Meet a company where one of the employees is a wellness coach for all the others. Mandy Kutschied and Sam Hanley are with The Fresh Perspective Group. They share practical strategies for employee wellness; ergonomic resources; a 4-day work week; productivity tips; and, talk about the ethics of wellness coaching in the workplace. Sam often hears things she cannot reveal. This is part of our coverage of the 2025 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#25NTC).
Anne Paschkopić: Email Deliverability
This comes up frequently at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, because the rules often change about whether your emails get delivered and how they get treated by email providers. Are you right to only mail to people who’ve recently opened a message from you? No. Is it good practice to make sure everyone has opted in to your list? No. Anne Paschkopić explains why these and other former best practices, are no more. She’s from M + R. This conversation is also from #25NTC.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. This is show number 740, which means we are a mere 10 shows, 10 weeks away from number 750. Nonprofit radios, unbelievable. 10 weeks away. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with dextroduction if I looked to the right to see that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate with what’s up this week. Hey, Tony, more conversations from 25 NTC. Employee wellness. Meet a company where one of the employees is a wellness coach for all the others. Mandy Kuthi and Sam Hanley are with the Fresh Perspective Group. They share practical strategies for employee wellness, ergonomic resources, a 4 day work week, productivity tips, and talk about the ethics of wellness coaching in the workplace. Sam often hears things she cannot reveal. Then Email deliverability. This comes up frequently at the nonprofit technology conference because the rules often change about whether your emails get delivered and how they get treated by email providers. Are you right to only mail to people who have recently opened a message from you? Now Is it good practice to make sure everyone has opted into your list? No. Ann Paskaic explains why these and other former best practices are no more. She’s from MNR. On Tony’s take 2. The federal budget, part de. Here is employee wellness. Thank you for being with our 25 NTC coverage. We’re all live at the Bal Baltimore Convention Center. With me now are Mandy Kutchide and Sam Hanley. Mandy is vice president of people at the Fresh Perspective Group. Sam Hanley also at the Fresh Perspective Group as wellness coach. Mandy, Sam, welcome. Thank you so much pleasure, pleasure to have you. How’s your conference going so far? Good. It’s awesome both of our first time here. Have you done both first? Oh, this is a very good conference, isn’t it? I mean so far? Yeah, it’s great. This is our 10th or 11th. Uh, having the podcast here, yeah, capturing interviews, it’s a very good conference. You chose you chose well it’s a good vibe. Um, and your topic is what employee wellness really means and why it matters. Um, Sam, let’s start with you because I don’t know any other companies besides the Fresh Perspective group who I’m just meeting today for my first time, uh, that have a wellness coach. Maybe it’s very common. I don’t know, but, uh, why is it so let’s answer the second part of the, uh, the topic. Why does it matter? Why does it matter? Come a little closer to the mic. Yeah, thank you. Um, I think it’s very rare to have someone as a wellness coach on a team. No, not very common. Um, typically speaking, many orgs have human resources, so it’s even a shift to be more people oriented and so I have a background in counseling and behavior analysis, so my intention is to support the company as a whole. In the culture and how we operate and embed wellness into our culture but also on an individual level level so supporting employees one on one whether that’s just venting or need an emotional release or something’s going on at home because home life and work life are so interwoven together so how can I support our employees as as human beings. OK, um, and, uh, we’re not gonna do this right now, but part of what we’re gonna talk about is what the ethical considerations are when people vent versus talking to their HR director. It’s very different, I imagine. OK, we’re gonna talk about we’ll, we’re gonna get to that. um, Mandy, what, what, why does the you’re a vice president there, officer? Why does the fresh perspective group, um, invest? I mean, you’re paying, uh. Paying salary to Sam and benefits, but she is a benefit. He program is a benefit to the employees so but I don’t mean to answer my own question. Why, why is the fresh perspective group investing in employee wellness to the to the point of hiring someone to do it? Yeah, we think it’s incredible incredibly um critical to our success. So the company itself is a people centric organization that does sales force consulting and manage services for nonprofits who are. Struggling with their technology as we’ve heard throughout the day and we know that what we’re selling is our people the the the keynote speaker this morning 10 minute gap or the sound went out but also she was talking about, um, we, you know, technology part of the, the issue with adoption or how we use it is like the people using it are really designing how it gets used um so what we’re selling is our people, our consultants, obviously they’re great. At tech, but they’re also human beings and we know that in order for them to support the nonprofits that we serve, we need to be supporting them as humans um so that’s really critical and one of the ways we want to do this is by being different in how we structure so I came out of HR I almost 20 years of HR um and there are some legal ramifications and sort of legal things you have to think about when you try to structure support in this way, but we knew that we really wanted to be people centric. Want to build something that was different, that really took care of the whole human and we were going to do that with intention and with care and part of that was having a wellness coach that was focused on the individuals. Yes, yeah. Well, she’s a founding member, so we all founded the company in July. We’re only 8 months old. Yeah, it’s a new venture. Yeah, so she’s been here since the beginning really helping us a people-centric culture through the decades of the practical strategies for employee wellness. Sam, I’m guessing that is more suited for you. I’m just answering. I’m, I’m not, I’m, I’m not committing you to anything. This is from your session description. You looked a little nervous. Practical strategies for employee wellness. You’re committed to this. Yes, OK, um, Mandy and I and I it we’ll we’ll talk to you so when employees are on a big project, so allowing a bit of breathing room afterwards, what does that look like afterwards, what do you, how do you how do you? Looking at what do you what do you say to them? Uh, what is your plan? What does your schedule look like? Is your calendar completely jam packed in full, or do you have space to take lunch? Do you have space to go for a walk? Do you have space to take an afternoon off? Our pay time off policy is very flexible, um, so if you need to take a Friday off, go take a Friday off. We also work 4 days a week, Tuesday to Friday, so we every week have Monday off. Um, so all employees except for myself work 32 hours a week, um, and so having that Monday allows just natural breathing room in our everyday week in itself because it’s embedded in that. So our every all our team members have that day to get appointments done, relax, be by themselves at home. Weekends are always busy doing errands and family functions and events and all that stuff, so just allowing that space and making it sacred so. We all know not to ping anyone on a Monday, um, so after projects making sure that continues to be sacred, but also checking what’s your schedule look like? Is it jam packed? Can we, can we check you is this you emailing to remind people or is it you knocking on, you’re probably not you’re virtual knocking on doors but how do you practically how do you do it? What do you do? Yeah, a one on one or 15 minute call. Your plan, how are you doing checking in? What does your rest look like afterwards? What’s your workload look like? Is it is it manageable? Do we need to support you in finding ways to take things off of your plate? Do you need to lean more on other team members and just giving them the autonomy to make those choices but still being proactive in that check in? What does that look like? Yeah and Sam has um scheduled one on one sessions with everybody who wants to they can opt in or opt out. Most of our folks opt in. Um, she’s so she’s taking that sort of like individual care, but then if she’s hearing something, so for example I think this is a good one, we, when we were launching as a company, there was a lot of heavy lifting from our marketing team right away when you launch a company, right? There’s a website, there’s branding, there’s material, so our marketing team is one person and one consultant, and they were doing a ton to get us ready and so Sam had been meeting with the our director of marketing individually noticed. That you know there was just a lot going on so after the launch um we worked with the marketing director and their supervisor and we said OK we’re gonna get, we’re gonna throw a couple extra days and we’re gonna ask if she has the capacity to take that time off and she did we said great, go like rejuvenate a little bit and recover and restore so you can come back refreshed um and she did, she said, oh, I feel like I can actually come back and like feel excited instead of daunted and drained and. And tired, so it was a it was a good sort of in the moment recovery plan. Now Sam, if you hear from someone that they’re overburdened, maybe they need to they need do you have a link to the CEO do you how do you get the person the help that they need. So in one on ones it’s what does that look like for you? How can I support you in your communication with others to be able to lean on them. Um, do you feel comfortable talking to the CEO or talking to your supervisor in, in getting support, um, I think that’s 1414 now. I was relevant for folks to know how big an organization we’re talking about 5 or 14, so you were saying that uh you’re asking. How comfortable do you feel or then can you be a voice on their behalf if they don’t feel comfortable, but then if they don’t feel comfortable, you’re going on their behalf. They know they came from you. How does that give them greater comfort ultimately everybody knows that it came from them. Yes, I think that plays into the ethical consideration so just really. Staying grounded in the relationship with that person and knowing that I’m only doing anything on their behalf with their consent and having that discussion first so if they want me to speak on their behalf or support them in that way then it’s important that I have their permission and that we do that together. I want it to be. Involved partnership to get help them help them get what they need. What if they aren’t comfortable with you speaking on their behalf, but this remains a challenge for them, and obstacle it’s burdening them, but they’re not comfortable speaking or having you speak on their behalf, then what? That’s that’s difficult. So a part of my job too is looking for themes so on in my one on ones are the themes that are coming up is communication being lost is one team feeling more stressed than another um so then I talked to Mandy and we figure out how can we support this individual, um, theme or this team team as a whole, um, and we yeah. And that’s why I think like in our session we talk a little bit about the evolution of workplace wellness and the history from you know industrial era to post COVID time and a lot of it is around the systems that we set up so there may be individual themes of burnout or um not feeling like there is that sort of self advocacy or self care that you can enact with your supervisor because maybe it’s a lack of emotional intelligence or empathy from. The leadership, so if we’re seeing those themes, then we know our systems need to improve. We need to train our leadership on EQ and emotional empathy and how do they have engaging conversations with their direct reports or is it more around like how we work and how we’ve designed work? Do we need to rethink those systems and structures, um, because sometimes it’s at an individual level, but a lot of times it’s on a systems level. Has this all come up in just 8 months? I mean it’s come up in other organizations for me over the last 18 years, yeah, but we haven’t experienced as much of that, not to any extreme. Yeah, yeah. OK. Um, since we sort of touching on ethics, what about, um, confidentiality? I mean, are you, are you sworn to confidentiality if the person doesn’t want anything revealed? Yes, OK, OK. And then, but your role is to try to aggregate themes, but. That might not be that might not be part of a theme. It might just be individual and the person so like is there a resource of referrals like would you make a referral to a deeper consulting that you can’t do or therapy basically we’re talking about therapy yeah so yeah if there’s deeper concerns or things coming up, yes, it’s referring out to counseling services. Can I support you in finding the appropriate service provider to help you with your mental health? Um, I, I had a thought there, um, I think sometimes at work, you know, you, you have something going on in your life and you go to your manager and so you dump your emotional things that are happening for you to your manager and the manager isn’t always equipped to support that person and so both people are kind of feeling disconnected, not sure where to go from there something’s there’s kind of a bit of a. Elephant in the room and so I’m, I hope that I can be that mediator of come let’s let’s chat get get what you need off your chest and then let’s move forward into that problem solving piece so I can be there for the empathy help you problem solve so you can go to your manager and say hey I’ve had a death at home I I need more space my brain is not in it this week whereas I think like Mandy said um historically there’s just that pressure to perform. Form and get work done no matter what else is happening in your life. So how can I help people move through that process a little bit smoother and still feel heard and supported and know that their workplace has their back even when something else is going on in their personal life. Encourage everyone to take their lunch break away from their screens, um, so, uh, there’s even a couple individuals at work where it it was encouraged to put that into their calendar. They just blocked off for lunch. No one can book a meeting at that time, so that kind of holds us accountable to actually take our lunch, um, rather than meetings just be booked and you then don’t have lunch, you’re not eating, you’re not taking time away from your screen, you’re not getting up and moving your body, um. So in that lunch break going for a walk, uh, we also have every week I post something and it’s often around that physical health so moving our body um snacks, getting exercise water yes. Stretching was an issue. I was she’s very good at reminding me to drink my water. I don’t drink water. I think ergonomic is also in the virtual world there’s a lot of because we’re working at home and we haven’t really thought about ergonomics set up to be physically supportive we’ve talked a little bit about how do we make sure folks have the right level for their computers so they’re not um putting pressure on shoulders and how do they have the right chair and we have a budget for that so we can support standing you got it yeah I have a walking pad, yep. see me in my walking. Oh, it’s just like why is it not a treadmill? It doesn’t go as fast. It’s just walking like a desk you’re walking you’re OK. We had Beth on a couple of years ago because she had just written a book on wellness for nonprofits she had a co-author too. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the co-author’s name, but Um, she was, they were advocating, um, doing walking meetings, physically walking out and you’re you’re in a meeting. Why not, right? Our brain works differently that way, yeah, getting fresh air and the repetitive movement of our body walking there’s real digital screen fatigue happening right now, so it’s like how can you also make sure you’re limiting some of the screen time. Uh, you have any other tip tips so the pad I’m sorry, it’s not what’s it’s OK um what else do I appreciate that you’re sitting on a ball, so you’re just you’re naturally moving your body and it probably feels more comfortable on your body to be that way. I use it at home it’s actually born of an NTC. In previous years they contracted with a furnishings company for the booths back when we had booths 10 by 10. This is your first ATC, but every year before this it’s been 10 by 10 booths, and the company that they use, uh, is expensive. Like a chair is like $300 or maybe I’m exaggerating $200 for the 3 days, right? And then, but I wanted a nicer chair, so I was like a 4 or $500 chair for 3 days. That’s a. That’s that, you know, I, I got my my ball and just blow it up and I’ll spend $0 and I’ll be more comfortable and you’re $500. So it was born of a couple of years, I think last year was the first year. I just got tired of the ergonomic chair expense. So yeah, yeah, OK, so, uh, yeah, it’s movement, right? Is core like centering taking even 5 minutes to step outside, sit on your front step. Breathe in some observing outside what do you see for distance it helps your eyes like you need a yeah just that quick yeah reset, refresh, change of environment for a moment can be really helpful in getting you back and refocused, um, having snacks at your desk, chewing things can be helpful for your nervous system, help regulate just simple little things, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, that oral sensory feedback, yeah, more crunchy or like like peanut butter is sticky, so you’re, you’re working your oral motor and it can just be helpful to regulate your body so it doesn’t have to be anything major, right? We don’t have to get our 10,000 steps in and we don’t have those types of initiatives at our at our work, um, but. Just getting those small little things 5 minutes away from your desk standing up yeah it can be in your in your 5 NASA says the optimal nap is 22 minutes scientists and they know this 2 longer than they. Longer than that and you’ll feel groggy and a little disorient maybe not disorient groggy when you wake up shorter than that, not restorative. So the optimal nap according to NASA 22 minutes but I’m a proud napper. I love. Yeah, OK. Um, the 4 day work week last year at NTC we had advocates, we had, we had the leader of the 4 day work week. Um, nonprofit. I, I forget what 4 days a week or I forget what it’s called, but he, he and a couple of panelists, including someone from N10. N10 has a 4 day work week here. Patty was on, um. but you chose Mondays off instead of Friday would have been the natural choice, I think for a lot of organizations. Why did you choose Monday? It was really intentional. So the again, the organization that we work in is consulting and we consult with nonprofits and so just the organic cycle of the stuff we do, we felt, um, there’s a lot of Tuesday Thursday meetings with our nonprofit clients so there was like uh inherent Tuesday could be meeting heavy day Wednesday could be. Down work day Thursday could be meeting heavy day. Friday we’re taking that feedback and kind of making changes and Monday we rest. So it just like it worked with I think um for us it worked because of who our clients are. It’s gonna be different exactly yeah you got it, yeah, exactly. It’s also an interesting mind shift too because most people work until Fridays and so you’re getting ready for that weekend naturally with. Community and so then you’re having your fun on the weekend and then you get that Monday oh yeah I have Monday and it feels more productive naturally because that’s what we’re all used to so you can get your chores done you can schedule in your massage um you can get the all the the housework done. OK, an intentional choice to make it to make it and just to be clear we’re talking about a 4 day 32 hour work week, not a 4 day 40 hour work week 2 hours. Yeah, yes, that’s what the campaign is all about. We, we had the panel on, yeah, that’s it. Yeah, OK. OK. Um, you mentioned massage. I’m, I’m a massage, I do, it’s not luxury, it’s it’s part of taking care of myself massage massage advocate as well. Yeah, we have quite a comprehensive benefits. acupuncture, it’s part of the, yeah, we’ve got different levels for folks, right? So depending on what you opt in high deductible, low deductible, but it’s acupuncture, yeah. It’s I I’m I’m from Canada too and so Mandy is from here, um, so we, we, we’re a little bit different anyways, um, so I can’t always speak to what I can’t always speak to that. But I think a lot of Americans consider that a luxury. Like when I’m at the resort for a week, you know, I’ll I’ll get a, I’ll get a spa treatment. I’ll massage, but it can be very, I mean like yeah very yes exactly physical touch that. Muscle movement and it I mean we have uh I have a coworker, we have a coworker at the Fresh perspective group who goes in for medical reasons monthly and because she can’t move her neck otherwise and it’s like she needs that and it is it’s not, it’s not nice to have it’s need to have. And, and, and can I go one bit deeper than physical touch is the human touch. Like this is something I never want a robot to do. I don’t want AI massage as as good as some, some, uh, medical services company may tell me that it is, uh, I don’t want it. I want, I want the human touch. We want to be seen and heard. Um, 4 day work on site counseling. I think we kind of talked about on site. It’s all virtual you can check in any time. I mean if you’re in a crisis, and I, I need to I need to I need to. I very much encourage everyone to book one on one, same day, any time, any length of time that they feel they need. And is there routine check-ins too like do you have a monthly or weekly with everybody or how does that work? Yeah, it’s about monthly for about 45 minutes, yes, yes, yeah, some opt for more and some opt for none some have their own um counseling services outside of the workplace too that they’re very regular and feel very well supported in that way so yeah. Uh, creating a culture of wellness at work. I mean, it comes from the top down. The CEO must be devoted to this, yeah, definitely, and, and again that was very intentional when we were setting up the organization. She was very much, um, a fan of a people centric culture, so I wanted to make this into policy process practice, so things like the 4 day work week, but also, um, when we have a decision and you know. You know we have to prioritize something we tend to prioritize people first and that means our clients but also our employees and then we might prioritize, you know, the tech or the finances and they go hand in hand, but we’re often um we’re really looking at the impact on the person so when we look at our benefits package when we look at our time off policy like all of those things we take up people. First lens too and like is this really improving the wellness of our culture or is it not um so thinking about just those systems are really important um so I’ve been really happy and you’re right from the top down like you have to have the buy in of the CEO or it’s never gonna stick um and I think she’s a huge advocate for wellness which is makes it a lot easier for sure. Uh, have you hired any new team members since the inaugural team? OK, um, so we only have a sample size of one, but what was the reaction when they were told that there’s a wellness, you’re, well, the wellness. Uh, the wellness coach, yeah, we have a wellness coach on on our team. What was the reaction? I think it was a huge draw so, um, part of the recruiting process, everyone we talked to the candidates before we made our final selection we’re all very excited about it. I think at first we had to explain it because it’s not something you see often so there’s a lot of education around this is. Resource for you they’ll be, you know, counseling available they’ll also just be a coach there to help you with your sort of own understanding of all of the dimensions of wellness, um, and it’s a 4 day work week like all those things were huge draws. I think it got us the the the big candidate pool that we saw, uh, and the final candidate that was selected was very excited about it. outstanding and uh productivity. I don’t know you don’t have a, you don’t have a control group. it wasn’t a pre-A and now how do you measure the productivity of the wellness program? It’s a great question, and we talk a little bit about metrics in our in our session tomorrow, um, because you’re right, there’s no control group pre wellness coach and 4 day work week and sort of people centric culture, but I think the metrics you we. And look at and use are a lot of the ones that other places have things like your employee engagement scores so like net promoter um but also just feedback. I know you know feedback is um is often seen as anecdotal but like anecdotal data is still data and so feedback from employees um we we haven’t um launched a net promoter score survey yet but we’ve gathered like you know monthly feedback on different offerings we’ve talked. The the staff, um, but I think turnover is like the biggest thing I look at it’s a lagging metric, um, and nobody has left. Well, always a good thing, right? Like no one’s like, I’m out of here, this isn’t working for me. There’s no exit interview data, yeah, exactly, um, so I think those are just big things to to keep an eye on and then there’s just, you know, participation rates of who’s engaging with the the services we offer, the programs we offer, um, their satisfaction from those programs and all of that that you can measure. Right, Sam, can you leave us with a wellness tip that we haven’t talked about yet? I’ll put you on the spot. You must have a deep repertoire of a tip tip. Yes, yes, your screen or away from screens. OK. Um, Mandy, Mandy, uh, vice president of people at the Fresh Perspective Group. Sam Hanley, wellness coach at the Fresh Perspective Group, Sam, Sam, you go by Sam Andy. That’s yeah that’s our duo name now. It’s the the the team, thank you, thank you very much for sharing. Thank you for having us. Thank you very much. And thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit technology conference, where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. It’s time for Tony’s Take 2. Thank you, Kate. Very similar to what I said last week. The federal budget process is still ongoing in Washington DC. There are hearings, there are negotiations going on, and there are bad things in the budget for nonprofits. For instance, uh, uh, something that I didn’t mention last week, the, uh, the permission of the authority for the Secretary of the Treasury to singularly denote that a charity is a terrorist supporting organization. Now, you may recall, that sounds familiar, because back in late last year, There was the House resolution. Remember 9495, it was the nonprofit killer bill, a lot of people called it. That’s what 9495 allowed them to do. Now that that didn’t pass in the last Congress, so it’s not called that anymore, but the, the unilateral authority for the Secretary of the Treasury to designate a charity in that way and thereby, you know, canceling the charitable status, that is part of the proposed budget. Um, there are also the, the big funding cuts to, uh, USAID and the State Department for, uh, for foreign funding, um, so, you know, there are, there are bad things in the budget proposed for the nonprofit community. I’m urging you to contact your Congressional representatives, senators, and your House of Representative, House of Representatives representative, your congress people. Uh, let them know how important your work is and how important our nonprofit community is that you don’t want to see it threatened. That you don’t want to see funding cuts. How vital the work is that all the members of the nonprofit community do. Uh, I had said last week, I, I, I had a LinkedIn post last week that had a link for how to find your senators and your congressmen or or congresswoman. Um, you know, it’s easy to find. You don’t, you don’t need my LinkedIn post. It’s just last week I had done it, but I do urge you to reach out to these folks. I’ve been doing it, I’ve been, my people, uh, the, the, the three that I call, you can only leave messages, it’s unbelievable, and nobody ever picks up. But if that’s, that’s all you can get, that’s fine. They need to hear from All of us how important. The nonprofit community is in the US. And that is Tony’s take too. Kate I remember in high school we had to, one of our assignments was to actually make an email and then send it over to our congressman. So if a high schooler can do it, I think anyone can do it. Uh, absolutely, yes, it’s not hard to, you can reach them by email, by phone, uh, you can go in person because they have offices throughout your state, however you do it. It’s, it’s, yeah, very doable. We’ve got bou but loads more time. Here is email deliverability. Thank you for joining our 25 NTC coverage. We’re live at the Baltimore Convention Center. My guest now is Ann Paska. Very close. Pashka Pitch. There’s an accent over the sea, which is an unusual character. accent is. Yes, it is. Uh, well, it’s actually my wife’s last name. I’m Pasky. She was co-pitched. We’re married now we’re Pask pitch, uh, and she was born in Yugoslavia, which doesn’t exist anymore. OK, yes. Yeah, so I haven’t seen that before. I don’t know if it’s definitely a lot of our friends thought we were joking until they saw it on our legal documents, but it’s, uh, we didn’t wanna pick one over the other. Well, did you decide who goes first? No, we just thought Pakay. I agree. OK, OK, wonderful. Uh, she’s Ann Paskaic, managing production specialist at M. They probably just say, yeah, it’s uh we are a consulting firm, uh, we do digital work, advocacy, audience research, advertising, uh, mostly digital, some PR social media, well, most of that’s online as well, um, we work with nonprofits across the country and across the world. Your topic is email deliverability. Have the rules changed? That’s almost an ironic or sarcastic question, uh, because they have indeed changed. We’re gonna talk about. Uh, you know, so we’ve had this topic over a few times in the past 3 to 4 years, uh, probably because the rules are, are, are changing. So, so the answer to your question is, uh, or maybe it’s a rhetorical question. Yeah, the answer is yes, right? It’s mostly changed. There’s some things that have stayed the same, um, I mean for a given level of same, of course we’re sending emails and. Not just uh mail and phone calls anymore, but some stuff is the same but a lot has changed. For instance, uh, you say in your session topic, are only mail the people who’ve opened recently. Oh no, that’s not true anymore. Now it’s clicked. Only mail to people who have clicked. So where, where do we get started with this? Is this an OK place to start or what? I think this is a great place to start because I think who do you email? How can you tell that they’re consenting is essentially the question, you know, of course you’ve got people who hopefully have opted in um at a minimum you wanna give them the language that says you’re getting emails maybe you have a confirmed opt in, but then once they’re on their list, how can you tell that sort of ongoing consent? I think that my approach to this is, you know, deliverability can be really technical and complicated, but you just have to remember that the people on the other end are humans and you’re trying to read those signals to try and understand what’s going on with the human at the other end. In terms of the opens question, um, of course Apple came out in 2021 with the Apple privacy policy for emails, uh, which basically said it’s common knowledge, it may not be common, it’s not so common, but, but you’re the expert so I glad you thank you for breaking this down for us, but, uh, just in case there are any listeners who didn’t, uh, who didn’t know that, uh, I’m with you. I did not know that Apple came out with this, uh, 4 years ago now. Yeah, so give us the history. No, no, I’m not, I didn’t want you to gloss over. I just want, I didn’t want, I don’t want anybody to be uh disappointed if they didn’t, they weren’t aware of this common knowledge. That’s true, that’s true. I I I assume obviously it’s my. If you were watching your email open rights, if you’re in the part of your industry that does that, you probably saw them go haywire in early 2022 and that is because of this change. So what Apple did is they said essentially You know, when somebody opens an email, the way that we track opens is whether or not they download a tiny little tracking pixel, so essentially an image, and when you download that it sends a bunch of additional information to the CRM that you’re using, whatever, um, where are you, what’s your IP address, what device you’re on. And essentially Apple said, you know, we’re really big on privacy and we think that that’s too much information. So what they did is that anybody who opted into this new policy, which they opt you in by default, so pretty much anybody with an iPhone has opted in, yeah, yeah unless you’re a real nerd and you’re like, I’m gonna go 3 levels down on the menu and turn it off. Um, what they do is they essentially open the emails on your behalf. So instead of like Ann Paska Pitch Malden, Massachusetts, my home’s IP address, if I have an iPhone, then that privacy policy just says, oh this was opened by Apple and you know Pasadena, California or wherever that IP address is, so it is protecting my privacy. On the marketer’s end, instead of getting, well, OK, probably a human person downloaded this tracking pixel and we can see where they are, we can see what their devices, you just get well Apple opened this and because Apple opens that for everybody with an iPhone, just a lot of people, what happened is Openreach just kind of went everywhere. Um, it depends on the email tool you’re using. Some email tools that, you know, this is confusing, we’re gonna separate it out, we’re gonna, we can look at the signals and say. This is a human eye open, um, yeah, you know, like oh it’s Pasadena, California and Apple’s IP that’s a machine, you know, it’s a little more complicated than that, but from our end we were able to be like, oh OK, this is human open, this is machine open. Usually they prioritize looking at those human opens your open rates go down. For everybody else, the CRMs went like, I don’t know, it’s still an open, it’s all the same and so their open rates went up because everybody with an iPhone was quote unquote opening everything, yeah. And then coming back to the like how do you target your emails um before this change we said you know opens are good top of the funnel indication that somebody is probably looking at your email, you know, it’s a bit of a rough it was a it was a rough statistic even then because of course if you have all your images blocked or you’re just on a slow connection and the images don’t load, doesn’t matter if you read the email, it’s not going to download that tracking pixel and track it as an open. And then on the flip side, if you’re one of those people that opens an email in order to delete it, that was tracking as an open, but an open was still kind of a good indicator that at least a human was using that email address and probably looked at your email. OK, right, that that we could say. Yeah, and it was like a good rough estimate. And of course Apple comes out with this change and everybody’s like, well now I don’t know if a humans looked at it, uh, you know, the machine is doing this and I don’t know if somebody’s completely ignoring it, um, so a lot of organizations said, well, I’m not going to take into account Ops anymore because I don’t think it’s a good good success. So we’re talking about the users or the the email the email providers. Uh, neither the, the nonprofits who are sending our email, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, we’re part of this too. OK, so we don’t know what to. Yeah, yeah, you know, like I’m somebody reading my email. I’m not gonna notice the difference. Inbox providers, they can still get all that information because they have access, you know, if I’m Gmail, I own the inbox, even if you’re looking at it through your Apple iPhone. So they’re still getting the same data. It’s just us as marketers who are using a third party tool that’s, you know, only tracking opens through that little pixel. That’s where our data starts to get weird and our decisions about who to send to has this whole other variable. OK, so let’s drill down on that because that’s what our listeners I think are gonna be most interested in um at least in this around this part of the, this part of the topic, who should I be mailing to or who should I be scrubbing off. Or whatever that’s not the right. Who should I be dropping off our list because they’re not engaged. They’re bringing down our engagement rate. They, they don’t, they don’t open or maybe we, we don’t know if they open or even if we assume they open but they don’t click, they’re still bringing down our engagement rates because because the providers know all this, right? You know, they know what you see, they know if you, if you, if you open it or if you only look at it in your um. The browser, not the like the preview pane yeah yeah if you only see the preview pane you know if you click, you know if you open or open and then click. They know everything they know how far down you scroll. They know how many times you looked at it. They they know if you like after reading it, did you like carefully file it away in a file folder or did you delete it? Did you forward it? Did you, yeah, like all of these things they’re collecting every single data point. And feeding into their machine learning and we’re over here with that for your emails to people’s inboxes or not that’s the subject. OK, so what’s your uh expert advice? Who should we be taking off our list or if you want to approach it in the positive, who should we be mailing to so. I’m gonna say you should actually be emailing people that open and this is not what we thought was gonna happen when Apple came out with this whole machine thing but it turns out um whether you’re looking at just machine and human opens or rather whether you’re able to distinguish between them or they’re just in a big pool, you can’t tell the difference, different tools are different. Opens are still a really good indicator of whether somebody is using that inbox and it turns out that that is good enough for inbox providers um yeah pretty low threshold it it is a pretty inbox, yeah, well, it’s not just somebody owns it, it’s that. So sorry, I’m I’m gonna, I’m I’m gonna do other sidebar. So Apple’s robots will only open emails if one that email is landing in the inbox. So if you have a bad reputation, your email is going to spam, the robot’s not gonna open that essentially they’re like this isn’t good enough. I’m not gonna open it. Probably nobody’s gonna pull this out of spam and look at it. They also only open emails if somebody’s actually using that inbox. So if you, you know, we talked about me changing my name when I got married. I’ve got an Ann Pasky email address. If I don’t use that anymore and I stopped using it, so I stop logging on, then Apple’s gonna stop opening those emails for me, you know, they’ve they’ve they’ve got a lot of server space but it’s not infinite, so they’re not gonna spend it on people who aren’t using their email. So, if you get that machine open, it might not mean that I actually saw it, but it does mean that it 1 landed in my inbox and 2 that I am actively logging into that account. And it turns out, and again like this is not what I thought was going to happen, you know Apple came out, we said you should look at pulling back to just looking at other indicators, but what we saw is that the groups who were like I’m gonna wait, I’m gonna like wait until I see problems uh by targeting these opens that may be humans and may be machines they never had problems um they they saw that continuing to email. Active addresses whether or not those people were actually engaging with their emails in terms of opens kept them in a healthy deliverability spot. OK yeah, alright, so, so encapsulate to summarize that for our listeners who are not technologists but they’re certainly technology users uh into a sentence or two that we can digest. Yes, so if you are targeting your email list based on activity and open is a good indicator of activity. That was very concise. Thank you. I hope it was helpful. Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s not the only indicator, you know, I think you should also be looking at clicks, you should be looking at things that aren’t deliverability related but are important to your program, whether that’s donors or event attendance or whatever other indicators somebody’s giving you that they’re going to be engaged because Tony, deliverability is not the point, right? It’s a tool, it’s a, it’s a requirement if people aren’t gonna read your emails if they can’t see them, but ultimately most people aren’t running a program where the goal is to deliver emails to the inbox. They’re trying to change the world. They’re trying to like talk to people, yeah, so. That’s why I say like also target people based on recent online actions because that’s what you’re actually going for. It’s not all about the technology and it’s it’s a yes, absolutely. It’s an online but it’s a nonetheless. Um, OK, making sure everyone has opted in. No, that’s not quite true anymore. Now we want double opt in. What, what, what’s the issue here? This is, this is a big one and one that I think is really different in the nonprofit space compared to, you know, obviously a lot of the advice out there is for for profits, you know, assuming you’re you’re selling the shoes or something like that. And this is where I feel like my take is maybe a little controversial but it’s based on what I’ve seen you don’t have to do a confirmed opt in if somebody is, for example, donating. They are putting down their credit card information they’re saying I care about you as an organization and I’m giving you my money and it is OK to just say, hey, thank you as part of that we are opting you into email. Obviously always give people the option to unsubscribe um you know there are some situations where you might want to do a confirmed opt in where it’s something like. Uh, we have an organization that sends, uh, cards to children in the hospital, and a lot of people want to do that, but they don’t actually care about signing up for the email list. So that’s a situation where we might want to do a confirmed opt in or a double opt in. Um, or anywhere where you’re a little bit worried about the quality of names you’re getting. So if you’re having people like sign up at a at an event and they’re typing things into an iPad or even if you’re writing your name on a piece of paper, that’s where you might want to make sure, hey, are you, did you make a typo? Is this really your email address? Did you really mean to sign up and send them that email confirmation that they have to click on to confirm, you know that? That is what a double opt in is, yes. you did not explain that. Yeah, we have jail. Yeah, opt in, confirmed opt in. It just means I put my email in on a form, but then I have to go to my inbox and click that link before I actually start receiving emails. Yeah. We do that all the time exactly a couple times a week. I mean it seems routine, OK, but that’s a double opt in so initially we’ve included you but please confirm. And then you confirm through clicking on an email, yes, yes, and that is kind of the gold standard of opt in, but of course a lot of people don’t do that so you have to kind of gauge what are my quality of names, what’s the likelihood that they’re going to see that one single confirmation email versus maybe the quality of action that brought them onto your list. How does this impact deliverability? the the inbox providers know whether there’s a double opt in? They do not. All they know is what happens when your email gets to the inbox that they own or you know, that they provide for your subscriber, their customer. Um, I guess they do it, yeah, yeah, they’re providing a, yeah, they’re providing a service to the user who is your supporters probably, um, and I feel like it’s important. I’m talking here about, uh, mostly free mail providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, you know, Hotmail, AOL, um, when we’re talking about. Uh, like, like a corporate inbox provider, um, meaning like I have a company and our IT team runs the spam filters versus Google running the spam filters. Those rules might be different. Most nonprofits lists are, you know, individual people using those free email boxes. The rules are a little bit different if you’re, um, mostly talking to corporations. Well, now we get to what which email address people have provided. Isn’t the personal, isn’t the personal email more valuable because it’s less likely to change through a person’s life? Yeah, yeah, but I think it also depends on like what context you’re talking in, um, you know, like I I just signed up for your list and I give you my work email because this is a work relationship so uh different organizations are gonna be relating to people in different parts of their lives. Right. Well, I guess it, I guess it depends on the relationship from the user perspective, which, which you gave us the second rate email because you might change your business and then I would lose you. I might, I might, but I don’t know. I’ve been in MR for almost 13 years now, so it’s, it’s pretty good. I just always have. I, I’m not disparaging your joining our list. Thank you. I’m grateful that you joined the list. I’m not disparaging the email you gave us. I’m having an academic discussion about which is, which is more valuable. I would have, I would think that someone’s Gmail or their, their home, their home, their personal account would be uh a more valuable over time. Address that I think all other things equal somebody’s probably gonna be on their personal email address for a longer period of time, but the thing to think about with deliverability is what what does that person want? Look how smart you are back to the top. I’m I’m wildly digressing and to the topic. Well, I can only speak to my area of expertise, so you’re doing great. Thank you for trying to build up. Um, no, but I think it’s a good question because it’s asking what is valuable to you as the sender versus what is valuable to the recipient if, uh, you know, we’re talking about, um, I mean yeah, let’s keep using me as the example. I’m like, OK, I want I want to know when my recording comes out. I want to know what other sessions you’re doing. That’s a work topic. I try to have good work life boundaries, you know, not always perfect, but so I wanna be like I wanna know when that’s coming out at work and you know be able to forward that email straight from my work email to my marketing email. If your email came to my personal inbox I’d be like no I don’t wanna think about work. I’m trying to trying to see when my pizza is delivered. I’m trying to see what my grandma sent me last week kind of thing. So it is, it’s relative. I might get upset I mean not me, but the hypothetical me might get upset if you’re sending work emails to my personal inbox. So I think that is a thing to be balanced. Like, sure, if I leave my job, you can’t email me my work email address anymore, but that’s where I want it. So I digression. Thanks for using yourself as an example all the time. I don’t know. Does your grandma send you stuff online? She’s pretty savvy. She does sometimes. She’s she’s got an Apple watch. Uh, she’s very, she is 92 and pretty savvy. 2. Yeah, I wouldn’t have even thought that old. Wow, 92 in an Apple watch it? Yeah, she does get her email on it? Uh, I mean, I don’t know if she gets her email. She does try to answer her phone on it sometimes and that’s it’s a little hard, but she’s great. She’s trying, yeah, yeah, not afraid. Apple Watch 92 savvy. Yes, let’s get into some nasty acronyms. Uh, we’ve, we’ve talked about these in the past. I was telling you off mic it was either last year or the year before we did email deliverability from uh at an NTC. SPF or DKIM first I live on the beach, so to me SPF is the sun protection factor. I look for at least 30 sometimes I I may transition to 50. I know that’s not what you’re talking about. Uh, let’s acquaint us first with these before we get to the deliverability advantages or disadvantages of each. Yeah well you know what I I’m gonna actually throw a third one in there and that’s D D M A C, OK, yeah, yeah, we’ll take one at a time. What’s our SPF? Gosh, OK, now I feel like you’re quizzing. It is a sender policy framework SPF. So there you go. Alright, yeah, and what’s its relevance to us in in the deliverability subject? Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna actually bucket these together. I’m not. No, no, so I think that these are, these are really important to understand. They’re very technical. I will say you only need to understand them once, probably, uh, the first time that you set up your email system, and then you only have to change them if you either change your domain name or send your change your sending IP address, which you probably don’t know what your sending IP address is, so TLDR if you move to a different email system. You know, whoever you’re sending from owns that IP address. All of these different frameworks are just different ways to say, hey, I’m sending an email and I’m allowed to do that and I am who I am, so I like using myself as an example. This doesn’t apply I’m not a bulk sender, but if I were a bulk sender. We’ll use MNR. M&R sends a labs post periodically, you know, I write about deliverability you get in your inbox. Um, the SPF DIM and DMmark are all different ways of saying hello, this email is indeed from M&R. I’m not spamming you. I’m not spoofing. I have permission to send, I have permission to use this IP address and these things all line up, um. Part of the reason I’m bundling this together is honestly, I have spent time trying to understand the technical differences between these and what all of them are. And it doesn’t stick in my head because I don’t need it that often. I mean we needed this initially when we set it up set up our email with our provider, yes, yeah, you, you need to talk to your your email provider, your CRM, whatever you wanna call it, and you need to have access to your DNS, which is the back end of your website essentially, yes, exactly, and it is essentially taking different pieces of code from different. Places and pasting them in other places to say what I said that you are a legitimate you’re sending OK so I think it’s bucket. There are a lot of really great resources about these. I, I will be honest, I am not one of them. I can tell you that you need to have it and I can tell you you should check and keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t break, but it is. Hopefully you set it and forget it. If we don’t have an IT uh CIO or an IT director manager, who should we check with? You should check with whoever you are sending your email out of. So your Salesforce, your Fonterra, every action, they will have their support team, um, so one of these again, uh, I don’t have a best friend of mine, one of those, they, they will. have to set up for you to provide the code to say you know we own this IP address and you’re allowed to send from it, but they will be able to help you through the other pieces because obviously they they want you to be able to send email successfully out of their system so they will be able to walk you through the technical difficulties or hopefully not difficulties, the technical details, give you the code, tell you where to put it, talk to if you don’t have an IT team, whoever is the best person with access to the back end of your website. Um, and that sort of thing that they’re gonna be a good resource. This is all about proving that you are who you say you have to send this. Name the sender that we’re telling you it’s coming from. It’s both the domain so whatever parts after the at sign of the email address, so MRSS.com for me uh and the IP address that is owned by that email tool that you’re using. OK, OK, um, we can spend more time together if if there’s more you want to say about deliverability that we haven’t talked about yet. Let’s see, I think the one other thing I wanna say is that um it’s really important to pay attention to and that means some sort of monitoring or reporting system. uh I think that it it is it can be tricky, right, because if you’re a small nonprofit, you don’t have a ton of resources, you’re gonna try to not pay attention until there’s a problem. That can be costly because then first of all you, you have a problem that you haven’t noticed for a while um and then it can be harder to fix and then you’re also trying to fix it at the same time you’re trying to figure out how can I tell if I fixed it. So I think it’s worth taking a little bit of. of time and setting up a couple of tools that will let you monitor what your deliverability is. Is it still generally better to have a mail to a smaller list that’s more engaged than a larger list with a lot of unengaged addresses? That’s a that’s a yes no question and I like to say it depends. um I think that what you wanna look at is how many people you’re actually reaching. I’m not gonna say like smaller is always better. I’m, I’m honestly more in that middle part. I wanna try and figure out how many people you can reach to maximize your program without hurting deliverability and kind of find that line and stay just on this side of it, um. Look at your actual numbers oftentimes if you’re sending to a huge list of people, the only big number is how many emails were sent and how many emails were delivered. You wanna look at, you know, we like to look at percentages, but you wanna look at like who in terms of numbers is actually opening or clicking and especially donating or taking action or signing up for your events or whatever that end goal is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, so there’s value, you just said this. I’m just reiterating. Uh, there is value in looking at the metrics, some key metrics. I don’t know, once a month or something or maybe more. It depends on how often you’re sending email, but I, I will say not once an email. Um, deliverability can be kind of volatile. So if you’re looking at it once an email is a good way to give yourself a scare and like have a false false positive in terms of there being a problem. Uh, once a month is usually good for most people or once a campaign. Um, and just taking a look at looking at that performance, if you can looking at performance by recipient domain, so dividing up and saying what was the open rate for my gmail.com subscribers, what was the open rate for my Yahoo.com subscribers because all those inbox providers have their own spam filters, so. Even though they use the same kinds of data, their users have different data points, so a decline consistent trend with one provider compared to the others, you might have an issue with that provider web person or IT provider. Rules at that provider. I mean, if you, if it’s noticeable enough that if it’s if it’s enough of a decline that it’s, it bothers you. And if it doesn’t bother you if it’s only a couple of maybe it’s not worth spending time on that. Yes, take a step back, look at your whole program. Yeah, I mean it’s good to look at individual domains because if Gmail thinks you’re you’re absolutely peachy and Yahoo thinks you’re sketchy, why would you do anything about Gmail? Why would you cut back on, you know, maybe main fix that you have is is to send to less engaged people and more sorry less unengaged people and more engaged people and if Gmail says, yeah, no, everybody’s engaged, why would you cut back sending there if the problems with Yahoo. OK, savvy advice overall. Thank you. All right, Ann, Ann, and Pasaic, managing production specialist M and give your grandma my good wishes. I admire 92. I do plan to fundraising, so I work with 70, 80, 90 year olds and I don’t know any 90 year olds with an Apple Watch, so she’s an outlier on, on the good side. On the on the Ambitious. Yeah, in the connected. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ann. Thanks for sharing and thank you for listening as 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting. Next week, healthier productivity from AI with Mika Whitlock and Jason Shim. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.
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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with quadra tano pia, if i saw that you missed today’s show happy, healthy non-profit beth cancer returns with co author eliza sherman, and their new book is the happy, healthy non-profit they urge you to make employees well being as important as organizational performance that was recorded at the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference and your job descriptions have the carpenter is co author of the book the talent development platform and she’s got advice for your often rushed through lifted off the web job descriptions hint don’t do it. Originally aired on september fifteenth of last year on tony’s take two my new plan e-giving video responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We be spelling dot com here’s the happy, healthy non-profit and this book that they’re about to talk about is number nine in the amazon non-profit books category. Let’s get this thing, but just by the darn thing skyrocketed. Let’s. Get it up to number eight. Let’s. Get it? No, we get it upto one by this book the happy, healthy non-profit hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc non-profit technology conference this is also part of ntc conversations. We are in san jose, california, at the convention center and with me now are beth cantor and eliza sherman. They’re session topic is happy, healthy non-profit using tech for healthier work and life we’re going to get to that very shortly. First have to highlight our swag item for the interview and that is this papal very fine crafted would a pencil those of you just on ntcdinosaur say shins and the audio stream i’m sorry you can’t see the fine craftsmanship and the way this is burned in the papal logo burned into the woods like i used to have a little wood burning kit when i was a cub scout and we usedto carve nasty words and our names but more nasty words independent to wood pieces, and then burned them before our parents saw them and then also there’s this nice papal book notebook very handy for keeping track of your wellness and health goals and your and your achievement toward them. This goes into our swag pile for the day, second day here at ntc and ah, what a not so subtle transition i made teo happy health and wellness. The two of you are working on a book. Beth, eliza and what’s. The book is called happy healthy non-profit is that right? Yes. Strategies for impact without burnout, judges for impact. Without burnett, when can we expect this book it will publish in october. Okay, your co authoring eyes there. Another author. We should know the two of you. Okay, now, beth, you’re last year and t c you were here talking about walking as part of work. Not as not as part of your health and wellness regimen, but working, walking at work. You have a you have a wellness kick? Yes, you know well, that was the genesis for this book. Because it’s not just about individual wellness. It’s also about well being in the workplace. Thie organizational health. Yes. So i see we’re talking to an organizational level now. Yes. And not just health, not just health. Because, you know, health is important that’s, physical energy, but well being, the well being of the organization, well being of the staff, which translates translates into the well being of the organization and its stakeholders. Okay, eliza, now i neglected teo properly introduce either of you. I’m sorry. Beth is a master trainer, speaker, author and blogger at beth blawg, and eliza is tech wellness advocate tequila’s on dh, author of eleven books. This will be your twelve, right. This is the eleventh, so ten, but she’s, just such a great writer and collaborator, i just i just thought it was twelve. You have an interesting this deeply are all your books about health and wellness? Actually, all of my books are about business or the internet. In fact, i started the first woman on internet company back in the nineties, and so i wrote a couple of books, cyber girl books about the internet for women, and this came out of my interest in tech wellness, which is obviously an important part of our lives because of everything we’ve been doing with all of our gadgets. And i got in touch with bath and she’s into the walking and she’s into all of the sleep habits, and we combined it all and that’s what the book is going to be. Okay, wait, hold on. Beth tech wellness. What is tech wellness? What do you mean by that? Well, if you think about the fact that the technology we use has gotten smaller and portable and nobody has taught us how to use it well, so now we’re all getting strained next. Strange eyes, strained brains. So hold it like this. Yeah, like that. Like it like that. Try to do that. Pose that’s a good pose. It’s hard. Maintain it is. Okay, what we’re gonna say back. Oh, i forgot. I know what i want to know why. I also want to say that lisa and i have actually known each other for twenty years. You have no rights. Okay? Out of the blue oversignt no, no, because, you know, i sort of had a front row seat at the creation of this field, the non-profit tech field. And so when i was looking around doing web stuff for non-profits back in the early nineties, i ran into at least met her at one of ah, web girls meet ups. Okay. Okay. So let’s go. All right, so we want we want tohave happy, healthy non-profit by having happy, healthy people eyes that. Okay, so you have some strategies, i presume for well, especially from you gaining more from technology with fewer intrusions. So we is that the way we start there, with sure minimizing intrusions in our tech beings? Sure. Okay. From what kind of lens? Of of the individual. Okay versus the organization. Okay, so, for starters, i stop sleeping with my iphone. Okay. You had your iphone goes to your head. Yes, i know. I used it is an alarm clock, but i had no impulse control. Teo actually not look at all my social media feeds before bed, and that disrupts your sleep. It disrupts your circadian rhythms and if you don’t get good sleep, you’re not good to anybody. You’re worthless, you’re worthless that air sleep by keeping your iphone out of the bedroom and bask in your office alarm clock. Sabelo well, i did a sony said, no, no, i don’t want radioshack final radio shack. What about one with that? Wakes me up with pulsating light fancy. And then i set up a charging station at the house. So as soon as i walk in the door, my entire family has to put their devices at the door, plug it in, and then if they want to use it, they have to walk through the whole house and think about the fact that they’re going to use the device. Ok, that is similar to me to what we learned in the italian, my italian background eat less by not putting the big platter of food on the plate. Exactly. You keep the platter in the kitchen and plate there and then and you have to get up and go and, you know, attempted by the beautiful sausage in the pasta that wolber so close, it’s. Just a fork. It’s a fork length away. Okay, okay. Makes a lot of sense now. I was just reading something about the iphone. Then the new iphone that’s going to be technologically equal to the six but smaller inside were like, five. They’re changing something about the blue, the blue tones, the blue light and the way you dropped your sleep. There’s a blue shades or something that that makes it hard. It’s a strain on your eye or that you know, but it’s it’s not so much. Just it’s. That but it’s also, if you read your work emails right before you go to sleep, you’re gonna have stress dreams about it. I mean, you know, you should have a better night time rich team that allows you to go to sleep calmly and wake up refreshed about a better morning routine. That too i do. I’m trying. I try not to look at my email now, my phone is not well. It is today now, because when i travel yeah. When you travel, you travel you. Use a little little nightstand radio club. Now, i use my phone, but i keep it. Try to keep it a faraway so have to get up out of bed. Okay? And i’ve conditioned myself to say don’t don’t do it right now. The morning routine that’s a tough one. No, i have one. Guess what it is. Well, it’s not checking your email? No, i don’t know. I walked five thousand steps, so you get out of bed. Well, i shower and, you know, show kids to school, you know? And then i walked my five thousand steps or your coffee drinker. I make coffee, i meditate while the coffee’s brewing okay, three short meditations. Yeah. Three minutes, three minutes. Cycle right. Five thousand steps on dh then start my day. Okay, let’s, turn to release it. Now, before you did something like the cookers hyre well that’s supposed to be related to the circadian rhythms. Exactly. The blue light affects your brain and its tricks your brain into thinking it’s daytime. And that is something that so subtle and none of us are realizing it’s happening. Now what i was going to say about the iphone is they’re taking that out over there, changing the shade in the new, smaller iphone that’s still going to be technically so all that does is change the light that doesn’t change. What beth was saying is that you’re compulsively checking all your messages and getting sucked into the tensions and stress of work keep the phone away from the bed, you don’t get it right, and i don’t need it in the morning. You don’t it’ll be there, you know, there are things in the world will be trying to make space in your life for reflection and contemplation and some were somewhere in this always on, always on, always thinking, always doing world yeah, okay. All right. What else? Elisa, you give us one self care so self care is important. So we were talking about technology. But there are so many other things that have to do with taking care of yourself. So tack, wellness is one of them getting good sleep. We’ve talked about movement. The fact that we sit so many hours of every day at work almost all of us are trapped behind our desk. So beth has been really good at training me at doing this i considered the computer for hours on end and never budge. She forces me to get up, we walk the halls, we walk around the block, you live in the same house. Are you sharing a home together way? No, no, what do you know when when we’re doing princessa presentations together and we’re traveling together working on the book, working weekends, right? Yeah, so we’ve been working a lot of the book and we get sucked in as well to the book, but then she is incredibly disciplined to get up and get her steps going, so i’ve gone from two thousand steps to hitting ten thousand every damn with her when i’m not with her, i’m not as disciplined, but you have reminders you can use your technology to remind you to be mindful of using it or to remind you to stop what you’re doing and get up and move around, or two meditate toe, listen to some guided meditations that are free on your iphone or on your android phone, and take that times or use your technology to advantage 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. Now, is this a simple is you referring to just setting an alarm to remind you to get up? It could be, but there are apse. There are acts that will remind you. All right. So they just have a few apple fit ball fit. Bolt? Yes, old fitted bold because actually is a plug in on your browser that will ding every fifteen minutes and show you exercises. Actually, pictures of exercises step by step that you khun dio i can still be productive if i stop my work every fifteen minutes. Yes, yes, yes, you can. It’s it’s a different kind of interruption because you’re what you’re doing is training your attention. Have you ever heard of a book called eighteen minutes a day? You’re pregnant. You can tell me about the last time. I think. You know, you have a really good memory. Yeah, i think so. Let’s, look back. We can check the video, but i think yes, you told me about it. Okay, but go ahead, summarize because everybody doesn’t have my memory. Give us well. And this is more if you’re cliff notes. Right? Right. So let technology makes us distracted. And what you’re doing is training your awareness, so if your beep yourself every hour and say to yourself and my own task, am i doing that most important task? You’re actually trained yourself to think that way, right? Right? Staying on task versus you know, i yeah, somehow i ended up, you know, in an endless loop of youtube videos, couto they’re very nice people, but, you know, it could be a little distracting. Yes, they have a big president like, i have to have two floor here, but it could be a little distracted, right? How did that happen? But if i have a little bit of a reminder, i’m not present, i’m somehow i wandered down this path. I don’t know how let me get back to where i need to know. It’s changing bad habits it’s becoming aware of your bad habits and changing them is being really conscious, mindful of how you’re using the technology and making those changes consciously making those changes because if nobody is, they’re nudging you if i mean we could be accountability buddies to each other, i might say to beth beth, you’re on your phone at bedtime, but if if nobody is there, at least your technology can remind you and make yourself more conscious and aware. Because once you’re aware you can do something about it and they wear. This is important too, because the technology provides monitoring. Like i can look down, i can say, well, i’ve only had twenty seven hundred steps so far. I better get moving. Okay, for sure that a simple benefit, but yes, the search search. Ok, it does everything okay? We name any other apse for wellness. Well, there’s a desk desk, yogi is one for your computer that will help you pull that bolt and yogi. Okay, there, spire spike. Oh, that’s a wearable it’s unbearable zubair aspire u s p i r yes, fire it’s a device. You either talk in here or in your pants and your brawl or your pants, and it measures your breath and it’s based on your breath patterns. It tells you whether you’re calm tents are you or you’re focused and it sending data to your phone. So i mean, it will tell you if you’re tense and so it’s a reminder to a nudge toe. Take a deep breath. You’re tense. Upset? Yeah, alright moment. There’s so if you’re in the meeting with your boss and things in your annual evaluation is not going well, you can say, well, my bride’s beeping i gotta stop fired-up spire was telling me, buy bras buzzing, you know? Well, i can’t have any more i can’t have any more flat attend. Well, what what it is is helping you with, you know, emotional intelligence of self awareness and knowing what your reactions are so you can then manage them and be intentional about it. Okay? That’s the awareness. Yeah. Intentional intentionality. Okay, what else we got? Oh, moment there’s the moment at which tells you how more okay, moments where tio, check your it tells you how many times you’ve been looking at your iphone. I have that really embarrassing. You haven’t mastered that. So how many times through the day today, i astronomical. Are you over? A hundred? Probably is. I mean, well, yeah, you use it for so many days, sequential things. I look at the time of day sometimes, you know, that’s over and over. But then but then there is mail on your facebook wear. How embarrassing, you know? Well, i was i was consciously trying to in this might somewhere because i’m a social media person to consciously think what i’m on social media and my butt being intentional and they getting stuff done are just wind this lee scrolling through the feet and saying what everyone else is doing. So how much time in my wasting on facebook and how much time i actually getting stuff done with her? Same thing? I mean, they’re also short looking another hundred fifty and it’s a way to procrastinate. Do you want to share your your number? What is gold with moment a moment you wantto make moment number, moment number i i actually just used it to t get a handle on it said he was embarrassed. It was embarrassing at first. What was i looked at like there was one like two hours of facebook today, two hours of yeah, but no cumulatively alt-right yeah, yeah, thank you, but also tell you how many times you looked at your phone. Do you remember how many times you were checking? Oh, you know, she’s not going to tell you that i’m going to tell you that i should tell you i can’t remember tell you her cholesterol numbers before i know it was like three hundred eighty years for eighty or something. Yeah, great. Well, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Three. Ninety nine, ninety four hundred. Okay. It’s one. Fifty now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. That was from last year. Also. That’s. What? Got you on the walking? Yeah, four hundred. That was yes. Okay, our other ideas. Way wellness. Okay, let’s, go up to the aps. And when we started to talk about relationships in the workplace, okay, so we talk, you know, that does affect your emotional well being. So we talked a lot about techniques that you can use. Teo, you know, man it. How to say no. For example. Boundary setting down decent but foundry said on reset and enforcing forcing i think lots of people set boundaries and then they don’t get enforced. I had our excellent pia is yes, that’s true. Given those i thought we were getting into the session i was looking at was, like, fifteen minutes. Ok? Yes, that it happens. You have these things in your mind. But you never. You never tell them to anybody, so nobody else knows and your boundaries get trampled and you don’t say no, you say? Yeah, how the first thing you say is yes, i’ll do that. Yes, i think you’re thinking. Are you okay? Yeah. Now. Okay, let’s, give some of the tips. So how do we enforce our boundaries? You say now we got to buy the but you’re going to say by the book, but you use it. You say nufer out on non-profit it was right. No way this little exercise around practicing feeling what no feels like in your throat. So i’ll say, eliza, we jump off a cliff. No, come on, alisa. You’re really good at jumping off cliffs. No, but why? I’m too busy right now. I have a full plate, but thank you for asking, okay? It was was this one act play festival, which is what is that? Well, we’re just just practicing saying no, and then and overcoming objections and if people practicing practicing and and also coming up with really legitimate reasons, because people want to hear a reason they don’t like to take no, they don’t want to take no for an answer. So come up with your reasons are and value those ok, i’ve heard a strategy? I don’t know necessarily related to boundaries. But you people want to hear. Yes. So you thie answer is yes, but even though everybody knows but is the universal no gator yeah, here. Yes, yes, yes, i will do that. But i won’t do it until tomorrow. Or yes, there’s that technique as well. Okay, is that is that bonem cards that make way didn’t make the book? I mean, our book is really just learning to say no and benefiting from saying on being okay with saying no so here’s another technique and sort of down the my mindfulness path, if you will drawling, meditative, drawling something called zen tangles. So rather than zoning out on your phone zen out with drawling so it’s actual it’s the meditation technique technique demonstrate this one your swag we have are going she’s so good at they’re people. So you now you’re gonna have to describe it for listeners because everybody does not have the benefit of the video. I need a pen. Of course. Give me the paper would burn. Oh, is that so gorgeous? What a gorgeous pan. The wood burning. I’m just gonna have to go. Go to their booth and hear what they’re doing. Zen zen circles with no it’s god’s entangles. Okay, okay. It’s, meditative drawing. Okay. And you’re usually doing on the small piece of artwork so you can complete it in less than a half hour. So we draw. You gotta do the cliff notes version four dots on the page. You connect them four dots. You drew a rectangle, i draw a rectangle. I then i draw a scribble or tangle. And then the next part is to fill it in with repetitive patterns in silence. Okay, stop now! Show that to the camera. So a rectangle than her squiggle and that we’re filling it in with repetitive vertical lines. She’s chosen right to write and keep on changing it. Okay, my head feels and or can i could? You could do circles or whatever, but the idea is, it helps your focus. You’re telling it’s intuitive there’s no right or wrong answers. And what it’s doing? Is it’s really lighting up a different side of her brain? Then you are in front of the screen. Is this research based we have researched? Approved? Yes. Yeah. It’s, therapeutic art. This is their feet in guarding the cars and houses, drawing the courthouses. Yes, about that. Oh, it could be that. Tell us about that. I don’t know. I like to make little court. I mean, i’m no artist naturally. But i thought you literally through no, i draw cars and houses. And i thought you threw carson. Elsa? What? What is this called? Xan. Tangle. Entangle? Yes. When i said is this better than drawing? Okay? Cars and houses. You know that i draw when i’m there. I mean that’s, my there’s mine, there’s there’s my own u do that over and over again. Well, i’ll fill it in sometimes. You know, sometimes a shingle house like that. How you do it might be bricks, you know, i might make it a stucco. Ah, it could be a plaster. Which would be no, you no, those are the main ones. And then i feeling the roof, of course, usually tar shingles. I don’t like the stucco roofs, and i don’t really like slate roofs either. So i do the the national sabat are there things? Do you do? This is there is my house. Relax, say, to relax or while you’re bored? Are you not to relax? I’m not paying attention if you’re doodling, which is a very different part of your brain, you’re losing its not enjoying this. You’re not, you know, dahna screen doing this? No, i’m not so it’s a different part of great. I might be on the ground on easy phone call, you know, a casual phone call like with friends and not business. I think i pretty well. So you’ve been in a bookstore recently. Have you seen, like adult men in the bookstore recently recently? Yeah, i was in barnes and noble. Okay, so, have you seen all the adult coloring books i have? Not. So this is the hot new trend? Yeah. Wait. But that means that we’ve grown up coloring books, not dahna way. Don’t bother. Although there is a swear e coloring book, we won’t say those among terrestrial radio. Now, don’t get in trouble with my am and fm affiliate stations. No, of course not. Like you would have two years ago. You know, of course not. All right, right. So these are adult themed right coloring book. Not a mean of a non sexual nature. They’re they’re they’re meditative. Drawings? They’re flowers. They’re butterflies, whatever. Highly detailed, though that’s. What? That was it’s different than a child. One very highly. Let’s. Go back to my course is a research backing up? Yes. Therapeutic art thieves entangles there are yes. Entangles. Okay, meditative art, art therapy. You can look at a dog clolery cubine google it. Everybody knows art therapy. Like yeah, yeah, yeah, same thing, same thing entangles all right. And adult coloring books, adult coloring book and there’s some right here in this sum. And this exhibit blackbaud blackbaud has them with pencils. In fact. Other says, i’m not blackbaud handup who had the pencils and the colored and it wasn’t black there’s three but there’s a thumb up your lady was upleaf saturday’s swag pile had coloring pencils. Very nice. Find pencils. You know that the adult coloring book trend has caused a color pencil shortage. All right? Yeah. There aren’t enough colored pencils produced in the world. Yes. Not anymore. Not anymore. They’re not. They’re doing putting extra shifts in the factory, and they want the big sets of one hundred fifty different colors. Right? You’re you’re young and you’re full spectrum? Yes, exactly. Red orange. Yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, the rainbow, you know, but you gotta have the full spectrum. All right, let’s, let’s, get back to our wellness. We were in the office that can put us in the office. All these. What do you have? Office. We talked about boundaries, nandi on the office, standing and sitting what’s. The combination there’s, an ergonomic combination of twenty minutes standing eight minute sitting in two minutes stretching and moving around it’s, twenty minutes sitting a minute, standing two minutes stretching a minute. Standing. Yes, it. Yes, as long as you’re breaking up the siting. Okay. Okay. Well, sandy or treadmill desks for movement while you’re healed. Now, i’ve seen motorized desk that are both. Yeah, i’m standing and and sitting there, vera desk. There will be a narrow desk. Very desk because they have lovers and they can raise them. E i saw that at south by okay. Okay. I want one. All right. You could have you could have. I have the old one with the lover. Yeah. That’s those air, those air, certain stops. The details. Yeah. You want the motor where’s unlimited stopping, right? And you don’t potential and, you know i actually have to buy a fancy desk. I’ve seen non-profit people use cartons and music stands okay. You know, let’s get people a decent death. Yeah. Or even on amazon? Yeah. I’m not saying you’re advocating that, but no, but let’s not have people standing standing on creates and no elevating their desk with milk milk boxes. You know, let’s, let’s get you people, but some krauz organizational policy offering that as an option if you want to standing and encouraging it or even a community one have a standing desk there that people take turns and they encourage each other. Okay, it’s, your turn. It’s returned eight minutes, eight minutes and that’s. Another thing you know, going into the office. That design and layout of the office can encourage or be nudges too certain healthy happy behaviors. For example, walking trails inside the office. They have that robert wood johnson foundation walking trails in the office. Right. They lay out here if you do this track around the office. It’s this many steps. Take a break. That’s not you know, i’m not joking. Alright, i believe you, you know sign it. Don’t take the elevator. Take the stairs. Two up, one down. You know, there’s a one up, two down, but even even doing something as simple as like, if your workplace offer soda in the refrigerator or put it down, i don’t have it. Don’t have it at eye level. Put the water in eye level dahna very simple stuff the baskets of fruit within reach through no chocolate doughnuts, right? Right, i’m ok. I’m feeling bad about something that just occurred to me that we said earlier again for people who don’t have the video, we were talking about how to use your howto hold your phone and i said like this, not like that. Well, that’s no value to people who are just listening to ntc conversations or non-profit radio, they don’t have the video, not on my youtube channel. Riel, oriel tony martignetti so they don’t have the benefit of video. I could do that. You cannot no, i like give shout out some, you know, best knows i’m kidding, lisa, i hope you know. No, you’re good, you’re good to chat about what was my point. Oh howto hold, explain how you’re alone, right? So so instead of your neck is down and your shoulders are hunched and it’s close to sixty pounds of pressure on your non-technical on the cervical spine. Yes. So it’s close to your body that’s not good. Hold it out a little bit forward. And if you don’t want to look like a geek, you khun sort of put your guests want to make a little more human looking you put you, you cup your elbow into your other hand and you’re sort of holding it up like that. You’re walking like this, you know you’re not supposed to be doing while walking. No, no. That’s distracted one thing you know, they’re not gonna do that when you set me up. No, but you know, that’s. All right. That’s, another issue. There’s been a thirty five percent increase in accidents do to distract and why i’m not surprised you walk the streets of new york city now because you’re on the west coast now. But anyway, i walk the streets of the east coast of new york city, and you have to you have to get out of people’s way, right? Because they’re not watching in tokyo. They have a texting lane in the sidewalk. No, they do. Where you can walk without a walker? Yeah, that’s. I wouldn’t do that because you get bumped into suppose you, but is there one for each direction yet? Is that a yeah? Yeah, is it too late? There was an article in the guardian recently to a really bizarre i think we should just about a fire handup ratify our environ. Exactly what exactly does that enables? Yeah, so so enabling modification to know, but modify your environment in different ways that create a relax using space that give you these cues that trigger your brain to say, oh, going into work, it’s not so stressful because i’ve got some really good lighting i’ve got maybe aromatherapy or some nice plants, i’ve got an environment that i’ve created at my workplace that makes me actually calmer, more relaxed, excellent didn’t even have to ask for your ideas. Were you right or or workplace? Where? There’s communal space where i can connect with other people and inspires collaboration? Yeah and that’s playful play way at work, but we need to have in our little in our shared space that makes it playful toys, adult court on always white ports and all. Clolery yes. Puzzles, markers, a communal table. Stress balls, balls. Yes, robots. One of one of the people you talked about has robot robot. Yes. Okay, cool. Yesterday we had did you see the group? I’m trying to see them. Corner shop. They’re here they have squeeze balls that are fruits today’s yesterday swags pile which got stolen overnight. But we had to squeeze eggplant. Yes, i have squeezed tomato. Some guests i could tell, you know, whether they were under stress or not, or whether you put there squeeze toy down, but they have fruits and vegetables out of squeeze toys. All right, buy-in we got to leave it there. I think we’ve from barton people. Yes, we have a deal. Ok. We only just talked about very little of what’s in the book. Well, of course you go by the book. The book is going to be called. I don’t know the subtitle of it. I’ll let a little lead to say at this time but the title is going to be happy. Healthy non-profit strategies for impact without burnout published by wiley wiley and coming out october of this year. Twenty sixty? Yes. Look for the book. Maybe we’ll have you on when it may. Well, have you want again? Keep that mind. Beth cancer. I may not remember so right. You know me better write. You can always find it happy, healthy non-profit dot org’s. Okay. Okay. Beth cantor out. Master trainer, speaker, author and blogger. You know she’s at best blogged. And lisa sherman, a wellness attack wellness advocate and, uh, multi book author as as beth is. Well, this is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc non-profit technology conference. Thank you. Wish, ewing, we’re showing you wishing you health and wellness in your office place. Thanks so much for being with us. You can preorder that book right now on amazon. It is available. Let’s. Shoot those numbers up your job descriptions coming up first. Pursuant, they’ve got a free webinar. Best kept secrets for upgrading donors. Well, secrets are going to be so best kept after the ribbon our wednesday september twenty first, one o’clock eastern, you’ll learn the latest don’t a research keys to advancing donor elation, ships and surprising strategies to upgrade your hidden gems. Tony dot m a slash pursuant webinar needed capital p and a capital w and that’s, where you go for registration, we be spelling spelling bees for non-profit rid fund-raising if you want to bring millennials into your good work, this is perfect, not grandma’s spelling bee you can check out their video, which has examples of the live music, the dancing, the comedy fund-raising and spelling these air terrific millennial events, usually in a bar or restaurant, and they’re very fun video is that we be spelling dot com now tony steak too. My latest video is don’t be in the woods on planned e-giving there’s a lot that small and midsize non-profits can do with planned e-giving i explained how to get started it’s at tony martignetti dot com and that is tony’s take two here is have a carpenter with your job descriptions. I’m very pleased that heather carpenter is with me. She is a phd was a non-profit manager for ten years. She’s, now assistant professor in the school of public non-profit and health administration at grand valley state university. She teaches grad and undergrad courses in non-profit management, financial management fund on profit technology, leadership and human resources management. The book that brings our two non-profit radio is co authored with terra qualls. And it is the talent development platform putting people first in social change organizations published by josy bass this year on twitter she’s at heather carpentier, which is at heather carpenter. But take off that last are have the carpenter. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, tony that’s. A pleasure. You’re calling from grand valley university. Where’s that michigan. Right war in grand rapids, michigan, which is on the west side of the state. Okay, okay. That was the summer there in grand rapids. It was really nice. We have a great summer. I’ll bet a little harsher winters, but yeah, no, but you do have harsh winters. Yes. Okay, heather, our job descriptions he’s often get very, very short shrift, don’t they? Yes. Yes. Well, having worked in non-profits for many years and done h r and operations, i know how busy we get. And often, when people leave organizations, we scramble and pulled together what we have on dh and send out a job description that is often outdated and hasn’t been updated in a few years. Or sometimes, i think even pulled off the web. Yes, yes. You’ve seen that? Yes. Ok, not that you’ve done that when you were leading your non-profit. I understand, but i think it’s i think that’s also a pretty common practice. Why do we need to focus more on job descriptions? Well, job descriptions are really an important part of helping an employee to understand their roles and responsibilities within the organization. It also helps to track employee and volunteer performance and success. And this is ah living document, right way. Need to keep these current as job responsibilities change. Yes, we recommend that non-profits update their job descriptions, actually on an annual basis. Okay, okay. Sabat do you do you think that poor job descriptions lead tio? I don’t know hyre turnover or lower morale? What consequences do you think result from not having accurate descriptions? Yes, i i agree with your assertion. We’ve found that a couple of things can happen with outdated Job descriptions 1 that it’s for a new hyre they might not really fully understand the role let’s say hypothetically, speak about how when organizations lose employees and they have someone coming in and they used a job description. That’s out data from the labs it’s not clearly showing the response the accurate responsibility so the person might get burned out pretty quickly, finding out they have a lot of additional latto responsibilities, or maybe they don’t even have the adequate qualifications for for the rial responsibilities. So the job or, if someone’s been in a position for a few years, there’s what we call the pile on effect, where often more and more responsibilities added, but that’s not actually reflected in the job description or in compensation so so employees can get and volunteers can’t burn out that way, and then sometimes people become overqualified for the job or might be overqualified when they come in. The job description is accurate. Does this apply also to organizations that are mostly volunteers? Should should be job descriptions for volunteers? Oh, yes, absolutely, we believe that that will our book applies to not just paid staff volunteers as well, and we actually have sample job descriptions for board board positions and key volunteers as well as come common staff within various non-profit organizations like your executive director, development director on bury the book is loaded with lots of resource is sample job descriptions but goes way beyond that just job responsibilities. And forms, you know, and we’re just taking one piece of the book and talking about job description, but there’s a lot more to it. And the thing is just loaded with but templates and resource is yes, thank you. I really wanted it to be as practical as possible, having worked in the nonprofit sector for many years ourselves, it’s more of a workbook where organizations can pick and choose the chapters that they need the resource is from. But it is a whole platform. If an organization decides to go through the process for from everything from understanding the organizational learning and professional development culture to actually assessing stats, professional development and creating professional development goals, an objective tied to the strategic als of the organization. All right, so where do we start this job? Description process. I mean, i know who it starts with its doctor, the supervisor. How does that what is the what the person need to do to get started? Well, the supervisor should really look at the position itself and often there’s different philosophies on job descriptions. And our our philosophy is that the organization, the supervisor, should build the job around the position and not the person because people change andi really, to really get an understanding of what is needed to advance the organization forward. So we have something called a proficiency mapping cool and are in our book where supervisors can really identify the called common confidences that the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics needed to perform the job and then rape those competencies on different proficiency levels. We use a proficiency level scale created by the national institute of health, and they’ve been doing this type of job description, worked for many, many years and really getting understanding of what level that the position and the responsibilities you need to be at when we talked earlier a few minutes ago about outdated job descriptions common, another problem with outdated job description says they’re not often at the level that the position needs to be on a smaller non-profits with great to have people who could do lots of different responsibilities, but sometimes we have very high expectations that someone in entry level type job might be more responsibilities, say, manager or leading the organization through some sort of process when that’s not necessarily the right level for that. Job you have these 5 proficiency levels, fundamental novice, intermediate advanced and an expert, yeah, way provide definitions and also example words and responsibilities at each level. I like to tell you, i jump pretty quickly from fundamental expert on i think if i’d done something once, that makes me an expert, so i don’t know if that fits within your construct, but like, one time i’m not the expert the first time, but after i’ve done it one time, i consider myself an expert and that’s cause that’s cost me a lot of money and, like home repairs and things, but i can’t get around it. That’s that’s but that’s probably not probably fit within your your definitions well, generally the expert and advance our our our director level positions on responsibilities. So at the executive director, we would hope a most size organizations that the person, the person holding that position would have advanced on expert level. But we understand that at the lower level positions the coordinators, the entry level positions that they’re more at the novice and the intermedia level. And yes, i mean, we’ve found that it’s helpful, starting with the supervisor to create these confidences and proficiency levels on dh, then down the line. Wei have employees assess themselves and not do a real comparison over the competencies profession? Okay, yes, we’re gonna get that. So so after the supervisors part, then then what’s next in creating these optimal job descriptions, the next step is really getting documenting the employees responsibilities, and they don’t see what the supervisor has done. But if you do have someone in that particular position just making sure that all the responsibilities are are documented because the supervisor might not have a son of everything that employees doing. But obviously, if it’s a new position, or if the job description ever been done before, then they would have the supervisor just do the proficiency mapping. Ok, ok, but but the the next step now is the is the is the employee e-giving their input into what their responsibilities are around the competencies and the proficiency levels. Yeah, the next up is just the employees identifying their their responsibility. Okay, a faster proficiency levels. Quite yet just for the job description itself. It’s really making sure that all the responsibilities are identified and the supervisor is really the one that making sure that all the proficiency levels are identified. All right, ok, ok. And we mentioned these competencies. Can you give us some examples of competencies? Sure. Before you do that, i want to tell you about the process that we took to to identify ten core competencies for non-profit managers like holly and i actually did some some national surveys and looked at literature around training needs of non-profit managers and assassin what their confidence cesaire needed. So this is really backed and research that we identify the ten course set of common confidence ease that non-profit managers possessed. They’re very general there everything from advocacy to communications, marketing, financial management to fun development hyre we also have human resource is way also in the book go through the process of has helping organizations create their own sub confidence ease, because since the time core competencies are very general, we know that each organization is different in their culture and each position and as well as department, it’s organization, house, apartment, that they have their own core competencies that are important to that organization. So we’ve also provided of examples of different size organizations and the subcontinent use that. They have so well for example, intercultural confidence he is a very important sub competency for many organizations, two working, working well under pressure are working with certain population, so we’ve we’ve worked with various organizations and their different types of missions require different competency. So we worked with homeless organization last semester, and they, you know, they require their staff to have confidence he’s in understanding people who have housing have challenges, okay, let’s see, we have just about a minute before, before we take a break and then we’ll continue. I should do this. We haven’t mentioned the board should be job descriptions for board positions. Definitely we have. We have a sample job descriptions for board chair board treasurer, board secretary on various board general boardmember on there’s a there’s. A lot of resource is not just in our book, but out there on the web is well for creating and managing board job descriptions. That’s an important piece we’ve we’ve done this process with all volunteer run organizations where it’s just the board teo organizations that have paid staff, maybe they’re smaller, they have all the board do their Job descriptions and then the 1 to two staff members that they have so it’s important that it’s not just a staff process that boardmember look at their job descriptions and revise them. Okay, let’s, go out for a break and when we come back, heather, of course we’ll stay with us and we’ll keep talking about your job descriptions, and then we’ll move to mapping, mapping you thies competencies and proficiency levels to the job description. Stay with us like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that or neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e. N e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals. Just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week, and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation. Top trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m lawrence paige, no knee author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. I know. I say it every time. Maybe maybe you listeners get here. Tired of hearing me say this, but i wish lawrence would pronounce his last name. Panjwani he’ll be so much more beautiful than paige. No. Ni lawrence. I’ve said this a large his face. So no it’s it’s. Not like i’m going behind his back. And pandiani will be so beautiful. Lorenzo? Lorenzo panjwani okay, okay. Heather let’s. Move now. Tio mapping what is this? What is it? What is that? The mapping process that comes next? Well, this is the mapping process is really about revising the job description and making sure that it matches up with the responsibilities really, that are needed. We advise organizations to separate job responsibilities by the competency categories. So we often see job descriptions that have a whole long list of job responsibilities. But were our processes to separate them by category? Cory so that it’s clear on the difference competencies that are needed with that particular job. We also have the manager identified perfect since he loves based on the job responsibility, action words. And so this is where hyre this is the revision process, the different levels and making sure that the wording really matches up with the proficiency level so we might have a position that is hyre up than it needs to be or lower and can be a giant. Now you mentioned job responsibility, action words. What defined those for us? Well, the action words are provided in the proficiency mapping scale. So as we talked about before there’s five purpose into levels from fundamental awareness, novice, intermediate to advance and back first. And each of these have a different level, and we have action words that are associated with each level. So as i mentioned about the higher level positions, we have the dance level there there’s facilitating, leading liaising, managing and the expert level. We’re synthesizing. We’re training were troubleshooting. And so these hyre level action words are associated with hyre level job responsibilities. Okay, yeah. And that’s me. Well, i like to focus on the expert. You know, like i said, i would skip over novice, intermediate and advanced. I go right from fundamental to expert one one one one time. So i’ve gotten used to use those expert use those expert examples. That’s where? Just in my mind, that’s where i belong let’s. See? Okay, so in this job in the in this revision process now it’s, the employees and the supervisor working together, uh, well, family it’s the supervisor making sure that the job description is aligned because as much as we’d like to be an employee involved in the process, the next step in the talent development platform which i don’t have time to talk about here is the individual professional development assessment and that’s where an employee actually haserot their confidence season proficiency level. So it’s really helpful that they don’t see realign job description before that, that there going off of what they i think that they’re expertise is and their proficiency level is. And then that way, you could do an accurate comparison. So what the job requires. Okay, well, you might be surprised we might have time to get to assessment a little bit. We might be surprised. Um, now for the mapping, there are there’s having six steps. Andi don’t really have. You know, we don’t have time to go through all six of them, but help help us understand an overview of the process. A little more detailed. And then we have so far yeah, so, as i mentioned in the first step of separating the job responsibilities by competency category, you’ll see then if there’s gaps and if you’ll have competency categories that you’re not covering it’s amazing how many organizations that we’ve worked with through this process, where they are missing competencies for specific positions, like operations manager, or or the executive director where often maybe, you know hr is a part of the operations manager job, but it’s not really accurately included are reflected in the job description or the job responsibilities or information. Technology is often a part of someone’s job, but not necessarily included, so it really helped helps organization to identify gaps with responsibility and say, well, we don’t have anything in this competency category. So let’s, let’s talk about what we need to include, i see, okay, it strikes me that this whole process to is going to i guess you said it, but just is going to make sure that you’re not bringing in let’s say, entry level people and having expectations that are unreasonable for them in terms of responsibilities and competencies. Exactly way also talk about degree levels as well in compensation we worked with quite a few smaller non-profits that, like tio, take all the responsibilities that we, we provide his examples, and and use them to hyre their new entry level staff at the masters level were like, whoa, you know, let’s think about it’s entry level, do they really need a mask spurs or do they even need a bachelor’s for that regard? So this really helped to think through the position responsibilities that you need for the organization and ok, if i really need all those responsibilities and maybe it’s two positions, not one or i’m i think i’m being unrealistic with how many responsibilities that i’m requiring in this in this position. So having those sometimes difficult conversations about what’s realistic for the organization since restarting tio, we’re talking about the possibility of entry level employees what’s your feeling on starting people at at low salaries? Well, i’m a little biased because i advocate for living wages because i teach graduate students in a lot of them are often on the job market, either during their degree program are afterwards and it’s really disappointing to see them have to take very low wage starting jobs also research, so that it costs between seventy five to one hundred for fifty percent of its employees annual salary when they leave. And so what i’ve seen with my students and former employees is that bill, if they’re not getting adequate living wage compensation, then the leave within a few months and that actually costs the organization a lot of money organizations, i don’t think we often realize how much time and effort it takes toe post the new position to interview the people to do the training and that’s that’s money, and what will when in fact, we could pay a living wage and a good starting salary for entry level employees and have them stay longer even if they stay a year to that’s that’s better than the cost of done, leaving within a few months because they find a better opportunity that paste on better excellent, we gotta leave it there. Unbelievable! You were right. We didn’t have a chance to talk about assessment. You’re right, but you got it by the book it’s talent development platform she’s heather l carpenter, phd and you’ll find her on twitter at heather carpentier carpenter and take off that last are thank you very much. Other next week, data disruption and small data rocks. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com, responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and we’d be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We be e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire miree off sam lee boots is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by susan chavez. On our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. 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