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Monisha Kapila & Stephen Alexander: Managing Up
Monisha Kapila returns with a ProInspire alumnus, Stephen Alexander, to explain how to manage your boss to boost your career. Monisha is ProInspire’s CEO and Stephen is program manager at Exponent Philanthropy.
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Meghan Murphy & Lacy Baugher: Content Creation and Curation
Learn what content will move and inspire your networks and how to empower your internal creators. Don’t be afraid to take risks with your content. Meghan Murphy is head of marketing and community at HandUp and Lacy Baugher is interactive content producer at WETA. We talked at the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference.
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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week, herbert salaam he followed me on twitter and said, i follow your podcast thanks for all your hard work. It really helps non-profits herbert that’s why i’m here that’s why i produced the show week after week, day after day slogging through, but i love it i love non-profit radio herbert salaam, thank you so much for your support for loving non-profit radio and congratulations on being our listener of the week. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into high pope isis if you pressured me to understand that you missed today’s show managing up monisha ca piela returns with a proinspire alumnus steven alexander to explain how to manage your boss to boost your career monisha is proinspire sze ceo and steven is program manager at exponents philanthropy and content creation and curation. Learn what content will move and inspire your networks and how to empower your internal creators. Don’t be afraid to take risks with your content. Megan murphy is head of marketing and community at handup and lacey bagger is interactive content producer at w e t a we talked at the non-profit technology conference on tony’s take to be an insider sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, also by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay for mobile donation crowdster dot com i’m pleased to welcome monisha capella and steven alexander monisha is founder and ceo of proinspire. Helping individuals and organizations achieve their potential for social impact, she’s worked with the likes of care and the clinton foundation in january. She was one of the chronicle of philanthropy is forty under forty she’s at monisha ca piela k, k p i l a and proinspire is at proinspire dot or ge and at proinspire. Steven alexander is an alumnus of the managing for success program at proinspire he is program manager at exponents, philanthropy, exponents, philanthropy, dot or ge working with philanthropists to leverage their resources and amplify impact, he chairs the board of washington, d c’s young non-profit professionals network he’s at s a l e x a n d e r welcome monisha welcome. Steven, thank you. Thank you for having a pleasure monisha managing up. Why is this ah, challenging area for people managing up is probably one of the most important skills that people need for success over the course of their career, whether they’re in their first job or they are an e t managing up to their board on and it’s really about how do you develop a good relationship with your boss? Uh, there’s research that shows that the number one reason people leave their jobs because of their managers and the idea of managing up empowers people to manage their managers to make a more effective relationship. Um, so we have all of our programs we always hear from people it’s one of the biggest challenges they face, and even someone who has a great, really ship of their boss typically finds actually thinking about how they’re managing up can help them to be more effective. Wow number one reason that people leave jobs, okay, that google done some really amazing research on what helps the pretension of employees. They look at all the data on their employees, and they looked at how much of it was tied. To tenure and promotions and teams. And the thing that they found consistently across the company was it had to do with your relation with your manager, steven, you find managing up a challenge day today? No. That’s. What? I like to think i’m getting better at it. Uh, particularly for younger managers, newer managers on younger employees. That could be very difficult to have that perspective. And perhaps, but you put yourself on the other side of the table. Imagine what that might be like. Yeah. That’s always hard to empathize. What? Where you in? In the organization at exponents philanthropy. Oh, in terms of where i sit on the orc chart, i’m towards the bottom there when i started off, actually, i was, uh, not only the youngest employee, but also the at the lowest level on. So for an organization with about twenty staff, uh, it could take a while to figure out how to navigate that god. So currently i’m well called mid level. Okay. All right. We obviously still have a boss. And now, yeah, but now you have reporting people, people reporting to you, actually don’t i i actually ah, managing a program that’s. Where the young non-profit professional network comes in, right? A tremendous training ground where i actually can manage people and bring those experiences back to explode. Okay, okay, and so in the future, you’ll be able to help people managed the help people themselves manage up when you are their supervisor. Absolutely, i would think so. Okay, alright, cool. And, uh, is this something that you thought about as a problem area before you went to the managing for success program? You know, i think i felt it. I’m not sure i fully realised in my head, you know what it was i was experiencing? I could feel that tension in the room with my boss, and i wasn’t sure why i was there. I was pretty focused on myself, right? And i think, yeah, the proinspire experience and certainly others as well, open me up to the possibility of oh, hey, there’s, there’s something else going on here that i could i could really take control of, yeah, so you felt it, but you weren’t around you weren’t sitting around saying i need to manage up better no, and i didn’t have the language either, right? Right money shows. That pretty common people feel it attention with their boss, but they don’t know what the difficulty is. It is, and i think there’s also a common perception, which is that your manager should adapt to you. So people sort of being my manager should understand how i work, and they should manage me well, and if they don’t know, that could be frustrating. What managing up really is about is, how are you understanding your manager? How are you adapting to them to make it a success? Oppcoll relationship? I wonder if i had gone through the managing for success program if i would still be working for other people? I don’t know, i find that go ahead, what were going to say potentially, you know, i think one of the things that can really frustrate people is feeling like their manager isn’t very effective. Um, and one of things we hear from managers that can frustrate them it’s feeling like the people who work for them aren’t good at providing the information or communicating. And so managing up to make a big difference, i feel like i could never work for someone again. I mean, i’ve had my own business now for thirteen years and the show and everything. And ah, i think i just think i would be a terrible employee. I don’t think anybody would hire me. I would not. I would not hire me. I definitely i would shoot myself in the foot in the interview. I i would come across his. I’d be too much. I looked a highlight that left when she made about adapting to your manager rather than them adopt into you on something that took me a while to come around to that idea. And once i did all the sudden it opened up so many doors for me. I really understood what i could do in that relationship to improve it. How it better communicate with them. Um, i realized that, uh, that responsibility, latto and that was with me, right? Not necessarily. With them, they’ve got eight, nine other employees to worry about it. Well, yeah. And tony, into your point about whether you could ever work for someone again. You know, as a consultant, you probably are doing a lot of managing your client on. So i think it’s actually a skill set that we all need. No matter what role that were in yes, you’re right. Of course i do, but i don’t have to see them every single day. I just trust me, i would not hire myself. I’d be a bad employee. Plus, i always want to good vacation days. I mean, i always want the week between christmas and new year’s even just being the new employee a you know, i insist. So there’s a lot of there’s, a lot of struggles, but we get a little personal but that’s okay, it’s me, it’s me doing it. Ok, we’re gonna go out for a break. We come back, stephen, i want to explore that a little more on with you two. Of course monisha adapting to your manager. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive. It tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Duitz welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, steven let’s explore the solemn or how did that help for you up and make you more comfortable with the idea of you adapting to your manager? Sure, i think critical of his process, there were there were two things one was working with the coach really hearing from someone else, the perspective that i was throwing out there in the world, the ideas that i was throwing out there in the world and how i was communicating those just hearing someone else on doesn’t have to be a coach. It could be a significant other it could be someone else that’s close to you hearing, repeating back some of the language that you’re using, perhaps in different ways. It really offers you perspective on how you might be sharing those things your your bus and how that might be playing into very specific parts of the ship monisha having somebody objective, that’s, that’s, valuable, it could be really valuable. And you know, if it’s a coach or steven said it could be a friend or someone else but sometimes just having people remind you people can get caught up in thinking about their boss isn’t like them, or they don’t like their boss and actually just having people remind you that that person has their own set of needs and priorities. So maybe they’re not following up on the request you made or giving you the feedback you ass for, but it may not be because of how they feel about you may be thinking about what are all the things that they have on their place. Stephen also made excellent point. You know, his manager had nine people reporting to him. So it’s impossible for the for the manager to adapt, teo each of them? Yeah, you know, one of our rules of managing up his own execution of the relationship, so really to manage it? Well, that means you are responsible for scheduling, checking with your manager for putting the agenda together to make it. I’m sure you’re asking your manager for what you need health on, because the fact is that most managers have way more responsibility than they actually have time for. And if you can do a good job of trying, teo ease their work load, they will really value you, so recognizing what are some of the things that are prayers for your manager will help you manage up better. Stephen, you have anything to say about that? Some of the practical ideas? Absolutely. I’ve actually i’m sitting here what they work sheet at monisha introduced metoo proinspire this managing up selfish doesn’t work sheet. Honestly, a soon as i thought i knew this had the power to change the relationship. But i had currently with my boss. Uh, it has questions like, uh, how well do you understand your manager? How did they prefer to receive information? How do they process information? So while i took up her stab at that really jotting down things oh, you know, i think she prefers you. Now i think that she likes to have the operation advance. What the manager of the program actually encouraged each of us to do was to go back with this worksheet. Stick with your boss and ask these questions. And it was incredible how open she wass she had been asked. Know what motivates? You know? What are you trying to accomplish? And what do you afraid of? She shared that information. I think the biggest revelation for her, wass no, i haven’t actually articulated that too many of my employees. So even a year later, i’m still hearing her now share those things geever join excellence. So it was like you sort of trained your manager to be mohr sharing with the other people who report to her about what her needs are basically isn’t that interesting? It’s funny, that wasn’t my original intention, right? Uh, in my written original intention was really to improve our relationship one on one, and then that really, er but she took it to the next level very much. I appreciate that. Yeah. Monisha you should charge extra tuition to stevens stevens. Direct report. Yes. Uh, the other thing i would share is there’s actually a great article from harvard business review about ten years old, but called managing your boss and it’s. Probably one of the first sort of classics that created the whole idea of managing up. And they have a checklist in there. So anyone who’s listening can just google managing your boss? Harvard business review went find that article. And those questions that cubine mentioned there’s. A set of those toe actually sit down with your own manager and have that conversation. Excellent. Okay, i love resource is like that. Um, steven, that is a great story you got. You got another story about your success in doing this or or maybe even a challenge in doing this, please? Yeah, absolutely. I think. And i think this, uh, well particularly resonate with younger folks as they’re entering a field trying to establish themselves for a long time. I bounced from job to job from culture worker, organization and different culture teo other cultures. And so when i came to exponents philanthropy, what i didn’t realize that time is that i had a pretty fixed mindset. If you’ve read the book, mind that you might be familiar with language fixed and growth, i wanted to prove myself i want to prove my words, my talent dahna with the with the knowledge that that could lead to long term employment. And so because of that, i didn’t put myself on the other side of the table. I couldn’t i was so focused on, uh, improving myself, i suppose, but not from the right perspective. And so, as i grew as i worked with the coach as intern was introduced to programs like this, i came around to this idea, and as i talked with my boss and she said, frankly, after promotion, we need to focus on the work now that helped me did it and say, uh, you know what i think? I think she’s, right? I think i need to put the organization first and simply doing that and really dedicating myself to owning my job and figuring out how to do it the best i could. It opened me up to all learning on the other side. Awesome, huh? Money. Should you mentioned earlier? The myers briggs assessment? How does that play into managing up? Yeah. So myers briggs is personality assessment. And, um, it’s pretty popular to actually find free versions online, but the idea is really understanding people’s preferences. So the most famous part of myers briggs is, are you an e or an eye extra vert or an introvert and something teo think some typical characteristics, for example, of extroverts is that they liked teo talk aloud. They think by talking aloud and introverts tend to want time, tio think to themselves before sharing ideas so that actually can have an important role in managing up depending on what type of preferences your manager has, you might have a manager that they’re going to want to see something in advance so they can think about it before giving you feedback. Or you might have a manager. We’re just going to sit there and real time discussed everything and brainstorm. So myers briggs is a great tool, not just on the extrovert introvert, but are they big picture detail oriented to really start to get to know what the purposes of your manager and how are you asking them for the support you need in a way? That’s going teo tied to what they’re looking for. Steven, you want to tell us whether you’re ah ee? Aye or big picture detail where you fall in myers briggs quickly. Well, a credible line e i e i can bounce back and forth. I’m definitely big picture. Okay, i’m up straddling the line i would think that’s good. You play both sides. It’s been interesting, teo to shift every time i originally saw myself as an introvert. One of his younger, uh, extra vert in my early twenties, for sure. And now i think with all this self reflection it’s really taking me back, teo, see myself in a different way. Cool. Okay, and big picture. And how old are you? I’m twenty eight. Okay, now, how did knowing where you fit in the myers briggs? How did that help you out in managing up? Duitz it certainly helped me understand how it might be communicating information. Now i want to receive information from others. I think it helped me just take a step back and look inside myself buy-in verified perhaps the few things that i wasn’t so sure about that i don’t have a great example for you right there, okay? And you can share one of the things that we hear a lot. Sometimes people feel like they’re managers are micro managers, they want to get too much into the details, and actually it could be sort of a preference difference that if the manager is someone who’s more detail oriented and the person is working for them is more big picture, and maybe that the person is not providing their manager enough details to hide to their preferences. So that’s an example that we see a lot where really understanding what? Are the things your manager looks for to help them process information can help you provide what will be most effective. So do you do? Do you have students? Participants do the myers briggs assessment on their boss or of their boss. So we have them to myers briggs for themselves, and then we actually have them think about what they think it might be for the broth or to have a conversation with your boss to find out. You know? What is their meyers break? Okay, steven, did you do that part when you were having this great conversation with the woman? We didn’t get as far into that part? No, no complication part for sure. Okay, yeah. Okay, i would say one of one of the teams overall that we talk about managing up is communication. Steven said people typically underestimate what their managers i need to know and what they do now. So there’s often this assumption of like, oh, i don’t need to tell my manager that. Or maybe they think their manager already knows something. And particularly when it comes to a bad news. Sometimes people are hesitant to tell their manager stuff too soon. But what we really recommend when it comes to managing up is just over communicate and really be forthright with good news and bad news. It’s better to let someone know that there may be a problem on the horizon, then to wait and see what happens and spring about them at the last minute. You know, very interesting that we believe that our managers know and need to know more, then they actually do yes, well, and if you ask a needy, they will definitely say that they feel like people don’t tell them a lot of staff. Um, so i think there’s a perception that people who are more senior know everything that’s going on when they don’t actually feel like they’re in touch with all those stuff is happening, okay, what could be such a critical conversation that have with whoever you’re reporting tio down and talk about how much information would you like on and then ask again, make sure to ask again because they may not tell you exactly what they really are feeling? Uh, so if you check in along the way and i provide enough information, do you understand the process low enough? Would you like me to provide more? And that gives you an opportunity to really tweak your style overtime? Okay, avery smart, and so so you’re not just doing this in one discreet conversation, but as you said, checking in overtime about about these things, too it’s a relationship, you’ve got to keep working on it. All right, excellent. Excellent. Um all right, let’s monisha you have cem cem rules about managing up. Why don’t you, uh, why don’t you start with the one about your manager committing yourself to manage his success? Yeah, so the number one rule is that you want your manager to be successful because if they’re successful, you’ll be successful. So the number one rule just commit yourself to your manager success and that you want to do your best to help set them up to be successful. What if? What if your your what if you’re an introvert and you’re on? Not like stephen, you know, close, but borderline, but you’re an extreme introvert and your boss is an extreme extroverts. Are you doomed? No, i don’t think so at all. You know, i’m a pretty strong extra burr and i’ve had people who work for me, who are introverts? And i remember one of them actually sitting me down and you know, i you know, i’m an introvert, and i like to take my time to processing. So, um, you know, the way i work best is if you want me back on something, if you could give me some time to think about it, um, i’ll come back with much better information that i feel i could do right in the moment and that’s just triggered for me like a new awareness. What a great way of heard a manage up to say like, this is something about me she also, you know, was doing her best to, um, adapt to my style and know that when she was giving me things that i would want to process out loud so she might give me something, and i wouldn’t review in advance. But when we were sitting down and talking to it together, i could really give her a lot of feedback on it. So i think you could have a great relationship with an introvert. Extrovert. Okay, steve, steven, you mentioned committing yourself to the organization’s success. What do you what? Do you? How do you commit yourself to your manager’s success? A manager? Yeah, well, first, i think i’ll sit down and try and understand what it is she’s trying to accomplish. Yeah, and i’m a big picture thinker, right? So i’m going to sit there and think, ok, what this ways that i could support that directly never roll. In addition of that, how can i help her build relationships, perhaps down the road? How could i strengthen relationships on our team? So that’s that’s not necessarily something she has to focus on for me, it’s very conversation driven i’m someone who loves to take the time to get to know all the fix working, and hopefully that helped her move along and in her in-kind anything else you want to add about your manager’s success? Monisha um, i think the other piece is finding the right balance, so you don’t agree with everything that your manager’s saying you’re asking you also not just fight about everything. So, um, committee yourself, commander, success doesn’t mean necessarily just being a yes person that’s really, that you respect them and that you want them and the organization to be successful, okay? How about the one about? Oh, you touched on this a little bit of owning the execution of the relationship we have there’s a couple things that are really important here, so i think one is really taking responsibility for the time you have is your manager. One of the biggest complaints we hear from people in our programs is their managers don’t do regular check ins with them, and you can take ownership of keep continuing to reschedule those and ask for those, um i know one of our fellows one’s had her check and rescheduled for three months, but she kept rescheduling it, and and then it happened, so making sure that your manager knows that you were still going to continue asking for that. Ah, and then when you do meet with your manager making good use of their time, so whether you’re in person or on the phone, sending them an agenda in advance and using the time to talk about issues or risk about the things that you’re working on together, you don’t have to use that time as an update or stuff that could be done over email. But what are the things that you really should be talking about and you could do a great job managing up by actually thinking that through the dance and the last thing to own execution of the relationship is really be dependable and build credibility. And so whether that’s sending drafts or things for your magic to review and to be honest about your capabilities, if your manager’s asked you to do something that you haven’t done before, you can let them know i haven’t done it before this time going to approach it, but it’s a way to really strength in that relationship. I love the idea of you providing agendas for your meetings with your boss. I don’t i don’t think that’s too common. Yeah, yeah. And i think it’s a great technique for managing up it’s also a great technique for managing down. So managers should ask for that. A swell as people should provide that for their manager. Steven, how about you, what’s your experience around around all these strategies that monisha shared? Oh, the agenda. Studying is definitely an expectation. Had excellent philanthropy, that’s. Something that is owned. Bye bye. The employees by the fix that are coming to this supervisors. That need it. We’re setting the purpose. We’re making it clear what that process is going to be for the conversation. And again thinking, how do we use this time? Most effective way? Yeah. Is that something you brought there or it was already in place? The agenda? You know, i think we have to think the management center for that they’ve got a great template. Actually, i don’t know if it’s available on their website, it might be worth reaching out to someone there to see if they share that. And where is that? Where is that stephen? In the management center, i believe. Based in washington, d c in washington, d c that one on one. Check in. Okay. Okay. Monisha, we have just like, a minute. A half or so left. You want to see a lot of communication? Yes. Um, this is the area where i think if people look at one thing they could do to manage a better it’s. Really? To think about how they can communicate effectively, how much information they should be providing what’s the best way to communicate with their manager. Think stephen mentioned. Is it? Email visit in person. Um and asking questions when your manager asks you to do something, part of the communication is asking questions. I understand what you’re doing as well. Demonstrate your thinking, you know, sometimes the questions will push your manager to think about things differently, so i feel like communication is probably the one area it’s someone to focus on managing up that they can really dio steven, i’ll give you the last word just about thirty seconds. You everything you’ve said has subsumed in community goodcompany cations yeah, that’s the foundation for that relationship. From my perspective, i’ll have to side with monisha on this one, uh, be more open you could be in your communication. I think the stronger the relationship could have particularly important things, uh, with any given, mission driven organization, or those two really embrace that and be as open as they can with their communications. Steven alexander, program manager at exponents, philanthropy, exponents, philanthropy dot or ge and he is at s a, l, x, n, d e r and monisha ca piela founder and ceo of proinspire proinspire dot or ge at proinspire and she’s at monisha ca piela stephen monisha thank you so, so much. For sharing. Thanks, tony. Thank you, tony. Night leisure. Outstanding. Thank you. Content creation and curation coming up first, pursuing and crowdster velocity is pursuing fund-raising management tool. It was created to help the pursuant consultants manage client campaigns, but the company found that the thing was so useful that they rolled it out so you can use it without a consultant. You don’t have to hire a consultant of theirs. You use it on your own. It’s your tools to keep you on task. Managing time against goal whether you’re a solo fundraiser or you’ve got a team of fundraisers. It’s a fund-raising management tool, it helps you raise more money. That’s velocity it’s at pursuant dot com crowdster peer-to-peer fund-raising do you have an event coming up? Do you want to engage your networks to expand your fund-raising for that event, maybe it’s an anniversary or five k run whatever you have coming up, join it, have it peer-to-peer funded crowdster will set you up with the tools and the sites on the dashboard that you need and this support that goes along with all those you could talk to the ceo he’s joe ferraro, joe dot ferraro. Crowdster dotcom tell him you’re from non-profit radio now, time for tony’s take two, be a non-profit radio insider now, if you’re listening podcast, you may not care about getting weekly insider alerts because you’re listening anyway, but if you’re listening live or you’re listening affiliate or if you’re listening podcast and you want to know what’s coming up before you hear it easy to do, i send insider alerts every thursday. You know who the guests are? You get early links to my videos, easy to sign up, go to tony martignetti dot com the e mail icon at the top right of the page, be a non-profit radio insider and that’s tony’s take two, we got to send the live listen love speaking of live and podcasts and affiliate if we’re going, we’re going to tease that if i’m gonna tease it, we’ve got to go all the way. Grateful love love going out to the live listeners, you know, the cities and states that you’re in, you know, the countries that you’re in very glad that you’re with us live listener love to you listening right now now, right? Right now, this second right now podcast pleasantries. Whatever second you listen whenever whatever timeframe, whatever time shift whatever device so glad that you are with us. Our podcast listeners. So grateful pleasantries to the over ten thousand of you and our affiliate am and fm station listeners affections out to you stations throughout the country. Remarkable community radio i love it. I love the mission of community radio and i’m so glad that you are listening on one of our am fm affiliate stations affections out to our affiliate audience. Here are megan murphy and lacey bagger from ntcdinosaur. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference we are in san jose, california, at the convention center and with me now are megan murphy and lacey bugger. Meghan is head of marketing and community handup and lacey seated for this for me is interactive content producer at w th a public television in washington d c meghan lacey, welcome hi. Thank you. Have you think having a thought here? Thank you. Your session topic is content creation and curation in the real world. Where do those tweets? Gifts and balog posts come from let’s? Start down the end there, lacey. What? What troubles do non-profits have around creation and curation? Well, i think i think it’s the same, you know, concerns and challenges. We haven’t a lot of other issues. We are living in an age where everyone is a publisher, everyone is creating content twenty four seven and we have small teams, small budgets and a limited amount of time to do this. But our audiences don’t know that our audiences want to hear from us. They want to, you know, see the same amount of things from us as they do from bigger organizations and brands. And how can we be strategic and nimble and have fun with doing this? Because it’s supposed to be fun? Okay, meghan, anything you want to add to an introduction? Sort of the problem statement or motivation statement. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, everything that lacey said time and budget is one of the biggest challenges. Andi, i mean, with the session, we just really want to focus on how you can kind of creatine scale this huge content marketing program with maybe just one person, maybe just five hours a week. Really? Okay. Five it’s. Probably one person. We recognize that. Ok. That’s. Very good, because the audience for non-profit radio is small and midsize non-profits so could very well be one person. It’s. Probably one person who wears five other hats. Besides being a constant creator, they probably have closely, like, sorry, i was going to say it. That’s probably one person who wears five different hats in their organization, and they have to do this in addition to being a marketer, being a pr person being three other things besides, a content producer might have hr also true. Okay, all right, so how do we know what our audiences are looking for? Megan, what type of content is appropriate before we start creating? Yeah, that’s a great question and it’s really important to know what your audience is going to respond. Tio what inspires them? What motivates them? I mean, you have to listen, i mean, wine, i think as an organization, you know, your target demographic is that’s a great place to start, but then who do you want your target demographic to be? Who else do you want to reach and think about how you can bring value to them? Ok, how do you assess what those who are not currently communicating with you are seeking? Sure, i mean, you have to get out there on the interwebs and see what people are posting what people are responding. Teo what’re they engaging on dh, honestly looking at similar organizations and seen what they’re doing? And what successful for them is a good indicator of what science says they’re responding. Teo as we’re doing this listening, we could be listening to hashtags, absolutely organization names sure what you know, see who’s who’s prominent on twitter in the cause absolutely influencers on twitter i am, i am subscribed to every newsletter that’s out there as well, just keeping an eye on where the conversation is, what trends are happening, what topics are happening, definitely hashtags following folks on twitter, following conferences like this as well to see what those topics and themes are okay. And lacey, how about on the side of people who are already be communicating with us? How do we assess what what their interests? Well, i think listening is definitely like megan said key, especially on the internet, it’s a very talkback culture, people will tell you what they want to hear and what they don’t like, and you should, you know, be responsive to that there’s going to be times where you have to do something that, you know, isn’t necessarily going to be, you know, internet popular because it’s an organizational priority, but for the flip side of that time, like if people if you’re if you know your audiences watch, is watching video, if you know they’re reading block post, where are they now? What kind of continuity consuming and how can you put your content into a space where they’re already living? Okay, i’ve had guests say that you need to meet your constituents where they are, not where you would like them to be? That is one hundred percent sure you’d like to be producing content and delivering exactly, although on the flip side of that i’d say if your you don’t have to be everywhere, i know that, and i’m going to date myself right now, i think, but snapchat is this cool new thing the kids are doing and i don’t understand chaps, snapchat, quite frankly, it frightens me that’s how i know i’m officially like an old now, but i know everybody all the all the, you know, brand industry people are like chase snapchat, chase snapchat and platforms that are like that. But if your audience isn’t there, you don’t need to be there if your audience isn’t, you know, young teens, young millennials, you don’t really need to do snapchat if it’s not a fit for you don’t force it, okay? Yeah, and just to add to that, i mean going rogue audiences and knowing that you might be one individual and you have limited time to to reach those audiences doubled down on the top two to three channels that work for you. Okay? Yes, focus. You know, i know my own experience for the for the chauffeur non-profit radio. You know, we have a facebook page because two billion people our there you have to, but we keep it fresh content every day, but it’s still not still not our priority. Twitter is because i have more fun on twitter and you love twitter love, twitter, i’m where no one will be able to see this right now, but the necklace that i’m wearing is actually my twitter handle. We’re shooting a video. So what is it like do-it-yourself shout out at lacey and be it will be a lot of notary about doctor who and benedict cumberbatch. So if that’s not your bag like you probably shouldn’t follow me. But twitter is so great and it’s it’s so immediate, like you’re actually just having a conversation with people who are interested in your organization, your mission, the stuff that you dio and they’re there to talk to you it’s so awesome! Yeah, it is. I love the immediacy of it and i find a hundred forty characters to be no limitation it all because you just carry on, so send multiple tweets and then move in private and then moved to email and then a phone call. I’ve gotten somebody guests that way. I’ve gotten sponsors sponsors to the show that way it starts with a tweet and it moves it moves in progress, you know, just progressive, you know, what’s. So amazing is how receptive people are on twitter. You could email someone twenty times, they’d never respond. You tweet out in once and they’re so excited you acknowledge them. It’s visual listening, basically like it’s and it’s, i’ve had people just, you know, favor and retweet me saying something like thanks for watching with us, which is like such a basic thing to say to someone, but it makes their day and i could do that and that’s amazing! I love that your necklace is your twitter idea. Yeah, it’s all it’s, my personal brand all the time. Not really. I just really i love twitter it’s a technology conference. It’s totally, totally appropriate. All right, i know. I forgot to put it on my business card, so i just wear it around. We’ll make it. Let me give you a shot. What? You want to shout your twitter handle since we’re talking about at megamerger, big bird, meg miree okay, okay. Okay, let’s, you know, let’s dive into this a little more deeper and listening. Listen, so many people talk about listening, but i don’t think there really such a good listener. What does it mean? Toe? Listen on the web, listen to a channel, anybody? Well, i think first you have to acknowledge that some of things you hear or not could be things that you like, and i think that sometimes hard for for organizational leadership to maybe here because we want to think that everyone loves us all the time and and that they don’t have, you know, criticisms that they want to share. So i think the first step is understanding that you’re going to hear some great stuff about your brand, and you’re going to have some not so great stuff about your brand and be okay with that, but that is an opportunity every time somebody tweet something negative about you or leaves you at negative facebook comment or whatever the platform is that’s an opportunity to improve, they like you well enough to have you take care of something time to do that. If they didn’t like you, they would just ignore it and yeah, the opposite of love is not hated. Indifference, indifference. Very good. Okay, yeah, yeah, i mean, it’s not but it’s opportunity to engage as well. I mean, they’ve they’ve giving you perhaps some constructive criticism, and you have that chance, too engage with them one on one and even turned them around. Take that feedback, but acknowledge on appreciate it. And ah, lot of times you know when i’ve responded, teo negative feedback in different ways, i i end up then creating a new, loyal member of my community. That’s a great point. Actually, there is sometimes so much value in turning someone around from someone who said something critical to say to you, but then they’re like, you know what? You really handled this criticism and and open and in a way that wants to move forward, and i respect that and i think that’s like that’s such a big step rather than just letting people shout into the void. Although sometimes you have to let people shout into the void because it’s either something you can’t change or there not shouting at you in a very constructive way. But no, you heard me and you spoke to me and you honored my criticism, and now i’m happy to still be part of the organization. It’s magnificent that’s. Outstanding that’s. So key. I mean, exactly what you said. You heard me, people just they want to be heard as long as it is constructive, right? Yeah. Back-up all right, so we know now we have sort of sense of where we should be creating content which channels. How about trying to optimize and leverage our internal resource is for content creation. So it isn’t just one person. How do we start to get some support? Oh, yeah. You have so much support on your team. They just don’t know it yet way. Empower them. And that’s it’s about it’s empowering them. It’s about inviting, you know, how do you even ask people if they want to contribute in different ways, figure out what may motivate them to want a right technical content or personal content or personal story. You can also go outside your organization, partner organizations. People are very responsive to guess. Posting so inviting people in your community to do guess pose on dh. Just help amplify your messages is definitely possible. Okay, there’s. Some tools. That we need teo, give them to empower them a simple camera or how are they going to start to create the content once they’re empowered? Well, first, i think you need to ask them because i think a lot of this is people don’t people in your organization may not know that there are these opportunities to be part of your content production chain, for example, we have we have a couple of blog’s on our website. One is local history based one is this one’s mine it’s ah, the anglophile british tv blawg, which is basically mean, turning out about down abila twentyfourseven but but there are people in our in our organization who are either big fans of, you know, british tv or their local history nards like find the people who are, you know, kind of nerds for the thing that you’re audiences into because i just started writing this block it wasn’t even part of my job originally, but that doesn’t even feel like work for me because i would do this anyway in my free time, right? But so there are going to be people in your organization who are like that for maybe. Not british tv, but whatever your thing is, so ask them number exactly what megan was saying. Find what motivates people, what would move them, too you to create some content for you. All right, yeah, and i would also just add, be open to what people might have to contribute. So you may not have even thought about increasing, you know, the photography and the imagery that you’re using. But you might have an amateur photographer on your team and making that connection and then letting them just go wild on what they can contribute. Okay? Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m rob mitchell, ceo of atlas, of giving. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent dahna okay. Going wild. Suppose it going a little too wild. And what they contribute is not gonna work for whatever reason out. How did we ever manage this diplomatically? Well, i guess there should always be guidelines in the beginning, right? You should talk about the goals and objectives for what you want to dio and go wild within those goals and objectives. And, of course, as the one person who’s in charge of your content creation, i mean, you’re still going to be the curator and the publisher, so maintain that control, just quality control. Okay? You have to make sure they know that. There’s there’s, somebody who’s who’s overseeing this was curating this and that. And that there’s sort of a consistent brand voice. Yeah. I mean, you’re a brand voice. Sounds very like marquetry, but it xero organization has has a voice that that they sort of used to speak to people. And it should all kind of toe that line. Okay. Okay. Um, any any good stories from inside organizations about having empowered non professional creators? Teo, contribute anything? Well, of course you had yours about. Yeah, we actually have interns like specific interns that sign up to do our local history blogged they’re like local student students from g w or local colleges, and they come to write history stories for us, and they get to go to the library of congress and nerd out in the reading room, and they’ve produced some really fantastic stuff. Okay, cool interns. Excellent. Yeah. Yeah. So we have similar, but we had individual working with us. So we build fund-raising tool specifically for human service agencies on we had someone that was working with us but also sitting in one of our partners offices essentially doing case management a swell. And we realized that she had this just wealth of experience and knowledge in terms of engaging with homeless individuals, and we saw an opportunity to start breaking down stereotypes. We asked her to to write a block posts about kind of a day as a case manager, and it was one of one of our top performing block posts. So that was kind of empowering and discoverable moments within our team. Yeah, outstanding. Alright. Very encouraging, hyre video or you’re doing much with video. We are. I mean, yes and no, there are some is a tv. Station it is but there’s weird internal things about production in our production office versus online production on our team. It’s very boring. I won’t tell you about it, but we do to a local siri’s called not that d c, which is our team’s effort to go out and find, you know, everybody has stereotypes of d c that we all wear, like in taylor pantsuits and and are just like political wonks, but so we made an effort to go out and find groups in our community who were doing very not d c things like the roller derby, for instance, on dh thie, my favorite was floating yoga, which were its people. Who do you go out in the potomac, which i don’t really recommend but go on the potomac on paddleboards and do yoga on the paddle boards? And so we did a whole little segment on them. It was it’s been kind of cool just to see these nitti things going on in the city that people don’t think, does that that’s? Yeah, meghan, any advice around video? Yeah, you know, we do a range of things from working with actual video production agencies that help us tell stories, teo helping our par runners and even ourselves just creating like short, digestible video content all from your iphone s so it’s it’s almost reminding people you’ve got this powerful tool on your phone and you can make great videos. They don’t have to be totally professional. Production value does not have to be exemplary. No people just want it to be authentic and genuine. And so you can push that stuff out there. And audiences so receptive to that. Okay, let’s. See what else? Wait, you were talking about repurpose ing content that we’ve already created, because that will help us not have tto continually generate new content. Megan, stay with you. What would you advice around with purpose? Ah, i would just once. I would just encourage people to re purpose. I think a lot of times you don’t realize spend time creating this piece of content. You share it. Once in, a lot of folks, forget that they can share it again. They can update it a couple of months later. They can add to it with relevant new, timely information. Um, honestly, i sew a quick example of this way. Published this. Post last year around valentine’s day around compassion and where that fits in with ending poverty and homelessness. Um, and i’ll be honest, we just re published that again around valentine’s day this year and, you know, maybe some folks saw it again, but kind of repurpose ing updating the title, updating again with some relevant stats and, you know, it’s five minutes instead of another hour doing hour and a half, creating a brand new piece of content, okay, especially something around a holiday it’s it’s fair to do it again, totally fair there’s so much stuff out there there’s so much people enjoy reading it again. Plus we have new members who who haven’t seen okay, you want to suggest something? I wasn’t i was at a conference last week, and they talked about the idea of stackable content, which i really like, where you take like the spirit of your two thousand word block post or whatever, and that can then become a two minute you know, youtube video it could become an instagram photo it could become a tweet like you khun, take one thing and turn it into six things you don’t need to make. Six separate things you just need to tailor that thing for the place that you’re putting it. Okay, any examples of that? You can share anything come to mind. I’m blanking on a lot of cold medicine right now. Wait till the end, but you’re rallying. You’re doing fine, occasional coughs, but i could turn your mic down quickly, doing fine. Okay, well, if you think of it free, are you solving another couple of minutes together? What have we not talked about? Round content, curation creation? What more can we sight? Come on, i’d say don’t be afraid because some freak don’t don’t be afraid to take risks and to just make something and see what happens. Because there it’s, especially with iphones like megan was saying before it’s so easy to come up with with a video or or just right like a quick block post and have fun with it like if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work and you just don’t do it again and sometimes things that you don’t know that are going to hit our huge like, for example, we made ah down abby personality quiz a couple of years ago, so sad down abby’s over, by the way and we just basically did it because we thought that it would be something fun to dio, but it was a huge hit for us because everybody else you know, sort of blonde onto it and loved it. And that was also luckily, right? When, like, personality quizzes were thing, but like, you can have fun with it and don’t be afraid to try some of it doesn’t work. Okay, i feel like i’m under pressure now to give you a chance to shout out downtown abbey for a fifth time. Ha ha. You haven’t haven’t quite exhausted your have lots of down. Abby started. It isn’t. I know. I know that way. We’d like to try to learn from some of them out. Anything you got, megan. Anything else that i add another? Yeah, another don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid if tio publish something that’s not perfect. It’s. Okay. I mean, a lot of especially when you’re a small team. It’s it’s. Kind of about speed, too. Right? Speed, speed and nimbleness. Nimbleness and quantity. A lot of times, too. Especially if you’re like. All right. It’s bog season let’s. Just get him. Going, don’t be scared if there’s a tie, paul hey, you can fix it later. And someone will tell you it’s only definitely tell you, but it’s cool it’s another opportunity to say thanks for reading written blog’s still still very popular. Oh yeah, actually, i think and i wrote the statue because i’m meaning to say it later, but i’m not going to remember it perfectly. Now i think our overall read website growth last year was fairly flat, but we had our two are two sort of nicci blog’s like that was where we saw the biggest both of those increased exponentially, while our actual website traffic didn’t go up that much like the audience is there for things that people are interested in also it’s content you own, which is great. Yeah, i mean, our block is a very great source of really drawing in new members to our community on once they’re there, and once there they feel like they’re getting valuable information, then you have a little marketing opportunity to convert someone. Okay, so you find the block is ah, first first page is a lot of people land on. Yes, definitely that’s how we’re bringing in top of the funnel because we’re creating content. That’s not, you know, hardcore marketing content. It’s educational, it’s, fun, it’s, informative people end up there and they go, oh, this is what’s handup about going to click around. Yeah, okay, let’s. See, we have i feel like another down to now be shot out. E gotta go satisfy my wife for i mean, that is what people used to ask me the most. When i met them, they would be like, oh, i work for w we do local public television, and people would always tell me one of two things they’d be like, i love sesame street, which or they would ask me, what’s gonna happen on down, abby, and i’m like, i don’t know, they don’t tell me, oh, all right, we’re gonna leave with the downturn, abby. Alright, well done, ladies, thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you, it’s fine. Megan murphy is head of marketing and community at the the fun cool place to check out handup and lisa baugur, interactive content producer w again. Public television, washington, d c cool, thank you very much, ladies. Thank you, tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference. Thank you for being with us next week, your little brand that can and the future of email. If you missed any part of today’s show, i castigate you find it on tony martignetti dot com. I need resolution. I need resolution. I don’t know the way forward, responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com, and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay crowdster dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez. On our music is by scott stein. Thank you, scotty. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful posts here’s aria finger, ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe, add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s, why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.
