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Nonprofit Radio for November 13, 2023: Fundraising 401

 

Laurence PagnoniFundraising 401

That’s Laurence Pagnoni’s latest book. When this first aired, it was his new book, but Laurence’s strategies and tactics are timeless. It’s a series of masterclasses for all levels and a collection of revelations he gained over 35 years in nonprofit management and fundraising. (This originally aired May 29, 2020.)

 

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We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

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

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

Nonprofit Radio for November 6, 2023: Your Website Performance

 

Charles LehositYour Website Performance

The first of its kind, 2023 Nonprofit Website Performance Report reveals startlingly disappointing performance across nonprofit websites. RKD Group’s Charles Lehosit explains the shortcomings and how to make the advances needed, so your site’s vital signs improve.

 

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We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

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

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite Hebdomadal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be thrown into Primo Dinia if you pained me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming? Hey, Tony, your website performance. The first of its kind 2023 nonprofit website performance report reveals startlingly disappointing performance across nonprofit websites. RKD groups. Charles Laos. It explained the shortcomings and how to make the advances needed. So your site’s vital signs improve on Tony’s take two. Thank you were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box dot org. Here is your website performance. It’s a pleasure to welcome Charles Laust to nonprofit radio. He has been described as an entrepreneur solutions, architect, strategist, technologist, and futurist. He’s got a lot of people describing him. Uh It’s uh it’s, it’s admirable just that you got that many people thinking about what you are as Vice president for technology at RKD Group. Charles develops solutions that answer nonprofits business needs. He’s a leading expert in application development, email marketing, lead generation, mobile development website development. We’re gonna talk a lot about mobile versus website and artificial intelligence. He’s on linkedin and the company is at RKD group dot com. Welcome to nonprofit radio, Charles. Thanks Tony. Nice being here. Nice to meet you. I’m glad you are. I’m glad you are. Thank you. We are talking about the 2023 nonprofit website performance report. Uh I’m sure you believe that this report was, is important. We needed it, right? I’m not gonna ask you, you know, but what, why, why should we be paying attention to uh the speed with which websites load? So um two things, one organic traffic is such an important source for uh traffic to your website and ultimately for your online revenue, right? There’s probably no nonprofit on earth would like to say, yeah, I, I’m fine to give up some, not some organic traffic from search. And so because of organic searches, like uh critical role in that valuable traffic. A lot of nonprofits are paying for um SEO or uh to optimize their website. And so this is um this is a, a critical uh component in that optimization and it’s something that nonprofits that are paying for SEO should doubly pay attention to because um you know, the it’s very easy to wipe out your seo investment. If you are, you know, you pay for seo and, and optimize a page, it’s, it’s not frozen in time as updates are made to that page, as updates are made to your site, you’re making impacts that are uh impacting your, your core web vitals. That’s some jargon. And uh and ultimately your, your page speed uh scores. All right. Well, we got a few things there. Now. What’s the jargon? You said, You said it so fast, I didn’t even catch it. So, uh Google, Google has coined the term core web vitals, core web vitals. CWVS. Of course, it’s common knowledge. You CWVS, it’s like EKG, you need an annual EKG. Uh you, you gotta watch your CWVS exactly a little bit, uh more frequently than annually. But, um, not every day, not every day. We do have some people that just obsess and I love you all that obsess over it just don’t obsess over it every day. Uh So core web vitals describe um the end user experience with your website and it’s completely defined by Google. And if we think about like Google has a pattern of doing this, right. Google has told us over the years that security matters. And if you don’t have an SSL certificate, if your website doesn’t have http S support in it, uh then that’s gonna impact your ability to rank and be found in search results. If your website doesn’t support, um, mobile, uh then that’s gonna impact your ability to be uh to rank in search results. I remember though, I remember those being issues that we, we have to pay attention to mobile now because whatever it was, 85% of users are opening page, we websites on mobile. So now we have to be mobile optimized. That was like that was like the uh there was a cry for a year or so, you know, um accessibility was another one. Exactly. Stability is important. Um And I remember the HTTP S too, the uh S we all got to get a HTTP S. All right, this is the, this is the uh it’s the, it’s the, that’s the banner call for the year. Now, we all gotta be secure sites. I remember these things. Exactly. So Google’s definitely ratcheted up like, you know, think of like security is important. No one’s gonna argue against that, you know, mobile optimized is, is, you know, in accessibilities board, no one’s gonna uh argue that but you think of the stairway of complexity and now it’s almost like they’re saying you got to leap three or four steps on this next one because they’ve really combined. Um There’s more than one metric and, and the core web viles where security was really binary is you either have, you know, an SSL certificate or you don’t, you are secure, you’re not and, and mobile optimized, you could argue is the exact same way. And so core web vitals are, um, are definitely uh more complex uh metrics for, for really all organizations. All right. So it’s, it’s, it’s more technical. We’re, we’re, we’re refining. I’m not sure, you know, uh a, a to me, accessibility is a big thing. Security. Very big thing. Mobile optimized. Very big thing. Um I, I mean, these are important. I’m not saying I’m not saying the report is frivolous but uh I wouldn’t have you on if I thought it was frivolous subject. You know, we I’d be talking to someone else naturally. So and so you would be too right now. So, so, so, so I’m not saying that, but we’re like, we’re, we’re getting uh more degrees of refinement. So maybe more precise, precise degrees of refinement of the, the our our internet experience experience. Google is trying to define what a good user experience is and that’s, it’s so hard, right? And so what Google is trying to say is that a good user experience starts with, how quickly does your content load, how quickly is the most amount of content available? And, and when your content is available, uh does it shift around? So when someone starts to, to read something on your page, does the content jump to another area and they have to go look for it uh like an Easter egg? And so that’s, that describes uh at a high level, the core web vitals and, and Google is really trying to say this is what um this is what makes up a good user experience. OK? And just make it explicit for us why Google gets this credibility? I mean, how, how much of search is still done on, on Google versus the, the, the, the alternatives? Yeah, like all of it. No, not all of it. It was like 99% and then 1% for bing and, and, and, you know, I think a lot of people in the search business are paying attention to A I agents and what they’re possibly doing to Google’s business. But the reality is that um Google search, Amazon search uh being searched. These are, these are um this is where people go to seek information, get questions answered still today. And so Google dominates that space and so that allows them and has allowed them for years to dictate the terms to say, you know, hey, if you want, this is what you need to do to um you know, be found by Google’s users, right? So what Google wants to do what they want to avoid is for, for you. Whenever you’re searching for something and you go to a result that Google’s put in front of you, they don’t want you to go to that result and then have such a poor experience that you come right back and you then maybe give up on Google and go somewhere else, go to Facebook or go, go somewhere else. And so um Google is, is uh you know, letting people know by these metrics, the folks that are, that have better co of violence that have better, they are performing better. They will uh outrank you if it’s one for one, you know, if you have the same similar content and um you think about like cancer research, so similar content, similar like health related articles, uh the article that has better core rev vitals is going to uh uh should outrank the, the, the other. OK. All right. Thank. Just wanna make this uh make it explicit why, why this is important. Um And clearly, there’s some Google self-interest too. They don’t want people to get results that they’re not satisfied with. Uh because you know, that’ll, that’ll hurt their, that’ll hurt their own, ranking, their own, their own experience. Uh People’s experience with them, I should say, yeah, and they have to provide value so they can provide more advertising. OK. Yes, we’re very concerned about their, their bottom line. All right. So these core web values, is that what is that the uh the multiple factors that are measured uh in the, in the report, these are the core web values. That’s absolutely right. Like overall, OK. So cool. Let’s start with uh just following your report. Uh Le let’s, let’s first tell folks uh cause I may forget later. So you have a lackluster host. I’m sorry about that. I may forget later to tell folks where to get the report. So where can they get the full report? Oh, gosh. Um So, well, it’s at the RKD group dot com group. This is our 2023 nonprofit website performance report. And if you Google uh nonprofit website performance report will, would be the first result. Um And yeah, we also have a blog post that I wrote um called Website Performance Matters and you’re probably failing at it. Um very cheeky there. Sorry. And that links to the this research um which is, you know, freely available for, for everyone, right? And the research also links to the blog post. We’re gonna talk about both because the blog post has the uh the what to do about the poor performance that you are uh that odds are you are experiencing? All right. So it just gave away a little bit, but let’s get into the details of the first uh core value, you know, vital, core value, we core web vitals, they are like vital signs, right? Your blood, you have to measure your uh your oxygen saturation, your blood pressure, your heart rate and your overall performance of your website. Exactly what, what is, what, what is overall performance? So it’s a, a cumulative score that’s based off of a lot of jargon. Um So let’s, let’s, let’s mention the jargon names and then we can unpack those, but the cumulative score is based off of first contentful paint. That’s 10% of your score speed index. That’s another 10% of your score. Largest contentful paint that’s 25% of your score. Total blocking time, 30% of your score and then cumulative layout shift, that’s 25% of your score. Hopefully that we’re gonna talk about some of these, the the content, especially the content full. Uh One the first, the largest we’re gonna, we’re gonna break these down. So not to worry uh Charles is not in jargon jail because uh we’re go, we’re gonna, we are gonna define these and talk about them. It’s time for a break. Are you looking to maximize your fundraising efforts and impact this giving season? Donor Box’s online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals from customizable donation forms to far-reaching easy share, crowd funding and peer to peer options. Plus seamless in-person giving with donor box live kios. Donor Box makes giving simple and fast for your donors and moves the needle on your mission, visit donor box dot org and let donor box help you help others. Now, back to your website performance. So overall performance is a, is a an amalgam of the fact that the uh the vitals that you just mentioned, I love, this is vital signs. You know, it’s the health, it’s the health of your, you know, just like the health of your body is based on your weight and body mass index and like blood pressure, etcetera. The uh the vital signs of your website. All right, same thing. Uh Overall performance. Uh I, I’ll, I’ll leave the headline for you. How are we doing overall performance? So, overall performance, um you know, 80% of nonprofits are, are failing um at their core web vitals. And I, I think many are many more are paying attention this year than ever before. Uh But I think many are still, this is an area that’s new to them and, and where they need some uh some help with awareness and education here. And um you know, to kind of develop like new habits, new good habits, as you mentioned. Uh how do you keep your healthy, bo your body healthy, you know, the same, same kind of starts. So applied to your, your website uh when it comes to adding, adding new content, what are you eating? What are you putting into your website? Well, is that new image uh optimized for the web or is it, you know, a giant five megabyte file, that type of thing? OK. And now for each of these vital signs, uh they’re evaluated in mobile, you evaluated them. You, you, you, you did, you do the study or you just uh were you actually doing the, the, you were 2000 websites that you evaluated? Did, did you actually do the work? Did you actually do the work? Put the, put them in uh both um I came up with the, the concept and um I do a lot of this work uh for individual uh nonprofits like our, our clients at RKD. And so, um, you know, we started with, uh I think a list of uh 3000 nonprofits and uh that got whittled down a bit, but we had a, a really good representation of uh the industry and the different sectors uh within our industry. And uh so, absolutely. Um uh I was, you know, part of this part of this study. Um It’s, and you’re right, there is a, a desktop version of these scores and a mobile version of these scores. If you’re paying attention, you know, your desktop scores are a lot more forgiving, they’re probably a lot better than your bubble scores and your mobile scores. You probably wish uh you could ignore this. But what, yeah, we’re gonna talk about each, each of these factors, as I said. But why is it that overall mobile uh uh performance on, on mobile devices is much poorer than on desktop devices. Why is that? So, um it is, is primarily the, the amount of content that we’re putting into our, our pages, right? And so uh think of, think of anyone’s home page and there’s uh almost no end to what people feel like I need to. This is the f front page uh o of our, our online experience of our user experience. And so there’s so much there and we often want it to be interactive and so maybe we want video to it. And so video on desktop is more forgiving because most people have a broadband connection, video on mobile. Uh you know, Google will judge you over like a four G connection. And uh and so it’s less forgiving to have all of this like really heavy interactive experiences and content on on mobile. And so I, I think that’s a good spot to say like achieving 100 isn’t the end goal here. Um You know, we wanna have positive scores, we have good scores so that we rank well. But um sacrificing what you need to communicate, a message shouldn’t be the goal. Uh Meaning like here, here is a uh uh a dark page with light text, here’s a, a light page with dark text and that’s it like that’s, we’re not, no one’s arguing that we go there to that extreme. Although that would, you would score really well. Well, that was, yeah, but that was back in uh dial up and uh DS L days when, before, before we had images and everything was text and, and page load speeds were like 30 seconds. Yeah. And so um and, and some of the mobile scores are still impacted by um that like a four G connection uh time. And so we know we know that’s not everyone on mobile. And so we just have to be aware of that’s, that’s part of uh what, how Google is kind of ranking and judging our, our mobile scores and the report breaks it down by uh by sector. You have probably eight or so uh sectors for each of these vital signs. We’re not gonna go into them. Folks can get that kind of detail if it’s, you know, arts and culture versus education, etcetera versus human services, et cetera. But um we’re, we’re, we’re doing poorly in mobile. Uh I mean, the, the percentage of yeah across the board, right? It doesn’t matter what your sector. Um the um the the percentages of pages that either failed or were poor were poor or needed improvement is very much higher than the ones that were made it good. Unfortunately. Un un un very true. OK. And uh and desktop uh much different desktop scores, it’s across all sectors. It does. And, and one of the reasons for that is Google doesn’t put the same threshold of four G on desktop like it does on mobile. And, and so it’s easier to, to score higher on on desktop. And part of the reason that is also if we think about like where do we often start when we’re designing? So many are still starting from desktop and then thinking well, this all of this will just kind of scale for mobile but it’s mm it’s still quite a bit uh for mobile there. And it’s, it’s why, you know, if we, we think about what might it take to score better in mobile. It’s gonna probably take a lot more folks starting with a mobile design and scaling that up. Interesting. Ok. Ok. Uh ok. So let’s move to our, our next vital sign. 1st, 1st I I, the layman’s term is first piece of content. That’s exactly right. Yeah, but you have a fancy, you have a fancy term. What was it? So, first, contentful paint, first, contentful paint. It’s contentful or contentful. It’s, I guess it’s got to be contentful. It, it is, it’s paint 1st, 1st contentful paint. Exactly. Why don’t they just call it first piece of content? You know, why do these mit engineers need to need to complicate things? All right, it’s the first piece of content that loads on your site, right? That so it could be a text block or it could be an image or it could be, I don’t know your header or what, what? Right, any of those things could be first. And so this is really, um this me metric measures the first point in which the user can see anything, anything. And the first paint, um a, a fast first paint should happen in, you know, 1.8 seconds or less, which today sounds reasonable. But um you know, we start adding doodads and video and we start looking at it maybe a three second first paint and then all of a sudden you’ve got a lower score right over three was poor, isn’t it? Exactly. Exactly. Uh Right. So, between 1.8 and three was uh needs improvement and then over three was poor. Where did we get? So, attention deficit that three seconds is a, is, is a long time. Um That’s a, that’s a, maybe that’s a, uh when, when did we, when did we, uh when did the goldfish beat us on our attention? On an attention span? Right. That’s a metaphysical question. Uh Maybe more for a neuroscientist or something. So, uh but all right. So three seconds is poor for the first piece. And then we’re not talking about the whole, we haven’t gotten to the whole site yet. This is for all the content we’re talking about the first piece longer than three seconds poor. Exactly all the largest, the largest pain is probably a natural place to go next, right? So I just want, I just want to make clear that we’re uniformly bad. 1st, 1st piece uniformly bad on mobile, uniformly better at desktop. It’s so much easier to score better on desktop, right? OK. Yeah. Largest go ahead. Largest paint will be um the, the point at which the largest content is loaded. So that, that, you know, maybe just dropping content f and just call it first paint, largest paint in your head at work. So largest paint would be, when is the majority of your content available for the your end user, your visitor, your, your prospective donor or supporter. And this is you know, shockingly fast, right? This needs to be shockingly fast. So you think about if a good score is 1.8 seconds or less for first paint, a fast largest paint is still uh 2.5 seconds or less. And so it, it the majority of your content cannot uh take too long to follow the first part of your content. And in Google size, right? So still under we’re under three seconds, 2.5, 2.5 seconds. Yeah. And you know, there’s a lot of studies in the ecommerce world that, that show that the cost of doing business. If your ecommerce site, you know, if you could shave a second off of your ecommerce site, what that normally does to, uh to um revenue and conversion rate and, and we don’t like to think of donors and, and nonprofit constituents in the same way, but they’re the same people, the same people that are shopping on Amazon are on your web, right? Amazon and its ilk have raised the bar for, for all websites. People expect that kind of seamless performance uh experience uh because they get it from Amazon. So, so they’re ticked off when they don’t get it from your nonprofit. Exactly. But which is not really fair if Amazon can do it. Why can’t you? Well, uh, ok, because Amazon has, I don’t know, trillion dollar research budgets and tens of thousands of engineers and you don’t. But, uh everybody’s, let’s face it. Everybody is not that, uh, not that forgiving when they evaluate, uh, their experience with your nonprofit. Uh, I, I see that even, especially among, I’m thinking about board members who have their own businesses. Uh, they’re a lot more forgiving of their own businesses than they are of the nonprofit board that they sit on. Um. All right. All right. So, let’s, let’s take a break from, we’re gonna get to the next one after largest content, but uh folks can evaluate their own websites. Oh, yeah, the same, the same way you did, right? With the 2000 that you put in, where, where do, where do people go to evaluate their own site and, and have it measured quickly? Yeah, great question. So, um in Google, Google Page Speed Insights, uh the URL is page speed dot web dot dev, um you don’t have to remember that if you just Google Page speed insights, this page speed one word insights would be the second word. Uh This should be the first result for you and then put in your URL and, and keep in mind when you put in that URL, that’s just one page. You’re testing, you’re not testing your whole site. And so, um just keep in mind like in, in probably when you’ve got people giving you opinions on this, um like a board member, uh they might, if they took a peek at your scores, it’s probably just your home page, which is probably the most content heavy page and, and you have, you hopefully know your top landing pages that drive, uh, you know, your most valuable traffic and this, that and the other. So, uh, don’t just look at your home page, don’t just look at a donation form, take a look at your top landing pages and see how you’re doing, um, overall. Ok. Right. So that perfect sense. Yeah. Right. If you just put in your dot org and, and there, right. It’s just a home page, but you can drill down to those top pages that are, are that, that get the most hits that are most important to you and put those URL S in. And I did, I went to the tool. It’s very simple. It’s just like a Google, it’s just like Google search, just put a URL in and, and click and you’ll get scores on all these uh in all these factors, the vital signs, I don’t know what it’s called, but all the vital signs will be evaluated for your, for whatever URL you put in. I like that. I’m gonna just start calling it vital signs as well, like like respirations and and blood pressure. All right. Um Next one is our speed index score. What is this vital measuring speed index, how quickly your content um is visibly populated? So, uh this is just ultimately, how quickly does everything load? I know this sounds like it should already be captured uh in first paint and largest paint. It’s a separate metric for whatever reason in Google’s world and a fast speed index should be, um you know, 3.4 seconds or less. This is the whole page though. This is the whole page. Initially, we were measuring first piece of content, largest piece of content. Uh This is the entire page. This is the whole page. And do you think about the progression from 1st, 1st paint in 1.8 seconds or less? Largest paint? 2.5 seconds or less? And now the whole page in 3.4 seconds, it’s a, it’s not, you know, you’re talking about hundreds of a second milliseconds. It’s not a lot of time in between these things happening. All right. So 3.4. So the, the for the whole page, you’re letting you go over three seconds, but not, you can’t have 3.5 over 3.4 is needs improvement. Right. Exactly. And what was poor? What, what above what score is or above? What time was poor for the, the speed index score? Oh, gosh, let me actually look at the report on that one. Ok. I just, uh uh I’m just amazed by the lack of a lack of attention or lack of patience that we all have. I’m not, it’s not like I’m saying, I wait, I’m willing to wait 30 seconds for a page to load. And so a poor is together. But no, you’re actually right. A poor score is, um, so needs improvement is, um, sorry, I was actually reading the wrong thing. Um, it should be, uh, over four seconds for Needs for, uh, oh, so it gives you four seconds for the, it gives you four seconds. Yeah, for, for or for poor. Oh, over, wait, over four is poor. Ok. That’s not a lot of time for an entire page. Four seconds. And, and there’s so there’s research that sh that, that if people have to wait too long, they will, they’ll just go away. So um yes. And so what Google, you know what Google is saying is they’re seeing is like you click on a link and you come back or maybe you clicked on what a lot of people probably talk, you click on four links and you know, you’re, you know, you, you aren’t engaging with them or you’re not engaging with them long enough. So that Google goes like, ok, um you spent so many seconds here and it wasn’t enough, you know, this is quick, quick tangent, you know, but in, in Google Analytics four, there is a metric called an engaged session. And the default Google has deemed the default time for an engaged session is 10 seconds. And I, I think that most seconds that’s engaged, I think is engaged. I thought like 30 minutes is engaged. No, no, I think, and I think most of us would actually go like 10 seconds is, um, somebody just kind of window shopping. It’s just kind of like, what, where’s your phone number? What, where’s your address? Like 10 seconds is, and so in Facebook and Google’s world 10 seconds or more as an engaged session. Uh, but I think for a nonprofit that’s trying to make meaningful connections, uh You know, your metric should be, um, a minute, you know, it’s come on, I mean, I, I think Google needs more baby boomers. Uh, and, and, and great generation because we would say like 20 minutes is an engaged session. All right. Exactly. All right. Anyway, that engaging with a person anyway. But even a website, uh, 10 seconds. All right. Uh, yeah, a minute. It just doesn’t seem like a lot of time. I don’t, I mean, you’re reading things, I mean, videos, I understand videos are supposed to be 90 seconds or less. Um, all right. What a world we’re living in to flush it out like this. I mean, I’m, we’re all living it every single day but to talk about, to talk about these speeds, it’s, uh, it’s almost surreal that II I, it’s, yeah, it’s surreal. It’s hard to, hard to imagine it being true now for, uh, our nonprofit friends out there and, you know, when you’re ready you can change your, you can customize your definition of an engaged session and so your engaged session doesn’t have to be Google’s, um, you know, 12th definition you in the future, you can change it to be 30 seconds to a minute, 20 minutes, you can do that. But if you have Google Analytics for off the shelf with that, uh, default setting, it’s 10 seconds. Ok. All right. But it’s changeable. All right. At least, at least the thing is forgiving uh to by human, by, at least by my human standards anyway. All right. Um Let’s deal with accessibility. We’re, we’re doing, this is a good one. We’re doing, we’re doing, we’ve improved over the past many years and this one is the, the best of all the scores that we talked about. All the vital signs that we’ve talked about so far. I agree with you. I agree with you. We’ve in our physical uh locations. We are, have made our physical locations more accessible and inclusive. Uh It’s important that we make our online um content more accessible. Charles is Charles is showing the thickness of his glass. Charles has bad, bad eyes. All right. And so uh I’m not the only one and so we um Google is, is definitely made accessibility um a factor. And so um this is not a hard one to get, right? And you want to get this right? Is it actually 100% overlaps with Seo. So, you know, the alt text on an image. Well, that’s part of accessibility and that also is needed for Seo your good, good page headlines, good page titles. Uh good uh contrast so that people can read. So we’re not doing uh Tony. Let me, let me hear your thoughts on um gray font on a like really light gray font on a white page. That, that, that sounds terrible. I mean, 61 I would be, I would be squinting. Why does this have to be so hard to read? So, yeah, that um contrast is uh important and because it makes it easier to read. And so Google just has seen from people that um where things are, are hard to read. Um whether or not accessible for uh folks, they, they leave and they don’t come back. All right. Uh Th those are the vital signs that uh that I’d like to cover because I want to spend the rest of our time talking about what to do about these issues that you will have discovered when you go to page speed insights uh tool that, that Google tool. Um All right. So you have some advice about uh what, how to prioritize because you know, we, we wanna, we wanna have a good experience for our users. We also want to rank high as high as possible in Google search results. So how do, how do we approach the, the uh the remedy to, to what we, we are likely to discover because we’re all doing so poorly, especially especially in mobile. So um the, I guess I would say step zero is make sure that this is a priority for your whole team. Um You know, if you have a, a partner, uh it’s like an seo specialist or an agency that’s working with you, it can’t just be a priority for them because if you have different team members or even different teams that are creating content, uploading content, uh updating content on your website. Um You know, your, your website is rarely a static set and forget it thing. It’s, it’s um always being updated and touched. And so any investment that you make, um really, you have to have uh step zero b everyone on your team, everyone with your organization that touches the website has to be um you know, following um your own guidelines for uh your healthy vitals uh to have your, you know, healthy and positive vital signs once you’ve got that cause that’s really gonna be whether or not, hey, you know, I spent so much money I invested in, in improving this. And is it going to be the just as good as it was when the investment was delivered, the work was delivered or is it, is it eroded? We would, we really want to avoid uh wasting that investment. So, uh once you’re past steps here, I recommend that you do an audit of your website tags. And so these used to be um hard coded pixels. You know, people used to put a Facebook pixel and a Google pixel and every other pixel like hard coded into their site and we were taught. All right. That’s not the best way to do it. We have moved all of our tags to a tag manager, like Google tag manager or TLI m most nonprofits are using uh Google tag manager, so we’ll stick with that. And so that’s a good thing. Google tag manager makes it easier to control like where a pixel loads where, where an advertising tag loads or doesn’t load. Um What uh I think too many people do is they add tags and then they, but they’re not actually going back and saying what shouldn’t be here anymore. And so, uh here’s a, here’s a little question for the audience is uh how many of you out there uh have Google Analytics three tags still uh loading and your tag manager um As Google Analytics three isn’t capturing, isn’t collecting data for you anymore. And I bet, I bet it’s more than zero. So the tags and this is a, here’s a, here’s another uh neat trick to try. They call it a trick. It’s not, it’s not a trick if you have the ability to have a, like a staging environment for your site. And I hope that you all do. So if you mean, if you have a developer environment where you can make changes and it doesn’t, it doesn’t impact um the your, your site visitors experience do your page speed insights with no tags, like no tags on your, your staging side and see and then, then take a look at what the uh the same uh page speed score is with your production site with the tags on. That’s the cost of all of the, you know, conversion tracking your digital analytics. Um That’s the cost of, of, of that. And I’m not arguing like we, we need that knowledge, We need that information, but there’s a cost to it. There’s an expense and it’s going to impact your, uh, your vital signs. Uh, it’s gonna ultimately impact the, um, the page, uh, the page speed as the time to load the page will be like, do you have 200 tags, 300 tags and tag manager? And it’s all of those are loading. And so, um, it’s good for you to see the total cost of those. So you can know. Well, how often do I need? Can I, can, I just do spring cleaning once a year? Do I needed to have a program where we are looking at, um, retiring tags and removing tags every quarter? Um, it’s probably not, it doesn’t need to be that frequent as every quarter. But if, um, you’re not looking at it at least once a year, chances are, you’ve got like dozens of tags that could be, um, retired and removed and, and that are adding to your, that are lowering your score. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate and thank you for listening to nonprofit radio. I am grateful that you support the show that you’re listening to the show and I understand you might not listen every week, right? You might see a topic doesn’t work for you, but overall you’re subscribing and listening. And I am grateful I’m channeling you. I’m thinking about what topics interest you, guests, interest you, even while I’m talking to a guest, the questions that you would wanna ask. So I’m doing what I can to encourage you to listen and, and I’m, I’m, I’m glad that you’re there. I guess that’s all to say. I don’t take our listeners for granted. I’m grateful that you’re listening and I’m working hard along with Kate each week to uh keep you alone. We want you listening. So, thank you. Thanks for being with us. And that is Tonys Take two Kate. Thank you so much, nonprofit family for sticking with us and for staying with the pod father at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Thank you. All right. Yes, absolutely. Grateful for our listeners. Well, we’ve got Buku but loads more time now, back to your website performance with Charles Laos are tags getting added incrementally as, as content updates. Is that what happens to me? I thought tags were were, well, I had a misunderstanding about tags. Uh I, I thought they were just to describe o overarching, you know what the page is about. Oh no, no, no, that’s so there’s a tag in like wordpress can describe uh the content or the like, you know, describe maybe an image. Are we talking about page? Are we talking about page level or talking uh talking about um uh the the page level? But it’s not in the not in like your content management system, this would be uh like a Facebook pixel so that um your, so that Facebook can know whether or not this person converted on a Facebook ad or Google Google level where Google can know this person converted on a Google ad or, and that type of thing. So all of that, those are all pixels and tags that end up getting loaded on your site. And so those, you know, we, they were originally called a pixel, which sounds like a really innocuous thing, but really anymore, they’re a bit a piece of code that can load or pixels. And so it’s a bit of javascript that can load more code and, um, and it ultimately impact the, uh, the, the how fast or how not fast your sites. OK. OK. That’s for our, for our listeners and for me that that’s sufficient level of detail on tags. Pay attention to your tags, audit them. Sounds like semi annual, you know, twi twice a year or somebody should be paying attention to them at least once a year. I would, I would say at least once a year if you have, uh, you know, under 100 tags, if you have like, uh like 300 tags or more, then this should be a semi annual uh routine for you all. Ok. Excellent. Thank you. Uh, sliders. You’re concerned about sliders. Now, sliders is that these are these images that when you open them, I guess they’re mostly on a home page. But no, they could be other pages too. That’s true. I mostly see them home pages though. The, the, the images slides and there’s five or six dots for you to know how many, how many images there are gonna be or you can select them. Is that a slider? That’s exactly right. That’s a slider. These things. Uh They’re not so they’re not, they’re not so vogue anymore. They’re not um they’re a little out, they’re out there. I still see them around. I didn’t know people have a hard time letting go of their sliders. Right. OK. Why, why are they not as popular as they were like, what, three years ago or just or so? Was it in four years ago? Yeah, you’re right. No, they, they were the standard um three or four years ago for sure what happened, what happened to sliders. So, user experience experts and Google folks like Google have really been steering us away from um sliders where you have one space that has five messages, seven messages and it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, when you’re talking about that that main hero spot on your home page that first loads. There’s I I completely understand why you wanna have. Well, here’s message one and here’s message two. Totally understand why. Uh That is the um that’s gonna result in the, the, the biggest loss in in your health, your uh health vitals, your core web vitals. Um especially if you have, you know, 357 images. It’s not the text that loads in it. It’s the, the images because all of those images load on your site uh in the slider. And so it’s adding to the overall weight of the site. And um kind of a AAA good little sidebar on sliders is the um not enough nonprofits are optimizing the images for the web. And so, you know, it’s, it’s uh very common to see a one like every image to be one megabyte or larger. And so then, all right, you’ve got three images that’s three megabytes, five images, five megabytes and you’re talking about over a four second load time on mobile for sure. And so um here’s a little, a little secret for anybody. It’s free, tiny PNG, tiny PNG. Um you drop drag and drop your images into tiny PNG and they will, it’s a free service and it will uh give you an optimized version. So uh if you’re working in, I don’t know Photoshop, you’re playing around with how much compression should I do or don’t do, don’t do that just drag and drop your images to tiny PNG and um and use that free service to make sure the images on your site are optimized for the web. Cool. Well, I love free resources, tiny PNG dot com. Yep, that’s it. All right. All right. So sliders. So I get for, for, for folks that never implemented sliders when they were popular when they were vogue. So now you’re ahead, you, you, you, you’re so far behind, you’re ahead. You didn’t, you never did the sliders. Now, you’re, now you’re ahead. So it was, it was valuable. So it was worth it to not to not be, not be uh cutting edge. Now, that sounds like my approach to fashion. So yes, that is uh behind your head. That’s exactly right. You’re waiting for bell bottoms to come back. I am too. I know I am. I, I’m waiting to take out my bell bottom suits again. Um All right, sliders not so popular. Not a good idea. Uh The technology changes, I guess because they were, they were the seem to be the standard for website design for, for uh I don’t know how for how long, but I’m thinking like four or five years ago, they were, they were very popular. Lots of, lots of sites converted to the big, big bulky slider files. It was innovative at the, at the, when they first came out, it was innovative because like my, my, it solved the problem. My problem was I need to highlight more than one thing. OK. Yeah. All right. Uh What else? Uh We talk image optimization. I know that’s I snuck in there. Um tiny P NGA really great resource, tiny PNG for wordpress users has a wordpress plug in. Um They have a paid service and tiny PNG also um will let you put in a URL for your, you know, like similar to page speed inside. You can put in your um the page URL and it’ll analyze all of the images on that page and it’ll let you know um where you can do better and then it will offer you a download to have all of those images uh fully optimized. It’s I mean, oh my gosh, what a what a valuable free service. It’s, yeah, we love it. We love it. All right, tiny PNG dot com. Um You have something to say about light boxes, light boxes. So these are pop ups. These are moguls we’re going to call it but you can see but you lightbox, you can see through it, right? Light box where it’s semi uh semi transparent, semi opaque. These also had their moment. Uh I think, I think lightboxes came before sliders, I think. Yeah. Well, the definitely the, like the advertising pop up, that kind of I think introduced this idea of like, hey, why do I do that on my own side? Like I’m not, I I’m trying to say this is what I want you to focus on right now. This is the most important thing for you. So yeah, join our newsletter, sign our petition. OK. Light boxes are, are they, are they out like sliders or they’re, they’re just, you need to be judicious about their use or what we need to be really judicious. Google has um really judicious to the point of don’t use them if you are. All right, Charles trying to nail you down. All right, you don’t have to be so definitive. But if you’re in a competitive market, if so, if you’re um if you’re a food bank use them, you’re, if you’re a food bank, you’re probably not competing with another food bank in your immediate area, use them. Uh If you’re in a competitive market, let’s say, let’s call it cancer research for it to be easy. You could, you could say disaster relief. Uh If you’re in a competitive market. Um Google has said uh light boxes are no on mobile, light boxes are no mobile. So if you are using lightboxes and mobile, that’s a problem. Uh And, and Google is saying that uh translates to a poor user experience. And so lightboxes, that means if you’re, if you’re in that space where you have more competitive peers, we’re not, we might not be saying that you directly compete with them, but there’s a lot of uh competing options. Um then uh lightboxes, you should focus on lightboxes on desktop only that if you’re in a space where you’re the only one focusing on animal welfare in uh Lawrence, Kansas, you’re fine to do cause then you’re not really competing for ranking and um uh animal shelters in, in Lawrence, Kansas. And so you find to use light boxes on bubble and desktop, just know, ultimately, there is a cost to that in, in your core web vitals, but it’s um black boxes and mobile for competitive uh markets really, really risky to your organic search traffic. Help me understand lightboxes versus pop ups. Are they, are they now the same when you’re, when you’re saying light boxes do you, are you including pop ups? No, I I was distinguishing but, you know, again, you know, lackluster host. Uh I don’t work in tech, I work in planned giving fundraising. So to me, a light box was, was a pop up that you could see through and a pop up was a pop up. That was um ok. Couldn’t see. 00 OK. I was talking about a pop up. That was so my, my, my definition of a pop up was more of the, the lightbox that was um opaque. But I guess because I think, you know, you know, the definition. So let’s describe it as um if it’s a pop up and it doesn’t block any of the background behind it. I mean, it, I mean, it doesn’t have any shroud then uh Google is OK with that. If it, if you have a, a pop up that has, or, or a light box, it has a shroud, meaning it’s semi opaque, it’s semi transparent but it blocks content in the background or your access to it. Then uh that’s what Google is saying. That’s a nil on mobile if you’re in a competitive market. OK. All right. And clearly, uh my definition and my understanding is outdated. Don’t be surprised. Uh So pop up, pop up is what we, we refer to them as pop ups. I mean, I’m sorry, we refer to them as light boxes. That’s what, sorry, I’m sorry. All right. Light boxes, light boxes, stop saying pop ups. That’s the last time I’m gonna use that word, the light boxes. All right now, you know, I’m not following this the way you are. Um What, what else should we focus on Charles you got in there in order to make sure your content loads the fastest you should be using what’s called a CD N which is uh a content distribution network. Um You really wanna seek hosting solutions that are integrated with the CD N so that you don’t have to try and solve for this separate. But um you know, so a hosting solution for those of you on wordpress uh WP engine has uh a built in CD N for you and you should take advantage of that for anyone. Uh That needs a separate solution, cloud flare, cloud flare has a really great uh and, and really, really cost effective CD N for you um to help um essentially deliver your content faster. So um the concept this, what this used to describe is that your server might be in California and your site visitor might be in DC. And so the CD N will host images and on their servers closer to DC. So that, that request doesn’t have to go all the way to California to go get the content to go all the way back to DC. And so instead um us clo uh a CD M like cloud flare might have uh your images on your site posted in uh like uh North Virginia data center. So that it’s um that site visitor had accesses your, your site content, faster CD N, faster content CD N content distribution network. Yep. OK. OK. And then you have some advice specifically for WordPress since WordPress is such a popular hosting uh creation platform, WordPress. Um So many nonprofits are on WordPress and uh really, so many websites are on wordpress. And so if you’re on WordPress, um you should really be on WP engine as your uh web host unless you’re doing something. Um There’s a, there’s a few people that maybe W pigeon is w pigeon isn’t the best option for. But the most part, if your website is um um gosh, how, how do I qualify this for you? I under under 10,000 pages WP engine is a really great option for you. Under 5000 pages WPN is a really great option for you. WPNWPWP one. You wanna make sure you want to ask your tch and consultant or if you’re on like you have one Go Daddy hosting, this is not something you want to stay on. Go Daddy hosting for your site. You wanna eventually go OK? If I’m that some of the things that you would do to optimize your health scores or optimize your core of vitals, you can’t do without a proper host. So WP Engine is a proper host for wordpress sites. Uh Go Daddy, sorry, go Daddy. Not so much for you. Um Within WP engine, there is uh an option called uh WP Engines Advanced Network that um is like a, a easy button for uh page performance and page speed. And so uh if you’re on WP Engine, it’s, you’re probably not using that yet. And so definitely uh ask um your website partner, your uh internal technical folks to about the advanced network. The, the next thing for wordpress would be Gutenberg. Uh Gutenberg has been out for a number of years now. Gutenberg uh is the, this is funny to, to say it’s the native editor in wordpress. So meaning like when you, when you are on wordpress, when you are editing content, the native editor that ships would wordpress is Gutenberg. Well, it wasn’t the first editor that ship would wordpress. And so over the years, people worked with their favorite editor that came with so many bells and whistles to make it, make it easier to edit content. Well, those legacy editors um are load the content loads slower than content and Gober and so um people have actually um there was a, a button to defer like I don’t wanna use Gutenberg and I’m gonna, there’s actually a plug in, they would use to Defer uh Gutenberg and push that back. And uh definitely, if you’re, if you’re building a, a new site in 2024 in wordpress, it should be in Gutenberg. It is uh your se your seo um uh consultant or partner will uh will love you for that and so will your pay speed scores? OK. It’s all about the vitals. All right, Gutenberg, go to the original, go to the original printing press, use the Gutenberg. Here you go. We’ve come full circle with uh with technology there, right? All right. You have one more. I got Auto for WordPress, WordPress develop sites. Yeah. So this is again an easy button. And so auto optimize will um gosh, you wish you had this for your own uh life where your body would just sort of exercise itself and would avoid um any kind of bad eating habits. But auto optimize is uh does a lot to advance and improve your page speed scores. Um It’ll also improve your uh images and um also um make your, your, your sight load a lot faster. It is um going to be a lot less expensive to test out auto optimize and see. Did it break anything? Is it, did it, did it improve anything than to uh you know, hire a really expensive uh consultant to do all this work by hand. So definitely um consider if you’re on wordpress, test these things, test these things in a staging or development environment, meaning not in a live environment where we might break something for a site visitor or a donor. And so when we test these things in the staging environment, we can say, oh, this doesn’t break anything and it gave us a 30% improvement to our scores or 50% improvement to our scores. We’ve seen some really drastic um improvements to scores with auto optimized and it’s, it feels like in some ways it’s the easy button for uh wordpress sites, Charles. We’re gonna leave it there. All right. So the, the uh the report is 2023 nonprofit website performance report. You’ll find it at RKD group dot com or just search that report name. Uh And I think, you know, uh to the uh you, you, you’re looking at your own scores like bone density and A one C and cholesterol and triglycerides and uh total cholesterol and uh high density and low density lipoproteins. You gotta look at uh you know, you gotta look at your, at your first piece of content, largest content, your speed index scores. These are all vitals, vitals. Are you looking at your own health, health metrics every day? Right. So, is there a parallel? I mean, uh, well, a little more often, I mean, we hopefully you’re doing a uh primary care physician visit once a year and eyes and uh, dentists should be twice a year. So some of these things are a couple of times a year, right? Some things we obsess over, like you might obsess over blood pressure more than triglycerides. But we’re, we’re, it’s all, it’s all in a balance, right? Is that a fair analogy? It is. I think if you’re obsessing over it daily, that’s an unhealthy obsession. And, and I think if you develop good habits, like you would with, uh, your own, uh, diet and exercise routines then for your website, um, like that priority zero or step zero, I talked about then, um, then you shouldn’t be surprised when you are looking at your core. We vitals, uh, quarterly or semi annually. Um, I would look at it more than once a year, but I wouldn’t look at it every single day. That’s just, uh, when you see a change, uh, on any given day. Yyy, you know, it’s, it’s, I, I think that is, uh, uh, a distraction. All right, Charles Lajos, he’s on linkedin RKD Group is at RKD group dot com. Charles, thank you very much loved it. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Next week, it’ll be one from the archive. If you missed any part of this weeks show, I beseech you to find it at Tony Martignetti dot com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box dot 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 guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 30, 2023: CRM Selection & What To Ask Before Your New Website

 

Rubin SinghCRM Selection

Rubin Singh returns to help you focus on what matters in CRM selection. To keep you safe from a serious misstep, he also shares his thoughts on what else might be the problem, besides your CRM database. Rubin is CEO of One Tenth Consulting.

 

 

Marc PitmanWhat To Ask Before Your New Website

 Stephen Tidmore from Mighty Citizen built his first website in 1999, and hasn’t stopped. He shares the questions you need to ask up front, before you embark on a new website project.

These both originally aired on June 14, 2021.

 

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[00:01:04.26] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father. We’ll just start again with this take. Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite Hebdomadal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d come down with Hypo is Phoria. If I saw that you missed this week’s show, here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s up this week?

[00:01:57.85] spk_1:
Hey, tony, this week it’s CRM selection. Ruben Singh returns to help you focus on what matters in CRM selection to keep you safe from a serious misstep. He also shares his thoughts on what else might be the problem besides your CRM database. Ruben is CEO of 1/10 consulting. Then what to ask before your new website, Steven Tidmore from Mighty Citizens built his first website in 1999 and hasn’t stopped. He shares the questions you need to ask up front before you embark on a new website project. These both originally aired on June 14th, 2021 on Tony’s Take two

[00:02:00.29] spk_0:
loving. The donors

[00:02:37.56] spk_1:
were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box dot org and by Kela grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers, CRM visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. Here is CRM selection.

[00:02:42.65] spk_0:
Welcome to tony-martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 21 NTC. You know what that is? It’s the 2021 nonprofit technology conference with me now is Ruben Singh CEO of 1/10 consulting Ruben. Welcome back to nonprofit radio.

[00:03:00.00] spk_2:
Hey, thanks so much, tony. Thanks

[00:03:40.48] spk_0:
for having me. My pleasure. My pleasure. Your topic this year is CRM selection. When you don’t know what you don’t know which is kind of related to what we did, uh talk about last year, which is don’t get played by the product demo that was listeners can go back to listen to that. That was uh when we talked about the uh the flash bang demo that doesn’t turn out to be so you, you can’t replicate the of which you cannot replicate the wizardry when you’re, when you’re posting sta it just doesn’t seem to fly, fly quite as fast as that product demo. So that was when we talked about last year. Um This year. What’s the trouble around CRM selection and these unknown unknowns?

[00:04:42.84] spk_2:
Yeah. Yeah. No, thanks. Tony and, and um uh yeah, this seemed like a good, good way to, to spring board off off of last year’s presentation with the demos because, uh still, you know, with all the organizations, with so many of the organizations that I work with, uh the selection process has just such a challenge. Uh And I even took the opportunity during the conference itself to ask, you know, what is it, what is it so challenging about these CRM selection processes? Is it that there’s just too many options in the market? Too few options? Is it uh you know, just uh confusion about the features they offer? Is it just, you know, if you right? No, or is it more on the internal side, you know, decision making as I suspected? II, I guess it is, it’s across the board there, there’s all kinds of reasons that people are really um struggling right now when it comes to selecting Cr MS. So, so that’s why we wanted to look at this top is, is really um try to unpack some of the reasons that make it so challenging and also give some advice on what can make the process go a little bit smoother.

[00:05:00.60] spk_0:
OK. The one thing that you ticked off that I, I imagine the problem is not, is that there’s too few Cr MS available? I don’t think that’s a problem. Is it?

[00:05:02.58] spk_2:
Uh Well, II, I think, yeah, I wouldn’t say there’s too few but then once you get into, you kind of dig in a little bit past the surface and really look at, you know, the types of functions that you need. So um you know,

[00:05:16.44] spk_0:
you might have a few options based on your specific

[00:05:25.98] spk_2:
exactly like, you know, everybody will have, you know, the the constituent management side of things and everybody will have, you know, basic activity management, donation management. So no, no shortage of solutions in the market there. But then you say, hey, you know, is there a solution out there in the market that does outbound funds management really well? OK. Well, now you’re down to like two. So, so I think so. So there is too few but yeah, there is a nuance there for sure,

[00:05:42.31] spk_0:
I understand. All right. So you know, how do you help folks? Where should we start with this? How do, how do you help folks make sense of this uh confounding landscape?

[00:07:45.53] spk_2:
Yeah, you know, there’s, there’s a few things I think that, that, that folks can do and, and the first and foremost is, is really uh when you have a selection process, uh you know, what I think you can do to make the most of it is, is first make sure that you have the right team internally. Um because uh you know, oftentimes I walk into situations like this where we do selections and, and you know, I I’m told, OK, you know, it is gonna make the decision here or leadership is gonna make the decision here and, and neither of those really work out particularly well. So I think really having a uh a cross functional team, not only in terms of where they sit in the organization, uh you know, across the organizational hierarchy, but also looking at the diversity of the team. And this is something that I, I personally feel is very important, you know, even even diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, age, you know, uh tech, technical, technical skill, capability, um ability, ee everything, you know, all those things are gonna matter, you know, even if you uh work with external constituents, uh perhaps even engage some of your uh program participants in the process, the more diverse that you can have your team, uh you’re really gonna have uh a solution in the end that that really represents what they need. So I, so I think really assembling a team, the the right team is, is a key part and often gets overlooked. Um Another thing is really just being honest with the, the expectations of the system. So, you know, I have some organizations that I work with that say, ah you know, well, we don’t have much budget and we don’t have any resources that can manage this system really ongoing. We need something that, that can, we can plug and play, it’s gonna work. So, so tell me about sales force or, or you know, tell me about razors edge and I’m like, wait, wait a second, you know, those are not the only, you know, two products in the market. There’s a lot of other tools that are out there that are more aligned for you that you can uh that is more plug and play. And then, you know, now granted you might be trading off some opportunities to, to, you know, it may not be as customizable or it may not be uh all the, the depth of functionality you need in certain areas. Um But uh going the other direction and having a highly customizable system that needs a lot of maintenance and, and when you don’t have the, the team and the resources and the budget to maintain it, it, it can really put you uh in a, in a tough spot. So, so those are kind of a couple of things I I have more but, but those are a couple of things that I think that often get overlooked is really starting in with those, those right expectations and having the right team to help make that decision.

[00:08:09.17] spk_0:
R unfortunately, you’re stuck with me as a lack of host. II. I should have asked you initially, how do you know if you need a new CRM before you even wade into these waters? Maybe CRM, maybe your CRM is not your problem. How do you make sure it’s, it’s AC RM. That is your problem and not not your processes or your leadership or something

[00:08:29.25] spk_2:
else. That, that’s a great question, tony. And, um I wish I had asked

[00:08:33.11] spk_0:
it five minutes ago.

[00:08:56.72] spk_2:
No, no, no problem. And, you know, it’s, uh I’ve worked for, um you know, product companies in the past where, you know, we have a specific methodology, specific product to, to come and solve your problem. And I’ll be honest with you, tony, you know, over the years I’ve, I’ve implemented CRM solutions. Uh you know, on time on budget, we’re sitting there after go live, everybody’s celebrating. And I, I walked out of those clients thinking to myself, this is not gonna end well, this is not, this is, they are not set up for the success and it really has nothing to do with the CRM. And you felt

[00:09:13.69] spk_0:
that way even on your champagne high after their champagne ate their hors d’oeuvres, you still, you still walk down, feeling, feeling

[00:10:28.25] spk_2:
unsatisfied. Well, I tell you walking to my car in the, in the parking lot. I sit there in the car and I’m like, oh boy, this, I’m gonna hear from these folks in, in two months and, and I don’t know what I could have done differently, you know, and, and it’s, it’s really for the things that you said that, that I i it’s uh it’s really making sure that uh do they have the right support ongoing? Do they have the right governance structure? Do they have good decision making, you know, uh uh processes when things come up. Um Do they have the right executive buy in? Um are the processes really well aligned to help them be successful in the new system or did they bring their own sort of broken promises into the new s uh sorry, broken uh broken processes into the new system? Uh or uh even their data, you know, oftentimes these, these projects kind of run overboard and then they just say, ah, well, let’s just, we don’t need to clean the data, let’s just push it into the new system and, and we’ll figure it out later. Uh These are not, these are things that are not going to uh lead you to success and, and oftentimes things go awry. It’s like, ah, you know, we shouldn’t have gone with this CRM or we shouldn’t have gone with this. And it’s really, uh you know, and that’s one thing at 1/10 we’ve, is really one of our key principles is it’s the people process and technology. Um It’s the strategy. It’s, it’s having everything aligned in order to make your technology successful. So it, it is, it is. Yeah, it’s, it’s a little bit science, a little bit art to make that, to make sure that balance is there.

[00:11:15.11] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Are you looking to maximize your fundraising efforts and impact this giving season? Donor Box’s online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals from customizable donation forms to far-reaching easy share, crowd funding and peer to peer options. Plus seamless in-person giving with donor box like kiosk. Donor box makes giving simple and fast for your donors and moves the needle on your mission visit donor box dot org and let donor box help you help others. Now back to CRM selection

[00:11:36.59] spk_0:
after an 18 month or maybe 24 month conversion, you know, the whole process of search and then narrowing down and you know, the thing, the things we talked about last year. Um And then, and then for it not to be the success that everybody is expecting. Um Let’s spend a little more time with this. What, what, what, where else should we look? You know, if we suspect our CRM is the problem but where else should we be looking? We, we’ve talked about processes, leadership buy in but, but be drill down a little bit, you know, you have the experience, what have you seen that? That is often the cause not the, it’s not the software.

[00:14:03.66] spk_2:
Yeah, you know, definitely the, the buy in is key. Um And that’s something that starts from the very beginning. Uh And, and I’ve see, I, you know, I, I don’t want to sound super negative here because I’ve seen, I’ve seen some organizations do this really well, you know where, you know, before they uh you know, let’s say they’ve made us, you know, they, they’re kind of getting close to a selection or they’re, they’re uh they’ve done sort of the initial vetting of solutions. Uh They really bring the leadership in uh and have them have, have a stake in the, in the, in the matter. I think that’s, that’s key, you know. So when I even talk about assembling a diverse team that also includes leadership and management, um you know, they, they’re not just, they shouldn’t just be Spectators of the process, they should be very engaged in the process. Uh Because that’s when I see things kind of fall off the rails a little bit is the moment something goes wrong and everybody just, you know, throws their hands up in the air and says, oh, well, you know, I never really, you know, subscribe to this or I, I told you you should have gone with, you know, such and such tool anyways. So that executive buy in is, is just super important and that really is, you know, it’s, it’s the project team sitting with leadership and making sure they understand what is the, the business this case for CRM in the first place? Uh What needs to make us successful. So if that means uh additional resources like we need a part time or full time administrator, uh or we need to have uh a, a tool to, you know, manage tickets and ongoing incidents. So we have a way of tracking things that we need to improve with the CRM or we need a governance process that we can make decisions uh um more effectively and, and I think tony that the governance is, is key. Um, because oftentimes like you, you go live and then sure enough as folks are using the system, uh there’s all kinds of requests, there’s, there’s bugs, there’s uh enhancement requests, there’s, you know, fundamental problems that need to be addressed. And oftentimes it’s like, ok, well, let’s just, you know, go to the person who’s, you know, you know, clamoring the loudest and, and solve their problem, but that’s not really the right way to do it. You want to be methodical and think about. Ok. Well, you know, let’s prioritize, let’s evaluate the, the urgency of the issues, the severity of the issues, let’s put together a road map. So everybody knows what’s coming when. Um, and, and so it, it sort of, you know, goes to that point that this, that CRM is not a project, it is definitely an ongoing journey. Uh And, and, and so, you know, when those kind of expectations are aligned, I see a lot more success. Uh So, so, so, yeah, the solution and that is completely solution. Agnostic.

[00:14:47.87] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you for that digression. But I, I think it’s important. I think, I think there’s a lot of orgs that, that blame their software, but they have much more inherent problems that, as you said, no application is gonna solve because that’s not the pro those aren’t the problems, that’s not the problem. All right. Um, you mentioned prioritization. I want to get to that. I wanted to get to that because you, you, you alluded to different features and, you know, but how do you decide what you really need versus what you, you could, you could use but you don’t really need it, you know, to try to winnow down your, your alternatives in this vast landscape.

[00:15:15.54] spk_2:
Yeah, that’s a really important question, tony because um you know, especially as I’ve sat through as, as perhaps you have to just sat through so many demos of systems and I think often times, uh the organizations I work with, they are very impressed with the breadth of functionality. Um But you have

[00:15:16.61] spk_0:
the, well, I haven’t sat through as many as you have, but you also have the experience of having done the, done the

[00:15:21.44] spk_2:
demo. I’ve been on both sides,

[00:15:44.30] spk_0:
thousands, I think when we talked last year, you know, you’ve done thousands of these things and you were the Whizz Bang. You were the guy flying through the, flying, the cursor through and showing everybody how easy it was, how easy it’ll be for you. It’ll be just like this to your experience is gonna be identical to mine, you know, give yourself 24 hours with the system and then you’ll be as good as me. I’m making you out to be a, a huckster. You’re not.

[00:18:32.05] spk_2:
Well, I, I’ll tell you a little story, tony and I shared, I shared this with the folks at, at the NTC. Um, you know, a couple of years ago on my last trip to India, I, I went on a shopping trip with my wife and, uh, we went to this, um, garment store, clothing store and she, she walks in there and she says, I’m looking for something specific. I want this dress that is, uh, turquoise. And the, the shop owner said, oh, ok. Yeah, no problem. And then he starts showing, um, all these different dresses and it’s just like, you know, unpacking and, and showing and demonstrating. He has 23 assistants, unpacking different garments and showing different things. You know, some of them are light blue, some of them are dark blue. Some of them are shades of green. Some of them are teal and, uh, you know, you know, about maybe 30 40 different dresses into this II, I kind of figured what was going on here. And I whispered to my wife, I said, I think he’s gonna show you everything in the store before he tells you he doesn’t have a turquoise dress and, and I feel every time I, I sit in some of these system demos, I kind of think of the same thing that, you know, the, the, the, the, the, um, and no disrespect to the, the account executives out there. They’re, they’re doing their job and, and trying to present the best elements of the products they have. Um but they are gonna show you everything. Uh They’re gonna show you everything, whether there’s breadth or depth, it doesn’t really matter that they’re going to impress you with um with, with all the features and functionality that the system offers. So what I try to uh encourage uh my client and prospective clients to do is, you know, you, you kind of take control of the demo, say, say, you know, no, I’m I’m not really interested in, you know, I know all these solutions do fundraising. I know all these solutions, you know, can, can send out an email. I know all these solutions will track activities, but here are my three or four priorities. You know, I, I need to do long term case management because we’re a human services nonprofit or uh you know, we get grants that we re grant to other smaller nonprofits. So we want to do outbound re you know, re granting or, you know, we, we focus heavily on the social listening or the volunteer management. Pick those four or five areas that mean the most to you and you want to see the, the, the real depth in those systems there because I think once you do that, you’re gonna find there, there’s fewer options than you might have thought. Uh And, and really kind of, you know, rather than just getting into this demo, uh process uh demos are nice. But what you really want is a working session to say here are my use cases. Uh And, and, you know, show me how we can solve very specific problems in these four or five areas. And, and I, and, you know, there are some uh vendors that will say, oh, you know, I don’t have time for that. You know, I, I, I’ll give you my can demo. You know, that’s the best I can do and you probably don’t want to work with those partners. Uh You really, you know, there, there, there are other vendors that say, oh thank you. Like, thank you. I don’t have to waste my time on this can demo. Uh And we can really focus on the things that matter to you. There, there’s some that really, really thrive in that situation. So, so I think it’s really um looking at what are those three or four things, those five things that really matter to you. Um That, that is not only something that you need to maybe replace in your current process, but looking 3 to 5 years down the line, uh you know, you really want to get into program management or you really want to get into more direct mail. Uh You think about what those three or five things are and really focus the sales process on that.

[00:19:19.25] spk_0:
Is that hard to do? Focus on these 3 to 5 when you’ve got 10 people from an organization clamoring for, for their, there used to be a top priority. You know, the, the the the event folks are saying, well, we need better ticketing but it doesn’t feel like ticketing is really a priority, but we do ticketing. You know, how do you, how do you manage these internal battles?

[00:20:56.00] spk_2:
There are always, there’s always gonna be that battle, there’s always gonna be that healthy debate and contention intention there. So, uh you know what, what I tried to frame up is, you know, as an organization, you definitely have to prioritize uh you, you surely have to prioritize and I know everybody expects it, but they just don’t want to be beyond the, the losing end of, of that prior organization. So, so I, I think, you know what, what I try to encourage folk is uh even though you may not get everything you want to make sure that you’re selecting a tool that does not preclude you or do not prohibit you from getting the features that you want. So maybe event management is not a priority right now. Um But let’s pick a solution that if even if it doesn’t have very strong event management capabilities, perhaps it can integrate with other tools that are out there that have very strong uh event management capabilities. So, um so, so it’s uh so you definitely want to focus on the, the key priorities you have. Um But you also want to be, make sure that you’re selecting a tool 3 to 5 years out can still support what you need. Uh So, so that’s it, it’s a little tricky and, and, you know, it kind of goes to one of my, uh you know, I, I gave a lot of suggestions and a lot of, you know, tips and tricks on, on how to really make the selection process work for folks. But, you know, one of the last points I did is, is it may take AAA trusted advisor to help in this process because, you know, the non profit I work with, they’re, they’re very busy, you know, doing good for the world and, and, and uh don’t always have time to keep in completely aware of what all the, the latest technologies and trends are. So sometimes it takes, you know, bringing in a trusted advisor, whether that’s in a pro bono capacity or a paid consultant, uh who can really, you know, help get you through some of the fluff and say, all right. Well, you know, I I know that program management is not a key priority for you right now, but it is something you want to do in the future. And here’s three or four tools that might want, you might want to consider that can get you there at a later point.

[00:21:11.22] spk_0:
There’s also the importance of leadership that, that you stressed, you know, it’s, it’s incumbent on the CEO to decide what the priorities of the organization are.

[00:22:09.41] spk_2:
A absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, uh you know, when I was sort of working more on the vendor side and, you know, with specific products, I, I wasn’t, you didn’t really have the flexibility to have these discussions. But, you know, now, uh you know, running our own practice, we have the ability to, to kind of start start selection processes with very different questions. So, you know, the questions I’ll ask is OK. Well, let’s talk about your fundraising strategy. Well, you know, let’s talk about, you know, your organizational goals. Uh Let’s talk about where, where you are now and where you want to be 3 to 5 years from now. Um You know, what’s, what’s the, the, you know, what are the kind of decisions, let’s say, you know, to speaking to the executive director or the leadership team, you know, when you walk into work Monday morning and you, you turn your, uh you turn your computer on, you log into your CRM. What do you want to see on your dashboard? What, what is it, what are those key decisions or, or key insights that you need to help you make decisions for that day, for that week? Uh Let’s start there and then from there, we, we start figuring out um what are the right tools, what are the right solutions and all that? But, but, but really, you’re absolutely right. It starts with the strategy and it starts, starts from the top.

[00:22:33.70] spk_0:
You have some tools and, and resources to help folks make better decisions.

[00:23:36.63] spk_2:
Yeah, absolutely. Um You know, making better decisions just means uh means a lot to us at 1/10 you know, whether you work with us or not, we, we, we feel it’s, it’s best for the non profit sector and, and, and best for the non profit tech sector um to, for, for everyone to really have, be making informed decisions when they go for a solution. So, um on our website on uh uh uh 1 10 dot consulting, you will be able to see. Um you know, we have webinars, we have um uh blog post all to really help you uh in that process. Um Also on our social media, we do have um uh from time to time, we are either posting articles, sharing articles, other content that we think is are, is really gonna help people make good decisions. So I would, I would suggest and all our, our web um all our webinars all are, are all on demand free. Uh So we, we encourage folks to, to take a look at our website and, and really um take advantage of all the, the content that’s out there, you know, uh combined with, with uh myself and others that we work with. I mean, it’s many, many years of experience, good, the good, the bad, the ugly. So we, we try to put as much as we can in that content on our website to make it available to everyone.

[00:24:00.17] spk_0:
It’s 1/10 dot Consulting. That’s correct. All spelled out 1/10 dot Consulting. Ok. That’s right. Are you familiar with the, the Tech Impact reports? The, the, the surveys that they do across different systems, you know, they, they agnostically survey and, and study different, different elements of, of lots of different, uh, program uh, applications that can be valuable too. Right. That tech impact the survey.

[00:25:12.42] spk_2:
Absolutely. I think tech impact does a great job on that. And that’s one of the things that we, we often share around on our social media when, when it becomes available or new, new uh visions of that is posted. Uh I’m a big fan of their work. Um There’s just so much out there, like I said, and you really don’t, uh I don’t expect any of the nonprofits I work with to be knowledgeable about everything. That’s, that’s, that’s out there. So, so I really do like what temp tech impact puts out and it really gives you like a baseline of what are the different tools out there? What are the key, um you know, from, from a pricing perspective and, and all that. So, uh you know, strengths and weaknesses, pros and cons. So I think that’s like always a good place to start. Um And, and then, you know, sometimes when you need to get uh where it gets a little bit more complicated and is when you are like, so, so for example, if you are thinking about CRM or it’s, this is like a first step for you and you know, you want to move off of spreadsheets, you know, the tech impact, I might be all you need to, to kind of make a first decision. Um What gets more complicated oftentimes is if you’re switching from system A to system B uh and, and you want to kind of know how, what that migration might look like. That’s where the guide may not help you as much. And, and you might need to look at other resources that are, that are available.

[00:25:24.42] spk_0:
OK. OK. We say we leave it there, Ruben. Does that sound like we’ve hit this? Anything that we’ve omitted that you think is important?

[00:25:30.34] spk_2:
No, no, that, that sounds great. I think I enjoyed the, I enjoyed the conversation very much. Always appreciate the opportunity to speak with you, tony and uh have a chance to engage with the audience. So thank you so much for the time.

[00:25:40.60] spk_0:
My pleasure, Ruben Singh CEO at 1/10 consulting again, 1/10 dot consulting. And thanks so much for being with tony-martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 21 NTC.

[00:26:40.34] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Keyla increased donations and foster collaborative teamwork with Kela. The fundraisers. CRM maximize your team’s productivity and spend more time building strong connections with donors through features that were built specifically for fundraisers. A fundraiser CRM goes beyond a data management platform. It’s designed with the unique needs of fundraisers in mind and aims to unify fundraising, communications and donor management tools into one single source of truth visit. Kila dot co to sign up for a coming group demo and explore how to exceed your fundraising goals. Like never before. It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:29:42.12] spk_0:
Thank you, Kate. I just had 10 days of donor meetings. I was in New York City, met with lots of donors and potential donors to a client there. And it, it just reminds me how much I love doing the donor meetings. Just the face to face. Some are in people’s homes, some are over lunches or coffee. Not too many breakfasts and dinners, uh, in, in planned giving the, the older folks, eighties and nineties. They don’t really wanna get out early in the morning for breakfast and they don’t really want to have dinner out either, especially in the winter and in the summer, summer time, you know, longer nights you might get more dinners, but, uh, not, not so many this time of year, not any actually for me. So lunches and coffees and meeting in people’s homes. But it’s just, it’s, it’s such a pleasure, you know, getting to know folks listening to their stories about, uh, their, well, in most cases it was their husbands who have died, uh, their Children, grandchildren. And of course, why they love the work of the non profit that I was representing while I was there. Uh It’s, you know, it’s, it’s moving. They’re, they’re just, they’re fun. The donor meetings are fun. You know, that’s the, that’s the beauty of fundraising is the meetings with the, with, with donors and potential donors. So thankfully, as a consultant, I don’t get bogged down in a lot of administration, there are not a lot of meetings, people want me to go to clients occasional but not so often. So I hope for you that you can or you have, you know, freed yourself from a lot of the administrative work that is not anywhere near as stimulating as the, the meetings, the face to face meetings with, with folks. I, I hope you can unburden yourself from administration and, and get to the heart of fundraising which around major giving or of course planned giving is meeting folks, meeting them and, and talking to them, getting to know their stories. I, I have a natural curiosity about people. Uh So I find these meetings just delightful and, and fun and fun. So I hope you can enjoy that part of fundraising, whether you’re a full time fundraiser or maybe you’re a CEO perhaps you’re on a board. I urge you to uh embrace that really fun part of fundraising that is Tony’s take two, associate producer, Kate.

[00:29:44.92] spk_1:
Well, it sounds like you had a very fun week and I’m sure the people that you met up with were having fun as well, you know, getting out, doing something, not being stuck in the home. So, it’s very sweet to, you know, go grab a cup of coffee with the old people, you know.

[00:30:14.79] spk_0:
Well, it’s ok. Yeah. So it’s a little more, a little more than grab a cup of coffee with old people. But, uh, II, I got you. Yes, it, it is. Some of them do like getting out. Um And I, I believe they enjoy our meetings too. At least, at least that’s what they say. We’ll, we’ll leave it at that. That’s what they all say.

[00:30:27.30] spk_1:
We’ve got buku but loads more time here is what to ask before your new website.

[00:30:34.87] spk_0:
Welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit radio coverage of 21 NTC, the 2021 nonprofit technology conference. My guest now is Steven Tidmore. He is VP of Technology at Mighty Citizen. Steven. Welcome to Nonprofit

[00:30:50.83] spk_3:
radio. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:31:01.44] spk_0:
Pleasure, pleasure. Your session topic is eight questions to ask before you start a new website, correct? And you, you, um you describe yourself as a technical savant.

[00:31:07.75] spk_3:
I don’t know if I describe myself as that. But um oh,

[00:31:11.71] spk_0:
that was that. It’s in your bio. That’s

[00:31:13.83] spk_3:
not our, our marketing folks may. That’s the

[00:31:17.12] spk_0:
marketing marketing phrase. OK. All right. I won’t ask you to define the technical.

[00:31:24.46] spk_3:
I would just say I’ve been involved in technology websites for um a long time, probably about 20 a little, well, over 20 years now of, um, experience building websites and for various size organizations.

[00:31:34.38] spk_0:
Yeah, indeed. Uh, that, that same market marketing team written bio says you built your first one in 1999?

[00:31:41.49] spk_3:
That’s cool. What

[00:31:42.46] spk_0:
did, what did websites look like in 1999? What, what did, what did it mean to build a website in 1999 or, or 2000? Oh,

[00:32:41.81] spk_3:
that’s, that’s a good question, I guess in some ways it was a lot simpler. Um Depending on the type of website you were building small websites. You know, you didn’t have to worry about all the um extra learning that comes these days from trying to figure out if you’re gonna build a single page application or if you’re gonna use this javascript framework or that javascript framework or, you know, really complex hosting setups. Um So that was simpler, but to do more complex things at times were a bit harder. Um I started at Dell um back in 1999 and I remember I kind of got into the web world because they were transitioning to the Dell dot com to a new technology. Um Well, not a new technology but a new build process using XML. And so coding back then was writing this whole custom XML um code that they had come up with that. Then Knightly would go through a big spider and spit out html and everything else. And so that was more complicated, I guess, in some ways then at least we have standards now and can do, uh, more dynamic things in a standards compliant way. Um, back then a lot of it was all custom

[00:32:58.63] spk_0:
was, that was, that was 1999 remind me, was that the, the, was that the years of, uh, dial up service where we hear that crackling

[00:33:23.49] spk_3:
it still existed? Um, but probably was a little more popular before that, you know, in the, in the late, in the, you know, a little bit earlier in the late nineties. Um but dial up still existed. I remember I still had dial up in 99 but a lot of people had already moved on to DS L or? That’s

[00:33:35.82] spk_0:
right. That was the follow on. Yes. Ok. Digital subscriber line, Ds L? Oh, that’s interesting. Ok. So you got eight questions to ask before you start a new website. Um Are these, are these internal questions that you should be asking before you go to maybe an outside provider? Because our, our listeners are small and mid size shops. So the likelihood of them having a development team, you know, uh I is small. So, so let’s assume that you use outside help for this. Are these internal questions you’re asking or you’re asking of the provider outside

[00:35:10.63] spk_3:
too either or so. So the goal really of the, the eight questions presentation was to just to get people thinking about some of these questions that we ask typically on a web project. So we’ve been doing lots of projects, you know, for a long time. And so we’ve gotten better about identifying these questions. We need to ask upfront on the technical side to avoid some pitfalls that we’ve seen on a lot of projects over the years. Um And so these questions are questions that you may have to go to, you know, if you have an it firm you work with or if you have uh you know, developers, either in house or partner, you know, partner agency like ourselves or other developers, you work with contract developers, you may have to talk to them about it. But some of the, the questions aren’t really that technical at all. Um Just, you know, a lot of the things that seem technical at 1st may be organizational questions around content. Um whether you’re gonna migrate content, who’s going to be in charge of publishing content. And um some of those could have a technical answer. But oftentimes we found that there may be organizational um processes in place that are causing some of the barriers more so than the technology itself. People tend to blame the C MS for, you know, it’s really hard to get content published on our website. And while the C MS could make that easier, most likely, um uh you know, turning to a new C MS immediately to solve that problem probably isn’t the first step. You need to figure out organizationally what you need to do in order to publish content and then find Ac MS that fits, you know, that need as opposed to trying to fit your process into something that C MS is gonna force you into.

[00:35:39.77] spk_0:
I’ve had other guests say the exact same thing uh as recently as earlier today. Oh, really? You know, uh software is often blamed for uh lackluster readership, poor processes. You know, people not understanding what the, what the limitations of the software are. So they look for something else that’s gonna have similar limitations, but they, they think it’s gonna be, you know, the grass is always greener and it’s gonna solve all their problems. And uh so it sounds like your, your eight questions. Let’s get into your questions because it sounds like some of them are gonna probe whether software, whether a new website is really gonna solve the problems that you’ve

[00:36:31.59] spk_3:
got. Yeah, I think just uh before you jump into mosaic questions, we um technology certainly can play a part and, and is to blame for a lot of issues I think in organizations. But um the way the way we look at it is, we, we try to, you know, figure out your organizational goals, publishing goals, um you know, technology goals, all that kind of all that kind of thing first and then find a technology solution that meets that. Um As opposed to just choosing a technology and trying to force your entire organization to use it when it, you know, you could build, like you said, a new website on a new content management system and still have the exact same problems if you haven’t figured out what your goals are first for your organization and, and um your, your visitors and you know, your members or whatever else it is.

[00:36:58.22] spk_0:
So, should we get into our, our questions knowing we just have a couple of minutes to spend on each one? Where, where do you like to start?

[00:37:07.03] spk_3:
What’s, what’s our first? Uh The first question we had in the presentation was do we need to migrate content? And if so what content, why

[00:37:14.10] spk_0:
is this important to know

[00:39:03.22] spk_3:
upfront? Well, so uh I’ve seen this come up on a lot of projects is that people automatically assume oftentimes that all of their content is going to move 1 to 1 into a new website. They may say, OK, we want a new website, we want it to look different and perform different, but we want to just move all of our content over. So you don’t have to rewrite anything. Um And that often case that that doesn’t happen most of the time there may not be, you know, a 1 to 1 fit. So during our, we go through a fairly robust information architecture and discovery phase and we don’t want our information architects to be held back from architecting a page or an experience that um meets your goals simply because they know they have this content that has to fit into the new architecture. And so you may end up with um you know, an events calendar that has new content on it, that you have to go in and add, you may have to add categories or something like that. So we can do fancy filtering and javascript filtering um or um you know, the content may not need to exist anymore. Uh So there is, you know, we see cases a lot where the it does make sense to migrate content, particularly with content that’s already structured. Well, like press releases or blog posts, that kind of thing, usually we’ll have more or less a 1 to 1 fit. Um But there’s lots of content that maybe it’s just in one big Wizz wig field, you know, which is what you see is what you get. I’m, I’m sure you’re familiar with that term, but it’s just basically like a word document or formatting inside a content management system. But now on a new site, there’s a bunch of structured content for a team page that has like your title and your um the department you work under and your phone number and your email address. And so you know, that content can’t migrate easily. So it’s something that we, we talked about way at the beginning and try to figure out does it even make sense to migrate content or do we really need to kind of take a fresh look and, and intercon, um, like

[00:39:05.23] spk_0:
this is like moving your home, you know, changing. Exactly. You need to bring everything with you, you know, maybe, maybe you don’t

[00:40:51.16] spk_3:
or you, yeah, you had three living rooms in your old house. So you have three sofas in your new house. You only have one. So, what, what do we do with those? You’re gonna try to shove them into the, the same one living room or are you gonna get rid of what’s next? Uh The next question is about hosting, just where will the site be hosted? Um So there’s some technical things you have to look at and our recommendation was if you don’t know the answer to questions about just some, you know, basic questions about your, your analytics hard drive space on your current web host ra MC PU bandwidth um that you need to talk to either your web host or your it vendor or someone to figure out those questions. Um But the, the important thing with hosting is that you want to make sure you don’t take into account just your regular activity, you need to look for any traffic spikes. So maybe your organization once or twice a year puts out a controversial press release or something happens that just causes the traffic to jump up. Um You wanna choose a web host that’s robust enough to handle that traffic. But ideally, you don’t want to pay for all the resources to handle that traffic throughout the entire year. Um So, you know, you wanna look for something that’s scalable, ideally where the resources can scale up and the resources you can think about it, just like your computer, you know, you add more ra M or you add more hard drive space. You know, there’s, there’s web hosting setups where they can kind of automatically add those resources whenever the traffic increases and that’s a great solution. Um So you’re not paying for that all the time. Um And then just make sure you’re finding a, a host that supports the technology you’re working with um you know, some hosts specialize in one type of technology versus another. So don’t want to get stuck with a host that doesn’t know your technology. And then if you are working with a, a web um vendor, maybe someone who’s building your website, then you need to make sure you have um an agreement between that web vendor and your host about who’s supporting which pieces of the website in the web hosting environment. You don’t want to get into a situation where the site goes down and the web host says, talk to your website vendor and the website vendor says talk to the web host and everyone looks,

[00:41:10.16] spk_0:
yeah, the finger, the finger pointing.

[00:41:12.30] spk_3:
Yeah. So you wanna, you wanna work that out in advance. It’s very

[00:41:15.18] spk_0:
frustrating for the person

[00:41:17.11] spk_3:
in the middle, for sure. Yeah, it’s not their fault, you

[00:41:19.08] spk_0:
know, who’s lying and who’s telling the truth or both? Half. Right. You know. All right. Um What else?

[00:41:26.88] spk_3:
Um So the third question and I could do, I could go in deeper into hosting, but I’ll pro I’ll just, we’ll go to the rest. We don’t, we,

[00:41:34.99] spk_0:
we, we need, yeah, we only have a couple of minutes to spend on each one. So

[00:43:30.23] spk_3:
OK, the third question is how does content get published? Um And this is one kind of like what I was talking about earlier where you really first wanna consider your organizational goals and your existing procedures for publishing that content. First. Um One thing we recommend is just, just ask is your content up to date and relevant now and if it’s not, then why is it, is it really a limitation in the content management system or your technology or is it an organizational issue that is causing that? Um So that’s the first question and oftentimes it is an organizational issue or content governance issue. Um And then we recommend you think pretty strongly about an approval work flow built into your content management system. What I mean by that is you want to force people to um have to log into the C MS and then post content and then, but they can’t actually publish it that goes to someone else to approve it, maybe it goes to someone else after that to approve it and then it gets published. Do you want to build that process into your C MS or do you want to leave that outside of the C MS? We have um built sites before where it was a requirement to have an approval work flow built in the C MS. But then, you know, we find out halfway through the project that the person who’s actually going to prove the content doesn’t want to do it in the C MS, they want someone to email them and they want uh they don’t want to have to log in and manage that. So, you know, you don’t want to get stuck paying for something or building in something that you don’t need. Um as well as oftentimes, you know, non profit organizations and a lot of organizations, other organizations may have time sensitive content that, that needs to get out there. And if you have a forced approval work flow and one person is the bottleneck and you have to post this content immediately and that person is out of the office, then that can cause issues where you’ve kind of roped yourself into not being able to, to uh publish timely content. And so those are just considerations that we start talking about at the beginning of a project. OK. Um We also talk about along with content. Um you know, you want to talk about the few at the beginning, if you’re ever gonna need Multilingual content in the future because you don’t want to get stuck with a platform that makes that hard. Um So is your, is your website going to need to be translated into multiple languages? And if so choose a platform now that makes that uh pretty similar. Uh I mean, sorry, pretty simple.

[00:43:53.99] spk_0:
Move us, move us to number four, get us halfway home.

[00:45:11.94] spk_3:
What third party systems you need to integrate with. And so this is a big technical question. Um Your website is most likely not an island. It is a um part of an ecosystem that involves lots of other third party tools. Um And this, these can be things like, you know, an event management system, a membership management system, a donor management system, a um mailing list, you know, product, um whatever that is, there’s tons and all those have to be taken into account. And um the first step really is just to sit down and make a list of every third party system or tool that is going to interact with your website. Um And you know, just think about how you handle lead forms and tracking code and social feeds and newsletter, sign ups and events and payments and all that kind of thing and just make a list. And then after you have that list, look at each of those and think about what type of integration do you need. And again, this may need a little bit of technical help um from either someone outside or someone on your team. But there’s, you know, sometimes people think it’s gonna be a complex integration where oh, we have to integrate this third party donor management system with our website. But really all you need is a link or you need some piece of embed code that they give you, you know, for a donation form and you just block that embed code on. That’s a pretty simple integration and then it can start to get more and more complex. Where do you actually need to send data back and forth through PD systems? Do you need to hire a developer to, you know, program, how that’s gonna happen? Does your event system need to send data into your website? So you can publish that in a different way? Um So third party systems are a big part of our technology discoveries we do now, they

[00:45:41.61] spk_0:
are right. There’s a lot, I mean, all the things you ticked off finance and events and uh uh yeah, petitions and things. All right. All

[00:46:40.59] spk_3:
right. Yeah, it can be a big list. What’s next? And then the fifth question is related is if you do have third party systems, um do any of those have websites that your visitors are going to interact with that need to be skinned and by skinned? Um What I mean is that, you know, you can often customize a third party site with design elements like logos or colors or graphics um to make them match your brand and, and we call that process skinning. And so you want to think about all the third party websites that exist that someone, you know your visitors, your website, visitors are going to need to interact with. And if they can interact with those, you want to see can you skin that to make it match your, either your new or current website? Um And if so great, uh you wanna, you wanna try to do that? Um But you want to figure out what the limits are. Some third party sites may just allow you to change the color. Some may allow you just to add a logo. Some may give you full control over fonts and um you know, a bunch of a bunch of styles. Um And if you can do that, then you need to figure out the responsibility. Uh Is that something that third party provider is gonna handle? Is that something you have to handle? And when does that need to happen in your project process? So we start talking about talking about that at the beginning because you don’t want to get to the end of a project and realize, oh, there’s this major third party website and now it doesn’t look anything like our new website, we’re gonna hold up launch so we can take the time to, to make that match.

[00:47:07.31] spk_0:
Um we’re five races of the way through and before we get to, uh, three quarters, uh, I wanna ask you about your six year journey around the world.

[00:47:16.23] spk_3:
Yeah. What

[00:47:17.22] spk_0:
was that? You told me? You bought a one way ticket to somewhere? Was it Portugal? Spain?

[00:47:21.80] spk_3:
Uh It was Spain. Yes. All right.

[00:47:28.00] spk_0:
And so how, how does, uh, how does AAA technologist benefit from seeing other countries for

[00:49:24.51] spk_3:
six years? That’s a great question, I think. Um, so I spent my last semester in college on this program called semester at sea where I had the amazing opportunity of traveling around on a big ship around the world. And um after that immediately, I started working at Dell here in Austin, Texas um on Round Rock technically, but Austin and um ended up working there for three years and um really got a lot out of experience, but I was kind of craving that, that travel. Uh Again, I got the travel bug and um I was young and didn’t have a whole lot of, you know, responsibility and things tying me here. So I bought a one way ticket to Spain and quit my job and had saved up just a little bit of money. And um that led to six years of kind of working my way around the world and various jobs, um lived in Spain for a while. Um lived in the British Virgin Islands, lived in Belize and Nicaragua worked on some native American reservations up in, up in Montana. Um and, uh, you know, bounced around Costa Rica a bunch and had an amazing time. I think, you know, the thing that it gave me, if, if we’re kind of applying it to technology and, um, more of a traditional working world, I think it’s just perspective um on, you know, how technology fits into the, the broader world. Um, there, I think it’s really easy to get stuck or hung up on. Um something that maybe, you know, maybe isn’t super important in the grand scheme of things that maybe seems really important for a week or a day or two. And so I think I have a little bit better perspective on just um the world as a whole and the importance of tasks that we um end up working on. Um And I think uh just the opportunity to live in other cultures. Um I’d recommend it for anyone because it does give, uh well, it gave me, I’ll say, um just insight into how other people live and what’s important to them. And, um you know, I think I, I got a small taste of that. I wouldn’t claim at all, but I’m an expert in all those cultures that I lived in by any means. Um But just a small taste of how people around the world are, are different and um ultimately how they’re all similar and have the same needs.

[00:49:50.92] spk_0:
Thanks perspective and it’s a big world out there.

[00:49:53.87] spk_3:
It is a big world.

[00:49:55.16] spk_0:
We’re not the center of the universe. I like to say that I am the center of the universe personally. But, but our nation is not the center of the universe, the

[00:50:01.56] spk_3:
universe.

[00:50:14.36] spk_0:
I could say it that way. Well, no, but I like to say the universe, I get carried away with some narcissism. Um, let’s, we just have a couple of minutes left. So let’s um, but do me a favor, le let’s do it this way. Just read off. Uh just uh questions 67 and eight and then we’ll come back, go into a little more

[00:50:38.53] spk_3:
detail, but we can do it pretty quick. So I think question six is, um, are you going to need single sign on question seven is how are you going to handle site, search? So, searching inside your website and then question eight is what standards are you required to follow? Um So I can hit this pretty quickly. The single sign on question is just basically, yeah. Yeah, we do. We have time to do this. Why,

[00:50:46.77] spk_0:
why do we need to know this in advance?

[00:52:40.96] spk_3:
Yeah. So the single sign on question is, is a big one. So do you have, um do you already have a system that holds records for, you know, members or visitors or whatever they are that people currently sign into in order to manage their account or do something else? And if So do people also need to sign in to your, your either current website or new, new website in order to do to do something. Um Most of the time that will be something like gated content where content on your site is only available to members. Um And so if you have that, you have to have those member accounts that allow you to access that content. And if so you need to know where those member accounts are stored. And so single sign on basically is a configuration that can allow someone to sign on to multiple different websites or web applications without having to have different accounts for all of them. Um And there’s some standard technologies that you can use that make that fairly easy. But um you just, you just need to start by asking if you need it. And if so do those member accounts exist anywhere now that you can hook into um to, to allow your website to um let people sign in to them using the same accounts. OK. Site search could do, we could talk for a long time about site search. But um you know, the the search on your website is super important. Um And you want to start by asking, you know, where does the data live? Is it in multiple systems? Do you need the site search engine to pull data from a third party site as well as from your website? Do you need a a search engine that’s going to search through the content of files like PDF files. Um Do you need to have a search engine that indexes content that’s only available to logged in users or members? Um And if so, you know, you want to start thinking about search solutions, there’s a lot of great third party search solutions out there. Um That can do a lot of advanced things while at the same time giving non technical users the ability to configure the search. You know, if someone types in a certain search term, these a lot of these third party solutions have a a dashboard where non technical people can say, OK, with this search term, I want this result to appear at the top no matter what. And then the rest of them are ranked by uh relevance. Um Some of the third party search solutions we’ve used that are great. Um Funnel back Pluto a search and swift type are just a few I’d recommend looking into. Um They do have a cost but they offer a fantastic solution.

[00:53:02.92] spk_0:
All right. So search is important. And then our last question

[00:55:03.44] spk_3:
standards, what standards are you required to follow? Um This is something you just want to find out upfront. You may not have specific standards in your organization, especially if you’re a smaller nonprofit. Um But you want to find out things like what browsers does your website need to be compatible with. You’ll have to look at historical data to see, you know, are people still coming to your website using old browsers like internet explorer 11 or can you ditch that and, and move on to more modern coding standards? Do you have any specific security requirements or policies in place? You know, maybe you, you do work with federal government and you have to, um, to adhere to their security standards. You want to know that upfront and then privacy laws are, are pretty big. Um now as they should be. Um things like H IP A which is the um health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or GDPR, which applies to um eu citizens. Maybe you do some business with EU citizens or the newer one here in the States is called the C CPA, the California Consumer Privacy Act. I’m not a lawyer. I won’t get into the details of all of those. Um But you know, you want to find out upfront if you need to um do anything different on your website to meet those standards. And then you want to think about accessibility from the get go. So what accessibility standards do you need to follow? Um most likely um you need to follow wick a AA. And what that means is um basically, if you’re not familiar uh which I’m sure you probably are, but basic accessibility is making websites, tools and technologies that um people with disabilities can use so anyone can use them regardless of their disability. And WC A is a set of very accepted guidelines um that define how you can make technology accessible. Um more or less at a high level. And there’s a, a level in there called WC AA that the federal government points to now and most other organizations point to. And so you want to be thinking about that from the beginning of your project because if you wait till the end to just run an automated scan, um It’s gonna take a lot to get your website um to be uh compatible with those guidelines. If you’re not thinking about it from the beginning,

[00:55:07.78] spk_0:
we have at least one session from NTC on accessibility.

[00:55:12.24] spk_3:
Yeah. Yeah, there were a number of them, which is great. I mean, the guidelines. Yeah. Yeah. Um And you cannot, you cannot say that your website meets with a AA standards just by running an automated stand. It’s impossible. It, it won’t, it’s impossible for it to check all the guidelines. And so it, it requires manual testing. So you want to plan for that?

[00:55:29.88] spk_0:
All right, we’re gonna leave it there. Great. All right, Steven. Thank you very much, Steve Steven Tidmore, Vice President of Technology at Mighty Citizen. Thank you, Steven.

[00:55:39.93] spk_3:
Thanks for your time. I appreciate

[00:55:41.04] spk_0:
it. All right, my pleasure. Thank you for being with nonprofit radio coverage of 21 NTC.

[00:55:52.68] spk_1:
Next week, tony is working on

[00:55:54.53] spk_0:
it. That’s true. I am. I swear

[00:55:59.13] spk_1:
if you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:56:02.18] spk_0:
I beseech you to find it at tony-martignetti dot com

[00:56:41.86] spk_1:
or sponsored by donor box outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box dot org and buy Kila grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers CRM visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. 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.

[00:57:09.71] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 23, 2023: The Surprising Gift Of Doubt

 

Marc PitmanThe Surprising Gift Of Doubt

That’s Marc Pitman’s book. It’s stuffed with strategies to help leaders—and future leaders—lead better. Marc is founder of Concord Leadership Group. (This originally aired on August 2, 2021.)

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:00:11.68] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit

[00:00:46.62] spk_1:
radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. I’m traveling this week so I may not sound up to my usual. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of coccidioidomycosis if I had to breathe in the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with the highlights.

[00:01:13.59] spk_2:
Hey, tony, it’s the surprising gift of doubt. That’s Mark Pittman’s book. It’s Stuffed with strategies to help leaders and future leaders lead. Better. Mark is founder of Concord Leadership group. This originally aired on August 2nd 2021 on Tony’s Take two.

[00:01:16.36] spk_1:
Goodbye. Marian

[00:01:52.67] spk_2:
were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits, donor box dot org and buy Kila grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers, CRM visit, Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kela to exceed their goals. Here is the surprising gift of doubt.

[00:02:44.96] spk_0:
It’s my pleasure to welcome Mark Pittman to the show. He is founder of Concord Leadership Group. He helps leaders lead their teams with more effectiveness and less stress. His latest book is the surprising gift of doubt, use uncertainty to become the exceptional leader you are meant to be. You may know him. Also as the bow tie guy, Mark has caught the attention of media organizations as diverse as the chronicle of philanthropy, Al Jazeera Fox News Success Magazine and real simple. The book and the company are at Concord leadership group dot com and he’s at Mark a Pitman, Mark Pittman, an overdue. Welcome to non profit radio.

[00:02:48.81] spk_3:
It is an honor to be here. Thanks tony

[00:02:51.09] spk_0:
and I’m not sure why you haven’t been on years ago and, and many times before. So I uh I feel bad about that because you’re a smart guy and you have lots of good, you have lots of good content, lots of good ideas. And uh that’s why I say long overdue.

[00:03:03.92] spk_3:
Well, thank you. And my head may not fit out of the office after this kind of word. Don’t get carried away,

[00:03:27.54] spk_0:
but you do. You do have a lot of good ideas, including the uh the ideas that are in your new book. And I want to start with having you explain how agonizing doubt can be a gift. Please help us understand that.

[00:04:48.45] spk_3:
Um It’s I’ve been an executive coach for 18 years now and it’s one of the things that really surprises people the most is the fact that high performers, first of all, don’t tend to know how to ask for help and then they get derailed when they start feeling down because they start feeling like they’re, they’re faking it. The that they’re the, you know, the wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain, they don’t look at him um because they’re, they’re producing results, but they’re not sure how. Um and that doubt can be very destabilizing, but the gift is it can force us to look internally for our own cues. Uh Look to look, to look in areas where we’ve been told they’re soft or, you know, they’re, they’re woo woo. Um look at things that make us unique and it actually clarifies our, our leadership because it’s very much about the, the grain of our wood, the way that we put a spin on things as opposed to just doing all the best benchmarked activities that are out there. Um Yeah. So the surprising gift of that is it, it can make it to me what I’ve seen it do is instead of having that inner critic saying I must be broken, I must be just, I must, I probably shouldn’t even be in this position. It shifts the conversation to why might I be perfect for this role? Why might my organization be exactly the voice that the sector needs to have right now?

[00:05:00.90] spk_0:
And there is a lot of introspection involved in the I guess the overall work that you’re describing and we’ll go into some detail about, about. But uh you, you, you need to be reflective,

[00:05:58.28] spk_3:
introspective, right? Which often is something that a lot of leaders don’t. There’s not a lot of, there’s so much need in, in organizations that there’s not often a lot of time given for professional development or leadership growth. And so people don’t think of the time as, as doing reflection as legit leadership work. They feel like um when we’re in early in careers, we’re, or even in school, we get graded on what we accomplish, we take tests, we do tasks, we complete tasks and that becomes how we are promoted as we move into management and leadership. It’s taking that time to reflect uh is so incredibly important, but we haven’t seen it modeled that much. Um So there is, you’re right. Absolutely right. There’s a lot of introspection, but there’s also, that’s what leaders do. They no longer, they provide, they, they no longer are just making sure things get done. But they’re also looking forward to see where should we be going? Where, where should we skating to where the puck is? I guess even though I’m not a sports guy, I grew up in Maine, so there’s a lot of hockey there.

[00:06:12.61] spk_0:
Uh Thank you. Yeah. Any, any sports analogy will be largely lost on me, sports

[00:06:18.01] spk_3:
ball. So I, I’m

[00:06:26.47] spk_0:
not familiar with basketball. So I wouldn’t know that skating in the park uh uh metaphor now. And I want to reassure folks that this is not only material for current leaders but future emerging leaders.

[00:07:22.91] spk_3:
Absolutely. When part of what um what we, when we’re going through our leaders journey, if we can identify the earlier, we can identify what makes us different, what makes us unique. Where are our limits? Where, where are we really good? Um Where do, where can we excel? It can help us position our leadership roles so that we’re not being squeezed into somebody else’s box, uh as much as possible, the organizations are clear are artificial. They’re, they’re not um they’re not perfect. So we’re always gonna have to do things that we don’t enjoy or we don’t like, but we can definitely, there are things we can do in our environment and in our, our schedules and the people that are around us that can help us or can really hinder us. So the earlier we know, even as, as people are going through their own personal growth journey, uh the more that they can identify these, these uniqueness is uh that they, that they bring to the table, the better thinking somebody was asking in a previous podcast, can’t you throw these conversations? Can’t you throw some of the, you know, if you’re being interviewed for something, can’t you just answer the questions the way that you think they want them to be answered and you could, but you may get the job that you don’t want.

[00:07:50.98] spk_0:
Right. That may not be in your, your, your best self interest, your own self interest. Um, you know, I can see how, uh, you would, you, you’d be soothing as a coach, just your voice. I have that. I have that in New York. I grew up in New Jersey, but close enough to New York City, Stone’s throw. I got that, uh, east coast. But you have a, I mean, you’re northern. You said you grew up in Maine now. You’re in South Carolina. You have a, you have a soothing way about your

[00:08:11.83] spk_3:
voice. Well, thank you, Mark after dark was gonna be my, uh, my DJ handle Mark

[00:08:19.61] spk_0:
after dark. You and Alison Steele the Night

[00:08:21.44] spk_3:
Bird, then it turns out there was already a mark after dark. So I’d have to spell dark with AC. Ok. So we do it. Here

[00:08:27.68] spk_0:
we go. All right. Claim it. Yeah, you just, your voice has a, uh, a softening calming quality

[00:09:00.51] spk_3:
to it. I’ve been told that I’ve had some people come to me and want, um, they kind of want me to be their boss, uh, some business owners and some nonprofit executives or, well, I want a coach that’s gonna tell me exactly what to do and make it, you know, make it hurt to not do it and that’s not who I am. I’m sure there are those coaches out there that are drill sergeants but um I believe most leaders are really hard pressed and doing the best they can. And so I like to be able to encourage them and, and kind of blow on the coals that are the fire that’s almost going out and rekindle their, their passion to do it themselves. Coaching with compassion. Nice. Wow dot com. I’ll get that coaching

[00:09:31.50] spk_0:
with compassion, the compassionate coach, the bow tie guy and the compassionate coach. Um I wanna dive into something that uh very interesting to me but you have it buried, it’s buried on page 98. Ok. It’s the Pittman family homework that you used to do. Tell me about that you uh you, you covered in just a couple of sentences. I to me it was a little bit of a gloss over because I’m very interested in what got you to where you are and what informs your coaching and, and I got to believe that the Pittman Family homework is, is integral

[00:11:11.48] spk_3:
in, in here. Absolutely. As I look at my bookshelf, they all, many of the books are things that I, I grew up reading. So in my family, we had uh school work because we were students at school. But my sister and I also had uh homework for being pitman’s. So we were had to read positive mental attitude books and to listen to motivational speakers. Um and we had to go to events, seminars, rallies, the sort of things where people were talking about goal setting and, and uh living your dream and, and all, um, my parents were just amazed that they hadn’t been taught this. They were learning it with us and they were shocked that they’ve never been taught goal setting or dreaming or leadership or people skills and they didn’t want us to, to be inflicted with missing that before we left the house. So, um, I didn’t know other people might, I thought everybody had homework because they’re in their family. But I was started to read is I, I had been reading Dale Carnegie how to win friends and influence people. Uh, Frank Beers’s how I raised myself from failure to success in selling Charlie tremendous Jones. Life is tremendous. Listening to Zig Zigler Florence Let Tour, uh, Les Brown growing up that part of the part of the way, one of our kind of traditions too was having a motivational speaker on while we were in the shower. So we would always have a stack of tapes next to the, next to a, uh, a kind of boom box. And, uh, we would just put them on while we’re doing our thing. And then, you know, the person’s done when the tape goes off.

[00:11:18.65] spk_0:
That’s when you know your shower is done. Wow. So, yeah, I mean, this was the days before, uh, waterproof, uh, uh, phones and, and I ipods.

[00:11:45.86] spk_3:
So my wife knew that she said, she said she knew she was when we were dating, she knew she was dating an entrepreneur because I had a whole bunch of tapes. She had to clear off for the passenger seat of the car. I was just so used to listening to different tape series and uh you know, Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, poor dad. And yeah, all sorts of different, always learning. Trying to, always

[00:11:47.65] spk_0:
after Kawa, what did you say,

[00:12:33.18] spk_3:
Kyi? Uh Robert Kiyosaki wrote a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad in a series after that poor dad. Yeah, just different ways. People keep different uh mindsets, people have about money and um security and, and it’s really helpful and going into fundraising was really helpful to have this kind of being able to speak the language of your donors is one of the most important things um in fundraising and having been exposed to this literature that the other leaders were being exposed to, made it a lot easier to, to talk to them. In fact, my first talks in um first professional talks were translating marketing things in sales for fundraisers cause sales was the s word 25 years ago. And um so I would take like Seth Seth Godin’s idea, virus information, marketing and make it. So I’d fully attribute it, but I’d make it so that it was understandable to how this could work in a non profit.

[00:13:28.39] spk_2:
It’s time for a break. Are you looking to maximize your fundraising efforts and impact this giving season? Donor box’s online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals from customizable donation forms too far reaching easy share, crowdfunding and peer to peer options. Plus seamless in-person giving with donor box, live kiosk. Donor box makes giving simple and fast for your donors and moves the needle on your mission, visit donor box dot org and let donor box help you help others. Now back to the surprising gift of doubt.

[00:13:47.56] spk_0:
So this Pittman family homework, which obviously, as you’re describing, you know, evolved through the, through the decades, you’re continually, continually learning to even today, you say that in the book a couple of places. Um But this was like elementary school. You were, I mean, they were, they were probably considered this indoctrination.

[00:14:34.22] spk_3:
Oh Absolutely. Yeah. Looking back on it, it totally was. And when Charlie, totally, well, my uh my Charlie tremendous Jones became a mentor of mine, which he’d been a hero of my universe cause I, I love his book. Um and he said, when I was looking with our kids, he said, oh, I would never do it that way with, as your parents said, I would teach, have them do stories, I’d have them. Uh have your kids read biographies and be inspired by, by stories as opposed to reading the how to literature. But um I probably because of my upbringing, I love, I love nonfiction. I love reading a good how to book on, on leadership or in goal setting or vision casting storytelling. Yeah. Credit to credit the

[00:14:35.26] spk_0:
pitman parents. Well,

[00:15:05.88] spk_3:
one time Sandy Reese was in interviewing me and she, uh, years ago and she came up with a, she cataloged all the books that I referenced in the talk. Uh, and my, just in a conversationally because I still read 50 to 75 books a year. Um, to, and, and I had to set a goal years ago to read nonfiction because that’ll make me a better storyteller. But I had to set it as a goal. Now. I can fully enjoy reading nonfiction. I mean, reading fiction. Sorry, reading, sorry. Yeah, reading the fiction books. Um, that are enjoyable. I always thought I was cheating but now it’s a goal. So I’m ok. I said a certain number of goals for fiction books I want to read in a year and 50 to 70

[00:15:14.91] spk_0:
five a year. Do you still

[00:15:34.33] spk_3:
read? Yeah. I, I’m cranking through books this year too. I don’t know why. But I love, well, part of it is, there’s just, I want to keep fresh when I’m writing a book. I try to not to not read in the genre that I’m writing it. So I didn’t read a lot of leadership books. So I was doing surprising gift of doubt because I didn’t want to, um, mistakenly, like I take, take over somebody else’s thought that should be attributed to them because I really do think crediting the source is really important. Um which this book even get more, more to the point. The editors were even more insistent that I, I double and triple checked my, my references, which I thought was wonderful. Yes, there’s a bunch of end notes. Yeah, I haven’t been pushed this hard in a while. So I’m really, really pleased with the team that helped me with this one,

[00:16:05.77] spk_0:
something you say early on is that the motivation is within you expand on that for us.

[00:16:11.89] spk_3:
Well, the um part the, I don’t remember exactly. I know that was part of the chapter. Sorry, you have to flip through the pages, you know, you write a book and then it’s a quiz

[00:16:19.84] spk_0:
on page 16 or something, but you talk about the motivation, the motivation for leadership and, and good and just good intentions is is within you.

[00:17:31.76] spk_3:
Yeah, I think part of what we um we spent so much of our life and another part of the book, I do this map of the leader’s journey where it’s a four quadrant section uh where we start off on the confidence scale, which is the vertical scale and we go down to unsure, we’re gonna talk about the leader’s journey. OK. Well, that’s part of it is that we are so used to looking externally for our cues that the, we forget to look internally and find out what, what are, what, what do we value? What are we passionate about what are two things we forget, we forget to, to actually give them air. And often we don’t really permit ourselves to, to define what we value or what we hold on to because we’re looking for others in uh for cues, either the culture or systems. But the other thing that we somehow don’t do is we don’t credit them as being unique traits. We think everybody must be like us. Uh, you and I both wear glasses and it’s almost like we forget that we’re wearing glasses at times. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of trying to find your glasses and they’re right there on your face. They’re not even on your head, on your face. You, um, I get fingerprints all over my glasses when I do that. But we often, the stuff that’s within us is often the stuff that makes us unique, makes us, um, a, a valued part of the team and we just kind of write it off as a weird quirk of our own. Not something that’s worth giving attention to.

[00:17:54.92] spk_0:
It’s, it’s some of it’s among those natural strengths you talk about natural strengths versus learned skills.

[00:18:02.28] spk_3:
Well, yeah, some of our

[00:18:03.78] spk_0:
natural strengths. You, you’re right. We, I guess we, we, uh, we minimize them thinking everybody, everybody’s that smart or everybody

[00:19:48.77] spk_3:
thinks about that or if I can do it quickly, then it must not be work. Um, I remember being in a early job. I, I loved, I was fundraising for prep school and I loved it. I just loved the traveling. I loved the, you know, when I was home at the boarding school, being at the table with the 10 other students, the 10 students and my, my wife and I were the faculty parents. And um I love the kind of matching school’s mission with donors values and trying to see if there was a fit and being ok if there wasn’t but being excited if there were that all excited me, but I didn’t think I could enjoy work that much. So I was talking with a, with a faculty colleague and I tried to make it sound really hard, you know, because there’s a lot of stuff that is hard. The travel isn’t that in inspiring, there’s delays and all. So I tried to really accentuate the bad stuff and he looked over at me and he said, you love your work, don’t you? And I felt so guilty because I totally did. And then I found out he didn’t, he would never want to do what I was doing because every day was different. Every day I had to come up on the spot with different answers. And um and I didn’t know what I had no idea who’s gonna call what I was gonna, who I was gonna see what opportunities are gonna arise. He liked being in his classroom and knowing this is the curriculum and this is where I can adjust if we go too long on one area or if we go too fast on another. He, he loved that stability. Uh, and that’s where I started realizing that the stuff that I thought was just kind of everybody would want to do this. And I, you know, I kind of got lucky is, no, not everybody wants to do this and any fundraisers listening to this knows that because we’re usually the oddballs out the non profit. We’re the ones that are outward focused in ways that others aren’t. Why don’t we talk about

[00:19:49.68] spk_0:
the, the four quadrants of the leader’s journey. Um You have some self assessments that folks are just gonna have to buy the book to do. We’re not going to be able to talk through the details of self assessments, but, but the leader’s journey through the four through the four quadrants, I think that’s valuable and especially moving from quadrant 2 to 3.

[00:22:23.96] spk_3:
Sure. So the uh what I loved about creating part of, I’ve been trying for 18 years to explain what I do with, with as a coach. And this was the first time when I created this four quadrant methodology. It was the first time it, people repeated it back to me and they understood it. And my wife looked at it and said, well, this is me as learning, this isn’t just leadership, but the axes again are confidence uh vertically and then inputs horizontally quadrant one is where you’re high confidence and you’re looking externally. So we most leaders only get half the map. We don’t get the whole map, we only get the external half. So we, we start in a quadrant where we’ve seen other people lead and so we start copying them, somebody gives us the ability to run a project or to, to lead a team, um some sort of leadership and either we’re super excited because we’ve known we’re a leader and finally somebody else sees it or we’re scared, but we have the confidence from the other people that they’re gonna do it. That’s, and that’s where we just try to do what they’ve done. Um Some of the people that I listened to growing up, some of the motivational speakers would say if, if you’re leading a team and you turn around and there’s no one behind you, you’re just out for a walk and that’s when your confidence starts going down, which I dipping into the quadrant two, which is the experiment quadrant where you start trying to figure out, OK, what worked for tony didn’t work for me like tony has his own way of doing things and it’s not clearly not working for me. When I say jump, people don’t say how high, what do I need, where are the deficiencies and how do I fix them? And that’s where you start taking courses. You start getting cer certifications, reading books going to seminars, going to conferences, listening to podcasts. So it’s people skills or um closing uh on sales or fundraising. Um Anything. And me, most leaders kind of stay in quadrant too lurching from success to success. They have so much success that the people around them feel like. Oh yeah, this is they’re gonna pull the rabbit out of the hat again. We know that whatever she does, she’s an amazing leader. Um but she, the leader herself is, is wondering, is seeing all the deficits, all the deficiencies, all the stuff that they don’t have measured up. And that’s where the doubt builds up inside them to think. Well, maybe I’m not the right person. If they have the opportunity, sometimes it’s just through strain and stress, sometimes it’s through coaching to see that there’s a whole map. And the other half of the map is all the internal cues. So the external cues are great because it tells us how we learn. And there are good systems that we can learn from. But when we move

[00:23:10.83] spk_0:
before you, I want to just make sure folks are clear about what the, what the horizontal and these are labeled. So the, so the the the vertical is confident and unsure. So confidence is on top, unsure at the bottom and then the horizontal is external and internal. So when you’re in quadrant, when you’re in quadrant one, you’re uh observing and you’re, you’re confident and that’s the confident external quadrant, quadrant two, that’s the unsure external

[00:23:14.55] spk_3:
and you’re trying to fix this wrong.

[00:23:15.92] spk_0:
That’s what we’re talking about right now. I just wanna make sure

[00:23:35.59] spk_3:
everybody’s clear and that’s the cusp. So I find the magic happens at the, when people are moved from quadrant two to quadrant three, which is the, they’re still in the unsure half of the map, but you’re moving internally to figure out. So let me illustrate like this. Have you heard getting things done by David Allen? Uh No, I haven’t. Ok. Well, it’s 13,000 listeners. They’ve heard of it.

[00:23:40.71] spk_0:
The audience is better read than the host.

[00:24:57.94] spk_3:
So the uh if you, if you read a book, like getting things done is all in time management and you only implement 10% of it in quadrant two, you’re gonna think. Wow, I failed at another thing. I can only get 10% of this. The book says it changed people’s lives. It’s not changing my lives. I just write lists. That’s all I get out of this. Quarter three is where you shift the question to. Huh? I wonder why either. I wonder why that didn’t work for me. What is it, uh What is it about the book or it’s shifting the focus to? Wow, I got 10% that 10% is really helpful. This writing list things with the next action item really actually is, is really helpful. And as one of my mentors said, years ago, eat the chicken, spit out the bones. All right, the chicken for me in getting things done is writing lists. I don’t have to do the whole reviews and the files cabinets and all this other stuff that has helped other people. It’s not gonna help me. And as you start building in quadrant three were looking at your hard wiring, looking at your stories. You tell yourself, looking at your goal, setting your mission, your vision, your values, your personal style, it starts building up your confidence again because we in quadrant two, you’re just seeing all your, what you lack in that. You’re afraid somebody’s gonna figure out that you’re really just faking it. In quadrant three, you start seeing why some of the things work the way they do for you. Um Why your organization doesn’t necessarily do whatever all the other organizations are doing, but you don’t have it just a, it’s not just a whim or a feeling, it’s, you start being able to have the language to be able to express what, why you do what you do. And that builds your confidence back up to Quad four, which is a focused leader. Quadrant. OK?

[00:25:26.40] spk_0:
Before you go to four. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people get stuck in in the second quadrant and the transition from 2 to 3, you find a lot of people in your practice and generalize beyond that stuck in that second quadrant, what we working with, working with external systems that are not not being rewarded

[00:25:35.40] spk_3:
or not looking for the next guru looking for the next framework.

[00:25:38.37] spk_0:
Why is it, why is, why are so many people stuck into looking for this external help? That’s it’s routinely not not fulfilling for them.

[00:26:38.23] spk_3:
I think part of it is because we are, we were raised that way. We look for parents for cues, we look for coaches, for cues, we look for, we look to externally to teachers uh to grade our work uh bosses to give us um you know, performance reviews. And I think we’re taught probably at least in the cultures that I work in to not really trust ourselves to not trust the inner voice, the nudges that we’re getting because those are soft. We should look for hard data, we should look for benchmarking, we should, we should see what others are doing. Um There, there are good things with looking at others, but it’s just not the complete picture. I think it really needs, it’s like an introvert that is trying to copy an extrovert boss. So the extrovert uh mentor walks around the office, talks to people gets energized by doing that has a high level of energy with the personal relationships. Um an introvert boss, this introvert that’s trying to be, you know, an emerging leader maybe will get drained from that. It’s not that they can’t be social and be engaging, but it’s that it’s not energizing for them. So they’ll need to take a lot of time to recharge their batteries but they won’t necessarily give them the, if they don’t look internally to realize. 00, I wire differently. They’ll try to keep forcing themselves into somebody else’s mold. Um, you know, the, the, the proverbial square peg in a round hole.

[00:27:01.64] spk_0:
Ok. Somebody else’s mold being based on the way we grew up, like you’re

[00:27:05.48] spk_3:
saying, the external. Yeah,

[00:27:06.71] spk_0:
teachers, parents, bosses you’re trying to fit into, we’re accustomed to trying to fit their molds

[00:27:40.92] spk_3:
and think about it nonprofits too. Yeah. Boards, every board member seems to come in with their own kind of mold for how a nonprofit should work or how a leader should work or how something should get done. And what is incumbent on us as, as nonprofits to help with the boards is to on board them, to train them to. This is how our, our nonprofit works. These are our values as a nonprofit. This is how we do things. This is the communication styles we’ll have, we will not go back behind each other’s back and gossip. That is not how we operate here. Um But that often that on boarding and, and board uh board orientation of often doesn’t happen. So you’re stuck with a bunch of people that have these external moles that they want to try to force the leaders and the staff and the nonprofit into that aren’t necessarily helpful or in line with what the nonprofits there for

[00:27:58.12] spk_0:
or even worse than not helpful.

[00:28:00.05] spk_3:
Yeah. Thank you.

[00:28:05.47] spk_0:
Detrimental, hazardous, toxic, you know. So then moving from 2 to 3, I know you, I know you, you already did this but because you were ready to go from 3 to 4, but I

[00:28:11.95] spk_3:
go for it. This is great. You’re suffering a lackluster

[00:28:27.57] spk_0:
host. So I, I’m, I’m, I’m just processing it. You’ve been thinking about this for decades, but I’m still, I’m still processing. So the movie from 2 to 3, I I kind of saw that as, as a synthesis of all these different systems that you don’t call it synthesis.

[00:28:32.18] spk_3:
I don’t, that’s me

[00:28:56.84] spk_0:
doing all your work. You’ve been thinking about it for decades, you call it analyze, I call it synthesis. I like it. You, you, you’re free to call it analyze. Of course, I, I thought of it as a synthesis of all the things that you attempted in, in these external systems, the books, the webinars, the, the, the week long leadership conferences, whatever they were that were only partially or maybe not at all helping you, you, but you extract out what does, what does have values you and, and you make sense of it and you emerge in a better place. And that’s to me that was the synthesis of I

[00:29:51.51] spk_3:
like that. And the next quadrant and you also learn some of the um some of the patterns that you fall, fall into. You start reflecting enough to say, oh, wait, I’m doing that again. Does that mean I’m stressed or? Um, there’s one of the assessments of he’s ability battery, um, which tests you on how you actually perform on things. It’s not, how do you feel about, would you rather read a book or go to a movie? It’s not questions like that, but it’s do this task under time pressure and it shows what comes quickly to you. One of the things that came out for me early in my career was rhythm memory, which is a kinesthetic type of learning. Um It’s a and it’s also tied to a desire to move around. So I’ve always looked for jobs that involve moving around because I knew that that would be more life giving and energizing for me. What that meant was that I never work at the, at the

[00:29:53.51] spk_0:
prep school.

[00:30:59.38] spk_3:
Right. Absolutely. Right. But that also changed my career trajectory because I realized many of the major gift fundraisers that I’d seen that went into management became very frustrated because they had to manage other people that were doing the work and they actually wanted to do the work. So I, I took some ownership of my own career path and moved into positions that um allowed me to still have that kind of external, I mean, extrovert um you know, movement. So that kind of synthesis is also the internal synthesis of this is my way of operating in the world and I want to try to put myself as much as possible in ways that work with that. Um Not that I don’t wanna grow, not that I don’t wanna be stretched or, or challenged, but I also don’t wanna put myself in a position where I’m just gonna languish. Although that’s sometimes what the right career path should be when the head hunters call, they, they want to see, you know, a paper, career path of associate to the manager, to director to senior VP or something, which may not be the way that is realistic for, for people talking from experience.

[00:31:50.54] spk_2:
It’s time for a break. Kela increase donations and foster collaborative teamwork with Kela. The fundraisers, Crm maximize your team’s productivity and spend more time building strong connections with donors through features that were built specifically for fundraisers. A fundraiser. CRM goes beyond a data management platform. It’s designed with the unique needs of fundraisers in mind and aims to unify fundraising, communications and donor management tools into one single source of truth visit. Kila dot co to sign up for a coming group demo and explore how to exceed your fundraising goals. Like never before. It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:31:53.76] spk_0:
Thank you, Kate.

[00:34:27.70] spk_1:
The downside of doing planned giving fundraising is that you working with older donors. Most most typically folks in their eighties nineties and these folks often die while you’re working with them. And that happened. I had the oldest donor that I’ve ever worked with. Her name is Marian. Uh, I met her when she was just 96. She was young. Um, and she just died a few weeks ago, right on her 1/100 birthday. The actual birthday where she turned 100. That’s the day that she died. Of course, you know, that is sad. Uh, but there’s a lesson that I’m taking away from my four years with Marion. Lots of times when I would ask her how she’s doing, she would say I’m content, I’m content. And I, I always thought about that, not just now since she’s died, but that contentment was just what she was looking for and was very content with, was very satisfied with, you know, she had her opera recordings on records, of course, with her phonograph. Uh she had her daily newspaper, she had WQXR, the public radio, classical music station. Uh She had her memories, she had her lovely one bedroom apartment with a view of the Hudson River and always well kept, I mean neat, very neatly kept. She was very, very capable of taking care of herself. So contentment, you know, she had these things and she was just content. And II, I feel like that’s something that I am striving for contentment, contentment. So, so uh Marian, I, I salute you, I admire your contentment and, and I thank you for passing on something very, very valuable for me that is Tony’s take two Kate

[00:34:29.83] spk_2:
she seems like a wonderful woman. And that story is very touching and the words that you said were very touching. And so she lives on in your memories, which is

[00:34:38.59] spk_1:
wonderful. She absolutely does. And, and the idea of striving to be content will always stay with me from her.

[00:34:51.82] spk_2:
We’ve got Buku, but loads more time. Let’s go back to the surprising gift of doubt

[00:35:15.75] spk_0:
you at least would, would be, uh would look good on paper and do look good on paper. I, I would, I would never be, I, I can’t be an employee. I, I would, I would fail the, I would, I would fail the screening interview with the, with the, with the headhunter, uh, assistant assistant. I, I wouldn’t even get to the associate level.

[00:35:18.81] spk_3:
I remember the managing director. I don’t know how I get the head hunter.

[00:35:22.43] spk_0:
I’d be 20 minutes late just because I, I felt like why should I be on time for you? And then if I ever made it to the, if I ever made it to the interview, which I never would. But if I met, if I met a principal in the organization, I’d be showing, I’d show up late. I’d be in sneakers. No, I just, I

[00:35:38.50] spk_3:
do everything

[00:35:43.91] spk_0:
I could because I know I’d be, I would be a shitty employee. I just don’t fit them up. So I, I would, I’d be doing them a favor by wasting their time.

[00:35:50.62] spk_3:
That’s awesome.

[00:35:52.31] spk_0:
So move us into the fourth for those uh for those who are, are more suited to uh work in an organization, you’re moving to a level of you mentioned at one point, grace you’re leading with grace and finesse, I think you say

[00:37:37.78] spk_3:
right? And, and there’s a the, it’s because you’ve got the kind of confidence and the peace of mind of knowing why you’re doing things differently. So instead of just thinking about, I must be so bad because I can’t get energized. I don’t like going to all those social events night after night. Um You start realizing why, what fills you up and what fills your organization, your team, your, whatever your organization is. Uh And that grows your confidence to that fourth quadrant which I, I called focus. Um But I don’t want to make it sound like it’s Nirvana. Uh It’s not all blissful because we’re still dealing with human beings and we’re one ourselves. Leadership is still a challenge. And yeah, but you now have a much, you have the full map you can look at and look at. Do I need to find somebody to copy? Do I need to learn skills from people? Do I need to uh go to a class or get a podcast or read a book or do I need to actually figure out what, what the synthesizing do I need to analyze what I’ve consumed already? Or our organizations consumed to figure out why are we doing it differently. Um, one of the things I also want to be clear on is that the data can be helpful. So, I don’t want to discredit external stuff with fundraising, in particular, uh, when fundraising letters, we know if they’re chat and they use you, they get better response than if they’re, uh, boring things. Essays that would get a, uh, high school, a grade a, from a high school teacher. Um, and we know that we know that and there are some nonprofits that might be tempted to say, ah, we don’t, we want to be more business like, um, and so it’s not just throwing out all the data that’s out there, but uh synthesizing it, I’m really stuck on that word. Thank you for that tony. Oh,

[00:38:14.13] spk_0:
the third quadrant synthesis. Yeah, that’s the way I, I’m one reader, just one reader that, that’s the way I conceived of it. Um All right. So, all right. So we got these quadrants that sort of progression. The four quadrants sounds like something out of the Matrix. But, um I didn’t watch much of that series, so I can’t go beyond that. Uh That. So let’s leave it there. That analogy. Um You talk about ST and you mentioned early earlier storytelling and you talk a good bit about different stories, stories that we tell ourselves, stories about the organization, talk, talk some about uh the stories we tell

[00:39:47.79] spk_3:
ourselves. That’s one of the things that I, I think a lot of us don’t reflect on is the kind of the self talk that’s going on in our head all the time. Um, the two that I talk about in that are the, I call them stock stories. They’re either the ones that you tell people when you’re meeting them for the first time. So we often have kind of go to stories where it helps position, helps people position us in their mind. Um, so maybe some people like Laline, some people like, uh, you know what their education history is or their career history, there are certain things we go to as we start paying attention to those, we can start seeing if they really reflect what we’re trying to do. Often we get stuck in these from a different time in our life and we just kind of tell the same stories because we think we’re gonna get the same response. The one that the other type of stock story that that happens is, um, with Jessica Sharp here in Greenville is really cat, has her clients just catalog the self talk going through and just for a day or a couple of days listing all the different things that enter your head and that takes some discipline, especially to do it non judgmentally. But things like, ah, I always fail, I always mess that up, but I can’t, I’m never good at that. Um, writing them down on a piece of paper. And then after your time holding that paper up and just asking, well, reviewing them and then she asks her clients to say, would you talk to a friend like this? And oftentimes our thoughts are so toxic, we’re, we’re actually filling, we’re polluting our heads because we’re so hard on ourselves. We’re saying to

[00:39:55.86] spk_0:
ourselves that we wouldn’t even say to others, right

[00:40:11.52] spk_3:
ourselves with them. Right. Exactly. So her, her invitation is, why don’t you become a better friend to yourself? Um, which I, I think it’s really, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this today but it’s very hard sometimes when, when you’re used to being hard on yourself to loosen up, lighten up because it feels like you might just go. I, I feel like I might just go off the rails if I’m too kind to myself, I need to be really hard, you know, and, and

[00:40:23.52] spk_0:
be a discipline like you need to be a little stricter. Otherwise I’m gonna get

[00:40:28.08] spk_3:
reckless. Right.

[00:40:29.74] spk_0:
You know, if I, if I, if I loosen up and, you know, something, something, something careless, I’ll do something careless or, you know, something

[00:40:36.46] spk_3:
along those lines, I’m self employed. But I often joke that my boss is kind of a jerk.

[00:40:42.45] spk_0:
Well, I am too, but I, I don’t have a good joke like that. My wife, the

[00:40:46.32] spk_3:
lackluster host. There you go. My wife, my wife reminds me that I am the boss so I can, you know, you listen,

[00:41:40.64] spk_0:
as a coach, you listen to a lot of, a lot of people who are stuck in quadrant two, beating themselves up and whatever they are and they might even be in, they might even be in the gray and finesse quadrant quadrant four, but they’re still, they’re still hard on themselves or the, or the work is hard on them. How, how does it, how do you not generalize all coaches? How do you as a coach keep, uh stay positive, like go from one coaching session to the next to the next to the next in a day or even if there’s a couple of days, I mean, how do you continue to relate as a positive human being when you’re hearing tough story after tough story after, you know, maybe insurmountable challenge. Uh

[00:43:51.53] spk_3:
I find people incredibly fa that’s a great question. I find people incredibly fascinating and um I, I’m a glass is always full kind of guy, not half full or half empty, it’s always full of water or air. So, um there’s a strong, strong sense of optimism that II I bring to the table and resiliency, I guess because um even people that are going through hard things, it’s one of one of the postcards I carry in my bag when I, when I used to travel, hopefully I’ll start again. Uh So just when the caterpillar thought his life was over, he became a beautiful butterfly. Um And so there’s that sense of even the ends are often beginnings for people. Um, uh, there’s definitely times where I have to do some of my, some of my own stuff like, um, center, you know, some meditation practices and other things just to exercise to keep the headset. But, um, I’ve seen so many people can transform themselves into people that they’ve wanted to be but they, they weren’t really sure they could be. That, that gives me the hope as I keep going from call to call and sometimes it does seem like the calls gang up one toxicity to another toxicity. Um I mean, you need your own, you need self care. Yeah. And I also one of the things the privilege of being a coach is that you get to not be in the hiring and firing space with these people. So you get to be with them and it’s, it’s almost, I’ve heard this, I haven’t experienced this, but I’ve heard in the Midwest, they, they used to have blizzards where you couldn’t back in the day when you needed to walk to the barn and milk the cows that you could get lost on the way back to the house because the blizzard was so, so um so, you know, covering or severe, maybe. Ok, great. So you needed a rope between the two buildings. And sometimes I feel like as a coach, I’m the one that’s either the rope or I’m able to connect between calls saying hey, but remember just three calls ago, you, you already talked about that and this is what you were gonna do. Oh, that’s right. I forget, I forgot I did that. That’s super. Ok. And just kind of get pointing the way, pointing some of the rocks uh and the path for people to take. And that’s, that’s incredibly uh life giving for sure.

[00:43:54.03] spk_0:
Blinding, blinding. The blizzard was blinding. Thank you. That’s what we wanted. We’re both, we’re both 50 plus so blind. That’s what you want. Um Yeah, the rope. I said, you’re uh you’re the, you’re the the rope back. That’s I like that quite a metaphor. Good one. And so

[00:45:14.04] spk_3:
because yeah, the demands of life can really be blinding to this. Uh people we are, they’re so the center for creative leadership tried to figure out what the one thing was for business leaders. That would be the most stressful. And it turns out there were four and they were all as one as somebody else pointed out to me. They’re all people, peers, colleagues, customers and supervisors or bosses. And in the non profit, it’s often boards, donors, uh staff and, and um and the and the clients, those are all pulling people apart. So it’s really easy to lose our way and to have somebody that’s, that’s sole job is there to be there to help you be better. Um That I became a coach because in my experience, I grew more through talking to coaches, uh than I did. Consultants are great. They have a, they have a blueprint that they were hired them to, to put on to the organization. But talking to a coach that didn’t even know my work helped me to grow as an individual. And I could figure out how to do be a better individual in my job when I understood a little bit more about myself. And

[00:45:14.99] spk_0:
you also have the voice

[00:45:16.30] spk_3:
so well. There we go because it is mostly by phone, so compassionate voice.

[00:45:35.87] spk_0:
You were destined some more, a little more about stories. Maybe you digress a little bit, but uh you talk about the future eulogy. This is so this is other stories that other people would say would tell about you. How do you, you know, influence your future history and talk about the future eulogy and that kind of storytelling?

[00:47:38.86] spk_3:
Sure. Well, and stories because our phones may have an Android or I OS operating system. Some people may sell blackberry. I don’t know. But our human as human beings, it’s uh story is our operating system and one of the ways we can program that is by figuring out what’s the story we want to be living uh for me and for many people, because if you google your eulogy, you’ll find this as a coaching practice that’s been well used is to think about at your funeral. What will people say about you as what will your closest people, maybe your family, uh community members, colleagues, what are they gonna say? Um And some of us that’s a little bit too hypothetical. So it’s the other way to look at it is if you were to die today, what would they say about you today? And writing it down, even in bullet points doesn’t have to be complete sentences can bring some clarity to how they perceive you or how you think you’re being perceived versus how you want to be had one leader. That was we before the pandemic had uh quarter, three leadership days where we do, people would fly into Greenville and we’d hold the whole day and we’d kind of work together as a group through some of these exercises. And when, um the kind of the story that she wanted for her apartment and she realized profi that her staff would never know that she wanted it to be a joyful place because she was so focused on policies and procedures and tightening, you know, um, routines that had been really lax and not non-existent. Um But she said now I have an opportunity to, to live into this story that I’ve written and it was sort of like for her, it was a history of the future. It wasn’t a eulogy, but thinking about that kind of final beginning with the end in mind, uh Franklin Covey’s uh habit too can be very helpful for us. Uh My example was when I did this in my twenties, I realized I want my kids to know I love them. But going away to work didn’t necessarily communicate that love. So it allowed me to be, I wasn’t gonna stop going away to work cause that providing for my family was something that was pretty important to me. But um I was able to then figure out what are other ways that we can, I can communicate that love so that they know that I love them. Um, despite my going away,

[00:47:59.35] spk_0:
you just buy them things when you go away.

[00:48:01.41] spk_3:
That could definitely be part of it. Yeah, until my wife said palpable items. No more stuffed animals. I used to get one in every place I was going and she’s like that’s enough. They have enough stuffed animals.

[00:48:13.41] spk_0:
I would just, I just reduce it to the tangible goods. Just, just send, just send presents. We know love is equivalent to tangible tangible items. The more

[00:48:22.41] spk_3:
and the shot glasses in the airport stores were a little bit confusing to kids. Like what, why is this a doll cop? What is this

[00:48:30.39] spk_0:
shot glasses? The I I heart New York shot glasses. Great. Just send things, sending things that’s equivalent to love if you’re gonna be away re replace yourself with items with

[00:48:40.22] spk_3:
items. I would,

[00:48:43.68] spk_0:
um, I, so that I thought that was very interesting. The future eulogy. Uh,

[00:48:48.44] spk_3:
have you ever done an exercise like that? No,

[00:48:52.97] spk_0:
no, I haven’t. Or, or what even, even making it simpler, what, what folks would say about you now?

[00:49:00.56] spk_3:
Yeah, it’s, it’s very clarifying and a little chilling for some people.

[00:49:52.46] spk_0:
Let’s talk a little bit. See, uh So just the listeners know, see, we’re bouncing around on different things that, that I think are interesting because, you know, we can’t really do the self assessments that are, that are part of Mark’s book. You just gotta, you gotta get the damn book, surprising gift of doubt. Mark a pitman, you got to get the book to do the self assessments to move yourself from the quadrant two. You may be stuck in or to yourself from whatever quadrant you’re in to advance your, your, your current leadership effectiveness or your future leadership. We’re all potentially future leaders, even those of us who don’t work in an organization, we’re still leading, I lead, I lead folks, I, I just, they’re not on my payroll but an organization payroll that I, that I am leading, but I’m leading them. So leadership still applies. Even if you’re an entrepreneur, Solone, however you want to call yourself.

[00:49:58.77] spk_3:
Well, I’m really glad you said that because I think a lot of people think leaders uh is, is a title which that is a form of leadership, like you’re saying, it’s influencing others and as human beings, we’re always influencing other people and that is a form of leadership. And so I try to take the broadest view a absolutely.

[00:51:05.50] spk_0:
And I find it, you know. All right, I’m doing, my synesthesia is kicked in. I just got to chill because I’m thinking about times when I’ve been able to influence someone, I’m not gonna, I can divulge any details but influence someone to a way of thinking that I’m, that I’m, that I saw that they didn’t and I’ve moved there. I, you can move people’s thinking and it’s not, it’s not, uh, conniving or anything. It’s just, it’s moving, it’s just consensus building and I’m not saying I’m successful at it every time, you know, but, but when you, when you, when you’re successful at helping people see things in a different way, you know, whether it’s, uh, I don’t know, it’s a concept or it’s money or it’s a, it’s a path forward to, in a relationship to bring it to fundraising. Um, it’s, it’s very, very gratifying. I mean, like I said, it’s giving me a couple of instances where, uh, where it’s happened. So that’s all to me. That’s all

[00:51:14.18] spk_3:
leadership. Yes, absolutely. I firmly agree. Yes.

[00:51:19.00] spk_0:
OK. Otherwise we’re shutting you off, you know, got 46 minutes. That’s the end,

[00:51:23.54] spk_3:
that’s the end of the show.

[00:51:26.20] spk_0:
I, I figured you would, of course. Um, so, you know, we’re moving around to different things that we can help you, help, you understand, the self assessments, help you move your leadership forward. And another one that Mark talks about in the book is, is goal setting, different types of goals, very important goal setting, talk about

[00:52:21.43] spk_3:
that. Well, so one of the things that we do with goal, there’s a lot of books written on goal setting. So this is the, the third of the three major areas that I focused on. But what I did was I took about 18 years ago, 17 years ago, I took all the different goal setting things. Uh not only did I study as a kid growing up in my family, but I also was in a program in college that actually required me to get a lower grade because I was supposed to take leadership and, and learn goal setting as a extracurricular, not just as part of my course of study, but I also my master’s in organizational leadership. So I had these all sorts of formal education on goal setting as well as you just said

[00:52:24.43] spk_0:
something, a course required you to get a lower grade.

[00:52:45.61] spk_3:
Yeah, there was a, there was a scholarship at the undergrad college. I went to that required me to get, I, I had a lower not required. I shouldn’t say that that there was a lower grade expectation because there was an expectation that you were gonna be all in on leadership and student activities. And part of that was having a mentor with a staff member and having regular meetings with them, teaching you goal setting and teaching you how to do mission statements and how to create strategic plans and that sort of thing. And that was all sort of extracurricular

[00:52:59.71] spk_0:
and you got too high a grade. Is that what happened?

[00:53:01.61] spk_3:
No, no, no. Fortunately they let my high grades still stand. But, but there are other, some of my other friends who had a different scholarship had to keep a higher GPA, I didn’t have the pressure of having to keep a GPA to keep the scholarship I had. So I see.

[00:53:14.82] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:53:40.76] spk_3:
All right. So, goal setting anyway. So, so what I did was I tried to take a bunch of the parts that I didn’t realize I was doing quarter three work at the time. But I tried to take a bunch of the different parts that I liked and this, this system that I use, um I submit to it, it’s in the book and I use my clients. Uh It isn’t the end, all, be all, but it’s a good one to try. Uh The first step you do is write a list of 100 things to accomplish in the next year or in your life. Um It’s, uh and, and why 100 for me is because it forces you to get silly and it forces you to think creatively because at some point you’re just trying to fill lines. Um What most people that I’ve got done this with, they get 10 pretty quickly because it’s job related. Probably things that are going to be on the performance

[00:53:58.64] spk_0:
review 10 goals in a lifetime or even in a

[00:56:19.53] spk_3:
year. That’s not. No, but then the next 10 become really hard. And when we were doing these uh intensives here in Greenville, people would call me over to the table and say, Mark. Um Can I uh this, can I put this, this goal on my list? Uh It’s like planting a garden. I want to plant a garden. Can I put that on my list? Chuck? Of course, you can, it’s your list and that’s the point. Um It gets the personal and the professional together. And what I have found with so many leaders is that they get so fragmented in their life. They have their professional side, they have their family side, they have different sides that when they’re looking at their goals comprehensively and they’re listing out 100 forces you to do that in some way. Um It, the amount of um centering that, that brings to human beings, the energy in the room invariably goes up because people see themselves, their full cells represented there. And it’s not like you’re gonna necessarily share your board or your boss that you’re doing a garden goal, but it’s your life. So you get to set the goals for that you wanna have. Um So the first step is that is writing the 100 the second step is then the history of the future, which is you read through all of them and it will take days usually to do the 100 read through the, uh, read through them and then just project forward. What does it look like? 12 months from now? If you’ve accomplished everything on that list, even the most far out crazy ones. What are people saying about you? What awards you have? What degrees you have? What do you, how are you feeling about yourself and then let that sit. Um If you did nothing else, you’d be shocked in 12 months. How many of those things you can accomplish? I’ve tested this with groups and it’s fascinating. Uh but then you, then you can map them out. You, you go back over the list and um look for two different types of goals. Either the ones that make sense, like planting a garden that if you’ve also to fill in 100 lines, you also plant carrots, plant cabbage, plant potatoes, planting a garden will kind of scoop up a bunch of those others, other goals, the smaller goals in it. So you could use, that’s one type of magnet goal. The other ones are some that just kind of pop off this the the page or you kind of get a little kind of jolt of joy. There’s, there’s, it’s not really rational why some of those are there but paying attention to those and, and trying to call the list down to about 3 to 5 of the rational goals. And the irrational goals. Um, and then plotting those out and focusing on those. Um, some people get it done in a quarter. I usually have to take the full year for each of those goals. But

[00:56:31.61] spk_0:
on one of your books shelves behind you, you have a license plate that says go guy.

[00:57:26.65] spk_3:
And that’s because of this process to basketball again. No, it’s not. It was my, my first ever training was with the equine vet and my second training was because of his referral was with a physical therapy practice who was owned, they were owned by physicians and they wanted to prove that they needed an admin help to do the billing so they could keep doing more care of patients. So we set up, uh, we broke down their goals, uh over the course of a year, what their revenue had to be, what, how they’re gonna communicate it to the people that own the practice, all the different things. 12 months of them, uh We worked also how they can operate, operationalize their, their strengths. So the people, what did the people like doing? What didn’t they like doing? They’d never asked them, they just did the work that was in front of them. They found out one person really loves knees, somebody else loved ankles. So they started shifting the workload so they could do better at a higher quality. Um Within four months of that training, they’d hit their annual goals within the twelvemonth goals they had accomplished in four months. And so I saw this, uh, Pippy, uh, I saw her at a store and she said that’s the goal guy. That’s the guy I was telling you about pointing at me. So I got a license plate to say, go guy. I thought that was pretty cool.

[00:57:45.93] spk_0:
The equine veterinary practice, you could have been the full guy

[00:57:50.42] spk_3:
that’s

[00:57:51.95] spk_0:
ps are always the worst. Unless you think of them first.

[00:57:55.72] spk_3:
I’m trying to get in there. But, um, guy,

[00:58:09.90] spk_0:
all right. All right, Mark. Leave us with, uh, some, some, uh, Mark a pittman, surprising gift of doubt, wisdom and, uh, and, and we’ll leave it there,

[00:59:00.53] spk_3:
please. Well, thanks so much for having me on the show and it’s my pleasure. One of the things that I think is really important. Well, there’s two things I’d like to end with. One is that we’ve hinted at assessments if you’re doing assessments as part of your teamwork, um, part of your own personal growth. I love them. Don’t let them confine you. They’re not, they’re meant to help you grow and grace and understanding of other people not to slap labels on people and pigeonhole them. So I’ll just, that’s one thing that’s a big, big ax. I like to grind. But I think going forward just people leaving, you know, listening to this, um, as you work through the, whatever the days are ahead of you and you find yourself asking, you know, criticizing yourself being really hard on yourself, try to pause and just say, well, what if this is exactly the gift that I have for the sector? What if, what if this limitation is actually the strength and the, the unique bend that I give? Because I feel like when you’re feel like you’re broken, you may be but you could be on the verge of greatness.

[00:59:17.66] spk_0:
The old guy, the book is the surprising gift of doubt, use uncertainty to become the exceptional leader. You are meant to be, get the book do the assessments. Don’t let them pigeonhole you, Mark Pitman, you’ll find him and his company at Concord leadership group dot com and he’s at Mark a pitman. Thank you again. Mark real pleasure.

[00:59:42.14] spk_3:
Thank you

[00:59:51.58] spk_2:
next week and we won’t let you down if you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:59:54.63] spk_1:
I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com

[01:00:44.39] spk_2:
were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box dot org and by Kela grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers crm visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. 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.

[01:01:10.21] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and the beach brand.

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[00:00:34.12] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. And don’t I sound much better than even just last week, 99% back to normal. And I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of Lenticonus if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming?

[00:01:15.04] spk_1:
Hey, tony, we have financial literacy for your C suite and board leadership that understands your numbers. Protects not only your nonprofit, it also protects the people filling those roles to finance and audit pros. Walk us through six key metrics that anyone can understand and that reveal the true state of your financial standing. Dean Dell and Jerry Frick are from veracity pros an Tonys take two

[00:01:17.45] spk_0:
Oklahoma City. Anyone

[00:01:50.79] spk_1:
were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box dot org and buy Kela grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers, CRM, visit Kela dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kela to exceed their goals. Here is financial literacy for your C suite and board.

[00:02:49.78] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure to welcome Dean Dasell and Jerry Frick to non profit radio. Dean has almost 30 years of leadership in administration, accounting and finance across nonprofits and for profits. He is also an outsourced CFO at veracity Pros. Jerry Frick is a finance professional with extensive experience in financial reporting analysis, forecasting, budgeting cash management grant administration and we may as well throw in auditing and internal controls. Jerry is also an outsourced CFO at Veracity Pros. The firm is at veracity pros dot com. And Dean and Jerry are both on linkedin Dean gel. Jerry Frick. Welcome to non profit radio.

[00:02:53.85] spk_2:
Thank you. Glad to be

[00:02:54.79] spk_3:
here. Thank you, tony. Glad to be here. I’m

[00:02:56.80] spk_0:
glad you are. Uh the first thing I think of is Dean and Jerry. Uh Dean Martin and Jerry. You gotta take this show on the road, the Martin and Lewis show, change your last names and start doing movies together. Duly

[00:03:09.07] spk_3:
noted.

[00:03:10.91] spk_2:
I’m ready. Where’s, where’s the casting goal?

[00:03:13.77] spk_0:
Absol Martin and Lewis, they did, they did dozens of movies together, whatever. I don’t know how many but uh there were theaters, you know, you should take this show on the road as Martin and Lewis.

[00:03:22.72] spk_3:
We’ll just have to figure out who the Straight Man is.

[00:04:01.86] spk_0:
Yes. Well, well, Dean, you’ll have to, you’ll have to make that sacrifice. That’s gotta be you, you stay, you’re gonna stay true to the, to the, uh, to the original team. Um All right. So let’s talk about some fiscal literacy, financial literacy, maybe for board members specifically, but, you know, not necessarily it could be for uninitiated or maybe un indoctrinated. I don’t know, uh, other c suite folks besides CFO S you, you are both outsource CFO S. So you’re, you’re seeing a, a broad swath of nonprofits. Why do we all just, why do we all just get hung up on numbers? Why, why do we gloss over financial, uh, financial statements? Even simple balance sheets, audits. What, why, why do we, why do we all get scared and frozen by these?

[00:04:17.14] spk_3:
I think that’s a great question, tony. I, and it’s a lot that we’re trying to help in what we’ve seen in working with different organizations, especially C suite and leadership and boards of different organ nonprofit organizations is they see the numbers, they gloss over and they are happy that they got numbers but they don’t necessarily know what they mean.

[00:04:37.75] spk_0:
So they should, they, hopefully they’re happy but they don’t even know if they ought to be happy.

[00:05:21.40] spk_3:
Exactly. And so it really gets down to the fiduciary responsibilities as a board, uh, you know, duty of loyalty, the duty of care, the, the duty of obedience, but making sure they’re fulfilling those uh, fiduciary duties and, and what we’ve seen both working with pros and in our prior life is, is that there’s really an opportunity to help the boards. Uh And I, and I jer know I can talk about this much more deeply than I can but really help the boards, uh assess what’s going on, uh, address what’s going on Act and then when necessary applaud. And that’s really what we try to help leadership, uh, folks and organizations do is how do you, how do you take those numbers? How do you understand those numbers understand what they’re telling us where we are, where we’re going. Um And how we do that in an effective way instead of giving them reams and reams of uh six point fonts with tiny numbers and dot

[00:06:12.65] spk_0:
points. Yeah. And you know, and, and my, my fear is that when it comes time to review financials, um, you know, it’s sort of done like five minutes before the meeting starts, people are flipping through, flipping through pages and, you know, that they don’t make any sense. They’re, they’re, they’re definitely abrogating their duties to the organization, to your, to your points dean, you know, they, they, and, and to themselves, I mean, they, they need to protect themselves as board members um as well as the organization and then, but it’s also, as you mentioned, you know, it’s also other, other c street leaders. I mean, they, it, it doesn’t, we, we can’t just all rely on the CFO to, to, we, we gotta have some literacy amongst ourselves. No. Is that is that, is that true, Jane Jerry?

[00:07:33.54] spk_2:
It’s absolutely true what you’re saying, tony and, and uh unfortunately, it’s all too common in nonprofit organizations that the, you know, the, the financial reporting is done by the CFO and quite often only understood by the CFO and that’s really the broken link. Um And, and it’s really not, you know, when, when you think of, of board compositions of nonprofit organizations, they go out and recruit board members who are gonna identify with their mission and maybe have some specialties in, in the mission area. A non profit is lucky if they get one board member who can understand financials. And so you’re right about, you know, just how quickly they get glossed over and you know, the, the board collapse if they get a report, even though they don’t understand it, they don’t have any idea what it’s saying. And that’s really the dilemma that, that we are trying to overcome with our clients is, is we want to get them reports that are not just jumbles of numbers that make no sense. We want them to see something that they can connect to. Um and, and really understand the financial health of the organization. And also how do those numbers connect to the mission delivery that that organization is trying to fulfill?

[00:08:15.99] spk_0:
All right, so, so let’s dive in. So how do we start to make this, these statements, these numbers uh you know, less abstruse to people more comprehensible, connect with them, Jerry, as you said, you know, how, how do we, how do we start to break this down so that it’s not just one person or maybe two in the entire organization, including the board that, that can make sense of these things.

[00:09:31.11] spk_2:
So I think you, you use the term that I would use to, it’s break it down. Um We’ve got to get away from thinking, you know, more data is better. Um The data is there, the CFO is required to understand the data and what everybody else needs to understand is what is the story that this data is telling us. So you have to break it down into, into the components that are really important and you know, when it comes to reporting those components to the board, uh less is more in my opinion, you know, so don’t I my experience and I know Dean has had this experience too. If you provide a board financial reports that just have columns and columns of numbers, you’re inviting them individually or collectively to go down rabbit trails that are just gonna waste time and accomplish nothing. So what you wanna do is you wanna summarize this information in, in a much more readable fashion.

[00:09:34.18] spk_0:
A dashboard uh uh uh A dashboard is

[00:10:14.24] spk_2:
perfect. We focus on dashboards and, and taking a balance sheet as you said and taking the income statement and, and summarize the numbers down to you know something much more readable. But then you, you can’t just stop there. You’ve got to provide and this is what the CFO S job and probably the executive director or CEO S job is. You’ve got to provide some analysis of what this is telling you. So that could involve narrative, it could involve charts and graphs, something more visual. And Dean, you want to speak to that so

[00:10:59.20] spk_0:
we can go to the visual. But, but let’s get to some key metrics because uh and, and maybe visualizations may help. I’m not dismissing that but and this is perfect because you, you two are uh talking to the guy who took uh accounting for poets in in college. I mean, I mean, all I can remember is assets, equal liabilities plus owners’ equity. I never understood how the two columns could come out to be equal. It just seemed like magic to me. It seemed like a bunch of lies and magic. I don’t know how the two numbers that the columns were supposed to always equal to come out to be the same to me. They sound opposite assets and my abilities. But you don’t have to explain. You don’t, you don’t have to help me pass my college, my college accounting course. But let let’s get to some like basic metrics. What, what, what are some, I don’t know, four or five key numbers or key trends there, there’s not a specific number that, that leaders and board members need to track.

[00:12:22.98] spk_3:
Well, that’s a, it’s a great question and I think, and you, you hit the nail on the head. Tony is sometimes with some boards, it’s even an educational process on what a balance sheet is. What are assets? What are our liabilities? What are net assets? What are unrestricted, net assets versus temporary restricted net assets and then the statement of activities and the statement of cash flows. So we’ve even found before we even get to the ratios of doing an education and have it be a continuing education process for the boards just to help them read a financial statement at a very basic level, mind you but, but this helping them understand, you know, assets is what, what you own and liabilities is what you owe and net assets is what you’re worth and sometimes just the principles of that and then once they have that base education, start looking at things of like their current ratio, which is a pretty common, you take a look at your current assets against your current liabilities and assess where you’re at. And typically we like to recommend to most organizations uh that that current ratio be uh be at least two that you have at least $2 of current assets to, to every dollar of current liabilities that should give you at least some cushion, not a whole lot mind you, but at least some cushion to whether uh any changes on a period to period basis is a great one.

[00:12:32.92] spk_0:
Ok, so that’s what you call it, the current current ratio, assets to assets over liabilities of assets to liabilities,

[00:12:48.88] spk_3:
current assets, current liabilities and when I say current assets, any assets that, um, that aren’t held like in buildings or, or any long term investments or that type of thing, things that can be easily converted,

[00:13:21.60] spk_0:
liquid have some, you know, you can liquidate them within two weeks or a month or something like that. Not a building. But, but, you know, I don’t know, I can’t think of an example but, uh, ok, something that you could, so that if your liabilities got worse then because you, you like to see a 2 to 1, uh, uh, assets, liquid assets to, to liabilities as a minimum as a, as a minimum

[00:13:23.38] spk_3:
and the current liabilities would be anything you have due in the next year. So that would be any typically in your accounts payable and bills you have to immediately. And then also if you have a mortgage, any, any liabilities that you have over the next 12 months or if you have a loan or other obligations that you have to others outside the organization.

[00:14:02.26] spk_2:
And it’s really for the board to understand if you don’t have a good current ratio, if you don’t have at least that 2 to 1, you know, what if it’s 1 to 1, um, you know, really what, what that is saying, or what abort should interpret that to mean is we have no flexibility. You know, we all of our assets are now spoken for because of our liabilities. How do we operate this organization going forward? How do we deliver any mission when we have no capability of investing any additional assets and programs?

[00:14:25.24] spk_0:
1 to 1 sounds treacherous. It is treacherous or less. I mean, it could, could be less than one too.

[00:14:50.15] spk_2:
We’ve absolutely had experiences with organizations who are less than one and it really can handcuff that organization from being able to sometimes even being able to operate for, for the long term. I mean, that’s when we start to get in to have the conversation about, can you sustain this? How long can you sustain this organization with this kind of financial picture?

[00:15:27.96] spk_1:
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[00:15:33.82] spk_0:
All right. So that’s great. The current ratio sounds critical. What’s a, what’s another valuable benchmark for, for, for leaders leadership to, to be tracking?

[00:16:25.01] spk_3:
I think another time they one is days of, of calculating how many days of cash that you have on hand. And the reason I say timely is just in the matter of last week, uh, nonprofits who received federal funding were staring down the barrel of a federal government shutdown. Um And so some nonprofits either whether they’re government funded or even not government funded. If you lose a ma major funder or your, your pipeline of funds is stopped because congress uh is failing to act and improve a budget or approve continuing resolution. How many days of cash do you have on hand to continue those operations? To make payrolls to pay your immediate bills? So that’s again, taking a look at your liquid cash or things that could be easily converted to cash and then taking a look at your expenses that you have and try and calculating an average daily expense,

[00:16:36.16] spk_0:
average daily.

[00:16:57.36] spk_3:
And so you take a look at your total cash. You take a look at your average daily expense, uh and then you come up with a number and typically depending on the organization for most government funded nonprofit organizations, we typically like to see 30 to 90 days of cash on hand. Meaning if there’s all of a sudden, a sudden sudden stoppage, uh they can continue for another 1 to 3 months for other non profit organizations. Uh We typically like to see up to 100 and 80 days. So up to a six month, it can sometimes be difficult for government funded because a lot of government funded organizations are reimbursement based. The government asked to spend the money and then you get the money from

[00:17:16.38] spk_0:
that. But what instance would it be where you want it to be more like 100 and 80 versus 30?

[00:19:11.62] spk_2:
Well, again, I think that then again, this is a great opportunity for the board to really think about what are our sources of revenue, what are the risks of losing some source of revenue? And therefore, you know, if, if the risks of a source of revenue, either drying up or needing to change are high, then you would want to set a benchmark or a target for a greater number of days uh of cash on hand or some, you know, some boards who want to, you know, just be more prudent and look to an unknown future. They, they may just want to say, hey, we want to set aside six months of operating cash in a reserve fund so that if something does happen, we already have it. We don’t have to worry. We, we can go on business as usual because we’ve created a rainy day fund. If something has happened. But one thing I wanna mention on this as well, tony is there are organizations, there are non profit organizations we’ve encountered who have too much cash. And the risk there is if you are going out to donors, private foundations, corporations, individuals and continuing to solicit contributions from them. And they wanna look at your financial performance before they make a decision if they see that the organization is sitting on a whole lot of cash. The obvious question they’re gonna ask is why do you need my money? You got all this cash in the bank. Why should I give you anything? You know? So there’s a danger on the flip side too?

[00:19:41.99] spk_0:
Ok. Ok, good. All right. So risk management, uh but operational management as well. All right. What a current ratio, days of cash? I love these, you know, let, let’s identify like half a dozen or something. What, what’s another, I’m not, it doesn’t have to be six but, you know, some decent numbers. So that, so that people know, you know. All right, here’s, here’s the numbers that, that this board wants to track on a quarterly basis and we, so we want to see not just the current but the trend also. So if we identify a problem with days of cash in, uh, in Q one of, of 24 do we see a difference by Q two or three? You know, are we improving? So what else, what else besides these two metrics?

[00:22:05.35] spk_2:
So another one that, um, seldom gets looked at, but it needs to be looked at a lot more is what we would call fundraising efficiency. So, really, but that is looking at it, it’s, it’s taking the total amount, you know, choose a period of time and how much money did you raise through contributions? You know, et cetera in that period of time. And what did it cost you internally to raise that? So, if you raised a million dollars in the last six months, that’s great. What did you spend, if you spent a million dollars to raise a million dollars, you’re not very efficient in your fundraising methods. So you really need to start to break that down and, and start finding out what are the diff, you know, what are the different sources of revenue you’re raising? How are you going about it and, and break it down to? What does it cost us to raise $1 of revenue? If it’s, it’s, if it’s a dollar to dollar, something’s not efficient, you know, you, and there are different metrics that you can measure against, you know, and it depends, you know, if you’re doing a fundraising event, for example, that’s one of the most costly types of fundraising that nonprofits engage in you. The organization is lucky if it, if it makes 15 cents on the dollar. In other words, it may cost 85 cents for every dollar raised in a fundraising event. Whereas though it takes longer, it takes a longer period of time to solicit grants from private foundations. The return on the time spent is far greater. It may only be, you know, maybe 10 cents of expense for every dollar that you can be awarded in private foundation grants. So again, you gotta break it down and figure out, you know, the organization needs to understand where does it want to put its the resources that it is committing to fundraising um uh activities.

[00:23:11.89] spk_0:
And this is, this is commonly referred to, as you mentioned it in passing cost to raise a dollar. What does it cost us to raise, to raise a dollar? Um The, the, you know, there’s a, there’s a lot of uh our confusion about or uncertainty about what to what to include in the costs. So, you know, you mentioned grants, Jerry. So, you know, you have a grants researcher and writer, so his her or their, you know, direct cash compensation, all their benefits, right? You know, that that’s fair to lump in. Uh if I would say, you know, an individual fundraising, all the, all the major gift officers that you have all their direct cash, all their co comp usually is another 25 30 maybe 35% depending how generous you might be. Uh So you can include their cash and their compensation, um their benefits. Um But then beyond that, you know, what’s what, what’s, what’s fair game to include? That seems to be a lot of it seems to be a lot of open discussion about what belongs in there.

[00:23:56.44] spk_2:
What? Well, uh I would be asking the organization, what are you spending on marketing and advertising and where are you spending it? You know, are you doing direct solicitations via either the old traditional mailing solicitations or using social media for doing solicitations. Are you meeting, you know, do you have gift officers who are meeting one on one with uh potential contributors? And what does that cost? You know, are you, are you buying meals? Are you, you know, do you have, are you spending any kind of money on donor relations, you know, gifts or any, any other, you know, what do you spend to acknowledge gifts and that sort of thing? All of that needs to be considered. Yes, you’re right.

[00:24:26.63] spk_3:
And a piece that’s that I’ve seen excluded that, that I would recommend not excluded is, is just the administration, administrative instru infrastructure because that fundraising department is gonna use the finance and accounting team is gonna use the hr team is gonna use the, the it team. So I don’t, although I don’t like the term overhead, it’s overhead is making sure that your fundraising area, all people that you had mentioned, tony are also being attributed that they can’t exist in a vacuum. They use the organizational resources in order to get their job done as well. So you have all the direct costs that Jerry had mentioned and the staffing costs, there’s also uh an infrastructure cost just to be a part of the organization that should be attributed to that fundraising

[00:25:01.56] spk_0:
as well. Right, proportionally proportionally. Absolutely. Right. So, you know, finance 20% of finances time maybe uh booking gifts, let’s say, let’s say finance books it and there’s not a, there’s not a uh uh AAA data processor, you know, a data processing function in the fundraising team that finance attributes to 15 or 20% of its work to, to the work of fundraising. So 15% of that financial overhead that, that finance team like, like like that, is that right? Is that

[00:25:31.27] spk_3:
you absolutely right. And that ensures, especially if you receive grants and even more specifically government grants that ensures that you’re not charging those finance costs that 20% to a grant. That that would would absolutely be, it would be a contract violation if you were charging some of those fundraising costs to a funding source that says, you know what, that’s not allowable, you can’t do that. So it’s making sure that those costs are identified appropriately and proportionately. I like that term that you used to each of the areas that, that, that finance or hr department serves.

[00:25:59.24] spk_2:
I think we, we, we can’t forget some of those easily forgettable costs. You know, think about how does money move these days, it’s moving electronically and through credit card transactions and all of those have a cost and again, those are often overlooked as part of your fundraising expense. You know, the cost to process all of those credit card gifts.

[00:26:32.15] spk_0:
Ok. Yeah, fair. Right. All the, all the back end whatever apps you subscribe to or platforms that are supporting you, whether it’s mailchimp on the male side or, you know, give butter on the, on the, uh, on the donation processing side or, you know, whatever. All right. All right. All right. So we got three. Any uh what other, other critical metrics for leadership

[00:29:00.57] spk_3:
management and fundraising expense is another one. We take a look at this one can be some controversial. Uh, because I think there’s different uh uh ways on on assessing what, pardon me, what is appropriate and what’s not appropriate. But that’s really how much is the organization spending on management and administration. And we typically include fundraising in that, uh, in that overall versus how much is it spending on programs spending on, on direct mission. Uh, and that really has a wide range and it really depends on where the organization is at. So when I say right, wide range at the, at the low end, I would say 7 to 9% the very low end. So that means out of every dollar 7 to 9 cents is going to support, uh, fin or going to support management administration, fundraising. Um, anything lower than that would indicate to that you’re probably not spending enough on your infrastructure. You might be operate a little bit like that. But, but, but it’s, it would be rickety, it’s not sustained, sustained. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, and then that can range all the way up to 40%. Uh, and depending on where the organization that could be higher. Um Especially if it’s a new organization uh where you are spending on infrastructure to get it up and running. But once you approach 40% or 50% then all of a sudden you’re spending more or approaching to spend more on your management and administration that you’re actually spending on. The reason you’re there is to, is to achieve your mission and fulfill your vision. Um And, and the reason why I say it’s a little bit controversial is, is um some funders still today, see the lower number, the better. That’s not always the case for the reason I just spoke about. Uh, but part of it, whether the number is right or not, it’s more making sure the organization and its leadership know what their number is and where it’s tracking, uh work with a client the other week where um theirs is in the 30 which is fine for their organization, but it’s been tracking up over the last three years. And so I said, I don’t know if I would put a, uh a red, you know, to use a color code. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have your indicator or your dashboard like blinking red yet, but it might be starting to glow a little bit yellow saying, you know, keep an eye on this. Uh and, and understand what those costs are. Um And if there’s an opportunity uh that, that needs to be addressed uh or a challenge that needs to be addressed at some point in the future?

[00:29:16.96] spk_0:
Yeah. Are these, are these management and fundraising costs just creeping up, you know, unwittingly or, you know, on the flip side, there may be a conscious investment may maybe we’re investing in some administration and infrastructure for launch of a new program in 18 months. So we’re, we’re investing for the future. So it’s intentional but uh uh you know what’s going on? What is the reason?

[00:30:04.27] spk_2:
And tony, what you just said, that’s the question board members need to ask. So if they’re seeing these indicators creep up like we’ve talked about a responsive board needs to say why and then it’s the duty of management to know the story to be able to explain why. And then the board can say, ok, we get it, we understand we’re backing it, we’re behind you or it can also be the duty of the board to say, hey, stop one second here. Um we need to discuss this further because we’re not necessarily um certain that what’s happening in practice that we’re ok with

[00:30:28.45] spk_0:
so so this one is a ratio management and fundraising expense to program expenses

[00:30:34.48] spk_2:
to total expenses. You want to take it as a percentage of your total? Oh

[00:30:49.14] spk_0:
to total. Oh ok. Oh to total. All right. Oh because then because then what’s left is devoted to presumably. Ok. Ok. Ok. Yeah so that I just want to make sure, you know, again, accounting for poets. So the, so the denominator there is, that’s your, your annual, your annual budget total, your total expenses is everything, is everything. That’s your, that’s your annual, your annual budget, right? It’s your

[00:31:07.23] spk_2:
annual, it’s your budget. You’re operating your total budget, including all your program expenses. Absolutely.

[00:31:14.44] spk_0:
Of course. Program. Yeah. All right.

[00:32:02.84] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Kila increase donations and foster collaborative teamwork with Kila. The fundraisers. CRM maximize your team’s productivity and spend more time building strong connections with donors through features that were built specifically for fundraisers. A fundraiser. CRM goes beyond a data management platform. It’s designed with the unique needs of fundraisers in mind and aims to unify fundraising, communications and donor management tools into one single source of truth bila dot co to sign up for a coming group demo and explore how to exceed your fundraising goals. Like never before. It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:33:26.24] spk_0:
Thank you, Kate Oklahoma City. If you are near there, I’m gonna be there in uh November from November 5th to the eighth. I’m speaking at the Sarky Foundation conference. If you’re in Oklahoma, you may very well know the Sarkies Foundation. Uh So if you’re in the area, if you would like to get together, I don’t know, coffee, lunch, drinks. Let me know again, November 5th to eighth. Um staying right in downtown, you can get in touch. Well, you could just use a simple email is the best way. Tony at tony-martignetti dot com. Uh, if you forgot my name, then you’ll, you’ll forget my email. So that’s not gonna work. Um, well, I guess you have to remember my name too to go to my site. If you want to use the contact page at the site, you’ll have to remember my name again. Uh, it’s tony-martignetti and the site is tony-martignetti dot com. So, I guess one way or the other, well, if we’re gonna get together, it would be nice if you could remember who I am that I would, I’d, I’d be grateful, you know, I’d be grateful. I promised to remember who you are. So, one way or the other get in touch, love to get together with you if you are in the Oklahoma City area and that is Tony’s take two K.

[00:33:34.82] spk_1:
Can you imagine, like going out to meet with someone for coffee and they’re just like, who are you again? Yeah. Just give me the free coffee. Who are you? I

[00:33:38.01] spk_0:
know, I’ve heard your name. I know, I’ve heard your name but, right. And you’re buying the coffee, right? What’s, what’s your name? You, you’re picking up the tab, right? Ok. No, I’m sure that’s not. I’m sure that’s not gonna happen.

[00:33:49.59] spk_1:
Giving people free coffee.

[00:33:51.76] spk_0:
Oh, no, I’ll pick up the check. Yeah. No, I, that part, that part will happen. Yeah,

[00:33:57.33] spk_1:
that sounds good. If you’re a

[00:33:58.71] spk_0:
listener, I’ll buy you coffee. Sure.

[00:34:02.36] spk_1:
We’ve got Buku but loads more time. Let’s go back to financial literacy for your c suite and board.

[00:34:12.46] spk_0:
Are there any other key metrics? Yeah.

[00:35:04.22] spk_2:
And I don’t know if I would define this as a metric, but it is certainly something that should be paid attention to and it’s called the composition of your net assets. So in non profit organizations, net assets have to be divided in two buckets. One bucket is what you call your unrestricted or without donor restriction. And then you have a bucket that is with donor restriction. And it’s really important to be certain that you understand what’s in each of those buckets in total. So again, a risky situation for a non profit organization is if they, if they see that a very large percentage of their net assets are in the bucket with donor restriction, that means they have some, they are limited in what they can do with those.

[00:35:10.43] spk_0:
Jerry. Is that essentially your endowment? It

[00:36:08.29] spk_2:
could be, yeah, endowments would be with donor restriction or we have the other category where you know, a donor places some kind of what we call a temporary restriction on a contribution. So either it has to be used for a specific program that the donor has identified, they want it used for, or there can be a time restriction where they say I’m gonna give you $300,000 but you, that’s to be used over the next three years. So now they’ve placed a time restriction on that contribution. So those have to be really carefully monitored. And this is one of the areas that we see so many non profits misunderstanding, um how to do that because what happens when you get money in the door, many nonprofits just deposit it all in the same bank account. So now you have one bank account that is, that has your restricted and your unrestricted dollars commingled. And if you’re not tracking that the risk of spending those restricted dollars outside of what the donor’s intent was, is very high.

[00:36:56.81] spk_0:
Now, now you’re getting into potentially illegal territory because so many of the states, maybe it’s all, but many, many of the states have the uni have adopted the uniform, uh management, uniform prudent Funds Management Act, for instance, a mi a uniform prudent management of Institutional Funds Act or they’ve ident they’ve adopted either the, the, the recommended uh unified statute or, or something similar to it. And there are, there are state laws around how around only spending the way donors have told you that they want to spend.

[00:37:58.13] spk_2:
That’s absolutely correct. And that’s what that is an enorm, an enormous risk. The other part that I find risky, I just, um, was speaking with a group of, of board members and executive directors a couple of weeks ago and I had an example that I wanted them to, to see if they could interact with it in the, in the example that I gave them was fictitious, but that fictitious nonprofit had 90% of their net assets were donor restricted or in that donor restricted bucket and only 10% unrestricted. And so my question was, how do you operate this organization on only 10% of your net assets? How can you operate? And you know, that’s again, something that, that is not clearly understood and so many mistakes are made in those areas and nonprofits potentially get themselves into very hot water as you just described.

[00:38:07.12] spk_0:
I mean, that’s gonna show up too in, in another metric like days of cash,

[00:38:11.67] spk_2:
it will days of cash

[00:38:13.12] spk_0:
might be like four.

[00:38:15.02] spk_2:
That’s absolutely right. Um And again, a mistake that many non profits make when they are calculating their days of cash, they’re calculating all of the cash, not just the unrestricted. And we, we emphasize this with our clients over and over again. Let us help you calculate the days of cash, but we’re just looking at the unrestricted.

[00:38:38.61] spk_0:
Yeah, because, right, because there’s a restriction on all the rest, right?

[00:39:33.06] spk_2:
One other thing in terms, you know why this is important and, and I have a client that relies heavily, heavily heavily on um private foundation funding. That’s great. And they’ve been very successful at getting those sources of revenue, but they mostly come with restrictions. And so if a if a non profit is putting an overemphasis on getting that kind of revenue and it’s always restricted. They, they are handcuffing themselves because that they’re only allowed to spend that money on certain things and then you have nothing left to pay for infrastructure or administrative or fundraising costs. You’ve got to, you know, you’ve got to balance out your unrestricted contributions in that as well. You’re not gonna be, is to

[00:39:36.08] spk_3:
be a strategic issue. There. There, it gets back to that duty of care. They’re making a strategic miscalculation, how they’re pursuing funds as,

[00:40:14.14] spk_0:
as valuable as the restricted funds are. You know, it’s not like we’re, we’re not discouraging, seeking restricted fund. I do plan to giving fundraising, some of those dollars are in trusts and, and those trusts or even the wills, you know, occasionally, not, not usually, but occasionally come with restrictions. It’s devoted to, you know, palliative care. It’s devoted to the, the children’s program, et cetera. Uh So, but those, so those are valuable, but I understand the point of being very conscious of the, the composition of your net assets. The, the what, what, what you, what again, it’s a ratio, what your, what your unrestricted to restricted net assets look like and, and are you ham hamstringing yourself?

[00:41:06.14] spk_3:
Yeah, and another ratio uh just to tag on to it, once you figure it out that composition, you take a look at your liquid unrestricted net assets and you look at that number against your total debt. So not only your current liabilities, but your total debt and really gives the board and the executive director. So it’s often referred to as Luna, so, liquid unrestricted net assets uh to debt. And it really takes a look at how much do we have, how much are we relying on ourselves versus how much are we relying on others to fund our operations? Um And again, it’s, there’s not necessary. Well, I mean, there’s a bad number you don’t want to be insolvent, um, and have more debt than, than, than unrestricted net assets. But you, it’s a number that, that should be known within the organization if you’re, uh, and that should, that number should be two or greater sort of similar to the current

[00:42:00.51] spk_0:
ratio, the liquid, liquid unrestricted net assets. All right, let’s break that down. Liquid, we can, it’s cash or we can get it to cash easily, unrestricted Jerry and I were just talking about that the restrictive versus unrestricted, the composition of your net assets, uh, net assets. All right. So it’s, it’s not just liquid unrestricted net assets. So, what, what’s, what’s a non, what’s a non cash net asset? Isn’t to me that just sounds like cash. Well, it must not be,

[00:42:22.41] spk_2:
again, it isn’t always just cash because what else could it be again if we, if we remember the basic formula that your assets are what you own, the liabilities are what you owe and the difference are your net assets. Well, in the, in the group of assets, you can have all your fixed assets if you have a building that has a, you’ve got that as a value in your assets. So, so that’s an asset that could be flowing down into your unrestricted net assets, but it’s not. So you can only look at the liquid portion.

[00:42:39.65] spk_3:
Another great example would be

[00:42:51.53] spk_0:
wait, I gotta, I gotta hold you off. Dean, hold on, hold that thought. Don’t, I don’t wanna hold the thought, write it down if you, I don’t want to miss your point, but I don’t understand what, aside from cash, what, what else could be a liquid, unrestricted net asset aside from cash.

[00:42:58.64] spk_2:
Um, if you’ve got, if you have any kind of investment funds that can be converted, if you’re carrying any receivables, those

[00:43:07.37] spk_0:
fairly liquid, right? You’re expecting you, you’re expecting, right? You’re expecting some grant or receivable. We all know what receivables are. Ok? Ok. All right. Thank you. Examples. Help again. Accounting for poets. Ok. Um, go ahead, Dean. You were gonna make a point.

[00:44:11.50] spk_3:
Oh, and then another thing that you should exclude on the current asset side or any prepaid expenses that the organization might have. And depending on the organization that, that might be significant and prepaid expenses would be if you paid your insurance a year ahead of time or if you had your website, um, uh, uh, costs or other costs for software license fees are a great one where you pay for a year or two or three and you write the check all at once, you’ve committed the check. But a, a gap says you have to record that as a prepaid expense. And you only recognize the, let’s say it’s over a year time, you only recognize 1/12 of that expense over the year. So if there’s a prepaid expense on your, on your balance sheet, you wanna be, you will want to exclude that from that calculation because that money is already out the door even though it’s,

[00:44:17.58] spk_0:
we’re getting a little into the weeds now a little bit. That’s about you mentioned gap. I, I know remind listeners what, what gap is otherwise I gotta put you in jargon jail.

[00:44:29.22] spk_3:
Generally accepted accounting principles.

[00:44:59.21] spk_0:
Gap and all, all your audits and all your statements are done under, under gap under generally accepted accounting principles they’re signed to by the, the, the firm that does the audit or the financial statement or whatever. All under gap. All right. Careful honest, tony. All right. Yeah. All right. Parole, parole is parole comes easy. Um, but you got to serve some time. It’s not probation, it’s parole. Um, ok. We, we’ve identified five. Ok, we got another one.

[00:45:24.80] spk_2:
We have another one. So I’m gonna start this out by saying that there is still misconception in many people’s minds, whether they work in nonprofits or they’re, they contribute to nonprofits that the term non profit means the organization can’t make any money. So I just wanna start this out by saying that, um, designation of non profit, that’s a tax status. That’s all it is. It’s a tax status. It’s not a business model. Is this

[00:45:38.75] spk_0:
misunderstanding still out there? Oh,

[00:47:40.65] spk_2:
oh, greatly out there. It’s still out there. So the ratio that we, we want to communicate is we want to measure, are you making any profit? You know, do you have a surplus? We don’t, we don’t necessarily use the term profit, we’ll call it surplus. Um And, and we want, uh especially boards to be concerned whether or not the organization is planning for through their budgeting process. Are you planning for a surplus? And in your actuals, are you actually making it? Are you, are you getting there? And if you’re not, there’s a problem that needs to be addressed because this is all about sustainability. If the organization is not making a surplus, they can’t sustain themselves or grow. And so we really look for a ratio of about, you know, a safe ratio is about 5%. I think that’s what we’re looking at now. 5% 5% surplus on your net revenues. You know, so if you, if you bring in a million dollars in revenue, we feel a safe place is, is to be showing a, a $50,000 surplus on that. And if that’s not happening, there needs to be a discussion, why, why isn’t that happening. Now, I have worked with clients who have over many, many years accumulated a lot of unrestricted net assets and they may have a year where they are planning to have a deficit and there’s a reason that they’re planning, they’re gonna invest in something new. And so they’re going to commit some of their accumulated unrestricted net assets as an investment. That’s ok. We’re not saying that can’t be done, but you can’t live that way forever.

[00:47:44.09] spk_0:
Ok. Surplus profit.

[00:47:47.23] spk_2:
It has to be, it needs to be measured.

[00:47:50.54] spk_0:
That sounds like that sounds like your investment capital investment in new ventures, maybe, uh a new whatever, maybe a new staff position or two. I mean, that, that’s, that’s your growth, isn’t that your growth money? It’s

[00:48:12.37] spk_2:
your growth money. You’re, you’re exactly right. And if nonprofits are not planning for that, yeah, there really is no standing still. If you’re not planning for growth, you’re actually planning for contraction.

[00:48:40.55] spk_0:
Yeah, because inflation is going to erode your erode you every year, 3 to 5 to 8% or, you know, however bad it might be. Uh, yeah. Ok. Right. So it’s, it’s just, it’s just bad business to say we, we, we, we need a, we, it costs us a half a million dollars to run this organization each year. So we need to raise a half a million dollars. We need to have a half million dollars of revenue of some of some sort. Right. No, 5 50 or 600 or 6 50.

[00:49:08.37] spk_2:
Right. That’s exactly right. Yeah. I mean, it seems so, um, intuitive, you know, like it should come simple. But again, in, in, I think Dean and I would both attest that in our experience with nonprofit clients is that is often overlooked. It’s, it’s not discussed. So, when we’re presenting financial information, again, we don’t have to give all. We don’t have to go into the weeds and give the recipe for the soup of how we got there. But we better be showing and the board better be looking for. Is there a surplus? Are we performing?

[00:49:28.78] spk_0:
Ok. And sometimes you’re, you’re pushed back on because people say that we shouldn’t have a surplus. We should be spending everything we earn to help, to help our community. We, we’ve got, we’ve got Children going hungry. Everything we earn has to go to those kids

[00:49:53.35] spk_2:
and, and, and, and, and it’s not as prevalent as it used to be. But, you know, that, that fear that if we, we have an audit that shows a surplus or we file a 9 90 tax return that shows a surplus and the public is viewing that, that they’re gonna go nuts over it. Um, now again, it’s all relative if, if you brought in $2 million and you have a million dollar surplus. Well, yeah, I’d probably be a little bit nuts about that. You know, why do you have a 50% surplus.

[00:50:21.64] spk_0:
All right, you’d like to see at least 5%.

[00:50:24.30] spk_2:
We, we feel 5% is a safe target.

[00:50:27.62] spk_0:
5% of the net revenues for the, from the year for the year.

[00:50:31.54] spk_2:
We feel that’s a safe, safe starting place.

[00:50:48.64] spk_0:
Ok. You know, the irony of some of this is that, um, people look at these, I, I guess I’m, I’m, I’m gonna lump board members. I mean, you know, board members look at some, some of these numbers and they, they would run their business the same way. Those of those who are in business or have their own businesses, they would do the exact same thing. But, but they don’t, but they apply a different set of rules to the nonprofit. No, it shouldn’t have any growth capital. No, it shouldn’t be able to invest. It should be spending every, we should be spending every dime we earn, but they wouldn’t do that to their own family business.

[00:51:29.81] spk_2:
Correct. Yeah, that’s so true. What you say is so true, tony. And, and sometimes, you know, again, I think as a, an outsourced CFO we find ourselves delivering that very message to the board, challenging them on that, that business model that they’re, that, that they are purporting that the business model should be a zero bottom line and be, we just push back and challenge that and, and try to help educate why that’s not a good business model. They be able to feed the

[00:51:49.12] spk_0:
kids. Pardon me? Yeah. And you know, you wouldn’t do that in your own business. You may be able to feed the kids this year and maybe next year. But wouldn’t you like to be able to feed them five years from now? You’re on a trajectory that’s gonna make that very, very, very difficult.

[00:53:09.46] spk_3:
Yeah. And to add on to that and you alluded to this earlier, tony, you were talking about tracking it over time, you say, are we, are we, is this metric or this uh ratio improving, not improving and or not improving? And where boards and leadership can really take it to the next level where I’m going is establishing targets, what’s important to your organization. And as a board saying, you know, we’re at only at 20 days of cash on hand, let’s establish a target of 50 days of cash on hand and I’m making those numbers up and then reporting progress to your target. So similarly on a budget, on a financial budget, you put together, you’re operating a budget, you’re evaluating how you’re operating uh during a year or a month, but establishing targets for each of those ratios and maybe it’s all, maybe it’s all six that we talked about, maybe it’s two or three that are most important, but having that conversation and putting longer term plans because you’re not going to solve all the world’s problems in a year. But having longer term plan and establishing a target and then measuring against the target? And are we achieving that we’re not achieving that? What adjustments and why is that target is what it is and having that conversation and really tracking almost having like a budget for the ratio or, you know, or a target for the

[00:53:16.31] spk_0:
ratio. Well, that’s how these can become management tools. You’re absolutely right. Management and oversight.

[00:54:31.86] spk_2:
Yep. Yes, that, that’s exactly right. Um, and I agree with what Dean is saying, you know, really the kind of the next step is besides reporting these on a regular cadence, whether that’s monthly or quarterly, start to look at the trend, you know, you need to build out trends. Um So where, where were we two or three years ago compared to where we are today? Have we made the progress that we said we wanted to make? And if not, why not, you know, do we need to change something about the style of how we operate the organization? You know, all of that becomes part of the conversation? And I think that it’s possible for board members to get there with that part of the conversation if they are being provided financial reports that they understand that give them these snapshots, these dashboards that we’ve talked about so that they’re not looking at pages and pages of numbers that make no sense, give them something that, that they can make these assessments very easily and then have the discussion and decide what actions need to be taken.

[00:54:38.35] spk_0:
All right. So it sounds like we’re, we’re comfortable with these six metrics.

[00:55:01.51] spk_2:
Yeah, I mean, and there’s, you know, there are, there are all kinds of other metrics, but these are, you know, when you talk about some of the common ones that really what we try to focus on, get boards to focus on, get executive directors to focus on is w how can we help you measure the current financial condition and whether or not it’s going to be sustainable? Is your organization? Do you have the capability to be to sustain 35 years down the road?

[00:55:15.46] spk_0:
Ok. So we’re, we’re confident we’re in these six, we’re not, we haven’t left out anything critical, have we?

[00:56:07.83] spk_3:
I think we covered a lot of great bases and one of the reasons why we record why we, and like Jerry said, there are more, but all of these ratios, all of these data points, the beauty of these is, these are publicly available from other organizations via their form 9 99 90 is informational return that all non non profit organizations of a certain size are required to file and it’s publicly available information. So if your ABC nonprofits and they’re trying to set those targets or trying to understand and understand where they’re at or how they’re doing it. Like, hey XYZ nonprofit across the street, let’s see what they’re doing. You can look at their 9 90 calculate their ratios as well and you can sort of evaluate and start to benchmark. Like, are, are we doing good in our sector? Are we not doing good in our sector? So, while I would recommend, and I’m sure would recommend is, is understand where you’re at. Um understanding where your brother and sister non profits are at is also a great bellwether to say, hey, are, are we doing well, are we not doing well with our peers in the organization? And it’s all publicly available information uh for other non profits as well?

[00:56:48.41] spk_0:
All right. Ok. Leaving it there. Then, Dean. All right, Martin and Lewis, Dean, Dean Del, you’ll find him on linkedin. Jerry Frick. Also on linkedin, their firm is at veracity pros dot com. Dean Jerry. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[00:56:51.68] spk_2:
Thank you, tony. It was

[00:57:26.93] spk_0:
really a pleasure. Oh, thank you. I’m glad listeners. I would like you to know that we had another show where we, we talked about a book devoted to board member, financial literacy and that was the May 31st 2021 show with Andy Robinson and Nancy Wasserman. Their book is the board members easier than you think, guide to nonprofit finances. So if you want to dive deeper into this, maybe buy a copy for each of your board members. Uh That’s a uh just a AAA further resource beyond this excellent conversation that Dean and Jerry and I just had

[00:57:45.73] spk_1:
next week, the surprising gift of doubt from the archive with Mark Pittman. If you missed any part of this weeks show,

[00:57:48.66] spk_0:
I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Don’t forget that name tony-martignetti

[00:57:55.82] spk_1:
or no coffee for you. We’re sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box. Fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box dot org.

[00:58:13.67] spk_0:
I still love that alliteration, fast flexible, friendly fundraising forms. All right, sorry.

[00:58:35.12] spk_1:
And by Kela, grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers CRM visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. 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 guide. This music is by Scott Stein.

[00:59:02.18] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Please go out and be great.