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Nonprofit Radio for July 22, 2024: 700th Show!

 

Claire Meyerhoff, Scott Stein, Kate Martignetti, Gene Takagi & Amy Sample Ward: 700th Show!

It’s Nonprofit Radio’s 700th show and 14th Anniversary. To celebrate, co-host Claire Meyerhoff brings “Claire’s Quiz.” We have our associate producer, Kate Martignetti, live music from Scott Stein, and our contributors Gene Takagi (law), and Amy Sample Ward (technology), are also on board. Also, our sponsors Donorbox and Virtuous check in. It’s fun and music and celebration! And gratitude.

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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. It’s July, it’s nonprofit radio. You’ve got the live music and that can only be, it’s our 7/100 show and 14th anniversary jubilee. All right. Amazing. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming for show number 700. Hey, Tony, your co-host is Claire Meyerhoff and she’s got Claire’s quiz. Tony’s take to trivia time. We’ve got much more live music from Scott Stein. Our contributors, Gene Taghi and Amy Sample Ward are here and our two sponsors will join in Eric Tamales from Virtuous and Jenna Lynch from Donor box. It’s fun and music and celebration and gratitude. We’re sponsored by virtuous, virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box. Fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Thank you very much Kate Cla Meyerhoff. Welcome Tony Martignetti. It is so nice to see you again and I cannot believe that this is the seventh show and the 14th jubilee, even the queen didn’t have 14 jubilee. Thank you. Thank you. Let me give you a proper introduction. Of course, our creative producer at nonprofit Radio uh and president of the Planned Giving Agency. Uh You’ve got decades of media experience including WTO P in Wash DC and Sirius. And uh of course, your company is the PG Agency, the Planned Giving Agency at EG agency.com. So good to see you, Claire, something like that. Yeah, it’s great to see. Great to see you too. Can I tell you a little bit about the exciting things I’ve been doing? You can tell us about absolutely what’s going on in life. Well, for many years, I attended this wonderful Plan Giving conference, one of my favorites in the whole country, the Carolina’s Plan Giving conference at Kuga, which is just a cool conference because it’s held at this camp and it’s really casual and the best people attend. And this year I was elevated to the committee. So I helped plan programming. I did a lot of marketing and I was really involved with the Carolina Planned Giving Conference and I’m doing so again next year and it is just the best. If you want to learn more about it. It’s Carolina’s Land Giving conference.org. I live in, I live in North Carolina that’s included in the Carolinas. Right. Absolutely. Yes, you need to come. Ok. Is it I don’t know where Cayuga, it’s, it’s in the mountains of North Carolina, near Hendersonville, North Carolina, which is near Asheville. North as it’s beautiful. It’s just the most beautiful setting. So relaxing and just a great place. If you love planned getting, then you should come to Canoga Tony. Ok. Cool. Uh, right here. Right. Well, I wouldn’t say my backyard about a five hour drive, but, uh, close enough. Thank you for sharing. And, um, I wanted to, uh, just remind folks and, and may probably you too or maybe not. Maybe you remember that. Uh, your first time on nonprofit radio was show number two really single digit show. Show number two, which was on July 23rd, 2010. And you and I talked, you and I talked about storytelling and jargon and, and you gave me the fabulous idea for Jargon jail. Jargon jail. I love jargon jail, which has survived these whoa, these 14 years jargon jail. Still putting, still putting, uh, scofflaw guests into Jargon jail when, when it’s required when it’s required. Yes, GG is holding up his hands, wrist to wrist rit cuff. And I think the first, uh, the first, first person to be confined first, uh, term to be confined to Jargon jail was probably capacity building that may have done it, may very well, that may very well have done it. Absolutely. Um, let’s bring in, uh, let’s bring our friend, uh, Scott Stein in Scott from Brooklyn New York, welcome. Hello, Tony. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Always a pleasure to have you for the anniversary shows, Scott. Thank you. Uh, Scott Stein, pianist, songwriter, thank goodness, songwriter. Otherwise we wouldn’t have any theme music. So grateful for that. Uh, and music director, you’ll find him at Scott Stein music.com and on Facebook, Twitter X Instagram and youtube. He’s Scott Stein music. Yes. You’ve got some gigs coming up, uh, a couple of gigs coming up in August. I see. Um, at Scott Stein music.com. Yeah, I’ll be doing, um, I’ll be performing as part of a community concert series here in Brooklyn called Operation Gig, which, uh, began during the pandemic. It began summer of 2000. Um, it was a series of outdoor concerts to employ the many musicians who live in that neighborhood and around Neigh neighborhood and it was so popular that it’s continued. Uh, so I’m excited because I’m gonna be teaming up with my old songwriter part or, excuse me, my old songwriting partner, Mia Byrne who is, uh, just moved back to New York after years on the west coast. Uh, we were in a band called The Ramblers for many years and co-wrote a lot of their songs. So that’s gonna be real cool. Uh, she had a great record that just came out last year. Um, and so probably to play some tunes off of there. And, um, yeah, and then I, I mean, I, I work with a bunch of different artists as a side man. So, I’ve, I’ve got a few here and there and um I’m gonna be up at the uh on the other end of uh what I do professionally. I’ll be at the North American Jewish Choral Festival as a clinician this year because I’m also a choral conductor because why do just one thing? And uh so it’s gonna be a busy summer. Um And uh just had a premiere of a work that I wrote about two weeks ago. So, uh more in the formal composition world. So, uh yeah, just lots of, lots of, lots of different stuff going on right now. What does a coral clinician do? Ah, so for this particular festival, uh, one of the things that they do is they group all of the attendees into what they call instant ensembles. So they create choirs, new choirs from all the people who are there. And so I’m gonna be conducting one of those four ensembles this year. And, uh, and then there’s a big concert at the end of the festival and, uh, it’s up in Tarry Town. So just outside the city. Yes, Westchester Tarry Town. All right, cool. Yeah, I’m glad you’re with us, Scott. Thank you. And, uh, Scott, uh, you’ll be doing three songs for us today, including, of course, the theme music. Cheap Red Wine, of course. And sample Ward. How are you? I’m good. I can when you were saying, you know, Claire, uh even remembering or maybe you had this written down and you checked your notes, but I’ll give you the credit of saying you remember because you remember everything, remembering. Um Episode two, Claire’s first time I was like, I, I believe the first time I was on was episode 100 right? And I don’t remember anything about what I said. So, ok, I don’t know what you said. I don’t know what we talked about. It was probably at that time, you were the social media contributor and then you kind of morph to social media and technology and now it’s technology which is, which is fine. It’s like uh John Cougar, John Cougar Mellencamp, John Mellencamp. Exactly. So you’re following and I’ll take, I’ll take this brilliant musician, well, and I, you know, maybe we could pontificate here that that’s a reflection of, of the sector and people over time feeling less hyper focused and, and distracted only by social media and thinking more generally about their technology and, and digital communications, you know, together. Um because you and I have brought them strategic advice for so long that they are listening to us and they are taking it all in. This is why you’re an author of multiple books because you see the bigger you see the bigger picture I just sent you show and, and explain how your, your contribution morphed but you see the bigger, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Uh because at the time 2010, this was your first show was absolutely right. Show number 100 it was uh July 13th of 2012. And yeah, I mean, social media, Facebook, we were still, we were still pursuing Facebook likes like us on Facebook, like us and they donate to us on Facebook. Donation was new. So, uh and all the sparkly shiny new objects that came along through over many years. And then I think we uh we let them tarnish on the shelf and put them in their place. People got smart and realized that the newest thing is not where they need to be every single time because there’s gonna be too many new things for us to pursue. And uh and now it’s artificial intelligence, largely not, not completely, not entirely of course, but artificial intelligence dominating the news. So makes sense that you would be uh devoted to technology for us. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, it’s, it’s funny the way things come, come back around uh the same or come back around differently like a game of telephone. You know, like I think about those early so much of the time, especially in the context of, of nonprofit radio and thinking about fundraising and revenue supports for organizations and kind of strategy around sustainability, you know, trying to kind of get the idea out there that whatever you’re investing in these other platforms isn’t investing in yourself, you’re you’re giving Facebook, the content to make Facebook, you know, and now, and now with a, now we know what the, what the hell they do with it too. Everything, everything you’ve given over, uh, they sell it. They, yeah, you, you are there. We, we’ve talked about this, you are their product, you are their product. Your data is their commodity and now they can sell you their fancy A I tools back to you that they held off of all of your free content. And hopefully you keep putting content into that A I tool and keep, keep feeding that machine. You know, um I’m sure you have the comments about this, but I feel like that’s so much now of, of conversations that I’m in are places where I’m invited to. You know, people are saying, oh gosh, we have a lot of A I questions. Could you come? And I feel like all that I do is, you know, slap it out of your hands and play a sad trombone. Like this is not the party you think it is? Let’s be really, we have to be really thoughtful. It’s not that you can’t use A I or shouldn’t be having these conversations, but it’s just like those early days where, oh, we could have a Facebook page. I guess we should have 10, we could have a page on every social media platform there is, I guess we should do it. I guess we should do it shouldn’t be your tech strategy. You know, I like that. Let, let’s bring Scott in. I’m sorry, let’s bring Gene in Gene Takagi. Our legal contributor, Principal of Neo, the nonprofit and exempt organization’s law group. He edits that wildly popular nonprofit law blog.com and is a part time lecturer at Columbia University. Welcome back, Gene. So good to see you. Awesome to be here and celebrate with you and, and with all the gang. Yes. And I’m glad we got you while you’re on the road. Yeah, in Boston today. For, for, for some work stuff going to DC tomorrow. Um, and, uh, eventually back to San Francisco. But, uh, yeah, nice to be on the east coast. It’s warm though. Your east coast run. Yes, it is. Yes. You’ve, uh, you’ve come to the east coast in a, in a warm time. Um, if your, if your work ever brings you to North Carolina, of course, you need to let me know. I’ve never been, so I’d love to go someday. Oh, my gosh. You gotta come to the beach. Well, maybe for next year’s jubilee, you could host all of us, Tony. We were thinking about, I was thinking about a studio gig for the 750th show. Uh, a beach, a beach show we could do. I’m sure Claire would come up with a beach theme for us. We totally do that. All right. All right. We may be together for the 7/50 we’ll see, we’ll see about that gene. What’s been going on? What, what’s, uh, what’s the stuff that, uh, folks are talking to you about? Um, so I got a few things happening this summer that, that should be fun. I’m talking, um, to the State Bar of Texas, uh, uh, on, it’s called the state of the economy, um, and how that affects nonprofits, but I kind of have a view on the economy being a lot of different things all at once. Um So it’s strong, it’s in transition, it’s uh uncertain, it’s uneven and it’s beyond what anybody’s uh prepared for. So, um I have a lot to say about that. Um And that should be fine. I’ve never been to Austin before. So that will be my first time in Austin uh this uh August and then in September, I’m doing something for the Stanford Social Innovation Reviews Nonprofit Management Institute. I get to speak on one of my favorite subjects and that’s kind of on climate change and why that should be something every nonprofit should be thinking about Stanford Social Innovation Review. I have a little funny story about that. Uh The, the editor there is named Eric uh Eric Nee nee and I saw uh now this is a Stanford Social Innovation Review. S si r very prominent online and I don’t know if they’re still print but very prominent uh outlet uh for, for uh smart thinkers like Gene Takagi. Um And I saw Eric Nee, the editor of this prominent uh channel uh in his uh uh in his bathrobe outside his house. I was, it was unbelievable. I was on a, I, I had visited my uncle who lives in Half Moon Bay, California outside San Francisco. And uh I was on a shuttle, one of the shared shuttle rides to the airport sfo and so we make different stuff scheduled, uh people scheduled stops. So the stops are all in neighborhoods at people’s homes, pick them, you know, like a like in a shared that kind of shared ride, not at, at malls and one of the homes we stopped at was right across the street from Eric Knee. Now, I don’t know this and I was sitting by the window. So I look out and there and there’s the guy coming out, he’s picking up his, it was a weekend picking up probably his Sunday paper. It was probably, let’s say it was a Sunday and he’s in a bathrobe and I’m thinking that’s Eric Nee from the to he’s in his, he’s in his bathrobe and his slipper, he’s picking up his uh what’s the, what’s the, what’s the San Francisco Chronicle, let’s say right? Isn’t that the San Francisco paper gene? Is that a, it is OK. He’s picking up his chronicle. It’s laying out there, you know, not the side because the paper boy throws it at the, it’s a little community throws it at the end of his sidewalk and, and he, and sure enough. So I email him but like within three minutes because I’m so excited. Uh, and sometime, sometime along that he got back to me and said, yeah, that was me, that was me because I knew, I knew the address where I knew the street we were at. And he said, yeah, that’s my house. I, yeah, you were across the street from my house. So I have the inside, uh, he has bony knees. I would have to say or, and, and not because his name is, last name is Knee. But, uh, he does have bony, uh, knees. Oh, it wouldn’t be nonprofit radio without Tony telling a story where everyone doesn’t know you didn’t have any idea. The story was coming. Doesn’t know what to do with the story. Once it’s been offered, this is proper. It’s not profit radio, timely. Topical. I hear you. Gene. Thank you. I’m glad you’re Gene. I’m glad, I’m so glad you’re with us. Glad to go. I’m still stunned by all of this, but all right. Hey, Kate Martignetti, our associate producer. She’s a graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and now attending Rowan University in, uh, Glassboro, New Jersey. Her first show was number, 00, we’ll get to Jeans. Her first show was number 645. So she’s, uh, she’s our newest, newest addition to the family, which was on, uh, June 19th of, uh, last year. Good to see you Kate. Every week. Good to see you too. So, it may actually not the newest addition to the family already in the family. Predating nonprofit radio, the nonprofit radio, family of a non specific, but the Martignetti family, she’s been in the, she’s been in, in the Martinetti family for 21 years. 21. So. All right. All right. But, uh, any, any case, good to, good to see you, Kate. We, we see each other every, every Thursday night, Kate and I, uh, put to put together the show for uh Monday release. It’s all fun. Uh Gina, I gave you a little bit of short shrift. I, I wanna go back to you and, uh, just let folks know that you were also in, uh, your first show was also a single digit. You were, you were on your first show was show number seven. I remember it well, on August on August 27th of 2010. And we also had on that show, the, um, the New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom back when, back when big time newspapers had nonprofit beats, which no longer haven’t existed for a long, long time. But Stephanie was on and, uh, um, and that was your first show number seven. It was awesome. He came down to San Francisco to, to visit with me too. I did after not long after, uh, that was a different visit to San Francisco. Not the one where I saw, uh, Eric Knee’s Knees but a different visit is when, uh, you and I, uh, you and I got together with, uh, your, your associate, the woman who was the associate in your firm at the time. Emily Chan, Emily, Emily Chan. That’s right. You used to do the show. Uh, you would do the contributions together. Well, I’m grateful to each of you for, for, uh, of course, being here for the 7/100 anniversary jubilee celebration. Uh But also for the contributions you make uh routinely the nonprofit radio. I really am. I really am grateful. Um Thank you. Thanks for putting up with us for all these years, Tony. I love it. I love it. It’s, it’s an absolute labor of joy, Claire. You’ve got some, uh you’ve got, uh we’ve got Claire’s quiz this week. I, I have a quiz. I have worked up uh a number of questions that I think uh everybody can enjoy the questions and answers to. I have one rule. Uh When I ask the question, anyone can raise their hand and I will call on the person I want to call on because this is not a democracy. It is my question. Just so our very first question uh Harkens back to something. The lovely Amy Semple Ward said earlier on the October 18th 2013 show, Amys Ward discussed something that had plummeted. What was it? And Amy, you can, you’re eligible to answer this question. Could you say the date again, please? It wasn’t her first show. It was, uh, 2013, October 18th, 2013. Any simple word discussed something that had plummeted. What was it? What did they offer up? Something that plummeted? Mm. We just feel like the word plummeted is important to the answer, but it’s giving me nothing. I have no memory of this show. Ok. It was Facebook Reach had plummeted. Ah, so see, back then they changed the algorithm, right? And, and Facebook reach plummeted which really affected nonprofits. They were all like, oh yes, we had such great reach and no, we don’t. That’s when they introduced the, the promoted posts and the pay to get your reach back up. Oh, all right. 2013. Wow. OK. Second question. Everyone can answer the first one, the first one for one. So our second question everyone can answer except Scott Stein. According to Scott Stein, he gets comparisons to this artist most often Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Billy Joel or Tiny Tim Bruce Springsteen, Elton John. Billy Joel. Tiny Tim. Who wants to answer Gene? I’m gonna go with Billy Joel. Oh, you would be wrong. Oh, next, that was my guess. Next Bruce Springsteen, Elton John are tiny. Tim is tiny, Tim, an artist. Oh, believe you me. Like I need to hip toe through the tulips. I would say that if it’s not if it’s not Billy Joel, uh I would say Elton John. Yes, that would be the correct answer. That Scott Steiner, that’s the comparison he gets most often out of those. I would say Billy Joel is a pretty darn close second though because there’s new piano players. Most people know. I think Elton John’s not a New Yorker. Technically neither am I, I just don’t, oh, don’t tell anybody. You, you’re from, you’re from Ohio, right? Scott. I am. But I’ve been here 17 years. So, you know, kind of a New Yorker. Yeah, New York is not, uh, New York is not, uh, clubby. That way you have to be there 20 years to, to be considered, uh, from the place. It depends on who you ask. Brooklyn though. Brooklyn. You, you’re either born in here or, or you’re not a Brooklynite. Yeah. There you got, we got time for one more. Claire. Yeah, we got one more. This is a cute one. Ok. This five time guest has initials which are funny to a kindergartener. Five time guest. A kindergartner would think this is funny. His initials. These are good Claire. Can you tell us the topic that they might be a guest on? Well, he has written books, uh, he has written a book about media and nonprofits with, um, a lovely woman. I know from North Carolina co-wrote the book with him. He’s been on the guest. He’s not been on the show five times and his initials. It’s the same one each it’s the, it’s, it’s, it’s the same initial Peter P Panopo. Oh, Peter Pan Pan PP PPP. I was trying to come up with somebody that name with but, or something, you know, I think you gonna love that. I’m, I’m not in, I’m not in kindergarten but I think that’s hilarious. That’s a good 10, those are excellent. Claire. All right. All right. I got one. We got, we got, we got, well, we won for three. You one for three. Yeah, because we, we didn’t initially get the Scott Stein one. All right. One for three. All right, Scott Stein. Speaking of which, uh, Elton John, Billy Joel, eat your heart out. You’re not part of nonprofit radio. Uh, nor will either of you ever be. I, I’m not, I’m not speaking to either of those two artists. Uh, I don’t take calls from either Billy Joel or Elton John. Uh, but I always take calls from Scott Stein. Thank you. What are you gonna do for us? This first one, Scott. Um, I’d like to do a new song actually. Um, and it’s called, uh, it’s called Out of Order and, um, it’s just about how sometimes life happens the way you plan it, but usually it doesn’t and you learn to kinda take things as they come. This is my, this is my fatherly wisdom now that now that I got two kids, this public feels a little smaller than at sea, no matter how I try, I just cannot keep it clear. The clutters piling up on the kitchen. Oh, I just smile and laugh it off as best as I’m able. 20 years ago. I was a, I knew I had the answer. I knew I had a plan. The alarm is set where the kids are, um, little voices. A little and car funny happened. You trade your house of dreams for bricks and more. The herein long his ice cream days will come back around again. You’re the d I friend of call. And I always thought I’d had it all. Guess in what’s going down now, he’s moving to an apartment across town and I trade your house and here in long and they had this ice cream days come back around. Always used to say right, what you know, but I get the feeling that that should a long, long time ago and if horizon very often let it off, sometimes things are in and out of order. Some dreams lie over an imaginary. Yeah. But every day you turn, then you turn a little till your broken heart is bigger than any girl was before. Tree house. Tree here is and side screen treasure house here in the what? You know him? The come back around again. 00, wow, so nice. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. Love it. Scott. Will you join every conference call I have and just play musical interludes. It would, it would make long days on Zoom. So much more pleasant when you know, every 20 ish minutes take a brief moment and let Scott play a song for us. I thought you were gonna say like, have me be like the uh like the hold music, you know, or something. I mean, I’ll take what I can get, but I really did mean just like be on Zoom and you know, when there’s a lull, you just play a song. I think that’s an offering. I’ll write up a description for you. Cool. All right. That sounds good. That’s a, that’s a niche. I am willing to own. Hey, you got something for us. Yeah. So on each anniversary show, our sponsors get a few minutes to tell us about their company’s products. Here is Eric Tamales from Virtuous, pre-recorded with Tony. It’s a pleasure to have with us, Eric Tamales from virtuous uh a nonprofit radio sponsor which we are very, very grateful for Eric is Chief Evangelist and Director of Business Development for virtuous Eric. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for the virtuous sponsorship. So glad to have you on the on board. Thank you so much for having me, Tony and having us allow us to support the work you’ve been doing. We’re so excited for you on your 7th 100 show. And what, how long have you been doing it for 14 years? Thank you credible. So good. So good. Yeah, 2010, we started off, uh, when podcasting was small, it was small. Um Tell us, you know, listeners hear us week after week talking about uh, responsive fundraising that, that virtuous is, is, is, that’s a core to the, to the business, flush it out for us. What’s responsive fundraising? You know, it, it’s interesting. It’s, uh, responsive fundraising to, to us is our methodology that drives all of our technology and all the work that we do. Um And as you know, Tony, I’m a, I I joke about this a lot is a, I’m a recovering fundraiser. I’ve been spending the last 20 some years on the front lines working with nonprofit organizations inside the organization. And one thing that I always, it drove me insane about was having all these desolate systems that never once talked to one another. So like we would have run an event or a gala or whatever it might be and our database team would download that report and then upload it into our CRM and we have to hope and we wish that it actually talks to one another and that it has good data and clean data and can break the right name and number and whatever it might be. And what responsive is, is kind of the modern approach to all things that we’re used to that right now. And I think through in my own household, think of it like a Netflix model, right? Like inside one household, my wife and I, we have one Netflix account and I have my own persona underneath my Netflix and she has her own persona. And so when I finish stranger things, which I often do because I actually like that show. It’s my, I’m on my fourth time watching it. Netflix listens to what I previously watched and will suggest another series based on those preferences and my wife’s not seeing hers, right, seeing mine, she’s seeing her own. And so our donors want that same experience. And when we start merging it, melding our technology together to be able to be one, we have the ability to say, hey, someone just attended an event, let’s take them down that donor journey or someone who just donated for the first time online. Now they have a first time new donor welcome series or if they just volunteered, the system can actually grow with it. So the main idea, responsive is having all of our technology talk to one and but going through four basic premises of we want to listen, we want to connect, we want to suggest and we want to learn and that methodology informs all of the work that we do inside our technology. So the CRM, the online giving the email, marketing, the technology volunteer management, all of that talks to one another to help grow generosity for our nonprofit organizations. So let’s flush that out a little bit because listeners also hear us talk about uh the CRM fundraising, volunteer management, the marketing tools, resources. Um ho how does responsive fundraising work its way into, in, into each of the, or let’s start with the CRM? Because I think that’s, that seems to be the uh your lead. Well, and I, I think the CRM is, would be our home base, right? And so all the different pieces around it would be the marketing and the automation and the signals and all the different technologies that inherently go to the CRM and have a conversation there. So uh like I said, like this new donor welcome series, you know, someone makes a contribution online $25 right. Right. So it automatically goes through the online giving portal, it tags onto the record. But now the CRM and actually talk to the marketing side of saying, hey, maybe we should take someone down and like, well screen them, maybe we should well screen them and be thanked appropriately by the right person inside our office rather than our annual gift officer who’s always gonna say thank you to the $25 donors. Maybe this individual has huge income producing assets, maybe it’s an ultra high net worth individual that should be communicated to by our CEO. So now we’re having a personal connection at a pro an approach to be able to drive that generosity and the right person is talking to the right individual. How about on the volunteer management side? What what does that look like, so the volunteer management side, there’s a couple of different areas that we, we have, we operate because holistically, you know, this, I, I come from the boy scouts, I think, you know, volunteerism is the beginning of generosity, right? Like it leads into our donor and constituents and individuals. And so now our system has the ability to track the number of hours that folks are, you know, are, are volunteering for our organization. But we also have this mobilization do application where we can actually register on our phones and we can actually go and volunteer. And so now you’re utilizing automation to say if Tony volunteer, if any individual volunteers over 50 hours, it will notify our gift officer team. Or if they say, hey, maybe they volunteered five times, maybe they need to get a phone call from our volunteer manager to be able to say thank you, right? Like all those different things to be able to all talk to one another. I, I appreciate your uh background in boy scouts. I’m, I’m a proud eagle scout. All right. All right. You always say, I always say I am an eagle scout, not I was Eagle for life. All right. Thank you, Eric. Thank you so much for the virtuous sponsorship, Eric Tamales hailing from uh Pittsburgh P A. Thank you so much, Eric. Thanks for being with us. Thank you, Tony. We appreciate it. I am so grateful for that uh for the virtuous sponsorship and they do have a very comprehensive suite of products that are all inter uh interrelated working together as uh as Eric described Claire. Let’s play some more Claire’s quiz. Oh, I’m so glad you like my quiz. All right, here we go. I have a few questions that concerned one of my favorite guests on your show who is a personal friend of mine, who I consider a mentor and just an all around fabulous guy and his name is Doug White. So Doug White has been on the show more than once. Tony, how many times has Doug White been on Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio? Anyone can answer but why would they know? But Tony should know, I guess dad Tony really wants to get this right. I can tell by his look of concentration to who, who’s Doug White? No, I know exactly who Doug White is. Former Columbia University. Is it 55 five? Ok. So we’re staying on the Doug White theme. Doug White’s book, Abusing Donor intent. One family’s epic battle against which university Tony? I, I know Columbia. No, Doug Whites. Doug worked in Colombia. He was the professor. And on your show, one family’s epic battle against which university it’s against Princeton University. That’s Princeton. OK. Which was the family that went back to Princeton University said give us back your money. Our money was the family, the Daniels family, the Robertson family, the Blackwell family or the Partridge family. I could have got that without the multiple choice. It was Robertson. Very good, very good. Princeton. That’s right. It was Princeton. He worked at Columbia. So here is one more question and I’ll let everybody have a stab at answer. Somebody else answered when this family, which was a, um, a MP Eric family heir of the A MP fortune, the supermarket fortune. And they went, again, they went up against Princeton University to get this, this massive gift that they had given a long time ago. Get that back. Both sides racked up legal bills. What were the total legal bills do you think? And Gene, maybe you have a thought on this. What was the total legal bills for both sides for this epic epic battle? Gene? What do you think? Maybe were the total legal fees in cumulative for both sides? Gene? What do you think it might be? I’m gonna say 18 million who you wouldn’t even be close? Gene? It was over $80 million spent on just legal fees. I’ve got charge more in San Francisco, the arguably the most expensive city, the world country, country, at least 8, 80 80 million million in legal fees because Princeton, they lost the case and they had to pay the legal fees for the Robertson family and they paid them $40 million in legal fees and they had spent more than that. Princeton. Gosh, isn’t that something? So, anyhow, all right, I have a couple more questions and the only one who can answer. Well, actually this is just for Tony. Tony who introduced you to Scott Stein. Do you remember? Uh, of course, the, uh, his former roommate from college, the lawyer, uh, his initials are JB JB. Right. JB JB J, Scott. I don’t know. I forgot his name. I’ll let you do the honor. It was Josh Becker. Josh Becker. So, you’re real close. He, actually, he was my roommate when I moved to New York. He wasn’t my college roommate, but I wasn’t too far out of college. So that’s that we’ll give you that one. All right. Well, thank you. All right, Josh Beckett. Right? Because I, he had done some legal work for me around intellectual property. I was just trying to trade or not trademark. I was trying to copyright. I think the blog at the time when blogging was, was uh more popular. Um, and so I asked him that guy was looking for some good music because I was stealing music from, um, um, fried. Was it called Fried Green Onion? The Booker T and the MGS fried green onions, fried green onions or just green green onions by Booker T and the MGS Green Onions by Booker T. That was gonna be my next question to you, Tony. And I was, had a multiple choice. So I looked up other 1962 hits like the song Green Onions and we had roses are Red by Bobby Vinton. The Locomotion by Little Eva. If I had a Hammer by Peter Paul and Mary 1962. Wow. She’s Got You by Patsy Cline and Twisting The Night Away by Sam Cooke were all songs that were, that were very popular in 1962. The same, the same year as the inspiration song for Cheap Red one. Well, yeah, it right. It was our very first. That was, yes, I was stealing. I was stealing the song. Uh and then we initially, we were stealing it, but then I did try to, so I confess initially we were stealing it, but then I did try to find who owns the, the copyright to the song and it was very convoluted. There was an agency and then they said, no, they don’t have, it’s not theirs and I was trying to license the song from somebody, but it was, it was a big mess. Well, I could never, I never found anybody. Um And maybe Josh Becker was even trying to help me. He might have even been trying to help me find the the right because I felt bad about being a thief of intellectual property. It’s not, it’s not a great thing to do. Um But it was the early days of podcasting, we can excuse it. It was what, what do, what do, what do we call them youthful indiscretions? It was a youthful indiscretion. I, I was only 37. Um So I made that, I, I don’t know for sure where it was 2020 2010, 2011, somewhere around there. Um, so I think Josh may have been helping me Scott to find the right agency to pay and we couldn’t do it. Uh, and then he introduced me to you and right, he, he wrote to me and he said, do you have anything that sounds like this? And I said, well, I don’t know if I got anything that quite sounds, if you know the tune, it, it, it isn’t quite that I was like, but I got this thing. It’s kind of got the same beat, same tempo. Let’s you know what, what the heck. Here, here you go. You see if you like it. And uh the rest as they say is history. Do you remember the fried green onions uh tune? Are you able to? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh Give us a few. It’s uh it’s uh right. It’s in a million movies. I really, really famous instrument from the early sixties. So Claire, we guessed one of your, oh, we get credit for guessing one of your next question. Next question. You did really? Well, give you some more questions. Do we have time for a few more? Um We do. Yes. OK. Uh This one’s about me. So uh Tony, when this, this is just for Tony, when the show was in the development stage, Claire talked Tony out of including a certain feature. What was it at the beginning? This was before we look, when we were, when we were developing the, um, you know, the clock and the, and the whole thing, this is when it was the Tony Martignetti show, which, which lasted only one week. And you talked to me out of that. Uh, yes, I believe I wanted to do live, uh, news, weekly news. Roundup. Cody wanted a news, wanted a news feature in each show, but I said, Tony, no, you can’t do news because you need each show to be more evergreen. And if you have that’s not evergreen, it’s gonna sound really old later on. Whereas most of your shows, if you listen to them years later, unless you’re talking about the pandemic or something like that, they’re not dated, they’re, they’re good shows. Ok. So what was, why is, why is Counsel from, from Claire Meyerhoff? I’m, I’m a professional. Save me, save me from myself. Yes, that’s why, why you brought me on board. So, ok, after this episode on August 2nd 2013, Claire talked Tony out of doing a new regular feature that he’d been doing. What was the topic that soured Claire, Tony? Uh uh wine, wine, it wasn’t wine, but you’re kind of close the fermentation that it wasn’t. Tony decided that he wanted to, to change up the show and said, I, I want to start bringing in people have nothing to do with nonprofits, talk about different things. And so we had a few people on and I was in studio for one of the bigger, you know, one of the anniversary shows we were in Sam’s studio, the one on the west side. And you had this fermentation guest and I sat there going and then I was like, hey, Tony, you know, I don’t know if the listeners want to hear about. I think you should stick with the awesome stuff that people are coming to you for that. You’re an expert on which is discussing nonprofit issues and topics. So once again, fermentation, save me from myself. Yeah, I thought, well, we’d bring in other topics because nonprofit professionals are multifaceted people and they have lives. And so I’ll just try to anticipate what they would be interested in. And the first guest was fermentation. And then, uh and then I, I had this, I feel bad about this. I had Santa Claus lined up. Exactly Claire. I had, I had a Santa Claus like a Macy’s Santa Claus. Santa Claus. This guy was more authentic than even Macy’s. I, I saw him on I 95 because I used to drive between North Carolina and New Jersey and he had like a sleigh on his van was made up like a sleigh. It was painted like a sleigh and I looked at the driver and it was Santa Claus and it was just as good as um Ed Gwynn who plays him on uh Miracle on 34th Street, the, the, the, the original, the classic one and Gwen Gwen, he looked just like the beer and everything. So I got the guy’s number off the side of his Slay Slay band and II I booked him on nonprofit radio. And after Claire helped me save myself, save me from myself with the fermentation guy whose name was Sandor Sandor. His, his name was Sandor Katz, but he used to call himself Sandor Kraut because sauerkraut is a f we heard it. I didn’t know. But so, so you, you called us, did you call Santa Claus and unbook him? I had to, of course, I’m not gonna just blow off Santa Claus. Santa Claus had like a nonprofit angle like that. Then you could have had him on the show because you should, you know, if, if Mr Mr Fermentation had had like a nonprofit angle, then I think that kind of thing would work. But this was somebody that just painted their van. I had a, I had a fundamental misunderstanding of podcasting, which was everybody will subscribe to the niche podcast that interests them. If they’re interested in fermentation, they’ll find a fermentation podcast. If they’re interested in crocheting or Needlepoint, you’ll find the Needlepoint podcast, uh et cetera. So I had a fundamental misunderstanding Claire saved me. Thank you again. That was a good one. That’s a fermentation show. I love that one. Sandor Kraut. OK. We have to move on. We, we had um Pony Pony Martin. Any fermentation radio with cheap. That’s awesome. I was waiting for that reference. I didn’t want to be the one to say it. I have to say real quick that Tony um your story about how you met somebody on the side of the road off an I 95. That’s not usually how that story ends as he comes on a podcast just putting that out there. So, consider yourself lucky. That’s great. Scott. Santa Claus could have been packing. I would have been in trouble. All right, Scott. Yes. Uh, very good gene. That’s very good. Um, Scott got another song for us. Sure. Uh, I did a record a couple of years ago which, uh, you very kindly gave me a chance to talk about when it came out an album called Uphill. And so I’m gonna do a song that was, uh, intended to be the second single, uh, off the record and then, well, we had a newborn at home and so that sort of took over, but this would have been the second single had I had enough brain cells to actually, uh, to promote it properly. Uh This is called a little longer outside of the trees. The grass where I played as a little side of the yard, the bushes, 1000 baseballs outside is the child that I was that I wish a little more than he did and stay here a little longer with you. Outside, there is progress. It’s made of steel. Outside, there is change upon change and things are changing too fast. And outside those who aren’t old enough to know for seeking this to shell and stay here a little longer with you outside. But outside those roads and those highways. Oh, wow. Because outside are the noise and the pros, the complications of life outside there is darkness but for those moments shining. Possibly. No, sir. Tell you about how you were always ready. Stay here a little longer with outside are the signs and the reminders of all things you used to love outside stars and the heavy skies, the day and outside of the dreams and all ever had and stay here a little longer with you. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. You played a song uh last year from Uphill you played. Um It’s, it’s a good life. I did. Yeah, I was that one. I remember I was trying to come up with one that I hadn’t done on the show yet from, from the, from that record. So there you go. Thank you. Thanks Scott Kate. You got something for us. It’s time for Jenna Lynch from our sponsor Donor Box to share how their products can help our listeners. Fundraising. Here’s her pre-recorded convo with Tony Jenna Lynch is the education and community engagement manager at donor box. Jenna. Welcome to the 7/100 show. And thank you so much for Donor Box’s sponsorship. Hey, Tony, congratulations. First of all, on the 7th 100 show. That’s amazing. And 14 years of nonprofit radio, we are so honored and proud to be able to sponsor the nonprofit radio and thanks for having me. Oh, it’s a pleasure. Um We talk week after week about how uh Donor Box is a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. Why don’t you flush that out for listeners? Sure. Yeah. So at Donor Box, we help fundraisers who lack sufficient time, resources and technology to really achieve that growth and sustainability for greater impact, which is so many fundraisers, right? There are so many fundraisers out there that are wearing so many different hats and just don’t have the resources. So uh that’s what we aim to do. So like generic fundraising platforms. Donor Box is really a comprehensive suite of tools and services and resources, right? So it’s not just the tech, it’s services and its educational resources that really empower fundraisers with a custom solution to help acquire and retain because that’s the important part, retain the donors that they have while raising funds online. And as you said on site. So uh so far, we’ve helped more than 80,000 organizations from all around the world raise over $2 billion in donations. Yeah, that 80,000 number. That’s incredible. But congratulations to you for 80,000. It’s remarkable. Um Let’s talk about the services a little bit flush that out because the tech is the I I’m not saying the tech is the same. Of course not. There are features that are specific to donor box and special, but say a little more about the service that that’s not so common. Sure. Yeah. So I’d say what truly and I’m biased, right? Because I’m the education and community engagement manager. But I think what really truly sets donor box apart is our commitment to supporting the growth of our nonprofit users. So yes, you have this amazing tech and an amazing suite of tools that you can use through donor box. But you’ve got to have a sustainable plan and those best practices set behind that tech, right? So we really believe in the human touch. And so that’s why we provide a range of resources to assist you. So, first of all, I have to give a shout out to our customer success team. They are amazing and they are so dedicated to our nonprofit success and you should see us behind the scenes when we see an organization raising $10,000 at the Gala, we are actually truly celebrating in our team chat, like, whoa, look at them, go, right. Um So they’re available 24 5 and even on the weekends and their response time is like 15 minutes. It’s amazing, right? So that’s one thing is you always have a, a group of people who are there to support you. But then we also offer fundraising coaching through our premium package. So we have a few different packages through donor box. We have our standard free plan and we have pro plans for those organizations who are looking to scale their impact. A little bit more with a more comprehensive suite of add ons and analytics and all that good stuff. And then we have our premium package which includes all those goodies, but also one on one fundraising coaching with our amazing fundraising coach Britain. Um So you get those one on one consulting sessions which isn’t usually cheap through individual uh consultants, right? Um So you get someone who walks alongside you in your fundraising journey and helps you as you’re aiming to grow. But we also host monthly free webinars. We post weekly articles in our nonprofit blog and we produce weekly episodes of the nonprofit podcast and our ethos here is we always give you a practical action to walk away with. We can talk about big concepts and things that feel important in the sector. But then we’re gonna pause and say here are three things you can do right now to implement this in your organization. So again, we’re here to walk alongside you in your fundraising journey and of course, help you learn how the tech works behind it as well. You mentioned Britain Britain Stocker was just on the show well, within the past month or so. Yes, Absolutely. So, all right, Jenna. Thank you. Thanks so much for uh elucidating. Go into a little more detail on uh on Donor Box. And again, thank you for the for the donor box sponsorship. Again. Congratulations and thanks for having me. Thank you, Jenna Jenna Lynch Education and community Engagement manager at Donor Box. I am grateful to uh Donor Box as well for their sponsorship. Claire. Let’s do our final round of Claire’s quiz. Tony take two trivia time. Ok. Well, I have, I have two final questions and um the first one is going to be a uh where it’s just for you, Tony and you’re gonna get one point for each one and if you get 10, you win a prize. So it has to do with Amy Sample Ward because I love, I love them. So Tony name it list at least six cities where you, you and Amy Sample Ward have recorded Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio at N 10 06 cities. It doesn’t have to just be, it’s just you and I have recorded, it’s been lots of places just, well, 22 are Portland. So I get Portland and Portland. Yeah. Yeah, but they count as one, but I’m acknowledging you two. Um, the one outside Washington DC. What would we call that? Is that Baltimore? The, the uh, the inner harbor. Uh No, no, not Baltimore. The um the big place outside Washington DC. Uh What, what’s that? Um, the gaylord. Gaylord. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the gay Lord George is Maryland. So that’s two. Number three actually. Uh, uh, was it, uh, San Antonio? No, it was Austin, Austin, Austin, Texas. Austin, because I think south by Southwest was coming right after us or before us before NTC. Mhm. Um, now I’m in trouble, uh, other places where NTC has you and Amy have recorded doesn’t have to be just, even if it wasn’t at the NT C. Oh, well. Oh, it was NTC. Of course, New York City, multiple, multiple shows with, uh, Sam in the studio in New York City. And, um, where was I last summer? I had to tune in from very far away. So we had to be together. You were in, uh, you were in Hamburg, close, correct country, Frankfurt, Berlin, almost Berlin, Berlin. Ok. So we’ll count cities where Amy has been. Ok. Ok. There’s, you missed DC proper DC. You missed San Jose. You miss New Orleans, you miss Denver, Tony Martin that I loved all those. That’s right. New Orleans DC. Oh, that’s right DC. Proper. The DC. Was that the DC Hilton, Hilton? Yeah. Yeah. Where they have the, uh, where they have the national correspondents dinner every night. You had staff, you had n 10 staff at, like every street corner. So that when we walked out of the hotel, they’d say, ok, walk out of the block and then that next person would shepherd us and now turn left. Ok. Now then, and then the next person would shepherd us one more block straight. You had somebody at every block. So to get us from the hotel to wherever, because we had, we had more, I think. Or, or something. Yes. And then I got New Orleans, of course. Uh, I love that. I stayed an extra couple of days and then Denver. Denver was just Denver just uh, two last year. Right? 2020. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Already forgotten. We have time for one more question. Don’t be harsh. Tony, do you want one or two more questions? Um Where are we? We got? All right. Do one more. Do one more. OK. And then Scott’s on. All right, in 2020 this man started a podcast called The Virtual Campfire. What is his name? I know it. What is it? Tony Martignetti? Yes. There’s another Tony Martignetti out there. Thankfully with a podcast, he’s been a guest. He was a guest on the show. Yeah, he was on uh two, I’d say a year and a half, two years ago or so. Thankfully, I’ve had savvy social media managers through the years. So I’ve got all the, I’ve got Tony Martignetti. You’ve got the seo on your name. All the good properties. I’m Tony Martignetti on Twitter X. I’m Tony Martignetti on Facebook. I’ve got all the good Gmail. I’ve got Tony Tony Martignetti, uh or Tony Martignetti at Gmail. Um I so thankfully I’m grateful to all my social media managers through the years who claimed uh properties. So this guy is locked out. He’s like, like Tony Martinet, I think he’s making a mistake on Twitter. He’s like, Tony Martinet won out the eye. Like, what’s, what’s the virtual campfire about? Oh, he’s a business coach. He’s a business kind of a business and, and personal coach, I think intertwined, intertwined, no fermentation highlights or anything. No, he, he’s not, he’s, he’s not that Savvy. He’s not that or if he goes in that direction, he doesn’t have Claire Meyerhoff to help to save him from himself. I still, because he doesn’t have Claire Meyerhoff working with his podcast. I’ll save any Tony Martignetti podcast out there. Oh, you can’t. No, you have to be loyal to this one. All right. Um So on Twitter, he’s like Tony Ma rt Igne tt one, Tony, who’s gonna, who’s gonna notice that difference beat Tony Martin at three or something that people are gonna notice that don’t, don’t hide the difference. You gotta flaunt it otherwise. And I do get a lot of his tweets and a lot of his, I, I stopped, I stopped forwarding them. OK, Scott. Everybody knows what you’re gonna do from your, from your 2009 album. A jukebox. You have to do Cheap Red Wine for us. A song about fermentation. The joke’s already been done, but it’s called a Callback. Let’s call back next year. What a fermentation song. This one’s for I 95 Santa Claus. The baby is just gave my target. Sooner or later I’ll figure out as to what you need. You’re singing romantic advice from a billboard. I’m looking for hands them on the TV screen and we nothing tailor up from down. We other baby at this use if I’m a charming, but I can’t figure out how and you said you thought I was handsome but it doesn’t matter now. So as long as you can, I got ready promises of the now you know, some girls that just live in diamonds and they won’t talk of the kind of clothing that I wear belong to B for the good stuff and go to, we try to do it the opposite. Do the best that I can. You have some competition and I’m a wealthier man you use if I’m a charming, but I can’t figure out how now the then from a your time promises now is a days the other be can kiss our ass have last of three signs because we’re perfect for each other. As long as we nobody else in my use if I’m a charming, but I can’t figure out how never mind it don’t matter. Now you keep falling from A P. It’s on your time. The promise. Oh. Mhm. Fantastic Scott. Thank you. Thank you and thank you Josh Becker for bringing Scott and Me together. You’ll find him at Scott. Stein music.com Scott. Thanks so much. My pleasure. It’s time for me to say thank you to everybody and farewell. I’m grateful I am. I get Misty here. I’m grateful for each of your contributions to the show. 700 shows strong. 1414 years podcasting. We’ve been around a while and uh we’re not going anywhere. So a week, 14 years, thank you. Thanks to each of you for what you’ve uh contributed to the show, which is helping nonprofits small and small and mid size shops, the other 95% right? We’re all helping that part of the, the nonprofit community. So I thank you on their behalf and, and for myself. Thanks to each of you. Thanks so much. Thanks Tony. Thanks for being such a champion for the sector. It’s always a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks everybody, Kate. Why don’t you take us out if you missed any part of this week’s show? I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and go giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Martin. I’m an associate producer, Kate Marinetti. The show so is in Chavez Marksman, our web guide. This is Glorious live music by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the 95% go and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for July 15, 2024: Exploit Conflict & Intuition To Make Better Programs & Products

 

Drew Nelson, Cassi Johnson, & Eve Lacivita: Exploit Conflict & Intuition To Make Better Programs & Products

Our panel from the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference is Drew Nelson, Cassi Johnson and Eve Lacivita. They explain how to add conflict resolution and intuition-driven strategies into your program and product development. Drew is with the City of Saint Paul, MN; Cassi is at Software for Good; and Eve is from EdFuel. This closes out our 24NTC coverage.

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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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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of cystolithiasis if you calculated to miss this week’s show, our associate producer, Kate has returned for your listening variety. Hey, Tony, we have exploit conflict and intuition to make better programs and products. Our panel from the 2024 nonprofit technology conference is Drew Nelson Cassie Johnson and Eve Lata. They explain how to add conflict resolution and intuition driven strategies into your program and product development. Drew is with the city of Saint Paul. Minnesota. Cassie is at Software for Good and Eve is from EDU. This closes out our 24 NTC coverage on Tony’s take. Two old friends were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is exploit conflict and intuition to make better programs and products. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference we’re hosted here by N 10. We’re all convened in Portland Oregon. Nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC is sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. With me for this conversation are Drew Nelson Cassie Johnson and Eve. La Vida. Drew is deputy director at the city of Saint Paul. Minnesota. Cassie Johnson is Vice president for product strategy at Software for Good. And she was Drew’s immediate predecessor in the job of directed deputy director of the city of Saint Paul and Eve, La Savita. We’ll see if she has a connection to the Saint Paul uh government administration. Uh Eve La Savita is, is managing director of product and innovation at Ed Fuel Drew Cassie Eve. Welcome. It’s great to have you all. So Eve, the burning question, are you, are you at all affiliated with the government of Saint Paul Minnesota? Were you in the past? Maybe in the future? Maybe you could be, you never know. I hear it’s a trend. You could be deputy director of the city of Saint Paul. You could be Cassie’s not the Cassie’s on her way out. But if she departs, if she should choose to depart, uh you might be her successor, I can take this one though, to explain the connection here if you’d like. So I work for an agency headquartered in Minneapolis, ST Paul and both of my esteemed colleagues here are clients of software for good. So we have a current work with the Office of Technology and Communications for the city of ST Paul where Drew is Deputy director. And we have a very cool project also with Ed Fuel and Eve is our client. And so that’s the connection between us. But, but you and Jonathan, you and Drew had the same job. I mean, you have, he has the job that you had. Yes, I hired him and then promoted him and then promoted him again. Ok. And he’s forever great. Absolutely grateful. Alright. And you left, you left the office in good order for Drew. You believe that? Alright. Well, I’m not gonna ask Drew whether that’s the case or not, we’ll leave it as uh we’ll leave it as with uh with your belief. Alright. Alright. Thank you. Thank you for explaining Cassie. So uh your uh session, have you done your session? You had your session, your session is harnessing conflict and intuition in product strategy and development. Uh Drew, let’s start with you. Seated closest to me, what’s uh what’s the need for this session? Um Really con conflict is an incredibly important part of effective product development and it helps really ensure that when you actually create something, it’s gonna solve the problem that you’re setting out to create and you’re encompassing the views of the folks that are um stakeholders um supporters or the users of that product and without actually leaning into the conflict, working through it and addressing the issues that are coming up in our uh through that you’re gonna just enable the dominant viewpoint, the loudest talker in the room, whatever you may be to uh pretty much steamroll through and create an app that might not actually serve the, the, the user base that it actually needs to serve or connect with the folks that it’s trying to connect with. And we’re talking about a product, uh a product strategy and development. So as deputy director of a, of a major city, what, what kind of products are we talking about? Well, product is a pretty nebulous term. I know, I mean, does that mean like a pothole, uh a pothole toll free uh collection line or it doesn’t have to be a technology product? And oftentimes we think about this in ways that aren’t that technology is just the support to this at the end. However, eve I think is an amazing person. If you don’t mind me kicking it over to her to talk a little bit about the product side. Let me pass over Cassie. That’s alright. Cassie. Seated in between Eve uh between Eve and Drew, we’ll come back to Cassie. I’ll make sure everybody gets a voice on nonprofit radios. Very equitable show. Great. Yeah, I’d be happy to talk about that. Um I think it’s so I’ve been in product for a long time. Um And actually came up through the, what I call the traditional tech space before moving into nonprofit. Um And one of the things that I’ve learned is that product is a very ambiguous term in this space. And so I think it is worth taking a minute or two to define what we mean when we talk about products, I’m glad I hit on something that you believe is valuable. It rarely happens. It’s dealing generally with a lackluster host. Well, it’s actually a little bit of for sure. It’s actually become a little bit of a thing thing for me since I first really entered the space fully and discovered that I was talking in language that nobody knew. Um And, you know, trying to figure out, oh, wait, I need to, I need to, you know, get clear about what I’m talking about in order for people to actually have a clue what I’m what I’m saying. Um So when, when we’re talking about product, it is a term that covers a lot of territory we’re talking primarily in terms of digital product. Um and that field. So the the practice of developing a bundle of functionality if you will, that you can name and put out in the world and it actually helps people get a job done. So in um in kind of the traditional tech space, like it can be something as broad as, you know, Facebook is a product, it can be something as small as, um, you know, the, the Buy now button in Amazon is its own product. Um, and the point being that, you know, you’re building something you’re designing something, um, that you can give to a human being and they can use it to actually do something that they wanna do. Um, in the nonprofit sense, you know, this could include things like, um, the, the Trevor project has a chatbot uh that helps train its responders um in crisis. Um And that is, that is a product. Um, a fundraising CRM could be a product. So that just kind of gives a sense of what we’re talking about when we talk about product. And I think the important thing for the conflict and intuition part is developing product is essentially a design and decision making process. And so inevitably conflict is going to arise during that because there’s never one right answer to how you’re going to do this and what you’re going to actually build. And I just want listeners to know that the, the arcade, which is the exhibit hall floor, but here at NTC, it’s called the arcade is coming down around us. So you may hear pipes, uh pipes, uh hitting the concrete floor and there’s gonna be crates moving probably very soon. It might be a little banging. There’s some banging for us. Not right on cue. It’s perfect. So, but nonprofit radio perseveres. So we are here, we’ve got another couple of interviews beyond this one. Even though the booths may be coming down around us, we continue so not to worry, it’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow, impact virtuous.org now back to exploit conflict and intuition to make better programs and products. Cassie, let’s talk about the intuition part of this. We talked about conflict. What an intuition honestly is the uh the key word in your session topic that caught my attention. What’s the intuition? What’s the role of intuition here? So, yeah, this was something that I wanted to lean into because it’s not something that is comfortable for me. And I think when we talked about it in our session, um the intuition came in when we get that, that sense that something is off. Um And that we need to pause and lean in and ask ourselves, where is the misalignment? Where is the lack of shared understanding about purpose or understanding of a concept or where we’re not tracking towards the outcomes that we set out to achieve together? And how do we slow down to explore that together and ensure that we’re still on track? And I think a lot of work and, um you know, thought and framework and practice in the product space is about, you know, replicable and speed and staying on track and checklists. And we don’t talk as much about, well, what happens when we get that sense that maybe when we are talking about um users and we’re using a word about our users are people who are radio listeners, are we really exploring? But which segment and do we have a shared understanding of even what listener means or um families, you know, did we explore or interrogate what family means or that’s an even better example than radio listeners. Exactly. The definition of family has changed so much in the past seven years, 78 years. And, you know, when we are in a room and we start to sense that people are nodding their heads, but probably not actually in agreement. And we don’t take the time to say CS, I think there’s something maybe where we’re not on the same page here. And yet we know time in the meeting is running out and there’s a deadline and it’s uncomfortable and it might even, um you know, trigger kind of issues in the room around positional privilege or identity privilege or difference. Um It can be challenging to step in and take that risk and it can mean that we get three months down the road and we’ve not built the right product. We’ve not built a product at all. We’ve not delivered for end users. We have wasted money, we’ve wasted time, we’ve wasted effort. And so I think a lot of what we talked about in our session are ways to set up projects to ensure that we have ways to kind of conflict proof or address and get shared understanding on the front end so that we are mitigating against conflict tools to address conflict when it does arise. But I think that intuition comes in of just being kind of in our bodies sensing feeling where there’s that just something that comes up where you’re like, it’s not right and, and talk about honoring the intuition of others. So you set up a great, you set up a great hypothetical. We’re in a meeting, the time is running out and someone will leave out whether that person has power and privilege in the meeting or not. Just someone I know that I know that could be important, but someone in the meeting has a, has a stomach, a jumpy stomach about whatever, whatever we’re talking about, talk about the role of honoring the responsibility of honoring that person’s tuition, intuition, paying their tuition. No, honoring their intuition in the moment. Yeah. I think that’s a really great question. It’s something that I really, really value in my leader. I see her now when she sees it in the room and now I know what’s happening. We’ve worked together for quite some time and so I can see that she’s sensing it in others and either we’ll make a decision to name it to ask questions or we’ll follow up after the meeting, if she’s aware that it might not be the time and the space in the meeting. Um And so I think learning from her to start to recognize in others to create space, if it’s the right time and the right space, and it’s going to be productive to name it, to make sure that we’re not kind of just bulldozing through um when it comes up for others that were curious and open. And also, you know, if we explore and we’re curious and it doesn’t turn out, you know, we give it space but also not kind of giving in to analysis paralysis and following every lead to its conclusion to where we don’t make progress. And so I think it’s a delicate balance. Um But I think just understanding that there are many different ways of knowing and we lose the human part of the work that we do. You know, if we just wanted to automate everything with like we could have, you know, a I do product process if we wanted to give up the human elements around intuition and knowing and kind of being in that space together. Um And we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t get good human centered tools and solutions and products. One of the things that makes us uniquely human is intuition and conflict. I don’t know if, I don’t know if chat bots can argue with each other. I mean, I know they can argue with users as you’re prompting it. But uh I don’t know if they argue with each other, but too esoteric to deal with uh maybe next year, maybe next year’s artificial intelligence uh session topic. Um Alright. So what else? Uh What else have the three, the three of you talk about in uh in the session drew that we haven’t, we haven’t covered yet. I mean, I’m, I’m looking at your, your session description and we’ve kind of touched on everything like describe the roles of conflict and intuition and apply a framework plan to add conflict resolution and intuition driven strategies into your product development cycle. We’ve kind of touched on all three of these, but let’s go into a little more detail on that. Uh So we’re not holding off, holding back on nonprofit radio listeners. We don’t want that. We don’t, we don’t give them short shrift. Well, one of the other things that we spent a lot of time kind of trying to unpack was the identity, power and privilege that comes into the product development process as well as the conflict, especially that arises from it. And um really taking like thinking about it in three levels, from working through this as an individual, working through it with your team and then working through it with your organization, kind of understanding what is going to be achievable to drive change in that space and really getting a sense of what your privilege is bringing into that space. So the example here I’ll use is that, you know, as we mentioned, Cassie and I had the same, had the same role. I succeeded. Her, Cassie has more experience. Cassie has more education than me. And she hired you and hired me and promoted me twice and I stepped into the role and I made more money than she ever did in the role immediately. Um So that, that’s just a strong example of the, of the base level of privilege that I bring into that conversation because as while your readers don’t know this, I’m far more dressed down than Cassie is in this, in this engagement right now. Um And I, I got a leather jacket on and Drew’s wearing a pullo fleece. Um But that when it comes into a, when it comes into conflict cycles, if you don’t actually take a step back and recognize a, whether you’re inferred or conferred power, whether it comes from you or comes from your organization, how that presents in that uh that space and how that creates an opportunity or more often than not dis inhibits the opportunity for co for conflicting views to come up. You’re just gonna design what you’ve already designed before. Um And a really great way to look at that is your smartphone. Um the camera on your smartphone right now, there is a huge press to talk about how amazing these uh cameras are are actually avail coming up to the level where they can get facial features of black and brown people, people who have darker skin tones. Um and iphone 15 is really plugging this right now. Well, there were 14 other versions of iphone and my facial features showed up pretty well on all of them up and now they still do. However, a lot of folks did not have that same experience and there was nothing in that space that was different other than the fact of who was in the, who was in the room to help design some of those features and who was the believed user base of that because without leaning into that conflict and without stepping back, especially in a space of technology which is white is male. Technology. Leadership is even more white, even more male. Um You’re just, you’re gonna build to the room that you see or you’re gonna build to the the historic user base that you had and that leaves out huge swaths of the population and really inhibits the success of your application because it just drives around the people that have always been able to successfully work with technology in a session. Uh conversation last year, we were talking about equity in product design and development. And the my guest used the example of a uh an automatic water uh water faucet, you know, in an airport or in a public bathroom and how darker skin tones didn’t activate the water. They worked fine with paler skin tones. There are many, many examples just that one comes to mind and yours is yours is, you know, excellent as well. The, the all the models before the iphone 15, it’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. I’m making plans to see a bunch of old friends uh coming up and I just saw one last week, a friend from college and I’m encouraging you to do the same. Think about how you can get together with folks. Uh I’m going back to, uh, actually a friend from high school is visiting me in a couple of weeks. So I’m guess I’m going all the way back to high school. Uh, but I’m also gonna be traveling to New Hampshire. Uh, there’s a wedding there in September, but I’m gonna stay a couple of extra nights to visit a friend in from college who also lives in New Hampshire and in October, I’m going to uh Texas and then California to visit uh Air Force friends and maybe, maybe include Colorado in that, not sure about that part. Um But just, you know, the joy of actually seeing being with people. Uh it’s uh you know, I’ve, I’ve talked about how inadequate zoom is. I mean, it’s a necessary tool, of course, but it, it’s nowhere near comparison to uh being in a room with somebody face to face in person, IRL in the uh to use the parlance of our times, right? IRL. So if you can think about how you can think about how you can get together with dear old friends. And that is Tony’s take two Kate. I almost feel inspired to go like text an old friend from middle school. But at the same time, I think I’m just gonna, you know, like their posts on Facebook and Instagram for now. Why, why are you gonna stop short of, of texting them. I don’t know. I feel like I wouldn’t even know where to begin, you know, like, what have you been doing for the past like eight years since we’ve seen each other? You know, how would you, like, start that? Well, some of these fo, uh, let me see. Well, no, I guess the folks I’m seeing, I, I’m in, I’m in touch with but, ok, I’ll give you another example. Uh, somebody from, from my elementary school and then we went to high school together also. I have not been in touch with him since high school graduation, which would have been 19 80. That’s 44 years and somebody recently gave me his phone number. So I texted him and we’re gonna get together and chat. That’s 44 years worth 00, you know, you can do it. It just, you come on, it’s, you don’t say what have you been doing for the past 44 years? How, how are you, what do you do? Do you have a family? Where do you live? I mean, there’s plenty of stuff, you know, eight years is not really that much. It’s really not. I, I’m connecting with somebody. Look, I’m connecting with somebody 44 years. I haven’t talked to him. I’m literally not exaggerating high school graduation. Last time I saw the guy so you can come on, text your text, your text, your elementary school friend. Just say, how are you doing? Not catch me up each month. What have you done each month for the past eight years? What is that? Eight times, 1272 months? It would be too long. You can’t do it now. Obviously nobody’s got that kind of catalog. But what are you doing? What are you thinking about doing? Where do you live? You know, things like that? Do you have a car? You know? No, I, I’ll do it and then I’ll, I’ll keep you updated. Come on. Yes, you can reconnect with your, your friend of eight years past Absolutely. Well, you know what? Because another reason why if you don’t, because then another eight years will go by and then you’ll say, oh, now it’s 16 years now. It’s, now it’s, now it’s twice as difficult for me to reconnect than it was eight years ago. Text her, text her tomorrow. We’ve got just about a butt load. More time. Here’s the rest of exploit conflict and intuition to make better programs and products. How about you eve, what, what else, what else haven’t we talked about that? You’d like to share with listeners. Yeah. So, um one of the things that I like to talk about and, you know, help, help organizations with is, you know, how do we actually set really strong foundations in the first place? Um For first of all, avoiding certain types of conflict that really shouldn’t arise if you’ve got the right foundations laid. Um And secondly, help you resolve conflict when it does eventually arise because again, you’re gonna get conflict because it, there’s no, there’s no clear answer. There’s no one right way. Um And so one of the, one of the things that um I’d like to share is just some of those foundational approaches that folks can use. Um And a lot of this comes down to um when there’s good conflict that can happen in the course of developing product. Um But there’s um also some types of conflict that um are just super foundational and you wanna get it, you wanna address right away. And um a lot of the conflict will arise when you get to the point of like, well, we should build X, you know, we should build Y and all of a sudden you’re just, you know, arguing passion around, you know, one person loves this idea and the other person loves this idea. And there’s no, it’s just the loudest voice in the room. When this conversation is universal, it transcends product development. Um The product strategy and development, it really does. I mean, we could be arguing, there could be conflict about, we should do this program or not this program or we should expand this one and cut this one. And so I’m, I’m not trying to usurp your topic, but I just want to make it explicit for listeners that to me, this transcends product development strategy 100% does. And I really appreciate you saying that because I think a lot of this stuff does scale and transcend for sure. So a lot of times when those, when those arguments arise, they are due to lack of alignment in three particular areas. Um You’ve got lack of alignment around why you’re even building this thing in the first place. You’ve got lack of alignment around what, what success looks like, what the, what the outcomes are that you’re trying to drive or, and, or you’ve got lack of alignment around the norms of how you’re actually gonna make decisions along the way. And so spending time upfront, investing time upfront in actually establishing um what those things are, is really essential to the success of any, any product. Or as you know, as you pointed out any, any project, any process, any program um that that investment will significantly pay down, pay off down the road. So, for example, you know, when it comes to like, why are we here in the first place? Well, the two most important things that you can be talking about is, well, who’s, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve in the first place? And who are we trying to solve it for? So Drew’s mentioned a number of times and Cassie mentioned a number of times users and when we say users, it’s kind of a jargony term. What we’re talking about is the people who are ultimately going to be the beneficiaries of the thing that you’re trying to build and that’s what matters most more than anything else. And it’s, it sounds obvious but it’s amazing how often there’s lack of alignment around that usually because it just hasn’t been discussed. Um, it’s not a question of, you know, um, it, it, it’s just a question of not having surfaced those assumptions in the first place and explicitly had, having those conversations around, you know, we serve a population that looks like this. But right now, what we’re trying to do is solve a problem that addresses these particular people. Um And what is that problem that we’re trying to solve? Um Again, a lot of conflict typically arises when we get laser focused on what is the solution? And we lose sight of what is the problem we’re trying to build for people fall in love with solutions. And um I am a huge advocate of falling in love with the problem, not the solution. The solution is disposable. The solution’s a hypothesis. What really matters is, is it solving the problem? And to actually answer that question, you need to be really clear about what the problem is in the first place and actually write it down and spend time discussing it and get super nitty gritty about like, do we actually have a shared understanding about what the problem is? And do we, you know why do we think this is a problem? Where is that coming from? You know, is this something that we are speculating about or do we actually have really strong reason to believe that this problem exists? Um You know, it’s, it’s amazing how many solutions are designed for problems that don’t exist or we’re profoundly misunderstood um hand in hand with that is, you know, what does success look like for this? And this is not um what is our list of requirements for this, which is where a lot of people start. Like, you know, I’m sure Cassie gets this all the time. Hey, we’re gonna hand you a list of requirements, you’re gonna build this for us. And um that is, that is a recipe for disaster because again, you’re gonna lose sight of those, th those, those that list of things may or may not solve the problem that you’re solving for and it, it uh takes away the, the creativity um and the iter of nature of figuring out like what are the right solutions bucket of solutions that could potentially solve for this problem. Um And so, you know, to, to really, but at the same time, you need a North Star to work towards and that North Star really needs to be aligned around what are the outcomes you’re trying to drive for this. So instead of, you know, success looking like here’s the description of the thing that we’re trying to build. It’s more like here’s the change we want to see as a result of building this thing. Um And the, and, and stating that particularly from the point of view of the person who’s experiencing it, you know, it’s fine to have a success metric that looks like, you know, we’re gonna serve X number more people. Like that’s not a bad metric, but it’s not gonna help you determine whether or not you’ve solved that problem, you know, that, that articulation of that end state is going to look more like, you know, as a, you know, in the, in, in the case of my organization, um it’s going to be as an, as a, as a talent lead in an educational organization, I can do XY and Z better or I have this much more confidence or I am experiencing this thing and that I and this is not me, the individual, it’s not, it’s not eve it’s the person that I’m who, whose change I’m trying to, to drive. Um And so having that, that alignment, there is fundamental to any, any product, any project, any program. Um and you wanna be building towards that, that shared understanding of what success looks like for your organization. But mo most of all for the user that you’re trying to, that you’re trying to serve. Um Yeah, I was gonna move to Cassie. So the only other thing I wanted to add is that, you know, the third piece is the norms and we could, we could spend a lot of time on what, you know, those norms, like, you know, who’s got the decision making power and you know, who’s playing what role in this. But I think the most important one to call out is making sure that you’ve got a norm around. We involve community and users in the development process. And ultimately our decisions are being made off of, you know, we have actually tried to figure out if this works for people before putting it into implementation and heavily engage them in the process. Cassie, what would you like to add that we haven’t talked about? You want to share with listeners, something that you brought up and something that came up in our session yesterday. And I think this is probably really clear based on what you’ve just described. And I’ve been a nonprofit executive director, I’ve been a nonprofit development director. I don’t have a highly technical background and now I build apps, I design apps, I don’t code, but I work with developers and with our clients and what I have learned the secret that I’ll let you all in on and your listeners is that, um you know, technology is way more complicated than what I think probably we want to let on. And the complexity is not at all technical. It’s all the things that nonprofit leaders deal with every day around people and process and community um and values and strategy and many of the practices that I used as a nonprofit leader are the same things I do every day with our clients. And then the technical piece comes in maybe at like 5%. Um And we have really smart people who work with us and I don’t want to undermine the value of the code and the work that our developers do. But in terms of product design, um most of the work that we do is very similar to what I did as a nonprofit leader. And I think sometimes people who do the work that I do are invested in making it feel way more technical and kind of building a gatekeeping, gatekeeping around what it means to build technological solutions. Yeah, they have a language that’s arcane and jargony to, to outsiders. Uh they have degrees that, that certify that they have expertise or at least they certify that they have a degree expertise may vary. But I also think nonprofit leaders are very, very quick. I mean, I probably did was one of them to say, oh, technology, you know, as a nonprofit leader, I had a CFO, right? And I had an operations person who had hr background, but I felt responsible for understanding my financials. My board wouldn’t have let me not have financial understanding and an understanding of hr policy in my state. But no one was asking me about, you know, our it I was able to completely outsource all of that stuff. And so I also think that in this day and age. I’ve talked with nonprofit leaders who have a very sophisticated platform. They have a product, they have a technology product and feel very uncomfortable with that. They don’t embrace that they are a tech nonprofit. Um and aren’t able to kind of embody that part of their leadership in the way that they would finance our hr And so I think I would just kind of make a call to your listeners in the nonprofit space of just kind of embracing that part of their leadership. And also knowing that it’s really just more people in process stuff. It’s the other stuff that they do that’s important. Um And kind of owning that as a part of their leadership, I’d like to stop right there. I think that’s uh it’s kind of ideal. Thank you. That was Cassie Johnson, Vice President for product strategy at Software for good with her is Eve la Savita, managing director of product and Innovation at Ed Fuel and future Deputy Director of the City of Saint Saint Paul. Uh Cassie and I uh Eve and I will be following along. I’ll have to do you have to do, I have to live in Saint Paul to be the deputy director. OK. I’ll move. It’s a beautiful place and with them is uh Drew Nelson who is the current Deputy director of the city of Saint Paul. Thank you very much, Drew Cassie Eve. Thanks for sharing and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Next week it’s the 7/100 show and 14th anniversary jubilee for nonprofit radio. Oh, we’ll have live music from Scott Stein co-host Claire Meyerhoff, Gene Takagi and Amy Sample Ward. Our sponsors will check in and Tony and me. It’s fun and gratitude. Can’t wait to uh share the 700 show with you that it’s, it’s um great, great fun, great fun. Oh, and also uh Claire Claire has a quiz for uh for all of us, Claire’s quiz. Of course, it’s Claire’s quiz. What else would it be called? Great fun. Gotta be with us next week. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com and Kate. Welcome back. Uh It was a little exhausting last week, reading all these uh reading all these sponsored messages. It gets a little, a little tiring. Thank you for uh thank you for coming back. No more vacations for you. I was busy at the barbecue. We’re spons by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Love that alliteration. Our creative producer is Claire Meera. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our We guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation Scotty. Next week he’ll be live, be with us next week for nonprofit radio. The 7/100 show, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for July 8, 2024: Improve Your Communications With AI

 

Carlos MoralesImprove Your Communications With AI

Carlos Morales, from Viva Technology, shares how to use specific ChatGPT prompts to accelerate your written drafts; optimize your messaging for clarity and audience; and, personalize your outreach as you maintain a consistent voice, tone and brand. All through artificial intelligence. (This was recorded at the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference, hosted by NTEN.)

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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with dysphasia. Not last week’s dysphagia, dysphasia. If I had to speak the words you missed this week’s show. Our associate producer, Kate is away this week. It’s all me. We’ll get through it. Hey tone. Oh, sorry. Continuing our 2024 nonprofit technology conference coverage this week. It’s improve your communications with A I. Carlos Morales from Viva technology shares. How to use specific chat GP T prompts to accelerate your written drafts. Optimize your messaging for clarity and audience and personalize your outreach as you maintain a consistent voice tone and brand all through artificial intelligence. I’m Tony Steak too. Giving usa why do we have to wait six months? We’re sponsored by Virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box. I’m channeling Kate fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. This isn’t so hard here is improve your communications with A I. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC. You know that that’s the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. And we are in Portland, Oregon at the Oregon Convention Center. We’re sponsored here by Heller Consulting, technology strategy and implementation for non profits. With me now is Carlos Morales, digital marketing strategist at Viva Technology. Carlos. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here. Pleasure. Thank you. How’s the conference going? Are you enjoying? Oh, I’m loving it. This is very good. Is this your uh this is actually, this is my second one in like in the last 14 years. And so it has been a while. It’s been a while since you came, you miss them. I mean, NTC is a very good conference. It is. It is, I mean, great, great information, great sessions and great networking opportunity, meeting awesome people learning from a lot of people as well. Yeah. Have you done your session? I did, I did yesterday. People learned from you and now you’re learning from others as well. This is the community, the N 10 community. It is. It is. And uh your session that you did yesterday is accelerating nonprofit communications draft, refine and personalize with A I, correct. All right, personalization. It’s possible. It is, it is. Well, give us the overview first. Why, why did you feel we needed this session? Sure. Uh Well, as you know, A I is sort of actually now the uh the talk of the town, right. And so a lot of organizations are using A I or want to learn how to use A I to actually communicate better, to market better and to reach their audiences better. And so it’s a great tool. It allows to save, uh save us a lot of time. It can give us great ideas and how to do our job better. We can be more efficient. And so the whole purpose of decision is actually to give practical tip hands on uh tips and how to use chat G BT in this case, uh effectively for nonprofit organizations uh create some efficient and effective communication strategies. So, yeah. Alright. So uh you say, you know, draft, refined and personalized. So why don’t we take those in order, drafting comes first before we’re writing? So what’s, what’s your advice around the use of A I drafting? Sure. So when we’re talking about drafting, communication is basically let’s, let’s uh let’s talk about CG BT as being the tool that he actually we talked about yesterday. It’s going into chat GP T uh and prompting or giving instructions to cha G BT on a specific task. For example, help me write an email about fund raising for my donors. Um And you know, I want this email to be very uh to have a grateful tone. Um And I want you to cover, you know, mention all the goals that we were able to achieve based on our fundraising strategies. It’s just, it’s just a simple prompt. This is a simple instruction. Now, Judge GP T is gonna come up with, OK, here’s the email based on the instruction that you gave me as you actually read the first draft of the email, right? What you’re getting is basically, that’s the first thing that’s the draft based on one instruction, the email comes up and then you’re gonna actually now refine it. But the whole idea right now is just to start getting some ideas, brainstorming and what would be the best email I can send out to my donors? That’s it. So I’m just giving you one instruction, you create the task and then from there we’ll go and improve it. So that’s the draft piece and, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna improve it with future with additional instructions exactly in a prompt. And so that’s when the refining piece comes along because then as after I looked the draft, I can say, well, this is great, but I want you to be more specific. And so, and I want you to address the donors that actually donated between five and $10,000 for example. Um and I want, and I wanna make sure that uh you know, as you were thinking them, I wanna make sure that we actually put a link where they actually can go and click on it so they know how their money is being used. So now we’re actually adding more instructions to be able to actually refine that email. Now, maybe the first draft was not what you wanted. Maybe the first draft was too vague, too general. Well, the refining piece is giving more context, more detail to cha GP T. So you can actually get better results and you go from there. So this is obviously an iterative process, you know, using A I in G BT or any other language model is not a one time thing. It’s not like giving instruction once you’re gonna come up with, you know, with the best idea, the best email, the best marketing communication is not gonna happen. So you have to continue talking at it providing the context or the additional information for that, you know, for cha GP T to give you the best result possible. OK. Yeah. So you know, we’re talking about prompt engineering, which is a fancy way of saying, you know, learn how to talk to A I by giving actually the right prompts the right instructions. That’s what that is. And we had a session yesterday, a conversation about prompt engineering with uh with two other guys. Um All right. So is that enough? I mean draft refine and then personalize right, the personalized piece though, after you are refining after you’re enhancing your communication that email. Now, we wanna make sure that we are personalizing, right? Remember that I said donors that actually donated between five and $10,000 that piece of it. There you are segmenting you are, you are sort of actually personalizing your message to a specific specific segment of your audience, right? Because the language that you’re using is gonna be different for someone who probably donated about $1000 right? Because that money might go to a different cost. And so that’s the personalizing piece. The other thing too is that you can actually train cha GP T to adopt the tone, the brand voice of your organization. For example, you can actually give them documents, you know, past emails or a specific flyers in which you say I want you to look at the way that we have written this communication pieces to donors and I want you to actually adapt or a adopt that specific tone into the email. So that’s where the personalization and keeping your brand voice comes in. So that’s, that’s the piece about personalizing it. But you’re gonna, when we talk about personalizing it, it’s pretty much talking, you know, we’re talking about let’s let’s communicate with a specific type of audience. No, in this case, we’re talking about donors, it could be parents, it could be youth, depends who, who, who your target audience is. Yeah. OK. And right. And the personalization also comes from you giving it text to train itself to you, to train it to adopt my tone. Use this ii I don’t know, use some of the maybe use the language of the second paragraph, you know, or things like that. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact virtuous.org. This is uh it gets a little tiring now back to improve your communications with A I I think we’re doing OK though. Uh you mentioned a link. Now, how would we a link? So donors can see how their gift was used. How’s that gonna work? So basically, you can actually do that. You can actually say well and I want in the email to for them to go to my website, give them, give it the URL, give it to your RL and then that will be included in the email that Chad G BT generates. Alright, I mean uh there must be more to talk about because you had a session we just did draft or fine and personalized. Um What what what, what more, what more do we need to talk about? Sure. Well, I think we look what we’re talking about actually communicating with JG BT. The whole thing is about prompting is actually about, you know, making sure that you know, exactly or you learn how to actually talk to it, give the right instructions. So one of the things that we talked about is OK, we actually came up with a basic structure, right? In other words, first thing that you wanna do is actually just state what your uh goal and the communication type is. So in other words, if you’re asking to write an email, that’s a communication type, the goal is to actually raise awareness about a specific, about a specific cause. You wanna also give context, tell cha GP T why this is important. You wanna also highlight the audience who is the audience going to be. So in other words, if the email is going to donors, that is my audience, you know, donors that actually donated between five and $10,000 for example, right. And what’s the call to action when I want them to actually go to a specific website for them to actually see how their money, how their funds are being used So that’s the structure, right? Basic structure that a prompt should have. When you actually have that structure, then you actually come up with a very good draft. In fact, we actually put it in practice yesterday. And when people actually saw that email, the first draft, they say, well, that’s a pretty good one. So when, when you actually come back into an editing mode, you’re refining it. Obviously, you spend a lot less time. Why? Because you were specific in the first try. If the promise to beg you’re gonna come, you know, you’re gonna have an output, you’re gonna have an answer more, more generic. So you’re gonna end up editing a lot more. So that’s the whole, that’s the whole, uh you know, kind of the whole idea is to actually learn how to talk to it. Now, I’m just mentioning, you know, email, but you’re gonna use it for marketing, how to create effective social media post. You can fact give it a, you know, if there’s a social media post, for example, either from your organization or another organization that actually has created a lot of engagement, you can grab that post, give it to chat GP T and say this post generating, you know, 25 shares had about 1000 views, whatever, whatever the metrics that actually you get from that post, you feed it to chat GP T and say I want to create something similar. But my audience is Xy and Z right, please adopt the best practices that you found from this post to generate one that is actually gonna work for me. Do you need to say please, you know, GP T just do it right. So it’s interesting because we, we, we were talking about it and one of the decisions like, well, you know, che GP T appreciates when you are polite and say please and thank you because you know, there’s been some research where this actually shows that when you are polite, you know, it’s end up producing better results for you. There’s research. Yes. However, however, the nice thing about this, you can actually read all this research in the world, but you can actually test it yourself. Is there been instances on my, on my end where I haven’t said please and then the results versus versus an instruction when I say please doesn’t change much. OK? So in my experience, you know, this is, this is one of the things that I’ve done. I get frustrated with cha GP T and you know what I’ve done is like you did not do what I asked you, you are making stuff up, you’re hallucinating because that’s the term that we use. So you’re making stuff up, please. OK. Revise the instructions and pay attention to details. All right. So I use the, please, then I draft the same prompt, same instruction without the plea and I pretty much get the same result right. There’s some instances when the results varies. A little, a little bit, right? But with a GP T, I’m gonna be honest with you, you can use the same prompt right now. Uh And then 10 minutes later you get a different, a different, um a different result. I’m gonna give you an example. So yesterday, someone asked at my session, OK, what happened if you actually say to chat G BT, write this email based on the target audience, you give it an audience and, and, and, and, and all the criteria. But then for the second prom, you say write an original email. What’s the difference between those two? Actually, there’s none because when you’re asking chai to write something, it’s going to be original. He’s actually creating the text for you. All right, you can edit it, you can change it, you can go back and forth, right? So, so we tested it out. So we tested it out. And so basically, we’re asking the same thing and one prompt, you know, uh we didn’t say original, the other one, we did. Obviously we had two different answers, right? Because because just one word that we changed now, what happened when you actually use the same instruction? The same one, no changes whatsoever, identical prompts, we also get different answers, but they were close but different answers. Here’s what happens when you can grab both, both of those answers. And you can say, oh my God those are good. What I can actually take from each of them to make one that is actually better and what you can do, you can give both answers to Cha J BT. And I said, I like both of them mention what you like about it. And now I want you to create one final email based on the instruction based on this criteria to make sure that is the best of the both versions that you gave me. So see all the things that we can do with it. And I’m just talking about text based, but we can do a lot of stuff, we can ask it to help us create prompt, to create images um to analyze data. Um You know, for nonprofits, for example, yesterday, we talked about let’s talk about different roles that you have in the nonprofits, right? You have a grant writer. How can you use a GP T to actually write a grant that’s very useful, you can actually fit in the whole information of the grant application, right? And then you can actually give a specific instructions and to tell you, you know how to actually answer those sections from the grant application with the tone of your organization. Make sure that actually highlights or give more importance to some of the sections of the grant of the grant application that it needs to be given importance to. But making sure that it maintains the whole brand’s voice, right? Obviously, it’s gonna come up with an answer. It’s not gonna be a perfect one. That’s where you actually go and start refining it and going back and forth. That’s, that’s just one, you know, one practical way of doing it. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers. Just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two giving USA. Why do we have to wait six months for a report about fundraising the previous year giving USA comes out each June 6 months after the end of the year, we used to have a far far superior product. It was the Atlas of giving longtime listeners to the show. May recall that the Atlas of giving Ceo Rob Mitchell was on the show several times, usually maybe always in January because the Atlas had and he was announcing the report on fundraising from the previous year in January. And on top of that, very importantly, he came with the forecast, the quantitative forecast of fundraising for the coming year and he had this report from the previous year and the forecast by sector, meaning nonprofit mission sector. He used to say, sector source, the source of the giving and state state, he could break down giving by state. He could tell you that last year, what the dollar amount was of arts fundraising in the state of Wisconsin. And in the forecast, he could tell you what the religious fundraising is going to be for the coming year in the state of Maine. That’s how robust and detailed and sophisticated the Atlas of giving was giving USA doesn’t even come close to this and we have to wait six months for it. And the forecast you get from giving USA is qualitative like uh the election and inflation and donors perceptions will impact fundraising this year. Oh What, what brilliant insight. So, so, so deep, the analysis and, and so actionable for us, it’s worthless. Uh OK, so what happened to the Atlas of giving? Uh it, it, it fell away, you know, so if, if I here I am saying it was far superior, why didn’t it survive? Well, the best products don’t always survive. Um In this case, it may have been underfunded. So the marketing and promotion was not adequate giving USA has its relationship with the University of Indiana and the Lily School of philanthropy which lends it uh undeserved uh credibility. And so, you know, puts those institutions imprimatur on the, on the giving USA product uh I believe it’s misplaced, but anyway, it’s there. So, but I, I really don’t have a complete answer as to why the Atlas of giving didn’t survive. I think the last report was 2017. So I think the last time Rob Mitchell was on was January of 2018 with the report from 2017, again, such deep analysis by sector source and state. And also, of course, then he had the forecast for 2018. I guess I’m voicing frustration and lament that we don’t have a better product. And uh I lament the loss of the Atlas of giving. That is Tony’s take two, Kate. No, of course, Kate’s not here. We’ve got just about a butt load more time this week. Here’s the rest of improve your communications with A I. Again, when you say use, use our tone, our voice, you can train it with your own text. You can even give it URL si mean, maybe a blog post or you can copy and paste or whatever. Well, and Tony, here’s the thing about it that you said give it a blog post. Somebody actually asked yesterday can actually, can I give cha G BT a link to my page? So he knows a little bit about me about my organization and ask him based on that information to actually write an email, making sure that he’s skipping that brand’s voice, that has a little bit of background of who the organization is. And use that when it’s actually drafting that email, right? And so, um, and you can certainly do that. You can certainly do that. And so, um, so it’s powerful, there’s so many things that we can do with it. You know, I’m gonna share with you a, a concern that I have that I shared with the, the, the two, um, the two technologists who were talking about the prompt engineering yesterday. And I’ve shared this with other folks too. I, I’m interested in your reaction. Um My, my concern about the use of chat GP T or any of the, the generative A I tools is that we’re, we’re seeing away our most creative time, which is the blank page, the creation of the draft. We’re staring at the blank screen. How do I get started? Um You know, where should I start with my ending or should I start with my call to action in the middle or, you know, but where that to me is the most creative that we can, we can be and then less creative than that is refining editing, you know, copy editing, uh proofreading naturally, you know. Um So, so to summarize it, like my concern is that we’re, we’re gonna become less creative, we’re giving away our most creative moment. That blank screen moment. What’s your reaction to that? You know, I don’t know what kind of answers you get in regards to that, but I have found myself to be more creative by using Chat G BT. And the reason why is because now I’ve learned how to be more effective at communicating and given a specific instructions. Not only that though, but as I’m actually seeing the answers, I start thinking of ideas that I actually can use to enhance the final product that I want from cha GP T. So in other words, to me, for example, if I’m looking, I’m gonna give you example, I did, I did my workshop yesterday. Did I use C GP T to create an outline for my workshop? What do you think the answer to that is, of course, I did have I done workshops before on marketing and social media and uh and technology. Yes, I have prior to chat GP T. What did I do to create an outline for a workshop that I was about to present? What do people do? You go to Google? Right? You do a little bit of research, you can come up with an outlet yourself, but then you go to Google and you start actually looking at case studies, you start looking at concepts you start looking at and then you start putting all the information together. What Cha GP T does is basically grab all the information that he knows that exist and actually put it in a package for you in front of your screen based on the instruction that you give it. That’s what it does, right? So, so to a certain point is like if I want to write an email, for example, I would say to cha GP T I need to write an email, right? Um Ask me clarifying questions to get more context before proceeding. That’s it. Then cha G BT will say, all right, you, I I understand you need to write an email. Now tell me who the audience is. What’s the type of tone that you wanna use in the email? What are the key messages that you want to convey? These are things that well, we, we already know that we need to write on an email. But what chat G BT is helping me is kind of actually be more organized if there are things that I’m seeing there that I hadn’t thought about. And then once I see it is, oh my God, I forgot this. Now, now chat G BT is prompting you exactly is prompting me instead of actually thinking and being a little bit more creative and how I can enhance that process. And so that’s the way that actually I see it. Um So I don’t think the creative process is gonna go away. What is actually happened with shifting and how to be creative in a different way by using technology. And so, and that’s, and that’s the way that I, that I see it. That’s actually I see it with the people that I work with and how we have applied A, I thank you. Creativity in a different way. Yes, definitely. Um What else do you want to talk about? We, uh we could still spend some more time. What, what haven’t we gone deep enough on or? Well, yeah, I think, uh you know, for nonprofits, for example, but this is the audience of your, of your podcast. It’s like the question is, how do we actually use a tool like cha GP T to be more efficient? Well, you know, I gave you prior examples and how it can help you save lots of hours. You know, one of the things that we talked about yesterday was like, you know, if you want to write a blog post and you want to write a blog post about um mental health issues for teens uh in your, in your local area, for example, and the purpose of the blog post is to educate parents and provide resources well, prior to cha GP T, you probably would think and you will look at the blank screen going back to your, to your concern and you probably spend about eight hours trying to write, to write a very good blog post. Right? Well, with J GP T, we can certainly actually spend between 2 to 2 and four hours and actually write a very good blog post. Now, what happened with the other four hours, the other four hours that I’m not spending now and writing a blog post can be used in the marketing piece of the blog post. Now that I have written it, what can I do to actually promote it better and making sure that parents actually get to see it and get to apply what I have I have written for them to do or the tips that are provided for them in terms of mental health and, and, and, and, and how to deal with that with, with their, with their Children, for example, with their kids. And so notice how technology now is being used more efficient and we become more, I mean, uh more efficient on time, but more effective in the way that actually we produce results. So those are some of the things that I think is important for if you are a for nonprofits, if you ask the question, OK, what are the number one thing that you want cha GP T to help you with a lot of people are gonna raise their hands, they’re gonna say content creation, how to create more engaging content on social media. For example, my goodness, you have these tools, it’s gonna help you do that, right? And so when we’re talking about, you know, uh you know, using a GP T more for the nonprofit organizations, you know, one of the things that I would say is like get good at prompting. But on the other hand, just yesterday, I was reading an article where prompting in a few months is not gonna be something that it’s gonna be needed because what’s happening is as this technology advances, um the la language model is actually by just giving an instruction, the language model is gonna be able to actually predict what exactly is it that you want. So, and so basically, it’s not gonna be, you know, you’re not gonna need to be more detail than necessary sometimes. And so, so it’s a dancing rapidly, right? You actually go and go to websites and grab uh you know, uh prompts library for any type of role that you want. And then what you do is just copy and paste it and edit it based on your own needs. Prompt library. Oh yes, yes. So you want you, you know, you copyright it. Yeah. If you actually are a graphic designer, uh data analyst, there are actually prompt libraries in which you actually for anything pretty much that you want, you can copy it and paste it, edit it as you see fit and it will allow you to get more results faster, right? And so, so, you know, for nonprofit organizations, one of the things that I say is like, let’s get good at the basics first. If you get good at the basics, you’re gonna, you’re gonna see right away. Very good results. You’re, you’re gonna actually produce some tangible results, great results for your organization and then you’re gonna be able to now promote, better, communicate better. Um you know, if you are using uh cha GP T to create content on social media, you’re gonna be able to actually see the results of that by the content being more personalized, remember, personalizing and refining. And so those are the things that I think will be beneficial for fund raising. My goodness. If you’re, you’re fund raising and you have a database of donors, you feed that to cha GP T and you start segmenting your donors based on the amount of money that they actually have given you. Not only that, then you personalize that email, like I told you at the beginning based on that, not only that those that are actually have not engaged with you or for some reason, they haven’t donated with you in a while. How do we re engage them? How do we make sure that we remind them of the cause that at some point they actually, you know, believed or they engage with us at the first, but they haven’t done in a while. How do we re engagement? How do we actually make sure that actually they, you know, they donate, they come back. So look at all the great benefits that you can actually as a nonprofit can reap from this technology. It’s just knowing how to use it, right? It’s key. But you know, but as you, as you’re learning how to use it, the creative, the creative actually thought comes to you and say, oh my God this is just one tip of the iceberg. Now we can do this, this and that. So that’s what I say is technology for me had to allow me to actually be more creative in the way that I do things. All right. Yeah. All right, Carlos, we’re gonna leave it there. All right. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you, Carlos Morales, digital marketing strategist at Viva Technology. Thank you very much again for sharing, Carlos. My pleasure. Thank you and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC where we’re sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits next week, exploiting conflict and intuition makes better products. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous. Like I’m 14. My voice breaks, virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Love that alliteration. This does get a little tiring doing my per one person. II, I must be out of practice doing it by myself. It’s been over a year. Our creative producer is Clare Meyerhoff. I’m your No, no. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for July 1, 2024: Use Your Tech To Enable Generosity

 

Jamie Mueller, Peter Genuardi & Natania LeClerc: Use Your Tech To Enable Generosity

Our panel encourages you to expand your definition of generosity and how you measure it, to better acknowledge diverse forms of giving. They help you facilitate generosity through your data, tech and business processes. They’re Jamie Mueller with PTKO; Peter Genuardi at See the Stars; and, Natania LeClerc from Feeding America. (This was recorded at the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference.)

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. I apologize for the distortion you’re gonna hear in this recording from 24 NTC. It’s especially in the, the last segment, but kind of throughout uh it was much worse and I, I had to edit out some parts because you just couldn’t understand what was being said. I, I kept in what you could hear over the distortion. So, uh just I, I forgive me for the distractions that you’re gonna hear in a few places in today’s show. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with dysphagia if I had to swallow the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming? Hey, Tony, continuing our 2024 nonprofit technology conference coverage. We’ve got use your tech to enable generosity. Our panel encourages you to expand your definition of generosity and how you measure it to better acknowledge diverse forms of giving. They help you facilitate generosity through your data tech and business processes. They’re Jamie Mueller with Tko Peter Genuardi at see the Stars and Natania Lalai from Feeding America on Tonys take two Jim attire were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is use your tech to enable generosity. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC. You know that that’s the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. This conversation kicks off our day two coverage. We are in Portland, Oregon at the Oregon Convention Center and we are here sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Kicking off our day two with me are Jamie Mueller, Peter Genuardi and Natania Le Claire. Jamie is Chief Growth Officer at Ptko. That’s papa tango kilo Oscar for those who like the phonetic spelling. Ptko Peter Genuardi is founder of see the Stars. And Natania La Claire is Director of Strategic and Integrated Planning at Feeding America, Jamie Peter natanya. Welcome. You did your session yesterday and your session title is use your tech to enable generosity. Uh Let’s start right here. Uh Sitting, sitting next to me, Jamie, why don’t you explain why, why the session was needed? Why, why uh what, what we could be doing better in the, in the community about uh, about the session topic. Yeah. Well, Tony, as you, well know, we’re seeing a decline in individual donors, right. Um, and we have some very uh generous people that are kind of making up that difference in the 1% and that is not a sustainable model for the industry. And so we’re really trying to figure out what is it that is decreasing fundraising or dollars coming into organizations. And, you know, the Generosity Commission has done a great job at uh looking at what makes people be more generous, what um encourages people to be generous. And so we wanted to have a topic that really explored all the realms of generosity and how they interconnect together and create a AAA pipeline for dollars to come in uh by way of volunteerism, advocacy and um just giving up time and influence and how our tech can better enable us to identify those indicators of generosity so that we can be more prepared to ask more of um the individuals that want to support our missions. Ok. You mentioned the Generosity Commission. I don’t, I’m not familiar with that. Yeah. So the, so the Generosity Commission is a group, a coalition of individuals that come from Stanford and a number of other uh uh um think tanks in the area. Um The Giving Institute is involved in that as well and give usa coalition. And so there’s been a number of studies that have been done over the that have looked at and explored through different colleges and universities and think tanks. This role that generosity has to play in our society, is there a report issued a report recently, a number of reports 2022 was the latest report, but there’s actually been a longitudinal amount of research that’s been done. And over, I mean, as you probably can imagine, volunteerism is a key indicator of uh of donations in the future. And um also advocacy and just overall relevance to somebody’s life and the way that they are being generous in their everyday life um can be an indicator of future generosity. And so how are we actually identifying those behaviors that people are naturally displaying in their everyday lives as being generous opportunities and then funneling that into the dollars that organizations really need to in order to, you know, further their mission and their capacity. OK, I see. And uh Peter, part of what you talked about in your session is expanding the definition of generosity, which Jamie was just alluding to how, how, how should we be redefining generosity? Yeah, that’s a great question, Tony. Um I think there are two ways that we should really look at it to help organizations just be more productive and engaging and getting more from their audience. The first is what Jamie alluded to, which is really taking a look at, say, Tony and saying, OK, today we really see him as a donor, but we know that he, you know, um volunteers that he is actually seeking services from us, that he is doing so many other things with us, but we’ve hyper focused on just his value to us as donors. And so we need to expand that. The other piece I think um that’s really important is expanding who we think of as people who can be generous to our organization. Um I’ve done a lot of work uh for and with direct service organizations and the vast majority of them really see those as two separate audiences, the people they serve and the people they raise money from. And so the more that we can think about a holistic uh relationship with people uh with the people who come to our organization to seek services, but also to support us in the future, to volunteer creates just a, it, it lets us expand the tent and draw more people into those who could support the organization in a, in a bigger and more holistic way. OK. So I, I’m, I’m, I’m stereotyping and generalizing with both of which are dangerous. But I think the stereotypes, I don’t know, I think they’re, I think they’re not valid. I think they’re ubiquitous that those of us, those who come to us for service are, are whether it’s feeding and of course, we’re gonna get to Italia Feeding America um or, or sheltering or, um, you know, I’m, I’m something of the, the, the the personal type of services that those folks aren’t just don’t have the, the capacity, capacity, the means to, to be donors. And I don’t think we think of the future, but we think of now they just don’t have the means. We’re, we’re wrong headed. I would say yes, I think with direct service organizations for sure. And I’ll let Natania um, tell us a little bit more about that. I think one of the, one of the organizations that actually does this really well is the American Heart Association. Um Several years ago, my dad had a heart attack and we need to get some help from the Heart Association. They gave us great advice and guidance. Um You know, after uh my dad got sick, he passed away, we made a contribution to the organization as donors and now as somebody who’s 47 and, and needs some support myself, I’ve gone back to the organization for information and that sort of thing. And so the way that they have thought about engaging me across this whole cycle of things where I’m a service uh beneficiary as well as a donor as well as somebody who will probably leave the money when I pass. You know, it’s that kind of long term thinking and holistic relationship that I think is really a productive model for many, many organizations. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only response of nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact, virtuous.org. Now back to use your tech to enable generosity. Natania. You’ve been doing a lot of nodding as uh as Jamie and Peter were talking uh whether you want to share your experience at Feeding America or you wanna, you wanna think broader about this expanded definition of generosity who’s capable? Yeah, I think I just wanna touch on the fact that it is a stereotype that the people that we serve and that are in service uh would not be contributors, financial contributors. We find time and time again that our best supporters are our neighbors and the people that have received the services from our food pantries, our food banks and, and the network at large. And we even tell stories of our neighbors who are now volunteers at these pantries. Um So they see the direct benefit of the service they received and the value that they get from that and want to immediately give back and, and turn that into more that, that ripple effect of continuing to give to others who now need. Um which is, you know, it’s a beautiful thing and we’ve started to give them a platform as well, not only through our storytelling and um you know, not being the mouthpiece for the, for the movement, but really allowing our neighbors to be the voice of the movement and, and telling us what they need in order to thrive. Um So that’s one way in which we’ve been generous. But I think, you know, in terms of expanding the meaning of generosity, um you know, I think the big um the sound bite that I wanted to bring from yesterday was I think, you know, not that you need to throw out technology in the whole process, but that you can start from a place of ignoring the drop down menus that you have in your technology and, and not trying to categorize generosity based off of the constraints of what’s in front of you in, in whatever platform you’re dealing in, but go out and talk to people about what is meaningful to them, about giving to you um in the ways in which they want to give and then try to build systems that can track that in a, in a way that is, that helps you understand how invested they are in you are, are there other constituencies Natania that, that we should be thinking about? Besides those of us who are uh service beneficiaries, are there other constituencies? We should be expanding the definition of generosity to I think. So, I think uh you know, there’s advocacy for sure. And I think there’s also folks who um who want to create their own fundraisers or they want to give in ways that are not currently in our structures. And really what this is about is giving people the opportunity to, to support you in the ways that are meaningful to them. That could be a number of ways and a number of platforms. And one of the things that we kind of ran into some friction in, in the conversation yesterday was, well, you know, how do smaller organizations that don’t have the resources and um the means to adopt all these platforms and run all these programs and just, you know, try anything under the sun, you know, what are we supposed to do? And um you know, really, what, what we, our other um compatriot who’s not here today was, was able to contribute was, you know, pitch it to your leadership as a test start. Say it’s a test of trying out a new platform, a new way of um you know, tracking the, the ways in which people support you and then see over time if it gets you um exponential results, Peter can we talk a little about using technology because your, your, your session topic is use your tech to enable generosity. Now, Natania just referred to the inadequacy of the current drop down menu uh menus. I’ll just, I’ll just pluralize menu and this way, I don’t have to think of another noun. So the inadequacy of the, the drop down menu, how should our tech be integrated into this expanded definition of who can be generous and how folks can be generous. Yeah, I mean, you, you’ve kind of opened up this Pandora’s Box and I got, I’m afraid I’m afraid that my friends who work at software companies here are listening to this podcast and I hope they are. But um I’m gonna be critical of us as an industry for a second. I think Jamie um by coordinating this session really got this topic out on the table for us and it’s being had at, you know, all levels of organizations um in all the departments. But here at the, the technology conference, you know, we have to be a little critical of ourselves. Um I’ve worked for a couple of software companies that have made online cr MS that help with email and fundraising and advocacy and volunteer registration. And I have to tell you, you know, the place where those platforms are the most mature is when it comes to uh seeking money. So whether it’s getting people to convert more often on donation forms or to hit them at the right time with an email that gets them to open their wallet. That’s all well and good. And that’s important. But I think, um, don’t stop there. That’s right. We’re not, we’re not expanding beyond, beyond the, the simplest. That’s right. And so, you know, as a senior ranking Marxist at this table, I don’t really know if I’m the senior ranking Marxist. But I would tell you that my goal is to take all of this technology that we use to get people to open their wallets. Um All of these tools of late capitalism and flip them on their heads. So how do we use the tools that help us advertise to find people to draw them into the fold to provide those social services? Can you imagine if we lived in a world where direct service organizations brought the same kind of discipline and technology to serving their population as they do to raising money? Um I think that’s where we’re going to see a lot of research and expansion in the next couple of years. Be a little more specific about the software shortcomings. What’s the ideal for you? You know, I’ll give you a good example. Yeah. So here it is one of the organizations that I work with, we help them find about three quarters of a million people to put into and lead to their job training programs every year. Um Part of that challenge is that we’re trying to reach them with advertising tools that find people who are over 50 people of color, primarily women, lower education, lower banking rates. And those tools for advertising are optimized to find rich people who have money to spend on discretionary stuff, whether it’s buying a TV or donating to, uh, a worthy organization. And so we’ve had to come up with really innovative ways to identify people who meet those criteria, um, because they’re not optimized to find people with lower income, lower discretionary dollars and that sort of thing. And so, um yeah, I’m not sure, I’m not sure how we do it. I think we have to do our best to take those tools that exist that have been built by very smart people and get them to really deliver a human service and make the world more compassionate, diverse forms of generosity is essentially what we’re talking about. So, Jamie, you were, you were the impetus behind this, this session. Don’t be ashamed. It was, it was, it was my fault. No, what else? Um Let’s see, uh facilitating generosity. I’m just reading from your session description, facilitating generosity through your data tech and business processes. I mean, we’ve alluded to all that stuff but why we, you know, you had a full hour session. What else? What else can we dive deeper in? Well, we had two other individuals that were here and I think that they made two very strong points that I’d like to just bring up real quick. Yeah, I will cheer. So Mike Fisher Trusts Republic land, he was uh he was really bringing home the point that one thing that nonprofits could easily do well and that there is technology to support is to encourage those individuals that are your five star fans, your, your, your individuals that are advocating, they’re opening your emails, they’re clicking through, they’re donating, maybe they’re volunteering, maybe, but they’re just consistently available to you and your mission. They are the ones that you should be asking to get more involved by bringing more people into your organization. They are your super fans. They are the ones that can tell their friends about you easily and well, because they’re obviously passionate about your cause and mission. Um The other thing is to be looking at who your social influencers are, uh who is on um who’s retweeting you who or re xing you. I don’t threating you. I don’t know. I know, but you know what I mean? I think now they just call them posts which is totally generic. So let’s do that. Well, I like, I like I do too that we’re expanding the definition, we’re expanding definitions. So yeah, so the ones that are posting about you on social networks that matter to you or that you’re finding um engagement on those are the people that you should be asking to support you in those regards that the idea of spreading generosity and connecting people to resources into each other is, is something that I think we undervalue yet is extremely important. And so Mike Fisher was really great at driving home that point that we are well under utilizing those individuals that can help us invite more people into our cause. And then also, and how we measure what they do. We don’t even have metrics really for like social influencing. Oh no. Does that exist in CRM systems? It does in some? Yeah, but it, it’s underutilized primarily and then it’s, it’s the other thing is, is that it’s a acknowledged and Peter really brought this home to us yesterday is the fact that when you get an email talking about the way that you’ve made impact at an organization, commonly, they’re reminding you of the last donation you made and how you can expand that donation or up a $10 and become a sustainer. But rarely do they say, and we really appreciate also the 25 hours that you, you gave to us this year through volunteerism or the peer to peer fundraiser that you helped us make a success and our match with others on Facebook last year. And so we’re really not tracking these different ways that people are showing their generosity and it’s really a shame. And um, so I’ll just make two other points real quick. One is um, storytelling which I think Natania has led, um, has done a great job at talking about and Michelle Payne who is jobs for America’s graduate on our panel as well. Um She, you know, they work with youth and high schools that um need are, are looking for a pathway to success in underprivileged neighborhoods or, and in areas um where opportunity is limited and the stories that those J A alumni are providing jobs for America’s graduates fundraising team in order to go out and raise more funds is critical to the success of jobs for America’s graduates. And um that, that needs to be acknowledged that these people are spending their time, their energy and being vulnerable by telling their stories to others in order to help raise critical funds for organizations and commonly, that goes unnoticed. Last thing I’ll just challenge everyone to say is we talk about donors like we’re not donors and like we’re not generous people, we and to take a step back and say, why aren’t donors giving more or why are, you know, or what should we do to make our donors more engaged with us? Look, look at yourself what is missing from the process of donations and from the way that organizations are engaging with you, how are we going to get folks to be more engaged with us, engage with them? I mean, you’re saying, acknowledge, acknowledge the breath of their generosity. Right. Exactly. Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way that a mission or organization has been responsive to you? How would you like to see that improved? Um If you’re feeling dissatisfied by the process, then I guarantee you every stakeholder in your organization, every stakeholder that’s giving to your organization is probably feeling the exact same way. Um So do unto others as you want to do unto you, I think was Peter’s line yesterday. Several years ago, there was someone on who I followed on then Twitter. So I’m gonna keep using Twitter. Uh She was, uh she was the Whiny donor. Uh She was a board member and I had her on the show. She didn’t want her name revealed. Uh but she was a board member of a couple of nonprofits in upstate New York, Buffalo area. Um So I had the Whiny Donor on several years ago and I used to follow her on Twitter and we would engage and she was, you know, she was, um often disappointed, not always. I mean, she would point out successes too, but, you know, you sent me, uh you sent me a thank you letter, but the donation amount is wrong. I mean, that’s a, that’s like a killer, you know, I mean, that’s so basic. That’s that, I mean, that is cr MS are capable of somebody put the wrong number in, you know, someone who was careless or, you know, they didn’t proofread the letter to compare it with the data in the, in the CRM and it’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers. Just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate in the gym. I’m, I’m coming back to these gym stories. Uh Yeah, no spending a lot of time there. I’m, I’m noticing things. I see a big difference between the way women dress in the gym and men dress in the gym. I, I think it’s easier to describe men the way they dress. They don’t give a shit put on anything old. I mean, and I know for myself like I’ll go in a pair of uh I, I typically wear, I wear a bathing suit as a workout workout shorts. Uh because they’re nice and short, you know, like they’re running, I use them as running shorts and also workout shorts like, uh you know, orange, uh orange bathing suit shorts and a green shirt. It makes no difference to me and my socks. All my socks are white. I don’t, I don’t call to coordinate any socks or anything that’s men, don’t give a shit. Women the color co ordination. The time that goes into the, the, I can imagine the hours that go into the shopping, not just the dressing but the shopping to match like the, the ankle band on the socks matches a color on the shoes or the ankle band on the socks matches the shorts. I’ve seen both of those or the shorts and the top color coordinate. Not identical. Man, you, you don’t have to go identical, but they’re coordinating a color, not saying matchy. Matchy. I’m saying coordinate much more sophisticated than Matchy. Matchy color coordinate or the shoes and the shorts. That’s another one. I’ve seen a lot. I the, the time that goes into matching these colors, it’s, it’s amazing uh or coordinating these colors. So women have a much better game in uh in gym attire. Uh You gotta say much better and um I just saw something in the New York Times this afternoon, uh about sock length in millennials versus Gen Z. And we get some of both on, on a, uh I’d say most of the people probably more than half the people who come to this gym, this town community gym are over 55 sixtyish uh but some, you know, but some are, are younger. Uh Now I have not noticed this myself. This is one that I I got from the Times today. Your, your Gen Z will, will not show their ankles with socks. It’s gotta be above the ankle and maybe even up to like mid calf gen Z but millennials always show the ankle what heads, I don’t know if P socks is an outdated. I didn’t, they didn’t, I don’t think they mentioned pets in the, in the article. Maybe that’s an outdated term, but that’s how I know them head socks. So you’re supposed to be able to tell Gen Z for millennials by the height of their socks. I don’t know what that’s all worth. Uh Congratulations women for having so much more pride in your gym appearance. And now I hope, I hope the energy that goes into your workout is equivalent to the energy that went into your shopping and then wearing the coordinating colors. I mean, I hope you’re working out just as hard as your shopping, but women got it over men. That is Tony’s take two Kate. What do you think? It’s, it’s like that old. Um If you feel better, like you’ll be better kind of thing. I think when you look better, you’ll feel better and you’ll do better. Um Also shopping for active wear is like so much fun nowadays because they have so many colors and you don’t want to show up in like boing black leggings or like white tank top. Like I want to show up in coral, you know, color coordinating, head to toe. It’s more fun that way. Ok. Ok. That’s the, that there’s the sentiment behind what I’m, I’m, I’m observing. And then you said pets for the socks. That’s how I know low, so low socks that are, are below or right at the ankle. Those are pets. We call them no shows because you can’t see them above your shoe. Yeah, I, I, I gathered that meaning, I, I was able to figure that out why they might be called No show. Thank you. All right. So, I’m using an outdated, outdated, antiquated, uh, uh, anachronistic term for old. Simple, old. All right. Well, I like, uh, I like, uh, I like, uh, synonyms as well. Ok. No more pet socks. No shows. We’ve got just about a butt load. More time. Here’s the rest of use your tech to enable generosity. Uh, Natania. I’m gonna put you on the spot. Do you wanna, do you wanna tell AAA um, a fee? No, no, a feeding America story. This antiquated, uh, mindset that nonprofits have that donors, you can only communicate to donors about giving money. And if you have advocates or volunteers don’t, don’t ask them for any money, you better not, you know, don’t, uh, don’t intimidate them or vice versa, you know, don’t encourage your donors to do other things besides donate. Um, we don’t want to distract them. We want to keep them on this path on the, the donor journey and the ladder of engagement to get them to be major donors. But none of this other stuff is gonna matter in that Um And I think that’s, that’s broken thinking and we have started to see how we’ve turned that around at Feeding America is, we’ve started to message all our in full file about advocacy actions and legislation that’s at risk. Here’s the spectrum of possibilities of how you can engage with us. That’s how you’re going to really build those brand champions for yourself. Um And, and get them to be the voice of your organization too as Peter um alluded to um II, I presume you haven’t had a lot of pushback from these donors as you’ve broadened their, there’s been no, no risk to it. I give, why, why do you ask me to sign the petition? Why do you ask me to write the email to the representative? You know, I’m already donating. People don’t still think that way they see everything as something coming from feeding America and a message from us to them. And, you know, I think that lifting that up and, and starting from that point, you can create a more holistic message that is more meaningful and stronger and gets you the results that you wanted. This is right within your purview as strategic and integrated planning director, right? And that’s a pretty big portfolio, strategic and not just strategic, strategic and integrated big portfolio. What I have to ask you the uh the significance of the you’re wearing a hat that says bagels, are you a, are you a bagel? Um connoisseur because I live here. They live in OK. Now I’m from New York where we’re boiled bagels? Are they boil them? OK. That’s the boiling. That’s the boiling. That’s the pre boiling before the baking. Which is, that’s, you get the golden crust on your bagel. It’s not supposed to be a pound cake. The definition of relevance. I’m learning a lot. I find this to be very generous. Henry Higgins. Henry Higgins. Henry Higgins. Spoiled bagels. Tony. If I could be so cheeky. I’m going to ask you a question. Um, Zars or David Bagels. What’s your, what’s your bagel place in New York? Well, it used to be H and H God, they close, they close, they always warm bagels. It’s gotta be, if you were willing to wait like five minutes, it’s the next round of warm whole wheat bagels, which is my, my, my, my go to would be coming out. But so, but h and h isn’t there anymore. So I’d probably have to say Zars. There are, I’m hearing an echo from our production assistant. Soon to be demoted. I said that earlier though to be nice to Amy free. I think that’s a good idea. No, after the conference, after the conference, but before the bonus. Yeah, exactly. After the work is done before the bonus is paid. Um, ok. Uh, so, ok. No, probably Zars. Yeah, we’re in Portland. Natan is Portland. Not a food city. It’s a big food city. This is an appropriate digression plus, you know, the middle aged white guy has got the master board and I I’m dictating the agenda. So, no, but I do, I do, I wanna work food in because Portland is an enormously rich and rightfully proud, rightfully proud food city from the trucks to the restaurants, et cetera. So, uh ok, let’s go back to genero expanding the definition of generosity though. Um What else? What more can we Peter? You’ve, you’ve been uh well, the, the, the one who hasn’t spoken. Well, you did contribute the bagel to the bagel conversation. But aside from that, uh what else, what else came out? Well, maybe some questions if uh if you feel we’ve covered topics, maybe some questions that came out of the session yesterday that were provocative, informative, interesting things you all hadn’t thought of. No, the questions were dull. You know, honestly natanya mentioned a couple of the really good ones and it was, you know, hey, look, we’re really small. How do we, we’re just trying to find our um our butt with both hands. How do we, how do we do the things that big organizations are doing? And I usually don’t say it so kindly, but with both hand that’s acceptable here. Oh, we had somebody say, fuck yesterday talking to my 14 year old daughter. So, you know, I try, I try to keep her. This is, this is not a G rated show. I mean, it’s a PG show but yeah, I still think it’s appropriate. I get it, I get it. Um I might, um, I might let you talk a little bit about it, Natania. Um, but I, I thought like, you know, look, you just have to, you just have to do it. Um delivering value to people and delivering a valuable experience is really critically important. Um And that’s one of the ways that smaller organizations can dive in and really try to grow. Everybody started their email list or their, their, you know, Instagram or Facebook profile or tiktok. Uh What do they call it an account, I guess over there um with one follower, right? Them, plus their mom. So um it’s really one of those things that I think we get asked a lot is how do small organizations get in? And so, you know, you just have to do it and, and from my perspective, I think delivering value is the way to, to really um start to do it. Just just give people something that they want, whether it’s that experience, whether it’s those compelling stories, whether it’s, you know, imagery that reflects people who look like them and the people they care about. Um that becomes probably the first step on that ladder towards, you know, programmatic maturity and getting people to really um engage an audience and get them to support their cause. Um Natania, I trounce all over what you were saying yesterday. Can I just insert something? There’s, there’s a basic principle in promotion and marketing that the way to get more clients or in this case, donors or volunteers is to be great to the clients or donors or volunteers that you’ve already got. And Natania, that goes right to what you, you’re saying about expanding their engagement. Uh and not, not, you know, putting people in silos as strictly a donor, never talk to them about, you know, other, other opportunities. Uh You know, and I think it’s just treat people the way you’d like to be treated. You know, you don’t even have to go to Prenn of promotion and marketing. Just uh the golden rule. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And no, you did not trounce all over. I was gonna say, um I do think, um, you know, yeah, offering those opportunities and, um, you know, I think there’s, there’s this perception that, um, you know, if you can’t do things at the, at the Cadillac or the gold standard that then you shouldn’t do it at all. And I just don’t think that’s true and, you know, we might be at, or I might be at a large organization now. That doesn’t mean we have everything figured out either. You know, we, we all are in the same industry that is founded on some broken principles, you know, the nonprofit industry isn’t perfect just like any other business out there. Um, and we all have to deal with the same fundamental um cultural issues that we, that we are dealing with um as an industry and uh at the end of the day, if you can ask three people, five questions or five people, three questions. However, you want to go about it, which are, you know, something like what are the ways in which you want to be involved? Do you prefer to support in person virtually or behind the scenes in an operational capacity? Do you wanna get email from us? Do you wanna get paper mail? Do you wanna not get anything? Um You know, asking people how they want to be involved is the first step and that can get you more data than any kind of, you know, the only caveat there is you then have to honor their honor their request. I mean, if you can’t, if you don’t feel that you can segment that way, then don’t ask the question. But I do think you can ask people, you know, what are the ways in which you do want to be involved? That doesn’t mean you’re gonna promise them that, but it does mean that you want to get to know them better. And then this is for in the future for us to be able to understand what do we need to deliver to you in the future. And it’s all about how you deliver that message to them. And I think you can keep yourself honest and accountable. Without over promising too much. All right, I’m gonna defer it to Jamie as, uh, as our origin originator, uh, to, uh, to wrap us up with some warm motivation. Ok. Well, so there were actually two other things that came out. They weren’t questions. We had a lot of people that offered a lot of great ideas in the audience as well. So we actually did, yeah, we did an exercise where we turned to each other and talked about as donors. How would we want to, how do we like to be treated? Um What seems to be missing from our, our um generosity experience beyond donations. And there were two things that came up as one is uh a Human centered design approach and starting from places of generosity, different origins of generosity, right? Volunteerism or advocacy or influence or engagement of referrals, storytelling and then mapping a journey uh throughout your organization for how you believe that individual is going to want to engage with your organization and, and delve deeper into your mission. Um And then using CRM automation or Eecrm automation, um offline analog, whatever, whatever you need or have available to you to make that journey as realistic as possible. People that are showing generosity in a certain way together to uh to help design together. How are you going to further that form of generosity within the mission? So if you have a number of volunteers that are volunteering at a food bank, uh bringing them together into a roundtable or fireside chat to talk about what’s missing from the experience. What could we be doing better? What are you finding fulfilling about that experience is a great way to get people involved and people find that form of generosity and, and being invited into a community of common, like individuals and common behaviors to be very fulfilling and a way of saying thank you to those people because you’re acknowledging the fact that they are contributing in a certain way. And that’s why leadership circles exist and giving circles. I just want to insert that I had someone a guest yesterday, call that a town hall. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever you want, whatever you want to call it, people feel warm invited to that. Absolutely. People want to share their ideas. I will say I’m very, I am excited about this book, Tony and I do not know the gentleman’s name and I apologize. So I hope you can find it for me. But the head of Ted just came out with a book called Infectious Generosity. And it’s all about how the greatest form of generosity is spreading ideas. And he gives some great examples, some great stories throughout. And I think that there are some really critical lessons for us in the nonprofit industry on how we are helping individuals uh and facilitating individuals, the spreading of ideas and resources to each other. Um because that’s really what connects us all together. That’s Jamie Mueller, Chief Growth Officer at Ptko papa Tango, Kilo Oscar, also Peter Genuardi, founder of see the Stars and Natania Le Claire, Director of Strategic and integrated Planning. What a portfolio at Feeding America. Thank you very much, Jamie Peter Natania. Thanks very much for sharing. Thank you, Tony. Thank you outstanding. Thank you and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits next week using A I in your communications. If you missed any part of this weeks show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for June 17, 2024: Gen Z Career Challenges

 

Ray Sherry: Gen Z Career Challenges

After a deeply personal episode, Ray Sherry devoted himself to helping Gen Z’ers—like the one who saved his life—with their careers. He channels his 40 years of experience in financial services and consulting to share his advice, so younger professionals take charge of their careers. Ray is CEO of Zynd.

 

 

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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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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of laryngeal FRAXs if you obstructed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with the highlights. Hey, Tony, I’m on it. Gen Z career challenges. After a deeply personal episode, Ray Sherry devoted himself to helping Gen Zers like the one who saved his life with their careers. He channels his 40 years of experience in financial services and consulting to share his advice. So younger professionals take charge of their careers. Ray is CEO of Zind on Tonys. Take two more chatty gym guy were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Here is Gen Z career challenges. It’s my pleasure now to be with Ray Sherry following a liver transplant. And on learning that his donor was a young man. Ray dedicated his work to aligning young individuals with careers that amplify their innate talents. He has 40 years spanning sectors like financial services and consulting. It was recognized in the UK with the best digital start up award in 2022 for ID INFO Limited. He’s now CEO of Zind Zynd. The company is at zind.co.uk and Ray is on linkedin Ray Sharry. Welcome to nonprofit Radio Tony. Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here. My pleasure to have you. You need to tell us the story to get started. Uh This liver transplant was transformational, not only for your body but for your thinking too, not only for your physical body, but your, your, you, you blossomed from there into something new. I think that’s a, that’s a great way of putting it, Tony. Uh I’ll, I’ll wind the clock back a little bit. Give you a little bit of uh history. So about uh 2005, I was diagnosed with a very rare liver disease called primary sclerosing Cholangitis PSC for short. And I was informed at that time by the consultant doctor that I was working with that at some point in my life, I would need a liver transplant. So unlike many people who need organ transplants, I was given quite a long heads up as to what I would have to go through at some point in my life. But the, the unusual thing about PSC, it’s not something that you can predict how quick it will actually evolve as a disease and how quick the liver will deteriorate. So, wind the clock forward to 2020. In fact, March 2020 I was on an interim uh contract with, uh, with very good payments company here in, uh, in the UK. And the pandemic came along and everyone got locked up from, from March uh 23 March 23rd. Uh At that time, I was already um working towards a AAA major, a major goal in my life, which is actually to do an Iron Man for the very first time. I was already, I was already doing half marathons. I was already swimming over a mile and I was already cycling 75 miles on a, on a regular basis. So 2020 was going to be my breakthrough year from a, from a personal sports perspective. Um And in parallel, I was obviously looking at what can I do after spanning a career of 40 years, what can I do to help my community, help my country whilst we, whilst we go through a pandemic. And that’s when I began to think through what are the challenges that young people face. Um As I went through my own personal challenges of working towards this Iron Man, then the pandemic came and everything got canceled. So like many other people, um I had to stay at home. I had to look out for my loved ones and my friends and, uh, make sure that I wasn’t, wasn’t exposed to the, the COVID virus. Uh, like many others. Um, I continued to cycle. I continued doing my sports and that was one of the, one of the great things about, it was a great time to cycle because all the traffic disappeared from the roads around, uh, Cardiff and Wales where I live. Um And it was a great time. And later that year, uh by the time we got into the September period, there’s a, there’s a race that we do here in Cardiff. Uh It’s called what we call T 10. It’s uh it’s what we call Cardiff to Swansea. It’s 100 and eight miles in a straight line from east to west in, in South Wales. And we were due to do that uh in September, but because of the pandemic, it was canceled in October. Uh we decided as friends to go and do a cycle ride. Anyway, we were allowed to. And at the end of that October ride, I, I’d cycled 100 and 25 miles and then everything changed again within literally two weeks. Um I, I became jaundiced, I became unwell and uh I had to go and see uh my consultant to find out what was going on and it transpired that my liver had gone from regularly, you know, evolving in terms of the pace of change based on the diagnosis I had in 2005 but had gone and, and had dropped off the edge of a cliff. Um, anyone that knows anything about liver function test, my bilirubin was over 100 and 60. That’s 10 times what it should be. Normally. Um Within six weeks I had been through transplant assessment and, um, made the UK transplant list, um, December and January 2020 20 going into 2021 was incredibly difficult for me. I, I’m not really sure how I got through it but I fought um mm mainly probably because of my sports strength and my mental strength that came from all of my sports activities, uh my experience and just knowing myself and my body and, and how I was feeling. Were you in hospital at that time? December, January, you were still in hospital. I was still home. You see, you see Tony, this was the height of the pandemic in the UK. So here in the States too, that’s why I was asking if that was the time that you were in the hospital. But you, you were, you were able to stay home or, or you needed to stay home, stayed home. I, I stayed home uh through that, through that December and that January and actually I was still, I was still cycling, although I was the color of a, of a tangerine orange. I was, I was still cycling. And, uh, the weekend, the weekend before I got my first transplant called, uh, I’d been out and I’d done 25 miles with, uh, a friend and had helped relatively good. I’d, I’d had antibiotics for the infection that was causing me to feel very, very unwell. And I’d sort of recovered from that. Um, then by the end of January, which the pandemic was really, really getting to grips, uh, with, with the UK. Um I had a call from my transplant hospital to tell me that they had closed. So I’m on the waiting list for a hospital that’s 100 and 60 miles away in London. And they tell me that they’ve had to close because of the pandemic and they were transferring me as a patient to Newcastle. Now, Newcastle is a good 250 miles from where I live and it’s about 200 miles from London in particular. And I needed to go and have an assessment with the Newcastle Transplant Hospital in order for them to accept me onto their list. So I had to jump in the car literally within 24 hours drive all the way up to Newcastle through the snow, do the assessment and then wait again, I had to come back to, to cardiff and wait again. Um Literally within a week, I was back on the transplant list in London. Um The, the COVID restrictions have been lifted, things had been cleaned up and they were accepting patients again and it was literally within a week of that, that being lifted, uh which was at the end of February that I got my first call uh for um for a liver. Um I was actually out walking in the local park and they called me and said, Ray, we’ve got uh a transplant or potential transplant for you. The ambulance will be with you within the hour, You need to go home and uh pack your bags and go. So to cut a long story short on, on all of that, uh literally within 15 hours of me getting to London getting prepped, they came with the news that unfortunately the liberal wasn’t suitable for me. There were, there were challenges with it and it wasn’t suitable. So I had to turn around, jump back in the ambulance and go all the way back to Cardiff. Um You know, it’s, those are the sort of things that I was warned that would happen. And uh you know, I was feeling better than, than I had through December and January. So I, I shrugged it off said those are the things that happened and I was forewarned. So I wasn’t too concerned about it. My, my time would come in a week, a week later on the third of March, I had a call 730 in the morning and said, right, we’ve got you another liver, but we’ve got you another donor and uh we’ve checked out the donor. Everything seems good. We need to get you up to London for the transplant. So, that was the third of March. It was early in the morning. By the time I got to London it was two o’clock in the afternoon. Um, by about six o’clock, I was beginning to, you know, twiddle my thumbs. Uh I’d been playing games with the family on the, on the phone just to keep me occupied and keep them sort of, uh informed. And around about eight o’clock, I asked my first question about my donor. I said, how’s things going with the donor? And, uh there was very little information about the donor. Uh, and, and to be honest, we being very selfish and very focused on what I needed to get through. II, I didn’t really think much of my donor. I didn’t, I think I didn’t think of what the family was going through. I didn’t think my donor was going through. I, I really didn’t get paid much attention to that. I just had the focus on myself and get through what I was going to go through basically. Um, and I think in the end that was probably the right thing to do. So at one o’clock in the morning, I was taken down, um taken down to the operating theater. I, I said a little prayer, you know, just a few minutes before I asked for a minute from the nurses and just said a little prayer. And 30 seconds later, I was sort of almost hopping. Seriously. I was almost hopping. Um, quite joyful on my way down to the operating theater. I arrived there, talked to the east, the test I could see into the operating theater room. It was a great big white room, lots of machines everywhere, lots of lights everywhere. And I, I didn’t once feel anything other than this is something I need to do. And I’m really happy that I’m going through this because I’ve waited effectively 16 years since that original diagnosis in 2005. So they put me to sleep. And uh about 11 hours later, I was woken up, the consultant plays a little trick, you know, the main surgeon, he plays a little trick. He actually wakes you up for a few moments, takes out the mobile phone number that you gave the family and he calls the main contact number and he has a little conversation to say everything’s ok. The operation went very well. Let me, let me have a little chat with my mother at this point in time. Apparently I swore, which was not a good thing to do at the time, but I have absolutely no recollection of that whatsoever. So they call me back to sleep and I was, I was, I was sedated for a further 24 hours. This was then um late on the fourth of March. So I’d been asleep. I’d been in the operating theater since the early hours of the fourth. Um, gone through the fourth and I woke up on the Saturday morning, um, and was, was chatting quite happily to the nurses who were still looking after me in critical care unit. I asked a question. I asked a simple question. Um, do you know anything about my donor? And no sooner had I mentioned those words? I was, I just collapsed in a pile of emotion. I didn’t know, I didn’t know him. I didn’t know his family. I didn’t know anything about him. But what struck me was the fact that he was a young man, um most likely in his twenties and through the whole course of 2020. And even before that, in 1919, I’d been working in my mind up a story up a journey, something that I wanted to do, having have a very successful career in technology for 40 years. I wanted to do something for people. I wanted to do something for my community. And it was that it was that moment thinking of my donor that it struck me that I needed to do something for young people. I needed to help young people because my donor, he wasn’t able to reach his full potential in his life. Therefore, it’s something that I needed to do for him and in his memory and for the for for as many young people that I could possibly do. Thank you for sharing. Uh That’s, that’s a, that’s a moving story. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtues believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers, responsive. Fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow, impact virtuous.org. Now back to Gen Z career challenges. So that led you then to Zind and you are taking advantage of the, your 40 plus years and you’re helping young folks embark on and, and grow their careers. Yes, that’s absolutely right. I had been harboring in my mind. These are the sorts of things that you uh you have taken over in your mind all the time that you get an idea. You think about the idea, you part the idea, you then come back to it at some point point in time. And uh 2020 give me, gave me that opportunity to begin to document some of that thinking and it wasn’t until I learned about my donor and his age. And uh the fact that he was a young guy that it really became quite clear to me that helping young people, helping all people who are going through a journey, whether it’s from school, college, university and into the workplace for the first time was the right thing for me to do. Uh Even those people that have been, you know, taken redundancy and, and want to change and move into a different industry. I wanted to be able to help those people to anyone that was coming back to work, whether it was through maternity leave or whether it was long, long term sickness. Um As I was facing, it’s something I wanted to do. So I create in uh along with a, a co-founder uh in January 2023 we started out by um thinking about, well, what are the, what are the, what is the goal here? What is the sort of vision and goal here? And it was really just all about helping young people, helping them navigate what is a very difficult journey from the safety of the educational years or the academic years into the ultimately the crazy world of, of work and the the the 2030 40 years that, that people will face as they enter that for the very first time. So we started researching um in more detail and trying to confirm through research um some of the challenges that young people would be facing. Um anybody would be facing as they, as they approached the workplace for the very first time. Um And there, there may be there, there’s value here also for older folks who might be mentors to, I know you’re, I think you’re, you’re working specifically with or you’re thinking mostly about Gen Z but anybody older who might be uh mentoring Gen Z or even just to be empathetic to what younger folks are facing in, in the, the beginnings or the uh yeah, in the beginnings of their careers. So it may not be the very first job, it might be second job or third job. But you know, as you get yourself launched, uh I think there’s value for folks who are older than Gen Z to understand what the challenges are for these folks. So let’s, let’s again, you know, let let’s go a little broader so that we can help our Gen Z colleagues as they’re as they’re coming along. Um You, you, you say that uh one of the, one of the challenges they’re facing, the early challenge is just un understanding your skills are, are, are folks not introspective enough or do they, do they not understand what skills are needed in the marketplace that they should be emphasizing what, what’s your advice around understanding what your value is, your skills? Yeah, you’re absolutely right. So, so this is, this is probably the the most critical part of this whole process. So when a person writes their CV, for the very first time, um, what, what will they have on there? The question is, what, what can they put on that CV? For the very first time, it will be mostly academic in nature. They will go through whether they’ve been at college, whether they’ve been university and so forth. Ok. So that’s if they’ve got any work experience, they’ve been very lucky. And they’ve done like a, like a, what we call a thin sandwich course where they’ve managed to have a few months in industry whilst they’re going through university, they can put some experience on there and a summer internship as well, perhaps. Exactly. Exactly. That, so, so, so there is a, there is a sort of set of things that you would put on the CV. The last thing they tend to put on the CV is their skills. They don’t tend to identify the skills that they have because they don’t, they’re not trained to think about the skills when they’re going through their academic years. They’re told, they’re told to learn, they’re told to research and, and, and pick up new knowledge, but they’re not really taught about their skills and how to use those skills in particular. Ok. So for that reason, they don’t think about skills when it comes to their, their resume or their CV. And they don’t identify them clearly on the CV. So when you got to be a skills section, very much so, very much so. And, and I would also, I would also advocate that they should identify at least try to determine the level of skill that they’re at. So for someone who’s coming on to the job market, for the first time, I would suggest they probably got a basic level of understanding of communications. OK? Unless they’ve done something in particular to uh forward or improve those communication skills that may have been through work experience, it may have been through a summer internship or it may have been through upskilling and training. OK. So identifying the basic uh or the level of skill that they have is, is incredibly important. It’s also very true on the employer side that they need to do the same. Because if they, if they just advertise a job, we’re looking for someone with good basic uh communication skills, we’re looking for someone with uh teamwork ability, et cetera, et cetera. If they don’t specify the level that they’re looking for, even at an entry level job, then there’s gonna be an automatic mismatch between the expectations of the employer and the expectations of the individual applying for that job. And this is what happens they don’t meet in the middle, they completely miss one another. OK. So what you end up finding is that a lot of young people apply for jobs, a lot of people apply for jobs and they haven’t got a chance even from the outset of matching the expectations of the employer. Not even at that early prescreening prescreening stage. Are they able to meet those expectations? It’s only when the employer shortlists and interviews can they begin to close that gap and understand? Where does that? Where does the applicant sit in relation to the expectations of the employer? All right, I guess if I was gonna summarize that, I would say, know your value, you, you need to know what it is that you bring even, even if you’re right out of, uh, you know, right out of college, you know, what, what is the, or, or even, uh, you know, with a two year degree, four year degree, you know, or even no degree. If it, if, if you’re right out of high school, what is the value that you’re bringing to the workplace and, and, and how does that match what the needs are of the, the organization? So, you know, uh, and I understand your advice from the organization perspective, you know, to be clear about what the needs are, what the expectations are among among applicants. Uh, but there may be some research required as well. You know, you, uh, on the individual side, what does the organization do? What, what do they write about? You know, that, that’s, that’s how you could sort of suss out what, what their needs might be so that you can match your value. To what their needs are. It’s exact, that’s exactly the case. Um uh you know, from experience. Uh and I’ve done this time and time and time again, I’ve picked up a copy of a previous job description. I’ve uh with technology, I’m able to copy and paste it into another job description. I’ve changed a few words here and there and I put it out onto the internet. Haven’t really thought about what it is. I’m really looking for. So the challenges are quite lengthy. There’s quite a long, long list of challenges on the, on the jobseeker side, on the applicant side. But there are failings regularly on the side of the employer as well. They don’t help themselves, they don’t publish enough information about them and their company, their values where they’re going as a company, what their history is, um what their policies are. What do they stand for in terms of a brand? They don’t do enough to publish that information in the right place for the applicants to be able to go? Oh, that looks like a good company. Oh, I would love to work for them. So the applicant is uh, is more inclined to put the effort in to make sure that they get an interview with that particular employer. Ok. So the employer needs to do more. Ok. But, but, and I agree, but the employee, the potential employee needs to work with what they’re, what’s out there. So you gotta do the research, you gotta do the leg work to, to find what, maybe it’s even what other people have written about the organization, you know. Uh, but, um, certainly starting with what the, what the organization says about itself in its, obviously in its website, in its annual report, in its, in its social, uh, networks in the social networks. What are they saying there? Uh You know, you wanna, you wanna, you gotta ally yourself with the work of the organization. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds, both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Its time for Tonys. Take two. Thank you Kate Chatty gym guy up to it again. This week. You may recall that last week. Uh He gave me a or gave all of us. It’s not just me, he’s not talking to me. He’s, he’s uh bestowing his gift upon everyone in the, in the town gym. Uh Last week, it was a short course on uh motor boat uh engine troubleshooting this week this week. Uh There’s a, this guy, there’s a Blue Marlin fishing tournament which is a, a, it’s a very big deal apparently all up and down the east coast. Uh, it’s at a town about a half an hour from where I am. It’s in Morehead City, North Carolina called the Big Rock Blue Marlin fishing tournament where, uh, mostly guys, not exclusively it, it seems like, but, uh, mostly go out and, you know, in these expensive boats and try to catch big fish and who, who’s, who gets the biggest fish and, you know, you win money. So he’s got, so I’ve known about this. This is not news to me. It’s, it’s, it’s an annual thing. It’s been going on, I don’t know, like 50 or 60 years or something. So I’ve known about it since I’ve been here. I’ve heard of it and I’ve, one year I got stuck in the traffic of it. You know, you can imagine how excited I was by that. Now, of course, you avoid the town anyway. Uh, the guy’s talking about the Blue Marlin. He’s all jazzed up about the Blue Marlin tournament. Uh, and, and, uh, the, the winning so far they, it’s a multi day thing. It goes on mid day. I don’t know, it’s like five or six days or a week or something like that. It’s these guys go out, uh, uh, and you have to go, this is one of the things I learned from this. Uh, this, this, uh, Blue Marlin fishing tournament, uh, Savant that, uh, you know, that you, you go out 60 miles, I think. You, you, you can’t, it’s not near the shore. You, you take your boats out like 60 miles and then you fish and then you have to come back, you know, and weigh your fish, whatever, whatever you’ve withdrawn from the ocean. So, the, the winning fish so far now, so we’re only like four days. I think he didn’t say, uh, I think it’s all this week. So, you know, we’re like four or five days into it or something. Uh, £516. You know, I was, I was very elated to hear that. Uh, someone caught a £516 uh, marlin fish, whatever. Marlo. I don’t know how, I don’t know how you tell the difference between a marlin and a trout. But these guys know, you know, it’s a marlin and it’s not a swordfish or whatever, it’s a marlin. So it’s £516. That’s the winning fish so far. But there are, you know, of course, there’s days more days coming. Um, and Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan, the, um, the, the football star he played for the Mets, um, and he was with them in the, uh, the, the Stanley Bowl something. Uh, Michael Jordan brings his boat out there and, uh, uh, he’s apparently he’s not a winner yet so far, but this, this, uh, this guy. Uh, so Michael Jordan is out there somewhere. Um, you know, it’s all very exciting. So, and then the guy is telling us about, uh, the Michael Jordan boat is, uh, is $8.9 million boat. It’s not a $9 million boat. This, this guy again, he’s a savant. You know, he knows everything about fishing and, uh, you know, he, he shares it. We’re so grateful that he shares all his uh his wisdom and, and expertise with us. Uh $8.9 million boat that Michael Jordan has. And uh oh, it, it, it must have a 2000 gallon tank, which, you know, so that means that uh as, as I learned, uh that every time Michael Jordan fills the tank on the boat, it’s probably about, it’s about $8000 that Michael Jordan has to spend when he, I’m so glad to know this and he has a crew. The crew probably costs Michael Jordan $5000 a week, all the details. Uh So, you know, the II I, meanwhile, I’m just trying to do my Pilates sit ups. That’s all I’m just trying to, I’m just trying to do my sit ups, you know, sit up 11 vertebrae at a time, sit up, lay back down one vertebrae at a time, back down on the mat. That’s all I’m, I, I’m just trying to, I’m in the corner. I couldn’t get any further away from the guy if II, I wait, the room’s not big enough. I am as far away from him as I can be and he still is. Like, it’s, he’s broadcasting in my ear. His, uh, his genius. So, yeah, Michael Jordan, the big rock blue Marlins. That’s a big thing. Oh, you got to catch the Blue Marlins. Chatty gym guy. I, I suspect there’ll be more. II, I can’t get away, you know, II, I go early, I, but I have to II, I wanna work out early in the morning and unfortunately, so does chatty gym guy. You know, I’m not gonna alter my schedule around this gentlemen. I’m destined to hear more of his wisdom. And that is Tonys take two Kate. I think you need a pair of airpods or something to cancel them out. Airpods would work. I have a pair. I have airpods. I just, I’m not accustomed to listening to music. I mean, you’re right. I could put it on just silent or the, the air, the cancellation mode. Whatever. That’s true. I could do that. I could think about that. We’ve got Vuko but loads more time. Let’s return to Gen Z career challenges with Ray Sherry. Ray. I wanna move to uh like the, the uh lack of feedback that you might get uh upon submitting your application to be prepared. Yeah. And I think this is the, this is the cliff edge that I think most people uh when they enter the job market for the first time. Really don’t get, they don’t really understand why. When they send their CV in for a, for a job, it, it just disappears effectively into a black hole, it just disappears. That’s the sense that people get, um, it, they, they rarely get feedback. In fact, there was statistic um published by the recruitment Employment Confederation here in the UK, which is the, they, it was like a governing body for recruitment across the whole UK industry that 97% of all job applicants in July 2021 we’ll come back for a couple of years, but it hasn’t changed a great deal. 97% of all job applicants in the month of July, which is about 66,000 people did not receive any form of feedback. None. Now, that’s probably in my language in Zin language. That’s a little bit of a crime. If you ask me, you know, a young person, any person coming into the job market for the very first time, really motivated to find their first job, really keen. They spent maybe a few good years in, in university having a great time and now they’re all motivated and ready go for it. And they take that first step of applying for a job and that second step of applying for another job on the third and the fourth and the fifth and the 10th and maybe 30 or 40 applications later, they still don’t hear anything, I think, I mean, it’s uh both frustrating, demotivating soul destroying. There’s lots of language that, that you can use as such. So the biggest challenge that’s faced the recruitment market, not just in the UK, but worldwide for decades is this inability to provide useful and helpful and guiding feedback to job applicants every single time. Now, I’m pleased when we worked on this uh through through last year that we can now do this 100% of the time for every single, every single applicant at four different levels. So when they apply for a job, they know exactly where their application is in the process, which is, you know, the first, the first, the first area of feedback because I, if I’ve sent a CV in for a job and I don’t know what’s happening with it. I don’t even know if the process is fixed, you know, but that’s, that’s if we’re using the Zinn platform though, you know, our, as I said, most of our, our, our listeners are not going to be using the Zinn platform, but we’re trying to suss out the lessons, you know, that you, you want to share with Gen Z uh about this process. So, you know, what do you do? You OK. Uh 1520 40 applications later. It is a, it has been a black hole. How do you not get dispirited? Well, I think the way the W I mean, I, I can only talk about Zin in terms of sort of how we’ve solved this problem, how we, how we make sure that people get feedback every single time when they make an application. I think the first thing the candidate can do without, without um using the Zin platform is they can ask for feedback if they’re, if they’re lucky enough to remember where they sent that application to in the first place. And it might have been several weeks ago. They’re lucky enough to remember which recruitment agency they went to with, with that application, they should really ask for feedback just to not do that is just uh continuing the momentum down that path. And it has done for decades. I’m guilty of it. Like, like most other people, you send, you send a CV in you, you wait for feedback, you get no feedback, but I don’t go back and ask for feedback. And I think that’s the first thing people should do is they should go back to that recruitment agency and ask for that feedback uh however small. Uh and however um useful it may be, they should go and ask that question. OK? Because eventually that recruitment agency will get the message that people are asking for feedback. We need to do something about this. OK? I think the second thing they can do is is, you know, share their experiences with their friends as well. I think uh community is a really good thing. Um social media is very powerful in many ways and it can be very positive. Um So if there are organizations out there that are taking literally thousands of applications and no one’s hearing anything, I think, call it out, call it out. These, these companies will soon realize that they need to do better. II I think especially your, your, your second bit of advice around your support, you know, community so that you can help each other recognize that you’re not the only ones each facing this black hole. It’s not, it’s no reflection on your submission on your resume. It’s a reflection of the lack of civility that has emerged over 1520 years or so of. I in the hiring process. Uh in, in long three dates, you submitting your application to XYZ nonprofit. Uh It, it’s, it’s just, it’s become an uncivil process, uh a heartless process. So it’s not just you, it’s not your resume. Uh It’s millions of applicants and tens of millions of job applications um asking for feedback I think is a good idea. I, I, I’m not, I’m not sure in the US what kind of reaction you’re gonna get? You, you might get the same uh black hole uh feedback that you, you got when you submitted the application originally. But I think it’s a gutsy thing to do. You know, you, you’re no worse off with respect to that employer uh or the recruiter. Uh uh I, I think it’s more apt, yeah, more, more likely to be direct to the nonprofit. You, once you’ve been rejected you’re no worse off with that nonprofit for politely asking. You know, how did I come up short? Uh, WW, what, what, what did the, what did the, um, but the person who was hired or the folks who were hired have that I, that I’m lacking, you know, this, this, your feedback could be really valuable for me and I’d be grateful to have it. I mean, there’s a simple email, uh, uh, that, that resumes that you have an email address to send it to. I realize you might not. But if you have any kind of contact, uh, information, it probably is worth asking for feedback. You might only get it in 10 or 15% of the time, but that 10 or 15% could be helpful. And, you know what, you’re also distinguishing yourself as somebody who doesn’t just walk away. But, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m interested enough in this whole process and in your nonprofit that I value your feedback and I’m hoping that you’ll be willing to share it with me. Yeah, I think the, another piece of advice I would certainly give job seekers is that when they do apply for a job, make sure they keep the contact information, uh, whether it’s nonprofit or whether it’s a commercial organization, keep, keep the original application information so they know who to go back to, they know who to go and ask that question. What happened to my application? Can I have some feedback? How do I do keep that information because it is very easy with job boards the way they are today just to submit that CV. And wait. And before you know it, the job post has come down from, uh, from the job board, it’s, it’s gone away and you don’t have that information available to you anymore. So always keep a copy of that original job advert. So you’ve got something to refer to. Yeah, and it’s probably going to give you the name of the recruitment agency on there or the nonprofit organization. Keep that information. It’s vital that you keep that awesome. Yes, valuable. Um All right, let’s say, um le let’s say we’re at the stage, we, we’ve gotten through the application process and we’ve been hired. Uh you, you have some concerns and, and advice around um the job not panning out to be exactly what you thought it was gonna be like broken promises from the employer potentially. Yeah, I think the, the, the problem with um let’s call it, retention of, of employees starts in the application process. When you start looking for a job, it starts with your value you mentioned earlier on to, it starts with the applicant understanding his or her value in this whole value chain. Ok. So if they’ve applied for a job and they managed to you know, use some language blag their way through the interview and they, they, they got a job, they got an offer and they got a job and they, and they started, and they didn’t ask enough of the right questions and they didn’t work out their value and they didn’t check that value against that of the employer. But the time they get into the job, they’ll soon realize that this wasn’t for them. You know, the, the whole process starts with me as an individual understanding who I am, what I am, what I like, what I don’t like what I want. Um, the type of organization I want to work for. Ok. And there’s a, there’s a common thread that always runs through, um, people that leave organizations relatively soon after joining is that they were made promises around training, development, rep, progression, coaching, mentoring, you know, the, the list will go on really they land in this new organization and then there’s a, there’s a little bit of a cost cutting exercise or something’s changed and the manager didn’t get the budget, whatever it might be. But invariably, one of the first things that goes is the training, the, the learning and development. Um, and that’s, that’s quite tough for a young person who may have based their, their half of their decision or a good part of their decision on joining that company based on the fact that they were going to be upskilled further trained and they would have some sort of career progression and, and, and employers. I mean, I’m honest, the, the employers face a lot of challenges these days. It’s not easy for the employers and sometimes they have to, they have to go back on their promises or put those promises off to a later date. I, I completely get that but it’s, that’s no good for the young person who’s now in a six months into a new job career and hasn’t had a single training course. Um an upskilling course, this just this distinguished the difference between the two. So you’ve got training which most employers will provide because that allows the person to do the job, ok? Which is valuable to the, to the employer upscaling is going beyond that. It’s going way beyond that. So it’s, it’s learning above and beyond what you need to do the job and that’s where you are able to go for promotions, um and progress your career upskilling allows you to do that as such. So most employers will provide on the job training. But when it comes to breaking promises, it’s typically around the upskilling because that usually costs money, usually costs time and that usually reduces things like productivity and so forth. That results in a higher attrition rate in the uh in the overall um uh number of employees and therefore the, the retention drops uh as a consequence. So people will then leave their job. Uh typically within 6 to 12 months of joining that company for the very first time. There is a, there is a third dynamic which, um, which is sort of linked to value, which is sometimes, sometimes people just get it wrong. Sometimes people just get it wrong. You know, they, they’re not quite sure about who they are and they just want to go and try a few different things and, um, six months, 12 minutes into the job. I go, oh, this is not for me, this is not something I want to do. I, I I’m more interested in artificial intelligence or I’m more interested in working in the environment. So, so thank you very much, Mr Bank. I don’t really want to work with you anymore. I feel as though the green economy is somewhere where I want to be. So it is normal for people to make those decisions as well. Ok. Well, so we’ve set up the what, what might happen or suppose we’re in the second situation. You, you, you explained where the, the employer is not following through on uh promises around progression that upskilling. Wh wh what’s the, what’s the young gen Z employee to do? I think, I think the first thing is go back, go back to the hiring manager, whoever, whoever that was, it may even not be the same hiring manager. But I think it’s very important to go back and, and uh have, you know, an adult face to face conversation with him about, you know, when I was recruited, when I came into this organization, I was, uh, I was promised that, uh, that there would be training and upskilling. Um, go back and hold them account for that. Ok. They may still get a flat. No, but at least as an individual you’ll feel better for following through on the promises that you were made. I think the second option you can go through is look for ways to upskill yourself outside of your employer environment as well. There are some, there are some really good schemes around today where you can, you can go and get, you know, additional training courses uh on, on careers that, that you may be following through on and, and, and that’s perfectly a viable approach as such. But I think the first thing to do is make sure the employer is held responsible and accountable for any promises that they’re making. And I’ll just make a finer point here. There’s a very good chance if they’ve broken the promise to you as an individual, they’ve broken the promise to a bunch of other people as well. So again, this is where the the community of uh employees can actually have a stronger voice by, by getting together to raise the the lack of training or the lack of upskilling with the employer. So sticking together, it’s also a good way of being safe in that employment environment as Well, if you, if you’re working with a bunch of people that all have the same, let’s say grievance, we’ll have the same grievance. Then, um then hopefully, then someone won’t get singled out for, you know, for being a bad guy or whatever, it helps a lot to have allies in, in whatever, whatever you might be trying to move the organization to do. Um And look, and you, you know, if you get that flat, no, at least, you know where you stand and that may be a different reason than you were describing why this is not the right nonprofit for you. It’s not the right fit. They a they didn’t keep their promises and b they’re not um helping us progress in our careers. And, and if there are more than one of you making this case, then there, you know, we go back to uh an old adage that dates me, I guess, but there is strength in numbers. It does help to help out have allies that there are a number of you that are raising this professional development issue and how the organization is not following through on its promises and not investing in its the future of its employees, not just the job they’re in now, but your futures then, you know, it may not be the right place for you. OK? Go ahead. Well, I was gonna, I was gonna move to maybe the biggest overarching theme. So you, you continue on this. Please go ahead. Thank you, Tony. I was just gonna add one more thing really look, I mean, typically employers will look at the cost of training as a, as purely a cost when you start to look at as a value add to your organization and the ability to grow and scale and develop your organization to be better at what you do to provide better customer service, to buy better products, to buy better services. If you look at it in terms of value that, that training gives back to the company, you might make a different decision. It’s an investment II I, it’s an investment in the people in your most valuable asset, which is the people who are doing the work for you. And if you’re not willing to invest, then maybe this isn’t the place for me to work or even better for us to work. All right, I’d like to wrap up. Well, you know what, before we do that, I, I want to explain what Zzynd, what, what it stands for. Well, uh I know it was like in the, in the US Tony but you know, in, in, in the UK, we have something called company’s house. And uh the first thing you do when you set up a new company is you go to company’s house and you put in a name and you pray and hope that no one’s thought of that name because if that’s the first name that you come up with the company. It’s probably one of the better names that you’re ever gonna have. I did that, I don’t know, a dozen, maybe 20 times. Uh, at the beginning when we started setting up the company in the end, you know, I went to good old Chat GP T and, uh, I asked Chat G BT, give me, give me some options for the name of a modern day company that might reflect uh today’s generation a and came back with a list of 10. I can’t remember. I think the other nine, but there was a list of 10 and Zinn Zynd was the name that stood out and it stands for gen Z youth, no discrimination, which is really at the core of what we’re trying to do with Zind, which is that Zin is for everyone. It doesn’t matter what your background is, it doesn’t matter what your religion is, isn’t what you, your sexuality is Zinda for everyone. OK. And we don’t put any barriers uh in, in front of anyone to, to prevent them from applying for a job. Well, I love that you, Gen Z. The company is uh artificial intelligence derived. I think that’s appropriate that uh that the youngest folks have um have a, a company name that uh was derived by uh chat GP T. Um I, I wanna wrap up with taking control of your own destiny that throughout your career, starting with the very first job. And for the next 4050 years, it’s your life, it’s your destiny. What do you have to say about that? Well, it started for me, Tony back in uh 19 nineties, this whole thing, this whole um area of taking control of my career. Um I was working for a really, really good progressive organization. At the time I had the opportunity to apply for an internally sponsored MB A program. I was one of the top performers within the organization and that my performance reviews reflected that my appraisals reflected that every single year I applied for the NBA. I didn’t get it and the feedback was poor, you know. Uh But I said to myself, look, OK, this next year, I’ll apply again. So I applied again next year and I didn’t get it again and still top performer within the organization. So I said to myself, well, that can’t be right. I’m not gonna let anyone else decide my career from now on. So I immediately decided that over the next five years, what I wanted to be where I wanted to be in terms of my career. So I think I was around 3233 years old at the time. And I said that by the time I’m 38 I want to be an IT director. So I picked the senior guy in the organization said I want to be in his position within, within five years. Um I had to move the organization, I broke all the rules and I applied for a job within the wider organization, the financial organization I was in at the time because my boss was blocking my career progression, which is, you know, she was controlling the shots, not me. Um So I applied outside my division and I got a more senior job than my boss, more senior job than my boss and for more money. Ok. Um Within uh within three years after that, um I was running the second most profitable area of the bank, the bank that I was working with at the time. Uh and I had taken them through all the, you know, all the millennium bug and the year 2000 program changes. And we’d put some new products out to the market. Three years after that, three years after that, I was running an organization with 650 people strong. We were, we’re generating revenues of 40 million a year with a very nice uh uh net profit at the end of it. So I took control of my career because I wasn’t able to make the decisions about my life. That’s what it boiled down to. It was about my life and my family’s life. So I had to be, I had to take some risks. Of course, I did, I had to take some risks. I had to decide what I wanted. And um based on the decisions I made I would have to live by those decisions, good or bad. But I was very, very focused and very, I would say somewhat lucky as well that I chose the right path for myself. And it all boiled down to the fact that I really didn’t want anyone controlling my life. Uh, and since work and your career, there’s a huge proportion of the time that you, you, you, you spend each day very, very important that I had control of that. And that’s something that I would certainly uh advocate to anybody these days is be in control of your own destiny as far as you possibly can. Ok. Sometimes it’s in, you know, the hands of God. Sometimes it’s in the hands of um who you are and what you are. But um if you make those key decisions and um live by them and learn from them as well, it’s very important to learn from them as well. Then, uh I think it can lead to a happier career and a happier working career and a happier life as a consequence. I’d like to add, don’t do something because lots of other folks have done it before. You. You don’t have to follow a career path. Indeed. Even a, a life path, a personal path that doesn’t feel right for you just because lots of other people have done it before you. There’s the, there’s life is rife with people who have made mistakes and done things just because lots of other people did it before them, whether it’s a personal decision to marry, uh, and, or have Children, uh, or it’s a professional decision to go a certain path just because lots of other people have done it before. It is, it is your life, it is your destiny. You decide it, you decide what’s right for you and don’t base it on millions of people that have come before you because that may not be right for you. I mean, that’s a great way to sum it up to me. I’m gonna, I’m gonna sort of just give you one image to, to think about, you know, I, I was in London uh late 19 nineties and I remember this very, very clearly because it was very, very, not long after I made decisions to take control of my career. I was crossing London Bridge. This was during the rush hour in the morning, it was about 830 in the morning. I was crossing London Bridge, pretty much every single person was going in the other direction. And that image has stayed with me for the rest of my life. The whole of my life. I had chose a different path and that sometimes means going against the flow of humankind for a period of time until you find your new flow. So for me, that was confirmation that I was, I was on the wrong path or I was moving in in a different direction, which was, was suitable for me as an individual. And uh I remember it was just thousands of people crossing London Bridge and I was just going in the opposite direction. I was bumping into a lot of people as a consequence, but that’s sometimes what you have to do. Ray Sherry, he’s CEO of Zend. You’ll find the company at zind.co.uk. You’ll find re on linkedin Ray, our first Welsh guest. We haven’t, we have not had a, a Welsh guest before. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tony. I’ve very much enjoyed it and thank you to all your listeners as well. Thank you. All right. Thank you for sharing next week back to the 2024 nonprofit technology conference with the essential craft of leaving your job and data privacy. If you missed any part of this weeks, show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. That’s gonna be interesting. Next week, the essential craft of leaving your job leaving it. Yes. Very good one. Well, they’re all very good that, that one’s just ex exceptionally good. Were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporter generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate T Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.