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Maya Winkelstein & John Hicks: Raising Risk
Risk pervades every grant you get. Lots of things can go wrong. Is it appropriate to discuss potential problems with your funders? Does that advantage your grant competitors? We’ll flesh it all out with Maya Winkelstein of the Open Road Alliance and John Hicks from DLBHicks.
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Duitz hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with media asta no, pericarditis, if you broke my heart with the idea that you missed today’s show raising risk risk pervades every grant you get, lots of things can go wrong. Is it appropriate to discuss potential problems with your funders? Does that advantage your grant competitors? We’ll flush it all out with maya winkelstein of the open road alliance and john hooke hicks, john hicks from de lb hicks and avoid social weariness et s w with our own s wmd sample ward the social networks twenty four seven and can overwhelm you, but there are ways to make them work for you. Amy knows how to make your social manageable and strategic she’s, our social media contributor and ceo of the non-profit technology network, and ten on tony’s take two show our sponsors love responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com, and by we’d be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. We be e spelling dot com. We just corrected that problem. Hey, maya winkelstein is on the line. She is executive director of open road alliance, finding new ways to deploy capital to achieve maximum social returns. She had been there consultant. And they loved her so much. They put her in charge. So i guess there must not have been any non solicitation clause in that contract. We’ll flush that out. They’re open road, alliance, dot or ge and at open road tweet. Welcome, maya. Heidtke durney. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. My pleasure. We have john hicks on the line yet. Okay, we don’t have john hicks yet, so sam’s going to give him a call, but that’s. Okay? Because i want to start with you anyway, maya, um, we want to talk about risk to talk about risk and are funding relationships, but, uh, yeah, i know why. Well, uh, you see the opening of the show riskiest everywhere it has stopped anyone on the street and said, hey, the world is unpredictable vehicle, you’re disagree. Everybody agrees. Andi makes sense that in the nonprofit sector, where by definition we’re working with the most vulnerable populations and look vulnerable and challenging. Geography and problems that unpredictability is just a fact of life, but this reality often doesn’t translate into the way that grantmaking works the way that project planning and particularly the going on grantee relationship functions. Andi, we think that change, okay, if i know you have some stats about how ah unlikely it is that a grantee will be asked to assess the challenges that are facing them in the in the program or project that they’re that they’re seeking money for on dh like, okay, you’re welcome, you’re welcome to work those in and but but then, but if if if we’re not being asked to raise this, this issue of risk, don’t we end up disadvantaging ourselves because our competitors in the grantspace may not do the same thing? Absolutely right now we’d like to say that the word risk is a foreign letter word, and you’re on, and i think about the situation as an emperor has no clothes. The truth is, we did do a survey in twenty fifteen, where we interviewed two hundred foundations two hundred non-profits and asked him about it what’s really interesting in that survey is that the foundations acknowledged that risk percent as much hutchisson non-profits it princessa agreed on the number, and the number is one inside the one in five projects or wanted five grand’s legend to encounter some type of roadblock or obstacle that’s going to need additional funding in order to achieve impact on time and in cold. Okay, that zoho both sides acknowledges so to, as you said before, seventy six percent of thunders don’t ask any point in the application what goes wrong and went under so now guarantees don’t tell. So we do have this this dilemma and the question about competitive advantage, i think there’s a really important one because there is a lot of fear among non-profits you know, why would i reveal my weaknesses if you know somebody else competing for the grand isn’t but the truth is, uh, when you don’t talk about brightstep friends, we’re not brave and say, hey, you know, there’s, other things that could go wrong, you really just shooting yourself in the foot because things are so go going to go to go wrong one way or the other, and the difference here is simply for patient setting. Well, we don’t expect a set. Expectations appropriately, they’re thunders then it’s not surprising that they’re blind sided or react negatively when you come up. All right, all right. Um, i saw the so we believe i’m not surprised to hear one in five twenty percent of funded projects will have trouble. I’m in trouble is inherent in anything we do, whether it’s commercial or non-profit i’m just still i’m trying todo playing devil’s advocate i’m trying to think of think like a ceo or a grant writer who is wants to be transparent and set expectations, okay, but my board or my ceo from the grant writer says, look, i mean, the competitors are just not going to do this. We’re making ourselves look like we’re inferior because we’re going to raise challenges that the other people competing for this exact money are not going to raise, and they’re going to look superior and we’re going to look poor, right? And where one where i encourage non-profits to play teo freedom, your donor’s instincts as an investor that’s open lately what all donors are, you know, when we send money out into the world, it’s not baking powder self-funding back and sleep at night, we’re in an era of philanthropy where we want to see change, um, we really do treat our philanthropic dollars as investments for looking for maximum return on investment on if you think about it in the private sector, you know, who am i going to pick the company that tells me that everything’s perfect and they’re never gonna have any problems or the management team that said, hey, look, you know, we’ve looked at all of the issues, these air, some things that could go around, but this is how we’re managing it. Uh, you’ve been really treat with management as a sign of confidence in your management team position it as, uh, a competitive advantage to your advantage that you’re thinking about these things and your competitors are if somebody tries to tell me that something one hundred percent guarantee that for me is a much for red flag and the honesty and transparency of saying, hey, what could go wrong? But i’ve got a plan in place, okay? Okay. That’s ah, that’s. Excellent. That would be persuasive to me. Position as as an advantage. Somebody who tells you that there’s no risk is not doing a complete analysis. You know, they’re they’re superficial and were detailed, etcetera, depending how far you want to go in trash trash in your competition. Okay, that is a great intro, right? We’re goingto going go out early for our first break. When we come back, we’ll bring in john hicks, we got him on the line now, and, uh, we’ll get into where does this start? I mean, is this a chicken and egg thing? I mean, to me, it seems like funders have the greater responsibility. They’re the ones with the applications, but we’ll talk about that on dh, more about, you know this, don’t ask, don’t tell about risk that that were in 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 they were on facebook live, so i want to give shouts shout outs to carry my croghan good to see you, carrie it’s been awhile, it’s been quite so quite awhile. Thanks for being with me, man and jeff rose and also and there are others there are multiple others, but i can’t quite see them all right now, but we’ll get to them more facebook live shoutouts, let’s bring in john hicks john hicks is principal of de lb hicks consulting deal b is for dylan’s light bulb and if you don’t know that story, it’s at deal be hicks dot com he’s on the faculty of columbia university’s master’s program in non-profit management and a contributing author to the books after the grant and the non-profit handbook fund-raising he’s at de lb hicks john hicks welcome back. Glad to be back. Thank you. You’re you’re on vacation in north carolina, are you? Is that right? Yeah. Absolutely beautiful day down here in the outer banks. Well, thank you for joining us on vacation, john. Thank you so much. Thanks for doing that. Uh, jon, do you heard the intro, i hope. Where yuan for that? I was okay. What do you think of this idea of raising risk? Other people might not be well, i think it’s incredibly important it’s something we talk about a lot in our grants glass at columbia university about mitigating risk for the donor and mitigating risk for the non-profits and i was one of very quickly right off the bat compliment maya and her team on raising this topic for grantmaker but i think it’s also everything that i’ve seen has been developed by by the team. I would love to share my plan to share this with my client because i think non-profits have to be looking at risk management in terms of developing long term, sustaining positive relationships with donors, but also, you know, you have to do a reading, undertake a really solid reality check when you’re starting a new program, you know how how much can you realistically do? How much can you realistically deliver? Um, so it’s an important topic and, you know, it’s, just so great to see this being, you know, brought out in the way that it’s it’s been taken on my uh, where do you feel the responsibility lies for starting what you want to see happen a lot more often than it does in, like thirteen percent of grand applications or something dependents look like depending whether you asked the funders or the or the grantees, you’ll get different numbers as to how often it’s it’s raised, but in both cases it’s in the vast minority of applications, do you feel like it’s the funders? Responsibility? Because they’re the ones asking the questions they’re the ones with the with the applications so open it, lee risk itself is a shared responsibility. I mean, these often heard the conversation, and rightly so that non-profit can’t do their work for that thunders and thunder achieve their objective non-profits so we really are equal partners in in sharing and the successive failures and rick, every project that we partner on, but the reality is that there’s also a power dynamic within that partnership, and that power dynamics is very clear and it’s such a the thunders so as much as i do think there is a place and is a safe for non-profits to stand up to breathe ray’s, tow, have the conversation. To raise the issue uh, really, if we’re going to see widespread change, it’s going to have to come from the underside and it’s gonna have to really be be demanded as thunders. And i like to sort of think about it as risk monitoring an evaluation was pan of fifty years ago, right? It wasn’t until even though non-profits knew that they could do better at measurements were trying to do better measurement to billy and sam impact of their products. You know, it’s not told donors have a really big lever when they asked for it. And when they funded that’s, when things really start to move and change, all right, let’s, let’s drill down into some of the how tio, how to do this my way if i’m of i’m a potential grantee and there’s no mention of challenges, risks, obstacles in an application for for granted i’m applying for how do you like? How do you encourage organizations toe raise the issue? Do they wait till there filling out the application? Do they started in the preliminary phone calls that we hope that they’re having before they submit an application? How do you like to see? This one of the things we found on the underside in particular is not that thunder don’t want to know about bricks or don’t want to ask about it’s just that it’s not part of the grantmaking mainstream grantmaking culture, and so it doesn’t even occur to them, and one of the things that is also absent on the underside is very serious for thinking about their own risk tolerance and being able to define that. So one way to ease into the conversation without going straight to hey, you want to me to give you a risk assessment is to ask the thunder about their risk tolerance. Askin, you know hey, what is your profile? What are the types of risks that you like to see potential grantspace taking? And what are some of the risks that you tend to lead to a void in your grantmaking portfolio? Not only is that dahna night entree to the conversation, but it will also give you as the applicant, some really interesting on dh hopefully helpful information around here. What will be a better fit for that particular thunder? All right, john, how do you feel about when when it’s appropriate? To to start asking these questions may be asking the funders risk tolerance, what’s your ideas on how to raise this. I know what my just said about you is that it’s very early on in the conversation? I mean, this is why, you know, a best practices, particularly taking on a ah large initiative, a new initiative you’re looking at standing something significantly, i i’m a big believer in coveting the client or the organization through having on initial conversation with grantmaker i think that’s where you you asked that question about risk colorants, and then but at the same time, i think the charity has i have a responsibility to have considered that question and be able to speak to handle day are assessing risk and how they have factored of risk-alternatives grain up. So i felt that, you know, a grantmaker handup that obligation to the grantmaker and john, can we quantify these things? I mean, ultimately we’re asking the funder for money. Can we quantify the likelihood of risk percentage of likelihood vs versus potential cost? Can we quantify this? I think it really depends on the program. Tony means sometimes if you’re if you’re looking at replicating something that’s already been found there might be information helps you to do that in a lot of cases that i come across, it may be that thie organization is trying something that’s very new and it’s very i mean, it could be a something new within a community, something new with them, a community of practice, and it may be hard to put numbers around that, and i think this is where, again, engaging the grantmaker and a conversation toe tried to bring out the questions that they’re going to have because, you know, ultimately you’re talking to a grantmaker you’re talking to probably a representative, who is? Mom has a responsibility to a foundation board and, you know, you want to get a sense of where is the board? We’re that foundation board, in terms of, you know, going back to what my dad says, what is their wrist and that mike guy, the metrics and the numbers and that helps you to create and construct a grant proposal that would speak to you know, that you could or you might be able to quantify risk. Let me give you a couple of my hold on. One sec, i just gotta do a lot more facebook live shot out sorry if you want to join us on facebook live, go to the tony martignetti non-profit radio page and joining us most recently craig’s swenson onda cara gammel, cara charles hello hello karen, what a pleasure. Thank you. Sorry, maya. What do you want to get my? What do you want to say about quantifying this for funders? Yeah, i’m really glad you brought that up, it’s something that we’ve actually been looking at open road for the past couple of years and unfortunately compared to certainly the for-profit sector, we just don’t have numbers yet, and this is in part due to some of the other clans patients, particularly when it comes to pricing in cause so that our sector is facing. So we’ve actually been having conversations and working with partners that would stand and non-profit finance son, people who are looking at things like overhead on dh, the survey shin cycle and accurately pricing the true cost of a process. We haven’t even figured that out yet, so this figuring out the next step beyond what is the true cost of a perfect projects. To say ok, and now, based on some sort of actuarial tables or other data that we could drop from here is the risk premium, if you will. I do think our sector is going to get there, but it’s going to be many more years and are you you you’re helping this conversation along the way? This research along, i should say, not just conversation, wei are yeah, we are helping to search along. In fact, one of the things that were excited about is within our portfolio. Now that he’s been around for five years, we’ve got over a hundred krauz funded, which also means we now over have a whole one hundred and miracle data points of what actually does go wrong in our sector. Andi, we’re going to be publishing reports later this year or early next year that begins to offer actually the first data that empirical david, what goes wrong? For what type of project, how often and under what circumstances? But failure has always been and can gentle and related challenge to this question of risk. You know, i say failure is a risk realized so and we all know how difficult it is to talk about failure in our sector so it’s very hard to get some of this data because people don’t want to admit failure. There’s certainly not recording failure. Can you open up an annual report? You see all of the good numbers, right? All of the return numbers, nobody, uh, really truck goes around. Failure is risk allies. Dh jonah, you hear snickering whereas my talks about the annual report, you want to answer them? I mean, no, i’m not laughing at you with everything that, you know, i think that it’s like when i’m sitting here with someone who probably, you know, works with charities on reports, and i’m constantly, you know, playing to my clients, that i think when we come back, we’re behold them to come back to a grantmaker and to honestly say when something doesn’t work, what do we understand about the failure? Why did it fail? How are we going to take that failure and learn something? Promise? I agree. I think that you know that sometimes there’s uh uh, there’s. A lapse in communication where the great you know that grant he feels like, okay, i just have to go back. And talk about all the really good things that happened and you’re right on the point of annual reports, there’s a lot of annual reports that just simply, you know, put a fairly burnished picture out there of the work that seemed done when reality not everything works and the more you can understand from it’s better you’re going to bay so i totally agree with, you know, with the point she’s making yes, producing this show, john, i’ve heard rumors to that effect. Not everything works. You have something you will. And when i said you were snickering, i didn’t mean you were snickering derisively maybe i should said you were chuckling or you were bemused. As as my was talking, i didn’t mean to suggest that you were you were being negative. About what? About what? She was saying that at all? No, not at all. You have a lot of you have a lot of good tools that open road, alliance, dot or ge on dh. One of them is you talk about a risk profile statement. What is that? Yes. Let’s. Go back to the convent and made earlier around. What is your tolerance? Andi? This is a tool that we developed with thunders and nine, but i think it is equally applicable and adaptable for non-profits out as well. One of the things that we found in our work and research is that it’s very hard to take steps to manage risk, to try to minimize it or avoid it. If you haven’t gone through the preliminary step of figuring out what you’re willing to deal with or not right, what is your current service profile statement is basically the idea that you go through a a very deliberate and intentional discussion with your your staff for your board, your trustees, depending on what type of organization you are and you really deliberately come up with what you’re risking, tolerance is and think about it along different not so your risk tolerance when it comes to taking reputational risk might be very low, but you’re colorants for innovation might be very high risk is not a single single variable, either. On the idea of this profile statements and it’s sort of the division would be wow, imagine if every thunder you could go to their website and you could look at their risk profile statement. And you could see in writing where they’re willing to take risks where they’re not willing to take risks, you know that? And it’s non-profit we’re able to look at their programs and strategies in the same light you the matchmaking, if you will, between non-profits grantees, not only is there potential for that becomes easier, but if you don’t know what risks you’re willing thank you, it’s very hard, then to identify and managed. So if you are looking to improve your management in general, you would’ve also have to do that. First step is figuring out what risks you even talking about and which ones are going to be worth it to try and save it for duitz and we need to, i guess, then set aside money teo plan for these could negative contingencies, absolutely, and that gets into the risk management side of it is sort of the objects inside of fifty will he other think cubine mind is that when we’re talking about a profiler with cholera in ultimately that’s a subjective measures, you know, whether or not i prefer to curtis, test with stock or treasury bonds is a very subjective choice on dh. That’s a choice that thunder have every single day do they want to invest in the tried and true after school program? Where do they want to invest in the innovative new inner cities i have model and whether or not which one they pick is as much about the impact that piece of the cross product can provide as much of the currents of the thunder, but that’s ultimately a subjective measure, but once you have that subjective measure now, you can do this management, and you can look at the object in sight of the fact that no matter how little tolerance for averse service you are subjectively it’s filled and exits, and you’re going to need to manage it and you can manage it through budgetary actions. You can manage it with internal policies of procedure e-giving manage it with communications on a whole bunch of other tools have been become much more easy to implement and ready it at your weinger john hicks, anything you want to head there? No, i think an ideal world and if we do live in an ideal world where there’s a lot of grantmaker who are listening to this program. Or are taking the time to go and get their hands on the tool kit, and they’re going, they’re going to use that five again, you know, just applauding the work that maya and her team have done on the topic and i hope, it’s useful to the grantmaking communities well, our our listeners are the non-profits over twelve thousand small mid size non-profit so what? We’re we’re i know meyer’s working on both sides because this is a shared responsibility, but so what we’re doing is encouraging non-profits to raise it with their they’re funders on dh that’s, why i want to drill down earlier and about how do you the asked both of you? How do you raise the question? Because where, you know, we’re hitting the non-profits and now the newly competitive because of maya’s my strategy and thinking on this, the newly competitive non-profits because they’re there now at a competitive advantage that they weren’t roughly twenty eight minutes ago. So i feel bad i feel bad for your competitors, not listening. You should, but you shouldn’t. But i do because i wish they were listening, which we have more but wait, we don’t have an audience to brag about of course we do, but i feel bad for the feel bad for the ones they’re not listening. My, i’m going to give you the last word. We just got about thirty seconds ago. Once you wrap up for us. Sure. Well, i guess that’s the last thing i would say, you know, keeping that non-profit audience and nine is duitz sebi breaks, you know, and stand up. There are a lot of a lot of things that you think you internally and externally with their fenders, put a risk front and center center onda also in terms of your own internal processes, you sustenance on your own. Anyway, even if you don’t know, never hear about it. Yes, what? You’ve just made your program stronger. You’re gonna have more impact and be more successful, which in turn is gonna attract more donors regardless. So i do think there’s a lot that non-profits could bring to the table here on but the end of the day without non-profit hundreds of just sitting on piles of money doing nothing. So i think it really, really is a great role that complaint my is executive director of open road alliance, open road, alliance dot or ge and at open road tweet john is principal of de lb hicks at de lb hicks dot com and also at deal be hicks. Maya. John, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for your pleasure. Got a void? Social weariness et s w with our own s w amy sample ward coming up first pursuant acquisition campaigns, they’ve got a free webinar, so much of the content is free it’s almost it’s redundant to safely webinar when you’re talking about pursuing but just in case you’re a first time listener free weapon are coming up to help you acquire new donors. It’s on august thirty first what inspires that first gift for a donor? They’ll talk about it. We’ll have lots of examples and and as we do here, actionable strategies just like non-profit radio, if you can’t make it live on august thirty first at noon eastern, then watch the archive listen live or archive, just like non-profit radio and the place to sign up. Is that the new landing page that pursuing has for non-profit radio listeners, that is tony dot m a slash pursuing with a capital p go there, sign up for the, uh, acquisition campaigns webinar and if you can’t make it live, you’ll get emails about you get an email telling you when the archive is available, so it doesn’t matter where you could make it alive or not. Just go, tony dahna i’m a slash pursuant we’ll be spelling, you know that super cool spelling bee fundraisers, millennial fund-raising and fund raising because they do spelling bees that include live music and dancing and stand up comedy, not your seventh grade spelling bee. At least not my seventh grade spelling bee from like, what would that have been? Nineteen, seventy one or something? Or nineteen, seventy five? Whatever. I was not like that. Throw that out. Check him out. The video that will show you all this happening at one of their many events is that we be e spelling dot com. Then just talk to the ceo. His name alex alex career. You’ve heard me talk about him. Get him, alex at we b e spelling dot com or you could pick up the phone. The numbers on the website. Check out the video. We b e spelling dot com have a millennial spelling bee fundraiser for your organization, low risk that’s probably don’t have to raise the risk issue for a spelling bee. I would think, what could it possibly be besides embarrassment now, time for tony steak, too. Listen, i really need you to be supporting our sponsors pursuant, we dispelling two new ones coming, the two new ones coming next week. Yes. Apple owes software is starting next week and also wagner, cps so we’re going for sponsors and peace organizations come to me. I’m very grateful for that because they know we’ve got a very consistent show every single week for seven years and over twelve thousand listeners, and i need you to step it up and show your love to our sponsors. So if you’re looking for millennial fund-raising talk to, we’d be spelling, and if you are interested in lots of free content bond fund-raising management then talk to pursue it, check them out, go to that landing page and likewise will be hearing me talk about wagner, cpas and apple owes software we need to show the love to the sponsors. Please keep respond to keep your sponsors. Our sponsors keep our sponsors in mind, thanks so much, and that is tony stick, too. And now time for a s w r own amy sample ward she’s, a social media contributor, and she’s, the ceo of inten, the non-profit technology network. Her most recent co authored book is social change anytime everywhere about multi-channel online engagement she’s that amy sample, ward dot or ge and at amy r s board. Welcome back in the sample. Ward. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Did you see? I put i’m sure you noticed that she had put your initials in the segment title. Now, i actually thought maybe this meant there was a lot more pressure now that any topic in the future has to be able to fall into a nasco w acronym. No, i don’t. I don’t feel like that now. Besides, i’m the one who put there. I would be putting the pressure on myself because i there. Yes. You don’t hear me. Hello? Hear me? I cannot hear you. I’m not sure if you can hear me. Okay? Okay. Why don’t you call back and call back so i can hear you now? Okay. Okay. Now i was saying that there is no pressure because first of all, i did not ask you to come up with a title that met your initials. I did that myself, so you can blame me for that. And no, not not a precedent setting measure. No, you don’t have to worry. And we just lose amy. We did just back now. Now you are back. Okay. Did you hear? Everything i just said, i’ve been in the system the whole time listening to the whole show. And then when it’s my turn to talk wait cut you off? Yes. Did you just hear my whole diatribe? No, i didn’t hear you. Well, alright, basically. Well, i thought maybe i sum you buy my comment. Oh, come on. You know better than that eyes no silence on non-profit radio that never that would never happen. Okay, well, you’ll have to go listen back. But the short answer is no it’s, not a precedent. Don’t worry, grayce so what? We are talking about setting boundaries around your social. Is this getting to be now? Is this going to be an issue for you and your community? Definitely been a really kind of top of mind. Intentional topic here at and ten, i think i think last fall leading up to the election, regardless of any candidate that any single person was voting for. It was just such an intense election and the, you know, everyone turning to social media all throughout the campaign turned to social media that i think by the time the election happened, everyone was just really at this kind of emotional breaking point around how much content there wass how often updates were coming through and that’s both content from, you know, out less media outlets, newspapers, etcetera, but also just content from each of us write everybody sharing things and adding commentary and just reflecting on things that i think people have you no for almost a year now felt like i have to find a way to take a break, or i may be going to lose it, you know, i’m just reading too much, and i feel like if i’m not, you know, i’ve left my left my desk, but now i better open up twitter on my phone because i want to make sure i’m staying on top of this, that people are getting to a place that i think is really overwhelming. I understand, yeah, there’s so many more people paying so much more attention to the networks and the news. I mean, this is the social networks on dh exactly on i would never advocate against that way. I mean, i’m excited that we have a country that feels like people are paying attention, i think, for non-profits that this is a huge moment for us because it means that when we send out on a call to action or an appeal, we can make less of a point about what it is that’s going on because people are are now informed and waiting for that action and indifferent way, right? So on one hand, as organizations it’s a really great time because people are informed and are paying attention, but as individuals and individual staff, i think if we don’t set some boundaries around how much content we’re trying to absorb every day, we will just burn out. Look how good she is bringing it right back to the listeners wait brilliant were brilliant contributors on this show, the host is lackluster, but the contributors are outstanding example exemplary, alright, so yes, so as individuals and maybe even as organizations to i mean, if we’re a small organization, we don’t we don’t have a devoted social media director manager, this applies on the organization level to so what ideas you got? Well, i think at the very basic, when we’re talking about just boundaries in general, something that i have been practicing and that a number of other staff here it and ten have also been practicing is to kind of use different devices as a way to create boundaries. So for example, i don’t have facebook as an app on my phone, and that means that i’m only going to go expose myself to the world of facebook if i’m sitting at a computer and i can open up a browser right? That i’m not just like on my phone, letting myself be kind of mindlessly sucked into that news feed, so separating which which channels which applications you’re going to look at on different devices means oh, well, you know, maybe in the evenings you liketo have a tablet because that’s, where you read, you read a magazine or you have a kindle or something, making sure that you minimize how many other apsara on that device will help you create some boundaries so that’s excellent. And then in addition to that, i think it kind of goes hand in hand, but it’s picking times of day where you want to engage, so saying, you know what? During the morning when i’m getting up and i’m having my coffee and i may be with my family, i don’t wanna have to start the day already worried about what’s happening in the news, right? So, like i during these times, even though the temptation is there, i don’t check twitter until i get to work or something. So picking sometimes a day where your mind knows, okay, it’s okay to go down the rabbit hole. This is my life twenty minute twitter break when you get into the office or something, but then the rest of the time, you don’t feel like, oh gosh, i should check i should check i should check you say, no, i have that time when i know i’m going to go check it. That’s a tough one. You know, people have been saying that about email for a year for years as manager. Way of managing your inbox on ly check email, whatever two, three times a day instead of i think the is in the aft national adult average, like a hundred times a day, we look at our phone to check email something instead of doing it a hundred times. Cut it down to three that’s a that’s, a tough one. You know, last time i had beth can’t iran and i know you know, beth very well and she’s very smart. She talked about how difficult it was for her to break the habit of waking up and picking up her phone and looking at email it’s, hard it’s shorts and part of it, if you know you have that habit, let the device help you with that, right, you can set your different channels, whether that’s, social media are email or whatever toe on ly shou notifications at certain times or never shown on vacations. I think it is very healthy to make sure your phone is not constantly showing you the number of unready males, because that is just like a stressful little picker, right? So, you know, howto open email on your phone, you can go look at it, but you don’t need this scream at all times to be shouting at you fifty on read emails, right? So you some of the control that you have just by the settings and was identification setting their display settings to help create some space there? Yeah, that’s a great one. You know, i’m going to do that that’s a great, like that little red badge next to my helmet that red number you need that. I don’t need that in your life, right? I’m going to look at that. I’m going to check email anyway. I don’t need to know that. There’s there’s one i didn’t. I didn’t get to. I just checked back. They just check twelve. I closed the damn thing. And now there’s one how did that guy? How did that bugger sneak in there exactly. Just feel good about closing it. Yeah, you don’t need that picture and you know it’s a great one. It’s not a phone app, necessarily. But if you use gmail, i know a lot of folks do. If you use gmail there’s a free ad on called bloomerang and if you in add that into your gmail in your browser, it can mute that incoming email like you were just talking about for you. So it’s not a matter of temptation of saying, gosh, i can’t even open my email because i’m always forced to look at it two or three times a day. You can have it open. You could be sending emails. You can read emails that air there, but it will not show you the incoming. E mails wow, during these times where you say i want a mute email for the next hour so that you’re not tempted to dive into all those new emails while you’re trying to focus on something else. That’s outstanding what’s that called it’s called bloomerang bloomerang and it only works with what did you say? Gmail workflows gmail? Okay, well, i don’t know if it works on other things, okay? I know that it does work with female. I’ve heard i’ve heard of female, so okay bloomerang cool, you’ve great ideas, it’s amazing. What? Well, i mean, i think it’s what’s important, even if those air to specific things that you already do or you don’t care to try, they’re just example to illustrate that there are some ways that we can use technology to help us stay away from technology. There are some good tools are quick little add ons that can help you create some boundaries and some filters so that you’re not feeling overwhelmed all the time that you don’t have to do all that work, right? You don’t have to say i just need to be a better digital citizen and not care to check. Facebook, facebook wants you to check it it’s going to send you notifications every way it can and it’s trying to get you back in there so you don’t need to feel guilty for checking the notification instead. Think about where where should i go turn off those notifications? Facebook isn’t trying to tempt me back in and the emails the emails of facebook sends did you know that seventy nine people like the recent posting you’re non-profit happy hour? Oh my god! Yeah, i got to turn that off, too. All right, that’s, too? Yeah, i got one the other day that i thought i felt so desperate, it’s said. You have not updated your public, i don’t know if it was my profile or just i hadn’t posted to my own kind of, you know, posted into the news feed in fifteen week don’t you want to see it? And i was like, if i haven’t done it in fifteen, we space book makes me maybe you could just let me go, you neo-sage they’re trying to trying to get you back in. You’re not cooking on enough ads for them to suit them exactly. All right, we gotta go out far for a break. When we come back, we’ll talk about the ultimate low tech non-technical way of turning yourself off. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t g n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, he hosts a podcast for for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m jonah helper, author of date your donors. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back and i got to say hello. More shout outs to facebook live, we’re on the tony martignetti non-profit radio page and scott williams with us. Mike hargrove, barbara freeze owner and terra kelly who’s now tower hickey, but i know you’re a star. Kelly welcome. Good to see you, facebook live! Thanks for being with us and there’s people on other pages, too, if you made beyond the talking alternative page. Thank you so much for being with us, facebook live and that leads me, of course, to live listener love the podcast audience the what am i saying? The live streaming audience. Our live love goes out to tampa, florida. Woodhaven, newjersey, ridgewood, new york. Which one you want? That’s, queens. We also have brooklyn. We have new york, new york. We’re missing staten island in the bronx. We got left to get that follow five boroughs, but live love to the three bottles that are with us. Queens, brooklyn in manhattan, andi woodbridge, new jersey. Also besides woodhaven, let’s, go abroad, seoul, south korea cells so of course, always checking in. So so, so loyal in seoul and your haserot cancer, ham, nida, germany. We can’t see your city? I’m sorry, but germany’s with us. Guten tag and rio de janeiro, brazil welcome live listener love to you also on the podcast pleasantries go out of course, to the over twelve thousand listeners on the podcast medium were multi-channel here where multi-channel multi? I know we’re multi personality maybe, but we’re multi multi. So, uh, every time i’ve been on, at least one listener has been on from seoul, i think that’s so awesome. Yeah, yeah, they are soul is very, very boyle. Yeah, i love it. So the podcast were the podcast audience. You’re pulling me back in howto live love. I’ve advanced. I’m past that now. I went to the podcast wasn’t i’m sorry you’re into other channels? Yes, or the other that’s, right, it’s, the podcast audience. The pleasantries go out to the over twelve thousand listeners, the ceos, the fundraisers, the the board members, the consultants pleasantries to you. And then, of course, the affiliate affections to our am and fm listeners throughout the country. Thank you. So glad that your station has included non-profit radio in its weekly schedule. Affections to our affiliate listeners and turkey in mexico joined us as well, back to the live love turkey, mexico sorry, we cannot see your cities, but but we know that we know you’re there. We know you’re there. All right, amy sample ward. Thank you for that indulgence, even though you interrupted, but okay, so let’s go to a very i know it is that i love having you on, you know that let’s goto a completely non tech way of setting boundaries, and that is just turn yourself off and take a take time away right from the social net from the networks. Yes, take a little social media vacation. Ah, sabbatical, if you will, you don’t have to close everything permanently. You don’t have to cancel all of your accounts, but, you know, and i think it doesn’t have to be like i’m going to take the month of september off of twitter or something. It doesn’t have to be so rigid and intense, but just saying, you know what? I wantto give a gift to myself of saying that every sunday afternoon is for me and not for the internet, it could be that simple, right doesn’t even have to say, oh, gosh, it’s twelve oh one, i’m already entered into my afternoon of no social media just saying, i i want i know that it will make me feel better. I’m going to give this to myself and then as you start to make that a regular routine, i think it’s easier to say ok like this feels good. I didn’t have to check anything all, you know, all sunday afternoon or whatever today it is, just give yourself that regular vacation very good idea and so simple to do and, you know, be good to yourself, you know? You need you need time away from the i don’t know the pace, the fast pace of the networks and the networks are only expanding and they’re only encouraging you back. Mohr and maura’s, we were just saying before the break, you’ve got to take control, you have to you have to it’s on you. They’re not gonna let you alone. You have to tell them you have to tell them to let you alone. I mean, just in that same way of, like, take control, i think it’s so easy to feel like, especially with channels like twitter where there’s it’s just happening so fast, right is just kind of streaming by that it can feel like you’re kind of this passive participants audience member right there, watching all of this content go by that again, just like you’re saying remember that you can be in control, that i think some of the smartest things to do for using it, not just setting boundaries about when you use it, but when you are using it are to use the list, make sure whatever channel you’re talking about, that you’re kind of filtering that content. It’s okay to follow a million people on twitter but start making a list of specific voices or people or certain hashtags that you you really do care about that you trust that you want to listen to first, and then instead of feeling like, okay, this is my to use that example from before. This is my kind of twenty minutes twitter break when i get to work instead of feeling like great. Now i need to read like all of twitter somehow open first that lift and just listen to those voices that you already know you care more about her that you wanted to listen to first, and then if you have extra time, open up the whole world of twitter, go back to your full kind of followers stream but don’t feel obligated to just always have to consume it all. Use some list on dh kind of filter down what you’re reading. Okay, excellent. Listen hashtags yes, and go there first, cause that’s your most important stuff to you, right? And then, of course, we could weaken turn off certain people if we need to. Yeah. Oh, my god! Unfollowed people just a kn follow-up make that stop if that if that is something that is not productive, you don’t mean maybe they’re your aunt and you feel like you can’t facebook unfriend them just mute them. Tell facebook you never, ever want to hear from that person, but they will still see that your facebook friends you know, maybe you need to maintain that in your family but again let some of those system preference options help you hide content that is on ly goingto make things worse for you. Okay, so and in that similar way i think you know something that’s been really helpful for me and my friends. Outside of work is just being intentional, you know, having conversations with folks and saying, when you realize that every person has started kind of their story or the article that they wanted to talk about by saying, oh, i read this article on facebook or i found this thing on twitter realizing that everyone’s starting place with social media, you know, we kind of had this conversation of i want i want to intentionally go find content that’s interesting to me that i made, you know, maybe i don’t tell anyone about it, i just read it while i was eating lunch. Or maybe i want to talk to my husband about it, but i don’t want to have to start every conversation with i read this article on facebook. I want to feel like i am, you know, i am not beholden to just those social channels i want to go find some other content and knowing that kind of having that realization has helped me and my friends and i have been all have a couple points during the day where we say i want to go like, look at the new york times home page. Oh, how crazy versus waiting for news. Articles to show up in twitter stream so just kind of thinking about how you want to be interacting with with content and media instead of just passively feeling beholden to the channels that you’re already a part of, i think also helps just with that kind of awareness, like we used to pick up the newspaper every day from from from a doorstep. Yeah, yeah, from the news stand okay, okay, which never like two minutes or so left. What else? What else? You have some ideas around filtering fill your other ideas around filtering content. Yeah, something that i found really helpful is that, you know, inside of channels like facebook is having private or semi private group that i engage in a lot more than just that generic kind of big news feed type engagement. So i’m not logging into facebook just to see what happens to be there. I’m logging in to go talk with this community. Andre could be really small or, you know, they could be professional, that i’m not saying there’s only one type, but i think creating some kind of safe private spaces with your friends, with family, with people that you like in any other way is really helpful because even what i have found t use facebook, arlington is two examples of people will still reference content in that group that maybe, you know, is everybody’s sharing that, saying on facebook or there’s a big news item on lincoln that lots of people are interacting with, but it’s a it’s a different way to talk about it in that group than it is often, you know what i’m talking about, where, like lots of different voices jumpin on a thread, and it just turns into a dumpster fire so instead, you know, having a kind of smaller, safer space to talk about things again just makes it feel a little bit more positive to engage their, especially around news items. Then it would be i just feel like you’re commenting on somebody’s post again create small groups that you want teo intentionally interact with versus just waiting to see who’s online and there could even be offline in your really real time real life community. Oh, my god! Okay, we get yes, yes. Oh, yes! Oh, heretical. How heretical is that? All right, we got to leave it there in the sample ward. Thank you so much. Thank you. You’ll find her at amy sample, war dot or ge and at amy r s board next week. I don’t know next week. Oh, no, i do know. Next week i was going to threaten you with fermentation that we actually i thought it might be from fisher, but no, we’re not doing that. It’s going to be with jean takagi. Jean takagi is returning and we’re going to talk about fiscal sponsorship. Big topic. I think we’re going to the whole show. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com our creative producers claire miree sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez. And this very cool music is by scott stein be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. Hey! What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do you put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.
