Tag Archives: diversity

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

 

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

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

 

 

 

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

I love our sponsors!

Turn Two Communications: PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is our mission.

Fourth Dimension Technologies: IT Infra In a Box. The Affordable Tech Solution for Nonprofits.

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

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

Transcript for 609_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220919.mp3

Processed on: 2022-09-16T13:48:08.345Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2022…09…609_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220919.mp3.155826533.json
Path to text: transcripts/2022/09/609_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220919.txt

[00:02:21.94] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of pseudo ag raffia if I had to write the words you missed this week’s show the tech that comes next social impact orgs, technology developers, funders, communities and policymakers can all do better at technology development for greater equity, argue Amy sample Ward and Bruce in their new book, The tech that comes next tony take two heading to the Holy Land. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box the affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D Just like 3D but they go one dimension deeper. It’s my pleasure to welcome Amy sample Ward returning she’s the ceo of N 10 and our technology and social media contributor there at AMY sample ward dot org and at Amy R. S Ward and to welcome Bruce. She is a leading public interest technologist who has spent her career working at the intersection of technology policy and society. She’s held senior science and technology positions at data kind, the White House, the FBI and IBM She’s at a few a underscore Bruce who is a F. U. A. Together they’ve co authored the book the tech that comes next how change makers, philanthropists and technologists can build an equitable world. Their book is at the tech that comes next dot com. Amy welcome to nonprofit radio Thanks

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

[00:02:27.35] spk_2:
I’m glad to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:04:41.22] spk_1:
does

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:08:57.13] spk_2:
I

[00:08:58.76] spk_0:
trust

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

[00:09:53.21] spk_0:
uh

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:16:36.71] spk_1:
well,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:25:52.25] spk_0:
buttons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:33:58.99] spk_1:
that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:38:33.81] spk_0:
to overly

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:45:14.65] spk_1:
people

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

[00:45:18.80] spk_1:
to

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

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

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

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

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

[00:47:32.08] spk_1:
Yeah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:51:55.99] spk_1:
I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nonprofit Radio for April 11, 2022: Measuring Equity

 

Danielle Fox, Ellonda Williams & Raj Aggarwal: Measuring Equity

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

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

 

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

I love our sponsor!

Turn Two Communications: PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is our mission.

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

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

Transcript for 586_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220411.mp3

Processed on: 2022-04-07T03:38:20.301Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2022…04…586_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220411.mp3.154526215.json
Path to text: transcripts/2022/04/586_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220411.txt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:08:54.34] spk_2:
when

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

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

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

[00:12:42.41] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:12:43.18] spk_2:
alright,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:28:26.24] spk_2:
monday monday

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

[00:28:37.74] spk_2:
certification,

[00:28:39.02] spk_0:
certification,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:34:05.13] spk_0:
but

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

[00:34:41.64] spk_0:
what

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

[00:34:59.74] spk_2:
well,

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

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

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

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

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

[00:43:22.05] spk_0:
Yeah,

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

[00:43:35.90] spk_2:
Oh,

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

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

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

[00:44:07.89] spk_2:
am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:52:49.43] spk_3:
thank you

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

Nonprofit Radio for January 17, 2022: Legal Outlook For 2022

Gene Takagi: Legal Outlook For 2022

Gene Takagi

Gene Takagi returns for a mix of checklist items and emerging trends. It’s a good time to look big picture at your HR investments, corporate docs and financials. Also, what to look out for in crowdfunding, donor disclosure, data protection, and more. Gene is principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations Law Group (NEO) and our legal contributor.

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

 

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

I love our sponsor!

Turn Two Communications: PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is our mission.

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

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

View Full Transcript
Transcript for 574_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220117.mp3

Processed on: 2022-01-17T01:38:56.677Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2022…01…574_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220117.mp3.559147057.json
Path to text: transcripts/2022/01/574_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220117.txt

[00:02:10.34] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of proto psychosis if you infected me with the idea that you missed this week’s show Legal Outlook for 2022, Gene Takagi returns for a mix of checklist items and emerging trends. It’s a good time to look at big picture items like your HR investments, corporate docs and financials also though what to look out for in crowdfunding donor disclosure, data protection and more, jean is principal of the nonprofit and exempt organizations law group Neo and our legal contributor On Tony’s take two 50% off planned giving accelerator. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. It’s always my pleasure to welcome back Gene Takagi to the show. You know who he is. It’s almost it’s almost superfluous for me for me to do the intro. But but jeanne deserves it. He’s well credentialed and I want to make sure that he gets his due introduction. Gene Takagi are legal contributor and managing attorney of Neo, the nonprofit and exempt organizations law group in saN Francisco. He edits that wildly popular nonprofit law blog dot com, which you should be following and he is a part time lecturer at Columbia University. The firm is at neo law group dot com and he’s at jeanne, Welcome back.

[00:02:11.94] spk_1:
Great to be back. tony how are you?

[00:02:13.98] spk_0:
It’s always a pleasure. Thank you. I’m well happy New Year.

[00:02:17.99] spk_1:
Happy New Year.

[00:03:05.74] spk_0:
Thank you. And let’s, so let’s let’s talk about the new year. Um and just before we do I want to remind folks that not too long ago we have genes one, our legal audit which you might want to look back at. That was a sort of a condensed version of some of what we’re gonna talk about today. Although we have lots of new subjects to talk about today too. But there was the one our legal audit and also with jean recently Risk management Part one and then a different show. Risk Management Part two. So those are resources that you can look back at just from a couple of months ago and we’ll go into and and those go into more detail on some of what we’re gonna talk about today jean. Uh where would you like to start for the new year, throw it open, throw it, I throw it open to you. What would you like to start with?

[00:03:58.64] spk_1:
So it does seem like kind of this chance that restarting, getting reenergized and thinking about our organizations and where we wanted to go. Um Yes, we have to keep in mind some of those um risks that we talked about in previous shows but we also have to think about kind of where we want to go. What of our, what our dreams are um what our vision is for the organization? Had we properly captured it? Um, what is our mission? Is that sort of properly captured? Is everything because our environment seems to be changing week by week. It seems to be new stuff that comes up that we have to consider. Are we still on track with where we want to go? So having these sort of broader discussions. I like sending those organizational priorities for the new year.

[00:04:06.64] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Um, what would you, what what priority would you like to start with?

[00:06:07.94] spk_1:
Sure. So, um, being the lawyer, I say, okay, let’s talk about legal compliance just to make sure we’ve got some systems in place, mission and values, which we’ve frequently emphasized them when we’ve had discussions about not just existing to further your mission, but to do it in a way that advances your values and if equity and inclusion of part of those values, then, you know, that’s something you should be thinking about as well, definitely considering some of the trends that are out there. And I know we’ll get into that a little bit later in the show, but also including kind of the times that we’re we live in and acknowledging that yes, we’re under the impact of Covid, which seems to be shifting constantly in both how it’s affecting us and how we might need to respond to it. The great resignation, which certainly isn’t completely unrelated to the Covid, but that is a huge trend and movement as we’re trying to figure out how do we keep our workers, are we burning them out? The mental health issues that are, you know, hitting pretty much all of us, um, from the isolation, remote, working from the uncertainties of health, from sick family members and loved ones and all of that and saying, well, are we going to be able to keep our team together? Should we be keeping our team together the way we’re working now? Do we need to shift our work practices? Do we need to shift what type of benefits for giving to them? All of those things have got to be sort of raised? And I would say raise at the board level, you know, together with the executives and senior management team. Let’s talk about it. Let’s brainstorm think about this and get what our organizational priorities are this year, because things can change rapidly and rapid change if you don’t have any plans um, to anticipate some of them don’t have contingency plans can force you into very, very stressful times where immediate actions are necessary and you can sometimes make bad decisions if you’re under that type of time stress. So

[00:06:18.63] spk_0:
then it because then it becomes a crisis

[00:06:20.30] spk_1:
right? Exactly.

[00:06:48.64] spk_0:
And and a crisis in staffing, especially knowing how hard it is to hire folks now, you know, you talked about, you know, keeping the team together or should we keep should we keep the team together? But, you know, I’m sure you’re seeing it with your clients. The difficulty in hiring, you know, you want to, that, that, that’s a, that’s a huge factor in, you know, do we have the right team? Well, putting the right team together, it’s gonna take a lot longer than it used to?

[00:08:01.94] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely. And if you’re talking about retention, you got to figure out what are you going to invest in this? I know you want to, you know, provide as much as you can to your beneficiaries. But if you’re not really considering the team of people in, you know, on your team that are providing those services that are supporting those services, the whole thing can collapse. So just remember where your infrastructure and when your groundwork is and how important the human resources are in your organization to being able to deliver services and provide goods for your charitable missions. So really important not to neglect that. And that requires an investment both on retention and if you aren’t able to retain everybody and you need to recruit, you’re gonna have to be able to show what you’re going to invest in those new employees and give them time to learn. You can’t expect them to perform like experience people have, um, in the past. So it’s, you know, some patients, um, and definitely investment in education and training and orientation, um, and all the rest and again, um, to the extent that your executive is probably also overwhelmed with everything else going on. The board is really pivotal in trying to be able to come up with plans that help invest in their teams.

[00:08:10.44] spk_0:
This goes to legal audit the conversation we had a few months ago. You’d like to see a review of governing documents to.

[00:09:31.74] spk_1:
Yeah, I I always think that that’s a great thing to check out in the new year. Just even if you have somebody, you know, a higher up kind of a board member or where your executive or senior manager take a look At your articles and bylaws, even spending 30 minutes on it and saying is our mission really reflected in these documents or have we evolved into something else? And these documents are like stale and old and outdated now in that case those documents still rule. So if you have the I. R. S. Or a state regulator coming in audit you, if you’re not performing within that mission statement in your articles and bylaws, you could be acting completely out of compliance and worst case scenario, you can really threaten the organization through penalties, etcetera. So that’s something to take a look at. Also just take a look at a lot of organizations. I find out their their boards, they’re like, oh, you know, we forgot to elect them. You know, we, we, you know, we’ve had terms, you know of two years but they’ve been on for like 10 years and we’re happy with them. So we just don’t do elections that can be really, really harmful as well for multiple reasons. But you know, sit back, see what you’re doing and what you’re not doing consistent with your articles and bylaws. And if you need to change things determine that you have to change. And if you need the help of a lawyer, try to find somebody that can help you with that. And there are some good resources on the web as well.

[00:09:48.64] spk_0:
What’s, what’s one of the good resources?

[00:10:15.04] spk_1:
A little bit of a self plug because I’m a board member, but board source has excellent resources on board of directors, governance things of that nature. Stanford University also has excellent resources in terms of sort of template documents that are just a guide for nonprofits. It’s not one size fits all, but it just gives you a general idea about how some things operate. Um, so those are just too good resources to look at.

[00:10:18.35] spk_0:
And, and again, we, we talked about this extensively in the show called your one

[00:10:24.34] spk_1:
hour legal audit.

[00:10:30.14] spk_0:
You have some last one. You have some financial performance advice for the new year.

[00:13:04.74] spk_1:
Yeah. Well I think probably, um, most people take a look at their financials throughout the year on the board level and on the executive level. Um, but the new year, you’ve actually sort of completed your financials and they might not be, um, in final form yet, but you might have what some people call it pro form, a set of financials, um, sort of close to final, where you get to assess what you’ve done in the year, you know, for, for most organizations, this goes without saying, but you want to make sure that you’re performing in a way that you’re not becoming insolvent. So you want to make sure what your balance sheet looks like and whether you have net assets, um, if you don’t have net assets, that means that you are either insolvent or, you know, in the zone of insolvency, you have to think about how you’re going to address that very serious issue. And I would say you don’t have internal expertise on dealing with it, get outside help right away if that’s the case. But your, your statement of revenues and expenses as well, are you sort of operating what people call in the black so that there is, you know, some net income in there or are you operating in the red where you’re very concerned because you’re losing money, timing is always important. So it’s misleading to look at one year in isolation because sometimes grants are given in one year, but they’re actually uh received in another year. So the timing issue can pose different challenges about reading financials. So you want to be able to read it sort of collectively through a multi year period just to know where you stand. And again, if board members aren’t able to help an executive and the executive feels like they need some help with understanding financials, to reading financials invest in everybody’s training in this area and there are a lot of people, even pro bono, that, that are offering this training pro bono and a lot of resources on the web. So make sure you understand your financials and what they’re indicating. You don’t need to know every single financial ratio that you know, business people use, but just generally no. Are you healthy financially or are you trending bad? And if you have several years where you’re in the red, where you, where you’re not making money, it looks like you’re bleeding money, then that might be indicative of some change that’s necessary in order to make your organization sustainable on an ongoing basis. So again, you don’t want to hit crisis mode financially. So this is a good chance, take a look at your financials, not just last year, but over a multiyear period and see where you are, get help if you need it.

[00:15:08.54] spk_0:
We have a show that I replayed, oh, I think within the past six months, uh, the guest was Andy Robinson. So you could go to tony-martignetti dot com and just search his name Andy Robinson, but it was something like teaching your board basic financials and he wrote a book, I’m pretty sure it was published by charity channel, uh, with, with a title similar to that. So if you, and the show is a few years old, but reading financial statements and and balance sheets hasn’t changed much in probably 100 years. Um, so it’s just all in and out now now, it’s all in Excel. But uh, so if you’d like some help with that, there is a, there is a show where Andy Robinson was the guest talking about, you’re improving your boards, financial literacy. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications, your 2022 communications plan. Does it have lots of projects? Lots of writing projects? You can get the biggest projects off your plate and outsource them. Free up staff time to devote to the work that it’s not feasible to have others doing for you. Like the annual report, just because it’s been done in house in the past, doesn’t mean it has to be done in house this year. What about research reports, White papers, your other heavy lift pieces. Do you need help with writing projects in 2022, Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Now, back to legal outlook for 2022 with Gene Takagi. Okay, so let’s talk about some trends then, jean, you have a, you have a case we haven’t talked about, we haven’t talked about an actual case for a while. Americans for prosperity.

[00:19:16.54] spk_1:
Yeah. So um that was a huge U. S. Supreme Court case at least huge for the nonprofit sector. Um, but with deeper implications for if I if I’m not over hyping it for democracy itself. So um so americans for prosperity, Foundation versus Banta, who was the California Attorney general basically it was about the schedule be disclosure of donors who donated more than $5000. So for nonprofits who know how to prepare their form 19 nineties, you’ll know that on schedule B of your form 1990. Eur actually disclosing to the I. R. S. It’s not public information. Um But it’s to the I. R. S. The name and address of your donors who donated more than $5000. Now that hasn’t changed, you still have to disclose it to the I. R. S. But certain states, including California where volunteers from as the attorney general um New york I believe New Jersey I believe Hawaii also included Um all asked for a copy of the 990 including an unredacted schedule B to be given to the state regulator because they also want to look at that information for state law compliance purposes. A lot of them are concerned about donors who give money but get something back in return that’s not being disclosed. So if they ever have to have an investigation of that, that information turns out to be very helpful to the state to be able to say ah they were giving money but they also took in this huge benefit, this huge contract for example, which you know, reap them millions of dollars. Um So there was a legal case um that went up through the courts um finally hit the U. S. Supreme Court and the A. G. Lost here, The California G. Um So the court decided and we know the court’s composition is fairly conservative right now. The court decided that uh the states don’t have this right. Um It was based on the fact finding of the lower courts which is a little bit unfortunate because if the higher court could have considered more facts, then it might have been decided a different way but based on kind of how how our legal system works and and and how the Supreme Court works and the composition of the Supreme Court. They held that, hey this is not disclosed able to the states essentially that’s the impact of it. The broader impact on why I said democracy might be uh issue here is because well what about sort of campaign finance disclosures? And what about the I. R. S. Should they be entitled to that information as well? So it’s really helpful in compliance. But the counter argument and why some organizations charities, we’re also um not in favor of the disclosures is because of the protection of the donor. And the old case cited um in this part of the argument was an N double A cp case that said, well, if we disclose our donors, the KKK had threatened to kill all of them. Um And you can see why privacy was important in that issue and this issue, it was nothing like this. I think it’s a Koch brothers, um, kind of funded charity. They wanted really to keep their identity, um, more hidden because they have desires to influence politics in many ways. And if it always gets associated with them, then the impact lessons. So if they can look like they’re ground swells of movements that are funding these things rather than individual donors, um, it looks better for for what they’re trying to do. So that’s, you know, that’s what’s at stake here is not only are the state’s not allowed to get this information that would really help them in state law enforcement of whether there’s diversion of charitable assets that benefit

[00:19:29.74] spk_0:
donors. But

[00:19:30.15] spk_1:
in the broader sense, are we going to allow more dark money to enter into our political systems without knowing that there are donors, heavy donors that back these, you know, politicians or political parties or political movements. So that’s the scary part about this decision.

[00:19:57.94] spk_0:
What’s the, I think infamous Supreme Court case that that allowed the allowed the dark money into, uh, into politics. United

[00:20:02.73] spk_1:
Citizens. United

[00:20:27.54] spk_0:
United. Yeah. Um, All right. All right. And so I just want to repeat this. So this case that Gene was just talking about is americans for prosperity Foundation V. Banta B. O. N. T. A. What about crowdfunding you, you point out that there’s a new crowdfunding law. Hope is this a little more optimistic? I hope?

[00:21:22.54] spk_1:
Uh, well, depending upon how you look at it. And I think in one sense it’s inevitable. Um, a lot of our laws that are developed regarding fundraising, um, don’t even, and never anticipated the internet, right, johnny. So, uh, you know, now crowdfunding platform is, you know, not just the internet, the use of the internet, but it’s a lot of different for profit companies getting involved, um, to enable charities and organizations and people who are not charities to raise funds that look like they could be for charitable purposes, Right? So you want to help victims of a fire, but you want to help them directly, because some individuals said, I want to start a Go fund Me campaign, right? And say, well, you know, chip in 50 bucks and let’s try to get these people some help doesn’t, that doesn’t go through a charity. Often it just goes to this person, right, who promises to give these other people money

[00:21:35.90] spk_0:
and go funding the person’s goodwill. Honestly, yeah,

[00:21:58.14] spk_1:
Go fund Me is, you know, reacted to this and they’re probably the biggest crowdfunding platforms. So they’ve reacted to this in terms of having their own internal policies to help prevent a check. But overall, there’s, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of crowdfunding platforms out there that do this to make a profit. Um, and they may not have those types of controls or checks to not to just, you know, prevent somebody from saying, let’s raise money to help fire victims and then just keeping it. Um, so,

[00:22:11.97] spk_0:
what, what, what is the import of the law for, for us?

[00:23:21.34] spk_1:
So I think the import of the law is, if you’re going to get on and decide, hey, we want to do crowdfunding, um, you’ve got to select your platform provider carefully and this law, which is in California, but is likely to spread across different states in various forms, says, well now, if you’re gonna do that, you’ve got to make sure that this crowdfunding platform is registered. Um, and they’re reporting and there are all sorts of rules involved. So if you have a contract with them, it should be subject to these rules that might say things like, well, if they collect money, they have to give the money to the charity within a certain time period. Right? So they couldn’t say, well, it takes this administration, so maybe a couple of years before you get that, you know, nobody’s gonna be happy with that, but without rules, why not? Um, so these are, this is why it’s important for charities to have rules. The actual details of the rules. So I can see why some people have some, some issue with them. And we haven’t had all of the regulations yet, they’re still in discussion. So this is very, Still very trending, but the crowdfunding law, the law, the general law that’s in place now will become effective in California in 2023, and the regulations are being developed right now,

[00:23:58.04] spk_0:
let’s turn to remote work, which is obviously so much more common now. Hybrid work, you know, return to work dates are being pushed off and off. Um What what are what are what are what trends are you seeing? What should be on, will you be on the lookout for with respect to uh remote work and employment law issues?

[00:25:10.84] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s, you know, this is a really tricky area. Um you know, for sure, Covid where people were suddenly not permitted to to go indoors in some cases for months. Um and who knows if, you know, we’re going to return to some of those scenarios with the omicron variant out there, We’re hoping that it’s less um severe in terms of its impact, even if it might be a more transmissible, but if we if we keep worrying about this and saying, you know, our workers aren’t comfortable coming to work, even if the law allows them to come to work. Um Maybe we’re going to let people work remotely, and many of us have gone full remote, some of us have gone back to partial returns, some have gone back to full returns and then gone back, you know out the other way and said, okay, you know, it’s at the workers discretion whether they want to come in or not. So what makes us a little bit tricky. Um is that you don’t control the work environment as the employer, if they’re working at home, right? Um but that becomes the work environment, if they’re doing work from home, that’s their work environment, and, you know, the employer is responsible for the work environment if they should get hurt, for example,

[00:25:22.94] spk_0:
um

[00:26:56.24] spk_1:
So it becomes a little bit tricky about, well, how do you, how do you handle that for workers comp reasons, for safety reasons, for OSHA reasons? Um and I think there’s an understanding by regulators that, you know, this is out of control of most small businesses, small charities and, you know, to to that extent, we’re not really gonna look to enforce things on that level, but there are other things that, that are also concerning, because not everybody goes when, when they decide to work remote, we work in the same city or in the same state, right. A lot of us um have decided to, you know, maybe move back with family, which might be in another state. In some cases it could be another country, or some of us have decided to travel and spend a little bit of time, you know, in different places. Um So how does allow treat that? And basically, you know, the old rules, which are the rules, many of us are stuck with. Um the old rules are, well, you have to comply with the laws where the worker is doing the work, so if you have a worker in new york who’s now working remotely and came out to florida, well, then all the employment rules regarding worker safety and wage and hour laws and salary, overtime, sick pay benefits, all the florida laws apply to that worker now. Um, and so now it’s like, well, you’ve got to work in florida, you’ve got to think about, are you qualified to do business in

[00:27:00.21] spk_0:
florida,

[00:27:36.94] spk_1:
charity registration in florida? Um, and you may have had no connection to florida before, but all of a sudden you have a worker working there. Um, so a few states, um, and they’re not very many, but a few states that said, well, you know, during covid, we’ve got these temporary rules where we’re relaxed, where you don’t have to do that. And there’s also state tax issues, right? State payroll taxes, and, and other times, all of those things, some states said, you don’t have to worry about it. A lot of organizations are simply not complying with, But,

[00:27:37.49] spk_0:
but you said it’s only a handful of states that said, we’re we’re we’re not enforcing

[00:27:42.14] spk_1:
right. Exactly.

[00:27:43.33] spk_0:
The majority of

[00:29:01.34] spk_1:
states are, Yeah, well, I shouldn’t say they’re enforcing, but they haven’t the old laws or the existing laws still apply. There are no transition laws, so you’re out of compliance. And if they do enforce, which might not be like a, you know, a regulator coming out to you and saying you haven’t done this, it may be your employee is unhappy with something you’ve done, who’s working there and said, hey florida law applies and you haven’t been complying with the florida sort of benefits laws that, that apply. And maybe I could give you more specific example because san Francisco, if you came out to California, your remote employee came out to California, san Francisco has mandatory six hours and not a lot, a lot of states don’t have sick our pay. Um, but all of a sudden if you’re not paying them and they get wind of that, hey, you were supposed to pay me for this and you haven’t been, it’s the employee who could launch the complaint. Um, so it’s just to be careful of these things and, and just as your strategy for charity registration, tony when you’re sort of fundraising all over the country to, to, you’re not going to be able to maybe do all 50 states at once, but just to make sure you’ve got a plan to attack this kind of the same thing here. Um, check out where your employees are, you should know exactly where they are and check each state in terms of how strictly, maybe in terms of enforcing this and start to slowly comply

[00:30:12.74] spk_0:
the implications of state law. Yeah. What about the technology remote work? I don’t know if that’s all been figured out yet and maybe there were, maybe there were stopgap measures during the, during the, the darkest part of the pandemic, but but going forward, you know, tech technology has to be, has to be upgraded. You know, are we gonna, we’re gonna continue providing work phones? Are we going to provide work laptops? What about paying for internet access over the long term? I mean, you know, the internet access can be costly. And if if work is taking up a lot of the bandwidth, isn’t it appropriate for an employer to be paying a portion? And then how do then how does the, how does the, what’s the mechanism for the employee verifying how much they pay and you know, and then what percentage are we gonna cover of that, all the all the technology issues around, around remote work.

[00:30:58.44] spk_1:
Yeah, def definitely. And and as an as an employer, I would say, beyond sort of any legal compliance issues, um, you’ve got a, I think an ethical issue to make sure you’re providing your employees with the tools to do their job. And if you’re allowing remote work, you should make sure that they have the tools. So if they need a computer to be able to access it, so they’re not, they’re not using their personal computer. Um then you should make sure that happens same thing with the telephone. And if, you know, if those are going to be dedicated to work, um it should be explicitly written out that way. But if you force them to use their personal things, there are some states that actually do have laws that say you must reimburse your your employees if they’re using the tools that they need um for for remote work, but just ethically. Yeah.

[00:31:18.74] spk_0:
But then that’s then that raises security issues too. Absolutely. They have any kind of HIPPA protected information on their personal laptop. That’s gonna be a big problem. That that’s I think that’s probably a mistake if you’re dealing with that kind of data. But um

[00:32:01.74] spk_1:
and don’t we probably all have that type of stuff on our personal computers, right? You know, sort of HIPPA protected? We may have had emails like that are saved onto our computers. Um Right. So if if the computer is also being used for work and there’s a work issue that causes that data to be taken or corrupted, like, you know, what’s the employer’s responsibility if they hadn’t provided an alternative, it’s a great point

[00:32:50.94] spk_0:
and and it’s not only hip hop data, but other other personalized data that that maybe on now the personals, the employee’s personal computer, desktop or laptop or phone, you know, how is that? How is that private private data protected? Do they have malware prevention on their on their personal devices so that so that company emails that they’re that they’re using on their personal device aren’t potentially compromised. I mean, the use of the personal equipment raises a lot of technology and and Legal privacy and ethical issues to your right. I mean, if the person is eight or 10 hours a day, they’re using their personal laptop, shouldn’t there be some compensation for that?

[00:34:46.94] spk_1:
Yeah. And I think minimally because no matter you know how much we encourage people to have sort of work dedicated computers provided by the workplace, people are going to use their personal phones. I mean we can go back to the politicians who have all been using their personal funds. So we know it happens regardless of what the best practices. But what can the employer do, they can pay for all of that data protection stuff that that computer should have. Right, tony because now it has much more sensitive information on there and the employer is partly responsible for some of the other information that could be on there and hack. So yeah, employers should help. And that kind of leads us to the whole data security issue as well that everybody’s got to be paying attention to now is really um nonprofits have important data in their system. Some of it is, you know, hipaa protected some of it is other privacy information. You may have employment reviews on there that you don’t want going out into the real world or client, you know, feedback which might be positive. Some of it might be negative sensitive communications, all sorts of stuff that you might find on a work computer and if it gets hacked and if that data gets stolen or if somebody holds the system which might run your programs or aspects of your programs if they cause your system to crash and say that they will only sort of fix it because they’ve hacked and caused the crash. If you pay a ransom, you’ve got all sorts of problems. Uh and maybe some of that may have been mitigated with some basic steps like you mean you’re not going to be, well even the U. S. Government can’t prevent all hackers. I think we we know that, but you can take reasonable steps based on your budget, whatever that might be to to control some of this. So it really is important to have some safeguards.

[00:34:55.74] spk_0:
Another potential category of data is the G. D. P. R. Data. If if if your nonprofit is implicated at all in in that european common law law then or the yeah then then you’ve got those concerns as well.

[00:35:08.94] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely. So if you have european donors or you’re doing business with any european entities and you have data from those entities or persons be careful and again, remote working can trigger some of that. So if if they decided to, you know their home or or they want to travel to europe and do their work from there.

[00:35:28.74] spk_0:
Um,

[00:35:29.74] spk_1:
all sorts of implications.

[00:37:44.03] spk_0:
Yeah. Absolutely right. People very good point where where people are sitting and where they’re planted when they’re working, It’s time for Tony Take two We’ve got 50% off the tuition for planned giving accelerator. That’s because just last week A donor stepped up someone who believes very deeply in planned giving accelerator and he is offering to pay 50% of the tuition For the 1st 10 nonprofits that take him up on his offer. A couple have already done it as of the time I’m recording, but there are several spots left. So if you’ve been toying with the idea of planned giving accelerator, it’s never going to be cheaper than 50% off. What the way this will work is. You’ll pay the tuition in full, which is $1195 for the six month course. This donor will then make a gift to you of half of that. So you’ll have a new donor, he’ll pay half your tuition. So it ends up being 50% off the full tuition cost. I know the donor, it’s someone I trust you have my word. Your final cost will be half of the full tuition if you’d like to jump on this and be one of the members of what is now our february class. I want to give people enough time for this because it, it just came in last week. So I’m extending, we’re, we’re not gonna start the class until february if you’d like to be part of that february class At 50% off email and we’ll, we’ll talk about planned giving accelerator and whether it can help you launch your planned giving program. Mhm. tony at tony-martignetti dot com. That’s me. That is Tony’s take two, We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for legal outlook for 2022

[00:38:01.22] spk_1:
one and one of the tools to think about and I’m a little bit guilty of this as well um is be careful of public wifi um because that often is an entryway for a

[00:38:03.83] spk_0:
hacker. Yeah, that’s totally unsecured airports, airplanes,

[00:38:09.89] spk_1:
coffee shops,

[00:38:13.42] spk_0:
coffee shops, Starbucks, wherever those are, all unsecured networks.

[00:38:29.32] spk_1:
Right? Meaning that there is the potential for somebody in there who has some malicious intent if they want to be able to hack into to your computer through that public wifi. Unsecured wifi. And there are different systems um but maybe one of the simplest for for those of us who have smartphones, which I think is most of us is you could actually create a sort of a private wifi just

[00:38:52.92] spk_0:
for your smartphone, right? Hotspot? Hotspot and don’t use the unsecured wifi to connect to, you know, use the uh the four G or five G or the five GHZ et cetera.

[00:38:56.17] spk_1:
Right? And that’s something an employer could pay to make sure that the employee has significant data and data plan that can incorporate all the additional data that they may need in their plan because of the work. So again, that would be reasonable and and ethical for the nonprofit employer to pay for their employees to have a higher data plan. Um, if they’re going to to use that and insist as a policy that they do not use public wifi. If they’re using a work computer or a computer that contains work and sensitive information,

[00:39:36.52] spk_0:
all you need is to transmit an email on, on an unsecured wifi that that has a donors credit card number, maybe

[00:39:38.77] spk_1:
native

[00:39:58.12] spk_0:
birth address, name any, any two of those things together, uh, hacked could be very detrimental to that donor. And you know, whether it ever gets traced back to you is is uncertain, but you’ve, you’ve put your donors privacy at risk in a simple email that has any two of those pieces of information.

[00:40:04.31] spk_1:
And it appears to be a myth, um, when people have relied on, they’re not going to go after us because we’re nonprofits, people don’t go

[00:40:12.29] spk_0:
after. Oh, that’s bullshit. Oh, that’s ridiculous.

[00:40:14.57] spk_1:
Right?

[00:40:22.61] spk_0:
I’m working with a client now that, that is a, is in new york city that’s, that’s, um, victim of, of a malware, uh, ransomware, so brought me a ransomware attack.

[00:40:27.61] spk_1:
Yeah.

[00:40:40.41] spk_0:
And they’re keeping it quiet so I’m not permitted to say who it is. But um, yeah, they’ve, they’ve been, they’ve been hindered for weeks and weeks with data accessibility issues.

[00:40:42.71] spk_1:
Yeah. And it’s much more common than we think because organizations do want to keep it quiet because if there is a vulnerability, they don’t want to come and say other hackers come come and attack us, we’re vulnerable. So it may be much more pervasive than we think

[00:40:57.61] spk_0:
and that myth also breaks down along ideological

[00:41:00.04] spk_1:
lines.

[00:41:21.61] spk_0:
Some some person on the left may may attack an organization on the right. Some person on the right may attack an organization on the left just because of where the organization stands with respect to the person’s political and ideological beliefs that that that’s enough. It doesn’t matter that you’re a nonprofit. It’s it’s your ideology and your mission. It has nothing to do with your tax exempt status as to why somebody would or wouldn’t go after you.

[00:41:28.41] spk_1:
Yeah and um in these times that those ideological differences have been very um pronounced and. Yeah.

[00:41:41.11] spk_0:
Alright where else should we go? Gene with trends, trends for the new year. Come on.

[00:44:24.69] spk_1:
Um Let’s talk a little bit since we’re talking about technology and data security. Let’s talk a little bit about crypto currency because I find that pretty fascinating. Um There was an organization that came together and bid $40 million on a copy of the U. S. Constitution just a few weeks ago. Um That money the $40 million plus more I think about 47 or $48 million was raised for that purpose in less than two weeks. Um So um Cryptocurrency donors um often have made a ton of money because of the appreciation of cryptocurrencies like. Bitcoin for for those who aren’t super familiar with it. Um And if you donate Cryptocurrency, it’s like donating a non cash asset, meaning that if You bought crypto currency for $1,000 10 years ago and it’s worth now several million dollars, which if you bought the red Cryptocurrency, that might be the case if you sold it, uh you would have a lot of taxes to pay on that appreciation right? The several million dollars of appreciated income that would be subject to capital gains tax. Um So if you sold it and donated some of the proceeds, that would not be a very tax efficient way to donate. When if you donated the Cryptocurrency itself, what you do is you get to take a fair market value deduction of the several million dollars. So you gave several million. So potentially you could deduct that is a charitable contribution and pay no capital gains tax because he never sold it. Um So very tax efficient way of giving um And Cryptocurrency people, wealthy millionaires and others who decided that they wanted see some positive impact um from giving these gifts are are making gifts of Cryptocurrency now and that’s that’s partly why I am so many gathered together to say hey we’d like to fund a charity to buy a copy of the U. S. Constitution so that we can ensure that this constitution is always for the public’s benefit and on public viewership and not sitting in somebody’s house, you know for for their own prestige. Um But that really opens it up, cherish. Think about there’s a lot of these people who made quite a bit of money on Cryptocurrency and a lot of younger people are investing barely heavily in Cryptocurrency now. So it’s something to not sort of blow away if we’re um kind of our age or older, tony to say, Cryptocurrency, what is that? It’s it’s something to really embrace now because it’s it’s not just this exotic tool now, it’s part of regular investment portfolios.

[00:45:56.79] spk_0:
Absolutely, it’s it’s it’s coming and and jean this dovetails perfectly with Our November 15 show of 2021 Bitcoin in the future of fundraising with my guests who are an Connolly and Jason shim who wrote a book Bitcoin in the future of fundraising. So, um it’s do you it’s just more, more sage advice that crypto donations are coming. It’s not a matter of if it’s just when are you gonna get on board now or you’re gonna wait two more years and potentially be behind the curve. Um and as an and Jason pointed out today, there are so few organizations accepting crypto that a lot of people are just searching for. Where can I donate? Cryptocurrency and probably largely, Gene for the reasons you’re describing there, They’re looking for a direct crypto donation to help them with substantial capital gains. Are there specific legal implications of crypto donations that that we need to be aware of or or is it just, you know, you just want folks to know that this trend is, it’s in the middle, it’s happening right now.

[00:48:15.97] spk_1:
So I think, you know, one of the reasons why charities are afraid to take Kryptos because they don’t know what laws apply when they receive the crypto. They’re like, what do we do with this? Um, and there are ways to easily cash that out and turn it into us cash. And in fact, most charities that accept crypto and they’re not a lot, you’re right, tony but most carriers that accept them liquidate them immediately turned them into cash and deposited into fiat currency, like regular paper currency, um, in their bank accounts. Um, So they’re not holding onto the crypto very long at all. One of the reasons why that’s, that can be very important is because there are prudent investor rules for charities that don’t apply to for profits that basically say if you’ve got investment assets, charities, this is not just endowments, but just any sort of investment assets for reserves or for a capital fund or anything you can’t invest. It speculatively, you couldn’t just throw it all in like Apple stock, um that would be too speculative. You have to look at it, uh, through what financial professionals, investment professionals called portfolio theory, are you sufficiently um, have an investment portfolio diversified across several different asset classes? So if one bombs, you haven’t tanked all of your money. Um, and the board of directors have a fiduciary duty to live up to the prudent investment laws that also sort of follow this portfolio theory of how how have you actually divest? Sorry? Um diversify Yeah. Um your your funds across different investment classes to protect yourself and there are different considerations that go along with that. Um But that is one reason why you don’t want to get stuck with all of your investments being in crypto because crypto maybe one of the most volatile type of investments where it can double in a matter of days and it could tank and disappear in a matter of days as well. So depending upon what type of Cryptocurrency you have and there are hundreds if not thousands of crypto types of Cryptocurrency um that have evolved in a lot of people and organizations that are making new coins all the time. So new new forms of Cryptocurrency arising and while we talked about crypto as being a part of more investment portfolios as a normal part of of investments. Now it’s not every Cryptocurrency that would be in that it’s certainly one

[00:48:47.07] spk_0:
1000 right? Some of these thousands trade for thousands of pennies, Thousands Yeah thousands of pennies even you know .0001 three zeros and a one is you know is the value of the currency. Um So. Alright that’s perfect as I said, perfect dovetail to that to that uh that november show because you’re you’re raising the prudent investor rule and and uh portfolio theory.

[00:50:07.66] spk_1:
One more thing on this, tony the forms the I. R. S. Forms for when you get Non cash contributions of more than $500. And how quickly you sell them. Um Also applies to form 82 83 is what the donor needs to sign when they give a non cash contribution of over $500 of over $500. And if it’s over $5000 which many crypto gifts are, they have to get a qualified appraisal for this. So that’s really important. And the Dhoni which is the charity has to sign that form for the donor. And then if the donor the Dhoni, I’m sorry the charity sells it within three years, they have to sign a form 80 to 82. Yeah so that’s again it’s not terribly hard. It sounds like a lot of just legalese I’m blabbing out but it’s not too hard but just take a quick look at those. If you decide that you want to start getting Cryptocurrency and at worst you might ask your donor to find a donor advised fund that takes crypto turns it into cash and then disperses it to the charity. So there are donor advised funds that do that

[00:50:15.76] spk_0:
interesting. Okay so so a Cryptocurrency donation is a non cash donation

[00:50:19.90] spk_1:
correct?

[00:50:58.76] spk_0:
Okay and for non cash donations of $500 or more, That’s where your your donor has the implication of i. r. s. Form 82 83. And you as the charity if you sell it within three years which your advice is that they do because it’s of its volatility Then you’ve got the implication of i. r. s. Form 80 – 82. I always thought those were backwards. The donors should have 80 to 82 because that comes first. Then comes 82 83 from the don’t to the Dhoni first the donor has it. Then the charity should be 80 to 82 82 83. But it’s not It’s 82 83 for your donor and 80 – 82 for you.

[00:51:06.16] spk_1:
That sounds like larry david logic. But that’s how I think as well.

[00:51:10.58] spk_0:
Yeah. I’ve been accused of being larry David in lots of ways. Including my my hair when it’s long like it is

[00:51:16.23] spk_1:
now. I’ve

[00:51:33.46] spk_0:
been accused of looking like Larry David. But we’re not complaining, we’re helping. That’s all right. Um Alright let’s leave us with something else. Another trend for the new year that you want us to be thinking about gene. Um

[00:51:36.96] spk_1:
Let me talk a little bit about diversity equity and inclusion. Since we’ve we’ve talked about that in the

[00:51:42.21] spk_0:
past. You could search jean and I have talked about D. I a bunch of times. But

[00:53:46.05] spk_1:
yeah please. You know I think in combination when we talk about the great migration and how the pandemic might be affecting different populations in different ways that we start to think again about kind of? Well if our charity is doing some some mission and we might not think of that mission as being really reflective of of specific races or or anything like that. Um But could D. E. I. B. Important anyway. And I think that’s where we get to think about. Well if we had more perspectives in our organization, if if we’re lacking some of those perspectives now, for example not having a lot of latin thinks Hispanics or blacks or asian americans on the board or in the leadership group, maybe we’re not really thinking about how our services that we’re delivering are affecting different populations differently. Maybe we’re just sort of providing services but we’re focused on urban centers or urban centers where if we’re center based, our center based is in neighborhoods that are much more accessible to uh white populations versus other populations. So getting different perspectives, even if we think of ourselves as being race neutral, which is kind of a charged term. But I’ll just use it for for these purposes. If we think some of us think of ourselves as race neutral and therefore we don’t have to get involved in the D. E. I work. We want to say, well don’t we care about serving our population in a way that’s kind of fair and not just favoring one segment over other segments or just totally neglecting certain segments of the population because they don’t have the same type of access. Have we ever thought about those things and having diversity can help us think about those things. Um, but it has to be done obviously in an inclusive way, which we’ve talked about and I know we just have a few minutes here, but it’s

[00:54:03.34] spk_0:
sort of it’s touching on, you know, not knowing what you don’t know without without having the perspective of diverse populations on your board, in your leadership, then you don’t know how you’re not serving other non white populations. Yeah. And even when we were perceived by other by by non white populations.

[00:55:32.64] spk_1:
Yeah, exactly. And even when we say, well when we look at a group of people and we say diversity, you know, that has one meaning. But sometimes when we just look in our inside our own heads, uh, and when people go unconscious bias, for example, try to think about what that is. It’s like, well if we don’t have the benefit of having different perspectives are being exposed to that all of our lives and none of us have all of the perspectives in our lives. So we were all going to be guilty of some sort of unconscious bias because we just don’t know any better. We we haven’t had other information that would have help develop a sensitivity or understanding or just knowledge of some of the disparities that are out there. So, and and how our organization can be either helping those disparities or hindering them. So just getting a sense of where we’d like to go. I think that can improve employee retention. It can lead us to new areas of employee recruitment and it can make us more relevant as organizations in the future, where if we’re not addressing some of these things, we could find ourselves becoming irrelevant less attractive to future donors, especially younger donors who this is very important to. Um, and so that’s my, my closing thought. Mhm.

[00:55:48.24] spk_0:
All good thoughts for uh, for the new year for 2022, Gene Takagi are legal, legal contributor, Managing attorney of Neo. You’ll find him at nonprofit law blog dot com. He’s also at G attack and you’ll find the firm at neo law group dot com. Gene again, thank you very much. Happy New Year.

[00:55:57.39] spk_1:
Happy New Year. tony

[00:56:47.13] spk_0:
next week. I’m working on it very diligently. 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. Do you need help with any of those ready projects in 2022? Get them off your plate. A creative producer is claire Meyerhoff. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein. Mm hmm, thank you for that affirmation scotty Be with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for November 1, 2021: Risk Management II

My Guest:

Gene Takagi: Risk Management II

Gene Takagi

Gene Takagi returns to complete our coverage of the risks lurking in your employee relations; facilities; events; and vehicles. Also, what to do to keep those risks at a minimum, so incidents don’t hurt your nonprofit. Gene is our legal contributor and principal at NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations Law Group. (Part I was on October 4th.)

 

 

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

 

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

I love our sponsor!

Turn Two Communications: PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is our mission.

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

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

Nonprofit Radio for September 20, 2021: Your Dismantling Racism Journey

My Guest:

Pratichi Shah: Your Dismantling Racism Journey

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

 

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

 

I love our sponsors!

Turn Two Communications: PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is our mission.

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

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

View Full Transcript
Transcript for 559_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20210920.mp3

Processed on: 2021-09-18T00:56:35.320Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2021…09…559_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20210920.mp3.841224443.json
Path to text: transcripts/2021/09/559_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20210920.txt

[00:01:54.44] 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 be forced to endure the pain of chiari malformation if you pushed down on me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. You’re dismantling racism journey, starting with your people, your culture and your leadership. How do you identify? Talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your non profit My guest is pretty itchy Shah, founder and Ceo at flourish Talent management Solutions. This originally aired July 8, 2020 Antonis take two planned giving in the pandemic era. 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 you’re dismantling racism journey. It’s a real pleasure to welcome welcome. I’m not welcoming. I’m welcoming. I’m welcoming party Sheesha. She’s an HR strategist and thought leader with 25 years experience in all aspects of talent management. She’s making a face when I say 25 years human resources equity and inclusion and organizational development in the nonprofit and for profit arenas. She is founder and Ceo of flourish Talent management solutions. The company is at flourish tMS dot com Prodigy. Welcome to the show.

[00:01:56.44] spk_0:
Thank you so much. tony I appreciate being

[00:01:59.53] spk_1:
here. It’s a pleasure pleasure to have you. Um, and I’d like to jump right in if you’re if you’re ready um

[00:02:06.26] spk_0:
absolutely

[00:02:42.14] spk_1:
you know um racism and white privilege most often look very Benign on their face, I had a guest explain why use of the word professional in a job description is racist. I had a more recently I had a guest explain how not listening a salary range in a job description was felt racist to them. So how do we begin to uncover what is inequitable and right under our noses yet not visible on its

[00:02:45.54] spk_0:
face? Yeah. You know what often it starts with listening to state state a bit of the obvious. It really does started listening. It’s understanding for organizations. It’s understanding where we are. Um so it’s listening to the voices that may not have been centered. We’ve become better as organizations and being responsive to staff. I hear that a lot kind of hey this is what my staff is telling me. This is what we need to do. But the question is, are you responding to the voices that have possibly been marginalized? Likely been marginalized or oppressed in the past? General responsiveness is not the same as centering the voices that really need to be heard. So it’s first off just understanding where you are as an organization and listening to the people who may have experienced organization in a way that is different than you think.

[00:03:36.21] spk_1:
So when you say general responsiveness is not what not adequate, not what we’re looking for. What do you mean by that?

[00:04:35.54] spk_0:
So a lot of time the voices that are saying, hey something’s wrong or we need to do this or we need to do that are not the voices of those that have been marginalized and oppressed. They tend to be maybe the loudest voices they’re speaking maybe from a place of privilege and that needs to be taken into account. So being responsive, for instance, if the I call it kind of the almond milk issue being responsive to a staff that says in addition to dairy milk for coffee, this is back when we were in fiscal offices, um, we need almond milk to, but the question is is are we listening to the voices of those that weren’t able to consume the dairy milk? It’s not a perfect metaphor. It’s not a perfect analogy because that one ignores actual pain and it just talks about preference. But are we listening to the voices of people that have been impressed? Who have who have been, who have heard the word professional or professionalism wielded against them as a as an obstacle in their path to success in their path to career advancement. Those are the voices that we need to listen to, not the ones who have a preference for one thing or another.

[00:04:54.34] spk_1:
Okay, uh, let’s be explicit about how we identify who, who holds these voices? Who are these people?

[00:05:30.04] spk_0:
It’s people that have come from, it’s particularly right now when we talk about anti black racism, we need to center the voices of those from the black community. And that means those who have either, maybe not joined, not just not joined our organization for particular reasons, but maybe they have not joined our board, Maybe they have not participated in our programs, maybe they haven’t had the chance to. So it’s really from an organizational perspective, think of it as understanding what our current state is. So how does your organization move people up? Move people in, move people out if we don’t have the voices in the first place? Because maybe we’re not as welcoming as we should be, then what does the data tell us about? Who’s coming into our organization? Who is leaving our organization, Who is able to move up into our organization, what our leadership looks like, what our board looks like. So at times the fact that there is an absence of voice is telling in and of itself and our data needs to be able to explain what is going on. So that data needs to be looked at as well.

[00:06:38.64] spk_1:
So we need to very well, good chance we need to look outside our organization. You’re talking about people that we’ve turned down for board board positions, turned down for employment. Um, I’m not even gonna say turned down for promotion because that would presume that there’s still that that presumes are still in the organization, but I’m talking about, very likely going outside the organization. People who don’t work with us, who aren’t volunteering, who aren’t supporting us in any way, but we’ve marginalise them? We’ve cast them out before they even had a chance to get in?

[00:06:42.28] spk_0:
Potentially. Yeah, actually, probably, probably there is something that they have not found palatable or appealing about working with us or being a sensor or being uh, to your point of volunteer. So we need we need to look at why that’s happening.

[00:07:22.54] spk_1:
Okay. I’ve got to I got to drill down even further. How are we going to identify these people within within our organization as it is? How are we gonna figure out which people these are that we’ve marginalized these voices of color over the let’s just pick like in the past five years, what have we? Well, if we’ve done this, how do we identify the people? We’ve done it too.

[00:07:42.64] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s a really it’s a complicated question. It will differ by organization, right? It differs by what your subsector is, how things flow within a subsector, the size of the organization. A really good place to start is understanding who has turned us down. Why have people left? So take a look at exit interviews. Even if you’re not doing exit interviews, we know that there is not always uh HR presence in a lot of our organizations. If there aren’t formal exit interviews. First of all, let’s make time for those because we need to understand why people are leaving. Um but if there isn’t a formal HR presence, what do we know about the circumstances under which someone left organization or said no to a job offer or said no to a board position or volunteer. It’s also important to ask, expanding our definition of stakeholder groups, engaging with all of our stakeholder groups as broadly defined as possible. And within those groups, understanding are we reaching out to a diverse audience to say why would you engage with us? Why would you not engage with us in any of those roles? So, yeah, it’s going to be a little bit harder to understand that people who are not there because they’re not there.

[00:08:51.84] spk_1:
Okay. All right. So all right. Um we go through this exercise and and we identify we we’ve identified a dozen people. They’re not they’re not currently connected to us. And uh it may be that they have had a bad experience with us. Yeah, I think they may have turned us down for employment because they got offered more money somewhere else. Um That could that in itself could be

[00:09:03.60] spk_0:
Alright, let’s

[00:09:57.24] spk_1:
that in itself could be uh not something other than benign. Um But let’s say they moved out of the state, you know, they were they were thinking about so so in some cases they may not have a bad have had a bad experience with us, but in but in lots of cases they may have they may have turned down that board position because they saw the current composition of the board and they didn’t feel they felt like, uh maybe being an offer a token slot or whatever, whatever it might be. I’m just, I’m just suggesting that some of the, some of the feelings toward the organization might not be negative, but some might very well be negative. Of the dozen people we’ve identified in all these different stakeholder, potential stakeholder roles that they could have had. Um, what do we reach out to them and say, how do we, how do we get them to join a conversation with an organization that they may feel unwelcome him?

[00:10:15.84] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And I think right now, especially we tried carefully. Um, we tried carefully and we honor the fact that they in fact might be getting that same question from many other other organizations, friends, colleagues, family members, in which people want to understand something, What we’re seeking to do is not be educated on the overall picture of white privilege, white supremacy of dominant narrative and dominant culture. That’s on us, that’s on all of us individually to understand that, that is not the, that is not up to the member of society, tell us that. Right? So what, what we want to understand is kind of, what did you experience with our organization? What was the good? What was the bad and first of all, do you even want to engage with us, Is this not a good time to do that because they’re already exhausted. I said to a colleague recently, you know, we can’t even understand the reality of what it’s like to live the right to live that reality and for many to lead the charge, right? Because they’re also showing leadership in the movement. So to we can’t even understand what those layers of existence or like. So I think it’s treading very carefully and should we have the ability to engage with someone because they have the space, the energy, the desire then I think it’s understanding and asking kind of what’s going on for us? What where did you find us either not appealing or where did you? Why did you not want to work with us in whatever capacity we were asking and it’s asking that question.

[00:11:34.80] spk_1:
Okay, well that’s further down, right? I’m just trying to get to like what’s the initial email invitation look like?

[00:11:54.24] spk_0:
It depends on the organization. It depends on the organization. It depends on the relationship. I wouldn’t presume to give words to that to be honest with you because because I think it also depends on the person that you’re asking. I don’t want to offer kind of a blanket response and inadvertently tokenize people by saying, oh, of course they’re going to want to engage with us. So I really think it’s dependent on the situation

[00:12:56.34] spk_1:
it’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Do you want to hone your message? Turn to, we’ll work with you to find your core message and make it concise simple for the world to grasp. So that as they get you placed in major media, like you’ve heard me name, and also in podcasts in blogs, at conferences, on op ed pages. Your message, your voice will resonate. They’ll help you hone your message, find your voice and get it heard. Turn to communications. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Now, back to your dismantling racism journey. What are you inviting them to do with you? Have a conversation, share your experience with us, Is it?

[00:13:44.14] spk_0:
Yes, essentially. I mean, that’s what it boils down to. But again, it really depends on what the organization is, Right? So this is your data collection moment. This is information collection. Where else are you collecting information? What what else do you know? What other steps have you taken to begin that educational process? Because there’s there’s kind of a dual purpose here, right? Is understanding who we are in, where we have contributed to structural racism, to pretend to a culture that does not support differing viewpoints, differing populations. That is in some ways upholding white supremacy or is completely holding upholding white supremacy and its culture. There’s that general education of understanding all of that, and then there’s understanding what our organization’s role is, right? So it’s both. And um, so it’s really highly dependent upon where is the organization? Uh case for us, who you’ve talked to? The head of Equity in the centre describes a cycle that is brilliant. Um around awake to woke to work. Where are you in that cycle? Are you? Where are you on? Um Where are you? And being pluralistic? Where are you? And being inclusive? All of those things depend on what you’ll ask and how you’ll reach out and if you even should reach out there maybe work that has to be done internally before that reach out can happen again. Just being considerate and sensitive of those who are willing to talk

[00:14:35.34] spk_1:
to you. Yeah. Okay. Was our guest for the last uh most recent special episode on this exact same subject. Thank you.

[00:14:37.78] spk_0:
Yeah. The organization is doing has been since its inception has been doing incredible work. K is leading that work um and both her words always contained wisdom and the products that they put out are extraordinary.

[00:15:09.44] spk_1:
How about in your work are you facilitating the kinds of conversations in your practice that you and I are talking about right now? Do you do you bring these outside folks in sometimes to to have these conversations

[00:15:53.24] spk_0:
sometimes? Yeah. Sometimes again being highly respectful of if they didn’t want to engage with us? Do they even want to talk to us right now. My work really is around um having an organization understand where it is right now. So what is its current state? What is the desire and future state? Right, so we know that we want to be a racially inclusive racially equitable organization likely that’s already been defined. But what does that mean for us as an organization If it means solely in numbers piece Right? Like we want to be more divorces aboard. Okay, that’s fine. But beyond that, how will we make ourselves have a board culture that is appealing to those people that we want to bring in to work with us? So it’s kind of defining both current state and understanding current state, defining future state and then developing the strategy to get there.

[00:16:09.14] spk_1:
Ok. And now you and I are talking about, you said, you know, we’re still data gathering. So we’re still defining the current culture as it exists. Right. Okay. Okay. And your work, you you centered around people. Culture and leadership.

[00:16:20.64] spk_0:
Mhm.

[00:16:24.34] spk_1:
Can we focus on leadership? I feel like everything trickles down from there.

[00:16:26.66] spk_0:
Very true.

[00:16:28.74] spk_1:
I don’t know. Are we okay? Are you okay starting with a leadership conversation or you’d rather start somewhere else?

[00:16:35.46] spk_0:
No, we can we can start that. That’s absolutely fine.

[00:16:48.84] spk_1:
Okay. Um so what what is it we’re looking for? Leaders of our listeners are small and midsize nonprofits to to commit you.

[00:16:54.74] spk_0:
I think it’s first of all committing to their own learning and and not relying on communities of color to provide that learning. Right? Again, going back to what we said earlier, it’s not relying on those who have been harmed or oppressed to provide the learning. So first of all, it’s an individual attorney that’s a given. Okay,

[00:17:25.14] spk_1:
can I like to, I like things like people. I like action steps. Okay, so when we’re talking about our individual journey, our own learning, I mean I’ve been doing some of this recently by watching Youtube, watching, um, focus on Youtube of course. Now now I can’t remember the names of people, but

[00:17:30.43] spk_0:
no Eddie Glaude.

[00:17:53.54] spk_1:
Um, so Eddie Glaude is a commentator on MSNBC. Uh, he’s just written a just released this last week a biography. Well, not so much a biography of James baldwin, but an explanation of baldwin’s journey around racism. Um, so that’s one example of, you know, who have been listening to? So we’re, so we’re talking about educating like learning from thought leaders around Yeah, privilege structures. Were reading books, listening to podcasts.

[00:18:00.12] spk_0:
Absolutely. It’s around, it’s around structures, but it’s also understanding things that we do all the time and organizations and how I as a leader might perpetuate those, right? So it’s sometimes the use of language to your point about the use of the word professional. Um, language tends to create our reality. So, and either language will build a bridge or not. So how do we use our language? How do we use our descriptors. How do I show up as a leader? Um, in my own kind of inclusion or not. So I think it is absolutely that is looking at thought leaders around things like structural racism around the use of language around people’s individual experiences to get that insight and depth because it’s not just an intellectual exercise. This is emotional too. And therefore has to have emotional resonance.

[00:18:51.24] spk_1:
Okay, thank you for letting me dive deeper into what

[00:18:55.21] spk_0:
Absolutely

[00:18:56.26] spk_1:
talk about personal, you know, your own personal journey, your own personal education, uh, fact finding and introspection. You’re talking about something, you know, and it’s no, no revelation. This is it’s

[00:19:09.42] spk_0:
difficult. If it’s painful.

[00:19:31.54] spk_1:
You know, you you’re very likely uncovering how you offended someone, uh, how you offended a group. Um, if you were, you know, speaking in public and something comes to mind or how you offended someone in meetings or, you know, multiplied. I don’t know how many times. I mean, this introspection is likely painful,

[00:19:39.44] spk_0:
likely likely. Yeah, more often, more often than not, I can’t I can’t really envision it not at some level being painful,

[00:19:43.27] spk_1:
but you’ve caused pain, you know, and there’s a recognition there.

[00:19:46.92] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah,

[00:19:53.24] spk_1:
painful for you. But let’s consider the pain of the person or the group that

[00:19:54.35] spk_0:
you

[00:19:58.54] spk_1:
I don’t know offended, stereotyped. Mean, put off whatever it is, you’re

[00:20:01.84] spk_0:
that’s right. And that that’s why the work as much as I know, you know, to some degree, people want this to be work. That can be kind of project managed if you will or it can be put into a process or a series of best practices or

[00:20:14.08] spk_1:
benchmarks

[00:20:15.64] spk_0:
to some degree, not very much, but to some degree. Yes, absolutely. The some a little bit of that can happen, but that in and of itself is a bit of the dominant narrative, right? That in and of itself is kind of that that centering white culture. So I think what we need to understand is this is not just going to be again to sorry to be redundant, but it’s not just going to be intellectual.

[00:20:38.41] spk_1:
The

[00:20:39.04] spk_0:
fact that pain has been caused dictates that this be emotionally owned as well. It can’t be arm’s length. It can’t be just intellectually owned with the project plan that I keep over here on a chalkboard or something like that.

[00:21:02.64] spk_1:
Emotionally owned. Yeah. Thank you. All right. All right. So I made you digress and deepen what else, what else you wanna tell us about leadership’s commitment and and and the importance of leadership, commitment.

[00:23:24.54] spk_0:
Yeah. So it needs to be explicit. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be baked into the leadership. Whatever leadership structure the organization has, it needs to be an ongoing piece of that leadership. So it’s not a hey, let’s touch base on our quote inclusion initiative if it’s an initiative first of all, that’s not really doing the work anyway. Um, but it’s not something that lives separately from ourselves. Let’s have HR kind of check in on this or let’s have the operations person check in on this. That’s that’s not what this is about. It’s really, it’s authentically being owned by leadership to say? Yeah, I know it’s gonna be painful. And in looking at our organization, we’re gonna need to understand why our leadership is remarkably homogeneous. Which in the case of many nonprofits, it is if you take a look at Building Movement project and the unbelievably great work that they’ve done twice now, they just put out an update to their leadership work around how people move through the sector or don’t and how people, communities of color and people of color are represented in our leadership. We can begin to understand that by and large, they’re they’re not. Um though i that is an oversimplification in some ways. So I would encourage people to go to building movement project’s website and check out their work. Um but you know what, why are we so homogeneous? Why is there a board so homogeneous? It’s also unpacking and uncovering that. So to your point earlier about, you know, how do we look at people and how they move through the organization? This is where you look at who is present, right? Not just who’s not with us, but who is with us? How do people get Promoted? How does that system work does any does everyone have the same information? Is it a case of unwritten rules, is it a case of some people move up because they’re similar or they have 10 years of experience, which is something that we like to say, How do you get 10 years of experience if you have not been given those chances to begin with. So is their life experience that we can that we can begin to integrate in our conversations because life experience is equally valuable. Are we putting too much of a premium on higher education education and its formal kind of traditional form? Are we putting too much of uh of an emphasis on pedigree of other kinds of those? Those are the things that ultimately keep people out. So taking a look at leadership and having leadership commitment ultimately means looking at all of those things. There’s an overlap and how we look at leadership or people and or organizational culture.

[00:23:46.14] spk_1:
Yeah, of course. This is a it’s a continuum or

[00:23:48.53] spk_0:
Absolutely, absolutely. And the areas bleed into each other.

[00:24:10.04] spk_1:
Yeah, of course. Um and you know, I subsumed in all this I guess. I mean it’s okay for leaders to say, I don’t know where the where the journey is going, I don’t know what we’re going to uncover, but I’m committed to having this journey and leading it and and right. I mean, supporting it, but I don’t know what we’re gonna find. Right.

[00:24:16.74] spk_0:
Right, right. And that in and of itself can be uncomfortable for a lot of people and that’s that’s the kind of discomfort we need to get okay with.

[00:24:30.04] spk_1:
Yeah. Alright. Yeah. You know I had I had a guest explained that this is not as you were alluding to? Uh it’s not the kind of thing that you know, we’re gonna have a weekly meeting and will be these outcomes at the end of every meeting then we’ll have this list of activities and you know the you know, how come it’s not like that? How come we can’t do it like that?

[00:25:02.24] spk_0:
Yeah. Because we’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of years of history and it’s because we haven’t been inclusive in the ways that we do things and we haven’t allowed whole selves to show up that it is um It’s it’s complicated and it’s messy because it’s human.

[00:25:05.74] spk_1:
All right, so it’s not gonna be as simple as our budget meetings

[00:25:08.84] spk_0:
today. Right. Absolutely different. Different kind of

[00:25:13.26] spk_1:
hard. Alright. We’re going to have an outcome at every at every juncture at every step or every week or every month or something. Yeah.

[00:25:19.48] spk_0:
That’s right. That’s right. And if we expect it to go that way, we are likely going to give ourselves excuses not to press on.

[00:27:00.64] spk_1:
It’s time for tony state too planned giving in the pandemic era. That’s my webinar coming up. I’m hosted for it by J. M. T. Consulting. Very grateful to them for hosting. We’re doing this on Thursday, September 30, 2 to 3 o’clock Eastern time planned. Giving in the pandemic era. So what am I going to talk about, what is planned? Giving? We’ve got to start with that right. What this thing is who your best prospects are? Where to start your program and the overarching. How does this all fit into our pandemic era? So I hope you’ll be with me to uh reserve your spot. It’s free. It’s a free webinar now by the way. But you do have to make a reservation. So to do that, you go to J. M. T. Consulting dot com Juliet mike, tango, J. M. T. Consulting dot com. Go to events and then pull down to lackluster speaker series and I’ll be the sole person listed there. They have an expert speaker series. That’s for everybody else. But now you have to actually uh, they were gracious enough to uh, not only host me but uh lump me in with the the expert speakers. So you do have to go to expert speaker series and you’ll find me right there. So I hope you’ll be with me Thursday September 30 two o’clock eastern

[00:27:02.44] spk_0:
for

[00:27:18.24] spk_1:
planned giving in the pandemic era. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for your dismantling racism journey. All right. So that’s what it’s not what what does it look like.

[00:28:42.04] spk_0:
Oh, it absolutely looks different for every organization. It absolutely looks different for every organization and that’s what’s so critical to understand. Kind of, where are we right now? Um, where are we? As far as all of the components of our organization. Right. So volatile again, volunteers ford staff culture. You said, you know, we were talking about people organization and leadership which is obviously a lot of my work. Um it is getting underneath all of those kinds of things to say. So who experiences our culture? How? Um so we do engagement surveys, Right. A lot of times we do engagement employee surveys, that kind of thing. Are we looking at those disagreeing disaggregated way? Are we asking different populations to identify themselves? And are we looking at what the experiences are by population? Are we asking explicit questions around whether or not you feel like you can be yourself in this organization, Whether you can provide dissenting opinions, whether you feel comfortable approaching your boss with feedback. Um whether you feel comfortable volunteering for particular work, whether you feel like you understand what a promotion or performance management processes, whether you get the support that you need or to what extent you get support that you need either from colleagues, boss leadership etcetera. So it’s looking at all of those things and then understanding are they being experienced differently by different communities within our organization.

[00:28:52.54] spk_1:
You mentioned disaggregate ng. That’s where the data is not helpful. Right?

[00:28:53.54] spk_0:
That is where we look at the data in terms of populations.

[00:28:57.94] spk_1:
Oh, Oh, aggregate, of course. Aggregating. I’m sorry.

[00:29:01.32] spk_0:
That’s OK.

[00:29:02.24] spk_1:
You’re stuck with a lackluster host. No, of course, yes. Aggregating

[00:29:06.02] spk_0:
early in the week.

[00:29:22.74] spk_1:
Uh Thank you. You couldn’t say early in the day, but thank you for being gracious. Okay. Yes. We uh we we want to disaggregate of course. Um and look by population and I guess cut a different way. I mean depending on the size of the organization. Um Age, race, age,

[00:29:26.74] spk_0:
race, ethnicity, um A physical ability, orientation. All of those need to be in the mix gender as well, including gender fluidity. So really looking at all of our populations and then understanding for these particular questions, is there a difference and how people experience our organization? We know then what we do know is that if there is a difference that there is a difference, we don’t know that there is causality unless there unless you’ve asked questions that might begin to illuminate that, right? But there’s always that difference between correlation and causality and then what you want to do is get underneath that to understand why the experience might be different and why it might change along lines of gender or race or ethnicity or orientation or physical ability.

[00:30:19.04] spk_1:
We uh we wandered, you know? But that’s that’s fine.

[00:30:22.60] spk_0:
I love it’s all part of the people in organization part

[00:30:31.84] spk_1:
people culture and um and leadership all coming together. Um uh Where do you want to go? Uh I mean I would like to talk about people. Culture and leadership. What’s a good what’s a good next one?

[00:32:30.34] spk_0:
Yes. Well, so this is what you’re doing, right? Is your collecting information and all of those three areas. Right and wanted. So a couple of things that I would add to that is when you look at people, you’re looking at their experiences, when you look at leadership, you’re looking at commitment makeup, structure, access, all of those kinds of things. When you’re looking at culture, you’re looking at how people experience the culture, right? And so what is happening? What’s not happening with stated out loud? What’s not stated out loud? What are the unwritten rules? There is also the piece that forms all of these things, which is operational systems. Right? So things like performance management, things like um where people may sit back when we were in physical offices, having access to technology, all of those kinds of things, particularly important now that we’re not in physical offices, so does everyone have access to the technology and information necessary to do their job, to do their jobs to do their work? So it is looking also at your operational side and saying how do we live our operational life? How do, how do people experience it, who do we engage with to provide services for our operations? How do we provide the services if you will, for lack of better term to our employees? So it’s also looking at that because operations ultimately permeates organizational culture, people and leadership, right? Because it kind of sustains all of that. So taking a look at that too. And finally, I would suggest again as part of this and as a wraparound is, what is the internal external alignment? Right. So I often hear people say, hey, you know what, this is the subsector we work in, people would think that we’re really equitable, but internally we are living a different life than what we are putting out to our stakeholders in our constituencies externally. So what is what is our external life and how does that need to inform our internal world? It’s not unusual for me to hear that the external life, the way we engage with stakeholders or the way we put out program programmatic work is actually may be further along to the extent that this is considered to be a continuum. It’s further along than the way that we’re living our life. Internal life

[00:32:53.10] spk_1:
dishonesty there disconnect that

[00:32:56.54] spk_0:
there’s a disconnect disconnect for sure. And possibly yeah, dishonesty. And hip hop, maybe even hypocrisy.

[00:33:09.04] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah. Alright, but again, all right, so now we’re looking like this is organizational introspection. There’s there’s individual learning and introspection. Now we’re at the organizational

[00:33:14.34] spk_0:
level, being

[00:33:15.78] spk_1:
honest with our, with our culture and our messaging,

[00:33:19.84] spk_0:
right? And and so what I tried to do is to help organizations kind of look at those things and decide how we might evolve, given the future that we’ve set our sights on and given some of the principles that we’ve laid out, how do we kind of get there? How do we, how do we evolve our systems, how do we evolve our people practices? How do we evolve our culture? So hence the need to look at all of these things that centered around people, Culture and leadership.

[00:34:07.54] spk_1:
What about the use of professional facilitator? Because well, first of all, there’s a body of expertise that someone like you brings uh but also help with these difficult conversations. Talk about the value of having an expert facilitator.

[00:35:20.54] spk_0:
Yeah, absolutely. So so you know, I think I think there’s always a level of objectivity and and kind of an inside look by an outsider that you that you benefit from. We go to experts for everything from, you know, our health to the extent that we have access to those experts, which is a whole different conversation on race and oppression. Um we we want that external voice. What I would say is it’s likely not going to be the same expert or the same facilitator and I say expert in quotes um for everything. So for instance, I am not the voice to be centred on educating an organization around structural racism. I don’t think I’m the right voice to be centered. I would rather send her voices like those at um race forward at equity in the center at those who have lived the results of 400 years of oppression. So you might want to call in someone for that discussion for that education. There are people that are better and more steeped in that and whose voices should absolutely be centered for that? Um You might want to call in a voice for White Ally ship because there is some specifics around that that we need to talk about without kind of centering White voices.

[00:35:27.85] spk_1:
I’m sorry White Ally ship.

[00:35:29.92] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:35:30.46] spk_1:
What is that?

[00:36:50.63] spk_0:
So if we think about the the organization right in our kind of culture and are people who who wants to half sees themselves as an ally and how can they be good? How can how can white people be good allies? Right. And how do we further and embed that in the culture? Um and then finally, so keeping that in mind that there are going to be different experts or different facilitators for different things, you know, who is going to be the person in my case, this actually might be is to help us evolve our culture and our systems so that we can be more equitable and take a look at that. Who’s going to provide the training because their skills necessary. Right to have these conversations. There are foundational communication skills, there is the ability to give feedback. Um there is the ability to communicate across cultures across genders across across groups. There is ability to be collaborative. So so also strengthening those skills while we continue to look at those things, but to think that all of this help is going to come from one source is not ideal and likely it’s even inappropriate because everyone can’t be everything. I don’t try to be the voices that I can’t be. It’s inappropriate for me to do that. Mhm.

[00:36:54.73] spk_1:
What what else do you want to, what do you want to talk about given the level where that we’re at? We’re trying to help small and midsize nonprofits inaugurate a journey around racism and white privilege.

[00:38:42.82] spk_0:
I think. I mean, look, first of all, I hear a lot of organizations say like what what is the access point? Like what do I get started doing? We put out a statement um in some cases we are experiencing some dissonance between the statement that we put out or the programmatic work that we do and the way that we’re living internally. So it is really understanding kind of where are we now, through all of the ways that we’ve been talking about over the last several minutes, where are we now? What is it that we’re not doing that we should be doing? What is it that we need to be doing? How do we define for us? If we have an equitable culture, if we are living racial equity, what does that look like for us? Um how does that affect our programmatic work? How does that affect our operations? Everything from our finances to our people processes to when we’re back in an office, even our physical setup, how how does that affect us and how would we define that future state? So it’s understanding what is my current state, What is my future state and then understanding how we get there and it’s likely going to be a long, all of the areas that we said right? So individual attorneys, some group and individual skill building, um, some evolution of our systems and some understanding of kind of how we can support each other and support ourselves for those that are that affiliate with a particular group. Um, and then kind of moving us along to that place of where we want to be. So it is, it is understanding where you are that determines what your access point is. But I would say if you if you have done the work of putting out this statement then there then look for look for where you’re not living that statement internally.

[00:38:55.72] spk_1:
That sounds like a very good place to Yeah. To start your search for for an access point because it’s so recent, Your organization has probably said something in the past 5, 6 weeks.

[00:39:00.82] spk_0:
Absolutely. And

[00:39:01.79] spk_1:
close are you hewing to that to that statement?

[00:39:20.22] spk_0:
Exactly. And we are incredibly, I would say important the use of the term but almost fortunate that so many thought leaders have been kind and generous enough to share with us their thoughts on this moment. So not just within the sector, but all the way across our society. So many people have taken the time and the patients and the generosity amidst everything else that they’re living through. They have agreed to share their thoughts, their leadership, their expertise with us? So there is a ton of knowledge out there right at our fingertips and that’s a, that’s another really great place to start and to center the voices that most need to be heard

[00:39:52.72] spk_1:
at the same time. You know, we are seeing beginnings of change. Uh institutions from Princeton University to the state of Mississippi

[00:40:14.41] spk_0:
right? Absolutely. To hopefully, uh, you know, the unnamed Washington football team and to Nascar and places where we, I didn’t know that change necessarily was possible, but we we are saying change and and the important thing is to not be complacent about that change,

[00:41:18.61] spk_1:
right? And not and also recognize that it’s just the beginning, you know, removing confederate statues, um taking old glory off the Mississippi flag. These are just beginnings, but but I think worth worth noting. I mean worth recognizing and celebrating because the state of Mississippi is a big institution and it’s been wrestling with this for, I don’t know if they’ve been wrestling for centuries, but that flag has been there for that just that long, right? 18. Some things I think is when that flag was developed. So it’s been a long, it’s been a long time coming. So recognizing it for what it is celebrating it to the extent that the, yeah, to the extent that represents the change. Beginning of the beginning of change? All right. Um, well, you know, what else, what else, what else do you want to share with folks at this, you know, at this

[00:42:02.10] spk_0:
stage? You know, I think, I think the main thing is um, dig in uh, we need to dig in on this. We need to dig in on this because in the same way that that we have been living this society societally for so long are organizations many times are microcosms of society. So if we think as an organization that were exempt or that were already there, we’ve arrived at like a post racial culture, that’s not the case. That’s just not the case. Um, so where do you want to dig it? Where do you want to dig in, chances are good. You are doing some version of looking at issues within your organization, whether it’s your annual survey, if you do it annually or whatever in which you can use that information to begin this journey. So dig in from where you are, it’s one of those things that if you’re waiting, if you’re waiting for kind of the exact right time or further analysis to begin the journey again, it’s not, it’s not based solely on analysis. There is a there is certainly information, there’s data that needs to be understood. But if we’re waiting for endless analysis to happen or to kind of point us to the right time that’s not going to happen. The intellectualism needs to be there. But again, as we said in the path, as we said a few times during the course of our conversation? This is about emotional residents and an emotional ownership and a moral obligation. So, dig in dig in wherever you are right now,

[00:43:15.10] spk_1:
what if I’m trying within my organization? Uh, and I’m not the leader, I’m not even second or third tier management or something, you know, how do I elevate the conversation? Uh, I presume it helps to have allies. What if what if I’m meeting a resistance from the people who, who are in leadership?

[00:43:50.50] spk_0:
I think look for the places where they’re made, not the resistance, right? So look within the organization. Um, if there is resistance at a particular level, then you know, who do you have access to in the organization where there isn’t that? And I think, I think starting out not assuming that you have solutions if you have expertise in this area, if you have lived through the oppression as a member of a community that has lived through the impression particularly black community, I think you’re coming from one place, if you are if you are not in that community and saying that you have expertise, I think you have to be a little bit more circumspect about that and introspective about what you can offer in this vein. Um, and I think, I think we want to look for the places where there is some traction, I think in most organizations, it’s not unusual to be getting the question right now

[00:44:25.59] spk_1:
and what is the I don’t want to call it outcome. What, what, what what can the future look like for our organization if we do embark on this long journey?

[00:44:42.89] spk_0:
Yeah, cultures that are equitable in which people can show up as their whole selves. Um, in which there is not only one right way to do things, which tends to be a very kind of white dominant Western culture, linear sequential way of managing work, of managing communications, etcetera. But that in fact work can be approached in a number of different ways and that solutions can be approached in a number of different ways. People get to show up and give their all to these missions that we all hold very near and dear. And so they are able they’re empowered. They are able they are celebrated without sticking to a set of preconceived guidelines or preconceived, unwritten or written rules that don’t serve us anymore. Anyway,

[00:45:24.49] spk_1:
when you started to answer that, I saw your face lighten up. You’re I don’t know, it was a smile. It just looks like you’re faced untended. Not that you’re

[00:45:31.70] spk_0:
nervous. Your face changed

[00:45:34.58] spk_1:
started to answer the where we could be.

[00:45:37.19] spk_0:
Who doesn’t like to imagine that future?

[00:45:43.99] spk_1:
Yeah, it was it was palpable. All right. All right. Are you comfortable leaving it there?

[00:45:46.59] spk_0:
I think so, I think so. What have we not covered that we need to cover for your listeners,

[00:45:52.59] spk_1:
you know that better than I

[00:45:54.68] spk_0:
for

[00:45:55.65] spk_1:
the place there at getting started.

[00:45:57.76] spk_0:
That’s fair. Look, you know what this is, this is the future that is written with many voices. And while I think I can be helpful, I don’t presume to be the voice that has all the answers I definitively don’t, I definitively don’t. And so what we have not covered is actually probably not known to me, but I dare say someone, someone out there does know that and they will likely be putting their voice up, which is exactly what we want.

[00:46:24.04] spk_1:
We will be bringing other voices as well. Alright,

[00:46:26.99] spk_0:
no doubt. Yeah,

[00:46:39.78] spk_1:
Patricia, she’s founder and Ceo of flourished Talent management Solutions and the company is at flourish tMS dot com. PCI thank you so much. Thank you very, very much.

[00:46:42.48] spk_0:
tony thank you. Thank you for opening up this space and having the conversation

[00:47:18.68] spk_1:
a pleasure. Uh it’s a responsibility and uh happy to live up to it. Try trying next week the activist activates activism with Amy sample ward 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.

[00:47:23.33] spk_0:
Mark Silverman is

[00:47:51.68] spk_1:
our web guy and this music is by scott stein, thank you for that. Affirmation scotty Be with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great, Yeah, what?