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Nonprofit Radio for November 16, 2018: Asking Styles

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My Guest:

Brian Saber: Asking Styles
In fundraising solicitations, one size does not fit all. There are different styles and personalities. Brian Saber sorts them out to make you a comfortable, confident and effective fundraiser, based on what you bring to the process. He’s the author of the book, “Asking Styles.”

 

 

 

 

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, feels so good to be back in the studio after six seven weeks away and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure buba analgesia if you paint me with the idea that you missed today’s show asking styles in fund-raising solicitations, one size does not fit all. There were different styles and personalities. Brian sabers sorts them out to make you a comfortable, confident and effective fundraiser based on what you bring to the process. He’s the author of the book asking styles i’m tony. Take to my farewell. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant by wagner. Sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers. Regular cps dot com by tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tell us on by text to give mobile donations made easy text. Npr to four four four nine nine nine what a pleasure to welcome brian sabre to the studio he has personally solicited thousands of donors as a director of development executive director and consultant over thirty years. Working with non-profits, he needs training programs and speaks nationally about asking styles to help people understand and embrace their unique strengths. As fundraisers. You’ll find him at asking matters dot com and he’s at brian saber. He’s a kindred spirit. We’re going to find out what that’s all about. His book is asking styles revolutionize your fund-raising. And i’m so glad to welcome him. Brian. Welcome to the show. Well, thank you, tony, for having onto the studio my pleasure. A little closer to the mike, the internet. Intimate with that thing. Okay. All right. Now, back in two thousand eleven, almost almost to the day was the november of two thousand eleven. Seven years ago, i had andrea kill stayed on. We talked about asking stiles. Um what? What? What’s happened? What’s evolved since then? Seven. In these seven years. Seven years? A lot. When andrea was on in twenty eleven, we had been quote live for about a year and meaning the asking matters site had been up and we had been promoting the asking styles. And so now we’ve had another seven years to delve into all of this material and what the first thing that changed probably about twenty thirteen, i think, is we change the results a little bit. So you might recall from twenty eleven tony that there were something like thirteen results, you could be one style. You could be two styles. You could be three adjacent styles, or you could be all four. And one of the things we found was that it wasn’t giving the staff and volunteers enough direction in terms of what to do, we found that too scattered, too scattered to say you’re all four or guo your these three didn’t give people a framework or a roadmap forward. And so we we actually tinkered with the assessment, and we narrowed it down to eight results. So everyone has a primary style and a secondary style. Okay, so the primary style is really what you lied from in the secondary gives you a sense of which of these two characteristics on the asking style graph is your dominant characteristic, whether it’s your introversion or extra version or your analytic or your intuitive side. And so having that as a guide gives people more to go on, right? So they’re still not locked into a narrow. Did you narrow your focus is that you focus it without saying you’re in this box or you’re in that box. We wanted people to have a little leeway there, because sometimes when you tell people this is exactly what you are, they say, no, that’s not what i am. And we didn’t want that right now. Andrea is no longer with asking styles and asking matters. Well, yes and no. We are no longer partners. I bought her out in twenty thirteen, but she is now. You bought her out. This was not a force. Was this jeff sessions? A kind of buyout? Are you trump out of session? In fact, andrea, i’m your request. I give my resignation and by and let you buy me out cause i get her on the phone. Yeah, i get it. I’ll get to that available. Did she say she’d be waiting by the phone today? Now she’s actually booked, but but all i did inquire are i know no, it’s graphic. She killing to me and said, i know what i think you should take it over. Andrea is one of the foremost creators of incredibly creative, sorry to use that twice ideas and products. She has brought so much terror field and she loves developing new stuff and constantly is doing so. She has endless undertaken to do it. But she said, you know what brian and andrea not go get? She’s a go getter, right? Talk about all the things we’re gonna talk about. All these right? Kindred spirit. Go get it and show you she’s gone. She’s gone and she is no getting rid of years older than me not to say anything to you what a chunk of your mother she is. And she said, you know what, brian? You can run with this for a long time. I’m not going to want to run this business for a long time. I like creating the ideas. I’ve got places to go. Exactly. And she has. She’s created more new things. It’s incredible. So and it actually inmate sent. So yes. So i took it over. And and but andrea is one of the four experts at asking matters. So she is actually still providing content, doing webinars on dh and such. I have a couple of people who have particular expertise is entree is one of them. So we’re still involved ethan and dear friends, ok, yes, i know. I do know, you never ask a question. You don’t know the answer. But now i do that all the time. Lots of questions, i don’t know answers to, um all right, so we’re going to get to all these, uh, all these different personalities, all these different asking styles, all the different styles, but we got a lead into it. So what a premise of the book is that there is no ideal way toe ass. And we’re talking about fund-raising solicitations. They asked the solicitation, that’s what prism. Everybody knows that. But make it explicit. But there’s no one way to do it. There’s no ideal way everybody brings something different we’re going to capitalize on. There’s no set way. That’s the best. There are best practices in the field. Yeah, but so much of it is about personality and relationships, and that means every one of those is going to be different, and you need to bring your true self and you. And that’s another theme throughout the book, all right. Authenticity and want us to be authentic. In our ask absolutely every step of the way. Because otherwise you can’t form a true relationship of the donor. And if you don’t do that, then the gifts they’re just transactional what we want his donors who really care and believe and want to be involved for the long haul. And that’s only gonna happen if they believe they’re having an authentic relationship with with the fundraiser in the organization. And can’t they tell us they tell him? Absolutely, mister, um is corporate, and it’s not your true self right talking to them, i say all the time. If you if you give your board an elevator pitch and expect them all to go out and give that same exact pitch, unless some of them are amazing actors, almost all of them will sound phony, right? You want everyone to talk from his zoho nick’s own experience in his or her own words. And why is this better done in person than any other method? When we’re in person, a level of empathy develops between us that just doesn’t develop some other way. When we’re sitting across from each other and looking in each other’s eyes, we care more about each other. We’re more vested. We want to come through for the other person. So there’s this bond that you just don’t get when you get a letter in the mail or an email or even a phone call. Because that voice khun b disembodied the reason i prefer to have guests in studio that, you know, body language is another one inflexion, you know, so special, you know, like i’m giving you the finger right now. So you know that, you know that it’s not going well. Okay, so we wait. We take a first break. Very good. That’s the figure i’m giving you. This is the one i didn’t say that. Did i say middle fingers that i say hold it. Maybe i’ll forget it. All right. I’m going up. The index finger pursuing they’re e book is fast non-profit growth stealing from the start ups. They take the secrets from the fastest growing startups and applied those startup growth strategies to your non-profit. It’s free as all their resources are. You’re accustomed to that? It’s on the listener landing page. You know where the listener landing pages? You’ve heard me say it repeatedly. Repeatedly. It’s tony dot m a slash pursuant. Remember the capital p for please. Now back to asking styles. All right. S o much better done in person. All the reasons that i prefer to have guests in studio. I mean, i’m happy to have call, but i’m very glad that you were able to make it in from moline, illinois. Att for am or so what demanded it for am work airport? Because we have this huge storm. Yesterday, it was crazy. And i was lucky to get in because when i landed at newark, there were thousands of people sleeping on the floor i couldn’t believe it was doing here. And people still trying to get onto planes at three. Fifteen. And then when we came through chicago, i did, which was its own madness. Yeah. Ok, that’s not a good way. Okay, so, midway, i mean oh, here must have been a madhouse. Also, it wass everything was a madhouse. Yes, everything fell apart. Transportation was yesterday not surprising. I’m glad you made it. Thank you. Checked in to do it by phone, but i considered renting a car. If i couldn’t get out and driving from davenport, iowa, it was it was fourteen hours, and it turns out i would have gotten home about the same time. Really, you could’ve made it a job if you could have got if you couldn’t write. So asking in person is better. But it’s hard. Yes, it is. It is. It is hard. Just feel better about why it’s worth the difficulty that we’re putting in. No one makes their biggest gift by direct mail by phone accufund by special events. If you want someone’s biggest gift, you have to develop a relationship with them. Over time, no one gives their biggest gift right off the bat. It usually comes over time as they get closer to the organization, as they understand the organization better. And and especially in this day and age where i think we’re starved for in person, right, so much is happening electronically. It makes the in person even more special. But it’s virtually none of those names you see at the top of the donor roster or on a building or a room. None of those gifts came from a phone, a thon or direct mail appeal. They came from building these relationships, so and eighty seven percent of all charitable gifts come from individuals, so almost told to give a compliment of it. You include family foundation’s yes, family foundations in there, as well as the individual gifts and the bequests there. And those total up the eighty seven percent. Wow, you did your homework. I read this book, i think. Very good. I’m disappointed that you’re impressed. That here is shocked. I’m disappointed that you’re surprised that she always put together, for god’s sake, i’ve been at the studio for six weeks. Of course, lycan youth rallied for one show. Excellent. It’s all downhill from here for next two months so well and and your subscription on itunes going going down after this week? Yes. So eighty seven percent of all the gifts come from individuals, and the biggest gifts come from asking in person. So if you want to fulfill the vision of your organization, if you want to have the biggest impact your organization can have, you have to go out. But ask individuals in person. But there’s a risk of you might take personal when there’s a rejection. You know how important it is to the organization or you over you over perceive how important it is. It’s life or death. You know, there’s a lot of personal risk in doing it. Face-to-face there certainly is, and depending on our style, more risk than not. Yeah, and i know we’re going to get into that in in a bit. I will share. And i i share with everyone. People think because i have been in thousands of meetings and i’ve raised tons of money and all my organizations have been very successful with the results that i am this stereotype of a fund raiser that i’m something most people can’t be, that i’m slick and confident, and i get in those meetings and i ask for big gifts. And if people push back, i push back. And i i don’t take rejection personally in all of this stuff and and there are might be a few people like that in the field. But i’m not like that. I’ve had all my own issues to grapple with all these years, and i like most people fund-raising not because we think fund-raising is the most exciting, wonderful thing we could ever do in our lives. But because it makes a difference, none of us grow up saying i want to be a fundraiser. I i asked this question every time i train, virtually no one raises their hand. We we we get the bug for doing something good in the world. We care about the arts, education, religion, a medical cause, whatever it is. And then we’re not a doctor or a musician or whatever, but we realize there’s a way that we can help. And that’s by fund-raising, too, so that our organizations have the resource and help musicians and doctors exactly. And social services, social workers. So we most of us come to it in a circuitous fashion. Not because we have some stereotypical skill set that people think of fundraiser has tohave. What we really need to have is the ability to form a relationship which almost all of us do have right. There are some people who’d rather antisocial let’s go about it at different in different ways. Exactly. Think pacers ways different levels of anxiety, etcetera. All right, let’s get i want just one more point. That is that after thousands of solicitations, i still confined it daunting. I can still be anxious. I can still fun for in a meeting and i still take rejection personally, even though i know i’m not supposed to thank you for opening up. I admire that. Thank you. Alright, let’s get into the styles. Now there are two acts. Do you know the plural of access? Because you worked at a c actually. Exactly right. Axes. Now axes. X s has the distinction of being the on ly word in the english language. That is a plural. For three words is the plural for acts a x axe axe e and it’s also the plural for access. Ex maxis, according to read its bona fide. I read it online. So it has to be true. It must be true. Must be true. All right, so let’s get to the axes. All right, listeners, i’m encouraging you, teo. I mean, you could you can go to asking matters dot com and isn’t there? Isn’t the chart there you’ll see? Right? You’ll see the chart. Okay. Don’t go asking matters dot com. You’d go there. But if you if your podcast listening with the vast majority do, uh, just you need a pencil on paper? It helps. It helps. I mean, you can try to visualize it if you insist, but it helps to have a piss peple a piece paper and pencil draw. Draw a vertical drop vertical axis and what we put on the vertical axis we put you. Look, don’t you guys to look? He’s looking at my teaching e. I wrote the book is look at my sheet people less. Well, where you bonem five. Well, where’s andrea? Didn’t you get her in? Get her bath started here. I think you made it. I think you made a blood thing is a big opportunity to buy you out. It’s funny. I was listening to her podcast and she was so articulate about how you lay this out when i need her to come here today and say that i was safe. She is our first date, so you have to drop both axes. Okay. Did you need the x and a y? Ay, right. One’s vertical once horizontal when they intersect. And they do the middle in the middle. Middle. Not like i wouldn’t make a bar chart from the origin that’s called the origins and mental virgin, so above ha sergeant must sign ok on on that y axis is in is extra version and blow the x axis. Is the introvert okay? That’s the vertical estonian. Why access and accept. Right? But, yes, the vertical line has introvert on top and no extra vert extra proton from atop an introvert. You right on the bottom, karaca. And they have the look you’re not okay. And on the horizontal, i’m a visual learner. I think it’s a link in my own material. Looking my own book. Damegreene goodcompany i didn’t bring your book. My copy. Your book. I guess that was a mistake for you. I have one. Okay. If i have to take it out and then on the x axis landing to the left and right of the vertical line, you have thie, analytic and the intuitive. So analytical is on the left. Correct and intuitive goes on the run. Right. Okay. Can i have your two lines and your four words? Right? You do? Okay. S so we know that you were in a couple of spectrum’s now. So which is which? Is this the style that you like that you seem to always start with? Go get her. You seem to know a mission control’s sorry. No, no, no. I’m sorry, rainmaker. I go from top left and i go claim make right, you stop. Rain, right. Go get our kindred spirit control. So in the tommy off here, tony top lefty, i wish you we gotta get gets to know their material. I’m in diamond barrister. You never know. I live in breach of it every single day. No, we wouldn’t. We wouldn’t. Quite right about that. Thank you. Ah, andrea was articulate. E missed that sometime we’ll have parents, so in the upper left, you right, rainmaker, correct on then in the upper right, you write go gets the go getter, correct. And then in the lower right, you write kindred spirit. Yes, you do. That’s you. That is me and you. We think we’ll come back to that. We’ll come back to that. I have an announcement about that. Okay. And in the lower left, your writing mission controller. Correct. Mission controller. Ok, um what is it? Just give us the overview of these. These four, like sure. How do they relate to each other before we get into the individuals? And how do they relate? How are they different? How are they different? Yeah, well, the key difference. The easiest way to think of the difference is through the core question. Each of these styles asks very good when trying to figure out what’s important to me. What’s going to drive me? The rainmaker top left, the analytic extroverted says. What’s the goal? It’s very quantitative. It’s something you can calculate. You know, when you’ve reached it, i’m going to raise a million dollars. I’m going to close ten gifts. I’m going to do glorious golden lorien. Did the ring make goal oriented? Top right? Go get her, go get her asks. What’s the opportunity? Like the rainmaker, the go getter is looking in the future. But the the go getter is looking more globally, less specifically. What is the vision? What is possible? Reduce poverty in right moline, illinois. This khun b so excellently provoc eliminate poverty, eliminate hunger, save the whales. It’s that type of looking vision for the future picture opportunity wise, right? The kindred spirit bottom, right? The intuitive introvert is saying, what moves my heart? What am i feeling? Because the kindred spirits decisions are all personal, they come from the heart and what they’re feeling inside and the mission controller says, and that’s the bottom left. The analytic introvert says, well, what’s the plan, guys? Because it’s okay to have goals and opportunities and a vision and to feel something. But if we don’t have a plan, we’re not going to get there. It needs to make sense. You need to see how you’re going to get from a to b. This is your detail person. Mission controller. What’s our plan for getting as you just said. Okay. Okay. I love that. All right, um, so let’s talk about then. Let’s let’s make it a little personal before we get into the more abstract, you know, planning your your asks, etcetera, etcetera. Dahna. So you’re you’re you’re an avowed kindred spirit. Yes, i now what’s your secondary mission controller? Mission controller. Ok, you went the other way for me. Okay. Okay. Ah, so so it’s a little more, in essence, that’s you since your kindred spirit. And we would you share that dahna say a little more about the kindred spirit. What? Sure. What do you love about it? And what? What? What makes it a challenge for you? Well, i what i love about it well, i’m embracing myself for who i am. Hard right? We all should embrace ourselves for who we are. I think developed developing this stiles has allowed me to embrace myself and be comfortable with who i am is a fundraiser and a person, and to say, you know what? I am feelings oriented. I take things very personally. I have a big heart. I want to help everyone. I want everyone to feel good. I want to be heard. I want to be seen. All of that is very important to me, those relationships and those feelings and on, and that’s what i lead with. And when i developed relationships with donors, they’re very much based on that there, very personal, and they’re very warm. And that’s that has been my avenue to success over the years as much as anything. Building those relationships very personally. Having a mission controller secondary, however, even helpful talking about the one what you have to overcome as way. We have to need to overcome his kindred spirit. What are our challenges? Well, no one loves rejection, and we do face a fair amount of it in fund-raising, or at least the there’s that fear that it will happen. And for kindred spirits, it’s personal, right for others. Okay, i got rejected, but it was about the donor or it was about the system or they didn’t believe in the vision or whatever. When we put ourselves out there and someone and we really believe we do it because we believe our heart is in it and then someone doesn’t want to support it doesn’t agree. It’s very hard for us. Did we do something wrong? That’s so upsetting? They don’t they don’t want to support what i believe in, and i believe in it so much. How can they not believe in it? It’s it. And i was telling this, ah, this room of fundraisers yesterday in davenport, iowa, that no, that yeah, i’m never going to get that past that you’re never going to get past that feeling, right, and you just have to you just have to embrace it. And no matter how hard i try not to make things personal, they are personal. So i have to just say their personal. What can you do that they’re going to be personal? Said earlier. Even though you know that’s not the way to feel about it, right? It still happens, right? And hopefully, just by knowing it. And some would say under overstaffed ing it being ableto look outside myself and say, okay, i can see you’re that way except it and we’ll figure out howto work with that, that it’s much better tham thinking i’m lesser because i take yeah, don’t write not lesser, just it’s fact based. We were not making judgment value judgments here. But you know, there are value judgments in society about that, and i do think kindred spirits are often judged. Introverts are judged to be inferior to extroverts, though there’s so much talk about this recently, and susan kane has this amazing book on it on the power of the introvert rights called quiets. A fantastic book. Quiet, quiet! Yes, the power of the introvert. I think it’s in a world that can’t stop, can’t stop talking something like that. But in fact, introverts or not is highly regarded, right. And i don’t think intuitive czar as highly regarded as is analytics, which is why everyone keeps thinking of the rainmaker, the analytic, extroverted, as something special and better. I think there is a bias in some ways towards and away from various people of different personalities. But we don’t have to take that bias to ourselves. We’re the person we don’t have to well, judge ourselves. Correct. Based on what society probably is judging, we have to block out the noise and believe in ourselves. Let’s move over to the left and you’re the your secondary style is the mission controller. That’s ah s o. That’s the plan that you’re the planner? Yes. How do we get there? So it’s funny. I details. I make lots of lists, and i always think they need to be better organized. And i’m always taking pieces of paper and trying to put them together and make cleaner lists. But i do have lists, and a lot of people don’t have those lists you have. Do you keep a list of all the lists that you have? More or less your deep into? You sure. You sure? Mission control. Your secondary secondary is definitely secondary. It is myself. Yes, but when people need someone to plan something, they often asked me to do it. I end up in charge. I don’t really want to be in charge. The kindred spirit doesn’t want to be in charge, but i know i can do what i have those skills and people need me to do it, and i want to come through for them. So i do it. But i’d be very happy if someone else would do it. What do you need to overcome as the mission controller? One of the challenges for for that? Well, the big challenge is giving up control, being able to go with the flow and not being thrown off when things veer off course, which can often happen in a meeting with a donor, you go in your you’ve got everything planned out. You’ve done your research, you’re going to hit these topics. You’re going to ask the turn to these questions and five minutes in, they take the conversation in a different direction. There could be a curveball or they ask a question you weren’t considering or you find out they have less time than you thought they had or whatever it is. And for the mission controller who’s planned everything out so carefully and meticulously, it’s difficult to tack in another direction. A lot of what you said about, uh, the relationship building and and the personal solicitation comes through in the work i do in planned e-giving. I mean, if those relationships aren’t so, if the donor relationships aren’t solid through the years, then there isn’t going to be a gift in their estate plan. Or there were times that land if you’re if you’re purely transactional in all in all respects, as people are giving to you through the years, and i don’t care whether it’s fifteen dollars a month or five thousand dollars a month or so are five hundred five hundred thousand dollar gift. If you’re treating it as a transaction through the years, then the likelihood of a plan to give being successful plan give scylla station big. Successful is much, much lower. Absolutely plan gifts do sometimes come by non personal asks. I’ve closed lots of charitable gift annuities all through email, so stations and mail and phone calls. But that’s where the relationship was rock solid, exact and the person was never treated transactional, e or if they were, it was rectified and they felt like they had a relationship. It was relational with with the charity. So that’s the big spectrum of, you know, from your monthly sustainers through toe plan gift. The ultimate, the ultimate gift hyre. So i was seven years ago. I was, ah, kindred spirit and a mission. A mission controller. Yes, seven years. November two thousand seven. I took the assessment on, but you gotta go to just take the assessment, asking matters dot com. It was thirty thirty. Questions. Yes, thirty very simple questions like eight eight eight ten words per question. Mean brief questions. Yes, no boom. It only takes a few minutes asking matters dot com not asking styles dot coms don’t go asking style dot com. That’s a point site. No, i don’t know what’s there, but actually that will do. Redirected our site to oh, good. So you do own asking sound. I thought, all right, all right, but just go directly. Sure we do. So you don’t have to go through pornhub goto asking matters dot com. Take the assessment. Thirty questions. It’s really fun, even if you’re not a fundraiser if you’re not a fundraiser. But but i have said in that interview with andrea that i aspired to be a kindred spirit and go get her so i was disappointed in my outcome. Come on. I want to be now taking it very recently this morning i wanted i wanted to be. I wanted the results to be fresh. Um, i’m still a kindred spirit primary, but now i’m a secondary go getter. You are. I evolved or i just answered the questions to the desired outcome. No, but i didn’t do that way. No, i did it honestly. So i have evolved. So we just have, like, thirty seconds before a break. But you can evolve, right? You know, i didn’t know you knew. Didn’t you answer the question differently because she just thought about it a bit differently today than you did seven years. We don’t evolve. No. We learn how to live in the world. On we learn we learn how to embrace our strengths and deal with their challenges. But we are who we are. I think we’re wired a certain way, but we weigh, manage our lives. We manage all sorts of relationships with all sorts of people. And and and certain skills are become more important in certain parts. And in our lives, we take leadership roles. And so we we need teo, focus on the differences of skills. And so we’re using different parts of our toolbox. But we are still who we are, right? Maybe i pulled the top. Maybe i pulled the top shelf off the toolbox. It’s dangerous for me to make two references on, because the first time i used a phillips head screwdriver, i had to go to the emergency room like, all right, we got to take another break. Regular cps. Are you not satisfied with your cpa firm? They’re not paying enough attention to you. Are you thinking about a change in twenty nineteen? Look at wagner. Check them out. You know where to go. Wagner cps dot com. You’ve heard that. Then talk to you. Coach tomb. Their partner. He’s been a guest twice. I trust him. He will be honest about whether wagner can help you. You gotta weinger cpas dot com now time to tony’s. Take two. I need to say farewell to our affiliates. This is the last show for our affiliate stations throughout the country. The affiliate family just hasn’t grown. The affiliate stations are not procreating, if you will, at the rate that i need to make the investment of time and money worthwhile. In that program, i’m enormously grateful to the affiliate stations and listeners that we have. Thank you. Thank you for being with us stations and listeners. I thank you. I just wish you had more siblings. I needed you to procreate more. I tried to get more siblings, but it takes a lot of time. And they’re just not it’s not coming through. So for our affiliate listeners, of course not. Proper media is always with you. Always available to you. Um, on itunes on google podcasts on stitcher andi. Lots of smaller wraps that you probably have never heard of. So we’re still with you. We’re still available to you. Stay with us. You don’t have to leave. I don’t want you to. I just need you to listen differently. And i’m going to do the men of the affiliate affections first, because i i do have affection for our affiliate listeners and stations. And i regret that this has to be the last show. But affections to our affiliate station family and to our affiliate listeners. Thank you, live listener love. It’s got to go out. It goes out to jacksonville, florida lake worth, florida russia were going abroad how that happened so fast. Ok, well, we’ll do. We’ll do. We’ll combine it all, um, delhi, delhi, india, russia. We can’t see your city, but live. Listen, love goes out to the coast to the whole country. Why not? Um, it’s leadership that a little concerned about. But to the people the life goes out. The love goes out another tampa, florida we got tampa lakeworth and jacksonville. Wallington, new jersey, new york, new york, new bern, new bern, north carolina live love out to new bern, korea. Can’t see your city gets anything. Cities, korea, netherlands live! Love goes out doesn’t matter. And seattle, washington and connecticut live love to each of our listeners. Thank you for being with us and the podcast pleasantries toe are over thirteen thousand listeners podcast each and every week. I’m telling you, it makes it so much easier to get good guests like andrea kill state. I mean, like brian saber, when i can tell them that there are thirteen thousand listeners. Alright, people put up with this. I wouldn’t i would walk out. I’d walk out. I’m getting my amusement for the day when they know that there are over thirteen thousand listeners each week. It helps with sponsorship too. So i thank you. The pleasantries to our podcast listeners. I thank you for being with us. All right, all right. So i learned a lesson. We’re not evolving. You were pretty much pretty much born into born into our asking styles quadrant and and that’s it. And we just apply different skills as needed, right? We’ll have a least a little bit of all of thes, and we call on it when we need it. We do it right, right. It’s not as if the rainmaker can’t be carrying insensitive and the kindred spirit can’t be strategic and goal oriented. It’s a matter of what we lead with, right? What? What’s court of us that dictates the styles. But there’s a bit of all of this and all of us. Let’s apply this to our donors, because where we know that we now have a style. And if we don’t know what, we’re going to go toe asking matters dot com and find out what it is. And then we’ll get the book to asking stiles. Just get the book. You could find the book asking matters dot com and then, oh, so but our donors have styles absolute. So if, if our donor happens to be in the same of the same style is us or at least on the same end of one of the axes you know next to, because the next twos they tend to work well with each other, don’t they? The next, the next two’s work well, and the well, they can tell you have a certain commonality. Commonality. I think the analytic intuitive pieces is particularly important, their meaning. If you’re an analytic, a rain maker or a mission controller and your donor is a a rainmaker or mission controller, you’re talking more of the same language. And if you’re both intuitive, sze go getters or kindred spirits, you’re talking the same language. Right, or whether it’s facts and figures or it’s a heartfelt story. There’s just there’s a bit of commonality there, and to me, that’s actually the mohr important parallel than the extra version introversion. Ok, right, ok, i think an introvert extrovert can establish a rhythm. Each has to watch out for the other. The extroverts has to slow down a little bit. Thie introvert may have to speed up a little bit in there in his air, thinking and speaking, but they they evolved a rhythm, and we’re used to doing that in society. I think the analytic into it is intuitive is a bit different, though, where i think we tend to associate with people who think like us right, whether where facts and figures, people’s people and we’re looking at outcomes, measurements and things, or where sharing heartfelt stories. So all right, so let’s start. Let’s apply this to our donors now, because if we can figure out where they are, if not if not a style than certainly what end of maybe maybe what end of different the two different axes on ly word in the english language? And as is the plural for three for three cingular’s. Then we can anticipate what they’re questions might be, what their objections might be, how they’re thinking about what we’re talking about. So how can we give us some strategies figuring this out for donors that where you have a relationship with now or someone were thinking we’re going to be soliciting? Well, we would have a relationship. Now, how can we apply? This? Could be suss this out. So there are a number of ways to figure this out. If you don’t know a donor well, and you’re going to set out to meet with this donor. You asking events, would you like me to send you any materials? Is there anything you’d like to know about before we meet and the analytics in particular? The mission controllers are going to be the most like. Please say yes. I’d love some material. Mission controllers will review as much material as you give them. They wanted to know all the facts and figures the rainmakers, the more strategic ones. But the mission controllers, everything you give them go getters are go. Getters of the most likely say, i just come talk to me now. That’s ok. Just come talk to me. We’ll figure it out so somewhat. Based on the material, whether people asked for material or not now much they asked for it. You can figure it out. Okay. God, you can figure it out. By which of your donors go to your special events o r. Or at least have a good time when they go. You hate events. Hate events. Yes. I hate gatherings of more than about six people actually. Which which is very funny, since i spend most of my life now doing workshops. First, i had two hundred people in this room sitting in the studio right now which would give a seventh in here to make you want that i’d have to leave, and then you could bring entree. And because she really likes these big total, not that’s why you’re here. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Ah, close. But it’s but it’s ironic. People would not expect that. But you’re very open about it in the book. Yes, i avoid events at all. Counterintuitive. I should say it is because i have learned to adapt. Right? I regardless of what you may think of the moment, people generally think i’m articulate and and i, i come off with a certain amount of presence and such, and i’ve learned how to do that to operate in the world. But it’s not my comfort zone, right? I mean, i was speaking to this room of people. Yesterday was not my comfort zone. Did i like the fact that i was sharing information that i thought was helpful to them? I like teaching. I like helping people be better. But i had no desire to be in front of that room or even in the room. And as a matter of fact, as soon as all the speeches were done, people hung around in the room to schmooze a network, and i made a beeline for the door. Even though i was the keynote speaker, i actually i must say i went out into the hallway because i had i have had enough. Can you share a start? My voices crack you fourteen, fourteen years old. Can you share a story when dahna thinking about a donors style helped you buy-in ah, solicitation. Anything coming to mine and put in the apse? No, i know immediately. I can think of a very significant donor at hudson guilt, one of the old settlement houses here in new york city, where i worked for many years and everything for her was about the children in the daycare and kindergarten programs, and for her it was about being in the classroom and hearing these stories about the kids. Even though she had a finance background, she never once asked about outcomes measurements. It didn’t matter how many kids exactly were being served what our goals were. She knew these kids were there, that their lives were being impacted. And and so it was all about sharing those stories and getting her into the kindergarten and the head start center clear as day. So that’s that’s an example. Yeah. All right, we gotta take a break. Tell us for pete’s sake, think of the companies. You can refer and ask them. Will they switch their credit card processing to tell us so that you can claim your long stream of passive revenue? Month after month, it’s coming to you. Fifty percent of the processing fees tello’s earns go to you every month. Start with the video at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us, then get asking the companies. Now back to brian saber and asking styles. Uh, our listeners like stories. That’s why i put you on the spot for our first story. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, this has great application that when you’ve done these thousands of sea pulsations when when? In the course of your thousands did you and andrea start start this work? Unfortunately towards the end couple weeks ago? Yeah. No, no, no. It was from two thousand ten, and so right. Well, i had i had been a fundraiser my entire career. So at the point andre and i met, that was more than twenty five years. I’ve gone through a number of campaigns, and i was always the frontline fundraiser. The person who cultivated and solicited major gifts in person who worked with the board. I did the work that had to be done. I never actually wanted to do it per se. I did it because i wanted to make a difference right now. So i did tons of that work forever. Now, since starting asking matters, i have worked on campaigns. There’s a an organization very dear to me in chicago called northwestern settlement house. It’s a it is a settlement, just like hudson guild in new york. I’m a massive fan of that model of cradle to grave service, and i’ve done a number of campaigns with them. Ron, who i talk about in the book and who even talks about his experience in the book. Ron, matt, man anderson and a shine. Yes, amanda shaw. Yeah, he’s a twenty five year buddy of mine. You guys get a lot of asks together partners, we believe i’ve been in a thousand meetings together in all this time. So the good news is the last big chunk of them came after we started this because the settlement finished a campaign now, probably about two years ago, and ron and i again were really the leads to listeners. They’re so we spent a lot of time together asking for gifts, cultivating toners and asking them. And i could see us through this prism of the asking styles, and it was really enlightening. It was enlightening because ron is a go getter. So it became so much clearer as to what he was bringing to the table what i was and the fact that we’re both intuitive and neither one of us was a leading with the analytic peace, even with our analytic donors. And you know what? That was fine. So we didn’t change anything. We did. But we embraced what we did more fully once we had this. This asking styles rupert to deal with were teasing the idea of partnering. And i’m goingto tell listeners that for insiders, brian and i are going to talk about partnering. So if you want to be a non-profit. Radio insider, go to tony martignetti dot com, get the insider alerts, then you’ll have access to the that the insider content. And in this for this interview, it’s going to be about partnering with a ko solicitor, basically, ah, and and using the styles, of course. Um, all right. How about well, s o? I feel like i’m jumping around, but going back to assessing your donors, i mean, certainly if you have a relationship, if you know the person through the years, um, that will obviously in form you’re figuring out what style they are. Absolutely. You learn their rhythm. You see whether they pause before answering questions way often talk about this the moment when you ask for the gift. And then what happens after? Well, a mission controller is most likely to pause for longer after you’ve asked to think about it. Where is the go getter is probably going to jump in very quickly with some gut response. So so as you spend more time with your donors, you you pick up on their traits such as this, right? What? The rhythm in the conversation, the questions they ask you. How many questions they ask you? Yes, right. Kindred spirits are less likely to ask questions right in the room. When i train, you’re the introverts are less likely to speak up, which means you. You have to sort of anticipate you have to try to anticipate their questions because the introverts aren’t going to be asking. And if you’re not fulfilling what they need to be favorable to your solicitation, they’re going to leave the meeting unfulfilled, and you will to write. And i don’t know for jumping ahead or whether you plan to cover this. But this is important for boards of directors as well. Latto understand the interactions of the board members. That’s the dynamic of the board, right? Because in a board meeting, the introverts are less likely to express their opinions. So if you want your entire board expressing its opinion, if you want all the voices at the table, you have to be particularly sensitive to your kindred spirits in your mission controllers, who in that large group are less likely to speak up? Okay, we may. We may come to the boy, us. If we don’t come to the board, then just by the book, for god sakes, goto asking matters dot com. Get the book. You know, we could get these brilliant authors. Well, we get these authors, and, uh, you know, semi are starting the catskill semi articulate on and, uh, and we can’t cover everything. It’s impossible. So everything so just get the book. But i will try to have time for the board because boards are big challenge. Yes, i do want to talk about preparing how preparing for your solicitation. And, of course, you know, solicitation that could be over a solicitation. I mean, there’s a meeting, but the course of the the course of that phase of our relationship could go over months, sometimes in back and forth and not this program or this program, but not that way. Or, you know, etcetera, att least implant e-giving. That’s certainly the case, and it’s got to be the case in major e-giving. Sometimes, too. Yes, well, you know, major giving to me there are two ways to look at major gifts. I think of a major gift as any gift worth the time to cultivate and solicit in some shops. There, they’re going to put a cut off, and it’s going to be those very large gifts for new programs for buildings or for plan gifts. But i to me, a major gift program is made up of all of the donors and hopeful donors prospects who have the ability to make a gift of a certain level that’s worth your time because everything needs to be customized and personalized. And that takes some time. So so major gifts could be twenty five hundred dollars gift to the annual fund, right? Your hundred thousand dollar a year organization. You’re going to go out and solicit a number of these to me. Those are major gifts and some of those gifts. So some of those gifts will happen fairly quickly with one meeting or two meetings. The bigger meet the bigger gifts. Those transformational gifts often take months and multiple proposals and bringing in various programs, staff and such donors. Advisers correct. All right, so so it’s it’s a process, yes, but so in terms of preparing for the meeting or the process, um, how do you ah, how tow us. Ah, how do we kindred spirits? Best prepare. How do we prepare? The best thing we can do is go visit the program and re acquaint ourselves with the program. It’s particularly important for fund-raising professionals because we can get very caught up in our day to day work, and sometimes we’re not near the program. Physically, we might be in a satellite office or something like that, and and and we don’t touch the program for a long time. We don’t see it in action. We don’t meet the participants, and that is critical to us because everything so personal. So the number one thing you can do to prepare is to go visit the program and get revved up again about it, because at the end of the day, all of us have to break. We’re all making our own case for support, telling our own story about why the organization’s important to us. That’s a very important piece of of the preparation for the kindred spirit. It’s it’s all going to be a personal story about a participant or their own journey. And and and so visiting the program enforces that. Okay, let’s go to your secondary. The mission controllers. How do they best prepare? They plant? They do a lot of research, much more research than the intuitive to go getters in the kindred spirits. Much more research on the donor that they will. I’ll plan out the meeting very, very specifically, even planned a meeting planned the meeting out. And how do we think the meeting will unfold? They’re more likely to have, ah, complete list of questions that they’d like to ask. They they’re gut will be to send information in advance because that’s what works for them. One of the exercises that asking matters is we asked people if someone were going to come ask you for a gift, how would you like them to do it? And how does your style impact that? Right? Well, mission controllers will often say, i want you to send me a lot of material in advance, so i can see it. And i can be prepared when we meet. So if your mission controller development officer your gut right, your natural inclination is to send a lot of material because that’s what you’d like. Now, once you get to know your donor, you might know your donordigital appreciate that you’d have to pull back on it, but often we don’t know our donors that well, so the number one thing to do is go with our own gut and our own style. So that’s how the mission controller would come here. We’re going to take our last break, and then we’re gonna come back and talk about how my secondary the go getters should best prepare. Okay, hoexter give. They haven’t email many course. Five myths of text giving debunked they’ll give you info so you can decide if this is a fit for you. The the the idea of text giving and then whether text to give fitz specifically, you hear all the hype about mobile e-giving get through that. Get the five part many course comes to you by email. Learn what you need to know. How do you get that? You text n pr november papa romeo to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine. Okay, we’ve got several more minutes for asking styles. Gladly. Uh, so the go getters, how would they best prepare for this solicitation meeting or process? Well, it’s funny that you say that because they’re the least likely to prepare. They winging it? Yeah, they’re very comfortable revolution. They’re very sure of themselves. And they are very good at being thrown into a situation and thriving whatever it isthe relating to various people keeping a conversation going, keeping the energy up so they tend to prepare less. What i do say to go getters is okay. I get that you’re going to prepare less than you’re comfortable. That’s fine. But everyone can benefit from from practicing their story their case for support because you don’t want to take a lot of time to tell it you wanted to be concise because of you share a lot with the donor. The donor is not going to hear what you’re saying. They’re not going to remember what you’re saying. And go getters tend to talk a lot too much. They can talk to much as a matter fact. Ron and i joke about how he can go long. He could go long, and it’s my job to rein him in and cutem uncovering the table, right? So go getters. Don’t prepare that personal story, which should only be a couple of minutes. Their tendency will be to go on and the story will lose it. So that’s the number one thing they should do. Ok, and how about finally the mission controllers? Preparation of the rainmaker? The rainmakers range, right? They’re going to want to review the outcomes, measurements and the goals of the organization because they’re going to tell the story their story through those because that’s what drives them right? The that we’re accomplishing x, y and z where sure, we’re making a difference because we reach this point and we made this difference with this many people and so forth. So they’re going to want to review that. They’re the most strategic, so they’re going to want to think a lot about where do we meet? What questions do i ask you? How do i how do i elicit certain information and a certain reaction and so forth so they’ll be rather strategic. Maybe without getting into the details the mission controller gets into. We just have a few minutes left. So i do want to talk about the board because that’s a that’s an important topic. Brian likes to ah, do his asked to the beverage. You will have to get the book to figure out why. Find out why he loves why it’s important to him to have a beverage in his ass just by the book, for god’s sake. All right, the board. So you would you would like us to. We just have a few minutes left. You would like us to have to have the board take the assessment. Absolutely right. It’s so effective. Lots of boards. What comes out of this? Tell us. Tell us due illustrated with a story. Well, i will give you a story from when andre and i were first testing the assessment. Okay? We had a small university in upstate new york. Take the assessment. The vp for advancement had his board take it. And and andrei and i looked at the results and we said, oh, no, it doesn’t work. Something’s wrong with the way the person i designed the test for us calibrated and so forth and so on. So with are did you think something was wrong because everyone on the board was a mission controller and we thought, well, statistically, that’s impossible, right? We may be there were twenty responses. So with our tail between our legs, we went back to the vp and said, we’re really sorry we’re gonna have to do more work. It doesn’t seem as if the assessment is correct. Everyone showed up is a mystery controller, and the v p said, that’s exactly our problem. Everyone is a mission control. You’re right. That is it. The dynamic is all off. We don’t have the go getters with the vision. We don’t have the rainmakers to keep us focused on accomplishing goals. And we don’t have the kindred spirits to remind us that this is about helping people and we have to have heart. So on a board, you want a mix of the styles for a variety of reasons. Committees, leadership. Well, right? I mean, aligning people to work together, deciding who, maybe who the leadership should be absolutely, and who ever every one of these organizations does. Special events, unfortunately, but you want to mission control are organizing them so the details or set right and you also want to go get her at the event. Who’s going to be really wonderful in the moment? So in some cases you might design board members to the work based on their style. But at the very least understand the dynamic of the board based on everyone style, just as you would in any behavioral analysis of staff for people in general. Ok, how about for the c suite? You see value there. We don’t talk about that. I don’t think it’s in the book. That’s interesting. I don’t. And that is interesting because i speak too many development directors who are aware of their executive director’s style and how that impacts them one way or another. And each executive director brings something different to this fund-raising equation based on his or her style. So the rainmaker is going to be rather driven right for their organization on. They’re going to like the big gifts because they want to make big impacts. The go getters will be happy to meet anyone. The development office wants them to meet and we’ll be charming. But it will be up to the development office to be strategic about that behind the scenes. When you have introverted executive directors, that could be a little more challenging to get them out. But, of course, the kindred spirit, you know, cells with the heart, and people usually really admire that. Executive director. But sometimes the kindred spirit executive director doesn’t want to make the hard decisions that need to be made in leadership on mission controllers when their executive directors can need to watch out that they don’t get into the weeds, that they don’t micromanage. So there’s value for the for the people working for the what of the c suite to know what you’re boss’s style is a way, i guess we need to encourage the c suite itself to recognize where it stands and ah, what it’s opportunities are and what it’s what it’s potential. The pitfalls are and to appreciate all its staff for who they are. Yeah, all right. We have about a minute or so left, and i want to enter the same place where we started. But authentic. You know, your authentic self. Remind us why that is so important. Using all these styles fund-raising good fund-raising the fund-raising that that leads to gifts year in and year out and larger gifts over time. And donors who really care about organisation. Though this is all based on relationships. If if you’re not authentic with your donor, your donor will smell it and your donor want to build that relationship. Who wants to have a relationship with someone you think is phony? So if we’re looking for longtime donors, we need to be our authentic cells and not worry about anyone else. Brian saber goto asking matters dot com take the assessment. Get the book which is asking styles. Thank you so much, brian. Thank you so much, tony. We planning to be here next week? There’s no show. Happy thanksgiving. You’ll be with family and friends. I’m sure i urge you make time for yourself. North. I didn’t say fine time for yourself. You never find it. You’ve gotta make time for yourself alone. Time. It’s important, even if you’re not a kindred spirit. Um, so and i have a thanksgiving. Thanks. Video. Which you’ll find forget to promote my own stuff. Go to tony martignetti dot com. I have a video e-giving my thanks to you for your support of non-profit radio. I don’t know if i say thank you too often, but enjoy your thanksgiving. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you. Find it on tony martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuing by wagner cps guiding you beyond the numbers wagner cps dot com by telus credit card and payment processing you’re 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 our creative producers. Claire meyerhoff sama liebowitz is the line producer show social media is by susan chavez. Mark silverman is our web guy, and this great music is by scott stein of brooklyn, new york thank you for that information, scotty. With me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great buy-in. You’re listening to the talking alternative network you get to thinking. Cubine you’re listening to the talking alternative net. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, i’m nor in santa potentially eight. Tune in every tuesday at nine to ten p. M. Eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Yawned potential live life your way on talk radio dot n y c. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates interested? Simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. You like comic books and movie howbout tv and pop culture. Then you’ve come to the right place. Hi, i’m michael gulch, a host of secrets of the sire, joined every week by my co host, hassan, lord of the radio godwin. 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We will touch upon all these topics and more. Listen, live at our new time on thursdays at twelve noon eastern time. That’s the conscious consultant, our awakening humanity. Thursday’s twelve noon on talk radio dot you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Yeah.

Nonprofit Radio for December 1, 2017: Music To Major Gifts

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Dahna hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host. We have listened to the weak it’s touched reema hussain. She e mailed me, quote, i’m a huge fan of your podcast exclamation mark! Thank you for all the incredible insights and ideas your podcast welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio provides for aspiring change makers end quote, i don’t know welcome welcome is not part of the show the title of the show the name of this show is tony martignetti non-profit radio try toe. If you’re going, i’m going to shut us out, try to get it right and also aspiring aspiring change makers. I don’t appreciate the qualification these air, these air engaged change makers, they’re doing it. They’re not just hoping aspiring trying to make change. Teshima grateful for the grateful for the love, grateful for the love thank you very much and for loving non-profit radio congratulations on being our listener of the week oh, i’m glad you’re with me i’d be stricken with a para nicaea if you pointed out to me that you missed today’s show music to major gift no one dreams of being a fundraiser it’s a non-profit truism and mitchell link er’s new book he and his music are with me for the hour on tony’s take two thank you! Twenty seventeen responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna may slash pursuing and by wagner cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit appaloosa accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and tell us turning payment processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna may slash tony tell us what a pleasure! Welcome mitch linker to the studio. He is a professional fundraiser in education and author of no one dreams of being a fundraiser by unexpected journey from music to major gif ts welcome to studio mitch, thanks a lot. I’m grateful to be here. That’s a pleasure? Yes, i’m a fan of the show. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that that’s that’s a prerequisite to being get now it’s actually. But it helps. It helps. Sucking up. Definitely helps, but don’t don’t suck up to them. And you look great today. Yes, right. Thank you. I got a lot of crushing questions for you. Don’t worry. Okay. All right. So music to major gift. That was that’s. Thie, that’s york that’s. Your story? Yeah. Okay. Story so far at least. Ok. Oh, so there may be another career. Well, given my track record, there could be several years. Oh, i see. All right, so maybe, like, fundraiser to french teacher. Okay. You know, i think i’m i think i found my found like, okay, cool. Alright. So music. Young age? Yeah. I’m talking to a former professional musician that you, you professional’s a little charitable on how much money he laid someone kayman song made money off to defend, not a living by are barely squeaking. No credit cards were important to you. Wake up to some of that. All right, but, you know, we gotta start with the early days. So the kiss concert nineteen, seventy nine? Yeah. Very important to you and your brother. You pleaded, pleaded with your dad. He took you. Why? Why? What happened? Why? We’re still big to you, you know, i don’t know. It was at a time in my life there was some personal turmoil going on, you know? And so i think it became something that i could cling? Teo there’s, some transitions going on. And what about kiss? Just so you know, i was the makeup, the makeup it’s. Funny. The music. Not so much. It was the makeup i just remembered. Like tracing their faces on that old tracing paper. Yes, i do remember treyz upleaf onion skin on. Yeah, exactly. You traced over with a pencil? Yeah. So it just became obsessed with them. And who’s your favorite in the band. Ah, it was changed. Gene simmons? Yeah. Had to be you. Okay, let wass i should say, was it, wass you don’t have a favorite and god now. Oh, no he’s around. You present it alright. Still could be back in the day. He was the guy. There is something just so you know, demonic and then terrifying about you want lloyd loved you had never seen him live. Never seen them live. Your dad took you and your impression. What can you remember? Well, the problem was which i talk about in the book was that i got sick. I think i was probably too young to be on the show. I was, what? Seven and i just didn’t feel well, i think the noise, the just the overall stimulation of it all. I just remember sitting there kind of crying and upset the whole time, and i remember seeing and i remember seeing jim, gene simmons flying, and i have vivid memories of the experience, especially considering how long ago it was. But it wasn’t a happy memory on that. I wanted getting sick and i went down health, alright, so so i mean that’s all right? That’s not a great memory. So why? Why continued in music or what? Well, you only seven then you’re still doing your still dabbling in music a little bit. Well, that young age, obviously, and it was obviously it’s part of sort of the tableau of how i became a musician, because, i mean, you know, i continue to be fascinated with him for years and years, so that was sort of my gateway. Um, so yeah, it was very formidable for whatever reason. I’m sure a lot of people have that story or some variation because kiss spoke to young kids during that era. Alright, yeah, but you got sick, and then you still continue to you. Know you’re well, everything is everything is life or death when you’re seven years old, so i’m not going to, you know, it’s so important to you, but everything is about, you know, the red wagon was important, but all right, but all right, you continued on, um so your music career was kind of like, i see, like, three, two, one, there were three people in the dent. Yeah. Then you were down to two with the day traders. Man, you did your home, and you want so i read the book. I appreciate everything. I remembered it. I do have it written down, but i do remember, i’m looking in his eyes. I’m saying now that was the dent and then the day traders and then ends. And then solo eso i’m and the day traders was too. Yeah, there was two person doing a two person act. All right, um, the dent was important to you. Yeah. You want it now? All right. I just want to set the scene that you grew up in. You grew up in west hartford? No, no. I was originally new york city when i was very young. And i have tio, connecticut, my family moved to connect, okay? And i’ve been in connecticut everyone’s, not west hartford know fairfield county, fairfield, fairfield and that i’ve been in the central heart central connecticut region like west harford since the year two thousand. Ok, now i know west hartford buy-in i guess as i was growing up in north jersey, i don’t know if this is still true dahna what started? It was very wealthy community because a lot of insurance companies were based in hartford, right? And then a lot of senior executives lives in west hartford, right? It was a pretty exclusive place, and in fact, i remember when i was a planned giving director visiting a potential donor who was a retired insurance executive in west hartford, and he had a huge house. I don’t know his west hartford? Yes, they were growing up. Was it still that way? Less offgrid is a great place there. There are a lot of really great quality of life. Sort of suburban towns in central connecticut glass and very avon and west hartford. Certainly probably. Okay, but that’s not where you grew up. You know, a group in fairfield if you fairfield. County if you feel count welfare flipped the town the town in fairfield county right now. Is that southern? Yeah. That’s, southern connecticut near new york city. That it’s a good place for commuters to live, right? But there is also a town named fairfield and felt very far like when i moved to central connecticut. Like the only time i ever went to central connecticut was to go to the heart pacific center to see things like kiss concerts when i lived down in fairfield county. Ok, so it was even though it’s a small state, they’re two very distinct areas, all right. And you were? You were a musical act. And excuse me in connecticut. Yep. Yeah. You made something of a name for yourself in connecticut. I like to think so. The hostess joking. Excuse me. Yeah. Okay. Starting with the dent. Yeah. You and two friends. Yeah. Tell us about the dent. Yeah, boy, i mean, man, do we go back? We were talking jeff and i my god, we would play with tennis racquets before we could actually play instruments when we’re pies really wears one. All right? And then we segue way too real. Instruments as we got older in high school and then we met dan. So yeah, the three must go way, way back. Arika like, fifteen years old and what not? And then as we got older, we got more serious and started actually writing songs and obviously, playing our own instruments. And then it just became your right. You want a karaoke? Chadband now you actually did play instruments. You know, we actually played instruments of yours, wasthe yours was originally i was a drummer, and then i was demoted to lead singer, okay? And i play piano took for writing purposes, but i’m not good at i’ve never been proficient. Okay, that shows that such a difficult question for me to answer. I saying the musician people ask, what did i do? And i get this ten minute answer. Well, i just started drops piela well, it depends how detailed you didn’t do anything particularly well. All right, all right. That’s okay. But you played. I played plate. Okay. All right, let’s, go out, let’s, go out for a first break. Sure. Well, way with which is me speaking and and so if you stand by time for a break. Okay. I don’t need one. But pursuing the art and science of acquisition it’s their newest paper to help you bring in new donors. This paper covers strategies that work from successful acquisition campaigns. And you do want to think about this as a campaign. Your acquisition of new donors campaign. I know this is fourth quarter, obviously so likely. This is not devoted teo acquisition during this part of the year. Probably not. So download the report and keep it. Keep it for next year’s acquisition work. You know that pursuing his data driven technology enabled. So the research is going to be based on the numbers. This report obviously no exception and helps you to understand your numbers. What metrics should you pay attention to? How do you know whether your campaign is succeeding, et cetera? Where do you get it? On the non-profit radio listener landing page. And that is that tony dahna may slash pursuing capital p now back to much liquor. And his book. Nobody dreams of being a fundraiser. All right, so the dent was, uh, it’s a time. I mean, it was hard to get traction. Yeah, you didn’t have a book. Or you don’t have an agent, right? You were recording doing some gigs. What happened? You know, intimately to the funny. I would recommend that everyone write a book because for me, even if very few people read it, it was like therapy. And i learned a lot about my started process and to your question, one of the things i realized in hindsight because we struggled so much we were so focused on this dream but had difficulty, as you say, getting traction. Part of it was in some sense, we weren’t all in, and i realized about that about myself. You know, i wasn’t the type of guy who’s going to live in a van for six months in total squalor. Like i loved writing songs. I loved music, and i did love traveling. But i just never was able to kind of make that full life commitment. And i only realise that in retrospect, i guess that’s sort of an aside but that’s, one of the fifty things i learned about myself in the process of writing this thing and so it’s sort of helped me realize oh, yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s. What happened to an extent, maybe we didn’t commit as much as we should have. We committed to the writing and, like the dream was there, but as far as what you actually need to be. Two d’oh it’s. So difficult and unpleasant. Yeah, maybe over romanticized it. I think so. Yeah, yeah. Now, how do you feel about your commitment to fund-raising today? Oh, one hundred percent. Okay, yeah. Now i feel like this is my do over. So i had a career. Okay? That’s what? I’m trying to get it. But as you were a musician, we’re still with the dent. You felt like you were committed. Then did you feel committed then? Do you think? I mean, is it possible to look back and say, you know, there were times when i just really wasn’t sure i should be doing it, but i kept kept on or did you feel like you were all in then? But now, looking back, you feel like you weren’t that’s a great question. That’s. Why you’re good at this. Cool. I scored one, okay. Initiating with because i think to some degree i probably always knew and part of it. And this is another epiphany. I kind of wondered what i think. The dent, we just kind of stayed with each other of familiar addie familiarity and comfort were best friends. Maybe that wasn’t the best sort of trio. Maybe that wasn’t the best partnership for all of us. And perhaps if i had not, i was just so so committed to these guys. Maybe if i had, you know, gone solo earlier or met someone else or one of the then met someone else. Maybe i would have sort of hitch my wagon to a different thing. And momentum would have occurred. There was just something about the dynamic of the three of us that in a way, held us back. And i think on some level, i knew that. I really do know. Now, in hindsight, so great. Much interesting. Okay, now dahna there’s. A lot of hard work. There’s. A lot of there’s there’s. Some overlap between being a struggling musician band, right? And fund-raising, right. You point out rejection networking. Yeah. Um, and you have a third one, too. Oh, well, a thick skin, i guess. That’s partly right, partly that was fleeing with rejecting. Do you feel like some of what? You faced negatively with the dent and then the day traitors, you know, actually help you in fund-raising? Yes, and that’s a thing? Well, i well, despite what i just said, you know, in my mind, i was generally all in and it was all i thought about. And as i talk about the book constantly pounding the pavement, trying to get gigs trying tio get a record deal, that was really that was that was the thing that you’re selling. And so, you know, there was a real commitment there, and yeah, it was just constant rejection. Like anyone good thing would happen, and it would be almost a surprise be so reinardy you want us to exactly what was wrong with sure. I got a judge, you might make it. You being a little hasty, take the weekend to think about and then let us know if you actually wanted to play next friday geever references of people who protected us wherever you want. So that did inadvertently trained me. And i talk about that a lot in the book, which is how you came to the question, but yeah, i was used to rejection. I was used to things being difficult, i’m used to the struggle on dh when i started to have success in something that that that wasn’t music, which was the fund-raising it was just amazing. It was like this incredible epiphany and that’s the ironic thing is, there was so many periods of time in the early days and music days when i thought, am i wasting my life? Certainly people in my life probably thought i might be needing to make a pivot, but it turned out to be to be great training. What i encourage anyone to do, what i did is their path to fund-raising not necessarily, but i know everybody’s got some path to it, and rarely, as your title suggests, is it linear, right? I don’t know that i sort of have the confidence in the fortitude and the desire that i have now if i hadn’t gone through that so i have no regrets, though there is a period of time where it felt dark. Now you have a day Job during always transitions in 3 two one trend and maybe that’s part of the commitment thing, i never just quit that job and completely did. It i was getting a little too scared. That’s probably what i mean, when i say, like, was i fully in? I think i’ve always had a little too much of a fear factor, actually even interesting. Now, i mean, your second band. We’re not gonna really dwell on the second band. Yeah, two ofyou, but day trader, i mean, that’s not there, not all day traders. I don’t consider being all in it’s, not like they’re right invested in a wall street career. I mean, they’re in a stock for a couple hours, and then they’re out. So, yeah, maybe there was something precedent about that name who knows? I don’t know. Yeah, that was no that nothing. Although very impressed by perceptive i think about thiss joe doesn’t just come together. Country popular belief i’ve get email like, you know, there’s a slapdash oh, i love it, but i know what’s up there, you know, it’s. Not true. All right, so the day job was you were you are involved in non-profits eventually landed in non-profits for awhile, i’d said dalliance is with several different random things on then eventually i stumbled upon non-profits i had no awareness. Of the non-profits sect alien says good work think people, but i’m sure not probably radio listeners will know that we’re but it’s good work dahna city. We’re going every now and then i’ll pull one out, but that was probably the only time in this show. So when i first started in development, it wasn’t conscious really was more just a job. Yeah, you today just fundez life, right? My love of exactly exactly. And it worked well, for a while. It was very then there was a time where you became a lot more intentional about a career in development. Starting to music. Music was not paying off, right? I was getting hold. Yes, you’re getting older. How would you know? I think we should set the contact older, you know i am. Wow. This is so you gotta come on. I mean, you wrote a book about your life. Hold forty five. Okay, forty five. I look much younger. I get ten years on you. You do all right. That’s a good thing. This is a podcast on nobody contest that assertion that you just made you could go on the website. Make your tony martignetti dot. Com make your own decision about whether which looks younger. Well, it was saying that i was sent it. I take it is thank you. People should draw that conclusion. Other on, i think it is a self serving. Pathetic, you know, sounds presidential almost okay. We don’t do politics. I’m non-profit radio. So you became a lot more intentional. Things were not going well. Money, tight music floundering, really? Your own gig. You’re on your solo career. You said you canceled you cancel every gig. Your music and your solo career, right? Literally canceled every gig that yeah, and then the whole thing is that when i think i feel like i actually started to find my voice and got better at music, i was at a point where i was to light. Like i said earlier, i was in these bands and i was felt beholden to these other people. And then when i finally went solo, i felt like i got a groove. But at that point, i had a lot of debt was getting older, and and then what really happened was the recession economy picked out and i don’t, so yeah, i felt so vulnerable. And i thought, well, i’m already in development. I’m gonna make this my thing, and i just completely abandoned music at that time. Okay, now, around that you were doing database management, and then you moved into prospect research. Yeah. There’s around this’ll eight, two thousand seven, two thousand eight session time or a little bit earlier i was doing really said advancement services. Then i was broadening it a little, but it was still not i was doing major gifts, you know, know, know, know? Know? Yeah. So but generally, i was sort of the research. Got back. Still back office? Yes, exactly. Right. They talk about, uh, two. Two bosses were discouraged. You and one who encouraged you. Yeah, the discouraging ones. What way? Wantto little cautionary tale. What? How did they discovered you in your? Yeah, because you had expressed an interest to them in right of career in fund-raising in furthering your working fund-raising two people discouraged you. How so? Well, i think in and in hindsight, maybe i would have discouraged me too, because i was still kind of like a young punk. You know, i guess i still could have had an air of you want e? I mean, they would you respect him? You worked for them? Yeah, i mean, when it was never malicious, but i think i just i didn’t look the part at the time, you know, our act the part. Probably i probably acted young and, you know, i was very vocal about my love of music, so i’ve sort of had me compartmentalized. And i worry artists lead, right. So then to suddenly say, i want to do this very serious, very diametric opposite you. Another edward of lessons going opposite that’s. Not such a trick. That’s. Not a good word either. I don’t know. Did they use it wrong? No, it depends what you mean. We’re not going to flush it out, but i don’t think it’s good. Okay, now i’m gonna move. Okay? So that i’ll point out the vocabulary. You have got to stop my you really do. I’ll point out that i don’t. Who will? I’ll point out the high points and we’ll let listeners make most of the decisions on their own. Okay, um, so, uh, letty so let’s talk about the guy. Who are you? A man or woman who inspired you? Somebody believed in you. Yeah. What? That person, a few people along the way just sort of recognise that i had a personality that might be come suitable. Yeah. Thank you. That and i guess i i was always conducive. Well, that was good e i think part of it was just i had a lot of different ages. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think i was and i had an energy and a zeal. And and so it’s a man or a woman, it was a few people on it if you are because you encouraged me, and that way we should be seeing people beneath the surface and look at what traits they possess and how those might actually, uh, transfer into fund-raising career or anything in non-profits so that, you know, we peel away the layer let’s, not judge a book by the cover. And there are there are traits that people have that could be valuable to non-profit and yeah, we should try to see that if if we’re ever in this kind of situation, i agree, and i’m deeply grateful for that for that encouragement, because at that point in my life, i hadn’t had much encouragement, you know, i’d sort of just been on my own trying this thing, and it wasn’t really working out, and then it goes such a long way and yeah, i agree that it was sort of a raw skill energy, whatever i had that had sort of a few people had noticed, and i was grateful for that. And i would have never really come to that on my own. You say that you perceived fund-raising as the guys in glengarry glen ross, which happens to be a favorite movie of mine. But, you know, if those who may not know it, it is excellent. Al pacino, walter matthau. No, no. Jack lemmon pompel al pacino. Alec baldwin. Very, very small, but very pivotal role. Al pacino, jack lemmon. Alan arkin. Excellent at harris. Excellent. Kevin spacey up. Excellent. Yeah. Okay, so these are these are shyster real estate people. We get the idea to get the idea for a movie that they’re special. They’re selling marshland in florida, people bonem and yet was sort of your perception of your gifts of asking people for money and, you know, part of it’s funny. I remember we went to this. Conference early on and i was i was doing research at the time, and i went to this it’s very funny nights that i went to this dinner and it was basically major gift people. I don’t even know why i went to it. You may have been that it was for everybody, but it was predominantly major give people and, like, the volume of that room was so loud, it was just a bunch of what i perceived as extroverts just really sort of out there confident people and part of it from he was a jealousy because i had been so just estranged from that world or i was just i had a very small world, and i wasn’t very confident. And then i saw these people in these personalities and i just thought, man, that’s, what fund-raising must be you’ve got to be this big, outgoing person. I cant do that that’s, not my personality, and i know where you’re going with this, but basically i came to realize you don’t necessarily have to be that way. But it was just it was so intimidating to me and then when i unpeeled back what i thought, a major gift officer does and what they do dio it just seems so scary and it just i sort of pigeonholed you have to be a certain type of person who is outgoing and brave and frankly, all the things in many ways you do need to be. But it was so different from how i perceive myself. I don’t know how you know where i’m going because i don’t know where i’m going, okay? I’m sure i’m not sure how you’ve mastered that thiss seems like a good place. We’re going to play one of mitch’s song. Oh my gosh! It’s ah it’s better this’s the dent is that this is this is me. So this is a solo. I’m sorry. Ok is the last thing i have things there, you know, he’s making this transition now getting serious about ah career in in fund-raising so things are looking up it’s ah, mitch linker. Yeah. Solo solo. Better anything else you want to say to lead into it? Well, this was never never. It was recorded as a demo, but it never went anywhere. I never did an album, you know, i didn’t put it on itunes or anything. But this was right at the moment that i basically stopped. So this is the first time anyone in the world so all right, so it’s podcasts, or you can play it back. You know, i could build buy-in anywhere you cannot buy. Give me a call, i’ll send you guys here. It is better. Which hyre two. Nice. Just get lucky. So, wait, king. Yeah, i’ll be down for a little while. Wait. Right? Duitz wait. Kapin wait. Two. Events back-up snusz buy-in hyre latto buy-in duitz hands. Krauz hyre mitch linker, better you heard here on non-profit radio. The only place you will we just take a break. Wagner, cpas. They really do go way beyond the numbers that typical cpas get mired in the guides they have. They have a couple dozen guides for you online. They’re going to help you sort your way through technical stuff because they break it down and make it simple for you. These are written specifically for non-profits, for instance, orders committee versus finance committee. That’s a that’s. A document they have. What one of different roles they break it down. Independent contractor versus employee checklist. Yes. You need a checklist. I just had attorney tom will sell on just talking about this. That was the november third show. You don’t want to make a mistake between contractor an employee and be penalized disaster recovery plan it’s another guide that wagner has for you. I’ve had a guest talking about that darvill arika last time she was on was june twenty third talking about your disaster recovery plan if your church wittner has a church internal audit plan, okay, you’re reviewing your bank statements each month. There’s a bank statement review form. All right, you get the idea way beyond the numbers. Take a look at everything they have go. Wagner, cpas dot com quick resource is then guides apolo ce software. You’re a non-profit but you use accounting software made for a business. I never thought of this. I never thought of that dichotomy. That’s a good word, but but it exists. And until apple owes brought enlightenment to me, i hadn’t. I had never thought about this. Why do you need non-profit software? Accounting software fundez counting that’s the difference. Fundacao n’t ing you have these different designated buckets funds of money and you don’t want to use the money designated the scholarships for the gymnasium renovation project. Mitch, you work in education, fund-raising you wouldn’t want to do that, would you? No, thank you. Now be quiet. You need to you need to separate account for each fund-raising appaloosa counting don’t use quickbooks and terrible cash. Where do you go for this non-profit wizard dot com now time for tony steak too. Thank you. Thank you. Twenty seventeen that’s what? My video says this year if you are listening in any of the different channels which we’re going to get through very shortly, it’s. Coming up. If you are getting my insider alerts in your inbox every single week, i know mitch lincoln gets them. You do much, don’t you? Thank you, never quite. Yes, i am grateful if you’re if you’re following on twitter, you’re retweeting about the show if you’re loving the show in-kind whatever method, however chan, whatever channel you used to show your love for non-profit radio i say thank you, i really do not mean mitch is breaking up, but i’m no, my gratitude is sincere, you know that. So if you want to see it on video, go to tony martignetti dot com. The video was called thank you. Twenty seventeen and i do thank you that’s through the live listen, love natural flow, right? What we got, we got leads new york, tampa, florida, woodbridge, new jersey, woodbridge so consistent i’m love with woodbridge, new jersey. Who are you? Identify yourself, please. I want to shout you out by name. Indianapolis indiana live listen loved indianapolis, indiana falik city, utah live listener loved each of our listeners who are domestic and over in the u k of course, we don’t know which country is that ireland, england, scotland or whales? We don’t know, i don’t presume live listen love to the united kingdom listener, listeners actually that’s multiple listen, multiple listeners germany, guten tag sudan, i think that’s first time with us sudan welcome, afghanistan, you’ve been with us before poland. You’ve been with us before. Thank you so much. 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Thank you for standing by. Thank you for your minor contributions. Okay, so things are picking up and you start to self teach yourself. You, uh you got conferences, books, you’re you’re diving in. Yeah. Self self education. Yeah, yeah. I just immerse myself again. I completely abandoned music to this day. I haven’t arika on dh. I just committed myself one hundred percent tio fund-raising and yeah, i just i tried teo network as much as i could. And this wasn’t a cringe moment for you when i played better, was it? Um, you’re dying inside aren’t dying inside where? It’s a little embarrassing that’s ok? Really? No, no. I mean, i’m proud of you. I’m proud of it. Well, there you go. All right. No embarrassment. All right? You may feel embarrassed, but you’re gonna play the whole thing. But that’s, just a sample here. We were all in non-profit it was all one hundred percent in committed to the worst humor. But i committed to it. You know, that’s that’s what distinguishes most people would cut their losses. Oh, no, not me. Oh, i’m in. I’ll be the joke to death until i until either i get sick of it. Which that’s. A very high threshold. And that’s. Happening right now, you’re witnessing it says you says you, you’re not one to judge dahna i don’t know why i just i’m just declaring you sure you’re not you’re not judgment worthy. All right, so you you developed a cut. You eventually you you found a coach, you found a couple of coaching? Yeah, mentors. This is important to you as your sort of removing your way into now you’re in major gifts and you’re blowing some things which everyone does. This is not an embarrassment. I have not as many as you, but i’ve blown things bonem coach and mentor mentors coach is very important to you. One of the few key takeaways for anyone who’s might be interested in the book or maybe thinking about major gifts. One of them is for me was transformational, and i just think everyone should probably no matter what you’re doing in life would be great to have a coach and mentor. But for me having that like one on one follow-up just dialogue, having someone you can go to and run situations by and sort of talk things out with someone who has experience and he’s been around the block. And has seen everything. It really changed my life because i was struggling. I again, i educated myself, but when i was trying to practically apple, you know, apply what i had read or studied. I just wasn’t comfortable and this sky and then a number of people who i met, i’ve a long list of mentors really changed everything for me. And so again, anything in life you probably need people to look up to, but certainly with major gifts. I would definitely encourage anyone to just find someone outside of your environment outside of your job. Somebody doesn’t know the players who can objectively just sort of look at situations and talking through them. And if you are someone who is experienced looks to take on look to help people, i mean, we need to go any further. The profession is not only you know, of course, yes, if you are new to the profession. Absolutely, mitch is vice advice is very sound. But ifyou’re mortem or experience looked looked to help. You know we got we got to elevate the profession, whether it’s fund-raising or whether it is one of the back office. Yeah. Important back office. Functions give processing or prospect, prospect research database management. You know, we gotta elevate. You gotta elevate the profession. We all have a responsibility to bring up those of us who are ah, you’re newer. Yeah, you know, and it’s and it’s so much fun. It’s fun, teo. And i think most people want to give back and want to help. And, you know, the few times i’ve had the opportunity to kind of pay it forward, i found it incredibly fulfilling. So you’re right. It’s, a two way street complain and you tell some very good stories in the book about how just simple conversations in the thirty minute conversation, you know, huge. You see epiphanies? Yeah, exactly how exactly is that a mixed metaphor? See epiphanies having epiphany when you see an epiphany? I don’t know if you could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Let’s, stick with that. I don’t know if you see an epiphany or you just can you stand? Can you see an epiphany? Sam doesn’t know. Yes, cristal’s, he’s, except the man surrounded by crystals. But i think it’s happened. I’ve thought about it, i think it’s having epiphanies that you have a different all right. U s a let’s now, now you’re a bona fide major gift officer, you’re you’re getting over the hurdles thanks to the coaches and tours, you’ve got some practical advice that that you like around let’s start with the donor now you’re in a solicitation, right meeting dahna preemption, that was a tough one for you one guy, one guy wrangled you twice meaning go ahead, i’ll let you explain preemption in case someone is not aware of what we’re talking about and i don’t know, i don’t appreciate that might be a term that i just, you know, it don’t quantified you have, you know, basically, when you have a number in mind or a gift you want to talk about and then the donor they, you know, had you off the path early in the conversation, so don’t worry about yeah, i know why you’re here. I’m going to give the three thousand dollars i gave you generally, you know you’ve got fifty thousand in your mind, exactly. They’re committed to their three thousand dollar gift from last year, so that’s one of one hundred things that hurt the type of scenarios that are difficult to navigate you really only know through experience and through having p experience. I mean, the experiences krauz you didn’t sail, you have to fail, get some help from a which makes your and go out and do it again because you gotta you gotta keep taking by two the apple, right? So, it’s a little practical advice around preemption. What do you do? You throw out ah, boy. It’s happened. Okay, let’s, hear hypothetical. Well, from the book you’ve got. I don’t remember. I forget what number you had in mind. But let’s, stick with my hypothetical okay, yeah. You’ve got fifty thousand your mind in the first five minutes of conversation, you know, agreed the person he says, look, i know why you’re here. I’m going, i promise you, i’m going to the same three thousand i did last year and then he pivots to a different subject. Now you’re off. That’s your oft e-giving subject thanks to the right, the donor and preemption. What’s your advice? Well, you know, it depends largely on the report. If you feel comfort that’s sort of. Why, for my experience will dictate how far you’re gonna push. Sometimes you’re just going to say thank you and move on and hope the next time you khun growing more prepared. You know, i think sometimes maybe thank you, but thank you, but which is sort of what i was going to say that, you know, if you have a report there’s comfort if you just sort of very authentically and genuinely and politely say, that’s great. I appreciate that. But, you know, i’ve really been looking forward to talk with you. I have a couple ideas that i actually want to share with you. Would it be okay to let you know we were thinking, you know, most times people are going to say, ok, sure, we want to hear what you had in mind and maybe it’s tied to a naming opportunity that it’s a zoo has a certain level that sort of, you know, dictates that, uh, yeah, you know, sort of those things that are our scholarship at a certain minimum. So they’re these tools to kind of help you navigate that, but really it’s it’s having the boldness and and then the comfort teo continue that conversation, and sometimes it goes well and, you know, it really all depends. Yeah, okay, you talk about urgency, urgency and contacts. Yeah, you like those? Those that’s what i learned from my key mentor. Okay, for shut out. Yeah. You know, context is just sort of explaining, you know, you have numbers in your mind when you’re talking to the donor, basically sort of justifying the number and explaining why someone’s gift is important and, you know, the end of the day when you’re raising money, it always comes down to a small number of people who are really bringing in who are giving a pass majority, the money, whether you’re talking about a small campaign or very, very large campaign, it always comes down to a small number of people, and by context, i like to sort of convey that to donors and sort of let them know you’re in a small group of people that were going to help bring about real change to save and change lives. There aren’t that many people out there, you know you are one of the few so that’s sort of the context. Is there’s actually something? Pierre ical research i was just reading, like with in the past two months or so, a report about someone had done some experimentation around different types of materials. What one printed said, you know, all together we can prevent hunger in the community or something, and the other was you can be a change maker. You and it’s always so is the global or their full community versus targeting the individual. And that individual marketing piece did much better write. Interesting. You are the change maker, you’re the you’re the you’re the pivot. You’re the critical link in this right in this problem in our community. You the solo? Yeah, that’s, great that’s going so that’s. So that’s your contact context piece just sort of really just explaining how important someone is tio urgently, then the difference that they can make and why? So that that’s that’s that was hugely helpful. May and having this giving conversations so don’t like setting the table urgency. Urgency is, you know, just putting parameters so that so that there’s a reason to have a conversation at a certain time like capital campaigns are all about urgency oftentimes it’s a very arbitrary timetable, but it gives you license to talk about giving at a certain time because there’s a deadline, you know, political. Campaigns it’s more finite. It really is, you know, there’s election day. But other campaigns often times it’s just sort of a random period of time, but it it’s a great tool. It helps gift officers. It helps fund raisers sort of justify why you’re having conversation at a certain period of time. So it’s an instrument to help move conversations along. How do you deal with the rejection that being rejected in music helped you? I helped you achieve in fund-raising i mean, you don’t get everything that you asked for now in from donors. How do you how do you process it? What do you thinking about? You know, help people who are struggling with this here’s. How i feel about that. There are many times when i come out of the visit or situation. Or maybe after a follow-up and the gift doesn’t come through. But i still feel ten feet tall and it’s because i feel as though i did the right thing. You know, i feel like i asked for a gift that made sense. It was well received. You know, maybe your daughter will say that’s the right number two house for or i appreciate you coming to me, but now is not the right time or this isn’t the right project, but it’s very amicable and it’s not a negative experience for for anybody, you know, there’ve been plenty of times where i didn’t get the gift, but i feel good. I feel like i was brave and i had the conversation they need to be had and it was the right one, but for whatever reason, it just wasn’t the right timing for the donor. Yeah, further donor, exactly, and oftentimes no is just know now, but, you know, for six knows you’re halfway to ah six knows you’re halfway to her, yes, but i’d like to say, but what about when you walk out on you? Not feeling so good? Like maybe i’ll let the institution down, like i didn’t know there was an opening and i didn’t seize it. Yeah, you walk out regretful? How do you process that? And then, you know, carry on, because a couple of days later, you’re gonna have another donor meeting. I do beat myself up about it, i as i get older, i feel like i’m still in the infancy of my career. I’m going to be learning to the day i retire, which hopefully will be decades from now on. I’m trying to beat myself up less about it, but basically i just try to learn from every experience i literally will write down how something went, what i think it could have done differently. I’ll talk to my mentors, i still have my coaches and i just try to learn from every experience and most importantly, i hope that the relationship is preserved. I didn’t do any damage and generally don’t that’s key, the relationship is over. Absolutely no, we long to always go back. It’s a long term it’s a relationship? Yeah. It’s. Long term, based on trust and absolutely and it’s about the institution. Yeah, about the institution. Excellent. Let’s, take a little break. Tell us. Credit card and payment processing. This is a passive residual revenue stream that pays you each month as one of their partner non-profits. You are going to earn fifty percent of every dollar that tell. Oh skits. Half of what they earned from the businesses that you refer to them goes to you that’s revenue with a long tail. They have an exclusive. Offer for non-profit radio listeners this really is only available to you. Referral business tell us, is going to look at their their credit card processing thie statement, and if tellers cannot save them money, then tell us, is going to give your non-profit two hundred fifty dollars, if they can’t help it. If i can help the business, you get two hundred fifty dollars. That happens each time you refer someone to tell us, and they’re just not able to save the money. Now most cases, of course, there are gonna be able to save the money, but if they’re not, you get two hundred fifty dollars if they are and then, if the company does indeed move their credit card payment processing to tell us you get that residual income fifty percent of every dollar that tell us earns all right now, the two fifty part that’s for non-profit radio listeners only that is only for you. Congratulations. All right, so you want to take advantage of this? Where’d you go, teo to do it, you go to tony dot, m a slash tony. Tell us that is the only place that you’re going to find the two hundred fifty dollars, offer at tony dahna. May slash tony, tell us. Try to get them some referrals and get you some long term revenue. All right, mitch liquor, that was called, you much clinker beauty, that it’s been known to happen. Yeah, sorry, okay, i admit it. I mean, i applied myself for being being honest enough to say congratulations. Thank you very much. Small victories. I’m very important to me. I amuse myself. If no one else, i amuse myself on the most damning me who’s. All right, well, if you’re not, i still have so and that’s. What this is the center of the universe is me so. Let’s, see where we are. Okay, so you’re the institution. Yes, you’re. I mean, you’re sort of keeping in mind that it’s, the institution that you’re asking for it does not help you in d personalizing this whole process. Exactly. I was going to say that. Thank you for saying that because that’s something that i’ve learned and i talk about this in the book with music, it was personal. When i was rejected, they were saying we don’t like your orders. It’s, your honor, i don’t like your voice go as your art. You’re right, we’re not this this your art it’s not about me. When fundez it’s not about the solicitor it’s about the mission of the organization and that’s how you can remove yourself too. And you just want to do the best thing on behalf of that organization because it’s mission driven, you’re tryingto again safe and change lives. And so, you know, i lament of something doesn’t know so they go well, because i do to an extent feel so i’d like the organization down, and hopefully i can do better in the future. But it’s not about you, it’s. Not about being a great fundraiser or having the magic words to say or, you know, here career it’s about the lives that aaron backed you do have to keep going out? Yes, you know, you’re gonna have to get over the rejection and put on the brave face for the next meeting with the next donor a couple days later and for your next meeting with that donor that you feel like you didn’t do so well with you’ve got to keep getting out, you’ve got it, builds your experience absolutely, the more you’re out there, exactly, the thicker skin you’ll get, and the more experiences you have, yeah, every experience you have it’s like, okay, that will never happen that exact same way again, because i will learn from that moment. So after there’s no, it’s not, and this is a funny thing i talk about the book it’s like experience, but also being reflective and having people who are training you because i spent a lot of time out in the road and i wasn’t making progress because i was making the same mistakes again, and i didn’t have the tools to get beyond those mistakes. So it’s a combination of that. Experience and then really working at it and i again, i feel like i’m just starting, um, i learned every day how long have you been a major give fundraiser? I’ve basically been doing i’ve been in major gifts over ten years now, but i mean, i started in research, or i’ve been yeah, i know, but i mean, frontline fund-raising yeah, not indicate eleven years. Yeah, alright, yeah. Ten, twelve years. Yeah. Uh, you have a love hate relationship with travel. Yeah, yeah, i and c i romanticize it. I do enjoy travel, but it is. Romanticize it leading up to the trip. Yeah, right. Yes. I’m going to call again way hotel. Quiet and then you’re on the trip. Not so much. Well, it’s, just it’s. A lot of work is a lot of work. A lot of things can go wrong, especially when you’re tryingto beyond dealing with the travel. Just navigating all these visits and meetings that may change or being thrust it’s exhausting. But i feel like a conquering hero when i come back from a trip, you know, having been through it’s it’s very, i think it’s a powerful experience and it’s so great. When you have a trip and you get to see a lot of different people, because and this is a point, i want to get to that it’s the best Job in the world and 1 of the reasons for that is you meet so many interesting people, you would never meet otherwise successful people, people who are doing great things in the world, people who’ve who’ve had extraordinary experiences and you’re given this opportunity to talk with them. And you know, if you go on a trip and you’re on the road for a week and you have ten or fifteen meetings, my god, what an incredible opportunity to to see the world through the the eyes of these people who have done extraordinary things, it’s incredible, the people i’ve met who i would never have met otherwise you only travel tips for a long trip, not just like a couple of two or three nighter, but suppose you’re after ten nights, years ago, we used to have ah, what i like to be called that tony’s no style tips, tony’s travel tips hard to believe it would be in a liberation, but tony’s travel tips travel doesn’t that’s not t teacher now. So anyway, we had started there years ago. I just used to plead with the regular contributors to give me a style tip or something weird, the more formative years still tryingto master this podcasting still am travel tips for people on the road for, you know, a week or more. Well, it’s funny, i actually i was going to put this in the book, and i didn’t. So there’s there is more material out there. I wrote sort of things basically travel tips, right? There’s gonna be a volume two sequel, so i have many, many things. A lot of it is a really all right. Well, one thing i’ll say for fund-raising in-kind non-profit your listeners always have back-up meeting set because you’re going to have cancellations, things are going to move around. So that’s something i’ve learned, i would just be crestfallen when i’d have a triple set and then one by one meetings with follow-up hard. Now i find myself in a starbucks just depressed, you know, you’re on the institutions nickel to exactly what am i doing in san francisco? Back-up trips? Back-up visit visits is key what are some other? Good tips that i have durney too many, all right. Well, yes, when you travel, you do that’s. What i like to do is a sort of i guess these air back-up i’m in town, then i call people who have always said now, you know, i don’t want you to come to just to visit me. Yeah, i get that. So actually, sometimes i would go just to visit them, and then i would build a trip around them, but i’d say, you know, i’m gonna be in town to see somebody else in a couple days or or depending on the person, i’m not even spring it on them, like the night before or day before because a lot of people planned e-giving e-giving consulting mostly retired, you know, now they do have, you know, if you get him out of there with a doctor’s appointment, then i am that wipes out the whole day. Sure, now i have a doctor. Point ten now, four o’clock dinner. No dinner now. I wouldn’t do that. I have a doctor appointment. Ten o’clock. I can’t make the dinner, so you run that risk. But you know, if you’re in town for another couple days, you can still say, you know so well don’t like to know that you came for them. Yes, there are there’s a cadre of people who like to visit you, we’ll take the visit yet as long as they don’t feel that you’re there. The reason you came? Yes, absolutely, and a cz related to that. I’ve found that sometimes it is usually easier to get the meeting on very short notice, you know, you plan these things far in advance, but there’s a real magic sometimes to say, hey, i’m going to be around tomorrow, you know, just so happens i’m in town. Yeah, someone looks at their schedule, they have an opening. Sure, you know, it’s not something that you would. You would plan a trip that way, way, your tonto. But but there is, you have some anker visits, you know, pretty solid ones, you know? We’re not going very unlikely to bail, right, and then you can build the other ones around. Yeah, and sometimes a short notice actually is convenient for bianca and works out. Um, just remind listeners, of course, that the name of the book is no one dreams. Of being a fundraiser. That’s it barnes and noble it’s an amazon find book retailers near you well online. Yeah, find online book retailers a click away so, you know, live listeners. You could check it out right now. Go to barnes. I happened like barnes and noble. Okay, check it out. Well, well, well. I continue the chat with while we continue to chat with with mitch channeling you channeling you trying to think, what would you do? Or that person asked? Course, i don’t know who the person is, but i’m amusing myself opening yourself up to donors. You talk about some donors, you’ll share your music passed with something long, but but the personal connection means a lot, right? Yeah, it does. It does to an extent, because generally my philosophy is i mean, you need that personal connection because you want trust and you want a real genuine report. But at the end of the day, it’s about the donor and that’s something that i’ve learned is that generally you find that if i’m talking too much on a meeting it’s probably not going that well because they’re not opening up. I’m not learning from them. Right. So it’s, like you need that, that human connection and that hopefully a long term relationship, but it’s it’s it’s about there experiences, as i say in the book there ah ha, moments, you know that how they really feel about the organization kind of getting to that understanding and and that that their emotional connection to the mission of the organization you’re representing that’s what it’s all about it’s out it’s both yeah, i’d love to end there, but we have another minute together. Okay, i think i want to say okay, say it in a minute. In a minute. Yeah, okay. Oh, you mean from now for milk? When? It’s morning. Say for a minute, i’m just not that smart. When i was going to say was, you know, getting back to when i was saying earlier that i look to major gift officers like they’re another species of human, if there’s anyone out there who’s thinking about the fields, working as a gift officer, i just i see myself in part of the reason why i wrote the book is to be a champion for the field because i think it’s the best job in the world again, as i was saying, and it’s so powerful to be able to help make a difference for our cause and to meet wonderful people and it’s, i feel very grateful that i stumbled upon this, and even if you think you couldn’t do it, you should still try it. If there’s an inkling of the suspicion, you might want to do it, give it a try, pursue it, dip your toe into it. Maybe ask someone you work with to take you on a visit and experiment and you might surprise yourself because i never would have thought a million years. I’d want to do this now i feel like i found my calling that’s a great place to wrap it up. Great. Thank you so much. Misha linker, professional fundraiser in education and author of no one dreams of being a fundraiser. My unexpected journey from music to major gifts thank you again. Thank you very much. Next week, scale up and be sustainable. Kathleen kelly janice will be with me to talk about her new book, social startup success. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot. Com that’s a good word, were supported by pursuing online tools for smaller midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuing capital p weinger sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers. Wetness. Cps dot com, appaloosa counting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and tell us credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tell us our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer show social media is by susan chavez, and his very cool music is by scott stein of brooklyn. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff 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 org’s somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gifts. 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 sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for October 7, 2016: Fundraiser Incentive Pay

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Oppcoll 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 thrown into neff row megally if you let me down with the idea that you missed today’s show fundraiser incentive pay university of pittsburgh has created a career ladder to stem frontline fundraiser turnover, and it includes incentive pay, explaining pits, innovation and helping you think through whether this makes sense at your organization or dave dalessandro and liz cooper fund-raising administrators at the university on tony’s take two the ntc videos we’re sponsored by pursuing 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 fundraiser incentive pay from the august twenty eighth twenty fifteen show. I’m very glad to welcome dave dalessandro and liz cooper to the show. Dave is associate vice chancellor for university development at the university of pittsburgh and liz cooper is senior executive director for development at the university. David liz, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having us for having a it’s? A pleasure, dave. I don’t. I’m not sure we’ve ever had a a chancellor or vice chancellor on the show before. This sounds like a very regal terms. You got a crown born there. What? You’re sitting on a throne. What? Mrs chancellor? Well, associate vice chances are a lot like vice presidents and banks. Okay, a lot of you. Okay, but they prefer chancellor. Essentially, i sit over all of the individual fund-raising for the university, uh, plan giving prospect research all the analytics no, and lose his second in command. Okay, uh, it’s, just interesting that some places, i guess mostly i see it, and i guess it is in universities. Prefer chancellor over president. I don’t know right now. I don’t know where that. Okay, i don’t know it just right. It sounds, uh, sounds like royalty. All right, liz, you and i are ah, you and i are the now the libyans know. What is your responsibility, liz? As senior executive director for development? Sure. So i oversee all of the central fund-raising operation. So i hyre orient and supervise all of our fundraisers that are located here. Centrally. I also oversee fund-raising efforts. That go on in some of our smaller schools, for example, school of education or the school of social work. And i also work closely with our regional campuses, all right? And of course, ah, i wanted teo let you know that i’m a carnegie mellon alum and no, carnegie mellon is just down the street from pit, so we’ll have no, we’ll have no trouble with you. Please way won’t hold it against don’t yeah, that’s sure it is. Two against one. So, what am i talking about? Yeah. All right. All right. Dave, why don’t you get us started? This incentive pay and the career ladder. And why was this important to do it pit, huh? I’m gonna have i’m gonna have loose start off on that. I look at this already is an anarchist anarchist already? I okay, this is what is what happens when you deal with this. What happens when you’re dealing with a chancellor? I see. Ok. Ok, go ahead, liz. You start off. Um, you know, i think that it seemed like every moment i was checking my email. I was receiving an article or a blogger about some big hyre education fund-raising. Issues um, two of which were the recruitment of major gift officers and the retention of major gift officers. During our campaign, we were fortunate to have a group of very successful and talented individual major gift officers that are loyal to the university. But as you know wherein one campaign ends, you start thinking about another, and we knew we were going to grow. So we wanted to address these issues recruitment and retention of major gift officers at pitt before they became ah common seem to us, if that makes sense. In other words, it was a common theme across hyre education, and we didn’t want it to be an issue here. And what do you see as the downside of just make sure everybody’s eyes on the same page with this the downside of a frequent turnover of fundraisers? I think continuity is a big themes that you’ll find in development. Continuity is good for donors. It’s good for the employees. It’s. Good for the organization. Good for the bottom line. Um, when an individual major gift officer leaves the university, uh, that relationship that they developed with that individual major gift donor repaired and start over. Again, so all right, so yes, we want this continuity and donors prefer it donors prefer it sure they because they begin a relationship not only with pitt, but with that individual major gift officer. Yeah, for sure, dave, if you think i’m going to bring you in this conversation, you’re out of your head so you can hang up or whatever i don’t, it doesn’t matter to me. No, it sounded like there was something you were going to say, dave, you want to add something? Well, i think that one of the things that we learned was that it’s actually less expensive over the long run to retain your existing fundrasing not only have you spent time training them, and we spend a lot of time training our major gift officers, but the process of recruiting the process of, you know, matching salaries from from folks coming from larger cities or larger institutions actual becomes more expensive over time, so it seemed us that one of the things we wanted to do wass to control, uh, for those those problems when we were going from eleven major gift officers to probably thirty two, so you multiply all those problems when you’ve got three times more fundraisers and you’ve got a real problem of scale if people are coming and going, so that was a big hit was a big issue for us that, you know, once we had made this initial investment, we didn’t want to have to recoup it over and over again with new folks. Liz, you said you’re responsible for the hiring and training, so why don’t we? Why don’t we start with this? The career ladder idea and the incentive pay around around fundraiser orientation? What what’s what’s different now that you have this a method of evaluation and compensation? Sure, when there’s so many young, talented folks out there that have maybe two or three years of development, these millennials, when they came to me in an interview, would ask me, where will i be a pit in five years? Or where will i be a pit? In seven years? Prior to the career ladder, i would stare back at them, and i would not be able to answer them except with simple response of we hope that you’ll still be here. So, you know, this was a really when when this was established this was a really interesting way for us to tell that applicants there is a future for you here, and we have thought it through. How long have you been doing incentive pay and the and the career ladder, which we’re going to talk about? So we worked on the career rod, or for about eighteen months, and it was implemented in january. Okay, so we’re talking, oh, wow. All right, so just eight months or so, all right, but a lot of little lead time, a lot of thought went into it. So go back to the orientation question then was, how is training of new fundraisers different now? So a part of what we wanted to ensure was that we were orienting exceptional fundraisers and that’s, really, what the career ladder is based on is really those performers that are going above and beyond a successful and being exceptional part of that is us training them for the first three months of their employment to get up and running as quickly as possible. So learn how pit fund-raising tto learn how we do it. So we establish what we lovingly refer to as the academy it’s a week long intensive training, hands on experience taught by our own staff on all the things that we think they need to know as individual fund-raising individual gift fundraiser, for example, that they get a crash course on plan giving they get a crash course on our endowment, making the ask proposals agreement’s, etcetera so that we feel that after that week, they really do have a great face in what it takes to be an individual major gift officer here. And what about god? I was just going to add that part of that so is the explanation is the explanation of the career excuse me? Is the explanation of the career ladder? Yes, there is actually a booklet that they get that sets out, uh, all the requirements for them to in a period of three years be eligible for promotion. Okay? We’re we’re. We’re gonna we’re gonna go out a little early for a break. When we come back. We’re going to talk about what these elements are to being exceptional, there’s six of them and we’ll talk about how they fit into the career ladder. All that stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony. Martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Dahna liz let’s, let’s, turn to you. Would you please take off the six elements to prove that you’re an exceptional fundraiser? Sure. Well, we have. The first is our fund-raising visit number. Dollar raised. Agreement sent. Agreement’s accepted the total contact that they have in our in our database, and the last is origination guests. Okay. Thank you. Um, let’s, let’s. Define some terms. What’s, an origination gift and origination gift is a gift that the development officer excuse me. Let me go back. The origination gift is a gift where the prospect was never placed in what we call active management. In other words, ah, other universities use the term maybe a legacy or one that was kind of handed down from a previous development officer to another. Origination gifts are those gifts that were the relationship that was established by the gift officer cultivated, solicited and closed. So their new giver to the university at the major gift level. All right, all right. And to be exceptional, you what? You have to achieve a certain level or exceed. Or how do you prove that you’re exceptional across these six categories? Yeah. It’s. Okay. I’ll let dave kind of handle that. And what we what we determined to be exceptional. That’s. Ok, i’ll trust him. Go ahead. Yeah. One of one of the things that that the career ladder does is takes a traditional major gift officer position and breaks it into six steps. So at each step, step one step two, step three. Step forward, so on there are a set of performance standards, the initial performance standards are considered. This is your level of competency. This is what you’re supposed to be doing, and then you have the exceptional being in terms of money raised double that amount and all of these other factors are not all that different at both exceptional in regular. In other words, what we’re really trying to figure out is are you doing to baseline of activity? And how effective are you have taken that baseline and raising mohr gifts than the person sitting next to you? So at each level and exceptional person is always raising double the amount of money that another person in the class is raising for one so the ones might be exceptional. They can average five hundred thousand if they could propose to it to their only exceptional, they raise a million if they get to three, they’re only exceptional raise two million. If they get the for their only exceptional, they raise three million. Alright, so in this system it’s entirely possible to be promoted and be exceptional as a cr m one and never leave the c r m to level because you’re not exceptional at that level. All right, so let me just way have jog in jail on tony martignetti non-profit radio c r e m is probably pretty widely known but let’s, just make explicit. I assume that’s, constituent relationship manager, charitable relationship, charitable. See, i did not have a charitable relationship manager. Okay, okay, go ahead. Sorry. And, uh, yeah. That’s that’s. Kind of where we got away from the major gift officer term. Because we felt that terrible relationship manager actually is a title that expresses the job. Yeah, related. They’re managing charity relationship. Yeah, kind of like that. A charitable relationship manager. Okay, so do you to be exceptional. Do you have to do double the double the goal in all six of these categories? No. No. Okay. How does it work now? How does it work? What’s the formula. The formula is that let’s say you come in as what we call the c r m one. So you’re cr one and we tell him here’s what you need. All right. Need forty five fund-raising visits two hundred thousand new pledges. Six. Agreement sent four agreements. Accepted. A thousand total contacts into origination. Now, if you are exceptional, you’ll have forty five were mohr fund-raising visits. You’ll raise five hundred thousand maurin new pledges and gifts. You’ll have six agreement scent, or mohr for agreements, mohr, a thousand total contracts and three origination gifts. So if you manage to make all those numbers all right, over a period of three years, in other words, sex, your average of doing at over three years. Yes. Then, at the end of the third year, you’re eligible for a promotion, it would be promoted to c r, m to two. Okay, okay, what is probably should just define this earlier, but what is the total contacts? Total contacts are all the things that you put in the database, which indicate an attempt to maintain communication with the donor. So emails, letters, phone calls, visits, okay, that’s, pretty liberal, and then and then one of the categories i think the first one lives mentioned is is actual visits fund-raising visits, right? That that assumes that that’s a face to face meeting, yes, okay, but here’s the difference and, you know, we’ve had people say, boy, that number that numbers, so we have to make two hundred, visit. Well, the only way you get credit for a fund-raising visit is that you have an actual discussion about a major gift, and in fact, all of our folks are supposed to call and say i would like to come and talk to you about your philanthropic relationship with the university of pittsburgh, so these aren’t alumni visits, these aren’t people you casually run into at a football game or a basketball game. We still count those, but you don’t get credit. We’ve got you know, we’ve got a staff that actually vets all the contact reports, determine whether you get credit or not for that visit i used to be a planned e-giving director at two colleges before i before i became a plan giving consultant. Yeah, i do. I do play e-giving telling now, but i used to be plain giving director i i’m trying to decide whether i would have loved this or hated it. I think it’s i think i would have loved it because i kind of like the office competition. Although buy-in both these shops, i had started the plan giving program, so there was no other planned e-giving fundraiser. But you could i’m sure we could have worked out a way of comparing my work to that of frontline major gift officers, but sure. Okay, now i think i would have i don’t know if i would have succeeded, but i think i would have liked it. I don’t know. I might have been out after three years. Why did yu let’s turn to lose? But is why? Why a thirty six month average? And and also, how does that work? If someone goes out on maternity leave or or family medical leave or, you know, has an injury or something like that. But first, why the why the thirty six months we felt like three year rolling average. It was a great way to measure exceptional performance and that you’re not relying on a successful year and you’re not relying on a particularly poor year, either. So for example, let’s say, ah, major gift officer has ah, year where they raised one point, one point, one million dollars it’s a great fund-raising year well, then, if you take the three year rolling average, you can’t just do nothing for the next two years and and know that you’re going to get promoted. There’s still work to be done? Um, so and on the flip side, if you have a year where you raise only two hundred thousand dollars, you still have plenty of time to make it up, so we thought it was fair in that sense. Come on, the thirty six months is what hr helped us to find it as active employment. So if they are, go on maternity leave, for example, essentially their performance cycle thes thirty six months pause and it picks right back-up and thirty six months so that’s, another thing that i want to mention is that we don’t run on the fiscal year, for example. We run on a calendar year from the date of their hyre they’re hired on march first, they’re judged on twelve year cycle for a year, one from march first to march first, so if they were to go on maternity leave on march first and then it would pause for the next three months, it would then pick up on june first, and that would be the end of their thirty six months of that makes it okay. So each person’s anniversary is the date of hyre correct and and there’s a if there’s a chunk missing for medical leave or whatever, then you would just tack on more time at the end. You got it. Okay, okay. Does that does that trouble you at all that or how did you think through this one? Everybody’s got a different anniversary date. I mean, putting aside the record keeping well, we’ll get to that. I mean, that’s a ministerial we could deal with that. But the different people have different anniversaries when they’re thirty six months is up. Does that? Does that concern fundraisers at all? Is that concern you? Well, i think that they believe that that’s actually extremely. Fair so let’s say you start in september if you were running on a fiscal year, you’ve only got nine months of performance, so at the end of three fiscal years, you actually haven’t worked for thirty six months. You work for thirty three months this way, your guarantee that you get the full thirty six months for your promotional review and, uh, from what i know from the folks who who work here and now live under this, they love the certainty of all this, they know when they’re going to be up for a promotional review, which almost never exists in any organisation i worked at before, one of which was carnegie mellon you got you got booted out all for emotion. No review was something that you might ask your supervisor. Hey, i’ve been doing pretty good for two years, you know, when you’re going to look at, you know, what else can i be? How can i be promoted? And that was always this fog kind of answer this way. They know at the end of that thirty six months they’re going to sit down and they’re going to be able to review their last three. Years of work. I’m sorry. You got booted out of carnegie mellon. Pardon? I said, i’m sorry. You got booted out of carnegie mellon. Yeah, well, that crazy ideas. Okay, i’m so uncertain. That didn’t happen. So so is there not a performance evaluation? Interim during the thirty six months there is there’s still an annual praise a ll, um and and that’s kind of the more, um, qualitative way of looking at this. So each annual appraisal has five performance factors, and these performance factors are what we’ve identified to be an exceptional individual, major gift officer. They are perseverance, problem solving, functional technical skills, interpersonal communication and kind of most importantly, donor focus. So that it’s not just about the numbers and i will and i when i would like to say that individual major guest officers tend to be numbers driven people. And they like this career ladder because it’s very transparent and it’s very numbers driven. But to us, it’s not just about the numbers to us it’s about ensuring that there still meeting the needs of the donor and these annual appraisals help us determine that there still totally donor-centric now i would think that even in these annual appraisal, though, you’re you’re evaluating the reviewing with the fundraiser, their performance, how they’re doing time versus goal over there for their thirty six month period. Yep, you got it. Okay, so there’s that there’s that too. But but okay, but also call it a more qualitative assessment. Then then the thirty six months, which would be that’s, that’s, pretty quantitative and numerical in the thirty six month review. Okay, well, the thirty six month review so here’s how it fits together, tony. All right, so at the end of the thirty six months so everybody every morning gets there gets their current running total on their screen so they know exactly where they stand. Oh, my, everyone. So at the end of the first year, they will get their current totals and their their average. At the end of the second year, they’ll get their current total stand. How that averages so they’re always they always know how hard they have to be working to get where they need to get. Okay. And, uh, that becomes that’s important, because when they sit down for there promotional review their very well aware of whether or not they’re going to make it or not, because the numbers are there, right? You have seen it and seen it every day during your appraisals. You cannot have needs improvement in any aspect. If you get it needs approval, you will not be promoted because exceptional employees don’t need to improve on one of these five aspects, right? And the biggest one that trips everybody up dysfunctional technical skills. Handup uh, one of the things that’s functional technical skill is putting accurate information and timely in a timely manner on what you’re doing. And so we just have some folks who simply can’t get around the port again trip report or they put in inaccurate trip reports, and so they get a needs improvement and therefore they don’t get promoted because they’re not exception, i see, right? Even if, even if the numbers are there, even if the numbers you can’t need, you can’t need improvement in any of the five qualitative areas that liz mentioned. All right, so what’s the problem with the the triple i mean, i that that used to be really valuable to me when i came back. Although, you know, if you get behind, then you’re really screwed because you have to forget and hopefully had decent notes, but but okay, we just have about two minutes before a break, but that that’s what? You’d be surprised how long? Two minutes last what? What trips people up with the use of inaccurate trip reports? Like, how does that happen? One of the things that the one of the rules is that one of the only way you could get counted for a credit for a fund-raising visit one of the fifty six is you have to enter a next task. So a lot of folks, not a lot of folks, but there are those people who go to the visit and don’t think about what they’re going to do next, and so over time, these people who are actually competent fundraisers, all right, they meet their basic number, they get a backlog of information that they owe us, and they never catch up. Yeah, i mean, they never catch up. Now, if you keeping up with your visits yeah. It’s it’s hard plus, you know, administrative tasks and things. I definitely if you get yeah. Like i said, if you get behind and you agree right. Would you have just a minute? Liz, what happens if i come to you and tell you i got an offer at a competing? I got offered carnegie mellon and not surprisingly, you know, they’re going to pay me one half times what i’m making at pitt. How does that fit into the career ladder? What kind of nice about the career ladder is that we can say to that employee? Well, this is where we value. This is where we see you. This is where our our standards are. And this is where we see you at pitt. So if you feel that, uh, that a move to carnegie mellon or to wherever is the appropriate step for you at this time, we’re sorry to see you go, but this is where we value you. Okay? This being your current salary, we’re not current. We’re not matching. We’re not matching competing offers. No. Right? Ok. All right. Sounds fair. We got more coming up. Of course, we’re going to talk a little about the ethics of of all this and, uh, maybe get some donor reactions as well. And talk about the infrastructure you gotta have maur fundraiser. Incentive pay coming up first. Pursuant, they’re a smart company. They sponsor non-profit radio that’s all you really need to know. But beyond that, they rely on data metrics analysis. This is all quantitatively based, not tradition and popular wisdom based if we all relied on tradition, then places like pitt would not have career ladders and incentive pay. You need to raise more money, pursue it will help you, for instance there urine calculator, year end accelerator the year end accelerator pursuant, dot com slash you’re an accelerator, we be spelling spelling bees for non-profit fund-raising you wantto welcome millennials into your organization. These are ideal it’s, not your grandma’s spelling bee. You check out their video, which you’ll see. These events include live music and dancing stand up comedy fund-raising and they managed to work spelling in there too. He’s a great events from millennials, usually in a bar or restaurant, maybe a bowling alley. The furry fund is at we be spelling dot com now tony’s, take two. You know, i was at the non-profit technology conference in march. We shot thirty video interviews and the first ones are finally up my video and links to the first bunch of conference interviews are at tony martignetti dot com that’s. Tony’s take two here’s the rest of fundraiser incentive pay. David. Liz, you’re still with us, right? Yes. Ok. You ok? Thank you. I know you were sametz sam, let me know, but i just like to say a little affirmation. Um, let’s. See, i don’t know who wants to talk about this, there’s? Not really too much. But i just wanted to make it clear when you talk about incentive pay, i think there’s a possibility that people might be thinking of the ethical considerations and constraints that the association of fund-raising professionals f has on dh. The relevant sort of passages, i guess are that members of a f p shell not accept compensation or enter into a contract that is based on a percentage of contributions. Nor shall members except finder’s for your contingent fees. Well, this clearly that’s that’s. Really not that’s, not what’s going on here, right? Right. That’s not what’s going on. And no, there is no relationship between the amount of money anybody raises and there increase in salary. So this is not a okay. You did really good this year. So here’s twenty thousand dollars based on one percent of your increases, this is an actual an actual increase in their salary, their annual salary level and hr work with us to ensure that that compensation levels stayed within the university’s ranges for jobs that were classified like our jobs were classified and hr actually had no problem with this, we thought that would be a stumbling block, but they really didn’t see a problem with that. Because, you know, the alternative is that people walk in and say, i have an offer from cmu and it’s one and a half times what you’re paying me and what are you going to do and a most instant? Most places that i know and i’ve worked for a bunch of folks sit around a table and say, what do we want to keep that person or not? And, you know, that’s, basically what it’s what it’s, what it’s, based on right, and they kick it up, and so that drives a long term that drives your cost over because it’s not controllable, it’s not predictable and it’s hard to set up long term budgets when you say fifteen percent of the people in our community and asked for more money. So ethic. But we’re trying to do is say to somebody, if you, uh, you have a career here. And there is a a future that you can envision based on your perform. All right, hyre what has the fundraiser reaction been now since since january? And neither one of you wants to commented? Well, i can let let me talk about two examples without naming any schools involved. We hired someone from an ivy league school, and, uh, she basically said that she had no idea how she would get promoted at the school. She was that she had never seen anything like the career ladder where it says, if you do these things every three years, we’re going to look at the possibility of promoting you within the major gift class, so that made us feel really good, you know, that someone from an ivy league school thought this was great. Hyre and we, you know, recently hired someone for from a private school who also said the same thing now what’s nice about the career ladder is we were able to bring that person in at a four uh, because she had ten years of experience as a major give fund-raising yes, so we’re not limited to just bringing people in in one, and when we sent the numbers over to h r, they said, well, that person fits exactly. Into who we defined as a four so we don’t have any problem with that compensation, and it actually worked out wonderfully dahna and most people when we come in and handed this booklet during the interview, they’re just amazed that that this thing has been thought out to the details been thought out has anybody i’m going to challenge us to see on the other side has anybody either applicant or employees. When it was implemented, i objected and on departed because of it, no one’s left yet, okay and apprehend list as you’re interviewing applicants, potential fundraisers, anybody said, i don’t think this works for me again. I mean, the young applicants are mother of their millennials or it’s a generational thing, you know, they want to know what their future is going to be like in an organization, and so most of them are very appreciative that we’ve kind of thought it through another existing staff. You know, the reaction has been very positive and i think it’s in large part because it’s so transparent, all right? And yes, it sze clear everyone, everyone knows they’ve been knows, and i think that he knows the state level. Of trust that this engenders it is very powerful for, you know, a group of fundraisers and, uh, one more point on that is we’ve had three promotional reviews to, uh, manage to make the jump to another level, and one did so that’s the way it goes, right, all right. And the one who didn’t ah, well, let’s not say his or her name, but nobody listens to this show, so it really doesn’t matter. You don’t worry about that, but the okay, so for people who don’t make the so then they’re still retained a tte the organization yes, there’s capped and now we’re going in thirty six months will look att promoting you the possibility of promoting you again? No, actually that’s not the way it works, the way it works is what we do is we drop off the first year of their three year total, and they’re that then in their third year again, so i don’t understand that. What do you mean? Ok, so the person who came up had worked here for three years and he didn’t make it. So what happens is we then say, we’re going to take all the Numbers from year 1 and drop him. And now you are in your new third year, so you can come up again on your next anniversary. Oh, in one year, okay, so i’m now right. I’m now finished my second year, and i’m entering my third because we drop the first one off. Yes, okay, well, that’s, good. Presumably, they’re getting better if you had a great, great first here and then you went down that’s. Not that doesn’t work to your advantage, but presumably fundraisers are improving. Not always, though you might have, you might have a spike one year and and not be able to match it in. You’re, too, but that happens a lot. Three other thing that’s important about all this is when you move from a one, two, one two all your previous numbers is zeroed out so you don’t carry those successes forward in terms of the career ladder, you carry the prospects forward, but those numbers disappear. And so now you’re starting from ground zero again. Yeah, so, you know, it seems like, oh, wow, you know, all these people get promoted over and over again, but in fact, they won’t be, because now they’ve gotta prove that they’re exceptional with the other level, and now they have to raise more money because we paid them or so they have to raise more money, and they have to do even better to be exceptional at that level. Yeah. Give us a sense of what the percentage increases from fromthe levels, can you can you do that? Yeah, we could do that. It’s, i’m going to say it’s between ten and twenty percent, okay, across all the levels, do you think? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, but that’s. Yeah, but here’s here’s the thing the university of pittsburgh has given out a raise of one point. Five percent for the last three years. Pary here, right, so that’s half percent over over three years, and you have the chance to go somewhere between ten and twenty. Yeah, yeah, ok, yeah, that makes sense. It should, your exceptional. You’re only being promoted your exceptional so exceptional peoples get the exceptional increases. Let’s, move to the little infrastructure, little record keeping well, ministerial stuff. What do you what do you need to put in place if you’re if you’re goingto take this on? Well, the first thing you need is some way to validate and verify all the information that goes into counting all these things you’re supposed to count, right? Almost everybody has that. What we have is we have two people who are assigned. Do as i say, validate all the information it goes in. So, you know, that becomes very important. The second thing is evaluation of gifts on some gifts. We have a sliding scale. So certain request, depending on the age of the person, are not going to be valued at one hundred percent. Yes. Okay, uh, you know, so, you know, you want to be fair about these insurance policies that university doesn’t own are not valued at all are credited at all right? Because that’s that’s rather krauz remainders knew all those things have have values based on, you know, kind of the standard way of valuing things in the campaign. Right? In other words, all those numbers have to be validated. In other words, they’ve planned giving is getting screwed. That’s what’s happening because i could really i could get lots of bequests. But bequests are revocable and yeah, is there an age at which a bequest would count at maybe not at not a future value. If the person reveals the amount. That’s just first of all, let’s. See how you like it? I think it’s, i think it’s. So i have this thing here. Got sixty five. They get one hundred percent. Okay, let’s, just let’s. Just passed it on age sixty five. Okay, so requests, if they’re over sixty five hundred, if they’re under sixty five to get a five percent discount per year to the age fifty five. Okay. That’s, actually. Pretty generous, by the way, liz, that already? I think so. Liz had provided that about thirty seconds ago. But that’s all right. Um, uh, yeah. That’s. Pretty generous. I was thinking more like seventy or seventy five. Wow. So full face value for aged sixty five. Ok. I think you bring pretty generous there. That’s. That’s. Very nice. Now that that presumes that, of course, the plan giving donors is willing to reveal the amount a lot. A lot would rather not. And this also put some pressure on the plan, giving officers to inquire right? And of course they need what we call letter of testamentary intent. Yes. It’s got to be something in writing, okay? And there’s. So you’re not discounting the fact that this remains a revocable gift? No. Okay, but you are discounting that on the life insurance side. You said if it’s a life insurance beneficiary there’s no credit now the university’s nifty insurance is owned by the donor and doesn’t transfer the ownership to the university. Right? All right, that’s, that’s the problem, right? The university’s just named as beneficiary. Right? Okay. And that that doesn’t count. There’s no credit for that, that beneficiary designation. And i’ll tell you what you know, one of the things that scare one of these things came about is is, you know, meeting with someone who says, well, you know, i’m with this i’m with this corporation and i’m on the board, and so i’m going to put you in it’s beneficial for the corporation. All right, on the key map, they’re not key, man. You know what they allow you to do that we’ve had those things just disappear when the corporation disappears. Most recently what? Hines when it was bought. Oh, heinz, of course. Very big in pittsburgh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I could see that. On the corporate policy said. Okay, because i’m if i was one of your plan giving officers, i would i would question that life insurance beneficiary designation. If i got it, i got a letter that says, you’re a beneficiary of my life insurance policy and, of course, that share the beneficiary designation form. Ah, you don’t see that is equivalent to ah, to a bequest for a sixty five year old no, no. Okay, good, we’ll take a break, not because of that, not because that the screaming with the break was coming anyway. You’re not cut off, don’t worry, stay with us, okay? 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 philantech 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 guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Lest you thought that i forgot about live listener love, certainly i did not. Well, we can’t can’t send live listen live by city and state today because they because we are pre recorded where we can advance, but of course the love goes out to each live listener. I just don’t know exactly where you are podcast pleasantries those listening in the time shift over ten thousand of you, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing as you’re listening pleasantries out toe all the vast podcast listeners and those very important affiliate affections are am and fm stations across the country. There may be ten thousand affiliate listeners who knows, but i don’t really know the stations don’t have the ppm data, so maybe this don’t know, maybe there’s another ten thousand, who knows? But anyway, however many however few affiliate affections out to our am and fm station listeners. Liz let’s, let’s bring you back to the conversation. Is there anything more that you want to tell us about sort of infrastructure that it has to be in place to make this career ladder of success? Yeah, i think what’s important is is looking a little bit at your own analytics. So we talked a little bit about, you know, pits Numbers 45 visits fund-raising hundred thousand six agreement sent etcetera those numbers were not thought off the top of our heads are plucked from the sky we used data from our own individual major gift officers going back far fifteen years individual gift officers that were that have a very exceptional record individual gift officers that didn’t and came up with the numbers looking at the data that way so i think it’s important to tell your listeners that if they’re thinking about using a career ladder as a model for individual gift officers that it’s important to kind of examine your organization and and and what kind of data makes sense for you and looking at your own analytics and what those analytics tell you all right dave, anything, anything more you want to contribute to the to the infrastructure question? Well, i think that when you said when you set this up, you have to have some set of folks who are worried about the impending review dates so that all the information is gathered together. All the information is put together that you do this in sufficient time so that any increase in pay is cleared by hr and buy your vice chancellor. You know, these big organizations, uh, you know, the cat time seems to creep up on you will be sitting there, especially the first two we did after january, you know, the place was basically more or less closed christmas spray, and suddenly you’re coming up on this deadline that you have to meet, and you’ve got it, you’ve got to be ahead of that, so you have to have people care about it and our curating the information, and then you’ve got to get everything in line with all the people have to know you’re going to do this so that when the person comes in, you basically handed the letter says congratulations or we’re sorry that it didn’t work this. Time, but yeah, i mean, it’s not the kind of it doesn’t run on its own. Okay? And that’s actually could play into the the hands of a small and midsize shops advantageously because they don’t have different levels. They may not even have a person who manages hr. It might be the it might be the executive director taking care of hr so you don’t have to. You have to worry about getting that, i guess that administrative buy-in we’re talking about a leaner organization, so there may be advantages. They’re making it a little easier too, and wear something like this. Yeah, definitely. I mean, once you decide once, once you decide what exceptional means. Uh, then i think that’s the big that’s, the big leap. Okay, what does it mean to be exceptional? And when you determine what it means to be exceptional, whatever, whether you have three, four, seven, eight however many criteria you have, our metrics you have, you know, it could be managed in any size shop. But i think where becomes difficulty is where, uh, you don’t really identify wood exceptional performances, right? And of course, liz, you made the point that it should come from your own data, your own analytics, not from some benchmarking survey of what’s, typical in organizations of your size or something like that. That’s. Exactly right. I mean, you know, when we look at pitt, or if you look at harvard, those that data might look completely different. And so, i think, it’s beneficial tio to look within your own organisation, because you really can’t control where the numbers fall. When it’s your own data. Yeah, yeah. How about approval for this, david? Was this something that that needed to reach the board or no? Well, actually, this needed to work its way up through the chancellor’s office. Okay, yeah. So we started hr and, uh uh, it was approved by hr after months and months of work. And then it went up to the chancellor’s chief of staff and then that’s at the level at which it was approved. Latto i was thinking that for a smaller, much smaller organization or non-profit this might go to the board, right? Yeah. I was wondering presentation aboard because it has somewhat of an effect on the budget. But it’s, not it’s, not as overwhelming as you thinking. Here’s actually, advantage. If i have one minute. This is this is very interesting. You have actually, you have just about a minute. All right, come on. It. So, uh, remember that we have these folks who are scattered all the way through the year, and so from a budget standpoint, the actual amount in that year that they’re going to make might be cut by fifty percent. In other words, the actual outlay because of when they started. So you know, the way it works is that you actually have. We have the three year anniversary date for twelve people already calculate, so we can estimate based on the numbers that we have thus far, what the cost in the budget would be over the next three to four years, which is really from a budgeting standpoint. Really value? Yes, i see the value. That. Okay. All right. We have to leave that there. Liz. I don’t know if you are aware dave volunteered you oftheir to accept questions that people listeners might have. Are you willing? Are you, in fact ah, consenting to that? They’re more than welcome to e mail me at sea lives at pit p i t dot edu see liz at p i t dot edu yet. All right, we have to leave it there, and i want to thank you both, dave. Endless. Thanks so much for sharing everything. Thank you, tony. Appreciate a real pleasure. Okay. Next week, gene takagi on unpaid interns. What you don’t know could hurt you. If you missed any part of today’s show. Find it on tony martignetti dot com. 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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 p m so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealists took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe, add an email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is, we’re here now that’s. Why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. 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Nonprofit Radio for November 6, 2015: Collective Impact & User Personas

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Kimberley Jutze: Collective Impact

Kimberley Jutze

Kimberley Jutze explains what collective impact is and what you need in place to assure the success of your CI network. She’s chief change architect at Shifting Patterns Consulting and we talked at Opportunity Collaboration 2015.

 

 

Debra Sharp: User Personas

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Me with Debra Sharp

What is a persona? Why are these fictitious people important to your website? How do you build them? Debra Sharp is digital director at Manifest Communications and we talked at the 2014 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) hosted by NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network.

 

 

 


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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 we’ve got a new affiliate. Kors chaos eighty nine point three fm in olympia, washington chaos radio from the capital city chaos in the capital welcome welcome chaos that makes two capitals that non-profit radio is in also km jozy fm in salem, oregon. We’re taking over the west sacramento you’re next. Welcome chaos. We have a listener of the week, stephanie zito she’s at wandering zito xero tio and she tweeted, quote, if you’re a non-profit leader, you should be listening to tony martignetti end quote she’s, a very smart woman. Congratulations, stephanie zito non-profit radios listener of the week i’ve got a bunch of turncoat friends to say hello to my networking group the b n i backstabbers meeting for lunch without me right now. Right now at the place i recommended jack’s on west forty first street. The food is very good. I hope you choke on it and that’s independently. Opie choke independent. Not a collective joke. I want the fifth person who chokes tohave to witness the first four choking before him or her unbelievable untrammeled malevolence nonetheless, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with brad east alsace if i had to digest the idea that you missed today’s show collective impact kimberly jets, he explains what collective impact is and what you need in place to assure the success of your c i network she’s chief changed architect at shifting patterns, consulting and we talked that opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen and user personas what is a persona? Why are these fictitious people important to your website? How do you build them? Deborah sharpe is digital director at manifest communications, and we talked at the twenty fourteen non-profit technology conference hosted by n ten the non-profit technology network. I’m tony steak, too sincerity trumps production value we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising their data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing to dot com here is kimberly jesse with collective impact welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage at the opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen i’m with kimberly jet c we are on the pacific ocean at the opportunity collaboration kimberly is chief change architect at shifting patterns consulting shifting patterns is a beak or that works with change. Makers to enhance financial and organizational sustainability she’s helped organizations in africa, asia, europe and north america. They’re at shifting hyphen patterns dot com and you’ll find her on twitter shift pat consultant can’t really welcome to the show thank you so much, tony. I appreciate you having me as a gift, i guess. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks. I love it. And we’re on the ocean. Yeah, uh, the sun is setting. Uh, well, we we got maybe an hour or so before sunset roughly. The ocean is beautiful and got nice breeze. That’s, right? This is great. I can’t think of a better location to radio anywhere. I cannot either. It doesn’t beat the new york city studio. I’m sorry, sam. This is better. We’re talking about networks for social change and collective impact. What? I see the phrase collective impact a lot. What is it? What are we talking about? So collected is an approach to developing networks. And so essentially what it’s about it’s. A more robust form of developing and network. And so what happens is a group of organizations will come together and they could be all non-profits they could be a mix of non-profits as well as businesses and government agencies, and they come together because they have a common goal that they want to achieve, and they realize they can’t do it on their own and one of the pre conditions for a successful it. A collective impact is making sure that there’s enough resource in place, there’s actual leader, but basically someone who’s a champion for the effort. Okay? And in addition to that, making sure that there’s some shared measures okay, we’ll get into the details. I just, uh i’m gonna ask you to talk a little bit louder when you when you get your next chance, okay oppcoll about it. All right? So this could be you said non-profits and for-profit and government coming together. We’re not just talking about collectives of strictly non-profit that’s correct. Although it can be non-profits as well. It depends on what’s what’s what? Why they’re coming together. Okay, what? Distinguished for me between collective impact and collaboration? Sure, there’s. A lot of what i see. The buzzword collaboration a lot. Yes. So collected is actually an approach to collaboration. It’s a much more robust approach. Where there’s a common agenda first. Of all there’s, some shared measures and there’s a champion who’s leading the effort. Okay, fair to say that it’s more formal than a collaboration. Yes, it’s more formal and there’s also a support system in place because there’s what’s called a backbone organization and so a backbone organization is an organization that provides support to all of the members of the collective impact effort. Okay, we’re gonna get there because that’s a new organization that gets form not necessarily this early, okay, we’ll get through it all right, but you typically wouldn’t buy-in. I don’t know. Maybe i shouldn’t say, but a mere collaboration. It yeah, there’s, different clothes, there’s, different kinds of collaboration, so collaboration could be a partnership. It could be a coalition. It could be a network. It could be an alliance. It could be an association there’s all different types of collaborating with him. Where does collective impact distinguish itself? Yes, a collective impact distinguishes itself because it’s not necessarily a type of collaboration. It’s a method it’s, a method for bringing it about. Okay, okay. Uh when is it appropriate for an organisation to start thinking about creating a network like the one we’re like what we’re talking about? Sure, yeah there’s certainly some conditions that need to be in place. So first of all, there has to be an interest in partnering with other organisations. So we need to get our board involved in making this decision or in exploring it or no. Yeah, i think you probably would want to consult with your board and have a conversation with them. Another factor that’s really important to take into account is the kind of issue that you’re working on. Is it an issue where it makes sense to work with other organisations? Is it a large, complex issue like, uh, like domestic violence? Sure. Poverty alleviation? Absolutely. What opportunity? Collaboration is all about you talking about big issues like this not getting a change to the local traffic law regarding pedestrians and bikes. Right? Well, that could be a large company. It’s. A bed. And you were going to see you like new york. You have that’s? Yeah. So it’s the kind of issue where there’s a lot of different stakeholders. And they are all affected by the issue. And they have a stake in action. What happens? That’s? A more appropriate issue, as you were, wouldn’t make sense would be something where it would just be a program that could sort of address that particular issue. I suppose you’ve been working on this. Your agency has been working on it for some time, and you’ve made some progress, but you don’t feel like there’s big attraction toward a goal is that appropriate, then is, like it’s a bigger problem than one organization can handle that’s? Absolutely right, yes, that’s, exactly right it’s an issue that one organization can’t handle on its own and there’s a need to work with other organisations collaboratively to come up with a solution, right? How do we figure out which other organizations those should that’s a great question. So a lot of times what happens is you’ll start off with a fairly small group and it could be within the same organization, or it could be other organizations that kind of know each other and they’ll come together and they’ll talk about it’s like, hey, we’ve got this problem, we’re all struggling to solve it. We’re coming at it from different angles. How can we address this? And then what will happen is one of the one of the first steps is to figure out doesn’t actually make sense. Does it make sense for us to work together? Are the advantages of collaborating worth the potential risks that are involved. And some of the things ovaries, qualitative stuff. You know, there’s not really gonna be a measure of this it’s. Gonna be opinions, feelings. There how you interact with the other potential stakeholders thatyou might bring in mrs all very kind of squishy stuff that’s a great that’s, a great insight, and so there are so much i have one great question, okay, two out of twelve or so badly i’m sure yes, you’re absolutely right. There is a relational aspect to it, and there is what’s called the soft side of collaboration where you’ve got to focus on the relationships. But there are there are some metrics. So for example, the collective impact forum, which is an online network of resource, is for people that are involved in collective impact, they actually have what’s called a feasibility chart, and they actually ask some questions like so, first of all, is this the problem that effects people and altum organizations that are coming at it from different angles? So it probably makes sense to look a collective impact, you know, our their resource is in place to address this particular issue. So so things of that nature, where can we find this organization? Yeah, so it’s www dot collective impact forum dot org’s and if you look under the resource is manual, you’ll see. It it’s called a feasibility tool. Okay, cool. I look, i love these resources for listening. All right? So, there’s gonna be a lot of due diligence that goes into this too? I mean, let’s say, you know, it’s, another non-profit or one of the organization’s you’re considering bringing is another about profit or four or corporation too. You gotta do your due diligence to make sure that that the organization, whichever it is, is sustainable, viable. They have a decent, strong board. They have leadership that’s committed to this that’s all you gotta do a lot of diligent that’s, absolutely right. And regardless of whether you used collective impact or any other approach, it’s really important to do your due diligence? Yes, absolutely. And so that’s kind of that kind of goes into some of the risks that are involved in collaboration. So for example, if you don’t do your due diligence up front, like you said, if you don’t check off some of the things that you mentioned, then there’s the risk that partnership won’t work. Another factor another challenge that’s involved is in power dynamics in the relationship he goes egos, even agendas, even agendas like for example. Some partners that might be large organizations that have a lot of resource is they might have a specific agenda, and it may be being an unequal partnership if they have a lot of power. So that’s another factor that used to be taken into account. They didn’t think that shooting getting ding, ding, ding ding 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 how do you how do you level the playing field? I mean, if you know that this large organisation is gonna be valuable to you, can you level the playing field so that there’s equal power across all the all the members? I certainly think it’s possible and that’s why it’s so important up front to kind of talk about how are we going to form this partnership and focus on the relationships that are involved and that’s really fundamental? And i think a lot of times what gets organizations into trouble is they’re interested in working together, and they moved too quickly into action, and they don’t pay enough attention. Teo what’s going on behind the scenes in terms of the duitz bilich dilgence due diligence factors and also in terms of the relationship dynamics. And so i think one way to do that is to have a conversation up front about what is our purpose, what turned and us for being here and also talking about whatever are one of the resource is that we’re going to commit what does some of the rules that we’re actually going to play? Because i could i see a situation where there’s a lot of excitement in the beginning. Oh, this is gonna be great. We’re going to solve the problem is so much short of time. If then if we were all working alone let’s, move ahead and you have to take a step back. That’s absolutely right, it’s so fundamental to take a step back and think about i mean it’s kind of interesting. So the process for developing collaborative relationship is really similar to kind of what we’re doing here and so opportunity, collaboration, it’s all about convene, connect and collaborate. And so the process of developing a collaborative relationship is very similar. It’s about painting it’s about bringing people together, it’s doing community mapping, finding out who is in these communities that’s affected by that particular problem and what is their role? And is there room and doesn’t make sense to include them in in in the particular collaboration? And then once you figured out, you know who the key players are who’s involved and you start bringing them together, then you need to talk about what’s our purpose, what’s our goal. What do we want to achieve? And there needs to be a strategy behind that. And then on top of that, you also talk about the process, the process of working together, the softer side, like the due diligence, like the relationship building all of those things air fundamental. And then once you’ve gotten those two pieces in place, then you can start moving into action and then measuring the impact of the results that we get the measurement too. Yeah, shouldn’t this be all be part of a written document? Yes, absolutely. And so one of the best practices for collective impact is having what’s called a framework a strategic framework where you actually write down you, who are the key players. What one of the goals you know, what’s our mission. You what are the resource is there gonna be brought to bear on this? Who is the backbone organization? What is their role so typically a backbone organization? Yeah, so a backbone organization. They play a support role for the for the collaboration work that occurs and it’s really fundamental in a lot of times collect collaborative efforts don’t succeed because there isn’t a support mechanism in place and so phone organisation it could be an existing organisation. It could be a member of that collaborative partnership or that collaborative relationship that takes on that role, it could be forming a new entity like you mentioned so there’s a variety of different options that are there. But the main goal mean purpose is to be able to support that effort. And by that i mean being a champion for that effort, making sure that there’s progress that there’s some quick winds in place, continuing to make sure there’s mo mentum, um, establishing linkages between between members of the collaborative effort fund-raising could be absolutely make-a-wish absolutely making sure their resource is in place. Ok, so if it’s not well, yeah, if it’s not a new organization, then all the organizations have to contribute. Resource is to the to the backbone, or one of them has to contribute. Resource is maybe one again, maybe one is outside that’s, a big part of their contribution, but we have to devote resources to this. Absolutely, yeah, there has to be part time staff that’s, right funding technology. Yeah, everything that all the organs that all the partner organizations have. And if and if it’s a new organization, if the backbone is going to be something new, then i mean same thing. It’s gotta be staffed, incorporated and funded, etcetera. Exactly. Okay. Exactly right. Do you, seymour? Where? It’s. Where? There’s, a new backbone organization created vs it’s. Ah, it’s provided the backbone support is provided from one of the partner organizations. You see one more than the other that’s. A great question, andi. I think it really varies. So the ones that i’ve been involved in it’s been primarily newer new entities, but that have been formed. But i’ve certainly been aware of other cases where it’s being one organization that’s pretty well resourced in his able and willing to take on that role. It could even be a thunder that takes on that. So it really depends. Okay. Okay. That’s. Cool. Yeah. Fundez that’s committed to the to do the work you bring them, you bring the collaboration to them and see if they can provide this. Reese basically, backbone support. I mean, all this back off this stuff that we need keep the collaboration operating. That’s. Absolutely right. Okay. So let’s, talk about the measurement we gotta figure out if this thing is working two years later, we want to able to look back and say what we’ve done or not done. Yes, you’re talking about yeah, so measurement is really fundamental because just like in anything in life, how do you know what impact your having unless you’ve kind of taken a look and seen, you know, where the progress is based on where you want to go? And so with collective impact on any other, even any other kind of collaborative effort, it’s really important to make sure that there’s some sort of measurement in place so that starts with the strategy part, but defining up front what’s our goal what? Our objectives and and what are our measures gonna be? How we’re gonna measure progress toward gold, right? What were the indicators? Ok towards measuring progress? Um, i could see a place where agendas would come through in measurement, right? I mean, what you measure is goingto determine whether this is successful. And if one, organizations got an agenda, they might, you know, they might want to influence the measurement and sway it, by the way. There’s a soccer game in the background. So if you you hear cheering and kicking it’s ah, it’s soccer for football. If you’re listening in europe. Yeah. So measurement is measurement is pretty important. Yes, it is absolutely. And, teo, as you point out, you need to have indicators and agendas. Certainly is an issue that comes into play. I would say another issue to his resource is you need to make sure you have resource is in place to be able teo, to show what those outcomes are and to be able to take corrective action if it’s needed okay right, resources to support the measurement that’s, right? And yeah, okay, yeah, i could just i see a lot of potential conflict areas. That’s, right. New collaboration, right? And you also collaboration and with measurement to you also get a backbone organization that’s gonna take responsibility for making sure, like holding all the members accountable for providing the data to measure impact and for also consolidating that data, analyzing it and making sure it goes back to the members and the members. And even the backbone organization helps spread it out into the communities everyone’s aware of what’s going on is there a point where a number of organisations in the collaboration just becomes unwieldy? We can’t do this with ten organizations or age, and of course when i say organizations including government agencies, too, you said they could very well be mean, ten sounds like a sound ten sounds like too many is that? Is that wrong? Well, there really is no limit to what really matters is that you make sure that whatever issue it is that you’re working on, you’ve gotten a full representation of that particular system, so collective impact or even other collaborative efforts could be a small as two organizations that are partnering up to you hundreds of organizations that are working together. Obviously the more organizations have, the more important it is to have resource is in place, and the more critical it is to have a backbone organization there that can kind of play this fundamental role of making sure that everyone’s being held accountable for what they’re doing, members are communicating with each other, work is getting done, we have measurements for results and information is flowing and only within the within the within the collaboration, but also out into the community. All right, i think, it’s time you share an example, i’m talking a lot of abstract, yes, share an example. Sure. So one example i have is is a network that i’m currently working with, and they are face-to-face organization that promotes immigration reform. And so i’m working with the head of this particular organization or the head organization of this particular network. Yeah, with back-up they are the back booker, that’s, absolutely right. And so i’m working with the backbone. Teo, help them grow and diversify their funding so that they can better support their members. And so their members are actually independent. Non-profits there’s about because the back bone’s connected to the hip, bone, hip bone’s connected to the knee bone. Yes, i know. But there are other member organizations, right? Right. And so it’s all about helping them it’s helping head of backbone organization get the resources they need so that they could better serve their members. Okay, and how’s it going? Yeah, yeah. So this organization, um uh, i’m happy to mention them international justice for our neighbors. So national justice for our neighborhood neighbor. Yeah, and so they were formed, um, a few years ago. And so what they do to their home mission is to serve as a ministry of hospitality or low income immigrants throughout the united states that are in need of legal immigration services and can’t afford them. Who are the members? So the members are actually non-profits and they’re called justice for our neighbors, and so they’re located throughout the entire us, and essentially, what they do is they hyre full time attorney job. It is to provide these legal immigration services to low income immigrants who often have no place else to turn. And so my role is, as i said before it’s, to help the backbone organization, the national justice for our neighbors, growing diversify their sources of funding and at the same time, i’m also working with some of the justice for our neighbors members. Teo also helps them develop their fund-raising skills, and teo also help them out with developing stronger and effective boards. How does this national see? I’m a small time thinker? I was thinking, like local community, maybe statewide, but do you think that a national coalition? Hyre how did they court? I mean, how does this work coordinate? Do they meet? They meet once a year or something. Or what? How do we coordinate this thing? That’s? Absolutely right. They do meet once a year, and so they have what’s called a roundtable. And so representatives from all the different members and all of the headquarter staff, they all come together in a particular area. And what they do is they meet. They share best practices. They have, they meet with each other, they learn about what each other’s doing. Then they talk about their progress overall as a network. How many clients are they serving? What are some of the opportunities they have? What are some of the challenges that they need to continue to work on? Anything you can share around here? The problems that arose that hopefully got overcome? Uh, you probably want talk about problems. They didn’t get it, but anything you can share that way, you know? Well, so i think one of the biggest challenges is that when you’ve got a network that spread geographically, it’s really hard to have relationships it’s really hard to develop it, maintain those relationships and so the round table is a great example, it’s a great opportunity for people to cut for members of that particular network to come and meet face-to-face and to develop those one on one face to face relationships. And a lot of times it’s been so valuable because when they go back home, they can then continue to maintain those relationships, and they can call upon each other, especially if they’re in areas where there not so geographically far from each other. So for example, there are a number of non-profits that air in texas, and so this’ll obviously, immigrants kayman immigration, immigration assistance, obviously critical in texas? Absolutely, yeah, into because there’s a least a few of them that are in texas. And so this was a great opportunity for them to meet each other face to face and talk about. Okay, well, how we work together because, you know, we are kind of spread throughout texas, but the same time we’re not so so hugely, far apart from each other. And so how can we coordinate on things like, you know, strategic planning? How can we coordinate on maybe joint fund-raising the relationships are important because there’s gotta be trust among partners. Otherwise, problems are gonna become insurmountable, even if they’re not big ones. If, if i mean it, the partners arnold trusting each other based on these relationships, i don’t think it’s got much likelihood of success. That’s absolutely right. How many partners air in this so it’s, a national network, about fifteen organizations. Okay, all right, so i was way off when i said ten, my att least fifty percent larger. All right, all right. Any other, just before we leave our little case study, any of you like a little lesson learned from the from this from this example that you can share maybe something you weren’t thinking of in the beginning or something. You learn new in this in this organization? Yeah, i would say probably one of the key things that i learned that relationships are so fundamental, they’re so important. Yeah, and i love the fact that the national organization, they’re so focused on their mission, which is providing great service to their members, and they are extremely well focused on that, and they’ve got a strong team in place and i think that’s so important, so oppcoll for long term success, the relationship is obviously touch that what else do you think is key for from long term success? This type of collaboration, i think it’s really important to have a strategy in place and knowing where you’re gonna go and how you’re gonna get there. That’s that’s also fundamental. Okay, so that thinking that upfront? Yeah, that upfront thinking yes, and then certainly having a backbone organization, there needs to be some sort of sport and a lot of collaborative efforts failed because there is no support. Places. People come together and they’re like, hey, wei, need to take action. We need to do something, but then it’s, like, okay, well, if nobody’s dedicated to making sure another beating happens, if no one’s contributing resource is to make sure things get done, well, then it’s really hard to move forward together. Yeah. What happened? We talked about yourself another two minutes or so to get ashore. I think one thing i’d also like to talk about is, um, what it’s like to kind of form a new network because that’s also a challenge. So we have about two minutes or so short. So i think there’s been one challenge that we talked about is like maintaining an existing network. And i think there’s another one which kind of plays into which is about forming a new network. And this whole idea, you know, how do we bring people together and how we make sure we have the right people in the room and making sure that we thought through our process for working together, finding a backbone organization, making sure that we’ve got a resource is in place. Those air all big challenges when you, when you start to form a new collaborative effort. All right, i guess you would believe that a consultant can be helpful in this. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, i am too. I like consultant. Yeah, well, certainly. I think you might need one. You know, if it’s a new, if it’s a new collaborative effort. And if you don’t have someone already in place that has a lot of resource is if there’s, not one organization that has a lot of resource, is or has experience with this kind of thing and can help take on a leadership role. It might be useful to have a consultant. What is it that you love about your work? So what i love about my work is being able to work with organizations that are making a positive difference in the world and helping them reach a point where they can be effective and helping them to reach a point where i’m no longer needed. And it’s it’s so rewarding to be able to do that. You don’t mind making yourself up? No, not at all. All right, kimberly jetson, chief change architect. That shifting patterns consulting you’ll find them at shifting hyphen patterns. Dot com and again on twitter. She’s at shit. Pat consultant kimberly, thanks so much. Thank you, tony. Real pleasure. Durney martignetti non-profit radio coverage of, uh, opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen in x top of mexico. Thanks so much for being with us. That was cool. Being on the beach with kimberly. Tony, take two and unity. Is our user personas are coming up first pursuant they’re online tools help you raise more money it’s that simple? I can’t make it any simpler. Nothing about these tools is an experiment. They’re tried and they’re proven like velocity there tool for fund-raising management is proven by the fund-raising consultants at pursuant, they use it to manage their clients fund-raising and it works so well that they released it to non-profit so now it’s available directly to you, basically, they cut out their own consultant. You don’t need them. You can if you want, but you don’t need him. It will help you be more efficient and you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com my video this week explains how sincerity trumps production values what’s important in your communications is the genuineness of your words, whether it’s, video or print or email whatever i share an example from a hotel in mexico where i got a very sincere note written in bad english, but the sincerity came through the video. Is that tony martignetti dot com that’s tony’s take two for friday, sixth of november forty second show of the year here is user personas with deborah sharpe welcome. To tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference two thousand fourteen use that hashtag it’s fourteen and tc with me now is is debra sharpe she’s digital director, manifest communications and her workshop topic is user personas it’s not about you it’s about them. Welcome to the show thanks, tony. Pleasure to have you bond just come a little closer to the mike, would you please so that everybody can hear you? Thank you, user personas i know very little about them, so i’m not gonna even try why don’t you explain what they are and why they’re so critical? Sure well, there are they are really essential part of web development and you’re only going to get as good a website is thie kind of strategy and thinking that you put into it at the fun and and part of that fun end is creating these user personas, which are really fictitious people there people you make up, but they’re based on very real segments there’s supposed to be able to help you understand who were the users coming to your website and what do they need? What their motivations, what their goals when they get there because what’s really deadly, especially working with with non-profits but it happens with all kinds of organizations and companies is that you get website development by committee from the people who work inside an organization was all about what they want to say to people, what they have, what they think is important, what they want to put out there, and often what happens is they just don’t have a good understanding of who’s actually going to come to the website and why they’re coming and what’s most important to those users. So that’s, what user personas will help you do? So we need to be thinking about who the people are that’s come that air coming versus what we want to say and put out as sort of a bulletin board for them all to read right and be able tio create a hierarchy, even of information and of users as well, because there’s a lot that goes into thinking about what what a user is, and when they come to your site, you might think that let’s take a non-profit you might think you’ve got your your clients with people, use the services of the organization, you may have volunteers. You may have donors and all of those may then segment into teo different groups themselves and what happened sometimes i’m sure everybody’s been to a website like this, where you have no idea where what you’re looking for is it’s like, how do i get there? And i’m clicking and i’m going here and i’m going there and about three or four kliks later, i’m still getting frustrated and guess what? I’m out there leaving, you know, and not all of those users may be of the same priority of the importance, for example, just give you an example that we worked on. We’re going so many, but one of the things i shared yesterday was a thiss was a consortium of healthcare organizations who came to us, and they wanted to get a very public conversation started about the expected tsunami that’s coming and health care with our aging population, something like in twenty years was goingto be something like love two times as many people over the age of eighty and four times as many people over the age of sixteen that’s going to be quite a dent in how we care for people. And many of them with chronic health care conditions. So this consorting with all kinds of health care organizations really wanted to be able to put some african scene policy conversations that there they thought they came to us and they said, okay, we have to reach those people, those people who are going to be over sixty. We did our research, we did some homework, we started put looking at user personas, who were the people involved in this conversation, and we did what was really revealing with some social media listening we did and what we found out and this and social media listen, i’m a great advocate of that because it’s very, very natural setting in which to be able to get information surveys are great focus groups could be helpful, but they are artificially set up context so that people are very aware of what they’re hyre answering their very where, what they’re saying, where in social media you’re actually being able to judge in, evaluate what people are saying when they’re not being observed, when they’re just commenting on blog’s and when they’re talking to each other and what they’re sharing, what their concerns are. And what their challenges are, what they’re pissed off about and what we found out about out with that is that it wasn’t the direct users, it wasn’t these people over sixty was their children, so we’re talking people in their forties, so the other ones who were talking people in their fifties, those are the people who are worried about what’s happening. So when we created the website that’s who we had in mind, okay dahna we are we’re going tow pause for second america’s the is the the team here to do a demo? Okay? We’re going to pause for a second. These user personas then are really quite critical. How do we get started in the process of creating one? Well, and we’re going to create many right all representative of constituents, different groups, exactly so there’s its research and in a number of different ways. First thing to look at his historical data. So you want to be able to look at your your website analytics and everybody should have google analytics it’s free it’s one of the best ways to be able to measure what’s happening on your website who’s coming what they’re doing there. And that’s, what you really want to dig down into sea? What are people doing right now on the website that’s? One of the biggest ways that you have to learn the second thing you want, teo does that? Does that include knowing where they’re coming from, where the good referral sites are? Sure, okay, i mean, it might just be from google itself or i mean, now the referral traffic isn’t necessarily gonna help you in determining how you’re developing your website. I mean, that’s more about marketing and how you’re reaching people. You’re driving traffic to the website, but all of that is going to be helpful. A cz you plan to make any kind of a redesign start any webb’s not start a new one? Obviously because you won’t have accepted in the redesign, then you’re gonna wanna survey people. That’s, always helpful to have an existing website, put a survey up asked people questions about what they’re finding about the website right now, what’s most important to them what the information they’re looking for. Are they able to find what they’re looking for? You just ask the more full denture things about, uh, that’s going to give you information and understanding how they’re approaching your website right now. Then you’re gonna want to talk to you, major stake lifters. And you’re gonna want to do one on one interviews and that’s gonna be really that’s to me the most helpful in some ways because you’re really then starting to say, ok, let’s, get some donors to this organizations that want to talk about what’s important let’s. Get the people who used the services and talk to them about what’s important etcetera, etcetera and even internal stakeholders. You want to talk to people within the organization? Start getting a sense of what’s working what’s not and even blue sky. What if anything that you would like to see here could there be here? But then, once you start doing that, then you have to get the information on who these people are and how they interact with the web and that’s. One difference that’s. Very important. We worked with some amazing clients, and most of them have truckloads of audience research. They know where their audiences are, but the kind of research that you have, a kind of data you have on people in the offline world. Doesn’t necessarily translate to online, and by that, i mean, so tony, if i were to talk to you and i’m trying to figure out what kind of an online user aren’t you? Are you a two point? Oh, user, do you like to share things? Do you like to talk with people? You like to have a community? Do you like to be able to know? Read stories about somebody else and what’s happening in your life? Are you a lean and hurling back person? What i mean by that is way called someone a lean in experience and more of an immersive experience. So you’re somebody if you’re all lean in person, you want to have your hand on the mouse, you want to be doing stuff and clicking stuff, using tools, getting it, being able to make your way around something in a much more sort of game like immersive way or you lean back where you want clinton served up and you want a video to watch you want cem really compelling copy to be able to read that packages things really nice. So if i don’t know what kind of used ru ru, time strapped. Even are you the kind of person who okay, i need to read three headlines here scan and if i don’t get it, i’m out of here. Are you that kind of a person? So for example, if we’re talking to potential major donors, most of them are times trapped, so you need to be able to know if that’s a really major consideration a limitation for them. How did you build your user experience? So you’re gonna satisfy their needs and expectations, so if i don’t know that stuff about you and i let’s say, i think that because i have so much important information to say, i’m going to put it all up here, i’m not gonna prioritize that i’m not gonna make a hierarchy. Meanwhile, you have about forty five seconds to teo give to my website, i’ve lost, yeah, yeah, i’m not gonna find what i’m there for. I had a goal when i arrived and i have not met it and i gave you a minute before, whatever the i mean, the stats were probably even shorter than that on i’m departing and i only looked at i wasn’t deep it all i looked at. One maybe two pages or something, and i can’t find the beginning of what i’m looking for. Okay, so we need to know all these different constituents so well, because we’re going to start to build a fictitious person, right persona. Exactly. Okay, wait there yet can we start with that process yet? Or is there more to do yet? Well, you have tio no, then you start to give you want to understand who they are, their cycle graphics and what their relationship to the issue is. You want to be able to them, not about what they’re what their needs are on the website, with their expectations or what they’re coming there with, and then what their goals are. What is it that they actually want to get out of the website? And once you start to do that, you start to get a blueprint of these individual users and what they’re going to one of the things thie examples i shared in the work dahna wass klein, it’s actually also health related. This was for a client in the area of cancer screening. And if you go into a google search right now, i i challenge you. Just put in cancer screening in google and you’ll see what comes up with a top ranking websites and their deadly i think it’s just an avalanche of coffee and information on text to make your way through, i think of the average site web md or or even cancer dot org’s yeah, there’s just there’s, so they have millions of pages. It seems like and it’s all very text intensive, and i’m not sure how well it’s uh, how well it’s organized 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 debra and i have been interrupted twice, now way. We’re doing our best. We were when you’re non-profit radio and you’re not bloomberg or cnn sometimes have to share the stage on dh that’s what’s happening at ntcdinosaur, wearing stage with the one of the generous sponsors of ntc bm they have the stage now, so deborah and i are behind the stage and that’s what happened the first time, and now it’s happened a second time because i had to help the help response to start their program, but we’re unrelenting, debra or not, we’re not. We’re not giving up it all that’s. Why it sounds a lot different, but the substance is still here. Thank you for your patients, deborah way. Will person twice thank you very much. So where we were at stage, where i’m getting lost in millions of pages, seemingly millions of pages of cancer data from my search, andi, i’m frustrated and leaving, right? So of our client came to us with a problem, and that was, uh it was actually a particular province and candidate was alberta health services, the agency that’s responsible for delivering health care there, and cancer rates were going down, and they wanted us to put up a website about screening so that people could understand what they have to do and why it’s important all the details and how do you prepare for it and all of the questions sametz all these other sites, so we started to dig in a little bit more about who were the users who were the people who are going to come and use this site, and something started to really emerge for us and that especially in that age category of women between forty and sixty and these are the people, especially when you’re talking about breast cancer were really, really confused. I don’t know what it’s like in america, exactly, but in canada there are different guidelines depending where you live. So the provinces have their own individual guidelines for wednesday. Appropriate time to get screened for various things nice. And then there are national guidelines. And, uh, the national guidelines changed about a year and a half two years ago, and this kind of created a lot of confusion and and there’s a lot of information being put out a lot of media reports and it’s just normal human behavior when you have a lot more information on a lot of confusion, what do you do? You don’t you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You throw your hands up in frustration and hope for the best right? How people stop getting screened in the same numbers. So that was the problem. So recognizing that was the problem. Sort of talking to women like this understanding who they were. Thiss forty. And this became our bull’s eye it’s woman forty to sixty and who? She wass how she interacted online, what she needed. They did not want a lot of information. They just wanted simple, clear answers. Please, will someone tell us what to do? Does it? Forty? I get screened is a fifty. I get screen, we don’t know. So we set out to make a website that really fulfilled those needs and the website welcome to go. Get to it. It’s screening for life dot c a and it’s. Very simple. Four is the number four no it’s not spelled out fo r. Okay, so what we did is we created a little tool that greets me when you arrive at the website there’s there’s. Just a big question that says not sure if you need to be screened for cancer and it asked you just click on the right figure and find out and there’s uh, two silhouettes of a man and a woman there. And you picked the right one for you. Oh, and as soon as you click on it, you get this slider where you can just now slide your age. And as the slider changes, the silhouettes changed shape. So it looks if you go down for anyone who’s going to look like a twenty one year old little bulge in the weight get into the fifties. Exactly. So it kind of is a little neat. We gave some buddies people something to interact with right away. So it gets you engage gets you a little bit closer the website, but right away, as soon as you say okay, female slide fifty four boom. You have your answer, and then it gives you just very, very basic information about what you need to know. And if you go no further than that on the website and that visit, we’re totally happy we don’t need you to go anywhere else. We know that you have the very basic information if you want to keep going, there’s a lot of information, if you want to figure out howto prepare for oscar, you can do that way need to relate this back to use their personas, right? But because we had done our homework way up front in terms of figuring out this was the problem there a bunch of users, for example, that cervical affects young women from the wallet text women for the time in the sexually active colorectal cancer affects both men and women. But we understood from doing we did personas for all of those people. We even did persona because the client wanted us to for the boyfriend of the the young one. Excellent. So because of that, how hiv affects that, but what i’m saying is because we did all these personas. And we understood what the problem was. We understood that the most important user was this forty to sixty year old women that’s, who was coming that’s, who were those that’s who was seeking the information most that’s, whose expectations we needed to fill right away. And we knew that we had to do it in a very simple way, without having to make them dig, because they didn’t want all that information. They wanted a simple, clear answer. And we didn’t have to make them. Process of the persona you had said earlier. They get to the point. They even have they have names, wey? No, because we don’t. Our research, we know their online behavior gets to the point of we know what? What sites? They get their news from regular. That sites they go to regularly. What kind of detail in these fictitious people? Okay, that’s. A little bit more of the media profile when you talk about how they consume good times. That’s it important for these particular women? What we what we drill down into were things like where they lived professionally, what their relationship was, for example, way have different personas when we’ve got to our primary one. So we had one where she was kind of a professional woman in that she’s familiar with, uh, online et cetera her motivations to start taking better care of herself. She’s had a friend. Who’s died from breast cancer. We fill in all these these things and her motivations because she has had a wake up call. And she wants us to start taking better care of herself and that’s. How she’s going to come to be investigating cancer screening way had another persona, she’s more of a rural person who lives in alberta, not really taking care of herself very much kind of is like that stop broke don’t fix it sort of thing. I don’t run to the doctor and everything, but her children are the ones who have been after her. They’ve been reminding seen the news they’ve been watching it so the influences in life so this sixty year old person lives on a farm and who’s who’s like this, stoick, the staunch stoic who really doesn’t have a lot of, you know time for doctors, but it’s at the urge of her daughters, who are making her pay a little bit more attention and start to take care of herself and get scream. So those that that’s the kind of information, then once we have that what air there needs online, what did they do? How does that? What is this woman? He’s? Very two different people knowed how do they interact in the online world? Oh, and again, that comes into the speed at which we want to serve up information the tool which we wanted to do not make people read a lot, because we had our rural women in mind, i didn’t want to give it that sort of very text, you know, dense copy information. So those air, how those pieces start to unfold and then the goals, of course, what do they want out of it? That may be a little bit different as you go in, like our professional woman, she may want a little bit more deeper information for those of the kinds of things, okay, sense, yeah, yeah, and the that i mean, clearly that the time is considerable for doing the research to create these goes into creating the personas dahna but i you know, i think that if you really want people to achieve their goals on your site and achieved their goals, not your goals for the for them, but achieve their goals on the site, it seems it seems very clear. Yeah, i ask helen yeah, takes time, but in terms of time, how long is your site going to be up? No, that would be the ants and don’t you want people to be successful on it every single day? Not just occasionally, when someone has more time to spend than the average. So if you spend three weeks creating these personas three to four weeks doing that up front, my my suggestion is that it’s a really worth investment of time when you’re gonna have a site that’s up for two to three years, who who creates the personas and we want to avoid website by committee when you mentioned earlier who’s actually sitting down and creating the people in willing up my world because i work at an agency, we provide that service and we do it though, in a collaborative way with clients. So we will talk to them about what we’re going to be doing will inform them of what kind of research tools will employ. We might be talking to them are usually almost always talking to them and talking to some key stakeholders within their organizations in addition to outside users. And then once we have started to get a handle on, it will have a meeting will sit down with them and review the research, review the findings with them and then the final personas they have to approve everybody’s got to be in on it. But we do provide that service. Okay, but non-profits khun do with themselves you can. There are ways to do it. We left in our workshop we had actually a worksheet that we handed out. We actually asked everybody okay, pick a website that’s near and dear to your heart. Pick one user and now fill this out and we gave them all the areas to fill out. And then we had a couple volunteers come up and norvig breathing after bring up their website, then walk us through the use. Of ok, so it can’t be done internally, but with time, commitment, but obvious value benefit at the at the end of the process, user personas, percent. Okay, something could be a lot of fun, too. It can be actually mean they’re used, they become your little family. Yeah, yeah, you get to know them very well. Ugo. Alright, thank you very much. Well, thank you, my pleasure. Deborah sharpe is digital director at manifest communications in where we’re in a hurry in ontario, in toronto. Thank you. Alright, excellent, thank you very much. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of anti season non-profit technology conference, and i want to thank debra for being a good sport and two interruptions. Now we’re in the back alley, almost of the of the science fair, but the substance is still valuable, so thank you very much, debra. Next week, you’re engaged board with michael davidson. If you missed any part of today’s show finding on twenty martignetti dot com, where in the world else would you go pursuant, you’ll raise envelopes more money. I’m not talking those number ten’s with your logo on them that is, sitting in your office, waiting to be stuffed by volunteers. I’m talking about those fourteen by twenty inch padded numbers filled with money, pursuing dot com our creative producers. Claire miree off sam liebowitz is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Kayman 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, and levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech 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 m a r 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 are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com.

Nonprofit Radio for October 30, 2015: Don’t Be The Founder From Hell & Chilling Laws And Regs

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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.

 

 

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host it’s our halloween show ghosts and goblins and ghouls hope you enjoy your happy halloween this weekend and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with carp itis if you came up with the inflammatory idea that you missed today’s show, don’t be the founder from hell, jim, no ac heads fund-raising for the zi 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 mohr. We talked at opportunity collaboration just a couple of weeks ago and chilling laws and regs thes air no tricks. Jean takagi has actual and proposed laws that will scare you into action. He’s, our legal contributor and principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group on tony’s take two between the guests tech videos from mexico we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com here’s jim nowak and the founder from hell from opportunity collaboration 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 act he’s, president and co founder of zi foundation. They’re at deasy i that’s deltas, delta zulu, india from my air force days dot org’s dc i dot or ge, 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. What? Two days ago, right? I think we’re connected. And, um, all right, you’re not the founder from hell, and we are gonna take this really have one side of the story, so i don’t have it. I’m trusting 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 at 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 their 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 haven’t i know, 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, um, let’s, start with your history with the organization. I’m the cofounder and now i sit is president. We started our work in the fall. 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. Yeah, three miles to the west of everest, on the nepal tibet border. Doing a new route has never been climbed. I was on there in eighty nine. Now back in ninety eight and in ninety eight found out about small girls home that was financially failing, huh? 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 telling. Right. 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. 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, uh, 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. Thie 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 two. 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 changed 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 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 know, and, um, 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. Um, 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 the composition of the board you mentioned? You had some change management people on your board? I’m talking about the importance of having the right skill set on your board to 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, we 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 buy-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, it made it 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 tony martignetti dot com that’s t i g 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 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 on his floor. 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 anchor it. Not just myself. Uh, let’s talk about the the search that that that search process you said it was the executive committee of the board, just four 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 there. Had 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 have 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 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 as 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 input directly back to the board chair on the board chair. Disseminated that too. The selection committee. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Was there a outside search consultant? 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. Yeah, yeah, way too much of a stretch. And people asking too remote work remotely in new york for this job. So glamarys and that was deal that we want people in the office, you know, you know, face to face on dh, so that i was a real process. And and once we cold that list, then all of the board members were assigned. The executive committee searching me 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 labbate, whittle it down. Job job descriptions. You’ve identified that as being critical, setting boundaries. About 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 the 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 this 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, 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 the founder. 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, a lot of really latto had to trust you. Yeah, and it’s a pretty standard situation. Yeah, you know, it’s pretty standard, um, that it be negative. Yeah. Is that the name? And quite often i do hear that people cycle through, though 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 or trust. Yeah. Latto trust 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 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 my mind. 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 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. You and i now sit on the board. I had never sat on the board first. No, there was not next-gen has 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 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. Yeah, 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, i think a lot of this, yeah, trust and and the personalities people have to be right now, it’s, not the right people. Then you’re not gonna have the trust and and we’re going toe 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 know, 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, i for us, we’re 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 paan 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 in the leadership role is 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 count 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 in 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 rap 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 really some personal stuff, talking about trust and ego and 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 stood 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 zee 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. Great convo with jim noah hoexter shared some excellent, really and personal stuff live listener love. We got new bern, north carolina, san diego, california, washington d c that’s alive listener loved going there how about st louis, missouri and durango, colorado live listener love to all of you so let’s go abroad. So south korea always so grateful soul always checking in on your haserot asahi, japan! Konnichiwa and buenos aires, argentina is with us love that you’ve been. You’ve been with us a couple times buy-in mazarene we know star days, of course. We never go beyond live listen love without podcast pleasantries for the over ten thousand listening in the time shift, whatever you’re doing, what’s the latest i heard was painting a house listening to tony martignetti non-profit media while painting the outside this i was very explicit. I want no was the inside the outside she’s painting the outside of her house to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Whatever you’re doing as you’re listening to the podcast pleasantries to the podcast listeners and, of course, affiliate affections began our am and fm stations throughout the country next week. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be next week. We’re going tio, we i i’m going to be welcoming a new affiliate. I’ll give you a hint. Mission await, not mission. Impossible agent ninety nine, agent ninety nine is the hint and that’s as far as much as i am permitted to say at this time. Tony, take two and chilling laws and regulations with jean takagi coming up first. Pursuant, they help you raise more money. They have online tools like prospector, which helps you. You find the donors in your database who are most likely to upgrade to higher levels of giving and velocity, which helps you manage your fund-raising time against goal, lots of analytics associated with velocity to manage fund-raising online tools for small and midsize shops that’s what they’re about that’s. Why they’re perfect sponsor for non-profit radio take the tools that you need and leave the rest behind pursuant dot com i have a video introducing other videos on technology, their interviews from ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference, which is hosted by the non-profit technology network and ten and in ten ceo. You all know this amy sample ward who’s, our social media contributor on each month she was with me in mexico at opportunity collaboration, where i just got jim, no ac interviewed and she and i shot a video by the pool. Is this just becoming too complex? I don’t know. Amy and i were in mexico an opportunity collaboration, and we did a video all the rest was just kind of background and the video is introducing a bunch of other videos about technology, wearable and mobile tech is one of them your disaster recovery plan and a couple of others. The video is at tony martignetti dot com that’s tony’s take two for friday. Thirtieth of october forty first show of twenty fifteen. Jean takagi is with me. You know him? He’s, the managing editor, managing attorney of neo, the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. And he edits the popular non-profit law blogged dot com on twitter he’s at g tak and i am very glad. He’s back live non-profit radio welcome back, jean. Thanks, tony. Great to hear about your your time at opportunity. Collaboration. Yes, i know you were there. You went a few years ago. Is that right? Yeah. It’s been some years. I hope to go again one day. Okay. Yeah, we had a terrific time. And ah, amy was there as well. Very smart, very smart conference on poverty alleviation throughout the world. Well, lots of bright, bright people are incredible, and we have more interviews coming up. I have a couple that i a couple more that i recorded on the beach, and then i’ve got a whole bunch of other ones book. So lots of smart opportunity, collaboration, people coming up and, uh, and you’re one of them. Your opportunity, collaboration alum with me every month. Um, we got some troubles. Well, some concerns troubles, maybe troubles for non-profits in some chilling laws and regs because some non-profits air not operating the way they’re supposed to and some government officials would like tio, have a little greater oversight. Yeah, i mean, it’s, you know, that’s kind of how, how law sometimes work and it’s scary how it works, there’s some sort of scandal that gets onto the front page of the newspaper on some legislator decides, well, we’ve gotta have a law, and sometimes, you know, they’re thinking teo, be very reactively in terms of fixing a problem, but they do not see what with the broader effect on, you know, the ninety nine percent of the non-profits that are not doing anything wrong, stealing or committing fraud and what impact that might have on them. So it’s all a little distressing, and sometimes, you know, from a cynics perspective, it seems to be a little self serving for the for the legislator who might be up for an election, teo sort of rally the public outrage over situation to get some of these laws passed if they’re if they’re ballot, measure propositions or if they’re just something that the legislators up for. Reelection on. So yeah, without their yeah bashing non-profits i don’t know. I don’t know if it’s it’s not as bad as media bashing, which eyes rampant and nobody seems to object to. But but it’s getting a little let’s get a little worrisome. I mean, you know, it’s, always the it’s. Always the bad guys, the bad actors that get the headlines. And then we get the knee jerk reaction from the politicians who, like you suggested i have their own agenda as well. Um, it’s getting a little chilling? Yeah. Yeah. Scary times first, for sure. And especially with media and the internet just ramping up all the information that’s out there and trying teo attract attention scandals to seem to be the juiciest stuff out there. Yeah, that’s zoho get the headlines, gets the headlines and and causes the reactions that could be adverse. All right, so let’s, let’s, let’s. Start here in in new york, i have seen some local headlines. You want to talk about it? To the queen’s library ceo in the county of queens in new york has nothing. Nothing. Totally above aboveboard about spending and that’s causing problems. Yeah, and that it’s their former ceo now he was terminated at the end of last year, and that was after there there are many boardmember is tryingto protect that that person as well, and i’m not sure that they were doing their their full due diligence on the matter when they were trying to protect him, but ultimately he discovered that, yeah, he was spending fairly lavishly on very, very questionable, if not unlawful expenses. Well paying for fruit executive staff to like a tender maroon five concert and then spending several thousand on batter spending several hundred dollars on wine bottles. Tio entertain. Well, now, wine i could see i like wine, but maroon five, i don’t know. Maroon five. Is that worth a couple thousand dollars? Good, i don’t know. I don’t know them if it was. If it was bruce springsteen, you know it might be justified. No, of course, it’s not just i’ve got five love that. Okay? Okay. All right. But, yeah. It’s it’s lavish to take your executive staff is an employee morale event and spend that much money. And there were there were, you know, over three hundred thousand dollars. That issue with lavish expenditures, probably. Never reported his income by the employees so that that was enough latto haven’t fired, but the stories have been breaking since the late bladder half of two thousand fourteen in all of the local new york papers on and picked up by the new york times as well. Um, and you know, this summer a city council member from queens decided that, you know, there should be something done about this, and i i think she comes from a good place and said that there should be some sort of oversight bill that requires executive level officers of organizations that are funded by the city that receive at least fifty percent of their funding from the city to file the conflict of interest disclosure forms that age city agency employees have to file and file them manually. And you know, that type of disclosure requires some normal stuff like name in home address and principal occupation, but it also asks for disclosing any business interests that the employees or their spouse receives that represents more than ten percent of their growth income now requiring that of government employees. I understand that what? Why, that may be necessary, but non-profits our private organizations come, and if you ask that from every in-kind executive type officer of a non-profit is getting compensated, and sometimes they’re just making, like thirty thousand thirty five thousand dollars a year and saying that you’ve got to disclose all of these things, including what your spouse’s making and where they’re making their income that’s going to really chilled the desire toe to serve, um, for those organizations and it’s going to cost a lot of money to for boards of those organizations to try to enforce that type of annual disclosure on what happens when when, you know, they miss a disclosure. And this is why the mayor decided that that this was something that he wanted to support, but, um, the city council member is sort of taking it back. They had a hearing, and they’re going to take it back, and then they’re going to re craft it. But there’s already state and federal disclosures required so this is going to be pretty burdensome and duplicative and sometimes not consistent with what’s already required that they do with the city in the state, i’m sorry the state and the state, the fed, right? Because iris requires conflict of interest disclosures. Is that what you’re talking about? Yeah, yeah. Ah, okay, yeah, so your concern is the the chilling effect that that this is gonna have that people going to be reluctant to take on. I think it was ceo well was certainly ceo executive director, but it was also including, i think, cfo’s. Um ah, they probably any of those sweets, right? Okay, um, you know what? What do you think? And we have other examples coming up. Unfortunately, what can? What can a non-profit do? I mean, lobby the local lobby, the local city council person, who’s, who’s coming up with these reactionary ideas? Yeah. Or just generally educate their stakeholders about what’s going on and why this might be bad for these organizations. So they’re latto small organizations out there, and then this is really going to hit them or could hit them pretty hard that they let people know that this is something that can affect their livelihood, then, yeah, certainly they can either engage in some lobbying on the bill, and public charities are allowed to engage in lobbying. A lot long does it’s not substantial, and they’re pretty generous limits. And we talked about that before, huh? But yeah, this is kind of khun khun b self defense loving too, which might be subject to the exception to the limit. So this can affect their their health and livelihood inability. Teo, do their mission. So go out there, educate people about it. And yes, send it. Send a letter to your legislators and say this is not a good idea. And yeah, as you said, jim, we have talked about the limits around lobbying and advocacy work. So if people want to go to tony martignetti dot com and just search either jean’s name or why do jean’s name and then also lobbying, you will find the show where we talked about this, that entire topic, what the limits are around lobbying and an advil advocacy. Um, we have just about a minute before a break. Gene, you want to introduce us to what’s going on in aa california there’s a proposal about suspending activities? Yes, it’s now, not just a proposal. It actually just got past a few days ago. Our problem will get it a few days ago. It d’oh the new law on january first. And i’ll just sort of revealed before the break boardmember personal liability on the ability to tell an organization to transfer all of its assets to another organization for a little technical. Oh, my if that’s not a cliffhanger of boardmember personal liability. Ham, california crazy out there, that ninth circuit. But i know this is not federal. Okay? Let’s, go out for the break. Gene and i are going to continue provocative conversation. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech 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. 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More live listener love food jiao china has checked in ni hao all right, jean california what’s going on, but boardmember of personal liability, transfer of assets and you you got you past this thing. Yeah, well, the attorney general it’s a regulation so it’s not a statutory law meaning that the legislative body didn’t elected officials didn’t come up with this law. It’s executive branch officials that passed it solicited some comments from the public and let me just give you some framework on it. First, i i understand why the attorney general’s office wanted to come up with the law that said, okay, we need thio make sure that charities are actually registered with us and are complying with the registration requirements because we need to know who’s out there. And this is probably true of every state where their tens of thousands of charities that have sort of let their registration slip, possibly because they think if they filed with the irs, that they didn’t know that they have additional state filings file in california, we have three filings with different agencies that you have to keep up with, and sometimes organizations particularly smaller ones that might not have professionals that are on top of their legal compliance and filing obligations. Sometimes they forget teo and let this one slip, and this one isn’t the one that’s done by the accountant’s. Usually either the count didn’t sort of take care of the tax for me, the i r s forms of the state tax agency forms, but this one is a charity registration for in which you’re well aware, i am it’s part of what i do, yes, yeah, exactly, but now the penalty they’re saying it’s like, we’re really wantto, you know, wrapping up our enforcement of this, and so we’re going to say if you operate and you’ve been suspended and you could be suspended for missing filing more, filing an incomplete filing, right and again in california, we have three separate filings with the secretary of state, the franchise tax board and the attorney general nypmifa miss one of the secretary of state or franchise tax court filings that can cause you to become automatically suspended with the a g’s office as well on so just slipping on those things, which some of them are very easy to file if you know about them. I can get you suspended and then if you operate while you’re suspended and this is where they’re they’re saying, well, if if you operate while suspended the age, he has the right tempos, boardmember personal liabilities, personal liability on boardmember that must be paid by the board members from their own money. This wouldn’t be covered by insurance thiss wouldn’t be covered by the organization itself. It couldn’t indemnify that boardmember for this it’s got to come out of the board members own personal pocket for operating while suspended, and there are, you know, there may be as many as one hundred thousand organizations in california. They’re not compliant with their filing regulations and charity registration regulations. You know, i think there’s some foreign organizations that are operating here that haven’t registered properly, yeah, that’s a that’s, a lot of organizations that to be subject to this draconian regulations, gina that’s important to point out that we’re not only talking about organises non-profits that are domestic in california, what incorporated non-profit in california, based in california, we’re talking about non-profits from throughout the country who are soliciting in california, that makes you subject to those three filings franchise tax board, secretary of state and a g that you’re talking about? Yep. And i think it’s more than the estimate of i i i saw was that your blogged or someone else above estimating one hundred eighty thousand? Like, i think it was fifty thousand domestic and then one hundred thirty thousand. Beyond that, i think it’s more than that. I mean, especially if you start counting online solicitations, email the california’s, the most populous state in the country. I think i think it’s more than one hundred eighty thousand that i saw that very well could be true. I was a little bit modest with numbers just because we don’t know some of those who just sort of been abandoned and dropped out. Okay, but being yeah, there are a lot of organizations that could be subject to this, and you wonder if you, you know, when you promulgate regulations like this and now non-profits air looking for board members and they’re trying to get the the most qualified in the best and support of board members that they confined, how many people are going to go? Well, you know, i’m a little bit worried about all of these. Things and ah, again, i don’t want to run the risk because boardmember is a typically volunteers and they don’t like stay on top of sort of the technical aspects of did we actually file with all three state agencies? They typically just reviewed the irs form nine, ninety submissions, if that so, yes, this is very distressing and for operating all suspended, not only can the g hold boardmember personally liable, but they can tell the organization you must transfer out all of your assets to another organization. Holy good, even big foundation you they could say literally, you must transfer out one hundred million dollars of your assets and give it to another organization because you’ve been operating while you were suspended. Yeah, so let’s talk about let’s talk about operating while suspended. So you failed to make of some arcane filing, although i it’s part of what i do with the franchise tax board now. Okay, so you failed that now you’re suspended, suspended means you’re not feeding people anymore. You’re not sheltering domestic violence victimssurvivors anymore. You’re not protecting the waterways of california anymore because you’re supposed to be suspended. You stop work and all your employees go home without pay. Is that what we’re talking about? Suspended. Yeah, basically can’t engage in any kind of operations while suspended. And if you try to keep helping the rivers and the oceans, and the and the survivors and the victims and the homeless and hungry, then you’re liable for have for the for the penalty of having a transfer all your assets, right? That sounds crazy, right off the ventilator. It’s, it’s, it’s really crazy and non-profit i’m going to do that and what the g has said to us and i launched a campaign here tryingto kapin get the a g to reconsider this and i had independent sector the national council non-profits cal non-profits united way’s, california lines for justice, the ceo, board source the non-profit insurance alliance group all fine on this so that they recognize that there was some national attention, that there was some big concerns about this, but unfortunately did not go through and the ages view is basically trust us. Even though we’ve got these broad, broad powers were not going to abuse them and we’re going to only attack use them against the very, very bad actors, and i just think that’s bad, yeah, may start out that way, but six attorneys general from now, who knows? All right, that’s a really that’s a really impactful one for anybody. Any organization operating in california soliciting in california? I don’t want to say operating soliciting donations in california. You need to make sure you are compliant. Holy cow! Okay, let’s, move. We just have, like a minute and a half left. Jean let’s. Move the federal tax court disallowed a couple of big charitable deductions, like over several million dollars in one, because donors or not, providing proper substantiation of their deductions? Yeah, i mean, so these weren’t that long ago, and the irs always wins on these cases, by the way, when donors tried to challenge them, take always win. So charities make sure you write proper forms in the first one, which was durden versus commissioner there’s just a deduction of twenty five thousand dollars for cash contributions they they were making to their church, and the church gave them a receipt. But the receipt missed the statement that you must have for donations of two hundred fifty dollars or more. A statement that says no goods or services were provided by the organization in return for their contribution. If you miss that statement, you can’t make up for it after the person the donor has filed their tax returns. It too late. Too late. Because that’s basically screwed it’s not contemporaneous anymore. Jean right. I’m sorry. I want to leave listeners with irs publication five twenty six it’s for people who make charitable donations it’s for your donors. But it has all the guidelines in it that that your donor’s need and that you need to be providing them when it’s your when it is your responsibility? Iris publication five twenty six gene, i’m sorry we have to leave it there. Great point, though thank you very much, jean takagi. You’ll find him at non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter he’s at g tack next week. Great show coming up very, very good show coming up, but i don’t know what it’s going to be. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com where in the world else would you go pursuant? Lots of tools for small and midsize shops. You’ll raise halloween bags more money. I wish i could elaborate on this, but we’re running a little at a time just trust me big, big halloween bags like the ikey of those blue bags, not the tiny little things you get in the drug store when you buy a four pack of batteries filled with money. 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When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox. They have tv. They have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist. I took two or three years for foundation staff. Sort of dane toe add an email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles? Best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. 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