Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%
I love our new sponsor!
Do you want to find more prospects & raise more money? Pursuant is a full-service fundraising agency, leveraging data & technology.
Listen Live or Archive:
- On Fridays at 1pm Eastern: Talking Alternative Radio and tune in.
- Listen to the July 31, 2015 archived podcast.
My Guests:
Lisa Jervis & Jeanine Shimatsu: People Far Away
Distance collaboration—whether a single co-worker telecommutes two days a week or you’ve got offices across multiple time zones—isn’t as easy as vendors would have you think. Let’s talk tools, work habits and organizational practices. Lisa Jervis is principal consultant at Information Ecology and Jeanine Shimatsu is IT specialist for Forward Together. We talked at NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference, hosted by Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN).
Tom Moberg: Files Far Away
Moving your files to the cloud presents options, obstacles and obligations (don’t make your staff cry!). Tom Moberg, independent strategic technology consultant, talks us through. This is also from NTC.
Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.
You’re on the air and on target as I delve into the big issues facing your nonprofit—and your career.
If you have big dreams but an average budget, tune in to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
I interview the best in the business on every topic from board relations, fundraising, social media and compliance, to technology, accounting, volunteer management, finance, marketing and beyond. Always with you in mind.
Sponsored by:
View Full Transcript
Processed on: 2018-11-11T23:20:47.815Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2015…07…251_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20150731.mp3.245336423.json
Path to text: transcripts/2015/07/251_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20150731.txt
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 my goodness! What a terrific fun show last week! I hope you’ve heard it by now. If you weren’t with me live, i hope you were there. It was great fun loved it two hundred fiftieth last week and i’m glad you’re with me this week, i’d be stricken with familial advomatic polly pope says if i had to digest the fact that you missed today’s, show people far away distance collaboration, whether a single coworker telecommutes two days a week or you’ve got offices across multiple time zones, this isn’t as easy as vendors would have you think let’s talk tools, work habits and organizational practices. Lisa jervis is principal consultant at information ecology and janine shimatsu is it specialist for forward? Together, we talked at ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference, hosted by non-profit technology network and ten and files far away. Moving your files to the cloud presents options, obstacles and obligations like don’t make your staff cry. Tom oberg is independent strategic technology consultant, and he talks us through files far away. This is also from auntie si on tony’s take to charity registration, responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising you need more prospects there, smart technology will find them pursuant. Dot com here are lisa jervis and janine shimatsu from ntcdinosaur welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen we’re at the austin, texas, convention center my guests are lisa jervis and janine shimatsu their workshop topic is effective distance collaboration hint it’s more complicated than vendors like to admit. Lisa jervis sitting closest to me is principal consultant for information ecology and janine shimatsu is specialist at forward together. Ladies welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us should have you both. Thank you, lisa, why don’t you get us started? What? What? What are non-profits not really thinking strategically about when they need to collaborate in a virtual office? Sure. Well, let me tell you a little story that i think is representative of a lot of people’s experience. Love story. I got interested in distance collaboration back in two thousand nine, i was working as the operations director for an organisation in oakland, california called the center for media justice. We had seven staff and one location. We just all worked in our office, and that was that. And then we hired someone who lived in chicago, and my edie said to me, so next week amalia needs to be on staff meeting, so figure out how to make that happen. And i was like, oh, oh, i have to think about how to make this happen. We now have this whole employee who lives elsewhere and, you know, so i was like, well, this is easy. We’ll just have her call in to the conference phone. And so every week we start having these staff meetings where the seven of us would sit around the table and look at the conference bone call amalia, talk to us and we, you know, and we kind of stopped talking to each other and started all talking to the phone. And, you know, i just i started noticing all of these ways in which our work was going to have to change in order to accommodate this one new staff person we kept growing. We eventually grew to two offices and ten staff, and that staff included two people who work remotely in neither of the offices so way. Started to want to see each other in our staff meetings. We had people who could not get files because the vpn wasn’t very effective and they couldn’t access the file server. You know, there was just this full constellation of needs that duitz we ii as the operations person had not had an opportunity to philly. Think through because, you know, the was like we heard this person let’s just, you know, go and include her in things now and was like, oh, well, there’s a whole set of issues to think about janine, why don’t you help us out? What are what are some of the things we should be thinking about? Oh, and we have plenty of time together, so we’ll be able to talk about them. But just as an overview. What? Where where should we be thinking? In terms of in general. Yeah, well, there are a lot of components of effective distance collaboration. There is not only the conference in peace that we started talking about. There’s also file sharing. There is also chadband calendars. How we manage email. There are a whole there’s a whole gambit of stuff where things can go right. But also where they could go wrong and it’s really, really important for organisations to know what their needs are and to be able to meet those needs. Ok? And i’m it sounds like the organization should be thinking more than a week in advance uh, from lisa’s story well, at least to talk about her stories, but but more than a week is probably a good idea. It is a good idea, although that’s not always the way it happens, because as lisa was sharing that story, i was just laughing because very recently, i just found out that one of our staff, people who work from home just moved and i didn’t find out until after they moved that they’re no longer located in new york, they’re located in los angeles, and that has a whole other has a lot of implications, such as internet connection and all this i don’t know if they’re living with you, alan, if they are renting or what’s, the situation with their landler is, like or any of these things that would really affect how they’re going to be working with the rest of staff. How it’s going toe play into the system that we already have developed on dso yeah, more than a week or a day would be great. Okay. Okay. Lisa let’s, come back. What? Where? How do we break this down? What should we be thinking about? Sure. We’re planning either bring someone in or yeah, i mean, o r we’re a virtual organization now, and we don’t feel like we’re doing it very smartly. Sure. Well, there’s one main overarching consideration that i think that people often don’t realize. And it has to do with the way that the business press and a lot of collaboration tool vendors talk about remote work there, like, just get a good internet connection and our software, and nothing will change and you’ll be able to do everything. And, you know, the reality is that things will have to change and things there’s overhead involved in remote work. And if you don’t plan for it in your organizational plans in your meaning agendas and in your individual work plans, then you won’t actually have enough time to accomplish the work that you had planned to dio. And so i think the most important thing is just to remember to build in that overhead into all of your plans as faras specific areas of work, there’s, kind of three main aspects, there’s meetings, then there’s file sharing. And then they’re well, yeah, i mean, janine took a whole bunch of stuff. Calendar, chat, email, file sharing conferencing, yeah, yeah, and then there’s, the process of kind of and a separate piece ofwork. Just choosing your tools and making agreements together as an organization about how they’re going to be used. Okay, now, jean let’s, go back to your i thought email was an interesting one. Why, i mean, email. Seems to me to be a fine distance tool without needing any planning. What am i missing? Well, the email is a great tool, and it doesn’t always work the same in all organizations. And i think, culturally are. My organization in particular, uses e mail a lot, especially because we do have a lot of people who don’t work in the same office. You can’t do the same. Drop by, and you can respond whenever you want and that’s. Great. Um, email. I think protocols need to be set for email in terms of setting expectations with other people internally with what is appropriate and how your staff is going to work best, just as with any other form of communication. What are some ideas you have around what these protocols should be? Um well. That’s great. I’m gonna think about that. Okay, back, teo. I mean, i have i have an answer a little bit. I mean, it does depend on the organization. It really is just about making agreements about what’s reasonable and what works for for the staff. I mean, in one organization that i worked in, we had a twenty four hour turnaround time agreement for internal emails. But if you needed something faster than that, you had to use another method. It was an agreement that we made as a staff that for emergencies, you will text or chat or call, you know, because those air, more immediate things, like people were not expected to be on their email, you know, within five minutes. And so you just couldn’t email about goings, and then i’m thinking, two security is that that’s an issue for people who are remote email preservation? I mean, these things well, it’s, just as we thought about security, yes, i mean, absolute security is an issue, whether your remote or not, but it certainly plays into very much what tools you select, who you’re willing tohave host your files. How you’re going to protect those files. What kind of configuration tresses you need, and so in-kind of determining what i like to call on organizations, collaboration, profile. Um, security security needs a really important part of that. Okay, 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. Dahna what’s this collaboration profile. What is that? Well, basically involves assessing your organization to help you choose and configure your tools and make these kinds of communication agreements. And so, you know, because not every organization is going to have the same needs and so questions to consider our you know, how many staff do you have? How many time zones are you working across? How many different roles are functions? Are people fulfilling? Is it just staff that your systems are going to be set up for? Or is it do you also need to include program participants are volunteers in your information systems, you know? And then there are some organizational culture. Things like janine was getting at about, you know, is email going to be the best way i would like to be on the phone or, you know, those kinds of work style questions. And then, as you noted, their security security questions, like, what kinds of information are we storing in transferring? Does it contain any personally identifiable information that may need to be protected and, you know, subject to regulate regulations like hippa or others, you know, is your organization or are your partners? And participants potentially targets of information breach attempts by political enemies. I mean, it sounds a little weird, and i don’t think that but it’s really, depending on the kind of work you’re doing exactly very real. Exactly. So that’s all all of those factors go into choosing. What are the most appropriate tools? Okay. Your communications protocol? Yes. Okay, janine, you want to take us to one of the other one of the topics you mentioned, like conferencing or file sharing or calendars? Uh, let’s talk about calendar going ok, please do i love calendars? My organization works in three different time zones right now, and, uh, we are currently using google calendars, and but i think the same principles that i’m about to talk about what applied teo, if you’re using outlook or many of the other calendar ring systems that are available. But i really can’t imagine being ableto work with other people, especially across geography, without being able tio very quickly and very effectively see when people are available and, you know, not have to like talk about negotiate meeting time. And you can also get us not only when people are available, but you can. Also, get a glance of what people are doing, and you get so much information from being able to view someone’s calendar um, sametz it’s okay, anything you want to add on a calendar, i mean, just that it’s sometimes it can be a struggle to actually get people to use an electoral elektronik counter that’s, not your organization or culture. And so that’s one of the changes that you’re really gonna have too many murders, there was a heavy side were story around that are well, yeah, i do have a story around that, actually, because when we moved over to using teo for when we moved over to having our entire organization using the calendar, it was a bit of ah, push because people are really attached to their paper calendars. There’s something about having the tactile feel, a planner that people really didn’t want to let go of and even still, you know, r executive director, she doesn’t manage her own calendar and that’s, this is kind of a system where everyone has to participate. Otherwise it doesn’t work, and we only have one exception and it’s because that staff person has an entirely other staff person. To manage a calendar for her s o it really does. That is this is somewhere it’s great. And also you need everyone’s cooperation with it for it to work. Okay, let’s, look at, uh, what about file sharing? That sounds like a pretty big, pretty big topic. I want to start off. File sharing doesn’t matter. I mean, you’ve just gone through this big file sharing change, okay, so my organization was using an internally managed file server and we’ve grown a lot over the past few years. So before really similar to what lisa had described earlier, we were one location with one person working out of their home office, and they would connect into the server via a vpn and it was okay. But as we’ve grown over the past few years, we’ve expanded into a satellite office, three different time zones, and now a third of our staff are working outside of that main office and the connection people were just not able to access their files, and it was just really, really awful sze really difficult for people. And so we we made the decision to move teo cloud file sharing it’s been a really good decision for us, especially because hyre, you know, it’s, our remote staffer, just so thrilled. It is a transition that required a lot of communication with staff and training and ongoing support. So even though our migration is done, the work is certainly not over with it. And it’s definitely that situation where it was not as easy as the vendor head or originally express there’s a lot more that went into it way have to think a lot about the learning curve. Yes, on dh training time, etcetera. Good. Well, that these the learning curve in the training are very important, but it’s also really changing people’s habits about where they keep their files. I mean, if you have a situation like that janine’s organization where you can’t access the vpn reliably so you just start storing all of your working documents on your hard drive. Then when you fixed the situation and get a centralized file repository that works, people are still in the habit of keeping things locally and getting them to remember to file documents centrally when they’re finished getting them, too. Be familiar with e centralized file structure so they can find the things they need, getting them out of the habit. I mean, i don’t know if this was happening to eugene, but when i was the operations director in this kind of situation i would get requests for from people for me to go on the server and email them. A file if they were outside the office and as you can imagine, that’s a it’s, a it’s challenging from a time management perspective for everyone to have to do that. But once people are in the habit of it, it could be hard to get them to stop. Okay. That’s. Excellent. That’s encouraging. How do we how do we get the the universal buy-in that we need? Janine? You mentioned it for the calendar ring. Essential, but obviously essential for file sharing, too. I’m thinking mostly of the structure. Like somebody some. Maybe you do this collaboratively. You come up with the literal file structure or does one person impose it and say this way? Believe this. I believe this makes the most sense. And so please comply. Oh, man. I mean that’s a really hard one. What did your tio thoughts? Well, when i initially started this conversation with people on the organization, i asked them what, in an ideal situation, what would they get out? What would they be able to do? What would be a great situation for them? And i think by starting the conversation that way, people felt like they had some say and then whatever the new solution, wass and not only that it really helped that i had buy-in fromthe leadership at my organization, there was a very clear signal to staff that this is the direction that we were going in, and people have to get on the bus, so yeah, okay, so some collaboration and some some input gathering, but in the end, somebody’s gotta decide and everybody’s gotta gotta agree pretty much. I mean, participate, even if you don’t agree. Yeah, yeah, disagree and commit is okay, but i think that i mean, what i have, what i often recommend two clients is that one person, the kind of the point person on the file migration project, whoever that is, should be someone who is really familiar with all of the organizational files, and they kind of come up with the top level structure that makes sense and is aligned with the way the organization works. But then, as you drill down deeper, you know, everyone people have tohave dominion and control over their most direct area of work files, because if you try to impose a taxonomy on people and it doesn’t work for them, it’s chaos and they will rebel, so autonomy is important, okay, at least at the the more granular level. Yes, ok, yeah, i mean, the important thing is really that there are some principles that are clear and communicate a ble to everyone. You’re never everywhere. Clients always come to me and say, we want an intuitive file directory and it’s like, well, you can’t have that, because what’s intuitive for one person is not into it for somebody else to, as long as you’re working off some clear principles that everyone can agree on. That’s what you want, four. Okay, gene, anything you want to add to the file sharing conversation. All right, now think. Well, we have child jack, one of the issues around chatting some people don’t like to log in to chat, you know? And i think that for me and the organizations that i’ve worked in the most effective uses of chat or when people are just in the habit of logging in in the morning so they have theirs, the presence, visibility indicator, you know, i’m here, i’m not here yet, i’m in a meeting, you know, and that is a really, really easy way to communicate your co workers where you are and if you’re available. But again, it’s a big habit shift for some people. I mean, i was doing in-kind part time gig at a very, very large organization with two offices and like, i mean, twenty thousand people in the whole organization and a hundred people in my kind of immediate department, and there were a few people who just never logged and it’s, like i saw this person i know she’s here, but her chad says that she is, you know, presence unknown, and so, you know, you can’t make people, unfortunately, what do you end up doing? And this could have lied beyond chat. Any of the any of the areas. We’re talking about. What you do with the people who are recalcitrant. Anybody who has a suggestion, what do you do? I mean, there’s a whole methodology of change management. I mean, it’s a whole field of study. And so i think that, like, any technology project, but particularly justin collaboration, really delving into change management and having a plan for it, which involves communication training, reinforcement oppcoll, you know, it’s it’s complicated. Okay, well, that’s, that’s an important thing to know anything more gin, anyone i’ll just echo that nothing people to change their habits is really it can be really difficult. Or, you know, a lot of times people at my organisation will log in, but they won’t update statuses, so oh, i’ll just wonder, wow, is that person unavailable all day? All day there and available? I’m not going to be interrupting them and something really important if i i am not, um but it’s, i think i will say that for the people that use it, it is great. Okay, so ah, good outcome is definitely achievable again. Yeah. I mean, i have one. I think my kind of most successful change management story is very, very small. But at an old employer, one of the things that i had to do was get people to fill. Out their online time sheets and no one wanted to do it because that’s a slog and it is, you know, they perceive it as a waste of time, and it kind of is except that i was in charge of the bookkeeping and i couldn’t allocate our totals for the month properly and closed the books until everyone in the organization and filled out their time sheets. And so reminders didn’t work. Nothing worked until, you know, and this i think this’s particular indicative of small organizations where people really have each other’s backs is i just such everyone i was like, look, you guys, you’re making my life a lot harder, there’s this crucial task that i can’t do and prevents us from getting accurate financial reports, and you’re making my life frustrating because you’re not doing this, and that was the thing that got people to do it all right, some guilt. I like to think of it more as a personal connection way a accountability to your co workers, and he was getting them to really understand why they had to do this piece of bureaucratic work that it actually had meaning in the organization it wasn’t just a piece of bureaucratic work. All right, we’re gonna leave it there. Thank you very much, ladies. Thank you. Thank you. My guests have been lisa jervis, principal consultant for information ecology and janine shimatsu specialist at forward together. Non-profit radio coverage of and tc non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen. Thanks so much for being with us attorney. State to and files faraway coming up. Sorry, i can’t do live listener love were pre recorded this week, but of course the love goes out. I just can’t identify exactly where it’s headed to by city and state or country. But the live listen i love, of course, does go out. Podcast pleasantries are over ten thousand wherever you are, whatever device. Thank you so much for being with us in the time shift and affiliate affections. Always sending affiliate affections to our stations and listeners on affiliate stations throughout the country. Very glad you’re with us little about pursuant, you know they do full service fund-raising from web only for small and very small and midsize shops up to on site campaign counsel for those other five percent who might need that fund-raising obviously constant challenge essential to you to get your work done. I routinely here on get questions about how can we bring our fundraising for the next level? How can we get from events to individual based fund-raising pursuant can help you with this stuff, you can raise more money, especially from current donors and those donors who are capable of upgrading their giving who are already in your file like somebody was giving a hundred dollars a year who could give thousand or the thousand dollar donor who could be doing ten thousand year for you, you know that they’re in there a lot of times they’re in your file, but you don’t know who they are or you’re not sure about somebody. Um, this is where pursuant comes in. They have something called prospector platform. It finds prospects for upgrade those upgrade prospects of yours that are hiding, like in plain sight. Prospector platform at pursuing dot com. I would i suggest you take a look at that. Check it out. Charity registration. I’ve been getting a lot of enquiries recently about charity registration. I was just interviewed on another podcast on this subject. Jo garics, the fund-raising authority that’s the name of his podcast that these are the requirements that you be registered in each state where you solicit donations. So if there’s a florida charity and they are sending email to georgia and maybe hosting events in south carolina, then that florida charity needs to be registered not only in florida but also in georgia on dh south carolina and this is different than incorporating enjoy in florida, where you you know, if this is again a florida based charity there incorporated in florida, this is very different in that it’s sort of parallel because it involves charities but it’s not incorporating your non-profit this is registering with state authorities to solicit donations in florida and also georgia, south carolina and wherever else you might be so sitting donations it’s a real morass because each state has its own forms and timetables and fees and definitions of what is a solicitation? That’s, that’s really? Where you start? What is a solicitation? The examples i gave, like email and u s mail those air solicitations in just about everywhere u s mail is a solicitation guaranteed every state. Ah, no state is goingto make exception for u s mail. Email is so ubiquitous and it’s ah, solicitation in so many states that you might as well just consider email a solicitation everywhere there are some states that haven’t caught up with technology, not like email is anything i can’t even i was anything new, but there are states that who’s legislatures, you know, haven’t codified whether email is a solicitation, but it isn’t so many states. I think you should just consider it also, if you’re hosting events in different states, if you are buying ad space in publications, in other states, these air, all solicitations and you need to be registered with the state authorities everywhere is that you are soliciting. Um sometimes i’m asked why this is important and you know why i bother? It is true that there aren’t that many enforcement actions enforcement is rare, but your irs form nine ninety hopefully you’re filing that each year that is signed under penalty of perjury by an officer, and it enquires about your compliance with thes state laws. So that’s, the irs enquiring about state law compliance on also your board is potentially liable. Jean takagi and i have talked about this. They are fiduciaries to your organization and if you’re not in compliance with laws, your board could board members individually could potentially be liable. So please pay attention to charity registration. It’s on my web site, you go to tony martignetti dot com. You see a tad for charity registration cause i do this work. You could do it on your own too. I have a book about it. You could check it out at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony. Take to tony’s. Take two it’s it’s ah it’s a it’s. A possessive latto plural. But it’s not tony. Take two that’s tony’s. Take two for friday thirty first of july thirtieth. Show of twenty fifteen here’s tom oberg recorded at ntcdinosaur moving into the cloud. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen it’s hosted by and ten the non-profit technology network. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center. My guest is tom wolber he’s, an independent strategic technology consultant. And his workshop topic is moving your files to the cloud. Options. Obstacles and obligations. Sounds a la menace on the obligation side. Tom oberg. Welcome. Thank you. We’ll get to talk about all three. We got plenty of time together, so maybe it’s. Not so ominous, but there’s, obviously, things that you thinking about. Lots of things are in the clouds. Why might files make sense for a non-profit, you know, for a while emails sort of in the big thing to move the cloud and that’s dahna that there’s been a lot of good options for doing that? And as people have been more comfortable with moving to the cloud and using tools that both from in their personal lives and in their work lives, um, it’s it’s started to make sense to have their files available, maur remotely in various places and to be able to get access to things beyond the walls of their their office and the tools available do that have been involving and getting better as well. So the other piece that’s made this start to happen is it for a lot of smaller organizations who may have had big file servers, those take a lot of effort to keep moving, and as your file server needs to be upgraded, our updated one option is to say, you know, we’re just not going to do that anymore and pay those costs. We’re going to move our files to the cloud and be able to access things i’m a little bit a little bit easier could also be a distributed environment. You might be have employees who are off site virtual organization and that made that maybe a stimulus. Also, it isthe yeah, in our session this morning, we had a lot of that was one of the things we talked about, why why do this? Why are people doing it? And it ran, you know, there are a lot of different reasons, but, you know, some people said, well, we have sixty locations where we’re trying to have people work and tryingto have sixty servers or one server that everybody tries to get into remotely it’s just it’s very hard. So if they khun you something like office three, sixty five or google drive or drop box or box, that could be really good option. Okay? And when we talk about some of the tools you later on, ok? Yeah, all right, because i don’t want to ask you anything that you didn’t prepare for your your workshop, but if we could talk about some of tools that will be helpful. Yeah, how do we start to make this plan? Well, is there anything more you can say? About how we shouldn’t what we should be thinking about to decide whether this makes sense for us as an organization. Yeah, we’re questions we should be asking, yeah, maybe yeah, there’s, there’s lots of questions on dh lots of that was sort of in my presentation, the whole obligations, things like how do you how do you not make your staff cry? That was that was what we were talking about because you don’t want to make him cry. That’s, that’s sort of a rule at number it’s and and doing this kind of project moving files from where people are used to getting them to someplace else can freak people out a little bit. Eso, you know, how do you do that in a good way? And so the organization first, like you’re saying, needs to figure out why why do we want to do this? What? Why does this make? Is this a good idea for our organization? And again, it could be a lot of different things, but but often it’s about doing it in a way where we can get access to the things we need to be able to do our work and meet. Our mission do it in a way where people can get at things from wherever they are and that they can have some assurance that the files they’re working with are the ones they should be working that it’s not, you know, there’s one on my my documents folder and there’s. Another one heard another one there. So what’s ah what’s our next step we are we ready to think about what tools they are be appropriate to do this after we’ve made. We’ve now made our decision that we’re it’s going to be beneficial to us. Yeah, yeah, i think if you know if the organization said okay, this is this the direction we’re going to go part of what i was talking about was, you know, it’s it’s more than just a thing to do, it’s a project and so having a plan a project plan is is is really important, and part of that is the is the tool selection, and we can we can talk about that. Some of the other things that that really need to be thought through are things like what’s, the timeline that that you’re going to use to do this kind of project. Who are the people who are going to be involved in it? Are we going to try and do it in house? Are we goingto use consultants to help out? And we’re going to have, you know, certain teams that are going to be kind of internal champions. They’re going to help help do this, which is something i recommend people doing. So you get some early buy-in from some key people and maybe keep teams or something, if, you know, if the accounting department has an accountant who thinks this is a good idea, it’s going to go a whole lot smoother than if you don’t have somebody there doing okay, so yeah. So some key key allies? Yes, indeed, indeed. Makes this kind of thing much, much easier. Okay, yeah, go ahead. So, yeah. So then we can talk about tools if you want to move to that. Some of the options. Yeah, go ahead. Let zoho you mentioned office three sixty five. Google docks. Obviously. Dr google drive drop box box box is his box of variation of drop box. It’s not. And we have to be a little careful because we’re here in austin. And what i didn’t know before i came here is that this is the home of box. So box is is a company that that has a tool that is sort of like dropbox, the differentiation i’ve heard before is that drop box kind of started as a consumer tool and box started as more of a corporate organisational in-kind of tulle and they’ve they’ve kind of met in the middle a little bit. The box offers more consumer stuff drop box now has drop box for business, but bso boxes here, there now is box one x or two or three they’re not triple x are they are not as far as i know, just one ex, okay? Just once we’re in the booth next to flux and their two exes. Well, but boxes only one act, but box is only one issue so people can find it. And yet and they’re here at the conference. And yeah, and so their their tool is something that you can you can download ah, little application that could be on your on your desk top so you can synchronise things to your desktop. But they’re also is the web interface for it. That’s very, very useful. You, khun, look at the files that air there. You, khun have some viewers where you khun view some files online and you can even beyond the web durney a portion of it. And if you have the correct application on your desk top, it’ll open up the file from the web in your desktop. And then when you do a save, it saves. It back-up down into the web. Big differences you see between dropbox and box, aside from their their culture, where they where they began and how they migrated to the center. Yeah. I think that’s one of the biggest things, one of the things i’ve seen, and we saw this in the in the session this morning is that because non-profits are who they are drop box has been free, just the plane drop box has been free and so people have gotten comfortable using it and, um, use it in organisations, whether the organization knows about it or not. And so what do you mean, how could you be using it if if you don’t know about it? Well, what i mean is that you as an individual employees may have found something like dropbox useful in getting your work done, but the the i t department, if you have one, may not know that you have it on one of the quotes that i put into the session today was that what i’ve found is that people will get their work done one way or another, and that means whether they use the tools you give them with you, with you or against you with you or against you or without you or whatever happens. And so the you know, some problems that non-profits ran into using dropbox is that it’s a personal kind of thing and staff can leave or maybe it’s a volunteer, and then maybe those files disappeared too. And so drop box now has drop box for business, where the organization can have some control. People can still use both their personal drop box and the the business files that are being shared with them. But if they leave the organization, the organization can stop access to those files, so they have some control and box has a similar thing. They just no it’s it’s been a pay service, and so i think fewer non-profits have used it in in the past, but many of them are learning they need some of this control, and that makes both of those both those products useful, and they both have non-profit discounts to i should mention that let’s move to office. Three sixty five yeah, it’s a big one and and partly it’s really big for non-profits right now because it used to be if you’re non-profit you want to kind of move to the cloud, especially with female, the player was google because that was free. You could get google apse for non-profits for free, but last year, microsoft made a version of office three sixty five free for non-profits as well, and so especially for non-profits that are using our windows based oppcoll it isn’t very attractive, offering and it’s basically a big server in the sky that you can interact with so there’s the email piece outlook works very well with it. And then there kind of two parts of the file storage piece. One is called one dr up and one drive for business, and then there’s sharepoint are sharepoint online. It’s the piece that’s, that’s, part of office three sixty five so if you have office three sixty five, you can use both of those tools, at least at this point. What microsoft says is that one drive, which has pretty much unlimited storage, is it’s kind of your new my documents area it’s for you to have your own personal files, and if you want to share them out with someone, you can do that, but by the individual file and then share point is mohr for creating an organizational structure for your documents. So you have document libraries within a sharepoint site and you, khun, you can upload files and have them available to people. In both cases. You, khun synchronize back to your desktop. Also sharepoint been around forever as a server based tool. And in the sharepoint online is the cloud version of it. And it it’s, very powerful. It can take a little bit more set up bonem to be able tio structure everything the way you want it. Do you need to be expert user too? Just to set up a share point? Um, i think office three sixty five in general has fairly easy administrative controls. But the mohr knowledge, you have the mohr functional, you can make it. So having some kind of it t advising on it, i think is good. Whether it’s, an internal person where you’ve maybe sent them to get some training, an external person, whatever, whatever it is it’s, it’s. Pretty straightforward. But there they are things here and there. And with this file piece, we talked about this a lot, and we had a lot of stories come up this morning in the session. There are some limitations of how you need to get your file. If you’re gonna move files into sharepoint, especially there’s. Some limitations you have. To watch for the migration that the whole migration piece there’s. How long are the file names and the directory structures? What kind of files? Khun move? How many can be synchronized back to your desktop? There’s someone, some, some limitations in there that you need to be aware of. Or else you can have some surprises as you move into the process. 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 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 are 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. Hyre what about the document tools in in ofthis three, sixty five word, power point, etcetera? You’re getting sort of, ah, light version of those compared to what you see on your desktop. Yes, you are. But for all of this and especially office three, sixty five, it has been evolving, and they’re putting a great deal of effort into augmenting those tools and making things a cz useful is possible. So dahna, word online, powerpoint online, excel online are very useful, and you can get basic editing done in any of those. If you want to do more things, you know, create a table contents or some of the more detailed document kinds of things. It’s. Easier to use the applications themselves, okay. What about google drive? Yeah, you know, it’s been around a long time, we also when i had people raised their hands about what tools are you using in the organization? The same hands came up for multiple things what’s happening is that all of this has been evolving a lot, and i think people are still trying to get some kind of getting a handle on how to manage files as they go to the cloud so that they’re adopting everything and seeing what works best for them. I think so. And i think it’s ah, it’s this push pull of staff again trying to get their work done and using tools that, you know, maybe they find someone who has shared something with them from another organization and drop box than they put drop box on their desktop so they can do that now they’re using that buy-in but and and so and google drive has been around for a while google docks, and so people are comfortable with it. So it’s one of those ones that that a lot of folks are using it. The quote i had from google and my slide wass for google drive. Was designed to work with google and to me that’s the if there’s a caveat. That’s, that’s the caveat is that it’s best if you want to kind of go all in with google docks and google spreadsheets and, you know, google slides and things like that? Dahna it’s, it’s a little bit easier. Two use other tools if you’re going to use straight microsoft word documents and things like that, you can still store those things in there, but, you know, it’s it’s a little easier to kind of go all in with the google stuff and then and then use those do you see us going to getting to a place where there’s there’s, google doc and there’s and there’s microsoft onda office docks, which would be in which which would be counterintuitive to the way most of computing is going? Yeah, you know, i think they’ll they’ll keep, um, trying to support each other and still trying to keep you know, their own thing so that i mean, there is some way to bring in where documents in into google thing it’s impossible to do it right, but you get the maximum benefit maximum management tools if you’re if you’re using the native? Yeah, native google doc with google drive? Yep. And and so microsoft trying to kind of push you into office three sixty five by doing things like building in access from the word application that you run on your desktop building in dahna a way to grab things from office three. Sixty five directly in there so that that that communication is as easy as possible so that we’ll try and kind of have you worked with all of those all of their tools. What about some obstacles to avoid that za part of your your your topic to yeah. Yeah. This is the ominous part. Wasn’t through with the obligations were no. I said obligations are ominous, but we just start with obstacles. Yeah, yeah, we want to keep it. And really, when i said obstacles, some of what i meant wass things to think through it’s, it’s the issues to kind of think through before you start doing a project, like talking about it. And and so we talked about, you know, sort of the file preparation and migration piece, but there’s other things to think about, too training for your staff. Is going to be, um, a big thing what’s the schedule going to be for people went, when is the change actually gonna happen? People are gonna want to know where their files are. Are they here today and over here tomorrow? And then it didn’t work, and then we’re back over here again. Or how is this? How is this all gonna work and bandwidth? There’s another one that we talked about is we’re talking about the cloud. We’re talking about the internet now where moving files back and forth from, you know, not just on our own network, but through the internet, which we have a little bit less control over, but we can try and have a cz much control as as we can get. So, um, thinking about how good is our internet connection, not just the download speed, but also the upload speed? Because now we’re pushing our changes up. Yeah, so that’s important to think through and the other thing that we end up talking to people about is so you’re moving to a cloud, maybe you’re using sales force and office three, sixty five so all of your important data is on the internet what if your dea cell line goes down? Is everybody just done for the day you sent everybody home? Or do you need to think about getting both the d s l line and a cable line and maybe a box that can kind of coordinate the two things? If one goes down, you go to the other and things like that. So trying to think about how we make sure we are online all the time starts to be a kind of ah bigger issue for folks. We haven’t talked about security buy-in thiss was a huge issue when the clouds start to become popular. I don’t see it getting as much attention now, but it’s still important mean, especially we’re talking about c r m our database? Yeah, that could be credit card numbers, dates of birth, lots of personal information. Yeah, i mean it’s, it’s, huge and it’s potentially depending on what you put there. Right? Right. And so there’s. Sort of. Ah, due diligence that needs to be done on whatever vendor you’re going to go with. Microsoft has a whole website about how it treats security in office. Three sixty five we had somebody. Bring up in the session this morning that they had gone with, i think box because it specifically talked about hippa compliance, and that was important to them. Um, you know, we kind of have to agree that the nsa is just going to look at all of it. So i guess we take that out of the picture, but it sort of depends on both your organizational culture and the kinds of data that you’re dealing with to see how important that stuff is. And i will say at the same time, it it’s we need to be thinking about it. And it’s, not a new issue. I still run into places where there’s the file server with a notebook with the password to get into the file server sitting right next to it. So, you know, it’s, it’s, new and it’s old, we’re going to get there. All right? It’s your soul. That sounds like a good place. Stop. Okay. Tom oberg is an independent strategic technology consultant. And you are with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference two thousand fifteen in austin, texas. Thanks very much for being with us. As always, my thanks to everybody and ten, the non-profit technology network, i’m already looking forward to being back there in twenty sixteen, which i believe is san jose, california. You should check out ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference next week, it’s going to be an archive show. That means i am taking the week off. I hope you’ve been enjoying your summer. I have been, and i’m going to again next week. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it at tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go pursuant full service? Fund-raising they’ll hope you find more prospects pursuant. Dot com. Our creative producers claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. The show’s social media is by susan chavez. Susan chavez. Dot com on our music is by scott stein. Duitz be with 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 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, 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 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.
