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Nonprofit Radio for August 22, 2022: Accounting For Nonprofit Leaders

 

Tosha Anderson & Zanni Miranda: Accounting For Nonprofit Leaders

In our penultimate #22NTC show, Tosha Anderson and Zanni Miranda introduce key accounting concepts to help nonprofit leadership avoid the common pitfalls they see. Tosha is CEO of The Charity CFO and Zanni is with Nonprofit Solutions.

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[00:01:51.40] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of pseudo papillae Dema if I saw that you missed this week’s show Accounting for nonprofit leaders in our penultimate 22. NTC show Tasha Anderson and Zanny Miranda introduce key accounting concepts to help nonprofit leadership avoid the common pitfalls. They see Tasha is ceo of the charity CFO and Zanny is with nonprofit solutions on tony take to the endowment excitement webinar, we’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c. O. And by fourth dimension technologies I. Tion for in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three d but they go on to mention deeper here is accounting for nonprofit leaders. Welcome to nonprofit radio coverage of 22 N. T. C. The 2022 nonprofit technology conference. My guests now are Tasha Anderson and Zanny Miranda. Tasha is founder and ceo of the charity cf. Oh Zanny Miranda is operations Manager at nonprofit solutions. Tasha Zani. Welcome to nonprofit radio Thank

[00:02:05.94] spk_1:
you for having us. Yeah,

[00:02:07.50] spk_2:
thank you so much for having us on

[00:02:11.89] spk_0:
pleasure. I’m glad we’re gonna talk about this. But 10 things every nonprofit leader should know about their accounting

[00:02:17.66] spk_1:
Alright.

[00:02:23.44] spk_0:
I I suspect this is an often ignored um ignored area by by nonprofit leaders until there’s some kind of a problem I guess or until the the 9 90 has to be filed, you know, so maybe once a year they become, or maybe there’s board reports, but in between all that, um I suspect it’s ignored. Uh Tasha, do I have that? You’re nodding? Is that

[00:03:12.03] spk_1:
yeah, I think, yeah, I think it’s ignored because it’s for a lot of small organizations. It’s not their primary role. It’s not what they’re experienced in. It’s not their skill set and it becomes one of those things, it’s not an immediate issue. It’s not something I’m particularly good at, it’s something I’m gonna have to teach myself and I’m gonna have to um very kind of the procrastination that I put into it. And then it’s when things kind of abrupt Show up like our 9 90 return or we realized we have an audit or our books have gotten further and further behind and now we have to hurry up and scramble for that, you know, board meeting or something to that effect. Um that’s kind of best case scenario. Um worst case scenarios are other more significant things that might come up with our accounting. Um that that all of a sudden becomes more of a priority.

[00:03:34.21] spk_0:
Like, alright, we’re focused on motivation. What are what are one or two of those worst case scenarios?

[00:04:46.20] spk_1:
Well, some of those worst case scenarios, I think more abruptly we get a lot of clients that work with us that have a lot of government funding and government funding usually includes um some pop up surprise what they call site visits. So if you anticipate uh your site visit or kind of your audit, I use the word loosely with audit. But if you expect your funder to show up on, you know, this period and then they end up coming in sooner or more regularly, either normal or whatever. They just changed their protocol and you’re not prepared for that. That then calls into question your ability to manage the program, your ability to manage the finances of that particular program. And we’ve seen organizations be at risk for losing their funding. And we’ve seen that more often than not, which we’ve kind of talked about and the original presentation that Danny and I did some of the challenges around um not just, you know, keeping caught up with the accounting, but the succession planning um in the transition. I mean, we’re in the midst of what they call the great recession. And so what organizations do that put all of their eggs in one basket with respect to this kind of swiss be nice if you will position that holds also financial management. And when those positions turn over, we’ve seen organizations find themselves really vulnerable situations and it becomes very apparent when it’s time to start sending those periodic reports to your funders or when they start to come out, when you look at your records, it’s a problem.

[00:05:06.79] spk_0:
You’re referring to the great resignation. You mean succession planning. Okay.

[00:05:16.60] spk_1:
I’m

[00:05:35.54] spk_0:
listening. I’m listening channel. I’m channeling listeners. They’re gonna say, wait, great recession. That was many years. Alright. We know we know what you meant. Alright. So Zanny, why don’t you why don’t you kick us off? We got 10 things people are supposed to know nonprofit leaders are supposed to know. So let me ask you before we kick off with our our list. Is this specifically the C the C. E. O. Are we, are we at that level? You know, listeners here are small and midsize nonprofits. So that could be like one or two people up to. I mean 100 or 250 employees could be a midsize nonprofit. Are we in the meat with this? We’re talking about nonprofit leaders. I assume we are.

[00:05:57.71] spk_1:
I

[00:05:57.89] spk_2:
actually think that this information can be for any leader that is self designated or you know, does hold one of those executive positions. I think what we share in this presentation is really about making sure everyone is on the same page across the entire organization. So it’s really for anyone,

[00:06:28.03] spk_0:
uh, with, uh, okay. But we don’t want our Ceo and other other C suite executives ignoring these things. Certainly.

[00:06:30.92] spk_2:
No. Okay.

[00:06:32.33] spk_0:
Okay. All right. So why don’t you kick us off? What’s uh, what’s your

[00:06:37.25] spk_2:
first one is definitely benchmarks and metrics and making sure that you have defined expectations about what those are and how they fit with your organization and I’ll actually pass this one over to Tasha because this is definitely her area of expertise as the C. P. A expert.

[00:07:54.23] spk_1:
Yeah, sure. Uh, so really what we mean by defining benchmarks? Oftentimes, what we see is that not just the tactical work of bookkeeping and accounting is delegated to one individual, but almost the full financial management and responsibility. Understanding how much money is in the bank account. Are we receiving the funding that we thought we were, Are we utilizing the contracts that we’ve committed to our to our funders? Really high level, even where we are with our fundraising goals. And I’ve personally been someone that kind of delegated that responsibility and financial oversight. And I just think it’s imperative whether you’re a for profit business and non profit business at the end of the day, it’s a tax designation. It’s not just because you’re a nonprofit, you should not be delegating full financial ownership and responsibility of your organization to one single person. This is really where that leadership at the ceo level or executive director level, there needs to be some understanding of what your benchmarks are. What are you trying to measure in the holding people accountable to it? And I’ve seen so often where the accountant or the bookkeeper is delegated the responsibility of the budget and they might be doing the bookkeeping in the reconciliations and all that. But is anybody really looking at that budget and holding anybody accountable to it? So what we’re really encouraging is that the leader, you need to understand where things are and what expectations do you have? What processes do you have in place to make sure that you’re moving in the right direction? So

[00:08:19.70] spk_0:
following the budget doesn’t belong with the bookkeeper.

[00:08:23.50] spk_1:
The

[00:08:23.97] spk_0:
bookkeeper does the work.

[00:08:49.29] spk_1:
Yes, the bookkeeper prepares the reports, diving into Why is this off from what we expected? That is joint ownership, frankly, in my opinion, from from the individuals that are charged with that. So your program team, maybe your fundraising team. And I recognize we’re talking with small to middle size at a minimum. The Ceo is looking at this or the executive director and so often times I see uh leadership teams that are just delegating that responsibility and they’re not really immersing themselves in the financial management, the way that I think they should

[00:09:00.00] spk_0:
be alright. You didn’t have to, you know, you two don’t have to go in sequence. You could have picked one that you’re, that you’re an expert on. You know, you don’t have to do it the same sequence. You did it in your in your in your seminar. Alright.

[00:09:13.07] spk_2:
Well, I definitely wanted to make sure Tasha kind of came from the C P a standpoint,

[00:09:18.39] spk_0:
you know, make

[00:09:21.36] spk_2:
sure they all knew, Yeah,

[00:09:22.75] spk_0:
she’s the charity. CFO so

[00:09:24.30] spk_2:
she knows what she’s talking

[00:09:26.01] spk_0:
about

[00:10:08.64] spk_2:
and I have to say I come from the small nonprofit side. So we have a mighty team of three full time and one part time person. So we are, you know, definitely representative of some of the groups that are probably listening. So and these are all things, these are all things that we have learned through working with Tasha that um are very important and we went through a transition and planning and uh had a transition in leadership which then created a transition into changing our bookkeeper um to the charity CFO. So we went through a lot of what we’re talking about in terms of the the sort of scarier situations of how did we get ourselves in this situation? What does this all mean? Where all the, you know, how do we get everybody on the same page? So we definitely learned our lessons.

[00:10:21.81] spk_0:
Let pick one that you are familiar with that you can talk about what’s next.

[00:11:23.37] spk_2:
Yeah, let me take a look. So I know that so kind of speaking about like getting into a sticky situation or number four is I would have understand my compliance needs. And I think that when you do like Tasha was saying, when you have those government funders or even really complicated funding grants from foundations, sometimes they require progress reports, they require year end um reports that can be really calm complicated to do at the last minute and they can be really complicated if you have not set yourself up for success at the very beginning. And so one of the things that we sort of have said is that you really need to take a look at what the grant is requesting from you when they’re, when you’re in that grant search process. And before you apply or maybe right after you apply, making sure that you’ve got things set up with your accountant and things set up in your chart of accounts to make sure that when you’re going through and processing and actually spending money related to these grants, you’ve got everything in place, you know, from the onset, so that it makes it a lot easier to pull those reports and to get that information instead of scrambling and going through, you know, a year’s worth of credit card receipts.

[00:11:50.57] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:11:53.20] spk_2:
Mentioned

[00:12:17.33] spk_0:
compliance. And there’s, there’s state state laws also depending on what state you’re in. You know, there are, there are the laws that you have to be registered in each state where you solicit donations, that whole charity registration morass that I used to have as part of my practice. Um, you know, keeping keeping track of that. Um, there, there could be, uh, other, I mean, there are federal, there are federal rules that have to stay in compliance with, so there’s, there’s a lot, there’s a lot in that word, compliance.

[00:12:35.20] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. It’s not just the funding that you get, it’s making sure that, you know, the things that you’re doing are following the law all year, not just when someone comes knocking

[00:12:43.02] spk_0:
and and Tasha, these often come up in audits right? They’ll be they’ll be uh I forget with the technical terms, but they’ll be like memo items in uh report items in an audit that you know, you’re not in compliance with something here. Things like

[00:14:10.94] spk_1:
that. Yeah, findings. And what’s really interesting. I have a funny story when so I used to be a CFO of a non profit organization and we had 14 different government contracts that were a little larger probably than maybe an average listener. We’re about, you know, 6 to 8 million a year. And uh that’s that’s that’s to me that seems large because so many organizations are much smaller than that. But really that’s not huge and what’s really, we went through every single one of our program contracts and wrote down all of the things we’re responsible reporting out to them. So not just on the financial compliance side but also like program outcomes and those sort of things. Anyway, we had five pages front and back on an Excel spreadsheet when we printed it out was five pages, front and back of all of the things that we were responsible for reporting out to someone. And so the more more complex your funding gets, whether it’s multiple foundations or government funding sources. When we hear the word audit. I think we think at the end of the year we have a C. P. A firm that comes in and does an audit. But oftentimes what people don’t realize that you may have multiple audits or inspections or reviews or whatever word you want to use for the same funding, right? You might get um, you know, kind of beat up at a local level through some pass through fun. Then you might have that sourced through the feds and then the feds might come in and do an audit, right? And then your auditors that come in at the end of the year that you hire will also do an audit. So I think that sometimes I’ve seen our clients not necessarily read the fine print of those grant agreements to know what they’re going to be responsible for doing and what frequency. So they find themselves kind of working reactively and scrambling to get that stuff.

[00:15:57.46] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications media relationships and thought leadership. You need one to get the other. You got to have the media relationships. So you get exposure and become the thought leader. Turn to will help you build those relationships. They’re former journalists themselves. And by the way, as you’re getting that exposure, they’ll help you craft your messaging. You get the increased exposure. You’re seen as a thought leader in your field. The thought Leader, the thought leader in your field, they can make it happen. Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to accounting for nonprofit leaders. You wanna know as any said, you want to know ahead of time what the requirements are. First to make sure that you can comply with them. You have the infrastructure either internally or or through a provider to do it, you know, and if it’s if it’s beyond you, then that that’s not a grant that you should be applying for because you can’t keep up with the I mean the money may look nice, but you can’t keep up with the back end requirements and you’re gonna end up in a bad situation. Okay.

[00:15:58.93] spk_1:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:16:00.26] spk_2:
Absolutely. No.

[00:16:01.56] spk_0:
In advance. I’m sure this especially applies to a government, a government agency. Yeah.

[00:16:07.28] spk_1:
And that’s funny. We we talked about that a little bit in our session just because there’s money available may not be a good deal. Just what you’re doing, not just the infrastructure. Um, there’s a lot of considerations where it might make sense for an organization to not accept funding. Um, it just doesn’t make sense. And asking ourselves those hard questions before we just

[00:16:25.90] spk_0:
before, Yeah. Look, look closely at what your obligations, your responsibilities are gonna be. All right. All right, well, let’s stay with you, Tasha. Why don’t you give us another another thing. Leadership should know about.

[00:17:33.03] spk_1:
Alright. I think another thing that leaders don’t always realize again, because most leaders of nonprofit organizations, they don’t come from the financial business management side of the biz right? Oftentimes you’ll see leaders that maybe come from the programmatic side of things. Um, and that’s fantastic for a lot of reasons. But what I think some people default to hearing, well this just can’t be done or this financial report can’t be created in the way that you want. And I really encourage leaders of organizations again, to define those expectations of what they’re looking for and ask their account to develop tools that help them measure if we’re on track or not. And this is usually by way of financial reports. And I hear this all the time. Tasha, you know, I get the standard set of financial reports from my accountants. It doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t make sense to my board. We don’t know where we’re at, we don’t know which direction we’re heading and what I tell people all the time that financial reports, Yes, your auditors will require to look in this perfect box and it has to look exactly like that. But that’s for the outside world. Think about what your organization needs internally and create those measurements, those tools, those financial reports. That makes sense for you internally. So that you can make business decisions based upon that and what a lot of people don’t realize.

[00:17:52.75] spk_2:
We

[00:18:53.12] spk_1:
Have over 150 clients. Probably many, if not all of them have some level of customization to their reports. So they need to get reports that make sense to them, not already nonprofits have to have the same internal financial statements. In fact, you shouldn’t have the same internal financial statements and start asking yourself what do you need to see? So I’ll give you an example. I have one organization that was really, really cash strapped. They had all the revenue sources in place. They could not understand why are we cash poor, Why do we not have any money? And the reality. After a quick look at some of the financial reports, I realized they were building their funders but they were never collecting them. There were some issues with the quality of their invoicing and some problems they weren’t troubleshooting and poor training and just some other issues that are actually pretty easily fixed. But going forward once we were able to get caught up on that building, the ceo want to make sure that never happened again. So she wanted to make sure she got a detailed listing of what invoices were still outstanding because she started understanding the, the, the timing of when payments were expected to come in and once things started to go off track

[00:18:59.15] spk_0:
basically

[00:18:59.70] spk_1:
immediately, basically

[00:19:01.09] spk_0:
talking about tracking your accounts payable.

[00:19:02.88] spk_1:
Yeah, accounts receivable in this case or payable

[00:19:14.25] spk_0:
receivable? Your receivables? Yeah. I took, I took accounting for poets in college. So I do remember that, um, assets equal liabilities plus owner equity. Is that still true?

[00:19:19.74] spk_1:
That is true.

[00:19:20.97] spk_0:
Axiom still still valid. Like a law of physics doesn’t change. Okay.

[00:19:25.52] spk_1:
In the nonprofit world, we say we don’t have equity because there’s no ownership. But the concept is still the same. We called net assets in the nonprofit world, but the concept is still the same

[00:19:34.74] spk_0:
assets equals net assets. Oh no, we

[00:19:37.60] spk_1:
called the net assets. Yeah.

[00:19:39.61] spk_0:
But the other side is assets, assets equals net assets.

[00:19:43.54] spk_1:
You could do assets minus liabilities equal net assets or assets, you know, equal, you know, however you want to do the algebra of the formula, you could say in multiple different ways. But um, yeah, we say assets minus liabilities equals net assets, but

[00:19:58.75] spk_0:
assets, my stuff, that makes sense to me, assets. Everything you have minus what you owe your liabilities, which I know, I know I’m grossly oversimplifying by when I said what? You know, but again, I took accounting for poets. So you’ll have to excuse that. I’m trainable. I guess I wasn’t, uh, yeah, equals your net assets. Right. Everything you have minus what you owe is is the net

[00:20:21.20] spk_1:
okay.

[00:20:22.47] spk_0:
We don’t have to go any deeper than that. We shouldn’t.

[00:20:24.85] spk_1:
No one wants to hear that. But

[00:20:26.63] spk_0:
Not profit leaders should not profit leaders should, I’m not a nonprofit leader. So I’m not, I’m not on the hook for this. Alright. Um, name another one. Somebody. Somebody throw out another another top 10.

[00:21:32.17] spk_2:
Well, I think, um, following up to sort of, what Tasha was already saying is that you can have all those in place, but if you don’t have anyone, um, doing checks and balances or even around to take over key processes. If someone goes or if someone’s out on vacation, that’s a really major risk. You know, we were in the training or the workshop last week and a lot of people really resonated with this, you know, don’t burn out the one person you have on your team who knows how to do payroll? Who knows how to do vendor payments? Who knows how to do the bank deposits. There can’t be just one person on your team who knows how to do all these things. There needs to be some, you know, some thought to succession planning. Some thought too. Um,

[00:21:32.59] spk_0:
or not even not even succession planning, just like you said vacation.

[00:21:36.04] spk_2:
Yeah, just process documentation.

[00:21:38.00] spk_0:
You know, we got somebody goes out on maternity leave. We still have to process, we still have to process vendor purchase orders.

[00:21:52.11] spk_2:
Yeah, we had someone chat in the comments saying I’m going out on maternity leave, but I still have to process payroll, which is not

[00:21:53.91] spk_0:
great.

[00:22:14.59] spk_2:
That’s not great for your staff’s morale. So definitely just making sure you’ve got some of those basic processes written down, trained, um, cross trained with different people and having backups in place so that people can take a break and people can, you know, not have that looming over their head when they’re supposed to be on maternity leave

[00:22:20.03] spk_0:
or, or

[00:22:21.18] spk_2:
family leave, you know, it’s not sustainable.

[00:22:37.49] spk_0:
Um, I have seen that too, in, in uh, clients that I’ve worked with. I do plan giving fundraising. Um, and you know, we have, we need vendor, we have vendors, there might be, there’s, uh, you know, there’s a company that that manages the soft that provides the software for playing giving calculations. Well that purchase order has to be paid. You know, my purchase order has to be

[00:22:49.87] spk_2:
paid. It

[00:22:51.37] spk_0:
seems sometimes to be one person who can do it and we’re all, we’re all screwed if that person is busy or away or whatever. Alright, let’s stick with you. Give us another one.

[00:23:26.25] spk_2:
Sure. Another thing that you brought up was having the right software to use. So, um, you know, we found when we were in our sort of leadership transition in our, uh, you know, transition between bookkeepers. We just had someone who was, you know, taking our information and then,

[00:23:27.07] spk_0:
you know,

[00:23:27.81] spk_2:
kind of piecemeal putting it together, like looking at the paper receipts, looking at this and really it’s just not sustainable long term to do that. And there are so many options with technology

[00:23:38.44] spk_0:
now to

[00:23:39.84] spk_2:
really make the transition easier. And a lot of nonprofits do qualify for

[00:23:46.85] spk_0:
discounts

[00:24:08.43] spk_2:
for some of these larger tech companies, they have a lot of for profit people using their services. So they, most of the time will have a nonprofit discount or even offer their their software for free. And really it just becomes a matter of making sure that the people in your organization are up to speed. And um, I think Tasha had an incredible case study that she shared about what, how she saw this kind of go sideways um, in her own practice. Okay,

[00:24:35.66] spk_0:
Natasha before you tell that story, aren’t there? There’s also scores of smaller companies that are devoted to nonprofit financial management we through the years. And non profit radio I’ve had one or maybe two of them as sponsors. You know, there they’ll say that, you know, quickbooks is basically they’re they’re, they’re thinking is Quickbooks is not made for non profits. You have to be able to do fund accounting and things and you know, so we’ve got, we’ve got the software solution that’s an accounting financial management devoted to non profits. You don’t have to modify Quickbooks or Intuit or something. Or maybe intuit’s Quickbooks, I don’t even know.

[00:24:58.47] spk_2:
But

[00:25:03.05] spk_0:
counting for poets, but you know, um, so you don’t have to use these major companies that there’s smaller, smaller apps devoted to nonprofit financial management. Right?

[00:26:34.72] spk_1:
That’s right. That’s right. And it’s funny, I was gonna talk a little bit about that because I think that there are a lot of organization accountants that will say nonprofit accounting is super special and we have to have everything special. Um, and I, I don’t disagree with that completely. But the challenge is it creates a, it creates barriers for nonprofit organizations to be able to um work with some of these providers, especially if the proprietor like proprietary software or things of this nature, What I try to do with our clients is create software solutions that can work with nonprofits have a really low cost point price point on those things. And more importantly, the software is very user friendly. There’s a lot of free training resources. So we actually use Quickbooks. I’m not being paid to say that I have no formal partnership with Quickbooks, but I like the software because if they needed to bring their accounting back in house when working with us, they could find bookkeepers or accountants that have experience with with Quickbooks. And so sometimes I think it’s a matter of preference. I say as an account that has my own preferences for how I like to do things. I think it’s, I can say that, but what I think is um important for nonprofits to understand what technology is available out there to Sandy’s point and how can they use that to alleviate some of the manual um time consuming task going back to not burning out your one person that does everything. If you can find ways to autumn streamline that they can maybe focus on bigger value added work or just simply take a breather or focus on work that feeds their soul a little bit more than just doing data entry into the accounting. So

[00:26:50.44] spk_0:
Okay, Zanny said you have a story well

[00:26:51.15] spk_1:
in this particular case. Sure. Yeah, sure. So

[00:26:54.90] spk_0:
speaking

[00:26:55.97] spk_1:
of tedious work that burns people out and it’s very time consuming. So I started working with an organization way way back many, many years ago and

[00:27:04.76] spk_0:
they, this is not, this is not a story about.

[00:27:07.30] spk_2:
No not

[00:27:12.05] spk_0:
but it’s not okay.

[00:27:14.12] spk_1:
No I have a friend. No it’s

[00:27:15.73] spk_0:
not. Yeah

[00:29:06.76] spk_1:
exactly. No it’s about software and how software can change how we do things. So I started working with an organization which actually is now a client of ours um in a very contract away a few years ago and we realized that they were heavy credit card users, credit cards are debating the existence of all accountants out there for every nonprofit. I promised you can quote me on that. I’m sure. Uh And the problem is that there’s not a good system for collecting the receipts, it’s very manual. Um You have got a copy, you gotta scan, you got a code, you got to get into all the people. Anyway, they have about 20 credit cards that have hundreds if not thousands of transactions a month. The accountant, the finance director um is they hired that person for that high level skill analysis, Financial thought leadership. That person was spending a good week of her month. So 25% of her working days, reconciling and tracking down all of these hundreds of receipt if not thousands depending on the time of the year. And one of the things that we immediately realized this person actually left the organization and the organization was left scrambling trying to replace it. And one of the things we realized immediately, we could save a lot of time. If we just have software, your team is already making copies of the recedes, forwarding it to the account, the account has to use all these Softwares to stamp it with electronic approvals and all that. We could replace that whole manual back and forth email flurry of system with the software, like many of nonprofits out there now use things like expensive fi or dext or or something like this where the user of the credit card actually just takes an image identifies what type of expense it is if it’s designated to a specific funder, um, if it’s restricted or not and then submits it off to the accountant and the accountant just matches them up with what’s actually ending the bank account. So this whole flurry of hundreds and hundreds of unnecessary emails, all of this monotonous detailed work that you’re bogging your accountant down with. Um, now has freed up their time to be able to do other things. In this case, it actually saved them cost because we don’t have to do that much work and it’s not as labor intensive, but if you did have somebody in house that you wanted them to focus on higher value work that that’s more valuable to the organization. You can use technology to do that sort of thing. So I’ll echo what Danny had said.

[00:30:27.33] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies. The free offer. It’s still out there exclusively for nonprofit radio listeners, complimentary 24 7 monitoring of your I. T. Assets for three months. They’ll monitor your servers, network and cloud performance, they’ll monitor your backup performance all 24 7. If there are any issues, they’ll let you know ASAP and you will get a comprehensive report on how you’re doing at the end of the three month monitoring. And they’re gonna throw in a few surprise offers as well. It’s complimentary, it’s on the listener landing page, tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant mention deeper. Let’s return to accounting for nonprofit leaders. Tasha, name those couple of resources that folks could look at again.

[00:31:03.46] spk_1:
So again, I like kind of uh out of the box like package is really easy to use expensive. Fi is a really popular one. Um dext formerly known as receipt bank is one. So those are two that work really well with Quickbooks are very user friendly. Um, you can have your people that use credit cards a lot of times they’ll have like apps on their smartphones and so they just take a picture of it while they’re out spending, you know, the money rather than worrying about lost receipts and things like that. So those are two really common ones that are again, really low price point and easy to implement. Easy to use

[00:31:09.49] spk_0:
is dexter D. E. X.

[00:31:11.25] spk_1:
T. That’s right, yep.

[00:31:12.88] spk_0:
Okay. And expense if I. Okay. Yeah. Alright let’s stay with you. Tasha give us another, we’re halfway through our list by the way I’ve been keeping track,

[00:31:22.99] spk_1:
we’re not combining any of these.

[00:31:24.99] spk_0:
Alright if we end up as long as

[00:31:26.49] spk_1:
well we’ll tell you when we run out,

[00:31:29.94] spk_0:
as long as we cover the content. You know it doesn’t we end up doing them uh 10 things but we ate you know ate under eight topics as long as as long as you’re not holding back on non profit radio listeners that

[00:31:39.14] spk_1:
we’re not holding.

[00:31:40.16] spk_0:
That’s my concern. That’s my audit. That is my benchmark. Is that the content is there doesn’t have to be under 10 distinct rubrics. But we have done five anyway. Alright.

[00:34:04.12] spk_1:
Okay so the next one I would say uh that uh nonprofits don’t necessarily realize that there’s not a one size fits all with accountants. And I think I realized this when I started hiring my own accountants and staffing um the work as the charity CFO for on behalf of our other clients. And what do I mean by this like any profession accountants and their experiences, skills and expertise vary. So I kind of divide up in this 80 20. Roll the infamous 80 20 rule 80% of accounting is very transactional input output. You need somebody that’s very good at attention to detail, very consistent, very reliable thrives and routine. They like doing the same things over and over again. There are a lot of accountants out there like that. Um They do a great job Then there’s like the 20% of accounting, that’s the creative accounting but not you know, go to jail creative accounting. I’m talking moving the needle with the organization, building better budgets, building financial models, really thinking how we can implement best practices or re imagining what our accounting function can look like implementing software. For example these are the visionaries. If you will, you can probably guess which one of those I am. I find that most organizations, all organizations need both of those skill sets, the challenge is oftentimes, although the label on the title on the resume or the job is accountant or CFO or controller or whatever, but the reality is there’s two different types of accountants. Now, some people could try to do both but that’s not where their skill set is. So if you took someone like me a 20% and you put me in a job where 80% of my time is doing, you know, detailed work on routine tasks. I’m not gonna stick around for a long time, I want to do things that feed my soul and on the flip side if you take a more transactional tactical accountant, that’s really good and you expect them to solve all of your financial world problems, you’re probably not going to get as far as you would hope. And I think that many organizations think that they could hire an accountant to do all of those things and and I think that that’s not realistic and that’s why we see some turnover in these roles um or organizations struggle with, I just need somebody that does both of these things. And I don’t think people really realize that accountants are not all the same. And so many organizations, money is not such an abundance that we can just both of those accountants.

[00:34:13.35] spk_0:
So

[00:35:27.46] spk_1:
a lot of nonprofits have to decide what’s most important. How can I get both of those um Accounting needs met tactical detail because that’s 80% of the work, you know keep the wheels turning and the bills paid. Um and but how can I also get that financial thought leadership that I’m looking for. So what I’ve seen in some cases that organizations will maybe higher and operate person, I just did a podcast the other day saying like nonprofits are quitting their accountant and what I meant by that is non profits are moving um similar to Danny actually probably speak better to this than I organizations are moving to more of an operations person that’s kind of the hub and spoke and they’re outsourcing outsourcing some of that technical work right? Maybe it’s hr maybe it’s accounting, maybe it’s I. T. But you still have somebody that can maybe do some of the tactical work because they’re on the front lines. They’re interacting with the staff in a more significant way. Or maybe they’re outsourcing that financial thought leadership. Or maybe they have a financial thought leadership in house but they’re using some other staff people to help do some of the bookkeeping. So that again you keep people doing what they do best um and creating work that’s meaningful for them. So not all accounts are created the same.

[00:35:31.32] spk_0:
Not all made the same

[00:35:32.19] spk_1:
as the biggest takeaway.

[00:35:33.35] spk_0:
Alright. Um I have to ask though, are there any accountants who would say I’m in the 80%?

[00:35:39.97] spk_1:
Absolutely.

[00:35:41.15] spk_0:
I’ve got a whole team.

[00:35:42.20] spk_1:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny because I have 32 employees and I would say probably 70% of my staff falls into that and we need to make sure that people see a path that they can take on additional responsibilities but not so much that they’re gonna be overwhelmed. Um

[00:35:59.67] spk_0:
I thought maybe all accountants think they’re in the creative,

[00:36:03.16] spk_1:
definitely not.

[00:36:06.28] spk_0:
Not that they actually are but that they think they are. It’s it’s a self image question.

[00:36:10.31] spk_1:
Well that’s a great point. I sometimes think as accountants are known to have maybe inflated egos of herself. If I dare to

[00:36:20.20] spk_0:
say. All right. That’s that’s where it was coming. That’s where I was coming

[00:36:22.06] spk_1:
from not

[00:36:23.07] spk_0:
where they are but where they think they are. All right, well, we’ll uh we’ll concede that you’re definitely in the 20% because you you can’t run a company called the charity CFO if if you’re if you’re not be the otherwise you’d be the charity bookkeeper,

[00:36:37.98] spk_2:
you’re

[00:36:39.11] spk_0:
not the charity bookkeeper. Alright. Um Danny, you want to contribute something.

[00:38:53.16] spk_2:
Yeah. So, you know, as Tasha was talking and and sort of talking about how, you know, technology needs. Like everyone can just use decks to take a picture and know what account to send it to and have everything all easy peasy kind of ready to go and like technology takes care of it, blah blah blah. Well, you can really get yourself into trouble if you don’t actually know what the structure of your accounting system is. So let’s say you have a program person who is using dext or even just you know, trying to code something on their receipt to share with their accountant. But they put the wrong chart of accounts. Well, the accountants just gonna do what the person told them to do. Say, okay, it’s in this one you told me to put it in there. Um And you don’t want them to be creative with that. You want the budget to match the chart of accounts. You want the chart of accounts and all of the expenses to go to the right place. But you don’t really know if that’s going to happen correctly. If you don’t train the people on the ground making the expenses sending in receipts if they don’t have the right information and you’re not kind of sharing that widely and having everyone understand with the chart of just the very basic things are and what, how to code things for your accountant. You’re really gonna get way off by the end of the year, you’re gonna, it doesn’t matter what fancy technology you have or if you have a 20% or 80% accountant, they’re doing what you’ve asked them to do. And so making sure that you’ve kind of got everybody buttoned up and, and learning what the basics are for your chart of accounts. And there’s not gonna be uh, one size fits all, like list of chart of account for every organization. That’s definitely something that comes out of programming comes out of requirements from your funders, It’s all related to your specific business. So we definitely went through some growing pains as we transitioned and had to essentially redo a lot of our chart of accounts because we realized our accountant that we had previously was sort of getting a little creative about which we didn’t provide any direction. And so they got creative on each month where these different same expense was going in a different chart. And so you have to sort of figure out how to unravel that. And then if it gets too far down the line, it’s really hard to do, it takes

[00:39:22.55] spk_0:
a lot, I don’t I don’t quite understand this one that you have to, you have to, so so you can educate me the way we were all supposed to educate the people who are spending the money when you say the chart of accounts, what why? I don’t understand why this is to everybody who’s out spending money, like you said, share the structure of your accounting system with widely, I don’t I don’t see what why that’s important.

[00:40:27.22] spk_2:
So let’s say, I mean I do this on a regular basis, so this is sort of my job is to make sure everyone in our organization knows what’s going on and how things code correctly. So, you know, let’s say at the beginning of the year, we’ve coded our organization provides professional development training, leadership training and um does some consulting work related to that as well. So we take a lot of our programming and we’ll bring it in house to people. So those are two different things. We have workshops that are open to the public and we have specialized consulting work that we do. So let’s say we have a consultant or a facilitator that we’ve hired to do a workshop. Well we’ve got a different chart of accounts essentially for saying how to split that consultants time. So we have one bucket that says, oh this is our consulting expense. But if you just put it in there and say, oh that’s a consulting expense or you know, this is a hired outside facilitator that we’ve brought in. But we don’t say whether it was for our workshops or for the, you know, the on site consulting specialized work that we’ve been contractually obligated to do with an organization.

[00:40:47.28] spk_0:
How

[00:40:48.49] spk_2:
are you going to know how much you spent

[00:40:50.86] spk_0:
for

[00:41:12.37] spk_2:
each of those different program types? So you really can have, and we have the same facilitators and they do different types of work for us at at all times, but we want to know at the end of the year what was our expense for our consulting work? What was our expense for our workshops and things like that? So we have to be very deliberate and understand when someone’s sending in an invoice or sending in a receipt that they’ve sort of coded that correctly.

[00:41:50.67] spk_0:
Okay, so it’s all a matter of like allocation to the right allocation to the right uh budget line or or general program area. The way you’re describing, you know, you have to you have two distinct areas, You are Alright, so allocating expenses and revenue, obviously two to the right, you know, not just that, it’s it’s just not generic revenue, but, you know, because at the end of the year we want to know what our expenses and our revenues are like in across. Well, in your example, you know, on both sides of the work that you’re doing, right? The public workshops and also the private consulting,

[00:41:58.74] spk_2:
right? Yeah. And so that can be really complicated if you let it sort of go down the wrong path. But you’ve got one of those really complicated federal funding grants and you’re not supposed to allocated a certain amount to this program. It’s really supposed to go to this program. Um,

[00:42:16.88] spk_0:
and

[00:42:17.10] spk_2:
you can kind of, you know, can be a lot of a bigger process to undo later on.

[00:42:22.88] spk_0:
Right, do it right the first time instead of trying to do forensic accounting to try to figure

[00:42:27.65] spk_1:
out. So

[00:42:28.76] spk_2:
it’s important for people who are, who are sending in those, you know, those pictures of their receipts on decks or expense. If I too have coded it correctly, before they send it to the accountant to make sure that they understand what account it’s supposed to go into or come out of.

[00:45:01.97] spk_0:
Okay, very helpful. Thank you. It’s time for Tony Take two. I’ll be on a panel endowment excitement, fundraising and management end quote. So where are you with your endowment? Do you have an endowment? You might be at zero or maybe you have a mid size middling endowment or you’ve got a vast endowment. The other three folks will be able to help you with endowment management principles. You probably don’t have a vast endowment. I bet there aren’t too many listeners who have vast endowments, but for the outliers, there’s something for you in this panel as well, for the vast majority of folks, no endowment or teensy weensy, itsy bitsy endowment or something in the middle. I’ll be doing the planned giving fundraising part of endowment excitement, fundraising and management. I’ll be the fundraising part. Talk about how planned giving is enormously valuable for endowment starting or endowment building. The other three folks there, the smart folks in endowment management. So we got the fundraising, we got the management doesn’t matter where you are in your endowment status capacity robustness, if you like. There’s something for you. It’s August 25 at noon eastern time. Oh and I should say we are sponsored graciously by an ex unite. Thank you and next unite. So to make your reservation, you go to N X unite dot com and you click webinars and panels and if you can’t join us on august 25th at noon, sign up and you’ll get the video. Of course it’s 2022 naturally. So I hope you’ll be with us either live or archive. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for accounting for nonprofit leaders with Tasha Anderson and Zanny Miranda. Tasha. Your turn. You wanna, you wanna contribute.

[00:45:49.01] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah, I’ll contribute a little bit more to that one. But to kind of sum it up for me what I tell people. There’s usually a lot of frustration. I don’t understand my accounting and I usually tell people, it’s not that you’re using quickbooks and quickbooks is not sophisticated enough. It’s that it’s not set up the right way and then the user that’s using it is limited. And what I tell people kind of garbage and not that the work is entirely wrong. Right? It’s accurate. The dollar amounts accurate, the vendor is accurate, but if it’s not in put a certain way, then you’re not gonna be able to get reports out a certain way. So you kind of have to think more globally. Uh, you know, how do you want this to come out and then you have to understand the intricacies of the system in order to get the end result. So what Danny is referring to is just understanding high level, what is it that you want to see? How is that information can be put out and then making sure that the inputs are going in the right way so that you don’t have that forensic accounting that you mentioned trying to go back and figure that out. And so many organizations go through that forensic accounting exercise every time they have a simple report. Um, a simple report.

[00:46:17.39] spk_0:
Yeah, I’ve seen some of that. I know it’s it’s expensive. It’s, it’s time consuming. Didn’t have didn’t have to have been done badly to start with. All right. Let’s move on. Let’s move on,

[00:48:42.83] spk_1:
moving on. So the next one I would say, um, that nonprofit leader should share more about their financial information in their financial position with other people within the organization. And what do I mean by that? I kind of alluded to it earlier that I have been in situations where it’s just the Ceo and I carry the weight of the financial management, the financial, he’s right. And I’m not just talking like, oh my gosh, we have enough money to make payroll. I’m talking about being the person, the point person to explain to the board why we didn’t hit our fundraising goals, why our program contracts not fully utilized, why we were over underspending and salary expenses because we have vacancies in the various departments or what have you. Um, and that’s kind of what we’re talking about. It all kind of feeds together. So if we understand what those KPI S, those benchmarks, those metrics for measuring, we have an accounting structure in place to properly categorize and track these things, not just by thunder, but by department we customize our reporting in a way that’s meaningful. Maybe that that translates to creating a income statement or a financial report, a budget actual by department and then sharing with those that run those divisions of the business, their area of responsibility. That’s where I like to get to that the fundraising, you know, professional within the organization actually gets a periodic report. So they know what they spent in order to raise the money and where we’re at and what we expected them to do the same with the program team, same with anyone else that has that area of significant responsibility. And so often I see that again, the financial person and the ceo bear that responsibility and they end up being the money. Police, can I spend money for training? No, can I do that? It’s kind of crushing for morale a little bit that you have to police every dollar spent. And in a perfect world we would include all of these individuals in the budgeting process. Okay, fundraising department, what what do you need to spend this year? And how much honey are you bringing it? Same with the program team. You know, all of the different people involved. I like to get input from them. They give me their budgets on what they believe they need to spend to meet the outcomes and the objectives that they’ve laid out to do. So if that means we need to add another staff person, if that means we need to pay for more programs, supplies or go to a couple conferences, whatever it is. Um, let me know. So that when whenever you come and say, hey, can I, you know, attend this conference this year, I can then in return say was that in your budget and assuming the cash is available, people start owning their own things and there and we hold them accountable right,

[00:49:19.57] spk_0:
Right? Like delegating responsibility for the budget that you’re responsible for rather than rather than as you said, you know, having to ask, I mean you’re, you’re empowering folks, you’re educating them and empowering them to spend their budget responsibly. And obviously, you know, that’s part of performance review and, and, and through the benchmarks and the metrics that we talked about first, we’ll know whether you’re, whether you’re doing it accurately or

[00:49:26.46] spk_1:
not

[00:49:27.23] spk_0:
wisely or not. I guess it’s probably better than accurately, but Okay, Alright. So like delegating, delegating budget responsibility and accountability as well, of course.

[00:49:39.06] spk_1:
Alright, where’s

[00:49:43.20] spk_0:
the role of the board here, Tasha in should it just be a quarterly review of of the overall financial picture? Should it be every board meeting? Let’s take a board that meets, take a worst case scenario, a board that meets monthly. Do they need to see a monthly financial picture? Can it just be quarterly, semi annual? What, what do you think?

[00:52:09.36] spk_1:
Yeah, So that’s a great question. I think it kind of depends on the organization, uh, small struggling organization, I think probably needs more oversight than one. That’s pretty well figured it out and they’re pretty mature. I would say kind of best practices that you always provide financial reports at every board meeting. Um, maybe you don’t pour over it in a huge level of detail, but the reality of the fiduciary responsibility is up there with one of the top board responsibilities. So I personally would never recommend having a board meeting for which finances were not considered solely for that reason. Um, I will say a lot of the nuts and bolts of the oversight, the financial oversight. Oftentimes happens at the finance committee level. So oftentimes the finance committees will be reviewing more detailed reports on a monthly basis, asking whatever questions they need to ask, then, you know, usually a summarized version of that information is given to the overall board. I mean, we don’t definitely don’t want to spend board time discussing why we’re overspending and office supplies. Right? When we’re ignoring the, you know, the big elephant in the room on why we’re off of our fundraising projections by 50%. I think you had those conversations before. So we want to keep it really high level. Um, but the, the details get done at the finance committee level and the, um, the, the high level discussions happen at the board level. And I’ve seen the spectrum of some boards that are really involved in the financial management so much to say that it probably crosses the, uh, you know, some boundaries in terms of your role is oversight and not actually managing the organization. Um, and then I’ve seen some words that are probably too passive, uh, and will come back around once financially the organization starts struggling. And what I’ve seen that consistent, um, a consistent presence and a consistent accountability from the board. That’s what keeps organizations in a good place. I mean, if you just keep coming in and out once things start to get a little rocky may be having some consistency and some accountability will keep the pendulum swinging from one way to the other. So to answer your direct question, every board meeting I think should have a financial review. Um even if it’s only five minutes to just update everybody on, are we on track or we off track is usually what I like to tell people

[00:52:31.79] spk_0:
and it helps to have a finance committee that’s paying closer attention. If you’re, you know, if your board is has that expertise and and frankly is big enough, you know, a five person board may not, may not be big enough to have a finance committee and you don’t want to have just one person looking at it because that that’s a mistake. I think

[00:54:00.86] spk_1:
I want to say something to before we go into the last one, I don’t want to run out of time. But what I think is the most important thing cause I wanna, I wanna validate what you’re saying that not every board is big enough to have a finance committee. Um and not every board has an abundance of accountants lined up trying to join their board. I recognize that fact, what I think is really important, what I think what I like to do for our clients is to create the financial information um presented in such a way that they can have the board can ask questions and have fruitful conversation. What do I mean by that? Oftentimes they get all these really long reports with all these numbers. They don’t actually know what any of it means. And there’s this intimidation level where many board members just don’t feel comfortable asking questions out of fear of looking silly or uneducated. Right. And so what we do, we put together an executive summary. And so I would encourage anybody listening to have their account and create some sort of executive summary to give a narrative that explains the context or what’s really going on and more of a written format. Because if you just simply give financial reports, you’re gonna keep butting up against the same problem. So what I try to do is create a process that will drive conversations at the board level. So if we write, hey, we are off from our fundraising goals. This is a red flag or you know, maybe not in those exact alarming words, but they may not necessarily interpret that just by looking at the report. So, but if somebody read that, they could say, well, what are we going to do about fundraising?

[00:54:11.56] spk_0:
Right, context.

[00:54:14.57] spk_1:
Yes. Yes. And I think that that engages boards more to have some of those financial conversations. Um, so if that’s not being done, I would really recommend

[00:54:24.64] spk_0:
that. All right. Sandy, you have, we should be wrapping up with another one or two unless we combined or something. But as long as the content is there, you have, Do

[00:54:31.81] spk_2:
you think we combined a couple, particularly around succession planning and making sure you’ve got your processes in place? Because they’re sort of,

[00:54:39.89] spk_0:
we didn’t leave anything out there. Well,

[00:56:31.28] spk_2:
there’s one thing that I think Tasha was almost alluding to and if you if you’re answering yes to any of these questions, does my organization feel siloed? Are we not getting the right reports from my accountant as my program staff and development team, not communicating any of those details about what requirements are or when reports are due. If your board is sort of questioning things and they can’t figure out what’s happening if any of those things are happening, it’s really not your accounting, it’s your culture and so making sure that across the board accounting doesn’t just stop with the accounting team. It doesn’t just stop at the Ceo or the chief or executive level, I should say. You know, it’s really a team effort. Everyone in the organization, from the receptionist to the program staff to the board president, they all need to know maybe not every single detail of course, but they need to have a general picture and an idea of what is happening in the organization. And some people need to have more information than others. Like I would say, a program staff person needs to know very detailed information about their accounting as much or as the same amount. So they can have a great conversation with the accountant to make sure that they’re on track that they’ve got their budgets aligned and sort of creating a culture where you’re unsure what the other program team is making and how much money they have to work with versus how much you have. You know, why does my executive director keeps saying no to me spending money on these things that I think will boost morale or will actually get better outcomes for our program. What’s happening is that if those are questions that you’re having, it’s really time to examine what’s happening in your culture and maybe try to change some of that, um, sort of fear or change some of that mindset around sharing information about money,

[00:56:56.55] spk_0:
accounting may not be your problem. Maybe something deeper. Sometimes technology is blamed to the technology may not be the problem that maybe the culture in the organization Zanny where is nonprofit solutions and where are you? You may not be in the same place as

[00:57:46.31] spk_2:
I know. Now, now everyone can be everywhere. Of course we are based in SAn Diego. Uh, that is not our geographic limit though for nonprofit solutions. I also live in SAN Diego. Um, but we are online, so we do a lot of virtual workshops and trainings and we can also do our contractual work. Um, so if anyone wanted to hire us for leadership training and um, we do have a lot of management training for new managers. So that is all can be done virtually and we’re now that things are starting to get a little bit easier to to come together. We used to do everything in person and so now we’re slowly getting back to in person but I would say the majority of our work is virtual so we can really be anywhere in any time zone. What’s

[00:58:04.96] spk_0:
the website for nonprofit solutions?

[00:58:06.91] spk_2:
It’s N. P. Solutions dot org.

[00:58:11.39] spk_0:
Okay, Tasha, where where’s the charity CFO, wherever you are, That’s where the charity CFO is.

[00:58:27.72] spk_1:
That’s right. Well, our office, our headquarters and all of our team are based here in ST louis Missouri. So although we work remotely with our clients, our team is centered here in ST louis. We do have not Office, we collaborate here, however, um only about 30% of our clients are here in ST Louis, the rest are all over the country from coast to coast. So we work with clients all over the place in the United States

[00:58:38.12] spk_0:
and what’s what’s the website for charity? CFO,

[00:58:40.91] spk_1:
yep, it’s the charity CFO dot com.

[00:58:44.29] spk_0:
Okay, I love I love Missouri because I lived for five years in Warrensburg. Warrensburg where where Whiteman Air Force Base is,

[00:58:53.37] spk_1:
I

[00:59:03.01] spk_0:
was in the Air Force for five years. So I lived in Warrensburg, we used to spend more time in Kansas city because it was closer but we went to some ball games in ST louis. Okay. All right. Uh Tasha Anderson, founder and Ceo of the charity CFO and Zani Miranda Operations Manager at nonprofit solutions. Thank you very much. Thanks for each of you sharing. Thank you.

[00:59:19.83] spk_1:
Got

[00:59:22.92] spk_0:
a great balance between professional C P A. And the the practicing learning client who’s who’s got some significant accounting responsibility but not a C P A. I love the balance. Thank you

[00:59:32.47] spk_1:
very much. Thank

[00:59:33.73] spk_2:
you. Thanks

[01:00:48.65] spk_0:
to our listeners for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 N. T. C. Thanks so much for being with us Next week. Our final 22. NTC show your tech problem is actually a people’s problem. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c. O. And by fourth dimension technologies. Their product is I. T. Infra in a box, the affordable tech solution for nonprofits, but they’ve got the free offer going on. So that is at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three D. But they do want to mention deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95 go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for March 25, 2011: I’m Looking and Back Office Blunders

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

You can subscribe on iTunes and listen anytime, anyplace on the device of your choice.

Paula Marks, President, Hire Resources; and Leonora Scala, nonprofit job-seeker.

I’m Looking: Savvy Strategies for Your Search:
  
It’s time to check in with recruiter Paula Marks and our nonprofit job seeker, Leonora. Take note because Paula’s advice works for your next search too, whether you’re in it now or it’s in your future.

  • Leonora’s resume is now revised. (You can view the old version here.)

Jeff Marston, Principal, Resource Center for Management

Back Office Blunders:
  
Stop squandering money on your back office costs; tricks to save BIG on supplies, phone, energy, desks, etc.

This segment is a repeat from the October 8, 2010 show.

  • Handout for Jeff’s session: Cutting Costs (an Adobe Acrobat, .pdf, file. – download the software here). You can also grab the file from the show’s Media page.

Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

You’re on the air and on target as I delve into the big issues facing your nonprofit—and your career.

If you have big dreams but an average budget, tune in to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

I interview the best in the business on every topic from board relations, fundraising, social media and compliance, to technology, accounting, volunteer management, finance, marketing and beyond. Always with you in mind.

When and where: Talking Alternative Radio, Fridays, 1-2PM Eastern

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Here is the link to the podcast: 034: Back Office Blunders & I’m Looking
View Full Transcript

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Welcome to the show, this is tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m your aptly named host, tony martignetti were always about big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent last week, i hope you recall it was legislative lookout and apprehensive with federal lobbyist perry wasserman, managing director of five o one see strategies we looked at what congress is debating that hits home for you, like the charitable deduction, maybe being at risk and what’s the fate of the ira charitable roll over. Also, i had scott koegler our regular tech contributor, he explained what it means to take the plunge and develop a smartphone app for your non-profit this week, back off his blunders and i’m looking, my guest will be jeff marston he’s, the president of resource centers for management, and jeff is going to explain how to stop squandering money on your back office costs and reveal tricks to save big on supplies, phone, energy desks and other stuff that your office needs. Then on our regular feature, i’m looking it’s time to check in again with our recruiter, paula marks and our non-profit job seeker leonora paula’s advice for career and job search works for your next search, whether you’re in it now or it’s in your future, and between those segments, of course, it’s always tony’s take, too. I’m going to talk about six tips to master your fund-raising relationships from a blogger post that i did this week before he departs. I wanna give a shout, larry bloom and his guest at nizer. Adios, larry, so you next week. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio, and after this break, i’ll be with jeff marston back office blunders in a pre recorded session. Co-branding think tooting getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternate network e-giving. Things cubine 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 crawl are said to want to 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. 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. 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 on tony martignetti, the host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m joined now by jeff marston. Jeff is the president of resource centers for management, and before founding the resource center’s, he was the first housing division director of the volunteers of america in new york city. He also has management and planning consulting experience throughout the u s and in saudi arabia, including two stints with booz allen and hamilton. So clearly you can see that his background is in non-profits and the corporate consulting area. So he brings that for-profit and corporate experience to our small and non-profit small and midsize non-profit audience, and i’m very pleased that jeffs practice brings him to the studio today. Welcome, jeff. Good to be here, tony it’s. A pleasure to have you. We want to talk about saving money for small and midsize non-profits on the in the back office. Let’s start with something that i think is a pretty substantial budget item for a lot of organizations, maybe all that that are able to even offer it. Health insurance. What suggestions do you have around health insurance? And tony, i very much recommend that non-profits when they’re taking a look at cost reduction start with health insurance because is usually the biggest item second teo salaries and wages so one of the critical issues in dealing with health insurance is never just renew your policy don’t just blindly say it’s another year, let’s, go let’s, continue where we’ve been, ok, what should we be doing instead? First of all, for smaller agencies and and small is fifty and under is that, uh, there are only six providers insurance providers in the state that will will deal with these small, smaller organizations in which state of you’re referring to in new york’s, new york, and the critical issue is to work with your broker, and you must pull your broker in as a consultant and is an adviser on dh that’s. That advice applies regardless of where you’re located in any of the fifty states have this sort of consulting relationship with your broker exactly, and if you don’t get a new broker, they want your business and they will provide consulting services, advisory services work with you and if they’re not change brokers and what sort of advice should you expect from this kind of a consulting relationship? From your broker as a consultant. Two or three of the key issues are one. Do we have the right structure? There’s, the traditional structure of health insurance and where you have a relatively low deductibles and you have the other kind, the h r a h s a deductible. If we have to stop you. And in this show, we have jargon. Jail. Okay. And i’m the warden of jargon jail. I hate to put you in there, but it’ll be of a temporary stay. Please tell us what h r a and the other acronym of mean, what is that? I can’t tell you what h r a stands for, but h s a or health savings account? Okay. They’re also known is high deductible accounts. You should at least talk to your broker about whether or not those structures that makes sense for your agency. And if they don’t know or they refuse to talk about it, get a new broker. Okay. Thankyou. Your sentence in jargon jail is commuted. Okay. Thank you very much. Temporarily. I hate okay. No, go ahead. Um, another thing is that since there are relatively few insurance companies in any state, do not go shopping for health. Insurance every year because the insurance companies will know you will get a bad reputation, and since their costs in the first year of serving, you are much higher because they have to sign you up, they have to do all the data processing, et cetera. You’re going, you’re you’re going to get a negative image, so you want to stay. You want to get into a situation where you stay with health provider for at least two or three years unless they’re provide terrible service, and maybe you’re changing plans or benefit levels within that provider. But your advice is stay with the same provider, whatever plan you’re into, correct thie other thing i would say about health insurance is that seriously, consider wellness programs, especially if you’re a larger agency and your broker and your health care providers should be able to work with you on that. So your people use fewer health care services and therefore your premiums have a chance of going down and in just a minute or so we have left before a break. You’re going to be looking for your broker consultant to be advising you on the suitability well, you know, the suitability for your agency and what the wellness plans are, that they should be, that you should be looking at, absolutely. Which part of it is a professionalism? Part of it is the personality of the person. The other is, are they the right size broker for you? If you have fifteen hundred employees, you don’t want a one person shop broker, and conversely, you’ve got fifteen employees. You don’t want to have one of the world’s five biggest brokers because they’re not going to care about you. My guest is jeff marston, and we’re talking back office blenders, saving you money and all kinds of back office costs on tony martignetti, the host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. We’re going to take a break. Please stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get a drink. Cubine hi, i’m new york state senator joe a dabo. I will be hosting a Job fair on friday, november 12 at aqueduct racetrack in queens. From tending into three p m, we will have over one hundred companies looking for qualified workers. They’re all to be lectures on job strategies and networking. So come and bring plenty of resumes and join me on friday, november twelve at aqueduct racetrack. For a Job fair from 10 a m to three p m. For more information, please call pete in my district office at seven one eight seven three eight one one one one. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two eight six five nine two nine. Zero or visit w w w. Dot mind over matter. Y si dot com. 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 way. Look forward to serving you. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Duitz e-giving thinking. Dick tooting, getting thinking things geever in-kind welcome back. I’m joined by jeff marston, president of resource centers for management. Jeff another a sizable portion of probably most of our audience is budget is office space office leasing. Most of our audience does not own a building. What about saving money around office leases? What advice do you have? It is in a major area where people can save money in the biggest blunder in office. Leasing area is to not get your own broker. Everybody who has purchased a house. Ah, condo. A coop gone out and gotten their own real estate broker. And the sellers have their own real estate brokers. Yes, certainly. Every building owner has a broker right in commercial real estate, you never want to talk to the person whose name is on the building. The broker whose name is on the building that working for the landlord, you need to go and find a tenant only broker who will work for you. This will save you money in the negotiations, and it will not cost you extra money. That landlord is going to pay a commission. When a transaction happens, he can either pay all of it to his own broker. Or he can split it in half and pay half to his broker and have to your broker. So this consulting advice does not cost you any money, so all right, so this non-profit does not pay for this broken relationship, and there are so many variables in a commercial lease on dh that doesn’t only apply in a big city, but there’s all kinds of chargebacks and emergency clauses and how to get out of the lease and all kinds of contingencies. It’s i think it’s just too complex for a non broker, non lawyer toe figure out, and i’m not going to go to a bunch of the details, but i would say to other things, first of all, because of all those details do not rely on even the best real estate attorney because the real estate attorney is not necessarily up on the market in terms of huh? Vacancy rates, costs of the give backs and he will make it happen. But a broker is the one that knows what the market is. So you need a good real estate attorney do not rely just on your real estate attorney to be your brokering represented the second thing is take advantage of the market today it is a buyer’s lee sir’s market, and it is very likely that if you have less than five years left in your lease, even if you love your building and want to stay, this is a good time to explore extending your lease, renegotiating your lease off and so take advantage of the market. A broker is going to know what the market is and be able to give you the good advice. I’ve often heard the advice that even if you intend to stay, it’s it’s valuable to go out into the marketplace, as you’re suggesting, because you can use the marketplace as leverage for renegotiating your released in the current space absolutely end with today’s market with the vacancy rates hyre if a landlord loses a tenant, it is much more likely that they’re going to have a vacant space for, um or extended period of time than, say, five years ago when ten a day left, you clean it up, knock down a wall paint put in new carpeting and three weeks later, tenant he moves in that’s, not the way it works, so landlords are much. More interested in keeping good tenants? Um, what about phones and internet service and that’s something that every non-profit has what’s the what’s, the marketplace like there in terms of trying to save some money for them? Well, there’s, good news and bad news on this we have the good news is that everyone, whether it’s, it’s, your home or your or your business of your non-profit has been saving millions and billions of dollars over the last twenty five years as that as a t and t was broken up and new competitors have come in. And so we’ve all been saving an incredible amount of money. Therefore, ah, i would recommend that someone ah non-profit not take a look at telephone and internet connections as a high priority area for cost reduction, because so many contradictions have already been squeezed out of the market in just because of with market trends. I think that the first place to start within that area is in your data, not on your voice communications, and there was a lot more competition in the the line charges between communication hubs and you knows we’re starting to get technical, but they’re okay if you get too technical put in george in jail, but go ahead, but on the data side, most non-profits are less sophisticated in that area and the in the market, there was more competition buy-in in that area than there is over on the voice side. Okay, um, and on the voice side, i know that there are consultants who will work on a contingency basis. Now, i do understand your caveat that this is not a place to look maybe first or even second for cost, because we’ve already we’re all enjoying the savings, and we all pay unlimited. We all pay a flat fee, probably for unlimited service, but if someone wanted to look at it, the phone side, there are these consultants to work on a contingency, right? And we’ll review your bill. Yes, there are, they’re two kinds of consultants, and they’re two different perspectives. There are certain consultants that will do an audit of your past bills and see whether you’ve been overcharged charge for things that weren’t in your contract and there’s a basically a fifty fifty contingency situation. Usually, if you have not, if you’ve either never had an audit or you have not had an audit in the last three or four years. It’s reasonable to consider it. Okay. The other kind of consultant is looking at the future and they probably will not charge a contingency. They they will get paid by the phone company the way in and insurance broker is on a residual basis so you won’t have to pay for this service. They they will show you how to save money, and then you will just pay the phone company what you pay and the phone company will pay them at residual commission. And for these look back phone consultants. When you say it’s a contingency fee basis, that means if they save you money and i guess if they actually get you money back from previous errors, omissions, whatever mistakes they get fifty percent, and you keep fifty percent that’s. Correct? There should be no other fees. Ah, no other exchange of money and this sort of assignment. Unless they actually save it and get it back correct and let’s. Look sort of expand from phone internet and look att utilities. Little more generally. What way we’d be talking about gas and electric, primarily gas and electric. In some, in some areas also a fuel oil. I know this is getting really boring. People start to glass over when you talk about when you, when you think about your utility bills, if you are paying them directly as opposed to paying them is part of your lease. This is an area where there is a whole new market, and in new york they’re called s coz ceo energy supply companies. They are state regulated. They are approved by your local utility. Tell you’re afraid of george in jail again. I am, but i’m a quick learner. Tony. By the way, my guest is jeff marston and he’s, the president of resource centers for management. We’re talking about backoffice blunders, saving you money in the back office. And, of course, i interrupted you, jeff let’s, talk more about those energy service companies. Okay. Basically, they are legitimate as they said, their their their their state monitored. It is a legitimate organized market. And anyone can save sixty seven percent on their total utility bill. Now gas and electricity. And ah also, most customers now have the opportunity to enter into a fixed price contract. And especially if you are interested as a non-profit. If you were interested in budget certainty over a specific period of time, these energy supply companies can now offer you a fixed price for a year. Two years, three years. You, you may save money. You may you made not save money because of the market goes down significantly. But if you are comfortable with where the market is today and you want that budget certainty then this is now offered to you through this this new energy supply company idea. And how do you find the energy supply companies? The s goes in your area, wherever you are in the us. Well, there are there two basic ways. One is you. Give me a call at eight, six, six two seven seven, eight, six, six xero or you go to the website of your local utility of or of your state public service commission. And of do a little do a little seeking on, and you will find the names and contact information for all of those. The vast majority ofthe states that have decoupled supply from distribution in the energy business are located from the district of columbia to maine. Oh, okay. It’s atlantic seaboard, the mid atlantic yeah, admit atlantic and new england if you’re listening to us and in denver or minneapolis or new orleans, your states are are not not doing yeah. So so in so outside the area, from maine to washington d c you’re saying it’s pretty much just you work with the supplier that that is state authorized? Correct? There aren’t thes energy service companies s coz that’s? Correct? Let me also add that if you want to go broader than our discussion, i have something from jeff. The file name is cutting costs and it’s ah it’s from a workshop that he did on cost management strategies. He was the facilitator and i have it up on my block now that’s at mpg a dv dot com you click the media tab and you’ll find the file under today’s show date the october eighth and the fire was called cutting costs that is provided to our listeners from jeff. I want to thank him for giving us that resource. What else? Sounds like you might have more, more, more advice around utilities. How? Well, let me ask you specifically how often should you be going? Into the marketplace to compare what you’re paying now with what you could be paying is that every year, every couple of years, how is that good question? Completely different from the health care area it’s completely different competitive situation there are in new york state, there are about twenty five, cos it’s much more of a commodity. So basically, if you’re staying with a variable month to month kind of cost once a year, you should seriously reconsider if you are enter into a contract one, two or three years, then you went about three months before your contract terminates. You get back with the company or your broker, and and you take a look at it but it’s much more of a of a commodity situation. It’s interesting. There are different areas of savings where you should be into the marketplace, um, or or less frequently, definitely. And this gets back into using your broker, your provider, your vendor as a consultant and finding out what the market is in terms of your relationship to the market in terms of buying and going out forbidden, that sort of thing. So they will tell you, and it changes from subject matter to subject matter and it’s really up to you to broaden your relationship with your broker, tio this consultative advisory role that you’re suggesting in whatever area we’re talking about, right? And you should not you should not feel hesitant to do that. People want to get they want to get your business, and they are able to provide these services and in tougher economic times they’re increasingly willing, and therefore you don’t have to staff up or it’s it’s there for the asking. One other thing on energy we’ve talked about buying energy for less thie other is using less energy. New york state ah has a subsidy for energy on its by third party funs to do an audit of your facility so the state will help you pay for the others. And, uh, the cost of the audit is certainly less than a thousand dollars, and as i said, it’s, a third party, a situation it’s not done by a lighting engineering company, and so they’re going teo recommend all kinds of lighting situations these air companies with with contracts with the state, and they will take a look at the physical plant and all. Your equipment and that sort of thing and give you give you a report. That’s the other side that’s the other side of the utility area where you may be able to save money. Certainly over the next, you know, five year period, for example, and for our listeners that might be outside new york, that could be something that they should look for. Also, if even if there isn’t a state subsidy but the energy audit, maybe money worth spending because you can save the cost of the audit over several years in the future? Yes. And it’s, much more likely that this state subsidized program exists in in new york than it does anyplace else. Given the level of expenditures in new york. My ah, my warning for people is that they that is very possible, that they could find the right consultant. And they might find a affirm that is in the biz is in one segment of the business of lighting or h c or some other area. But if you have a good heart to heart discussion with them about, we want to see everything, not just your specialty. You it may very well be worthwhile tohave it done. We have about a minute and a half left. Jeff, i’d like to look at the ah, the sort of more mundane actually have about a minute left office supplies off of everybody spending money on paper, paper clips, staples are their savings that can be wrenched out of this. Yes. Couple of rules of thumb never buy office supplies from a company that has retail stores. Really? Retail stores are expensive. And even though you’re buying over the internet, you’re paying for the retail store. So staples office depot are they recommend they are major companies that are lower, lower crossed so let’s, just focus on that because we only have a little time left in thirty seconds or so. What what’s the alternative if we’re not going to buy from staples, office depot, et cetera, where should we go? Well, ah, i have a favorite company and i don’t think we should. I don’t think i should promote them, but if people want to talk to me about that, i can i can do that off the air. This is an area that most companies that they have not gone out for bid in. The last twelve months can save fifteen to twenty five percent. Jeff. Again, if people would like to reach you, what’s what’s the phone number or the e mail one okay, uh, i’m old fashioned. Give me a call. Toll free number is eight, six, six, two, seven, seven, eight, six, six. Xero. My guest has been jeff marston, president of resource centers for management. I hope you got valuable back office blunder avoidance tips this week on tony’s, take two, which is coming up after this break. I’m going to talk about my block post this week, which is six tips to mastering your fund-raising relationships. I’ve got some ideas for you to keep in mind as you try to build those strong relationships, some things to do and not do, and that’ll be and tony’s take two after this break. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Dahna 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 do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing efforts. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is. We do whatever it takes to make our clients happy contact them today. Admission one one media dot com 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 the show. Of course, this is tony martignetti non-profit radio. In a moment, i’ll be joined by our resident recruiter, paula marks, and our non-profit job seeker leonora. But right now, it’s tony’s, take two. My block post this week is six tips to mastering your fund-raising relationships just some basic ideas that have been getting some pretty favorable comments on the block. Of course, my block is at m p g a d v dot com and a couple of those tips. One of them is to be a good listener, you know? You’re trying to build sound and honest relationships and strong relationships with your prospects and donors. I think one of the simplest ways to do that is just listen to what they have to say. Listen to what they say about your non-profits work and how much it means to them, because that’s giving you clues as to what might be interesting to them to give to and to fund you listen to what they say about their family that can give you clues to their receptivity to making an additional gift. Your your organization? Certainly, if you’re in planned giving fund-raising family. Circumstances very important, but it really applies for everyone be a good listener. People appreciate someone who listens to their story. Um, remember anniversaries and i don’t just mean weddings and birthdays, but on idea that i’m always sharing with clients is remember the anniversary of when the donor told you that they’ve included you in their will or the anniversary of when a donor made ah gift to you and it doesn’t have to be a substantial gift, but you want them to know that that gift, whatever its size and whatever type it was planned or outright or otherwise was so important to you that you remember the anniversary of it ah, year later, two years later, you remember the day they made their gift, they’re not going to remember that, but they’ll be very touched that you remembered their gift anniversary on one more. And then there were six on the post. I’m just giving you three right now, right hand written notes hardly anybody writes handwritten notes anymore, and writing a hand written note on a piece of stationary or card is so much easier than sitting in front of a blank eight and a half. By eleven screen, inward and feeling compelled to fill it. You want to write something heartfelt and sincere, but you can say it in fifty years. Sixty words and you don’t have to feel like you have to fill an eight and a half by eleven inch page. Read it in a card or on a piece of stationary hand written notes so uncommon, and for that reason they stand out, you’ll find those tips on three others on my block. Post six tips to mastering your fund-raising relationships my blog’s that m p g a d v dot com. I’m joined now in the studio by paula marks, paula is president of hyre resource is on her career. An executive search spans almost three decades. She’s, our contributing search consultant for the regular i’m looking featured and which is a recurring feature on the show, and i’m very glad to have paula in the studio. Paula, welcome back. Thank you, tony. Good to be back and on the phone we have leonora scala are non-profit a job seeker who has been graciously sharing her search for a job in non-profits with us. Leonora, nice to have you back. Thanks. Welcome back from from staten island, right here on staten island. Correct. Excellent. So, leonora, why don’t you? Ah, why don’t you tell us what’s been happening for you in the last four to five weeks since we last talked, you spoke. I wish i had better news. However, things have been more status quo. I’ve been getting responses to applications, sending letters directly, however, nothing yet has been solidified and what i’m coming across is something similar. I think we’ve all been talking about is if you don’t have that direct experience, um, in the field, i hate to say it. They sometimes don’t wantto even bother with you, it’s more of a specialized industry right now versus where it was few years back. And maybe, paulie, you could even comment on that because that at least would have been experiencing here and similar to what other people have been talking to and trying to communicate with him. Yeah, before i bring paula in, i just want to remind people that you’re looking for a non-profit a job. But you have a for-profit background in finance. Financial services? Yeah. Financial services also in the cosmetic industry, on dh people. I mean, within the industry, people want to talk to you and then outside of the industry, they’re like saying, well, we’re not sure if you know, you’re the right fit, it’s, almost like they’re looking for that cookie cutter person and leonora just remind us why it is that you want to make this career search. Why is that non-profit jobs so important to you? Yeah, back in back in august, my mother had back surgery, and when we had a look for rehab centers and i was doing the investigative work, i found that the non-profit ones were the better ones. No, and i said to myself, why not be since i know i’m in, you know, looking out there for something as a career opportunity, i would get very well in trying to make money for a profit organization. Why not be able to do that for a non profit organization and have them utilize that money just to help people, you know, in whatever what, in every which way it could be if it’s not just, you know, for the older people, kids or for animals or whoever it may be any non-profit paula, she has a lot of passion, but she’s not getting interest from the not-for-profits side. Well, i think that there’s a couple of things operating here and that is that we live in a time where there’s a lot of silos, and i think that organizations or at least their recruiters believe that if they hire somebody out of the same industry that they’re minimizing the risk, and i don’t believe that that’s true, and i think the one thing about human beings is where the only product that has a mind of our own. So just because you’re the guy from the competitive firm across the street doesn’t mean you’re going to be a better performer. And i think that if the not-for-profits were more open, as in the four, profits were more open to different kinds of experiences, as long as the person knows how to perform the function that they’re tasked with. And in leah norris case, she’s very fortunate that she has two career path. She’s got a financial career path and she’s got a product marketing one could even say she has three career paths, so she’s adapted, she went from banking to big consumer and she’s. Had to work in environments where finding funding was very important, even if it was for-profit finding funding is what not-for-profits all about how do we make this case, though, to the not-for-profits so they get out of there silo, and don’t just hire somebody from another non-profit and, you know, from a competitive non-profit who’s already been doing the work they’re looking for, how does she make this case? Well, i think that we as a c society need to make a big, big, sweeping changes i think we need to get people to listen to broadcast like this and to think about why am i not finding good people and that’s something that i’ve heard from companies for decades? Oh, it’s really hard to find good people, and you’re not going to find good people if you’re only looking in the same place, you need to be looking at other organizations and other industries and other skillsets where people have been challenged in different ways, i’m not saying that you should hire me to be your sepia, because i don’t bring that financial skill, but because i worked in a lot of different industries on the search side. I think it’s, one of the things that made makes me a very good search consultant is that i can understand a wide range of issues from a wide range of businesses and that the truth of the matter is it’s easier to have somebody who’s coachable that you can teach an industry. Look, i know you’ve been at this for some time, and we’ve been following you for probably five months or so roughly, and you were in a search before that. Are you thinking about abandoning the the non-profit sort of your search? I think that i’m not going to abandon it one hundred percent. I still eventually want to get there. I just feel like at the moment, most of the responses are coming from the profit side of the organization is teo, get that job because, you know the thing is it’s always easy to find a Job when you have 1 um, to do that and work my way. I know it’s it’s dealing with bond hearing, i need to do more of that. I started doing it very little, but now i need, you know, to heavier in that really to prove to those. Non-profit organizations that i’m serious about what i’m saying, so i’m not going to abandon one hundred percent, but i need at this point, i want to find something yeah, you have to be realistic, yeah, i’m trying to be realistic about what is coming my way and not abandoning that one hundred percent, so i want to be able to do that, but maybe it’s more of a long term thing, okay, okay. And, you know, we never we didn’t know what the outcome was going to be, not that the outcome is predetermined. I’m not well, certainly predetermined. I mean, not that the outcome is known something could break, so, you know, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but i think this could be valuable for for, for people, even if you end up, not in the non-profit job you’re it sounds like you’ve got the right attitude, i’m going to ask paula to say, you know, does she she’s gotta be realistic? Is this kind of rite attitude that the non-profit search should really be a longer term altum process for her, i think, is you said it’s, not a known situation, and i think because of the current state of the market and the huge amount of unemployment. I don’t think we can afford to abandon anything, and i think we’re constantly like grains of sand where we have to constantly be connecting with more people in different people. And as i have said, toe excuse me, leonora, i think that it sometimes takes going out of the box in a different way than we think about that you’re not necessarily calling hr people. You’re not necessarily just calling the finance person maybe call public relations or public affairs to connect in other ways in the organization’s you’re interested in. And you’ve made that point a number of times, paula, that you just you can’t be out enough. And you’ve told stories about talking to people on trains and planes and thinking your doctor’s office, you know? So why don’t we? Just what? I’m going to turn to leonora, andi, ask what? What have you done? Leonora that’s that’s out of the box, whether it resulted in ah for-profit interest or not, whether it was for-profit non-profit what have you done that similar to what paul is describing? I’ve actually come out of the shell. I i’m always the type of person that i’ll go up and talk to people, however, i’ve been a little bit more bolder come and doing that if someone came back to me and says, you know, we don’t see a right fit here, i’ve gone back to them and i said to them, give me some opportunity and time to sit down with you and show you almost proved to you where i see it could work some cases i’ve had positive results in it and meeting that at least talk to me, and there were times when they’re like, you know, sorry, we don’t see it happening, you know? No, thank you, okay, each one is a learning each one is a learning experience that i’m sure exactly exactly what it is, and as i’m out there, i’m out there, just, like, put what polish says talked everybody on ideo and their times, i’m sitting in starbucks and someone happened to talk to me, and i’m like i’m there talking to them and trying to find out and connect with them in which way i can. We’re going to take a break, i’m with leonora scala, our job. Seeker non-profit job seeker and paula marks our resident and contributing search consultant. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio stay with us. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. 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. Dahna i really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness can help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com buy-in do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing or mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is. We do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com. Talking all calm. No. Welcome back to the show, leonora before the break, you were saying that you’ve come out of your shell that’s probably something necessary don’t do you feel that way for job seeker? Totally. I think when you first are looking, you tend to be a little bit more reserved. You i’m not gonna do you have the idea? I’m not going to be doing that, and then you get tripoint where no, i’m going to do that. You need to be just boulders. What on finding and nothing bold in a bad way. I’m saying bold where you’re going to try things that you haven’t tried before, okay, leonora, i’m sorry, paula. You probably have something to contribute about being out there being bold. I do, and i’m not sure that i consider it bold, but i think it can be bolder. I think we all have to think about things differently, and i think we have to look at things differently, and we’ve been thrust into being entrepreneurs in a time when we’re coming out of decades of being a cog in a wheel, and i think that being available to people making ourselves available and hoping other people. Are available to us is going to help create more opportunities and more awareness and more connective ity leonore what’s the next step for you now i’m still going to keep on going at it the next epps i have i’ve actually gathered her roughly about maybe seven to ten companies that i’m going to find key people within the organization and try to connect with him in that way and it’s just going to be starting out just talking to him you mean in the not-for-profits non-profit yes, i’m sorry, um and just talk to them and find out what their needs are, one of the concerns that they have and i’m going to come back and say to myself, okay, where could i help them and try toe? We’ll call it, try to convince them i’ll tryto persuade them it’s almost like what to do with fund-raising and you’re trying to get people shoot, you know i don’t need the money, and here i’m trying to hold myself a dollar bill, but i’m trying to sell myself to them. I’m going to try to work that way. Does your networking include networking with non-profit cfos? Who? The reason? I’m asking is because i think they’d have a better one standing of your background does that include a cz your work, including that that is the new i was going after more than people like the line people of people who have the reporting to you now that’s my next that’s, my next step is all right, now i need to go a little level hyre because maybe they’re the ones who truly understand dahna you know, i also try to look and do a little bit more research on their backgrounds and to find out where they came from because if someone had a similar background just coming from a profit into a non-profit they’ll probably understand it more than maybe somebody who’s always been a non-profit so i’m trying different angles on that, and maybe in a few weeks, we’ll see something different coming to play. But, you know, i can’t predict the future, okay, on dh my thought was that cfo’s, with their financial background, would have a better understanding of what you could do, how your experience would translate to their organizations. Paula, what would you like to see leonora doing next? Next steps, i think she’s doing a lot of the right things as we talked about more recently it’s continuing to do the research and find perhaps if she can’t find the headquarters in the new york market where there isn’t a headquarters in the new york market, maybe talk to people in regional offices. I think we all know the companies move from people move from company to company to company, often in the same sector. But if you reach a regional person, let’s just say for girl scouts of america in this market and they know somebody in another not-for-profits or finding out where the conferences are for the not-for-profits market, even if it’s not in the financial area, but it’s, perhaps in the fund-raising area, so at least you’re rubbing elbows with the kind of people that can be helpful to you. And i think that a lot of hiring is done based on how we occur for people and the way we behave and how people feel about being around us personality type, personality type of style, how you process information, how open you are to a conversation that you could talk about things other than your own organization. Having some band with you mentioned earlier leonora volunteer work and that you haven’t done too much of it, you’ve done some what type of work have you been doing? I’ve done a little volunteering at a dog shelter because i have this a little passion for dogs because i want a sitting home doing some letters, and i heard on the news that the way that these animals were being treated and i’m like, oh, my god, that’s right by where i live, let me go there and check it out. I’ve done it, but i just need to, like, i’ve done a few hours here and there, i think i need to be more dedicated in that respect. Dahna okay, its meaning what i say, what i say, paula, volunteering, is that a good guy? So they want to make this transition absolutely it’s another way of meeting people in the industry that you’re interested in, and i guess demonstrating a commitment to the to the industry, demonstrating a commitment, getting to know something about the organization, you will certainly learn more about not-for-profits if you’re functioning at one, even if it’s on a part time basis and non paid, by the way, nonpaying dwork still counts, you’re still there. You still getting experience? You still hopefully looking around and gaining an understanding of how these organizations work and you’re showing your commitment because our time is limited, but you’re devoting your limited time is right to something that you you aspire to and you’re giving back, which is what not-for-profits all about, it may be valuable, leonardo, for our listeners to hear where the leads on the for-profit side have come from actually in various, various ways. One is definitely a few recruiters here and there, some of it was coming from just supposing you do the board, you know, like monster, and they simply hired something’s coming from there open, and i’m doing a lot of things through linked in, and the more i become networked with different people, it seems like they’re searching me out based on my background, like, oh, you know, we’re looking for somebody with just have a background would you be interested in a position that i’m working on or had a two companies actually connect with? May i’m saying, you know, how about we sit down and talk and the smartest of a talking exploratory, but you never know where that could lead. Come on and then some other ones is me just doing direct mailing? Okay, let me just sending to, like, a hiring manager saying, you know, i’m interested in your corporation, you know, could we sit down and i’ll share fifteen minutes with you, and some of it is coming from there, okay? And in just the thirty seconds or so, we have left. Paula, these sound like home runs. Can we can i sit? Come sit down and talk and direct mail hits absolutely it’s a step in the right direction, it opens another door and the value for our listeners could be, you know, if they are in, if you’re in a non-profit now and you’re making a more direct transition, that million or is trying to make her advice could be valuable for your transition, which would be an easier one than when she’s trying to work on leonora. Thank you very much for sharing your story again. Thank you for having me, it’s. Our pleasure. Paula marks. Thank you for joining me in the studio. Thanks, tony. My thanks to leonora scala are non-profit job seeker and paula marks are contributing search consultant and also thanks to jeff marston for backoffice blunders next week. Amy eisenstein she’s, the author of fifty, asks in fifty weeks, and she’ll share advice from her book on direct mail board fund-raising diversifying your funding, creating an individual giving program and quite a bit more from her book hope you’ll be part of that conversation you can keep up with what’s coming up on the show. Sign up for our insider email alerts on the facebook page while you’re there, click like and become a fan of tony martignetti non-profit radio, we’re on itunes. We’ve been on itunes for weeks where we’ll be on itunes for much longer. Subscribe and listen any time on the device of your choice smartphone tablet, computer, whatever that’s at non-profit radio dot net, our creative producer is claire meyerhoff line producer sam liebowitz and our social media is by regina walton of organic social media. I hope you’ll be with me next friday, one p m eastern here on talking alternative broadcasting talking alternative dot com i didn’t even think that to be a good ending, you’re listening to the talking alternative network to get you thinking. I think. Cubine 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. 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 on montgomery taylor, and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt. Y at r l j media. Dot com you’re listening to talking on their network at www dot talking alternative dot com now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. 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 us ed 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. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. 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Nonprofit Radio for October 8, 2010: Back Office Blunders & Your 5-Minute Program

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

Compliance. Board relations. Fundraising. Technology. Volunteer management. Accounting. Finance. Marketing. Social media. Investments.

Every nonprofit faces these issues and big nonprofits have experts in each. Small and medium size nonprofits have Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts throughout the country join Tony to take on the tough issues facing your organization.

Episode 13 of Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio for October 8, 2010

Tony’s Guests:

Jeff Marston, Principal, Resource Center for Management

Back Office Blunders: Stop squandering money on your back office costs; tricks to save BIG on supplies, phone, energy, desks, etc.

  • Handout for Jeff’s session: Cutting Costs (an Adobe Acrobat, .pdf, file. – download the software here). You can also grab the file from my new Media page.

Claire Meyerhoff
Your Five Minute Program: Super-streamlined events that keep your audiences informed, engaged–and awake


Here is a link to the podcast: 013: Back Office Blunders & Your 5-Minute Program

  • When and where: Talking Alternative Radio, Friday, 1-2pm

    You can subscribe on iTunes and listen anytime, anyplace on the device of your choosing.

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    View Full Transcript

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    Durney hyre welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio i’m the aptly named host of the show, tony martignetti where we’re always talking about big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Last week, we talked about going beyond google, we had gourmet prospect research on a goulash budget. My guest then was maria simple, and she shared strategies to get to know your current donors better and find new ones. Also, last week, everlasting endowment techniques to keep your endowment safe and invested, right? I hope you’re cfo and bored. I was listening to my guest, kathleen rittereiser this week, we’re talking back. Office blunders stop squandering money on your back office costs my gift my guest, jeff marston, will share techniques to save big on supplies, insurance, phone, energy, furniture and all your back office needs, and i’ll also be joined by claire meyerhoff, your five minute program super streamlined events that keep your audience is informed, engaged and awake. Claire is a marketing specialist for non-profits and has a lot of expertise in promoting and producing programs and events for non-profits between the two guests, it’ll be tony’s take two, i’m going to remind you again this week. Like i did last week, the irs says you’re non-profit status may be at risk. More about that in tony’s, take two, and also i want to share with you something pretty exciting. This show is going to be partnering with the chronicle of philanthropy to do podcasting at the national conference on philanthropic planning that conferences next week. We won’t have the audio from that for a couple of weeks. So that’s, not next week’s show, but we are partnering with the chronicle to bring you that this week, it’s again, back off his blunders and your five minute program, all of that. After this break, please stay with us. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. 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. 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 two one two nine six, four, three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom, too. 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 on tony martignetti, the host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m joined now by jeff marston. Jeff is the president of resource centers for management, and before founding the resource center’s, he was the first housing division director of the volunteers of america in new york city. He also has management and planning consulting experience throughout the u s and in saudi arabia, including two stints with booz allen and hamilton. So clearly you can see that his background is in non-profits and the corporate consulting area. So he brings that for-profit and corporate experience to our small and non-profit small and midsize non-profit audience, and i’m very pleased that jeffs practice brings him to the studio today. Welcome, jeff. Good to be here, tony. Pleasure to have you. We want to talk about saving money for small and midsize non-profits on the in the back office. Let’s, start with something that i think is a pretty substantial budget item for a lot of organizations, maybe all that that are able to even offer it. Health insurance. What suggestions do you have around health insurance and tony, i very much recommend that non-profits when they’re taking a look. At cost reduction. Start with health insurance because is usually the biggest item second teo salaries and wages so one of the critical issues in dealing with health insurance is never just renew your policy don’t just blindly say it’s another year, let’s, go let’s, continue where we’ve been, ok, what should we be doing instead? First of all, for smaller agencies and and small is fifty and under is that, uh, there are only six providers insurance providers in the state that will will deal with these small, smaller organizations in which state of your friends in new york’s, new york and the critical issue is to work with your broker, and you must pull your broker in as a consultant and is an adviser on dh that’s that advice applies regardless of where you’re located in any of the fifty states have this sort of consulting relationship with your broker exactly, and if you don’t get a new broker, they want your business and they will provide consulting services, advisory services work with you and if they’re not change brokers. And what sort of advice should you expect from this kind of a consulting relationship from your broker? Is a consultant. Two or three of the key issues are one. Do we have the right structure? There’s, the traditional structure of health insurance and where you have a relatively low deductibles and you have the other kind, the h r a h s a great deductible if we have to stop you. And in this show, we have jargon jail. Okay? And i’m the warden of jargon jail. I hate to put you in there, but it’ll be of a temporary stay. Please tell us what h r a and the other acronym of mean, but i can’t tell you with h r a stands for but h s a r a health savings account. Okay, they’re also known is high deductible accounts. You should at least talk to your broker about whether or not those structures that makes sense for your agency. And if they don’t know or they refuse to talk about it, get a new broker. Okay, thankyou. Your sentence in jargon jail is commuted. Okay, thank you very much temporarily. I hate okay now. Go ahead. Another thing is that since there are relatively few insurance companies in any state, do not go shopping for health insurance every year because the insurance companies will know you will get a bad reputation, and since their costs in the first year of serving you are much higher because they have to sign you up, they have to do all the data processing, et cetera you’re going you’re you’re going to get a negative image, so you want to stay you want to get into a situation where you stay with health provider for at least two or three years, unless they’re provide terrible service on dh, maybe you’re changing plans or benefit levels within that provider, but your advice is stay with the same provider whatever plan you’re into, correct thie other thing i would say about health insurance is that seriously, consider wellness programs, especially if you’re a larger agency and your broker and your health care providers should be able to work with you on that so your people use fewer health care services and therefore your premiums have a chance of going down and in just a minute or so we have left before a break, you’re going to be looking for your broker consultant to be advising you on the suitability. Well, you know, the suitability for your agency and what the wellness plans are that they should be, that you should be looking at absolutely which part of it is a professionalism? Part of it is the personality of the person. The other is are they the right size broker for you? If you have fifteen hundred employees, you don’t want a one person shop broker, and conversely, you’ve got fifteen employees. You don’t want to have one of the world’s five biggest brokers because they’re not going to care about you. My guest is jeff marston, and we’re talking back office blenders, saving you money on all kinds of back office costs on tony martignetti, the host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. We’re going to take a break. Please stay with us co-branding dick, dick tooting, getting thinking things, you’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. Cubine hi, i’m new york state senator joe a dabo. I will be hosting a Job fair on friday, november 12 at aqueduct racetrack in queens, contending into three p m, we will have over one hundred companies looking for qualified workers. They’re all to be lectures on jobs, try to jeez and networking. So come and bring plenty of resumes and join me on friday, november twelve at aqueduct racetrack for a Job fair, intending m 23, p m. For more information, please call pete in my district office at seven one eight seven three eight one one one one altum. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com 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. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. E-giving thinking. Dick tooting. Getting thinking things geever no. Welcome back. I’m joined by jeff marston, president of resource centers for management. Jeff another a sizable portion of probably most of our audience is budget is office space office leasing. Most of our audience does not own a building. What about saving money around office leases? What advice do you have? It is a major area where people can save money. In the biggest blunder in the office leasing area is to not get your own broker. Everybody who has purchased a house. Ah, condo. A coop gone out and gotten their own real estate broker. And the sellers have their own real estate brokers. Yes, certainly. Every building owner has a broker right in commercial real estate, you never want to talk to the person whose name is on the building. The broker whose name is on the building that working for the landlord, you need to go and find a tenant only breaker. Who will work for you? This will save you money in the negotiations, and it will not cost you extra money. That landlord is going to pay a commission. When a transaction happens, he can either pay all of it to his own broker. Or he can split it in half and pay half to his broker and have to your broker. So this consulting advice does not cost you any money. So all right, so this non-profit does not pay for this broken relationship. And there are so many variables in a commercial lease on dh that doesn’t only apply in a big city, but there’s all kinds of chargebacks and emergency clauses, and how to get out of the lease and all kinds of contingencies. It’s. I think it’s just too complex for a non broker, non lawyer toe to figure out. And i’m not going to go in to a bunch of the details. But i would say to other things, first of all, because of all those details, do not rely on even the best real estate attorney, because the real estate attorney is not necessarily up on the market in terms of vacancy rates, costs of the give backs and he will make it happen, but a broker is the one that knows what the market is, so you need a good real estate attorney do not rely just on your real estate attorney to be your brokering represented the second thing is take advantage of the market today it is a buyer’s lee sir’s market, and it is very likely that if you have less than five years left in your lease, even if you love your building and want to stay, this is a good time to explore extending your lease, renegotiating your lease and so take advantage of the market. Ah, broker is going to know what the market is and be able to give you the good advice. I’ve often heard the advice that even if you intend to stay, it’s it’s valuable to go out into the marketplace, as you’re suggesting, because you can use the marketplace as leverage for re negotiating your release in the current space? Absolutely, and with today’s market with the vacancy rates hyre if a landlord loses a tenant, it is much more likely that they’re going to have vacant space for um, or extended period of time than, say, five years ago when ten a day left you clean it up, knocked down a wall paint put in new carpeting and three weeks later tenant he moves in that’s not the way it works, so landlords are much more interested in keeping good tenants. Um, what about phones and internet service and that’s something that every non-profit has what’s the what’s, the marketplace like there in terms of trying to save some money for them? Well, there’s good news and bad news on this we have the good news is that everyone, whether it’s, it’s, your home or your or your business of your non-profit has been saving millions and billions of dollars over the last twenty five years as a as a t and t was broken up, and new competitors have come in. And so we’ve all been saving an incredible amount of money. Therefore, i would recommend that someone ah non-profit not take a look at telephone and internet connections as a high priority area for cost reduction because so many contradictions have already been squeezed out of the market buy-in just because of of with market trends. I think that the first place to start within that area is in your data, not on your voice communications, and there was a lot more competition in the the line charges between communication hubs and you knows we’re starting to get technical, but they’re okay if you get too technical, put george in jail, but go ahead. But on the data side, ah, most non-profits are less sophisticated in that area and the in the market there was more competition buy-in in that area than there is over on the voice side. Okay? And on the voice side, i know that there are consultants who will work on a contingency basis. Now, i do understand your caveat that this is not a place to look maybe first or even second for cost, because we’ve already we’re all enjoying the savings and we all pay unlimited. We’ll pay a flat fee, probably for unlimited service, but if someone wanted to look at it, the phone side, there are these consultants to work on a contingency, right? And we’ll review your bill. Yes, there are, they’re two kinds of consultants, and they’re two different perspectives. There are certain consultants that will do an audit of your past bills and see whether you’ve been overcharged charge for things that weren’t in your contract and there’s a basically a fifty fifty contingency situation. Usually, if you have not, if you’ve either never had an audit or you have not had an audit in the last three or four years. It’s reasonable to consider it. Okay. The other kind of consultant is looking at the future and they probably will not charge a contingency. They they will get paid by the phone company the way an insurance broker is on a residual basis so you won’t have to pay for this service. They they will show you how to save money. And then you will just pay the phone company what you pay and the phone company will pay them a residual commission. And for these look back phone consultants. When you say it’s a contingency fee basis, that means if they save you money and i guess if they actually get your money back from previous errors, omissions, whatever mistakes they get fifty percent and you keep fifty percent that’s. Correct. There should be no other fees. Ah, no other exchange of money. And this sort of assignment, unless they actually save it and get it back correct and let’s look sort of expand from phone internet and look att utilities a little more generally. What way? Be talking about gas and electric, primarily gas and electric in some in some areas also a fuel oil. I know this is getting really boring. People start to glass over when you talk about when you, when you think about your utility bills, if you are paying them directly as opposed to paying them is part of your lease. This is an area where there is a whole new market, and in new york, they’re called s coz ceo energy supply companies. They are state regulated. They are approved by your local utility. Tell you’re afraid of george in jail again. I’m a quick learner, tony. By the way, my guest is jeff marston and he’s, the president of resource centers for management. We’re talking about backoffice blunders, saving you money in the back office. And, of course, i interrupted you. Jeff let’s, talk more about those energy service companies. Okay. Basically, they are legitimate. As they said, their their their their state monitored it. Is a legitimate organized market, and anyone can save sixty seven percent on their total utility bill now gas and electricity and ah also, most customers now have the opportunity to enter into a fixed price contract, and especially if you are interested as a non-profit of you were interested in budget certainty over a specific period of time. These energy supply companies can now offer you a fixed price for a year. Two years, three years. You you may save money. You may you made not save money because of the market goes down significantly. But if you are comfortable with where the market is today and you want that budget certainty then this is now offered to you through this this new energy supply company idea. And how do you find the energy supply companies? The s goes in your area, wherever you are in the us. Well, there are there two basic ways. One is you. Give me a call at eight, six, six two seven seven, eight, six, six xero or you go to the website of your local utility of or of your state public service commission and of do a little do a little seeking on. And you will find the names and contact information for all of those. The vast majority ofthe states that have decoupled supply from distribution in the energy business are located from the district of columbia to maine. Oh, okay, it’s, atlantic seaboard, the mid atlantic. Yeah, admit atlantic and new england. If you’re listening to us and in denver or minneapolis or or new orleans, your states are are not are not doing that yet. So so so outside the area from maine to washington d c you’re saying it’s pretty much just you work with the supplier that that is state authorized? Correct? There aren’t thes energy service companies s coz that’s? Correct? Let me also add that if you want to go broader than our discussion, i have something from jeff. The file name is cutting costs and it’s ah it’s from a workshop that he did on cost management strategies. He was the facilitator and i have it up on my block now that’s at mpg a dv dot com you click the media tab and you’ll find the file under today’s show date the october eighth and the fire was called cutting costs that is provided to our listeners from jeff. I want to thank him for giving us that resource. What else? Sounds like you might have more, more, more advice around utilities? How? Well, let me ask you specifically, how often should you be going into the marketplace to compare what you’re paying now with what you could be paying is that every year, every couple of years, how is that good question? Completely different from the health care area it’s. Completely different competitive situation. There are in new york state. There are about twenty five, cos it’s much more of a commodity. So basically, if you’re staying with a variable month to month kind of cost once a year, you should seriously reconsider. If you enter into a contract one, two or three years, then you, about three months before your contract terminates. You get back with the company or your broker, and and you take a look at it. But it’s much more of a of a commodity situation. It’s interesting. There are different areas of savings where you should be into the marketplace, um, or or less frequently, definitely. And this gets back into using your broker. Your provider? Your vendor as a consultant and finding out what the market is in terms of your relationship to the market in terms of buying and going out forbidden that sort of thing, so they will tell you, and it changes from subject matter to subject matter and it’s really up to you to broaden your relationship with your broker, tio, this consultative advisory role that you’re suggesting in whatever area we’re talking about, right? And you should not you should not feel hesitant to do that. People want to get they want to get your business, and they are able to provide these services and in tougher economic times they’re increasingly willing, and therefore you don’t have to staff up or it’s it’s there for the asking. One other thing on energy we’ve talked about buying energy for less thie other is using less energy. New york state has a subsidy for energy audits by third party funds to do an audit of your facility, so the state will help you pay for the others. And, uh, the cost of the audit is certainly less than a thousand dollars, and as i said, it’s, a third party, a situation it’s not done by a lighting engineering company, and so they’re going. Teo recommend all kinds of lighting situation thes air companies with with contracts with the state, and they will take a look at the physical plant and all your equipment and that sort of thing and give you give you a report, that’s the other side that’s the other side of the utility area where you may be able to save money. Certainly over the next a five year period, for example, and for our listeners that might be outside new york, that could be something that they should look for. Also, if even if there isn’t a state subsidy but the energy audit, maybe money worth spending because you can save the cost of the audit over several years in the future? Yes, and it’s, much more likely that this state subsidized program exists in in new york than it does anyplace else, given the level of expenditures in new york, my my warning for people is that they that is very possible that they could find the right consultant and they might find a affirm that is in the biz is in one segment of the business. Of lighting or h, v, c or some other area. But if you have a good heart to heart discussion with them about, we want to see everything, not just your specialty. You it may very well be worthwhile. Tohave it done. We have about a minute and a half left. Jeff, i’d like to look at the ah, the sort of more mundane actually have about a minute left office supplies off of everybody spending money on paper, paper clips, staples are their savings that can be wrenched out of this. Yes couple of rules of thumb never buy office supplies from a company that has retail stores. Really? Retail stores are expensive, and even though you’re buying over the internet, you’re paying for the retail store. So staples, office depot, although they recommend they are major companies that are lower, lower crossed so let’s, just focus on that because we only have a little time left in thirty seconds or so. What what’s the alternative if we’re not going to buy from staples, office depot, et cetera, where should we go? Well, ah, i have a favorite company and i don’t think we should i don’t think i should promote them, but if people want to talk to me about that, i can, i can do that off the air this is an area that most companies that they have not gone out for bid in the last twelve months can save fifteen to twenty five percent. Jeff again, if people would like to reach you what’s what’s the phone number or the e mail one okay, i’m old fashioned. Give me a call. Toll free number is eight, six, six, two, seven, seven, eight, six, six. Xero. My guest has been jeff marston, president of resource centers for management. I hope you got valuable back office blunder avoidance tips after this break going, toby tony’s, take two and then i’ll be joined by claire meyerhoff, where we’re talking about your five minute event. Super streamlined events to keep your audiences informed, engaged and awake. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio stay with us talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Hi, i’m new york state senator joe a dabo. I will be hosting a Job fair on friday, november 12 and aqueduct racetrack in queens, contending into three p m we will have over one hundred companies looking for qualified workers. They’re all to be lectures on jobs, try to jeez and networking. So come and bring plenty of resumes and join me on friday, november twelve at aqueduct racetrack for a Job fair from 10 a m to three p m. For more information, please call pete in my district office at seven one eight seven three eight one one one one altum 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 way look forward to serving you. 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 dafs talking alternative radio twenty four hyre. Durney welcome back, i’m tony martignetti jeff marston left us a little bit hanging there because he sort of teased us, he said. Don’t use the brick and mortar stores because their overhead is so high and he has a provider that he strongly recommends for office supplies. I am going to post his recommendation on our facebook fan page, so when you go to facebook, then you just search tony martignetti non-profit radio you’ll go to the fan page and very shortly after this show, you’ll see what store he recommends. Four office supplies saving big money from the sort of big brick and mortar stores it’s tony’s take two time roughly thirty two minutes after the hour, and i’m goingto remind you, as i did last week, that the i r s has something you should be paying attention to your non-profit status could be at risk. I’m reading from a press release of theirs from this summer small nonprofit organizations at risk of losing their tax exempt status because they failed to file required returns for two thousand seven, two thousand eight and two thousand nine can preserve their status by filing returns by october fifteenth of two. Thousand ten under a onetime relief program that gives you a week. So you go to the irs dahna dot gov site, and they have a list of non-profits that are at risk? Um, i can save you having to navigate through their sight because on my blogged at m p g a d v dot com there’s an irs widget, and you click on that widget, it will lead you directly to the list of non-profits that, the internal revenue service has said are at risk for losing their non profit status because of not having filed in the over the past three years. So at the blogged click the widget, you can see the list if you’re not in a non-profit but if you know people in non-profits you might want to send them to that widget so that they can read the list and see what organizations are at risk of losing non-profit status, i’d hate for you to not be able to listen to tony martignetti non-profit radio. I mean, how can you listen to the show if you’re not a non-profit if you lose your tax exempt status, you can’t listen to this show that’s. Probably the biggest consequence of letting this happen, and i also want to tell you that i’m pretty excited to be partnering with the chronicle of philanthropy at the national conference on philanthropic planning next week. It’s down in orlando, florida, the chronicle and tony martignetti non-profit radio are going to partner to produce podcasts, we’re going to be interviewing speakers off line and then offering those interviews for you on this show. And of course, the chronicle of philanthropy will also host those interviews on their site. So that’s ah, that’s pretty cool, we’re ah, we’re partnering with ah pretty well known media outlet very pleased to be doing that, and we’ll be bringing those interviews to you later this month or or early in november. I’m now joined by claire meyerhoff. Claire is a marketing specialist for non-profits we’re going to be talking about your five minute program, super streamlined events that keep your audiences informed, engaged and awake. Clare is a marketing specialist who works with fundraisers and nonprofit organizations she’s, a former broadcast journalist with lots of acronym big acronyms, cbs radio, x m and cnn and during those stints, she covered lots of events either. Covered or attended hundreds of non-profit events, she combines that experience with her production skills to help non-profits design and execute programs that are entertaining, informative and concise. And we’re going to be talking a lot about concise because the topic is your five minute program. I’m very glad that claire’s work is her to the show today. Claire, welcome. Thanks, tony, thanks so much for having me. Because this is a great forum to share with the non-profit audience about events which are so so important. Yes, i’m pleased to have you back. Claire’s, a repeat guest and also the creative producer for tony martignetti non-profit radio. Claire, i think organizations don’t pay enough attention to planning their their events. Their program. What advice do you have? Well, i think that in my in my little a world where i where i come up with little acronyms for things, the little names for things i’ve just come up with this is i was waiting to come on and that’s that i think the event and specifically the program portion of the event is the final frontier of fund-raising you could see me, you can see why claire is the creative producer of this show she’s waiting on hold to join the show and she comes up with final frontier fund-raising please go ahead elaborate. Sorry, it’s it’s the final frontier of fund-raising is what’s what’s. The first step of fund-raising is just is just the ask the simple ask, you know your son is raising money for jump rope for hard, and he goes to the next door neighbor, and says, would you support may and that’s an easy one, right? Because that’s the neighbor and it’s, not for very much money. So that’s that’s a pretty easy ask so that’s, sort of the first frontier of fund-raising and then we go, you know, down the line for very sophisticated asked, and even, you know, planned giving and thank you, she she mentions plan giving say so dear to my heart. Yes, the more sophisticated, you know, that’s sort of a ah, deep frontier of fund-raising it’s a long time before you get that donor to the point where they’re goingto do a bequest, our charitable gift, a new innovation so there’s all these different levels of the ask and fund-raising and when you put on a fundraising event that is the time of year where you’re celebrating your organization, you’re having fun with it, you’re inviting all these different people to come. They bought a ticket for thirty dollars, seventy five dollars, one hundred fifty dollars, six hundred dollars, depending on where you are and how fancy your event is. So now these people have come and they’re all dressed up and you spend a lot of time on the food and the orders and the decorations. And should we have balloons, or should we have four kids? And what should the place look like? Should we have strolling singers and acrobats running around our event hall? So it’s it’s very events are very labor intensive, my my event supremely labor intensive and then when i found from working with non profit organisations, is that the program part of the event is almost an afterthought. It’s something that happens maybe the week before or even i’ve seen it the day before, where they say okay, well, who’s going to get up and speak and what are we going say and who’s going to say what? And the program is really one of the most is more important than the little shrimp order bs that you serve or if you’re going to have caviar or little tiny hot dogs, it’s much more important what you actually say to your donor’s while you’re up there on a stage and you have their undivided, hopefully attention. So that’s, why it’s so very important this is an opportunity for you to speak to donors, whether they’re long time dedicated donors or they are that donor’s guests at the event. So let’s say you have someone they’ve been coming to your event for ten years, and they are very good supporters. They’re in your hair in your special circle, they give, you know, twenty five hundred dollars a year and they are very important donors to you, and they have brought their friend, their neighbor, who they would like to introduce to your organization. So this is your chance to speak. Can not only your dedicated donors, but also your your new donors, your potential donors, potential friends of your organization so it’s really, really important it’s almost more important to me than just about anything else, except perhaps the auction if you’re going to have an auction, okay, so that’s really important? So pure, so clearly now the program people, you are on stage, you’re on the air, you know, let’s say your you know, a newscaster and you have five minutes or ten minutes to talk to your audience. What do you tell them? You tell them the most important news of the day or things that you think your particular audience is interested in learning about so that they don’t shut you off or turn you off. So think about your guests as viewers that are watching your little show about your organization, and so you’re recommending claire the five the five minute programmes you want, you want the program to be more important than whether the bunting matches the flowers clearly and you have the really the five minute program tell us about what buy-in organization should be doing at this gala in just five minutes. Well, there’s, a lot that you could do in five minutes and you have these people and they’re usually sitting there right there, the round tables in this big room at the d’hotel, and they’re sitting there and what i like to say is that your guests, our donors and guests and friends they’re not hostages, they’re not a hostage for the next five minutes, ten minutes a half hour to your speakers and your program, they’re your guests and they could just get up and leave, but they’re much, much too polite to do that. So your goal is to keep them engaged and keep them informed and keep them entertained. And i think that that’s the perfect way say it and so what’s, your first step is you want to, you know, welcome that you want to greet them. That’s easy to do, you don’t have to say a whole lot to greet them. You don’t have to go on and on with the greeting you just simply, you know, thank everybody for being there. So that’s, the most important part is to thank everyone several times, just as you would thank a donor several different ways of, you know, a good donor. You would thank um, several different ways you’d call them you send them a note, you didn’t fight them to a little event. You thank them in a lot of different ways, whereas whereas we’re as we’re developing the program, who should be the key speaker, who should? Be the first one up to say thank you. Well, the first one option to say thank you should be really quote the host of the event whoever that person is that was kind of the most important person in bringing all these people together. So let’s just say this particular year you have a local person who’s very well loved. Maybe you have the local ah weathercaster from the tv station whose daughter has really benefited from your after school program that you’ve been running for years. And she’s decided this year to step up from doing something kind of simple to being the chair of the event. So let’s just say she’s been very, you know, she’s been key in planning this event and that’s why people are there, she should be the person that should get up and thank everybody, not the executive director of the organization. So it should be that key person that people are going toe really appreciate them getting up and saying thank you. So think, really think about and not just go to the default like, oh, we should have, you know, our event chair or we should have our executive director get up, speak. So it could be you know, anybody that you think is that person that everybody that’s in the room would be interested in having them thank them. So come up, come up with who that person is, and and that person kind of plays the role of the host. And this is a simple little roll of just keeping keeping things moving along because it is a little program. It’s a little show. Just like when you watch jay leno, he is the host. He keeps the show moving along. Yes, the band plays. Yes, the guests come on and talk. Yes, there’s. Some other there’s a singer performing or something like that. But jay leno was the host that he keeps things moving, so appoint someone the host i can think of another host isn’t. Isn’t there another host you might like to use as an example host of ah, a radio show, perhaps, who keeps things moving along and has guests and they come in and is there possibly another example besides jay leno? Oh, what a coincidence. Oh, thanks. Carry great non-profit radio show on the planet. As far as i know, i didn’t ask you to say that part thank tony, keep things moving along and he did besides what the show is going to be like, and he keeps things moving along and make people feel welcome. And most importantly, tony martignetti is a radio host. What he wants to do is keep people entertained and engaged and informed and staying show on dh claire, i have to tell you, just clear to my role we just have about ninety seconds before the break and you had just explained who the the first guests should be. The main host should be thanking everybody in just a ninety seconds til we have before a break what should come after that person in your five minute program? Well, in my five minute program, i could probably do that. I’ll run the whole program down for you in ninety seconds, and i’ll do it head into the brakes. So your first thing is someone greet, greet the crowd. The next thing is they tell them why they’re they’re so tell them something important about what’s going on right now that they might not know about. So you know you’re here because because this year we’re launching this major endeavor where we want to, you know, we serve fifteen schools now, and by this time next year we hope to be in every school in the county and that that takes a lot to do that. So tell them something very important. Give them some news about why they’re there and why it’s important then the next thing that you khun dio is is simply give someone a gift and that’s my favorite way tio, to build a program around the gift say it’s an after school program and you have a teacher in the program who’s really done fantastically she’s done wonderfully. And her dream is tio, you know, take the kids, ice skating or something and do these different things for the kids. But she needs a certain amount of money to do it that’s outside of the normal budget. So this is a great way to honor this person. Plus explain a little bit more about your mission. So you can say, you know, we have our guest of honor tonight is, you know, mary katherine stewart. And she is the director of such a program. And she’s been here for twenty years. And she’s done extraordinary work, and we would like to say thank you to her tonight. Then she comes up and you say, and we have a gift for you, mary, catherine and it’s, something that she doesn’t know about. You know, we know that you’ve been dying to take the kids to the brand new skating rink, so here is a gift certificate from the skating rink. They’ve agreed to do this and that, and the other thing, and where we have to leave it there, we have to leave it there. We’re gonna take a break, and we’ll pick it up after giving a gift. This is this is you did have get you more than ninety seconds. My guest is clear, meyerhoff taking over the show, she’s, a marketing specialist for non-profits. Please stay with us. You couldn’t do anything, including getting thinking things, you’re listening to the talking alternative network, get in. Nothing. You could. 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 two 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. Durney is lack of capital or credit keeping you up at night? The show me. The money conference is coming to the roosevelt hotel, forty five east forty fifth street in manhattan on november third. This’s the best business networking opportunity to meet potential investors and lenders, and get answers from our expert panel of business and financial advisors. From or information, call six four six six one nine eight, xero nine one or online at rose otto accounting that’s r o s a d o accounting, dot, com, slash show me the money. 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. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Geever metoo welcome back. We’re in the midst of the five minute program with my guest, claire meyerhoff of marketing specialist for non-profits and claire, we were so far have covered the greeting, why we’re gathered, give a gift, what are the other elements? Just briefly of your five minute program and they will dive into a little detail? Well, the other elements of the five minute program are basically what you feel like you absolutely have to include so that’s where, you know, you’ve decided that while we have our board chair is retiring this year, we need to honor him or we have a new director. We need to have him speak, he has to speak. If he doesn’t speak, you know the world will collapse and that’s that’s what’s really important with the program is to completely tryto limit the number of people that are getting up in speaking. And then the next challenge is to limit the amount of time that they are speaking. So if you could give people something to do rather than just give them this open ended, we would like you to speak that’s your first step in in controlling on that’s something to do was probably give a gift. Let’s, let’s, explore that. There are two things i definitely want to dive into e-giving the gift and sharing your timeline, but let’s talk giving the gift what do you mean by that? Well, in the giving the gift is this is a way for you to do a numerous things with one simple gesture, one simple action, and that is you can have the, you know, the giver of the gift could be an important person, so let’s, just say you have a new executive director and it’s important to introduce him to your crowd, but you don’t really want him to speak for ten minutes and give his resume and his vision for the future because you’re going to bore your audience with that. Yes, so instead you can have your new executive director give that gift to the woman that has done a great job for your after school program for the last twenty years. So this is where you if you have an honoree, in other words, you’re saying this is this would be a great opportunity to honor that honoree by having that the special person give a gift. To the honoree, is that what you’re talking about? Exactly? It gives everybody like something to do, as opposed to just an open end, and we would like you to speak or we’re going to give you this award, so please get up and speak for a half an hour and for assault also tears. So if you have this honoree that’s, a way to introduce them, so you let’s just say it’s, the new executive director, and and she has come from, you know, let’s, just say you’re in st louis and she’s come from new york city, and she used to run some big organization and now she’s with you and and you want to let people know that so that you introduce her? You say we’d like to introduce our very new executive director she’s part of all our exciting plans for the future and she’s come from new york and she’s done this and she’s done that and it’s a better way to do it rather than have the person talk about them selves, because when people talk about themselves, it’s one of two things it’s either they you know, go on and on and on. To tell you how great they are or their humble like hopefully most people are and they don’t like talking about themselves. A lot of people have said they really don’t like talking about myself, so let someone else do it. And in this case, it’s your host of your event so they can say we have our new executive director. I’d like you to introduce her to you, she’s come from new york, where she ran this, that and the other thing and we’re so excited to have we could not possibly dream of ever having a wonderful person like this here in st louis helping our organization. And we’re gonna we’re gonna put her right to work by announcing who our honoree is this year. So then you’re you’re first honoree. Really? Your new executive director gets up and then they know all they have to do is say, oh, thanks for saying that night i’m so happy to be here in st louis. I love it here already and there’s so many great people here, and i’m gonna tell you about one of them right now. And that’s mary katherine stewart, who is our executive, you know? Our director of our programs and is doing it for twenty years not such a great job, we have a gift for you. This is exciting, you know, trip, you can take your kids on whatever it is you give her, and then the executive director gives the gift to your other honored person. Now all your other honored person has to do is say thank you for the gift you have to say anything else and look at the things you’ve done now in a very short period of time for your audience, your donors, you’re dedicated donors and your potential donors, your new friend, they see that you have great people working for you. They see that you’re very generous and that you have your act together, that you went out and got a gift for this person, that you could afford to do that. But you’re not dying in this economy, like so many people are cutting back, you actually went out and got a gift for this person kapin the gift has something to do with another sponsor. So in this case, i’ve come up with this skating rink where thie person, the honoree is going. To take her kids from her program. And so now that skate rink gets a nice big thank you in front of the whole crowd of people so used now brought in another spot, sir, and you, you’ve highlighted somebody else. We have a right and a small amount of time you’ve said, thank you. And you’ve also explained a little bit more about your mission. The gift should have something to do with the mission. We have to move on to the next topic i want you to share your ideas on, and that is you alluded to it the value of the timeline, but we just have about thirty seconds. Claire what’s what’s the value of the timeline and who should we be sharing it with? Well, a value of the timeline is that it keeps everybody on schedule, so someone needs to be appointed a producer of an event, and that should be someone with experience doing something like that. They don’t have to be a professional producer, but just someone that knows how to make the trains run on time. And everybody knows somebody like that. And you say we have five minutes. How are we? Gonna fill that up and they come, they just do a little run down timeline. This is what happens, you know, from the you know, the first minutes of the second minute, second minute of the third, fourth, fifth boom and if you try to make it five minutes on paper in reality, it might be about ten minutes long. We have to wait. We have to stop there. I’m sure there’s also value in sharing that timeline with the people who are going to speak so that they see you speak for one minute you’re on for two minutes, and all of this adds up to your five minute program super streamlined events. My guest has been clear meyerhoff marketing specialist for non-profits you can contact claire through my for the facebook page on the website because she’s, the creative producer, and that’s the way to reach her if you’d like more information on her five minute program. I also want to thank my previous guest, jeff marston, the creative producer of sony martignetti non-profit radio claire, of course, our line producer sam liebowitz, our facebook and social media, of course, as always, by regina walton of organic social. Media, this is tony martignetti non-profit radio. Join us next friday, one p, m eastern. Pretending to do, you’re listening to the talking, alternate network, waiting to get in. Nothing. You could. I really need to take better care of myself if only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up dahna is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com wolber 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 hi, i’m new york state senator joe a dabo i will be hosting a Job fair on friday, november 12 at aqueduct racetrack in queens, contending into three p m we will have over one hundred companies looking for qualified workers. They’re all to be lectures on jobs. Try to jeez and networking. So come and bring plenty of resumes and join me on friday, november twelfth at aqueduct racetrack for a Job fair from 10 a m to three p m for more information, please call pete in my district office at seven one eight seven three eight one one one one. Dahna 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. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Duitz

  • Nonprofit Radio for September 10, 2010 : Printing & Direct Mail: Tips to Save Money & Time

    Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

    You can subscribe on iTunes and listen anytime, anyplace on the device of your choice.

    Tony’s Guest:

    Tim Kennon, who has 23 years in the business and is president of McVicker & Higginbotham.

    Topic: Tricks to save you money on printing and direct mail


    Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

    You’re on the air and on target as I delve into the big issues facing your nonprofit—and your career.

    If you have big dreams but an average budget, tune in to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

    I interview the best in the business on every topic from board relations, fundraising, social media and compliance, to technology, accounting, volunteer management, finance, marketing and beyond. Always with you in mind.

    When and where: Talking Alternative Radio, Fridays, 1-2PM Eastern

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    Hyre dahna welcome, i’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent if you feel that your non-profits smaller midsize is sometimes lost in the shuffle may be lost in the media doesn’t get the kind of attention that it deserves. You have a home here at tony martignetti non-profit radio last week, we talked about your people being the most precious resource that you’re non-profit has how to attract hyre motivate and retain the best employees for your organization. That was last week. This week, my guest is going to be tim kenan, and we’re going to be talking about printing and direct mail tips to save you money and time to get the most out of your printing and direct mail and postage budgets. Tim is the president of mcvicar and higginbotham and that’s, a print and direct mail or letter house shop, which has been around since nineteen fifty eight tim is my guest all this hour, and we’re going to be talking about printing and direct mail, saving you time and money and working best with your print shop that’s all after this break stay. With me. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. 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. Dahna 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 race? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Durney welcome back on your host, tony martignetti you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio on talking alternative broadcasting at talking alternative dot com i’m thinking this week based on something that i saw in the new york times this was on august twentieth, new york times piece by judith warner, and it was called the charitable giving divide. It touches on some subjects that i’ve thought about and been thinking about for for quite some time for years, motivations for charitable giving and specifically that taxes are not the primary motivation that there are a host of other factors that typically full ahead of tax incentives. When people are asked what there, why they give and what motivates their giving and those are, you’ll see that they want to motivate and encourage charitable giving in their family from their children that they want to give back to a cause that means a lot to them that that has either inspired them or in a lot of cases been important to them personally in ah, a personal or a family situation, so that there are other factors besides taxes that are motivating charitable giving, and that sort of has implications to for the obama charitable deduction limitation initiative, it’s at this point, it’s still just a proposal, but that is that it would. The proposal is that it would limit the charitable income tax deduction for wealthy charitable donors, and i don’t think that will have the impact on the non profit sector that a lot of people do. A lot of people think that that’s just going to be disastrous for non-profits and i think it will hurt non-profits but it’s, i don’t think it’s going to be the disaster that a lot of people predict, and history has shown that charitable giving always rebounds after depression, recession and tax changes that might popularly think might popularly get people thinking that the but that tax changes going toe reduce giving terrible giving always comes back within two to three years after significant events that people think will discourage giving forever and you know it, just make it fall off a cliff there’s a little more about this subject at my block, which is you’ll find at m p g a d v dot com and what again, what got me thinking about this was the new york times piece by judith warner, the charitable giving divide my guest today is tim kenan, and he is the president of mcvicar and higginbotham, which is a printing in direct mail company. They’ve been in business since nineteen fifty eight tim as president has been with the company. Now for twenty two years, mcvicar and higginbotham works with some of the biggest non-profits in the country, but also importantly for you, our audience works a lot with small and midsize non-profits and our subject today is printing and direct mail. We wantto give you tips too, save money and time and make this budget item these budget items most efficient for you. And i’m very happy that tim kenan’s work brings him to the studio today. Tim, welcome to the show. Good morning. Thank you, tony. My pleasure to have you, uh, let’s start with printing. This is for small and midsize non-profits you know, um, printing can be a substantial budget item. What what sort of opening thoughts do you have for non-profits tto help them save time and money around around they’re printing? Well, the printing is a huge budget item for everybody and especially, you know, connected to direct mail. You’ve got to be very careful who you choose to do your work and you want somebody that’s goingto understand direct mail with printing and direct mail and direct mail in terms of fund-raising non-profits can mean anything from news letters, too invitations to special events, toe acquisitions of new members or donors re newell’s acknowledgments of gifts so there’s a whole realm of types of mailings you’re going to be doing to be successful, but you really want a printer who does understand the male side of it because with all of the regulations and the post office on, they’re constantly changing nowadays, it could be ah difficult trail to go down and be successful. So you’re looking for a printer who has a great reputation. You’re looking for someone who does understand what you’re trying to achieve, and of course, you’re looking for a good price. So the print and the direct mail functions really have to work closely together, and i’m sure in the hour will be we’ll be delving into whether it’s better to have them both done by the same house or or separately and if separately, how to get the two working closely, but it sounds like you’re one of your main opening points. Is what’s happening in direct mail? Really is going to drive what happens in the printing? Yeah. You have to be very careful. But, you know, let’s, go back a little bit here. You know, we deal with we have about one hundred twenty clients right now, and they’re very steady clients. We really don’t lose people over the years. But whoever you’re dealing with, you have tio have a good relationship with them. But the point with the print side of everything is that yeah, yeah, just there’s. So many things that could go wrong on that and it’s not necessary for the printer and the mailer to be the same vendor. What is necessary, though, is to be a lot of communication up front when you’re designing that piece to go into the mail. So you want that print shop and the mail shop, which is also called a letter shop. Is that right? That’s? Correct. So when we say a letter shop that’s the same as direct mail, your letter shop is just a wonderful little term for it. You know, when they started out, you know? It was basically personalized letters creating them, and the process was very slow. But that’s what we were known as when we began in nineteen fifty eight letter shop, the letter shop. All right, so when we see that it’s it’s synonymous with with the direct mail, yeah, more often now they’re called male houses, but people from the olden days tend to keep that letter shop term it’s nice and ah, in terms of printing, what about custom sizes? And a lot of people want their piece toe sort of stand out because it’s an odd shape what’s your advice around? Sure. Yeah. You want your piece to stand out in the mail? Somebody goes out to the mailbox, picks up ten letters from magazines. They want their piece toe jump out of them. A lot of times they’re thinking ok, a larger piece and nine by twelve over a much smaller piece. One of the pitfalls many organisations fall into is that they make a square piece and that’s a no, no, because you’re gonna have a surcharge on the post office from the post office with the poster. So you’re going to pay quite a bit extra. For every piece it’s in the mail for a square, a perfectly square piece, yeah, there’s, a there’s, a specific ratio for length and whip for every mailer and that’s where male shops, letter letter shops like idea to come in handy, because there’s, a lot of information need to know when you’re going to design a male piece. Okay, and we’re going to pursue that after this break. My guest is tim kenan, with mcvicar and higginbotham. Please stay with us. You didn’t think that shooting, good ending, you’re listening to the talking alternate network you get in. Thing. Cubine hi, i’m new york state senator joe a dabo. I will be hosting a Job fair on friday, november 12 at aqueduct racetrack in queens, contending into three p m, we will have over one hundred companies looking for qualified workers. They’re all to be lectures on jobs, try to jeez and networking, come and bring plenty of resumes and join me on friday, november twelve at aqueduct racetrack for a Job fair, intending m 23, p m. For more information, please call pete in my district office at seven one eight seven three eight one one one one. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com 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. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Zoho dahna welcome back. My guest is tim kenan, president of mcvicar and higginbotham, a printing and letter shop, and we now know that letter shop is the current term is the old sort of quaint term for direct mail shop tim. Before the break, we were talking about sizing of print pieces and your advice that square is bad. Let’s, let’s go into a little more detail about why square pieces, although they attract attention, what’s the implication there well, there’s a surcharge! I forget the exact amount, but you may be paying up to ten cents more per piece. It’s it’s considered a nonstandard piece by the post office anything that can’t be handled through there. Ah, ocr machinery, which is optical character reading eyes not it can’t be automated, so you’re going to pay extra money but a handling it has to be handled by a person at the post office and that’s one of the things they don’t want it all and this is actually right in line with what you said when we opened, which is your printer needs to know what the direct mail is going to be doing and and vice versa. So your direct mail shop needs to know that there’s a square piece coming because that’s going to impact the price they’re going to give you. Sure, because you’re an organization out there and you’re planning let’s say you’re planning a special event, an invitation, a gala affair. You’re very important to the organization because it’s ah fund-raising event that could pretty much keep them going all year round. You’re talking to your print to you tell him what you want. You talking to your designer first and your printer and you’re coming up with an idea that just may not be good financially. Budget wise, it’s going teo cost you extra money, and it could also cost you extra time getting delivered because of the because it doesn’t go through the standard exact ocr equipped doesn’t go through and these machines at the post office they’re very, very high speed and you know if it has to be handled manually by a postal clerk it’s going to take extra time? First class mail is going to take anywhere between one two through day, three days going across country um non-profit now, which is what a lot of my clients use is going. To take anywhere from basically four to seven days we are seeing non-profit mail going a lot faster nowadays simply because the volumes at the post office there’s so much lower than they were two, three years ago, okay? And we’re going to get into those different postage rates to you’re talking about first class and non-profit we’ll get into those while we’re on the printing. What else besides size on dh shape will will impact printing budget so that people may be can save money by not doing exactly what they’d like? Write well, you have to be very concerned with the address side of a mailer or an envelope, and since if you are a non profit organization, which i’m assuming you are, you have to make sure that you have the correct address on there because the return address if you have an incorrect return address, the post office is going to take away your non-profit rape and make you go at either the standard rate, which is commercial bulk or first class. So you need to make sure that your name and address is properly situated in the upper left hand corner you need to make. Sure that that apartment indicia on the right side, which is the indicator of how the postage is going to be paid, is worded correctly with your proper permit number. With the post office it’s going to be entered into, you need to make sure that you have enough space for the address where the addressee it has to be four inches long because you want to be able to get all the information, and you also want to get a barcode in there because the post office requires it what’s this indicia toe a little more about the indicia in the upper right corner. What is that? Well, a lot of organizations, they’re going to use an indie shit teo for posting their mail. You can post your mail by stamp indicia or a meteor strike, but most of the time it’s going to be done first, say, a newsletter or just a self mailer, a piece it’s not going into an envelope. You’re going to have an indy, shawn and it’s important that indicia specifies where you’re dropping off the mail. On what your permit number is the city and the post office, so it has to be. Written explicitly according to post office standards, in a lot of people wing that part, they say, oh, yeah, you know, i know what this should say, it’s a little box on the right side where normally you would have a stamp for a personal piece of mail i see and what else in terms of the printing that’s going to impact budget? I mean, for instance, a lot of organizations like to have bleeds because a bleed looks looks prettier, but that has a big budget impact and things like that it does. But a lot of people are going to, of course, want to bleed on their piece of the artwork looks better. Onda bleed, of course, is where your printing over the edges and then it’s trimmed down so it looks like it was all printed right to the edge. The bleed isn’t going to affect very much most printers air set up to assume a bleed. If you ask a printer about a job he’s going to assume you’re going to believe that piece and he’s going to price it that way, it’s often not even a question, but aside from that, you have to be concerned about how, if it’s a folded mailer, you have to be concerned about where that fold opens up and where it closes. Okay, so now we’re talking about a piece that a cz you’re designing it, so we’re still sort of in between print design and printing it’s a piece that is going to literally be folded, and then it has to be sealed, right? That’s what you’re talking about, right? And in order to qualify for the best postal rates, the automation non-profit rates, you have to have the opening at the top, so you’re looking at a you know, ah ah, five and a half by eight and a half brochure now and those kinds of brochures now you’re going to have three openings because you’re gonna have the spine at the bottom and an opening on the sides and on the top right for that. The post office is gonna want you now to put on three way for seals, which is a lot of extra money and extra time by your letter shop male house. So you have to be concerned about how the pieces designed in terms of golden opening, because, again, they they’re going to be putting this through high speed ocr machines, and they wanted to make sure it’s not going to mangle when it goes through them. If you’re thinking about a piece like that that has a spine and three open sides, might it be cheaper toe put that inside an envelope? Yeah, sometimes it is, but of course, sabelo prices air expensive. It depends on the size of the job. You know, if you’re doing a fifty thousand piece Job that’s 1 thing to print envelopes on dh, then go through the insertion process it’s going to add a lot of cost you may the cost for the extra wafer seal is going to be far less than sticking into an envelope. Okay, but again, your letter shop your mail house needs to know that this is going to be a three sided it’s going to open on three sides, because that has implications for the pricing that they’re going to give you because of this extra seal. Sure, absolutely. And a lot of times we don’t know if our client is printing outside with a different printer that we don’t have a relationship we don’t know until it. Comes into our shipping receiving area what it looks like unless they tell us now we try very hard communication wise to make sure we know up front what we’re receiving. But it’s. Just not the case all the time. Very often we know without a job because it’s landed at our doorstep. My guest is tim kenan, president of mcvicar and higginbotham. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Tim, you started to allude teo, the different postage rates let’s, let’s sort of move from now printing to the to the mail function. Although they certainly overlap is you can tell from our conversation what are the different postage rates? And how can we make sense of that? I think this is an area of confusion for a lot of well, it’s, an area of confusion because people do get confused between the rates and how it’s going to be posted. So, first of all, for nonprofit organization, everybody could mail first class and then from first class you paying the exact amount that anybody would pay, mailing one piece so forty four cents right now. Then you can do first class pre sort which will bring down your postage approximately five six seven cents and all depends on the density of the mailing into specific zip codes. You know, if your mailing nationally and your mailing five to ten thousand pieces, you’re not going to get us much of a break on the the postage. The confusing part is that there are so many different rates within even non-profit you could be paying nine cents for one piece and sixteen cents for another piece in the same mailing say, if you had ten pieces just going to california, you’re mailing five thousand let’s say you have three thousand going into manhattan at at five thousand. Those pieces could probably go for nine, ten, eleven cents, while the other pieces that are going far outside to other states are going to cost you up towards fifteen, sixteen, seventeen cents, so that could be a confusing part. Then, of course, those are the rates. So you got first class, first class pre sort and then non-profit and a lot of people say bulk mail, but really it’s on the commercial side of standard and on the non-profit side, it simply caldnear non-profit standard but that’s, what a lot of my clients are using especially for their newsletters and communications like that. So it’s called non-profit standard and that’s. What that’s, what people mean when they say bulk or that’s, what you interpret, they mean when they say that’s, what that’s, what they do, they’ll get confused and say, non-profit pre sword or first class non-profit and all kinds of terms like that. But generally, if you’re talking to a good male house letter shop, they’re going to explain all this to you. How it can be posted as i mentioned earlier stamp, indicia or meter strike. So you get that at it away now. What rate of male of what class of male do you want to use? First class, first class? Pretty sort or non-profit and then you go from there. And are you familiar with the research? Are there are there ways of determining whether the live stamp gets better reply rates, return rates than the indicia or the or the postage meter? Well, we we use stamps on probably ninety percent of our work non-profit stamps or first class stamps or first class priest sort stamps, we believe there’s definitely a difference, because when that piece comes in the mail, you know, the everyday person getting their piece of mail from a non profit organization, whether it be a hospital of school or club, they belong tio, they’re not quite sure what a non-profits stamp is, so when they’re getting it, they’re looking at it and they’re not going to treat it as a third class mail. They’re going to see a stamp on it if they see an indy show on it and it’s in an envelope, they may think, ok, this has a little bit of a junkie look to it, and i don’t need to open up right away. And the most important thing, of course, is to had the recipient opened up the piece of mail as soon as possible. So you do see a difference with your clients work? Sure, because, as i say, the step teo putting on the stamps is another one in a cost, money and it’s done very quickly. It could be done during the addressing process stamps or a fixed there fixed it a high speed, but the using the stamp can have ah good effect on your mail and it can get it open quicker and it just makes it look more natural. So i see the really again sort of pervasive in our conversation is the need for the communication between the printer. Well, really, starting earlier, the designer? Yeah, the printer and the and the male house sure, a design that it does have a good knowledge of the mail system and how mail pieces should be designed, starting with that is really a big step, because when you look at your cost to do any kind of a mailing your thinking, okay, you know, my this is going to cost the printing is going to cost this design is going to cost this and then the letter shop, but what you’re not considering is the mistakes that can happen, which can cost you a lot more in time and money, postage wise or just extra services that are going to be needed to get it in the mail. And time is usually critical. Your example of the gala thes pieces, whether it’s, the save the date or the actual invitation, these need to be on time. Absolutely. Tony, you’d think that, you know, a lot of organizations have the entire year planned out. They’ve been doing the same things for years. They’re having the gallery there basically on the same night every year or that friday of that weak or tuesday, whatever it might be, but it always comes down to for one reason or another, and it might start on design. They’re running late, so we were very often behind the eight ball once the printing is done, because the printing is thought to take x amount of time. But the mailing is thought to be magical and just go out there to the post office. But you have to allow a good amount of time for that male process to happen correctly, and it sounds like there is advantage than teo bringing the printing and the male house operations into one place. Well, of course, i believe so, and, you know i do on a letter shop and print shop on dh, i think it’s critical to do both at the same place for any number of reasons. One of the most important ones is to make sure you’re printing the right amount of materials. What will happen is you, bill, to put in a print daughter for let’s, say five thousand pieces. Well, there’s going to be wasting that process of printing and we may only get forty, five hundred forty, six hundred from the printer, although they said they sent us five thousand it’s critical when ordering printing toe always order ten percent more so that when it does get to your letter shop, they have enough to complete the mailing. Because if you get to the end and you’re not able to mail to four or five hundred people, you’re going to have to go back to the beginning and it’s going to cost you an immense amount of money. What accounts for this loss? What? Why should we be factoring in an extra ten percent? Well, basically it’s finishing in the printing process. You know these whatever your printing, whether it be an invitation or ah, newsletter flyer, a brochure especially talked about bleeds earlier that as toe after it has dried, it has to be cut that it has to be bound or folded in some way. So you have a final peace that’s suitable to go into the mail. So there’s, where you need to, you can have a lot of waste and you need to make sure that with that waste with the cutting, folding, etcetera finding possibly you have to order enough to make sure the final product will i arrive at your letter shop and be able to be process entirely in the two minutes or so that we have before the next break, what’s another advantage or to of having these to print and and direct mail in the same in the same place besides having the right quantity of of pieces. Well, i’ll give you a good one. This happens all the time where people come up short on material is because one of the reasons they do come up short is because they’re not quite sure what their final list is going to bay all of a sudden another list can come out of the blue and you know it might just be a few hundred more names, but they’ve already ordered the printing. If you are printer and mailer are the same vendor thie that vendor khun turn around quickly and when he realizes that we’re having more, we have more names here. Then we officially thought we were going to have they could turn on a diamond. Print more pretty quickly, but if you have to, if those two vendors are split up, then you’ve gotta have those two vendors agree on. Okay, why are we short here? Who’s fault is this, and then get the matter taken care of, and sometimes that can caused delays and in just a minute or so we have before the break. It sounds like also time is a factor, because if you’re a printer and letter shop or to different places there’s going to be transportation between the two. Oh, sure, it’s a huge factor time, because often we only have a couple of days. Once things arrive in our shop, people wanted out extremely quickly. So if there’s any kind of an error it’s great to have everything under one roof so it can be taken care of expeditiously within a day or two rather than waiting another week. My guest is tim cannon, president of mcvicar and higginbotham printing and direct mail company. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio stay with us. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Hi, i’m new york state senator joe a dabo. I will be hosting a Job fair on friday, november 12 and aqueduct racetrack in queens, contending into three p m, we will have over one hundred companies looking for qualified workers. They’re all to be lectures on jobs, try to jeez and networking. So come and bring plenty of resumes and join me on friday, november twelve at aqueduct racetrack. For a Job fair from 10 a m to three p m. For more information, please call pete in my district office at seven one eight seven three eight one one one one. 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 way. Look forward to serving you. 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 my guest is tim kenan, and we’re talking about saving you money and time and getting the most out of your printing and direct mail budgets. Tim let’s, talk a little about the actual stamps just cause you you said if somebody sees one type of stamp, they may treat the piece as they’ve received it differently than another piece. So these stamps all the live stamps now all look different. Well, they dio, you know, that non-profits stamp, of course, there’s only one and it looks different than the first class stamp or the first class pre sort stamp now generally there’s only one of those as well. Remember these pre sort stamps come on large rolls of twenty, five hundred or five thousand, i think, and they’re set up to be fixed as the pieces moving through the addressing equipment or separately. But for the most part, people aren’t going to really examine the stamp unless it’s a commemorative stamps and getting into that that’s more expensive to a fixed because it has to be done by hand. So it’s emmanuel process so very often, folks, when they’re having some sort. Of gala or just some sort of special event. They want to mail that invitation out with a commemorative stamp and that’s going to have to be handup fixed. You do see that, then? Oh, all the time, that’s, what slows us down? We do an awful lot of special event invitations and that can really slow down your scheduling because the stamping process has to be done manually. So we have we’ll have several people working on a job, and all they’re doing is a fixing stamps by hand. And do you see a difference in response rates? Can you say? But when? When it’s a commemorative stamp versus ah, standard non-profit stamp, i don’t have hard proof in reading people. Do you know there have been many articles written about how the stamp on the envelope or the high personalization of the package is going to have a higher impact on your response rate? And i just i do believe in general, that this stamp is going to make a difference because it’s going to be perceived as a little bit more of a personalized piece of mail in your mailbox than just, you know, some come on. By the local car dealership you mentioned personalization, let’s talk a little about how pieces can be personalized and to what degree and and the impact that that has on your on your budget. What are the different sort of degrees of personalization? Well, the simplest form of personalization would be to do a personalized letter and then have the name and address show up through a window envelope and thereby you do not have a match part of the mailing when you get a little more involved with the personalization, with the response device being personalized separately. So you have a little slip in there for people to fill out, but there could be another piece in there that is personalized. There could be a response envelope even we have clients who personalized those in the upper left hand corner. They actually put that person’s name on there. So we do anywhere from no match personalization with just the letter in the window. Two, three, four and five way matches. Of course, when you’re addressing the envelope that’s part of the personalization as well. So you’ve got a standard fund-raising mailing teo people that already have given to your organization or already are a member of the organization will very often be eh letter personalized, a response device personalized and an outer envelope close space envelope not a window and that’s personalized as well. So this is what i hear when ah, shop is talking about ah, double match or triple match or two way or three way match. You’re talking about the number of pieces that have personalization and therefore need to be matched so that they go together. That’s, right? And the more personalization you do have in a mailing, the more impact it will have. Of course, you want to get the piece open first that’s, they’re your first goal. But if it’s fully personalized on the letter and of course a close base envelope is going to have a better look less of a junk feel than a window envelope. So three way personalization is very, very common. So wait, let me stop you. So three way would be matching the outer envelope. The letter and what the response piece. A separate response. What we call a response device. It’s just ah buckslip basically, that has your name and information on it and also has different amounts of information that we’re asking you to give as a donor or a different level of membership to come on, we deal with basically hospitals, performing arts centers, museums, schools, colleges and, you know, when you’re doing a mailing like this and your personal things, you’re personalizing it, you’re going to basically look at what the donor or member has done in the past, and you’re gonna play that response device off of that if they’ve given five hundred dollars, in the past, you’re going to ask them to give another gift of maybe five hundred seven fifty one thousand fifteen hundred if they’ve given twenty five dollars, in the past, you’re going to create four options that are going to start basically with twenty five and go up to one hundred, so you’re going to use that response device based on what that person has done in the past e-giving wise or what they were as a member because you always want to get people to do a little bit more on this on this ask and so now we’re getting into the complexity of this, so you’re not only personalizing the replied device with the person’s. Name and address, but also based on their giving level. So we’ve got lots of different reply devices for the same mailing. Sure, and in terms of membership, you don’t want to somebody to go backwards, and really, you don’t want him to just stay where they are. If they came on, is an individual or a dual member three, four, five years ago. Now you want to boost them up. You want to get them into higher levels of membership, with more benefits. And so you’re going to design that piece specifically, the response device, to kind of push them in that direction, not just leave, okay, everybody gets one generic response device, and everybody stays at their current membership because or donor. Progress forward and keep on growing with you and this this applies to for for our audience, for small and midsize non-profit was sure the smaller the mailing generally, the more important it is if you’re if you’re going to be bailing, teo, whatever twenty five, fifty thousand people and we do that a lot, but the bigger concern is the smaller volume mailings that are going to your best members or your highest donors and that’s where you’re really going toe, play up the personalization and try to touch them closely. And you’re talking now about mailings that might be just a few hundred people. A smaller organization might have a list of just three or four or five hundred people. Oh, sure, go back to the gala affair. You know, you you may be sending out an invitation to twenty, five hundred people hoping that they’ll come to your gala and raise a lot of money, but you’re going tohave a much smaller group that very often we put the mailing together and it’ll go back to the organization for more hand written personalization so they can really hook thie spokes in. Oh, that’s. Interesting. Yeah, some say a little more about with some of that what some organizations doing handwriting replies, sure, and you may have seen that in the mail yourself. It really gives it a lift that it came right from their offices right from the organization, and it has a great effect. You know, they might be just something as simple as when we send them back the package with a letter inside in the response device, or if it’s an invitation where they just cross out dear mr cannon and say, dear tim or hi tim hope you can make it this year looking forward to seeing you, and that has a big effect on people and that’s work that that you, as a letter shop can do for the organization very often. What they’ll do is take that portion of the male back. So if this is an invitation to an affair, we might mail a certain portion. The larger portion, you know, ninety percent of it, and then ten percent of it or five percent even might go back to the organization, and then it might be distributed to board members or people that are on the committee for the affair. And those folks will take those and personalize them in handwriting and then just mail in those themselves. We’ll put a stamp on it, so they just have to personalize it a little bit, seal it, chop it in the mailbox. Are there letters shops that or maybe yours does this? Where if if they want that personal feel but they don’t want to impose on a boardmember or or they just they wanted more. If i could say a more generic personal field, can you can you do that work for them? Maybe just cross out the name the dear mrs or miss mr and write the first name in eyes that used the way we used to do that years and years ago? Quite a bit, but not as much anymore. Way usedto also hand sign a lot of the letters, and occasionally you still have people asking you to do that. But the technology with laser printing color laser printing has gotten to where the signature can look really terrific. But some people still insist on it being hand signed and that we used to do that a lot in the old days, but we don’t do it as much anymore as you can imagine, it takes a lot of time to sit there and have folks hand signing, even if it’s just a thousand letters and you want it all to look perfect but that’s what they’ll do if they can’t get the boardmember to do it, of course, there’s somebody on staff back at the organization that’s going to take on that role more likely nowadays, or a lot of organizations have volunteers now a day to come in and work and that’s a great job for them to be doing, even if you have one volunteer have them doing something like that, putting a little extra personalization on apiece that’s an ideal suggestion for a smaller organization help ah, great way of having volunteers absolute about absolutely on and of course there are also signing machines there are signing a live pen. Yes, there are. I’ve never we’ve never of course, gotten one, but we didn’t really have a need for it, but they are really big. I think in political male with those types letters, and we don’t get into that, but they can, of course be used for everything. It’s not a big thing around here, but i think it is very big down in the virginia maryland area where they do an awful, awful lot of fund-raising mail like this morpher cause related organizations and for politics, elections, but it’s ah, great alternative to use one of those hand signing machines we do offset prints signatures very often, because that will look even a little bit better than the laser digitize signature, and that can get pretty complicated when you’re talking about any mailing, no matter how large or small is often broken up into all kinds of different segments, according to who these donors are or who these members are, and you’ll have different letters and different people signing them. S o if you have to, if the client wishes to have the signature look as true as possible and they can’t do it by hand signing or a machine, we will do offset, which is traditional princessa we’ll print that pre print the letter had maybe already printed, but we’ll print it with the signature and position and then bring it over to the laser machines and do the personalization at their the signature is printed exactly where it needs to go. Oh, okay, so you’re printing the you’re running the already printed letterhead through your offset printing the traditional printing acid and just putting the signature just putting the signature, and then, you know, this sincerely will go on top of that. And, of course, the name it may be a title underneath that will be done by the laser in the next function. Yeah, that would be done in the laser. And so that could be a really time consuming part of a job, because, you know, first of all you’re setting up the data, you’re setting up the different letters that air going into your mailing, and then you want those offset signatures on there so it’s going back to oppress and, you know, plates have to be made and that’s time consuming, it does look good. We’re trying more and more, and with the advances of color laser technology, these kinds of things are looking better and better every year, and with the next wave of color digital machinery that we’re going to be getting very soon in the next couple of months, we think we’ll have the answer to that as all being done. Through digital printing just for the next few months. Yeah, because of the new machinery that just happens to be coming out right now and because our machines are going off, police release our equipment for three years because the technology changes very quickly. And you’re suggesting to that the signature could be in a different color. Maybe should be in a different use. A blue signature where all the other short, i do mean blue signatures and i wasn’t clear on that. Yes, if you want to just print a black signature, certainly it will be done during the digital laser process. But we are talking about a blue signature and getting it to the exact blue of the pen that’s when this is called for and the technology in your mind is good enough that it looks pretty close to alive signature it looks very, very close to a live signature. I personally think that laser looks very, very close to a live signature, but the difference is if you lick your finger and rub it across the signature, and if it doesn’t bleed, then it was printed either with ink or toner laser. But if it bleeds it was a real pen. And only a few people would really test that. A few of your most particular investigative type sherlock holmes type donors. So if you’re if you’re just diving into the signature because it’s interesting the printing of the signature by itself, if you’re doing that than your letter needs to be perfect, because the location of the signature is critical, once the signatures there you’re the letter really can’t change, right? No, it is critical, and in anyone project i could have as many as twenty, twenty five different segments, different letters signed by different people, even in a ten thousand twenty thousand piece mailing or quite a bit smaller because people are let’s, say it’s a hospital let’s say it’s a college seeking donations, they’re going to have different people signing those letters. They’re goingto have different letters, so the signature is going to fall on the front. It could fall in the back, so the set up for that procedure could be a week to ten days before you even start laser ring the personalized letters there’s a huge amount of set up in these processes, and you have to account for that and scheduling any of this type of work. And this is where there’s great advantage, i think, for the small and midsize shop because they don’t. Have all the levels of coordination. They don’t have to get all the levels of approval, but they can still take advantage of this great technology. Oh, absolutely. On dh small mailings altum biggest concern of most people nowadays with direct mail, you’re not seeing small, special niche type letter shop mail houses going out of business. You’re saying big ones that we’re dealing with banks and insurance companies and credit cards. But what we do is important to all of our clients, whether they be larger, small, whether they have one hundred thousand members or whether they have a thousand members of five hundred members it’s the small mailings that mean too, most of them because the smaller lists are going to be the hyre level donors and the high level membership levels. My guest is tim kenan, and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio stay with us. They didn’t didn’t dick dick tooting, getting dink, dink, dink dink. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, waiting to get into thinking. 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. Buy-in 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 friday’s one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcast. 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. Two 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. Geever you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Schnoll i’m tony martignetti and we’re talking to tim cannon, president of mcvicar and higginbotham printing and direct mail shop. Tim let’s talk a little about the working relationship. What are some ideas that small and midsize non-profits should should implement? Tio have the best relationship with their with their printer and direct mail shop? Well, the first thing teo, think about everybody is concerned about price, but you have to think about who you’re going to be dealing with this well, especially since you’re doing smaller volume mail and we do, you know, one hundred pieces, two hundred pieces, you need somebody who understands how to effectively execute mailings like that. So it’s really important that you pick a vendor you can work with and it’s very good, very good ideas to go visit them, you need to see them see what they’re doing, see who they’re working for, see what they’re doing for those folks so you can get an idea. Hey, if they can do this, they can do it for me, so a visit should be welcome without it. We encourage all our clients all the time to come out and visit our shop because they get a wealth of information about how to do things better they also see things that we’re doing that we’re not doing for them. They’re just focused on their needs, but there’s a lot of other ideas out there and ah lot of these other organisations, whether they be in the arts, healthcare or performing arts or museums there, they’re doing things that you don’t know about great idea go out to the shop and see what the other clients are doing, and it will give you many ideas, big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. And as you said, a couple of times that that small organization that has just a few hundred donors to mail to those every one of them is precious, sure and very often people think, okay, this is so small, maybe i should do it in house, you know, at the organization a lot of times, though, it’s not a bad idea to send it out to a male house letter shop vendor because they may be able to do it more efficiently. Time and time again will do a large segment of a mailing on dh suddenly a piece comes back in. The mail too. The person who was in charge of the mailing or some seed they had within the organization a seed is a piece that comes back to somebody in your organization so you can make sure that it’s correct, but very often a seed will come back. And it just happens to be that that was the portion that they did in house, and they didn’t pay close enough attention, teo and it’s. Kind of natural. It’s. Easy to give a vendor clear instructions on what you want done. And then you decide. Okay, but we’re going to do this smaller portion in house here and often that’s where the mistakes were made. And what about the right employee to assign to be the liaison with the printer in the mail shop? Well, it’s, very important to have great communication in all of business. But anything can go wrong in a mill project. Starting with the list. The number of lists, how clean it is. How clean. Meaning what? Well, you know, we can very often people are bartering are exchanging lists from different organization on a small organization. I need more names to mail to whether i’m doing fund-raising or to build up attendance of my gala affair, you’ve got to make sure those lists our male oppcoll ago, we sent everything through the, which is the natural national change of address process or the post office to do an update on them to see if they moved, you know, there’s ah, high percentage over fifteen percent of our population moves every year, so you’ve got a lot of different address changes, so you want to make sure your lists are very clean? And i think a lot of times, these, uh, the liaison work falls to, ah, newer employees or a lower level employees. Well, the good thing about small organizations is that you’re very often dealing with a high up decision maker. It could be the executive director, and that helps right helps enough a lot because they know what they want to do and even more so they’re very willing to listen to you. They want to hear your ideas, the larger the organization, the more likely we’re going to be dealing with, you know, somebody who’s kind of new to that organization, and maybe a lot of the others don’t wanna handle the letter shop work and that’ll fall on their shoulders often they are confused at the whole big picture, and they don’t want to hear about all the little tips. They just want you to get this in the mail, get it done right? So a tte that point, they’re just saying, i just need to do what my boss it wants me to do and the way they described that that i should do it. Yeah, they’re kind of coming from an angle where they’re scared of making a mistake and talking to them and trying to reassure them and trying to get all the information straight between you and them is very important. So it’s a little bit it’s a little bit easier actually dealing with small organizations because you have somebody that’s very invested in that organization and who has a lot of experience that understands things you’re telling them it sounds like it the very least you should start the relationship with the printer male house with with us more senior person and then maybe delegate to someone to actually get the work done. Absolutely something that i see a lot with our clients is someone is thinking that while they’re on vacation, the printing can get done. Sure, and what happens then, i find is there isn’t anybody around to answer questions that the printer needs to have answered in order to do the work? It happens all the time, especially coming up to the end of summer and going into the holiday season. People have been thinking and planning a job, but they come to us a lot of times on the friday before they’re going on vacation. Here it is, and they’re going to a lot of questions you need to have answered, and they could be coming back from vacation a week later without us able to do a thing, and that can really hurt their schedule that that hamstrings you. My guest has been tim kenan, president of mcvicar and higginbotham, the printing and direct mail company located in brooklyn, new york. Tim, if people wouldn’t like to reach you, how could they do that? Well, we’re actually in long island city now. We were in brooklyn for fifty years in the last two, we’ve moved over to long island city, and you can find us on the web at www emcee the h dot com, or call seven one eight nine three seven two nine four. Xero. I’m very glad that tim’s work brought him to the studio today, andi, i would like to thank him very much for coming. Thank you so much to thank you so much. Tony was my pleasure, my pleasure as well, and other people to thank our creative producer, claire meyerhoff, line producer sam liebowitz and our social media is by regina walton. Speaking of social media, we have a facebook page. When you go to facebook, look for tony martignetti non-profit radio, just search for it, it’ll pop up, head over to the fan page and please like us. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. We’re coming to you on talking alternative broadcasting at www dot talking alternative dot com every friday, one p, m eastern. Join us next week, thanks very much. Durney hyre good ending things. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, waiting to get a drink. Thank you. You could. I really need to take better care of myself if only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up dahna is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two, eight sixty five nine to nine xero, or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com oh, this is tony martignetti athlete 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 hi, i’m new york state senator joe a dabo i will be hosting a Job fair on friday, november 12 and aqueduct racetrack in queens contending into three p m we will have over one hundred companies looking for qualified workers. They’re all to be lectures on jobs. Try to jeez and networking. So come and bring plenty of resumes and join me on friday, november twelve at aqueduct racetrack for a Job fair from 10 a m to three p m for more information, please call pete in my district offices seven one eight seven three eight one one one one. Hm? 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. Dahna you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Napor