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Nonprofit Radio for December 22, 2017: Recruiting Your Next CEO

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My Guest:

Dennis Miller: Recruiting Your Next CEO

“As a board member of a nonprofit organization, the most important responsibility you are likely to assume will be to hire your chief executive officer.” So starts the book, “A Guide To Recruiting Your Next CEO.” Whether you’re on a board or work with one, you need to know what’s what for this critical duty. Author Dennis Miller walks us through.

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of cattle lep c if you tried to hypnotize me into the idea that you missed today’s show recruiting your next ceo as a board member of a nonprofit organization, the most important responsibility you are likely to assume will be the hyre your chief executive officer. So starts the book a guide to recruiting your next ceo, whether you’re on a board or work with one, you need to know what’s what for this critical board duty author dennis miller returns to walk us through on twenty state too next month’s non-profit radio we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant and by wagner. Sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers wittner, cpas, dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit appaloosa accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com tell us turning payment processing into your passive revenue stream tony dot m a slash tony tell us i’m glad that i can welcome dennis miller back then a c miller he’s, a strategic leadership coach and executive search consultant with more than thirty five years experience working with non-profit board leadership and chief executives across the country. He’s, managing director of the non-profit search group, an executive recruiting firm. His latest book, his fifth, is a guide to recruiting your next ceo. The executive search handbook for non-profit boards you’ll find dennis and his book at dennis c miller dot com he’s at dennis c miller and i’m very glad that his book brings him back to non-profit radio. Welcome back, dennis c miller happy to be back, tony way happy well happened years coming up. Yes, stopping here. That’s appropriate. I’m sorry. Thank you. And to you what does the sea foreign dennis, c miller, dot com and charles that’s my father’s name. So, so many dennis mellows and grammar school in high school, we put my seeing and i’m very proud to be a similar dennis charles. All right, you don’t mind if i don’t call you tennessee miller the whole hour, though, i just call me yet that it’s anything you’re like. Okay, now. Dennis overviewing i just have to be it has to be anymore denigrating the dentist, then it’s fine, now you’re by phone, you’re in, you’re in los angeles, is that right? Yeah, i’m actually in the los angeles area of isn’t that it’s a business appear this week and now we’re spending time. My wife and i went our two sons on their families and grandson out here and los angeles and heading up to santa monica santa monica pier, right after the show. So good. All right, well, we won’t hold you up. In fact, if you want take off now, we can just back the whole thing. Did you do you need to go public transportation is going to leave in five minutes or something or you’re okay. You’re okay for the hour. Okay. Now remember the last time you were here? You almost had a heart attack. You were running down the street. You were late. Your your, um your cheeks were rosy. Your heavy breathing. You needed a few minutes to take deep breaths. So now you’ve after to go to los angeles. And this way you can call him by phone. Well, okay, you don’t. Worry about running running to the studio. Okay, okay. You didn’t have a heart attack. You know what i was saying? I really have no salmon. Naralo were had a regular. You may have. No, you did. You had a high. You’re definitely out of my heart because your face was red. All right, why do we need this book? Why are you causing trouble with this tome? Well, think about it that there’s probably over a million more more than a million non-profits around the country and with the number of people that are just paid to retire over the next five plus years on any research, uh, just staggering sometimes close a seventy five percent. The ah the vast majority of people went into the non public sector and leadership positions where baby boomers from the sixties and seventies went to sort of the cultural change and wanted to commit themselves to having a big impact in the communion. So there’s, a lot of retirement going on, and the the biggest responsibility that a member of the board can have is selecting the next ceo. And then on top of that, when you think about the challenges of the environment in the non public sector, the leadership conferences have been dramatically changing, so it’s an important time for board members to understand what is needed to recruit the next ceo that’s why i wrote the book ok, seventy five percent turnover in the next ten years we’re going to have i’m probably less i mean, it’s, it’s quite a bit, if you think about people that grew up in the sixties and seventies, where you know it’s now two thousand, you know, seventeen and people in their sixties and thinking about stepping down another part of life and a lot of recruitment gonna be needed get latto leadership so it’s going to be required for this sector. Now, one of the opening questions is whether we should go this recruitment alone or hyre a such consultant now you’re you’re biased. You say that in the book you’re biased, but, you know, can you weigh the pros and cons for us? You know, so i’m biased certainly wasn’t if someone if someone wants to go about it a lot, i think the book will help them with that for sure you want to go in alone is this year. You have people on the board or staff with the expertise and recruiting. Do you have the time commitment that’s going to be needed for the board members, too? Not only identify the profile of the next candidate, but spending the time and now is reaching out and screening candidates. So there’s a lot of work involved that lay out those except in the search committee. Klaus is here. I think that what a lot of people doing today is realizing that, you know, whatever the figures that they’re going to be paying and most trees probably in area someplace between twenty to thirty five percent are cases. Twenty five that the advertiser over five years and sometimes really not that high. And yet. So you want to have an expertise this like anything else? If he needed a lawyer of financial account, you’d be hiring someone. It’s a challenging thing to go about on your own and the other aspect, tony, uh, for people who want to go about on their own is by just posting sort of adds a social media. Whatever you going toe on ly get the people that are looking for a job. And you know no either how good they are. However performing they are. Well, if they’re happy, a search from is going to recruit people that are not looking for that job. And that’s part of what you want. What i have that those percentages thatyou quoted that’s of the first year cash compensation. Is that yes. So someone makes ah a position whether the ceo our c f o r development amglobal to say the position i was one hundred thousand dollars. You know, the average three is going to be, you know, twenty five thousand dollars. But if this day five years it’s five thousand dollars a year which comes out to be about a hundred dollars a week or twenty hours of any and, you know the thing about it’s, probably the smartest investments that aboard would want to make. Okay, noah particularly because the right person and they stay for a period of time. It it’s okay. And i guess the main advantage of going on your own is your saving that fee. Well, you saving the fee, but you also, you know, better be prepared for the time that your board is gonna have that so that you poisoned cons here, but most most really good organizations will use the search from for certain keys positions. Okay, okay. Um, let’s say we just have about a minute before ah, first break, dennis so let’s, just identify that this ceo change is not something necessarily to be feared. I mean, just in a minute or so, this could be an opportunity, a great opportunity. Well, that’s, how you look at him and i were doing a search right now when we’ve got the finalists been seen by the search committee and in beginning this is that this is the first time this organization has used a search firm. And, you know, they admitted they made some mistakes in the past. But you’ve got to go from, you know, not a crisis, too. This is a phenomenal opportunity, too. I just take it, get a new leader. But i have an assessment of your organization and have some advice and give me and people get on the board. And we’ve been here for quite a while. Or fairly new it’s a exciting time to take a first look atyou organization. So it if the glass is half full it’s i look at it is very exciting times one organization, most clients feel the same way, all right? And we’re gonna talk about that. That assessment right after this right now. Time to take a break pursuant. Proven strategies for stewardship. That is their oh so timely webinar replay for you stewardship strategies, because lots of people giving right this quarter this month how do you keep them giving year after year after year? You know how costly it is to lose donors and replace them. We know nationwide that donor attrition is around seventy five percent annually. Sad that’s ah that’s supposed to be ah, supposed to be our president tweeting sad. But if you have to tell the judge, you have to tell what it is then it doesn’t work. Ah, but but maybe it did work. I’m not there to listen to you laugh. So maybe it worked out fine, so i didn’t need to. Rachel and kathy are going to give you examples of top thank you’s. They talk about automation without sacrificing personalization. They have free templates for you to use. And if you don’t mind, i would like to throw in that the value. Of the personal touch of handwritten notes for your special donors, all proven stewardship strategies. You’ll find that webinar at tony dahna em, a slash pursuant capital p now, back to dennis miller and his book, recruiting, ah, guide to recruiting your next ceo and dennis similar so let’s, talk about that. That possibility for assessment. You, uh, you say that you might. I considered doing strategic planning. I guess if you have time before getting into the recruiting process for the next ceo. Yeah, well, the you know, the question always is, you know what comes first, right? Chicken or the egg? Tony, do your hyre our ceo or d’you hyre our chief development officer before you have a plan and and kind of it’s up it’s up to the client, the organization, but give you a couple examples, whites sort of better toe at least an idea of where you want to go and what you want to achieve. So let’s say, uh, you want it, you go out and hyre ceo hoping that day will build your plan and let some party of plan is to be more involved in philanthropy maur involved in cultivating. So seeing donors? What if that seo hee just hyre doesn’t have that experience will now you’re stuck. So what if your needs is to grow? You’re bored and you, seo yi sa doesn’t have that so one of the things that i recommend the clients is that’s not necessarily happen to have a full blown strategic plan, but certainly it’s a good idea to have a real sense of your strategic vision where you had it, where you want to head, what some of the big strategic goals you have, um, what things that you need to get done, and then obviously it’s much easier to in to identify that the characteristics on the qualities and experience of the ceo. So you bring someone on board who is the right cultural fit for your organization. So that’s, why it’s important to take a look at kind of way you want to go before you just went on board? You say that if you’re not going to do a full, full blown strategic plan planning process, you want to at least identify what your organizational goals are? Yeah, i mean, i think there are some people that, you know don’t do oppcoll bonem metoo plan, i think that you could do that, but i think more importantly, uh, what you want to do and a good search from what we do is we do sort of an assessment of where you’re at in your life, uh, cycle as an organization and as a board um, and then we interview members of your board and you’re seeing your team to get a sense of where you’re at that helped us for magically beginning the onboarding plus is what your next ceo? So we know kind of what their challenges are versus going about it blind, so i do think that you wanna have, and i point this out in the book, you want to have a sense of your strategic vision, we’re heading and pick up some of the key goals you’re having here. So when you’re interviewing kayman thatyou want, make sure they’re lined with those gold here and it makes a much smoother transition, some of the goals you you lay out besides mission envision our fund-raising and development, you know what you want do around that you’re bored ceo relationship, your programs and services and of course, you know, the book explains what goes into detail on each of those, but, um, yeah, i would have a couple of it, certainly. You know, your organizational capacity. What do you have in terms of leadership development? Do you have ah plan to develop the people you have there? What’s going on with you border. You’re building the right board. Are you branding the organization and communicating with the impact you’re having is important things today. So there’s a lot of ah, strategic goals, that one. Should be having with this process and you want to get a sort of buy-in from your board and have the new ceo committed help temple with this upleaf and okay, so this new ceo is gonna have need to have some skills on dh you make the point that you don’t want to be constrained by what the what the skills and talents of the existing ceo are. We want to be thinking beyond that, i mean, that’s that’s part of what this organizational either planning or identifying the goals is going to do is help you look forward, not current, you know, you just don’t want you don’t want to just replicate the current ceo’s talents, but you want to build on those for the future and you identify a whole bunch of, you know, potential skills that you might be looking for a visionary thinker, entrepreneurial spirit, relationship builder, etcetera. But you want to be going beyond the current? Yeah, i mean, it’s easy question when you have someone, you know, you know what kind of kind of see what you’re looking for? And then the person who has been in the job, you know, for the past ten, fifty years, your name is surely people we’d like someone like charlie. Well, maybe you do. Maybe you don’t. I think that the challenges that you previously eoe had maybe sell it, but they also be very different. And one of things that you just mentioned that i have in the book, in another books, in my work i do, tony is the idea of today’s competencies for ah, executive leadership in on public sector, dramatically different than they were five, ten years ago. There’s nothing wrong with what they were in the past. You know, aboard we’ll look for someone who was a a mission based person who could have built a good relation of in the community, probably someone who could manage people in programs and perhaps someone who could go out get a grant. Though their skills are still important today, they look for more than just skills. But competition traits such as they want a visionary thinker today, when the past the ceo or executive director would implement the board’s vision. Today, boards are looking for ceos to create their own vision cream organization. I want a visionary thinker, which takes coverage of grey. Division number two certainly. People want the idea of relationship will the building relationships outside inside the organization? Uh, someone who’s, a social entrepreneur who can help develop the resource is in partnership that you need not just managed him when you got so is the whole siri’s of conferences that identifying the book, including, you know, today being a collaborate it’s, not about how big of a budget you have in control it’s about collaboration. So, yes, there is a lot of new compass out there for ceos and executive represented, but i use the term song with ceo. Exactly. Director? Yeah. That’s a fair that’s. Fair fares. Similarities. Of course. I did have a guest years ago. Eugene fram. He was a professor that i think he was a university of rochester. Andi made a case that he wanted it to be the ceo. He he felt that chief executive officer conveys a greater gravitas than executive director and ceo. That chief executive makes it less likely. Now it doesn’t make no guarantee, but less likely that board members will get involved in the nitty gritty the day to day management, you know, be be micromanaging ceo versus an executive director? I don’t. Do you have any preference for one over there? I know the book uses anonymously, but you have a preference for one. Over the other day, i d’oh you know, tony it’s a point you’re raises a really good one. And i do highly in the book of my work. But i do think today the more contemporary title is chief executive officer. Um, the more contemporary title is bored shiver support president what you kind the past is, um, it may just be words, but i think they have a lot of connotations. They do hide them so i’d like to see board chair for sport president. I think the top late personal pipe paid for sex should be the president ceo. And i think that was provoc pulawski right there when you’re out there with donorsearch oh, it’s more than just an executive director overseen the apartment. You really keep executive making things happen? I do. I do before the words ceo cubine taking andi also executive director. I mean that’s that’s sort of a uniquely non-profit terms way wanted to think that running like businesses run. This thing like a business happens. To be a nonprofit corporation. But don’t tell this to run like a business on my other interviews with you came up the term, you know, non-profit attacks that business plan, i think it’s important that today’s title be ceo. I just really think that important title they have let’s get into some nitty gritty. I want to start with the the search committee who belongs on this thing. Well, clearly, i think the this you know that in terms of size of dominant members of the search committee should be members of the board. Now, can you have a non board member on such absolute who might that be? Well, if you have someone on your community that you know has experienced with search maybe a human resource background and then on your board, you want to get their advice and gets a good that’s a good conclusion. But generally speaking, if you have a board say of, you know, twelve to fifteen people, you may one of the search committee of maybe five, you know, maybe seven maximum, but i’ve seen larger or smaller. Um, so sizes of the committee is important. Number two, uh, be tremendous amount. Of time commitment so the members of the search committee have to realize it’s going to be in involvement here in some time, and then obviously, the key part of that will be who will be your chair, the search committee, in some cases it’s, a chair of the board, which is completely appropriate. Other times that could be the vice chair of the future chair. Ah, a lot of people ask me all the time. Would it be ok, though? Has the form of a former board chair? A starita search for money and i would say maybe i would say maybe on ly, because if the former board chair eyes focus about what happened yesterday and not involved as much in your strategic planning for the future and not somebody think of something because they won’t know like what they’re looking for, yeah, this’s committee’s got to be a forward approaching organization, afford protect committee so i think that’s kind of that that’s something to think that i would be looking for a nose of membership. What about an employee putting one one employee on the committee? I don’t think that’s a good idea, actually, i think it’s a bad idea to come out writer bae and say not well, give example. Okay, uh, i’ve had people wondering to put, you know, uh, you know, the current ceo on the search committee, and the answer is no, that law office of the current ceo, maybe and help in the search committee and the consultant or either inside or outside of the search committee helped develop aspects of the position provoc what will be the ideal qualifications and experience of the next ceo? But the board hires and fires a ceo um it’s also very uncomfortable before a current ceo to be on the search committee. I had a case where it wasn’t my search client, but it was my client that i helped with succession planning in they had internal candidate for the position. And when the search committee, as this person, what changes would you make she’s very awkward to be talking about the change you want to make with theo? Of course, right. So i have. But now, those times when you get there, some people have their v p of hr on the search committee if they need it lays on. But remember, people it’s not a good idea. Has staff it’s not good to have senior members of the committee on the search committee. It should be his boardmember dahna okay, predominately. And then you said maybe a volunteer. I love you. He needs expertise. I mean, if you know if you’re going to not have a search committee and may sometimes people can hyre a certain person not to do the search, but just give advice. But i think you want someone on the committee that has experienced in recruitment, identifying screening candidates and all that type of thing so you can build it up with the great. Okay. Okay. Um, this search committee has to assure that applicants confidentiality is going to be maintained, right? You want a crucial because on i make it clear to all my such you could be. You could be sued for. Ah, um, you could be potentially have a lot of liability for exposing that. There is a candidate. You tell your friend, by the way. You know, tony is it’s been interviewing for me and and before you know it, tony’s, you know, employer finds out, you know, feels like this oil is the prom. So you have to protect confidentially, it’s something that i have to establish the trust of my chance coming in, derek, they’re they’re adamant, and it’s just goes with the same goes with the business, i have to keep them confidential. There’s no way can let people know they’re seeking a job. Yeah, and this goes part me, tio, some of the time commitment, you know, if if there isn’t a, uh, a search consultant helping some of these conversations that the early stage is going to be after hours, people are going to be comfortable talking between, you know, nine and six p m yeah, after the day i’ve had, you know, i mean, our business is growing tremendously, what’s what’s going on, but, you know, when people say yeah, you know, maybe i’ll do it myself, but listen, if you can, if you know it’s up to you but the time involved for not just the identifying the characteristics and compasses of what the third, if you want up with the outreach to potential candidates is very time consuming if you’re going to delegate that members of the search committee a wall so, you know, professionals are working or even retired it’s a lot of work involved in screening people, scheduling interviews, scheduling meetings, being qualified to interview people, it’s a lot of time of all the narrow and candidates down and doing the reference, checking it’s quite a bit. So there’s a lot of work that’s involved in a process, not just putting it out there and then, you know, interview case it’s quite a bit of work to both sell candidates on why they want to take a look at this opportunity that’s really important, which is when i was just going to point out that you say some things that caught my eye was very, very interesting i hadn’t heard before that the search committee has an obligation. So our role teo, be selling the applicants on the organization not just to be not just to be a neutral a neutral committee, but be advocates for the auriga yeah, i mean, the candies are going to come in, they’re gonna come in prepared and they’re there to sell themselves. And what often happens on some cases where the search committee say, jeez, i thought, you know, how come they don’t think that we’re the best? Thing since sliced bread. Well, you want to convey a sense of optimism, a sense of enthusiasm. So you need candy it’s, goingto, besides what the search consultant is going to be telling them about the organization recruiting for as a search committee, i remember that you want to be portraying avery plaza of image. You want to be sort of extending your hand, you want to be greeting them. You want to make them feel welcome and warm, even if you’re not going to be selected them. And you noted, under process, you want to believe what a very positive feeling for donorsearch that’s, a major altum search committee acid. All right, interesting let’s, move, teo, resume screening. You’ve got you’ve got a ton of tips, you’ve you’ve reviewed thousands of, but you’ve got you’ve got a lot of tips to share, share a couple of resume screen tips. Now we’re at that stage that these things were coming in. Just repeat that, tony. I’m sorry about a lot of people coming in. Resume resumes. A lot of resumes coming out sametz share share a couple of resume screening tips. Oh, couple things one of you want to look for clary right off the bat. Eyes cloudy. Is it clear as to how their name and how to get ahold of you? You don’t always have to have your home accuracy stays, but certainly a phone number and email address. I think i look for one of things that we look for on our team is more of a chronological history. I want to know kind of where where’s your career, ben and a couple of tips. You look for someone’s been, you know, in a job every one or two years, and they leave quite quickly that that’s a signal textile, red flag, red flag and it were bad thing. But it should be there. The other thing that, uh, those there some people for it is the functional resume where you get a sense of what their skills are experiences. But you never get a sense of where they performed that. So two things on a resume. Both. For people that are considering throwing their hat in the ring on applying for position or respond to a search from is clary, is the resume clear of what i’ve accomplished? Is it clear what have achieved as a clear in terms of the timetables have? And i think that’s a couple of tips on the resume that really yeah, that that gap in employment that could be a woman who took time off to raise children absolutely was a caregiver was a caregiver for pareles that was concerned about a gap, and i said, just tell me you have a phd in parenthood. I mean, i’d be proud to be apparent way we don’t have parents, we don’t, you know, keep going, so i think it’s a totally appropriate but be honest with what you don’t want to do, it’s, not the cover things up here, and so then, you know, present yourself in a positive tone, but certainly be honest, if you took a couple of years out or timeout to raise children to be proud of it, and so you did, but these skills and bring back the table and begin the work force, i think it’s implying with that, let me ask you a quick one. Does this turn you off when you see people with email addresses that are hotmail or a o l does that suggest to you that somebody is out of touch with technology? No, i don’t, you know, not any detail. Why? Because most of them have to e mails. They have their business emails and their personal emails, and so they don’t want ah search from or an organization that there may be talking to going into there. Professional at work email like, yeah, no, i get that. I’m okay with the email accounts. It’s, when i see you know, dennis at, you know, big love of dot com i have eyes that see you. I’m gonna try that one. Yeah, okay, but wait. Yeah. And then when the e mails that are unprofessional, like baby cakes, you know, but yeah, i don’t want to be the case. That field. Yeah, that’s unprofessional, but all right, i think it’s okay does to protect your you know, your private from work, i think that’s. All right, but let me ask you, but but my point was if it’s an added you know, sort of an out of date domain like jool or hotmail or yeah, who you know, does that suggest to you that somebody’s not hip with the current with technology it’s possible? I know nothing about that. If that you know, if you have an out of the email address and then your resume looks out of date and it’s not clear that’s not gonna help you. So if that is your email address on minutes at a oh, well, i mean, i’m fine with that. I’m fine with that. All right. As long as not baby cakes today. Well, all right. Way to take a break. Regular cps. I got a testimonial for you, quote. I was new at my position when i began working with wagner cpas. My confidence has grown knowing that i can rely on the professionals of wagner to answer any questions and make recommendations that will ensure the success of our non-profit. And you see, i always say they go beyond the numbers. This’s the truth. It comes out right here in the testimonials, we were given sound advice enabling us to increase investment income while at the same time protecting assets. Tony. Inserts a question. Does your audit firm do that for you? Recommending investment investment alternatives for you? I trust and respect our audit team and look forward to their annual visit end quote, how many do you look? I’m dying to know. Do you look forward? Your annual audit that’s probably more like dreading your annual audience, but somebody from this midsize religious organization in the midwest looks forward to their annual audit. You can to check out wagner, regular cpas dot com apolo software you’re non-profit but you used accounting software made for business stop wasting your time using business accounting software for your books like quickbooks turbo cash asap microsoft they’re not made for you. They don’t do fund accounting for you. They’re built for businesses apple owes accounting is designed for non-profits it’s in the dna for tired for pete’s sake it’s in a dna easy, affordable and you need thio use to check out the pricing. By the way, it is quite reasonable non-profit accounting for you, they’re at non-profit wizard dot com now time for tony steak too. Next month on non-profit radio you’re twenty eighteen planning if you want free business coaching in twenty eighteen we’ll have a guest from score he’ll be telling you all about it. You’re online giving plan for twenty eighteen joe garrick, the fund-raising authority will be with me. Where’s, the new tax law mean for your overall twenty eighteen fund-raising plan. Jean takagi is going to parse it out for us. How about in twenty eighteen? You get free software and consulting from oracle net suite. The vp of their social impact team will be on plus maria and reassemble course. You know her aimee semple board. You know her with their twenty eighteen plans. It’s all in january. Or you need to do is listen. And that lovely is listener is tony steak too? And doesn’t that sound like live listener? Love is coming up. Indeed. You were right would reach new jersey. Woodbridge, i want you to identify yourself. I demand it. Otherwise you have to stop listening. I want to know who this season. Woodbridge, new jersey. So loyal! Identify yourself! Use the hashtag non-profit radio on twitter, email me tonia tonia martignetti dot com i wanna know who you are. Tampa, florida, new york, new york multiple thank you for that live listeners love to all these places port murray in new jersey honolulu, hawaii killing worth connecticut live. Listen, love going out there, the honolulu i don’t think we’ve had certainly not recently, i don’t know if you’ve had a little before live love going out there all those places. How about in china, guangzhou, lee, how and other in china that we cannot see? That’s interesting. Guangzhou we can see other cities we cannot see. But now to everyone in china, united kingdom, of course live lesser love to you tokyo tokyo was with us. Konichiwa, germany is with us. Guten tag germany on germany mast and also castle kassell, germany, putin dog to everyone in germany listening and also in japan toko ri zala, konnichi wa to took a result. How about those podcast pleasantries over twelve thousand of you, the vast majority of our audience that’s where you’re listening and pleasantries go to you. Thank you, podcast listeners for being with us and i am and fm affiliate listeners throughout the stations throughout the station’s well throughout the stations throughout the world yeah, throughout the country anyway. Throughout the stations throughout the country affections, affiliate affections to our am and fm listeners in those stations throughout the states throughout the country, affections to you. Dennis miller’s with us, you know him, we’re talking about his book, a guide to recruiting your next ceo, you know, we can we can cover the whole book, so just get the thing we’re going to say, you know, it’s, a dentist, see miller dot com that’s where you’ll find dennis in this book just get the damn thing, it’s just that i don’t know how to make it any plainer. All right. Anyway, denis let’s, continue our our joint through, um okay, so we’ve got a bunch of resumes and the book goes through lots of lots of resume screening tips. I mean, when they really don’t have time to go through all the tips, but there’s a lot there. Now we’re into interviewing. So you say there are two things we’re looking for? They were looking for the interpersonal and skills ability? Absolutely. I mean, the tv process. Once we screen people in terms of resume on paper, we certainly begin actually with phone interviews and then once leaves, go to the phone into the process and we can get a better sense of with they are as a potential candidate, we may explain a final car. Weather at one of salary package so without wasting people’s time here. But there are a couple two things you’re looking for. Um, do they have a cultural? Do they have interpersonal skills that will build your team on the team builders over there? You know, ah, they collaborators of the communicators and then obviously did they have the ability to deliver positive results? And i think those two things is what kind of, you know, separates the people who get to positions and those that don’t hear i we advised certainly the search committee on, you know, the question should be focused on limited tony to, you know, their person’s behavior, their skills, their experience, what they bring to the table, not things that deal, what things like, you know, age and discrimination and gender and all those kind of things that you want to avoid. But the bottom line is who can communicate their ability to get along with people because it’s a team game antionette glamarys also there too, things that are a crucial now one of things that you may ask me, i’ll just what answer ahead of time we have and your listeners can get their contact and get onto our newsletter. But we at non-profit search dot com. We provide a candidate matrix that has sort of a scoring sheet with certain questions on it. Ah, what a total score fifty. And whether it’s on leadership, communications, street, strategic planning, board, relationships, etcetera. So when people of actually going to the interview process on the search committee and you’ve got forty eight people, suppose, you know, going in the search committee members can evaluate for people. And i have this matrix a kind of sense of where, you know, people come out scores and usually it’s a good tool that have for them. You have a lot of resources at the non-profits search dot com. So you mentioned throughout the book, but that’s scoring matrix is one of them. All right, so let’s, get into some details here. Now is the whole committee meeting with every every candidate. Because if it’s subsets of a committee meeting with different candidates, then i don’t think that doesn’t seem fair to me because different subsets or going to judge people differently. Yeah, well, here’s what we do, um and, um the answer is that the entire search committee needs prepared to interview all the candidates now in a case we just have here. Because it’s got multiple locations. There are actually eight people on, uh, a search committee and four will meet in one location and four met another location. Actually, each candidate each of the five final candidates you met which weiss but they but they are all seeing yet you cannot have one group meets somebody. Candidates and another good meet the only other candy that’s part of the process with a search committee. He’s gonna be on the committee. You have to have the type of zoho so every every candidate should be seen by every person on the search committee. Absolutely. You you advocate. I mean, this is sort of a no brainer, but just make it explicit. You know, you don’t want to be asking. Yes, no questions. You are open ended questions. Yeah. You you don’t want to say, you know, you want to you want to engage him in conversation and they want to get you in a conversation two and so, you know, asking questions. What was the most challenging thing you had a deal with in your current? Position on your most recent position. What was the you know, your biggest achievement? Hey, is an issue for us. How would you deal with it? You stay away from the yes and no questions. And we have, you know, we’ve identified on a website and our resources and our book here, you know, question to be asking, but yeah, not open it. Not not. Yes or no. Open ended questions. Engagement of conversation is the best of them. Okay, let’s say, we’ve everybody has interviewed all the candidates. Uh, now what’s, our next step in the committee. Well, what you want to do is the one i have everybody’s gonna score the candidates and give feedback on the candidates and have the board chair or someone assigned to oversee the accumulation of all the scoring. So you can see how people did. And then what you want to do is and what we do is i have a conversation with this chair of the search committee. And then, uh, i will meet with the search committee. One of my senior member of the team will meet with the search committee depending where the searches on what it’s for and then we they may determine that. Listen, there’s one final candidates is one person they like, and they want to bring him back to meet with people in the organization. Take him on a tour or there’s. Two final plans. They’re not sure. So that there’s a process here. The process here is obviously too, uh, what? The other candidates know that they did well and they thank him before participating. But there’s someone at this point in time that has a skill centre experience. That’s mohr meets the needs of my client. Ah, we hope to see him again the future and then focus in on, you know, having to help them make a final decision on the candidate before we get involved and advise him on making, making a final offered and employment contract employment agreement right now in this scoring, obviously somewhere going to score highest and high esten hyre than others. But suppose there’s just there’s just a sense that, you know, even the highest scoring one or two, they’re just they’re just not right. It was just, you know, like i said, every in a group of five somebody’s going to score the highest but but even that highest one, they just don’t feel right. You know, how do we we feel like we may have to go back to the go back to the recruitment process. Well, have expressed happened. You know, only once in my recent experience, where in most cases, uh, in addition, the scoring members of the search committee and, you know, as you know, the millions and millions of people that serve our non-profit board throughout this country and in other countries and canada, you know, our bright, committed people they gotta see if you get a feel for you know who you think would fit in here. So usually, you know, the scores will help you because it gives us feedback. But usually you get a kind of a feeling you would be the best person for that. If there’s a situation, um, that, you know, the search committee sees the final candidates. And if it happens that you feel like there’s, you know, just not feeling it for those candidates. I absolutely would highly recommend that he go back and do the search again. We have a situation with a very prominent national foundation. Uh, we started with believing out of pool of eighteen candidates, uh, middle down, teo wither down to eleven that was down to five and five people came in, and so with the entire team and that team in there of identified, you know, to people and long behold some discussion and some some time issues and then people not sure what decision to make and there was some inexperience on the team making the decision and they kind of planted and they just, uh, well, i’m not sure i’m ready to pull the trigger, so we were disappointed for the work we did. We will back out into the search again, and usually you don’t get the great candidates again, and we did, and it worked out so it’s for some reason, you don’t feel it. I dont just say, well, because is a high score because you’re going to live with this person quarter what use with this not happen, tony, you, um you know, the search is doing the work, you’ll get the right candidate, but if a some reasons you feel that, you know, this is i just don’t feel it for this person is going to fit in here. Then don’t just pick someone because of scored the scores are one of the many tools will you offer to help you pick your candidate? Is this a stage where we should be calling references now? We’ve we’ve narrowed it down to our top two or so, yeah, so what way? Well, a cz we get the final can’t wait do ask for a reference, but here’s, what we do, we don’t ask them, they could tell us who they’re going to use the reference we are specific and ask him for the type of reference we’re looking for example, and a ceo case we know they can’t talk about the company, we’d like the house, then talk. We’d like to talk to someone who is a boardmember maybe a boardmember another organization would like to talk to someone that appear that they have done a lot of work with. We would like to talk to someone that has worked for them, so, uh, we don’t always talkto the references i had a time, because if you’ve got, you know, four final candidates we spent about our time it’s that wee if you’re not going to be chosen, why go? Through the house full of asking people speaking the reference. But with your various final candidate, we actually do a thorough construct. And i have a little bit of a funny story that that you listen, um, you may enjoy just quickly here, and it goes back a long time ago when i did my first search believing not thirty years ago. And i was recruiting someone to head up a healthcare foundation and came down to two people. And there was a man, a woman. And i remember the, uh the man had sort of mohr experience, but the young woman has seemed like much more potential. Anyway, for some reason, the man had given me a list of ten references. Don’t ask me why, but he gave me ten references, and i call it the first six references. Iss man kind of walked on water. He was, you know, could have been their spiritual guru by the time i got seven. Eight. I really got a sense that people were not that comfortable. Then by the time i got the nine and ten people were asking me, you know, why did you what did this guy even you? Give me a reference, i recommend anything, so the moral stories you want to keep, you know, kind of dig in here and it’s, certainly you have a right as a as an organization, and you have a right as a search committee to, you know, find out what you know about people, which is what we do, um, and same time protecting confidential alley, but certainly, you know, we need to do with our research on them and in addition to references, we obviously do a check on educational credentials, and then we advise our clients baseball what state they’re in about what they can do and not teo regarding they want pursue, uh, feeling criminal background check will and credit credit risk of credit reports. It sounds like that guy on his word document that he gave you with the list of what was thirty years ago. We didn’t have work, but have we have word we’re going? We’re using them word perfect where you had toe right down at the bottom, you have to change the bold face down at the bottom of page. Anyway, it sounds like he conflated his do not use list with his reference list that he did want to use like the last four we’re we’re on a separate list and he somehow put the two of them together. All right, we got to take a break, tell us credit card and payment processing. They have a video. Check out the video at tony dahna slash tony tello’s. It explains what the process of businesses switching to tell us is and how you the non-profit that refers them will get fifty percent of the revenue that tello’s urns that’s passive revenue for you your organization. Each month it talks about their one hundred percent satisfaction rate. They have a price match guarantee, but that’s in the video, but for non-profit radio listeners, you get way beyond a mere price match. If if tell us, can’t help, you’re the first referred business is by saving the money, not just matching but saving. Then you get that two hundred fifty dollars, that you’ve heard me talk about, so worth it for you very likely tell us we’ll be able to save the money, but just in case not you’re protected and so is the business. Really, because it’s still still then is helping you. In the video covers, free switching to tell us they have a ninety day easy out but tell us has a hundred percent satisfaction rate, so they’re not gonna need not gonna need the easy out ninety days. That means there and it’s free, but they’re not going to eat it, but it is there, but they’re not gonna need it. Think about the businesses that make sense for you to refer and check out the video at tony dot m a slash tony tell us now, back to dennis miller and his book, a guide to recruiting next ceo let’s continue our joint ajanta dennis okay, so we’ve checked references, references and this and that we’re bringing some people in were like site tours and what their meeting some of the staff now too, and maybe even some of some of the people who are getting our services no, what we worked a man don’t do that metoo staff until they are having a place where we don’t really know sexuality you don’t. You don’t really want the staff on my opinion on a ceo level. Uh, they have to pick the ceo if it’s another level? Certainly if it’s achieve opening office of chief financial officer it’s totally appropriate to have other members of the executive team meet with them. The finer who’s a better vet culture that’s line. Okay, but on a ceo though you are make it clear that the board is making the decision and i would not have staff involved on interviewing until all right. So who are they meeting that in thiss day when they’re going to visit the visit the site? Well, so many have gone to the search committee. Obviously, there is no one else to meet except the entire board. So if you’re talking about the ceo, which is what? We are way wrong that once a search committee has made decision before on offers made it’s what the search committee wants to do doesn’t really have any authority to itself. You wantto search committee should be making a recommendation to the entire board and in many cases, and i will advise us is have that final ceo or in the case where this too close candidates committed meet the entire board may be on the same day, you know, spend a little time with each one. Um, if if there’s one that’s clearly, uh, the person that everybody wants don’t waste the time of having to feel you have to bring a second one and you give it someone hope when is when they’re not probably going to be selected but i have an interesting story, tony, that you listen. May one here, uh, about a year ago we did a search for a ceo and the search committee had him ranked wanted to have this ah, woman rank one in a guy number two. And i had agreed with that recommendation thought it was the best way of going. And by the time those two candidates came in to meet with the entire board and this is an unusual situation ah, the board ended up going with the number two candidate and not the number one candidate and some things came up in discussions. Then i think at the end of day they made the right decision. So don’t forget the board has a final hiring authority. They delegate that that a search committee to search committee xero recommended candidates, but do not hire a ceo from a search committee on ly they must meet the entire board. Have you ever heard of co ceos? Yeah, i have and i found it never. Well, couple times it rarely works there. It works in a case where today there’s a lot of mergers and acquisitions, so both people take on the role of co ceo won, they have responsibility for maybe certain geography one than another o once focus more on one thing before not tow have it. I think coz ceos is like koh board chairs. It doesn’t make a feeling that anybody’s really in charge. Um, i’m working with an organization right now out in california because we do certainly national searches as well as in canada and, you know, there’s a transition going on and is this it the heart organization? It’s important to know who’s in charge? So if it has to happen and you’re particularly the merger, can you have it? Yes, but ideally it sooner than later. It’s only a transition. You can’t have a co ceo doesn’t work. I’ve seen coach, chief development officer and it doesn’t work either. I mean, i think someone has to be in charge. So that’s my opinion. Okay, way explored co ceos with jean takagi, so if anyone wants teo, get more on that. That was the main nineteenth twenty seventeen show with jean ok, alright, we, uh we it’s time to negotiate an offer we were ah, we’ve selected our top one you like guards, guidestar they have i don’t know if you mentioned i know them. Guide star has a has a good salary guide comes out every year. So it’s it’s current but you have other studies that you like? Yeah, a couple of things we have a good sense of what the marketplaces like different geography, maybe waken use guide star and i i like the organization well, but here’s the palm and it’s not guide, says the bomb is that usually the data that’s in there where you have the five highest, complicated employees? It’s probably two years old, even if it says two thousand sixteen and you’re in seventeen, it may have been, you know well, about a june of two thousand fifteen, so i don’t rely upon that nestle as a guide for making offer. I know what the organization is looking to pay. I know what what the sally is. People that are looking and then we i advise uh, i’m involved in every ceo, so i advise my client is what i think it’s going to take to get the person i’ve seen clients do salary surveys using geiser and other things that committee from other compensations raised there’s nothing wrong with it, but what you don’t get from that, you don’t know, uh, what the performance of the organization has been you don’t know how well they’ve done. You don’t know what, how well they’ve done with fund-raising, you know, you don’t know much about him other than what the total budget is. So on one of the advantages of a search for meditation now based upon the work they’re doing what what the rate is to attract some money and that’s kind of what we do. Okay, let’s, spend our last couple minutes. Ah, you know, you just got it by the book because there’s a lot more about negotiating the offer in the book, but i want to spend last couple minutes, just about two minutes or so on on onboarding this’s a board responsive board responsibility. Well, it’s a big thing. I mean, you know, if you talk to ceos, i mean half of them have never been on border. So what does? What does he mean by sort of onboarding candidate? Well, uh, our onboarding onboarding if you don’t get onboarding you get hired and then you start and then you go geez, i don’t know this is the way itwas, you know, you’re not supported in your new job. So dahna whatyou onboarding were first to the idea of preparing a ceo to adjust to the new social, cultural and professional components of the new role and or to the board here, really very important that i be some type of onboarding process um, so as example here, here’s some things you would want to be thinking about what onboarding here is, um, let’s be clear. So both the board and the ceo and again, you could say the same thing about a ceo or cfo. What she development altum same thing here is what are the expectations of each other? Clearly that’s gonna come up during entry puss, but that needs to be known. How often does the board chair want to communicate to the ceo? Did they want to meet monthly? Did they want have a phone conversation on every other friday did they want emails or not emails that they want to meet for breakfast? Um, what does the board want the ceo to accomplish in the first thirty days or sixty days, or maybe one hundred eighty days? Uh, what the cultural issues or financial is that the organization is facing, um, what senior members of the team may have some performances the watch out for who had the key stakeholders outside the organization like donors of all tears that you want to see how to make sure that building wishes, perhaps maybe with a local congress person or a member of the senate assembly here. Dennis, we’ve got to leave it there. There’s too much. All right, keep a melissa. Thank you, tony, for this. I appreciate you and all your happy holiday season and the great thank you so much, dennis. Same for you. Get the book. It is a guide to recruiting your next ceo. You’ll find it at dennis c miller dot com and you’ll find him at dennis c miller next week. Happy new year. There is no live show affiliate listeners. You are covered. Of course we’re going to replay zombie. Loyalists. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuant weinger sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner cps dot com appaloosa accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and tell us credit card and payment processing, your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna may slash tony tell us our creative producers, claire meyerhoff, slam sam, sam the slam liebowitz is the line producer show social media is by susan chavez, and this very cool music is by scott stein of brooklyn’s. Thank you for that information, scotty with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or p m so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card, it was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s, why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for May 19, 2017: Healthcare Funding Options & Leadership Options

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Chris Labbate: Healthcare Funding Options

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Gene Takagi: Leadership Options

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Oh, hi there. Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host this is show number three hundred forty, the three hundred fiftieth non-profit radio is going to be coming up it’s on july twenty eighth, three fifty music comedy special news i hope you’ll be with me for three fifty i’m sending spies special a pre show special live listener love to the fans of crystal a bat this insurance guy has a big fan base that this guy’s, a rock star who sells insurance live listener love to chris’s special live listeners, and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with my own militia if you try to soften me up with the idea that you missed today’s show health care funding options today is options day first, kriss la bat walks us through fully insured self-funding level funding and minimum premium. So you understand your choice is paying for your employees health insurance chris’s with marsh and mclennan agency and shared leadership options. We talked leadership options with jean takagi are legal contributor and principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group co ceos. Anyone? How about holacracy shared leadership on tony’s? Take two. My finger is still wagging, responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We be e spelling dot com for all his fans. And, of course, for everyone else. Here is crystal bat with health care funding options. My privilege to welcome chris lay back to the studio as regional executive vice president at marshall mclennan agency, chris is an authority on employee benefits, including customer driven health plans and alternative funding. He shares his expertise and twenty eight years of industry experience to help you see how innovative employee benefits and hr programs can lower your costs. The company is at mm a hyphen and e dot com crystal bat. Welcome to studio. Thank you, tony. Pleasure to be here. I’m glad you are. Thank you. Read your colleague last week. Mark. So you’re going to shine like mark shine did yes, i know you’re up to it. All right? So we are we’re talking about funding funding options for employee health. Let’s, let’s reassure listeners first, this is not going to be impacted by health care reform that may come or is not going to be impacted seriously, right? Yes, that’s that’s correct? Most likely, the funding options will stay the same. Okay? Because we really can’t predict what’s coming out of congress, but we don’t expect the general ideas around funding that you and i are going to talk about to be impact. Correct, okay. Right? We don’t make the show irrelevant in two weeks after. Okay. All right, so it turns out you don’t have to fully fund. I mean, i think probably the majority are ah, now i know you do have some stats, actually, but i’m thinking small and midsize non-profits probably most of them are just osili insured, fully insured, really insured plan. Correct, but you have options. Correct. So? So in a fully insured plan, you’re just paying a fixed monthly rate that the insurance carrier sets for your organization and if its profitable to them it’s profitable them. If it’s not profitable, they’re taking on the all the risk skin and losing out. Yeah, okay. They probably don’t lose out too often, though. I’m guessing they might lose one year, but they’re probably gonna lose two years in a row over the long term state business. They have to make profit. Okay. Exactly. All right, so i think pretty. Yeah. People are pretty accustomed to that. The fully fully insured and ah it’s easy it’s level payment, i mean, and you know exactly what to expect. Her employees have a set of benefits and it’s all easily defined and of course, insurance, company’s, managing it right. So we’re just talking about the financing of the benefit plans, right? So that’s, often transparent to the employees, don’t get involved with that. So the employer is just paying the fixed costs, and they’re all there are alternatives to the fully insured, called self-funding, which can be explored for more, most organizations, five employees on up. Ok, so even for the smallest organization, correct benny on the state. But, yes, okay, okay, cool. S so this is going to be impacted by state law. Also, correct, yes, all right. Um now, if we are, if we are self-funding then we’re taking on some risk, correct, you’re taking on a portion of the claims risk so that portion you’re going to fund as the claims come in, but what’s often misunderstood about self-funding is that there are insured components built into self-funding so it may not be at the same level that you have. You’re fully insured, fixed rate, right? But you do have insurance components to protect you. Two different suits to specific types. There’s ones called specific insurance to protect you against any one person having a claim over a certain amount. Okay, you decide is the employer and you purchased that coverage of twenty five thousand fifty thousand. If a claim hits that level, the insurance kicks in, and then the second is called aggregate insurance, which is protection that your total claims that going don’t go over certain amount. Okay? All right, so i got you. I got you so you can. There are some. Yes, there are some insurance protections built into self-funding. All right, now you do have some stats about, um um about what? What? The percentages are around. Who’s self-funding. And how it’s. Been changing since nineteen, ninety nine like percentage self-funding vs versus the full, fully, fully insured thank you write. So especially since health care reform has has kicked in there’s been a movement towards self-funding on dh that basically is benefiting employer groups that have a favorable risk of benefits around the country. They’re showing. About sixty one percent of covered workers that have health insurance through their employer are covered under some form of a self-funding plan. Yeah, well, okay, so almost two thirds correct under some form of self self-funding and that’s changed from nineteen, ninety nine that was forty four percent correct. A big change. Okay, okay, um, so if we’re if we’re going to consider this self-funding option, there are some different kinds of costs that we need to be aware of, correct. Right now, we’re just like we have about two minutes before break. So why don’t you just kind of tease out the idea of these different kinds of costs we have to be aware of? And then you’re not going to more detail. Perfect after right after that. So in general there’s, two categories of cost, you have your fixed costs that you’re paying on a monthly basis and you have your variable costs will be, which will be your claims costs as they come in. Ok, fixed, invariable. All right, we’re going to dive into that a little more. We take our break a minute and a half earlier, so and then kristen are going to keep talking, finding out what your options are around, maybe self-funding all are a part of your employee health stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent with chris sabat when we’re talking about funding options for your employee health now, christine, you do not have lots of letters after your name. Last week we had i says that mention mark your colleague market lots of letters especially easy, like sees after name there’s all your where’s, all your credentials, they’re all just built into yourself. Yes. You know, i’ve been in industry since eighty nine, and i have my master’s in finance and marketing. I’m just really the experience in the industry on the benefits side. Okay, okay. Your bona fide? Yes. Okay. Okay. All right. So let’s. Now, zai promised diving a little more on these. Some of these costs that you have to think about taking on if you were goingto fundez self-funding fixed costs like like what? Like what? So the first fixed costs you would have is your cost to administer the plan. And typically you’re hiring an insurance carrier or a company. It looks like an insurance carrier called a third party administrator to perform all the tasks that that insurance carrier would under a fully insured plan. So paying claims customer service id cards for employees booklets. So from the employees perspective, if they don’t know what the funding is, it looks and feels like a fully insured plan to them. There’s no difference. Okay, so you’re outsourcing this administrative work. Exactly. No need for you to hire people to be doing this for you. Exactly. Cos that’ll do it for you. Yes, at a fraction of the cost of a fully insured plan. Okay. Okay. Um and the what? What else? Fixed costs. There’s this ways that now we now we get into some of the insurance coverage mentioned earlier, protecting us against a really unhealthy employer employee or or or or or aggregate. Go ahead. Absolutely. So so most companies that self-funding will have two types of insurance associated with their plan and their purchasing this protection. And the first is called specific insurance protection against anyone large claim going over a predetermined amount. And as the employees you, you picked that amount, whether it’s twenty five thousand, fifty thousand and as that amount goes up, the premium associating it kind of goes down exactly. Okay? And the second type of coverage is called aggregate insurance. And that’s protection that your total paid claims will not exceed a certain amount. Okay. And that’s, very inexpensive coverage. All right. And so these air part of your fixed costs that you’re going to be absorbing? Yes, if you’re if you’re exploring self-funding, you’ll get a monthly bill with your admin costs and your stoploss costs all printed out per employee, just like you get a fully insured premium bill. Okay, okay. On. And then you had the variable costs, which is basically what you’re going to be paying out for doctor visits. Right, etcetera. That right. Exactly. So the variable cost will be the claim’s paid out for your employee population covered under the plan. And in general, when you’re purchasing your stoploss insurance, the underwriter at the stoploss carrier will determine what they expect. Your claims to be given your employee population and then they’ll determine a maximum exposure. So if your claims go above this maximum amount, the insurance will kick in and cover it. Okay, that maximum exposure is usually set ten to twenty percent higher than your expected claims for your popular do-it-yourself kush. Exactly. Okay, exactly. Now, what about reserves in all this? I mean, if we’re going to be doing that, we have to have money set aside for the payment of claim. Exact. Exactly. So when you first go into self-funding plan in the first few months, you typically will not see any paid claims. Somebody goes to a doctor today. It doesn’t get reported two to three weeks from now when it gets paid. Okay, so there’s a cash flow advantage upfront going into a self funded plan, but on the back and if you ever terminate a self-funding plan, there’ll be claims coming into the third party administrator or the carrier that need to be paid based on service states prior to when you terminated, right? Right. That’s called run out or term a terminal liability. Okay, yeah, while you were self-funding toe at the end mean, you benefited in the beginning, right at the end. Claims are still going to be coming in as you exact your i guess. Or now fully insured. And you ended your your self-funding crackers. But but so that has to be a reserve fund, right? Don’t law must require something like you’ve gotta have ah dedicated account or something with the money. For the old yes, so typically a joint bank account set up with the third party administrator there paying claims out of this account when you had that crash flow advantage at the beginning of the program when your first during out self-funding we recommend that you just bank that money and that’s setting up the reserves for the event if it ever happens where you cancel the self-funding plan, okay? And how about knowing? Oh, well, i guess that goes into your expected cost. Me knowing how much to put into this reserve correcting for for a decent sized organization, i don’t know, like ten employees, i mean, could conceivably be half a million dollars or something. I mean, i’m just numbers don’t stop my head, right? You’re going to be more precise, you’re probably gonna say, well, it’s gonna depend on age, right and correct help histories, etcetera and it’s broken out by the underwriters on a monthly basis. So, you know, so when you get your stoploss coverage, they’ll give you a claims factor per employee per month. And that is how you calculate the number of employees times that claims factor gives you your exposure for the expected exclaims focus and that’s the amount that’s got to go in this dedicated reserve for typically yes, now you can’t you can’t be using this money for other purposes correct it, sze designated restricted or something for the self-funding plan? Yes, it should be air marks for the self-funding plants. He had the money available to pay their letting your employees down your absolute, obviously seriously. Okay. Okay. We don’t want people run operating that. Okay, um all right. So we’re talking a lot about self-funding what are what are some of the reasons you that non-profit might actually think about doing it? There’s some advantages? Yeah. There’s some big advantage associate with self-funding the first is there are a bunch of hidden taxes and fully insured plan. So under health care reform, there’s four four and a half percent in taxes that get attacked right onto a fully insured great. Okay, now, health care reform. Today on the day now, we’re recording couple weeks earlier, then this is going to air. So health care reform by that you mean the affordable care act? Correct? Or obamacare? Correct. Okay, not something that may be happening in congress in april of this year in may of this year is that right? That’s correct. So in the affordable care act, there’s a tax on non-profits that are any fully insured krauz any fully insured plan has attacks built into it that gets funded, the funds go right towards offsetting the cost of the affordable care act. Was it attacks on the amount of premium? You correct? Oh, interesting. Okay, right. Forty five percent you sent were correct and there’s also in some states and local taxes that get applied to fully insured plans. So when your self-funding you’re circumventing the state rules and some of these fully insured taxes at a federal level, yeah. Okay. All right. This one advantage. All right? What else are there? Other reasons it we have? Ah, younger, healthier group. You’re going to benefit because you’re paid claims will be much lower then expected or similar to expected. And then you’re paying less than you would under a fully insured plan now wouldn’t and ensure offering full insurance? Wouldn’t they be factoring in that you have a younger, healthier workforce. So health care reform change some of the factors that go in. They do account. For age coverage, tear with a single or family coverage if you’re a smoker or a nonsmoker, but generally you’re paid claims in a small group will not count towards calculating your rate. Wait a minute, we better impact that statement. Hold on, you’re paid claims in a given group will not will not what? I came here if you’re unaffiliated, if you’re in a fully insurance plan small group market? Yes, your claims do not drive your rates typically. Oh, they don’t correct because it’s the law of large numbers, they’re playing, they’re not going to base your rates on your claims. If you’re five people or ten people that’s what healthcare form actually did away with to try to stabilize the small group market just like those of us who are individuals, we go to the exchanges. It’s my premium is not at all based on my history could i mean, i think they might have asked if i’m a smoker. But that’s all yes, that’s one of the factors taken you okay? So we’re getting very small. So that’s at one end of the spectrum, tiny individual. I see what you’re saying. They’re all right there it applies to small groups as well. So i’ll give an example of you if you’re in a fully insured plan, you’re paying fixed rate every month and say your premium comes to one hundred thousand dollars a year. Okay, now, if you wanna self-funding plan, you’re paying your fixed costs, which might be twenty or thirty thousand will estimate and then there’s seventy thousand and projected claims what your claims only coming at ten thousand, you’re only paying ten thousand wonderful insure plan you pay the full hundred thousand still alright, so there’s an opportunity here for a new organization to engage in employee health, health, health and wellness, right? Yes, if you’re going to go fully every, i’m sorry if you’re goingto self-funding you can enjoy some benefits of every every, every two weeks, we have a five k run or, you know, whatever i say, right? I mean it’s perfect segway twenty foot that one of the next advantages. If you have an active wellness program where you’re engaging your employees and getting healthy, that can parlay into fewer claims and under self-funding plan, you benefit directly from that you’re not paying out claims on un employees that don’t go to the doctor. Okay? What size organization do we have to be? Or was it eliminated completely under affordable care act, where they would start looking at our claims history and our wellness programs? If we were going fully insured so it vary state by state eso it khun b fifty employees, one hundred employees and and more. All right, you have to be that size for them to start factoring in your individual act. Your program’s done. But i mean, you could have, like, smoking cessation. You could have, i don’t know. Organization provided fitbits and everybody’s got eight or ten thousand step daily minimum, right? You can have all kinds of programs to try to save yourself. Money. Those air, those air common wellness programs. There’s not innovative thinking, innovative now company and fried. It provided fifty. Now they’re doing that. Yes. Alright. I thought maybe i had some some great insights. Okay, um all right. So i just happened to be a big wellness fan so you could save some money if you doing self insurance. Self-funding self-funding i should say on and there’s a couple there’s. A couple more advantages. Get more transparency. You see, you’re paid claims were under fully insured arrangement. You typically do not especially smaller employers, so you don’t get to see the claims them all employers typically, we’ll not see their claims history because they’re not allowed or that usually carrier policy not to give out paid claims to smaller employers, especially if they’re rates aren’t dictated by plane. So that gives you the ability to better budget for future costs because you have all the information and it helps you design with plan design. So if you know people are over using the emergency room, you might up the co pan the emergency room copay and you might lower the copay on your urgent care centers or tele medicine to try to drive people with lower cost setting. Yes. Okay, so you could drive some behaviors. Okay. I could see that there’s one last one. It gives you the ability to not have to include state mandated benefits in your plan. And that’s, a big benefit for companies who have people across state lines because they can provide one seamless plan designed for all their employees. You say companies. But we non-profit organizations exactly. All right. So different. States have different mandated benefits, correct packages? Correct. Okay, i saw a bit of a little i mean, this is kind of interesting, well, privacy issue coming out of what you were just saying, if you’re self-funding you’re able to see claims history now you know who the unhealthy people are, right? Who’s got bad behaviors, etcetera mean, who wrecked a lot of so the reporting khun b done where’s d identified which just means you’re seeing general information, but it is if you have a smaller the company, you might be able to identify who those people are. S o typically you would want tohave an internal privacy policy, which which follows the hip national privacy standards with a privacy officer and a policy in place to protect that information and only have certain people buy-in certain people given access to the information within your organization. Ok, ok, that actually dovetails with what? What mark and i talked about last week levels of compartmentalization correct categorization, i believe he called. Okay, um, who typically would be looking at this data if we’re going self-funding who looks at this on a monthly basis so typically be somebody in hr maybe. Something in finance and it’s almost it’s, almost always d identified so you know, you’re not going to know who the people are, but they’re looking at it, just seeing what claims were being paid out and budget and future years, and then also the behaviours trying toe like you said, friends instance, if we see emergency rooms being overused, correct plan design, and then we could also just have meetings about listen, people, you know, you’re hurting our you’re hurting the organization by using the as your primary care or something like that, you know, you’re hurting. We’re trying to stay self-funding for for the these reasons because we think it’s better for you then than being fully insured. But you’re making it hard for us to do so right? Get a primary care physician. Yeah, you can have meetings about the right can you talk about? You can talk about that, you can have any things. And you, khun target wellness programs like you reference if you see your population has a history of high blood pressure or a lot of smokers, you can use that information to taylor educational program. Bring people in current, bring people in to talk about hypertension. Manage? Absolutely. Okay. Diabetic diabetes management? Yes. If people are having a lot of diabetes related issues. Okay. Okay. All right. So we still have some time left. What? My voice just cracked still. What? What happened? I asked you what else? What else could we talk about? Some of the some of the negatives with self-funding. So if you’re moving to a self funded arrangement, you have the variable cash outlay potential. So one month your claims can be very favorable. The next month you can have high claims. You do have those reinsurance caps built in protection. Stoploss is you’ve already examined all the jargon. I got tongue now, stoploss but you can still have some variants and some come organisations prefer the fixed costs associated with a fully insured plan. You know what you’re paying your budget for it and that’s your costs for the year where self-funding can vary over the course of twelve months. Okay, um, how does it work? This is a very basic question. But if you if you are self-funding, how does it work in terms of a network of hospitals and doctors? Have you that’s? Good cause. You choose what providers are available to your employees. So when when you hire the third party administrator or insurance carrier to administer the plan there, providing that service for you so you can hire a big insurance company and use their network, you’re renting their network to access those discounts. That’s part of the administrative fees it gets broken out into network rental fee utilization management, he gets into a very a lot, a lot of details broken out, focus. Okay, well, because you can use somebody’s network and not be insured by the exactly you’re taking the risk, you’re just using them to administer the plan. Roger. Okay, i say interesting. Okay, um, what else? We still got a few minutes left, so that zoho your disadvantages of having any of that was that was one big one. The other one is if you ever want to get out of self-funding you have that terminal liability. So if you say i’m canceling my self-funding plan today, you’ll have a couple months of claims to pay out. Still for claims that were incurred prior to your cancellation date. And at the same time, if you’re signing up for a fully insured plan, you’re paying the fully insured rates so it’s like a double payment for a few months to get out of this self-funding plan. I got to get to cool things. I got terminal liability and stoploss yes was going around saying, you sound like a genius, alright stoploss german labbate that’s a term reliability problem on dh that i could touch on to two other quick thing before you do, though dahna the terminal liability i mean, could that could that go on for years? I mean, suppose someone made a claim while you were still self-funding and then they continue to have related issues to that claim like so i don’t know what a surgery that went bad or something, and then years later, they’re still having, like following surgeries to that infection from when you were self-funding what good question so it’s driven by the nhk earl date of the claim? So if i go to a doctor today and i’m self-funding today, it gets paid dahna self-funding plan for that same condition if i go to the doctor next month and next month i’m under a fully insured plan gets paid by the flame. Shirt plan. Oh, so the general liabilities just the run out. They call it from the from the self-funding period when people went to the doctor during that plan here. All right, so it’s not considered like a pre existing condition. Correct? Where the now insurance company, because you’re fully insured kicks is going is going to kick it back to you from what? Your self-funding days doesn’t work like that. Correct? It does not. Does not. Okay. Okay. All right. That’s, some reliability thisyou xero everywhere you’re in our daily lives. Term liability stoploss okay, what else you got? I could do real quickly to other hybrid type products between fully insured and self-funding. So you have some combination once called level funding, and this gives you the fixed costs of a fully insured plan where you paint a rate every month for employees. But at the end of the year, if your claims are favorable, there’s the potential to get a refund of a portion of the terrible claims. Oh, so you benefit if if claims air. Good. Act. Okay. And if claims are are not good. You’ve paid your rate for the year and you walk away. Okay, well, that’s, because you have what you want had some stoploss coverage it’s all built into, like, a fully insured rate. So you have that fixed rate, and then if your claims are favorable there’s something called a settlement done at the end of the year, you know, if you would get money back, but there’s no potential. The additional dellaccio more correct. Okay. And then you have you said in which another hybrid? Yeah. There’s there’s one more call the minimum premium arrangement. And this is sort of like a fully insured rate, but you’re carving out the claims part of it and your funding the claims as they actually come in. So similar to level funded. But you don’t have the wait till the end of the year to get the benefit of favorable claim get, like month the month? Correct. Exactly. Well, okay, so there’s. A lot of issues to think about, and i guess way just have, like, a minute and a half left or so, but i guess this all comes down to risk tolerance. Exactly. Do you do? Do you want to just write off the wrist completely and give it to an insurance company? Or would you like to get some of the benefits of doing it yourself and maybe even having healthier employees? But you’re taking on some of that risk. Correct your risk tolerance and your ability to handle some cash flow changes from one month the month with self-funding and it really comes down to analyzing what would my costs be under a fully sure plan. Total costs. What may cost being herself funded plan at the maximum claims that’s where the stoploss carrier says you would not pay more than that. Yes, you’re a total costs on. Then what would your cost be under the expected where they expect your claims to be? Given your employee population and looking at those numbers will give you a good feel for where he should be. Okay. All right. Crystal bat. Andi. I demoted him because he’s, a crystal bat is a regional executive vice president at marshall mclennan agency. Okay. I wanna thank you very much, chris. Thank you. Tony called my pleasure. Coming up. We have jean takagi and shared leadership options. More options for you first. Pursuant, they’ve got a new webinar. Big surprise. It’s free designing experiences. That inspired donorsearch every brand elicits a feeling, you know this like think disney, starbucks, united airlines and each of your donors has an impression of your organization based on their experience and interactions with you with your brand. On thursday, may twenty fifth, you can join lutheran, our ministries, brad never ary and pursuance senior vice president hillary noon and learn how to create immersive experiences that inspire greater engagement from your donors and potential donors. Brad is going to share how lutheran our explored the journey of a key audience identified opportunities to improve on their experience with his brand, and they put in practice places that are goingto make measurable impact trying to make change. Of course, this will be archived if you can’t make the live session, but if you can, you register at pursuant dot com quick resource is and then webinars we’ll be spelling who needs to engage millennials? Maybe you’re bored has raised that as ah as a possibility or a need. Do you feel it’s important for your sustainability? Perhaps what you waiting for? We be spelling dotcom get started for pete’s sake. Hosta fund-raising spelling bee. This is not your seventh. Grade spelling bee. You know this. Check out the video at we b e spelling dot com and then talk to the ceo alex career. Set something up or just get more information. We be e spelling dot com. Now, time for tony’s. Take two. That damn finger is wagging again. 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Woodridge in new jersey, swan’s borrow north carolina, new york, new york and brooklyn. New york really got two out of three borrows this week last week. Course we had all five. But brooklyn. I’m glad you’re with us. Manhattan. Thank you so much, but gives he with that westchester that’s. Not bad. North of the city. Poughkeepsie live. Listen, i’d love to you also, white plains neighbors in westchester live. Listen level so to newjersey caldwell, new jersey, hackensack, new jersey. Still no altum pandu jersey, where my mom and dad are sitting right now. Uh, moving ah! Moving way down south san marcos, texas live. Listen, love out to you, san marcos on then coming back to the northeast, stratford, connecticut were all over except on the west coast. I know what west coast person who’s listening but he’s on the line so it doesn’t count. Not this week. And let’s do germany got to live listeners in germany? We cannot see your they’re so concerned about privacy in europe we cannot see your cities in germany nonetheless live. Listen, love guten tag the podcast pleasantries. They got to go, you know that you’re tired of me saying it, but i’m not going to stop the podcast. Pleasantries have to go out to the over twelve thousand, listening in that method pleasantries to you. Thank you for being with us on your schedule on demand, and the affiliate affections were looking to grow that affiliate list. Our outreach director, belly, betty mcardle belly. No, she’s. Not ever. Billy. Betty mcardle is working on that. But for the effect for the affiliate stations that exist right now. Of course i am. And fm stations affections to you. So glad that you’re station includes us on your schedule. Thank you. Jean takagi is with us waiting patiently. He’s the one i was alluding to, um and he is the managing attorney of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the wildly popular non-profit low block dot com and he’s the american bar association’s twenty sixteen outstanding non-profit lawyer he’s at g tack on twitter and i believe he’s calling from an airport. Welcome back, jean takagi. Hi, tony. How are you? I’m very good. Very well, are you, in fact, in an airport? Is that what happened? I’m now at an airport hotel. A little bit better. Okay, where are you? What city you’re in? I’m in los angeles, los angeles. So that’s not far from you for san francisco. Okay. Okay. S a little background noise. I kind of like that. Mixes things up a little bit. Um, if anybody gets difficult while you’re on the phone, you know if you have to drop the phone, you know, and fight somebody off, just explain what you’re doing first before you just dropped the phone. Okay, i’ll make sure i hold them off, ok? All right, well, do what you have to do but inform me first that’s the first your safety is secondary to informing me that’s what? I’m that’s basically, what i’m saying, it makes understood, ok, thank you very much for that. So we’re talking about some shared leadership options. Um what? What brought this to your attention? You know, shared leadership has kind of been a little bit of a hot button issue recently amongst non-profits that are thinking of more equitable practices and in attracting younger people. Millennials, you might refer to the you know, to that group and say that they may not be is ingrained with the hierarchical structure that those of our generation tony, maybe comfortable within used to, and they’re really wanting tio have more of a say early on in their careers, so, you know, shared leadership issues, all sorts of forms are really starting tio to take hold in some practice on dh starting t gain in more popularity so are you seeing this? I guess mostly then in organisations where the leadership is thirtysomething or so well, you’re seeing it from from a lot of younger people, for sure. So living in the san francisco bay area in with silicon valley nearby, and this is not just a non-profit management or organizational structure, this is started in the for-profit world in this sort of spread into some non-profits but yeah, it’s a lot of younger tech companies, like suppose that that sort of kicked it, kicked it off some of experimented with it and left it like medium, but one of my organization that i’m on the board of a compass point non-profit services also experimented with holacracy and while it isn’t continuing in a whole keeping the whole model, we’re keeping aspect of it because you feel it’s really valuable. Okay, now i’m not going to put you in jargon jail because i know we are going to talk about holacracy but you just try to slide by me, and i want you to know that i’m quicker than you. So i i noted it, but you’re you’re you’re pardoned thiss time because where i know we’re going to talk about holacracy alright, so so sort of following from what you’re suggesting i can see the advantages there’s empowerment, there’s, there’s, there’s shared, there’s shared buy-in and empowerment of others. Yeah, and i think that works for leadership development with the team more people having more voices, teo impact what’s happening with the organization, what they’re doing, they become more interested in it that probably helps in recruitment and retention. It helps internal communication and collaboration, and it i think, necessitates cross training because you’re talking and trying to understand what your little part of the organization, how it may impact every other part of your if you’re one of the decision makers, are you’re making decisions as a group? You got to know the other three other parts of the the organization how your decisions are going to impact them. Yeah, i can see that this is not something you embark on overnight, right? Especially in the need for cross training and understanding. What’s going on across the crust of our organization for the thing people are going to be sharing in leadership now. Yeah, absolutely. The other, you know, benefit that has some people. Have been writing about it lately than it actually helps facilitate and succession planning. So we have more people who maybe pull, you know, in the pool of candidates to take over for for a ceo or an executive director. That maybe leaving the organization? Yes. Okay, that’s a good one, right succession plan. We’ve talked about that. Uh, ok, alright. See cem value. Um, but i see some potential downsides to this is going to be a lot more cumbersome for decision making. Yeah. I mean, you can imagine when you have too many chefs in the kitchen. I guess it is the metaphor analogy that people make on dh. So yeah, definitely neo-sage delayed decision making and that khun delay implementation of ideas. So you’re kind of the slow ship that takes forever to turn around. It can result in inefficiencies, and then you may lose opportunities, not acting’s. Quick enough cause confusion at the start. A cz you’re trying to figure out, you know, who’s accountable. How how do we, you know, make a decision? What if we’re split for? For what? If we start tio a form cliques within our organization and then we start to battle or engage in disputes with other factions of the organization. So their their potential bound falls that you have to actually really account for careful. Yeah, potential for open conflict. I mean, one of the things we’re going to talk about his co ceos and, ah, i mean, if the two people don’t agree. I don’t know. Yeah, get factions and jesus, you could start running like our white house. I don’t know. Okay, we’re gonna get to co ceos. All right, um, let’s. See? Well, we may as well go there. Um, what air you saying? Have you seen this? Have you have you seen this one in practice, where there were two ceos? Maybe any of your clients execute this? I mean, i’m just i’m just wondering if you’ve seen it firsthand co ceos, yeah, way have so definitely on. And i think this is actually becoming more of a trend, and i’ve seen it more in the nonprofit sector have limited exposure to for-profit sense since since i left that that world but i think you know, times are getting much more complicated. Management has also become much, much more complicated with, you know, technology changes non-profits are exploring earned income and advocacy and collaborations and employees laws are changing and then non-profit corporate and tax laws are ever changing, and right now there there’s some big, big changes that are planned, of course, on dh. So with all of that complexity, can one person really be the leader through the organization understand all of those those factors and be ableto lead the organization through all of it and that’s kind of why there’s been a little bit of a draw forming co ceos and succession planning is the other thing is, i think there’s supposed to be a huge turnover of executive lake leadership is the baby boomers are starting to age out of their employment, and they’re starting to retire on dh succession is, uh, is a problem if we don’t have adequately trained and experienced people in those roles, and coke co ceo platform’s can really help ease that problem. Ok, but with with all those issues that you mentioned for leaders to deal with, i’m not even sure that to people with their combined skills could manage, you know, can understand all that in the level of depth that that’s necessary. I don’t know, i’m not even sure two people could do it, so yeah, ee don’t know that i’ve ever seen three tio, no, but i’m just wondering if if i’m not sure to really adds that in my sense of it, too doesn’t really add that much more value. You could say it doubles, but i’m not even sure that’s enough, so if if i’m right, then why not just stick with one who has a strong team of people directly reporting to him or her it’s an interesting argument, tony, and indefinitely the single ceo structure is the one that were more comfortable with and probably the one that’s going to teach comin in for a long time still. But first, for some organizations, experimenting with two ceo structures can work out. And i think where we’ve seen this practically is where the two leaders share kind of a long term relationship, so they’ve already comfortable with how they work on dh, how they would make decisions together hyre the areas of responsibility, maybe divided so that one person has final decision making over these fears of the operation and the other one over other spheres, and sometimes, you know, in a very simplistic way, some people just refer to it is the internal management and the external management. Yeah, okay, some of that makes me makes me think of mika brzezinski and joe scarborough. I don’t know, okay, all right, let’s go out for a break and when we come back, jean, i’m going to keep talking about the shared leadership options. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy, tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m peter shankman, author of zombie loyalists, and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent um, jean, i’m thinking this is goingto take some time to to implement and, uh, before you start to reap benefits from it, if you if you do it’s not you, you’re not going to see this immediately. The advantages? Yeah, you know, i think it’s going to take an investment on depending upon what level of shared leadership you’re talking about co ceos is probably the a fairly simple level, relatively speaking of shared leadership, but yeah, it’s going to require an investment, it may take a failure, teo, actually get it going the way you want it. So there’s definitely a lot of learning. It relies on it, you know, having a shared vision and common values amongst the shared leaders on if you don’t have that established, you really shouldn’t do this. You have to be careful of the amount of money, time and other resource is that you’re going to have to invest because that’s all got to be budgeted in if you don’t incubated and invested and nurture it, it means it’s probably not going to work. We’re also gonna need a lot. Of patients among our staff. Yeah, yeah, i think that’s absolutely, absolutely right. You run the risk of having that go to mom, go to pop kind of run things, right? Good cop, bad cop. Yes, right. Somebody’s, thie other ones said this, but i said no. So i’m coming to you, right? Right? You got to beat that stuff down. All right? Interesting let’s go to one that i want to make sure we spend enough time on this. To me, it sounds like anarchy, but you’ve said your organization you’re on the board of is doing some of this. The pro you call it program autonomy is what is that? So the general idea and they’re different forms of this, but this this is on the other end of the spectrum of complexity. So this is a complex form of shared leadership where each program or each division oven organization is fairly autonomous, so doesn’t all rely upon going to the ceo on the ceo makes the final decision. Each group within the organization which might be divided into programs, will make their own decisions now don’t know, probably be working with the budget that’s been approved by the board on then segregated out into the different programs. So they know what the operating rules are within within their group. But figuring out how to distribute the leadership and that’s the one of the buzzwords, sum, sum. Avoiding drug in jail again, it’s. Really just distributing the leadership amongst the different programs or the different groups within the organization and there’s. One particular type of model that i mentioned earlier, which i should have waited until we got to this segment. That’s called holacracy on dh. That is a particular form of distributed leadership, where the different groups that that are taking on these local decision making authority rolls are called circles. No, james, no, jane. Yeah. Can you still hear me? Yes, i hear you. Okay, last thing we heard you say was holacracy is made up of circles, but you need to explain. Yeah, so you know, generally the way holacracy works is so it’s a form of program autonomy, although again, the circles or self managed groups don’t necessarily have to be divided into a program that could be divided into function. So there might be one for fund-raising for service delivery, for grants, for events, for public communications. So however, you decide you want to divide up the circles, it’s going to be an iterative process where you’re always modifying it. So every month you’re going to consider whether you should have the same circles or different circles, and each individual is actually going to take a role with multiple circles, and in some cases they’ll be the leader of a circle that’s going to help decision making and help facilitate that circle or that group of individuals within that circle to make a decision. And in other circles they may not be see that that leader on dh, so they’ll just be part of the group that makes the decision making, and they might be on three or four, five circles depending upon what their skills are. All right, this is anarchy to me, but you’re saying it works a compass point, it weaves we’ve tried it for maybe a year and a half, and we’ve decided to modify it so we’re keeping aspects of it. But we’re not keeping the whole thing, so you’re anarchists of anarchy. You can’t even follow the anarchic model of program autonomy. Okay, well non-profits pride themselves on their ability to experiment and hopefully do yes, alright, yeah. So who is but who’s orchestrating the overall? I mean, there’s got to be, doesn’t there? Well, i’m i’m answering my question, but better ask it as a question, doesn’t there need to be one or maybe two people if the co ceos overseeing the coordination of all these pola craddick circles yeah, there, you know, so it’s it’s, largely governed by two principles, one is you’ve got the law on the latto has the board of directors on top of the organizational hierarchy and does require a ceo in most states, or or a president that that’s going to be ultimately in. Charge however, they’re going to be a set of rules and systems, and this has to be very transparent and holacracy so you’re not leaving everybody to go. I don’t know who to go, teo, you know, maybe i’ll ask this person so in holacracy there’s a large set of rules that everybody knows and everybody has to abide by, including the ceo and that’s where how the different relationships between the circles are all codified and how the decision making goes from one circle to another. But ultimately again, it would be a non non-profit corporations you have a board of directors and ceo have to oversee the whole thing and can decide how to modify accordingly. Okay, maybe something for listeners toe look at program autonomy, let’s say i wanted to jump to the most complex one because i want to make sure enough time sometimes our talk at the end, our topics at the end get cut off a little bit. I don’t want that to happen with program autonomy and the holacracy pola craddick circles still feels very crystal lee to me, i don’t know dahna all right, let’s, go to we just have about two. Minutes left explain how the ceo and the board might be the leadership share well for small organizations that particularly all volunteer organizations it’s usually all hands on deck, right? The board is completely active in running the programs of the organization as well as just doing their regular board duty. So, you know, you got the ceo because somebody has to be ceo of a corporation that might be called president or chair of the board, but somebody has got to be identified in that way, and what their decision making authority is going to be will depend upon what the board wants to give to that position, but board make decisions board takes actions on lee at meetings or by written consent, so whenever individuals are actually running programs, they’re not running them as board members. They’re running them of volunteers with certain delegated authority. And what the board has to really be careful of is that they’re making sure that they’re delegating authority for somebody to run an event or somebody to run a specific program there delegating with due care, meaning that they’re not quitting somebody who would be totally unqualified and in experience latto lead. Something of importance to the organization because if it is, gets into trouble, you know, the board could be held for violating the produce very duty’s not exercising reasonable care in making that delegation, and they can’t just say, well, that was another board members, i couldn’t tell them what to do. That’s not the case. Yeah, yeah. Ok, i see. I see i see a greater responsibility and risk for for the board under this one, but it makes sense. I mean, they’re taking a more active role in the leadership of the organization. That’s, right? So that’s, that’s very much shared leadership where all board members see themselves as equal, but when they’re exercising roles that are different from meeting at boards and taking actions like approving contracts are approving, you know, the by-laws there acting as volunteers, so they have to realize that they’re wearing a different hat and the authority has to be properly delegated. We’re gonna leave it there. Jim takagi from ah hotel in los angeles managing attorney of neo and you’ll find him at g tak neos, the non-profit and exempt organizations law group. Thanks so much, gene. Thanks. Have a great day. I pleasure. Thank you. Next week, diane lettered returns with your grants team in and out. If you missed any part of today’s show, i’d be seat. You find it on tony martignetti dot com, responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling, dot com, our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Betty mcardle is our am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by susan chavez, and this cool music is by scots. Time you with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or p m so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card, it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s, why should i give it away? 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Nonprofit Radio for December 23, 2016: Fundraising and Finance Friendship & Your CEO/Board Chair Partnership

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Rich Dietz & Dan Murphy: Fundraising and Finance Friendship

Abila has a study about the challenges between your fundraising and finance folks, and the opportunities for collaboration that will make your nonprofit a happier and more productive organization. In the ring are the study co-authors: Rich Dietz, fighting in the fundraising corner, and Dan Murphy for finance. Can these pugilists make peace? (Originally aired 5/20/16)

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John Fulwider: Your CEO/Board Chair Partnership

How do you cultivate this critical relationship? What should they be asking each other? John Fulwider is a consultant and author of “Better Together.” (Originally aired 4/3/15)

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host we’ve got a listener of the week robin jacobson, she tweeted, i learned about your show from liza dyer. I love what you’re doing lies. It was a show was a guest a couple weeks ago. Liza, thank you very much for sharing this show with robin. Robin, welcome to non-profit radio. So happy that you found us through liza. I love that you love what we’re doing. I thank you very much for that you can you can follow our listener the week she’s at robin ruin r o b i n r o u e n ruin, of course, the city in france. Common knowledge. Robyn. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being with us. Congratulations on being our listener of the week. Robin jacobson. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with blefary denied us if you inflamed me with the idea that you missed today’s show fund-raising and finance friendship abila has a study about the challenges between your fund-raising and finance folks and the opportunities for collaboration that will make your non-profit a happier and more productive place to be in the ring or the study co authors rich dietz fighting in the fund-raising corner and dan murphy for finance. How can these pugilists make peace that originally aired on may twentieth this year and your ceo board chair partnership? How do you cultivate this crucial relationship? What should they be asking each other? John fulwider is a consultant and author of better together and that originally aired on april thirteenth last year on tony’s take two thank you p s that hair we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, wee bey e spelling dot com now chek out rich dietz and dan murphy in the ring with fund-raising and finance friendship very pleased to welcome excuse me, rich dietz and dan murphy to the show rich dietz is director of fund-raising strategy for abila he has spent the last twenty years working with and in a wide variety of non-profit political and government organizations, as well as technology companies focused on the nonprofit sector. Dan murphy is product manager for my p fundacao n’t ing at abila. He has an extensive background in financial management with degrees in finance and accounting and over ten years of non-profit accounting experience and he’s aboard treasurer of a non-profit in austin, texas. Rich, welcome back to the show. Dan. Welcome to non-profit radio. Thanks for having me here. Pleasure. I did. I mr pronounce the name of the company that when i was first introducing its abila abila abila that is correct. In case i didn’t say that in the in the opening, that is the correct pronunciation and it’s a b l a. Okay, dan, you’re on the on the finance side, rich on the fund-raising side. Rich let’s, start with you. What was this study about fund-raising and finance all about. Why did you feel it was necessary? Yes, it’s. Kind of interesting, though. You know, as a software company focused on the non profit sector, we have products for fund accountants. You know, for accountant we have products for fundraisers, and dan works mostly on that finance side. I work mostly on the fund-raising side. We we we realized we’re not collaborating amongst ourselves. Even here at the office and then dan and i started talking, and we’re like, hey, we have all this all this anecdotal evidence from our past working at non-profits of this sort of adversarial relationship, and so we thought, hey, let’s, get there, especially get to what’s going on and actually ask non-profits is this, you know, collaboration? Or is it really an adversarial relationship? So we surveyed a fourteen hundred non-profits and we really wanted to dig into what is this perception of collaboration? What’s the biggest challenge is on and maybe some ways that we could, you know, help that that that collaboration actually increase. Yes, dan, a perception of collaboration. It’s it’s, not really all that collaborative, a lot of people feel that’s, right? Yeah, it actually turns out that more than half the fundraisers that we surveyed, as well as almost half of the financial professionals about that their relationship with their respective collaborates other departments was either not collaborative or very little collaboration was happening. So we saw there’s a lot of room for opportunity, both in the actual collaboration processes, as well as the perception of whether collaboration could be a value to the organization that is very glass half full of youto recognize it as an opportunity rather than are these kids? Yuki departments are not talking to each other on and there’s also some very interesting differences across the generations, which will, which we’ll get to you very shortly. Um okay. What? What are what are some of the problems? Let’s us stay with you, daniel what’s. What? What? What’s causing some of this lack of collaboration, sir. I mean, there’s a lot of contributing factors to, you know, why these organizations may not be collaborating as much as they could. They have different reporting metrics that they’re using to evaluate their success and their their progress toward their milestones. Some of them, you know, have very distinctly goes, especially on the financial side. You know, we talked about gap. We talked about cosby and there’s. All these other acronyms that we use that our counterparts and development may not be used to using may not understand very well as well. On the fundrasing side, you know, there’s there’s also the very specific acronyms and, uh, different ways of speaking that maybe a little bit different than what? The finance side of the house. Used to and then just in the Job you know what 1 sector down now? We have joined in jail on tony martignetti non-profit radio. So already you the finance trouble guy have ah, you’ve transgressed what you have to tell us what gap and fast b stand for everybody doesn’t know, okay, yeah gases generally accepted accounting principles. So it’s kind of a principal guiding philosophy of accounting in the united states and fast because the financial accounting standards board and their governing agency responsible for regulation of accounting practices. Okay, thank you. So we’re trying to bridget tronvig? Yeah. Okay. We’re trying to bridge the gap here. Let’s not make that right. Let’s not make a warrant and you make it work. So it just in daily activities, the two different development and finance department’s had very different priorities. So, you know, one side of the house is tryingto raise money to make sure that the organization can continue to find its activities and expanded commission on dh. Then, of course, the financial side of the house is wanting to make sure that the resources of the organization are responsibly managed. The finances are adequately classified and reported. The stakeholders so just two different philosophies to see the same mission organizations tryto rich over to you, the even metrics, right? What what metrics the two different sides look at are very different. Yeah, and this is interesting. Dan and i spent a lot of time talking about it because it first, so so we asked the fundraisers and the finance folks what’s your top five challenges and all that stuff and metrics and reporting was in both of their top five, and it was different metrics and reporting at first we were like, oh, wow, that that could be a problem, but then as we dug geever without no that’s, actually, right? I think the fund-raising teams and the finance team should have different metrics and reporting, they’re actually reporting on different things. The problem is when we don’t have common goals and and overarching goals that both of those metrics and reporting feet up into and so when we get into the recommendations in the report, that’s where we really start talking about joint goal setting before you even get to figuring out what you’re going to report on figuring out what the over our goals of the organization are, and then how to both those departments feed into those over our goals. We think that’s going to help overcome a lot of those of those differences that that people are saying a greater understanding way we need to meet in the middle and there’s a lot obviously that’s in common now everybody wants to advance the mission, they wouldn’t be there otherwise, but but let’s let’s find what’s comin and understand what’s outside the common areas for exactly yeah, all right, let’s, go out for a for a quick break and when we come back, the three of us we will we’ll keep talking all have our little ah, we’re going to find out more about the differences across generations. Very interesting. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals. Archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Oppcoll welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Dan, you are ah, product manager for m i p fundez counting at abila now already. This is three acronyms from the finance side. We’ve had none from the fan fund-raising side, so i’m starting to see where the problems lie. What is m i p or mip? I don’t know. It’s micro information processes it’s a name that we’ve had for a significant amount of time. That’s very well recognized in the non-profit finance sector. Okay, very well recognized. The non-profit in the finance sector. Okay. That’s, right? We’re trying to bridge gaps now. Damn, i not break down bridges all right now. Okay. Um ah, rich acquaint us with some of the the difference is this is really interesting across the generations, boomers feel that three things everything’s fine and the millennials are not as content. Yeah, this is really interesting. That’s something we’re doing a lot in our research studies now is we’re kind of breaking out a lot of the answers based on generation, you know, boomer’s, gen xers and millennials, especially because that’s who’s in the work force right now on what we ask the questions about how they felt, you know, did they feel collaborative? We saw the boomers felt pretty collaborative on both the finance and the fund-raising side, fifty seven percent to sixty percent on the finance side. Ah, but the millennials felt way less collaborative on the fund-raising side on dh then and i talked about it. Dan actually had a really interesting theory on this, and i’ll actually kick it over to him so he could talk about that i thought was really interesting and something i think we can address. Okay, let me ask first, though, am i the only baby boomer in this in this conversation born before nineteen sixty four? I believe so. I’m a gen xer. You are. So we have one of each. Okay, dan, your millennial. Is that right? No, i actually fall into genetic. You’re ok. You have a baby face. Okay? Uh, that’s. Too bad. Because i was going to beat up on you as a representative of millennials. Why? Why? The millennials are causing so much havoc in the workplace. Why? They can’t be more content. But go ahead. What is your what is your theory? Well, my theory. Is that if you look at the data, there really seems to be a tendency for the boomers too collaborate together is somewhat, but to communicate definitely directly, but there definitely seems to be a tendency on the finance side of the house for both the djinn xers and the millennials to have more communication and contact with the senior members on the fund-raising side of the house and i suspect, and we’ll probably dig into this a bit more, but it’s most likely because of the, you know, i strive for efficiency and kind of just wanting to get to the the answer is something rather than build relationships focus. So i think a lot of that is probably more driven by the finance side of the house, which is why you can see the collaborators collaboration, sentiment hyre on that side. Unfortunately, i think that means that the millennials connectors on the development side of the house might be kind of circum bennett in some of these conversations on dh left out in some cases. What about personality, too? I’m generalizing here, but i don’t think you’re average finance side person is is as outgoing, you know, the relationship oriented extroverts, aziz, you’ll find on the fund-raising side. So i mean, i think that’s definitely fair to say not to say that accountants are incredibly wake up on and find accounting. I know beating on the accounting and finance side. I know i’m trying not to, but i don’t know that it’s a stereotype, but so, you know, call it that’s what that’s, what i’m doing, but i think fundez sorry, but i think fundraisers arm or, like, extroverted and so they’re seeking mohr collaboration than the people on the finance side of the same age, even well, i think you could also just very clearly make the argument that inherent in the development role is a focus on relationships that is part of that role within the organization that doesn’t exist as much on the finance side. Okay, all right. So you yeah, and so yes, certainly job responsibilities on the way the two the two sides are organized and what their purpose is our butt. And so i think as a result of that, you get personalities that are different in the two different teams. All right? I know you don’t agree with the personality theory. That we agree that degree of that and you’re back in the report when we get into the recommendations, we actually talked about kind of breaking down some of those personality, you know, division’s, like, actually start doing some joint activities, you know? Do you know i’m a big fan of doing something outside of work, a happy hour after work at the finance and fund-raising folks together outside of the workplace, you know, maybe have a drink and start talking about other things besides work went to get to know someone as a person and of course, on the fundraiser saying this because that’s what we did, you know, you go out and you get to know people you learn about their kids, their pets, all that stuff, and it makes that next conversation you have with them at work even easier. So we have to drag the finance people to this happy hour that’s, right, and then stopped them from just talking to each other, right? We have to penetrate their circle. I’m beating up on the, uh, okay, small organizations, let’s get that damn small organizations a lot more potential. Well, depends what you want to describe. It small organizations are a lot more collaborative. That’s, right? Yeah. We found that there’s a significant difference between large organizations and small organizations in the level of collaboration that’s happening. We also theorized that a large contributing factor to this is that in the smaller organizations you have smaller staff, and so people are forced to collaborate, you know, there’s fewer people to get the job done. A lot of organizations, people may wear multiple hats or, you know, play different roles in the organization. So there’s a hot a lot higher level of interaction, there’s, more frequency of interaction on a lot of time. People are, you know, just physically located closer together. And so whether you know it’s a small organization and only has a single office or small office space many times, these finance and development individuals responsible for those roles are physically closer to each other. And so there’s a lot of a lot higher level of interaction that leads to more collaboration. That makes a lot of intuitive sense. But i think it’s important to point out, you define smaller organizations as less than ten million dollars, right? Listen, krauz million annual revenue, so we’re not talking about necessarily tiny shops where it’s two or three people and obviously there more collaborative than bigger organizations. But, you know, a ten million dollar annual revenue that could have dozens of employees that’s, right and that’s a good point there, not there not, you know, five or ten person shops, but at the strategic planning level on the less than ten million dollar organizations we saw a lot hyre interaction in the strategic planning processes and the budgeting process is and, you know, kind of the key processes for each role. And so we also saw smaller staff size, and so their just was a lot higher level of interaction required to get things done. And so, you know, there’s kind of a necessity there for these these rules to interact more and there’s more opportunity for him to do so, as opposed to above ten million. There started to be, you know, significant layers within the organization that lead to inflation. Right? Right. Rich. Anything you want to add about the small versus large organizations? No, i think it’s pretty much what diane said. Where? You know, if you have a smaller office, you’re gonna bump into people in the hallway more and then you know, you’re not you’re not divided by department as much, you know, there’s, not a finance department over on floor four and the fund-raising department on floor three when you’re not even a ten million dollar zorg, you’re probably all in the same office and you beat each other in the break room and everything in those again hi. Always go back to the human interaction. That human interaction is what really breaks down those silos. Also reporting structures. No smaller organization like that have fewer vice presidents. So teams are more cohesive because they’re clustered together. Yeah, definitely. All right. So we got some problem areas, you know, lying around like goals and priorities. Language, metrics, personalities, let’s. Move to the positive now and start identifying some opportunities for ah, making things, making the world a happier place. So this is not a boxing match between fund-raising and finance. Rich want to stay with you? What? What? What’s. Ah, let’s. Talk about the social ideas first since you already touched on that. Yeah. I mean, definitely social ideas. It’s. You know, finding ways to get more human interaction there. And you’re like you’re saying, you know, dragging the finance folks out the happy hour again. A lot of them may not want to go to that happy hour, so maybe start with a brown bag lunch, you know, has at the office, everyone gets in the same room, bring your own lunch on dh. You know, watch a movie, you know, just talk about something else. Just start to get those interactions to start anyway, that you can do it, andi and you have to keep pushing that, you know, so that that would be not mayan number one tip. Okay? Yes, i like i like the social ideas, too. That’s. Why? I was i was glad you mentioned it, but we could be more formal to some training. Right? Some basic training. Dan that’s, right? Yeah. You can really structure your onboarding process and offer training to, you know, cross training between the two different departments to facilitate the interaction too. You know, in increase that cohesion between the two teams to work toward the joint mission of the organization. And that could be, you know, it’s. Simple as modifying your onboarding processes to have, you know, an explanation and as part of those processes of what the different departments do, what their goals are, kind of what they’re key processes are, and it could even advanced something where there might be a periodic schedule training where one department will train the other one. And you know what they do, how the reporting works, other systems work, or even just a collaborative meeting that’s on the calendar every month or, you know, every other week or however frequently it might be in order to keep each each other aware of what’s going on within your respective department so that you’re kind of synchronized on on what’s going on and what the priorities are across the organization and maybe in in orientation, we can have a day or so, you know, whatever, where the fundraiser goes over to the finance department spend or is at least onboarding by someone in finance, and so from day one, we’re getting a an empathy for what’s happening on the other side, right? And making sure that you understand how your processes are, you know, feed into the processes of the other departments, so for fund-raising maybe that’s gift entry and understanding how you know, downstream that goes into the accounting system and how that kind of goes through the financial reporting process. So you understand what you’re doing, it directly impacts the finance department and the reports that they produce and on the finance department side in accounting, understanding the gift solicitation process and what it takes to get that money in the door and entered into your serum or whatever your dahna records system is on dh, then how that gets to you an accounting. So you understand that full process because it’s, nobody really operates in a vacuum, so we’re really making sure that you connect the dots between the organizational department. Dan was a part of the tension. I thought i read that finance doesn’t understand the need for spending money on relationship building. Yeah, it definitely can be a challenge to understand why you would spend resources on something as abstract as relationships that that’s definitely a story that resonates more with some than it does others for accountants and finance related in, you know oriented individuals you want to be able to show direct outcomes for resource is used for money spent and its hard to quantify. That whenever you’re saying you’re investing in relationship, but you know that, but that is required to cultivate relationships with donors that will ultimately lead revenue in the front door. And so there is a return on that it’s just very hard to quantify that through reports, you know, through the traditional financial reporting process so it can be hard for to rationalize and justify spending funds or resource is in that way. But i think that through collaboration, that story can be told jointly from the department of, you know, development narrating kind of the relationship side of that and helping them finance to quantify what the return on that is and communicate that out. Do either of you know our master’s programs in non-profit management brake, bringing these these two department’s together, and helping people with the finance background understand mohr of fund-raising and vice versa? Do you know if that’s happening at the degree level or certificate level? Okay, i don’t know if it’s happening at the degree level. I do know that there are sort of think it’s available for non-profit management and leadership, that tie kind of the executive roles finance rolls, the development rolls it’s some degree the volunteer roles together for people that are enrolled in that program to give people have a three hundred sixty degree view of the organization. I don’t know that the intention is specifically for collaboration, but it is too kind of enhance the literacy of the participants in the various areas so that they can be effective leaders. Yeah, okay, i mean, i hope that’s going on. We have meteo thie. Only degree i have is a law degree, and i don’t have a certificate on, come on, classically under credential to even host the show. I don’t know what somebody’s looking like in front of me six years ago. I don’t know what happened. All right, a dan you start of ah alluded to this talking about the budget let’s, let’s jump over to rich, we can work together on our budgeting. Yeah, most definitely eye on me. And i touch on this earlier little bit is, you know, we have these different priorities and these different metrics that were that were held accountable for in both departments on and i think instead of starting at that point, which is where most budgets get put together, the fund-raising side says, we need this in the finance side says, well, i got all these departments say that need all this stuff, taking a step back and going to that joint goal setting and budgeting as step one look at the look at the big bucket first, and then break out into your department’s and trying to figure that out. I think some of the frustration we heard a lot in the in the open ended answers of the survey was, you know, fund-raising sango finance just gave us this number to go fund-raising it doesn’t really mean anything. They just pick the number out of the sky it’s not like, and i’m sure finances saying the same thing, you know, who are these fundraisers that are just throwing these numbers at us? You mean? And so if you just take a step back and out of that silo and do that joint gold setting and budgeting, i think that everyone knows where the where the basis is. And then we break and do and figure out our, you know, our specific goals in there, and then come back together again to make sure that those makes sense for everybody. So it is it’s really a three hundred sixty degree? Ah process there and again, just another one. Another way to break us out of those silos. And i think that’s going to increase the collaboration greatly. When you understand what the other side is struggling with, then you do a much better job of making sure your data clean. Making sure your data is getting to them in a way that they need. And then everything just flows better. Have you had any feedback on the survey that it’s stimulated conversations are? We used it as a way to start well, that’s stimulate the conversation or it helped bridge this gap any feedback like that? Way, actually have our vp of marketing test that gerard has some really good friends in the industry. And he talked to one of his fundraiser guys. And he said they took the report with the his counterpart on the thunder on the finance side, and they went out to lunch and just talked about the report. And they said it was one of the best conversations that they’ve ever had in, like, ten years. So we are getting really good anecdotal evidence that it just it gives you something to talk about, something to start with and then go. Okay, so how how do we match against that? Are we doing better? We doing worse? Where can we improve? You know, it’s sometimes easier to have at least something in common that you’re talking about. And then, you know, again, break down those silos. That’s, outstanding that’s, a that’s, a that’s, a grand slam. I hope some listeners will. You know, if you hear this first and then bring it to the people that can help start to start the conversation, you know, listening to this you can get the study at abila dot com slash collaboration study and abila is a b piela abila dot com slash collaboration study? Yeah, i mean, it’s, you know, it’s, great to hear. Okay, glad you got that kind of feedback. Excellent. Um we’ll see what else we can let’s drown. Another opportunity, dan let’s, go to you some some shared terminology we can we can put together, yeah, something that could help. And it can also kind of jointly work with the train and onboarding is to create a reporting in metric, so we call it t cheat and that is just a place where, you know, both apartments can kind of see what the critical metrics for each department are, how they’re being used, that kind of how they’re derived. And then what? The important reports that are being generated for stakeholder consumption for public use, whatever the case may be, basically, what the story of the organization that’s being communicated is through reporting so you could make sure that you’re both on the same page, that you’re being consistent in what’s being reported. And really, i mean both from a practical point of view to make sure that, you know, i don’t boardmember you’re not telling two different stories. To your board and also from a community and mission point of view to make sure that you’re really making the most out of the data that you have out of the stories the organization have, that you’re effectively communicating the missions so that you can raise the most and really, you know, put your best foot forward as an organization for your mission. It sounds like a cz much as the the the outcome of that, that that that deliver herbal will have value just the collaborative process of putting it together together. We’ll have value. Absolutely. We’re gonna work together. We gotta define what are unknown terms are to each other and things like that’s going to start the conversation, right? You have to be able to communicate effectively internally before you can communicate externally. Okay? All right, rich, we’re going to wrap it up, which is just, like, a minute or so. You have some opportunities around software integration. Yeah. Yeah, integration was another one. And, you know, we definitely go deeper into the into the report on that. But we ask, you know, how important was integration, you know, to to the finance and fund-raising quotes. And we saw some interesting things there, including it seemed the younger the person was, the more they wanted integration, which, you know you would would would make sense. Millennials have had their lives integrated online forever, so they’re very much into integration. Some of the older boomers, um, tended to be a little more skeptical of of integration. So there’s definitely some stuff to teo look at their what dan and i found on the integration pieces that there might be some fear around integration about, oh, that’s, our data and i don’t know if i trust, you know, a machine to actually move the data correctly. I’d rather do it myself manually. So i think we need to do a lot of training on dh showing folks that that that software integration, you know, data going from your finance from your fund-raising software to your finance up our can actually save a lot of time can actually save a lot of double entry on and and and keep your data very clean. So i think that’s something that’s going to take a little time for people to get comfortable with it powerthru deeds, director of fund-raising strategy at abila also dann murphy, product manager for was it micro integrated processes fund accounting my p my p my p i got it wrong in other words, okay, we’ll stick with that. Might be also abila, gentlemen, thank you very much. Thank you. My pleasure. Your ceo board chair partnership with john fulwider is coming up first pursuant. Check out overcoming the major donor dilemma it’s free as all their researches, they’re so generous with the stuff it’s unbelievable. This one is a ah white paper that will help you identify new major donors, help you engage them and optimize your major donor cultivation all wrapped up in one in one paper says unbelievable, overcoming the major donor dilemma you’ll find it at pursuant dot com quick resource is, and then content papers do it for pete’s sake, we’d be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising your word is shenanigans. Watch the new video and see how the contestants do it’s from a night that raised one hundred ten thousand dollars for hfc, which has helped for children. If you want to have a fun night with stand up comedy, live music, dancing, spelling on raising a ton of money, check out the latest video, please, at we b e spelling dot com now tony’s, take two. My latest video is thank you excuse me. I’m a little scratchy today. Thank you. It didn’t crack though it just broke. It was difficult to crack and break very different. Very different. Do not confuse them. I’m grateful that you are you’re with us, you’ve been with us through twenty sixteen. Thank you so much. We’re up over twelve thousand plus listeners now very often i should i’m hasn’t. You know i’m conservative in these things always say over twelve thousand all the time but it’s very frequent trust me over twelve thousand. So the ten thousand is fading, and i’m so grateful for that whether your loving non-profit radio by listening subscribing wherever you subscriber listen whichever platform, whether its affiliate or podcast or live if you are getting my insider alerts by email every thursday so you know where the guests are each week? You with me on facebook, twitter, youtube, youtube actually, youtube, twitter much better than facebook there’s a lot more going on there. Keep facebook active, but i have more fun on youtube and twitter wherever you are. With me with us with non-profit radio, thank you so much. Thank you, there’s. A ps to that video. That hair my hair is very long. You’ve been watching it grow if you’re with me on youtube and i addressed that issue head on, check out the video at tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two and to show my affection of course what comes eyes is only one way to do it live. Listen, love. We’re all over the world today. The uk, seoul, south korea multiple in new york, new york, norway italia, espana, san jose, california, about our china, uh, college station, texas. Killeen, texas. Multiple texas ho chin minh city, vietnam is with us. Okayama, japan i love it. I’m going to dispense with the languages today, you know, i know all the languages. I’m fluent in japanese, chinese, korean, the mexican spanish czech republic i know what you know. Fluent take my word for it affiliate affections they got to go out are am and fm listeners all over the country. Thank you so much for listening through your affiliate station and the podcast pleasantries to the very frequently over twelve thousand listeners. A week. Whatever you’re doing while you’re listening, i thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me in your ear while you’re carrying on your life. Podcast pleasantries to you here’s john fulwider from the april third twenty fifteen show your ceo board chair partnership john fulwider is with me. He helps non-profit chief executives, he combines coaching, teaching and training toe work exclusively with high achieving ceos. I want their leadership teams and boards to row in the same direction. His latest book is better together non-profits ceos and board chairs get happy and fall in love with the mission i hope the book is shorter than the title john he’s at john fulwider dot com and on twitter he’s at john m fulwider welcome john fulwider thanks so much, tony, its honor and pleasure to be here. Thank you. I’m glad and you’re you’re calling from omaha, nebraska. Is that right? Lincoln, nebraska lincoln, nebraska pardon me, i gave you live. Listen love to lincoln pardon me. That’s. Right, lincoln i hope you didn’t take me too seriously when i was admonishing you about requesting live listener love careful, they’re not at all ok, good. Don’t take nobody listens to me, it’s all in good fun. Okay, your book is ah siri’s of questions, which i love, that that ceos and board chairs should be asking each other. What? What shortcomings do you see in this relationship? That you want to be a partnership? You know, i wantto start with the possibilities that you can achieve from a really healthy and successful partnership before i get to the shortcomings. If i could. The possibilities are amazing. Too high achieving, growth oriented, talented, passionate people can really support each other and accomplishing together for themselves, for the organization and for the mission, something they wouldn’t be able to achieve a part. And so it can be a really fulfilling effort asked, spend their wanting two, maybe three years of the border chairs leadership term together, really accomplishing something that they could both feel proud of at the end of those years. Okay, um, but i’m still gonna ask my question. Don’t be an anarchist now taking over the show. What? What? What now? I got two shortcomings or what? You know what? What’s typical of the board chair ceo relationship that that you see and when? You build that strong partnership, you can avoid a number of pitfalls. One of them is just failure to develop trust and transparency in your relationship, which was really the bedrock for leading together at the start. Next up, you can sail to communicate often enough, and as a result, neither the board chair nor the chief executive gets what she or he needs in terms of information to even run an effective board meeting, much less provide some really inspiring strategic direction. Two the organization and the last thing that you can do is fail to establish clear expectations of each other. So you’re sort of casting about rudderless, not really knowing who’s. Responsible for what? And that’s not a fun or indeed the filling of productive position for either of the leaders to be. How about that trust the how do people in these positions let’s take it’s? Ah, new relationship. Either the board chair is new, or the ceo is new to the organization. How do we start to build build that trust? You know, it really just begins in conversation, tony change begins in conversation conversation with your most important partner that being your board chair if you’re the chief executive, the chief executive, if you’re the board chair, it’s just a matter of starting off the relationship, right with some open ended kind of deep questions that let you start to develop that trust and transparency from the very start in the book associate in the workbook associated with the book, i have a list of those questions that go from sort of short to medium so long, and you can kind of customize it based on the time you have, and you have them broken down into categories and then within the categories, there are lots of different topic areas, marketing and accountability, and that’s right succession planning. So i really like this question and answer that i mean, i they’re they’re all questions to stimulate conversation and conversation hopefully is going to be honest and open, and that helps us get to trusting partnership. Indeed, it is a virtuous cycle. Okay. All right. Let’s, let’s, talk about some of these questions. I like them so much. Um, you don’t mind if we start with marketing, do you? Would that be okay? No. Let’s, let’s. Go right into it. Ok, so you’re the way. It’s laid out is you give some perspectives, cem quotes for thinking for the people. Tto consider on the subject and then ask your partner and there’s lots of ask your partner questions and, uh, you know that you ask some very basic ones around marketing. What should our message be? Who needs to hear it? Where where does it need to be? Can two people, though sitting in a room together out, answer these, they can begin to answer them, tony and in a way that generates questions for other people, let me let me use one of your previous guests as an example of how this could work. So you have a guest one or two weeks ago talking about your board as brand ambassadors, and there was that there was that question, as i recall about, you know, what does our organization even do in terms of category where we capacity building organization? Or were we making social change organization? I believe your guest said, and and that’s a question that you and your board chair i’m just going to talk from the chief executive’s perspective because those of the clients i work with you can ask your board chair? Well, bored share? What the you how would you categorize our organization and then ask your board chair? How do you think your colleagues on the board would categorise the organization? And that helps the board chair decide? Well, hey, maybe i need to lead a discussion on this at the next board meeting because i’m not sure and i want to find out. So starting a conversation with your board chair starts conversations that she or he has with her or his colleagues. Okay, so these are not going to be questions that we’re going to sit down in a couple of our long meetings, and we’re going to have answers to no, we’re not going to figure it out for ourselves, but we’re going to we’re going to start the conversation. We’re going to use our knowledge at my knowledge as the chief executive of the leadership teams perspective and the board chair her knowledge of her colleagues on the board, their perspectives. We’re going to use it to narrow dance on our information, gathering our question, asking for our colleagues. Okay, by the way, that guessed that you were referring. Teo, your board is brand ambassadors two weeks ago was roger sametz, um, also with the also in one of your marketing questions, looking internally, how good a job are we doing? Getting our message to our own board and staff, you want some introspection here? Yeah, absolutely, i mean, one of the one of the challenges that that i i always here when i’m working with, not for for-profit is the staff in general are pretty dissatisfied with what they perceive as the board’s level of knowledge about and interest in the organization and then what i find when that when when we really examine it, the board tends to have more knowledge and information about the organization, then was the staff perception and so conversations about marketing and branding and the, you know, sort of internal outside perspective on the organization can be sort of a safe and comfortable way for people to get rid of negative assumptions they might have about their colleagues. I’m going to move to one that also i find interesting internal threats to the organiser from, like you ask who is a flight risk on the board who air flight risks on our staff? This is right. This is very, very good. You risked management. I would call it, too. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s it’s something not not every organization really has the time or bandwidth to consider, but it is pretty hard to attract high quality talent. You are not for-profit organizations for various reasons everyone’s familiar with so once we have a really talents and high achieving, competent person on board, we need to take special care to ensure that we retain that person by continuing to challenge her or him offering a clear way up in the organization and so on. That could be the downside of term limits. Indeed it can. On the on the board side and boy, you know, if we get into the question of term limits will get into the question of government governance structures, and this conversation will get too complicated and i will wind up in jargon jail well, but you’re well, i’ll i’ll put your there, i’ll put your but they’re easily so you may end up there anyway, but let’s not let’s, not let’s. Not underestimate the capacity of non-profit radio listeners. Very sophisticated audience. Ah lutely. So i think they’re up for ah governance. Conversation. We may. We may get there, you that’s one of the other topics that you have questions around governance and accountability. But oh, i mean, if i can, if i can address term limits for just seconds under under governance, you know, that’s one of the frustrations of building a partnership with your board chair is that it’s a short term relationship. You could be doing all this work that i recommend. And i recommend doing a lot of work on this relationship on ly to have that person term out of the board chair seat one year from now, maybe two years, probably at the most three years. So term limits are a big deal in this context. Okay, buy-in but as we’re identifying let’s say, you know ah, well, who’s, the who’s a flight risk on the board we should be. Then the next question is going to be, well, what’s our succession plan for for that well, flight risk or, you know, whether it’s term limits or whatever whatever reason president is going to in the position. So how do you how would you feel about having a neg zsystems chair and the planned successor? Whoever that is the vice chair. Whatever the the chair to be named in this conversation, could we do this is a three way. Sure, we definitely could do that. The first thing you need to do is have the two way conversation where you’re building the solid partnership with your board chair. And honestly, if that’s all the two of you have the time, space and bandwidth to do, just stop there because you’ll be ahead of many other people who are in a leadership partnership. But if you can, by all means bring device chair, they’re electing the president elect that sort of thing into your discussions and and talk about how we can keep the strong leadership goodness culture flowing. But then also talk about how we need to customize the relationship to the prospective, the incoming board chair, because the nature of building trust with that person setting expectations, clarifying rolls and the style and manner and frequency of communication. It’s all going to be different for that new person? Yes, customized not not cookie cutter. And yes, not one size fits. All right, right. That’s, that’s offensive to the incoming person. Then you know right. Alright. Loss of trust there. We just have a minute or so before a break. Um, you would also like us under internal threats, to be looking at which of our programs is below par or failing. Sure and and that’s a great conversation. Tio have with your board chair, because you’re bored. Chair isn’t in the organization twenty six hours a day. Thinking about it, like like you are, doesn’t have probably that attachments teo each of the programs, and so can offer and unbiased mohr outside you at what is working and what is not in the organization and honestly, can help you strategize about how to do the influence campaign necessary on your board, and indeed, with your staff, and maybe even your thunders, to eliminate a failing program in order to allocate resources to something that is creating social change. Let’s, take a break. When we come back, john and i are going toe. Keep covering some questions that the ceo on board chair should be asking each other. Hang in there. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that or neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Got lots more live listener love tons of live listeners today serbia is with us live listener love out there. Mccarty in the philippines, mexico city, mexico. I’ll be flying there in october on my way to stop a for opportunity collaboration. Go through mexico city, reservoir, australia, bogota, colombia, seoul, south korea several in seoul not surprised. Always appreciative. Thank you very much on your haserot in japan, kawasaki and tokyo konnichi wa also spire germany, gooden dog amazing let’s, bring it back to the u s, newport news, virginia, omaha, nebraska. John omaha, eyes on and multiple in lincoln, nebraska so you’ve got some family there. I don’t know some people love you in lincoln, nebraska and pflueger ville, texas i love pflueger ville welcome live listener love to each person listening live. John, do you mind if we, since we’ve sort of headed in this direction to look what some succession planning for the for the board chair and for the ceo, we’ll do it that way, okay? Your questions for for those two are pretty similar, so i would just take him in a bunch recognizing that nobody’s going to be in the position forever. What? What skills and qualities do we need in our next chair and our next ceo? Right? The reason i include the succession planning of questions in the book is because it really gives away toe have that conversation about succession planning, which is so sort of inconvenient and awkward and about your own mortality on a regular basis. What i recommend is that people go through this list of twenty four strategic discussion topics with their board share hyre one at a time, actually go through the entire list um, twice a year, so they’re having forty eight weeks of conversations taking four weeks off, but this just brings it up automatic so that it’s not awkward now that’s a that’s. A lot of time to ask. Ah, volunteer to spend is that you have you have clients that are doing that. This is realistic. Ideo i do have clients who were doing that. Okay? And what do we say to the board chair? Who may be reluctant to spend that kind of time? We’re talking about at least an hour a week, right? Sure. I mean, it can go faster or slower than that. What we say to the person is, i value your counsel and your input. And i know you joined the board because you felt like you have something to say. You cared about the mission, and you felt like you had something to say about advancing the mission and getting mohr dunaj for the social change cause that wee boat care about. And so i simply want teo give you the opportunity to be strategic about that as often as possible. And i promise that in our conversations, we’ll try to keep it at the high strategic, interesting and compelling level and away from boring taxable day today as much as possible. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We want to encourage the board to be looking at bigger pictures and not what the office supply budget line should be. How about let’s? Look, a little external. Now, we’ve been in to do a lot of introspection. You have a section on meeting community needs, right? I mean, this, the basic. What does our community need from us on dh? How are we doing in providing it? Yeah, this is this is really a question i like to use, teo, inform strategic planning processes. And so what i what i see this conversation as tony is ah, logical and easy progression from, uh, tapping the strategic thinking capabilities of the chief executive and the board chair and then moving that discussion to the executive committee or the officers of the board and then moving it from there to further board members in, say, a strategic thinking slot on aboard agenda and then moving that all the way to the strategic planning retreat. So strategic conversation are happening constantly at all levels of the organization, but starting at the top it’s kind of like one of those chocolate fountains that you see at wedding receptions and so forth where it’s this yummy, gooey, rich chocolate and it bubbles out of the top, and it flows down to the next layer and the next layer, and then it bubbles back-up from the top strategic thinking happens in organizations the same way, okay, we don’t have to explain it to the person or maybe the people we’re going to have these conversations with as a strategic planning process, dewey, because that has a lot of baggage to it that maybe people aren’t ready to take on or you know what we have, you know, you’re completely you’re completely right, tony, i’m i’m working on a year long strategic planning process with a client right now, and as i’m doing the strategic, the preplanning interviews with the leadership team, they’re being kind enough to tell me, hey, some of us have some trepidation about that. The board says that has as well you do want it to be clear at the board chair level, though, that you have a shared responsibility to, no matter how you phrase it or how you present it. Teo, get strategic thinking happening throughout the organization consistently. It can’t be something you do just once a year, okay? Or once every three years or something, and then it ends up on the show, which would be even worse. Okay, yes, these are that’s true and seen it this way, but these are very good strategic planning questions, even if you don’t want to call it a strategic planning process there. Very good strategic questions, i guess is what i mean. You have a section on external threats. And we just have about a minute left. But so let’s. Just throw out that we should be looking at who’s doing a better job than we are at providing program. Right. And that’s a that’s. A question that your your board chair is especially well suited to help answer she or he may have the answer himself just by being virtue of being a philanthropist in the community, caring about the issue, seeing what others have to say or your board chair main not know the answer himself but can go to other, uh, you know, really connected on that particular issue. People on the board who then can offer some information that again comes from somebody who has that outside. Unbiased, not thinking about the organization, you know, more than twenty four hours a day, like twenty six hours a day, like the chief executive is all right, lots of strategic and thought provoking questions. In the book, you’ll find it at john fulwider dot com. And john is on twitter at john m fulwider. Thank you very much for sharing john there’s. An even better link, tony at better together leadership. Dot com it’s, easier to spell. All right. Thank you very much, john. Thanks, tony. Next week, there’s. No show. However, affiliates you’re covered, you know that you have my best wishes for merry christmas. Happy hanukkah. Happy new year. Lots of good wishes for your holidays and your time off. Take that time for yourself. Take some time for yourself. That’s. A good wishes for the holidays. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, wee bey, e spelling, dot com, our creative producers, clam hyre off. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and this great music is by scots. Dine with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent happy new year. Go out and be great! What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe. Add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life, it sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do put money on a situation expected to heal you put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for April 3, 2015: Dan Pallotta And Charity Defense Council & Your CEO/Board Chair Partnership

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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My Guests:

Dan PallottaCharity Defense Council

He’s the guy behind the 2013 viral TED video “The Way We Think About Charity Is Dead Wrong.” Now he runs the Charity Defense Council, because nonprofits have no anti-defamation cause.

 

 

 

John FulwiderYour CEO/Board Chair Partnership

How do you cultivate this critical relationship? What should they be asking each other? John Fulwider is a consultant and author of “Better Together.”

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer scrub typhus if i got bitten by the notion that you missed today’s show damn piela and charity defense counsel he’s, the guy behind the twenty thirteen viral ted video now he runs the charity defense counsel because non-profits have no anti defamation cause and your ceo board chair partnership. How do you cultivate this critical relationship? What should they be asking each other? John fulwider is a consultant and author of better together on tony’s take to storytelling and a fellowship opening. We’re sponsored by opportunity collaboration, the working meeting on poverty reduction that will ruin you for every other conference. Terrific pleasure to welcome to the show, dan piela he’s, the founder and president of the charity defense counsel at charity defense counsel dot or ge he created the multi day charitable event industry when one hundred eighty two thousand people participated in the aids rides and breast cancer three days that plot a team works created he’s, the author of uncharitable how restraints on non-profits undermined their potential. You probably saw his viral ted video the way we think about charity is dead wrong. He’s at dan, pull out a dot com, and at dan piela on twitter, dan. Welcome to the show. Okay, tony, thanks for having me, it’s. My pleasure. Thank you for being with us. Did i beat the hell out of you when we were kids? No, i you know, be careful, ly i went to high school with a kid named tommy tony martignetti and, uh, the only fist fight of my life and i didn’t fare well in it. And when and when we spoke a week ago or so, i just had to make sure you weren’t the same. Tony martignetti but sounds like, you know, i’m not i i had never beaten anybody up. I’ve lost a bunch of fights when i was young, but i ran away from most of them. I was a pretty quick runner, so that saved me from a lot of beatings. I used to play hockey, i was a goalie, and when i would have a fight with someone with that right handed waffle glove, that was that was nothing for them to overcome that would put them out, right? You’re the big guy big guy in front of the goal, then it’s, right? Save the save the team from from aa a goal and trying to save the world now, are you you still skating it all skating on ice? You know, when the kids go skate and go skating with the kids i got three kids. I got triplets there. Seven there’s, seven years old. And so i dragged escape. Sometimes i tell people triplets really? How many? That’s? Wonderful. Congratulations on triplets. I think that’s great that’s. Terrific. Yeah, wonderful. Why do we need a charity defense counsel? Why do we need a charity defense counsel? Because, amazingly, unbelievably, somehow the nonprofit sector which organizes people on behalf of all kinds of causes is not organized itself. So if you look at any successful movement for change, there are a few basic functions that those movements have that the non-profits sack sector lacks utterly and completely so. Four things essentially first, we don’t have an anti defamation force, you know? So we get the famed in the media all the time, and we have no powerful organized voice to offer the general public and alternative point of view. You know, the gay and lesbian community has the anti has glad the jewish community has the anti defamation league. We have nothing like that. Now, what about independent sector? They would say that they’re they’re that kind of a voice. Independent sector isn’t chartered to be an anti defamation force, you know? So they do their work on the hill, and they try to make sure that, you know, they were originally charted to make sure that that the non profit sector never loses the tax exemption, so that was their original charter. So say they work a lot on the federal level on big public policy issues, but they’re not specifically chartered to be the media organisation any more than, you know, the some of the big, like the the human rights campaign is chartered to be a gn anti defamation mechanism for the gay and lesbian community that’s why the gay and lesbian community specifically has get glad the gay and lesbian alliance against defamation so we don’t have anything with that kind of specific charter and specific expertise. Secondly, we don’t have any kind of a public facing ad strategy, you know, the way the pork producers in the nineteen eighties got together and change the image of pork with pork, the other white milk bottles got together and came up with got milk in the face of big challenges by the bottled water in the sports drink industry wasn’t anything like that were never taken out a full page ad in the new york times to say anything about our sectors of the first two things, the third thing is we don’t have ah legal defense fund. So all kinds of counterproductive public legislation and regulation gets proposed, especially at the state and local level, and we have no apparatus for combating that are educating, for example, state’s, attorney’s, general and last but not least, we don’t have a database, we’re not organized, we don’t have a database of the ten million people employed in the sector, you know, we don’t have anything close to that, so we can’t bring that powerful voice to bear on the issues that we really care about. So the charity defense counsel is to fill those voids. Do you see the statistic that charity’s represent roughly a tenth of the gdp of the country, which would be around a trillion and a half dollars in assets and money through in a year? Do you? Is that something a little more than a trillion dollar annual sector? You know, it’s huge in the end, the idea that it doesn’t have any systematic form of a comprehensive treyz just this morning, as you mentioned, the pork board and milk and you know, i’m learning on the subway that a tablespoon of peanut butter has seven ounces of protein, you know, from the peanut board, so you know, yeah, imagine if you learn that, contrary to popular belief, the amount of money that charity spends on overhead is correlated to its ability to have an impact on them or that it spends on its own growth mohr impact that can have that would be great. We’re actually running digital billboards in very high profile locations on highways in massachusetts right now that tell people don’t ask if a charity has low overhead, ask if it has a big impact and that’s the first time that we’ve ever spoken to anyone other than ourselves about these things let’s talk a little about ah, something that i know you’re a strong advocate of. Ah, investing in fund-raising and what the failure to do that means for for people whose lives we’re trying to save. Yeah, you know the question is always asked, you know, what are you spending on? Fund-raising how much are you spending on? Fund-raising and the question is not what is your fund-raising costing you it? What is your unwillingness to invest more money in fund-raising costing you you know, you look for example, a wounded warrior project they didn’t exist fifteen years ago, and in two thousand six they were spending about a million five on fund-raising on, and they had about five million left over for programs they had about a forty four percent fund-raising an admin ratio, and you look at that and say, well, that’s beyond what any of the watchdogs say, so wounded warrior project should just cut down on that overhead. They went in the other direction, they spent more money on fund-raising so that’s six years later, they went from a million spent on fund-raising twenty million spent on fund-raising their revenue went from ten million to two hundred million. The money available for veterans went from five million to one hundred and fourteen million um all because they were willing to buck the system and invest in their growth and it’s that unwillingness of organizations to invest in growth because of the cultural pressure put on them. It’s literally killing people, it’s keeping these organizations miniature up against the scale of the problem, but they can’t grow, they can’t ever possibly solve the problem what the donor doesn’t realize. The donor thinks i want low overhead because that’s what they’ve been taught, but what the donor really wants is the problem to get solved. What the donor really wants is mohr of the hungry to get fed and, paradoxically, counterintuitively, the path to ending hunger and curing breast cancer isn’t toe lower overhead. It isn’t the lower fund-raising costs it’s increased those things so that we can grow the size of these organizations and they have a shot at combating these problems. I get it, i get enormously frustrated when i see that, um gives to charity are so consistent at two percent of of whatever the aggregate is that it was gross domestic product or something. We’re just way don’t we haven’t found the way to get people to give mohr without taking without becoming a zero sum game, which it doesn’t have to be. Yeah, exactly. Charitable giving has been stuck in two percent of gdp for forty five years now, which means the non-profit sector isn’t taking any market share away from the for-profit sector, it isn’t convincing consumers to give money to charity instead. Of the budweiser into hershey’s, and the reason is it doesn’t spend any money convincing donors to give their money to charity instead of budweiser and her she’s now her, she spent five hundred eighty million dollars a year trying to convince the public to part with their money for chocolate loreal spends one point five billion dollars a year on advertising, trying to convince the public to part with their money for cosmetics. By contrast, susan komen, the breast cancer organization in two thousand twelve spent twenty five million dollars on advertising against lorry as one point five billion, and we would criticize coleman even for spending that twenty five million dollars on advertising. Well, if you don’t let these charities go out into the public media, television, advertising, radio, advertising, newspapers, billboards the way, every other big consumer brando they can’t excite peoples imaginations that can’t compete with the for-profit sector for the consumers dollar let’s go out for a breakdown. Of course you and i’ll keep talking about the work of the charity defense counsel and investment and scalability stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’ve got a ton of live listener love we’re going to start in the u s del valle, a texas new bern, north carolina live listener loved to you, lincoln, nebraska and i believe that’s, our upcoming guests. John fulwider who says on twitter he’s hoping for some live listener love i have to admonish you live listen, love is a privilege, not a right, and those who ask for it sometimes don’t get it. So watch that. But i am i am very generous with it but it’s not common to be asking for the live listen love it’s a it’s a privilege daisy missouri st louis, missouri many in new york, new york right here, bold in massachusetts and denver, colorado and live listener love to you and lots of people out west to including san francisco live listener love. And then we got a bunch of broad will get two podcasts, all of massachusetts that you are born. Is that right? Maybe that’s tony martignetti that’s, the tony martignetti who beat beat the heck out of you and he’s listening, tony, i love, you know only because you have the same name, not because you beat up damp latto i wish you could hit you with his hizmet what you call that? That glove is the glove waffle glove. I appreciated you with his rifle glove, because clearly the the anguish and the pain remain. All these years later, you still remember tony martignetti i gotta send podcast pleasantries. Everybody listens in the time shift, whatever device, whatever time, whatever day pleasantries to you and, of course, affiliate affections to our many affiliate stations throughout the country. Love you too, dan. Do you distinguish between impact and outcomes? Do you make that distinction? People do you know, i thought about that before, not really. I i put them in the same category. I don’t, i don’t know. Maybe they’re maybe they’re some p people who ah, are more purist about that. Okay, but now seems a semantic difference only to you. All right, but you want people donors to be focusing on the impact. The lives that are being saved. Changed? Yeah. What impact is the organization having? Actually, you know, the problem with the overhead ratio is it’s overly simplistic. And, you know, we as a culture are addicted to simplicity, so we got to be careful that we don’t trade one simplistic measure for another simplistic measure, and you’re starting to see that addiction to simplicity play out with the measurement of effectiveness now, because okay, so effectiveness has become the new trend. The new buzzword. You got to be careful because if you start rewarding charities for effectiveness, then they’ll start to pursue the problems that are easiest to solve and show effectiveness on because that’s, where the money will be easy to get, especially from grantmaker and and the problems that are more difficult to solve will get orphaned. So you want to ask the charity what? What are your goals? What progress are you making toward those goals? And how do you know? So i don’t necessarily care if you’re making progress, you might be working on a very difficult problem, but i want i want to know whether you care about whether or not you’re making progress. I want to know whether you measuring whether or not you’re actually making progress on the problem, so, you know, i encouraged the average doner look, you’re always going to give to the red cross one when a tsunami happens, you know, when some one ofthe tragedy happens, you’re always gonna give one hundred dollars or something. But in terms of your overall philanthropy, what is the cause you really care about? Figure that out? Which one of you passionate about? Then? Do some research on the organizations that are doing the best work in that area the same way you do research before you buy a car? Same way you do a lot of research before you vote for a presidential candidate, you know you owe it to yourself. It’s your money? You’re a philanthropist too, even though you might be giving a lot less than within warren buffett. Philanthropy means love of humanity you’re a philanthropist respect your money and your investment take the time to get to know the charity called them up go visit them. Go for a site visit. They’ll be happy to take you on a site. Visit that’s the best way to learn about the work that they’re doing. Not by looking at some rating on a website i had the c p a send me ah comment when he saw that you were going to be a guest on hey does audit work, and what he’s seen is the focus on the overhead ratio encouraging non-profits to miss report on their nine nineties putting what are clearly administrative expenses and into program program lines on their nine, ninety or in some kind of financial report? Yeah, well, you know, that’s a that’s a whole kind of a big dark secret in the sector, right? The sector knows that the public wants low overhead, so the sector has figured out all different kinds of waiting to give the public low overhead. One of those ways is by underspending on the things that they really need. Another ways to joint cost allocation. Now i’m a fan of joint cost allocation, but on ly, if your definition of the cause is the same as the consumer’s definition of the cause because you know what percentage goes to the cause depends on hot entirely on how you define it. If you define it very broadly and you include all kinds of expenses that the donor doesn’t think of cause related in your cause related line items, well, then you’re going to show a very high percentage going to the cause. But, you know, you run the risk of duping the consumer if your breast cancer organization and that you know, the donor thinks the money’s going to breast cancer research. But what you mean is it’s going to education and it’s going to events, and some of it’s going to research, then to me, that’s doing it disservice to the donor. We have jargon, jail on non-profit radio, but i think you clearly explained what you mean by the joint cost allocation. Um, but training teo trying to transcend it’s. Ah, probation is hard to come by in drug, in jail. Let’s see, there’s ah, there’s. A joking with you. By the way, you sound like you found dead. You’re not. You’re not taking me seriously. Are you mi dan? Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. Jog in jail. It’s fun. Okay, no really being admonished. Um, this is ah ah, being adopted in a bunch of states, we’re seeing a regulatory trend where states are enacting by statute percentages that ah, either shouldn’t be allocated to overhead to be on a certain amount or must be allocated to program certain way. New york has jumped on the bandwagon. A lot of states air headed this way. Yeah. In new york, you know, they grants state grants to non-profits used to come with a twenty five percent overhead threshold. Then all of a sudden, as of january, andrew cuomo decided it should be. It should be fifteen percent, you know. On what basis? No, there was one organization, one one watchdog agency that once did a study to find out how much money should go to the cause versus overhead. And they serve in consumers and said, you know how much money do you think should goto overhead? Well, that’s like asking the general public. How long do you think jurassic surgery should take and then using? That is standard for thor asic surgeons. I mean, what does the general public know about how much overhead should be it’s? A complicated question. And it all depends on what you want is an outcome. The feeling is that it’s it’s partially public money because of the charitable deduction. So it becomes a political issue and come political issue. And but people say, you know, politicians say i want a lower overhead. I wanna lower overhead because i want more money going to the cause you know, overhead is part of the cause if you especially if you’re using money for growth if you if you can invest a dollar and fund-raising and turn it into ten dollars, wouldn’t you is a state want to put all your money into fund-raising instead of programs because you can multiply it by ten dollars? So you know, by forcing these charities not to spend on overhead, the state is getting a lot less bang for its buck. Out of its money overhead is part of the cause. Thank you. Outstanding. Ah, what? What? How do you know? How many states there are roughly that air there, even that have enacted these kinds of statutes or or considering them? Well, new york is a standout example right now, but but oregon past legislation that would strip the tax deductible status from from donations coming from charities that don’t meet a certain overhead threshold. Florida was about to do the same thing. Last year, the california attorney general was looking at eliminating the ability of charities to do joint cost allocation. Right now, the california attorney general wants to required charities to make a statement on any solicitation that there’s a professional fundraiser involved and to me, you know so well, why does an apple have to put on their iphone that there were professional engineers involved in people being paid, you know, x amount of money to build the iphone? Those aren’t those aren’t the questions you should be asking, what is somebody being paid? What you want to know is what value is somebody being producing for the money they’re being paid now? It could be somebody’s being paid very low, but they’re not doing a goddamn thing, so they’re the ones you know, really ripping the charity off. So you, you know, you really want to ask not what is the dollar amount, but what is the ratio of value to dollar spent? That’s the important question, you know, any business school student would be thrown out in year one if they didn’t do a cost benefit analysis duitz but we never do them with charity salaries. We look a figure four hundred thousand dollars we so that’s way too much get rid of the person or throw them in jail. You know what? How do you know that person isn’t capable of making for a million dollars in the for-profit sector? And then that that they haven’t produced three times as much in the way of a result of the lesser paid person? Would so it’s it’s just a really simplistic way of looking at the world in it, and undermines the donors and undermines state and undermines the clients that the charity’s ultimately serve? Another thing that i believe you encourage and ah ah, nde actually seth godin does to has been on the show, and he has three things he encourages organizations that do create ship and fail and the willingness to fail. And learn. Yeah, you know, well, that’s a big issue in the nonprofit sector is we don’t want non-profits to take risk on new fund-raising ideas with donor dollars? Well, if they can’t take risks that can’t learn and they can’t grow, if they can’t grow, they can’t solve these problems, you know, we don’t we let hollywood take all kinds of risks, you know, we let hollywood place two hundred million dollar bets on movies like sex and the city seventeen or, you know, the lone ranger which flopped or john carter, which flops, and this is how the big consumer brands learned they place these big bet some of them pay off some of them don’t, and on the basis of that, you know, they evolved, we don’t let non-profit organizations do that. I don’t know of a nonprofit organization that has a research and development budget for fund-raising i don’t even know of one that has a line item for it. I mean, can you imagine if apple didn’t have ah, on rnd budget for the new products that it wants introduce? I s o you quoted somewhere saying that restraints undermine potential just sort of service something all this up? Yeah, that’s actually, that it’s actually the subtitle parent restraints on non-profit attention, mind their potential. I really didn’t want that subtitle because i can’t stand the use of the word non-profit you know the words, it apologizes for itself. It tells us what what we’re against talks about our tax status yes, it does the larger issues. And the word profit comes from the latin for progress so that the term non-profit literally means non-profit gress you know it’s it’s the no sector? No, you can’t have money to advertise. No, you can’t pay people a swell as the for-profit sector does. No, you can’t take any risks, but please solve all the world’s problems for us. You know what i can’t stand is a lot of times i’ll do an interview with a reporter and then the headline writer will will label the story damn pull out of the guy who thinks charity should act more like business that’s not at all what i’m saying, i’m saying that you know we as a culture are not for a moment. Ready to give charities the big league freedoms. We really give the business. So please stop telling them to act more like businesses. If they’re too stupid to do it in the first place, they would act more like business if you would give them the permission to the just this week. Way learned that charity navigator’s ceo ken berger who’s been on the show a few times, eyes leaving. Does does charity defense counsel have any advice for charity navigator in their search for a ceo? They say they want to a technologist. Yeah, i think ken has already left. Um, yeah, i think i think there’s a tremendous opportunity here now, you know, charity navigator was funded by donor-centric new york originally, who had a bad experience with a charity. You know, it was hale house where a lot of the money was going to places that he didn’t feel it was going. And, you know, he made a great contribution of his heart and his wealth, and he felt betrayed. And as a reaction to that, he created charity navigator. You know, essentially for all these years to make sure the charity’s weren’t spending too much money. On overhead and salaries, the intentions, i believe we’re good, but the effects have been destructive now, you know, to their credit, they signed on to this letter telling the public a year and a half ago not to ask about overhead anymore, but focus on what ah outcome the charity is having, i think there’s an opportunity here for some kind of ah, of a merger with other organizations, for charity navigator to become much more nuanced and not so numeric and not so rigid. Overall, though, i think the issue is all of these evaluative efforts, whether it’s, you know, the wonderful work that are taylor does with the better business bureau wise giving alliance charity navigator great non-profits there’s, they’re relatively small in scale, you know, they’re they’re one million two million three million dollar organizations and americans give three hundred billion with a b dollars to charity every year we need on itunes for charity nationally, you know, we need a big, robust entity operation that can evaluate every charity in america using rich narrative as well as america data, it could be updated on an annual basis and that’s going to cost hundreds of millions. Of dollars sounds like a lot, but it’s cheap up against the three hundred billion we give to charity every year. We have to make some excuse me, meaningful investment in measuring all that. And, you know, charity navigator is just a way, way, way too small a scale to be able to do that you’ll find charity defense counsel at charity defense counsel dot or ge and you’ll find dan at dan piela dot com and at dan pelota on twitter. Dan, thanks so much for sharing. Thanks, tony. Have a great easter weekend. Thank you very much. Same to you. Thank you. Bye bye. So long, tony’s, take two and your ceo board chair partnership are coming up. First opportunity collaboration. Extremely useful contacts, projects funding. It opens people that was from last. Year’s delegate alberto vasco is president of society edad e dis capacidad in saudi’s, peru. It is the single most productive week i have spent all year. That’s gretchen wallace, founder and president of global grassroots dar for haiti, rwanda, uganda and the u s opportunity collaboration is a week long conference in x top of mexico devoted to poverty reduction throughout the world. It’s coming up in october, i was there last year. I’m going again this year. If your work is it all related to poverty reduction, check it out. Opportunity, collaboration, dot net. I have a new non-profit radio knowledge, base storytelling, the best non-profit radio guests on the subject of storytelling. The video and links are at tony martignetti dot com. Are you a millennial interested in measuring social good, then evaluate for change, has your next career move they’re recruiting for their millennial non-profit data fellowship. The ideal candidate is a millennial, employed or volunteering at a non-profit and dedicated to using data to improve the social sector. The fellowship is part time and includes training, mentoring and a final capstone project. The application deadline is april thirtieth. Apply at evaluate for change, dot com. I am being honored by a non-profit that saves lives in the dominican republic, they bring water to the poorest of the poor in the d r the organization is hermandad and i’d really like non-profit radio fans to be honored with me by giving to herman dahna i’ve been supporting the charity for several years, and i would love for us all to be honored together on april twenty third video is that tony martignetti dot com and i thank you for thinking about that, considering that that is tony’s take two for friday, third of april thirteenth show of the year john fulwider is with me. He helps non-profit chief executives, he combines coaching, teaching and training toe work exclusively with high achieving ceos. I want their leadership teams and boards to row in the same direction. His latest book is better together non-profits ceos and board chairs get happy and fall in love with the mission hope the book is shorter than the title. John he’s at john fulwider dot com and on twitter he’s at john m fulwider welcome john fulwider, thanks so much, tony, its honor and pleasure to be here. Thank you. I’m glad. And you’re you’re calling, ah, from omaha, nebraska. Is that right? Lincoln, nebraska lincoln, nebraska pardon me. I gave you live. Listen, love to lincoln. Pardon me. That’s. Right? Lincoln i hope you didn’t take me too seriously when i was admonishing you about requesting live listener love. Careful, they’re not at all ok, good. Don’t take. Nobody listens to call it it’s all in good fun. Okay, your book is ah siri’s of questions, which i love, that that ceos and board chairs should be asking each other. What? What shortcomings do you see in this relationship? That you want to be a partnership? You know, i wantto start with the possibilities that you can achieve from a really healthy and successful partnership before i get to the shortcomings, if i could. The possibilities are amazing. Too high achieving, growth oriented, talented, passionate people can really support each other and accomplishing together for themselves, for the organization and for the mitch and something they wouldn’t be able to achieve a part. And so it can be a really fulfilling effort asked, spend their wanting two, maybe three years of the board chairs leadership term together, really accomplishing something that they could both feel proud of at the end of those years. Okay, um, but i’m still gonna ask my question. Don’t be an anarchist now taking over the show. What? What? What now? I got two shortcomings or what? You know what? What’s typical of the board chair ceo relationship that that you see, and when you build that strong partnership, you can avoid a number of pitfalls. One of them is just failure to develop trust and transparency in your relationship, which was really the bedrock for leading together at the start. Next up, you can sail to communicate often enough, and as a result, neither the board chair nor the chief executive gets what she or he needs in terms of information to even run an effective board meeting, much less provide some really inspiring strategic direction to the organization. And the last thing that you can do is fail to establish clear expectations of each other. So you’re sort of casting about rudderless, not really knowing who’s. Responsible for what? And that’s not a fun or indeed fulfilling a productive position for either of the leaders to be. How about that trust the how do people? In these positions, let’s, take it’s ah, new relationship either. Well, the board chair is new, or the ceo is new to the organization. How do we start to build build that trust? You know, it really just begins in conversation, tony change begins in conversation conversation with your most important partner that being your board chair, if you’re the chief executive, the chief executive, if you’re the board chair, it’s just a matter of starting off the relationship, right with some open ended kind of deep questions that let you start to develop that trust and transparency from the very start in the book associate in the workbook associated with the book, i have lists of those questions that go from sort of short to medium so long, and you can kind of customize it based on the time you have, and you have them broken down into categories and then within the categories, there are lots of different topic areas marketing and accountability, and that’s right succession planning. So i really like this question and answer that i mean, i they’re they’re all questions to stimulate conversation and conversation hopefully is going to be honest and open and that helps us get to trusting partnership. Indian. Yeah. Ok. It is a virtuous cycle. Okay. All right. Let’s, let’s, talk about some of these questions. I like them so much. Um, you don’t mind if we start with marketing, do you? Would that be okay? No. Let’s, let’s. Go right into it. Ok, so you’re the way it’s laid out is you give some perspectives, cem quotes for thinking for the people. Tto consider on the subject and then ask your partner and there’s. Lots of ask your partner questions. And, uh, you know that you ask some very basic ones around marketing. What should our message be? Who needs to hear it? Where? Where does it need to be? Can two people, though sitting in a room together, answer these? They can begin to answer them, tony. And in a way that generates questions for other people. Let me use one of your previous guests as an example of how this could work. So you have a guest one or two weeks ago, talking about your board as brand ambassadors. And there was that there was that question, as i recall about, you know, what does our organization even do in terms of category where we capacity building organization or were we making social change organization? I believe your guest said, and and that’s a question that you and your board chair i’m just going to talk from the chief executive’s perspective because those of the clients i work with you can ask your board chair well, bored share what d’you, how would you categorize our organization and then ask your board chair? How do you think your colleagues on the board would categorise the organization and that helps the board chair decide? Well, hey, maybe i need to lead a discussion on this at the next board meeting because i’m not sure and i want to find out. So starting a conversation with your board chair starts conversations that she or he has with her or his colleagues. Okay, so these are not going to be questions that we’re going to sit down in a couple of our long meetings, and we’re going to have answers to no, we’re not going to figure it out for ourselves, but we’re going to we’re going to start the conversation. We’re going to use our knowledge at my knowledge as the chief executive of the leadership teams perspective and the board chair her knowledge of her colleagues on the board, their perspectives. We’re going to use it to narrow dance on our information, gathering our question asking for our colleagues. Okay, by the way, that guessed that you were referring. Teo, your board is brand ambassadors. Two weeks ago was roger sametz, um, also with the also in one of your marketing questions looking internally, how good a job are we doing? Getting our message to our own board and staff, you want some introspection here? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the one of the challenges that that i i always here when i’m working with not-for-profits is the staff in general are pretty dissatisfied with what they perceive as the boards level of knowledge about and interest in the organization. And then what i find when that when when we really examine it, the board tends to have more knowledge and information about the organization. Dan was the staff perception and so conversations about marketing and branding and the, you know, sort of internal outside perspective on the organization can be sort of a safe and comfortable way. For people to get rid of negative assumptions they might have about their colleagues. Okay, i’m going to move to one that also i find interesting internal threats to the organiser from like you ask who is a flight risk on the board who air flight risks on our staff? This is right. This is very, very good, like risk-alternatives would call it too. Yeah, absolutely, and it’s it’s something not not every organization really has the time or bandwidth to consider, but it is pretty hard to attract high quality talent. You are not for-profit organizations for various reasons everyone’s familiar with so once we have a really talented, high achieving, competent person on board, we need to take special care to ensure that we retain that person by continuing to challenge her or him offering a clear way up in the organization and so on. That could be the downside of term limits indeed, a can on the on the board side and boy, you know, if we get into the question of term limits will get into the question of government governance structures, and this conversation will get too complicated and i will wind up in jargon. Jail well, but you’re well, i’ll put your there, i’ll put your but they’re easily so you may end up there anyway, but let’s not let’s, not let’s. Not underestimate the capacity of non-profit radio listeners. The very sophisticated audience. Ah lutely. So i think they’re up for ah, governance conversation. We may we may get there, you that’s one of the other topics that you have questions around governance and accountability, but oh, i mean, if i can, if i can address term limits for just seconds under under governance, you know, that’s one of the frustrations of building a partnership with your board chair is that it’s a short term relationship. You could be doing all this work that i recommend, and i recommend doing a lot of work on this relationship only to have that person term out of the board chair seat one year from now, maybe two years, probably at the most three years. So term limits are a big deal in this context. I’m going hyre but as we’re identifying let’s say, you know ah well, who’s, the who’s a flight risk on the board we should be then the next question is going to be, well, what’s our succession plan for for that well, flight risk or, you know, whether it’s, term limits or whatever, for whatever reason president is going to be the position. So how do you how would you feel about having a neg zsystems chair and the planned successor? Whoever that is, the vice chair, whatever the the chair to be named in this conversation, could we do this is a three way? Sure, we definitely could do that. The first thing you need to do is have the two way conversation where you’re building the solid partnership with your board chair and honestly, if that’s all the two of you have the time, space and bandwidth to do. Just stop there, because you’ll be ahead of many other people who are in a leadership partnership. But if you can, by all means bring device chair, they’re elected the president elect that sort of thing into your discussions on dh and talk about how we can keep the strong leadership goodness culture flowing, but then also talk about how we need to customize the relationship to the prospective, the incoming board chair, because the nature of building trust with that person setting expectations, clarifying rolls, and the style and manner and frequency of communication, it’s all going to be different for that new person. Yes, customized, not not cookie cutter. And, yes, not one size fits. All right, right. That’s, that’s, offensive to the incoming person. Then, you know, right, alright, loss of trust there. We just have a minute or so before a break. Um, you would also like us under internal threats, to be looking at which of our programs is below par or failing. Sure and and that’s a great conversation. Tio have with your board chair, because you’re bored. Chair isn’t in the organization twenty six hours a day. Thinking about it, like like you are, doesn’t have probably that attachment to each of the programs, and so can offer and unbiased mohr outside view at what is working and what is not in the organization and honestly, can help you strategize about how to do the influence campaign necessary on your board, and indeed, with your staff, and maybe even your thunders, to eliminate a failing program in order to allocate resources to something that is creating social change. Let’s, take a break. When we come back, john and i are going toe. Keep covering some questions that the ceo on board chair should be asking each other. Hang in there. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth godin, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Got lots more live listener love tons of live listeners today serbia is with us life listen, to live out there. Mccarty in the philippines, mexico city, mexico. I’ll be flying there in october on my way to stop a for opportunity collaboration. Go through mexico city, reservoir, australia, bogota, colombia, seoul, south korea several in seoul not surprised. Always appreciative. Thank you very much on your haserot in japan, kawasaki and tokyo konichiwa also aspired. Germany good dog, it’s. Amazing let’s, bring it back to the u s newport news, virginia, omaha, nebraska. John omaha, eyes on and multiple in lincoln, nebraska so you’ve got some family there. I don’t know some people love you in lincoln, nebraska and pflueger ville, texas i love pflueger ville! Welcome live listener love to each person listening live. John, do you mind if we, since we’ve sort of headed in this direction to look what some succession planning for the for the board chair and for the ceo, we’ll do it, we’ll be okay. Your questions for for those two are pretty similar, so i would just take him in a bunch recognizing that nobody’s going to be in the position forever. What? What skills and qualities do we need in our next chair and our next ceo? Right? The reason i include the succession planning of questions in the book is because it really gives away toe have that conversation about succession planning, which is so sort of inconvenient and awkward and about your own mortality on a regular basis. What i recommend is that people go through this list of twenty four strategic discussion topics with their board chair one at a time really go through the entire list um, twice a year, so they’re having forty eight weeks of conversations taking four weeks off, but this just brings it up automatic so that it’s not awkward. Now that’s a that’s. A lot of time to ask. Ah, volunteer to spend is that you have you have clients that are doing that. This is realistic. Ideo i do have clients who were doing that. Okay? And what do we say to the board chair? Who may be reluctant to spend that kind of time? We’re talking about at least an hour a week, right? Sure. I mean, it can go faster or slower than that. What we say to the person is, i value your counsel and your input. And i know you joined the board because you felt like you have something to say. Um, you, you cared about the mission, and you felt like you had something to say about advancing the mission and getting mohr done for the social change cause that wee boat care about. And so i simply want teo give you the opportunity to be strategic about that as often as possible. And i promise that in our conversations, we’ll try to keep it at the high strategic, interesting and compelling level and away from boring taxable day today as much as possible. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We want to encourage the board to be looking at bigger pictures and not what the office supply budget line should be. How about let’s? Look, a little external. Now we’ve been doing a lot of introspection. You have a section on meeting community needs, right? I mean, this, the basic. What does our community need from us on dh? How are we doing in providing it? Yeah, this is this is really a question i like to use, teo, inform strategic planning processes. And so what i what i see this conversation as tony is ah, logical and easy progression from, uh, tapping the strategic thinking capabilities of the chief executive and the board chair and then moving that discussion to the executive committee or the officers of the board and then moving it from there to further board members in, say, a strategic thinking slot on the board agenda and then moving that all the way to the strategic planning retreat. So strategic conversations are happening constantly at all levels of the organization, but starting at the top it’s kind of like one of those chocolate fountains that you see at wedding receptions and so forth where it’s this yummy, gooey, rich chocolate and it bubbles out of the top, and it flows down to the next layer and the next layer, and then it bubbles back-up from the top strategic thinking happens in organizations the same way, okay, we don’t have to explain it to the person or maybe the people we’re going to have these conversations with as a strategic planning process, dewey. Because that has a lot of it’s our baggage to it that maybe people aren’t ready to take on or, you know, we have, you know, you’re completely you’re completely right, tony, i’m i’m working on a year long strategic planning process with a client right now, and as i’m doing the strategic, the preplanning interviews with the leadership team, they’re being kind enough to tell me, hey, some of us have some trepidation about that. The board says that has as well, you do want it to be clear at the board chair level, though, that you have a shared responsibility to, no matter how you phrase it or how you present it. Teo, get strategic thinking happening throughout the organization consistently. It can’t be something you do just once a year, okay? Or once every three years or something, and then it ends up on the show, which would be even worse. Okay, yes, these are that’s true and seen it this way. But these are very good strategic planning questions, even if you don’t want to call it a strategic planning process there. Very good strategic questions, i guess is what i mean. Um, you have a section on external threats. And we just have about a minute left. But so let’s. Just throw out that we should be looking at who’s, doing a better job than we are at providing program. Right. And that’s a that’s. A question that your your board chair is especially well suited to help answer she or he may have the answer himself just by being virtue of being a philanthropist in the community, caring about the issue, seeing what others have to say or your board chair main not know the answer himself but can go to other, uh, you know, really connected on that particular issue. People on the board who then can offer some information that again comes from somebody who has that outside. Unbiased, not thinking about the organization, you know, more than twenty four hours a day, like twenty six hours a day, like the chief executive is all right, lots of strategic and thought provoking questions. In the book, you’ll find it at john fulwider dot com. And john is on twitter at john m fulwider. Thank you very much for sharing john there’s. An even better link, tony at better together leadership. Dot com it’s, easier to spell. All right. Thank you very much, john. Thanks, tony. Next week. Do you know the agitator at agitator dot net? He’s. Roger craver and he’s with me. Next week, we’re going. To talk about donorsearch retention. If you missed any part of today’s show finding on tony martignetti dot com, where in the world else would you go, i think you have to be, ah, be over twenty to get that, i believe maybe, or maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t that long ago, but i hope you get it. If you’re over twenty opportunity, collaboration with world convenes for poverty reduction, it’ll ruin you for every other conference opportunity. Collaboration. Dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer show social media’s, by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. He was me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Yeah. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist. I took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe. Add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five.