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Nonprofit Radio for May 5, 2025: PII In The Age Of AI & Balance AI Ethics And Innovation

Kim Snyder & Shauna Dillavou: PII In The Age Of AI

Artificial Intelligence and big data have transformed privacy risks by enabling malicious, targeted communications to your team that seem authentic because they contain highly accurate information. Kim Snyder and Shauna Dillavou explain the risks your nonprofit faces and what you can do to protect your mission. Kim is from RoundTable Technology and Shauna is CEO of Brightlines. This continues our coverage of the 2025 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#25NTC).

 

Gozi EgbuonuBalance AI Ethics And Innovation

Gozi Egbuonu encourages you to adopt Artificial Intelligence responsibly, in a human-centered approach. First, be thoughtful with the threshold question, “Should we use AI?” If you go ahead: Create a thorough use policy; overcome common challenges like staff training and identifying champions; manage change intentionally; and more. Gozi is with Technology Association of Grantmakers. This is also part of our #25NTC coverage.

 

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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d turned dromatropic if you unnerved me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to introduce it. Hey, Tony. Our 25 NTC coverage continues with. PII in the age of AI. Artificial intelligence and big data have transformed privacy risks by enabling malicious targeted communications to your team that seem authentic because they contain highly accurate information. Kim Snyder and Shawna Deleu explain the risks your nonprofit faces and what you can do to protect your mission. Kim is from Round Table Technology, and Shawna is CEO of Bright Lines. Then Balance AI ethics and innovation. Gozi Egbuonu encourages you to adopt artificial intelligence responsibly in a human-centered approach. First, be thoughtful with the threshold question. Should we use AI? If you go ahead, create a thorough use policy, overcome common challenges like staff training and identifying champions, manage change intentionally, and more. Gozi is with Technology Association of Grantmakers. On Tony’s take 2. Tales from the gym in addition to my gratitudes. Here is PII in the age of AI. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio coverage of 25 NTC, the nonprofit Technology Conference. We’re all together at the Baltimore Convention Center, where our coverage of 25 NTC is sponsored by Heller Consulting Technology services for nonprofits. Our subject right now is PII in the age of AI. Personally identifiable information in the age of artificial intelligence, safeguarding privacy in a data powered world plus we’re adding in the topic. Alright, already the show’s over. I wanna thank you all for coming. Uh, we’re, we’re here all week. Uh, be sure to tip your servers, um, and we’re adding in the topic a little more privacy please. Colin, diving into data privacy. All right, because, uh, our guests, um. Ask to combine topics which made a lot of sense. Um, but, uh, before I introduce the guest, well, now, let’s do it this way. So we have, uh, stand by there. We have, uh, first is, uh, Kim Snyder. Kim Snyder, um. I gotta take a deep breath. I do, uh, Kim’s title. I’m gonna hyperventilate trying to get enough air to oxygen in. I’m only 140 pounds. I don’t carry enough in my lungs to carry this, to carry this title of virtual digital privacy Project and program officer. You know Joshua Pesca is thanked for that word salad of it’s all nouns. It’s all it’s all one adjective. 12 nouns. Joshua, you’re, you’re out. Anyway, and then CEO doesn’t get any easier. OK. Also with us, uh we have a special guest who’s gonna give a couple of syllables. Uh, let me introduce Miles. Miles, say hello. Hi everyone, it’s Miles with Fundraise up. Thanks Tony. My pleasure. Miles is sponsoring the hub next door at Fundraise Up, so I, I thought I’d give him a little. He asked to give a shout out, so I said sure. And uh they’re giving away free socks. That’s what fundraise Up is all about socks and what else do you do at fundraise. Right, so we help nonprofits raise more money with AI and we do that by not using any identifiable information and are completely compliant across the globe. All right, that’s what a segue and not even reversal incredible. All right, you’ve overstayed your welcome. That’s enough. OK. OK. OK, thank you, Miles. No, thank you. I, he was, I, I did invite him after he pleaded. OK. So we are talking about PII. So Miles, a perfect segue, beautiful segue into personally identifiable information. Uh, Amy, we’re gonna do the overview, so I’m gonna ask Kim. Virtual digital data, virtual digital privacy project and program officer. I’m gonna ask Kim Snyder. No, I’m gonna, no, I’m hitting it hard. Uh, so for an overview, why, why do we, why do we combine these two topics? What are our issues around personally identifiable information and, uh, and artificial intelligence? Kim Snyder. So they both center on the issue of personally identifiable information. So on the one hand we’re talking about what kinds of regulations exist, how do you manage your data I’m too far away. Don’t whisper, Kim. Everybody hears you. Oh, go ahead. I’m waiting. Um, now you, you edit this, don’t count on too many edits. Oh dear, OK, alright, so, um, we’re talking about personally identifiable information which for quite a while for the last couple of NTCs have been talking about this here and. For quite a while it’s been about more about regulation this year I have to say it’s about having our data out there and vulnerability and so looking at data management and how do you start to take stock of your data so that it is less vulnerable and the person the people whose data it belongs to is also less vulnerable and the other topic which I’m here with my co-facilitator um. Uh, Shawna is with all the amens and I’m here. I’m just like I’m a man, yeah, in the, yeah, so, so talking about how that what constitutes personally identifiable information, how much that’s expanded in recent years and Shawna, what’s what’s your bright lines, how are you related to. Yeah, yeah, so Bright Lines, I founded it 4 years ago. We are a doxing prevention company for folks who don’t maybe know what doxing means. Yeah, it’s define it please. When folks will use your personal information or sensitive information, they’ll post it publicly, essentially posting your documents, that’s where doxing comes from with the intent to incite others to do you harm. So there’s like a malevolence there, right? I don’t usually consider it doxing if someone posts like. A relatively available email address from like a professional setting. I do consider it doxing when it’s your personal email address and the intent is to ask others. It could be your birthday, it could be, could be your wife’s or my man right here, yeah. the PII PII is an expanded. No, I never, no, no, actually I came out of US intelligence community. I was there as a much younger person and in a different age in the United States and in terms of our national security. It was really progressive national security person, um. The whole community, yeah, the I I’ll just say the I mean the intelligence community, yeah, yeah, I don’t usually get too granular with that um but the. Was it in the session description it would have said OK yeah we can talk about that. OK, well, I, I’m not sure I’m, I’m pretty sure, but there again it’s one thing when it’s like out on the airwaves. First is when it’s in like a session thing yeah and at at the time when I was there I was detailed out to the DEA this might have been what you read, to train them on finding their targets on the US side of the border of drug trafficking organizations so we were using these same techniques. I was training them in these like techniques to find people. We reverse engineered that now four years ago after the 2020 election when. Folks were going after Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss for just passing a piece of gum while tallying ballots in Georgia they have a penthouse in Manhattan now have the keys to that penthouses. Um, OK, interesting. So reverse engineer I see reverse engineered your, uh your prior prior work. All right. um, so referring to your session description, uh, how AI and big data are transforming privacy risks by enabling aggregation. So your concern is that the, the. Attempts at uh. Spamming people, not spamming but spoofing, fishing, they can, it can be so granular and so accurate that they, they look more and more real. This is a part of our problem, right? OK, and people and agencies, people are using artificial intelligence to gather this information and then and then put it together and collate and then threaten. So they will, so I think we could probably tag team on this. Do you wanna do the production part? So what we see is them gathering data. There’s a lot of data that’s out there about all of us, and I will. If there’s one point folks take away from me talking today in addition to my hype madness, it’s that this is not your fault. Our clients come to us and they say, oh, if I just hadn’t shared so much on public on social media publicly when I was younger and it’s like no no this had nothing to do with you. Your public records are being scraped by data brokers every day. If you own a property, if you’ve ever registered to vote someplace, if you have a driver’s license, which you have to have if you wanna get on an airplane, that data is being sold or scraped. So that’s the data that’s the source data for data brokers. So yeah, sometimes for free, for a, yep, OK, but publicly available, you don’t need to be, not an agency there’s no kind of like legal process to gather it exactly. This is why law enforcement officers, like certain law enforcement agencies now go around legal process and we’ll just buy data from data brokers. Oh, so much easier than defending a subpoena. to prove it to a judge to prove it to a judge and then if this if they move to quash the subpoena, you have to defend it. Exactly. So AI can now gather data from various sources, so it could be used to scrape these sites. It can then be used to connect data. Let me share a story. We got a phone call like a very concerned client. They had just received a phone call themselves from someone who claimed to have. Photos of theirs compromising photos from an old Snapchat account and on the call they described a photo that this that our client knew they’d taken right it was a photo of a room they were describing a room and the clients like, I remember that room. I remember that poster that they’re describing. I think I might have posted it on Instagram one point it was public, but how did they get my number? How do they know where I work and. My response was like, this is a scam. Someone scraped, someone bought a scra of LinkedIn. Maybe they connected that to your phone number. Maybe you have your phone number connected to LinkedIn because you use it from MFA for multi-factor authentication. They connected that to a handle on Instagram, probably using your face, a facial recognition. And then they just made this phone call and talked to you about your employer finding out about these photos, which was a bluff because your employer’s name is listed on your LinkedIn profile. It’s terrifying for her. And Kim has taken it a step further. So you can stitch all this together, right? and you can process all this data at speeds that never were possible before, but you can also use generative tools to create things so you can. Easily mimic a style of someone so you can also so you part of that data that you grab off of LinkedIn or social is somebody’s writing style so you can, you know, generative AI is really great tone and style and also events. So if you’re posting about events and things happening you could get. An email from your purportedly from your executive director or a colleague referencing that event and things that happened and people who were at that meeting it depends on how public the data is and then you know that can be used as a basis for a you know phishing email um that is a lot more convincing phone call yeah or a phone call this person that called our client was a human but they don’t have to be we’ve seen cases where EDs are being impersonated. And it’s video and it’s audio of them that is so convincing to the people that they’re reaching out to and this is it’s trivially easy to do right in our session in fact we had which one is the real Kim and there were two videos of me and one of them was not me um it was AI me but that cost me $29. To take that, so it’s not inaccessible. These tools used to be it used to be like really hard to do this or 25 cents and it’s like a photo in 3 seconds of audio, and they can make those videos, yeah, and you can have me say you don’t even need me saying the alphabet or or Kim’s title for Christ’s sake or half of Kim’s title. I did say you could swear. I didn’t say you could take the name of the Lord. There’s a difference. There’s a difference. There are boundaries even on nonprofit, there are boundaries. This is Chris. I’ve, uh, I’ve gotten, I’ve gotten these, uh. Dear Tony, I know I could have called you at my number or or written to you at my address accurately, uh, but I chose this method instead. So now I know they’ve got my email and my phone and my address, uh, included a picture of my home, which they probably got from Google Maps or, or right, and, uh, I, I some kind of bitcoin bitcoin scam. But how did that make you feel uh the first one I was a little like. Yeah, I was a little nervous, but, but I’ve gotten, uh, we all have gotten Bitcoin scams in the past, but this one had, like, you know, like you’re concerned that amount of information a lot of, yeah, yeah, it had the right and uh I, you know, I, I ignored it with some trepidation and then like a day or two later I got another one and you know I knew I was just kept coming. It was bullshit. Yeah, I saw one of those from one of our threat intelligence partners, someone who swims in this every day, and it terrified him and his wife. Yeah, because it’s so it’s so close to you. It’s why receiving one of those phone calls or back in the, I would say back in the day I got really energized around Gamergate started to try to support the folks who are being targeted by Gamergate. This is back in 2015, and they would describe what it was like to have like, you know, I sleep with my phone next to my bed. And or under my pillow and to have that be the stream of all of this like directed hate messages like you should kill yourself or I’m gonna do this to you or I’m going to do this to your parents or whatever the case might be. It’s so proximate that technology removes what feels like barriers between you and everyone else, and the issue with doxing so terrifying is that you don’t know who it is. It could be anybody. How do you walk down the street? How do you like sleep in your home, not terrified? You don’t know. I never thought about that. Who’s coming after you? Thank you. I never thought you bet new nightmare unlocked. Yeah, no, no, you know how, but Tony, so you get these things because you’re you’re killing me. It’s supposed to be reassuring us here on nonprofit radio. Well, you’re terrifying. We’ll get to that. We will get to that party eventually we’re we’re great parties, but, but, OK, so you’re, you know, more public person, uh, you, you know, nonprofit radio, so, so you. Get these things it’s a little unsettling and unnerving for you, right? yeah like so imagine how like a nonprofit staff person who happens to be working in an organization that may be more targeted by malicious actors, OK, so one is so your staff member starts to experience this and this may this could freak people out, right? So that’s who we’re thinking about. Um, and kind of raising the awareness, OK, yeah, I mean these are folks already dealing with some level of cortisol at a on a regular basis because of work because of their mission. I think we’ve spent enough time on motivation, and let’s let’s, uh, let’s let’s transition, uh, not subtly very abruptly to what the hell do we do? What do we do it already. Is it already too late? It’s never too late. I’m sure you’re not gonna say it’s too late. No, I wouldn’t be here. Yeah, well, I also believe it and I’ve had those moments. Listen, I live in DC and DC DC Health Link had their data leaked and taken a number of years ago and my child who had not even turned a year old had her social security number lost in that breach and I was like, oh man, she’s not a year old, you know, like how is this? This is the world we live in, right? And I turned to my partner and I was like, this is just, I don’t even know why we bother. And she’s like, you can’t, you of all people can’t have that feeling. It’s OK that you do right now, but you have to keep going. No, there are plenty of ways to ameliorate it. Yes, let’s get, let’s get into them. So what we’re with you. Why don’t we start? Go ahead and then we’ll go to Kim. Yeah, I think you can think about this so the individual as the vector to threat to the organization that can be reputational financial threats to the organization could make it hard to fundraise if you don’t support that person very well. Um, you, you would harm your reputation, say, or, um, it could make you look illegitimate to your funders, right? So if you can think about where the risks are to the organization, that’s one set of what to do, right, action items, and I might leave that with you and speak more to the personal. So when it comes to protecting yourself as an individual, there are plenty of ways that you can work to remove your data online was referring to Kim, not me. Oh yeah, no, Tony’s not gonna take that part no Kim’s got that, um, Kim. I won’t try your title um when it comes to the individual, listen, all of us have data out there again it’s not our fault we have lived a life, right? Like we’ve done things it’s, I think it’s a betrayal of trust in our own local governments that they sell this data and no one’s ever asked us for consent they’ve never informed us, etc. etc. etc. OK, so what do you do? You can sign up for one of those services that removes your data from data brokers we consider that like um. Like taking Advil, right? Like it’s like kind of taking care of some of the pain and some of the symptoms. What we also recommend is like looking back to the source data itself. So if you own a property that you live in, we always recommend that people consider moving it into a revocable trust that they don’t name for themselves. You’ve seen too many estate attorneys call it the Tony Martignetti revocable trust. Exactly exactly a different a different name to the revocable trust. That’s it. So now the ownership is obscured its data that’s already out there from prest. This is the argument that our interstate attorney always gives us and we have to educate them on this. They’ll say, oh, but it’s your name’s gonna be on the document granting it to the trust, but your name was there before on tax documents. The way data brokers work is that they’re constantly pulling this data down and renewing their data set. So when the new data comes down at this address, they want the most accurate, the most recent. they’ll overwrite it. So it may be that you lived at that address at one time but you don’t any longer and if someone’s looking for that address, it’s not your name on it. So it will get overwritten, especially over time. What we’ve seen wildly enough is that when that piece comes out, it’s like a house of cards. When you pull that property record out the rest of it tends to fall apart. We see our clients less and less on ownership is kind of a uh. a core or a hub to to other data yeah absolutely yeah I think there’s some connections happening there with like app user data that’s also on an ISP that’s connected to the house, etc. etc. is there other pieces about that location um that create profiles anything else we can do on an individual level besides the uh property ownership. Another big vector is voter data and I know that’s probably not popular in this audience because a lot of folks believe a lot in the voter file and voter data and using it and I, we often see voter data on getting used mm. Getting bought and getting scraped and so we will recommend that folks apply for programs in their states called address confidentiality programs or safe at home programs they’re always set up in with uh survivors of intimate partner violence in mind but a lot of the programs are pretty expansive, so if folks are concerned about stalking or harassment they can also apply and that then gives them a proxy address in some states like in New York across all agencies. So the DMV is now not going to sell your home address and your name. They’re going to sell your your name and your proxy address together. And and shout out the names of those programs that you would look for at your state. Address confidentiality program or safe at home. If you’re interested, the National Network to End Domestic Violence NNEDV.org has a comprehensive up to-date list of those programs. OK, awesome. Kim, uh, before we turn to Kim, uh I think you’re the perfect question perfect question answered. Person, you’re a person, you’re a person. You’re neither a question nor an answer. You’re you’re just a person with a lot of answers. Um, I read once, it’s so hard to unforget, you know, to unlearn things that, uh, the value of, of stolen data is really in the future is more financial like so that the bad actor can act without you tying it to a specific event. So my credit card, let’s say a credit card number is compromised, it’s of more value if it’s 3 years old than if it’s just a couple of weeks it was just stolen a couple weeks ago. Is that true or is that incorrect? I can see that. I can see that being true. Maybe we’ve gotten a little bit better banks and credit cards have gotten better about just reissuing new cards. Websites tend to push you to change your password when they’ve alerted you that there’s a breach, so I, I think. The private companies more so in government agencies but private companies I think have caught on to that a little bit and I think there is some truth if it’s not for financial means but really someone trying to go after you, we call that a ideologically motivated attacker. What we saw you used the word vector before I did, yeah this is my background so they um. What we found with uh a university, a client that’s a university, their students were being targeted. Some of these outside groups showed up to student houses over the summer. The students had already graduated. We’ve gotten some of their address stuff removed. The addresses weren’t available in connection to their names online any longer. So what we think happened was that those addresses that was screenshot and saved. That can happen, yeah, so it’s not a perfect fix. However, what if you have one as an intelligence officer, if you have one data point, so you have that screenshot, but then you have all these other things telling you that Shawna Dilla no longer lives at that screenshot address, you might show up there, but you’re not gonna spend a lot of time on it because you can’t verify it. You can’t confirm it with another source. Makes sense? Yes, thank you, thank you. All right, Kim, let’s turn to you on the organizational level. What, uh, what can we do, uh, there to. Protect ourselves from what’s already out there. How do we help nonprofits and small and midsize are our listeners. Alright, so for many years the the kind of mantra has been to verify, verify, verify verify. I thank you very much, that’s Kim Snyder and Shawna. No, I’m joking. She’s like I’m we’re out of time. No, we’re out of time. Are we out of time? No, I’m only child I fall for jokes very easily. I wish I had known. I wish I had so many. I had so many more. I had so many more in mind for you specifically talking about a targeted attack. Oh my, talk about a vector vector I was coming right at you. I could have written that you’re you’re putting this on the airwaves. You know how vulnerable you are. Oh man, I got all kinds of advantages. All right, I’m sorry, I interrupted you. What was I talking about dying. Go ahead. OK I’m sorry. OK, so we used to talk in cybersecurity world about, you know, verification verify, verify, verify that was the mantra, right? So now we kind of reshape that so that it’s vet and verify so have kind of multiple ways of verifying especially incoming requests. Anything kind of trust your spider sense is what I’d say if something seems a little bit off like what what are we talking about? So if you receive an email, if an email comes and it, you know, it comes from your development director who’s saying who’s referencing something that you just went to the panel or if it comes from accounting, write a check if any money is involved. And it wasn’t like completely expected even if it was a little expected actually I’ve seen I’ve seen this happen where people got into um nonprofit systems and using AI can scan what’s going on very quickly. And then target things that are about to happen from kind of things that are OK, so, so I would, so the instinct instinct, OK, use your, use your instinct but also make it a policy, make it a process that you just follow uncomplicated process for verifying like any financial transaction needs to be verified even if it’s expected, yeah, so yeah, so you wanna walk through that. You just get much, much more deliberate. About verification and and who is it coming from and you don’t want to. Confirming, did you send this email or not replying to the email, but my phone yeah exactly yeah you you send this email about this rush transaction or or routine transaction. Do it in a different format right different channel, yeah, so you know, and even though the instinct may be email back quickly but no right um but then what you do also is create a culture in your organization where that’s OK to do where it’s OK to take that extra 30 seconds minute to you know verify to ask someone for their time to say I just wanna check, did you send this to me? Um, and in that way it’s OK even if it’s because he’s actually director you can say, did you send this to me? I just wanna make sure and so that that’s an OK thing to do. In fact, that’s a good thing to do. Now we can’t they have to be boundaries around this because we can’t do it for every, every message we get so you mentioned. financial financial transactions and no no no not nervous at all financial no no no financial transactions, any kind of initiated correspondence where they’re asking you for something or for some information. I saw a scam recently where the uh an an old employee was trying to be reinstated and wanted to go around HR to IT to get their accounts reset up like I’m I’m coming back and it was like using the person’s middle name so it’s already a little bit fishy but. They went all the way up to the CTO of the of the company and said hey so and so and these people were friends on LinkedIn and like had shared messages back and forth so the attacker knew this was a personal relationship. hey so and so I’m trying to get reinstated. They’re telling me you need to go to HR, but like I but I can do this. I just need to get my account access back up and online and the CTO is like no. Oh bro, you gotta go through HR. I can’t do anything because they had those controls in place, but small and let’s be fair, small and medium sized organizations don’t, so I’ll just take care of it now or we don’t have a, we don’t have a we don’t have any clear guidelines that we give to people for all requests we need to go to HR. I thought of another. Potentially nefarious request you send your logo. Could you, could you, I need a I need a high def for the logo, you know, the, the, the, the JPEG I have is, is not good. I need a high definition logo that could be that could be to produce a check that could be to make a spoof a spare a spoof website, um, OK, I mean, but it seems innocuous send a logo, yeah, it’s very easy to spoof a website, right? So you know, you know, check. Also check where it’s coming from, right? So you know I’ve had an organization where there were two spoofed, um, there’s spoofs on both ends a spoof of the funder, a spoof of the the grantee. Can you tell us more about that story? It’s a really good one. So yeah, so they, they got into an organization’s, um, you know, Microsoft environment. I asked the questions here whoops. Go ahead. Uh oh, off the mic. 3 like 30, go ahead. So, um, Anyway, that’s late in the day. And I’m thirsty. Yeah, late in the day it’s not it’s, it’s well it’s almost 3 o’clock. You’ve been going since then nonstop. Um, anyway, all right. So the organization had someone get into their systems for a very short time, but in that short time they were able to tease out some information again this is AI can help with this kind of analysis short you know canal is a lot of data that it can grab very quickly and um identified some upcoming financial transactions which were rather large and so um in order to kind of trick. The person to sending to the wrong place, they set up fake websites, fake websites for the foundation, fake websites for the grantee, and domains not websites domains, and so then they had emails coming back and forth you could hardly see the difference and so the, the, the real people, the real people were communicating with the bad actor on both sides and the money. And he got sent to the wrong place, OK. Yeah, that was, that was actually no they did great, but, but it was that was a happy ending, but not necessarily. We started with Shawna, so we’re gonna end with Kim. give us oh no we did OK well I’m not Shawna, your mic is down but that she still gets through. She talks and laughs so loud you hear her over Kim’s mic. No, I didn’t, I did not but one more thing before, before we unless we’re totally out of time, um, don’t shoot the messenger. So create a culture. This is another thing that’s any size nonprofit can do where if something happens, if you click on that thing, if you did that thing that you feel like uh. That was really dumb, right? Make it OK to report that and you don’t get in trouble and there’s no shame and blame because it happens so but yeah the the no blame kind of we encourage you to. You know, say it, yeah, call yourself out, yeah, and there’s no punishment, you know, some organizations like they don’t want bad news at the top, so. All right, we’re gonna leave it there, OK? All right. That’s Kim Snyder. Virtual digital privacy project and program officer Roundtable Technology and Shana Dela Vu, CEO CEO Bright lines. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Shawna. It’s a pleasure. Shawna laughed her ass off. I’m a good sense of humor. All right, I love it. Uh, and thank you for being with a, uh, well, whimsical, I’m not sure it covers it. Raucous maybe, uh, at one point, uh, uh, uh, anarchical because, uh, there was a question that I did not answer. Uh, session. Uh, thank you for being with us at uh 25 NTC for this episode sponsored by Heller Consulting. Technology services for nonprofits, virtual digital privacy project and program officers. It’s time for Tony’s Take-2. Thank you, Kate. A new tales from the gym episode just happened this morning, this very morning. I was minding my own business as I do on the elliptical. And overheard two women talking. One lives here permanently, and the other one who said her name. Sandra Lynn, uh, she lives in North Carolina, but not here in Emerald Isle. She lives, uh. In the Raleigh area, like that’s about 3.5 hours, 4 hours away, roughly. And she was lamenting, Sandra Lan was that uh that she can’t live here full time, house prices are high. And she also still has, uh, her mother and her father-in-law, so her husband’s father are still both alive, and so she needs to stay in that area, but she was, you know, looking forward to retiring here sometime but lamenting that she couldn’t live here now. And that got me thinking as I was on my. 6th or 7th uh interval on the elliptical. I do 88 episode 8, Not episodes. What did I just say? 8 intervals. I do 7 intervals of a minute, take a minute in between, and then the last interval is 2.5 minutes. I was toward the end and it got me thinking, listening to Sandra Lynn. That, uh, I’m grateful that I do live here full time, permanent. This is my home. And that, you know, it’s that there are other people who don’t live here who wish they could, you know, so, uh, you know, I, I add, I have, I have a long list of gratitudes, but I don’t specifically say grateful that I live here in Emerald Isle full time. So I’m gonna add that to my gratitudes that I do every, I guess I’ve told you every 2-3 times a week. I’m adding. Gratitude that I live here in Emerald Isle full time in this beautiful place and I have the ocean across the street. Uh, your own gratitudes. I hope you’re, I hope you’re doing your gratitudes out loud, at least a couple of times a week. That is Tony’s take too. Kate. You do sets. Uh, well, sets are for, yeah, no, that’s different intervals. Intervals on an elliptical, you do a minute hard and then a minute resting. And then a minute hard and a minute resting, it’s called high intensity interval training, HIIT high intensity. It just means you do intervals of things like you sprint, yeah, I don’t run, I’m on elliptical, but you might sprint and then walk, and then sprint and then walk and sprint and walk. Those are called intervals. Sets are like you do 3 sets of 10 if you’re, if you’re on a weight machine or something like that, or maybe pushups, might be 3 sets of 10 or something like that. I don’t know, they seem, there seems to be a different, well, I think the interval is because you’re still active, you’re just resting in between the high intensity intervals. Gotcha. That makes sense? Yes, and I am grateful that you have a beach house. Yeah, because you get to, yeah, you get to visit and uh laze around and uh. What is the word I’m looking for, uh, not schmooze, but, uh, you get to, uh, I don’t know. I can pretend that it’s my beach house. Yeah. You can for a week, yes, but then, then I’m very happy to say goodbye. After a week. Love you too. We’ve got bou but loads more time. Here is balance AI ethics and innovation. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference, where our coverage is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. With me now is Gozi Egwanu. Gozi is director of programs at the Technology Association of Grant Makers. Gozi, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Awesome. Thank you for having me, Tony. Pleasure. You’re welcome. Your session is AI strategy for nonprofits, navigate ethics and innovation. We have plenty of time together, but can you give me a high level view of the the topic and the session that you did? Sure. So the session was really, um, and was really spearheaded by Beth Cantor, uh, and it basically provides uh a balcony view of where we are in the sector in terms of AI adoption, ethical responsible AI adoption, the nonprofit and philanthropy sector. And so, uh, we really start with what we found in the Technology Association of Grantmakers state of Philanthropy tech survey that we did in 2024. In that survey we found what many grant makers are currently doing with AI as far as you know are they testing are they experimenting? Has anyone rolled it out enterprise level, which is, you know, at the organization wide level and what we found is that. And which mirrors quite what we’re seeing in the nonprofit world is that most folks are not using AI in terms of, you know, anything that’s crazy, you know, innovative at this moment it’s really just kind of, you know, meeting summaries, you know, taking notes, that sort of thing, um, and so and but in addition to that we found that while 81% of folks are using AI, uh, sorry, while, uh, oh sorry, 81% are using AI but only 30% have AI use policies, so. You’re using it but you don’t have any guard rails you have no way to tell your teams or your staff, hey, this is what we don’t put into the AI this is what we do put in so you’re really running the risk of having your information potentially used in a way or trained uh an AI model that, um, you know, could potentially put your members at risk, your grantees at risk, whatever the case is for your organization and so. With that little bit of an overview it basically came down to the importance of AI experimentation and really do starting slow starting at the very base level working with your teams to kind of talk through should we use AI if we did use AI what would that be for? So thinking about the use cases, the business, um, the business use like what what would be the business case for it and then you know assembling a nice team of folks, you know, as advisers or experimenters and champions at your organization. Uh, to really kind of help you all start doing that experimentation in a safe and low kind of like low risk way, um, and then from there really defining whether or not AI is your, your next move and then once you do have decide that AI is the next move you wanna move into that next level of the AI maturity which Beth, you know, covers really um really well uh you know you go from that exploration to discovery and then you move into experimentation and ultimately enterprise eventually. Um, but what we’re finding is that most folks are not there yet. They’re still very much experimentation early stage, very early stage, um, and, uh, you get to kind of get to see a case study of it through the work that Lawan did at her organization United Way Worldwide. OK, well, we don’t have with us, but you can provide a lot of context, lot of, lot of detail, I just said you could talk. All right, um, are, are we, do you know the you might not be part of what you surveyed, but was there even intentionality around should we, should the should we use question or did it just kinda happen because people started, people started hearing about it using chat GPT. Well, you know, with one of the questions that we did on the survey, we found that like there’s quite a few folks that are using it in what we call shadow use or shadow AI, which is basically you’re using AI but your organization doesn’t know what you’re using. I see. Alright, so that’s not intentionality at the organization level. No, no, no, I would say not, not. Uh yeah, so we really want to encourage the intentionality which is don’t start using the AI unless you all have that collective organizational conversation of is this something that we should be doing? Is it useful? Is there a business case to go with it? Is it relevant? Does it make sense? Is it safe for our organization? does it align with our ethics? And then consider going into experiments. OK, let’s explore that question a little bit uh now in 2025 because I, I suspect at 26 NTC we won’t be asking the threshold question, should we, should we use? So what, what, what belongs in the conversation if we’re, if, uh if we’re at the stage where Well, uh, individuals may be using it, but we don’t know. Or if nobody’s using it and we’re trying to decide enterprise wide, you know, is there not, we’re not even at the is there a use case like but should we, should we explore it? What goes into that conversation? Sure, um. Again that you know, really thinking about the business case. So when you’re having that conversation about should we use AI, then you have to think about what would be the specific usage of it, right? So say you’re the finance team and you’re considering using AI, what would be the benefit of using AI versus doing the doing the the work flow or process that you currently have and you’re thinking of having AI do? so you really. Kind of have to have that conversation like an in-depth conversation about the process that you’re doing right now. Is there anything wrong with it? Are we losing anything? Could we gain, uh, productivity, time in our days and our schedules if we were to move to using AI to do this one process or this one, this one work flow? Then at that point you think about, OK, maybe we do get a benefit out of it now that we get a benefit out of it. What are some of the things that we have to be concerned about now that we have a benefit is it that now we don’t wanna make sure we wanna make sure that any financial information that could be sensitive to any of our donors or their their personal information, do we not want to have that being able to be, you know, used in the AI model or whatever system that we’re using so you know, you, you start with here’s how we do. Things here’s how AI could potentially benefit and then you move into that conversation. OK, if we did, what are some of the risks and concerns really thinking through all of them as much as you can, we know that you can’t think for every single possibility, but as much as you can kind of write it out and map it out as a group with several folks in the room, the better that you are at being able to say yes or no on moving on with AI as that. Potential new solution. OK, and a part of what goes into this intentionality is a usage, a use policy, your, your, you know, you want us to be thinking about ethical uses. OK, uh, what, what are the, what are, what are the ethical concerns? How can you, how can we talk through those? Well, you know, one of the key ethical concerns is that we know that most AI models that exist now, including open AI, were trained on the internet, and we know the internet can be, uh, wildly biased, wildly biased, filled with lots of terrible things. Not only biased but misinformed, misinformed wrong yeah complete nonsense in a lot of cases, um, and so if you’re using these open AI sources that have been trained on the internet, then you have to be really careful about deciding to use it against, say your theory of change. So if you’re an organization that is er. Be uh vulnerable populations groups that are already kind of under attack, whatever the case is, do you want to have AI making or informing your decisions related to work that you’re doing with these vulnerable groups? More than likely no because the AI may choose to do things that are more in line with the group that is. Biased that may have you know may be unethical and so you want to make sure that whatever you’re using the AI to do that it isn’t putting the organizations and the people that you support and serve in harm’s way so really thinking through, hey, if we’re gonna use it in this way, maybe we need to use it in a way that does not put these groups in harm. Maybe we just focus on using it internally like folks do for the meeting. Notes because that’s a very low risk thing whereas if you’re you know input you know uh decisions about whether or not to continue funding an organization or trying to measure or not whether or not their impact is aligning with your organization’s missions and values some of those those questions are not as clear cut as yes or no, whereas an AI that is trained on purely just wanting to see impact, purely wanting to see a return on investment, which is not always the case of what happens in philanthropy. Then you really have to take, take a step back and say is this the most ethical decision to go forward? Could we be putting organizations in harm? Now you can control what a model is trained on, yes, but that requires something proprietary, right? You have, you have to pay a developer to, uh, to create that. I get I don’t know it’s called a small language model. I don’t know what it’s called, but something that’s trained only on your own data, but your own website, maybe your own documents that you that you provided, but that, that requires a fee and a and a developer. Exactly, it it can it can cost, it can be expensive. The other option is if you don’t want to go the route of creating your own AI you do a paid version because we know the free versions of AI specifically I’ll talk about open AI there’s not a whole lot of freedom or flexibility in turning off the settings to prevent it from training the model on the data that you input. And so in that case you definitely need a use policy because some folks would probably just be like I really need to you know analyze all of this data on all of the groups that we served in this, you know, community that is already really, you know, under attack or potentially in in harm’s way and then now you’re putting that information into the AI to have it, you know, into the free AI to start doing it’s now. and now the AI has all of these people’s information and can now use it to provide it to other people who may look them up or want to find data on. That’s you’ve you’ve shared data that it’s gone. I mean it’s yeah yeah yeah there’s no control. So yes, enormous intentionality, care, um. And what if we don’t have a, you know, we don’t have a, a chief technology officer, chief information officer, you know, it’s an executive director, CEO, and, and maybe decent sized staff. I don’t know, 35, 40 people, but they still don’t have a chief technology officer. How do we, how do we uh ensure the intentionality and care that you’re, that you want us to? Yes, um, there’s a couple of ways, and I think oh good, I think at the core of it you don’t have to have a CTO and even yourself you don’t have to be a technologist. I would never classify myself as a technologist, but we can, there’s ways to find training. There’s plenty of training and 10 it has fantastic training for AI certifications for professionals in in the nonprofit sector, um, and I’d love to share that and 10 and tag are teaming up and we will be offering one for philanthropy professionals very soon. And so these are opportunities, a very, you know, relatively easy ways for people who don’t have that technical background to learn about the AI itself, get themselves familiar familiarized with, you know, what they need to be doing to protect themselves and their staff, ways that they can start to experiment in a safe, you know, safe space, um, so and there’s plenty of also free tools, free education. I will, you know, even I, even though I’ve talked. About OpenAI a lot. OpenAI just announced their OpenAI Academy which has all free resources and tools for learning how to utilize AI for anyone and so there are plenty of free resources out there and people online, you know, uh, there’s plenty of folks on LinkedIn that I see on a regular basis that are sharing information and providing some guidance for nonprofit leaders as well as, uh, folks. That are just not technically inclined so there’s ways that you can kind of upskill and train yourself to understand how to use AI even if you don’t have that technical experience in house. Say a little more about this partnership, can you uh and it’s technical association of grant pardon mechology Association of grants thank you um. Yeah, so I don’t have a whole lot of details to share, but essentially if you’ve, if you’ve used any of the great training and certification resources on the N10 website, we are essentially trying to make a parallel version of that same professional certification for nonprofit leaders using AI for. Our foundation leaders and so uh you can expect really a kind of a similar learning process but however it’ll be tailored to some of the different functions and needs that we find at the philanthropy you know at foundations versus what you would see at a traditional nonprofit. OK, so I’m sorry, it’s intended for professionals I should say. Um, Alright, what, so thank you. You know, that’s important ethical considerations, um, anything more on ethics because, uh, then I I want to talk about the policy, what belongs in your use policy, but is there more about ethical concerns? OK, OK, OK, enormous. I mean if you, if, if you’re exposing your data. And, and it’s gone. It’s, it’s out there like you said, right, um, our use policy that, uh, only 13, 30% have, although 80% are using AI. What goes into this use policy? The use policy essentially just outlines what you and your team should be thinking about before you ever use any AI, so. It’s kind of that no go or go kind of conversation so if it’s sensitive data, if it’s information related to any of your members that you just wouldn’t want anyone to have outside of your organizational members probably wouldn’t want to put it into an AI system so it just kind of outlines, you know, essentially guardrails for for teams and and staff to understand how to best utilize it. And I think some folks are also, you know, thinking about the environmental impacts of using AI are really now making sure that their data use policy or the AI policies are also, you know, having folks be ethical about how they’re using when they’re using AI right? so you know if it’s to do something that could take you probably about the same time that the AI does, don’t use the AI um if you’re just, you know, just tossing anything, any old thing and they’re asking questions all day probably also not a very useful. Use good use of AI you really wanna think about AI very strategically and intentionally, right? You wanna make sure that if you’re going to the AI, it’s for something that you know it’s gonna save you significant amounts of time. One of the things that I often will use AI for is drafting, you know, large descriptions for events. That takes me sometimes hours if I give it to AI, I can do it for me in seconds and the key to descriptions of events, yes, like, so we have webinars events that we have on our website, yeah, so you know I, I, I, I don’t wanna sit there talking about all the learning that you’re gonna get out of it and the objectives and this and that and so AI, I’ve trained, I have like a GPT that is based on kind of like my voice that I provide it like hey here’s the prompt, here’s what I’m kind of looking for. It provides me a draft and then I use that draft and I manipulate it how I want. Um, and so you really wanna make sure that you know when you’re prompting the AI or you’re using the AI, it’s they’ve measured it. I think one prompt uses as much energy. I think it’s like an entire city like it’s crazy. It’s like like it, I, I don’t use my quote me on that, but it’s enormous. There’s quite a bit of energy, and I can actually actually share a link to um one of the stats that came out about it. There’s a researcher that’s been sharing a lot about it, um, and she was just interviewed by, uh, I believe it was Doctor Joy Bullumwini on, uh, by the, um, the. AI justice uh group that she she leads, um, and so there’s a lot of it there’s a lot of energy being used so if you’re gonna use it, you wanna make sure that it’s for something that you don’t need to, you wanna learn prompting good prompting, so you can get what you need out of it and then you can make, you can, you know, refine it and make it better. Sometimes you may have to go back in and ask the AI to refine, you know, what it did, but you really do wanna keep it to a minimum. You don’t wanna be using AI. Constantly because the energy use and the impact on the environment is extreme extreme that gets over to the ethical concerns as well exactly because it’s yeah so yeah you’re you’re just really um basically telling your teams here’s the here’s what we expect out of you when you’re using AI and these are the things that could result in consequences if you don’t follow this policy OK um. What else, anything more about the policy, what, what, what belongs in there? Um, You know, I think the the key things is like you know making your team’s aware of the types of AI that are provisioned because that’s another thing some organizations have taken the decision to block certain AIs that they don’t want you using or even turning off certain AI functions in their uh current tech stack. So, uh, you wanna make sure that it’s really outlined very clearly the types of AI that are in use and also it may, you may wanna include something in there about how you, uh, communicate your use of AI to your teams or other people outside of your organization so. Kind of a, a nice, nice little bucket of what’s internal external, and then also where can you go if AI and where should you not go disclosures to the public um why would there be some uh some platforms or that are that are ruled out? Well, because You know, one of the things that I’ve seen some members talking about within, you know, the tag space is that there are some AI that do not allow you or some systems that do not allow you to turn off the AI function meaning that you don’t have any control of how that AI is taking your data that you have in that tech stack or that tech tool. Oh, you don’t have control no yeah and in in fact there was actually a conversation about a specifically a DAF uh platform that actually. Made this clear to many many many of our members who use it and so that is something that you really have to be concerned about is do you have any level of control if you don’t have any level of control and how the AI is using your data in that system there are organizations that would likely say this is a this is not a system that we would allow you to use. OK, it’s a good example. Um what else uh came out of the session? We still have a couple more minutes together. What else did you talk about in the session that uh that you can share with us? You know, one of the great things that we did was we did these scenarios, um, that Beth Beth put together about, you know, what are some of the things that you would say if you’re in a situation when where, you know, say for instance, uh, your organization is really excited about using AI they wanna jump head first and they just wanna start using AI without, you know, and and they they basically just want you to start rolling it out and get your teams on board. Um, and so in that scenario we really talked through all of the processes, you know, first of all, that first conversation that we talked about, like, should we even use AI that didn’t happen, so that needed to happen. The other part is also, you know, how fast do we wanna roll things out? What are some of the different change management principles that we should be thinking about as a team that could make AI adoption more beneficial and successful so really, you know, starting slow but really starting at the very beginning of like should we or should we not like that should be your because truthfully many organizations do not need AI. It’s true. I mean, it’s just the reality. Some organizations will never probably need to use AI, and then there’s a whole lot of them that probably will. So that question of like, should we do it has to happen first, um, and I think if you’re doing it on your own as a rogue, stop, do it on your own time. You want to practice on it, do it after after hours on a weekend. Exactly, exactly, not on our computers, not on our sisters. Yeah, yeah, if you, and that’s actually one of the things that, um, you know, we’ve seen a lot of our members and foundations, and I think Beth has also seen with, you know, some of the work she’s done in the in the sector is that a lot of foundations are now trying to just get to the staff and say, hey, look, we know that you’re using, can you just tell us and try to make that trust, build that trust with each other and I think that’s gonna be really a good way to help prevent a lot of the issues. Alright, let us know, but then stop. No, there’s no repercussion for reporting yourself, but only, well, only after what you report after the report date, you’re liable. All right, stop it. Exactly. OK, going rogue. All right, um, anything else? Uh oh, questions, any, uh, provocative or memorable questions that came. From the audience I’m trying to think. Um, No, well, you know, the one that had come up was just, uh, you know, there was a, there was someone at the front that had asked about, you know, AI hallucinates, and I was, and, you know, should you hallucinates, yeah, and she and the, the person was basically saying, you know, be careful using it as an organization because it could give you answers that are just factually wrong and so you know our response was like yeah you’re right AI does hallucinate but that’s why it’s incredibly important and I. And I didn’t even say this myself, but at the beginning, which is if you use AI, you always wanna make sure that it’s for something that you have a certain level or high level of expertise or knowledge about. So you know if I’m asking you to write descriptions for me, I know about the event details so that I’m not just gonna let the AI write a description and let it go and put it on the website. Yeah, that sounds good. I’m gonna put it no you review it, you make sure that. The details it’s including are correct. If there’s any statistics or numbers that are being used, you can go and verify those data. So if you’re ever using AI for anything, you should always have a human in the loop. There should be someone that’s able to verify the information, especially if you’re someone that’s not knowledgeable in that specific thing that you ask AI to do. You need someone who is either that or it’s gonna be written at such a high level that it’s maybe that has no value. Exactly, exactly. All right, how about we leave, are you OK leaving it there? Oh, you feel like we covered this? I think we did. OK. All right. All right. Go the Abuno. Euanu Gozi Ebo. Director of programs at Technology Association of Grant Makers. Gozi, thank you very much for sharing all that. Thank you for having me, Tony. My pleasure and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. Next week, 225 NTC conversations to help your fundraising events. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. And now the donor box is gone, I miss our alliteration fast, flexible, friendly fundraising forms. Uh, I miss that. All right, well, I am grateful to Donor Box though for 2 years of sponsorship, very grateful, grateful. There’s another gratitude. I’m grateful to Donor Box. Now that they’re not a sponsor anymore, I’m grateful to them. No, I, I’ve been grateful. I just haven’t said it. OK. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show 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. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for June 26, 2023: Data Driven Storytelling

 

Julia CampbellData Driven Storytelling

Julia Campbell returns to share her thinking on retaining and engaging donors by creating and curating your best stories. She’s an author, trainer and speaker. This continues our coverage of the 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, hosted by NTEN.

Also this week, we welcome Nonprofit Radio’s first announcer, Kate Martignetti!

 

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[00:00:34.88] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti, non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Our announcer, Kate martignetti is gonna stick around last week. I invited her on for fun and I love the way she sounds. So I hired her, Kate. Welcome.

[00:00:36.29] spk_1:
Hello.

[00:00:41.36] spk_0:
Glad to have you. Congratulations on your May graduation from American Musical and Dramatic Academy. How did you, how did you find that program?

[00:01:14.59] spk_1:
I went to a high school at a technical school for theater and then I just kinda wanted to continue theater as like a professional career. And one of the places that I found during one of those um college fairs where you can let go and speak to other colleges in the area in other states found Amanda. Um and they were like, hey, come work with us, we’re professionals. Everyone has the same passion as you. You will be worked very hard, which is something I really wanted because theater and just being on stage is what I want to do for the rest of my life and

[00:01:28.69] spk_0:
where you worked very hard. How did you like, did they work too hard?

[00:01:32.49] spk_1:
Yes, they did. They worked me very hard. But I, you know, out in the Real World you’re gonna be auditioning every single day, maybe multiple auditions a day. So I am to throwing us new material every day was honestly really, it helped to prepare us for the Real World.

[00:02:02.01] spk_0:
I’m glad you had a great experience at an NDA. And I’m really glad that you are non profit radios announcer. So welcome again, I’d be hit with pseudo AG graphia if I had to write the words you missed this week’s show,

[00:02:48.75] spk_1:
data driven storytelling. Julia Campbell returns to share her thinking on retaining and engaging donors by creating and curating your best stories. She’s an author, trainer and speaker. This continues our coverage to the 2023 non profit technology conference hosted by N 10 on Tony’s Take to the gift butter video. We’re sponsored by Donor Box with an intuitive fundraising software from Donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others donor box dot org. Here is data driven storytelling.

[00:03:23.73] spk_0:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC, the 2023 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. You can tell that this is much quieter than all the other 23 NTC recordings you’ve heard. That’s because Julia Campbell and I were not able to connect on the floor at the conference, but we’re doing it in follow up.

[00:03:26.56] spk_2:
I got the time zones wrong. It’s my fault. All

[00:03:34.39] spk_0:
right, Julia, I wouldn’t say it, but yes, Julia messed up the time zones. She was ready two hours after she was supposed to come. I

[00:03:38.69] spk_2:
was like, where am I going? What am I doing? And your poor, lovely, you know, associate said, oh, no, that was a while ago. So thanks for bearing with me.

[00:04:00.14] spk_0:
Yes, of course. Yes, it’s, it’s Julia Campbell very well, very well worth waiting for. And Julia is an author trainer, speaker and even years ago was the social media manager for tony-martignetti non profit radio which helped launch her author speaker training

[00:04:12.55] spk_2:
career. I really, really, really did. That’s so interesting. It was so long ago because it doesn’t seem like that long ago.

[00:04:35.35] spk_0:
It was good. 878, 10 years maybe. I’m not sure quite 10, but it’s around there. Yeah, we had, we had fun together. Yeah, we did. Yeah, you always knew what you were doing. You just get me, get me, get me straight. Google. What? Google Mail. What am I like?

[00:04:38.03] spk_2:
Yes, you have some, you have some great ideas. But yeah, the technical application, but that’s the perfect example of being in the weeds. And I think you are a great example of knowing your strengths and hiring out and you still do that. It’s inspiring for, you know, entrepreneurs and freelancers like me,

[00:04:57.66] spk_0:
I’ve had a social media manager for many uh 15 years, probably 14, roughly 14, 15 years, I’ve had somebody helping me.

[00:05:08.51] spk_2:
So nonprofits take note. You don’t have to do it all yourself.

[00:05:59.26] spk_0:
Oh, please don’t. Yeah, you don’t, you, you know, based on your scale, you know, you might be able to but if you want to really scale, you know, you need help in a lot of different areas might be grants, it might be social media. Yeah. Don’t, don’t fear the outside folks who can help, you know, they specialize, alright, like Julie, like the Julia Campbell’s, but she’s moved on from being social media manager. Now. She’s author trainer, speaker, August personage generally. So your topic at NTC at NTC? Yes, was retain and engage your donors with data driven storytelling. I feel like we should start with what is data driven storytelling. So let’s start there.

[00:08:40.91] spk_2:
Yes. So I think that the term storytelling has taken on this interesting almost jargon e quality where people just sort of throw it around and they say, oh, we have to tell stories or collect stories or share stories. And I’m definitely guilty of a lot of that because a lot of my content and materials and training is around effective storytelling, but a lot of nonprofits don’t work in human services. So there are quite a few of us that maybe don’t have those stories that are incredibly apparent like the puppies and the kittens and the kids and the, you know, the Food Bank. Um So how can we use the data, but also create a narrative around it. So, with storytelling that is data driven, it’s really appealing to people that have that logical mindset. So the way that I taught it and just to go very briefly, the way that I tried to frame it in the session. Okay. Well, the way that I framed it in the session and I did have two other speakers with me that were absolutely fabulous. Um And I want to talk about how they covered it as well, but I talked about Aristotle’s rules of persuasion. So the only way you can persuade someone to take an action is to have three elements. One is logos, which is logic, the logical nature. The second is ethos, which is, which means you need to be credible, which is tony, why you read my bio and talk about my accolades before the podcast even get started because people are automatically saying, why should I listen to her? You know, why should I even pay attention to her? And then there’s pathos which is the emotional connection that you need to have in order to take an action. So data figures into the logos piece of it, which is convincing me that what you’re working on is something that’s urgent and relevant and timely, but also something that’s really a problem like is food and security a problem that sounds silly. When I say it out loud and I’m sure for everyone listening, it sounds silly. But if I ask someone on the street, they might say no, I don’t think so. I don’t know anyone that goes to a food bank. I don’t know anyone that’s food insecure because what we don’t understand, we’re so caught up in the curse of knowledge and what we know that we don’t understand. We still do need to convince people that the problems we’re working on our problems. You know, we can’t just keep sending out fundraising appeals that say everything is great and hunky dory and wonderful because people will read it and say, oh great and just throw it in the trash. We need to incorporate data and statistics into our storytelling to show people that this issue, this cause is relevant and timely and also is really worth our attention,

[00:08:55.08] spk_0:
but still make the story humane,

[00:10:31.06] spk_2:
but still make the story humane. So storytelling is the way that you’re going to create that empathy that is required. So if the only thing you do is share statistics, you know, and actually I should have pulled up my slides and gotten some statistics because I’m going to just make them up right now. If you say, you know, 100 billion, not 100 billion, 100 million people are refugees right now in Ukraine, right? That’s just a statistic people’s eyes kind of glazed over if you don’t start talking about the story. Like what is the story? Maybe? Tell a story of a family that was displaced, tell a story of a family that came to the United States and what they experienced. So if you read anything that’s good journalism and tony, you know, I studied journalism. Journalism. Journalism is really my passion. That’s why I started my podcast. That’s why I love to write. I love to get the story, but not just the story. I really want to drill down into. Why is this something we need to pay attention to right now? And why is this relevant? And how does this sort of relate to what’s going on in the rest of the world? Because what happens is when non profits do their storytelling, a lot of the time they focus just on their locality or they focus just on maybe even their region if we’re lucky, but we need to tie our stories into the bigger picture of, you know, racial inequality and racial injustice or maybe, you know, the bigger problem of substance use and abuse, the bigger problems of income inequality and how that affects people experiencing homelessness. I think we need to do a better job tying our little piece of the pie into the bigger picture to create that context for our audience. So we shouldn’t rely on data, but we should definitely be incorporating it more, I think with our stories.

[00:11:04.62] spk_0:
Alright. This is, it’s, it’s sounding very valuable but a little esoteric. So like how can we or what are there things that we need to think about or I mean, this is not, it’s not a 1234 steps, you know, when you’re done, but how do we approach this so that we can get to what we aspire to human stories that also incorporate data so that people see the bigger context

[00:11:33.00] spk_2:
thinking about. So we need to be really creating a system where we’re constantly looking out for not only really effective stories but also data that supports our point that this is a problem. So while I love Humans of New York, I love Humans of New York. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s,

[00:11:49.71] spk_0:
I don’t know if there were more than two volumes, but I have two of those on my

[00:12:16.50] spk_2:
book. It is anyone that wants to be a storyteller, especially a storyteller on social media needs to follow Humans of New York on Facebook and Instagram get the books. They’re fantastic, they’re wonderful stories. They make me feel something but Humans of New York, they don’t ask you to do anything. I think they might now be fundraising and there might be a call to action at the end. But in the beginning, it was just sharing these stories to make you, you know, to help you feel like you’re part of the human experience

[00:12:22.88] spk_0:
is and compelling photographs of folks

[00:12:26.27] spk_2:
exactly compelling

[00:12:27.27] spk_0:
visuals and not by a professional photographer. I don’t think he was a professional

[00:12:31.36] spk_2:
photographer. No, I think he’s just using an iphone.

[00:12:34.07] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:14:54.64] spk_2:
Talk about just something that exploded because as you can see, you know, we’re craving that human connection. So we’re craving like seeing ourselves and other people or you know, we want to be empathetic, we want to be compassionate. But when you want someone to do something, you can’t just share a fantastic story and then say give at the end, it really needs to be what is the impact going to be when you give, for example, what’s going to happen with that donation? A lot of people say give so that 10 people can, you know, have access to the food bank or give so 40 kids can get the backpack, something like that. Yeah. So I consider that a piece of data. So data doesn’t have to be a statistic on the problem. It really just has to be something that is going to appeal to the logical side of my brain. So you’ve got me emotionally, you grabbed my attention, you piqued my curiosity, you pulled at my heartstrings, maybe or you inspired me, maybe you made me angry. That’s a valid emotion to elicit with storytelling. And what are you going to do with that energy? And that’s where a lot of organizations I think get lost. They focus on telling this great story, pulling the heartstrings, but then what happens after or they tell these great stories and they keep telling them, but I’m a donor and I now want to know what is the effect, what is the impact? Like? Tell me great stories. Fine. But if I’m an active donor to organ is a, I’m a monthly donor, I really now want to know how many people have been served this year. How much is this affected? What’s going on? Is it pushing the needle on this problem? Is there legislation being passed? Like what is the sort of what is the impact? And I think that’s lacking and a lot of donor communications because we focus so much on donor acquisition and we don’t focus on donor retention. And when I designed this training, it was really retaining and engaging donors. It was not about donor acquisition. There’s enough data on that. I talk enough about that. But how do we really get them invested by using the statistics and communicating the impact? I think we just continually tell them these great heartstring pulling stories. But at the end of the day, we really want to know a little bit about what was done with the funds that we provided.

[00:15:59.12] spk_1:
It’s time for a break donor box. It’s the fundraising engine of choice for 50,000 organizations from 96 countries. It’s powerful enough to double donations and simple enough to be used by everyone. Black girls code increased donations by 400% upward. Scholars increase donations by 270% Maya’s hope saw a 100% increase in donors. The donor box donation forum is four times faster. Checkout, no set up fees, no monthly fees, no contract and 50,000 or go all over the world. Donor box helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Now back to data driven storytelling.

[00:16:59.72] spk_0:
The whole point of this is retention and engagement. Alright. So data for, for context data for so for understanding the scope of the problem, you know, sort of human storytelling to pull us in and, and ground it because you’re right, we can’t, we can’t understand something on a scale of 100 million people. It’s not that many in Ukraine, but whatever it is, we can’t understand even a million, even even 10,000 people is hard to understand, let alone millions, right. So, all right. So you know grounding in in one or two concrete stories, um data for impact. So you know what, what, what are we doing? Yeah, the problem is enormous. What’s our part of it? How can you be allied with us, help us alleviate the hunger problem or the domestic violence problem or in our community? Okay. Okay.

[00:17:07.59] spk_2:
These are huge problems and it takes the story to contextualize it, but the data to put it in perspective,

[00:17:25.56] spk_0:
write the story. Yes, the story contextualized data for perspective and, and context. Exactly. Alright. Alright. Um Right. Without too much reliance on data but but the numbers are important to, you know, get a sense of the scope of the problem. Like you said, I’m just, I’m just reiterating the smart points you, you, you already made. Um

[00:19:26.76] spk_2:
And I think another thing that nonprofits trouble with and you probably see this too in your work with like planned giving. Don’t donors, I don’t want to say not all donors are created equal because I hate that saying, but I don’t know how else to say it. Like donors don’t all want the same information. You know, donors don’t necessarily all want the same information depending on where they are in the donor journey. And they might, you know, they definitely need to hear the stories, the success stories, the testimonials, they need to hear the good things that are being done, but they also really need to understand that these problems are not going away. Like you give a $10,000 gift, you’re amazing and wonderful and that’s incredible. And thank you. And here are ways that you can get even more involved or becoming a go to resource on the issue. That’s always what I like to think. People start out the conversation trying to be the go to resource, but they should be, you know, kind of wining and dining the donor. Once they get the money, then they become the go to trusted go to resource on this issue. And they almost become like an advisor telling people you really care about arts in our community. This is what’s going on. You know, this is what the data showing arts is a fantastic way to improve academic excellence or are, you know, we have shown that the kids in our program are getting into college at higher rates, whatever it might be, we throw all that data at people that don’t even know us and don’t even care necessarily care about us. And we don’t end up giving this information to the donor who has raised their hand and put their credit card down and said I care about this issue. Um I think we just focus so much on donor acquisition and throwing so much information at brand new prospects, but not enough using this data to cultivate and retain existing donors

[00:19:56.58] spk_0:
and motivate. Um you know, you want folks to feel good about whether it’s $10,000 or $1000.50 dollars, you want them to feel good about what they’ve done. So they’re encouraged to, to do the same or more and not leave and not be among the, was it 75% of first year donors leave us?

[00:20:05.48] spk_2:
I think the fundraising effectiveness project data that just came out something like 80% of first time donors leave and then overall donor retention is around 46%.

[00:20:32.87] spk_0:
Yeah, not even half right, not even keeping half half our donors. Yeah. Alright. Alright. So smart to focus on retention engagement. Um What else? What else what else did you talk about? Because you had the other, you have the uh co presenters. So I don’t want to specifically ask you things that were in the like the learning objectives. And then you say, well, that was somebody else’s support

[00:23:41.34] spk_2:
so well, we really worked collaboratively together. So, um my two co presenters, one was Patrick Byrne, who’s the CEO of the Challenge Foundation, which is an organization based in Denver. And then Candice Cody, who’s been a longtime friend of mine, but she does marketing and data analysis for community boost, which is a consulting firm. So I asked Patrick to join us because he has that for, you know, um in the trenches perspective, he had just actually changed jobs, but he’s been working in um education and after school and youth development for decades in Denver is actually pretty well known. So, and he’s the CEO, he goes out and does a lot of these donor meetings, which we’re all very familiar with. So he’s one of those CEO that loves to go meet with donors, loves to talk, loves to present, loves to be like on the forefront of the issue. And he says that he Jen, he generally like will with a major donor lead with the data almost. It’s not like they’re parading around, you know, he doesn’t usually have one of the youth um come with him to these meetings, first of all, because of confidentiality and ethic, ethical reasons. Certainly they have events where the donors get to see the program in action. But he says often what he finds with the big big donors in the foundation certainly is that they want to see that data. So they understand that the problem is, you know, it’s really large and they know the success stories because the Challenge Foundation has done a great job in terms of marketing and pr and they’re always in the news, but they want to see kind of the hard facts. Like are we really pushing the needle on this? Like, are we really getting good results? Are we getting the bang for our buck if you will? Um What are the outcomes? You know, what are, what’s the actual impact based on our goals and objectives of what we’re trying to achieve? So he was talking a lot about his experience, talking to donors, his experience collecting those human interest stories as personal stories, how they do it at his organization. They have a whole system, they train their employees in storytelling, all of them so that they can notice a good story or a mission moment or a little quote or a testimonial when it comes up so that they always have like a database of stories to pull from. So when I tell clients that they, that really freaked out because they don’t want they, they think that it’s going to be everybody out in the wild West posting all over Instagram without any guidelines, but that’s not what it is. It’s really just people collecting the stories and sending it back to one person who’s kind of the gatekeeper and figures out the permissions and things like

[00:23:43.42] spk_0:
that. That’s valuable. You’re curating stories throughout the organization. Yes.

[00:24:40.43] spk_2:
And really, that’s the only way that storytelling is gonna work if you have it infused into the culture, if you just have your development director and I’ve been that development director that is the only person responsible for stories. What’s going to happen as I used to do every Friday, I would send out an email and say, hey, everybody, I’m gonna send out the newsletter this week or I’m sending out donor. Thank you. I really need a great story. And then of course it’s crickets. So if it’s not infused into the culture and if it doesn’t come from the top down, the importance of collecting these kinds of things, it’s just not going to happen. I mean, people are so busy, think about all of the things like anyone listening, think about all the things on your plate right now. But if it’s part of your job description, you know, part of your expectation. And if it’s just something that’s part of the culture of the organization, it makes it a lot easier. Yeah. And it

[00:24:41.46] spk_0:
makes it easier for the for the person who does have to curate the content because there’s this library of, of valuable stories that you can go back and ask more detail about. But, you know, like, well, you know, this, we have this great success or this, this woman gave said something about our work and here’s, you know, here’s what she said.

[00:25:09.61] spk_2:
Exactly. And you, you can’t always be on the front lines. In fact, you’re probably not always on the front lines, the marketing person, the fundraising person, and you’re not gonna

[00:25:10.53] spk_0:
remember it, You know, six weeks later when the, when the newsletter person emails you, you know, because it happened six weeks ago, you’re not gonna remember that story, but in real time. All right, that’s valuable in real time. If people just have somebody to email, look, there’s great, great quote from this woman. You know, I can tell you more if, if you decide

[00:27:41.51] spk_2:
exactly, I can tell you more or I had lunch with this donor and I think she’d be really perfect for our gala. Just make a mental note. You know what I mean? And it’s things you can follow up on later. And what I always say is that these stories are evergreen. People think that email and social media, everything has to be something that you came up with that second. It really doesn’t like if it’s a story from five years ago, it’s still powerful and no one knows it was from five years ago and it’s still like it still has that impact. I just think we overthink the content creation and the storytelling, the story gathering process because we think it has to be something that happened this week. It really does not. Like sometimes people work on stories for months, you know, they work on them for weeks. Like thinking about making a video, you can work on that for a really long time. It doesn’t have to be this like, oh, this person told me this story today and I have to post it today. That’s the way I think we think about things, think about websites that have stories on them that are really God only knows how long the stories have been on there. But that doesn’t diminish their impact. It doesn’t diminish the person’s transformation or the life that was changed or the impact that was made. It just, it just um you know, if you have that, that powerful like evergreen story that never goes stale, you can build on it and why not revisit stories? That’s another whole topic. Charity Water does that they constantly are revisiting people that they told stories about and sharing new information about these people. And I just wonder why we have to constantly be on this hamster wheel of storytelling and we don’t dive a little bit deeper or maybe, you know, revisit someone that was in our program that we talked to, maybe talk to them five years later or even just a few months later. So the constant content creation, hamster wheel and the view of storytelling is it has to be this perfectly crafted Lord of the Rings trilogy kind of thing where there’s, you know, the hero’s journey drives me crazy journey.

[00:27:47.80] spk_0:
Yeah, the

[00:28:21.34] spk_2:
hero’s journey. It’s the, it’s the one we all know. It’s like the Luke Skywalker, the Harry Potter Frodo. I mean, it’s the, the Hunger Games, you know, Katniss, it’s the reluctant hero and then the guide and then we all know that story. But when we are talking about storytelling, especially on digital channels, it really can just be a great picture and a quote like Humans of New York does it or it can be a mission moment or it can be a piece of data and then illustrating that data with a quote with a testimonial. So I think we tend to think everything has to be perfect and very produced. But on the other hand, that’s stopping us from doing the work, I think it’s a little bit of an excuse. Honestly,

[00:28:36.25] spk_1:
it’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:29:13.33] spk_0:
You can watch the video of last week’s webinar that I did with Give Butter. It’s debunk the top five myths of Planned Giving. I was with Floyd Jones from Give Butter. And when I say with, I mean, we were sitting next to each other, it was terrific. What I’ve never done a webinar like that and I hope I can do more where we’re sitting side by side. So we joined each other’s screens and we just, we had a good time at, at the, we were in Brooklyn. So if you want to watch the video of debunked, the top five myths of Planned Giving the video is on the Butter blog at give butter dot com.

[00:29:23.98] spk_1:
That is Tony’s take to, we’ve got just about a butt load. More time for data driven storytelling with Julia Campbell.

[00:29:53.07] spk_0:
That’s all very valuable. Go back, you know, like if you’re listening, I would go back 10 minutes and replay what, what Julia just said because there’s 44 valuable points in there that will help your storytelling, help your content curation really valuable. Um And what did you just say that something is hurting us? What was the last thing like last sentence you said?

[00:30:00.97] spk_2:
I think it’s a little bit of an X. It’s

[00:30:03.11] spk_0:
an excuse. Yes, it’s an excuse. So not happening because we don’t have anything that’s 24 hours recent.

[00:31:12.51] spk_2:
So or we don’t, we don’t have the budget to make produced video. I could tell you every excuse in the book, every storytelling excuse I have been told and there are ways around it and this is not my quote and I just wrote it down for a talk that I’m doing and I can’t, I want to give credit to somebody for it, but it doesn’t take resources to be resourceful and you have to consider, you know, your budget, your band with your capacity and also, of course, there’s ethical considerations around storytelling, but none of this is insurmountable. I’ve worked with organizations. I work with an organization that focuses on their think tank and they focus on chronic absenteeism in the United States. They never tell stories about students because they don’t want to focus on a student who’s chronically absent. I think that would be highly unethical to do that. And also it’s, you know, there’s such a stigma around it that it’s hard to find personal stories for them, but they still managed to talk to teachers or principals or even other um like legislators about their work. I mean, there’s ways to do it without getting that. You know, Julia was hungry and she came to the shelter and we helped her.

[00:31:27.96] spk_0:
But can’t they tell a story of a student just anonymized?

[00:31:37.21] spk_2:
They could they tell they interview a lot of teachers who tell stories, the third party stories, okay. But because they don’t provide direct services so they provide training and assistance and legislative advocacy. I mean, their think tank,

[00:31:54.70] spk_0:
right? But let’s, let’s take, let’s take a hypothetical then playing off that. I mean, if you, if you do do direct service work, the stories can be anonymized, right? Not to use the neighborhood that they live in, you can pick another neighborhood. You don’t have to use their age, you can pick something different than their age. You don’t have to use their name, you can pick a fake name. No, the, but the story can still be told that that sounds like a, that sounds like one of your excuses. We don’t want to, I don’t want to compromise. We have ethical and maybe even legal

[00:33:49.15] spk_2:
requirements. Okay. So anonymized of confidentiality clients I’ve worked with one is called Plumber Youth Promise their foster care agency and Salem Mass, they only work with underage kids because once they turn 18, they age out of the foster care system. So they sent an email out the other day that I saved because I wanted to use it as an example um with my clients and it said that 40% now this is like such a horrifying statistic. 40% of kids that age out of foster care, like our homeless instantly just homeless because they don’t, they’re not staying in their foster care family. Maybe they can stay in their foster care families house. Um They certainly can’t stay in the facility because of laws, state law. Oh my God, it’s so horrible. So that is such an example of that statistic grabbed me and then they told a story of girl that they assisted um while she was transitioning out and they talked about their whole transitioning program and what they do when kids turn 17 and how they work with them for a year to figure out this transition. So they don’t turn homeless. It was really amazing and like it was just super I opening for me because I guess we all, I don’t know, I just never thought of it that way, but it was using data in this way to kind of open my eyes. But then sharing a story of how okay this this piece of data is horrible, but here’s what we’re doing, you know, in our little corner of the world to combat it. And it was, it was all anonymized. Like you said, there was a picture of like a tree in the email and it was, the story was, you know, obviously names changed and everything. So there’s definitely a way, there’s ways to do it.

[00:34:28.71] spk_0:
All right. Thank you. Encouragement, encouragement. They always, this is, this goes to something I’ve, I’ve said on the show a few times and I say in my trainings too often, you know, I like to think about how we can instead of why we can’t, if you’re looking for the, why we can’t. You come up with 1000 reasons were under resourced. We’re, we’re understaffed. It’s a holiday

[00:34:29.83] spk_2:
week. It’s a recession. It’s this, it’s that it’s a political campaign

[00:34:34.80] spk_0:
has time, right? It’s the summer. It’s the fall, it’s the winter. It’s the spring, nothing can get done in those four seasons. No, we need a new season. You know, exactly why you can’t. But the, how you can focus on the, how you can see why you can’t, how could we get it done. Let’s assume we’re gonna do it. How can we do it? How can we do it?

[00:35:36.64] spk_2:
I love that. I think it’s all about framing and a lot of it is mindset like you and I both teach tools and tactics. But if you have a person, what you just said is so interesting is if you have a person that comes to you for training and help, but they are just thinking about, they want you to just legitimize why they can’t do something. I immediately say, I just don’t think this is gonna work until we can get into that. What can we do space? Because especially with storytelling, people do, they have a lot of challenges that are very valid and then they have some challenges that maybe they could work on that. They put up these walls that they think. Well, we can’t share this, we can’t collect this data, we can collect this story. So coming at it from that we can, I think I’m guilty of doing that in my own life. I think you’ve just inspired me to change my own thinking. Sometimes I’ve got to come at it as a I can like, what can I do? I can’t do that. Okay. What can I do?

[00:36:11.90] spk_0:
Exactly. Exactly. Alright. Any more encouragement on data, the intersection of data and humanity, let’s say

[00:37:43.52] spk_2:
data and humanity. Well, I believe that we do so much data collection and we have absolutely no idea of what we’re doing with it? So with any kind of data collection that you do, whether it’s internal or external or social media or its program related, always have a focal point. How is this going to be used? How are we going to improve what we’re doing? How you know, what could this inspire? What could this elicit, what minds could be changed? What behaviors could be changed? Always have that sort of bigger picture view of the data you’re collecting. Because if you know, we can all collect data all day, every day, but if we’re not using it in an effective way, if we’re not contextualizing it for people or if it’s just a piece of data that we’re not doing anything with, it’s really not going to be worth anything. And I also really encourage people have empathy for your audience. So this is something that J Kenzo says he’s one of my favorite authors and podcasters, J A Kenzo and he says have empathy for your audience, make everything very explicit, very clear, very short, don’t wrap a ton of stuff in 90,000 statistics and flow charts and things like that. Unless it’s a funder, you know, you’ve gotta know your audience. But if you’re thinking of an email or social media post, just have empathy for people, they’re scrolling, they’re busy, they have 90 1000 other emails, their boss is yelling at them, their kids are probably homesick, you know, whatever it is. Just make sure that you are providing the most relevant information, something that’s going to help them inspire them, something that’s going to encourage them to take the action that they want to take,

[00:38:02.73] spk_0:
have empathy for folks. Channel, channel your folks. I try to channel our listeners when I’m talking to smart folks like you. All right.

[00:38:11.95] spk_2:
Yes, I love that. Be your audience. Think about your audience first,

[00:38:16.04] spk_0:
Julia Campbell August personage

[00:38:20.42] spk_2:
personage. Uh going to put that in my email signature.

[00:38:33.66] spk_0:
Uh But more more uh perfunctorily, she’s author, trainer and speaker and was a speaker at 23 NTC. Thanks to

[00:38:37.57] spk_2:
excellent

[00:38:39.63] spk_0:
my pleasure and thank you for being with the ever continuing coverage of 23 NTC. Even four weeks later, still still capturing the smart speakers. And we were sponsored at 23 NTC by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being with us

[00:39:42.29] spk_1:
next week, 10 fundraising boosts on a budget and personalized fundraising at a scale. If you missed any part of this week’s show, we beseech you find it at tony martignetti dot com were sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I am your announcer Kate martignetti. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:39:48.78] spk_0:
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 May 22, 2023: Multigenerational Technology Teaching & Goals Aligned With Technology

 

Lauren HopkinsMultigenerational Technology Teaching

If you have folks spanning the generations working or volunteering for your nonprofit, you may have noticed they learn technology differently. Lauren Hopkins shares the strategies for teaching tech across the generations. She’s from Prepared To Impact, LLC.

 

 

Jett WindersGoals Aligned With Technology

Step back from your technology decisions before you buy the shiny, new apps. What are your goals for the tech? And how does the tech support your overall goals? Jett Winders from Heller Consulting helps you think through it all.

These both continue our coverage of NTEN’s 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, #23NTC.

 

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


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[00:02:07.29] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. And this is number 641 which means we are just nine weeks away from the 650th show. 13th anniversary coming in July. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of dextrose gas tria if you upset my stomach with the idea that you missed this week’s show multigenerational technology teaching. If you have folks spanning the generations, working or volunteering for your non profit, you may have noticed they learned technology differently. Lauren Hopkins shares the strategies for teaching tech across the generations. She’s from prepared to impact LLC and goals aligned with technology. Step back from your technology decisions before you buy the shiny new apps. What are your goals for the tech? And how does the tech support your overall goals? Jet Winders from Heller Consulting helps you think through it. All these both continue our coverage of N tens 2023 nonprofit technology conference on Tony’s take to share, share. That’s fair. We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Here is multigenerational technology teaching.

[00:02:29.17] spk_1:
Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. The nonprofit technology conference we are at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation

[00:02:31.98] spk_0:
for nonprofits. With

[00:02:34.41] spk_1:
me. In this meeting is Lauren Hopkins. She is social impact consultant at prepared to impact LLC Lauren Hopkins. Welcome to

[00:02:46.00] spk_2:
Nonprofit radio. Oh, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Pleasure.

[00:02:53.09] spk_1:
I love your topic. We’re talking about teaching to technology skills in a multigenerational workplace on the baby boomer. You’re a millennial. I am and we will try to bring in a couple of other Jen’s as well. We don’t want to exclude Gen X and sometimes it does sometimes feel a little left out or

[00:03:09.88] spk_2:
they don’t think they feel left out. I don’t think so. As long as we provide the tools, I don’t think so. Okay.

[00:03:17.34] spk_1:
Um And Gen Z, of course. Yes, we’re not going any younger than that. Now.

[00:03:21.41] spk_2:
We do have the traditionalist um younger or I’m sorry, older than the baby boomers. And we discussed that in myself. Okay, traditionalists, traditionalists. Yes.

[00:03:33.10] spk_1:
Okay. Because I’m a young boomer at 61 where traditionalists, I

[00:03:38.33] spk_2:
believe the traditionalists if I recall about 78.

[00:03:57.48] spk_1:
Okay. Well, there still are some 78 year olds in the workplace, especially returning to returning to work, perhaps second career. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I don’t want to leave out and I don’t want anybody traditionalists. So uh just give us, give us like overview. Why did you, why do you feel we’re not doing as well as we could training across the generations?

[00:04:45.23] spk_2:
Yeah. Well, you know, so I really enjoy teaching technology skills. I started as a social worker and I started to um teach technology skills in various sectors. And so Department of Social Services, teaching software implementation. And then I went to Aflac teaching the same thing and in the nonprofit field, and I really feel as though we have individuals within, within the various generations that still have a lot to learn and depending on the learning styles, their learning needs are very different. And so the strategies that we use to teach the technology could vary based upon the generations.

[00:04:52.04] spk_1:
So when you say their learning needs you there starting in different places, starting

[00:04:56.47] spk_2:
in different places and their learning styles as well,

[00:04:59.84] spk_1:
comfort

[00:05:01.18] spk_2:
their comfort and um and the tools and strategies that we will use to reinforce some of that learning some of the activities and such may be different based upon the generation.

[00:05:15.15] spk_1:
One of your takeaways is learning how people value training differently, they value it differently. That was interesting what I’m not, I don’t think of valuing training. So I’m obviously not in the mainstream. So that’s why I’m talking to you because I need help. So how do people value it differently

[00:06:12.37] spk_2:
across the ages if you think about it? Um with some of the, with the baby boomers and we the traditional list, they genuinely want to learn. Um They just may need some, some help along the way where we think of millennials and the Gen Zs. It’s sort of as if um they’re just expecting for the information um to be provided to them. And so we just want to make sure that we’re providing the information that they need to be, to be successful. So it really, it depends on how the information is provided that their values may change.

[00:06:20.18] spk_1:
You have some techniques to talk about. Yes, for training across.

[00:06:26.30] spk_2:
Absolutely.

[00:06:28.01] spk_1:
Let’s, let’s dive in. Okay. Don’t sell short now. And nonprofit radio listeners don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t hold out okay. But what’s, what’s the technique? Which, which one, what should we start with?

[00:07:08.68] spk_2:
Let’s start off with the traditionalists. Okay. Yes. So with the traditionalist one, one thing that we do well with the traditionalists and the baby boomers, we want to make sure that we are providing step by step tools and strategies for them to be successful. So if you are training on some technology skills, make sure that you do have the step by steps with screenshots available and really encourage them to, to go ahead and print that out. So within the training, if your training is virtual or if it’s in person, they can follow along really well. Also, we want to make sure to the best of your ability if we do have someone of a younger generation that maybe we can partner them together with someone of the older generation and they can, they can assist in the learning process.

[00:07:31.30] spk_1:
Students.

[00:07:57.50] spk_2:
Yes. Yes, both are learning because we’re talking about a multigenerational workplace. Um And so, um and also with the baby boomers and the traditionalists, they both prefer to learn within a traditional in person classroom setting. But we know that that’s not always possible. And so we want to make sure that we are um making some accommodations to ensure that they are getting the information in the best way that they receive it the best way that we can. Okay.

[00:08:06.56] spk_1:
So in person is better for the older folks

[00:08:11.28] spk_2:
better and well, let me say preferred is preferred for them. Um Research shows

[00:08:19.45] spk_1:
preferred their prey, but it may not be

[00:08:21.23] spk_2:
possible. How do you, how do you like to learn? Do you prefer virtual as a baby? You say your baby? Right. So do you prefer to learn virtually or in person as far as if you’re learning new technology skills? Yeah,

[00:09:01.32] spk_1:
I have a two part answer to that first is I generally don’t like it when guests turn the tables and put me on the spot. That’s the first, that’s the first answer. But the second answer I will go along with you. Is, uh, no, I prefer, I’d much rather be in person. Yeah. I also prefer speaking to in person audiences. Um, I prefer in person into like this. I mean, I have to do most of them over Zoom because the guests are from all over the country and I live in North Carolina. But, um, are you in

[00:09:10.28] spk_2:
North Carolina? I am from, I’m from North Carolina originally. I now live in South Carolina. Where are you, where are you from? I’m from Hickory and then I went to undergrad in high point and I also lived in Wilmington’s.

[00:09:21.44] spk_1:
Okay of those three. I’m the closest to Wilmington’s. I live in Emerald Isle. You know, the little beach town about an hour and a half above Wilmington’s. Yes,

[00:09:30.36] spk_2:
I do love it. Small world. Where’s hickory hickory hickory? It is at the foothills and so it is about an hour from Charlotte and about an hour and a half from Asheville.

[00:09:44.83] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. Foothills. Alright. Alright. I’m originally from New Jersey. Okay. Okay, cool. And you’re in South

[00:09:49.70] spk_2:
Carolina? I do live in South Carolina now Columbia, South Carolina settled down there. So

[00:10:30.84] spk_1:
that’s the capital of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. Don’t think I don’t know why. Yeah. Okay. So, um, yes, so I prefer in person, everything, audiences, learning interviews, um, meetings with, I do plan giving, consulting, fundraising. So I much prefer to meet donors in person, but a lot of times phone has to suffice. And for the older folks that I’m working with, they’re usually not interested in being on Zoom, they’ll do it for their grandchildren, but they’re not gonna do it for me, which is fine. So I pick up the phone, I got you. But I’d rather be in person whenever I can whenever I can.

[00:10:36.81] spk_2:
May I ask something? Then

[00:10:38.82] spk_1:
after my first answer to the last question you’re still gonna ask again?

[00:11:18.05] spk_2:
It’s not a question. It’s not a question. But as far as far as baby boomers and the traditionalist, I also recommend providing an option for them to call. That’s what reminded me uh providing them an option for them to call the, the training consultant, whoever’s doing the training in case they have questions. Um If there’s a phone available phone number, because oftentimes with technology, you know, we want them to email if they have questions or send a message. But with those two generations, they prefer to pick up the phone or if there’s an option to meet in person, not sure if that is possible. But um at least the phone option will be great better

[00:11:42.12] spk_1:
than email or text. Makes perfect sense. It’s what they grew up with. Exactly. And an email and text or what the other generations grew up with. Exactly. So follow up phone offer, phone, follow up anything else for dealing with Boomers, traditionalists? Not right now. Okay. What if maybe we’re gonna get to this. What? Yeah. Alright. So you are we gonna be talking about having multiple generations like in the same class? Yes, like you said, pair off somebody younger with somebody older. Okay.

[00:11:57.72] spk_2:
Okay. Yeah. So one of my suggestions is to um in your training plan, look at the learning styles of all these generations, figure out what is best or how each of them learn best and just implement various little nuggets that meet the needs of all of the generations. That is my suggestion instead

[00:12:16.66] spk_1:
of like what give me some sample nuggets.

[00:13:30.31] spk_2:
Sure. Yeah. And so for the, let’s start, let’s start at the top. So for the um for the traditionalist and for the baby boomers, like I said earlier, you may want to have a um a print out of the step by step guides for the Gen Xers. They love independent work. So for the activities to reinforce that learning, if you have some independent work that would be helpful um for the millennials, they also enjoy group work. And so after the session, if we have some group work, that would be great. And um we can reinforce their learning to by pairing them up with someone who’s a bit older and helping to strengthen both groups. And then for the Gen Z’s, they love videos, training videos. 3 to 6 minutes is the sweet spot videos of 3 to 6 minutes. Because remember this is the generation that goes to youtube for answers to almost anything. And so videos will be great. And so um if we can have trainings and then implement just little pieces that are catering to the various generations inside of the learning plan or the training plan, that would be ideal.

[00:13:37.53] spk_1:
Okay. So take a hybrid

[00:13:39.11] spk_2:
approach. Exactly. Touch

[00:13:45.58] spk_1:
everybody with what they need and this is all research based. We know Gen Z does much better. Exactly. Two

[00:14:01.32] spk_2:
six minute video. Yes. Yes. And for those who have attended the conference this year, the learning materials and my slides with the references are online. Okay, so they can pull that

[00:14:03.12] spk_1:
up, walking your talk. Alright. Yeah. Um what else other, other techniques across the generations? We got plenty of time

[00:14:22.38] spk_2:
together. Okay. So let’s go with the Gen Xers. They really enjoy being active and so their activities, if they can be active, that would the ideal um any type of gaming that would be great too. So um in their activities, if they can get up and move, if it’s in person or if it’s virtual, let’s set up a way that the activities can help them to just be active and implement what they are learning. That’s key.

[00:14:43.66] spk_1:
So active, meaning they get up out of their

[00:15:35.85] spk_2:
seats. Oh yeah, that’s good. Let me clarify, let me clarify. Yeah. So for active you could get out of your seat. But an activity. So what I like to do is say for instance, you have a, um, an activity plan for them to, let’s say I used to work at our local United Way, United Way of the Midlands in Columbia, South Carolina. And I taught the homeless management information system to about two huh 100 users. Right. And so what I like to do is after their New Year’s or trainings, I would email them a task sheet for them to complete their tasks. And once they finish that task sheet, go ahead and send me their work and I’ll look over it. So that is a way for them to be active. Now, depending on the resources that your agency have, you may have um some gaming um strategies or tools. My agencies did not have that. So we work with what we have. Um But that is a way just for them to be um to be actively doing something and to reinforce the learning that has taken place.

[00:16:40.97] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Stop the drop with donor box. It’s the online donation platform used by over 100,000 nonprofits in 96 countries. It’s no wonder it’s four times faster. Checkout, easy payment processing, no setup fees, no monthly fees, no contract. How many potential donors drop off before they finish making the donation on your website? You can stop the drop donor box helping you help others donor box dot org. Now back to multigenerational technology teaching with Lauren Hopkins.

[00:16:48.01] spk_1:
What about Gen Z. Anything? Anything further further for Gen Z besides the video?

[00:17:05.26] spk_2:
Yeah, just for, for Gen Zs and for millennials, one thing to note is that they love learning management systems or LMS as most people. Um Well,

[00:17:06.23] spk_1:
I have Jargon Jail on non profit radio. So I’m glad you opened with learning management system. LMS would have to call you out. What the hell is an LMS?

[00:18:48.07] spk_2:
Um So the LMS for learning management system that have a feel of social media. All right. So if we have a discussion board, if we um have some sections that just feel like social media, that you can put together a poster or um share a tidbit or tip of the day that just feels like social media that would be helpful. Now, if your agency does not have those type of resources, that is okay. Another thing that is helpful, especially for the millennials is if there is a blog for um this generation really enjoyed blogs. And so if there’s a blog where you as a trainer can introduce some tips, so say for instance, every week or two, you do a tips Thursday or tips Tuesday or whatnot and introduce or post a tip for them to be utilizing the system. That would be, that would be great also. And another thing as well, remember remember that with these videos, we have to have somewhere to store them, right? And so one thing that I do a couple things that I suggest finding a mutual place where we can store the videos via your, the L M s or maybe it’s a site that is open where you can store those, those videos, a screen share videos that could be helpful as well. Um And also I’m not sure if it’s possible, but depending on your agency, if your company has a, a, a, a company, youtube, see if it’s possible where you can record the screen of some trainings, just making sure that it’s not any confidential information on the screen. But see if we can store it on there. And remember too that the videos should be between 3 to 6 minutes if that’s not possible. 20 minutes or less, but the sweet spot is 3 to 6 minutes.

[00:19:19.53] spk_1:
Yes. Um What kinds of you already had your session? I did. What kinds of, what kinds of questions were you

[00:20:21.73] spk_2:
getting? Yeah. So I got a couple questions. One question that we got was for the baby boomers and for the um traditionalists if they are in this um in the classroom and um we cannot implement in person trainings, how do we teach them? What’s the best way? And so one thing that I really enjoy doing, especially with training software is for those generations, I really like to do one on one training. I love to do one on one training. And so what I offer them is let’s meet one on one now in my um in my work experience, we always use teams. And so, and I’ve also um I use some others too, but mainly teams, but let’s go ahead and share your screen. And what I like for them to do also is for them to drive the training. So I don’t, I always prefer if the learners, no matter what the generation is, if the learners will share their screen and, and drive and I will teach them as they practice. Dr

[00:20:32.68] spk_1:
meaning what they decide what the topics

[00:21:54.58] spk_2:
are, training, training agenda. Yes, we have a training agenda. Exactly. So let’s say for instance, I am teaching um a staff member at a local shelter how to check a client into a bed using a particular software. What I’m going to do as the trainer, if this is their first day, I’m going to ask them to log into the system. Be it the live system or a training system somewhere? They can mess up in and practice or whatnot and share their screen. I’ll give them a login, share their screen and I will teach them. All right. This is where you go to enter in the client’s name. Okay, go ahead and do that. Alright. Next, we’re going to click on such and such. Okay, go ahead and do that. Um And so that’s what I mean by driving. So letting them um letting them navigate and, and play around and see what it feels like also I do enjoy and I do suggest rather having step by step guides like I’ve mentioned before. But if your agency does not have that or you don’t have time to create it or whatnot, because we do know that a lot of nonprofits, they have a smaller staff and such or, you know, smaller department. So that’s okay. Make sure you give your learners no matter what the generation time to write notes, um write notes during the trainings. And so make sure that, you know, you’re taking your time and and can write, allowing them to write some notes that that is a huge tip.

[00:22:06.64] spk_1:
Any other valuable questions you got? Oh,

[00:23:01.81] spk_2:
yeah, let’s see here. I did have a question about um oh, confidential information. Um Someone asked me a question about um confidential information and sharing, not sharing the confidential information. But what if it is a part of the new software? Let’s say that it is an electronic health health record that your agency is in implementing. And so one of my suggestions is to just ensure that the company that, you know, the company’s policies and what can be shared during training and what should be only shared, you know, in, in the real world. And so that, that is um that is huge. Someone said that oftentimes that is the question, should we be sharing this or whatnot? So that’s my suggestion that just look at your company’s policies as far as the training or if y’all don’t have that, um, go ahead and implement something, what should be shared during these trainings, what can be shared or if we need to go ahead and make up some dummy data

[00:23:09.39] spk_1:
beforehand, dummy database.

[00:23:12.76] spk_2:
Exactly. And then sometimes with some databases, um if there’s not a dummy database, maybe that we can make up some data in the live one and just delete it. It just depends

[00:23:25.57] spk_1:
or something. Exactly.

[00:23:29.61] spk_2:
Exactly. Yeah. So that’s part of the pre planning process.

[00:23:34.53] spk_1:
You were going to have folks practice designing strategies. Now, how did you, we can’t practice here but how did you set folks up to? It was

[00:24:37.91] spk_2:
great. Yeah. So what I went ahead and did, I created five different scenarios of agency that are implementing a training, a tech training. And so what we did is we went around the room and we split up the individuals and um they went ahead and I created a pre created objectives for the scenarios for the, for the training plan and they put in place some activities for them. And then also that could be um that could be used to teach the information and then a skills check activity. So how can we ensure that the learner has um understands the information? And so it went really well. And then after that, after um after the groups, we probably spent 15, 18 minutes or so and then the various groups went around and shared with the entire um and with the entire class, their ideas one or two minutes, but they gave us some um some fresh ideas that they have utilized in the past. And then, um as they, as they were working in the team, how they brainstormed then went really well. Now

[00:24:57.73] spk_1:
skills check. Sounds to me like a euphemism for test.

[00:25:26.15] spk_2:
Yeah. Well, it doesn’t have to be though. It does not have to be a quiz. It could be say that that task sheet that I was telling you about earlier, do this, do this and then once you finish these tasks, send me say the client number or the client I D and I will check it out. I’ll check it out before you get access to the life site. I really like to do that or it could be um just do this worksheet and go ahead and write down the responses oftentimes to with these skills checks. They don’t need to turn them into, you know, if you want them to and that could be an evaluation part or evaluation strategy for you as a trainer to make sure, okay, our folks really learning what they need to learn but sometimes it’s a way for them to just practice. Mm hmm.

[00:25:47.36] spk_1:
What did you learn in your session? You know?

[00:25:51.06] spk_2:
Yeah. That’s a good question.

[00:25:52.91] spk_1:
I finally 23 minutes in decent question comes out of this guy. I

[00:28:21.56] spk_2:
love it. No. Um So what did you take away? Yeah, my takeaway was that I really through that activity of the scenarios and then creating a training plan. I actually came, came away and walked away with some good ideas, um, that I could actually use in the workplace or share with others. And, yeah. So, um, let’s see here. Oh, one particular group they stated that they would have a hybrid training, so to meet the needs of all of the generations, they would introduce a hybrid training instead. So virtual for some and then in person for others um that’ll be really helpful. Also making sure that we have a step by step guides um available. That is really good. Um I did have if I could go back to the one question that you stated about um about the questions that some folks asked. So one thing that someone came up to me afterwards, they stated that they work for um they work for Salesforce and they train um the Salesforce Salesforce software with different agencies and because sales force can be so customizable, she was wanting to know what are some suggestions or what is a suggestion that you have for the step by step guide piece, especially for some of the older generations or even the video piece also because sometimes you don’t want to create too many videos because the screens may change because it is customizable. And so um and I did ask her, I said, okay, Well, do you have relationships with these individuals? And she said, yeah, so, so she’s not just going in one day and then just leaving. So over time, I did encourage her to just get to know the learners, um try to figure out what their needs are and to create a video for that agency specifically for that agency that may be helpful. And then as the software changes, she may need to um recreate a video, but hopefully that will last a little bit for, you know, once they’ve been, you know, customize their screens have been customized a bit, but that is one suggestion. She said that was very helpful. Um So, you know, she may not, she said she didn’t have time to do the step by step right now guides. So that’s okay. Um But let’s see if we could do some videos and because the video should be 3 to 6 minutes. She said that maybe, oh, maybe I could do some short videos depending on the topic and go ahead and create those and share them with the agency. All

[00:28:50.26] spk_1:
right, Lauren. Um You want to leave us with some uplifting thoughts about, you know, why it’s important to be all inclusive in your training.

[00:29:29.53] spk_2:
It really is. Well, thank you and thank you for the opportunity. So this subject matter is very close to my heart. I really enjoy training and especially those of the older generation. Um No offense but baby Boomers and the traditionalists. Yeah, they’re actually my favorite generation to teach. And I think oftentimes as we’re thinking about technology, we sometimes leave out um, Gen Xers, baby boomers and the traditionalists and we sort of forget about those learning needs. Now. Um I did not share this and you might not, you might know, but I actually have a doctorate in curriculum and instruction and,

[00:29:37.18] spk_1:
yeah,

[00:29:57.86] spk_2:
that’s okay. And so, um so training and learning is just very close to my heart. So just remember that no matter what the generation is, um just please keep in mind their learning needs and that if they’re in the classroom, they might be forced to be in the classroom depending on their jobs. But they all have various learning needs and they have um they have value at the agency and we need to equip them with the tools to be successful. We really do. And so um so it’s just been, it’s been very, very good, it’s been a good experience and I really hope that folks can take some of this information and use it at their workplaces and in their communities, at

[00:30:53.57] spk_1:
the very, very least rages consciousness. You need to be aware, sensitive to the different values, the different learning styles, learning needs of everybody who’s in your workplace. Not just the folks who are new to the organization or not just the folks who are of a certain age of a certain age, of course, So raising the very bad, I mean, you’re going way beyond just consciousness raising, you have a lot of very good ideas too. But greater consciousness is

[00:31:14.33] spk_2:
absolutely. And one other thing if you don’t mind, the you brought up a good point in saying beyond the new user training, the initial training, remember that just because the users of any generation has completed, the new user training does not mean that they don’t need on going training. So we want to remember that and make that a part of the overall training plan for ongoing training.

[00:31:21.49] spk_1:
Our staff, absolutely, internal professional development. People want to feel supported otherwise, quite quick. Yes.

[00:31:29.61] spk_2:
Yes, absolutely.

[00:31:35.61] spk_1:
I would like to put something on the record that I am a very young 61 born, born in 1962. So very among the youngest of all the baby Boomers is me on the record. I love it. Dr Lauren Hopkins, Dr Lauren Hopkins. Thank you very

[00:31:48.43] spk_2:
much. Thank you. I appreciate it, tony. Thanks for having me. My

[00:32:03.59] spk_1:
pleasure. She is social impact consultant at prepared to impact LLC. And thank you for being with me for our 20 our 2023 nonprofit technology conference coverage where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits.

[00:33:23.25] spk_0:
Mhm. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Hello, who can you share non profit radio with? Maybe it’s among your friends, your colleagues who on your board should listen at least who on your board. Would you like to have? Listen, first step is you gotta share the show with them or who did you used to work with that you’re still willing to talk to. Could you by chance mention non profit radio on your linkedin or Twitter Mastodon? I’d be grateful if you tag me. I will certainly give you a shout out. And I thank you very much for thinking about who you could share non profit radio with and then sharing non profit radio. Thanks very much. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got just about a butt load. More time here is goals aligned with technology.

[00:33:54.88] spk_1:
Welcome to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. You know what that is? You know, it’s the 2023 nonprofit technology conference that is hosted by N 10 and that we are in Denver, Colorado. We are hosted by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. And from Heller with me now is Jet Winders, Director of Sales at Heller Consulting Jet. Welcome to non profit

[00:34:00.76] spk_3:
radio. Thank you for having me, tony. Pleasure.

[00:34:04.57] spk_1:
Absolutely. Your session topic is how to align your nonprofit’s goals with technology. That’s right. Why is this an important session? Why do we need this?

[00:34:24.12] spk_3:
Yeah. You know, for so many organizations and certainly for tech enthusiasts at a conference like this, sometimes we geek out on the and want to jump straight to what system or what tool are we going to use? And it’s really important to step back and think about what is the goal of using that tool. So what is your nonprofits goals to even start with and then align that with the technology? Because the technology is always advancing something the organization is trying to do,

[00:34:52.20] spk_1:
right? The technology is advancing, presumably your mission certainly is stable. Your goals are going to evolve to achieve achieving that mission. But we need to align these moving parts basically.

[00:34:57.38] spk_3:
That’s right. You know, non profits, they spend a lot of time building strategic plans and they’ll outline, you know, what those North Star goals are and then what those specific levers they’re gonna pull, you know, whether that’s increasing fundraising or awareness or patient outcomes. Those are the goals that the technology is driving towards the goal is never let’s adopt a new tool just for the sake of doing it.

[00:35:22.22] spk_1:
So I’m taking from your, from your learning objectives, identifying technology strategies and how those affect software solution. So what kind of technology strategies are we talking

[00:36:13.40] spk_3:
about? Yeah, you know, sometimes we talk about uh organizations, you know, approach to technology, how do they adopt it? What type of relationship do they want to have with it? So for some organizations that might mean we want to be the most innovative in the field were okay taking risks if it’s going to allow us to be a first mover or advanced something or show the sector something they haven’t done before while others might be, you know, we have to be conservative with our dollars. We want to do something that’s tried and true. We want to do what is proven in the space already. And so we want to do what our peers are doing. That’s a totally different relationship with how you might approach technology and the tools you might adopt. And, and that is just, you know, sort of a philosophy that different organizations adopt that can have an impact on what technology they ultimately select.

[00:36:26.61] spk_1:
Okay. Have you done your session

[00:36:28.41] spk_3:
yet? No, it’s to, it’s on Thursday. Okay.

[00:36:31.23] spk_1:
So walk us through, how are you going through it with your in your session? How are you approaching this?

[00:37:30.18] spk_3:
Yeah. So for first, what I like to get organizations to imagine is that changing technology is actually part of a broader operational change within the organization. And whenever you change technology, uh your business processes also have to change along with that. And your people also have to change whether that’s simply training to use the new tools or it could be new roles and responsibilities based on those tools. And so you want to put in contact context, a technology change with the broader impact that it’s going to have to try to make that change. The other way. I like to get organizations to think about it is that, you know, the technology is always advancing those broader goals within the organization. And so we want you to think through the impact that you’re trying to make first and always be. So starting with that impact messaging rather than, you know, again, getting into the nitty gritty of what tools we’re gonna change in systems we’re gonna change. We need to be centering the impact that it’s going to have at the organization for us to actually sell and make that plan for what we’re gonna adopt and what tools we’re gonna move forward. Okay. So

[00:37:58.19] spk_1:
yeah, centering the impact, right? Not centering the tools we’re not focusing on, not focusing on the tools. Um What is there a method of you? I think you have a method of um assessing different options, information systems options. You say what, what’s, what’s that assessment part

[00:39:15.54] spk_3:
about? Yeah, we take folks through a roadmap methodology that starts with, you know, real strategic discovery to understand what organizations are trying to accomplish. Uh you know, get those specific requirements of what do these tools need to do? It’s not about tool functionality. It’s about what do staff actually need to be able to accomplish in their day to day rolls and then from those types of requirements, build out what you need these systems to accomplish for you. So what role will those technology systems play within the organization? And then only then start to put specific names to what those tools are and that’s where you might actually go out to the vendors at the conference to start to fill in. You know, we need a tool that’s going to do this for our organization. Well, let’s find what tool that is. And you know, the way technology has changed over the years, there’s so many options out there. You know, whether you’re going to take an approach that’s based on a platform and build and customize it to meet all those requirements, or if you’re going to try to find more highly special tools and uh take on the sort of integration requirements of using, you know, tools from different vendors. So there’s not one size fits all anymore of, I just need a tool that does X. You really have to think through that broader approach and put the pieces together and make sure it’s all gonna add up to, you know, those, those goals and outcomes you described at the very beginning.

[00:40:14.31] spk_1:
What about the difference between the like sort of the all inclusive, like like a black box solution or Salesforce versus smaller apps that do different things like accounts payable or there’s an accounts payable vendor behind me. Um Behind us, we’re in the same boat behind us. Um or something else does. You know, it is a fundraising CRM is if you’re, if you’re trying to center the goals, there’s, there’s, there’s one, there’s a one, one size fits all system like that really makes sense. Yeah. Well, one can it, I’m, yeah, that’s such a neophyte question. I don’t know.

[00:41:11.54] spk_3:
It’s, it’s a great question because you are centering the goals and then you also want to look at your organization’s relationship with technology. So that is that example I I shared about whether you’re an innovator or you want to do best practices. You know, these are sort of guiding principles on what your relationship is with technology. Another example might be, um we want to build up our own internal capacity to manage tools and systems with a strong I T and operations department where another organization might say we’re first and foremost fundraisers and program managers, and we’re going to leverage experts outside of our organization to manage our technology. So that’s two totally different relationships with technology. So when you start to decide on your own guiding principles at the organization on what your relationship with technology will be that can then help you answer that question of whether it makes sense to use a platform where you’re going to be responsible for maintaining the integrations and maintaining the customization, or we’re gonna look to a single vendor who’s gonna provide multiple tools in the ecosystem because we’re going to use them as our experts and, and not keep that internal expertise.

[00:41:40.23] spk_1:
Is there a case study or story that you can share?

[00:42:06.58] spk_3:
Yeah, tomorrow, I’ll be highlighting, you know, three different examples of organizations that we worked with and, and took them through this process. And so you know, for one organization, uh they were really focusing on having tools that were easy for their users to use. They needed to look across the organization to a platform that could support five different departments within the organization. Um And they were prepared to take on managing that platform but didn’t want to build it all out from scratch. And so that organization chose salesforce as a solution that had built some of the purpose built mission tools that they needed on their platform already working with another organization on the

[00:42:42.44] spk_1:
salesforce. Absolutely. What kind of outcomes did they see that? You think they would not have, they would not have gained if they had done is the way it’s typically done or, you know, focused on focusing on the technology instead of their mission and goals.

[00:43:06.24] spk_3:
Yeah, I think the approach that they might have taken that I, in my opinion would have been a mistake would be to look at each of these departments in the organization individually. So they’d be looking at uh you know, their programs and uh mission support separately from fun raising separately from finance. They might have each submitted an RFP focused on what are the requirements for each of that department? And they might have chosen different systems based on in a vacuum, what looked best for that department and then none of it would work together and I T would never be able to support it. They never get any good analysis of how information is actually flowing within the organization?

[00:43:30.24] spk_1:
Alright, I kept you from another

[00:43:59.59] spk_3:
story. Well, yeah. Well, in uh in contrast, another organization really was looking at efficiency, you know, they were in that state of having different systems within each of the departments and their I T department recognized that they couldn’t support the different systems that had been chosen independently by different departments. And so they really focused on having a centralized I T structure that could manage and develop solutions on behalf of all of these different departments. They chose Microsoft as a platform because it was an extension of expertise that they already had already using Microsoft in some areas of the organization and then building on that. So they have a core competency now as an organization on Microsoft and are able to hire for those roles and maintain solutions across the organization that are sharing from that platform.

[00:44:49.16] spk_1:
If you’re centering your goals, there’s a lot of organizational introspection that’s got to happen first. So are you, are you looking to your strategic plan? I guess if, if you’ve got one that’s current, I mean, how does this, how does this exercise take place before you start talking about technology

[00:44:49.81] spk_3:
solutions? That’s right. You know, when and where

[00:44:52.24] spk_1:
also it’s c suite conversations. Is it down at the user level? You know, so please wear also. Yeah,

[00:45:30.76] spk_3:
absolutely. You know, when we start working with clients, it’s amazing how much work has usually already been put into defining those types of broader organizational, you know, goals, you know what those strategic plans are, those are often already, you know, their year three of a 10 year strategic plan and they may or may not be on track to achieve some of those lofty goals that got put out there. So, you know, technology is really downstream to support those goals. And we’re often, you know, when we’re working with somebody in operations or an I T kind of forcing them to dig up that, that document and, and confirm like this is still the path the organization is, is on, that’s what we’re trying to accomplish so that we can put our recommendations in context of what the whole organization is doing.

[00:45:52.09] spk_1:
Okay. Um And you had a third story.

[00:46:31.72] spk_3:
Yeah. Well, you know, I I shared uh an example of a Salesforce platform and Microsoft platform. We worked with another organization that actually left Salesforce, um really recognized that managing that platform was too much for the organization. They did not want to keep the in house staff to manage that. Uh They wanted to focus on fundraising, but, you know, didn’t really have the internal capacity to, you know, select apps or integrate with, you know, other online tools. And so they actually went to a purpose built solution, they went to virtuous that happened to have a lot of, you know, features and functionality out of the box for them with an easy on boarding process and a lot less ongoing maintenance and cost for them in the long run. And so, uh, there’s no, you know, perfect solution for everybody out there. It’s really about aligning what you need, you know, to work with and the tool and, and finding what’s going to be the right fit for you.

[00:46:57.27] spk_1:
You have some recommendations about evaluating different uh solutions that you might have, you might identify. Okay, they fit your, your, your stated goals. How do we make the, make the decision?

[00:47:28.65] spk_3:
Yeah. Well, one thing I discourage folks from doing is focusing on the old demo with organizations. You know, when we talk with folks, that’s almost the first things that they go to, you know, they wanna see demos of a bunch of different products and the demos only offer a limited insight into some of the usability, you know, how user friendly something might be. Uh people are flying through the

[00:47:33.69] spk_1:
screen, they could never replicate it, you could never replicate it five minutes after it was shown to you.

[00:48:15.84] spk_3:
That’s right. It doesn’t give you the full perspective. And so, you know, what we really encourage folks to think through, you know, once you’ve done that sort of identifying your goals, understanding what types of tools might be appropriate based on how you want to approach and use technology, then, you know, actually identify systems and platforms that could meet those goals. Sometimes there’s only one or maybe sometimes there’s one or two with big contrasts between them. You can actually do a lot more groundwork and understanding whether those are going to be a fit for you or not before you actually see the product, seeing the product is just that kind of final confirmation to see how it works and get a little more familiar. So how do you do

[00:48:22.87] spk_1:
this groundwork in your evaluation? How do you, yeah, what do you do before the

[00:49:07.82] spk_3:
demo? Yeah. So from, from your discovery effort and developing the requirements, the critical step is prioritizing those requirements against the goal. So you know, when you ask people what they need or what they want to be able to do, you’ll hear tons and tons of different things. And so the real critical period is prioritization of what is going to be mission critical for that fundraising strategy. That’s gonna get you double fundraising in three years or what’s that critical requirement? That’s gonna allow you to analyze whether, you know, multiple, you know, whether one of your program participants is actually participating in three programs so that you can actually see, see that rather than it being siloed data in separate program databases. So prioritizing what’s critical for you allows you to then look at different technology approaches and systems and narrow them down before you ever get to the demos. What

[00:49:24.98] spk_1:
else do you have planned for your audience tomorrow that we haven’t talked about yet.

[00:49:59.80] spk_3:
Yeah. You know, the last exercise I’ll talk folks through um is one way to, to map out your systems in sort of a pre work to any technology selection is to track what data is coming in to the organization where that data is stored, how it’s being used by different individuals and what other data folks would want and need. You know, sometimes a mistake that we see organizations make is they just think all data is good. We want to capture as much of it as possible, but that’s actually not the case. You really want to understand what data you’re already getting and where it is, but also what data you need to make critical decisions and who needs to use it. And when, because having that kind of map of where your data is, how you’re going to use it and what you need is really a lens that we can use to look at these technology systems of whether it’s going to support that or not.

[00:50:25.97] spk_1:
Okay. Anything else planned for tomorrow? I don’t know what you’re holding out on nonprofit radio listeners. I think we’re

[00:50:33.15] spk_3:
gonna talk about tomorrow. I think you’ve got the highlights for sure.

[00:50:47.12] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. These Jet Winders, Director of Sales the hell are consulting, which is our 23 N T C sponsor technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Jet. Thank you

[00:50:52.14] spk_3:
very much. Thank you, Tony Blair. My

[00:50:54.11] spk_1:
pleasure and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C 2023 nonprofit technology conference

[00:51:38.77] spk_0:
next week, equitable project management and make time for professional development. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by Donor Box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Check out donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff.

[00:51:41.05] spk_1:
The shows social media is by Susan Chavez

[00:51:43.71] spk_0:
Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by

[00:51:49.46] spk_1:
Scott Stein. Thank you for that

[00:52:00.34] spk_0:
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 May 15, 2023: Engagement And Stewardship For Increased Giving & Data Maturity

 

Brenna Holmes & Alyssa AckermanEngagement And Stewardship For Increased Giving

As our #23NTC coverage continues, Brenna Holmes and Alyssa Ackerman deliver systems and ideas that treat your donors right. They help you understand the value of multichannel touches that move the needle on donor retention and value. They’re from Mission Wired.

 

 

 

 

Joanne JanData Maturity

Also from #23NTC, how data strategy and practices impact your ability to meet your mission. Plus a free resource to gauge your data maturity. Joanne Jan is from data.org.

 

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:01:43.26] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit 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 be forced to endure the pain of dextrose inclination if I saw that you missed this week’s show engagement and stewardship for increased giving. As our 23 NTC coverage continues, Brenna Homes and Alyssa Ackerman deliver systems and ideas that treat your donors right? They help you understand the value of multi channel touches that move the needle on donor retention and value. They’re both from mission wired and data maturity. Also from 23 NTC. How data strategy and practices impact your ability to meet your mission? Plus a free resource to gauge your data maturity. Joanne Jan is from data dot org. Antonis take to it is what it is is what I made it. No, no, we’re done with that. We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Here is engagement and stewardship for increased giving.

[00:01:49.59] spk_1:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage. Of 23 N T C 2023 nonprofit technology conference

[00:01:57.42] spk_0:
where we are sponsored by Heller

[00:02:12.89] spk_1:
consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. It’s my pleasure to welcome back Brenna Homes and to welcome Alyssa Ackerman to nonprofit radio. Brenna is principal and senior vice president of Mission Wired and Alyssa is senior account director also at Mission Wired Brenna. Welcome back.

[00:02:25.08] spk_2:
Welcome.

[00:02:48.80] spk_1:
Thank you very much. Your topic this year, engagement and stewardship tactics that drive increased giving, writing the fundraising track. I’m sure part of fundraising track. Correct, Brennan, why don’t you kick us off? Just kind of give us a 30,000 ft view of wide. You believe that we need this session 23

[00:03:21.36] spk_2:
N D C. Um I mean, fundraising is harder and harder nowadays, right? It’s a very competitive market. There’s a lot of organizations out there vying for donor dollars. Um And while new generations of donors are coming up, the way they respond and the way they give is different from previous generations and then no matter who you are, nobody wants to be treated like an A T M. So building an engagement and stewardship opportunities is we found the best way to you get a donor from a one time giver to a lifetime brand, evangelist,

[00:03:28.30] spk_1:
evangelism, the evangelist for

[00:03:34.22] spk_2:
keeping them engaged, right? All the way through

[00:03:39.95] spk_1:
time. Have you done your session

[00:03:42.88] spk_2:
yesterday

[00:03:50.55] spk_1:
about how that went and what questions arose from that? Let’s see, I mean, I have your three learning objectives that were stated in the official document for your, for your session. Where would you like to start the topic? Where, where did you begin

[00:04:16.63] spk_3:
the session? Yeah, I think that it’s important to give an overview of why engagement is important as well as how it fits into the overall fundraising strategy. So yeah, I think a lot of organizations often time struggle with the balance and for us to be able to share the value of engagement.

[00:04:27.31] spk_1:
I want you to talk about it like you

[00:04:42.72] spk_3:
talked about it. So there is a strong value behind engagement and stewardship tactics. So you’re really building that relationship with your donor and potential donor. And by doing that, you’re building a case for support and they’re able to make their own decisions to give and quicker. So when you’re asking them to make that gift after an engagement, there’s little decision to be made because you’ve already helped prime and pave that path for them to make the easy choice to give, talking

[00:04:59.68] spk_1:
about giving, not just first time but

[00:05:08.81] spk_3:
any time. And we want to always try to lessen the time between the 1st and 2nd gift, get people to be giving at different levels. Um And so it’s not just about that first time donor and moving them down the marketing funnel, but also retaining those donors and moving them in their donor journey. Okay.

[00:05:24.86] spk_1:
So why don’t we stick with you kick us off with the first, we’re going to do engagement before we’re going to get the stewardship of the first engagement strategy.

[00:06:02.78] spk_3:
Yeah. So um engagement is really important in the beginning of a donor, potential donors journey. So thinking about um different ways to welcome an onboard. So someone who might have signed up for email, let’s get them into a automated welcome series. That’s explaining what the organization does, how they can make an impact, stay connected. And then when they get out of that series, get that first Baskin. So they’ve already taken the action of becoming a subscriber, but let’s get them to take that next step quickly, but also set expectations of how we’re going to be communicating, why we’re communicating. So really that onboarding is important to set the stage for how they are going to be included in the organization.

[00:06:23.07] spk_1:
How long does this welcome series last?

[00:06:57.78] spk_3:
So typically, um welcome series last could last 10 to 3 weeks having multiple touch points. It’s important, it’s important that when they are in a welcome series though, that you’re being mindful of other communication that’s going out. And so oftentimes, my recommendation is to suppress from other correspondents going out. So it’s very clear, concise and they’re on this track, they’ve been primed, they understand the organization and the communication stream and then get them into your normal cadence of communication. Um And it’s really about your organization. So you should test there’s not one prescribed timeline for a welcome series. And so based on your content and your audience, it might be shorter or longer, but it’s really important to test that

[00:07:45.73] spk_1:
out. You suggested that a part of that is informing them how you’re going to be communicating. Is that, is that really asking how do you want to be communicated or, or saying you’ll hear from us every three days for the next three weeks? I understand it would be, I understand this is not a template that everybody applies. You’re in the next 48 hours, there will be no communications after that. So, but how do you say to what degree are you informing them? How you’ll be communicating?

[00:08:44.86] spk_3:
Yeah. Again, I think it’s dependent upon your organization. I am a big believer in, in uh asking that question of what are you interested in? How do you want to hear from us? But sometimes if your system isn’t set up to actually do that or set those um standards of if you only want a newsletter, but we don’t have our system set up to only send you a news. Let’s not ask that. But we can be general to say you’ll be hearing from us and you’ll get newsletters, important updates. If you’ve given your cell phone number, you’ll be getting SMS messages from us. So you can be vague. But the big thing is you need to follow through on that. So if you’re asking how they want to be communicated to

[00:08:51.31] spk_1:
tell you. Okay. All right. How about you? What else about engagement before we get to stewardship? Yeah,

[00:09:39.62] spk_2:
definitely. So, I mean, engagement can mean many things to many people, right? And it really is in the digital space which is a lot of what we were talking about, um getting them to engage with content. So take an action, click something that is measurable in some way. Um Alyssa talked about onboarding, but we can take that even further throughout, you know, quizzes and surveys, getting their own preferences, even, you know, obviously action alerts for advocacy organizations, getting people to take action in a, in a more impactful way um and giving them feedback on what that impact is, is really critical. So depending on the organization, it’s a beautiful consultant answer, right? It depends, um you’re asking them to volunteer, asking them that they’re interested in these other opportunities to further bond them with the organization because whether it is engagement or stewardship or, you know, thinking of them as synonyms. It is about how they engage to stay bonded to the organization or become bonded in the first place.

[00:10:06.31] spk_1:
And there’s value in all these individual steps.

[00:10:07.38] spk_2:
There is definitely and some organizations can actually put a monetary value to them, right? Like they need this number of many signatures for this petition to take this to Congress or, you know, that sort of thing and some of it is a little bit more. Just feel good to calculate how folks are responding to the brand, whether it’s recognition and sentiment kind of things,

[00:11:13.73] spk_1:
any other strategies or tactics around engagement even beyond. So we, we’ve talked about the welcome series right? So now we’ve gone beyond the welcome series. Anything more. I mean, I guess we’re leading toward Alyssa. You had suggested a first gift or maybe, maybe, maybe the welcome series came after the after the first gift. So now we’re looking for a second gift. But the welcome series just to be clear, I mean, it could have come after some other action, right? A signature on a petition. I don’t know if you’re sophisticated enough, maybe a comment on a on a comment on a social post if you’ve got that kind of connection. But okay, so it doesn’t have

[00:11:14.76] spk_3:
to be so it could be, you know, an email subscriber, a new donor

[00:11:21.20] spk_1:
list,

[00:11:34.18] spk_3:
a new sustainer perhaps. Um or if you have like mid level giving or major giving, if someone’s made a mid level gift, they should have a unique onboarding experience as well. Um But beyond welcome series, as Brennan mentioned, having surveys and petitions to really bond and then that’s really focused in digital. But there are many opportunities in direct mail that can complement these as well.

[00:12:32.45] spk_2:
Surveys and petitions are a mainstay in direct mail, right? So those engage devices again, that’s the term that’s used in direct response for eras and eras is to get people to feel their impact beyond writing the check or making the gift. Um And you should be doing that. One of the things we focused on in the session was doing that on a recurring basis. So working, having the fundraising team either build them themselves as part of a comprehensive communications calendar or work collaboratively with a marketing communications team that may be already producing this type of more educational or quote unquote programmatic content so that it’s not just month 13 fundraising appeals and nothing else, we really want to make sure that the donor or prospective donor is having the opportunity to learn and engage with the organization in various ways. Okay.

[00:12:52.84] spk_1:
Okay. So anything else on engagement before we moved to? No, don’t hold out on non profit radio. I mean, what else did you share in your session?

[00:13:09.85] spk_2:
I feel like we touched on a lot of it. I mean, Alyssa talked about tactical opportunities to with whether it’s S M S or even like auto calls, voice recordings, things like that. Um And engagement and stewardship. Can

[00:13:13.80] spk_1:
people still people still react positively to

[00:14:19.92] spk_2:
the auto call? They do. I mean, we forget that our smartphones are actually phones oftentimes, right? Not just supercomputers in our pocket and getting a recorded message that is a human, sometimes even a volunteer or another donor from an organization that is thanking somebody, for instance, for their gift or giving them an opportunity to come to an event um or just saying, go online and check out this latest case that we just wrote this expose on again, depending on the organization is a really fantastic way to break through the clutter of somebody’s inbox, somebody’s direct mail, you know, actual mailbox. Um and technology now allows us to go straight to voicemail. So you don’t even necessary. Yes, ringlets, voicemail. Um and you don’t even have to, you know, have somebody answer the phone and it makes it feels very authentic for a recipient to just see. Oh, I have a missed call. Listen to the voicemail. It’s not a robo call, write personal

[00:14:35.80] spk_3:
messages. You don’t have to listen to the voicemail. You can see it written out in your transcript. And so, you know, that even is great. I like that is, you can see it there. It’s all written out, it’s emphasized. And if I want to listen to it, I can and I hear that real voice. But if I’m on the move and I don’t want to listen, it’s all written. How

[00:14:47.87] spk_1:
do we access ringlets voicemail as you’re calling the number. How do you do it? So,

[00:15:05.07] spk_2:
yeah, there’s third party partners um that work that offer these services um much like a telemarketing firm, but instead of the live callers, you are accessing a dashboard where your staff or volunteers can log in record a voice message. Um sometimes you can even record it just right on your iphone or whatever and then email the file over to the vendor um and then upload a list of phone numbers and the auto dialer spins amount. The vendor knows

[00:15:50.25] spk_1:
how to not make the phone ring. Exactly. Damn. Alright. Ringlets, voicemail. Okay. Very interesting. Okay. But again, I like the emphasis that these are personal calls. It’s not a, it’s not a, it’s not a robocall, it’s personal, you know, Brenna Alyssa, thanks so much. You sign that last petition a couple weeks ago and maybe the person says, um, and, and, and we’re so grateful.

[00:15:54.77] spk_2:
It is if you don’t have the time to do an old fashioned. Thank a Thon, right? This is a way that you can still give that personal touch and a very cost effective way.

[00:16:09.01] spk_1:
Um Okay, engagement. Have we exhausted?

[00:16:12.28] spk_2:
I mean, I guess that’s kind of stewardship to, right? So saying thank you. So kind of going back and forth.

[00:16:30.58] spk_1:
That’s true because we did say thank you. Right. Okay. Um But yeah, we want to keep folks engaged in your point early on. We don’t want to treat them like a T M. All right. All right. Um Anything else? So let’s move more formally to stewardship. Okay. What are your recommendations so we can increase, giving anybody?

[00:16:58.90] spk_3:
Yeah, I think that, um, one you need to make sure you have an auto responder set up for any action to say thank you. It’s very simple and it goes a long way and you need to be specific about what you’re saying. Thank you for. And so is it thank you for taking action. Is it? Thank you for making a gift. These things are important to take that kind of mass communication. And again, bring it to more of a personalized level and so digitally can have those auto responders for direct mail. I don’t think the written note is dead. It still makes an impact.

[00:17:27.55] spk_1:
It’s handwritten huge. I can’t emphasize enough uh fan of handwritten notes. They’re short, it’s not an 8.5 by 11 inch page that you feel you have to full, you have to fill their and nobody does them and they’re personalized and it’s somebody’s somebody’s hand handwriting. There

[00:18:02.83] spk_2:
are few organizations doing them but they stand out that hardly anybody, literally nobody. So that’s what we want. We want folks to kind of, it feels like going back to basics, but it really is just thinking about how would you as a donor, how would you want to be treated? How would you want to be recognized by an organization? Um And then thinking about what are the little things that you can do before?

[00:18:32.17] spk_1:
I want to emphasize the handwritten note. And then if you’re writing the folks, I’d say roughly maybe 60 65 over, don’t be surprised if you get a handwritten note back. Thanking you for your hand for thanking the time I’ve gotten scores of these giving everybody. I work with all the donors pretty much 55 over thanking you for taking the time to send a handwritten note. Thanking you for that. Thanks for your thank you. And they’re doing it another handwritten note back, especially folks in their seventies and eighties and nineties. Some of the donors I work with, that’s what they grew up with handwriting and postage note. So, absolutely. I mean, and also your mail is not junk mail to the folks that are giving to you, you know, an acquisition campaign that’s different. But we’re not talking about that for your, for your donors. Your mail is not your U S mail is not junk

[00:19:38.95] spk_2:
mail. Yes, people are touched and the generational giving studies that are coming out now too is saying it’s not just our elders in the United States that are feeling that way. Millennials respond to direct mail as well. They may not have checkbooks in the house. So you have to give them other ways to respond. Um But it stands out, we don’t get a lot of mail. Um And you know, it’s so having something, we talked a lot yesterday about the having a Q R code that is now ubiquitous, right? Silver lining of the global pandemic. But everybody knows how to use them. Do you remember Q

[00:19:46.98] spk_1:
R codes? They, I don’t know, eight or 10 years ago you’d see them on like a bus. And I thought, oh, these are brilliant and they didn’t take off them. What do we know what happened? 10 years? And if my timing is off,

[00:20:05.88] spk_2:
it was even older than that, actually, I remember them coming out really? In 2003. How come they didn’t take off then? Because each phone it wasn’t native in the operating system. And so if you recall, you had to download a specific app per code. So every company that was pushing these products or trying to get you to use their QR code platform to separate proprietary app reader that then had to be downloaded. So that’s a bridge too far for most of us.

[00:20:32.98] spk_1:
So every code could be a different, a different provider. I there was competition among them

[00:20:36.95] spk_2:
so we have to have the technology catch up. And thankfully now any operating system on any phone, has it native within the camera app. So you’re not asking the user to navigate their

[00:20:51.30] spk_1:
way proprietary app for our, for the company that provided our code. Alright. Yeah, I know it’s now native but I didn’t know why I thank you for explaining why they, why they died so many years ago. I thought this is a brilliant, okay, cool. Thank you for feeling that I’ve always had. Yeah. Now they’re right now they’re ubiquitous.

[00:21:53.24] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Stop the drop with donor box. It’s the online donation platform used by 40,000 nonprofits in the U S, 50,000 worldwide. It’s no wonder it’s four times faster, checkout easier payment processing, no setup fees, no monthly fees, no contract. How many of your potential donors drop off before they finish making the donation on your website? You can stop the drop donor box, helping you help others donor box dot org. Now back to engagement and stewardship for increased giving.

[00:21:58.73] spk_1:
Okay, millennials. Gen Z, no checkbooks in the house most likely, but give him a code, the

[00:22:49.47] spk_2:
donation page and like integrating that whether it’s donation page or you know, connecting from against stewardship pieces, newsletters. Um Calendar, people still really love having excuse me, um A wall calendar with beautiful photos to hang up year round and having Q R code there with various calls to actions to learn more about the very programs. You know that Q R code can of course take you to the website and specific pages designed, but it can also take you directly to youtube where you can watch videos. It can take you to a lot of other native apps on your phone that supporters already have and use and engage with on their own that then further your impact story.

[00:22:50.45] spk_1:
People react well to calendars December calendar for the next

[00:23:00.75] spk_2:
year, 100%. I mean, sometimes they’re even more than 12 months, right? So you’re sending them out uh summertime planning for the next year. Yeah,

[00:23:06.16] spk_3:
and all sizes.

[00:23:08.25] spk_1:
So like refrigerator magnets, calendars

[00:23:14.91] spk_2:
are magnetized nowadays. So that makes it harder.

[00:23:26.07] spk_1:
Stainless steel ones. I don’t even know. I don’t have a, I have a stainless steel stove, dishwasher but, but I never had magnets anyway. So I wouldn’t because I think that looks like clutter, clutter in my kitchen. Stainless steel magnetized.

[00:23:35.14] spk_2:
Obviously, I don’t know all of them, but on mine at home it’s just the sides that are magnetized. Interesting.

[00:23:41.49] spk_1:
Alright. Alright. So maybe maybe not the refrigerator anymore but people do like like

[00:23:46.06] spk_2:
wall calendar

[00:23:51.39] spk_3:
even with people moving, working from home and not necessarily working in an office where you’re hanging it up. Still want it interesting.

[00:23:56.54] spk_1:
Okay, cool. All right. So some of the some of the old school stuff is not dead. We’re talking about male, we’re talking about phone calls, we’re talking about handwritten notes,

[00:24:05.58] spk_3:
calendars. You can’t assume you can’t assume that these things aren’t going to work. And so you really need to know what your constituents right now. We go

[00:24:16.72] spk_1:
back to testing trying try a 12 month calendar, maybe there’s a is there a code on every month or something? And then we know right. We know how many of those, which months and how often we know we send 5000 calendars and if we get 1200 hits on a cure, is that, is that

[00:24:36.63] spk_2:
good? Well,

[00:24:42.85] spk_1:
alright, 5000 calendars times 12 month, 60,000 codes, but we only get 1200 I don’t know, but it depends what they lead to. It

[00:24:54.01] spk_2:
does tell you a lot about what your supporters are interested in. Um So if September,

[00:25:00.51] spk_1:
September, what the hell did we, what did we link to in September that everybody loved to volunteer opportunity was something related to the month of September month.

[00:25:11.39] spk_2:
It’s what was happening the world. Yeah, media. Yeah. All the things. So, and I mean, that’s what we have to think about from an engagement and stewardship and lifetime retention standpoint is it’s not just necessarily the bottom line L T V per donor, but it is how these supporters are engaging with the brand, the organization more broadly so that they stay engaged for the long term. Otherwise you don’t have planned giving prospects,

[00:25:56.91] spk_1:
right? My friend is so smooth. Didn’t even, I didn’t have, I didn’t have to give, I didn’t have to have to lay that out. All right. Thank you very much. Um These are awesome uh ideas you can implement for your program. So we’ve talked about a ton of ideas. Anything else that old school, new school stewardship,

[00:26:17.55] spk_3:
I think to part of engagement and stewardship is information sharing. So if something is happening in your organization, making sure that that’s shared and that can be seen as stewardship also because they’re in the know and they feel important and connected. And so thinking about content your organization already has or is planning to disseminate in other ways package it up as stewardship or engagement. So everything doesn’t have to be brand new just for this.

[00:26:35.76] spk_1:
What makes me think of is if you have insider communications, maybe it’s from donors at a certain level. Can you expand that circle? And you’re not diluting the content? You’re not, you’re not diminishing what you’re $10,000 donors get. If you start giving it to your $2500 donors, your $10,000 donors are still getting it. It’s not like a zero sum, right? So

[00:26:58.81] spk_3:
can you

[00:27:02.04] spk_1:
expand the circle so that so that more folks are considered insiders? It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt the existing insiders to bring more folks in. Repurpose the content, expand the content. I always think about that around and giving donors insider communications or events for your major donors. Why not invite your giving

[00:27:22.90] spk_2:
folks as well? I mean, we think about that similarly with sustain Ear’s. Um can I

[00:27:28.31] spk_1:
until they drop off? Yeah,

[00:29:10.69] spk_2:
I think, I hope we’re well past the like set it and forget it, don’t wake the bear mentality and you know, some things like the proposed Microsoft regulations from last year to will kind of shocked the industry in to having to be better stewards of these really important donors. Um and on the Microsoft. Sure. So I mean, we got a little bit of a reprieve. So, but it’s basically surrounding data privacy rules and allowing the donor themselves or from Microsoft’s point of view, the consumer to, to have a right to adjust their own information, have a right to change um what they want to change without having to jump through a lot of hoops. So Microsoft was not Microsoft, I keep saying Microsoft Mastercard, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. That’s not good. Radio, Mastercard, the credit card processing is was going is requiring for for profit e commerce, things like that, that there’s a lot more of the automation and receding that happens for subscription services, right? It’s kind of the Netflix vacation of our lives where we all have so many different monthly subscription services um that we sometimes forget which ones were actually actively subscribed to, but our cards are being charged regularly out and consumer debt is skyrocketing. Mastercard was trying to also extend that out to subscription giving for nonprofits. So sustainer programs. I did sign up for a second sustaining gift to one organization because I had forgotten which one

[00:29:33.92] spk_3:
it didn’t make organizations think about what our process is that

[00:29:39.48] spk_2:
it was a really long time getting there. But

[00:29:43.67] spk_1:
because an explanation, that’s something I never called it Microsoft in the beginning, I would have known exactly what you’re referring to. I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know that. That’s

[00:30:18.81] spk_2:
okay. So, uh the T N P A which is a wonderful nonprofit advocacy focused organization, the nonprofit nonprofit alliance. Yes, that’s all it is. Um fought and lobbied on behalf of the industry to have nonprofits be forgiven for these rules or not, not have to be held to the same standards that commercial companies like Netflix and others are because sustained charitable giving is different. People are signing up for it like you said, for a reason and they don’t forget about it quite as often as

[00:30:37.12] spk_1:
they would.

[00:30:40.10] spk_2:
Like I said, I am, I am an example. The

[00:30:44.89] spk_3:
whole selling point is you don’t have to think about it. You’re giving to an organization you care about and don’t worry about it. We got it.

[00:33:08.53] spk_2:
There is some benefit to the efficiency, certainly, but I think we do have to move past that. Um And, and not be scared to empower our sustain ear’s um with some D I Y functionality online if they want to change the amount or the date that their gift is processed. A lot of systems nowadays are allowing for it, but the nonprofits still have to go in and activate those modules and customize that ui that user interface so that donors understand where to go, what to do and also where the humans are when they need extra help to do whatever. So we got a reprieve temporarily or potentially temporarily. But I think what hopefully what this does and how we’ve been working with our clients is a little bit of a wake up call that it shouldn’t be seen as a reprimand. It should be seen as a stewardship opportunity because you’re sustain ear’s are generally 100 plus dollar annual donors. And if they gave that gift at a one time gift level, you’d be treating them differently. They would be part of a pipeline strategy. Um And, and so we need to not only, like I said, empower them to take some ownership over their own giving, but integrate them into, you know, the rest of the communication and stewardship programs that you already have in place for donors of, of that value and higher potential value. We were just looking at an organization’s um stats just recently that a one time donor online acquired donor, which most sustainer zar is online acquired um had an average 24 month LTV of $86 which is pretty good. 24 months, 24 months, $86 sustain urz 2 87 right? So huge difference um that you theoretically don’t have to do much for, right? Um But if they’re, if they’re falling off, um and not, not being stewarded up that pipeline of giving, it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to the potential that may

[00:33:13.25] spk_1:
hold just going back to the mastercard rules. Was it just wasn’t that charities have to start informing the monthly sustain that there’s a dashboard or something that they can go to.

[00:34:09.47] spk_2:
So, not necessarily, you have to make it available. There was a few different, was a four or five different bullet lists that you had to do or bullet items to do. One was having easy accessible like links and all your emails to a place where they could cancel or change their, their gift and or be in contact with within a very short period of time, which was subjective with a human who could then help them through that. Another was uh email notification before the gift was charged on a monthly basis, which actually felt quite was probably the most arduous thing that Mastercard was asking for because most systems are set up to set the auto responder after the charge, not pre charge. So there would have to be some configuration and new content developed to have that year

[00:34:38.20] spk_1:
after one said, thank you, you will be charged in another 30 days that had to be within a certain time of the charge might have been like 24 or 48 hours. But yeah, thank you very much. And you will be charged in another 29 days, right? I

[00:34:40.37] spk_2:
like that. All

[00:34:49.99] spk_1:
right. All right. Um Okay. But yeah, I just wanted to get that little little detail about what the requirement was. Your bigger point was that there’s value in these folks see this as a stewardship opportunity, not a, not a reprimand.

[00:35:19.89] spk_2:
Exactly. And I mean, I think a lot of stuff you’re hearing at the conference to around data privacy. Um and donor choice is going to kind of follow suit here where we, we have to build systems that empower the donors to take ownership over their own giving trajectory. Um And sometimes it is our corporate partners and regulations that nudge us and sometimes we can stand up and do it ourselves

[00:35:23.81] spk_1:
and don’t be afraid to talk to your sustaining donors. Never. Don’t. Let’s not, hopefully, you know, we’re not only over the set it and forget it, but we’re also over the, if I talk to them, they might, they might change their mind,

[00:35:38.42] spk_2:
scarcity

[00:35:39.17] spk_1:
mindset, they’re gonna take that gift away if I remind them that they’re doing it every month. No, no, no. So see, there’s an opportunity

[00:35:45.54] spk_3:
afraid

[00:35:46.11] spk_1:
of, you’re afraid to talk to

[00:35:49.79] spk_3:
these folks if you’re engaging in store them, if they do make the decision that they can’t continue being a recurring donor, hopefully, they still will make that one time gift or they’ll sign up for advocacy or volunteer or planned giving is that they’re still fully engaged with your mission and organization. So you’re not losing them completely. They’re just shifting how they can support.

[00:36:35.11] spk_2:
Situational changes, certainly will affect that, right? And especially some sustainer Czar only giving three or $5 a month. Um and things like inflation and a tightening economy might affect if they can temporary, you know, if they need to temporarily pause that sustaining gift, um If the system allows them to do that themselves, amazing, if not making sure they, you know, who to contact. So that how they can do it and keeping that open line of communication so that they know they can also come back is really important to, again, building that brand affinity and bonding them to the organization so that they say good things about you out in the world.

[00:37:13.18] spk_1:
Oh, this is awesome. Um Great ideas coming, I’ll be very interested in if that Mastercard rule takes effect in the sort of the data, the outcomes, you know, do we see, do we see a lot of sustain ear’s dropping off? My optimistic self thinks that we won’t see that happen. A lot that a lot of people are going to abandon it just because their remote, that they could, but I’ll be interested in the data, but maybe the rule will never. So where does it stand now? With the Master card? It’s not, it doesn’t apply to non profits now and we don’t know if or when it will

[00:37:26.70] spk_2:
change their mind. And they

[00:37:29.09] spk_1:
didn’t say like December 31st is it

[00:37:31.21] spk_2:
is a temporary but no deadline waiver?

[00:37:36.26] spk_1:
Okay, perfect. Okay. Um I’m looking at your learning objectives that were stated in the official and 10 document for this session. Um Ideas with dozens. If you have, I think listeners, you have to go back and replay this. We play this episode to capture all the ideas we talked about. Um understand the value of multi channel touches that increase retention and value what we’ve talked about multi, we’ve talked about all kinds of channels. Uh What else can we talk about that you talked

[00:39:59.74] spk_2:
about yesterday. So we touched on it with the welcome series, right? In the automation. One of the things that I said yesterday and I firmly believe is that we should be leveraging automation more than we do in the digital space. Uh There is so much still like manual labor happening in email, launches SMS, launches advertising and things like that building audiences that is unnecessary. If we take a step back and take a little bit of time to kind of assess the lay of the land first and build out campaign goals, priorities and tactics and strategies. You can pretty much pre schedule almost everything online. Uh So you don’t need to be manually sending out three emails a week or, you know, whatever it is your systems, your technology can really do so much work for you. Um And it’s hard for some folks to put their trust in the machines. Um Yeah, to let go and not review every single audience Celtic and every single, you know, test life, want to see a live seed for every single email, you know, those kind of things. Um But there’s so much more opportunity to do that and you can build trigger based behavior based triggered actions, um emails, engagements, things like that, that keep stewarding people on their own timeline. So you don’t have to pull a list of your, you know, almost lapsing donors manually every time if it’s based on the data that lives in the CRM. Um, and you can build these chronic non responder, trigger based behavior based re engagement series. That’s all about when I last engaged. And it’s different from when Alyssa last engaged. Uh, and it is a little set it and forget it though. Of course, you want to check in periodically to make sure nothing’s gone sideways and the content is still relevant and doesn’t feel dated. Um But that would free up fundraisers, marketers, whoever at the nonprofit to think bigger, think newer, think how we can do something differently or what are the things that we wanted to do for so long. But we never feel like we had the bandwidth at the time if we truly allow ourselves to fully leverage the software that we are investing in regularly, um We’ll have so much more time.

[00:40:27.85] spk_1:
Okay. Leverage automation.

[00:41:43.14] spk_3:
Yes, I think another thing yesterday and often times this is a big question of how can I come back to my organization and have them see the value, you know, they’re looking for the up front giving and want fundraising at the forefront to ask donate now, give now. And so with engagement, you can have after actions, but that’s behind the engagement, that’s not at the forefront. So really being able to share with people, the value is important to go back to their organization and say, you know, there needs to be a balance. You need to look at your communication calendar, where is there the give and take that you can have and sharing that while you might not get the gift today. When you make to ask, there’s a stronger case to give their. And so really looking at your unique file and what they actually respond to because there’s some organizations where you can send a fundraising appeal and you get tons of gifts right off the bat and then there’s somewhere you need to sell it a little more and have those touch points before you can make the ask. And so it’s def for everyone, but it’s important to evaluate that before just saying no, we can only give fundraising emails and direct mail appeals.

[00:41:54.24] spk_1:
All right, I’m gonna let you, that was semi inspirational, but it was very tactical too. So I’m gonna let you leave us with an inspirational message about engagement and stewardship and how that leads to increased giving.

[00:42:08.48] spk_3:
Oh, that wasn’t inspirational enough. Okay. Um

[00:42:15.35] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:42:35.52] spk_3:
this is pressure. I think that you, you just have to take that leap of faith with engagement and stewardship and no one is going to say you thanked me too many times. You sent me too much information. Um You shouldn’t be afraid to provide what your organization does and share your mission. That’s what we’re here to do. And so, um, yeah, engage steward and you’ll see, you’ll see the value come back

[00:42:50.32] spk_2:
around, convey that impact and they’ll, they’ll keep giving. Thank you very

[00:42:59.93] spk_1:
much, Brent Holmes, principal and senior Vice President at Mission Wired and Alissa Ackerman, senior account director at Mission Wired. Thanks very much for sharing, energetic and brilliant. Thank you. Thank you very much and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T. See where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks so much for being with us.

[00:44:38.14] spk_0:
It’s time for tony steak too. Hi there. Who can you share non profit radio with? I would be grateful if you could identify one or two folks that would benefit from the smart guests that I’m picking the brains of each week for all our listeners in small and midsize nonprofits. Maybe it’s someone you work with, someone you used to work with. Maybe it’s a board member. Who do you know that you could share non profit radio with? Let them know it’s your favorite abdominal podcast. So I would be grateful if you could share non profit radio. Love to have more folks learning from all our smart savvy guests. That’s what the show is all about. Passing on expertise and wisdom. Thanks very much. Thanks for thinking about that. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got Boo Koo, but loads more time here is data maturity.

[00:44:47.31] spk_1:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. It’s day two at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver

[00:44:57.48] spk_0:
where we are sponsored

[00:44:59.15] spk_1:
by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. With me now is Joanne Jan. She is project manager of strategic

[00:45:11.35] spk_0:
partnerships at data dot org.

[00:45:14.61] spk_1:
Welcome to nonprofit radio, Joanne. Thank you,

[00:45:16.56] spk_4:
tony. Happy to be here.

[00:45:17.58] spk_1:
It’s a pleasure to have you.

[00:45:18.51] spk_0:
Thank you. And your

[00:45:28.69] spk_1:
session topic is, is data maturity, the key to meeting your mission. It’s question mark. All right, give us the 30,000 ft view of why this is important.

[00:47:14.45] spk_4:
Absolutely. So when data dot org is thinking about data maturity, we think about it in um three different ways, a specific framework we call the three PS purpose practice in people. And what we have designed based on this framework is a data maturity assessment, which is a way to understand where you think your organization is in terms of its data maturity. And we hope that you use the assessment as a communication tool to understand with other colleagues, perhaps your leadership, perhaps born members to think about what do you want to do next in terms of improving the way you use data more effectively? And um how do you use it better to meet your mission? What is data maturity? Yeah. And so there are a lot of different terms out there that um can encompass data maturity. But the way we think about it is again, in the three piece So when we think about purpose, we think about why are you collecting data? What are you intending it to do? Are you intending it to help you inform future decisions? Are you helping it? Are you intending to collect it to help you inform past um past programming or are you informing it or collecting it to inform um uh what you think could be right now, informing decision making right now in terms of the second P which is practice, this is what, how are you going to actually use the data? How are you gonna use it to achieve what you’re looking for? Um So this is thinking about data analysis, data visualization, um the way you’re using and working with that data. And then the third piece we think is probably one of the most important ones is the people. So thinking about who is actually doing this data collection, the analysis, the visualization, who at the leadership level is promoting and prioritizing data. And then there are the culture. So what is your culture around data as a team? Are you constantly collecting and analyzing data together using it to inform decisions um that type of uh culture?

[00:47:38.72] spk_1:
Okay. And the question is, is this the key to meeting, meeting your mission? So ah how does how does data maturity contribute to mission accomplishment?

[00:48:24.27] spk_4:
Yeah. So I think the way we think about it is it’s a way to be more effective, be more efficient and be more impactful in the way that you are carrying out your programmatic objectives. So um when we think about our data maturity journey, you can be at a different part of the journey depending on where your organization is. And perhaps if you’re earlier on in the journey, data collection might not be of primary focus. But as you’re moving along, as you’re developing more um understanding and knowledge and that talent and data, you might want to use it a little more and drive your specific decision making or practices in that way. Um And so the reason it’s a question that said students really thinking about where your organization is and thinking about what can I do now to um maximize the use of data that I as an organization and probably already collecting. So what am I doing now with the, with the data that I have on hand and thinking about in the future? Do I want to shift my practice is in any way, shift my people in any way or my purpose to make it a little more efficient, a little more effective? Um a little more impactful.

[00:48:53.98] spk_1:
Um You have some tools and resources. You mentioned the data, you mentioned data assessment. Yes. Is that, is that at data

[00:49:17.04] spk_4:
dot org? It is um data dot org is an organization that is a platform for partnerships to build the field of data, for social impact and we do it in the three CS. So the first one is the three CS, easy to remember.

[00:49:18.65] spk_1:
Three.

[00:49:40.85] spk_4:
No, I think that’s it. So the three C’s Cases Capacities, comments Cases, you’re really thinking about lifting up practitioners, nonprofits, social impact organizations that are already doing great work with data or data science. And we post those stories, we share their stories on our digital platform. The second one is Cases Capacity. So thinking about how do

[00:49:47.52] spk_1:
you do,

[00:50:44.61] spk_4:
you can only go from the capacity. So thinking about um how do you increase the capacities of individual practitioners and also organizations? And we do this in a few different ways. One of them being perhaps if an organization needs some technical assistance, we can match, make them with um different consultants or other organizations that do this type of work. Uh Thinking about upscaling organizations. So helping them become more um literate in data or developing a new skill. Um And then our third seat is commons, which is where the data maturity assessment falls in and comments is thinking about different digital public goods that you can offer for free for anyone to access. Um that is open source. Uh And that it um can help you improve your practice in some way. So we have an initiative called reverse at data dot org, which is what’s the name of

[00:50:45.62] spk_1:
the initiative divers?

[00:51:24.29] spk_4:
Okay. So that initiative was thinking about creating open source tools for epidemiology. And so if you have coders if you have public health professionals, everyone’s coming together from different roles and aspects and creating tools that would be helpful for um other people. So maybe a local government in a different country might want to look at these open source tools and helps them predict uh the way a pandemic might spread, predict a number of hospital beds you might need based on um different elements of their, of what has already happened. So putting things together and creating those tools and different packages that you can take and apply to different scenarios and context. So there is just one

[00:51:33.22] spk_1:
example of,

[00:51:34.32] spk_4:
of a comment of

[00:51:35.31] spk_1:
a of a commons,

[00:51:47.41] spk_4:
but the one I focus on is the data maturity assessment. And in addition to that, it’s connected to what we call the resource library. So there are a lot of different resources on our library that can help you figure out what you want to do next. So the way our assessment works is it gives you an overall score and a score for the three PS as well as subcategories. And with that, you get resources matched up to how you’re responding. And so say you’re scoring really high

[00:52:10.29] spk_1:
before we go to that, before we go to the outcome of the assessment, where where do folks find the assessment at data dot org?

[00:52:11.38] spk_4:
So data dot org slash DM A

[00:52:28.08] spk_1:
data management assessment assessment, maturity assessment, data dot org slash D M A. OK. Very well named, easily named. So then the outcome is we get, we get resources allied with our outcomes around the three PS.

[00:52:55.04] spk_4:
Yeah. So if you’re scoring a little lower and strategy, which is subcategory in purpose, you might want to check out our, our strategy guide, which is a step by step process that you, you might want to take your team through and think about okay, what is the data were already collecting? What do we want the data to help us inform in terms of decisions or in terms of team makeup or whatever? And then thinking about okay, what’s our over arching strategy and how do we communicate that with our team? So we’re all moving in the same direction. What do we need

[00:53:03.40] spk_1:
to know entering the assessment? Like is this something I can do in 15 minutes? Yes. So do I can I ceo do it or do I need my I T vendor with me or what?

[00:53:57.65] spk_4:
That’s a great question. And so the assessment you can do in about 10 to 12 minutes, it does not matter what role you’re in. Anyone in your organization can take it an important caveat. Is this is your perspective on your organization’s use of data. So this is not gonna be the objective assessment of how your organization is using data. It’s your perspective on it. And the way we encourage users to use the tool is to use it as a communication tool. So say I take it and then tony, you take it, but our scores are different. That’s okay. The whole point of it is to help you understand and have a conversation about why did you score maybe five in this category? But I scored eight, is it because of the role I’m in? Is it because we interpreted the question perhaps a little differently? And then once we’re aligned, then we can think about okay, we’re aligned on where each subcategory falls. And it seems like we both understand that maybe security is something we want to work more closely on because we agree that that is something that we don’t have the proper protocols and practices in place or that’s something we want to improve. So let’s work together on that and think about how do we improve that a little more?

[00:54:31.10] spk_1:
Um without our listeners having the advantage of having taken their uh data maturity assessment, how can we help folks? I mean, are there maybe there are some of the resources or tools that are commonly needed and helpful? How can how can we help listeners with their data maturity before they take their assessment because they’re just listening

[00:55:20.56] spk_4:
now? Yes. Well, so if you’re interested in exploring the resource library, we have a lot of different tools on it. But what I would recommend and what we recommend for those who are just starting their day to maturity journey is to think about strategy. So, data dot org has a specific guide for strategy in the resource library and you can think about, okay, where is my organization now? And how do I enact and write up a strategy with my team in order to use data more effectively, to better understand how data is coming in and what you could uh think about in the long term and future, what you want to do with the data.

[00:55:23.52] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. What else was in your session that we haven’t talked about

[00:55:36.09] spk_4:
yet? So unfortunately, my co presenter couldn’t be here. But another part of our session was thinking about um you’re using data but how you’re using it in equitable ways. So equitable, cultivating Ecuador practices for data for social impact. Um and the organization that was part of this presentation was the Data for Social Impact Initiative at the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in ST Louis,

[00:55:58.24] spk_1:
took four layers to get there.

[00:56:26.87] spk_4:
All right, I have to make sure I take a lot of pauses during that. And so what they’ve done is they created a course module. So it’s free and open to anyone to use and it’s thinking about data for social impact. So if you as an individual or thinking, you know, I want to learn a little bit more about data, I want to learn, you know, perhaps in my role, how you can use it better, just some foundational knowledge, this free and open courses, something you can access um at the Data for Social Impact Initiative at the Social Policy Institute website.

[00:56:44.36] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. Um How about questions that came from your, from your session? Uh What kind of questions did you get or anything that’s stuck with you? Maybe a provocative question around

[00:58:42.39] spk_4:
data. Yeah, I think um a question, one of the first questions we got was thinking about the word assessment and how that lands with people. So R D M A is called the data maturity assessment. And thinking about maybe assessment is not the right um word because it does have a certain connotation that you’re being evaluated. And the real purpose of the D M A is to help you set a um an understanding of what you think your organization is. So it’s not necessarily a value to it evaluative, it’s more of a um a snapshot of where you are. And so a suggestion was perhaps benchmarking is a little more um is a little more friendly or a little more descriptive of what it actually is. Um So that was really interesting question and useful feedback. Um I’m trying to think of others. I think an interesting piece about the data maturity assessment is that we um are global organizations. So we encourage wherever you are in the in the world to take it. And we’ve had um a lot of different countries represented in our dataset, which is over 1000 submissions at this point. So it helps us understand the field of data for social impact a little better. Um It’s a relatively emerging field. We’re still learning about it and the fact that we can have a larger pool data sets, we can better understand perhaps where there needs to be more support in the fields, um where there needs to be more funding in the field. Um Something that data dot org releases every year is, is a report on thought leadership. And our first report was work first wanted and thinking about what is the current talent landscape of this sector right now? And how do we train more purpose driven data professionals uh and bring some people over from the private sector, encourage new talent to get into data for social impact because we believe that data is going to be a huge um indicator whether or not your organization is going to be successful. What’s,

[00:58:47.62] spk_1:
what’s I guess I I really have kind of a neophyte question. So, but you’ve been your your data professional scientist and I’ve been studying this for about 16 minutes. So,

[00:58:58.10] spk_4:
well, I’m not a data scientist. I am. Yeah. Well,

[00:59:16.15] spk_1:
your title, your title is Project Manager, Strategic Partnerships. I’m sorry, you sound like a data scientist but you’re not. No, I’m not. Okay. Um Well, you have been working with this for a long time. Um What’s the value of knowing where we are in our data journey as an organization? Why, why, why is this important?

[01:00:54.28] spk_4:
Yeah. So I think, well, we hear a lot from organizations is everyone is collecting and consuming data regardless of whether or not you have a strategy in place. And so when you want to make a decision, perhaps you’re having a challenge at your organization and you think maybe buying software technology is going to solve everything. Um What we often hear is that making that big financial investment didn’t actually solve everything. It created more problems. And our hypothesis is that because there was no strategy in the first place, there was no overarching reason why um the decision to make an investment in some technology or software would help you achieve your overarching goals, which was, which is usually in some sort of programmatic objectives, your outcomes that you want your organization to achieve. And so it’s understanding what data are we collecting, what is our infrastructure, what tools do we already used and how do we make them all work in the same direction? How do we make it all work? So we’re going towards and working towards our programmatic objectives and something that we’re learning more and more is that data can help you be more efficient. It can help you understand the different trends in perhaps the different constituents you’re serving or the trends in um whatever your mission, maybe it can help you get more information and oftentimes you have this information, but it’s thinking about how do you um look at it. How do you analyze it in a way that can drive maybe financial decisions you’re making, maybe cultural decisions, you’re making leadership decisions. Um and this is just one data point. So thinking about the different types of data you’re collecting uh and helping you make as informed a decision as possible.

[01:01:21.88] spk_1:
Okay. Alright. So helping with strategic direction, obviously meeting mission um strategic

[01:01:24.96] spk_4:
planning. Yeah, talent decisions. If you want to hire who you want to hire, what skill sets you need, etcetera. Okay.

[01:01:32.28] spk_1:
How do we leave it there? All right. All right. So a big part of this is encouraging folks to do the data management assessment.

[01:01:41.57] spk_4:
Majority, maturity,

[01:02:01.46] spk_1:
maturity, dammit, I’m sorry, data maturity assessment, which you will find at data dot org slash D M A. She is Joanne Jan project manager of strategic partnerships at data dot org. Joanne, thank you very much and thanks for carrying the, the uh the other part of the other part of your session to for your co presenter who couldn’t be here. Thank you for representing that as well. And thank you for being with non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C 2023 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits

[01:03:07.70] spk_0:
next week, multigenerational technology teaching and goals aligned with technology. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide 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 October 3, 2022: Your Dismantling Racism Journey

 

Pratichi ShahYour Dismantling Racism Journey

Starting with your people, your culture and your leadership, how do you identify, talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit? My guest is Pratichi Shah, founder & CEO at Flourish Talent Management Solutions. (Originally aired 7/8/20)

 

 

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[00:01:58.44] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast and oh, I’m glad you’re with me, I’d be thrown into necro psychosis if you killed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. You’re dismantling racism journey starting with your people, your culture and your leadership. How do you identify? Talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit. My guest is pretty itchy Shah founder and Ceo at flourished Talent management Solutions. This originally aired july 8th 2020 on Tony’s take two, let’s debunk plan to giving myths. 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 four D just like three D but they go one dimension deeper here is your dismantling racism journey. It’s a real pleasure to welcome welcome. I’m not welcoming. I’m welcoming, I’m welcoming, she’s an HR strategist and thought leader with 25 years experience in all aspects of talent management. She’s making her face when I say 25 years human resources equity and inclusion and organizational development in the nonprofit and for profit arenas. She’s founder and Ceo of flourish Talent management Solutions. The company is at flourish tMS dot com. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:10.09] spk_1:
Thank you so much tony I appreciate being here.

[00:02:14.25] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure pleasure to have you um and I’d like to Jump right in if you’re, if you’re ready. Um,

[00:02:20.35] spk_1:
absolutely.

[00:02:48.05] spk_0:
You know, racism and white privilege most often look very benign on their face. Um, I had a guest explain why use of the word professional in a job description is racist. I had a more recently, I had a guest explain how not listing a salary range in a job description was felt racist to them. So how do we begin to uncover what is inequitable and right under our noses yet not visible on its face?

[00:03:34.85] spk_1:
Yeah. You know what it often it starts with listening. I mean to state state a bit of the obvious. It really does start with listening. It’s understanding for organizations. It’s understanding where we are. Um, so it’s listening to the voices that may not have been centered. We’ve become better as organizations and being responsive to staff. I hear that a lot kind of, hey, this is what my staff is telling me. This is what we need to do. But the question is is are you responding to the voices that have possibly been marginalized? Likely been marginalized or oppressed in the past joe. General responsiveness is not the same as centering the voices that really need to be heard. So it’s first off just understanding where you are as an organization and listening to the people who may have experienced organization in a way that is different than you think.

[00:03:50.19] spk_0:
So when you say general responsiveness is not what not adequate, not what we’re looking for. What do you mean by that?

[00:04:45.05] spk_1:
So a lot of time the voices that are saying, hey something’s wrong or we need to do this or we need to do that are not the voices of those that have been marginalized and oppressed. They tend to be maybe the loudest voices. They’re speaking maybe from a place of privilege and that needs to be taken into account. So being responsive, for instance, if the I call it kind of the the almond milk issue being responsive to a staff that says in addition to dairy milk for coffee. This is back when we were in fiscal offices, um, we need almond milk too. But the question is is are we listening to the voices of those that weren’t able to consume the dairy milk? It’s not a perfect metaphor. It’s not a perfect analogy because that one ignores actual pain and it just talks about preference. But are we list listen to the voices of people that have been oppressed who have, who have been, who have heard the word professional or professionalism wielded against them as a, as an obstacle in their path to success in their path to career advancement. Those are the voices that we need to listen to not the ones who have a preference for one thing or another.

[00:05:08.34] spk_0:
Um let’s be explicit about how we identify who, who holds these voices, who are these people?

[00:06:03.47] spk_1:
It’s people that have have come from. It’s particularly right now when we talk about anti black racism, we need to center the voices of those from the black community. And that means those who have either maybe not joined, not just not joined our organization for particular reasons, but maybe they have not joined our board. Maybe they have not participated in our programs, Maybe they haven’t had the chance to. So it’s really from an organizational perspective, think of it as understanding what our current state is. So how does your organization move people up? Move people in move people out if we don’t have the voices in the first place? Because maybe we’re not as welcoming as we should be, then what does the data tell us about? Who’s coming into our organization? Who’s leaving our organization, Who’s able to move up into our organization, what our leadership looks like, what our board looks like. So at times the fact that there is an absence of voice is telling in and of itself and our data needs to be able to explain what is going on. So that data needs to be looked at as well.

[00:06:52.58] spk_0:
Alright, so we need to very well, good chance we need to look outside our organization. You’re talking about people that we’ve turned down for board board positions turned down for employment? Um, I’m not even gonna say turn down for promotion because that would presume that they’re still that that presumes are still in the organization, But I’m talking about very likely going outside the organization. People who don’t work with us, who aren’t volunteering, who aren’t supporting us in any way, but we’ve marginalized them. We’ve cast them out before they even had a chance to get in

[00:07:10.44] spk_1:
potentially. Yeah. And then actually probably probably there is something that they have not found palatable or appealing about working with us or being a sensor or being uh to your point of volunteer. So so we need we need to look at why that’s happening.

[00:07:36.46] spk_0:
Okay. I’ve gotta I gotta drill down even further. How are we gonna identify these people within within our organization as it is? How are we gonna figure out which people these are that we’ve marginalize these voices of color over the let’s just like in the past five years, what have we if we’ve done this? How do we identify the people we’ve done it to?

[00:08:33.53] spk_1:
Yeah. It’s a really it’s a complicated question. It will differ by organization, right? It differs by what your subsector is, how things flow within a subsector. The size of the organization. A really good place to start is understanding who has turned us down, why have people left? So take a look at exit interviews. Even if you’re not doing exit interviews, we know that there is not always uh an HR presence in a lot of our organizations. If there aren’t formal exit interviews, first of all, let’s make time for those because we need to understand why people are leaving. Um but if if there isn’t a formal HR presence, what do we know about the circumstances under which someone left organization or said no to a job offer or said no to a board position or a volunteer. It’s also important to ask, expanding our definition of stakeholder groups, engaging with all of our stakeholder groups as as broadly defined as possible. And within those groups, understanding are we reaching out to a diverse audience to say why would you engage with us? Why would you not engage with us in any of those roles? So, yeah, it’s gonna be a little bit harder to understand the people who are not there because they’re not there.

[00:09:02.40] spk_0:
Yeah. Okay, Alright, so, alright, um we go through this exercise and and we identify we’ve identified a dozen people, um they’re not they’re not currently connected to us and uh it may be that they have had a bad experience with us, that they may have turned us down for employment because they got offered more money somewhere else. That could that in itself could be, let’s

[00:09:18.28] spk_1:
say that

[00:10:08.31] spk_0:
in itself could be uh not something other than benign, um but let’s say they moved out of the state, you know, they were they were thinking about, so, so in some cases they may not have a bad have had a bad experience with us, but in but in lots of cases they may have, they may have turned down that board position because they saw the current composition of the board and they didn’t feel they felt like uh maybe being an offer, you know, a token slot or whatever, whatever it might be. I’m just, I’m just suggesting that some of the, some of the feelings toward the organization might not be negative, but some might very well be negative of these dozen people we’ve identified in all these different stakeholder or potential stakeholder roles that they could have had. Um what do we reach out to them and say, how do we, how do we get them to join a conversation with an organization that they may feel unwelcome him?

[00:11:21.79] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And and I think right now, especially we tread carefully. Um we tried carefully and we honored the fact that they in fact might be getting that same question from many other other organizations, friends, colleagues, family members, in which people want to understand something. What we’re seeking to do is not be educated on the overall picture of white privilege, white supremacy of dominant narrative and dominant culture. That’s on us. That’s on all of us individually to understand that, that is not the member that is not up to. The member is of oppressed societies to have to tell us that, Right? So what they, what we want to understand is kind of, what did you experience with our organization? What was the good? What was bad? And first of all, do you even want to engage with us. Is this not a good time to do that because they’re already exhausted. I said to a colleague recently, you know, we can’t even understand the reality of what it’s like to live there to live that reality and for many to lead the charge, right? Because they’re also showing leadership in the movement. So to we can’t even understand what those layers of existence are like. So I think it’s treading very carefully and should we have the ability to engage with someone because they have the space, the energy, the desire. Then I think it’s understanding and asking kind of what’s going on for us? What where did you find us either not appealing or where did you? Why did you not want to work with us in whatever capacity we were asking? And it’s asking that question.

[00:11:50.37] spk_0:
Okay, well that’s further down. I’m just trying to get to like what’s the initial email invitation look like?

[00:11:55.10] spk_1:
It depends on the organization. It depends on the organization. It depends on the relationship. I wouldn’t presume to give words to that to be honest with you because because I think it also depends on the person that you’re asking. I don’t want to offer kind of a blanket response and inadvertently tokenized people by saying, oh, of course you’re gonna want to engage with us. So I really think it’s dependent on the situation.

[00:13:35.19] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They had a very smart newsletter this week. We often can’t predict news outcomes, but we often do know news is coming, for instance, hurricanes during hurricane season, the Duffy decision on abortion and the november midterm elections. We know in advance that there’s going to be this news. The smart nonprofits turn to communication says prepare talking points for all the possible outcomes in advance and they’re the ones that get the day one quotes and the op EDS and they own the issue on social media. So prepare your messaging in advance, then launch when the news breaks. It’s brilliant turn to communications. Your story is their mission. You can get their newsletter which is on message at turn hyphen two dot c o. Brilliant. Now, back to your dismantling racism journey. What are you inviting them to do with you have a conversation, share your experience with us, is it?

[00:14:42.37] spk_1:
Yeah, essentially. I mean, that’s what it boils down to. But again, it really depends on where the organization is. Right. So this is your data collection moment. This is information collection. Where else are you collecting information? What what else do you know? What other steps have you taken to begin that educational process because there’s there’s kind of a dual purpose here, right? It’s understanding who we are in, where we have contributed to structural racism, to pretend to a culture of that does not support differing viewpoints, differing populations, that is in some ways upholding white supremacy or is completely holding upholding white supremacy and its culture, there’s that general education of understanding all of that and then there’s understanding what our organization’s role is, right? So it’s both. And um so it’s really highly dependent upon where is the organization uh case for us, who you’ve talked to? The head of Equity in the center describes a cycle that is brilliant um around awake too, woke to work. Where are you in that cycle? Are you, where are you on? Um where are you and being pluralistic? Where are you and being inclusive? All of those things depend on what you’ll ask and how you’ll reach out and if you even should reach out there maybe work that has to be done internally before that reach out can happen again, just being considerate and sensitive of those who are willing to talk to.

[00:15:09.48] spk_0:
Yeah. Kay was our guest for the last most recent special episode on this exact same subject. Thank you.

[00:15:16.71] spk_1:
Yeah. The the organization is doing and has been since its inception has been doing incredible work. K is leading that work. Um and and both her words always contain wisdom and the products that they’ve put out are extraordinary.

[00:15:48.30] spk_0:
How about in your work are you facilitating the kinds of conversations in your practice that you and I are talking about right now, Do you you bring these outside folks in sometimes too to to have these conversations

[00:16:16.58] spk_1:
sometimes. Yeah, sometimes again being highly respectful of if they didn’t want to engage with us, do they even want to talk to us right now? My work really is around um, having an organization understand where it is right now. So what is its current state? What is the desired future state? Right. So we know that we want to be a racially inclusive, racially equitable organization likely that’s already been defined. But what does that mean for us as an organization if it means solely in numbers piece right? Like we want to be more divorces aboard. Okay, that’s fine. But beyond that, how will we make ourselves have a board culture that is appealing to those people that we want to bring in to work with us? So it’s kind of defining both current state and understanding current state to finding future state and then developing the strategy to get there.

[00:17:00.63] spk_0:
Okay. And now you and I are talking about, you said you know, we’re still data gathering, so we’re still defining the current culture as it exists. Right. Okay. Okay. And your work, you you centered around people, culture and leadership. Can we focus on leadership? I feel like everything trickles down from

[00:17:05.04] spk_1:
there.

[00:17:27.69] spk_0:
I don’t know. Are we okay. Are you okay, Starting with a leadership conversation or you’d rather start somewhere else? Okay. Um, so what what is it we’re looking for leaders of our listeners of small and midsize nonprofits to, to commit to you.

[00:17:30.41] spk_1:
I think it’s first of all committing to their own

[00:17:32.40] spk_0:
learning

[00:17:33.56] spk_1:
and, and not relying on communities of color to provide that learning. Right? Again, Going back to what we said earlier, it’s not relying on those who have been harmed or oppressed to provide the learning. So first of all, it’s an individual journey that’s a given. Okay. Um,

[00:18:32.11] spk_0:
can I, can I like to like things like people, I like action steps. Okay. So we’re talking about our individual journey, our own learning. I mean, I’ve been doing some of this recently by watching Youtube, watching, um, folks on Youtube of course. Now I now I can’t remember the names of people, but no Eddie Glaude. Um, so Eddie Glaude is a commentator on MSNBC. He’s just written a just released this last week, uh, biography, well, not so much a biography of James baldwin, but, but an explanation of baldwin’s journey around racism. Um, so that’s one example of, you know, who I’ve been listening to. So we were talking about educating like learning from thought leaders around yeah, privilege structures, whether reading books listening to podcasts.

[00:19:00.76] spk_1:
Absolutely. It’s around, it’s around structures, but it’s also understanding things that we do all the time in organizations and how I as a leader might perpetuate those, right? So it’s sometimes the use of language to your point about the use of the word professional. Um, language tends to create our reality. So, and and it either language will build a bridge or not. So how do we use our language? How do we use our descriptors? How do I show up as a leader? Um, as in my own kind of inclusion or not? So, I think it is absolutely that it is looking at thought leaders around things like structural racism, around the use of language around people’s individual experiences to get that insight and depth, because it’s not just an intellectual exercise. This is emotional, too, and therefore has to have emotional resonance.

[00:20:10.42] spk_0:
Okay, thank you for letting me dive deeper into what about personal, you know, your own personal journey, your own personal education, uh, fact finding and introspection. You’re talking about something, you know, and it’s no, no revelation. This is it’s difficult. It’s painful. You know, you you’re very likely uncovering how you offended someone, uh, how you offended a group. Um, if you were, you know, speaking in public and something comes to mind or how you offended someone in meetings or, you know, multiplied. I don’t know how many times. I mean, this introspection is likely painful,

[00:20:12.44] spk_1:
likely likely. Yeah, more often. More often than not, I can’t I can’t really envision it. Not at some level being painful.

[00:20:21.92] spk_0:
Yeah. But you’ve caused pain. You know, that there’s a recognition there. Yeah,

[00:20:27.16] spk_1:
exactly,

[00:20:27.62] spk_0:
painful for you. But let’s consider the pain of the person or the group that you.

[00:20:33.80] spk_1:
Exactly, right. I

[00:20:34.78] spk_0:
don’t know, offended, stereotyped, mean to put off, you know, whatever it is, you’re

[00:20:40.73] spk_1:
that’s right. And that that’s why the work as much as I know, you know, to some degree, people want this to be work that can be kind of project managed if you will or it can be put into a process or a series of best practices or benchmarks

[00:20:53.94] spk_0:
to

[00:21:05.75] spk_1:
some degree, not very much, but to some degree. Yes, absolutely. The some a little bit of that can happen, but that in and of itself is a bit of a dominant narrative, right? That in and of itself is kind that that centering white culture. So I think what we need to understand is this is not just going to be again to sorry to be redundant, but it’s not just gonna be intellectual. The fact that pain has been caused dictates that this be emotionally owned as well. It can’t be arms length. It can’t be just intellectually owned with a project plan that I keep over here on a chalkboard or something like that.

[00:21:41.49] spk_0:
Emotionally owned. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Um All right. So I made you digress and deeper. What else, what else you wanna tell us about leadership’s commitment and and and the importance of leadership commitment.

[00:23:23.38] spk_1:
Yeah. So, so it needs to be explicit. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be baked into the leadership. Whatever leadership structure of the organization has, it needs to be an ongoing piece of that leadership. So it’s not a, hey, let’s touch base on our quote inclusion initiative. If it’s an initiative first of all, that’s not really doing the work anyway. Um but it’s not something that lives separately from ourselves. Let’s have HR kind of check in on this or let’s have the operations person check in on this, that that’s not what this is about. It’s really, it’s authentically being owned by leadership to say, yeah, I know it’s gonna be painful. And in looking at our organization, we’re gonna need to understand why our leadership is remarkably homogeneous. Which in the case of many nonprofits, it is if you take a look at Building movement project and the unbelievably great work that they’ve done twice now, they just put out an update to their leadership work around how people move through the sector or don’t and how people communities of color and people of color are represented in our leadership. We can begin to understand that by and large, they’re they’re not. Um though i that is an oversimplification in some ways. So I would encourage people to go to building movement Project’s website and check out their work. Um but you know what, why are we so homogeneous? Why is our board? So homogeneous? It’s it’s also unpacking and uncovering that. So to your point earlier about, you know, how do we look at people and how they move through the organization. This is where you look at Who is present, right? Not just who’s not with us, but who is with us? How do people get promoted? How does that system work? Does any does everyone have the same information? Is it a case of unwritten rules? Is it a case of some people move up because they’re similar or they have 10 years of experience, which is something that we like to say.

[00:23:45.71] spk_0:
How

[00:24:08.90] spk_1:
Do you get 10 years of experience if you’ve not been given those chances to begin with? So is there life experience that we can that we can begin to integrate in our conversations? Because life experience is equally valuable. Are we putting too much of a premium on higher education, education and its formal kind of traditional form. Are we putting too much of a of an emphasis on pedigree of other kinds of those, those are the things that ultimately keep people out. So taking a look at leadership and and having leadership commitment ultimately means looking at all of those things, there’s an overlap and how we look at leadership or people and or organizational culture.

[00:24:24.52] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah, of course, this is a it’s a continuum or

[00:24:27.44] spk_1:
Absolutely, absolutely. And the areas bleed into each other.

[00:24:38.31] spk_0:
Yeah, of course, yeah. Um, you know, subsumed in all this, I guess. I mean, it’s okay for leaders to say, I don’t know where the where the journey is going. I don’t know what we’re going to uncover, but I’m committed to having this journey and leading it and and right. I mean, supporting it, but I don’t know what we’re going to find.

[00:24:54.28] spk_1:
Uh

[00:24:55.50] spk_0:
Right,

[00:24:56.39] spk_1:
right. And that in and of itself can be uncomfortable for a lot of people. And that’s the that’s the kind of discomfort we need to get okay with.

[00:25:03.34] spk_0:
Yeah. Alright. Yeah. This, you know, I had I had a guest explained that this is not as you were alluding to, uh it’s not the kind of thing that, you know, we’re gonna have a weekly meeting and will be these outcomes at the end of every meeting, then we’ll have this list of activities and, you know, that then, you know, it’s how come it’s not like that. How come we can’t do it like that

[00:25:26.67] spk_1:
because we’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of years of history, and it’s because we haven’t been inclusive in the ways that we do things and we haven’t allowed whole selves to show up that it is um It’s complicated and it’s messy because it’s human.

[00:25:44.56] spk_0:
Alright. So it’s not gonna be as simple as our budget meetings.

[00:25:48.62] spk_1:
Absolutely different. Different kind of hard.

[00:25:52.76] spk_0:
Alright. And we’re gonna have an outcome at every at every juncture at every step or every week or every month or something. That’s

[00:25:58.65] spk_1:
right. That’s right. And if we expect it to go that way. Um We are likely going to give ourselves excuses not to press on

[00:26:56.36] spk_0:
it’s time for a break, fourth dimension technologies. Are you seeing technology as an investment, an investment in your people, the people you’re helping, the people who work for you, the people who support you, an investment in your sustainability and investment in your programs four D. Can help you make better tech investment decisions. Check them out on the listener landing page at Just like three D. But you know, they go one dimension deeper. Let’s return shall we to your dismantling racism journey. Alright, so that’s what it’s not. What, what does it look like?

[00:27:59.80] spk_1:
It absolutely looks different for every organization. It absolutely looks different for every organization and that’s why it’s so critical to understand kind of where are we right now? Um where are we? As far as all of the components of our organization? Right. So volatile. Again, volunteers board staff culture. You said, you know, we were talking about people organization and leadership, which is obviously a lot of my work. Um, it is getting underneath all of those kinds of things to say. So who experiences our culture? How um so we do engagement surveys, Right. A lot of times we do engagement employee surveys, that kind of thing. Are we looking at those disagree in a disaggregated way? Are we asking different populations to identify themselves? And are we looking at what the experiences are by population? Are we asking explicit questions around whether or not you feel like you can be yourself in this organization, Whether you can provide dissenting opinions, whether you feel comfortable approaching your boss with feedback, um

[00:28:01.00] spk_0:
whether

[00:28:01.73] spk_1:
you feel comfortable volunteering for particular work, whether you feel like you understand what a promotion or performance management processes, whether you get the support that you need or to what extent you get support that you need either from colleagues, boss, leadership etcetera. So it’s looking at all of those things and then understanding are they being experienced differently by different communities within our organization?

[00:28:26.10] spk_0:
You mentioned disaggregate ng. That that’s where the data is not helpful, right?

[00:28:31.94] spk_1:
That is where we look at the data in terms of populations.

[00:28:35.58] spk_0:
Oh, of course. Aggregating. I’m sorry.

[00:28:39.09] spk_1:
Oh, that’s okay.

[00:28:40.34] spk_0:
You’re stuck with a lackluster host? No, of course, yes. Aggregating

[00:28:44.36] spk_1:
early in the week.

[00:29:00.70] spk_0:
Thank you. You couldn’t say early in the day, but thank you for being gracious. Okay. Yes. We we we want to disaggregate of course. Um and look by population and I guess cut a different way. I mean depending on the size of the organization, um age, race, uh

[00:29:25.54] spk_1:
race, ethnicity, um of physical ability, orientation. All of those need to be in the mix. Um gender as well. Including gender fluidity. So really looking at all of our populations and then understanding, you know, for these particular questions, is there a difference in how people experience our organization? We we know then what we do know is that if there is a difference that there is a difference, we don’t know that there is causality unless they’re unless you’ve asked questions that might begin to illuminate that. Right? But there’s there’s always that difference between correlation and causality and then what you want to do is get underneath that to understand why the experience might be different and why it might change along lines of gender or race or ethnicity or orientation or physical ability.

[00:29:57.07] spk_0:
We we we wandered, you know, but that’s that’s fine. I

[00:30:03.50] spk_1:
people

[00:30:09.82] spk_0:
culture and um and leadership all coming together. Um where where where do you want to go? Uh I mean, I would like to talk about people, culture and leadership. What’s a good, what’s a good next one?

[00:32:27.52] spk_1:
Yes. Well, so, so this is what you’re doing, right? As you’re you’re collecting information and all of those three areas. Right? And one so a couple of things that I would add to that is when you look at people, you’re looking at their experiences, when you look at the leadership, you’re looking at commitment, makeup, structure, access all of those kinds of things. When you’re looking at culture, you’re looking at how people experience the culture, Right? And so what, what is happening? What’s not happening? What’s stated out loud? What’s not stated out loud? What are the unwritten rules? There is also the piece that that forms all of these things, which is operational systems. Right? So things like performance management, things like um where people may sit back when we were in physical offices having access to technology, all of those kinds of things, particularly important now that we’re not in physical offices, so does everyone have access to the technology and information necessary to do their job, to do their jobs to do their work? So it is looking also at your operator side and saying, how do we live our operational life? How do how do people experience it, who do we engage with to provide services for our operations? How do we provide services if you will, for lack of better term to our employees? So it’s also looking at that because operations ultimately permeates organizational culture, people and leadership, Right? Because it kind of sustains all of that. So taking a look at that too. And finally, I would suggest again as part of this and as a wraparound is what is the internal external alignment? Right? So I often hear people say, hey, you know what, this is the subsector we work in, people would think that we’re really equitable, but internally we are living a different life than what we are putting out to our stakeholders and our constituencies externally. So what is what is our external life? And how does that need to inform our internal world? It’s not unusual for me to hear that the external life, the way we engage with stakeholders or the way we put out program Programmatic work is actually may be further along to the extent that this is considered to be a contain, it’s further along than the way that we’re living our life internally. So

[00:32:31.20] spk_0:
there’s dishonesty there disconnect that

[00:32:34.70] spk_1:
there’s a disconnect

[00:32:36.18] spk_0:
disconnect

[00:32:36.88] spk_1:
for sure and possibly yeah, dishonesty and hip hop maybe even hypocrisy.

[00:32:47.12] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. But again, all right. So that now we’re looking like this is organizational introspection. Exactly. There’s individual learning and introspection. Now we’re at the organizational level right? Being honest with our with our culture and our messaging.

[00:33:05.70] spk_1:
Right. Right. And and so what I try to do is to help organizations kind of look at those things and decide how we might evolve give in the future that we’ve set our sights on and given some of the principles that we’ve laid out. How do we kind of get there? How do we, how do we evolve our systems? How do we evolve our people practices? How do we evolve our culture. So hence the need to look at all of these things that centered around people, culture and leadership.

[00:35:27.37] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take to debunk the top five myths of planned giving. I hate these insidious, pernicious myths like the one that planned giving will hurt your other fundraising and the one that you need a lawyer because plan giving is so complicated. I will debunk the top five myths in a webinar on Tuesday october 18th at 10 a.m. Pacific time, one p.m. Eastern time. but the time doesn’t matter because if you grab your spot for the webinar, you’ll get the video. This is 2022 you don’t need to be there. We’d love to have you live, but you don’t need to be there. I will be debunking these insidious myths in plain simple language and I’m gonna weave in my stand up comedy. The host is NP Solutions. They’re hosting, you are hosting me, they’re hosting us. That’s what hosts do they host their hosting? You go to N. P solutions dot org and click on workshops. What could be simpler. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got the boo koo but loads more time for your dismantling racism journey with Gene Takagi. No, no, it’s with who writes this copy? I need an intern so badly, desperately. So I have somebody to blame. Please. You’re dismantling racism journey with pretty itchy Shah and intern resumes are welcome. What about the use of a professional facilitator? Because well, first of all, there’s a body of expertise that someone like you brings uh but also help with these difficult conversations. Talk about the value of having an expert facilitator. Yeah,

[00:36:50.97] spk_1:
absolutely. So, so, you know, I think I think there’s always a level of objectivity and and and kind of an in inside look by an outsider that you that you benefit from. We go to experts for everything from, you know, our health to the extent that we have access to those experts, which is a whole different conversation on race and oppression. Um, we we want that external voice. What I would say is it’s likely not going to be the same expert or the same facilitator and I say expert in quotes um, for everything. So for instance, I am not the voice to be centered on educating an organization around structural racism. I don’t think I’m the right voice to be centered. I would rather center voices like those at um, At race forward at equity in the center at those who have lived the results of 400 years of oppression. So you might want to call in someone for that discussion for that education. There are people that are better and more steeped in that and whose voices should absolutely be centered for that. Um, you might want to call in a voice for White Ally ship because there is some specifics around that that we need to talk about without kind of centering white voices. I’m

[00:36:51.22] spk_0:
sorry that white Ally ship. Yeah. What is that?

[00:38:01.95] spk_1:
So if we think about the or the organization, right, and are kind of culture and our people um, who who on staff sees themselves as an ally. And how can they be good? How can how can white people be good allies? Right. And how do how do we further and embed that in the culture. Um, and then finally, so keeping that in mind that there are gonna be different experts or different facilitators for different things, you know, who is going to be the person in my case, this actually might be me is to help us evolve our culture and our systems so that we can be more equitable and take a look at that, who’s gonna provide the training because there are skills necessary right to have these com conversations. There are foundational communication skills, there is the ability to give feedback. Um, there is the ability to communicate across cultures, across genders, across across groups. There is ability to be collaborative. So so also strengthening those skills while we continue to look at those things. But to think that all of this help is going to come from? One source is not ideal and unlikely it’s even inappropriate because everyone can’t be everything. I don’t try to be the voices that I can’t be, it’s inappropriate for me to do that.

[00:38:26.14] spk_0:
What what else do you wanna, what do you want to talk about? You know, given the level where that we’re at, we’re trying to help small and midsize nonprofits inaugurate a journey around racism and white privilege.

[00:39:44.81] spk_1:
Yeah, I think, I mean, look, first of all I hear a lot of organizations say like what what is the access point, like what do I get started doing? We put out a statement um in some cases we are experiencing some dissonance between the statement that we put out or the programmatic work that we do and the way that we’re living internally. So it is really understanding kind of why where are we now through all of the ways that that we’ve been talking about over the last several minutes. Where are we now? What is it that we’re not doing that we should be doing, What is it that we need to be doing? How do we define for us if we have an equitable culture, if we are living racial equity, what does that look like for us? Um how does that affect our programmatic work? How does that affect our operations? Everything from our finances to our people processes to when we are back in an office, even our physical setup. How how does that affect us and how would we define that future state? So it’s understanding what is my current state, what is my future state and then understanding how we get there and it’s likely gonna be along all of the areas that we said. Right? So individual journeys, some group and individual skill building, um some evolution of our systems and some understanding of kind of how we can support each other and support ourselves for those that are that affiliate with a particular group. Um and then kind of moving us along to that place of where we want to be. So it is it is understanding where you are that determines what your access point is. But I would say if you if you have done the work of putting out this statement then there then look for look for where you’re not living that statement internally.

[00:40:22.11] spk_0:
That sounds like a very good place to Yeah, to start your search for for an access point because it’s so recent, your organization has probably said something in the past 56 weeks.

[00:40:23.77] spk_1:
Absolutely

[00:40:26.78] spk_0:
to that, to that statement.

[00:40:43.46] spk_1:
Exactly. And and we are incredibly, I would say and pardon the use of the term, but almost fortunate that so many thought leaders have been kind and generous enough to share with us their thoughts on this moment, so not just within the sector, but all the way across our society. So many people have taken the time and the patients and the generosity amidst everything else that they’re living through, they have agreed to share their thoughts, their leadership, their expertise with us. So there is a ton of knowledge out there right at our fingertips and that’s a that’s another really great place to start and to center the voices that most need to be heard

[00:41:15.89] spk_0:
at the same time. You know, we are seeing beginnings of change uh institutions from Princeton University to the state of Mississippi

[00:41:37.59] spk_1:
right? Absolutely. To hopefully, you know, the unnamed Washington football team and to Nascar and places where we, I didn’t know that change necessarily was possible, but we we are same change and and the important thing is is to not be complacent about that change,

[00:42:41.88] spk_0:
right and not and also recognize that it’s just a beginning. You know, removing confederate statues, um taking old glory off the Mississippi flag. These are just beginnings. But I think worth worth noting. I mean worth recognizing and celebrating because The state of Mississippi is a big institution and it’s been wrestling with this for, I don’t know if they’ve been wrestling for centuries, but that flag has been there for that just that long 18. Some things I think is when that flag was developed. So it’s been a long, it’s been a long time coming. So recognizing it for what it is and celebrating it, you know, to the extent that yeah, to the extent that represents the change, the beginning of the beginning of change. All right. Um well, you know, what else, what else, what else do you want to share with folks at this? You know, at this stage?

[00:43:50.39] spk_1:
You know, I think, I think the main thing is um dig in, We need to dig in on this. We need to dig in on this because in the same way that that we have been living this society societally for so long. Our organizations many times are microcosms of society. So if we think as an organization that were exempt or that were already there, we’ve arrived at like a post racial culture, that’s not the case, that’s just not the case. Um, so where do you want to dig in? Where do you want to dig in, chances are good you are doing some version of looking at issues within your organization, whether it’s your annual survey, if you do it annually or whatever in which you can use that information to begin this journey. So dig in from where you are. It’s one of those things that if you’re waiting, if you’re waiting for kind of the exact right time or further analysis to begin the journey again, it’s not it’s not based solely on analysis. There is a p there is certainly information. There’s data that needs to be understood. But if we’re waiting for endless analysis to happen or to kind of point us to the right time, that’s not going to happen. The intellectualism needs to be there. But again, as we said in the path, as we’ve said a few times during the course of our conversation, this is about emotional resonance and an emotional ownership and a moral obligation. So, dig in, dig in wherever you are right now,

[00:44:38.44] spk_0:
what if I’m trying within my organization and I’m not the leader, I’m not even second or third tier management or something, You know, how do I elevate the conversation? I presume it helps to have allies. What if what if I’m meeting a resistance from the people who, who are in leadership?

[00:45:11.35] spk_1:
I think look for the places where there may not be resistance, right? So look within the organization. Um, if there is resistance at a particular level, then you know, who do you have access to in the organization where there isn’t that? And I think, I think starting out not assuming that you have solutions if you have expertise in this area, if you have lived through the oppression as a member of a community that has lived through the impression, particularly in the black community, I think you’re coming from one place if you are, if you are not in that community and saying that you have expertise, I think you have to be a little bit more circumspect about that and introspective about what you can offer in this vein. Um, and I think, I think we want to look for the places where there is some traction, I think in most organizations, it’s not unusual to be getting the question right now,

[00:45:47.45] spk_0:
and what is the, I don’t want to call it outcome. What, what, what what can the future look like for our organization if we do embark on this long journey,

[00:46:18.02] spk_1:
uh, cultures that are equitable in which people can show up as their whole selves, um, in which there is not only one right way to do things which tends to be a very kind of white dominant Western culture, linear sequential way of, of managing work of managing communications, etcetera, but that in fact work can be approached in a number of different ways and that solutions can be approached in a number of different ways. People get to show up and give their all to these missions that we all hold very near and dear. And so they are able they’re empowered. They are able they are celebrated without sticking to a set of preconceived guidelines or preconceived unwritten or written rules that don’t serve us anymore. Anyway,

[00:46:44.78] spk_0:
when you started to answer that, I saw your face lighten up your I don’t know, it was a smile, it just looks like your face untended. Not that you’re nervous,

[00:46:55.65] spk_1:
Your face changed,

[00:47:06.37] spk_0:
started to answer the where we could be. Uh yeah, it was, it was palpable. Alright, alright. Are you comfortable leaving it there?

[00:47:09.88] spk_1:
I think so. I think so what have we not covered that? We need to cover for your listeners,

[00:47:15.60] spk_0:
you know that better than I getting started. That’s

[00:47:34.18] spk_1:
fair. Look, you know what, this is, this is the future that is written with many voices and and while I think I can be helpful, I don’t presume to be the voice that has all the answers. I definitively don’t. I definitively don’t. And so what we have not covered is actually probably not known to me, but I dare say someone, someone out there does know that and and they will likely be putting their voice up, which is exactly what we want.

[00:47:47.19] spk_0:
Yes, we will be bringing other voices as well. Alright,

[00:47:50.25] spk_1:
no doubt. Yeah,

[00:48:02.94] spk_0:
she’s founder and Ceo of flourished Talent management Solutions and the company is at flourish tMS dot com. Thank you so much. Thank you very very much.

[00:48:05.97] spk_1:
Thank you. Thank you for opening up this space and having the conversation

[00:49:10.60] spk_0:
a pleasure. Uh it’s a responsibility and happy to live up to it. Try trying next week Beth Canter and Alison fine on their new book the smart non profit if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were 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 I. T. Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc 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