Tag Archives: digital inclusion

Nonprofit Radio for May 10, 2021: Online Meetings For All & Online Accessibility Beyond Meetings

My Guests:

Cindy Leonard & John Kenyon: Online Meetings For All

Cindy Leonard and John Kenyon continue our 21NTC coverage, with strategies and tips to make your virtual meetings accessible and inclusive. They’re with Cindy Leonard Consulting and he’s with John Kenyon Consulting.

 

 

 

 

Martin Cacace: Online Accessibility Beyond Meetings

We identify potential issues, help you prioritize what to fix and pick out the low-hanging fruit. My guest is Martin Cacace at Bound State Software and this is also from 21NTC.

 

 

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[00:02:05.94] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me, I’d suffer with a vascular necrosis if you killed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Online meetings for all. Cindy Leonard and John Kenyon continue our 21 NTC coverage with strategies and tips to make your virtual meetings accessible and inclusive there with Cindy Leonard consulting and he’s with john Kenyon consulting, both happily named and online accessibility. Beyond meetings. We identify potential issues, help you prioritize what to fix and pick out the low hanging fruit. My guest is Martin Kosei at bound state software and this is also from 21 NTCC on tony state too. It’s vacation planning time. 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 online meetings for all. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 ntc, you know what that is. The 2021 nonprofit technology conference conferences virtual this year Were sponsored at 21 NTC by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot C O. My guests now are Cindy Leonard and john Kenyon. Cindy is Ceo at Cindy Leonard consulting and john is principal at john Kenyon consulting. They both have aptly named companies. Welcome Welcome Cindy welcome john

[00:02:09.64] spk_2:
thank you. Thanks Tony, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having us.

[00:02:54.34] spk_1:
Pleasure to have each of you. Your session is intentional. Facilitation choices, creating online meetings for all to enjoy. I put the emphasis on all, but I think we’ll, we’ll explore, explore why we want to do that. So Uh, Cindy, let’s start with you. What, what obviously is very timely but, and, and online meetings we expect to continue right. I mean these are not going to die once the once 90 of the folks or you’ve either been vaccinated or had the coronavirus or whatever. Online meetings are not going away. What just generally, what could we be doing better? It seems like it seems like a lot of mediocrity.

[00:04:01.54] spk_2:
A lot of mediocrity. That’s an interesting. That’s an interesting way to put it. Yeah. So the part of this session, the idea was that, you know, now that everybody has been doing zoom and online meetings for about a year now, you know, we’ve all gotten used to the technological parts. Um, we felt like it was time to do a session that goes beyond that somebody at the Ntc, I forget the breakout session. Um, but they said that technology is a mirror. So when you hold it up to your nonprofit, it reveals all the broken processes and broken tools. And I thought that was very apt. And when you think about that regarding online meetings, you know, everything in terms of inequity, inaccessibility, um, lack of diversity, power dynamics tend to be magnified, you know, where those things existed in person meetings. The technology adds an extra layer of complication. That makes things more inaccessible, more inequitable unless you do specific things to counteract that. And so that’s what this session was largely about.

[00:04:12.74] spk_1:
John you want to add to the Cindy’s introduction at all?

[00:04:39.44] spk_3:
Sure. That like Cindy said, you know, we really tried to share what our vision is for inclusive meetings. And so that means that all folks can contribute equally if they desire and that it’s okay not to using things like you would in person like a talking piece to go around and make sure everyone is able to engage meaningfully and to share. And that it’s okay if if they don’t want to. But digitally we just list people’s name in the chat and have everyone go through so we make sure we don’t miss anyone.

[00:05:00.24] spk_1:
Mm Okay. Okay. Uh so how can we be more intentional as we’re setting up a meeting? Is that a is that is that a place to start? Can we like sort of maybe take this chronologically through uh through a meeting? The pre meeting? The during the meeting and then the post meeting? Is that by doing it justice, if we do it that way?

[00:05:38.94] spk_2:
Yeah, we actually um we split we split our section up into three main sections. One was about inclusion and Power Dynamics. Another section was accessibility techniques, how to before during and after with those and experiential and reflective techniques. So we actually demonstrated a variety of interactive activities that could be used to engage your as a facilitator to engage the audience. So those were the three main sections.

[00:05:45.34] spk_1:
Okay. Is it okay if we uh well I don’t, I don’t want to mess up your

[00:05:50.34] spk_2:
no, you’re fine,

[00:05:52.27] spk_1:
john can we do it? Is that

[00:06:06.04] spk_2:
okay? I think so, yeah, john and Griffin, Griffin Castillo, um who’s not with us today? Uh Griffin and john were covering the power dynamics portion of this. So I think starting there is probably a good idea to john.

[00:06:10.74] spk_3:
Sure. So yeah, tony if it’s okay, I’m going to talk about some aspects of inclusion and then I’ll start to do that. I’ll talk about before during and after a meeting.

[00:06:18.64] spk_1:
Okay, Thank you. Great.

[00:06:20.29] spk_0:
All right.

[00:07:00.64] spk_3:
So some of the aspects of inclusion that we want to make sure people are aware of are the some of the advantages that we bring to our meetings online from having the latest technology to having older technology or only phones and even recognizing folks have no internet access in some areas. Understanding there’s advantages when it comes to digital literacy with computers or software, even having a dedicated space to participate. Our co presenter, Griffin Castillo, is the racial equity ambassador for the Oakland School system and so many students are sharing space with other family members. Understanding some people can respond quickly versus those who are reflective thinkers. So providing different modes for people to share as well as the very common advantages of having expertise, seniority or rank or relational privilege. So you want to be aware of those aspects and then there are specific things you can do before, during and after your meetings to make sure that you’re creating an inclusive and accessible meeting.

[00:08:26.04] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. Well, I mean I gotta, I gotta start with the obvious. You know, I’m asking neophyte questions. You, you all spend, I’ve spent years thinking about these things and I’m coming at it quite a bit newer, uh, for folks who don’t have the technology that’s needed. How do we include them in a meeting that we’re planning online? That has to be online by because of the pandemic, by the way. If you hear any background noise, I’m having some renovations done. So maybe you’re banging. Yeah, there’s a little hammering, buying little drilling going on. So, uh, that’s, that’s, that’s your lackluster host with talk about a non private. I mean, I guess, uh, they’re much, there are much worse environments to have to be a party to a meeting in, but I’m in a lesser one than I than I would like. But that’s what, that that’s what that is, listeners. You’re, you’re hearing my stairs being renovated. Okay. So what about folks who don’t have any, they don’t even access, They don’t have digital access. How do we accommodate them? How have we accommodated them and how can we going forward in online meetings?

[00:09:10.84] spk_3:
Sure. So two of the ways we talked about were make sure that you’re providing offline readable versions of any documents or presentations for those who can’t see them live or can’t see them online but may be able to download them as well as documenting your notes and providing recordings, either video or audio to allow folks to review materials, digest them at their own pace. And that also supports accessibility, which are some of the pieces that Cindy talked about. Okay.

[00:09:21.84] spk_1:
It still seems like, I don’t know. It still seems insurmountable though if you’re, if you’re giving them a recording, but I mean if they don’t have internet access, how can you give them the recording?

[00:09:44.34] spk_3:
Sure. So the example I use, I often work with native american people and for example sometimes they need to drive a half hour in order to get a signal on their phone. Or they could go to a library on the reservation or wherever they are. So it is possible for them to get access. It just may not be live and it just may not be high speed. So as long as you’re providing those materials and there is a way for them to get them and put them on their devices or print them out if needed. That helps.

[00:10:16.44] spk_1:
So as you’re planning meetings you need to be aware that there may be folks that are going to raise their hand and say I can’t attend the zoom meeting at one o’clock tomorrow. You know, I don’t have that kind of access or I don’t have the, you mentioned even the privacy, uh, maybe they have online access, but they don’t have a private space to to listen and, and yeah, to listen and participate.

[00:11:20.14] spk_3:
Sure. Yeah. So I’ll talk about some of the things um, that that I covered and then I’m going to pass it to Cindy because she’s got some great ideas and when it comes to accessibility for people of all abilities. So one of the things tony that like you said before the meeting, it’s really important to discuss the issues that I mentioned about, you know, advantages and and our vision um with those with privilege to get by in so that they understand we want to allow all voices to be heard and that we think about ways to include everyone when we’re planning for meetings, Um that we, you know, make sure that that is part of our planning. That we ask attendees about accommodation needs up front during registration and that we have a plan to accommodate people with different abilities so that you know, we already know somebody who can do american sign language interpretation. We already know someone who can live caption. Uh, the presentation that we’re giving. Um, and I know for example, other pieces that that Cindy helped us worked on was if you have somebody who is sight impaired or blind, um reading the description of any visuals that you have. And Cindy was also great because she added something called all text that I’ll let her talk about two images. Cindy talk about that for us.

[00:11:47.04] spk_1:
Let them uh, we’re talking about inclusion. Accessibility. Cindy, Cindy is them Cindy. Thank you. I just you know, it’s all done in politely but you know, we got to be respectful. Right? It’s

[00:11:56.73] spk_2:
all right. Yeah. Absolutely. And I don’t walk if somebody says she her I don’t I don’t freak out. Okay. I do identify this non binary.

[00:12:05.14] spk_1:
Do the better you do the best we can. All right.

[00:12:07.24] spk_2:
Yeah. So yeah. One of the

[00:12:09.54] spk_1:
we’ll never make that mistake again. I assure you that.

[00:14:21.74] spk_2:
Okay. Um So yeah, so um one of the things that we did uh did we did do as an accessibility technique during the meeting and we probably should be doing this for radio interviews as well. One would think whenever we did our introductions uh for example, I said I’m Cindy Leonard from local velocity learned consulting. And I am a white white person with long straight brown hair and green glasses and today I have on a plaid sweater and I’m sitting with a yellow blank yellow wall background behind me and the idea of describing yourself um for people who aren’t either are excited or how vision impairment, but there’s also people that, you know, if you’ve ever tried to connect to a zoom meeting on your phone, the video isn’t always great or maybe you’re not in a place where you can watch the video, but you’re listening to it. Maybe you’re commuting or in your car. Um, so having that visual described is really important, not just for people with vision impairments, but for everyone, you know, and I talked a little bit during my piece about universal design, you know, and so one of the great examples of universal design design that is good for everyone helps people with disabilities. That is also good for morgan. What more of an audience is the concept of curb cuts Now, this is a low tech example, but the curb cut that, that little cut out at the corner of a sidewalk, you know, it’s, it’s great for people with using a wheelchair. It’s great for people using on a cane, you know, walking that have blindness. But insults are great for women and strong women with babies in strollers. It’s great for delivery persons. It’s great for older people who tend to trip on, you know, as we age, we tend to trip more. Um, so the idea is to make your power point and your meeting and your handouts more accessible and it helps everyone, not just people with disabilities.

[00:14:38.64] spk_1:
I’ve had guests from previous ntc’s make that point often. Uh Usually I think in the, in the context of a web, web, web design, uh it benefits benefits everyone. It reduces, you know, if if you’re using the right contrast levels, it reduces eyestrain for for everybody uh etcetera

[00:16:22.34] spk_2:
etcetera. Alright. Yeah, it really does overlap. I’ve been one of my, one of my consulting practice pieces is web website development, which I’ve been doing for about 20 years and there is a lot of overlap. A lot of the things that I’m saying about your power point back also applies to your website. So for example, the alternative text alternative text is what is red in lieu of the file name of a photo. So if I’m, let’s say I am a person who is blind and I’m using a screen reader software that is reading the web page to me or reading the power point debt to me when it gets to the images. If it doesn’t have alternative text which is descriptive text that you deliberately added to the image, it will read the file name of the image that’s been inserted or that’s uploaded. And that means, you know, it’ll read like, like image, it will say like I M G 678 jpeg. And that means nothing to anyone. So the idea is to describe the images in the alternative tax, so that, you know, whenever whenever I’m trying to figure out how to do that, when I’m either doing a website or a power point is I like to pretend that I’m sitting here in my office with somebody who has vision impairment and that I’m trying to, you know, like, here’s a picture, I’m trying to explain to them what is on the picture. So it’s helpful to me to imagine a person beside me that I’m trying to describe something to.

[00:16:47.54] spk_1:
Mhm john how about um if we transition um we’re a little bit all all encompassing, but uh that’s okay, that’s fine. As long as folks get the information, it doesn’t really matter what, what format it comes in or what, what, what theme we use. But like is there anything you can say specific to during, during a meeting that we haven’t talked about yet?

[00:16:50.64] spk_2:
The, the,

[00:16:52.14] spk_1:
that we need to

[00:18:14.44] spk_3:
Sure. So some of the things that we did in our session and that I try to do consistently is when I introduce myself as you mentioned earlier, using uh sharing that. I’m john Kenyon and my pronouns are he and him just as Cindy’s pronouns, are they in them and I’m not enforcing that or asking everyone to, to say that, but it just helps people with different gender identities feel included. Something else I do is when I introduced myself, I say that I’m coming to you from the occupied lands of the native coast, miwok people and that I send my respects to them and their leaders past, present and emerging again to just recognize that the land on which I am currently living was not originally my land and again helps people who are native people feel included. And that’s a practice I actually learned from my Australian colleagues because they are trying to be respectful of the Aborigines, the native Australian people. I’d also say that what we try to do is have real clear guidelines for participants. Something excellent that one of our session participants shared was doing, including things such as suspending judgment, suspending guilt, suspending assumptions and embracing awareness toward understanding, embracing leaning into discomfort. If you don’t feel comfortable with the topic or sharing, being able to lean into that,

[00:18:27.14] spk_1:
lean into meaning, express it,

[00:18:29.29] spk_3:
that’s right. Being in

[00:18:31.08] spk_1:
a forum where you can you can say something

[00:18:45.24] spk_3:
right and being able to say so, you know, tony you’re you’re our boss and you’re handling this meeting and you’re not letting any of, you know, the emerging leaders of the younger folks speak and you know, finding respectful and positive ways to bring that out. So for example, just to name that, to say, you’re not letting other folks speak, why is that? I’m not judging you, I’m not shaking my finger at you, but that we’re naming it,

[00:19:02.74] spk_1:
bring out the power dynamics

[00:19:23.54] spk_2:
and some accessibility related things that we do during a meeting are they’re actually pretty intuitive once, once you hear them, but if you don’t deliberately think about them, you know that you can miss things. But for example, use plain language, you know, every industry has a lot of jargon and you cannot guarantee everybody knows the jargon.

[00:19:25.89] spk_1:
non profit radio we have drug in jail

[00:19:28.50] spk_2:
in jail. I like it. I’m not hesitant to put people in like a

[00:19:32.48] spk_1:
transgress

[00:19:33.59] spk_2:
acronyms are another big thing in our second, everybody loves their, you know, so don’t say in 10 say the nonprofit technology network first, you know, okay, well,

[00:20:27.14] spk_1:
and then they don’t want to be the nonprofit technology network anymore. They’re like, I was thinking maybe he said that, but I’ve been admonished by the CEO maybe I said and 10 earlier, but example award that the N 10 Ceo is is a regular contributor, a technology contributor to my show, she’s admonished me to stop saying non profit Technology Network. So it comes from that comes to the top, but absolutely acronyms, you know, fundraising is full of them. I do plan giving and there’s all kinds of acronyms around trusts and just the, the, the assumption that everybody knows what you’re talking about. I mean I I shoot my hand up and say, what is that? You know, I’m right, right self, I’ve been doing it all my life, so it’s, you know, Uh, so I don’t mind people, but if one person doesn’t understand it’s probably 50 or don’t.

[00:21:11.84] spk_2:
Exactly. Another another point, another point is to give sufficient time a little more than you think you need to for people getting into breakout rooms on on the online software, forgetting to any third party exercises, responding in the chat box, any interactive activities. Not everybody is a fast clicker. You know, like I’m a power user. I guess you could say I’m on a laptop or a computer, so I’m really fast on the clicking, but not everybody is like that. People need time. Some people need more time to find what they’re supposed to be doing or where they’re supposed to be calling. So you want to be careful about that as well? Yeah.

[00:21:30.24] spk_1:
All right. Mm. Um, how about after after the meeting follow up, john you had mentioned. Uh, I think it was you john readable documents. Uh, what else, what else should we be doing and follow up to be sensitive to

[00:21:52.34] spk_3:
Sure. So just to reiterate, like I said, making sure that you have all your documents and notes and things like that that you can share with people so they can download them and read them off line or print them out. Something else that was suggested in our session. And that we try to do is post meeting surveys and ask, how did we do with inclusion? How did we do with accessibility if you’re an emerging leader? Did you feel centered? Did you feel excluded or included? Did we give everyone time and space to participate whether they’re able to share immediately or There are more reflective thinkers, like many of us are

[00:22:10.84] spk_1:
Cindy, anything you want to add there?

[00:22:13.57] spk_2:
No, not at all. But that’s great, john that was a great summary. I would like to send a shout out to our, we mentioned Griffin Castillo, one of our co

[00:22:22.66] spk_1:
presenter. I was gonna, I was gonna put a moratorium on mentioning him because he didn’t join us for the interview here.

[00:22:58.84] spk_2:
No. And now so are other co presenter his name, I don’t think we’ve mentioned yet is Jean Allen and Jeanne Allen is she’s, she’s a dual role. She’s with a nonprofit, she’s on the board of a nonprofit in north Carolina with his name, which name of which I cannot remember. Um but she’s also uh independent nonprofit consultant herself. She’s been at it for many years. Very smart lady. She ran she talked about all of the interactive how exercises how to include more engagement and your breakout session to make it more interesting or in your in your online meeting.

[00:23:12.64] spk_1:
Is there anything from that that you can you can share as well as you would have. But I mean for engagement possibilities in online Yeah, what can you reveal?

[00:23:53.04] spk_2:
Yeah, it was something as simple to an exercise. She called the chatter fall exercise chatter fall like a waterfall. Um And we put a put a question on the screen that says an idea emerging for me is why. And she had them all not hit send but deployed at their answers with the reflections in the comments box of chat box. And then she had them all had sent at the same time and it was just this beautiful cascade of all kinds of thoughts and comments all coming out at once. And there was a lot of, there were a lot of unifying ideas and themes emerged from that. And then she also showed us a tour

[00:23:59.21] spk_1:
which, hold on, tell me again, what was the lead into that? What was the statement that folks were supposed to fill in the blank? What we asked

[00:24:13.34] spk_2:
them to tell us an idea emerging for me, meaning emerging from the sessions of our is. And then they were supposed to finish

[00:24:18.85] spk_1:
Thank you.

[00:24:56.44] spk_2:
Yeah, it could be any question. Of course. Of course, Yeah. Um and Jeanne also did a live example of a google jamma board. So jam, like, like let’s Jam, you know? Um and it’s a really, it’s almost like an inner john you can help me with the description on this. It’s almost like a, like an interactive, multi user whiteboard. It reminds me of a smart board, did you have in a classroom or a meeting room? Except that everybody accesses it at the same time. And you could add post it notes and and print on it and scribble on it. It’s really eat right. The double suite.

[00:25:15.84] spk_3:
That’s that’s right. Yeah. It’s almost as if, as we often do an offline meetings, you have a wall where people are putting up post its and people can put up post its and write anything they want on them. We were able even showed folks how we were able to upload images and pictures. So it’s, as Cindy said, this nice interactive place where people can share, you could even do something like here’s a question. Do you agree or not? And put your posted five is totally agree. One is, I don’t agree at all. So you get a spectrum of answers and see where people lie on the answer to the question. It’s not just thumbs up or thumbs down.

[00:25:42.14] spk_1:
This is called a google jam board jam board. And how does it relate to using zoom for meetings? Is it a is it like a screen share? Someone shares their screen and they show their jam board and then everybody, everybody can participate how zoom

[00:26:01.74] spk_2:
meeting you give them a link and you send them off to the tool, they stay in zoom, they stay in the room so they keep zoom active, but you’re sending them to their browser and it opens in a browser tab.

[00:26:16.84] spk_1:
Okay. So everybody’s doing it independently along alongside zoom. Okay. All right. We have just a couple minutes left. Anything that we haven’t talked about that either of you want to bring up in a closing a couple minutes.

[00:26:28.64] spk_3:
Uh huh. Sure. So I think for my closing, I would just share a participant quote from our session which which really resonated with me and they said, even if I’m a participant rather than a leader of a group, I can still practice and demonstrate accessible and inclusive practices by describing visuals, Making sure I engage people in the chat, sharing my pronouns, making sure I provide room for everyone to share,

[00:26:49.34] spk_1:
john why don’t you describe your background? Let’s try to put this into practice and I’ll do it in my clothes, Go ahead or describe yourself on your background.

[00:27:15.94] spk_3:
Great. So I’m john I’m a white male, I’ve got gray hair and a little bit of a beard. I’m sitting in a room that has white walls. I’ve got a kind of a delft blue curtain behind me and some flowers, the flowers are called veronica. Um and so yeah, that’s and I’m wearing a dark blue shirt.

[00:27:44.44] spk_1:
I’m Tony, I have a red t shirt on my hair is mostly white, a little smattering of dark remaining. But, but it’s, it’s stunning and dashing nonetheless, even though it’s 90% white uh, you know, you’re supposed to not supposed to editorialize right, supposed to keep it factual. I have stunning, stunning, boring background of my hp printer and uh pretty much white walls behind uh in a red t shirt and I wear glasses. I wear glasses.

[00:27:48.84] spk_2:
Thanks. That was excellent. Uh huh.

[00:27:52.54] spk_1:
Yeah, they are Cindy Leonard. Ceo, Cindy Leonard consulting and john Kenyon principal john Kenyon consulting thanks to each of you for sharing. Thank you. Cindy. Thank you john,

[00:28:03.84] spk_2:
thank you for having us. Real

[00:28:05.84] spk_3:
pleasure. Thank you.

[00:31:44.24] spk_1:
Thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 ntc 2021 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot c o. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Let’s talk a little bit more detail about them. The ambitious biden agenda released a couple of weeks ago. Is there anything in there that impacts your work touches on what you do at all? Anything you’d like to be heard on may be quoted on be a trusted source about you can improve your chances of getting an op ed published or being a source or getting quoted working with turn to because they have the relationships to make these things happen for you so so much better than you or someone in your office cold calling a journalist or blogger whoever it is that you’re trying to reach that doesn’t know you, you want somebody who’s got the relationships you want to turn to because your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. It’s time for Tony’s take two. It’s time to plan your summer time off. Yes, I uh It’s finger wagging time. No camera here. But you got to take care of yourself folks. Please. You need to take care of yourself this summer. What a what a 18 months it’s been. Maybe last summer was a blur. Certainly you couldn’t go anywhere. And I hope you didn’t because it wasn’t safe. It’s changed. You know that master of the obvious. So plan your summer. Get it. Let’s get the plans going. Get the reservations made, book the week book the two weeks. You’ve got to block it and then preserve it, preserve it for yourself. Honor it. It can’t be interrupted. You got to set boundaries set that time for yourself and make boundaries around it. Honor that time. No, I’m sorry you can’t get together then. No, I won’t be able to do that meeting. No, now now that that weekend is not good. Now that week isn’t good either. You gotta make time for yourself and preserve it. Please yourself. Your family. If you have a family, get that time away this summer, you need it, you deserve it. You want to take care of others. Whether it’s on the professional side, those folks you take care of or it’s on the family side, you want to take care of your family. You’ve got to take care of yourself, please this summer, especially of all of all summers since last summer was such a bad bust. Set the time aside. Honor it. No encroachments, do it for yourself, do it for those who you take care of. That is Tony’s take two. We have boo koo but loads more time for nonprofit radio here is online accessibility beyond meetings. Welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 NTC the 2021 nonprofit technology conference. We’re sponsored at 21 NTC by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot C o. With me now is martin caucus a president of bound state Software martin. Welcome to nonprofit radio’s coverage of 21 ntc.

[00:31:53.94] spk_0:
Hi Tony, thanks for having me

[00:32:05.44] spk_1:
a pleasure, absolute pleasure. Your session was 10 common accessibility issues and how to fix them. I would like to start at the basic ground level. Let’s just define what accessibility is before we identify the issues.

[00:33:21.64] spk_0:
Yeah. So I think you can define accessibility as making well in this case like your websites, uh, making it accessible to everyone and what that means is that there’s four different levels. So whether they’re perceivable, which means that people can like actually see what’s going on operable, which means I can actually not like use your website without um special requirements. So if you for example a mouse or something like that, they might not be able to use that um understandable. So that means that they want to be able to you want to be able to make sure that people when they go to your website or accessing some content that they can understand what’s going on. It’s not confusing and robust. It means that it’s just a future proof and it can be used across various types of like uh technology. So like web browsers or um screen readers and stuff like that. So it kind of encompasses all that is making it is making your website be accessible to to everyone apart from if they have um impairments or anything like that, disabilities.

[00:33:37.24] spk_1:
We know what the penetration rate is among nonprofit websites. If we use that definition of accessibility. Um sorry,

[00:33:37.91] spk_0:
can you say that again?

[00:33:38.78] spk_1:
Do we know what the penetration rate is? How common are accessible websites in nonprofits using your definition?

[00:34:20.64] spk_0:
Uh, to be, I don’t have a specific number per se, but from just from my research and from browsing different types of websites. non profit websites. It’s not it’s not too common, like it’s something that I think it’s becoming more uh top of mine, but like I see it in proposals or RFP s and stuff like that more and more and more and more often, especially if the organization has like some government funding and the requirements come from that, but it’s not something that’s um commonly found. So

[00:34:32.64] spk_1:
there’s a lot of room for improvement. Yeah, I think so. Okay. Okay. Um can you help us spot potential problems on our own website? Yeah. Good. Sure.

[00:35:04.24] spk_0:
Um Yeah so that’s kind of what uh my talk with and at the conference and I just wanted to give people some some tools and like some understanding of what’s going on their website. So they can they could take them take them home and start working on it and see you know, how can we make our web sites more accessible? It might not be like fully accessible in terms of the various levels but at least getting started. So at the most basic level. So somebody has used enough system technology. Can you can use your website that goes a long way. So. Yeah,

[00:35:14.44] spk_1:
well we’re not gonna be able to do everything overnight. It’s not gonna be like flipping a switch but no we can approach this incrementally and make it more make our site more accessible.

[00:36:00.13] spk_0:
Yeah, exactly. I think that’s the right approach. So I think, to begin with, I wanted to like differentiate between a couple of different issues. So like sometimes these issues are caused by their technical issues, so it might be caused by the templates or in quotation marks, the code. Um, so you might need a developer, uh, to, to help you with it. And other ones are more like low hanging fruit. I think it’s just like things that are related to content. So a lot of the nonprofits use like content management systems to up their websites to create blogs and content. So some of this stuff can be like fixed through just having an understanding of, okay, what are the guidelines that should follow, um, to create more accessible content?

[00:36:15.33] spk_1:
Okay, yeah, So let’s let’s let’s focus on the low hanging fruit, the stuff we can do on our own because our listeners are small and midsize shops. So, you know, they may very well not have an internal developer and hiring an external developer maybe outside their means. So let’s start the stuff we can we can do on our own. Yeah, let’s do that thing. Yeah.

[00:37:06.53] spk_0:
So the first one is it’s pretty basic, but it’s um, it’s page title. So page titles are very important for for orientation. It’s the first thing, like for example, screen reader reads when you’re like when you line on a new page, it’s a good way to differentiate and move between pages and move between pages. So, um, you want to make sure that page titles are unique and they provide um enough information to know what that page is about. Um, another tip that you want to be looking for is that you want to make sure that the most unique and most relevant information comes first. So rather than putting like your organization name first, you want to put it at the end and make sure like whatever the pages about it comes up at the beginning. And this is also some of these practices are also like best practices for the web, but also for like a Ceo and things like that.

[00:37:18.53] spk_1:
Can you explain why does the organization name go at the bottom? Why is that lower?

[00:37:31.73] spk_0:
Because you want to make sure that whatever is the most important part, the most relevant to that page Comes 1st and then your organization comes

[00:37:34.17] spk_1:
after they already know they’re on your organization site. So

[00:37:53.03] spk_0:
yeah. So perhaps if you’re on the home page, you wouldn’t follow that. Like maybe like depends how your SEO strategy is. But if you’re on the about page or or blog article, you want to make sure that the title is at the beginning of the title of the blog or the title of your about page, because that’s kind of what that person is looking for, otherwise it can it can be distracting. Okay,

[00:37:58.53] spk_1:
okay. What else? What

[00:39:35.12] spk_0:
another thing is just headings like this is again pretty basic things, but you want to make sure that when you’re correct, craft and content. Um and a lot of the usability guidelines go hand in hand with like uh just sorry, the accessibility guidelines go hand in hand with usability. Um So when you’re making like, let’s say creating content for the web, you want to make sure that it’s split up and you’re using headings appropriately, so the continent’s more digestible, so it’s easier to understand, but it um and then also if you’re using these headings, you want to make sure that they follow a hierarchy. So typically pages will start with heading one, which is the largest heading. That will be the page title. And as you work down the page, you want to make sure that that hierarchy is maintained. So then that would follow by an H two tag, which again, if you’re using a content management system, you would be able to just select the H two tag is similar to like award uh like a more document and things like that. Um And then a little bit more technical is you want to make sure that when you when you’re selecting these headings that they actually look like headings and on the code side, you want to make sure that there for like their semantically um tagged as heading. So what that means is like in the actual page code is there’s like a little tag, this is H one H two H three, so it needs to be created that way because they’re used as anchors for again, for screen, right? Just to to be able to understand what’s going on. Some people that sounds like they’re sections,

[00:39:39.62] spk_1:
that sounds like it’s just a matter of highlighting the code. Sorry, highlighting the text and tagging it as H one H two H three. Yeah,

[00:39:53.72] spk_0:
exactly. And there’s little tools that you could use, like you don’t have to know how to look at the code. Like there’s plenty of um

[00:39:55.62] spk_1:
yeah, we’re trying to result there’s we’re trying to avoid the code for for right now. Yeah, you can do at our desk if we’re not a developer.

[00:40:02.85] spk_0:
Yeah, you could do this like um as long as you, if you’re using WordPress, you can just select the right appropriate tag and if the theme or or the template you’re using is properly done, then you shouldn’t have any issue.

[00:40:16.41] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. Other low hanging fruit, I’m sure you’ve got a bunch of this bunch of these. Yeah.

[00:41:24.11] spk_0:
Yeah. So another one is uh your link, text a lot of the times, like people will put in something like for more information about my organization click here now um you you want to make sure that you’re when you’re creating links that people understand, like where they’re going, like where that link is taking them and so you want to be able to when you’re creating these links, you want to create, create context rich links. Um And the reason for that is because some some assistive technologies that allowed them to view all the links in one page, just so you land on a page, see all the lengths and they’re listed in order. So say that you have a lot of click here’s like they don’t really make sense out of context, so it doesn’t really help them, it’s confusing. So rather than doing something like that, you want to make sure that the the lengths make sense out of context. So you want to say, learn more about my organization, that’s the entire link. So when somebody is scanning through all the links, it makes sense to them.

[00:41:25.41] spk_1:
All right. So it’s a matter of which words are linked. Yeah,

[00:41:29.37] spk_0:
exactly. And

[00:41:30.00] spk_1:
linking the word here here here.

[00:41:42.41] spk_0:
Exactly, Yeah. And and the same thing goes with buttons, for example, you don’t want to have like buttons that are just generic like submit. You want to make sure that they’re descriptive. So, again, this goes hand in hand with usability. So you want to make sure that the button says for example if it’s a newsletter, subscribe to newsletter so they know what the action they’re taking.

[00:41:58.21] spk_1:
I see. All right. That that explains something that I’ve wondered about why some people have or some I see mostly in journalism too. And now I’m thinking about it you know like five or six words will be highlighted as the link. One of them.

[00:42:27.20] spk_0:
Yeah. And it’s also it’s also but yeah. Okay. And it’s also better for S. C. 02 because you’re that’s kind of uh in essence like google crawls your site through a boat. So and it’s very similar to a screen reader. Read it. So they would they look at the links and it’s like okay, this link is this. Um And then you would you answer that phrase and then that’s how it starts to understand what’s going on on your website and where web pages to navigate to. Yeah.

[00:42:38.70] spk_1:
Rich links. All right. Give us more. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:09.30] spk_0:
Yeah. Another one is um text alternatives. I’m sure everyone well not everyone, but this is more familiar. Like all text is the text alternative description of an image. So of course, if you’re if you can’t see and using a screen reader, you can’t see what the image is about. Uh So you can you can provide a description for the image um about what that image is about or the or why that that image is there. So what’s the function? Um If it’s just like a decorative image, you don’t you don’t need to put anything, but if it serves a purpose, it’s important to have that their

[00:43:18.98] spk_1:
description.

[00:43:26.30] spk_0:
So typically when your uploaded a new image on your content management system, you have the option that they will be like a little descriptor field even say I’ll text and then you can just put it in there.

[00:43:33.60] spk_1:
All text. Yeah.

[00:43:55.50] spk_0:
Yeah. It’s it’s it’s very common. It’s just a lot of times you’re like uploading a lot of images and going through like doing a million things. So it’s one of the things that’s easy to miss and it can be hard to also to think about what uh huh what, what to put in there. So I think, yeah,

[00:43:57.40] spk_1:
I guess otherwise the person, the screen reader is just going to see like a file name.

[00:44:02.49] spk_0:
Yeah, exactly.

[00:44:03.68] spk_1:
Yeah. Image seven dot jpeg. Which is Yeah.

[00:44:32.29] spk_0:
Yeah. Or maybe a default value that the program are put in there. Might say default. Yeah. It’s not great. Yeah. And then in the same and lines with the, with the links that we talked about before, a lot of times you use images as links. So you want to make sure that in the all text, your including the destination, if you’re using an image for a link, making sure, okay, where is this link taking me? It’s it’s kind of tied into what we talked about before,

[00:44:40.09] spk_1:
yep. Okay. But the content, content and links. Okay. Others uh yeah.

[00:45:26.89] spk_0:
uh number five would be multimedia like so a podcast for example, um Not available like two people with with hard of hearing or death, um, visuals and videos are not able to people who are blind. So you want to, you want to provide a way to to help these people. Um not only that, it’s just people without, with without disabilities were out, I don’t know, taking the train or something, you want to watch a video, but you don’t want the sound to be on having captions. Um it’s very useful. Um, if you’re learning a new language, like I learn english like having captions, it’s very useful to understand what’s going on. So there’s many uses of why multimedia should have um, should provide an alternative to to consume that. So like a transcript

[00:45:31.14] spk_1:
transcripts, podcasts,

[00:46:42.88] spk_0:
Yeah, a transcript for podcast, for audio and visual content maybe captions. I mean they can be quite elaborate elaborate to to create, but uh, it’s it’s one of the requirements for or guidelines for accessibility. Um, I think these next two are the ones that I talked about before, but um, and they kind of go hand in hand. One is simple content. Like a lot of what I see a lot is just like people just dumping information and information on their websites. And I think it’s important, especially with, for people with cognitive disabilities are really anyone if you’re landing on a page and it’s just like blocks attacks that you have to scan through and trying to understand what’s going on. Like it’s not very usable and again it’s not accessible. So you want to make sure when you’re creating content, you really think about what message you’re trying to convey and you you formatted in a way that’s simple and use a simple language. So Try to aim for an 8th grade level and there’s some tools there that kind of help you with that and help you edit your content so it’s more digestible.

[00:46:46.16] spk_1:
Okay. 8th grade, I’m wondering if I’ve even heard lower than that. Like sixth grade? I’m not sure.

[00:46:59.68] spk_0:
Yeah, I’m not sure. I think I think there is I use a tool called Hemingway editor and I think that one even goes down even further. But yeah, I think if you get to eighth grade and it gives you a check mark.

[00:47:04.17] spk_1:
Okay. Okay Hemingway is that a free resource that listeners can use?

[00:47:08.29] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just go I think it’s just if you google Hemingway editor, it’s just like a free tool you can use online.

[00:47:18.78] spk_1:
Okay. That’s cool. Thank you. I like I like resources. All right. And you said something related to that?

[00:49:58.87] spk_0:
Yeah, So the same same thing. It’s uh your your layout. We talked about the heading simple content. All go hand in hand layout in terms of like how you’re structuring your page, you want to make sure it’s just simple, straightforward. Um I’m not going to go into more than this because it goes into more like design and things that you really can, you can really change without the help of maybe a designer or developer. So I won’t touch them more on that. But the next one I will touch on is contrast ratio and this is another one that’s quite popular when you think of accessibility, like okay, like it needs to be like the contrast needs to be enough so people can can read what’s the tax? Um Right, so one of the things you want to use is there’s plenty of tools out there if you if you just google contrast checker. Um I think one I have here in front of the web, I am dot org and it’s contrast checker. That’s I think the one I use most of the time. Um you just put in two colours and there’s just like it spits out to two different results, whether it passes or not. Um So that that’s pretty straightforward. It falls within like the template sort of but uh now more and more like with the CMS, you can you can change anything right? Like you can change the colour depending on the flexibility of the template. Um, A big one is images, so like a lot of nonprofits like to use images, um because obviously it’s an easier way to like resonate with your audience. Like you can, you get a better feel of what what they’re about. But the problem is that they like, it’s common to overlay text over there and now you’re giving your staff the ability to upload new images and then change the text. Um and then that becomes really tricky if, if it’s not a nice theme or if the image is not great. Um Now you’re having contrast issues. So like, for example, having like simple overlays, it’s like making sure your image is dark enough, so there’s some contrast um goes a long way, There’s other tips for in terms of design that you can do to overcome that but um like putting like a little background on on the actual text so it stands out more. Um But yeah, I think it’s one of the tips, let’s just be careful and the images you’re picking, making sure there’s enough contrast or and if it’s not adding some sort, if you if you have the skills just adding a bit of like a darker um rectangle overtop, like through whatever image processing software that you use

[00:50:31.26] spk_1:
and you can check this with which the well by the way, I want to just make sure everybody knows CMS is your content management system, just in case everybody questioning that, I’m not gonna put martin in jargon jail because I think CMS is pretty, pretty widely known, but if you get if you get to giardini martin then my jargon jail. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. But I’m not putting you in there for CMS. I think that’s pretty, it is widely known but just just in case there’s any listeners who don’t know CMS is your content management system and stunning. Absolutely. But be careful because you’ve transgressed, I

[00:50:34.59] spk_0:
don’t know when I go to jail, I don’t have a jail free card. So Yes, that’s right.

[00:50:40.76] spk_1:
Well I I allow um uh parole is not too hard to get.

[00:50:42.66] spk_0:
Okay. That’s good. Good to hear.

[00:50:44.42] spk_1:
What’s the contrast checker again that resource that folks can use.

[00:50:56.06] spk_0:
So it’s web uh it’s web A. I am dot org. Okay. Um and then if you go to the website it’s just under the resources as contrast checker. Yeah.

[00:51:02.36] spk_1:
Okay. And you can just google contrast checker as well.

[00:51:04.73] spk_0:
Yeah, there’s there’s probably like more than 20 different tools but

[00:51:10.96] spk_1:
martin picasa recommended one is web A I. M.

[00:51:14.66] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. They have a few other tools. That’s the one that’s

[00:51:17.37] spk_1:
it’s got the blessing. It’s got the yeah, it’s a blessing. All right.

[00:51:21.38] spk_0:
Sure. Let’s go with that. All right.

[00:51:23.36] spk_1:
So does that does that exhaust the ones that folks can do on their own without a developer? Let’s

[00:52:23.35] spk_0:
see. I think the last one is actually um it’s not really an issue but something that’s nice to have is an accessibility statement. And during my uh talk, a couple of people like this um so they’re an excessively statement is just it’s an important it’s kind of think about it like a privacy statement. But for accessibility it shows your users that you you kind of care about accessibility and about them provide some information about the accessibility of the content. What steps are you taking to to do um to make your website accessible? And then you can provide an option to to receive feedback. So if they notice any problems they can they can they can reach out and let you know because issues will come up as you create new content or things get updated, there’ll be regressions and um you kind of have to stay on top of it. Accessibility just periodically do checks to make sure that uh nothing nothing fails. So

[00:52:26.15] spk_1:
yeah, that bleeds into maintaining accessibility over time. We have a few more minutes left. What’s your advice around keeping this up?

[00:53:44.05] spk_0:
Yeah. So I think to to keep this up, but you gotta understand that again. Regressions are common if you’re constantly updating your website and upload in your content. I think having manual checks periodically, so maybe once a month you have a bit of a checklist to go through. Um It’s a good idea. I think sharing some guidelines with your team, it’s it will go a long way rather than be um reactive and unfixed changes as they come up. Like you can make sure the new content that you’re creating meets the guidelines. So just having like a little checklist of. Okay, well, these are the common things that you want, we want to stick with will go a long way and then later, like, or if your budget allows, there’s a bunch of automation tools that will like run tests for you um on your website. So if you’re a bigger site and you have thousands of articles or things like that you might want to look into into that and and and accessibility of is it important to you that it might be worth it? Um So for example, I have here um like from DEak X. So it’s like an extension um There’s also accessibility insights from Microsoft or again the same website I linked to before. Well webbing. Uh they have a wave evaluation tools that you can wait. Let

[00:54:03.84] spk_1:
it goes more at the time. By the way, I have some floor work going on. So if you hear a circular star or some hammering or drilling okay, renovations outside and no worries.

[00:54:05.58] spk_0:
If you’re a crying baby, that’s that’s my baby outside the

[00:54:08.74] spk_1:
daughter. So.

[00:54:09.46] spk_0:
Okay. I

[00:54:15.14] spk_1:
haven’t heard any. All right, okay, great. Wait, let’s tick through those um those those resources again a little slower.

[00:54:18.03] spk_0:
Yeah, sure. Um So there’s acts by deke um Let’s see if I have the I don’t really have. Yeah. So like the website is D E. Q. U. E dot com for slash X.

[00:54:34.04] spk_3:
X X

[00:54:35.37] spk_1:
X

[00:54:36.11] spk_0:
A X E

[00:54:38.02] spk_1:
X C four slash X. Okay.

[00:54:40.94] spk_0:
Then the other one is again the it’s the same website I mentioned before. They have an evaluation tool. So all these are kind of like extensions you install in your browser and then you can click a button and that tells you all these all the issues on your page. So it’s kind of like a handy thing.

[00:54:56.81] spk_1:
Yeah, the other one was what? Web dot A. I am.

[00:55:01.14] spk_0:
Yeah. That’s right.

[00:55:05.64] spk_1:
Okay. And and so all right. So there’s there’s a accessibility checker there as well.

[00:55:08.01] spk_0:
Yeah. And then the last one is by Microsoft is just this one is easy. Its accessibility insights that I owe.

[00:55:24.84] spk_1:
Okay, accessibility insights dot io Yeah. Alright. We like free tools like free totally bring this, bring this uh

[00:55:45.94] spk_0:
and I guess I’ll do one more. Um There’s a Khan Academy has one that is quite friendly. I don’t I mean I like it, it’s just like a little tool that you add to your bookmark and then whenever you go to a website you just click on that and it creates like a little pop up. Um So if you google just con economy and it’s uh it’s T. O. T. A. 11 Y.

[00:55:49.66] spk_1:
Way Con con K. H. A. N.

[00:55:54.82] spk_0:
Yeah akademi

[00:55:56.66] spk_1:
Khan Academy. Yeah.

[00:55:58.49] spk_0:
And then the tool is it’s T. O. T. A. 11 Y.

[00:56:03.53] spk_1:
T. O. T. A. 11 Y.

[00:56:05.67] spk_0:
Yeah so I think I don’t have an actual you’re all for it but it’s said to I use. Okay, so we can find

[00:57:29.43] spk_1:
an account academies. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right, thank you for those uh free resources. I like those. We’re gonna leave it there, martin. All right, okay. Cool. Well thank you for having me my pleasure. He’s martin to CASA President abound state software. Thank you again martin and thank you for being with 20 martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21. Ntc the 2021 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot c O next week. First generation wealth with Esther choi 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. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, yeah, thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty You with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95 go out and be great. Yeah.

Nonprofit Radio for January 13, 2017: Digital Inclusion Furthers Impact & Your Annual Grants Plan

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure amblyopia if i saw that you missed today’s show digital inclusion furthers impact more people than you’d expect don’t have home access to the internet. This has implications for the people you are trying to help. Our panelists from the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference have each made digital inclusion a priority, and they share their wisdom. Kemi griffiths leads the community technology network karen lincoln is from the stride center, and alicia orosco is with the chicana latina foundation and your annual grants plan. We start with the basics, then move into goals and metrics. Finally, colleague engagement. So you’re not alone making your plan and executing it. Diane leonard is president and owner of d h leonard consulting attorneys take two, mohr ntcdinosaur goes responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com here is our panel on digital inclusion welcome. To tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc non-profit technology conference in san jose, california, at the convention center, i guess now are camby, griffiths, karen lincoln and alicia roscoe. Cam e is executive director of community technology network she’s seated next to me. Hoexter haris carry in lincoln director of business and operations, the stride center and alicia orosco is manager of administration special projects at the chicano latina foundation. Ladies welcome. Thank thank you. Thank you. You have a very provocative, interesting topic digital inclusion to further your impact. I’m going to start in the middle there. Karen turns out that everybody in the country does not have access to the internet at home. I’m shocked to learn actually you’re not alone in being shocked. A lot of people are very surprised by that. Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty five percent of americans do not have access to high speed internet in their home, and a huge percentage of them don’t even have digital literacy skills twenty to twenty five percent throughout the country. Yes, does that include? Does that include in urban areas? Or is it mostly suburban sametz rule? No urban it’s both definitely. Is checking your nodding vory right here in silicon valley? Yes, right here and in san francisco it is incredible. Do we know what the percentages here? Just in the local area or i don’t have that number, but we know that there is an inclusion issue here and it’s broken down by income, age and education level. So in san francisco, they did a report recently, and it showed fifteen percent didn’t have access and that’s in san francisco where you think everybody’s connected all the time, but there’s pockets of poverty, there’s people who don’t have homes and where did they access the internet? So a lot of people are going to libraries and other places to get online. So san francisco’s, lucky in california in general, is ahead of the curve compared to the rest of the country. But there’s still a divide even though some people think that everyone’s go to cell phone, so we’re all connected. But that’s, not the case what we all hear about libraries as the alternative? Are there other alternate besides libraries? What are they? Anybody? So? Community centers, recreation center, senior centers, other non-profits that provides services sometimes also offer access to computers, but you don’t always get training at those places. So that’s, what a lot of our organizations are focused on is the training. Yeah, okay, so not only the access, but also literacy. Yes, setting for this machine, but i don’t know how to use it. Yeah, it’s not doing me much good physically. Okay? And children are failing in high in schools because they don’t have connection at home and they are in schools where they’re five to six students per computer at their school. Eso it’s really they’re they’re incredible, they’re doing homework, they’re doing essays on their phones, their parents, phones and i take my hat off to them because they haven’t given up. But that’s not right. Also having access to things like libraries and community centre of senators doesn’t serve everybody because if you are home mound are don’t have access to a vehicle are living in a neighborhood was not try safe to go out at night. You don’t have the ability to use those other surgery, even maybe cost travel it, zach public transportation. It’s not free. You know, some people may be a burden just to get to the alternative and we have met families who packed their kids who have homework with the computer. They haven’t go park in the library parking lot to get the wifi and the kids, they’re doing their homework because if they go inside, they get timed out within an hour. Most of the computer’s already occupied parking in the library parking lot for wifi access. Yes, this is happening right here in san will say yes, and if you don’t have a car, you’re outside on a bench or they call him the leaners there, leaning against the wall using the internet from in the building? No, yeah, yeah. All right, that should be enough motivation. All right, so now the issue is that we are in our organization’s trying to help these people. We’re trying to reach them. You know, i hear it ntcdinosaur talking about so much about multi-channel engagement, but if two people can’t access the channels and don’t have to use the channels again, we’re not reaching them. Andi, we’re we’re trying to provide services a lot of times to this population. How do we write this is talking about how our organizations supposed to duitz hair themselves. To reach these people, all right, let’s, start close this time. Cam e how do we start even assess what the problem is, omar, our constituency is that where we started? It’s a good place to start and not everybody does that they jump right in and they’ll have a bank of computers there are they literally let their clients use their own computers, which isn’t necessarily the best idea caused after, oh, yeah, and or you’re helping them apply for jobs? They’re sitting next to you and you’re applying for the job on their behalf because you just want to help them apply. But what i would encourage folks to do is to partner with agencies who are already doing computer literacy or adult literacy or some way don’t take it on yourself to train your constituencies or help them connect to the internet, but know who the partners in your community are and work with them tio get them the training that they need. So we want people to be able to apply for jobs on their own, ideally in their homes, privacy, some degree of privacy, exactly, and taking their time cause a job application isn’t something. You should send six out in an hour. It should take an hour just to find one application that you want to fill out and then several hours to do research and fill out the application, you know appropriately and it’s it’s a time intensive thing and at the library is alicia said you’ll time out after an hour, and so libraries aren’t always the solution for job seekers. So for non-profit, who has stumped by this issue of their clients not being online, we’ll go to where the training happens partner. But if you have a needs assessment that you’re deploying into great digital literacy or digital inclusion into that survey, see you have some data to prove to the foundations that this is a need that you should give us funding for. So we can help these people get online at home, that they can provide access to their children to do homework so they could do job search liking, connect with family using skype research information, entertain themselves, whatever it is, the internet is this amazing revolution, and they should be able to join in. Karen, what are some of the things we should be asking if we’re doing a survey the way kapin suggesting to determine if we have a problem among our constituency. For one thing, you need to be careful about if asking if they have access to the internet or if they have internet access because a lot of talk about that’s duvette right? Yes, i do. I’m gonna buy community foundation, which is a two and a half hour ride, and it cost me six dollars to get there and years to come back, and i get timed out after an hour. Are you using your phone and your phone isn’t really where you’re gonna build skills that are transferrable, et cetera in the morning, you all three of you a very good teacher because i feel like i’m mastering sort you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals. Archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Dahna duitz what should we be asking in a in a survey tool. So i would ask things like, do you have access at home? What do you want to use the internet for? Is it because you have a sense of isolation and you want to connect with your family? Are you looking for a job? Are you trying, teo? Better understand your health. I would get a better understanding of what skills they bring to the table. They may say they know how to use their computer. But does that just mean that they know how to look up? Something on an internet page are? Do they know how to create a word document? There’s? You really need to dig into what skills they bring to the table with access they have today and what their goals are with that usage. Okay, elisa, you’re doing a lot of nodding. Absolutely. So are you connected at home? Do you have equipment? You have actual computer. Is it working yet? We find that a lot of them are. You know, door stops like you said, karen, but but someone might answer that question. Yes, yes, we have one. But it’s worthless. Exactly. So on and then you know, your questions are very important. How would you benefit from having a working computer and knowing how to use it at home? And, you know, i i ask everyone who’s listening to us to start listening everywhere you go, if we go to a hospital, if you see your doctor, if you go to unemployment anywhere that you go it’s school, everything is oh, you can get it online. Cam. He was at the tax place you can download of the forms online. Um, so a lot of people don’t have that ability. Well, but but if you can’t here’s the altum won’t know the idea that the thing we want people to know is that the world has gone there, but not everyone has access to the world. This is a social justice issue. Are we leaving a percentage of human beings out of the twenty first century and it’s not because they don’t want to? We live at least here in this area where we are one of the most expensive areas in this country. People have two and three jobs just to pay rent, several families living together um so when you tell them that they’re going to have to pay forty nine, fifty dollars a month for their internet and then buy a computer. Well, say so are our listeners are oppcoll in non-profits themselves it’s form so they know size non-profit so well, they may not, but, you know, we’re raising consciousness. But now we want to approach. The problem is, how do you ten thousand plus listeners approach to approach your constituents who don’t have access? I mean, how can you help them geever gain access? Or how can you deliver your own services knowing that we have this enormous void? That twenty to twenty five percent of population was much bigger? Go on. Okay, let’s, continue. Karen, you want to you want to pick up with where do we take this next? Now we’ve done some assessment work. We know what our constituents are lacking. How can we help? So it would say there’s primarily to things that we can do in both alicia and can we spoke about this earlier today, one has become familiar with the organizations in your area that are teaching digital literacy. Non-profit work is very self referential. Nobody could do everything. Become familiar with what services are available in your area for your constituents and additionally, get the word out there. It’s so so unknown how big of a gap is being created, our population and how many people are being disenfranchised. And the only way that change happens is through awareness. So we all need to start talking about it also fight now, if you have a refurbished or in your community, for instance, we did that a lot in our project. So because they usually make computers available at no cost or very low cost, and then they offer support for those computers wave they do break down, so refurbishing companies are important, and they’re springing up all over so low cost internet is other there’s. A lot of companies coming out low cost internet options. So internet essentials from comcast is one that’s been out for about four, five years, and now they have a pilot for seniors. That’s ten dollars a month and it comes with one hundred fifty dollars voucher for a computer. So comcast has something low caused it. And t there’s mobile beaconfire ogle citizen so know what the low cost options are in? Your community that people can apply for, you know, advocate to your city government or your region to get low cost of free accessed in low income areas. So google fiber is doing some really interesting things connecting low income housing to free too free internet and so getting the low cost or free option of both the internet and the connectivity is very important, but not everyone knows how relevant it is to them. So having the training is absolutely essential tell them understand why it’s relevant and then how to use it safely because the safety part, especially for older adults, there’s a huge amount of fraud and older adult community, and they’re getting scammed out a lot of money. So if we can make sure that people, once they’re getting trained online, they’re learning how to do it safely. Okay, karen e i will just mention that there’s also a lot of lobbying that has bean done with the p u c with our legislature in sacramento. Yes, because there are merger’s happening and the comcast offer of nine ninety nine. There was because they were so kind and wanted to help people. In fact, they were forced by the government and then they sat on it and did nothing. The california emerging technology fund had money to give dahna in-kind grants to all of us to get the word out and that’s how it began by us getting involved in telling people if you have a child in school receiving lunch, you know, free or reduce you qualify for this. Well, i invite you all to look up california emerging technology fund because they are very involved in lobbying and trying to get access to california. Their goal is eighty percent. By next year, twenty, seventy percent california’s connected access in home? Yes. What would we search if we’re not in california? I don’t know anybody else, but i just got this major breeze. Yeah, yeah. Shivering on anybody wondering why the air just got turned up. Eighty percent don’t bilich they’re just got turned up to percent if we’re outside california. What we be googling what terms should be searching to find the equivalent to what elisa is talking about in our in our home state. So there’s a national digital inclusion alliance and i think the earl is digital inclusion latto orders something nd eyes yeah, and there’s a list serv and there’s a lot of us on and there’s lots of conversation. So if you were to join that and say, hey what’s happening in salt lake city national digital inclusion alliance and there’s a conference coming up in a kansas city in may for folks who are interested in this world of digital inclusion and any other resource is weaken, we can shut out at this point nationwide, i think just put in digital inclusion in your google search, you know, and and i and some of these organizations, you know, ah, city c e t s california virgin technology fund might be able to help you to say okay, because they are involved, actually national ing to a certain degree, they latto washington got india, you can’t just give up, and i’m happy to point people to other resource is i’m wanting to build my own network of who’s doing what in sharing resource is and that’s the only way i think i can get better at doing this work and to help us build a movement where were training the trainer because that’s what si tiene dozes trains trainers to teach free computer classes and works one on one with individuals and and i really think that’s one of the only ways to meet the need is to meet people where they’re at in the language that is it that they speak using the device that they use and to show them the things that they need to know how to do. And so if we can replicate that in a large way across the country and eventually the world that’s a way to address the people we should reach you if they would like to participate taken email me at cam e am i at seti en bay area dot or ge? And we’ve got resource is on our website and there’s, another conference for people in this space called shelby schools health library, broadband coalition that’s a yearly conference that happens in d c i’ll be going to that speaking. Shelby shelby is schools, health library, broadband coalition, it’s a mouthful. But there’s really great folks that go there too. And it’s all about getting people access to the internet. And why do they need to use it in the skills to use it? Okay. All right, there’s. More. We have more time together, so way, haven’t beat this topic up yet. Let’s, take a look. I’ll give you a couple of seconds to think about, and we’ll take a commercial break because i have to highlight and ten swag item we have from upleaf. Coloring, coloring and are outstanding. Piela hannah has taken some liberties with the owl. I already started to color this in, but this is from upleaf and of course, they don’t give you the cold sheets, but coloring pencils as well. And karen, i need your help. You have this to the intend to my intense swag pile? Yes. Sheet and the pencils. You got a pencil? It is a color color. That’s okay, one fell sixty. Okay. Thank you. Arika god. All right, so what more do we have to cover on this very important topic? Let’s? See what e-giving who’s with me? I would like killing program delivering. We haven’t talked about program delivery. I just want encourage everybody to think about volunteering in their community to help make a difference in this area. If you know how to send an email and you’re a good communicator, somebody in the community could benefit from you helping them learn how to use the computer. So if you have two hours to give once a week, you could really change somebody’s life by helping them use their new smartphone that they got from their adult child or used their laptop. To apply for a job or improve their resume. There’s so many ways that we take it, we take for granted what we know on this could potentially be a volunteer opportunity for some of our organizations who listen, i guess they could create something around digital little received within their community way have, for instance, you cannot latina foundation supports latina women to go to school hyre education by wei have a programme for them. One of our alumni apply for a grant, and she got ten thousand dollars so that she could teach classes and have computer for people in santa cruz. So there’s really a lot of ways that you can figure out how to help your community. She has now taught ah hundred people how to use a computer. And it was a four week course in the old computers based on this grant, as she got on her own initiative work going to school and having a job. And then she recruited students from santa cruz, u c santa cruz to join her and teach. So it was a beautiful, beautiful project brought in students. College students obviously exaggerate and connected. Let’s, uh, i’d like to move to programme deliver how do we start to break this down if we know that there are people were trying to help who aren’t connected at home? Where do we start with this problem? I think some of the things you have to consider is not on ly what the community is, what they’re trying to do because the things you’re going to teach a group of seniors is very different than a group of job seekers, for example, but if you’re talking to people who are like food and secure or don’t have the money, you really have to find a way to integrate technology into their life so they can start to see the value of it. And i think a good way to do that is tio not on ly find out what matters to them to find some way to subsidize the program for the first six to twelve months, so it does become a part of their daily practice because if you’ve never had in your home, you don’t know what value it is, and you don’t understand why an investment of ten to forty dollars, is worth your time. The other thing? Is that for instance, if you are working with families who have children in school, we found that there are a lot of school laizans who are actually volunteers. Who are you doing this? They’re training parents on the internet. Well, not only internet how to use a computer so there is depending on who your clientele or the community you are serving is look around because i bet that there are these other organizations that are doing the work or groups that are doing this work, the school’s air, very interested in getting the parents on the internet and on their school loop or there’s different names for it. But they would love to let their computer labs to be used. We did that in santa cruz. We did there in selena’s. We did that in santa rosa. It was the school so open there, their computer labs to be used by the community school hours exactly the things we’re sitting follow-up exactly. Yeah. So okay, kayman anything you can about the program which focus on definitely part brings people. Yeah, partnering with other agencies and not taking it on yourself would be the first. I think you do. Look out into your general vicinity, and if you’re in a small town there’s no one else, you know it. Good. Take the next step, teo, learn more about other cities. They’re doing it, learn from people like us, but don’t try and do-it-yourself it it’s really difficult work, and it gets harder if you’re talking about older adults and cognitive disabilities or, um, multiple language is being spoken in any one area and that’s the kind of stuff that we’re dealing with and, you know, we don’t have computers of our only partner with senior center, so we don’t have to maintain the computers. We don’t have to run the non-profit that’s housing the computers, we don’t have to provide the meals that are drawing the seniors in there in the first place to then go to the computer center. So find an adult ed or a library or school or somebody that has perhaps something that you can you can glom onto, or you can work together. And if that doesn’t exist and then really try and build a network of people who want to help out and so good place to go would be if there’s a school or a university where you can elicit the support of a service learning program, we’re partnering with usf to do that and it’s a really great resource for us and, you know, utilizing volunteers is an amazing way to address the need, but they need to be trained and they need to be supported, and the volunteers like to get to know each other, so having a real robust volunteer program is is essential and continually helping them help their learners. So there’s going to be questions about iphones? We’ll have an iphone train there’s gonna be questions about this new website they’ve never heard of. So have that kind of training for the trainers, so they can be really good at communicating this technology to the to the learners. So it’s it’s, really? And then one thing that we’re doing is a monthly networking event we call bragan borrow so people come together just to talk and brag about the cool stuff that they’re doing related to technology, access and training, and then the borrow pieces saying, well, i’m having this challenge. Can you help me with that? So that’s the one thing i’ve been doing monthly for? About a year and a half, that’s resulted, and some partnerships and me learning a lot about the different communities are last. Braggin bar was at a veterans serving agency that had some computers, and so he had about eight veterans organizations. I’d never met any of these people before, and now we’re having conversations about technology, training and access for veterans, so that was pretty special co-branding borrow? Yeah, they were all taking ideas from others. Course or not or no, nothing want to formalize it looks let’s get together every thirty days, days or something. The one thing i want to add, if we have time is talking about evaluation and reporting on your impact is the hardest part of all of this. That, at least for us, is how do we show the impact beyond the number of people who attended a computer class or the number of hours of training that were provided? We just have a couple minutes left way get to some ideas of how to do it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So i would say for us, it’s, knowing what the goal is of the individual for or the group and we’re not. Doing it as well as i’d like to because we don’t even have ah data collection platform, we’re working on sales force right now, so we’re hoping by the summer will have that well built out. But what is the goal of the learner? And how do we show that they have reached that goal? If if it’s ending isolation so what are the things you need to do? Technology wise, teo health and get connected? They’re not feeling isolated or for jobseeker’s that’s a little bit more clear cut? Did they get a job? Or do they feel like they’re getting more hits on their resume? So it’s really figure out what? What are you hoping to accomplish? And then how do you build in the metrics to track that goal and it’s for small non-profits it’s really difficult to do that? Well, because you just don’t have the staff tio ask the right questions, collect the data in the right way to then be ableto run reports at the end of show that there was impact there. So what what’s the small organization to do? How can they? They just get as close as they can to reporting impact? Well, you just start talking about it first and, you know, don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do it, but at least try and find out from the individual learners. Are you mark comfortable now? Whatever the goal of it. So if they want to get on social media, did they get, you know, after six months today, were they able teo do facebook because to do facebook you need an email and then did he e mail you need to know howto open up a browser so there’s all these things that you need to layer on top so that would be one thing is like, did you are you doing this now? Whereas before you couldn’t, you could say, percentage wise that’s an easy one to say like fifty percent of our learners air now able to do this thing or one hundred percent, so that would be an easy thing, but you do have to track it regularly and have it in a database, so i would say, don’t overwhelm yourself with things to collect just keep it simple and start small i do think it’s important also in addition to saying if they know how often they’re doing it i mean, i know how to do it, how often they’re doing it because if you’re really integrating that technology, it’s not just the knowledge it’s, if you’re actually using it in a consistent manner, i absolutely agree. All right, ladies, we’re gonna leave it there. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you. Thank you again. Candy griffiths, executive director of si tiene community technology network. Karen lincoln, director of business and operations at the stride center, and alicia orosco, manager of administration and special projects for the chicano latina foundation. Durney martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference thank you for being with us. Your annual grants plan is coming up first. Pursuant they have mohr free research for you. Overcoming the major donor dilemma is the most recent. This paper will help you with the identification, engagement and cultivation of new major donors overcoming the major donor dilemma, you’ll find it at pursuing dot com, click on resource is and then content papers check that out. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising they’ve got a new video up it’s from a night that raised money for hfc, which has helped for children. The organisation needed help for its programs, and it turned to wi be spelling. They raised one hundred ten thousand dollars that night. You see it all in the video at we b e spelling dot com now tony steak too. I’ve got no videos from last year’s non-profit technology conference. I’m capturing these under the rubric virtual organizations and volunteers viv of love, one on i’ve won on how to manage remote employees. Another is managing remote volunteers where to find volunteers, and the fourth one is leveraging your expert or tech volunteers. My video that introduces these four with the links you’ll find it, you know, where do i need to say it? Do i need to say it? Tony martignetti dot com and by the way, are you going to this year’s ntc? You’ll find info at in ten dot org’s you know it’s, an excellent conference, the non-profit technology conference that is tony’s take to my pleasure to welcome diane leonard. She has been a grant professional for over a decade and is president and owner of d h leonard consulting and grantwriting services, she has secured over thirty four million dollars in competitive grants for clients from all three levels of government and private foundations. She’s, the co host of hashtag grant chat, a weekly twitter chat for grant professionals she’s at diane h leonard and there’s an e at the end of diane on only one end make that very clear. And her company is that d h leonard consulting dot com diane leonard, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. My pleasure. You have the credentials gpc after your name. What is that? Yes. So that stands for grand professional certified that’s, the grand professional certification institute, a sister organization to the grand professionals association. Very proud to have been in the field long enough to be able to grant professionals. Well, they just make it certified grantcraft sessional c g p it could be that too. You know what? Happy to have the initials into people that feel that way you might look into that just switch just kapin called c gp certifies otherwise have grant professional certified sound like just have a comma after professional like rifle comma and seventeen o or something like that. Or i don’t know, i would look into that, see if they’d switch. It around, you know what? If i grant professional? I mean, it doesn’t that doesn’t. That doesn’t roll off a little easier. No. Well, like i said, i’m just happy to be able to be a part of the community and having thought, ok, you don’t want to speak out against your professional suspicion because cause trouble i i’m not. I will never have the gpc. I’d be a gpu. I got grand professional, uncertified, but i’m not even grandpre fresh inal, so i’d be just a u uncertified. Just have the letter. You don’t martignetti you uncertified. Okay, let’s, get into our grant plan for ah for the year. Um, sorry. I like to start with some basics we should have. Ah, calendar. Right. Looking forward for the year. Yeah, absolutely. Should have a grand calendar that lets you is the person writing france in the rest of your team. Know what is coming? We have for deadlines. Where do we need to plan to be? Ableto be a part of the grand process. It’s a stress level down. Okay. And we’re going to talk about other people who are part of this. That may not typically be thought. Of but we’re tryingto break down these misconceptions about who’s, part of the grand steam it’s more than the grant writers were going to get to that. Ok, i also noticed you say that you would like to say grant professional, but i usually see grants professional. Is there, uh, is there a split in the in the profession among whether your singular rip plural? Oh, i think more than anything, there’s a distinction for some folks will call themselves a grant writer versus a grant professional that’s usually the question we get versus a grant writer grantspace writer or a grant professional grant professional? Yeah, i’m asking the pool of single plural singular question. Yeah, i’m usually way use singular. Yeah, yeah. Ok. On the personal preference there, i think okay, the the industry has not standardize itself. There’s some room for standardization still in the industry. Well, singular versus plural. And i think these things are important. Scrutinized these things? Um, like c b g o r g p. Okay, um and so what should be a part of our grant calendar? What belongs in there? There’s. A fair amount that belongs in there. So upcoming deadlines for existing funders that an organization already has relationships with those take priority. So what will be the deadline’s related to their report to their relationship maintenance with those existing funders and then renewal applications? Also on, there should be any known deadlines for potential new funders corporate foundation of family foundation, as well as the outreach that you might make to those foundations before you choose to apply. So whether you’re goingto a funder, former participating in a webinar technical assistance session, though, should be on there too, and then, if you’re looking at government funding, we’re usually forecasting we’re not exactly sure when things will be out, so those guesses of forecasts for when you expect to see opportunities amount through the different either federal or state systems should be on the calendar as well as a trigger point, so that you’re watching those opportunities open and reminding yourself to pre plan for them the the the the outreach part of of ah being a grant professional, correct me if i’m wrong in this, in the statement, please, and i really do mean challenge me if i’m wrong that the relationship part of grantspace nw ship or grant grant? Writing is underappreciated often it is, and it’s actually one of my dear friends and colleagues, heather starbuck of just right solutions, loves to say that people give to people right and that’s not usually debated in the fund-raising community or non-profit but the reality is this is where heather takes it. A step further is that people the foundations are granting two people at the non-profit so it really it does might not feel the same as a major donor interaction or an individual donor, but ultimately, people are making those decisions. And so there is that opportunity for some dialogue dafs questions toe have some interaction, not with all grantmaker but it really it’s an important factor that a lot of folks do skip over under the stress of a deadline, and ultimately, in the long run, they probably hurting their success ratio is a result. Is it worth talking to the the grantmaker while you’re in process, you’re preparing your application one hundred percent, so i started as a grantmaker and while talking to a programme officer isn’t ever a guarantee of anything when you find a grantmaker that has the preference and the capacity we should. Maybe say the other order capacity and preference for some pre award communications it’s going to help you is the applicant to write a more competitive proposal or potentially to realize actually, maybe we’re not a good fit, so save yourself the time and it does. It helps the thunder is well in the long run again if they have the capacity and the preference for that communication because they’ll ultimately they’re receiving stronger awards as a result of that dialogue. Now, how do we assess whether they have capacity and preference? Can we just call and say i don’t have any specific question about the application? I mean, like, i understand it completely, but what do you say? How do you open that conversation if you don’t have specific questions about the process? Right? So the way that we handle and recommend that our clients do that outreach is through their research when they’re looking at an opportunity, but they’re looking at the website and they’re seeing what is the thunder actually say? Community foundation for southeast michigan says right on there, please, paul, before you apply crystal clear in their materials, they want to talk to you others. Will say, please email us or please call the program officer, please call the program director. Please email. On the flip side, there will be those that in their materials will say no increase accepted, so a lot of them were being pretty clear if they have a printed website or if they have it and you will report, they’re putting out information to try and make it easier for focused, understand what it is that they want or could allow to happen for station. But i think really what’s important that you consistently developed talking points. If you find a thunder that you’re going to have the opportunity to email with or call, maybe even meet in person and the way that we develop the talking points, they worked just as well in person as they do on the phone, or they turn into a great female. So the first thing is to do a quick introduction. Who are you and who are you? Not the whole history of the organization, which is quick, okay? Calling because based on my research about your foundations, you’re granting organizations, i think that our organization is a really strong potential grant funding partner with you because give him a thirty second elevator speech. Why do you think that your work is well aligned with theirs? Why should they want to talk to you? Okay, elevator speech or you’re at a cocktail party without a quick thirty seconds with somebody before they run away. So you’re establishing upfront that you’ve done research and you’ve thought you’ve thought this through. Okay, okay, uh, here’s, why we’re a match? What it what else? And then the last part is that you’re gonna ask, may i ask you? I’ve got a few questions that will help me understand if we’re gonna be competitive in your process and make our application the best possible for you that’s the phone call going, they’re likely going to say yes or in person they’re going to say yes and email you just dive into it, you’re going to ask him to two three thoughtful questions, thoughtful questions are things that are not in a funders frequently asked question documents, they’re not things that are clearly outlined. On their web site, a thoughtful question is if you read all their materials and you haven’t you do you have a question? Do you prefer to do a matching grant versus a one year straight project france here? Are you willing to fund salaries? Is that an eligible expense? Those are legitimate, thoughtful question could be that the way that they’ve described how they support education, you’re wondering if indeed they’ll actually support after school activities vs heimans on ly in school tutoring programs or whatever the case might be something a little more programmatic and you might say, well, they’re materials are really clear, i don’t know, i’m not sure i have a thoughtful just like anything else with people, people love to talk about themselves, so a thoughtful question to a funder all that you might want to ask you, would you tell me about a recent france that did a great job of sharing their outcomes with you? Or they did a great job of publicizing the funded work? Get them to talk about something that they funded that went well, because that’s going to give you a good example? Something to think about for what? They like, help the work that you do. How could you talk about it to them in a similar way in the application? I love it. I love it now, if you do this, if you open the door this way and have this this delightful conversation what percentile of grant applicants would you say you’re putting yourself in? You’re putting yourself in the top tier for sure? Yeah, it’s just not that it just doesn’t happen. People don’t think of the relationship part of of grant work. All right, all right. That was an excellent thank you for that digression. I took us there, but that’s not our plan. But we call it the three r’s. So the research then you do relationship and lastly, you get to be your third are of writing. Of course doesn’t start with an r but we capitalize. Alright that’s, everybody but it’s a quick thing. People skip the second r that’s what we failed to do research they do writing everything in between. Ok, we know that you know how to spell the word writing so i declare we’re going for the alliteration i underst which i love very much appreciate so it’s fine. We will know you, khun spell. All right, all right. That’s cool. I like that. Uh, yeah. Okay, so ah, and putting our backdrop calendar. We’re putting this counter together, there’s, considerable time. We have to spend looking into all these things about deadlines and africa. Not all applications, but renewal, etcetera, mean there’s a lot of time up front goes into this. It is, but it really. It ends up saving you significant time in the long run and it’s usually well paired that you’re working on your grant calendar creations. While you’re working with your peers, your colleagues in your leadership for what is that grant revenue line item look like in the operating budget for the year ahead. At the same time that your organization is pausing to budgeting work, you should be creating your grant calendar so that they’re in synergy. Yes, and not only amount, but timing, too, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, it’s. Excellent. Nastya. I’ve had guests on talking about this hyre generally, but never heard that you have to align the revenue with with the budget. Otherwise, everybody’s gonna be disappointed if the grand budget revenue line item is off right. You is the person who was doing the right thing, and those that are in leadership responsible for that budget. Yeah, could be worse than your disappointment. Okay, let’s, take our first break. When we come back. Diane and i will continue talking about your your annual calendar, and we’ll get a little more in depth. A little more advanced. Stay with us. 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Lively conversation, tap trends, sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m melanie schnoll begun managing director morgan stanley philantech management. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i gotta send the live love that’s, etcetera, etcetera, it’s gotta go out were pre recorded, so i can’t name you by city and state. But if you are among our live listeners today, the love goes out to you. Thanks so much for being with us. Not only love, but thanks gratitude and love podcast pleasantries over twelve thousand i’m brown prepared to say it now, you know it’s happened so often that it’s over twelve thousand that’s all there is to it. It’s over twelve thousand podcast listeners it’s just that simple we’re beyond that ten thousand mark ten thousand threshold so pleasantries to the vast majority of our audience, the podcast listeners, whatever device, whatever time, whatever you squeeze us into your busy hectic schedule pleasantries to you our podcast listeners, thanks so much for being with us and the affiliate affections to our am and fm stations throughout the country. Affections to you. I’m glad that you’re listening. Let your station know that you do listen so they get some feedback. That’s always valuable affections to our am and fm affiliate listeners. Okay, diane. Leonard. Um, this this process necessarily involves gold setting. Let’s. Talk, let’s. Talk about that. Sure, having goals is really important for yourself, and so that the organization is in well alignment with grant seeking strategy and really articulating and achieving your strategic plans. Okay, so well, so what are some of the some of the goals you have? You have lots of good metrics here. I love all of these metrics that you list, um, like award percentage and percentage funded versus asked, we’re setting goals for for all these things, ideally, yes, what we find is that some organizations our only using one or two metrics to measure their grant seeking success. What’s really, there is a pretty long list of different metrics that can be used and if you together actually present you with a fuller picture of the success and where you’re seeing growth or potentially room for improvement in your grantmaking so that you can try and sharpen your skills, have better success percentages overall have a stronger return on investment on each koreans that you write as we’re setting our goals. What do we benchmark against? Is that to be organizations like us eyes that number even? Or those numbers even available to what degree does the previous year factory or the previous three years? Great questions? People tend to be pretty tight about sharing they’re different personal metrics, and so it really is about looking at your organization’s ask track record looking at one, two and sometimes three years back to see what those different their success presented percent of funders that are renewing percent of each year to see what dollar amount or what a number of total grantspace unders versus previously existing relationship. If you look at those numbers that you’ve got a longer terms history, it can show you sometimes there’s some blips, things that happened because of government funding, in or out that are beyond your control. That would impact your metrics. That’s what you want to look at more than just the past year hyre establish a benchmark where were you? And set some goals from realistic goals for yourself? For how could you improve your work? And hopefully your grant revenue is forward so it would be off color of me to ask you what you’re percentage of awards is that? Is that an inappropriate question? Not at all, totally appropriate, especially if you’re talking to a grand consultant were usually pretty public, so my success percentages stayed over sixty five percent for my eleven years in business. Okay, is that how does that rank? I don’t know two thirds proud. Of that, though, i will say that with pride. All right, so two thirds of the application that you submit over the past eleven years have been awarded. Is that right? Did i state that? Right. Okay. All right. Two thirds. All right. Excellent. Um, all right. So let’s, talk through some of these, um, percentage funded versus asked, like it’s that’s pretty straightforward. Um, again, you know, it’s it’s, i think the toughest part of this is figuring out where you fit in. Like, what? Which leaves should we be looking for ninety percent funded versus asked? Or is is fifty percent good? It’s tough it’s, very tough, and especially depending on what type of work you’re doing and what type of grantmaker you’re applying to what would be a good standard will be different. So, for example, and i ate when they publish their funded percentages mean there, so incredibly evidence all grantmaker czar, but at an age to think the last published that i saw was that thirteen percent of submitted proposals funded thirteen percent. But that’s all the work you’re doing, you’re probably gonna be happy with a different numbers than if you are solely working. With family foundations for britain families. Percent of funding renewed and increased. Can you say some something about that? Sure. So if you look back at the last year and you see which funders you received funding from, you’d be looking then to say, well, how many of those? Well, i’ve retained what percentage will i receive another grant from in this upcoming year? And ideally, what percentage could i increase in award from? So instead of getting another seventy five thousand dollars france, i should be great if i could increase and get an eighty thousand dollar grant eighty that’s modest, i was thinking from seventy five to one hundred it was eyes like crazy. I mean, you’re the pro eyes is that is that unreasonable to go expect somebody of thunder to go from seventy five to one hundred it’s so situational for something having the increase of a few thousand is a big deal for others, you’re right, you could make a much bigger jump depending on what you’re proposing mean, if you did a great job last year or over the past two years with them, um, and and you have a way of expanding the program, wouldn’t that be a credible? Argument for giving ah, what would my case would be? A thirty percent increase? It certainly could be, and i think you know, this actually goes back to that relationship point if you’ve done more than just implementer project, but rather you thought about how you can enhance your relationship with your grantmaker in addition to doing what you said you would when you said you would, how you said you wouldn’t your applications, i think you stand a much better chance of increasing your award in the future year. Yes, well, one of your metric is grant compliance. How do we measure that when you look at the different brands that are being implemented for some, if you’re talking government grant has got very strict standards from the ownby office federally, but we’re looking at grant appliance. You could measure yourself on percent of report turned in on time or early percent of grant bill turned in on time or early, even simple metrics like that go a long way, because as soon as you turn a report in late, you hurt your truck and your relationship with the grantmaker. Yes, very much. And and your credibility is diminished. Yeah. Um, labbate diane, we may have to have you back is we only have, like, two minutes left, but i i want to get to the use of your colleagues and expanding the definition of who belongs on the grant team. Please talk about that. Sure. So when we say grand team folks will say, i’m a grand team of one and what we really mean, when when i talk about grant team when those that i worked with when we talk about granting what we mean, are those organizations that play a key role in e-giving you helping you give it, tio put together competitive applications so it’s leadership for saying yes, good ideas in alignment with our plans, somebody from finance helping giving you the budget numbers it’s a vice president of programs or a program director that telling you here’s what goes in that logic model form here’s what goes in your work plan for they are they might not call themselves formally ever a grand team, but they are your pre awards frantic. Then you have a post award rant. Eam might be slightly different players. That are helping to make sure grant rented the way that it was proposed. That thunder information is being shared back by a report, if there’s a need for financial building or you do a revision to a budget there helping and working with you or your grandmamma jer, if your organization has one, they’re working together for that. So again, i might not ever call themselves a grand team formally. You might not ever see it on the organ chart. They exist. Not truly a solo role to be in grant. We have to leave it there. I hope you’ll come back again because there’s a lot more to discuss and some of these topics, and we gotta leave it there. Thank you so much. You’ll find diane’s company at d h leonard consulting dot com and she is at diane h leonard again. Diane, thanks so much. Thank you so much, tony. My pleasure. Next week, very special show atlas of giving. Ceo rob mitchell announces the fund-raising results of twenty sixteen and the forecast for twenty seventeen with us will be paul schervish, america’s professor at boston college, and professor doug white from columbia, commenting on the review and the forecast. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com, responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam lewis is the line producer. Gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director. Shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. 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