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Nonprofit Radio for April 10, 2020: Turbocharge Your Grants Fundraising

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My Guest:

John Hicks: Turbocharge Your Grants Fundraising
John Hicks returns with 9 steps that will burn the tires off your grants program. He’s principal and founder of DLBHICKS, LLC consulting. (Originally aired February 23, 2018)

 

 

 

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[00:00:13.74] spk_3:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit

[00:00:58.80] spk_4:
radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% on your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with Lissa if you bit me with the idea that you missed today’s show Turbo Charge your grants fundraising. John Hicks returns with nine steps that will burn the tires off your grants program. He’s principal and founder of De LB Hicks, L. L C Consulting. This originally aired on February 23rd of 2018 feet Land last week was grantmakers relationships. See how you see how it all ties together. This show is so heavily produced on tony Steak, too. I’m channeling You were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com Not heavily produced. Not just that, but expertly produced but Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant. Martin for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Here is John Hicks.

[00:01:27.42] spk_3:
What a pleasure

[00:01:27.86] spk_0:
to welcome back John Hicks. We

[00:01:29.85] spk_3:
believe this is his third time on the show c f r EE principle

[00:01:42.64] spk_0:
and founder of De LB Hicks, a consulting firm providing fundraising and grant seeking guidance to nonprofits from grassroots to global. His

[00:01:42.84] spk_3:
career spans over 30 years.

[00:01:44.81] spk_0:
He’s on the faculty of Columbia University’s Masters degree in non profit management, teaching grant writing, and he’s a lecturer for Rector’s University’s Institute for Ethical Leadership. He’s at de lb Hicks and de lb hicks dot

[00:01:59.05] spk_3:
com. John Hicks Welcome back to the studio.

[00:02:01.62] spk_5:
It’s great to be here.

[00:02:06.51] spk_3:
My pleasure to have you d l B D L b All we keep. Here’s deal be I love the story behind Deal Be Tell it

[00:02:15.34] spk_5:
Sure thing L B stands for Dylan’s lightbulb, as in Bob Dylan. Um, years ago, I came across a copy of D. A. Pennebaker’s great documentary Don’t Look Back, Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of the U. K. Early in the film, Dylan’s getting off the plane at Heathrow Airport in these walking of this press conference, carrying a large light bulb, and he’s getting asked all the innocuous questions, you know, Are you folk? What is your message? And someone asked me, what is your message is my message. Keep good head. Always carry a light bulb.

[00:02:45.65] spk_3:
And I thought that

[00:02:47.27] spk_5:
was probably about the best piece of advice I’ve ever heard in my life. And I adopted is a personal mantra. And so when I launched my own firm, I said,

[00:02:57.98] spk_3:
You know, I’m gonna

[00:03:03.74] spk_5:
work. Deal, be into this. Get the light bulb in there. And that’s t l B. If you go to the website, you can learn a little more about that incident.

[00:03:05.82] spk_0:
And the home page has ah lightbulb image.

[00:03:09.19] spk_5:
It has a light bulb. Do

[00:03:10.77] spk_0:
we know why Dylan was carrying, like, both Do we know

[00:03:13.05] spk_5:
this day? And no one knows, I think is the typical Bob Dylan thing where somebody handed him a white bombings like this is cool.

[00:03:20.55] spk_0:
Or maybe it’s not, but I’ll make it cool. Okay.

[00:03:22.74] spk_5:
They’re identical radio.

[00:03:24.83] spk_3:
All right. Um, glad to have you back.

[00:03:27.36] spk_4:
I love it. You can come to studio all the time. Wonderful.

[00:03:29.48] spk_5:
Yeah. It’s great to be here.

[00:03:32.04] spk_3:
Um all right. So you got you got these nine

[00:03:42.74] spk_0:
tips for Ah, um, Turbo charging. You know, kicking up your grants program to the next level. Um, and you’ve got some advice that coincides with the panel that was on last week when I moderated at the Foundation center. Right? That’s cool.

[00:03:57.02] spk_3:
Um, so let’s I mean, let’s Ah, let’s let’s let’s overview first. What are what? What do you

[00:03:59.39] spk_0:
feel like? Non profits just generally are not getting quite right. Man, you got nine tips here about things that not profit should be doing better. But

[00:04:08.34] spk_3:
just eyes the thinking, not right around grants.

[00:04:10.60] spk_0:
I mean, what what generally, what could we be doing? Smarter. Thinking better differently about Grant What grants wise?

[00:04:18.64] spk_3:
Well, I was

[00:04:19.22] spk_5:
looking at grants is being the kind of philanthropy that brings to things to the table for a charity they bring. A grant will bring you cash and those rings you cachet. Okay, so it’s, um

[00:04:30.19] spk_0:
thank you. Somebody else’s supporting you that they believe in your work. Exactly. If you non profit radio sponsors. Yeah,

[00:05:35.37] spk_5:
you got it. And the thing about getting grant funding is that you go through a more of a due diligence process, which means that if I’m able to go to AA donor even if it’s an individual donor and say I have a grant from this foundation, of that foundation, and particularly if it’s a pretty well known foundation. Um, it says to that person, Have you been through due diligence process? And so I think First of all, it’s getting non profits to think about what part does a grant or grants for a grants program play in their philanthropy? And, um, also, I think it’s the heart of the nine steps to turbo charging your grants outreach. It’s It’s all about rethinking your agency. It’s like rethinking your story. And how do you use that to engage foundations at a much higher level? And I think I’ve always said that any charity could do this. I mean, it is This is not just large charities. I think grassroots charities.

[00:05:38.16] spk_0:
We wouldn’t be on non profit radio. This is all really for the $1,000,000,000 endowment and above.

[00:05:45.52] spk_5:
You got it? Okay.

[00:05:46.10] spk_3:
No, no. For sure they can. And that’s that’s why that panel

[00:05:48.51] spk_0:
was so valuable. Last That was last week. Yeah, I think there was

[00:06:15.68] spk_5:
a lot of discussion about this. I mean, if you if your listeners go back and listen to that, um, that podcast again, I mean, you’re gonna hear these grantmakers talk about the importance not only of engagement, but it’s coming in with a story in a vision for where your organization’s going next. And if you can get them to buy into that direction, you can not only get a grant that you could maybe could get a sizable grant or an impactful grant.

[00:06:20.91] spk_0:
And that term grand. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, changing the conversation. Okay. And you’ve got ideas on that coming up. You know, thinking long term versus immediate and what’s recurring costs, etcetera. And what’s growth costs we’ll get. Okay,

[00:06:34.29] spk_3:
so that’s a so the 1st 1 you have, um, focusing on

[00:06:37.64] spk_0:
the right, the right kind of money Thio ask for

[00:07:03.23] spk_5:
right. I think it’s understanding where your organization is in not trying thio under reach or overreach. So I think the important thing is I see a lot of charities come in and say, You know, I’m under feeling under a lot of pressure from my board or the staff that I have to go for the gold swing for the fences and get gates may not be the right fit for you. It’s choosing the part of the donor pool. You want to swim in a CZ I’m find of telling clients, Um, and the other part of raising the right money is making sure that you’re not getting money that sets up expectations that you can’t fulfill. This is another thing I run into is a consultant is walking in the door and seeing a lot of grants literally lying around where the agency is struggling to fulfill the promises made. But they just weren’t able to bring the rest of the money. And so it’s making sure that you’re driving the bus. That money is coming in to support your priorities and what you do Well,

[00:07:34.04] spk_0:
yeah. Um, So what? What causes this? This gap is it is not adequate planning on the part of the part of

[00:07:42.38] spk_3:
York. It can

[00:08:16.02] spk_5:
be inadequate planning. But, you know, I’m also fundraiser, and I acknowledge that a lot of us were there a lot of pressure to produce. And so it could be that, you know, we have boards. We have bosses. Who are you asking us to go for this grant? That grant. And, you know, you’re just you’re in response mode. The nine steps, I think get us back into doing this proactively so later in our conversation will talk about things like a strategic agenda and envisioning. And that kind of helps us, you know, move the ball forward, but close

[00:08:18.04] spk_0:
this gap between expectations and and reality. It’s

[00:08:22.04] spk_5:
usually you said it better than I did, tony,

[00:08:24.16] spk_3:
Uh, most guests say that. So don’t be surprised what this point out

[00:08:30.06] spk_0:
is that you’re surprised that I Okay,

[00:08:30.40] spk_3:
hold that thought.

[00:08:54.44] spk_4:
It’s time for a break wegner-C.P.As so that your 9 90 gets filed on time so that your audit is finished on time so that you get the advice of an experienced partner. You each tomb and affirm that has a nationwide non profit practice with thousands of audits and nine nineties under its belt. Wegner-C.P.As dot com Now more of turbo charge your grants. Fundraising.

[00:08:58.44] spk_3:
Let’s go back

[00:09:10.90] spk_0:
to John and turbocharging your grants. Fundraising. Um, yes. So we’ve got ideas coming up that are gonna close this gap. Basically, um, let’s see

[00:09:14.48] spk_3:
what you want. Talk about next.

[00:09:15.84] spk_0:
What do you uh you You You you go.

[00:09:18.09] spk_3:
What? We

[00:09:19.80] spk_5:
were talking about visioning, and maybe we should talk a little bit about gold setting because I think that’s it

[00:09:24.46] spk_0:
certainly related to what we’re just talking about. If you don’t, you don’t have the goals right Then the expectations are gonna have that gap between what you asked for and what they’re expecting,

[00:09:31.52] spk_5:
right? So, um, a

[00:09:33.39] spk_3:
lot of

[00:09:59.98] spk_5:
cases gold setting stops at raise more money and you did last year. Our costs are going up. Here’s where the costs are going up, and that’s pretty much the end of the conversation. And what I’ve come to find out over time is that the organizations that seem to do a better job of getting money on the grant seeking side are the ones who think about their goals into categories. There’s, um, sustaining goals, which is essentially what are carrying costs just for the operations and carrying constant program. So we still need to bring money in to make sure we keep the doors open. We’ll keep doing the essential work that we do best. But then there’s another set of goals which relate to investment. So I call these investment goals and I only think of it is you put money in, you’re going to get a return on it, and we’re going to do something a bit more than you know we’re doing right now. So when the operation site he could be staffing, it could be strategic planning could be capacity building and never on the program. Inside, it’s all about creating new programs and growing new programs for growing the programs that you

[00:10:40.45] spk_0:
have. So this carrying costs versus new investment, right? Um,

[00:10:46.08] spk_3:
it’s It’s not This is not, Is not

[00:11:17.71] spk_0:
the same is short term versus long term Now I think it’s because carrying costs could be long term correct, Right? It is it those air like you’re basically your overhead eyes that fair or now nobody’s that’s program its program to write its programming. It’s just feel free to say you’re wrong. I’m not gonna shut your Michael. Uhm, we re very rarely Occasionally we do, but I won’t let you. So uh, okay, so it’s not that right. It’s, um it’s you You’re forced to think long term. If you want to make this type of, you know, new investment kind of asks,

[00:11:54.83] spk_5:
right? Exactly. I mean, I know another way of putting this Is that sometimes, you know, I, um yeah, I’m so privileged to meet incredible people who were working miracles with small amounts of money. They come in with a fairly small, modest program. But when you look at what they’re doing, they’re making some pretty deep meaningful change in people’s lives. And sometimes I’m so blown away by what they’re doing with limited resource is I’m I look at them and say, You know, if you’re doing this on a shoestring, imagine if we had the shoe. Yeah, she was all about the investment grand. Where do we go next? And how do we take this? And either deep in it are are make it bigger,

[00:12:06.00] spk_0:
look atyou extending the shoestring metaphor. Hey, So smart. Okay, So insightful. Okay, no friends if we had to shoot. All right. All right. Um, but now this. You know, there might be a fear of putting the putting the potential funder off, because now we’re asking for more money. And if we’re looking for this new investment kind of money,

[00:12:25.01] spk_3:
we’re not gonna

[00:12:25.59] spk_5:
put a thunder off by asking for more money. If the money has a purpose. I mean, think about it this way. I remember

[00:12:31.64] spk_0:
this sounds important years. They’re not gonna put a funder off by asking for more.

[00:12:34.74] spk_3:
I don’t think something. Yeah, I Years

[00:13:07.02] spk_5:
ago, I heard Abigail Disney talking to a group of non profits at an event here in New York City. And something she said was that she says, Yeah, I have a lot of money and I’m a philanthropist. But without you, my money means nothing, because I don’t go where you go. I don’t do what you do. I don’t see what you see. When I find you. You become my ears and you become my eyes and you become my hands. And

[00:13:07.42] spk_3:
any

[00:13:07.75] spk_5:
organization can be part of that

[00:13:18.48] spk_0:
picture. That’s why, don’t you? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So ask for what you need, not what you think will be approved. As for

[00:13:20.21] spk_5:
what you need, what

[00:13:20.89] spk_0:
do you think you’ll get

[00:13:48.71] spk_5:
and and and ask for funding that’s going to get you to the right opportunity. So I always feel that philanthropy is about the possibilities, what we’re able to do next about opportunity. I remember once I had was working with an organization here in the city and the CEO was taking a grantmakers through the building and showing him the program and talking about program growth. And halfway through the visit, the thunder looked at the CEO and said, Look, I know you’re going to be coming to me with a grant proposal. Just make sure you ask me for enough money to do what you need to do. So you don’t have to come back and ask me again.

[00:14:04.84] spk_0:
Yeah. All right. They want to be asked for yesterday. Right? Uh, tony with foundations.

[00:14:11.47] spk_5:
Remember, we’re dealing with the donor constituency that’s in the business of giving money away. Yeah. So let’s help them do their jobs,

[00:14:28.46] spk_0:
and they want to do it right? They don’t want it. Ah, half cocked. And then, like you said, you know, a request to come back, uh, having to come back in 18 months because you didn’t ask for enough. Right? That looks bad because you look at your not about you. Not a good

[00:14:38.32] spk_3:
planner then. And you did the best you

[00:14:39.44] spk_5:
can. Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances, but you have put some thought into it. And I think you know most of our listeners. I’m sure do this, so yeah,

[00:14:46.98] spk_0:
well, we’re making sure that they will. Now,

[00:14:49.47] spk_5:
there we go.

[00:15:01.84] spk_0:
I’m glad you said our listeners before you says my listeners and, uh And then you kept talking, so I let it go. But this time you said our listeners are Our listeners are our listeners, right? Pronouns non profit radio. Uh, we should make that a takeaway on to make that my takeaways. Okay. Um, all right, so we have carrying costs versus new investment money. Now we have sustaining grants versus investment grants. What it’s supposed to do You want us to be thinking about these? What does this mean,

[00:15:20.50] spk_3:
Right, So it’s thinking about yourself in jail. It z it’s

[00:16:13.52] spk_5:
sustaining Great. It’s the stating expenses, investment expenses and then the you have to think sustaining an investment grants and the way you write these things are a bit different. I mean, sustaining is essentially you’re making the case in the proposal, the application for why we need to keep the doors open and keep doing what we’re doing. And I think these grants get driven by results. Here’s what we accomplished last year. Here’s what we have the promise of continuing to do this year with investment, grand proposals. You’re talking about kicking it up a notch, and you know where we’re going next to me. Here’s the roadmap here. The opportunities. This is why we’re trying to grow a program from $100,000.150,000 dollars. And the idea is it’s investment. I’m asking you to put money in with the promise. Or at least I’m the best of my ability. I’m promising that we’re going to get some stronger results. And so it’s, I think it’s a little the way the proposal gets presented it. It’s probably a little bit different in terms of some of the language and some of the presentation. Perhaps.

[00:16:23.16] spk_3:
Now, this sounds

[00:16:23.64] spk_0:
like some some of what was talked about in the panel. Ah, that we have had on last week.

[00:16:40.31] spk_5:
Yeah, yeah. You had a number of the grantmakers he talked about, You know that you have to not only just come in and show us the opportunities, but, you know, you have to show us that you have Ah, I’m going to use the metaphor of road map. You have an idea of how to get from point A to point B and why my money’s gonna make a difference. One of things. I talked to my students a lot about in the class at Columbia. Is that

[00:16:52.61] spk_0:
Yes, Professor. Go ahead. Sure you’re the sugar wisdom. You’re not a

[00:16:55.87] spk_5:
professor. You know, they we talked a lot about risk mitigation, which is maybe an odd thing to talk about in a class on grants. But

[00:17:05.28] spk_3:
the end of

[00:17:33.84] spk_5:
the day, a lot of what we’re doing for donors, just for major donor, you can do it for foundation is your mitigating risk. You don’t want the donor to feel that they’re putting a lot of risk on the table when they give you money. So in what we’re fortunate in the world of foundations as we can, right? A thoughtful grant proposal. Make a nice presentation. I can show you how to get from point A to point B so I can give you Exhibit A. So

[00:17:49.90] spk_0:
now subsumed in this by the way, road map, isa Fine, metaphor. Just you don’t go to automobiles that drive on roads, because then I won’t fall. You know, Like I said, I think the intra my first experience with a Phillips head screwdriver was very bad. So you can imagine me with a set of ratchets or whatever those things are called. Um,

[00:17:55.48] spk_3:
this sounds a lot like the Arno subsumed

[00:18:15.49] spk_0:
in this, though, is the thing that I get asked a lot of I hear a lot about it. Should you ask for overhead support in your in your grants and subsumed in all this is is a definite yes, right? I mean, you gotta keep the lights on. You keep salaries paid my approaching Mr Right

[00:18:16.31] spk_3:
way. What you are. I

[00:18:37.51] spk_5:
mean, that’s a question that comes up quite frequently. Is that do Foundation’s fund overhead expenses? I think First of all, there’s ah, there’s, ah, misguided notion that foundations don’t like to pay for overhead. There’s a few foundations who don’t, but most of them understand it, and they get it. Um, I mean,

[00:18:37.95] spk_3:
me that’s essential. These essential, essential expenses.

[00:18:40.24] spk_5:
They are essential

[00:18:41.44] spk_0:
to carry out the program if I can’t pay my rent.

[00:18:43.51] spk_5:
Exactly. And And the

[00:18:44.64] spk_3:
thing

[00:19:00.59] spk_5:
is, is that what what I I find sometimes is that when you really start looking at the costs and the expenditures from from an organization and how they’re supporting their programs, you find that expenses that are categorized as overhead or administrative or not I mean,

[00:19:02.78] spk_3:
I work

[00:19:11.96] spk_5:
with a lot of grassroots organizations. Were the CEO is coming out of her office, and she’s working with kids. And she’s working with families. Well,

[00:19:12.21] spk_3:
she’s not overhead.

[00:19:33.41] spk_5:
She’s actually also direct program. So, um, you know, I mean, first, you can’t have toe really hold your budget up to the mirror and say, you know, is this truly accurate? I mean, you know, there’s a lot of hard work and CEO is out there, especially in grassroots organizations where they’re essential. And so there are probably more of their costs. Might be included in a program budget for a grant proposal.

[00:19:45.14] spk_0:
Hard working for sure, we know that. Absolutely. Um, yeah. So

[00:19:47.94] spk_3:
Yet, uh, you got

[00:19:53.93] spk_0:
any client story that comes to mind? Like we’re you know, they were thinking low and you encourage them to think bigger. And they ended up being successful. Maybe they didn’t get every dollar they asked for, but they got something bigger than you. Bigger than they were initially asking for.

[00:20:05.75] spk_3:
Yeah,

[00:20:06.18] spk_5:
I mean, and, uh,

[00:20:10.69] spk_0:
I should hope so. I put you on the spot. It never happened. And then we cut the mikes.

[00:20:13.64] spk_5:
No, absolutely

[00:20:14.61] spk_0:
not. yours. You cut mine. Well covered like

[00:20:23.10] spk_5:
Well, first of all, I just tryto look, it goes back to the light bulb. You know, I just don’t you you know, I’m just I’m just simply illuminating what’s in front of us a lot of times, and I find that I have probably any number of stories where working with a client and all I have to do is show them that this foundation could give more money and they said, Well, G, I think I have these opportunities and get them to think of three. Or like, Hey, I think I’ve got something. I could take the foundation

[00:20:44.74] spk_3:
and they do a

[00:20:45.24] spk_5:
fabulous job of presenting an engaging the thunder. Maybe I’ve you shown them that opportunity, but at the end of the day, you know I want to give credit where credit’s due. My my current clients raise good money because my clients are really good. Smart people were doing great work

[00:21:00.03] spk_3:
collaboration. You’re also contribute modest, surprised to find

[00:21:04.18] spk_0:
a modest professor. There aren’t too many of those, and I said no, professor, but I’m going to

[00:21:07.63] spk_5:
start a band called Modest professed

[00:21:11.50] spk_0:
It’ll be D L B everything in your life is deal be about the ball. Yes. Modest Professor deal

[00:21:59.13] spk_5:
bu But he asked me a specific example. I mean, recently I was working with I am working with ah, wonderful charity on DDE. They help kids with cancer. And you know what? What was really great was they had this wonderful opportunity to apply for a grant from a major national foundation and they had a great contact. And I think the early conversations was about a fairly modest create, maybe $10,000. And when we said that really looked at what the opportunity iwas, um you know, what could this charity do you expect with shoestrings, like 10,000 bucks a shoestring? And what’s the shoot that she turned out to be $50,000. So we worked up a proposal at $50,000 the upshot is the foundation funded. It is that they felt like it was a really good investment for their money, and I think they’re probably gonna be happier Giving the $50,000 seeing what they get is a result.

[00:22:12.46] spk_3:
Look, just in case

[00:22:13.16] spk_0:
any of our listen, my voice just broke a 14 year old voice. Christ, get out! A case

[00:22:20.64] spk_3:
of our, um uh, any case. I mean,

[00:23:14.25] spk_0:
Elizabeth, it’s just have to be your first show. I mean, there’s over 12,000 of you, so, you know, maybe some people come. I guess every week we get new additions if you want to. You know no more about the nuts and bolts the relationship, building specific strategies about that. You wanna listen to last week’s show because that was a panel from the foundation center that I moderated. And there’s a lot of discussion. That’s what we were based on. That old discussion was how to build your relationships with the with program officers, foundations, foundations are made up of people. So that’s, you know, like certain decibel John and I today our, um, more higher level, enormously valuable. And there’s all this strategy and planning and gold setting thinking through what you’re gonna ask. This is enormously relevant to. But last week was Maur detail, I guess nuts and bolts on the relationship building here today we’re in Baltimore, strategic and high level. You

[00:23:23.27] spk_3:
see how the show fits together. You know that people think this just comes. It doesn’t just happen. This thing is planned out

[00:23:33.37] spk_0:
contrary toe the belief of 12,000 people listening. But it is planned. So I just got lucky this week and last week. S

[00:23:36.02] spk_3:
O okay, you have measures

[00:23:49.44] spk_0:
around some of these things. You have measures for each of your 99 strategies. Um, this one is just simple. What? What’s the ratio of sustaining grants to investment grants? So we want to see Maur, I presume?

[00:23:52.77] spk_3:
What? See Maur investment grants, right? Thinking longer term and you’re going to grow your organization and its its capacity. Well, I’m actually

[00:24:28.29] spk_5:
trying to look for a healthier balance. I mean, um, yes, if I have a fair if I have a good core of sustaining grants first, Well, it says I have people who are renewing. Okay, so they like, I mean, think about foundations like subscribers. They love the program and they’re continuing to support a year over year of a year. That’s a that’s a great sign. But am I also bring in? You know, a good number of investment grants that kind of kid again and kick it up a notch and get meatloaf every night for dinner. But if I give him the topping on it every once a while. I mean, it gets more interesting. So there you go.

[00:24:52.04] spk_0:
Okay. This is a vegan show, so that was a bad metaphor. Uh, I just made that up just to embarrass you. Um, now, listeners, you can have anything you need, anything you want out of care for your overall lacto, You know, whatever. I belong to the park slope food co op, but you don’t have to. Um, yeah, eat whatever you like. Um,

[00:24:55.82] spk_3:
okay. Make sure you have the right grantmakers

[00:25:00.20] spk_0:
on your list. Okay? And

[00:25:00.82] spk_3:
and this sounds to me, this

[00:25:02.25] spk_0:
one sounds a little like it’s coordinated with your goals. You want your goals and your and the people, the organizations you’re asking for money from to be consistent. But you can say it more articulately than I can. I

[00:25:15.00] spk_3:
know what I mean

[00:25:24.70] spk_5:
by that is do you have Do you have recognized leaders supporting your program? I mean, um, if I just giving example, I work. I do a fair male work in the youth development world. Worked with various charities who do wonderful work here. And if they want to bring a new program online. Sometimes where my research starts and this isn’t terribly scientific, but it’s

[00:25:42.02] spk_3:
I look

[00:25:42.37] spk_5:
at. Well, who

[00:25:42.81] spk_3:
were

[00:26:06.75] spk_5:
the top 10 foundations funding this kind of work? Say, in New York City or in whatever community, Wherever you’re between your work, can I lend three of them? Can I bring three Thought leader foundations who work in this space to the table and have them funding my project? That’s that to me, that’s the right set of funders. I mean, that’s that helps me with my focus. So I’m not chasing money all over the place.

[00:26:11.40] spk_3:
Yeah, this is very strategic thinking.

[00:26:16.34] spk_0:
No, you’re not. You’re not just looking for foundations that support the work you do, but specifically, you know, some of the leadership foundations. Yeah. I support you.

[00:26:24.13] spk_3:
One of the

[00:26:24.71] spk_5:
things that about that panel discussion which I thought was so great I moderated. I think it was. Thank you. It was artful. Thank you. It was all thank you’s absolutely

[00:26:37.55] spk_0:
Thank you. I thank you again. Thank you very much for that. Thank you. The

[00:26:59.14] spk_5:
Thea it was just sit. There was so much conversation about partnership. I kept hearing it word over and over and over and over again. And I think foundations are looking for really good charities to partner with. And we should think about that on the set in reverse, like, Well, which foundations, though? I want partnering with me on this work that I’m going to d’oh! And that helps toe open that conversation makes the conversation natural. And it makes the proposal flow. I mean, were there for a reason.

[00:27:14.14] spk_0:
All right, Um, John Hicks, I got to, uh, ask you to hold on temporarily because, uh,

[00:28:50.81] spk_4:
we need to take a break. Cougar Mountain software, Their accounting product Denali is built for non profits from the ground up so that you get an application that supports the way you work that has the features you need and the exemplary support that you’ve heard me talk about. They understand you. They have a free 60 day trial on the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in. Now it’s time for Tony’s take two. I’m channeling you small and midsize nonprofits each week. When I heavily produced expertly produced the show, I’m channeling you the listeners in small and midsize non profit. I’m thinking about who are the best guests What are the best topics when I get a guest and I’m thinking about talking to them. I’m thinking What? What do you want to know? What? Um, what is going to be helpful to you? Toe, bring a discussion item to your supervisor CEO board. Um, toe, have a discussion within just within your office. Um, sometimes it’s action steps, things you can do. What? You know, I’m drilling down with guests. What can we be doing? Not just thinking about, but what can we be doing? One of the first couple steps we need to take. So, uh, I always am just thinking about what you want to know. And that’s why I’m channeling you. Always small and midsize, non profit where our listeners are where you are. Um,

[00:28:51.25] spk_3:
I say a little

[00:28:59.99] spk_4:
more about this on a video which you will find, as always, at tony-martignetti dot com. And that is tony. Take two. Now back to turbo. Charge your grants. Fundraising with John Hicks.

[00:29:11.97] spk_3:
Back to you now. John Hicks. We’re gonna get this. Keep terrible. Charging. All right. Oh, that was your That was your word. I decided I would use it. A lot of times.

[00:29:15.24] spk_0:
I don’t. I’ll use what guests, uh, recommend that the log topic says or what? Their article says that I like, but

[00:29:22.17] spk_3:
I I thought,

[00:29:23.01] spk_4:
you know, it would

[00:29:30.49] spk_0:
be adventurous. Let’s go with turbo charge. All right. I made an exception for you. Thank you, tony. My pleasure. Um,

[00:29:31.80] spk_3:
let’s move on. So did we say everything? Well, we see everything we want to say about the right grantmakers before we move way.

[00:29:38.16] spk_5:
We’ve, uh We’ve started with goals that didn’t leave. We’ve kind of looked internally. What do we need to do by way of list? Bill Building. Now, we’re gonna start talking about some external things.

[00:29:48.22] spk_3:
Okay? Okay. So that’s what you want to talk about.

[00:29:51.43] spk_5:
Well, we start with the next one, which is building your V. Q.

[00:30:00.19] spk_0:
Vic, you get us out and get yourself out of drug in jail. What’s that? And define your

[00:30:55.05] spk_5:
visibility question. Yeah, which is, you know, is what it is. He I mean, the idea is that you want to be visible. I, um I think that grantmakers don’t I work in a bubble. Sometimes we think that you know, grantmakers, they sit in their offices and they kind of stay in their on their side of the street. We stay on our side of the street. The reality is that a lot of grantmakers air just out there and looking. They’re very aware of our community of practice and they get to know who we are largely by our just being out there and being visible. So, you know, any time I’m working with a nonprofit organization and the CEO gets out of his or her office and they go to events and they are in the press and they are writing and they’re speaking and they’re publishing and they’re advocating grantmakers get to know them And I think that counts. And I feel that a part of that quote unquote turbocharging um process

[00:31:05.27] spk_0:
thesis turbocharging to the ground. Now we’re

[00:31:19.81] spk_5:
not gonna beat it to program. A part of it is, the more you’re out there and you’re raising the visibility for your mission and your agency in your work, the better it is for you. I mean, it helps you with framing your grant proposal and who you are and what you’re able to dio

[00:31:23.79] spk_0:
credibility. Is that very good? There was another word for this credibility, but that will be your CQ. But you prefer Vik, you we’ll be secret. Well, it could be CQ, right? All right. I don’t want to write your block post anything, all right? And

[00:31:36.66] spk_5:
it could be fashionable. B g Q. So

[00:31:40.10] spk_0:
Yeah. Okay. Uh, that would be your

[00:31:44.96] spk_3:
grandson. Your grants quotient there. Um, now, a lot of this came out

[00:31:46.84] spk_0:
in the panel from last week. People we were talking a lot about networking being visible in the community. Going to events? Yes. And you start to get known essentially what? Same as you’re saying,

[00:31:58.49] spk_5:
right? And and, uh,

[00:32:00.01] spk_3:
the only

[00:32:07.81] spk_5:
maybe new once I’d throw on this is that I mean, there’s there’s visibility. I

[00:32:07.95] spk_3:
like the thing

[00:32:31.84] spk_5:
about visibility with content. And what I mean by this is you can go to parties and goto events, and you can meet people. But what do you leaving them with? What impression are you making? And so some of the things we’re gonna be talking about such a CZ. You know, your strategic agenda where your organization’s going next part of is having a story to tell someone when you meet that grantmakers, here’s here. We are. Here’s the opportunities that are in front of us. Love to come and talk to you more about it. So you know you’re peeking their interest.

[00:32:56.32] spk_0:
Yeah, for sure. You you want to not only be visible, but you wantto have credibility behind that content behind that. You wanna make a good first impression? Imagine how good it would be if if a funder got your application and already knew your name knew the organization name before they, even when the application arrives right there. Knew in advance. Right, Because you’re in the community. And, of course, being in the community includes the the online communities, the online network. You want to build your vic, You there as well?

[00:33:14.98] spk_5:
Absolutely. I mean any. You know, the way I look at it is the when your proposal shows up in the foundation’s office with a bunch of other proposals. If

[00:33:19.85] spk_3:
they’ve

[00:33:47.44] spk_5:
heard of you, they’re going to pick up them. The look on their going to read the letter. They’re gonna read the proposal. I can’t pretend that doesn’t happen. Yeah, there’s a wonderful book which I have my students at Columbia read every semester by a guy named Martin ty tell which is the insider’s guide, the grantmaking. And it’s a great behind the scenes look at the grantmaking process. And, um and he talks about things like this. I mean, you know that. You know, if we know something about the organization, it doesn’t hurt.

[00:34:02.58] spk_0:
Yeah. Okay. Have you ever seen where a foundation approached? A Ah, a potential fundy Ah, non profit and asked

[00:34:06.71] spk_4:
for a asked for a proposal.

[00:34:48.94] spk_5:
I was sure it happens all the time. Does I think it does? I think that, um um particularly the foundations who hire professionals. I mean, think about this way. Part of your job when you work for a foundation is to make the board of the foundation smarter about what’s going on in the world that they’re being asked to fund in. So if you’re out there, if I work for foundation and I get to know something about the work of your organization, I might pick up the phone, call you and say, Hey, I want to learn more about you. Remember, one of my clients just got a call from a foundation. Pretty major foundation was any longer radar screen. They just called out of the blue and said We’ve been hearing about you would love to come and talk to you Have to stand. Absolutely.

[00:34:50.54] spk_0:
Wasn’t on your radar screen? No. Does that mean you’re doing defective research? Inadequate? No,

[00:34:59.04] spk_5:
No, this is Theo. This is actually a donor advised fund. Okay, that’s that’s a whole nother

[00:35:00.19] spk_0:
time. Can’t find Yeah, those air, those air buried What? Their funding is very, very hard to find. Yeah, it’s not. It’s not public, really. It’s not anywhere, is it?

[00:35:09.35] spk_5:
It’s really not

[00:35:19.90] spk_0:
now. Okay. All right. No negligent research by deal. BX make that clear. Make that explicit. They do not do negligent research. Okay. Um

[00:35:20.95] spk_3:
okay. Strengthening your network. This is very

[00:35:27.34] spk_0:
much related. Strengthening your network, um, strong foundation. And you know grantmakers Air are there doing this? You want to be wanted again? You won’t be out and and known in the community.

[00:36:45.47] spk_5:
Yes, it might be a question. You know, I would be asking this question, which is? Well, what’s the difference between your visibility quotient and the network? Well, a network is actually taking a role of X and all the people that you’re meeting and all the people who are supporting you and beginning to reverse engineer it a bit. You know, one of your Panelists on the show last week and talked about or gave a great example of. Well, if I’m funding you, I could introduce you to other funders. And that happens more frequently than that was a good conversation. Oh, absolutely. And it makes a lot of sense because usually a, um think of it this way. Foundation, once they’ve written the cheque and their supporting you there a stakeholder they have a vested interest in seeing you bring other money to the table to build on what they’ve helped you to creator to grow or expand. And there’s nothing wrong with working that in reverse. You know, just a strategy, a tip for everyone, and I’m seeing this work is tthe e get a fund or get one of your grantmakers. Ask them to host some kind of a gathering where you can come in and talk about your work and what you’re seeing as a result of your work or talk about a topic. Were they inviting to this? They’re usually inviting grantmakers, whom they know because they want to help you get your story out there and get people to know you. I mean, it’s not a solicitation. You’re gonna be handing out pledge cards

[00:37:01.29] spk_3:
on the individual side. It’s the same is like a parlor Gather.

[00:37:07.31] spk_5:
Exactly. Exactly. It’s you know, uh, it’s always better in the parlor. This is usually the board room, but

[00:37:10.78] spk_0:
well, yeah, because it’s institutional, But there

[00:37:12.96] spk_4:
are parallels

[00:37:13.73] spk_5:
you get.

[00:37:14.30] spk_3:
Don’t don’t Don’t hurt

[00:37:22.27] spk_0:
my analogy. I mean, I went along with your metaphors. Metaphors and analogies are important. Yes, I adopted your terrible judgment metaphor. So, you know, you certainly couldn’t support my analogy.

[00:37:24.74] spk_5:
I’m totally supporting her nails.

[00:37:26.17] spk_3:
It isn’t involved. It’s analogous ball. That’s what makes it an analogy

[00:37:29.46] spk_5:
of all is

[00:37:30.83] spk_3:
okay. Um, yeah. So you’ve seen this work you’ve seen? This absolutely wonders will do it. It’s common. It’s more common than you think. I I think merging Throw tip now. Well, you know,

[00:37:41.79] spk_5:
beyonc? This is This is a pretty old school approach. Mean they were doing it then. They felt they stopped doing it. Mean grantmakers, then Now they’re doing it again. Um, I think the the key to making this happen is being ableto walk in with a presentation that has really information. It’s not just a come meet my agency.

[00:38:03.08] spk_3:
I think this

[00:38:03.82] spk_0:
is what’s happening in this area. Yeah. In this fund, in this priority that we know you’re all funding, right? Here’s what we’re seeing. Here’s troubles we see coming in the future. Here’s opportunities. Yeah, right. It’s sort of analysis. Like a market announce.

[00:38:27.62] spk_5:
Yeah, exactly. Euros. Every positioning yourself is a thought leader. You know, I have information for you. I have some best practices for you, and they can get a good conversation going.

[00:38:45.18] spk_0:
Okay. I love that. Okay. Uh, yeah. I don’t think my right, it’s not. I don’t think a lot of people are thinking that way. It’s great and approach to approach your funders and ask them to, uh, to do it. Okay. So

[00:38:45.41] spk_3:
what’s your measures

[00:38:46.12] spk_0:
for that one for strengthening your network?

[00:38:48.40] spk_3:
I mean, the measures

[00:39:06.94] spk_5:
I have here you have any meetings with colleagues or potential donors that we secure? I think a big part of it is Did you get out of your office and go meet with your grantmakers? Did you did you meet with colleagues? Did you? Um Hey, how much did you use that role of X and the other is, you know how many potential grand tours that we add to the network.

[00:39:11.77] spk_3:
That’s the

[00:39:25.88] spk_5:
other thing, too. Is is you can meet grantmakers and not ask them for money. But you can get to know them, add them to the network. Maybe the timing isn’t right. Maybe you are not ready for a billable of the Gates Foundation grant. That doesn’t prevent you from getting a no program Officer Gates mean. Maybe they can’t give you money, But maybe they can suggest other people. You can talk to me. I find a lot of its disappearance. Simple networking.

[00:39:35.29] spk_3:
What would your

[00:39:38.74] spk_0:
follow up B to, ah, to an event like that? Eyes the non profit that presents

[00:40:13.30] spk_5:
what’s interesting. I just had a conversation with a client before camp here for the show. I’m aware that I heard about what we’re talking about about that well, years, years, years, sketchy, very deep. Don’t don’t underestimate I I am not underestimating you. Slice it. It’s essentially they’re producing a white paper on one topic, and they’re gonna use that as the follow up to an event. So they’re gonna have some grantmakers in the room and they can follow up with content, so demonstrate how good you are. And there you have it.

[00:40:14.96] spk_0:
Take a break. Indulge me for a break momentarily, please.

[00:40:37.96] spk_4:
It’s time for our last break turn to communications their former journalists so that you get help building relationships with journalists so that your call gets answered when there’s news you need to comment on so that you stay relevant. They’re a turn hyphen to DOT CEO. We’ve got butt loads more time for turbo charge your grants. Fundraising.

[00:40:42.12] spk_0:
Now’s time to finish up with John Hicks and turbocharging the metaphor that I very graciously I think adopted. John. John doesn’t acknowledge that grabbed the graciousness, but But I acknowledge it for myself.

[00:40:57.31] spk_3:
Okay, um, have we exhausted? Oh, and then you had one more

[00:41:01.03] spk_0:
measure for strengthen your network. How many potential grantmakers? No, you did say that. How many do we add to our network? And they were talking about the follow up. See, that’s my trouble Cone and coming back. Um, follow up. Anything more to say about content Paper seems like a very good idea.

[00:41:20.11] spk_5:
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, just come out. Come back with something that would be useful to the thunder. And, um, yes. Sometimes we So the grants starts with not asking for money but giving the thunder something that they can use.

[00:41:36.21] spk_0:
Okay, for sure. Giving them? Yeah. You’re a team player. You’re adding value to the community, right? That we’re all funding. Okay, You got build a bigger footprint. What is this all about?

[00:41:40.56] spk_3:
Building

[00:42:34.94] spk_5:
a bigger footprint is, um think about two things. One which is can I take the work that I’m doing and how my leveraging it leveraging means either working in partnership with another organization or being a resource to another organization? Uh, I made that you provide the kind of service is your charity does, tony. But maybe you were able to refer kids or families to me, and I can help. Well, that’s building a bigger footprint. Another way of building a bigger footprint. Could be working on a consortium product project. Excuse me. And another way I think about is deepening the impact of what you’re doing. I mean, I’ve worked with a lot of organizations where they may work on a program where the maximum number of kids they conserve might be 50 60 70 is less than 100 kids. But if they’re able to provide a deeper level of service, that’s expanding the footprint because they’re going to get stronger results and it becomes a demonstration site and, ah, place toe test out. Best practices. So you’re changing the conversation. It’s not just a program. It’s helping 70 kids. It’s It’s actually working in a very deep and meaningful way.

[00:42:53.40] spk_0:
This is related to one of the earlier points. It was the 1st 1 that investment in long, long term investment type. Grant seeking.

[00:43:00.74] spk_5:
Exactly. Exactly. So. I just think it’s you leverage as much as you possibly can.

[00:43:07.38] spk_0:
Well, you just rewarding these things that you could come up with nine. You know, it was you had seven. Like you had six, and then you weren’t satisfied. That seemed weak. So you had There are little

[00:43:16.77] spk_3:
different. They are a little different. I don’t want these padded.

[00:43:20.05] spk_5:
They’re not padded. I guarantee they’re not.

[00:43:27.36] spk_3:
Um, we’re on you here. You know, we don’t We don’t accept Aah! Slack content

[00:44:33.99] spk_0:
on non profit radio. No, we don’t have that here. We never have. Except that one time we did the show on on, um on? Ah, fermentation. Oh, yeah, that was That was that was bad content. I thought I thought we’d try something completely unrelated, Which was in the podcast world. Big mistake. But I learned immediately fermentation in the middle of the guests. That wasn’t even happy. But I I couldn’t shut him off. I didn’t have a heart. I invited him. It was my idea. Okay, Fermentation. That was bad content. But that was one out of 377 shows. This happens to be shown over 377. So you could forgive 11 377th actually. And then if you count the number of guests, I mean, lots of shows have two guests, so, you know, we’re up like, 800 get r, and then some have four guests. So were over 1000 guests. So, like, one out of 1001. 1000.1 That that 1 1000? Yeah, that’s not 1 10,000 10.1 Is that one? 1000. Did that felt that is 1 1,001,000 So 1 1/1000 of the guests being slack. You should stick with no prob radio. It’s a safe bet.

[00:44:36.43] spk_5:
I’m gonna do all my budgets.

[00:44:38.29] spk_3:
That was

[00:44:50.79] spk_0:
a small digression, but, um, yeah. Now you don’t want to be doing numerical analysis. I didn’t even know I wasn’t sure. What? The 0.111 1000. The two interns in the room looking it up. They haven’t even answered it yet. Um,

[00:44:53.09] spk_3:
I need an intern. I need an intern if everybody I need somebody to blame for this. So So you know, the 1 1000 I need something

[00:44:59.51] spk_0:
to blame on that blame that on. So if you if you can suggest if you know anybody want to be an intern for non profit radio, have them come have them send a resume, because I need somebody to blame. Um,

[00:45:10.77] spk_3:
let’s move on to Ah. Oh, now we get into the thistles with strategic agenda. You’ve been teasing this all show strategic agenda. What is it?

[00:45:18.37] spk_5:
Well, strategic agenda is, um

[00:45:20.99] spk_3:
I don’t

[00:45:21.69] spk_5:
know if I’m among the only one uses this term, but

[00:45:25.35] spk_3:
I mean, it’s just basically

[00:47:03.57] spk_5:
being able to say to a grantmakers, here’s where we’re going the next 18 24 36 months. And here’s where our focus gonna pee. And here, the most important things that we need to be doing to make a significant difference in the world. Um, I mean, you could say strategic plan, but whenever I say the word strategic plan, clients inevitably think, well, are we looking at going through a six month, nine month process of planning and introspection? Sometimes they’re just doesn’t time to do that. And what I’m just trying to come up with is, you know, if you met a grantmakers tomorrow and you want to try toe, have a conversation to get that grantmakers a really interested in possibly giving you money, I’d like to be able to not just say, Here’s my mission statement. Here is the work we’re doing. It’s wow. Let me tell you about the opportunities we have. We’re going to be doing a, B, C, D and E, and you had a number of grantmakers on that panel going back to last week’s show who talked about. It’s better not to come to us with just one idea, asking us to find it, because I mean, when the panel said what if you pitch the wrong thing to me and I say no, then the conversation stops come to me with a general overview of what you’re doing. So yeah, walking with a general overview. But the way you I think undress this up is to say, Hey, here’s where I have some opportunities to accomplish some really exciting good for people And whatever the time horizon you’re working with getting 12 18 36 whatever the number of months and you could piqued

[00:47:04.22] spk_3:
their interest, how do you prove that

[00:47:11.47] spk_0:
the money would be well spent? Because it’s it’s all it’s all perspective.

[00:47:57.15] spk_5:
Well, if you’re gonna put anything up a strategic agenda, you you have to have your hands around the numbers like, you know, right now, I mean, think of one client where they’ve launched for fairly new initiatives in the last year. And those initiatives air showing promise. They’re working in some challenging communities here in New York City. They know their numbers. They know how many families they’re working with. They know how many kids and adults are impacted. They all said no how much they could grow this program if they were able to bring in enough money. So their story if we meet any funders that you know, we’re working with 9000 people across four sites. We know we have the ability and the opportunity to work with 15,000. Our budget is X. If we’re able to raise it toe, why we can make this happen?

[00:48:02.13] spk_3:
That’s a

[00:48:04.27] spk_5:
pretty powerful story. So? So, grantmakers. Maybe that’s a good use of your money.

[00:48:06.62] spk_3:
Excellent. Excellent. John’s giving. You think he just He just wrote you

[00:48:10.77] spk_0:
a template for ah, one paragraph. You got expand on that. You got what you need. You need deal. Be hicks to help you out. So

[00:48:20.47] spk_3:
all right, let’s go to our last Ah, our last

[00:48:20.89] spk_0:
of the turbo charging strategies. Know where you’re heading next?

[00:48:39.54] spk_5:
Yeah. So it means the end of this strategic agenda. Yeah, it’s like essentially, yeah, this gets us in the long term. Do we? Do we have a long term story for our agency or do we It’s you know, if we’re able to go from A to B in the next 36 months, but just kind of looking out beyond the horizon, you know, this is where we think we’re going next.

[00:48:47.72] spk_3:
This is

[00:49:15.96] spk_5:
the part of a conversation with a grantmakers. Andi. Even sometimes it gets evidence with the application of proposal that proves to grantmakers that you have a clear understanding of who you are, where you’re going, where you sit in your field and that you have a You have a realistic sense of scope, and I think that’s awfully, awfully important. You’re able to do this and you engage in a different level than you get the money and you turbo charge.

[00:49:17.87] spk_0:
Oh, John,

[00:49:24.93] spk_3:
look, Look the wrap up, he does. You see that? Look at that, huh? And you turbo charge. All right, we gotta leave it there. He’s John Hicks, c f r ee

[00:49:28.20] spk_0:
You’ll find him at de lb Hicks and deal be hicks dot com. Deal be, of course, Don’s lightbulb.

[00:49:35.57] spk_3:
Thank you very much, John Hook.

[00:49:36.99] spk_5:
Well, thank you for having me on

[00:49:38.30] spk_0:
real pleasure having you back. Thank you.

[00:50:13.29] spk_4:
Next week. Be a disrupter with Chris Field. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com. But Coca Mountain software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turn, to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot c e o. Creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff.

[00:50:15.23] spk_3:
Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is

[00:50:25.35] spk_2:
by Scott Stein of Brooklyn. That information Scotty Do

[00:50:26.98] spk_3:
with me next week for non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for June 15, 2018: Avoid Website Ageism & Grants For Newbies

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Jessica Meister, Matt Dragon & Justin Greeves: Avoid Website Ageism
How do you design your site to meet the needs of those 65 and over? What about testing with seniors, and accessibility requirements for federally-funded nonprofits? Our panel answers it all. They’re Jessica Meister with Oral Health America; Matt Dragon from Charity Navigator; and Justin Greeves at Porter Novelli. (Recorded at the Nonprofit Technology Conference)

 

 

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Janice Chan & Danielle Faulkner: Grants For Newbies
Janice Chan and Danielle Faulkner cover the basics of researching and submitting grants. They reveal free resources to find out what’s available, share tips on tracking deadlines, help you prepare for online submissions, and more. Janice is with Johns Hopkins Institutions and Danielle is from Baltimore Community Foundation. (Also recorded at the Nonprofit Technology Conference)

 


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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, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into foley dupe aqua if you questioned why you shouldn’t miss today’s show, avoid website ageism how do you design your site to meet the needs of those sixty five and over? What about testing with seniors and accessibility requirements for federally funded non-profits our panel answers at all. They’re jessica meister with orel health america, matt dragon from charity navigator and justin grieves at porter novelli that was recorded at the non-profit technology conference also grants for newbies. Janice chan and daniel faulkner covered the basics of researching and submitting grants they reveal free resource is to find out what’s available. Share tips on tracking deadlines help you prepare for online submissions and mohr. Janice is with johns hopkins institutions, and danielle is from baltimore community foundation that’s also recorded at the non-profit technology conference. I’m tony steak, too thank you. Responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio and by wagner cpas guiding you beyond the numbers witness cps. Dot com and by tello’s turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna may slash tony tello’s here is a void website ageism welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc non-profit technology conference. We’re coming to you from new orleans at the convention center all our ntcdinosaur views are sponsored by network for good, easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits this conversation is with jessica meister, matt dragon and justin grieves. Jessica is the web user experience specialist at orel help america. Matt is director of engineering at charity navigator and justin greaves is senior vice president of research. Porter novelli jessica justin welcome, thank you for having welcome to non-profit radio your workshop topic is i’m not the dinosaur. You’re the dinosaur. How your website should keep pace with america’s aging population okay, let’s, start down the end there. Justin, who thinks i look like john mcenroe? He he spilled performance that happen. But i remind you of john macro at least at least happy. Yeah, right now. Not the tennis racket slamming john macaron? Not yet. I haven’t gotten there yet. Yeah, yeah. Don’t give me cause, okay? What what’s the issue here, justin way, talking about websites that are built specifically for senior population, like sixty five it over or accessibility of all websites for the for the elder population? Yeah, yeah, i think i think one or the other, but we’re taking a step back from that and looking at everybody and really looking good. How in my part of the presentation, how people are accessing information generally in society and looking at that websites are a part of that news is a part of that social media is a part of that radio shows are a part of that, right? So seeing how those different audiences by age or by other characteristics are doing things online, are getting information. So we really took a broad view about toe understand that, and there are a couple of interesting trends that we found in our research. Porter novelli we do an ongoing program called styles, which is abroad be of americans lifestyle okay, we’ll get into the research. Remind me if i don’t get teo. I don’t know about research company. Okay, sametz what what’s your sense of this. How do you want to open up the topic sure. So charity navigator biggest user percentages is sixty five and over. And if you lump in fifty five and over it’s really a majority nineties, we in ninety percent, ninety percent, probably around eighty percent. Ok, seventy five percent. So we we have a lot of those users. As i covered in the presentation. Over seventy five percent of our donors to us are seventy five are fifty five and over. So that that’s something that we’re constantly considering in our website design communicating with our users and our donors. Okay, jessica, you’re our user experience specialist. And what what? How do you want to open this topic for the elder population? Eso my belief is that technology should be for everybody, and it shouldn’t be limited to just young people, um and that’s on all of us to create technology and websites and designs that air usable by every single person. I think. It’s a negative stereotype that older adults seniors above the age of sixty five don’t use technology and it’s absolutely not true. Both justin and i have found plenty of research. That is completely metoo contrary. Okay, thank you for that. All right, not. Now that i’m sixty five, i’m approaching now, but, uh, i’m not even in the face, you know? I am in the fifty five over. Yeah, i am in that one, okay, i did remember what i want to talk to you about the research, so i want i do want to start with in terms of how thie older population is using data differently using is using technology differently. Yeah, please, just beyond, i think justcause point it’s ah it’s a myth and it’s a long held belief that older people are behind in technology and don’t use things but what we found in our styles, research that i mentioned before is half of people in the silent generation that’s, age seventy two and above have a smartphone mobile device that they’re using and half half seventy two and over half of our subs on dh in boomers, which you’re you’re, you’re a boom here, boomer young, i’m young, you’re young boomer. Yeah, almost genetics are seventy five percent of boomers have smartphones and that’s the primary way that they’re accessing all sorts of things. News your radio show information about websites e-giving donations online so you got to think about the population, which the vast majority of givers of high givers are also older people. You’re not going to be as effective if you’re just still mailing them stuff, right? They need thio interact and access just the way we all do, and they want to do it on the whole device. Mostly. Okay, okay, you want to add more to the research summary? That’s ah, pretty fair summary. So justin’s work has been primarily in quantitative data and looking at it from, like a sky level view. Getting these good statistics on what usage rate looks like. My work has been more qualitative when you actually sit down and interact with have a senior interact with either a website or a tool or technology, you asked them to use it, completing a particular task, and, yeah, the vast majority of them are wanting to do it on mobile as well. And especially from a non-profit perspective, it’s important to keep in mind that sometimes the on ly access someone may have to the internet is, in fact, on a mobile device. They may not have the means or access to like a desktop computer, and so that was something that we found in our research when we redesign tooth wisdom dot org’s, which is a website designed to provide education and accessed older adults to dental clinics, affordable ones in their area. When we did this study, we found that they really wanted to be able to search and that they may be doing this from a mobile device. Yeah, okay, okay, and in the middle, matt at a charity navigator, what was your part in the presentation so way have this predominantly older user base, but we’re also seeing a lot of growth in the twenty five to thirty, twenty four to thirty five year old user community that we’re seeing, so we’re struggling, too make angels to the site that that appeal to a younger generation, but not turn off or lose our older users in the process. So we have a lot of a lot of sort of feedback and help type questions that we get from older users where they just aren’t used to interacting with with websites like younger generations are on dso we’re always trying to sort of factor that in as we make changes to the site or or consider how we present information on the site. It’s. Time for a break pursuant. Their new paper is the digital donation revolution. I always love all the pursuant free resource is very generous. How do you keep up in our one click to buy amazon world? Can you use more revenue? The paper has five proven to work online. Fund-raising tactics that will save you money. It’s on the listener landing page. Of course. Tony dahna slash pursuing radio now back to avoid website ageism. There’s another layer to this two, which is the federally funded organizations. Yes, by law that required, you have to have accessible, abide by and it’s called section five o eight and it was voted on and passed through congress last year, january twenty seventeen and it just went into effect january eighteen o and this is any organization that receives any federal funding whatsoever, regardless of if it’s one hundred percent or if it’s two percent they receive any federal dollars whatsoever, they’re obliged to adhere to accessibility guidelines there, primarily based on the w keg, which is the world wide web consortiums, accessibility, content and six ability guidelines. Okay, thank you for question that. Because we have george in jail on tony? Yes, i apologize. You just walk in front of the prison? No. Yes, i wanted teo put it out there because it’s it’s an important resource. So it’s w c a g and it’s finding online. You see a g? Yes. Okay. Okay. So, so any any federal money, you’re getting grants for service or whatever, but anything at all and the critically this law applies to not just your public facing website, but anything that you use internally as well. So even if it’s just in internal that on ly the other staff members see all the only your millennial staff is using correct yes, it’s pretty burdens. Yeah, so it’s it’s pretty it’s pretty massive. But this is especially critical to seniors and older adults because forty percent of people above the age of sixty five have some sort of disability compared to twenty percent of the general population. And so, if you’re did, if you’re designing for seniors, you’re designing with accessibility in mind. Okay, dahna let’s. See where should we go testing you? So you do the individual testing. So your roll. Justin is more than quantitative research. About bigger, bigger picture recent yeah, my role in the presentation was sort of the higher level trends and another another thing that we all talked about in all near and dear buses, the impact of social media on things you know, we hear a lot about facebook and twitter and linked in and other things nowadays. And so again, there’s another myth that, well, seniors aren’t on technology and they’re definitely not on social media, which is absolutely false also good. The majority of seniors are on some form of social media, most likely facebook, and so if you think about you need to think about how to meet them where they are just convention on our in our engagement earlier today and that’s going to be mostly on facebook, you know, if you’re trying to get people and get them to interact, they’re going to be in a special channel, they’re going to be in facebook, they’re probably not going to be on twitter very often. There’s another myth twitter’s everywhere only thirteen percent of americans used twitter on a regular basis and of course, we all know one of them right here two hundred, chief, so thirteen percent use it on a regular basis thirteen percent of americans use twitter, so? So if you have an older population, you probably shouldn’t spend too much time on your twitter strategy, which is something we worry about, p r all the time you should think about facebook and think about other channels and think about websites and e mail because that’s, where you’re going to find i like coming back to you not because you thought i looked like john mackerel, but, you know, so it provides the broader context. Yeah, i was okay. And then jessica, you’ve done the individual you use your studies? Yes, sitting with seniors watching them way have devices that watch their eyes on a cz they navigate website. No screen reading studies are available from larger group screen reading, so that technology exists you, khun tracking studies tracking studies labbate which yeah, and then those can develop heat maps that will indicate where someone looks on a site but generally speaking, in terms of how seniors look at a website, it’s not very different from how most of us do most of us like to scan websites, we don’t like to read them. The average amount of time you spend on a website is between around single web pages between thirty seconds and sixty seconds. There’s not a whole lot of time, people, people just try to get what they can and they leave on dh that’s true for seniors as well. They’re there for a purpose way know that they don’t come in through the home page. They came from somewhere else they were looking at or looking for something specific, they link to you, they found it, they leave, yes, so he might try to engage them somehow that gets into, you know, marketing and the web site design, but but leave that aside buy-in they came for something specific, and they’re leaving after they get it correct and it’s interesting, because as webb has evolved over time, the home page has become less and less important because, as you said, they’re coming in from google and they’re landing on the pages that they’re looking for. And so for example, on the homepage is right overrated, for example, on our website, tooth wisdom dot or only eleven percent of our users come in through the home page and so it’s interesting. When you’re doing time evaluation oh, how much time should we think about the home page? Maybe eleven percent of your time, matt, i’m guessing. Does that vary for you? Is home page more important for charity? Navigator it’s actually less so so ten percent of our told my intuition eyes a data driven discussion. Ten percent of our total web page views heir of the home page so not not even landing on it. Just visiting it any point during your visit? Ok? Eso there’s there’s ah it’s a similar thing and i think, really the we mentioned five oh, wait like five oh, wait doesn’t talk doesn’t speak it all to how people move through your sight how they locate information on your site it’s about the visibility, the readability, the color contrast so it’s it’s still very important to talk to your users do the kind of studies that jessica did because you’re not going to know you can be one hundred percent five oh, wait compliant and have xero users able tto do what they’re trying to do when they come to your site. That’s absolutely true there’s a difference between accessibility, compliance and accessibility and practice, you have a loss that’s a minimum standard, right? But this is not going as far as you’re describing now. So, matt, you you’re straddling an interesting position because you said, uh, the elder population is most of your users, but you’re the younger population is growing, so you’re constantly straddling. How do you how do you rationalize that? So part of it is we we addressed it to our channels, so so our website, our facebook tend to have an old, older audience. Our twitter followers, as justin noted, tend to be younger, so we can we can sort of target content that way. Another big part of what we have to look at is just we can’t way sort of can never make a really drastic change to something on our website, because that will throw our senior audience even though a younger audiences is almost surprised when you go when i go to a website and nothing’s changed since the last time i’m there that’s sort of the anomaly, but with supporting older users, we’ve made what we thought were very simple changes to our search results page, and it throws people off and they don’t. Understand that it’s not the final destination, it’s just you have to click through to get to the data, and people are people ask us, you know, where did all the data go? Why did you take away all this information when it’s just they’re looking at a searchers all not at the page that used to be looking at so we go, let me go to justin. This is this has implications around the it’s, the way seniors air using the technology. So you’ve demystified ho are not demystified debunk these myths that, as jessica did to seniors or not using technology, they’re not engaged with it, but how they’re using it and their understanding of it is different. I mean, it’s not as sophisticated as someone who grew up with it. Yeah, it has more exposure. Yeah, i think it’s probably not a sophisticated, but they bring their kind of wisdom and life experience to it. So another thing is, what do you really believe when when you see things on the internet? We did this siri’s that things based on the whole fake news and other stuff to look at, how many people actually get news from facebook believe the news and what do they do have someone post something that they don’t like? So what we found is only about one in ten people now believe what they see in social media is news good. Only about a third of those people click through to actually look at the original content about, like, three percent it’s a very small number on then. But the other interesting thing is seniors less likely to have this one bad behavior, which is diferente de follow people who have a different opinion than them? The younger generations are much more likely tio unfriend or unfollowed someone let’s say, tony of a different opinion than idea about politics or some social thing. Seniors are going to ignore it. Younger people are going basically opt out of you and what that means and you feeling about the implication is we all are just star in our own personal echo chamber, right? What we hear, what we want to hear, we’re only talking people have the same opinion and i think that’s a very dangerous point, you know, america’s based on diversity in the melting pot, and if you’re not hearing people from other cultures or believes our angles, whether you think they’re right or not, you should at least listen. Seniors do that younger people do not very interesting. Okay, so dahna matt, i’m interested in what was the little change you made to the search page, that through seniors that you thought was not a big deal, so we actually we service mohr information onto the search result and gave you mohr functionality via the searchers, always doing things like the result s o that the fact that all that functionality and information was showing up on the search page, people didn’t didn’t understand anymore that they had to click in to a charity’s page to see that high that maurin dept is more in depth. They thought they thought you had a cat in a diddle, the right all the all the information down to just what they’re seeing on this screen, right? The one after the after i click search. Exactly, okay, kapin ate it. Is that the right use of the word? Shorten? Keep it simple, alright, reduced, all right, got it. Some best practices. You ah, from your seminar from the workshop description, you promised them best practices for helping the over sixty five, population sharing you s oh, they’re posted on the handshake from our session, which is eighteen ntcdinosaur okay, very good. So we have them posted there, and you should also be ableto flip through materials and find access to those slides. So some of the overarching principles the first one, which is very important is be big, be bold and be obvious. And so this has to do with create things in large text. High contrast, is it good enough? Text tohave a texting, larger obstruction lodging button it’s not that it’s a it’s a good thing to add it’s a nice feature, but you also have to expect quite a lot of people won’t see that available on dh so fun side, but if you make the guy larger, big that’s not still not adequate, so that goes that’s. A lot of people just will ignore that part of the screen, usually because they don’t visually identify it as the thing they’re looking for, like you said, but making text minimum of a year, she educates. The host brings me along. I’m very gracious. I’m grateful for that. Okay? Minimum size, i think, is recommended at seventeen point font for website. Okay, what’s the way know what the average is? We know what typical website is. A lot of people have it smaller than that because standard booker print size is twelve point and so a lot of people rely on that print standard over fifty percent larger yeah, roughly almost fifty percent larger than the standard book. Okay, okay, big, bold and what was it obvious? And so matt and i talked about this senior sometimes having a difficult knowing which items air interact oppcoll and so we recommend, for example, of recognizing the highlight like they don’t know that, like a button is a button on dh, so you might need literal signifiers to make it look like it’s a three dimensional button with a shadow that you would push in three in real life that’s a literal signifier, but it gives a visual indication that something’s interactive ble and i think literal signifier that central ok previous conversation today i was talking with the woman and sheila warren about bitcoin blockchain that you’re talking about the wallet wallet in blockchain. Is that is that what it was? What was the literal signals? That a literal signifier? I would say so i would say so when we refer to something that’s traditional for something that’s new because blockchain is just yes, people just discovering what it even means or how people think of a floppy disk. Us the same little signified, right? Right. A literal signifier. Yeah. Okay, little signal. I always wondered what those were, but when you see a little bank for for your for your savings or something, okay, little signifier, thank you for that. Your host aggression, right? That phrase down okay. And having nothing to do with this conversation, but or very little to do with it. Okay, i used know that matt had talked about how some of the users on their site had also struggled with things that weren’t necessarily obviously buttons. But we’re click. Okay. You got some. You got some best practices for dealing with the sixty five over. Yes. So? So one of the things is is just to make a literal call out. So one of the things we did teo help with. Our search results problem was making sure that there was there was words that said mohr details or more info, something that even though it’s a link and it’s blue and it looks just like every other charity name link that’s in the search results, the fact that it was more of a call to action and clearly something that if you’re saying, oh, i wonder where the details went, you could click on that thing, and it would take you to the following paige so just things that that sort of are very clear next steps or calls to action. The other thing that we’ve done is pages that might be a dead end, like if you click into a history of donation and you’re looking at an individual donation you made and you want to get back to the list for a lot of younger users don’t know they have to hit the back button, but we have we’ll actually put a button that says, you know, return to my donations so that it’s very clear that there’s always a way out from from whatever page you’re on and sort of similar, just sort of having bread crumbs. Sort of at the top of a page that would list sort of the hierarchy within the sight of the page that you’re currently at. So any anything that that sort of keeps people when, when they might think, oh, now i’m stuck. I don’t know where to go next e-giving them sort of an escape valve or an obvious thing to click on has the next step what are the breadcrumbs? What breadcrumbs on pages so breadcrumbs would be like if if you’re if you’re at the top of the charity navigator page and you click into a category and then it cause it will show you the category you clicked on as we list the causes within that cattle. Are you okay? Trail that contrary? Yeah, apple does that. I think they pioneered a lot of websites. Will have that sort of at the top. You are in the nest, right? Baizman nesting. Okay. Okay, justine, i don’t want to leave you out of the best practices conversation, but you know that you’re part of the bone, and i cracked. I definitely have about okay. And all of us share this theory, which is do more research. I mean, i think that the number one stumbling block block that people have and mac gave great examples and just cut you have to know your audience and do research to understand how they’re using your product or your website or whatever and sit down talk of them. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it doesn’t have to be a long process that could be a small focus group of granny’s at home or it could be your friends and family, but do research and have a discipline way. One cautionary note that i’ll put out. I don’t want to get in the acronym jail, but be calm argast drug in jail don’t ruin my little signals are like in jail, the literacy that are the literary sent a liberation, but the idea is don’t collect more data than you need because the gdpr is coming general data protection requirements from europe and so everyone in the united states, if they deal with european counterparts, is going to be required. Tio give people who are citizens of europe and the uk, the ability tio, act like they never visited your sight. Are they you know they could be for gotten and it’s very hard, the finds are extremely expensive. They’re meant to be business shutting fines and so don’t collect the any personally identifiable information you don’t absolutely need and have a way for people opt out of that, let them know what you have and have a way to get rid of it because that’s the requirement and starts at the end of may know yeah, i’ve been doing a lot of reading about that. We covered it on non-profit radio a couple months ago. Yeah, yeah it’s a tough one. But again, you know, the my final answer is you do research, it could be informal can be formal, but gets a users and have a feedback channel because we live in a dynamic world and people expect change. Okay, although matt, when people see change, they don’t always know how to react to it. And sometimes they get panicky. Yeah, and that’s the kind of thing that having a group to test that with, you know i can help you sort of a void that that stumbling block so so even even just being ableto put it in front of a small group of people who are in a representative portion of your audience, you know, putting putting in front of my developers is not a way to know if if are our older audiences going tto find a problem, you have some seniors come out to new jersey, you’re you’re in a small town into joe’s we are alleged wort know what is not gonna rock gonna rock. So so we want we it’s something we want to do more of way. Haven’t we haven’t done it? Jessica’s been ableto really incorporated into her process much more than we have. Okay, we do it all the time. And the thing we always say is you get out of your own conference room. Talk to real people, i think that’s very good advice for a lot of it. Also rates back to what you were talking about. You know, night narrowing your circle of of influence that you allow in, you know, but let’s, get out a little that’s. Good for life. Okay? We have to have, like, a minute or so left. Who wants to wants to put the finishing touches on this subject? A little motivation. Jessica, i’m gonna give it to me, okay? Because i started down that end with with justin, so let’s go. All right, so i think, oh, my gosh, no, i’m on the way they were talking to a friend, you know? We said, you know what i’ve been doing this work? Why is this so important? I think it’s very important, especially in the non-profit community that we don’t just talk the talk, but we walk the walk, and so if we say we’re trying to serve a specific population, it’s very important that we do the work to actually do that. And i believe that building tools and resources and technology for seniors is a way that we can live our mission and serve that population. That’s it rubber. Okay, she’s, jessica meister webb and you ex specialists at oral health america. Well, she’s not also mad dragon, but seated next to her is matt dragon and he’s, a director of engineering at charity navigator, and justin greaves, senior vice president of research porter novelli, justin sorry, jessica and justin. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. This interview has been sponsored by network for good, easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits and this is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc and i thank you for being with us. We need to take a break. Wagener, cpas they go beyond the numbers. They’re covering your essentials nine, ninety and audit before they go beyond the numbers. So first is the essentials. Then they go beyond the numbers. Check the matter whether cps dot com start your due diligence there. Then use the contact page or better go in real life. Pick up the phone and talk to you. Eat hooch doom the partner there. Wetness cpas dot com now time for tony’s take two. Thank you. However you’re listening live podcast am fm affiliate if you’re getting my insider alerts each week thank you. I am very glad i’m very grateful that you are with us. Thank you very much. Now let’s, go to grants for newbies. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the twenty eighteen non-profit technology conference coming to you from the convention center new orleans. This interview, like all our ntcdinosaur views, is sponsored by network for good, easy to use donor-centric software for non-profits i guess now are janice chan she’s, a tech training specialist. For development and alumni relations. Maybe the tech training special, the one of the only are you the guy? I am a team of one seam of one. She is the tech training specialist in development and alumni relations for johns hopkins institutions, and daniel faulkner is donor engagement coordinator for baltimore community foundation. Ladies welcome. Thank you for having a son like you. Your topic is grant proposals for newbies, bootstrapping research and preparations so that’s perfect, actually, for our audience of twelve thousand small and midsize non-profits some of whom may not be doing grants don’t don’t have to get started on grant’s research. You don’t know how to start putting. Well, there’s a paper depends hyre anymore, but doing out online forms, you know, and that probably should be in the fund-raising mix. You think, daniel, for most be a consideration. Definitely it’s, it’s, it’s. A robust process. But once you get it, handle it it’s really easy to follow year after year. So if you could work it into your schedule it’s definitely worth going active. Okay. Okay, janice, anything you want to add to the motivation step i think you get it gets easier. The first one is always tough to figure out, and it gets easier as time goes on, so don’t get discouraged by exactly first one. Exactly number five will be easier than number one. Exactly. Okay, okay, let’s, talk about some of the research, you know. How do you how do you, uh, find out about grants that might be appropriate for u s o for me, i look for free and easy sources. We love free on free it’s always great. I will plug one, which is foundation center. They have a great website to find funding opportunities they have. If you in baltimore, if you go to a public library, you can actually access their account free. They’re free full membership, most libraries or institutions, educational institutions have a membership through them. So that’s a great resource. If you’re looking for nine nineties, you want information about funders? I use them a lot. Their office in d c is great because they’re really if you call, they’re willing to help you and they’re all volunteered face or they have classes webinars that are free. So i use that a lot in my day today foundation research you khun i’m sorry foundation sent to research. You could do any any of their affiliated library in that country. Exactly. There are many there that you don’t have to be a subscriber. You there so we can be who you want to do for your desktop. You won’t get as many features, but the features that are offered through their free on account justice. Good there are okay. The other other janice free resource is that we could take advantage of besides foundations dahna sure grantspace go for any federal funding and that’s that’s up your alley and you’re usually a lot of states will have a local council of grantmaker zor of foundations, community foundations, humor sort of have a consortium and you can sort of go to one place and get some of them, even have a common common form. Okay, okay. Others other we love free resource is anything besides, maybe your community group. I know. In new york, there’s new york regional duitz association of grantmaker is nigh rag. So there’s that goes well, the foundation center. Any others were involved when we have a bag, which is another resource, like a bag thing. Well, i would say community foundations are a great way. Usually most their websites give a general opportunity list of what’s going on for their fund holders. So in baltimore, we have over eight hundred funds that come through our foundation. So that’s a great source. If you know your community foundation, get in contact with them to see what’s available and how they can help. Okay? Okay, anymore i’ll keep asking. You say there are no more also like your state or local organization of a non-profit associations. So, maryland, the suspicion non-profit organizations has some of those. Resource is that you can, you know, make an appointment schedule to use as well. Ok, for research there, there for research research. Resource is also okay. Okay. Anything else? I think that covers everything the free and easy. The user friendly ones that are a great start there won’t overwhelm people. Those are really good sources to use when you’re first starting out. Okay. These are also for not only finding well grants, doing your own research around foundations that may fundez your fundez or work. These are all resource. Is that exactly that? Well, okay. Okay. What’s, the next step. So now we now we know where we should be applying. We’re taking it step by step. Danielle, where should we where do we go next? Well, for me, after i’ve done all the research, i have a proponent of writing one grant and then from there outsourcing it and using it to write many multi purpose. Exactly. I call it my my thanksgiving dinner of granting if you go one grantspace irv’s, everyone. So that’s, where most of my work comes in, i would say gathering information that pertinent to your organizations, so that might be your mission statement all your financial papers on the irs, things working with your program team to make sure you have the right lingo in a language down to explain the project that you’re want funding for take some real time to gather that all in one location. So when you sit down and write, you don’t have to go and have to go back and forth. I’m a really big component of doing all the hard work first, so then you can focus on the writing if you that’s not your strong point there’s also a point that’s tangential to that which is make sure you follow all the instructions exactly. Hide everything just for doesn’t really matter how burdensome you think it is. Yes. And they say twelve twelve point fonts on double do it, it’s not a suggestion. Find tabs? Yeah, ever. What was jonas finder town that they need to be labeled? Just do it. Okay, it’s like, in that sense, it drives me of dealing with government bureaucracy. I’m just they may ask things that don’t make sense to you, but and it may not even make sense to the people who are asking for it. It may have been twenty years ago, but just do it okay, just comply. You know you’re asking for their their support. You gotta comply, right? And i’d like to add a point to that to write figuring out like one of things we talked about our session was having a go or no go less right there’s things that yeah, there’s some hoops that you’re going to jump through it’s going to be worth it. But you also wanna they’re going to be some things that maybe is a stretch too far for organizations. Kind of taking you off mission. You’re kind of drifting. From things. So you want to make sure that that’s really feasible, invisible as well? Okay, that’s a very good point, especially in terms of mission, you know, it’s only it’s only sort of related to what you do, you know, they’re going to read through that, right? And you’re probably gonna be unsuccessful in the grant anyway, you know. So why try toe conform your work, tio what they’re looking for? Better to stick with exactly what you do, find funders for that makes it ok. But look at the different angles of what it is that you do that might be appealing to that funder, but it’s, so good to be at the end of day. What you’re actually trying to find accomplice, you gotta be on the same page, okay? Oppcoll you talk about i’m just drawing from what was in your session description? Oh, interpreting instructions is that is that basically what we’re talking about? Or is there more spending one? Yeah, just read them. I would have after you’ve written the actual brand and this is way after have someone not associated with the organization or maybe a co worker who’s, not in the process. Read the instructions of unread your grants so they can look at it from a different eye. Make sure you hit all the targets because if you’re in it and your writing it, you might think you answered that question correctly, but in reality he didn’t, and someone outside of your space well under sand so i would definitely, if you have the time, try to get someone outside of your world to read it and the instructions fired-up anything that janice you want to add, i think also, i don’t like to start with what’s needed less when i go through the instructions like, okay, let’s, before we can gather everything’s, make that checklist that i don’t lose something or i can get somebody else rolling on whatever i need, i need their help with. Okay. Last november, i hosted a panel at the foundation center. I’ve done a fair amount of speaking there. It was not a great writer or professional, but it was a panel of grayce grant oars, funders and one non-profit and the subject matter was building a relationship with the institution, even including at the applications, you know, some some explicitly say no calls. So oppcoll but others are more open to communication or maybe it’s no calls and, you know, we take emails, but talk a little about that early stage where you’re still rating, having getting questions answered, you know, not being afraid, anybody? Well, i’ve never come across a call for a proposal that didn’t have instructions on if you have questions during the process, they always air usually upfront about that which they prefer follow that to a t and that that’s what i told my freelance clients the same way, you know, if you do have a question, let me go through that process for you, but don’t like magically run into that person for that thunder that’s not really appropriate, but follow their rules just like the instructions for the grant follow the rules. What do you mean that people see through that stuff? Yeah, you know, it becomes law fake and phony, and you don’t want that, i don’t know and if the end, if they don’t write, i mean funders know they’ve your non-profit what you’re looking for us funding, right? Like that’s already in the back, right? You want to you want to find out? What? What it is that that fundez hoping to achieve through their grantmaking so that you can line that up. But i think also, if they don’t have explosives constructions about, don’t call, don’t e mail anything like that, right? You know, it doesn’t mean i don’t feel like you can’t. You’re like, you know what? Like our boardmember knows somebody on their board, let’s, just see if that would be okay to have a meeting. Tto, learn more and meet with their program officer to see you. Is this a good fit? Doesn’t line up or, you know, it should be it go looking elsewhere. Good. How about tracking deadline? Make sure we go to a lot of details were like twenty five minutes, yeah, don’t hold back, don’t hold out on non-profit video sures deadline, so deadlines ah, and i’m one of those people would put, like, you know, two weeks ahead of the actual deadline on my calendar, but i think that there are a lot more, you know, when i did a lot of my grantwriting is before a lot of project management skills were easier to use and they are, so i just put a lot of things in a spreadsheet on dh kind of, like project manage things that way think they’re a lot more project management tools now, right where you can put in due date it’s gonna trigger reminder and send you an email or, you know, when you log into that system, et cetera, but i think that that is really key, because if you you know, if you don’t similar, like if you’re applying for a job, you don’t follow the instructions, you don’t meet their time frames, you don’t show that you’re respectful of their time, they’re going like, why am i exactly? We have a deadline it’s an easy right off that in the next way didn’t say postmark said, bye you know you’re gonna be disqualified our land and also building and buffer times using technology. First of all, that’s a technology help brovey times yeah, you’re not gonna be able to devote a solid week to this, so don’t leave five business days before the deadline to get started on that right? Be realistic about what you can do in the time for him, a lot of opportunities may pop up it’s a rare with grants cause cycles are pretty much the same, but be realistic if you are a team of one r office that small, i don’t think you can pull off the whole grant and a time frame of a month that’s a lot of work to do for one person if you’re a small office buy-in some opportunities you have to wait for just go after next year, but yeah, be realistic about those deadlines and don’t think you could just write a grant overnight. I thought clients asked me that, and i always turned them down right away. No, you won’t get my best work at that, so yeah. Just be realistic about what you can produce. What your staff can take on that’s also related to what we were just talking about it, asking questions of the the foundation of the thunder. You know, if the question is coming the day before the due date yeah, that looks back that you know, that even you can’t mask it. They know they’re down you again. You’re gonna be gonna be found out. So all right, plan ahead. Leave yourself enough time. So even a month is really not enough time for a small shop. I like to do at least four to six months and that’s if everything is weight, should be. But there are those rare occasions where something pops up. You can’t miss out, you need it. That’s where i would say if you’ve already written that one grant, you’re prepared already so you can dust it off for what you need from it. And you can apply to that one that pops up within a month. Otherwise, i probably wouldn’t go under a month just because of what you have to produce. If it’s a brand new grant and if they’re asking for a lot. Of extra things that you don’t have time to produce in a you know, good manner, i think the weather you’re starting from scratch like your writing a grand for a new program that you haven’t had to write one for me for right? Like a lot of stuff you can recycle, but some things you can’t or like, they’re taking a very different tack on whatever it is you’re doing. I think the other thing is that the attachments, right? If they want their like budget for mated, a format, a specific way, you you know, your finance person doesn’t have that time, right? So i think just being cognizant of that and being cognizant, what you’re asking of your coworkers will also make the process smoother because you’re always like, i always worked closely with the finance people with our program south and the better relationships i had with them, like, okay, let’s, be realistic about this and also is this realistic for me to ask for? Or is there are there some adjustments that we should make that’s so meet the put the funder is looking for, but that aren’t going to be just a pain for everybody to actually implement if you get the grand also good point too you’re going to be counting on other people? Or is that another reason to allow enough time? Exactly? I don’t want to make enemies in your you got enough opportunity. Do that elsewhere around. Same team here. Okay, i gotta take a break. You’ve heard the talis moughniyah lll from lee elementary school, where they’re getting a monthly donation from tell us for the credit card processing of a parent owned company that’s the secret to the monthly pass of revenue from tell us, ask the people close to your organization who owned businesses that would they switch to tell us that’s the key? Get those insiders started tony dahna em a slash tony tell us now back to grants for newbies anything else around this discussion about deadlines? More hold out on us now don’t wait to submit an online application so the last day like i always i actually block, would block off time on my calendar because i definitely like the day before submitted and like their website has gone down, you know, like will this count against us? We don’t know, maybe we should have submitted it earlier, and so then you end up panicking about it. You know why you schedule it, like at least three days in a fans for, like, an online submission, or, you know, maybe till i get it in the mail, get it, you know, tracks, you know, it’s worth getting a track for that piece of minds. I once drove across town and actually dropped it off. But that’s, an idea you got there twenty minutes before that funders office closed. Got there, just in the nick of time. It was a day off, but that was not ideal. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Don’t let this happen to your exact a proud moment, okay, but thanks for sharing. Hyre. A prepper preparing for online submissions. We just talked about that clearly. Tips for online. We got more time to get now, when is your sessions? Have you had it? This morning. Okay. Now you spoke for an hour on this topic. And you? We did. Okay. What? I think it was just right. Join now. We’ve been together for seventeen minutes. So are like sixteen minutes. We have a minute of prep. You got more. Don’t hold out on us. Ah, fun fact about me. I love reading nine nineties that’s. If you know what those are, the virus form nine. Ninety. Exact wired by latto you like you’re not talking about the easy no, no, no, no. Thirty patients postcard postcard don’t no, no, actually, i started high school with a non-profit i was volunteering for that’s how we fund-raising to come back because we’re all volunteers so i was taught very of sixteen. Seventeen howto break them down and i enjoy it now for sure somebody tips on how to decipher how to get out of the good things to know you can find out who you need to contact as far as who to invite to her events, if you’re afraid that religion is the foundation, you’re looking at the wound, yes, so they have to list who was involved with our foundation. So i’m talking about their board, who their highest paid person is our persons, you don’t have to disclose your five thing exactly he’s on the nine, ninety okay would say if you are not inviting those people to her events, you should, because those are the people who have power clearly in that organization. If they don’t know who you are and you’re not on their radar, you should be, and that list it verifies, hey, they’re important to be on this form. I should probably know who they are, and they should know who i am so that i always tell people check that list out is web sites aren’t always updated quickly on dh that’s, a yearly thing that the irs form also their disclosure of where they give money. People can say a lot of things, but what they report to the arrests have to be legit, so looking at how much they give tio organizations that are like yours, so if you’re, you know, arts organization and you find a nine ninety where they’ve given in the past, but their highest gift has been two thousand dollars. I wouldn’t go for them for ten thousand dollars. I would stay in that range of okay under two thousand it’s the first time, maybe a thousand, but it gives you a good indication of what they’re capable of giving that’s also looking at their salaries if their executive director only makes fifty thousand and you need that probably shouldn’t ask for fifty thousand. But you should definitely okay, little things like that where you can break that down on nine nineties there free. You don’t have to. Everyone has tohave one. Some of them are located on people’s websites, so they’re really easy to find this buy-in store have foundation. They d’oh d’oh scores another one. I sir, has its foundation, of course, has attorney xero back-up probono also happens. We’re together database e-giving well, yeah, yeah, so little things like that. I kind of check on what i do take on a freelance client and they say, oh, i want to go after this grant, i check out that foundation first and say, is this worth your time? Because they might have grand ideas off. Oh, they’ll give me this when in reality no, they’re not so it’s. A good way to double check yourself and it’s a free source and they have to give it something else that can happen is referrals from board members, but not bona fide like just right. Oh, i heard i heard the rockefellers funded. Yeah, great. You know, let’s see, if that i dont happen, you know our work, you know, they have a lot of money, a rockefeller have a lot of money and gets to exactly everybody knows that. And if they’re not allied with what we’re doing now, what’s the point. Sometimes you have to press back, push back. Otherwise you’re going to be real. Or if you find in baltimore, we have certain family foundations where they give to similar organizations throughout the year if you’re new on the scene and saying, hey, is this a good opportunity or good contact? Tohave you can find similar people are doing your work and say, well, they’ve already got a contact with them. They might like me too. So it’s a good way to say like, are we on the same level, you know. Will they even, like, welcome, ian, if they’re already on that same mind. So i like to look at that. Zoho your peers are exactly know your peers are going after. So you khun get a piece of that pie. Okay. All right. Those were excellent. Thank you, danielle. Insider like pro tips for the nine. Ninety it’s. A weird thing i liked. I glad somebody likes to look at them. It’s mitch, what else? We got several minutes together. Somebody but somebody had brought up like they had this sort of weird program model. And anyhow, i think one of things that’s important to think about is as much as we harp on following the instructions and following, you know, everything that they asked for the tea. Like what? Their contact preferences are, et cetera. Also don’t feel like you should be boston by that. Right. So that’s that’s, i think where working your network has the potential. Teo, open up. You know, other ideas. So i get in terms of corporate funders. Right, corp corporations usually have both, like the they might have a corporate foundation, but there’s a marketing dollars that they give. Out of to write for a slightly different reasons, right? But if you have a conversation with whoever’s in charge of giving right, or even if it’s somebody in their corporate social responsibility department, right, you can have that conversation about, you know it does this make here’s what we’re doing here, some opportunities for your organization to get involved, you know, maybe if employees engagements important to them, whatever it is, right? You finding out what that angle is for, what they’re trying to achieve through there giving right, whether it’s on the marketing event sponsorship side or they really like that grants more formal grantmaking side for it or some bridge of the combination of the two right, and then also corporations, national corporations in this half like local community e-giving where that local store of, you know, say of a large chain store, they might have that store manager might have the ability to give out small grantspace right, it’s a good way to get your foot in the door and say like, hey, can we get we work across the state? Can we get? Is it possible to get funding at that state level? So i think don’t be afraid to sort of, like, figure out what is your foot in the door to start that conversation with them and that’s also where you can find out. Okay, you know what? Maybe this isn’t really good fit, but people move around to write and they remember you like you’ve had a really good relationship with them. You’ve, like, always kept him updated, invited them to your events, right? See what we’re doing, even if you’re not doing it right now, maybe you personally, like i would make, you know, like we’ve gotten i’ve seen people like, you know, like, okay, my company isn’t doing right now make a small personal gift because i think you guys are doing great work, right? And those people have moved, and i’ve also see them come back and say, like, you know what? I’m a different organization that now funds programs like yours, so you know, like, the more you can build those relationships and have those conversations just get on people’s radars, as danny mentioned, the more people you know, just like personal networking, the more people know what you’re doing and see that impact it has, then i think that’s more people can advocate for you. Someone who’s volunteered to re grants for review. Ah lot of the decisions come down to do i know who this person is. Do i know who this grant us for? Andi it’s very shallow thing to say like, well, i don’t know who that is, why i give money even though they’re doing great work, but it’s a reality. If you’re not on their radar, why would they take a chance on giving this x amount of money? So you really do have to think about how you’re engaging those people that you’re going after and don’t just approach them when you need money approached me around so they know who you are and they feel comfortable getting with that amount of money that isn’t that the same as what we do with individual? Yes, come to the clinic and engaged. We educate them just like them. And then, you know, the ultimately that there may very well be a solicitation for some, you know, for something and and janice, you’re point is very good to terms of corporate, you know, it’s not only about money, but employee engagement, your opportunities it’s often very important, right? Or if they’re start opening headquarters in a new community, and then i have a relationship with that community, and you, d’oh, right, that’s, a good place to position yourself as well. Okay, uh, we still have another couple of minutes left, like men and a half or so together. Daniel, i guess. My three takeaways for writing, because that’s, my background study, playwriting. But this is how i get to write as well. It’s all over it’s weird, but i would definitely say, win or lose, funded or not, i was under thank you letter i’m a big proponent of thank you letters that’s part of the follow-up you never know when friend funding will become available. So that little piece of thank you, you know, regardless, we’ll keep them engage. I always say simple equals fundez so you might have a beautiful paragraph about everything you’re doing, but when it gets down to it, it might be too much. So that goes back to the instructions. If they have a word limit, follow it. But also you’re getting too wording and just what you’re doing. Just take it out. They really want to look at the numbers and the outcomes and how they’re going to get that money back if there is opportunity for that looked like that. And then your last one kind of brief. Last one said you had three three takeaway? No, i don’t never mind. Okay. Thinking. Sorry, right to protest to yeah, those are the two big ones too big to take away. Okay. All right. We are going to leave it there. All right, so my pleasure they are. They are jenise chan, the technical training specialist in development and alumni relations for johns hopkins institutions on danielle faulkner dahna engagement coordinator at baltimore community foundation. It sounds like she’s also a freelancer. Yes. Okay. Okay. Girl right. That’s, the freelance for arts funding in baltimore city. We’re looking for that girl right where you are, right? Tio? Yep, like playwright. Okay. Danielle janis, thanks so much. So much. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen, ninety si, thank you for being with us. This interview sponsored by network for good, easy to use donor-centric software for non-profits, thanks so much next week. Storytelling and free facebook fund-raising if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. 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Nonprofit Radio for February 23, 2018: Turbocharge Your Grants Fundraising

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John Hicks: Turbocharge Your Grants Fundraising

John Hicks returns with 9 steps that will burn the tires off your grants program. He’s principal and founder of DLBHICKS LLC consulting.

 

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week she’s grace shandan a in new orleans. She helped us out by referring videographers for the upcoming non-profit technology conference where we’ll be. Grace, thank you so much for your help. If you want to check out grace she’s at grace in nolan congratulations, grace on being non-profit radios listener of the weak and thank you for your help. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of duitz handup cia if you mentioned the off color idea that you missed today’s show turbocharge your grants fund-raising John hicks returns with 9 steps that will burn the tires off your gran’s program. Look at me making car metaphors. I don’t even know how to change. The only thing i can do is change the windshield wiper fluid. First time i used a ah ah phillips head screwdriver. I had to go to the emergency room s so there won’t be a lot of car metaphors beyond this. This one, john is principal and founder of deal be. Hicks llc consulting on tony’s steak too don’t get don’t get hung up on the money we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio bye weinger suppose a’s c p a’s guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna may slash tony tell us what a pleasure to welcome back john hicks. We believe this is his third time on the show. C f r ee principal and founder of de lb hick it’s, a consulting firm providing fund-raising and grant seeking guidance to non-profits from grassroots to global. His career spans over thirty years. He’s on the faculty of columbia university’s masters degree in non-profit management teaching grantwriting and he’s a lecturer for rector’s university’s institute for ethical leadership he’s at deal be hicks and deal be hicks dot com john hicks welcome back to studio that’s. Great to be here. My pleasure to have you deal be deal be all we keep here’s deal be. I love the story behind deal be tell it. Sure, thie lb stands for dylan’s lightbulb as in bob dylan. Years ago, i came across a copy of the ai pennebaker’s great documentary don’t look back, bob dylan’s nineteen sixty five tour of the u k early in the film villains getting off the plane at heathrow airport in these walking in this press conference carrying a large light bulb and he’s getting asked all the innocuous questions you know are you folk? What is your message? And someone asked me, what is your message? This is my message keep good had always carry a lightbulb and i thought that was probably about the best piece of advice i’ve ever heard in my life and i adopted is the personal mantra. And so when i launched my own firm, i said, you know, i’m gonna work. Deal be into this, get the light bulb in there and that’s t l b if you go to the website, you can learn a little more about that incident and the home page has ah, lightbulb image. It has a light bulb. Do we know why dylan was carrying, like both do you know this day? And no one knows, i think is this is the typical bob dylan thing where somebody handed in my white, bobby is like, this is cool, or maybe it’s not, but i’ll make it cool, okay, cool. There you go. All right, um, glad to have you back. I love it. You can come to studio all the time. Wonderful, yeah, it’s, great to be here. All right, so you got you got these nine tips for ah turbocharging, you know, kicking up your grantspace o gram to the next level. And you’ve got some advice that coincides with the panel. That was on last week when i moderated at the foundation center. Right. That’s cool. Yeah. Um, so let’s, i mean, let’s. Ah, what? Let’s overviewing first, what are what do you feel like non-profits just generally or not getting quite right when you got nine tips here about things that non-profit should be doing better, but just eyes the thinking not right around. Grants mean what? What? Generally what could we be doing smarter thinking better differently about grant? What grantspace wise? Well, i was looking grantspace as being the kind of philanthropy that brings to things to the table for a charity they bring a grant will bring you cash and also brings you cachet. Okay, so, it’s, thank you. Somebody else’s supporting you that they believe in your work. Exactly. Upleaf non-profit radio sponsors you got it. And the thing about getting grandfather bing is that you go through a more of a due diligence process, which means that if i’m able to go to aa donor-centric divisional donor and say i have a grant from this foundation of that foundation, and particularly if it’s a pretty well known foundation, it says to that person, han cubine through due diligence process. And so i think, first of all, it’s getting non-profits to think about what part does a grant or grants for a grant program play in their philanthropy, and also, i think, it’s the heart of the nine steps to turbo charging your grants, outreach, it’s, it’s all about rethinking your agency. It’s like rethinking your story. And how do you use that to engage foundations at a much higher level? And i think i’ve always held that any charity could do this. I mean, it is this is not just large charities is i think grassroots charities continue. We wouldn’t be on non-profit radio. This is all absolutely for the billion dollar endowment and above you got it. Yeah. Okay, now i know for sure they can. And that’s that’s why that panel was so valuable last. That was last week. Yeah, i think there was a lot of discussion about this. I mean, if you if your listeners go back and listen to that the podcast again, i mean, you’re going to hear these grantmaker sze talk about the importance not only of engagement. But it’s, coming in with a story and a vision for where your organization’s going next, and if you can get them to buy into that direction, you can not only get a grant that you could maybe could get a sizeable grant or an impactful grant, and they’re going to term grand exactly, yeah, changing the conversation, okay? And you’ve got ideas on that coming up, you know, thinking long term versus immediate and what’s recurring costs, etcetera and what’s growth costs will get there. Okay, so that’s the so the first one you have focusing on the right the right kind of money. Tio tio, ask for right, i think it’s understanding where your organization is and not trying teo under reach or overreach. So i think the important thing is i see a lot of charities come in and say, you know, i’m under filling under a lot of pressure from my board or the staff that i have to go for the gold swing for the fences and get gates may not be the right fit for you, it’s choosing the part of the donor pool you want to swim in as i’m find of telling. Clients and the other part of raising the right money is making sure that you’re not getting money that sets up expectations that you can’t fulfill this is another thing i ran into his a consultant is walking in the door and seeing a lot of grantspace literally lying around where the agency is struggling to fulfill the promises made, but they just weren’t able to bring the rest of the money and so it’s making sure that you’re driving the bus, that money is coming in to support your priorities and what you do. Well, yeah, so what causes this? This gap is it is not adequate planning on the part of the part of york, it can be inadequate planning, but, you know, i’m also fundraiser, and i acknowledge that a lot of us were there a lot of pressure to produce, and so it could be that, you know, we have boards, we have bosses who are, you know, asking us to go for this grant that grant and, you know, you’re just you’re you’re in response mode, the nine steps, i think get us back into doing this proactively so i you know, later in our conversation, we’ll talk about things like a strategic agenda and envisioning, and that kind of helps us, you know, move the ball forward, but close this gap between expectations and and reality. It’s usually said it better an idea tony must get say that so don’t think you should be sprite. What i’m just point out is that you’re surprised that i okay, hold i thought, it’s time for a break. I’m going to do something different. I’m going to wagner, cpas they are, they have i have with for them a brand spanking new testimonial. Um, coat weinger cps has taken the time to research and understand our rather unique industry and its regulations. Ah it’s a sign of their commitment to provide excellent service. They make themselves accessible to our team members, which speaks volumes on how much they care about their clients. And quote, this is from a midwest agency that finances alleviation of economic inequality. Look at this. They make themselves accessible, they care about their clients. Can you talk about your accountant and your audit firm that way? Can you say that about them? I mean, even get personal. I’m going to make this personal. I’m going to get ad hominum in a good way. You eat each tomb. This is the guy you want to talk to. You want to talk to eat, which tomb? It’s, personal wagner, cpas, dot com. Okay, let’s, go back to john and turbocharging your grants. Fund-raising yes, so we’ve got ideas coming up that air going toe close this gap, basically. Dahna let’s, see. What you want, talk about next, but you, you you, you you go well, we were timeout, visioning, and maybe we should talk a little bit about goal setting because i think that’s at the heart something related to what we’re just talking about you, if you don’t get that, you don’t have the goals right? Then the expectations are going toe is going to have that gap between what you asked for and what they’re expecting, right? And so well, in a lot of cases, gold setting stops at raise more money, and you did last year, our costs are going up here’s, where the costs are going up and that’s pretty much the end of the conversation, and what i’ve come to find out over time is that the organizations that seem to do a better job of getting money on the grant seeking side are the ones who think about their goals into categories there’s sustaining goals, which is essentially what are carrying costs just for the operations and carrying crossfit program so we still need to bring money in to make sure we keep the doors open. We keep doing the essential work that we do. Best, but then there’s another set of goals which relate to investment. So i call these investment goals, and i only think of it is you put money and you’re going to get a return on it, and we’re going to do something a bit more than you know we’re doing right now is so on the operation side, he could be staffing it could be strategic planning could be capacity building and ever on the program inside it’s all about creating new programs and growing new programs were growing the programs that you have. All right, so this carrying costs versus new investment, right? It’s it’s not this is not is not the same is short term versus long term. No, i think you know, because because carrying costs could be long term. Correct, right it. Is it those air like you’re basically your overhead? Is that fair? Or now? Nobody’s that’s programs program too, right? It’s programmed it. So just feel free to say you’re wrong. I’m not gonna shut your michael. Wait. We rarely occasionally we do, but i won’t let you, so okay, so, it’s. Not that right. It’s it’s you you’re forced to think long. Term if you want to make this type of, you know, new investment kind of asks, right? Exactly. I mean, i know another way of putting this is that sometimes, you know, i yeah, i’m so privileged to meet incredible people who are working miracles with small amounts of money. They come in with a fairly small, modest program, but when you look at what they’re doing, they’re making some pretty deep, meaningful change in people’s lives, and sometimes i’m so blown away by what they’re doing with limited resource is i’m i look at them and say, you know, if you’re doing this on a shoestring, imagine if we had the shoe yeah, she was all about the investment. Great. Where do we go next? And how do we take this? And either deep in it r r make it bigger look atyou extending the shoestring metaphor. Okay. So smart. Okay. So insightful. Okay, no, ramsey, if he had to shoot. All right, all right. Um, but now this you know, there might be a fear of putting the putting the potential funder off, because now we’re asking for more money. And if we’re looking at this new investment kind of money. We’re not going to put a thunder off by asking for more money if the money has a purpose. I mean, think about it this way. I remember our this sounds important years, i’m not going to put a funder off by asking for more? I don’t think so. I mean, you know, years ago i heard abigail disney talking to a group of non-profits at an event here in new york city, and some thing she said was that she says, yeah, i have a lot of money and i’m a philanthropist, but without you, my money means nothing because i don’t go where you go. I don’t do what you do. I don’t see what you see when i find you, you become my ears and you become my eyes and you become my hands, and any organization can be part of that picture. That’s very touching. Yeah, yeah, okay, so ask for what you need. Not what you think we’ll be approved. As for what you need and what you think you’ll get and ask for funding that’s going to get you to the right opportunity. So i always feel that philanthropy is about the possibilities, what we’re able to do next about opportunity, i remember once i had was working with an organization here in the city, and the ceo was taking a grantmaker through the building and showing them the program and talking about program growth and halfway through the visit, the thunder looked at the ceo and said, look, i know you’re going to be coming to me with a grant proposal, just make sure you ask me for enough money to do what you need to do, so you don’t have to come back and ask me again. Mmm, yeah, all right, they they want to be asked so they write tony with foundations remember, we’re dealing with the donor constituency that’s in the business of giving money away. Yeah, so let’s help them do their jobs and they want to do it right? They don’t want it. I have half cocked and then, like you said, you know, request to come back having to come back in eighteen months because you didn’t ask for enough, right? That that looks bad because you look at your not about you, not a good plan or then and you do the best. You can i mean, sometimes there are extenuating circumstances, but, you know, put some thought into it, and i think you know, most of our listeners, i’m sure do this. Well, we’re making sure that they will now i’m glad you said our listeners before he says my listeners, uh, and then you kept talking, so i let it go. But this time you said our listeners, they’re our listeners. They are our listeners, right pronounce non-profit radio uh, we should make that way to make that one might take aways okay, um, all right, so we have carrying cost versus new investment money. Now we have sustaining grants versus investment grants. What way? Supposed toe? You want us to be thinking about these? What does this mean? Right? So it’s thinking about yourself, gorgon jail, it’s, its’s, it’s sustaining great it’s, the staying expenses, investment expenses, and then the you have to think sustaining investment grants and the way you write these things are a bit different. I mean, sustaining is, you know, essentially you’re making the case in the proposal the application for why we need to keep the doors open and keep doing what we’re doing. And i think there’s grantspace driven by results, here’s what we accomplished last year, here’s what we have the promise of continuing to do this year with investment grand proposals, you’re talking about kicking it up a notch and you know where we’re going next to me? Here’s the roadmap here, the opportunities this is why we’re, you know, trying to grow a program from one hundred thousand dollars one hundred fifty thousand dollars, and the idea is it’s investment, i’m asking you to put money and with the promise or at least i’m the best of my ability. I’m promising that we’re going to get some stronger results. And so, it’s, i think it’s a little the way the proposal gets presented. It’s probably a little bit different in terms of some of the language and and some of the presentation, perhaps now, this sounds like some some of what was talked about in the panel that we have had on last week. Yeah, yeah, you had a number of the grantmaker she talked about, you know, that you have to not only just come in and show us the opportunities, but, you know, you have to show us that. You have ah, i’m going to use the metaphor of road map. You have an idea of how to get from point a to point b and why my money is going to make a difference. One of things i talked to my students a lot about in the class at columbia is that yes, professor, go ahead, share your sugar wisdom, you’re not a professor, but you know, they we talked a lot about risk taking a shin, which is maybe an odd thing to talk about a class on grantspace the end of the day, a lot of what we’re doing for donors just for major donor you can do it for foundation is your mitigating risk. You don’t want the donor to feel that they’re putting a lot of risk on the table when they give you money. So in what we’re fortunate in the world of foundations as we can right of thoughtful grand proposal make a nice presentation i can show you how to get from point a to point b so i can give you exhibit a so now subsumed in this, by the way wrote roadmap isa fine metaphor, just like you don’t go to automobiles that drive on roads, because then i won’t fault. You know, like i said, i t entrust my first experience with a phillips head screwdriver was very bad. So you can imagine me with a set of ratchets or whatever those things are called. This sounds a lot like the are no subsumed in this, though, is the thing that i get asked. A lot of i hear a lot about is, you know, should you ask for overhead support in your in your grants and subsumed in all this is is a definite yes, right? I mean, you got to keep the lights on. We gotta keep salaries paid, my approaching this the right way, what you are, i mean, that’s. The question that comes up quite frequently is the foundation’s fund. Overhead expenses, i think, first of all, there’s ah, there’s, ah, misguided notion that foundations don’t like to pay for overhead. I mean, there’s, a few foundations who don’t, but most of them understand it, and they get it. I mean, i mean, it’s essential, these essential essential expenses, they are essential to carry out the program if i can’t pay my rent. Exactly. And and the thing is, is that what what i find sometimes is that when you really start looking at the costs and the expenditures from from unorganised ation and how they’re supporting their programs, you find that expenses that are categorized as overhead or administrative or not, i mean, i work with all a lot of grassroots organizations, were the c e o is coming out of her office and she’s working with kids and she’s working with families? Well, she’s not overhead, she’s actually also direct program. So, you know, i mean, firstly can have toe really hold your budget up to the mirror and say, you know, is this truly accurate? I mean, you know, there’s, a lot of hard work and ceos out there, especially in grassroots organizations where their essential and so they’re a lot, you know, probably more of their costs might be included in a program budget for a grant proposal. Hard working for sure, we know that absolutely, um yeah, so yet you gotto any clients story that comes to mind, like we’re you know, they were thinking low and you encouraged them to think bigger, and they ended up being successful. Maybe they didn’t get every dollar they asked for, but they got something bigger than you bigger than they were initially asking for. Yeah, i mean, and i should hope so. I’m putting you on the spot? No. Never happened, you know? Then then we cut the mikes. No, absolutely not yours, you know, cut mine. Well, everything covered, like, well, first of all, i just try toe look, i get it goes back to the light bulb, you know, i just don’t get you, you know, i’m just i’m just simply illuminating what’s in front of us a lot of times, and i find that i have probably any number of stories where i’m working with a client, and all i have to do is show them that this foundation could give more money and they say, well, gee, i think i have these opportunities and get them to think it through, and i’m like, hey, i think i’ve got something i could take the foundation and they do a fabulous job of presenting an engaging the thunder. Maybe i have, you know, shown them that opportunity, but at the end of the day, you know, i want to give credit where credit’s due, my my krauz clans raise good money because my clients are really good, smart people who are doing great work. Well, it’s a collaboration, you’re also contributed a modest surprised to find a modest professor. There aren’t too many of those and they say no, professor, but i’m going to start a band still be called modest, professor, no, it’ll be de lb, everything in your life is deal be about the ball. Yes, modest professor deal bur but he asked me a specific example. I mean, recently i was working with i am working with ah, you know, wonderful charity on dh. They help kids with cancer. And you know what? What was really great was they had this wonderful opportunity to apply for a grant from a major national foundation and they had a great contact. And i think the early conversations was about a fairly modest create, maybe ten thousand dollars. And when we said that really looked at what the opportunity, wass you know, what could this charity do? Inspect the shoestring signal? Ten thousand bucks on a shoestring and what’s the shoot that you turned out to be fifty thousand dollars. So we worked up a proposal of fifty thousand dollars, and the upshot is the foundation funded it because they felt like it was a really good investment for their money. And i think they’re probably going to be happier giving the fifty thousand dollars and seeing what they get is a result. Look, just in case any of our listen, my voice just broke a fourteen year old voice krauz get out ok so far. Um, in the case, i mean, listeners, you know, it’s just have to be your first show. I mean, there’s over twelve thousand of you. So, you know, maybe some people come, i guess every week we get new editions if you wanted. You know no more about the nuts and bolts the relationship. Building specific strategy’s about that. You want to listen to last week’s show? Because that was a panel from the foundation center that i moderated and there’s a lot of discussion. That’s what? We were based on that the whole discussion was how to build your relationships with the with program officers. Foundations, foundations are made up of people so that’s, you know, like, certain possible john and i today r more hyre level enormously valuable and there’s all this strategy and planning and goal setting thinking through what you’re going to ask. This is enormously relevant too. But, you know, last week was mohr detail, i guess nuts and bolts on on the relationship building here today we’re below more strategic and high level. You see how the show fits together, you know that people think this just comes. It doesn’t just happen. This thing is planned out contrary to the belief of twelve thousand people listening. But it is planned. So i just got lucky this week and last week s o okay, you have measures around some of these things. You have measures for each of your nine nine strategies. Thiss one is just simple. What what’s the ratio of sustaining grants to investment grants. So we want to see maur, i presume. What? See maur investment grants, right? Thinking longer term. And you’re trying to grow your organisation and its its capacity. Well, i’m actually trying to look for healthier ballots. I mean, yeah, if i have a fair if i have a good core of sustaining grants, first of all, it says i have people who are renewing, okay? So they like, i mean, think about foundations like subscribers, they love the program, and they’re continuing to support a year every year of a year that’s a that’s, a great sign, but am i also bring in, you know, a good number of investment grants, that kind of kid again, kick it up a notch mean and get meat love every night for dinner, but if i’d given the topping on it every once a while, i mean, it gets more interesting, so there you go. Okay, this is a vegan show, so that was a bad metaphor now, i don’t know, i just made that up just to embarrass you. Now, listeners, you can have anything you want. I don’t care if you’re over lacto, you know, whatever i belong to buckslip food co op, but you don’t have to dahna yeah, eat whatever you like. Okay, make sure you have the right grantmaker tze on your list, okay, and this sounds to me this one sounds a little like it’s coordinated with your goal. Wolf, you want your goals and your and the people, the organization’s you’re asking for money from to be consistent, but you can say it more articulately than that. I cannot know what i mean by that is do you have? Do you have recognized leaders supporting him? Program? I mean, if i just giving examples, i work, i do a fireman or work in the youth development world works with your various charities who do wonderful work here. And if they want to bring a new program online sometimes where my research starts, this isn’t terribly scientific. But it’s look at well, who were the top ten foundations funding this kind of work? Say, in new york city? Or in whatever community, wherever you’re between your work, can i land three of them? Can i bring three thought leader foundations who work in this space to the table and have them funding my project? That’s that to me that’s the right set of funders? I mean, that’s that helps me with my focus. So i’m not chasing money all over the place. This is very strategic thinking, though, you know, you’re not just looking for foundations that support the work you do, but specifically, you know, some of the leadership foundations. Yeah, support you. One of the things that about that panel discussion, which i thought was so great i moderated. Thank you know, is it was thank you. It was artful. Thank you. Was all thank you’s. Absolutely. Thank you. I thank you again. Thank you very much for that. Thank you. The thie it was just that there was so much conversation about partnership. I kept hearing a word over and over and over and over again. And i think foundations are looking for really good charities to partner with. And we should think about that on the set in reverse, like, well, which foundations? So i want partnering with me on this work that i’m going to dio and that helps toe open. That conversation makes the conversation natural, and it makes the proposal flow means were there for a reason. Ilsen all right, john hicks together. Uh, ask you to hold on temporarily because, uh, let’s, take a break. Pursuant. They have a new resource for you, and it is. Demystifying the donor journey it’s ah it’s, a white paper demystifying the donor journey, overcome stewardship, stumbling blocks and build deeper relationships with donors i love i’m going to just give you a sample of some things from the table of contents. Where are you taking your donors? Three common stewardship stumbling blocks? Step back and consider the ideal donor experience stand out with immersive digital experiences place an extreme focused on the beginning of the journey and making the donor experience a top priority, and then it closes with next steps. So that’s what’s in this white paper, i want to take a couple of pull quotes out of it, it’s an undeniable fact the donor experience and how we steward them is directly tied to retention in a major and impactful way, and retention is the key to building a long term, sustainable fund-raising program end quote, right? So you’ve heard we’ve had lots of guests on reminding you the cost of acquiring new donors vs keeping the donors you’ve already got. So that’s what this white paper is geared towards helping you do keep the donors, you’ve got it’s all about stewardship, you know there’s a pull. Quote an international donor experience? Erase that reverse quote an intentional donor experience is essential in today’s increasingly noisy world stewardship works. Developing a donor journey isn’t just a nice thing to do for your donors, it’s one of the leading influencers in their desire to give again again, you know, it’s keeping the donors you’ve got. Then it goes into almost things i read off on the table of contents and you are going to find it at the listener landing page, which is tony dot m a slash pursuant radio okay, time now for tony’s take to you knew it was coming your daughter relationships. Now we’re on the individual side talking about institute institutional with john and pursuing and some content in the individual side, you need to go deeper than the dollars that come in from your individual donors. They do they tell you they’d like to do more, but they can’t or they sincere about that than you. My advice? You probably should be sticking with them. Don’t give up on them. Keep on building your relationship with them. The gifts will come just you got to be patient if you believe that they are. Sincere about their desire to doom or stay with them. And i say more about that on my video, which is look beyond the numbers and it’s at tony martignetti dot com i’m driving in their lets people passing to see how slow you’ll see how slow i drive on many five i even got an email about a ll the people passing me in the video. It’s embarrassing. Okay, it’s, time for live listen, love, we’ve got to do it, and, uh, we’re starting out. San francisco, california, westfield, massachusetts alright, west to east love it, um, brentwood, new york, new york, new york, multiple it’s always multiple new york, new york he’s here in new york, new york just think multiple all the time. Um oh my going back eating, going back west, garden grove, california. We got anything in between california and new york and massachusetts don’t know. North hollywood, california, staten island, new york. I don’t know, there’s. Nobody. Ah, fly over territory is not listening today. Live, of course. You know that catch the podcast twelve thousand. Um, they mention twelve thousand listeners. Could do, um, let’s. Go abroad. Germany. Gooden! Todd! Oh, there’s something. Abroad. Oh, that’s, not abroad. Tampa, florida that’s, then that’s domestic? Yeah, that’s here. Okay kapin florida’s there. But still we still got big fly over territory. Not with us live today, germany. Guten ta q kay, i don’t know which country is that northern ireland is wales, scotland or england by population. Of course it’ll be england, so but i don’t want to presume uk welcome. You live here with us? Um, houston in the czech republic, wonderful live with their love to you, and i think that covers the ones we got so far. And on the heels of that, of course, has to come the podcast pleasantries. Did i mention over twelve thousand? I’m not sure if i did over twelve thousand listeners in the time shift, whatever device, whatever time i’m grateful that you are with us pleasantries to the podcast listeners and the affiliate affections to our am and fm stations throughout the country, including fly over territory, by the way. But they’re not listening live because their station puts the show in wherever, wherever they want in their weekly schedule. But affections always go. I don’t care what time you’re listening day or night. We could a weekend affections to our am and fm affiliate listeners throughout the country back to you now. John hicks. We’re going t o keep terrible charging. All right? Oh, that was your that was your word. I did not. I would use it a lot of times. I don’t. I’ll use what guests aa recommend that the log topic says, or what their article says that i like. But i thought, you know, we’ll be adventurous. Let’s go with turbo charge. Alright, i made an exception for you. Thank you, tony. My pleasure. Um, let’s, move on. So what do we say? Everything. Well, we see everything we want to say about the right grantmaker before we move on. I mean, we’ve we’ve we’ve started with goals that we’ve we’ve kind of looked internally. What do we need to do by way of list, bill building. And now we’re goingto start talking about some external things. Okay. Okay. So, let’s, do you want talk about? Well, we start with the next one, which is building your v q. Vic you don’t you get us out and get yourself out of george in jail. What’s that there’s enough and define your visibility closure, yeah, which is, you know, it is what it is. I mean, the idea is that you want to be visible. Um, i bonem i think that grantmaker sze don’t i work in a bubble? And sometimes we think that you know, grantmaker is they sit in their offices and they kind of stay and they’re on their side of the street, we stay on our side of the street. The reality is that a lot of grantmaker zehr just out there and looking, they’re very aware of our community of practice, and they get to know who we are largely by are just being out there and being visible. So, you know, any time i’m working with a nonprofit organization and the ceo gets out of his or her office and they go to events and they are in the press and they are writing and they air speaking and they’re publishing and they’re advocating grantmaker sze get to know them, and i think that counts and i feel that a part of that quote oppcoll turbocharging processes thesis turbocharging to the ground now we’re not going to beat it to the ground, but part of it is, the more you’re out there, and you’re raising the visible the for your mission and your agency and your work, the better it is for you. I mean, it helps you with framing your grant proposal and who you are and what you’re able to dio credibility. Is that very good? It was another word for this credibility, but that will be your seek. You. But you prefer vik you. Well, let me see you as well. Could be sick. You don’t want to rewrite your blood post anything, all right? And it could be fashionable geek. So, yeah. Okay, uh, that would be your grants, your grants quotient. There you go. Um, now, a lot of this came out in the panel from last week. People, we were talking a lot about networking being visible in the community going to events. Yes. And you and you start to get known essentially, what you’re saying is you’re saying, right? And the only maybe knew once i’d throw on this is that i mean, there’s, there’s visibility. I like to think about visibility with content. And what i mean by this is you can go to parties and goto events and you can meet people, but what do you leaving them with? What impression are you making? And so some of the things we’re going to be talking about such a sze yu know yur strategic agenda where your organization’s going next-gen part of is having a story to tell someone when you meet that grantmaker here’s, here we are, here’s the opportunities that are in front of us love to come and talk to you more about it. So you know you’re you’re peeking their interest. Yeah, for sure. You you want to not only be visible, but you wantto have credibility behind that content behind that. You wanna make a good first impression is imagine how good it would be if if a funder got your application and already knew your name, do the organization name before they even when the application arrives right there knew in advance, right? Because you’re in the community. And of course, being in the community includes thie online communities, the online network you want to build your vic you there as well? Absolutely mean any. You know, the way i look at it is the when your proposal shows up. In the foundation’s office, with a bunch of other proposals, if they’ve heard of you, they’re going to pick up them, philip, and they’re going to read the letter. They’re going to read the proposal. I can’t pretend that doesn’t happen. Yeah, there’s a wonderful book, which i have my students at columbia read every semester by a guy named martin ty tell which is the insider’s guide to grantmaking and it’s a great behind the scenes look at the grantmaking process and and he talks about things like this i mean, you know that, you know, if we know something about the organisation, it doesn’t hurt, yeah. Oppcoll have you ever seen where a foundation approached a, uh a potential fundez ee ah, non-profit and asked for a asked for a proposal, i was sure it happens all the time. I think it does. I think that particularly the foundations who hyre professionals, i mean, think about this way a part of your job when you work for a foundation is to make the board of the foundation smarter about what’s going on in the world that they’re being asked to fund in, so if you’re out there, if i worked for a foundation, and i get to know something about the work of your organization. I might pick up the phone, call you and say, hey, i want to learn more about you as a member of one of my classes got a call from a foundation pretty major foundation wasn’t along our radar screen, they just called out of the blue and said, and we’ve been hearing about you would love to come and talk to you just happen to stand absolutely wasn’t on your radar screen out. Does that mean you’re doing defective research? Inadequate, nick? No, this is a no, no, this is actually a donor. Advised funds that size that’s a whole nother time can’t find that. Yeah, those air, those air buried what their funding is very, very hard to find. Yeah, it’s, not it’s, not public. Really it’s not anywhere. Is it it’s? Really? Not now. Okay. No negligent research buy-in deal. Bx make that clear. Make that explicit. They do not do negligent research. Okay, um okay. Strengthening your network. This is very much related. Strengthening your network. Um, strong foundation. And you know grantmaker zehr. Are they doing this? You want to be wanted again? You will be out and known in the community. Yes, it might be a question. You know, i would be asking this question, which is, well, what’s the difference between your visibility quotient and the network? Well, the network is actually taking a role of x and all the people that you’re meeting and all the people who are supporting you and beginning to reverse engineer it a bit. You know, one of your panelists on the show last week and talk about our gave a great example of, well, if i’m funding you, i could introduce you to other funders, and that happens more frequently there. That was a good conversation, absolutely. And it makes a lot of sense because usually a, you know, think of it this way foundation once they’ve written the check and they’re supporting you there a stakeholder, they have a vested interest in seeing you bring other money to table toe, build on what they’ve helped you to create or to grow or expand. And there’s nothing wrong with working that in reverse, you know, just a strategy, a tip for everyone and i’m seeing this work is thie. Get a funder got one of your grantmaker zoho ask them to host some kind of a gathering where you can come in and talk about your work and what you’re seeing as a result of your work or talk about a topic were they inviting to this? They’re usually inviting grantmaker sze whom they know because they want to help you. You get your story out there and get people to know you. I mean, it’s, not a solicitation. You’re not going to be handing out pledge cards on the individual side. It’s the same is like a parlor gathering. Exactly. Exactly. It’s ah, you know, it’s always better in the parlor. This is usually the boardroom, but well, yeah, because it’s institutional, but there, there, there there are parallels. Yeah, you get don’t don’t don’t hurt my analogy. I mean, i went along with your metaphors. Metaphors and analogies are important. Yes. I adopted your terrible judgment metaphor. So, you know, you certainly couldn’t support my analogy. I’m totally supporting her nails. It is only a mall there. That’s analogous ball is what makes it an analogy of all is ok. Um, yeah. So you’ve seen this work? You’ve seen this absolutely wonders will do it. It’s common it’s more common than you think. I emerging pro tip now. Well, you know, beyonc, this is a this is a pretty old school approach. When they were doing it, then they felt they stopped doing it mean grantmaker sze then now they’re doing it again. I think the key to making this happen is being ableto walk in with a presentation that has really information. It’s not just a come meet my agency and this’s what’s happening in this area. Yeah, in this fund, in this priority that we know you’re all funding, right? Here’s, what we’re seeing here is troubles we see coming in the future. Here’s opportunities. Yeah, right. It’s like, sort of analysis. Like a market announcer. Yeah, exactly. You’re also very positioning yourself is a thought leader. You know, i have information for you. I have some best practices for you and they can get a good conversation going. Okay, i love that. Okay. Yeah, i don’t think my right. It’s not. I don’t think a lot of people are thinking that way. It’s great and approach to approach your funders and asked them tio to do it. Okay, so what’s your measures for that one for strengthening your network. I mean, the measures i have here, you know how many meetings with colleagues or potential donors that we secure? I think a big part of it is. Did you get out of your office and go meet with your grantmaker zx? Did you did you meet with colleagues? Did you see how much did you use that roll of x and the other is, you know, how many potential grant orders that we add to the network? That’s? The other thing too, is, is you can meet grantmaker zand not asked them for money, but you can get to know them. Add them to the network. Maybe the timing isn’t right. Maybe you are not ready for a bill. Imola. The gates foundation grant, but doesn’t prevent you from getting to know a program. Officer cates, i mean, maybe they can’t give you money, but maybe they could suggest other people. You can talk to me. I find a lot of its disappearance. Simple networking. What would your follow-up be, teo? To an event like that? Eyes the eyes, the non-profit that present what’s. Interesting. I just had a conversation with a client before camp here for the show. I’m aware that i heard about what we’re talking about. Numbers about that, well, years, years and years of steady and very deep. Don’t don’t underestimate, yeah, i am not underestimating you. Slice it, it’s, essentially, they’re producing a white paper on one topic, and they’re going to use that as the follow-up tow an event, so they’re going to have some grantmaker is in the room, and they can follow-up with content latto demonstrate how good you are, and there you have it. Take a break, indulge me for a break momentarily, please. Tillers credit card payment processing. You gotta check out their video it’s at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us this is your this is your passive revenue stream. You watch this video and then get businesses in your community. They may already. I think your best prospects are the ones that are already supporting you get them to watch the video and ask them to consider switching their credit card processing from whoever’s, doing it now and gouging them on fees over to tell us why would they do that? Tell us has a hundred percent satisfaction among among the companies that use them, and also their fees or lower. And in fact, if they can’t reduce the fees, then they’re going to give you the non-profit that referred the company two hundred fifty dollars, so you can’t lose but that’s not that’s, not that’s. The short money the long money is the company that you refer, that they look at the fees they sign up with. Tell us and then you the non-profit will earn fifty percent of the revenue month after month after month that tell us earns from that business or hopefully businesses so that’s the long money that’s, the long stream, one hundred percent satisfaction. So the likelihood of a company leaving tell us is low. Check out the video it’s at tony dot m a slash tony tell us now is time to finish up with john hicks and turbocharging the metaphor that i very graciously, i think adopted. John john doesn’t acknowledge that granite graciousness, but but i acknowledge it for myself. Okay, have we exhausted o and then now you had one more measure for strengthen your network. How many potential? Grantspace? No, you did say that. How many do we add to our network? And they were talking about the follow-up see that’s, my trouble cone and coming back follow-up anything more to say about content paper seems like a very good idea. Yeah, yeah, i mean, just, you know, come out, come back with something that would be useful to the thunder. And yes, sometimes we that’s a grant starts with not asking for money, but giving the thunder something that they can use. Okay, for sure. Giving them yeah, you’re a team player. You’re adding value to the community, right? That we’re all funding. Okay, you got build. A bigger footprint what’s this all about building a bigger footprint is think about two things one which is, can i take the work that i’m doing and how my leveraging it leveraging means either working in partnership with another organization or being a resource to another organization i made that, you know, provide the kinds of services your charity does, tony, but maybe you’re able tto refer kids or families to me and i can help. Well, that’s building a bigger footprint, another way of building a bigger footprint could be working on a consortium product project excuse me, and another way of thinking about is, you know, deepening the impact of what you’re doing. I mean, i’ve worked with a lot of organizations where they may work on a program where the maximum number of kids they conserve might be fifty, sixty, seventy it’s less than a hundred kids. But if they’re able to provide a deeper level of service that’s expanding the footprint because they’re going to get stronger results and it becomes a demonstration site and a placed oh, test out best practices. So you too, changing the conversation, it’s, not just a programme. It’s helping. Seventy kids. It’s, it’s actually working in a very deep and meaningful way. This is related to one of the earlier points. Maybe was the first one the investment in long, long term investment type grant seeking exactly exactly. So i just think it’s, you know, leverage as much as he possibly can were you just rewording these things so that you could come up with nine? You know, it was you had seven naralo like you had six and then you weren’t satisfied that seemed weak. So you had to they are a little different. They are a little different, but i don’t want these padded that we’re not about it. I guarantee they’re not all right hyre we’re on here, you know, we don’t we don’t accept aah! Slack content on non-profit radio no, we don’t have that here. We never have except that one time we did the show on on on the fermentation oh, yeah, that was that was that was bad content. I thought i thought we’d try something completely unrelated, which was in the podcast world. Big mistake, but i learned immediately fermentation in the middle of the guests that wasn’t even happy, but i i couldn’t shut him off. I didn’t have a heart. I invited him. It was my idea. Okay, the fermentation that was bad content. But that was one out of three hundred seventy seven shows. This happens to be shown over three hundred seventy seven. So, you know, you could forgive one one, three hundred seventy seventh, actually. And then if you count the number of guests mean, lots of shows have two guests, so, you know, we’re up, like, eight hundred ghetto and then some have four guests, so we’re over a thousand guests like, one out of one thousand one one thousand point zero zero one that that one one thousand? Yeah. That’s not one ten thousand point xero xero ones that one one thousand it is felt that is ten hundred thousand one one thousand. So one one thousandth of the guests being slack, you should stick with non-profit radio it’s a safe bet i’m gonna do all my budget. There was a small digression, but yeah, now you don’t want me doing numerical analysis. I didn’t even know i wasn’t sure what the point zero zero one was one month out osili two interns in the room, looking it up, they haven’t even answered it yet. Um, i need an intern. I need an intern. If everybody i need something to blame for this. So so, you know, the one one thousand i need something to blame on that. Blame that on. So if you if you could suggest if you know anybody want to be an intern from non-profit radio, have them come have them send a resume because i need something to blame. Let’s move on to ah, now we get to the this’s with strategic agenda cubine teasing this all show strategic agenda. What is it? Well, strategic agenda is i don’t know if i’m among the only one uses this term, but i mean it’s just basically being able to say to a grantmaker here’s where we’re going the next eighteen, twenty four, thirty six months and here’s where our focus is going to be and hear the most important things that we need to be doing to make a significant difference in the world. I mean, you could say strategic plan. But whenever i say the word strategic plan, the client’s inevitably think, well, are we looking at going through? A six month, nine month process of planning and introspection sometimes there just isn’t time to do that, and what i’m just trying to come up with is, you know, if you met a grantmaker tomorrow and you want to try toe, have a conversation to get that grantmaker really interested in possibly giving you money, i’d like to be able to not just say here’s, my mission statement here is the work we’re doing. It’s wow, let me tell you about the opportunities we have. We’re going to be doing a, b, c, d and e and you had a number of grantmaker tze on that panel going backto last week’s show who talked about it’s better not to come to us with just one idea asking us to find it because, i mean, when the panel said, what if you pitch the wrong thing to me? And i say no? Then the conversation stops come to me with a general overview of what you’re doing so, yeah, walking with a general overview, but the way you i think undress this up is to say, hey, here’s, where i have some opportunities to accomplish some really exciting good for people and whatever the time horizon you’re working with twelve, eighteen, thirty six, whatever the number of months and you could piqued their interest, how do you prove that the money would be well spent? Because it’s it’s all it’s all prospective? Well, if you’re going to put anything on a strategic agenda, you you have to have your hands around the numbers, like, you know, right now, i mean, i’m thinking of one fly in where they’ve launched for fairly new initiatives in the last year and those initiatives air showing promise there, working in some challenging communities here in new york city, they know their numbers, they know how many families there working with. They know how many kids and adults are impacted. They all said no, how much they could grow this program if they were able to bring in enough money. So there’s story, if we meet any thunder, is that, you know, we’re working with nine thousand people across four sites we know we have the ability and the opportunity to work with fifteen thousand our budget is x if we’re able to raise it toe why we can make this happen that’s a pretty powerful story. So so grantmaker maybe that’s a good use of your money. Excellent. Excellent. John’s giving you think you just just wrote you a template for ah, one paragraph you got expand on that. You got what you need. You need deal be hicks to help you out. So all right, let’s, go to our last our last of the turbo charging strategies. Know where you’re heading next? Yeah. So that means the other strategic agenda? Yeah. It’s like, essentially, you know, this gets us in the long term, you know, do we do we have a long term story for our agency or you do it? It’s, you know, if we’re able to go from a to b ing the next thirty six months, but just kind of looking at, you know, beyond the horizon, you know, this is where we think we’re going next. This is the part of a conversation with a grantmaker on believe and sometimes it gets evident when the application our proposal that proves to grantmaker that you have a clear understanding of who you are, where you’re going, where you sit in your field and that you have a you have a realistic sense of scope. And i think that’s awfully awfully important. You’re able to do this and you engage him a different level than you get the money and you turbo charge. Oh, john, look, look. The wrap up, he does. You see that? Look at that, huh? And you, turbo charge. All right, we gotta leave it there. He’s. John hicks. Cfr e you’ll find him at deal be hicks and deal be hicks dot com deal be, of course, don’s lightbulb. Thank you very much, john hooks. Well, thank you for having me on real pleasure having you back. Thank you. Next week, any sample ward returns? What about buying likes and fans? If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio wagner, cps guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, sepa is dot com and till his credit card and payment processing you’re passive revenue stream tony dahna slash tony tell us. Ah, creative producers claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez. And this very cool music is by scott stein of brooklyn. Be with you 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 yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe. Add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony 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 expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for May 26, 2017: Your Grants Team, In & Out

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My Guest:

Diane Leonard: Your Grants Team, In & Out

Diane Leonard returns to share her wisdom on your internal and external grants teams. Who needs to be part of your inside processes and who manages your outside relationships with your funders? Diane is president of DH Leonard Consulting.

 

 

 


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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, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into proto porphyria if you brought to light the idea that you missed today’s, show your grants team in and out. Diane leonard returns to share her wisdom on your internal and external grants teams who needs to be part of your inside processes and who manages your outside relationships with your funders. Diane is president of d h leonard consulting on tony’s steak, too. Charity registration we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com what a pleasure to welcome diane leonard in the studio, this time not calling from upstate new york, she is gp c grant professional certified, and she has been a grant professional for over a decade and the president and owner of d h leonard consulting and grantwriting services, she has secured over thirty four million dollars in competitive funds for clients from all three levels of government. And private foundations. She’s, the co host of grant chat, a weekly twitter chat for grant professionals she’s at diane h leonard. And the company is at d h leonard consulting. Dot com. Welcome to the studio this time. Diane. Yeah. Thank you so much. Great to have you glad to be here now. Grantspace schnoll certified. Did the the accrediting association take my advice and change that to certify grantcraft sessional since the last time you were on, you know, i talked with the board, but we haven’t addressed that that specific matter yet. So still gpc grant professional sort of for the time being. But it’s, just the time being we’ll you know, tio r b i brought out the light. Okay, it may be on the right. It may be coming, possibly on the agenda. All right, i just sort of five grand profession. Ok, but your grandpa deshele certified for now, so we’re sort of extending our conversation from, like, the last minute of last time you were on or so way just got into your teams and we were talking about the internal team. But what? We just barely scratched it. So let’s start with your internal grants team? Why is this not just the the, uh, responsibility or might say burden, but we’re on the upbeat side, we’ll say, why is this not just the responsability of the the grant writer? Whether he or she is employee or consultant, isn’t it? Isn’t it just there? That’s what you got this person for, right? So you’re right that the grant writer, the grant professional, they are there to write grants so it sounds like it could be a solo sort of activity. But the reality is you can’t write well and competitively without information from your grantee. Mme. So whether or not you call it a grant team that’s up to you, we don’t care folks ever self identify as a member of a granting right, but finance needs to give information and vice presidents of programmes have to provide the logic models or the details, the design of what you’re going to write for. So if the grant writer was really, quote unquote, just writing the grant, would that really be what the organization wants to implement? What’s going to be in line with their strategic plan, right? We’d be writing in a silo. Okay, now. Yeah, clearly. So we’re getting information. By the way. Ricky, i see you have your d h leonard consulting shirt on. Of course, when you go home without it, which is not just like a land’s end, you know, straight button down. It’s got it’s. A blast really got it’s got ruffled down down the front. Very nice. We’re going were very fashionable. Is going to picture on facebook? Wait the mic flag out on everything. So but not just your average, you know, land’s end corporate shirt. Not anymore. By any means. Well, thank you. Very nice. Your daughter rebecca’s here, rebecca, you like this shirt? You have? You have one of these? Is that you? Have it? She doesn’t have one. You don’t have a dish that while they have special running shirts that on the back say right, period. Sleep, period. Run, period. Okay, we got those for the whole team, so ok, we’ve got a diversity of apparel. All right, so this is you putting land’s end to shame. Very good. Much, much nicer than than your average. Okay. All right, so, yeah, clearly. So we got to get information from other people. All right, so you don’t care if we call him the grants team or not, but but, you know, how do we, uh, how do we get their buy into this to the larger process? I mean, i saw the cfo gives you some numbers, you know? Is that all you really want? I mean, don’t you want we want a little more? Yeah, real engagement. So how do we start to get there by into this process that they don’t feel is their responsibility right now? Well and sometimes it’s, not that they don’t feel it’s their responsibility, it’s that perhaps based on how things have been done before, it hasn’t dawned on them that they could have a better process, a better success rate if there was a more thoughtful, proactive collaboration within the organization. So when we go into an organization and we ask the question, do you have a grant teen? According to our grasp tool, it is less than half in fact it’s closer to about thirty five percent say yes, what’s a grasp tool. So i’ve jargon jail sorry you’re right. Totally grasp tool. What is this? Grasp tool is a proprietary tool that my team and i developed that measures grantwriting nous so there’s twenty great readiness elements and one of them is about your grant team. I can not about what it’s called, but do you have that group? Okay, so based on the data assessment, esso and that’s helped us to understand that said so it’s about thirty five percent have a grant team. That means they’re so sixty five percent. No, right? So when you walk into a new organization and you talk about this idea of a grand team, sometimes the grant professional looks that you don’t kind of holds their heads like they shake their head? Nope, just me write other times the organization is ready for because they’re all non-profits air fighting for dollars, right? There’s a really good thoughts, so they’re trying to figure out how how they can increase their grantspace king success just even a little bit right? A few extra success percentage points or an extra forty fifty one hundred won one million dollars, whatever they’re trying to increase the revenue. So the idea that by taking their resource is they already have the people rearranging them a little bit differently to share for grant process so that it has a better return on investment, usually by some pretty good traction quickly. Ah, but the question is always well, what do we have, like a lot of meetings? What is it? Does it go on the organ chart? What does that mean for me? Right? And so what we look at as a grant team structurally, we recommend that it would be a group that annually plans the calendar agrees on what our priorities are for funding. Who are our funders. We’d return to that’s big picture, so once a year, you’re doing that together. The grant teens then looked different for each application, sometimes depending on the size of an organization. So that’s, where we can really start to improve the process, reduce the stress and increase the likelihood for the funding for the yes. All right, i like the idea of getting some early successes, like, maybe there’s, some low hanging fruit that the team can rally around a success on early success of and from from i guess i should say from yeah, the award letters went to start a grant team idea that first award letter solidifies the process for sure, long term, yes, every reason to think. All right, all right, let’s, go for a break, and diane and i are going to continue talking about your grants team in and out. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Diane. When i introduced you, i i used the bio that was back from last time. You were on in in january and said you had raised thirty four million dollars among lots of organization. Is that still an accurate number? Got any higher than that now? Since we last spoke, it is close to thirty six million. Six gets getting close, but it was never that fluctuates all the time. Million dollars difference. Alright, well, it always fluctuates up. I mean, you never having grantspace clawed back or no, no, you’re way kruckel excellent. There. So bios added eight. Thirty six, nine dollars. All right. And also you mentioned your team and your team goes in now the only team member i know you have his rebecca who’s here. Rebecca’s. How old? Rebecca’s? Eleven. Eleven eyes. Rebecca party your team or the whole families apart of the team for me. Okay. Last shirt. Every everybody wears this. Sure. Everybody gives me coffee. You’re ten number. You’re giving out shirts on the corner. Your team, your team member. Okay, now you have grants other grand professionals. We do. Have other grantcraft specials and and use your your provide. It was a group. No grass grasp, not growth. That’s a scratch. Okay, group. Okay, um it could be grantmaker be gropes if you get a no in coming close to you know what groups lose. Stick with craps. You could you it’s actually an acronym. So krauz looks great, it’s. Good, but let’s like see gp gp. Alright, i will take it under advisement. Tp gp is my recommendation. Okay, um, all right now you say fund-raising not a solo sport, basically. No. Yeah, not fund-raising not in grants, right? We cannot be silent, right? All right. Let’s, let’s talk about some other people who should be involved. We mentioned cfo. We might come back to him or her. Who else needs to be active? Actively helping this process. And they were going to get into how they’re actively helping. But yes. So so, depending on the size of the organization, often we will see the president or the ceo be a part of the annual the big picture granton process, right? Not individual applications, necessarily. But that big picture annual plan a plan which you and i talked. About last time, yeah, listeners could go back and could search tony martignetti dot com and your grants flan or diane leonard, you’ll see the all the times that she’s been on. Well, this’s second, eso you only looking for one other, but, yes, we talked about the grants plan, right? Last time you were on. All right, so the ceo certainly could be involved, right? Absolutely. And so having, though, whether it’s, a vice president of programs or other program leadership that are focused on the actual implementation and service delivery, having them have a voice at the table be an active participant in that big grantee mme annually and on those individual applications that so a voice that carries a lot of weight in the grant team because they’re driving what the applications contain. Yeah, all right. Let’s, let’s, talk about the the talk about the program’s staff for the program that you’re attempting to get funding for correct people carrying out those programs. All right, so what are they bringing in that people who are not taking advantage of this are missing? Sure. So the program’s staff, sometimes they’ll be like, oh, i already have a logic. Model for that program and there that make grantwriting jump up and down for joy if you don’t have to write a logic model, right? Um, they might already have a great activity work plan for what? That looks like implementation wise over the next year or oh. Yep, absolutely. I know those collaborative partners. I can help you get the letters of support, and so they make the asked for the letter? Not necessarily you. They know their clients that they’re serving better than anyone so they can help decide. Okay, we’ve got a limited character count. What are the best demographic stats that we should talk about, or what are the barriers in that limited space? That cheese? We’ve got a long list of barriers out of the dozen. Here are the two that we really should talk about. They can help you narrow that down. So that then we is the grant writer. The grant professional can tell the story in a stronger way. Okay. You mentioned the logic model. Of course. We all know the logic model what’s a logic model. So ah, logic model is a well, i guess i shouldn’t use the word logic. Again is a thoughtful way that you can demonstrate visually your program designed so you start with your inputs from way clients flow through your program. Great. Yeah, i usually think about it, like a conveyor belt is the way that i described it. So you take your got three metaphors going dellaccio logical flow. We’ve got a conveyor belt. What else durney uses their shoot is their trash. You what else? All of those could sure alright, you sick with your comfort the conveyor belt. So because the what happens is that grantmaker zey have a wide variety of logic model forms that they use. So having a logic model in your head that only looks like one thing as a design is really tricky because you’ll united way. We’ll have a different one than a federal government agencies. So that’s why you need to have a general understanding of logic models and how you use them in program design. Right? So if you think about that conveyor belt idea, you take cubine puts your clients your staff. Your resource is set him on the conveyor belt and they has the conveyor belt starts. It moves through, i think. Of ah box, where all the magic happens, but they had very about moving the conveyor belt. Rebecca you’re following this is conveyor belt moving into a box doesn’t make sense for you, because if you could explain this to an eight year old and then i can get it, i can grasp all right, so so far so the conveyor belt and actually you’ve seen the movie like toy story or something. Where there’s all these flames shooting out of the box, but that’s where the activities air happening, the magic. So where you’re delivering counseling services or hiv prevention education or after school tutoring, right, whatever those services those activities are, and as the box of the inputs comes out, the end of the shiny box you can count on is coming on their belt conveyor belt. Most don’t mess up our metaphor. Alright, the conveyors coming out of the box. And you, khun now count how many people you served? How many after school sessions were held? Hominy caregiver education workshops whatever the case may be, but you can count them. You get your outputs and you can at that same time so well or my short. Term outcomes, right? And then a little bit further is the conveyor belt moves well or my intermediate outcomes. What were my long term outcomes at the very end of my conveyor belt? Maybe as far as i can see towards the horizon, right? Well, knowing all that detail is really tough for a grant professional to know about a program that they’re not implementing, right? So filling in i under you can understand the concept that detail that’s where those program staff members are critical. Okay, makes sense. Yes. There you go. You’re with me. Ok, thumbs up. Okay, i understand it. Yes. Now, um, what about the value of their value in? We’re digressing a little bit from the team concept, but but stories, i’m certainly program staff, the ones working with your clients, they’re going to have lots of stories, is they’re valuing in telling a story and individual persons story in a grant? Or is that really not such a good practice? It really depends on the specific type of application. And so part of deciding whether or not it’s important is looking at what the funders application looks like in their preferences, but the what? Is the level of detail. What is the emotion behind the story that a program staff member can share with you, it’s? Not just a one quick sentence. A little success story, but what can they really help build? So, in a federal application? Actually, there was just a great use of a story and that’s, not a place. You always see it. But we had a client that was able to articulate what it would be like for a rural, low income student that was entering middle school that had all these barriers to overcome and quickly in a paragraph walk you through what that student was experiencing. So you felt like this young girl or you felt like this young boy. And so as you got into the heavy meat of this application, your thoughts as the reviewer really grounded in what it was like, is that student right? So used carefully good, vivid storyteller. It can really draw that reviewer in as a grant writer is a great professional. What? I know enough of those details about what those clients are experiencing to tell that sort of story. It be tough. You would not know. Yeah. Okay. Um, now, i would think you mentioned federal grants. I would think that’s a pretty daunting looking package, does it? I mean, just the i don’t make you’ve done scores are hundreds of them, but i just think that it just looks imposing and threatening. Yeah, all of the federal grants federal grant application they are, but sometimes they’re short narratives. Other times, you know, like we’re working on now. One that’s, a thirty page single space that’s, some hefty writing. But, you know, with the right grantee mme it’s completely manageable, you don’t have to work crazy long hours. You don’t have to work all weekend. You don’t have to know out to your family for days, it’s some of those really big ones that don’t that are daunting to people as soon as they do it. The first time in the grant teamviewer sis their old way, they’re sold forever yeah, okay, i’m dying to get to the outside relationship with the funders, but we’re not there yet, so we gotta be going metoo stopping up on the inside because the whole relationship thing it’s excellent. We’re getting to it, we’re getting to it. Um all right, i guess that’s that’s pretty much exhaustion in the program. What the program people are bringing to you and the wisdom they have the on the ground boots on the ground experience that they’ve got that nobody else really has on. Certainly not the grand team or grant writer. Right. Okay, bring them in the europe program professionals. Um, who else? Cfo do we do we we, uh i asked you, who else? And then i tell you, yeah, that’s just the way the show goes and i run it. Cfo, do we beat that up? Is there enough that i mean numbers? What? But an application may ask for more than that if you’re what’s the state of your financial controls, right? And things like that? Well and so usually where cfo’s or the finance staff are involved, like, yeah, i fell out the budget or i review and i approve the budget. But when that happens, we find that if you’re not having conversations early on about how the budget numbers what’s the justification behind those, how does that relate to the design that we’re proposing? They end up being incongruent, we find inconsistencies then between what? The budget? Tells us a story on what the narrative tells us the story so there’s a little bit of ah, that you have to work together to really tell airtight story. So you’re consistent, and that s o there’s like chicken and egg conundrum in terms of the team and who goes first? Okay, once you have the input of both, who then whose responsibility is it, then? Teo, scrutinize this story and make sure that the numbers are in line with what the program people told us, right and that’s where the grand professional internal consistency okay to be like? Okay, all right, i hear which you’re saying this is what the staffing costs, but hold on, we’ve exceeded the allowable salary percentage of the total project budget by funder standards or, hey, it says that you can’t spend more than seven percent on evaluation, and your budget currently tells us eight point five. Well, eight point five percent of the total product budget is what it costs to do the designed evaluation. Okay, now we need to work together. Right? So those things come up and that’s where the grant professional starts to work on alignment between the two. Parties, the financial constraints and the program designed what is the best for the organization. Okay, cool. You give us a sense of how this team works together if we don’t call it a team. Um all right. Who else? Ah, who else needs to be involved if if we have them on our staff data evaluation? What? Anybody in interest? No one. That attention. Tio counting the client outputs, tracking success, tracking satisfaction. And that looks so different by title. An organization that it’s hard to say. You know, not everybody has a director of evaluation. Many, many don’t treyz but someone in the organization is responsible for those client databases for the education session. Workshop reviews rightto surveys somebody’s responsible. So who are they? Whoever they are, whatever title it is, they should be on the team because that data is critical for analyzing as you think about your next application. Did you think about your next application? Write what happened? What happened about this application we’re working on now for the applicator. If we have an application in front of us now, i want to be looking at well, what did you learn last time? What is? The data show so that our projected outputs are anticipated. Outcomes are in alignment with what we’ve been able to achieve before. Okay, so i need the staff person that was doing the data the last time the program ran, or for a similar pilot program, or whatever it is. We need them there with their data, knowledge, teau, help us run some numbers, is and figure it out together. What do we do for organizations that aren’t currently evaluating? Not measuring these important outcomes impact what do we do for them? So i usually will send them is their first bit of homework straight to the wk kellogg foundation. They’ve gotten evaluation handup book that’s on their website for free and it’s. Fabulous and it’s. A great way for groups to begin to think about what evaluation could look like for them. Okay. Do you ever refer a book now? That might be too daunting because we had a we had dr robert penn on he’s. Been on a few times, but the first time he was on and it was years ago. But he has an excellent book that people have quoted to me before. Called the non-profit outcomes toolbox. Yeah. That’s a good one. You know what? Yeah. Oh, you know. Okay, you just don’t assigned as homework to a client because they’ll say, what you giving me his two hundred fifty page book? I thought we were hiring you for the expertise. Why, yes. Feels good to be the book now. Yeah, but it’s got chapters on different methods of it’s a toolbox, different methodology for measuring impact and he’s. Very hey wants to call it. Impact, not outcomes. Some people aren’t too scrupulous about that. But anyway, measuring the good that you’re doing in your beneficiaries lives or whatever it is in the environmental, whatever. Because by chapter, a lot of different tools. Yeah. Okay. So you know that one? Yeah, s o the other thing we do is that depending on where they are, we have a lot of folks that we know that our great professionals and evaluators in their background and so will try to pair them with someone that could maybe walk them through some initial support or give them some ideas. Right? So that they can look at what’s happening. What could they do? What’s feasible for them? For evaluation? Alright, alright, but a good resource. Wk kellogg foundation. It’s a great one. Yep. If you search kellog foundation evaluation handbook it’s small it doesn’t feel daunting in that sense. Tto learn a little bit and think about logic models and what you could measure. Okay, now what do we do? Ah, it’s all that hypothetical. We’ve got a grant application in front of us that asks for measurements and we don’t have any. Should we not be doing this? Application we should really be asking ourselves, can we be competitive, right? We need to think we want the money, we need the money to do a good work, right? And so that measurement question if we don’t have a good answer, really that’s going to be a concern when they’re reviewing it when a grantmaker their board is reviewing it, you’re going to lose some significant either theoretical or real points. And so, as your stacking up against the other applications, it’ll be hard to get that yes, no, are there still applications out there where the the impact measurements are not asked for or there they’re not a priority? Maybe you can tell their apartment, i mean, is that is that still exist? Not all grantmaker sze will formally ask for it sometimes because they let you provide a letter of request of your own design. And so what happens is that if a group doesn’t have measurement is part of what they talk about all the time, it won’t naturally be what they think to put in their general letter, but for other groups that do think to talk about it, they’re going to stand out, right? So they’ll be more competitive in those general formats, but when you’re in all those online applications, the cyber grants, the found ints that grantmaker sze use most of those online zsystems you’re finding questions about measurement worded in a lot of different ways, but the vast majority have questions. Fountains. What is that found? Found in’t it’s on online grant application system like cyber grant. So it’s there’s a common core it’s, a common system that lots of funders use. They are? Yep. So there it’s. Not a specific common application. It’s a common online system. So the funder gets to customize their form using those companies. Oh, i see. All right, it’s. Just okay. Okay. Um all right, let’s. See, we got a couple more minutes before we go out for our midterm break, if you will. What? What are the professionals? We’d be bringing in that we haven’t talked about yet. So in some groups we see human resource is have a seat at the table for the grant team. You know what they contribute? Well, because like, fifteen years ago, they call personnel. Now it now all of a sudden they’re hr human resources. What? What? Is the personnel team the hr team bring so when you look at organizations that are heavily grant funded and they start to ask themselves, well, what percentage of staff are currently funded? Is anybody overfunded, right? Those conversations are riel. They happened when you’ve got organizations that are heavily grant funded and with designated grants. So, for example, we worked with an organization that had two wonderful adult day programs for those with dementia, great programs, and happened to be that the state that they were based in had a great amount of money for them, as did the county governments. And so they ran on different timelines and had to be very careful. Oh, and and by the way, there was black grandfather thing too. So they had all these sources that had to list excruciating detail about which staff for what percentage of fto eat keeping track of that. And what was happening with payroll in hr was an important part of the planning process. So it’s not always that they have to be at the table, but first, some programs for some organizations, you’d be sunk without him. Anybody else you want to bring in? Well, let’s see, we’ve done evaluation, we’ve done cfo, we’ve done program leadership data it and tech khun b a great need to know who to call, right? Because when you’re doing a big grant, you’re like, okay, we’re going out for the computer lab. I shouldn’t be the one out on google looking for computers to figure out what works because it might not get the network. So you’ve gotta have some of those players that you get to call the call the bat if there’s a technology component to your grant, right, it might not be the main purpose of it, but if there’s the technology funding needed, what are we going toe? How are we going, phil? So you fill our need? Yeah, we’ve got sort of like a designated hitter list, right? When the application calls for it, we’ve gotta have folks that know that they’re going to be on deck to help us. Not all the time in the grand team, occasionally, based on the application, okay, let’s not go too far with sportscenter. That was that when you just mentioned on deck that’s basketball, right? If you’re on deck, you’re coming in next, based at the buzzer softball, that’s a baseball right let’s not go to any further with no more sports metaphors on non-profit radio. All right, so where we at? Alright, hang loose while i do a little business, please, and then diane and i are coming back and we’re going to talk about the external team who is managing. I should say the team that manages that those external relationships with funders and your community so that is coming up first. Pursuant the archive of their webinar how to win at data driven fund-raising fund-raising fund-raising data driven fund-raising is up. It answers questions like what should we measure? That sounds from there. I think we’re having this little chat. And how do we make our dated? Actionable. You know, if data is a conundrum for you, as in the hypothetical little diane and i were just talking about or you just want to be savvy or about you like you may be. You feel you have too much data. What do you do with it? Well, how do you shift it out? That’s what this webinar is designed to help you with will help you with get control over your metrics. It again is called howto win at data driven fund-raising it’s at pursuing dot com you click resource is then webinars. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for millennial fund-raising this is a fun night out of spelling bee live music, standup comedy, dancing and making money for your organization. I need to raise more money. This could be the way you want to engage millennials in your good work. This could be the way. Check out the video at we be e spelling dot com now for tony’s take two. Cue the wagging finger have you got your charity registration? Have you got that off your to do list yet? In other words, are you properly registered in each state where you solicit donations, including grants? I can help you. Charity registration it’s part of my practice. I’ve mentioned it before that’s. Why his fingers wagging. I can get this done for you. Check the video at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony. Take two and i am with diane lettered and she is with me and her daughter. Rebecca is here also. Diane leonard gpc. The company is d h leonard consulting at d h landed consulting. Dot com and you’ll find diane on twitter at diane h leonard and i’m very glad again that she’s in the studio thanks for coming down where your upstate new york i forget where the rochester area no far, far, far upstate, eight thousand island or you’re all the way up your republic by the canadian border you you’re on a body of water too aren’t you would write on the st lawrence river lorts river that’s okay, alright knew it wasn’t on the great lakes. Okay, ron, we’re part of the great lakes system right at the end of lake ontario. Okay. And what is the town that you’re coming from? Clayton clayton, new york? Yes. How cold is it up in clinton now on ly a few degrees colder now. Oh, yeah, right. Because, well, we’re actually doing this in late april, and the temperature dropped, like fifty degrees or something. Doing yeah. Yeah, but the snow’s all melted. Okay, a lot this year. A fair amount of all right. Um, all right. We’re making the transition now we’re going to managing our relationships externally. Let’s start with the funders. But we also want talk about the community. Um, you have ah, you have a whole story about talking somebody recently, who’s who’s very dismayed about getting calls two days before deadlines. It’s true. So in my background, i have it was a grantmaker so i have my own set of skepticism about how people treat grantmaker xero programs program officer, right? It was it was a program officer for a statewide foundation, but it’s been a long time now and so but that background is part of why i was get on the relationship soap box, and i was sitting with the assistant director for the northern new york community foundation, and he and i were talking cause actually he’s writing a guest blogged for us for our firm, and so we were talking about it and said, it just it baffles me goes, i just was getting it yet another call we’ve got a deadline coming up on friday is the conversations having this like, and so they’re calling me, like, two, three days before, okay, so what do i want to put in an application? Well, okay, so luckily had a few minutes to talk, but what sort of application and conversation we’re going to? Have in two days, right? And he said, so there’s just non-profits are out there doing good work, and their website encourages conversation, right car does. What does it say? Call us. It says, please contact us and it’s got their phone number and it’s got their emails. I mean, it’s got to contact us for a minute, i think teo so they’re very open. They don’t demanded they don’t make it a requirement. We know some thunders. Do they say you must call us before so it’s an open invitation and yet still and maybe it’s because they’re caught up because they’re doing really important, truly important things in the community, right? All these groups are resources are limited and so it’s like oops, that deadline’s coming up. I should call them. And so he and i were talking about it again. And just what do you do? How much do you say? Do you make it mandatory? But his point was that it when you make that call last minute and he’s got a quote on the block post actually, about how you feel like an a t m is a grantmaker it feels very transactional like, okay. I need some funds ready versus having it be a true relationship, a partnership in making grants to create impact in the community. And so what we were talking about was the value of what he’s calling the next level gratitude so there’s like the quick phone call before to talk, but then once you get the grant or even if you didn’t, but you’re still trying to maintain a relationship to apply again later, where and how can you have contact that’s appropriate for that specific funder to keep the dialogue going? So, yeah, super excited that max was willing to write the post for us, but it’s not an uncommon story. We hear it from other funders when the program officer we all used to talk about that over lunch when we’d get together, right? Funders talk part of your grantspace lan include contact with the funders that are in your plan. What, i don’t know, two months in advance or how much, but but should that be part of, you know, make initial contact with this funder that we’re going to be approaching in two to three months? Absolutely so when we talk about that when we go back to that grants plan in the grants calendar. Usually when folks have a grantspace alan durney calendar that’s a little upstate. You upstate, you know durney from upstate. I’m from buffalo originally, anyway, so, yeah, i can’t help it. Okay, you don’t have to. I’ll just call you out. Okay? Thank you. So the i can now conscious of self conscious. Okay, so that thing that device that you use clique has basil data dahna be outlook based. Yeah, nothing has deadlines on it is what folks will normally have. Right? Right. Ok, maybe some reports for those current funders. Hey, what about putting relationships on the counter? Right? It’s a critical piece. Now, this we’ve gotta, like, have a huge ass trick. I’m making one in the air. All right? Not all grantmaker is allow communication pre award. They have no capacity or no preference for it. Okay, so we’ve open that up and we have to address the elephant in the room. Not all grantmaker sze will talk to you because they don’t have enough time or they have too many proposals and too many contacts that even with a dozen staff right, they couldn’t handle it so all right, we agree on that, right? Okay, but you know, you’re gonna know because you’re researching this funder because you wouldn’t have put them in your plan if you didn’t know anything about them. Wayward certainly wouldn’t do that approach. The gates foundation? Yeah, great. All right, so we’re going to know we’re going, we’re going to know. So we’ve learned through our research whether or not we can even talk to them. If we’ve done that, like in the example of the community foundation, i would have seen the clues. The writing’s on the wall. Hey, you’ve got staff names. I’ve got phone numbers, we got e mails, they’re offering to talk. I should talk, right? I should put it out there and like you said, gosh, two months before a deadline. That’s fantastic, even a month, two days before that’s, right? Not a good idea, because now you’re also tipping your hat to the thunder that you just started thinking about it. It didn’t. That was not a good thing. I presume they wouldn’t take anonymous call. I’m calling from an organization, but i don’t really say which you know, but this is what we do they probably wouldn’t care for the call like that. Exactly. All right, all right. So you’re going? Yeah, you’re typically exactly you’re revealing that you’re not organized and you’re thinking about this two business days in advance, right? All right. That’s bad. All right, who? Wei don’t have a grantspace sessional let’s, say small and midsize non-profits may not have a grand professional on staff who initiates this call, and we don’t have the benefit of d h leonard consulting helping us who’s through initiates the contact. Yeah, so the answer is that it depends right? It’s sort of a strength spaced decision who likes talking to donors who lights talking to major donors at special events, look around your organization and say, gosh, our executive director loves to talk to people about the programs and okay, so maybe that’s your answer could be that you’ve got a major gifts officer, so you don’t have a grand professional, but you’ve got a major that’s a great person to make that outreach might be that as you look around and you start to think about who’s, connect to who sort of the six degrees of kevin bacon idea, right? You’re like, oh, actually, wait it’s the program’s staff that sits on a collaborative group with the grantmaker they already know someone, they can be the point of contact, right? Backed up with talking points by the development staff by the grantmaker but so it doesn’t have to be one answer. Now the fallback can always be a development director or a grant writer if you have one on staff, sure, now i will say i have another ass trick making another footnote, yeah, go with the footnotes. This one has to be well has to be a dagger, because otherwise the footnotes would be the same. You can’t have two footnotes with asterisk that’s thiss one’s a dagger mary-jo okay, if you have an external grantcraft sessional or an external fundraiser working with you, it is my strong recommendation. They should not be the one reaching out on your behalf to build a relationship, because we can’t answer all the questions right grantmaker zeal have questions if you’re really having a good dialogue grantmaker will ask a question because you’re engaged in a dialogue, right? We’re not just talking at them or vice versa, and when that happens and the well intentioned external fundraiser or grant professional who’s like i will have to talk to my client get back to you now. I say that as an example because when i was a program officer, that happened more than once. That doesn’t bode well for the organization either, right? So, yes, you’ve got this great resource, but you need to be able to answer my questions like pick up the phone now, we gotta book a second call right now, but the questions all right? What? What if there’s reluctance? Because the the ceo or development director i love talking individuals, but now i’m talking to institution, they’re going to ask me questions i can’t answer about about accounting, and they’re going, they’re going toe. What do you have to get over that kind of nervousness about talking to the institution, the person, the person who loves talking to the person or the individual or the couple? Yeah, so we end up coaching a lot of folks that are they’re a little altum it about making that call because you’re right? It does feel different and that there’s a little bit of a power differential that doesn’t always exist with individual donors and the reality is it’s actually my colleague heather storm bug of just right solutions. You’d love her. You should have her on the show. Okay, okay. Making a plug, she’s great. But she’s got a line that is, people grant to people, not proposals xero and so the grantmaker tze and that’s what? The story is about it’s about grantmaker so grantmaker zoo are run by people and its people making the decisions right? So, yes, it seems like it’s all this big institution. But remember that it’s people trying to do good work, they have a mission aligned with yours, right? They want the same general thing thatyou d’oh. So to try and strip away some of that stress of oh, this big structures are reluctant. Okay, on dh parallel with that. Our corollary? What? I don’t visit a corollary algorithm it’s a serum i don’t know is that we do want to have a relationship with these funders like they’re people. I mean, because they are staffed by people. So i mean, this is the whole purpose of having on next team to manage that external relationship. You don’t you don’t just call ah, an individual donor on december twenty ninth because they haven’t made their end of your gift yet. You know you’re in touch throughout the year cultivating, right? So don’t do that to the institutions the institutional funders carry on a relationship because they are staffed by people, right? Yeah, you don’t want to just send in the obligatory grant report on time for the deadline. Okay, hold on. I want to put it again. Another application. Okay, i’m going to buy fifteen thousand. Right? Vicious cycle there’s. So much to do in between that we build it and what’s wrong with picking up the phone and talking to the thunder and saying, you know, we had a i mean, just like sharing anecdotes with a great week this week or, you know, this month this month we were disappointed, but here’s, what we’re doing to turn it around i mean, can you have conversations like that with with an institutional funder? You can. So it depends again on preference and capacity. So is you get to know the fun durney like, okay, they have staff. Oh, they like to talk. Oh, they only like email, right as you learn there. Preferences we worked with a small funder in central new york, not a lot of staff capacity loved promoting grantee work and success on social media, not what you’d expect, but it’s fantastic, right? So as you learn those preferences, you can think about how you’re going to share updates during the year, okay? The media team just did a great job. They’ve got a facebook post, we’re going to share that and tagged the thunder, so now they know what’s happening or i’m going to write a hand written note, right? The art of hand written notes go a long way with grantmaker just doesn’t do with individuals means it’s an individual’s going to open that envelope and read it it’s going to make their day right? I got to hand written notes from different folks that attended sessions recently that i hadn’t met. I instagrammed each of them the day they came in because i was so excited right now because you’re like as a funder who something different, then what i normally get and they’re treating me like a person. Yes, even though i’m representing an institution, i’m still a person. I’m the advocate for this organization when they submit their next application to our board. Right? Is that how it is now? Program officer works and he should get something that looks promising. They bring it to the board of the foundation. Or maybe they’re bringing up the chain. But eventually it gets to the decision makers. But the point is, the programme officer is the advocate for your application. So why not have them on your side? Exactly? It’s, exactly at in the process, you’ve gotta look at it, even in government work. While they might not be able to. Not the peer review were there, not the scoring source can have great relationships with government staff that will help your process. They’re still your advocate, but still are. And they can help you navigate the process and be stronger overall. All right, all right. I wish i i feel like the relationship building part of ah, grants is duitz egregiously overlooked mean, badly overlooked. No, i’d go with egregiously. Yes, not even just badly. Yeah. All right, all right. We gotta go out for a last break. Diane. Of course going to stay with us. And they’re never going to move from from the funder. To the community, let’s. See what you see, what that relationship is about. Hang in there. 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 they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy, tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests 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 guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation talk. Trans sounded right, that’s two tony martignetti non-profit radio and i am his knees. Carmela and i am his nephew, gino. Carmela and gino, now now thirteen and eleven. I think we record that last year. So their twelve and twelve and ten, uh, love that. Okay, the well, the point is, someone’s gotta manage the relationship with our funders, right? Someone’s got to get to know their preferences. They prefer social or email or phone or everybody loves the handwritten note. We agree on that, but somebody’s gotta manage this relationship right? And so someone has to be the central. You need to have one person that’s managing the relationship, but usually where the great writer, the professional right shit somebody’s going to make sure that they know what’s happening with all of them that everyone’s aware of who’s talking to who, when and where and what are you trying to accomplish? So that in case somebody’s out of a special event or at a conference that everybody’s prepared what conversations are in play? Okay? And how about in the community? You you what you want, you want communications to be good in our community, to sure and so there’s a few different ways that plays out because you don’t know in your community who knows whom? Especially in a lot of small towns, right? Everybody’s connected so that casing clayton it is there having not grown up in a small town, i’ve learned quickly incestuous. Well, i wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t have but just know it’s really it’s everybody’s looking like oh it’s. Only two degrees of connection to anywhere you want to go in northern new york is your local paper have ah, section like talks about diane’s aunt is visiting from the big city rochester and she brought along with her two kittens and you have that in your in your paper are thousand islands on which is truly just st lawrence river paper. Instead, it has a section where if you take your paper to wherever you go, when you take a picture, you get your picture in the paper so there’s pictures as you can, and we’re going over got to bring my copy to new york city. You can’t in-kind burghdoff xero of non-profit radio total are all right, but it’s not quite as closest know your aunt is visiting for the week. Not quite like that, but the point is that you just never know how close the connection could be. You’re talking. To someone in a collaborative meeting, and all of a sudden you realize that it’s, somebody who sits on the board for is on a review panel somewhere, right? You just never know where that connection’s going to play out to a grantmaker and i got news for you that’s the case in new york city to treyz things air compartmentalized so you might be part of a grants panel or or organization devoted to social services. Okay, so now we’re getting pretty narrow, ok? There are a lot of social service agencies in new york city, but maybe somebody in from one of your funders is part of it, and you don’t know it because you don’t know the bio of everybody there, you know? So that does not only the case in small and mid sized towns, new york city can be very compartmentalized. Um all right, so we want to be talking up are funded programs in these forums? Is at the point well, we want to be naturally looking for collaborations naturally looking for spot where we conduce do-it-yourself cause when you think about how the community khun play out in your grants, trat, egy and why you want to have a team that’s thinking about it and then maybe kind of reporting back to the group? It could be that we’re thinking about okay letters of support, foran application or letters of commitment, right support. We’ve got our cheerleading letters, all right? Our senators and our dignitaries funders are like, god, okay, that’s, great that’s, nice, but what they really like are those letters of commitment, the organizations that are partnering together, and they’re like, okay, this is my role, this letter says, i’m going to do x y and z, right? So having the relation in ships in place with those agencies that you would ask for a letter of commitment from those relationships aren’t usually held by the great writer. It goes back to our grant team internally, we’re talking about our program staff again, or our executive director whatever, um so it’s, a really important way that we engage community everything about community as clients who are we serving? Having testimonial letters is either required or appropriate for some grant applications. Well, again, it’s not going to the grand professional that’s usually making that ask it’s going to be the staff member. That the client trusts say, hey, are you willing to write a short paragraph for us about your experience, you know, and these letters of support and certainly the letters of commitment are not going to be coming two business days before you’re your application deadline, they take time? Yeah, way have to be developing these relationships right in advance and asking those that we have relationships with foreign advance. So you’re not running around the city you’re driving all over the county trying to collect letters no good. Plus, you got a writing dead line two and you got a midnight submission deadline and it’s a big disaster. All right, all right. Um, so does that belong on our grantspace lan mean, the attendance at these community affairs? Well, if we think about what’s on the kind of what we go back to our conversation earlier a few months ago, about with the grants plan, i don’t know it always put community interaction onto the plan, but having the team recognize what their role is, their role is applicants application specific for sure, but the things that they do in between applications, having them understand that when they’re out in the community, they’re having these interactions. Those are things that come back, that they might not know exactly which application is going to be relevant to. But they should be stockpiling that information, thinking about the relationships they hold thinking about what advisory groups they sit on or hey, you know what? Actually, this organization we partner with a lot. I think they were talking about this federal grant too cash. I should talk to them before we consider applying. What if we did something collaborative instead of both trying to apply for the same thing, right? That knowledge will naturally bubble to the surface in your internal grant’s team. If they know how and what they should be watching for externally with community we have just like a minute and a half or so before we got to wrap up. How do we how would i know this time flies right now? How do we find the right places to be going in our community? Just like in a minute? Yeah, i would say look at where you are naturally don’t force it. Look it where? There’s collaborative sze. Where there’s? A social service agency gatherings or environmental? Group regional conferences or work groups? Look at what you’re naturally doing and that’s where you need to be. How can you then use those existing relationships for the betterment of your work and there’s? Everything we just talked about, you write all that collaboration. All right, diane, hte leonard with the h for my maiden name, which is corey. Corey. Okay. Diane it’s. Leonard hori is not part of ah, her earl it’s d h leonard consulting dot com and she’s at diane h leonard always got that year was keeping her maiden name present, though, but abbreviated well, and also there’s a there’s, an impressionist painter. Diane leonard. So when you think about ceo and how you identify, i see. Okay, thank you very much for coming, diane. And thanks for being in the studio record. Thank you. Thanks for being here. You probably thought that i forgot live lister loving podcast pleasantries, inflate affections. Oh, you are. You are badly mistaken. The live listener love goes out. 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Nonprofit Radio for January 13, 2017: Digital Inclusion Furthers Impact & Your Annual Grants Plan

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Kami Griffiths, Karen Lincoln, & Alicia Orozco: Digital Inclusion Furthers Impact

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More people than you’d expect don’t have home access to the internet. This has implications for those you want to help. Our panelists from the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference have each made digital inclusion a priority, and they share their wisdom. Kami Griffiths leads the Community Technology Network; Karen Lincoln is from The Stride Center; and Alicia Orozco is with the Chicana Latina Foundation.

 


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: Your Annual Grants Plan

We start with the basics, then move into goals and metrics. Finally, colleague engagement, so you’re not alone making your plan and executing. Diane Leonard is president and owner of DH Leonard Consulting.

 

 


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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, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure amblyopia if i saw that you missed today’s show digital inclusion furthers impact more people than you’d expect don’t have home access to the internet. This has implications for the people you are trying to help. Our panelists from the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference have each made digital inclusion a priority, and they share their wisdom. Kemi griffiths leads the community technology network karen lincoln is from the stride center, and alicia orosco is with the chicana latina foundation and your annual grants plan. We start with the basics, then move into goals and metrics. Finally, colleague engagement. So you’re not alone making your plan and executing it. Diane leonard is president and owner of d h leonard consulting attorneys take two, mohr ntcdinosaur goes responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com here is our panel on digital inclusion welcome. To tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc non-profit technology conference in san jose, california, at the convention center, i guess now are camby, griffiths, karen lincoln and alicia roscoe. Cam e is executive director of community technology network she’s seated next to me. Hoexter haris carry in lincoln director of business and operations, the stride center and alicia orosco is manager of administration special projects at the chicano latina foundation. Ladies welcome. Thank thank you. Thank you. You have a very provocative, interesting topic digital inclusion to further your impact. I’m going to start in the middle there. Karen turns out that everybody in the country does not have access to the internet at home. I’m shocked to learn actually you’re not alone in being shocked. A lot of people are very surprised by that. Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty five percent of americans do not have access to high speed internet in their home, and a huge percentage of them don’t even have digital literacy skills twenty to twenty five percent throughout the country. Yes, does that include? Does that include in urban areas? Or is it mostly suburban sametz rule? No urban it’s both definitely. Is checking your nodding vory right here in silicon valley? Yes, right here and in san francisco it is incredible. Do we know what the percentages here? Just in the local area or i don’t have that number, but we know that there is an inclusion issue here and it’s broken down by income, age and education level. So in san francisco, they did a report recently, and it showed fifteen percent didn’t have access and that’s in san francisco where you think everybody’s connected all the time, but there’s pockets of poverty, there’s people who don’t have homes and where did they access the internet? So a lot of people are going to libraries and other places to get online. So san francisco’s, lucky in california in general, is ahead of the curve compared to the rest of the country. But there’s still a divide even though some people think that everyone’s go to cell phone, so we’re all connected. But that’s, not the case what we all hear about libraries as the alternative? Are there other alternate besides libraries? What are they? Anybody? So? Community centers, recreation center, senior centers, other non-profits that provides services sometimes also offer access to computers, but you don’t always get training at those places. So that’s, what a lot of our organizations are focused on is the training. Yeah, okay, so not only the access, but also literacy. Yes, setting for this machine, but i don’t know how to use it. Yeah, it’s not doing me much good physically. Okay? And children are failing in high in schools because they don’t have connection at home and they are in schools where they’re five to six students per computer at their school. Eso it’s really they’re they’re incredible, they’re doing homework, they’re doing essays on their phones, their parents, phones and i take my hat off to them because they haven’t given up. But that’s not right. Also having access to things like libraries and community centre of senators doesn’t serve everybody because if you are home mound are don’t have access to a vehicle are living in a neighborhood was not try safe to go out at night. You don’t have the ability to use those other surgery, even maybe cost travel it, zach public transportation. It’s not free. You know, some people may be a burden just to get to the alternative and we have met families who packed their kids who have homework with the computer. They haven’t go park in the library parking lot to get the wifi and the kids, they’re doing their homework because if they go inside, they get timed out within an hour. Most of the computer’s already occupied parking in the library parking lot for wifi access. Yes, this is happening right here in san will say yes, and if you don’t have a car, you’re outside on a bench or they call him the leaners there, leaning against the wall using the internet from in the building? No, yeah, yeah. All right, that should be enough motivation. All right, so now the issue is that we are in our organization’s trying to help these people. We’re trying to reach them. You know, i hear it ntcdinosaur talking about so much about multi-channel engagement, but if two people can’t access the channels and don’t have to use the channels again, we’re not reaching them. Andi, we’re we’re trying to provide services a lot of times to this population. How do we write this is talking about how our organizations supposed to duitz hair themselves. To reach these people, all right, let’s, start close this time. Cam e how do we start even assess what the problem is, omar, our constituency is that where we started? It’s a good place to start and not everybody does that they jump right in and they’ll have a bank of computers there are they literally let their clients use their own computers, which isn’t necessarily the best idea caused after, oh, yeah, and or you’re helping them apply for jobs? They’re sitting next to you and you’re applying for the job on their behalf because you just want to help them apply. But what i would encourage folks to do is to partner with agencies who are already doing computer literacy or adult literacy or some way don’t take it on yourself to train your constituencies or help them connect to the internet, but know who the partners in your community are and work with them tio get them the training that they need. So we want people to be able to apply for jobs on their own, ideally in their homes, privacy, some degree of privacy, exactly, and taking their time cause a job application isn’t something. You should send six out in an hour. It should take an hour just to find one application that you want to fill out and then several hours to do research and fill out the application, you know appropriately and it’s it’s a time intensive thing and at the library is alicia said you’ll time out after an hour, and so libraries aren’t always the solution for job seekers. So for non-profit, who has stumped by this issue of their clients not being online, we’ll go to where the training happens partner. But if you have a needs assessment that you’re deploying into great digital literacy or digital inclusion into that survey, see you have some data to prove to the foundations that this is a need that you should give us funding for. So we can help these people get online at home, that they can provide access to their children to do homework so they could do job search liking, connect with family using skype research information, entertain themselves, whatever it is, the internet is this amazing revolution, and they should be able to join in. Karen, what are some of the things we should be asking if we’re doing a survey the way kapin suggesting to determine if we have a problem among our constituency. For one thing, you need to be careful about if asking if they have access to the internet or if they have internet access because a lot of talk about that’s duvette right? Yes, i do. I’m gonna buy community foundation, which is a two and a half hour ride, and it cost me six dollars to get there and years to come back, and i get timed out after an hour. Are you using your phone and your phone isn’t really where you’re gonna build skills that are transferrable, et cetera in the morning, you all three of you a very good teacher because i feel like i’m mastering sort 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 duitz what should we be asking in a in a survey tool. So i would ask things like, do you have access at home? What do you want to use the internet for? Is it because you have a sense of isolation and you want to connect with your family? Are you looking for a job? Are you trying, teo? Better understand your health. I would get a better understanding of what skills they bring to the table. They may say they know how to use their computer. But does that just mean that they know how to look up? Something on an internet page are? Do they know how to create a word document? There’s? You really need to dig into what skills they bring to the table with access they have today and what their goals are with that usage. Okay, elisa, you’re doing a lot of nodding. Absolutely. So are you connected at home? Do you have equipment? You have actual computer. Is it working yet? We find that a lot of them are. You know, door stops like you said, karen, but but someone might answer that question. Yes, yes, we have one. But it’s worthless. Exactly. So on and then you know, your questions are very important. How would you benefit from having a working computer and knowing how to use it at home? And, you know, i i ask everyone who’s listening to us to start listening everywhere you go, if we go to a hospital, if you see your doctor, if you go to unemployment anywhere that you go it’s school, everything is oh, you can get it online. Cam. He was at the tax place you can download of the forms online. Um, so a lot of people don’t have that ability. Well, but but if you can’t here’s the altum won’t know the idea that the thing we want people to know is that the world has gone there, but not everyone has access to the world. This is a social justice issue. Are we leaving a percentage of human beings out of the twenty first century and it’s not because they don’t want to? We live at least here in this area where we are one of the most expensive areas in this country. People have two and three jobs just to pay rent, several families living together um so when you tell them that they’re going to have to pay forty nine, fifty dollars a month for their internet and then buy a computer. Well, say so are our listeners are oppcoll in non-profits themselves it’s form so they know size non-profit so well, they may not, but, you know, we’re raising consciousness. But now we want to approach. The problem is, how do you ten thousand plus listeners approach to approach your constituents who don’t have access? I mean, how can you help them geever gain access? Or how can you deliver your own services knowing that we have this enormous void? That twenty to twenty five percent of population was much bigger? Go on. Okay, let’s, continue. Karen, you want to you want to pick up with where do we take this next? Now we’ve done some assessment work. We know what our constituents are lacking. How can we help? So it would say there’s primarily to things that we can do in both alicia and can we spoke about this earlier today, one has become familiar with the organizations in your area that are teaching digital literacy. Non-profit work is very self referential. Nobody could do everything. Become familiar with what services are available in your area for your constituents and additionally, get the word out there. It’s so so unknown how big of a gap is being created, our population and how many people are being disenfranchised. And the only way that change happens is through awareness. So we all need to start talking about it also fight now, if you have a refurbished or in your community, for instance, we did that a lot in our project. So because they usually make computers available at no cost or very low cost, and then they offer support for those computers wave they do break down, so refurbishing companies are important, and they’re springing up all over so low cost internet is other there’s. A lot of companies coming out low cost internet options. So internet essentials from comcast is one that’s been out for about four, five years, and now they have a pilot for seniors. That’s ten dollars a month and it comes with one hundred fifty dollars voucher for a computer. So comcast has something low caused it. And t there’s mobile beaconfire ogle citizen so know what the low cost options are in? Your community that people can apply for, you know, advocate to your city government or your region to get low cost of free accessed in low income areas. So google fiber is doing some really interesting things connecting low income housing to free too free internet and so getting the low cost or free option of both the internet and the connectivity is very important, but not everyone knows how relevant it is to them. So having the training is absolutely essential tell them understand why it’s relevant and then how to use it safely because the safety part, especially for older adults, there’s a huge amount of fraud and older adult community, and they’re getting scammed out a lot of money. So if we can make sure that people, once they’re getting trained online, they’re learning how to do it safely. Okay, karen e i will just mention that there’s also a lot of lobbying that has bean done with the p u c with our legislature in sacramento. Yes, because there are merger’s happening and the comcast offer of nine ninety nine. There was because they were so kind and wanted to help people. In fact, they were forced by the government and then they sat on it and did nothing. The california emerging technology fund had money to give dahna in-kind grants to all of us to get the word out and that’s how it began by us getting involved in telling people if you have a child in school receiving lunch, you know, free or reduce you qualify for this. Well, i invite you all to look up california emerging technology fund because they are very involved in lobbying and trying to get access to california. Their goal is eighty percent. By next year, twenty, seventy percent california’s connected access in home? Yes. What would we search if we’re not in california? I don’t know anybody else, but i just got this major breeze. Yeah, yeah. Shivering on anybody wondering why the air just got turned up. Eighty percent don’t bilich they’re just got turned up to percent if we’re outside california. What we be googling what terms should be searching to find the equivalent to what elisa is talking about in our in our home state. So there’s a national digital inclusion alliance and i think the earl is digital inclusion latto orders something nd eyes yeah, and there’s a list serv and there’s a lot of us on and there’s lots of conversation. So if you were to join that and say, hey what’s happening in salt lake city national digital inclusion alliance and there’s a conference coming up in a kansas city in may for folks who are interested in this world of digital inclusion and any other resource is weaken, we can shut out at this point nationwide, i think just put in digital inclusion in your google search, you know, and and i and some of these organizations, you know, ah, city c e t s california virgin technology fund might be able to help you to say okay, because they are involved, actually national ing to a certain degree, they latto washington got india, you can’t just give up, and i’m happy to point people to other resource is i’m wanting to build my own network of who’s doing what in sharing resource is and that’s the only way i think i can get better at doing this work and to help us build a movement where were training the trainer because that’s what si tiene dozes trains trainers to teach free computer classes and works one on one with individuals and and i really think that’s one of the only ways to meet the need is to meet people where they’re at in the language that is it that they speak using the device that they use and to show them the things that they need to know how to do. And so if we can replicate that in a large way across the country and eventually the world that’s a way to address the people we should reach you if they would like to participate taken email me at cam e am i at seti en bay area dot or ge? And we’ve got resource is on our website and there’s, another conference for people in this space called shelby schools health library, broadband coalition that’s a yearly conference that happens in d c i’ll be going to that speaking. Shelby shelby is schools, health library, broadband coalition, it’s a mouthful. But there’s really great folks that go there too. And it’s all about getting people access to the internet. And why do they need to use it in the skills to use it? Okay. All right, there’s. More. We have more time together, so way, haven’t beat this topic up yet. Let’s, take a look. I’ll give you a couple of seconds to think about, and we’ll take a commercial break because i have to highlight and ten swag item we have from upleaf. Coloring, coloring and are outstanding. Piela hannah has taken some liberties with the owl. I already started to color this in, but this is from upleaf and of course, they don’t give you the cold sheets, but coloring pencils as well. And karen, i need your help. You have this to the intend to my intense swag pile? Yes. Sheet and the pencils. You got a pencil? It is a color color. That’s okay, one fell sixty. Okay. Thank you. Arika god. All right, so what more do we have to cover on this very important topic? Let’s? See what e-giving who’s with me? I would like killing program delivering. We haven’t talked about program delivery. I just want encourage everybody to think about volunteering in their community to help make a difference in this area. If you know how to send an email and you’re a good communicator, somebody in the community could benefit from you helping them learn how to use the computer. So if you have two hours to give once a week, you could really change somebody’s life by helping them use their new smartphone that they got from their adult child or used their laptop. To apply for a job or improve their resume. There’s so many ways that we take it, we take for granted what we know on this could potentially be a volunteer opportunity for some of our organizations who listen, i guess they could create something around digital little received within their community way have, for instance, you cannot latina foundation supports latina women to go to school hyre education by wei have a programme for them. One of our alumni apply for a grant, and she got ten thousand dollars so that she could teach classes and have computer for people in santa cruz. So there’s really a lot of ways that you can figure out how to help your community. She has now taught ah hundred people how to use a computer. And it was a four week course in the old computers based on this grant, as she got on her own initiative work going to school and having a job. And then she recruited students from santa cruz, u c santa cruz to join her and teach. So it was a beautiful, beautiful project brought in students. College students obviously exaggerate and connected. Let’s, uh, i’d like to move to programme deliver how do we start to break this down if we know that there are people were trying to help who aren’t connected at home? Where do we start with this problem? I think some of the things you have to consider is not on ly what the community is, what they’re trying to do because the things you’re going to teach a group of seniors is very different than a group of job seekers, for example, but if you’re talking to people who are like food and secure or don’t have the money, you really have to find a way to integrate technology into their life so they can start to see the value of it. And i think a good way to do that is tio not on ly find out what matters to them to find some way to subsidize the program for the first six to twelve months, so it does become a part of their daily practice because if you’ve never had in your home, you don’t know what value it is, and you don’t understand why an investment of ten to forty dollars, is worth your time. The other thing? Is that for instance, if you are working with families who have children in school, we found that there are a lot of school laizans who are actually volunteers. Who are you doing this? They’re training parents on the internet. Well, not only internet how to use a computer so there is depending on who your clientele or the community you are serving is look around because i bet that there are these other organizations that are doing the work or groups that are doing this work, the school’s air, very interested in getting the parents on the internet and on their school loop or there’s different names for it. But they would love to let their computer labs to be used. We did that in santa cruz. We did there in selena’s. We did that in santa rosa. It was the school so open there, their computer labs to be used by the community school hours exactly the things we’re sitting follow-up exactly. Yeah. So okay, kayman anything you can about the program which focus on definitely part brings people. Yeah, partnering with other agencies and not taking it on yourself would be the first. I think you do. Look out into your general vicinity, and if you’re in a small town there’s no one else, you know it. Good. Take the next step, teo, learn more about other cities. They’re doing it, learn from people like us, but don’t try and do-it-yourself it it’s really difficult work, and it gets harder if you’re talking about older adults and cognitive disabilities or, um, multiple language is being spoken in any one area and that’s the kind of stuff that we’re dealing with and, you know, we don’t have computers of our only partner with senior center, so we don’t have to maintain the computers. We don’t have to run the non-profit that’s housing the computers, we don’t have to provide the meals that are drawing the seniors in there in the first place to then go to the computer center. So find an adult ed or a library or school or somebody that has perhaps something that you can you can glom onto, or you can work together. And if that doesn’t exist and then really try and build a network of people who want to help out and so good place to go would be if there’s a school or a university where you can elicit the support of a service learning program, we’re partnering with usf to do that and it’s a really great resource for us and, you know, utilizing volunteers is an amazing way to address the need, but they need to be trained and they need to be supported, and the volunteers like to get to know each other, so having a real robust volunteer program is is essential and continually helping them help their learners. So there’s going to be questions about iphones? We’ll have an iphone train there’s gonna be questions about this new website they’ve never heard of. So have that kind of training for the trainers, so they can be really good at communicating this technology to the to the learners. So it’s it’s, really? And then one thing that we’re doing is a monthly networking event we call bragan borrow so people come together just to talk and brag about the cool stuff that they’re doing related to technology, access and training, and then the borrow pieces saying, well, i’m having this challenge. Can you help me with that? So that’s the one thing i’ve been doing monthly for? About a year and a half, that’s resulted, and some partnerships and me learning a lot about the different communities are last. Braggin bar was at a veterans serving agency that had some computers, and so he had about eight veterans organizations. I’d never met any of these people before, and now we’re having conversations about technology, training and access for veterans, so that was pretty special co-branding borrow? Yeah, they were all taking ideas from others. Course or not or no, nothing want to formalize it looks let’s get together every thirty days, days or something. The one thing i want to add, if we have time is talking about evaluation and reporting on your impact is the hardest part of all of this. That, at least for us, is how do we show the impact beyond the number of people who attended a computer class or the number of hours of training that were provided? We just have a couple minutes left way get to some ideas of how to do it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So i would say for us, it’s, knowing what the goal is of the individual for or the group and we’re not. Doing it as well as i’d like to because we don’t even have ah data collection platform, we’re working on sales force right now, so we’re hoping by the summer will have that well built out. But what is the goal of the learner? And how do we show that they have reached that goal? If if it’s ending isolation so what are the things you need to do? Technology wise, teo health and get connected? They’re not feeling isolated or for jobseeker’s that’s a little bit more clear cut? Did they get a job? Or do they feel like they’re getting more hits on their resume? So it’s really figure out what? What are you hoping to accomplish? And then how do you build in the metrics to track that goal and it’s for small non-profits it’s really difficult to do that? Well, because you just don’t have the staff tio ask the right questions, collect the data in the right way to then be ableto run reports at the end of show that there was impact there. So what what’s the small organization to do? How can they? They just get as close as they can to reporting impact? Well, you just start talking about it first and, you know, don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do it, but at least try and find out from the individual learners. Are you mark comfortable now? Whatever the goal of it. So if they want to get on social media, did they get, you know, after six months today, were they able teo do facebook because to do facebook you need an email and then did he e mail you need to know howto open up a browser so there’s all these things that you need to layer on top so that would be one thing is like, did you are you doing this now? Whereas before you couldn’t, you could say, percentage wise that’s an easy one to say like fifty percent of our learners air now able to do this thing or one hundred percent, so that would be an easy thing, but you do have to track it regularly and have it in a database, so i would say, don’t overwhelm yourself with things to collect just keep it simple and start small i do think it’s important also in addition to saying if they know how often they’re doing it i mean, i know how to do it, how often they’re doing it because if you’re really integrating that technology, it’s not just the knowledge it’s, if you’re actually using it in a consistent manner, i absolutely agree. All right, ladies, we’re gonna leave it there. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you. Thank you again. Candy griffiths, executive director of si tiene community technology network. Karen lincoln, director of business and operations at the stride center, and alicia orosco, manager of administration and special projects for the chicano latina foundation. Durney martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference thank you for being with us. Your annual grants plan is coming up first. Pursuant they have mohr free research for you. Overcoming the major donor dilemma is the most recent. This paper will help you with the identification, engagement and cultivation of new major donors overcoming the major donor dilemma, you’ll find it at pursuing dot com, click on resource is and then content papers check that out. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising they’ve got a new video up it’s from a night that raised money for hfc, which has helped for children. The organisation needed help for its programs, and it turned to wi be spelling. They raised one hundred ten thousand dollars that night. You see it all in the video at we b e spelling dot com now tony steak too. I’ve got no videos from last year’s non-profit technology conference. I’m capturing these under the rubric virtual organizations and volunteers viv of love, one on i’ve won on how to manage remote employees. Another is managing remote volunteers where to find volunteers, and the fourth one is leveraging your expert or tech volunteers. My video that introduces these four with the links you’ll find it, you know, where do i need to say it? Do i need to say it? Tony martignetti dot com and by the way, are you going to this year’s ntc? You’ll find info at in ten dot org’s you know it’s, an excellent conference, the non-profit technology conference that is tony’s take to my pleasure to welcome diane leonard. She has been a grant professional for over a decade and is president and owner of d h leonard consulting and grantwriting services, she has secured over thirty four million dollars in competitive grants for clients from all three levels of government and private foundations. She’s, the co host of hashtag grant chat, a weekly twitter chat for grant professionals she’s at diane h leonard and there’s an e at the end of diane on only one end make that very clear. And her company is that d h leonard consulting dot com diane leonard, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. My pleasure. You have the credentials gpc after your name. What is that? Yes. So that stands for grand professional certified that’s, the grand professional certification institute, a sister organization to the grand professionals association. Very proud to have been in the field long enough to be able to grant professionals. Well, they just make it certified grantcraft sessional c g p it could be that too. You know what? Happy to have the initials into people that feel that way you might look into that just switch just kapin called c gp certifies otherwise have grant professional certified sound like just have a comma after professional like rifle comma and seventeen o or something like that. Or i don’t know, i would look into that, see if they’d switch. It around, you know what? If i grant professional? I mean, it doesn’t that doesn’t. That doesn’t roll off a little easier. No. Well, like i said, i’m just happy to be able to be a part of the community and having thought, ok, you don’t want to speak out against your professional suspicion because cause trouble i i’m not. I will never have the gpc. I’d be a gpu. I got grand professional, uncertified, but i’m not even grandpre fresh inal, so i’d be just a u uncertified. Just have the letter. You don’t martignetti you uncertified. Okay, let’s, get into our grant plan for ah for the year. Um, sorry. I like to start with some basics we should have. Ah, calendar. Right. Looking forward for the year. Yeah, absolutely. Should have a grand calendar that lets you is the person writing france in the rest of your team. Know what is coming? We have for deadlines. Where do we need to plan to be? Ableto be a part of the grand process. It’s a stress level down. Okay. And we’re going to talk about other people who are part of this. That may not typically be thought. Of but we’re tryingto break down these misconceptions about who’s, part of the grand steam it’s more than the grant writers were going to get to that. Ok, i also noticed you say that you would like to say grant professional, but i usually see grants professional. Is there, uh, is there a split in the in the profession among whether your singular rip plural? Oh, i think more than anything, there’s a distinction for some folks will call themselves a grant writer versus a grant professional that’s usually the question we get versus a grant writer grantspace writer or a grant professional grant professional? Yeah, i’m asking the pool of single plural singular question. Yeah, i’m usually way use singular. Yeah, yeah. Ok. On the personal preference there, i think okay, the the industry has not standardize itself. There’s some room for standardization still in the industry. Well, singular versus plural. And i think these things are important. Scrutinized these things? Um, like c b g o r g p. Okay, um and so what should be a part of our grant calendar? What belongs in there? There’s. A fair amount that belongs in there. So upcoming deadlines for existing funders that an organization already has relationships with those take priority. So what will be the deadline’s related to their report to their relationship maintenance with those existing funders and then renewal applications? Also on, there should be any known deadlines for potential new funders corporate foundation of family foundation, as well as the outreach that you might make to those foundations before you choose to apply. So whether you’re goingto a funder, former participating in a webinar technical assistance session, though, should be on there too, and then, if you’re looking at government funding, we’re usually forecasting we’re not exactly sure when things will be out, so those guesses of forecasts for when you expect to see opportunities amount through the different either federal or state systems should be on the calendar as well as a trigger point, so that you’re watching those opportunities open and reminding yourself to pre plan for them the the the the outreach part of of ah being a grant professional, correct me if i’m wrong in this, in the statement, please, and i really do mean challenge me if i’m wrong that the relationship part of grantspace nw ship or grant grant? Writing is underappreciated often it is, and it’s actually one of my dear friends and colleagues, heather starbuck of just right solutions, loves to say that people give to people right and that’s not usually debated in the fund-raising community or non-profit but the reality is this is where heather takes it. A step further is that people the foundations are granting two people at the non-profit so it really it does might not feel the same as a major donor interaction or an individual donor, but ultimately, people are making those decisions. And so there is that opportunity for some dialogue dafs questions toe have some interaction, not with all grantmaker but it really it’s an important factor that a lot of folks do skip over under the stress of a deadline, and ultimately, in the long run, they probably hurting their success ratio is a result. Is it worth talking to the the grantmaker while you’re in process, you’re preparing your application one hundred percent, so i started as a grantmaker and while talking to a programme officer isn’t ever a guarantee of anything when you find a grantmaker that has the preference and the capacity we should. Maybe say the other order capacity and preference for some pre award communications it’s going to help you is the applicant to write a more competitive proposal or potentially to realize actually, maybe we’re not a good fit, so save yourself the time and it does. It helps the thunder is well in the long run again if they have the capacity and the preference for that communication because they’ll ultimately they’re receiving stronger awards as a result of that dialogue. Now, how do we assess whether they have capacity and preference? Can we just call and say i don’t have any specific question about the application? I mean, like, i understand it completely, but what do you say? How do you open that conversation if you don’t have specific questions about the process? Right? So the way that we handle and recommend that our clients do that outreach is through their research when they’re looking at an opportunity, but they’re looking at the website and they’re seeing what is the thunder actually say? Community foundation for southeast michigan says right on there, please, paul, before you apply crystal clear in their materials, they want to talk to you others. Will say, please email us or please call the program officer, please call the program director. Please email. On the flip side, there will be those that in their materials will say no increase accepted, so a lot of them were being pretty clear if they have a printed website or if they have it and you will report, they’re putting out information to try and make it easier for focused, understand what it is that they want or could allow to happen for station. But i think really what’s important that you consistently developed talking points. If you find a thunder that you’re going to have the opportunity to email with or call, maybe even meet in person and the way that we develop the talking points, they worked just as well in person as they do on the phone, or they turn into a great female. So the first thing is to do a quick introduction. Who are you and who are you? Not the whole history of the organization, which is quick, okay? Calling because based on my research about your foundations, you’re granting organizations, i think that our organization is a really strong potential grant funding partner with you because give him a thirty second elevator speech. Why do you think that your work is well aligned with theirs? Why should they want to talk to you? Okay, elevator speech or you’re at a cocktail party without a quick thirty seconds with somebody before they run away. So you’re establishing upfront that you’ve done research and you’ve thought you’ve thought this through. Okay, okay, uh, here’s, why we’re a match? What it what else? And then the last part is that you’re gonna ask, may i ask you? I’ve got a few questions that will help me understand if we’re gonna be competitive in your process and make our application the best possible for you that’s the phone call going, they’re likely going to say yes or in person they’re going to say yes and email you just dive into it, you’re going to ask him to two three thoughtful questions, thoughtful questions are things that are not in a funders frequently asked question documents, they’re not things that are clearly outlined. On their web site, a thoughtful question is if you read all their materials and you haven’t you do you have a question? Do you prefer to do a matching grant versus a one year straight project france here? Are you willing to fund salaries? Is that an eligible expense? Those are legitimate, thoughtful question could be that the way that they’ve described how they support education, you’re wondering if indeed they’ll actually support after school activities vs heimans on ly in school tutoring programs or whatever the case might be something a little more programmatic and you might say, well, they’re materials are really clear, i don’t know, i’m not sure i have a thoughtful just like anything else with people, people love to talk about themselves, so a thoughtful question to a funder all that you might want to ask you, would you tell me about a recent france that did a great job of sharing their outcomes with you? Or they did a great job of publicizing the funded work? Get them to talk about something that they funded that went well, because that’s going to give you a good example? Something to think about for what? They like, help the work that you do. How could you talk about it to them in a similar way in the application? I love it. I love it now, if you do this, if you open the door this way and have this this delightful conversation what percentile of grant applicants would you say you’re putting yourself in? You’re putting yourself in the top tier for sure? Yeah, it’s just not that it just doesn’t happen. People don’t think of the relationship part of of grant work. All right, all right. That was an excellent thank you for that digression. I took us there, but that’s not our plan. But we call it the three r’s. So the research then you do relationship and lastly, you get to be your third are of writing. Of course doesn’t start with an r but we capitalize. Alright that’s, everybody but it’s a quick thing. People skip the second r that’s what we failed to do research they do writing everything in between. Ok, we know that you know how to spell the word writing so i declare we’re going for the alliteration i underst which i love very much appreciate so it’s fine. We will know you, khun spell. All right, all right. That’s cool. I like that. Uh, yeah. Okay, so ah, and putting our backdrop calendar. We’re putting this counter together, there’s, considerable time. We have to spend looking into all these things about deadlines and africa. Not all applications, but renewal, etcetera, mean there’s a lot of time up front goes into this. It is, but it really. It ends up saving you significant time in the long run and it’s usually well paired that you’re working on your grant calendar creations. While you’re working with your peers, your colleagues in your leadership for what is that grant revenue line item look like in the operating budget for the year ahead. At the same time that your organization is pausing to budgeting work, you should be creating your grant calendar so that they’re in synergy. Yes, and not only amount, but timing, too, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, it’s. Excellent. Nastya. I’ve had guests on talking about this hyre generally, but never heard that you have to align the revenue with with the budget. Otherwise, everybody’s gonna be disappointed if the grand budget revenue line item is off right. You is the person who was doing the right thing, and those that are in leadership responsible for that budget. Yeah, could be worse than your disappointment. Okay, let’s, take our first break. When we come back. Diane and i will continue talking about your your annual calendar, and we’ll get a little more in depth. A little more advanced. Stay with us. 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Lively conversation, tap trends, sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m melanie schnoll begun managing director morgan stanley philantech management. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i gotta send the live love that’s, etcetera, etcetera, it’s gotta go out were pre recorded, so i can’t name you by city and state. But if you are among our live listeners today, the love goes out to you. Thanks so much for being with us. Not only love, but thanks gratitude and love podcast pleasantries over twelve thousand i’m brown prepared to say it now, you know it’s happened so often that it’s over twelve thousand that’s all there is to it. It’s over twelve thousand podcast listeners it’s just that simple we’re beyond that ten thousand mark ten thousand threshold so pleasantries to the vast majority of our audience, the podcast listeners, whatever device, whatever time, whatever you squeeze us into your busy hectic schedule pleasantries to you our podcast listeners, thanks so much for being with us and the affiliate affections to our am and fm stations throughout the country. Affections to you. I’m glad that you’re listening. Let your station know that you do listen so they get some feedback. That’s always valuable affections to our am and fm affiliate listeners. Okay, diane. Leonard. Um, this this process necessarily involves gold setting. Let’s. Talk, let’s. Talk about that. Sure, having goals is really important for yourself, and so that the organization is in well alignment with grant seeking strategy and really articulating and achieving your strategic plans. Okay, so well, so what are some of the some of the goals you have? You have lots of good metrics here. I love all of these metrics that you list, um, like award percentage and percentage funded versus asked, we’re setting goals for for all these things, ideally, yes, what we find is that some organizations our only using one or two metrics to measure their grant seeking success. What’s really, there is a pretty long list of different metrics that can be used and if you together actually present you with a fuller picture of the success and where you’re seeing growth or potentially room for improvement in your grantmaking so that you can try and sharpen your skills, have better success percentages overall have a stronger return on investment on each koreans that you write as we’re setting our goals. What do we benchmark against? Is that to be organizations like us eyes that number even? Or those numbers even available to what degree does the previous year factory or the previous three years? Great questions? People tend to be pretty tight about sharing they’re different personal metrics, and so it really is about looking at your organization’s ask track record looking at one, two and sometimes three years back to see what those different their success presented percent of funders that are renewing percent of each year to see what dollar amount or what a number of total grantspace unders versus previously existing relationship. If you look at those numbers that you’ve got a longer terms history, it can show you sometimes there’s some blips, things that happened because of government funding, in or out that are beyond your control. That would impact your metrics. That’s what you want to look at more than just the past year hyre establish a benchmark where were you? And set some goals from realistic goals for yourself? For how could you improve your work? And hopefully your grant revenue is forward so it would be off color of me to ask you what you’re percentage of awards is that? Is that an inappropriate question? Not at all, totally appropriate, especially if you’re talking to a grand consultant were usually pretty public, so my success percentages stayed over sixty five percent for my eleven years in business. Okay, is that how does that rank? I don’t know two thirds proud. Of that, though, i will say that with pride. All right, so two thirds of the application that you submit over the past eleven years have been awarded. Is that right? Did i state that? Right. Okay. All right. Two thirds. All right. Excellent. Um, all right. So let’s, talk through some of these, um, percentage funded versus asked, like it’s that’s pretty straightforward. Um, again, you know, it’s it’s, i think the toughest part of this is figuring out where you fit in. Like, what? Which leaves should we be looking for ninety percent funded versus asked? Or is is fifty percent good? It’s tough it’s, very tough, and especially depending on what type of work you’re doing and what type of grantmaker you’re applying to what would be a good standard will be different. So, for example, and i ate when they publish their funded percentages mean there, so incredibly evidence all grantmaker czar, but at an age to think the last published that i saw was that thirteen percent of submitted proposals funded thirteen percent. But that’s all the work you’re doing, you’re probably gonna be happy with a different numbers than if you are solely working. With family foundations for britain families. Percent of funding renewed and increased. Can you say some something about that? Sure. So if you look back at the last year and you see which funders you received funding from, you’d be looking then to say, well, how many of those? Well, i’ve retained what percentage will i receive another grant from in this upcoming year? And ideally, what percentage could i increase in award from? So instead of getting another seventy five thousand dollars france, i should be great if i could increase and get an eighty thousand dollar grant eighty that’s modest, i was thinking from seventy five to one hundred it was eyes like crazy. I mean, you’re the pro eyes is that is that unreasonable to go expect somebody of thunder to go from seventy five to one hundred it’s so situational for something having the increase of a few thousand is a big deal for others, you’re right, you could make a much bigger jump depending on what you’re proposing mean, if you did a great job last year or over the past two years with them, um, and and you have a way of expanding the program, wouldn’t that be a credible? Argument for giving ah, what would my case would be? A thirty percent increase? It certainly could be, and i think you know, this actually goes back to that relationship point if you’ve done more than just implementer project, but rather you thought about how you can enhance your relationship with your grantmaker in addition to doing what you said you would when you said you would, how you said you wouldn’t your applications, i think you stand a much better chance of increasing your award in the future year. Yes, well, one of your metric is grant compliance. How do we measure that when you look at the different brands that are being implemented for some, if you’re talking government grant has got very strict standards from the ownby office federally, but we’re looking at grant appliance. You could measure yourself on percent of report turned in on time or early percent of grant bill turned in on time or early, even simple metrics like that go a long way, because as soon as you turn a report in late, you hurt your truck and your relationship with the grantmaker. Yes, very much. And and your credibility is diminished. Yeah. Um, labbate diane, we may have to have you back is we only have, like, two minutes left, but i i want to get to the use of your colleagues and expanding the definition of who belongs on the grant team. Please talk about that. Sure. So when we say grand team folks will say, i’m a grand team of one and what we really mean, when when i talk about grant team when those that i worked with when we talk about granting what we mean, are those organizations that play a key role in e-giving you helping you give it, tio put together competitive applications so it’s leadership for saying yes, good ideas in alignment with our plans, somebody from finance helping giving you the budget numbers it’s a vice president of programs or a program director that telling you here’s what goes in that logic model form here’s what goes in your work plan for they are they might not call themselves formally ever a grand team, but they are your pre awards frantic. Then you have a post award rant. Eam might be slightly different players. That are helping to make sure grant rented the way that it was proposed. That thunder information is being shared back by a report, if there’s a need for financial building or you do a revision to a budget there helping and working with you or your grandmamma jer, if your organization has one, they’re working together for that. So again, i might not ever call themselves a grand team formally. You might not ever see it on the organ chart. They exist. Not truly a solo role to be in grant. We have to leave it there. I hope you’ll come back again because there’s a lot more to discuss and some of these topics, and we gotta leave it there. Thank you so much. You’ll find diane’s company at d h leonard consulting dot com and she is at diane h leonard again. Diane, thanks so much. Thank you so much, tony. My pleasure. Next week, very special show atlas of giving. Ceo rob mitchell announces the fund-raising results of twenty sixteen and the forecast for twenty seventeen with us will be paul schervish, america’s professor at boston college, and professor doug white from columbia, commenting on the review and the forecast. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com, responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam lewis is the line producer. Gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director. Shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the 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 yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun 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, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’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 expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. 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