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Nonprofit Radio for November 4, 2024: Your One-Page Strategic Plan

Veronica LaFeminaYour One-Page Strategic Plan

In a lot of ways, we can see typical strategic planning as a flawed process. Veronica LaFemina shares a more collaborative endeavor, with more staff collaboration and stakeholder inputs, resulting in a more actionable plan with greater decision-making value. She’s the CEO of LaFemina & Co.

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with exophoria if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming? Hey, Tony, we’ve got your one page strategic plan in a lot of ways. We see typical strategic planning as a flawed process. Veronica Lahaina shares a more collaborative endeavor with more staff, collaboration and stakeholder inputs resulting in a more actionable plan with greater decision making value. She is CEO of LAFA Mia and company. Finally, we got Veronica La Finna. I’m tired of introducing her when she’s not showing up. She’s here. She’s here on Tony’s Take two Tales from the plane. A new captain’s briefing were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Here is your one page strategic plan. It’s a pleasure to welcome Veronica La Finna. She is founder and CEO of La Finna and company working with nonprofits and social impact businesses at the intersection of strategy, change management and strategic communications. She is a strategist facilitator, trusted advisor and certified Change Management professional. With nearly two decades of experience as a senior executive at National US Nonprofits and as a high impact consultant, you’ll find your company at La finna.co and Veronica is on linkedin. Welcome to the show Veronica. Thanks Tony. It’s great to be here. Yeah, it’s a pleasure to talk to you. We uh we chat a lot on linkedin. Uh This is uh this is much better. Yeah, it’s nice to have the chance to chat in person. Absolutely. After we met, uh we had a very nice lunch in uh in uh in Raleigh because you’re in the Raleigh, North Carolina area, right? That’s right. Yeah, it’s great here in the time and it was great to see you as you were passing through. So it’s always great to see other nonprofit folks in North Carolina. Yeah, I love it when, when social media can actually bring us together in person, which doesn’t happen too often. But as I’m traveling, uh it, it doesn’t sometimes does. Yeah, that was, that was a lovely lunch. You’ve got some thinking about a one page strategic plan uh which we have plenty of time to get to the details of. But, you know, let’s start more broadly. What uh what difficulties do you see with strategic planning? What could we be doing better? How do we avoid these things becoming lovely binders on a dusty shelf and that never get looked at again after, after their approval by the board. Yeah, I, so um I’ve been at this a long time and in the beginning of my career when I was doing strategic planning with organizations, um you know, you spend so much time on this beautiful process and you bring people together and over the course of six months, you develop these, these big ideas and these big goals. Um And I saw how much effort and energy and wordsmithing um would go into those plans and then I would see that, you know, it would get back to the organization and it’s crickets, you know, people are confused, they don’t know what’s going on or it just feels like this big pie in the sky Fairy tale and not actually something that we can accomplish as an organization. And so both as a consultant and then when I was working in house as an executive leader, you know, I’m a practitioner, I want stuff that works. Uh And so I started developing new ways of looking at strategy to say, like, how could we be doing this better if this isn’t actually getting us to where we want to go? What do we need to be thinking about? How can we make it easier for the people who work in this organization or the volunteers who are helping do um on the ground work actually accomplish what we’re saying we’re trained to accomplish. Um And so I think, you know, there’s not just one way to do strategic planning, which is a really important recognition. You know, I think a lot of executives in the sector have kind of been doing things in a similar way because that’s how well we were all taught many moments ago. Um But we’re now at this place where the speed of information, like how we get feedback from our communities and how frequently we can get that feedback is much faster than it used to be when we would, you know, convene people once every three years. Um our ability to make different kinds of choices because the technology that may be available to us or our ability to partner with other nonprofits in our community is a bit different. Like we’re not just creating plans for ourselves as organizations, we have to be really mindful of the context and the other partners in the space or others who are working to advance our issue area. Um And we’re not able to be everything to everyone. And so making sure we have a really clear understanding of our own identity as organizations actually makes a big difference then in what we choose to do and the kind of strategy we choose to pursue. So I talk a lot about, you know, the aim is not to build perfect plans, it’s to build strong strategy. And so how can we have a better understanding in our sector of what strategy is and how we use it, um, to achieve the impact we’re looking for, to raise the money we’re looking to raise, to, to bring that, um, impact to life. But how, you know, how can we be? OK, not getting an A plus on the perfect plan process and instead focus on strategy that sticks and it works and gives us the kind of impact we’re looking for. Uh let’s flush out your meaning of strategy because the, the prevailing sentiment and not sent the prevailing professional opinion is this needs to be a binder. It’s gonna be all kinds of tabs about, you know, the five year plan, the 15 year plan, uh the staffing, the, you know, the programs that we’re gonna expand or move into the partnerships that we’re gonna have, you know, this is so to reduce this to a one page actionable strategic initiative plan, it’s still a, it’s still a plan, it just doesn’t have 100 and 75 pages. It’s, it’s reduced to uh to 1, 175th of that. So, so that uh so you’ve, you’ve hit on strategy a couple of times. So what, what, what, what’s your sense of uh strategy? Yeah. So, so at its heart, right? Strategy is a series of interconnected choices about what we will do and what we won’t do to achieve our goals, right? So I sometimes will write that like when I’m doing workshops or presentations as strategy is vision like where we headed plus the decisions that we want to make to get there. Now, that doesn’t mean we have infinitely documented choices or all of the details or task lists in place. What it does mean is that we have enough information, agreed to and documented so that we can keep applying that strategy when new opportunities arise. So, you know, often what happens with those long documents is they become a task list instead of a way of understanding how we work in the world, right? It’s a good strategy, you know, and I, I will also say um the main audience for your strategic plan is your staff, right? Or the people who are doing the on the ground work in the organization and that’s a little bit different, you know, we tend to or in the past, we wrote plans with our funders in mind and with these other, you know, audiences in mind. And that’s great if we want to inspire funders or get people excited and behind our cause. But if our staff doesn’t know what that strategy means or how to execute it, um if it doesn’t make sense to them, then it’s not gonna happen. So we’ve just kind of sold a false dream of where we’re headed. Um So being able to instead really document key choices about who we are, who we serve, where we’re headed what we’re gonna focus on to get there and what it will look like when that success happens, it gives us the flexibility then to make great choices when new opportunities or challenges arise, that we might not have been anticipating. And I think a lot of organizations if you look at um at the COVID pandemic, right, at this moment where there’s a lot of clarity about how much we can’t predict about what comes next, right? None of us is a fortune teller. We don’t have crystal ball. Um And you know, certainly if I did as a strategist, that would be wonderful for me because I could tell organizations do exactly this and that’ll work for you. Um But it became clear that we needed to better understand what is our way of doing this and of making the impact we want in the world. Instead of here is a list of all the programs and, and tasks we do as an organization. So are you describing a process that’s more staff driven or at least staff pa participating more? Because II I to go back to the, the prevailing way of doing this is more like at the board level, at the C suite and board level. Yeah, I’m, I’m a huge advocate for staff being quite involved in strategy development for a couple of reasons. One is staff are living this every day. They’re seeing what’s working and what’s not working. They, they have the real time feedback from the community or the people you serve. And so their uh the internal wisdom of the organization is really important. You know, our board members play such an important role in governance and in enabling um the success of the organization in a number of ways. But most of them have day jobs or have other things that they’re experts in and focused on. And so to ask them to be responsible to make choices that will drive the operations and way of working of the organization is not super fair to them as board members, you know, they need to be involved in the process, but we should be involving staff and their expertise um from the beginning. Um I’m also an advocate of the fact that um sometimes when we go out and gather input from our community, we are doing it with good intention, but we are not necessarily honoring our community’s time, right? So we’ll go out and we’ll do like a big survey or, or deep dive with them on all of the things that they need or hope for or would love to see change in the world. And we as an individual nonprofit may only touch a tiny percentage of that, an important one, but a tiny thing. And so when we’ve asked them to spend all this time with us, sharing everything they need, and then we come back to them when the plan is fully baked later saying we’re only addressing this one little thing and we we it’s a mismatch of expectations and reality. So I think there’s opportunity in our strategic cleaning processes to start with our internal wisdom. Like what do we already know? What do we know about ourselves? Our strengths, our role that we play in this issue and use that to put together some informed hypotheses about where we think we should be focusing over the next several years and then go take that out to folks and talk to them about it to say, what do you think about this? Does this make sense to you? What are we missing? What are we getting wrong? But giving our community the chance to engage with us in a process where we’re setting more realistic expectations about where we can play and contribute as an organization. But also then giving them more say in, yeah, we’re, we’re on board for that. That makes sense. That will actually help us, right? That’s something that we’re looking for or listen. I know you guys want to do this, but that’s no one cares about that, right? What we need instead is this and that gives us more useful uh feedback so that we’re valuing people’s time and their ideas and insights in a way that we may not be able to do or haven’t necessarily been doing in how we’ve been doing that process previously. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers, just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to your one page strategic plan. You said the audience for this is primarily the staff, the people doing the work. They’re clearly they’re contributing a lot to the, to this process, to this plan. They’re in the process developing the plan. Um What, what is the role of the board then? Because we’re, we’re shifting from what again, I’m going back to the typical, you know, there’s a weekend uh board retreat and board members spend as much of their time as they can at this retreat. It might be off site even uh to try to get people’s attention and, and keep them away from distractions. You know, we’re gonna do this two night thing or, or it’s on or, or we’re in the office and you come as you can and the people miss miss the introductory section, but then they come to the, the fundraising part, you know, it’s so, I don’t think it’s ideal, but that’s the, that’s, that’s the, the most popular way of doing this. Right. The board bangs something out in over two days. Uh, what, what is the board’s role in, in the way you, you work? Um, so I’m going to answer that question. But isn’t that wild Tony that we, that, that’s the prevailing process, right? We spend two days determining our future for the next 3 to 5. I have a couple, a couple of, a couple of outside speakers, but it’s, and maybe a fil a hired facilitator. Um But yeah, you know, and, and it’s, it’s, I don’t, I don’t think it’s a very informed process, uh because you’re talking about community, you know, community input, you know, so they might get, there might be a speaker, maybe, maybe a 45 or 60 minutes speaker comes from the community. I don’t know somebody on the town council or maybe it’s uh an agency head that works in the area that your nonprofit works. But, you know, we’re, we’re kind of, we’re, we’re like, we’re assimilating all this stuff and then we have to think about how to pay for it as well for the next 10 years it seems, or even just five years, I’ll be, I’ll be even, I’ll be fairer to this typical process. It’s only 55 year plan, but still, you know, like we’re banging this out over a weekend. I, I just don’t think companies, you know, companies work this way. I mean, they spend a lot more time thinking about the next five years than two days of, you know, join us whenever you can over the weekend. Yeah. I mean, it’s just, it’s, and so that’s part of why, um, it’s a partnership, right. So, so I’m not saying the board is not involved. The board is very important, right? They need to be, they have governance responsibility. They need to be excited and for it and behind what we’re doing, but it’s a partnership. So retreats shouldn’t just be board members right there. I listen, I still facilitate retreats where it’s primarily board, but I really encourage organizations that we at least need the staff leadership on board. So if you’re a smaller organization, that might be everyone on staff, if you’re a large organization that might be department heads or division leaders. Um But we need those leaders involved and able to correct misconceptions which come up often, right? In these conversations, um We need them available to talk about what’s working, what are our most effective ways of achieving the impact that we wanted to achieve thus far? Um But also what are we really good at, you know, part of, you know, you brought up like corporate strategy. So in a corporate environment, you don’t see strategy um come to fruition where we’re building something that we are not at all equipped to do, right? So in, in a sense of um like an organization that or a company that is in tech, for example, right? They’re continuing to build on their core capabilities and say how can we keep leveraging these core capabilities with new innovations to build a new product line or create a new service line? Right? They’re not like all of a sudden gonna go into agricultural production, right? Like like but in nonprofit world, we because we are are, you know, givers because we’re trying to take care of the whole humans, right? That are um part of our community that are part of, you know, the issue or disease area that we serve. We sometimes start creating programs that have no overlap in operational efficiency or in our strengths. You know, we, we put out stuff that is an aspirational, that we’re actually not well equipped to run. And so then we keep make like all of our investment financially, then it starts getting thinner and thinner because we’re having to fund all these different kinds of operations instead of really understanding, hey, what are the skill sets or capabilities or operations we’re great at? And how can we keep using those leveraging those building on those to deliver better services or better value or better, better advocacy, whatever our mission may be for the people who are, are cause we serve. And so that’s why that staff board partnership is really important because staff leadership can say here’s actually what we’re really good at, you know, the things that we do better than anyone else, the things we’re able to deliver efficiently or effectively. Um And that we think there’s opportunity to grow. Um staff are also really essential. Um There’s an exercise I do in strategic planning that I think it’s a big gap um that we have in the sector right now, which is I ask leaders, you know, what it could be, executives, could be, board members could be both together to really think about what is our organization’s role in the cause we serve in the issue area. Um And often what happens is we come up with a list of 25 different roles. It’s really hard to be 25 different things really well. And so I ask organizations and leaders to think about what are our three main roles that we play. And the reason that’s important is because who we are shapes, the choices we make about how we’re going to get to our goals. And when we, I I sometimes use a transportation analogy to talk about it, which is to say like if you, if your goal is you’ve got to get from Washington DC to San Diego in the next two days, there are lots of ways to make that happen, right? Not, not infinite possibilities, but lots of different choices. You could make plans for how to get there. You could, you know, hitchhike, you could, you could fly, you could take a bus, you could do a lot of different things. But what will help you make the decision about which route to take is knowing. Are you, do you happen to be a commercial pilot with access to a plane and you can get people there quickly that way? Do you happen to be a bus driver with intimate knowledge of all the routes and the best places to stop? Right. And that’ll get you there. Do you happen to be neither of those things but resourceful and know which partners can help you along the way? Um Because a pilot can drive a bus, but they’re not going to know all the bus routes, right? And a bus driver might be able to get a plane down the runway but not up in the air. And so knowing those roles that we play has a big impact, right, on the choices we make about how we’re gonna get to where we go. I can see how staff are, are important to uh you mentioned, you know, clear up misconceptions on the board. You know, I can imagine a board thinking, well, we do this so to, to provide this additional program or service, it should be very simple, you know, they’re, they’re so close and then you find the the staff member who says no, that they’re actually as much as your intuition may lead you to believe that they’re so close and this would be so easy, you know, we can’t, we can, your intuition is not, is not, right. And to do that means bringing in, I don’t know, additional funds or a new person or, you know what you’re, you’re making a, you, you’re making an incorrect uh assumption about how easy it would be for us to expand what you think is slightly. So these misconceptions, you know, that, that um that even, even the, even the senior leadership may not appreciate but the people doing the work or the people leading the teams doing the work, you know, to them, it’s it comes, it comes instantly to mind, right? And that’s not to say we don’t want to be bold or ambitious, right? We still want to share that vision of what’s possible. We need smart choices, we need to be realistic too about what this conversation, you know, if the conversation is going awry about how simple it would be to do. Uh b because it looks so closely related to a to all the people who don’t do the work of a, you know, then we need to straighten out the conversation and lead it the right way just so, you know, that you’re understanding, well, that means an additional staff person actually because we don’t have anybody skilled in what you’re now talking about. So that is roughly an $80,000 a year job plus 30% for benefits. So we’re now talking about fundraising for roughly 100 and 20 100 and 10, 100 and $20,000 that we don’t currently fundraise for. So, and we made that expectancy from a program like that for 3 to 5 years because we need to build it and make sure we have the right partnerships and resources in place. So it’s the the operations have to inform the strategy, it can’t be done separately. You know, I think sometimes something that happens often is um strategy gets confused for new, right? So what are the new ideas? What are the new things we’re going to do instead of recognizing that strategy is about being really good at getting to where we wanna go accomplishing our goals. And so, you know, when you think about companies that have been placed and in place for a long time, organizations have been in place for a long time. And it’s very clear like this is what they do at their core, they haven’t stopped doing the thing they’re great at, that’s still the base of everything, you know, but they may innovate, they may expand, they may choose a new direction to learn in. Um But they’re not abandoning the stuff before. And so sometimes when strategic plans focus so much on what’s new and leave out, you know, the core aspects of the work, then we have even a bigger divide right between, how are we supposed to accomplish all this when we don’t, you know, we’re, we’re still trying to accomplish this main thing we’re known for or best at or most capable of. And so I find that bringing those bringing staff and board together do a lot to help us have shared expectations, instead of really divergent expectations about where we’re all trying to head together and the kind of impact we want to have, it’s very collaborative uh versus being top down. Um You, you have three critical components to strategy that you think you see most nonprofits. Miss, let’s talk about these. What are these? So if you think about again, sort of the the general process, right, with traditional strategic planning and what we produce at the end of it, right? We end up with our mission vision values, we end up with our goals and the strategy is to achieve those, we might have specific objectives within um that, that align with those strategies and then the tactics um we may have also thought about the budget it takes to get that done. Um But there are, I find are a couple of key areas in there where some additional important detail can really make a big difference in us, not just having a, a big long task list, but instead a way of understanding how we’re going to work and being able to apply those decisions going forward. So the first is when we think about who we are, right, that’s typically expressed as mission vision values that we, we talked about this a little bit already, but knowing our role and stating it clearly is so important and like sometimes organizations will say they want to get really inspirational here, right? They’ll use language that is, that feels really good to say and feels really good to hear. But then when our staff member has to make a choice about an opportunity that comes across their desk and say, is this a fit for us that inspirational role is not as helpful as something concrete? Right? And so, um there are lots of different roles we can play as organizations, but knowing that we are an advocate and convenor rather than a direct service provider, uh is a big difference then, and what kinds of programs we’ll undertake in the way that we’re hoping to change the world? Um So that’s the first one is having a clear understanding of our role in our mission area and the issue or cause or community we serve um or in the lives of our constituents. The second is, you know, we set these big audacious goals. Um And again, if we’re, if we’re doing well, we have financial goals as part of that. Um But there are two areas that we don’t always define that I think are really helpful for a lot of organizations. So one is um being explicit about the investments that we are intending to make. So if we need to, um if, if we need to hit a certain financial target, if we’re going to introduce, you know, some new programs or some new focus areas. Um or we want to be building skills or capability in a certain area. We’re going to need to make investments and it’s not just, hey, we need a new CRM, it’s we need a new CRM and we also need the training and ability to help our team get great at using it, right. So being really thoughtful about articulating what the key investments are to make our overarching strategy possible. Um The other part up there too, um It is what do we want to learn? I find a lot of organizations spend a long time, not entirely knowing what works and what doesn’t work with what they’re doing. So they may have programs that have been running for a long time and they serve a certain number of people and we, you know, get our, our output metrics from them each year, but we’re not entirely certain which parts of them may or may not be working. And so when we know what works, that’s great. And we want to document that when we can identify stuff that we’re pretty sure isn’t working and we want to leave behind that’s good too. But usually there’s this gray area of like what we’re not sure about, right. And so being able to set some learning objectives so that we can gain more clarity on those is important. So those might be related to um we want to learn if the way that we’re delivering this program is um is as effective or more effective. You know, like, let’s say we’re launching a digital component. We want to learn if that works better than how we’ve been delivering this in person in the past. Or we want to understand um if this technology or marketing approach or fundraising approach is helping us get to our goal faster than an alternative, something along those lines. But just being clear about a, we do need to keep learning these things. And b what is it, we were specifically are going to try to learn, understand, get more clarity on over the course of this, this plan. Um And then the last area, you know, is like how we’re going to get there, how do we get to these objectives? What are we focusing on? And so um with those focus areas, um it’s important to, to find owners, right? So sometimes what happens is as an organization here are three pillars and we’re gonna put an equal number of initiatives or priorities in each of them. And then we go on to the list of tactics and things along those lines. Um I encourage organizations instead to think about what are we focusing on over the next few years. Um And doing a brief narrative description of that. So we can have more clarity instead of just like a one word pillar um and defining, you know, so who’s the lead on this and it could be, if we are an organization where we have pretty tenured staff, it could be a specific person or it could be a department um or area of the organization because again, opportunities and challenges will come up and someone will need to be the decision maker or have ownership over how will we need to adjust as things come up over the next few years? So being able to say yes, everyone’s contributing and working towards these focus areas. But this is the person or the department that has um a the accountability to move this forward. But b also the opportunity to make decisions when those decisions you make. Um And so that creates a sense of ownership and accountability and momentum that sometimes gets lost from like the energy of announcing a new plan to then putting it into practice. It’s time for Tony’s sake to thank you, Kate. There’s a new captain’s briefing that I’ve been seeing at the beginning of uh some flights that I’ve taken. And I wanna thank and uh congratulate and shout out these, these captains who have done it. I usually fly Delta because I’m near two small airports. And most of the flights from those two tiny airports are are Delta flights. Uh And these captains have been, this is tails from the plane, by the way, I hope, you know, this is not tails, it doesn’t sound like tails from the gym, right? This is tails from the plane. I forgot to say that these captains have been getting out of their captain seat and coming out of the cockpit and they face us, they’re looking at us from the galley. That’s, you know, uh, the front galley and you can see them as they’re saying, you know, we’ll be cruising at 35,000 ft and might have a little turbulence on the climb out. But, uh, you know, it should be smooth after that and uh, et cetera an hour and 25 minute flight. You know, that briefing, I like seeing the captain. It’s just uh a little bit more reassuring. I, I mean, I, I know they exist because I hear them in the average briefing, but in these ex extra special briefings, uh you know, you get, you get to see the person, you get to see the person who’s flying, you who’s in the, who’s in that left seat, that captain seat. It’s, uh, it’s just comforting. I find very comforting. So I, I did let Delta know on uh X Twitter that uh, I appreciate it. Uh And um I’m sharing it with you. So let Bravo. Bravo to the captains who get up out of their chair and come and look at us, look at us in the eye and give us their captain’s overview. Thank you very much. And that is Tonys take two K. I would like to, I mean, when we fly, when you and I take my first time to go flying. I know that they do that because I would like to know who’s, uh, I was about to say, driving the plane, whoever is flying the plane, like you said, I think that adds more comfort and see it’s reassuring. We’ll, we’ll get you up there. Yeah, just so, it’s not like, I think my fear. Have you seen the, um, the cars that drive themselves? Like the no driver cars? Yeah, I’ve seen those prototypes. Yeah. My fear is like, that’s gonna be our future with like airplanes and all that and it, like, freaks me out that it’s gonna be like A I cars and A I airplane. Yeah, I can see it on cars. I don’t know about airplanes. I, I think that’s a, that’s a, that’s a bridge too far. I don’t think anybody is gonna be comfortable with an, with an nonhuman piloted, uh, uh, air flight. I don’t think so. I think that’ll be going too far. Well, we’ve got vu about those more time. Here’s the rest of your one page strategic plan with Veronica La Finna. I, I, I’m distilling these, I think down to what, what’s our role, mission vision values? What, what do we use? This, this relates to the list of 25 where we need to call that down to two or three things that we do best our role. Um, what do we want to learn and what investments do we need to make and a what do we want to achieve? How are we going to achieve it and who’s responsible, who’s accountable? Ok. Ok. And you know, if you want more detail than that, just rewind and listen to Veronica explain for the past uh several minutes. But I’m just trying to, I’m just calling down to our, to our three. Ok. Um, I, I’m, I’m not here suggesting now that this is something that most organizations miss and, you know, like you should make it four, not go from 3 to 4. But, um, do, does fundraising, you know, the, uh, the funding that’s gonna be necessary. I mean, it sounds like it’s built into the three, I think. I, I think you, you, you talked about investments but, you know, do we need to increase our fundraising staff or, you know, we, we don’t want to just say, ok, well, the development team, uh, they’re gonna be responsible for a new, uh, 100 and $75,000 that they’re not now raising, but they’ll just, uh, have to do more with less or, you know, the, they’ll just have to find, find the extra $175,000 for us to achieve that, that we’re gonna need to achieve what we just, what we just laid out. I mean, how, how does funding all? Yeah, so, so in the goals we set, you know, we should have meaningful financial targets, right? So that might be revenue, it could be revenue pertaining to a specific area that we’re trying to grow. So, you know, it could be, hey, we really a key investment we’re making is in plan giving and we are expecting at, you know, whatever time in the future for that to pay off or, but in the meantime, maybe there’s another area. So yes, that’s definitely part of our targets, right? Is what kind of um financial situation we need to achieve to be able to do this work, but also in the focus areas, right? So three or four focus areas um I prefer that to pillars because pillars sometimes get stuck around programmatic work. Also pillars that give you this um like this feeling that they all need to be the same height and they’re static, right? That we need it, they all require equal investment or care. And that’s just not true in how we work as organizations. So um I always say that at least one of your focus areas should be on operational um or culture work, right? So that is exactly what you’re talking about with. We may need to hire more people, right? So if we’re going to achieve this, we may need to hire more fundraisers or we may need to recognize that this is a build over time where we will need to be bringing in funding so that we can hire more program staff and fundraisers and marketers and whoever else we need to get that done. Um I think that, you know, some people are like, well, the operational plan is different from the strategic plan. But again, uh the strategy is not useful if it can’t be operationalized. And so making sure that that focus on operational or fundraising or, or strategy or sorry, operational fundraising um or culture work is seen in that same level of prominence and priority that our program focus is um is really important to having a successful and sustainable organization. How does the process go, you know, logistically uh when you know, how many meetings do staff and board have together, do you try to condense it into, you know, AAA month long process or does it take longer? And there are iterations as we learn more about, you know, where, where we want to go uh as we make decisions about what, what, what our, what our three key roles are. How does the, yeah, just logistically, how does the process go? It’s different for every organization I’ll say. So, um some of it depends on what resources you have available, what time you actually have available to get it done again as a practitioner. I’m like, what’s going to actually work, right? So it’s not about um a perfect process, but it is about what, what do we need to make this happen? And so sometimes for smaller organizations, um the process looks like me doing a workshop with their board and staff and teaching them about this process and how it works and then they’ll go back right and do a draft and then we’ll come back together and look through it and talk about it and, and uh see where we might need to improve and keep going, then they might go to their community and get feedback and go. So it is more of an innovative process, right? We’re not trying to present this big perfect thing. We are trying to say, how can we bring people along in the process but do it in a way where they’re active contributors to the end product um for other organizations that might need a more extensive um time to get feedback from their community or key stakeholders. Um It, you know, we’ll start in the beginning again with like um some work around. Let’s get our, let’s get what we know on paper, right? Like, let’s not start from scratch, let’s talk about what’s been working, let’s talk about, you know, things that we may need to change or keep the same. So some organizations are, are set with their vision and mission and their values, you know, we might spend some time saying does this still feel true? Is there anything we need to update or make um more meaningful or understandable to people? But then we’ll often spend time on. OK, what’s our role and what are the things we do best and how does that shape our work so that we’re starting to document what we already know. Um So that we can then start to say, where do we need the most feedback? Where is it that we’re not sure? Or we could really use um some different kinds of perspective in this? And so that may mean that next, we’re going to um talk to a broader group of staff, if it’s a larger organization, right, we need more impact, input and feedback beyond kind of maybe the initial planning committee group that involves staff and board members um that might then give us some ideas about how to revise and then we may take that to these stakeholders or to members of our patient community or cause community and, and have facilitated conversations with them about, you know, here’s, here’s who we are, here’s what we’re thinking as we look to the next several years, but we want we need to hear from you to make sure that makes sense and that’s the kind of, you know, service or program or support that you’re looking for and expecting from us. Um And then being OK if they say actually none of that, right, we have to be, we have to be OK being vulnerable a little bit and, and coming to them and saying like this is a work in progress. Here’s where our thoughts are so far, but what will make it better and stronger and the kind of thing that can drive real impact is your, your insights and your input. And so it becomes an iterative process. That then means we can also say, ok, here’s the plan. But if we have to be flexible or revise or adjust, we’ve already started this kind of iterative conversation and connected conversation with our community and our key stakeholders where they’re in on it with us, right? They’re part of what’s going on. And that means that we have a, a better, more meaningful strategy, right? That actually is likely to lead to results and we’ve brought people along the way. So we’re garnering support, you know, from the people we serve, but also the people who power our organization, you know, either with volunteer hours or their funding um or in their connections to other kinds of funding streams as well. I think you’re a very patient practitioner, you must be just the way you describe it, but also the, the process that, that you help nonprofits through. Uh Yeah, I just see, I, I just hear a lot of patience. Well, thanks. I, I hope so. I think too it comes from change management work, right? Which is we don’t just say here’s the plan and all of a sudden we flip a switch and it happens, you know, people, any change requires us to go through a process of letting go of what came before and being ready to begin and accept what’s new. And so if we design strategy or plans that are built with humans and mind, we’re more likely to go farther with impact over time because we’re actually designing it for the people who are going to power this thing instead of designing it for one big pr moment, right? Or one big round of talking to our major donors that then we are not able to deliver results because we didn’t build it in a way that we could actually do it. Yeah, actionable again. Um All right. So we come together through this process which does sound iterative and learning and being vulnerable along the way. Um How strict are you on the uh the one page limit? I suppose we need a page and a half. Is that all right? Is that, is that OK? Well, I mean, I even like I already expanded the margins out to like half an inch, you know, on all four sides and I still can’t fit it on, we still can’t fit it into one page. Um You’re flexible on the one page a little bit. I am, I think, I think a one page template and approach is valuable in helping us like have the behavior of making choices, right? Because sometimes what happens is, oh, well, we’ll do all of it, but we only need three pillars. So let’s shoehorn these things together that don’t make sense together, right? The the aim is like there are trade offs, there are things you are not going to do. And so the point is, you know, not to have a gimmick in one page, but to put ourselves through the exercise of, if we really had to boil it down to what’s most important, you know, and, and when I was an in house leader and on all the teams I’ve ever led a big part of my philosophy is permission to focus. I think if we enable ourselves to focus, especially in a time when there’s so much that could pull your attention to new or shiny or different. But when we enable ourselves to focus, that means we practice and we get better and we keep delivering impact because we’re staying, you know, we’re kind of staying here instead of trying to spread all of our energy out all over the place. And so, um so when it comes to one page, right? It’s the, it’s the exercise of choosing, you know, and can we look at what’s on there and say that we’ve left something out. That’s, that’s another part of the exercise is to say. So, in looking at all this, what does it mean? We don’t do? And a lot of organizations that’s hard to define or sometimes it’s really small and that’s OK, you know, like I had a client that was a um a really impressive animal welfare organization. They’re doing incredible work that is modeling, you know, um approaches across the country and they get asked pretty often to bring an adaptable pet to elementary schools for presentations, right? And one of the things that they were able to say we don’t do is that’s some, that’s not something we do. You know, we are trying to change policy across the country by modeling what it looks like in real life. Um So elementary school students, while we love that they care about animals, they’re not one of our key audiences. That’s not the way we’re trying to change the world. Um And so it can seem small, but actually it saved them so much staff, time and energy. They had, you know, standard email response for how they handle those requests. And so it saved, you know, a lot of just time and staff being away for that and having to make the plans to do it in a safe way. Um But also just the mindset and energy of being, being given permission to say like I can say no to this because I’m focusing on these other things. Permission. Yeah, permission to focus when you say permission to focus, I think of institutional discipline. Uh But I’m not trying to co op, I’m not co op, I’m not trying to replace your, your, your thinking. But it’s a, it’s a, it’s discipline. It, it’s, it’s a, it’s a discipline but it’s a f it’s a focus. It’s, I’m just using a different phrase, same thing, same. Um But yeah, and, and to not. And that’s a tough one too because you don’t want to appear heartless to elementary school Children. How come you’re not helping the Children in our community? You know, they want, they want to relate closer to, to, to animals around them. And how can you not help our, our school Children? So it’s very, I mean, but it’s, and that’s, that takes an emotional toll, right? And in our sector, so many people who work in the nonprofit and social impact space, we want to say yes, we want this to be like a beautiful world where where everyone is getting their needs taken care of. And so it’s not always easy to say no, right? And, and it, it could be a situation like that. It could be a situation for staff members where like a director from a different department all of a sudden has a new idea and is excited and wants people to get on board for it and you know, being an organization and a leader, you know, of that department that’s able to say no, like you have my permission to focus and if someone else is asking you to pull focus for something else, like send them to me, let’s talk about it because it needs to, we need to keep staying committed instead of getting really energized by a new idea and feeling like we’ve got to act on it right in that moment, right? We need to spend the time saying, how does this fit into our strategy? Does this align with our role? Is it in line with the investments we intended to make? Does it connect with the focus areas we’re trying to drive forward? And if the answer is yes, then it becomes. So what else do we need to stop doing then so that we can create the capacity to make it possible? As you said, permission to focus. Where else do you want to go? What, what else do you want to talk about this uh this process that I haven’t asked you about? I think I just would put it out there for folks that um different organizations need different approaches to strategy and strategic planning. So there are organizations that very comprehensive processes involving, you know, broad community input. Um And you know, could be a year 18 months in the making that that’s the right choice for them again, based on their mission based on where they’re headed and based on how they interact with other nonprofits or government agencies in their area. So I am not telling you to throw out processes that work for your organization. What I am saying is that um if, if your strategic plan is coming up, you know, it’s expiring and you’re getting ready to start something new, asking yourself what you need most for your team to be able to drive impact, right? And for you to be able to speak clearly to funders and stakeholders and supporters about what you do as an organization. Um you can be open to these other ways of working. You know, they, it doesn’t need to be just the same taxing expensive process of putting together a plan that then sits on a shelf. So it’s, it’s more um I hope, inspiration and hope for um nonprofit executives that there are other ways of doing this, right? And there are ways that can be a better fit for your organization. Um And it’s ok to explore that it’s ok to be the person who brings that to your organization so that you do get something that provides value for you and your team that helps you and your board be better connected and aligned. Um You know, having done this process with organizations, uh one of my favorite conversations with a board member afterwards was, you know, we’ve been, we’ve been doing this for 15 years. You know, we all have good relationships, everyone’s working hard, but we knew something wasn’t quite working and how we had done these processes before. She’s like, I can look at this one page and I feel more clear about where we need to be focusing our time and energy than I have in 15 years. And so, you know, knowing too that um everyone, everyone is looking for that clarity and that ability to understand where we headed and where we go, where are we going. Um And so it’s o it’s ok to step into a new way of working. Veronica. La Finna, her company is La Finna and company at La finna.co. I suggest you connect with Veronica on linkedin. We’re connected, we chat a lot. Comment a lot. Thank you very much Veronica. Thank you for uh a new way of approaching the way you’ve been approaching something that uh for a lot of nonprofits just is, is, is not working, is not actionable uh is not helpful in decision making. So, thank you very much for sharing all this. Thanks for having me, Tony next week, accepting Cryptocurrency gifts with Pat Duffy. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our wealth 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 October 28, 2024: Your Strategic Partnerships

 

Mark Lillis: Your Strategic Partnerships

Local nonprofits, companies, government officials and agencies, business leaders, and others can improve your outcomes in ways you cannot imagine. Taking the time to build relationships with potential partners—before you need them—makes a smart investment in your mission and programs. Mark Lillis from Leaven Kids shares his experience and wisdom around savvy partnerships.

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be thrown into a cor if you wounded me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s up this week? Hey, Tony, I’m on it. Your strategic partnerships, local nonprofits, companies, government officials and agencies, business leaders and others can improve your outcomes in ways you cannot imagine taking the time to build relationships with potential partners before you need them. Makes a smart investment in your mission and programs. Mark Liis from loving kids shares his experience and wisdom around savvy partnerships on Tony Ste Two Tales from the gym. A MRS blood and soil update were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Here is your strategic partnerships. It’s a pleasure to welcome Mark Lillis to the show. He is the executive director of the le providing after school and summer tutoring for Children living in underdeveloped communities in Fairfield, California and beyond California. We’ll talk about that. The Levin’s achievements are extraordinary and much of that is attributed to the partnerships Mark has developed. That’s what we’re here to talk about. 11 is at 11 kids.org. And you’ll find Mark Lillis on linkedin Mark. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Hey, thanks Tony. Thanks for inviting me, pleasure to be here on the show with all your great loyal listeners. Uh We do have a lot and uh they’re anxious to learn about partnerships, partnerships. Um What, what, what first brought this to your, to your fore? Like maybe you had been doing it for a long time. But what, what did you see as you know, the value uh coming coming from strategic partnerships, whether local state, maybe even broader, where, where, where’s the value here? What brought this to your attention? Yeah, I think where I, where I really saw this is I was an aide to the mayor and city council in Santa Barbara. Uh When I graduated from college, I had the opportunity to be the uh assistant to the mayor and city council in the city of Santa Barbara. And I really saw um AAA community that got together, came together and that had strong local partnerships and I saw what they were able to do and I saw how they were able to do it. And so that kind of training or that kind of, I guess instance of seeing that come forth and come to light. Uh it really paid off in how I approached uh the job that I’m in right now as CEO of loving kids and being a part of a community based uh organization, a nonprofit um that uh that serves out into the communities and into the neighborhoods. Uh And I will just say that there’s a, another gentleman mayor, Harry, the former mayor Harry T Price who just really, um he was the mayor of the city of Fairfield. And I’ll tell you, he just emboldened this idea and he once told me, he said, you know, Mark, never ever, ever underestimate the power of a thank you note and not just one that’s kind of generated from a, you know, from an A I but one in which you handwrite, you never underestimate that and make sure you think often and make sure that you think. Uh Well, and so, um so those things just kind of understanding, getting out into community, being out and being, being seen leading by example, if you can’t see it, you can’t, if you can’t see it, you can’t be an example of it. So, um so being out in the community and just really enjoying the communities in which we serve. It’s, it’s really, it’s really a lot of fun. You struck right to my heart with uh it, it sounds like the, the, the man the, the former mayor of Fairfield was a mentor of sorts to you and you struck right to my heart with handwrit notes. They, they are so rare and therefore so appreciated. They, they do stand out that, you know, put yourself away from word. It doesn’t have to be lengthy, right. A little card, a card or a half a page. You can be genuine, sincere heartfelt and that you took the time to handwrite something. It, it, it stands out. It, it absolutely, I, I couldn’t agree more with, uh, with that gentleman. Yeah, absolutely. No, I send, I send hundreds a month, um, and it’s just something that, uh, yeah, I love it. They are worth the time. People are grateful. And do you get, do you get some handwrit notes back? Um, I guess, you know what, I, I get emails back saying, hey, I got your handwrit note. Thank you so very much. I understand my work is in Planned Giving. So I work with a lot of folks in their seventies, eighties, nineties. And, uh, when I write handwrit notes, it’s not uncommon, not every time, but it’s not uncommon to get handwrit note back because that’s what those folks grew up with. They grew up in handwriting. So they do their cursive, you know, which I learned, we don’t even teach in schools, you know, they, they, so, uh, that, that’s why I, I get, I get a fair amount of handwrit notes back. But yeah, I, I, so we’re in a rabbit hole on handwrit notes. But for the, for the record I do listen notes, I love them. You do get some. Yeah. All right. And you, you know, so, you know how it feels to get them. Um, I spent a little time in San Barbara because I was, uh, for four months I was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Yeah, I was learning the missile business. Uh, I ended up doing it at Whiteman Air Force Base. This, we’re talking about the 19, late 19 eighties. Uh I end up stationed in Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. But you learn the Minuteman weapons system at uh at Vandenberg. So we would take occasional weekends to uh to Santa Barbara, beautiful uh waterfront, really lovely town. Incredible. It really is a very tight knit, very close knit community. It’s, uh, it’s a, it’s kind of a big town but it has a small town feel, that’s for sure. Oh, excellent. All right. Well, that and so partnerships, partnerships become that much easier when, if it has a small town feel. Um So in your work, whether as uh uh assist you were, you were assistant to the, to the city council. Is that right? I was, yeah, I was, I was an assistant to the uh to the mayor of city council. Um Primarily the, the, the vice mayor is where I spent a lot of time with the former vice mayor, Rusty Fairley. Uh Just a, a fantastic individual baseball coach. Um, I always find that, uh, that the coaches have a certain way about them. So, yeah. Um, just, just really learned a lot under his tutelage coaches. Absolutely. Do they understand teamwork? And we’re, we’re here talking about partnerships. Another word for partnership is teamwork. Just build your team, whether it’s a team of nine or 12 or it’s a team of dozens, uh, in the partner in the community and beyond. So, what are we, what are we looking for? I mean, II, I would think part of what we’re looking for is like we’re, we’re, we’re short or we, what we don’t do what we don’t do. Well, you know, we wanna maybe partner with folks who do are essential to our work are essential to those we’re helping, but we don’t do it also all that well and they do. But that’s just me. Uh, you know, you’re the expert here. What, what are we looking for in potential partners? Yeah. Well, I think what you’re looking for is you’re, you’re looking for, you know, sort of do an assessment a bit of where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are and then be able to, you know, um, uh sh shore up your weaknesses by bringing other people in uh that are fantastic uh partners and do it really well. For example, during COVID, we knew that we had to go to an online uh learning platform, um where we, we do after school tutoring and mentoring. And we didn’t understand the online business very well, quite honestly. But I will tell you that the scientists at Genentech, they really understood it, they understood Zoom, they understood code, they understood developing um that kind of platform. So they developed our entire, you know, online uh platform for us with zoom and with other types of of medians that really helped us to be able to serve Children in the midst of the pandemic. So, yeah, you gotta look at kind of where your weaknesses are and then how you’re going to be able to, to uh to, to shore it up. So it’s, it’s really knowing yourself or assessing yourself. Um But it’s also kind of getting out of your own getting from behind the desk. There’s a, there’s a lot of, there’s sometimes there’s so much to do, I’ll, I’ll just say as an, as an administrator of a nonprofit, the CEO executive director, um there’s a lot that can tie you down in doing things at the desk and so you got to be able to move outside the desk and go think about your organization, think about yourself. Um And then be able to go out into the community and in integrate with those folks who, who, who, who are gonna be stronger than you are. And um and you know, I remember 11 particular CEO saying, hey, I can go about a project uh by myself and go really slow or I can do it with others and move lightning fast and it’s so true. So, yeah, that’s, um, it’s kind of kind of it in a nutshell and, and it, so it sounds, uh, consistent with what we should be doing as individuals, you know, some, some introspection, some assessment, you know. What, what do I know very well? Uh, let me focus on that. What do I not know? So, well, let me hire somebody partner with somebody, bring somebody in uh who, who, who does that, who, who, who, who does that better fills, fills the gaps that I have. But being honest with yourself. And also, and, and you know, as you’re suggesting at the organizational level, being honest, you know, we just don’t, we’re, we’re, we’re just not the best at online online platform. Not only, not the best, sounds like you didn’t, you never had to do it because kids were coming, 11 kids were coming to you, right? They were coming to you in your after school program. So we don’t know anything about this, you know, but just honest, I think honest introspection on the individual level as well as the organizational. Absolutely. That’s, and, and we, and quite honestly, we couldn’t afford it. I mean, we, it, it, those are, those are pricey, pricey services. So, you know, being able to hire somebody who does coding, it’s costly. So we saved ourselves not only time, but also resources and money. And I think we, we stewarded um those resources very, very well by partnering with somebody like Gentech. Now, you’re fortunate, Gentech has a big presence in, in our, in our area. Fairfield area, the area. So let, let’s drill down. How do you make the approach? Now, the gen and tech, let’s assume they didn’t know about 11 kids. How do you, how do you make that, what, what’s the first phone call like? Or what’s the first? Maybe it’s not a phone call but what’s the first uh outreach like? What does it say? How do you do it? Yeah. Well, I think it’s that it’s a, it’s a mindset. So it’s getting from behind the desk, it’s understanding that, hey, you know, it’s tough to lead an organization from behind the desk. So you have to go out into the community. So we go to a lot of chamber events, we go to a lot of, you know, ribbon cuttings, we go to a lot of um businesses that open. Um And so rotary when we see and so you end up seeing a lot of business people and community leaders at these kinds of functions and then it’s um and then it’s doing something that is very important to do and that’s working in a room. Um which, which, you know, I know it, it, it, it, it’s an art. I will just say this. I saw, yeah, I saw the late I saw again, one of the, one of our, our fantastic uh government officials, the late um mayor Miller from the city of Santa Barbara, that woman could work a room like no other. And I saw how she did it. She went through, she, she didn’t spend a lot of time with one person. She just kind of worked through the room and then she sat at the rear door or when everybody left and she made sure that she, she shook everybody’s hand as they took off. Um I mean, it was just brilliant, but you gotta be able to do that. So in those kinds of work, the room and having those conversations, you’re going to hear things, you’re going to meet people. Um, people are going to say, hey, you know what I do coding or I set up zoom systems or, um, you know, hey, we know we’re, you’re going, we’re in a pandemic. So somebody give us a call and say, hey, we know, we know we’re in a pandemic and what are you guys doing? Um, well, we’re trying to set up a online uh program and process for our students and they’ll say, hey, how can we help? So it’s, it’s developing that relationship beforehand. I guess my, one of my points are is that if you wait until you’re really in a problem, um, maybe you’ve waited too long. So you wanna set that work up ahead of time, you want to set the foundation up ahead of time, you wanna be able to be known in the community, you want to be able to have a good reputation, um, because that’s, and you want to be able to do what you say you’re going to do and do it really, really well. And so when you’re known for that, um, you’ll, you’ll just kind of have these things, not, they’re not magically open, the doors don’t magically open, but a lot of doors do open when you take the time and you invest the time to make those kinds of relationships. Absolutely. Relationships. It’s, it’s identical to fundraising. You know, you don’t, you don’t come to people only when it’s end of year. And, you know, you’re, you’re trying to make your, you’re trying to make your fundraising numbers for the, for the fourth quarter. Now you keep relationships open before you need someone’s help and maybe you never will. I in, in terms of the community, not, not in terms of fundraising, but in terms of the community, you know, you, but you, you don’t go into a relationship, uh looking at what you can get out of it from the outset. You just look at relationships as, as, as valuable uh humane civil, right? This is how we conduct ourselves. We’re, we’re social beings have relationships and then you never know what might come from them. So, yeah, so, so you see value in like it sounds like local chamber membership Chamber of Commerce, you mentioned rotary. You have, you have memberships in those. Well, we, we have memberships in, you know, we’re in, we’re in, in nine different cities. So we don’t have memberships in every, in every city, but we have it in our, where our hub is where our headquarters are. Um And then we make sure that we show up that we attend, you know, um 90% of life is just showing up. So we make sure we show up. Um when we get invited, we show up if we get invited to speak at one of those uh one of those venues, we make sure that we show up and, and speak um that we have a presentation that it’s a presentation. I, I, I’ll tell you, uh you’ll maybe appreciate this, Tony. So the first time we entered into the city of Valeo, um we were invited to the Rotary group. Wait a minute, what’s the name of the city, city of Vallejo, Vallejo, California, Valeo. Yeah, sorry. Vallejo, California. So, uh we were invited to come to the Rotary group. And, um and, and so I was, I was sort of new at kind of doing this whole executive director CEO thing. So I go in with our presentation with our powerpoint and uh and the president of Rotary kind of pulls me aside and he says, hey, we’re gonna know if this is good within about the first two minutes. And I said, I said, I said, what do you mean the first two minutes? No pressure, no pressure. Yeah. Yeah, we know this is, this is kind of like one of my first ones that I’ve done like this. And, uh, and I said, what do you mean by the first two minutes? He goes, yeah, he goes because if, if you’re tanking, he goes, people will just start talking and you won’t ever get the room back. And I went, right. So, yeah, so um so my point being have a good presentation, make it memorable. In that particular case, we actually did make it very memorable and we uh we, we, we had a, we had a great response but make it memorable. No, people were giving up their time and give them something that uh that they could feel really, really good about. So, yeah, we go and make, make presentations uh to these organizations uh quite frequently and then we, and then we just go before, sometimes before the city councils or before um our local government bodies and we just give them updates of how we’re doing and what we’re up to. So, um so those, those types of engagements are really important. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds, both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers, just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs, helping you help others visit Donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to your strategic partnerships. So we’ve talked about uh like sort of corporate potential partnerships. Um So now you’re mentioning go and, and, and civic organizations like rotary sounds like Rotary can be a tough uh tough audience. They give you two minutes to make a, make a break. Otherwise we’re gonna start talking to the person next to me. So you’re, who’s the guy on the, who’s the guy with the mic? Cut him off? Could be? All right. All right. Rotary is a tough one. All right. But uh civic, civic organizations um government. So, you know, you’re not just looking like for government grants, I mean, you may be doing that but it’s, it’s not a transactional again, relationship, it’s not transactional where I come in for a city grant every, every year or 18 months or something. You know, let’s renew you, you have relationships with local government officials. Not surprising because you were, once you saw the value, talk more about local government. Yeah, local government, it’s important, you know, to understand that there is a process that occurs within local government and to really respect that particular process. If you’re meeting with, you could be meeting with. Well, you need to know first who you’re meeting with um within the the city. So if I’m at an event, for example, and I see the director of public works or I see the police chief, I know who they are and hopefully they know who I am. Um if they don’t, then you need to make sure that you have and I hate the word but people use the elevator pitch. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t use the elevator pitch. This is what I use. So we won the Chick Fil a national award twice and I went back to Atlanta. Uh and I was speaking to some of their, their marketing folks and they said, start off with your, why, why you got involved with whatever you’re doing? It’s far more interesting than just kind of going through the mundane elevator pitch of telling people what you do, how many people you serve so forth and so on. So I always start off with the, why, why we started? And so I’ll tell them kind of the, the why we started this organization. Um What inspired us, uh what got people motivated ar around it and then, um and then you’ll, you’ll, you’ll understand kind of, hey, is this person a uh uh a department head, is this person the city manager or am I potentially speaking to one of the council members? Uh one of the city council members or to the mayor and and you have to also understand that these folks have got a lot, I mean, it’s a, these are big cities that we serve in. So there’s hundreds of thousands of people that are involved in these organizations and in these cities. And so there’s a lot that’s on their mind and you gotta sort of make it punchy and quick and then hopefully memorable and then leave them with something if and then ask them, hey, is there any particular way that we can further serve you? Is there any particular way that we can help? Um Is there anything that we’re doing that we could do more of? So we always come from a perspective of, hey, we, we love to serve our communities. We don’t want to be a burden upon them. Uh You know, we don’t want to just come and ask for money, but we want to know how we can help solve some of their headache and some of their problems. So we ask that question and typically we get a, yeah, you know, have you thought about this or this organization is doing that? Have you thought about partnering with them? So it’s just uh it’s just really insightful when you have those types, when you come with that type of mindset and that type of heart. And you, you ask, hey, you know, how is it that we can further help serve into this community? Now, be careful about what they might say, because you gotta be prepared, you gotta be prepared, you gotta be prepared for something that might be a heavy lift or you gotta be prepared for something that might not be a heavy lift more than definitely not. But uh and then follow up, you know, make sure that you do some follow up. Make sure if they say, hey, we’d like to have you think about a partnership with this particular organization or to serve in this particular area of the community, then follow up and then get back to them and let them know, hey, you know what I contacted this person or we’re looking at doing XY and Z. So, again, not transactional relationship, you know, how can I help you? How can I help you? You know, how can we help the community? And it’s a hard of what it’s, it’s what the nonprofit sector, why they’re so important because that’s what we can do. Um is that we can go out and provide great help for a community and for residents and, and members. So, yeah, 11 kids is not only in California now, right? Texas also. We are, yeah, we’re, yeah, we um so we started off in Fairfield, California, which is in Solano County. And uh we started with one learning center and our, you know, kind of our, our promise to that community was, hey, we are going to do what we say we’re gonna do and we’re gonna do it really well. And if, if we just had one that would be fantastic. Um, but if we had many, then that would be great as well. Just wanna be able to have the resources to do it. Well, good news traveled fast. And after we opened up our first one, it was sold out. And so we were asked to do another one and now we have 20 in California and then we started one in San Antonio, Texas. And, and I’ll just say, so we brought uh General Marianne Miller who was a four star general um was also the Commander of Air Mobility Command and she joined our board as a, as a vice president. And one of the things just absolutely understands relationships. And so we met in San Antonio, Texas for three years with different leaders, organizations, civic leaders uh before we even opened up one of our learning centers. And that was just so important to do, to try to understand the community, try to understand what its needs were, try to understand, you know, what people were talking about. Um And then trying to get a really good flavor of San Antonio. So we did that for three years and um we found out a whole bunch of information and I would just say that, hey, before anybody goes to start a project, make sure that you really understand. Don’t just take, we just didn’t want to take something from California and plant it into Texas. So we really wanted to be able to understand and then we created an advisory committee, a strategic advisory committee in that community so that they could really have and grow up with some great roots from San Antonio. How did you choose San Antonio, Texas from uh from the Fairfield, California area? Yeah, that’s a good question. So there was some similarities to uh to Fairfield. Fairfield was home to Travis Air Force Base, which is the largest air mobility command base. Uh I think in the, in the nation, uh maybe the world. And so we have a lot of military connection and San Antonio is really a retirement community for military. So, uh and it is also the home to Lackland Air Force Base, which is sort of the gateway of where most Air Force uh members go in which to uh to, to be trained in them to serve. So it just had a lot of similarity. And then when we met with the mayor of the city of San Antonio, uh Mayor Nuremberg, uh he said, hey, you know what, we could really use this in our communities. And so we just knew there was a, there was a, there was a red carpet and an open door and if there wasn’t, that would have been fine, we don’t want to go to a place where there’s already typical or similar services. So, but uh but he said, hey, we, we don’t have really anything like this. This is unique and we want to have more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. We’re back to the gym. Tales from the gym, uh, for a week because I have a, uh, Mrs Blood and soil update. I hope you’ll remember her. She was, uh, she was our original Tale from the gym that remember my very first class. She fought over her turf that I was, I put my stuff down near her space and she didn’t like that. Uh uh I want you to know, you know, you’d be reassured to know that Mrs Blood and Soil is still in her exact same space back behind me. Third row, third row, second from the end on the right side as uh from my perspective, facing the front of the room, she’s always back there, always routinely and, and I would say, and other people are not like that way. Uh She’s, she’s probably the only one who is just always in that special spot of hers. That’s, you know, so aptly named uh Mrs Blood and Soil. So we had some complaints from Mrs Blood and Soil. This week, the, the gymnasium floor is gonna be redone at the community center. Now, we don’t have our class in the gymnasium. We have in a fitness center, fitness fitness room. Um, you’re just open with good wood flooring, but the gymnasium flooring thing is gonna move classes into our space And so, so the schedule is gonna be uh changed around for like six weeks in November and this was announced and some of these classes are gonna be shorter 45 minutes instead of an hour, you know, to accommodate more classes in this, in this one space because we’re losing the gym space. Uh Mrs Blood and soil doesn’t like this. Why do the classes have to be only 45 minutes? So, you know, and we’re having this conversation while we’re doing, uh you know, while we’re, while we’re exercising. So while we’re doing steps and we’re running in place and uh you know, it’s hard to describe all the, you know, but you can imagine all the aerobic stuff that we’re doing so with weights and sometimes not weights and the planks and et cetera. So while, you know, while the instructor is, while this woman is running the class, Mrs Blood and soil, how come only 45 minutes I paid in advance for all the classes. There’s supposed to be an hour. Oh my God, Mrs Blood and soil to give it up. You know, we’re redoing the gym. Try to try to understand we got to accommodate some other classes in our space here. So, uh so Mrs Blood and soil still in place and uh very upset. Very ranting. Oh, and the class time may change too. Oh, it may have to be, it may have to be an 815 or an 830 class instead of 8 a.m. Oh, it’s gonna throw off for a whole day. She was like, no, I can’t. I like, uh, I was like, what’s the difference? A half hour? So I didn’t want to get into a skirmish with MRS blood and soil because I would certainly lose. She’s, uh, she’s heavily armed and, and, uh, battle hardened. This is blood and soil. All right. Whew, next week, uh, we’ll be, uh, back to, uh, tales from the plane. I got some nice, uh, good stories from the plane and that is Tony’s take two Kate. He sounds like such the character. She’s a, she’s a piece of work. You know, she’s, uh, she’s firm in her opinions, uh, and in her location, say that she’s a, she’s a firm person. So I have something to tell you. This is a few weeks ago. You talked about how people should reach out to their old buddies, old friends, maybe old schoolmates and, you know, reconnect because it’s important to just have people to surround yourself with and not be lonely. Right. You remember that? Yeah, because I was planning a trip, uh, which I just did, uh, earlier this month I was planning a trip to multiple states to see old air force friends. Yes. And I was encouraging you to, to my friend. So I did it. I reached out to the, um, we’ve known each other since elementary school. Um, but then we lost contact after I moved to New York. So now that I’m back at home, I saw she’s a hairdresser now and she posts a lot of hairdressing videos online and she’s like, hey, I work here if anyone wants like their hair cut colored, you know, and I was like, oh my God, this would be a great, you know, segment to get myself in there and be like, hey, so I obviously dammed her and I was like, hey, I would love to get my hair done by you and maybe catch up. So that’s what we did. Outstanding. Did you have it? You already had it. You, you met her? Yeah. So it was just a consultation but the whole entire time we were just going over what we like, she moved out, you know, she’s out at her own apartment, she has a cat now, she’s doing great and it’s all these things like you could never figure out just by like, you know, scrolling through Instagram. Of course not. You can’t, of course not you, you can’t, you can’t be, be acquainted with the depth of someone’s life through freaking social media. Of course not. All right. So how, how did it feel while you were with her? How did it feel? Honestly, it felt like the same exact person who like I got to know in elementary school, but she was just now more mature, more graceful and she had this air of confidence, which is really cool to see. Um, because that’s something that you gain through maturity and we’re like 21 years old. So you’re 21 you, you, you’re too young to have old friends, but this is how you get to have old friends when you’re 51 and 61 more than twice where you are now by keeping in touch with people. So, congratulations. I admire that. You reached out next time. You can reach out to somebody when you don’t see them. And uh and some social post, you just think about somebody and you say, you know, I haven’t talked to him or her for a long time and we were really close. I think I’m gonna, I gotta send a text, I got their phone number or I’m gonna try to find them maybe through another friend or something. So, yes, but congratulations. I’m glad I admire that you reached out to an old friend because that’s how you keep friends through the decades, which is a joy and that’s what, that’s what I had originally been talking about. So. Good for you. Very good. Well, we’ve got book who loads more time. Here’s the rest of your strategic partnerships with Mark Lillis listening, you know, especially listening to is there a need but listening to the community creating the community advisory board, which I’m sure was made up of local people, right? They’re your community advi yeah, to date myself from the air Force, uh air mobility command when I was in was called, I think it was called military Airlift command. Ma I, I believe I was not in, I was in the strategic Air command sack, but it was Mac. And then there was t a, it was a tactical air command. I think that was the fighters. But yeah, that’s, uh, we’re going back 40 years. Thankfully, things have advanced. Were you, were you on active duty? Were you in the Air force? I was not. No, I was not. No, I, um, I actually had an opportunity to. Well, Fairfield is my hometown, so I’ve known of Travis Air Force Base ever since. Uh, I was born and, uh, my dad was in the military, um, really appreciated his service and, um, and then I had an opportunity to watch the Thunderbirds. Uh, one year the gate at Travis Air Force Base and my dad absolutely loved to watch the Thunderbirds. He like, really liked any, any, any aircraft. Um, he, he wanted to be a pilot but he couldn’t because of his, of his eyes. But, um, but so I watched the Thunderbirds from behind the gate and then the next year mayor Price nominated me to be the hometown hero for the Thunderbirds. And I actually got to fly with the Thunderbirds. So, uh, you were flying while you were flying, while they, while they were performing, I flew the day before they, they have a so flew with the Thunderbirds for, uh, for three minutes. It was incredible. I did a, I did a 9.59 0.2 G turn and I’ll tell you one thing, it, it’ll remove your hair and then put it back again. Did, did everything stay in your stomach? Ok. Yes, it did. You get to fly with the Thunderbirds? Wow. That’s, that’s fantastic. It was, it was incredible. It was incredible. And then I went off to be an honorary commander with Travis Air Force Base and a civic leader for Air Mobility Command. And uh now I proudly serve as a golden bear at Travis Air Force. So have really been able on the civic side, be able to see the fantastic mission of our airmen and how they, you know, provide the blanket of protection for us each and every day and night. It’s just incredible. So, um yeah, it’s been a, been a, been a great partnership. So with Air Mobility Command, you must have a lot of big planes flying around C seventeens, right. The big, the big cargo, the big cargo planes that can fit 20 whatever, 20 tanks or whatever, you know. Right. Isn’t this, I think isn’t the C 17? Is that our largest cargo? You’re a golden bear. Well, first of all, what is a golden bear? What does that mean? I, I was five years in an, on an air force base. I didn’t, I didn’t know any Golden Bears, I got you. Yeah. So golden golden Bears particular to Travis Air Force Base and basically specific leaders that uh that really interact uh with the, the base and also with the community. So it’s so it’s, it’s an offset but it’s really in relation to the, I believe the C 14 one that used to be the Golden Bear. Um So that’s, that’s kind of, that’s kind of what it’s named after. But the biggest one, the biggest uh uh aircraft out at Travis’s C five. and then the uh the C 17 and then they just got the KC 46 which was the tanker. Um the new tanker just came in. So I remember the KC, I remember the KC 130 fives. So the C so the C five is bigger than the C 17. 0, ok. I had that back. I had it wrong. OK. The C five is our largest um uh Yeah, mobility command because the biggest, those are enormous. I mean, they’re like tunnels. They just, they’re incredible, they’re incredible. They, they, they, they, they move satellites, I mean tanks, you name it. Yeah, it’s, yeah, but this, but to your point, Tony, this is, this is kind of what you get to learn and have a, when you do this really, really well um is that it takes you off into spirals into all different areas of a community. And so, you know, I was, you asked the question. Have you ever been in the military? No, I never had been, uh, had an opportunity to serve but I do in this role, um, indirectly by, uh, by being a civic leader and it’s only because of getting out and having a real heart for community partnerships, I guess, to tie it all around. Yeah, you’re spot on. And you said you’re an honorary commander, I mean, commander of Travis is probably, what, two or three star general? It’s a colonel. Oh, it’s a colonel. Oh, really? Oh, I thought it would be a general. Ok. Well, you’re an honorary, like you’re an honorary honorary colonel. I hope that comes with a pension. I hope you get a nice, nice Air Force pension when you retire as a, from your Golden Bear position. All right. I completely volunteer and I appreciate being able to serve. Yeah, of course. I, I admire it. Congratulations. Um, all right, let’s talk about II, I feel like we, we, we’ve covered, you know, sort of who are the potential partners, how to approach, um, how to, how to keep these relationships going, these partnerships, you know, uh, the, they are relationships, uh, they’re just, you know, they’re strategic. Although again, you don’t go into a relationship looking for what you can get out of it. But, but how do we nurture these, uh, what’s your advice around that? Keeping these going strong? Yeah, it’s, it’s so important to do. I mean, you do need to nurture it. You do need to understand that it’s not transactional, just like what you mentioned. Um You have to understand that, hey, it’s as much as what you can give as much as what you can also glean and learn. So, um so I would say continue to, to just make those um introductions and continue to be out into community. I think if you’re, if you’re bored is having to tell you to do it, you have sort of lost the, you sort of lost the mantra. Um You wanna be able to, to be out there in front of, you want to be able to be out there nurturing the relationships, you wanna be out there um having your organization and particularly your name known um amongst the community. And then you wanna be able to, you know, I would say not call, you know, every month, but at least every quarter to be able to, to give an update, a short update, not any, not anything really long but a short update of how it’s going, uh what’s happening. Uh What are some new things you’re thinking about? And then, um and then again, that part of, hey, is there anything we can do? That’s more? Um So I would just, uh I would just say continue to um to be out into the community, continue to make phone calls. And um and then again, just taking it from Mayor Harry Price don’t ever for get the power of that handwrit note, just send a note to somebody um or send or if you can’t, if you don’t have time to send a note, send a text saying, hey, you know what, I was sure thinking about you today. Um and just wanted to uh to let you know that hey, we at loving kids um are thinking and praying for you um and just something very, very quick, but lets people know that they’re being thought about and they do come to your mind. I mean, when you hear about their story, when you hear about what they’re doing, when you understand, hey, the pressures that they have in leadership um and in serving particularly our mayors and our, and our, and our community leaders, you just go, wow, you know, I want to be able to lighten their load as much as you possibly can. So, yeah, I’d say continue just to keep up that uh that, that cycle. And um and that’s how you kind of nurture it along. Um Be careful if you s oh just one other point, just be careful if you, if you say no to something and you will possibly have to say no to something, but be careful that uh that you give some explanation and that you’re thoughtful in how you decline. Um or that you try to find a surrogate of some kind that you try to find somebody else like either somebody else on the team, a board member or whatever it might be because if you end up saying no, too many times, um, then you kind of won’t be invited to. People are gonna stop and do it again to do it very much. Yeah. What about for a corporate partnership? Like a gen and tech, you know, uh How do you, how do you keep that strategic partnership strong, strong. Um So we have a lot of them thankfully. So we have not only Genentech but Kaiser Permanente, um Jelly Belly Candy Company, um QTS. Um You know, we, we have, we have several of these and, and again, it’s, it’s, it’s making sure, you know, if you receive funds from any of those organizations, uh I’m amazed at how often in the sector that we miss deadlines like grant reports and things of that nature don’t do that, don’t miss those important deadlines because somebody is having to talk about you to their boss or bosses. So make sure that you, you just again, do your due diligence. Um But then also be able to talk about the impact that you’re making and not anything really big and not anything that sounds like you’re pounding your chest, but just want just, just let them know, hey, you know what um we, we’re in Xy and Z community and um and we found this, this child who really needed help. Um And this is how we help them or send them a video, we oftentimes text videos because we do a lot of videos. So we’ll text a testimonial from a child, something of that nature that really helps, that helps them to understand more of the story. But I think more importantly how they’re able to enter into the story. Um and really be the hero because that’s what we, that’s what they are. Um You know, they, they fund the work, uh They help us, they inspire us. Uh We learn a lot, um, you know, with Chick Fil a for example, we go back every year and we learn as a nonprofit, you know, different things that they use in business that can really help us in the nonprofit world. So, um so yeah, so nurture those relationships, understand that their time is valuable for sure. Maybe they won’t respond back right away and that’s fine or maybe they won’t respond back at all but keep on doing it. Um Keep on, keep on doing that. I’d say, you know, every, every quarter. Um just kind of continue and just make sure, make sure, make sure you fill out the grant reports if you have one, if you get funding. Yeah, it’s, it’s so important. What about when there are problems, you know, every, every partnership, every relationship has ups and downs, you know, that you might have done something incorrect or come up a little short or just, there’s something that neither party anticipated, you know, whatever the, whatever the, whatever the difficulty in the relationship might be, how do you, how do you overcome that be, be honest and, and still, you know, maintain the, the strong partnership? Yeah. Well, I think it’s, I think it’s important to, to understand that. Yeah. You know, there are going to be, there are going to be problems. Um, I think you have a good plan and a good strategy for how you’re going to overcome those problems before it, before it happens. Um But uh but then just be able to be open, be able to be um authentic and transparent, uh be able to say, hey, if, if it was, if it was on our side, uh be able to, to take um some type of ownership and then um and then find out what type of clear communication you need to have in which to, to uh to solve and, and be a better partner. Usually, I, I appreciate when there’s those kinds of challenges because it really helps us to be a stronger and a better partner uh with any organization. So, um so those are, those are kind of some things that, that I think through, I always, I always try to have a strategy and a plan for how do we overcome any challenges that may come up and kind of think through from our rolodex of what those challenges have been in the past so that we can have a way to, um, to push through them and, uh, create a stronger partnership and a, um, and a better tomorrow based on everything you’re saying, Mark, I’m sure that trust is important in these, in all these relationships, establishing trust. Can you, can you flush that out a bit? Yeah, I think it’s, it’s, it’s very early on, uh, we received a grant from Kaiser Permanente and, um, we were at a point that in our, in our, in our organization where um where we were very, very young, we’re just applying for grants and Cynthia Verret who was the community benefit officer. Um called me up and uh and she ii I, I’ll just kind of say what she actually said and then I’ll, I’ll paraphrase of what I think was going through her mind. So I think what’s going through her mind was saying, hey, you know what? You guys are young funks, what are you guys doing? Uh You have, you, you know, you’re too young to be doing this. You don’t have the sustainability, you don’t have, you know, much of a plan. You got one, you got one successful project under your belt. So I’m gonna take a risk kid. Um And uh and that is that I’m going to uh I’m gonna, we’re gonna give you this grant, but I’m gonna ask you to do two things and this is the part that she actually said, I’m gonna ask you to do what you say you’re gonna do and do it very, very well. And so, you know, that became our corporate promise that when we go into a community, we’re gonna do what we say we’re gonna do. We’re gonna show up each and every day. Uh We’re going to provide after school tutoring and mentoring uh to Children. Um We do it through kindergarten through, through fifth grade and then we’re going to excel, we’re going to do it really, really well to the best of our ability. And um and that piece is so important because um the opposite of that sometimes occurs. So we have, you know, sometimes services that are sporadic um or for whatever reason and then, you know, it gets out into the community that hey, you know, these guys are really kind of doing this sort of halfway or whatever. Um But we really wanted to make sure that we had a, a strong commitment and a strong process um operationally that we can fulfill the promises that we were making to the organizations that funded us and gave the reputation. But then also to uh to the community in which we are serving. Very important. Yeah, and trust, trust is everything. Yeah, that’s the only thing that, you know, that’s very, very difficult to gain back. Um And it’s the, the piece that you can give away very easy. It’s easy to lose. It takes, it takes time, it takes time to gain it, you, you could lose it in a, in a couple of hours. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And so when you see it sliding, I say, get in front of it rather than behind it. Um, so if you sense that, hey, somebody has lost their trust in, uh, in, in you or the organization for whatever reason, try to get in front of it rather than responding behind it. So, um, you have to, that’s the part of kind of knowing, um, and be able to get out from behind the desk, do an assessment and really have a clear mind. Um, and then, uh, own what you need to own and, um, and then, uh, strengthen yourselves and be ready for the, for the next day tomorrow. Hey, let’s talk. I think, I think we’ve got, we’ve got an issue between us. I mean, let’s let me come over, let’s talk, you know, face to face, right is the best way. Uh, even if you got to fly somewhere, you know, if the relationship is important, uh, it’s, it’s worth, it’s worth taking the time to, to be there in person. Yeah. And I’ll just also add, sometimes it’s not repairable. So if that’s the case, then don’t impress it, uh, don’t, don’t push somebody to repair something that they’re not ready to repair. And so, you know, be patient, um, like, for instance, if they won’t take the meeting, if they, if they won’t talk to me you’re right. We have issues but I don’t, I don’t, I don’t see we have a basis to, to have a conversation. There you go. That’s a hard one. That’s a hard one. That’s a hard to hear. That’s a hard, it’s hard to hear but you know what you have to, you have to, you have to own and go ok and then you can’t push somebody to reconcile. Um you have to, you have to then go. Alright, this is what I’m coming, I’m comfortable with with hey, yeah, we’re gonna take some ownership here the other the uh you know conflict is always a two way street. Um but then you just have to kind of let it sit and often times what I find is that it comes around and and then you go oh and then you look at it later on with the person and they go well it wasn’t really that big of a of a deal. It was more me than the. Yeah and so yes, reconciliation has to be mutual has to be mutual. It can’t be one person chasing it can’t be can’t be as much as we want to, as much as we want to make it as much as we want, as much as we oftentimes we’re we’re we’re big people, pleasers in this business but you know what, you have to be able to sit with some conflict and just go. All right. Well, I’ll, I’ll learn from it and um and then we’ll, we’ll, we’ll reconcile this if not now. Uh We’ll wait for a delayed response and, and do it later. Yeah. What’s that Chick Fil? A award that you, you said you won two years in a row? What is that about? Eat more chicken? So, yeah, so we were um so we were, we were nominated by one of the two of the operators. One in uh in Fairfield, another one in Ontario down in Southern California where we have a center and uh we were nominated for their true inspiration award. And um the first time we didn’t win the um the award. But um but we were patient and we applied again and then the second time we won it in the owner’s uh the owner’s name, um the founder’s name, uh Truitt Kathy. And it was so incredible um to and such an honor to win an award in the name of a, of a man who basically took serving people and created something that was just an incredible franchise. Um But uh Truitt just had such a, such a fantastic heart for people um for understanding how to serve um serve people out of a, out of a, out of a small um restaurant. And um and then kind of grew it to a mall location and then uh from there, it became the Chick Fil a story. So uh we won it, we’re one of the few organizations that’s won that twice. So we won but, uh, uh, once and then we won it, uh, again, uh, two years ago, so huge honor. Um, and, uh, really appreciate, uh, Chick Fil A for recognizing, uh, the work that we’re doing and the excellence and then being able to learn, uh, from their great successes. Congratulations. And especially for being a second time, second time winner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was really, really unique. Um, but we’re, we’re, we’re grateful to win it. Chick Fil A has those brilliant billboards on the side of the highway with the cows. The cows eat more chicken chikin. Yeah, I don’t eat a lot of, I don’t eat a lot of fast food, but I do, I do, uh chuckle at their, their billboards, cows, sometimes the cows are stacked on top of this one cow and another cows. I don’t know, shoulders or whatever they, you know, and, and he’s got a piece of chalk in his mouth or something. He’s eat more chicken. Yeah, it’s brilliant. I know. It’s just simple and smart and funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, let’s talk about uh celebrating successes. So we talked about, you know, there might be some downside, there will be any, any relationship, we call it a partnership or not. It’s gonna have downsides. But the, uh the success is the achievements, you know, how do you, how do you recognize those? Make sure all the, all the stakeholders that are involved, feel ownership for the, for the achievement and it doesn’t even have to be a big achievement, I’m imagining. Right. Yeah, just, you know, recognizing, giving high fives, uh recognizing with the team, hey, when things really come together, uh and just uh being able to, uh to, to celebrate that we spend quite a bit of time, you know, talking as an organization and really understanding where those successes are. Um and then be able to, to have that with our board, be able to have it with our uh staff, being able to have it with uh with other key partners. So if we like when we won the Chick Fil A award, we let them know that, hey, we won this award. Um You don’t wanna surprise a, a really strong partner. So we always try to keep them out in front of the news that we have. So if we’re opening, like we’re gonna be opening up a second center in Santa Neil, we’ll let our key partners know that we’re opening up that center because we don’t want to have them hear it in the news and go huh? I had no idea what was going on. Um So, so, so um so we want them to be able to uh to hear it from us first. Um And particularly from uh from the, from the leadership. So we make sure that we uh that we, we celebrate in those ways to let them know that, hey, you know what we’re, we’re thinking about this idea or this idea that we’ve been thinking about for several years has now come to fruition. Um and be able to really kind of give them some uh some news and be able to celebrate directly or indirectly with them. You mentioned celebrating internally too, right? Achievements. And again, they don’t have to be big, right? It’s, it’s monumental. Just, you know, we’ve, we’ve surpassed something. We, we’ve done something that we were out to do and we did it and we did it very well. Yes, absolutely. And then, and, and document those things. We have, you know, not just in an annual report but, but document them in a, in A I, you know, I, I journal a lot so I document them because let me tell you the times are gonna get hard and uh you can go back and look at those successes. It really helps you when you come across some trouble water. Um So, you know, it reminds you about, you know, the, the times in which you, you came across something and, and you were successful. And um you know, in our particular case with being a faith based organization, you know, God really helped us here or whatever it might, whatever it might be. But um you know, celebrate and understand and document and scribe those successes that’s so important. What else do you want listeners to know? Mark that, that I haven’t asked you about, we haven’t talked about yet in terms of the, the, anything about these, these strategic partnerships. Yeah. Um, well, I think we hit upon a lot. I would, I would just say that, you know, to reiterate to the listeners, hey, you know, make sure that you, that you’re, it’s, you, I just want to recognize to them and I’ve listened to AAA lot of podcasts. I listened a bit to yours as well and they’ve been so informative but, but go and, and, and I know you spend a lot of time um in the day to day stuff and everything in this business feels like an emergency. It really does because you’re dealing with people’s lives and to, to the folks that we serve, it is an emergency to them. Um So we always end up, you know, feeling like there’s a fire somewhere. Um But really take time to move yourself away and really be able to, to look and do a, a fair assessment of your organization, do a fair assessment of yourself, of where your strengths and where your weaknesses are and then be able to move outside the desk, move outside the office and really meet people, meet people in the communities. Um just uh just be, be interested um be interesting and, um, and then have, have fun. Um It’s a lot of fun. I, I love it. I mean, I mean, it, that’s great. So have fun, have fun doing it. Um, and you’ll, you’ll learn something new, um, guaranteed, uh, you’ll learn something about your organization. Uh, you’ll, somebody will come up and go, hey, golly, you know, you’ll be like, I’ll be wearing a lo kids shirt and, uh, somebody that’s over at the parts store will go, hey, you know what, my, my son went through that program and let me tell you a little bit about the great experience he had and I’ll go no way. Your, your son did. Wow. And I’ll find out more about what he, what he does and he’s the manager of the parts store. Um Hey, why did your son like that? And so you’ll hear a lot more about your organization than just what you’ll get off some data sheets. So, yeah, so, um, have fun at it. It’s, it’s a great adventure. I’ll never forget mayor, uh Harry T Price going whenever we had an adventure to go on to. He said, you know what? Mark we’re up for a new adventure. And so, uh, so he would, he would, he would, he would grab the saddle when we go. Um, but, uh, yeah, um, go out, have a great time. You’ll never, you’ll never guess who you’ll meet. I mean, I have met some incredible, incredible individuals. Um And, uh, so you’ll, you’ll never ever, it’ll always surprise you. Um, everyone from, not only just the chick fil A but Doctor Phil we met, um you know, we’ve met people just along the way that have been so inspiring. Um And uh and so, yeah, go out and do it. You’ll have a great time, Mark Lillis, executive director of the 11. You’ll find them at 11 kids.org. You can connect with Mark on linkedin. Mark. Thank you so much for sharing this wisdom. It’s valuable. Thank you, Tony. Thank you. Great interview. Sure, appreciate you, appreciate your listeners and what you’re doing. It’s, it’s, it’s monumental for the, for the sector. Thank you. Next week, Veronica La Finna with your one page strategic plan enough with her with the Veronica La Finna already. I’m getting tired. How many weeks have we promised Veronica La Finna? Uh uh This time, you know, she got sick. We were supposed to record earlier this week. She got sick uh and lost her voice partially. That’s the, that’s the second guy Russell James. He had lost his voice too. We were supposed to, we promised him and he lost his. I don’t know there’s something going around anyway. She swears we’re gonna do it next week and she’ll be on, she’ll be on enough already if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. I’m, I’m exasperated now. I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 21, 2024: How We Got Here

 

Robert PennaHow We Got Here

It’s the story of the unpredictable trajectory that led to today’s U.S. nonprofit sector. How did we come to be what we are? The history is told by Dr. Robert Penna, author of the book, “Braided Threads.” (This originally aired August 3, 2018.)

 

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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. It’s good to be back home. My studio mic should sound much better than the previous couple of weeks. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d come down with ichthyosis if you dried me out with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with the highlights. Hey, Tony, we have how we got here. It’s the story of the unpredictable trajectory that led to today’s us nonprofit sector. How did we come to be what we are? The history is told by Doctor Robert Penna, author of the book Raided Threads. This originally aired August 3rd 2018 on Tony’s Stake two tails from the plane. The overhead bins we’re sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Here is how we got here. I’m very glad to welcome uh Doctor Robert M. Penna Bob back to the studio. Um He’s the author of the new book Braided Threads a historical overview of the American nonprofit sector. He served for five years as a consultant to Charity Navigator and also as an Outcomes consultant to the World Scout Bureau. Indeed, his last book was the Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox, which we talked about on this very show. He’s presented before non profit organizations and associations across the US. And in Canada, Poland, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Australia Bob is a native of the Bronx, New York and he still sounds like it. Even though he lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, you’ll find him in his book at Braided threads.com. Welcome back, Bob Penna. Thank you very much for having a little closer having. Thank you very much for having me. My pleasure. Thank you for coming to the studio. Um This uh braided threads uh overview, overview. Um I think that I think you make the point. There’s just not enough of an appreciation among those of us in the nonprofit sector. It’s, it’s not where we, where we came from, where we came from. Well, I, I think a lack of knowledge about the sector is probably throughout the population, but for those of us that work in it, um Most people know stop to think about where it all come from and uh like so much else around us. Uh We Americans are notorious for a lack of a historical sense generally. Uh We just kind of accept that, uh you know, OK, that mall was built for my convenience right before I was born, forgetting about what was there before being a farmer got in those, what the same thing with the sector. Um, people just accept it for what it is today and even though they don’t know, the real size or the real dramatic, uh, you know, economic impact and, um, I thought that that story ought to be told. It actually started, uh, uh, as a, what I thought it was gonna be a chapter in another work and it got as big as a book. And it was to me, a fascinating, fascinating story. What’s the thread that you think is most important resiliency through the history of resiliency? In other words, it is changed. The reason it’s called braided threads is because it is not uh one unbroken series of events uh that uh took place in sequential honor and all in one line for the history and, and the strength I thought both of the of the sector, there are all these different things that were happening that when they were woven together gave us what we have today. Uh So that’s where the, the title came from. But if you had to pick one thing, I think it’s a story of resiliency. It’s, it’s a story of uh before it was a formal sector such as it is today. It still was a movement. It was a, it was a things that people were doing and it ricocheted off of reacted to but also impacted events for over 200 years. You’re, you’re clear to point out that it’s not a history of nonprofits. No, it’s how the nonprofit sector evolved because of discrete events in history. Well, that’s why it’s called an overview. In other words, I, I didn’t start out with day one and then try to give chronologically month by month, year by year, whatever, what I did was I looked at what I thought were the most impactful things that uh uh happened during or to the history of the sector. And those are the things I wrote about. Now. Um I’m not sure if we’re gonna go strictly chronological. We, we made the book isn’t actually strictly chronological. There are places where I have to double back. Um Now, when you were on last time we talked about uh Queen Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth the first. But I know Martin Luther uh piques your interest. I thought he’s pre by about 60 by about 60 years. I, I particularly thought it was interesting because if you look at the sector today, it is largely secular uh humanist. Um not that there aren’t religious or religiously affiliated organizations in it, but it is not a religious sector. I mean, generally speaking, not that there aren’t religious or uh organizations and affiliations, but it is a very humanistic secular. In some cases, you might say liberal, I don’t know uh uh movement and yet its roots were distinctly religious. So how did that break happen? Why did that break happen? Where did, and personally, I trace it back to Martin Luther and the reformation. So you are because up until then, uh I mean, again, and this is not to be uh uh focused on just one, you know, ethnicity or religious tradition. This is certainly not to leave anybody else out. But the truth of the matter is that Europe was Catholic ever since, you know, Constantine made it the Catholicism of Christianity, the official uh uh religion of the Empire in 330 Ad Europe was Catholic and then comes along Martin Luther and he initiates along with a few other people, the reformation. And his biggest point was that unlike where the Catholic church said it was faith and good works that got you into heaven, Martin Luther was Sola fide faith alone. He split them and he said you can do all the good works you want, they’re not gonna get you into heaven. Faith is and he divided it at that point. And that crack, that infinitesimal airline crack got wider and wider and wider and wider people began to realize over time, maybe they never even articulated it, but it became a sense that there were certain things you do because they’re right, not because it’s an extra two points to get into heaven. This tradition had not existed theretofore and that’s why I peg one of the 1st, 1st steps towards what we have today and particularly in the United States with Martin Luther. And now uh so, and then Queen Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth was important. Now, if listeners want to go back, you can go back to uh the June 2016 show. We talked for about a half an hour. Not all about Queen Elizabeth, but we talked a fair amount about her more than we’re going through today. But you can go to uh Tony martignetti.com, Search Bob’s last name Penna Pe Nn A and that June 2016 show last time he was on uh we, we’ll appear to you very quickly. Um Queen Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth in 1601 issued something that was called a uh statute of charitable Uses. And what she did was um and this not to say this had never happened before, but she codified the idea that things that were of civic and civil benefit could be appropriate targets of charitable givings. What’s things founding of funding of schools, the funding of scholars, the building of bridges, the building of causeways, the ransoming of prisoners. All of these things were in this list. So what was she doing there? She was a further secularizing charity, but b she was putting into the charitable pot things that theretofore had not been considered charity, charity, but charity was always personal to help the poor. Now she’s moving far away from help the poor bridges, bridges and ransoming hostages or also uh putting together a sort of a charitable pot for the dowry for poor maidens, ok? Um There were things that today you might call either social engineering or what, what not. But the point is it was no longer the idea that charity always was, always had to be about helping the poor. So first Martin Luther breaks off the idea of these good deeds to having nothing to do with getting you into heaven. And then she comes along 60 years later and says on top of that charitable activity, things that are good for the community and not necessarily what was thought of as personal charity. Putting the uh the coin in the beggar’s hand beyond Martin Luther uh religion, the, the evolution of religion has been tremendous, particularly in the United States. We’re probably gonna hit religion a bunch of times. But give us an overview of why, why you say tremendous. Well, I would say two reasons first off because of the impact of puritans. Um I if you wouldn’t mind me mentioning another author, Colin Woodard’s book American Nations, he makes the, what’s his name? Colin Woodard American Nations. He’s in your, in the introduction. And he makes the point that uh they were founding cultures here in the United States and one of these founding cultures he calls yanked basically the Puritan culture. And uh the thing of it is that, that had a tremendous impact because their world view, they were the only ones coming here amongst the settlers, amongst the French, the Spanish, the Swedes, everyone else who came here who came with this idea of creating a better society. We’ve all heard that term. The city on the hill, John Winthrop in their Mayflower compact was writing this down and was saying that amongst the things we’re going to do is every person has to be responsible for every other person built into the DNA of that colony. And what it became eventually in terms of, one of the, I would say dominant cultures of the United States was this concept that we have a responsibility, a civic, civil un responsibility for helping each other. We’re gonna come back to Winthrop. 01 of the New England Puritans, right? It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to how we got here. So let’s jump ahead. You know, we may come back like I said, we may not stick chronological, but you mentioned Winthrop, uh New England Puritan the New England Puritans were different than, in terms of their, their uh concept of charity than the Southern. It was also ok. The pioneer was also, it had a lot to do with was the, the, the way they set their society up if you think of the South. Um The first off there was the Tidewater South, the uh Maryland, Virginia, uh uh Northern North Carolina, that was one society. But then there was what we came to know for better or ill as the South. Eventually the confederacy et cetera that all started in South Carolina. It was a plantation. Both of these were actually plantation societies and these plantations were largely self sufficient. So, amongst the things they didn’t do, they didn’t worry about having a public school because the rich took care of their own Children. They had tutors or perhaps they sent the Children away someplace, but they didn’t worry about public schools and the poor didn’t matter. They need education, neither white nor black, it didn’t matter. So all of the things that we take now as thinking of they are earmarks of society. They’re earmarks of civilization. They didn’t exist down there. Conversely, the first things you did in New England was you? Where’s the Village Green? The church is gonna be at one end, the congregational, of course, uh the, the school is gonna be at the other end. Everybody supported it through their taxes. So right there you had a division. This then later was reflected in terms of things like the pieces of civil society that you and I would consider to be uh a charitable efforts. They didn’t exist in the South since religion is a thread that you, it’s very important the congregationalists. And in that time they were the, they were the, they were the state religion in Massachusetts. Oh, just in Massachusets? Mass in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut. As you went for the South, it became the Anglicans. In fact, the Anglicans were a minority in, in Massachusetts. And what, what became of the p you don’t, you don’t see a pilgrim church or a Puritan church anymore. They became the congregationalists which were supported by taxes. So, I mean a complete uh you know, this is obviously uh all pre revolution, pre pre constitution. But in that, in that day, we had state religions in, in every, every colony, some of the northern state, every colony not know, including eventually, you know, as things got more settled down south, the Anglican, the Anglican, the church of England was the state church. So for example, uh in uh uh Virginia had to deinstitutionalize the Anglican church. So taxes wouldn’t go to it anymore. But it did have this thread Tony of uh o of how religion impacted it. It goes through this whole story because uh when the ministers no longer were part of the government, so to speak, they had to find a new role, you had other sects that came along. After the second great awakening amongst them, the Baptists, the Methodists, they were incredibly influential because they had, they didn’t have all the formal theology that others had. It was that’s why you would hear a Baptist preacher referred to as Brother Parsons or something because they weren’t ordained ministers in many cases. And because of that lack of formality, number one, um they could, uh they didn’t need a church necessarily, they could preach under a tree. But secondly, they also had a much more accessible kind of idea uh the way they approached it. And a lot of what we see today came from specifically the Baptist evangelicals and the Methodists, like what, like what some of these traditions that, well, for example, the 1st, 1st nationwide survived the first nationwide uh uh charities if you wanna call it were Bible and tract associations. And they were all run by, funded by and pushed by these Southern uh evangelicals, Methodists and Baptists. And that became like the first nationwide charities, the precursors of all the big ones, you know, today, they were the first ones who were like coast to coast. What else? Is there another tradition that uh you can, you can, I think, I think another tradition I would, I would connect is uh uh the activism of uh many, many uh groups. So for example, going back to the abolition of slavery, which of course started of all places in Boston. Boston was the home of the abolitionist movement and a lot of the people up there were religiously affiliated. But it is also true that during Reconstruction and what a lot of the quote, charitable work that was done down there amongst the freedmen, amongst the freed slaves, et cetera was done by Northern Methodists and Northern Baptists. So this, this threat, this involvement, but they weren’t doing it necessarily uh for the, for the same reasons that going back to, you know, the 14 hundreds, the, the Catholic slash Christians were giving money to the poor that was trying to buy their way into heaven. It was slowly completely different. This was, this was a uh uh a contribution to society. Exactly. It was, it was like a secular, the nation beyond. It was a secular act being done by people who, who belong to uh a, a particular denomination. In this case, it’s interesting to see the, the degree of do get think back, you know, go back to the anti-war movement during the sixties. How many of those people marching? They were protestant ministers, many of them, many of them were Methodists and they were Baptist. This strain never went away. What was uh I’m jumping way ahead now. We’ll come back to the constitution and separation of church and state. But uh um ancient uh Greek uh Greece, Rome, Egypt. What was, what, what was the conception of charity that well, Egypt does it vary by Empire or generally speaking? I mean, even in Egypt, there are, there are higher hieroglyphics that have been found and uh have been translated that roughly say that uh you know your place in the afterlife and dependent upon how you treated pe people in this life. So you might say there was that kind of strain of charity in Greece and Rome, charity was much more uh what um Queen Elizabeth did. In other words, the idea was particularly in Rome, if you want to get ahead and you want to be noticed. So let’s say you’re in the army and you want to move into politics, you were high up in the army, you would spend stuff, you would spend money on things that the public could enjoy. Like you would build a public bath or perhaps you would pay for a temple to Athena or some small thing of this nature. But the idea was that charity in those days did the poor didn’t count, the poor didn’t exist on anybody’s radar screen. You had a totally different perspective of human nature, human value and it was for your own. It was for your own, good, for your own good, your own career, career, career development. But the whole idea you could just, I could spend 400 bucks to go to a conference. Uh Then I would have had to build a temple to Athena or you could today you could make a big donation to a hospital and then put a plaque on the wall with your name. This is Tony Martignetti Wink. I’d rather build a temple. But um ok, that’s interesting. All right. Thank you. So, so let’s go. All right. So now we have uh uh our constitution, our bill of Rights, uh its first amendment. Um obviously religion. No, no state religion and, and separation of church and state. So how did these factor into these factored in three different ways? Number one part of those, those, the first amendment is the right of assembly, um which the British kept an eye on uh when they were, when they were in charge. Well, now you could uh formally have, you could have group meetings, you could organize, you didn’t have to worry about perhaps the king’s soldiers would come and say break this up while you six people was gathering here. One of the things that people did was they formed organizations de Tocqueville um wrote back in 1830 something when he wrote his famous, uh his famous review of Ame of America based upon his tour that Americans were already organizing for virtually everything. You name the thought, music, culture of politics, something that they thought would be done. And Americans were organizing. He has a, he has a comment that says, uh where in England you will find a uh uh uh a, a person of great wealth or prominence heading up an effort or where in France you will find the government doing that in America. You virtually always find it being done by a citizen’s organization. Interesting. So this could have been a De Tocqueville was here in like the early 20 you know, the 1st 20 years or so of American independence. I mean, I believe he wrote Democracy in America somewhere around 1834. Um, and these were already his reflections. Uh by 1820 the New England area already had over 2000 of these citizen voluntary organizations. They were the precursors of today’s nonprofits. Yeah. And how were they structured? W what do we know about? Their, their organization was structured like they were structured, sort of as, uh, you know, an association. They had uh bylaws, they had officers. What they didn’t have was either illegal corporate identity. Nor did they have, uh, any sort of fiscal power because the laws that created what we call today, a corporation didn’t exist back then. Uh All right. So we’re in the, like, early to mid 18 hundreds. Are they, are they doing their own independent fundraising? Yes, they were doing well. They were doing, they were doing, we would, they would, they would call a subscription, they would call it a subscription. I put out a, a subscription subscription request and it was today’s fundraising but that they called it a subscription. But the key things in those days were threefold. Number one, they weren’t incorporated So they didn’t have a legal standing identity such as people don’t like about citizens united, that whole idea that it didn’t exist. Secondly, they did not have any, uh, uh, separate fiscal ability to buy, to sell to, they, they didn’t. And the third thing was that the officers or whoever was there, the officers were the identity. So if Mrs Smith or Jones quit and, or died very often the operation would fall apart because there was no way to keep it going. It was very, very crucial for them to eventually get this right to uh to uh uh incorporate. And one of the most key points about this was that they eventually incorporated under the state laws, the laws of their home states now who then control them, did the state legislature because it charted them or allow them to incorporate, control them or were they independent? And there was a crucial, a crucial court case involving Dartmouth University, whereby the courts found that even if public money went to these entities, and even if in fact, these public entities, these entities were incorporated under state law, legis couldn’t touch, the legislature, could not give the money, but the legislature could not tell them. In this case, specifically Dartmouth University. What to do that independence was crucial because it allowed these organizations to in many, many, many cases precede government in various uh efforts, whether it was uh schools for the Children of Freed uh former slaves. Whether it was schools for uh today you’d call it, you know, handicap the deaf, the blind. Uh it, they would very often create certain they would call them asylums. Today. You might call them orphanages for Children. There was one in New York City that was specifically for the shall we say, um, um, Children of prostitutes who might have been called bastards back then or might be called illegitimate. Nobody. Where did these kids go? What did you do with them? And they were, there was a privately funded asylum that was created just for those people, just for those Children, for the poor as well. Very well almshouses. They, yes, very, very largely funded by these private entities, but very often, particularly in New York City, New York City under Mayor Dw Clinton High School in Bronx, Clinton in the Bronx. He became, uh, he was governor at one point. Um, he was not only when he was mayor, he was also head of one of the largest charitable efforts in the, in, in, in the city. And it was even back then. We’re talking early, I’m gonna say around, I’m guessing here, I’m trying to remember 18 twenties, something like that. I don’t remember the exact years of his, uh, his term of office, but the city was already paying what today you would call a nonprofit to run the, run the schools for the poor. So in New York State, particularly this tradition of public money going to a, not what we today would call a nonprofit to provide a legislatively desirable and socially desirable. And think about it, Tony, this is 2018. You’re almost 200 years later. We’re still doing the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Well, well, around this period, let, let’s take like mid 1800 or so. What, what’s happening in the, in the rest of the country with very well. Slavery and the civil war are, are percolating and a tremendous number of, of, of um efforts, private government effort or rather private citizen efforts uh were trying to have the slave trade stopped because the constitution originally said that the uh uh the the government could not do anything even to end, end the slave trade, not slavery, but the trade for 20 years. So this effort was going on for a long time and it was all being done by, by citizens and 99% of them up north. Um A lot of them either spurred by or uh um uh inspired by the culture of yanked do, which was spreading across the country at that point. I mean, think about it from the Mohawk Valley to the Ohio Valley. It’s we spread from east to west and this culture came with us. And uh the number of people who felt that this was a uh uh a scar on our national character uh increased. And um I mean, you’ve heard, you know, the Missouri compromise, bleeding Kansas, we all know what, all the things that led up to the Civil War. But what was, while that was going on there was this tremendous effort to, among other things abolish slavery. But at the same time, uh penal reform, um uh uh reform of, to, to, to end of what’s the biggest show in New York Hamilton, right. Hamilton and Burr dueling, outlaw dueling. Um all these are, these are, these are efforts by the, by the nonprofit organ by these organization organizations. Ok. Now, the term nonprofit didn’t come along until 1950. Yeah, we’re gonna get, well, the right, we’ll get to the tax exemption. Ok. But by these or penal reform, what else, what, what can you think of other examples, what they were doing around this time? Well, it was very, very interesting, uh, amongst these subscriptions today. You know, there, there’s, everybody’s familiar with the term 501 C three. Well, the three denotes one level of 501 c, there are actually 29 of them. Well, one of them, one of the earliest was, uh, what was called mutual society, sort of mutual aid or mutual. Today. There are mutual insurance companies which are nonprofit. They started back then. The idea is you would again have a subscription and if, uh, a fire hit your house, this would pay money to you to get you back on your feet. This was another nonprofit effort that didn’t exist, uh Benjamin for every year. Well, I guess that was, remember Benjamin Franklin, but every year I get my uh subscribers check from uh USA a right, a mutual mutual uh benefit uh insurance insurance company. And now, and bank, uh Ben Franklin, uh Ben Franklin, uh uh is credited with founding amongst the uh first uh uh for nonprofit things in the United States. The Volunteer Fire Corps in Philadelphia, one of the first libraries uh the Juno Society. These were all today, you’d call them nonprofit effort, effort uh that he founded uh in, in Philadelphia uh before the revolution. So again, this was, but interestingly enough, not down south. Yeah, not down south. Once you started to get towards around the North Carolina border, you didn’t see it because of the plantation economy because of the culture. They didn’t have a civic there. There wasn’t a civic, a civic sense. We have community sense. It was this my plantation. We take care of everything here. This is why two of the most revolutionary things that happened down there was uh Thomas Jefferson’s founding of the University of Virginia and North Carolina’s founding of one of the first state universities in the country because that’s was unheard of down there. It was just unheard of. So all of these efforts, as they say were northern. We have about a minute before the break. Um The, the tax exemption, I feel like this is a good time. When, when did that, when did that, uh, the tax exempt tax exemption started way, way, way back because you have to ask about which taxes. So it’s probably gonna be more than a minute. Wasn’t religion, wasn’t religion, the religion first, exemption, religion and then also schools and things, things of that nature. So I go back to that. It broadened but it started with religion. Ok. So we teased it together and you always do. Thank you very much. Always tease. It’s time for Tony Steak Two. Thank you, Kate. I have another tale from the plane. Yeah, about the overhead bins. Uh, regrettably last week’s civility on deplaning and how humane and polite everybody is, uh doesn’t quite carry over to the overhead bin courtesy. Uh, it, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re doing some things not very polite uh, in the overhead bins for instance. And I’m, I’m just seeing this more recently too, like, I don’t know, just within the past six months, even that just that recent putting small bags like backpacks or a shoulder bag in the overhead bin, that smaller stuff belongs underneath the seat in front of you. That’s courtesy. So that the overhead bins, which are bigger obviously and can accommodate the bigger bags. That’s where the bigger bags are supposed to go. But I’m seeing more people putting smaller bags in the overhead bin and, and I’m checking these same people. It’s not like they have two small bags. They got one under. No, it’s not one under the seat and one in the, in the overhead, they’re not using the space underneath the seat in front of them so that they can stretch their legs out and put their feet there. Well, that’s not really the way the plane is designed. That’s not the most courteous thing to do. So, please your, your smaller bags use the space under your seat and how, I mean, how many people can fit their feet under the uh in the underneath the seat in front of them anyway, although, well, although maybe in the main section, it it does go, it can get a little tight but you, you still, it’s being discourteous. So please not the not the smaller bags in the overhead bins, the smaller bags in the seat underneath you and save the space up ahead, up, up over for the bigger bags. And then when also when you’re putting your bigger bags in, you know, again, just politeness put them in so that the top or the bottom of the bag is facing the aisle, not the side of the bag. So don’t put it in long ways, put it in short ways so that more people can fit their bag. And even if it’ll stand up on its end like a book, if it stands up on its side, that’s what I mean on its side, then stand it up so more bags can stand up and then the final thing you’re supposed to check to make sure the bin will close before you walk away because it may look like your bag fits, but it could be, it’s a little too tall. The bin is not gonna close. If that’s the case, then we’re just gonna have to go. The flight attendant is gonna have to find you later on and you’re gonna have to end up checking the bag uh at the gate anyway, or you know, plain side anyway. So it’s not like you’re getting away with something just you know, the the the courteous thing make sure the bin closes so that uh we don’t have a problem later on, right? Delayed flights. Nobody wants that delayed flights. Ok. A little bit of a rant. I know but uh the overhead bin space, you know, let’s be civil. Let’s be courteous like we are with the planning, with the, with the, with the deplaning it works out so well, it’s so smooth, please. We, we can carry that over to the overhead bin, courtesies. I know we can. That’s Tony’s take two Kate. So we talked about this last week, I’ve never flown. So maybe this is a dumb question. Does each row have their own hubby? Uh No. Uh it’s, it’s pretty much a free for all except uh first class. It’ll say, you know, these are for first class bags only but when it gets really crowded in the back you then they’ll use the, they’ll use the, the, um, the first class space doesn’t matter. So it’s not by row but sometimes by cabin. Uh, or, you know, um, uh, uh, it’s, uh, service service or even Delta calls it, which experience like is it first class or is it comfort plus or is it main cabin? So there might be divided space by service but no, not by row. We gotta get you on a plane. We gotta, we gotta, we gotta get you, we gotta get you on a plane. This I feel bad that you’re asking this question. I feel like there’s an experience that everyone needs to like have at some point. Well, yeah, eventually you’re gonna get on a plane. It’s gonna be just be too far for you to drive or walk. Uh I don’t think you walk to walk in like 650 miles, but you could drive, you could drive it. All right. We got to get you on a plane. That’s, that’s all, that’s all. Well, we’ve got VU but loads more time. Here’s the rest of how we got here with Doctor Robert Penna Bob Penn is with me. His new book is braided Threads, a historical overview of the American nonprofit sector. Just get the book because you know, we can’t do it justice. Of course you’re interested in how our sector, our community evolved to what it is now. Um Get the book you know, we, we’re hitting some threads, some braided threads if you will. But, um, you want the full story, you know, even, you know, Bob mentioned something. I was like, oh, yeah, the Dartmouth case, you know, I, I can’t remember at all. Um, just buy the thing for Pete’s sake. All right. Um, where were we? See now, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve ranted about bees and sunshine and all this live love. Where were we? You also screwed up the whole thing about baseball. But that’s another thing. Well, yeah, baseball doesn’t have touchstones. But anyway, that’s a different story. We’re talking about, we’re talking about taxes and tax exemption and that’s what you, you had asked about tax exemption. Thank you. So, it started religion was the first one. What period are we talking about? Now? Going, go, going back to probably the 16 hundreds. And the point of the matter is you ask what taxes, what taxes, federal government levied very, very few taxes. Before that the states levied. Not that many taxes, most taxes were on property and very early on churches were exempted from paying those taxes. Uh, now it wasn’t just the church building. It also became the, uh, the, the parsonage where the minister lived. Uh, then if there was a set, another building, a library perhaps, then schools obviously were not taxed, uh, be they private or be they public, uh, clearly the public government is gonna tax itself. So public institutions like a public school would never, we were never uh uh taxed. But the idea was that it, the, the, the exemption list grew bigger and bigger. New York State was obviously this was going on in all states. I happened to have a quite an extensive, uh, accounting in the book of how the New York State list just kept getting broader and broader and broader and broader. Uh At one point, it was interesting because the law was changed to allow organizations that included in their charter or their mission, the uh the enhancement of the minds of young people or something. That’s how the, why got in because why had tried to get a tax exemption, they had gone to court, they’ve been turned down, they had to pay the tax bill. But everybody thought gee the y should be in, in this. So why is very interesting too uh in the World Wars? Yeah. Well, that’s right in the book, right? That they were also involved. This is the book I know. Yeah, but what I’m saying is that the, the, the, the, the why was not really was not mentioned or organizations like the, why now you mentioned New York State? Um I love this. Uh theres one thing I want to read, this is from 1799 uh New York State. You, you, you cite New York State as sort of representative of what was happening around there. There were very issues but it was very representative. This is an act for the assessment and collection of taxes, New York State 1799 excerpt, uh I won’t read the whole thing. Of course, no house or land belonging to any church or place of public worship or any personal property belonging to any ordained minister of the gospel, nor any college or incorporated academy, nor any schoolhouse, courthouse jail, alms house or property belonging to any incorporated library shall be taxed by virtue of this act, right? And that, that list just kept going. And as I said, at one point, they amended it to include and I forget the specific wording was something about the betterment of the minds of young men and women because there was the Y MC A and the YWC A young, you know, young men and young women’s Christian Association. So the the law was changed and basically what the courts said was that these operations were doing good, they were doing good things and were beneficial to society and therefore society. Uh it was in society’s interest but also as just a smart thing to do, we are gonna do our bit by supporting them to the extent that we do so by alleviating them from the tax burden. They were still not called nonprofits cause that concept came way later. Um But these organizations, these voluntary and for a long time, it was called the voluntary sector of these or yes, that was the name of it. Um, these organizations increasingly became, uh, tax free, what we know today as the people call them nonprofits. Um, I’ll, I’ll do this relatively quickly. Um, one of the last Revenue Acts of the 18 hundreds, uh, included this idea that these kinds of organizations could be, uh, should be exempted from federal taxes. That particular Revenue Act was found unconstitutional. However, when things started to fall into place and you’ll remember it was the 16th amendment that made the income tax legal in the United States. When that happened, the recognition that these organizations should be exempt was codified and it had to be three things. Number one, it had to be incorporated as a nonprofit. What does that mean? Does it mean they can’t make a profit? They can’t make money? No, what it means is that what any excess extra either has to go back in? Well, it has to go back in. They can, this was contemporaneous with the 16th amendment. It was, well, it was shortly following the record, but what is a nonprofit means? That really mean? Does it mean it can’t make money? No, that doesn’t. That’s not what it means. What it means is it can’t take that profit and distribute it to partners, distribute it to stockholders, distribute, it has to go back into the pot. That’s number one. The second thing is that no, none of its activities can make money for any of the officers. Right. And the third, the, the, the, the third idea uh is, is, is that, um, the, uh, well, the, the role was saying the, the idea is that nonprofit, non distrito and doing some sort of civic good. And so very often it was charitable and there was a charitable, educational and the list got, you know, bigger now, fairly Mazin. I like that word. That’s what I believe that is. But maybe you’re right, maybe you’re right. Um, remember I come from the Bronx, so I’m different pronunciation. Um, well, you were wrong about, you were wrong about baseball too. So, our, our, our, our present tax, a tax code comes from 1954. That was the first place where they laid out, uh, what we have today, this 501 c category and where, uh, the general exemption from. And originally the idea was that if these organizations made money, they didn’t have to pay a corporate income tax on it, then it became not legally, but in terms of practice that they are basically free from almost all taxes other than things like excise taxes or taxes on gasoline or something that you pay as part of a bill, which is why the local men’s association will go to a restaurant and they’ll have the banquet and they give the, the, the owner, here’s my tax free, my tax free number and they won’t have to pay sales tax on the restaurant meal. Yeah. Ok. So that’s where all that came from, but it was in terms of its codification. Although the roots go back to the 16 hundreds codification goes back to 1954. Ok. Is that the 16th amendment? Was that the, uh the 16th amendment was 1913? That’s what allowed the income permitted an income tax, federal income tax, right? Ok. Ok. Um, let’s, uh, I don’t know where World War One, we saw an expansion. Uh Yes, yes. Uh Why, why, why? Because, because, well, because there was no functional way for the government to step in. One of the more fascinating things about it was that uh the, you mean we talk about the, why? The, why was the first organization to do? What today? You think in terms like the Red Cross, you know, powspow camps, uh you’re checking on status, bringing pre, you know, prisoners, pre nobody did that. This government sure as heck did neither the union nor the Confederate government. It was the Y the Y MC A that first started this, bringing this service to both sides to the Confederates and Northern. So they were, they were in uh in confederate pow camps, ministering, so to speak to union prisoners and vice versa. You say that the Y was the first large scale service corps? Really? You could say that you could, you could, you can say that the other. So it comes along World War One. There was a need for this but nobody else to do it. The, why the, why it was the Y MC A initially or was it, why was there a Y? No, well, there’s two, there’s one Y MC, a young men’s Christian Association and the young women’s which came first. Ym. So, um, first large scale surface corps and, and, well, well, what happened was this, in other words, when World War One started? And uh, uh there was uh a need when the Americans got involved, when there was a need to again bring services to this army that was being raised, whether it was, you know, outside of Fort Dix or whether it was, you know, eventually when the A EF got, got across to the other side, across the pond, expeditionary forces, right? Uh American expeditionary force, uh The whole idea was somebody had to do the same sort of thing. And the y was the first one to step in the Red Cross eventually joined the salvation Army eventually joined. But all of this was being done privately. Meantime, both prior to America’s entry into the war. And after there was a tremendous amount uh of uh um refugee, if you will uh victims, victims, relief. I mean, you know, war is terrible, whatever war it is and there’s always collateral damage, the people who are displaced, the homes that are destroyed. Well, during war, governments don’t stop to worry about taking care of that. They move on. They want they have a war to try to win. So who took care of those people? The refugee problem was tremendous. Belgium became uh one of the worst uh sites of it because when the Germans invaded Belgium, the, the allies said, well, you have to feed the Belgians because most of the Belgians of food came from outside. Germans said, no, we’re not gonna be bothered doing that. We’re, you know, feeding our troops. Do you want to give them food? You give them food? Well, it was a relief effort that began in the United States that started working to bring food to Belgium, but it was not government. It was all private, it was all voluntary. It was all what you today would call nonprofit before our and there’s actually pictures, one of the few pictures that are in the book before the war, before the US got involved in the war when we were supposed to be officially neutral. Yes, there were organizations raising money for the poor and the suffering and the widows in Belgium and France and, but there were also organizations doing the same thing, directing money to the German Empire, the Austria Hungarian Empire in Turkey because we were officially neutral. So there are actually a couple of pictures in the book. I would have shared more pictures by the way, I like pictures. Well, I’m sorry, next, next book of more pictures, but the whole idea was this entire effort was being done privately after the war, massive relief effort run by Herbert Hoover. Most of it, not all of it at that point, the US government was committing money but a great deal of it. You know, I don’t know, proportion, 60% maybe uh was all private. Today’s U. So was formed by a collection of a bunch of the collaboration of a bunch of the organizations, you mentioned the YMYWC A Red Cross. Uh that’s today’s United Service organization, right? And that’s where, that’s where it was a coalition that was found. It was one of the first ever like that. One of the first ever efforts. I mean, there are all sorts of things that happened back then that we, we today, for example, do you’ve heard of United Way? Everybody knows United Way, do you know where United Way came from? Community chest? Community Chest? And you know, today most people know community chest is a sort of a space in the car on Monopoly board. OK. Community Chest was local fundraising specifically for disaster, personal tragedy, uh private relief. So if you lost your job or the factory burned down and five people lost their job. Community chest was the, was, was the entity in each individual community that would, they would go to for relief. I mean, maybe if they belong to a particular denomination in the church might help them out or as well or the, you know, temple or, and you know, there’s a lot of that. I mean, both and there’s a whole section there on both the Jewish and Catholic specific uh um con contributions to what we know today as the uh uh um American nonprofit sector. And that, that’s interesting reading on it on its own. But this isn’t to say the churches weren’t involved but every community, there was no public relief. There was no public welfare. And so if dad died or fell off the roof and broke his leg and couldn’t work, there was no unemployment insurance, there was no worker’s comp people very often they went to community chest. What wound up happening was uh one of the transformative events was what we might call uh cooper fundraising. If everybody fund fund rosed for, for fundraise, fundraise, whatever the, the, the past tense of that is by themselves. You want it with competing appeals and they’re banging into each other. Well, uh it actually started, I believe it was in Cleveland. It was one of the first ones. Uh I know there was one in Denver, there was one in uh uh in, in, in uh Detroit. There was one I believe it was Cleveland. Was this around the, was this also the Hoover administration where nonprofits complain where, where we’re basically testified before Congress, we’re basically running over each other, stepping over each other, trying to, trying to help? Oh, yeah. That was also, was that the Great Depression or no? Yes. Yes. And No, no, there was what you’re talking about was World War Two, stepping on each other and over that was World War Two. No. What happened was when the, uh, when the depression hit, um, sort of the thought was that, uh, uh, the community chess would step up and community chess tried, they would have, instead of one annual drive, they were having two annual drives, they tried three. But the problem, as we all know, was much bigger than anybody could have foreseen and their efforts were just not up to the fact that the entire economy crashed, which is why government had to get in that. Well, it was obviously FDRFDR appointed, appointed Harry Hopkins to run the chief effort. Harry Hopkins thought that it really should be local government that was doing this, local government sitting off of the side, they’re very happy not to be involved. So what Harry Hopkins did was he said, ok, we’re gonna do this and it’s gonna be federal money. But um, none of the money can go to what today would call nonprofits they got completely cut out. That was not right. That was not to punish the nominee that was to encourage, that was to force the states unwilling states and states that had not taken on public welfare to do it or do we give the money to the state? But we, the federal money won’t go to these community chests. They were trying to force the hand of the unwilling recalcitrant states and localities and localities. But, but yes, that’s, and that was hopkins’ idea. Of course. Now, what did the nonprofits do? I mean, this kind of left them out in the cold. Now, you also have to realize that at this point, we keep, we’re talking about community chess, but this was one, this is not to say that the arts efforts weren’t going on and people weren’t founding zoos and botanical gardens. And a lot of this was originally founded by private garden clubs or a zoological society. But the nation was in crisis and relief was always from the charitable sector, which is why it was called the char. And now they a couldn’t do it anymore because it was too big a job and b the federal money couldn’t go to them. How did you know Harry Hopkins said no. So they re invent themselves. I mean, I said to USB early on, what was the theme I keep saying resiliency. And one of the things that one of the earliest tests of this resiliency was after the depression because basically the Feds said you can’t have any of you no more money for you. So um say a little about the uh the Jewish contribution to, to, to what we know. I think this is utterly fascinating. Uh There’s a book I believe the guy’s name wrote. It was Cahill K, I don’t know how Cale or K it’s called the gifts of the Jews. The gift of the Jews book is probably 20 years old at this point. But he makes the point that one of the biggest contributions that the Jewish culture, the Jewish religion made to us here in the United States was in fact, cultural, cultural. It had to do with how human beings were viewed. When the Jewish immigration here started in March. Think about where they, these people had come from. They were either, you know, they were persecuted in Czarist Russia. They were persecuted in Poland, which was part of Czarist Russia. They were kicked out of Spain. I mean, you know, 1000 years of this, they had a an outsider perspective, nobody else had. And they brought that here with them and when they got involved in charity and what they were the ones, they, they were the biggest allies of the Black Civil rights movement because their idea that nobody should be an outsider was central to them. And they brought that to that you think about today’s nonprofit uh space. We are concerned about the handicap, we’re concerned about all sorts of groups that you might call marginalized or semi marginalized. And this was antithetical to the Jewish world view. So to me, whereas a lot of these other charities were taking care of their own. So for example, there was the Irish workingman such and such, but you had to be Irish, the Jews said no inclusive inclusive Excellent. Thank you, the Jewish tradition. Uh I, I just, I, I cannot emphasize that enough because I mean, truly, today, if you look at, at, at, at the, the whole core of the nonprofit mission, it is inclusivity. And I personally feel that without the uh uh incredible Jewish influence that, that uh particularly here in New York and New York became kind of like one of those centers of the nonprofit world. But still is, I, I cannot emphasize enough how strongly I believe that, that, that worldview, that thread um truly, truly helped to imprint of what we have today. You gotta get the book because there’s uh some things we’re not going to be the Great Depression. Uh Kennedy’s uh New Frontier and then uh Johnson and Johnson’s war against four war on poverty. We have what, 34 minutes five, I want to talk about the future too. Ok. Then I’ll do very quickly. Let me just do Johnson Johnson set us on the road that we’re on there. War on poverty, war, right? The Great Society. War on Poverty. We are today farther down that road and that road has been fancied up there are, you know, there are curbs where maybe they didn’t used to be curbs. There’s a newer pavement, nicer pavement than originally, but it is the exact same road. What Johnson did was, he said we are gonna take federal money and we’re gonna change poverty. We’re gonna eradicate whatever his goal was, but it wound up that it wasn’t the government that was doing it. It was government money going to community action agencies and to nonprofits. Now we don’t have time now to go to talk about what happened to nonprofits during the fifties between World War Two. And we, we, you don’t just get the book. Well, I have the book. Oh, you mean they should get to the 13,000, 13,000 who are joining this conversation? They hope to God, you have a copy of it. That’s a different story. But the whole point was that it was hard to get for me to get one LBJ LBJ set us on the road that we’re on, we’re on now. And my fe feeling and maybe there are people in the sector who would argue, uh you know, this is my theory is that basically things have not really changed in direction they’ve changed in degree now. Uh the nonprofit sector is not just the partner of government. There’s, it’s, it’s dependent upon the government. I mean, look what happened to the sector during the depression. It wasn’t that individuals stopped giving individuals even during the worst of the, of the great recession were giving corporate was down. The corporate is not that big, it was government money. The sector today is very, very reliant on, on. So again, Johnson set us on the road that we’re on now and we are just farther down. It and very much deeper into it. I wanna, I wanna look, I wanna look forward you uh you cite uh generational change and technology change as our biggest uh opportunities, opportunities and challenges. I think, I think two of the two of the three biggest things because we end the book on what’s happening in the future. That’s the last uh the last uh third or 25% of the book. I think that the three biggest things that are impacting the uh the sector and sectors, largely unaware of it is number one, the growth we are adding 50,000 a year. Uh In 1990 there were a couple of 100,000 nonprofits in the United States today. There’s, there’s a startling chart in the book. One of the pictures, one of the pictures of the chart I drew I drew that myself dramatic rise. Um Now there’s over 1.76 million actually nobody as, as uh Mr Solomon, who’s one of the SAGES of the, of the, of the sector says nobody really knows how many there are. And it’s because there’s no registration, there’s reporting the different story. So the growth, this can’t just go on 50,000 new ones a year, even given 3 to 4% you know, uh dwindling and going away, talk about technology and technology. Uh You talked before about making online donations easy. That is changing the paradigm between donors and organizations such that we’ve never seen before you and I are of an, of an age when we still remember uh uh March of dimes going door to door. Right. That is all the chemist canisters. But think about it now, we are making it so easy for online or text, but we’re also making it very easy to give uninformed donations because it’s impulse. It’s on the second and it’s right there in your finger. The third thing is the generational change. We’re already seeing the statisticians and the demographic. The demographers are already seeing a great, great, great change in terms of values and behavior amongst the millennials and us, but not just us, also the generation right behind us. So these three things churning are have the power to totally change the nonprofit sector as we know it over the course of the next 15 years. And all I’m saying is we as a sector should be aware of these things and be prepared for what could happen and maybe try to steer the ship instead of just being a cork bobbing along where the tides and the winds take us where they will just get the book for God’s sake. Bob Penner braided threads, a historical overview of the American nonprofit sector. You’ll find uh Bob and his book at braided threads.com. Thank you very much, Bob. Thank you next week, Veronica La Femina with your one page strategic plan. Finally get Veronica on if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Fast, flexible, friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit. Love that I I uh it’s such a brilliant alliteration. It’s so much fun to say. Like week after week, our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 14, 2024: Tech Policies To Reduce Toxic Productivity

 

Marina Martinez-Bateman: Tech Policies To Reduce Toxic Productivity

First, what is toxic productivity? Then, as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people who work with you? Finally, what are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez-Bateman, at New Coyote Consulting. (This originally aired August 1, 2022.)

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. We did promise you Veronica La Finna this week, but I couldn’t record with her because I had a family emergency. So we have one from the archive and we’ll get Veronica on within a month. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of BRAC ignatia if I had to speak the words you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s going on this week? Hey, Tony, this week it’s tech policies to reduce toxic productivity. First. What is toxic productivity? Then as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people who work with you? Finally? What are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez Bateman at New Coyote consulting. This originally aired August 1st 2022 on Tony’s take two tales from the plane. The civility of deplaning were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is tech policies to reduce toxic productivity. It’s all covered by Marina Martinez Bateman at New Coyote consulting. If you start buying shoes instead of food, buying shoes, instead of paying the rent, then you have a real problem, right? And productivity is like that, you know, it’s just like any other thing that we engage in, we can do it so hard that it hurts us toxic productivity is when we will choose work over things that we need, like taking lunch breaks or moving our body or um engaging with family and community things that sort of are essential to our mental and physical health. And then, you know, what happens is as we engage more and more with this toxic level of productivity, our actual real true product or output diminishes and then we see our output diminish, we get really upset about that and then we double down on being more and more productive and, and then our output diminishes because we’re exhausted and we’re not getting filled up in other places and we double down again and it can lead to, you know, you can create uh you know, really unhealthy spaces. You can um you know, make yourself ill, you can hurt yourself, you can get hurt, you know, how many people have fallen asleep while driving um because they’re working too many hours. Um You know, how many times do we make really silly mistakes when we’re exhausted. Um Those things sort of creep in and creep in and then your identity starts to change into being someone who can’t get things right, who isn’t able to perform when that was never a part of your reality, you’re just engaging way too hard in work thinking that that’s the answer to your, your problem when really it’s the cause. And before we go further and toxic productivity, let’s remind folks in case there’s any question, uh You said, you know, it replaces being filled up by other spaces like community, family friends. Let’s remind folks of the, the joys that and, and maybe there’s even research that shows the physiological changes when we’re engaging in things that are not work. Yeah. Yeah. So you get different parts of your brain activated when you’re engaging in hobbies that are different from your work, um your creative life, you know, if you have a creative job um sometimes doing something that’s not so creative or doesn’t require a lot of like big innovative leaps um can be nice like, you know, tidying up or taking a walk or um doing something physical, like hiking or going out into the outdoors, going fishing and camping, et cetera, or even going shopping or going to the movies, like those things when they’re safe. Of course, because it’s still COVID right now um are important to engage in because they activate other spots of your brain and also just your body moves differently on a hike than it does in the office or at a desk it moves. First of all, first of all, it moves your standing desk, even if you attach a treadmill to it or something can never really replicate going outside. Um And then, you know, we’re people even introverted people need other people. We just do, we’re not, um, we cannot exist completely alone. Um We have to be able to engage in the people that we have in our personal bubble. However big that bubble is we have to be able to sort of like activate um that empathetic drive that we all have as humans or that, you know, the vast majority of us do. Um And we, we just have to be in, in concert, you know, how many of us have been at work, especially in the nonprofit sphere and things are sort of looking gloomy and we’re thinking, oh, the world is filled with bad people, everyone’s making terrible choices. This is the worst, you know, and then you go to dinner with a friend and you’re like, wait, the world is wonderful. This is great. Everyone’s making great choices. I bet all these people are just trying to figure it out because that human connection needs to exist for us to be people in the world, which is, you know, why we’re here is to be people. Thank you for that reminder, right. We are, we are communal. We are social, even the most introverted to some degree. Still, as you said, you know, with however, however, however many or few it may be uh uh contact community. All right. All right. So what are nonprofits doing that uh is leading us to toxic productivity? And we’ll, we’ll certainly get to the solutions. But what are we doing to? Uh, I don’t wanna, I certainly don’t want to say, improve it uh to induce it, induce it. Yeah, I mean, part of it is that we have these and these are, it’s great that we all want to end hunger and that we, you know, no one’s being like, oh, but it’s hard when you have 16 people and they’re all making 20 to 50 to 100% less than they could make in the free market trying to end hunger from a small office with broken chairs and a raccoon that won’t leave the trash alone. You know, like we are so severely under-resourced in nonprofit and that’s not our individual fault by any means. It’s the culture and the structures of the culture that we live in. Um where uh poor people are, the people that build this country and their labor is so exploited that they are um kept poor so that the rich can stay rich. Um And then we at the nonprofits and generally those are the people we serve are the poor or people who are missing something from their, their experience or their needs. And uh and we’re under resource too. I mean, it’s a whole, it’s a whole culture, right? It’s a whole structure. It’s a whole system that’s made to make it so that we have these incredibly vast missions and we have a broken pencil and our own gumption to make it happen. And um and it is, you know, we, we as individuals cannot solve that entire problem by ourselves. One, we can’t solve the problem that we’re working on by ourselves. We can’t end hunger alone. Um Even the most vast and well resourced organization would have to work with others in order to make that happen. Um And part of that, so we have this, like we have these vast resources, we are severely under-resourced or we have these vast missions. Yeah, and we’re severely under resourced. And then um what we as organizations do on the, on the organization to organization level is that we compete with one another. We don’t coordinate with our organizations in our same sphere or it’s hard, we find it hard to coordinate. Um We also don’t recognize that we’re under-resourced. Um Frequently we will sort of like, you know, when you get a bunch of nonprofit workers together in a room, we’ll joke about, you know, how we don’t have a chair that works and our computer is 15 years old and all these things. Um But we don’t talk about how that makes the mission harder to do and nor do we talk about how we’re still hitting goalposts. We’re still crossing finish lines. We’re still making things work and where do those resources come from? In general? They come from the individual workers. Um And some of us have vast resources to put to this and some of us don’t. Um But there’s no adjustment, a, there’s no adjustment of expectation based on how much resource we’re individually putting into the, the work to make it cross the finish line. And there’s also no, um it’s seen as an individual failing if we can’t do this impossible work with very little resource in the, in, in, in terms of money, in terms of time, in terms of support, in terms of whatever. We’re all fighting an uphill battle. And um and our organizations frequently lean into that martyrdom and lean into that, you know, while I was working 17 hours yesterday, while I was up at two o’clock in the morning, finishing with this grant while I was, you know, and um and it doesn’t have to be like that. I mean, if we live in a world where we think that our clients deserve education, food, um a healthy ecology to, to Roman community, art, all of these things, you know, medicine and um recovery and all these things that we provide to people. If we think that our clients deserve that, how come we’re not getting that for ourselves? Like how many of us are pushing off things like doctors appointments, how many of us have skipped um significant times in our family members lives because there was some campaign or something that had to go on. And then also how much of that um happens because of expectation. You know, when we start a nonprofit, we’re working with nothing, we work our way up, we become leaders in the, in the sector. And then it doesn’t seem weird to us that the people, the workers that are coming behind us are experiencing the same hardships that we experienced because it’s normal for us to struggle in this way. A lot of what you’re saying is that it’s, it’s culture and, and mindset. So I guess you’d like to change the culture and change the mindset and change the investments. Um So please, let’s uh let’s start talking about what, what we can do differently. I think what we can do differently is it starts with the leadership in nonprofits. People who are lower on the York chart do not have as much power. Although a lot of people, especially right now with the great resignation. Um A lot of people who are lower on the art chart are as asserting their power by leaving um environments that are toxic or don’t work for um what their vision is for the future. I think Gen Z is a great motivator for us to all take a look at how we’ve been working in the past and how it has harmed us and how, if we don’t get right and start cycle breaking, we are going to be perpetuating the same harm that was done to us, which while it’s not fair that we were harmed, it’s also not fair to, to sort of slough that off onto others. Um, but in the leadership of the nonprofits, we have to stop thinking that because it happened to us, it’s ok for it to happen to other workers, especially younger workers coming sort of, you know, rite of passage, you pay your dues and then you’ll, then you’ll emerge a better leader in the, in the sector. You know, that’s, that’s silly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And punishing to be, you don’t have to be punished to be successful. Exactly. Can we be like, can we be the nonprofit executives and CEO S that we needed when we were younger and that we didn’t get, can we do the things that, that would have helped us to heal or would have helped us to be safe or be properly resourced or succeed even if that’s not something that we experienced when we were younger in career? All right. Um Do you have specific, like, uh are there specific things that leaders can, can encourage? Like, you must take time off or something? You know, I, I don’t want to see anybody not using their vacation time. And you know, the these folks who say, hey, I haven’t had a vacation in four years. I’m so proud of myself and I’m thinking, like, don’t blame me. That’s your own fault. Yeah, if it’s been that long, it’s your own fault for not taking it, you know. So what, what, what can leaders do, you know, specifically to avoid this? The, the, the toxic productivity is? Yeah, that, that sort of thing where it’s like, well, it’s not my fault that Sharon hasn’t taken a vacation in seven years saying that is, is a thing we can put to bed. And we can say actually, if I’m in charge of this organization and of course, we work together with our boards and advisory councils, sometimes with governmental agencies, whoever we’re helping to steward this change with. Um but if I am the CEO here, I am the executive here, then if someone hasn’t taken a vacation in four years, that’s, that’s on me. Um This is the, this is the container I’m building for workers. Um I see my view my duties as a CEO very explicitly to keep the people in my, you know, in my organization safe. That’s one of the things that, that I have, you know, task been tasked with is to keep people safe. Um If I can tell people what kind of work we’re doing and where we’re going and what our goals are, then I have to take responsibility for their safety during that journey because I’m the one taking them that, that place. I’m the one on that journey with them. Um And so asking, you know, why is it, why is it that Sharon feels like she can’t take a vacation? Um Is there something going on internally that is making that happen? Does she not have anyone who’s trained on the thing that she does? Does she, um, has she not gotten a, a performance review in four years? And she, so she doesn’t feel like she can take a vacation because she doesn’t even know how well she’s doing her job. You know, there’s just a bunch of little things that we can look at and it takes time which most of us don’t have. And I advise leaders to look at our plate and find out where we’re being performative productive. How many of the things do we do every day? That looks like we’re doing something. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t actually cons it doesn’t actually contribute to the mission. We can spend three hours on something. And um, and not only are no more Children fed, they’re not going to be on that labor that we just did, but it looks really good. It looks like we’re doing a lot. How can we cut that out and then focus on, let’s get somebody cross trained on Sharon’s job so that she can finally take a vacation. Let’s let’s make this a safe space for our workers to make healthy decisions. And the truth is that because a lot of our sector has for so long leaned into this under resourcing of workers. There becomes a pathology around being under resource. There becomes a sort of like um system wide martyrdom. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers. Just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit Donor box.org to learn more. Now back to tech policies to reduce toxic productivity. There’s something called a brotherhood of suffering. Exactly. It’s, it’s, I’ve read about it in prison populations where I mean, the phrase says it, the brotherhood, sisterhood. Um They would of suffering the uh the, the shared experience among all folks of being in something that’s, you know, ritualistic, punishing suffering, difficult. And then, and it ends up being a source of almost pride that we’re, we’re suffering this way together. I’m sure you want to turn that on its head and, and disabuse us of that. It’s, and it’s hard, it’s entrenched, there are people for whom for whatever reason. And then this does become an individual problem once you’ve done all of the systematic things around alleviating that suffering around creating um you know, the concept of abundance, even as we’re in these systems where we’re under-resourced. And part of that is acknowledging how we’re under-resourced and, and, and speaking its name out loud, um which is capitalism and racism and colonialism. Um Once we sort of do that in our organizations, there are still going to be people for whom it is necessary, they need that they feel for whatever reason that, that this is what they have to do, this is how they have to work. Um And, and in general, what I find um in the times when I’ve managed to create this package, which is really hard to do, well, we have all these other external forces sort of like working for us to have this hero complex to keep in the savior mindset. Um When I’ve been able to make this abundance package with the sort of container where we can all work in abundance towards our common goals. There are a couple of people who will leave and sometimes it’s messy, sometimes it’s not thankfully, but sometimes it is messy. Um But it’s because they need to be in an environment that feels like home to them and that toxicity is going to feel like home until they make the choice to step out of it. And, and recognize that this is this is a choice that, that they’ve made. There’s systemic issues at hand and then there’s individual issues at hand and we as CEO S can do a lot to solve the systemic issues and also we can never make someone heal themselves. Yeah. What’s some of that uh performative work that you uh that you mentioned just if you could tick off two or three things that are performative but lacking in value and, and, and benefit. Um Staying in the office on a day when there’s no reason to, you know, if, uh something like something tragic frequently happens, if there’s something terribly tragic in our community requiring, you’re requiring everyone to keep their butts in their seats is just ridiculous. No one’s working, that’s not gonna happen. Um, even sort of staying in the office when there are things going on that are, are wonderful. Um, for example, uh, if it’s, you know, if we are living in a beach town and it’s a great surf day and we are a surf, you know, protect the surf nonprofit, everybody goes surf, like, come on, this is our whole thing. Like, it doesn’t make any sense if we are. Um, say we’re, uh, you know, very into free media and we have a free media conference in town. Nobody should be expected to come to work. We should get tickets to the free media conference and we should go to that. Um, you know, there are a lot of things I think, um, you know, if we’re a big sports town and our team is winning. Nobody’s going to pay attention to work and there’s no reason to be here. All of these things, you know, they’re all individual to the nonprofit. Then there’s also things like, you know, some of us and I’m one of these people, I admit it love to see a meeting room packed with people. We love it. But half those people do, they need to be there. Do they really, does this really important to, to the running of the nonprofit that, that, you know, so many people are there for an hour doing nothing and, or, you know, getting information that could have been in an email or, you know, et cetera. Um, yeah, I think there’s, uh, some people have gone into the, um, oh, I can’t remember what they call it but they do 15 minutes stand ups every morning and they’re never 15 minutes long. They always run over the morning huddle. I mean, if the morning huddle makes you guys productive and it helps your, your nonprofit do the thing you, you’re put here to do. Great. But a lot of times these huddles are just performative and it’s awful and everyone’s so tired because it’s the first thing in the morning and there’s no reason for them. Um, I think also there’s a lot of like email checking that happens throughout the day for me is one of the ways that I am performative, productive and, and my uh my only employee is remote. We are all remote here. So no one’s watching me. No one can see me in here. But I will sit here and check email because I want to quote unquote, feel productive. And so then I spent 2.5 hours moving emails around the digital space doing nothing and I leave and then I leave, you know, I have to go to lunch or it’s the end of the day or something and I didn’t need to be there and do that. There was, there was no reason its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. Uh starting a new series because I’ve been traveling a lot. So starting the Tales from the plane series and uh starting optimistic and positive deplaning the deplaning process which I, I don’t know why they just don’t call it. You’re leaving the plane. They gotta have a word for plane deplaning, but it’s just done so civilly. Everybody is so friendly as they’re getting off the plane. Uh People wait for each other. Very thoughtful. They let, they let uh the all the rows, you know, go just in line orderly before them. You know, we’re, we’re not, it could be imagine the worst of humanity. It could be just everybody rushing, pushing, tripping over each other’s bags, tripping over people who are, who are smaller or weaker, you know, just stampeding. It could be that but it’s not, it never is. It’s nowhere near that. It’s all very civil and thoughtful. Um, when bags are, when, when somebody stuck with their bag, you know, a few rows back, they point to it and people offer to get the bag and then it gets passed up to the person and we all wait until that person leaves and then we take our turn. I just think it’s so admirable, you know, uh, it, in the current, you know, in the, during the presidential campaign, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a mega hat on or a Harris walls. T-shirt. People are all very thoughtful civil as we’re getting off the plane and it’s admirable. We help each other people offer. Can I get that bag for you? A man? Would you like some help, sir? You know, you look a little, you know, not, you don’t say you look a little short but you know, short gentlemen, would you like help? Can I help you? It’s all very polite, civil, thoughtful humane. I admire it and I think it, I don’t know if it has promise for a bigger lesson for all of us. Uh I mean, we can be civil. That’s clear. Uh but I’m not getting carried away. I just, I admire the civility of our deplaning process in the process. Why is it, why does it have to be a process or when they’re boarding? It’s the boarding process? Why are we starting a process? We’re just getting on the plane to me. Uh, a process is, you know, cooking dinner or putting out a fire. Um, you know, those are, those are processes. Digestion. Digestion is a process. But getting on a plane we’re just, we’re just boarding, we just start the boarding, start the boarding, boarding period. I don’t know why there has to be a boarding process. But anyway, that was a little, that’s a little sidebar. The point is the civility of the deplaning period. The deplaning, I admire it. Thank you. Thank you, everyone for being all so civil to each other. And that is Tonys take two. Ok. I wish ann track was more civil. I mean, I’ve never been on a plane but I’ve been on a train and it’s not very, uh, welcoming. You mean getting on or getting off, I think both for both. Yeah, I mean, I started, I used to take coach, you know, free for all. You find a seat, you sit down kind of thing. But then I could never find seats where people were just like putting their bags on like the second seat, you know, and saying like, oh, someone’s sitting here and then so I started like getting um, business class. So I actually had an assigned seat because people just weren’t, they weren’t thoughtful. Yeah. No, that is true on Amtrak you have to say, you know, excuse me? Uh, I mean, and then if they say somebody’s sitting there, I mean, I’m taking them at their word. I don’t need, I don’t need to see the person’s ID or anything but, but uh you do have to be a little assertive and say, excuse me, you know, like to sit down. Alright. Anyway, we’ve got just about a butt load more time. Here’s the rest of tech policies to reduce toxic productivity with Marina Martinez Bateman. Is there more that, that we can um ask of our, of our leaders, you um not that you haven’t given uh given, given a lot of uh uh uh a lot of advice but uh is is there any more that, that we can expect from our leaders to help us make the right choices? Yeah. And part of that is so we are in a unique space as leaders where we are suffering from the exact same ailments that our people are suffering from and we are suffering from the exact same structures of oppression that our people are something. I mean, not the exact same ones, but we’re here, we’re in it, right? So all of that um you know, all the systems that are set up to make it so that personal health and art and the environment and food and how like um communities and all these other things that we fight for, right? In the nonprofit sector, all these things are devalued. We’re, we’re in the same boat. Um And also we do have power within the walls of our our organization, sometimes it’s limited, sometimes there’s other factors at play, but we have more power than anyone else in the building almost. Um, with very few exceptions. And so part of it is that we have to make certain sacrifices as leaders, which I think all of us know, but those sacrifices are probably not going to be the ones, the ones I recommend are not going to be the ones that we expect. So, um we need to protect our own time. We need to be seen eating lunch, we need to be seen taking time to move our bodies. Um A lot of the things that we do as leaders are are um the second we get to work, the second we log on whenever our day starts, we are being seen by everyone at the organization, even if it’s a small organization, even if it’s a remote organization, we don’t realize how visible we are. Um And so when we model these behaviors for people taking vacation, telling people about how wonderful and restorative the vacation was reassuring people um that it’s ok to take vacation for themselves, leaning into abundance even though we know what the budget is and we know scarcity very intimately um making those choices um that are, that are on mission, um that are values driven because that’s what we’re called to do. Um And then having to make tough calls uh as a leader is, it’s why we’re here. It’s why we got put in this seat. Um It’s why we sought the seat we wanted this position most of us. And um and so it’s time to sort of like what we sacrifice when we have this uh out. Like when we are modeling this good behavior is we sacrifice any delusions that we might have had towards the productivity nature of, of, you know, performative productivity, right? So those big meetings that have a ton of people in them that are really kind of just ego strokes for us, we can get rid of those. That’s a sacrifice that, that is a good sacrifice to make. Um a lot of times we do things like we have those big meetings because we’re not feeling very productive, but we want to see everybody’s face, you know, working. Um And really what we needed to do is take lunch and start taking lunch probably three months, three or four months ago, or years ago or 10 or 1520 years ago. Um And then we would feel productive and filled up and we would need a big meeting of 15 people that doesn’t do anything. Um So, so modeling the behavior ourselves is very, very important and um and specifically in a way that is seen, um it can be very hard because as leaders, we want to say, well, I’m gonna take, I’m modeling the behavior I’m gonna take off early, I’m gonna go home and um that is valid. And if we need to do that, we should do that. And also say, ok, everybody, we’re going home early this day is just whatever happened this day is in the pits, let’s go home early. If we can, of course, some of us can’t do that because we have certain service obligations. Um, but we can do things like look around the room, take the temperature of the room and say, all right, everybody, we’re getting, you know, pizzas delivered or whatever. Uh We’re just gonna sit down and hang out together and blow off some steam. I can feel it. We just, we’re not doing productive work right now. You know, be thoughtful, be intentional um about creating uh about the culture you’re creating and that culture starts with leadership, whether whether you might be the CEO or you might be a mid-level leader, you might be uh uh lower on the org chart, a lower level leader, but you’re still leading two or three people, right? I mean, it applies. This is not only for the CEO, you’re a CEO, but this is not only for CEO S. Yeah, the people like your choices are going to be dependent on what’s up with the people and focus them and then model the behavior that you because you know that a lot of us don’t realize how seen we are in our organizations. We’re very, very visible if we’re in a leadership position. Yeah, you made the point, you know, even even in a virtual organization like yours virtual company. Um Well, uh so flush that out. Well, how, how do you feel like folks know when you start logging in when you’re reading email, et cetera? How is that seen? How is it seen? How am I checking in? You know, if we have a digital chat platform? How am I checking in? Am I showing up? Am I saying? Hey, I’m here. Am I asking questions? Um Am I, you know, am I asking for feedback? You know, am I, am I visible enough for you? Am I you know, am I bugging you too much like um and listening to people and trusting people when they tell you what’s going on with them. Um and also trying to remember it’s very hard, it can be very hard with everything going on that you have to do as a leader. But when someone says, hey, I’m gonna be out for the afternoon, put it in your own calendar and make sure that you don’t reach out to them during that time. Yeah. Right. Those, those uh slacks or texts or emails, whatever it is that start sorry to bother you on your day off. But, but of course, the universal and the gator cancels everything before it, but I need, you know, blah, blah. Exactly. And that, you know, so much of that it could just wait until the day off is over. So the week off is it? You know, and, and, and you, you said earlier, you know, cross training so that people feel they can take time. And so the organization doesn’t suffer when they do. Exactly. If so, and so doesn’t have the thing. I’ve cross trained this other person which, of course, you know, i, it’s easy for me to sit here in my office and say cross training when a person listening is looking at me like what with what resources with what people? But that’s where the sacrifices come in. You have to say, OK, well, this vanity project of mine doesn’t happen because cross training is happening instead or this. And somebody bristled when I said Vanity Project, I know it. But we all have them, they exist. We’ve got to accept that, that they exist. So instead of the thing I want, we do cross training because that’s, that’s, and eventually I’ll get the thing I want probably, especially if it’s mission aligned and it makes sense. But we have to prioritize workers needs and comfort because we have a lot of options here. The people that we employ, have less options than us have fewer options than us. And so we need to, to, to honor that. What about some uh questions that you got questions or comments you got uh in your session? Uh What uh what do you, what do you, what, what stuck out for you? I always get this question in all, every time I teach his training, I get this question and it’s some version of the, you know, my coworker, my direct report, my boss, my board member is very into toxic productivity. They’re very into this. They’re, they’re the ones that are always, you know, I was answering emails from the hospital when I was in labor with my second daughter or, you know, all of this stuff. Um, it’s very badge of honor. You know, we wear these sort of like wounds like medals and nonprofit. Um, that’s the, the person who would have suffered. I said the person who of suffering it is a bad, they do become a badge of honor. I’m, I’m always the last person to leave the office. Yes. Yes, exactly. And, uh, and, and, and this person is that their, their toxic productivity is harming people. They’re pushing, uh, the culture, you know, more and more to work more and more. Um, they have unrealistic expectations of people that work nearer with them, et cetera, et cetera. It’s harmful. And what I always tell people is, you know, you can do this. Uh, first of all, your proximity to this person is not a coincidence. At some point, you guys probably saw eye to eye on this or we’re working together in tandem to create something that really worked for you. Um, you know, I look back on my nonprofit career and one of the, my best times, one of my favorite times in my career was on as deeply into toxic productivity. And so was everyone else around me and it was wonderful because we were all on the same page. We felt like such a good team. We were so unified in the way we thought about things and the way we thought about things was deeply unhealthy. Um But uh I tell them, you know, you can tell this person, especially if you really care about them outside of work. Um You can say, I think we’re in a toxic relationship. I think we are operating in a way that is making each other less healthy, that’s not, not helping us thrive. I want to try and heal from this. I think that healing is gonna bring about a really incredibly positive change, not only for me, but for the work that we’re doing here, will you, will you heal with me? Will you come in this on this journey with me? And you can ask them with sincerity and the truth is that you can’t do anything else other than that, just ask them. And if they say no, you can’t keep asking them. You have to, you have to respect that and everyone has the has, has their own path, you know, and not everyone is going to heal at the rate that you are going to heal at, not everyone is going to heal the way you think you should or they should. Um Some people just have other journeys. And so if you are that person’s boss, you can make decisions about. Ok, well, we’re going in a different direction. We need competencies around healthy productivity. You don’t have the competencies around healthy productivity that we need. Therefore, we’re no longer a good fit and that hurts. It’s hard to say those things. But if I had, you know, if I said, you know, we’re gonna go, uh we’re gonna move towards gap accounting everyone. You know, we’ve got to do things, uh best practices, ways and, and not have, you know, our accounting all Willy nilly and our accountant at the time was like, nope, I do my accounting on post its and I will never not do that. You can’t make me change, then we would have to get a new accountant, wouldn’t we? So it’s the same thing when we’re trying to create this healthier productivity. If someone doesn’t want to learn or become competent in this, in this new work way, we can’t keep them on just because we like them or because of what they did in the past that was helpful. Um We can honor them and say that, that, you know, thank you very much and we can also release them to continue on their own journey. Whatever that is. What have we not talked about that? Uh You want to um, good question. Uh And I do my best to uh channel our listeners, but you’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I’m just coming to it. So maybe the, the stuff that we, I haven’t raised. Yeah, let’s talk about perfectionism. Perfectionism is, is a, we know for a fact we know that perfectionism is a, is a um feature of white supremacy. Perfectionism is um pervasive and insidious in our culture as a whole, but also in nonprofit culture. And so when we are practicing uh healthy productivity, when we’re trying to learn how to do things differently, the fact that we’re doing things in a way that we haven’t done them before means that we’re not gonna be as good, effortlessly good at them. Um As we were before, even if we were doing something that ultimately harmed ourselves and our organization and our mission, we were really good at it for a long time. We had a high level of proficiency. So when you sort of like decide to go home at five o’clock and uh walk around the block and then take a bubble bath or whatever, that’s not gonna feel super good because you’re not gonna be super good at it. Um I can’t tell you how many times I used to buy coloring books because I was like, I need to be less, you know, work centric and I need to do creative things. I miss being creative. And so I would buy those adult coloring books and I would hurt my fingers from coloring. So hard because it had to be perfect. Um, and then I would think, ok. No, I can’t do this. It’s too, it’s too physical. This coloring is too physical. I’ll go get in a bath. That’ll relax me and I’ll, I would sit in this bath just, uh, tense because I’m supposed to be relaxing and I’m, and I’m not doing damn bath over yet. Right. Exactly. That’s not working either. Right. And, but it’s not working because you’re not familiar with it. It’s hard. The first time you did anything, it was just kind of a little bit difficult and a little bit unwieldy and overwhelming. And, you know, for those of us who have been neglecting our other, the other parts of our lives for however long because of work, it is daunting to go into a place we feel very new at, especially when we’ve been in a place where we feel extremely, um, you know, experienced and comfortable. Exactly. Yeah. So, the, the perfectionism of like, if you are going to engage with your community and if you are going to engage your creativity and you’re going to go on a hike and you’re going to, you know, reclaim the other part of your life that isn’t at work, be willing to do it badly because it’s that important. You have to be able to do it badly because you have to get through that sort of like new unwieldy part. Um, and it’s ok to say, like I’m really new at this, I’m only going to hike for 15 minutes or I’m only going to sit at the trailhead and look at the hiking place and then I’m gonna go get back in my car and go home there. There’s no level of engaging with your non work life that is not gonna be beneficial. There’s no, it’s not like you have to hike to the top of the mountain. I mean, this is part of the toxic productivity that’s been, you know, making this, this bad scene this whole time, right? Is that we feel like we have to, um, do everything the best the most, regardless of what else is going on. You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna start your physical fitness journey with AAA Triathlon. You know, you’re gonna run around the block and in a week you’ll be able to run around the block twice or maybe just walk to the end of the block, pardon me? Or maybe just walk to the end of the block or whatever it is. Yeah. However, you start, right. But, but starting and, and you’re saying, you know, you’re eee embrace the discomfort because it’ll become comfortable and you’ll get better at it. You know, you’re in a pattern now where you’re, uh, you know, you’re like you said, highly efficient, uh you know, highly efficient at toxic behaviors. You’re really good at this and you can be really good at something else too. I mean, I remember, uh there was an interview with Terry Crews who’s an actor and he’s very muscly. And um people always ask him, how do you get so buff? Like you’re always, and he said, look, the gym is my happy place. And so I can’t tell you a person who doesn’t really like the gym how to get like me. I look like this because I hang out at the gym all the time. It’s my favorite place. But he also says, you know, go take a, if you really like something, take it to the gym with you. So if you really like romance novels or mysteries or something, go and go and take your mystery novel to the gym and just sit there, read your mystery novel and then go home and then, you know, you don’t have to pick up a weight, you don’t have to do a single thing. Just hang out there because it’s for a lot of people like the weight room at the gym even especially is like a very new place. It’s pretty foreign. There’s a lot of traditions, there’s rules, you don’t really know what they are. Um, so ali acclimatizing yourself to a new place, you know? Interesting. Yeah. All right. All right. Leave us with, uh, with something inspirational. Please. Marina, there’s been a lot of inspiration. Sum it up, sum up 40 minutes as best you can. Well, when we think about how much we as nonprofit workers on an individual level, on an organizational level and on a sector wide level have been able to achieve and, and move the needle on with. So with how little we’re given, if we made sure that we ourselves were properly resourced, in order to do this transformative work, imagine how much more could be accomplished by people who are showing up fully in their power to this mission work. I mean, it’s incredible. And then also the thing I like to remind everyone in my training is that this is generational work. I have generations of people behind me, you know, relatives and ancestors who have done their own mission work. And I will have generations of people in front of me doing the mission work that they’re called to do. And all I have to do is show up for my part, my link in that chain. Marina Martinez Bateman, Ceo, New Coyote consulting. Oh, I have to ask, why is it New Coyote consulting? What is that? It’s New Coyote because I wanted a name that spoke to my ancestry, which is Mesoamerican and uh and which spoke to my sort of like presence and the way I show up. And uh the Aztec, there’s an Aztec God, uh Weiwei Coyote, which means very old coyote. And um I thought he’s um frequently gendered as a, as a male, but very also frequently gendered as non-binary or female. So I’m non-binary. It felt very like I felt a lot of kinship with, with that. And then, um, old, very old coyote is a storyteller and he teaches through storytelling. So that felt very appropriate to me as well. You know, he’s not didactic, he’s not teaching humans lessons or if he is ever teaching humans lessons, it’s in this very jokey sort of way. Um, he brings people along with him on journeys rather than sort of like telling them to go places. Um And I uh I also feel like in the context that I’m in, which is a very white context and a very colonizer context. Frequently, a lot of people will call my work new. They’ll say that the things I’m doing are new, these new ideas, they’re new concepts. And for me, they’re not new, they’re very, very old. Um But also new coyote is a transformer. He’s a trickster. So he, he becomes the thing that you need in the moment. And I thought, well, then we’re a new coyote. We’re not a very old coyote. We’re a, we’re a brand new one. So that’s why I named us New Coyote. Lots of levels. Yeah. Again, Marina Martinez Bateman Ceo at New Coyote consulting. Marina. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me on. You’re welcome too. Next week, Tony will pick one from the archive. It won’t be the fermentation show with Sandor Kraut. If you missed any part of this weeks show I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 7, 2024: Grants Readiness & Success

 

DeaRonda HarrisonGrants Readiness & Success

DeaRonda Harrison helps you get ready to accept grants and shares strategies for successful grants research, writing and outcomes. Also, how to win grants quickly (it shouldn’t take years!); how to turn a one-time grant into multiyear funding; and her recommendations for grant research platforms. DeaRonda is the president of June First Firm.

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of gingival hyperplasia if I had to chew on the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s on the menu? Hey, Tony, we’re serving grant’s Readiness and success. Dear, Rhonda Harrison helps you get ready to accept grants and shares strategies for successful grants, research, writing and outcomes. Also how to win grants quickly. It shouldn’t take years how to turn a one time grant into multiyear funding and her recommendations for grant research platforms. Deanda is the president of June 1st firm on Tony. Seek to a special listener of the week were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is grant’s Readiness and Success. It’s a pleasure to welcome De Rhonda Harrison to nonprofit radio for her first appearance. She is the founder and president of June 1st firm, a grant writing firm specializing in funding for housing, health care and workforce education. She’s responsible for awards totaling more than $45 million a member of the Grant Professionals Association. She served as Georgia chapter president for two years. Our company is at June first.com and you’ll find Deronda on linkedin Deronda. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Hi, welcome. Thank you, Tony for having me. It’s a pleasure. Glad you’re with us to talk about grants, the some basics of grants, some uh pro tips on grants. Talk about just uh why is, why is June 1st firm? Uh What uh I’m sure June 1st is a deadline type. Is that why June 1st? Is that why I pick the name? Yeah, I picked the name is actually my birthday. My birthday is on June 1st. Um and grants are driven by deadline. So that is actually a good, a good guess. But yeah, I just use my, my birthday as a business name and stuck with it for, for all these years. I love it. That’s very, it’s very personal, unique, excellent um uh listeners. I want to explain that uh associate producer, Kate and I had to record together uh before I learned the proper pronunciation of de Rhoda’s name. So you’ll hear Kate uh saying dear Rhoda. Uh That’s because nonprofit radio has a lackluster host, Miss guessed on how to pronounce uh Du Rhonda’s name. So that’s the explanation for that. You can blame it on me as much as I like to blame the associate producer. This one is not on her. This one is my own doing. Uh So Deronda, let’s, let’s just start, you have a grant ready checklist that I’d like to start our conversation with. What do, what do uh small and mid size nonprofits need to have in place to be uh grant ready? Yeah. So, um it’s actually on my website and I’m happy to send it and share it with you to share with listeners. But a lot of times people are ready to dive into grants. They’ll say I have my 501 C three. They got it yesterday and they’re ready to apply for grants. And I’m like, well, there’s a little few more steps that you need to take. So I have what I call a grant ready checks, checklist. A lot of other grant writers have them too just to give people a full overview of what a lot of proposals are asking for. Like, do you need to have a board list? You need to have like bios of your senior staff and a list of um a lot of your critical, you know, um financials and items and things like that. So we put together a list over the years and just what I’ve seen, especially doing a lot of federal grants, what’s required. So you can kinda have an idea of what, what you need to have in front of you to be ready to? Ok, so le let, let’s go into more detail. Besides your, you need to have your 501 C three, you need to have your board list. Uh What, what before we tick off more items? What about financials? What, what do you need uh assets and liabilities or a budget or what, what do you need? Yes, definitely an organizational budget. So what is the revenue that’s coming for your organization? Line items for each and what are your expenses? Of course, line items for each. So your organizational budget that total, that’s pretty much acts in probably 90% of grants. They’ll act specifically for your org budget. Um As your organization grows your financial audit. So um having a third party conduct an audit of your organization that’s done every year. Again, majority of your foundations and corporate grants are asking for financial audits. Um If you don’t have an audit, sometimes you can replace that with just your 990 year tax form. Um I’ve been seeing more now like the demographics, not just the board list like, but the demographics of your board like, what is that? Is that makeup of their ethnicity? Gender? Um Cause I wanna see that your board is a reflection of like the clients that you serve. So I’m seeing like more of those type of things, but I, you know, financials as stated, I’m looking at the list because I always don’t think of anything else you can cheat. That’s right. I don’t want you to back on the what? Oh, a list of funding sources. Like they’ll typically ask that a lot of banks wanna know that because they like to see who, what, like a lot of, you know, banks are competitive so they want to see who else is funding your organization. So a list of your other funding sources, that’s something that sometimes will come up. I tell people just go ahead start putting those things together. Um De I statements. Does your organization have ad E I statement? I mean, it’s just not, you know, on your website. That’s ok, but just sharing that as well. Um Strategic plan annual reports. So all those type of things that your organization needs to kind of have together if you work with a number of organizations where you do partnerships, very close partner partnerships, mo US or memorandum of, of understanding. Um Those are really big for a lot of federal grants. You need to have some mo US in place. So you can um submit those with your application. Interesting that they’re asking about the demographics of board members. I see that a lot with bank applications um like your wells and your Bank of America’s. Uh well, who else have I applied to? Like some of your banks that have the foundation arm, they d they, you know, for the most part, ask a lot about demographics. Oh, is it not so common with the private foundations. Not so much. Um, but more of your corporate corporate organizations. Ok. All right. That’s interesting. I would, I, I would have hoped that private foundations would be interested in diversity on the board also. They’re getting there but it’s more, much more prevalent with, like, your corporations. Ok. Anything else to be grants ready? Yeah. What else is on my list? Those are like the big ones. Um, oh, your organizational chart, like how people reporting to, of course, executive director being the head. Well, technically the board is in charge but your organizational staff and structure not just list all we have 30 staff members, but what is the, the set up the chart for that? How, who reports to whom and things like that? Um If you have multiple locations, a list of all of your sites and locations and their addresses and where they’re located. Um I’ve seen that providing a list of your physical locations. If you’re like a housing provider, you have multiple housing sites just having all that in one place. Where is everything located? So it’s interesting, you know, you had given the hypothetical like, you know, we got our 501 C three approval yesterday. All right. But you know, you don’t have a year of financials even to be, to be audited yet or you don’t even have any, any basis to have filed a 990 yet. So you, you’ve got to have been a nonprofit for, uh, I guess at least a year or a couple of a couple, 12 years where you’re gonna be eligible, uh, you meet the, meet the basic criteria it sounds like. And what I’m finding is a lot of people are, have been doing the work for some years or months or whatever that looks like. And then they, you know, get their paperwork where they’re officially a 501 C three. So they may have proof of concept if you will program information. Um but just having uh the financials is very critical. A lot of people use fiscal sponsors or something that people may not be aware of. But you can definitely have another agency apply for a grant on behalf of your nonprofit. And they are like the represent the representative of your organization. And you can, um there are some organizations that’s their business model. They operate like fiscal sponsors for other nonprofits and of course, the setup and all the different things are different, but that’s an option as well. And a lot of community foundations will do that. Yes, they act as fiscal sponsors to support your smaller nonprofits, smaller and younger. Ok, good point. Thank you. Um What, so we cover and we exhausted the, the grants ready checklist. I think. So. Overview. But yeah, definitely happy to share with anyone that wants to. Well, you just gave us the substance of it and it’s also at your site, June 1st fm.com. Uh, what if we, uh, well, let you know what, let’s start with the, the research because it’s important that you not be just throwing grants into the wind and without regard to what the, the foundation’s funding priorities are. So, let’s start with research. How important that is. Yes, it’s very, a lot of people will hire grant writer to conduct research just to find some organizations that they can apply to some foundations. Some corporations, maybe even some state funding opportunities, but they’ll just go and just do a general. These are all the opportunities that are out there where your research would be much more targeted specifically if you’re smaller nonprofit, mid-sized, um or younger nonprofit, there are funders who have a history of giving to like your size nonprofits. So your research should entail that it needs to include funders who have a history of giving to organizations with your same makeup, not just the program and services that you provide, but your same size. And um that’s so critical. And I feel like a lot of, a lot of times people miss that say, well, the big food bank is funded by this organization, but they typically do not fund smaller nonprofits. These certain, there are certain foundations and corporations that fund smaller nonprofits like community foundations. Some of your smaller local foundations may um fund smaller nonprofits, there’s even some bigger nonprofits or even being more intentional with having programs to fund um some of your uh emerging nonprofits. So that’s why I say your research needs to be very tailored and targeted. And um it shouldn’t be a list of hundreds of people that give, it should just be a very targeted list. I always say about 20 or 30 but it’s a very strong list where you should yield a good return on your investment and time. Yeah. Yeah. All your, all your resources you’re putting into this because it is time consuming as, as we’ll get into. Um, you make a very good point about uh not just researching programmatic funding priorities but type size, size of nonprofit or a number of years. You know, if you’re brand new and they’re only funding, you’re looking at a potential prospect that’s only funding established, like you said, established Food Bank, you know, you’re brand new. That, that sounds like a misalignment. So um ok. Um And what are some of the research sites that you use that you recommend? Yeah, I use research. People always ask, are there free ones out there? There are? But you have to kind of like piecemeal things together. Um But the ones that are paid that have everything in one place or like your candid or used to be foundation directory, I use that. I’ve been using it for many years. I’m just the most comfortable with it and it’s very robust and it brings everything up together. Um What you’re looking for, you can s um segment out your search. I really like it and then instrumental is a really good one as well. Um You can even uh segment out your search with instrumental to see like who has a history of giving to new funders. I mean, new organizations. So they’ll show like a percentage of the organizations that are renewing with them and the percentage that are brand new. I think that’s a very critical, you know, thing if it’s like less than 10 or even like 1% of brand new organizations that they fund, you know, it just may not be worth your time and energy. So, yeah, so I think that’s Curto. So those are some of my favorite. I really like instrumental and I like um Candid. Candid. OK. Uh What are some of the free ones that, you know, if we’re just dipping our toe in? You know, you, I know you said they’re not as good because you have to piece things together. But can you explain, share one or two of those and that is what is it? Explain what it is? You got to piece together? Yeah. So like, I mean, you can do, I’m signing for list serves a lot of people do that. Um So like your philanthropy news digest, um it’s free. You can just get, you can uh put in your program like if you wanna search education, they’ll send you all the upcoming education opportunities but it’s across the entire nation. Um, and then you could just see what’s upcoming, um, in K 12 education. Um, all the different segments. Uh, so many days you can break them down housing, um, environmental things like that. So, that’s a good one. you’ll get those email letters that will come directly to you and you can just check out and see what’s out there. Um, there are some more, that one was philanthropy News Digest. Yes. Yeah. PND. Yeah, we call it PND. And then um some other like maybe other free resources is looking for list service in your community, like with your state, if you’re, I’m in the state of Georgia. So signing up for opportunities that come through grant funding programs through your state, most states is your state.gov and seeing what grant opportunities are out there. So it’s a lot more um piece milling that you’ll have to do. But there are some like lower costs research tools like grant station um that you can check out as well. A lot of times when you’re part of like a membership organization, I know uh grant professionals um association or GPA if you’re a member of their um of that organization, grant station comes with the membership. Um I think Maryland nonprofits, I believe they have a free um the one of the benefit for being a member is like access to one of their research tools. So a lot of times people are already a part of these organizations and they’re just not taking advantage of those free free tools. What’s Grant Station about? What can you get there? Same thing. Um You can find locate funders that give to your programs and services. Like, like PND, you have to, you have to do more of the station is a real research tool. It’s not one that you necessarily have to piece meal. I just find that, um, Candid and like instrument are a little bit more robust than Grant Station. Um And neither Candid nor instrumental has a free version. They’re very expensive. Yeah. Ok. That’s what I’m trying to drill down. All right. Is Grant Station, is Grant Station less expensive than it is. It is. I don’t know off the top of my head, but it’s not as expensive as those other two. Yeah. Ok. All right. So just give, give them folks options. I understand. The premier is Candid and Instrumental. I remember when Candid was the foundation directory when it was, when it was the foundation center before it merged with Guidestar Found Center and Guidestar merged to form Candid. And pardon me, go ahead. Sorry. No, I was just saying that just happened a few years ago. Um Now when I was a foundation director, I remember you used to be able to go to um the affiliate libraries throughout the country and you could use the foundation directory for free, you know, in person you had to go to the, but they had a, they had, I think a couple of 100 affiliate libraries around the country and there was somebody who at that library was trained in foundation directory. So they would actually help you get started, help you with some, some of your early searches. Uh, but I don’t know that anymore. Yeah. And I’ve heard people say that it’s still the case. Honestly. I have not done that since prior to COVID. So I think that’s still an option. Um And because if you’re, especially if you’re in the metro area, definitely check out your local library. Get to your, to Tony’s point is you can definitely go to the library and pull up your research and take it back with you. Um And there’s typically like you said, someone trained there to assist you as well. Cool. All right. So maybe they’re still doing that. So, yeah, see if, see if you have, you can get free candid access uh in a local library because there, there used to be hundreds of them throughout the country. It wasn’t just like in, you know, 10 or 15. So. All right. All right, China give people uh resources. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster that’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more now, back to grants readiness and success. All right. So we now we have our list of you said like 20 or 30 or so. What if some of them say we don’t accept unsolicited proposals, you know, proposal by invitation only, something like that. You have a, you have a strategy for uh maybe getting around that or getting ahead of that. Yeah. Um What happens is a lot of times people like hone in on those for some reason for some odd reason when there are so many other organizations that don’t say that, especially when you’re just getting started. Don’t spend your time, energy and effort on those when they’re not, when they, you know, explicitly state that there are so many other opportunities that are out there and that are available. But of course, if those come up and you’re just like we’re a perfect fit. I always tell people to reach out to them. Of course, people will tell you, see if you have a contact, see if a board member knows someone, if someone can make an introduction for you. And yes to all of that, but I’m OK with sending out outreach on them during my research. I looked to see who the trustees are, who’s on their board of directors list and see where they work. And I find an email and I just introduce them to the organization. I help the nonprofits write up a what I call a email of impact to show them like the impact that they’re making in the organization and in their region, in the community that the funder is interested in and just see if we can have like a conversation. But um always see, of course, spend most of your time on the organizations that don’t have those limitations. And um but if you want to definitely reach out to those that state that I just say, send, send them a request, do you sometimes see that you, you get, you get some traction and you know that even though their policy is no unsolicited proposals, they’ll, they’ll still end up opening a conversation with you. Yeah, sometimes. Yes, sometimes. No. Um So I always tell people just let them tell you no, but give it a try. Um It seems to work pretty often. I it’s a certain things that you need to put in your email is not give us money or how can we get money from you? Of course, you want to really highlight your work, how it directly ties into what their interest is at the organization with the funder. So if you wanna write a, a message of impact an email that short and sweet people aren’t gonna read pages and pages of an email. So I always say like a three or four sentence email, highlight your impact needs to come. I always say, I believe it needs to come from the executive director to show them, you know that you have done your research and that you are interested in really having a conversation with them. And I really hope organizations draft that. Ok? And you probably also want to acknowledge, you know, I understand your policy is no unsolicited proposals just to show that you, you’ve done the basic research, you know, their policy. But, you know, uh I, I thought I would reach out nonetheless because I think, you know, we’re doing, you know, very impactful work in the community. We would like to, yeah, we would like to know how we could partner with you. I would love to learn more. Just we, we would even like to have a conversation to determine if it’s a good fit. If it’s not. That’s OK. So, yeah. OK. All right. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. But OK. All right. So the place you want to spend most of your time is not on those uh the unfriendly ones or I’m calling unfriendly ones, the unwelcoming ones, but all the others. Um Let’s talk about the importance of when you just at the outset, you know, following deadlines, following directions, page length, font size, sometimes emp emphasize all the, all that please. Yeah. And even going back to the point of the email, not really asking questions or addressing things or even if you get a phone call, not restating things that are already on their website asking, you know, thoughtful questions showing that you’ve done your research. Um And if there is something on their website that you’ve seen or you have questions about or you see what that type of programs and stuff that they serve, you may wanna just drill down or get more um, information about that. That’s ok. But definitely following directions. That’s very critical to being a grant writer, being a grant professional. If they ask for 10 pages, don’t send them 12. If they ask for a certain font, stick to the font that they’re requesting um even page, not just page limit but margins. What should be your spacing and things like that? A lot of times people miss a lot of those things, but I always say you look over it, have somebody else read the RFP to see what is required. So you can make sure that you meet all their requirements. Because if you don’t meet these basic requirements, they could just bounce you without even reading your thoughtful application, right? You gave 12 pages and the limit was 10, right? Isn’t, isn’t that a very good chance that they’re just not even going to read it and you wasted all your time and you didn’t even get a read. Yeah. And I’ve seen even some foundations say send us this only don’t send us anything extra. Like some people are like, well, let’s, let’s send them our annual report. You know, they didn’t ask for your annual report because again, they’re getting so, so much information and so much material, they’re not trying to be mean, they just want what they need to make a decision and of course, if they need any additional information, they’ll definitely follow up. But some people are so proud of their annual report and they wanna just blast it out to everybody. Um Even when they apply for grants, but if they didn’t ask for it, don’t send it. All right. So, and thank you, let’s, let’s drill down a little deeper, you know, and strategies for successful grant writing because now we’ve got our list and we know what all the requirements are for each of the individual applications and the timing, right? You got, of course, you got to meet the deadlines. Uh What are, what are some like pro tips for for you? You’re never gonna guarantee success. But, but giving you the best shot. Yeah, I always say answering the question, like sometimes people see the question and they put something in there that they feel they should share. But specifically, when their grant is asking you, how do you implement your project or program, how are you sustaining your work at your organization? Really answering the question Um I see, I’ve not only written grants but a reviewer seeing that people spend a lot of time energy and effort on other things that weren’t asked. So um you’ll hear a lot of people like, well, we only have so many words or so many characters to answer the question. Um How do we do that? And I always say because they want you to answer the question. So that’s always been my pro tip with um grant writing is making sure that you answer the question and the tip to that is whatever the question is, restate that in your application and start your application, start your answer with that, that that question and answer the question. Even a lot of the questions will have three or four questions really in one question. And one of my tricks is I take each question, I put it in my answer and I make sure I address it. And then of course, you know, I can delete the question out later but really making sure that you answer what’s being requested from you. OK. How about another one? Um Some of the pro tips I would say, of course, we talked about following directions, we talked about answering um the questions and a lot of times sometimes as grant writer, we kind of feel forced sometimes to make our program fit. So they’re saying they’re funding capacity building or, or they may be funding, funding other like items, but yours isn’t what you’re requesting. It truly isn’t a good fit and you kinda know that don’t try to force it. So we don’t wanna force a square peg into a round hole. We wanna make sure that it’s a good alignment, make sure that it’s a good fit. Um, if they state they don’t fund arts program or recreational, don’t try to make it fit. It was like, well, really, we do education when you always known and you’re known for art programming. So again, just making sure that it’s true alignment, unless the funder has told you differently, like we wanna fund your program, you can apply under this certain category. But if you haven’t given those, if you haven’t been given those instructions or directions, then don’t try to make it, make it work. You said you were a reviewer, what, what uh share that side of the, the this whole process because you know that that’s being on the reading side, the reviewing side, what’s, what, what’s that work? Like? What, what’s like, what’s going through your mind as you’re, as you’re reading an application? Yeah, being a reviewer. Um I did that earlier in my career, show me how some um grants or some organizations responded very well to applications. They wrote stellar proposals. It was easy to make a sale in the case of funds them. And then there was something they were really, really, really, really bad. So it really showed me like what is the ones that stood out to me? Why they stood out to me is because they got to the point when they um addressed the RFP that the organization showed that they were stable, it showed that they knew what they were talking about. It shows that they were um confident if you, if you will and the work that they were doing and the delivery, they showed outcomes and the impact that they were making. Those were the or the, the applications that stood out. So those are like things that kinda, I always keep in my head when, as I’m writing, but those that were not good, that were really bad. It just didn’t address anything that weren’t necessarily a good fit or they talked about their program in a way that it wasn’t understood like very um like if it was an art program, it was very, you could tell an artsy person wrote the grant to be no, no, no offense to my art people. But it was very, um it wasn’t just written in plain, plain language. And that’s another thing too. Sometimes we can use big words. But when we’re looking, you know, we’re all, you know, smart people. But when you’re looking at several applications and all these big words come at you and through an application, it kinda makes your eyes cross always um write what I like, how I would like to read. So it’s always very easy general language, I try to say like on 1/5 grade level, 3rd, 4th, 5th grade level, keeping it easy, simple to understand. Cause of re when you’re reviewing, you review multiple application and you want to help them get through it as quickly as possible. When you may keep the reviewer happy, they’ll score your application high and that increases your chances of getting the grant. So that taught me that on that side and I encourage any grant grant writer to be a reviewer. So you were a program officer. Uh It sounds like, well, I just like they have to have volunteers to like community foundation, these volunteers to review grant applications. So you can just volunteer, your department of Education needs uh reviewers to review applications. So you can just definitely volunteer. And then when a reviewer or, or even a program officer, I think in, in in private foundations likes likes a proposal thinks that it merits funding to walk us through the process because you, because I think your job as a grants writer, I don’t mean you, you know all of us as grants writer, our job is to help the the reader or the program officer to like our application and then be an advocate for it. So talk about, talk about that process on the on the funding side. How that, how, how, how, what, what the next step is for that reader or that program officer when they like something. Yeah. When they like something, um, to my point earlier, they are like, they understand your programming. If they get done reading your, even if it’s just like a short lo I three or four pages or two pages and they’re still think the information was there. But it may have been like a lot of questions that came up. Like, how is that? L O I now, I have to stop. I just want to say loi I don’t want you to be in drug in jail. Oh, sorry, explain, explain uh uh explain what everybody knows what lo I is. Yeah, lo I is typically before you actually submit a full grant application, some funders ask for an LO I or a letter of intent or a letter of interest and it’s a shorter grant application which is about 23 pages, maybe four and it’s literally like a letter, you know, you have your introduction page or a cover page and then you go into your um summing up your programming services. So um that’s typically an introduction. I always say it’s like an introduction to your program before you get in that invitation to apply, which we were talking about earlier. OK. Thank you. You’re out of Jargon jail. So that I know that’s what I just want listeners to get it all. So. Alright, so I interrupted you with the Jargon Jail, but you were talking about what, what, what that read or program officer is going to do if they like an application or an lo I, yeah. And, uh, for the most part I haven’t been an official program officer but just like, speaking from my reviewer, like, you know, you know, how they work and honestly, yeah, with foundational corporations it’s typically like a relationship. They need to, you know, at least have heard of your organization. Um, they’re not gonna tell you that but that’s the truth. Um And of course your um application needs to be um uh a good, a good application it addresses, I mean, I’ve seen some very well written applications, they didn’t get funded and then some that were not because they had a relationship that were funded. So more on your corporate and foundation is more about relationship. Government is addressing all the elements within the application within the RFP. So government is, you know how you’re gonna be scored, they show you how, what, how many, um how many points each section is, is going to receive. Um And I really like that cause I go into the proposal knowing what we want to highlight and make sure they score really well and they tell you exactly what that is. So you always say you wanna get in the mind of the reviewer and look at the, how they’re evaluating that application. And then in the case of a program officer in a, in a foundation, they’re going on to be an advocate for your for your proposal, right? To the, to their, their, uh, their supervisor or maybe the board depending on the size, right? So, you’re, you’re trying to help them be an advocate for you? Yes, that’s correct. So, um, a lot of times they’ll say this application was so, you know, clear, it was easy to understand you address all the bullet points. So it was easy. I’ve heard them say it was easy for me to advocate for your organization because you all did such a great job in your application and the great job means you address the thing that they asked you for. And it was easy to understand. And sometimes we think what we’re saying is clear and easy to understand and we know our program. So I that’s why I always encourage people have another set of eyes, someone that’s outside of your organization, someone that’s not close to read it. Cause a lot of times you think what you’re saying makes sense, but it may not just to a general audience. So I always, I highly encourage people to have someone else read over their programming services or get a quality um writer or grant writer to put you together some boilerplate language, what you can use in a lot of your, you know, applications moving forward if you um don’t have the capacity or the funds to bring on someone on a like monthly basis, look into bringing on like a potential like putting together boilerplate language for your organization, something that you can just copy and paste over. You may have to tweak it a little bit, of course, from application to application. But bringing in like those outside set of eyes and a professional to write your programming and services because you have assumptions about the work that you do, you do it day in and day out and you understand it uh intimately and you’re written proposal may have gaps that are based on something you understand and everybody who works for you understands. But that’s to your point, you know, get somebody from outside the organization, make sure your application makes sense. Tells a story. OK? What if you have something that’s hard to measure the impact of like maybe it is an arts program or even even, you know, some, some grassroots service, you know that you’re providing, whether it’s domestic violence or housing, you know, the, the outcomes can be hard to track the impact. Well, there’s outcomes and impact the impact on people’s lives can be hard to track. You might lose track of them after they, after they are no longer receiving your service. How do you answer those impact questions that are inevitably going to be on an application? Yeah, that’s a, a very popular question. I always tell people it’s not hard to track any impact. Anything. You have observations, you have anecdotal um observations. You can definitely address that and you’re not tracking people, once they’re gone, you’re tracking them while they’re in your program. So, if your program is a year, what ha what is, um taking place after three months, what’s taking place after six months? So you’re collecting all this information on a consistent basis. And that’s where a lot of nonprofits struggle with. They’re just doing the work and not evaluating the programming, getting feedback. The feedback is critical surveys for participants. Um Of course, they can be anonymous and getting their feedback on how this program is making a difference. And of course, you have those specific questions and I’m not an evaluator. I can’t give you questions off the top of my head. But there are um your uh evaluator or strategist that will help you come up with questions to put on your surveys to help you get that information because you need to be collecting this while people are in your program. And of course, once they leave, if you can um get collect information to see what the impact like a year later, um you can just say so many people that out of 30 people that we serve, about half of them responded and they self reported these items. This is what the impact that they they’re showing. Of course, that’s all you can, you know, collect once they’re no longer in your program or things like that. But there’s always something that you can highlight. There’s always impact that you can make even with, you know, art programming, you can tie that a lot of times, especially if you’re working with students to education, with adults, how that is improving their confidence. They’re even going into job interviews. Um Being a part of this program has increased their um their self-confidence and their self worth. So you can definitely collect impact information. A lot of it may be a bit subjective, but even if it is, that’s still, that’s still data. OK. Valuable. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. A very special Tony’s take two. This week we have a listener of the week who have, I never had a live listener of the week. I’ve always just announced who they are. But this listener of the week is with me, we inspired her to start her own podcast, not a nonprofit podcast, of course, because if it was a nonprofit podcast, we wouldn’t even be talking about this. And it’s someone who is a dear friend. I have known her since 1984 when I was in the air force with her husband. Her name is Martha Shoals. Please welcome. Here’s Martha Scholls our listener of the week. Welcome, Martha. Thank you, Tony. Here. I am the other 2%. 30 percent. No, no, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re a frequent listener of the show and you told me that listening to nonprofit radio through all these years, um, inspired you to start your own podcast. So tell tell us about your, your practice and your podcast. Well, I am a life coach and, um, I li have listened to you for years and it’s like talking to a, to a friend. It’s like you’re right there. But the information that nonprofit radio gives out goes beyond nonprofit and it really, uh, I have having my own business and that this podcast that you are the pod father of reaches a lot of people. And so it is a platform that I felt ready to, to tackle. So you have inspired and trained. Well. Congratulations. So your, your podcast is the connected heart and you have a co-host, I do and you have four episodes so far, right? And all right, you’re the target of 10. All right. That’s I got carried away. Now. Don’t get, don’t get overly ambitious. Ok. No, you’ll get, you know, soon enough, you’ll have 50 then 100 you’ll see, you’ll see it comes together. So, uh I wanted you to be the listener of the week because first of all, I’m a guest in your home. So, if I didn’t make you listener of the week, I might have, might have had to get a hotel in San Antonio where I would have made you pay well, I would have got a hotel before I paid you. Uh I’d rather be at a Marriott than, than paying you. So, uh yeah. So you, you shared with me on this visit that, uh, nonprofit radio inspired you to the Connected Heart Podcast. And, uh, I shared some advice with you and, uh, I wish you and the Connected Heart Podcast. Lots of luck in your, in your life coaching practice. And, uh, and in the podcast. Thank you, friend. All right. Thank you, friend. Thank you. Thank you for letting me stay. It’s a pleasure to see you after several, many years, we’ve been, we chat a lot, but I haven’t actually seen you for like eight or 10 years to Martha Scholls our listener of the week. That is Tony’s take two. Ok. Well, it’s nice that and thank you for giving my uncle a place to stay. I’m sure he’s difficult, you know. All right. Let’s not a lot of people getting carried away now. Difficult. I think I’m an ideal guest. You’d be, you’d be amazed what a good guest. I am low. I call myself the low impact guest. I would say high maintenance, but that’s just me knowing you all my life. All right. You don’t. All right. And, uh, Ted and Martha, Ted is Martha’s husband. Uh, both say want you to say hello to, uh, to your dad. I, I will, I will. Ok. Well, we’ve got buu but loads more time. Here’s the rest of grant’s readiness and success with dear Rhonda Harrison. Do you have some advice on, uh, on winning grants quickly? You know, you say it shouldn’t take years. What what, what’s in, what’s in there? Yeah, I’ve even heard grant writers, like, I’ve been writing for this organization as a volunteer for over a year and I haven’t won that many grants and I was like, well, that’s probably the reason why, um, you’re volunteering your own. That’s the wrong question. Yeah. So, um, but yeah, it shouldn’t take, I would say it shouldn’t take a year, especially if you’re submitting grants on a ground. Of course, you just submit two grants in one year. Ok. Yeah, but if you’re submitting grants on a consistent basis and then a consistent basis is like two or three grants per month, I, I think that’s a lot. Um There’s some like a larger organizations that are doing five plus grants that’s like uh actual application and report some months just depending on deadlines, sometimes how they fall. I worked in an organization one time we had eight actual projects in one month, one month, it was 10. I mean, that’s a lot that’s excessive. Some months, the deadlines just fall like that. And then some months you may only have about two or three. But I say you’re submitting about two or three grand applications over a year. You should have won something like I would say at least about 30%. So you wanna make sure that it just shows that you’re not positioning the organization in the limelight or you’re not applying to or to funders that have a history of giving to nonprofits of your um nonprofits like yours or you may not be doing any cultivation. I don’t encourage any of my clients when they work with me. We don’t submit code applications. We always try to do what I call a warm up, which is back to those warm up emails. We cultivate the client to cultivate the funder um try to introduce them to our organization. So when we submit a grant, that’s not the first time that they hear about us. So it shouldn’t take you that long. That just means you’re missing critical components when applying for grants. And a lot of times it’s cultivation, say more about that cultivation. It sounds like you’re trying to, you’re, you’re building relationships before you’re submitting an application. So you’ve identified that you’re 20 or 30 but you’re not, you’re not going right to OK. What’s their, what’s their deadline? Talk about the cultivation relationship building part. Yeah, you definitely want to reach out to a lot of the foundations, especially if you have like I use what I say, candy list all the trustees. That’s why I love candy so much. It list the trustees. It list the board and I am with all the tools and resources we have on the internet. Now, you can find where they are and if they don’t have their contact information on there, find out where they work and reach out to them to um introduce them to your organization, invite them to have a conversation with your executive director. If they’re local meet for um have a meeting, meeting in person, invite them to your nonprofit. If it’s like a programmatic, you’re serving students. A lot of times, some people’s work, a lot of the times people’s work speaks for itself, getting people out there to see what you’re doing and the impact that you’re making, um it can speak for itself. So just asking people to come out invitations, inviting them to events that you’re having, where you’re showcasing the talent or showcasing the students showcasing the work that they’re doing. Um I always encourage people just to act, I mean, they say no, they, that’s ok but just ask, ask the question. So just like how you will cultivate, meeting a new person, making a new friend. It’s just as those same general practices, there’s nothing really different about it because it’s a for a grant. I love the idea of inviting somebody, board members or, or officers, whatever program folks to come and see the work being done. You know, if it, if it, if you’re all local and same city, you know, come, come see, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got an Adoption Day, maybe it’s a Pet Humane Society. We’ve got Adoption Day coming up, come see the excitement, you know, the kids getting their, getting their kittens and the animals going to good homes and how we screen for that and the care that we give the animal before the family leaves with them, you know, to see that, you know, I think we might take our work for granted because we’re just so accustomed to it. Like I was saying, day after day, but to an outsider it can be enormously, you know, moving. Exactly. Yeah. And a lot of nonprofits put on events, like three or four events a year. Like, that’s the thing you should be inviting your, um, constituents to. I know a lot of time we invite the people that we always invite, but also invite others as well. That may have never even heard about your organization. This is all to get the funder familiar with, at least your name, even if they never come to, they never come to any event. No, the, the, they, like you said, name recognition, they, they’ve heard of you before, the application. Exactly. They’ve heard of your organization before you submit that grant application. Ok. And you see this making a difference. It does, it makes a difference. Um, and it could just be nurturing over a year or two. You know, it may not just happen immediately but it’s um, part of all the nurturing, building relationships and building a rapport with finders. Yeah. Ok. Yeah. It, I think as you were suggesting it’s very similar to individual fundraising, right? Your first meeting, you don’t ask for a gift, you’re cultivating the person to and then developing a strategy and reaching the solicitation stage. But that’s, that’s not step one. Absolutely. Ok. That’s interesting. I’m not sure a lot of folks think about that relationship building or at least trying, at least trying with funders with institutional funders. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Um You uh you also have advice on turning a one year gift into multiyear funding. What’s your thinking there? Yeah, some, if you’ve been funded by an organization multiple years, instead of having to come back every single year to submit an application to benefit, not only the nonprofit, but the funder um ask them about a multiyear. So they give you 30,000 every year, 25,000 every year. Can you um ask the question, say, can we um consider a 50,000 multiyear Twoyear grant award? And we’re happy to report on that at the end of each year, every year similar to how we’ve done before, but to eliminate the administration task on, on your end, I know you all are, you know, small staff, a lot of your foundations are um we would like to see if we can enter into a multiyear a gift or a multiyear opportunity. A lot of funders have moved away from it because they, you know, they’re very uh the budgets are uncertain from year to year. But I always say, ask the question that could be something that they’re open to entering into. I’m just going back to building relationships, asking people to come out, um asking people to um, meet you, even if it’s just a virtual meet up, asking them for a multiyear um gift. It’s, these are for funders you’ve already have like that relationship with and they have a history of funding your nonprofit. Um, especially year after year. Ask them about a multiyear two year. Even if you’re bold enough, ask for a three year, they give you 30,000 every year, ask for 90,003 year gift. And that was, that’s, those are huge. We love multiyear funding. It saves a lot of time. You can do planning. Of course. Now you can do a two or three year plan around that funding program. Not just year to year. All right. So that’s good. Thats the question. Ask the question. II, I have no problem. I, you can, uh, there’s a coach. She says you need 100 nos in a year. She, she, she encourages her students to get to 100 nos and the gift in that or the beauty in that they never get to 100 nos. I actually get a more yeses because they ask the question. So I just tell people to do the same thing. Just ask. I always say with individual fundraising six nos. And you’re halfway to a Yes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I like the 100. You get to 100 because you’ll get a lot more yeses before you get to the 100 nos. Yeah. And it’s not, they’re not rejecting, you don’t take it personal. I know what a lot of people do they like. Oh, no, they told me. No, it’s not. You. That’s just they have limited funding. Just like the nonprofits do. They only have so much money in their bucket that they can give out. It’s not that they think your program or you are terrible. It’s just, they can only do what they can with what they have. How about, uh grants.gov? You have a lot of experience there and I think it can be daunting to folks if they’re looking at their first uh federal grant. What, what, what advice do you have when you like, open the page and you’re overwhelmed. Yeah, a lot of people come to me for federal grants and they were just like, I’m not about to spend any time trying to find an opportunity. So they’ll reach out to me to do the grant research just for federal grant opportunities. Of course, everything is um in one place on grants.gov, but a lot of your states have public funding opportunities. So, um, they’re also enlisted me to locate and find state funding opportunities, um because they’ll say, well, we heard about this thing out there, this bipartisan bill that’s funding our program and services that we know that other organizations are being reimbursed for training young adults in these certain types of program. But we’re not taking advantage of that. And we know that’s a state funded opportunity. So we wanna know like what to do, how to be a part of that? Do we qualify? Do we fit? So um we could definitely um take advantage and see what opportunities are out there. But just with a quick search on grans.gov, I always tell people to go on grans.gov, create an account and put in the um search category, your area of interest. So if it’s environmental mentoring, you can be very specific as mentoring. Um try not to be so general education is so broad, but just be specific within education. If you have like a, you know, like I said, a mentoring program, um if you do things with like youth and um young adults or you serve adults that have intellectual developmental disabilities, listing those type of disabilities, whether that’s autism and things like that. So just type in autism and see what types of programs come up in grants.gov that are being funded. So be, you know, very specific. It’s, it’s possible if you just wanna start out entering one word, so you don’t feel too overwhelmed, start there and seeing what’s what’s available. And then in the federal grants process, is there advice that’s specific to that, that, that we didn’t talk about in the, in the overall grants process? Yeah, it’s very similar. Just making sure that your grant rating a lot of it for federal grants is another level of grant readiness. Like you you definitely will need to have an audit, not just a 990. Um And you wanna typically, you wanna already have um a history of winning grants, private grants. So like if you’re already bringing in, I don’t know, 255 $100,000 in your private grant funding, you wanna leverage that for your um federal grant opportunities, you typically, we may already have a grant writer on staff, but they just don’t have the capacity energy time or effort or know how to pursue federal grants. So those are just like I always say, like my checklist, quick checklist for those of organizations, like, are we ready for federal grants? So you wanna already be bringing in grants um, typically have some type of fundraiser at your organization, whether that’s a director of development or a grant person to manage the grants and you, um you definitely wanna have an audit in place. Can’t the reporting for federal grants sometimes be burdensome? Yes. And that’s a part of my, like once um organizations do work with me, that’s a part of our review process. We found this grant opportunity is a good fit. We wanna pursue it. Part of that review is the reporting and the compliance. Is it worth the time energy effort if this grant is just say 100,000, over two years, which is $200,000? Is that sounds like a lot of money? But is it gonna are we gonna spend more time and staff time doing the reporting on this grant than it would be the effort to actually apply for it. So that’s a part of that review process as well. Some, some, um, um, grants, you only have to report once a year. Some of them they want monthly reports. Court. I’ve seen them all across the board. Um, I’ve seen monthly, which is a lot. So again that those are just things to take into consideration when applying. So, yeah, that’s a great question. Sometimes they’re so burdensome that it’s not worth applying, it’s not worth it. And that’s something that organizations make the, make the determination, we determine that, um, or we’ve, we’ve gotten funding from them in the past, I’ve seen that happen. We’ve gotten funding from this organization in the past. It wasn’t worth it and we’re not going after it again. But you alluded to earlier. I wanna pull on a little bit more the, if you have difficult, uh, programs to, to fund, you know, uh, is there specific advice? I mean, beyond doing careful research? So you’re not, like you said, you’re not expanding an arts program into education when it’s really, it’s really an arts program. But if you have a difficult to, to fund program, what is there specific advice you have around that? Yeah, a lot of times people try to make grants, their thing when, um, you should be as a grant, professional like this is how I get paid. But nonprofits, every nonprofit shouldn’t be pursuing grants. The number one source of income or revenue should be individual donations. Um So you should be promoting your services in that manner and tracking your ideal, you know, funders. I know a lot of nonprofits are state or county funding. That’s where you get a lot of their money. But if you’re generally just trying to raise money for your organization, you should definitely um be pursuing individual donations, your major giver, your major, um you know, major gifts and things like that. Um And then building off of that, if you say your program is difficult, difficult to fund or difficult to explain or, or maybe is difficult to get funding from grants and grants may just may just not not be your thing and that’s ok, you definitely wanna pursue funding in other areas. And you also mentioned uh affording a grant writer or you know, what if I mean, obviously there are consultants like you who can, who can do this. Uh You also mentioned the idea of having someone write language that you can use and tailor, you know, throughout your grant writing. And then, you know, maybe every year or two, you, you just update that, that, that sounds like very good advice. You could hire somebody to just do like a discreet project for you to uh what else? How else can you leverage uh what the, the expertise that’s out there. If you can’t afford a, you know, if you can afford one, like a grant writer on a consistent basis, like every single month paying them, I say, um, you can bring them on board for uh, a smaller project. They’re gonna do the, say the next three or four grants for us and we’ll take those grants and take them moving forward. You can just hire them for a project, um hire them to develop some bowler plate language for you. Um hire them to work closely with your organization to train staff to uh pursue federal grants or, you know, just be to, to pursue grants period. So the training is an option or you can just bringing them on for like project support. I always tell um organizations to consider a training program, not just sign up for a grant training program, like a webinar uh self or like on demand, but like actually bringing someone on for a short period of time to work with you to train up your organization. They’re not gonna be doing the grants for you, but they’ll be guiding you and that helps with um keeping the cost down because the grant writer isn’t doing the those grants for your organization on behalf of your organization because of course, that, that, that costs more. Are you seeing more funders now paying for some of the overhead that goes along with the project or program that they’re funding like technology, uh, you know, maybe salary or partial salary. Are you, are you seeing a move in that direction? Like over the past five years, even just recently? I actually am. I’m seeing organizations understand it. Take staff to do this work so they understand they’re like, wow, like novel idea. But yeah, they’re funding, um, your overhead and I’m just seeing like general operating, general operating funds so you can use those funds as needed. Um, I just talked to someone who’s inquiring about services. She was like, we’re looking for more general rating that she’s like there’s more project, um, funding than there is general operating. I said actually it’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of general operating grants out there. So, um, if you’re not seeing them again, that’s because you may just not be, you’re just not because it’s not what you do and not your expertise, you may not know where to go, but there are a lot of general operating funding opportunities available. Ok. That’s very good to know. Um, and then just, you know, to sort of wrap up, what do you see as the future? What do you, where do you think, uh, grants, the institutional funding is, is headed? What do you think changes we’re gonna see? What do you expect? Yeah, a lot of trends that I’m seeing now, one of the big trends I’m seeing now is organizations funding groups or coalition. So, um I’m a nonprofit A I do this work and our clients also need this other service. It’s not what we do, but we partner very closely with nonprofit B to deliver that service to our clients. So in order for our clients to get the holistic experience and um making sure they don’t get gaps in services like they have housing, but our clients aren’t able to keep their housing because they have health check challenges. We partner with a healthcare organization, healthcare agency that specializes in serving vulne vulnerable populations, vulnerable people to get them the resources and health care services, health and wellness that they need. So, funders are funding groups or coalitions. When you go in as a group, um in a grant application, they really like that, they see their dollars being, you know, spread out more effectively, they’re seeing a greater impact. So I encourage um nonprofits to consider going into some of these grant applications instead of competing against each other. Going as you know, a group select a fiscal sponsor. I don’t know how you’re gonna do that, flip a coin, do whatever you need to do, it just increases your chances success. A lot of times people just go with whoever is the bigger organization who has the um the largest budget. But sometimes it could just be a capacity issue. If somebody has the capacity to manage the grant, I really encourage people to go into these grant applications, especially if it’s like a big multiyear funding going in as a coalition. So that’s a big one. OK. Anything else? Uh you see trend wise? Um I of course, a I is really big people taking advantage of that. Um There’s the concern of replacing grant writer. I don’t see that happening, but I can see like us being able to utilize it to enhance um the way we work. Um like leveraging A I, what that looks like. I don’t know what this is point is still kind of new we’re learning. But um that’s something definitely I can see taking advantage of learning how to utilize it ethically um to enhance the programs and services and our services that we deliver to our clients and even our nonprofits are utilizing it on their end as well. Thank you very much, De Rhonda Harrison. Thank you her firm uh that she’s founder and president is June 1st firm at June 1st firm.com. You’ll find Deronda whose name is not pronounced Deanda. That’s the, that was the Italian in me, Italian. You pronounce all the vowels. So I must be Deanda bad. Um Deronda de Rhonda Harrison. You’ll find her on linkedin. Thank you very much, Deronda. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Tony. I enjoyed it. Pleasure. Next week. Your one page strategic plan with Veronica La Finna. You missed any part of this week’s show. I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation. 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