Tag Archives: Big Duck

Nonprofit Radio for July 3, 2023: Brand Democracy & What To Avoid When Selecting Your Next CRM

 

Claire Taylor Hansen & Jennifer Daw Holloway: Brand Democracy

Continuing our coverage of the 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, a conversation about letting go and democratizing your brand, so it’s collectively owned. The why’s, what’s and how’s are explained by Claire Taylor Hansen of Big Duck, and Jennifer Daw Holloway with Ipas.

 

 

 

 

John Coogan & J. Michael Fisher: What To Avoid When Selecting Your Next CRM

John Coogan of CharityEngine and J. Michael Fisher at the Army Historical Foundation, pose the key questions to answer internally before you go shopping, reveal must-have functionality, and share insider secrets, all to help you avoid the common pitfalls of CRM system purchases. This is also part of our 23NTC coverage.

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:31.23] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of acute flaccid myelitis if you made me nervous because you missed this week’s show,

[00:01:48.87] spk_1:
Brand Democracy. Continuing our coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference, a conversation about letting go and democratizing your brand. So it’s collectively owned the wise. What’s and how’s are explained by Claire Taylor Hanson of Big Duck and Jennifer Doll Holloway with I Pass and what to avoid when selecting your next CRM, John Coogan of Charity Engine and J Michael Fisher at the Army Historical Foundation posed the key questions to answer internally before you go. Shopping, reveal must have functionality and share insider secrets all to help you avoid the common pitfalls of CRM system purchases. This is also part of our 23 and TC coverage on Tony’s take two. I’m available. We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org here is Brand democracy.

[00:02:43.62] spk_0:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC. You know what that is. You know, it’s the 2023 nonprofit technology conference and that we are at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. And you also know that we are sponsored here at 23 NTC by Heller consulting technology strategy and implement it for nonprofits what you don’t know now, but you are about to is that my guests right now are Claire Taylor Hanson, who is creative director at Big Duck and Jennifer dot Holloway, Director of Communications at I pass, Claire and Jim. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure to have you both. Your session is coming up. This is a good preparation on brand democracy. Um So I’m going to say Claire as the agency representative of the agency, client relationship, representing Big Duck agency. What is brand democracy?

[00:03:41.27] spk_2:
Sure. Well, first Big Duck, we think of brand as the impressions that you’re forming in your, in your audiences, the impressions that your nonprofit creates out in the world. And so when we think about brand democracy, we’re shifting our orientation to the history of branding, which is about single ownership. It’s about signaling value. It’s about tightly controlling the impressions that you’re making. It’s about regulating who’s communicating on behalf of the brand. And you’re switching, you’re thinking you’re thinking to instead being about collective ownership of the brand. And so you’re equipping your community of supporters to communicate on behalf of the brand and to really be the brand and inhabit the brand. So it’s really about sharing power and sharing the power of brand in a way that’s aligned more with many nonprofits these days that are thinking more about how can we share and distribute power and how we can communicate and build a brand. That’s more representative of who we are as a non profit and a mission led organization

[00:04:10.33] spk_0:
and Jen as the agent as the nonprofit representative. This all sounds very scary like it’s anarchy that we’re gonna lose control. The brand is going to be diluted. People aren’t going to use the right colors. There’s Farrah trumpeter trumpeter offstage. Hello, how are you? Good to see you. I love the purple highlight too. From Big Duck in Brooklyn in Brooklyn

[00:04:14.42] spk_2:
were now distributed across the country and beyond office in Brooklyn. No, we don’t. We’re now fully distributed, distributed.

[00:04:31.13] spk_0:
All right, used to be a Brooklyn based. Um So Jen, now I’m concerned the colors are gonna be right. People are gonna write, I pass with my period, period, period, period going to dilute the name, the brand, everything is gonna be anarchy and everything that we have invested in our brand is going to be lost. Why is that not true? If we democratize

[00:05:22.34] spk_3:
our brand, it is totally not true. And like Claire said, um we’re uh an ingo. So we’re fairly large, we’re working about 18 countries. Um We have offices in 18 countries. We work in about 30 countries around the world. So brand democracy for us is really important because we’re our core values are justice equity, right? So good. Um We are an organization that is working to expand abortion and contraception access around the world. We are working toward global reproductive. Your work is cut

[00:05:31.31] spk_0:
out for you in the United States for about the past 12 months

[00:06:26.18] spk_3:
or so. It’s true right now. Today news happening. Yes. So um brand democracy for us is really important because we are actually our structure is changing. So we’re we’re not when we will no longer be a kind of a hub and spoke organization with power centered in the United States. We are shifting it, pushing it out, decision make, authority, shared leadership to the places that are closest to our work and closest to the people we aim to serve. So brand democracy allows more engagement. It’s about representing the brand in a way that is best for the communities that you’re serving and that you are part of. So and it’s about trusting our teams to know what is best for the community and their context.

[00:06:27.90] spk_0:
Alright. Um Can you go further and allay the fears of your fellow directors of Directors of Communications may be ceos that everything we’ve invested in the brand is now going to be torn asunder.

[00:06:44.05] spk_3:
Oh, no, no, no. I how can we trust,

[00:06:47.31] spk_0:
you’re not community to do the brand, the justice that we want them to. Well,

[00:07:08.54] spk_3:
I think because in brand democracy, when you’re thinking about the brand, your refreshing it or you’re doing a kind of brand, check up what you’re doing is engaging your community in defining and refining the brand so that you’re kind of living it. You, you understand the brand, the brand represents your core values, represents your mission and vision. So those are common threads throughout our country offices around the world. The mission, the mission and the vision are the same the way that the colors that you might use. They may vary a little bit. It’s okay. It’s okay.

[00:07:31.05] spk_0:
Okay. Maybe a couple of weeks of decimals off. I

[00:07:43.33] spk_3:
mean, the logo is set, but you can use it in different ways. You can use it with a tag line, you can use it without a tag line, but it’s still the local.

[00:09:01.53] spk_2:
Can I build on that? Well, I think we were talking about last night, Jen um at our happy hour moment about really questioning like what’s at risk, you know, and, and, and exploring also frankly, we’re exploring like what this could look like and what the limits are. So a brand is important so that you have brand recognition and so that you’re signaling, you’re building on the reputation of the entity. But if your, if your primary motivation as an organization is really to get folks invested and feel it like it’s rooted authentically in the organization. Well, maybe there’s a greater risk in having folks feel that there’s sort of a top down or western imposition of what a brand or quality looks like. Maybe that’s a bigger risk for you organizationally than having a color, a slight color shift. And so also it’s about having lots of education. So I pass does all this amazing work having webinars having downloadable tools. So things that are truly important for brand recognition, like your logo and like your vision in your mission, ideally, you are building in tons of education around those parts of the brand. But then also leaving room for if you’re in a in a South America where a color has a very different meaning than it does in America. Well, then if that color really resonates allowing folks to enfold that color within the brand and use that brand and have a little bit more, not a little bit more, a lot more regional autonomy with what I pass looks and sounds and feels like in the context in which they operate.

[00:09:43.09] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. What do we, you know, something just occurred to me. I have to have to get something off my mind. I talked to my wife production assistant for a second. You Susan because we’re we are live tweeting that you’re with us. But Susan needs the names of of these two guests in the spreadsheet. Does she know them because, because they got added last minute. Okay, thank you. Okay. Now, now, now you have my complete attention, you give me 30 seconds,

[00:09:46.79] spk_2:
you’re going to ask

[00:09:49.66] spk_3:
you a question.

[00:09:52.30] spk_2:
Like

[00:10:19.45] spk_0:
what, what is this? We’re starting, we’re starting to talk about what this looks like. But I have a very neophyte question because I’ve been studying this for about 11 minutes and you’ve been working on this for months and your presentation is coming up years and your presentation is coming up. What are we allowing folks to do? What are we allowing the community to do? What does this democracy look like? Well,

[00:10:20.58] spk_3:
it looks like a little, a lot of what Claire said in that you are able to represent. I pass in the way that is best for your context. So it

[00:11:02.92] spk_0:
means I want to tweet about how do I as a um newly empowered brand owner, co owner of the bypass brand treat the brand or tweet tweet differently now than I did for the other nonprofit where it’s a top down model. But I wanted to shout out that nonprofit too because I still love that one. Even though I’m not a co owner in their brand. How does my tweet look different for? I pass that it does for the more traditional brand, traditionally branded non profit. I think that’s a pretty eloquent question. I must say.

[00:12:13.32] spk_3:
I don’t know if my answer will be half, but I’m gonna try but I think two things that I pass we have various Twitter handles, right? So if you’re I pass Nepal, you have, you may have your own Twitter handle, you may have all your own social media handles. You may have a website that I pass Nepal, I pass in the US doing tweeting. So I think the thing is that you’re again bound by your values. So are you talking about reproductive freedom and reproductive justice? Are you thinking expansively and inclusively about who is impacted by abortion? Right? Are you, is that coming through in what you’re saying, whatever channel you might be tweeting in French, you might be tweeting in Spanish from from I pass. But I think it’s the personality and the mission and the core values that are coming through in whatever medium you’re speaking in or writing centered

[00:12:17.49] spk_0:
centered around the

[00:12:18.25] spk_3:
value. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:12:20.37] spk_2:
Can I build on

[00:12:21.32] spk_0:
that Claire? Go ahead because I have a question for you. But yeah, go ahead.

[00:13:09.88] spk_2:
I think also we worked really hard with Jen and by we, I mean Big Deck and by then, I mean, I passed two, we also just develop this brand. So it’s a new brand and so we worked really hard when we created that fundamental over, you know, that overarching layer of their logo and the main color to make them have community input from all of the different countries to make sure that folks could get on board with those aspects and those elements. So I think a big shift now is in your analogy of the nonprofit that was before and the nonprofit was after before, I felt it could have felt like, okay, we’ve got this logo that’s a kind of one size fits all. And it has to work for literally every country across the world where every country across the world didn’t help, pick the logo or to find the logo. Now you’ve got a logo where everyone literally did help figure it out. So it feels a sense of ownership and there’s flexibility built in and encouragement built in to say like okay. So this is the base layer. This is the fundamental thread that is consistent through all and now adapt as it makes sense for you. So it’s it’s sort of working with a set of tools that were designed for this purpose and with the with the flexibility and the spectrum of flexibility kind of built in and communicated and reinforced for folks.

[00:14:30.17] spk_1:
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[00:15:27.60] spk_3:
Well, I know we have a lot to say, brand, brand democracy and, and like, like Claire was saying this flexibility. So our teams in different countries know their audience is better than, I mean, that’s you know about not being this kind of hub in the United States. I can’t tweet something that is meant for uh you know, let’s say people in a health system in, you know, Kenya, for example, or, you know, for advocates working on law change in Mexico. So it, that allows you to again have the flexibility to know your audience, know your community, you know, talk directly to them, which is kind of comms 101, right? Know your audience.

[00:15:28.39] spk_0:
Yeah, and, and give them the freedom to speak to their audience who they know better than you do.

[00:15:36.46] spk_2:
But I would generally push back on the anarchy thing because I don’t think that is not here

[00:16:11.90] spk_0:
on this podcast. I gotta make sure. So we’re talking about an international NGO. I pass what if we’re a local uh local state? I mean, you know, small, small town, whatever uh um agency is there, is there value in democratizing our brand? And um is there, is there,

[00:17:04.72] spk_2:
well, I think if your organization is, is really interested in sharing power and uh and um kind of authentically routing your brand in your community, then for sure. Yes. And then I pass, it was an amazing opportunity for us because it was the most obvious and clear, you know, of course, when you’re dealing with international Autonomous, you know, culturally sensitive work, this is a great solution. But now it’s interesting to use some of the thinking that we worked on and developed in this project and to think about how does this, how does this look for a for a regional nonprofit that’s got a small staff, like, what does this look like? And I think some of the ideas about, okay, well, let’s deeply listen to stakeholders that maybe we didn’t historically listen to when we develop the brand, how do we um pressure test the brand during brand development and see what folks are thinking about? How do we train the community and the staff, how do we maybe open up some parts like maybe there’s a toolkit that we can offer for folks. So I think there’s aspects of it and elements of it that for mission aligned for organizations where it makes sense for them and that are interested in these ideas would definitely uh we’re incorporating into our projects right now that are very different than interesting. It

[00:17:33.88] spk_0:
sounds like an example that folks may be more familiar with would be like giving Tuesday, right? I mean, don’t they don’t they have tools, they do have tools and resources and you know, take the logo, use the brand completely decentralized. Folks might be more, be more familiar with um than, than, than I pass. Okay,

[00:17:56.29] spk_2:
you’re right, probably in the world of campaigns like now this is bring into brand, which maybe feels a bit riskier, but this is a common strategy for campaign work because you’re trying to recruit and advocate. And so this is interesting, it’s like taking some of the same ideas and approaches that have been used for campaigns and thinking about does some of that make sense for brand as

[00:18:18.89] spk_0:
well? Where do you think if someone some non profit wanted to explore this, does it need to be part of a rebranding exercise? Because you said there’s a new brand for I pass or I mean, can their existing brand be democratized? I

[00:18:43.80] spk_3:
do want to say it is, it is a, it’s fresh and dynamic and new and everything, but we’re still I pass our mission didn’t change. So the way that we’re working is changing, so we called it kind of a super brand refresh. Right. Right. So maybe a better description

[00:18:47.75] spk_0:
and refresh and rebrand. But still,

[00:18:50.27] spk_3:
I mean, it was, it was verging on rebrand, but we’re still, we’re still I passed. So it was a big deal. I don’t mean to minimize that.

[00:19:06.73] spk_2:
No, but it’s true. I think this is really like a shift in thinking and then actually when you look at the actual brand assets and tools. It’s not that, you know, it’s not a shocking change. It’s just thinking about how you share and distribute and you know, communicate the brand in different ways.

[00:19:13.77] spk_0:
Let’s talk a little about brand ambassadors. How do you, how do you identify these folks? Maybe it’s easier, maybe easier for I pass than, than for the typical US nonprofit that is not international. But uh go ahead explain Jen brand ambassadors.

[00:20:54.05] spk_3:
We kind of you anyone who really sort of has an external facing role, right? If you, you may be talking to the media that maybe that’s different, you might be talking to donors, you might be talking to partners. You’re still an ambassador for I pass for the brand, right? And we have some ways that we’re in in on my communications team at the network level that we’re really trying to build the platform and create the support Claire mentioned tool kits, that sort of thing. So what we view our role is is to to help our brand ambassadors be the be as effective as effective as they can be. So it’s you’re speaking to community members, it’s your, you know, your speaking, you’re giving a speech at a conference or you’re doing a presentation representing I pass on our work that’s ambassadorship. I don’t know that we necessarily always pick them. I think they surface. And I think that anyone in an organization who again is talking with people outside with their community members should be able to represent the brand. And if they have the right tools and, and they’re, you know, they understand the mission which everyone of my passes clearly is committed to our mission. They can be a good brand. That

[00:20:57.14] spk_0:
wasn’t a good question. How do you pick them? Because that top down model, you’re anointed.

[00:21:03.98] spk_3:
Exactly.

[00:21:18.52] spk_0:
So I just made the sign of the cross and giving my giving up my religious background that no longer applies. You’re anointed the canonized, not a process of canonization. That’s what I was looking for, right? They emerge, they want to have lunch and talk to some of their friends about I pass or they want to do an online campaign and give up their birthday, you know, whatever

[00:21:31.64] spk_3:
exactly a donor who feels strongly about why they support ipads, they’re an ambassador

[00:21:36.77] spk_0:
empowered, they’re supported, they just emerge, they’re not, they’re not, they’re not canonized.

[00:22:07.47] spk_2:
And I think the idea of a brand ambassador, that’s not a new concept, you know, in the nonprofit world, like we’ve been incorporating that role in our trainings for a long time. But really, it’s um I think it’s acknowledging and creating tools and resources and approaching the this community of folks in a deeper way. So you’re, you’re saying you’re acknowledging that especially in the nonprofit world where maybe you don’t have infinite dollars to, you know, work on marketing. You know, instead you’re saying you’re capitalizing on the power of your community and you’re saying okay, I’m gonna, we have all these folks that care about us and our communicating on behalf of us. And so rather than trying like control the message or, you know, only have designated spokespeople, let’s kind of release a little bit more and kind of embrace that and capitalize, capitalize the wrong word. But, you know, really lean into the power of our community.

[00:22:31.95] spk_0:
I like the word exploit. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not a pejorative exploit. The you’re taking advantage. Yes, you’re exploiting. I mean, we exploit resources but not to the not to the detriment of the resources. I don’t think leverages, I’m tired of leveraging. I just, I got

[00:22:50.63] spk_2:
I

[00:23:44.69] spk_0:
amplify, okay. I grew up just using things now. I have to leverage them. Um It sounds, it sounds like more work. Um Like I learned in fifth grade, like simple machines as a fulcrum and a power, you know, it sounds too, sounds, it sounds like too much energy expansion. Um Okay, I could see, you know, I’m trying to apply this more generally. I see how it fits perfectly with an international NGO you’re 18 different countries, right? Okay. Um But for, for the more typical listener, I mean, you could be like approaching this but maybe not a full on, you know, um democratization, but empowering your ambassadors letting ambassadors emerge, let let people use your brand for an event or, or uh something they want to do. You know, a peer to peer camp or something, right? I mean, so like, you know, but you have a toolkit for them, there’s some Google, Google Google Docs or something shared resources where you can grab our logo here, grab some of our key talking points there.

[00:23:57.95] spk_3:
Right. Right.

[00:24:53.73] spk_2:
And then also there’s so that’s the brand assets, but there’s also kind of brand feedback, we like to think of brands as like living and evolving things. So, you know, if you reach out to your community for feedback on your brands and to kind of include them on how is it performing in the world, are there ways we could shift or adapt? So then you’re really through how you walk and talk and every through signaling to folks that, hey, this is yours to like this is, this is our communities brand. How do you get that feedback? I’m Google Surveys. You could have listening sessions, you can offer free gift certificates to have folks show up and kind of share their feedback on some questions and hear how folks are responding to statements like your mission statement, your vision statement showed them some recent materials, you know, and also just full acknowledgement. Were we are as an agency really like thinking about this wrestling with this kind of playing around with different ideas. Like this is kind of a new uh framework and way of thinking about branding for us to like as recently as you know, five or 10 years ago, my goal in life was to make the brand as consistent and as, and shut down, you know, anything that could potentially erode the brand as

[00:25:08.59] spk_0:
possible. Yeah.

[00:25:45.41] spk_2:
And, and now I’m questioning that I question, I’m not, not, I’m in some ways, I’m just, you know, wrestling with like, well, what if your primary motivation is instead to, you know, to embody the brand in, in your entire community? how do you get people engaged and passionate about what you’re doing? How important is it really if your hex value is consistent across, I mean, and it isn’t, I’m a designer, it’s very important that your website appear correctly across certain ways and that you have accessible colors. So it’s just thinking about at every touch point, you know, questioning the way things have been done, you know, is there a different way approach that could be taken that would be more in service to the mission and thinking about being maybe a little bit less um tightly controlled about some things that have historically been very locked down.

[00:26:20.37] spk_0:
That’s cool. Alright, Jen, I’m gonna leave you with the last uh last um encouraging words of encouragement, words of empowerment around loosening up, loosening up, maybe not, you know, approaching full on the way the way I pass is able to and really suited for as you both, you both agreed. But um empowering are the rest of the folks around loosening up the their, their

[00:27:20.83] spk_3:
brand, I think it serves many purposes, right? If you’re loosening up in the sense that you are actually practicing or leaning into brand democracy, you are empowering your staff, your community, like Claire said to speak to represent the brand and you’re not um you know, it was this top down calms or marketing controlled the brand in the past and it in a smaller organization, you don’t have a lot of comms and marketing people, right? So you really need more brand ambassadors. You need people to be sort of living what the brand means, be able to represent it and to sort of share those core values. And I think, you know, any size organization, your supporters or your community want to feel a part of something. And this is another way to help do that.

[00:27:42.64] spk_0:
That’s Jennifer dot Holloway, Director of Communications at I Pass and also with me is Claire Taylor Hanson, creative Director at Big Duck, Gen Claire Claire Jen. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Glad it’s worked out. Thank you. Thank you, my pleasure and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 NT see where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits.

[00:28:07.55] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate.

[00:28:58.22] spk_0:
Are you planning a conference or maybe some other training for later this year or in 2020 for I’m available if planned giving can fit into whatever it is you’ve got coming up training wise, then I’d be grateful if you would give me the opportunity to be a part of your program. I’m typically talking about launching planned giving at small and midsize nonprofits. That’s my target audience. So, if that’s your audience for whatever you’ve got coming up again, I’d be grateful if you’d, uh, give me the opportunity, I’d love to talk to you about it. You could use the contact page at tony-martignetti dot com or just email me tony at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:29:10.19] spk_1:
That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time here is what to avoid when selecting your next CRM.

[00:29:38.33] spk_0:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC 2023 nonprofit technology conference. We’re in Denver, Colorado and we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now, our John Coogan, who is vice president of client services at Charity Engine and J Michael Fisher, who is vice president of Development at the Army Historical Foundation. John Mike. Welcome to non profit radio. Thanks for

[00:29:55.39] spk_4:
having us. Thank you.

[00:29:58.40] spk_0:
Pleasure, pleasure to have you both. Your session topic is five pitfalls to avoid when selecting a CRM system. John, let’s start with you just high level. Why is this an important topic?

[00:30:48.95] spk_4:
Well, for me, it’s an important topic prior to Charity Engine. I was with, with non profits for about 15 years. And in each of my 43 of my four nonprofits had to migrate from one system to another for various reasons. And in each case, it was very difficult for me because I went in blind not knowing which questions to ask. And you know, I ran into a lot of implementation delays and you know, misunderstanding of the product. So we wanted to put together a quick session to help people who are shopping around for CRM. Ask the right questions, understand the perspectives, understand who to get in involved from an executive buy in within the organization. Um You know, you know, insists on things like transparency, understand data and the migration process. So they’re walking in with the right, I guess overall perspective. So that the buying process is a lot easier and the implementation process and and going live is even that much easier as well. Mike,

[00:31:10.08] spk_0:
is this something that Army Historical Foundation has been through

[00:31:14.23] spk_5:
and actually going through it right now?

[00:31:15.80] spk_0:
Is this a client vendor, client consultant relationship?

[00:31:19.52] spk_5:
Currently,

[00:31:21.34] spk_4:
he’s been a client of ours with two other nonprofits. He’s moved on to a new one that’s not yet a client.

[00:31:29.22] spk_0:
And so you’re going through a CRM selection now at the foundation,

[00:32:07.31] spk_5:
it was already done before my time and there’s been some implementation issues if you would. And you know, after I was talking to Charity Engine, you know, I was just telling them some of the things we’re going through, like, would you share that people would like to know because you’ve done it two times before and you’ll probably do it again in your career. And I said, of course, because the only way you can really help others is showing what you’ve learned. You know, it is free advice, you get a full refund and, you know, that’s one of those things. But it’s, uh, yeah, I’d like to share that information just because you do a lot digging as a nonprofit executive. You know, there’s no book, there’s no manual and you and I’ve done a lot of digging and I have some ideas of what I think is good and happy to share that and

[00:32:19.21] spk_0:
some sounds like some lessons learned as well. Yes.

[00:32:34.59] spk_4:
One of the big things is 10 years, 15 years ago when I was shopping for my first CRM, there were not a lot of options out there and nowadays there’s just so much noise, there’s so many different levels of CRM, you know, smaller, bigger all in one very specifically focused CRM. If you Google non profit CRM, you’re gonna be overwhelmed with the options. And I think that’s a big problem, especially for smaller nonprofits that neither have the time nor, nor maybe the sophistication with technology to wait to kind of wade through all of those, all the noise and really kind of come up with a product or a list of products that would make sense for them. So we want to help out with

[00:33:01.88] spk_0:
that John, let’s stay with you. You, you alluded to questions, questions, I think between the two of you, oh it’s five pitfalls to avoid, but you have a bunch of questions to ask. One of the pitfalls is not asking

[00:34:09.93] spk_4:
the right questions. It’s not, not being prepared, not being prepared for your. And so asking the right questions and understanding your current environment and who’s going to be using the system and what they needed for having the right people at the table when interviewing a potential partner in a CRM, because you need to represent everybody in the organization, you need to make sure this product is going to effectively give all those people what they need to do their job on a day to day basis. So if you’re coming in and you’re listening to a sales pitch and every, every sales pitch is gonna be similar, we’ve got these great features and great functionality. We do all these great things and we’re going to double or triple your fundraising in the year. But at the end of the day, you want to move past that you want to is this product the right product for me in terms of everyday use. Um my ability to understand it, my ability to leverage it in the right way, my ability to grow with it. And so you move past the sales and start getting into talking to people like me that run client services and actually install the product and get it going. Um So, so you can ask those deeper questions and really answers. Let’s

[00:34:13.92] spk_0:
drill down. So what are some questions that should be asked? What stage are we now? Were, are we evaluating choices at

[00:34:33.08] spk_4:
the stage we’re at now? I think, I think a lot of people in the room are probably, hey, we need to get out of what we’re in right now because either we need to grow or we don’t get what we need out of this or it’s too expensive. So there, there kind of just searching around. So you’re at the pre RFP

[00:34:35.98] spk_0:
stage. So you’re asking these questions internally. Yeah, you’re not asking them of the

[00:34:40.10] spk_4:
vendors. No, not yet. So and then, and then when you get the questions internally answered, then you can shop around and we’d off. Okay. So let’s

[00:34:48.13] spk_0:
get. So what are some of these internal questions?

[00:34:56.41] spk_4:
So for me, one of the, one of the biggest questions that, that I want people to ask is, is, you know, how is your customer support? And you know, do you, do you have a customer support team that’s gonna stay with us as partners?

[00:35:01.80] spk_0:
Well, that’s the question you’re asking the vendors.

[00:35:03.21] spk_4:
Yeah. Yeah. But internally the question has to be, what kind of support do I need?

[00:35:07.57] spk_0:
What do we

[00:35:21.74] spk_4:
have internally? So do I need, do I need support with like reporting. Do I need support with running queries or building building different cuts of data so that I can do segment, segment and emails and things like that. Let’s write that one.

[00:35:24.57] spk_0:
You gotta have

[00:35:38.89] spk_4:
segmented. Yes, you got a lot of segmented data. But I think, you know, if you don’t know what you need, if you don’t know what questions you need to answer for yourself internally, then how can you even expect to ask the right questions of the vendor? And I think that’s the big thing. So planning, sitting down planning, okay, what do we need? What are the questions we need to ask? What are the questions we need to answer for ourselves? So we can go out and look at products and eliminate those we know are not correct just based on our own needs. What else should we

[00:35:52.87] spk_0:
be doing? Introspectively look

[00:36:18.68] spk_4:
at your data? I mean, I think, I think one of the biggest things that trips nonprofits when they’re migrating is not understanding their, their data and where they sit right now, whether they’ve got a single database or multiple databases, are they using spreadsheets? What information is important? Are you managing duplicates the right way? Because what happens when you migrate first order of business is get your data into the new platform in the right way. So you can build everything on top of it and nine times out of 10, if you’re not understanding your data and keeping it clean and doing the things you need to do to prepare yourself to move in a new platform. You’re gonna end up adding a ton of overhead to the implementation timeline itself. And that’s a big deal,

[00:36:32.71] spk_0:
Mike in your experience. Now, I know currently you’re you and you joined the foundation after this stage. But in your previous two times, do you feel like what was your experience around the internal questions being asked? I

[00:37:25.08] spk_5:
think one of the hardest parts at this stage for the non profit of this putting the deal together is you actually have to go back in, make the new piece different than the old database. So a lot of times people sit around the table and they’ll re cobble this thing together and then you look at it like this is exactly what we already have and then you have to logically think, well, that’s if we’re really just gonna build the same thing, right? Have, then why putting lipstick on a pig and send it down the road? And the reality is technology changes so quickly now that, you know, even if you redid your database five or 10 years ago, there’s a lot of different pieces. You don’t have a lot of pieces, you could just jettison aside. And so I think that’s one of the biggest pieces at this point is don’t just remake your same database. That’s, that’s a big mistake that a lot of people

[00:38:29.31] spk_4:
make. Yeah. Again, when you get back to the questions, you know, if you’re asking yourself the right questions, then you’re, you’re understanding why you’re even looking to begin with. So, so we’ve seen some clients come in that end up expecting the same thing out of our product because they didn’t ask certain questions and they are basically trying to replace what they have for price alone. I think if you, if you’re shopping for price, you still need to understand what you’re getting into and you need to be able to think outside the box. What you know, I have an opportunity now to change my database infrastructure in my crm. What are things that I don’t like about my current environment? You know, what, what can I leverage out of the product to make my life easier to make us more efficient so that we can raise more money and do more things for our recipients. I don’t think a lot of nonprofits will sit back and think about that if they’re only shopping for price, you know, and I think that’s an important one. So, okay.

[00:38:32.13] spk_0:
Okay. Anything else about the planning stage before we move on to some must have anything else? Uh I think

[00:38:56.93] spk_5:
we touched on briefly and invite all of your, your interested parties who, who can give input, who can uh test early and they can see previews so they buy in it, calms the waters of this event because to a lot of people. This is a huge event. And if you, if you include the stakeholders early, it’s not as big of a

[00:39:00.88] spk_0:
deal. Who are some of those stakeholders that you see sometimes maybe this goes to lessons learned, but stakeholders get forgotten.

[00:39:21.51] spk_5:
It could be, it could be major gifts, the database based managers, customer service reps, uh the back end guys, if you would that, that are doing the actual data augmentation and you know, so it’s just a, it’s a wide variety, but it

[00:39:48.74] spk_4:
can also be the board member of the board member that is looking at the bottom line and getting the report on a quarterly basis, you know, they need to understand the product as well. Um And they didn’t understand why, you know, you’re moving into that product or they’re not gonna support it going forward. So I think at all levels, if you’re not having everybody at every level that’s gonna be leveraging the product or affected by the product, you’re basically doing yourself a disservice. Um and ultimately potentially creating downstream problems internally about the about the system, even if it’s perfect and,

[00:39:55.60] spk_0:
and including the board helps for some buying. Absolutely. Get that upper level management buy in.

[00:40:03.75] spk_4:
Yeah. So when you need to expand or you want to do certain things with the product that may cause, you know, cost a little bit more, whether it’s a new integration that was built into the product or new functionality that they want to leverage if the boards bought into it, it’s an easier process to adopt that, that new functionality.

[00:40:19.17] spk_0:
You have some must have functionalities that you think. You think every nonprofit

[00:41:09.59] spk_4:
needs. For me, the biggest one is a single database. Like I have lived through running non profit, smaller nonprofits where we’ve had distributed data. And there’s a lot of issues that go with that. Not the least of which is, you’ve got a contact record or a donor or a prospect that’s living in more than one data source, which can lead to uh siloed outreach. So you may have a major donor if this happened to me where we had a donor that wrote a check for $5000 for, you know, major gift end of your giving. And a week later got a solicitation in the mail for $25 and he called and said, what’s going on, don’t you know me? You know, why, why am I hearing from these people as well? I just gave you $5000 and so it could creates problems. So a single source of data for me is critical and that, and I think everything needs to be built from that.

[00:41:12.51] spk_0:
That’s, that’s not standard. I mean, that just seems like there’s a lot of,

[00:41:48.07] spk_4:
well, what happens is this, you know, you’ve got CRM nowadays um that may not have had certain components of technology, like, let’s say, advocacy or events. And so instead of building it, they’ve acquired another organization or integrated. And so what they’ve done is they’ve created siloed databases and I don’t know, I can’t speak to any one particular organization, but what ends up happening is you got duplicate records, you’ve got data that’s inconsistent across the organization. It just becomes a frustrating thing, especially for I was an executive director for a couple of nonprofits. It’s just frustrating because your reporting is not accurate, especially to the board. You know, you’re not, you’re not able to accurately represent the revenue or the donor’s activity. In some cases, you’re not acknowledging correct.

[00:42:06.56] spk_0:
You don’t even know what is accurate. Yourself don’t even know because you’ve got inconsistent data across more than one database.

[00:42:21.82] spk_4:
And what’s funny is now in my role on the for profit side as charity engine, overseeing professional services. We’re seeing that come in because we have to bring all that data in and map it into our environment. And as we’re doing that these, these nonprofits are discovering, oh, my gosh, I didn’t realize this one donor who was our monthly donor giving, you know, $15 a month also attended these events because there was a bucket ID database somewhere that, that they weren’t, they weren’t looking at something as simple as that could be. It could, it could really hurt an organization’s ability to raise money and build relationships.

[00:42:43.09] spk_0:
Mike, do you have a must have,

[00:43:07.90] spk_5:
I agree with that. The data points to their missed. So you could be Anthony and my one list, tony and the other two different emails and we could be talking to you two different ways and you’re, you’re going a little mad like, what are these people doing? They talked to me this way one day and then they talked to me this way another and, and that’s where I think there’s a lot of mistakes are being made when they, there’s too many systems and when you can consolidate them, they eventually they won’t catch everything 100% but it’ll be 99% much better. Other

[00:43:17.84] spk_0:
must have, must have

[00:43:32.95] spk_4:
functionalities. I mean, you need the standard stuff. I mean, I think, you know, the CRM needs to be integrated with email marketing. You need, you need good solid reporting, the ability to build advanced reports and customized reports. Um You know, I believe a great must have is open a pis into the nonprofit

[00:43:40.10] spk_0:
nonprofit radio. We’re not here so well.

[00:44:05.26] spk_4:
So it’s simple. Yeah, open api so for me, so to explain it in layman’s terms, um Charity engine offers, you know, let’s say a dozen different inherent functionality within our system. If somebody comes and says, hey, I’m using this other thing that does this thing that you guys will never do because it’s something separate from, from your, your core roadmap. Um But we want to integrate and we want to store the information in your database. So that we have that single source. Still, we have two way integration. So we can, they can bring data in through that other application no different than a user entering it through our user interface and they can pull data back out. So in that way, no matter what happens outside of our environment, we still have the most updated data.

[00:44:29.90] spk_0:
So open, meaning not only the the providers that carry the engine has contracted with other sources,

[00:44:34.13] spk_4:
exactly not

[00:44:34.83] spk_0:
open source. But

[00:44:36.65] spk_4:
yeah. So, so charity Engine, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got A P I is that we built that are very specific like Wealth Engine and Quickbooks and double the donation as part of ours. That’s here this week and double

[00:44:48.03] spk_0:
donation, Adam wegner and

[00:44:54.54] spk_4:
so on the show, it is a great organization. The immigration is easy, we tapped into their and built it so that, you know, when a donor gives one of one of our nonprofits, they get a prompt essentially to double the donation, which is great.

[00:45:02.58] spk_0:
Double the donation is referring to corporate corporate corporate matching, whether your company has a matching gift. That’s what double donation is all about.

[00:45:19.37] spk_4:
Yeah. And so we’ve got integrations that we build into the product based on other A pis and I’m here shopping for partners that we want to build more integration with. But then for those that podcast, podcast production partner. Yeah, let’s do it. Can you can you build, can you build some API calls into our system. I don’t even know what

[00:45:27.37] spk_0:
they are, but I would be happy to produce podcasts. Yeah. Yeah. You

[00:45:31.37] spk_4:
know, we can do that.

[00:45:34.42] spk_0:
So open A P I so I, we can bring in me as the, as the, as, as the user organization can bring in other, other vendors. Our

[00:45:41.32] spk_4:
primary goal, we want to preserve the single database. We want to give everybody the opportunity to bring data into.

[00:45:52.89] spk_0:
Um anything else must have functionality? Okay. Just wanna make sure we cover it. I don’t want to hold that on non profit.

[00:45:55.57] spk_4:
No, no, no, we’re good. Have you done this session yet? I’m not. No, no, we did the session already had some good follow up this session. I was like, no, we’re in the middle.

[00:46:24.37] spk_0:
You really don’t hold hold. Tony-martignetti in very high esteem guy doesn’t even know where he is from moment to moment. Okay. Um You, I’m taking this from your takeaways or learning objectives, whatever industry insider secrets to help you shop smarter. That’s a good

[00:47:46.28] spk_4:
move past the sales team. Like hear the pitch, insists on talking to the head of customer service, insists on talking to somebody in the professional services team. Ask deeper questions because the sales, the sales team will be well equipped to talk about features, functionality pricing, that sort of thing. But when they, when they’re ask deeper questions, oftentimes they don’t know the answer and they’re gonna go internally questions like what like, you know, like some of the things like tell me more about the integration API and how it works. You know, is there a library that you can provide to us or you know, do you have a query tool that allows for, you know, uh sub queries and querying across the database? You know, there’s things that the sales team, there’s things underneath each of the features that someone’s going to dig deeper into. There gonna be a tech guy or somebody that wants to ask a better question. And so I as, as the head of client services often get on the sales calls and I’m, I make myself available deliberately for these prospects because I need to know what they’re asking too. And I wanna understand at the end of the day, it’s a relationship in both directions. You know, we don’t want a client that doesn’t fit with us because they’ll get frustrated and they’ll go away at some point and they definitely don’t want a CRM that doesn’t fit with them because, you know, the money is limited and these processes are, are difficult to, to migrate. So, you know, we open ourselves up to if you want to talk to our head of customer support, Destino, more about how we support our slas. Yeah, you’re

[00:47:52.40] spk_0:
welcome. I don’t know what the

[00:48:08.13] spk_4:
service level agreements. So if you open up a critical ticket, how quickly do we do we respond to you, how quickly do we, do we resolve it? There’s SLS based on levels of criticality and impact of the business and that sort of thing. I as a, as a person shopping for a CRM, want to talk to all those people because these are the people that I’m living

[00:48:20.35] spk_0:
with, the ones who are fulfilling the sl A, I’m going to come back to industry insider secrets, but I want to go to Mike for some lessons, learned some things. You, well, lessons learned. What, what’s in your past? That first you can help people

[00:49:35.08] spk_5:
with when you’re shopping. If you would for this type of group, don’t find a vendor, find a partner. And that’s really, it sounds a little cliche but find somebody that will go in deeper with you just like John was saying, you know, uh I end up doing a lot of hands on stuff like I’m sending an email for the end of the year. It’s in, you know, the end of December, I’m the only one in the office or doing it at home. And I run into a snag. I can actually call somebody and not like, hey, we’ll get back to you January 1st, you know, the third. After all the stuff, all the emails that need to be sent out to make the end of your push. You know, even though you test things, I retest right before I send them again. And if I get a snag it gives me a chance to, to get everything done. So, when you find a partner, they’ll, they’ll be there for you no matter what. They’re not just waiting for your check in the mail. And, uh really the other part that I find is find a group that is creating innovation, not chasing innovation. And so, you know, you can find like these bigger groups that are called like a Frankenstein uh back end where they’re just bolting on. Hey, we, here’s the next best idea. We, we bought a smaller group bolted on, you know, like a big bolt on Frankenstein’s neck and here it is, and they don’t always work together. But if you’re creating innovation, you’re finding ways that, hey, this is the next big idea and we partnered with someone or we made it ourselves and it really works. And

[00:49:55.06] spk_0:
how could you tell if a vendor is creating versus chasing innovation?

[00:50:26.84] spk_5:
What would I do a lot of homework? So, uh the short story is, you know, John, 15 years ago, did this thing with wounded warrior project. I was at a group called American Veterans, Amvets and I sat down and I’m like, who was making the most money in this market, wounded warrior project. So I went and I did as much research on them as I could. I didn’t know him at the time. He had just started doing this other thing with Charity Engine. And I was like, if they’re doing it. I should be doing it. So I called them out of the blue and they were just really getting going charity Engine. Like, how’d you find us? And you’re like our fifth client? And we’re not even, like, set up to do this yet. I’m like, we’re only 20 minutes away. I want to see you next week and they’re like, holy cow, you know. So they showed up at our office and, and that’s how our relationship started, but it was just really digging in kind of the way you find major donors is the way you find partners, you go out and you really do the research and dig it up.

[00:51:43.08] spk_4:
Yeah, I think if I can add, I thought, you know, if you’re building, if your crm that’s, that’s building things inherently, you’re thinking through all this stuff. So, you know, a good example is Chat GPT and AI it’s all the bits, all the buzz. Now, you know, if you’re gonna just slap on a component that says, okay. Now I’ve got a, I because they want to check off a box where, you know, uh charity Engine over the years for me, a wounded warrior project built AI into, into the product itself to be more predictive about, you know, things like, uh fraud and, you know, who’s, who’s accessing forms, um you know, from a boat or a hacker. And so what we’ve already got in the product that’s been inherent for a decade is artificial intelligence to respond to certain things so that we can protect the non profit. So I think, you know, if, if a CRM vendor is growing based on acquisition and slapping things together, they’re probably less innovative and more reactive. And I think that’s the for me that’s kind of the litmus test.

[00:51:55.42] spk_0:
Another lesson learned, Mike,

[00:51:58.64] spk_5:
that’s really the big, the big pieces, find innovation, you know, and don’t chase it.

[00:52:04.67] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. I’m coming back to you John for the insider tips insider

[00:52:25.03] spk_4:
secrets, insider secrets. Uh back to help you shop smarter. I mean, I think the biggest one is move, move downstream past sales. But I also, I also think for me, the biggest thing is is do your homework internally before you start doing your homework externally um understand your own team, understand what you need to understand what people are using, understand what people are complaining about, understand how many different components you’ve got in your environment today. Because if you start shopping before you even have those answers, you’re doing something wrong, you’re gonna, you’re basically not you not, you don’t even know what you’re looking for at that point. So start internally, spend a lot of good time, you know, really understanding your current environment and people’s mentality about your current environment before you get out there and start looking around,

[00:52:56.14] spk_0:
what are some of the questions you got in the in the session? Um

[00:53:23.80] spk_4:
Well, so we we ran to the end and people walked up with questions afterwards and I think the biggest question was related to shopping around, like, you know, where do you start? And it was, it was a couple of smaller nonprofits asking, you know, we don’t know, technology, like, where do I go? Do I search Google? You know, and, and if I do, what are the key words that I’m looking for? And I said, you know, obviously, you know, if you’re starting there, I’d say take a step back and really ask yourself your questions first and then it’s gonna drive how you search. So yeah, Google is gonna be a great source for a lot of people, referrals are good as well, but most people are gonna go to the web, every CRM is doing their search engine optimization and they’re, they’re getting their rankings and everyone’s putting up their marketing messaging. But at the beginning, you need to know specifically what you need before you start searching for anything. Otherwise it’s, it’s misaligned

[00:53:58.04] spk_0:
questions. Exactly, Mike, you want to give us parting thoughts on no pitfalls to avoid a little. Well, just some uh parting encouragement for doing it the right way. Of

[00:55:53.56] spk_5:
course, uh like John said, do your homework. That’s really, you’re, you’re responsible for yourself in the nonprofit world because they hire you to do one job and then you end up having five or 10 or 20. And, you know, it’s really hard to kind of slow things down and really look. But, but call your friends, hey, what, what’s, what are you using? That’s good. Ask, ask for referrals and, uh, and really just go out and see who’s, who’s doing things together with clients more or less than just, hey, I just add a new client. So it’s that partner piece is, to me is the biggest on everything that I do is if you’re not, I don’t, I don’t want a vendor. I don’t, I don’t want a pay for play even though it does kind of break down to that a little bit. I want someone that if there’s a problem, they’re going to help me come through it and, and John, uh, you know, he, he alluded to uh, some things, uh, I don’t even know he, that we had, he knew I had this in our past, but we had a thing where we bought a bad list and a bad list. So it was at another nonprofit before my time and it was integrated by and, and a vendor if you would, that was, uh, that we were getting rid of, but they had integrated like 100,000 emails and it just uh sent off a lot of alarms and Charity Engine and they said stop and we see that you’re not, you’re not getting the response rates. And, uh, you know, you got a little, I hate to use this word honeypot and I don’t want you to put me in jail. But, you know, it’s like all these pieces where they were not great email addresses, they were going to bed, you know, dead ends and so forth and they stopped us from really going down a slippery slope and we had to parse out. Yeah. And it really, it saved us a lot of time and money in the long run and if they would have just let it ride and we were just like another number on their list, it would have cost us money and in terms of donations and fixing. So those are the things I look for.

[00:56:42.80] spk_0:
All right, that’s J Michael Fisher. He’s Vice president of Development at Army Historical Foundation and also with John Coogan, vice president of Client services at Charity Engine, John and Mike. Thank you very much. Thanks very much for sharing my pleasure and thank you for being with tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference in Denver, Colorado, where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks so much for being with me

[00:56:59.27] spk_1:
next week. 10 fundraising boosts on a budget and personalized fundraising at scale. If you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:57:02.73] spk_0:
I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:57:33.16] spk_1:
We’re sponsored by Donor Box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your announcer, Kate martignetti. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:57:49.85] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for June 21, 2021: Movement Messaging & Farewell, Maria Semple

My Guests:

Hannah Thomas & Morgan Fletcher: Movement Messaging

Expanding on the partnership theme two weeks ago, consider building a movement with orgs outside your direct mission. You’ll want cohesive, effective messaging and that’s where Hannah Thomas and Morgan Fletcher can help. Hannah is with Big Duck and Morgan is at Girls for Gender Equity. This is part of our 21NTC coverage.

 

 

 

 

 

Maria Semple: Farewell, Maria Semple

Maria Semple

Her first Nonprofit Radio was February 11, 2011. Soon after she became our prospect research contributor. Maria’s practice has evolved and this is her last show. Quoting somebody, nobody can identify: “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.”

 

 

 

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[00:00:11.24] spk_4:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big

[00:00:15.74] spk_2:
non profit ideas for

[00:01:51.04] spk_6:
The other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with hyper nutri mia if you shared the salty idea that you missed this week’s show movement messaging, expanding on the partnership theme two weeks ago, consider building a movement with org’s outside your direct mission. You’ll want cohesive effective messaging and that’s where Hannah thomas and morgan fletcher can help Hannah is with big duck and morgan is at girls for gender equity. This is part of our 21 NTC coverage and farewell Maria Semple Her first nonprofit radio was February 11, Soon after she became our prospect research contributor, Maria’s practice has evolved and this is her last show quoting somebody nobody can identify, don’t cry because it’s over smile because it happened. tony state too podcast pleasantries were sponsored by turn to communications. Pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by sending blue the only all in one digital marketing platform empowering non profits to grow. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in blue. Let’s get started. Shall we hear is movement

[00:01:54.62] spk_2:
messaging.

[00:02:11.74] spk_5:
Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 MTC. The 2021 nonprofit technology conference. We’re sponsored at 21. NTC by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot c O. My guests

[00:02:12.42] spk_2:
now are Hannah, thomas

[00:02:23.64] spk_5:
senior strategist at big duck and morgan fletcher, Director of marketing and storytelling at girls for gender equity. Hello morgan welcome.

[00:02:26.44] spk_3:
Hey, tony excited to be here,

[00:02:28.51] spk_1:
I. tony Thank

[00:02:33.64] spk_5:
you. Pleasure to have you on nonprofit radio and our coverage of the 21 MTC uh your

[00:02:36.68] spk_2:
session topic

[00:02:41.24] spk_5:
is me versus we. Well, we versus me. We versus me.

[00:02:42.60] spk_2:
Maybe it makes a difference.

[00:02:55.04] spk_5:
We’ll find out if it makes a difference, but we’ll get it correct. We versus me Building messaging for a movement. Hannah, would you get us started with with some basics? What is this movement messaging that we are talking about?

[00:02:58.54] spk_3:
Yeah, I’d love to start us off with that. Um, so to set some context in the nonprofit landscape over the

[00:03:05.49] spk_1:
last few years, there’s

[00:03:38.34] spk_3:
been a lot of efforts made by nonprofits to band together in coalition to work in partnership um in in service of movements that exist beyond even just the organization’s mission. Um, so those are causes that are benefiting the collective sector, benefiting the larger world. Um and they really require a different take on messaging. A lot of times, nonprofits are very focused on clearly articulating themselves in their mission and making sure their audiences are really motivated to support them. But movement messaging in order to be effective, has to be used by multiple voices, multiple entities, um and move a bunch of different audiences to take action in support of a larger cause. Um So where when we’re talking about movement messaging, we’re talking about sort of a reframing um from me to we so that that sort of explains the title there.

[00:04:16.24] spk_5:
Okay, So we we versus me is Okay or Me versus we is okay, but we’re going to go from me to we Exactly not. We to me, that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do. All right. That would be taking a great cause and distilling it down to uh were the center of the universe, and we’re the only ones who can do this work. So the rest of you are out exactly

[00:04:19.01] spk_3:
opposite.

[00:04:48.54] spk_5:
That’s exactly what we’re not doing, right? That’s antithetical to what we’re talking about. Okay. All right, um, morgan. Let’s bring you in. Let’s help us understand what the value is of working outside our mission. Because I I want to I’m thinking of our listeners. You know, they they’re they’re tied up in their work and I want them to help or I want to help you to help them see the benefit of seeing outside your own individual mission to a broader cause. So what what what was the experience that girls for gender equity?

[00:06:34.84] spk_1:
Yeah, for sure. So it goes for gender equity and we call ourselves G for short, just as context for who we are. An intergenerational organization based in Brooklyn. Um, that’s centering black cis gender and transgender girls and gender non conforming non binary youth of color in the fight for gender and racial justice. So with the mission statement like that obviously actually is quite broad, which allows us a lot of opportunity to partner and collaborate with organizations who are able to meet us at the intersections of the lived experiences of the young people that were working with. So, for example, Environmental justice, economic justice, all these other issues are also racial justice issues. And so we have a lot of entry points to our work, particularly for this session with Hannah. We I was speaking about a national agenda for black girls, which is G. S. First national campaign that we launched in alignment with the presidential election. Keeping in mind that we were always trying to center young people of diverse backgrounds but of color To help us shift policy priorities and have them actually be informed by people who need the change in their lives. So there are plenty of organizations that we partnered with in this work. We had about 60 endorsing organizations. And the campaign itself is spearheaded by a steering committee of 80 young people from across the country and they each represent their own organizations that are local. So we’re able to work collaboratively with these organizations that may be may fall under the umbrella of what we’re talking about, right, these intersectional areas of young people’s experiences, but they may not be, you know, exactly cookie cutter like girls for gender equity, but the issues that we’re talking about are in alignment with theirs. And so we’re able to develop strong messaging that all of the organizations collaborating with us can uplift and use and take action on

[00:07:01.14] spk_5:
any. Was there any consternation at G about working in broader coalitions and and excuse me, maybe, you know, diluting some of our own work, you know, were there any? Was there any pushback like in the organization? May be among the board? Just you know, I’m trying to help people see what what obstacles might be might be out there for them to do this

[00:08:36.54] spk_1:
work? Absolutely, yeah. Did you have any of that? We were very fortunate. I will say that um we had a really good base of organizations that we were used to collaborating with in this way who were aligned with our values? Already newer organizations of course came in and um, you know, did a gut check with us and had we had internal conversations and we hold we hold regular meetings for those folks as well as we kind of catch them up on where our messaging is coming from to continue to check that we are still in alignment and with our priorities and framing. But I would say that actually the place where we experience the most challenge and growth as an organization and as a campaign running team was in the messaging around identity. You know, you heard me list a couple of different gender presentations and identity that one might claim moving through this world and for us, especially as we’re co collaborate and co designing this campaign with the young people in the steering committee. We had a lot of conversations around like, well honestly, who’s a black girl? Why are we framing it this way? Do we, you know, how expensive is this terminology? And does it accurately represent? Do people who are on this campaign feel accurately represented by this language? So I would say that a lot not a lot of but most of the pushback that we were receiving was extremely useful because it was coming from young people themselves who were saying, you know, I’m not binary, I don’t love that, this is framed this way. And I’m like, as you know, as a person who’s in charge of the frame and like great, keep giving me that feedback, right? Let’s create a campaign that actually represents you and how you’re moving through this world. That’s the point. So I would say a lot of constantly having that dialogue so we can continue to make sure that the campaign is serving the people, it’s intending to serve.

[00:08:50.34] spk_5:
I have to broaden my mind because when I got if I if I were getting that kind of feedback that you gotta be like, this is so annoying, why can’t you just agree with what we all we all the rest of us agreed on. Why can’t you just jump on board what you have to cause

[00:08:58.25] spk_2:
trouble? So

[00:08:59.49] spk_1:
it makes it a really time consuming

[00:09:22.44] spk_5:
process. It’s frustrating, but you always frustration usually leads to a better place. I mean if it’s channeled right, you know it’s unproductive than then it’s destructive but you know in creativity I found that frustration usually leads to a better a better outcome. Alright let’s go back to you now. So take a little broader Hannah help us identify like what, how does Big Duck think of a movement? What’s a what’s a movement?

[00:09:56.44] spk_3:
Yeah. I think um actually really related to what you’re just talking about, the language, the definitions, all of this stuff is you know always evolving and all we were always adapting what we think about as a movement and the role that messaging can play in that. Um But generally a big duck. We’re thinking about a movement as the commitment of many to work together and create transformative change based on a shared purpose or goal. And we see movement

[00:09:57.55] spk_5:
any. I’m distilling that down to uh many, working on a shared purpose or goal.

[00:10:04.27] spk_3:
That’s right towards transformative change.

[00:10:26.54] spk_5:
Okay, Okay. And how about um the messaging? How do you conceive of the messaging? And then we’re gonna we’re gonna have to dive in and explain how we how we all work together to ally around a common message, but help us understand. I mean, are we just talking about the simple it’s just a simple communications. The what each of us produce.

[00:10:41.34] spk_3:
Yeah, we are talking about, you know, all of the different ways that you can communicate something to an audience and try and prompt them or motivate them to take action with you. And so that can be, you know, in a tweet, that can be all different sorts of ways that you can communicate out. That can be in the stories that you tell, the narratives that you’re trying to disrupt or push forward. Um there’s a lot of different ways that you can that can be at a rally when somebody is giving a speech, what’s being said there in that context. Um so we’re really thinking big big about what what messaging can look like and trying not to have a narrower prescriptive view.

[00:11:34.74] spk_5:
Okay, so yeah, whatever channels, whatever channels you have, and then does does each well, before we get to approval, like getting messaging approved? So, I don’t know, we’ll talk about that process if it’s even necessary. But how do you how do you start to bring folks together, around around a common message with, you know, inclusivity? And uh you just just convene a meeting and then you start somebody produce a document that everybody comments on it.

[00:11:38.16] spk_2:
How does this process work?

[00:11:41.54] spk_1:
Yeah, I would

[00:12:56.94] spk_3:
say that there’s probably a lot of different processes that work. Um but we found that helpful like in um to to align yourself with other organizations, other people, individuals who are would be aligned around a common cause is too start the conversation around shared values. Um and the opportunity agenda is obviously a great resource, doing a lot of work around storytelling using values and all that, but shared values are really an effective in for folks who wouldn’t otherwise get the nitty gritty of of what you’re trying to achieve, to understand their role in your cause and understand how it relates to their own. Um So we we talked about in our session all of the different ways that you can like sort of frame frame this cause in ways that use those deep shared values and also you know, fill in the context around that. Um So you know, we all believe in love. Um, so or we all believe in opportunity. Um, so maybe that’s an effective in for somebody, an organization who back in the day was advocating for a gay marriage, right? There was a lot of that was a great example at the time, actually, of the way that shared values were a really efficient, effective way for people to move hearts and minds, um, and to gather, you know, some momentum around this cause that on the surface, on the policy level folks weren’t really jelling with.

[00:13:11.64] spk_5:
That’s a great example. Yeah. Love who’s gonna disagree with that?

[00:13:15.74] spk_1:
Exactly,

[00:13:16.39] spk_3:
literally no one

[00:13:17.43] spk_5:
I’m the I’m the anti Love, I’m the anti Love

[00:13:21.16] spk_1:
candidate, tough to make

[00:13:24.26] spk_5:
not in favor of that.

[00:13:25.21] spk_2:
Yeah, that’s my platform

[00:13:26.50] spk_6:
is uh is hate, right?

[00:13:57.74] spk_5:
Well, there are people who have that, but they don’t call it that. Um even they would say that we I agree with Love. We agree with Love. Alright. So cool. All right. All right. Um And then it’s starting to frame these messages like you said, I’m kind of in the details, like So then All right. So, we have these shared values morgan. How do we start to build messaging? We just want to share documents that uh people start contributing to.

[00:14:00.23] spk_2:
How did that work?

[00:14:54.74] spk_1:
Yes, the process. Well, for us, honestly, it’s it really is that fundamental basic, just kind of like, look, let’s just start putting some things down. Of course, there’s all sorts of like jazzy processes you could design and do all sorts of like discovery conversations and, you know, you can call it by those names and that is what it is. But I think ultimately we really did just sit down as a team internal and lay out our vision as it aligned with, of course, the larger goals of the organization, because this was specific to a campaign, but this applies to all of our work. We sit down as a team, we pull out a document, um, and this was developed in the time where we could be in person at our office, so we were able to sit down together in a white board, technically, and put everything down, and then we started to introduce that to people that we thought would be great allies in the work. And so we had our entry points at each organization, based on people we knew through our connections personally. Um, and also just kind of put out a general call to action into these organizing spaces that we knew had similar values alignment or values alignment, and similar ideas about a progressive future for black girls. So we could run with that. So it really wasn’t. It really was a lot of google documents. Honestly.

[00:15:22.54] spk_5:
All right. So, so morgan did you have a formal organization that that you all created or this just like this? You didn’t make a legal organization out of all these entities? Right. You just you just all contributed to a campaign,

[00:15:50.34] spk_1:
correct? So we remained Girls for gender equity. And we launched a national agenda as an initiative of Girls for gender equity. Within that. We do have a steering committee, as I mentioned, that young people and then we also have the partner organizations who are represented by those young people and some who are not who are partners in the work at large. And so those things, those groups all have names, but we did not go about formalizing legally a new entity.

[00:16:05.74] spk_5:
Okay, Okay. Not necessary. Um, and so while this is going on, uh well, this larger campaign is going on, you’re still doing your own, your own messaging, Right, Aggie. You know, that’s not like that suspended or anything.

[00:16:12.21] spk_1:
No, definitely still definitely juggling both. Right. All right.

[00:16:17.84] spk_5:
And and how does how is fundraising impacted? Was was part of the campaign for fundraising for the for the entities or it was it was a different a different call to action?

[00:17:33.74] spk_1:
Yeah, fundraising is certainly call to action for national agenda specifically because it has its own funding. And so, you know, we’re fundraising for G were fundraising for a national agenda. And of course we are talking about G. I mean, we do narrative shift work, we do direct service work. We also do organizing policy campaigns work. So there are several different buckets of work that were fundraising for at any time. Um, I think what our process has been to keeping that streamlined for and under comprehensive and clear for our audiences is just naming, but in very clear, consistent terms, all of what we’re holding as best we can and acknowledging that it’s a lot and that allows us to lean into this the, you know, what, what Hannah and I were talking about before around intersectionality and the holistic nous of the work and the holistic nous of the movement work. Right? So we can say we’ve been very explicit about a national agenda is focusing on these national priorities. However, at a city and state level in new york where we’re based, this is what else we’re holding and how it is interlaced with these other priorities. And so we’re able to flesh out where all these things are meeting and also naming, you know, there you can choose to support any of these, but ultimately supporting us will support all of them.

[00:18:01.14] spk_5:
Hannah, help us understand some more around the the complexities of messaging and consistent messaging or maybe maybe have some big some best practices that Big Duck or something. Help us flush out the details of getting consistent messaging across all your, all the entities contributing to well, in morgan’s cases with the national agenda, but you know, whatever, whatever cause we might be working toward.

[00:18:46.14] spk_3:
Yeah, I think it’s really interesting because at Big Duck primarily were preaching, you need to have one voice, a very consistent voice, a very aligned voice. Everybody should be a brand ambassador who understands deeply what you’re positioning is, what your personality is, should be able to speak. You know, all you know, sounding the same with movements. I think it’s actually very different. I think you have to necessarily make space for people to communicate. The message is in their own way using their own personalities. Um the movement can’t it’s really in my view like an exercise in relinquishing control in a lot of ways and making sure that it’s it’s something that others can own as well and feel like it’s theirs to speak about in their own voice.

[00:19:01.14] spk_5:
It’s interesting like nobody owns it, but everybody, everybody owns it, but nobody owns it.

[00:19:53.94] spk_3:
Exactly. And that’s why you can see a lot of um successful movements. One that I think is really cool is the land back movement and campaign. So there are website is very simple and it has a manifesto with about 10 lines of text on it about all the different meanings that land back has in terms of a literal, you know, meaning of we want to get this land back. But also the narrative, this means about our relation to our relationship to the environment, our relationship to racial justice, all of these different things. So it sort of sets up a basic something to work with. But if you look at the hashtag land back on instagram or something like that, there are so many folks, so many individuals who are able to um build meaning from that from that manifesto and take it in new directions and give it new life all sort of aligned generally around that manifesto, but really expanding um expanding the meaning.

[00:20:12.04] spk_5:
Anything either of you want to want to say about this sort of this consistent shared messaging

[00:20:15.14] spk_2:
Before we uh

[00:20:16.47] spk_5:
before we move on, morgan you’re shaking your head. You want to add some more.

[00:20:39.84] spk_1:
Yeah, I just wanted to underscore I think how important it is for there to be a muscle for constant vulnerability, openness to feedback and collaboration. Um you know, campaigns as Hannah was saying, you know, folks are able to step into the campaign work individuals and organizations and make it their own in a way and that is so special and unique and you also want to be sure that that does not spiral into another direction of course. And so you want to also provide structure and infrastructure for folks to feel supported as they’re moving with this campaign. Right?

[00:20:54.54] spk_5:
Like what? Like what kind of structure and infrastructure?

[00:20:56.94] spk_1:
Yeah, So I would say, you know, developing really basic tools that people can use, like messaging, kids digital tool kits to provide folks with key talking points graphics, if you want there to be visual cohesion to your campaign and folks don’t always use that stuff, you know, of course they’re like, that doesn’t match individuals might be like, doesn’t match my aesthetic organizations might be like, you know, we want to frame it a little differently. So the intersection with our work is more cohesive and clear to our audiences, but you want to give folks a starting point so they can say, you know, I like looking at land, land backs manifesto, they can refer to some tools and documents and say, okay, I know where this is rooted. And I’m going to pull these pieces from it for my, my specific messaging or my organization specific messaging and then having consistent checking with folks, you know, updating that regularly, letting folks know it’s being updated, these real basic communications that get lost because you’re holding so much.

[00:22:09.24] spk_5:
Do you feel like giving Tuesday is an example of what we’re talking about, or like spun large, you know, billions of dollars now? Or is that really something, something different because it’s so decentralized? I mean we’re talking about something decentralized here, like I said everybody owns it but nobody owns it, but I don’t know do you feel like giving Tuesday is an example of could be an example large of what we’re talking about or or no, that’s really something different.

[00:22:46.74] spk_1:
I think so, especially to disagree with me and say something. No, I was thinking about it, you know, I think um I mean we’re talking specifically about very progressive movements. I certainly am, but I’m thinking about how they, you know, they really provide, we are obviously participating giving Tuesday um and they always provide such incredible materials. So you you feel so clear through the process. Okay, I’ve got 44 months, six months out. How do I build this campaign around this moment? Right. And I always feel so prepared for giving Tuesday because they’re able to roll out such robust materials to build that infrastructure for us as organizations.

[00:23:08.04] spk_5:
Alright, well, there’s at least lessons to take from giving Tuesday in terms of the support you mentioned, support infrastructure. Um one of the things that you mentioned in your session description Hannah is that you want folks to reconsider some best practices that may be hindering their cause. What does that mean?

[00:23:09.14] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:24:37.94] spk_3:
we, we hit on some of it earlier when we’re talking about intersectionality and making space for, you know, other causes or things that are not directly in your lane, but maybe in the next lane over. Um I wanted to include say this Audrey Lorde quote. There’s no such thing as a single issue struggle because we do not live single issue lives. So if you are an environmental organization, but you don’t see how that could connect to racial justice or to voting rights or to whatever else may be out there. You’re missing some great opportunities to expose, you know, that there’s critical connections between all that we’re doing and it can be really hard. That’s the me versus we inaction is like I need these dollars, I need these donors, I need the spotlight all of that versus a different mindset, which which we think of as a scarcity versus abundance mindset. Um, so what I was just explaining is an example of some scarcity thinking versus we want to spotlight this whole ecosystem of change we’ve got going on of which we are a piece. Um, there’s room to show how we’re connected to what our peers are doing. There’s enough dollars and donors to go around. It doesn’t have to be us who gets all 50 of those donors dollars. Maybe they give us five, and they give everybody else five to um and again, a de emphasis maybe on dollars, right? Folks have currency that goes outside of, you know, money. And how are you showing value for that? So, a lot of ways of like kind of de centering your organization in a healthy and healthy and productive way. So that’s one example of disrupting sort of best practices that we think about

[00:24:56.44] spk_5:
it. And that’s related to what you had said earlier about surrendering control. The point that nobody owns

[00:24:58.78] spk_2:
this.

[00:25:07.54] spk_5:
You have another one. That’s that’s very good de centering. Right? What else? Another another sort of mind shift that you want to encourage?

[00:25:38.44] spk_3:
Yeah, we had a whole section where we were talking about disrupting um dominant narratives, which I think morgan can speak to a little bit more. But dominant narratives are these sort of pervasive, like, the way we say things are the way we tell things, and the things that we assume that we are are all really sharing um movements are a great opportunity to really disrupt that and and form new narratives um that are healthier and that are um more progressive and are gonna frankly help us transform the world in the way we want to, I don’t know, morgan if you wanted to chime in.

[00:27:14.74] spk_1:
Yeah, I would just add as, like, a specific example, um you know, for us, when we’re talking about when G is talking about are the constituents in our programs and young people who are in our campaigns, You know, a lot of the work that we do is around shifting the narrative around the your audience cannot see this or cannot hear this or see it, but I’m using air quotes when I talk about the monolithic black girl, right? Like this and no community is monolithic, this is it. This means nothing, right? So what are you know, for us to break down that absurd premise? Um it requires us to really give opportunity to young people in our programs um to tell their unique story as they want to tell it. And so for us, our narrative shifting work looks like passing the mic. It’s not about me, the director of marketing storytelling, going to a rally and giving a really great speech. You know, it’s about young people going to that rally and them giving great speeches or speak in front of city council in new york, which we do quite frequently or talking to legislators across the country. You know, other types of campaigns that we’re building out right now. Video and social media storytelling campaigns that really allow us to present a breath of experiences and all those people are saying I fall somewhere on this black girlhood spectrum, This identity spectrum and my story may not look like this young person or that person or that person, but it is still important, it is still affected by the legislation that’s happening in this country and therefore it’s still relevant. Okay, I have

[00:27:16.64] spk_5:
a little uh, we’re going on in the background. I don’t know if you can hear that buzz, so yes, you can.

[00:27:24.44] spk_2:
Okay, sorry. Um All right, um

[00:27:30.64] spk_5:
let’s let’s leave it there. But Hannah, why don’t you just take us out with some last minute motivation? I I can see ego has to be, you know, checked at the door. You know, we’ve been talking about decentralization, de centering yourself and and your organization. Um so yeah, Hannah leave us with some last last, second last minute motivation.

[00:28:31.14] spk_3:
I have the perfect way to close this out and this is what we close our our presentation with was how important the role of a radical imagination is in helping develop movement messaging and helping you create that story that you want to tell and move folks towards action. I think it has taken a paraphrasing Adrian Marie Brown, who um wrote an emergent strategy, how it took somebody else’s imagination for this world that we have right now to come to fruition right for all of these structures and all of everything going on to happen. And we need to use our imagination if we want to create something different. And I think that if nowhere else that really radical imagination that proud, you know, proclamation of a future that we’re going to get to really belongs in movement messaging. Um so it’s more of an abstract ending note, but really important to use your imagination and be sharing, sharing your vision for the future. Unapologetically,

[00:28:51.74] spk_5:
that’s Hannah thomas, senior strategist at Big Duck also was morgan fletcher director of marketing and storytelling. A. G girls for gender equity, Hannah morgan, thank you both very much. Thanks so much.

[00:29:01.66] spk_3:
Thank you. Thanks tony

[00:29:13.64] spk_5:
Glad to have you and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21. Ntc we’re sponsored by turn to communications turn hyphen two

[00:29:15.01] spk_2:
dot C o.

[00:30:36.54] spk_6:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications, you remember them, The Chronicle of philanthropy, the new york times, The Wall Street Journal, Usa today stanford Social Innovation review Oh, the Washington Post the Hill Cranes, nonprofit quarterly Forbes Market Watch. That’s where turn to clients have gotten exposure. You want that kind of press turn hyphen two dot c o. Your story is their mission. It’s time for Tony to take to the pleasantries, the podcast pleasantries have to come out. They haven’t been for some time. They’ve been dormant. They’ve been on hiatus for several weeks, but they’re back pleasantries to our podcast audience. U 13,000 plus listeners throughout the world. We’ve got listeners, yeah, we’ve got listeners in Germany um, where else besides north America? Certainly north America, we’ve got Canada and Mexico covered. Uh, so those go without saying not, not that we take the, not that we take the northern and southern neighbor listeners for granted. No, no, no, but they’re, they’re, it’s, it’s just kind of understood, you know, it’s, it’s tony-martignetti non profit radio

[00:30:40.45] spk_2:
You just know that

[00:30:56.64] spk_6:
all the north american countries are going to be represented. It’s, it’s just, it’s subsumed in the name. That’s that’s, that’s what it is. That that that’s what I mean to say. It’s subsumed. So we’ve got North America covered that. Subsumed going

[00:30:56.94] spk_2:
abroad. Oh,

[00:30:58.03] spk_5:
Germany.

[00:30:59.56] spk_2:
Um often checking

[00:32:42.74] spk_6:
in uh, italy France UK, certainly o u k. Those are the ones that come to mind and if you’re out there in other countries beyond those just named, let me know. I’d love to shut you out. Love to the pleasantries. The pleasantries. I’m grateful. I am grateful that you listen two nonprofit radio week after week. I’m glad the show brings you value. I hope it gives you actionable steps or things you can start thinking about to lead to action. That that’s what this is about. Right? So the pleasantries to you, our many, many podcast listeners, I’m grateful. That is Tony’s take two send in blue. It’s an all in one digital marketing platform with tools to build end to end digital campaigns that look professional are affordable and keep you organized. They do digital campaign marketing, that’s what we’re talking about. Most marketing software is designed for big companies and has enterprise level price tags. No, no, not here, sending blue’s price for nonprofits, it’s an easy to use marketing platform. They walk you through the steps of building a campaign. You want to try them out and get a free month, send him blue. Hit the listener landing page at tony dot M A slash send in blue. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for nonprofit radio Here is a farewell Maria Semple.

[00:32:46.74] spk_5:
It always has been my pleasure to welcome Maria simple to the show. Of course,

[00:32:52.15] spk_2:
month after month, year after

[00:32:53.54] spk_5:
year, many years.

[00:32:55.24] spk_6:
Uh, today it’s

[00:32:58.54] spk_5:
uh bittersweet to welcome Maria sample back to nonprofit

[00:33:04.74] spk_2:
radio for a farewell. You know her, she is the prospect

[00:33:06.98] spk_5:
finder, a trainer and speaker on prospect research.

[00:33:10.36] spk_2:
Her latest book is

[00:33:11.28] spk_5:
magnify your business tips tools and strategies

[00:33:17.84] spk_2:
for growing your business or your non profit she’s are dyin of dirt cheap and free.

[00:33:28.24] spk_5:
She has been for many years, she’s at the prospect finder dot com and at Maria Semple, I always used to

[00:33:29.06] spk_2:
say Maria, it’s a pleasure to welcome you back. It’s a little like I said bittersweet this time though,

[00:33:33.71] spk_5:
hello, hello and well you’re still welcome. You’re still very welcome. It’s just not so much of a pleasure that’s

[00:33:57.34] spk_0:
all. Uh, well thank you for having me back for a little bit of a farewell and you’re right, Tony. It is bitter sweet. Um, you know you and I have been talking in one way or another and having it recorded before the time of internet radio, we were doing some tele recordings, right? We would do recorded calls and that’s right. We had those phone

[00:34:01.68] spk_2:
calls. Tell us we did a few tele calls together about planned giving and prospect research. Yes,

[00:34:07.31] spk_0:
yeah. Yeah. Back back in the day when it was tele classes. Right.

[00:34:11.52] spk_6:
Right.

[00:34:12.44] spk_2:
Yeah.

[00:34:13.29] spk_5:
Yes. And then we

[00:34:14.47] spk_2:
did some, some conferences together.

[00:34:16.88] spk_5:
That’s right.

[00:34:17.70] spk_2:
Prospect

[00:34:29.34] spk_5:
research and planned giving. Um, and then it’s been many years on, on nonprofit radio you, it’s been like eight years or so. You’ve been with the show.

[00:34:30.32] spk_0:
Absolutely prospect

[00:34:31.99] spk_2:
research contributor.

[00:34:33.05] spk_5:
What’s

[00:34:33.91] spk_2:
going on? What’s going on in your professional life?

[00:36:18.53] spk_0:
Well, you know, my business, you know, in the last couple of years has expanded and, and uh, focused a little bit more, you know, like the title of my book Magnify Your Business. It’s really kind of focused a little more on online marketing, strategy, social media, email marketing linkedin and really um you know, expanding to beyond nonprofits as well. So I work with a lot of small businesses and financial advisors. Um and and I’ve been, you know, I pulled back a little bit, I’ve been, you know, having moved to uh beautiful crystal coast of north Carolina. I’ve been working more part time than full time as I was back in New Jersey. Um and I’m doing a ton of volunteering for a number of different organizations and capacities. And one of the most recent projects that I’m really excited about is expanding broadband. And you know, that’s a big topic right now, coincidentally, so last year I was invited to serve on a committee here in carter County to expand broadband opportunity um in underserved and not served at all regions believe it or not, there are pockets down east and so forth. They just don’t have any internet. Um, and so we saw in the last year how important it was to be able to stay connected. Um, and so through the carter at County Economic Development Foundation, um, I’m continue to serve on a committee that’s going to now be implementing some of the deficiencies in areas that were identified in the digital digital inclusion report, um, that that came out. So that’s one of the big projects.

[00:36:40.43] spk_5:
So you’re working more part time and that means you’re not going to be contributing prospect research wisdom as our deutschland of dirt, cheap and free on nonprofit radio So your, your focus is shifted

[00:36:46.61] spk_2:
a little more,

[00:37:02.03] spk_5:
little more business oriented, only part time, a lot of volunteer work, which I love because we only live 12 miles apart about so uh, helping you’re helping my community to, uh, we’re in the same county. Um All right. I

[00:37:02.74] spk_2:
understand that,

[00:37:04.34] spk_5:
so happy to hear it, but I understand

[00:37:07.83] spk_0:
and I’m serving as my H. O. A. Board president. Uh

[00:37:12.82] spk_5:
I hate H. O. S. Oh my God when I moved here uh Homeowners

[00:37:18.39] spk_2:
associations.

[00:37:22.83] spk_5:
Yeah. So your uh your those people who say you can’t you can’t put this color on your door and you can’t hang this on your windows at christmas time. Is that you?

[00:37:30.13] spk_0:
Unfortunately. Unfortunately I I didn’t I unfortunately. Yes, there are there are rules when you live in an H. O. A. Community, so either you live in one or you don’t.

[00:37:43.53] spk_2:
Alright, alright. I don’t mean you’re the president,

[00:37:47.73] spk_5:
you’re going to be the scrooge time, your lights are too bright or whatever. You

[00:37:52.75] spk_0:
know, we don’t get into lighting because it’s all common area lighting. It’s a condo complex. It’s not single family homes.

[00:38:00.42] spk_5:
Right. Right. Well, people can outline their windows with christmas lights or something. We

[00:38:04.94] spk_0:
allow that. That’s fine.

[00:38:06.72] spk_5:
Okay.

[00:38:08.26] spk_0:
We’ll have christmas lights. Oh,

[00:38:10.63] spk_2:
all right. I’m getting a sense of why I know I

[00:38:14.97] spk_0:
paint your door any color you want to paint your door? There’s a specific color. You have to paint your door

[00:38:19.73] spk_6:
specific color for

[00:38:20.89] spk_0:
everybody. All right.

[00:38:22.82] spk_5:
All right, madam, President? Yeah, I’m not uh

[00:38:25.92] spk_2:
personally I’m not too keen on the

[00:38:37.62] spk_5:
U. S. But I I understand you you bought knowing that you were part of an H. O. A. So I guess you might as well be active in it so you can insert some degree of reasonableness. I hope. Yes,

[00:38:41.87] spk_0:
I hope. Well, I’m also the chair of the social committee. So I’m all about the fun.

[00:38:46.82] spk_5:
Okay, well, but if you harass people too badly on their door color, you may not, you may have zero people at your social events. So activity may offset the other. We’ll see. We’ll see how those two things are playing in

[00:39:26.02] spk_0:
the nonprofit space. Also tony You know, I think I’ve mentioned to you before, there’s something called the Crystal Coast nonprofit network that exists. And uh, we’ve, I’ve been facilitating the meetings through zoom um, for the, over the last year. Uh, and so it’s starting in september, we’re going to start meeting again in person. So you should really come out and get to know some of those nonprofits here in carter county. Be fun to have you attend?

[00:39:31.02] spk_2:
I’d love to, I, yeah, you

[00:39:31.44] spk_5:
mentioned that before. I think

[00:39:32.37] spk_2:
I followed up and then

[00:39:34.22] spk_5:
I didn’t, I’m

[00:39:35.61] spk_2:
not sure what happened after

[00:39:57.22] spk_0:
that. Well anyway, september. We’re taking a break, not meeting in uh, july and august, we just met this week not meeting july and august meeting again. September. And uh, so that’s a nice, nice network of non profits and I launched a website for them, created a site and launched it for them so that they had a space online. Um, so yeah, I’ll send you the link.

[00:39:59.17] spk_2:
Okay. Crystal

[00:39:59.81] spk_5:
Coast. Alright. Crystal Coast

[00:40:01.31] spk_2:
nonprofits. All right.

[00:40:02.71] spk_5:
Yeah.

[00:40:03.20] spk_2:
Alright, Maria, Well, you know, I’m grateful for all the hours we spent together over eight

[00:40:09.17] spk_5:
years.

[00:40:15.71] spk_2:
You helping nonprofits understand prospect research, how important it is. It’s, it’s, it’s so much richer than a lot of people realize it goes way beyond google search way way and

[00:40:21.39] spk_5:
people have been following,

[00:40:23.61] spk_2:
you know that? Yeah. So I guess I can just say thank you for everything you contributed for, for

[00:40:28.37] spk_5:
all our listeners

[00:40:29.26] spk_2:
over so many years. Thank you very much. You’re

[00:40:31.49] spk_0:
very welcome and thanks so much for having me. It’s been great, great fun.

[00:40:35.53] spk_5:
It’s always been a pleasure. Today is

[00:40:37.18] spk_2:
a little tough, but

[00:40:42.51] spk_5:
up until today it’s always been a pleasure. Alright, alright. She’s Maria Semple, she’s still the prospect find her, but just part time and more business oriented.

[00:40:48.11] spk_2:
Her sight, the

[00:40:49.60] spk_5:
prospect finder dot com and at Maria

[00:40:53.61] spk_2:
Semple. Thank you Maria and so long,

[00:40:55.51] spk_0:
so long now take care

[00:41:40.31] spk_6:
next week let’s try to get amY sample ward or Gene Takagi back. I’m working on that. If not, they’ll be up soon and next week will be more from 21. Ntc if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications. You remember them? You’ve heard of them a couple times. Pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. And by sending Blue the only, all in one digital marketing platform empowering non profits to grow. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in Blue. Creative Producer is Claire

[00:41:52.71] spk_4:
Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy and this music is by scott Stein. Thank you for that. Affirmation scotty. You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 90

[00:41:58.99] spk_6:
5%

[00:42:05.41] spk_4:
Go out and be great.

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[00:00:43.04] spk_1:
welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 and T. C. That’s the 2020 non profit technology conference. Regrettably, the conference in Baltimore had to be canceled, but we’re persevering virtually via zoom, sponsored at 20 NTC by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial. My guest today is Sarah Durum. She is CEO of Big Duck and add dramatic Sarah. Welcome.

[00:00:50.64] spk_4:
Hi, tony. Thanks for having me on the show today.

[00:00:52.67] spk_1:
I’m glad it worked out that we could get together. Virtually, uh, not being able to do it together in Baltimore. Um, how are you doing? You’re in. You’re in Middle Massachusetts? Yeah.

[00:01:04.19] spk_4:
I’m a native New Yorker, and I live and work in New York, but I have decamped to Massachusetts. Everything is fine here. Thank you for asking. I hope you’re well too. I

[00:01:56.34] spk_1:
am. I mean, my beach house in North Carolina. The beaches across the street, the beaches are open so I can walk there because we don’t get crowds on beaches. It’s to the town is too small. Nobody’s heard of it. Which is which is why I’m here. Um, so we’re gonna you know, NTC brought us together. Uh, but I’m gonna release this as a special episode of non profit radio because you’re deep expertise in communications, and you’re you’re you’re NTC Topic was creating kick ass major donor communications. Uh, with your permission, I’m gonna convert that creating kick ass Corona virus Communications, please. Okay. Okay. And we’re gonna We’re recording this, Ana Wednesday, March 24th. And,

[00:02:03.94] spk_2:
uh, we’re gonna look for release on next Monday. Whichever day the But everyone is, that looks

[00:02:32.34] spk_1:
like the 30. I think that’s the 30th of March. Gonna look to get this out. Um, all right. And I’m gonna you leave it to you. What? Where? How should we? Let’s let’s talk about communicating with our donors because there’s gonna be a time when fundraising is the message. I don’t think that’s the time. This is the time now. But what should we be saying to our committed donor? People are already giving to us. We’re not trying to acquire anybody new at this stage. Um, what should we be saying to people who are already

[00:02:34.47] spk_2:
loyal to us?

[00:02:35.95] spk_4:
Well, first of all, I love that you’re starting with this question of, you know, the people that are already loyal tow us. I think there’s what should we be saying? How should we be saying it, and when should we be saying it? And certainly starting with your base is one of the most important things you can do right now. What you should be saying, I think, depends a lot on your mission and how affected your donors and the audiences you serve might be by what’s going on right now. If you’re in an area that’s directly affected, then you want to speak to that very directly. But if you’re not, you may want to be candid about what you’re working on and what’s going on in other ways.

[00:03:24.50] spk_1:
What’s going on? Can it be stories about where your how your employees air faring? You’ve got parent employees. You’ve got some maybe can’t work remotely. People do face to face meetings, maybe with beneficiaries. They can’t do that. You know, if the story’s gonna be like insider baseball,

[00:03:53.67] spk_4:
it can and it can’t. I did an interview recently with Seville Me hand are who’s one of the leaders at CCS fundraising, and we were talking about exactly that. We were agreeing in our conversation that in some cases the first wave of communications should be the insider. Baseball. How is your team faring? But a lot of organizations already done that. That happened in Week one. For most organizations. The second wave of communications after you send the Here’s how we’re faring really should be. I think about your community and about your work and, um, and beyond that, talking about what’s going on in the future and how you’re navigating. I mean, there there are, You know, there are five or so principles that we’ve been advising our clients to use in terms of their tone and style, and I think a lot of it is about adapting those principles of tone and style in a few ways. But the other piece that I think is perhaps most critical is that you, um, you adapt your communications to be much more iterative, both in terms of how you plan and what you’re doing. In other words, if you had a communications plan or strategy, probably it’s needs to be updated on a weekly basis every week. Who are you communicating with? What are you trying to communicate and what will feel appropriate from a tone and style point of view for those donors to hear from you this week, given what’s happening?

[00:05:09.54] spk_1:
Um, how about those five principles? What are those?

[00:05:13.44] spk_4:
Well, so the 1st 1 is to be authentic. One of the questions that we’ve been getting a lot is should I be candid with our donors about the financial hit that our organization is taking? And our advice is yes, you should be. You’re gonna You’re gonna need Thio. Ask them for support and you don’t wantto paint a rosy picture If that’s not the reality for your organization.

[00:05:46.74] spk_1:
You know, I think a great example of that is any sample Ward CEO, then 10 Great exit. D’oh! You know, you see her wiping tears from her eyes in her video explaining that that conference is 62% of their annual revenue and now they’ve not only lost that revenue, but they have penalties to pay for the contracts that they’re breaking. So you know, she was I think that it’s a great example and absolutely great read with authentic, heartfelt, sincere, You know, she’s she’s tearful and she didn’t do it take to

[00:06:11.74] spk_4:
yet? No. Amy is a great example of an authentic leader in all contexts and particularly if you haven’t watched those videos on the end 10 website where she really you know, day by day she was navigating, making a decision about when to cancel the conference and how to do that? That’s That’s arguably, I would say, the best example. I’ve seen OVEN or organization leader being proactive and authentic, and

[00:06:45.12] spk_1:
in 10 dot org’s I listeners know her very very well. She’s on the show every month, but in 10 dot organ yet you feel her our anguish. You feel it’s an excruciating decision, but yeah, I mean, that has to be made.

[00:07:11.04] spk_4:
Yep, and Amy Amy is also an example. Those videos are a great example of some of the other tips that we’ve been giving people. The second is to use your values, use the values of your organization if you if you look at the way and he did it in that communications. She talks about the values of the community, the values of connection that they they share with each other, and she really leans into the organization’s values to guide her decision making, and we’re encouraging all organizations to do that. She is also very human. And that’s another thing that I think is really important right now.

[00:07:25.09] spk_5:
There are There are

[00:07:26.39] spk_4:
e mails that we are all getting that are not at all acknowledging the situation that people are in and they don’t feel good right now. They feel inappropriate. So it’s okay to be human. It’s okay to reach out and call your major donors and say to them, How are you doing? Here’s how I’m doing and make a human connection. The compassion that we express for each other right now is what’s gonna bind us together

[00:08:20.74] spk_1:
and especially exactly That’s the point. I was just gonna say, Yeah, this is what holds us together is our common humanity. And, you know, not only is it okay, I don’t You go out of your way to preserve your humanity in the face of uncertainty, Financial loss, both personal and professional. You know, the organizational level and on a personal level, those of us who have their own businesses, you know you have employees go out of your way to preserve your humanity.

[00:09:07.53] spk_4:
Absolutely. One of one of my employees at Big Duck, a copywriter named Lila Dublin just wrote a piece that we are going to probably post in our block in the next couple of days. It should be live by the time your show airs about words to avoid during during this crisis. Delilah writes a very popular blogger every year called words to avoid in the nonprofit sector. But this one is the sort of Corona virus specific set of words to avoid, and one of the words she recommends avoiding is social distancing. She talks in this piece about how what we want to engage in right now is physical distancing. We don’t need social distancing. We actually need social connections more than ever. So So let’s let’s work on staying apart physically. But actually with your donors staying in touch and being human and on, um, making that personal connection with them is is what’s gonna weave the social capital you have with them, um, in an even tighter way, which is which is, you know, whether or not they’re going to donate to you or have the capacity to donate you right now is just the right thing to do.

[00:09:33.64] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah. What’s where Do radio people find that that blogged?

[00:09:40.41] spk_4:
Uh, it’s going to be on big duck dot com. And if you go to insights, um, so that’s big duck dot com slash insights. You’ll see that you’ll see the blog’s. We also have recorded videos about crisis communications right now. How to facilitate great meetings online. We’ve been posting a lot of free content over the past few weeks designed to help nonprofits adapt to this. This environment.

[00:10:04.56] spk_1:
Yeah. Thank you. I’m trying to do the same. I have been doing the same. Um, what else after after be human.

[00:10:57.24] spk_4:
So Okay, so be authentic, be human. Use your values. And the last one I want to emphasize is the importance of adapting for the audience you’re communicating with. You know, in the marketing and communications world, the jargon for this is segmentation. But you don’t have to have the capacity to segment to think about how to adapt for your audience. What I what I really mean by that is, if you’re going to send out an email, if you’re going to send out your you know, end of your appeal, I mean, a lot of organizations with fiscal years that begin July 1 or are asking this question right now, you know what’s gonna change in my year end appeal? You know, think about who’s on that list and what tone is appropriate for that. So eso in a, um, webinar I gave recently about crisis communications. One of the people who was participating chatted in, um, an example. They said, You know, I’ve been very offended. I’ve seen a lot of emails going out that say things like, Well, you know, on Lee, X percent of people will actually become sick from Corona virus. But our disease or our issue effects way more than that. You know, that’s an example of the kind of communications that just feels really inappropriate for most audiences. Um, now that’s an extreme example. But the point is to think about who’s on that list and what message is going to resonate for them and reflect where they are right now, not just where your organization is. So in my book brand raising, I use this term audience centric and and talk about how many organizations communicate in ways that our organization centric. We talk about us is an organization. What we need communicating in an audience centric weighs about speaking to your audience is in this case, your donors, um, in a way that reflects where they are and what you and they connect about. Not not just what you need is an organization.

[00:12:08.57] spk_1:
Um, Now, you said there are five principles.

[00:12:10.94] spk_4:
Um, you, uh, you find you’re getting Let’s see. Okay. Authentic. Adapt your audience, be human. Use your values. Your ate it. Reiterate.

[00:12:24.74] spk_1:
Okay. Thank you. Don’t shortchange us now. Come on. Sorry. We’re okay. What’s your advice around? Adoration.

[00:12:27.99] spk_4:
Well, so you know, there are a number of places where organizations plan, um, strategic planning. It is first and foremost, communications, planning, fundraising, planning. Maybe even how you plan out your website and what you’re gonna, you know, build or change your overhaul on your website. I would say all of those things right now

[00:12:47.74] spk_5:
are a little bit up

[00:14:27.20] spk_4:
in the air. Probably your strategic plan, conceptually is right. But some of the plans you put into place for things you might do this year are no longer gonna work. So it reiterating as a principle that comes from the world of agile and It’s not something that nonprofits air super familiar with, but basically the idea is that oftentimes when we plan, we plan in ways that are kind of fixed, where we assume that there is an outcome or a destination we’re trying to reach, and then we kind of worked backwards off of it and we set a plan. We say, Okay, if I want to achieve X by December, Here’s what I need to do in November, in October, in September and so on and so forth. Illiterate Ivo basically means seeing your planning work and seeing the work that you’re doing is happening in discrete chunks of time or cycles. So maybe your cycle is weekly right now. I would recommend it should be at this time. And that means that every week you should meet with the core team who are the decision making team around. Let’s say fundraising or communications or your organizational work, and every week you talk about what? What are this week’s priorities? How are you going to stay on track with those bigger goals? But what needs to adapt or change? Given what’s actually happening right now, I think we’re all at risk of, um, throwing the baby out with the bath water right now, we’re either so working so hard to adapt to this current environment that we’re losing sight of the bigger picture of what we’re building towards or we’re so focused on the bigger picture. We’re not necessarily communicating in ways that feel appropriate for what’s happening this week. So you have to strike a balance between those two things and and thinking of it is an illiterate Ivo exercises is I think, the

[00:14:37.55] spk_5:
practice that helps us get there.

[00:14:51.74] spk_1:
You mentioned, you know, phase one, phase two. Um, what what’s phase three is? Phase three. Can we start talking about some of our need on dhe? How you might be able you again talking the same audience, you know, committed loyal donors? Um, how you might be ableto help us if if you’re able. Is that is that then?

[00:15:01.37] spk_4:
Absolutely, absolutely. I think it’s very appropriate to start talking about the need. Um, if you could do so authentically. There are many organizations that, you know, I spoke to an executive director on Monday who told me that they anticipate there appeared appear fundraising season is gonna drop significantly and they’re already seeing a 30% decline in in in other donations. I think it’s perfectly appropriate if you’re seeing the writing on the wall and things are already happening. Or, for instance, you’re in arts and culture organization and your theater has gone dark or your museum is closed. Absolutely. It’s appropriate to start talking about that.

[00:15:39.24] spk_1:
It’s home to know when that starts, though. When? When? That When? When it feels OK to do that.

[00:16:14.64] spk_4:
Yeah, well, that’s where I think Iterating becomes important to. I mean, if you if you read The New York Times, you might recall, about a week ago there was an article about the Metropolitan Museum of Art closing until July and the expected, um, financial impact of that. I believe it was something like $100 million they anticipate as the financial impact of closing their doors for this period of time. So, you know, if you’re an organization that’s taking steps like that, I think you can really you know what the numbers are Or Amy. Simple words. She knows what the numbers are, you know, from canceling the NTC. Not every organization knows yet, but I do think a lot of organizations know the impact of their community when you know they’re soup. Kitchen is closed, you know, or people are not able to come in for vital service is so, um, yeah, I think you need to be out there talking about it, but it don’t think you can talk about it in a conclusive way yet because it’s still ongoing.

[00:16:43.95] spk_1:
When you do get to that stage and how do you balance the messaging between your need and compassion for what your donors air feeling

[00:16:52.72] spk_2:
on Aah! Financial financial footing. I

[00:18:03.91] spk_4:
think it’s definitely an art, not a science. And, um and actually, the session I was gonna lead at the NTC about creating kick ass major donor communications had a whole segment about writing. I think you know, this really comes down to how you how you write, what kind of tone and style you strike and how you balance helping your donors envision a brighter tomorrow with the reality of today, you know, there there is a sort of a narrative arc that sometimes great speeches have sometimes great fundraising communications have where you you have to kind of vassal eight between envisioning a stronger, brighter tomorrow and contrast ing that with the reality of today because we don’t want to lose our hope. And and that’s actually one of the pieces of advice that I’ve been giving people is that, you know, there is actually an opportunity right now, especially if you have staff people who are stuck at home not doing what they normally d’oh. And the opportunities to plant the seed for a stronger tomorrow, You know? So so as you it raid. What is that? What is that stronger tomorrow? Look like what? How does your organization want to emerge from this crisis? And, you know, how can you help bring your donors on that journey to?

[00:18:21.94] spk_1:
Yeah, an art, not a science. Um, and you don’t want a misstep, you know, and appear tone deaf or insensitive.

[00:18:25.51] spk_2:
Uh, you know, on

[00:18:56.94] spk_1:
the same by the same took. And you have your needs that you’re trying to convey its, um you know, if I think, you know, if you keep your humanity, that’s a ground. Glad it’s one of your principles. No, um, you know, uh, right from the heart, um, Maybe share, share your message with maybe a board member may be tested with board members, maybe even close major donors. Who’s gonna be the audience? Um, you know not. You know, this is a time where I think it’s especially valuable to get outside opinion

[00:19:02.96] spk_2:
on Ah, some

[00:19:04.38] spk_1:
of these key key key communications.

[00:19:19.93] spk_4:
I think it can be 11 of the other questions we’ve been getting a lot that I think is useful to share to under the under the topic of being human is where and when and how to use humor. Because we’ve seen some examples where humor right now has been really welcome or really, really inappropriate. Eso a place where it’s welcome, for instance, and maybe this isn’t humor, but it’s definitely charming. Is, um, there’s a zoo in Chicago that had that video that is on YouTube, where they let the Penguins out of their exhibit of Under the Aquarium, right? So that’s not outright funny. But it’s very charming, and it makes you laugh. And that kind of humor is very, very welcome right now. And I think that’s one of the reasons we saw that video spread the way it did. Um, where humor I think it’s inappropriate is when it has anything to do with the virus or what people are experiencing right now. I think people are experiencing enormous hardship and challenge, and there’s nothing funny about that. So I think you have to be very strategic, how you use humor if you’re going to do it. And again that often comes down to great great writing and being being creative. You know that that example of the Penguins is one of many of of a team, really, you know, thinking about what? This what this moment presents as an opportunity, as opposed to just as a challenge. And that’s hard to do. But when you get it right, it’s really powerful.

[00:20:54.26] spk_1:
Um, we still have some time left. What? What? What else do you want to share with our listeners and maybe your listeners? Oh, I want to shout out your podcast. Smart, smart communications podcast, non profit radio listeners. You’re you’re already podcast listeners. Sarah is the host of ah smart communications podcast.

[00:22:41.14] spk_4:
Thanks, tony. Yeah, that podcast is mostly interviews with people very short, all designed to help nonprofits get better and smarter at their communications. There’s a really topics there, you know. There I think this is from a communications point of view. This is a really good time to take stock. And, um, and one of the one of the questions that I think is coming up increasingly is Should I be cutting communications? Should I be cutting marketing? Um, we’re how did how to spend with that? And it’s been interesting. I started Big Duck 25 or six years ago, and there have been periods of time recessions or 9 11 where people did cut communications in more recent years. People actually are leaning in to communications. In my experience, we have found we found in 2008 and 2009 that we were busier. Then, ah, then we had ever been, um Now, that’s not to say you necessarily have to spend money, more money or different money. But if you have in House communications people, I would encourage you, hang on to them and give them new new roles and new responsibilities right now, don’t cut them because those are the people who do help you with with the writing, with the design, with the things you’re gonna need to weather this storm and when communications gets cut. You really I think short circuit. Your potential to to come out of this better. Um, you know, the other organizations that are leaning into communications, they’re going to capture that mindshare. And that’s gonna That’s not necessarily gonna set you up for a stronger tomorrow in the long run. So it’s tricky time.

[00:24:01.84] spk_1:
Yeah, now, But you want to keep that long term view? Uh, you know, it’s the if you follow my stock advice, you buy high and sell low. But people who are much barter brighter about investing and long term is, you know, hold what? Hold what you’ve got, you know don’t sell. So it’s the same, you know, it’s the same because you’re in for the long term, right? So people like me need advice like that. So you know the analogy to your to your communications staff to your fundraising staff as well. You know, you you have a long term view. You’ve still got a a mission that you’re trying to accomplish goals you want to achieve. You know, this six month or even yearlong. Uh, I don’t think we’re gonna be in our homes for a year, but the lingering effects. It’s hard to know how long that’s gonna be, but even if it’s a year, it’s just a year. You’ve got a much longer term view and you want to emerge as strong or stronger. And you know you’re absolutely right. The you know, others they’re gonna fill that space around. You’re around your mission if you’re If you’re not communicating at at at a time when it’s, you know you can show your relevance, you become irrelevant. If you stopped communicating now, people gonna lose sight of you. And the trust is the trust between you and governor is gonna be lost.

[00:24:06.34] spk_4:
Yeah, I totally agree. I think that’s well said. And you know, I’m hearing about a lot of organizations right now who are putting together a sort of a crisis management team. You

[00:24:16.17] spk_5:
know, they’ll have ah board staff

[00:24:18.66] spk_4:
leadership team who are meeting regularly to make decisions

[00:24:23.54] spk_5:
as as this crisis unfolds.

[00:24:26.34] spk_4:
You know, one thing that I would like to see more of is I’d like to see more organizations putting together the kind of the long term or the seed planting team, too, because if you’ve got certain people on your team who are managing the crisis. There may be other people on your team, particularly if you work in a mid size or larger organization who can actually start to work ahead and to think about where do you want to be in a year when this is over, or six months or whenever it ISS? And what are the seeds you can plant now? What are they? What are the appeals? You can write the case for support. You can write the you know the Web Web site plans you can create whatever it is, whatever the thing is that you wish you had that you normally don’t have time to d’oh in your daily life, put a team together of staff people who are under utilized right now and let them to an assignment and work ahead. Those are the kinds of things that you know might not be appropriate to release now. But when the timing is right, you’ll be so glad that you laid the foundation on. And it’s just gonna help the recovery, you know, come faster for your organization.

[00:25:31.90] spk_1:
Yeah, that’s a great place to end, Sarah, and that’s you know what? That’s capitalizing on something you said earlier, which is finding opportunity in ah, in the midst of confusion and crisis

[00:25:43.23] spk_2:
s so I’m not

[00:25:44.30] spk_1:
gonna not gonna deigned to rephrase what you just said. You said it beautifully. Uh, look, you know, you’re north of the city. I’m south of the city. I look forward to getting together in the city for a drink, and hugging you is you’re a gem gem. And thanks for what you’re doing.

[00:25:59.06] spk_4:
I’ll toast to you of your listeners from Massachusetts. I hope you and everybody

[00:26:05.64] spk_5:
else is Well,

[00:26:28.99] spk_1:
thanks, Sarah on Dhe. Same for you. Stay safe up there. And I look forward to seeing you in the city. Close with it with a big hug. Um, Sarah Durum, CEO of Big Duck And add dramatic and thank you for being with us 20 martignetti non profit radio coverage of what was intended to be 20 ntc. But as I said, I’m releasing this. A special episode responsive by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits. Tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for 3 60 day trial. Thanks so much for being with us

Nonprofit Radio for October 5, 2018: The State Of Good 2018 & Your Brand Personality

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My Guests:

Mike Rusch: The State Of Good 2018
Pure Charity released this report and CEO Mike Rusch shares the results from their survey of mostly small- and mid-size nonprofits, plus his recommendations.

 

 

Farra Trompeter, Taylor Leake & Zhanna Veyts: Your Brand Personality
This is a long-term play, letting people understand who your nonprofit is, what you do, why you do it and what you stand for. Our panel has tips on identity, strength and consistency of your personality. They’re Farra Trompeter from Big Duck; Taylor Leake with Corporate Accountability; and Zhanna Veyts at HIAS. (Recorded at the 2018 Nonprofit Technology Conference)

 

 

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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 oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of ac andthe assis if you pickled me with the idea that you missed today’s show the state of good twenty eighteen pure charity released this report and ceo mike rush shares the results from their survey of mostly small and midsize non-profits plus his recommendations and your brand personality. This is a long term play letting people understand who your non-profit is what you do, why you do it and what you stand for. Our panel has tips on identity, strength and consistency of your personality there farrah trompeter from big duck taylor leak with corporate accountability and gina bates at highest that was recorded at the twenty eighteen non-profit technology conference where we were on tony’s steak too. Remembering mom responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant wagner, sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com bye tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tell us and by text, to give mobile donations made easy text npr to. Four, four, four, nine nine nine. Pleased to welcome make-a-wish to the show. He’s, based in downtown bentonville, arkansas, and he is ceo at pure charity, a non profit dedicated to building world class technology solutions for non-profits individual fund-raising and community advocacy. He serves on the board of directors for help. One now mercy house, global canopy, northwest arkansas ninety nine balloons and others. He’s worked for nickelodeon, walt disney, hershey foods, and he served in the u s marine corps. He’s. Never far from a fly fishing river, you’ll find pure charity at pure charity dot com. Welcome to the show my crush, sonny, thanks for having me, it’s, a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Glad to have you pleasure on the signed as well, um what i’m interested in all these non-profit you’re on your own, a lot of different boards. Yeah, we’ve had the privilege over the past, oh five or six years of pure charity to interact with, just, you know, luckily, thousands of non-profits around the world before that, my heart and passion was about how do we make a difference in the world ? And so i had the opportunity and privilege to serve on some of those non-profit boards before we entered into the maturity space. And then since then, i’ve been able to kind of strategically serve in some areas where we think there’s some non-profits who are really leading innovation, who have the opportunity of really addressing the whole sector of needs of some of the world’s, most difficult problems, and so in trying to not only help in the fund-raising space, but also make sure that we are really students of the non-profit space and really in the weeds and in the dirt with non-profit partners have the privilege of being able to serve on the board of directors of some non-profits that i really feel provide some opportunities to continue to learn, but also to be able to share an implement some of the ideas that we see happening all over the non-profits space continuing your service from the from the marine corps dedicated to well and i think came too soon, not quite as rigorous is definitely think part of what we do is, you know, we’re in the technology space, and so a lot of our time spent behind a computer thinking about how people interact with technology, how do they interact with non-profits how did they see messaging on if we stay there that we’re gonna be disconnected from what we’re actually trying to occur polish and what we’re actually trying to accomplish didn’t see the lives of people improved, and so we we want to be not only involved in how that takes place on line, but we want to be personally involved, it keeps us grounded, keeps us connected and make sure that we’re always in a position of learning and listening. I’ve witnessed, and i’ve heard of some tense board meetings, i hope that your service in the marines was more rigorous than any of the board service. Yeah, definitely. So i think maybe maybe the marine corps was the perfect training to make sure that we could work, walk into the non-profit space on be effective. Yeah, right. Let’s, let’s keep things in perspective, please. You know, people, i remember i knew someone who, when anybody said, you know, i’m having a really bad day or they were really down or something. He i was in the army and was in vietnam. And he said a bad day is when the helicopter that rescues you crashes on the helicopter that rescued you from that crash is also that was that was his definition of a bad day to helicopter crashes, same day. Yeah, that’s, that is a bad day. And i think, you know, obviously we’re involved in working with non profit organisations all over the world, doing all kinds of work. And we also have the privilege of serving non-profits who are working to serve our veterans here in united states as well. And so for me, that’s a personal privilege, i think it’s in those places where we really we remember, like we as a country, we as a people, those that get to serve in the non-profit space. But we have the tremendous honor of tremendous privilege of being a part of something bigger than ourselves. And anyway, what we would like to consider this force of good that eyes really working its way around the world through just people like you and me who have a desire to not be content with the state of where we are today. But i want to see, you know, and that’s the name of our study, the state of good, we wantto state of good move forward. Well, let’s talk about the state it’s uh, it’s realistic, you know ? And i want to be realistic about it. Uh, but we’ll, you know, we’ll get to the we’ll get to the challenges, talk about your methodology. I was drawn to it because it’s mostly a survey of small and midsize non-profits but tell us how you did it, how many ? How many organizations were talking about how you chose them ? Sure, i think part of this is number one. We typically start with the non-profit partners that we’ve been able to work with on drily the focus on the pure charity side is working with non-profits who are what we would consider trying to solve some of the most difficult problems in the world. So when we started, we really the millennium development goals at that. Time and said, ok, these are the some of the most difficult problems that really the whole world is working to solve. And so we said, hey, if we could take our our expertise, if we can take our best practice sharing on and the tools that were creating two really apply those to those kinds of really serious situations in problems and issues that way felt like that was a good place to start, and so we lifted the state of good. We obviously started with all the non-profits that we’ve worked with before and really sending out these questions to them, we did later open that up, tio non-profits really within our network or those that are following on social media and then sought out some friends and partners to ask them to provide their feedback as well, too. So it really is a survey, i think we wanted to use it really as a listening device, teo really ask people what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling and really open ourselves up to kind of be moved from what we thought or move from where we think our traditional problems and challenges are to really listen to those. That are out in the world at the forefront of some of these problems. And how do they feel ? And i think that’s important to remember that a lot of people working in the non-profit space, how they feel and the things they’re doing, are going to project to the organizations that they’re serving. In-kind project into the people that they’re serving our community, that they’re serving. So we really felt like, really asking people, how do you feel ? What are you seeing ? What what’s the world that you’re seeing within your sphere of influence in your sphere of work, on trying to aggregate those opinions and thoughts and ideas to see honestly, what we would find ? How many non-profits were surveyed, total. Sure, we had the privilege of talking about over two hundred, non-profits participated in the survey, so we had within those two hundred non-profits people, from all levels of the organization, from the executive level toe development directors, to marketing directors of program coordinators. Way like we got a really good sampling of both non-profits doing a whole lot of different types of work, but also different people within the within the organization, and it really does weight towards small, i would say small, not even midsize, but certainly it’s, a two, least small and midsize, the number of donors who gave to your non-profit in twenty seventeen, that was a question. One, two, fifty was was thirty percent. Almost twenty nine percent and fifty two, five hundred was forty two percent. So when you put those two together, seventy two percent of your respondents had fewer than five hundred donors. So that’s, you know, that’s, our that’s, our audience here. Ah, in terms of total annual receipts for twenty, seventeen, just up to one hundred thousand was fifty percent of the survey, and a hundred thousand to a million was another thirty one percent. So there you got it, just like they got eighty percent a million dollars or less. Aunt stella, we definitely, i think, was in the network of people that we’ve been working with most of the non-profits are probably that we see anyway are anywhere from five to ten years old, they have usually annual donations of half a million to a million dollars so it’s typically where i think the types of organizations that we’ve been working with there’s just a lot of those organizations out there in the world, those are a lot of organizations working on on kind of the problem problems that we would consider a kind of a really detailed micro level, um, that we think are pretty typical of the non-profit space i know there’s a lot of big organizations doing a whole lot of very good work out there, but when we see new ideas, emerging new ways of thinking about innovation in the non-profit space knew programs being created way see a lot of obviously i think as well with i have a new generation of philanthropist, a new generation of innovators, new generation of people entering into the work force air into the non-profit space single, obviously a lot of new non-profits that air starting really tackling ? Problems in new ways or different ways. So we want to make sure we capture that, that ethos of what we feel like it’s, kind of the up and coming organisations and leaders who are who are really able tto look att problems may be in a very critical eye, and while they understand that traditionally problems have been dealt with this way, maybe their space and opportunity to deal with them and look at them in new ways as well. Yeah, we gotta take a break, mike. Pursuant they’re e book is fast non-profit growth stealing from the start ups, they take the secrets from the fastest growing startups and apply those methods and practices to your non-profit it’s free as you’re accustomed to all the pursuant resources are free. You will find it on the listener landing page. Tony dahna slash pursuant with a capital p for please and i guess for pursuing ilsen now back to the state of good. Twenty eighteen. Thank you, mike. All right, let’s, get into let’s. Get into some of the results. What ? What struck you ? Mostly. What was the most outstanding thing when when you pushed through this data that, uh that hit you ? Yeah, i think there’s a number of things, obviously, but when you look at, um, the nonprofit sector, i think there’s this overarching theme that sometimes the way i look at my non-profit is not the way that i look at the non-profit industry on that could be good or bad, and the things that i feel like i should be prioritizing for my non-profit are sometimes very different than the things that we feel like the non-profit industry should be prioritizing and and i think what that means is that to me, there’s, a little bit of a disconnect and maybe there’s this expectation of the nonprofit sector or this view of the nonprofit sector, how well informed that is sometimes khun b question, yeah, let’s talk about what you think that we would expect, yeah, what’d you learn from the survey, i think some of our biggest takeaways was really maybe some of the untapped potential that we see out out in the non-profit space, i think we all know that i think we all know that non-profits rather trying to solve problems that haven’t been solved yet. Andi, i think, unfortunately, sometimes there’s a very critical, very skeptical view point, sometimes within those that are in that in that space. When we look at the study, we found that one out of every three other respondents said that the non profit sector really wasn’t very healthy when you looked at the executive leaders within these non-profits they thought that even more and so we know this work is hard, we know this work is difficult, but way couldn’t let that set the tone for what we thought was really this untapped potential out in the world of doing good, so we need to step back a little bit and really make sure i think one of our biggest collapse non-profit since we talked to them is ok let’s, let’s withhold maybe some judgment around the non-profit space and industry, and maybe look at our own organization a little bit more critically and maybe not such a rose colored glasses sometimes, and so seeing that there’s untapped potential, you know how ? How can the it’s, the sometimes frustrated and struggling small, a midsize shop ? We’re going to talk about what challenges they saw very shortly, but, you know, how can they capitalized on that ? And grasped them that potential ? Yeah, i think well, we see back with them. Maybe some of the comments, especially that we received back, is that we have to remember that number one, the space that we’re working probably has some inherent challenges that are, you know, that are greater than most may think sometimes the work that we’re doing it’s not going to move the needle is as quickly as we thought, but that shouldn’t be discouraging, and it shouldn’t mean that the work we’re doing isn’t working, so it really takes those within leadership positions that non-profit organizations to continue to reinforce that what we, what we have ahead of us is greater than what was behind and that the challenges that we have in front of us are not insurmountable. We do have the ability, it may take a little bit longer. It may take a little bit more focus on the programs that we have in the programs were working in, but we really have to set the tone within our organizations and within our industry that that there is hope and that there is good being done in the world. We all know that, but sometimes i think those especially who have been in this industry for five to ten years, they have to take care of themselves, they’ve got to make sure that they’re keeping, you know, their their views and their ideas of what’s happening in the industry, you know, positive and hopeful and really, i think they could draw that from being within networks of other non-profit leaders and other people with same types of areas that they’re working, so i think somebody, you know, first of all how we feel with non-profit space sometimes that’s, maybe not always accurate, and we have to really make sure we check ourselves and not sometimes let the overarching hardness of what we’re doing start to impact our ability to see what that kind of new tomorrow could look like for the people we’re serving. I have a therapist used to say the way you field drives, how you act on dh, you know, if if you if you’re thinking regularly constantly about, you know, shortages and scarcity mentality that’s going toe that’s goingto drive your organizations, but if you’re in the leadership is going to drive your staff and your organisation toe act in certain ways and send certain messages that, you know are not are not optimistic, like, you know, like like you’re encouraging the way you the way you feel is going to drive the way you act. Dahna and you absolutely true and it’s, not that’s, not unique to the non-profit world, but i do think because the nature of the problems we’re trying to solve, we do have to have an awareness that way we do have to rise above in many ways and that even though it’s hard, what actually is the light at the end of the tunnel is that we do have an opportunity to make a really positive impact on someone’s life. I should give a disclaimer, too, that i fired that therapist. I never i never got that. I never got any value on her so very good, okay, you, uh, you report on challenges for non-profits and the you first you aggregate and then you have reported challenges for smaller non-profits and then for larger ones, the in the aggregate, almost sixty percent ofyou respondents said fund-raising lack of funding is a top challenge on then, about thirty three percent said exactly thirty three percent. Socio political environment on dh, then close to that thirty one percent lack of incentive for donors to give. So those were the ones with the aggregated ones. I wonder, i wonder, focused more on the the challenges for smaller non-profits vs versus larger, because i thought that the disparity between the two was interesting, and you certainly bring it out in the report. For the smaller non-profits, the top challenge is, in fact, fund-raising that’s sixty. Sixty four percent so close to two thirds think fund-raising and lack of, uh, lack of funding is a problem, you know. And again, that’s that’s that well, you don’t want that to turn into a scarcity mentality. You want to recognize it as real, but but not not, let your messaging. Drive. Drive. A sense of, i guess, have sense of discouragement. I think, you know, this was probably unfortunately the one thing in the study that kind of confirmed what we were thinking, and i think part of that we’re number one, we are in the fund-raising space, so most people, when they come to our doors, they are thinking about how do i get help ? Fund-raising so that’s not an uncommon question to us on dh it’s kind of one we have begun to anticipate, but when you put the survey out, um, i think it confirmed that, you know, sometimes this is a long term versus short term view of what we’re trying to get done. I think in our experience, we’ve we’ve kind of used this term that fund-raising is the symptom meaning that, yes, you may have fund-raising opportunities you may have lack of funding, but as you start to dig into why that maybe or or what you’re doing to solve that problem typically that’s not the root of the problem we’re trying to get done, and so it always causes us to kind of back up into hyre level questions around either leadership or around the division admission of the organization or in program execution. To understand how those kinds of things where the messaging about our non-profit actually affects our ability to fundraise, and so if those things are not done correctly, fund-raising is always going going to be a problem, and i think smaller non-profits will inherently feel this tension of being super competitive because they’re trying to break out a new idea into the world or they’re trying to understand their messaging or they feel like no one understands what they’re trying to get done, and so that manifests itself back within this offered this idea of lack of funding, and so i think, number one that’s confirming ofwhat we maybe had expected to hear, but number two, i think it’s also hopeful because it is an overcome oppcoll problem in many ways, andi, i think that also speaks toe wide, maybe with some larger non-profits you actually see some of these challenges start to kind of almost flip, if you will, because they’ve started to think through or maybe solved some of those problems. Yeah, i see in yeah, for larger organizations and that’s, those with five million dollars revenue annually or mohr fund-raising opportunities is it actually is flip it’s. Only one third, ranking mattias, as one of the top three challenges versus the two thirds. At the smaller words. Mike’s. A little more about what might actually be the cause. The disease, if you well, i mean, if fund-raising is the symptom, you mentioned some broad categories, like leadership. But when the clients you’re working with what ? What do you find ? To be a little more precise about what you find as the the root cause of that fund-raising symptom. Sure. And i think sometimes, um, broadly, i would say it usually comes back to how i’m able to communicate about the impact on the work that my organization is doing and typically and smaller organizations or younger organizations, typically those who are our founder lead there’s just so much information around passion, uh, that we feel like we can, and typically this is what gets a non-profit kind of puppet running out the doors, this idea of a very dynamic leader who has a lot of passion for our cause is right, and people will come alongside that leader because of that passion eventually, though, that has to translate into execution into programs that are actually, uh, appropriate and making a difference within this idea of what we would consider almost a continuum of care. So my organization is exist to solve this problem. This is how we solve this problem and then here’s the results of solving this problem, and unfortunately, i think within smaller non-profits they’re still working that out, and i think you could find yourself in a position where kind of the car gets in front of the horse where we think if we just had more money, i could be more effective in my programs, or i could i could get more people involved, or i could do whatever i’m trying t get done, and i think i have very rarely run into problems situations with non-profits where if they just had more money, all of their problems would go away. I think in many ways, just having more money can actually amplify their effectiveness, or sometimes unfortunately they’re ineffectiveness is, well, too. And so i think younger, smaller organizations where it may be run by a handful of people, unfortunately, sometimes there’s, not that critical eye to come in and say, we understand you’re passionate, we understand you care about these. We’re not calling any of those things in the question, but we do need to think critically about the programs and the way we’re serving people in the impact we’re having. First, how we message that to our donors, how we and this you know this as well, if not better, than i do, how even communicate to our donors how we thank them, who acknowledged how we invite them into our work. So that it’s not a financial transaction, this is a way of making a difference in the world ? Yes, we need financial resources to do that. But it’s not the only thing that we need to move our vision and mission forward. And so i think it comes down to leadership. I think it comes down to, you know, having permission to be critical of the work that we’re doing internally. Andi thinkit’s i think it’s okay to ask and invite other people to come in and speak into the work that we’re doing to make sure that we’re, uh, in the interest of serving the people and our communities the right way, the most effective way to alleviate whatever problem we’re trying to solve, we owe it to the people that we’re serving to do it the best way we can. And we shouldn’t be expected to have all the answers out of the gate. Yeah, yeah. I absolutely agree with you about the passion that gets thie organization started, but it takes ah, much savvy, your business sense to get to the next level and that’s a question i get so often how do we get to the next level ? Look so well said thankyou. So on. The on the top reporter challenges for larger if it’s again, you asked for what people named their top three, the one that got the most half said the socio political environment, and i felt like that they’re there. They were saying they’re having trouble standing out in a crowded and noisy environment where lots of people are signing more petitions, getting more calls to action, whatever they might be. Sabat and i, uh well before i say what i thought, my my sense of that what what the real trouble could be ? What what, what what did you take away from that half the half of the larger non-profits again, five million dollars in revenue annually, saying the social political environment is their biggest challenge ? Sure and this, you know, this was actually a question that we have non-profits ask us all the time like, hey, what’s happening in the daily news. To what extent does that affect the work that i’m doing ? Andi, i think we can all admit whichever side of the political spectrum you’re on the past few years have taken on a very different tone than we’ve had in years before, and i think that has an impact on how people think about philanthropy, about the causes they want to support, whether there will be international supported programs or domestically, you know, the most domestic programs. And so this was a big question, like, how worried are you in the changing how quickly our culture is changing, especially over the past few years ? Mike ? Mike it just to interrupt you for a sec ? Well, you have about a minute left. Unfortunately. So ok. Eso se concise, i think. Yeah, i think i think that was that was our biggest question. Like, do you really think this environment something maybe outside of your control is really impacting some of the challenge you’re having and pushing your mission forward ? Okay, andi, i i saw the problem there is, you know, your messaging. You need to be able to stand out. You need to make your make your case for why your organization is unique and on dh on dh deserves attention. Not just your support, but attention in this in this. What is ah ah, noisier environment. Mike tell people how they can get the full survey because we’re just scratching the surface. People need to read. The whole thing. How did you get it ? Yeah, absolutely. I would say if you want to follow along with conversation go, you can go down the full download the full report at state of good dot org’s, that state of good dot organ will give you all the information that we have. We try to summarise in a way that’s, kind of short and concise, but take a look at that and then shoot a certain questions way we’d love to engage with people to understand how you see these issues and maybe how they could be applied to your organization. Move that state of good forward. Can they send questions at state of good dot or ge ? Well, that’ll take you into ah paige, on the pure charity website where you’ll have the opportunity to send questions and, if you want or when you down that download that report, you’ll get an email from us and you can respond to that email of questions or thoughts or, well, happy to dig into it a lot more. Okay, we got to leave it there. Thank you very much, mike durney, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate my pleasure. Thank you, ceo and pure charity, which you’ll find a pure charity. Dot com. And, of course, the report is that state of good dot or ge. Now it is time for another break. When you’re cps, do you need help with accounting or your nine ninety ? Are you thinking about a change of accountants ? Maybe for next year, the next cycle, check out wagner. Cps dot com. Start your due diligence there. Then pick up the phone and talk to them. Partner yet huge tomb. You know he’s. Been on the show. He’s smart, he’s. A good guy. Hey, will explain whether they can help you at wagner. So get yourself started at wagner. Cps dot com now time for tony stick too. My mom died a year ago today and while the time she was declining all last summer and early fall seems like it was so long ago. The year that she’s been gone has really flown by. And while the loss still hurts and there are times that i miss her a lot. It’s no longer sad all the time. Sometimes now i confess think about her and i smile. And joe biden mentioned that in his eulogy to john mccain he was talking to the mccain family. He said that that time would come and it struck me. How right that he is that over time the memories bring a smile it’s not always tears that always sad anymore on dh. So i know that i have lots of more smiles to come as my memories of my mom remained vivid. I say a little more about this in my video at tony martignetti dot com now it’s time for your brand personality welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc you know what that is ? Two thousand eighteen non-profit technology conference. We’re coming to you from new orleans at the convention center. This interview is sponsored by network for good, easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits. My guests are farrah trompeter taylor leak and gina bates para closest to me. Is vice president of big duck and she’s also chaired the board of non-profit technology network. Taylor leak is digital engagement director, corporate accountability. And john avi is director of digital strategy and engagement at highest. Welcome. You good to have you all seen my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for taking time. I know because i know the bar is open. Has anyone bought a drink ? Not yet. We’re waiting for you to buy. A street you are going to hold your breath a long time going blue in the face. Your seminar topic is courageous or cautious establishing you’re non-profits brand personality tara, i don’t know how many different ways you can carve up brand personality. You and i have been talking about this for about six years. I think no video, i don’t know multiple times on non-profit radio and here in the studio. Why is the brand personality so damn important ? Well, the kinds of their brand personality is one of two parts of brand strategy. The other part is positioning, and at big duck we wrote a book many years ago. You’ve had sarah on the show. Sarah durham, our ceo wrote a book called brandraise ing and at the heart of brandraise ng we look att brand strategy of positioning and personality as really being the essential ingredients to guiding your brand identity and the experience of your brand, and we really believe personality especially, is a concept that is really easy to hone in on and then used to make decisions from big things like your brand to day to day decisions like what should i post on ? Facebook and how should i say it ? Ok, ok teller brand personality takes on things like that are kind of esoteric, like tone short, right and it’s just a little bit. It is a person i mean gets to tone and whether we’re humorous or or serious and things like that, right ? Right ? Absolutely. Yeah. And that we a corporate accountability a couple years ago started working with big duck teo do ah whole organizational identity campaign on one of the first things we did was take a look at what our personality waas. So we went through a process with our staff are bored remember some of the folks who are most engaged, teo really figure out sort of what was resonating, what wasn’t what work we were doing and how all that fit in on what we came up with was a personality with forwards and smart, optimistic, fierce and genuine. Wei used that sort of our north star guiding light for everything that we did after that which included coming up with a whole new name for the organisation. Omar okay, hold the website so it really was sort of the starting point for this really big long process. That has been really phenomenal and paid really nice dividends in the end. Softy. Softy. Soft optimistic what ? What else ? Smart, smart, smart, optimistic, genuine and fierce. So gf okay. Don’t make an acronym. Adam, come on. All right, jonah, down the end. What is your your rules are working with big duck at highest way works with what ? It took five years. Okay. What did you discover in this in the brand personality process ? Uh, well, we had to dio three sixty as well, and it was very intensive and quite long process. And what we learned was that our brand was scene very differently outside than the way that people saw it. Inside the organization. It was a one hundred thirty year old organization. And people thought of it as your grandmother’s highest, an organization that brought your grandparent’s over from the holocaust or brought soviet jews over in the early nineties late eighties, which it had on. And i was actually a refugee brought over by highest. But we were still around. And now we were working in twenty states across the country, in ten countries across the globe in washington, doing fierce advocacy and we wanted to communicate that. And so we couldn’t be the hebrew immigrant society of organisation that sounds like at least two of those words are outdated. Instead, we became highest. We got a tagline. Welcome the stranger. Protect the refugee so that it would be in lock up and always tell people that highest was the jewish refugee protection agency on. And we got some brand personality words. Okay, so, there’s, a lot of introspection. Oh, yeah. You had to admit that people thought you were dead. You had to hear people thought you were either dead or relevant. I mean, that’s hard to hear. I mean, not that i would be difficult for me, but you. I mean, you ask hard questions, you have to be willing to hear the answers power on my right ? Yeah. I don’t think there was ever worry that highest was dead. I think it was just more like there was a guy group of people who understood its work based in the past. And there was a fear, i think to a two point if we talk about what we’re doing now, we might lose some of those people who only knew. Us in a certain way, men, often with brandon projects not just with highest with almost every non-profit organisation we work with theirs, as we think about shifting our identity, how do we make new friends and keep the old ana and right when we’re taking this really hard look at ourselves and we’re trying, teo, you know, whatever, trying to remake an organization, and we’re just trying to bring out who you really are now and tap into the best of who you are and make sure your communications actually reflect that. Ok, ok, so now, okay, so you’re you both have worked with big duck, but i don’t want to ask all the questions of sarah the exit now so let’s see your experts as well, okay, i so one of you identifying where you stand now like what your personality is now, how do you how do you do that process ? How do you start that process ? Go ahead, tell him. So. We started a couple years back and really you’re just saying it really started with introspection. It really started with sitting down figuring out exactly who we were, what work we did. And then what ? Other folks who are closest to us thought so how do you how do you gauge that ? How do you find that out ? We did a lot of interviews with staff and board members as well as some of our closest philanthropic partners on, and then we did sort of a broader survey of a few more of our members. I came up with you, no word clouds and data points, and andrea lee crunched through just sort of what folks thought of us, and one of a few of the things that we found was that folks really resonated with our mission, which is to challenge corporate abuse challenge lifesaving corporate abuse, but they didn’t necessarily know who we were. One of the reasons was that we had developed a whole bunch of campaigns and people knew our campaign, so they knew then you kick big tobacco out and they knew take back the top. They knew of these campaigns that we were doing, but they didn’t know that we were the ones doing and then, you know, we had also transitioned from organization started in the seventies with the nestle boycott around infant formula, so we started is this really scrappy, that grassroots organized organization that, you know, it’s, just a couple folks taking on this giant corporation on dh. Then when we took on more campaigns, we transitioned into corporate accountability international, we were doing a lot of work with the u n so we had put out sort of a different view of us being sort of stuffy policy wonks who are at the u n and, you know, taking on really important decisions with ambassadors eso a lot of the work we have to do is both to say, you know, how do we marry those two things ? Because they’re both true on how do we reflect that in what we look like to the world, which was not the case before we went through this process ? Now, jonah, you as you’re going through this process, they’re going to be people who are reluctant two abandoned, whatever he ruin migrants aid society, even though farah saying, you know, you, you don’t want to lose the past a cz you embrace the future, but there are still people that are not going to go along with hyre it’s, the hebrew immigrant aid society or it’s ? Nothing. Wait, just let those people go are what we do to try to bring them along, and some people will never but what are we doing ? Try anyway, it’s an interesting question to ask, but we’ve been at it for five years since the rebrand and luckily and unluckily, a lot of things have happened in the world to really help us do that. We’re in the midst of the largest refugee crisis the world has ever seen, and as a jewish organising agent rooted in jewish history and values where the jewish refugee experiences really central, um, i wouldn’t say that we lost that many people, but, boy, did we gain a lot, uh, it’s an experience that it’s a crisis that is in the news every single day these days when when i started out, i’m not going to lie on a content side. It was talking about the syrian refugee crisis, global refugees there, sixty five million people displaced around the world, twenty two plus million of them are refugees and uh yes, over five million are syrian refugees, but we’re talking about we’re talking about the whole entire world, world on and we’re talking about refugees. In this country and what’s happening in the administration and what the administration is doing to turn off refugee admissions to this country on dso, the jewish community has been empowered and mobilized. Teo advocate for refugees too stand with highest in a really powerful and profound way to say that this is not what our country’s about. This is not what our people are about. This is not what we want to be, and highest has been able teo brand personality words are agile, fearless, intelligent. It was just the right fit. You only got three words. It was in the top three corporate account e-giving got four. You got screwed. Now they have five or six actually she’s just talking about the top three. I don’t want to clarify something earlier you were asking about, like what’s your brand personality. Now ideally, you don’t change your brand personality, right ? That you might you should every year do what we call a brand check up our brand audit and you should just say okay here’s, our positioning and personality here’s how we’ve been communicating, here’s, what’s happening in the world or our world does this all still feel relevant ? But your brand personality and your brand positioning, which are internal tools, are meant to guide the organization for several years. You don’t change it every year. You might accentuate certain treats in some places more than others, but you’re not re changing your brand personality every year. Yeah, no. Okay, okay got to take a break tell us you’ve heard from the charities that referred companies for credit card processing, and they’re getting that revenue each month you’ve heard from the companies who are using tello’s for credit card processing can use more revenue. I know you can start with the video at tony dahna slash tony tell us now back to our panel from auntie si how do you assess these things like tone and attitude, which are which are part of personality humor or not ? How do you ? Yeah, i don’t know you’re shaking your head, so i hope you understand like i can’t i can’t articulated any further. How do you assess these things ? He’s, amorphous personality attributes so how do you first define what they should be ? Or how do you assess if you’re actually expressing them ? No, you have a lot of if they’re actually expressing what we’re reaching, where you want to be. I mean, i think i’d be curious to hear from john and taylor on this too. I think it’s hard, because a lot of this is very subjective. Yeah, right. So i might you know what i think is funny or witty ? Like i might think something’s witty and you find it insulting or you find that hysterical, like we all have different interpretations. What does it mean to be fierce ? What does it mean to be lifesaving ? There are different ways we might express these ideas. So i mean, often it’s a matter of asking for a few people their opinion does this feel this way on and also just asking the people you’re trying to engage ? How do you see us ? But the most important is that donor that activists that volunteer, that audience member were trying to engage with our communications because at the end of the day, communications and your brand, this part of that is about building relationships and making connections. Personality is making easy for maybe needs see myself in you, but if you don’t see it, then something’s wrong. So even talking to the people you’re trying to reach and ask them how they describe your, how you make them feel that’s the best way to assess it short of that talking teo your coworkers and say, does this feel extra ? Why and getting their feedback ? But i’m curious how you guys sort of think about using the brand personality and dated a ways and how you assess if you’re living up to that. Welcome to farrah trompeter way you’re putting my profits with you if that’s what you’re asking now, go ahead, of course, sorry, don’t be sorry, you know, i think what fair said about it being something that is sort of already part of who you are really resonate, so i think we use it as sort of a guide, right ? So we have those words in mind when we’re drafting content when we’re posting on social media on dh, you know, oftentimes it will it will be that we’re emphasizing one over the other, you know ? You can’t be all four of those things that at all times, but i think you know, for me, it’s really a thing to keep in mind as you’re working on everything you put out day today a cz, you know, a reflection of what we do, but i think to me it feels like those just are sort of intrinsic to the organizing we do. That is sort of why the organization hired all of us because we as individuals who work there represent that, and the work that comes out of us represents that too. So it’s, it’s hard to really assess because it feels just like it’s, part of who we are and that’s, what we’re doing is sort of representing that in the world in the best possible way we can. Do you have a concern that as staff turnover in the organization, that the learning is that you have one convey one could be over ? I don’t think so. I mean, i think we have some really incredible staff who’ve been there for a long time, and we have some really strong sort of internal process cities that keep things pretty pretty consistent. Okay, let’s, talk about this. Get that to the list of discussion in the process because, i mean, there is a fair amount of turnover, okay ? Horsepower said you do an annual check up, so that is goingto reinforce for people who weren’t there in the past, but we’ll talk about some process. Dahna did you want to respond to what there was talking about ? Sure so i think i could talk about it in two parts on the one hand, um, i think that our personality as a brand be seeped into our personality as an organization, i’m not sure, um, if that was truly intentional, but it was but an entirely necessary, uh, and by that i mean, now we are in the process of suing the u s government, our biggest funder for posing such a threat, teo refugee resettlement, which we which is at the core of what we do. And at the core of what this country really stands for that that’s a lot more than brand colors or guidelines or a tagline that’s about being lifesaving at the core. S o i don’t think that, uh, that that’s the kind of thing that requires, you know, an annual refresh that’s just who we are on and then the other piece is about how you make people feel, and i think that because he is a huge part of what ? We do and community engagement in our work, it’s a huge part of what we do, and so we give people a lot of different ways to take action, and we try to be very responsive to events and report those events to our supporters so that they can take action and that includes situation in this country as well as internet national issues affecting refugees. And so weii, we empower our supporters too, be a reflection of our brand personality as well, and i think that that creates a really strong connection. You work in digital engagement strategy. Back-up how do you ensure that mother teams in the air in highest feel the same ? I mean, communicate in the same way if their outward facing, even if they’re not outward facing, but even if they’re strictly an internal team department, how do you convey this personality outside your your team, your engagement team ? Or how do you make sure that they feel what you feel, but maybe it’s, not your thing ? It may not be your responsibility to do that, but how do out of out of the organization ? I mean ways, please large and small is all a lot of it is personal connections with our community engagement team who are the people that are out in synagogues and at other conferences and in the jewish community, engaging people in our mission. So being in close communications with them and help working on the campaigns that we do together with communications with development teo, to display our brand properly in an outward facing way. Um, internal communications way have an internet where we talk with the program’s people and share our brand guidelines, and any time i see a programs person talking to our partners and sending out materials that are not on brand because they might be new and i haven’t had a chance to meet them, uh, and they need to be looped into you know what our communications do, one should look like, you know, then then we have conversations i’ve travelled to our offices too give lynton learns on our branding and to our field office this’s with communicated with our global directors to make sure that globally our brand is well represented, which is by no means tricky, but you just it just requires jutze buy-in nothing’s easy again, it is it’s an ongoing process and yes, there’s, you know, turn over and volunteers and new people to educate all the time. I think that when the personality is so closely aligned with the mission, the people that are joining the team, wherever they may be, i already sort of half indoctrinated and it’s just a matter of, you know, giving them some templates and some tools and opening up the lines of communication. Yeah, very well said, because we do have to make sure that this pervades the entire organization and even even internal i had mentioned not only for the outward facing teams. Yeah, i mean, some organizations use brand personality, and they’re hiring, right ? So we want to be seen as a b and c we need to make sure that everyone who works for us is naturally that way. Both john and taylor have spoken about how making the switch to train everyone in the brand personality actually wasn’t that hard because what we did in the process is figure out who they were and, in essence, fine there’s. Lots of things, lots of adjectives, ways we might describe people, what we want to do is hone in on those three to six that we want to amplify, right ? That we really want to be most known for ? We want most resonate, but they’re who we are, so we’re turning up on the volume of something we already have so organizations can use that in hiring and even shaping conversations. Yes, every single person, you know, if an organization wants to be seen as friendly, if i call them on the phone and the person who answers the phone sounds pissed off or drops me on the line, or it takes twenty minutes with someone live, answers the phone and they were going to be seen us open and accessible. If it takes me twenty minutes to get a person on the phone, you never want to go for a brand personnel city that, in essence, will never be who you are. And every single person who represents the organization and that includes inside needs to understand what it iss okay ? Yeah, your point is you’re just you’re emphasizing what already exists. Exactly you’re you’re bringing it to the top and prioritising right ? Prioritizing us a good warning, people probably already feel, but right not articulated. We’re making explosion. Let’s, be intentional and start trying to do that more and everything that we’re doing. Okay, okay, time for our last break text to give you’ll get more revenue because text to give makes e-giving easy for your donors. If they can send a text, they could make a donation. It’s simple, affordable, secure, plus the ceo chadband oid is a smart guy. He set up a really smart company text npr to four, four, four, nine nine nine for info. Here’s the wrap up of your brand personality. Okay, perfect. So let’s talk about some of these internal processes that could be valuable, teo making this pervade and be and be consistent across all our teams, et cetera. So i mean some things we recommend our makeup part of orientation, so every time a new staff person, you know comes in someone like dahna, trains them and goes through the brand guide explains the brand strategy shows how we use it, just make that part of a standard thing as on any other on boarding have regular presentations that staff meeting, depending on an organization. Some organizations have staff meetings once a week, some have them once a year. What and whatever form at the staff is getting together, or they might use slack or hip chatter, stride whatever it may be. You know, these tools were organizations are communicating already take those ongoing moments and figure out where to plug communications, including the brand into that, and not just saying this is our brand personality but saying this is our brand personality. We were debating two covers for annual report, which one you think looks more like acts or more like why and getting people to understand how they use their brand personality in real time railways. Okay, excellent. Anybody else have examples of what you do internally ? Tell her i think one of the biggest parts of our organizational identity campaign was coming out of it. We not only had a new name, but a new website. So that’s just one thing off the bat where that sort of our most public facing piece on dh we worked really hard to make sure that our new website represented our brand and are brand personality on then we have had for a long time a style guide, so it guides what words we use in communications. Make sure. We’re being inclusive and not using violent language, things like that, and then we also developed a brandon guide. So it’s, a written document that explains what, when our personality is what our positioning is on, then how to use that and, you know, also has things like colors and those sorts of things that just make it morgan, make it able to be consistent for everybody, who’s using it. Johnny, you talked a lot about what you do. Anything more you want to add about what you’re doing it at highest. You gave us. The whole time you’re you’re you’re you’re drop by this time up, we have still have, like, another three minutes or so left. Implementing one of the things you mentioned in your session description, implementing your personality throughout your communications. I mean, i don’t know, it really pervades a lot of what we already talked about anything more you want to make you anything you want explicit about about the communications i mean, i would just say, don’t just think about the big, so your website is hugely important. Your facebook page, your annual report, your newsletter all of these things that we immediately think of us communication tools are very important to represent us, but don’t discount the things like the person who answers the phone or answers the email or the conference here at you know, and you meet taylor, who works for corporate accountability. You have a great experience with taylor, of course, and taylor represents certain feelings you’re going to cement in your brain and help see corporate accountability. That way, you need to realize that your brand is emphasized across every single touchpoint i know points kind of charge anywhere and throughout every person, every interaction, every person, you know, even if you don’t represent the organization on social media, it says you work there people think about you that way. So your staff and your board are extensions of your brand as well as every single person your donors, you’re volunteers, the more they understand what you’re about and are trained as well as like, you know, you talk about how to represent you there better. You are actually being seen that way. You hope to be seen volunteers interesting once. And they you guys did some volunteer train, organizational ambassador work that might be interesting to talk about. Yeah, the sort of most immediate adoration is right after the trump election. We started the corporate accountability action league s so this is a group of really dedicated volunteers who just raise their hand and said this is unacceptable that the president is now a person who is cementing corporate power at the federal level on dh. I need to do something about that, eh ? So we now have a network of a couple thousand folks who are really engaged with our work, do some really high level organizing around very specific issues that we sort of point them towards and let them them go and make some impact. Um and yeah, i think you know it. Was self selecting at first, but then we’ve done a lot of work around sort of i’m developing organizing guides that, you know, gives them the templates of howto run a campaign with tools to empower them exactly take it within within certain constraints. Yeah, exactly where they want to go. Yep. And then we’d done some digital work around webinars to sort of give them all of the fact that they need around an issue and explain why it’s important and set them on the on the path to organizing around it. We’re gonna leave it there. All right ? All right. They are farrah trompeter, vice president of big duck and chair of the inten board. Terribly digital engagement director att at corporate accountability and jonah, director of digital strategy and engagement hyre thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, tony. You’re very welcome. This interview sponsored by network for good, easy to use donor-centric software for non-profits and thank you for being with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc next week. Amy sample ward returns with fund-raising jing. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot. Com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuing capital. P well, you see, piela is guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner, cps, dot com bye tello’s, credit card payment processing your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna, slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr, to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine a. Creative producers. Clam meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Shows social media is by susan chavez. Mark silverman is our web guy, and this music is by scott stein of brooklyn, new york. You with me next week for non-profit radio, big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What ? You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get a drink. Nothing. You could. Hi, are you interested in blockchain technologies and crypto currencies ? Then tune in here on talk radio. Got n y c with me, david every friday, eleven a, m twelve p, m eastern time. As we answer your questions and interview, great guests live on internet radio on building the blockchain where you can catch the blockchain revolution. Duitz you’re listening to the talking alternative now, are you stuck in a rut ? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down ? Hi, i’m nor in sumpter, potentially ater tune in every tuesday at nine to ten p m eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. 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Nonprofit Radio for July 17, 2015: Walk to Work & Keep Current After Launch

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Beth Kanter & Ritu Sharma: Walk to Work

(l-r) Beth Kanter & Ritu Sharma at NTC 2015

Beth Kanter and Ritu Sharma want you to make walking part of your work day. Not for a break. They share how to work while you walk, including walking meetings, and they swear you’ll be more productive, more creative—and feel better. Beth is a master trainer, author and blogger. Ritu is co-founder and executive director of Social Media for Nonprofits. We talked at NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference, hosted by Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN).

 

Farra Trompeter & Kira MarcheneseKeep Current After Launch

(l-r) Farra Trompeter & Kira Marchenese at NTC 2015

A website redesign is expensive, time-consuming and overwhelming. Starting on day two, how do you keep it current? Farra Trompeter is vice president at Big Duck and Kira Marchenese is senior director, digital strategy + platforms for the Environmental Defense Fund. This is also from NTC.

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent of your aptly named host we have a listener of the week, daniel trust in bridgeport, connecticut. He tweeted me that he just found non-profit radio and says good stuff, man he’s, our newest listener and our listener of the week i’ll send you a video, daniel, and you can pick a book from the non-profit radio library. Congratulations, daniel. Trust oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with prayer ago if i had the itching idea that you missed today’s show, walk to work beth cantor and re to sharma, i want you to make walking part of your work day, not for a break. They share howto work while you walk, including walking meetings, and they swear you’ll be more productive, more creative and feel better. Beth is a master trainer, author and blogger re too. Is co founder and executive director of social media for non-profits we talked at ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference, hosted by an ten non-profit technology network and keep current after launch. A website redesign is expensive, time consuming and overwhelming starting on day two. How do you keep it current? Farah trompeter is vice president at big duck and kira marchenese is senior director, digital strategy and platforms for the environmental defense fund that is also from ntcdinosaur on tony’s, take two. Have you seen my videos responsive by opportunity, collaboration, the working meeting, the unconference on poverty alleviation that will ruin you for every other conference from ntcdinosaur are beth cantor and re to sharma on walking. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage over the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen, hosted by intend the non-profit technology network. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center and my guests are beth cantor, master trainer, author and blogger at beth cantor dot org’s. And also metoo sharma, co founder and executive director of social media for non-profits their workshop topic is walking is work. Don’t call it a break. Beth metoo welcome, welcome, thank you. Welcome back, beth, that has been on the show before you to his new welcome first time. Thank you very much with us. Metoo why? Why? Why should we be paying attention? Teo walking from my perspective, i’m an accidental walker, i think one hundred times better i started. Walking more extensively as part of my work, i’ve always been a walker, but as part of my work, i started about seven months ago and it was accidental because i got a new puppy and the puppy needed to be walked every three hours. That’s how it started with practical, it was very practical decision, but as i started walking, i needed to take some calls and then i started taking some of those calls on my and my box, and i found that i was paying a lot more attention. In those calls, i was not distracted by a number off social media pings and emails and other people entering in those conversations, i was really more present and then the other thing that i noticed, which is what started us making a lot more content at social media non-profits is, i am i started having a lot of ideas about different topics to write about different opinions on the current topics and that got me kick started is walking is work alright on beth, we shouldn’t if we haven’t fallen into it. Luckily accidentally metoo did we actually should be deliberate about it on dh we have some research to back that up? Yeah, as a matter of fact, i know. I got into it. Actually. The right after the last time. I was on almost two years ago. Really? I went into my doctor and i got my cholesterol tested. You know, we’re getting there. We have to get our cholesterol tested. It was three. Ninety nine. You had cholesterol of blind ninety nine. Right, which is closer to the mike. You get too excited. Okay, you know, three hundred ninety two and healthiest on one fifty or less. Right? So i decide to get walking. You know, obviously, i was not eating too many cheeseburgers, and i was sitting at my desk and i could see that you know, the house effects. So i bought one of the use of health. Fitbit. And i got out there and i started walking and writing about it before i knew it. I was walking twenty thousand steps per day, and it became this little game. How could i work? Work it into twenty thousands, like double the thie average. Ten thousand ten thousand. I’m up to now ten miles a day. Yeah, and you know what happened? My cholesterol went down to ninety nine my trig lyssarides, but something else happened. I noticed i was more president, i could pay attention and i was happier and more creativity. And so what would happen is i got really excited about this, and i’ve been blogging about it. I’ve been doing workshops, i’ve been kind of this evangelist for walking as work was people would say to me, how do you fit this into your day? You know? And and the mindset is really about, like, ok walking it’s the separate thing it’s for exercises for the health benefits, but really, i think it’s key to your productivity, we know we know something about walking versus sitting while we’re while we’re working, don’t we? Yes, we dio slideshare well, think about how much time you spend sitting at work. The average person spends nine point three hours sitting that’s more than we sleep, which is seven point seven hours and you know what all that sitting is doing to our bodies and our minds? Well, it’s, physically it’s collapsing our spines, it’s collapsing our spines it’s causing calling cancer it’s calling, causing heart disease brain fog, neck problems muscle generation, you know, it’s enough to make you want to stand up your desk, head to the door and never come back to your office. But you don’t have to do that. You know, you just need to start to think about ways to integrate movement into your work, okay? You know, maybe it’s, first of all, change your mindset, it’s thinking about different ways that you can start adding more steps, more walking, you know, park the car far this away from the door. We’re gonna get to all that time together. We’re still the motivations thing, okay? The motivation so obviously health reaches say more about the creativity. I know that was really important to you. I think when we are in close spaces and spaces, every normally sitting at nineteen hours a day, our mind gets closed almost. It only sees what we have in front of us. It becomes very reactive. It’s just reacting to emails that are coming in phone calls that are coming in and putting off fires. When you get out of that stunning and you walk in the nature, you walk in the grass, you walking the party, it doesn’t matter where. You walk when you start moving a little bit, your your brain starts to disengage from a reactive mode to a much more proactive and creative more, and what i’ve noticed for me is some of these things come to me, they’re like brilliant pieces isn’t incredible. I wrote a couple block post that we had the males traction ever, and i was just walking the dog. You know what? You have the most traction traction ever in our in our work, and those entire pieces were conceived while walking i just idea hit it, and i started flashing it while i was walking in and i came back, you had granted out in twenty minutes, and we’ve seen most likes shares, comments and really some great pieces that have come out of walking. So from a creative standpoint, i find the reason behind that is that you get a distance and you’re not constantly just addressing a pressing problem anymore. You’re able to actually give your mind a little bit of brake to process all the stimulation, all the stimuli and act activities and all the information that we were exposed to, in fact, over exposed to we have a time to process it, we have a time to just put it in different places where it belongs, and then start to see greater trends and start to see how this piece fits with some of the other stuff we’ve done. And if you’re in a reactive in front of your computer mode, you just don’t have that create this space to a process i know time is constantly belongs to other people as e mail comes in, and as much as we’re supposed to, i know a good practice for email is only react to it a set number of hours a day or set time today, but that’s very, very hard to do, and you end up being all fragmented and distracted constantly. Exactly. And, uh, the other thing is going to get a flow going way also have these phones that are full of notifications, any ping you get any tweets, you get any tax message, you get all the e mails there, these things that were changed, you know, technology. While it can be a great, great accelerator, it can also hold you back and hold you in chains because you’re constantly attacked on your head? Yeah, go ahead. Back-up let’s, go say this sort of gets us away from the topic about walking his work, but the with the walking does physiologically in your brain. Is it it’s fire synapses, you know? So if you were to look at there’s actually, researchers that are looking at the impact of movement on the brain and so if you look at a brain of a person who’s been sitting for twenty minutes, it’s all dark, okay? And if you look at a person’s brain, you know, doing a brain scan after a twenty minute vigorous walk it’s all lit up because the endorphins are flowing, connections are being made, and then we hear, you know, the proof of it from what metoo was talking about. And it’s also been proven in a number of studies. I think the most famous one has come from stanford, where they actually studied. They measured creativity of people who took walks, a brisk walk at lunch and creativity improved. Andi, just to make it explicit. We’re talking about walks without your phone or it’s turned off. Maybe you know you’re not you’re not allowing the distractions of your mobile device. While you’re walking, unless you use it to take notes. Okay, take note, but that’s you gets you in putting. Yeah, but metoo it sounds like you’re saying, you know, we don’t we’re trying to eliminate these distractions and also be vigorous in activity that’s true and when you’re walking it’s kind of hard to be as attached to a phone without tripping or knowing where you’re going, so i usually just go have it handy with me. Should there be an emergency that really needs me. But unless it’s an emergency, i actually have it handy if i need to answer a call or something. But for the most part, it’s. Hard to be that attached. As as you are in an office, i see people in new york city giving it a go, though yeah, there they are walking and lots of walking and texting, but but that’s not what we’re talking about here know what we’re talking about here is turn off the yarn device and go for a walk damaged overhead. Clear, clear your head. Don’t go further than that. Yeah, i think is notorious for the f word on non-profit radio a long time ago. But its memories linger. You know, world leaders. You know, obama is really famous for taking walks, steve jobs and, well, there’s a rich history of of of walking as work. I mean, think about like charles dickens. Did you know that he walked twenty miles a day, twenty miles a day? He hated being tethered to a desk. And on gina freud? No. Okay. Freud and analysts, you know? Yeah, they said, and their patient lies on the couch. But he’s fate, he was famous for walking with his patients to get to breakthroughs. I know, i know. A famous stander we stood on his desk was donald rumsfeld. He did not have a traditional desk. He stood as he worked. Now i don’t do politics on non-profit radio, so maybe that’s a counter example. Wait. Decided either way, but i know he, uh he stood and that’s that’s, that’s something that you were suggesting that you, khun, stand and work aside from walking, but standing versus sitting, yeah, standing desk. And, you know, other researchers come in, you know, it used to be okay. Go the jim. You know, i go the gym so i can sit on my backside for eight hours and i won’t suffer those how harmful health effects, but you know what? It doesn’t matter whether you’re at the top of your game physically, you still can reap the harmful effects of sitting. So what some researchers recommended this comes from the mayo clinic is the twenty eight, two. So every twenty minutes, if you sit, you work, you concentrate, you get up and you stand for eight minutes and two minutes stretching. Really? And that the idea, the mind shift is that you sit to rest your body from standing. Uh, okay. Rather than sitting being the focal. Yeah. Focus of the day. Yes. Okay, 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. Okay, we got you. Sometimes it can be hard to follow structures like that one that i think is very worthy. And i use it in a different way. If you’re starting out and your tender session tomorrow. Are you here today and you inspired to do that? What i would recommend doing is doing something that i’ve done is pomodoro matter-ness it really allows you to set these intervals. If you just rely on your own free will to help you do this, sometimes it can be hard to create habits. They take about ninety days to form habits for something to really gel into your daily life style change at the very least, so well you may want to do is look at things like pomodoro, matted and you can and you can design that for me. It’s every twenty five minutes of sitting, i get a five minute break and then after two or three of those, i get a twenty minute walk and and that actually forces you and it’s. Incredible, you’re doing this in your day to day work day today i have a knife in you two so obviously i do want your day. Well, i do it. Yes, it is. And i do it slightly differently. I not only measure my time in increments body also measure my energy and my ability to concentrate. And i try to design my schedule so the tasks fit my ability to concentrate and always working in these smaller chunks. I do things like i do it a slightly different method of pomodoro. I’ve experimented with paula joran for a couple of years, but there’s no place pomodoro. We call it pomodoro. Yes, it’s tomato in italian because that’s the reason it’s called this because it came with an old tomato timer. And so and time yeah, you set up for twenty five minutes. And originally the context for it is that if you’re overloaded like this, you’re going to suffer consequences of procrastination and work avoidance. So pomodoro is a method for you to like eat that frog in the morning and just start get something done metoo ago you were you were sharing. I really enjoyed that. Because what i do is i get teo something i take take a project with twenty, twenty five minutes. And then even if i’m in the middle of doing this. I take a five minute break and i actually either stretch or ideo pushups or i just do a plank. And i tried to increase my duration for that. And then that’s sort of every two or three generations. And then i go and take a walk. And i will tell you that in the last year of doing that, the days that i do mamatoto matted very religiously are the days that are that i can get in one day over two weeks worth of work. And i’ve tested it several times now. In what amount of hard work in one day you feel you could do the same as you would have. That’s a maze in the dark days into weeks? Yes, including i even fit some laundry and folding some laundry in between weeks in a day? Yes, there’s. A lot of reading time. What i found is there’s a lot of closure. I want to do things that i actually make a big list before i take on a pomodoro day. Actually, you know, i make a huge list of things that i need to absolutely get done in a night. That’s my weak. Leaders and i’ve tested it several times. Normally i will be able to hit three or four or five of those because there’s so many reactive thinks about when i’m in the pomodoro matter mode, i basically check things off age of and the forced break no matter where you are in the process, it really prevents you from going into procrastination from reading one block post that takes you into another block post that takes you into yet another blood pools and that takes you to facebook and then to twitter. That doesn’t happen on pomodoro for me at least, so i would just recommend experiment with finding whatever is right for you not just mattered that works for me, but what works for you and use some technology to hope you get in the mode don’t just rely on free will to follow this palm adores it’s really not about like trying to get everything done and taking it off your to do list, but really it’s about focus and training your attention as somebody who has been doing the technology for twenty years or more like i’m like i was like that dog and up, you know. Doug squirrel. Oppcoll you know, so i consciously this about seven or eight years ago, like, trained my attention, like like i have on ongoing dialogue with myself on my opening up, another taba, my following, another social thread. And is this the task or something i should be doing? Would be doing is the best use of my time in this room, right? The eighteen minutes a day method with david berkowitz? I don’t know. What can you can you summarize it? Sure you spent. Okay. This will change your life. A change mine. And i’m right. That’s. The only reason i finished my second book. Okay, like changes. Okay, so, it’s, five minutes in the morning, you write down. What are the two or three things that you need to have done? What? Your priorities. And you reflected five minutes on the end of day. Did i get to my priorities? And then throughout the day, every hour on the hour, you beat yourself to remind yourself, am i on task? Okay. And what? Your set and you would think, it’s counterintuitive that you’re beating yourself? You’re distracting yourself, you know? Would you get distracted? Bring yourself to a center to a center center of the focus for that day. Exactly. And then you if you do that over a period of time, it really according to cubby takes what is it? Twenty one days to make a habit. Then you’ve internalized it and then used it stops beeping and you’re focused. And this helped you finished your second book? Yes. Okay. The two of you have great outcome stories. Really terrific. Impact of love. We still have some more time together. What have we not shared that we well, did we cover getting yourself out of the culture of sitting through the pomodoro method? Or so are very any variation of that. Is there maura around? Well, what? We started with this. Okay, so if we think divide this topic into the i and the weak. So we i think we have covered the you know, what do i have control of in my work life that i can change? Ok, ok. But many of us work in organizations and with other people. And we work in a culture where there’s lots of meetings. Sure. And the culture around those meetings is to sit. Yeah. All right. So that’s the challenge. Okay? We’d like to have walking meetings? Yes. Okay. And now you’re doing this tomorrow at twelve. Thirty and we’re gonna talk more about what we’ll bring it back to the office setting. I’ve forgotten, but just tell us what you’re doing tomorrow. Twelve. Thirty go ahead, return. We have a session tomorrow at ten. Thirty to twelve, where we’re going to talk about walking his work when we lay out the framework and then we’re going to take a big walk around twelve thirty with a number of conference attendees and give them an experience of discussing a specific topic while they’re on a walk with a large group. So they get to actually experience how to have a meeting while they’re walking out standing. Do you know what the topic is? Where you’re going? Decided in the session for the topic for the war. Walking comes for the ten. Thirty meetings. They’re going to be talking about planning a walking meeting. Okay, on our meat up, it will be open. It’s over that people choose what they want to do. Okay, are there all right, so let’s, bring it back to the office now. How can we help the the sitting meeting culture? Teo, get out of that. Well, you know, it’s interesting, because sometimes first of all, i think there needs to be some education around the links to workplace productivity and workplace wellness and that, you know, it isn’t a break. It really is important to productivity. And then this is not a zest your topic right at sung his work exactly. Don’t call it a break, right, it’s not like it’s not going to the gym and it’s not goofing off. Okay, okay, you’re really getting work done. So the next thing is to think about what? What are all the meetings in your life? And think about what could be done as a stand? You know, as a meeting, you know, walking, meeting and it’s. Probably best to start with a one on one meeting. Maybe a weekly meeting with your supervisor, maybe jet or somebody who reports to you and suggests that, you know, bring your sneakers to work. And you do that. Weiqing meeting as a walking meeting and maybe institute is the standing meeting ifyou’re going tio do a meeting with more people requires a little bit. More planning than a regular meeting in addition to the agenda, the purpose. Any pre reading you have to think about what your route is. You have to time the route. You have to be prepared if there’s bad weather, you know, we’re going to walk inside. You have to let people know to bring the right shoes at where their coats if it’s going to be cold and then you had to sort of make some modifications in the way that you take notes, people are you know, maybe this meeting is one where you’re discussing something. And the only thing you need to take down is the decisions as opposed to being in a meeting where you need to be looking at a lot of papers and a lot of yeah, tasking people on dh specificity, you know, okay, but you can take notes. You know, you can remember those things called pens paper. I’ve heard of them, you know, a most skin and can also now is it violating anything? If if if i suppose i get tested with something in our walk and i have my phone and i do a voice note to myself is that okay? Yes. Yeah. No, i’m we suggest a little side convo. Just we’ll just wild just for myself. Okay, so, like, well, one good thing to do in a walking meeting with a group is not to do. They spend the whole meeting walking and discussing like, you always have a little space of time at the end of the meeting to, like, summarized what the delivery bals are. And maybe you do that when you get back into the conference room. Okay, you know, and and and do that for note taking and people are fresh. Endorphins have been flowing and remember them, you know, another way to get started. It’s a little bit easier than the walkie meeting is a standing me kayman okay, we take this in increments, maybe. Yeah, depending on the culture and how willing your supervisors are to participate in your colleagues, they will do it incrementally. Yes, right. Standing, baby sitting half and then standing house, you know, crawl, walk, run, fly, ritu anything? Well, sure, i’d say that. Take it slow. Take it according to your culture and find different ways to do it. And there’s one common criticism, i hear. When we talk about walking his work, well, we have so many things we can get it done, it’s, like when you’re taking this on, start slow to start with one or two meetings and see how you’re doing don’t try teo enforce the really big culture change, you know, from the beginning do little things. Hey, do you mind when we do these meetings that we do the first portion of introductions and check ins? And when we’re reporting in what our week was like and what we’re doing, do that and maybe in a walking session and come back and take some notes as that just recommended in coming back? So find those the other couple things i would say that i have personally done that have been really helpful in and coming with from a change of culture in our organization is my default for all meetings is walking meeting now if you want time with me, it’s a walking meeting unless there’s a compelling reason why you can’t be so on. My default is no longer let’s sit down for coffee at starbucks my default is hey there’s, a park next to my office you want to meet, then let’s talk. And if somebody has an objection like, well, how are we gonna take notes again? I go back to now abets famous line. Have you heard of those bill old things called pen and a little pocket most qin and the other thing i’d say too. And the way i work with it, it’s, you know, walking meetings or subset of overall good meeting practice, and i would also talkto leadership and ask, don’t don’t you want more effective meetings in your organization? What if you were able to replace ineffective meetings that waste people’s time with meetings that are highly productive and that makes people feel great and get work more even more work done in less time when you want to do that. And that should really try it. Yeah, let’s. Try it and see you at least try. Okay, we got a couple more minutes. What have ah, not asked you yet about this. That, uh, you want to you want to share? Get a couple more. If i can cheer when quick thing. The second thing that i do besides defaulting to walking meetings is i do not take any phone. Call unless it’s absolutely necessary sitting down and that’s a very easy switch to make. Just grab the phone and start pacing, you know? Yeah, i’ve been doing that for years because i’m a kinesthetic learner, so it teach me it just helps me if i move, i think better and just and i found that if i’m like, when i wasn’t standing for phone calls, i’m sitting at my desk, checking my email and getting distracted, so standing walking on and also i think i want to emphasize to people, you know, i got started with this web stuff in the early nineties, and i had our side by the nineteen, ninety five repetitive stress is right, and one of the things i learned there was about stretching and taking this break, that it’s really important, and sometimes we get so addicted and where were you know, we use our computer keyboard is a lunch train, and we don’t get up because we think, you know, we’re not getting work done. So the one thing i would leave people with us really think about what you’re doing to your body and what you’re doing to your mind and don’t think of it as wasted time and trust us. You’ll be more productive and you’ll be happier. Absolutely okay. Productivity, creativity. Good health. Good. Reduced cholesterol. Substantially it’s. All it’s. All excellent. All right, we do anything you want to wrap up with. No, just thank you for the opportunity and happy walking, everyone. Yes. All right. Get out there and do it. Metoo sharma is yes. Is co founder and executive director of social media for non-profits and beth cantor, master trainer, author and blogger walking is work. Don’t call it a break. Listening to and joining with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen. Thank you so much for being with us, ladies. Thank you. Great thanks to you. Pleasure twenty steak too, and keep current after launch are coming up first opportunity collaboration it’s an unconference in x top of mexico in october for everyone working in poverty alleviation, there’s a lot of free time to meet the non-profits from around the world that are there, who you can learn from and who can help you do your work wherever it is you’re working it’s over ninety three percent sold out i’m going to be there? I got my reservation in if you are helping those who live in poverty, check out opportunity, collaboration, opportunity, collaboration, dot net, i have over one hundred seventy videos on youtube. There are dozens of conference interviews, all the conference conferences where i’ve interviewed speakers on topics like fund-raising events, marketing, communications, technology, board relationships, lots of board topics, the non-profit radio knowledge based videos are there everything i’ve done on plant e-giving and charity registration? My stand up comedy clips are there, too. My channel is riel r e a l tony martignetti and there’s also link from tony martignetti dot com to the youtube channel and that’s tony’s take two for friday seventeenth of july twenty eighth show of the year. We’re pre recorded this week, but you know how sincere i am in sending live listener love if you are one of the live listeners today, thanks so much for being with us live listener love to you podcast pleasantries wherever you are, whatever device washing dishes or otherwise, whatever it is you’re doing pleasantries to the ten thousand over ten thousand podcast listeners and affiliate affections to everybody listening on those am and fm stations throughout the country. Our affiliate network. Thank you so much for being with us. All our affiliate station listeners. Here are farrah trump, peter and cura marchenese from anti seizure keeping your website current after launch welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen we’re at the austin convention center austin, texas with me now are farrah trump, peter and kira marchenese sarah is a vice president for big duck and kira is senior director, digital strategy and platforms for the environmental defense fund. Sarah sarah, welcome, welcome you welcome. Thank you. It’s. A pleasure to have you both here. Let’s. Start let’s. Start with you. What are what are non-profits not really planning around enough when they do a web redesign or maybe even a launch. Everybody gets so excited about having the new site that it’s like you bring home your brand new car and you never think about putting gas in it, much less getting the tires changed or oil put in it. And so what we focus on our session focus on in our session is all of the things that you do need to keep track. Of after you’ve brought home your shiny new website and concrete tips on how to do so, uh, what are what are some of the things that you’ll be talking about? Just tick off a few topics. How does stretcher resource is further so that you can fit more smart updating in you in your regular schedule? We’ll talk about structuring your sight to minimize the need for updates, and we’ll talk about how to keep yourselves accountable and make sure that you actually do the updates that you’ve planned on doing. Okay, farrah anything i think you want to add at this early stage, just that i think just to build on this care and i did a session three years ago at the ntc twenty twelve called is a time to rethink your website, and that session was all about, you know, first, starting with a clear understanding of your goals and audiences before you go and change the design change, the content changed the technology, wait a really great conversation with staff and everyone and non-profit staff consultants who attended and we’ve since done it and other conferences, and it spread a lot of good thinking about do i rethink my sight? So i have to completely overhaul it? Are there incremental changes i can make? Well, we realized, as we were sort of reconnecting on this topic recently was again a sort of cure was saying there’s, so much energy put into building a site, you know, redoing your sight can take six to nine months for some organizations a year, and then all of a sudden it launches you like great done seeing three years check off. Exactly, and what we have found is especially, you know, your your website. Still, even the web sites have been around for over twenty years. It still is the one of the main places supporters will go to find information about you, and it is important that that site represents who you are and what you’re about on also is somewhat current with user experience and what people are looking for in a basic website so responsive, for example, on other things, and and that means that your sight’s still has to be dynamic. It can’t be a brochure, so if in organizations made it past this idea that their website is not a brochure that step one but i still, even though that happened let’s say, non-profits and organizations got that over ten years ago. And, you know, our website needs to be engaging. Great. I still think that there are lots of non-profits out there. They build their sight, they set up the information, they walk away from it. So this idea of this session is how do you keep that site current and think about it being a living, breathing representation of your organization and a way to connect with your community beyond that launch button day. Okay, care. I see you nodding a lot. So total agreement, your did this three years ago. So you know, the beginning of this three years ago, this is this is this is the sequel, and this is how we’re keeping it current. Okay, this is the electric boogaloo part duitz. Yeah, exactly. Remember that break in electric boogaloo? I don’t know, eighties. Um, okay, so, let’s, stay with you. Ah, farah what’s your wee. Where should we start with this? Start this process. Well, karen mentioned stretching resource is further. Is that is that a good place for us to start? Yeah, i mean one of the things that we often hear when we say, well, wire websites not kept up to date or wire people, you know, aside from this feeling of okay, it’s changing a belief, certainly that i do have to think about my sight beyond launch, but more than that, we always get this conversation that, well, i don’t have enough time. I’m busy getting the next email out, i have to worry about my fund-raising campaign, we’ve got all this advocacy, this petition, we’re running, so everyone sort of caught up in the day to day their communications that they want the website to be on autopilot. Eso what we’re really looking at is, yes, we know you don’t have enough staff time, we know you don’t have enough money, what are some things you can do once we get past that acknowledgement? And so we’ve got a lot of suggestions about how you can, you know, take those limited resource is and be smart about you want people to stop saying we can’t way have this other stuff, so we’re just gonna throw up our hands and website just we’ll have to suffer exact what can we do with the limited? Resources that we do have exactly. Okay, exactly. Xero what can we start to do? Well, the first thing that you can start to do is evaluate what resources you have and how much you need, and so we’ll go through ah quick little math exercise on our site. We have about one hundred pages that need some kind of maintenance there, not a press release or a block post that has a date on it, and nobody ever expects those to be updated. We’re talking about the page, the about us, paige, our privacy policy pages about certain projects that were working on those need a little bit of care and feeding, and one of the first things you do is you say, well, if i’ve got a hundred of those and i think it’s going to take a couple hours of time, tio, get each of those updated one hundred times a couple hours that works out to five weeks of solid work time in is that reasonable? Do you have five weeks? You know, some organizations do and that’s great, and they’re a head of a lot of the rest of us, but a lot of us. Will say, oh, in two hours, that’s really not enough to update this page because i’m going to have to talk with the program’s staff who managed this manages the project, and then they’re going to have to approve the changes that i make and all of a sudden you’re like, man that’s, eight hours so that’s one hundred days and you know, where am i going to find that hundred days? So the in a lot of organizations, you never have that conversation, and you just have an out of date website in a stressed out staff. So the first thing that you can do is try teo, get it? Well, why’re we stressed out, is it because we don’t have enough help? And maybe we can hire a temporary writer to help us? You get on top of this, or have we just really taken on more than we can handle? And we need to reevaluate how many pages we have on the site. So if we can find a concrete place to start that conversation, we can start solving the problem you have in one of the things that we were talking about is like, what does? Your website being out of date really look like so that could look like everything from your board listing just doesn’t you know, you added somebody on the board two months ago, but they’re still not listed on your site so that’s kind of a minor out of date. But one of things that drives me crazy is when i go to an organization’s website and i see, like, save the date for her upcoming conference in december twenty fifth eleven but i mean, maybe that’s a little exaggerated, even last a month out exactly. And it’s like no, come back. You know, the next day i should see conferences from the pictures from the event i should see what happened. I should see the tweets, the storify, whatever it is. But i think when organizations say, like what’s new and you go to the what’s new page and it’s talking about things from six months ago again your donor, your activist, your participant is going to think you’re not keeping things up, and then they that will actually impact your reputation. So, you know, at big duck, we think a lot about your brand, so so our angle on a lot of this is hacking you your user website as a way to really continue to build a relationship with your supporter. Your website. Visitor. Whoever that is and make sure that you have said, is just enhancing their perception of you and not eroding it. And so, you know, when your website is out of date, it will start. People won’t think they’ll think a lot less of you, it’s, like coming by to your office and see that there’s paint chipping on the wall. What else? Anything you want to add to ah, what kira suggested about howto evaluate what? What? What? The task is that’s ahead of us. Yeah, i mean, i think here is laid out of really thinks about it so smartly, which is why i love presenting with her we’ve a love fest, but i think not, you know, it’s great to think about what are the pages, how we maybe minimize those number of pages we have to keep up today, but then layering in again, this idea of goals and audience is coming back to that, which is saying, okay, let’s say there are a hundred pages we’ve built the site, i can’t change it, it is what it is. I only have twenty days and not one hundred let me then focus my twenty days on the twenty most important pages, and those most important pages were the ones that maybe get the most traffic are most critical to any initiatives you’re running and are really the ones that your audience are looking for. Not necessarily the page at the executive director of the board chair tell she was most important, which is another congressman, we’re definitely gonna get into the board and senior senior leadership, they have their opinions as well, but it becomes very difficult and even your own staff. You know, one of the things that we’ll talk about is that editors and writers really like making things that are new, and there i won’t forget the first time that my online writer realized that it wasn’t it she’s pushing the rock up the hill, and it comes rolling back down and she’s got to push it back up again. We got a page lunch and she had really worked hard on it, and it came out great, and i made the mistake of saying to her right after it launched like, oh, great! And then the next time we come back and revised this page, we can look into this bit of it, and we’ll have data about that and the look on her face, who’s, just don’t make me do it again. You don’t have to do that again. And so it’s, not just the senior executives who are pushing us to do things that may not be really what’s most needed no it’s, always fun to do something new and it’s. Not as fun to go back and redo something that you thought was done a year ago let’s probe this little deeper when we’re getting of suggestions from boards, senior leadership, how do we how do we manage that on anybody? When, when, when their suggestions are misplaced, right about priority? It all goes back to what sarah said about goals and audiences, and if you’ve built a strong understanding with all of your stakeholders about what your priorities are and how you’re going to connect with your audience is then it’s easier to go back to that is a foundation and you know, if you can say yes, i understand that this is important to you, and when we’ve when we look at what people are looking at, there is a mismatch here you khun service that and have that conversation with them if you haven’t reached that agreement, it’s a lot harder to shift that conversation later, and i think when they come to you and say we want to change its pages, ask questions, why? In who? You know, why do we need to change it on dh who really needs this page? Updated who’s looking for something new that’s not already on there and let me tell you a little bit based on those thinking about the wise and the who’s, what i think we should be focusing on now, at the end of the day, i could say all i want to say about that as a consultant, but you live in an organization, and sometimes you have to listen to the senior leaders, but i think you can at least try and have a strategic conversation as much as possible, and you can set the agenda as well. You know, we don’t wait for our senior communications executive to find a page on the website that he thinks need to be needs to be updated. We tell him here the pages that we’ve decided to focus on for the next three months and here’s what you’re going to get from it. And so by framing the conversation again, back to the goals and audiences, you can take more control of it. I’m being proactive with that, i think you know, the other thing i’m thinking about us were talking, and we spoke again a lot about this previously, which is, i think organization non-profits have to make the shift of thinking about their website as a program, right? So you know what i mean? Like so if you think about the programs you’re putting out in the world, whatever those those maybe whether they’re in person, whether their, you know, whatever services you’re providing, if you think about your website as a service you’re providing, then maybe the idea of giving it, you know, love and attention and care and feeding feels a little bit more comfortable. I think when people still think about their website as this, you know, printed, you know, like the statics for tools, the support tool, but not a living breathing mechanism that could help advance your mission and connect with people. That’s what we’re really talking about. Excellent. I love that love that idea think it seems very simple programs, and it is so fundamental reputation, right and reputation and brand that all sang like that we’re thinking about exactly let’s move teo structuring the site two to help to minimize updates who was firing? One continues, i’ll speak briefly, but i think here has a lot of great things to say here i think you know when it comes to when your first structuring your site it’s important to think about what are the priorities that my audience is looking for again? Not necessarily what i’m what the senior staff for any staffer looking for, but it really ask the questions if you have an existing site doing user testing, finding out really what the community wants from your website again thinking about it as a program, and then once you’ve structured the site, i mean again asking those questions that, you know, in six months from now on, we’re looking at all those pages we have to keep up to date how we done ourselves a disservice. Certainly i’m not saying you should build your sight in a way that it doesn’t have to be updated. I think it’s important again for that website to be a living representation of your organisation, but maybe minimizing the number of pages that might have to get those updates and think about, too. What are the pieces of the site that need to be time sensitive and need to be up to date if it’s the description of you know your mission around a particular project area that’s probably. Not going to change. And you should probably structure it in such a way that that part of the page is is evergreen. And there might be things around it that change. There might be a little news box next to it that has blood posts and press releases saying the newest things about that program. But if you don’t have tio embed it all together so that you have to rewrite the entire text, you know, every three months, you’re going to save yourself a lot of time. 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You must have other ideas about that physical structure around around timesaving go ahead, please. So another one is, and this one is a little harder to explain without the screen shot in front of me, but what we used to dio is, you know, every page had a bunch of sub pages, and anytime self they needed to be updated on one of the sub page you work on the sub page, it would be this longer, bigger piece, and then, you know, you’d have to go to the page that was above them and like you had all these updates in different places, and what we’ve done is just eliminate a lot of that, and so will have an overview page that has, again the evergreen overview of here’s, the work that we’re doing and why it matters. And then we’ll link off to a few more timely things, like a block post about it or a press release, some kind of statement or testimony, and when that piece ages, we just delete the link. And so we keep that high level overview of what we’re working on and why they’re little supplementary pieces of it that give you a sense of what’s going on right now? But we haven’t built it in the structure of the site. We haven’t created extra pages, we haven’t, you know, built it into the menu, and once you build something into the menu that’s really tough because if you have four things in the menu, every one of them has to be updated. But if you could just have an overview page that refers to for things, you give yourself a lot more flexibility. Excellent, excellent! You got more that’s, a that’s, a great one, i think that’s about it for a structure there. I missed anything. No, that sounds good. I mean, one of the other things i knowthis is neatly under structure that we talk about is sort of using the work that you’re doing another channel. So let’s say you’ve got this great instagram presidents or you’re really active on facebook or you’re tweeting a lot and thinking about how to embed or bring that content in as a way to keep your sight feeling dynamic and what’s the right places for those things. Where should that live on your site? How should it live on your site? That’s another thing that we have people think about, okay, so it’s possible to have more than just a little little box recently sent tweets exactly what more can we didn’t mean? You could just have the most recent tweet you could, depending on how sophisticated your twitter ah, you know your your twitter tweeting is if you use specific hashtags, you can connect those hash hoexter appear on specific program pages or bio pages if staff members are mentioned by name or by twitter handle okay, yeah, things like that so just being like taking it up a notch, being a little bit more sophisticated with how you bring it in, but while we’re talking structure let’s also go into deep structure, which is actually the platform that you’re on. And this is another part of website e i love that i asked you before you kind of threw up your hands and and then a man came back and now now it’s come back in a deep strike now we’re getting deep deep here throw this goes into the category of invisible ways that your sight can be out of date, you know you can come to my site and you can’t tell easily if i’m running word pet press three point seven or four point two, but it matters, and if you fall too far behind on those updates, you open yourself up to security risk as well as not being able to take advantage of the latest developments on your platform. And this is something that i think a lot of the content specialists just don’t have on their radar and it’s something that you need tio have a sense of how often your platform updates, which are the updates that are important for you to take advantage of and then work with your vendor or your in house team to make sure that, you know, you’re sticking to a schedule and you’re not falling too far behind. Yeah, i mean, i think websites have sort of two sides, right there is the front end, which is what the user experience is what the person sees, what they can tell is happening with the organization based on your site, then there’s the back end, which people love when i say back in, then there is the back and that’s where they’re headed, right? And, you know i think you think people are thinking that because i’ve had people say it’s, because your mind is in the garden sometime sometime, i here i am back in altum now, maybe i don’t i don’t have the same day, and my body studio is okay. So the on the back end of the website, we’ve got your content management system and your constituent relationship management system, and sometimes the cms sincere amour love lovingly integrated sometimes they are two or twenty different systems that are connected to your site, depending on how you have it set up and it’s important again to think about as a staff you’re worrying about how those things work in secures point, you need to make sure you’re paying attention to both sides of the equation s so that the site is not only again representing you well, but also doing all the work it can for you and and supporting your fund-raising your outreach, whatever it might be that you need those systems to be working well and up to the latest date of what they can do for you care. When we did an overview, you mentioned accountability keeping you’re keeping yourself accountable, what’s what’s this about. Well, once you decide that you are going to stick to a certain update schedule, i mean it’s like sticking to a diet, right who’s going to be able to do that completely on their own without any sort of reminders or accountability, some of us can, but most of us can’t, and i can tell you one thing that definitely did not work for us, which was having the systems and automated reminders, you know? Hey, tony, this page is out of date, you might want to check it out just became anxiety producers and it’s so easy to ignore them because the system won’t know if i don’t do anything about ignore exactly. And so one of the things that we found is that in order to hold yourselves accountable, you really need a person to be part of that and there’s usually somebody on your team or associated with your team in some way, who is going to be open to taking on that roll. And, you know, one of the things that i encourage people to do is figure out who that person is embraced that about them, you know, used. There, there their charm and organizational skills. Thank you. Fair lovingly nudging. Yeah, and you know that that’s going to be the person who has all the spreadsheets and gets really anxious when deadlines are approaching, you want that person sharing that that skill with the rest of your team? Because otherwise it’s just too easy, like farrah was saying in the press of all of your communications and email schedule on all of that to just let this thing that feels not as urgent slide, but, you know, you do that too long, and all of a sudden you have five weeks of work backed up that you could have been tackling a little bit like a project manager function. Okay, the other thing we talked about this is about accountability, general, with all sorts of things is the racy model? Do you know that the r a, c i so that stands for responsible, accountable consultant informed, and the idea is that at the start of every project, you think about those different roles, so for example, we may be accountable to the executive director, but they don’t need to know they’re not they’re not responsible for things. That they don’t even have to be consulted are informed they just want their they’re ultimately accountable. Maybe they have to be informed, but the communications director has to be consulted, and then the communications manager is the person who’s actually responsible for getting it done. So thinking about those different levels of where people have to weigh in so that you’re not, you know, waiting on this, you’ve got this long list of pages, you have to go through ten people thinking about people’s different roles on that accountability scale could be very helpful, okay? And then another thing that you can do in addition to getting a person involved is think about how you’re presenting to yourselves, the work that needs to be done. So, like i said, it doesn’t work to just have a system generated email land in somebody’s email box, and nobody knows it’s there one of the things that has worked for us is to do a chart and the amount of red on the chart shows how many pages have past their expiration date on the site and visual yeah, eso to share that publicly and then there’s a sense of sort of shared accountability like, oh, how did the red get so big? And i’ve actually had the editors say, wait, can we wait just a couple more days before we make the next charge? Theo? Yeah, exactly out of the rain. It looks so much better if we could just getting forty eight, forty eight hours. Yeah, exactly. And so figuring out what the right tools are to motivate and and get your people feeling the urgency about it, i think it’s going to be different for every organization that’s one that’s worked for us. All right? We still have another couple minutes together, like, another three minutes or so. What? What else do you want to share that we haven’t talked about yet? I mean, one of things that we sort of end the session on is that people should make a road map for themselves. What? What should they be doing? As you know, is a result of thinking about this. What do they think they need to do immediately? That might be doing a sort of friend and sweep of the site and figuring out like, oh, my god, we have that, you know, what’s new section that hasn’t been updated in two years or, you know, put out the immediate fire is the low hanging fruit, as we like to say, so make a road map of what do i need to do this week? This month? What do i need to do over the next six months? What do i need to put on a schedule for next year and just really plotting out? What did you and making yourself unorganized way to think about it cause there will be it’s like anything? Lots of anxiety around this issue? Oh, god, and it really is i was doing it wrong, or i’m worried about it, but just really just try and plan it out, map it out and think about where is the biggest thing you need to put your attention on with the resources you have, kerry wanna add anything? Just that this is never challenged, that anybody has completely conquered, and even though i’m up here, you know, sharing tips and wisdom that have we’ve come across our site is not up to date entirely, you know, we haven’t gotten rid of the red on that chart, it’s, very brave of you and well. I’m sure if you poked around hard enough, you could find something that was obviously out of out of date. So it’s also being kind to yourself and acknowledging that this is something that you’re going to be working on for a while. All right, we have to do a shout out. Tio sarah, sarah, durum who’s the cold herself president or ceo and president the grand poobah i call her the big big duck of big. Alright and today your birthday have hurt the chariots. March forth it is four. So happy birthday sorrow they sarah happy twenty nine. Yes, of course. And she’s been on the show. She’s wanted me to get you for some time now. Here we are. Here we are. All right. We’re gonna leave it there. Thanks for having us. My pleasure. Thank you very much. Kira farrah trompeter is the vice president? Maybe someday i don’t know. I don’t know. I like it. So it spread like vice president you do. Alright, vice president of big duck. They’re consulting agency thinks a lot about brands and reputation in new york city. I’d like to visit your office any time. And kira marchenese very good, thank you. I names are important. See she’s, the senior director for digital strategy and platforms at the environmental defense fund and again farah kira, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you, stony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen at the austin, texas convention center thanks so much for being with us. My thanks always to everybody at inten the non-profit technology network loved being at that conference each year, and i’m sure i’ll be there next year. Also next week it’s our twenty fiftieth show next week we’ve got giveaways in studio guests all the regular contributors have a comedy sketch, live music, a new sponsor and lots more going on two hundred fiftieth show fifth anniversary of the show we’ve been doing this each week for five years be with me next week are two hundred fiftieth show july twenty fourth. If you missed any part of the two hundred forty ninth show, find it on tony martignetti dot com opportunity collaboration with world convenes for poverty alleviation it’s an outstanding unconference that will ruin you for every other conference it’s over ninety three percent sold opportunity collaboration dot net our creative producer is claire markoff. Sam labor, which is the line producer show social media, is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. Thank you, scotty, 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 and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist. I took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe. Add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is 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 gifts. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric 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.