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Nonprofit Radio for March 25, 2024: Living Our Values & Healing Over Everything

 

Amy Sample Ward: Living Our Values

The first of our 24NTC conversations is with our technology contributor and the CEO of NTEN, Amy Sample Ward. They give us the numbers around the conference, and remind us to walk the walk on our nonprofit’s values, including centering equity.

 

 

Beth Leigh: Healing Over Everything

Wellness in your workplace. Is that a value your nonprofit holds? Then take in this conversation packed with suggestions for mental health, creativity and unity in your office. Beth Leigh from Village of Wisdom, shares hers.

 

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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of Schwan mitosis if you unnerved me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s on our menu? Hey, Tony, I hope our listeners are hungry for the nonprofit technology conference coverage. We’re kicking off our coverage with these living our values. The first of our 24 NTC conversations is with our technology contributor and the CEO of N 10 Amy Sample ward. They give us the numbers around the conference and remind us to walk the walk on our nonprofits values including centering equity and healing over everything. Wellness in your workplace is that of value your nonprofit holds. Then take this conversation packed with suggestions for mental health, creativity and unity in your office. Beth Lee from Village of Wisdom shares hers on Tony’s take two. The NTC conversations were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking support generosity, donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org and by virtuous virtues gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow. Giving. Virtuous.org here is living our values. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC. You know what that is. You know, it’s the 2024 nonprofit technology conference, you know that it’s hosted by N 10. You know that we’re at the Oregon Convention Center. What you don’t know. Oh, you also know that we’re sponsored here by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Now, the reveal, what you don’t know is that I’m now with the N 10 CEO, the grand high exalted mystic ruler of NTC and our technology contributor at nonprofit Radio, Amy Sample Ward. Thanks for having me. It’s fun to get to do the interviews in person a year. We get to see each other while we do it. You know, in years past, your husband Max has been affiliated like stage managing. Is he with us this year? I didn’t, he hasn’t done it. And well, I guess we had a few years where the NTC wasn’t, wasn’t in person, but he hasn’t been helping with the main stage since maybe, maybe 2019 was the last year. Yeah, but um, he and Oren are gonna be here at the reception, so I’ll make sure you get to see them and say hi. Yeah, in the arcade staff or local, wherever the NTC is. Um we have staff in eight different states and you know, everybody has friends and family everywhere, so we’ll pick a reception and have that be where staff can bring their friends or their families so that it’s so it’s so rare to get to see what we do at N 10 since most of it is online. Right? And so it’s a fun way for friends and family of staff to get to see us in our element. The reception is this afternoon. That’s right. Ok. Awesome, awesome. Alright. Um So just acquaint us with some of the basics of uh 24 NTC. How many folks are here? How many folks are with us virtually? Yeah, we’ve got about 2000 attendees. Um Almost 400 of them are joining virtually. So they’re joining into the general sessions, the hybrid sessions and the virtual only sessions. Um and we have over 100 exhibitors here in the arcade. And I think it’s really interesting folks. We I heard some attendees talking about this yesterday, how diverse this group of exhibitors are? You know, I think sometimes folks think it’s, you know, 100 different Cr MS or, or, or 100 different payment processors or, you know, there’s so many different types of technology projects or service providers, even if they don’t have a technology product, you know, that they’ve made or that they sell so many different folks that are really invested in nonprofits being successful, you know, and um walking around here you go from agencies to communications firms, you know, to technology providers. There are Cr MS, there are payment processors, but there’s also like a safari fundraising team and like platforms that, you know, help you keep your board engaged. Like there’s just so there’s a video production booth, Bubu TV, they’re helping us with our live streaming and they’re recording. Yes. So there are, there is, there is a big diversity. You’re right. You’re right. Well, and the, the N the N 10 community is a diverse population and you, you are always very good about that. Um There’s a, there’s a, there’s a racial affinity room. There’s a quiet space for folks who might be neuro diverse and maybe just need quiet time alone. There’s like, I don’t know if it’s a silent room, but it’s a devoted quiet room. You’re always very intentional about that at N 10. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. Yeah. And I think folks that haven’t been um, had the opportunity to be at the conference in person, don’t necessarily know all of those other pieces. You know, we want the conference. Yes. To have this big arcade, this place where you could connect with service providers, vendors, et cetera, connect with other community members, but also educational sessions where you can learn and then third places where you can just find other people like you a feather along with, along with the quiet room and the racial birds of a feather. There’s dozens of those folks just say I’m coming from Chicago. Anybody else from Chi Town want to get together? That’s it. That’s a birds of a feather. That’s all. I think. This is one of the first years in easily like 15 years of, of the conference that I’ve been at where there hasn’t been a West Wing birds of a feather table. I don’t know if West Wing fans now have something new that they’re holding on to. But for many years, there was a stronghold, there was always a West Wing Table. Um In addition to, you know, Chicago or Canada, whatever or the other, we need some more entertainment related. I’m Binging Blair said she’s gonna do Love is Blind Table. So there you go. That’s all it takes. Yeah, I’m doing this, come join. You want to join. We’re now birds of a Feather. And ultimately, the bigger lesson here is you’re never alone in this community. There are, there are other folks who want to talk about the same things or have experienced similar challenges or issues or favorite TV shows, whatever it might be. You’re not alone when you’re in this community. Uh Portland is an enormously, uh and justifiably proud uh food, food city, very justifiably so many rounds tonight. Oh my gosh, we have to keep expanding the Google. We’re now going out to like a 30 minute drive out across the river and then, maybe, and then you gotta go into that other suburb. And, yeah, they’re, they’re going out. I know there’s, there’s one that’s, I was invited to, it’s like a 30 minute drive. Um Yeah, we’ve taken over the immediate uh convention center, downtown Portland, downtown. Uh, but, you know, at the NT CS you’re always very good about the food. I mean, today’s breakfast, there was, it was a European breakfast, there was salmon, there was Brie, there was blue cheese, there was a quinoa, a quinoa like breakfast, parfait with fruit and nuts, um cheeses. Uh There’s an oatmeal station, steel cut oatmeal station. You’re all, you’re very sure want to have folks feel taken care of because we know that the vast majority of folks who attend our conference are allowed one conference per year or maybe one conference every other year and that only includes their registration sometimes includes part of their travel. We don’t, we know we know we get it. We’re a nonprofit too. You know, we really want folks to feel like while they’re here, we are not expecting you to go try and find some expensive breakfast next to the Convention Center, right? That if you’re here, if you’re at the conference, we are feeding you, you are taken care of, you are supported. Um because that’s what we all deserve. And also humans don’t learn when they’re hungry. We don’t have fun at the birds of a feather if we’re hungry. Right. So we really want folks to feel taken care of here. I believe lunch today is Indian. Ok. Um, coffee, there seems to have been an adequate supply of coffee. Coffee is always like, I don’t know, 8000 gallons or something. There’s a $8000 per gallon. We talked about this, a couple. You’re paying like $80.90 dollars a gallon or something. It was 200 for cold brew. Damn, for a gallon. Jeez. You know, if you’re looking for a money making business, go into convention coffee. Um Not to mention convention furnishings, which you and I have talked about offline. We we’ll leave that there. Can I can I make some sort of bridge or paint some picture from this into something bigger? We actually were talking about this as staff and as an illustration, I think of how, how there are challenges even when we have these, you know, empowering messages from the keynotes of we, we can do it, right? Like we can have our values and we can build what we want. And we say that, you know, I say that, oh my gosh, I say that all the time and yet we’re not saying that because it means everything is now easy, right? We can say we want you to be fed, we want you to be taken care of. We want um accessibility is huge for us. That’s is a dedicated line item in our budget, accessibility is so important to us, but we are not the entire system, right? We’ve said we, we know that there’s a lot of reasons you might not be able to travel, you can join the conference remotely, you also have scholarships, but then we are not the internet providers. And so when the internet providers don’t deliver the internet and so the live stream goes down, it looks like we are not invested in that accessibility, right? So N 10 can say we will spend the money, we will focus on it. We will plan with the community, we will do all these things, but we are still only our part of that process or that system. And I just wanted to name that because I think it’s, it’s helpful to remember that it’s not just, oh, say the right things and like you’re good, we can say we’re invested in these things. We talk to these vendors for months and months and months. We’ve set the expectations, we even have staff in the room. But when the internet is down, it’s down, it’s, you know, we can’t magically make it come back on our own or even necessarily with the vendor sitting there saying I’m also pressing the big green button, you know, I also who want the internet to work. So I, I think it’s important to know. It still takes us saying those things, making those commitments, putting the, the values into our budgets and accepting how much can we influence in the process in that whole system? Where can we say? Well, we couldn’t change that. The internet went down in the moment. But we can say for the next conference that comes along or maybe a smaller conference or a conference that isn’t as invested in accessibility. We can meet with the convention center and the vendors here after the conference and say this can’t happen again to somebody else. And here’s how we think you can mitigate it, right? We can still pass along those knowledge and expectation kind of lessons. Even if our part is over, you know, it’s time for a break. Open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations anywhere, any time, picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors, make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations in 2024. Visit donor box.org to learn more now back to living our values. That’s an enormous commitment because you want to convey your values even for the next convention. And, and I our conference and I I heard that uh from, you know, the, the uh, the, the, the exhibitors talk. We, I heard some exhibitors scuttle but that somebody had been told by, by someone who works here that, oh, this was an issue a couple of weeks ago, you know, so they know that there’s a dead zone here and, and, you know, it’s been weeks. So, you know, maybe those prior conferences hadn’t passed it on or maybe it’s the Convention Center not living up to values even though you had meetings with them. And they still, you know, they didn’t say, well, you know, in this area, we’re gonna be, I’m sure they didn’t relay to you, there’s gonna be a dead zone and for these uh eight or 10 booths. So, you know, because if they had, you would have told them to remediate it before the 12th of April 12th of March. Um So, yeah, but, but we each still have to be committed to our own values and we are, we’re, of course, we’re all players in a much bigger system. We just have to try to bring the others along. Right. And Sabrina’s message this morning of, you know, we do all have power and it’s not to say, ok, well, we really tried, we said that we’d have hybrid and virtual sessions and the stream went down like, you know, sad Trombone. So sorry, we can say, right. But so what is still in my sphere of influence? What is still in my power to do? It’s still in my power to say, hey, we did pay for this. We did expect this. We did talk about this. It didn’t work. So let’s document it. Let’s make it as public as need to be, you know, what, what else can we do here? Because I think that’s the piece where especially a nonprofit organizations where the list of things to do, the list of community members asking for support. It just feels long that we don’t always do the second part of it. We say, OK, well, we did try there, let’s move on to the next thing and, and spending a little bit of time just to do that final. OK. But what was the, what, what’s the last piece of influence I have here in instead of saying, OK, well, we did, we did do it, it’s resolved, it it isn’t resolved. Some of these things are never resolved. Um And feeling like we can take up the space inside our teams or, you know, with vendors in this case or with community members, whatever it might be with funders, whomever take up that little bit of extra space to say, actually, II, I have a little more influence I wanna put here. You know, this is why you’re a multiple book author, you see these, you, you make these connections and you see this bigger picture and it makes perfect sense. Uh Once you explain it when I have 250 pages to explain it. No, you did it in 13 minutes. Come on. All right. Um, no living your values and, and carrying them forward and even for the benefit of others, like you said, you know, for the next conference it’s admirable. It’s, and I know, I know N 10 lives its values. I see it in the conference. II, I see it in our, I hear it in our conversations. You know, you’re always, um you’re always putting, putting mission forward equity forwards, like centering equity. You know, it’s not a, it’s not an office on the side. You and I, you and I and Tristan and Justin Spell Haug from Microsoft just had a conversation about centering equity uh in uh in tech and artificial intelligence specifically. Um You know, so no, I admire it. I mean, I, I admire you the work you do and the organization you lead and the uh the pervasiveness of the, you know, just walking the, what did you say? Is it walking the talk or is it walking the walk? Like you talk the talk, don’t you walk the talk? I, I’m getting confused about this. I always used to say walk the talk, but I think you’re supposed to walk the walk because if you choose to talk, well, no talk to talk is in is insufficient. You know that. But walking the talk, you don’t want to walk the talk, you wanna walk the walk or is it or is it just, it’s it’s walk the walk, walk the walk, you don’t walk your talk to upgrade from talking your talk. No, you walk the walk. All right. I admire that intent is always walking. Always walking the walk. Alright. Thank you, Jason for your help. Jason is running our video and live stream as well. Hopefully, you know, uh communications guide correspondent colloquialism colloquialism king. Um Well, can I make another bridge to what you just said there? Something else that I think is coming up in conversations here? Um So many, so many sessions, not that they have to put equity in the title, right? But equity is the foundation from which they’re talking about technology in their session, regardless of the topic or, or whatever. And I can’t help but feel frustrated that we’ve been having these conversations, we’ve been successful in putting resources out like the equity guide that have helped folks create or find language around this for themselves and for their organizations and yet it’s 2024 and I look out at the tech sector and I’m like, yeah, OK. Yeah. Have we, what are we doing here? You know? Um And I’m really hopeful that other folks, you know, just as Sabrina said in the keynote, like part of solidarity is just saying, I also see that, you know, you, you’re, no, no, no, you didn’t lose it. I also see this and now we can be together. I see you, you know, we’re in this together, but I hope that we can not just find this language for ourselves or our organizations, but we can better use this language together to say more loudly because our voices are more united. Yeah, we see you tech sector, we really do have clear and different expectations than what you’re delivering. Um I’m hopeful that that 2024 especially with this continued just proliferation of A I tools marketed at us that we can be stronger in our voices around that I was encouraged by our conversation, you meet Tristan and Justin be Haug from Microsoft uh technology TSG technology for good for social impact T si, right. Thank you. Um I mean, he um you know, I like to think he’s not just um being condescending and the team and gratuitous when he was basically, you know, speaking truth to power because he does run he’s the global head and global Vice president or corporate vice president of uh of technology for social impact at Microsoft. So, you know, I think that was a valuable conversation and I think he said the right things, but you’re seeing evidence of it as well. Yes. And I think, you know, there’s there a piece of this, you know, we often talk about, we’ve talked about on the show accountability, but a part of that is helping make real and helping make visible incentives to be accountable to us, helping more technology companies that are not Microsoft, that do not have an entire tech for social impact division, right? Um these smaller tech developing or service related, developing uh entities to realize it isn’t to build whatever you want and then come market it to us as a vertical later, it is to build it with us from the beginning because there is real incentive to doing that with us in this community. There are users, there are clients, there are customers, there’s, there’s money to be made and also like impact to be made by, by doing that work in this sector and not just selling it to us later. Is this the, is this the proposal for your next book? Sounds like it. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t thought about another book but I feel like I hear the frustration, you know, but we have achieved but we, we’re but not to not to where we need to be, not to where we need to be. Because I think for me and I don’t think I’m alone in this. I think you, I think, I think this whole community, it isn’t just like a this hope, this optimism that maybe one day it will get better. I know it can be fucking better now, it can be better. So let’s do it. You know, it’s not about like, oh my gosh, we’ll build to one day like today is now and by the way, don’t blush because you said, fuck, you’re not the first one. Somebody said, fuck you. And somebody said as today, grab your ass with both hands or something. I never heard that before. So well, he said, but, but I encouraged him to say yes so that I can say whatever. But I think my point is like it doesn’t have to be a kind of grindstone where we say, OK, well, you know, it’s just worth it to have, have known in our hearts, we were doing the right thing, we actually can make it better. So what have been the obstacles then? Why aren’t we much closer? I mean, we, we, we both acknowledge the community acknowledges this is a journey. It was never gonna check it off and say, oh, we, we have a completely equitable tech community. I mean, I think some of the big, why aren’t we further in 20 24? I think some of the biggest challenges, at least specifically to this community to, to nonprofit organizations, especially as they think about technology and their work is access and uh kind of segmentation or separation. I think a lot of folks in organizations don’t consistently have access to technology knowledge, technology, leadership, technology decisions. And so those decisions become inequitable, they become not very strategic honestly, they, you know, so within our organizations, we are creating access issues to, to knowledge and power. And then as organizations, we are limited in our access to the service providers and the technology providers where it’s not clear. Oh, maybe three special clients that paid the most in our giant enterprise organizations got to be on their nonprofit advisory. Right. But as a sector, as, as everyday organizations, as you know, most organizations are under a million dollars, like these kind of regular organizations don’t feel that access to inform or influence the tools that they then adopt. So that’s, that’s an access piece at both levels within organizations and then between nonprofits and the service providers or vendors that they’re working with and the smaller or they just don’t, they don’t feel they have the agency and who would they would they would they ask for? Right? Like there, there it is uh systemic issue. The vendors are often set up in a way where there is no manager to ask for, right? And so they’re not creating an access point in um to allow for that influence. And then the segmentation issue I see this perpetuated so strongly by funders and technology providers, you know, this is a tool for arts organizations. We fund arts organizations. What is art in 2024? Like I think my definition is a little more broad than to consider myself an artist, any content creator, creating audio art, right? Um And what do we gain by pretending that we are fundamentally different because you work in the arts and I work in the environment, guess what? In an equitable world? We have to have the arts and we have to have an environment, right? We all of our missions are important and necessary. So pretending that we are so different that we aren’t sharing knowledge with each other. We’re not building that power together. We’re not both saying, hey, we both use this vendor. Let’s go together and ask for access and influence, right? So this segmentation and I think often it isn’t the nonprofit saying, oh no, we’re not like you, we don’t want to collaborate. It’s funders saying we only fund this city or this region or this topic or these three portfolio goals, you know, um and and technology providers who are also saying, oh, this is just for higher ed, really like really? So it isn’t, I I want to give people space that it’s not just your own making, you know, that that, that the segmentation exists, but it isn’t serving us and we need to do more to say, yeah, I have something to learn from this human rights organization and this housing organization and this environmental organization, right? That all of those groups, we are all trying to make this world better. So let’s do that learning and, and power building together. Let’s go. If it’s not a book, it’s a keynote. At least I’ll give you that. That’s just 45 minutes or so, you know, just listen back to this recording and you’ll have, you’ll have your keynote. Alright. Lots of good wishes for the rest of NTC. Let me ask about 25 NTC. Uh It’s on the website, but I, I in April of 2025 and we will be in Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland at the Convention Center at the Convention Center. Not the, not the gaylord. No, that’s, that’s something different. That’s in Maryland. Yeah. Yeah. Ok. Baltimore Convention Center, right. So we’re going east coast, we’re going west coast to east coast. Um Do we know the dates? I don’t, I did not. That’s, it’s on the website because the 25 NTC is already like, it’ll be in the notes below the stream. You know, like one of those, I’ll try, I’ll try. It’s on the website. That’s reliable. N ten.org N ten.org. All right. Good wishes for the rest of the conference. Thanks so much and thanks for being part of the conference for another year. It’s really magic and it’s such a gift to put more speakers who don’t have access to microphones on a literal microphone. So, thank you. It’s my pleasure. And this is our 10th. Wow, congrats. Yeah. Amazing. They’re Amy Sample Ward. They’re the CEO of N 10, the grand high exalted mystic ruler of uh event 24 NTC. And they are, of course our technology contributor here at nonprofit radio. Thanks so much to the pod father. Oh, thank you. You did like that. You’re giving me this wild title. I’m gonna remember Pod Pod. And thank you. For being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks so much for being with us. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thanks very much, Kate. Great conversations from the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. I was there all last week in Portland, Oregon. We were in our booth sharing with the sponsors Heller consulting. Let me add my thanks to Heller. Very grateful to them for second year in a row, sponsoring nonprofit radio at the NTC. So these conversations that I got 24 captured 24 interviews, conversations. I like to call them conversations. The two today living your values healing over everything. I mean, you wouldn’t think of healing and, and wellness in the workplace as belonging in a tech conference. But that’s because this is not a, you know, you know, that this is not a tech conference for techies. It’s a conference for everybody who uses technology and wellness is essential for everybody using technology. So just starting with today’s. But then we uh uh we, we, we’ve got conversations coming up on artificial intelligence. There are a couple of those matching gifts, email deliverability, uh which is a big issue. The uh the email providers are tracking your recipient’s actions and they’re penalizing your emails when folks that you email to uh put you in the junk mail or mark you as spam or don’t interact with you. So, email deliverability, very topical, timely. Um redefining generosity. That’s a very good one, avoiding tech debt, designing good surveys. Switching to a four day work week. That’s an interesting provocative 14 day work week, 32 hours, not, not four day work week, 40 hours, four day work week work week, 32 hours, no reduction in pay. Very interesting conversation. And um, the last one I just, um just hitting a couple of highlights leaving your job. So another very interesting one, lots of good conversations coming up over the next several weeks from the nonprofit technology conference uh and happy to taking off our NTC coverage this very week. That’s Tony Stick too. Ok. Well, I hope you had fun in Oregon. But also I must say I’m excited to hear all these new conversations and stories and hearing about the people that you talk to. If you met anyone new, I want to hear about that too. Oh, lots of, lots of new folks. Yeah. Lots of folks who have not been on before. That’s awesome. Plus plus uh plus some repeats. Yes. Love them too. Well, we’ve got Buku but loads more time here is healing over everything. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC, the 2024 nonprofit technology conference in Portland, Oregon. Our coverage is sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. With me. Now is Beth Lee, director of development and stewardship at Village of Wisdom. Beth. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks for having me, Tony, pleasure. And you are talking about a very interesting subject. We are gonna talk about you, your expert in it and I’m just learning your session topic is healing over everything. I’m just going to say, explain, explain the session, explain your title. Healing over everything is a mantra for me that I often say and it’s healing over everything, meaning any and everything that comes up, right? Because often if we center ourselves on healing and positivity, distractions come up, right? If you want to focus on being more financially stable, that’s often when an emergency shows up and takes all your money, right? And you’re like, oh, this is not what I should be doing, but in the world of nonprofits healing over everything, it’s more about healing over what your supervisors say or what the environment is telling you which is work 90 hours a week or pour all of yourself out despite feeling yourself back up. And so this is why the topic is important. There’s a couple of levels to it. Players healing over everything. I see. I was thinking of healing coming first over being supreme over everything else that’s going on in your life. But, but so that’s got different levels. That was, that was my, my take, which is a great take. You’ve been thinking about this for years, overcoming, overcoming everything over all. Love it Um So you, you thinking of this in three different, I don’t know, three different realms, three different ways, mental health, creativity and unity. How do these work together? How do these work together? Where’s this energy? So, for me, this all comes from research that I did for a small bit of people, 100 and 75 people from 2018 to 2020. For obvious reasons. The research stopped in 2020. right? And it was finding out what happens to people once they leave the nonprofit space, how do they feel what’s going on? 100% of the people mentioned having some sort of battle with PTSD. And so 100% 100% of the 175 people. And so that was to me pretty baffling that everyone felt in some way that they had been damaged by this space and they were damaged, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually, they mentioned different areas of that damage. So this is why I focus on the different creativity, healing and unity. And so in giving that research and talking about it this week, it’s really like diving into the environment of nonprofits. Why are they toxic? And why don’t we talk about it? And also in that we found in the research that and these are all ages, ages 22 to 60 eight, I was going to ask you about your sample sample, what part of the country or geographically diverse? So we were geographically diverse. I’m going to pull out just some of the stats. It’s 100 and 75 people. 100% of nonprofit employees that had left. They’re all former. Their time in the nonprofits range from one year to 33 years. Um Gender 128 women, 35 men, four, non binary, eight prefer not to identify their gender race. 40% identified as black indigenous or person of color. 30% Caucasian, 10% 2 or more races, 12% Asian and 8% prefer not to answer. And then ages ranged from 22 years to 68 years and I can tell you just off the bat we had probably more than 50% are from the east coast. Um And then 20% about the Midwest and the rest are coming from the west coast. Ok? I mean, I I presume you, you were you were trying to trying to achieve a representative sample of nonprofit employees, ok. Trust that you’ve done that. I mean you’re the expert, but thank you for the details. Um Alright, so mental health, mental health, you’re talking about mindfulness, but there’s so much more to it, help us. I’ll help you all through it. Yeah. So given that data and talking to everyone and then aggregating the data and talking to people about what they wanted out of this. If you could redo your journey again, what would you do? And each person, you know, in their positions were management to entry level positions were saying I wanted someone to tell me it was ok to take a break. And so when we talk about nonprofit spaces and mental health, where’s the mindfulness? Where are we saying? Ok, mental health has a place here on our day to day, 9 to 5 work. Right? And often I don’t see it even when I’m consulting or working with other nonprofits, we say it a lot. We want our employees to be healthy. But what are we doing? Where’s the walk? Exactly? Where’s the walk? And so we’re not seeing it. So, where do we put that in? For me? It’s a very simple 12 to 1 that’s a lunch break. But I also ensure that I also make it my mindfulness break. So I break it up for myself. But when I do these consultations, Tony, no one is going, oh, and maybe I can put that in my calendar. Yes, you can put lunch in your calendar. Yeah. So people are just like, oh, this is mind boggling. I’m not quite sure I could take a break. You can time for me. CEO S do it. Executive time. The president of the United States has executive time that nobody knows it’s some black box. But CEO S CEO s too trickle down closed door time or whatever they call it. It’s time that they don’t want to be interrupted. I have my time that I don’t need to be, I don’t want to be interrupted as well. So be conscious, conscious about time for yourself. There’s gotta be more to it conscious about time for yourself. And in that time, what am I doing? Right. So, is that, and I’m, is it breathing exercises? Is it journaling? Is it that you’re taking time for your spirituality? What is it that you need to do for you? So this is where we talk about emotional assessments and assessing that. What do you need to be your best self as you do this work in the nonprofit field? Right? Often in the nonprofit field, we’re seeing people at their worst because whatever our mission and vision is, it’s to help someone get out of something, I mean, very, very, very curt way of saying that, right? And if that’s the case, then you’re expelling a lot of energy you’re pouring from your cup often. So now I’m telling you take a break, maybe an hour a day in this hour, a day after assessing what you need to do to make yourself and keep yourself whole as you’re doing your work. That’s how you program your one hour, right? So for me, I’m going to program my hour to have breath work because that works for me. And that’s just taking time to, you know, do some deep breathing. But there’s also probably going to be movement yoga, walking just outside, being with nature or that’s going to be journaling. And that journaling is normally for me where I pull in my spirituality. So it might be writing prayers or it might be reading the Bible, anything like that, whatever feels good to you and your spirit and whatever you’re practicing. But that comes after you have assessed what you need in your environment. I’m going to presume that we’re going to discourage, you know, I want to be on Facebook for half of my one hour. This is not social media, it’s not social media, catch up time, it’s not social media, catch up time or text, catch up time, right? You know, and this is barring the normal checking in with your family type of stuff, obviously, right? But yeah, this is the time for you. Ok? I I’ve said for years that you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others and we’re all taking care of. Well, if we’re not, if we’re not explicitly others, you know, humans or animals, we’re taking care of the environment, we’re taking care of forests, we’re taking care of uh churches, whatever it is, you know, we’re expanding. You said it, I’m just I’m reinforcing and I believed it for years, whatever it is, whatever you’re engaged in, it takes energy, it, it takes some of you, it takes some of your heart and you have to take care of yourself before you can do this other work. For other agencies, people, entities, whatever, however you define your work. Because so that, that’s what caught me about this, you know, because people are not, you know, we’re not, we’re just not taking care of ourselves and we’re seeing it in rates of, I think depression, obesity, high blood pressure, suicide, right. These, these bad behaviors that we’re only increasing inflicting on ourselves are showing up in very bad ways. I mean, fatal ways sometimes. Absolutely just take care of yourself. And that’s why we’re talking about how, how to do it be purposeful, purposeful. I’m your cheerleader. I’m here for this, Tony. I’m here cheering you on. I appreciate this. This is work that I want to cheer on. Alright. Suppose, I suppose we have uh some leadership objections like, well, you know, yeah, you do get an hour but uh or you don’t even get a full hour or well, but we still need you to be on email during, during your lunch break. Uh You know, this, this your time is, it’s, it’s not working for me or us. How do we, how do we push back? We get some allies. I mean, how do we, how do we make the case for our own healing time? I’m glad you asked during the work in the workday hours. Yeah. So my biggest supporter has been hr right? And I know that sometimes hr isn’t always the best supporter because they’re there for the company. They work they work for the company. And I say that in the sense of using research to work for them and what I’ll do is say, well, I’m more productive when I have this hour, I’m less productive when you don’t give me the hour and then I actually back it up. You know, like when I don’t have this one hour, you can see that my work starts to dwindle, you can see the excitement in the work that I’m doing or the ability for me to do this work or now I’m frazzled and I’m not even bringing my best self to the office any longer. That has always worked for me with working with other supervisors who may not say I don’t want you to take this hour. I need you to still be on call. I also have learned to push back just personally. Are you adverse to me being my best self? Is that what you’re saying you’re opposed to that? Are you opposed to this? You don’t want my best self at work, work and often that stumps them and you’re like, take the hour, just take the hour. Ok. Those are very good. Anything else? Those are the two that have worked really well for me. And even though I’ve helped other people, those have worked really well. So those are two. I lean on now. You do consulting on an individual basis as well as the organizational level. Anything else you want to say about mental health before we move to creativity. So one thing I’ll say here on mental health too is leaning on allies, as you mentioned earlier and outside resources. I have a great therapist and I just, that’s my personal therapy. Yeah, I love my therapist and she’s a huge cheerleader and proponent of writing up breaks for me. If I need them at work to say, you know, Beth, if you need a week or you need a couple of days, let’s make sure we actually write that out and I’m just going to write you out. Your therapist writes to your employer to give you a break, a mental break, like a surgeon would say she needs two weeks for, you know, whatever surgery, mental health, mental health, she needs this. How do you fight with that? That’s medical back understanding. She’s got to go and there is no justification of, well, she’s out and she could still check email, she’s out and she can still do text message. No, she’s out and it’s a mental break and it’s medically recorded and given to hr and there’s no more questions about it. And I think we need to lean on our therapy resources more often for things like that because we don’t, I think we also, as we were talking about all these bad behaviors, we have an understanding and if someone were shot that they’re bleeding, they need immediate assistance. And we talk about those bad behaviors or negative behaviors, I should say of, you know, bad eating habits or mental health decline. That’s often because we don’t understand how emergent it is for us to get help. Someone says I’m exhausted at work. Those words, I’m exhausted are often not, I’m just tired. It’s, it’s everything, it’s work, it’s home life, everything is compounding. And they’re telling you I really need a break. So when they need that break, let’s give it to them. And if we can’t give it to them, let’s lean on outside resources to make sure you get it. So, tapping into your therapy network will help you with that as well. I think that’s brilliant. I mean, any, any hr department or CEO is gonna take a doctor’s note, an MD note. So this is the therapist note. This is mental health instead of physical health practitioner that brilliant. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity, virtuous beliefs that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys. The response to the needs of each individual virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow, impact, virtuous.org now back to healing over everything you want to move to creativity. Yeah, we can go to creativity. Let’s do it. Yeah. Creative spaces, creating creative spaces in the workplace that used to come up like 1020 years ago about, oh, we have a creative workspace. And what that meant was that your office looked like Google’s office and that you all had couches somewhere pong table. Exactly. Were you productive? No, you weren’t really that productive. You just had moments to play, which there is research that suggests that play is necessary for your brain to have a break, right? So I’m not doubting that. But what I am saying is let’s be intentional about creative spaces. And for me, when I’m working with individuals, I love to take pauses whenever we’re meeting or we begin meeting to do something creative together. And that may be, we’re going to just literally have a paint session, paint parties or, you know, we’re all building something together here. There’s a painting kiosks painting here. There is, there’s painting here and I love to see that type of stuff because what that shows you is that there’s an understanding for health, our abilities to tap into our creativity are so important. It’s important to just our daily lives. It helps us move forward, it helps us think of things that we’ve never thought of before. And again, we’re more productive when I’m tapping into my creativity, I’m thinking I go back to that problem and now I see it in a different lens because I’ve spent so much time on it. So, you know, introducing that in the workspace is really brilliant as well. And I think that the way we do that, at least that’s worked for me. The way that has worked for me is, you know, back to the arts, really bringing in the arts. I’ve worked at a place where we had an art table and it was really the old school kindergarten table which is paint and paper you squeeze and it’s just like a good jump in, just go for it, just go for it. And even if you were stressed out, just go for it and have a good time on those tables. And that was an environment that felt really good. It was an environment that when we had conflict, we took it to the table, like I’m still upset with you, but I’m going to go to this table for a little bit and then we’re going to come back and have a conversation. Those conversations were a lot more pleasant than if we just sat there and tried to bicker with one another and get to some kind of plausible solution that really didn’t work in the end because someone felt like they weren’t heard. And So introducing creativity truly in that way, there are rooms and spaces here that have little fidget spinners and things on them, right? Small creativity. But it’s for the introvert that wants to be alone, but still have an opportunity to color things like that. And then they can come back to the space when they need to. And so introducing that creativity in the workspace and your work flow in your scope of work even with at Village of Wisdom, one of the things that one of my colleagues is always saying, you always champion rest. They’ll give us these huge scopes of work which are amazing scopes of research and understanding. And then I’m like, well, where’s the rest built in? Did you build in the rest? Did you do that? Did you build in the creativity? No. OK. Well, let’s go back and do that, you know, and I think that’s just an amazing thing to do. But I love the environment of Village of Wisdom because they accept it because it’s one of those, you know, I can say let’s rest and we rest, we collectively rest. And I think that’s the thing is that you need an environment and space that will offer you the opportunity to rest. There’s something about the tactile, we’re talking about creativity, finger painting. I’m thinking of Legos clay, clay. I used to love clay. Uh I, there’s something about the, yeah, the tactile, you know, now all we touch is our phones and hopefully our families in loving ways. But aside from that, I mean, in the creativity side there’s, there’s nothing we don’t unless we’re, unless we’re devoted to the arts, you know, or it’s a big part of our life. Maybe as a hobby, maybe not a profession. But aside from that and that’s not, that’s not very many folks. We don’t have the touch. Right. And it’s so important, Tony coming out of the pandemic when you were shut off from touch, stay 6 ft away. I couldn’t touch a person for a while. We thought we couldn’t touch our groceries. We were wiping our groceries down for a while until we realized we’ve learned through science that it’s not on your grocery. The device is not on your groceries. But, uh, doorknobs, we installed the, uh, those things on the bottom of the door, open your shoes. You couldn’t even touch a doorknob. So we lost, yeah, the pandemic was enormous for isolation and loss of tech time. The sensation. So what else, what other kind of creative space you talking about? Painting? You talked about the clay, which is great, silly putty. And even I found that making those things together, you can make clay, you can make silly putty. You know, I have the benefit of living in North Carolina. So we actually sit on clay in Durham. I live in Emerald Isle on the beach and then I have a place in Pinehurst too. Even closer to down there in Pamlico. Yeah, you’re right there. You do in Durham. Durham is close to Pinehurst is, it’s right there next time I’m in Pinehurst. That’s not the one I don’t live there. But you go visit that one. Yeah. No, Durham is a very nice town. Great college town. Great food. That’s another good food town. Durham culture, universities. That’s a great place to live. I didn’t know that. So creative spaces in the workplace, what else can we do? What works for you? I say get involved in your community that way. What’s creative happening around you? Right? There’s some great exhibitions. There are great little opportunities to go visit different shows. I know that seems like a strange thing to do. Me and my group are going to go visit a show. We are and we’re going to talk about it afterwards. How did that make you feel? It’s really bringing field trips back into the workspace. You know, that’s one way to do that. The other way is, you know, like you mentioned Lego, Lego is great because it has so many different things. Now I introduce my best friend to it. I do it. I build cars. That’s my secret. I build cars. She got into the plants, they now have plants and so her home has all these little plants all around it, plant, decorate it that way. And so bringing that in where each person can maybe bring in a little tiny box. These are small boxes and build something together and talk about it. But you learn about each other video games. Another thing, right? Card games, old school uno we did that and that brought out some things but fun is another one. Yeah. And I mean, it’s just a matter of bringing play and creativity. And I say creativity because in the workspace, anything that’s counter to just sitting at a computer oftentimes is creative. At this point, journal prompts writing time, you know, working with your colleagues. OK. Well, together, we’re going to set aside an hour and that’s our meeting time. But in this meeting time we’re going to write, you know, I’ve seen that multiple times that’s been introduced into village of Wisdom as well, not by me, by another colleague. And so I think it’s great. You have something you haven’t mentioned that. I think it would be counterproductive. But I want your opinion. Uh We, we’re all gonna play for an hour together between 11 and 12. We’re gonna do it all together, we’re gonna do the same thing is that, is there value in that or is that counterproductive? There’s value in that like it’s mandated, we’re all going, we’re all going to do something. So if we’re all going to, there’s value in that the word mandate often is what takes the value off of it, right? Because I’m a big proponent of choosing, you know, just for that person during the day, you might not have the energy for it. If we’re talking about healing, it’s acknowledging your cup that day. So that day you might not really want to do it, but do it for those who want to, for those who don’t, you can take your personal hours and use it as you like those who want to. We’re going to, I don’t know, go to an escape room or Durham has something I love called a rage room. A room filled with things you can break and lots of different weapons. So there’s a baseball bat, sledge hammers and then there’s a whole bunch of glass plates and cups and you can just throw them against the wall. They suit you up and put on all the protective gear. So you don’t get injured and you just have an hour in there to smash things. They turn the music up and you just have a good time throwing beer bottles, all that Rage room. They also have a paint room where you can throw paint on each other in the same room. So it’s getting messy. It’s reactivating the piece of your brain that people tell you you’re too old to activate. Are you, are you too young to know Tinker toys? You know, Tinker toy. That was another Lincoln Logs were good too. I can remember the package that the Lincoln Logs came in. There was like a round thing. Lincoln Log. Blocks. Yeah. Those are the big ones that the toddlers have. They’re LEGO, but they’re real big. Ok. Again, there’s our sense of touch. It’s all on a smooth screen now. It’s important. And, yeah, I mean, even for your own health of feeling different things, right. You know, sometimes you can correlate touch to an emotion. Something smooth, reminds you of Xy and Z something crunchy. Feels like this and just reigniting those emotions helps you with just getting through your day. Should we move to unity? Creativity. We’ve given that adequate. I think. So, hopefully for whoever’s listening, you know, they can go, I can do this, you know, healing spaces, unity. You talk about fertile soil for all people. That’s what’s engaged here. Yeah. What’s engaged here? That becomes the um the evaluation of the space. That’s the part that people don’t often like and it’s the evaluation of self. And so in these spaces, we’re asking you to evaluate yourself and say, OK, do I have emotionally what I need to go through this? And so some of those questions are, you know, where am I today? Is my home life? OK. Is my work life? OK? Is my spiritual life. OK? And if everything is in balance is my physical life, OK? Can I move forward and expelling some more energy? Right? Only you know the answer to that. But then I flip this back onto the organization and the environment and say now do this for the environment. Does the environment have enough soil, fertile soil? That if this person says I’m not OK as an employee that you can hold them and if the answer is no, then what resources do you have for that person? And you say none, now we need to go find those resources because I don’t believe that everyone’s job should do everything for them. But I do believe that they should have the opportunity to provide resources. And that’s why there’s unity in that. Because I think in order to do that, you are looking at people as humans and you’re seeing their humanity, you’re not looking at them and saying, well, I don’t want to do this because I don’t like you or I don’t want to go down this path of helping you because you may be mad a little weird too. You know, it’s esoteric getting a little personal. I don’t really want to know you should deal with that on your own day. Exactly. But what I’m saying is that especially in the nonprofit space when we’ve had, like I said, the small sample size who told you 100% of them felt that they were damaged. Then we need to probably look at where we can actually provide you some fertile soil. What kinds of resources? What should we do even internally without external resources internally? So that’s where the other two, right? We talked about giving you that hour, things like that, but it is check ins and what I mean by check in, it’s meeting with your team to say, how are you feeling in the culture? And then based on that conversation, you need to have a plan for this person. Um And, you know, in my session, I’ll be talking about different ways that people can have these plans because they’re pretty extensive. We have a lot of time here but the planning is, is looking at this person and saying, all right, you don’t like the following things, recurring meetings. You know, you don’t feel like you’re heard, you don’t feel as though your work is being showcased in a way that other people’s work is being showcased. You don’t feel like you’re getting the credit, whatever it is that’s wearing on you, like diving deep into this, like why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling and then we’re gonna create a plan. What is this plan? And it’s not the same as a work plan. It’s more of what’s your feel good plan. So you can actually feel good in this space. And in that, if we need to increase some flexibility in your hours, you’re starting at 10 o’clock instead of nine o’clock and ending at six instead of five, you know, is it that you’re doing a four day week? Because some people are more productive with four days than five. Is it that these meetings, you only need to show up to every other week instead of every week, you know, what is the plan for you? Um And that’s why I was saying it creates unity because each person feels seen and held and as long as each person feels seen and held, then everyone is OK. What I’ve found is that if one person is getting more attention than the other, it’s not going to work. This is applied inequitably disparately, then this is just going to be breed resentment. Exactly. Some of the folks will be very content and feel better and heard and the rest will be pissed off. Ok? So it’s got to be done equitably. And then all the thing too for me has been Tony talking to management to have them learn different management styles. And what I mean by that is we’ve gone through a pandemic and people have changed. We all change coming out of the pandemic. My work style going into the 2020 is not the same. Now, the way I communicate is not the same, how I interact with people is not the same. And so understanding that we need to be able to say, ok, what do we need to come back? I don’t want to say come back to self to just nurture this new person that’s come out. Um You know, I talked to the executive director at V once before and we laughed about it because I said, listen, your executive director. Yeah, right now and I said, hey, you built a team in the dark because the organization grew in 2020 from 4 to 15 people in the pandemic year. And I was like, over the pandemic over the course of two years. And I said so in doing that, I was like, people don’t know each other. We know each other on screens, we don’t know each other and we don’t even know ourselves. And so now we’re doing amazing work. I call it root work in the sense of bringing in people to talk to us about the environment and the workspace because it’s not negative, but just learning to learn each other, learn each other’s work styles and things like that. And so that intention behind it has been great and I’m always excited from him and the rest of the leadership team of just diving in, it wasn’t a, oh, we’re going to just let this thing just be infertile. We’re going to actually dive in. So they brought in people strategic planners to actually focus on doing strategic planning in a holistic way. They brought in, you know, a therapist who’s doing, you know, culture planning in a holistic way and it’s done in a way that everyone has a voice and it allows us to move as a team saying, OK, this works for me, but this might not work for you. But how can we work together and show up in our whole selves? Yeah. So why don’t you bring this all three together again? The mental health and creativity and unity, uh, you know, leave us. Uh, well, I think we’re already inspired but, you know, just, just pull it all back together. Pull it all together. Yeah. Club, the benediction and the sermon. Right. For me, if I were to put a bow on it, it’s the understanding that every last one of us working in the nonprofit space is fostering humanity in some form, shape or fashion, right? And we need to take the time to love on ourselves in a way that not only replenishes ourselves but honors our own humanity so we can give our best selves in the workspace. And we do that by honoring our mental health. We do that by honoring our creativity and we do that by knowing that in a unified approach, we will always be our best selves. I bet you’re very good at the stewardship, part of, of Director of Development and stewardship because you, you hear people, actually, I think I would recommend you for promotion to like Chief Humanity Officer Cho Cho. I I I’ll speak to your uh now you’re a better advocate than I will be. She’s Beth Lee, Director of Development. My pleasure, Director of Development and stewardship at Village of Wisdom. Thank you again, Beth. Thank you Tony and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Next week, the generational divide, Tony, am I fired? Maybe so, as I said last week, if the generational divide didn’t come this week, there was gonna be a shake up. Uh but I’m taking responsibility uh for this. There, there could be other issues. So that’s why, you know, that’s why it’s a maybe uh around you. The generational divide. I have it, I have it, it’s recorded. It’s in the can, the digital can, but I wanted to really wanted to kick off our 24 NTC coverage this week the week after NTC. So the generational divide will come. Uh I, we’re not gonna keep promising it well, the next time you hear it, uh it’ll be for sure the next week. Uh And in terms of Kate, we’ll see about week to week. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box. Fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Let me say a quick thank you very much to Donor Box. They are ending their sponsorship with this show. It’s been a terrific year. I’ve just been uh grateful to have you as sponsors. So we thank you very much Donor Box and by virtuous, virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools you need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer for now, Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty. You’re with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for March 3, 2017: Prosperity Paradox

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host we have a new am and fm outreach director betty mcardle she’s, based in portland, oregon. She has a long background in community radio, and she was recommended by her predecessor, gavin doll. I appreciate that, gavin, but he’s got lots of experience. She loves non-profit radio, so i know that we are in good hands as we bring mohr affiliate stations to the flock, the family, the foundation, the community very glad you’re with me. Betty, welcome. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with simpatico tonia, if you got me nervous with the idea that you missed today’s show prosperity paradox silicon valley boasts seventy six thousand millionaires and billionaires and revolutionary innovation yet local non-profits struggled to meet demand and suffer inadequate reserves. Researchers alexa cortez culwell and heather macleod grant explained the disconnect and the lessons for your organization. Their report is tthe e-giving code on twenty steak two i’ve got a plan giving webinar coming up. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling dot com. I want to welcome alexa and heather to the show, but they haven’t called into our line yet, so we’re waiting. Sam, of course, is struggling. You’re sending them texts to sam. Okay, sam is trying to get them on the line. Wth e-giving code is their report, and this is based on silicon valley. New philanthropy and the paradox in silicon valley, where there is enormous wealth and enormous innovation and research going on, and yet silicon valley non-profits r struggling to meet what are actually growing needs, we’re going to talk about thea, the shrinking middle class in the silicon valley they ladies define the silicon valley with in terms of two, there are two counties, and we’ll talk about those that they define as the silicon valley area specifically for their research and the report e-giving code. So it’s ah it’s frustrating to hear that with the enormous wealth and, you know, we’ve got statistics like, um, well, it’s, a super rich place the number of millionaires and billionaires is has grown incredibly in six years from, like two thousand eight to two thousand thirteen, individual giving rose incredibly from, like two billion dollars to have almost five billion dollars, one hundred fifty percent increase the number of millionaires and billionaires now at seventy six thousand. In these in these two counties santa clara and san mateo counties, so enormous wealth and considerable growth in giving but the non-profits in those two counties, our ah are struggling. I’ll tell you what, we’re going to go out for a break and we’re going, so i’m going to try i’m going to regroup and see what sam has done, and maybe i’ll call the women myself and see what’s up with how come they haven’t called in to our line yet so let’s go out early for the break, we’re gonna come back with e-giving code and hopefully the two co authors of the giving code stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. We’ve got one of our co authors, i think, it’s, alexa, alexa, is that you? Yeah, okay, alexa, thank you, alexa cortez culwell, cofounder of open impact and a longtime philanthropy advisor, speaker and facilitator for the past twenty five years, she’s built and managed foundations and philanthropic initiatives for successful entrepreneurs, including serving as ceo of the charles and helen schwab foundation. She’s at alexa culwell and open impact is at open impact dot hi. Oh, welcome, alexa. Thanks for having me. You’re welcome, pleasure and honor to be with. Thank you. Is there gonna be calling in shortly? I am sure will be joining us soon as you can. Okay. All right. Well, we’ll see her on the panel. We have the dashboard for the the conference line. Okay, so let’s, then let’s, get get started. I gave a little overviewing while in the first block while we were waiting, hoping you were going to call silicon valley is very rich. I went through some some statistics about the number of millionaires and billionaires there. Seventy six thousand. But talk about the growing need. I didn’t. I didn’t cover this part yet. The growing need that non-profits air facing. Yeah, so we uncovered that there’s, this incredible growing wealth in the region and with it is growing philanthropy. And then there’s what we call a prosperity paradox and that’s exactly right. So it’s, this enormous economy and all of these wealthy people, and yet thirty percent of our residents are replying on some form of public or private assistant. Yeah, that’s! Incredible! A third. A third of residents need some kind of public assistance. Nearly a third. Yes, and one and one in three, which is a third of our kids are going hungry, so they’re on free. And reduced lunch programs. They’re accessing food from the food bank and other things. Um, what is the non-profit community like there? In terms of numbers and size? I know it’s ten, small and struggling, but give us more color than just that. Well, like the rest of the united states, the majority of our non-profits their small under a million dollars in revenue. And since in the last ten years, we’ve actually seen a lot of growth in the number of our non-profits almost thirty, one hundred non-profits in the region. And so and so we have a lot of non-profits a lot of small inns, and we also have non-profits that are struggling to get by. So they’re being displaced by this economy. They’re under siege and what’s. Interesting is not only are they kind of being displaced, they can’t afford actually operate in the region. The demand for their services is at an all time high, so people are on wait lists there being ah, dahna, you know? They’re just asking for help that these non-profits can’t keep up with that kind of thie irony of all of this and as a result, our non-profits they’re struggling, so they actually have deficit that are above the national average for organizations there and also being displaced from office base because it’s, the silicon valley on and i mentioned earlier san matteo in santa clara, county’s that’s how you define silicon valley office space is at a premium, so that’s costing them and that’s hurting them. Um, i have some of the stats from your executive summary eighty percent of non-profits reporting increasing demand for services over the past five years, seventy four percent don’t have access to high net worth donordigital works significantly hindering their outreach. We’re going to talk about that. The gap there, fifty one percent say they will not be able to meet demand for services this year and and on and on, you’ve got very nice multicolored summary there on page three of the executive summary, but of lots of lots of pretty colors in those in those stats, i like the electric i appreciate the color, thank you and think you’re actually reading the report and i do what you think of earth people to dig into our data. It’s awesome and there’s a lot of it. You think i don’t prepare for the show or what? What do you think? You’re very well off the cuff. Well, we haven’t. We haven’t spent the hour together yet. We’ll see what happens in one one fifty nine eastern rolls around. See if you still say that, but yeah, now the summary, i have toe critique a little bit because it’s my nature, i think the executive summary is a little on the long side. Sixteen page. I mean, i’m executive summary. I’m looking for like, two paragraphs. Well, then i won’t torture you with the full report, but it’s seventy nine pages of even more data graphics and deeper insight, and i really would urge people teo get into the executive summary and if and if they’re interested to really, really dig deeper into some of the analysis and implications for their work. Well, it doesn’t mean sixteen pages it’s a really tough topic and there’s there’s just i think we’re going to need to really kind of carefully consider these issues that were going to actually want to solve them. Well, i’m well acquainted with take point taken. Okay, now, but i’m well acquainted with the full report. I’ve read large pieces of it. I do not read all sixty nine pages, but okay, you know, executive. I mean, i’m a busy person. I don’t know. I’m sure you’re busy, but i’m busier. I need i need to paragraph executive summary. So, please, maybe you need a summary of the summary. Can you do that? Yeah, well, well, i think that somewhere you were pretty forward if we want to give it to people here and then they don’t even have to read the report. They can hear your interview. Go. Okay. Okay. I got it. Like i say, executive summary is the situation sucks. It’s bad and yeah, and we can do some things to help it. Is that teo teo to kurt? Well, i think i think that’s the set up to this report the set up is we have growing wealth and growing philanthropy in silicon valley. We haven’t even dug into that. So it ends up that all these wealthy people in silicon valley are actually giving a lot of money away where the disconnect is is that money is not making its way to a local causes an issue and the community based organizations, right, that kind of are the champions of those issues and those residents who need help and that’s the case in many communities, right? I think this is a trend we’re seeing across the country, you’re we’re seeing increased income disparity, we’re seeing growing need by the by the residents who are the most left out, and then a non-profit community that’s under siege. And so we’re interested. And yet we see this growing wealth and we think, well, are they giving money away? And if so, why isn’t it making its way to me? Where is this money going? And so in silicon valley, we track all of these statistics. We tracked individual giving the growth in private foundations the phenomenon called donor advised funds and also corporate giving. And there was mortgaging everywhere that was kind of the astonishing fact. But the majority of it does not go to our local organizations and heather’s now on the line, and can be brought into the call to add into this dialogue. Okay, sam, you’re ready way. Have heather. Okay, wonderful. Let me introduce her. Heather macleod grant is the other co founder of open impact she’s, a social entrepreneur, author and consultant with twenty five years of experience and social change. Both these women have twenty five years. Everybody’s got twenty five years today except neil fight host with twenty years she is. She is co author of forces for good six practices of high impact non-profits, which was named a top ten book buy of the year by the economist she’s at hmc grant and again open impact is that ah, open impact, dot io and also at open impact team. Okay, heather, welcome. Welcome to the show. Hi, tony. Thank you. And i apologize for the technical difficulties. That’s. Okay. Well, berate you later, it’s not, but not on the air. It’s ok, um okay. So alexa and i have been ah, diving in and let’s bring you in where? I guess we were really at the point where we’re saying that essentially the need is scaling much faster than the support is growing locally. Locally, that’s the point that election was just making heather let’s bring it in. Let’s bring you in with an explanation of what the giving code is, yeah, so the giving code, we talk about it in the report, and we talk about it being this kind of implicit approach philanthropy that many of these new donors have that is very much it’s, very much informed by their business background and experience, and they’re they’re they’re sort of expertise and technical companies, so for example, they’re very focused on impact, they’re very driven by metrics they’d like to measure outcome, not surprisingly, their innovative and disruptive, so they really like to think about, you know, how they can hack systems and change things like education or health care. They’re very connected and networked with their peers again. Many of these new donors are in their thirties and forties, they’ve grown up in the era of social media, they like to do things with their peers, so we see a rise and e-giving search kinds of group e-giving activities and you know, they’re they’re really again. Their approach to philanthropy is very much informed by their business background and experience, and so sometimes, unfortunately there’s a disconnect between this business like approach to philanthropy and the approach that community based organizations take yeah. And in fact, well, first, i want to make something explicit when we say they and they turned the donors were talking about newly wealthy philanthropist knew ah, high net worth ultra high net worth millionaires, billionaires in the inn, that to county area the way you, the two of you to find silicon valley there’s also ah, skepticism of non-profits heather, yes, absolutely. They look out across the landscape and they see this fragmentation among non-profit organizations, and they really think that non-profits aren’t being businesslike enough in their approach. So again, it doesn’t mean non-profits they’re wrong, they’re just not meeting the expectations of some of these new donors. Um, and and they do tend to be skeptical non-profits don’t inherently have scale. Almost eighty percent of them are operating on less than a million dollars in budget. That’s true for these two counties and it’s true for the rest of america as well. So these are the guys we’re used to running multibillion dollar companies, and they see these small, tiny non-profits and there’s just a massive disconnect you mentioned the growth of unicorns in silicon valley, which is the unicorn is a greater than one billion dollar asset value pre ipo and how the number has grown to twenty something right? I think in the region, yeah, there’s twenty one unicorn in these two counties now, i’m sure there’s i think there’s something like forty six forty seven nationally, but you know more than our almost half of the unicorns that we see now are here in silicon valley, and you’re correct those that’s kind of the local jargon or lingo for start up companies that have a billion dollars evaluation pre-tax haven’t, in two thousand eleven, there were three unicorns and twenty sixteen there were twenty one so again, just enormous growth in wealth and scaling. You refer to a bigger, better, faster, essentially, too, to summarize what the newly wealthy philanthropy philanthropists think and how they think, and then there’s the skepticism of non-profits of it, i mean, you don’t you don’t use this word, but would you say it? It suggests in a certain arrogance among these, these folks? Well, you know, some would say someone some would use that word. We wait, we don’t say it’s arrogance, i think it’s perhaps more ignorance or not understanding how. Social change works, but, you know, i do think some of these donors can’t come across that way in their approach to social change, they think, well, i built this billion dollars, you know, app that scaled in three years, i’m going to go fix public education, and they don’t really have an understanding of how complex social systems are, um, and again there really obsessed with scale and, yes, moving really fast and unfortunately, social change is an entirely different beast than building an internet company, right? It’s complicated and involved multiple stakeholders, you often have to find ways to work with a partner with government latto leverage the significant resources that are already in government, you’ve gotta engage communities, and you’re really trying to solve market dafs where they’re actually isn’t a paying customer sometimes, right? It’s, you know, solving homelessness is not something that you could do with the technical app, so so the complexity of these problems, i think sometimes pla mixes these new donors, and they do come in with this mindset of, you know, i felt this huge company, how hard can it be? And i think what we’ve seen many of them overtime. Bill gates, mark zuckerberg and others have learned that it’s actually really, really hard the’s air really big, intractable problems, and it takes time and it takes patience and it takes resources and it takes working in very different ways than just building an internet company. You and alexa are very nonjudgmental in the report, but it’s well, actually, tony, i’m going to jump it. I’m going to jump in here. It’s really not about judgmental or non judgmental, we find that not really going to help us get to a solution, and we call it the empathy gap because when people start relegating each other teo arrogant one percenters or social do getters, we find the conversation just stops and everyone walks away frustrated why heather and i wanted to write this report is we wanted to really probono deeply like, how could we get these two sides that are so disconnected? Who speaks such different languages who have such different mindsets and frameworks? How could we leveraged their strength to come together to really solve community problems? And if we stop at just going okay there too arrogant and you’re too much of a do better we don’t. Get to the solution, and the reason we wrote the report is we wanted to get past kind of those stereotypes and begin to bridge the empathy gap that is so wide right now. By the way, alexa, our listeners will know that earlier, when i said when i said i may be busy, but you’re busier. I mean, what did i say? I may be busy, you know, i said, you may be busy, but i’m busier. That’s what i said, listeners know that i was joking, but you might have rolled your eyes and said, who is this clown? But, you know, now i’m andi, i’m teo for twenty minutes, and yeah, he’s only takes about thirty seconds for people to recognize my i mean, i’m judgmental about myself, arrogant, certainly big doses of scare of sarcasm, so all right, we’re all busy, but heather, that was in the context of i was saying earlier, when i see executive summer, expect like, two paragraphs, not sixteen pages, and then the sixty nine full page, sixty nine page full report that i had to reed, you know, so i was that i was asking alexis to scale it down. But i understand it’s, a complex problem, and all right, but i expect to pay an executive summary. I was scrolling through the pdf. Is that what this is a summer? You need a. You need a summary of the summary? Okay, wait, we got a little ambitious. My last project was a book, and so i let you keep joking that i was trying to turn this into a book. So all right, well, you’re in the right trends in terms of least my attention deficit. So you know the next thing you could do instead of a report, maybe, just to a paragraph. Great. Well, we could try. I suppose you could sum it up. You could probably get into one hundred forty characters if you tried really hard, but yeah, basically, it sucks. I had said that earlier. All right, let’s, get to the to the challenges that you identify between that are preventing the two communities the newly wealthy philanthropists and the community based on non-profit organizations from coming together. Alexis let’s, go back to you. You basically the first one is they don’t they don’t know each other that’s how i know that that’s how i put i’m using my words you have different, you know, you live in silicon valley, it’s a pretty compact in place. We’re not talking about, uh, this enormous area, these air to counties and people live pretty close together. And some of our poorest neighborhoods are right next door. Some some of our wealthiest neighborhoods. And yet these two groups of people the ones who have all this capital and are giving it away, and the ones who desperately needed in order to help are most needy residents. They just are worlds apart. They have completely different networks and ways of thinking about place. And at the heart of it, it really is about community in place, so the donors are often globally minded. They’re working or running global companies, they’re traveling all over the world for those companies, and they will have homes in different places and relate and identify with different places as their home in community, whereas the nonprofit and community based organizations that we work with r really thinking about places, the place where we live and raise our families and our kids go to school where we go to work every day, and this is our community, and it deserves our attention, and it deserves to be healthy and vibrant for the sake of all of us. And so the social networks just don’t meet as often as you might think they’re like worlds apart, even though they may only be blocks apart. Yeah, you call it the more articulate that you called the knowledge and information gap. I was just saying they don’t know each other. Let’s let zach with you for another one. What you call the social network and experience gap. I just say they don’t have ways to get to know each other that’s, right? They don’t, they don’t, they’re not at the same cocktail parties, they’re not vacationing in the same places. They’re not even going to the same grocery stores, and even though they live sometimes within a mile of each other. That’s, right, it’s just a very stark contrast and kind of an odd conundrum, but it makes sense, right? I mean, there’s, a sense of place in community is different, and their social networks are really different. Let’s jump over to you and and continue this thread on the gaps that what you call the mindset and language gap, i just say it, they look at the world differently. Yeah, that’s, that’s going back a little bit of what i was saying before about this language of business and metrics and scale and that’s a language, you know that these tech entrepreneurs have come up and many of them have had almost no exposure to social problems or public policy or government or social work. And on the other side you have non-profit leaders, many of whom came out of programs for public policy or social work and who really speak a much more moral language, a language of ethics and social justice and taking care of the least well off. And so, again, we find that there is kind of a disconnect in terms of the language and frame works in the mental models, if you will, that the philanthropist use versus the language and framework and mental models that community based organizations in particular use and later on that that many of these community based organizations were serving low income population, sometimes there’s literally a real language kept sometimes these populations are speaking spanish or their low income asian communities, so you’ve got lots of different layers of disconnect, and and that leads to what we ultimately say is an empathy gap and that’s why we don’t like to use words like arrogant, we don’t wanna point fingers because we actually feel like that’s already happening too much it’s too easy to write off these business people is being arrogant and greedy and that’s actually oversimplifying and it’s not also taking their good intentions into consideration. We really think we need to get beyond the empathy gap, have each side try and understand the other in the world that the other is living in and that that’s what’s going. To ultimately help bridge the gap. Okay, perfect, ladies, we’re going to take a break for a little while. Your i have to do a little business for our sponsors, and of course we’re going to continue our conversation for the remainder of the hour. And now that we’ve talked about what creates the what the gaps are, you know we’ll spend the balance of time talking about bridging those gaps on the positive side and, uh, encourage you again to have ah, two paragraph summary of your executive summary, so stay with us. Ladies duvette there’s more of this prosperity paradox coming up first, i got a chat with you about pursuing because they have a new info graphic grow your monthly e-giving your problem, you need to raise more money solution in part monthly giving and that’s what the infographic is about. Ah, it helps you, whether you’re creating a program or trying to convince your board or your c e o of the value of a sustainers program or you need to grow your existing program and your fund-raising mix the infographic has got strategies to launch and grow tells you how long you can expect sustainers to stay with you and gives you tips for attracting new donors and there’s more to it as well. It’s all in mourning for graphic. Amazing, very, very highly concentrated, dense with value. And it is at pursuant dot com quick resource is my voice just crack get resource is fourteen years old quick resource is and then info graphics at pursuing dot com we be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising you need a fun millennial event, check out the video it’s from one night of spelling and stand up comedy music great fun! The video is that we be ee spelling dot com now for tony’s take two. I am doing a free webinar coming up later this month. It’s jump start your planned e-giving how to get started. Who the best prospects are were the types of gif ts that you can start promoting right away right away easily dispel yourself of the myth that plant e-giving is only for larger organizations and only for major donors. Both of those are incorrect. Both fallacies. I’m gonna explain plan giving simply ah, not using my legal background. I can explain it to you so that you will understand it. And understand how to get started. You know my focus is small and midsize shops that’s who the webinars for it’s on thursday, march sixteenth two o’clock eastern affiliate listeners there is time for you to be with me. I know sometimes the timing doesn’t work for you by the time i and i put something in the show and then by the time you’re your station airs, it may be too late. This one the timing is perfect for you it’s march sixteenth there’s still time you register at tony dot m a slash jump start your pg the link is also on my video, which explains a little more about the webinar and that video with the registration link is at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s take two and i feel like doing live listen love podcast pleasantries and affiliate affections a little differently today we have listeners all over the country all over the world, but today i will instead of identifying city and state and sending love and pleasantries and affections, we’re all one big non-profit radio, family flock, not a church. I almost said church, not a church, but we’re one family. Whether you’re listening live right now or among our twelve thousand podcast listeners or among our am and fm affiliate station listeners, today, we’re one big non-profit radio family. So the love and the pleasantries and the affections go out irrespective of what your method of listening is. I’m very glad you’re with us. That is tony steak, too, all right, let’s, bring the ladies back, and, uh, you know, you, uh, you have something interesting. Anybody can comment on this, the you devote a page in the full report to the good wani brothers. They sold their company to netscape in nineteen ninety eight, and in two thousand three, the co founded a nonprofit to india community center. And basically, what i come away from that page is they recognize the brothers, recognized that this is hard work, having a non-profit. Yeah, i love that story in our report. And tony, it does prove that you’re you’re a much more diligent reader than you let on, because that’s all the way on page fifty for the report, but there was a couple of reasons we wanted to feature their story, their immigrant, uh, americans who came from india, they started a really successful company, that’s contributed to the economy in the valley, and then they decided to give back by starting a nonprofit that would serve the indian diaspora in silicon valley. That would be a gathering place for indians to come and to share culture and food and language and ping pong, which they love. And so it’s an enormous community center not unlike the jewish community center model we often see in the u s and they started the very first one and silicon valley, and we talk to them because we wanted to hear about there journey, starting a community based organization and also about how philanthropy work in other cultures and communities. And, you know, philanthropy is a rather novel thing to america, it’s part of our culture and its distinct distinct from other cultures and other parts of the world, and so they just shared how challenging it’s been to raise money from other indian americans around this really compelling non-profit that they’re building because they prioritize helping their families back at home. E-giving toe heart hyre roo i causes in india, where you can literally save someone play for set their whole life on a new trajectory by sending them to school for hundreds of dollars a year on get this incredible return. And so they’ve been on a journey to figure out how to build a sustainable business model for this very vibrant community center that they started some time ago. That was alexa, right? Or is that just alexis being? Yes, i’m a little disadvantaged cause you sound a little a little like, but i figured, yeah, that xero voices don’t don’t apologize, and i want to remind listeners that alexa cortez culwell and heather macleod grant are the co authors of this the of the study i’m called e-giving code and also co founders of open impact ladies, how come open impact your your your your consultancy around social impact and how come you’re dot i owe you? Didn’t you didn’t get in early enough to get dot com or dot or gore dot net, will you not dot org’s? But how come dot i owe on your for your very trendy, trendy and hip trendy in him, it is kind of the forefront of of the new. Yeah, but, you know, a lot of people buy up lots of names with dot org’s dot com, even though they’re not using them that we just went. Dad, i oh, okay. It’s. Another word you came? Yeah. It’s. Cool. Because why? Oh, i iove well, well, because that io is also open impact initial backwards, right? So it’s ah, it’s ah it’s a palindrome that’s, right? Oh, i i don’t. I don’t. I don’t know what kind of some kind. Okay, well, yeah, if you take just the initials but it’s not it’s, not a lie. Dot io it’s open impact, your honor name. We will tell you what, why open impact is such an important name and part of the value of the work we do, which is we think that non-profit leaders today are constantly balancing the tension of staying open and adapting to the complexity that they’re dealing with all around them, the external landscape is so volatile, but they’re also being required to really measure their impact and report that in clear terms. So we are really committed, teo writing and speaking and publishing about that. And we help our clients with that. Yeah. You have a very good video at open impact dot io who’s who’s fireplaces that that you’re in front of that’s. A beautiful fireplace. Is that one of your homes? No. That’s, a dear colleague of our living room. Okay, i kind of want to see the kitchen. I was hoping the second half of the video was gonna move into the kitchen because the fireplace is beautiful. Fabulous. Yeah. Labbate all right, maybe the next video, he’ll let you use the kitchen. Okay, let’s. Go back to the substance, though, so let’s, start bridging the gaps. I don’t know who want to take the first way, but, uh, you do something. You suggest something called connect to build empathy. We want to talk about that. Yeah, this is heather happy too. I’m happy to jump in on that. So so i do think bridging these gaps really starts by finding ways to bring these donors and these non-profits together and there’s a couple of examples in our community of organizations that are doing that we’ve also seen traditional intermediaries. Their role has very much changed in this landscape. I don’t think alexa touched on this before it joins the call, but just in brief our local united way has emerged, so we now have a bay area why united way that serving like twelve different counties and our community foundation is very nationally and globally focused on working with many of these donors on all levels of e-giving but not just community e-giving so what we’re finding is, as these intermediaries have kind of changed their role in the ecosystem, new intermediaries, air having to step in until some of these gaps. One example is to silicon valley social ventures, which was actually founded sixteen, seventeen years ago by laura, ari, aga and reasons and it’s e-giving circle, where donors actually come together, meet local non-profits vet them, they pool their money and their resource is so you don’t have to be a billionaire. You don’t even have to be a millionaire to join you can contribute six or seven thousand dollars pool your money with other donors and then vet local non-profits and find knows that you think are, you know, the most interesting, having significant impacts have leadership that you like and basically make an investment in that organization and what’s really great about this model is many of the partners in this e-giving circle actually take board seats or become mentors to the non-profit so this is, you know, one example, but we think it’s the perfect example of what we need a lot more with these opportunities for these donors to actually connect with these leaders, mentor and coach them start having a conversation where the non-profit leaders can teach the business with yours about social change and why it’s so complex and why it sometimes really hard to measure their impact, and at the same time, the business leaders could bring their technical and their marketing and their strategy skills, cities non-profit organizations, and really helps them be even more effective. So it’s again connection and learning together, we find it a very effective way to start. Bridget yeah, engagement if i put a five letter word to it, genuine up boat way just lose alexa, i don’t know. Heather used to with us, no, i mean, i’m here, i’m good, we’re here. Oh, you are okay. Whoever was whoever was listening on the call, the third party that wasn’t invite the third party that wasn’t invited, just dropped off. All right, they could have just listened online. It’s so much easier than calling the number. Um, yeah, and i think, you know, this is the section bridging the gaps that has the real value, i think, for our listeners, because these are things that non-profits can do in their own community. You know, there are lessons. That’s, why i wanted to have this conversation with ladies, because there are lessons for the entire nation’s non-profit community based on your findings. Just in two counties in california. What do we got? Well, this’s, alexa, you’re exactly right. I mean, the report is received a lot of national attention because issues of income disparity, issues of the wealthy and philanthropy, and the very unhealthy state of many of our local community based non-profits is something that is concerning in many, many cities, in urban areas and even rural areas in the country. So i do think we’ve been surprised at how much has been resonating, because on one hand, silicon valley is so unique. But, on the other hand, is part of the really odd story that we’re also so much like other places. Yeah, well, that’s, your it’s, a well written report, and that it comes out the value for the community nationwide comes out if i can call that a community. Oh, and all that national media attention has brought you to this moment non-profit radio. You see that, right? Yeah, and we’re grateful to you see that? Yeah, okay, what, i don’t know, whatever the national media you’re on, but it brought you two brought you here. So there’s, roger’s stepping stones, all right, let’s, let’s, let’s, continue to bridge the gap. Thank you for agreeing. You have no choice. I understand that let’s, continue bridging the gaps. Who wants to talk about creating educational opportunities in your your step two? Well, this is heather. I can jump in again. I mean, so two thoughts first on the like this resonates across the country mean, one thing we are doing, you know, we start to see up solutions in the report, but we’re actually starting teo focus even more on what would it take to implement execute some of the solutions in silicon valley? Because we actually do think if we can start to solve some of these divides here that’s a model that other communities might want to emulate, but going back to what you said, tony, i think it does come down to engagement, and one thing we’re realizing is that that both sides need to be educated that can happen through connection and experience are learning the both sides really need to build their capacity to engage with the other. So in this case, many community based on profits, they’re so resource strapped, they’re so focused on being head down, trying to serve the communities there, serving that often they’re not actually doing a good enough job of creating real donor engagement opportunities. Finding ways to connect into these networks happened to these networks. I get it that takes time and money, and when you’re serving the poor, the temptation is to spend all your resources on your program. But then you have nothing left to build your organization and build your outreach and build the donor engagement opportunities, or even to market and get your information out of these donors even know that you exist. So we think there’s education opportunities on both sides the opportunity to build the capacity of non-profits to be more sophisticated and how they reach out and engage these donors and how they have theories of change and strategies and how they measure their impact to the extent that they can and how they can tell stories used metrics, not just wonderful anecdotes, i think again playing both the head and the heart, same time donors need education to we were astonished as we talk to many this philantech how long it takes him to get up the warning firm, sometimes five or ten years, and there are some programs out there, the philanthropy workshopping one there are some other programs out there that focus really on donor education, but we need many, many, many more programs like this because there are many more millionaires and billionaires who are coming online with their philanthropy and our country stuck. They don’t even know how to get started, so so education can also be a stepping on dh, creating things. Circles are accessible and communities all over the country, and the data is showing that when a donor joins e-giving circle, they give more and they give more faster, they accelerate, they’re giving their more satisfied there, more confident, so really simple things. Non-profits khun dio is help think about curating e-giving circles or joining with partners, and if a donor is listening to the podcast, you know, joining a e-giving circle is just a a fabulous way to accelerate your impact. Also also just creating or seeking out volunteer opportunities, and i have to stop you. Alexa, hold on, we’ll take our last break. Hold that thought, please, andi will continue, okay, hang on. 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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. Oppcoll welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m with alexa and heather, and they are co authors of the giving code that that is they’re reporting you confined their full report and the lengthy executive summary there’s my judgment, i’m not i’m not no, i am not nonjudgmental judgment confined the full report in all its robustness, both forms at open impact dot i oh, which is actually a very pretty sight, ladies. All right? And i do love the video. That’s a very good video of the two of you. Um okay, alexis, i think you had a thought that i cut off you wantto ex charity? Well, i was just saying that, you know, a creative thing for a non-profit to do would be teo curate e-giving circle on the cause that their organization is all about and to try to get some donors and learn about the issue and to learn how to give and donors likewise confined giving circles there’s lots of those in their communities. It’s an easy way. Easy, inaccessible way to plug in non-profits i think there’s lots of capacity building opportunities for non-profits and they really need to think strategically about building their capacity to pitch their organization proactively. So what a lot of donors told us is there often coaching non-profits on what they need rather than having a non-profit pitch some kind of anticipating what they’re going to need, and i think it’s pretty easy to anticipate what the donor’s need they want, like, a really clear narrative about what the organization does, and they want really clear numbers, they want to know very basic things in a very clear way, like, how many people do you serve? How deeply do you serve them? What’s the evidence you have that something is changing in their lives for the better, and how much does it cost to do that service and why? And non-profits really struggled to just step up and and frame those issues in a non apologetic way, never heather and i are out talking non-profits they they really struggled to just kind of state and the state it clearly, and so the best advice we can give in terms of educating yourself is to go out and really learn how to put together follow-up plan that you can pitch to donors that really anticipate their objections. Like, you know, overhead is a big objection donors donors often will express. And the leader who just, like gets ahead of that. You know, who really explains what the organization does and why how they do it so efficiently is really gonna win with owners versus one that’s kind of caught on their back foot trying to answer that question. Yeah. You refer to the overhead myth, and i thought we were i thought we were past this. I had back when this happened. When? When? Guidestar and charity navigator and better business bureau wise giving alliance. I created this problem. I had the three ceos of those organizations on and we talked about thea overhead myth letter that they all signed for the country. And this was back, like, three years ago. I think it was twenty thirteen. Are we not past the overhead myth among, well, let’s talk about the court you’re dealing with among newly wealthy philanthropists. Are they not overhead that? Are they not past that overhead myth problem? Well, tony, this is heather and it’s. Interesting. Because my book forces for good came out almost ten years ago and we started to take on the overhead myth in our book back then, and i think, unfortunately, even though those of us who are kind of insiders in the nonprofit sector feel like, you know, haven’t we gotten past that? Haven’t we said it’s really about impact and outcomes, not the inputs that it takes you to get to that impact? Unfortunately, i think some of these new donors coming online are not yet with the program, and these kinds of, you know, stereotypes and overly simplistic ways of looking at measurement, unfortunately continue to persist. But as alexis said, we’ve also seen amazing examples of community based organizations taking that argument and just flipping it on its head. So one great example. Peter forton bob, who runs the local boys and girls club in our community, serving literally thousands of low income students and kids and partnering with schools. He’s really been a subtle intra printer, and within the boys and girls club network, he’s really innovated around their core models and, you know, i went to a fundraiser they had two weeks ago, and not only did he have the ceo of youtube, susan would just be was a judge. On the panel, he had the ceo of lincoln in the audience, and he had cheryl sandberg is opener, the ceo of facebook. And when he got up to give the pitch to that audience, peter, by the way, has a harvard mba. It worked in tech. Former mackenzie really smart guys made some money now dedicated his life to service and running this grassroots community organization. So he knows how to talk to these donors. And he stood up and he made a pitch that you would hear kind of on sandhill road and the tony kind of blue chip venture capitalist offices. He stood up and he said, guys, this is not charity. This is an investment. This is an investment in the youth in our community. This is an investment and where we live, this is an investment in our future workforce. And by the way, we hyre top talent. We have a great organization, we have state of the art technology. We don’t work on twenty year old computers and guess what? That costs money. But if you invest in us here’s the return, you’re getting it on that investment and he walked through the numbers. Of the impact that they’re having, and i’ll tell you what, they raised a million dollars in one night in that room, unbelievable and that’s an example of what we don’t see enough non-profit leaders doing is getting out ahead of the argument, anticipating to push back and saying, yeah, you know, you want me to run a small, shabby organization that’s never going to scale or have impact? Fine, then we can talk about overhead, but if you really want me to have impact, you’ve got to pay for the things that it takes. So we would just love to see more non-profits in this country, learn from these examples and figure out how to do this and get on the front foot rather than being on the back foot. Excellent, excellent. Okay, we have we have just about, like three minutes left together, ladies. So and i want to get to the rest of the your specific methods of bridging the gap. Let’s just stay with you, heather, and talk about just in like a minute or so. Increasing coordination and collaboration among non-profits on dh and then also among i know that’s hard to do in a minute, but then also among the let’s, just talk about it for the non-profit just on the collaboration on the non-profit side. Okay? Please. Yeah, so this is all i’ll be quick, and then i’m sure alexis may have something to add as well, but, you know, i’ve done a lot of work over the last five, seven years of my career working on networks and collective impact, and we actually think this approach holds great promise when it’s done the right way because you have hundreds, if not thousands of tiny community based organizations, the answer isn’t necessarily to have them all merge because that’s not practical, but if you can get them more coordinated and aligned around the goals that they’re trained, the problems we’re trying to solve and setting shared goals and setting shared measurement and collaborating rather than competing against each other, you can actually have much more impact cubine also attract more resource is because donors look out and they say, oh, finally, all these small little guys, they’re working together on solving the problem that’s what i care about, i want to put my money into that so there’s a couple examples in our own backyard one called the big lift, which is an early literacy program for early childhood development, and they’re working with several hundred non-profits they’re working with school district, they’re working with the county government, and they have managed to create this kind of collective impact network. So we think again, we need to see more of this in our sector, we need to see more non-profits kind of stepping up and really getting aligned with other non-profits and coordinating rather than everybody kind of putting their head down and doing all right, you have, and then you have a fourth, which is building capacity and addressing costs, and we’ve pretty much covered that not under that rubric. We’ve talked about that so let’s, let’s wrap up with, we just have a minute left celebrating success. Please, alexa well, so whenever we see a philanthropist and a non-profit doing this the right way, we need teo tell their story. And in silicon valley, we actually have some really great stories of where this is working. Well, so it’s not all bad news. We have some extraordinary philanthropist who are commited locally and telling their stories why they’re committed locally how they give their money to smaller community based non-profits how they partner with them is just critical to raising awareness that it can be a great and satisfying thing to do is a donor and and go beyond just e-giving safe bets to your alma mater or to the things that are familiar to you. Stepping out of your comfort zone has huge rewards. Andi, start funding these organizations and we have to leave it there. Alexa cortez culwell she’s at alexa culwell heather macleod grant she is at hmc grant. You’ll find the report and the summary at open impact dot io ladies, thank you very much next week. Thank you so much for being a call. Alright next week doing good, better effective altruism for individuals with takeaways for non-profits of course, if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. 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