Tag Archives: DEI

Nonprofit Radio for February 20, 2023: Talent Development

 

Preeta Nayak & Lindsey WaldronTalent Development

With a few practices, you can turn your talent development process into an employee retention tool, a leadership pipeline and a step toward greater inclusivity. Preeta Nayak and Lindsey Waldron, both from The Bridgespan Group, talk through their article, “How Nonprofit Leadership Development Sustains Organizations and Their Teams.”

 

 

 

 

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[00:02:28.03] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure to welcome Preta Nyack and Lindsay waldron to nonprofit radio Pretty Nyack is a partner in the bridge span. We’re gonna do that again. No, I can’t have that, I can’t watch the first three words, it’s terrible. All right, let’s do it again. Bridge span group. Do people have trouble with that bridge span group? No, I don’t know why, I don’t know why people would, I did Okay bridge span group, the bridge span group, the bridge span group 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 necrotizing ulcerative ginger vos dermatitis. If you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show talent development with a few practices, you can turn your talent development process into an employee retention tool, leadership pipeline and a step toward greater inclusivity. Preta Nyack and Lindsay waldron, both from the bridge span group. Talk through their article On Tony’s take two. Non profit radio 50 redox here is talent development. It’s a pleasure to welcome to nonprofit radio free to Nyack and Lindsay waldron. Preta Nyack is a partner in the bridge span groups SAN Francisco office and head of bridge spans leadership and community services, she’s co author of the book nonprofit leadership development what’s your plan a for growing future leaders Lindsay waldron is manager in the bridge span groups boston office. She worked on the development and facilitation of leading for impact bridge spans, two year consulting and capacity building program for nonprofit executive teams. Bridge span is at bridge span dot org to lindsey. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:35.58] spk_1:
Thank you. tony It’s great to be here.

[00:03:18.23] spk_0:
I don’t know who’s the expert in which subjects. So you know, if I call on somebody and then, you know, if you want to pass it off and say no, peter knows that better lindsey or vice versa. Of course, you know, feel free to do that. It’s not, I won’t consider it anarchic. If you, if the person I asked doesn’t, doesn’t fulfill the, you know, fulfill the question. So let’s see overview. I’ll just throw it out and one of you can take it and then maybe the other wants to contribute something more. What is not going well for nonprofits generally in, uh, in talent development? Well, why don’t you start us off? There we go. Yeah. You

[00:04:36.92] spk_1:
jump in. I’ll jump in and, and, and name some some challenges. Um, and then, and then Lindsay definitely invite you. I invite you to jump in as well. I mean, I think let’s, let’s be clear everyone in this moment. Every organization across all sectors is, uh, facing a set of talent challenges that, um, you know, that have been precipitated by sort of layers of crisis. Right? So we, we had, we experienced covid. Um, and what that meant in terms of the workplace. We’ve experienced the racial reckoning and the questions that has led us to ask, We are, we’ve, we’re facing is it inflation recession is in both our people quiet quitting or are they getting laid off? Like there’s just a, there’s just a set of things that is also affecting the nonprofit sector now in particular, I think I would say that for the nonprofit sector, if you’re a nonprofit leader, you know, you have historically and probably even today not had the resources at your disposal to really invest in your leaders. We, we invest first in, you know, in our constituents and our clients and the people were serving and we put ourselves last often times and that means we don’t have some of the habits we should have. And it means all of these pressures than can hit us harder. So I know I’m talking about at a high level there, but I do think it’s a very real challenge.

[00:05:25.18] spk_0:
We put our own selves last. It’s like the, it’s like the founder who doesn’t pay themselves for the first three years of the, of the nonprofits existence. You know, we, we, we put our, we set up maybe perpetuate that and we put our teams are, I don’t know, arguably our most important resource, our, our staff, our teams. Um, you know, last, right?

[00:05:28.28] spk_1:
Yeah. And then, and that might, you can maybe do a sprint that way. Right. But what is social change? Not a sprint. Right? More than America cannot

[00:05:39.08] spk_0:
right lindsey, please.

[00:06:42.36] spk_2:
Well, just to just to build on that, you know, I think what, so what that leads to then that lack of investment is the turnover and increased rates of turnover that we’ve, that we’ve seen. So bridge fan has done some research. We cite a lot of other research in the, in our article as well. Um, you know, estimate, we estimate that one in four senior leaders leaves their role every two years. Right? So eight years you’re kind of looking at a whole new, a whole new team, which is, which is just difficult. And we also know that a huge reason for so much of voluntary turnover among nonprofits is for lack of career development and opportunities. Right? So that, that turn over that turnover treadmill that has a real cost associated with it. Both a financial cost for organization, The cost of recruiting hires, the cost of training new people and it has a cost on the impact side as well trying to fill new positions kind of, you know, constrains the amount of impact we’re able to have through the programs and services that nonprofits run. So I think that really kind of puts a pin in the problem itself.

[00:07:00.28] spk_0:
It takes a new employee three months just to know for sure. You know where the bathrooms are. I mean it takes, there’s a lot of, there’s a learning curve and so right. That impacts the services. Um, very interesting what you said about the volunteer 40% of voluntary Tony over is not feeling like there’s opportunity. So basically like I’m in a dead end job, I don’t see any advancement here for me. So I’ll go somewhere else. Is that, is that it essentially putting it crassly dead end job.

[00:07:48.21] spk_2:
Yeah. Or you know, not feeling an opportunity for professional development, right? Like not every organization is structured like a professional services firm, like a law firm for example, that has a clear ladder up. But regardless of whether or not there’s, you know, a clear, a clear up the task at a given organization. I think the point that we try to make, um, in this in this piece is that there are many ways to grow professionally. Um, whether or not, you know, there’s a new role or a specific new job on the, on the horizon.

[00:09:16.58] spk_0:
Funny you mentioned law firm, you know, a normal progression like associate partner maybe name partners. You know, I practiced law for two. Well in some respects they were two short years, but for me, there were two of the longest years of my life and I, I couldn’t stand it because in large measure I was dreading the partnership path because I was looking at the partners, they were all gray eyed, miserable divorced from their spouses or estranged from their Children. Like that was the last thing I wanted to do was follow their path, but I know that’s, that’s not the, that’s not the example you were giving. But your example conjured, uh, some hysteria in me as I recalled Not wanting to be like, I don’t want to be like those people, I don’t want, I don’t want to advance in this career. If I have to look like those people 15 years from now, I’ll be miserable. So I bailed out after two. Okay. But on to more, more, uh, more encouraging talent development progressions and scenarios. They’re not all, they’re not all bad in law firms, but a lot of them are outside. So, uh, so like we’re looking for, you know, like transparency, right? We want to transfer you, you cite the arctic in your article, which we’ll, we’ll give folks a link to shortly, you know, transparency and consistency. We’re looking for some, we’re looking for something, some bedrock that we can rely on so that we, uh, we know there’s a future for us in this, in this organization.

[00:11:13.49] spk_1:
I think, I think that, yeah, I think that’s right. And I, I think that one of the things that, um, because we don’t have, you know, the habit of investing in ourselves investing in our people or that, you know, it’s when it does happen, it tends to be a little bit at hot, right? You’re sort of a little bit making it up as you go along and the real, there’s, there’s sort of two challenges there, right, at least, right. One is that you’re right Tony you don’t get, you’re not providing anyone with visibility of like, how is this gonna happen, right? How how will will somebody invest in me? Right? You just don’t know. It’s not, it’s not predictable. The second is, and this is a really important point that we try to make repeatedly throughout the article, is that when you do things in that ad hoc way, inevitably it leads to inequity in the results, right? Inevitably. It’s the people who are the least connected, often the most different from people who are in the most senior thoughts, who aren’t going to get what they deserve right, because it’s going to be through some informal relationship or oh, Lindsay, you’re just like me in this way we connect and then like I give you an opportunity and if we don’t stop to actually ask ourselves, oh, is everyone, are all the lindsey’s getting opportunities and what kind of opportunities are they getting? And are we systematically having that conversation with everybody? That’s the only way you’re gonna get to some of the equity goals that I know many of our, many of our nonprofit leaders have rightfully kind of established now for themselves. They said we want to have a more inclusive culture, we want a leadership team that looks different from the team today, but the only way you’re gonna get that is by creating some systems and habits

[00:12:00.32] spk_0:
you say that, um, nonprofits fill the top leadership positions internally at only half the rate that for profit employers do. So it feels like we’re, we’re abandoning the people that we know the best, the ones that have worked for us. We’re, we’re not, we’re not promoting them. We’re doing it only half the rate that, that companies do it. So we’re not like we’re not investing and we’re abandoning the folks who seemed like the best shot because we know them, they have a history with us rather than bringing somebody from the outside

[00:12:37.68] spk_1:
well. And the other, the other piece there is that those people from the outside there, there are moments to be clear, you should have a mix of hires in your organization. People, you’re growing internal leadership. But the, the success rate on external hires is for all the reasons you would imagine not as not as high, right? Because those are people who are to some extent unknown and who don’t know you. And so it’s not just that you’re not giving people internally a chance. You, you may also then be like, it may take a lot longer to get to a two to a higher that really works

[00:12:45.70] spk_0:
Lindsay, was there something you wanted

[00:13:06.41] spk_2:
to add there? No, just the point that, you know, as as pre dimension, external hires are kind of less likely to be successful and they’re, they’re also more expensive to attract, right? It’s like this, the cost of turnover and kind of relying over indexing on external hire to fill leadership gaps in your organization is, you know, there’s a real cost to that, which again, it just like all builds the case for a thoughtful approach to leadership and talent development that that we outline and are excited to talk about

[00:13:23.14] spk_1:
today. Okay,

[00:13:43.57] spk_0:
so let’s, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna make improvements in D. E. I were going to make improvements in retention, we’re gonna reduce turnover. Your first idea is craft competencies who wants to wants to introduce us to crafting competencies? Just pointed to Lindsay Lindsay. I guess that means you do, if you had pointed first, peter would, but she did you go,

[00:15:36.99] spk_2:
No, I got it. Well. So I think you know, the first, the first question is what’s a competency was kind of a big, big words are just to break it down. We talk about competencies at the end of the day. They are kind of a unique set of skills and capabilities that people need to perform, you know, and develop in their work today and and to develop in order to be successful in an organization going forward. Um so a competency could be something like strategic thinking or communication or you know, data analysis analytics, mission orientation, there’s, there’s a whole number and we kind of outline some of the more popular competencies that we’ve seen in our work with nonprofits over the years. But the idea is, you know, there’s such, there can be such value in, you know, as a nonprofit leadership team, Distilling the set of competencies. It shouldn’t be an endless list. But say, you know, what are the top five or the top 10 that matter most for the people in your organization, Right. It’s really critical that, you know, folks in our organization are able to bring an equity mindset to this work. So what does that actually mean? Let’s spell it out right and name that as a competency. We want people to invest in developing or, you know, ability to communicate with our clients with people. We serve with funders with policymakers. That is a critical competency. So what is good look like on that dimension for people in our organization? So the process of kind of naming the, the skills and capabilities that are critical for people in our, our organization to develop in order to promote our mission, advance our our work um, that in and of itself, you know, we found both with our clients in a bridge band right to be a really a really valuable exercise that kind of lays the foundation for this approach to talent development

[00:16:04.63] spk_0:
pre to you. You distinguish between core competencies and leadership competencies. Why did you flush those out for

[00:17:12.09] spk_1:
us? Yeah, I think one of the things that um, you know, Lindsay mentioned that it’s, it’s valuable to to name together as an organization, A relatively small set of competencies that you’re trying to build in all your your employees right. Um at the same time we recognize that there are going to be a set of folks who may be taking on broader leadership or more complex challenges for the organization and they may need to have an additional and slightly different set of competencies that they have to grow into as well. And so we encourage teams again to just think still try and keep lists short. You’ll see in the article we name some of the most popular but but also recognize that yeah, there are some things as you take on more that that you may need to build um additionally to what beyond the core competencies and those are the leadership, we call them leadership competencies, you could call them all sorts of things but but we distinguish between core, which is something that you know, everyone in the organization you would hope would grow on and leadership which would be for a subset of folks taking on more complex tasks.

[00:17:50.26] spk_0:
And it’s important, let’s just stay with you preta it’s important to recognize that the competencies today may be very different than the competencies that we need both. Core and leadership in the future. Although I would think especially leadership would would change but if we’re gonna look ahead, I think it was, well it was one of you who said earlier, you know what what what got us here basically what got us here is not what’s gonna get us ahead, you didn’t, you said it more elegant ever said, it said it more eloquently than I just did but but what what got us here is not gonna work for the future so we gotta, we gotta be looking ahead to competencies as well.

[00:20:10.22] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely. And this is where I’ll just name, you know lindsey and I have both had the opportunity to be in, I don’t know, hundreds of leadership team conversations where the, where where folks are sitting together and actually trying to wrestle with this question of like oh yeah what are, what is it we mean by leadership or talent in our organization, what are the competencies we want to name? And those are really energizing conversations right? Because to your pump point tony you realize like you’re not trying to, you know, just name what you do now, you’re trying to think ahead like what what is the organization we may be in the future and what does that mean? We’re gonna need in our staff and in our leaders and you know some of that’s gonna be the same, there’s some things that you want to continue but some of it’s gonna be different and that that can be a really exciting conversation, I think the other thing is that um what’s what’s often fun about those conversations is you can just have, you know, I think Lindsay you use use the, you think, you said strategic thinking or strategic mindset like you could actually just like even sitting together with others and being like well when I mean when I say that when I say someone’s being strategic, this is what I mean and then like you’ll realize that like you’re not always even speaking the same language and actually one of the most important things about competencies is is actually then going one layer more to describe them and describe them in like observable ways because that means then like tony when you join my team and I say look I want you to be more strategic a lot of times people will walk away and be like I don’t even know what you meant, what what is she talking about but instead I have to say like so here actually is what I mean tony like I mean when when a problem comes your way, I want you to I want you to show me that you can break it into pieces and and tackle that piece, piece by piece with with your staff right? That’s what strategic means and that’s the kind of language you need in these competency definitions so that everybody can kind of say like oh that’s what I need to do, that’s what this organization needs, it was really powerful,

[00:20:30.11] spk_0:
peter trust me you would not want me working on your team, I would be a terrible employee of any company, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t even get, I wouldn’t even get hired. I would just I would probably just not even show up for the interview. I would I would book it and then just to prove that I’m independent, I wouldn’t show up. I wouldn’t

[00:20:31.15] spk_1:
even then you’re right. There are some core competencies that were they missing out

[00:20:36.22] spk_0:
on. I have core arrogance. I think that’s that’s my arrogance is arrogance. One of the core skill sets. One of the core competencies.

[00:20:43.16] spk_1:
We it has not been frequently named. It has not been frequently. Not

[00:20:51.04] spk_0:
frequently. It’s very diplomatic of you. Thank you. Um Alright let’s so lindsey, let’s go. Was there anything else about crafting the competencies from anybody that that we didn’t talk about? You think folks should know?

[00:21:44.34] spk_1:
Oh I will say I will, I’ll name one more thing which is just that a mantra we have in the in the competency sort of list processes. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So do not be the organization that spends 6 to 12 months trying to identify your competencies. That’s 6 to 12 months that have not been developing those competencies in your people, right? Because you’ve been worrying about the words that you’re using. I’m not saying words don’t matter at all. But like you know get most of the way there and try it and then you can always come back and adapt your list if you need to. So yeah, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good Lindsay

[00:21:48.27] spk_0:
you wanna introduce us to uh, co creating professional development plans.

[00:22:13.76] spk_2:
Yeah, sure. This is a fun one. you know the, the way that we introduce the concept of an effective um, professional development plan um, is through kind of a really fun example, um, which is by asking, you know, nonprofit leaders that we work with. Let’s reflect on how you learned how to ride a bike for the first time, right. Um, and tony if I asked you that question, right, assuming you know how to ride a bike. Um, what, what did that, what did that look like?

[00:23:00.03] spk_0:
Well, my, my mom and dad would take me out and I had a bike with, well started with a tricycle, right? We start with a tricycle and then we, we got, I graduated to a bike and they would put training wheels on it, of course it had training wheels and they would kind of hold the handlebars one of them with me as I rode even with, even with the training wheels in the beginning I think and then eventually the training wheels come off and mom and dad are left behind and I bike away.

[00:26:08.07] spk_2:
Yeah, and now here you are a bike rider. Um, no, it’s a helpful, like what you just described is a very kind of active and involved process of you kind of learning while doing right with people kind of by your side, you know, making sure you don’t like fall too hard and and coaching you along the way. Um and I think that’s a really helpful kind of picture to keep in mind as we think through well, how do people learn, how do we expect people to kind of grow and develop some of the competencies that we just developed. Um and it’s not by just reading about it, it’s not by attending a training on how to ride a bike or by watching a video. And I think I elevate that contrast because what we, what we often, what we often see like many nonprofits are, are guilty of this is, you know, an expense budget that’s kind of tied to training and development and more often and then not like that, you know, that the default is well, attend this training online or go to go to a seminar or kind of like learn about it, read about it, which is fine and which is necessary to a certain extent, but that’s not gonna help you develop the skill. Um and so there’s a, there’s a body of research that has kind of resulted in a framework called the 70 2010 around how how people learn, which is that 70 per percent of learning happens on the job that happens while doing it happens while you’re kind of pursuing that stretch assignment, right? 20% of learning really is kind of anchored in thoughtful coaching mentoring and development, right? So pre to for example giving me pointers along the way the work that your parents were doing right, kind of coaching you along the side, holding the handlebars, making sure that you knew what you were doing, Giving you tips, you know, and then there is a role for kind of learning through reading through more formal training, but that’s really you know closer to 10% and so it’s you know that that mindset, that allocation of how I think through how I want to develop myself, how I’m going to kind of become better on some of these dimensions that we that we name as organizations, those competencies that matter. I think we we encourage and we even include a template in our set of resources around like a development plan that kind of brings to life the 70 2010 approach and the great news is this right I mentioned before a lot of, a lot of organizations out there, they have a training and expense budget, Right? But that’s really at the end of the day, that’s kind of like the 10%, so much of learning happens on the job. So if if we could invest more in thoughtfully developing those stretch opportunities that preda alluded to kind of at the beginning of this conversation, um that’s great, that’s the most effective way people learn and it’s also one of the least expensive way to kind of teach our people to, to mentor them through more of an apprenticeship model.

[00:26:53.88] spk_0:
So how do we develop and we’re supposed to co create these right between the manager and the person who reports to the manager co co create the plan. But how do we Make the plan when we don’t know what the, what the opportunities are gonna be for the 70% part of the 70 2010 rule, how are we going to craft up? I mean, we don’t just create opportunities to see the person succeed or not. I mean, how do we how do we develop a plan around something that’s uncertain for the future? The the 70% part, the on the job part, we don’t we’re not really sure what’s coming.

[00:28:00.88] spk_1:
Well, i if I can jump in Lindsay, I’ll just say, I mean, no, you’re not sure of everything that’s coming, but you know, a good amount of what’s coming. Right? So if you’re, you know, you know, um in particular, I mean, obviously will vary by um by competency. Right, let’s remember that, right? You’re picking your your decided in advance together, there are these two or three competencies maybe that you’re going to really focus on? Well, let’s say it is about communications, it was one that that Lindsay mentioned earlier. Well, you might not know all the big presentations that are, that are gonna come up in the next year, but you know that there’s, you know, there’s the annual staff gathering. There’s the there’s um, you know, there’ll be at least a couple of updates to the board, you know, that, you know, you have a sense of what’s coming right and so you can, you and then you can together look for those opportunities. So the other thing to know is that if we agree, you’re gonna work on communications tony we might pick out a couple of things that we think are gonna be opportunities in the next couple of months. But then we should also revisit this plan at least once a quarter and say like, okay, what, what opportunities came up and what might be coming up in the next quarter so that you can continuously be updating it right? You can’t plan out a year and can’t plan out a year,

[00:29:11.81] spk_0:
especially for the, the arrogance building skill set. No, we didn’t, those are gonna be particularly particularly hard to come by, but, but I’ll fight for them anyway, let’s flush out the coaching and mentoring part a little bit the 20 and the 70 2010 that I think maybe, I don’t know, it feels like sometimes it’s left to sort of, you know, people kind of find a mentor on their own might be in the company, maybe, maybe you’re saying ideally it should be in the, in the organization or, but it’s, it’s left too much informality and it’s left up to the mentee to go find somebody who will mentor and coach them. I think you want it to be much more formalized in the organization, don’t you Lindsay? Go ahead lindsey.

[00:31:16.80] spk_2:
Yeah, yeah, well I was, I was just kind of observing, observing Preta’s like head nodding and I think, you know, I think that is ultimately the goal and then I think that that it speaks to kind of like the third piece of this puzzle that really makes it all work, is making sure that your, your supervisors, your managers throughout your organization are kind of taking ownership over their team’s development are kind of stepping into that role of coach so that my team of, to my team of five, my team of however many I’m aware of what they’re working on, right? I’m thinking about what opportunities I can help create for them and with them and I’m and I’m actively kind of coaching them through providing providing constructive feedback on what they’re doing well on what they need to to improve. And so often it’s the case that me in a supervisor role, I could be that coat, I should be approached to my, to my teams, those I’m supervising and at the same time it may be that, you know, there’s a, there’s a certain competency that I’m really focused on developing and my current supervisor isn’t the right person to support me on that. Right? So they’re, there are certainly opportunities where I might seek outside counsel, um, an expert on a certain topic to help coach me on something like public speaking, for example on on data analysis or or something like that. Or I may I may, I may seek out coaches from folks within my organization that don’t directly supervise me. So it’s not kind of a one size fits all situation, there are kind of different avenues and at the same time I think it’s our, our perspective that that talent development often hinges on an organization’s ability to kind of equip and hold their their management, their their supervisors accountable for developing their teams. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Oh,

[00:31:43.22] spk_1:
I you know, honestly, I just keep imagining tony like learning to ride this bike and his parents at his side. And as you were describing, I was thinking to myself, I guess we should all whatever that competency is that we’re trying to develop whatever that skill is. We should be asking ourselves who’s gonna be like those parents who trusted tony enough to get him a bike right to put him on the bike, but then who he trusted enough that if he was going to fall, they would be there to help him right? Like it’s like you’re gonna kind of asking that question of yourself as you’re building the skills is who are the people and it’s probably not just one person, right? It’s probably a set of people you go to under different circumstances, but it’s that environment of management support that I think the best kind of like talent rich organizations have created, they’ve created that environment.

[00:35:38.89] spk_0:
You, you all are making me picture my little block on uh orient way in Rutherford New Jersey where I learned to ride a bike and there were too many, there were too many trees, you know, because the trees upend the sidewalk slabs so it’s all bumpy and it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a good environment, but you know, that’s where I grew up orient way Rutherford New Jersey, I hope they’ve repaired the sidewalks in the past 55 years or so. It’s time for Tony’s take two nonprofit radio 50 for the planned giving accelerator, it’s the re ducks, it’s a reminder that you can get 50% off planned giving accelerator tuition by using the code non profit radio 50 the accelerator, the class begins in early March and you’ll be done with it with me. We all together will be done by memorial Day, so no impact on your summer March april and May will spend an hour a week together, you’ll meet with me and all your peers in the class and I will step you through launching planned giving at your non profit there’s no homework from week to week, there’s incredible peer support. We share challenges as well as successes together. The outcomes are incredible like $4 million from a small humane society in Georgia and $2 million from community development organization in Oregon and five new board gifts from another small organization in also in Georgia, a child development agency. So lots of lots of good outcomes. Your outcomes can be just as good. It’s all, it’s all available to you. It’s at planned giving accelerator dot com, You’ll see how to proceed and you’ll get the 50% off with non profit radio 50. Any questions about the accelerator naturally you ask me tony at tony-martignetti dot com. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got the book. Ooh, we’ve got boo koo but loads more time for talent development with pre to Nyack and Lindsay waldron. What about the idea of not leaving this to the mentees? Like the organization should be assigning or how do we, but it might the leadership might not know who the best mentor is for somebody. How do we, are we leaving it to the mentees to go find their own or what, how we, how do we formalize this but not make it overburden over overbearing. I’m very interested in this mentor mentor relationship. Maybe I never had a mentor as an attorney that maybe that’s why I dreaded. Uh I dreaded from promotion. I didn’t want to be like those people. Maybe I didn’t have a good mentor in in the law firm. How do we, how do we help Pope folks not have the same crushing defeat in their career that I had.

[00:35:42.41] spk_1:
I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to manage that tony but

[00:35:49.27] spk_0:
I’m unmanageable. I told you I don’t want, you don’t want me to work for you. Trust me. Exactly. You just said it, I’m unmanageable. But for the other folks who are, who are manageable, how do we help them get the right mentor?

[00:36:51.79] spk_1:
I would actually one question I would suggest even before that is like, is actually trying to just get a sense of who has, who has someone that they’re relying on that they’re able to turn to. And again, these development plans are an opportunity to ask that question. Who’s got me and you know, who doesn’t because I think that like you may not, it may not be that big a stretch. It may be, you know, a small set of people who don’t already have the connections they need that. You can then focus your energy on. Um, and, and so I think just the other thing I’ll just name is, I think generally when organizations for profit, nonprofit ask this question, they do find that the folks who are often left out are those who aren’t, haven’t traditionally been in that employment space, You see women who don’t, who often are lacking a mentor, people of color. And so you know, again, some areas where you can kind of double down and focus if other folks are, are seem like they’re doing okay

[00:37:41.56] spk_0:
alright. I see. So we can use these at least quarterly check ins to which we’re gonna get to the check in. All right. So then the remaining we got 70 2010, the remaining 10% is formal Lindsay like you said, go to a webinar seminar, go to attend a conference, that’s the 10%. That’s I mean we need to budget for that because there is a role I would think especially in in developing like a new competency that may be an early stage of developing a lacking competency skill set, you know, hearing, hearing listening to a webinar or going to a conference on it might be very valuable. So we need to budget that also.

[00:38:16.15] spk_2:
Yeah, for sure. Like a concrete example we use in at our organization at at bridge band which is focused on strategy, right? And operating effectiveness. But a lot of, you know folks that come in to our organization like need a pretty solid like quantitative background because a lot of our, you know, we use a data driven approach right? But if I’ve never opened Excel Microsoft Excel for example, It’s gonna be hard to just start doing immediately. And so there are so many tutorials kind of online and person around like what are the basics, right? How can I invest again? Not 100%, but like 10% of my capacity to just kind of familiarize myself with this thing, understand the basics, get my bearings and then start to apply that learning um on the job.

[00:39:04.71] spk_0:
Uh I should have asked you earlier. So it’s your suffering under a lackluster host who’s unmanageable, lackluster, arrogant. See these are all the traits you don’t know all the reasons you don’t want me working for you rita, you don’t want, you don’t want me in the bridge band organization. Um, you know, what’s the, what’s the basis for the, the conclusions that you drew? What? This is all based on Lindsay. You referenced hundreds of conversations but was this a survey or was this intentional research or it’s just organically grown, gained over time. What who wants to talk to why you have the credibility in this space to help

[00:40:27.68] spk_1:
us? I can talk a little bit about the path. Um, because tony you actually mentioned at the top, top of our time together the, the book I’ve written with a colleague plan a right on developing developing future leaders and that was over a decade ago we wrote that and we did that was research that was talking with um, uh, folks in the field who are leadership and talent development experts to understand what are the best for profits and nonprofits doing to create leadership pipelines. We then have like a set of general practice is to anchor our work in and building on that. We have then worked with. I think we are now probably at over 200 teams we’ve worked with in cohorts to apply these principles and that’s where we get the reps and refined it and where like some of these stories that you see even in the article come from. So, so it’s been a, we’ve tried to take our own medicine, so to speak, like we did the 10% desk research and then we wanted to apply it in the field and like actually just understand what’s going on and what’s hard, you know, what, what’s easy on paper, hard to do in practice, what kinds of tools might help that sort of thing. Anything else you’d add Lindsay?

[00:41:51.97] spk_2:
Um, I think we’ve also like in addition to coaching those nonprofits right around the country around the world at this point we also are learning within our organization, right? So, so a lot of like the structures that we, that we discussed were kind of trying to like eat and breathe ourselves. So I I have a development plan, right, 70 2010, I revisit it um, twice a year actually with my mentor, we talk about it, I talk about my strengths, my weaknesses, you know, where I need to, where I need to develop what that could look like to kind of reach the, the next level within my career at the organization, whether or not really that means a new role, so to speak, I know that I’m kind of growing regardless. Um, and, and so that, you know, it kind of motivates me to, to stay at this organization because I know I’m constantly learning, I know there are people who are investing in me and I have clear insight into what it takes to be successful in our organization because we’ve kind of spelled out those competencies, we’ve we’ve made what is often implicit explicit for everyone in our organization, right? Not just the folks that kind of our proactive in seeking it out.

[00:42:13.74] spk_0:
Are you supposed to be revisiting your plan at least quarterly? I thought you said you said you’re only doing it twice a year.

[00:42:20.92] spk_2:
I’m Oh I I will say I I have development conversations and we’ll get to this next right? I have development conversations with my supervisors and with those, I supervise, you know, every every couple of weeks or so. Right. So regularly we’re talking about like what am I doing? Well where do I need to improve? And we kind of have this framework of the competencies we care about to kind of reference.

[00:42:47.66] spk_0:
Okay. I just wanna make sure you’re not violating

[00:42:49.63] spk_1:
your I

[00:42:51.89] spk_0:
mean, I can’t lessons from a bunch of hypocrites, but Okay, you’re not you’re not you’re not hypocrites. Okay, Okay, what are you saying? I’m sorry, I was just talking

[00:43:02.95] spk_1:
unmanageable,

[00:43:04.33] spk_0:
I talk over my manager, it’s terrible. He’s unmanageable. I get him out, get him out. He’s unmanageable.

[00:43:11.36] spk_1:
Sorry, I was gonna say it’s a feedback rich environment and and tony maybe that’s another reason why you would not you would not you would not want to be with us because we would be telling you regularly what we love and what you can do better. How’s that?

[00:43:51.36] spk_0:
Yes, what I can do better. It’s again very, very tactfully put. Thank you. Uh there are there are there are expletives that could substitute but you use the tactful way. Um let’s tell a story peter you mentioned. Yeah, you have you have three examples for each of the three, you know, we have craft competencies, co create professional development plans and and then we’re gonna get to consistent development conversations those check ins um tell a story. Somebody, somebody this is worth talking about the professional development plans. Your your your example was shocked to see if I said it right shocked the Sustainable Energy Foundation, which I love Shaq Shaq T and Energy going together. I don’t know if they intended that when they created their Foundation, but I like it. Who wants to tell the story about shocked and their professional development plans?

[00:45:09.01] spk_2:
Yeah, I’m happy too. I’m happy to kick us off. Yeah, shocked is an as an organization based in India um that we supported through through a version of this process, through this kind of offering that we um that we deliver for cohorts of nonprofits and our main point of contact was actually an HR professional who had been doing this work for, you know, over a decade, but was was still new to this framework of of 70 2010. Um and so, you know worked with his leadership team with his ceo um to develop a set of competencies as we discussed right? They went through that process with with some bridge span support, we’re able to articulate what matters and then focus first on developing you know that what we often see with the organizations we work with is they don’t roll it all out at once. That would be really hard. But often first you know the it’s the work typically of the executive team of the leadership team to align on what competencies matter most in their future leaders

[00:45:27.93] spk_0:
you make that point that leadership has to set the example

[00:47:35.76] spk_2:
exactly, leadership has to set the example. So once they’ve done that then they kind of you know they start to walk the walk and this hR professional who was in a leadership position um He provides the example which we highlight in the article around a competency that he was working on which was improved communication right in public speaking. And so he named that as something that he needed to develop. It went on, his development plan, you know? And in this case he actually sought out somebody who was not his kind of like direct supervisor, direct boss, I’m forgetting exactly who it was but say it was a board member right who he admired who had a very strong concise and effective communication style and he he sought out that individual as a mentor and what they I would do is check in again like every quarter um to kind of review and assess how am I doing, How am I progressing against this really important skill that will help me grow in this role. That will help me be successful as a leader within this organization. And so that’s just one example and I think you know you point to a piece that we name like you leader you have to lead by example right? Because this is the type of thing as Preda mentioned up front, like it’s easy not to invest in talent, right? It’s easy to focus all of our attention on the programs we’re running on the services we’re offering on the clients that we are serving because those needs never never stop. Right? It’s and so the grind of just our day to day is it’s real but taking the time and discipline to pull up and reflect on our own learning our own development, our own professional growth um is critical and so if a Ceo or director of HR can find the time to do that can be candid and transparent about their growth areas, right? Everyone has growth there areas right? Even the C. E. O. S of the top companies out there, nobody’s perfect. We’re all growing right? That in turn kind of helps make visible um to others throughout the organization that like oh if the Ceo or the director of whatever department has time to do this and is taking charge of their professional development, then I can do that too. And that helps create this kind of culture of learning development of feedback

[00:48:30.51] spk_0:
completely contrary to the Jack Welch at general electric style of management to I know everything I am perfect. I have all the answers. Just just come to me. Uh, but he’s he’s long been his theories anyway. I think I’ve been debunked. All right, thank you. Good story about shock. T Yeah, it’s interesting that he chose a board member to, to uh, to help. I mean, he went to a volunteer leader, you’re saying,

[00:49:20.64] spk_2:
Yeah, and it can’t, I mean that’s, that’s the point. I think it’s, you know, I think an organization can play a role in kind of making those connections like the mentor match, so to speak. But I think it, you know, it also requires there’s a role for kind of your supervisor or manager to play and there’s also a role for each individual to play and taking ownership over their professional development and growth, right? So I might say, oh wow. Like creed is so awesome at the way that she engages clients, right? And I really, I really want to learn from from her. So, you know, I to have the agency to kind of reach out and seek, seek out mentors that spike on some of the skills and dimensions I care about. Um you know, is very much like that’s totally possible. There’s nothing preventing me from from doing that. And if you kind of like create the culture within your organization that, that is, you know, that that happens. So that is the norm that people are receptive to that. Um, I think that that can enable great things.

[00:49:39.92] spk_0:
So preta let’s talk about what we’ve, we’ve alluded to a couple of times. The the 3rd 3rd recommendation, consistent development conversations, these check

[00:51:58.23] spk_1:
ins. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was just, um, I was just thinking as for, you know, for folks who are listening to this. You know, there, there there’s value in the whole system, there’s value in putting in place these competencies and, and development plans and, and all of that. And you know, there’s also a question of like, well, what could I do as an individual tomorrow, Right? What could I start doing? And I, and, and I think actually the important there’s a lot because at the heart of all of this is regular conversation between a manager and a direct report or someone in their sort of network about where is it you’re headed? What are the skills you’re trying to build and how do we make sure you’re actually getting effective opportunities to build it right. And those effective opportunities are probably going to be on the job. And so that and it’s the regular conversation, right? So I had a, had a conversation Um, just yesterday with for 30 minutes with a mentee relatively new mentee someone when I’ve just been chatting with regularly for a couple of months and you know we we spent most of the time just kind of kind of getting to know each other and then talked about one particular problem that was on his mind and it was 30 minutes and we’ll do it again in a month. you know, and it’s a it’s just a little bit of a muscle you start to build and then in six months I will we will know a lot about each other and there will be a lot of space for that hard moment for him to pick up the phone or send the chat or whatever he needs to do because because those moments you can’t really schedule, can you write those are those are those are unscripted. Right, So so I just think it’s that muscle that gets everybody comfortable with like sharing feedback, sharing ideas, celebrating the winds, you know, sometimes like having a good cry, whatever it is that it’s that pattern that I think um really sustains that the relationship. But then actually if you have a web of those in an organization, it really sustains the organization

[00:52:20.38] spk_0:
and and to your point earlier was that the the formal check ins with with with the the supervisor, those should be at least quarterly, but but but mentors you’re saying, you know mentors mentees, I mean that can be on the fly as as ad hoc as needed or you know, maybe could could also be scheduled to?

[00:52:31.42] spk_1:
Yeah, I mean I like I’m a huge fan both in my professional and personal life of the recurring, the recurring appointment, you know, set the recurring appointment, have it for the half an hour monthly, you may end up canceling it or not using it, but like put it in there and and I I just really encourage everyone to be doing that with with the advisors in their life, whether they’re formal managers or or mentors or something else.

[00:53:21.30] spk_0:
Do you have any other action steps or for either of you? I love stuff that people listen on a Tuesday and they can think about it Wednesday and then they implement on thursday. What anything else for from either of you that we can act on immediately start taking action steps. No, this is all 100% theoretical, there’s no value

[00:53:58.99] spk_1:
in. Yeah, no, I think that I mean that the This the simple sort of thought exercise I would encourage people to do is like if you download there’s a 70 2010 template, we’ll share the materials but you can probably make this yourself. It’s not rocket science, right? It’s a couple of what are the couple of skills or competency areas, you can use our list or you can come up with your own or Google, there’s plenty of banks online available and then what do you think the 70, is going to be for you in the next few months on that thing. What’s the activity you’re going to do? What’s the coach, you’ll have do it for yourself as the first step and then share it with your manager or maybe or actually even better share it with the person you manage, right? Let them know how you’re thinking about this and maybe those, their wheels will start turning too. So I know that would be uh, just an easy way to get started lindsey. Any other suggestions?

[00:56:03.01] spk_2:
Well, I think just, you know, I feel like most of the people, I imagine a lot of folks listening like they may not have a set, a very like clear, explicit set of like what are the qualities, characteristics and skills I need to develop to be, to be great at my role in my organization over the long term and if that doesn’t exist, that’s, that’s okay. I think I think just kind of carving out some time for some self reflection um, on, you know, what, what are the assets that I bring to my role to my organization? How can I build on those, what are some things that I’m that I’m working on, right? That I need to continue to develop and then, you know, that becomes, you know, the, that becomes in large part the focus of my development plan, but again, it shouldn’t be like, we want this to be an asset based approach, right? So like building on strength. This is all I think one of the, one of the lines going through my head that I’ve I’ve, you know, started to appreciate um you know, at this point in my career is just this notion that feedback is a gift, right? It can be easy to get defensive, it can be easy to think like, oh, what am I not good enough at what am I doing wrong? But at the end of the day, like creating this culture of feedback is so critical because it it helps us grow as individuals. How am I going to get better if I don’t know, kind of where I need to to grow. Um So I just keep kind of thinking about that like self self reflection. Um I think is is really a critical piece of this

[00:56:04.79] spk_0:
process. Self reflection, introspection. I like I like I like introspection. It doesn’t do me any good, but I like I think it’s an admirable thing to spend time on where can we get the article? So because there are a lot of links to other to other research, other articles, there’s two other stories where where can we read the article?

[00:56:54.44] spk_2:
Yeah, well it’s available on our website, right www dot and dot org. Um and you know, we’re really excited actually because it’s we’re we’re kind of in the process of developing a new a new space on our website, um, that houses all like, not just this article, but all of the nonprofit knowledge we’ve, we’ve collected over the years on areas such as talents, on financial sustainability, on strategy, on organizational effectiveness and so our goal at bridge fans to kind of disseminate these tools, these resources which are all free as far and as wide as possible so that, you know, nonprofit leaders across the country around the world can can pick them up and apply for them like what, what is most useful? So go to our website.

[00:57:38.63] spk_0:
So Okay, so is there a spot at bridge span dot org that uh, someone just politely put it in the chat I guess was preta while while lindsey was talking. So bridge band bridge span dot org slash insights and then slash library. Alright, we’ll put it in the show notes.

[00:57:44.25] spk_1:
It’s unfortunately a bit of a mouthful of a U. R. L. So,

[00:58:05.82] spk_0:
okay, we’ll include it. I feel like craft competencies, co create professional development plans, consistent development conversations. Those are the three, three Tenets of the article. I know you three CS if you had, if you could tease out four more sees, you could do like the seven seas of talent development. Wouldn’t that be clever? The seven seas of talent development and there’s a bridge band group so that the bridges spanning the seven seas of talent development. If you could tease out four more sees, you know, I would, I would recommend it.

[00:58:26.15] spk_1:
But

[00:58:28.82] spk_0:
There are three, Pardon

[00:58:30.70] spk_1:
Me, we can come back with the next 4Cs.

[00:59:00.78] spk_0:
Yeah, so we’ll do a follow on with the with the remaining forces. Now these are very three very valuable sees and they are free to Nyack and Lindsay waldron. Preta is a partner in the bridge band groups san Francisco office, Lindsay, waldron manager in the bridge bands, bridge span groups, boston office and the company, the organization pardon me, is at bridge span dot org. So Preta Lindsay, thank you very much. Thanks for sharing all this.

[00:59:05.07] spk_1:
Thank you.

[00:59:06.37] spk_2:
Thanks tony

[00:59:46.52] spk_0:
next week managing your nonprofit for resilience with ted village. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for 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

Nonprofit Radio for September 19, 2022: The Tech That Comes Next

 

Amy Sample Ward & Afua Bruce: The Tech That Comes Next

Social impact orgs, technology developers, funders, communities and policy makers can all do better at technology development, argue Amy Sample Ward and Afua Bruce in their new book, “The Tech That Comes Next.”

 

 

 

 

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[00:02:21.94] 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. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of pseudo ag raffia if I had to write the words you missed this week’s show the tech that comes next social impact orgs, technology developers, funders, communities and policymakers can all do better at technology development for greater equity, argue Amy sample Ward and Bruce in their new book, The tech that comes next tony take two heading to the Holy Land. 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. T. Infra in a box the affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D Just like 3D but they go one dimension deeper. It’s my pleasure to welcome Amy sample Ward returning she’s the ceo of N 10 and our technology and social media contributor there at AMY sample ward dot org and at Amy R. S Ward and to welcome Bruce. She is a leading public interest technologist who has spent her career working at the intersection of technology policy and society. She’s held senior science and technology positions at data kind, the White House, the FBI and IBM She’s at a few a underscore Bruce who is a F. U. A. Together they’ve co authored the book the tech that comes next how change makers, philanthropists and technologists can build an equitable world. Their book is at the tech that comes next dot com. Amy welcome to nonprofit radio Thanks

[00:02:26.04] spk_1:
for having us.

[00:02:27.35] spk_2:
I’m glad to

[00:02:28.07] spk_1:
hear what you

[00:02:29.25] spk_0:
think both of you for the first time. Very nice to meet you. Glad to have you.

[00:02:34.51] spk_2:
I’m so excited to be here.

[00:02:53.06] spk_0:
Thank you, excited. That’s terrific. You may be more excited than I am. I don’t know, but I know I’m very excited. I’m very pleased. I already said I was pleased, excited. Is excited is even better than pleased. Thank you. Uh let’s start with you since people know AMY sample ward voice. Um I feel like we should start with a definition of technology the way you to see it.

[00:03:45.79] spk_2:
Absolutely technology can mean many things to many different people and even when people just simply hear the word of technology here, the word technology contra and hope of the future and assistive devices that may transform our world, but it can also bring up feelings of in trepidation and confusion and so in the book, when we talk about technology, we define it very broadly as to what our tools that exist to help us really exist in the world. Um and so this can be anything from digital systems and websites and like AI for example, but it’s also more basic things such as you know, pay deeper or other tools that are just used. And so we define it extremely broadly in the book. The focus of the book does focus on digital technologies though and really looking at adoption and use and development of digital technologies especially as it relates to the social impact sector

[00:04:07.28] spk_0:
and what what troubles you about our relationship to technology?

[00:04:36.38] spk_2:
Um, well I am an engineer, a computer engineer specifically. And so I love technology. I love being in technology. I love doing all sorts of things with technology. I love designing new ways to use technology and figuring out how to design technology to support new ways of interact that we have. I think one of the things that

[00:04:41.22] spk_1:
does

[00:05:34.13] spk_2:
give me pause though is how some see technology or some try to position technology as the be all and end all the magic solution that we could have to solve all of our problems. And that if we simply find the right technology, if we simply insert technology into any societal problem that we’re facing, that that technology will magically fix whatever we have been facing. And that’s simply not true technology not a natural phenomenon. It is something that we could create. It’s something that we should be intentionally creating to minimize bias to make sure that technology is developed and used in inclusive ways and really does enhance what we want to do as humans, which is hopefully live well together in community. Um and not just be used as some big tool to force uh different, often um different, often disproportionately impacting outcomes

[00:05:45.54] spk_0:
and you have a lot to say about development specifically more more equitable development.

[00:07:43.75] spk_2:
Yes, absolutely. Um I think equitable development of technology is something that can and should be continuing to grow. I think historically, especially when we look at the past several decades of the rise of digital technologies and technology more broadly the um the power, the money, the education has been concentrated in one group and a lot of other groups, it includes a lot of historically underrepresented or overlooked communities um based on ethnicity, based on gender identity, based on sexuality, based on ability, physical ability, mental ability or more um have really been left out or forgotten about. And so when we talk about a more inclusive design process and more inclusive development process for technology, we’re talking about one being more inclusive to who is actually allowed in the room when we talk about technology design. So who do we see as capable of being technologist um and who have who has those abilities to engage that way, but also recognizing that because technology does not exist alone, but because technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum, because technology can’t magically solve all of our problems on our own. Even if you’re not a technologist, you should be at the table in some of these design conversations because you are part of communities that have needs and those needs should be articulated at the start of the design process. You might understand a particular subject matter. I think in the book we talk about using technology in the education space, in the food space in other spaces as well, you may have some of that knowledge that is critical to making sure that the technology supports the overall goals of those sectors. And so it is important that as we think about being inclusive in developing technology, we make space for not just different types of people who are able to be technologists, but also different types of expertise that we need in that developed process.

[00:08:09.00] spk_0:
So you’re not so pleased with the model where rich, privileged white males develop technology develop, identify what’s going to be solved and how best to solve it. I I assume that that model is not working for you.

[00:08:27.26] spk_2:
I would say I would go even further than

[00:08:30.25] spk_0:
going out and

[00:08:30.92] spk_2:
it’s not working for most of us. Um so it is not working for most of us to have the power concentrated in that

[00:08:52.64] spk_0:
way. Okay. And in fact, uh someone see, I don’t know who wrote which sentences, but somebody wrote. We can’t continue to perpetuate the belief that those with the most money know best. I don’t know, maybe your editor put that in. You may not even be one of the two of you. I don’t know. Maybe

[00:08:57.13] spk_2:
I

[00:08:58.76] spk_0:
trust

[00:09:36.43] spk_2:
me amy and I spent many, many hours on many, many aspects of writing and editing to make sure that what is in the book. We both stand behind. And so absolutely with that sentence. Something that I think we we both stand behind. Um We can’t let you said we can’t let one small population in this case rich privileged white men be the ones who design all of the technology and decide all of the outcomes for everyone. We really need to. And in the book we talk a lot about how it’s so important, why it is so important to go back to communities and communities who understand their needs to understand their priorities and let communities drive that process. That would then include um policymakers. That then includes funders that that includes um technologists themselves and that includes

[00:09:53.21] spk_0:
uh

[00:09:54.53] spk_2:
the leaders and employees at social impact organizations.

[00:09:58.85] spk_0:
Another aspect of it is that just what’s what problems get solved? What what what gets attention?

[00:10:06.18] spk_2:
Absolutely. And um I think we have lots of ideas on this, but I have been talking for so long. Um I would love to pass it.

[00:10:29.88] spk_0:
We’ll get a simple word gets amy sample Ward will get their chance. Okay. Um Alright, if you insist for All right. Um Okay, if we have to go to Amy Now. All right. Uh You say somebody wrote this sentence. Uh Exactly related to what I was just saying. We dream of community centered work that builds from community centered values and there’s a lot of emphasis on going back to values. Um Why don’t you uh just sort of introduce us to the some of those values amy

[00:14:05.53] spk_1:
sure. Happy to. um I think that you know one thing we say in the book and we’ve we’ve enjoyed getting to talk to a lot of groups about since the book has come out is that everything we do as people is centered on values, but often times we don’t talk about them, we don’t make sure that our values are aligned when we start working on something. And so then those values become a some and I think we’ve all heard many different puns about what happens when you operate on assumption. Right. And so that’s that’s kind of part and parcel of also assuming that the only people that can make technology are people with certain degrees or that have a certain amount of money or that you know look a certain way. Um again that that’s those are values that we’re not talking about and that we need to talk about so that we can be really intentional about what we want to focus on. Um and in the book, you know of who has already been speaking to some of those values that there’s important role and we need to prioritize lots of different lived experience as an important part of any technology project. Um that a lot of different people should be involved in every single stage of that process, not like at the end, once we build something and we like pull the pull the little cover off and are like today we built it, what do you think there should be no pulling the cover off? You know, everyone should have already been part of it and known it was being built this whole time. Um but also values that I think are important to can it name early in the conversation around accessibility, so much of the barriers and the walls around technology projects that are there, you know again, whether people are talking about them explicitly or not that are maintaining this this false reality, that only certain people can be involved are coming from a place of saying oh we speak a certain way we use these acronyms. We we talk about things without slowing down for other people to be involved. So what does accessibility look like? Not just that a tool could be used with a system of you know devices but really that you are not using jargon that you’re making sure things are being held at the time of day when those folks that you want involved can be there. Um that child care is provided that your user group meetings, you know every level that you are operating in ways that really do make things accessible to everyone. Um and I think another value that we like to talk about early in conversations is the book is kind of a big idea like the world is not the world we have right now, like what if it was not this, what if it was equitable and just and wonderful. Um, and I know you want to talk about the illustrations colorful uh, you know, so to get there. It’s not like two steps. It’s not okay. That’ll be on like the 2024 plan, right? It’s a lot of work. And so technology and the relationship and expectations we put on it just like social change are that we can make incremental right now immediate changes and at the same we can be working on really big changes. The shifts that get us to a very different world that we have to do both. We can’t just say, well let’s live with harmful technologies and and harmful realities until we can all of a sudden just change over to the like non harmful one. Um, you know, we need to make changes today as we’re building for bigger change.

[00:16:31.93] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They have a bi weekly newsletter that I get. It’s called on message and they had something interesting in the, in the last one, it was five ways to find the timely hook and I’ve talked about news hooks with them that can be a great opportunity for you to be heard when there is some kind of a news hook. So how do you find these timely hooks, couple of their ideas track recognition days and months. I just did that in august, it was national make a will month and I did a bunch of content around that and there was, you know, there are days and months for everything like pickled day and a lot. So you can search for, you can search for the the recognition days and months, find something that fits with your work. Another one was just staying current with the news. They said they were gonna send their e newsletter on the day that queen Elizabeth died but they thought better of it because you’re not gonna be able to get people’s attention. People are just gonna be deleting emails more rapidly because they’re consumed with the death of the queen. So they held off a day or two. Um, and tying to a trend is another one that they suggested. Uh and they give the example of when um including salaries in job postings was trending and they used the example of somebody who actually wrote contrary to that idea. But it was timely because it was something that lots of people were talking about. So there’s a couple of ways of identifying the hooks, You can get their newsletter on message. Of course you go to turn hyphen two dot c o. Turn to communications. Your story is their mission now back to the tech that comes next. How is it that technology is not neutral? Amy

[00:16:36.71] spk_1:
well,

[00:16:37.09] spk_0:
humans, humans,

[00:17:26.74] spk_1:
I don’t think humans have the capacity to be neutral. And we are the ones creating technology. I mean even before digital technologies. You know, the number of um, pieces of farm equipment that could be considered technology, you know, humans built those that kill people who are left handed because the tool was built by right handed people to be used with your right hand, right? Like there’s there’s not a lot of evidence that humans can be neutral. And so then you add to that that we’re building it with a often very small group of people not talking about values for something that is meant to be you know, used in a different context with different people. It’s it just doesn’t have the capacity to be neutral. Let’s

[00:17:43.78] spk_0:
take something that’s so ubiquitous. It’s an easy example. Let’s take facebook. How is so somebody’s facebook is there, you can use it or not use it. How is that not just a neutral entity sitting there for you to use or not use,

[00:19:31.46] spk_1:
I mean you are welcome to use or not use facebook but just because you have the choice to use something or not use, it doesn’t mean it’s neutral. The platform is collecting your data is selling your data is deciding whether and how you can use the tool to connect with other people or to create groups, right? It is not allowing you the control over how your data and and use of the platform goes. So it’s kind of a false choice really. Um and for a lot of people, it is very much a false choice. There. There isn’t the feeling that they cannot use it if it’s the only quote unquote free tool that they could use to find certain resources or to otherwise, you know, talk and stay in communication with certain people, but at what cost, you know, and I think that’s the kind of conversation we’re trying to spark in the book is technology isn’t neutral, we just accept that and then we say and so at what cost at what harm are people having to make these choices around how they navigate technology? And we we have never presupposed in this book or in our lives that facebook or any other platform is going to necessarily make the choices that are best for the community and that’s why policymakers have an entire chapter in the book. You don’t need to be a text specialist or have a who is you know, technical background to be a policymaker that’s making smart protective policies that for users we need to say, hey people should be able to access and protect and restrict their data. Let’s make some policies around that. Right? Because the platforms are not going to make that policy themselves that that restricts them. Um and so I think again, all of these different groups together, get us to the tools that we need and not just the technology developers themselves,

[00:19:56.28] spk_0:
a few anything you want to add to that. Uh My my question about why facebook is not a neutral tool.

[00:20:50.18] spk_2:
I I think Amy gave a really good overview as to why technology and facebook in this case is not neutral. I think um you know, a lot of people now you’ll hear say they algorithm made me see it, the algorithm didn’t make me see something and that just also goes to the fact that someone has programmed the algorithm, someone has decided what will be given more weight or what will be given less weight, what will be emphasized won’t be emphasized. And so that then drives your interactions and the biases that the programmers have or the stated goals that the owners of the platform have then get seen to encoded into the technology that you use, whether it’s facebook or any other platform that then can affect how you interact, even if you do decide to often to using the technology as Amy mentioned, you always well not always, but you often have a choice as to which technology you want to use, what platform you want to log into, you want to engage with or not, but once you’re there, your choices are often limited in ways you might not realize because of the fact that technology is not neutral.

[00:21:20.02] spk_0:
We’re getting into the idea of oppressive systems which which the book talks about for you wanna explain. So, facebook may very well be an example, but what what what what’s oppressive systems generally,

[00:23:01.71] spk_2:
you know, I think one of the underlying themes of our book is that technology can really be used to enhance goals and to sort of enhance missions, and we argue in the book that we want to, you know, social impact organizations, especially communities to find ways for technology to enhance their mission, to help them accomplish their goals more often. But the reality is that technology again sits on top of people because it’s created by people and so to the egg extent in which extent to which um there are oppressive systems and society, whether that’s around how people get jobs or access education or access other resources, um that is then I can just be translated into the technology systems that then help facilitate our lives. It’s the same principles for different sort of outdated policies that have been rooted in unequal access. For example, if you just take those policies and write code then um that directly relates to policies, the new system, this technical system you’ve created has those same oppressive oppressive aspects in that system. And so again, when we talk about designing technology does need to come back to what communities are we designing for? Are we talking to them? Are we letting communities really drive that work? And through the development process are we really keeping in mind some of the historical context, some of the social context, some of the knowledge about biases and how that appears in different technology and what ties doesn’t have to how organizations function and how policymakers do their work, Um what we need to be funding to make sure that we have the time and the money to invest in a more inclusive process.

[00:25:40.82] spk_1:
I just want to add as I was talking about that um, and kind of trying to like hear our own conversation while while we’re in it and to share the reminder that while of course like facebook is this giant huge technology platform. Um, we are also talking about technologies that nonprofits make, you know, an organization that decided to have their staff or hire a web designer to help build something on their website that allowed users to complete their profile or to donate on their website. All of these things that organizations are doing with technology is also developing technology, right? It also needs to be inclusive. It should also have a lot of your community members and users part of that process the whole way, right. This isn’t just for for profit giant tech companies to hear this feedback, this is everyone including the way we fund our own technology inside of organizations, the way we prioritize or build or don’t prioritize or you know, don’t build technology and when we, when we think of it that way and you know, it’s just so easy, I think or I think it is easy to to say, oh my gosh, facebook is an oppressive platform, all of these things are horrible. It’s done all of these things. We can, you know, we could search for news articles from a decade of issues, right? But that kind of shifts the attention. Um, and acts like we as organizations don’t have any blame to share in that not that we’re sharing in facebook’s blame, but like we too are part of making not great decisions around technology, you know. Um there’s an organization that I I experienced this as a user on their website and had to give them some feedback that there they collected demographics as you’re creating your profile super common to do right? Um, their race and ethnicity category for like all humans that would answer this category only had four options total of all of the races and ethnicities in the world. There were four. Not one of those options was multiracial, not one of those was other. Let me tell you the thing you didn’t list here, right? You had to pick required question with four radio

[00:25:52.25] spk_0:
buttons.

[00:26:29.98] spk_1:
That’s that is that is harmful, right? Like you and maybe there was a good reason, not a good reason. Maybe there was a reason that you felt, you know, your funder makes you report in those four categories. I totally understand how hard it is to like manage your work as well as meeting all these funder reporting requirements. That’s something we talk about the book that is an issue. We need to go fix funders reporting requirements, but just because a funder says give us state in these four categories does not mean those are your four categories right? You have an obligation to your car community to be better than that. Um, and so I just want to name that as an example that we’re not just taking the easy route of complaining about facebook, which I would love to do for like five more hours.

[00:26:41.44] spk_0:
No facebook is not even facebook is not even,

[00:26:43.71] spk_1:
you know what I mean? Also trying to name it as something we’re doing inside our organizations to

[00:28:58.50] spk_0:
your example reminds me of the example you cite from jude shimmer who says, you know, she’s filling out a donation, they’re filling out a donation form and there’s no mx option. It was mr mrs Miss, I guess no mx um, by the way, you had several nonprofit radio guests quoted in the book, Jason sham steve hi jude. So I’m glad non profit radio brought these folks to your attention. You know, elevated their voices so that you, you became aware of them because you would not have known them outside. Well that’s elevating voices. That’s exactly exactly right. It’s time for a break. 4th dimension technologies, technology is an investment. Are you seeing this? You’re investing in staff productivity, you’re investing in your organization’s security donor relations because you’re preserving giving and all the actions and all the person’s preferences and their attendance and things. So you’re certainly investing in your donor relationships, uh, in your sustainability. So because technology is gonna help you preserve your mission into the future. So I don’t want to just throw something out and then not explain it. So see technology as an investment, fourth dimension can help you invest wisely. So, uh, make those savvy tech investment decisions. You can check them out on the listener landing page at Just like three D. But you know, they don’t want to mention deeper. Let’s return to the tech that comes next. All right. So let’s bring it. All right. So no, as I said, facebook is not mentioned in the book. I was choosing that as a ubiquitous example, but let’s bring it to something that is non profit created. Who wants to talk about. I kind of like the john jay college case because I used to do planned giving consulting for john jay, who, which of you knows that story better. Nobody

[00:30:43.41] spk_2:
looking at other resume. But I will, I will happen and talk about the john jay college example. So just briefly for folks who might not have read the book or gotten to that section of the book yet. Um, john jay college, an institution in new york city that had recognized that they had a lot of services geared towards making sure people finished their freshman year and started their second year, but not as many services geared towards people who, um, not as many services geared towards me, making sure people then ultimately graduate. And so specifically they had noticed that they had a large number of students or a not insignificant number of students who completed three quarters of the credits they needed to graduate but didn’t ultimately complete their degree and graduate. They partnered Data kind, which is an organization that provides data science and ai expertise to other profits and government agencies. Um so they worked with those data scientists to really understand their issue to look at the 20 years of data that the academic institution had collected. The data. Scientists ran about two dozen models, I think it was and ended up coming up with ended up developing a specific model specific tool for john jay college To use that identified students who are at risk of dropping out and potential interventions. The John Jay College staff then made the final determination as to what intervention would be done and how that would be done. And two years after this program was started at John Jay College credits the program with helping additional nine 100 students graduate. Um and so that is, I think, you know, one of the examples that we’re talking about of really the technology coming together with the subject matter experts really being used to enhance the mission and then really again, technology and humans working together to make sure that the outcomes are our best for everyone.

[00:31:04.33] spk_0:
There’s some takeaway there too in regard to ethics, the use of the data collection and use of the data. Can you talk about that? Absolutely,

[00:31:51.44] spk_2:
Absolutely, absolutely. As we think about data collect data collection data use data analysis, I think in general, especially in the social impact space, you want to make sure that you got consent when you collect the data that you’re collecting it in ways that make sense, that you’re not necessarily over collecting um you’re storing in the right way is protected in the right ways. Um and then as you need to do something with it, you can you can access it, you can use it as a way to foster communication across a different departments. I think one thing that was really exciting and talking to the john jay college staff as they said this program in that development actually force conversations across departments which if you’ve ever done any work at an academic institution, you know, working across departments on campus can be challenging and so sometimes the data can force those conversations and can also help strengthen arguments for the creation or um termination of different programs.

[00:32:15.79] spk_0:
Thank you because ethics is one of the one of your core values ethical considerations around around technology development and

[00:33:23.63] spk_1:
I think that’s I like that you’re bringing that up tony because I think it reinforces, I mean a fool was saying this, but just to kind of like explain those words when we’re saying that technology is there to help humans, it means that algorithm that was created is not moving forward and sending, you know, a resource or sending an inch invention to a student, it is not there to do the whole process itself, right? It’s there for its portion and then humans are looking at it, they are deciding, you know, who needs, what resources, who needs what intervention. And they then do that outreach right? Versus that idea that I think nonprofits especially think of all the time. Like if we just got the tool then this whole like thing will be solved and it’ll just like somehow run its course, you know, and like the robots will be in charge and that’s not great. We don’t need to do that. We’re not looking for robots to be in charge but also in this really successful example of technology being used, it’s still required people, you know, the technology isn’t here to replace them. It’s to do the part that we don’t have the time to do. Like crunch all those numbers and figure those things out and then the people are doing what people are meant to do, which is the relationship side, The intervention side, the support side, you know. Um and

[00:33:43.70] spk_0:
I just want to kind

[00:33:44.49] spk_1:
Of separate the two right?

[00:33:46.71] spk_0:
The tool was to flag those who are at greatest risk of not graduating after they have I think three quarters of the points or credits. Uh so so that

[00:33:58.99] spk_1:
that

[00:34:13.73] spk_0:
right, that that’s an ideal day. That’s an ideal uh data mining artificial intelligence task. Just flag the folks who are at greatest risk because we’ve identified the factors like I don’t remember what any of the factors were. G. P. A. I think was one. But whatever the factors are identified them now flag these folks. Now it’s time for a human to intervene and give the support to these to this population so that we can have 900 more folks graduating than than we expect would have without without the use of the tool.

[00:35:19.70] spk_2:
Yeah, absolutely. And just to continue to build on what Amy was saying. I think sometimes as nonprofits are considering technology or maybe hearing pitches about why they should use technology or why they should select a particular technology. It can be overwhelming because sometimes the perception is that if you adopt technology it has to then take over your system and and rem move sort of the human aspect of running your nonprofit and that’s simply not the case. You can always push back as to what those limits need to be sort of in general but also very specifically for your organization for your community. What makes sense? What doesn’t make sense? And so really prioritizing as Amy said, the using the technology to take advantage and to do those tasks that or just simply more efficient and computers are more capable of doing that while you use the humans involved for the more human touch and some of those more societal factors I think really um it’s important to emphasize that as leaders of social impact organizations, as leaders of nonprofits, you have that agency to sort of understand and to decide where the technology is used and where it isn’t used.

[00:36:57.67] spk_1:
Yeah, we, we were really conscious when we were working on the book to disrupt this pattern that you know, it’s like you learn a new word and then you see it in everything that you read. Um once, once we talk about it here, you’re gonna like go and everything you click on on the internet, you’re going to see it. But technology companies have been trying to sell us for a long time very successfully that their product is a solution and technologies are constantly using that language when you’re looking at their website, when they’re talking to you, you know, this is an all in one crm solution, this whatever, they are not solutions, they are tools and as soon as we, as you know, non profit staff start adopting that, they are the solutions, we then start kind of relinquishing the control, right? And thinking, oh well the solution is that this too, tool has all of this, It is just a tool, you are still the solution right? You are still the human and we, we didn’t want to have that language in the book. So you know, we’re always talking about technology as a tool because with, without humans needing to put it to work, it doesn’t need to exist. We don’t need to have a world that’s trying to make sure we can maintain all of this technology if we don’t need it anymore. Thank you for your service. Like please move along. We don’t, we don’t need that anymore. And that’s okay. We don’t need to feel bad that a tool isn’t needed anymore. It’s not needed. Great. We have different needs now, you know, um and changing that kind of dynamic and relationship inside organizations.

[00:37:24.77] spk_0:
A Crm database is a perfect example of that. It’s not gonna, it’s not gonna build relationships with people for you. It’s just gonna keep track of the activities that you have and it’s gonna identify people’s giving histories and event attendance and help them ticket etcetera. But it’s not going to build personal relationships. They’re gonna lead to greater support whether it’s volunteering or being a board member or donating whatever, you know, it’s

[00:37:39.88] spk_1:
not the mission, It’s not the food at the gala. Even if it sold the tickets to the gala right? Like it isn’t at all.

[00:38:13.47] spk_0:
So I, so I gathered so the Wiley did most of the writing on the book is what I gather because I managed a couple of quotes and nobody like nobody claimed them. So um and also the I I see there’s only two pictures, I like a lot of pictures in books. You only have two pictures and then you repeat the same two pictures from the beginning, You repeat them at the end and and they’re in black and white, they’re not even four color pictures. So there’s a little shortcomings

[00:38:15.70] spk_1:
that’s because in the book they could only be black and white, but in the e book they can, the one that’s meant to be in color can be in color.

[00:38:25.00] spk_2:
And also we knew that our readers have imaginations of their own and the words that we have on the page would evoke such strong images we didn’t want

[00:38:33.81] spk_0:
to overly

[00:38:34.58] spk_2:
provide images in the book.

[00:40:08.82] spk_0:
Very good, well played. Okay, it’s time for Tony’s take Two. I’m headed to the Holy Land in november. I’m traveling to Israel for two weeks and I’m wondering if you have suggestions of something that I should see? We can crowdsource my my sight seeing a few things that are already on my itinerary, of course the old city in Jerusalem um Haifa and the Baha’I gardens the Dead Sea and uh mitzpe ramon. You may have some other ideas, things that uh you found or places to eat, maybe that would be that would be great little uh terrific places that I should try in either Jerusalem or tel Aviv I’ll be spending a lot of time in, in those two places but also near these other, these other ones that I mentioned to Haifa So if you know a good restaurant eatery, I’d appreciate that too. You could get me at tony at tony-martignetti dot com. I’d be grateful for your Israel travel suggestions and anything else that you may recommend about Israel travel. I haven’t been there, so I’d be grateful to hear from you that is tony steak too. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for the tech that comes next with Amy sample ward and a few a Bruce. Let’s let’s talk about another story. Talk about, let’s talk about, yeah, you, you all pick one, pick one of your case cases stories to talk about that that you like,

[00:44:39.78] spk_1:
I can talk about one since the flu already talked about one, but I was thinking because you already said it earlier, the food sector, so there’s one in there on rescuing leftover cuisine, an organization founded in new york. Um, and I think a pretty classic example of non profit trajectory like someone has personal lived experience they want to address, you know, make sure people don’t have the experience they had and create an organization kind of accidentally like they just start doing the work and they’re like, wait, what am I doing? Wait, we’ve just created a nonprofit, you know, and and kind of want to build because they start to have success actually doing the thing that they set out to do. Um, but like many nonprofits you reach the limit of human scale, like you get to the, this is only the number of people I can personally talk to or physically carry food, you know from one restaurant to to a shelter or whatever. Um and realize, oh we’re gonna need some tools to help us make this thing work. Um and grow beyond just the handful of initial people and also like many nonprofits, that was a very reactive process, right? Like oh gosh, we need a calendar tool, here’s one, oh gosh, we need a, you know, a phone tool, here’s one and not what is the best, you know, what what do we really need? How do we solve these goals? So they found themselves a few years in with very common nonprofit sector, like little patchwork, you know, all different kinds of things. They’ve kind of forced and often the the integration to use the technical term, the integration between tools was humans like answered the phone and then typed it into the tool because the person on the phone doesn’t have access to type it into the schedule er right? Like I they were having to be the tech integrations as humans, which meant humans were not doing human work, right? Humans were doing work that that the robots should be able to do. Um and that’s when they brought in more strategic dedicated technology. Um staff helped to build and again, what they didn’t really realize at first is they were building a product, you know? Um I think this is a bigger conversation of you and I have with organizations is we are we have products, we’ve built products. It’s not bad. And I think especially in the US, we’ve come to think that product is like a for profit word and we will have nothing to do with it. But what it just means is like it’s a package, it is a thing that’s doing what it’s meant to do. And we should think about how we make sure it works and who can access it. And you know, we bring some strategy to it. Um, but their process is really what drew us to including them in the book. They had a really inclusive process where all the different folks from, you know, that were users. So the volunteers who physically like went to the restaurant and picked up that food and and took it to an agency, the people in the agencies, the people in the kitchen of the restaurants, all those different people were able to say, oh, I wish the tool did this. I wish that I could do this every day when I need to pick up food. I wish I could get this kind of message. Everyone was able to give that feedback and then see everybody else’s requests so that as the staff and community and the tech team prioritized, okay, well what works together? What can we build next? What’s in line to be built next? Everyone had transparency. Everyone could see that everyone understood, okay, my thing is last or like I know why my thing is last, right? Like people could really see and give feedback and be part of the process the whole time kind of back to the very beginning of this conversation with us said, even if they were not the technical developers themselves, they had important expertise, Right? It was good to know, oh, these five different restaurants all want the same thing, what’s happening, right? Like what is the thing that’s happening for restaurants trying to offer food? Let’s figure that out. We know who to get feedback from, you know, um, we’re just such a wonderful example of people really having everyone involved in the whole process. Um, and as they have done that and continue to do that, they were able to move people out of, you know, answering the phone to type into the calendar and move people into human jobs. Um, grew the organization, it’s now in eight different cities in different states. Um, and that’s just more of the mission happening, right? Because technology was invested in in the right kind of way.

[00:45:02.73] spk_0:
So takeaways are transparency in prioritizing development inclusiveness, including

[00:45:10.61] spk_1:
the, including

[00:45:11.71] spk_0:
the community, all the, all the different

[00:45:14.65] spk_1:
people

[00:45:15.63] spk_0:
who are impacted, giving them agency

[00:45:18.80] spk_1:
to

[00:45:19.70] spk_0:
contribute and not not have it developed.

[00:45:24.33] spk_1:
Yeah. And they had,

[00:45:25.28] spk_0:
I don’t know how much

[00:46:40.74] spk_1:
of this made it into the book, but you know, in talking with them and having conversations, you know, there were a number of times where the thing they were hearing from, all these different users that needed to be prioritized wasn’t something as staff, they maybe would have identified or at least prioritized, but when you’re really listening and having the community drive that development, you know, is that what you’re investing in is actually going to make it better for your community, right? It’s the thing that they’re asking for versus you saying, Gosh, we have, you know, what’s next on our development docket, wonder what we could build, Like let’s think of something you’re not kind of guessing, you know, exactly what needs to be built and that’s kind of reinforcing for your users that you are listening that you are valued that they want this to be as good of an expiry as possible for you, right, Which is really kind of um bringing people in closer and and I think we all know, especially tony as the fundraiser, like keeping people, it’s a lot easier than bringing in new people. So if you can keep those partners in great, you know, you keep those volunteers in instead of having to recruit new ones because you’re burning them out because they don’t like working with you, it’s not a good experience, you know? Um yeah,

[00:47:26.71] spk_0:
let’s talk about the funding, but but not from the funders side because most of the very few of our listeners are on the, on the funding side, they’re on the grantee side and so from the, well the book, you talk about social impact organizations, but this is tony-martignetti non profit radio not tony-martignetti social impact organization, radio So so if we could use, please use nonprofits as an example in their funding requests, they’re doing grants, what what can nonprofits do smarter about requesting funds around technology, the development and the use that’s going to be required for the, you know, for the, for the project that they’re trying to get funded.

[00:47:32.08] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:47:32.45] spk_2:
absolutely. This is a question that Amy and I have gotten so many times since the book has come out.

[00:47:42.97] spk_0:
Okay, well I’ll give you a milk toast bland ubiquitous question that not that

[00:49:01.18] spk_2:
it’s a milk toast question, but it is one that is so important to organizations and that even for non profit organizations that have thought about technology before, then the question becomes how are you going to get it funded right? And so, um, it’s an incredibly important question. And so I think that there are a couple of things that non profits can do. One is to seek out funders who are explicitly funding technology, we’ve seen an increase I think over the past several years in different foundations, different companies who are specifically funding technology and so looking for those types of funders. Um, I think it’s really important, I think then another thing to do is to really make the case as we make in the book that um, funding technology is part of funding programs of the organizations and part of funding the running of the organization. Um, it’s not simply an overhead costs. That is a nice to have that. If you get around to it, you can do it, but really you need to have strong technology and data practices in order to design your programs to run your programs. Um people, you know, are used to being out in the world and interacting with technology in certain and so when they come to your nonprofit, they still probably would like to have a website that sees them that recognizes them. That’s useful. They might like to know how to get connected to other people in your community, other staff members and what those communication technologies might look like and more. And so really looking for ways to write technology into program design as non profits are doing that

[00:49:25.77] spk_1:
as well. And

[00:49:25.97] spk_2:
then I think thirdly, just being connected with other nonprofits through organizations such as N 10 and listening to other great podcasts such as this one um to hear what, what other nonprofits are doing and what’s been successful as well. And applying some of those techniques to your own organization.

[00:49:47.95] spk_0:
I feel bad that I gave short Shrift to the, to the foundation listeners. So, I mean there’s there’s lessons in what you just said. Um, are there one or two other things that we can point out for uh for foundation listeners that to raise their consciousness.

[00:51:25.89] spk_2:
Absolutely. Um, I think one of, I think, you know, there are many things about technology that can be funded, especially with nonprofit organizations. And I really encourage foundations to think about what it means to really fund that inclusive innovation process and to fund when I say innovation. I mean recognizing that version one is might not be perfect. And so funding version 1.1 and 1.2 and version two point oh, is just as valuable as funding version one. We see this all the time in the private sector that, you know, my phone gets updates on a regular basis and I still have a, and that’s okay. And so really wanting to make sure that funders recognize that we don’t need to just create new technology every time for the sake of creating something new, but really allowing the space for that iteration and really adjusting to the community needs is really important. I think also making sure that we’re funding inclusivity and so that can be things such as uh compensating people, you know, from the community for time, um, as they are involved in this development process, making sure that there’s money in the budget for all staff, not just a member of the tech team to get training on technology, but there’s money for all staff to get training on the different technologies that the organization is using. Um, and also the timelines that are given to nonprofits doing their programs allows for that really critical community listening and community input process into developing any technology and then ultimately developing and executing programs,

[00:51:49.02] spk_0:
I’m glad you just used community as an example because I wanted to probe that a little deeper how

[00:51:55.99] spk_1:
I

[00:52:11.32] spk_0:
guess, I guess I’m asking how you define community because you say that, you know, technologists and social impact or eggs and policymakers and communities can can be should be more involved in uh, technology development. How are you defining communities there?

[00:54:23.04] spk_1:
We’re not in a way because technology that N 10 builds for, you know, the community that that we have is very different than um, you know, that would be a bunch of nonprofit staff from mostly U. S. And Canada, but also all over the world, um of all different departments. Right? That that would be the community that intent has, but the community around, um, you know, the equitable giving circle in Portland. Well, that’s Portland’s specific very, you know, geographically different than the N 10 community. Um, it’s folks who can do monthly donations that want to support, uh, you know, black community in Portland, it community is meant to be defined based on what is trying to be built and and for whom it’s meant to be used. Um, and that’s going to be flexible, but I think where it really comes in is what we talked about in the book, in the funding section, but also all of the sections is what does it look like when we expect that transfer to community ownership is the final stage of technology development. Right. And so if that is the final stage, if um the community, you know, owning the technology that was developed by someone, um is the final step well, there needs to be a level of training and an investment that is very different than if you’re planning to keep this privately yourself the whole time, right? If you’re going to turn it over to the community to own it and maintain it, you’re going to be investing in that community in the process in a very different way. You’re going to be including people in a different way. You’re going to be thinking about knowledge transfer, not just technical transfer, right? Um and so that relationship with the community is inherent to the goal at the end. And I think that’s for us, part of what is so important about thinking about that big question of what does it look like for community to really own technology? Like even in the biggest widest sense, because right now, We as users don’t own the Internet, right? Really, there’s there’s 45 million people just in the us that can’t even access broadband. So the idea that the any of these tools, even in the widest biggest, you know, most access sense are are collectively owned isn’t real. And so that goes back to community, but it also goes back to policy, it goes back to how we’re investing in these tools, what values we are even using when we, when we access them? Um, that’s the whole book right there, I guess.

[00:55:00.40] spk_0:
Uh, the book is also, uh, a lot of questions. I always hope to get answers. When I read books this, this book, lots of questions questions at the end of every chapter and then they’re compiled at the end. They’re organized differently at the end. Why did you take that tack?

[00:56:06.65] spk_2:
Absolutely, yes. Our book does perhaps answer some questions, but it does provide questions. And that’s because what this work looks like varies based on the community you’re in based on your nonprofit organization, based on your role as a policy maker based on your roll thunder perhaps. Um, it varies. And so what your specific solution will look like. There’ll be some of the same building blocks, but the actual techniques you use will need to vary. And so the questions that we have at the end of each chapter at the end of the chapter on social impact organizations. For example, there are, I think 25 questions and five of those are questions that you ask someone as a nonprofit can ask of other nonprofits about technology. You as someone as a nonprofit can ask of your funders to start that conversation with some funders that we were just sort of summarizing now. What are specific questions that you should be asking of your funders were specific questions you should be asking of technologists that come to you and say, have we got a solution for you? Um, what are specific questions that you should be asking? Policymakers? Um, within the realm of what’s allowed for nonprofits to do part of the policy making process. And what are some real questions that you can ask of the communities that you serve and the communities you partner with to really get out, what are their needs and how might that tie to some of the technology needs for your organization?

[00:56:43.69] spk_0:
So what have we uh, what haven’t we talked about yet? That, that either of you would like to, uh, you feel like I’ve spent enough time on the well, here, I am asking you and then I’m proposing something. So I’ll cut myself off what, what what would, uh, whatever we talked about yet, either of you. That

[00:58:18.09] spk_1:
I mean, I think one thing that we have experienced is that there are some topics like how do we do this or how do we fund this or how do we make change? Um, you know, there’s some topics that recur throughout a lot of conversations, but ultimately, we have never had the same conversation about the book twice because that’s part of writing a whole book. That’s just questions, you know, and isn’t all the answers that isn’t Oh, great. You know, turn to chapter three where we list the 10 things you need to do tomorrow? Like there are no, I mean there’s probably 100 things, right? But um because of that, what we wanted to do when we wrote the book, even if, you know, we said at the beginning, even if no one reads this but ourselves, we want to feel like we are starting a conversation that we are just going to keep starting and keep having and keep getting closer to figuring out what’s next because it’s gonna be a whole long path. Um, and if it if we’re here to write a how to book that, who are we to write that? Right? Who are we to write the how to book on how we completely change the world? But what if we wrote a book that said, y’all, how do we change the world? Like really truly how let’s go, let’s go figure that out that motivates us. And so if it motivates us, it probably motivates others. And these conversations, I mean, I just love them because this yes, we had some of those recurring themes that all of us think about all the time. But this was a completely different conversation than we’ve had before and that, well, you know, different than we’ll have tomorrow. And I think what we’ve talked about the two of us is when we have

[00:58:31.93] spk_0:
not only not only different, but better,

[00:59:15.21] spk_1:
but when we have opportunities to talk about the book together with folks like you knowing that people are listening, right? Thousands of, of non private radio listeners, we want to, in a way have this be like a practice session for all of them so that when they finish the podcast and they go to their staff meeting, they’re like, hey, a food amy like never had their sentences thought out before they started probably said a million times. The bar isn’t high. I can just start asking questions, right? That’s why we have all the questions at the end. I can just start talking about this. There is no perfect, perfect doesn’t exist. So let’s not worry that I don’t know the exact way to talk about this technology project. Let’s just start talking about it and and get in there and have these conversations that we have almost model that process of just practicing the work of, of changing things.

[00:59:33.45] spk_0:
Anything you would like to uh leave us with anything we haven’t talked about that you would like to,

[01:00:00.54] spk_2:
you know, the subtitle of the book talks about building a more equitable world and we call out a few specific roles. But really I think it’s just important to recognize that we all have a role to play in building a more equitable world. And so if you see something in this world that you want changed. Hopefully this book does give you some real ideas about how you can go about doing that, some real questions to ask to find other people who can help you along that journey because really building an equitable world is an inclusive process and that includes you. So that’s that’s all I would add.

[01:00:43.80] spk_0:
She’s a for Bruce at a few uh underscore Bruce, her co author is Amy sample ward at Amy R S Ward and you’ll find the book the tech that comes next, how change makers, philanthropists and technologists can build an equitable world at the tech that comes next dot com. Amy, thank you very much. Pleasure.

[01:00:46.45] spk_1:
Thanks so much Tony.

[01:00:48.33] spk_2:
Thank you.

[01:01:39.63] spk_0:
You’re welcome. Thank you. Next week. Gene Takagi returns with Trust in nonprofits. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. And by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box, the affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant 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 his music is by scott stein, Thank you for that information Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for August 15, 2022: Board Members Are People Too

 

Judy Levine: Board Members Are People Too

One size fits all rules may not make sense for your board, especially if you’re embracing diversity and equity in board membership. Our guest, Judy Levine, is a longtime board coach, trainer and consultant, and she leads Cause Effective.

 

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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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[00:01:23.53] 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 forced to endure the pain of pseudo calista toma if I had to hear that you missed this week’s show board members are people to one size fits all rules may not make sense for your board, especially if you’re embracing diversity and equity in board membership. Our guest judy Levine is a longtime board coach, trainer and consultant and she leads cause effective Antonis take two endowment excitement. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. And by fourth dimension technologies i Tion for in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three D but they go one dimension deeper here is board members are people too.

[00:01:29.04] spk_1:
It’s a pleasure

[00:02:05.22] spk_0:
to welcome to non profit radio judy Levin She has been executive director of cause effective since 2006 and she has over 30 years experience as a nonprofit management advisor At cause effective since 1993. And as an independent consultant. She has trained and consulted with well over 1000 nonprofits on issues in fund diversification, donor engagement and board and organizational development. Cause effective is at cause effective and at cause effective dot org judy Welcome to nonprofit

[00:02:06.47] spk_1:
radio

[00:02:09.02] spk_0:
pleasure to have you, I’ve had your colleagues through the years Greg Cohen and Susan comfort who I know Susan is completely retired now and Greg is mostly retired now, but now we’re uh they’ve been sort of stepping stones to the top now. We have the executive director.

[00:02:27.11] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:02:28.12] spk_0:
Alright.

[00:02:30.21] spk_1:
I’m

[00:02:37.36] spk_0:
good. Okay. Um my my apologies. Susan comfort is someone else. Susan, Gabriel is who used to be

[00:02:43.00] spk_1:
at

[00:02:43.99] spk_0:
at cost

[00:02:45.01] spk_1:
effective

[00:03:06.63] spk_0:
Gabriel and and Greg Cohen. So um you’re concerned about equity on boards. Uh, but at the same time, you know, we’re trying to maintain standards but we want we want a diverse board standards don’t always apply to all the all the different cultures. We’re inviting in, help me set this up.

[00:04:46.22] spk_1:
Well there’s always a fear of the difference, the different and uh there’s also a fear of um acting inappropriately around the different and those two fears um sometimes stop a board from real honest, um an accurate reflection on what’s at the table and what’s the most appropriate way to support the organization’s mission. Um And especially, you know, ever since the racial reckoning of 2020 and the understanding on nonprofits parts that they needed to reckon with their own D. E. I. B. Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Um my sense is that that that happened that that reckoning has happened on a staff level at a different different pace than it’s happened on the board level and some of that has to do with fundraising and people’s fear that if they rock the boat, they will not have the fundraising return that they have now. Um, And I’m here to say two things. One is that there is plenty of, uh, salaried capacity in this country for people of color, although not as much, not as much wealth accumulation, certainly generational wealth accumulation. And that’s a very real factor. Um, so to think that you need to diversify your board that you need to reach into the client base, which may be true, but is not the only way to diversify your board from the, uh, the group. It has always been

[00:05:05.08] spk_0:
okay. That’s, that’s number

[00:05:39.72] spk_1:
one. The other is that, Yes, you may have to rethink the one size fits all package and that’s been a mantra in our boards is that everybody has to hold the same standard and we know that everybody is the stain standard and we don’t want double standards or triple standards. Um, I’m here to really help people rethink the idea of universal standards versus standards. That makes sense for where that person is coming from and what they can, what they can actually bring to the table if they do their best.

[00:06:17.02] spk_0:
Okay, let’s take the first of those because there’s, there’s an, there’s an assumption there that people of color are not gonna be able to meet our fundraising expectation. So we’re gonna have to, we’re gonna have to reduce our board giving to invite folks of color in. But that, that, that’s just unfair and unfair and racist you’re not, if you’re not finding these folks, then you’re not looking hard enough for people who do have the means, uh, to, to meet your, to meet your, your board expectation, your, your board fundraising expectations

[00:07:26.98] spk_1:
and, or you’re not looking, um, with the right messengers and, or you’re not understanding why your cause is going to be of deep personal interest just to a person of color. Um, all of those factors have to be there. Um, you can’t, you don’t ask anybody on the board, You don’t ask somebody on the board of an animal shelter. If they have no connection to animals, they don’t care about animals, you gotta look. Uh, so in the same way you have to understand, let’s put it this way. There are, there are legacy charities, um, the Urban League, um, you know, very, that, that there are huge fundraising machines that are people of color lead. Um, there’s a sense of the ownership that this is ours. Yeah, may not be in your board as currently constituted. That needs to be opened up.

[00:07:32.26] spk_0:
Yeah, that’s a, that’s a holding onto that’s holding onto power and structures and not allowing someone who looks different comes from a different background into our, our playground

[00:08:34.14] spk_1:
well, and it’s more than not allowing. It’s actually, um, it’s more than just a not doing, it’s something that you have to actually do do, um, is to understand, um, how who makes decisions. Is there an in group and out group? Is there a biding one’s time uh ethos um which doesn’t work well when you invite people of color on and then they have to buy their time and they’re the only ones that are biding their time. And yes, it might be historical that everybody else bathe their time years back, but people gonna lose, lose, you know, they lose patience. So it means that you have to do much more rapid um leadership development, onboarding and power sharing. Then your board may be used to.

[00:08:43.52] spk_0:
All right. I don’t want to derail what what what we were intending to talk about, but I just

[00:08:46.12] spk_1:
I think it’s,

[00:08:47.72] spk_0:
I mean, I think it’s important to point out the implicit bias that goes along with this, assuming that you’re gonna have to lower your standards basically. Just assuming you got to lower your standards if you have people of color in. I

[00:09:00.60] spk_1:
think it’s all of

[00:09:02.51] spk_0:
gross and erroneous.

[00:09:06.87] spk_1:
And board members, all board members need to be owners, not

[00:09:12.44] spk_0:
guests. Right. And yes, and not treated like guests. Alright. Alright. So one of the things you said is that um one size fits all

[00:09:21.36] spk_1:
is

[00:09:36.76] spk_0:
not, is not gonna be the right model necessarily. So what what’s what’s an alternative? So if we’ve got a, we’ve got a $15,000 annual give get bored requirement uh and and two thirds of it has to be from your personal, your your personal assets. So $10,000 from you and if you want to either give or get the other 5000, you have an option there, but you have to give at least $10,000 a

[00:11:27.90] spk_1:
year. One of the things that I talked about that took me, you know, frankly, you know, a while to understand is the role of generational wealth transfer in people’s capacity to have disposable income. So that um, you know, uh, often times white people come from there. They’re not coming from money money, but they’re coming from a position of um comfort. Um, and so they’re not necessarily carrying family members. They’re not, they’re not pulling their family out of poverty along with them. Oftentimes, certainly black people who are in a may make the same salary, but they are carrying people in their family. And so you can’t say, oh, this person makes X salary and that person makes X salary, therefore they have the same capacity. You only find this out by talking to and listening to someone and I universal give assumes universal capacity. And yes, we said, okay, this gives the floor and everybody should go over the floor. We all know that people rise to the floor. So the question is, is there a way to help this person get and to change that relationship and or is there what are we, what are what we are after on the board? Someone who is using their connections for the, to the extent for the organization’s behalf And what comes in is relative to those connections and that capacity,

[00:12:58.91] spk_0:
it’s time for a break. Turn to communications media relationships, you know, how important relationships are in all aspects of your work and, and personal side to the past couple weeks, I’ve been talking about fundraising, but relationships are everywhere that applies to the media as well. You want to get heard in the media, you want to be that thought leader that you know yet you are that that you know, that other folks ought to know you as it’s gonna happen through media relationships so that when you are calling the journalists are so much more responsive to picking up the phone that supplies to journalists, podcasters, bloggers, conference leaders, wherever you need to be known. Right turn to can help you build those relationships so that you get heard in the media outlets. When you need to be, they’ll help you with the relationships they know what to do. Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Now, back to board members are people too. Alright. So we need to, we need to get to know our board members. Uh, and you know, I understand your point. You know, some folks may very well be supporting helping other family members, not necessarily out of poverty, but I mean could be, but not necessarily out of poverty, but they’re they’re they’re helping other family members that aren’t doing as well as they

[00:13:16.31] spk_1:
are. And

[00:13:39.08] spk_0:
a lot of that can a lot of that can very well come from the lack of inter generational wealth through the generations at that. Uh, folks of color got screwed out of, essentially. Um Alright, so, alright, and I still want to go back to the fact that, you know that I don’t want to operate under the assumption that you have to lower standards just to invite folks of color fundraising fundraising standards. I don’t want to I don’t want to operate on the assumption that you have to lower standards.

[00:14:00.20] spk_1:
I’m

[00:14:00.94] spk_0:
trying to defeat that assumption.

[00:14:02.80] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:14:26.69] spk_0:
Okay. Um All right. So what about the uh, what about the pushback? Well, before we get to the pushback that you might hear from your white board members about we’ve been doing this for so long and it’s been fine for us. So why can’t it be okay for them before we get to that? What might what might some of this look like? What what kinds of what kinds of uh activities can can folks do if they if they can’t make the not able to meet the requirements. Are you, are you suggesting rewriting? Do we rewrite the

[00:14:37.01] spk_1:
the

[00:14:37.21] spk_0:
expectations for all board members

[00:14:39.05] spk_1:
or suggesting using that as a starting point? Not an ending

[00:14:42.32] spk_0:
point.

[00:15:08.52] spk_1:
That’s a starting point with each board member, um, about their, how it relates to them, to their assets, to their relationships to their circumstances. Um, and where, which areas they can go above and beyond in and which areas they need to pull back from and everybody’s gonna have a different answer to that, those equations. The fact is that they are, you know, I’ve been on board with very mixed income levels and the people who had the higher incomes understood that in order to have a board with mixed demographics, they had to do more weight bullying in the fun

[00:15:23.13] spk_0:
gathering,

[00:15:29.39] spk_1:
that, that was part of the value system was that it was not, if they wanted everybody equal, they would have everybody just like them. If the value system was to have different voices at the table, then the value system had to be that some people did more direct fundraising and direct giving and some people did more outreach and some people did more political converse, you know, conversations, etcetera.

[00:15:48.53] spk_0:
Okay,

[00:15:50.64] spk_1:
I

[00:15:50.79] spk_0:
want to make sure we want to be having these conversations with uh, these individual conversations with potential board members right before we’re in the recruitment process, before we invite someone to be on a board or before we accept someone to be on the board, we want to be investigating these things

[00:16:10.94] spk_1:
so

[00:16:12.03] spk_0:
that they know what to expect, so that they know what the expectations are and we know what we can

[00:16:47.56] spk_1:
expect. I, I, you know, having done a lot of board recruitment with nonprofits through the years, I would say two things, I think you have a before as your recruiting, you say, here’s the kinds of things that board members are expected to do. Um, and um, you know, how do these rest with you? Um, and you’ll find out some of them are scary. Some of them are, you know, oh, I couldn’t do that. Some of them are like, oh, this, I could definitely do that. I don’t know that. I would pin someone down to an exact um, prescription. You’re trying to get their temperature,

[00:16:49.39] spk_0:
but you

[00:17:17.83] spk_1:
know, it’s a courtship process. And so people go above and beyond what they thought they could do when they’re really excited by the mission and they’re given the tools they didn’t know they needed. So uh, in the courtship process, I would put this menu out and say, you know, how does this look to you, How could you see yourself in this? Um, but I wouldn’t take that as the last word because board service should be, people should be going into places that are not comfortable for them.

[00:17:21.63] spk_0:
And

[00:17:43.27] spk_1:
that’s partly the role of the board chair is to, is to live that by example is not just to be good at what they do, but to live by example. I tried this and this was, you know, I thought I was gonna throw up, but actually I didn’t throw up. I did really well at it. And then I tried that and I did throw up. So I, you know, somebody else will do that one from now on. Um, and so I want to be honest with people, but I don’t want to pin them down to something that are not being ready ready to be pinned to.

[00:17:51.29] spk_0:
But you make a good point about board bird service being a challenge. You do want, you do want folks, you’re you’re you’re leveraging the fact that they love your mission, your work, your values. They stand beside you with that in those ways. Um, You want them to to be challenged. You want board service to be meaningful? Yes.

[00:18:19.09] spk_1:
And you you want them to learn something from it because that’s part of what they get out of. It is not just a happy club, but that they’re gaining a different kind of sense of themselves of what they’re capable of,

[00:18:24.49] spk_0:
interesting, different sense of themselves, what they’re capable of. Yes, challenge. That’s the challenge. That’s the challenge. Go beyond comfort zone. Try this and see whether you throw up or

[00:18:35.40] spk_1:
not. Right? Kind of. But I mean, you need to try it with a lot of support and with the tools,

[00:18:42.18] spk_0:
yeah,

[00:18:42.95] spk_1:
throw somebody into the lion’s den.

[00:18:46.17] spk_0:
All right. What about the uh the pushback from white board members that, you know, we’ve we’ve been. This has always worked well for us. We’ve always had this very rigid uh uniform, giving everybody’s given the same through these years? What why why do we have to now? What’s the advantage? Why, why should we change now?

[00:19:09.91] spk_1:
Okay, so I need to be polite here. Um, you

[00:19:13.62] spk_0:
can be firm, you can be firm and realistic, you have to be

[00:19:16.04] spk_1:
polite counseling of white folks and I think it’s part of our job as white folks to help other white folks to a different place.

[00:19:22.57] spk_0:
Alright, so don’t be, don’t be soft on nonprofit radio listeners. I’ll admonish you don’t do

[00:20:31.72] spk_1:
That. Um, it’s 2022. We know stuff now is white folks that we didn’t, that we were able to be blind to for hundreds of years. Yes, and we don’t anymore. So there’s a moral obligation to act differently. Our non profit is is here for the public good. And it it we believe that to do that, we need to reflect the full spectrum of voices that is that public and or should be concerned with our mission. That means that we need to have a table that is really welcoming to all those voices that they’re not just here, but they’re actually, we’re gonna share the ownership of this mission. And that does mean that we need to pull apart the stuff that we’re comfortable with and that’s unspoken because it’s gonna be a mystery to somebody who doesn’t come from our background and it was already part of this

[00:20:40.51] spk_0:
and what’s the advantage to the organization, Let’s make it explicit, uh, to doing this?

[00:21:26.65] spk_1:
We are living our values in our governance and if we’re not that’s pretty um compromised. Um so one is congruence without organizational values and what we’re here to try and carry out. Um the second is sort of more robust conversation and decision making because there are different points of view at the table because it’s not people with it’s not an entire crew with the same assumptions and frankly you’ll have more interesting conversations. That will be a more interesting club to be part of. That’s not why to do it. But it’s a side product.

[00:22:41.83] spk_0:
It’s time for a break, fourth dimension technologies. They’ve got the free offer going. It’s exclusively for non profit radio listeners. It’s complimentary. That’s why it’s free 24 7 monitoring of your I. T. Assets And they will do this for three months. They’ll look over your servers, your network and your cloud performance, they’ll monitor your backup performance all 24/7. If there are any issues they will let you know right away. Plus at the end you get a comprehensive report And they’re also going to include a few surprise offers as well. They’re gonna take good care of you. It’s all complimentary, it’s for three months. It’s for the 1st 10 listeners. It’s on the listener landing page Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper grab the offer, let’s return to board members are people too. All right so that sort of answers uh dumbing down.

[00:22:44.15] spk_1:
You

[00:22:50.48] spk_0:
know, we’re not we’re not we’re broadening broadening and there are advantages. What would you say to folks that are the advantages to them personally learning, learning, learning about, learning from folks with different backgrounds.

[00:23:47.71] spk_1:
There is an incredible gift to be had to be able to listen. I’ll say this personally as a white person working in a diverse environment. Um, it is humbling and awe inspiring to be in a place where you can really hear from people who didn’t, who are just like you and have them change your mind and open your mind. That’s what you gain by being in a diverse environment. And not only will you make better decisions for your nonprofit, but you will learn more and be a kinder person who in and of itself understands the way you interact with the rest of the world in a different way

[00:24:35.83] spk_0:
folks. If you want to see a diverse team, then uh, pause the podcast and go to cause effective dot org. Go to their team, this team or staff page and look at the look at the pictures of the staff at cause effective dot org and then of course, come right back and press play again. Don’t don’t don’t don’t start browsing, you know, don’t go to amazon dot com to just look at cause effective dot org and you’ll see, uh, an enormously diverse team there? Um, All right. So, you know, that

[00:24:37.08] spk_1:
that’s

[00:24:38.22] spk_0:
anything more you want to say about why this is worth it for the organization or for the people.

[00:25:32.29] spk_1:
Um, we live in a diverse world. I mean, you know, no matter where you are, um, we, we live in a world in a country certainly and in a world with lots of different kinds of people from lots of different kinds of backgrounds and doing a lot of different things to the table and that are really interesting to interact with. Um what better way to interact with them than in the support of a cause you love. So there’s, you know, you’re all putting your, you know, shoulder to the wheel together. Um, it it gives you your life spice to be doing this in a way that’s not homogeneous and your organization itself will be stronger.

[00:25:47.52] spk_0:
Yeah. In the ways you just, you talked about a few minutes ago. Yeah. You have some ideas about how to do this. Uh, it’s sort of efficiently shave, shave some some time off.

[00:25:53.59] spk_1:
Well, one of the things that, you

[00:25:55.75] spk_0:
know, we

[00:26:58.51] spk_1:
all know that executive directors well run boards, executive directors are behind them at kind of every step of the way. Um, but in boards that really take off, there’s board to board conversation that the executive director kind of monitors, but it’s not board of every conversation. And so, and when that happens, it’s because there are, there’s not just a board cheerleader, but there are many leaders. So there are leaders of governance where there might be a leader of on boarding or there might be a leader of uh you know, there’s different ways to chunk it up so that there’s leadership which leadership leads to ownership. Um and so part of your job as the board liaison, whether is to understand what that web of relationships could is and could be and then to do in essence what we call, you know, HR staff development, but with board members, so you’re asking them to take on certain things and then your job is being a coach, not being a doer.

[00:27:04.42] spk_0:
We’re talking about the ceo executive director now.

[00:27:09.62] spk_1:
Yes, yeah and and development director also

[00:27:12.35] spk_0:
Development and and working closely with the board chair. I mean, it’s gonna help enormously to have a culturally sensitive board

[00:28:29.33] spk_1:
chair. Um I send board members, especially white board members to trainings and not just what is D. I. But to reel immersive, you know, one or two day trainings about the how this culture rests has rested on um racial injustice. Um I say if you’re gonna be part of this organization, you need to have this basic understanding. Um and we need you to do this two day training and here’s, you know, how to pay for it. Um because there’s a basic understanding of that that really shifts in those kinds of very immersive trainings. I’m not talking about a two hour what HR does at a large corporation. Um And you know, we just said these are our values and you have to really get it if you’re gonna be part of this team, I would certainly do that with board leadership, that this is a journey and this is part of the and we want the board to be part of this journey, and we need the board leadership to start it out. And if the board chair won’t do that, you do a succession plan, it’s not like you kick them out right away, but ultimately, your board’s not gonna progress until you have somebody at the head of it for whom this is the air they breathe.

[00:28:42.34] spk_0:
Mm.

[00:29:10.30] spk_1:
Now, you can have a chair and a president, you can have an honorary chair and an honor. You know, there are all kinds of ways to move people to the side that don’t, you know, kick them off this planet. But ultimately, you need to have someone who does, who breathes this stuff and who you don’t have to explain why this matters. And then it’s deeper than going to a training to understand what that implicit bias exists,

[00:29:19.69] spk_0:
Right? one of those two hour trainings, okay, say a little more about joyful board service, what we, what we can aspire to.

[00:29:41.65] spk_1:
I, you know, I get this so often were board members, the board that we’re working on, their their niggling, They’re going after, you know, do I have, you know, is it 2000 or 3000? What do I have to do? That’s the question as to what as, you know, it’s like I’d like to get away with as little as I can. Um and and it’s an imposition on me

[00:29:49.85] spk_0:
as

[00:30:47.66] spk_1:
opposed to I will do everything. I can, I may not be successful at everything, but I’m gonna give it a shot because this mission matters so much, and if I can help it, God willing, I’m going to and there’s when people are at the table with that attitude, there can be a joy at both delivering yourself and seeing other people deliver and celebrating that. Um and you can build that in, you can build in celebrations. You can build in, you know, balloons for somebody when they hit a certain mark. Um you have to build in, not just um the actual dollars, but you can build in, they made thank you calls and they never talked to anybody before. You know, there’s all kinds of ways to build in a sense that I can do be part of the fundraising process, which then builds more courage for the next step. But it doesn’t happen unless you think about it,

[00:30:53.61] spk_0:
celebrating small successes. That’s that’s a terrific idea.

[00:30:59.73] spk_1:
Yeah. And you want to build in this this sense for every board member so that they are looking for ways to celebrate each other.

[00:31:06.28] spk_0:
Mhm.

[00:31:10.79] spk_1:
So it doesn’t just come from you the the ceo it doesn’t just come from the board chair, but that they’re trying to help each other up that ladder.

[00:33:20.95] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. I’ll be on a panel called endowment excitement, fundraising and management. I’m fundraising. Uh, two smart women are the management and that’s, that’s the key about about panels. You want to be the sole person on your topic that way you’re at no risk. You can’t ever be called out for something stupid that you say because, uh, other people, the other panelists don’t know. Right? So, I mean, I don’t know endowment management. I mean, I know a little bit about spending rates and uh, three year moving average, you know, etcetera. Prudent investor rule. But, but I know very little compared to them about endowment management. And they probably know even little less about planned giving than I know about endowment management. So, everybody stays in their lane. You don’t have to worry that if you’re ever invited to be on a panel, be the sole expert in your area. All right. So, um, uh, that was a bit of a digression. But so the panel is endowment excitement, fundraising and management. It’s on august 25th at noon Eastern time, graciously hosted by N X unite. So I’m grateful to them. Thank you to register, you go to n X unite dot com. It’s like november X ray unite dot com and click on webinars and panels, there’s your registration. That is tony stick to, we’ve got boo koo, but loads more time for board members are people too with judy Levine you like to see board members socializing outside? I mean I, I can presume your answer, but I want you to say socializing outside outside the form of the board meetings.

[00:33:48.16] spk_1:
I do, but I also am realistic. Um, I don’t think it’s necessary for them to be personal friends. In fact, I’ve been on board with people who are personal friends and it’s tough because then they kind of talk about things outside and they’re like becomes factions and you certainly don’t want relatives on the same board that I’ll tell you right now. Um, not just married, but brother and sister were playing the, you know, the childhoods, you

[00:33:55.48] spk_0:
know, I can see in your face and it sounds like you’ve been there.

[00:33:58.97] spk_1:
Yes. Um,

[00:34:00.97] spk_0:
I

[00:34:01.69] spk_1:
don’t know. I think that people have to like each other.

[00:34:04.74] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:34:05.77] spk_1:
And I think you need to have some social places, you know, it’s been hard, don’t,

[00:34:09.85] spk_0:
they need to get to know each other outside the

[00:34:15.36] spk_1:
board. Um, but that’s different than, um, but

[00:34:16.70] spk_0:
outside their board service. I mean, maybe not, maybe not necessarily

[00:34:23.34] spk_1:
to me that’s part of their board service. Um, that part of the board service is understand, you know, it’s team building

[00:34:28.51] spk_0:
and the organization can facilitate that. Right? I mean can we have, can we host drinks or dinner after a meeting.

[00:35:52.47] spk_1:
Yeah. Um, it’s, that’s one of the things that’s been much harder in zoom. Um, my board, you know, cost effective itself as a nonprofit and they had a board dinner once a year, but they sat at my house and one year I had the flu and they had at my house anyway. I just went to bed and they stayed up till like midnight and cleaned up after themselves and left, um, that we this, so we have a game night now once, once a year on zoom because it’s once a year, everybody comes and they do all kinds of like 32 truths and a lie and all kinds of stuff, but it’s not quite the same. Um, we did have an outdoor picnic this summer and about half the board came. Um, it’s hard, you know, that’s the hard thing is now getting people out of their shell because we’re all used to now doing everything by zoom or going to work and coming home and you know, scurrying home. What zoom has that? I haven’t quite figured out is that time before meetings. That time in the middle of meetings. You know, those are the times of the after meetings, Those kinds of times when people would talk to each other about their kids, building that in. Um, what we’ve done, some of it is in the, you have to do it in the middle of the meeting because people run out at the end of the meeting and they won’t come early, no matter. They say two board members will come

[00:36:00.09] spk_0:
early.

[00:36:36.70] spk_1:
But if you break into smaller groups in the middle of the meeting, even if it’s only diets or triads and give them something to discuss. Um, you know, one of my provocative questions is how does your birth order affect um, the way you take on leadership, which gets into all kinds of personal background, it assumes strength and it gets people talking to each other. So having a section like that in the middle of each board meeting can help people to start to bond and then obviously changing, you know, changing the groups

[00:36:40.26] spk_0:
up,

[00:36:49.81] spk_1:
making that group a hint. Make those small groupings deliberate. Don’t just leave it to the zoom universe to deliver. You

[00:37:15.11] spk_0:
can either make them random or you can assign people to be with other with other people. And the assigning is is much better. Yeah, I’ve done that in some of my trainings. Um, alright, what else, what else you want to touch on around this, this equity and equity and boards and, and inviting folks in and joyful board

[00:39:14.65] spk_1:
service self interest, which I think it has to do with understanding the, the meaning of your cause to people who are not directly affected by it. So, you know, when we’re teaching fundraising will say, um, okay, you don’t fundraise just for the people who have direct interest to your cause because that’s your clients and if you could raise your money from them, that would be earned income and you wouldn’t be a nonprofit, but you can’t raise money from people who have no connection to your cause because it doesn’t make sense to them. Why are they gonna lie on it? And that’s the same thing with board members. You can’t ask board members to fundraise if you don’t feel connection to cause and or to audiences that don’t feel connection, but you have to find the enlightened self interest, which is myself as a member of the city, this neighborhood, this grouping that I care about Children having a head start. That’s why you’ll often find like a mom’s group in Westchester suburb of new york that’s fairly wealthy. Most of it um, will take on fundraising for a program in the inner city because they understand the meaning of this work for Children, even though it’s not their Children. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because that’s where the ownership comes in the sense that it’s on to, it’s up to me to make a difference for this. And that this matters to me, even though it’s not my personal experience. And I think that’s group conversations conversation in the courtship process and then it’s group conversations at the board level to keep that fresh. And it has to be deliberate because it’s the board service devolved into finance monitoring.

[00:39:20.93] spk_0:
Oh yeah, if it’s right. If it’s allowed to

[00:39:24.91] spk_1:
discussions about why the mission matters

[00:39:28.50] spk_0:
whom

[00:40:02.43] spk_1:
does the mission matter beyond just the direct recipients are very inspiring and they give your board members personal uh you know, nurturing and the tools to go out to their context with different kinds of language. And you will often find, you know, I’m looking for areas in which different people can be experts, not just the people who have a lot of board experience or who are, you know, longtime experienced fundraisers, but that people with different points of view can have the position of being an expert.

[00:40:10.97] spk_0:
Mhm.

[00:40:12.96] spk_1:
And this is where you will find points of view that your classic cabal has not thought of

[00:40:26.45] spk_0:
conversations. Yes, I love how you pause and and think through and then make your next point. I’ve just been talking to you for 40 minutes, whatever. 35 minutes I’ve learned. All right, give her a couple of, give her a couple beats because she’s got she may very well have more to say. I love your the way you reflect. IIi don’t have that gift. I tend to be more more impulsive and I spew everything out in one shot.

[00:40:53.64] spk_1:
Well, that’s why you’re on the radio and I’m

[00:40:55.08] spk_0:
not

[00:42:16.41] spk_1:
normally um you know, I wanna having served on the board, not that many because I take it really seriously. Yeah. Um And then being a an executive director myself and um being a consultant support gives me humility about about the possibility of board service. Um And I feel like uh people who are only on staff have expectations uh and anger when board members don’t meet their expectations, whereas I’m trying to say it’s human nature to triage the kind of people who will agree to be on the board are often fully committed, I don’t wanna say overcommitted because you commit to what you commit to and it makes sense for them to do what they have to do and not more, because there’s always something else calling on their time, let alone, you know, the idea that they might want to play golf or read a book if you do that. If you understand it, that that’s rational, human behavior, then you don’t get as angry at people, you manage them,

[00:42:17.96] spk_0:
that everyone’s gonna triage that they’re gonna they’re gonna assess their

[00:42:21.34] spk_1:
priorities and

[00:42:22.84] spk_0:
they’re gonna they’re gonna act accordingly

[00:42:33.84] spk_1:
and it’s up to you to have a dialogue about that. It’s not that you you know, there’s something wrong with letting people slide or something, but it’s um it’s understanding and helping them understand how to fit in with all the different priorities of their life,

[00:42:40.74] spk_0:
right? And where does this mission fit in? And you’re among your priorities?

[00:43:11.76] spk_1:
You know, it’s why i um when when I when groups do uh board member um contracts or whatever they call them. Um I suggest that there actually be calendars in there so that you, somebody can say to you, I can’t do that in june because my twins are graduating high school, in which case we’re saying, you know what, we’re gonna take you off of that and we’re gonna take you off of May so that you can have a very because they’re not gonna do it anyway.

[00:43:14.85] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:43:15.70] spk_1:
And then they just

[00:43:18.05] spk_0:
or

[00:43:22.19] spk_1:
they don’t respond to emails, so having respect for all the different polls rationally on board members time and life and energy and then helping them understand how to fit this in in a way that makes sense.

[00:43:51.30] spk_0:
Alright, let’s give you, I want to give you a chance to talk about cause effective because it is a non profit. It’s a it’s a consultancy for nonprofits, their advisors, consultants. What what uh what’s the breath of the work and how how do you work with with your client nonprofits?

[00:43:57.71] spk_1:
Well, you know, I’d say we are 40 this year, we are about to celebrate our 40th anniversary.

[00:44:02.85] spk_0:
Congratulations. For decades.

[00:47:33.85] spk_1:
Um And I’d say that the common theme throughout has been changing how organizations are resourced, um changing the balance of money and therefore power in the sector. Um and it’s both increasing it and increasing it so that it’s not just that the most well resourced nonprofits get more resources, but that it’s non profits that are located in disenfranchised communities and the people who work there and um uh and volunteer there are able to raise the money, they need to further those causes. Um and to govern themselves because to me, governance is integral. E apart, it’s more than just raising money, but if you don’t have a governance structure that works, you’re not gonna have a fundraising structure that works on the voluntary level. Um, and that’s where you get to organizations where the staff fund raises. But the board doesn’t have volunteers don’t. Um, so we have, we work, we do a lot of cohort work where we’re looking at development Directors of Color and help, um, working with them over a six month period of time, um, in a particular program that we have to help them really address, um, the barriers to their being successful and not only to talk about it, but to actually address it. Um, we, so we do a lot of individual coping with, with, with executive directors, who may be having come up through fundraising and, but, you know, you need to do it if they did. It is not part of the fundraising structure. The organization is only gonna get so far, um, and board members, a lot of board consulting, especially now with boards that, no, they need to diversify and don’t really like, they know they need the composition, but they don’t, they don’t necessarily know that they need to act differently to have different people in different seats. Um, we do everything from, you know, eight hour retreats on zoom, maybe six hours, uh, two year long coaching engagements to what we call deep transformation, which is a lot of times people come to us and say, well, my board won’t fundraise and we get in there, we start talking to board members and we find out there’s all kinds of reasons, it’s not just that they don’t know how to ask for money, but it’s that there’s not financial transparency, there’s not a real partnership between staff and board. Um, there’s not a peer to peer accountability on the board. Um, there’s a inner group of three board members who do everything and everybody else slides. Um, you know, there’s all kinds of reasons that we will help, we will actually go in and help address. We say that that’s a symptom, my board won’t fundraise and there are, you know, many, many causes of that and we will, we, one of the things we’re known for is that we will go and address the cause. We’re not just gonna do the tactics. Um, we also do a lot of fundraising consulting for groups that have had a lot of government support or a lot of foundation support and know they need to diversify and they don’t necessarily have, you know, a Lincoln center board, um, but it is very possible that people around the country or the world will care about what they do and we’ll back it up and want to make it happen if they, you know, for one thing they say is that our fundraising, the one thing that’s, that’s some limited time. There’s only 24 hours and maybe one second or maybe now two seconds in the day. And so you need to make choices that are smart with how you spend your fundraising time. Money is not the limiting factor, but time is and so will help groups really understand what are the likely avenues and how to structure the resources they have to reach those

[00:47:43.87] spk_0:
Days get longer. What’s one or 2 seconds

[00:47:51.27] spk_1:
actually they did make a ruling and there’s like they added a second or something. Oh,

[00:47:51.54] spk_0:
I didn’t hear about that. I’ve been squandering my two seconds a day. How long have we had this? How long have we had these longer

[00:47:57.57] spk_1:
days. Six

[00:47:59.88] spk_0:
months.

[00:48:00.43] spk_1:
Yeah. I don’t know how many seconds that is. I can’t do the math that fast. No,

[00:48:20.41] spk_0:
But six months is 100 80 days. Times two seconds, 360 seconds. It’s a good six minutes I’ve, I’ve squandered. Alright. I’m gonna try to get it back right now by cutting you off. No. All right. Thank you for explaining. And thanks for a frank conversation. We don’t, you know, for our for nonprofit radio white listeners. We’re not, we’re not, we’re not going easy. You have to have you have to have honest conversations. So thank you.

[00:48:58.91] spk_1:
Yeah, I, I think this has been some of the, you know, I’ve been in this field for 30 years and this has been some of the most rewarding and deep work. Um it’s not surface, it really addresses, you know, I had to go back to everything I assumed from my childhood on and understand that there’s there are different realities and that um it’s not that I can go back and change it but I can change my behavior going forward so that I further a different kind of future.

[00:49:31.46] spk_0:
Mm She’s judy Levin, she’s the executive director of Cause effective. You should have already been at their website because you would have seen their diverse team when we uh when I suggested take a pause and then you came back but if you haven’t been there or if you don’t remember where it is, it’s at cause effective dot org. And they’re also at cause effective and judy Levin, thank you very much. Thanks for sharing.

[00:49:33.80] spk_1:
Thank you. It’s great to have this kind of conversation

[00:50:47.97] spk_0:
next week Back to our 22 NTC coverage, accounting for nonprofit leaders. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at Tony-Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies i tion for in a box, the affordable tech solution for nonprofits but they also got the special offer going on the free offer grab it. It’s all at the listener landing page, tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant but they go on to mention deeper. Our creative producer is Clam 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, You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio Big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for April 11, 2022: Measuring Equity

 

Danielle Fox, Ellonda Williams & Raj Aggarwal: Measuring Equity

We’re kicking off the 2022 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#22NTC) conversations, with a discussion of how equity can be incorporated into your nonprofit’s performance measurement. Sharing their collaboration are Danielle Fox at Union of Concerned Scientists, Ellonda Williams with B Lab and Rajneesh Aggarwal from Provoc.

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[00:02:45.84] spk_0:
mm hmm. Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%,, I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I get slapped with a diagnosis of pollen, euro Maya’s itis. If you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show measuring equity, We’re kicking off the 2022 nonprofit technology conference conversations with a discussion of how equity can be incorporated into your nonprofits, performance measurement, sharing their collaboration are Danielle Fox at Union of concerned scientists. Alando Williams with the lab and Rajneesh Agarwal From provoke On Tony’s take two, you’re responsible for donor relationships. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o here is measuring equity. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 N T C. By now. You know what that is. You know that it’s the 2022 nonprofit technology conference, you know that it’s hosted by N 10 very smart savvy organization helping everyone use technology in their social change work. You know, all this. What you don’t know is that my guests now are Daniel Fox, Alando Williams and raj Aggarwal but now you do now you’re informed now, you know, as much as I do Daniel Fox is campaign and Science network manager at the Union of concerned scientists. Alando Williams is director of justice Equity, diversity and inclusion Jedi at B lab and raj aggarwal is president of provoke Daniel Ayalon garage welcome to nonprofit radio and and Farage welcome back. I hope I’m, I hope I’m as excited to have you back now uh, in half an hour or 45 minutes as I am now, Rogers already given me trouble before we even started recording. So I’ll have to check in with me every 15 minutes to see how my raj meter is is is jumping. Okay,

[00:02:47.88] spk_1:
what about what about my tony meter?

[00:03:07.24] spk_0:
It’s less important because that’s the relevance of that is raj Aggarwal. non profit radio that’s where you can measure your tony meter, but tony-martignetti non profit radio I can measure my raj meter anytime I want to. So pardon me, Yolanda,

[00:03:08.51] spk_2:
it’s House Rules,

[00:03:33.94] spk_0:
House Rules, House rules, get your own show essentially it was what my advice is to, to raj. Okay, let’s see, So let’s give everybody a chance to give a brief, let’s, you know, we’re not, you’re, you’re talking to an audience of 13,000 folks who are already in nonprofits. So you’re you’re likely not talking to potential donors, but for a little context please, you know, briefly Danielle, what’s the union of concerned scientists about?

[00:03:37.34] spk_3:
Sure. So the concern of concerned scientists is a science advocacy organization, essentially. We’re all about how do you put science and the scientific community to work for a better world. Uh, and that also means more just policies and political systems and so we’ll get into it a little bit soon but working with the justice and equity lens is fundamental for us to actually be able to fulfill our mission. Um And so that’s why I’m excited to talk about how we measure it.

[00:04:33.84] spk_0:
Thank you for supporting the work of scientists. Uh it’s especially now, but please thank you. You know, science scientists, they’re I think they’re not to be marginalized and and mocked there to be central to a central to a conversation and essential in a in a rational world. So thank you for doing that, Yolanda. Please tell us about B Lab

[00:05:26.14] spk_2:
you too. Yes. Um so the lab is a non profit network that transforms the global economy to benefit all people communities and planet. Basically what we do is really our vision is to create a collective vision of inclusive, equitable and regenerative economic economy. So we really come into organizations and businesses known as the corpse. Um and we certify them using our set of standards to really take a look at their organization. How are they treating them? How are they treating their community? How are they paying their staff? How do folks feel showing up as part of a member of that organization? And so collectively we have over 4000 dead corpse across the globe. Um and we all come together to really assess how to do things in a more um Jedi forward and equitable way with really um centering around economy and how do we change? How do we think about business

[00:05:29.74] spk_0:
is B lab the certifying like agency or not for for B corpse? It’s isn’t where folks apply for for for B corp status.

[00:05:41.24] spk_2:
You got it. That’s a really good question. So be lab, which is where I work. Um It’s part of our entire B lab global network. So we are movement. So be lab itself is the certifying body and that is where individuals kind of start um taking our basic impact assessment in terms of your organization to really assess how do you fare as it as it as it is against our current standards. Um and that kind of gets, gets your foot running in terms of getting certified to become a B corporation.

[00:06:20.24] spk_0:
Excellent. Alright, thank you raj. Tell us about provoke which is spelled P R O V O C. When I first met Roger, I thought it was provocative. He corrected me. Of course it’s provoked raj, Tell us about the the agency,

[00:06:29.74] spk_1:
thank you. tony So provoked is a brand, the narrative strategy and uh communications and campaign um firm that roots are that does their work through an ever deepening racial equity lens.

[00:07:08.94] spk_0:
All right, thank you all again for being here. Um Daniel. Let’s start with you. Oh well, I didn’t introduce the session topic which is can equity be measured lessons from a great collaboration Danielle. It seems that you’re the you’re the organization that was interested in as you said, Centering I guess you know, walking the walk now of uh justice equity, diversity, inclusion Jedi why why did that become important to you when whenever it did versus some other time.

[00:08:22.04] spk_3:
Yeah. Absolutely. Well I think it’s I think that the organization has had to do its own unlearning relearning and thinking about, you know, as we look at the political systems and systems of racism and injustice that we need to change how we do our work frankly and how we show up. Uh it’s a different definition of success if we’re going to be true to our mission and our stated values and so with that um we’ve tried to work hard and continue to continue to learn, continue to mess up, continue to make progress and continue to take steps forward. Uh, but the work that we did with provoke was specifically around our science network. So we have this network of about 25,000 scientists and technical experts that come to U. C. S. To say hey I want to grow as an advocate and get involved and put my skills to work for social and policy change now for us for us to truly be successful. That meant that we also needed to ground how we were organizing and cultivating scientists and researchers and putting their skills to work to rectify social wrongs. That includes fighting environmental racism. That includes addressing the disproportionate impacts of all the health and environmental hazards that are going unchecked that we’re trying to put science to work to help tackle. So at the end of the day, that is really what it’s about. I think we truly

[00:08:54.34] spk_2:
when

[00:09:42.84] spk_3:
you know better you have to do better, Right? So we needed to change how we define success. And one of the things that has been so fantastic is to see the power of scientists as authentic partners with communities most impacted by the issues we’re tackling. And so the initiative that we were working on is looking at how do we scale up the ability for scientists to join us and get active? And that was through building local teams. That’s a distributed network of now, more than 50 groups throughout the country who are getting involved, but we knew that we needed to hold ourselves accountable and learn deeply about what did it what did it mean to have inclusive teams and what did it mean to integrate a lens of justice and equity and how we did our advocate building and engagement. And so that’s where we teamed up with provoked for and that’s how we’re trying to um you know, put metrics and accountability to the progress and what we’re trying to do here.

[00:09:58.74] spk_0:
Okay. And I love when you know better you need to do better. Excellent. Um Yolanda, how did how does B lab fit into this collaboration?

[00:12:30.04] spk_2:
Well, there’s there’s a couple of different ways that we fit into this collaborate. So this particular collaboration uh was between um you know, as Danielle mentioned with garage um and collaborating, collaborating provoked provoked as a report. So the fun thing about that is that I worked really closely with other be corpse that are in this space. And so not only is provoked A B corp but provoke is a B corp that that works in the Jedi space that works in the equity space. And so we’re able to constantly um share learnings, share what we share what we um discovered in in our our dialogues and our policies and our practices and and from the results um of surveys and internal work that we’re doing. So we all always able to kind of like iron sharpens iron. Right? So I’m in good company um with provoking those over, over in that space to be able to think more about, okay if provoking the people up and we’re working with other organizations to really identify how do we show up what role does the lab have in that and how do we kind of take the ideas that are that are that we’re starting at the lab in this conversation while we’re trying to tackle eyes some of these critical challenges. These are global challenges. So um sharing learnings and adapting what we learned is really a way to uh drive the learning forward. And then these types of collaborations, we can learn what went well and a really fun thing is when I was even spoken speaking with Danielle like a lot of this stuff is the same thing. There’s a lot of similarities in this realm and I think what it does that drives the, the understanding that Jedi is everybody’s job, equity, bility is everybody’s job there. It doesn’t matter what your role is, right? I’m quote unquote an expert, I didn’t give myself that title, right. People see people in the space and we give each other these titles, but we’re all accountable to this work. We’re all accountable, we’re showing up differently and I love what Danielle said as well around when you know better, you do better because then that means that you have to think differently and so our session and when we talk about how do we measure, how do we measure equity? It really starts with asking ourselves a lot of questions, why are we doing this way? You know, why do we always do it this way? Who who, who are we thinking about? Who’s in the margins and in these intersections there is no one size fits all. So something that Danielle and and and their team might do might be very different. But in the learnings of what went well, what are the challenges, what, what, what we still need to elevate um is where we can all try to come together to identify solutions that are gonna be solutions that we all can, can, can use.

[00:12:42.41] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:12:43.18] spk_2:
alright,

[00:13:34.14] spk_0:
now raj despite your, your pre recording admonition that I’m not turned to you too much. I promise. Trust me, trust me, I won’t, but I will at this point because you were the um I don’t know, maybe it’s not fair to say the catalyst, but you were the you were the, the, the helpers. That’s a great word, that that’s a sophisticated technical term. You were the you were the you were the drivers for the union of concerned scientists. So what should, what should nonprofits be thinking about? Like at the very early stages, what did you advise Danielle and her team, you know, at early stages to be, to be, I don’t know, assessing uh measuring or you know, given where they were at the time. You know, what was your advice at the earliest stages is what I’m trying to get at.

[00:16:02.34] spk_1:
Yeah, so first of all, um I just really appreciate Danielle and Yolanda and I learned so much from them all the time and just how we show up in partnership. So I was really taking this as an opportunity to learn from them. Um I appreciate the term catalyst and also with our work with the Union of concerned scientists, I was reminding the client just the other day that, you know, the term catalyst is a is a term and chemistry, which I actually have a degree in which I rarely use and the purpose of that is a catalyst is something that helps to reduce the activation energy of a chemical process. So, so it’s going to happen anyway. But hopefully through an intervention through hopefully our team, we can maybe get there a little bit quicker. That’s that’s what a catalyst does. So I’ll take it. Um um so you know, with with so obviously part of the reason that we participated in this work is we do a lot of work on equity. And often people ask this question, you know, because of just the nature of the world. Business capitalism is are we really getting there and how can we measure it? And how can we report on it? Um and that’s obviously really important to do that as well. And so some of the things that we asked, you know, for certain scientists to do was to really think critically about why they want to change the world, how they plan to turn that into reality and what best metrics represent that success. And so for example, sometimes we would hear language from um union of concerned scientists around things like high impact actions. And so we asked them to specify what is the list of those actions or underrepresented scientists. And then we asked them to get really specific about what does that mean race, economic status, gender identity, disability. And to amplify and support. And what does that mean? And one of the big things that came up in our session with uh N. T. C. Just last week is this idea of impact and how that’s been so much that comes up in nonprofits, but we don’t really define it. So this practice that really was a whole practice of definition and then determining what tools and measures you can go about doing it. And Danielle will talk to you also about like what has happened since they started doing this and where did it work? And where did it didn’t, where does subjectivity come into this? Because some of that, so many of these things are going to be subjective through how a person might perceive what they’re actually doing. Um, and it may not be measured by a specific number. So, um, that was, that’s just one thing in here. So what the union concerns scientists did was they established six key performance indicators and 15 supporting metrics to evaluate the growth of local engagement program across the US, um, including an equity specific KPI

[00:18:39.74] spk_0:
it’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Here’s the ways that they can help you media relations. You’ve heard me talk about this, that’s the relationships building those relationships with outlets like the chronicle of philanthropy, the new york Times Market watch fast company Washington post. All places where turned to clients have gotten placements, content marketing. If you’re interested in white papers, Your annual report falls into that. You want them to do research for you. Maybe research on a program and then publish that research for you to share with donors, foundations. You know, other supporters research. They can do research for you and write about it. Speech writing, ghostwriting training on media management, media relations website. They can build website for you website creation redesign. I haven’t talked about that one. But yes they do that too. So all you know media relations, content management thought leadership web social media social marketing turn to communications, right? Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Now back to measuring equity. Raj said this is all very subjective. I was thinking ethereal you know, but it’s it’s uh it’s it’s it’s hard to it’s hard to grasp however you you know how every whatever word you use to describe it. So Danielle, you know how did the U. C. S. Start to start to start to grasp it. You know, start, I mean eventually you end up with like raj said, you know, six KPI s and 15 supporting metrics, you know, whatever. But you know, how do you take that incrementally with this? Very subjective these very subjective concepts.

[00:21:57.84] spk_3:
Absolutely. Yeah. I’m happy to I’m gonna try to discuss it. It might sound a little messy when I discuss it but that’s so actually symbolic of what the processes and the fact that it’s just messy. Let’s do it. Oh no, it’s fine. Honestly if we’re going to talk about equity, it should always be a little uncomfortable. Um so one of the uh you know, one of the very first things I think we did with roger and the team and I really appreciated it was to just hold space for dialogue about why this even matters and what impact looks like. And I don’t mean that vaguely, we had to do a tactical visioning exercise. What described, what does impact look feel smell like when you see it, when does it take place? Um, and I think that that was so critical because we took the time to ask ourselves questions before thinking we knew anything just like Yolanda had said. Um, and so it was the time to ask ourselves those questions and overlay that with our theory of change. Why are we even saying that these local teams need to be organizing with the commitment to equity, What is equity scientist organizing really looked like. And so we held some time to really build that, which was so critical because it ultimately served as a compass for when my team of organizers waited through all of the possibilities of things we could look at and measure. And we’re from a science based organization. So you might imagine we are curious souls that want to learn a lot of information and bless rajan their team. They sat with us through it and said, well it sounds like you’re interested in your heart is telling you you need to know all of these things that might have something to do with it. But at the end of the day when we just talked about that compass of what does impact actually look like? What are the most fundamental indicators that you can consistently track that will tell, you will do the real learning of letting you know if you’re making progress or not. And so it was really the process of starting big and messy and then running through all sorts of variations of how we may or may know whether we are in fact grounding equity and inclusion in our teams based organizing and then painstakingly. But we had we built good trust along the way. So that was so critical um narrowed down to core um things that we were going to measure. So we ultimately had two of our six core keep key performance indicators that helped us measure three things, diversity of the team’s inclusive practice of our team leaders and how they are building and running those teams and the members education and engagement in terms of what is explicitly addressing equity or amplifying underrepresented upper underrepresented voices and the issues that we’re working on. And we had to define those throughout the way to be able to measure that. So that was a little bit of the process.

[00:22:06.04] spk_0:
You were able to capture those three Concepts in two Kpi s.

[00:22:46.24] spk_3:
Yeah, we we collected we collected for a few different things. So that is, you know, a number of instances where underrepresented scientists were supported or where partners were grounded in the work that uh some of the team members were um, taking up, uh, that also includes things like number of teams. What is the diversity in the makeup of that team and discuss the actual practices and how you’re running those teams. So we did that through some collection of different survey questions which we can dive into a little bit later. It was an iterative process. I’ll tell you that much.

[00:23:06.94] spk_0:
Yeah, no, I can tell for sure. And and and just for some context, I guess, how does this relate then to um, performance measurement? Like is this, is this is this drill down to individual employees or volunteer? No, I don’t know. It’s volunteers or employees like performance evaluations.

[00:24:23.14] spk_3:
Yes, that’s a good question. This for us is more about impact measurement. Um, and so the reason why we did this all along is to make sure that the data, we’re going to need to collect data about how these local teams are working and building. And it seems fundamental to us to make sure that equity inclusion were part of those because we were talking about this earlier. You manage what you measure, right? And so we needed to make sure that our key performance indicators included equity and inclusion and how we were building out our program. So the whole goal of those indicators are to help us learn as the people, the practitioners and the people who are building out this program are we actually making progress on those things that we are saying we care about and then to hold a space for accountability when we actually have to assess the growth and impact of our program. And then also just finally to invite a culture of learning both for us as staff who are trying to do things differently and for our science network members who are trying to join us in a movement to evolved scientists engagement and advocacy with a stronger equity lens. So it served more of a learning and accountability versus a performance performance evaluation.

[00:24:46.04] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Um Alondra, your you wanted to take away, you know, you wanted to learn lessons takeaways like what, what are you hearing as as Daniel is describing this?

[00:27:56.34] spk_2:
Ah what I’m hearing is excitement, right? I’m hearing, I’m hearing alignment. Um uh we, we talk a lot about accountability especially at black. So, so um when you’re thinking about KPI S and I’m something that Daniel said around like you when you’re measuring, like that’s what you’re focusing on, your focusing on what you’re measuring. And so if you’re not measuring something that is a clear kind of like red flag of like if you’re not measuring it, you’re not tracking it, you’re not paying any attention to it. Um and so you’re measuring what really matters. And so it’s an outward depiction of what an organization truly matter, what matters to an organization, look at what they’re tracking and look at what they’re measuring. Um and so as a network B lab and we have all these reports, thousands of people were measuring what matters. But how are we if we’re trying to build an inclusive economic system and business is at the center of that? How do we do that? How do we have conversations with people? I might be an expert in the area. Um and raj talked about his degree and we’ve got we’ve got scientists and I’m not a scientist, right? Ah And so how do we educate people around how to approach their job? A lot of times we have conversations around Jedi and someone will say what you’re the Jedi expert? Like why do I have to do that’s your job? And I say, but it’s not, it’s not. Um we talk about what makes a leader, what makes a good business, what makes a leader someone you want to follow? Um if you’re doing things and how do you make people feel, how do you make other businesses feel? How do you make your community feel right? And so if we are we’re all knowing better and doing better and sharing this information, how do we take this information and have further dialogue around things like our standards are certification requirements? How do we measure what matters? And if we have conversations with our community that helps us understand what are the needs of the most marginalized in order to center in order to think more Jedi forward. We have to always ask ourselves who are the most marginalized. Um who who who are we not thinking about? Who are we creating barriers for a lot of times. We look at the outcomes and what’s gonna happen. But we don’t ask ourselves the question around, have I created a barrier? And more specifically, have I created a barrier for a representation that is traditionally or historically marginalized? And the only way to do that is to ask questions. Right? And so what Daniel said around dialogue. So we’re learning around listening to the community. What are the challenges that organizations are having when they’re trying to approach? Not only their KPI but whenever they’re approaching their supply supply chain, whenever they’re approaching their community communication, whenever they’re working with community, uh what are the challenges that they’re experiencing? Because if we’re looking at that, that is the information that we can use to build more resources, more uh more policies that are actually going to help uh create equitable outcomes. It’s gonna help our tools and our programs and just general accessibility of the work that we do.

[00:28:17.34] spk_0:
So, so Alondra is this is this work that’s going to be um spread among the b corp Among these 4000, you know, be corpse that that they’re going to start to be held 2, 22 Jedi standards, as I don’t mean, I don’t mean tomorrow, but tomorrow’s Saturday. But I don’t mean

[00:28:26.24] spk_2:
monday monday

[00:28:34.34] spk_0:
either. Give yourself some time. But um, this is this is this is this eventually going to be part of b corp I don’t know the approval or

[00:28:37.74] spk_2:
certification,

[00:28:39.02] spk_0:
certification,

[00:30:08.34] spk_2:
certification and verification. Um, so let me clarify so a couple of things we already tracked. So Jedi Jedi and equity bility, um, inclusion. These are already built within our standards. Um, but we are an organization, like many other organizations where trucking along and we’ve been in existence for some time and so, um, what we used to do to measure the past or not the things that we’re going to be able to measure the future as things are growing and as things are changing. So why we have always measured Jedi, why? We’ve always measured things like what’s the difference between your highest paid individual and the organization and the lowest paid individual in the organization. And the farther across that spread is indicates that there’s less equitable ability built into your systems in the organization. So we already looked at things like that. But what we’ve done in this past year is we’re really, really looking at all of our requirements. We’re looking at how we measure what truly matters. And so how do you measure equity? What is, what is that question that we write in the basic impact assessment that is gonna give us the information that we need to track how well an organization is doing identifying those questions if it’s difficult identifying those parameters were global. So it’s not just us, it’s not just Canada, I mean we’re a global network and so we have a lot of things to take into consideration. Jedi is not one size fits all, um, something that one global partner might do might not be suitable in another region of the world. So we are constantly challenged the lab Global with creating standards that are actually going to be not only accessible, but something that’s going to translate across the globe. So that’s why it’s important for us to ask lots of questions ourselves.

[00:33:34.04] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. You’re responsible for donor relationships. What do I mean, I’m talking about keeping relationships strong, moving relationships forward. I’m also talking about when there’s been a solicitation not lettering, not letting, not lettering, not letting that solicitation sit fallow, but you follow up on solicitations right? You never want to have a solicitation hanging out there that looks like you didn’t take the thing seriously to begin with. So it’s your responsibility to keep relationships strong and moving forward with your donors. You do that in ways like remembering milestones, birthdays, anniversaries, uh, the anniversary of their very first gift to the organization. Their 20th gift to your nonprofit, their 50th gift milestones like that. Um, so milestones in their personal lives, but also related to your nonprofit, keeping in touch with just, you know, handwritten notes, phone calls where it’s appropriate. Not every donor wants phone calls. I realized that however they want to be communicated with keeping in touch in those ways, email phone notes. Keeping relationships strong and moving forward. This is your responsibility as the leadership, as the fundraiser, as the board member involved in donor relationships and fundraising. It’s not your donors responsibility to keep in touch with you. It’s your responsibility to keep in touch with your donors. And that’s what I mean by keeping those relationships strong and moving forward. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for measuring equity with Danielle Fox, Alando Williams and raj Aggarwal, Danielle. Let’s talk about leadership by end. I don’t know if, you know, maybe maybe it wasn’t an issue for the the union of concerned scientists ceo necessarily or you know that c c suite level, but there must have been leaders at some at some levels in in U. C. S. That were um, I don’t know at worst, you know, unwilling at best unaware and and and so for either reason, you know, not not accepting what you C. S. Was trying to do. How do you whatever management level we’re talking about? How do you what’s your recommendations for getting that kind of buy in among leadership because it’s it’s essential otherwise this work is going nowhere, you know. So what do you recommend there?

[00:33:37.34] spk_3:
Oh that’s such a good question. I will try

[00:33:39.69] spk_0:
To finally only took 29 minutes. Almost all right.

[00:33:43.25] spk_3:
Yeah. The other ones were no, you’re

[00:33:45.83] spk_0:
suffering a lackluster. There’s no question about it. There’s no question.

[00:33:52.24] spk_3:
I uh I’m happy to to try to take a crack at that. Um and but also I’m really interested with uh with what Yolanda and Roger have that, so if you don’t mind, I’d love to have like that be a team effort. Um

[00:34:05.13] spk_0:
but

[00:34:21.54] spk_3:
but I’d say, you know, there there was no sort of, there was no overt objection to it. It was just more of a sense this understanding that when you want to track when you redefine success and you want to meaningfully track that, that means we’re gonna have to have a hard look at our systems and our status quo of how we usually track and monitor things and to to unpack some of that and potentially to have to change um

[00:34:41.64] spk_0:
what

[00:34:42.02] spk_3:
we’re defining as success and what even systems or tools or capacity we have to be able to then consistently monitor and learn from it. So I would say that it wasn’t, there wasn’t a particular opposition, it was just more of a question of,

[00:34:59.74] spk_2:
well,

[00:37:28.33] spk_3:
what does new success actually look like. Uh and I think for that the approach was more just creating an authentic space for learning that no matter what level you are in an organization of space to ask critical questions together and to relearn and re envision together and have really difficult conversations about what we might need to be doing differently and why that’s important for what contribution we’re trying to have is so fundamental and that it doesn’t from my perspective and maybe this is my personal opinions towards like hierarchy were all at the end of the day, people with different ranges of responsibilities that hopefully if we’re showing up at that meeting and that conversation and good faith want to do better. Um, and so maybe that’s naive of me perhaps, but I think some of it was just creating a lot of spaces without particular judgment, but very honest, candid conversations about um what what’s different, what does success actually look like that needs to look different from how we’ve defined it before and then um what do we need to do as a team to be able to outfit ourselves to authentically monitor that and hold space to check back for whether we’re really um meeting the markers that we have and if we aren’t how we’re willing to adapt. And so maybe this is my own opinion every I’m an organizer at heart. So everything’s a campaign and part of that is a mix of sure pressure, but also persuasion and bringing people on board to join in a collective vision with you and see their role in it. And so I think there’s a lot of conversations along the lines of that and then a lot of conversations about if we’re going to do more of this, what are we going to do less of and having to make difficult decisions about what we prioritize and actually invest in. Uh those were difficult conversations and that is a okay. And so just giving yourself the time to work through that so that when it comes time to start up these key performance indicators and this initiative with equity and inclusion as barometers for progress that we’re all on the same page and were brought in and we know how we’re going to do it.

[00:37:57.13] spk_0:
Well if any of that was naive then I share your naivete. So I don’t think it was, but that’s because I’m with you all right. Uh Irlanda, do you wanna Danielle opened the door? Do you want to talk about? You know what I want to focus on leadership? Leadership buy in for Again, it could be anything from unawareness too. I don’t know. It could be blatant racism and just unwillingness, you know, at the at the extremes. What about leadership by in which again I think is essential to this work.

[00:42:30.50] spk_2:
Well uh it is right, it’s not, there’s no guests, right? Uh leadership buying is absolutely essential. Um And it is going to help drive longer term change and success, but a couple of things that Danielle said makes me think like that. So I’ve had a couple of experiences. I have had a myriad of experiences, I’ve had experiences where your your stuff trying to like you’re back at the business case, right? You’re back at business case. So so for those of us in the in the Jedi, I say look at Danielle Danielle, for those who can’t see, Danielle is vigorously nodding her head. Um the business case. So when Jedi hit the scene, when equity diversity E. D. I hit the scene, um the business case was like a really big thing because when we think about Jedi, it’s really rooted in how people feel the experience that people have or lack thereof, and how those experiences create inequities that can show up in education, obviously in business um in the health care system, you know, pretty much any system that we have with that inequities can can show up in. So what’s important for us to take into consideration, how do we get this by it? And so what we had to do was is we had to make the business case which was a lot of contributed in money, right? We had to say this is this is relevant to a business because businesses that are diverse that have diversity of thought, not just the color of someone’s skin, diversity of thought, thrive, They do better. And there’s years of evidence for that. Um so long before we really were having conversations about inclusion and justice and how people feel we were having conversations around your business should do this and it’s worthwhile for your business because you will get a return on your investment financially. Um, and I love the fact that we’re kind of shifting away from that and uh I’m having a lot less of those conversations and a lot more conversations of I know that there’s a problem. I recognize that something must be done. I have no clue where to start or I know that there’s a problem. I just don’t see it, help me learn how to see it and in that work it’s very, very difficult and it takes a long time. And so I’m lucky that in my current experiences I have with leaders that that know that there’s a problem and want to do something about it. But the struggle sometimes is what one thinks is the solution to the problem is not the solution to the problem. So what I see happens is you get the buy in. Sometimes you might have an organization where you have buy in from leadership. However, when you talk about what the actual solutions are, that’s when there is discrepancies, there’s discrepancies on whether or not we can actually solve this problem by by enacting that solution. And so we have to have a lot of conversations around resources and for me, I’m able to really elevate vision right, what is the vision of your organization? So I could ask that all the time. Staff say how I would love for my organization to put E. D. I first right to elevate equity. What is the conversation that I need to have with my manager, with my boss, with my supervisor, with leadership? How do we have this conversation? And I really challenge you to kind of like look at the vision and I’m encouraging those who really feel like they want to be a part of organizations that are putting this type of work forward. Take a look at the vision of the organization that you work at. We have an inclusive equitable regenerative system. So I was able to say if we want to do this work, we have to think about equity, but we have to take into consideration if we know that we’re not only going to get a return on our investment are people are going to feel better. They’re going to want to be here. They’re going to um, feel valued being here. You don’t have to work your employees to the bone to get dedication from them and treating them like human beings is how you’re actually going to be able to work together to create not only solutions but a space where everyone can show up as their true, authentic selves and feel good about being at work. Um, and we’re not there yet. You know, we’re not there were not there at the lab right? We still have these challenges internal to our organizations. Just like other organizations.

[00:43:03.80] spk_0:
I am gratified that you’re having fewer conversations that are based around money. You know, bottom line, that’s, that’s encouraging in the end it is all it is all about the bottom line but that you’re having fewer conversations that are rooted in that, you know, that are, that are explicitly about why it’s better for your, you know, how it will help your bottom line um, Raj. I’m only turning to you because Danielle suggested that you might want to comment on this. So uh would you, would you like to on the, on the buy in? We just have about 10 minutes left or so.

[00:43:18.30] spk_1:
I don’t have anything more to add than what these folks do.

[00:43:22.05] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:43:22.68] spk_1:
I did share though, Danielle with Lane frisco and Denise done. Um how happy it makes me here? How happy it makes me to hear you share this in this way. So thank you so much.

[00:43:35.90] spk_2:
Oh,

[00:43:36.50] spk_0:
you’re thanking me.

[00:43:37.80] spk_1:
Yeah, I’m always thinking tony and I’m thinking Danielle and of course dr Williams all the time.

[00:43:54.20] spk_0:
Yeah. Well, these voices, right, the conversation needs to be elevated and I can help deliver it to another 13,000 folks. So, um Yolanda, I have a question um, I am, I am, I am, I am I because you’re the Director of, of Justice Equity diversity inclusion. I am. I am I to 2019 If I refer to D e I

[00:44:07.89] spk_2:
am

[00:44:08.83] spk_0:
I am I if I’m if I’m three years old, if I’m living in the past. Tell me and I’m asking you d i is what it used to be. But now I see Jedi more, I see Jedi emerging, I know

[00:46:07.58] spk_2:
are you 2 2019? Ah that’s that’s a lot of pressure to put on. Maybe you’re not there and you’re jeremy Tony and I respect that. But I will say I will encourage folks that are still really focusing on like, quick. The fastest Jedi training that I ever can give right is um, the justice aspect is is really, really important because it takes into consideration where we are, And it’s really difficult for us to look at how the existence of things as they are right now in 2022 without paying homage and respect to the fact that there is a very specific reason why we are facing the inequity that we face today. And so it’s important for us to bring that element to the conversation, because then we can say the reason there’s a really good reason why we need to have a conversation with our HR department about whether or not this level to position needs to have a bachelor’s degree, and that is that role actually necessary? Or have we are we a product of a of a society that folks of privilege and power decided what was necessary in order to be able to succeed again defining what that success looks like. And so we are just perpetuating that same ideology, even though we know that’s not true, and so how do we really root equity diversity and inclusion in in, you know, in a way that allows us to change from the way things used to be with recognizing that it’s not going to get us to where we want to go. So that’s why justice is a really key component. But again, some folks aren’t there in their, in their Jedi journey. Um, and I aspire okay,

[00:46:43.58] spk_0:
well, and I regret that I personalized it. I got, but I was thinking, I was thinking to myself, but you know, because I don’t mean to put pressure for Jedi, I love Jedi Jedi warrior. You could be a Jedi warrior. Um, yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, let’s see Danielle, why don’t you, why don’t you leave us with some, uh, inspiration if you like or something that you think we haven’t talked about yet doesn’t have, doesn’t have to be, uh, doesn’t have to be grand inspiration. Maybe just something that we haven’t talked about yet that you’d like folks to know about, uh, this work, this journey that that you see us went through. I’m gonna give you the chance to, uh, to leave us.

[00:48:52.87] spk_3:
Sure, you know, it, this is gonna sound a little atypical, but I think the for me, what’s been inspiring is that we’ve already learned, What isn’t working from what we did with provoke. Don’t take that personal rush. I mean, that is a wonderful wonderful thing because what weird doing is we’ve built in an invitation to ourselves as I would invite our advocates and any other organization that um is questioning whether they um have the knowledge or expertise to deepen equity and justice in their work and have to measure that. Um I think we’re a perfect example of organization that doesn’t have a deep expertise in this, but still wants to do it and is trying to do it, had built out something that I think really has helped ground us to be able to see how we need to keep improving. Um and that, for me is uh pretty inspiring because Ellen and I were talking a little bit about this before very often this can feel like an such a high stakes topic that can sometimes paralyze people from investing in it in taking steps. And I think the inspiring thing here is we’re already learning in the first couple of years of using these KPI s ways we can organize the local teams to to be a little bit better and more thoughtful in justice and equity, and we’re also learning that um there’s opportunities to reiterate and and strengthen our key P. I. S. That is an invitation for more learning and accountability, and for me that’s pretty, pretty exciting because this is ongoing work. I don’t think there’s gonna be a year that you see us as check we are an anti racist organization, it’s going to be ongoing work, and that’s exciting.

[00:49:21.27] spk_0:
Perfect inspiration. Thank you. And I realized that uh I made a mistake, Yolanda, I’m gonna let you take us out because B Lab, the lab is in this for takeaways. What what you what you can share with your your your 4000 certified companies. So you take us out with some with some takeaways.

[00:50:59.06] spk_2:
I love that. Um don’t let perfection be in the way of doing something right. Doing doing nothing is never good enough. So I love what Danielle said about a moving target as well. Um lean into uncomfortable that we don’t know what a utopian world looks like. We do not know what an equitable world looks like. We don’t know we haven’t had it yet. That’s the beauty and all of this is like we can imagine whatever we want and so be a part of what the new normal looks like. Step up and take apart to stake your claim because we’ve all we are all a product of of systems that were created before we got here. We are in a unique juncture in society in history that we can take a part in what success and the new normal books like moving forward and we can create systems that actually are inclusive for everyone that allow everyone to succeed regardless of where they were born, what they looked like, their social and economic status, um sexual orientation. We have a weird and unique space that as our leadership and when I say leadership, I’m not just talking about organizational leadership, I’m talking about in the world humans and and society members who have been a part of making decisions for a long period of time. That shift of power and influence is shifting and we’re all getting apart and we and so this is a unique opportunity, don’t squander your opportunity to be a part of something different for your Children, for our future for youth. Um we get one shot. Um and and this is gonna be, this is gonna be shaped the next 500 years of society. And so I want to take, I want to encourage everyone to kind of step up to the plate and and take ownership of your part in what the future’s gonna look like for others.

[00:51:45.46] spk_0:
Perfect, thank you. That’s Alando Williams, Director of justice, Equity, diversity and inclusion at B lab, also Daniel Fox Campaign and Science Network Manager, the union of concerned scientists and the other person around was is raj Aggarwal, president of provoke who asked me to not focus on him too much. So I took him at his word. I assume he was. I assume he was honest when he’s when he made that recommendation, made that made that request, I should say so.

[00:51:50.41] spk_1:
tony what do you think? Don’t you think it was better to focus on Dr Williams and Danielle.

[00:52:03.35] spk_0:
I do, but I’m I’m disappointed that you didn’t expect me to do that anyway. So little faith after the third time on the show and still still thinks I’m an underperformer. Thank

[00:52:10.62] spk_2:
you like I know how to do my job and I didn’t, I didn’t need you, but thank you, thank you. All right,

[00:52:31.55] spk_0:
maybe the fourth time if there is 1/4 for you, I’m not sure I would say anybody wants to be on nonprofit. radio Uh, don’t partner with Raj in 2023 because you’re greatly reducing the likelihood of being of being selected. Uh, Alondra Danielle raj, thank you very much.

[00:52:34.42] spk_1:
tony it was really nice when we received your emails, valuable

[00:52:43.75] spk_0:
conversation, I appreciate it and appreciate you all for being good sports to while I uh, make fun of raj, especially

[00:52:49.43] spk_3:
thank you

[00:54:07.05] spk_0:
and thanks to all of you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22. Ntc the 2022 nonprofit technology conference with the hope that we will be together in person in 2023 in denver colorado. Thanks so much for being with us Next week. More from 22. NTCC asking for receiving and giving feedback if you missed any part of this week’s show. I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com we’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o 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 be with me next week for nonprofit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great. Mhm mm hmm.