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Nonprofit Radio for November 13, 2015: Your Engaged Board & In-Kind Gifts

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Michael Davidson: Your Engaged Board

Michael Davidson

Michael Davidson says your board members are happiest when you ask them to do more–not less. He tackles how to recruit and maintain an engaged board. He’s a consultant and board coach and former chair of Governance Matters.

 

 

Maria Semple: In-Kind Gifts

Maria Semple

Maria Semple, our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder, returns to share her advice about in-kind gifts. How do you find these non-cash gifts, their value and the right appraiser? When do you need an appraiser? Maria answers all. (Originally aired on October 10, 2014.)

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We’ve got a listener of the week. Congratulations, michelle clan in boulder, colorado. She tweeted that she’s challenging her board toe listen to six shows before their next board meeting. I love that non-profit radio is helping michelle’s board, and i hope they’re gonna listen to this week’s show very relevant about boards. Congratulations, michelle clan non-profit radios listener of the week i’m glad you’re with me i’d be forced to endure bronco candid i assists if i inhaled the idea that you missed today’s show you’re engaged board michael davidson says you’re boardmember zehr happiest when you ask them to do more, not less, he tackles how to recruit and maintain the engaged board. He’s, a consultant and bored coach and former chair of governance matters and in-kind gif ts maria simple, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder, returns to share her advice about in-kind gif ts how do you find these non-cash gif ts their value and the right appraiser? When do you need an appraiser? Maria answers it all that originally aired on october tenth twenty fourteen between the guests on tony’s take two sincerity still trumps production value responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com very glad, very glad to welcome back michael davidson. He has helped over a hundred boards, has over thirty years, working with non-profit boards and leadership of many organizations. He’s, lead consultant for the united way boards, serve new york city board training program and teaches at the new school university and adelphi university, along with being former chair of governance matters. He’s been an attorney, criminal prosecutor and bakery owner. Those cookies were delicious. His coaching practices at board coach dot com michael davidson, welcome back. Morning, tony. Great to be back. It was you were on. This is really momentous too. May you were on the very first show that’s amazing it was it was july fifth, two thousand ten. And that was back when it was called the tony martignetti show. Yes, i didn’t even think to include non-profits with that it’s it’s about me with that. Um but yeah, so five and a half years ago. That’s amazing and we’re still talking. About board way. We’re always talking about boredom. Would exgagement ford fund-raising yes, you had a block post recently that stimulated mito to think that you need to come back. The engaged board have some traits of unengaged board. Yeah. It’s. Really interesting that the thing that prompted this article was a kind of a ce national study which said that, you know, boards are all committed to the mission, but a very large percentage of them are unengaged and and that’s the reality. I mean, that’s, that’s what? I see boards who people get brought in, they have a great they believe in the mission. Whatever the mission is and their extraordinary number of wonderful missions that people get involved in and they bring him in and they put him on board. But no one quite knows what to do with them and how to really engage them. And i keep looking at that question is i work with boys and for me, it’s thoughts to boil down to this a really simple stuff that i think organizations khun d’oh. The first one is that people get connected because they believe in the mission they want whatever it is, it’s, they always come with passion. They come into a passion for this particular cause whether it’s, you know, helping in greve families or a particular a disease that you know that they think really needs to be addressed or theater or whatever it is, and then they sit him around a table away from the mission. Yeah, and the connection with that mission kind of dissipates into the details ofthe finance and management and oversight and all that kind of stuff, and they get further and further away from the passion. Okay? And so for me, one of the keys is you kind of keep keep him connected with the passion, and there are very simple things that boards do to do that, okay? We’re going. We’re just like overviewing of the you get these three areas of traits of engagement were overviewing them and then we’ll get into detail on great. We’ll come back and hit him each one, so okay, what’s, the what’s, our second engaged board trait that the second one is having high expectations and enforcing those expectations. It’s a job enforcement enforcement like a cop. Okay, but not, you know, good cop, bad cop, good cop. And i can’t marry the cop murray, the cop fremery company on a corner that you know, you know, and it’s making sure that it’s everybody’s clear about what the job is that they agree that they’re going to do the job, and then there’s a process to encourage, supposed to enforcement, encourage and car encourage them to continue doing the job at the best of their level. And the thing that’s really interesting about that is it’s counterintuitive. I got a board executive director ization. Oh, my god. If i asked too much of my boy, the leaf and that’s. Not true, i think it’s totally the reverse. I thinkyou mohr. You ask of people the happy they are okay. In the end, they engaged. All right. Excellent. Well, go into detail on that. And then. Well, the third round. The executive director has responsibility. Absolutely. The executive director’s key, i believe, to the whole process. Too many executive director zoho my god, the board is by boss and i better not push adam and i better not try to tell him what to do because the fire me so i can’t tell them what to do. And that’s totally wrong. T e d is the professional in the room. We all arts board members were all amateurs. Thie edie knows what the organization needs and has. To really serve as a coach for the board behind the scenes, working through the chair, working through the officers, working through the executive committee but always serving as a coach to move the board forward in the direction that the organization needs. You’re coming at this not only as, ah coach on consultant for boards and organizations, but you’ve you’ve been on many boards and you’re on many boards right now. Right now. Two, two alright, i know i know you wouldn’t do it to have been on many in the but yes, ooh now, yeah, yeah. Okay, won’t you shout out ones you’re on? Well, one isn’t really interesting organization and it’s a great story, actually, about boards, it’s going critical community works and we worked to bring theater into schools, and we work to connect schools with theater and all sort of connect kids with a history of their neighborhoods. It’s a very interesting connection between education and theater and arts and history, and we went through a period, actually where we almost closed the doors, the model, the business model was no longer sustainable. Uh, schools no longer had the money to pay for these kinds. Of things in the school to bring kids to plays and things like that because the nature of budgets and we were almost ready to shut down and the board with some great board members really did a very tight analysis of cash flow and of what programmes were sustainable and what programs we’re not sustained. Serious introspection, siri’s introspection with detailed analysis, detailed financial analysis of what? What sustainable and what’s not sustainable. And we cut what’s, not sustainable. And we’re left with a few basic things that are sustainable and i think the organization’s going to revive and it’s a lot of it is his board work with the executive director. And just a minute before our first break what’s the what’s, the other organization, the others. My synagogue board. I’ve been on there for too many years. Okay, like i come off. Come on. I used to be chair. I left for a while. They brought me back. It’s, you know it’s. A community obligation for me. Okay, well, what’s the name of the society for the advancement of judaism run the upper west side napor side of new york city. Okay, there’s, another upper west side. Somewhere in the world. All right, you’re gonna get something. I do enough of this new york centrism. I mean, personally, i’m the center of the universe, and then new york revolves around me, but it’s also, you know, it’s. Another sort of center around. May i do enough of that? So don’t get in trouble. All right? Let’s, go out for this break when we come back, michael and i’m going to keep talking about these three traits of engaged boards and of course, i’ve got live. Listen, love, etcetera, stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy. Dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Okay, michael davidson. Um, let’s, go back to the first part. Now, personal experience. It starts with a personal connection. It’s yours with a personal connection, but you have to maintain we’ve got to keep it up. You got you got you, you’ve got to keep it up. And there are really two very simple things that boards can do to keep it up. One is you bring the mission into every board meeting. So as part of the agenda for every board meeting, you have somebody telling the story. Yeah, either a staff member or a client, someone who comes in to talk about the impact that this program has had online client story lines. I mean, that could be tearful, it’s tearful, and it serves a number of purposes. First, it reinforces the mission connection. But the other thing that it serves when you asking boardmember is to go out and raise money they got have stories to tell, no one’s going to get interested about statistics of a program and the numbers and so on and so forth, right, they’re going to get interested in the impact on dso boardmember sze have got tow have these stories, but what’s important about the way adults remember things right? We don’t remember stuff that we’ve read as well as stuff that we’ve heard. So you have a real person in there talking about a real event versus a couple of paragraphs, there’s just a couple of paralyzing the latest program achievement exactly where so so you do that, then the other side of us, he bring it into the board boot. The other side of it is bringing the board members out to the program. So you build in an expectation, which is we’ll get the expectations, but you build in an expectation that every boardmember has to visit a program twice a year. Shut off to the program, just go there, watch it, talk to people, ask questions, learn about what’s going on and then another expectation is every boardmember is expected after they visited a program to come back to the board and tell this story report their report and so they talk about how they reacted to this. So now you get to results from that right? Number one, it reinforces that you got to go visit program because you don’t want to be the only boardmember who never had a story to number one and number two. Now, i’ve got my story that i heard, and i’ve got your story that you heard from us, and now i’ve got twice as many stories to tell about the organization so it’s two very simple things that maintain the mission connection. And then on top of that, every board meeting you’re hearing a story exactly right so it’s in front of them, not that’s, not a special that’s. Not a special meeting. That’s every every meeting, every meeting. It’s on the ejecta, it’s on the job. Okay, um, yeah, i guess. I mean, you said it, but i want to dive a little deeper with it. The boards tend to lose that. That personal connection, the passion that brought them there turns into a monthly budgetary analysis, staffing levels, competitive analysis. You know which things are important too. But that becomes the sum, the whole thing that’s, right. And that and that’s, when the board members get together and it’s, you know, another part of it which i didn’t quite push in that in that. Article is that it’s about the group it’s about the team part? A big part of what motivates board members is being part of the team. We don’t liketo operate on our own, not we’re not good as human beings. Is that right? We are best in groups. We all know that we do our best. We are best our best selves come out in groups, something some groups not so good. But mostly our best selves come out in groups. And so you want to reinforce that sense of a team at the board meeting? Yeah, so it can’t all be just a little business, and the more you know, the detailed business it’s got to be the big stuff that that we joined together around, and you give people an opportunity to express that as they asked questions from the staff member or the client has come in from the boardmember what had a, you know, a visit that they’re reporting on, and that conversation builds the sense of a team i’m standing. Yeah, sometimes it’s really simple. The emotion comes through that’s, right? And you know, it is it’s about the emotional tony. You’re absolutely right. We were not rational creatures. We are emotional creatures. We will use our rationality to explain emotions that’s good and maybe to control them sometimes, but mostly we way run by our emotions by our sentiments and that’s that driver have we got to pay attention to that? You know, i sought out my professional life is a lawyer. So all the legal stuff about boards, i know it, but i kind of forget it because it’s not as important as the emotional side and we have plenty of guests talking about the legal side. Yeah, yeah. Good genes. Akagi are regular legal contributor, often talking about board the fiduciary obligations, etcetera. Yeah. All right, let’s. Go to the expectations. Yeah. Let me ask you a threshold question. Do you like to see expectations in writing absolute for a perspective board? Absolutely. Coming on the board. Here’s what we expect you got that right? You recruiting me to come on my on your board? I’m asked the first question i ask is so what’s the deal and i want to see it. You know, if it’s just told well you’re supposed to do this, you’re supposed to do that it’s kind. Of vague, right? I want to see it in writing, okay. And seeing it in writing. Well, first of all, to get to that writing. Where do you get to that? Writing from where do you get to that written list of expectations? The board has got to agree to it, you know, like a job description. Yeah, but it doesn’t come from the outside. It’s gotta come from the inside. There’s. No outside authority that can write that. That contract for you, it’s got to come from an agreement on the part of the board members. This is what we expect off ourselves. Okay, so that’s that’s that’s a conversation. So the executive committee works on this are usually, ah, governance committee. So the governance committee would take a look at what? What are the expectations for board members? Come up with what they would propose. Put those on the table, have a conversation with the board and get the board to approve it. The vote on it? Yes. This is this is it. This is what we expect, and they and their very specific, you know, how many board meetings were you expected to attend? Yeah, that every boardmember is expected to serve on a committee the number of side visits, the personal contribution site visits are the program yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the broker was just ok the contribution, how much? Everybody i believe every boardmember should write a check it’s going to be different in different organizations, but they got to demonstrate their old commitment. What’s the expectation for fund-raising you expect around the fund-raising do you ah, like to see all board members have a certain the same minimum? Or is it more tea to your yoga really varies? You know, much bigger organizations that have, you know, museums, theatre groups, and so on they will put in and many others too, if they’re more, um, more mature organization will put in a number five thousand dollars, okay, smaller organizations, they struggle with that our listeners are more small, make it small and many eyes they they struggle with that because they say, look, if i put that hyre number half of my board can’t do that, you know? So what we do with the smaller organizations, for starters, is simply say every boardmember is expected to make a personally significant contribution, so what is personally significant mean, you have to have a conversation about that, and for me, i have a i have a kind of ah rule of thumb, right personally significant means you have to think before you write the check, right? Ok, over the check that you don’t have to think about that’s not significant, right? It’s got to be significant relative to what you do, maybe it’s a hot one of the top three charities or some other standard like that. Once you get it started, then you congratulate inching up overtime, ok, but you started with the notion of it being personally significant, and you like to see this as you said, personal gift not not, give or get it’s, give and get given and given and that’s an injunction conjunction okay, we’re both lawyers do that. So that’s, right, former, former well and happy yeah, i’m happy about it. So, yes, it is, and because i believe every boardmember has got to make a personal commitment, right? And i believe they’re better board members if they’ve got as they say, skin in the game and that they’ve written a check and they’re going to pay more. Attention, because they’re they’re investing in this, and they’re also getting out and are also getting involved in, you know, selling tables for the gala, the gulf, whatever it isyou know all of that kind of work as well, but it’s kind of because they can’t do that work unless they put themselves on the line. You can’t go to your friends and ask him to contribute for the gala because if we’re going to say, i hope you’re what are you doing? Yeah, you know, we dwelled on this. We’re talking about expectations gentle, but we dwelled on fund-raising because i found something that i i was asked to do some board we search some research about boards back when i was an employee is on my st john’s university. No, no letter home where you really saved me. I’m in france, tony from nineteen, ninety seven it was an article i found fund-raising realities every boardmember must face, quote to demonstrate their commitment boardmember sze must first make a generous gift proportionate to their means. End quote nineteen, ninety seven we were still talking about this. We were always told years the same story. Yeah, the dynamics don’t change? Yeah, yeah. Why is that? Because, that’s, the reality of what we’re dealing with, right? We’re dealing with the reality ofthe volunteers with dealing with the reality it’s a uniquely american phenomenon. Okay, we take people ordinary people from all walks of life, right? And we asked them to be responsible for charitable organizations to be the stewards of these organizations, to guide the organizations to support these organizations. It’s a very strange phenomenon. If you think about it, right. When you ask people, you know, i want you to serve on my board. So here’s the deal. Right. Okay, i’m expecting you. Come six meetings a year. I want you to serve on a committee. Okay? I’m asking you to pay for the privilege. And as a bonus, you get to ask your friends for money. Okay? That’s the deal, right? It is, but we do it. So it doesn’t. The dynamics of what make this makes this challenging. Never change. They never change because it is inherently a challenging back-up proposition. Tohave all of our charitable work, all of our non-profit work run by volunteers. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That’s. A very articulate explanation. That’s. Why it’s the same in nineteen nineties not going to stop lt’s not going eighteen years from now. We have the same conversation. All right? Hopefully we know a little bit more with some or expectations a cz you’re departing the board, you want to know why people leaving? Yeah, and sometimes these conversations are really interesting exit interviews, the exit interviews. So i’ve been involved on on the selection panel for a thing called a non-profit excellence awards non-profit excellence awards, which is award given every year in new york city for excellence and non-profit management. So one of the organizations that we were doing a site visit on this year, i was talking about the fact that one of their very serious major contributors on the board was announcing that he was gonna leave. So one thing is, oh, my god, but, you know, we love you buy or someone sat down with him and said, well, what’s going on tell us why you’re leaving and basically what he said was he says, look, i’ve been on this board for five years, i’ve been on the finance committee for five years, i do finance every day, i’m tired of doing finance. I don’t want to serve on finance anymore, so i’m getting off the board and the chairman said, you don’t have to serve a fine and it’s not the only connection i already committee. What what would you like to be interested in? What would get you interested? And he wanted to serve on the program committee, which worked on the evaluation of programs on their metrics, on their outcomes and things like that? Bingo! He didn’t leave that’s a grand slam grizzly. I didn’t lose the big donor major, but what’s happened. And now he’s happier and the organization hasn’t lost his ten. Now, sometimes in an exit interview, it doesn’t quite work that way when you find out from someone stepping off about the board. What was your experience? What worked for you? What didn’t work for you? How do we how could we make it better? Who does these exit interviews? Ceo. Exactly. Director, i think not. Fellow boardmember fellow boardmember. Yeah, i would. You know, it could be the chair. Yeah. Could be the chair of the governance committee. Is the trouble? Could be with the executive director. That would be the board relationship. Yeah, so? You figure it out, you know, probably the most neutral. If there’s trouble. I mean, there might be trouble. Yeah, but usually the most neutral. Be the chair of the governance committee because that person might be having some trouble with chair of the board. Yeah, you mentioned is governance committee now? Twice. What? That’s? Not a very common committee. It’s more and more common. It is what we expect of our governance committee. Well, it used to be what was the nominating committee. Ah, so it’s job was bored. Recruitment. Now, it’s it’s taken on a larger roll off of the life of the board. So it looks at the by-laws it looks at board procedures. It manages the process of evaluation on which we hadn’t gotten to of board members. Because once you have those expectations, expectations are only useful. If you review and evaluate let’s talk, you know what you mean? That piece of paper, your notes, the guy, the guy wanted his notes at the beginning and handed it to him. And now he’s holding them now into quarters. Not looked at it once. You know this, you know the self atop your head. Give me. The notes back stop fiddling with that. The director is that folded up in the little quarters was gonna rip it up into shreds. Putting his shredder alright board of al u ation. Yeah, so we have expectations. You have expectations, right? So it’s a number of different ways sometimes boardmember typically serve a three year term. That’s who we should like that folk. So sometimes what you do is when the person is coming up for for potential renomination. That’s when you do a review, should this person be nominated again for another term? That’s one way another way is i think i’ve left. I’d love to have and some organizations do it every year there was a conversation chair, the governance committee chair of the board, depending upon who you know, it was best to have that conversation with each boardmember every year. So how you doing? How have you done against these expectations? How do you feel about your performance? What are you hoping to do next year? So it’s that you know it’s the kind of a thing that any manager would do with an employee that their supervising right? You don’t just given employee job. Description and hope that they fulfill it right? You review them on a periodic basis so with a boardmember you do it once a year and you find out what’s going on and hopefully re energize the person, maybe you find different things for them to do and that they’d be engaged in, and someone so it’s an active process of interaction with every boardmember we’re just a couple minutes left here. I want to get teo the executive director’s responsibility in feeding you call it meat eating meat to the board and that’s it’s a really subtle process, but it’s really important and there’s two sides to it. One is there are really important questions that board should be dealing with, you know, what’s our financial future what’s our prospects. What of our programs are sustainable? What pro? What should we be seeking for outcomes of our programs? Where we going now? Sometimes executive directors don’t want their boards in cage that knows that because they want to make those decisions themselves, but they are the sea important things that you can get an executive can get important understanding and knowledge from smart board members and and make it a collaborative process. So they got a they have to be willing to trust the board. Teo, do this kind of stuff. But so how did the executive director get to do it? They do it suddenly they do it through the board chair. They do it to the executive committee. They make suggestions. They guide the work, they ask questions. You know, my my first experience on a board, i was a young lawyer, right? So i got recruited to this board of a senior service agency on the west side. They needed a lawyer on the board, so i got to be on it again. The western again. Oh, god. Not that we hear you’re new york accent, so it’s. But sooner or later, i became a lawyer, became the board chair, right? I would meet every week with the executive director, and she would tell me what she needed from me. She would tell me what she needed from me to get from the board. And we worked this a tina and that’s, a good executive director does that she’s a partner with the board chair and guiding the work off the board. But at the same time has to be willing to trust the board and be willing to put some of these meaty issues on the board table, because that means that he or she are not going to able to totally control him, right? The board is going to have a say on these questions as they should, and if if the if the offerings heir to minuscule who’s when we start to get disengagement, of course i mean you we recruit smart people, yeah, with good experience in all of their professions and lives and businesses, and we don’t give him challenging challenge do right? It doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, the more the challenge, the happy where you are. Yeah, that’s your that’s the irony you said earlier and i intruded to thee. The more you give, the happier you’re bored will be that’s, right? Yeah. Okay. All right. Let me ask you last minute. What do you love about this work? You’re doing around boards, it’s the people they’re so interesting and it’s the missions this so interesting. I mean, the range of things that people find important to do in life and to achieve in society is enormous. And i never would predict it. I mean, right now, right now, i’m working with a group that works with kids newyork city again in harlem, right? Teaching, um, ice hockey. Okay? And and and the parents and the kids this’s important? Not just sports, but charitable. They’re really changing kids lives by ice hockey. I dealt with another organization, new jersey, now across the river, right provides support for families who’ve lost the joy of a child. Grief counseling. Yeah, everybody thinks about grief counseling for adults who’ve lost spouses, right? But for you, no. So the rates for me what’s exciting is this range of things causes interests that people can get engaged in. Michael davidson, board coach many years experience over one hundred boards working with them, you’ll find his practice at board coach dot com. Thanks so much, michael. Why pleasure. Welcome back. So you get in five years. You have, you know, i know it won’t be that long. Yeah. Tony’s take two and in-kind gift’s coming up first. Pursuant. Online tools for small and midsize shops they’re committed to our community ceo is trent ryker. He saw the passion for mission in the twelve years he worked in non-profits also saw how under resourced so many organizations are the tools that they have are smart, they help your fund-raising you’ll raise more money and they are affordable pursuant dot com my video is still up on how sincerity trumps production value. You can see the earthquake in new york city last week, and i read from a hilton hotel letter in brooklyn broken english, but the sentiment definitely came through on that video is at tony martignetti dot com that’s tony’s take two for friday, thirteenth of november forty third show of the year. Here is in-kind gif ts with maria simple marie sample is back she’s, our monthly prospect research contributor and the prospect finder she’s, a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot com her book is panning for gold. Find your best donorsearch prospects now she’s our doi n of dirt, cheap and free. You can follow her on twitter at maria simple. Welcome back, maria! Hey there, tony, how are you? I’m doing very well. How are you today? Just fine. Thank you. Go that’s. Good. We’re here to talk about gifts in-kind on this fall. Afternoon what way are we are but i first need to just quickly mention to you that apparently i am having a three year anniversary with your show this week. Really? You’ve been tracking your well, you know, who’s been tracking it is lincoln. Oh, really? You saw an anniversary notice on lengthen. This is this is your third year it yet it sent out an anniversary notice. Tio my connections and i all of a sudden started getting all these congratulatory notes this week. So i thought, well, that isn’t that appropriate that here is my my weak teo, reconvene with you so it’s been three wonderful years. Wow, that’s really something i would if you had asked me, i would have thought it was i would’ve said it was more like two holy cow that’s. Terrific. I get those notices i but i don’t always read all of them. Usually i just read the birthday notices. I don’t always read all the work anniversary notices, but i also noticed they send them out throughout the month, so they don’t. They don’t only come in the beginning. So maybe i just maybe i haven’t gotten yours yet. You’re three. Three year anniversary, but happy anniversary. I’m glad you’ve been with me for three years. Thank you for having me for three years. Wonderful. Oh, thank you. My pleasure gifts. In-kind let’s. Make sure everybody understands what a gift in-kind is. Yes. That’s, right, let’s do that first before i get thrown off into jargon jail first, first out of the gate here, so gets in-kind would really be anything other than monetary donations. So typically they would be considered donations of food, clothing, medicines, furnishings, office equipment, building materials and, you know, even sometimes services that air provided by somebody could be considered ah, gift in-kind as opposed to a gift in cash that they might give to your organization. So if they’re providing some sort of a specific service and then not charging you for it, i know that, you know, sometimes consultants will do that on on a pro bono basis, so that would be considered a gift in-kind as well, i could throw out another example that i’ve worked on a few times. Gifts of artwork, art collections are also gifts in-kind i worked on a really interesting one once it was a presidential memorabilia collection. And it included a picture. It included the resin, the one of the nixon resignation letters, original signed. I think there were five or six that he signed, and it also had a picture of that famous picture of jimmy carter, menachem begin and anwar sadat. You know, the three of them are shaking hands well, thiss was a deep into six figure art collection, but so they can be really interesting on dh cars. I’ve worked on a couple of classic car donations also, which can be quite valuable. I know you mentioned automobiles. I was just thinking of classic automobiles, but, um, yeah, they can be that could be kind of fun to work on. Well, so, you know, it must have been interesting. I’ve never had the opportunity myself to be working directly with, uh non-profit while they’ve been, you know, fortunate enough to receive something, you know, of that type of value on also, you know, it got me to thinking about, you know, well, what if i were a small to midsize non-profit and have the millionaire next store living in our community and maybe people didn’t even realize they were housing any type of art collection or one or two even significant pieces in their home? And you know what? You know? What do you do? What is the next step that you do if you find out that perhaps it’s somebody’s left it to you and there will or they could be making the gift while they’re still alive? When then, you know, it got to be really complicated as i started to research this a little bit to try and figure out. Well, what is the non-profit need to do first, in terms of valuing the artwork? So what did you do? I’ll tell you what organizations i kind of came up with that are reputable in terms of places you would turn to, but i’m curious to know how it worked out. How did you appraise the artwork? Yeah, well, let’s, let’s, take a step back and make sure he understands the for a gift that’s valued over five thousand dollars. And again, like maria said, this is we’re talking about non-cash gifts, so not this is not cash or stock, but something other than that. Over five thousand dollars, the irs requires what’s called a qualified appraisal and that’s a term of art and the qualified appraisal has certain requirements, and a qualified appraisal has to be done by a qualified appraiser and that’s also a term of art, and they’re certain credentials that the irs requires the place that i turned for the presidential art collection anyway was thie american association of appraisers i think i’m pretty sure they’re based here in new york, and i believe i contacted them first for some recommendations specific, too presidential memorabilia, was it perhaps the american society of appraisers? Because my research shows that they’re the oldest organization founded in nineteen thirty six, and they think they are in the new york area, okay, could have been, but i think there’s another one, too, which i think is triple a american association of appraisers or american appraisal association, so we could try either one of those, but yours is here’s more bonified because you actually research that i’m remember i’m living off the top of my head. Yeah, i actually am. I can actually post a list, uh, post show onto your facebook page, but there were actually sort of six top societies or associations, if you will that that my research turned up one. Was that one i just mentioned the american society of appraisers which, according to this particular web site that lists them, says that this one is the oldest and then there’s the art dealers association of america, thie appraisers, association of america. Well, there’s the triple oh, yeah. There’s that could’ve been it. Okay, please go. Thie appraisal foundation, thie international society of appraisers and the private art dealers association. So i thought that was all interesting. Then i got to wondering if you can actually turn to any of the major houses that actually, you know, the auction houses like those that you might be seeing featured on something like antiques roadshow. Ah, but i didn’t know if that was, uh, if people turned to those types of auction houses to help, you know, evaluate the worst oven item. Certainly an auction house, i suppose, would get involved once there. It actually want to, you know, offload that particular items so that they will end up having the cash. Uh, i i would imagine that would be the case for any non-profit other than a museum who would want that gift, perhaps as part of their dahna display, yeah, it’s it’s it could go broader than that, you know, there are ways that non-profits khun use gifts in-kind in their mission that that are permissible and are not so obvious, like hospitals can use artwork because they can decorate waiting rooms and hallways and things. One of the classic car donations that i worked on was for a university, and we were anticipating using the classic convertible in there athletic recruiting because they thought that seventeen eighteen year olds, when they’re thinking about what college to go to to play sports, might love driving around in a being driven around in a fifty seven chevy, i’m pretty sure that’s what it was convertible, so there are different charitable uses that they’re not as obvious as like you said, you know, the museum, there can be other charitable purposes for for these types of gift no, yeah, i hadn’t thought of that. That sounds great, actually, i can i can really see how an organization might want to step back and think about how it could fit in, as you said to their overall mission or two attraction like in the case of the college or university. There with their son sports department. Really wonderful stuff. And of course, there’s. Also the other examples you gave you no services could be gift in-kind so that’s obviously being used used up immediately a point that i want to make. Two is it’s sort of subsumed in what were saying? I’ll make it explicit. You have to find the right kind of appraiser. There are like i mentioned presidential memorabilia there. Our appraisers are specialising just that. So if you had a ah, a fine art photograph that was being donated to you you need to find someone who specializes in not only find our photography but they may even specialize in the particular photographer the artist or the era if it’s ah it’s ah it’s! Not a contemporary piece of art so you have to find and this goes into the irs requirements. Do you have to find someone who specializes in precisely what it is you’re being given? If it’s an automobile automobile appraisers it’s just like a medical specialist you have to find the right kind of person. Maria, let me ask you about trying to find gifts in-kind i mean, these don’t only come from wealthy people, i don’t want people to be left with that idea. They’d only come from people of wealth. What about ways of ah, finding gifts in-kind in your community? Well, that got me to thinking about not not just the individuals in your community who i might be capable of doing this. But then i started thinking about all of the corporate programs that are in place, for example, that have gifts in-kind as part of their overall corporate social responsibility, so they may have a corporate giving program, a corporate foundation, then they may have a separate set of programming related to in-kind on dh. Then i was wondering, well, how could a non-profit potentially find who are the corporations in my area? Or, you know, i’m a non-profit in need of, um, you know, whatever women’s closing to help the women in our shelter be closed in the winter months or something like that, you know, where could i find that actually found? Sure, there’s multiple websites, but i found a non-profit website that that looked like it would really be helpful front for your listeners to know about and it’s a good three sixty have you? Heard about that one. Oh, i don’t know. It is what is a good three. Sixty dot org’s. Yeah, good. Three. Sixty dot org’s. And so you can go into this if you are a non-profit and you’re, you’re in search of product donations. Um, and you cannot go. You can see the companies that are there. And then, if you’re a company that wants to list your product donations, you can list what you have available on dh. Of course, if you’re an individual that would just like to donate to this particular or a good three sixty dot org’s, you can do that as well. They’re looking for monetary donations. Always. So i just thought it was a pretty interesting, almost like a clearinghouse. It looks like to me. Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s, why you’re our die end of dirt cheap and free. Anything else you found out there about trying to find these types of gif ts? Um uh, i was thinking about this might be more suitable for organizations that are, you know, related to being near the water or maritime or marine environment organizations. But, you know, i have touched upon yacht’s in the past. And trying to figure out, you know, yacht owners and so forth. But, you know, sometimes there will be people who would like to actually donate their yacht, just like people would want to donate a car supposed to try to sell it on their own. So boatinfoworld dot com would allow you to search by state or county or zip code for a list of boat owners near you. So, you know, if we have anybody in the, you know, marine related industry listening to the call, they might want to check out boatinfoworld dot com to get a list of boat owners. Um and it could be something that they would want to start cultivating relationships with those individuals getting them and involved in cultivation events, etcetera. You always go the marine wear because you have a sailboat. I know you don’t have in-kind wave that in dahna that’s. Ok, you are you donating your sailboat? No, not anytime soon, you know? Okay, you work quick. Answer that too. Okay? Okay. Where? L should we go with this? What if in terms of well, i’m sorry? Was there anything more about finding potential gifts? In-kind or is we? Exhausted that. Um then i start thinking about real estate, and i was wondering, well, how would you find out if you want it to proactively find if there is real estate, that could be potential for donation? And i was thinking, well, i guess if you got involved in developing a solid relationships with realtors in your area or, you know, even the banks, um, that, you know, unfortunately these last few years, we’ve seen such high foreclosure rates and so forth there might be some opportunity there if you have conversations with bankers in your community or realtors to find out about some potential properties that could become available, you know, before as a donation. All right, we have to go out for a couple minutes, we come back, i have a couple of tips about real estate gifts that marie is talking about, and we’ll keep going on gif ts in-kind stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation, really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. I’m peter shankman, author of zombie loyalists, and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, maria simple. Hey there, what would i say in jersey? What up? How you doing? Yeah, doing that’s just yeah, i was born in jersey and i was raised there, so i don’t like that that kind of organized crime overtone around new jersey, but sopranos obviously hit that home. A couple of things that i wanted to reinforce about real estate that that you have brought up real estate can be a very, very good gift for non-profits it can also be a really lousy gift. You have to do your due diligence around real estate and basically it’s the same as if you were buying a home or condor coop do the same too diligence before you put that charity name in the oppcoll the the chain of title so you want to do an environmental assessment phase one. If that raises any issues, then you have to go to a face to assessment if the land has buildings on it or a home, whatever you want to make sure that the building is all in code. So there’s there’s that kind of an inspection, a building inspection title search to make sure that there wasn’t there isn’t some defect in the title, basically all the things you would do as i said that you, if you were, if you were buying the place to yourself, whether it’s got dahna buildings on it or not before you took ownership of a piece of property, you want to make sure that it’s clean in all those ways environmentally title code and building inspection wise. Oh, and if you do all that, then you can end up with a really valuable gift of real estate. So you you bring up an interesting point. I hadn’t really thought about that chain of title that you just mentioned hyre so if i’m understanding you correctly, does that mean if if somebody were to approach an organization let’s say while they’re alive and they say, you know, i’ve got this undeveloped piece of land we want to leave, too. I would like to donate to your non-profit organization, and if you decide to say pay well, great and take that piece of wind and then immediately sell it and let say it’s sold within, you know, three months time, and if you didn’t go through maybe something in the environmental assessment and then somebody down the line says, wow, i can’t believe x y z non-profit, uh, ever owned this piece of land it happens to have had, you know, contamination on it or whatever you’re saying, it could end up coming to bite you in from almost like a pr perspective if your name’s somehow attached to it. This’s like a law school exam there’s a bunch of things in the inn. That hypothetical you just gave me? Yep. Pr. Yes, but i think even potentially worse than that. Although pr can be pretty bad. There’s a potential for legal liability. If it’s if it’s an environmental mess, then all the owners in the past and i’m not environment the lawyer, but i know a little bit a very little about it all. The all the owners in the past are potentially liable for not having cleaned it up or possibly for having contributed to the mess. So and that applies to individuals to so yeah, that’s. This is why we do environmental assessments. You can. You can. Get in some really sticky legal trouble if they’re turns out later on a couple of owners later or something to be an environmental problem and, you know, you didn’t know about it, you didn’t insure against it, things like that. Go ahead. I i was just wondering, what about, in the case of somebody who is willed, a piece of land or a property that had some sort of an environmental issue from years ago? Let’s let’s, you know, think about somebody who may be owned a family run gas station for a number of years, or something like that, or on oil related business oil tanks or something, and then the spouse dies. The person continues to all the remaining spouse, continues to own the property, has no heirs and decides to leave it in her will to a non-profit so then i’m wondering what the impact is mean in this case kayman non-profit to say no, we don’t want it no, thank you. Yeah, again. Sounds like a law school, hypothetical, by the way, i do recognize you turning the tables on me, asking me questions on guy, and i don’t appreciate it, so you may not. Reaching your four with me? Yes, thie the amount of time that you have tio renounce a gift. I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s called in a will varies from state to state it’s typically ninety days or, you know, maybe longer for any beneficiary of a gift by will to turn it down. You don’t have to accept something that’s in a will. So if in your hypothetical the non-profit would want to do its due diligence around that real estate before it accepted the gift, and within the time period that it can still turn it down, if it doesn’t want it. The only thing that came out of your earlier one was you said the the charity sells the real estate that’s a whole other issue. If it’s sold within three years of the time of the date of the donation, then that has implications for the donor’s charitable deduction. The donor’s charitable deduction gets reduced because if the charity unloads, i’m using an unkind word, but i’m not using a loaded word but gets rid of that gift within three years of the date of donation. Then it’s presumed that the donation was not part of their charitable mission not within their charitable mission and therefore that the irs goes back to the donor who claimed the donation and that and the deduction associated with it possibly years earlier and reduces it from a fair market value to a cost basis. Don’t a deduction on that could be a huge difference between what it costs the donor to get something and what the market value of it was when they made the gift so big implications if charity does not use a gift if does not use a gift for at least three years, i have to go out in about a minute. Maria so i kind of took over your segment, but but you were asking me questions. So it’s your fault? Um, well, no, i mean, you know, you’ve given us so much food for thought, really? And i think, you know, the bottom line is you really have to be able to, you know, seek out the right appraisers, seek the advice of financial and law professionals when you’re going to be getting any sort of a significant gift. Ah, oven in-kind gift any non-cash related gift that you really do need todo your homework and and and know what what to look for here, i think it’s, good stuff. There are a couple of liars publications that will help you publication five twenty six, which is called charitable contributions, and also publication five sixty one, which is about gifts in-kind and those qualified appraisals and qualified appraisers i was talking about. Okay, maria, we got to leave it there. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, tony maria simple are doi end of dirt cheap? You’ll find her at the prospect finder dot com and on twitter she’s at maria simple. I’m pre recorded this week, so can’t do riel live listener love by city and state, but the love still goes out of course live listener loved everybody listening live on this day podcast pleasantries, too, are over ten thousand, whatever you do in painting a house, washing dishes, driving subway, ing, walking, running, tread, milling, elliptic, politicizing whatever you’re doing podcast pleasantries, toe all those listeners and affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners throughout the country. Korso, of course, just the latest of many affiliate affections out to all those am and fm terrestrial listeners next. Week get creative poetry and other arts in your meetings and events with lissa piercy. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go pursuant, you’ll raise pillowcases more money. I’m not talking those accent pillows that you toss on your couch. I’m talking those twelve foot long pregnancy body pillows that fill a queen size bed where your husband doesn’t fit anymore, filled with money. Pursuant dot com, our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer, shows social media is by diner russell, while susan chavez is on maternity leave. On our music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and big ring. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card, it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s, why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts, tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for September 20, 2013: The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox & News Sources/New Source

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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My Guests:

Dr. Robert Penna: The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox

Robert Penna 2Dr. Robert Penna, author of “The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox” discusses the wave of reliance on outcomes measurement, and gives concrete steps and tools so that small and mid-size shops can stay ahead of the trend toward outcomes assessment. We also talk about Easy Bake ovens and my Eagle Scout project (as an example of what NOT to do). This is part 1 of our interview from a previous show. Part 2 is next week.

 

 

 

 

Maria Semple: News Sources/New Source

Maria 057 Low Res Color_crMaria Semple, our doyenne of dirt cheap and free ideas in prospect research, is also The Prospect Finder. She’s got advice for you on which news sources are best for your research, and a new free offering from The Foundation Center, “Foundation Directory Online.” Plus, her 60-Second Style Stop!

 

 

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent for friday, september twentieth i’m your aptly named host. Oh, you know that i hope you were with me last week. I’d be put through mitral regurgitation if i heard that you had missed cause marketing one oh one trish in naper, principal manager at alcoa foundation and mounir panjwani, business development manager at do something dot or ge shared tips for getting started in cause marketing and internal social networks. Scott koegler, our technology contributor and the editor of non-profit technology news, explained how internal social networks compliment the external networks like twitter and facebook this week. The non-profit outcomes toolbox dr robert penna, author of the non-profit outcomes toolbox, discusses the wave of reliance on outcomes measurement and gives concrete steps and tools so that small and midsize shops can stay ahead of this increasing trend toward outcomes assessment. This is part one of our interview from a previous show, and part two is going to be next week. Also, news sources new source maria simple are dyin of dirt, cheap and free ideas in prospect research and the prospect finder she’s got advice for you on which news sources are best for your research and a new free offering from the foundation center called foundation directory online, plus her sixty second style stop. We’re going tow! Try having one minute tips on style like travel, food and leisure from guests. I’ll be anxious to know what you think about these sixty second style stops between the guests on tony’s take two my block this week is planned e-giving saved our ass and also i want to tell you about bb con coming up, i’m going to be there will say a little about that got contests that’s in tony’s, take two my pleasure now to give you my interview with dr robert penna and the non-profit outcomes toolbox. My guest now is robert penna. He is the author of a complete i’m sorry, the non-profit outcomes toolbox, a complete guide to program effectiveness, performance measurement and results published by wiley and sons he’s, a consultant, and his work includes the application of corporate sector, outcome based tools and insights to the work of non-profits he’s done work for the n e casey foundation, the national geographic foundation and the ford. Foundation he’s, an adviser to charity navigator on outcomes. I’m very glad that his work and his book bring him to the studio. Robert. Welcome. Thank you very much for having pleasure to have you. Thank you for coming all the way down from albany. No problem. Live in the studio. In the studio. We hear an increasing amount of talk about outcomes, outcomes, measurement. Why is that? I would save it for basically two reasons. The ones historical. The fact is that traditionally and this goes back easily to the beginning of the last century. No one ever asked non-profits to be quite fair, no one ever asked non-profits to either show evidence of or to demonstrate that they were having an actual impact. That was sort of a field of dreams and concept. If we make it available, things must get better. And it was taken on faith that train people with good programs with enough money would bring about positive change. Nobody actually quite asked that all started to change in the late seventies and then into the eighties, and quite independently of one another in various spaces. This concept of a focus on results in outcomes. And evidence of the same started a crop up, and it began to coalesce and particularly as we are in an in an era of limited resource is it becomes more important than ever for non-profits to be able to say here’s actual evidence of what we’ve accomplished, as opposed to a story about how big the problem is or how hard we’re trying in his forward. Ken berger, president, ceo of charity navigator who’s been a guest on the show, says that measurement is a battle for the very soul of the nonprofit sector. Ah, it’s taking on that great a prominence? Yes, it is that actually that line comes from a from an article ken and i co co authored it really is because there are those apologised who honestly believe in its ah term used before a fair exchange of differing ideas who honestly believe that non-profits and their clients should not be held. Tio this kind of accountability that the concept of just making services available truly is the mission of the non-profit space and that as long as they’re doing that, they’re doing their job. The problem is that for all of the money we’ve spent thes problems haven’t gone away, and so the question is, shouldn’t we be putting our our resource is into those programs into those organizations that have proven that there having the most beneficial impact, as opposed to giving it to other places that are perhaps not being as effective? The problems are too big, and the resource is of too scarce not to do this anymore, but it truly is a battle within the sector because there are those who just don’t believe in it, and we’ll get to a little of what their arguments are, maybe obliquely only, but that some of the ideas are so nebulous that they can’t be measured that like a child feeling a more positive ah feeling about education or about going to school, sort of nebulous ideas like that, but actually, those, um, sort of feel good outcomes can be measured. Well, first off, i would argue that if an organization is focusing primarily or almost or solely on feel good outcomes, they’re rethinking what they’re doing. Number one but number two there are proxies. There are proxies in terms of attitude, in terms of behaviour, in terms of various other kinds. Of things that can be looked at and can be taken as fairly accurate measures of whether or not if what you want to changes in attitude, whether or not that attitude has changed so it can be done, and we’re gonna talk about some of the ways that non-profits get there and the way that we can measure these things, um, is the butt is the story is the non-profits story the compelling story is that is that dead? Well, it it shouldn’t be dead, but what it should be, what should happen is that should be put in its place. Okay? The idea of telling a story is not a bad one, in fact, that there’s a whole chapter in the book that talks about using narrative as opposed to just factoids, because people remember stories where they have a tendency to forget much more vivid right stories vivid. But the problem is, if the if the story first off focuses on how big the problem is and that’s all it, it focuses on, and there are a number of non-profits i won’t name any, but you could probably think of them. You get things in the mail. And they show you the picture of x, y or z and it’s always how big the problem is, when we’re telling that kind of story and that’s all we’re telling we are in a way, avoiding entirely the question of, well, what do you doing about it and what other results that you have that you have achieved so that’s one one reason why the story has to be put in his proper place? The second is, and i don’t know whether we’ll get into this today, but a lot of non-profits wind up telling the wrong story for the wrong reason and ofttimes to the wrong people so that something has to be carefully handled as well. Okay, we have just another minute before a break, what if not a named example? What do you mean? Telling the wrong story? A lot of non-profits will focus on an emotional story that will highlight, for example, a success story, and it will be about this client of that client, but inadvertently, what they’re doing is they’re focusing the attention on that client. What we don’t know is, is that story cherry picked? How representative actually, is it what they’re not talking about is thie the the work that the organization as a whole does it’s it’s, shall we say, it’s it’s, macro impact. They focus so specifically on the story of this particular client at that particular client, it becomes very easy for their overall message of what they’re doing to be lost, counterproductive in counterfeit. His book is the non-profit outcomes, toolbox, it’s, robert penna. You’ll find his blogged outcomes, toolbox, dot com, and he’ll be with me after this break, so stay with us talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Do you need a business plan that can guide your company’s growth? Seven and seven will help bring the changes you need. Wear small business consultants and we pay attention to the details. You may miss our coaching and consultant services a guaranteed to lead toe. Right, groat. For your business, call us at nine. One seven eight three, three, four, eight six zero foreign, no obligation free consultation. Check out our website of ww dot covenant seven dot com oppcoll are you fed up with talking points? Rhetoric everywhere you turn left or right? Spin ideology no reality, in fact, its ideology over intellect no more it’s time. Join me, larry shot a neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven easter for the isaac tower radio in the ivory tower will discuss what’s important to you society, politics, business and family. It’s provocative talk for the realist and the skeptic who want to know what’s. Really going on? What does it mean? What can be done about it? So gain special access to the ivory tower. Listen to me, larry sharp your neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven new york time go to ivory tower radio dot com for details. That’s, ivory tower radio dot com everytime was a great place to visit for both entertainment and education. Listening. Tuesday nights nine to eleven. It will make you smarter. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com dahna welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio talking to robert penna about his book the non-profit outcomes toolbox right before the break, robert, we were talking about, um, for too much focus on problems. But the non-profit sectors exists to solve problems. So shouldn’t they be talking about what the problems are? Well, again, it has to be put into its proper place into its proper perspective. And this is not, you know, women, teo, bash the sector. Okay. I mean, we have to be honest and say this is a historical perspective and very early on this was how attention was brought. Tea to issues were literally going back to the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. Um, people, for example, he’d carry nation she’s well known for wanting tio bring about prohibition. Well, what she talked about was all of the ancillary downsides of alcoholism, all right, and the folk. But the focus was on drink. The focus was on people drinking too much. And the idea was they didn’t think, think it through to say, well, what’s really gonna happen. What other causes here. It was just focused on the drinks. So we had prohibition and guess what? All of those issues did not go away. The issues of broken families, the issues of domestic violence, the issues of unemployment, the issues of of poverty didn’t go away just because, well, we got rid of alcohol for those period that period of time. So part of the problem of the focus on just the problem is it tends to lead to simplistic answers because the concept is that progress is a lack of the problem when, in point of fact, really, the outcomes approach is that what you want to do is bring about some positive change that goes beyond merely an absence of the problem. So that’s one of the problems with focusing on just the problem, the second thing is that it kind of takes you off the hook if you think about it, for having to say, really what you have done to alleviate the problem or what success you’ve had in alleviating the problem. If every time i come back to you, pick an issue, homeless puppies, i come to you and i sent put something in the mail and tony, you know, look at all these starving puppies, and i say it was ten thousand starving puppies and you know it, justin in manhattan or something. That’s, a problem. And you emotionally are expected to resupply with a cheque will. Now, next year i come back and i say, well, now, there’s ten thousand homeless puppies. This still ten thousand homeless puppies will again. What it keeps focusing on is the problem. It does not focus on am i having an impact on alleviating situation. So that’s, a real son of short way of describing why that tends to be a ah sort of a circle, you know, like the snake eating its own tail. It really doesn’t get you where you need to pay. And you alluded to earlier the fact that we do still have deep seated, entrenched problems that we have been working on for generations like homelessness, entrenched poverty, etcetera. Exactly right be a hunger of broken family, you name it, these problems, or of worldwide. And so you might even get thes these appeals from any place on the globe. But it tends to in a lot of ways, i think the lead to a sense of defeat because, i mean, think about it if every single year you get the same appeal from the same organization showing the same picture of the same a person in need. The question starts to hate begs the question, well, what’s happening with my money, what we’ve been at it for so long, and we’re still seeing the same right? The one problem? One gentleman i speak speaking to someone’s ago, he runs a non-profit e program in ohio, and he said to me, well, do candy said, you know, we’ve been fighting this war on poverty for, you know, forty something years, and i’m not so sure we have anything to show for it. And part of the reason is that from the beginning, what we have to show for it was not the accent the accent was on making money available and making programs available. You’ve heard a thousand times there, the concept, the underserved community, right, which you could argue about whether they’re actually underserved enough but that’s a different story. But the question is what it seems to lead to. It leads to the implication that if you make services available, things will be better. Well, that’s not necessarily true. Just making them available, zach. Will will result in the outcome that you want exactly, and for years social investors you know, traditionally called funders, we’re investing in making services available rather than investing in change, and if you’re investing in change, then there ought to be sameer marks of the change. The whole concept of moving your your your your head away from the idea of being a thunder what’s being an investor is one of the first the first steps what’s a funder and interested in a funder, is interested in the dispersement of funds. In terms of the process, the paperwork who’s it going to what’s it being used for what’s, an investor interest is an investor and investor wants a return let’s talk about some more of the language differences that you point out not so much differences, but the important language around outcomes measurement that takes up roughly the first third of the book or so gent generally outputs versus outcomes outputs of what you do outcomes of what happens because of what you did okay example of an output and output is training class, and the outcome would be that somebody got a job by virtue of having been trained and more importantly, kept the job for a reasonable amount of time. When and this was this was rampant in the late sixties and seventies. Excuse me when thanks to largely to government, we got into being counting and compliance organisations were measured onto in terms of how many fannies their head in the seats, how many training training class they help? Well, that was great. But then it turned out in some cases people we trained for jobs that no longer existed or the training was insufficient, or there really was no placement attached to it. So we had organizations claiming success because they’ve had x number of fannies in the seats, or because they held so many training’s or the game, but someone certificates. But the end of the day was anybody hyre did anybody did anybody’s life improved? Well, don’t ask me that question when i focused on that were protest on how many training on the output not come from the outcomes spring from the outputs. Yes, yes, you need the outputs in order to get the outcomes and they have to be the right outputs. But again, if that is only just your focus is there’s a saying that a colleague of mine, a colleague of mine who wrote a book, if well, you fundez activity that’s usually all you get? Yes. Okay. All right. Impact, impact flows from outcome. What? Tell us about it and that’s down the road that’s down the road. In other words, for example, let us say that what you were talking about was bringing possible water. And this is something i was engaged in a t united nations potable water, fresh water supplies to certain kinds of villages. I was pronouncing potable. Is that okay? Potable vote on a laudable somebody made a tomato, somebody from and why you were calling correct one of us. I have to. But i was so it’s possible that anyone, when you’re with the united nations. So that’s a hyre i’m just tony martignetti non-profit radio it’s hyre hyre hyre stand. But you had a situation where okay you’re you’re bringing fresh water and now you could think of a host of reasons early on why you might want to do that. One of the more interesting ones to me was to alleviate the burden on the women and girls in the village usually whose job it is to do nothing while david hole water one of the reasons why their educational opportunities were so so stunted was because, well, gee, somebody’s got to get the water and that’s the woman and children’s job rather a woman and girls job. Well, let us say that you bring it in and let us say that some girl does get to go to school. Well, perhaps if twenty years later, when she’s an adult, she actually has a business and gets out of the out of the village, that might be an impact. But the problem with the focusing on impacts these long term impacts is very often the causal chain is extremely weak. The causal chain is broken and it’s kind of hard. Teo teo to take credit for some things. I mean, we’ve all heard the stories of the head start program that’s taking credit because thirty five years later, one of their graduates became the head of some, you know, ceo of some company. Well, you know, thanks, snusz because back in nineteen forty seven, he was with us in today’s end of a corporation. I don’t know about that, but i honestly would say impacts agreed to have these are the kinds of things you see in mission statements and vision statements, the long term impacts, what organizations need to do is figure out how to translate those things into measurable, achievable, significant, meaningful outcomes. Okay? And shortly, we’re gonna talk about the outcome statement and contrast it with the mission statement and talk about what the elements are and how to get to ah, no a ah, a proper and and viable outcome statement. So yeah, and and just around impacts you say in the book impacts or what we hoped for, outcomes are what we work for. We’ve talked about that means your outcomes or what you’re working toward the impact of the the longer term we we we talked about funder donorsearch versus investor, anything else you want to say about the about? Maybe non-profits looking at themselves as invest, ese. Well, that’s, that’s a very good point. I mean, when someone gives you a gift christmas gift. Okay, now we’ve all had the relative who gives us something. And then every once a while checks oh, yeah? Are you using it? You? Have you been? Did you like the sweater? Most people that give you a gift, they hope you like it, but they really don’t have any kind of control. Now. My grandmother used to give me cash. She would slip me cash in by hand like a handshake, and she would always say, spend it like you earned it. My grandmother never did that. You didn’t know i’m sorry. You know, my grandmother borrowed but no that’s, um, we’re not related event starting now, but the idea is when someone gives you a gift really the in most cases, the strings got, you know, the the very there, the influence they have over the use of that gift, et cetera. Well, the problem is, when you think of yourself, if you’re a non-profit as a grantee of donor of a donation or giving, okay, the implication that the onus is on you to deliver something back to that to that donor to that investor is i like to use use the term is much less clear than if you see them as investors and you see yourself as an invested because right from the start from the basic language, what we’re making clear is that you owe them a return investments give returns exactly. And so the mindset shifts that i mentioned before the first one is moving from the concept of thunder to investor. The second is moving from the concept that what we’re investing in is the provision of services opposed to we’re investing in change. And then what are those changes and how do you define them? And the third thing is that we are going to be satisfied with an account of activity as opposed to actual evidence of results, performance and effectiveness thes air three crucial mindset shifts that the space has to eventually and will adopt, and the sooner non-profits get on this, the better off they’ll be. You quote stephen covey saying, it is incredibly easy to be very busy without being very effective. Well, we’ve always have seen those people who can, you know, go to the office in the busy all day, and at the end of the day, what have they actually accomplished? And the answer is, you know, not a heck of a lot and that’s, you know, that’s, the wife, i’m with robert pennant he’s, the author of the non-profit outcomes toolbox. Let’s, talk a little about the outcome statement versus the how does it contrast with the mission statement? The well, mission statements of very often pie in the sky and aspirational mean they ought to be yes, and an inspirational okay, okay, but the idea is that the idea that we’re going to solve a problem in our time, we’re gonna end poverty. We’re gonna end homeless. Is thies air the kinds of things that you very often see working their way into? Ah, emission statement or vision statement. The problem is that how do you then actually turn around and effectuated if you basically go to an investor and they said, what do you know what we’re going to? We’re going to end and homelessness well, you’re probably not. So when you don’t, what do you could do? You come back and say i failed an outcome statement is based upon a couple of key characteristics that good outcomes have among those are all right. It’s, meaningful it’s not a cosmetic change. It’s sustainable that’s. A very, very important one, right? It’s achievable. All right, there’s. An old statement. Everyone talks about the weather. No one does anything about it. Why? Because global warming aside, it’s. Tough to do anything about the weather. All right, but if you ah, couch your your goals in not slam dunks you want, they want them to be doable with a stretch. You clearly want to push yourself. All right. But the idea is that you want it to be something that can be achieved in your lifetime on dh something that can be measurable. The sustainable part is particularly crucial. I think of my involvement. I’m a lifelong scout on fifty. Eight years old and your first join the boy scouts when i was ten kayman eagle scout well, i never made it that i was in the order. The arrow you want? Ditigal oh, no, no, no it’s different. But i have a son who was in the order of the arrow and he’s an eagle scout like vicarious thrills. But we i remember ah, project where are we going to clean up a lot. And tha this lot had been used as a dumping ground. The scouts came in and we weed whackers and rakes and tree pruners. And we’re trying to look like a park who had done right and we congratulate ourselves. Up, up, up we all went home in that night’s peace. Somebody dumped a refrigerator. It wasn’t a sustainable achievement because we didn’t have the facility for either blocking it office, stopping people from dumping again. So the concept has to be again in terms of a good outcome, one of the characteristics and aki one is this concept of sustainability, but again, to go back to your question about the difference between a mission statement of vision statement and an outcome statement a lot. Of organizations all right have a tough time differentiating in the book i refer to ah, vision approach. You may recall the book in the book, i had a picture of some futuristic city, teo illustrate that my belief is that mission statement envision statements are both great things that good ideas, they’re visionary, they belong up on the wall, but they don’t belong in terms of you every day action plan, they’re different from an action plan it’s the difference be between having the long term goal of i wanted to be fit. I want to be trimmed and having an actual diet that you’re that you’re following. All right? Um, you know, there are numerous examples we could weigh could point to okay, i’m realizing now, since we’re talking about since i’m talking about being an eagle scout, i’m really you know, i didn’t measure the the outcomes of my eagle scout project, which was teo. Make sure that address is street addresses were visible to emergency services in my little town of altum panned new jersey, which had maybe three thousand homes or so, so we looked at every home and where there wasn’t a visible address. From the street that a policeman or fireman or the ambulance could find could see it easily. We left a note in the in the mailbox, and the note was signed by the police chief, the fire chief and the head of the angelus score. But that’s just that’s just activity. I don’t know what the outcome’s were. I don’t know if more lives were saved police response times, we’re reduced fire response times are reduced. That would have been right that would come into the out moment. And what? And if you had done the eagle project as an outcome, you know, an outcome based thing that was specifically the kinds of things that you would have wanted to look at. Now that was response time reduced, you know, i don’t know anything is dramatic, is we’re lives saved, but certainly were response times reduced. You could even you could even have done it as looking at things like ups, you know? Did ups have fewer lost deliveries because they were brought to the wrong home? All right, i have thiss factual case up in albany way way. Have to hold on your case. Feeling bad about my eagle project from thirty five years ago. This is tony martignetti tony martignetti non-profit radio we have to take a break after the break. We’ll be tony’s take two for two minutes and then i’ll return with robert penna. Stay with us now. We were going into a break. I’ll have the second half of that interview next week. You could tell you know he didn’t hey didn’t like that. I said i was an eagle scout and then he said he wasn’t an eagle scout. So that’s why, i think that’s ah that’s reflecting now, that’s. Why the bashing of my eagle scout project? That was a good project that i’m i got i got raves from the first aid core and the fire department in town. I remember that was a good project. All right, yes, we go away. I’ll have some live listening love. We got lots of live listeners tony’s take two and then maria simple she’s in the studio news sources. New source. Stay with me for all that they didn’t think the tubing getting ding, ding, ding ding you’re listening to the talking alternative network get in! Dahna duitz are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Hi, i’m ostomel role, and i’m sloan wainwright, where the host of the new thursday morning show the music power hour. Eleven a m. We’re gonna have fun. Shine the light on all aspects of music and its limitless healing possibilities. We’re gonna invite artists to share their songs and play live will be listening and talking about great music from yesterday to today, so you’re invited to share in our musical conversation. Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a. M on talking alternative dot com. Yeah, you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Duitz durney i’m dana ostomel, ceo of deposit, a gift. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’ve got live listener love nashville, tennessee i don’t know if you’ve been with us before nashville. Welcome new york, new york and new york, new york couple people from right here in the city and los angeles, california. Welcome live listener love to all of you. We also have someone masked in the us there’s someone else at least one of the person in the u s maybe it’s, the national security agency. I don’t know, i can’t tell, but you’re out there live listener love to all of you moving out to asia. Always lots of loyal listeners in asia, none ing china and guangzhou china ni hao and also happy mid autumn festival hope. Hope you did you save me some moon cake? I would love for you to send me some moon cake, if you will if we’ll make the trip over malaysia, we can’t tell what city maybe it’s kuala lumpur maybe not. But malaysia live listeners love to you. Welcome. And seoul, korea anya haserot will have mohr. Lots of live listener love time for tony’s. Take two. Last week i had a client tell me planned e-giving saved our ass. It’s. Exactly what? They said, and save them from what in four of the past six years planned giving saved them from shortfalls in unrestricted giving unrestricted cash planned giving got them to goal in those four years, including, of course, the recession and that’s, because the vast majority of plan gif ts and you would expect at least seventy five percent sometimes as high as ninety percent of all your planned gift doesn’t matter what kind of mission you have to be bequests and most bequests are unrestricted gif ts so that as you build your program, you gettinto lots of wills, and i’m just talking about will bequests in will’s not any of the other other many types of plant gifts just talking about wills as you get into more and more of those. The fact is that people pass away irrespective of the state of the economy, whether we’re in a recession, whether stock market is high or low, people pass away, and those requests that are in those people’s estates represent a lot of unrestricted cash for you. Not that you khun budget for it that’s unwise. But as your plan giving program grows, there will be revenue from bequests each year. And i say a lot more about that. On my blogged at tony martignetti dot com. Also going to be at bebe con on september thirtieth, this’s the blackbaud conference it’s at the gaylord convention center in maryland. And we’re running some some contests while i’m there. I’m going to be there interviewing for this show, doing about fifteen or so interviews. And i’ll be on stage on the exhibit floor, but they set up stage for for metoo podcast from and the contests are that i’m giving away two hours of consulting teo either people who were at the show or who are on twitter that day so you can tweet live that day, september thirtieth, and you have a chance to win or if you’re at bebe con, you can you can enter to win and there’s more about all of that on my block. Also a tony martignetti dot com there’s, a post devoted to be become twenty thirteen that’s coming up on the thirtieth of september and that is tony’s take two for friday, twentieth of september thirty seventh show of the year maria simple she’s in the studio today she’s the prospect find her you know, her he’s, a trainer and speaker on prospect research fact she spoke today we’re going to talk a little about that. Her website is the prospect finder dot com her book is panning for gold. Find your best donor prospects now she’s our doi end of dirt, cheap and free you could follow maria on twitter at maria simple welcome to the studio. Maria. Hey, tony. Good to see you in person. I know it’s. A pleasure, it’s a it’s. A bigger pleasure than usual to have you here. Have you hear? Face-to-face you did a little speaking gig today. What was that in the city? Ah, yes. So wilmington trust hosted some of their non-profit clients and colleagues and had an opportunity teo, to do a topic on prospecting on a shoestring budget. So it was a lot of fun as our die. And you’re the perfect person for that. What was what were what was a question? That you got any common questions or ah one that you hear a lot that you want to share? Probably one of the common questions was just sort of related to, you know, what are the resource is that i typically would go to and is it worth paying for? The resource is, you know, people always want to know is always good to just use the free resource is or sometimes should we be paying for them? So and i had a chance to to talk about the new foundation center’s project that we have, which we’re talking about today, so that was good that we were able, teo dovetail that in you and i have talked a lot about free resource is, of course, as i said, you know, a couple times you are doing end of dirt cheap and free. Um, do you think you’re do you think you’re really hindering your program if you’re only relying on free resource is well, what i think you’re doing is you’re probably spending a lot more time staff time on trying to hit a number of different research resource is, whereas ah lot of the fee based resource is will compile a bunch of things under one and so on what you’re what you’re not spending on resource is you probably are expending on staff time unless you have a volunteer doing your research. Ok, ok, go let’s, talk about our some of new sources that with news sources that we talked about and then well, later on, we’ll get to the new source. The foundation center thing. Yeah. You have advice about newspapers? Yeah. So of course, one of the things that you want to be able to do is sort of keep on top of what’s going on in your local economy what the local business owners air doing, for example, who the movers and shakers are. And then certainly, as you’re doing reactive research, that means you have a name of somebody you’re looking to research. One of the sources that you definitely want to check out is news sources. So i generally will try and check out newsreel ated to where they live a cz their primary residents. But if they’re snowbirds, so for example, if you have somebody from the northeast and they spend their winters in palm beach, eso you would want to be able to check out well, what are they doing? Philanthropic lee there. Okay, cool. So you know where they’re where they’re located in you? Then you look for local news sources. You just searched the newspapers in the vicinity. Is that well? That that’s. Definitely one way of doing it. I love using, as you know, libraries. And, you know, i’m a huge proponent of our library systems. And so, in fact, if you did have that snowbird down in palm beach, i you can go to the palm beach county library. And they have magazines and newspapers that you, khun research online for free. So they will include the local re newspapers for palm beach area. And even if you’re not a cardholder, they will give you a temporary pass. A research passed to be able to research their sources. So it’s fantastic. You can get that online. Yeah. Get the free research past online and be anywhere in the country. I believe so. Yes. So you just there’s. Ah, button. You click and you just request it. And so it would give you access to those newspapers if that’s indeed where your prospect was living for temporarily do you have ah, earl for since ah, approaching winter and palm beach is a popular snowbird place. Yeah, well, it’s, palm beach county, p, b, c library dot or ge is thie site. You want to go to bbc library dot or ge? Okay, you could put that on facebook page for sure. Okay. Um, okay, interesting. So, what is the advantage to going to the library? Is it because they they’re aggregating versus trying to find the sources on your own? So going through a library resource is going to mean you’re not going to pay for the full article. So very often, if you go directly to a news source, what they’ll allow you to do in a lot of cases is to do the search to come up with a set of list of search results, but then you won’t be able to see the full article without paying for it. Whereas if you go through the portal of a library, you typically will be standing are doi in-kind now it zoya i said, like, five times already today, we’re not even family it’s, very smiths. Incredible. Well, you know, your shoe string budget, right? So you’ve got to be able teo to figure out a way to access news sources and not paying arm and a leg for them. Go through the library so you don’t pay for your feet. Content? Excellent. I’m definitely include that we i post takeaways now on facebook page on dh. That will definitely be one of the one. The bullets. Excellent one. Is there something else you want to add about this? No. Okay. Okay. Um, now, are there fee based places that you can find local news sources? Yeah. I mean, there are and i would say for for the most part, though, non-profits that are doing research on more localized basis unless you’re really looking to get into international research, right? Sew something like it used to be called dow jones interactive. I can’t remember what they switched teo, but that news source, for example, will be able to scan newspapers worldwide. And in case you do have, i could see you in more of a college or university setting where they may have alum living all over the world, and they have to be able to see what’s going on in those sources. But i think for the for the average, your audience, the other ninety five percent who might be more local you khun definitely do that. Of course, you’re your listeners who are overseas would want to take advantage of some of that, so you can definitely google news resource is fee based news resource is, and you’ll come up with some alternatives to looking on a paid basis. Okay, now we have just about a minute before we go away for a couple minutes. This presumes that you confined addresses on people or at least if not an address a locale. Teo, how do you how do you find those locales? What do you get that well in? In a lot of cases, when i’m doing my research, for example, i will be told that somebody might have a second home somewhere else. So during the course of my research, i know to be looking for that piece of information. S oh, if i know they have a secondary piece of property in another state, i’m always trying to find out what the news sources are and checking out what they might be doing. Philanthropic lee. Sometimes they’re participating in golf tournaments, galas and so forth, so it’s, kind of good to know what they’re supporting when they are doing their their snow birding, right, okay, because you can help find the vicinity. All right, we’re gonna have a lot more on this on dove course. Also, maria’s, sixty second style. Stop at the very end, so hang with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Buy-in are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping countries. People be better business people. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. Time. Montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Dahna with the prospect finder maria simple, and we’re talking about news sources, and then we’re going to get to a new source shortly. Maria, this part of the value of this is if you find that someone works in a place that’s different than where they’re living, right, so then you’d want to be doing this local local news search in both places. Yeah, i think that would be very valuable, you know, especially when you’re talking about metropolitan areas where you’ve got people commuting on hour or more to get to work. S o they might be doing some philanthropic efforts in the locale where they work as opposed to where they live because they well, the commute is so long, so yeah, absolutely. The’s online research access cards that you can you can sometimes get. Do they have ah, limit to how long is that for a day pass? Or how does that work? Well, ahh, yeah. I mean, they all have different rules around them, so you would definitely check out with the individual library. But for the new sources that i typically will be searching and and that search is actually a lot of newspapers across the country i go through my local county library, i have my county library card. It has a bar code on the back of the card, and that barcode is what allows me the access to being able to search things like a pro quest, which is a new stand that’s available online and another one news bank, which is available online. So again there it’s it’s, searching across multiple newspapers across the country, but that’s that’s mostly in a situation where i i i’m not entirely sure where people might be residing elsewhere, but if i know where they are, then i will definitely go straight to that newspaper of the town where they’re spending other time. And you and i have talked about this before the value of having a local library card like you’re talking about. You use your local library? Absolutely. It gives you access. Yeah. You’re saying so? Yeah. Lots of sites that yeah, and you don’t even need to be, you know, on site at the library to do the research. You anywhere. You have an internet connection, you can be doing the research. So that may be money. Well spent just on a local library card. Knowing that you could get ah, access. Yeah, well, if it’s your local library card, you won’t have to spend any money at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so long stuff had one. But if you if you find that your your local or county library does not have a good card, another source to think about is your alma mater. Because sometimes your universities and colleges will allow you access. Teo to resource is online. And another alternative is you can buy a library card. Ah, if you if you live outside that county or region, some libraries will allow that to happen. So in the fees range hundred to two hundred dollars. Okay. And if and if it’s a place that’s. Ah, popular spot for your your prospects. That may be money well spent. Absolutely. Local library. Yeah. Excellent tip about, um, it’s. Amazing about your alma mater. Another way, another backdoor way. Teo, get library access. Yeah, right. Cool. All right, let’s, move to the foundation center. They have something called fbo. They’re calling fto free foundation directory online on dh. You checked it out for us? Yeah, i did. So, of course. Staying with our sort of library theme, right? So foundation center, very specific library on doing donorsearch research on dh, whether you’re doing the search at the foundation centers library in manhattan or and any of their cooperating collections, you may be aware that they have fto foundation directory online, which is a fee based resource that they make available for free through the library’s. However, what they have now done is they have basically taken a portion of that data base and made it available, or certain search functionalities across the board available for free through a link on their website. So you don’t even have to be in one of the co operating collections. Okay, excellent. And what does it? What does it offer this this limited free service, right? So i did. I definitely found, you know, some some pros and cons. So what do you want? First, the pros of the calls start with the positive. Okay? Absolutely. Okay, pro it’s free, right? So i have to promote that for sure. Andi, i think i find that it was good for both reactive and proactive research. And we’ve talked about that before. Reactive. You’ve got the name of a prospect? Proactive, you’re just in there trying to find some new prospects. I loved the fact that you had access to researching the entire nine nineties. The text of irs nine nine text searchable its search text of the nineties is searchable, right? Do you know if guidestar they’re popular nine ninety site, do they do they have that feature? I think they might have that feature as well, but this is the first time that i’m seeing foundation center making that available for free. That’s, right? Well, oh, yeah, i don’t know if guides to write, i may be confusing. I don’t know if guide star has nine nineties of foundations yeah, they d’oh, d’oh, d’oh, andi. Also, what you can do is you’re getting a glimpse of the fto product, right? So you’re getting a glimpse says to because you’ll get a certain amount of data that you can get for free and then as soon as you go to try and do a little bit more, it’ll say, well, you need to be a subscriber, so at least it gets you in the mode of understanding how to use the tool and do the research and then and then, you know, you could decide either subscribe on a monthly basis and at what? They have various levels of subscription, or go to the local cooperating collection and used their source there. And then you can use it for free. Absolutely. Latto one of cooperating court. Cooperating collections. Yeah. So those were the real pros that i found let’s. Give the what’s the girl for this. Ok, so the girl for this is fbo dot foundation, center, dot or ge? Okay, i do love thee, even even if it’s even if it’s available elsewhere. I just i love that keyword search of nine nineties. Yeah, it’s. Really, really cool, eh? So what i did was i did a little test of the keyword search. First of all, just like you would be doing a keyword search on google if you had a phrase you want to make sure that you’re putting quotation marks around anything that’s a phrase, right? So i was testing it for the phrase foster care i was trying to see. Well, who are the funders that might come up funding foster care and you can also narrow it down by st. Right? So i did a search for who was funding foster care in new york and came up with a bunch of foundation hits, so then i thought, well, let me see if this really worked. So i went into a few of the nine nineties, and i searched for the word foster inside of thie nine ninety and lo and behold, there it wass and it appeared as one of the grants that they had made was for funding foster care. Excellent. Excellent. Now, if you don’t use those quotes, you might end up with it’s on foster brooks. So the comedian who used to play a drunk, actually what i what what had happened was i did the search without putting the quotes first, and i got a ton of hits and i couldn’t believe it and i thought, something’s wrong here what had happened was they picked up on embedded in the nine nineties companies that were foundations that were invested in foster wheeler as a company. Ok, so i thought, okay, so i’ve got to refine it further and once i re ran the search with foster care in quotes, then i got better hits. Excellent love this love the keyword search. Okay, yeah, that was great anymore. You want to say positive before we get to the what you saw some problems with? Um, no. Go ahead. Okay, good. What do you have on the downside? So, on the downside, you know, some fields are definitely fi base to research. And i think the biggest downside of all was that you could not export the results so you could not come up with that list of foundation hits and and download them to a spreadsheet to have something that might be very share a bowl with other staff for board members before you decided to do this research and behind the food that’s behind the export. So you have to take notes? Yeah. Yeah. You have to take notes, or yeah, you could construct the spreadsheet yourself. I’m sure, but okay. I just kind of found that that might be a con, but as i said, you know, you can definitely go on a monthly subscription or use it at the cooperating collection. Okay. That the only downsides? Yeah. I found more pros and cons. Actual. Excellent. All right, cool. I was like, i love the foundation. Center for people here in new york. It’s it’s right on the lower fifth of it, i think it’s at sixteenth street and at all the cooperating collections. Not only is it free to use, but they you are very generous with showing you teaching you how to use it. The librarians are there and they will spend as much time as it takes. And it really doesn’t take much because it’s a pretty simple system i ous i recall teo teo use but the librarians are very generous with their help. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, cool. Let’s. See we we’re going. We’re going toe, i guess. Wrap up. I asked er i asked you for a sixty second style stop. What do you s o? We’re opening this too. You know things like travel, leisure, food, what’s your just sixty seconds what’s your what’s, your what’s, your style stuff. So i decided to pick the topic of travel for and there’s a fabulous website and mobile app called hop stop dot com and i had to use it today. As a matter of fact, i need to figure out how to get from my location in midtown to your studio here and it told me exactly which subways i had to take to get here. Is it only for public transportation hub? Stop no, you can. You can select to be told how to walk to a location, how taxi and approximately what the taxi might cost. So you you’ve got a lot of different options that you can play around with and yeah, it’s pretty cool. I see people using hop stop dot com. My objection is that when they’re new york, if you live in new york, if you live in new york, i don’t think you should be using hop. Stop. I think that’s cheating. I think you’re supposed to use the other tools that are more difficult. It’s just it’s a part of living in new york. You’re supposed to do it the hard way, not the hop stop where you’re supposed to get the apse that the empty a the metropolitan transit authority has, you know, they use a map that from the subway token from the token booth, if you have to go paper, i just object to residents using hop stop. But if you’re visiting someplace hop stop is really cool. Perfect. We got some last minute live listener look that maura liberation last minute live listener love japan! I never want to leave you out tokyo, sugisaki, yokohama sutjipto or sugito? I’m not sure konichiwa to our japanese live listeners where’s, north carolina today in the u s didn’t north carolina and check in miree simple, thank you very much for coming to the studio. Thanks for having me always it’s a special pleasure today, as i said, you can find maria on twitter at maria simple and you’ll find her blawg her sight at the prospect finder dot com next week. I have part two of the non-profit outcomes toolbox, no more berating my eagle scout project, but we do mention easy bake ovens, so you wantto you want to listen for that? Remember easy bake ovens. I’m going way back like foster brooks references from thirty years ago, you got to keep up. Also, amy sample ward is back, our social media contributor and the ceo of non-profit technology network has tips for optimizing your profiles to boost your search results and stay consistent with your mission, and she will have a sixty second style stop. I’m interested in what you think about that little nufer teacher, do you have a sixty second style stop? I’ll i’ll share yours if you got one you want to use, you hit me on facebook or or twitter or even on my block does contact page. Let me know what you think. I’ll let you know if you have one you want to share over nine thousand leaders, fundraisers and board members of small and midsize charities, the other ninety five percent listen each week you know how to reach me. If you want to talk about sponsoring the show and we have a sponsor starting in october, be welcoming them. Our creative producers claire meyerhoff sam legal, which is our line producer, shows social media is by deborah askanase of community organizer two point oh, and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules our music. Listen to that bye, scott stein. I hope you’ll be with me next friday one to two p m eastern. I’ll be here in the studio. I hope you will be listening. Live one, two, two eastern at talking alternative dot com e-giving didn’t think that shooting the good ending. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get a drink. Cubine are you a female entrepreneur? Ready to break through? Join us at sixty body sassy sol, where women are empowered to ask one received what they truly want in love, life and business. Tune in thursday said. Known eastern time to learn timpson. 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This is tony martignetti athlete named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting are you concerned about the future of your business for career? Would you like it all to just be better? Well, the way to do that is to better communication. And the best way to do that is training from the team at improving communications. This is larry sharp, host of the ivory tower radio program and director at improving communications. Does your office needs better leadership? Customer service sales or maybe better writing are speaking skills. Could they be better at dealing with confrontation conflicts, touchy subjects all are covered here at improving communications. 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