Tag Archives: brand

Nonprofit Radio for March 28, 2022: Don’t Work For Free

Matthew Zachary: Don’t Work For Free

Your brand, programs, assets and communities are a commodity worth assigning value to. Is it time to tell a company, or other potential partner, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Matthew Zachary from OffScrip Health shares his advice.

 

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[00:00:25.64] spk_0:
mm hmm. Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with parallel

[00:00:27.64] spk_1:
GMA. If

[00:01:49.74] spk_0:
you broke me with the idea that you missed this week’s show, don’t work for free. Your brand programs, assets and communities are a commodity worth assigning value to. Is it time to tell a company or other potential partner? Thanks but no thanks. Matthew Zachary from off script health shares his advice. non tony steak too. Please take care of yourself. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. It’s a pleasure to welcome Matthew Zachary to the show. He is a 26 year brain cancer survivor and one of the most respected voices in healthcare. He’s an award winning concert pianist and film composer And the host of out of patience with Matthew Zachary, the # one podcast in healthcare. He founded the award winning nonprofit stupid cancer. Matthew is now Ceo and co founder of off script Health, the first audio broadcasting company focused solely on consumer health and patient engagement. He’s at Matthew Zachary dot com and at Matthew. Zachary. Matthew. Welcome to nonprofit radio

[00:01:51.64] spk_1:
Hello tony

[00:01:53.84] spk_0:
pleasure to have you.

[00:01:55.01] spk_1:
Likewise, thank you for having me on the show.

[00:01:57.17] spk_0:
I’m glad you’re on from from new york city

[00:02:00.14] spk_1:
from the heart of Manhattan

[00:02:02.54] spk_0:
downtown where where where are you downtown? In Manhattan

[00:02:05.62] spk_1:
we are between the world trade center and the South street seaport

[00:02:09.94] spk_0:
Well, you’re very far down. Okay. I mean, I consider Chelsea downtown, your, your financial district

[00:02:18.04] spk_1:
downtown, just like near the, near the bay Battery.

[00:02:24.94] spk_0:
The battery near the battery. Right? Yes. All right. Welcome. Glad to have you. We’re thrilled

[00:02:25.83] spk_1:
to rant and rave to your listeners.

[00:02:28.54] spk_0:
You ready to rant and rave. Please do. And

[00:02:31.30] spk_1:
I’m

[00:02:31.93] spk_0:
already correcting you. They’re our listeners, please. Our listeners

[00:02:36.41] spk_1:
listeners,

[00:03:12.34] spk_0:
listeners. No, no, don’t, don’t disqualify it. There are listeners rant and rave. Please tell stories. And we’re gonna be talking about some stories, uh, some of your stories and your background, but we’re getting started. You know, we want to get started. We’re talking about non profits, undervaluing their assets. And uh, let’s set up your, your bona fides to talk about this. What, what is it in your background that leads you to the, to the, uh, to the belief that this is a problem that nonprofits are, are, are causing for themselves. This undervaluing,

[00:04:38.94] spk_1:
I have the terrible privilege of having started the nonprofit with no experience in 2006 and then running it too To success by accident over 14 years. And it’s often the most unqualified human that doesn’t write the wrong way. And I spent a decade working at Omnicom in the agency space after surviving brain cancer in college. So I learned a lot And this is pre internet, pre google pre everything. This is a ol floppy disks and dial up and crappy Macintoshes and gateway computers. That’s the era in which I kind of grew up with. And back then consumers really valued, you know, good brands and direct to consumer wasn’t really a thing yet. There was no like banner ads pervaded but health care and cancer and rare disease wasn’t really a market. We were kinda left to our own devices and I wound up meeting a guy who happened to be on the board of directors of a group called the National Coalition for Cancer survivorship. They are five oh one C three and the five oh one C four group in the beltway, probably the single most influential group no one’s ever needing to have heard of because they get all the things done behind the scenes in cancer policy access CMS, payer equity F. D. A. There there, wizard.

[00:04:46.40] spk_0:
Well we have, we have jargon jail on tony-martignetti non profit radio

[00:04:52.13] spk_1:
jargon. But where can I do that?

[00:04:53.83] spk_0:
There’s no button. I just, I just interrupt you brashly like I just did

[00:04:59.94] spk_1:
Medicare services, the federal Drug Food and Drug Administration and insurance companies.

[00:05:04.24] spk_0:
What is CMS,

[00:05:05.47] spk_1:
Comprehensive Medicare services.

[00:05:07.35] spk_0:
Thank you. Okay.

[00:05:08.42] spk_1:
Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I will, I will do the acronym for the rest of the day if you

[00:05:14.05] spk_0:
please, but if you forget, I’ll remind you. Don’t worry.

[00:05:46.84] spk_1:
But I wanted to start a nonprofit having no experience understanding what that was because I saw, I saw a marketing need, I saw a business opportunity and before I get to the second part of that thought nonprofits are still businesses and fundamentally, most people that start nonprofits, I have no data to support this are doing it because of emotional desire and not practical forward thinking. Well

[00:05:47.34] spk_0:
that sounds like it was your own experience. You said

[00:05:49.52] spk_1:
yes, you

[00:05:50.79] spk_0:
blundered, you maybe didn’t blunder into it, but you blundered through it. I

[00:07:38.14] spk_1:
blundered through it with no experience. But I always ran it like a for profit company. It happened to be a tax examples, you know, I. R. S. Status, but I never thought that I would want to ever beg people to give couch cushion money to keep the lights on. I’m not that kind of person and I genuinely believed and you could commoditize cancer patients because they’re just consumers and they want to feel like they’re part of a community and they want to give back in a way that they can get paid for having their life experience sold to somebody that didn’t ask to have that wisdom but also figure out ways to monetize the revenue portfolio of the company without being dependent on donor dollars. And that that was my approach. Then I even tell you was that, oh my God, no one’s ever done this. I’m gonna try it. And then I was met with like, oh you need a board of directors, you need to, you know insurance, you need to have the audience, I don’t know these things but fumbling through that with the onset mindset that this is a business first and foremost that happens to be a nonprofit was antithetical, but I think it’s an underserved narrative in why most nonprofits fail, Why most non profits earned less than $50,000 a year and why the government made it way too easy to get to C3 status because they just know that they just want to have this on the books were the good government, we get the C3 status and I’ll end that thought with one of my friends and heroes and mentors is dan Pallotta, dan Pallotta had the most watched ted talk in history,

[00:07:44.25] spk_0:
an

[00:08:05.24] spk_1:
old friend, the way we think about charity is all wrong. It talks about GDP issues and the fundamental flaws and scaling and growth and equity and value and you know, he taught me a lot, getting this off the ground and I was privileged to have him kind of be the jiminy cricket that validated my approach that this is a business that happens to be a charity?

[00:09:41.64] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Your story is their mission. What does that mean? What do you want to tell? What story do you want to tell? What audience do you want to tell it to? What channel or channels do you want to use to tell that story. All of that is what turn to does that makes your story their mission. So, and they’ll help you refine that story. They’ll they’ll maybe help you find that story, not just refine it, but help you find it. And then they’ll help you figure out who the best audiences are. You probably have a good sense of that, but they can help who the, what the best channels are. They definitely can help you with that. And then hone that story and tell it, get it out. Whatever, whether you’re going to use earned media or owned media, whatever channels you’re going to use, they’ll get it out. All of that means that your story is their mission Turn to communications turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to don’t work for free. What about the undervaluing part? What what, what did you were there lessons you learned and you said you didn’t you never wanted to pursue a couch cushion, pennies as donations. But where did your thinking about nonprofits not sufficiently valuing themselves come from?

[00:09:49.34] spk_1:
Right. So this goes to how industry and the cockeyed fucking nous of healthcare. Is that the people that make the drugs that you and I take it? We’re not

[00:09:56.42] spk_0:
customers appreciate your saying this. Yeah,

[00:09:59.31] spk_1:
it’s factory.

[00:10:01.34] spk_0:
Right? Wait, say that 1. 2.

[00:10:03.86] spk_1:
Yeah.

[00:10:04.44] spk_0:
There there too, too few words that mean anything anymore. So, you know, we say it, say it, say the word that best describes the situation you’re talking

[00:10:19.84] spk_1:
about the healthcare factory, the way in which the health care economy works. And your listeners, our listeners may know this. See what I did there. You’re

[00:10:23.56] spk_0:
swearing at our listeners,

[00:11:41.34] spk_1:
pharma makes the drugs, the insurance companies decide how much doctors will get paid to give the patients the drugs and that’s it. It’s that straightforward. You’re the patient on the drug, you’re not the consumer, you’re not the end user, you’re the recipient, You walk into a store and someone else decides what you’re buying on the shelf and how much you have to pay for it. That’s not a normal way to think about the economy. But what drives the industry to care about nonprofits is that we are the people on their medications that they can never get in touch with legally. So they have to develop the advocacy budget programs thanks to the Sunshine Act that allow them to have less influence over decision making but a loophole through to the people on their medications and pipeline. So they’re desperate to throw advocacy money at nonprofits in the hopes that the nonprofits will tell your community about these disease state awareness that are non branded websites and all these other things because they can’t directly get to the patients. So that’s stupid cancer. at one point we had in the heyday, we had maybe a half a million people on facebook and maybe 100,000 people on the mailing list. This is before text and twitter and Tiktok and all that. All that matters

[00:11:45.76] spk_0:
is roughly what years are we talking about? It’s important for context.

[00:11:48.50] spk_1:
2010, 11, 12,

[00:11:52.18] spk_0:
maybe

[00:11:54.54] spk_1:
13. Like real like super. What the heck was that? Super cool.

[00:11:58.67] spk_0:
Like like us on facebook and that was just

[00:13:55.14] spk_1:
like us on facebook. We also had live events, you know where we had 20 or 30,000 people coming to our live events every single year. We had a trade show in las Vegas for five days with 1000. So we were, we were swimming in the patients that the pharma companies needed to get to. So they’re like, hey, we would like to talk to your under the breast cancer community. I said great quarter million dollars. What? Well you’re already spending half a million on facebook to get people to care about this drug. Why should you think we’re doing this for free? Well because you’re helping your community and I was like, no, we have a community that’s huge because people pay us so show what is it that no dough no show was the absolute end all be all binary transaction of stupid cancer which put us in a very different value space. Then the other nonprofits which are like sure take all these people will tell them all about this for free when they’re so undermining their own like you said their own value, you are worth something. So then farmer got smart and other groups cropped up that became these middle groups, these registries and these patients like me and Snow company, We go health inspired health union and they do a great job aggregating communities and therefore profits. But most of these people are still part of nonprofit organizations. So then they’re the ones going to the nonprofit saying, hey, encourage your community to join ours so we can sell these people to pharma and you are left holding the bag and then the non pro sure. Hey people, everyone go join this platform now. So you can tell farmers how much you hate them or like them or whatever it is. But the model is still the same. The nonprofits are not basically monetizing the opportunity to data mine their community when they built all the sweat equity to create in the first place to

[00:14:11.44] spk_0:
create, You created this vast community. You’ve got to take a step back and and recognize its value to tell people you’re trying to invite in people, people who want him,

[00:15:12.44] spk_1:
right. I mean a lot of this goes back to what we used to call. Trust culture, nonprofits are the place you go because you trust the community. It’s peer to peer. It’s life hacking. It’s, it’s, I’m not alone anymore. It’s mental health support of psychosocial support all the evidence over the last 15 years, points to that patients are getting more value in decision making and mental health improvement by talking to people like them and not the doctors. So it’s natural that the farmer companies want to build, you know, better drug pipelines or better clinical trial engagements or better disease state awareness programs are better than non branded websites, but they can’t do it without the patients. You know, how many farmer conferences are all about healthcare and patient access and blah, blah, blah. And then that’s not a single patient there or a single nonprofit there. They won’t pay the nonprofits to show up. They expect us to apply to exhibit For $5,000. How fair is that? Where you need the nonprofits at the patient conference with no patients nor do you want the patients to come and talk on the stages tokens and not even pay them.

[00:15:25.64] spk_0:
Okay,

[00:15:26.74] spk_1:
Am I ranting enough?

[00:15:28.64] spk_0:
You’re, you’re, you’re doing a good job. Yeah, the passion is there the zeal is there? Absolutely. Um if you would look, if you were flat, I would have turned your mic off five minutes, 10 minutes

[00:15:36.62] spk_1:
ago.

[00:16:36.94] spk_0:
Um, let’s, I understand your background is healthcare and you’re still, you’re, you’ve, you’ve got uh, the number one podcast in healthcare. I’m gonna challenge you to take this out of the healthcare realm for the benefit of our listeners who don’t work in healthcare. They don’t have a patient population or a family supporting population. They may have a a dog loving population or uh, a well loving population. So let’s, let’s let’s get folks to take a step back and value what their assets are that are appealing not only to companies if you you make the case strongly about, uh, well pharmaceutical companies in particular, but we can broaden that to potential corporate supporters, but also value to, uh, individual individual donor investors. So can we start to talk about, you know, take a step back and recognize what your value is to your supporter communities?

[00:18:54.94] spk_1:
Yeah, I I think if we separate the consumer health nonprofit universe with everything else, it’s a different beast. It’s a very different beast. It’s also a lot easier to quantify impact when you’re out of healthcare than when you’re in healthcare. And I look towards, you know, doctors without borders, habitat for humanity. Um, you know, charity water, you can really your money makes this well, your money build this house, your money sends this doctor, your money fixes that cleft palate. It’s a lot easier in terms of showing donors exactly where their money, individual donors where their money goes. So my perception is that I’m not gonna say easier, but also easier with like an asterisk attached to it. Most donors in the healthcare space are there because they’ve been personally affected because healthcare fell on them too. And they want to be there to support the nonprofit they care about because whatever they’re doing is helping me feel better because I’m somehow knowing someone else is helping being helped these many more women get mammograms are these many more these more communities get access to care or this is improving mental health and Children or whatever, whatever, whatever. But there’s a different dogmatic principle in tange ability of donor relations outside of the healthcare space. You know, the A. S. P. C. A. For example, here’s how many dogs you can help. You know, the all the Sarah McLachlan commercials, like, here’s exactly the jerry lewis telethons. We can assign a mental value in our head to knowing this dollar helps this thing. It’s less esoteric than healthcare. So with that said, you know, there are still the pitfalls of most nonprofits never break over $50,000. Most people still start them based on passion projects without doing any research into understanding it’s still a business, It’s still a C. Corp it just has a tax status. You still need a board, you need an audit, you need insurance, you have to have payroll, you can’t pay yourself, there’s all these red flags when you do. You’re a million things that go into like learn what you’re getting yourself into without the passion horse blinders on because you want to get it done because no one else is.

[00:19:39.04] spk_0:
Yeah. Well, alright. Yes. And and um our listeners are past that though. You know, they’ve they’re already in nonprofits. Um, and I know I’ve heard you on some other interviews talk about, uh, I guess you pretty much despised people who do what you did. You know, start a nonprofit with without, with, with the blinders on without knowing what you’re going into it. What, what the expectations are, what the, what the compliance requirements are, what the fundraising requirements are with the board requirements are state law, federal law. Um, you’re, you’re down on people who did what you did. So, so like it was fine for you. But you know, don’t, you know what I

[00:20:26.04] spk_1:
am an accidental success because I approached it very differently. I went in knowing firsthand this is going to be a commercial brand. This is going to have products and services, e commerce stunts, uh, commoditized assets, a brand halo effect hitting consumer markets on what used to be called, cause marketing dollars, I, I did not ever want to walk in and beg for change. Um, but I am a rare case study because I did approach it from a very antithetical. Having no idea what I was doing on purpose versus, and it’s not an equal or an either or Annapolis oranges not doing the research and advance of what it’s going to take to accomplish what goal by doing this.

[00:22:49.74] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. Please be taking care of yourself. I just had my annual wellness visit, which used to be called annual physical, somewhere along the line. Uh, when I guess around the time that toilet paper became bathroom tissue. Uh, annual physicals became wellness visits. So I had my annual wellness visit very recently within the past week and basically it was keep doing what you’re doing. So that’s very good news. I hope you are doing things that you should keep doing are you? So I’m encouraging you to uh, take care of yourself right things like getting enough sleep, eating well. However, however you define well, you know, being scrupulous about what you eat right, the work life balance. It’s true of course work and life are so inextricably intertwined now because so much of work is done from home. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t or can’t be proper balance just because they’re inextricably intertwined. Doesn’t mean you can’t be balancing them spending not too much time at work doing the work wherever you’re doing it from. Uh, and not enough time taking care of yourself. Right time alone. You know, I’m a big advocate of that. If you’ve been listening for a long time, you know, a big advocate of time alone. Restful time, right time with family, with your deer, with those dear Children, grandchildren, all of this. All of this is the work life balance and bigger than that. I hope you’re generally taking care of yourself. So that when you have your next annual wellness visit, your doctor will tell you keep doing what you’re doing That is Tony’s take two we’ve got but loads more time for don’t work for free with Matthew Zachary. You mentioned brand equity.

[00:22:52.54] spk_1:
That’s

[00:23:17.14] spk_0:
something that all nonprofits have in common. You know, encouraging our listeners to think about what the, the value of your brand is in your community. However you define community, it might be your local community, it might be your state, it might be the environment, all, all air breathing mammals, might be your community. But you know, however you define it, you know, uh, you know, Matthew, you’re, you’re talking about brand equity. Brand value. What,

[00:23:24.36] spk_1:
what, what, what,

[00:23:25.38] spk_0:
what’s the value of that to, to outsiders who you’re trying to encourage to invest?

[00:23:31.54] spk_1:
Well, I mean investing versus donors that we’re talking about.

[00:23:57.84] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah. I’m, I’m taking it out of individual donors now. Yeah. I mean there are people who believe, you know, that what I do to the individual donating is investing. But I’m talking more about, you know, outside outside support, uh, corporate corporate support. There’s, there’s, there’s value in your brand. And I’m just, I’m, I would like listeners to recognize that, you know,

[00:25:50.44] spk_1:
There’s like there’s 30 ways to enter that with 30 other permutations. So I guess I’ll start with you know, brand equity is defined as how a customer feels good about their purchase and why they are repeat customers and the value they get by involving themselves in that brand experience. Apple target. Mcdonald’s whatever it is the brand is there, it’s nice. You’re used to, It gives you comfort. There’s a psychological benefit. There’s a retail confirmation bias that’s basically the DNA behind brand equity and many nonprofits don’t have that. They have a mission statement. They may have a logo or may have a, you know, some cleverly designed kitschy thing, you know, on a marquee somewhere most don’t, and that’s fine. But I’m gonna go out on a limb and say most people who discover a value of associating with a non profit that they care about. We’ll have nothing to do with their logo or their name. It’s what they do, um, on the, I would say the consumer brand, retail CPG corporate side of why they would underwrite something. There’s always an ulterior motive about what’s mission aligned with their quote unquote pillars, right? And sometimes they just don’t align. Or sometimes when you’re the Ford Foundation, everyone submits a grant for $40,000 and they get a million grants and they can only give four. So there’s a massive conundrum in, in where businesses would align with a nonprofit organization versus like a local business. You know, a lot of these golf outings are phenomenal, but they’re underwritten by a local deli for 50 grand and that’s great. So it depends on how you want to skin the cat in terms of what’s going to get that business to get behind that charity

[00:26:09.44] spk_0:
that counts. The totally the local deli sponsoring recognizes that you have credibility in the community and they want your name. And so you just don’t want to, we want to not undervalue the credibility that we are lending to our investing partners,

[00:26:15.64] spk_1:
but they also want people going to the golf tournament to buy sandwiches at that deli. Yeah.

[00:26:17.34] spk_0:
You mentioned, you mentioned CPG. What is that?

[00:26:19.82] spk_1:
Please? Oh sorry jargon. Consumer packaged goods services. Oh

[00:26:40.54] spk_0:
my God, I would never have gotten that one consumer. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So you know, so when you go to, when, when you go to companies and I don’t care if it’s the local deli or it’s, you mentioned ford, I’ll say the local ford dealership for ford motor company International. You know, you want to, you want to be conscious of the value that you’re bringing to the, to the conversation.

[00:27:35.54] spk_1:
Alright. I’m gonna go back to what I said before, which is, if you can highly quantify where your dollar goes and you could show that, you know that dog or that house or that park you want to renovate or that sick kid. Yeah, you’re gonna have direct community impact. It’s a lot easier to build the communities around the smaller groups. But when you get to the bigger groups, you know, people are going to discover them based on where they, where they find their interests if they’re advertising. If you see them on tv, if you’re invited by someone to go to one of their events and oftentimes there is a bit of a superficiality where I want to be associated with habitat humanity. I want to give them a lot of money. So they put me on their board of directors, I need that thing. And so there’s a, there’s a huge psychology That split seven ways from Sunday on what drives I would say the american psycho psychology to get involved with a nonprofit that they themselves are not directly filling with.

[00:27:42.54] spk_0:
That’s interesting. Let’s say a little more about that.

[00:28:06.54] spk_1:
Well, I mean, again, it just goes back to kind of ego and halo and why does this person want, you know, this leaf at the synagogue or this wing of the hospital or you know, I want to be on the board of, you know, the cystic Fibrosis Foundation because it looks good on linkedin and my cousins, cousins, cousins had this, there, there’s all different, you know, intentions and something, nothing malignant in terms of wanting to do this. But we talked about like how people see value in the non profits, but also how the nonprofits express their value to sponsors, donors and, and, and stakeholders.

[00:28:22.24] spk_0:
Right. And, and a lot of that expression is through the, the impact of the work that you’re doing

[00:28:26.84] spk_1:
right, which goes back to how anything else out of healthcare has a different way to express impact.

[00:29:01.34] spk_0:
Different, not, not, not insurmountable. Uh, you know, we, we mentioned animal shelters maybe before the shelter open. We just had just had a guest last week or the week before, before the shelter opened, there was a 98% kill rate of, of dogs and cats that were, that were found that were, that were, that were given to given over to a government agency, a nonprofit took over that work. Uh, and now they’ve turned it on their head. We’re only 8%, it’s an 8% kill rate and 92 adoption rate. I

[00:29:02.76] spk_1:
would donate to that place tomorrow. That’s yeah. I mean who wants dying pets? No one wants dying. Right.

[00:29:21.54] spk_0:
Right. So it’s, it’s, it’s doable by the way, if you want to give the charity’s barks, uh, Baltimore animal rescue and care shelter Baltimore Maryland. A little shout out to a guest with last week’s castro, the guest before Joanne Goldberger. Uh, I’m sorry. Um, am I offending the, am I offending you by mentioning another guest? No, I don’t think,

[00:29:28.43] spk_1:
you

[00:29:29.05] spk_0:
know, here he goes. Not, not damaged. Right? You’re okay.

[00:29:33.09] spk_1:
Not right now. No.

[00:29:34.12] spk_0:
Give a little shout out to a past guest because because an overlap. So this

[00:30:05.84] spk_1:
goes back to the shared economy of non profiteers. We are all doing our best. I also, you know, I’m sure this is still the case. It still is largely in cancer. There’s a certain degree of territoriality that goes to a lot of the nonprofits anywhere in the country in any specific mission where I can do it better than these people. And these hydro groups. These splinter groups that you’re not doing it the way I would want it to get done. So, you know, I’m not going to work with you to better this nonprofit, I’m gonna start my own thing. And you know, I think that in fighting and territoriality that’s ego driven and that doesn’t help anybody.

[00:30:22.94] spk_0:
The shared economy of non profiteers. That’s interesting.

[00:30:55.54] spk_1:
It’s community organizing, its community wisdom. It’s, it’s how do we learn from each other? Because there’s, I mean irrespective of mission and impact and there’s a fundamental horizontal line on how to do it well and things to just not do and just like peer to peer support in any community. There’s professional, peer to peer support in nonprofit leadership. All

[00:31:18.44] spk_0:
right. Um what do you feel like? I haven’t, I haven’t asked you about it, we haven’t talked about that’s related to recognizing your value as a, as an institution, as a business uh, to, to in to those you’re trying to encourage to invest in the business. What what what what what what more do you want to say about recognizing the value.

[00:31:45.74] spk_1:
It takes a business sense to identify what your value is. You can’t really allow someone to tell you what that is, but you can observe why people are invested in giving to what you do, but you’re the steward of your own brand, You invented this, you started this, you didn’t get hired by this company. It’s your thing. Why should people care about you that is your determinants of value to express to the communities that you’re asking to support you.

[00:31:52.34] spk_0:
Matthew Zachary,

[00:31:53.94] spk_1:
Yes,

[00:31:54.94] spk_0:
bless you.

[00:31:57.58] spk_1:
Matthew

[00:32:02.74] spk_0:
Zachary. Matthews Zachary dot com And at Matthew Zachary, thanks very much for sharing your ideas.

[00:32:09.84] spk_1:
I appreciate being here tony Thank you very much and thank you to all all of our listeners for chiming in. It’s

[00:33:12.04] spk_0:
very thoughtful of you. Next week we’ll continue the corporate partnership discussion with specific strategies with chris Barlow. When he returns if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy. And this music is by scott stein of Brooklyn new york. Thank you for that. Affirmation scotty Be with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95 well and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 5, 2020: SEO For Your Fundraising Campaign & Rebrand Vs. Refresh

My Guests:

Michelle Frechette & Amanda Gorman: SEO For Your Fundraising Campaign

Our 20NTC panel helps you build your online community and increase engagement with 3 SEO strategies: keywords research; competitor analysis; and, content writing. They’re Michelle Frechette and Amanda Gorman, both from GiveWP.

 

 

 

 

Yvette Scorse, Christopher Wallace, Taylor Shanklin & Serrie Fung: Rebrand Vs. Refresh

Which is better for you, rebranding or refreshing your brand? Our final 20NTC panel helps you choose, then shares the case study of Byte Back and reveals strategies for getting the buy-in you’ll need for success. They’re Yvette Scorse and Christopher Wallace from Byte Back; Taylor Shanklin at Firefly Partners; and, Serrie Fung, founder of Zest.

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Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:02:30.54] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with Ikaria if you irritated me with the idea that you missed today’s show s CEO for your fundraising campaign. Our 20 NTC panel helps you build your online community and increase engagement with three S c o strategies, keywords, research competitors, er analysis and content rating. They’re Michelle Frechette and Amanda Gorman, both from give W P and rebrand versus Refresh, which is better for you re branding or refreshing your brand. Our final 20 NTC panel helps you choose, then shares the case study of bite back and reveals strategies for getting the buy in. You’ll need for success. They’re Evette Scores and Christopher Wallace from Bite Back Taylor Shanklin at Firefly Partners and Sorry Fung, founder of Zest Antonis, take two planned giving accelerator were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo and by dot drives raise more money, changed more lives tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant for a free demo and free month Here is our 20 NTC penultimate panel. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC. That’s a 2020 non profit technology conference. The conference regrettably had to be canceled, but non profit radio is persevering, of course. Virtually 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. With me now are Michelle Frechette and Amanda Gorman. They are both with give. W. P. Shell is head of customer success, and Amanda is customer success manager Shell and Amanda. Welcome.

[00:02:32.44] spk_1:
Thanks for having us

[00:02:54.94] spk_0:
the pleasure. Thank you. I’m glad we were able to put this all together. The three of us. Thank you, Andi. It’s good to know that each of you is well and safe both in Rochester. Alright, Alright. Um, you’re 20. NTC topic is three s CEO strategies for optimizing your fundraising campaign. Um, Michelle, why don’t you start us off? What? Why did you feel a need? Thio have this workshop?

[00:03:01.64] spk_1:
Sure. So you know, we work with nonprofits all day, every day, helping them do fundraising. And Amanda’s area of expertise outside of working with nonprofits, is actually, um, s CEO. And so it was just a natural, um, natural thing for her to want to help, uh, people’s organizations be found on the web, especially so that they can collect donations.

[00:03:24.87] spk_0:
Okay. Um, Amanda What? What? Air Nonprofits Not getting so right about the S e O That that we needed this this session.

[00:03:35.14] spk_1:
Looks like a man has just lost her connection.

[00:03:37.34] spk_0:
Yeah, Amanda did. She’s back. Okay, there she is. Your back Amanda

[00:03:41.98] spk_2:
back. I’m sorry. My Internet just decided to kick me out first.

[00:03:45.54] spk_0:
Okay. That’s why I had to cancel the session earlier. I lost it for too long, and I had a whole bunch of them back to back. Um, did you hear? Did you hear what I was asking you? Why? What air? Non profit. Really not getting right with S e O. That that we We needed this session.

[00:04:00.84] spk_2:
Yes. Yes. And Michelle, did you already give your answer?

[00:04:09.44] spk_1:
Yeah, I already talked a little bit, but But, you know, what are they doing wrong? Or they missing the mark on is really for you,

[00:04:09.88] spk_2:
right? Right. Absolutely.

[00:04:11.83] spk_1:
So there’s a couple of things

[00:04:13.18] spk_2:
that we we definitely see and just in my experience, working with a lot of our customers and working with kind of my own intention of starting on non profit and getting excited about that kind of looking at what is out there and what I am saying in the gaps is just like we get really excited about producing a campaign and kind of jump a lot of steps of just getting things started to start raising money. But we don’t necessarily look at the initial steps that should be thought about before the campaign actually hits the page. So what should the content look like? What kind of people are we actually hoping? Engage with us? What are our expectations for those people and how are they going to feel while engaging with our brand or company or organization? I think some more thought needs to be done with all of that before just kind of putting something on the website s o. I try to slow it down a little bit and really get careful about the messaging. Really? Get careful about exactly what we’re trying to communicate on. That all starts with, you know, keyword research and ah, lot of other strategies,

[00:05:43.94] spk_0:
which which we’re gonna get into. We have time. Eso You’re the troublemaker, Like people want to get, like, you just Can we just start the campaign, You know, way, you know, why do we have to have mawr ground work We’ve already done. You know, we’ve talked to our key stakeholders, and we’ve got me first dozen donors lined up and and we’ve We’ve got messaging out, you know? So you wanna lay more groundwork? Yes. Yeah, For success. So you have better outcomes. Of course.

[00:05:47.41] spk_1:
Sometimes you hear that people say to us, you know, I built a website and I have a fundraising page, but we’re not raising any money. And so it’s not like the field of dreams, right? You don’t just build it and they show up. There’s a lot of work that goes into driving people to your donation page

[00:06:34.94] spk_0:
where we should have learned that with first with websites on, then with blog’s and then with podcasts. You know, you don’t just put it out and people come to it. You should have. We should have learned this lesson by now. All right, way. Haven’t Yeah, not. Not satisfactorily. Not all right, um All right, so let’s Let’s stay with you, Michelle. You have three principles of building the online community. Uh, be intentional, aware on build trust. It sounds like most of the most of the time will be spent with the three s e o strategies. So but just can we go through the The three principles of building kind of quickly is that I have That

[00:06:42.56] spk_1:
s so you know, the way that Amanda and I have kind of structure is it’s like building a garden. You can’t just throw the seeds in the yard and expect that you’re gonna have a beautiful garden at the end. You have It has to be intentional. You have to, you know, turn the soil. You have to plant the seeds. You have to water them. You have to tend them. You have to weed things out. Um, you have to decide what you’re planting. Are you planting? Ah, perennial, Are you planting an annual? So do you want these things to continue to grow and continue to come back? Or is it something that’s a one time one time deal? So it really has to be. It has really a lot of those same ideas behind anything that you do and you want to do well, is it has to have those those principles behind it in order for it to flourish.

[00:07:21.24] spk_0:
Okay, Michelle, that’s a particularly apt metaphor for you the garden, because in the background, I see a flowering. I don’t know if those air daisies, uh, in the in the brown frame, but

[00:07:31.76] spk_1:
flower you painted

[00:07:42.14] spk_0:
that. Oh, awesome. All right, all right. They’re flattering. They’re flourishing. So perfect. Perfect metaphor. Um, so be intentional. Be aware. Oh, and build trust, say a little about building trust.

[00:07:47.24] spk_1:
So building trust is super important. But you have to be a kn organization that people want to give money to. So in order for somebody to give you their money, they have to know that it’s going for a good cause. So you have to have put out there be a transparent, uh, you

[00:08:01.12] spk_3:
know, be

[00:08:01.93] spk_1:
intentional. Show where that money is being used. Show how it’s being used. Ah, lot of nonprofits that don’t succeed aren’t necessarily doing anything wrong, but they’re not being transparent and how their money is being spent. And so sometimes people assume because CEO is putting or the director’s lining their pockets, things like that. So with intentional, you know, um and and building trust, it has a lot to do with just making sure that people understand what you’re doing.

[00:08:28.44] spk_0:
And how about be aware, Amanda, What does what does that one mean?

[00:08:33.24] spk_2:
Uh, that kind of really comes down Thio not stopping your efforts after all the great work you’ve done of getting your campaign out there but continuing to be aware of your market, your your industry overall and being an authority in that industry so that you are continuing to update your website your landing page for your campaign. You’re keeping your donors informed. The newsletter by Social Media. You’re making changes to your campaign as things start to change in your goals and whatever else might come your way. Eso really being aware of where you stand and how others air being helped, how you’re helping and how you can really fill in the gap. If there are any gaps out there that you’re aware of,

[00:09:46.74] spk_0:
okay, and all this has to be communicated. Thing is, all part of your messaging right is how you fill the gap where what important role you play exactly. Exactly. Okay. All right. So, Thio, build this online community. You have. You have 33 seo strategies. Eso keyword research, competition and competitive analysis and content writing. You wanna you wanna kick us off with keyword research? What?

[00:09:51.94] spk_2:
Yeah,

[00:09:52.53] spk_0:
but how? This relates to the groundwork we gotta lay beforehand.

[00:09:56.64] spk_2:
Absolutely. So keyword research is always a great place to start for N E S C o strategy, but especially for our nonprofits. We want to make sure that we get a really good understanding of what our goals are right from the beginning. And that has to do with keyword research Because N E S C o campaign, it isn’t a campaign for ASIO without keywords, right? We have to be able to know what keepers we want to show up for in search s so that we can connect with our ideal customers or are ideal clients in that way. So keyword research for me is this kind of going with the metaphor of the garden is this idea of planting seeds. So we’re starting with those little seed keywords. We’re putting them in the ground and kind of burying them with a bunch of fertile soil and then hoping that they grow into something really excellent for our campaigns. Eso specifically using a lot of tools, uh, to access keywords on the Web. I have a lot of free tools that I utilize. Um, so just Google itself, using the Google, suggest bar where you just type in your ideal keyword and then seeing the suggested key words that come up when you search in any keyword. That’s a great place just to get some ideas. If you’re stuck or you just don’t know what keywords could be related to your topic s. Oh, that’s a really great way to see what people are actually searching. And then thio kind of go from there to develop your content and toe, understand how your best going toe, You know, find yourself in search.

[00:11:24.04] spk_0:
Is there another free tool that you can shout out?

[00:11:27.24] spk_2:
Yeah, mas dot com has ah free keyword tool. I m o z m o z dot com. They could do have some free tools that you can use just to get some quick searches out there for your a topic that you’re looking for. The Google trends uh, tool on Google also is a great one to check out. And just Google keyword planner, Uh, that’s a free tool. You do have to have an ADWORDS account, but you don’t have to run any ads with Google in orderto use that tool, and you can search for keywords. You can see the competitors, er analysis for all those, as in terms of how many clicks they’re getting or how much people are bidding on those keywords in ad words. But again, you don’t need to use or spend any money on ads in order to see that information

[00:12:20.89] spk_0:
to get get the value of the of the keyword research you don’t have. Right,

[00:12:21.77] spk_2:
right? If

[00:12:22.64] spk_1:
you do

[00:12:23.20] spk_2:
run an ad, you would get more detailed research. You’d be able to get specifics about exact dollar amounts as to what is being spent. But in the free version, you just kind of get an estimate of low medium high. What somebody is spending on a particular keywords so you can kind of gauge for yourself. Is this worth going after or is this something people are paying for ads on And I don’t wanna waste my time here if I’m not going to spend ads myself.

[00:12:50.84] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Michelle, can you tell us about competitive analysis? Which to me, sounds like some kind of corporate espionage

[00:13:32.64] spk_1:
work. It’s not so much corporate benchmarking, right? Taking a look at what is what is your competition doing? So, um, you know, non profit don’t compete in the same way that for profit organizations do. They’re not selling widgets, for example. But they’re competing for those discretionary dollars that people are looking to spend, um, via donations. And so it’s important to look at other organizations that are similar to yours, See what they’re doing. Look at their content. Look a TTE how they structured their There you are Else. Take a look at all of the different things that go into play a SZ faras how they’re putting themselves on the web, search for them. See what kind of search using search terms that you think they might be using and see what comes up on. Do you know you can’t really just call them up and say, Hey, what keywords are you using? Because, you know, that’s kind of your little secret, but you can. There’s a lot you still can do as far as, um, you know, using Google to find things and then also just looking at their website and looking at the way they formatted. They’re blogged looking at their donation page there about us Page and things like that and how they structured all their content.

[00:14:01.06] spk_0:
Okay. And, um, you said, And I think you said benchmarking. But you can also use all that competitive information to distinguish yourself. Sure, if there’s a niche, you’re you’re tryingto fit into that, they don’t do. You can? Yeah, Like I said, distinguish yourself. I’m not sure how you would do that, though.

[00:14:24.45] spk_1:
Well, for example, there’s e think there’s 14 dog shelters in our county here outside of Rochester, you know, And so $14 or animal shelters? Um, some of them are no kill shelters. So if if you have half of them are kill shelters and half of them are no kill shelters. You wanna make sure to use words that people are searching for specifically, so can you distinguish yourself is a no kill shelter? Can you distinguish yourself? A zone organization that fosters out pets is not just keeps them engages in your own in your own space. So there are different things that you can do by looking at your competition in your area to make sure that what you’re doing might be different and how you can distinguish yourself. That way.

[00:15:53.54] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Last week I told you a friend got a long quote in Business Insider magazine. It was beautiful. I asked him how he landed it because he had a relationship with the journalist. Longstanding relationship. The writer called my friend when he needed someone with recruiting expertise. Turn Two will help you build journalist relationships like that so solid that journalists are calling you. They specialize in working with nonprofits. One of the partners, Peter Pan A. Pento, was an editor at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. They’re at turn hyphen two dot ceo now back to S. C. O for your fundraising campaign. Also,

[00:15:54.02] spk_2:
when it comes to the content that you’re writing, I just wanna add that you’re really in terms of S C o U. You wanna earn those clicks, right? So the more content you have on your website relating to your service is but also relating to just things that you’re passionate about, things in your community that your followers are really at attuned to. What can you write that’s going thio connect with them more deeply than maybe some of those competitors are. What are people not talking about? That you want to talk about in your space that you find is important?

[00:16:27.24] spk_0:
Okay, okay. And that was that was the third strategy. Content writing eyes. Anything more You wanna, either if you want to add about about

[00:16:34.90] spk_1:
that, it was like I got this a

[00:16:37.75] spk_0:
lot more. Yeah, please.

[00:16:38.67] spk_2:
Yeah. I

[00:16:39.73] spk_1:
mean, when it comes

[00:16:40.47] spk_2:
to content rating, it’s that’s kind of the end result for your strategy, of course, with those keywords planning Ah, the competitors research and then actually getting content on there on your website, that is, or your landing page for your campaign. It’s all about connecting with your audience and doing so again and again and again. Eso providing value is really what the content is all about. It’s not necessarily just I want to get clicks. I wanna provide value. I wanna be there for my community and provide them with a place to get authority of information, and I mean in information with integrity, something that they can trust and that they can lean on to come back to for fax. Being an advocate in your community, for research to be a deliver of information, especially as a non profit, can become a really awesome way to connect with your community. If there’s a study that’s been done in your industry that no one’s written about yet, something that has a lot of data and numbers that you can put into some context for your community to better understand, that’s going to really build trust in your community. And that’s all done through the way that you write your content.

[00:18:01.04] spk_0:
That’s a long term process to. That’s not. That’s not something you you throw together because you’re anticipating volunteer campaign in the next six months. Building trust, ability. You know your bona fides wherever you want to describe it. That takes time,

[00:18:07.34] spk_2:
absolutely, and

[00:18:08.55] spk_0:
it takes

[00:18:09.34] spk_2:
dedication because it it is hard work and typically a block post that I see that rank in Google because there are so much content coming out. There’s so many block posts being released every single minute of every day. It has toe have your blood, sweat and tears in it. You’ve really gotta put your energy into writing a piece of content that’s going to get shared, and that’s going to get some love on it. On social media and just from your community, however, you’re sharing it. Eso really putting in the time and effort to know what’s already out there and what you can do better is where you could really distinguish yourself.

[00:18:46.14] spk_6:
A

[00:18:47.31] spk_1:
lot of, ah lot of non profit don’t even have blog’s. You know, I would say anecdotally, probably, you know, less than half of what we see on a regular basis are building regular content, um, new content onto their websites. So, you know, just getting the block and getting it going is half the staff is half the process. But following the steps for S e. O. Is going to take that even the next level.

[00:19:09.54] spk_0:
Okay, um, since you both give W p. Michelle and you’re the you’re the head of customer success, what’s give W P about you couldn’t explain a little bit.

[00:19:18.72] spk_1:
So give w P. Is WordPress is a WordPress plug in, and what we do is we build dynamic donations pages for people so they can use our software to make a really, truly dynamic donation page for their website. You can build in all those keywords and and do a lot of content on their images. Video text for sure. And then we have a suite of add ons that give you additional functionality. So recurring donations, you know, few recovery tributes, functions things like that.

[00:19:47.54] spk_0:
Okay, so W p is the WordPress now Western Pennsylvania.

[00:19:54.75] spk_1:
Correct. Were a little bar global. Okay.

[00:20:04.54] spk_0:
I knew it wasn’t Western Pennsylvania when you told me you both in Rochester. So, uh, okay, WordPress Alright. Um, okay. Uh, we we’ve I mean you pretty much. We’ve covered your three principles of building and the three Seo strategies. Um, who wants toe leave us with some parting thoughts.

[00:20:16.64] spk_1:
Go ahead, Amanda.

[00:20:28.34] spk_2:
Eso eso gracious. Thank you. Yeah, s Oh, thank u s o. All of this is to again build that community, right? So it can be a little dangerous at first when you’re approaching SDO strategy to kind of get lost. And I need x y z toe happen. I need so many clicks. I need this kind of engagement for my campaign to be successful. Uh, I think it’s more important. Thio. Measure your success by the way you’re providing value and to keep at it. And if your timeline that you’ve originally set yourself up with isn’t necessarily met, adjust it. Make changes, return to the start of your keyword research. Go back through the competitors er research, and then start writing content in a different way, doing a B testing or whatever you can do within your markets. Thio produce content in different ways and test and see what works best is really important and to not get discouraged because as long as you’re producing and you’re providing value, that’s what’s really going to be important for your community in relying on your community to ask questions and Thio engage with you and to help you be better is something that should definitely be leaned on.

[00:21:42.74] spk_0:
Okay, be willing to listen. Yes, yeah, yeah, both from Rochester, New York that was Amanda Gorman, customer success manager. It give W P and Michelle Frechette head of customer success, give w P on Michelle Amanda, Thank you very much. Thanks so much for sharing.

[00:21:59.04] spk_1:
Thanks for having us.

[00:24:35.84] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure Thank you. Thank you. Stay safe and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC 2020 non profit technology Conference sponsored there, here, everywhere by Cougar Mountain Software. Thanks so much for being with us. It’s time for Tony’s Take two planned giving accelerator. It’s a brain dump. I’m gonna teach you everything I know about getting your plan giving program started in 2021. I’m going to do live trainings, which, of course, will be recorded for those who can’t make it live. Ask me anything. Sessions, exclusive podcasts. There’ll be a Facebook community all exclusive for members of planned giving accelerator. You’re gonna get your plan giving program started in 2021. We’re gonna identify the top prospects and the Tier two prospects. We’re gonna get the promotions started. We’re gonna develop a solicitor cultivation and solicitation plan for your top prospects. We’ll get the wider spread promotions, go out and going. I’m gonna help you reply. Answer those replies. You reply back. Thio requests for information. I’m gonna show you what to do. When folks tell you that they’ve included you in their wills. We’re gonna get you started I’m gonna get you started and we’ll get Yeah, we were gonna get started as a community going together. I’m leaving it. I’ll teach you everything I know. It’s all the info that you need. Is that planned giving accelerator dot com. I hope you’re gonna join me. We’re gonna kick this off in 2021. This being your plan? Giving program planned giving accelerator dot com. That is tony Steak too. It’s time for rebrand versus Refresh. Our last final ultimate panel from 20 and TC. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC 2020. Non profit Technology Conference sponsored A 20 NTC by Cougar Mountain Software. My guest now are Evette Scores Christopher Wallace, Taylor Shanklin and sorry Fung. If that is communications director and bite back Christopher is also a bite back. He’s development director there. Taylor Shanklin is vice president of growth at Firefly Partners. And sorry is founder, branding and communications strategist at zest. All right, everybody welcome. Welcome to each of you. I

[00:24:38.93] spk_3:
tony. Hey there.

[00:24:40.74] spk_4:
Thanks for having us.

[00:25:04.14] spk_0:
Yes, I’m glad. Thank you. I’m glad we’re able to work this out virtually. And I know that you’re each well and safe in your respective places throughout the country. So I’m glad you’re 20. NTC Topic is brand new rebranding that will literally pay off event. Let’s start with you. What? What are nonprofits not getting quite right? Why did you Why did you all feel you needed this session? That’s a better way to put it.

[00:25:10.84] spk_1:
That’s a great

[00:26:01.34] spk_4:
question. I think there, of course, a lot of non profits are re branding and looking at that for us at bite back. We’re quite a small non profit were founded in 1997. So our branding really wasn’t matching up with our values the way we we’re communicating and the audience is that we wanted to attract where a tech organization and our reputation was kind of a ZX teaching older ladies how Thio use a mouse, how to type in the public libraries here, which is great work. And it’s work that we dio Um but we also needed to incorporate the really important tech training that we did that we still do Thio help people get careers that use technology. Eso For us, it was a matter of having our branding really match what we were doing in our work.

[00:26:06.94] spk_0:
Okay, s so that was a rebranding versus Ah, refresh, right?

[00:26:11.84] spk_4:
Yes, that’s right.

[00:26:23.44] spk_0:
Who’s the? Who’s the best person? Toe? Answer the question. What’s the difference between a refresh and rebrand? And how do you know which is best for your organization? Who? A tailor. You wanna talk about that?

[00:26:27.04] spk_1:
Yeah, sure. I

[00:26:27.74] spk_5:
mean, I’ve done everything under the sun in terms of rebranded and refreshing e, I think. Here’s how I think it I think about a refresh as sort of like a light rebranding. Right? Maybe you’re swapping out the logo a little bit or changing colors or coming up with a new tagline. But most of the things they’re staying the same. I think of a rebranding, Morris, something where you are going all in to say, What is it that we want people to always think about when they when they think about our organization and what’s that first impression we’re making? And we’re going to get at a real overhaul. So you might completely redo the logo. You might completely radio. Um, you know all of your assets and you know, color schemes and things like that. So I think there’s a lot that can go into it. Um, a refresh could be a good starting point for some organizations who maybe are not yet quite there and ready to go through a full rebranding when you’re thinking about all of the costs and things like that that come from it. So that’s a little bit of my perspective. I’d be interested to hear what some of the others here think about the differences between the two.

[00:28:20.64] spk_3:
I think sometimes it’s a little bit hard to tell whether you need a refresh or rebrand when you’re just kind of asking that that question of where our organization needs to grow. Um, so one of the organizations that I used to work for in Hong Kong, we felt like we just needed a refresh. We said We just need to kind of tweak the mission statement because I don’t think it’s quite sitting right. What ended up happening was, um, as we started asking the questions of what’s not right about this, what’s what. How are other people seeing our organization? We actually realized we needed to revisit the vision, the mission. We redid the logo. We redid our brand colors like and that was not where we thought we would end up. We thought we were just tweaking a couple of words. Um, so I You know, obviously this is this is also dependent on how much budget you have, how much capacity your team has. Um, but I’d say that it’s a little bit hard to know when you’re just starting the process.

[00:28:40.52] spk_0:
Okay, So is this a little bit of a cautionary tale that this thing can? Can Raval unravel out of control?

[00:28:46.74] spk_3:
It absolutely can

[00:28:48.54] spk_0:
boundary put boundaries around it.

[00:28:50.54] spk_3:
It absolutely can. But also, you know, you don’t have to do everything at once just because you know that eventually your organization needs to be in a state where you have rebranded, you can take smaller steps. Now, you know, we could have started with saying, OK, let’s let’s just tweak a little bit and then we’re going to keep keep working on it. Yeah, so it could be like,

[00:29:13.99] spk_5:
you know, let’s just risk in our website a little bit, and that’s a refresh versus Let’s redo our mission statement our values and our logo and our

[00:29:23.85] spk_0:
power

[00:29:24.26] spk_5:
point templates and our website and that’s a rebrand, right.

[00:29:28.14] spk_0:
And? And Christopher, what does this mean for the fundraising at, uh, bite back?

[00:29:34.54] spk_6:
Thanks, tony. Eso for us. We were making a big pivot from 60% government fundraising to trying to get a more sustainable model and approaching corporations and foundations and individuals in a different way. And so it really set us up in a way that we were able to highlight those other things and shared what we’ve been doing in a different way and have that at the forefront of our mission and our values and our activities in a way that people began to see that and see the workforce development and see that we were part of the tech community, not just a small training provider in a public library.

[00:30:03.92] spk_0:
So this was intentional on in your orc that you wanted to diversify revenue. That was that was known going into the rebrand.

[00:30:14.78] spk_6:
Yeah, Absolutely. Was definitely a driving point for us.

[00:30:20.34] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Um, so let’s stay with you, Christopher. What? What do you think organizations should be thinking about or what? Like what? Questions should they answer in advance of either a refresher or rebrand? Or but you could you could make it. You know, you could stick with the rebrand, since that’s what, like Back did.

[00:30:36.94] spk_6:
Yeah, great question as well. And I know my fellow Panelists and go to that even deeper for us to

[00:30:41.99] spk_0:
great questions. Already s all downhill downhill from here. You got a very lackluster host. I’m surprised.

[00:31:09.84] spk_6:
Make the exit. Um, e um, for us. Yet defining the goals up front was really important. And so it was revenue. It was fundraising and thinking about how it was going to impact that, but also how it impacted the participants, that we work within the community, how they would see what we’re doing, how our partners would see us and and making sure that we were able to reflect, um, the values in a different way. So So setting those goals up front and knowing who your stakeholders are, you’ve got to define your stakeholders and who needs to be involved? Um, it is going to be more than just a communications department, um, during the development apartment and finding those before you start, it’s always going to be a key.

[00:31:30.34] spk_0:
Okay, Um did that Anything you wanna add? Thio? Uh, What What bite back was thinking about before you got started?

[00:32:16.04] spk_4:
Yeah, I would add that It was a really important part of our process involving our students who are adults taking our computer training. When at the beginning of the process of kind of looking at a rebrand Andi actually, looking at our mission statement, I brought it to a class of our students, and the language didn’t connect with them. Um, there were clear quotes of saying like, I don’t wanna be called underserved. Like, What does that mean? I don’t relate to that. And that really helped us in the process of getting buy in from leadership and from the board toe, Have that student opinion really tied into our we brand.

[00:32:21.64] spk_0:
So if that where did the process start? Was it between you and Christopher or because you said getting leadership by in So it didn’t start at the very top. Where did the conversation about this project start?

[00:32:33.24] spk_4:
Um, it really started with me. I was looking at our language. Our look on dhe kind of went through the process of getting that buy in and involving other leadership in the conversation and building it out,

[00:32:58.69] spk_0:
okay? And I do want to spend some time. We’ll get Thio getting that, making the case to the CEO, et cetera. Um, let’s see what else Eso taylor? What else? Uh, I guess we’ve kind of exhausted. Like what you should be thinking about. What? About? Do you have advice around finding the right provider to work with for your for your rebrand?

[00:33:12.34] spk_5:
Yeah. I mean, that’s a good question. Um, you

[00:33:15.08] spk_0:
were going from great to good. See that already? I told you that.

[00:33:18.44] spk_5:
Great e don’t know if I can handle this. Those by the

[00:33:21.80] spk_0:
end, by the end of the that was a lousy question, but I’ll do the best I can

[00:33:25.49] spk_5:
with tony. There was an all right question. That was an

[00:33:31.21] spk_0:
all right question. Going downhill very rapidly. Go ahead.

[00:34:08.14] spk_5:
You know, I think you could go through r f P processes. If you want to depend. I think on how much you are doing a refresh, you know, versus a rebrand. Uh, I would say a couple of my tips. Its first. Ask who you ask in your circle. Who you know who’s good. Um, see, if you have a friend and other organizations who have worked with someone to help them and see what that experience was like. I didn’t think if you do go into, like, an R F P process where you’re saying, Hey, I wanna this is what we want, you know, providers. Um, how can you service? I think just being very upfront about your needs is really important. I think a lot of times it’s easy to sort of, like put something put in, r P out there and then not be very specific. I think the more specific you get about your needs and the more authentic and conversational you are about that those needs in that process helps both the organization shopping for provider and the provider who is thinking through how they can best serve that organization.

[00:34:38.04] spk_0:
Sorry, you got some suggestions, like maybe things

[00:34:40.35] spk_2:
I wish

[00:34:41.23] spk_0:
people had thought through or asked before started. They started working with you.

[00:36:10.93] spk_3:
Yeah, so I definitely think well, back to your earlier question about things to think about. I think timing is a really big questions. So one of the first questions I always ask my clients is, Do you have a deadline? And when I say a deadline. I don’t mean in the sense of like, Oh, yeah, we want to get this done by next week. I mean, do you have a major fundraising event coming up? You know, Are you printing? You know, a new annual report anytime soon, because all of those things are major touch points with your clients that, um you would want to get right with your new branding before having those events. You know, the worst thing is, when you have your major gala dinner, your major fundraiser and then two weeks later you say, actually, just kidding. We’ve rebranded. Right? So you really wanna consider consider the timing of it? Um, I would say also in terms of picking, you know, someone Thio help you work on this. Having outside help really, really does help. And I’m not just trying to make a case for, like, all the consultants out there, Um but I think having fresh eyes um, What I found when I was working in house at a non profit was that I was so in it and I was using the language every day. I was using the materials every day that I couldn’t kind of take a step out to see what was wrong with it. Ah, nde, it really took. We were lucky enough to have the support of a pro bono agency. So that’s another consideration. There may be local agencies, advertising agencies or marketing agencies that may want to volunteer their time to support you in this area. On DSO, using that pro bono agency really helped us to get a fresh look on what we had been like struggling through for for a number of years,

[00:37:10.73] spk_0:
time for our last break. Dot drives that drives engagement that drives relationships. Dot drives is a donor pipeline fundraising tool, and it is the simplest one out there. If you want to move the needle on your prospect and donor relationships, get the free demo for listeners. There’s also a free month. You go to the listener landing page at tony dot m. A slash dot We’ve got but loads more time for rebrand versus refresh. Did you do R f p or what was your process at bite back?

[00:37:17.13] spk_4:
I I let it. We had few of resource is like we have fewer resource is then because we didn’t have Chris doing this amazing fundraising work. Eso We spent about $270 at 99 designs and got a new logo, and I did most of the other work. Um, yeah, that that’s about how it happened.

[00:38:17.12] spk_3:
So I definitely think that you need someone internal. So even if you’re gonna find an outside consultant or outside pro bono agency, you need someone in house like event who’s like, really championing it, really driving it forward. Andi, I think the strength of what you did with fight back was that because you did all that research on discovery with your clients, with your donors, etcetera, that you were able to give very clear directions to these graphic designers that you were outsourcing the work thio in order to come up with a logo that actually fits What? You’re what you’re looking for. Yeah, that’s a good

[00:38:18.51] spk_5:
point. I mean of that. I’m glad you brought that up to. I think a rebrand doesn’t necessarily have to be out of your budget. There’s ways to do it. No matter what budget you have, you might have the budget to go out and hire an agency to do this or you might have the budget to freelance it and outsource it. And there’s so many tools that make that easier these days with resource is like 99 designs and fiber and up work. You can get really good work. Um, you know, by using those types of resources to

[00:38:51.92] spk_0:
Christopher, did you end up joining bike back after the after this project? Because there was no development director before then. Uh,

[00:39:00.76] spk_6:
e started just before. Just was in a different role within development department

[00:39:09.42] spk_0:
E. Okay, Um, what do you What do you see? Is the development department contribution, Teoh a rebrand? Yeah,

[00:39:15.92] spk_6:
absolutely. So if raising money and the way you raise money is a part of the goal, then the development department and your donors and key stakeholders, whether that’s individuals or corporations or foundations that you’re already working with, um, getting their opinion and and understanding the way that they see us an organization is going to be really important in that.

[00:39:36.12] spk_0:
So did you survey or focus group or just how did you go about understanding what their perceptions are?

[00:39:44.32] spk_6:
Yeah, Well, we’ve done is pick out like individual, um, stakeholders that we knew would be willing toe talk for, you know, 10 minutes and get opinions and thoughts and and here the way that they do the organization whenever we’ve been through this process.

[00:39:58.72] spk_0:
Okay, So you just did as individual interviews?

[00:40:01.11] spk_6:
Yep. Absolutely.

[00:40:17.31] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Um event. Let’s let’s move Thio Getting the leadership by in. Uh, how did you approach that? You said you were the genesis of the idea. You have to get budget. You have to get time. Um, how did you How did you approach your leadership?

[00:40:22.81] spk_4:
Um, yeah, well, we had a new pretty new executive director at the time. And now our CEO, Elizabeth Lindsey. So a tw the same time that I was thinking about these things that was very much part of her role As she started thinking about the direction of bite back eso It wasn’t too difficult in my case. Thio get the buy in because it was clear we were founded in 1997. Um, our look, our feel our messaging was feeling like it wasn’t moving along with the direction of our work. Eso really We were partners in doing that and moving it along on dhe then as far as getting buy in from staff and board and other stakeholders. I think there are are always people who may be somewhat attached to an old look or a nolde feeling or an old message that you’re distributing. Um, but really, we had most people get on board pretty easily make good contributions as they were involved in the process, and asking them early on made a big difference in that,

[00:41:34.77] spk_0:
too. Sorry. Do you have some advice? Maybe for organizations that are not as unfortunate as if that was a bite back when there might be some reluctance?

[00:41:45.14] spk_3:
Yeah, eso in In the previous case that I was talking about, thankfully, the CEO was on board. However, what we didn’t realize this was a big mistake that we made was that you know, myself and some of the leaders in the organization with this pro bono agency, we kind of like went into a room and we came up with the new brand and then we you know, we just announced it to people and people were horrified. You know, this was a 30 year old organization, and, like Yvette said, people have really emotional connections to the old logo on dhe people. We got all kinds of questions, like, what’s wrong with the old logo? But we love the old logo. Ah, nde. And quickly we said we actually need to explain to people and bring people on board. Eso we

[00:42:36.80] spk_0:
did not. You did not evaluate who? The key stakeholders.

[00:42:39.80] spk_3:
No, we didn’t. We just kind of announced it at a staff meeting

[00:42:43.88] spk_0:
earlier. Okay?

[00:43:01.40] spk_3:
Yeah. And so and so what we did was we developed a a narrative for why we were doing this. We knew why, but we hadn’t told anybody. Why on dso we kind of outlined some of the challenges that we were having with our old branding and why it wasn’t working. Um, and then explain to people like, this is the vision of the next 30 years. This is where we wanna go. And this is why we feel this new vision really articulates not only where we’ve come from, but also where we’re going. Um And then at that point, we then went and did a whole stakeholder mapping on who are major donors who absolutely needs to know. Before we publicly launched the new brand because that was really important for people who had been involved with the organization for a very long time. It was especially important to get them on board. Um, and then one final tip that our agency gave us, which was excellent advice, which was, if you can give people a very small gift with your new branding on it. So we actually just came up with, like, a little bookmark that was very cheap, very cheap to make that we gave all of our donors all of our volunteers on Basically, the agency explained to us, the psychology is that people will feel mawr engaged when they own something. They feel like they also own the brand on dso that that was a really good move on our organizations

[00:44:12.41] spk_0:
part. Taylor, you have you have ideas around executive Buy in?

[00:44:48.19] spk_5:
Yeah, I think going back to just pulling in stakeholders early is important. Um, getting people to sort of workshop out in a room. Why, this is important and what the goals are behind it. And you know, something that I’ve done before in this kind of work shopping exercise is really just casting like the big picture vision of like, who are we? And how are we even trying to explain that? You know, what are the words we want people to think about? When when they think about our organization. For example, Andi even doing some fun exercises. Like what? You know, car, are we like, or what movie are we like? And, like, some of those kinds of exercises in a workshop can really pull out the creative juices and getting people to start thinking in a little bit of a different way. And then I think if the team feels like they’ve come up with it together, then they’re bought in, um, as opposed to because I’ve also been in those situations like Syria, where the marketing team wrote something out. And then you’re like,

[00:45:23.02] spk_1:
Hey, this is

[00:45:23.57] spk_5:
what we’re doing and everyone, huh? Why? And so, you know, also going through that learning, learning from those experiences and deciding, Hey, we need to bring in stakeholders from across the organization in a lot earlier to really talk about, like, who are we and what is our brand? Let’s talk about that first, and then that will help us think through

[00:45:45.79] spk_3:
what does

[00:45:46.13] spk_5:
the new brand need toe look like. And what does it need to say about us?

[00:45:49.80] spk_0:
Yeah, filling that gap between current perception and what? Where we actually are or wannabe. Um, Christopher, I’m gonna give you the last word since you’re in development, and you can again speak to what? What? What? The impact was what the great outcomes were for. Bite back.

[00:46:07.48] spk_6:
Yeah. So for us, we’ve gone from a $2 million organization to a $3 million organization and 60% government funding to 25% government funding. Um, yeah, it’s been a It’s been real for us.

[00:46:58.88] spk_0:
Okay, It could be real for you to We’re gonna leave it there. All right, that was That’s Christopher Wallace, development director. Bite back. He’s in New York City with him. Is, uh, that scores communications director. Bite back. She’s in Washington, D. C also, Taylor Shanklin, Sugar Mountain, North Carolina in the west of North Carolina and founder, branding and communication strategist exist in Memphis, Tennessee, on Tele Shanklin, vice president of Growth at Firefly Partners. Christopher, development director, bite back and event communications director. Bite back. Thanks to each of you. Thanks all for Thank you so much.

[00:47:02.48] spk_3:
Thanks, tony. much. Tony,

[00:48:14.58] spk_0:
Thank you. And thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC sponsored by Cougar Mountain Software Finale Fund is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits? Tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for free 60 day trial Thanks so much for being with us next week. Amy Sample Ward returns with a report on Equity in Technology. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o and by dot drives, raise more money changed more lives for a free demo and a free first month. Tony dot Emma slash dot Our creative producer is clear. Meyer, huh? Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this excellent 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 95% go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for June 7, 2019: Disrupt Unconscious Bias & Your Normal Is My Trigger

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Joe Shaffner, Minal Bopaiah & Sara Boison

Joe Shaffner, Minal Bopaiah & Sara Boison: Disrupt Unconscious Bias
Our panel encourages you to dive deep into your own biases and how they influence you and your brand. Then deconstruct and disrupt those you no longer want. They’re Joe Shaffner at International Center for Research on Women; Minal Bopaiah with Brevity & Wit; and Sarah Boison from Communities In Schools. (Recorded at 19NTC)





Barbara Grant & Eve Gourley: Your Normal Is My Trigger
Accept without blame that your normal is not everyone’s. This panel helps you recognize differences and manage across generations. They’re Barbara Grant with Crux Consulting Consortium and Eve Gourley from Food Lifeline. (Also recorded at 19NTC)





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View Full Transcript
Transcript for 442_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190607.mp3 Processed on: 2019-06-07T19:22:27.262Z S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results Path to JSON: 2019…06…442_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190607.mp3.778427195.json Path to text: transcripts/2019/06/442_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190607.txt xero Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of trick Otello, Sis, if you split hairs with me over whether you missed today’s show disrupt unconscious bias. Our panel encourages you to dive deep into your own biases and how they influence you and your brand, Then deconstruct and disrupt those you no longer want. They’re Joe Shoffner at International Centre for Research on Women Minal, BOPE IA with brevity and wit, and Sarah Boysen from communities in schools that was recorded at 1990 si. Then you’re normal is my trigger except without blame that you’re normal is not everyone’s. This panel helps you recognize differences and manage across generations. They’re Barbara Grant with Crux Consulting Consortium and Eva Corley from Food Lifeline that’s also recorded at 19 and TC Tony stay too pissed in Brussels, Responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash Pursuant by witness Deepa is guiding you beyond the numbers regulars wetness cps dot com My goodness and by text to give mobile donations made easy text NPR to 444999 I got that one already is enough. Here are Joe Shoffner, Middle back-up Aya and Sarah Boysand from 1990. Si. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of 1990 Si. That’s the non-profit Technology Conference. We’re in Oregon, Portland, Oregon, at the convention center. This interview, like all our 1990 si interviews, is brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising. Tools to help non-profits make an impact with me are Joe Shoffner, Mental BOPE Aya and Sarah Boysen. Joe is senior communications specialist at the International Centre for Research on Women. Excuse me. Mental is principal consultant at brevity and wit, and Sarah is director of digital strategy for communities in schools. Welcome everyone. Thank you for your pleasure. Have you, uh, we’re talking about your seminar topic, which is disrupting unconscious bias as we grow our brand. Uh, let’s start down at the end. Sarah. What? Before we unpacked What? Unconscious biases? What What’s what’s the trouble? What are non-profits not getting right about growing their brand that you wish they would? Well, I would say a lot of non-profits are really struggling Teo identify where some of the problems are coming from. In terms of things like hiring a promotion in terms of the communications, I think a lot of organizations are starting to see that diversity isn’t something that just could be thrown around is a buzzword. But it’s something that they actually have to embody within the organizations, and from there it usually flows through the word. Okay, mental. You want to add to the headline on the leave? Um, yeah. I mean, I agree with everything. I think I’m sorry agree with everything, Sarah said. And I think in this day and age, brands do need to be very conscious of diversity and equity and inclusion if they want to have a brand that’s still relevant. I think thie millennial general generation is probably the most inclusive generation of it’s time. America is more diverse than it’s ever been. And if you want to appeal to all segments of the United States, if you want to be a global NGO, and in the end, the in the era of social media where a misstep can go viral, it’s really important that brands protect themselves by having an awareness of how unconscious bias could have affected their brand. Okay, Joe, you want to lead us in a swell, I think the one point, I would add is, is that unconscious bias within a browned is both individual and group. So in order to work as a team to tackle unconscious biases that come out in your brand, you have to alert look internally as an individual and as a team. Okay, let’s define unconscious bias. What do we mean? Sure, So they’re going to throw it to me since I have the degree in clinical psychology. And so I’m technically supposed to be able to do this. So it’s It’s easier with slides and with visuals, to be fair, if you are a picture of the brain. But I’m gonna I’m gonna do this via just speaking and see how this goes. Basically, within the human brain there, two systems of thought. There’s automatic thinking, and there’s deliberate thinking. Dahna condiment talks about this and his work thinking fast and slow. I prefer the words automatic and deliberate, because you can have delivered thinking that is fast as well. And unconscious bias happens because thie automatic thinking pathways, which air dictated by the limbic system, which contains the amygdala and the hippocampus. And those are areas that are really responsible for creating emotion and creating memories tend to fire together. And what that allows you to do is to make quick split second decision. So, for example, if you’re in a dark room and you you walk in and it looks like there’s a snake on the floor, you would recoil. Now, if you turn on the lights, you may find that that snake is actually a rope. And so you’ve based your data, your based your reaction on what your brain has perceived and made a split second decision that’s protected yourself. We’re talking about such decisions about people. Yeah, so if people in groups, yeah, so if you are not exposed to people of a certain race. But all of your data has been for movies that portray that raised negatively you may have if you meet somebody of that race, your initial reaction, maybe based on poor data at the same time, that automatic system can protect you. So I used to be a rape crisis counselor in a previous life, and a lot of women have said that they had the sense they had a flag that said maybe this guy was dangerous, but they didn’t want to be biased against them. And that’s not the time to just go against your bias is what we really talked about in our session was that if you want to mitigate biases, you have to start employing that more deliberate system of your brain. And bring your unconscious biases, too, your awareness, and really start to look at whether you’re basing those decisions on accurate data or not. If you’re a woman who’s in a position where you physically feel threatened, you need to get yourself out of that space first. But then reflect back as to whether your fear was based on something realistic or whether it was based on a past memory that was maybe inaccurate for that situation. Or worse, just something culturally that understood. Yeah, and grossly. It could be grossly and actually wrong, and but it it could be really accurate. And it it’s up to every individual to really do the work to explore where their biases air coming from and be able to respond from from their deliberate thinking from their from their executive functioning part of the rain. Rather then just that primal urge of their brain. Okay. And then Sarah on I may even be asking youto repeat what already said, But I’m trying to I’m processing this. And you all have been thinking about this for months. Relate this back now to brand, please. Yeah. So in terms of the brand, I mean one thing I can say that, at least in my organization, that community schools, what we’re doing is we’ve implemented diversity equity and inclusion work. So what we were doing is we’ve identified a taste of the basic level that there’s some work that we need to do organizationally, right? So we recognize that as we work with one point 6,000,000 students across the country, that each of us individually may, you know, we all hold biases, and it’s up to us to do that work to ensure that we’re able to better serve our students and better understand their circumstances. So what is happening at my organization is that our board of directors is actually mandated that we implement d I work across all of our affiliates across 26 states and D. C. So there’s work that’s being done from the top down and also from the bottom up. So what we’re doing as well is that we’re we’re going to our affiliates and we’ve actually way have affiliate representatives that are on a d. I planning team. And what they’re doing is they’re actually creating a tool kit, and they’re creating actual work flow for the entire organisation for us to follow in order for us to better serve the students in our community. So this sounds like I mean, even though I asked you about Bram, this sounds like mission. I mean, it goes right to it, really is more of your work and your what your mission is. Absolutely. I feel that if you can’t address a lot of the things that go on in terms of diversity equity inclusion, I almost feel like you really can’t as an organization served. You know, many of the populations that way Do you want to help? So d I needs to be identified as a core value of the organization? Absolutely. It’s time for a break. Pursuant. The art of First Impressions had a combined strategy, analytics and creative to captivate new donors and keep them coming back. It’s all about donorsearch acquisition. It’s on the listener landing page. You want to make that terrific first impression so that your donors stay with you. They’re attracted to you and they stay retention as well as attraction. You’ll find it at Tony dahna. I’m a slash pursuing with a capital P for please. Now back to disrupt unconscious bias. I mean for a non-profit. Hold on. I want to find out what his communities in schools do. What’s the work? S o Right now we serve one point 6,000,000 students across the country. Essentially, how it’s structured is we play psycho. Nader’s within schools. So we work with school district and schools and state offices. We have sight coordinators in schools that helped afield. Resource is between the schools in the community to help the students and their families. Okay, pulling together resource is from local communities. You’re in 26 states. Yes, we’re 26 states in D. C. Okay. Community resource is for the benefit of students. Yes, So it is. It’s academic and community resource is so good example would be like if a student comes in and their and their families facing homelessness instead of the student putting that responsibility on the family and the student, the site coronated will help so one identify what some of their needs are and work with those in the school as well as some of the folks in the community to ensure that the students able to get the resources that they need so they could focus on school. We’re gonna know I was just going to put a finer point on Sarah’s comments and say that you know, for non-profits how you execute your mission is your brand. And so that’s why I like if there’s bias and how you’re executing your mission, that is a reflection of your brand reputation than in the space and goes back to, you know, how do you want to be known in your community in the country? Okay. Okay. Um, so from your session description, your dive deeper into our own biases on how they influence us on the point being made that we’re not only talking about organizationally, but also individually, Um, how did they influence us? I mean, it could be positive. My my thinking is that it’s I mean, I think, is that it’s mostly negative. But it could be positive, I don’t know. Or is it all negative? How did the job your turn? How does how does how did these biases influence us? What’s don’t go by me? What’s the consensus of the pattern? Sure. So I think one thing mental untouched on was the snake versus rope on DH. You know, applying that to Ah non-profit setting where it shows up is actually because there’s so many things going on at one time that you have to make decisions quickly so you don’t have a lot of time. It feels like to process and to think about these decisions that you’re making so to an extent, what we wanted to focus on them. The session was how to bring that out and discuss it in an honest way with those in your organization and also focus on who is in the room who is at the table discussing this because you do get caught in these cycles sometimes of having the same people making these decisions, whether it’s events, whether it’s what photos you’re choosing. Teo, display the Bowler hat brand. What project you’re taking on and a great way to mitigate that is bringing other people in from different backgrounds, different perspectives, different views and how you work together to come up with solutions of that. Create that change. Okay, the how and the who Let’s talk about some of the house. How do you bring it up? So one of the things that we’re working on at I c e w is the International Centre for Research on Women is an event checklist. So we’re aware that with all these quick decisions we’re making, sometimes you bypass the thought process and how to, uh, figure out how who’s on the panel for the events on DH? The checklist brings into mind, um, you know, who are you bringing in for the planning stage? I think that was the most important point that we came out with is who’d you bring in the room? And then you look at, um what photos? For the invitations you look at, you have considerations of who’s on the panel. So, for example, if you have a panel on talking about youth and there’s no one represented who is in the category of youth, right, so, uh, kind of bringing all those perspectives to the table. Okay, Sarah, anything you can add about who should be in this conversation? Yeah, I’d liketo piggyback on what Joe was talking about. So for me, like working in the use sector, what I’ve seen is a lot of times you have people who are making decisions that, uh, that that impact other people. And one of the things that I really want to challenge, not only just ourselves, but other non-profits do is to really allow the people that we’re serving to be the experts on their lives like, yes, we have the resources and the tools to maybe empower them, um, to shift course of change. But I really do feel that we’re doing ourselves a disservice by not bringing the people that we serve into the conversation to be a part of the solution. And that’s one of the things that including when their school age Absolutely that’s do-it-yourself. Absolutely. And I for us, I mean, there’s definitely a perception that young people aren’t ready for leadership right now, but many of them are already leaders in serving in their communities, and many of them are very well versed in what’s going on and some of the problems at their peers phase. So we’ve actually found it to be incredibly powerful toe bring in students early on in the process. When we’re doing the programs, when we’re doing projects and asking them, Hey, what is going on? And what do you feel would actually be a viable solution? And we actually just did a student in it. Evasion Challenge in Las Vegas and we had four students. Three of them were from Charlotte, and 11 was from Michigan. And they actually presented ideas that they worked with on a student team to help mitigate some of the issues that are happening at their school on. It was a great opportunity, one for adults to kind of just sit back and listen to these students. But it was also another opportunity where we were actually e-giving Students of resource is to be able to actually create change in their own neighborhood mental about how to raise your advice, how to raise this in in your organization. Yeah, it’s an interesting question because I think it’s sort of organically being raised in a lot of non-profits right now because, like I said, the younger generation of employees who are coming in are very aware of this and really wanted When you have an intergenerational office, Yeah, and and I think, really, when we’re talking about building diversity, equity inclusion when we’re talking about building inclusive cultures, what we’re talking about, his power dynamics. And so you really need to be able to study power to be successful in any diversity and inclusion initiative. And that means working with leadership. If leadership is not bought in that diversity and inclusion needs to be a core value of the organization, it is unfair to put the burden of change on people who have lesser power. And and that’s really critically important for organizations. Understand, once leadership is bought in, then it needs to be like any other operations or business unit where there is actual commitment in time and money and metrics for progress. How do you get this buy-in What? So much of the power is white and male. Yeah. Andi, let’s assume the leadership is because a lot of it is not all but a lot is Yeah. How do you How do you go to the CEO? The white male CEO and try to get this D I core value buy-in from? Yeah, the guy whose power he perceives is being threatened. Yeah, so not assumes. Powers xero some, but But ah, lot of guys do. Yeah. So how do you overcome that? Yeah, so that’s a big question. So I’m gonna take it in multiple ways. Got two and 1/2 minutes now we have more than yeah. No, that’s a really good question. And I think it gets to their multiple approaches. First of all, like somebody died. So I would not recommend somebody like me because I’m much better at strategy than I am as an executive coach or facilitator. I think it takes, um, Riel s o. I worked with a lot of diversity inclusion. Consultants are facilitators, and they’re exceptional at their ability to have a conversation at that level That doesn’t trigger people’s defensive isn’t Isn’t this almost essential? Tohave an outsider facility trained facilitator. Sarah, you’re shaking. Did you did you use a a facilitator? Yeah. So currently way Do bring in outside facility. Other conversations I’ve had with other guests. They’ve said that it’s almost essential because it’s doing conversation. Could break down. Yeah, rapidly. And you need you need sort of an outside there. But, I mean, I think of a diversity inclusion consultant almost like a family therapist, like their job is to give you that outside perspective and help you to see things in a new way on DH, then within, like, sort of having those conversations. There’s multiple things that you could speak to. Some people like to go the fear and avoided through, which is what I mentioned before about brand reputation. You know, if you want your organization to continue to be successful in the 21st century, you need to get on top of this. Bring a Brown. Once gave a talk at Were Human last year, where she said, If you are a leader who is not talking about diversity and inclusion, you will not be a leader in five years from now. And if you are going to talk about it, you were going to mess up and you were going to fall flat on your face and you were going to make mistakes. And you need to learn how to be an evolved enough leader to make public mistakes. And like rumbled through it and get through to the other side. So it takes a lot of it takes a very mature leader to be able to do this. The second part is to make what people like to call the business case, which is There’s research that shows that shone and this is from the for-profit sector. But companies that have diverse product teams have three times as many patents as companies that don’t. So the leveraging diversity will inevitably help your programs, your operations, your bottom line. And that’s really important to know, especially as we live in a more globalized world. I mean, I remember growing up is an Indian American. I didn’t think most of the television and most of the magazines were relevant to me. I didn’t buy any of that stuff. Nobody got my dollars because nobody was marketing to me on the third way is really too, you know, I think that there are enough white men like Joe, and you probably like you, Tony, who are you who are men of conscience? You know who who understand that you shouldn’t. There is a business case to be made, but you should just write this was the right thing to do for God’s. You shouldn’t always have to make the business case to do the right thing. And more importantly, like how, like, Why don’t you want to create a place where you wouldn’t recruit the best talent? You know, like Sara shared an experience today in our session. I’ve had a similar experience of being in organizations where we wanted to give our best. But the lack of an inclusive culture made us leave. And so you’re losing exceptional talent because of unconscious bias or because of your lack of commitment to including creating an inclusive culture. And so if you want to create the best products and services, if you want to have the best programs, if you want to have the greatest impact, this is is absolutely critical to all of those goals. And so diversity Inclusion isn’t something you do because it’s nice. It’s something you do because it’s mission critical and a strategic goal for every organization. I feel like the conversation has been raised to another level just within the past few years, and that may be the result of black lives matter now metoo. More recently, metoo No, because for so many years it was just It’s the right thing to do. But now, on DH, that was unavailing, obviously, to the white power structure, white male power structure, because things weren’t changing. So doing the right thing wasn’t sufficient a za motivation necessary but not sufficient. But now you know we’re so buy-in next level, we’re making the casing in different ways. That you can argue should have been, should not have been necessary. But Aziz said change wasn’t happening. So, you know, making the business case, for instance, Yeah, If you have to bring it, bring it to the bottom line and say you risked relevance, you risked losing talent. Well, I think it’s a communications professional, and other communications professionals here can speak to this. It’s important to speak to the values of your audience, and I think it’s it’s hubris on the part of people who actually care about these things to believe that the other person must think like you in order to be able to enact diversity inclusion initiative. I really think that Dee and I needs to take the same approach that truth campaign took to smoking. They created a multitude of ads, and they basically was like, We’re going to target everybody. We’re going to target everybody based on whatever they care about. And so when you would see the ad, maybe one out of 20 adds spoke to you, but then they got 20 different archetypes that they could speak to. So they weren’t saying, Oh, you have to care about this one thing in order for you to buy into this way of living. And I think diversity and inclusion needs to take that approach that different people are going to be motivated by day, different things. And we need to be able to speak to all of those motivations instead of sort of rank ordering and saying This motivation is better and more noble than this other motivation. I think that’s really judgmental, and it doesn’t move anything forward. Okay, Joe, we haven’t heard from you in a while. What you want to contribute? So, uh, we focused a lot of the session today on, uh, workplace, but I would extend that to say, particularly for white males. Um, this is a conversation that I think needs to be had in the home. A school on the street because of some of the issues that we’re facing. It worked. We bring in tow work. It’s not just something that comes up at work. So it’s something where to have a coffee with someone and and just try to shift perspective a little bit. And there’s in the us in particular is a lot of this attitude of pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Um, which, yes, that’s worked for some. But there are others who don’t start out at the same level where there is race, gender, economic way, same level. But you don’t have the same opportunities, right? Don’t have. You don’t have the power. Yeah, So it I think by avoiding, um, even reflecting on that, that’s where the biases come in. And that’s also where we continue doing the same thing, Um, at work, at home. So it’s like, how do we create that shift? And part of that? Is this through honest, open communication? Ok, uh, we still have, uh, another two minutes or so. Two and 1/2 minutes. What else have you done your panel yet? Yes, you have. Okay, So what else you had 75 minutes with in front of an audience. What else did you talk about? That we didn’t talk about here or more detail that we didn’t go into enough. We got a couple of bones talk about white privilege of fragility. Sametz. Well, actually, actually want anything I want to bring up was we had a bingo card which included some of these terms, but we did have, ah, exercise on privilege. So essentially, we made some statements. Uh, and people would raise their hand if they felt that reflected on them on DH. Keep their hand down if they felt like it didn’t which there’s been a breach has such a sure such as? I have no college student loans. There were some that raised their hand, Some that didn’t, um that one’s a little easier to answer than others. Like I’ve never been bullied. Some might think, Uh, yes, I’ve kind of been believed, but it hasn’t been to the level of what I think. Other people have been bullied. So what we focused on through that was that it’s a little more complex. It’s not binary either, or sometimes the decisions made in those moments, um, are more complicated. And I think That’s kind of what we want to focus on here. Um, so relate this back to white supremacy. Yeah, sure. Um so white supremacy, white power, White power, White privilege. Okay. Yeah, No. So a lot of, for the most part, this is just to reflect on the fact that the privileges are there. I think that’s Ah, it seems simple, but for a lot of there are a lot of people who will not associate themselves with privilege. Or they’ll say, But I grew up in a poor area without reflecting on the fact that maybe someone else of a different skin color or different gender also did. But it’s staggered. So that and this white powers, you say, white privilege. It’s structural. It’s ingrained in our systems and our institutions, um, and and too tow have those conversations. And to create change, we really have to be reflective and admit that they exist. Okay, way. Have another minute left. So let’s, uh let’s give the wrap up sorrow that I asked you to start with you. Have you mind wrapping up what you want to leave people with? I just really want to challenge people to do the hard work of really looking within themselves to identify any bias is that they may have on and just know that it’s a lifelong commitment. I think a lot of people go into it thinking like, Oh, I’m going to do, you know, for three hour sessions this year and I’m going to be woke check, Yeah, and you know, I definitely want to challenge people, not to feel the pressure to be quote unquote woke. I feel like that’s a word a lot of people have been throwing around recently, and I just think that people need to just do the work consistently in order to be able to change their perspective on different peoples in places and things. All right, we’re gonna leave it there. Thank you very much for all three of you. Each of you think they are. Joe Schoffner, senior communications specialist at the International Centre for Research on Women. Manabu piela, principal consultant at Brevity and Wit, and Sarah Boysen, director of digital strategy for communications for communities in schools. Thank you again. Thank you. Thanks to you for being with Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 1990 sea as non-profit technology conference in Portland, Oregon. This interview. Like all our 1990 si interviews brought to you by, or partners that ActBlue free fund-raising tools to help non-profits making an impact. Thanks for being with us. We need to take a break When you see piela CPAs, it’s in the title. You know what they do? Do you need one? Do you need a new one? If you think you might need help or your tinkering around the edges of maybe changing accountants, check them out. You goto weinger cps dot com. Do your due diligence there, of course, and then pick up the phone. Talk to the partner. Yet each tomb who you know because he’s been on the show twice already and he’s going to be coming back. He’s not high pressure. He’ll explain whether they can help you. All right, that’s the process. Get started at Wagner’s cps dot com. Now time for Tony’s Take two. My video is pissed in Brussels. Yes, uh, manic in piss, and that is what it’s called. I’m not being crude, so if you turned off well, if you were to turn off the volume or shut me down, then there’s no point in me saying Don’t because you’ve already done it. But for those of you were still here, like on the fence. Don’t be offended, because that is what it’s called. There’s a statue in Brussels, Belgium, called manic in piss. Okay, maybe it’s peace in Belgium on these manic and peace, but it’s spelled like this. So, um yeah, so I got I got assaulted. I got assaulted by the little statue. Um, he pissed on me and you can see it. You can see it on the video at tony martignetti dot com and then go to Brussels, Belgium, and get some for yourself. Just keep your eyes in your mouth close. That’s all on DH, that is Tony’s Take two. Let’s do the live. Listen, 11 the, uh And you know what comes after that? So the live love goes out. Thank you for listening. I’m grateful. The live love to those of you listening at, uh, Friday 1 p.m. Eastern time. And whatever time zone you might be in, the love goes out to you and the podcast pleasantries My gratitude to our over 13,000 podcast listeners. Sometimes I wonder why you stay with with all the I don’t know the talking about piss and everything else. But you have you have you still here? So the pleasantries go to you and you should stay. Don’t Don’t wonder why Leave? Leave the wondering and the and the worrying to me about that you just stick around Ana. Now here is from 19 NTC. Your normal is my trigger. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of 19 1990 Si. That’s the non-profit Technology Conference 2019. We are in Portland, Oregon, at the convention Center. This interview, like all our 1990 si interviews, is brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact. My guests now our Barbara Grant. She is CEO of Crux Consulting Consortium sitting next to me and even Gourlay. She’s director of information systems at Food Lifeline Barbara Evey kruckel. Thank you. Thanks for having a pleasure. Pleasure. Your topic is a little provocative Little bit, er when you’re normal is my trigger unpacking multiple generations and white privilege. Let’s start with you. What? Uh what do we need to know? Give us Give us the headline in the lead. Well, what’s going on here? You fundamentally, you have a normal that you view the world of particular way. That is your way of viewing the world. And you think that’s the real way. That’s the truth of the world on you interact with it like it’s absolute, but you don’t appreciate. You do sort of live your life like other people’s normals of the same as your normal. And that causes real problems for people, particularly in regards to white, privileged white. People think that they’re the normal and they don’t attend to the concerns of people of color, and people of color lose out, significantly weaken all these different measures of public health will show that. But it’s very hard for people to see why their behavior is white people houses impact on people of color, and we’re going to delve into the dynamics, underlie the and really give people some access to engaging with how that their behavior has these negative impacts on the world. Okay, what what are some of these negative impacts? Barber? Well, I think that first we start with generations. And so what we’re trying to look at is that if my definition of What is normal is not your definition of what is normal. So, for example, what should be on a recruitment form like if you’re filling out a job application, should you ask people for their gender or not? So some generations would think? Of course, it’s a recruitment Forman application. You put your gender male, female, other generations would think, Why are you assuming my gender? Other people, other generations might think I don’t want to work here because clearly you’re more interested in my gender than my qualifications for the job. And so part of what we’re looking at is it’s not about one thing being bad or good. It’s about looking just to understand. The fundamentals, like Evil is saying, is that there are different definitions of normal and they shape your judgments and the shape your behaviour. And how can we look at that together? In-kind oven on blaming context because too often when we try to talk across differences, what we find is that people are talking, blaming like I think this is normal. You think that’s normal and I’m judging you is wrong. Uh, without trying to make excuse, though. But if we’re talking about across the generations. It’s what those of us and the older generations were brought up with Your butt s o to not make its use something but we can relearn wear depends on which people you’re tryingto hyre were trainable were trainable. Well, I think I just take it from a perspective of utilization based perspective. If you’re trying to hire people who aren’t exactly like you, it might be useful to understand what they think is normal because those are the people you’re trying to hyre those people are trying to work with. It’s not like what you think is wrong or how you were brought up is wrong. It’s just now there are five generations in the workplace, maybe for the first time in human history, because we’re all living longer and we’re not leaving. And we’re actually caring what younger kids kick would think. And another traditions. Other generations, you know, people who are younger really haven’t been accorded a voice, and people who are older either died sooner or left the workplace. So now we have five generations, all of which have been shaped by different understandings of what’s normal and so part of what we’re trying to do is to say these air who were working with on purpose. And so how do we create a workplace that is inclusive and gets the job done that we want? E. What is this normal that we’re talking about? If everyone’s normal is different or their cohorts that so you just coalesce around sort of more or less together. But But as an individual, what’s what goes into my normal? What goes into your normal what? What’s the normal? What are we talking about? Yeah, because you don’t you don’t think about it. It’s like you wake up in the morning and sort of put on your normal right. What is it? The world just seems to be to you a particular way. And the way that it seems to you isn’t necessarily the same way it seems. Other people want me to think about it. I mean, I don’t get too conceptual, but it’s an interesting talking to delve into right, like the context of your world and the content of your world are different things. If you’re a man, you have a view of the world in an expectation of what public safety feels like So it’s you know, too. Am your your friend’s house. You don’t call for a cab. Gonna walk home like it’s an hour. Like as a man, you have a view of whether that’s safe or not, and you’ll have your own opinion of it. If you’re a woman, you’ll have a very different view of that. Now there’s no Is there a reality or whether it is or isn’t safe to walk home? No, there’s no actual like, objective measure of what safety looks like, But I’m a lot of people don’t really understand it. Don’t appreciate that. They do have these. These contexts they view the world through. When you actually start attending to them, you realize that it’s not just like a couple of things. You have this entire world view on this entire perspective that informs everything about your existence, and you’ve probably never thought about it. Once you start thinking, you start finding things that you wouldn’t choose to believe. You know you you have come to believe that based upon experiences that you’ve had and lessons that you’ve learned and you pick up these ideas and you know it’s really good work to do that reflection figured out because it’s not just about race. I mean, it certainly has an impact on race, but it can affect your relationships that can affect your success in business. Your coworkers, like everything that you do in you, your life is in form. But this context and doing the work of digging into it’s really important. We like to look at it from levels in your workplace. In your non-profit. There are things that people you’re trying to attract, people you’re trying to retain professional development, how fast people are promoted, what’s appropriate use of technology in the workplace, What’s appropriate professional behavior, what’s appropriate communication, all of these things of what is appropriate in the workplace, these air. What you think is normal is common sense, and so, but that normal common sense is different, according to these different five generations. And we think it’s pretty funny because we catch ourselves all the time saying, Oh, I guess I thought I just what I thought right? But But it’s not funny when it happens in a space where the dominant normal gets to decide. Like I might think, it’s funny that you think that, but if you are in the dominant position, then that’s what it is. It’s gonna happen. So part of what we try to do is to just open up the conversation so that its future oriented decisions, instead of how we’ve always done it in the past. I had a panel last year at NTC, and, uh, it was related to this topic, and the subject of job descriptions came up, and it was the use of the word professional. You know, a professional makes makes a professional appearance. Yeah, well, that exclude, I think the guests. It was a panel of, I think there were three think there were three. And it was, I think, was Raja Agarwal on everything. He was sitting next to me and he said, So that excludes everybody with dreadlocks in a white privilege world. Those are not professional. So does that exclude everybody who’s black because their hair is different and you know, so that’s where that dominant. But the perspective is different than a note. A new miracle perspective. Yeah, but just to use the word professional, I mean, it’s an office. I do want people to be professional, but then, you know, professional appearance. You know that’s different than comporting yourself as a professional. You don’t even need to say professional. In the job description, you can consult season, think out of an interview. So it’s fun when you start scratching away at that word like professional like, What does it mean to be profession? Doesn’t mean, like no skilled at using office communication tools for understanding. I was 14 XL, but doesn’t mean where’s a shirt and tie e mean it does mean those things, but unless you actually do the work of unpacking it, you don’t know what you mean. And it could be really detrimental to people like my own personal experience. I’m originally from Ireland. Dahna immigrated United States and was about 20 because I immigrated. I interrupted my college experience, and I never actually finished college. But a lot of job descriptions will say, you know, college degree required, and that’s that’s an assumption that people make about, like hiring that that’s a normal for people that if you’ve been to college, you’re there somehow qualified or somehow more capable of doing a particular job. Now I like, almost finished going. I was like one semester away from getting done and I have no regrets about coming to United States like that was absolutely the best decision I made. It was totally worth giving up, called my degree for. But you just got to really take the time to really investigate what you really mean by what you say because it has an impact on people and those impacts show and they’re often invisible. I think if you talk to people, United States, no one’s ever well, very few people will actually claim to be racist or will endorse racist perspectives. Or, you know, it’s very, very rare to find someone who’ll do it. If we do find them, we isolate them pretty quickly. But racism’s vivid and clear it. She was really clearly in the statistics. So how does it keep happening, like word of these, these negative influences come from. You have to be able to look beyond the surface in order to see that, and that’s where this but this work is about. I think what’s really important about the generations conversation, why we’re using this as a vehicle for talking about privileges, that this is a fun and accessible, an easy way to get into this conversation is not anywhere near is. Confronting is talking about race. It can be challenging, but generations it’s it’s a It’s a fun conversation right on dure. Your topic is generations and white privilege. So let’s overlay the white privilege to this. But now we’re at a disadvantage. There’s three white folks talking about white privilege. Well, one of the things we found is that oftentimes one of the dominant mentalities is that people of color should help us talk about white privilege because we don’t know how, which is once again, kind of layering a burden there. So part of one of the thing you just said is why people we don’t ever learn to say the word white like that’s because it was normal. Like if you look, if you read a book, a novel, the characters air never described by the color of their skin unless it’s not white because, like so you don’t say, he walked into the station, his skin was pasty, like the underside of a dead halibut. You know instead, But you would say like this. He walked in, She walked in, they sat down. He set down his skin, was dark, like cinnamon ice cream or something like it’s only described if it’s not white. So these are the kinds of things that that why people have to be able to start talking about. And so but no one ever talks about generational differences too much, either. So we tried it. We call it Training wheels is like if if I can try to talk to you across a different generation if I’ve had people come up. I was working with the A different client group last year and someone came up and said, You know, now I understand how to talk to my son, who’s been living in my basement, and I feel like we’ve never been able to talk to each other like I get it. Our definitions of normal are different. You know, there’s a There’s a lot of desire as what we call a part of a week circle. So, like we are all different generations. But we’re part of a family or we’re part of one circle we already identify as though we were just different, whereas across other things, like race or class or other dominant privileges way don’t see ourselves as a wee we see is us and those people. And so part of what we’re trying to do is even within our circle of who we already think is us. How do we talk across differences well and respectfully. And then how do we use that experience to try to talk across these bigger differences that are a little bit more charged? What kind of worker is the two of you doing together? You’re doing work for food, Lifeline Barbara. Yes. So I’m a consultant. I worked with international NGOs, NGOs, local domestic non-profits, and one of my clients for many years has been food lifeline, which is where I met Yves. And so there was even even if it’s even, that’s right. And so so and our work together is been issues around, trying to change a culture within their non-profit and also doing a move and trying to figure out how we do that move in a more inclusive way to this glorious, gorgeous new hunger solution center that they’ve just taken off the ground. And so a lot of my work has been with this system, and so we met, and here we are. Okay, um, and how did this topic Come, Teo, how each of you get drawn to this topic in the concerns. So one of things I’ve been studying since I do work with many non-profits and associations across the country has been this kind of she drops out in there. This this as I worked with years of all stripes and sizes and you’ll find me at six for 62 What I’ve found is that for the last 6 62 5 to 10 years, people have been very anxious about all these generations in the workplace and also about the great retirement fear that all these people are going to retire. We’re gonna have a leadership gap. And so I started studying what that meant to have a generation retire and what the composition was of the domestic and international non-profit in particular Workforce were all these leaders about to leave what was gonna happen with succession planning and became very interesting to see that they didn’t leave and then the next generation. So those easters air, now 26 at the top. And so now there are people in 1/5 generation. So everyone was all like, oh, skies falling is going to be four generations. And then these people are going to leave. They didn’t leave and these guys came. And so it’s a phenomenon. Now that is very interesting. And people are trying to figure out who are you trying to hyre? And it’s a very different mindset of tryingto hyre now when you’re trying to hyre outside of an assumed normal of a generation, and that could be across lots of industries and sectors. So I was drawn to it by my clients who were concerned and also, by finding it very like. It’s an interesting inflection point in our history as a sector time for our last break. Its text e-giving They have the five part email, many course to dispel the myths around mobile giving. You get one part each day it’s over five days soon as you sign up, they start coming. And then four days, Uh, we say four days hence, yeah, in four days hence, right that the right, Yeah, Hence his post post fact, post facto four days. Expos facto of the of the sign up, you get the remaining courses one a day. It’s an average of one per day. One is also the mode and one is also the median as well as the average. That’s what you get per day after you sign up for the course. What you do at by texting npr to 444999 And we’ve got butt loads. More time for your normal is my trigger. You baby. How about you? Barbara knows me from Food Lifeline and in my work, I’m the director of information systems for Food Lifeline. And what you do in that role is not only manage the system, but also the Iast systems. All the databases that base are works. I’m involved in every aspect of the organizations activity, right from our entry level staff and our new stuff right up to the executive team and then the CEO. So I cross the generations. Anyway, when we started talking about doing this the session together, some of the real issues that I have in my work came up in our discussions, and we really got into them and use this methodology to address those concerns. And we actually cover some of this in the presentation. And it became not just an opportunity to talk about what we love, what we what we care about, but actually to develop food lifelines business as well. So it’s really, really become really engaged in. It’s really become part of our work. Um, okay, you say, in your description, used the framework of generational understanding and predictable triggers to have deeper conversations. I paraphrased a little bit. But what is the general generational understanding of predictable triggers? Is that first of all, is that one that one one of the processors, too? So one of the things that we’ve found is that there are some predictable triggers that will show up across generations. For example, if we say Oh, you know, some of those people are so entitled there’s a whole set of people in the room that will not and laugh and say, I know you’re talking about in a whole other set of people in the room who will feel like the mute button just happened and disrespected and turned off, or one of our other favorites is when someone says, Well, this is the way we’ve done it successfully for the past 10 years and they think that. And so I have now sealed the point and half of the other people in the room think, and so it must be a relevant. And so some of the things that I feel like the most normal thing in the world for you to say someone else receives, like like you just said something completely different. There’s a very real world challenge that I have with this with regard to training and you software. So if I had, like, a new tool like any of the vendors here at this conference, if I had their suffering, if I take this out to the staff, it’s okay. We got this great new tool. It’s going to be awesome. It’s gonna make a big difference in your work. There’s two kinds of responses I’m going to get from older people, you know, boomers and maybe Gen Xers. You’re going to say, Okay, we’re going to training, which means we have to hire a trainer. We’re gonna have a training day and a reason to calm. We’re going for coffee and bagels and everyone going to sit in chairs and listen to the training, and then we’ll go through it. When we’re done, you’re going to find her and you take a binder to death you sent in your desk and okay, you’re trained. Now go and use the software, which means no one’s trained and they just sort of sit there and stare at the screen now. But when I when I try to train people who are younger, like millennials and sisters, it’s an entirely different model on approach. They don’t need that. What they need is give me a can account. Let me access the sulfur and sit down with me for like an hour and show me the basics and then go away would be available. I want access to the knowledge base online. I want to able to watch videos on the Web site. A chat room for users is great, and it’s an entirely different model of training. And my real challenge with that is that in order to train those easters in the millennials how to use the software, which is really what I need to do because they’re the ones that are gonna be using it anyway, I have to convince the leadership that it’s okay and that it’s safe to do that. So we do the training day, we forget about it, and we trained this Easter’s. It’s that there’s a lot of different generational challenges in the workplace that we have to go. Um, but I feel like way diving into the depths of this. I mean, I feel like we’re talking around it a little bit. Are we? Are we getting to the meat of the real issues here? Well, we’re getting to the middle of a generational issue. Just be circum superficial. So one of the most important things Tony is that is just the fundamental except acceptance that you might have a different normal, that it might guide your worldview like Eve’s even example there was and then to say, Okay, so then what? What do I do if my normal is this other thing? But once you fundamentally accepted that it’s different than thinking. Well, those people are idiots, and they should just do this thing or everybody knows, or common sense. People leave that stuff behind, and then they approach the issue like, Well, then how do you do it across five generations? And that’s the attitude where we can then begin to talk about privilege and dominant privilege, because many times, if people say well, you know you’re white So therefore you’ve inherited all of the benefits of being white, and then a person of color has not. There’s all kinds of stuff that goes off in people’s minds like, Well, I’m not racist and it’s not my fault. And I worked as hard as the next person, and it’s all defensive, defensive, defensive. It’s not curious, like if we go back to the other part where we have with generations, where people are like Okay, people have different definitions of normal, what do we do next? That’s curious. That’s like saying we’re we and we have to do something forward. But when we get into issues that are more charged and that are more layered with blame and oppression and dominance, then people generally defend and any kind of diversity training or an attempt to do that generally ends up with people often feeling worse than they felt before and more blamed and more isolated. So part of what we’re trying to do is to bring these two things together and to say, if you can learn this way to move forward with curiosity, what if we took those same tools into these conversations and to say wow your experience of being a woman in the workforce is very different of being a man in the work force or your experience of being cyst. Gendered is very different of my experience of being trans or your experience of being a black woman. Professional manager Leader is very different from mine of being a white woman, professional manager, leader Like what? I work for Microsoft for 10 years and at one point in the building, I was often the only woman in the whole huge restroom. And I would get startled if I saw another woman in the restroom because it was so unused to there being another woman in the building, you know, super different, then going to the theatre where women will wait for, you know, 15 minutes and then I walk in and out of the of the restrooms, right? And so So this is just something to start noticing that your experience is different and if you can fundamentally just accept that without blame, then you can say, OK, what is the workforce we want of the future? And how do we acknowledge that our experiences have been different? Someone may have had a glass escalator and somebody else has been clawing through a ceiling. But once were here together in this organization or in this moment in history, How do we lean towards each other with curiosity? Even you mentioned earlier? I think he said some of the physical manifestations of this among the people who are not the elite in the privileged. Yeah. Oh, our sound like you were referring to research of physical physical manifestations of this in terms of health outcomes. Yeah. Yeah. So, like life acceptance E on DH infant mortality or 22 rates. You can really see health outcomes on people of color in United States. What? We would actually we’re just setting this. Yes, we were talking about the impact of red lining on communities of color. Um, throughout the sort of last century, people color, black people couldn’t buy houses in neighborhood hoods and the weapon looking buy houses. And if people did buy houses in those neighborhoods, white people would leave. And judging the price of the property, this isn’t long term impact on the ability of their children to go to college or, you know, be set up for life. And so you can actually check? Was it like net and come or no wealth for for people, white people have a lot of black people I think is actually about xero. On average, across the population is a really impact on people’s lives and immeasurable. We still have another five minutes or so together. What else can we say about this topic? One thing that I think is really important for me, for your listeners and non-profits is like Take a look at all of the issues you have in your organization. Like what’s holding you back in good terms of growth, that every step of the way you’re going to find some touch of technology and each of those things. I think that’s a contemporary phenomenon. This is this is the era that we live in, and if any of those areas, if you investigate, I bet you find generations underlying those conversations. This is this is not just like an abstract thought exercise around understanding privilege. This is very riel way have, ah, my organization. We’re dealing with a challenge right now. Unlike who makes decisions about process about system, Wei have many experienced people who might be sort of boomers or Gen Xers have been trained, and they’ve learned their skills at a time whenever technology wasn’t a major part of their work. They’re now dealing with that migration to a system that’s very much technology based there, having to get on databases if they’re fundraisers they’re dealing with, like online giving an email and that kind of stuff ability. Younger people who are native in that in that world and they’re coming in wanting to participate, expecting different systems, to be available to them and then not having access to that expertise. It’s challenging. I think we’re going to see in a lot of non-profits shift from expert expert lead programs, toe having technology and performance management systems and business intelligence systems driving management for organizations. There’s a major cultural shift happening in the realm of technology. You’re gonna have to understand how that impacts in the community and the culture of your organization or to be able to deal with it. And one of the things I was I’d say that builds right off of what you talked about about digital natives, one of the one of the huge questions that’s happening right now in our culture in this country is, What does it mean to be native? And what does it mean to be an immigrant or a refugee? And who do we let in? What does that mean? Toe let in and when we look a technology across generations, there’s a concept of at one point people became digital natives. And that’s somewhere in the middle of the millennial generation, where you were born into a system where you had rights and you had privileges and you understood the language. And often when I’m working with people with generations, I’ll say, What does it mean to be a native citizen of a country? And so people will say what you have rights, You know where your addresses and even comes down to, you know, the right language to use. So first generation children well often have to inform. Their parents know you don’t have to say that to school or a siren doesn’t mean that they start interpreting the culture for their parents. And so it’s the same thing with digital native kids who basically interpret the culture for us and say, Oh, no, let me fix it for you. Just hand it over and so but this whole idea of understanding what it means to be in a land a digital land in which you are not native, in which you feel anxious where you feel like things, are at risk, your privacy is at risk. Your data is at risk. You don’t know what you’re doing. You feeling that and allowing people to have some time to think about that generationally. It’s slightly safer. But then it it it rolls back around to say So. What does that mean when we think about who has rights and privileges in our whole society, and what does that mean? And how are we translating that with each other and thinking about, for example, in public education, when your children are your English speakers and the parents may speak primarily another language? How do we think about is our system in English only system in school? Or do we think if we really want family engagement, we have to reach across that in some way? We’ve to begin to think differently. So a lot of the things that we’re talking about with generations and technology while we’re here, you know what the anti unconference and we both have technology backgrounds. And so he’s There are people to some extent, but we also are, you know, we are. You know, Eva and I are not exactly the norm in many other ways in our lives as well. And so we have the experience of not being the dominant norm in a space. And so we bring that to this conversation, not just to say that we’re white people, so we know everything about people of color instead, what we’re saying is that we’re white people and we understand what we’ve taken for granted as the dominant normal. And and we’re trying to figure out a way for people to have conversations that doesn’t involve blame and separation. We’re often times it’s like what I call the diversity sidecar, where you take all the people of color and organization. You put them on the diversity committee, and you kind of sideline them from the main business, right? Right. And so instead, what we’re trying to talk about is what if we were all You know what I call that? I call that divers Committee. Yes, they’re not. They’re not doing diversity for the organization. They are a showpiece committee that is diverse. I call that the divers committee and many of my colleagues who are amazing engineers or consultants or leaders or architects or artists. They’re not invited first to be on the top engineering or architect or artist committee. They’re invited to be on the diversity committee as an assumption because there are people of color. And so part of what I think we have to do is to begin talking about this because it’s not just because what we want to do is tow have organizations and a society where people are able to bring their best expertise into the space and we can talk about it. We’ve got to leave it there. All right, thank you. She’s Barbara Grant, CEO of Crux Consulting Consortium. And next to her is evey Gourlay, director of Information Systems of Food Lifeline Ladies. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thanks to both of you, This is non-profit Radio coverage of 2019 the non-profit Technology Conference from Portland, Oregon. This interview, like all brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits Macon impact. Thanks. So much for being with us next week. E-giving Tuesday with Asha Curren It’s not too early to start your planning. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you Find it on tony. Martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits, Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuant by Wagner’s Deepa is guiding you beyond the numbers weinger cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations. Made easy text. NPR, too, that for 44999 creative producers Clam Meyerhoff Sam Lee Board says the line producer Thie shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein be with me next week for non-profit radio. We’re a little late there, Scotty. Yeah, big non-profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking Alternate network way You are listening to the Talking Alternative Network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in sometime potentially ater Tune in every Tuesday at 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show yawned Potential Live life your way on talk radio dot N Y c Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business. Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested? Simply email at info at talking alternative dot com Thie Best designs for your Life Start at home. I’m David here. 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Nonprofit Radio for October 5, 2018: The State Of Good 2018 & Your Brand Personality

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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. 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Nonprofit Radio for August 17, 2018: Branding & Focus and Attention

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James Wu, Kristyna Jones & Rhiannon Tasker: Branding
How do you get people to care about your brand and your cause when there’s so much noise out there? It helps to be inclusive and authentic. Our panel from the Nonprofit Technology Conference (18NTC) explains how. They’re James Wu, brand consultant; Kristyna Jones with Brothers Empowered 2 Teach; and Rhiannon Tasker from The Public Theater.

 

 

Steve Rio: Focus and Attention
Steve Rio has been researching the intersection of mindfulness, creativity and productivity. He’s CEO of Briteweb.

 

 

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Oppcoll hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host today’s show is dedicated to my mom. She would have been eighty five today would have been her eighty fifth birthday. Hi, mom. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with zoho no sis, if you made me sick with the idea that you missed today’s show co-branding how do you get people to care about your brand and your cause? When there’s so much noise out there, it helps to be inclusive and authentic. Our panel from the non-profit technology conference eighteen ntc explains how they’re james woo brand consultant christina jones with brothers empowered to teach and ran in tasker from the public theater and focus and attention, steve rio has been researching the intersection of mindfulness, creativity and productivity. He’s ceo of bright webb on tony’s steak, too, baby boomers, we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuing capital p wagner, cps guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com bye tello’s durney credit card processing into your passive revenue stream tony dahna may slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr to four, four four nine, nine nine here is branding from the non-profit technology conference welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc that’s, a non-profit technology conference in new orleans hosted by the non-profit technology network interview like all our eighteen ntcdinosaur views is sponsored by network for good, easy to use donorsearch and fund-raising software for non-profits my guests are james wou christina jones and ran in tasker. James is an independent brand consultant. Christina is co founder and ceo. Seo of brothers empowered to teach by here in new orleans. Andre hannan tasker is donor communications project manager at the public theater. Welcome. Thank you for having a pleasant have all three of you. Your workshop topic is branding for the apocalypse very ominous how to get people to care about your cause when everything is horrible. Okay, eyes the horrible that we’re, uh, is part of the horrible that we’re thinking about the current political environment and how there’s something new every couple of hours. Do you like he’s a crisis? Yes, that that is exactly what we’re talking. About that was certainly that’s the driver of the conversation and that i remember one day, you know, logging off twitter for about thirty minutes, coming back on and literally, there are six new horrible things that happened that we’re very much tied to the current political climate in the country we just learned a couple hours ago that paul ryan is not going to run for for the house in wisconsin. Well, there you go. Speak something about what’s going on on dh there’s news like that very, very often. Yeah, our challenge is to stand out, okay? Apocalyptic? Yeah, we have an apocalyptic e i mean, i think that the khan, the environment that we’re in right now is very divided. And no matter how quickly things change and how every how fast news is happening, it still feels like we’re in a very sort of divided world in the way that we’re feeling after post election, especially no matter what side you’re on it’s feeling very divided and very sort of there’s a lot of tension right now, and so it feels a little bit of tense and uncomfortable sometimes, okay, but, kristina, we can’t overcome your your organ has done it. I guess you’ve got some lessons to share. Yes, i think that we have overcome that because one of the things that we always do, regardless of what’s happening politically in the world stay true to who we are is an organization. So, you know, part of you know, your branding is sort of interpreting that message for what’s happening in the world as long as it’s a part of who you are. Okay, so, is that your first advice for rising above this noise is staying true. Yes, you are. I think so. I think what happens when we have these, you know, something, something that happens with non-profit sometimes is that wear always putting out a fire, right? We’re responding to a crisis. And in responding to those crises, sometimes we can lose a part of who we are or staying kind of on message of what we’re trying to accomplish or what our mission is. And so i think it was sort of like being i think i used on the panel today is like being a bully and a storm, right? So that’s, my part might take. Okay, so your panel’s already done. You’re relaxing them. That’s. Right, guys, take it easy on us. All right? Congratulations. Yeah, this is fun. This is not from radio. No, no, you got yours here. Anything okay? And i gather from the session description. Christina and rhiannon. You’ve taken two different approaches in terms of politics. Hyre christina apolitical. Pretty much staying mostly apolitical and reaction. Uh, using the arts to be political, using theater to be political. Yeah. Anything, something about the public theater as we try and represent all sort of views were opened everyone and we want to tell all stories and especially in our branding, we did the same thing where we said, very true to who we were as an organization and the urgency that people are few going in the community in the power of storytelling, to sort of tell people to share different perspectives and the power that storytelling really has. Teo help people feel like they understand a different viewpoint than their own, whether that’s, depending on all sides of the political spectrum, i mean the public theater being in new york city, we do tend to lean a certain way, but we try toe be as open just all, all voices in all stories on dh, hopefully help other people understand, especially as i said, we’re divided right now, helping understand other people and under perspective helps sort of refused attention and help people come in issues in a different way. James, i think it’s pretty well recognized that storytelling is critical. We’re not a theater group that has a stage literally, yeah, how can we effectively, compellingly is better. Tell tell, have the storytelling or telling ourselves yeah, yeah, that is a great question and one question, that question that doesn’t have fans, we have to have a fan, i have know that we’re seeing a james now you both way or lindsay is a small town, there was astra, everybody about each other’s people and your, uh, your home i’m leaving now way that was legitimate, okay, just kind of make up having any family. So how do we do this compelling? You know, that’s a great question is actually question that came up in a in our panel conversation today from the audience and ran and answered it beautifully, and i’ll try my best kind of encapsulate her great response in that. At the end of the day, yes, we might not be affiliated with an organization that is in the arts or in the future, or use this storytelling as the primary medium or platform. But the work that were in in the nonprofit world is all about human stories, right, it’s all about change and transformation within humans and communities that they dwell in, that we serve. And so i think at the end of the day, you know, you might not have art as kind of the channel for telling these stories. But the better you can get at telling very human stories that connect to people at a very human emotional level. I think that’s, where you get really, really, really power. How do you do drill down into that? Getting that making that connection with with the leader of the viewer? S o i think one of the mistakes that a lot of organizations do is they get caught up in kind of explaining their model like this is our theory of change. And this is here all of our programs, right? We invest in building community, we invest in entrepreneurs, whatever it is way train leaders instead of thinking about why, like, why do you exist? What is your purpose? What is your reason for being right? If you can start there, then you can begin inspire people in a way that if you start talking about your products and programs, you might lose them. Right? So if you can start with why you exist, really drill down and get to your core purpose. I think anyone can really identify with that. Begin. Teo, resonate with that message. It’s. Time for a break pursuant the round up the fund-raising round up it’s called the pursuing e-giving outlook. They took all the latest fund-raising reports. Boiled it down to just what you need to know. Plus they did a webinar on it. And you can watch the archive of that it’s, an ensemble piece, the content paper and the webinar both. Are on the listener landing page that is at tony dot m a slash pursuant remember the capital p for please. Now, back to branding. Cristina’s doing a lot of nodding. Yeah, i what’s your way, you know, brothers and power to teach, unlike the public fears only four years old, right? Um and so we’re still kind of a startup, but when we first started, it was very much like, this is our model. We have these three steps. This is what we do, and people would be like dahna and so when we started telling the story about why we do the work and why we think the way we do, it matters, it was much easier for people to connect. And so i think that that’s really, really important and you’re trying to get black men to go into teaching, right? Right? Education. That’s right, brothers? Yeah. Weather’s empowered to teach brothers and power to teach and sister bras and power to teach. But, yes. Okay. Okay. Uh, and you’re you feel like you’re creating a lot of boats and a lot of conversation around your mission. How? Yeah, on the way of rising above you, get talking about you? Yeah, i mean, uh, one of the things that i said today was that, like, show up, right? So we show up to lots of different things, and we show up in lots of different ways. So we participate in lots of activities going on around town related to the issues that we work on, but also on larger issues like there’s, an initiative in new orleans called forward together politicians non-profits people who work in the private sector come together, so we go to those things. We’re all constantly wearing a b, right? So that’s one of your share, one of the ways we show up the every way is that we know on your shoulder turned my shoulder way. We have young people who are very much engaged in the work that we do, and so they do a lot of videos for us. They do a lot of tweeting for us. They we do a lot of social activities, so people see us collectively together, and they’re like, what, that beaming? What hashtag real bro teach? What does that mean? So that’s how we really driven people to think about it, brandon, how about the public theater. How are you creating buzz conversation about about the pub. I mean, the public theater is a definitely a growing brand, especially in new york city. We had hamilton, which was like a huge, huge threat. Hamilton before was on broadway. Yeah, we created hamilton here the way we did the workshops and, like, sort of helped. It could be that show. And then we did the first production. That was the production that moved to broadway. So we had a lot of sort of, like buzz from that show. And i were now in the place of like, okay, now that hamilton’s sort of moved on, continuing those conversations and keeping us in the forefront of people’s mind as a theatrical in student as well. Civic inge institution. We hold a lot of talk are that are hosted the republic form team at our home in astor place. We also were doing them a delacorte. We hold other sort of initiatives. We did. Voter registration was a big thing. We had a table on our lobby on bistro. Participated with other non-profit geever okay. Interesting voter registration. That’s. Um, that’s. Not something that intuitively i would. Link with with a theater? Yeah, it was initiative that was started by believing playwrights horizons. They got theaters throughout the country to set up voter registration foods for when people came and saw shows they could register for vote while they’re like waiting in line or internet during intermission or after the show. And the idea is just to help people engage civically within their communities in the country by voting, and we had a huge turnout. We also did some pushes on our social media and through emails, and we got a lot of people registered to vote and it’s our way of sort of helping people just be active within our community and engage socially not just with the conversations that we’re having with the work we’re resenting, but just like in the real world outside of what’s on our stage is james, you’re our resident consultant. How generally, how can we create conversation and buzz around our work? I mean, i think we just heard some great examples, but beyond those, yeah, i think it does at the end of the day, come back to having a clear sense of who you are, but also who your audience is and we talked a lot today about authenticity, right? Yeah, doing here too, yeah, allowed on non-profit radio on and i think the theme of authenticity is something that we keep the three of us keep coming back to and is a common thread in all of our work. But, you know, like rian instead of beginning organization that’s yours and organizations that tend to shift their messaging or change, they are in response to what’s happening the world today without remaining true to kind of their core purpose or kind of their their identity. I think there’s a real danger, they’re kind of losing sight of what you’re all about and why you exist. I think when you have a clear sense of who you are and more importantly, how your audience connects with that, then that kind of authenticity shines through no matter what is happening around you. And i’m sure these to concede say more about that. Yeah, i think a lot of the questions we have today, no matter what the question was, are always kind of brought back to that authenticity and who you are and sticking true to who you are. Whether it is like a post election end of your campaign where there’s a little different urgency within it, it’s still about those fundamental things that make your organization what it is people are going to see right through you if you’re trying to, like, do something urgent, that doesn’t feel authentic or real because they don’t want to give money to an organization that’s not going to do something with it, that’s what that is fundamental to who they are, and so the public theater and, like we have always stuck true to those values that were theater of by and for the people on that culture belongs to everyone one and this is we are places, storytelling, and those are the things that are important to us and just framing it in the way of the moment of it, whether it’s urgency or what, no matter what it is, it is it’s still, those things at every question we got today, we kept coming back to that authenticity and who you are, because, christina, you’re not only alienating your mission, but you’re also alienating your core supporters, right? You’re awful, haley expecting work for you, you and your employees, your staff, they have certain expectations. Now we’re adjusting just because there’s tha multi in the in the political economy, right? Exactly. I mean, we think of our brand is a person, right? So one of the activities we did when we did our brand refresh was okay. His brothers and power to teach was a person who are they use a person? This ah, james is a user persona, or i think that’s part of it certainly part of it and so, you know, kept coming up with all the things that we already do that sort of reinforce who we are as a person, so we’re twenty something creative, collaborative, fresh and fashionable group what we read, what we listen to way to our podcast, you know, all about those things that connects our brand to people who want to hear about the work we’re doing in more detail, and it translates into the photos we take into our website. All of those things signify that you think, tony, you just used an interesting word a minute ago, and then there was expectation, and i think, that’s one thing that we actually didn’t talk a lot about. Directly today but certainly was a theme that i see woven in a lot of the work, especially the tactics that both of your organizations have used in the past year and can be something as small as the public theater in there. You’re an fund-raising campaign last year instead of their typical just we’re just going toe send email after email appeal at the end of the year asking for our audience to give us money they actually hand wrote notes on postcards thanking people for their contributions for their engagement, a very analog old school approach in this very hyper, you know, social media, digital world, and they saw a huge bump in terms of kind of hoping to see a big bump in terms of renewal sze but did see a big bump in terms of engagement, justin, based in response to that tactic, which so that kind of analog very old fashioned, if you will approach really, really cut through the clutter when you’re just getting bombarded on social media or email today and similarly with brothers empire to teach, i think one of the things that was really interesting when they were going through their brand refresh. They had an exercise where there, you know, looking at something as mundane as colors which should our color palette be that represents our visual identity. It’s a very standard part of any branding exercise. But the way that they thought about colors was really provocative for me. And i should probably just, like christina tell the story herself. But essentially, you know what? What i heard was correct me if i’m wrong that yeah, you tell us. Thank you. S r color palette is soft. So its environs so it’s yellow, teal of, like, a lavender. And i grayce right. And the reason for those colors is because we did this today we had all feel like you’re hearing. Yes, you’re going down going down with you. Eventually wei had everybody close their eyes and say and think to themselves, not necessarily share like you think of a young black man. What do you see? Right? And so when they open their eyes and said the reason these colors are the colors they are because they signify liveliness and collaboration and nurturing. So a softening of the idea of a young black man is because we want people to see young men as nurturers, right as having potential to nurture so that’s why our color palette is the way it is. We talked about this idea of i used to come from the international development world in this this expression or phrase club poverty porn. But if you’ve heard that but it’s kind of this, you know, in our imagery we either really negative imagery that’s very exploitive in an effort to raise money and awareness, right? So malnourished kids and sub saharan african with flies on their faces, right? That kind of creates this sympathy or pity. On the other hand, the pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction in the last five, ten years, where everyone uses just images filled with happiness and optimism and joy. And i feel like there needs to be a recall calibration again and something that’s kind of in between that prevent presents a mork, nuanced complete hole and maybe complex picture of what the issues are that we’re dealing with in the communities that we’re serving. I think that there’s a real danger and kind of dumbing down your message rebrand or simplifying it to say, this is this is who we are, this is what we’re all about and it’s it’s kind of playing into what people expect right versus some little what brothers in power to teach duitz he said, how do we create an image that is more about fostering this nurturing environment? And then also in some of the photographs, you see it’s, like, sometimes it’s really struggle on diversity that you see sometimes it’s real celebration enjoy and just the complete humanity that’s presented kind of a whole human being, i think that’s um, something that we don’t see enough of today, christine what’s a home run for you is that when when someone decides to and embark on a career in education is that i like the grand slam home run and a stadium fans would be if a young man starts with us and doesn’t want to teach, and by the time he leaves he’s like you know what i’m going to teach. So that’s that’s a grand slogan, the basic home run is basically a young man who should, who may want to teach what isn’t really sure and decides to teach, but we’ve had a lot of success with guys who had no intention of teaching because only three percent of all the teachers in the entire country are black men, they don’t see themselves and teaching, so the idea that they now see themselves with the teacher or working in education period is like, phenomenal, really, yeah, and you talked a bit about inclusive hyre say more about that in terms of the public’s brand. How do you feel being inclusive sets you? Aside from competition in new york city, the public theater, it’s one of our fundamental sort of missions is tio provide theatre to everyone no matter what background you are. And i mean, if we dio free shakespeare in the park where we give one hundred thousand tickets, world class shakespeare every summer, all for free heart is held to get to former new york come on, we’re making i mean that’s the thing that they are hard to get, people have to wait in line for hours. So what? We’re taking steps to make it easier to get tickets for everyone. So we do distributions in all five boroughs. We like what they’re like throughout the week we’ll be, we’ll be in queens one. Week will be in brooklyn will be in the bronx and staten island dahna distributing tickets there so that they don’t have to come into the city, wait in line for hours, maybe, or maybe not, get a ticket and then wait until the show in the evening. It’s a more accessible moment for them to get tickets there. We also have a digital online lottery so people could do it from work or from where they are. We do a lottery downtown, it are after a place home. So again, you’re not waiting in line. You can come enter the lottery, get john, be quick, we so we are trying to you offer more and more opportunities to help like to help expand who is seeing the theater versus the people who are able to write in line. We also do the mobile unit, which takes shakespeare to prisons, homeless shelters and community centers do out all five boroughs, and we do that twice a year. Once a year, we’ve now expanded twice a year, their twenty stopped tour, and then they come downtown and dio a three week, three week run at our theater and astor place and all those tickets are also free inclusion. Yeah, well, i just want to talk about. No, but the wraps. Okay, what else could we talk about you, you had your your workshop. We’ve got another five minutes or so together. What happened? We touched on anybody that we want to. You did ninety minutes. I know. We’re all talked out questions, maybe questions you got that we haven’t talked about yet. Well, one thing that that we didn’t that didn’t come up, that some folks ask me after our panel was, you know, it’s it’s interesting because you have a very founder lead organising your small organization, you’re young organization upmifa on the contrary, public theatre has been around for sixty five years, almost and their founder is not, you know, directly involved anymore, but oscar eustis who’s been there for how long? It was ten years when i started so twelve, thirteen years he’s kind of an iconic institution in another sound. And so how do you think about brandon relation too? The founders personality, and if you work in an organization that doesn’t have a strong founder with that really influences that culture than then what do you do? I don’t know if you guys have thoughts on that. Well, i’ve worked in no book fired-up buy-in my previous career, i was investment banker, community development and one organisation i work for went through a big brand refresh the founder had long been gone and what they did. Internally was sort of theater does with the stash and sent out a survey. Like, who are we way say we are. Who do you think we are? Wait, you think we should be? And they did a whole entire brand refresh based on sort of who’s in the building. Now, who works for the company now? Why did they come to this place to work here? And i think they did a great job rebranding themselves. Enterprise community partners. I haven’t looked at co-branding lately, but a few years ago, they did that. I thought that was a really great way to do it when you don’t have a strong founding founders culture anymore. The founder has, you know, your organization has evolved over the years. You’ve had another executive director, but you still want to stay kind of truth to your original mission. I thought that that was a great way, actually. Survey surveyed the staff surveyed the stand. Why are you here? Right? Right. Right. And i guess you know another question. Taking that a step further that i get all the time. Okay? We were sold. We should go through a branding exercise. That brand refresh. If you will, how do we get the leaders of our organization on board? How do we get the entire staff on board to really buy into this? So this doesn’t just feel like a bunch of pretty words that we stick in a mark getting drawer, but has riel impact on how we show up in every department throughout the organization every single day. So how do we get that buy-in that’s my question, i don’t know, i mean, you guys are both live and breathe this every single day, and i’m happy to share my thoughts, but i mean it’s, the public theater is such a deeply rooted mission and oscar, whose artistic director really lives and breathes the mission of the public and truly the people who work there want to be there. I want to be there for the mission of the public it’s, you know, it’s non-profit you want to be there for that, you you want to be there to help give thousands of people free tickets in the park and the work that goes behind it and to create good work. So we are kind of in a a very lucky situation and that we are very, very rooted in our mission and our brandon who we are on it, it stuns from having a strong artistic director leader who any speech he gives any from, like a staff meeting, agreed to the delicate and opening night of shakespeare in the park. It is so rooted and who we are and so rooted in the deep belief of who we are every so it really helps everyone in the organization really get behind it because you know that you’re working towards something not for our leader believes and i also that’s something that we believe in a cz group and as a theatre, so we’re kind of we’re lucky and that our way it’s so embedded in us is a public you don’t know, a lot of cedars don’t necessarily even have that theater is not something that people think of in these huge, huge, deeply founded missions and values and big we have brought their broad and really lofti of culture belongs to everyone and theatre should be free for all and all those things that but there are things to aspire to and there things that we all are working towards. Is an organization, james, if we don’t enjoy that luxury that the public has yeah, you yeah, i think one of the biggest things that i tried it teach my clients is that when they’re going through branding, exercise, it’s really critical to bring the entire organization on board throughout the process, right? There’s, nothing worse than going through a six month rebranding and the leadership says tata, we’re done look at our new brand and he says, what, like, how come i didn’t have my how come i wasn’t hurt happened? I didn’t get a chance to weigh in or at least share my opinions or and so i think that’s a really, um, the fine line between, you know, a successful branding and co-branding that ends up failing one of the i think it comes down to when you’re when you’re developing a mission or purpose statement, if you’re developing core values for the organization that you don’t fall into the trap, which is choosing empty words, right? We’ve also core values like empathy, innovation, honesty, well, who’s, who’s not going to be honest, like, who wants to be the opposite of that, right? So those kind of be empty, meaningless core values. How can you create a set of values that really change the way we show up to work every single day? And so one of the things that i do is my clients is after we have this branding, we bring everyone along throughout the process there entirely bought in, we say, okay, now we have this new set of values. Now we have these new purpose. Maybe we’ve written a manifesto. Really? Look at these words break up into teams. So finance department, accounting department marketing department operations team i want you each to go and meet and look at these words and really understand what they mean and have a conversation about what’s going to change. What you going to start doing mohr of today that you’re not doing enough of what you going to stop doing as a result of the language on the words at the end of the day, a lot of rebranding tze come down to a language and words and the intention that you put into those really can go a long way. Okay, we’re gonna leave it there, ok? Alright, right they are james woo, independent brand. Consultant christina jones, co founder, ceo of brothers empowered to teach rehan in tasker dahna communications project manager at the public theater. Thank you all. Thank you all very much things interview scheduled sponsored by network for good. Easy to use donor-centric software for now. Non-profits thank you so much for being with non-profit radio coverage of eighteen. Auntie si. We need to take a break. Regular cps, please talk to eat. Which tomb? You heard him on the four hundredth show. Plus he’s. Been a guest on the show a couple of times. Check out the firm. Of course. Do your research, then talk to e tell him what you need. He’ll tell you whether wagner can help you with your accounting needs. No pressure, all professional. Got to do your due diligence. Get started at wagner cps dot com now, tony’s, take two. I’m paying attention to baby boomers. Millennials get a lot of attention. Of course on dh that’s deserved. That could be a very, very important part of your fund-raising prospect pool course. Depending on your mission, they’ll be donors for fifty or sixty years. I am not saying ignore millennials at all we’ve covered in here on the show many times what the trends involving millennials, etcetera and will continue to but that i don’t mean that is the universal no gator along with that my consulting, and hence my focus is on baby boomers. They’ll be around because i’m one and i’ll be around for a good forty years. Actually, i’ll be around for another forty four because i’m living two hundred so they’ll be around there’s a lot of wealth in the baby boomer generation, they have proven to be generous with their wealth, lots of reasons to pay attention to baby boomers and to promote and market the state and retirement plan gifts to them, as well as paying attention a millennial’s again, this is not an either or depending on your mission and depending on the makeup of your constituents, they may both very well fit in. Okay, my video saying a little more on that is at tony martignetti dot com it’s my pleasure to welcome steve rio to the show. He is founder and ceo of bright webb, a social impact consultancy delivering strategy, branding and digital. He aims to build the world’s most flexible, engaged and efficient company. He’s, an expert in exponential organizations, remote and distributed teams and workforce, wellness and performance. He consults with impact leaders to reimagine their organizational strategies, systems and company cultures. The companies that bright webb b r i t e web dot com and he’s at steve rio. Welcome to the show, steve. Hi, how are you? I’m very well. How you doing? I’m doing great. Good. Were you calling in from? I’m calling from my home office on bowen island in british columbia, canada. Wonderful bowing island. How far offshore is bowen island? Probono island is the closest island to vancouver. It’s about a twenty minute fairy. But it’s a small little community about thirty, five hundred people. So just a small, small island. Okay. And you’re a good, uh, i don’t know. Six, seven thousand miles from new york city. That’s about right. That’s. All right. Right now. Yeah. Okay. That’s where i’m sitting so, uh, okay. It doesn’t matter who got twenty. Eighteen. It hasn’t mattered for a long time. Okay. Um, you’ve been you’ve been spending a lot of time learning about researching the science of focus and attention. What? What? What brought you to this? Yeah. So, i mean, i’ve been thinking about this, i guess, as a leader of a company of about five years ago, we moved to more of a remote model where we’re kind of embracing twenty first century practices around, you know, organizing people, so we started allowing people to work remotely and and travel while working and doing things like that. And then a couple years ago, we launched a distributed workforce of freelancers, so we have freelancers in twenty five cities around the world now and, you know, over that time, one of what i’ve learned for knowledge workers there’s an increasing onus on the individual to think about how they manage their time, their work have it how we organize our offices, whether those air, virtual or physical spaces and just really thinking about, you know, the capacity and capabilities of our teams. And so i guess even for myself thinking about how to maximize productivity and howto really achieved the most impact i can have in the work we do it’s become a key part of my thinking on howto really maximize their teams. So it’s been a few years now where i’ve been focused pretty heavily. On this subject did you used to have a more traditional office where all our most people worked in one place? Yeah, i guess that would have been about four years ago was when we started making that transition. We were we were working out of an office. So we have an officer, vancouver. But we serve clients mainly in the united states. So we have an office in new york as well. So as soon as we had two officers that’s when we started to think about howto have you no more of a distributed approach toe work. And so four years ago, we started making that transition. Okay, i see what drove you to that. All right. So you could have come to the studio. You you could’ve visited the new york office and come to our studio here. That’s, right? But it happens to be summertime and summer time on the island is pretty good. So i understand how you could be with you in new york. That’s okay? We tried, tio. We tried to, but the schedules were just, you know, i’m not in new york all the time, either. I’m, uh, i spend a lot. Of time in north carolina, where the beach yes, i have a beach house there, and the beach is also very nice. During the summer, you might have heard rumors to that effect the ocean and beach life. Very nice in the summer months. Um, yeah, okay, so you’re and you’re interested not only in the not only interested, but you’ve been spending time researching not only the conscious aspects of this, but unconscious earth. Yeah, well, so to me, there’s sort of a couple of key components. One thing is how we organize our time. You know, i think about this from if we’re thinking about the social sector, which is who our clients are in a lot of who i consult with and work with. I think about the capacity of our teams because i think we have pretty severe limitations on budgets on operational budget specifically and thinking about howto increase the capacity of our workforce. And i think one of the ways we can do that is by really looking at the way we structure our time and the way we you know what kind of habits we reinforce in the office place and i think first off, there’s the component of just getting focused, work done and thinking about distractions, thinking about how we’re implementing technology and the sort of core components of that, i think a second component is around creativity and around creating space and allowing people actually have the time to think big and come up with creative solutions, which doesn’t happen in a busy, distracted work environment. And when you’re right in front of technology all the time, it kind of requires ah level of space to be created for people and so let’s. Ah, let’s, get some ideas. How do you how do you create that space? So i think creating spaces, it comes with first off and understanding what it means, you know, what’s interesting, like, you know, we’re starting to work with universities in canada as well as the u s and thinking about how we start to educate people from a younger age about what it means to be productive. I think we have, you know, his knowledge workers. Most of us are knowledge workers in today’s world who were working in front of a computer, and we’re creating documents or information products or things like that. Were a lot of communications, so oftentimes we feel like productivity is time spent in front of the computer o r on our devices and and i think it’s really important to realize that productivity and creativity comes also when you create space, when you go for a walk, when you take breaks when you actually disengage from the, you know, actual document creation or the actual work you’re doing and take time to process what’s happened so what’s interesting is that we have a conscious mind in a subconscious mind, and, for instance, when we learn new information, um, about six percent of that goes into our conscious mind, which is immediately available, and the other ninety four percent goes in our conscious mind, and that takes time to process and that’s where we kind of put things together and think that’s where correlation happened, that’s where true creativity happens. So, you know, i think most people would, you know, relate to the idea of the best ideas might come to them in the shower when they’re doing the dishes or when they’re, you know, doing some task that requires very little cognitive effort and that and that’s when our creativity strikes, and so what i what i try and teach my team and what i talked to people about in our workshops and the work we’re doing is about think rethinking what productivity’s means and how creating space in your days and you’re weak can actually be a very productive way to be a more creative contributor to your work. This reminds me of the dark days when i practiced law, and in those days we didn’t have why didn’t you have a computer at my desk? We’re talking about nineteen, ninety four, nine, nine, nine nine to nineteen ninety two andi i i’d have to stare at a blank ledger every day, and i knew i had to fill it up with atleast ten hours of billable activity. Otherwise i’d be working that weekend to make up the difference, and there were all kinds of building codes for for producing tangible output, but there was never a code for thinking. You know what? I just spent time thinking about your case, thinking about what the best strategy would be thinking about how to manage the relationship with this adversarial party, but i could never build for i thought and i i i had to build it into some document, some letter memo to the file or to the client that i had written this thinking time was never a billable activity, that it wasn’t a recognized thing that we should ask clients to pay for. Yeah, sorry, we feel the exact same thing as a consultant, you know, we were able to build for designing a website or creating a strategic brief for leading a workshop, but a lot of that that the thinking time is sort of out in space that we’re not. We’re not ableto billed for, which creates on, as, you know, an inverse relationship with the actual quality of the work that we’re trying to deliver. Yeah, wait, we just have a minute before a break tell me how you enforce this. How do you get people to it’s create this white space in their in their work days? Well, i think you just i mean, it’s been very interesting trying to implement this with my own company over the last couple of years and the hardest route to do this with his with young folks with the millennials grownup as digital natives. In so it’s kind of repeatedly letting them know that they’re a part of their job is delivering value like deep, valuable thinking, and to do that, they need to create some separation from technology and from their devices, and they need to create space and so really encouraging people to get up and walk around to take way. Taking meditation moments through our days, we have these virtual meditations we do throughout the week that are just three to five minutes, because i don’t think it could be. It could be a short period of time or a longer period of time longer the better. But even to destry minutes can make a big difference in your day where you’re actually fully disengaged in either in a short meditation or even just day dreaming and looking out the window. Hold that’s all we’ve got to take a break. Yeah, tell us you’ve heard the tell us mony als from charities that referred companies for credit card processing and, of course, they’re getting the revenue each month on dh from companies who are using tello’s for credit card processing can use more revenue big question can use more revenue that long stream of passive revenue. Ah, i’ll bet you could watch the video at tony dahna slash tony tello’s that’s the way to get started now back to steve rio. Steve, i am guessing that a part of this is the especially the millennials where the tougher nuts to crack, he said they need to see you doing these things a swell like you’re you’re taking the virtual meditations with them, of course, that’s, right? Yeah. So so i think i mean, i think what’s very key for organizations realized that has to start with leadership, and so i think in my case, i’m the ceo of my company, i’m the founder of my company, so i’m ableto teo live this toe live this thes recommendations and these ideas and to really create that opportunity for people to pick it up. Now, it’s a serious behavior change for a lot of people who are very accustomed and, you know, perhaps addicted to their devices into being engaged with technology and those things so really creating behavior change, which could take some time, but it does start with leadership. Mm. And i think it all you know, it also we also have to rethink the way we organize our offices and the way we organize our work days and start to create, you know, periods of the day where people are allowed to work uninterrupted without the expectation that they’re going to re responding to emails or or taps on the shoulder or slack black messages that air coming in. I mean, the amount of distractions were seeing in our workplace today is is pretty insane, actually, when you think about how the brain works and what we actually need to do, teo, to be focused, creative and productive. So again, maybe maybe enforcement is not quite the right word, but encouragement or, uh, seems sounds like you’re stronger than just encouraging. Do you have these periods where people are no, during which people are not expected to to respond? So that’s their long term, you know, sort of thinking time and creative time. Yeah, we yeah, we do. We encourage way encouraged people to to use their calendars as a tool to block out time for that they’re weak. Where it’s very clear to everyone if they’re looking at other, you know, trying to find a time to book a meeting that these, you know, we encouraged ninety minute blocks of time because that’s really the amount of time that the the brain can, you know, we can focus on a hard cognitive tasks without meeting a break. So these ninety minute blocks, we encouraged those in the morning whenever possible because that’s really the most, uh, energy or your brain is going to have for the for the day. And we also created some tools, so we use black, like many, you know, like many companies, we use flak for internal communications, kind of quick, quick communications, but we’ve created a tool where people can basically turn on a snooze button for their slack, which notifies others when they messaged them to say, this person is in a focus what we call a focus block for x amount of minutes, and it indicates the amount of minutes before that person will be available again. Okay, so both some tools as well as practices and then what we’re what we’re looking at now is looking at sort of a shared a shared timeline throughout the day that works because we work on both the primarily the west coast in east coast time zones in north america, but basically looking at a calendar format that works for both, where there’s specific periods of the day where everyone is encouraged to focus in on their work and other shorter periods of time where everyone is focused to then use those periods to collaborate, communicate, ask questions and do all the regular sort of things that are necessary to move project forward. When you’re interviewing people to work for you, do you bring up these topics and sort of assess their their willingness? We do we? I mean, i don’t expect i don’t really feel like it a subject that is taught in universities or that many workplaces have ever really considered, so i don’t necessarily expect people to come in with a knowledge of it, but i do expect people to be open to it and willing to adopt it, and actually, as we’ve developed this content, more and more we’ve done two things one is internally, we’re starting to build a curriculum for this that will be basically required learning it’ll be part of our onboarding process that people will go through over the first a month or two of being being part of our company, where they will, they’re basically build these habits up, and these will be poor expectations of our of our work, of our workforce. The second thing we’re doing is is creating we’ve created a new entity called right well on break wells, you know, mandate is to help train and educate people through workshops were working like i said, we’re about to embark on a university tour to start teaching this as a supplementary content to college students. So my my my goal would be that people start to recognize this is the core necessity for for the workforce, not just being a subject matter expert and say, fund-raising or marketing or whatever, you know, your your specific areas, but also your work habits. So really thinking about both as as critical to success. How often do you do the virtual meditations? We have those happening every day of the week and there in a couple different times and what they are, they’re basically optional five minute meditations where people can jump on a video call, yeah, like on a video link, and they every we jump on the video and we just start with everybody sharing a one word kind of update on where they’re at so it could be stressed or excited or tired or just something to check in really quickly. And then we have a three, three, two, four minute guided medication that we all listen to. What it was really interesting is that the the actual active taking those three to four minutes is really relaxing and rejuvenating, you know, energetically, but it also brings people together in a very interesting way that we always end the calls of people, the big smile on their face and kind of connected in a way, even though we’ve been mostly silent together for those three to four minutes pretty neat how many of those do you participate in? I try to do them at least three or four times a week. I participate in a lot of them, i don’t i don’t leave them, but yeah, i try to participate in them a lot. I mean, i think, like i say, a lot of this is lead by example and and show that even a busy ceo of the company can take that time, you know, creating that space is possible, it’s a matter of sort of changing your mind set around how you structure your day no, we’re going tow. We’ll take another break and when we come back, i want to i want to start talking about your encouragement for non-cash hour, mindfulness and and attention. Great text to give. You’ll get more revenue because they make e-giving easy for your donors is our newest sponsor welcoming them again? If your donor’s consent a text, they could make a donation. How much simpler could it be? It’s simple, affordable, it’s secure the ceo is chad chad boyd. You can talk to him. The way to get started is text npr to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine for info and to claim a special listener offer. We got about six more minutes for focus and attention. And so, steve really let’s make that shift what’s your encouragement for people outside the work day. Yeah, this is to me is a such a critical area and it’s very interesting to try and, you know, impact people’s personal behaviors, right? And i think it’s a critical component of our success that work is their success out of work. And i think to me, they’re all combined these days. So there’s a few things we really focus in on one is people’s morning habit. So how did they start their day? Particularly the first thirty minutes to their day. So really encouraging people to wake up without technology. So just stay off of of the internet, on off social media and off their email and things like that for the first thirty minutes of the day. It’s proven it’s a very critical time where we’re shifting mind state from, you know, from asleep to a conscious state, and it is a key time to sort of tell the tell the brain what type of what type of hey, am i gonna have is going to be a fragmented, distracted day where there’s all sorts of news and e mails and alert coming in? Or is it going to be a day where i’m focused on my priority? So the morning routine, we talk a lot about there’s, other aspects of that too, where we wait, just think about can you get some physical time in o r sum? Like even if it’s just yoga or a walk or something like that? But how? Do you think about your morning? And similarly before you okay? Before you move on, i want to focus on the morning. All right, so so you’re recommending eso. Okay. So, it’s, fine to wake up with your phone. Okay, your phone is your alarm. Okay? You silence. That sounds like don’t put it on snooze taken extra ten to fifteen minutes. Right? That’s bad. Probably, uh, okay. And now set aside. Don’t check e mail. Don’t look at the latest alerts. Um, what do you want? What do you want me to do? Right after i hit that silence button on the alarm. Yeah. So i think probably the most. The healthiest thing you could do for your day is to wake up to spend the first few minutes of your day, perhaps thinking about your top, you know, maybe what you want to achieve that day, maybe thinking about what? Your great before, like, you know, taking a few minutes to have a bit of a gratitude practice. So a simple way to think about that is just every morning. Think about three things that you’re grateful for and those could be, you know, somebody important in your life some projects you’re working on, you know, the sun is out. It could be very simple things, but taking a few moments to be grateful and two to to, you know, feel good and excited about your day. And then i think also spending the first few minutes, uh, doing something physical, if possible, if you can get up in the first thing you do is get outside and breathe fresh air and go for a walk. That’s a very healthy way to start your day and to warm up your body in your mind so i can stop in the bathroom first, right on my way to the walk. Absolutely. Okay, but don’t eat anything, you know, okay, because otherwise out of bladder pain be terrible walk so yeah, and it could you might, you know, you could wake up and make your coffee or make your tea or, like, i think, just having basically a morning routine that is calm and present, where you’re spending time in the present moment, whether it’s like a lot of people for them it’s the ritual of making a great coffee and thinking about their day and looking out the window. And just, you know, taking a few moments to be very present at the beginning here today is a great way to ground your energy and be more resilient when you do start, you know, getting your work environment and you start getting emails or not you and all sorts of information, you’re a lot. You have a lot more resilience and ability to be, you know, president and capable of handling whatever stone at you. Now, this sounds good intuitively is their research that bears this out. What this is this effect throughout the day that you’re describing there is a lot of there is research around, yeah, around the way that you start your day. So when people, when people start today with technology, whether it’s, whether it’s work related, so se e mails rather kind of alert first off, any type of work e mails or things like that can immediately trigger an anxiety response, even if it’s not necessarily a negative thing, it could just mean hope there’s an urgent thing or something pops up, and so when you start your day with that way, you’re basically haven’t heightened, uh, heightened dose of what we call cortical zoho yeah, yeah, and this is where your stress is, one of those one of reaction to stress hormones well, basically spike right out of the gate without having a warm up to the day and then there’s also research that shows when you start your day with technology, your brain is basically triggered into a highly reactive state, which means that you’re more likely to be distracted on dh less able to stay on task through the morning after the day. I mean, so so you’re more likely you’re basically telling your brain if you think about our brain in a more about, you know, primitive sense, if you wake up and you’re immediately alerted to thirty different things, you’re basically telling your brain today is a day where i just need to be aware of anything that moves around me, which is not necessarily the state you want to be in when you wantto get him focused. Work done. Okay, so the research bears it out. All right, all right, all right. What? Anything else we have? Just about two minutes or so left. Anything else for outside the work hours that you reckon e i would. Say the at, like, the absolute most important thing people should be thinking about outside of their work is their sleep. And and in north america, we have a serious issue. One into adults are sleep deprived. You know, one in three adults in north america are working our surviving on less than six or left hours of sleep, and this is having a massive effect on not only our cognitive ability, but our health and well being and our mood and our mindset. And so i think, it’s one of the most undervalued, most important things we should be thinking about is getting the necessary amount of sleep there’s just an incredible amount of research, not only showing the health issues that are related to a lack of sleep and by a lack of sleep, i really mean six hours or less, or anything in that area which a lot of people consider to be a fairly normal amount osili but also the amount of cognitive decline that you that you experience. So i think a lot of times we have this this this relationship with time where we think, well, there’s not enough time to sleep. There’s so much i got to get done, but then when we don’t sleep, our productivity in our capacity and our ability to process is so low that we’re actually kind of creating a creating a negative feedback loop on where we’re getting less done with our time. I think sleep is the other area that i think people should be really focused in on and for optimal sleep. You want a dark and quiet space? I’ve done the way. Yes, we’re gonna leave it there those steve. But thank you for saying one hundred percent steve rio, you want to learn more from him finding that bright b r i t web dot com and treat him directly at steve rio. Thank you, steve. Thank you every day. Thank you. And a good night, too. Next week, amy sample ward returns with over marketing. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant capital p weather. 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