There are lots of video use cases you may not have in mind. Like employee recruiting, donor stewardship, and volunteer recruiting and thanking. After you identify how video might work for your nonprofit, you need the right equipment, which doesn’t mean spending a lot. Then there’s preparation, shooting and editing. Pat Taggart makes each step very doable, so you can realize the full potential of this powerful medium. He’s founder of SkyBlue Creative.
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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 podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Last week was show number 725. If your aptly named host wasn’t so lackluster. He’d have reminded you last week that we’ll celebrate our 750th show in July. Tragic. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be forced to endure the pain of exophthalmus if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to tell us what’s coming. Hey Tony, this week we have Consider video. There are lots of video use cases you may not have in mind, like employee recruiting, donor stewardship, and volunteer recruiting and thinking. After you identify how video might work for your nonprofit, you need the right equipment, which doesn’t mean spending a lot. Then there’s preparation, shooting, and editing. Pat Taggart makes each step very doable, so you can realize the full potential of this powerful medium. He’s founder of Sky Blue Creative. On Tony’s take 2. Nonprofit radio’s response to the new administration. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is, Consider video. It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome Pat Taggart to the show as founder and chief creative at Sky Blue Creative. Pat uses his skills as a documentary filmmaker to create fresh, exciting content that moves the needle for organizations of all sizes. He educates leaders on how to use video to attract and engage employees and customers alike. Pat is on LinkedIn and his company is at sky Blue Creative.com. Pat Taggart, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Tony, thank you for having me. I’m here in the city of Philadelphia where I know we kind of share some common roots, all that, you know, you maybe weren’t born here, but you went to school at Temple, I just learned. I did, uh, off mic, yes, I went to Temple Law School 1992 graduate. I used to live at, uh, I lived in, uh, pretty close to the campus, uh, Broad and Gerard, Gerard, just scratching the surface of just getting into North Philly Broad and Gerard, right? 12 I think it was 1220 North Broad as a matter of fact. Right on. You are in the city. Well, I know this is not a sports podcast, but I have my Eagles hat on. Our Eagles as we’re recording this, are gonna be in the Super Bowl this weekend. So hopefully, Broad Street will be full of Eagles fans come Sunday night. I’m sure, yes. I, uh, uh, a very poor sports, uh, with, with very poor sports understanding, recognize the importance of, uh, The Super Super Series, Super Bowl, Super Bowl, not Super Super Bowl. That’s the World Cup, World Cup, World Cup of not doing the World Cup Series. We’re in the Super Bowl here, sir. Uh, OK. The Eagles and, uh, the Kansas City Chiefs who have won enough. That’s what I’ve heard. Even I am aware that, uh, people are tired of seeing. The Chiefs, uh, in the Super Series, so, or Super Bowl. So, um, good luck, good luck, Philadelphia. Thank you, sir. The Eagles. All right. Video, we’re talking about video. You like to think about video, you’re documentary filmmaker. Uh, talk to us about now. Our listeners are all in small and mid-size nonprofits, so we are not gonna have large video budgets, which I know is not a, a problem for you, uh, and for your, your style and thinking, um. Let’s talk about just basic principles. But, you know, it’s like, give us some, some familiarity with your, your style, your thinking around video. Sure. So, as the story goes, I was 22 years old, fresh out of college, and my career as a sports broadcaster lasted about 4 months. And so I started a wedding video business and very quickly realized nobody gets married Monday through Thursday. Let me find something to do with my time during the week. The natural progression was corporate video for both for-profit and non-profit companies. And so I went out, met these really engaging people, and then we’d put them on camera and everything, Tony, would completely fall apart. These very engaging people with, you know, all of a sudden it looked like for the lack of a better term, a hostage video. They’re sweating and they’re stuttering, and they look scared to death. And I said, my gosh, we have to figure out how to make these videos better or this career is gonna be very, very short-lived. And it really came down to two things. First was we were making people stare into the lens of a camera, and for almost everybody, that’s very unnerving. But secondly and most importantly, we were scripting people. And the fact is that the story already exists in every nonprofit on the planet, there’s a great story and the story exists in the folks that founded that nonprofit and the folks that make that magic every day, and of course in the minds and hearts of the people that they’re helping. And so every second that you spend scripting content for video, you’re actually doing a disservice. For the final product. What you need, instead of being word perfect, is to be genuine, and it’s very hard to do that when you script yourself. I, I admire that. Uh, I, I use that in, uh, in, in my own practice, you know, be genuine in, I’m a big advocate, uh, in the consulting I do and plan to giving fundraising of handwritten notes you in a little card. You don’t need an 8.5 by 11 sheet to be genuine, sincere. Right? Heartfelt. You can do that in a couple of sentences. Sincerity comes across when, but, but uh, but now convert that to video, uh, we’ve got a camera in front of us and the, the same reason that I don’t like, well, podcasting, you know, we’re using mics, mostly the reason I don’t like scripted questions is because they lead to scripted answers. So I appreciated for instance that you did not ask me for a list of questions, which I would not have given you. I, I politely decline every guest that asks that because scripted questions lead to scripted answers. And I would like to have a conversation with folks. I would like to draw them out about their expertise, maybe some personal things as well. And uh so for all those reasons, uh, I’m, I’m, uh. Simpatico with your overall thinking about being genuine, sincere. So, Um, how do we start to, so let’s start to pull on some of these threads. How do we avoid, uh, a hostage video? Uh, if we’re gonna shoot video, there has to be a camera or a phone or some device. I see over your, uh, over your shoulder, you’ve got a fancy looking camera, handheld device, right? That’s for your documentary style, you can walk with people through the hallways and Like, uh, SUV, whatever that is, that kind of stuff that’s exactly what that is like a handheld unit. That’s called a 4D, but the, the, the point of it is it’s, it’s kind of an all in one camera that’s built in for tracking. Um, but what I often tell organizations is don’t get wrapped up too much in the technology. Yeah, we don’t need no, no, you do not. You certainly don’t. And what I will tell you, which is very exciting for everybody except for me. Um, is that the cell phone in your pocket? It is better than a camera that I spent $7000 for about 10 years ago and now can’t sell. So that’s wonderful news, right? Hold it, hold it up. It’ll be an archive, a museum piece. That’s what it is. You can donate it somewhere for a big charitable deduction in 30 years or something. I don’t even know if I can donate it at this point. It kind of breaks my heart. Obviously my fault, right? I missed kind of the cut off on that. But that cell phone that everybody has in their pockets, the folks that are running and working in nonprofits, you could be using that today to be able to produce content. Technology is no longer the barrier. In fact, you spend about. 100 bucks or maybe even less on Amazon and pick yourself up a stabilizer for that camera. So like a, a little tripod that your phone will fit into, a, a basic light and a microphone that interfaces with that camera, you’ve really up the production value. And it’s not thousands anymore. It’s like 100 bucks, right? And so that’s no longer the barrier. That used to be one. The other barrier, of course, that everybody faces is, oh, I don’t like the way that I look or sound. I cannot put myself on video. I can’t ask the people in my organization to put themselves on video. I hate my voice on video. I hate my face. That also doesn’t hold water because it’s the same voice and face that you use on Zoom calls like we’re doing now. It’s the same voice and face that you bring into in-person meetings when you meet with donors and you don’t think twice about it. So, If you don’t like the way that you look and sound on video, just don’t watch it. The content’s not for you. If you’re producing content to consume yourself, you’re probably a sociopath, and we have a way bigger problem than video. So create the content, put it out in the world, never watch it, problem solved. All right, that’s very thoughtful. Um. How about, uh, something out another thread you mentioned, you know, everybody gets nervous, nervous in front of a, right now let’s say we’re just in front of a phone on a simple tripod, it’s ourselves or our program staff or maybe the folks that are benefiting from our work, you know, maybe we’re trying to get some candid interviews at. The animal shelter at the food pantry for folks who are willing, you know, wherever we might be. How do we overcome this nervousness? Uh, that is, is, is natural. Yeah, a couple tips for that. So, first of all, remember that it’s not live. If you go into a meeting and you’re only coherent about 10% of the time, chances are whatever your objective was going into that meeting is not going to be achieved. People are gonna think you’re either crazy or incompetent or some combination of both. However, if you take 10 takes of something that you want to put on video and you only get one right, well, the rest of the world is only gonna see the one that you did correctly. And so you had a 90% margin for error. And nobody knows it. So take the pressure off yourself and just feel free to experiment knowing that you’re the only one that’s going to see your mistakes. The second thing that I would say, and it goes back to earlier in our conversation when I talked about how unnerving it is to stare into the lens of a camera, maybe do some stuff documentary style, which is looking slightly off camera. So right now I’m looking directly into the lens of my camera. If I just shift my eyes. A couple of inches, and I’m having a conversation with somebody else. Even if you’re just looking at the wall and there’s nobody there, then for you, it’s much more comfortable not to have to look into that lens, but also for your audience, they feel like they’re dropping in on a conversation. They’re privy to something, you know, as a third-party viewer and they’re not being directly marketed or sold to. So the way that they received the message is a bit more comfortable as well. So shifting your eyes a couple of inches can really help with some of that nervousness. Or coaching others to do the same. You don’t, you don’t have to you don’t have to look at me as I’m holding the, you know, because we, again, you know, maybe we’re interviewing staff or beneficiaries of our work, you know, you don’t have to look at me. You can, you can look at, look a couple of degrees away. And that may, that may make you more comfortable. Look at you. Look out over the animals that we’re talking about, right? Look out over them and I’ll just be recording you and you don’t have to worry about it. All right, all right, um, what about scripting, so you’re, uh, for very good reasons, as I said, I’m, uh, sympathetic to, uh, avoid scripting, but then how do we know what to say? what do we? How do we prepare to, to make the points or to have others make the points that we would like them to make, but we haven’t written it out. Well, one big distinction is unscripted doesn’t mean unprepared. So if you’re gonna say we’re gonna create a video, what I often like to call a brand story, or we’re gonna tell the story of the company, if my company was going to do that. We would have a strategy meeting with the folks in that nonprofit and say, hey, let’s talk about your story. Tell me what makes you unique. How do you do things differently? What’s your purpose? Why do you love the work that you do? Who do you help? How do you help them? We have to be educated on that and then myself as the interviewer sitting in the seat across from the people that are on camera, I’m not gonna hold a list of questions, right? Because I’m gonna try to give them the same energy that I want in return and just engage them in a really, really authentic genuine conversation. And we might film with 6 people at that nonprofit and each of them might be in the chair for 15 minutes, right? So you’re talking about an hour and a half of content. For what might ultimately wind up being a 3 minute video. And so, The goal there is to collect a whole lot of clay and then to take the onus totally off the organization to try to put something like that together. The onus should be on us to find that story. Chances are if people are working at a nonprofit because they have a heart for that and a talent for the specific roles that they play at that organization, they may not be storytellers and that’s OK. You should never put that pressure on yourself if you’re not. Find somebody that can help you shape your content and you brought up budget earlier. If it’s not someone like us that’s been doing it for a very long time. Maybe you can find an intern, maybe you can find somebody fresh out of school, but there are people that have these specific skills that know how to do this. So don’t struggle to try to do it yourself if you know that’s not in your toolbox. That’s excellent advice, uh, around, uh, having a volunteer or an intern, uh, especially younger folks may be very acquainted with, you know, a video editing app. Uh, you can do you can do, you can do pretty robust video editing right on your phone if you have, I mean, I have an iPhone, that’s, that’s what I know. I don’t know Android, but, uh, I imagine it’s similar, uh, but you don’t even have to just, you know, you, you don’t have to be limited to that. OK, you know, you make a very good point. You know, uh, you remind me too of my, uh, stand-up comedy days. You, you walk off stage and I would think, oh shit, I forgot to say I, I forgot this bit I wanted to do. Nobody knows what you didn’t say. So your point, nobody knows about the 90% that uh is, is edited out. They know that they know the 10% that you did. Hopefully I did more than good, 10% good. So I was doing stand up, but, you know, nobody knows what you forgot, what you left out. So don’t worry about that part. That’s such a great point. And you’re exactly right about that. And the other mistake that people fall into all the time, Tony, is trying to fit everything into a video. Man, if we’re gonna talk about our nonprofit, they need to know everything about us. No, they don’t. They don’t need to know everything about you. They need to know what’s really important and it doesn’t need to linger any longer, then it’s totally relevant and interesting to them. And so these videos never exist in a vacuum. It’s not like someone’s gonna see a video about XYZ nonprofit and never be able to get any more information that they need. And so, big piece of advice to nonprofits is decide whether you want to educate with your video primarily. Or you want people to feel something, you want it to be a bit more emotional, because information many times. And emotion work against each other. And so if you really want people to feel something, you don’t want to overload them with a ton of information. You don’t need to tell them a ton about your process or or or how to apply for help, right? You really want to hit them with that emotion and then make them say, oh my gosh, I love what this organization is doing. Let me find out the actual information. Let me find out the tactics. It’s probably not the place to do that in a video. Where you’re trying to make them feel something. Does that make sense? Absolutely, yeah, you’re, you’re, that’s the sincerity, the genuineness that we talked about in the opening. When that comes across, if people feel the connection, they’ll go do the research. They’ll go to your, they’ll go to your site and, and presumably that’s the place where all your programs are and the giving button, etc. So you’re not, right, you just, you’re just trying to, you’re just trying to draw some, draw people in. Right? If you can draw them in through the heart, their brain will follow, and that’s where they’ll do the, the, the research to find out, to find out greater detail. 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 DonorBox, 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 donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to consider video. Any other advice on, uh, no, OK, let’s say I’m a uh nonprofit CEO or maybe I’m a marketing communications person and I’m coaching somebody else, you know, uh, again, it’s somebody, um, let’s take somebody who’s benefiting from our work, um. I, I, I, I, there are certain things that I do want them to hit on, but I don’t want to overload them 3 minutes before we start recording. Any more advice on how to, how to help them through? Yeah, great question. Uh, so let’s, let’s hit the lead up to that because there’s a lot of people that never get there, Tony, to ask the people who are there helping to tell their story because they feel like that’s exploitative, that hey, I can’t ask this person that we’ve given some, some sort of help or aid to, to share their story because we wanted to just help them. We weren’t helping them for the, for the chance to raise money or to gain or to do anything. And that’s, that’s wrong. Uh, the, the fact is that a lot of these folks are very eager to give back in some way. And if you explain to them, hey, no obligation, but we’d love to share your story to try to help more people like you that were in your situation when you found us. You, I mean, most of them are gonna say yes, and I learned that firsthand many times over the years. And as far as how to prepare them, I don’t think you, you hit on something. I just, I wanna emphasize folks are looking for a way to give back and you know, it may not, maybe they can volunteer to help others or maybe they can give some money or you know, but if they can’t do those or even if they can, there there’s a good likelihood that they’ll be willing to. Sit with you for a half hour for you to hone down to a 92nd, you know, in a little 92nd spot, and it does not need to be exploitative, you know, uh, and, and, and some of the work we’re doing is, you know, we’re, uh, this kind of subsumed we’re assuming, you know, the person is, is not a person of means. They may very well be a person of means. So there’s the first thing. Or even if they’re not, they may very well be looking for a way to give back. And, and be happy to sit with you for a half hour, so you can call out 90 seconds of of valuable content. But so I just wanted to emphasize those points you made, but you were, you were about to say, you know, about how to prepare, how to prepare these folks. Yeah, as far as how to prepare these folks, I, I don’t think that you necessarily want to prepare them. I think that if you’re thinking about specific content to get, I think the person that really needs to be prepared is the person asking them the questions or conducting the conversation. And so really educating that person on, here’s the outcome we want to create. Here’s their story, the person you’re gonna be interviewing. Here’s the points we really wanna hit on. And then for that interviewer, sometimes you have to circle back 3 or 4 times to the same question phrased differently throughout the conversation to get the certain sound bites that you want. But you really don’t want to go to somebody and say, hey, kind of say this, right? And the other thing that I would strongly advise against is if you are working in the nonprofit and you own that relationship with the person that you wanna share their story. I don’t believe you should be sitting in the chair across from them. I don’t think you should be saying, hey, tell us how great we are. Tell us how much we have 60 Minute style. No, there should be someone sitting across from them, but it should not be the person that owns the relationship. If you’re the person at the nonprofit that welcomed them into the organization and we’re the primary caregiver or help giver. I really believe the conversation should be had with someone that they weren’t previously familiar with, so that they can talk about the organization without saying this is what you did for me, right? Because it’s inevitable if I’m sitting across from you, Tony, and you, you are leading a nonprofit and you helped me, you helped me and my family. It’s gonna be really hard for me to not say, I’m so grateful for what you did for me, for what your organization did for me. You want them to talk about the organization in the third person? And it’s very difficult for them to do that if they’re talking to someone within the organization that they’re very familiar with. Why do you want it to be a third person reference? Because then it, it sounds, it sounds a bit more genuine as opposed to someone, it almost sounds like you planted them there. What were they going to say, right? Like, if you’re sitting across from them and you own that relationship and you’re saying, hey, tell us what we did for you. The words might certainly be genuine. But the fact that they’re speaking directly to you, as a listener, I’m thinking, well, did they have a choice? Are they really telling me the truth because obviously they’re talking to someone within the organization. I’d rather hear them say, you know, I, we encountered XYZ uh this way, and here’s how we learned about them, and here’s what they did for us. I never want to hear, thank you for what you did for us. You guys did this, you guys did that. Now, if that’s what your organization likes to hear, totally fine. My opinion is it’s better coming from a third party and it’s more comfortable for the person if they are able to be their true authentic self and not sit there and have to keep wondering. I wonder what this person wants me to say exactly. All right, fair point. Um, we’re gonna get to, uh, some use cases, uh, momentarily, but, uh, we’re gonna pivot a little bit to this, uh, 4 month, uh, sportscasting career you had. What, what, uh, why, why did it, why did it last all of 4 months? What happened? What’s that about? Yeah, I, I don’t know, Tony. If you can find the producer and find out why that show got canceled, I’d really appreciate it. Broke my little 22 year old heart. It’s the only thing I ever really wanted to do. Uh, but I will also tell you that in the 4 months that I did it, I realized, number one, I wasn’t very good at it. But also, #2, I wasn’t able to be very creative. The work that we get to do today, what I love is that there’s no blueprint to it. And so you have no choice but to be creative. And it’s all centered around conversations. So I will be told when I was a sports reporter for that very brief time, go out and do a 92nd story on this athlete and make sure you include this, this and this. Well, there’s not a whole lot of room for creativity there, right? But in the work we do now, I might go out to a nonprofit, have a conversation with 6 people, bring back an hour and 15 or 1 hour and a half hour worth of footage and some B roll, and there is absolutely no blueprint to be able to put together a story other than cutting it down, finding the gems, and figure out how those puzzle pieces fit together. So the fact that I sucked at it and the fact that I got fired, uh, or that the show got canceled, de facto fired. It’s a blessing in disguise, certainly, and I’m just very grateful that we’ve had the chance to help so many organizations over the years for sure. Well, that was, that’s a very impressive pivot. Uh, I still wanna, I still wanna go a little deeper. Uh, I see over your over your shoulder above that camera. I see a CW knowing from your, you’re from Philadelphia. Is that Case Western? That is West Catholic High School, uh, high school varsity letter. Listen, I’m true to my school. I love that varsity letter. Look at what happens. What happens when you. Yeah, what happens when you turn a kid’s playroom into an office and you get these beautiful built-in shelves, but you don’t know what to put on them. You start digging in old boxes, right? That’s where the varsity letter came from. I see that’s your varsity letter. OK, um, sorry, so the sportscasting job was right out of college. Where did you go to college? La Salle University. So down the street from Temple University, right Philadelphia. Phil, went for communication and, and had a very kind of traditional. Communication by the book education. So. A lot of the things that I’m doing now from a production standpoint, uh, were, were things that were the complete opposite of what we were taught, which was all very script-based. OK. OK. And uh sportscasting was at a local Philadelphia station or a Comcast station called CNA. I was a high school sports reporter. Very glamorous, Tony. Very glamorous indeed. Well, it’s local local news, there’s value in local news. Oh, for sure, it was a start, right? Like, I mean, I actually was on the air for, for, for all 4 months. And then I would have had to move around to really small markets and have no friends and make no money and live on ramen and try to figure out if I can get. Back to a big market and you bootstrap your way up, you know, through uh Lincoln, Nebraska and Omaha, uh and uh. And, and move your way hopefully to a major market, but right, that takes that takes years and right, but we’re not, we’re not picking on Nebraska, right? Because we just hit on two cities, both in Nebraska. I did, yeah, well, they’re Midwestern, you know, they’re not major markets, but they’re maybe well, I’m not sure, they may not be bigger than, no, they’re probably not bigger than Philadelphia. I don’t know. Oh gosh, no, no, but maybe I could have done news at a place like a high school sports coverage coverage at a smaller town. That’s, that’s kind of what I was thinking. That’s exactly right. Bootstrapping your way up. All right. All right, so that, thank you. Thanks for sharing a little sportscaster background. It’s time for Tony’s take too. Thank you, Kate. As I said last week, uh, amid the, the funding frenzy, the, the, the freeze, and then the release of the freeze, and, uh, now USAID funding is frozen and USAID’s future looks bleak. Uh, um, as I said, we’ve got your back. I’m, I’m thinking about you, we’re supporting you. Uh, thinking especially of the nonprofits that are affected very adversely by the USAID. Freeze which seems like an imminent, uh, elimination of the, of the department. So, but beyond that, you know, I don’t wanna be just like Pollyannaish or you know, uh, ignoring. The, the trauma that. A lot of our listeners are going through because of these funding, you know, changes and uncertainties. So, you know, we, we did have, uh, in December, we had Gene and Amy talking about Potential threats to uh to parts of the community. Uh, Gene and Amy are gonna come back later this month to talk about some of the real threats and how to counter them, how to prepare for, for things that may, uh, may come in the future. Beyond that, I’m working on a guest from the Alliance for Justice to talk about, go deeper on. what could be coming and how to prepare, basically, you know, resilience in the face of a lot of uncertainty and maybe serious challenges beyond just uncertainty. So, we’re definitely dealing with it. In addition to that, though, I believe in consistency in the face of uncertainty, uh, you know, we’re gonna keep doing the, the kinds of topics that we do week after week. And, and just, you know, be sort of a bedrock for you, that you can count on, you know, we’re not gonna be political. We’re just, we’re we’re gonna deal with the facts that are before the, the nonprofit community in the United States. We’re not ignoring those in the ways I just described, we’re gonna deal with those, but beyond that, it’s, you know, consistency. You can count on nonprofit radio to not be alarmist, just. Continue our programming and that will include the things that I was describing and, and maybe more. Oh, that’s, that’s what’s planned just in the next couple of coming weeks. I do host a more sort of activist group, which is not related to nonprofit radio. We, we’ve met only twice. If you would like to be a part of that, if you’d like to be on the email list for that, you can send me a message, you can use my email, Tony at Tony Martignetti.com. Let me know you’d like to be on the list for that group, or you could send me a message on LinkedIn. But I need your email either way. So if you’re gonna use LinkedIn, make sure you include your email, and I’ll just include you on the list of this, uh, at this point, I would say nascent. Nonprofit community that is working. Uh, to support each other and also to identify how we can prepare and react. But, you know, that group is devoted to those subjects. Nonprofit radio, we’re remaining. Very consistent as we have since 2010. And that is Tony’s take two. Kate, oh, I, I missed my cue. Oh, right. And that is Tony’s take too. Kate. I didn’t have much to add other than I think what you said, uh, consistency in a time of change and uncertainty. Is helpful. I wanna put that on like a t-shirt. OK, yeah, no, I, I, I think there’s value in that that you folks know that they can count on nonprofit radio, so yeah. We’ve got booco butt loads more time. Uh, we got just about a butt load more time. Here’s the rest of, I’ll just redo that. Ah. I love Buu, that’s uh. We’ve got just about a butt load more time. Here’s the rest of Consider Video with Pat Taggart. We’ll honor your, uh, your savvy pivot now. Let’s get back to the uh to the subject, uh, for the time being anyway. Uh, some use cases. So you mentioned um. One that I had not thought of, which is uh why I’d like to talk about it. I’m trying to, I try to. Channel listeners, what you know what might be interesting to them employee hiring use of video in a hiring process. What does that look like? Who’s who’s doing the video? Are the applicants doing the videos? Are we doing the videos and then the applicants, do we, should we demand videos from applicants or is that, is that really belongs in the arts and not here? What, what is, what is video in uh in hiring look like? Yeah, so typically what we do is is go out and help companies tell the story of their culture to attract people that fit that culture. And since COVID, The majority of our initial reach outs from companies. Are based around that rather than marketing, which is completely different than pre-COVID. The war for talent has never been more intense and it’s very difficult to attract people to your organization for profit or nonprofit, obviously. And so what do you do? The best way to attract people that fit is to sit people that are already fit, that already work with you and choose to get up and follow your mission every day in a seat. And let them talk to someone like me. That can find out why they choose to stay and why your culture lights them up and why your organization has given them purpose and then cut it into a piece where someone can watch it that’s looking for a position and say wow, I would fit there. That aligns with my personal core values. I can imagine myself waking up every day. And following that mission. Now one important caveat where these things go wrong sometimes is that. Organizations try to paint the most rosy, perfect picture of what it’s like to work there. Because they want to attract everyone. But the truth is they don’t want to attract everyone. In fact, these videos just as much as they attract the right fit, they should repel the wrong fit. So it’s very, very important to be specific about your culture, about work, about maybe some of the things that wouldn’t work for people. Let me give you an example. At one organization we did work for, there was. You know, a call for very early hours, and so they started very early in the morning, right? They packed meals very early in the morning. Well, if you like to sleep in. That’s gonna be a terrible fit for you. But a lot of organizations would leave that out because they say we don’t want to scare people away. Oh, you want them to know that right up front because you don’t want to waste a second of your time interviewing someone that might slip through last 2 or 3 weeks and say, hey, this, this is awful. I don’t, I don’t wanna be here at 5 a.m., right? So be very specific about who you’re looking for and and who you’re not looking for. And a great way to do it really is video because if you create it one time, it can work for you. You know, for the next 235 years, 10 years, as long as your mission hasn’t changed. What about videos from the applicants? Is that, is that a thing? is that, uh, I, I thought that was trending for a while. Well, I guess, I guess that was during the pandemic also. Uh, but that, you know, that puts a lot of pressure on an applicant. Now I gotta, I gotta look right, I gotta have good lighting, otherwise my, you know, if my production values aren’t high. That’s gonna, that’s gonna impinge on the hiring because the people aren’t, people watching are not gonna be sophisticated enough to overlook my low production values and so I gotta, you know, I have to invest in a light kit and you know, is that, is that a thing or is that, is that passed, uh, video, videos submitted by applicants? No, I, I certainly think that that it can be useful in certain organizations. Obviously, we don’t do it because we can’t create it. Right? So, you know, it’s not, it’s not something that, are you seeing it? Are you seeing that or, or, or not? Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, you are not, you’re not off base on that at all. I think, I think there’s a lot of organizations that are using that to their advantage and really, especially, you know, if And I truly believe this, that you can’t really feel someone’s tone and their heart and their energy in text. You know, they can write something. How many times have you seen somebody write something, a text message to you and they use 4 exclamation points and then you see them 10 seconds later and they’re not very excited at all, right? So it’s really hard to determine someone’s intentions and their voice, uh, through text alone. I think video is a great way to do that and you know, it’s free for the organization. If somebody can’t figure out how to send you a short video. Chances are they’re not gonna be able to handle whatever their day to day tasks are. Oh, that could be. All right, tech wise, OK, yeah, or give them like 4 simple instructions. Hey, please record this wide screen, not vertical. Make sure you’re in a room with a solid background, and then if if they mess up two or three of the very simple instructions. Well, they didn’t take it very seriously and they don’t pay attention to details, right? OK, that could be. All right, those are interesting. All right, interesting, uh, tests, simple, simple. All right. Um, what about for donors? Well, I guess, um, I mean we’ve, we’ve talked through what, what the value could be, you know, testimonial videos, things like that. We didn’t, we didn’t call them that but having your donors talk about the nonprofit is that I think that’s similar to having those who are benefiting from your work, you know, maybe they’re having testimonial videos, uh, a couple of testimonial videos on your site. That sounds similar to having either your program staff or those benefiting. Talking about, you know, so I think you, I think your advice there would apply. What about, um, you’re seeing much use in The, uh, the organization creating videos to thank donors, you know, personal videos. I know, I know there are apps for that. You might not be a fan of those like Bonjoro or, you know, might, you might not be an advocate of those, but I know that they exist. What about personalized video as a, as a thank you? I think it’s wonderful. And I’ve seen organizations do a really great job of automating that. So there’s two ways to do it. You can create kind of one master thank you video that can go out when someone donates, it can be auto generated via email. They receive a thank you email with a video embedded, uh, or, you know, if you want to go to the next level and maybe at a certain donation level, you create a custom video. And you know, you have maybe split it up among your team, uh, or, you know, if you’re the leader, maybe, hey, you say at this donation level, whatever that is for your organization, I am going to record a 20, 32nd video to thank that donor very sincerely, very organically. And I think obviously, personalization is is best. Uh now, depending on how many donations you receive and the size of your organization, you might say, hey, that’s not feasible. That’s a great problem to have, right? In that case, maybe give a shot to something that’s uh that’s a little bit more canned, not in a bad way, but, you know, just pre-produced and I think that using video in ways like that because it’s such a great idea, but also just looking through your full experience, your full donor experience and how they encounter the organization all the way through to the point they donate and say, is there a place where we can substitute some text for video? And my guess is that most organizations you’ll find a couple of ways to make the process more engaging. And I would add to that that uh applies for volunteers as well. Everything, everything we just said, you know, I, I asked you about donors, but all, all applies to volunteers as well. Um, what else, Pat, what, what else would you like to talk about videos or small mid-size nonprofits that we haven’t uh scratched into yet. I think we hit a whole lot, Tony. I really what I would say to folks is, you know, the best time to get started is, is, is now, and it sounds so cliche, but people really wait on video because they think it has to be perfect. And it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be genuine. So just start creating some content, let people in maybe behind the scenes of what it’s like to run your organization, share stories, maybe they’re not the story of your organization, but stories that happen every day, really wonderful conversations. You can certainly protect people’s privacy and you don’t have to mention who it is. You can just say, hey, we met someone today that and, and tell the story, right? Uh, but there’s so many stories that pop up every day. It’s why we love doing work with organizations. And oftentimes they just don’t get shared, which is a real tragedy because there’s magic behind those stories, and I think that if you’re intentional about sharing them, put the self-consciousness aside, put the, you know, the default feeling that everything has to be perfect aside and just say we’re doing great work in the world, we want to share it with more people, we’re going to start recording videos. I think you’re gonna get a really positive response from people. My kids. They don’t read, right? I mean, they read when they have to, but how do they consume their information and entertainment. They watch how old how old are they? They’re teenagers. um, and, and so that there’s a whole group of people and now the twenty-somethings that I know as well, they’re the same. And so the wave is coming of people that, you know, didn’t grow up with video as a luxury or as in hey, we also have this, it’s their primary source of information and entertainment. And for so for the long term viability of your organization you really need to speak to people in that way because it also rubs off on us like if I have kids that are constantly watching video, I’m probably gonna watch more video as well, right? So tell your stories and realize that there’s a whole audience of people out there that maybe they’re not gonna donate but they might be a perfect candidate to come work for you and it’s the only way they’re going to learn about you is if you put yourself on video. that, that sounds like a wrap up, but I, I gotta pull on one of the threads that you, uh, we, we’ll get to the wrap up. I’ll, I’ll, you’ll have another shot at, uh, terrific inspiration, uh, even for a video, um, the everyday stuff in your office, you know, we take it for granted because we’re doing the work day in day out, month after month, but, but folks who Might give or volunteer or who are currently, you know, they don’t see that day in and day out and they they’re interested, you know, if they’re giving time or money they’re interested in the work that you’re doing and uh something behind the scenes, you know, that’s not the work being delivered, the the pro the program being delivered, but something behind the scenes now not, you know, not a staff meeting. But some, some kind of engaging, uh, engaging scenes that are behind the scenes that most people don’t see, you know, you might not be able to invite them for, uh, an in-person tour because your donors are too, too dispersed. But to share that behind the scenes stuff, I mean, we, we love that behind the scenes. So think of the, think of the, uh, like the, the, the blooper roles that we, you know, that, uh, that major celebrities create, you know, we love that stuff. That’s the behind the scenes. That, that we take for granted that that can be very, very engaging. Yeah, let people in, right? That’s what you’re saying. Let, let them in. I am saying that I love and I love that and it’s so true. Just, you know, you know, but the stuff that you take for granted is not routine to those who love your work and just don’t get to see it, uh, done at the granular level that you do there you do have. Engaging Uh, interesting stories to tell. For sure, yeah, and sometimes when you’re when you’re in the minutiae of every day. You can lose sight of that, and sometimes it takes somebody from the outside to say, hey, this is, this is really cool. You know, why don’t you tell anybody about this? It’s like, I don’t know, it’s just kind of what we do. Yeah, it’s what you do every day, but it’s interesting to the rest of the world. Somebody from the outside, like Pat Taggart just like Pat Taggart just did. Like Pat Taggart, but there, there are more, there are more, Tony. Uh, you know, we, we, we love, we get a chance to work with, with uh select few companies and we, we typically go pretty deep with those companies, uh, because I really believe that if you’re going to bring in somebody. On the professional level, like us, you don’t just wanna create one video. You wanna be very intentional about, hey, here’s our punch list, here’s our wish list, while we have everybody together, while we are thinking about this, let’s create a library of content. That is going to take us from next to no or no video to absolute best in class video and fill our social media pipeline for the next year or so. With all this really great organic content we can capture. Pat Taggart, founder and chief creative at Sky Blue Creative, you’ll find the company at the aptly named uh URL sky BlueCreative.com. Thank you very much, Pat. Thank you for sharing. Tony, I really enjoyed the contest. Thanks for having me. The contest, boy, I’m still thinking about this football game. Yeah, he’s got the, he’s got the hat on. He’s got he’s obsessed. All right, go Eagles, Eagles. Next week, the 4 mindsets. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, Donorbox.org. Oh, I love that alliteration. Fast, flexible, friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. 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.
Shoshana Grossman-Crist: Your Grantmaker Relationships
Shoshana Grossman-Crist leads you through the pathway of relationships with institutional funders. She reveals her advice on how to build and maintain relationships before you apply for a grant; while your proposal is under review; after you’ve been funded; and, while you’re doing the work. Also, what if the foundation denies your proposal? Her company is Social Impact Compass.
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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 podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. And oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with gastroenteroptosis if you brought me down with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to tell us what’s up this week. Hey, Tony, this week it’s your grantmaker relationships. Shoshana Grossman-Christ leads you through the pathway of relationships with institutional funders. She reveals her advice on how to build and maintain relationships before you apply for a grant, while your proposal is under review, after you’ve been funded, and while you’re doing the work. Also, what if the foundation denies your proposal? Her company is Social Impact Compass. On Tony’s take 2. For our listeners whose funding was uncertain last week. We’re sponsored by DonorBox, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is your grant maker relationships. It’s a pleasure to welcome Shoshana Grossman Crest through her company Social Impact Compass. She helps NGO grant teams exceed their annual fundraising goals. She leverages her extensive experience working on both sides of the funding process to yield client results that range from growing grant funding from $15,000 to $300,000 over two years. To 10Xing their donations from individuals. Shoshana is on LinkedIn and her practice is at socialimpact compass.com. Shoshanana Grossman Kris, welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you so much, Tony. And welcome from Mexico City. Yes, it is great to be connecting with you from the other side of the border. You just moved there a couple of months ago. What, what is it that draws you to Mexico City from, uh, from Vermont? Great question. I fell in love with Latin America quite a few years ago actually I took a gap year before college and I realized that Latin America chills me out. I’m very type A and I’m a happier person when I’m living in Latin America and my career has always been focused on community development and nonprofits and NGOs and so this is where I started that path. Have you lived in other countries, Central, South America? I have, so, oh gosh, um, started out that gap year and half of it in Costa Rica and then Ecuador and then I spent some time in Argentina with an internship with the government ended up in Kenya, um, studying abroad and then I have lived in Mexico City on and off since 2007. There have been some other places sprinkled in there too. We lived in Guatemala 2 years ago, and I’ve also spent extensive time in India. I’m probably forgetting a place or two, but in a nutshell, that’s about it. That’s very impressive a global, a global, a global resident outstanding. What what is it about Latin America? So you’ve been to lots of places you’ve been to Africa as well as Asia. What is it that that makes you less type A? What is it about Latin America draws you in specifically? You know, I could never put my finger on it other than that people enjoy life and they work to live rather than living to work. And then a number of years ago I saw a graph that charts out GDP for countries and happiness. And basically more money correlates with more happiness until a certain point at which you’re pretty good on money and then it doesn’t really impact your happiness. Latin America is an outlier in that graph and so it’s significantly happier people are significantly happier than you would expect for the GDP. So maybe that shed some light on it too. It’s admirable, yeah. All right, very interesting. Thank you. All right. Well, congratulations on uh just having moved to Mexico City. You said, uh, you told me off mic, uh, 2 year lease, right? You’re there for 2 years? That is exactly right. Outstanding. And what time zone is Mexico City? So it depends what time of year it is because Mexico, uh, like much of the global South, does not go through daylight time. So right now we are 1 hour behind East Coast time, but sometimes we are 2 hours behind East Coast time. OK, so central or mountain or from North America, right, right, right. We’re talking about grant maker relationships. Uh, let’s, let’s just a threshold question, make sure that these are even, uh, I hope the answer is yes, otherwise it’s gonna be a very short, uh, short episode, like, like 5 minutes. Um, these are, these are possible. We don’t just, we don’t just apply. I mean, we can, we can actually get to know people behind the institutions. This is all feasible and doable. They are possible, not always, but often. And You don’t have to have a connection to be able to make a relationship. You don’t need someone to introduce you. There are other ways. OK, all right, we don’t need an insider. We don’t need a board member who, we don’t need to know a board member in the foundation, but, OK, we can come cold and try some, right, some, some folks are not gonna, some foundations, I guess, are not gonna respond or respond coldly, I suppose, but we can, we can make the effort, we can make the outreach. Uh, without knowing an insider, lots of people come to me and they say, hey, I’m looking for contacts. Can you, you know, introduce me to people? Can you introduce me to people and foundations? And I say there were 86,000 foundations in the US alone. There’s no way that I know someone at every foundation that’s gonna be right for you, or even at a handful of foundations that are gonna be right for your organization. And and we can get into that question later of of of right for your organization and where you should be trying to build relationships but at the end of the day that’s something I want people to walk away with is knowing that you can build that relationship you can open the door and create the relationship. It takes work, um. It takes finesse, but it’s definitely possible. All right, good. Then, then we can spend more than 5 minutes. That’s that’s good. I’m glad. So these are not essential though, right? If we’re, if we’re not able to build a relationship, we still can go ahead and uh make the application that we think we’re, we’re suited for the, the, the work of the foundation. In most cases you have to look at what the foundation is open to. So if it’s an open call for proposals, absolutely submit your proposal if you don’t have a relationship. If it’s a you submit a a general expression of interest on the form on the website, absolutely. It may even be an email that you can send along with a couple liner on the kinds of work you do and where you see alignment. Um, so most of the time you can still submit something. There are places that say no, and then we have to respect that. OK, I just don’t want folks to get discouraged in their relationship attempts. If, uh, if, if an organization isn’t forthcoming, there’s still a good likelihood that we can, we can proceed. Um. Absolutely. I usually tell organizations always try first to create a relationship, to build a relationship, and if that doesn’t work, then just send something along. OK. Yeah, very concise. Uh, you have some principles of building relationships. So what I guess let’s sort of take it chronologically. What, what is our first outreach look like? We, well, we’ve done our research, we, we’ve, we’ve identified that we believe our work aligns with the funding priorities of this hypothetical foundation, which, which should we make it a, should we make it a. A private uh uh private family foundation or should we make it a public foundation, which is right, that, that seems a little more intimidating too. I, I, I just, uh, to me it sounds like it would be harder to, uh, it sounds like a little more closed, uh, institution. Maybe, maybe I’m wrong, but all right, let’s, let’s go with it anyway. private, it’s a private, it’s a family foundation, um, midsize, you know, it’s not, uh, it’s not, it’s not enormous. Uh, multi-billion dollar endowment, but, uh, you know, they’ve got a couple $100 million endowment, something like that, maybe, uh, a couple $100 yeah, a couple $100 million dollar endowments. So, We’ve identified, we, we’ve done our research proper. Let’s just assume that that there is alignment in fact. I’m glad you’ve done your research because there are many, many outreaches that happen where people have not done their research. So let’s double click on that and say, right. Is that, but maybe we shouldn’t assume it. All right. You have to, you have to make sure that you’re aligned with the work of the foundation. You better you better you better flesh that out for us. Many foundations will share that they when they have open calls for proposals for example and so this is just the numbers we have to give us an illustrative example open call for proposals, maybe 25% of the proposals they receive do not meet the basic criteria. So then we can assume that that research is not always happening or that we’re not always sure what alignment means. And so, So that we have this piece under control before we move on, I’ll share a few things that we always need to double check. One, obviously thematic alignment, 2, obviously geographic alignment. Right, so are they working on the top, you know, do they fund the topic you work on? And do they fund in the area that you are working in? Also, are they funding where you are registered, so they might only fund organizations registered in your state or your country or not. But then also things like. Are they looking for something scalable, innovative? These are really loaded terms and You need to understand what they mean to that funder. To that funder scale might mean replicate in some additional counties in your state, or it might mean we want to reach 10 million people across the globe. They might use the same language to say we want something scalable and replicable, but you’re not actually gonna know what that actually means and if you align until you look at the kinds of things they’ve been funding until you look at their website or their 990, the 990 might be the easier place to look for a private family foundation, um. And you can see who they funded before and you can see if the kind of scale those organizations are are having reflects what you’re doing or what you’re looking for similar thing for innovation. So there’s, there’s the more concrete checklist you need to have, but there’s also that sixth sense. So that’s some initial guidance on making sure you’re right fit before you’re reaching out, otherwise you’re just gonna kill yourself reaching out to a million and 1 foundations that aren’t gonna be the right fit. Yeah, or, or even not a million and 1, but you’re, you’re squandering your time anyway. Right, all right. Uh, OK, thank you. We’ve done that. We’ve we’ve done it, uh, successfully appropriately. Uh, now what? I don’t know anybody. I’ve, I’ve given the list of board members of the foundation and employees of the foundation to my board and nobody knows anybody. What. What do we do? Well, the fact that you have a list is a great starting point because those people can be found in a couple of different ways. One is LinkedIn. They’re all individuals, probably a lot of them will be on LinkedIn, and you could send them a, a connection request always with a message, right? You get I think 200 characters on LinkedIn, uh, message requests, and you can send something like hi, uh. It is so and so from it’s Shoshana from Social Impact Compass. I’ve, I’m really inspired by the work of this foundation. I’m seeing some synergies and would love to connect, can write more once we’re connected on LinkedIn. So you indicate a little bit that you’re a real person, you’re writing to them very intentionally, you see some opportunities. And you were doing your homework and you’re willing to put in the legwork to share some more once they connect. It piques some curiosity too. It makes them more likely to to accept your invitation and then once you’re connected you can send them a follow up message or uh there are some great, um, before you, before you leave LinkedIn, I wanna say that uh. Before we started talking, I sent you a LinkedIn connection request without a note. I figured you would know who I am. So I, so I didn’t, I didn’t include a note. So I hope you’re not gonna turn me down because I didn’t include a note. I promise not to, Tony, but we’re existing. This is existing relationship, different situation. We, that’s true, but you still, I don’t, I don’t know how hard and fast you are about the, uh, sending a note. I think it’s a very good idea to send a note, but you know, I was, I was thinking about what we want to talk through and I thought, oh, we should connect, make sure we’re connected on LinkedIn because that’s our preferred social. So I just, I did it without a note. So don’t, don’t turn me down. I promise. OK, thank you. 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 donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to your grant maker relationships. Beyond LinkedIn direct messages, where were you gonna go? Yeah, there are some great free services online that will let you look up people’s contact information. Um, Hunter AI, for example, is one of them, hunter.AI, I believe it is, um, there are a couple others. They give you maybe 25 free searches a month. Other than that, you can pay a subscription and you put in the information you have on that person and you can often get their email address, particularly if you know what uh foundation they work at or if uh you know what company they work at, and then you get their email address. And then you get to send a longer message than that 200 character LinkedIn uh outreach that some people may or may not see because some people have a LinkedIn account and they haven’t been on there in 2 years so uh we may need some alternate strategies and. That email Is going to want to do a few things. One, similarly, it’s gonna want to pique their interest. 2, it’s gonna want to show you’re a real person, and 3, it’s gonna want to um So you’ve done your homework, and 4th, a clear call to action or a request for a next step. Now, one of the things that’s really important in these outreach emails, it’s cold outreach email is To make it more about them than about you. Oftentimes in the nonprofit space, we are so in love with our work and we’re so passionate about the impact we’re having that we focus on Our organization and the amazing things we’re doing. Hopefully we’re also focusing on the need that we’re addressing the problem that we’re solving. Unfortunately, that’s not enough when we’re reaching out with a cold contact because we’re humans and all humans, it’s about me, me, me, me, me. And so that means that this email needs to talk more about them than it’s gonna talk about you. It’s gonna talk about what made you catch, what caught your eye about their work and their foundation. You’re gonna wanna talk about other work that you know that they fund that’s similar to the work that you’re doing. You might wanna talk about some commitment that they’ve made or a place where they spoke recently or something you saw the the family speak about in the case of a family foundation if maybe they gave a talk at a Rotary Club and you found the, the uh recording online. You want to show you’ve done your homework, you wanna show that there’s alignment, you wanna show that what you are doing. Offers the potential to get their mission further faster. Basically you’re positioning yourself as a great ally to them. Now, in the case of a family foundation, it might be a little more on the touchy-feely side than if you were talking about a Ford Foundation, a Kellogg Foundation, um. Where they have very clear theories of change and indicators are trying to meet and these sorts of things which you should talk to in that case. In the case of a family foundation, it might be a little more on the touchy feely side of things about the change you’re you’re making in the world and how you’re helping. So you also wanna talk to the try to speak the language of the person that you’re you’re writing to. So that email might sound something like. Hi George, hi Nancy. Um, I am Shoshana, the founder and CEO of Social Impact Compass, and I am reaching out because I was really inspired when I saw the, the change that you are driving on. Ending hunger in sub-Saharan Africa. I was particularly mot motivated by your. Collaboration with XNGO and the way you’re supporting innovation. In the region. Here at Social Impact Campus, we are also working on that issue. And doing it in a different way. The reason this, this is unique because of A. Or B and it’s. It’s This is going to be a game changer because. We think there’s a lot of potential for synergy or collaboration here. We would love to hop on a 30 minute call with you. And get to know each other a little bit more, and if it makes sense, explore what collaboration might look like. Do you have time for a 30 minute call in the next month? And then you might choose to sign off with, even if you don’t, do you mind just letting me know you got this email? That’ll really help me know if I need to follow up. Thanks so much, Shoshana. That’s great. You just think that’s outstanding. You just dictate. You put yourself on the spot. I, I would have felt bad if I had asked you, what should it say? But I didn’t. You, you, you put yourself on, you took it on, took the burden on yourself, and you dictated, uh, a template, uh, email. Outstanding. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure on behalf of our listeners. Thank you very much for that. Um, and you included the call to action. OK, could we jump on a call? So this would apply whether it’s a staff person or even a, a board member of the foundation. How, how are we reaching out to staff and board or should we just restrict it to staff of the board? I’m sorry, staff of the of the foundation. I think staff is a great place to start because it’s their job to respond to you. It’s their job to be sourcing great projects. If you don’t get response from the staff, then I think the board is a great plan B. And when you reach out to the board, it’s probably gonna be a little less structured than what I just shared, a little less. Um Um, it’s gonna be a little more conceptual. I see some great alignment. I’d love to know about your engagement with the board, where you see the organization heading, some priorities, um, we think there might be a match, but before we engage directly with the organization, I would, I would love to hear, hear from you, hear about the perspective, um. Here what priorities you see the foundation focusing on and how you think we could potentially engage with the foundation. I love how you edit as you’re as you’re speaking. It’s you’re real, you’re like a real editor. Um, OK, and of course the board member might refer you to a staff person, but that’s fine, right? It’s a it’s. Absolutely. I talk to one of our officers. Perfect. And then that officer is probably going to pay attention to you because the board member told them to. Yeah, I was, I was referred to you by, uh, Shoshana Grossman Krist, uh, your esteemed board member who does real-time editing on podcasts, and she recommended that I speak to you. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, drop a name, right? I mean, isn’t that the way to do it? Absolutely, absolutely. I think there are two things to do here. One is you want to come across authentically. And so this real-time editing made me think of that because I am not coming across as the perfect speaker who has, I didn’t come here with the template written. That I’m reading to you. I’m coming to you live. We are talking through a real scenario. I’m being a real human. It’s allowing you to see me as a real human. I’m not a bot. I’m not AI in this day and age, we don’t even know, um. And it allows you to feel that human connection and be more interested in responding. So, just as you see me editing in real time, feel free to be authentic and human. On your emails. In fact, I had a team member once a couple of years ago who was significantly younger and like just out of college, and she started her emails with high exclamation point to like cold outreach emails. And I was like, that feels very informal and really not that professional. Maybe you shouldn’t do that. But you know what? She got great responses. It was refreshing for people. And so feel free to let your personality shine through in that way. OK, instead of deer. Mr. Miss, miss, you know, something more formal. Hi, hey, like, uh, yeah, it’s like, uh, it’s like a friend. Hey, it’s a friend you see in the supermarket. Hey. Talk to them like the relationship you want to have with them. Yeah, absolutely. And then the other thing is follow up. And this is why I’ve started putting that final line around, if you don’t mind, just let me know that you’ve got this email, because oftentimes those emails do go to inboxes that no one is checking, particularly if you aren’t able to find the contact information of a specific person. So your plan C is just to write the generic contact info at or whatever that email address is, maybe it’s something you find on the 990. And I have found that they might, no one might be checking that inbox. In fact, there’s a case where we wrote to an email address. No response. We wrote to the contact us form on the website. No response. We followed up on both of those. No response. Like 6 months later we decide final final attempt we’re going to call them old school, pick up the phone turns out no one had been checking any of those inboxes. They said, we are so sorry. Thank you so much for letting us know. They ended up review requesting a proposal and approving it. So this kind of persistence and follow-up is critical. It’s the name of the game in fundraising and more so when it’s a cold outreach. All right. Um, Did we talk through your, your advice on uh on questions, getting to know you, get to know you questions? You, you, you alluded to a couple, like what do you, what do you see as the priorities, where is the foundation headed? Do you have some other advice around questions getting around for getting to know folks? Yeah, absolutely. I, once you’re on the call, I would absolutely start at a personal level. Some people won’t be open to this, and then you can read the room and move on. But this is now we’re at the next stage. We’re at the, we’re at the, we’re at the phone call now. Oh yes, yeah, I wouldn’t ask too many questions in the email. No, um, you know, let’s take a step back for one second and I’m gonna give one other tip for that follow-up email, which is You don’t get a response to the first one, very likely. To be honest, in some ways I screen my emails in similar ways. If I get a cold outreach from someone. And I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m just gonna let it sit. If they follow up, I know that they’re serious, I know they’re professional, then I’ll respond. So that may be happening. So always have a system in place to make sure you’re following up on your emails if you don’t get a reply within maybe 2 weeks. That follow up email is great to make it a response over your initial email, and it might look like an RE and then they’ll think they’re already in conversation with you, so they’ll be more likely to open it. So now you’re forwarding your original email to them, your original email. Oh, respond over yours. All right, and then put their address. OK. Yeah, exactly, uh, no, cause you already sent it to them. So if you just click the response button, the reply button, it will just reply to them over your original email that you sent them. No, it’ll reply, it’ll reply to you because you wrote it. No, it won’t, it will reply to them. Oh, I always do that by forwarding the original email, and then that’s how I get the RE. Maybe we’re using differences. I don’t know. I, I use Apple Mail. Maybe you use Outlook. I use Google. Google. OK, OK. I think differently. OK, whatever you need, you want your original email in the in the in the body of yours, uh, of your follow-up and you want the little RE. Exactly. Exactly. And so then your follow up can be really brief, just two lines. Hey, following up on my email that I sent you a couple weeks ago, it’s below, would love to put 30 minutes on the calendar to chat. We just last week had hit a huge milestone with our program, share some update like that, mention what it is. Are you game for chatting? Here’s a link to schedule. Some people ask me, you know, isn’t that too forward? Isn’t that like inverting the power balance if I like share my calendar, my scheduling link? It’s like, no, screw the power balance, pardon my French. And uh, we’ve had much worse than that on nonprofit radio, don’t worry about that. And and reduce any friction. Give them an easy way to schedule a meeting with you. So that would be my recommendation. OK. And how many times would you follow up? You’re not getting responses. How many emails, how many, you send the original, how many follow-up emails would, would you, would you, do you recommend sending? You know, Tony, I have a feeling we might spend this whole podcast episode just on getting the meeting, and I’m not opposed to it. There’s just so much to unpack here. I love it. Um. I like detail, you know, I like action steps that people can take and talk through with their VP or take take if they have the authority themselves, move ahead. Yeah, I would like, I like details. Great. So there’s a term called professional persistence, which I love. Joanne Sonenshein um is the one who I heard that from, and The idea is follow-up works, follow up is important. Don’t feel bad following up if you do it in a professional way. Oftentimes when we send an email, we feel like. I made a personal connection to you. If I call a friend and the friend never calls me back after I left him a message, I might be insulted, especially if I follow up. So by the second time, I’m kind of feeling hurt and I’m not gonna follow up again. I’m taking it personally. That is not how we can think about cold outreach because these people don’t have a relationship with us. So what if we use a different framework and we think about the marketing rule that you need 7 touch points. Before a potential buyer buys. 7 touch points. So essentially, what if we think of buying as giving you a meeting? 30 minutes of their time is valuable. That is giving you, that is buying something. So, maybe you might need to do 5 follow-ups. Now, what that looks like is going to vary. So that might mean that by the 3rd 1, it’s not hey did you get my message, but it’s this article just came out about us, wanted to share. It might be, I know you work in this space. Here’s an innovation that has nothing to do with my work, but I saw it and I thought of you, let me share it. Then if they are not responding after all of that, I would send them a final message saying, Just wanted to see if you’re getting my emails, and B, if this is bugging you and I should just stop, but I would really love to hop on the phone. That’s what I would suggest. OK. And then you don’t move from email to a different channel, you just, you’re just taking that person off your, your contact list. Oh no, I’m using email in a very generic sense, contacting. So in the example before, definitely try to give them a call if you’re not getting a response to an email, you want to make sure your emails are going somewhere that someone’s reading. I think that um trying a phone call is great. I think trying to contact other people on LinkedIn is great. There’s also something to be said for you might not be the fit with that person, even if you’re the fit with that foundation and trying other people I absolutely think it’s a great idea too. OK, and are we doing these all concurrently? So are we reaching out to maybe 34 people at the same foundation? Around the same at the same time, we’re sending our initial LinkedIn DMs or emails concurrently. I don’t do that because it usually feels like some wasted effort. If multiple people respond to you, then I’m like, Oh sorry, I’m already talking to someone else in the foundation. I’ll loop back around if it makes sense to follow up with you or something like that is a way out of it. But I generally find it’s more work that’s not necessary all the time. So I would just do one at a time. OK, OK. Consecutive, not concurrent. All right, um, so let’s say we get the, we get something successful now. They’ve, they’ve, uh, jumped on our call to action. They, uh, they opened up for a 30 minute meeting on Zoom. Now you have some Advice around uh questions, you know, getting to uh opening questions, right? Yeah, absolutely. So just like in that email, you want it to be more about them than about you. In that first conversation, you want to Get to know each other, you want to understand what they’re looking for, what they’re struggling with in their portfolio of grantees right now, and the change they’re looking to see. The way you get there is through asking questions, and I recommend that you start with personal questions if you can. How did you get into this work? Allow there to be a personal connection that is built first. If they’re not open to that, OK, move on. But if they are open to that, it’s going to bear a lot of fruit later down the road. Most people like to talk about themselves. Exactly. Then once you’ve gotten through some general connection questions and oh you both discovered you lived in Kenya at the around the same time, once upon once upon a time or whatever, um you’re both motivated to do this work. From very, you know, for very personal reasons, whatever you’ve discovered, then you can start to talk about what is the organization, what is the foundation looking to do ideally before you start pitching your work, you’re gonna know what they’re looking to fund. And what kind of change they’re looking to achieve? And that way, when they ask you about your work, you can target what you’re sharing, you can tailor what you’re sharing so that it responds directly to what they’re looking for. That, that raises the question. We have to take a little step back. How do we prepare for this 30 minute Zoom meeting? First, read whatever you can read about them. So if they have a website, if they have an annual report, please read it. It’s gonna make you look good and it’s going to allow you to be much more focused in the call and actually get to a useful point by the end of the 30 minutes. Second of all. You want to have thought through based on what you’ve read about them, or learned about them through any other sources, maybe you know someone who knows someone who has an experience there, who’s been funded by them, whatever it is. Once you’ve done that, think about what do I want to share with them. What’s going to excite them, both about experiences, like success stories in the past, and about our vision for the future. Then, Say, all right, if they ask me for money, what is the number that I can share with them? It’s not I’m coming with a proposal, but generally I should be able to talk some numbers of we would love to scale to. One more state, or replicate in one more state, and this is what it would cost. And this is what it it would make possible for the community there. And then I also really recommend you come in with a plan B and maybe even a plan C. So you think that what they’re interested is in early childhood education, but maybe you on in the middle of the call you discover that they’re in the middle of a whole strategy revamp and they’re not gonna be working on early childhood education anymore and now they’re moving into higher ed or they’re moving into economic development. So, what are some other things that you could share if you are able to identify that that initial idea is not gonna be of interest to them? And then ideally, you might have a handful of slides with some visuals to complement this, that’s not necessary. But if you’re someone who um makes a good slide and, and feels comfortable presenting in that way, maybe you wanna have 5 slides that you pull up when they ask you about your work and you’re gonna take 5 to 10 minutes to share an initial introduction about your work and, and what some um what your upcoming programs are and maybe an impact story you might wanna have some visuals on slides that are just gonna make that really hit home and and be more powerful. It’s time for Tony’s steak too. Thank you, Kate. I was crushed last week. 00, we’re recording this on Wednesday, the week before the show gets out, and, uh, you know, so on, on last Tuesday, there was the freeze on federal grants and loans and then Today that they we’re recording. The freeze was rescinded, uh, you know, the, the ups and downs. Just I’m, I’m, I don’t know, I have your back. If this was affecting you. Um, I, I was thinking about you, our community was thinking about you. Um, and, and as of today, uh, I think the international grant making, uh, to organizations doing international work is what I mean like international relief and aid. I think that still seems uncertain. So, I, I don’t really have a solution, a strategy, well, I guess I have a strategy, we all need to stick together. We, you know, if this, if, if these freezes become routine or if they turn into cuts instead of just temporary freezes because this was supposedly a 90 day freeze, it lasted 24 hours thankfully. Then we all need to band together. But the community is stronger when it stays together, when we all advocate for each other or for a segment of our community. My heart is with you, if this affects you. Of course, for nonprofits that, you know, might be affected in other ways with the new administration. Seems like it’s been 6 months and it’s been 2 weeks. We’re here for you. The community is here for you. We got your back. We’ll do what we can for you. That is Tony’s take too. Kate. There’s a lot of ups and downs with change, and right now it’s, it’s only been 9 days and so much has been happening. We just have to have each other’s backs on times like this. That’s right, yeah, because it’s a, it’s a fire hose and uh. In a lot of ways, the fire hose is the is the purpose to just exhaust and distract. So, yes, we do have to have each other’s backs. Anyway, we’ve got Boou but loads more time. Here’s the rest of your grant maker relationships with Shoshana Grossman Krist. What, what, uh, what’s our goal for this meeting? What, what would we like to get out of this thirty-minute meeting? Great question. You want to get the next meeting. So ideally after that 30 minute meeting they would let you, you would have together honed in on there’s some alignment in terms of values, there’s some alignment in terms of what you’re looking to fund and what we’re we’re trying to get funded and you’ve gotten clear on which of the things you do would be of interest to them. Ideally you would have a follow on meeting to hammer out what a proposal whether a project fundable project with them would look like that may not be what they want that may not be their ideal next step and maybe then it’s an invitation to submit a letter of interest or proposal that’s also a totally fine end of meeting one. But the more information we can get before we spend the effort writing a proposal that’s gonna get a yay or a nay, the better. And again, if we haven’t reached this step with them. Still, with, with the assumption that our research is, is done accurately, uh, we, we should go ahead and submit. If we, if we haven’t gotten any response, I’m just reminding folks that you don’t have to be at this stage in order to submit the letter of inquiry or the or the proposal as long as you’re, as long as you’re complying with all their other rules about timing and length and everything like that, you don’t, this is not essential for uh for a funding request. 100%. OK, just reiterating what we said a half hour ago just in case. All right, um. Yeah, so suppose we uh. Well, where, where, where would you like to go? What’s the most challenging step? Uh, I don’t wanna make this an easy process. I want this to be a little, uh, maybe circumlocuitous a little bit. So we didn’t quite, they, they didn’t say submit a proposal or LOI. They said we need another meeting. Now, what’s the, what’s the how do we know what the purpose of the, the new meeting is? is it just to reiterate what we just did or what, suppose we need another meeting. Well, how do we know what to do in the next meeting? You should ask. OK. I think we’re very afraid of the nonprofit sector. We’re very afraid of who will I be talking to? What would we, what would interest her or him or them? Yeah, what would you like to get out of that next meeting for it to feel like it was fruitful? It’s perfect, yeah. Well we focus on you, uh, focus on them. What would you like, uh, what, what would you like to get out of the next meeting? Yeah, we feel like there’s this power imbalance and we’re not allowed to ask any questions. I’ve had organizations uh that I’ve, I’ve worked with say, oh, we had a funer come for a site visit and we never really understood why they came or what the purpose was and they left and we never heard from them again. And I think that was a great, that’s great they came for a site visit. I mean they spent time, they traveled, yeah, even if it was just across town, they traveled. They traveled and I said, well, did they ever share the objective? No. Did you ever ask? No. Ask if you need permission to ask, please ask and funders are listening to this funders, please be up front and please be clear. But if you’re a nonprofit and NGO. Please feel comfortable asking. You deserve to have this information. You deserve to have your time respected, and you deserve the clarity that you can move your mission forward as effectively as possible. So this is me giving you permission if you needed that. You have, uh, you have Shoshana’s uh blessing on your next step on, on being proactive. Um, OK, so then, let’s say it did go well after the 2nd meeting. They said submit a proposal. Uh, I don’t really want to talk about, we’ve had other folks not too long ago talk about the rules of, you know, make sure you use the right font size. They have a page limit, adhere to the page limit. Don’t think you’re special. They have time limits, adhere to the time limits. Try not to do it by midnight of the final day because your, your Wi Fi might go down or UPS might let you down or something, you know, they might have a snowstorm. And then you don’t get there on time and then you have to ask if you have an extra day because of the snow in Oklahoma. All right. Um, But I want to keep the relationship going. We want, uh, naturally, now we’re. We’ve, uh, let’s say, all right, so we’re under, we’re under consideration. We haven’t been funded yet. They have our proposal, we followed all the rules. What are we sharing that? Are we, are we stepping away? So that we don’t oversell and just let them do their due diligence or are we still keeping in touch or maybe somewhere in the middle? What what what what are we doing while during the three months that our proposal is under consideration? Great. So you just indicated some information that we always want to have, which is what does the process look like? We know in this case, 3 months. 3 months is the amount of time where you could let it sit and give them their space. Trust the process, trust the universe. But if something interesting comes up in those 3 months, if you have, um, again, you hit a big milestone or your annual report comes out, or you relaunch your website or Someone awesome said something great about you. There’s an amazing testimony that came through. Feel free to share that. Maybe one touch point with a wonderful update to keep them particularly excited, it’s not a bad idea. What if your CFO was indicted for criminal uh financial malfeasance of uh of the nonprofit’s assets? You want to play that? Why don’t you take us a little bit further along in this scenario, Tony? How would you start playing it out? Do we share that? Uh, well, I think it’s it, it definitely needs to be shared because it’s relevant, uh, it’s relevant to their decision. So even bad news. Yeah, you have to, you have an obligation to share that. Because if they go out, if they go ahead and fund you under, under a failure to failure to disclose something relevant like that, then I don’t know, you might be committing some kind of fraud yourself. Maybe it’s only civil fraud. I don’t know, but, uh, uh, yeah, you have to share bad information. So, I mean, you’re an upbeat person, uh, yeah, everything you said was positive from website to publicity, you know, whatever, but if it’s on the downside, uh, You gotta share that too. I think that that kind of direct and assertive communication is really important. We’re building a relationship and this relationship, even if you do get the money in the short term, it’s not gonna bode well for the long term. You’re gonna have a lot of repair to do. You’re gonna get through this. You’re gonna have a second, you’ll have a follow up CEO. You’ll have your blue ribbon committee that will do an outside investigation and ensure that this never happens again, as we always, you know, as we do. And then when you have your new CFO in place. Uh, you might want to very well come back to that, or that funder, and if you are Duplicitous in your first attempt. Uh, concealing bad information, then there’s no way they’re gonna consider you a second time. Absolutely. And so I think an outrage saying this happened, we wanted to let you know, here’s everything we’re doing to address it, and we would love to hop on a call with you to address any concerns you have. That’s one way to to go for it. You could also just read the room, and if you feel like this is not, this is not going to be successful, given the blow up that just happened, maybe you say, Our recommendation so that you have a chance to get to know us fully and this doesn’t become the deciding factor is we pause our application and we so that we have this year to continue to build this relationship with you and that you consider us again next year and then maybe you go back to your past funders and say here’s the crisis we’re in will you help us fill the gap this year so that we can move forward effectively. Outstanding. OK. All right. I hope folks realize I’m not a negative person. I, I don’t focus on the negative, but I just, it came to mind as you were positing all these wonderful, uh, wonderful news, newsworthy hooks that are, uh, you’d want to share. Uh, what if it’s, what if it’s not so, what if it’s not so positive, but it’s still newsworthy. OK. Um, all right, so. But we, you said we also be OK to just let the process lie, you know, if there isn’t something newsworthy that really merits their attention. It’s OK to let the let the 3 month process go. That’s OK too? Yeah, absolutely. And if it’s longer, if we’re talking like a 6 month process or a 9 month process, I do recommend being proactive about staying in touch, maybe um. Every 3 months you might, you know, maybe it’s just, it’s the new year, it’s the holidays you just send a happy holidays wishing you the best and make it a personal email or maybe it is something relevant to your organization and and your annual report or whatever it is, uh, the idea is not to overwhelm them but it’s to keep them excited and to show that you are professional and you are committed and you are passionate. All right. Uh, the stated time has elapsed. It’s now been 3 months or 6 months or 9 months. We didn’t hear back. Definitely follow up. What do we say? Uh, how long do we give them after this stated period? A couple weeks, couple weeks, 2 weeks, 10 days, 2 weeks. Yeah, sure. And what are we saying now? When did you check in? And you had shared that the uh there’d be a decision around X date. And we would love to know um if there’s anything else we can provide on our side if the decision hasn’t been made yet and there’s anything else we can provide on our side. Let us know. And That’s about it. OK, this, this particular moment is just about not being annoying and getting the information that you need. OK, OK. Could you go be a little more assertive and, you know, wondering about the status, you know, could you please Uh, please advise on, uh, you know, where our application stands, where our proposal stands. Yeah, you can be assertive. You just wanna be kind if they haven’t responded to you, uh, in time, it’s probably because they’re underwater. That’s usually the case. Everyone in the sector, both organizations, nonprofits, and funders tend to be overworked and so we can generally assume that they haven’t responded because they have a lot on their plate. And so we just wanna be that nice person who’s checking in, but we don’t wanna be like, hey, you said it was a state, we haven’t heard, please advise this is rude. Yeah, no, OK. OK, right, we’re polite, but we have, uh, as you’ve said in the different words a couple of times, you know, we have rights in this whole process. Yes, we’re, we’re stakeholders in this process. We have a, we do have a right to know, but you just don’t want to say it that way. All right, and in, in a slightly different scenario where This is a funder you do have a relationship with. Maybe this is even a follow on grant. If they haven’t responded by a date that might really be impacting you because you might be expecting this grant or you might have been, you know, have a team in place from the first year and maybe that money is ending soon and you’re not sure if you can renew their contracts or not. These kinds of things are also fine for you to share with the funder you do have an existing relationship with. You wanna share it in um. Um, in a, an assertive way, but also a respectful way, because they probably don’t have this on their radar. So if you can say, if you have any insight into the process because we will renew the, the, we will renew the contracts of the existing program staff if this is a yes. Or if there’s some significant changes to the decision making process or timeline that will impact decisions we make in the next 2 weeks if you could let us know within the next 2 weeks. That would be, that would be really helpful for us. That kind of thing is absolutely helpful and usually it’s a human on the other side. That person’s gonna respond. OK. Uh, we were successful. We got funded. Now what? Well, because we had the, we had the help of Social Impact Compass and uh Shoshana Grossman Krist advising us. So why wouldn’t we have been successful? What, uh, what now? Pick up the phone? Can you, can you, like, I do plan to giving fundraising. When someone tells us through a checking a reply card or I hear it secondhand from another, uh, from a staff member, uh, when I’m a consultant, my immediate reaction is to pick up the phone and express effusive thanks. Uh, is that, is that, is that not appropriate on the institutional funding side? It’s not quite the same, but it really depends on the relationship that you’ve built so far. So, if it’s someone who you really built a personal relationship with through this proposal process. And you have their phone number, which oftentimes we actually don’t even have each other’s phone numbers. Um, that might be something you do, but honestly, it’s probably gonna be a really excited, grateful email that you’re gonna send. OK, all right, so it depends on, yeah, it is. OK. Depends on the relationship though. All right. That’s why I do plan to giving and not uh foundation work. I’m, I’m, I’m much a, I’m a person to person, not a like institutional. All right. Uh, not, you’re not an institution, but you know, I like dealing with people, uh, people not representing, uh, institutions, people, people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s representing themselves and, you know, their husband, because a lot of the people I work with are women, so. Uh, OK. So right, really effusive email. Thank you so much. Look forward to working, of course. Uh, next steps, if they haven’t outlined anything in there, how do you usually get the acceptance? Is it, does it usually come in paper mail or is it email or it varies? Email. It’s usually an email? OK. Yeah, either email or a notification through the system, but usually it’s an email. OK. OK. All right. Um, we’re complying with everything they said to do to get the, get the funding flowing. All right? The, the payments are coming by ACH. Everything is smooth. What are we doing now? What’s our relationship look like now? That uh maybe a little different than than it was just a few months ago. This is when we sometimes get relaxed and we turn the relationship by we I mean the executive director or the development lead, whoever was managing the relationship before may turn the relationship over to the implementing team, the program’s team, say, OK, now we have a funded project and it’s being implemented by X team, they are responsible moving forward. Uh, that is a mistake, because of that team, their eyes on the prize of implementing their project well. Their eye is not on building a long-term relationship with this funder. That may also just not be their skill set. So as much as reporting and meetings and whatever are going to be through that project team, you wanna make sure that you have someone who’s tagged as responsible for this funder relationship over the long term. And so that might look like. In addition to the mandated reporting and meetings or site visits that this program project team is going to have with the funder, that relationship lead is going to make sure that if the funders open to it, they’ve been added to your mailing list so they’re generally aware of what’s happening in the organization. Be that when things that are particularly relevant for that funder. Come into the universe that they are shared with that funder even if it’s not specifically about that project, even if it’s not specifically even about your organization you’re maintaining that relationship. The other thing I always recommend is that once every 3 months that person who’s leading the relationship sits down and writes a 1 paragraph email to. Eat to the funder. That’s not a huge ask. I mean, how many grant funders are you gonna have in total in an organization? Max 25 in like a crazy making kind of world? Yeah, that’s huge. Yeah. That’s 25 paragraphs that you need to write once every 3 months. You can do that, right? That’s a very feasible thing to do. 25 1 paragraph emails that you need to write every 3 months. So you take one day a month and you do this. Max And that paragraph. Probably it’s going to look something like the following. Hey, how are you doing? How is the transition been going? I know that you guys changed your, you know, the president of the foundation last month. Just wanted to share a quick update about some really exciting things happening over here. First of all, we hit this milestone with our project, or we just heard, I just heard this testimony from a participant last week, or we just entered the field and I, you know, things are now in operation for this project. I wanted to attach a photo. The second thing you’re gonna say is, here’s what we’re looking forward to. Actually, no, take that back. Here’s my editing in real time. So first thing was excitement, something that’s happened. Second thing is, if you want to share about a challenge you’ve encountered in the project. Do that and share how you’ve overcome it or a challenge that organizations recently had and how you’ve overcome it. It makes you more real and it shares anything that needs to be shared but framed in a really positive way that you are resilient, that you are capable, that you are moving forward in this challenging world and then the third thing is something that’s coming up that’s really exciting in the organization or in the project. That’s one paragraph send something like that once every couple of months. If you have multiple foundations funding the same project, you can literally send the same email to each of them, but make it an individual email to each of them. And then you’re good to go. That’s the main thing to do. When should you hop on the on the phone? When should you meet in person? That’s all gonna vary based on the vet vibe you get from them. Ideally, you could have a once a year, you know, 30 minute virtual coffee just to connect. OK, OK, and of course if there are. Bigger challenges than you want to mention in your every 90 day email, right? You need to flag those. Here’s what we, what we intend to do to overcome. If you, if you want to discuss, you know, let’s jump on a, let’s jump on a meeting, right? Let’s have a call. OK, OK. They’re, they’re partners now in this work, so you need to treat them as partners. That’s exactly it. All right, all right. Uh, well, let’s take a step back. Well, even this happens, it’s so rare. Those who are working with Shoshana, but some people do get turned down. Some, some, some proposals don’t get funded. We didn’t get funded. What do we do? Walk away walk away tail between our legs never reach out to them again. No, I know that’s not right, but you flesh out what we should do. So first off, you want to acknowledge that they let you know a response. Some foundations just don’t respond and that’s your no and we wanna be grateful when someone does give us a response. So you’re gonna most likely hear about this through email, so you’re gonna send an email back. you would send it back to wherever you got the notification from. And copy in anyone else who has been part of this process, who you met with earlier on in any of these meetings or who you had been in email contact with um previously. And you’re gonna thank them for letting you know, and you’re gonna thank them for the incredible work that they’re doing, and you’re gonna express all of the good wishes that they, the projects that they did select are really impactful. And you’re going to ask for feedback. That’s the next thing you’re gonna do. If they haven’t explicitly said that they don’t give feedback, you’re going to ask them for feedback and you’re going to say, do you have 20 minutes to jump on a call and share feedback? So really help us know if we should apply to you. In the future, if it makes sense for us to apply to your foundation again in the future or and or to strengthen our proposals to other foundations in the future if you don’t have 20 minutes, do you mind just sending off a line or two with why we were not selected in any feedback you have? You’re giving the option. Mhm, or let’s just do it by email quicker. OK, OK. Um, and then from there, based on what you hear, if you don’t hear anything back, follow up. If you hear back, look, you were so unaligned, you did not do your research. Oh, that’s probably you should let that one go. If you heard, look, we loved your work. It was actually quite well received by our committee, but at the end of the day there were just too many proposals, and this didn’t make it to the very top of the list. There are other projects that offered more bang for the buck, that were, you know, seemed more innovative, bigger scale, whatever it is. And you say, then you respond and say thank you so much, this is really helpful, we’re gonna take it into account. And I would love to keep you up to date. You maybe share an email once every couple months. About what’s going on over here, so we, if in the future it makes sense to collaborate, if in the future we’re a better fit for funding, that that door is open, are you OK with that? So ideally we’re gonna ask for their permission to keep them up to date. And then, and my guess is this is the same in planned giving, right? You, there’s a lot of asking for permission. We need to, it’s a relationship. We can’t just be like bombarding someone who with unwanted things for too long. So, so we’re gonna ask for that permission and then we’re going to keep our word and so just like we hopefully follow we responded to their email within a few days and. Um, we thank them for their feedback within a few days. We’re going to do that follow up and we’re gonna make sure we have the systems in place and the people responsible internally to do that follow up. Maybe it’s something where you use Asana and you put a recurring task in your Asana or your Monday.com or whatever you use to to manage your tasks, um, and so every 3 months it pops up that you’re supposed to, you know, follow up this person. Maybe you put on your calendar that the first Monday of every month. This is what you do. You do follow ups to funders that haven’t responded or updates to funders who um you said you would, you know, keep apprised of what’s going on or your current funders. So there are, there are a couple different ways to do it, but um. But that’s gonna be really important to to continue to have that relationship if you think you can bump into them in person at a conference, for example, if you know that they’re gonna be at a conference that you’re gonna be at, uh, do make that effort before you go to a conference to look at the list of registrants, see who’s gonna be there, think about who you want to engage and and ideally send them in a message or an email beforehand and say, hey, just how you’re gonna be there. I will, I’m gonna make an effort to run into you, or say, hey, I see we’re both gonna be there. Do you want to find time during your coffee, you know, is there a day during a coffee break that you want to have coffee together? It’ll be great to actually meet in person. Conferences are great for building a personal relationship into an existing professional relationship. Excellent, excellent. All right. And uh, my final question. Talk about leaving ego. Uh, out of this, when, when we, when we didn’t get, didn’t get funded. Ego. Where to start? Think the ego can be about us as people, and it can be about our work. We can take it personally that our work wasn’t selected. And At the end of the day, that’s not gonna help anyone. Unfortunately, there is ego in this world, even when our goal is to make the world a better place, there is ego. So, we need to check that. And we need to come from our the place of being our most authentic selves because that’s what’s going to to engage more fully and so you could say in an email if you were rejected you could say thanks for letting me know we’re really bummed we were really excited about this program but I understand that the competition is fierce. And, and, and maybe that’s a way to be true to yourself and your feelings while you are being authentic and respectful and keeping the door open and and and strengthening the bridge, honestly, for the future. Do you have other thoughts on this? No, I don’t even have thoughts that deep. Mine, mine were basically just, you know, it’s not personal. Uh, it’s, it’s not even a professional. Reflection of the work you’re doing, the quality of the work, the, the value of the work, it’s just that you didn’t align with their, with their priorities. I mean they have priorities and you have work. The two didn’t, the two don’t work out. It’s like, you know, it’s like a, uh, I don’t know, you can analogize it to, uh, trying to buy a home, you know, you want a home, you meet a bunch of people trying to sell a home, you make an offer, sometimes they take your offer and sometimes they don’t. It just doesn’t work out. You, you have, you have similar interests. It’s just that this deal didn’t work out, and I’m not a, I’m not a transactional person, but, you know, it’s just some things work out and some don’t, and that. It’s not, it’s not a reflection on your, of your, the value of your work, or certainly of the value of you as a person. It’s just that The two are not aligned and maybe and this time, you know, it’s not even like a house because you get to come back a second time. If the feedback is that it was a very it was very close, but you know the way you phrased it, other, other projects were more compelling or more innovative or scaled faster, you know, you’re welcome to come back. You can’t, you can’t do that usually on a house sale. So I generally agree with you, but I would add a caveat, which is to say it might not be that you’re just not aligned. The fact that you didn’t rise to the very top might be that you still have some growing and learning to do in how you’re presenting your work and how you’re responding to the funder’s priorities. And so there you need to check your ego and say what can I learn from this? How can we improve in the future from this? There’s an organization that I worked with who who regularly for 6 months asked for feedback after every proposal, and they didn’t get feedback every time when they asked for it maybe only 1 out of every 4 requests, uh, turned into feedback, but those 1 out of every 4 requests over the period of 6 months turned into they heard the same feedback 3 times and that told them that this was an area they needed to strengthen. So, See what you can learn, see how you can grow. Don’t take it personally on an individual level or about your work. Understand that some of it is just part of the game and some of it is part of the growth. And see the growth opportunity. All right. So, so it’s not to end with, uh, you know, what to do when you don’t get funded. Leave us, uh, you’re suffering with a lackluster host, you know, the things, things are not organized, we’re over time, it’s a disaster. I’m surprised you’re still with me. Just overall, you know, leave us with some uh some institutional relationship. Uh, inspiration. Relationships with funders can evolve in ways we don’t expect when we build that foundation when we enable it to when we enable it to be a relationship and not a transactional experience they can then be excited and connect us with other funders they can then invite us and put us on a panel where we get. Visibility in front of other funders they can we can you know they can turn to us when they need guidance about a local situation or help mapping other potential grantees and we can play that role for them and in some ways return the support that they’ve provided to us so there’s a lot that is possible when you sit first in that human relationship. And when you treat it like a garden that you really do care for and tend to and water. And not like an human ATM machine or an institutional ATM machine. So there’s a lot of possibility here and it can feel really good. You can feel like it can feel like you’re running into a friend. It can feel like you have a partner. You can feel supported rather than feeling like you’re reporting to someone who’s judging you all the time. So there’s a potential to totally shift the way you’re engaging with the funder and how the relationship feels if you do it from this perspective. The garden is a wonderful metaphor. Thank you. Shoshanana Grossman Quist. You’ll find her on LinkedIn, uh, but if you want to connect, don’t make the mistake I made, you know, send a note. You’ll find her there and you’ll find her practice at socialimpact compass.com. Thank you very much, Shoshana. Thank you, Tony. This is so much fun. I really appreciate it. I’m glad, my pleasure. Next week Yeah, we’re working on it. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. DonorBox, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. 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.
Sarah Wood reminds us of the value in telling good stories to your stakeholders. Also, how do you tell them? Where do you tell them? Which ones are worth telling? What’s ethical storytelling? And, what’s the right engagement or call to action? We pull some lessons from her children’s favorite stories, the “Narwhal and Jelly” series and “Dandelion Magic.” She graciously shares her own story of solo motherhood by choice. Sarah’s company is Sarah Wood Communication.
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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 podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be thrown into dextrogastria if you upset my stomach with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, to tell us what’s going on this week. Hey, Tony, I’ll be happy to. Storytelling. Sarah Wood reminds us of the value in telling good stories to your stakeholders. Also, how do you tell them? Where do you tell them? Which ones are worth telling, and what’s the right engagement or call to action? We pull some lessons from her children’s favorite stories, the Narwhal and Jelly series and dandelion magic. She graciously shares her own story of solo motherhood by choice. Sarah’s company is Sarah Wood Communication. On Tony’s take 2. Thank the folks who nobody thanks. We’re sponsored by Donor Box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is storytelling. It’s a pleasure to welcome Sarah Wood. She is the founder and chief communication consultant at Sara Wood Communication LLC. A lifelong voracious reader, Sarah has been helping individuals and organizations identify and effectively share the stories of their good work for her entire professional career, and she still loves a good story. We’re gonna talk all about stories and storytelling. You’ll find Sarah on LinkedIn and her company is at Sarah with an H Wood communication. Dot com. Sara Woodcommunication.com. Sarah Wood, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here today. Oh, I’m glad, pleasure. Storytelling. You’ve been doing this for a long time. Why, uh, why are, why are we still talking about storytelling? We’ve been talking about storytelling for years now. What, what brings this, what makes this so timely for us? Well, storytelling has become the the term, right, that we’re using now, uh, and people are very into, you know, they talk about storytelling, they talk about narrative, they talk about all that. In reality we’ve been doing this. The entire human existence, right? Uh, I mean, you can go back to caveman days, um, before we even had a written language. People were telling stories, sitting around the campfire, telling stories, uh, and that was how they were teaching people. It was how they were remembering things. It was how they were communicating with each other. Um, and so in some ways, nothing has changed, right? Uh, we still know that there’s a lot of research out there that shows that’s one of the best ways for humans to pass on information. It’s what we do with small children, right? We read to them, we tell them stories. If they’re getting ready to do something new, we talk about like, oh, here’s a children’s book for it, that’s gonna help them kind of like understand and process and go through it. And the same is true for adults, and we still love a story, even those of us who don’t get to read that often. I used to be a voracious reader. I still have that in my bio, but I’ve got two small kids and, you know, a business and everything else, and so I don’t read as much as I would like to anymore. You’re reading. I am. I’ve read so many of them. You’re a voracious reader of children’s stories. What age are your children? Um, they’re 2 and 6. Oh, the 22 year old, do you? I don’t have children. Do you read the 2 year olds or is that too early? You you when they’re like newborns. It’s a it’s a good thing I don’t grow up illiterate because I wouldn’t know I wouldn’t know. Hopefully somebody would have told me. Uh, OK, so you start at, uh, at birth or, you know, we’re hearing our whole lives, right? Whether they’re books, whether it’s radio, whether it’s television, whether it’s, you know, just some story that your parent made up to help you go to sleep at night, you know, we’re telling stories the entire time and we’re listening and we’re learning and that’s how. We learn about humans and we feel connected to each other. So we’ve been, we’ve been doing it the entire time, but there’s a rise of interest in it as far as nonprofits go recently. All right, but before we get to nonprofits, so give a shout out to your six year old’s favorite book. That’s a tough one. You know, he really likes the, um, trying to think of the name of it, Narwhal and Jelly series. It’s a kind of comic graphic novel type thing, and the main characters are a narwhal and a jellyfish. Um, and so there’s all these different titles in the series, and, and he really loves those. OK. So there are, so they may they may be sympathetic or maybe they’re in need of a title or. To, to, to broaden their own voracious reading children’s books. Yeah, and I mean the good thing, good thing they’re they’re kind of out of the, I want to read the exact same thing like over and over and over again. My 2 year old, you know, we’re definitely like, we can read the same book like 10 times in a row and she’s still fascinated. have a favorite? Uh, she likes it. It’s right here next to me. It’s called Dandelion Magic, and she likes it because it instructs you to like blow on the magic dandelion. So, you know, she gets to like, and, and blow, um, and make magic things happens. It’s an engaging. There’s some, there’s some engagement that we may talk about, uh, hopefully we’ll be talking about donor engagement with their stories. So she likes the act of blowing on blowing on the dandelion. Yes, she does, she does. She’s a big fan of that. All right, so we can pivot back to the less interesting but maybe more relevant nonprofit storytelling. All right. Well, some of the same things apply, right? You still want to make it interesting and ideally you’re making it interactive in some sort of way. Um, you know, a son and daughter, you know. Uh, what about feedback or or volunteer feedback or just whoever readers reader feedback on our stories? How do we get feedback? How do we know which is the favorite stories? Well, it depends on how you’re presenting the stories, what stats you have available, right? Different platforms are gonna have different ways for you to measure kind of what’s happening, who, who’s interacting with it and, and who’s not. Um, I mean, you also have kind of Behind the scenes ways of doing that, you know, you can kind of set up some separate URLs or landing pages, you know, so that you can kind of track specific interests of like, you know, who’s coming from this place and who’s coming from that place. Um, so it really kind of depends on what your setup is and kind of how you’re presenting your story. OK, if you’re, if you’re presenting it to a list and if you’re, I guess if your list is big enough, uh, you could test, you could test different stories, right? If you, if you have a large enough list to have a valid test or a simple AB test of different stories, OK. All right, I’m making you jump around, but, uh, I, I know, I wanted to launch off the uh the children’s children’s reading because that’s what you’re a voracious reader of children’s stories. So, yes. Well, and you know, I mean, some, some storytelling does happen in person, right? So if you’re at an in-person event, if you’re at an event for your donors or an event with uh potential donors, right, you can kind of catch up on all the cues, right, of are they interested or not, you know, you’ve got the nonverbals then. Um, but you know, it really depends on kind of how you’re presenting it. That’s, that’s a very interesting ones on that thread a little bit. The in storytelling, like having your cache of, uh, I don’t know, one program or, you know, whatever, you know, you’ve got some stories in mind that when people say, you know, oh I love your Uh, the hospice work you do really moves me, you know, then maybe you’ve got a hospice story or it’s the, uh, you know, it’s the fact that you’re a no-kill shelter. Oh, that really, now I’ve pivoted now. Now that’s not a human no-kill shelter. That’s an animal I’ve pivoted from human to human uh hospice, although you get a pet hospice too, but I wasn’t thinking of that. So we’re not talking about animal urine you’re a no kill shelter. I love that, you know, that aspect because you’re the only one in our state that’s a no-kill shelter or something like that, so. You know, so yeah, I mean I I never thought of in storytelling. Yeah, I always encourage anyone. I mean this is any organization doesn’t have to do with what industry you’re in, but you have to have your elevator speech down first, right? What is your organization? What’s the main thing that you do? Why should people care? You know, you need that kind of one minute spiel, right? Um, that you can give to anyone. And I always tell people, listen, don’t just get your executive director who’s able to do that. Every single. Employee in your organization should be able to give a one minute elevator speech about your organization, what it is, what it does, and why it’s important. Uh, if not, you’re just missing so many potential opportunities because think about how many more people every single staff person of yours interacts with on a daily basis than just, you know, your executive or your C-suite or or what have you. You know, you really wanna make sure that everyone’s on the same page. Um, so that’s one. But also, yes, absolutely, you should have like your back pocket full of like. Pack full stories. I mean, people want to do business with people. We know that there are companies, we know there’s organizations, but the more we can humanize and personalize those and we can put a face to what we’re doing and why it’s important, the more successful a nonprofit’s gonna be. I mean, it’s, it really lays the foundation for anything that you might want to ask those people later, right? Because if you just come up to someone and you say, hey, give me some money to do X, they’re gonna be like. Why? You know, like, what, what impact is this gonna have? Like, and people love other people, right? So, I mean, and it is not, even if your nonprofit doesn’t work with people, like you were just saying, like, the, the dogs, right? Or the no-kill shelter, you know, the dogs or the cats. We wanna like personalize and humanize the dogs and the cats, so that people feel close to them. They feel connected. The more connected someone feels, the more likely they are to. Invest in your organization and in your mission. Right. Now, how about uh disseminating these stories to, let’s say board members or volunteers it could be, could be non board member volunteers, you know, they’re, they’re great spokespeople because they, they devote time. They give several hours a week or whatever, you know, time, time is great value, especially now, time and attention. So. So volunteers could be great storytellers and as well as your board, but how would you, how do you pass these stories on to them? Like, so let’s take, um, let’s take the harder case first, like volunteers. So these folks are spending maybe 45, I don’t know, 10 hours a week or something. How would you arm them with stories about your work? I think volunteers are going to have their own stories, so it’s more about helping them share them in a way that is helpful to the organization they’re gonna share what their work is right, they’re gonna talk about their personal experiences, um, and, and their personal interactions or or and you know what they get out of it and what they feel like they’re doing. Um, so like I said, it’s more about helping them learn how to share that in a way that is effective, um, and that helps the organization overall. So how do you, how do you help them effectively? I think you have to arm them with the facts, right? You want them not just to have their personal experience, but to give them the the bigger picture, right? of how does their personal experience fit in with the bigger picture. I think if they have a particular thing that they want to talk about and they let you know that, I think that you can provide them with the background. Yeah, I mean, if you’re a big enough organization, you can even do media training for your volunteers, um. And you can pitch them as speakers as kind of ambassadors and out into the community, uh, that does take, you know, some, uh, staff effort on the, on, on the inside, but I think take advantage of the opportunities, you know, if you have a volunteer, particularly if you have a volunteer that is very well connected in the community, make sure that they have the information that you want them to have. And if they want to take that opportunity to kind of like practice what it is they want to say, give them that opportunity. OK. All right. And uh board members, that’s a little easier. I mean you could, you could write some story, you could write some anecdotes, you could share, have people come and tell their own personal story at board meetings, right? How important your work is not to the community, but to me, me, my family, my child, me personally, my spouse, whatever, right? And board members and the same thing with volunteers like that are already there if they’re already there. They’re already kind of committed, right? They already know about your organization. They are, they’ve already drank the Kool-Aid to, you know, throw an adage in there, um, you know, they’re, they’re already on board with what you’re doing. You don’t have to convince them. It’s not a hard sell, right? It’s just about showcasing the impact that you are having and nonprofits do so many good things and if they don’t talk about them. They’re just kind of lost, right? I mean you might impact a few people, a handful of people that directly know what happened, right? But if you can’t share those stories and amplify them and put them out into the world, you’re gonna hit a plateau for your organization where you’re not able to get the volunteers or to get the donations or to expand the programming or bring people in that that you could help, right? Because they don’t know about you, they don’t know about what’s happening so the more you can tell your stories, the more you can put it out into the. World, the better off your organization is gonna be because you’re gonna be able to have this foundation of support you’re gonna have this relationship with your audiences because you’ve been consistently telling them what you’re doing so that way when you ask them for money or you come out with big news, they’re already primed to listen to what you have to say because they’ve already decided, OK, this is a valid source and this is a source that is doing important things and so I’m gonna pay attention when they are saying something to me. Right, get good folks out. Um, let’s get folks out storytelling and finish, finish my thought. Um. Yeah, don’t overlook your ambassadors. Any, you know, anyone who is willing to be an ambassador for you and to talk you up, you know, give them the tools to do that. 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 donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to storytelling. How about engagement? We, we, we, we talked about uh your daughter’s engagement with the dandelion, dandelion story. She loves to blow on the little on the dandelion pages, I guess you can blow on the pages. Yes, OK. Like they can’t still be dandelion seeds. There’s nothing really blowing. It’s not a dandelion, it sounds like she’s so many times. I mean she does really blow and of course, you know, like you know it is not a slot like dandelions in the book. OK. What’s the name of the book. And magic magic, OK. So let’s let’s continue there. So what about engagement with your stories? Is there, is there a parallel for for nonprofits, folks engaging not so much, yeah, not so much the metrics, but the engagement. The old mode of communication was much more one way communication, right? It was kind of we say it. You hear it, and there wasn’t really an an ability to interact, certainly not in real time, right? I mean, you could conceivably like write a letter and mail it, you know, and, and all those kind of things. Um, but there wasn’t really the ability to interact in real time that we have now, right? And so now we have much more ability to get instant responses or instant reactions, and we can do, we can even do live things, right? Um, and we can get them like right away. Um, so I think. Things that your audience is interested in and that they want to interact with are very important because you don’t want it, you don’t want people to feel like they’re being lectured to, right? You want them to feel like part of the community, part of the conversation. And part of the way you do that is just having interest interesting content, right? But and humanizing it and personalizing it and all the other things that we’ve talked about, um, because that makes people feel more involved. But other ways you do it is, you know, you ask them questions, you give them ways to get involved. You don’t just kind of like put it there. And then drop off the face of the earth, like, um, what do they want to see? You know, what does this make them feel like? Are they going to take action? Here’s the actions we’d like you to take. Would you do any of these things? Like, I think all that kind of engagement is, is important, and It depends on where your audience is, how you’re going to interact with them the most, you know, maybe, maybe your main audience is on email, maybe it’s on social media, maybe it is these in-person events, maybe you do a lot of local in-person meet and greet type things. I mean, it, it really is gonna depend on. The organization and the specific people that they are trying to reach. Um, but yeah, you, I mean, you have to be engaging. I mean, I think we’ve, there are so many people trying to catch your attention. That you have to be engaging or. You’re you’re forgetful, right? I’m not forgetful, you’re forgotten, um. And it’s, it’s hard to catch people’s attention. I, you’re forgotten or you’re forgettable. Yes, yes. And you know, I feel like there was that old adage that You know, you have to hear things 3 times before you would take an action. And I was like, well, that’s very outdated, right? You have to hear things way more than 3 times now. I was on a webinar the other day and someone dropped it, it’s now 25 times. And I was like, well, they didn’t actually cite that. So I don’t know if that’s research based, but it kind of feels true, right? It feels like it, it passes the smell test, right? Because there is just so much information out there and we’re bombarded with it, like all the time. So it’s an and everyone can sell their story now, right? That’s the main thing that’s different about storytelling in the past versus storytelling today. The storytelling in the past was, you know, you kind of had a few people who were able to tell the stories and able to get that out and it was like your major national television networks, you know, your radio channels, that kind of thing, and now everybody has a platform, right? authors, journalists, yes, yes, there was kind of like gatekeepers, right? There were people you had to go through and now everybody can tell their story. It’s really been democratized, you know, we can all tell our story. It’s a what’s important now is being able to choose the stories and determine how to present them in the ways that best reach and resonate with your audience. And another thing that’s come to light is not a lot of, I won’t say just nonprofits, a lot of organizations in general. I feel like back in the 90s we’re doing this a lot and it was kind of the um poverty porn, um for lack of a better term, stories, right? Where you were putting these kind of sob stories of these people that were in this terrible situation and you know, the organization came in and they really like changed their lives, right? And, and up and did it. And, and that may very well have been true. um. But I think there’s more of a recognition today of the importance of telling stories ethically, right? And part of that ethical storytelling is really making sure that telling the story benefits everyone involved, you know, and that we’re not taking advantage of someone who we were able to help in order to kind of. You know, make ourselves look better or to to get more for that, right? We have to be very careful about how we tell these stories, particularly, you know, when people are involved, um, not exploiting a situation or, you know, a tragedy. Exactly and making them aware kind of of the the potential repercussions of sharing their story that maybe they haven’t thought through um because particularly, you know, you might have someone, you know, maybe they’re maybe they’re young and you know they haven’t necessarily thought through that they can tell the story and they can literally follow them their entire lives, right? Um, because of the internet, because of social media, because of the ability to like find information now in, in ways that were not present, you know, in past, in past areas. Um, so I think just making sure that you’re telling the story in a way that benefits everyone, and that might involve, you know, being anonymous, it might involve, you know, changing the way that you’re doing it. It certainly involves making sure that you have The appropriate releases, you know, to, to tell the story and making sure that you’re kind of educating people who may be, who are doing you a solid, right? We’re doing you a solid by sharing the story of how your organization impacted them, that, that they’re actually getting something out of it as well, and that they’re not gonna get negative repercussions from doing so. Let’s talk about what makes a good story, uh, a good ethical story, of course, and uh I wanna use the uh the Norwhal and jellyfish example. What, what do you think makes that a good story? For your, for your son, is that why is that you said it’s a, yeah, what is it what is it about the uh the Norfish that we can, we can extrapolate for good storytelling nonprofits? Well, one, it’s very visual, right? It, it is a graphic novels. I don’t even know. I don’t know if there’s a length to be called a graphic novel because they’re not super long, but I’m going to say they’re graphic novels. OK. Children’s graphic children’s novel. Right. And like most children’s books, right? Most children’s books are super visual. So I think, um, you know, you have to catch people’s attention, you know, and it’s not always visual, but you have to think about what is it that’s gonna catch and keep people’s attention. So that’s not only the story itself, right? So it’s the actual storyline and that being interesting and these particular books have a lot of comedy, right? They’re, they’re funny and they’re cute, um, and there’s a lot of puns. He’s very into word puns, um. So, you know, there’s the things that make the content itself engaging, so the words themselves are engaging. Also the visuals, right? It it’s very visually engaging, there’s lots of pictures for him to look at, um. In his case, there’s not a huge amount of words per page, that’s important when you’re 6, right? Because you’re you’re kind of done with it and you’re ready to move on. But aren’t we supposed to do we supposed to do like we’re like grass grade or something? I, ideally, yes, I mean. You don’t know everyone’s education level, right? And particularly depending on your audience, you know, or if it English as their first language or anything along those lines, right? So, um, you need to keep it easy for that, but also people don’t want to work that hard, right? Um, don’t make people work for it. Make it easy for them to do what it is that you want them to do, you know, and if that’s be invested in your organization in whichever way, if it’s volunteering, if it’s donating, if it’s doing whatever. Make it easy for them to do it, and don’t make them work hard to understand the story and what you’re saying. There’s a lot of industries that jargon is very common, and they tend to throw around acronyms or terms that make a lot of sense to the people involved, you know, like inside baseball, if you will, right? Um, but don’t mean anything to the general audience, and I think that’s one thing we have to try to catch. It’s like, you know, you aren’t speaking to yourself, you aren’t speaking to someone who has the same background and the same details and the same information that you do, uh, and you need to recognize that and you need to use a conversational manner and you need to use language that people are familiar with and that doesn’t mean. You know, you don’t co-opt, you know, you don’t need to kind of co-opt something and be someone who you are not. Still be who your organization is and have that consistent voice. But, you know, you don’t need to speak at like PhD level. I’m writing a dissertation style way to, you know, Joe from down the block, right? Uh, you need to speak in a way that your audience reacts well to and that they understand. You reminded me of, uh, when I was in law school, first year of law school. I hate, I, I, I, I hated practicing law, by the way. I don’t do it anymore, but I was very glad that I went to law school. I still am very glad I went, but your first year of law school, uh, now I went in, uh, 1989, so you, you’d be reading cases and I had literally my dictionary. My Black’s Law Dictionary by my side because every, you know, every paragraph there’s a word I don’t understand. There’s, you know, Latin phrase or something, you know, you don’t, you don’t want need people to be going, going to an online dictionary to get, you know, you don’t need to show off your extraordinarily literate vocabulary in your professional. Storytelling. Keep that to your friends. Because we, we kind of train people to do one thing in school and then you need another thing in real life, right? So in school, we kind of train people over time. You write longer, you use bigger words, you, you know, you do this, this, this, and so you start off, you know, I mean, my kid is in kindergarten, right? He’s writing like I saw. Sue run, you know, like that’s what he’s working on writing, you know, and then by the time you know you’re in college or you’re in grad school or law school or whatever it is, you know, you’re writing these long papers, right? You’re writing a dissertation, you know, and you use the, the big words and use the academic language and you use the insider terms because you have to do, you have to, that’s what you’re trained to do. That’s right. And then once you get out into like the real world. And I was like, I haven’t written anything that’s more than like 4 pages and I don’t even know how long, right? Because nobody wants to read all that. Like people want it short, succinct, like get to the point, what’s the summary, you know, if, if we do write something along, we always have that one page executive summary in the front, right? Because a lot of people are just like they don’t have the time for it and they don’t have the interest and their capability they don’t, you know, they’re not that invested in it that they’re gonna spend all this time. Digging through to find the gem that they need, right? They really need, they need some bullet points. They needed an executive summary. They need a story that they can remember and that sticks with them and makes sense, you know. And I mean, sure, you could do, I mean, when we talk about storytelling, there’s so many formats, right? I mean, you could really do a really long term, you could write, you could write a book, you could do a long term. Documentary, you know, those type of things. But most of the time when we’re talking about storytelling in this context, we’re talking about, you know, short hits, right? We’re talking about things that are, you know, like under 3 minute video, you know, that you can read in less than 10 minutes, a podcast, right, that you can listen to in a half hour. I mean, we’re really talking about shorter, more succinct, getting to the point. Stories. So you have to kind of like capture someone’s interest from the beginning, and keep it. I mean, the good thing is, I feel like that that is easier to do in a shorter time frame, right? But you have to get to the point faster. You don’t have a lot of runway to kind of meander around the point. I hope there’s still a place for longer form podcasting because we run like 45 minutes to an hour. But uh the good thing about podcasts to podcasts, people are frequently multitasking, you know, so I feel like you get a little more leeway for. Yeah, I hope. You know, I hope they’re not, I hope they’re not doing crossword puzzles or sudoku while they’re listening to Tony Martin and nonprofit radio because then you’re not gonna get the, you’re not gonna get the, the genius of Sarah Wood and other guests if you’re, if you’re too engaged in you’re multitask. So, you know, let’s dumb down the other, the, uh, the, the other part of the, the other tasks while you’re listening to. Nonprofit, you know, if you digest of the impressive. I bet there’s somebody out there who’s done it. I hope so. Oh, if there is, I’d love to know. Well listens to it. That’s what we should do a picture of your nonprofit and you can be a star. I’ll I’ll listener of the pages. Um, let’s talk, you know, the narwhal and the jellyfish. What’s the relationship between those two? Let’s talk about relationships. They are. OK. OK, BFF. It’s time for Tony’s Take 2. Thank you, Kate. The people who nobody thanks, you know, they kind of. silently breathe by us, and they are ignored by most people. I am encouraging you to give a simple thank you, a simple, have a good day. You know, it costs nothing, it’s, it’s, it’s a second. Um, and I’ve been trying to be conscious of this in my own. Mostly, mostly in traveling, uh, so, you know, I’m thinking about. Airport bathroom attendants. They’re keeping these bathrooms clean and like I said, they just come silently in and out, nobody gives them any mind. Say a quick thank you. That’s it. Just, thanks. They’ll get it, they’ll get it. Um, in hotels where you, when you get the, the free breakfasts, now this is not the breakfast that’s served to you, but, you know, I’m thinking of like the, uh, I use Marriott a lot. So like Fairfield, Resident Inn, Spring Hill Suites, you know, they have the free breakfasts, uh little tiny buffets. The folks that put that food out for you, thank you for breakfast. I, I, they’re so grateful to be thanked. Um, flight attendants, you know, flight, I, I, flight attendants, um, they come around and they offer you something and Lots of people don’t even remove their headsets or their AirPods, whatever, earbud, whatever, you know, whatever you got in your ear. And then, and then, and then you, you gotta ask the person, what did you say again, you know, you see them coming like remove the device from your ears so they don’t have to repeat themselves and then, and even some people don’t even give them the courtesy of that, they just They just kind of guess what’s being said, you know, you can usually tell if the court is there with, with the beverages, obviously, you know, it’s time for beverages and snacks, so they, they don’t really even hear and give the person the courtesy of Being listened to. Because they won’t, you know, the passengers won’t remove their devices. So you have a little courtesy, like pause your music or your movie and and actually listen to the person, hear them. Another one, restaurant, um, in restaurants now I think servers are, you know, waitresses, waiters, they’re, they’re generally thanked, I think. What about the people who fill your water in your coffee? They come around sometimes, it’s not the server that you’re, that you’re tipping. And we ignore them, you know, I see this when I see it with friends, I see it with donor lunches, but nobody says thank you for the, for the coffee refill or the water refill. A simple thank you, you know, like the arm is extended in, you know, and it’s just, it’s like it’s not even a person, it’s just an arm reaching in with a pitcher of water. These are people, say thanks and then carry on your conversation. It’s, it’s just that simple. Um, and also in restaurants, uh, the bus staff, people take your plates away. You know, again, it’s an arm, a couple of arms reach in and and and disappearing. They’re not disembodied. These are people. Thank you. Thanks for taking my plate. So, I’m being more conscious of this. Uh, I’m encouraging you to be. Maybe there are folks in your lives who come in and out and, you know, we’re treating them almost like they’re not human, like they don’t even exist, but they do. But you know, so it’s, it’s it’s uh, it’s not very thoughtful, it’s not at all generous to. They giving to to people who. You don’t have to say anything to, but I, I, I think we should. That’s Tony’s take too. Kate, I’m just gonna add a few to the list from my own life, um, Boston guards, we live near a school and you know they’re out there. Uh, making sure our kids are safe. Now, give them a very good one, right, and especially now, freezing out there for an hour or so. Crossing guards, excellent. Wait, you got others. And then also I was thinking shuttle staff, whether that’s like your buses, your trains, that also kind of has to do with your flight attendants, but the people transporting you to and from, give them a little wave. Yeah, yeah. My shuttle driver was actually really nice yesterday because I got off at the wrong stop, or I was going to get off at the wrong stop, but then I stayed on with her. She was like, you got off at the wrong stop, but you can stay with me and I’ll recircle. So she was really nice. See, they, they were people, yes, people are generally thoughtful and helpful and Uh, see, there, there was a very generous thing she did. So there you go, yeah, those are excellent, thank you. Excellent additions. Well, we’ve got Bou butt loads more time. Here’s the rest of Storytelling with Sarah Wood. Relationships, so, you know, how do we? How do we make sure these stories aren’t, you know, so complex? Like you’re, you’re, you were just talking about the length, you know, but. How do we make sure that we’re not including so much detail that the important things get buried? I mean, they’re in there, but they’re not coming out because we’ve got detail about the make another human story, you know, the person’s background or something we need to, we need to edit down, right? Absolutely, yeah, uh, I mean, I am a I always start with more than what I need, right? Um, because I’m like, I’m gonna have everything that I could possibly need when I’m, when I’m kind of crafting this and when I’m thinking about this. And also because I tend to be, even when I tell, even when I tell my stories, right? I, my personal stories, you know, I’m always putting too much information in too many details, and then sidetracking and be like, well, let me explain this part, you know, um, and so it really is, it really is the editing process, and you really do have to have a A standard process, I think for doing that. Um, and you can set that up in lots of different ways depending on your organization, but I think, you know, you can’t necessarily just have your first cut be a final product. Now, sometimes you can, sometimes you can catch some candid, you know, I mean, that’s become very popular now, right? Candid kind of just like impromptu, put your, put your phone up and, and grab a, a quick snippet of something. Um, so I’m not saying that you can’t do that, but I’m saying when you come to your more formal stories and the things you’re gonna be using for a longer period of time. That you’re gonna want us to kind of think that through, right? You might want to storyboard it out, um, you know, think about what your goals are going in, what are, what are the goals, what are the key topics that you want to hit, and then, you know, think further about how are you gonna do that, you know, what’s what best exemplifies what you were trying to share. You know, I mean, you also can, you can start from the story. You can have a great story, and then you can figure out how to use it. But I personally feel like it’s easier if you kind of start with your goals and then think through, OK, what kind of story best fits this? Who would be the best spokesperson, what is it that we want them to talk about? What are the key points that we want to get across. I think if you know that going in, it’s, it’s easier than kind of going back after the facts, um, and kind of shaping it, but it is possible to do it after the fact as well. All right, I’m gonna take a chance here because you said you, you, you tend to wander in your own storytelling, but you have something in your bio that’s very interesting that uh that you’re a single parent. So I’ve never seen that. chose to have children on their own. Um, so both of my children were conceived using donor sperm. Um, and they, they do not have a, a father in their life. Um, I have other family members, obviously, who kind of step up and friends and whoever and lots of loving people in their life. But, um, you know, I was a person who, I mean, this has something to do with communication, but I was a person who always I felt like my life would be unfulfilled without having children, and I did not feel that way about a relationship and or marriage or, or anything along those lines. Um, and so I opted to have them, you know, on my own and and raise them on my own. Um, and they are amazing little humans, and it was the best decision of my life because like they are the best thing I have, I have done, you know, I’ve created these amazing humans to kind of go out and make the world a better place. Um, and so that’s an, that’s an awesome experience. I mean, I was gonna say, I was gonna say, you know, I don’t try to talk people into doing things, right? But I will say if you are interested in in potentially doing it, I would advise you to explore it, right? And to look into your options because science is great. I, I work with a lot of health. Science nonprofits. And 11 of the reasons is I just like really think that there’s so many neat things that are happening now, right? That you couldn’t even potentially do years ago. I mean, I think the first, I think the first IVF baby was born around the time I was born. Um, so that’s give or take 40 years ago. Um, so it’s only potentially, I mean, my kids were not born through IVF. I used IUI, um, which is insider term, right? But because we have jargon jail on nonprofit, yes, but it doesn’t matter we’ll just say it’s less medically invasive. IUI IUI is interuterine insemination, um, and so it’s not as, uh, it’s not as technical. I didn’t have to have eggs frozen and retrieved and, and, and all of that. It just, you know, it’s kind of. They put some sperm on up there and right, right, yeah, yeah. And you double down on this now, so you have two children, 2 and 6. I do, I do. Yes. So one was one was not fulfilling your first, your son was not fulfilling enough. Well, I wouldn’t say it that way, right? I mean, if I had been unable to have another child, then yes, I would have been fulfilled with my son. But, uh, I had always wanted two children, and, um, I was at a spot where I could do that or try to do that. And Was able to be successful with that and so yeah, they. They’re awesome and I’m I’m like traditional spouse or partner is not a, I mean, I hope they would say I’m successful. I feel like I’m doing all right. I’m sure, yeah, we can’t yeah yeah yeah you know it’s interesting. I’ve never seen anyone that way as a Yeah, there’s a growing, there’s a growing community of us. There’s a growing community, you know, I think times are changing, right? And, and you can do things now that you couldn’t do in the past both with technology but also kind of being more socially accepted and you know, being a more tolerant society and. To, to families that are shaped differently and created differently. Um, and I think that’s an amazing thing. Um, I mean, you know, um, my sister is, um, married to a woman, and, uh, they obviously had to use sperm to, to have their child as well, use donor sperm, and, um, you know, they actually had to use a surrogate as well, uh, for health reasons. And so, you know, the. It’s just amazing that we get to have these children in our lives in these in these ways that, like I said, would not have been possible. You know, a couple decades ago, so in the adoption process, did, did you see any bias against a single parent? Well, I didn’t do adoption. I am saying? Oh no, no, I’m sorry. So in the, uh, yes, of course, of course. I’m sorry, that’s embarrassing. Um, but in so in the, in the, in the the process of being approved as a As a parent, whatever that requires, was, did you see any bias against being a single parent or we are in the fertility industry are are kind of well aware of, um, you know, kind of the single mom by choice, you know, it’s not, it’s not new to them. Uh, uh, they’re like they’re probably the in in the in group. I, you know, I will say, you know, it. You have to kind of be clear at like medical appointments and things like that, that you’re the only legal parent, you know, um, and all those kind of things, but I, I don’t think that’s really any different than Anyone who say had had, you know, a spouse pass away or, um, you know, otherwise was like not available in their life, um. But yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what people are thinking in their head, but I will say that, you know, I haven’t felt bad about it and I haven’t had anyone like try actively try to make me feel bad about it. So I think that’s a plus, right? I mean, people might have their own thoughts, but if so, you know, if you don’t have anything nice to say, keep it to yourself, right? Yes, I was. I was wondering about like institutional bias or something, but it sounds like we’re past that. We’re we’re we’re past that. Well, I wouldn’t say that we are past that. I would say I have not personally experienced it or knowingly experienced it. Um, I think that, you know, it, I would not go so far to say that it does not exist. I mean, I think it certainly still exists and, uh, you know, probably maybe more dependent on, you know, the areas that you were in and your, and your localities and kind of, uh, their perspectives there, um. May play in a bigger part yeah. Um, so let’s let’s go back. Thank you for sharing the story. I thought that was a poignant part of your, right? Right. Well, you might say, well, I only third party, not my own, but it’s harder to tell, right? I mean, I think, you know, People tell stories all the time and I, it’s easy for me to look at someone else and think, OK, here’s the angle, here’s what makes you different, unique, here’s what we can kind of, you know, talk about, here’s what we can, you know, get some leverage, here’s, you know, all of that kind of thing. And when you try to apply it like to my own business, right? It’s, it’s much more complicated to do it with your own business and yourself, right? Because you, you kind of overthink it and. And impostor syndrome kind of pops up and, and also you kind of think like, oh, well, I can’t do it unless I’m really good at it, because, you know, I am in the field, like I feel like there, you know, there’s a benchmark that you kind of have to get over, right? You have to be like at least X is good about and really it’s not. Like you can try things out the same as anybody else and and do things in a different way, but it’s really getting out of your own way and getting out of your own head, um, and having enough mental energy left after you serve your clients to kind of apply the same principles to your own business. And you even you devolved into jargon in your own story. I did you spotted it. You did, you did self-identify too, but I, I would, I would have called you out because we do have jargon jail, but I didn’t, I didn’t need to. Um, so you, something you mentioned, uh. We we were earlier, uh, consistency, messaging consistency, like I think like tone of your stories, you, you know, you said the, uh, the narwhal and the jellyfish, like they have, there’s clearly a pattern. You, you expect the puns, etc. Let’s talk about the value and, and, and how you ensure consistency in, in nonprofit messaging. Yeah, I always tell people, you need to know who you are first, right? And you need to decide as an organization, this is who we are, this is what we do, and this is how we talk about it, um, because it’s gonna be confusing for your audience if your emails are written in one way in one tone, and then your website is a copy is in a completely different tone and your social media is in, in, in, you know, a third one, and just, you need to pick one which is realistic, which feels like it. Works for you, which feels honest, um, and also want a voice that resonates with your audiences, and then you need to stick with it, um, because you don’t want to have mismatch between what you’re saying in one place versus another. And also you need to. When we talk about consistency, it’s not just being the same but it’s consistency and kind of the cadence, right? It’s I we’re consistently telling our stories we’re consistently talking about what we’re doing we’re consistently, you know, emphasizing what are the most important parts for us. So it’s both how often you’re doing it, and it’s making sure that it’s kind of similar, that there’s a similar vein, right? Of course you’re gonna alter things depending on like what format you’re doing it in. If you’re writing a case study, it’s gonna be different than, you know, if you’re doing. And Instagram reel, right? Uh, you’re not gonna do those the same way. They’re not gonna exactly have the same vibe and the same language and and all of that because they’re very different styles for different audiences, but you want overall your voice to be consistent. Your key messages across the board should be consistent. Your values should be evident and consistent across wherever you happen to be. And then like I said, you know, telling people. You have to tell people over and over and over again what you do. It is really hard to overcommunicate with people as a nonprofit organization. I mean, you’re inside, you’re embedded in it, you’re you may be tired of talking about it, right? You may be like, oh, we’ve done this so many times or, or we’ve told this story and so many times in so many ways and and all of that, but the reality is, you know, you see every message your audience does not. They’re gonna miss a lot of the messages that you’re putting out. Yes, that’s a very good point. They’re not seeing every message that you send. Exactly. And they’re not seeing it kind of the way you are, right, where, you know, it shows up like, you know, back to back to back to back, right? All the message you might send, like, here’s, here’s all your emails in a row of what you’ve sent or here’s all your, like, you know, when you’re looking at the back end of it, they don’t see it like that, right? It’s, it’s all this other stuff in between, you know, that they’re seeing. So I, I try to tell people I I feel like. Nonprofit organizations in particular, they’re worried about like annoying people, right? They’re worried about, um, kind of irritating them and then, oh, they’re just gonna like, you know, unsubscribe or unfollow us or they’re not gonna wanna do this, that and whatever. And I was like, it is really hard to annoy someone so much that they’re gonna opt out unless you are really just spamming, right? And like you’re, but if you’re providing content that is of value, and you, I mean, they might. See 1 in 10 of the things you do, right? I mean, I, I don’t have the actual data on that, right? Like, you know, but they, they are certainly not gonna see every single message that you send out. And then if they do, great. I mean, and if they are seeing every single message and they come to you and they say, you’re sending too many. I’ve seen all of these or whatever, like, let’s figure out a way so that that that particular individual, you know, doesn’t maybe doesn’t get quite so much of it. But I mean, I think that’s, it’s hard to do and. That’s something that nonprofits kind of have to get out of their own way on, is they’re worried, like, oh, we’re gonna annoy them, they’re gonna unsubscribe. If, if they’re gonna unsubscribe because, you know, they got Or end of year email like fundraising ask, then they weren’t someone who should have been on your list in the first place, right? Because they aren’t someone who’s like regularly invested in your organization. If they’re gonna be, you know, I mean how many emails does Target send me? Like how much like I haven’t unsubscribed from them yet, you know, like, I mean, now, do I delete most of them without opening them? Yes. But I mean, I, most nonprofits are not saying anywhere near the volume, right? That, you know, a target or or someone along those lines is sending. That’s consistent with uh advice around boards and utilizing your board, being afraid that you’re asking your board to do too much. If, if that happens, they’ll they’ll let you know. But odds are you’re not asking them to do enough and they’re feeling like they’re, you know, kind of a lackluster board member because they’re, they’re not engaged enough with. hopefully the right kinds of tasks you know they don’t know what to do, right? I mean, I think, I think that’s common, right, is that, you know, when someone joins a board and they’re very, or a volunteer or or or however they’re joining, however they’re, you know, being involved with the organization, they want to help, but they don’t necessarily like know how to go about that or they don’t want to step on someone’s toes, you know. And, or kind of take over what someone else is doing. And so I think the more information that you can provide internally as well, right? Not just externally, um, about what is most helpful, like, you know, don’t just leave people hanging. Like, ask them for what you need. And I know it feels awkward. We all hate, like, you know, we all hate asking for things and, um, That’s why some people who are like, you know, major fundraisers who really are OK with it, get, get paid more, right? Um, but it can feel awkward until you get used to it, right? And once you do it, and you see like, OK, you see the reaction, you see that it is a positive reaction. You know, you’re not getting the negativity that you thought you were gonna get. Um, I think that it’s easier to do it the next time, right? And, and it becomes, it becomes routine, and it’s no longer hard for you to do. Don’t be afraid of your board members. Don’t be afraid of your, your volunteers, your donors, whether they’re your major donors or your audience in general, right? Don’t, don’t be afraid of them and don’t be afraid to talk to them and to ask them things and you know, you might get crickets, they might not respond back, but, um, give them the opportunity, you know, give them the opportunity to engage and and to connect with you and to communicate and to let you know what it is they’re most interested in. Um, and, and not hearing back doesn’t mean that they don’t like you, means that they, they’re time constrained and, you know, they didn’t, they didn’t read that particular ask or they didn’t, they didn’t have the time to respond to it or they just chose not to. You know, it doesn’t mean that they don’t like you when, when they start unsubscribing, that’s when they don’t like you. Yeah, so they don’t, don’t default to thinking negatively, right? You know, um, if no one responded, then it’s just as just as likely that they responded positively as they did negatively, right? Probably more likely because I think people are more likely to actually let you know if they have a negative reaction to something than if they have a positive reaction to something. Um, I mean, we see that in online reviews all the time, right? Uh, the people who leave the review a lot of times are the people who have like a really bad experience for whatever reason, um, because most people who have like an OK or positive, you know, experience are just kind of like going about with their day. What else do you want to talk about around storytelling that uh either I haven’t asked you or we didn’t go deep enough. What else is out there? What’s on your mind? What’s on your mind? We’ve covered a lot of, um. I think maybe talking a little bit about kind of like how you pick the stories. I mean, we touched on this a little bit about how You know, how it’s important to kind of go in knowing what you want to get out of it. Um, but you may, if you aren’t used to storytelling, you may kind of be looking at your organization. I’m like, well, I don’t have any stories to tell, and that is like. Oh, that’s, that’s definitely wrong. You shouldn’t be, you shouldn’t be in business if you don’t, if you can’t come up with half a dozen stories, like sort of off the top of your head. Well, I mean, let’s not say it like that because for some people, you know, they just haven’t learned how to see it in that way yet, right? It’s the, the stories are there. You have, maybe I was being harsh, but you have. You just have to identify them. All right, so help us, help us, help us do that. All right. So I think you, I think you’re gonna, like I said, you can start with your kind of the goals of like, you know, this is what I really would like to have a story talking about or this is what I would like to have a story that there’s an example of. Um, and having that in mind can kind of help you when you’re looking at it can kind of like frame it and kind of shape how you’re looking at what you’re doing. Um, so that’s one way to go about it. I think another way to go about it is, um, to kind of train yourself and your staff to think about things through the lens of a story, right? So, so many times we’ll have, uh, you know, people they’re like, Oh, I don’t have enough, I don’t have enough content for social media, or I don’t have this. And I was like, OK, well, What does your staff say? You know, what is your staff doing like day to day, you know, are you asking them like, OK, what is there we could take a picture of? What is there we could take a video of? Could we do a behind the scenes of like what their day is like, you know, um, when someone comes in, have you asked them like what to give a testimonial of some sort? Have you asked them for their feedback, you know, those are always That you can kind of gather things that can kind of turn into stories. Uh, I think, uh, I worked for an organization for a while and they had been around like 90 years, right? And they’ve been running these programs for like 90 years. And, you know, so in all that time, there’s so many people that had been involved with it, right? And we really had to kind of create a program where they were like reaching out to like alumni of this program, right? Um, and kind of talking to them and doing blogs, a blog series and, you know, using that to then spin off and repurpose into like other, other storytelling content, right? But they just hadn’t thought about it, right? Like no one had just sat and thought like, OK, well, we should reach out to, you know, it’s been this amount of time, like they’ve done all these like different things. Like, it’s not like they’re still in high school. This was particular program was aimed at like middle and high school kids, um, you know, and, and some of them were like famous. So, you know, it was a matter of just like letting people know to think about it in that way, you know, because the stories are there. That’s one of the reasons I really like working with nonprofit organizations is because there are so many good stories that are just like right there for the bank, right? It’s not like you’re having to like create it. Anything else that you want to share? I don’t want you to give uh give nonprofit radio listeners, you know, like short shrift, I would want to just encourage everyone that everyone can be a storyteller and that the and that everyone has a story, right? So when you’re looking at your organization, think about what stories would be most effective for you, um, and how you can share them in a way that will resonate with your audience the most. And that’s the way I think you can best approach it, because otherwise it can feel overwhelming, and you want it to feel approachable, and you want it to feel like something that you can accomplish. Sarah Wood Founder and chief communication consultant Sarah Wood Communication, you’ll find Sarah on LinkedIn. You’ll find her practice at Sarah with an H, Sara Woodcommunication.com. Thank you very much, Sarah. Thanks for sharing your own personal story as well as all the uh valuable advice on. Nonprofit storytelling. Thank you very much. I hope somebody goes out and tells a story because of this. Many folks will, I’m sure. Next week, your grant maker relationships. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, Donorbox.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. 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%. Come out and be great.
Though wildly counterintuitive, producing and embracing ambiguity can give you the upper hand when it looks like you have no hand to play. Stop thinking of ambiguity as something you must react to and avoid. Start seeing the value in cultivating it. Kyle Crawford’s book is “Ambiguity Is The Answer” and he explains its power.
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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 podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d come down with Cotard’s syndrome if you killed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, to introduce it. Hey Tony, I’m on it. Ambiguity is the answer. Though wildly counterintuitive, producing and embracing ambiguity can give you the upper hand when it looks like you have no hand to play. Stop thinking of ambiguity as something you must react to and avoid. Start seeing the value in cultivating it. Kyle Crawford’s book is Ambiguity is the Answer, and he explains its power. On Tony’s take 2. A new tale from the train. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is ambiguity is the answer. It is a pleasure to welcome Kyle Crawford to nonprofit Radio. Kyle is a strategist with nearly two decades of experience studying and working with movements and organizations. He’s the author of the book Ambiguity Is the Answer Timeless Strategies for Creating Change and how we bring about Change in Difficult Environments. You’ll find Kyle at KyleJ Crawford on Instagram. And you will find the book at Barnes and Noble. You’ll also find it at Amazon, but I like to give, I like to give breath to other institutions. Buy the book from Barnes and Noble. Kyle, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Tony. My pleasure. Thank you for joining. We’re talking about ambiguity. You have a book about ambiguity. We’re gonna talk about your, uh, Stanford Social Innovation Review article about ambiguity. I think we should start with how you are defining ambiguity. Yeah, I mean that that’s that’s the place everyone always wants to start, um. I think the most literal? Oh, no, that’s perfect. OK, it’s wisdom. I mean, we’re OK, we’re starting in the same in the right place in the right place. OK. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s what’s fun about the topic is that it uh it from the very beginning invites discussion and almost like debate and conversation. So I mean, the most literal definition is, you know, something that’s open to multiple interpretations. So, um. I think in layman’s terms, it’s much more used in the way that uncertainty is used, you know, we say like the environment is uncertain, it’s ambiguous, it’s a complex situation. Um, so that’s the way we kind of layman term use it, um, but I think when I, when I talk about ambiguity, it is, it is in the sense of things that are open to multiple interpretations, but for me, It’s part of a conversation that talks about who defines what things mean, who is uh responsible or obligated to define, to follow definitions set by others. It’s all, it’s, it’s within a context of power and language and meaning, and I think a lot of that for me, the, the usefulness of ambiguity sits with um folks in unequal power dynamics and What I look at the most is the role of ambiguity for folks who have less power to navigate those situations, share messages with different folks, um, and ideally disrupt those power balances and create change. So for me, like ambiguity sits, it sits in that context and we can get into that, but um, you know, most of the research is very literal. Does this object look like an old lady or a young lady? Does this, you know, it’s like there’s a very literal interpretation, but um. It’s usefulness kind of historically sits um in how it’s used and how people adopt and and convey meanings, yeah. How it’s used, how it’s created. I mean, you want us to create ambiguity to defeat uh established power structures. Yeah, I mean, to be totally honest, I mean, I think about the book and a lot of my research is sort of a remembrance, like, it’s reminding us that this is how this happens. I think for me, the narrative that we are told and is very familiar, I think the nonprofit leaders is, uh, it’s very managerial. You should structure something, you should set a plan, you should have dates and deadlines, and as if all we need to do is execute and we will accomplish the aim. I think when you look at really unequal power dynamics historically and folks who sort of succeed despite those. Dynamics, what you see is something that is not boiled down into into rigid plans and structures and, um, you know, just like typical managerial approaches. What you see is something that’s a much, that’s much more fluid. It’s navigating that external environment and in that is the sense that, you know, uh, you might convey one message to one population and you might convey another, right? So for nonprofit leaders like a good example would be You’re trying to create a big change. If you are too open too early about what you’re after, the people who are in power who could stop that if they’re aware of it might sort of get it on their radar too early for you because you’re not prepared to create that change. And so what a lot of people do is sort of like adopt a very innocuous. Appearance about what they’re up to, while trying to lay the groundwork needed to have enough momentum to create that change. And that’s what you see historically is folks needing to do that. And so, um, there’s lots of different ways that happens and and people think about that and use that, but um that sits, I I found that that essence is sort of like edited out. Of the histories of how we think about how change happens, but when you dig in, it’s central to how people are navigating these situations. I wanted to like remind us of that, yeah. So, so being so messaging in innocuous ways. Um, I understand you’re saying because people who might or interests that might. Be opposed to your actions are not certain where you’re proceeding because you’re being innocuous, vague is, is vague, is vague a suitable synonym for us to use here? Yeah, it’s in the same ballpark. OK, OK. Um, so we’re getting into what I was gonna ask you why is ambiguity the answer? All right. So if you’re, I mean, can I say like flooding the zone, like you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re being, uh, Yeah, you’re being innocuous. Uh, you, you’re being noncommittal about how you’re proceeding, but, but doesn’t that then confuse your allies as well, or maybe confused, but doesn’t that disturb your allies? Like, well, where are they with us? Are they, are they opposed to it or they, they say they want to do the same thing we wanna do as, as an outcome, but they’re going about it in these ways we’re not really sure what they’re doing. This is very disturbing. So, could it not disrupt your allies as well? Yeah, I think, I think that’s the challenge and the fear that folks always have is sort of, um, and so I think that there’s a tendency, a very rightful tendency to You know what, the world is a hot mess. Let’s be as clear as we can. Most people aren’t paying attention to us, but the people that we’re close to, we need to be as clear and transparent and honest with and because that’s how we’re going to move anything forward. I think that that makes sense. I think here’s here’s a historical example to maybe demonstrate it, right? Like, if you think about, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Kombi River raid, um, Harriet Tubman led the largest, um, Uh, in the Civil War, the largest sort of Freedom Acts where they freed almost 1000 people in a single night. The way they did that, right, was that on, on the plantations, the to the to the slave, the enslavers, everything looked like it was operating as it always had, right? The days looked the same to the people in power. What was actually happening was that there were very coded. Quiet messages being communicated about where and when different actions were going to occur in order to get people to freedom, right? And so, so when I talk about the power dynamics with ambiguity, what you’re talking about is like, often to people in power, it looks like the status quo is at play. These people aren’t making any moves, they don’t have it in them to make any moves, and below that surface. You see this kind of quiet coded communication, which is actually how we feel intimacy, it’s how we feel closeness, how we feel part of community, um, is that You know, in music and dance, and in how we move, the gestures, the clothing we wear, the art that we make, there are these messages to communities that share what we’re trying to express. And so like, but the Conbi River raid, what you see is like that one layer where everything looks normal, below is this whole other activity, um, and by the time folks in power realized that their, their sort of sense of the day was off. Enough has been done to accomplish, you know, essentially, which is an almost impossible task, freeing 1000 people in the middle, in the middle. And how were they, were they coding messages to each other? So, I mean, there’s there’s lots of different ways, you know, there’s a lot of um A lot of research on quilts being used, so folks think that quilts would have different um quilt designs would code different meanings like go left zigzag here, there’s food up here, you know, like, so quilt designs folks would hang up their windows and and that would give messages. What, what you would often see like what Harriet Tubman used to do was actually send in like Bible verses. And she would sort of like test to see whether they got um caught or distributed or not, and then she would use that as a test and then send in other messages which which allude to times and places for activities and so um that’s, I think that’s one of the most extreme examples, but that illuminates this idea that it’s not. Uh, it’s not clarity and transparency when you’re in a dangerous environment. It’s actually some of these other ways that we find safety, protection, and I think possibility. So it’s it’s those kinds of lessons that um are are I feel like kind of the power of ambiguity. Let’s drill this to the, uh, because before we talk more theory, like how to, how to achieve this, how to defeat the uh the existing power structures or at least If not defeat, um. Minimize their, their, uh. Their harm to what what we’re trying to, you know, and their obstacles to what we’re trying to achieve. uh, so before we, we talk more about the how, um, our listeners are small and mid-size nonprofit professionals. So is there, can you provide an example of, you know, some kind of social change. Either story or hypothetical where. Ambiguity was could be used or was used to advantage. Yeah, and I think that that, and I’ll get into that. I think that um I think that one of the first places to start with this is realizing that we get boxed in, and I think small and medium nonprofits, especially, you get boxed in by funder requirements, you get, you get boxed in by regulation, like. You often have like a very dynamic aim or mission, right, that you’re after, and you realize that that sort of gets boxed and you have to present it in a very specific, manageable way, right? And so I think that, I think that that’s part of the reason why it can be helpful is reminding ourselves that the way that we’re operating is is structured for us, that, um, and so I think one of the first things to, to do is to start to think like, Uh, is to realize where we have made ourselves more restricted or more limited than we actually feel and want to be, um, and sometimes we have to just recognize that before we do something else. So there’s lots of, I mean, I think about ambiguity doing lots of different things, um. I mean, 11 place that I think about it, um, is from the um the Delano grape strike during the 1960s, you know, you know, you had farm workers in California who were trying to get higher wages. It was a paltry sum anyways, but they wanted more, right? And, and, and this is where I think it applies. The leaders of small and medium sized nonprofits, you know, if you looked at the balance of what that challenge was, it was really powerful grape growers who had close connections to politicians and the police, and then you had farm workers with essentially no political power. Different ethnicities pitted against each other, and on paper that would look like an inevitably losing battle. And so what, what the responsibility of the farm workers was, was that they had to actually look at circumstances as not simply as they were presented, but as, as having additional meaning. So one example is that, you know, the um a judge made it illegal to say the Spanish or um uh to call a Filipino language for strike, right? And so, You would think that on paper, like now we can’t even talk about a strike. What they did is essentially turned the whole battle from a labor dispute into a free speech battle. So they had a group of supporters, predominantly women, go outside, start saying those words, get arrested for it, turned into publicity, fundraising. Opportunities, um, and I think shifted the dimensions of the, the, the challenge, the conflict that they were in, from simply being on paper this financial dispute to starting to expand it in these ways that attract new allies and start to generate new levels of power. And so that’s one of the ways that I think sometimes the challenges were and feel really simplistic in the sense that we don’t have the resources of the folks that we’re going up against and it in the The sort of empowering aspect about ambiguity is saying, what can I introduce into this moment that’s actually going to change that dynamic and start to put a little bit of the power in our, in our camp. So, um, they did that in lots of different ways. They also use that kind of thinking to shift it from a very local battle, like locally, they were up against. This terrible situation. What they started to do was turn it into a much more national argument, where the, the things that were beneficial to grape growers locally on the political scale nationally started to look really heinous and bad, giving more sort of political clout to the farm workers. And so, I think the, the, the impetus for anybody there is to say, The sit I see the sit the my first read of the situation is simply my first read of the situation and how can I start to look at it to see different meanings and opportunities and what’s being presented to me? Um, and that usually involves thinking about the circumstance and yourself in a little bit more ambiguous terms than how you kind of redefine yourself. OK, we’re gonna, I want to drill into how to how to. Like start this thinking, but I, I need to know, did the grape growers get the increased wages, the higher wages that they were, they were striking, they ended up striking for? They did, you know, there’s some confirmation bias, right? You gotta pick the ones that that OK. 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 donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to ambiguity is the answer. So we’re not talking about macro changes necessarily, or macro-social change. I mean, You know, uh, eliminating homelessness or poverty, you know, or domestic violence. I mean, our listeners are working toward those outcomes, but In your work, you’re thinking too just about like sort of micro, like it could be a, a program change. And it might just be your board perhaps that is is the sort of the, uh, what the opposing, I hate to think of your board as an opposition, but the power structure, let’s put it just that way, uh, we won’t characterize it. The, the, the board is the power structure that is potentially an obstacle to a program, a new program, or maybe a program change or something like that, right? So it’s gonna be on a micro level within the institution. Yeah, absolutely, and I think that, I think part of it is, is almost where you started, which is that we have a very good reason. To want to be certain and want to make decisions and not want to sort of sit in the mud, right? We, and so I think that even, it’s so much more comfortable to know, oh this is a binary, this is a black and white choice, it’s a binary choice. I, so I, I, so this is purely rational and we could do a cost benefit analysis and we can arrive at the objectively correct answer which will give us our desired outcome because everything is clear. So clarity is much more comfortable than ambiguity and vagueness. Yeah, I mean 100%, and I think, I think even just accepting that like, it makes sense that we want that and we all want that. And so for me, in a lot of the work that I do with like, say a new program, what you, what I usually get up to at a certain point, you realize that people want, they’re tired of of that middle ground where it’s not decided yet. And there’s almost like there’s a moment where people They want to close the door and make the decision. What I always think is like just a little bit too early. You’re close to sort of rethinking in a fundamentally new way, and after you do that multiple times, you kind of go like, Yeah, we’re just at that point in the process. It’s to me it’s usually like 2/3 of the way, like 2/3 of the way people get a little tired of sorting it out and they want to just move on and do the next thing and, and cross that off the list. And as a leader, right, so you’re working with your board, if you can, if you can see that coming, you know that there’s going to be that tendency, you know, maybe even the individual or two on the board who’s going to make the case for that. If you can Kind of see that in advance, except that it’s just part of the process, but then still be willing to hold people to work through that last maybe quarter or 3 of what you’re trying to sort out to do something fundamentally new. It just helps you sort of see where it sits in the process and it can also help you kind of go, I’m starting to feel that tendency, but that doesn’t mean we’re done. It might just mean that I’m getting too antsy and just want that clarity and certainty to be there, um. So just seeing it in the process is helpful to know this happens, it actually makes sense that we feel this way, and sometimes your, your responsibility is to lead a group to stay there just a little bit longer than than you might want to. Right, so let’s pursue this hypothetical. How, how would we Work with ambiguity as our, uh, you know, you, the, the title of your book is Ambiguity is the Answer. So how would we work with that you’re thinking to Get to the outcome that we’re trying to get to where we have a board that’s objecting to uh just a program change maybe it’s the ages of folks we’re gonna work with maybe instead of 5th grade to 12th grade we want to do 3rd grade to 12th grade like we’re just expanding on to us it’s a small but, but we know a small incremental change, but we know there are board forces. A foot that, that don’t want to go any younger than 5th grade. What do we do? Like, what do we think about to try to Overcome these. These obstacles that are that are in within our institution knowing that we have to continue working with our board, all our board members, however the outcome, whether we get to the 3rd grade objective or not, we, we all have to still continue working together so it’s like even harder because they’re not strictly outside influences that we might never need to rub up against again. Yeah, I don’t know if I have a a nice sound bite for how to do that because people, right? Well, no, it doesn’t have to be a sound bite. I don’t like. No, because they’re unrealistic. they’re they’re so think through like what would we, what would we as the CEO you’re the CEO and I’ll be the uh. You know, I’ll, I don’t know, I’ll, I’ll be the board liaison officer or something. I don’t know. You could be the CEO. You’re like, what do we need to think through to just try to get this change that we don’t see as substantial, but we know that there are a couple of people on the board who, who do. Yeah, I mean, I think that part of it is figuring out why folks, it’s usually, I think what, what are their object, what are the nature of their objection? What are their objective, so we need to speak to them. We need to bring them into the conversation. Yeah, and I think that there, I think often, and I’m sure a lot of the listeners understand and and do and know this, a lot of that time is sometimes getting it out of the group dynamic. It’s getting the person with the very vocal resistance in a one on one so they can voice all of that without maybe derailing an entire meeting for everybody, right? And then I think part of that too is. I usually letting those resistances be heard, be part of the process, but also not, uh not dictating that the decision is made based on that urgency that somebody’s expressing, right? And so, um, that’s, that’s what I usually see in the work that I do is you start to get a couple of folks who you hear are ants to be done with this, they’re ready to move on, they want to cross it off, they’re getting a little frustrated, and I think there’s two pieces. One is Having enough enough faith in the work of what you’re proposing that it’s going to pay off that dealing with a little short-term frustration and anxiety and pressure is, is not the end of the day if you believe that this is actually the right way to go. And so that’s part of it is going like, this is again part of the process, but we have faith in where it’s going. And then I think in the meantime, you just either manage those relationships or to be totally honest, you let people just Have those feelings for a little while while you sort out the last piece. Um, that’s what I see a lot is you’re not going to shut down those feelings for folks. You have to let them have it, but it also doesn’t need to stop you from having faith in what you’re trying to accomplish. Now, where’s the role of ambiguity in this? Well, in this Um, It might be more one of process where you are, like we, we haven’t, we haven’t fully crafted maybe what the what the 3rd grade program looks like, why it’s beneficial, um, and so somebody’s going, well, we’ve talked about it for 6 months now. I still don’t see the vision. I’m not quite there. This doesn’t, this is nothing we’ve ever done, and that’s too young for our organization. That’s really like in essence of saying I wanna just close the discussion. I wanna, I wanna start to make a certain decision right here, right? Um. And so the, the, to me the ambiguity is just in the process. It’s where you are that somebody wants certainty and and where you are is still kind of ambiguous and and uncertain. And so you just have to hold the group there, even if people are ready to close the door. Um, but you know, like, like all things, there’s a benefit to it. Having people that are willing to say, we’ve talked about it enough, let’s move on. Let’s get it, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna argue for talking forever, but I just, I just think that on big new projects, or new directions, somebody always wants to close that door a little earlier and just accepting that as part of the process and saying they’re just struggling with what this moment feels like. That’s actually normal, but I’m going to keep everybody here a little bit longer because we’re going to get somewhere much better. In a short amount of time than we are right now, right? Don’t let their frustration. Derail the the end the conversation like, OK, I give up, you have, yeah, you’ve said it a couple of times, you recognize that this is gonna be a part of the process and we’re not at the stage yet where These ah objectors. Believe we are like that that that the decision is, is made and we’re not gonna proceed. That’s not, that’s not where we are. But you got to recognize that there may be, that may be coming from, from some folks. Right. And I think one of the most, one of the most interesting kind of applications of ambiguity that I think about is, is ambiguity as form and so maybe this might be a good segue, um. We, we find ourselves kind of stuck into a particular form and and how we operate. Maybe we’ve always been 5th grade and up, and that’s how we think about ourselves, right? Um. I think an important thing is to recognize that circumstances change and that requires the organization to change its sense of itself. And what you can see sometimes is that there’s such a deep commitment to that past sense of self, that it’s hard to kind of adopt a form that doesn’t look like it did in the past. One of the examples in the book that I use is um the HIV and I think it’s in the article to the HIV and AIDS HIV early decades, right? And so. The HIV AIDS crisis looked like nothing else. It had, it had the essence of all sorts of things. It had social movements, it had political issues, it had financing, it had homophobia, it had pieces of all of these circumstances, and all of these different kinds of movements, but it was, I think I say it was a new amalgamation of things, right? What I think to the great benefit of those activists, the design of the movement that they crafted did not look like. Any other movement in the past. It pulled from, uh, you know, feminist movements. It had sort of like these health clinics that were very similar to abortion clinic, like pre-ro abortion clinics, you know, it had a lot of um media and art that reflected other movements. It also worked with government in a different way, like they couldn’t just oppose. the government because they actually needed the government to do and fund and work in new ways. And so the HIV AIDS movement, like, it had this form that did not look solely like a social movement. It did not solely look like a, you know, political campaign. It reflect, it had like, It you could look at, to go back to the definition, you could look at it and you could see all of these different things. You could say this isn’t a social movement because of this, or this isn’t a political movement because of this, or this isn’t just an arts movement, it’s it’s all these other things, and I think that that willingness to say. This circumstance does not look like the past, and that requires us to not look like the past, and that might mean that we look in a way that is not as easily defined, but is actually what’s necessary to create that change. That’s like, I feel like one of the most beautiful applications of it is when you start to go like, I can’t be so committed to my sense of, of what people have done before and how we should present ourselves. What we need is to respond to the moment, whether or not that’s easy for others to define. We need to take on a shape that’s going to, you know, respond to the shape of the issues that we face today. It’s interesting that you, you remind us that arts were brought in. I mean, I’m thinking of the AIDS quilt, uh, but there were also dances about HIV AIDS, um, not, yeah, again, not what you would expect, uh, to your point, um. All right, I don’t know. Kyle Crawford, what is it about your background that drives you to this, to this ambiguity work? Why, why can’t you just be more, be more definite, or, or why can’t you talk about topics like organization? Uh, you know, this is 1234, this is what, no, what, what drives you to this, to this work, to this book? Ambiguity is the answer. Well, how did you get here? Yeah, it’s a little bit of everything. I mean, I grew up in kind of like radical punk DIY politics, which was very, very loud, be bold, um, you know, that kind of moved into anti-war organizing during the Iraq War, right? Like it was, I, I feel like I grew up with this. This idea that if you mobilize enough people, people in power will go, yeah, that’s enough people, and we’re gonna do what you want now. And I like with the war that just never happened. Like, you saw the largest protest ever, and it was always this dangled carrot, like, if you do what you’re told to do. People will make the change that you’re asking them to make, and I just saw that not work. I think enough times to say that like, we’re repeating this story, we’re we’re raising people into this narrative that you just do what you’re supposed to do and there’s like a rationality to it, and, and those changes will just be implemented when it’s presented the right way or with the right number of people. I just saw that not working enough where um I think I tied that kind of like that very radical, punkish need for big change with this real urge to say like, what are we missing from all the stories, like, the the planning, the structures, the all of that just was to me was not cutting it. Um and so, to be totally honest, I just, I just went into history as much as possible, you know, I was working and doing all the normal things as well, but on the side, I just kept thinking like, There’s something we need to know. To give ourselves a better shot at all of this, um, and I just found it in just such a wide breadth of of areas that, um, yeah, I mean it’s, it’s in the subtitle, but like it is this timeless aspect of how change is created. Um, and I just wanted to find, find that in as many places and then just make that as clear for folks as possible. The irony, of course, right, is writing about ambiguity and trying to be as clear as possible in your writing. I was just like, oh man, if I could get away with it. Being ambiguous on some of this, it would have been easier writing, but it was like it was this real fun. It’s a real fun challenge to be like, I’m talking, you know, this, this very making the case for this, but you can’t do that if you’re not sort of like as precise as possible in your language. So it was a fun challenge. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. I have a new tale from the train. This was my ride home from Kate’s house, actually, uh, over Christmas, took Amtrak back down south from the Wilmington, Delaware station to North Carolina. That’s a long ride. Uh, and as I had said, uh, a few weeks ago when I was extolling the virtues of Amtrak, you know, there are no 3 seats. Amtrak only has 2 seats on each side. So you don’t, first of all, you don’t have to worry about being in the middle. That never happens, can’t happen on Amtrak. Uh, but also, you know, it’s a, it’s a little, it, it’s a little chummier, you know, because you’re on the train for so many hours. Um, and you have these nice wide seats, and it’s comfy and eating is easy and It’s easier to talk to your roommate, and I did talk to mine. His name is Samson. And he’s just a, you know, delightful man, uh, retired, he’s 78 years old. He’s a caregiver for his mom, who’s 90. 7 or 98, something like that, um, and she lives with him. You know, but he does also on his own, he does local theater, he’s in a local theater company. So he was telling me about some of their recent productions, plus the next one that’s coming up. His brother was in the state legislature in South Carolina. That’s where he was headed. He was going to South Carolina. So, you know, just a delight, you know, so when you can strike up these conversations with strangers, could be on an airplane, certainly possible, but um again, the advantage to Amtrak is you’re spending a little, you’re spending more time next to somebody. Uh, so it becomes a little bit easier. Uh, either way. Have chats, you know, chats with your roommates, whether planes, trains, or automobiles, uh, planes, trains, or buses, buses would be a little tough. People are more, more uptight on buses, so it might not work there. But maybe something brief, a brief, a brief bus encounter that could work. So, That’s Tony’s take to a uh. The serendipitous, long conversation. With Samsung on Amtrak. And that is Tony’s take too. OK I think I already talked about this my first time on Amtrak alone. The first time I did it, I was with my roommate. So I was sitting next to someone I knew. But the second time I went, I was alone and I was scared, and it was Christmas break, so everyone was there. And I got to sit next to someone who I was able to talk to. And I think I said that she built playgrounds, and she had a little traveling dog with her, and she was really nice. I wish I remembered her name. Um, but I’ll always remember like being so terrified, but then this really nice woman was like, hey, come sit with me, like, OK, and then we like we’re best friends for those two stops that we were together and she got off. But yeah, start up conversations. Yes, absolutely. No, no reason to be terrified. Well, we’ve got Beau who but loads more time. Here’s the rest of Ambiguity is the answer with Kyle Crawford. Were you a musician? You mentioned punk culture a couple times. Are you? I did, I wrote a tiny bit, um, and then I did zines. I did the kind of like self-publishing in in the kind of organizing. I did a lot of um food not I ran a food not bombs out of my house and it was kind of like the political do it yourself side of. But yeah, I never not bombs. What was that? I mean, I can imagine, but what was that about? Yeah, I think out of the 70s, but essentially, you know, we would get food from there’s chapters all over, but we’d get food from the co op every Sunday, cook it, serve it for free in public. Um it was just this very like, very simple kind of direct action type of thing, but Kind of the punk movement has kind of close ties to that type of work. I did a lot of um books to prisoners organizing when I was younger as well, so just, yeah, it was just, it was always kind of trying to pair what’s the most tangible good you can do with also how are we gonna sort of like change this fundamental um. Dynamic that we’re in, so, yeah, just Just combining a whole lot of yeah, a little roadie work too. What is that like? What’s that like? Oh, it’s a bands that we would recognize in the punk scene or you came from the Pacific Northwest, so yeah, let me shout out. Yeah, it was a Broadways, um, say it again. Broadway calls Broadway calls. Oh, cool, yeah. I’ll have to let them know pop punk band, um, yeah, we went to California. I, to me, I think there’s probably what a lot of people who are musicians realize when they tour is sort of like. There’s a lot of sitting around and was there a budget for you? I mean, were you sleeping in people’s homes or what? Yeah, we were, we were sleeping on couches. I would sell zines and try to contribute my couple bucks every day and uh, yeah, I remember eating. Eating corn off the back of a truck and yeah, you know, you had to contribute money to this. No, I actually took, I took an overnight Craigslist ride from Portland to LA. Me and some stranger, we just alternated off who was driving, like we did probably said two words from Portland to LA cause we just slept at alternating times, but yeah, I just showed up in LA and joined him for. For a little while. Greg, Greg Newmark was a guest on the, on this show years ago years ago, yeah, yeah, after he had left Craigslist, but, uh, talked about some of his veteran’s work and he’s expanded since then. But yeah, Craigslist. All right, um, you got a roadie story. I mean, besides eating corn off the back of a truck, you got a like a good like punk band. I, I, I think my favorite moment, which is very funny, there was like a high school band, um, I think in Soul Dad, California, you know, just like 16 year olds, and the kid just starts breaking his guitar. And I mean, there’s probably 5 people in the audience. I, I remember telling somebody in the band, I was like, I could watch a band like. this every day. And he was like, I don’t need to see another one of these bands in my whole life. But I, I’m such a sucker for just like, you know, we’re just you’re in it. I just, I don’t know, something about like a kid getting, I don’t know, yeah, so I, I, uh. Yeah, like he was drawing energy from the 5 people in the crowd. Yeah, and just like that, you know, he’s probably on his first stage and feeling like a rock star. I don’t know, there’s something, there’s something endearing about how you, how you get absorbed into those, those worlds. It’s like when you’re, I don’t know if you ever like went in a mosh pit, like when you’re young and you get bumped around and thrown on the ground. I don’t know why, but, you know, there is something to like, you’re like, well, I’m in it now, like this is part of it. So yeah, that wasn’t my experience. One mosh pit in New York City. I went to, I went to see a band. I don’t, I don’t even remember the name of it. Um, and I, I, I got there early, so I was up close, you know, but then people started pushing my like my glasses were flying away. All right, but I’m older than you are, um. But uh yeah, I, I, it was all I could do is just get to the fringe of the, of the act of the uh semi-violent activity. I know it’s not violent, but the, you know, the, uh, the pushing and shoving, I, I had to get out of that as quick as I could. I almost lost my glasses and Yeah, it’s different but it didn’t feel safe. What did you say? I said it’s different with glasses. I had the same thing. It’s like, yeah, once you drop your glasses once you’re like, Oh, this is not worth it. Yeah, this is not fun. I’m not into the spirit of this at all. So I, I experienced it for like 90 seconds as quick as I could get out of the crowd. Um, but there’s like there’s no indication that it’s coming either. that maybe if like I said, I don’t remember the band. I don’t remember the club. It was somewhere in New York City. Um, so maybe for fans of the, of that band, maybe that’s common, you know, they expect it, but I just got there early, so I just stood up front, you know, I, I didn’t know. I didn’t, um, I didn’t get swept up in the movement that one. I, I got out as quick as I could. I was not swept up. I wanted out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was that was that movement was not for me, um. Let’s talk about in the article you cite a couple of uh rich historical figures besides Harriet Tubman. You mentioned Billie Holiday, musician Muhammad Ali, Thurgood Marshall, uh, let’s uh it’s, I used to be a lawyer. Uh, I didn’t like practicing law, but I used to be a lawyer. Thurgood Marshall, Supreme Court justice. What was his, why do you cite him as a, as an example of why, uh, ambiguity is the answer? Yeah, he’s, so he’s the opening chapter, and he, he’s maybe the less uh literal application I will say, um, but every chapter in the book has sort of A role of ambiguity as something, right? So for Thurgood Marshall’s chapter, it’s ambiguity as as precursor, which is essentially like precursor to a big change is usually a period of ambiguity, right? And so for Thurgood Marsh, before, before you, I’m sorry, I should give folks context because a lot of people may not know who Thurgood Marshall is. Uh, it was a black Supreme Court justice, uh, in the, in the heat of the civil rights era. Um, Brown versus Board of Education was, I don’t know if he wrote that decision. He may have. I don’t, I don’t remember. He did a lot of his work was actually was like, OK, he argued, he argued Brown versus Board of Education, but he did ascend to the Supreme Court. In the civil rights era and, and, and beyond. OK, I just want to set a little context. Yeah, yeah, perfect, thank you. I should have done that as well. The, um, I mean, his, his, I think if you’re thinking strategically with Thurgood Marshall, um. What he had to do, he was the the head of the NAACP legal education fund, um. What he had to do was take a stack of 500 cases every year, right, and say which of these is not only gonna produce an outcome for the for the individual in the case, right, but which of these is gonna create a legal precedent that’s going to build up to rulings like Brown v. Board, right? And so I think where you think about ambiguity was that like Thurgood Marshall was not secretive about what he wanted to accomplish. He was not shy about, you know, eliminating segregation. In all sorts of places, um, he was not shy about expanding justice to everybody that that it should be expanded to. What he was more, I would say more ambiguous about was um his strategy for doing that, right? And so what I say in the book that um You know, to sort of outsiders, and he looked like an underfunded lawyer just taking on a smattering of cases. What he was doing in practice was laying that that precedent groundwork so that each of these cases was building and making the legal justification for much bigger rulings. And so some of those would be like, you know, he might say like, You know, he got a ruling in Texas where, you know, if, if there’s no higher education for black students, the white institutions must, um, Must enroll them, right? So it’s a very like, very small kind of piecemeal winning, which doesn’t get even to the heart of the issues that he really cared about, but that actually opened the door enough where he could expand that in another place and do it in another place. So you get to the point where segregation in any institution is fundamentally illegal, and we have all these little justifications that that make that the case, and so, um. That that’s where that sits, but I think, you know, there is an irony, especially with your legal background, you know, the irony with Marshall is that the ambiguity in Brown. People actually point to as being a reason why the actual changes haven’t been produced as much. There isn’t, there wasn’t a timeline for integrating schools. There was not standards around some of that. It was left so ambiguous that actually the implementation struggled, but um the chapter focuses much more on his strategy to bring about that in the first place. It sounds like strategic ambiguity. It was very thoughtful, very thoughtful process. All right, um, in terms of You know, using this to your advantage, um, you talk about holding multiple readings of your situation and you’ve, you’ve, you’ve alluded to this, you know, but I wanna hit, you know, pull on this little thread a little further about just having different interpretations of, of what you’re facing. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we talked about that a little bit. I, I gave, I gave a workshop one time um on sort of like futures thinking and we, we crafted different scenarios for folks, right? And it was funny because to me, the components of these different scenarios all seemed equally. Bland, like they, they didn’t seem ne necessarily negative or positive, but almost across the board, it might have just been the time of year or whatever it was across the board, everybody felt like they had been given the most negative set of scenario features. And so that was like a realization where you You can take the, you can take almost just like facts or factors or pieces of, of your circumstance, um, and people will project readings onto them. But I think in terms of the beneficial role of kind of holding multiple readings, it’s really in the sense that I think that for a lot of folks. It’s it’s, it’s somewhat dictated how you’re supposed to view your circumstance, what different pieces mean, and a lot of the book and a lot of the research sits with people saying, I hear how I’m being told to look at my situation or look at myself, and actually my obligation. Or responsibility is to hold an awareness of what I actually know to be true, and I’m gonna hold that in the face of what I’m told is the situation, um, and then, and then kind of rooting what you’re doing in that. And so a lot for a lot of, I think a lot of that is just, you know, the maybe the most obvious place for that is like WEB Du Bois, like double consciousness is is having a sense of what you’re told. The social environment of the nation is, and then actually knowing what that experience looks like, that plays out in all sorts of different places, but I think there’s a historically you see there’s a ton of power in saying, I see how I’m told to look at the situation and I’m holding on to the truth of what I actually know to be true, um, and I think that that helps you not only navigate those circumstances, but, um, figure out ways to change them as well. Without giving voice to what you know to be true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it’s being described to you in as one set of circumstances, but you know that there’s another underlying truth. So holding and holding that, you know, sort of to yourself while you’re working toward changing that. Exactly, and I think nonprofit leaders are very uniquely familiar with this. It’s sort of you’re told how to present your work, you’re told what you need to do to bring more funders on board, and there’s always a little bit of attention, I think that, I think nonprofit leaders do an excellent job of it, but there is a tension in You’re telling me I have to operate this way or present what we’re doing in this way, and I know the reality on the ground is something fundamentally different, and I have to like, like nonprofit leaders have to live in that tension and navigate between those two, but it is a little bit of like Often, OK, I’m moving how you want me to move, but also I have to, cause you’re not quite getting what the situation on the ground is. I have to hold that awareness while still navigating um in order to to get the funding that we need, but I think the nonprofit leaders get pushed. In that, in that situation a lot, and I think that a lot of folks navigate that, um, much better than they’re given credit. And part of, part of like the, the push for me for ambiguity was also was with nonprofit leaders recognizing this is how they have to operate a lot of the times, but, but they’re told that you’re not supposed to, that it’s not supposed to be part of the work, but actually to navigate funding environments and all the work on the ground. You’re having to do that all the time, um, present the same program in slightly different terms because this funder likes it told this way, this funder likes it told this way, but the actual work might not even change, right? Nonprofit leaders are masters at that, um. But also we’re sort of supposed to act like we’re not and that’s not what’s happening, um. So I felt like we should give voice to that a little bit. Yeah, uh, you’re alluding to the the foundation fundraising, institutional, institutional grant making, um, you know, Trying to work within the. The confines of the funding priorities of different. Uh, the different funders. So you know, like going back to our example and and one might be a community foundation that funds work only in the county or the town even, but another might be, you know, an early education intervention funding priority, uh, and another one might be like college college prep. Uh funding priority and so you’re trying to, as you said, you know, describe your work. Uh, within, within all those different constraints, yeah, you’re right, you’re right, nonprofit leaders are. Extraordinary at that. Yeah, to communicate that out multiple messages to multiple audiences, multiple meanings is the same, about the same work is is a type of expertise that uh we I think we don’t recognize but is to me is like is just a fascinating level of awareness and ability, um. And yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think I could name a group that does that more often or more effectively than nonprofit leaders, like, sincerely, I really don’t. Yeah, that’s an that’s a really interesting subject thread, um. Yeah, no, and, and they’ve come to do it out of necessity. I mean they need the they need the institutional funding along with hopefully other, you know, other, other revenue sources, but, uh, and then government as well. You can imagine the constraints around government grant making. Federal grants, even state grants. All right. Yeah, that’s, well, that’s, that’s been born of necessity. Mm Um, how about, uh, Billie Holiday? How does she, how does she fit into, uh, ambiguity is the answer? Yeah, she’s one of my favorite because I think that, uh, you know, you better now you give the context for this one because you know, you know her work better and her her background better than I do. So fill in some context before, before you, you explain. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, Billie Holiday, um, phenomenal singer, kind of early part of the 20th century, black woman, um, bisexual. What I say in the book is like rose from poverty, the sold out shows at uh Carnegie Hall and magazine covers and all these other things, um. Uh, I think for me that she’s she’s incredible and that chapter I actually love so much cause there’s, there’s so much incredible work around. I think the layers of meaning and and power that she represented and and conveyed, but I think in general you could think about it in terms of like, A lot of her skill was in taking these very bland lyrical songs, and with the way that she conveyed them, conveying so much more meaning. I think the the most maybe applicable way about thinking about this is that um kind of coming out of a blues tradition, the same lyrics can mean multiple things, right? And so kind of to the conversation we’re just having, she might be singing a song about being treated right. And you might hear that and think this is about a relationship issue, right? This is about a partner wanting another partner to see them and show up for them and and and be there for them and do right by them. To a different audience or at the same time. Those same lyrics might mean the nation is not treating me right, and the nation deserve, like, should be treating me right, and that same lyric that feels like it’s about a relationship can also be a call for justice, a call for organizing. And so Billie Holiday, I think just in this way that there were so many layers to her, her story, there’s all these kind of piecemeal stories that um Contradict one another, that sort of don’t tidy up into a neat narrative about what is essentially just like this fascinating complex. Incredibly impactful woman. There is no neat narrative about her that holds up, and I think that that’s reflected also in the way that she um she sang and and and conveyed so many things. So I think she just like she just embodies to me like the art side of this, which is some of the things we love the most, we don’t understand. Like, we can’t pinpoint, we can’t sort of like break down. The the the perfect musicology about why somebody like her is so captivating, and actually there’s a lot in our lives, I think that it’s these things we don’t understand. They just captivate us and we don’t understand them and we’re pulled to them anyways, um, and I, I, I actually really love that side of this, like, these are some of the most meaningful moments as, as humans, um. And I think they’re the the kinds of things that we return to cause we’re trying to figure out why do I love this so much. The article mentions, uh, examples that we’ve just talked through a couple, uh, the folks are all black. Uh, it’s Thurgood Marshall, Muhammad Ali, Billie Holiday. Um, Harriet Tubman. Why, why is that because of the, the, the black experience in the United States? What, what is it, what is it that uh makes them excellent examples of, uh, why ambiguity is, is valuable? Yeah, I mean, I think that they’re all incredible people. I think that, I mean, There is just a lot, I think, to, to history, having incredible black people navigate just some heinous situations in this country. And so I think that, um, you know, each of those people, I think their examples are also very different from one another. So they’re all black, but, but they’re they’re what they’re navigating, how they’re using it, how they’re doing these things, um. You know, they tend to be in different chapters looking at it from very different angles, um. And I think that to me that’s just, to me it’s just some of the most powerful stories in history that I discovered. The book includes folks like, um, I mean all sorts of different folks, but um. You know, one example is like Phumz An An was this journalist from Vietnam who he ended up working for multiple sides during the Vietnamese-American War, um, And ended up essentially kicking, helping kick out the United States despite having very close relationships with everybody, and then forming kind of like reconciliation between the nation, like, just one of the most fascinating characters um that I I’ve ever read about, but you know, there’s Virginia Woolf and there’s Jane Jacobs and there’s Cesar Chavez and um. Yeah, there’s there’s a whole cast of characters, and I think for me it was, it was really like, what are the what are the stories that illuminate this, this piece of ambiguities application in doing something incredible, um, wherever I could find the most interesting stories and juxtapose with others that we tied it together, yeah. You called it the Vietnam-American War. Not the not the not the Vietnam, yeah, I don’t, uh, I don’t think just saying the Vietnam War makes tons of sense, but, um, yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s the correct language, but just saying that I’m not correcting. I’m curious you know, I never heard it called that. Yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that we had a role in, you know, yeah, enormously. I think that if you, you know, if you think like the Iraq War, the Vietnam War, like you’re essentially taking out. Our nation’s role in those circumstances, it sounds like it’s something that just happened there. To them for um um and we had no role. So yeah, I don’t, I don’t speak about it a lot, but it doesn’t, I don’t, something doesn’t sit right to me about just, just putting it on the nation that we invaded. I don’t, I don’t, yeah. I see. OK. OK. Uh, what else, what else about ambiguity we haven’t, we haven’t talked about yet or something you want to go deeper on something that we did talk about? What else? I mean, I think one last thing that might be worth mentioning is that in the article and Stanford Social Innovation Review, it ends with a number of questions that organizations can ask themselves. And so, um, if we got too heady or theoretical at any point in this, which is my, my fault or my tendency, um, the part of the, part of the point of that article is to really distill things that the leaders can do. As they think about how they want to move their organization forward. So some of that is just questions you can ask yourself, you can ask your leadership team, you can ask the board, you can ask as part of a strategic planning process, um, to consider. If the choices that you’re making or the the tendencies that you have as an organization reflects the circumstance that you’re in today, or if they just kind of reflect the um the tendencies that you have as an organization and so um that that might be somewhere uh folks get a lot of kind of very practical useful application of some of the things that we’ve talked about. Some of the questions that are there, there, like you said, there are 10. Do we have enough power right now to be fully open? Would, would being more ambiguous help us learn more information? Or a couple, do we need to clarify the situation now, or do we trust it to come to light over time? So do you know, we take the narrative or is it gonna emerge? All right. The article in strategic, sorry, uh, the article in Stanford Social Innovation Review is the strategic Art of Ambiguity. Kyle’s book is Ambiguity is the Answer Timeless Strategies for Creating Change. Kyle, thank you very much. Appreciate you opening up. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tony. Next week, storytelling with Sarah Wood. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Clark 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
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