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Nonprofit Radio for May 5, 2025: PII In The Age Of AI & Balance AI Ethics And Innovation

Kim Snyder & Shauna Dillavou: PII In The Age Of AI

Artificial Intelligence and big data have transformed privacy risks by enabling malicious, targeted communications to your team that seem authentic because they contain highly accurate information. Kim Snyder and Shauna Dillavou explain the risks your nonprofit faces and what you can do to protect your mission. Kim is from RoundTable Technology and Shauna is CEO of Brightlines. This continues our coverage of the 2025 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#25NTC).

 

Gozi EgbuonuBalance AI Ethics And Innovation

Gozi Egbuonu encourages you to adopt Artificial Intelligence responsibly, in a human-centered approach. First, be thoughtful with the threshold question, “Should we use AI?” If you go ahead: Create a thorough use policy; overcome common challenges like staff training and identifying champions; manage change intentionally; and more. Gozi is with Technology Association of Grantmakers. This is also part of our #25NTC coverage.

 

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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d turned dromatropic if you unnerved me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to introduce it. Hey, Tony. Our 25 NTC coverage continues with. PII in the age of AI. Artificial intelligence and big data have transformed privacy risks by enabling malicious targeted communications to your team that seem authentic because they contain highly accurate information. Kim Snyder and Shawna Deleu explain the risks your nonprofit faces and what you can do to protect your mission. Kim is from Round Table Technology, and Shawna is CEO of Bright Lines. Then Balance AI ethics and innovation. Gozi Egbuonu encourages you to adopt artificial intelligence responsibly in a human-centered approach. First, be thoughtful with the threshold question. Should we use AI? If you go ahead, create a thorough use policy, overcome common challenges like staff training and identifying champions, manage change intentionally, and more. Gozi is with Technology Association of Grantmakers. On Tony’s take 2. Tales from the gym in addition to my gratitudes. Here is PII in the age of AI. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio coverage of 25 NTC, the nonprofit Technology Conference. We’re all together at the Baltimore Convention Center, where our coverage of 25 NTC is sponsored by Heller Consulting Technology services for nonprofits. Our subject right now is PII in the age of AI. Personally identifiable information in the age of artificial intelligence, safeguarding privacy in a data powered world plus we’re adding in the topic. Alright, already the show’s over. I wanna thank you all for coming. Uh, we’re, we’re here all week. Uh, be sure to tip your servers, um, and we’re adding in the topic a little more privacy please. Colin, diving into data privacy. All right, because, uh, our guests, um. Ask to combine topics which made a lot of sense. Um, but, uh, before I introduce the guest, well, now, let’s do it this way. So we have, uh, stand by there. We have, uh, first is, uh, Kim Snyder. Kim Snyder, um. I gotta take a deep breath. I do, uh, Kim’s title. I’m gonna hyperventilate trying to get enough air to oxygen in. I’m only 140 pounds. I don’t carry enough in my lungs to carry this, to carry this title of virtual digital privacy Project and program officer. You know Joshua Pesca is thanked for that word salad of it’s all nouns. It’s all it’s all one adjective. 12 nouns. Joshua, you’re, you’re out. Anyway, and then CEO doesn’t get any easier. OK. Also with us, uh we have a special guest who’s gonna give a couple of syllables. Uh, let me introduce Miles. Miles, say hello. Hi everyone, it’s Miles with Fundraise up. Thanks Tony. My pleasure. Miles is sponsoring the hub next door at Fundraise Up, so I, I thought I’d give him a little. He asked to give a shout out, so I said sure. And uh they’re giving away free socks. That’s what fundraise Up is all about socks and what else do you do at fundraise. Right, so we help nonprofits raise more money with AI and we do that by not using any identifiable information and are completely compliant across the globe. All right, that’s what a segue and not even reversal incredible. All right, you’ve overstayed your welcome. That’s enough. OK. OK. OK, thank you, Miles. No, thank you. I, he was, I, I did invite him after he pleaded. OK. So we are talking about PII. So Miles, a perfect segue, beautiful segue into personally identifiable information. Uh, Amy, we’re gonna do the overview, so I’m gonna ask Kim. Virtual digital data, virtual digital privacy project and program officer. I’m gonna ask Kim Snyder. No, I’m gonna, no, I’m hitting it hard. Uh, so for an overview, why, why do we, why do we combine these two topics? What are our issues around personally identifiable information and, uh, and artificial intelligence? Kim Snyder. So they both center on the issue of personally identifiable information. So on the one hand we’re talking about what kinds of regulations exist, how do you manage your data I’m too far away. Don’t whisper, Kim. Everybody hears you. Oh, go ahead. I’m waiting. Um, now you, you edit this, don’t count on too many edits. Oh dear, OK, alright, so, um, we’re talking about personally identifiable information which for quite a while for the last couple of NTCs have been talking about this here and. For quite a while it’s been about more about regulation this year I have to say it’s about having our data out there and vulnerability and so looking at data management and how do you start to take stock of your data so that it is less vulnerable and the person the people whose data it belongs to is also less vulnerable and the other topic which I’m here with my co-facilitator um. Uh, Shawna is with all the amens and I’m here. I’m just like I’m a man, yeah, in the, yeah, so, so talking about how that what constitutes personally identifiable information, how much that’s expanded in recent years and Shawna, what’s what’s your bright lines, how are you related to. Yeah, yeah, so Bright Lines, I founded it 4 years ago. We are a doxing prevention company for folks who don’t maybe know what doxing means. Yeah, it’s define it please. When folks will use your personal information or sensitive information, they’ll post it publicly, essentially posting your documents, that’s where doxing comes from with the intent to incite others to do you harm. So there’s like a malevolence there, right? I don’t usually consider it doxing if someone posts like. A relatively available email address from like a professional setting. I do consider it doxing when it’s your personal email address and the intent is to ask others. It could be your birthday, it could be, could be your wife’s or my man right here, yeah. the PII PII is an expanded. No, I never, no, no, actually I came out of US intelligence community. I was there as a much younger person and in a different age in the United States and in terms of our national security. It was really progressive national security person, um. The whole community, yeah, the I I’ll just say the I mean the intelligence community, yeah, yeah, I don’t usually get too granular with that um but the. Was it in the session description it would have said OK yeah we can talk about that. OK, well, I, I’m not sure I’m, I’m pretty sure, but there again it’s one thing when it’s like out on the airwaves. First is when it’s in like a session thing yeah and at at the time when I was there I was detailed out to the DEA this might have been what you read, to train them on finding their targets on the US side of the border of drug trafficking organizations so we were using these same techniques. I was training them in these like techniques to find people. We reverse engineered that now four years ago after the 2020 election when. Folks were going after Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss for just passing a piece of gum while tallying ballots in Georgia they have a penthouse in Manhattan now have the keys to that penthouses. Um, OK, interesting. So reverse engineer I see reverse engineered your, uh your prior prior work. All right. um, so referring to your session description, uh, how AI and big data are transforming privacy risks by enabling aggregation. So your concern is that the, the. Attempts at uh. Spamming people, not spamming but spoofing, fishing, they can, it can be so granular and so accurate that they, they look more and more real. This is a part of our problem, right? OK, and people and agencies, people are using artificial intelligence to gather this information and then and then put it together and collate and then threaten. So they will, so I think we could probably tag team on this. Do you wanna do the production part? So what we see is them gathering data. There’s a lot of data that’s out there about all of us, and I will. If there’s one point folks take away from me talking today in addition to my hype madness, it’s that this is not your fault. Our clients come to us and they say, oh, if I just hadn’t shared so much on public on social media publicly when I was younger and it’s like no no this had nothing to do with you. Your public records are being scraped by data brokers every day. If you own a property, if you’ve ever registered to vote someplace, if you have a driver’s license, which you have to have if you wanna get on an airplane, that data is being sold or scraped. So that’s the data that’s the source data for data brokers. So yeah, sometimes for free, for a, yep, OK, but publicly available, you don’t need to be, not an agency there’s no kind of like legal process to gather it exactly. This is why law enforcement officers, like certain law enforcement agencies now go around legal process and we’ll just buy data from data brokers. Oh, so much easier than defending a subpoena. to prove it to a judge to prove it to a judge and then if this if they move to quash the subpoena, you have to defend it. Exactly. So AI can now gather data from various sources, so it could be used to scrape these sites. It can then be used to connect data. Let me share a story. We got a phone call like a very concerned client. They had just received a phone call themselves from someone who claimed to have. Photos of theirs compromising photos from an old Snapchat account and on the call they described a photo that this that our client knew they’d taken right it was a photo of a room they were describing a room and the clients like, I remember that room. I remember that poster that they’re describing. I think I might have posted it on Instagram one point it was public, but how did they get my number? How do they know where I work and. My response was like, this is a scam. Someone scraped, someone bought a scra of LinkedIn. Maybe they connected that to your phone number. Maybe you have your phone number connected to LinkedIn because you use it from MFA for multi-factor authentication. They connected that to a handle on Instagram, probably using your face, a facial recognition. And then they just made this phone call and talked to you about your employer finding out about these photos, which was a bluff because your employer’s name is listed on your LinkedIn profile. It’s terrifying for her. And Kim has taken it a step further. So you can stitch all this together, right? and you can process all this data at speeds that never were possible before, but you can also use generative tools to create things so you can. Easily mimic a style of someone so you can also so you part of that data that you grab off of LinkedIn or social is somebody’s writing style so you can, you know, generative AI is really great tone and style and also events. So if you’re posting about events and things happening you could get. An email from your purportedly from your executive director or a colleague referencing that event and things that happened and people who were at that meeting it depends on how public the data is and then you know that can be used as a basis for a you know phishing email um that is a lot more convincing phone call yeah or a phone call this person that called our client was a human but they don’t have to be we’ve seen cases where EDs are being impersonated. And it’s video and it’s audio of them that is so convincing to the people that they’re reaching out to and this is it’s trivially easy to do right in our session in fact we had which one is the real Kim and there were two videos of me and one of them was not me um it was AI me but that cost me $29. To take that, so it’s not inaccessible. These tools used to be it used to be like really hard to do this or 25 cents and it’s like a photo in 3 seconds of audio, and they can make those videos, yeah, and you can have me say you don’t even need me saying the alphabet or or Kim’s title for Christ’s sake or half of Kim’s title. I did say you could swear. I didn’t say you could take the name of the Lord. There’s a difference. There’s a difference. There are boundaries even on nonprofit, there are boundaries. This is Chris. I’ve, uh, I’ve gotten, I’ve gotten these, uh. Dear Tony, I know I could have called you at my number or or written to you at my address accurately, uh, but I chose this method instead. So now I know they’ve got my email and my phone and my address, uh, included a picture of my home, which they probably got from Google Maps or, or right, and, uh, I, I some kind of bitcoin bitcoin scam. But how did that make you feel uh the first one I was a little like. Yeah, I was a little nervous, but, but I’ve gotten, uh, we all have gotten Bitcoin scams in the past, but this one had, like, you know, like you’re concerned that amount of information a lot of, yeah, yeah, it had the right and uh I, you know, I, I ignored it with some trepidation and then like a day or two later I got another one and you know I knew I was just kept coming. It was bullshit. Yeah, I saw one of those from one of our threat intelligence partners, someone who swims in this every day, and it terrified him and his wife. Yeah, because it’s so it’s so close to you. It’s why receiving one of those phone calls or back in the, I would say back in the day I got really energized around Gamergate started to try to support the folks who are being targeted by Gamergate. This is back in 2015, and they would describe what it was like to have like, you know, I sleep with my phone next to my bed. And or under my pillow and to have that be the stream of all of this like directed hate messages like you should kill yourself or I’m gonna do this to you or I’m going to do this to your parents or whatever the case might be. It’s so proximate that technology removes what feels like barriers between you and everyone else, and the issue with doxing so terrifying is that you don’t know who it is. It could be anybody. How do you walk down the street? How do you like sleep in your home, not terrified? You don’t know. I never thought about that. Who’s coming after you? Thank you. I never thought you bet new nightmare unlocked. Yeah, no, no, you know how, but Tony, so you get these things because you’re you’re killing me. It’s supposed to be reassuring us here on nonprofit radio. Well, you’re terrifying. We’ll get to that. We will get to that party eventually we’re we’re great parties, but, but, OK, so you’re, you know, more public person, uh, you, you know, nonprofit radio, so, so you. Get these things it’s a little unsettling and unnerving for you, right? yeah like so imagine how like a nonprofit staff person who happens to be working in an organization that may be more targeted by malicious actors, OK, so one is so your staff member starts to experience this and this may this could freak people out, right? So that’s who we’re thinking about. Um, and kind of raising the awareness, OK, yeah, I mean these are folks already dealing with some level of cortisol at a on a regular basis because of work because of their mission. I think we’ve spent enough time on motivation, and let’s let’s, uh, let’s let’s transition, uh, not subtly very abruptly to what the hell do we do? What do we do it already. Is it already too late? It’s never too late. I’m sure you’re not gonna say it’s too late. No, I wouldn’t be here. Yeah, well, I also believe it and I’ve had those moments. Listen, I live in DC and DC DC Health Link had their data leaked and taken a number of years ago and my child who had not even turned a year old had her social security number lost in that breach and I was like, oh man, she’s not a year old, you know, like how is this? This is the world we live in, right? And I turned to my partner and I was like, this is just, I don’t even know why we bother. And she’s like, you can’t, you of all people can’t have that feeling. It’s OK that you do right now, but you have to keep going. No, there are plenty of ways to ameliorate it. Yes, let’s get, let’s get into them. So what we’re with you. Why don’t we start? Go ahead and then we’ll go to Kim. Yeah, I think you can think about this so the individual as the vector to threat to the organization that can be reputational financial threats to the organization could make it hard to fundraise if you don’t support that person very well. Um, you, you would harm your reputation, say, or, um, it could make you look illegitimate to your funders, right? So if you can think about where the risks are to the organization, that’s one set of what to do, right, action items, and I might leave that with you and speak more to the personal. So when it comes to protecting yourself as an individual, there are plenty of ways that you can work to remove your data online was referring to Kim, not me. Oh yeah, no, Tony’s not gonna take that part no Kim’s got that, um, Kim. I won’t try your title um when it comes to the individual, listen, all of us have data out there again it’s not our fault we have lived a life, right? Like we’ve done things it’s, I think it’s a betrayal of trust in our own local governments that they sell this data and no one’s ever asked us for consent they’ve never informed us, etc. etc. etc. OK, so what do you do? You can sign up for one of those services that removes your data from data brokers we consider that like um. Like taking Advil, right? Like it’s like kind of taking care of some of the pain and some of the symptoms. What we also recommend is like looking back to the source data itself. So if you own a property that you live in, we always recommend that people consider moving it into a revocable trust that they don’t name for themselves. You’ve seen too many estate attorneys call it the Tony Martignetti revocable trust. Exactly exactly a different a different name to the revocable trust. That’s it. So now the ownership is obscured its data that’s already out there from prest. This is the argument that our interstate attorney always gives us and we have to educate them on this. They’ll say, oh, but it’s your name’s gonna be on the document granting it to the trust, but your name was there before on tax documents. The way data brokers work is that they’re constantly pulling this data down and renewing their data set. So when the new data comes down at this address, they want the most accurate, the most recent. they’ll overwrite it. So it may be that you lived at that address at one time but you don’t any longer and if someone’s looking for that address, it’s not your name on it. So it will get overwritten, especially over time. What we’ve seen wildly enough is that when that piece comes out, it’s like a house of cards. When you pull that property record out the rest of it tends to fall apart. We see our clients less and less on ownership is kind of a uh. a core or a hub to to other data yeah absolutely yeah I think there’s some connections happening there with like app user data that’s also on an ISP that’s connected to the house, etc. etc. is there other pieces about that location um that create profiles anything else we can do on an individual level besides the uh property ownership. Another big vector is voter data and I know that’s probably not popular in this audience because a lot of folks believe a lot in the voter file and voter data and using it and I, we often see voter data on getting used mm. Getting bought and getting scraped and so we will recommend that folks apply for programs in their states called address confidentiality programs or safe at home programs they’re always set up in with uh survivors of intimate partner violence in mind but a lot of the programs are pretty expansive, so if folks are concerned about stalking or harassment they can also apply and that then gives them a proxy address in some states like in New York across all agencies. So the DMV is now not going to sell your home address and your name. They’re going to sell your your name and your proxy address together. And and shout out the names of those programs that you would look for at your state. Address confidentiality program or safe at home. If you’re interested, the National Network to End Domestic Violence NNEDV.org has a comprehensive up to-date list of those programs. OK, awesome. Kim, uh, before we turn to Kim, uh I think you’re the perfect question perfect question answered. Person, you’re a person, you’re a person. You’re neither a question nor an answer. You’re you’re just a person with a lot of answers. Um, I read once, it’s so hard to unforget, you know, to unlearn things that, uh, the value of, of stolen data is really in the future is more financial like so that the bad actor can act without you tying it to a specific event. So my credit card, let’s say a credit card number is compromised, it’s of more value if it’s 3 years old than if it’s just a couple of weeks it was just stolen a couple weeks ago. Is that true or is that incorrect? I can see that. I can see that being true. Maybe we’ve gotten a little bit better banks and credit cards have gotten better about just reissuing new cards. Websites tend to push you to change your password when they’ve alerted you that there’s a breach, so I, I think. The private companies more so in government agencies but private companies I think have caught on to that a little bit and I think there is some truth if it’s not for financial means but really someone trying to go after you, we call that a ideologically motivated attacker. What we saw you used the word vector before I did, yeah this is my background so they um. What we found with uh a university, a client that’s a university, their students were being targeted. Some of these outside groups showed up to student houses over the summer. The students had already graduated. We’ve gotten some of their address stuff removed. The addresses weren’t available in connection to their names online any longer. So what we think happened was that those addresses that was screenshot and saved. That can happen, yeah, so it’s not a perfect fix. However, what if you have one as an intelligence officer, if you have one data point, so you have that screenshot, but then you have all these other things telling you that Shawna Dilla no longer lives at that screenshot address, you might show up there, but you’re not gonna spend a lot of time on it because you can’t verify it. You can’t confirm it with another source. Makes sense? Yes, thank you, thank you. All right, Kim, let’s turn to you on the organizational level. What, uh, what can we do, uh, there to. Protect ourselves from what’s already out there. How do we help nonprofits and small and midsize are our listeners. Alright, so for many years the the kind of mantra has been to verify, verify, verify verify. I thank you very much, that’s Kim Snyder and Shawna. No, I’m joking. She’s like I’m we’re out of time. No, we’re out of time. Are we out of time? No, I’m only child I fall for jokes very easily. I wish I had known. I wish I had so many. I had so many more. I had so many more in mind for you specifically talking about a targeted attack. Oh my, talk about a vector vector I was coming right at you. I could have written that you’re you’re putting this on the airwaves. You know how vulnerable you are. Oh man, I got all kinds of advantages. All right, I’m sorry, I interrupted you. What was I talking about dying. Go ahead. OK I’m sorry. OK, so we used to talk in cybersecurity world about, you know, verification verify, verify, verify that was the mantra, right? So now we kind of reshape that so that it’s vet and verify so have kind of multiple ways of verifying especially incoming requests. Anything kind of trust your spider sense is what I’d say if something seems a little bit off like what what are we talking about? So if you receive an email, if an email comes and it, you know, it comes from your development director who’s saying who’s referencing something that you just went to the panel or if it comes from accounting, write a check if any money is involved. And it wasn’t like completely expected even if it was a little expected actually I’ve seen I’ve seen this happen where people got into um nonprofit systems and using AI can scan what’s going on very quickly. And then target things that are about to happen from kind of things that are OK, so, so I would, so the instinct instinct, OK, use your, use your instinct but also make it a policy, make it a process that you just follow uncomplicated process for verifying like any financial transaction needs to be verified even if it’s expected, yeah, so yeah, so you wanna walk through that. You just get much, much more deliberate. About verification and and who is it coming from and you don’t want to. Confirming, did you send this email or not replying to the email, but my phone yeah exactly yeah you you send this email about this rush transaction or or routine transaction. Do it in a different format right different channel, yeah, so you know, and even though the instinct may be email back quickly but no right um but then what you do also is create a culture in your organization where that’s OK to do where it’s OK to take that extra 30 seconds minute to you know verify to ask someone for their time to say I just wanna check, did you send this to me? Um, and in that way it’s OK even if it’s because he’s actually director you can say, did you send this to me? I just wanna make sure and so that that’s an OK thing to do. In fact, that’s a good thing to do. Now we can’t they have to be boundaries around this because we can’t do it for every, every message we get so you mentioned. financial financial transactions and no no no not nervous at all financial no no no financial transactions, any kind of initiated correspondence where they’re asking you for something or for some information. I saw a scam recently where the uh an an old employee was trying to be reinstated and wanted to go around HR to IT to get their accounts reset up like I’m I’m coming back and it was like using the person’s middle name so it’s already a little bit fishy but. They went all the way up to the CTO of the of the company and said hey so and so and these people were friends on LinkedIn and like had shared messages back and forth so the attacker knew this was a personal relationship. hey so and so I’m trying to get reinstated. They’re telling me you need to go to HR, but like I but I can do this. I just need to get my account access back up and online and the CTO is like no. Oh bro, you gotta go through HR. I can’t do anything because they had those controls in place, but small and let’s be fair, small and medium sized organizations don’t, so I’ll just take care of it now or we don’t have a, we don’t have a we don’t have any clear guidelines that we give to people for all requests we need to go to HR. I thought of another. Potentially nefarious request you send your logo. Could you, could you, I need a I need a high def for the logo, you know, the, the, the, the JPEG I have is, is not good. I need a high definition logo that could be that could be to produce a check that could be to make a spoof a spare a spoof website, um, OK, I mean, but it seems innocuous send a logo, yeah, it’s very easy to spoof a website, right? So you know, you know, check. Also check where it’s coming from, right? So you know I’ve had an organization where there were two spoofed, um, there’s spoofs on both ends a spoof of the funder, a spoof of the the grantee. Can you tell us more about that story? It’s a really good one. So yeah, so they, they got into an organization’s, um, you know, Microsoft environment. I asked the questions here whoops. Go ahead. Uh oh, off the mic. 3 like 30, go ahead. So, um, Anyway, that’s late in the day. And I’m thirsty. Yeah, late in the day it’s not it’s, it’s well it’s almost 3 o’clock. You’ve been going since then nonstop. Um, anyway, all right. So the organization had someone get into their systems for a very short time, but in that short time they were able to tease out some information again this is AI can help with this kind of analysis short you know canal is a lot of data that it can grab very quickly and um identified some upcoming financial transactions which were rather large and so um in order to kind of trick. The person to sending to the wrong place, they set up fake websites, fake websites for the foundation, fake websites for the grantee, and domains not websites domains, and so then they had emails coming back and forth you could hardly see the difference and so the, the, the real people, the real people were communicating with the bad actor on both sides and the money. And he got sent to the wrong place, OK. Yeah, that was, that was actually no they did great, but, but it was that was a happy ending, but not necessarily. We started with Shawna, so we’re gonna end with Kim. give us oh no we did OK well I’m not Shawna, your mic is down but that she still gets through. She talks and laughs so loud you hear her over Kim’s mic. No, I didn’t, I did not but one more thing before, before we unless we’re totally out of time, um, don’t shoot the messenger. So create a culture. This is another thing that’s any size nonprofit can do where if something happens, if you click on that thing, if you did that thing that you feel like uh. That was really dumb, right? Make it OK to report that and you don’t get in trouble and there’s no shame and blame because it happens so but yeah the the no blame kind of we encourage you to. You know, say it, yeah, call yourself out, yeah, and there’s no punishment, you know, some organizations like they don’t want bad news at the top, so. All right, we’re gonna leave it there, OK? All right. That’s Kim Snyder. Virtual digital privacy project and program officer Roundtable Technology and Shana Dela Vu, CEO CEO Bright lines. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Shawna. It’s a pleasure. Shawna laughed her ass off. I’m a good sense of humor. All right, I love it. Uh, and thank you for being with a, uh, well, whimsical, I’m not sure it covers it. Raucous maybe, uh, at one point, uh, uh, uh, anarchical because, uh, there was a question that I did not answer. Uh, session. Uh, thank you for being with us at uh 25 NTC for this episode sponsored by Heller Consulting. Technology services for nonprofits, virtual digital privacy project and program officers. It’s time for Tony’s Take-2. Thank you, Kate. A new tales from the gym episode just happened this morning, this very morning. I was minding my own business as I do on the elliptical. And overheard two women talking. One lives here permanently, and the other one who said her name. Sandra Lynn, uh, she lives in North Carolina, but not here in Emerald Isle. She lives, uh. In the Raleigh area, like that’s about 3.5 hours, 4 hours away, roughly. And she was lamenting, Sandra Lan was that uh that she can’t live here full time, house prices are high. And she also still has, uh, her mother and her father-in-law, so her husband’s father are still both alive, and so she needs to stay in that area, but she was, you know, looking forward to retiring here sometime but lamenting that she couldn’t live here now. And that got me thinking as I was on my. 6th or 7th uh interval on the elliptical. I do 88 episode 8, Not episodes. What did I just say? 8 intervals. I do 7 intervals of a minute, take a minute in between, and then the last interval is 2.5 minutes. I was toward the end and it got me thinking, listening to Sandra Lynn. That, uh, I’m grateful that I do live here full time, permanent. This is my home. And that, you know, it’s that there are other people who don’t live here who wish they could, you know, so, uh, you know, I, I add, I have, I have a long list of gratitudes, but I don’t specifically say grateful that I live here in Emerald Isle full time. So I’m gonna add that to my gratitudes that I do every, I guess I’ve told you every 2-3 times a week. I’m adding. Gratitude that I live here in Emerald Isle full time in this beautiful place and I have the ocean across the street. Uh, your own gratitudes. I hope you’re, I hope you’re doing your gratitudes out loud, at least a couple of times a week. That is Tony’s take too. Kate. You do sets. Uh, well, sets are for, yeah, no, that’s different intervals. Intervals on an elliptical, you do a minute hard and then a minute resting. And then a minute hard and a minute resting, it’s called high intensity interval training, HIIT high intensity. It just means you do intervals of things like you sprint, yeah, I don’t run, I’m on elliptical, but you might sprint and then walk, and then sprint and then walk and sprint and walk. Those are called intervals. Sets are like you do 3 sets of 10 if you’re, if you’re on a weight machine or something like that, or maybe pushups, might be 3 sets of 10 or something like that. I don’t know, they seem, there seems to be a different, well, I think the interval is because you’re still active, you’re just resting in between the high intensity intervals. Gotcha. That makes sense? Yes, and I am grateful that you have a beach house. Yeah, because you get to, yeah, you get to visit and uh laze around and uh. What is the word I’m looking for, uh, not schmooze, but, uh, you get to, uh, I don’t know. I can pretend that it’s my beach house. Yeah. You can for a week, yes, but then, then I’m very happy to say goodbye. After a week. Love you too. We’ve got bou but loads more time. Here is balance AI ethics and innovation. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference, where our coverage is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. With me now is Gozi Egwanu. Gozi is director of programs at the Technology Association of Grant Makers. Gozi, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Awesome. Thank you for having me, Tony. Pleasure. You’re welcome. Your session is AI strategy for nonprofits, navigate ethics and innovation. We have plenty of time together, but can you give me a high level view of the the topic and the session that you did? Sure. So the session was really, um, and was really spearheaded by Beth Cantor, uh, and it basically provides uh a balcony view of where we are in the sector in terms of AI adoption, ethical responsible AI adoption, the nonprofit and philanthropy sector. And so, uh, we really start with what we found in the Technology Association of Grantmakers state of Philanthropy tech survey that we did in 2024. In that survey we found what many grant makers are currently doing with AI as far as you know are they testing are they experimenting? Has anyone rolled it out enterprise level, which is, you know, at the organization wide level and what we found is that. And which mirrors quite what we’re seeing in the nonprofit world is that most folks are not using AI in terms of, you know, anything that’s crazy, you know, innovative at this moment it’s really just kind of, you know, meeting summaries, you know, taking notes, that sort of thing, um, and so and but in addition to that we found that while 81% of folks are using AI, uh, sorry, while, uh, oh sorry, 81% are using AI but only 30% have AI use policies, so. You’re using it but you don’t have any guard rails you have no way to tell your teams or your staff, hey, this is what we don’t put into the AI this is what we do put in so you’re really running the risk of having your information potentially used in a way or trained uh an AI model that, um, you know, could potentially put your members at risk, your grantees at risk, whatever the case is for your organization and so. With that little bit of an overview it basically came down to the importance of AI experimentation and really do starting slow starting at the very base level working with your teams to kind of talk through should we use AI if we did use AI what would that be for? So thinking about the use cases, the business, um, the business use like what what would be the business case for it and then you know assembling a nice team of folks, you know, as advisers or experimenters and champions at your organization. Uh, to really kind of help you all start doing that experimentation in a safe and low kind of like low risk way, um, and then from there really defining whether or not AI is your, your next move and then once you do have decide that AI is the next move you wanna move into that next level of the AI maturity which Beth, you know, covers really um really well uh you know you go from that exploration to discovery and then you move into experimentation and ultimately enterprise eventually. Um, but what we’re finding is that most folks are not there yet. They’re still very much experimentation early stage, very early stage, um, and, uh, you get to kind of get to see a case study of it through the work that Lawan did at her organization United Way Worldwide. OK, well, we don’t have with us, but you can provide a lot of context, lot of, lot of detail, I just said you could talk. All right, um, are, are we, do you know the you might not be part of what you surveyed, but was there even intentionality around should we, should the should we use question or did it just kinda happen because people started, people started hearing about it using chat GPT. Well, you know, with one of the questions that we did on the survey, we found that like there’s quite a few folks that are using it in what we call shadow use or shadow AI, which is basically you’re using AI but your organization doesn’t know what you’re using. I see. Alright, so that’s not intentionality at the organization level. No, no, no, I would say not, not. Uh yeah, so we really want to encourage the intentionality which is don’t start using the AI unless you all have that collective organizational conversation of is this something that we should be doing? Is it useful? Is there a business case to go with it? Is it relevant? Does it make sense? Is it safe for our organization? does it align with our ethics? And then consider going into experiments. OK, let’s explore that question a little bit uh now in 2025 because I, I suspect at 26 NTC we won’t be asking the threshold question, should we, should we use? So what, what, what belongs in the conversation if we’re, if, uh if we’re at the stage where Well, uh, individuals may be using it, but we don’t know. Or if nobody’s using it and we’re trying to decide enterprise wide, you know, is there not, we’re not even at the is there a use case like but should we, should we explore it? What goes into that conversation? Sure, um. Again that you know, really thinking about the business case. So when you’re having that conversation about should we use AI, then you have to think about what would be the specific usage of it, right? So say you’re the finance team and you’re considering using AI, what would be the benefit of using AI versus doing the doing the the work flow or process that you currently have and you’re thinking of having AI do? so you really. Kind of have to have that conversation like an in-depth conversation about the process that you’re doing right now. Is there anything wrong with it? Are we losing anything? Could we gain, uh, productivity, time in our days and our schedules if we were to move to using AI to do this one process or this one, this one work flow? Then at that point you think about, OK, maybe we do get a benefit out of it now that we get a benefit out of it. What are some of the things that we have to be concerned about now that we have a benefit is it that now we don’t wanna make sure we wanna make sure that any financial information that could be sensitive to any of our donors or their their personal information, do we not want to have that being able to be, you know, used in the AI model or whatever system that we’re using so you know, you, you start with here’s how we do. Things here’s how AI could potentially benefit and then you move into that conversation. OK, if we did, what are some of the risks and concerns really thinking through all of them as much as you can, we know that you can’t think for every single possibility, but as much as you can kind of write it out and map it out as a group with several folks in the room, the better that you are at being able to say yes or no on moving on with AI as that. Potential new solution. OK, and a part of what goes into this intentionality is a usage, a use policy, your, your, you know, you want us to be thinking about ethical uses. OK, uh, what, what are the, what are, what are the ethical concerns? How can you, how can we talk through those? Well, you know, one of the key ethical concerns is that we know that most AI models that exist now, including open AI, were trained on the internet, and we know the internet can be, uh, wildly biased, wildly biased, filled with lots of terrible things. Not only biased but misinformed, misinformed wrong yeah complete nonsense in a lot of cases, um, and so if you’re using these open AI sources that have been trained on the internet, then you have to be really careful about deciding to use it against, say your theory of change. So if you’re an organization that is er. Be uh vulnerable populations groups that are already kind of under attack, whatever the case is, do you want to have AI making or informing your decisions related to work that you’re doing with these vulnerable groups? More than likely no because the AI may choose to do things that are more in line with the group that is. Biased that may have you know may be unethical and so you want to make sure that whatever you’re using the AI to do that it isn’t putting the organizations and the people that you support and serve in harm’s way so really thinking through, hey, if we’re gonna use it in this way, maybe we need to use it in a way that does not put these groups in harm. Maybe we just focus on using it internally like folks do for the meeting. Notes because that’s a very low risk thing whereas if you’re you know input you know uh decisions about whether or not to continue funding an organization or trying to measure or not whether or not their impact is aligning with your organization’s missions and values some of those those questions are not as clear cut as yes or no, whereas an AI that is trained on purely just wanting to see impact, purely wanting to see a return on investment, which is not always the case of what happens in philanthropy. Then you really have to take, take a step back and say is this the most ethical decision to go forward? Could we be putting organizations in harm? Now you can control what a model is trained on, yes, but that requires something proprietary, right? You have, you have to pay a developer to, uh, to create that. I get I don’t know it’s called a small language model. I don’t know what it’s called, but something that’s trained only on your own data, but your own website, maybe your own documents that you that you provided, but that, that requires a fee and a and a developer. Exactly, it it can it can cost, it can be expensive. The other option is if you don’t want to go the route of creating your own AI you do a paid version because we know the free versions of AI specifically I’ll talk about open AI there’s not a whole lot of freedom or flexibility in turning off the settings to prevent it from training the model on the data that you input. And so in that case you definitely need a use policy because some folks would probably just be like I really need to you know analyze all of this data on all of the groups that we served in this, you know, community that is already really, you know, under attack or potentially in in harm’s way and then now you’re putting that information into the AI to have it, you know, into the free AI to start doing it’s now. and now the AI has all of these people’s information and can now use it to provide it to other people who may look them up or want to find data on. That’s you’ve you’ve shared data that it’s gone. I mean it’s yeah yeah yeah there’s no control. So yes, enormous intentionality, care, um. And what if we don’t have a, you know, we don’t have a, a chief technology officer, chief information officer, you know, it’s an executive director, CEO, and, and maybe decent sized staff. I don’t know, 35, 40 people, but they still don’t have a chief technology officer. How do we, how do we uh ensure the intentionality and care that you’re, that you want us to? Yes, um, there’s a couple of ways, and I think oh good, I think at the core of it you don’t have to have a CTO and even yourself you don’t have to be a technologist. I would never classify myself as a technologist, but we can, there’s ways to find training. There’s plenty of training and 10 it has fantastic training for AI certifications for professionals in in the nonprofit sector, um, and I’d love to share that and 10 and tag are teaming up and we will be offering one for philanthropy professionals very soon. And so these are opportunities, a very, you know, relatively easy ways for people who don’t have that technical background to learn about the AI itself, get themselves familiar familiarized with, you know, what they need to be doing to protect themselves and their staff, ways that they can start to experiment in a safe, you know, safe space, um, so and there’s plenty of also free tools, free education. I will, you know, even I, even though I’ve talked. About OpenAI a lot. OpenAI just announced their OpenAI Academy which has all free resources and tools for learning how to utilize AI for anyone and so there are plenty of free resources out there and people online, you know, uh, there’s plenty of folks on LinkedIn that I see on a regular basis that are sharing information and providing some guidance for nonprofit leaders as well as, uh, folks. That are just not technically inclined so there’s ways that you can kind of upskill and train yourself to understand how to use AI even if you don’t have that technical experience in house. Say a little more about this partnership, can you uh and it’s technical association of grant pardon mechology Association of grants thank you um. Yeah, so I don’t have a whole lot of details to share, but essentially if you’ve, if you’ve used any of the great training and certification resources on the N10 website, we are essentially trying to make a parallel version of that same professional certification for nonprofit leaders using AI for. Our foundation leaders and so uh you can expect really a kind of a similar learning process but however it’ll be tailored to some of the different functions and needs that we find at the philanthropy you know at foundations versus what you would see at a traditional nonprofit. OK, so I’m sorry, it’s intended for professionals I should say. Um, Alright, what, so thank you. You know, that’s important ethical considerations, um, anything more on ethics because, uh, then I I want to talk about the policy, what belongs in your use policy, but is there more about ethical concerns? OK, OK, OK, enormous. I mean if you, if, if you’re exposing your data. And, and it’s gone. It’s, it’s out there like you said, right, um, our use policy that, uh, only 13, 30% have, although 80% are using AI. What goes into this use policy? The use policy essentially just outlines what you and your team should be thinking about before you ever use any AI, so. It’s kind of that no go or go kind of conversation so if it’s sensitive data, if it’s information related to any of your members that you just wouldn’t want anyone to have outside of your organizational members probably wouldn’t want to put it into an AI system so it just kind of outlines, you know, essentially guardrails for for teams and and staff to understand how to best utilize it. And I think some folks are also, you know, thinking about the environmental impacts of using AI are really now making sure that their data use policy or the AI policies are also, you know, having folks be ethical about how they’re using when they’re using AI right? so you know if it’s to do something that could take you probably about the same time that the AI does, don’t use the AI um if you’re just, you know, just tossing anything, any old thing and they’re asking questions all day probably also not a very useful. Use good use of AI you really wanna think about AI very strategically and intentionally, right? You wanna make sure that if you’re going to the AI, it’s for something that you know it’s gonna save you significant amounts of time. One of the things that I often will use AI for is drafting, you know, large descriptions for events. That takes me sometimes hours if I give it to AI, I can do it for me in seconds and the key to descriptions of events, yes, like, so we have webinars events that we have on our website, yeah, so you know I, I, I, I don’t wanna sit there talking about all the learning that you’re gonna get out of it and the objectives and this and that and so AI, I’ve trained, I have like a GPT that is based on kind of like my voice that I provide it like hey here’s the prompt, here’s what I’m kind of looking for. It provides me a draft and then I use that draft and I manipulate it how I want. Um, and so you really wanna make sure that you know when you’re prompting the AI or you’re using the AI, it’s they’ve measured it. I think one prompt uses as much energy. I think it’s like an entire city like it’s crazy. It’s like like it, I, I don’t use my quote me on that, but it’s enormous. There’s quite a bit of energy, and I can actually actually share a link to um one of the stats that came out about it. There’s a researcher that’s been sharing a lot about it, um, and she was just interviewed by, uh, I believe it was Doctor Joy Bullumwini on, uh, by the, um, the. AI justice uh group that she she leads, um, and so there’s a lot of it there’s a lot of energy being used so if you’re gonna use it, you wanna make sure that it’s for something that you don’t need to, you wanna learn prompting good prompting, so you can get what you need out of it and then you can make, you can, you know, refine it and make it better. Sometimes you may have to go back in and ask the AI to refine, you know, what it did, but you really do wanna keep it to a minimum. You don’t wanna be using AI. Constantly because the energy use and the impact on the environment is extreme extreme that gets over to the ethical concerns as well exactly because it’s yeah so yeah you’re you’re just really um basically telling your teams here’s the here’s what we expect out of you when you’re using AI and these are the things that could result in consequences if you don’t follow this policy OK um. What else, anything more about the policy, what, what, what belongs in there? Um, You know, I think the the key things is like you know making your team’s aware of the types of AI that are provisioned because that’s another thing some organizations have taken the decision to block certain AIs that they don’t want you using or even turning off certain AI functions in their uh current tech stack. So, uh, you wanna make sure that it’s really outlined very clearly the types of AI that are in use and also it may, you may wanna include something in there about how you, uh, communicate your use of AI to your teams or other people outside of your organization so. Kind of a, a nice, nice little bucket of what’s internal external, and then also where can you go if AI and where should you not go disclosures to the public um why would there be some uh some platforms or that are that are ruled out? Well, because You know, one of the things that I’ve seen some members talking about within, you know, the tag space is that there are some AI that do not allow you or some systems that do not allow you to turn off the AI function meaning that you don’t have any control of how that AI is taking your data that you have in that tech stack or that tech tool. Oh, you don’t have control no yeah and in in fact there was actually a conversation about a specifically a DAF uh platform that actually. Made this clear to many many many of our members who use it and so that is something that you really have to be concerned about is do you have any level of control if you don’t have any level of control and how the AI is using your data in that system there are organizations that would likely say this is a this is not a system that we would allow you to use. OK, it’s a good example. Um what else uh came out of the session? We still have a couple more minutes together. What else did you talk about in the session that uh that you can share with us? You know, one of the great things that we did was we did these scenarios, um, that Beth Beth put together about, you know, what are some of the things that you would say if you’re in a situation when where, you know, say for instance, uh, your organization is really excited about using AI they wanna jump head first and they just wanna start using AI without, you know, and and they they basically just want you to start rolling it out and get your teams on board. Um, and so in that scenario we really talked through all of the processes, you know, first of all, that first conversation that we talked about, like, should we even use AI that didn’t happen, so that needed to happen. The other part is also, you know, how fast do we wanna roll things out? What are some of the different change management principles that we should be thinking about as a team that could make AI adoption more beneficial and successful so really, you know, starting slow but really starting at the very beginning of like should we or should we not like that should be your because truthfully many organizations do not need AI. It’s true. I mean, it’s just the reality. Some organizations will never probably need to use AI, and then there’s a whole lot of them that probably will. So that question of like, should we do it has to happen first, um, and I think if you’re doing it on your own as a rogue, stop, do it on your own time. You want to practice on it, do it after after hours on a weekend. Exactly, exactly, not on our computers, not on our sisters. Yeah, yeah, if you, and that’s actually one of the things that, um, you know, we’ve seen a lot of our members and foundations, and I think Beth has also seen with, you know, some of the work she’s done in the in the sector is that a lot of foundations are now trying to just get to the staff and say, hey, look, we know that you’re using, can you just tell us and try to make that trust, build that trust with each other and I think that’s gonna be really a good way to help prevent a lot of the issues. Alright, let us know, but then stop. No, there’s no repercussion for reporting yourself, but only, well, only after what you report after the report date, you’re liable. All right, stop it. Exactly. OK, going rogue. All right, um, anything else? Uh oh, questions, any, uh, provocative or memorable questions that came. From the audience I’m trying to think. Um, No, well, you know, the one that had come up was just, uh, you know, there was a, there was someone at the front that had asked about, you know, AI hallucinates, and I was, and, you know, should you hallucinates, yeah, and she and the, the person was basically saying, you know, be careful using it as an organization because it could give you answers that are just factually wrong and so you know our response was like yeah you’re right AI does hallucinate but that’s why it’s incredibly important and I. And I didn’t even say this myself, but at the beginning, which is if you use AI, you always wanna make sure that it’s for something that you have a certain level or high level of expertise or knowledge about. So you know if I’m asking you to write descriptions for me, I know about the event details so that I’m not just gonna let the AI write a description and let it go and put it on the website. Yeah, that sounds good. I’m gonna put it no you review it, you make sure that. The details it’s including are correct. If there’s any statistics or numbers that are being used, you can go and verify those data. So if you’re ever using AI for anything, you should always have a human in the loop. There should be someone that’s able to verify the information, especially if you’re someone that’s not knowledgeable in that specific thing that you ask AI to do. You need someone who is either that or it’s gonna be written at such a high level that it’s maybe that has no value. Exactly, exactly. All right, how about we leave, are you OK leaving it there? Oh, you feel like we covered this? I think we did. OK. All right. All right. Go the Abuno. Euanu Gozi Ebo. Director of programs at Technology Association of Grant Makers. Gozi, thank you very much for sharing all that. Thank you for having me, Tony. My pleasure and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. Next week, 225 NTC conversations to help your fundraising events. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. And now the donor box is gone, I miss our alliteration fast, flexible, friendly fundraising forms. Uh, I miss that. All right, well, I am grateful to Donor Box though for 2 years of sponsorship, very grateful, grateful. There’s another gratitude. I’m grateful to Donor Box. Now that they’re not a sponsor anymore, I’m grateful to them. No, I, I’ve been grateful. I just haven’t said it. OK. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for April 28, 2025: #25NTC & The Human Factors Driving Your CRM Success

Amy Sample Ward#25NTC

We launch our 25NTC coverage with the CEO of NTEN, which hosts the Nonprofit Technology Conference, sharing the numbers and the experience of this year’s Conference, earlier this month in Baltimore, Maryland. They’re Amy Sample Ward, and they’re also Nonprofit Radio’s technology contributor.

 

Rubin Singh: The Human Factors Driving Your CRM Success

Don’t blame your tech first when it feels like your CRM database is letting you down. Human beings, the tech users, have responsibilities that precede, and must align with, your technology. Rubin Singh returns to enlighten us about business processes; inclusive design; personal and professional growth; and more human factors that impact the success of your CRM database. He’s founder and CEO of OneTenth Consulting.

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. We’re kicking off our 25 NTC coverage this week. These two segments are both from 25 NTC. It was a wonderful conference. I think the best. Uh, this was, I believe, the 11th year that I’ve hosted nonprofit radio, uh, in a studio at the nonprofit technology conference, and I think this was the best one. You’ll hear Amy and I talk about that. So excited, legitimately, you know, some people say, uh, I’m excited. No, I’m excited that we are launching, inaugurating, kicking off our 25 NTC coverage this week. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of ramidenia 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, this week it’s 25 NTC. The CEO of N10, which hosts the nonprofit technology conference, shares the numbers and the experience of this year’s nonprofit technology conference last week in Baltimore, Maryland. They are Amy Sample Ward, and they are also nonprofit Radio’s technology contributor. Then the human factors driving your CRM success. Don’t blame your tech first when it feels like your CRM database is letting you down. Human beings, the tech users, have responsibilities that proceed and must align with your technology. Rubin Singh returns to enlighten us about business processes, inclusive design, personal and professional growth, and more human factors that impact the success of your CRM database. He’s founder and CEO of 10th Consulting. On Tony’s take 2. Tales from the gym. Meet Roy. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. DonorBox, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is 25 NTC. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio coverage. Oh wait, I should do what Amy loves. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. What a genuine pleasure to welcome. The CEO of N10, the host of the 2025 nonprofit technology conference, Amy Sample Ward, welcome. Thank you. I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten to see in person witness live the Podfather intro. So yeah, exactly, it doesn’t have the same power, you know. Uh, so, uh, we’re here at 25 NTC. We’re at the uh Baltimore Convention Center. Oh, I, I should have said that our coverage here is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. Very grateful to Heller Consulting. How’s the conference going? CEO. It’s going great from community perspective, you know, I think we didn’t really know what to expect in this moment right from the community perspective, yes, I mean you know there’s always special things um there’s always opportunities to continue refining. Uh, but you know, from the, from the community side and kind of what we spend so much time focusing on, you know, the community experience, we just, you know, would anyone actually. Feel like coming when they woke up Wednesday morning would be, you know, like are is anyone even gonna be in a space to have conversations or wanna go to a session, you know, and we’re not trying to pretend that everything is fine and normal or that those things exist, you know. I like we’re certainly embracing that and yet we’re trying to embrace it within a reality of well we’ve all planned for this conference to be here so so it is still a a structured thing and and how porous can we make it in real time together to also meet whatever needs are emerging by maybe going to a session that was already planned and you know the speaker had prepared but from that conversation came something. Oh my gosh, we, we need a space, we need to keep talking about this right now and what do we do, right? So I’ve heard a couple of stories like that anecdotally that I’ve got I’ve learned so much I need to learn more now and you realized what I didn’t know and I I need to connect with that person or, you know, um, I heard it from an audience, uh, like talking to somebody who was sitting next to the person who was talking to me and then also to this for. Speaker, I, you know, I need to connect with, I forget whether it’s him or her or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Um, I need to learn more from this person. Alright, let’s let’s, uh, you know, I always like to ask you the numbers you know how many folks are with us here in real life in Baltimore, Maryland. I don’t know that I actually have the accurate numbers. We, we’re. Uh, 1800 registrants overall, but given how many shifts are happening, I don’t know exactly, and, well, I’ll finish my first sentence and then I’ll add a second so I don’t know how many folks are necessarily in person because we don’t. Require if you’re in person you have access to the virtual and so folks that couldn’t come for whatever reason didn’t necessarily have to tell us that so we don’t totally know or they could have even come one day and then gone virtual another day that’s right so I don’t totally know how many folks are in the room. I know that I think catering told us that over 1600. Silverware were used at lunch today. So just for lunch today I guess that yeah I know I only used one and I used one upstairs even so it’s a proxy for right so that’s how many people ate lunch I guess. OK, um, talking about the conference experience, uh, we’re gonna bring in someone who was a previous guest Aia Aria Ma, come on, come on, Arya. you can share my mic, just share my mic. Yeah, let’s make it easier. Um, because this is her first NTC, and I, I, she was saying, she was saying things that I think you would want to hear as CEO. So I said, if you want to come back, well, it’s not gonna be quite that long, but, uh, yeah, it’s not gonna be quite that long, but thank you. Uh, if you wanna talk to the CEO, let Amy know that, that, uh, what, how you feel about your first NTC. So this is Ama. Um, her company, uh, are, are you just, you say your company, so I don’t have to look back two pages. OK, I’m, I’m the principal consultant founder of Lunara, so I do consulting with environmental conservation nonprofits. Um, first of all, thank you. This has been amazing. I’m actually from Baltimore, so just jot down from Boston, do a quick family trip, and the people here, I feel. Like NDC really has curated an amazing group of people where it’s not really about networking but really connecting and knowledge sharing the accessibility here it really feels like the staff are here looking out for the for the participants and it’s just been an amazing time connecting with people the bird like the feathers of a bird table conversations, the comfy chairs like this is I’ve been to a lot of conferences. And it’s definitely one of a kind. So thank you so much for curating an amazing team, curating amazing people who come here. It’s been a really great time for me. All right, thank you so much for being thank you for being one of those amazing people that is here, right? Thank you. I so appreciate that. Of course, of course, lots more NTCs in your future. OK, good. Thank you. Thanks for coming back. Glad you did. I, yeah, a little treat for you. I knew I knew you would want to hear something. Thank you. You’re welcome. Um, So, oh, I turned up for that was turned it up for our, yeah, OK, um, alright, so we have about 1800 people. Well let’s call it 1800 between friends, just as a round number. That’s good. OK yeah, we, I mean, I think there were like 12 people who just showed up and registered on site yesterday, so. Yeah, the number is a moving. When we talked a couple of weeks ago, you said people just show up. I was amazed at that. OK, it happens. OK. There’s always room at the NTC, you know. Yeah, well, we’ll add another chair. What did Ari just say? There’s a staff. Thank you for the staff, looking, looking out for all of us. Yes, of course. We’re accommodating. We’re, we, I’m a member, so I’m not staff, but I’m, I’m part of the N10 the N10 community. I don’t want to call it the the NTC people call you NTC. Yeah, I know Amy. She runs NTC in a way they, they, yeah, um. The commons experiment, yeah, I mean, I hope like we could talk about it for a minute. I’m just gonna preempt your intro and say for people who run conferences as part of the larger work of your organization, right, not that not that you’re an event planner, but people who are listening to the show and have organizations that have conferences as a part of your programming. Would love to learn what you are testing because we, as I said the other day you know there’s that like analogy or whatever like oh I pulled the band-aid off and just you know tried something we we found every band-aid and we pulled them all off at once and tested everything is is different this year. There is not an exhibit hall with pipe and drape and 10 by 10 squares that you have to walk through, uh, hallway hallways of corridors of, uh, it’s an open space, open plan. The studio here is set up right behind all the chairs that are facing the stage where the main stage where all the keynotes are and the awards were given. Um, we’re by the food station. Well, the food is here. It’s just the the hall is open. There’s not anything dividing us. Yeah, we sold no exhibit booth packages. Uh, and I admire it, I admire the attempt at change. Look, even if you, I’m not, you’re gonna decide as a team what you’re gonna do, but even if you went back to 10 by 10 cubes, uh, pipe and drape next year, I would still admire the 2025 experiment because you are trying something that radically different. You’re not bound by what every other conference does and what you. Uh, what N10 has done year after year after year for 24 years, this is our 25th, your 25th NTC. So you’re not bound by, by your own history even. I just, I admire the outward look, the fresh look, even if you go back to the way it was last year, I still will never stop admiring what you did this year. Thank you for saying that. I mean, I think. It in some ways was was and is a huge risk to say we don’t we’re not even selling packages that would equate to hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue um so if anyone’s listening and would like to write a check, please let me know um. But it just didn’t feel like that hard of a choice for us because it feels like every year all we want is to get closer and closer to an experience for as many people as possible to be in community and we, you know, getting rid of the booths was just one thing there’s also, you know, sessions are working in different ways and there’s. More furniture in this room that is not from the convention center, you know, it’s not rounds with chairs. We actually rented every piece of furniture from a local furniture company, um, just to, I can say the name that’s my show, not the Freeman Company. We’re not we’re not using that. We actually have put on an entire, you know, 1800 person conference in a convention center without a decorator, um, so we. Did everything ourselves so that we could control and make it just how we wanted it to be. You rented how many chairs you found a source for all these, all the everything, yes, every, every vendor is local, every maker is local. Yeah, you have a little shop. There’s there’s a market, local, local vendors that yesterday I saw cutting boards, uh, I see art, uh, that’s all I saw, but there’s a market over there, local, local vendors love it. You, you also do something smart that I learned, uh, one of your team members told me. That uh you you have your staff retreat in the city where or one of your annual retreats in the city where next year’s NTC is gonna be that’s very smart that way all everybody has walked the building we’ve all stood there and said, do we think this is really where badge printing could go? Do we really think this is. Because we also make basically every decision as a team for the conference, so you know there’s no one person on staff whose job is the conference and they get to make the decisions we we do it together or we say who wants to be in this decision, you know I think we’ve even talked about some of the the way Zen10 works um on the show before but. Yeah, so it feels good to have everybody be there, which means this late summer, early fall we’ll all party in Detroit and see what 26 NTC is gonna look like. OK, 26 NDC NTC in Detroit. Uh, no, it’s very smart and you’ve walked out. in the hotels we can make a couple of restaurant suggestions if somebody comes up because we, yeah, yeah, we went to that place. Yeah, very savvy, very savvy. I admire it. I don’t know. I just feel like I would never have thought of that. Like if I was a CEO I would, I wouldn’t need somebody else to suggest that. I think I never would have thought of that. Can I ask you a question? Do I get, is that allowed on nonprofit radio? OK, OK. I had an anarchist in the previous, uh, OK, I was gonna ask you, you know, I know, I mean with 160 plus sessions every year you have a hard job of only doing 30 or so interviews or or 20 or whatever the number is, right? Yeah, yeah, because it’s that’s only a fraction of how many sessions you could have um chosen from. But even still, I’m curious from the interviews you’ve had from, from a day and a half or so. This is content different this year? Like, is there, is there trends or or interesting notes surfacing because of the time we’re in, because of the moment we’re in the moment of under this administration, the the shifts of of the sector, but also even just like this weird moment around AI and the moment around, you know, all of those different pieces, is there something that you’ve seen? Artificial intelligence, yes, more panels on artificial intelligence. I, I requested more so we’ll have a couple more um. Yeah, I, that’s that’s what I was thinking it’s artificial intelligence, um, you know, the, the political environment, it comes out a little bit, but, uh, first of all, a lot of our, well, yeah, no, it comes out you know of course beyond the fundraising, uh, I was gonna say the fundraising panels have mentioned it, you know, but, but, um. Uh, also in the tech, uh, we just had a panel on personally identifiable information, how to preserve that, um, and including from government intrusion and subpoena, um, so you know that would not have been a topic last year would have been a thought, a possibility, um, so yeah, I’d say those mostly the AI and then the the the political and the, um, data, data protection, data protection, yeah, yeah. Um, Is uh is is Max here? Max stage managing? No, he hasn’t for a number of years a few years yes, yes, and I didn’t see Or Louise here. No, she, it’s not her spring break. Oregon already had spring break, so she is very mad to miss her first. TC. Oh, is this the first one? I think so many years at least, or yeah, I think so. She’s about to be 9. That’s right, yeah, yeah, I guess she missed Denver too because that was she was in school then, but yeah, so those are the only two that she’s ever missed, yes, even as a little babe, yeah, so we don’t have like a family photo booth photo from this, yeah, she has them like up on her, on her, you know, cork board in her bedroom. Yeah, I know he has all the NTG. In like the photo, you know, yeah, parent, yes. Um, How’s, uh, you know? How, how are things, uh, how’s the team, how’s the team doing? Thank you for asking. Um. I, I’m just looking because they’re in that room. That’s our, that’s our staff office so that we can see if there’s any issues, but that’s where everybody’s working the halls on fire or something. You’ll see it’s like a uh um called um smoke towers or fire towers. So, so we’re on, we’re we’re down on the floor, but up maybe 40 ft or something there’s windows and that you’re saying that’s the it’s like in the mall, you know, where the security is behind the one-way glass up above, yeah, that’s, yeah, so staffs up there’s too high, we can’t see in you know staff is OK, I think. Like Any any organizations group of staff, you know, there’s. A staff person dealing with this other issue that’s not work related and somebody you know caring for a relative and somebody trying to help their kid that’s having this struggle is that you know so. Uh, the team is OK. We’re a great team and folks have just been like. Even reflecting in real time like God we’re just like showing up for each other so strong and we feel so like happy to get to show up for each other these these few days together but also try to hold that like you know behind that or underneath that or around that. Life is hard for everyone right now in so many ways that have nothing to do with putting on a conference or or replying to your work emails or you know it’s just like everyone is always carrying these these other things that they’re thinking about um and we know and we’ve and we’ve heard from community members as we do every year that. We want the NTC to be a place where like you can set all those burdens down like it’s OK to talk about all of that stuff you know this is not like a perfect professional face you know like what does that mean? What what is my professional? I don’t know. You know, but also I think it’s a little bit hard for staff to feel like they get to do that too when we’re working so hard to create that space for the community because we’re also like on radio and calling catering and you know we’re like doing all these other logistic pieces so in some ways the staff like miss out on the on the best opportunity to do that that we have every year because we we’re we’re kind of behind the scenes but usually on Friday. Less logistics are happening because it’s the final day of the conference and then you know all but one or two people will get to be at the general session and listen to the keynote and everybody will get to like just go to a bird’s table at lunch or go you know people will really get to kind of come out and and. Enjoy it for a little bit. And when does the team depart on Saturday? Yeah, we fly out on Saturday. Oh yeah, we’ll, I mean Friday, Friday afternoon. Oh yeah, our stuff is getting palletized and taken away at 3 p.m. tomorrow. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yes, and like we have volunteers, we have, you know, we have um. I mean it’s end 10. We have a spreadsheet, you know, and every storage bin is numbered and we know what goes in bin number 1 and bin number 2 and you know you just look at the spreadsheet and everybody knows what has to go. I see. Of course we have a spreadsheet for that. Yeah, wonderful, um. Yeah, I would say, and I’ve told others this, uh, this is, this is, I think this is the 11th, uh, NTC that nonprofit radio has come to, yeah, uh, I think it’s the best. I do, I do, you’re just saying that because I’m sitting here and I’ll push you off the yoga ball. I said it to somebody else. No, it’s, yeah, you know, you know, uh, no, I really do admire the open plan. I love. It’s, yeah, it’s just a better feeling, you know it’s not a congested feeling we’re not confined to a 10 by 10 cell. Right and like just from an attendee’s perspective, you know, we didn’t want to shrink it down to only a room of 1800 chairs in theater seating or something, you know, like there’s all this open space. Do you wanna just sit on the floor and build Lego? Go for it, you know, you wanna drag a chair away from a table and talk to somebody else? Go for it. Right, we, we, it’s called a pre-con when before you have an event we have a meeting with, you know, the head of every part of the facility, right, uh, like here’s the security, right, like, you know, one rep from every part of the building comes and you have this precon meeting. And they are like, OK, who are you? it’s like just the day before or a couple of days before or is this we do we do it, no, no, no, we do it Monday so you’re on site, you’re like ready to go. You’re starting to load in and usually events that do this like send one rep from N10 right? we send all of us, all 16 of us show up because each of us are here, right? And you’re supposed to say like, you know, is there any info about your attendees? Is there anything the team should know, you know, and we say. If our attendees want a chair move, that chair is moving. Right, you’re not radioing me for like an approval. If attendees walk up to you and say the water is out, you’re refilling the water, right? Like this community is making the space. Our job was just to make sure water stored in there 16 of us right that you can take direction from, yes, and I mean if they say we’d like a whole another part of the building and could you bring catering there that please don’t do without our approval. Right, but we really want to have a, a place that is just open. Make it. Do put the chair where you want it to be, right? Like Ryan, bring your penguins and set them up. Apparently everybody’s like putting in the chat who gets to take them home, you know, like that feels like a gift to ourselves and hopefully a contribution that’s additive to the sector to to have a space that’s like that or that tries to say. What does it look like? We’re, we’re not a trade show. We’ve never been an actual trade show, but what does it look like to say, yeah, there’s no booths, just talk to each other. And honestly like there are some providers who are here for the very first time and they’re like what? What am I doing? What, what am I supposed to do, right? So we need to do a better job of setting people up whether they’re a provider or a sponsor or just, you know, attendee what to expect, what do you, what does it mean to just walk into this huge room and pick, pick a velvet couch to sit on and talk to somebody, you know, but just walk up yeah um. I, I, I just heard someone’s heels. I, I looked because I thought I heard pickle. I thought it was pickleball, but there is pickleball here. We have there’s pickle ball. There’s ping pong. Oh yes, and the pickle ball tournament yesterday, you know, it ended in, I’m not gonna say controversy, um, but it was heated because E0’s very own Carl came in 2nd place and he desperately would like that trophy. Is there a rule about employees? No, no, no, no, but Carl keeps he has spent a year reminding everyone that last year in pickleball he lost in the first round, but to the eventual winner. Right, it’s just, it’s just like, you know, the, the drama of a bracket process and so he wanted to redeem himself this year, right? He made it all the way to section. Yes, right, Carl. Alright, alright, and Carl is celebrating, I think, 18 years as an N0 staff person. He’s our IT director. He started as an AmeriCorps Vista. That’s incredible. Yeah, is he the longest? He’s the longest. And then how many years are you since membership I’ve been, I’ve been, I started at the NTC like the, you know, two days before 11 NTC was my first day as membership directors, um, and, and Ailey’s right behind me at 13. 0, she’s she’s outstanding. She curated this table that we’re sitting at. Uh, she got the chairs that we’re sitting on, um, she chose this spot for you all to be able to see everybody coming in visibility. Yes, it’s very nice. Yeah, Ali on her game, her thank you. All right, I know you’re busy. Thank you, CEO. I hope Aria was a nice surprise. It was such a gift. Thank you for doing that. I so appreciate it. I’m gonna tell the whole team with our at our daily debrief, um, and. And I look forward to the next time Gene and I get to be on the show and I have slept in some reasonable amount of hours prior to talking into the microphone, but I really value you being here and creating a digital platform for so many of our community members to get to share, you know, all of their smarts beyond these walls. So thanks for thanks for the collaboration. Yeah, lots more. OK. Amy Semple Ward, they’re the CEO of N10. They’re our technology contributor here at uh nonprofit Radio. Thank you. Um, and thank you for correcting me, parent, parent, yeah, yeah, you’re right. I mean, I know you’re right, but thank you for the, thank you for the correction. I’m, I’m a trainable boomer. You’re very trainable. We’ll leave it there. Thank you also for being uh with with uh nonprofit Radio’s coverage of 25 NTC where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor Box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you, a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges. Helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs. Helping you, help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now it’s time for the human factors driving your CRM success. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference. We’re at the Baltimore Convention Center, where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. My guest now is Ruben Singh. He is founder and CEO of 1/10 Consulting. Ruben, welcome back to nonprofit Radio. Thanks for having me, Tony. Good to see you again. This is, I think your 3rd, maybe 4th, 4th you’re counting, you’re more accurate than I am. Um, your session this year is the human factors driving nonprofit CRM success. Uh, I don’t know, I wonder, do you see people often or organizations often blaming technology when the problem is more team and human? Yeah, that’s exactly the the premise of it, Tony. I, I, um, uh, I’ve I’ve often found myself as a consultant coming into situations where Um, you know, the client we’re working with at the prospect we’re speaking with says, ah, we need Salesforce or we need, you know, uh, this particular solution or virtuous or something else, um, and, uh, you know, because they’ve had a bad experience with the technology that they were with, uh, and so, uh, as I’ve seen this so much throughout my career, um, and then you know you start peeling back the layers of the onions. And then you see, oh well, you know, the business processes are not fully defined. There’s not, you know, a plan for adoption, there’s not a plan for governance, uh, and so what I’ve realized is that, um, often times, uh, where the, the, the failures happen have really has nothing to do with the technology at all. So yes, that’s exactly what the premises of this uh of this um workshop. So the symptom I don’t know, cycling through, uh, platforms like, oh we need Salesforce, and then they have Salesforce for 3 or 4 years and then they realize, oh, no, Salesforce wasn’t really the solution. Now we need we need the Microsoft platform, right? Does it happen like that? That’s definitely a part of it. I think there’s also, you know, just there’s always this sense of urgency um as new technology comes along. Um, that uh we don’t, if we don’t innovate, we’re gonna fall behind, um, and we’re seeing a lot with, you know, AI now as well. Um, it’s, it’s no different, you know, everyone say well if you’re not using AI for your solutions, uh, you know, you’re, you’re gonna be left behind, you’re gonna, your organization’s gonna fail when really. Um, that is, that is really forcing organizations to adopt certain things that they’re not, they may not be ready for their, their processes may not be in place, their data might not be ready. So, um, so just like we’re seeing right now with, you know, the latest trend of technology, um, feel the organizations we work with just feel compelled to to to rush into whatever the particular trend is, um, and sometimes there’s business pressure also. Uh, you know, if this particular system failed, you know, new, new CTO comes in and says, ah, I need to prove myself or I need to get something going, so oftentimes they try to get the, the, the cart before the horse. You mentioned business processes a couple of times. What what kind of processes should we, so now we’re getting to what the human factors are that you need to have in place for the technology to be successful for the CRM. Well, what kinds of business processes are you looking for? Sure. Well, um, first, are they defined, are they documented? You’d be surprised how many nonprofits I walk into where, you know, they could be operating just fine, um, but there’s no nothing really documented and that’s fine, that’s where, you know, consultants like ourselves who would come in and help, uh, understand them, review them, define them. Um, and then there’s some that are just, uh, not very, uh, as you as you learn more about their business processes, you see that there’s, um, just inefficiencies, uh, that are there as well. So what kinds of business processes are we talking about? Just some examples. Yeah, um, fundraising, for example, so check come, you know, stack of checks come in, you know, what are the different processes to get that data entered into the system, or it might be donor advised funds, you know, what is the process around that? Or you know, we have a uh uh a series of files that need to be uploaded or it could be an application. process for programs uh that that might be so it it it could be um the grant distribution process what’s the reviews and applications that process who needs to review, who needs to approve before a grant might be approved. So, um, so there’s really a cross grant making fundraising program delivery um there’s there’s all kinds of steps that needed to happen and we ultimately want the the system, the technology to make it work as efficiently as possible. So we we we heavily rely on business processes to make sure that we’re. Um, that we’re creating things that ultimately makes the systems more efficient. So the technology is supporting the business processes not not we’re not relying on the technology for the business process, but it’s, it’s supplementing what our processes are. That’s exactly it. I would, I would add one more thing to that, you know, in addition to the technology supporting the business process, it also has to support the strategy. So that’s kind of one of the other points that we’re gonna be talking about later on today. Um, is to make sure that there’s a clear strategy. What is it that as an organization you’re trying to solve, um, how do you know that you’re successful? What are those markers or indicators to confirm that you’ve, that you’ve, you’re successful because we want again the technology to support that, uh, we want the technology to be able to track and report and monitor to make sure you’re meeting your goals, so. Uh, as a technologist, it’s a little bit tricky sometimes because they, they, you know, the clients often expect us to come in with a technical solution and, you know, code this and configure that, but we, we like to kind of step back and say, you know, what is it that you’re trying to solve? What’s your strategy? How do things work? Where can we create some efficiencies, then we start building. OK. Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s often important to have that consultant perspective to take a step back because you’re, you’re probably often. Uh, at 110th Consulting, and I’m, I’m gonna ask you to remind listeners why it’s 110. I think I remember, but we’ll get to that, we’ll get to that shortly. Um, you know, you’re, you’re often, um, confronted with, you know, we need, we need new technology. That is not our, that’s not our feedback. Amy. It is, it is feedback. OK. OK. There we go. Thank you. Oh, can you just try it with a lower volume? We’re uh we’re we’re, you can tell we’re live here at we’re, we’re just turning on the loudspeaker because the plenary session just ended, so we have a we have a loudspeaker and it was feeding back. OK, so that was us, that was us. Tala. All right, we’re accountable. I’m accountable. I feedback. It’s time for Tony’s Take too. Thank you, Kate. We’ve got a new tale from the gym introducing you to Roy. Uh, I met Roy by. Same way I hear about lots of people, uh, overhearing other people talking about Roy, uh, after he had left. And I know who he is. I’ve, I’ve seen him around. Uh, I’d say Roy is probably early to mid 70s. And the, the thing that the uh the two guys talking about Roy were focused on. Was that, um, well, he talks a lot, I agree. Uh, and he doesn’t put the weights away after he uses this one machine that he focuses on a lot, spends a lot of time on, and, and he actually grunts a lot when he’s on this bench press type machine. Uh, I had not noticed that he doesn’t take the weights off like you’re supposed to, but these two, guys did, uh, as well as talking about how chatty he is, and, you know, that he, he like, uh, just spends too much time in between his sets. Talking to other people. Maybe even annoying other people, uh, they did, they didn’t say that, but. They didn’t like how much he talks, and they don’t like that he doesn’t put the weights away. So I was, uh, so I was keeping an eye on Roy, you know, after I saw, I saw him again, and, um, word must have got to him about the weight part. Uh, he didn’t, he didn’t talk any less, still very chatty between sets. But he did start putting his weights away after he was done, takes them off the machine, puts them back on the rack where they get stored. So that’s good. So Roy did uh improve his bad gym behavior. Now, how did he get wind of the idea? That he’s not. Practicing good gym etiquette, I don’t know. Uh, I, I, I had nothing to do with it. I just stay out and listen and, and I happened to watch well, cause I heard about Roy once I learned his name, so then I was paying more attention, and that’s when I saw that he, he, uh, exercised good gym etiquette. So, but how he came to change his ways, I don’t know. I swear I had nothing to do with it. So that’s Roy at the gym, uh, along with many of our other characters I’ve introduced you to, uh, through the, through the many months. Roy at the gym, the community gym where I work out, uh, 44 times a week. And that is Tony’s take 2. OK. Are you sure you haven’t spoken to Roy before? Because he sounds familiar. I don’t think so. You might be, you might be thinking of Rob, Rob. There was Rob. He was the Marine Corps. Remember Semper Fi? He was talking to a another former Marine, and they ended their conversation with Semper Fi, the the Marine Corps motto. You might be thinking of Rob. I, I’ve seen Roy, but I never knew his name. OK. Hm. A lot of our names that are short. Well, it’s a couple. Try to keep track of all the characters at the community gym where I go, try to, maybe we should start a database. We should do, maybe we should start a CRM database. We said. We’ve got Fuku butlers more time. Here’s the rest of the human factors driving your CRM success with Rubin Singh. So you’re often confronted with our technology sucks, you know, we need this platform is not working for us. Nobody, I don’t know, nobody ever seemed to have learned it right. It doesn’t, it doesn’t work with what we’re doing, what we’re trying to do, and but you need to step back and say that there may very well be something deeper than your platform. OK. Absolutely, and you know there there’s there’s that and and I’d say also there’s been times if I’m being totally honest, Tony, where I’ve don’t don’t don’t be disingenuous, don’t lie to no I can’t do that, um, but, uh, you know, I’ve I’ve been part of teams early, early in my career where, um, you know, we have, we’ve completed the project. We have finished on time, we’ve finished on budget, we checked all the boxes for all the requirements that we met, but at the end of the project, at the end of the go live, honestly I, I felt kind of uncomfortable. I felt uneasy. I felt sick to my stomach because I knew that despite all the things that we’ve done for the technology, the nonprofit is not set up for success in the long run. Uh, some of the ways that I sense that were, um, they, you know, maybe all the users were really excited about the technology, but maybe the leadership was not fully on board, so they may not have, um, you know, they have not modified their processes, how they’re gonna do reporting, how they’re going to measure progress, how they’re going to measure performance, um, if they’re not really bought into the system, um, the whole thing’s going to fail. Um, also another key thing is governance. For leadership, the leadership buy-in is essential, uh, I think we may have talked about, or if it wasn’t you, it was another NTC how to get that leadership. It’s, if, if, if the leadership isn’t committed, leaders who are listening, CEOs, uh, executive directors listening, if you’re not completely committed, I mean your teams, your teams know that they figure it out and their commitment, uh, uh, is gonna be equivalent to yours for sure. If you could spend tens of $1000 on a on a new CRM system, if not more, but if you as a leader are gonna say, OK, you know, fundraising meeting, you know, fundraising, you know, check-in is going to be on Monday and everybody bring your spreadsheets, um, forget, you can forget the investment that you made in that CRM system, you’ve lost adoption right there holistic look remind us why your your company is one. Yeah, you know, well, um, you know, we’ve exclusively worked with nonprofits and, and very early in our, in our startup phase, uh, we worked with a lot of, um, uh, faith-based organizations, um, and, uh, it was, it was funny that as I was working with different organizations whether it was a synagogue or a church or a mosque or or cordura. Um, they all seem to have this 10% concept, this giving back of 10%, uh, to back to the community, back to causes, back to the good of, of the whole, um, and I thought that, you know, despite all these different faith traditions being so different, there was something that was, uh, you was a common thread amongst many of them, and so that’s kind of where 1/10 the consulting came from, yeah. I had it close. I thought it was, I thought it was giving I was giving back, but giving back 1/10. Yes, exactly, exactly, um, you, you, uh, your session description talks about inclusive design as a as a means to. Achieve the the CRM success that we’re looking for. Uh, say, say more about the design process, inclusivity. Yeah, well, well, we feel strongly that any technology that is meant for everyone should uh include as many people as possible as part of the design, otherwise, um, there’s gonna be blind spots. Um, uh, you know, this might seem, uh, you know, unrelated, but I was reading some stories about how when Um, uh, there’s crash test dummies, um, were being used, um, to test the safety of vehicles. They were based on a male body of 5′ 970 pounds and, um, the, and as is the 2011 University of Virginia study that showed that women were much more likely to be harmed or hurt in an accident. Um, than men were and 47% more it was like a pretty ridiculous number, so, um, just makes you wonder like when, when these vehicles and safety were designed and assessed, were they really thinking about different body types, different people? Well, the same thing applies to, you know, technology, um, the story I often give people is, um, you know, even my own parents, my, my elderly, uh, you know, parents, you know, from an immigrant community when they signed up for the COVID vaccine. Um, it was a process that was clearly not designed for immigrants and it was not designed for elderly, um, you know, it was, it was a the application form was very, uh, cumbersome. There was a lot of information you had to have, have prepared you cited this in a year or two in the past, yeah, the online form was not, uh, well, not user friendly for 70 or 80 year old, yeah, yeah, and so. Um, and, and so like, and then you, you also hear that uh well the immigrant communities are not signing up for the vaccine and, and it’s a public health problem. So, um, you know we feel that CRM is the same day is the same way that um it often times I walk into a room for a design session and I have the IT professionals there or because they’re the ones who can give us the quickest answers, um, or we have the people who are like the quote unquote super users who are the most technically proficient. Um, but you know, to me, if we really want to have inclusive design, we really want to see what who who’s not at the table. Let’s maybe have people of different ages, different technical proficiency, different, you know, socioeconomic, different uh parts on the company hierarchy because if this system is really designed for everybody, we need to get as many different thoughts, ideas, perspectives involved, um, to me, uh, often times if we overlook that, um, it, it, it ends up being a gap that we have to fix later. Um, you, uh, you also cite, um, this being valuable for uh professional growth. How is that? Yeah, and this is something, uh, as I get older, Tony, I’ve been reflecting on on a lot and uh I’ve been, um, I’ve I’ve felt this in my professional career and I’ve I’ve had the um privilege to uh teach as an adjunct professor close by here at University of Maryland Baltimore County. And it’s something I often tell my students, it’s like, um, you know, if, if you really want to be good consultants in this space, um. You know, we, we often times focus on the, the, the credentials or the certifications and you know we go crazy with the certifications and, and you know so we can present that and say, ah this is, you know, this is who we are but in my experience what’s been most useful and also has been useful to to the success of our projects is really being an expert in the industry that you’re working with, being passionate about the industries that you’re working in. Um, so for for us we tend to have a focus on the social justice sector, um, and it’s, you know, in my tradition, in my blood, and my, in my, uh, upbringing to be working with these types of organizations and really understanding the ins and outs of, of these organizations, and I feel like that’s been able to, um, uh, it’s it’s been something I’ve been uh able to bring to my projects, bring to my implementations, um, and the love and care that we give our clients and. It’s, it’s been very helpful so it’s something I, I encourage folks to, um, you know, to, to work on becoming experts work on becoming um keeping up to date with what’s going on in the industry so if you’re a nonprofit technology consultant being fully aware with the challenges with grant making or you know how government funding might be affected these days or you know taking an opinion on how AI can help or harm uh nonprofits. Uh, taking an opinion on data privacy and where it fits, so, uh, what I’ve seen is that what our clients need is not just, just people who are experts at the technology, but experts at the industry that they’re working in. And what about professional growth for for folks in nonprofits as they’re looking at their own businesses? I mean this is sort of a broadening exercise where folks are learning. there as you’re you’re suggesting for consultants, the folks nonprofits learning outside their own areas of expertise. Yes, yes, absolutely, um, an example of that is, you know, uh, to me I realize that, you know, equity and and technology is, is, is ultimately, you know, uh, it’s super important for inclusive design and inclusive systems, um, so for me that meant, um, I was gonna become a. A certified DEI practitioner, um, so I went and, you know, went through the classes, got my certification, and, and that was something that I, I wanted to make sure that was part of who, who I was. So while you might think that this might not be part of your part of your, um, technical credential, um, this might not be part of your technical credential, um, it, it having that business credential or having that expertise was super important, um. Another example could be change management. Um, so if, if you feel that change management, excuse me, change management is something that you’re passionate about, by all means become a certified credential change management professional because it’s only going to make all your projects, uh, more successful. Get you outside your comfort zone. Yeah, I mean I think there’s I think there’s value in that. I’ve I’ve seen it professionally, um. Just, you know, challenging, challenging yourself, you know, outside outside your normal boundaries and and and it really applies to any industry, so as I tell my students, if you’re a The technology is everywhere, so you know if you wanna do fashion tech, become an expert in the fashion side of it a sports tech, become an expert in the sports side of it doesn’t really matter, um, but it’s really just about, you know, what my clients over 27 years of of of this work, um, they don’t really care how many salesforce certifications I have. They don’t really care about, you know, what they, what they care about is do I understand them? Do I understand their business, do I, you know, what, what else do I bring to the table? There’s lots of tech consultants out there, but what else do you bring to the table? So it sounds like we’re in your backyard, uh NTC. You teach at University of Maryland Baltimore County. Yes, yes, yes, just uh uh right right outside 20 minutes from here, so it’s nice, we’ll see you again next year. I don’t do you know where next year’s is? I believe Detroit, but, uh, wherever it’s gonna be, I’ll be there. We’ll be together. Um, what else, what else are you gonna share on this topic that, uh, you and I haven’t talked about yet? Um, we are gonna, I think the one other thing, and, um, it’s not something I talked about, you know, a few years ago, but it’s just so much more relevant now is, um, you know, again as far as the, the human factors that that uh affect CRM, it’s also uh looking at um, you know, how bias and discrimination can make their way into the systems, um, so whether it is algorithms that are built, whether it’s AI models, um, and, uh, making sure that we have. Checks and balances in place to ensure that the data is um not toxic in any ways or or the data is not skewing results in a in a way that could um hurt or harm communities. I think one example I if I can give a specific is, you know, if you are a nonprofit that uses an algorithm for recruitment volunteer recruitment or application reviews, um, you know, making sure that those do not, uh, uh, create skewed results, making sure that. There’s a checks and balances process to make sure that that that the results are not discriminatory, that they’re fair, they’re unbiased, um, and that’s something that, um, organizations are really grappling with how do we do that? So I have some, some models that I’m gonna be sharing as well today that I’m pretty excited about on on how you can create some checks and balances. Yeah, um, I mean it’s uh I wish I wish I had my diagram I could bring up here too. Yeah, but um, yeah, yeah, um, but it’s basically just um being intentional about, OK, you know, if again starting with strategy, so let’s say it’s a volunteer recruitment plan and you say, you know, I and I had a lot of this well we want to increase our, our diversity in our recruit in our volunteer pool so you know it’s, it’s basically setting some measures for that. um, we wanna have 20% of, of this particular demographic or 40% of this and then it’s really just um creating some checks and balances just like in any. Um, in any implementation of of technology there’s gonna be a, a testing phase, there’s gonna be a data validation phase. So what what I’m proposing is we also have a a a a a bias detection phase. We also have a, um, you know, um, uh, a sort of um discrimination and bias, uh, check that we essentially do so in that case we will just like we have parameters to say these are the percentages we’re looking for, what are the results for it? So, um, so it’s, it’s not rocket science, but, but it’s really just making sure that when we build our test plans out that we’re also checking for bias and discrimination. I know a lot of work on LinkedIn. Have you written a book? Um, in the works, Tony, in the works you mentioned it or maybe I’m just that you ought to write a book. OK, uh, you’re working on a book, um, early stages, yes. But um but yeah, now there’s I’ve I’ve kind of captured a lot of thoughts um over the years about this and you know these are things that were just kind of things I uh thought about, you know, like uh you know this doesn’t feel right or this could be done in a more equitable way or this is this is not really doing good. Even though we’re calling it tech for good, um, and then, you know, being in communities like this at N10 and NTC, uh, made me realize, oh, I’m not the only one who thinks like this. There’s others who who are who have also found some weird stuff in out there in the implementation world and and I think, um, you know, as a consultant who, who now has started my own practice, um, I realized, you know, I don’t have to just continue being part of the problem, you know, I can. Uh, I can try to shift some things and, and, um, share my stories to, to make sure that we, we, we, we collectively do better. OK, now, you know, I imagine you’re, you’re part of a minority faith community in the United States. How does that inform your practice or or how does it open your eyes to the inequities that that we were you know, you’re doing more to fight than I am. I bring voice to them, but you’re actually doing. Well, well bringing to it is is very important, so I appreciate that you do that, Tony. Um, uh, yes, as part of the sick tradition I think um it’s it’s a few things. um, I mean it really does fuel a lot of my work, um, you know, the sick tradition is a very um deep in in community service and in justice and in collective liberation, so it it really is a fuel for, you know, the, the, the focus on the social justice sector. Um, but I would say, yeah, absolutely, you know, being a visible minority does, uh, help me have, uh, that the radar is always on. Um, you know, and, um, I, I’m, I’m very aware, hyper aware of of things that just don’t feel right or that that that that don’t sit well with me, whether it’s happening to me or someone else, um, so you know, early on in my career I was, you know, thinking to myself, ah, you know, I’m just learning the ropes, let me just follow along what everybody else is doing and you know, different practices that might happen in in implementations themselves and technology implementations. I’ll just go along with it. It’s fine, um, but now I, I didn’t it right, yeah, so now I kind of sense that, you know, I feel that agency that I can, you know, I can, I can speak my mind, I can step forward and say, yeah, you know, this, this persona building exercise we’re doing for marketing, you know, of, you know, guessing what. Different races and demographics might feel about our work. Yeah, it doesn’t, that’s not great. That’s there’s other ways to to get that information that doesn’t sit here and, and, you know, enable stereotypes, uh, you know, we can use archetypes, we can, you know, we can ask people directly why they could come to our nonprofit or don’t come. So there’s there’s alternatives out there, you know, the tried and true methods are not always the best, um, they’re not always the most equitable, so you know, let’s let’s brainstorm other alternatives. Did finding that agency come from starting your own business or before then? I think it was a combination of being in circles of other technologists of color that, you know, where I, I felt very empowered and said, ah, you know, we’re not the only ones, you know, like other people feel this way and collectively. You know, there’s things we can do better, um, and then yes, starting the company and I I recognize that comes with privilege, um, and not everybody can speak out the way that they want to, but, but definitely starting starting my own practice and being very transparent with my customers about, hey, this is who we are, this is what we’re about. If we see something that doesn’t feel right or that the data that you’re requesting from your clients is is overreaching, we’re gonna, we’re gonna raise our hand and and you know what I thought might have deterred. Customers is actually um uh had customers gravitate towards us. They want to be held accountable. Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m glad you found your voice it’s always good to see you, thank you very much. Thanks so much. My pleasure. Singer and CEO. Thank you for joining us for our. 2025 nonprofit technology conference coverage in the Baltimore Convention Center and thanks to Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits for sponsoring nonprofit radio at 25 NTC. Next week, more from 25 NTC PII in the age of AI. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, Donorbox.org. I’m gonna miss that alliteration. Donor box is going away this week. Fast, flexible, friendly, fundraising forms. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for April 14, 2025: Your Improved Fundraising Messaging

Lynn Bohart: Your Improved Fundraising Messaging

Do your fundraising messages engage and connect with your donors and prospects? Or do they merely inform? Do you know how to craft an engaging story? And what makes stories so valuable anyway? Lynn Bohart answers all these questions and more, as she encourages you into persuasive writing and core messaging. Her new book is “Raise More Money Through Better Messaging.”

 

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

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

Nonprofit Radio for April 7, 2025: Nonprofit Leadership For Current & Aspiring

Nick Grono: Nonprofit Leadership For Current & Aspiring

There’s a new compassionate, inspiring and valuable guidebook on nonprofit leadership. It’s aptly named, “How To Lead Nonprofits.” The author, Nick Grono, shares his thinking on the role of the CEO, your team and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), because the success of the people leading throughout your nonprofit, now and in the future, is essential to your mission success. Nick is CEO of Freedom Fund.

 

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

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be thrown into dysteiasis if I saw that you doubled down on the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate with what’s going on. Hey, Tony. We’ve got Nonprofit leadership for current and aspiring. There’s a new compassionate, inspiring, and valuable guidebook on nonprofit leadership. It’s aptly named How to Lead Nonprofits. The author, Nick Grono shares his thinking on the role of the CEO, your team, and diversity, equity and inclusion, because the success of the people leading throughout your nonprofit now and in the future is essential to your mission success. Nick is CEO of Freedom Fund. On Tony’s take 2. Gratitudes. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is nonprofit leadership for current and aspiring. It’s my pleasure to welcome Nick Groo to nonprofit Radio. Nick has decades of experience leading and chairing nonprofits. He is CEO of Freedom Fund. A charity dedicated to ending modern slavery around the world. His book, which brings him to the show is How to Lead nonprofits Turning Purpose into Impact to Change the World. You’ll find Nick on LinkedIn. Nick Roo, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Tony, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on. The pleasure. Thank you for joining. Congratulations on your book published, uh, just last year, very recently last year, right? Yeah, published mid last year, so still kind of reasonably fresh off the presses. Good, congratulations again. Uh, leading nonprofits, why do you feel the, the how to lead nonprofits? Why do you feel the book is essential? Uh, you kind of, you say you’re filling a void between sort of business and nonprofit leadership. Please fill in that gap. Why, why this book now? Well, there are thousands of books on business leadership, right, you see new books every day, if you go to the airport, you see books on the shelf from prominent leaders, etc. Um, but, um, there’s not a lot on non-profit leadership. Um, so, you know, I kind of, when I was thinking about this, there were, there were 3 things that kind of were playing in my mind. The first is that leadership is different, and I’ve worked in the for-profit world. I’ve worked in the past for Goldman Sachs and as a corporate lawyer and I worked for government. And it really struck me that there are quite significant differences in many ways between kind of leadership in the, the business world and the government world, and, and, and that in a non-profit world, so that was one issue. um, another was there just wasn’t a lot of stuff out there, um, to my mind, uh, and had a look around. Um, and the third is that there is a real, um, desire for it, right? Whenever you get to a group of non-profit leaders together, we’re always talking about the challenges we face and the particular issues, and I’m sure on your podcast, you know, there’s kind of endless cycle of people saying, well, these are some of the real challenges and the hard things about leading non-profits. So kind of felt to me like there was, there was a, there was a gap to fill. You, uh, you said you, you’ve had a background in, uh, in law, in government, uh, in nonprofits. How did you find your way to, uh, to Freedom Fund? You fill in a little of the gaps of your, your, your history. It was a it was a it was a general path, you know, I started my, my professional career as a corporate lawyer in Australia, um, and then, um, at that time I’d done a bit of volunteering for a, a non-profit, a sail training non-profit, you know, one of these big old sailing ships that take, um, underprivileged youth out, so I had some non-profit experience, but I certainly wasn’t thinking of non-profits as a career. Um, but I, I was fortunate enough in my first couple of years as a lawyer to have something I think was a transformational experience, and that was my law firm offered to send one young lawyer to go work for the Legal aid commission for 6 months, so that was their pro bono efforts, right? We’ll, we’ll, we’ll offer you one of our young inexperienced lawyers. We’ll offload the pro bono on one, exactly, yeah, yeah. And so I applied for that and we had a big law firm. I thought lots and lots of people would be fighting for this position because you know, it’s a fascinating experience and I was the only one. Um, so I went off to work for Legal aid where you’re representing, you know, clients who can’t afford legal advice, um, so the, the some of the most, the least privileged in our society, um, often facing horrendous charges and, um, and it was just a real eye-opener to me about um how the system can really discriminate against people who are vulnerable and don’t have access to, Money, lawyers, etc. so that was quite interesting, after that, even though I continued as a corporate lawyer, I started volunteering commercial legal centers and, and my career went on for a little while, but um, I went to government. It was a kind of general progression, right, from corporate law into policy. I worked for the Attorney General, uh, the, the Federal Attorney General in Australia ended up being his chief of staff, so lots of interesting engagement on legal issues and legal policy, and I decided then that I wanted to kind of change my career, so I came to the US, I did a master’s degree in the US in public policy. And got my first job coming out of that, working for a, an amazing nonprofit based in Brussels called the International Crisis Group, which worked on conflicts around the world, like Afghanistan and Syria and Sudan and all those kinds of things. So that was the, the general path it took, took a little while, but I got there in the end. Interesting that, uh, at, at the big law firm, you were the only person to apply for the, for the 6 month pro bono position. That that’s kind of eye-opening about where you were versus what your real interests were. It, it probably tells you a few things about the incentives in these firms, right, you know, as in you’re on a track and, and the perception is that you need to kind of do certain things. Um, I, I had a slightly unusual upbringing, and maybe that made me more open to, um, to kind of jumping over to pro bono. My, my dad was a ship’s captain, so we spent 3 years while I was growing up on a 100 year old sailing ship sailing around the world. Um, so I kind of, Was more exposed to my parents taking risks, leaving their jobs, changing careers and all the rest of it, not that I’m saying this is the same thing, but I, I don’t know if that was, it’s always hard, I don’t know how it is with with the other guests that you get on, but you’re often in the non-profit space, you’re often, You want to tell a nice neat story, and there isn’t a nice neat story, there’s a whole lot of things going on here, isn’t there, but, but it was certainly one of the most influential decisions of my professional career, cos it just did open my eyes to different pathways and. And now I spend my whole time working on an issue of, you know, human trafficking one slavery, where, where it’s an issue where that’s illegal everywhere in the world, but the law doesn’t work. The rule of law is failing tens of millions of vulnerable people, so there’s still a connection with law, rule of law and all the rest of it. It’s just, uh, it’s just much more, um, it’s much more powerful. So your dad was a ship captain and, and your first nonprofit experience was volunteering on the three-masted 180 ft tall sailing ship uh for uh vulnerable under with training, training kids to work together, who came from underserved populations. So that, there, there’s a, there’s a little bit of a through line from your dad’s work to your first volunteer experience. Say a little more about the, was it pronounced the the Lewin was the name of the the the as in like Leeward is that Leeward versus win in um no, it’s actually Dutch for lion and, and it was named after Kate Leeuwin which was named by some of the early Dutch sailors who came out and they, I don’t know where it was, the 1700s and got blown off course, so yeah, so the Leeuw. Oh, OK. I didn’t have to do with Leeward and Winward. But now, interesting through line from your dad’s professional work to your first volunteer experience. Yeah, it, well, so he um so he was a, a ship’s captain, uh, you know, he worked for the merchant navy and all the rest of it, then did this job sailing the ship around, and then he became um the captain of this sail training ship. So I came over during my holidays and volunteered during my holidays because there was opportunities, so there was a very direct connection, um, and it was something that, you know, I found, um, really um powerful and moving and enjoyed it immensely, so. I was fortunate to have that opportunity. And your career has uh culminated in uh uh leadership of nonprofits. Yeah Uh, so the, the book focuses on, um, on, on three areas of, of leadership and organizational development, I guess, uh, organizational structure. And the purpose of your three P’s, the purpose of the people and the partners, um, why don’t you give an overview. I’d, I’d like to focus on the people, but give the overview of, of all three, the, the, how essential they are. Sure. I mean, so the, the, the, the central point of my book is that non-profits have this really powerful motivating cause, their purpose, right, to change the world in big ways or small, and by changing the world it could be changing your community, changing your, your, your country or working globally, but you’re there to make positive change, um, and your 662 and so is your impact, right? Um, and you need both, you need a powerful cause, and then you need to deliver on it, cos I think there are lots of non-profits that kind of have, The best of intentions, but may not be as good as delivering delivering on those intentions. So, so the central thesis is, purpose, turn it into effective impact, and then the framework I set up, which is um a pretty straightforward one is, is around purpose, people and partners, purpose is your um direction of travel. Uh, and I talked there about the mission of your organization and the impact and how you measure it, and the strategy being the connection between your um your mission and your impact. People is looking inwards, that’s looking at first and foremost, the CEOs, what are the priorities for the CEO? It’s looking at your team, um, and culture and all the things that go with team, it’s looking at your board. And then the third PE partners is looking outwards, you know, it’s, it’s your. If we use the lingo, it’s it’s your external stakeholders, but that, you know, that’s kind of jargon, isn’t it? So for me, it’s the communities you serve, first and foremost, right? Why do you exist? You, you’re serving a population, a community, um, they should be at the center of your work. Uh, it’s about your funders, about your funders, then it’s very hard to do the work. And also, I think a really important areas around peers and networks and those that are in the space with you and how you mobilize them. So, so those are the three Ps. That’s the quick, quick, quick gallop through the. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you. Um. So you’re the uh the section on, on people uh in the middle of the book starts with the CEO and the only thing I’d like to read is just uh uh uh this, this quote really struck me about leadership, uh, opens the, the, the, uh, the CEO chapter. Uh, from Mary Parker Follett, uh, uh, a 1924 book, Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power. But by the capacity to increase the sense of power among those led. The most essential work of the leader is to create more leaders. It’s inspirational. I, I, I, I, it’s aspirational and inspirational at the same time, um. Give us your, your, you know, I have some specific things I want to ask you about, but give us your overview of, of your, your role. You are the, you are the CEO of Freedom Fund. Um, give us your, um, give us your overview of what, what you’re supposed to be about. Sure, um, and I’ve, I’ve had the, I think it’s the benefit of being the CEO from day one of the organization. So we set up the organization 11 years ago, I was the first employee. Um, and there are advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is I, I, I had a fair say in what was gonna happen. Um, um, and then we build out the team and now we have, um, about 80 staff, um, so, um, some 10 years later, um. It’s How do I describe the role? I mean, there, there are many things going on, you know, I think there are many priorities and the priorities that I say for the CEO are the priorities I think for myself, you know, it’s about holding the vision for the organization, and the CEO, I think, I think what I would say to a lot of people is the CEO is often the only person in the organization that is looking over the horizon. And everyone else is kind of focused on specific tasks, you know, you’re running programs or you’re running your finance or dealing with HR, uh, working with volunteers, whereas CEO is always looking what comes next. Uh, I think of that particularly right now with everything that’s going on with kind of international finance and aid and all the rest of it, it’s a really turbulent time, so looking over there, um, it’s about motivating staff, it’s about kind of leading on strategy. Um, it’s, it’s making sure you focus on the stuff that really matters, not the stuff that you want to do or the stuff that you’re comfortable with, but the stuff that no one else can do, because I often feel like, if you run your team well, then the only decisions that come up to you are the really hard decisions because everyone else deals with the decisions that are easier to, to make, right? Um, so. That’s the way it should run, uh, and, and then finally the, the point is, if you’re fortunate enough to have a team, a leadership team, and so on, then, then it’s just really key as a leader to, to support that team and make sure it’s powerful and engaged and, and that you’re a a a a a really effective member of that team. And there’s lots to unpack on all of that, but, Um, they, yeah, that’s a quick run through of that. Yeah, we’re gonna get to a good bit of it. You, you, you, you devote a chapter to the team, which we, which we’ll talk about, uh, but, uh, just focused on the CEO and holding the vision. You, you said it, it was something I wanted to ask you about, expand on that a little more about hold the vision. So, I, I, I keep on talking about purpose being the central point of the organization. I mean, non-profits have lots of challenges, right? And we can talk a little about that with fundraising and the fact that you don’t earn income, people give you money and all the rest of it, and it’s really complicated. They have this superpower. Of purpose. It’s really powerful, right? I am deeply moved and inspired by the work we do to support some of the most vulnerable people that are being exploited, uh, you know, for, or at risk of sex trafficking or forced labor, or bonded labor or forced marriage. And, and so the vision that we have is about how do we have the biggest impact on those communities that we’re serving. And, and I think if you harness that, it’s really powerful for the team and the work, and particularly when things are challenging or difficult, I kind of keep on reminding people of the power of what we do and the importance and the privilege of what we do, um. They’re difficult times, or or when COVID hit, right, and when COVID hit and the organization’s reeling and there’s a lot of uncertainty, it was really powerful to say to the team, but look at the communities we serve, they are hit so much harder than we are, and we have such an important role to play in supporting them during this completely uncertain time and it was a really good. Way of mobilizing the team and get everyone focused at a difficult time, and I think it can be really powerful. So, so that to me is the vision. What are we always about? Bring it back to that. Always, if you have problems at work or if there are staffing issues or internal discord, you start with, what are we here for? And then we’ll work on everything else. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s DonorBox, a comprehensive suite of tools, services, and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs, helping you, help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to Nonprofit leadership for current and aspiring. Are you, uh, facing a lot of that, uh, a lot of challenge now with the, the, uh, USAID funding cuts and uncertainties and I imagine a lot of the organizations you fund are also funded by USAID. So this is all you’re living through this again, it’s COVID 5 years ago to the month actually, um, now 5 years later, you know, this, this funding uncertainty and, and turmoil. Yeah, there’s a huge amount of uncertainty, and it’s not just US government funding, you know, the Brits have announced that they’re cutting their foreign aid funding, the um the Dutch have cut their foreign aid funding, the Swiss have announced cuts to there, so there’s a, there’s a, um, we, we get um some funding from, it wasn’t USAID, it’s from the State Department, which was frozen for about 3 weeks but has been unfrozen. Um, and that we use to fund some 30 organizations on the ground, so we’re, we’re very fortunate compared to many, um, and historically trafficking has been largely a bipartisan, anti-trafficking work’s been largely bipartisan, so, so we hope that that will continue to be the case. Um, um, but it creates massive uncertainty, particularly on the ground where we don’t work in isolation, we work with local partners, so we fund some 150 local partners, but if, if, Um, aid is cut from any government that supports frontline organizations. Everyone becomes a bit more vulnerable, right? So, and for work on trafficking and slavery, vulnerability is the proxy for slavery. It’s vulnerable populations that are preyed upon, so if communities become more vulnerable because aid has been cut from various quarters, um, then the risk of trafficking and slavery grows, so even if we’re not directly impacted on the aid cuts, The demand for what we do is only going to grow because there is going to be increasing vulnerability um as, Rich countries withdraw somewhat from the aid space, at least temporarily. Are you finding yourself having to reassure your own staff of 80 some, again, you know, holding the vision for them? Yeah, absolutely, and, and, and reminding them, you know, one where we’re, we’re in a solid financial position, um, and so we’ve been able to continue supporting partners and the work will continue. Um, but, um, talking to staff about these scenarios, and it’s not so much just reassuring them, it’s, it’s giving them renewed purpose, right, because everyone struggles when they see what’s happening on the ground and greater vulnerability and you know, this work is emotionally very, very draining, and when you see um, Groups of people that are even more vulnerable to trafficking, it can be really tough, so it’s getting everyone aligned around the purpose and saying right, here’s our chance to have even greater impact, uh, doing the stuff that we care about. It kind of leads to, uh, leading on strategy, which, uh, you, you, you have several interviews through the book which I, I appreciate they, they add, they add color and, and, and depth and, uh, you one of your interviews is with, uh, uh, a man named LeFevre who says that, uh, leading uh they sort of expressing strategy is more of an inspirational sketch than a blueprint. So please uh say more about the, the CEO’s role in, in, you know, take from holding the vision to execution, to leading on strategy. Yeah, sure, so strategy, I kind of see strategy as the, the pathway, the route, the, the map that you set out that gets you from your, your vision, your purpose to the impact that you want to achieve, right? You kind of say, well, we’re here to end modern slavery or make a big measurable difference to modern slavery in the regions we work, and we can kind of say what that means in terms of percentage reductions and all the rest of it. So how do we get there? Um, and I think, I think in our space, there’s often a lot of overthinking of strategy, and I, I’m still trying to articulate this more clearly. I think, I think one of the big things that non-profits struggle with is that we don’t have the feedback mechanisms and the price signals that you have if you’re a business. Uh, if you’re a business and you’ve got a plan. And it’s not working, you know, pretty quickly because your customers are leaving you or your income is falling, and you have very strong price signals and feedback mechanisms that non-profits don’t really have, right? Um, because you’re doing a program and you think it might achieve something and it may or may not be, but it’s often very messy, and so, so, um, so strategy is important because you’ve gotta be really thoughtful about the plan that you have. And you’ve got to find ways of, of reflecting on it and changing or adapting as, as, as things progress, and so that’s what Matthew means about, You know, kind of sketching out a way of challenging, and I, I have another quote in there about a guy who kind of talks about, you know, it’s more of strategy is more a kind of a GPS sat-nav, you know, than map, because you have to adjust as you move along. um, and I think nonprofits too often can kind of think, OK, there’s a magic in a strategy and we’ll spend a year and um investing in a strategy and we’ll come up with a really detailed plan. And we’ll stick to that plan because we’ve all signed off on it, even if the world changes, uh, and I, I talk in the book about, you know, imagine, imagine you’re working on, Mental health issues, um before COVID, and you’ve got a nice plan and your income’s been going up each year for the last 4 or 5 years and you’ve got a good strategy to engage companies to become sponsors and partners. And then COVID hits. And two things happen, right? One is, the demand for your services just skyrockets, right, if you’re involved in mental health during COVID and all. And the other is your funders are probably initially at least running 100 miles an hour because, you know, the companies are really worried about their own financial bottom line, so often we’re drawing back from, from funding commitments and so on. So demand goes up, your income goes down, your strategy is out the door, right, and not every component of it, but I mean any detailed year by year plan is out the door. Now hopefully, And, and I talk about one of the things that I think is really key in the strategy is your theory of change. And, and theory of change often sounds very jargonistic, and I don’t like jargon, but theory of change is your insight. It’s like, what is special about what we do that is going to translate into the change that we want to see. And, and I, I think it’s really important because often, The work that we do doesn’t directly deliver the results that we want to see. Um, and I think one example might be working for a think tank, right, now if you work for a think tank and you’re producing research reports, Your objective is not to publish reports, usually, right, that’s a, that’s a, that’s an output, that’s a tool to achieve. Usually your objective is to change policy or to change behavior in some way. And so your theory of change is not our think tank exists to publish 100 reports a year and to get 20 opinion pieces and papers. It’s our theory of change is that the most effective way to change policy is to produce thoughtfully well reduced, uh, well, well researched reports and go and advocate on those reports to policy makers and influence them to change what they do. And, and because that’s your theory of change, while you may not be able to guarantee all of the results, you can at least try and track whether or not it’s working. Are your reports influential? Are people referring to them? Are they being covered in the press? Do policymakers refer to them? Do they change policy? And so, so for me, strategy is kind of trying to get the fundamentals in place. What is your purpose, what is your, what is your, your insight that will get you to your objective and what is your objective? And then keep on, keep on looking at that and thinking about that as times and things change. You also spend time talking about the CEO’s role in in fundraising. Which can, ah, can be fraught with, with some, some founders especially who, uh, may have a lot of passion. And zeal about the work that they’re doing, but not really have a solid plan for how to fund it. So, share your thinking on the, the CEO’s role and, and need to embrace fundraising. Yeah, well, the thing about nonprofits is. For most nonprofits, You, your income comes from people giving you money, you know, you raise it from individuals or grants or governments. I mean sometimes you provide services and have a contract with government, but leaving that aside, you know, most of it is raising money from people who are giving to you, um, and, and that can be really tricky. Um, again, I kind of, you know, an example I use is, imagine if you’re a business, And you have a really good strategy and you execute really well and you’ve worked out your niche and you’re operating much more effectively than your competitors, you probably have people coming and wanting to invest, right, because it’s like, wow, this is a great business and it’s doing really well and we can make lots of money and all the rest of it where, I imagine you’re in a nonprofit and you’re doing really well on your strategy and, Um, you’re kind of more effective than your peers and your competitors. Well, you’ll often have donors, particularly foundations, say, mate, you’re doing just fine, you don’t need our support anymore, we can go fund others because look, you’ve done such a good job. And so it’s almost as if your success can be a, a contribute to reduced income. I know these are particular circumstances, but in my world, this is very real. Um, and so I think it’s part of one of the interviews where someone says that it’s easy to find funding in the first few years because there’s excitement and you have a, you have a, a new plan, a new model, but, but it becomes difficult after like year 5 and on. Yeah. And, and that’s often the case, you know what I mean, and it, and it kind of varies in various ways, but certainly, you know, when we started the Freedom Fund 10 years ago, initial enthusiasm and great interest, uh, and lots of people, and it’s new and it’s interesting, and, and it certainly helped us mobilize great funders, most of whom have stayed with us. So full credit to them. Um, so, but the way I look at it from the CEO is, you know, your organization can’t do anything without funding. And so it is an absolute priority for the CEO to make sure that you are getting the funding that you need, um, and increasing it over time if that’s what you want. Now, it doesn’t mean you have to do it yourself personally, but to be honest, usually the best spokesperson for an organization, a non-profit is the CEO. Um, and again, particularly if you’re raising grants from, from high net worth funders or from foundations, um, people want to hear from the CEO. Uh, and there are some CEOs who kind of think, well this is beneath me, right? I’m really interested in the, the programs and, and the, the, the real nitty gritty of the work. Well, sure, if you’ve built a team and you’re managing to raise the funding, great, but you won’t have programs if you don’t bring the funding in. So to my mind, the role of the CEO is to make sure all of the relevant bits are working and if fundraising is key. Then that’s where you spend your effort, and I would spend over 50% of my time doing fundraising and outreach because that’s where I can add the most value to my organization. I’ve got amazing program people. I’ve got people who know much more about modern slavery and human trafficking than I do, who’ve spent their lives working on these issues. I’ve got, you know, wonderful, Kind of finance teams and HR teams and all the rest of it, where I can add is selling the vision, building relationships, explaining to people why they should give us a chunk of funding, and for this issue, rather than to either a peer organization or a completely different issue. Um, so I think, um, it doesn’t always mean the CEO has to do it all, but the CEO is responsible. Uh, cos there’s nothing worse than being all virtuous about, well, I’m gonna focus on this work and find that you’ve got less and less money and you’re doing less and less work. So you devote, you think it’s more than half your time to, to fundraising? Fundraising, talking about the work, selling the message, it’s not all you know, it’s not all meetings, meetings with donors, right, it’s, it’s, it’s talking about the power of the issue, going to conferences where, where it’s appropriate, um, yeah, yeah. By the way, you, you, uh, mentioned your disdain for jargon, uh, here on nonprofit radio, we have jargon jail. You’re not likely to be, uh, you’re not likely to be subject to because if we’re, uh, we’re we’re, we’re simpatico on not liking it. It’s time for Tony’s steak too. Thank you, Kate. Gratitudes. I’ve been doing more of this gratitude practice. Well I’m actually saying out loud things that I am grateful for in my life. I do it usually in the mornings when I’m waking up, and not every morning, but A bunch of mornings and occasionally at night. Uh, and I just, I, I’m sharing that I do it because I’m encouraging you to do the same. It’s kind of especially with all the anxiety and chaos and turmoil and. The storm around us, not only in the nonprofit community, but just in our country. I think it helps to ground, at least it helps me ground myself, that there are things to be enormously grateful for. So I Say out loud, I’m grateful for my family. Except the the part where Kate lives in New Jersey, that that there’s an exception, but uh other other family, all, all, all other fam, no, no, of course, all my family, um, my wife Amy. The beautiful place that I’m privileged to live in uh on the beach, my clients, uh, friends, you know, and I name friends that are that are on my mind when you start doing this. The list grows long, and you realize that there’s so much in your life to be grateful for. I guess, again, I, I should say that’s what happens to me. I, I hope that that will happen for you also, that you start naming people and the names just keep coming and the uh the other, the other folks and and maybe even companies, you know, whatever it is that you’re grateful for, uh, just keep coming and coming and and that’s what I find so. It’s really valuable to me. I encourage you to try it. It’s quite simple, just saying out loud the things that you’re grateful for. And that is Tony’s take too. Kate I think that’s a great way to start your day and even end it. Do it both in the morning and the evening, cause then you’re starting on good thoughts and then you’re also ending on good thoughts. Excellent. I, I agree. All right. You could do both. Absolutely. The more, the more gratitude that you recognize, uh, the better. You could, sure, book into your day with gratitude. And, yeah. We’ve got Boou but loads more time. Here’s the rest of nonprofit leadership for Current and aspiring with Nick Groo. You spent some time on leadership styles, and I’d like you to share what your uh what your advice is around soft power. Yeah, so there are lots of different styles of leadership as anyone who has worked for anyone or anyone who has led will understand, um, and, and certainly I’ve been on a journey with my own leadership style, um, and I think often lots of new non-profit leaders are. Um, you know, I, I’m sometimes asked what’s the, what’s, what’s the one of the best pieces of leadership advice that you could give someone, and, you know, one of my pieces of advice will be the, the skills and the behaviors that get you into leadership positions aren’t often the skills and behaviors that make you a really good leader. Uh, and in my case, you know, I was very happy to make decisions, and when I was a #2, my boss kind of loved it because she would throw things to me and I’d sort them out and kind of barrel through. But if you bring that approach when you’re the CEO you’re not building a team, you’re not bringing people along with you, you’re not, you’re not giving people the space to kind of be their best selves, um, and so my learning over time has been, and it’s still an ongoing process, you know, the kind of approach that I think for them, in most cases, not always, that’s really effective as a leader is bringing a coaching approach to leadership. Uh, kind of giving people the space to work out how they can do the job most effectively, asking questions, listening, providing some guidance, but not just charging in and making decisions. Um, and with new non-profit leaders in particular, you know, particularly if you’re a bit insecure, it’s your first time in a CEO job, you’ve, you’ve maybe been recruited from, from the organization internally and so you’ve moved a step above your peers and, you know, you can, it can be really tough, and you’re kind of, and again, speaking from experience, you sometimes respond by like micromanaging everything and, you know, kind of making sure that you’re on top of everything and, Second guessing everyone’s decisions, that’s not good leadership. Uh, if you, if you start jumping in and making decisions for everyone, you know what happens very quickly, no one makes decisions, because it’s like, well, Nick’s gonna decide this, so why should I spend all this time working out the very best approach on this issue, be it how to approach a fun a funder or, How to design a program if Nick’s just gonna jump in and make up his own mind, and then everything ends up being elevated to Nick. Yeah, and then suddenly you say, well, I’m the only person that can do this, because look, it’s all coming up to me, you know, it’s a kind of self reinforcing cycle of, of, uh, narcissism. Um, you share a good story, uh, uh, one that was revealing to you, uh, also from, uh, from the pandemic about when you were at uh International Crisis Group. Why don’t you share that little story, yeah. So that was, it wasn’t um it wasn’t the pandemic, it was the financial crisis, so another great recession, sorry, yeah, yeah, so, so, but, but, but similar, similar and you know, what happened was that basically we knew that our income was going down by at least 10%. Um, and I worked with it, so I was number 2 there, and I worked with the CEO and we went to the board and said we need to cut by at least 10%. The board said, yep, off you go. And we, um, we were heading, so we had about 120 staff then maybe, uh, spread all around the world, you know, Crisis Group’s are an amazing organization. And once a year we’d bring the top 30 staff or so together at a senior staff retreat, and this just happened to be about a week after the board meeting. And so my boss said, OK, well, we need to now work out how to deliver on these cuts, and, and I, um, and he gave me a lot of responsibility for this, and I thought, well, there’s a couple of things we wanna do. One is we need to move fairly quickly with cuts because the quicker we make cuts, the quicker we’ll enjoy the savings, right? If you take a year to implement your cuts, well, there’s a year you’ve spent the money that you could otherwise save. And then the other thing I thought was, you know, instead of just squeezing everywhere and making, we should, Use this opportunity to cut a couple of areas deeply that are just perhaps less effective or not the same priority, and both of those acceptable propositions, you know, in and around, but, so I then just decided where this was gonna happen and I kind of briefed my boss and then I kind of went up to the division heads and said, hey, you know, we had to the cut, so here’s what we’re gonna do. And surprise, surprise, they, they, they weren’t very happy about the process, um, and you’ve got this convening now, everybody gets together and they start to conspire. So, so I managed to, I, I, I did achieve one thing which they managed to unite pretty well everyone against me, you, um, you know, so it was great morale building because there was a coherence, um, and, and they actually called a meeting that night that me and the CFO weren’t invited to and the um, And the next morning, we, we had our staff rebellion, and they said, well look, we, we don’t want you, the CEO to run this process because obviously it’s not being run very well, and my boss, who’s a former Foreign Minister of Australia, who wasn’t not noted for his patience, handled this remarkably well, and he was smart enough to understand, OK, well let’s just play this cool, and so he said fine, let’s do this, and, and the staff said right, we wanna do this properly and we wanna workshop, you know, we’ll sit down and program teams and, We’ll sit down with Nick and we’ll sit down with the CFO and see if, if there are better ways of making savings. And so it was somewhat humiliating, um, and but it was also really informative in a number of ways. And first of all, everyone accepted the need to make cuts, so it wasn’t like saying we don’t need to make cuts, you’re, you know. And then of course, the wisdom of the group between them could identify areas where we could make easy savings. That had very little impact. I mean, to take one example, we used to publish about 100 reports a year and we used to send them out to, you know, each report to targeted audience, maybe 2000, 3000 copies. We didn’t need to send that many out, but we’d just been doing it for years, and that cost $400,000 a year. And by cutting it down to maybe 20 copies per to absolutely essential and putting a bit of more work, we saved $350,000 right? I hadn’t thought of it. I haven’t thought of it. Um, um, and so we did some other things, I mean, the organization did get squeezed because people offered up salary and all the rest of it, but perhaps the most striking thing about it was, OK, we came out with a plan, and we ended up cutting by 15% because people had offered up instead of the kind of 10, 11% that we’d we’d targeted, which served us very well at that time. Um, and 2 years later, our income was significantly higher than when we’d gone then pre-cuts. So we cut deeply, um, we rallied around together, and then over the next 18 months or so, we managed to raise significant additional funding, so we ended up being in a better position than we had been at the time when we, when we were worried about the funding cuts. So, I learned, I mean, you learn from your mistakes, don’t you, more than you, you learn from your successes, ah. And I just learned that um you know, powers of teams need to proper process, need to consult, and, and, and don’t mistake these things, you know, consultation doesn’t mean surrendering necessarily uh decision making authority to the crowd, unless you handle it really badly. It just means giving people an opportunity to provide input and feel heard and and often, and usually they have really good things to say. That story of what not to do just uh sort of exemplifies why I, I admire the book. There’s a lot of introspection in the book. You, you routinely say, you know, you’re still learning, you’re a work in progress, uh particularly uh with the, the chapter I want to talk about with, uh, diversity, equity and inclusion. But throughout, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re honest, you’re open. You’re vulnerable. Uh, uh, I admire that. Uh, uh, uh, a lot of folks see vulnerability as a weakness, and I’ve always thought it, it, it’s a, a sign of, uh, a strong leader. Well it’s very kind of you and it, it, it also, you know, on the feedback, and I’ve got lots of lovely feedback on the book and and probably the feedback that resonates most and the most consistent feedback is, well, we really appreciate it because you know, you’re not saying that CEO has to be this perfect, you know, infallible model, right, because we know it’s really hard and hearing other people say that they struggle with this is a real gift. Uh, and again, for, for young or new non-profit leaders, I think that’s often the thing they’re struggling with the most. It’s like damn, I’m in charge of this organization, it’s really hard and I don’t have anyone to turn to and I’m terrified I’m gonna make mistakes, and I can’t admit that I get anything wrong because everyone will judge me, um, so. You spend time on, uh, self-care too for the CEO, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s funny you, uh, you open that section, and you talk about, uh, overwork, micromanagement, your loneliness, and I’m thinking this, why would I keep, why, why would I aspire to leadership? This sounds like a suicide path to, or a path to self-destruction. Um, so, so, but there are way, you know, of course, methods of overcoming strategies for overcoming. The the negatives like, like mentoring and peer, peer groups and coaching, um, and your own mental health. So say, say something about the, the, the essential self-care uh uh uh uh for a CEO to before you can care for others. Uh, well, the starting point is. It’s a tough and lonely job. I mean, it’s a wonderful job. I love my job, right, and I love being in charge, and I love working with a team, but it is tough and lonely, and I, I thought about it, uh, particularly when crises happen, right? And so COVID was an obvious one, but even now with kind of turmoil with financial assistance all around the world and all the rest of it. And there’s this, and, and, and you feel a sense, an intense sense of responsibility. Like if I get this wrong, and if I do badly, It impacts on the lives, first and foremost of the 80 or so staff that we have, very directly, right, who’s, it’s their jobs and their livelihoods and all around. I feel a huge sense of responsibility, but then it, it packs on the 150 grassroots organizations that we work with, and then the millions and millions of people that are served by those. So, you, if you sit back and think about this, it can, can be somewhat overwhelming, um, and, And then also there are these drivers, so one is, Leadership can be lonely in any organization, not just non-profits and business, uh, because, The buck stops with you and so you’ve got to make the final decision and um and even if you don’t make decisions, that’s a decision, so you know, you, you, you’ve you’ve got the responsibility, um, um, you often don’t have people that you feel comfortable turning to and but that’s something we, we can talk about, um, and so, so it can just be really, really challenging. Um, and then, again, particularly working with non-profits, there’s always this sense of, well, we exist for a, for a bigger purpose and so if I just work harder, we can achieve more. I mean, how, how do you stand by, I think of people working, In Humanitarian disaster zones in Sudan or where we’re just seeing, you know, horrendous things happen right now. And malnutrition, babies dying and all the rest of it, and how, how do you um, How do you not kind of think, well, if I just work a bit harder, um, we can do more. So, so lots of reasons why it can be overwhelming, and I think the starting point is for CEOs to think, OK, well, I do no one any favors if I burn out, right, so stop trying to prove yourself when it’s not being effective, right, if you’re working 80, 90 hours, weeks consistently, you’re not gonna do anyone any good, you’re not doing your job properly, you just aren’t, because you’re not effective. Um, so stop making yourself into a martyr, work out how you can support your own mental health, wellbeing so that you are just a better leader. Um, and then there are strategies for it, right? You can establish, I think one of the best things that’s happened in my non-profit career is kind of small peer groups. Uh, I have a wonderful friend, she was, she was #2. At a um at an organization, um, and she kind of said, why don’t a few of us come together once every 9 months or so and just share some of the challenges that were going on. And, and we just got, initially we set these kind of days and we’d kind of have a tight program of what we were gonna talk through and all the rest of it. In the end it just became a sharing opportunity and we’d go out for dinner and we’d just be sharing all of the challenges and, you know, these are the challenges we’re all kind of around the number 2 level, so often it was like these are the challenges we had with my boss, right, um, but also, you know, have you had this problem with funders or impact or whatever, and it’s just a huge relief to be able to share, um. And then personally, I also, you know, I try and meditate, I try and stay fit and healthy, I try and exercise, um, all as a way of just dealing with, with the pressures and, and stresses of running an organization. You spend time, uh, you have a chapter devoted to the team as part of the, the, the people, there’s the CEO and then the team, uh, you, I think a lot of insightful advice around culture and so talk about culture, psychological safety, how important that is as a part of culture for the, for the team that uh that that you’ve built that you invested in. Please share there. Sure, so, I think one of the things with teams that, Some non-profit leaders don’t, some leaders don’t understand is. Teams are an amazing resource. It’s not that teams exist for you to issue commands and then just to execute, right, because if that’s what, if that’s how you see your team and that’s how you’re doing it, you’re missing out on the real richness and power of a team. And to me, the best thing about a team is that I get access to really smart ideas from smart engaged people and can pick and choose these ideas and work together, but you know, and come up with better decisions. And, and it is so helpful for me when I say, hey, I was thinking about this, and, you know, I’m gonna do this. Now if, if the team wasn’t engaged, they say, Sure, Nick, great, whatever, off you go. Whereas, in fact, they’ll say, oh, that’s interesting, but what about this or what about this? And then I can step back and say, well, actually that’s a really good idea, let’s explore that. And, and as a leader, it’s just a huge benefit because I’ve got other people’s wisdom, and then we’ll work together. Uh, and I just don’t understand why people don’t understand the value of being able to draw on all of this expertise if you run your team well and build an effective team. But that won’t happen unless you build an effective team. So if you run it in a hierarchical way and you just, as we said earlier, make all the decisions, and no one’s gonna offer up any ideas because Nick’s gonna say, uh, you know. Um, so that’s one point, but it’s not enough just to kind of not, not listen to people’s ideas. You actually got to actively create a space for ideas to come up because you may say you’re really, you may say to your team, give me your ideas, I really want to hear them, and we’re gonna, but if you can’t. poo poo a couple of those ideas. Nice try, but really, you know, they’re not going to offer up their ideas in the future. So this is the idea of psychological safety, right? Fancy word, jargons, but, but the idea is pretty straightforward. It’s you, you show that you are actually willing to hear ideas and be contradicted. Right? So you start off a conversation by saying, well, I got this wrong last time we did this. Anyone got any idea, you know, so you’re admitting, you’re admitting that you don’t get it right all the time, it creates space. Someone puts up an idea and you say, this is really, you don’t have to say it’s brilliant and all the rest of it, but say I really appreciate that. And let’s draw in some more ideas. You don’t have to grab everyone’s ideas. You create a, so, and this is all about culture as well. So, you know, a culture of psychological safety means the leader signaling very clearly that they are open to people expressing views and a range of views. And I thought, I referred to it in the book, a study that this all comes, well, it it it it’s all demonstrated very powerfully in a, in a research um study that Google did when it was trying to work out what are the most effective functioning teams, and it, Google has more information on its staff than anyone ever has on their staff, right? It’s a data company. And so he was trying to work out, OK, we’ve got these really high performing teams, we know they’re really high performing, what makes them distinct from other teams, and now we’re trying to work it out, is it where all the team members are are alike, are homogeneous, or is it where all the team members are really diverse and different, or is it where the team members like hanging out, not just at work, but after work, or is it where the team members are all acutely focused. And none of these really predicted the effective teams, it was the teams that had psychological safety. Um, that, and so they kind of helped popularize this concept of basically just giving people space to input and contribute and be thoughtful and drawing on the wisdom of the group. Um, so, so that’s what I see as a really important part of culture, and I think if you’re going to be intentional about it and culture across the organization, you know, as a leader you have to think about culture all the time. Uh, and to me, culture for companies is like character for individuals, um, and it just doesn’t happen, it’s developed, right, and I think one of the ways you develop culture, and it can’t just be the leader, but the leader obviously sets the tone, uh, is there are values that you, as an organ that the organization cares about. Um, for individuals, their virtues, they’re good values, right? Values that advance the purpose of the organization, it’s not just enough to say we care about these things, you have to turn them into habits or into norms. And so it’s turning values into norms, and you do that by identifying things that matter and then consistently implementing or behaving accordingly, and that becomes a norm or a habit, and, and it’s values and norms that make up culture. Um, and so our staff. You you say behaving accordingly. And you, you talked, uh, throughout the book about modeling the behaviors that you know are important in, in yourself doing, as you said, you know, being open, for instance, being not, not uh negating ideas when you ask for people’s ideas, but you know, throughout, you talk about modeling behaviors. Everyone watches the CEO, right, and it always surprises me how much they watch the CEO, right, and I shouldn’t be surprised, I’ve been a CEO now for 12 years, but it’s still, everyone watches the CEO, so everything you do, and it’s pointless saying this is what kind of organization we are and we’re, I have an open door policy when in fact you’re slamming a door on everyone, uh, and people work it out pretty quickly, right, uh, I treat people well when I don’t, or whatever, um, and so, you know, I mean one thing that I do, That I think is quite useful um for us in building culture. I used to do quarterly CEO calls where I’d just have an all-staff call and I’d update everyone, and I’d be pretty open about what happened at the board, and I thought, OK, well this is a good way of keeping people informed. And then I’d ask for questions at the end and I’d get no questions, right, no one was gonna put up their hand virtually in front of 70, 80 people and ask questions and, and, And so I thought we’re not using this as effectively as possible, so then we changed the system where one staff member gets to interview me on these calls. And they’re allowed to ask anything they want, and they know they are because they’ve seen other people have been allowed to ask me anything that they want, and I will ask the questions. And more importantly, they can solicit questions from any of the staff that come into them, so I don’t know where the questions are coming from. That’s the part that I love, that you don’t know the questions in advance. It’s, it’s total vulnerability. Yeah, and, but, but people generally, one they respect it and even if they, you know, I mean I I just did one a couple of weeks ago, and, you know, there were questions about, um, Impact of the financial crisis and are, are we gonna be making people redundant, what impact does it make on partners? There are questions about my mental health and how is, how is I managing the stress and all the rest of it. Um, and these are great questions, because then I can, I can then share my thoughts, and it’s not me just kind of delivering from on top what I think people want to hear, it’s being responsive to questions. There are questions about, um, you know, our culture or learning and development within the organization. And I think it’s just super helpful to have that conversation, uh, and hopefully contributing to a culture where people feel like, OK, well we can ask these questions. Time. The DEI work. You, uh, you say you were initially, uh, nervous about. And, uh, and you make the point here, as I said, said earlier, it’s it’s, it’s a work in progress and, and we’ve had a good number of uh guests through the years, um, you know, emphasizing that it’s a journey, it’s not a check box, um, but, you know, talk a little about your own, uh, again, some introspection, some vulnerability, which again, I admire, uh, your own initial, uh, anxiety about You know, embarking on a, on a, on a process to, to be more diverse, equitable, inclusive. Yeah, so, Freedom Fund started 11 years ago, so, um, you know, when we started and we were recruiting, and we were based in London, initially, even though we work in countries like Ethiopia and Kenya, and Bangladesh and Brazil, um, and recruiting really talented staff, and it turned out at the end of year one or so, we had half a dozen staff and they were all white. I think all were university graduates, all deeply expert and knowledgeable. Um, and, and, you know, hugely talented, but it wasn’t a particularly diverse, um, kind of group of people, um, and particularly given that, as I said, we’re working with and partnering with organizations in Ethiopia, and Brazil and elsewhere, uh, and raising money and getting it to frontline partners and, um, and, This is before Black Lives Matter and before a lot of the debates happened, and in fact my initial kind of focus on DEI was more on my board, where we had a board of 8 and there were 2 women and 6 men. And so I thought, well, you know, we need a, a more balanced gender breakdown on a board. So I was trying to recruit the board, and the board is much more diverse, um, in various ways, and the organization was always diverse on gender, but, you know, often, often gender was a, and still is an aspect of diversity that seems to be overlooked these days when we’re looking at other characteristics. Um, and then, um, when, uh, there was a lot more focus on, On issues around, um, race and ethnicity and so on, particularly after George Floyd and, you know, the Freedom Fund works on slavery and, and there’s arguments about structural racism and being a legacy of slavery, and staff were just saying, well, what are we doing about this? And so my nervousness was in part because I could see that, um, some of these debates, Were being badly handled internally around um how, what does diversity, equity inclusion, or what does it mean to be more diverse and more inclusive as an organization. Some of them were being really badly handled and were tearing organizations apart. Um, and, and that was happening for a lot of reasons, and, and it could happen for the best of intentions, right, that people care about these issues and just can’t converse. But often, you know, leadership people might say, well, you know, we’re doing amazing work, so why are you looking internally, right? Look at what we do, we’re serving all of these underserved populations, stop, you know, it’s not about being internally focused, it’s about doing the work, and then, Staff could legitimately say well hold it, you know, we’re not representative and we don’t, and we’re not particularly inclusive and so I think, but, But also, and this is, OK, this is, we, we can have this discussion, I think, you know, it’s not just about leadership failing. I think, I think there were aspects of the way this was handled where staff who didn’t have a lot of power thought that they could use this as a very powerful tool to engage on issues that they wouldn’t otherwise do. And, and that can be really destructive, like if you kind of insist that, I don’t know, we have to change all of our policies because this is what we think. You should be doing in terms of pay policy or recruitment policy and you’ve got no responsibility for running the organization as a whole, and if you don’t manage this debate well, it can just be extremely destructive. We um, we had a a long internal discussion about this, uh, and so lots of working groups because I thought we’ve got to live our values and talk it all through and um and it wasn’t easy, um. But, but through the process, I, you know, I, I started doing my own reading and, and, and a few things were pretty obvious. One is, um, yeah, I keep on talking about teams and drawing on a pair of teams, well, if your team isn’t, if you’re drawing your team from a fairly narrow pool or not a broad enough pool, you are not accessing the best talent, right? You are not accessing the people who might know the most about the issues and when you’re working on slavery, people who know most about what is the living experience of exploitation are those that have, Been through it or come from the communities that are hugely vulnerable to it. And so if you’re just talking about a position, a situation of expertise, then you have to be drawing from the communities you serve more effectively, and you have to be drawing from the regions that you work that are closest to, uh, the places you serve, and that was just a no-brainer, so, um, and, and then again, there’s an issue of being reflective of, Um, the community you live in. Um, so we went through a process, I think that we ended up in a very good place where it was just clear that we could do better in drawing from all of the people who could help us be a better organization and be more effective, um, and be more knowledgeable about the partners we’re working with, the communities we’re working with, the issues that we’re working with. Um, and so I’m quite happy where we’ve gone, but I think, I think it’s really, Tragic that people have turned DEI into a punching bag, and they’ve turned it into a, an identity issue in a way that is not helpful, and this is people on all sides of the debate where your starting point should be, Who’s expert, how do we have the best possible team, how do we have the greatest impact by bringing in the people who know the most about the issue, uh, without being pro forma about identity one way or another. Um, so I don’t know if that’s clear and, you know, as you can see it’s something I still kind of, yeah, working my way through, but what do you see as the CEO’s role in this? how do you best facilitate? Well, it took me a while to work this out, but the way you facilitate it is exactly the way I started this whole conversation. How does this advance our purpose? Right, how, how do we, how do we become a more it doesn’t advance our purpose to say we must recruit from certain populations or other just for the sake of it. How do we get better or we’re an anti-slavery organization, right? How are we better at our anti-slavery work? Well, by having people who are deeply knowledgeable about what that means. Now, that means a whole bunch of things, right, it can mean people from the communities or the countries that we’re working, but it also can mean the best anti-slavery experts who may or may not come from particular regions, but it’s bringing a whole team together, not just kind of having a single lens of what it means. How does that advance? So, and and framing the discussions when they get heated. How does this advance, you know, it’s not about your ideology or your views. Tell me how this advances what we’re trying to do. And then let’s work backwards from that. Um, and so that’s, that would be my biggest learning was like, start with purpose, always. Tell us how this gets us there. Tell us why this will make us a better organization and a more effective organization. You say it’s the right thing to do, well, obviously, if it’s the right thing to do, it advances our purpose, how does it advance our purpose? Nick, that’s a beautiful 360 from where we began, purpose and, and holding the vision. Thank you. Thank you. So folks, the, the book is how to lead nonprofits, turning purpose into impact to change the world. Um, I think it’s a, it’s a very compassionate, uh, introspective guidebook for, for leaders and aspiring leaders. So check, check the book, please. Uh, Nick Grono, you’ll find him on LinkedIn. Nick, thank you so much for sharing all your thinking, your wisdom over uh over all these years. Very grateful. Thank you. Tony, thanks for having me on, thanks for a really wonderful rich discussion. It’s my pleasure. Next week, your improved messaging. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, Donorbox.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for March 31, 2025: Mental Wellness Among The Chaos

Jennifer Walter: Mental Wellness Among The Chaos

When the chaos is the point, let’s help you avoid getting overwhelmed or checking out. Jennifer Walter, a Swiss sociologist and mental health coach, has strategies to gain agency, recharge and build resilience. You need to be good to yourself first, then you can help others. Her practice is at JenniferWalter.me.

 

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I hope you remember that I wished you happy Saint Patrick’s Day on time, not a week late. I’m quite proud of that. Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d come down with catalepsy if I lapsed into a trance because you told me you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate with what’s on the menu. Hey Tony, I hope our listeners are hungry for. Mental wellness among the chaos. When the chaos is the point, let’s help you avoid getting overwhelmed or checking out. Jennifer Walter, a Swiss sociologist and mental health coach, has strategies to gain agency, recharge, and build resilience. You need to be good to yourself first, then you can help others. Her practice is at Jennifer Walter.me. On Tony’s take 2. Has from the gym semper fi. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. DonorBox, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is mental wellness among the chaos. It’s a pleasure today to welcome Jennifer Walter. She is a Swiss sociologist, mental health advocate, and equal parts rebel and marshmallow. She admires potty humor. Through her podcast, the scenic route. And her coaching and consulting work, she’s making the world a gentler place one conversation at a time. You’ll find Jennifer on LinkedIn and her practice is at Jennifer Walter.E. Jennifer Walter, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Thank you so much for having me, Tony. We’re gonna make the world a gentler place with this conversation and adding one more to the gentle. Yeah, like, will it ever be gentle? Maybe not, but at least I don’t know, I always say it’s not, it’s not your fault that you found the world as it is, but it’s your fault if it’s still like this when you leave. Oh, very good. We all do have a responsibility. Yeah, I do believe so. Yes, I do believe so. I’m not sure it’s a gentle, but as you said, gentler, yes, yes, make it more gentle. What that means to you, right? But basically, I don’t know, you can sum it up and just be more kind. Be more kind is very good. Yeah, that’s a great, that’s an ideal admonition. We need more of that. Yes, we need more of that on a lot of different levels. Well we’re gonna be working on the personal level, right? So, here in the US, the administration is causing turmoil, chaos. Hellscape, uh, not only here in the US, but, uh, we’ve become very good exporters of all of this. It feels like we are. Hit with a hurricane followed by a tsunami followed on the 3rd day by a wildfire, followed on the 4th day by mudslides. It was a rocky start into 2025. It still is. It still is. So what, what do you, overall, we have, we have a full hour together. We have plenty of time, but just, you know, generally, like how do you make sense of this for, for us? So first and foremost, uh, uh, maybe a disclaimer how a Swiss makes sense of American politics might be different than an American makes sense of American politics. I could use some, we could use some foreign perspective. I, I’m no expert in American policies by far, but what we see here is, is a pattern that we see, um, not just in the United States but also in large parts of Europe, right? This um. This kind of moving towards totalianism and fascism, and whoever shouts the loudest, the first is kind of like wins the race. And um it not and doesn’t matter so much if that what is said is. Kind or smart or reasonable, but you’re just the first to shout at the loudest, so. Yeah. How do we make sense of that? Like. On one hand, it doesn’t, when you speak to historians and philosophists and sociologists, they’re all kind of like, yeah, this is not really like a surprise. Um, when you, when you have people who feel In despair over a lot of things, right? Like you, there’s not enough money at the end of the week to get you to your next paycheck. You’re struggling to pay rent. You don’t know what’s gonna happen, your healthcare costs are through the roof. You don’t know what’s gonna happen to your children. You don’t know what’s gonna happen to the planet like. All these Ideas feed of despair. That paired with. The systems we’re in, who all at the front is surely capitalism. Um, As well, where we’re like, OK, we just need to exploit every resource there is. Pairing that and and and also looking at the decline of. Education of freely available education of uncensored education. The decline of empathy and compassion. We’re kind of like in a recipe for disaster, really. So, and, and this has trickled down to Our listeners, um. In, in, in forms of questionable funding for, for a lot of US nonprofits that do work abroad. Uh, there are individual nonprofits like, uh, National Public Radio, for instance, and Planned Parenthood or being individually targeted, so we’re seeing it at a sort of a, a subset of the community of the nonprofit community level, you know, those doing foreign aid work, but also at a micro level and individual nonprofits. And so this, this makes our, our listeners. Uh, uh, in the nonprofit community generally, um, uncertain, you know, uneasy. No longer, things are not stable like they were just 2.5 months ago, um. And so we take this on to ourselves, you know, we, we, uh, this trickles down, the shit trickles down to the to the, to the people, to the individuals, and we have, we have nowhere else to pass it on to, you know, right, we are the last, but we’re also the first from the bottom up, right? So you have a lot of, you have a lot of advice on the, on the personal level about burnout and let’s start to explore the. The bright thinking that motivated me to invite you to, to come and, and talk to our listeners. Yeah, well, like, for instance, you know, you, yeah, you say that you know you burn out, uh, uh, feeling a burnout is not a personal failure. Can we start there? it’s a natural response. Can we start there? Yeah, for sure, yeah, I think that’s one of the key things to, to realize, right? It’s, it’s not just you. If we look around, we, everyone I talked to and uh they are emotionally overwhelmed or feeling burned out, um. There was just recently, but this is for Switzerland. I don’t know what the US is just today or yesterday was published like the, the happiness, the happiness report, like which countries feel the happiest and yeah, because we’re, we’re recording on International Happiness. Yes, exactly, that makes sense. The reports came out today. Um, Switzerland is, I think the first time ever it’s not in top 10. Which it might surprise people, but if we’re looking here like, yeah, OK, it makes kind of sense. So it’s really systemic, right? This whole overwhelm, especially when it comes to politics, right, we had, I mean, we had Bannon. Like the ex, um, like exact concept of pro he. He was the one who turned like the, the, the phrase flood the stone with shit, right? To have so much, so much coming out that you’re trying to like keep up and keep up and keep up. Which is kind of like almost impossible. So this whole overwhelm. This chaos and crisis, this is design, and this is also what Naomi Klein amplified in her book Shock Doctrine. Although now it’s She might, she argues it’s even a step further, but basically it’s using chaos and crisis to push through. Um, changes because people are too disoriented and to like know what to focus on and to know what to resist. Right, so this is a this is a feature. You you’re you’re citing, uh, yeah, it’s by design. Naomi Klein, you were citing Steve Bannon. Uh, to, um, to flood the zone with shit, so, so it’s, it’s by design to overwhelm us. So this is, that’s important to recognize, yeah. Because you, you, because you can resist by not being overwhelmed. Yes, that would be ultimately the goal if you cancel, right? You, you, if you process information, if there’s, um, if we go with conman, he says, well, you have basically you have system one and system two, right? System one is all the quick, quick thinking you do and the reacting you do and kind of like the ad hoc crisis mode and system two is deep thinking, reflective thinking, critical thinking, so. We hardly, it’s really hard now to go to be like, oh now I do some critical thinking on this, right? Because there’s so much coming out every now, every like every minute of every day. And also, we, I don’t know, we might have to relearn really critical thinking and also engaging with content that is longer than a 22nd reel on TikTok. So kind of like there are many different things that are coming together, um, but yeah. If you So how to kind of like deal with this overwhelm if we know it’s by design. Right, um, and one. One thing is that I find is really crucial is. To say, OK, you know, if it’s a structural point. Hey, what, maybe I don’t really have to keep up with everything. Right? What if, if I only focus on the 2 or 3 issues that are really close to my heart? And that are really and fully aligned with my values. Right, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about the other things. But I think every listener now has. Their topics that they are feeling deeply passionate for. And maybe just focusing on those instead of trying to like keep up with everything. We don’t want to keep up with the Kardashians, we also don’t want to keep up with everything else that’s going on. And focusing. That’s the reframe doesn’t mean being ignorant, right? It means remaining capable of acting. Right? If you consciously choose which topics are relevant to you, if you don’t chase after every media wave that’s coming at you. But focus on the essentials that was what’s most valuable to you, to your community, you will regain the clarity, you will be able to. Stay focused and do the work, because I think now is really the time where we’re all called to do the work. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor Box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you, a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges. Helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs. Helping you, help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to Mental wellness among the chaos. So we’re not lazy or, or dispassionate or uninterested if, if we’re, if we’re just focusing on two issues or three or maybe even just one, you know, whatever our, whatever we think our capacity is, you know, if it’s just one, you know, maybe it’s USAID funding, that’s it, you know, that’s where I’m putting my, so we’re not lazy or, or uninterested if we’re, if we’re paying less attention. To all the other cacophony that that accompanies that that are are chosen. Yeah, I, I truly believe that, right? If like don’t beat yourself up because you can’t keep up. That’s the intent is that you not be able to keep up. Exactly, that’s true, that’s why it’s important to realize, you know, this is, this is you said, it’s a feature, it’s by design. So if you’re trying not to follow the design and disrupt kind of like that system or that pattern. This is where you kind of like gain some sort of agency back. And of course, If you’re a news outlet that might be harder to do just to focus on one issue, but if you’re, I mean we, we have to like a lot of charities are single issues charities for a reason as well, right? It, you’re narrowed down, you’re focused, you know, you’re, I don’t know, maybe it’s reproductive rights or mental health, climate change, whatever it is. And The fault I, I have to pay tribute to the lineage of that, like the fog goes back to Bell Hooks and Audre Lorde of like this whole. The idea of self-care and self-love, right? That is a radical form of resistance. We need to consciously look after our own well-being, physically as, as well as mentally. We need to recover and reflect and recharge because I know you’re listening who are who are, they know like this is not like a sprint. This is a marathon and it’s, and I probably most likely, most definitely will get worse before it gets better. So we need to act sustainably and with foresight and we need everyone to replenish their batteries and recharge. That’s a smart metaphor. Um, it’s really an analogy. That’s a smart analogy to sing single mission nonprofits, right? We don’t, no, no nonprofit takes on every issue that is, uh, that merits money and time and, and needs improvement. No nonprofit does that. Um, I don’t know, but no, no, no, no, we’re focused, so our missions are focused. So, you know, on the, on the individual level, the analogy goes we should remain ourselves singularly focused, or maybe two issues, you know, whatever, again, whatever your bandwidth can take, but I just think that’s that’s it’s it’s, it’s a very apt analogy for our, for our listeners, um. You just mentioned recharging. You know, what are some, uh, aside from, you know, focus and, and recognizing that. Your focus is your resistance. What can we do to, to recharge, take care of ourselves in in other ways here? Um, So One thing that I also really. That I practice myself, um, and again, this might not work for. Your nonprofit organization on an organizational level, it might not, but it’s kind of like a 40 hour wait period until you like. React to something. Right, because all these controversial, often like emotionally charged topics, like he, he, he put tariffs on Canada then less than 48 hours they were gone again, right? If we would just have waited 48 hours before we would get like really worked up about it, it’s already poof gone again, so. Maybe we don’t need to react. On a personal level to everything that’s happening, so maybe we can give ourselves a briefer might not need to be 48 hours, but maybe we can sleep on it. Or do we really have to do like a TikTok right now? Like, it’s really asking yourself, do I contribute to the frenzy or to the solution? And often it’s just more noise. Um, Something else I really is kind of like goes that goes into this is. Don’t try to not let yourself be controlled by the outrage, right? Um. This is really hard to do, but if, if a topic is super emotionalized and you wanna like say your piece. I always ask myself, OK, who benefits from the fact that I’m now getting super upset, super worked up. And is this. Outrage is this addressing a real problem, or is it just adding to the frenzy? Is it just generating attention? And often it’s the latter. So, and then worst case you’re becoming part of the problem, right? Um, Um, and the big one. And this is, I feel really tough for us as as a as a collective as a society. We need to build resilience and that we can also sit with things that are. Uncertain and unpleasant. Right, for example, hm. Many of these political and social issues, right? They are very complex. They have no quick solutions. Everyone who tries to sell you a quick solution either doesn’t have like a fully developed frontal cortex or is leaning towards fascism. And like these so-called wicked problems, right, climate change, for example, where all the variables are constantly changing. It’s, we need to know that it is OK to feel uncertain. About certain topics, right, that facing up to the uncomfortable. Is Instead of looking for hasty explanations or culprits, is also a really great way to We to practice resilience and be like, oh no, OK, it’s OK, I have to sit with this instead of Oh, get me like a quick fix solution or a distraction. And this is really hard because I feel a lot of us struggle with this at times, right? How often are we like, oh no, this makes me feel uncomfortable. Quick, let me distract myself with something. Whatever this may be, it’s totally individual for everyone, right? And then we’re wondering why we as a collective have A hard time with Uncertainty with sitting with uncertainty or Having these Having people come to power who offer quick solutions. And easy solutions that are often in the binary and never really working out. What about, um, broader, you know, self-care, um, you know, like time away, things that distract you that you enjoy. They’re not, they’re not really distraction, but they distract you from, you know, uh, whether it’s family or needlepoint or, you know, these other, other things that we can do to get ourselves out of the, the, the, uh, the, the news maelstrom. Oh, of course, I’m, I mean, all activities that you do that you feel are truly recharging you. And God, please do them and please do more of them. But at the same time. I talked to other people when I asked them, oh, what’s your hobby? They look at me like. But like I, they have like this theoretical concept of a hobby, but. They’re like, well, when, when, when should I have the time to like follow like a leisurely pursuit of something. And Also, to really go back to maybe some of us really need to learn again how to rest and to know the difference between Well, I know I’m sleeping and like really resting. So, yeah, whatever you, you know, the activities that you that you hold close that you know are fully recharging you, go do that. And for some, it might really be thinking of, OK. Maybe I start doing only one thing at a time. For example, I. I just uh mentioned this recently um on another podcast and led to a beautiful conversation there. It was very fitting, but For example, when you make your morning coffee. Right? What if you just watch your coffee brew? Instead of, I don’t know, cleaning out the dishwasher, cleaning up the kitchen, doing this and that. Right, these little moments where you, where you really kind of like decompress, breathe. And just be Those can also be small moments of rest. Instead of doing everything at the same time. Watching coffee brewing. Now, I am not personally a coffee drinker. I don’t drink coffee. I know I’m, I’m not making excuses. I was gonna say what I was thinking was. That sounds like uh I don’t know, doesn’t take 6 or 7 or 8 minutes or something for a pot of coffee to brew. So that’s 6 or 7 or 8 minutes that you’re just, you’re doing something that’s probably gonna bring down your heart rate and your blood pressure, right, as long as you breathe in and out, you’re consciously breathing, you’re really like getting in touch with your body. Yeah, sure, 100%. Just don’t spend that time thinking what’s going on in the world? What, what, what headline am I missing? I need my phone. Where, where is it? You know, that’s not the way to spend your 6 to 8 minutes of coffee brewing time. OK, taking, you know, taking a pause, right? just. To the extent we can, um. I saw something where there were families experimenting with locking their phones up during meal times. And, and I, one of the videos, I think the, the woman actually smashed the, the glass jar that the phones were still sealed in. That may have been a, that may have been a comedy thing, but the concept is real that, you know, we can, we can step away. It’s, it’s OK to step away from, from the, uh, you know, from the chaos. Yeah, and it does not make you lazy or ignorant or whatever. I mean, if those stories play in your head, then it would be really interesting to ask yourself, well, why are they playing? Why does me watching my coffee brew make, like, why does that play the story in my head of, oh, you’re lazy. Look at that. Or you’re ignorant or whatever the story is, whatever kind of story that comes up, that would be the interesting question. They’ll be like, why is this story playing? Or even selfish, it’s not selfish to take care of yourself, you know, uh, uh, self-care is not selfish. So I mean I think when you go ahead. I’m sorry, you, you. Just to make the right, like, it’s, it’s always the first thing when you’re on a plane, you put on the life jacket on yourself first. Mm. Take care of yourself before you can take care of others. I, I espouse that widely. Uh, I, I talked to. Listeners and uh folks in nonprofits about that, you know, we all do giving work, but to give and to care for others at whatever level we’re doing it, whether you’re the CEO or you’re doing the house visits, uh, you know, as a nurse’s aide, we’re all caring for others or some other, some other entity like the climate or the oceans beyond ourselves, we’re all giving, but if you’re gonna give and take care of others. You need to take care of yourself first. Yes, that’s not selfish. No, no, absolutely not. It’s really you. You protecting yourself. To To have all these compassion to give towards your cause or your people, your community. And to be able to, to, to give longer, right? To sustain, to really kind of, as I said, we know this is, this, this will not just be over. In a year or 4 years, who knows, right? Um, and it was like, yeah, I said, it probably will get worse before it gets better. So this is really this idea of that this is selfish is really something we have to let go of. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. Tales from the gym semper fi. There were these two former Marines who met at the gym and I was over in the corner doing my floor work. And I heard the whole conversation. Uh, it was really, it was, it was kind of touching, the way these two guys bonded instantly over their Marine Corps service. Uh, and they started getting into, you know, the, the, the, the acronyms, of course, uh, MASOC, JSOC, SOI 0311. What were you? 0311? Oh, I was 0311. So I, so I’m thinking, uh, I’m trying to remember these things while I’m doing my, uh, my, my, uh, planks and and my push-ups, and I’m thinking, all right, I gotta remember more so, JSOC, uh, you know. So I went back and looked these things up and uh. JSOC is the Joint Special Operations Command. And Marsak is the Marine Forces Special Operations Command. So these guys worked in some kind of special operations. Um, and SOI is School of Infantry. Which made sense uh with uh 0311 cause 0311, I figured was the, this is something that I remember from the Air Force, the, it’s called uh I figured it was their MOS. It’s a military occupational specialty. I, I forgot what MOS stood for, but we used to just say MOS. It means what, what kind of job you had. It’s a code for what kind of job. So, so they were talking about SOI School of Infantry, and they were 03 11, and that is an infantry. MOS infantry specialist, 0311. So these guys were in infantry, uh, not together, but they, they certainly shared that bond. So it was, it was quite interesting listening to Marstock and JSOC, etc. Um, one of them is named Roy, you know, I like to refer to these folks as like, you know, we met Val, Mrs. Blood and Soil, um, so, you know, I like to have names. One of them was named Roy. The other one, he didn’t get too much airtime in the conversation. So I, I’m sure he said his name, but I didn’t catch it and he, uh, yeah, I missed his name. So I only know Roy as, uh, one of the two. Former Marines. So I, I thank the unnamed Marine and uh and Roy for their service. In JSOC and more so and. SOI And that is Tony’s take too. Kate, Tony We’ve never really talked about it. I don’t think, I mean just you being my uncle, I knew you were in the Air Force, but what is like the one Great takeaway that you took, like one great takeaway that you took from your time in the Air Force, maybe like uh. I don’t know, like a saying or something you just remember like, I don’t know. No, I would say it’s the, it was the teamwork because I had an unusual job. So talking about these guys, Roy and the unnamed Marine, you know, infantry, that’s a very common thing, you know, right, hundreds of thousands of people or at least 10s of thousands are in in infantry. That’s the fighters, those are the fighters. Um, but I was in a specialty, even in the Air Force, something that was unusual. It was Minuteman. Missile operations. Minuteman was a nuclear weapon system. And there weren’t that many people who did that kind of job. I mean, there were, there were probably 1000 or something across 6 spaces or, you know, so it’s a small number. Um, and so, you know, you got to be a very close team cause you did something special, unusual, and, but you did it all together. And on my base, there was probably only Maybe 200 or so people who did out of out of many thousands. So, it’s kind of a camaraderie, I’d say, camaraderie, teamwork around an an unusual kind of job operating Minuteman missiles. That’s really cool. You know, it uh it served its purpose in the Cold War. It was a, yeah, yeah, thank you. We’ve got just about a butt load more time. Here’s the rest of Mental Wellness Among the chaos with Jennifer Walter. Where else would you like to go, Jennifer? What, um, what else would you like folks to know about coping, I don’t know, self-care, whatever, you know, you’re the, you’re the, uh, the, you’re the Swiss expert sociologist. Well, it’s really going back to Being curious. I think true self care also has at this level is component of being curious, right? When you realize, oh. There is this thought creeping in, oh, you’re selfish for doing this, or you’re arrogant or ignorant or. To really be curious and ask yourself, oh, why is this thought coming up? The same with emotions, right? If you, if you do something and it makes you feel anxious, or if it makes you feel angry or resentful to really be like, oh, OK, can I like channel my inner scientist and ask like, oh, why? Why is this coming up now? Why could that be? Interesting. So this is really kind of like where a lot of. Change on a personal level happens if you’re curious enough to, to ask the question, just being like, oh, interesting. Some introspection. Yeah, and a lot of if. Sometimes if people are at the beginning of their journey, they’re like, oh, but how can I like self-reflection feels really hard, like, do I have to. Meditate for an hour a day to have gained like introspection and so. Well, no, sometimes it’s just really Slowing down enough to recognize what thoughts or feelings are coming in. And be curious about them and ask, oh why, why this particular feeling emotion fought right this second. Interesting. What other advice Do you have that we that I haven’t, uh, I haven’t, I haven’t teased out of you yet. Well, let me ask you this. Well, how did you get into this work? How, how did you get into sociological studies and, and, and coaching of others, helping people cope on an individual level? How, how did you get into this work? Oh, Well, I think the sociologist was in me when I was already like very, very young. I was a small kid I was always like, why, why, but why? And I always had this deep sense of justice of like, oh, but this is not fair. Why can they when I cannot or why can cont day and I can, um. So that was kind of that felt very like a logical conclusion to be like, oh, OK, I’m gonna study sociology because that’s basically the question of. Who profits from what we said right at the very beginning, who profits from you being emotionally worked up about this? Right? And so who, like the power dynamics and everything. So that’s, that’s really one of the key questions of sociology, like, OK, who, who profits? And this is, this goes into every aspect of our life, right? If People who uh who identify as women. Growing up, we had all these images of how it also goes for men, how women are supposed to be, how men are supposed to be. And if you feel bad, if you’re made to feel bad about the way you look, Who profits off that? It’s not you. You’re feeling like crap. So. Looking at the systems in place that are trying to tell you there’s something wrong with you. And we need to fix it, and look at that, we also just have the solution to fix XYZ. And that kind of like naturally translated in. Also in in coaching people, right? Because we often are led to believe that we need something outside of ourselves to. To deserve to feel what we want to feel, to get where we want to go, um. And I don’t know, 9 out of 10, 9 out of 10. There’s nothing internal, external, it’s something internal. It’s the internal job you have to do, um. And it’s no I don’t know, yes, you can get. I don’t know, you can get a crystal to help you relax. But ultimately it’s a, it’s a tool or a crotch. And Just the crystal itself will, I don’t know, very unlikely make you feel relaxed. Yeah, confident. Whatever it is, it’s it’s, it’s false, it’s a mistake to look. Outside yourself for. Validation or we mentioned happiness because it’s happiness, World Happiness Day, to, to, to, to need externalities to approve of you. Versus Approving of yourself or or maybe approval is not the right word, but acceptance you need that you need it from outside versus you should be able to find it within you. Well, if you need it. Like externally from an external source. You most likely at some point you will run into this corner of it is never enough. Right, if you need external validation, I don’t know, maybe in the form of, I don’t know, likes to your social media posts, followers, money. Number of friends whatever. I don’t know. Will you ever truly know when when is enough? When is enough external validation? From what I’ve seen so far and read and seen so far, like it, there’s hardly ever enough. Right, if you’re accumulating and accumulating. You will always, this will always wear off, and then you’re right, right back where you started. Then you kind of like need to earn even more money or to have even more followers, and then you feel like, oh, validated again, and then it starts fading again, because you have no internal knowledge of this to back it up. You have no, you haven’t kind of like built this internal muscle to back it up. So you kind of like fade, so it fades out, fizzles out. want to leave us with um some. Final Words of uh of hope. And, and, or even just reminders of how to cope, if, if not, if not overall hope, but Oh, I’m that’s, no, I mean, I am, I am truly hopeful. I’m always like the glass is half full. That’s also why my description is like I’m always, I’m always going to be half marshmallow. I’m, I will believe in the good in people until like the very fucking end. Um But I had this, yeah, it’s really like. Being mindful with our attention. Right? Where does our attention go? and so often we’re not really conscious in choosing where our attention goes. But where our attention goes, our focus goes. And if we can use our attention in a very targeted manner, very focused, we can really strengthen certain topics, highlight certain topics that would otherwise be lost in the flood of information or in the flood of shit when we go back to ban it, right? So really. Yeah, be be reflecting critical enough, OK, that not every breaking news story has to be commented immediately and really not just be outraged for the sake of being outraged. Because like this whole where your attention goes, your focus grows. It’s kind of what we consume, right? What we consume, how we talk about it, the words we use, they build the world we live in. So And what we think. We pass on. And that shapes others. So when you understand that consciously directing your attention is is a very valuable resource. It can have really kind of like put back agency. Into yourself and the work you do, and I think this is really crucial because if you feel hopeless. Reminding yourself of agency and the things you can actually do control, such as your attention. And even if it is no smartphones after 8 o’clock. Then go do that. I want to thank you for uh for saying shit and fuck. But, but we get both from one guest. Usually I, I need scores of guests to get just one of those. Maybe this is the divide. I don’t know. No, it’s, it’s. But you didn’t get any potty humor. True, true, but this is like. I don’t know. Those are things that never really work on command, but they have to be. Yeah, no, I’m not gonna say I’m not gonna say a toilet joke. No, it’s, it’s organic like shit and fuck, you know. But in fairness, my, my son, he’s 5, and he really had, he came home from kindergarten the other day and he really had. The most beautiful, most innocent of potty humor jokes I’ve heard in a long time, and it was truly precious. All right, well, so with that kind of build up, you can’t leave us. So what’s your, what’s his joke? OK, so now bear with me because I have to translate this from Swiss German to English, um, on the go because I’ve never told it in English. Well, so basically, there is a poop walking down the street. Then he meets another poop. He says, hey, you know. What you doing? Oh, I’m just gonna go rob a bank. Oh, that sounds cool. Can I come with? Sure. So two poops walking down the street, they meet another poop. Hey, you look like a good piece of poop. What are you doing? Like, what are you two up to? Well, we’re just gonna go rob a bank. OK. Can I come with? Yeah, you look like a solid piece of poop, you can come with us. So they walk to the next corner, they meet diarrhea. And just like, oh, you two look like fun fellas. What are you doing? And like, oh, we’re just gonna go rob a bank. And then everything’s like, oh, sounds fun. Can I come with? Nah, sorry, this is only for hard guys. OK, 5 year old, humor, but it’s it’s precious. It’s cute, yes, yes. All right, well thank you for translating in from uh from Swiss German. She’s Jennifer Walter. You’ll find her on LinkedIn. You’ll find her practice at jennifer Walter. Me. Jennifer, thank you very much for sharing your thinking, your, your advice, your wisdom. Thank you so much, Tony, for having me. Thank you so much. Next week, nonprofit leadership for current and aspiring. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. DonorBox, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. I saw you you out, faked you out with a false. Breath. 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 like 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.