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Nonprofit Radio for September 21, 2020: Your Leadership Pipeline & True Consultant Love

My Guests:

Dennis Miller: Your Leadership Pipeline

Dennis Miller returns to encourage you to identify and develop future leaders in your nonprofit. He explains what goes into your leadership development plan. He’s president of Dennis C. Miller Associates.

 

 

Loree Lipstein & Tracy Shaw: True Consultant Love

If your leadership pipeline is lackluster, you’ll have to hire outside talent. Our 20NTC panel helps you pick the right match for a great consulting relationship. They’re Loree Lipstein and Tracy Shaw from thread strategies.

Loree Lipstein Tracy Shaw

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:33.94] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of declare veins if you inflamed me with the idea that you missed today’s show Your leadership pipeline. Dennis Miller returns to encourage you to identify and develop future leaders in your non profit.

[00:00:40.74] spk_0:
He

[00:02:08.74] spk_1:
explains what goes into your leadership development plan. He’s president of Dennis C. Miller Associates and true consultant Love. If your leadership pipeline is lackluster, you’ll have to hire outside talent. Our 20 NTC panel helps you pick the right match for a great consulting relationship. There are Laurie Lips Teen and Tracy Shaw from Thread Strategies. Antonis. Take two. A change to plan giving accelerator response erred by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo and by dot drives, raise more money changed more lives. Tony dot Emma slash dot for a free demo and a free month. I’m very pleased to welcome Dennis Miller back to the show. He is a nationally recognized expert in non profit leadership, executive search, strategic planning and board and leadership performance coaching with more than 35 years experience. Once upon a time, he was president and CEO of Somerset Medical Center and Foundation in New Jersey. Now he’s president of Dennis C. Miller Associates. He’s at Dennis c. Miller dot com. Welcome back then. It’s similar,

[00:02:10.84] spk_0:
All right. Great to be back. It feels like being back home. It’s great.

[00:02:14.60] spk_1:
Back home. Good

[00:02:16.44] spk_0:
a long time. I’ve always, you see since grammar school because distinguished myself

[00:02:20.35] spk_1:
from the that from that comic Dennis.

[00:02:24.23] spk_0:
And I just tell people I’m actually funny today. It’s so that’s right from

[00:02:27.57] spk_1:
the fraud. Yeah, he’s the fraudster. You’re the original. All right. Dennis Charles.

[00:02:32.68] spk_0:
His mother gave him my name. Put it that way.

[00:02:36.04] spk_1:
Yeah, very good. Alright, alright. So leadership are non profits. Not doing a good job bringing up talent from their ranks. What are you seeing, Dennis?

[00:03:07.04] spk_0:
What’s not necessarily that they’re not doing a good job. I just think there’s not a focus that they need tohave here. I mean, I tony, I tell a lot of people that typically today with, you know, Kobe 19 this is the time to do a number of key things. Shopping up your vision, shopping up your board, shopping up your branding flans me. But really, a lot of tension has to be paid to assess your leadership talent from within new organization. I mean, you know this quite well. I’m sure your listeners to is that the thing that makes an organization successful is not the bricks and mortar it’s of people. And we need to invest as much as our in our own people as we possibly can, because there are our future leaders. So it’s really crucial that we take a step up and invest in our leadership development.

[00:03:31.01] spk_1:
How do we distinguish between folks who have leadership potential on dhe? Those who don’t

[00:03:56.64] spk_0:
well, a couple things first and organization really should do is think about what its overall strategic goals or for an organization, and then looking at every position they have in the table of organization as any level of management, whatever one of the conferences that one needs toe have to succeed in that job, particularly if that job becomes available. What we do is that we do an assessment of each leadership person and When I say leadership, I’m not talking about the top level

[00:04:03.53] spk_1:
people. This is not only for CEO. Yeah,

[00:04:48.94] spk_0:
this is for everybody that has a title of supervisor, part time, weekend outreach coordinator. Whatever this is, the leadership of support term for us is the kind of we do an assessment of them to our farm to Alexis. And it really kind of measures core attributes. Um core attributes the things along, the lines of reasoning, ability of people contact their attitude, their sense of urgency will take charge. There’s things like that. They’re competitive. So once you assess their core traits, not court aptitudes core traits, you can then put together a development plan for those core traits and kind of move people on which I’ll happy to explain. But it’s really assessing where someone is and give me a plan of action to develop. So they become for productive and more forceful as a leader going forward.

[00:04:53.54] spk_1:
Do you feel that anybody has leadership potential if they’re if they’re brought along the right way? Or they’re just some folks that are not are not meant to be leaders.

[00:05:03.04] spk_0:
Yeah, Well, listen, you know, there are people I think you can learn to be a leader. I think that I think I learned to be a leader. I think there’s some people that certainly are born probably with certain attributes or genetics that predisposed them towards a leadership position, something sometimes. But I clearly think people can can learn to be a leader and certainly buy things in their environment or things in their life that they have to make choices on. So I think people can develop if they want to. But here’s Brian saying Everybody you have to choose and decide You wanna be a leader And I think there’s a lot of ways of helping people become leadership. But it’s a question, if you wanna, you wanna be a leader. If you wanna be a leader, you wanna be one. Yeah,

[00:05:42.56] spk_1:
all right, that’s true. A lot of folks may not aspire to that. They’re just absolutely don’t know. They don’t want to supervise other people and,

[00:05:49.84] spk_0:
well, you know. And there’s a

[00:05:52.27] spk_1:
place for them as well. Of

[00:05:55.14] spk_0:
course it you and I know that the future and even today I mean we need leadership we need. Teoh is a people business. We’re in and so we need to develop or potential. Those are assets.

[00:06:05.64] spk_1:
Well, I know you chose to be a leader because one of your books is mopping floors to CEO. Yeah, I know you’re you’re chuckling, but that’s your book title.

[00:06:53.64] spk_0:
Yeah. What is it? You know, I I’ve had a successful 35 40 year career, but I started out really difficult challenges. And I did actually my floors when I was, you know, young man and was sort of homeless and went to a very difficult time in life, and and I chose to become a leader, and I ended up becoming a, you know, CEO and had a long term career of 25 years of medical, business and corporate executive and CEO of two hospitals. And I had my own business for 16 years, so I chose to be a leader. Absolutely. But, um, you know, I think that we need to sort of, you know, uh, the issue was also about, um, confidence and developing self confidence to people that they can be leader. And I think you know, most people somewhat lack some level of self conference. Some people, as you know, have too much self confidence and probably not riel, but I think tony to a lot of people. Given the opportunity to experience that chance, I think people will grow with it. I mean, no one gets to be a major league baseball player without starting with Tebow or literally. So. I think that, um, but I just to me is really important. It’s not not something we could do tomorrow. We don’t You could do this without any, almost without any dollar investment. But if we don’t invest in our people and training our people give people a chance to grow and develop. No one stays in a job forever, and it’s really crucial, particularly in any sector. But it’s not public sector, which is really the glue that keeps our communities together through these difficult times. And this is the worst time I can in 100 years, at least for this country, for the world leadership of development. And so what is the what are the benefits? When you tell people that you’ve been selected to be part of a leadership development program, it inspires enthusiasm. The morale goes up, retention goes up. People feel a sense of future

[00:08:11.34] spk_1:
I was just gonna ask you, Do you tell folks that they’re in a leadership pipeline? Leadership will tell someone Way leadership potential in you.

[00:10:00.34] spk_0:
Yeah, I think One of the ways way. Do it. Twofold. One is to start with, just, you know, hopefully everybody has some form of performance evaluation system. So to evaluate people, how they’re performing on those, whatever they might be a those top 20% performers, whatever they have earned the chance to be in sort of. What do you want to call your own organizational, leadership, academy or institute? Whether you have 50 people working with you or 500 people working, too, you want to kind of identify those people based on their performance. Then those people have not made the grade. You could explain to him what you need to do to make the great so you could motivate them to say, Listen, you need to beam or focus on working with others. Well, not just yourself, so you can point out the thing that they need to do to get into that leadership club here. It’s a huge reward to do that, and then obviously there’s a lot of things that one can dio and the types of courses one can take online courses using your own staff as mentors. There’s a whole range of things to focus in on, but clearly there’s a lot of leadership conferences today that we need to use to successfully leader organization. But we didn’t use yesterday, so I’ll give you a couple examples you clearly today more than before, visionary thinking is crucial. Compensate. That has to have, I mean, mission support. Mission focused is crucial but visionary thinking. It’s important relationship building. It’s a simple thing, but clearly how well you can earn people’s trust. Respect your passion for the organization, Emotional intelligence is a huge issue to be able to be able to identify and grow. Used to be I Q. Now it’s like you entrepreneurial spirit, having the ability to understand that today you know most of our funding is not going to come from public sources, and most of our, uh, you know, funding, particularly with Kobe. 19. This the federal government statement cameras. We’re running out of money so don’t dependent on public funding together. But on tomorrow, Spirit Mayor convinced people to invest in your success. That’s it’s fun. You issue of collaboration wth issue of being a motivational leader of vision will be able to be successful succession planner s. So there’s a lot of conferences that people need tohave today and the skills that need to have going forward and not necessarily the skills that led people to success in the past. So today there’s new companies that needed, and we need to encourage people to develop those.

[00:10:47.67] spk_1:
All right, so you can you identify these? I mean, you’re not gonna find somebody who’s got all these competencies? I don’t think, but you’re you want toe identify people who have potential, right? I mean, maybe they they think they think broader, you know, they think market wise. So that gives them a broader a broader perspective. So that’s that’s encouraging on. Maybe they’re on top of that. They work well with others, but you’re not gonna find somebody’s got all these, you know, 68 competencies. Right? But you’re looking for you’re looking for potential in folks, right?

[00:12:29.76] spk_0:
Yeah. Nobody is perfect. Nobody has everything myself included. Clearly what you want to do is focus on where people are at today. So what are their best attributes today and give people enough because there’s thousands and thousands of people every day who are visionary thinkers in our own communities, but give people an opportunity to be exposed to it. So let him explain What? What does it mean to be emotionally intelligent? What does it mean to be able to regulate your own emotions? What does it mean to be able to identify the emotions of others, to make sure that your own emotions are causing, uh, friction within other people? So how do you respond to people’s emotions? So there’s a lot of things one can learn what can learn about governance, what can learn about flan to be what can learn AA lot of things, how to develop goals and follow through and give people an opportunity to it. But if we don’t sort of seed if we don’t seek ways of training, are currently has become better and are potential leaders become even better emerging leaders, we’re gonna be on the show. So we have to focus on as much as we can developing people.

[00:12:32.87] spk_1:
All right, we’ve identified these people, by the way you might hear some background noise. I have some work going on on my deck up above me. So in case you here’s some background sawing or pulling boards up or anything, that’s what’s going on.

[00:12:49.07] spk_0:
It

[00:13:07.64] spk_1:
z unavoidable. So all right, way to identify these people? How do we invest in them in their futures? Or do we? Is it a matter of sending them toe professional development courses? Is it giving them mentors? Is it broadening their responsibilities in the organization? How do we develop these, these folks?

[00:13:45.84] spk_0:
What’s a couple of things and your questions right on the money. So it’s a every organization. Just as you have a strategic plan and you have a business plan and operating budget plan, you should have a leadership development plan. And what does that mean? Just what you said here. So sometimes you wanna be able to, uh, creators and met the ship. So who would The organization would be a good mentor, Somebody else’s to identify your mentors. Mentors and coaches here identify potentially some their courses or topics that one can teach about sort of through a lunch and learn. Uh, there are. We are firm. We have online courses. We have an online course called How to become a high performing, non profit executive leadership team. A CEO’s guide. The organizational success So you could take this course relative very inexpensive, a tw home in your office on your mobile app. And so there’s ability to interact with that. There are certainly a books one take their certainly things on the website. You can think so, But if you wanna let people put somebody in charge of your leadership development for maybe or HR executive, maybe you’re Cielo. But anybody here? So you want to stop. Wish more of a formal leadership development program, just as you would with anything else here, just as you wouldn’t and you’ve developed. You have a development plan, a fundraising. But how do we get more donors dollars? There’s an effort put into that right. You hire someone, you have a program. We have a plan. You might bring an outside consultant. Focus in on your leadership development the same way here. I think that you can clearly think about this. If you’ve been identified as a potential method that makes you feel good. Also, to know that you’ve been recognized as someone who could be a mentor here, So this has a really, really positive feature here. So if you assess people’s talent, you do have to assess people’s talents based upon their performance and again people our farm. We have something called Alexis, which we measure people’s core attributes and things like that, but certainly, um, development program.

[00:16:02.84] spk_1:
It’s time for a break turn to communications. The world runs on relationships we know this turn to is led by former journalists so that you get help building relationships with journalists when you wanna be heard because there’s breaking news and you wanna show yourself as a thought leader in your field, those relationships are going to help you get heard because journalists are gonna take your calls because they already know you turn to specializes. In working with nonprofits, they understand the community. One of the partners was an editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy. They’re at turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to your leadership pipeline with Dennis Miller. Is this a program that’s for individuals? It’s individually tailored or it’s a It’s a leadership or professional development program that is universal for for all all the potential talent we

[00:17:24.24] spk_0:
see, I think as an organization, I think you should have overall organizational, um uh, leadership development plan, just as you would in order overall organization plans. We plan. So overall one. Now, just as you have a plan for annual giving and playing, giving and major gifts and grants things like that and then each person that was that in your employment, each person that’s part of your team should have their own individual sort of plan assessment based upon their own personal. That’s what they need to do. So example here, if they’re assessing, they find that their you know their their reasoning ability as well. They enjoy people contact, but maybe do not take charge. So now you have to find a way to help them build their self conference so they could take charge so each each other, assess each person individually at the same time having any part of the group here. That’s how it works. It’s like coaching sports team. You have a team, you know, whether the Yankees or the Mets or the Dodgers. Whatever. You have a team out there players, but each person is also coach in your position, so that’s how you do it. You

[00:17:24.48] spk_1:
mentioned mentoring could be could be valuable, say a little more about that. I feel like there’s not enough. I feel like it’s not enough attention paid

[00:17:31.90] spk_0:
Thio your your friend or family next, tony. But I think I look at myself here. I mean, telling yourself here, I asked, You know, your listeners, Has anybody ever meant that you have? You had a mentor and I’ve had a number of mentors and they’re just people toe the surrogates and supporters, people that maybe there were role model to you. So someone, you know, that’s that’s probably the best thing if there’s anything that you kind of listen come away from today is is is you know, think about the idea of mentorship just where your organization can. You have people become, you know, become a member.

[00:18:16.94] spk_1:
Let’s let’s talk. Let’s drill down because I’ve had other guests, you know, talk about the value of mentoring. But but and you’ve said you’ve had many mentors, what does it look like? Do you schedule a bi weekly or a monthly? Our together

[00:18:21.86] spk_0:
there’s

[00:18:22.22] spk_1:
there’s some banging going on. By the way, you might hear our radio to my my contractor likes, uh, music of the sixties and seventies.

[00:18:32.57] spk_0:
So outside my office to say,

[00:18:33.76] spk_1:
Okay, you got recycling. All right, well, you might hear some credence. Clearwater Revival. Um, hey, if you can hear his music, that’s the There you go here that there you go, pulling that, pulling those deck boards off. All right. So mentoring the details of mentoring. What? How does it work? Let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of a strong mentoring relationship, like in your own. In your own example,

[00:18:59.84] spk_0:
I It’s an excellent question, I think. A couple of things here. Thanks. You certainly can. And as an individual, be seeking a mentor. So try to identify someone maybe in your and your neighborhood, maybe in your organization, maybe in your church.

[00:19:17.84] spk_1:
All right.

Nonprofit Radio for April 24, 2020: 5 Questions & Working Virtually

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Heather Yandow: 5 Questions

Heather Yandow’s article is “ 5 Questions to Answer Before You Call a Consultant,” and she’ll help you avoid making a costly mistake. She’s founder of Nonprofit.ist.

 

 

 

Heather Martin & Alice Hendricks: Working Virtually

We talk through the issues encountered when managing remote staff: technological; generational; emotional; measurement; recruiting and retaining. Our panel is Heather Martin from Interfaith Family and Alice Hendricks with Jackson River. (Originally aired 11/2/18)

 

 

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

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[00:00:14.04] spk_2:
Hello and welcome

[00:02:14.31] spk_3:
to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d come down with hydrogen itis if you made me sweat with the idea that you missed today’s show. Five questions Heather Yan does article is five questions to answer before you call a consultant, and she’ll help you avoid making a costly mistake. She’s founder of non profit IST and working Virtually. We talked through the issues encountered when managing remote staff. Technological, generational, emotional measurement, recruiting and retaining. Our panel is Heather Martin from Interfaith Family and Alice Hendricks with Jackson River that originally aired November 2nd 2018. Tony Take to Our Innovators Siri’s were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As, guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non profits, Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo. It’s a pleasure to welcome have a Ando to the show. She is founder of non profit ist an online resource that helps payer nonprofits with the right consultants. She’s also a lead consultant at Third Space Studio, where she helps with Strategic Planning Board and leadership development and going from Good to great. Previously she was director of development and communications with the North Carolina Conservation Network. Her consultancy is at third space studio dot com, and non profit ist is at non profit dot i s t Welcome to the show. Had the Endo thanks

[00:02:14.64] spk_5:
so much for having me. I’m glad to be here.

[00:02:21.29] spk_3:
Thank you. It’s a pleasure. Thank you. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. So you work. You are a consultant. Um, I can I guess, that people have made mistakes in,

[00:02:31.59] spk_4:
I don’t know, maybe made mistakes by hiring. You know, that’s not that’s not what I want to say. Scratch that. Scratch the the the opening clause of that sentence. But

[00:02:42.27] spk_3:
people can make mistakes in their consultant hiring. If they’re not thinking ahead.

[00:02:50.04] spk_5:
That’s absolutely right. Make really costly mistakes. And they can waste a lot of time, their time and consultant time by not really having your questions answered before they go into it.

[00:03:01.18] spk_4:
Okay. Have you been in a situation where you didn’t you felt that the organization had not thought through enough what they really wanted, and it it wasn’t the right time to hire you.

[00:03:33.12] spk_5:
Absolutely. What? What I see are a couple of different problems that are reflected in these questions Wound that I see all the time and others might see. This, too, is, but people come without a clear understanding of how much they have to budget for some kind of engagement with a consultant. So we’re talking about a project, and that project could be anywhere from five hours of my time to 25 hours of my time to 100 hours of my time, depending on how deep we want to go. And having a sense of budget is really helpful with the front end.

[00:03:51.37] spk_4:
That’s that’s something that I ask. I do plan to giving consultant and and before I do a proposal, I have Teoh. I have to have a budget range, at least not going to be a number, but I have to have an idea. So I know that the things we just spent the past hour talking about can be achieved with the budget that the organization has in mind?

[00:04:12.04] spk_5:
Absolutely, absolutely. And if people are getting multiple proposals for this kind of work, which often happens and I encourage, it’s really helpful to be able to compare apples to apples. So you’re not just comparing on costs because that’s often not the most important variable. You’re really comparing on approach on personality fit on culture fit on all of these other variables that are going to give you a much better outcome.

[00:04:49.80] spk_4:
Yeah, okay, very wise. All right, So you’ve been on both sides, give you you’ve been in a non profit, and as a consultant, you’ve been you’ve hired non. You’ve hired consultants when you were I

[00:04:52.08] spk_5:
have higher consultant. And certainly, over the past nine years of serving as a consultant, I have had many of these conversations about getting to the proposal or the contract phase.

[00:05:10.65] spk_4:
Well, I admire you putting this these thoughts down because I’ve been a consultant even longer, and I never you know, I do

[00:05:20.84] spk_3:
these things implicitly, but to say to organizations, these are the things you should have in place, or the These are the questions you should be asking internally before you get to

[00:05:22.27] spk_4:
the start. talking to the first consultant. I think that’s I think that’s valuable and helpful. So thank you for coming on. I’m glad you’re here to explain.

[00:05:30.87] spk_3:
So the first thing you want, you don’t You don’t want some vague plan like board development or strategic plan you want you need. You want something more than that?

[00:07:35.05] spk_5:
Yeah, the first question that I want you to answer is what the challenge you want to tackle. What’s the question you want answered? What’s the sticky thing that your organization has been having trouble with over the past few years? So there’s two ways that I see. Organizations often go when they talk to consultants that are not helpful. One is what you just mentioned, which is? They come with a very big desire for a strategic plan. And when you ask why, the answer might be well, because our old one ended last year, we need to do it again, which is somewhat helpful but really doesn’t tell you what’s driving this desire to have these conversations. And I think that a lot of time, these ideas that fundraising plans, marketing plans for development plans, they’re things that non profit leaders know they can ask or they know that they’re good things have. But they don’t give you much of a sense of what’s actually driving the the need for this or what kind of behind it. One of the questions keeping you up at night about this topic. One of the things you really want to tackle to this effort. So one of being too babe, The other thing I see a lot when organizations talked to me is that they are really, really specific. So they have not only figured out what the that they want a strategic plan. But they have figured out every single activity that’s gonna happen over the next six months to make that happen. So they have designed a whole process without the aid of somebody like me who does this a lot and can really bring some of that outside expertise so sometimes are also getting a little too specific and often times they’re not really addressing the right challenge. So getting clear about that challenge can help a co design something that would really address it.

[00:07:47.63] spk_4:
Yeah, okay, so two ends of the spectrum, either too vague or too specific in terms of precise tasks they want

[00:07:53.77] spk_3:
done. And they’re just hiring you to execute what they’ve developed. Yeah, I’ve never been in

[00:07:57.30] spk_4:
that situation. I’ve had the too vague, but ah, not that not to to speak

[00:07:58.72] spk_3:
well, I work in planned giving. So it’s such a black box. Unfortunately, it should not be a I’m constantly railing against that. It should not be a black box. It need not be a

[00:08:10.16] spk_4:
black box, but so I think people are not sure what activities to do in planned giving. But if it’s

[00:08:16.74] spk_5:
I think it shows up a lot in requests for proposals, which I’m actually writing an article now about how they’re the worst, and people should think about what else to do. But often in a request for proposals, it will be very, very detailed about the all of activities they want the consultant to undertake.

[00:08:35.49] spk_3:
Well, I I guess, yeah, depending how precise it is that you made man just having employees do it, you

[00:08:42.48] spk_5:
know,

[00:08:48.19] spk_3:
you developed it internally. You may as well just have the person who helped develop it to carry it out. If you’re such experts in what the plan should be, why don’t you go ahead and do it.

[00:08:53.82] spk_5:
Well.

[00:08:54.41] spk_4:
Yeah.

[00:08:54.85] spk_5:
And you’re really not getting the staying for your buck of hiring an outside expert.

[00:08:59.47] spk_3:
Because

[00:08:59.89] spk_5:
we really do understand the process of round a lot of these conversations and how to structure them. How to really engage people, how to help you make change and make that change.

[00:09:25.58] spk_4:
We’re gonna take our first break. Other. Um, we come out of this in about 30 seconds, or so I I want to dive into ah board development a little bit. Like what? What? What kind of specifics would you want to see their and then we’ll carry on with the rest of the questions. All right, so it’s time for this

[00:09:55.79] spk_3:
break wegner-C.P.As so that your 9 90 gets filed on time so that your audit gets finished on time so that you get the advice oven experienced partner, eat each tomb, been a guest on the show, and the full firm that has a nationwide non profit practice with thousands of nine nineties and audits under their belt wegner-C.P.As dot com. Now let’s go back to five questions. Okay, Heather, um, so instead of we want board development what? What would you like to see that. At what level would you like to see the The plan fleshed out.

[00:10:49.34] spk_5:
So what I would really love is for an executive director, Uh, maybe aboard. Care to call and say, you know, we’ve done some thinking about our board. Maybe we’ve even done a little bit of an assessment of our board and we figured out we have these couple of challenges. We’re really struggling with accountability around, following through on tax or we’ve done some training on fundraising, but the board still isn’t really engaged. And then we can have a conversation from there about Well, what have you tried? What do you think behind it? What might we try together to help the board shift in these particular ways? So the important pieces are that you’ve done some reflection about what the challenge might be and what’s really behind that.

[00:11:00.28] spk_4:
It’s

[00:11:14.54] spk_5:
interesting you bring out board development because that actually links into question number two, which is, does everybody agree that this is a challenge and that there’s some need for outside help? So if we’re talking about a board, the executive director might have a particular opinion. Does the board chair share that opinion and if they don’t both see the same challenges or even see a challenge with the board. Then again, you’re not setting up the consultancy for you’re not setting up this engagement for success.

[00:11:35.40] spk_4:
So does everybody agree about the challenge? Whether this even, like, what’s the source of the trouble? Is that Is that what you mean?

[00:12:07.66] spk_5:
Absolutely. So if you really if you as an executive director feel like the board really has trouble with accountability or they don’t understand their roles and responsibilities, does the board chair who is really the leader of the board have that same assessment? Would they agree? If I show up to do a training on roles and responsibilities, how is that going to be received by the board? Is everyone on the same page, or at least the leaders on the same page about what? That challenges?

[00:12:17.94] spk_4:
Okay, I see. Yeah, yeah. Um, so that so if it’s let’s let’s continue with the example that board development, um, you you want to know? Do you want to know that the full board has, uh, I don’t have formally approved it, but at least discussed the idea that you know we need some help here is you want to go to that? You want to know about the full board or really, just like the Executive committee or what?

[00:12:39.97] spk_5:
I think it depends on board culture. I would say more people buying it is always

[00:12:45.95] spk_4:
better.

[00:12:46.73] spk_5:
So if there is a conversation among the full board about devoting two hours at our next meeting to this topic to bring in an outside expert to talk about this, that was the ideal that really sets me and any other convulsant up for success.

[00:13:12.88] spk_4:
And so I guess likewise. If there’s some kind of staff, um, I don’t know, uh, staff work that’s going to be done. Um, you’d want to know that the staff is, uh, has bought into the idea. It’s not just coming from the vice president or the CEO.

[00:13:24.71] spk_5:
Absolutely. If you want to develop a fundraising clan, is your development team brought into bought into the need to do this? Have they talked about what the challenges are? How whatever this fundraising plan is might help them move past those challenges. So it’s really the kind of idea of who are the key stakeholders and are they in agreement with the desire to have an outside expert come in? Are they in agreement about the challenge at hand?

[00:13:52.31] spk_4:
Okay, okay. Yes, the key stakeholders. Right. All right, all right. So, yeah, if you’re driving home the point that there’s gotta be gotta be conversations internally before we start talking to somebody externally, we got to know what our trouble is. And beyond that,

[00:14:01.89] spk_5:
right?

[00:14:27.72] spk_4:
And the key people need to be invested in the process to solving the problem. Okay? Absolutely. Right now, I want todo let you know that I let you. I let you suddenly go from question 1 to 2 without my without my buy in. It’s okay. I’m, uh Let’s just just, uh, tread lightly as we go forward. Okay? Um, all

[00:14:30.63] spk_3:
right. So the next one is a timing. When when do you want the project?

[00:14:41.07] spk_5:
Absolutely. So this is really important, because often time, the timing really impact when a consultant is able to help or not. So if you want a board retreat next Saturday, I may not be able to help, or even next month, someone may be booked up if you already have really important date for that project on a calendar and a consultant isn’t isn’t available. You may have to move on to another person, or you may have to shift the timeline, if that’s really the right person.

[00:15:09.84] spk_4:
So

[00:15:47.65] spk_5:
there’s one question about a specific dates on the calendar. The other question is just what’s really driving the timeline for the organization? Do you need this to be done by a certain date? Because there’s a grant deadline? There’s turnover on your board. There’s something else externally driving it. So at the front end, really thinking through Where does this fit in? In terms of our schedules can be really helpful in figuring out in that first phone call is this person is this consultant a good fit and and what might need to be shifted to make them a good

[00:16:23.74] spk_4:
you know as well. There has to be some receptivity for the consultant to push back and say, You know, that’s not a That’s not a realistic timeline for the scope of the work that we’re talking about, you know, putting aside it’s, you know, a board retreat on a weekend or at a board meeting, but you no longer term engagement like for instance, planned giving. There’s not much we can do in planned giving in six months. I don’t I don’t consent Teoh. I don’t agree. Toe. Six month engagement’s got to be at least a year. So it’s got You have to be willing to hear that what we’ve just talked about can’t be done in the timeline that you defined.

[00:16:28.98] spk_5:
I’m so glad you brought that up. I

[00:16:30.81] spk_4:
think

[00:16:31.55] spk_5:
I would

[00:16:32.52] spk_4:
say

[00:16:32.91] spk_5:
90% of the folks I talked Teoh, uh, have a over ambitious timeline

[00:16:39.86] spk_4:
on.

[00:17:27.44] spk_5:
And when we really start to dig into, uh, what are all the past but need to be accomplished, who were all the people that need be engaged? What are all the schedule that need to be managed? Often times we’re having that same conversation, and and I believe, as you probably do that particularly for these bigger processes where you’re really in terms of plan giving, building something new, doing a lot of research, having these important conversations, it just takes more time. And that’s important because it also means that it’s more likely to stick if you were having more conversations over more time. So when I do strategic planning I really like for that. Have a six or nine months time horizon that gives people enough time to really think through all the implications of that he changes were making gives the board and the staff opportunities to engage with each other in different ways. So, yes, pushing back on the timeline is really important to

[00:18:13.51] spk_4:
the strategic planning, I would think, uh, I mean, that’s, uh so I’ve never I don’t I don’t do that kind of consulting at all, but, um, yeah, I mean, there’s their interviews and have to take place and coordinate with people’s schedules. You know which board members just started a new business. So she’s gonna be in Costa Rica for eight weeks, you know? Uh, yeah, that’s that’s a particularly strategic planning. And I would think that’s a particularly long time frame. And then and you have to Ah, you have to be willing toe recognize that it may not be finished, even in the time that we have to find.

[00:18:20.24] spk_5:
Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:23.64] spk_4:
All right. All right. Um, so before we rush through Teoh points number four and five, uh, put now I’m putting on the spot about a bit tell Tell us a story. Um, something that, uh, you know,

[00:18:35.13] spk_3:
maybe maybe when the initial conversation took place, they hadn’t thought through it enough, and you advised them that they do some internal thinking and then you did command and you were genius, and they paid you

[00:18:56.61] spk_4:
double what? The contract amount, You know, anything like that where you know, the internal work was was made a big difference. You could tell.

[00:19:02.04] spk_5:
Yeah, I wish I had that. For where they paid me double. I

[00:19:16.69] spk_4:
don’t. You know, you haven’t been consulting long enough. I have a dozen of those. Oh, man, I have a dozen of those, but I’ve been consulting since 2003. 17 years. 17 years. You’ll get there, you’ll get there about it.

[00:19:34.04] spk_5:
I What I have is more of the lesson learned in failure of the cautionary tale, particularly early on in my consulting career, Um, kind of blindly believing one person’s viewpoint of the state of an organization and not truth checking that

[00:19:42.37] spk_4:
with

[00:19:43.04] spk_5:
other key stakeholders.

[00:19:44.75] spk_4:
What happened?

[00:20:45.44] spk_5:
And I was a new executive director, called for some work with their board. Um, the board was having some big problems with getting work done. Committees weren’t really functioning very well. They weren’t doing their fundraising. Very as I look back things that a lot of organizations are dealing with, I often hear some of some similar complaints. And so we talked about doing 1/2 day board retreat where we developed some action plans on how to get things back on track, and I discovered upon getting into the border treat. But the board did not see these as problems on, and that if I had done some more conversation or even some assessment survey work with the board, I would have discovered that they had a very different viewpoint of what the challenges were. And they were in some, some level of conflict with the executive director about whose work was this, how they wanted to be encouraged and Stewart as volunteers of the organization. And so it was a real lesson for me of that. That question Number two has the board chair in the executive director. Have they talked about that? There they in agreement. Does everyone see this challenge from the same viewpoint

[00:21:05.49] spk_4:
that sounds like, uh, may have become Ah, hopefully not tense, but at least awkward. While you were in front of the board.

[00:21:13.89] spk_5:
It was definitely awkward. It was definitely awkward. We recovered and they did some good work. Um, but

[00:21:20.98] spk_4:
it’s

[00:21:25.12] spk_5:
good. Waas. I learned definitely that I needed to have a more comprehensive understanding of organizations before I do that kind of work.

[00:21:30.20] spk_4:
Yes, not one person’s perception. All right. Was the executive director in the room while this was unfolding?

[00:21:37.44] spk_5:
She waas

[00:21:38.56] spk_3:
way

[00:21:39.15] spk_5:
had some good conversations afterwards. It wasn’t It wasn’t terrible, but it really did draw more of a bright line of this is what you thought was going on. And this is what the board thinks is going on

[00:21:51.58] spk_4:
and their difference. And we

[00:21:56.16] spk_5:
need to talk about why and how we can deal with those.

[00:21:58.01] spk_4:
Okay, good that it was early on in your career. Not This was just not last week, was it?

[00:22:02.64] spk_5:
But I was not last week.

[00:22:05.46] spk_4:
Okay, So you’re going uphill. That’s good. That’s good, right? Uh, right. OK, Your next one is around money.

[00:22:53.86] spk_5:
Yes. So we already talked about this a little bit that it is so important on the front end to have an understanding of what your budget is for any work not only for other reasons we already discussed, but also because it really signals to a consultant and signal to your organization that you’re serious about addressing the challenge. Uh, so if you have money built into the budget for if you go back to the board and have them approved a revised budget with a little bit more funding for some kind of special project throughout the year, it also signals to everyone that this is a serious issue and we’re going to devote resources to it. Plus super useful for us consultants to know what we’re dealing with And if it’s even possible, As you said,

[00:23:12.24] spk_4:
Yeah, yeah, And and, uh, you know your point earlier. I want toe reemphasize. If you’re getting getting proposals that run the spectrum of costs, then you’re not really making fair comparisons?

[00:23:25.02] spk_5:
Absolutely, Absolutely. You I definitely have seen organizations to particularly for these, uh, catch all terms like strategic plan will get a $5000 proposal and a $50,000 proposal, and they’re just not comparable.

[00:24:03.22] spk_4:
And then you end up wondering Well, okay, way sounds. Let’s say we could spend the 50,000 but what would the over the 5000 person have done if we told them that our budget was 50,000 cause we like what they’re doing for five, but it’s not nearly as comprehensive. Obviously, G, what would they have done for 15? And then you got to go back to them and, you know Oh, our way. We can’t spend 25. And so neither one is quite right. You know, that’s a big botch. That’s that’s a big time. Waste time suck. All right, all right. Be up front.

[00:24:08.60] spk_3:
And there is a responsibility on consultants to I think Teoh toe Ask if if money hasn’t come up, you gotta ask What? What are we looking at? What kind of budget do you have?

[00:24:40.70] spk_5:
Absolutely having that money conversation. And I tend to do it even earlier in the conversation now because what I find is that we can daydream about all of the wonderful things we could do together. And then when they say and we have $10,000 I have to sometimes really some of those things back in or I have to have. They have to make hard choices about all of the potential beautiful options I put out on the table. So I’m even now early in the conversation, asking trick so that we can really right size. Or I can present options in a way that helps people understand what’s possible.

[00:25:00.45] spk_4:
Okay, Okay. Uh, let’s go to your last question. What do you got? You insurance? It’s

[00:25:57.32] spk_5:
the last question, but I think it might be the most important one. And that’s how much organizational time and energy do you have to address this challenge. So what’s the bandwidth for this piece of work? Um, a lot of times you may see this. Two organizations think Well, I have a problem. So we’re just gonna throw money at it. We’re gonna hire consultants and they’re gonna hear our woes and go off and fix it and come back and present us with perfect plan to solve all of our problems. Um, that’s not realistic. Uh, I don’t believe that’s how consultants who want to really make lasting change in organisations often operates. So we always need organizational help. We need board time. We need staff time. We need If we’re in the case of fundraising, we need some reports from your database. We might need to look at, um, sit down with you and really go over your last strategic plan and think about what worked and didn’t and why? But we’re definitely gonna need the executive director’s Dan with and then the other key stakeholders.

[00:26:18.04] spk_4:
Oh, getting

[00:26:18.89] spk_5:
clear. Yeah,

[00:26:20.11] spk_4:
go ahead. Now you’re finished, you finish. I’ll remember mine.

[00:26:23.62] spk_5:
Those getting clear about do you have the bandwidth? And if you are trying to do a huge capital campaign and move the office and you’ve got transition of a key staff person or you’re hiring a whole set of people because we’re ramping up for the election if there are other organizational priorities going on sometimes I’ll say If I it seems like this isn’t the right time to tackle up a big project that you really don’t have the band with, you got some other competing priorities?

[00:27:25.14] spk_4:
Uh huh. That often gets in the way of the final step. Engagement? Uh, because other things are coming up. There’s a database conversion. There’s a gala, um, et cetera. It’s valuable to to talk about. I think, at the at the granular level, how much time this is going to take a least. At least in my work. Um, you know, I need a staff person, and I’ll need maybe 4 to 5 hours a month of their time or something. You know something along those lines so that they know what they can plan around, You know, everything you just said. Just getting a little more granular with it.

[00:27:34.77] spk_5:
Yeah, I will. Often as we’re talking through, really think about what’s the board time and attention we might need?

[00:27:40.33] spk_4:
What’s the

[00:27:50.34] spk_5:
halftime in attention we might need, um and really thinking about how does that fit in with what you already have going on over the course of the year? Can we find an hour of this board meeting and three hours is aboard retreat to do this work? Or is it is your plate already full for this year? That might be OK.

[00:28:01.28] spk_4:
Okay, um, final thought Heather before, before we wrap up, Just got about a minute left.

[00:28:08.34] spk_5:
So the final about is all of these points to being really intentional about the conversations you have internally before you pick up the phone and call a consultant really thinking through what’s our challenge? How much how many resources we have to devote to this. With our time as we convert to this, that’s gonna be you’re gonna get much better proposal from consultants. And in the end, a better engagement and a better product.

[00:28:35.08] spk_4:
Have a endo. We’re gonna leave it there. Thank you very much.

[00:28:38.32] spk_5:
Thanks for having

[00:28:39.35] spk_4:
my pleasure, Heather. She’s founder of non profit dot I s t non profit ist and her consulting is at third

[00:30:11.64] spk_3:
space studio dot com. We need to take a break. Cougar Mountain software, Their accounting product Denali is built for non profits from the ground up so that you get an application that supports the way you work that has the features you need and the exemplary support that understands how you work. They have a free 60 day trial on the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant non Tin. Now it’s time for tony Steak too. Our innovators Siri’s It just finished last week and I curated the eight Innovators into one post. We started way back in January with Edgar Villanueva that was de colonising wealth and Stephen Myers with personalized philanthropy. And it was back then in those dark days of January that I had to assure you that live innovators were coming and they did come. Um, we started off with Heather Macleod. Grant, that was social change is system change, and the innovators have been live ever since. Her Peter Shankman, Sherry, Kwame Taylor, Peter Heller, Jamie Bursts and Crisfield. They make up our innovators. Siri’s, um, you’ll find them curated, catalogued and captured with a video at tony-martignetti dot com. And that is tony. Take two. Now, here is the pre recorded working Virtually

[00:30:45.45] spk_6:
welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 18. 90. See the non profit Technology Conference 2018. We’re coming to you from the convention center in New Orleans. Second interview of the second day of our coverage. All our NTC interviews are sponsored by Network for Good, easy to use donor management and fundraising software for non profits. My guests right now are Heather Martin, CEO of Inter Paid family, and Alice Hendricks, CEO of Jackson River. Whether Alice welcome.

[00:30:46.64] spk_0:
Thank you. Welcome

[00:30:47.40] spk_6:
to non profit radio. What have you

[00:30:49.06] spk_7:
needed to be here?

[00:30:53.47] spk_6:
How’s the conference going for you, ladies? Great. Have you done? Yeah. OK, great. Excellent. Good superlative. Have you done your session yet?

[00:30:57.01] spk_0:
We did. We were on yesterday

[00:30:58.23] spk_6:
morning. Okay, so it’s all relaxing now.

[00:31:00.71] spk_7:
Now it’s partying

[00:31:17.03] spk_6:
drinks last night. Okay? All right. Your workshop topic is working. Virtual attracting and managing the best talent. I’m sure we have stats on how many org’s nonprofits have virtual employees, or at least what the trends are. It’s obviously growing growing wouldn’t be here.

[00:31:25.17] spk_0:
And not only in the nonprofit world in the for profit world as well. Um, especially in tech.

[00:31:30.24] spk_6:
Yeah. Okay,

[00:31:31.35] spk_7:
absolutely. It’s becoming it because of the technology that can a enable easily to work from home your chat technologies, videoconferencing. It’s become a thing and everyone is doing it now in exploring whether it works for their organizations a lot.

[00:32:10.25] spk_6:
Let me dive into the word everyone not to not to quibble with you at all. But I was thinking generationally, Are there 50 and 60 some things that are comfortable working, being virtual not well, maybe we’ll get to whether they’re comfortable having virtual employees. They will get to that. My voice was cracked like I’m 14. Get to that. But how about being virtual employees themselves? Are they comfortable? I’m over 50. So I include myself in that. Are we comfortable doing that or,

[00:32:37.59] spk_0:
you know, I think it actually depends on the organization, and it’s really dependent on the organization making the employee comfortable. And so I’m not sure I don’t know if you have any stats, but I don’t know. From an age perspective, there’s a very good question about an older generation being comfortable having virtual employees under them and managing them. However, as being the virtual employees, I think it’s all about how the organisation sets it up.

[00:32:48.94] spk_6:
Okay, so that there’s promise then for those 15. Absolutely. Let’s talk about it, since since we’re skirting around it, how about comfort or discomfort with having employees being virtual when you’re over 50?

[00:33:28.65] spk_0:
So I again, I I think that there might be an age discrepancy in the comfort. I also think it’s just personality, and I’m finding that when I talked to a lot of people who are looking to work virtual and they’re asking me, what can I do to go to my manager, my supervisor and quote unquote sell them on me, working virtually My answer to them is find out what the resistance is there is. Part of the resistance is we’ve always done it this way. I need to see my employees to know that they’re working. And how do you get around that some of the key things that we talked about in our session are setting very clear goals and making sure that those goals are being met.

[00:33:39.02] spk_6:
Let’s go to our talk about the gold goal setting.

[00:33:53.83] spk_7:
Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s not that much difference in terms of goal setting in terms of accountability for delivery, Bols, that you’re supposed to be doing so used that the real issue is communication, making sure you have a structure where there’s frequent communication and proof that you’re doing the delivery herbal. So you’re measured not on a punch clock style of. I get to work at nine and I leave at five, and therefore I must have worked during that eight hour period. You’re measured based on what is the work you were set out to do, And did you actually do that work in the time period? I said I would do it. So if you’re a project manager or working on a program area, you work with your you work with your supervisor on here, the things that I’m going to get done at a particular time, and if that’s not done, that’s, Ah that that could be a concern. That’s a problem with that view problem in a non workplace, too, but rather than time, it’s mostly based on work product.

[00:34:32.80] spk_6:
Okay, okay, so that should apply, Even if you don’t have any virtual, I

[00:34:36.21] spk_0:
think one of the things we’ve found is that working virtually is this or managing virtually is the same is managing in an office. But you just have to be much more intentional about what you’re doing. Much more intentional about your communication, understanding that you’re not gonna have that water cooler conversation, that someone’s not going over here something and understand where you are in a project and be ready to communicate with those people who are not physically in the office with the management and the psychology of the management is very similar.

[00:35:19.45] spk_6:
Very valuable to know on dhe make explicit. Um, how about attracting people, Teoh a virtual or attracting the right talent so that we’re comfortable that they’re gonna work in this work environment? What you thought

[00:36:07.43] spk_7:
Well, there’s two thoughts on that that I have one is What What is that? Your talent pool is the entire country or world should you see fit? And there are wonderfully talented people in places that aren’t in the city or town in which your organization is located, and it gives you this ability to recruit from a wide place. And you can also hire incredibly talented people from who have a wonderful lifestyle in a less cost of In my organization, we have people who live in a lower cost of living state than Washington, D. C. Where we’re based, and that allows me to provide a living wage and for my employees in that, um, but the other thing is just you. When you’re recruiting, you have to be very mindful of the interview process. And I think one of the things we talked about in our session was helping people figure out who these folks, how well they’ll respond to working virtually. How

[00:36:21.83] spk_6:
do you do that?

[00:36:25.92] spk_0:
Yeah, so some of the things that we recommend some of things that we recommend is number one. We use technology as a tool to enhance communication in a virtual environment, so sometimes you’re using video conferencing just for a regular meeting and you’re talking through Instant Messenger, and there’s other ways you’re using technology. So in the interview process, I always recommend that people use the technology that you’re going to require those employees to be using during their job if they can’t do an interview on Skype or zoom or appear in, and it’s very uncomfortable. It’s not to say that that might not be a good employee for you, but you have to be aware that there might need to be some training or development on that tool for them. And no going into that is important when you’re hiring that person.

[00:37:17.43] spk_6:
And if you see generally a discomfort with technology, that’s a pretty big red flag

[00:37:33.48] spk_0:
or a red flag that you might need to overcome or that person is not right for the position. And then the other question is some positions just don’t lend themselves to working virtually, and you have to be aware of that when you’re hiring also well. One of the the easiest ones that we look at is if your office manager and you’re managing the physical office days, it’s really difficult to be virtual when you need to notice that there’s a crack in the sailing where the vendor needs toe, you know, deliver something and be their

[00:37:47.97] spk_6:
way. Don’t have a tool for measuring the coffee level.

[00:37:54.40] spk_0:
Zack. Remotely There’s an app for that. You can probably

[00:38:19.72] spk_3:
time for our last break turn to communications. They’re former journalists so that you get help building relationships with journalists so that your call gets answered when there’s news you need to be on top of so that you stay relevant in your community. They are at turn hyphen two dot ceo. We’ve got but loads more time for working virtually with Heather Martin and Alice Hendrix or

[00:38:25.98] spk_6:
any others that stand out to you.

[00:38:38.00] spk_0:
I think it depends on the industry and what the job you’re doing. If you’re someone who does intake or you have to be there to welcome people into the office, you need someone physically there. There may be hybrids where sometimes people could work in the office, and sometimes people could work from home. And I think thinking this through before you move to a virtual environment or virtual job for that specific role is key. You can’t just say OK, tomorrow we’re just gonna go

[00:38:55.45] spk_6:
virtual Alice. How do you How do you create this environment That’s gonna be hospitable toe virtual. I

[00:39:00.49] spk_7:
mean, it’s all about culture. You have to create a culture where everyone is communicating well with each other, where people know what the expectation is on response times of communication.

[00:39:10.16] spk_6:
He’s gotta start at the top.

[00:39:11.37] spk_7:
It has to start

[00:39:14.72] spk_6:
a willingness to accommodate virtual employees. Okay, so it starts there. And then how does that out of the CEO trickling down?

[00:39:21.43] spk_7:
You adhere to it. So rather than walking from my office into someone else’s office and telling them what I think they should know that maybe two other people who aren’t physically there also need to know. I will do that on a slack channel, for example. So I’ll use an instant messenger chat program, and I’ll put them all on the channel and talk to them all together at once.

[00:39:39.10] spk_6:
You go through with a bar, or

[00:39:40.29] spk_7:
even if that’s the situation, because it requires amount of discipline because you don’t want to leave people out. The interstitial conversation that happens at the water cooler can also be done virtually, and that’s pretty important, too.

[00:39:58.41] spk_6:
Okay, Excellent. Excellent. All right, we’re gonna get the tools you mentioned. Slack Aslak Channel. Is that that a tool? Okay, okay. Chat. It’s a simple chance.

[00:39:59.54] spk_7:
Chance chance software. Yeah,

[00:40:01.53] spk_6:
you’re over my head, but I’m trainable. I could be a virtual employee trust

[00:40:05.65] spk_7:
way. Remind us in technology challenges there, but way remedial. You got the radio?

[00:40:16.81] spk_6:
Yeah, I’m very good at that. I mean, I got knobs and everything from buttons and old. I don’t know what they do. Um, okay, What else? Anything else about creating the environment making inhospitable.

[00:40:21.71] spk_0:
I think some of the things that some of the other things are making sure that your remote employees have the tools, whether it’s the technology or even a monitor to go along with that laptop that you’ve given them because some some people go into a new job, they’re given a laptop, they say work from home. And it’s not as easy as just. Is your home office conducive? And being able to help them think through what are the things that they need to set up in a virtual environment to make them successful and effective at what they’re doing? We talk about a little bit about security and knowing what the security measures are. You can’t go into a coffee shop and work from your computer. Number one. Are you on the Y? Fire? You on the public? WiFi? Are you on a virtual private network? Are you using your hot spot? You’ve to go the bathroom and your computer sitting in Starbucks. Do you leave it there and ask the person next to tow? Watch your computer while you go to I mean, we set policies around these things, especially in organizations that have a lot of regulations on data and accessibility for their information. These are things you have to think about when you’re creating a virtual environment.

[00:41:22.50] spk_6:
OK? It could be hip. Maybe. What’s the credit card? P C M

[00:41:26.22] spk_7:
p c I

[00:41:28.93] spk_6:
c. I Okay, what do you do when you’re at Starbucks alone? You’re on. You’re on a VPN virtual private network. But you have to go the bathroom. You gotta close up your

[00:41:47.08] spk_7:
laptop. You use the diaper changing table in and you pull it down in the restroom and put your laptop on that. Take care of your business, OK? This is very

[00:41:47.64] spk_6:
all right, though. I love the nitty gritty. Listen,

[00:41:49.82] spk_7:
I mean, we’re all about real life here. Way need

[00:41:55.79] spk_6:
to detail. You need clear policies around

[00:41:56.47] spk_7:
policies that people sign. And everyone is very well aware of what the security policies are.

[00:42:09.48] spk_6:
Protection, use of technology. You said the company’s versus your pride. Your personal technology. Home versus away from home. Okay, All right. Help me out here. Getting else what else belongs. Just ask you what else belongs in our policy?

[00:42:49.40] spk_0:
Well, so there were talking about there’s communication policies. How? I mean, one of the things that we found when we first started having more virtual employees. We started as an in office. Everyone was in the office. And as we grew into different communities, we had employees in different cities and states than our headquarters were located in. And things like when I send an email, I just need you to acknowledge that the email was sent. If you’re in the office and I send you an email and you haven’t responded, I could walk into your office and say, Hey, you get my email. Even if you’re not ready to respond to it, I know you’ve gotten it. And by five oclock that day, I’ll get an answer when someone’s virtual and you send an email, you have no idea if it got lost. Did it go into there Spam and you have to get some kind of communication

[00:42:57.78] spk_6:
with water. Quick. Got it.

[00:42:58.71] spk_0:
So we said a communication policy that says If I asked you something or requested something, you send an email back saying I got it and I’ll get back to you by Wednesday period. The end. It’s all set. And so that that you need to be very much more aware of those types of things and other community way have communication policies that go along with that.

[00:43:19.18] spk_6:
Okay, Alice, you wanna add Teoh or policy statement? I

[00:43:30.17] spk_7:
mean, the security, I think, is the most important. You know, the email security, the hacking potentials. You know what happens also, when someone is let go the lockout procedures, they have access to all of your systems. And they’re, you know, in North Dakota, somewhere at a coffee shop, you have to shut down all of their access to things. So all of that needs to be planned at the I t level in the company. What are you going to do? And how are you handling staff with remote devices?

[00:43:48.36] spk_6:
Can we do this if we don’t have a dedicated T staff person?

[00:43:52.26] spk_0:
We don’t have a dedicated Yes, it is.

[00:43:53.19] spk_6:
So the family says the answer is yes. Okay, because our were small and midsize non profits in this audience of listeners. So

[00:43:59.85] spk_0:
you onboard someone with technology? When they leave, you do the same thing. Onley with a virtual person. You don’t physically have them there. And so you have to do the same thing you would do if someone was in the office. But make sure you couldn’t do it while they’re not physically there. How did they get your computer back to you? Do they FedEx it to you? Are you going to go pick it up somewhere if they’re not there? And so just those types of things need to be thought

[00:44:42.20] spk_6:
through. Okay. Excellent. I love the policy statement details, because this is the stuff you have to think through. And then Alice, to your point, it has to be activated. Implemented on from the top. You can’t just have a policy and ignore it. You know, if it’s the CEO. It’s a sea level person whose, whose distant they to have to say, I got your email and I’ll get back to you by Wednesday.

[00:44:49.42] spk_7:
Everybody has to play by the same rules. There shouldn’t be exceptions or any accommodations for anything else. Yeah,

[00:44:54.62] spk_6:
okay, Um, how about let’s talk about some of the needs that your remote staff has been talking about, like managing the office? What special needs to the people who we only see a couple of times a year have?

[00:45:07.27] spk_7:
That’s a great question. I think they

[00:45:10.10] spk_6:
it took that long.

[00:45:53.38] spk_7:
They need community. They need a partner. They need a buddy. They need to know that they’re not all alone. I’m so frequent meetings daily. Stand up calls, Um, and Heather’s organization. They stand up. Call it Well, it’s It’s a phrase for on a daily time when you just spend 15 minutes sort of role going around. The company’s saying, Who’s doing what? That day or a day or a team? If you’re working on a project together, you know everyone’s together on either a video chat or a conference call, or it could even be during on a slack channel or a Skype Group or a Google hangouts or any type of technology that people can come together for a period of time. The more frequent that happens, the more connected they feel. And there is an issue of feeling lonely. It’s not that you’re just going off on your back room and typing all day long on your own. You need to be part of a community and part of a team. And the technology helps enable that and a Heather’s organization. There’s you do. What is it, a buddy?

[00:47:02.84] spk_0:
So anyone who is new, who comes on board, there’s a couple things we do. One is no matter what level you’re at. You come to Boston for a couple days toe on board. You actually see physical people. That’s probably essential. It’s really it was one of like he learnings. When I started working virtually is to know that there’s a physical person in a physical space, or just seeing meeting someone face to face gives you much more of a connection to them immediately. The other thing we do is when we hire people, we kind of give them. We give them Ah ah, a partner. So we hire a new associate director in L. A. And we put them with the associate director in Atlanta. This is not a mentor. This is not a supervisor. This is someone you can ask the dumb questions too. Like, how do I get my expenses paid? Or I’m sure they told me this during orientation, but I don’t know what to do about X, y and Z. And just having that person that you know you can go to is critical. Especially when you’re by yourself in an office or in your home. And you’re trying to go up the learning curve of starting a new job.

[00:47:11.86] spk_6:
Okay. All right. What else? Uh, anything else to be empathetic to our remote employees

[00:47:20.49] spk_0:
again? This is a typical management. I would say this you should be doing this any time is just everyone’s intent is good. Assume that is good. And there’s a good intent all all the time.

[00:47:25.68] spk_6:
That could be that That that’s gonna have implications for chatting

[00:47:30.88] spk_0:
any

[00:47:31.25] spk_6:
female. No, you can’t. You’ll never hear the well, Not never, but most of the communications. You’re not gonna hear the inflection in the person

[00:47:38.19] spk_0:
you don’t see the Sometimes you don’t see the physical. You don’t see the physical, you don’t get the inflection. And so, before you jump into anything someone sent. And I get this all the time and sends me an email and says I need blank Well, that could be taken in so many different ways. Are you demanding something from me? Did ice not get you something? There’s so much in just those three words. And so my first thing is to okay, they have good intentions. Let me follow up. You need blank by when? What is this foot? Get more information. They’re not. Now. They could be like You haven’t done something. I need it now. And recovery screaming. It could be screaming at you, but the default is not do that. And what we do actually is we have everyone created communications charter that says how they like to be interacted with. And so I understand if you are one of these people who sends very short emails, I also have the flip side where someone sends me seven paragraph e mails to describe one thing. And so if I understand how you interact, I could read that email with that understanding not to immediately assume that you’re yelling at me in the email.

[00:48:50.38] spk_6:
Valuable. Um, anything else? Anything else to be supportive again, Empathetic to the remote employees we covered it, recovered it. But I

[00:48:51.72] spk_7:
want

[00:48:51.84] spk_6:
to make sure we’re

[00:48:52.29] spk_7:
the only other thing I can think of is definitely getting together at least once a year with the whole team culture building.

[00:49:31.07] spk_0:
It’s tough. It’s tough in a non profit environment where you’ve got a very tight budget. But we have prioritised an all in person meeting in Boston. So we’ve got staff in California, in Chicago, in Atlanta and Philadelphia. We make sure that we try in our budgeting process to bring everyone to Boston for two days during the summer, not only for good brainstorming and and thinking and strategy conversations, but also so they can connect with each other and have that community and build that in person conversation and feel comfortable with each

[00:49:32.86] spk_6:
other. And you feel like once a year is sufficient.

[00:49:35.34] spk_0:
You know, if I had the budget to do it more, I worked a

[00:49:38.09] spk_6:
little longer, but

[00:49:43.42] spk_0:
all of that, yes, and so you have to take it for one of the the tools that we talk about is the airplane. I mean, yes, it’s expensive, but it’s a really helpful tool to really get past some of the boundaries that are put up when you don’t actually physically meet in person.

[00:49:55.76] spk_6:
Alice, do you have virtual employees? Also Jackson River

[00:49:58.50] spk_7:
30 30 Working 30. Promoting entire organization is virtual

[00:50:04.94] spk_6:
Oh my God! OK, where’s the Is there a physical office?

[00:50:12.07] spk_7:
There is a physical office with three people in Washington, D. C. But so we all behave as if we’re virtual. And there are many days that I don’t go into the office. So in its you know, it saves a lot of money and transportation costs. It stays dry cleaning bills for everyone. It saves child care expenses that you know it’s a very great way to have a lifestyle, because you you have that flexibility. There’s also downsides to it. There are days that I wake up in the morning at 6 a.m. and check email, and all of a sudden it’s too, and I haven’t eaten breakfast yet, and then I’m until six at night. So you know it’s a It’s the same type of work life integration needs toe happen in a virtual environment as well as a physical office space. You know, you need to know how to take a break.

[00:50:58.95] spk_6:
You mentioned saving childcare expenses. So? So the the remote employees. It needs to be understood that the remote employees may not be immediately accessible, right for a quick for last minute way. Gotta talk right now,

[00:51:03.52] spk_7:
So I think it’s about

[00:51:04.34] spk_6:
have something going on that is gonna hold him up for 10 or 15

[00:51:31.76] spk_7:
way. Try and make sure that people have adequate coverage to do their job during the day, the hours that they need to work. So we have a lot of employees that are at 30 hours a week because they want to spend more time with their families. Um, older Children can be met at the bus stop and take care of themselves for a few hours in the afternoon. But the expectations of performance air still there, You know, we’re pretty high stress. High standards of that. You know, we don’t want you to be distracted from your work. How do you

[00:51:35.21] spk_6:
manage? The West Coast versus East Coast is the West Coast. People have to do the West Coast. People have to start at 6 a.m. Local time.

[00:51:39.53] spk_7:
I think a lot of people do different policies on that. Our policy is that you work for the day that work the business day in the time zone in which you live. So it’s sometimes hard if we’re dealing with Europe and the West Coast at the same time, because the time zones don’t overlap as well.

[00:51:53.17] spk_6:
Everybody’s in Europe.

[00:52:04.21] spk_7:
We don’t have employees in your village of clients in Europe, so it’s Ah, it’s a situation where we have to manage that. But there are organizations that have West Coast people working East Coast hours way don’t have

[00:52:06.85] spk_0:
a as explicit policy that you work those hours. But we asked people how early on the West Coast, how early would you be willing to have a meeting so we will not set meetings with some people? Some people are early morning people, and they would rather work from 7 to 3 rather than 9 to 5, and so we’ll work with your schedule individually. And so I said, there are some meetings I will have on the West Coast is seven in the morning, but that’s due to that person willing to do that.

[00:52:40.83] spk_6:
We have a few minutes left. Still, let’s talk about some of the tech tools I was gonna ask you about. Slack. What dot com How do we find it or what they do for us?

[00:52:42.95] spk_7:
Black dot com It’s how you find it. You know, it’s it’s equivalent to Skype. Or there’s Google chat any type of chat software where everyone can log into. And then there’s you can make groups in them, so the term for a group in Slack is called a channel. And in our organization, we have a channel for one of the channels is named lunch. And if you’re gonna be away for 20 minutes or going to lunch, we just take we just like everyone who’s in the company on that channel and say, Hey, stepping away for a bit, I’ll be back in half an hour. So we are all know it’s almost a ZX, though you would see me walk out the door, you know. And instead of walking out the door, I’m just telling that channel what’s happening. There’s channels reach project. Also, Slack is a good ones.

[00:53:22.33] spk_6:
Black has already a verb. It’s like someone

[00:53:31.93] spk_7:
just like someone. It’s a verbal. You Skype, someone you trust someone. Do you remember a well instant messenger that that was a one matter, that you could use that?

[00:53:38.86] spk_6:
Well, I was. But, um OK, so slack for, Ah, for chatting. A quick, quick chat about document sharing is simple. Google docks or something better.

[00:53:44.99] spk_7:
It’s a simple Google. Microsoft has a great

[00:54:16.27] spk_0:
product. Microsoft’s one Dr SharePoint Microsoft Suite has has a document sharing software. Ah, cloud based saving system. Um, Skype is now escape for businesses and integrated with it. And so we’re using that in the office. And then there’s There’s a ton of independent ones out there, and it’s whether it’s video conferencing or it’s document sharing or its chatting. There’s a ton out there, and I think it could be overwhelming. And for us, it was evaluating what was best for our organization and what our upper management was able to use. We talked about this before, is modeling the behavior you want from your staff, and so getting upper management on board was key. So one of our project management software, we use a sauna, and we’ve tried three or four of them, and our CEO liked asana. And so if she was going to use a sauna, we’re all going to use this on. And so I think that’s really important. It’s got to be easy to use and work for your organization.

[00:54:48.64] spk_6:
Calendar Ring Simple is

[00:54:50.53] spk_7:
callin during Yeah,

[00:54:51.97] spk_6:
you have any other tools besides Google Calendar

[00:54:54.43] spk_0:
were using outlooks Calendar.

[00:54:57.04] spk_6:
Microsoft. Yeah, all right,

[00:54:58.43] spk_7:
I think.

[00:55:00.51] spk_6:
What other ah categories we need toe

[00:55:02.54] spk_7:
video chat video is really important.

[00:55:05.24] spk_6:
Describe a couple

[00:55:14.14] spk_7:
I couldn’t do one on video with Skype, you can do video with Google hangouts, but any time you can actually have an opportunity to see someone’s face and most of the calls we try to do as videos and we find that that works really, really well,

[00:55:21.05] spk_6:
river again, the sense of community.

[00:55:47.46] spk_0:
And if you can’t get together, that’s almost the next best thing. And video has come a long way. The technology is more seamless than ever before, and so at least you’re seeing the person. You might not get all of the nuance of the physical that that’s in the room, but you can see a emotion, or you can see a reaction to something which is super or their cat walking the cat. We could get a lot of pets walking in front of the camera while people are on video. This

[00:55:47.99] spk_6:
can be a lot of fun to talk about cats, but, you know, you have 30 virtual employees. Alice. Um, you have fun doing it. I mean,

[00:55:56.18] spk_7:
it’s awesome. It’s completely awesome is I love it. And, you know, the best thing is that that people have really formed strong relationships with each other. They when you ask them what they like most about working here, is they say each other. They say, the people I’m here because I have connected relationships with other people on the team. And to be able to create a culture where people feel connected to each other in a remote environment is is like That’s the thing I’m most proud of. Anything we’ve ever done. It doesn’t have to do their software product or what we’ve done to impact non profits is the fact that we’ve had a culture of people that have had a wonderful time working and doing productive, impactful things.

[00:56:35.99] spk_6:
Jackson River always had a largest proportion of employees virtual from the beginning

[00:56:36.56] spk_7:
from the beginning

[00:56:38.64] spk_6:
in the culture of the start, about about family

[00:56:49.97] spk_0:
well, we started as a 2.5 person organization in the same way. We got to probably about 8 to 10 people in the office, and then our growth took us into different cities and communities. And that’s when we became virtual because of the growth. And so we’re probably half in the office in Boston, and then half of our staff is outside and there’s one or two people in a city by themselves.

[00:57:03.41] spk_6:
We’ll leave it there.

[00:57:04.30] spk_0:
Excellent, Thank you.

[00:57:05.82] spk_6:
All right. They are Heather Martin, CEO of Interfaith Family, and Alice Hendricks, CEO of Jackson River. This interview, sponsored by Network for Good, Easy to use donor management and fundraising software for non profits. And this is tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 18 NTC ladies. Thank you so much.

[00:57:23.70] spk_0:
Thank you, thank you. Pleasure.

[00:58:06.32] spk_3:
Next week there’s a good chance it’ll be privacy. Best practices on. If that’s not next week, it’ll be coming very, very soon, and something else will be excellent next week. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As. Guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com But Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund is there Complete accounting solution made for nonprofits. Tony done m a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turn, to communications, PR and content for non profits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen. Two dot ceo Ah, creative

[00:58:45.84] spk_2:
producers Claire Meyerhoff Sadly, Boots is the line producer shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein You with me next week for not profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great talking alternative radio 24 hours a day.

Nonprofit Radio, February 17, 2012: Consider Consultants Carefully

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

Sponsored by GE Grace corporate real estate services.

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My Guest:

Penelope Cagney
Penelope Cagney: Consider Consultants Carefully

Penelope Cagney, consultant and author of “Nonprofit Consulting Essentials” shares how your nonprofit can get the most from these engagements. What’s special about nonprofit consulting? Does it matter whether you need help with fundraising, governance or management? How do you make a good match? And what can we expect for the future?

Please take a moment to take the survey for this week’s show with Penelope!

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Yeah. Hyre hello and welcome to the show, it’s tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent of your aptly named host it’s february seventeenth, twenty twelve i’m glad you’re with me and i hope to hell that you were last week because you would have heard readings, possible futures and last and past lives. Psychic medium betsy cohen, one of the top ten psychics in new york i can read your non-profits energy and help you see a wider perspective, reveal what’s hidden and understand possible futures from different alternatives related the donor’s staffing budget, maybe even consultants programs or whatever challenges you’re facing that was last week on dh. Also, it was board oversight basics to our regular legal contributors. Jean takagi and emily chan unlocked the vagueness around the board oversight, and that was part two of the discussion that we started on january twentieth. All of that was last week. This week, consider consultants carefully. Penelope cagney, consultant and author of non-profit consulting essentials what non-profits and consultants need to know, shares how your non-profit can get the most from these engagements what’s special about non-profit consulting does it matter whether your your need is in fund-raising, or governance or management, or maybe even international consulting. How do you make a good match, and what can we expect for the future around these relationships? Penelope cagney is with me for the hour at roughly thirty two minutes into the our tony’s take two. My block this week is generosity day. Valentine’s day was rebooted to generosity day on, i’ll say a little about that. This show is supported by g grace corporate, really state services, and i’m very grateful for their support. Really. Right now we take a break, and when i return, i’ll be joined by penelope cagney. We’re going to talk about considering consultants carefully, and i hope you will stay with us. Dafs you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Treyz are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Hyre hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on tony martignetti non-profit radio. My guest for the hour today is penelope cagney. She is president of the cagney company. They’re consultants to non-profits in governance fund-raising and planning she’s worked with six consulting firms. She hosts good advice. A chronicle of philanthropy, blawg by consultants for consultants with co author bernard ross. She has a new book coming out this year. Global giving how the world is changing philanthropy today we’re talking about her current book non-profit consulting essentials what non-profits and consultants need two notes published by josy bass. And i’m very pleased to welcome penelope cagney to the show. Hello, penelope. Hello, tony. Thank you for inviting me. And i’m very pleased. It’s a pleasure to have you welcome from arizona. Yes. Uh, celebrating a hundred years that’s, right? You’re yes. One hundredth year celebration of the statehood. A van of arizona’s that right this year. That’s right. Downtime. Excellent. Okay, this month, even. All right. Um what? Not non-profit consulting essentials? Why did you feel this needed to be written? I needed to be needed to write this book because i’ve been a consultant for most of my professional career and well, i often concentrated on the my expertise, the content of what i was doing, it was beginning to dawn on me that there was a whole, uh, side to consulting. That wasn’t off talked about, which is the actual, uh, skill of consulting itself. And, you know, there’s just there’s a lot of books written about consulting, but very, very few on non-profit consulting specifically so and the last couple books that had been written, they were good ones, but it was over a decade since the book had been written on the subject and much had changed in the world since that time. And so i wrote the book that i wanted to read, okay? And consulting is actually one of the largest expenses that a lot of charities face. It is it’s it’s often khun b, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, not a part of the usual operating expenses. Non-profit and it can be ah, a considerable expense. Hyre i pulled listeners before the show, and i think the first two questions are our most relevant. Have you worked with consultants in your non-profit either paid or probono and eighty six percent said that they had. And then the second question was, if not, why not? And one hundred percent said because it was too costly. Yeah, i’m really not surprised that it’s it can be can be viewed as somewhat of ah, luxury or non essential, you know, that’s debatable whether it really is is not his good consulting at the right time can really change the fortunes of a non profit organization. But then the book is also for consultants as well, and maybe even people considering dahna ah, career as a consultant. Yes, it is. And there’s more of them today than ever. Which is another reason why i wrote the book, actually, because there are more consultants and more different kinds of consultants. So there’s there’s a great diversity. And i think that non-profits may have i may have a challenge a time sorting out what’s good. Who they should choose what the criteria should be. Yeah, and maybe even what their needs are? Yes, absolutely. We’re going to have a chance to talk a little about different types of consulting and what? Why it matters what? Whether somebody is being brought in for fund-raising or governance, but yeah, i think just for charities, identifying what their needs are can be difficult, absolutely oftentimes it’s, like when we visit the doctor, we we hurt, we know that something’s wrong, but frequently we really don’t know way don’t have a clue what it is excellent problem, we have symptoms, symptoms, right flagging fund-raising or board disagreement or volunteer troubles or something like that, right? You know, it’s interesting one thing that we consultants will say, you know, we’re going to talk about the different types of consultants, but fund-raising typically is it tend to be a popular choice, and one of the reasons is because something is wrong in the organization and the way it shows up, they can’t raise money and interesting, yes, so that’s a common symptom of a lot of different problems, really, that can be the root of that. And one of the one of the, uh, clear, uh, clear past that non-profits conceit towards hiring consultants is one that will increase their revenue. So that is one argument that can be made for hiring consultants that they find, you know, agreeable and what you’re saying about fund-raising being very popular. Is born out in that listener survey. I did to two thirds of people who survey who answered the survey, said that fund-raising was one of the areas that they had engaged a consultant, and we’re going to take a break right now, penelope. And when we return, we’ll get a chance to talk about how non-profit consulting differs from from corporate or government. And we’ll talk about some of these other different areas of consulting. I know that you’ll stay with me, and i hope listeners will too great e-giving anything tooting, getting thinking things, you’re listening to the talking alternative network. E-giving e-giving cubine. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Hi, this is psychic medium. Betsy cohen, host of the show. The power of intuition. Join me at talking alternative that calm mondays at eleven a. M call in for a free psychic reading learned how to tune into your intuition to feel better and to create your optimum life. I’m here to guide you and to assist you in creating life that you deserve. Listen. Every monday at eleven a, m on talking alternative dot com. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed hi and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars, dafs and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. If you have big ideas but an average budget, tune into tony martignetti non-profit radio for ideas you can use. I do. I’m dr. Robert penna, author of the non-profit outcomes toolbox. Welcome back. Come with penelope cagney, penelope cagney’s with me, and we’re talking about consider consultants carefully, that important consulting relationship for your non-profit how does it differ? Consulting for non-profits penelope versus other other sectors? Well, there’s, there’s a number of differences, one of the there’s fewer resource is non-profits have fewer resource is than, say, uh, corporate organizations, you know, money being one of those another difference is and what can i just stop you there? And sometimes it’s fewer resource is in relationship to on a seemingly insurmountable challenge, like world hunger or or water purity in, you know, eastern africa, absolutely my co author of my next book on global giving, it says that it is absurd the size and the resource is that non-profits have relative to the size of the problems that they’re trying to tackle, so they have fewer resource is and that affects non-profits in a lot of ways, one because, um, they there tends to be a sort of relationship because they’re less willing, as we’ve noted there, less willing to pay out money for consultants, then some corporations would be so it’s more of a sort of piecemeal approach to consulting rather than a longer term relationship there’s less in the way of long term retainer relationships, they’re not unheard of, but there, but they are take place less often. Um, and also you have to take care when you make recommendations to make sure that the non-profit can’t afford to implement the recommendations. So you have to keep all these things in mind. Some of the other differences are that impact, which is, you know, a very hot topic these days. Yes can be harder to measure in the nonprofit sector without a bottom line to point to, um, consultants have to help the non-profit figure out what has to be measured and how to measure it, and including their own success is a consultant. Oh, that’s interesting. So and that should be part of the engagement, right? Is measuring that absolutely, um also that you have these large boards with large and diverse boards are much larger than corporate boards, and they’re not hand picked by the ceo as they are in some corporations. So dealing with these boards and also with many other concerns types of stitch you in then you might have in a corporation, so decisions take longer because there’s more stakeholders involved and so not consulting a non-profit usually takes a third to half longer than the same a similar type of project in the corporate world would take and that’s interesting in relationship to the point you just made a couple of moments ago that typically the relationships, the consulting relationships are shorter. Yes, well, you have a slower moving process and typically shorter relationship that is correct. Good also there’s a larger degree of passion that you won’t find, perhaps i mean, i’m not saying that passionate people don’t work in in corporate cos you’re generalizing lee, but there’s, you know, particularly board members, their passion converge on, you know, fanatical being around you could say fanatic, we’re not using any names irrational, fanatical, sure naming no names, of course, the degree of passion of both staff on board and that could also apply if if the founder is still in the picture. Oh, absolutely right. Enormous passion. It’s their it’s, their child. They created this organization, yes. And and that passion can contribute to problems in some respects as well as being a great yeah. How does it contribute to problems? Well, you know, talking about founder’s syndrome, you know, sometimes i’ve been engaged in exploratory conversations with non-profits and what the individual’s describing as as the problems that the symptoms are actually the signs of founder’s syndrome and what let’s let’s keep you clear of jargon jail now on tony martin and non-profit radio have george in jail, so let’s define you need to take a break for a sec, like take a drink of water or something. I can i think i could do a little tap dance, ok, because i couldn’t go into more detail about george in jail if you need it. But s o let’s let’s define founder’s syndrome, so get you out of get you on probation quickly. Well, in order for an organisation to evolve and mature, they’re good move through different stages and then the beginning. There’s there’s often times the charismatic, driven founder who attracts a group to them and drive the organization in the beginning. But in order for an organisation to grow at some point, that founder has to let go and it’s very difficult, and it cause it can cause a lot of problems and terrible risks and and estrangement from the board and sometimes even organizations, you know, completely, uh, dissolving because of this sum kind of stress. So founder’s syndrome is one of the problems that that’s often encounter, and the founder is sometimes not conscious of this syndrome comes that the common. So they’re describing what’s going on, and they don’t even realize that the problem. Okay, he’s, good to bring this out. Okay? Just some other ways that i think it’s interesting. How how? How non-profit consulting contrasts with with maybe corporate or government? Well, what else are you thoughts there, there’s more women ceos. So staff leadership, uh, there’s there’s more women they are than in the corporate world. Um, and also on board, however, there is the exception with the very large non-profits those will be typically male dominated boards. Yeah, they’ll tend to be, you know, the sort of the typical, um, you know, caucasian male, middle aged, uh, a type of profile, which is something that, you know, can be a challenge because we’re trying to reflect the diversity of the organs of the constituents that we represent, right? So that’s, another difference. And also that non-profits typically have a more collaborative style and sometimes, for instance, great leaders come over from the corporate world into the non-profit world, and they find that it’s actually more difficult for them because they can’t just tell people what to do. I mean, that can certainly can tell the board what to do. So there’s a great deal of consensus building and work, a more collaborative style, which is required for leadership and the non-profit sectors. So god, so and this this effects consultant? Yeah, and that is creating that slower process that you talked about earlier, exact, because we’re trying to be more inclusive and and not only divers, but collaborative. But that takes time exactly. And one other point going back to the resource is is that there is the perception and sometimes the reality of their being the highly paid consultant, in contrast to the, uh, less well paid staff person and they tend to be salaries tend to be more equitable in the corporate world between consultants and non-profit and in truth, you know what consultants earned there’s a very, very wide range in the nonprofit sector and sometimes it’s a misperception, because sometimes what the consultant is being paid. Involves ah, a number of things that the non-profit staff person salary does not like overhead and downtime and marketing time and all, uh, all sorts of things that have to be considered into devising ones. You mentioned overhead and you, one of the first things you mentioned in making this comparison about non-profit consulting is fewer resources and a lot of cases, and you bring this out in the book, there’s, uh, there’s. A shortage of support for overhead from institutional funders, right? And so how does that impact consulting? Um, well, it’s, uh it can affect consultants effect consulted a number of ways, i mean, one thinks about consulting in the non-profit arena is that there’s often sort of third parties involved and the third parties, air foundations so foundations will be involved with non-profits in a variety of different ways, i mean, some of them are you know, you you apply to a foundation to get back-up funding for capacity building or consulting services, some foundations actually supply consultants on dhe consulting services, they have a more of a hands on approach to it. So there’s a third party, the thunder involved in the relationship, which is obviously yeah, in contrast to the doing corporate consulting. All right, i had a comment from from twitter before the show from connecting you to and her comment was just that both people should consider both both sides come client and consultant should consider each other carefully for a mutual benefit, and you’re not going to talk a little about what it takes to make that successful att least have the best shot at having a successful, successful match with penelope cagney, and we’re talking about that important consulting relationship. Her company is the cagney company and you’ll find that at the cagney company dot com and her book is non-profit consulting essentials, and you’ll find that at amazon. Um, why is it? Do you think that and i hear this so often, but you have insight into it that consultant opinions are considered mohr carefully and just basically listen to more more likely, more often than an employee who may have been saying the same thing for for quite some time, because sometimes they were because the consultant was paid to say it because they paid to have the consultant so interesting. So, you know, there’s a certain value, you know, actually, i just had a discussion about this with a group of consultants yesterday, and the fact that even when they were offered consulting services is a gift. Say bye, a foundation that it would be better if the non-profits chipped in some of their own. No three sources as well, because they would they would then value the consulting mohr and pay more pt. Heed the recommendations more carefully. So you know, it’s. Like when you pay for a gym membership, you may go to the gym more often. Okay? And there’s. Also evaluate right there is a perception of value greater than the employees value right? And, you know, it it’s also true that we are the, you know, latto exalted expert who that zoho well, first it’s an alliteration which i love, but exalted experts, ok, yeah, which i say, ironically, help the ironic came across in my voice, but there is that i mean, we have a sort of, ah, status as an outsider also, the fact that we have way don’t have anything, we don’t have an agenda, you know, our agenda is to tell the truth, uh, and to help them to improve, you know, we’re not trying to hang on tio you know, any a retirement fund, if anyone could have done any more or, you know, we’re not involved in any politics within the organization? Yes, truly objective. Pardon me for a minute, penelope, i want remind listeners that we are live tweeting the show and you use hashtag non-profit radio to join the conversation with us on twitter. And if you have anything that you would like to ask penelope cagney, you could do that by twitter use that hashtag non-profit radio um so they’re different types of consulting fund-raising marketing, governance, management and oversight. But there was no there. No, there are very few credentials for consulting, right? Yes, there that’s one of the challenges i think for non-profits and trying to determine the credibility ian and the quality of consultants that they’re looking at part of it is that it is just as you described it, very diverse, so you can’t come. You’re not going to come up with a standard, you know, certificate of non-profit consulting, you know, because it just it just would be not useful because it’s too broad. I mean, there are certain there is certification in certain areas. Um, for instance, uh, i myself i’m a c f r ee certified fund-raising executive, which is not just for consultants, but it can mean something in the non in the fundrasing world. Yes. Also, uh, the institute of management consultants, uh, they have a certified management consultants certificate. So there’s certification there for management consulting. Not specifically non-profit and there are, you know, there are, uh, in many other areas to mean for prospect research and also that even bored source of national non-profit board consulting organization is looking at offering certification for non-profit uh, board consultant. Okay, so that that is something you know, a certificate, you know, certification tells you that they know something that they have mastered a body of knowledge and won’t tell you if they’re the right consultant for you. Yes, on we’re going to talk about that. Making that most successful match that’s twice. I’ve promised it. So we are definitely getting to it. I’m just teasing people up, but we’re getting there. So does it really matter? And we just have about a minute or so before the break. Is there much difference between fund-raising consulting versus governance versus management consulting? Yes. Because the, uh, the contents of their knowledge, their expertise, of course, is different. Because you actually have to know something for many types of consulting. You actually have to know about something in order to be useful. Okay, i should hope there’s some are there somewhere that doesn’t apply. Well, maybe i missed the boat. I should. I should have picked an easier consulting branch, then plans giving. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There you go. One of the most exulted exult like that word exalted realm, you know, but are there are there aren’t really many where body of knowledge and not everyone has it, you know? But, yeah, there are there are facilitators, you know, that also falls within the realm of consulting, or coaches have a za coach, uh, you know who could help you become a better leader, but who wasn’t necessarily an expert in, um, you know, you’re particular type of non-profit having expertise in management. I mean, they would have to have expertise in facilitation or in coaching, but not about a specific management hyre area. Yes, very good. Okay, um, we are going to take a break and when we return, than we’re going to continue this conversation, and we’ll get into some of these ways of making the best match between your consultant and your non-profit. But right after the break, it’ll be tony’s. Take two, so stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Geever are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed hi and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultation shins. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l, j media. Dot com are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam lebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio it’s time now for tony’s. Take two at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour generosity day. That was my block this week. This was started by sashadichter, who has been a guest on this show also on for a full hour. And he is chief innovation officer now with the acumen fund. When he was here, he was there business development officer um but he’s rebooted valentine’s day to be generosity day. And he started that last year is inaugurated because of his own feelings about not really and he’s very up front about this he’s blogged about it not really being as generous as he felt. He should be given the work that he does for the acumen fund raising money for important causes. Um, so he did a lot of introspection and decided that valentine’s day should be generosity day we started last year, and it did pretty well got a lot of attention on twitter especially. And this year even more so i blogged it this week. It was valentine’s day and the idea is just not only that day, but for the whole month two be more conscious. Of maybe how you can help somebody rather than why you can’t and that somebody could very well be an individual. Or could be institutional and and charitable. So that’s on my block this week post is called generosity day. My block is that tony martignetti dot com and note that that is a different girl from the past. Tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s. Take two for friday, february seventeenth, the seventh show of this year. Penelope cagney, you’re still with us, right? I’m so with you and sonia. Have a question for you. Oh, yes. Go ahead. Taking over the show? Yeah. E-giving consultant. Yes. What? Uh, you know what? What should someone look for in your particular area of expertise for consultant? How would you what would you advise them? I would say to fold one is the technical expertise that you referred to before the break. I mean, you do have to know what a charitable remainder trust is and what the two varieties of that are and what you know. What does it mean to do a charitable gift? Annuity, et cetera. We got of the technical and then also the relationship building. I have had experience talking to people who are fifty five or sixty and over, and that could be well into their nineties to about there, a state plan and how it can help charitable work. So i would say there’s a technical on the relationship side is what i would be looking for if i were hiring a planned e-giving consultant, i think that’s what you’re asking, and i guess, and in that technical side, i would want to know what your experiences like, you know, have you been a plan giving consultant for a while because consulting is different than being a planned e-giving director in a charity so that’s that’s part of the technical expertise and why do you ask me that question? Turning the tables on me? Well, i ask because, uh, i’m just curious, i’m curious what you thought and long around the subject really interested, in my opinion, you may be the first guest to actually watch lots of listeners are not too many guests are at least they don’t seem now know my guests are terrific. I’m just you’re being you’re being sarcastic. Um, so let’s, let’s get to this now if i’ve mentioned a couple times some ideas for having the greatest likelihood of a successful consulting relationship. And regrettably, in the poll that i i asked people tio tio answer beforehand before the show, their their relationships haven’t worked out so well. If you’ve worked with one or more consultants thinking only of the highest paid consultant you’ve worked with, how were the outcomes? And about seventy five percent where either just met are expected to act? Ations is barely, you know, just just met or disappointed us. Wow. So and then the other quarter were exceeded, but far exceeded was an option, and nobody selected that. So? So yeah, three quarters a zeiss ed met or did not meet expectations. So how can we help to turn that around for listeners? Well, i have some suggestions. I thought you might. Yes. Um, one is that it would be good to find out more about the nature of non-profit consulting do-it-yourself and look for certain signs. One of the things that is really going to contribute to a fruitful relationship is trust. And you can’t buy that. Come come by that quickly. Um, but i think that the degree to which you can trust each other and be open is going to really going to contribute to the success of the relationship. So the consultant’s responsibility and the non-profits responsibility is to be authentic. There’s, there’s, there’s a lot of you know, there could be a lot of, uh, you know, tension around having an outsider come into your organization and what that could mean for you, you know, and so it’s a kind of a relationship full of trust, at least initially, but to spend some time building the relationship and not just jump into the work. But when you’re when you’re the hiring stage, how do you assess whether you’ll be ableto trust someone if you do hyre them well, you have to start out, uh, you know, the way probably the most successful way too sabat, you know, get get suggestions for consultants to consider is to ask your peers, your peer organizations and get referrals, so word of mouth and referrals is always a good way to do it, however, because our society is so transient these days. Um, that’s not always possible. You have to look for other sources, so i’d say look for the source. If you look for a, uh, you know, and look to an organization of membership organization who might recommend some choices for you to consider. But first looked a credible source for your consultant, um, and get recommendations, you know, thoroughly vet them. That’s going to help, you know, help. You have a greater comfort with the consultant that you choose. And also to make sure that you had a compatible culture. Um, well, you did say compatible, not compatible, right know i did a compact compatible. Okay, yes, we don’t want come back. Okay. Compatible culture, because otherwise you’re gonna be fighting upstream. So you need to be you need to be have someone who’s gonna be ableto work within your particular culture. You also have to in order to build trust, you have to spend some time in what i would call the engagement phase on and spend, uh, not to get that short shrift. So when you’re talking about the contract, you know, it’s it’s a physical contract, but there’s also, um, engagement and contracting, which is which is not the documents. So you’re talking about identifying what the real problem is, and then coming to agreement. About how that will be approached. So the better understand you have the beginning. Um, the greater the trust is going to be, they’re going to know what’s going to be happening. I mean, it can always be surprises, and you have to change course, but to get as much agreement and clarity of front as you possibly can. Okay, so there are there are some of the ways that you could do that. And again, as i said, um, authenticity. Um, you know, taking some risk, you know, it’s like what we do with our personal relationships, you know, how do we get to trust? You know, we take some risks and what we reveal about ourselves. So i think that and also knowing what you want, um, and for the consultant to know that what you think is the problem is really the problem because it may just be the presenting problem. S o we talked about this a little earlier figuring out what you really need. How do you do? You count on the consultant to figure out what you really need and you just sharing symptoms. Like you said earlier, you know, our fund-raising is lagging. Or do you need to be more introspective so and identify those these needs yourself? Oh, well, it depends upon i think, the level of consciousness hadas an organization i mean, some organizations are they’re pretty sophisticated and they can, you know, look within themselves and identify what the problems are, but often an outsider is called in when they can’t figure out what’s wrong so often it’s the consultant job to help them figure out what needs to be addressed and how they should address it because you can recommend that they follow a course of action and one if they’re if they don’t have the will or they don’t have the resources they’re for, they don’t know how those recommendations they’re not going to be followed. And i say that that’s one of the characteristics of a good consultant is they know how to get recommendations implemented so you could be the greatest expert in the world. And if you don’t know how to get that relationship, uh, going and if you don’t know how to move from great recommendations to great implementations, then you know you’re not the best consultant because there could be resistance like we talked about founder’s, founder’s syndrome and resistance there, but there could be resistance from other sources as well. Within within the charity. Absolutely. Resistance is almost, uh you will almost always encounter it at some level. Um, you know, we’re like therapists in a way, and so are relationships with organizations. They’re not just mechanistic and technical, and but they’re also have to do with the soul of organizations in the psyche of organizations. And sometimes we know the what we we know it’s individuals there’s something that we absolutely should do. We should quit smoking, we should lose weight. And we have resistance against doing it. Even if we know that we should do that. And sometimes there’s a lot of pushback from the client that can manifest itself in many ways. And the heart of the pushback is sometimes the closer you are to really being on target. Oh, right. Because the most the most challenging thing to implement on most painful i guess it could be the real source of the problem. The thing that you are avoiding? Yeah, that the charity’s been avoiding, right? Right. Right. You mentioned earlier matching cultures between the consultant or their firm whether it’s a solo person or a big company on the on the charity. How do you how do you sort of get a culture compatibility? Well, i think, it’s, you know, it could be as obvious as you know, you have a kind of a relaxed, more relaxed sort of workplace environment where people typically show up in jeans and, you know, and and the consultant shows up in a very conservative black suit that says something. But, you know, it’s, not everything. You know, you have to flirt a little further, but that’s that’s an indication that you might have have ah, a bit of a cultural difference. They might have just come from a funeral. Also that’s true. And i can tell you, i have worked for black suit firms. It could be anything you know, and it could be anything. We’ve been black suit firms, and we come into more casual work kinds of environments, and we’re still very successful. So, it’s just, you know, it’s. Something to look at that’s, an obvious indication that they’re different from you. You have a delightful little quip joke. I guess that i want to read, which is a joke, really? How many consultants does it take to change a light bulb? Answer what’s your budget? Oh, it’s a snarky one, but no there’s there’s that perception out there, and we’re trying to get through that so that we have stronger relationships on better relationships with consultants and we don’t have surprises, right? Especially on the money side, right? You have a bunch of questions, specific questions that you ask in the book, what we don’t have a minute before break. Can you just run through a couple of those questions to be asking the potential consultants? Sure, i would look at whether they’re generalist specialist to begin with, because if they’re if they’re specialists there, be good if you know what the problem is, so if you have a, you know, social media issue, then you want someone who’s, an expert in social media. However, if you just have some kind of nebulous hyre problems with your with your culture, which is very difficult one of the greatest challenges, actually, but, um, you may want someone who’s sort of a generalist who knows something across fields, and they may be be a better fit for u um also, can they manage their own affairs? Sometimes the cobbler’s children had no shoes, but sometimes you can find out about how they run their own organization. So are they collaborative in the way they work with their, you know, colleagues, um, you know, there’s there’s, some ways to look at their style is a compatible with yours. Penelope. We’re going to take a break. We’ll do more of these questions to ask potential consultants. When we return, i hope everybody stays with us, okay. Talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. Hi, i’m carol ward from the body mind wellness program. Listen to my show for ideas and information to help you live a healthier life in body, mind and spirit, you’ll hear from terrific guests who are experts in the areas of health, wellness and creativity. So join me every thursday at eleven a, m eastern standard time on talking alternative dot com professionals serving community. Oh, oppcoll. This is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting are you concerned about the future of your business for career? Would you like it all to just be better? Well, the way to do that is to better communication, and the best way to do that is training from the team at improving communications. This is larry sharp, host of the ivory tower radio program and director at improving communications. Does your office need better leadership? Customer service sales or maybe better writing are speaking skills? Could they be better at dealing with confrontation conflicts, touchy subjects all are covered here at improving communications. If you’re in the new york city area, stop by one of our public classes or get your human resource is in touch with us. Website is improving communications, dot com that’s improving communications, dot com improve your professional environment, be more effective, be happier and make more money. Improving communications, that’s. The answer. Talking. Welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio. My guest is penelope cagney. We’re talking about these important consulting relationships. Consider consultants carefully, penelope. Let be before we get to the sort of trends of the future let’s, get a couple more of these detailed quest. Turns out that that are valuable for charities looking for consultants. Sure, i would ask how the consultant is going to ensure the quality of the project. So you know what? When are they going to check in with you how we’re going to make it measure progress? What you going to do if things are not going well? Okay, these air discussions, you should have also about staffing. Because one, you know, consultants, uh, particularly in the nonprofit sector, they tend to be either so. So proprietorship, you know, one person, shops or very small shop. Um, so you have to look at capacity. So if you’re very large organization, if you were a national non-profit or even an international non-profit, you have to look that if they have the capacity to staff your project yeah, right. Big enough. Just but yeah, right. They have associate. Do they have staff on hand? How are they going to, you know, address that, and if they have associates, is it appropriate to ask who on your staff is going to do our business? That’s a really smart questions? Because, you know, like, like every organization, there are sometimes superstars, and they’re the ones, you know, everybody wants on their particular team, but, you know, as a consultant, that can cause real problems for you. Yeah, when you have the right individual requests so you may not be able to satisfy that absolutely can’t put these superstars everywhere, but, you know, looking at from the non-profit side, i would definitely definitely ask because sometimes they bring in, you know, the senior staff to sell the project in-kind the juniors who come in to actually do the work, yeah, just who were these people, what we do now? We have a contract, but we didn’t meet any of these way did meet this junior person when you were trying to get the contract, ok? What else? Well, this is good detail also, that i think that a large term and a small form can both offer great service so you shouldn’t rule out one or the other, um and it, you know, the large firm has has more resource is, um and more capacity usually. But smaller firms may have greater dedication to your particular project on dh. They can also have a really great expertise. Your work may be more important to a smaller or a smaller a small consulting firm. Absolutely. And and the staff within large firms. I mean, they may have carried out, you know, thousands of projects over the years. But there their staff may have actually worked on far fewer project’s individually than the staff of smaller firms. Right? So the staff and small difference may actually have much more experience on dh may have worked in your sector as well. Absolutely. And they may specialize in your sector, which would be, you know, tour. If you’re an arts organization, there are some friends, some consulting group that specialize in art. So that’s, another valuable question to be asking is what’s your work in our sector, religion or arts education, et cetera. Yeah. And how important is it to you? Because it may be very important or me really not be important to doll. Okay, okay. Well, just in a few minutes. We have left let’s talk a little about what you see changing in the future. That’s going to impact these consulting relationships. Well, there’s a number of things, one which is impacting everyone, of course, is globalization. So, you know, a lot of my work isn’t fund-raising and i can tell you that, you know, the focus of my new book is how practices from all around the world are transforming the way that we work. So it has to be greater awareness of what’s going on in the world in many different ways. You know, um, our donors are supporters are affected by world markets and not just, you know, the dow jones industrial average. So that’s one thing that is changing and that well, that i was gonna say, that also leads thio more collaboration possibilities on the charitable side. And that could be the result of of ah, consulting recommendation. Absolutely. And related to that is ah, sort of what i would call a blur of the sectors. So, you know, as as i had said earlier, that you know the scale of the problems relative to the resource is that non-profits had is ridiculous. So they need to there’s a growing need to partner with business and public sectors in order to achieve results. You know, like ending world hunger, you know, great, you know, ending aids or, you know, really buy-in ambitious goals like that. So we’re going to be needing experts who can work between the sectors. And so that is that’s going to be a growing need, and we also have things like we have new kinds of not for-profit organizations like l three c’s and b corporations, right raise all kinds of questions. The l three c is the limited, low profit, limited liability corporation. Correct. So these thieves, new organizations are going to raise questions and, uh, pose challenges for consultant help them grow organization. We have just a couple of seconds left what’s, what’s. One more thing you see happening in the future. Also there, there’s changing while the expert in general. And as i said, i said ironically, the exulted expert because, you know, people could get so much information over the internet today that, um, you know, for us to were not look too in the same way as we were in the past, because it’s the democracy democrats civilization of information and knowledge which the internet has created. Penelope cagney is president of the cagney company, which you’ll find at the cagney company dot com her book is non-profit consulting essentials what non-profits and consultants need to know you’ll find that at amazon penelope, thank you so much for being a guest. Thank you. It was a real pleasure. I enjoyed it too. Thank you very much. Next week two interviews from the next-gen charity conference last november aria finger from do something dot org’s she’s the ceo there on motivating teens toe love your cause and eric sapper stine on living your hero’s journey. Then also next week we’ll go into greater google search. Maria simple, our regular prospect research contributor, will go deeper into using google search to advance your prospect research. Keep up with what’s coming up sign up for are inside or email lorts on the facebook page and like that page, love the page but you can only click like there is no love button, so click like twice, though now actually disappears after you click it once so you can’t do that just like the button just like the page for pete’s sake, that’s the point itunes non-profit radio dot net that is where you’ll find our itunes paige, you can listen to the archive in case you didn’t listen live on twitter we always live live tweet the show the hashtag is non-profit radio or you can follow me or you could do both on twitter. The show is sponsored by g grayson company are you worried about the rising cost of rent for your organization? Or maybe you just want to look at some alternatives to your current lease. 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