Judy Levine: Board Members Are People Too
One size fits all rules may not make sense for your board, especially if you’re embracing diversity and equity in board membership. Judy Levine is a longtime board coach, trainer and consultant, and she led Cause Effective for 17 years. She’s now an independent consultant. This originally aired August 15, 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. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the embarrassment of pseudo cholesteatoma if I had to hear that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s up this week? Hey, Tony, we have board members are people too. One size fits all. Rules may not make sense for your board, especially if you’re embracing diversity and equity in board membership. Judy Levine is a longtime board coach trainer and consultant and she led cause effective for 17 years. She is now an independent consultant. This originally aired August 15th, 2022 on Tonys take two tariffs, 101 were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box.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 board members are people too. It’s a pleasure to welcome to nonprofit radio, Judy Levine. She has been executive director of cause effective since 2006 and she has over 30 years experience as a nonprofit management advisor at cause effective since 1993. And as an independent consultant, she has trained and consulted with well over 1000 nonprofits on issues in fund diversification, donor engagement and board and organizational development. Cause effective. Is that cause effective.org Judy? Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you. I’m pleased to be here. Pleasure to have you. Uh I’ve had your colleagues through the years. Uh Greg Cohen and Susan Comfort, who I know Susan is completely retired now and Greg is mostly retired now. They’ve been sort of stepping stones to the top now. We have the executive director. Ok. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Here I am. I’m good. My, my apologies, Susan Comfort is someone else. Susan Gabriel is who used to be at uh at cause effective long time and, and Greg Cohen, you’re concerned about uh equity on boards. Uh But at the same time, you know, we’re trying to maintain standards, but we want, we want a diverse board standards, don’t always apply to all the, all the different cultures we’re inviting in, help me, uh set this up. Well, there’s always a fear of the difference, the difference and uh then also a fear of um acting inappropriately around the different and those two fears, um sometimes stop a board from real honest, um, an accurate reflection on what’s at the table and what’s the most appropriate way to support the organization’s mission. Um And especially, you know, ever since the racial reckoning of 2020 the understanding on nonprofits parts that they needed to reckon with their own d eib diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Um My sense is that, that, that ha that, that reckoning has happened on a staff level at a different, different pace than it’s happened on the board level. And some of that has to do with fundraising and people’s fear that if they rock the boat, they will not have the fundraising return that they have now. Um And I’m here to say two things. One is that there is plenty of uh salaried capacity in this country for people of color, although not as much, uh not as much wealth accumulation, certainly generational wealth accumulation. And that’s a very real factor. Um So to think that you need to diversify your board, that you need to reach into the client base, which may be true, but is not the only way to diversify your board from the uh the group. It has always been ok. Are those the two? That’s, that’s number one. The other is that yes, you may have to rethink the one size fits all package. And that’s been a mantra in our boards is that everybody has to hold the same standard and that we know that everybody is the same standard and we don’t want double standards or triple standards. Um I’m here to re help people rethink the idea of universal standards versus standards that make sense for where that person is coming from and what they can, what they can actually bring to the table if they do their best. Ok, le let’s take the first of those because there’s, there’s an imp, there’s an assumption there that people of color are not gonna be able to meet our fundraising expectation. So we’re gonna have to, we have to reduce our board giving to invite folks of color in. But that, that, that’s, that’s just unfair and unfair and racist. Um You, you’re not, if you’re not finding these folks and you’re not looking hard enough for people who do have the means uh to, to meet your, to meet your, your board expectation or your board fundraising expectation and, or you’re not looking um at the right messengers and, or you’re not understanding why your cause is going to be a deep personal interest just to a person of color. Um All of those factors have to be there. Um You can’t, you don’t ask anybody on the board, you don’t ask somebody on the board uh of an animal shelter. If they have no connection to animals, they don’t care about animals, you gotta look. Uh So in the same way, you have to understand, let’s put it this way. There are, there are legacy charities, um the Urban League. Um You know, it’s very that, that there are huge fundraising machines, there are people of color that um there’s a sense of the ownership that this is ours. Yeah, that may not be in your board as currently constituted. That needs to be opened up. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a holding on to, that’s a holding on to power and structures and not allowing someone who looks different comes from a different background into our, uh, our playground. Well, and it’s more than not allowing, it’s actually, um, it’s more than just a not doing, it’s something that you have to actually do do, um, is to understand, um, how, who makes decisions? Is there an in group and an out group? Is there a biting one’s time, uh, ethos, um, which doesn’t work well when you invite people of color on and then they have to buy their time and they’re the only ones that are biting their time. And yes, it might be historical that everybody else made their time years back but people are gonna lose, lose, you know, they lose patience. So it means that you have to do much more rapid, um, leadership development on boarding and power sharing. Then your board may be used to. Yeah. All right. II, I don’t, I don’t want to derail what, what, uh, what we were intending to talk about, but I just, I think it’s all of the, well, I mean, I think it’s important to point out the, the, the implicit bias that goes along with this, assuming that you’re gonna have to lower your standards basically. Just assuming you got to lower your standards if you left people of color in and I, I think it’s all of a piece and it’s about who is and who was a guest at the table and board members, all board members need to be owners, not guests. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And yes and not treated like guests. All right. All right. So, one of the things you said is that, um, one size fits all is not, uh, is not gonna be the right model. Not necessarily. So what, what’s, what’s an alternative? So if we’ve got a, we’ve got a, uh, $15,000 annual give, get board requirement. Uh, and, and two thirds of it has to, has to be from your personal, well, your, your personal asset. So $10,000 from you and if you want to either give or get the other 5000, you have an option there, but you have to give at least $10,000 a year. One of the things that I talk about that took me, you know, frankly, you know, a while to understand is the role of generational wealth transfer in people’s capacity to have disposable income. So that, um, you know, uh, oftentimes white people come from, they’re, they’re not necessarily coming from money, money, but they’re coming from a position of, um, comfort. Um, and so they’re not necessarily carrying family members, they’re not, they’re not pulling their family out of poverty along with them. Oftentimes certainly black people who are in a um may make the same salary, but they are carrying people in their family. And so you can’t say, oh, this person makes X salary and that person makes X salary. Therefore, they have the same capacity. You only find this out by talking to and listening to someone and I a universal give assumes universal capacity. And yes, we say, ok, just give us a floor and everybody should go over the floor. We all know that people rise to the floor. So the question is, is there a way to help this person get and to change that relationship and or is there what are we, what are, what we are after on the board? Someone who is using their connections for the to the extent for the organization’s behalf and what comes in is relative to those connections and the capacity. 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 board members are people too. All right. So we need to, we need to get to know our board members. Uh And, you know, uh I, I understand your point. You know, some folks may very well be supporting, helping other family members, not necessarily out of poverty, but uh I mean, it could be, but not necessarily out of poverty, but they’re, they’re, they’re helping other family members that aren’t doing as well as they are. And, and a lot of that can, a lot of that can very well come from the lack of intergenerational wealth through the generations that, that, uh, folks of color got screwed out of essentially. All right. And I still want to go back to the fact that, you know, this, I don’t want to operate under the assumption that you have to lower standards just to invite folks of color lowering standards onto, onto your, onto your board. Well, lowering fundraising, fundraising standards, but it’s not lowering, it’s broadening. Right. Well, I don’t wanna work, right. I don’t wanna operate on the assumption that you, that you have to lower standards. Right? That’s what I’m trying to defeat that assumption. Yeah. Ok. Ok. Um, all right. So what about the, uh, what about the push back the, well, before we get to the pushback that you might hear from your white board members about how we’ve been doing this for so long and it’s been fine for us. So why can’t it be ok for them before we get to that? What might, what might some of this look like? What, what kinds of, what kinds of, uh, activities can, can folks do if they, if they can’t meet the, they’re not able to meet the, the give get requirement? Are you, are you suggesting rewriting? Do we rewrite the, the expectations for all board members or I’m guessing using that as a starting point? Not an ending point? Ok. So that’s a starting point with each board member um about their, how it relates to them, to their assets, to their relationships, to their circumstances. Um And where, which areas they can go above and beyond it and which areas they need to, to uh pull back from and everybody’s gonna have a different answer to that those equations. The fact is that they are, you know, I’ve been on boards with very mixed income levels and the people who had the higher incomes understood that in order to have a board with mixed demographics, they had to do more weight pulling in the fund gathering. Mhm. That, that was part of the value system was that it was not. If they wanted everybody equal, they would have everybody just like them. If the value system was to have different voices at the table, then the value system had to be that some people did more direct fundraising and direct giving and some people did more outreach and some people did more political convers, you know, conversations et cetera. Ok. I wanna make sure we wanna be having these conversations with uh these individual conversations with potential board members. Right. We’re before we’re in the recruitment process, before we invite someone to be on a board or before we accept someone to be on a board, we want to be investigating these things. Yeah, so that they know what to expect so that they know what the expectations are and we know what we can expect. II I, you know, having done a lot of board recruitment uh with nonprofits through the years, I would say two things. I, I think you have a co before as a recruiting, you say, here’s the kinds of things that board members are expected to do. Um and um you know how these rest with you um and you’ll find out some of them are scary. Some of them are, you know, oh, I couldn’t do that. Some of them are like, oh, this, I could definitely do that. I don’t know that I would pin someone down to an exact um prescription you trying to get their temperature. Yeah. But you know, it’s a courtship process and so people go above and beyond what they thought they could do when they’re really excited by the mission and they’re given the tools they didn’t know they needed. So uh in the courtship process, I would put this menu out and say, you know, how does this look to you? How could you see yourself in this. Um, but I wouldn’t take that as the last word because the board service should be, uh, people should be going into places that are not comfortable for them. And that’s partly the role of the board chair is to, is to live that by example, it’s not just to be good at what they do, but to live by example, I tried this and this was, you know, I thought I was going to throw up, but actually I didn’t throw up. I did really well at it and then I tried that and I did throw up. So I, you know, somebody else will do that one from now on. Um And so I want to be honest with people, but I don’t want to pin them down to something they’re not being ready, ready to be pinned to. OK? But you, you make a good point about board bird service being uh a challenge. You do want, you do want folks, I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re leveraging the fact that they love your mission, your work, your values. They stand beside you with that in, in those ways. Um You want them to, to be challenged, you want board service to be meaningful. Yes. And you, you want them to learn something from it because that’s part of what they get out of it. Isn’t that just a happy club? But that they’re gaining a different kind of sense of themselves of what they’re capable of. Interesting, different sense of themselves, what they’re capable of. Yes, challenge. That’s the challenge. That’s the challenge. Go beyond comfort zone. Try this and see whether you throw up or not. Right, kind of. But, I mean, you need to try it with a lot of, um, support and, and with the tools, throw somebody into the lion’s den. All right. What about the, uh, the pushback from white board members that, you know, we’ve, we’ve been, this has always worked well for us. We’ve always had this very rigid, uh, uniform giving everybody’s given the same through these years. What, why, why do we have to now? Wwwww. What, what’s the advantage? Why, why should we change now? Ok. So I need to be polite here. Um, no, you can be firm, you can be firm and realistic. You don’t have to be a lot of counseling of white folks. And I think it’s part of our, um, job as white folks to help other white folks to a different place. All right. So don’t be, don’t be soft on nonprofit radio listeners. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll admonish you don’t do that. Um, it’s 2022. We know stuff now as white folks that we didn’t, that we were able to be blind to for hundreds of years. Sort of the comfort of being blind to. Yes. And, um, we don’t anymore. So there’s a moral obligation to act differently. Our nonprofit is, is, is here for the public. Good. And it, it, we believe that to do that, we need to reflect the full spectrum of voices that is that public and or should be concerned with our mission. That means that we need to have a table that is really welcoming to all those voices that they’re not just here, but they’re actually, we’re gonna share the ownership of this mission. And that does mean that we need to pull apart the stuff that we’re comfortable with. And that’s unspoken because it’s gonna be a mystery to somebody who doesn’t come from our background and it was already part of this. And what’s the advantage to the organization? Let’s make it explicit to doing this. We are living our values in our governance and if we’re not, that’s pretty um compromised. Um So one is congruence with organizational values and what we’re here to try and carry out. Um The second is sort of more robust conversation and decision making because there are different points of view at the table because it’s not people with UN, it’s not an entire crew with the same assumptions. And frankly, you’ll have more interesting conversations and it’ll be a more interesting club to be part of. That’s not why to do it, but it’s a side product. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate going a little different this week. Uh Because a subject I know about is in the news, a lot tariffs uh, I know about it because it’s one of the few things that I remember from my economics degree at Carnegie Mellon University in 1984. So I’ve forgotten a ton of micro and macroeconomics. But, uh, tariffs stayed with me and they’re in the news a lot that, uh, and the media doesn’t seem to explain them fully. So I would like to take a minute to do that. Uh, tariffs, what’s a tariff? A tariff is a tax on goods that the United States imposes on goods that are imported into our country. And of course, you know, other countries impose tariffs on uh goods that are imported into their countries. But, you know, we’re talking about it from our perspective, but our, our government might do this to help an industry, like suppose you wanted to help the wine industry in the United States. You might put a tariff on wines that come from maybe France and Italy and Spain or something like that. Or if we want to help the washing machine industry or the auto industry, we might put tariffs on washing machines that come from maybe China or Mexico or wherever they might come from. Same with cars could be just certain countries or we could say putting a tariff on all of the cars that come into the country from whatever country they come from. We might not pick individual countries. We might just say all the, all the cars that come into the United States are getting an additional tax, a tariff because we want to help our US uh, auto industry. Right. So it’s kind of protecting industries. That’s why they’re used and they’re also sometimes used for punishment. If we’re angry at another country, we might impose a tariff on that country’s goods. What that does is whatever the reason that we impose them, it raises the cost of these goods because there’s an extra tax added to them. And so that hurts the, that hurts the goods that hurts the companies that are bringing the goods into the country, right? So these tariffs are imposed on the companies, right? I mean, we might pick a country but the tariff really is paid by the uh by the, by the company that makes the good and ships it into the, into the United States and who pays the tara. This is the part that I don’t see explained adequately in the media. We pay the tariff, we, the consumers pay the tariff. It’s a tax, it’s added to goods and companies routinely increase the cost of their goods that are imported into the US to reflect the cost uh the increased cost to them because the the tariff is now gonna cost them more money. So they pass that cost on that additional tax on to us, the people who pay to buy the goods, the washing machines or the wine or the car. A tariff is not paid by the foreign government, whether whatever government, Italy Spain France, China, wherever, wherever we’re imposing a tariff on imports from that government is not paying the tariff, we’re paying the tariff and then the money gets paid back to the United States government from the companies that make the goods that are tariff and that are imported into the US. Ok. So the US government does get money, that’s the tariff, but we’re the ones paying it. We pay it to the company that make, made the goods and then they pay the tariff to the United States. So like lots of things, the ultimate cost of these gets passed down to us, the consumers and of course, we have nowhere to pass it on to do. We, we, we can’t pass it on. There’s no passing the buck beyond the consumer. So I just want everybody to understand who is paying tariffs when the United States government gets tariff money. Where’s it coming from? It’s coming from us, the consumers and that to take two K, that was tariff 101 with Professor Tony Martignetti. Uh I don’t know about professor like uh adjunct adjunct lecturer, adjunct lecturer for a half a ha uh for like 20 minutes on tariffs. Maybe I could, maybe I could expand a little bit. So like one third of one lecture, Adjunct lecturer, Tony Martin. I I wish all my lectures were that short in school? That insightful is what you mean? Insightful. Well, you put a lot of information in a short amount of time and I think a lot of professors could learn how to do that as well. That may be. Yeah, I, I, right. I’m not, uh, particularly verbose unless I’m having some fun with, uh, verbosity and, and, uh, word smithing. But, uh, otherwise, yeah, I’m, I think I’m pretty, pretty to the point. Yeah. Well, we’ve got VU, but loads more time, here’s the rest of board members are people too with Judy Levine. All right. So that sort of answers. Uh, dumbing down, you know, we’re not, we’re not, we’re broadening. Yeah, we’re broadening. And there are advantages. What would you say to folks that are the advantages to them personally learning, learning, learning about, uh, uh, learning from folks with different backgrounds? There is an incredible gift to be, had to be able to listen. I’ll say this personally as a white person working in a diverse environment. Um, it is humbling and awe inspiring to be in a place where you can really hear from people who didn’t, who are just like you and have them change your mind and open your mind. That’s what you gain by being in a diverse environment. And not only will you make better decisions for your nonprofit, but you will learn more and be a kinder person who in and of itself understands the way you interact with the rest of the world in a different way folks, if you want to see a diverse team, then, uh, pause the podcast and go to Cause effective.org, go to their team, uh, team or staff page and look at the, look at the pictures of the, the, the, the, the staff at Cause effective.org and then of course, come right back and press play again. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t start browsing, you know, don’t go to amazon.com too. Just look at Cause effective.org and you’ll see uh enormously diverse team there. Um All right. So, you know, that that’s anything more you want to say about wh why this is worth it for the organization or for the people. Um We live in a diverse world. I mean, you know, no matter where you are, um we, we live in a world in a country certainly. And in a world with lots of different kinds of people from lots of different kinds of backgrounds. They bring a lot of different things to the table and that are really interesting to interact with um what better way to interact with them than in the support of a cause you love so that there’s, you know, you’re all putting your, you know, shoulder to the wheel together. Um It, it gives you your life spice to be doing this in a way that’s not ho homogeneous and your organization itself will be stronger. Yeah. In the ways you just, you, you talked about a few minutes ago. Yeah, you you have some ideas about, uh, how to do this. Uh, it, it sort of efficiently shave, shave some, some time off. What? Well, one of the things that, you know, we all know that executive directors, well run boards, executive directors are behind them kind of every step of the way. Um, but in boards that really take off, there’s board to board conversation that the executive director kind of monitors but is not board of every conversation. And so, and when that happens, it’s because there are, there’s not just a board cheerleader, but there are many leaders. So there are leaders of governance or there might be a leader of on boarding or there might be a leader of uh you know, there, there’s different ways to chunk it up so that it, there’s leadership at the uh which leadership leads to ownership. Um And so part of your job as the board liaison, whether uh is to understand what that web of relationships could is and could be and then to do in essence what we call, you know, hr staff development, but with board members, so you ask them to take on certain things and then your job is, is being a coach, not being a doer. We, we’re talking about the, the CEO executive director now. Yes, sir. Yeah. And, and the development director also development and, and working closely with the board chair means it, it’s gonna help enormously to have a AAA culturally sensitive board chair. Yes. Um I send board members, especially white board members to trainings and not just what is de I but to real immersive, you know, one or two day trainings about the, how this culture rests on has rested on um racial injustice. Um I say if you’re going to be part of this organization, you need to have this basic understanding. Um And we need you to do this two day training and, and here’s, you know how to pay for it. Um Because there’s a basic understanding of that, that really shifts in those kinds of very immersive trainings. I’m not talking about a two hour what hr does at a large corporation. Um And, you know, we just said these are our values and you have to really get it. If you’re gonna be part of this team, I would certainly do that with board leadership, but this is a journey and this is part of the, and, and we want the board to be part of this journey and we need the board leadership to start it out. And if the board chair won’t do that, you do a succession plan, it’s not like you kick them out right away. But ultimately, a board is not gonna progress until you have somebody at the head of it for whom this is the air they breathe. Hm. Now you can have a chair and a president, you can have an honorary chair and an honor. You know, there are all kinds of ways to move people to the side that don’t, you know, kick them off this planet. But ultimately, you need to have someone who does, who, who breathes this stuff and who you don’t have to explain why this matters. And then it’s deeper than going to a training to understand what implicit that, that exi implicit bias exists. Right? One of those two hour trainings, ok. Say a little more about joyful board service. What we, what we can aspire to. I, I, you know, I get this so often where board members, the boards that we’re working on, they’re, they’re niggling, they’re going after, you know, do I have, you know, is it 2000 or 3000? What do I have to do? That’s the question as to what, as to, you know, it’s like I’d like to get away with as little as I can. Um And, and it’s an imposition on me as opposed to I will do everything I can. I may not be successful at everything, but I’m gonna give it a shot because this mission matters so much. And if I can help it, God willing, I’m going to and there’s when people are at the table with that attitude, there can be a joy at both delivering yourself and seeing other people deliver and celebrating that. Um And you can build that in, you can build in celebrations, you can build in you know, balloons for somebody when they hit a certain mark. Um, you have to build in not just, um, the actual dollars, but you can build in. They made thank you calls and they never talked to anybody before. You know, there’s all kinds of ways to build in a sense that I can do be part of the fundraising process, which then builds more courage for the next step. But it doesn’t happen unless you think about it celebrating small successes. That’s, that’s a terrific idea. Yeah. And you wanna build in this, this sense of, for, for every board member so that they are looking for ways to celebrate each other. Mm. So it doesn’t just come from you the CEO, it doesn’t just come from the board chair but that they are trying to help each other up that ladder. You like to see board members uh, socializing outside. I mean, I, I can presume your answer but I want you to say it socializing outside, outside the, the form the board meetings. Iii I do but I also am realistic. Um, I don’t think it’s necessary for them to be personal friends. In fact, I’ve been on boards with people who are personal friends and it’s tough. Um, because then they kind of talk about things outside and there is like, becomes factions. You certainly don’t want, um, relatives on the same board that I’ll tell you right now. Um, not just married but brother and sister replaying the, you know, the childhood, you know, I’ve seen it all I can see in your face and it sounds like you’ve been there. Yes. Um, the b, I don’t, I think that people have to like each other. Yeah. And I think you need to have some social places. You know, it’s been hard, don’t they need to get to know each other outside the board? Um, but that’s different than, um, going outside their board service. I mean, maybe not, maybe not necessarily to me that’s part of their board service. Ok. Um, that part of their board service is, understand, you know, it’s team building and the organization can facilitate that. Right? I mean, can we have, can we host drinks or dinner after a meeting? Yeah. Um, it’s, that’s one of the things that’s been much harder in zoom. Um, my part, you know, cause back of itself as a nonprofit and they had a board dinner once a year, but they should have at my house and one year I had the flu and they had it at my house anyway. And I just went to bed and they, they stayed up till like midnight and cleaned up after themselves and left, um, that we miss. So we have a game night now, once a, once a year on Zoom because it’s once a year everybody comes and they do all kinds of like 322 and a lie and all kinds of stuff, but it’s not quite the same. Um, we did have an outdoor picnic this summer and about half the board came. Um, yeah, it’s hard, you know, that’s the hard thing is now getting people out of their shell because we’re all used to now doing everything by Zoom or going to work and coming home and, you know, scurrying home. What Zoom has that? I haven’t quite figured out is that time before meetings, that time in the middle of meetings, you know, those the times of the after meetings, those kinds of times when people would talk to each other about their kids, right? Building that in um what we’ve done some of this in the, you have to do it in the middle of the meeting because people run out at the end of the meeting and they won’t come early no matter, they say, you know, two board members will come early, right? Um But if you break into smaller groups in the middle of the meeting, even if it’s only dies or triads and give them something to discuss. Um You know, one of my provocative questions is how does your birth order affect? Um the way you take on leadership, which gets into all kinds of personal background, it assumes strength and it gets people talking to each other. So having a section like that in the middle of each board meeting can help people to start to bond and then obviously changing the, you know, changing the groups up. Yeah, and making that group uh a hint, make those small groupings deliberate. Don’t just leave it to the Zoom Universe to deliver the development. Yeah, you can either make them random or you can assign people to be with, with other, with other people and the assigning is, is much better. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve done that in some of my trainings. Um uh What else, what else you wanna touch on around this, uh this equity and equity in boards and, and inviting folks in and joyful board service. Um Welcoming notion of enlightened self interest, which I think uh it has to do with understanding the uh the meaning of your cause to people who are not directly affected by it. So, you know, when we’re teaching fundraising, we’ll say um OK, you don’t fundraise just for the people who have direct interest to your cause because that’s your clients. And if you could raise your money from them, that would be earned income and you wouldn’t be a nonprofit, but you can’t raise money from people who have no connection to your cause because it doesn’t make sense to them. Why are they gonna lie on it? And that’s the same thing with board members. You can’t ask board members to fundraise if you, they don’t feel connection to cause and, or to audiences that don’t feel connection, but you have to find the enlightened self interest, which is myself as a member of the city, this neighborhood, this grouping that I care about Children, having a head start. That’s why you’ll often find like a mom’s group in Westchester suburb in New York that’s fairly wealthy. Most of it um will take on fundraising for a program in the quote unquote inner city because they understand the meaning of this work for Children even though it’s not their Children. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because that’s where the ownership comes in the sense that it’s on to. It’s up to me to make a difference for this and that this matters to me even though it’s not my personal experience. And I think that’s group conversations, it’s conversation in the courtship process and then it’s group conversations at the board level to keep that fresh. And it has to be deliberate because it’s the board service devolves into finance monitoring. Oh, yeah, if it’s right, if it’s allowed to discussions about why the mission matters to whom does the mission matter? Beyond just the direct recipients are very inspiring and they give your board members personal uh you know, nurturing and the tools to go out to their contacts with different kinds of language. And you will often find, you know, I’m looking for areas in which different people can be experts, not just the people who have a lot of board experience or who are, you know, long time experienced fundraisers, but that people with different points of view can have the position of being an expert. Hm. And this is where you will find points of view that your classic cabal has not thought of conversations. Yes, I love how you pause and, and think through and then make your next point. Uh, I’ve just been talking to you for, uh, 40 minutes, whatever, 35 minutes I, I’ve learned. All right. Give her a couple, give her a couple of beats because uh she’s got, she may very well have more to say, I love you the way you reflect. I, uh I, I don’t have that gift. I tend to be more, more impulsive and II, I spew everything out in one shot. Well, that’s why you’re on the radio and I’m not interesting to, um, you know, I, I wanna, having served on a board, you’ve been on multiple boards. Not that many because I take it really seriously. Yeah, but it’s been more than one. Yeah. Um, and then being a, an executive director myself and, um, being a consultant of board gives me humility about, about the possibility of board service. Um And I feel like, uh people who are only on staff have expectations, uh and anger when board members don’t meet their expectations. Whereas I’m trying to say it’s human nature to triage the kind of people who will agree to be on a board are often fully committed. I don’t wanna say over committed because you commit to what you commit to and it makes sense for them to do what they have to do and not more because there’s always something else calling on their time, let alone, you know, the idea that they might wanna play golf or read a book. If you do that, if you understand it, that that’s rational, human behavior, then you don’t get as angry at people, you manage them that everyone’s gonna triage that they’re gonna, they’re gonna assess their priorities and they’re gonna, and they’re gonna act accordingly and it’s up to you to have a dialogue about that. It’s not that you, you know, there’s something wrong with letting people slide or something, but it’s um it’s understanding and helping them understand how to fit in with all the different priorities of their life, right? And where does this mission fit in, in your, among your priorities? Right. You know, it’s why I, I um when, when I, when groups do uh board member, um the contracts or whatever they call them, um I suggest that there actually be calendars in there so that you, somebody can say to you, I can’t do that in June because my twins are graduating high school. In which case we say, you know what, we’re gonna take you off of that and we’re gonna take you off of me so that you can have a very because they’re not gonna do it anyway. Yeah. And then they just stop returning your phone or they don’t respond to emails. So having respect for all the different po pos rationally on board members, time and life and energy. Yeah. And then helping them understand how to fit this in, in a way that makes sense. All right, let’s uh give you, I wanna give you a chance to uh talk about cost effective because it is a nonprofit. It’s a, it’s a consultancy for nonprofits. They’re advisors, consultants. What, what uh what, what’s the breadth of the work? And how do, how do you work with, with your client nonprofits? Well, I, you know, I’d say we are 40 this year, we are about to celebrate our 40th anniversary. Congratulations for decades. Um And I’d say that the common theme throughout has been changing how organizations are resourced, um changing the balance of money and therefore power in the sector. Um And it’s both increasing it and increasing it so that it’s not just that the most well resourced nonprofits get more resources but that it’s nonprofits that are located in disenfranchised communities and the people who work there and um uh and volunteer there are able to raise the money, they need to further those causes um And to govern themselves because to me, governance is integra apart, it’s more than just raising money. But if you don’t have AAA governance structure that works, you’re not gonna have a fundraising structure that works on the voluntary level. Um and that’s where you get to organizations where the staff fundraises, but the board doesn’t and the volunteers don’t. Um So we have, we work, we do a lot of cohort work where we’re looking at the development directors of color and we have um working with them over a six month period of time, um in a particular program that we have to help them really address um the barriers to their being, being successful and not only to talk about it but to actually address it. Um We, so we do a lot of individual coping with, with, with um executive directors who may have come up through fundraising and, but, you know, you need to do it if they need it. It is not part of the fundraising structure. The organization is only gonna get so far. Um, and board members, a lot of board consulting, um especially now with boards that know they need to diversify and don’t really like, they know they need the composition, but they don’t and they don’t necessarily know that they need to act differently to have different people in different seats. Um We do everything from, you know, eight hour retreats on Zoom, maybe six hours uh to year long coaching engagements to what we call deep dive um transformation, which is a lot of times people come to us and say, well, my board won’t fundraise and we get in there and we start talking to board members and we find out there’s all kinds of reasons. It’s not just that they don’t know how to ask for money, but it’s that there’s not financial transparency, there’s not, um, a real partnership between staff and the board. Um, there’s not a peer to peer accountability on the board. Um, there’s a, in a group of three board members who do everything and everybody else slides. Um, you know, there’s all kinds of reasons that we will help. We will actually go in and help address. We say that that’s a symptom. My board won’t fundraise and there are, you know, many, many causes of that and we will, we, one of the things we’re known for is that we will go in and address the cause. We’re not just gonna do the tactics. Um, we also do a lot of fundraising consulting for groups that, um, have had a lot of government support or a lot of foundation support and know they need to diversify and they don’t necessarily have, you know, a Lincoln center board. Um, but it is very possible that people around the country or world will care about what they do and will back it up and want to make it happen if they, you know, for one of the things they say is that in fundraising, the one thing that’s, that’s um limited is time. There’s only 24 hours and maybe one second or maybe now two seconds in the day. And so you need to make choices that are smart with how you spend your fundraising time, money is not the limiting factor, but time is. And so we’ll help groups really understand what are the likely avenues and how to structure the resources they have to reach those days. Get longer. What was one or two seconds? It actually they did make a ruling and there’s like they added a second or something. Oh, I didn’t hear about that. I, well, I’ve been squandering my, my two seconds a day. For. How long have we had this? How long have we had these longer days? Go look it up. Six months. Yeah, I don’t know how many seconds that is. I can’t do the math that fast. No, but six months is 100 and 80 days. Times two seconds. 360 seconds. It’s a good six minutes. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I squandered. All right, I’m gonna try to get it back right now by cutting you off. No, no. All right. Thank you for explaining. And, uh, thanks for a frank conversation. Yeah, we don’t, you know, for our, for nonprofit radio, uh, white listeners. Uh, we’re not, we’re not, uh, we’re not going easy and you have to have, you have to have honest conversations. So, thank you. Yeah, I, I think this has been some of, you know, I’ve been in this field for 30 years and this has been some of the most rewarding and deep work. Um, it’s not surface, it really addresses, you know, I had to go back to everything I assumed from my childhood on and understand that there’s, there are different realities and that, um, it’s not that I can go back and change it, but I can change my behavior going forward so that I further a different kind of future. Mm. She’s Judy Levine and she’s the executive director of cause effective. Uh you should have already been at their website because you would have seen their diverse team when we uh when I suggested take a pause and then you came back. But if you haven’t been there or if you don’t remember where it is, it’s at. Cause effective.org and Judy Levine. Thank you very much. Thanks for sharing. Thank you. It’s great to have this kind of conversation. Pleasure. Next week, Professor Russell James returns with the right words and phrases for fundraising. He got sick and couldn’t record for this show. I know you believe that you believe the guy he comes up with, he comes up with uh I lost my voice. No, we’ll, we’ll have them next week. 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. I love that alliteration. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. You’re with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
The New Year means a close look in the corners. We’ve got the legal issues you need to fine tune. Erin Bradrick is senior counsel at the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (
