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Nonprofit Radio for March 1, 2019: Your CEO/Board Chair Relations

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My Guest:

Aisha Nyandoro: Your CEO/Board Chair Relations
You, or your CEO, as the case may be, need to work together with your board chair toward an aligned vision. How do you establish it and what if it gets blurry? Aisha Nyandoro shepherds us through CEO/board chair and full board relations, as in recruiting, onboarding, engaging and removing. She’s CEO of Springboard to Opportunities.




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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 be forced to endure the pain of ventricular itis if you broke my heart with the idea that you missed today’s show your CEO, board chair, relations you or your CEO, as the case may be, need to work together with your board chair toward an Aligned Vision. How do you establish it? And what if it gets blurry? Aisha nyandoro shepherds us through CEO board chair and full board relations, as in recruiting onboarding engaging and removing she’s CEO of Springboard to Opportunities. Tony’s Take two act Blue responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuant by Wagner CPAs. Guiding you Beyond the numbers. Wagner cps dot com Bye. Tell us. Turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash Tony Tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text. NPR to four four four nine nine nine It’s a pleasure to welcome Asian nyandoro back to the show. She is chief executive officer of Springboard to opportunities. Springboard provides strategic direct support to residents of federally subsidized, affordable housing. She’s been an academic and evaluator, a philanthropist and NON-PROFIT executive. She’s a Ted ex speaker and her work has been featured in Essence Magazine, CNN, MSNBC, Fast Company, the Nation and other media. Isha’s life mission is to holistically and compassionately lift families out of cycles of poverty. She’s at Isha underscore Nyandoro and springboard to opportunities. Is that springboard to dot or ge? Welcome back to Non-profit Radio Ayesha. Thank you so much for having me back. Tony Beets. Absolute pleasure. Sorry. Yes, thank you. I’m glad it feels good for you. It feels good for me. Um, you’re calling in from Ah, you in Jackson, Mississippi? Is that right? I am calling you from a rainy, dreary day here. Injected it. Good. OK, it’s always good. It’s always good in the south, right? Yeah, it’s I like that. It’s always a good thing coming. Fancy coming for somebody? The Northeast Teo, You know, we’re all jaded and think we’re the center of the universe. No, that’s not true. All right. I’m glad to have you back. It was about three years ago. I look back. It was about three years ago, actually to the month. I think it was May have been a January of twenty sixteen that you were on. So it’s, uh it’s been three years since I met you at the opportunity collaboration, which must have been that the October before. That must’ve been October twenty fifteen. That’s exactly right. Well, and a lot of a lot of change since then. But I’m still doing the same great work with springboards opportunity here in Jackson. And so yeah, I think I’ve seen you two be good. I’m glad. Alright. I love your laugh to scorn. Follow-up lifting. Love it. Okay. Um, so your your primary point we got, you know, we have an hour together, so we got time to Flesh is sold out. But you’re you’re very concerned about having an aligned vision between you as CEO and your board chair. What? What does that look like? A big align vision is really a vision where you, as the CEO are maintaining your ideals, your leadership and not losing yourself in the voice of the chair of your board. But they’re also really recognizing that in order for that vision, come to pass, but you really do need the support of the chair. So it really is a beautiful day in, and it is a relationship that a lot of intentionality and work has to be put into. And I don’t. I think a lot of folks understand. I understand the work and the balance that it takes a really maintaining those relationship. And that is not something that happens overnight. And, well, you know, if I get the relationship in order to make sure that you’re getting all of the benefits from the relationship, you have to invest in it. And so, you know, that’s true with the relationship between the CEO, our executive director and the board chair really being intentional about the relationship and putting the work in and ensure that both parties are getting the support that they need from it. Okay, just like any personal relationship or or like any part of the relationship yesterday evening, it’s the same thing. And I think the best beauty about you know, it really is something that translates over easily into personal relation. Because what you’re bored Chair, you really do have to have a personal relationship with them. It just can’t be about whatever is going on professionally with the organization, because so we lead of organization. So much of your personal idea ideology is invested into it. And so because of that you, you know, Yes. You have to have a personal relationship with that individual, will you? You said it’s a It’s a beautiful dance. Uh, who leads? Even Think of a way your words against you Eve. Of course, to see only because the CEO is the head of the organization. But with that that thing you really have, tio have a relationship where you can be open about your vision and your idea. And you can trust that you know it time that you all may not be on the same page and you’ve done the work and the relationship in investing in the relationship to trust that the relationship will still stay in even when you do have moments when you disagree. You know, for my board chair and I have a great relationship. I’ve known her now for years, and she is one of my absolute favorite people. But they are sometimes, but we have had to have courageous conversation and that is simply a conversation that was difficult because I knew that we were on different sides of, you know, a position that that we felt both passionately about. But because of that that we had done investing in a relationship ahead of time, we’re able to have those conversations were ableto agree to disagree. And the work continues. Okay, So give us give me a sense of what this looks like when you’re, uh you’re thinking about who’s who the next board chair is going to be. How do you You know, How do you start this dance? How do you make sure that he or she is aligned with the mission? The way you as the CEO are you before you select? I mean, you maybe have a couple of people. Maybe Maybe it’s a few board members. Or maybe he’s an outsider. You know, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t really bring an outsider on to be bored. Share, would you know, you bring out that you would cultivate them up, okay? You would cultivate them. You want someone who understands some of the historical history of the organization has that context of the work and you know, and has worked their way up the ranks start to stay in the board. Okay. And so far, you know, that’s a good question because currently springboard its own wrapping a new board chair. So we identified the chair who would take over the end of this year, and she’s currently serving in the role of vice chair. And so for me, the way that I am going about really fostering that relationship with her and getting to know her, it’s a chicken once someone you know, so we can begin to get to know each other, get to know it doesn’t work now, personalities I know her, but I don’t know her nearly as well as I know the board here with whom I talked to weekly and, you know, and that I’ve talked to weekly for No for years now. So just be really being intentional about putting that time and think, OK, let’s just you know, And, uh, my board chair is in Maine and fice Terrier. My board is in New Orleans. So where the vice chairs like? Okay, listen, virtual coffee because you are in the world. I am in Mississippi. I can’t physically see you want so much, but we can, you know, elect some time on our respective calendars. Just a connect and, you know, catch up with the work, catch up with personal life and just really no began to build those connections that I know are necessary when you’re trying to, you know, move strategy forward. Okay? Give me a chance for a break and we can compete up the conversation. Right. Right where you are. Just hold on. No problem. Pursuant, their newest free book is the Art of First Impressions. It’s all about Donorsearch acquisition. To attract new donors, you need to make a smashing first impression. How do you do it? E Book has their six guiding principles of ineffective acquisition strategy How to identify your organization’s unique value plus creative tips. You’ll find the book on the listener landing page at tony dot M. A slash pursuant capital P for please. All right, now, let’s go back to your CEO Board chair relations. Did you say your current board chairs in Maine? And the vice, The vice chair. The chair to be is in New Orleans. Is that right? That’s correct. Okay. Do you find now? Okay, Well, you’ve the current board chair. You’ve worked with her for years on DH before she was bored. Chair. You obviously were working, whether just not as closely did that distance, uh, hinder the relationship You, you know, not at all surprising. And that’s the thing with technology now. Yeah. You know, there’s so many opportunities to connect and really be a relation buy-in ship over with technology. We have no meetings there. Space time there’s, you know, text messages. There’s all these ways to stay connected. I text her all the time. It’s just something that I think is interesting, just our foreign, her different articles. So there really is so many ways that you could be a relationship and feel connectedness when you are not physically in the same space with someone. So I don’t want people to feel like, you know, in order to have a really great relationship with the boardmember that you have to have physical proximity because I found that not, you know, that has not had to be the case. Yeah. So you’re you’re texting frequently. Your you have these weekly calls with the board chair, but frequent texts back and forth, There’s just you know, it’s it’s deeper than a I don’t I don’t really know what to call it, so I don’t want to take a chance and blow it and call it something wrong. But it’s deeper than just a professional relationship you have with her That’s not exactly right. But I’m saying you know so much you really do get to the place where it is a personal relationship with Will I feel in order to truly advanced the work. You have to have those things and especially for those of us who lead now process because so much of non-profit working really hard work. So it really is a lot of your personal convictions. And, you know, it’s a lot of your personal convictions go into the work. So you do get to a place where you know it’s a professional personal relationship, but at the same time, you feel do recognise it. Okay, um, even though we have this relationship that it’s still it’s a working relationship. So it’s not as if you ever you know, blur the line and get to a place where you know you’re unprofessional or you can, you know, get really comfortable in some of the spaces because it still is your balls. And you still have to be mindful of that on DH. That’s just, you know, this is the reality of our working relationship. I feel Yeah, yeah. Now I hear you. It’s it’s a deeper professional relationship, but it’s still not, you know, it’s not a relationship with your friends. Of course you can’t. You can’t You can’t You can’t get that. That’s that would be inappropriate. But it’s but it’s not dry in stagnant, and you don’t know who wants to work in that space. It’s close. It’s close. I mean, it’s a close working relationship, so and so in terms of this, you know, vision alignment, you would. You would learn that as the person worked their way through the ranks of the board, I mean, whether whether they’re in line with the mission and they see it, the mission and the vision, the same way you do. You would learn that a cz you got to know them on the board, and if you didn’t feel it was a right fit, you know, to be to be chair, then you just, you know, you wouldn’t nominate that person or you would exactly right and that, and I think that’s exactly right. And I think it’s a lot to be said for that because I think sometimes wanted a steak that non-profit leaders to make. If you know, wanting to promote their friends and putting their friends on their boards in different things such as that, And then you know, you make your friend your board chair and you all may not have the same vision. And they they really affected friendship than an answer, being a really stressful situation for everyone involved. And so that really allowing the individual work up the ranks on the board and get to know that individual doesn’t mean that, you know, they’re your personal, your favorite person on the board. But is this the person that you understand? You are most aligned with the and that can really help carry the mission forward because of the end of the day, It is all about strategy and mission driven and trying to figure out how do you make sure that the organization is living out his mission? Envision as best, possibly when when you do have some rough spots, let’s say you know you. You said, you know you’re there times you know you’re on the other side of oven issue problem than the chair. How do you, uh, how do you approach it? You talk about it. If you don’t let us sit. I mean, haven’t you have open dialogue and conversations and you just go in and you lay out your position and your Russian allies, you’re give him out? You don’t go into Vince. Um, you build your best case for why you are advocating for whatever that position is, and you allowed them to do the same. But it really is that open dialogue and communication in trusting the work that you have put in and establishing a relationship to begin with. Yeah. You have a solid foundation that you’re building, right? You said earlier you’re confident that the relationship isn’t going to break down over this thiss obstacle. Obstacles overcome oppcoll, but it takes open communication to do it. And I really do think that’s a sign of a healthy relationship. When you can have those disagreements and recognize it at the end of the day, everybody’s okay. Because if you were not able to go to your board chair and say I disagree with you on that, or I don’t think this makes the most sense in here is why is it a relationship and, you know, and are you out truly allying And so to be. If you are not in a place where you can have it on a silo, there’s no more that needs to be done with that relationship. Okay. Okay. Uh, excellent. All excellent advice. What? Let’s see. So So before we before we start talking to the to the bigger issues and I’ll move, move to the bigger board and the CEO relationships there. What? Maybe you’ve already said it, but what would be your your number one takeaway for that? For that board chair CEO relationship, the number one takeaway really would be for first CEO to understand their vision for the organization and to feel comfortable communicating that beige into whoever, whether or not to be your board chaired. The donor is the staff members of the board members that whoever that has to truly know what your vision is on Bac comfortable in that space and then from there, hold having open dialogue and communication with your board share regularly. And recognizing that fostering that relationship has just so much a part of your job as the fund-raising aspects of your relation of your job. It always, you know, extreme part of your job description. Well, that was to take aways, but I’ll let you go. Your anarchist now. Yeah, you weasel doing there. But that’s fine. Not all important. I’m just getting, um, Yeah, I mean, I hear you communication, open dialogue, a strong, foundational relationship. Uh, you know, as you said, so that you can you can be honest in the rough times and hear each other and work through. No, no obstacle is insurmountable. If there’s if there’s a strong relationship. Teo, att the base. All right, Cool. All right, so, so broadening a little bit. You know, if we if we go to the think about now the CEO relationship with the Fuller, that the bigger board, um, how do you How do you get involved with board recruiting Yeah, so you know, for us, boy recruiting, really. Governance committee. Where must again, we’re going through that process right now, We have a governor’s committee where we have set up a metric of what it is that we know. That we need organizational in orderto helpless, you know, extra cheese, the pieces of our strategic plan that was recently identified. And so it really is using that rubric to help guide our decisions about what makes the most sense. And that’s where you know, having strong boardmember that are well connected labbate locally, regionally, nationally also comes into place because they can make recommendations and allow us the CEO to say yea or nay order, do some research on those individuals going. You know what, the CEO, you have individual that you think they make sense that that really is where bilich conversation should come into play. And it could be a fun process. But, you know, really thinking about who gets to be a part of division for the next three or so years moving for it. You know, I love. I love putting boards together. You know, one of my favorite pieces of my job, because it really is a lot of fun. So you lean on your board members toe open up their networks. Teo. Potential board members. Yes, the and Boardmember should recognize that that is a big part of their job as well. You know, provide access to their network into really be Campion’s before the organization with their friends and colleagues. You know, talk about what is this? That we’re doing a talk about what it is that the organization is doing not just from by natural lorts teeth, but also from, you know, he wasn’t a recruitment. Peace and social capital is really important, and we have a dynamic board right now in the majority of the board members that we have have come directly from referrals from other board members. And so shall you know the board. Your board’s ability to provide their connections in that social capital is just as important to me. In my opinion, for them to help with the financial fund-raising aspect of it is Will. And this well is there. You know, they’re content expertise because our board is still a fairly small board. So I really do rely on thy boardmember. They have contact because experts in various pieces on that we know will be to be strategic and move forward. Okay. I probably should’ve asked before you stay. You’re stuck with Ah, lackluster host. I’m sorry. Describe your tell us about your board. How big? What committees do you have? Yes. Our board is really small working board. We have seven board members were potentially about to growth either nine or eleven. And yeah, and everyone. Everyone on the border’s content expert that aligned to specific buckets. The work that we do for the organization. So we have individuals who are housing expert. Since we’re working affordable housing experts. Since we work in the space of federally subsidized, affordable housing, we have individuals who are organizational strategist. Because when we started seventy years ago, we said that we knew that we would be growing rapidly so that we so we knew we needed someone that provided a level level of expertise. So it really is matching Arnie. Finding is like chess. The needs that we have fighting appropriate individuals to feel that gap for us. Now, how does that feel? You if you’re going to grow from seven to ten or eleven, I mean, that’s Ah, that’s like roughly a fifty percent increase in inboard size. How does that feel it feels about? It feels right. It feels like it’s time we go back your fourth and you know. And so if you know it will bring bring on either two or three, so so it doesn’t feel too big on there. Still is manageable because, you know a lot of CEO time managing for it. It helps relations with those things. Those bilich manageable for me. I don’t know if I don’t want to have a board that is twenty members or fifteen members or different things fishes at which those of my colleagues have. So it feels it feels good. And it feels like we’ve all been involved in the process of getting to the place of having a board decide on that. Feels like it’s timely that, you know we’re being conscious of the organization’s posts and where we are and saying, OK, as we have grown in our strategies and our footprint, we need to bring on more experts that can help in these various spaces, though it’s not something that we’ve done happenstance, very few teaching in time. So where we are, which is also very important for individuals to be mindful of. Yeah, yeah. Mindful that you’ve you’ve identified areas of need that a springboard has grown that you now require. And so you’re expanding the board to bring those experts bring those experts in. Exactly. It’s not like we said, Alice. Bring more boardmember just because it feels like we’re way behind a lawyer. But the lawyer will you see piela? No, not like that. Okay. Yeah. You don’t want lawyers anyway. You you stay away from lawyers. Trust me, we’re bad. I used to be one. I don’t remember the Oh, I’m reformed. Exactly. So you get get reformed attorneys. They’re good because they still have subject matter. Expertise. There may not be able to represent you, but they still have good advice to give. They have a kind of expertise you need exactly. Right. Okay. Okay. That’s exciting. I mean, that growth, that kind of growth. Um Okay. So you’re Yeah. It’s kind of a follow on, too, you know, leaning on your board members, Teo, bring in their networks, you know, do you? Do you subscribe to the belief that you know if if you’re not asking your board members to do enough. Then they’re going to start to get disengaged and bored versus I’m afraid I might be asking him to do too much. I don’t want to impose. You know, I don’t want to take more of their time. They’re already spending ten hours a month. I mean, how do you how do you fall in that on DH? How do you balance that? So far, it’s only balance when we are bringing on board members or with our boardmember very honest about the time commitment and, you know, and also very honest about it. And we’d like, if it were small board, so he empopwering brought on as a constant burghdoff x, y Z, whatever it is that we need. So there may be some months where I leave more heavily protect one particular boardmember than others, and I’ve come to learn that they actually really appreciate that. And for so many of them, they’re bored service. It’s a part of their community service because we don’t have a paid boards where really is their, you know, their service, and they approach vitiate, being able to use their expertise and something differently than how they use it in their ninety five. And so, yeah, I think it just really goes that, too. The being honest about what the demands are of the boards were prior to asking somebody to come on. And I really do by within the space of utilizing the folks that you had at the table. And if it feels like too much, they will let you know whether or not they don’t have the commitment or had to have availability at that particular moment to provide the level of commitment that you may need a But I think you have to ask for what it is that you beat, and that hell is so you have to do everything by yourself. Yeah, there’s like, you have a board, so I don’t have to do everything by yourself. Yes, I’ve had guests on say, You know, you can’t be a subject matter expert in everything there’s on. There’s no time for you to learn And that’s that’s pointless because it takes you away from what your what your own expertise already. Exactly. It takes you away from what the boys hyre todo if I’m over here trying to figure out accounting. That takes me away from all of the other pieces, and I’m supposed to be doing that. It’s not what they hired for, so there’s exactly right. Do you put the board expectations in writing at the recruiting stage? Do you give him a document that lines it out or hat? How do you make sure that they understand for sure what the expectations are, So we don’t do the expectations as faras the times you made a commitment in pieces. But there is when we’re going through the recruitment process, there are conversations will be multiple conversations with me on the conversations with the board chair and conversations with other boardmember. So they have last of opportunities tax question and then also lots of opportunities for various individuals who are connected to the organizations to provide their take on what the commitment looks like and what they needed and what their understanding of the organization. Okay, so you’re saying that several levels of interviews with, with you and board members I don’t like the word interview, the conversation mandatory, mandatory conversations just, you know, trying to feel interested that makes you know we’re tryingto field issues. But also really trying to make sure that we’re being transparent so that we can get the right fit, you know? And sometimes you know the path we on around the new boardmember. And we were really excited about her coming onboard. And I bumped into in, her job changed. And she knew that based on the various conversations that she had had with myself another boardmember, that she no longer would have the time necessary to provide the commitment that we needed. So she elected so, you know, jump off the board, even though she just jumped on the board, and that was good. But I think the expectations ahead of Thai And so before we get six months down the road or so it was, you know, easy for her to say. I know this is no longer want to work for me because we have been very open with our dialogue prior to Yeah, now that that’s the best outcome. If if that was gonna happen, that’s the best way to have it happen. She backs out in advance, bows out, pull my service. She you know, she says, know in advance versus she’s stressed over the commitment that she’s not fulfilling. You’re disappointed because she’s not mating upto the everything that you and you and the other board members laid out far while she was being recruited. You know, I would be disappointed on both sides, but obviously much better just have her back out. Okay? But the lesson is that she understood what the expectations were, and she took it seriously enough to know that she couldn’t fulfill them, so Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, let’s Ah, let me let me take another break, and then we’ll come back, and we’ll talk about a little more formal onboarding and keeping boardmember is engaged. And I even hoped that we could get toe having to remove board members, possibly before there, before their term is up. So we’ll come to that. Okay. Great. Where you see piela? A new archive. Webinar for you. Which is why she was just talking about accounting. It’s accounting update. What has changed this year that Wagner knows unqualified Lee. And you need to know a little bit. For instance, new requirements for financial statements. You’d like to be a little acquainted with it, but you don’t want to have to do them, certainly. And you don’t have to scrutinize him to make sure they meet Muster. But you want to be a little acquainted with the new requirements. That’s what this there there webinars all about. Goto wagner cps dot com Click Resource is then Webinars. Now time for Tony. Take two ActBlue. There are Premier Sponsor at nineteen NTC. The twenty nineteen non-profit Technology Conference. It’s next month in Portland, Oregon. I presume you’re going because you know that this is the go to conference for people who want to know how to use tech. Smarter in in their organization. You’re if you use a computer, you’re using technology. What can that computer do? More for you that you’re not aware of and make you and your staff more efficient? That’s what ntcdinosaur all about. So you’ll be there. That’s a given. Okay, so we got that. So it’s March thirteenth of fifteenth, but already know that because you’re coming, you already made your plane reservations. What you don’t know is where to find Non-profit radio and Act blew. You would go to the exhibit floor booths five o eight and five. Ten. We’re sharing a booth together. There are sponsors at the conference, which I’m very, very grateful for. They’ll be talking about the power of small dollar donations while I’m capturing interviews for Non-profit radio. Ah, you can learn more about small dollar donations at tony dot m a slash Act blue, and you could see more about what we’re going to be doing together. The swag, the chats, the on site training giveaway that’s all in my video. And that video is that tony martignetti dot com, that is Tony’s Take two. Let’s go back to Aisha nyandoro and your CEO board chair Relations and Onboarding Way just started to touch on a little bit. What’s your What’s your recommendations for? Ah, a non boarding process of Ah Niu boardmember from a recrimination for Onboarding process of new board members is too like that our lawyer have conversations of front with multiple folks with on the board so that they truly understand that process and then do a retreat or training. Pacifica will not retreat. Training no of this facilitated by the board chair just for those in the big who are coming onto the board so that they can have an opportunity to be a relationship with one another tax any more in depth questions that they may have not had an opportunity to ask and then, you know, introduce them to the full board. It’s a pretty scene was processed. So how do you how do you do that? Training? Is it a day or a half a day or something? Or how does that work was, like, half a day, half a day and go through all of the organizational pieces. So for us, that would be going through the strategic plan that would just adopted and making sure that individuals understand the goals that we have. Outline, um, for the next two years talking to the organizational strategies history. Those pieces are accountants sometimes just in and is involved in that process. This they’ll understand our our finances and what that piece looks like. But yeah, I know some individuals through a full day as they get their pants on how large organisation for us, a half day has been sufficient to get that done. Okay, um, and do you have a requirement for how many of the board meetings people need to be physically present for versus virtual or not, You know, we don’t because we are an organization that is based in the city. But we have a footprint, that it crosses various various states, and we have boardmember that live in various states. We have to board meetings that are actually physically in Mississippi twice a year. But all of our other board meetings, we do virtually the zone. So we do not have requirements about whether or not you know how many you attend in person versus online and the reason we don’t do that. It’s because we trust individuals want to be a part of this organization and the part of the board, because it’s not a paid position. And so if you have signed on to give your expertise, we trust that you know you will do that you would show up. You will be engaged in the process. But how many board meetings do you have a year? We have six board meetings a year, Okay? And two of those are on site in Mississippi. Tuitele zoho inside the beans and those way have size in Mississippi are fairly. You know, today is because if you’re going to go through the work of getting individuals here, he could make sure that you’re, you know, handling a lot of good business in the process. Okay. You have some dinners to I mean, you have some social times, I’m sure. Ugo. Yeah, yeah, Way duitz site visit. We, you know, conduct the board, is that we hear from partners that we pack a lot in when we get him here on side. Do you have any formal mentoring for new board members? But would they be meant toward by a longer term? Boardmember You know, we have not done that on, but it really is because we’re such a smile, Gordon, that we have not. I felt that that was necessary. And it also, since our own wrapping process, with the conversation, it so much that that is not a piece that we’ve put in on. And I actually have not thought about that. But now that you mention it, I’m like, let me think about that. But it’s not. It’s something that we’ve put in place. Okay, it’s something I’ve heard from other guests, and I don’t know, maybe as you expand the board makes sense, but just okay. Um uh, okay, so so then Oh, so What do your committee’s what The board committees. So we have a finance committee and we have a government committee, and that is for the most part, pretty much it. You know, we every once in a while, if we have a process of getting it put coming into place, we’ll do an ad hoc committee, like we just in the trash if you do plan. But we had a committee for that. But for the most part, since we are, you know, once again, such a smile board, you know, everyone just works across the board. That’s necessary. But we do have a finance committee in the government committee. You So you’re gonna have to get your going to get out of the habit of saying small board. You’re growing up to nine or ten that I I’ve seen three and four. I mean, I’ve seen thirty. I’ve seen thirteen and fourteen. I’ve seen thirty and forty also. But I know it’s a It’s a midsize board. Maybe. Thats on the small size relative. You’re right. I don’t know, maybe something small size of bid, but I don’t think it’s small anymore. I think it’s on the, you know it is on the average smaller side, but also small, like three or four. So you’re right. And I know better because, you know, I’m on the center for the I’m on the center. I’m on the board. Four men are now process here in this city, So I have seen boards that are three. So you? Exactly. It’s not a smile board. Okay, Um, So where does where does fund-raising fit into your board? Well, I guess I should ask what? Is there much individual fund-raising or is your work more government government fee for service or what’s your revenue? So we have a hybrid is government, you know, its developer fee for service. And it is also larger foundation philanthropies. Fund-raising so. But that with board members, is also where the social capital comes into play, you know, because getting access to the larger funders, you know, it’s a lot of times of war meeting a boardmember. Excuse me. You know, shooting a e mail, um, or having a personal relationship with someone, they Hey, I’m going to this conference, and I really think you should be here as well. So you know that really, where? A lot of fund-raising support comes in with the social capital cities, of course. You know, like Al Gore’s. I’ll be wanting boardmember to give it one hundred percent. A lot of sounds. A lot of salvation, Actually, I do. Look at that right now, require that. But we do not have, you know, a require set up. Now what we ask our board members to give, you know, physically. Okay. Got you. Um, so then keeping these, these new board members engaged. You know, the last thing we want is you mentioned earlier, you know, bored people getting or I said it. And I think we both said it people not filling that They’re that they’re talents are being utilized. They got they brought on the board for a purpose to share their expertise. The last thing you want is them feeling that they’re not being tapped. Um, how do you How do you do? You start getting them engaged. Started in the game for asking questions immediately. And pieces that, you know, there’s a place that I have been struggling in tapping in and getting that done and shooting those emails and asking, you know, for those phone calls they hate can’t beat right quick. I want to touch base with you without X. Y Z Because in so many instances, there are pieces that I really my boardmember than a lot of instances about partners to really help me think pieces that may be critical with something that I’m trying to figure out. A perfect example of that sabat boardmember who is a local business owner here and, you know, really connected with the corporate, you know, funding world. And that’s one of the pieces I’ve been trying to figure out. So, you know, shot him. But I saw him out socially at the special format socially and finishing on the shooter and email because I really want to talk to you about ex wives. And so just using those opportunities to connect with them all pieces that I’ve been thinking about, um, we’re struggling with what their feedback on it doesn’t have to be something that requires a two. A three hour work session. Ah, lot of the things that I need in a lot of instances earlier, you know, twenty, thirty minutes. Strategy conversations. Just four. Simple can. You could make me the X Y Z. Yes, of those pieces. So that’s how I in this. Something is not a heavy list for them is something. Because there has been some time why I needed the boardmember to look at a contract, which was a little heavier lift. But a lot of instances is not a really heavy lift into this about building those connections, building those relationships, making them still involved because they are involved in a larger mission and really allowing them to use their cuts and expertise outside of their day with a job. And, you know, having to be of service. So yeah, I can see how the relationship would just develop over time. You know, you’re just you’re you’re tapping them as needed conversations, You know, you don’t have to. You don’t. You don’t wait for a board meeting. Toe tap, someone. You have a need. You, you, you, you You express it right away like you have a need to express that. You have asked us, President. And even though you don’t know what they can’t but feel that need, they can connect you to somebody who can help you with that. Mita, I gotta take a break, but I will leave you with this. You said you said you. You sought someone out socially. That sounds like stalking to me. I have taken a break. I’m taking a break while you laugh. Excuse me. Uh, tell us, can you use more money? A new revenue source, Perhaps We’re talking about revenue. Right now. You get a long stream of passive revenue When the companies you refer process their credit card transactions through Tello’s, go watch the video, then send these potential companies to watch the video. You will get fifty percent of the fee for each credit card transaction that tell us processes for those companies you referred And that all adds up. That’s your long stream of revenue. The video is at tony dot m a slash Tony Tello’s Let’s do the live Listen, love it’s Ah, it’s it’s pre recorded live love But the love of goes out It doesn’t matter That the love is not Is not in any way Uh mitigated Ah or impinged upon when it’s pre recorded it still it still love going out It’s just not exactly love live but it’s love Still s o to ah to our live listeners love going out to you and the podcast audience. The pleasantries come, you know, they do very grateful that you are with us. The vast, vast majority of our audience listening by the podcast, The over thirteen thousand. Thank you so much. Thank you for being with us pleasantries to the podcast audience. Now, let’s go back. Teo. Aisha Nyandoro. Um Okay. So you’re over this stalking thing. I tell you that. It sounded like social, social, seeking out. That sounds like stalking to me. All right, all right. Maybe that’s just my warped head. I’m willing to admit that. That’s just my warped perception of Okay, Um all right, so All right, so we got to keep them engaged. Well, let’s talk about a little bored conflict, I’m sure through the years, um, you’ve had conflicts, uh, whether it was you and a boardmember or between Boardmember Sze. I mean, all the personalities through all these years couldn’t have gotten along perfectly. What do you What’s your advice around around? Let’s say boardmember to boardmember conflict. So thankfully, I have not had any my board. I kid you not. I have had no boardmember boardmember conflict. I have had no conflict with my board members, and I didn’t even know there was a thing. And you brought it up. Oh, come on. That’s it. You know, So that had that I am not had that issue. I would. So for me, I feel obviously, personally powerthru fiction currently have not had that issue. I have a board member on the board before I’ve had conflict come. And when that presented itself for me, I have a decision to leave that board because I felt like my expertise was no longer thou you’re needed. And since for yeah, it’s almost like, you know, I don’t have to be somewhere where I’m What is this? That I am bringing to the table is no longer respected. So I just decided to bow out and leave that process altogether. Yeah, okay. That’s that’s extreme. It must have been bad, you know? Interesting. I don’t know. Have executive that work today help duvette differently. I don’t know, but for beauty, you know, that’s what I decided to do. But I have not had. I’ve not had any conflicts that I’ve had to revive. And hopefully, you know, we will not get to the place where we have a conflict that we have to resolve. What I invest heavily in my personal relationship to each one of my board members. We try to make sure that we’re investing in the Boulder members knowing each other like you know what I said earlier? We have come together and Mr fifty twice a year, and we do build in the social time when we get to mess and have dinner and, you know, try to make sure that we know what’s going on with each other’s families and those things. So we really are trying, Tio. It’s a model, a culture of community as organization because so much of that, as you know, our forward facing work. So we really are trying to model what it is that we say we believe in. Organizationally. All right? And it’s a testament to your recruitment process, like you just said that. But you haven’t had those conflicts. But I’m going to put you in a hypothetical. Suppose you did suppose. Suppose you had a, um suppose you had a difficulty. Lets one that I think is kind of common like one boardmember on dit may not be the chair. It might be, but it might not be just like overbearing in the meetings. He or she talks successively. Take successive time. Ignores the agenda Times fell in every guard, every day that little gee up to the board here, to have a conversation with her counterpart and to resolve that and really point out to them that OK, there’s a process. And we really want to make sure that we’re being mindful Arrival of rule and everyone has an opportunity to be heard and share. So I would act in that regard. I would ask the board chair to step in and have a conversation with her counterparts. Okay. Starting challenge new words that space that I feel like basis, it. And with that, I don’t think that that will be my responsibility. Um, manage that situation. Okay. So peer-to-peer and sort of Pierre. I mean, there is an authority. The board chair is invested with authority over the board so that it’s not exactly peer-to-peer, but I mean, like, volunteer to volunteer. That’s what I mean. Peer-to-peer. But the board chair does have that authority that everybody recognizes. Okay, you know, and I guess if it’s not, if it’s not resolving. You would have to talk about removal, which has never happened for you. Yeah. Gosh, so hard. But yeah. I mean, if the person I don’t know Well, let’s talk it through. I don’t mind talking through. I mean, what if the person is not coming around like they’re just like, Yeah, I like the person’s not coming around. They have made a decision that they no longer want to be there. So I just feel like I don’t like they would have removed them, sells the best situation, You know? I don’t know. B a no. Okay, Well, hopefully they would, um, hopefully they would, but if it’s not once again that will be. Then I will be for the board and, you know, to have a conversation about that in the board chair to make it, you know, toe accent individual to remove themselves from the border to leave the board. Okay, there again. You would lean on your board chair. Yeah, I would have a lien on my board here. Okay. And you’re like that would happen from I think that you have aboard here if head to govern the board. Okay. So, yeah, I would lead on the boys here for that. I can see that. Because, you know, if if you if you were stepping in, then then you’re sort of, you know, your usurping the authority of the board chair. Exactly. Yeah. I want to use the word you starting. Exactly. That’s exactly right. And usurping the usurping the role of the boards here. And quite frankly, stepping out of order, it’s some regard. So you have to resist. Expect that structure that is put into place, put in place for a reason. Okay. Um, are you a member of the board? Uh, ex officio member. I am that you’re not Okay. I know a lot of lot of CEOs are, but they might not be voting. They typically not voting board members because that’s a conflict. Jean Takada and Jean Takagi. And I’ve talked about that. He’s our legal legal consultant, but a lot of but a lot of CEOs are members. OK? You’re not OK. I’ve seen it both ways. And what would you do? So then? I mean, let’s take it a step further. The person is not stepping down. The board chair has done whatever she can. It’s not. It’s not. It’s not effective. Now you’ve got You’ve got a lot of tension on the board. What are we going to do? What would you do? We’re putting out of spite. CEO Seo is the board. Members of the board chair has acted to step down and they’re still not stepping down. I mean, really, alright are not pay. Okay? Alright. He’s maybe she hasn’t asked her to step down, but the all right, Well, I guess a tension continues to build. Then you were just at the person to resign and Yeah, actually person Terry. Okay. Okay. I got you. I got you. Um, how long? How what do your board terms? How long term. So we have your first term of three years. And then you have an option of doing another three year terms that you could do a total of six years. Okay, On our board have you had very many people take take you up on the second the second term? Everybody. It’s a great organization. Yes. There’s never any conflict on the opportunities to spread our board. That’s right. So they thought was going on utilizing their expertise. Who? You know, I’m not wasting their time. I’m not over the banding. I get to parties in here. I get to parties a year in Jackson. I mean, who would turn all this down way walk away from that after three years? I know. I can’t imagine it. All right, we got a carvery way, Got takeout. Very last break. Think about what you want to talk about because I’m going out. I’m going to turn to you and because I’m kind of out of topics. But that doesn’t mean we’re done so think about what you want to talk about. Text to give can use more money a second way. The second revenue source. Here’s another one mobile e-giving learn about it with texted Gives five part email Many course fiv e mails once a day That’s a ce faras. You are away from raising more money on raising it through mobile giving. It’s There’s not a big hurdle to get started. All the gifts are not necessarily small. Lots of misconceptions overcome in this mini course, which I took to give them any course. You text NPR to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine. And we’ve got lots of time left. Several more minutes left for your CEO, board chair, Relations. I What do you, uh what do you want? Talk about? What do you want to talk about? Teo? No guy and I was just throwing some things. Nothing specific. I was just you know, I was just trying to generate some ideas about CEO board. Um, stories You got any cases? May be a difficult case. Um, good case. Somebody he wasn’t feeling so good or they were feeling a little disappointed. You were able to bring them back up. Anything like that. What do you mean? I wasn’t feeling so good year. We’ll bring them back. Well, like, you know, they they felt like they were. They were They were not so and not his engages they wanted to be. Or they I don’t know. I’m just I’m just kind of throwing things out. I don’t have You don’t get your board members to ask them what the troubles are. I didn’t I didn’t go to your board and say what? What story. Should I ask? I used to tell I didn’t do that, so I don’t have any of that personally. But I was thinking, you know, we’re thinking about CEO for relationship. I was thinking about the truly smile organizations that you know, the three four, the number board just really start up. Some start up thinking about how, in so many instances, especially when you’re what do your their smiles from Thompson’s feeling like your mom and pop were startup or whatever. The whatever the situation may be that at some time it the board relation can suffer because you feel like so much of your work really does have to be with building the organization and actually doing the work and the service and being a community of whatever it is, you know, really living out that mission. And so this morning, the caution folks that you know as the CEO of executive Power, whatever the title, maybe you know the board relation. As I said earlier, it’s really a big part of your individual mission as the leader of the organization, and you should really look at that as a significant piece of how you get to doing the work in the community and that just be so forward, facing something so many times you feel like you have just have to face outward. And you should, you know, really figure out how to do both simultaneously, the outward facing, you know, the leader of the organization. But then also making sure that you’re looking inward and challenging your board members to help, um, be strategic and supporting us necessary as you’re not placing folks shit. Do not be afraid of their board members, amazed at the number of CEOs and talk to who really don’t feel like they can call and have on his conversations with their board members. And so really challenging folks, just really, you know, invest in a time necessary for those relationships and, you know, don’t have individuals on your board that you don’t feel like you can work with. That. A personal. It’s what was professional. Yeah, investing. So how did I guess you’ve heard this from colleagues? You know, Piers, how did they get to that point? How did How did somebody get on their board that they didn’t feel comfortable working with and tapping, you know, because they Because other boardmember recommended him, and they didn’t feel like they could say no because that person has a really great reputation in the community and just not not leaning into their leadership and understanding that you can say, Oh, I don’t think this is a great fit for this organization And, oh, you know, just because they’re doing x Y Z over here doesn’t mean they need to be doing a B C with us. And so it really does go back to, you know, a CEO having their voice and recognizing that I have a say So what the organizational board looks like and that you really do have to a voice that, uh, yeah, on that goes back to the recruitment process. Yeah, and that there’s a lesson there that the community leaders, the prominent people in town, uh, or the air in the state, You know, whatever are not necessarily the best board members for you for your organization, Wade. Yeah, a lot of times else. Individuals out, you know, could be on four or five different boards already on it. They could be doing great work, and it could be, you know, amazing people and that means, and you didn’t even they don’t necessarily put them on the board. You put them on a committee or something, you know, last sametz needed, but yet it doesn’t mean they necessarily have to be on your board. Um, so just, you know, knowing what it is that you need and being being really strategic with the limited seats that you have, because, you know, you have a limited number of seats that you can feel in your board. So, thinking through what makes the most sense for they’ll seek section have Okay, we got just, like, forty five seconds left, So I’m gonna leave it to you, Teo, give parting thoughts, My parting thoughts. That’s a lot of really think it will affect your relationship between the CEO and the board chair. And that relationships should be one of mutual trust and respect and openness. And it is a beautiful being. One done, right? Awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Tony. I appreciate pleasure that our flu she is she is ceo of springboard opportunities. You can follow her at Aisha. Underscored Nyandoro, and you find springboard at springboard to dot or GE next week have ever let you down. I know one time there was the fermentation show. I was young. I was naive. It was a youthful transgression, locker room banter. And to the extent I may have hurt some hyper sensitive people who might have been unreasonably offended, I deeply and sincerely wish I could apologize for the fermentation show. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash Pursuant Capital P by Wagner CPAs. Guiding you Beyond the numbers regular cps dot com. Bye, Tello’s credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream, Tony dahna slash Tony Tello’s and by text to give mobile donations made easy text. NPR to four four four nine nine nine Ah, creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the line producer shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy and this music is by Scots. Dine with me next week for Non-profit radio Big non-profit ideas for the either ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What Wait Thank you. 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Nonprofit Radio for June 23, 2017: Don’t Be The Founder From Hell & Your DR Plan

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Jim Nowak: Don’t Be The Founder From Hell

Jim Nowak heads fundraising for the dZi Foundation, which he founded. How did he and the Foundation manage his transition from executive director to chief fundraiser? He talks candidly about the board, job descriptions, ego and more. (We talked at Opportunity Collaboration 2015 & this originally aired 10/30/15.)

 

 

Dar Veverka: Your DR Plan

Disaster recovery: Ignore it at your own peril. What belongs in your DR plan? Dar Veverka is vice president of technology for LIFT. (This originally aired 5/1/15 and is from the 2015 Nonprofit Technology Conference.)

 

 


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Dahna hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the idler ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of black ophelia if you tried to sugar coat the idea that you missed today’s show, don’t be the founder from hell, jim no ac heads fund-raising for the d c i foundation, which he founded. How did he and the foundation manage his transition from executive director to chief fundraiser? He talks candidly about the board, job descriptions, ego and more. We talked that opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen miss originally aired october thirtieth, twenty fifteen and your d our plan disaster recovery ignore it at your own peril. What belongs in your d our plan dahna geever ca is vice president of technology for lift. This originally aired on may first, twenty fifteen and is from the twenty fifteen non-profit technology conference on tony’s take two the charleston principles we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers we be e spelling dot com here is gym no ac with don’t be the founder from hell. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen were on the beach in x top of mexico. My guest is jim no ac. He is president and co founder of zi foundation. They’re at dc i that’s deltas delta zulu, india from my air force days dot org’s dc i dot org’s and we’re talking about avoiding being the founder from hell. Jim is not that jim. Welcome. Thanks, tony for having me on the show. Appreciate it. It’s a pleasure. I’m glad we got together rubs what? Two days ago, right? I think we’re connected. And, um all right, you’re not the founder from hell, and we are going. We’re gonna take this way only have one side of the story, so i don’t have justin you because one of your board to collaborate to corroborate your your side. But you’re doing a session here. Yeah, i presume you’ve been. You’ve been vetted. Yeah, i’ve done done the session for the six years i’ve been coming. Job pretending collaboration. I keep offering. You know i don’t need to do the session, but it seems as i always say nobody ends up in that session by mistake, you know, people and it’s been interesting people, aaron really tough situations, very emotional, you know, that the social sector is a tough space to be in, and people are very passionate and it can be really charged, but we do our best to try to give people some tools, maybe walk through these these these difficult situations, all right? And in the six years i’ve been doing, you’ve never been challenged by anyone who said, no, that guy is the ceo. That guy he’s the founder from hell, no never had that challenge, but having no, but there, you know, again, i would say i only have one perspective to bring to it there are people that have different perspectives and say that would never work that are absolutely, and i’ve had some of them as guests, but but we’re getting the founders perspective, which i haven’t had before. Yeah, let’s, start with your history with the organization. I’m the cofounder, and now i sit is president we started are working. Paul. Seventeen years ago, it was around an expedition that had been climbing in the fall for a number of years and small expedition to climb. Memoria twenty three thousand four hundred foot what’s. The name of it from maury fremery three miles to the west of everest, on the nepal tibet border. Doing a new route has never been climbed. I was on there and eighty nine now back in ninety eight and in ninety eight found out about small girls home that was financially failing. Raised money in my local community to help bail this girl’s home out. That was the genesis of our work. Where’s. Your community. Where were you living then? I was living the vail, colorado, that and shortly after that moved to where were based now in ridgeway, colorado, southwest corner of colorado. Down by tell you right now. Okay. And how long have you not been the executive director? I was executive director for the first thirteen years. Okay? And then we started into a process of identifying we wanted to shift from there and bring someone in with better financial skills than than myself. But and it was early, early on, it was identified by my board that they want me to say connected to the organization i carried the history carried a lot of the donors carried those relationships on. They want me to become the development director. Okay, i’m going to get to the details of how that all played out. That’s that’s, critical part. But so it was for you, it’s been four years now since you were executive director. Is that right? Correct. Okay. And there is a new executive director. Hired and same person have been in the position for years. Yeah, we feel like we we did a really thorough an extensive search. Get a job and he’s still on the job saying individual okay. Okay, so, he’s uh, he’s executive director. Um correct, mark. Mark. And you won’t get a shot at mark. Yeah. Mark rikers, mark rikers. And you’re the president. Correct. Okay. Let’s, um, let’s start with the board’s role in this what i think is really interesting eyes that it was the board recommendation that you stay it wasn’t you as founder dictating. I want to stay with this organization. The impetus for having you remain came from the board. And also the impetus toe hyre an executive director came from the board, so it was to phase it was like we need to. And as my board affectionately refers to jim, if you get hit by a bus, this organization could potentially go down in flames. So the impetus came from some very skilled and wise board members that had experience in the nonprofit world. Had experiences change management leaders. We’re just very savvy and saying let’s, make our organization more sustainable and increase our bench bench strength. There had to be a lot of trust, a cross, you and the board, i mean, you had to believe that the board actually wanted you two remain and in the capacity that you ultimately became president and which is chief fundraiser for right, you have put a lot of faith in you’re in your board members telling you that believing what they were telling you. Yeah, and this is a really an emotional space for founder’s teo walk into because you could certainly believed that you were in a situation where you were being replaced, you and i that certainly took ah, was it took a while for me? Because that was my first reaction. I don’t think it was an unusual one. Hyre this changing roles and organizations is really tough work, i think it’s exceptionally tough if you’re the founder, if you were the very first person working on your own, you know, from monstrous hours and generating the organization, but pardon parcel of that is that i always had the belief that eventually, you know, in organizations everyone leaves eventually, and i always had in the back of my mind that the most important thing was that this organization lived on beyond me. And this was certainly a major stepping stone to that. What about the, uh, the composition of the board you mentioned? You had some change management people on your board talk about the importance of having the right skill set on your board. Help this transition? Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s, kind of like who’s. Do you have the right people on the bus? You know, and early on in our evolution, you know, i was way had a lot of people that knew a lot about paul, and that was great. But they were all foreigners, you know? And they had great skill, great passion and that but the evolution has been to bring in people with sound non-profit experience people who were changed management leaders that basically had their own consulting firms that actually helped corporal eaters and non-profit lee just walk through these really challenging transitions in the evolution of the nor is a t had that expertise. Oh, yeah, we have that three people that change management expertise. Yeah, that was that was really hughes. And then more than anything, maybe was that i had specifically two individuals that i trust implicitly, that they actually have my back. And that that boardmember board members that this was, you know, they had long non-profit experience, but that this was the way the organization could go and that i was not being, you know, put out to pasture and that that that this would be a very fascinating time for me to be able to find out what i really wanted to do instead of having to do everything you also had to trust that the board has the best interests of z in mind that and that their vision is at least, you know, parallel to yours. I mean, it may not be identical, but they yeah, they’ve got z in their in their hearts and and that that really, you know, one of the two individuals i trusted implicitly had been there at the first board meeting in my kitchen table, you know? And now we’re actually we have our board meetings at his board table on the fourteenth floor in denver office, you know? So i mean, that’s been a long evolution, but that had been fourteen years of that relationship, so yeah, i really knew that they had my had my back, a lot of trust ways, but not without a lot of emotion. And a lot of baggage, i’m sure is a tough, you know, you know, talk about the emotional, you know, you just just feel, is this the where am i actually going? What was actually going to happen to the organization, you know, what’s gonna happen to me because i really impassioned about this work and want to stay in this space, you know? So yeah, a lot, a lot of challenges and a lot of ups and downs, and i would say that that period tow walk through that and feel confident it took a couple months and they really took a couple months, and we laid out a very deliberate plan on the evolution of this after about a month into it. So i was starting to get on board a month of emotion. Yeah, the emotion continued, but then it started become irrational process. Yeah, because it started to develop and expand into what could be and i didn’t see that initially. Oi! All i saw was what what? What i thought was being replaced. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Initially that’s it. Yeah, yeah. All right. But you obviously overcame that. Yeah. Oh, and to add to that in this process and, you know, one thing that was really fascinating is that our entire board bought into the concept that as we moved into a new executive director, that the executive committee and myself would be the five people that would decide, and it would be unanimous on who we decide if we didn’t find them knives like your daddy way did not find that person, we would scrap it for six months and then come back okay, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way dahna we’re going to get to the search. I spent more time on the board. You mentioned you had a lot of longevity on the board. Not not just the one. The one guy who started your kitchen table and now you’re in his fifteenth floor. Yeah, but you you yeah, you had other board members with long longevity. They understand the organization. They they have the best interests of z in their hearts to jury. I mean in our by-laws boardmember sze sit for three years, they have to be voted back on for another three years. They could walk away from the organization or immediately go to an advisory board that gets all the information doesn’t vote. After a year, they could be voted back on the board, but wave have everything we’ve had people that stayed a long time. We’ve had people that cycled and cycled out. I think that’s a really healthy for the cycle more than anything. New ideas, new energy, new vision. You know, new new things. Yeah. Onda connection disease work. Yeah, and and that that solid underpinning has always been that people have been there to anchorage, not just myself. Let’s, talk about the the search, the search process. You said it was the executive committee of the board for people and you. And did it have to be? You had to be unanimous. Vote on who the successor would be. Okay. He obviously had a lot of you have to be a lot of trust in that process. Yeah, from the rest of the board members. So well. And you too, you know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All five of you had to. Well, actually, the whole board had trust the process. Yeah, they had delegated the vote to the executive committee and you, but the whole board had trust this process. Yeah, they really did. And so there were some mechanisms that engaged staff engaged other board members, whether it was an opportunity for the three final candidates to be in our office and ridgeway and for people to come there and meet them and to sit in on a conference call with all the board members anyone that wanted to patch in, we actually had the three final candidates work with our financial officer for an hour and at ask questions around that they were in a closed room also with our the paul country director who was in country at that time. So they they all spent time with them. So it was really a deal where everyone had input. But there were five the executive committee and myself that were decided. Maybe a little detail. But i’m interested. What was the mechanism for staff to give feedback to the five people who are going to do the vote? It was basically threw the board chair. So they say the staff whether it was the financial officer in the whole country. Director they gave that him. Put directly back to the board chair on the board chair. Disseminated that to this election. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Um, was there a outside search consultant? No. No, we all did. With is completely just posted it publicly. Well, we posted it in all sorts of spaces, you know, on you threw the peace corps on on. Were located in a remote area in western colorado. So speak on the western slope. So we had lots of people in the denver area. Certainly. Um what we ended up through our network’s way ended up with sixty for paper applications. Now on dh. So that was what we started to wed our way through and pretty short. Or there were a third that it was really crystal clear they were, yeah, yeah, way too much of a stretch, and people asking to remove work remotely in new york for this job. So am i, and that was deal that we want people in the office, you know, you know, face-to-face on dh, so that was a real process, and and once we cold that list, then all of the board members were assigned. The executive committee search committee were assigned a certain amount of people to deal with, to make phone calls, too. There was a list of questions to be asked, and then that information was brought back to the search committee, and we started to, just with a little bit, whittle it down. Job the job descriptions, you’ve identified that as being critical, setting boundaries abound. What? What? You’re what you’re gonna be doing as president and not doing with the exec director is going to be doing let’s. Let’s flush that out job description. Yeah, that was that was really critical, you know, so to speak. What? You know, what was mark’s role? What was my role in what was our rule? You know, and how are we gonna work? Basically in the same office. And how is that going to make this kind of lateral move to be in charge of of all development, really focusing and digging into that, which is something i certainly had done, but i was doing a lot of different things, too. So that was just really critical and also having our executive committee really get into the weeds on that. And then, you know, it’s all about really owning that once it won once things transition about assuring mark who became executive director, but during the process, maybe at the point where he was offered the job or at some point he had to be reassured that this was not going to be a founder. Syndrome situation that he was stepping into. Yeah, what was that like? How did you well, we did that with all of our three final buy-in indefinite detail. And that was something that we put forth. This is how this out was, is how it’s changing. Okay? And, um, you know, i mean, this is probably a good time and, uh, it’s about somebody’s ego and, you know, what’s the what’s, the main driver, is it about you is about control, is it about not allowing the organization to grow past you and evolved past you? Or you’re going to keep a stranglehold on it on dh make things miserable for not only marked, but everybody else in the organization, so i want to double it more detail on how those three candidates got god assured that this was not going to be a disaster situation they’d be walking into mean, it had to be more than just the written job descriptions. Yeah. You know, i think one of the things that was really interesting is we weren’t, you know, quite often in this the executive director search or changes organization. What happens is it’s because the, you know, the staff’s upset programs are not being delivered properly, and financially, you’re you’re in dire straits. I mean, it was a kind of that’s, a standard, why you’re changing. We actually came from a really strong position, and we felt it was inappropriate time to make the shift financially. We were in good shape. Um, staff was quite happy with what they were doing, and programs were certainly evolving at that time. So, you know, nothing was perfect, but we certainly were not in the crisis mode. That’s quite often, what happened, so we were on the front end of this, but we were again realizing the vulnerability of of me is found, yeah. And they also had to be assured that you personally wood abide by the job description. Yeah, on everything that’s being said. I mean, you know, this is all in writing, and it all sounds good, but, you know, i was the new executive director could walk in and, you know, this guy jim is just blowing everything out of the water that we talked about, and now i’m in a bad spot. Yeah, yeah, yeah latto latto i had to trust you. Yeah, and that it’s a pretty standard situation. Yeah, you know, it’s pretty standard that it be negative. Yeah, is that demanded? And quite often, i do hear that people cycle through that know that first executive director didn’t work out. Now we’re into our second one, you know, we were fortunate and maybe i don’t know why, but i guess mark and the two other candidates believe me, you know, i mean, i really think it comes down to you know that and reassurance from the executive committee, no more trust, yeah was allowed to rest there’s a lot of stress. Yeah, we’re taking a big step here. Like i said, the paper documents are fine. But in the end, they could be end up being meaningless. It comes down to a human connection and right and trust. Yeah. Yeah, ego. You mentioned it before. So let’s, explore that it’s mostly your ego that you had keep in check for the for the good of z. Yeah, i think so. I mean, i’m no, no expert trust me, but i guess at the core of this is i’ve always held a belief of doing your best to hyre smart people than yourself on that doesn’t intimidate me. It makes us a stronger organization. So that’s a core belief of mine. Mine. Um, i why would i not try to bring the best and the brightest board members to the board, the best and brightest staff to the board? Um, that’s. Just a core belief of mind that that’s what’s going to make a sustainable organization, you know, that’s where the oil starts for me. All right, you know, and, um, hyre, you know, again, that core belief that my biggest responsibilities, this organization, lives on beyond me. Yeah. It’s bigger than you. It is much bigger than me. And then you, you know, from one person operation tow for people in colorado in twenty five in the fall. And, you know, fourteen girls is where we started serving over. Thirty thousand people now it’s way beyond me. I play an inter call roll i have in trickle power because i am the founder, but i’m on ly a piece of the puzzle and that’s that’s a healthy place for nor ization obviously there was a transition period where you had a share, a lot of corporate knowledge, with mark as the new executive director. Absolutely. You know, one of the things that was interesting way we’re in an office situation where we had two basic office rooms, and initially mark and i were going to work in the same room, and i just was, like, that’s not gonna work. We took the office next door. We’re connected by a door, but we can be close and have our own private space that i didn’t want him to feel that i was looking over his shoulder. Yeah, ever, you know, but there was institutional knowledge, you know, of our organization and what we done and our relationships and our funding and our partners and how we did things and where we worked and all that stuff that had to be transferred over and that takes time. That’s just a constant process of answering those questions mark was incredibly quick study, but i mean, i can’t imagine i’m thinking back out for years now, but, you know, he was really getting it after four months, six months a year, you know, it takes time and it’s, you know, and transferring those relationships, introducing him to those relationships is key and again, taking that letter will move away from that, you know, so that’s, what an and in a way, we also identified that it was an opportunity for me to become maur engaged in the board on dh i now sit on the board, i had never sat on the board. First of all, no, there was not in exhibition zoho ous founder, no, no one i was fonder, i said as the executive director, but i did not sit on the board and you don’t have a vote now. I didn’t have a vote that i don’t have a way out or not right now you’re on the board, but you don’t have a vote, correct. So i’m basically straddled the board on the kind of clutch between the staff from the boy. Why that decision to not have a vote i already have enough power is what the board felt, and i think that that’s the accurate, that definitely was another risk situation for me where i was like, wow, i’m losing control. Yeah, but founders have immense historical knowledge, respond relationships, they have immense power with organizations. And although that did feel uncomfortable, it was the right decision, you know, and quite a lot, itjust wass, you know, a lot of this feels like it has to be the right people. I mean, here you’re you’re you’re saying, you know, you struggled with not getting a vote being on the board, but not having a vote, but in order for this to work and for the board to be comfortable, you had teo swallow that you had to accept that and, you know, another person might not have been able to yeah, a lot of this, yeah, trust and and the personalities that people have to be right now, if it’s not the right people, then you’re not gonna have the trust and and we’re gonna end up with what i’ve had guests on the show say that which is when the founder leaves the leadership role here. She has got a several ties. Yeah, that’s really the default, right? But it sounds like if you arrive the right personalities, you don’t have to you don’t. Except the default. Well, i think there’s a couple things that play into that one is most times when people are shifting executive directors, it is a crisis situation, and maybe the management wasn’t very strong for so that’s that’s a pretty standard situation. I mean, for us, we were coming from ah, solid footing and the thing that was the constant phrase that we we used in our search was we need to find somebody with correct emotional intelligence to come in and not gutsy, but to build on pond what we’ve already created. And so that was it was really the baseline kind of tag line that way worked off the position as president created opportunities for you that you didn’t have as dahna in the leadership relies founder yeah, let’s talk a little about that because i think it was important for you to recognize that there was opportunity for you and the board was making that clear in the new president role. Yeah, and there i think the opportunity around it was too deep in my relationship with board members. And as i say, be that clutch between what’s happening in our work on the paul what’s happening with staff and that but a zai moved into the development roll exclusively. Really? What happened is at a time. I mean, i had time to follow some more creative, creative things i mentioned there was a knopper to nitti where we were invited from a little town that’s less than a thousand people in ridgeway, colorado, to create enter an event in italy and in france, where there’s a charity cycling about where it’s it’s basically a fancy camp for cyclists that i mean, they have massages and right insane amounts. That was three days of riding with over twenty five thousand feet of climbing racing. And so basically, we were able to bring in individuals who had financial capacity to commit to raising a significant amount of money for the foundation. Through this, this leverage point through their friends, and you would not have been able to pursue this no way and found a rolling no on and much band with way too much band with and then what happened out there that is we actually then deepened our relationships in london in the uk and we were a register as a charity in the uk. So now there’s the zi foundation uk and we have a board of trustees over there and they basically carried the work of the zi foundation in the uk raise funds for the paul that money flows through the u s and then in the fall so that basically become a whole new revenue stream that we never had nor would they have had anywhere near the bandwidth to take something like that on so it’s all those opportunities you know and looking around the corner what’s next and being very creative about it and that’s been very, very rewarding for me simple question in in the wrap up why the title president instead of director of development or institutional advancement? I think the board really wanted to honor my legacy with the organization, you know? And instead of just director of della development, they just wanted to honor my title is cofounder present your morning thank you for sharing means really some personal stuff talking about trust and ego and you know, being the right personality, so i want to thank you very much for for sharing. Yeah, thanks. I’m happy to share with anybody. It’s it’s, i think one of the things that happens is in these non-profits u u you changed from being student sometimes teacher, and i’ve been able to share this with a lot of people. It’s tough work at that level and i’m happy to share with anyone. So thank you for having me on pleasure you’ll find him at xero foundation dot org’s, it’s dc i foundation dot org’s tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage at the opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen on the beach i know you hear the waves breaking in its top of mexico. Thanks so much for being with us. Your d our plan with dar viv arika coming up first. Pursuant they’re content paper. They want you to know about its breakthrough fund-raising like all their content it’s free and this one is going to train you on break through thinking where you will learn how to solve the challenges facing your office, how to set a breakthrough outcome and what that means and how to create a culture of breakthrough thinking. In your office breakthrough, you can do it. There’s good ideas in here. The paper is breakthrough fund-raising and you get it at pursuing dot com click resource is and then click content papers. We’ll be spelling spelling bees that raise money. It’s a fun night out at a local place and it’s not your seventh grade spelling bee. You need to raise more money. I know you do. You can do it. We be e spelling dot com. We’ll help you. We’ll be spelling now. Time for tony’s take two the charleston principles this is something that relates to charity registration, which talked about love three weeks ago or so roughly three, four weeks ago was the video on that charity registration morass. Now i’ve got one on the charleston principles. They were created in charleston, south carolina, and they have very good suggestions for states it za recommended body of laws for states to adopt around charity registration to try to standardize things. Trouble is ah, lots of states haven’t adopted them. It’s not too clear where they’re adopted. Eso it’s not really all that standardized, but they’re good ideas and they are in some states the charleston principles. Check out the video at tony martignetti dot com it will help you with charity registration. And as always, i can if can you help with that, too? That is tony’s take two here’s darby barca with your disaster recovery plan welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc twenty fifteen the non-profit technology conference were in day two. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center and my guest is dar vivir ca she’s vice president of technology for lift a lefty, and her workshop topic is avoiding disaster. A practical guide for backup systems and disaster recovery planning you’re welcome. Thank you very much. Good to be here. It’s! A pleasure to have you ah, this day two we’re highlighting one swag item at and ntc her for interview. And, uh, i have a double chip biscotti from a sputnik moment. The hashtag is hashtag is sputnik smiles and i’m told that the glasses go with the biscotti so this is essential. This is this interview’s swag moment. Thank you very much. Sputnik smiles and it goes into the goes into the swag collection. There it is. Okay, door. Um we need to know some. Ah little basic turn. Well, you know what, before we even get into why is disaster recovery and the related and included back-up so i don’t know if it’s just for gotten ignored, not done. Well, what inspired the session is a organization i used to work for. We were required by auditors to do a disaster recovery plans. So when it came time for the annual audit, i got out the current disaster recovery plan. It went all right, i’m going to go ahead and update this, and when i discovered, when i read the plan was there were servers that were eight years gone for last eight years server and reading the planet was very clear that what the previous person had done was simply change the date and update the plan for auditors. And as i thought about it and talk to other people, i found that that actually happens a lot people. It’s, d r is sort of that thing they don’t have time for because no one ever thinks it’ll happen to them, so you push it off, you push it off, and you either just download the template, you know, a template off the internet. And you slap a date on it and basically fill it out just for the auditors. But a lot of organizations never actually think through their disaster recovery, they don’t get into the details, they don’t worry about it, and then when a disaster actually happens to them, they’re sort of stuck. You don’t have a plan that i don’t have a functioning christian, and they’ve never tried it out. So that was what inspired the session, and as we dug into it, we we tried to give the thirty thousand foot view because disaster it cover, you know, there’s an entire industry, the deals with technology, disaster recovery. You can spend days on this topic, and obviously we didn’t have days we had a ninety minute session, so we tried to give the thirty thousand foot view of the practical items you need to pay attention to if you’re not confident in your organisation’s d our plan, if you i don’t have a d our plan or if you do and you really don’t, you know, you think it really needs an overhaul that sort of the top ten of items of what you should really be looking at. When you’re dealing with disaster recovering backups and we tried to give some several practical examples myself and the other speaker and andrew, who could not make it this morning of disasters we’ve had to deal with as well as other well known ones. Yeah, okay, do we need some basic language? Wait, get into the d r disaster recovery topic short jr is one of them disaster recovers, often referred to his d r it’s often spoken about in terms of business continuity or bc, which is sort of the larger plan for the entire organisation. Should’ve disaster strike there’s you know, there’s very d are specific things such as our poet recovery point objective that we could talk about your rto, which is recovery time objective there’s very specific language like that for disasters. It’s usually just referred to d ours. So whenever we say d arts disaster recovery okay, we’ll see if we get into those eyes and i could explain this week. Okay, um, all right, so clearly we should have a disaster recovery written just recovery plan. Even if we’re an organization that small enough that doesn’t have an annual audit, we still should have. Something in place? Yes. Okay. What belongs in our day? Our plan top ten things. You need a contact list for your team. So if you have a top ten of the d r i do of what should your plan d our plan? You know, it could be anything from a five page outline that just covers the basics. And in in our sessions slides, which i’ve posted in the ntc library gives it some good resource is for doing a d our plan or it could be a, you know, a huge hundred page document. It covers absolutely every aspect of business continuity or something in between. It’s going very by organization. And the reality is, if you’re a small organisation with a small team, you might only be able to do the five page outline. But that’s better than nothing. That’s better than no d our plan or a d r plan that realistically hasn’t been updated in the last ten years. But i would say, you know, the top ten you really should have in your day. Our plan is number one. A contact list for your team members. You know what is the contact for? Your team, folks, your business continuity folks, if you normally would get that out of your email and you’re in a disastrous situation, you know you can’t get to your email or, you know, like we’re ever going through. And i want listeners to know that she’s doing this without notes, i it seems very confident that she’s got the and hopefully i remember altum in-kind get seven out of seven or eight of ten will be ecstatic, but so continue. Oh, but i want to say, yeah, as we’re going through, consider two organizations that may not have someone devoted to it correctly. This is our listeners are small and midsize non-profits right? They very, very well just all be outsourced, or it falls on the executive director’s desk. Excellent point. Would you cover that in the session? So t finish at the top ten contactless three team members contact list for your vendors, a call tree and some sort of communications. How do you tell your organization in your members that you’ve had a disaster? Either your servers have gone down your parts of burst and your communications air underwater. How do you do that? What is your? Network look like so. Network diagram process. Outline how you’re actually going to do your disaster recovery. A timeline? How long do you expect these activities to take before you, khun b live again? A list of systems and applications that you’re going to recover. If you’re a large enough or gore, you can afford a hot site was called a hot or warm site where you can immediately switch over two other equipment. You know, information about that. You’d need that to start your recovery. And then also information about your backups. You know, who’s got your back ups? What system are you using? How do you, you know? Get those back. So those air sort of like the top ten things or d our plan should have alright, let’s dive into the the process. Okay? A bit is that intrigues me, bond. Hopefully listeners? I think so. I think i have a fare beat on what’s. Interesting. I hope i do. Um, yeah. What? How do we start to think about what our dear process should be? But first, i have to think about what all could be a disaster for your organization. A lot of people think. About things you know, earthquakes, hurricane, sandy, hurricane katrina, but it could also be water pipes bursting in your building. That is one of the most common thing if your server is not properly protected. Which a lot of a lot of stuck in closets ah, dripping pipe water. We call those water events and that seems to be the most common thing departments encounter is leaking pipes in the building or some sort of a flooding situation, but it could also be an elektronik disaster. Such, i’ve worked at an organization that underwent what’s called a ddos attack, which is a distributed denial of service. It took out our entire web presence because malicious hacker hacker went after that’s where there’s millions of right network and they just flood your network seconds you’re overloaded and yeah, and that’s a disaster situation. So one why would they attack like that? Why wasn’t non-profit attack malicious? The cp dot organ are attacked out with avon marchenese travon martin decision. Folks attacked our our petition site way. We were able to get it back online, but for a couple of hours yeah, we were off line and that could be considered a disaster situation for sure. Yeah? How do you help us think through what potential disasters are not even identify them all i think about what could affect your or what you wear, you vulnerable? Some of the things we talked about in the session where? Think about how would you get back online if the’s, various things happened to you are your are your services sort of in the cloud? Do you have servers on site and start there when thinking about your process is what would you have to recover if these various scenarios affected you or with these various scenarios? Scenarios affect you. If your website is completely outsourced to a vendor that has de dos protection. Okay, that’s not a scenario you have to worry about so kind of analyze it and every organs going to be different. You know, if you live on the west coast, you’re probably concerned more about earthquakes than other regions. So it’s it’s going to vary for each organization, what sort of disaster you’re going to be worried about? And then you start getting down into the practical nuts and bolts in terms of who are your disaster recovery people, who’s. Your team, if you’re really small lorry, that might just be you or as you mentioned before, if you’re using outsourced, manage service provider and your vendors responsible for that, make sure your vendor has a d our plan for you? Ah lot of folks just assume your vendors taking care of that, but when it comes right down to it, do they actually have d our experience? Can they recover your items? Actually sit down and have that conversation? Because so many of the small org’s, as you pointed out, do use outsourced thes days? There’s yeah, there’s a lot of manage service providers that specialize in non-profit, but you need to have that conversation. Don’t wait till you’re under a disaster scenario to discover that groups they don’t actually have that experience have that conversation ahead of time. What else belongs in our process? Outlined in your process that outline? If you’ve got a another site, either a cold, a warmer, hot site or if your stuff is based in the cloud, where would you recover to? The hot side is some place you go to drink cold water or hot? Sure, a cold site would be where? You’ve got another location let’s say you have a dozen servers at your location and in the case of your building, being inaccessible or underwater, a cold site would be where you’ve got another location you could go to, but you don’t really have any equipment stage there, but it is another location you can begin operations out if that’s a cold sight there’s nothing ready to go, but you’ve got a sight a warm site would be where you sort of have a skeletal equipment there it’s far less capacity than you’re currently at, but you’ve got something there it’s not live, but you’ve got stuff ready to go that you can restore to and get going. And a hot site is where you can flip over immediately. Your live replicating to somewhere else, it’s ready to go? It might not be full capacity, so it might not have, you know, full blown data line size that you’re used to might not have your full range of service, but it is live and you could switch over near instantaneously. That’s a hot site, ok, eso you’d want that in your process and you’re going to want to think about what are you restoring and that’s, where we get into the backups? What comes first and that’s, where you start getting into terms such as recovery point objective and recovery time objective those air to very common d our terms recovery time is how far back are you recovering too? And what does that mean for each system? So if it’s your donorsearch system that’s probably fairly critical, you want a recent restore of that? If it’s a system that doesn’t change very much, maybe a week ago restores okay for that sorry that’s recovery point objective recovery time objective is how long does it take you to get back online after a disaster? You know, ifyou’ve got to download your data from an external source. Has anyone thought about how long that’s going to take you to get the data back? Is it going to take you fifteen hours or three days? So it’s in a lot of folks don’t think about that ahead of time, they just go oh, you know, we’ll we’ll pull it back down if we have a disaster, but they don’t think about instead of their nice normal data communications, they’re going to be on a tiny d s l line trying to pull down one hundred fifty gigs of information and it’s going to take a week to get it back down. I have to say you’re very good about explaining terms and thank you, proper radio. We have jargon jail? Yes, we try not to neo-sage transcend you haven’t transgressed cause your immediate about explaining exactly what recovery point river and recovery time objectives are. It could be very confusing. You know, if you don’t understand the terms in tech, you can be confusing what folks are talking about, and that was one of the the focus is of our station session is making it less confusing and being very practical, practical about what you can or cannot do, and if folks go and look at our slides, they’ll see on several of the items we did a good better best, and we tried to talk about that all throughout the session because we realized again for a small ork or, you know, even a large order that just doesn’t have the resources to devote to it. You might not be able to do best practice, but you could at least try. A good practice that would be better than nothing. And then so we do a good, better best for each. Each type of thing, like what does a good d our plan look like versus the best day our plan, and at least try and get to that. Good, because at least you’ll have something. And it could be a continuum where you try and improve it along the way. But you’ve got to start somewhere it’s. Better than just ignoring it, which is what happens at a lot of places. 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 worked 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 guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Duitz i’m chuck longfield of blackbaud. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Do we need thio prioritize what’s mission critical and yes, we can work with out for a time. Yes, how do we determine that? Definitely we talk about that in terms of its not just a knight each decision either because we may think that the emails the most critical thing out there, but development may see the donor system as the most critical out there program might think that the case management system is the most critical out there, so you finance wants their account, they want their accounting system up. Obviously you’ve got to have an order in which you bring these things up. You’re probably not gonna have enough staff for bandwith or, you know, equipment to bring everything back online, so there needs to be and hopefully your executive team would be involved in deciding for the organization what is most critical in what order are you going to bring those things up? And that needs to be part of your d r plan? Because otherwise, if you’re in a disaster scenario, you’re not going to know where to start and there’s going to be a lot of disagreement of who starts where so you guys need to decide on the order, okay, we solve a few minutes left, but what more can we say about d r and related? Back-up that’s not going to wait till i’m back up because i think we could do a little bit in terms of d r i n st key points on backups are check them because a lot of time, yes, monthly or quarterly, at least is anyone looking at your back-up back-up work-life one of the scenarios that we talked about that actually happened to my co speaker, andrew, was that their server room flooded and it hit their razor’s edge server, which is their entire c, m, s, c r, e, m and donorsearch system, and they thought it was backing up, but no one had actually check the backups in the last two months, and it was on, and it was not s o in terms of back-up just typical, you know, pay attention to the maintenance. What do you backing up? Has anyone checked it? And again, if you’re using a manage service provider, make sure if they’re responsible for for looking at your backups of managing them, make sure they’re doing that. You know, double check and make sure that they understand that your backups are critical and they can’t just ignore the alerts about your backups. You know, you don’t want to be in the unpleasant situation of three of our servers just got flooded. We need the data and discover nobody was backing it up. It ain’t exactly okay, all right, anything else, you wanna leave people about back-up before we go to the broader diar? No, i think that’s good for those were the highlights for it. All right, so back to the disaster recovery. What more can we say about that? There are going to be a lot of watches if you’re in a large d our situation. And so one of things we stress is one getting down into the details of your d. Our plan. Before disaster hits. You see, if you’ve never thought about how you’re actually going to do the restores air, actually, how you’re going to be rebuild those servers. You need two ahead of time. A lot of folks never practiced have a fire drill. I hate fire drill, but and you don’t have a live fire drills in this case, it might be a live fire drill. You don’t want to have that, so you should make some effort to practice, even if it’s just something small, you know, trying to restore one server. I mentioned in this session that i was put in a situation years ago at johns hopkins university, where we were required to have verification of live tr practice, so i was put in a room that had a table, a telephone, a server, and we were carrying two laptops and we couldn’t come out of the room, and so we had completely restored our domain. We had a set of backups on the thumb drive and added the second laptop to that domain improve that we had restored the domain, and an independent person that was not connected to our department was monitoring to make sure we had done it, and we had to prove it, and that was an eye opening experience is as experienced as i was doing that i’d never done it live, and it took me three tries to do it so that’s, right? Encourage folks to really try and practice this stuff ahead of time and get down into the you know, the weeds on their on their d our plan and, uh and also to think about it, you weren’t fired because wayne johnson no, no, no, i actually like too much, john soft. No, we we did complete it within the time frame, but we were a little startled when we discovered that we thought we knew how to do it first time out, and we kept making little mistakes. There were two of us and they’re doing it, and we were surprised ourselves that we thought, oh, of course we know this. This is not a problem, but no, we were making little mistakes because we didn’t have the documentation down. A specific is it needed to be. And so that was a very eye opening experience. There’s a couple of their d r gotchas we talked about, which is crossed. People don’t think about the cost ahead of time. How much is going to cost to get you that data back in the instance of my co presenter who had the damaged drives, they weren’t expecting a near ten thousand dollars cost to recover those drives, but that’s what happened when they didn’t have the backups? They had to take those hard drives to a data recovery place, and the price tag was nearly ten thousand dollars. Dealing with insurance is another big one that people don’t think about having to account for all of the equipment that was lost, and dealing with that insurance morass often gets dumped on the auntie department in a small organization. There’s not, you know, a legal department that’s going to deal with that it’s going to be you so to, you know, kind of talk to your insurance provider ahead of time and see what all you have to deal with in a disaster situation. So you don’t get an unpleasant surprise if you’re ever in one a cz well on the insurance topic, just are you covered? Exactly what you think is your equipment covered? And what do you have to do with that? In terms of accounting for it? If you suffer a disaster, you know the gooch is we get so a couple of minutes, if if oh for days. About consciously trying to think about somebody we don’t hold back on non-profit video uh, i think some of the other ones that we covered in their thick wit mint again to the cost, how much is it going to cost you? Two gets new equipment and did you account for that when you were doing your d our plan and a time to recover? A lot of folks don’t understand how long it may take them to do a recovery and also deciding what is important and what is not important, not just in terms of what should be restored in what order, but in terms of practical things, do you really need to restore your domain? Er, or could you just start over from scratch if your domain only contains maybe fifty accounts and doesn’t have any associated servers faster for you to just start over and just recreate the domain immediately? Especially if a lot of your emails in office three, sixty five or google maps, you could reconnect it very quickly. So, you know, thinking about more practical gotsch is like that with that, you should think about have time, you know, obviously it’s that’s the best practice to think of all these details, and we realised folks may not be able to, so we provided someone sheets and some samples of them of just quick, yes or no questions and thinking this through and things to think about and where will we that is not notice provoc radio has a professional sound i don’t know about ntcdinosaur ten, but that was a way over there. They’re on their own. They can come to us for expertise if they if they need to, but, um, see, now i messed myself up because i ask you about something, but we were just talking about how much, how long will actually take you to recover things and whether or not you should practically skipped recovering something because it might be faster to rebuild it. Okay, i have a follow up to that my smart ass humor, maybe lose it. All right, so why did you leave us with one take away d, r or back-up the session was a little bit misnamed because technically, you’re not going to avoid a disaster. You really can’t. In many cases, you’re not gonna avoid the flood you’re not going to avoid. The earthquake if you’re in that region, so you need to plan on how to deal with it. So it’s more like avoiding avoiding your d are becoming the disaster because you’re not going to avoid the disaster itself, so you might as well plan for it. Outstanding. Thank you very much. Door. Thank you much. Darby america, vice president of technology for lift. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference two thousand fifteen. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Next week it will not be fermentation. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. And by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com a creative producers. Claire miree off. Sam liebowitz is the line producer, but he mcardle is our am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by susan chavez. And this music is by scott stein be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the odd learned ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful posts here’s aria finger, ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were. And, uh and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.