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Nonprofit Radio for June 14, 2019: Giving Tuesday & Candid

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My Guests:

Asha Curran: Giving Tuesday
It’s time to start your prep for this rapidly growing giving day, this year on December 3rd. Asha Curran, CEO of Giving Tuesday, gets you started.





Jacob Harold & Brad Smith: Candid
Guidestar and The Foundation Center have merged to form Candid. Their respective former CEOs are with me to explain what it means for your nonprofit. They’re Jacob Harold and Brad Smith, Candid’s CEO. 











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Transcript for 443_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190614.mp3 Processed on: 2019-06-17T12:34:38.637Z S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results Path to JSON: 2019…06…443_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190614.mp3.390956394.json Path to text: transcripts/2019/06/443_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190614.txt Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, very nice to be back in the studio live after several weeks pre recorded and I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of Mega Lo Kyra if you handed me the idea that you missed today’s show. E-giving. Tuesday 2019 Part one It’s time to start your prep for this rapidly growing e-giving day this year on December 3rd, Asha Curren, CEO of giving Tuesday, gets you started, and Candid Guide Star and the Foundation Center have merged to form Candid their respective former CEO’s air with me to explain what it means for your non-profit. They’re Jacob Harold and Brad Smith candids. New president on Tony’s take to summertime is planning time. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising Data driven and Technology enabled. 20 dahna slash pursuing by Wagner CPS Guiding you beyond the numbers whether cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations made easy text NPR to 444999 It’s a pleasure to welcome Asher current back to the show with a new title she is CEO of giving Tuesday the global generosity movement that we’re going to learn a lot about. She’s also chief innovation officer at the 92nd Street Y, but not for long. She’s a fellow at Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society lab. She’s at Radio Free Asha and giving Tuesday Is that giving Tuesday dot or GE? I should current Hello and welcome back, Tony. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. It’s my pleasure. Thank you. Um So tell me about your this new, exciting title that you’ve got CEO of of ah e-giving Tuesday. I didn’t know like that. Sounds to me like CEO of Of metoo are I don’t know, how does that work or CEO of Christmas? It is pretty funny. Well, so e-giving Tuesday’s the movement and on DH movements have lots and lots of leaders and all those leaders Coke create e-giving Tuesday e-giving Tuesday is also how the leadership and has a new organization. And as you know, we have seen incubated at the 92nd Street y forgiving Tuesday’s the 1st 7 and 1/2 years and so we’re going to be transitioning to become independent, which is really exciting It doesn’t make a huge amount of difference to your average e-giving tease, a participant or or a fan or super ambassador. But it makes a big difference to us because it’s really interesting. Actually, they consider that for everything giving Tuesday has has done and for how much it’s grown in the past eight years. E-giving Tuesday has never actually had a single full time employees, myself included, and that just became an unsustainable situation. So the 90 Seconds she wide Belfer center, which I direct the full time leadership and giving Tuesday, needs full time leadership. And and so I’m going to be transitioning out to work full time on giving Tuesday and really double down on arika. Wonderful, you’re our first guest on about giving Tuesday was Henry Henry. Tim’s the CEO of the many secretary. Why, after the first after the very 1st 1 Andi have sampled it from time to time after that, So So this is a paid position, all right, Where does the where does the money come to pay to pay you? Is that is that from the Why? No way. Stop, That’s that part’s not really changing. We fundrasing freezing Tuesday we had fund-raising for years has been very generously supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so they will continue to support us and we will continue to raise additional funds as well to support all the different parts of the movement that that we want to support and cultivate, including our leadership team. Yeah, and what are the other leadership positions? I don’t I don’t think people know this And plus, it’s all brand new so but I don’t think I know that it’s not new. It’s actually it’s not brand new over there. Over the years, we have built up e-giving Tuesday team court what we call our core team because it’s really important to distinguish the are core team from the leaders that exist all over this country and all over the world who are leading like entire giving Tuesday country movement Right there. We don’t consider them part of our quarantine, but there’s certainly part of our broader community and our broader network. We all work extremely closely together, but our team of 10 is my self, A data lead. We have a strategy lead way, have a fund-raising and data support. We have a global community manager. We have a social media manager. So yes, there are definitely people that are devoting lots and lots of time, making sure that we amplify all the good work that giving Tuesday is doing all over the world. You know, sometimes we have, you know, certain strategic objective that come from us. But often what happens e-giving Tuesday is that we see something, something meaningful, something inspiring, something that we think a lot of tension organically emerging from the movement. And then we, as a team talk about how we can best support that. So there have been lots of different examples our community campaigns, for example, which are entire state or small cities or big town whatever that come together to create a e-giving Tuesday campaign that pulls together all of the different segments and sectors of that community and really reflects that communities, identity and population and a sense of civic pride so that we had no expectation that that who happened, We just had no idea when we first launched e-giving Tuesday and that first, you know, years that Henry and I were working on it. That’s not something we expected to see. It happened. And so our job as a team was to make it at six. Cecil, as we possibly could offer all of the additional support convening power, all of that to what was emerging organically. Another example is our country’s leaders. We had no idea getting Tuesday. We cross borders now, As you know, we we predicated it on Black Friday and Cyber Monday on Thanksgiving, for that matter. But I mean, that’s all pretty us focused. But almost immediately giving Tuesday started to cross Borders, and now we’ve We’ve passed 60 countries, so we spend a lot of time in this sort of Pierre learning ecosystem that those country leaders have come to comprise. Okay, I see so right, not new, but I still, I think, widely unknown. I think people think it’s all undistributed, and, um, I don’t think that’s commonly know that there’s this leadership team of 10. That’s really no, I think you’re absolutely right and partial Tony, that’s kind of fine design, like we’re not, You know, we’re not enough self promotion, you know, exactly minutes, and I think it’s really interesting. You know, a movement can be leaderless right and that there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a different model on DH. Movement can be leader full, and we like to think of it in that way that we’re not the only leaders of the movement. But we are way are certainly hear ourselves as its backbone. Yeah, it’s all. It’s all very new power to give old Marge Teo Henry’s book and he’s been on talking about. He was on talking about it when it came out. Yeah, it’s all very new power. So are the Are the 10 people going to be full time e-giving Tuesday employees or just US CEO? No. So what? We’re going to be full time team final e-giving on Tuesday, the full time attention it really needs and hopefully, you know, fingers crossed. Many will raise enough money. Teo even hyre. Beyond that, I don’t think we need to ever become a you know, a a massive team. I don’t think we ever need hundreds of people, but I do think that as we expand to all of these different countries as we get more deeply into data work, we certainly want to be as well staffed as we possibly can be to try to achieve everything that we’ve achieved. But we’re very nontraditional when it comes to fund-raising as well, because we feel like we could do good with whatever we raised, right? So if we raise $100 will do $1000 worth of good with it. If we raise $1,000,000 etcetera Will Will will always parlay that into into exponential growth, as we have so far. All right, Well, congratulations on this new transition. Yeah, that’s happening in just a couple weeks, right? Is it July 1st? Is that one? It is, indeed. It’s happening on a lifer, so it’s really it’s really coming up, and I’m very excited about it. Awesome. Uh, we all are. All right. We gotta take our first break standby for me, Asha Pursuing two. They’ve got a podcast. Ah, and it is Go beyond. It’s hosted by their vice president, Taylor Shanklin, who is a friend of non-profit radio, of course, and has been a guest. Recent episodes of Go Beyond our Self Care for Leaders and for Digital Trends. For 2019 you’ll find their podcast go beyond at pursuant dot com slash resource is now. Let’s go back to giving Tuesday 2019 part one. All right, so that’s, er good news. Fabulous news. Congratulations again. So let’s, uh this is going to be the first of two times that Will, we’ll have you as, ah have the pleasure of you as a guest and now honored to have you as a full time CEO. Uhm, that’s kind of like that’s kind. Like any sample ward, our social media contributors. She started when she was marketing manager or whatever. What marketing lead for? Not for non-profit Technology Network. And then when she became CEO, she I’m glad stayed on as our social media on DH Tech contributor. So you’ll sew in your new position as a full time CEO of e-giving Tuesday. Well, we’ll look forward to having you back, and I’m glad you’re here today. So this whole announcement, Graham. I’m looking forward to you. Thank you. All right, um, so let’s get people motivated. Who have heard of giving Tuesday? Still, there’s still some reluctance, but I see I hear that waning. It’s not like in year one or two where, you know there was there. Was there a lot of naysayers that I think, at least in the press that I read. I think that’s declined. They’re still occasional, but you know, that’s fine. I mean, they’re entitled to their opinions. But for those who need some motivation for being involved with e-giving Tuesday on December 3rd of this year, what can you provide? How it’s growing, how easy it is to participate, etcetera. Oh, boy, we’re to start. You’re gonna have to shut me up, Tony. Okay, we’ll start with Okay, Let’s start with a couple of common misconceptions. Maybe works. So one thing that I hear expressed a concern is that e-giving Tuesday’s encouraging people to move money around on different days rather than being additive. Uh, we’ve done extensive data analysis on this and you know conclusively that giving Tuesday is indeed providing a net list and giving. So, you know, I think the concern that you’re simply moving the donor from December 31st to December December 3rd is pretty misplaced. I think instead, it’s best to think of giving Tuesday as as an opportunity to be more experimental as an opportunity to be more collaborative, not to use the buzzword, but as an opportunity to beam or innovative. I think that these are all muscles that be non-profit community really, really needs to flex its an opportunity to become more more digitally literate on fluent and and again, I think that that’s the muscles that the non-profit world needs. TTO play. So we see a lot of money being raised. Obviously, on the first e-giving Tuesday, we were able to count $10,000,000 being raised online, and they were able to count because, as we all know, data and the sexual notoriously poor and were able to count simply on aggregate total of the different transactional platforms to give us numbers and we add them all together. So that was 10,000,000 in 2012 and it was north of 400,000,000 this past e-giving Tuesday. And that’s that’s $400,000,000 that is made up of gifts, on average size just over $100. So we’re not talking big philanthropy here. We’re talking the grassroots e-giving. Our data also indicates, but be, uh, about 1/4 of giving Tuesday. Donors are new and about 75% are consistent, so it’s an opportunity both to rally your supporters that you have already and also to engage new ones so that sense of experimentation is often around. How could we speak to people in a new way that really gets them engaged with our cause or our issue? It means playing with a lot of traditional assumptions. And what I see a lot of is sort of operating, making decisions based on quote unquote best practices. That might have been true 10 years ago, even five years ago. That simply aren’t true now. And so I think it’s a really good opportunity. Just start from the ground floor, right? If you if you didn’t thank you. If you thought you didn’t know anything about donorsearch gauge Mint or stewardship, what would be the things that you would try? WAY have over 80% of our participating non-profits report to us that they use the day to try something new. To me, that’s a big metric of success. Even if they don’t make their goals because trying something new, that sense of experimentation bye collaboration. I mean reaching out to other organizations to look at them as mission aligned collaborators rather than competitors, as we so often do. We see a lot of that around giving Tuesday, and it really requires taking a step out of your comfort zone. But the lessons learned from things like that and the new muscles being strengthened, our things that benefit and organization all year round. Once you once you learn new lessons, you can’t unlearn them. So we don’t think of giving Tuesdays. Just how much money can you raise on this one day? But really, how can you think differently about engaging people around your mission, right? Not just around your bottom line, but really reasoned that you are the reason that you exist. The thing that you were here, the tackle okay. And the sector has been talking a lot about for years about collaboration. I I’ve heard it Mawr in grants, funding applications, clap teamwork, collaboration with other non-profits. But you’re talking about it in the digital space. So it’s it’s it’s billing over From from what I thought was the genesis of it, which was foundations wanting to Seymour collaboration. Yeah, I mean, when I when I talk about the kind of collaboration I see on giving Tuesday as far more than digitally, you know, we see groups of arts and culture organizations, groups of immigrants, rights organizations, groups, of women’s health organizations are looking out for each other to try to really Coke create not just a fundraising campaign, but really a storytelling campaign and awareness raising campaign. So it becomes less about how much can we raise versus them? Where’s our logo gonna go? How much credit are we going to get? And much more about we all exist to tackle this same mission. How creative can we get in telling a story about why this cause is so important? So I draw a real distinction between transactional collaboration, which is much more along the lines of I’ll scratch your Back, you scratch mine and transformational collaboration, which really involved taking the strength of different organizations and, frankly, different people. Right, because all of this stuff is actually driven by human thought organizations and bringing them together to create something entirely new. So I’m very in favor of that latter part of that lot of definition of collaboration, which also carries, Let’s face it, more risk right in giving up some control over exactly what you’re going to do in the first roll over some of your data, things like that on DH. I’m very much of the mind, that kind of risk tolerance, something that we that we very much wanna build If I’m in an organization and I want to raise this with my vice president or my CEO, how do I start to get buy-in? I’m going to find something that e-giving tuesday dot or gets going to help me get some organizational buy-in or get some talking points that I consulted. Thing. Raise the conversation. I think you know, doing this accessible giving Tuesday campaign. First of all, it doesn’t have to be its resource intensive. So that’s one way to get buy-in, right. Any any good leader should be encouraging their employees and not just only their senior employees, but all of their employees to really think creatively and to try new things and have some tolerance for failure. So I think trying something new on giving Tuesday can can be a pretty light lift financially, and that’s one way Teo that’s one way to sell it. Pointing to the data is another way, right? This is This is something that’s raising people a lot of money that’s forcing people to think different organizationally. That’s become so much greater than just a fund-raising Day that you know the reasons to try it are ample, and the reasons not to are few. It’s not going to do If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. We’re not about every single person participating e-giving Tuesday. But I think if you do go on giving Tuesday website way, always say there’s no such thing as stealing and giving Tuesday. There’s only joyful replication, so we way absolutely encouraged people go online. Read the hundreds of case studies that you’ll find their fund-raising case studies non sun grazing case studies, collaborative case studies, community foundation case studies and go on and on and on corporate, You know, houses of worship and find something that works for someone else and try it so it should be an opportunity to innovate. It shouldn’t be crusher to innovate, right? People should feel a sense of, ah, a sense of adventure when they embark on getting to a campaign. And I think one of the reasons that giving Tuesday is so sticky for people I mean real people, regular people, not sector people is because it has a very celebratory overtone right e-giving Tuesday is not about morning. All of the weighty issues that we all have to deal with it out, celebrated in our ability to make an impact on them. And so if you see all the photos we have the privilege of seeing from all over the world, we’ll see over and over again. Is Thies peace with pictures of people together and looking really happy? So there’s something about this sort of communal right giving as a human community that is very sticky to people. And I think that organizations do the best when they leverage that fact. Can you share a story? I know I’m putting on the spot. One of the one of the collaborative stories. Maybe it’s ah, couple of medium size non-profits. Anything come to mind that you can share so we could take this out of the abstract? Sure, although I hate to do it just there are so many. But I will take a couple of examples and before you do that, I will also say along the lines of selling it internally. Okay. Another misconception about giving Tuesday is that big organizations like multi national you know, huge budget non-profits do better than small and medium sized non-profits, and that is emphatically not the case. In fact, small and medium sized non-profits tend to do better, then huge non-profits, and I’m I’m quite sure that the reason for that is first of all, those. Those small non-profits can often tell Justus compelling a story, but also they often have the ability to be more agile. They left weighted down by bureaucracy, so they’re often idea they’re often able to just sort of put an idea out there, give it a try without having to run it through multiple layers of approval. Rating is important. That’s important for people to know. So one example that comes to mind is there’s a small community foundations in a town called Bethel, Alaska, which has, if I’m not mistaken, 12 area non-profits. Now this town is is the administrative hub for a series of native Alaskan villages that surrounded It has won four way stop, and a few years ago, on employee at that community foundation, not even the most senior employees decided to do a collaborative effort that brought together all of vessels non-profit. And so they did a volunteer campaign where people stood outside of that four way stop all day in a sub xero temperatures, and they gathered donations from passing motorists talking about their area, non-profits and all of the good they do. And then they divided that money equally between those non-profits. So that was an entirely new model and also just amazing story of leadership. That young woman is entrepreneurial and she is creative, and she was able to, you know, put this game changing idea out there. And so the fact that that could be implemented in a town like vessel and also in let’s say, the entire state of Illinois or New York or Arkansas is exactly what we had in mind when we created giving Tuesday as an idea that could really be adapted to anyone or any town or anything or any cause. One collaborative story that I really loved. Tony. There was a group of women’s health organizations in Wisconsin that had always been competing against each other for donors. Ellers we see so often that’s pretty much the default in the sector. And instead of doing that, they decided Teo again do this collaborative campaign. It was not about their their individual P and l’s. That was not about their individual brands But that was about the mission that they were trying to serve collaboratively rights and sew up. That seems so obvious, but I think often mission can become subsumed to brand. So these these organizations were all trying to help women in various ways. They got a local tavern to devote space to them tohave an awareness raising party, basically and fundraiser. And then they had that they got a ton of people came and they again distributed the funds equally. We also see models where organizations will come together, do a collaborative storytelling campaign, and then fundez goto directly to the whatever organization people want to donate too. So it doesn’t have to be that sort of equal divvying up of the pot. It doesn’t have to be anything right. It could be whatever a group of organizations decides hyre to co create together on DH more entrepreneurial better. In my opinion, this is a thank you. These this excellent storytelling in news for our listeners because they’re in small and midsize non-profits and your your larger behemoth organizations are are going to be to your point. First of all, it’s going to be difficult. And then in the end. It’s probably gonna not be so successful anyway, even if they’re even if you can overcome hurdles in willingness to collaborate. But but the small organizations, they have that agility. You’re right. They’re not so deep. And they can. They can knock on the door of another local organization or one you know, many states away, but you know, digitally, they can come together. Um, that so very good news for our listeners. Yeah, you’re exactly right. And then a big priority for us here. Tony is going to be too, too very intentionally Try to create more of those kinds of coalitions, even at a global level. Like so, even seeing organizations that are devoted to social justice of various types coming together to form interconnected network. Because we’ve seen how incredibly useful and productive and inspiring that is among the networks that have already been created with e-giving Tuesday if you can imagine an idea being born in Taiwan and then being implemented in Tanzania within the same two weeks, fan, if we created more of those kinds of network, imagine how radically change and improve the sector. How do you encourage that that international part elaborations about your first question, you know, why does e-giving. Tuesday Nida Core leadership team? I think part of what we what we exist to do is to set a culture and a set of behavioral norms and expectations within the broader giving Tuesday community on a big part of those norms and expectations are that we are as generous within as we are without. So the philanthropic community is often far less still in profit, inside itself, right inside, inside the bubble and with with each other with our what should be our colleagues. Then we are out into the world. And so our network of global leaders, for example, are connected every day, every single day of the year, not just about giving Tuesday. They consider it an obligation to share good ideas and things that have worked with the others in that community, and they find joy and reward in seeing those ideas picked up by others. So there’s no sense of I’m going to do something that works, and then I’m going to afford that ideas so that it only works for me. There’s a sense of I want to see this popping up everywhere because it’s because it’s done so well, we just have a couple minutes left. What are you alluded to? Outdated best practices. Could you, uh, identify a couple of those? Take a couple of those off that you think we’re holding on to need mistakenly. Yeah, sure. And, you know, I’m sure people will be very annoyed with me, but, uh, so one would be the conflict of donor fatigue. I think what I’ve seen, you know, from my observation and from the analysis that we’ve done of the data that we have available to us, donor-centric has become more of an excuse then a fact within the sector. Right? So you don’t see the corporate world worrying that it’s selling too hard. You don’t see the corporate thing that they’re making. They’re asking people to buy and buy again and by again, Right. But you do see that same worry in the sector that we’re over asking that people give. But then they get tired of giving quite on the contrary, our our observation and our own analysis find much more than generous. People are generous. They give over and over again. And they gave in multiple ways. And so you know when you look at giving Tuesday 2017 right? What you saw was ah, fall. That was a series of basically terrible things happening. There was a Hurricane Maria. There was Hurricane Harvey, that was, you know, any number of a natural disasters and people were giving after each one of those. And then they gave again in record amounts on giving Tuesday. So we do see some disturbing trends of e-giving going down. But we do see also these really hopeful trends of generous people giving and giving in multiple ways. The second outdated idea I think that I would raise is this idea that people give either in one way or another. So the way that that worry is currently manifesting in the sector is Oh, my gosh, people are giving so much to their neighbours kapin surgery on an individual cat with a crowd funding site that they’re not going to give anymore to non-profits. That seems to be a kind of logical reasoning, but we don’t see it and we don’t find it in our own numbers. On the contrary, what we’ve found is that he who gives the surgery are more likely to get non-profits because they are generous people and generous people give and they give in multiple ways. So I think, you know, back to your reference to new power everything has changed about the way that people engaged about the way that people communicate and about the way that people care about causes. And we need to pay such close attention to those huge ground 12 and tidal shifts so that we know what’s actually happening and react accordingly rather than do things based on the way people communicated and connected and engage her causes back in the day. All right? Or should we have to leave it there? That’s perfect. Thank you so much. Uh, so welcome. Thank you. Pleasure and perfect timing. Asha. Caryn. See, People think this all happens, but this is all planned out. This show was produced, for God’s sake Current. She’s CEO e-giving Tuesday doing that full time. Starting July 1st, you’ll find her at Radio Free Russia and you’ll find giving Tuesday and all the resources and the tool kit everything she’s talking about at e-giving tuesday dot or GE And I love seeing female CEOs. So congratulations again. And Asha, Thank you. Very much look forward to having you back in October. Thanks, Tony. And I do buy. Wonderful. We need to take a break. Wagner, CPS. They’re accountants, for God’s sake. You know what they do? Do you need one? Do you need help with your 9 90? Do you need a review of your books? And maybe it’s not a full audit? Um, you know who to talk to. It’s you goto wagner cps dot com to start, and then you talk to the partner. You eat each tomb who’s been a guest of times two or three on DH. He will tell you honestly whether brechner is appropriate for what your accounting needs are. So it started at Wagner cpas dot com. Now time for Tony’s take to summertime is planned. Giving planning time. I think this is an ideal time to give thought to either moving your game up in plan giving or um, for lots of small and midsize shops. It might be starting your plans giving program, which I’m always evangelizing and advocating for summertime is good time for planning. You can get your CEO tto take your proposal on the beach with her or read it on the plane. It’s a little slower time. I mean, it’s not dead. That was, I think that’s sort of outdated, you know, summertime dead time, but you have a little slower time. You can give thought to what you want to do, what you want to pitch to get your plan giving program started. And, of course, I advocate always starting with simple charitable bequests. The marketing and promotion of GIF ts by will so use summer time so you can rule out in the fall. Or maybe it’s a January rollout. But use this time to, ah, to advantage for planned e-giving planning and is more about that in my video, which is at tony martignetti dot com. And that is Tony’s Take you. Now let’s talk about Candid Sam. We have a guest. They are Jacob Harold. He’s executive vice president of Candid, the Data Platform for Civil society. He was president and CEO of guide Star. Jacob has worked at the Hewlett Foundation, the Bridge Span Group, the Packard Foundation, Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace Yusa. He’s at Jacob. See, Harold, I hope we find out with C. C. Is for and candid is that candid dot or GE and www dot candid dot or GE and also a way of Brad Smith. He’s the president of Candid. He was president of the Foundation Center. He’s been at the Oak Foundation in Geneva and the Ford Foundation. He’s on the board of the Tinker Foundation and the advisory board of the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security. Gentlemen, welcome to non-profit radio. Welcome back to both of you. Got to be here. Yeah. Great feedback. Thank you. Thank you. Brad. Uh, Harold Jay Jacobs. I’m sorry, Jacob. What’s the What’s the C for in your middle name? What’s your middle name? The C is for Christopher, my eldest uncle. Okay, Jacob. Christopher. Harold. But he’s just at Jacob. See Harold. Ah. All right. Um, I feel like we should start with Brad, the president of Candid. This all this all emerged in February of this year. Uh, what’s going on? A candid bread. Well, first of all, yes, it emerged as a 1st February 1st, but it’s been a decade in the making. The original conversations about this actually started in shortly after the recession in two thousand 9 2000 Can, uh, we started a series of deliberate conversations between the CEOs of both organizations at that time was Bob latto Huff from Guide Star, and we began to see a week collaborate together, commissioned a study into 2012 in-kind consultants to make the case for to bring the two organizations together at that time. The advice. That’s not so fast, but here’s what you can do to collaborate. We did that. We learned a lot about each other, establish a lot of trust among our teams and brought back to consultants in 2017 to take another look. This time they said, full speed ahead. Go for it. So 2018 we we barton long process involving both boards, uh, to do the pre work toe. Actually bring the two organizations together and we inked the deal on January 31st and launch Candid January February 1st on What? Why the name Candid? Yeah, that’s a lot of people ask that question. Which is good, right? I mean, that’s what the name should D’oh! Okay, we didn’t want to call the organization buy-in Foundation Center because, well, that would not be that wouldn’t that wouldn’t have been fair to guide Star That would not have been fairly crowdster. So exactly one. What the foundation center did already wasn’t really captured adequately by the name. GuideStar, in a sense, might not have been fair to foundation center, but would really drove. It wasn’t external professional branding process, that consultant. They did a survey of the staff and surveys stakeholders and the South overwhelmingly decided We need a new name going to leave the past behind and be an organization for the future. And we began to look around at all the names out there in philanthropy, and they’re all the centre for this center. For that, they’re all effective. They’re all sort of similar, and they started to throw at us one word names and the one they threw out there, which he sort of corrects our heads and candid. I was the one that ended up sticking for a lot of reasons. One, because it’s a really word that one was made in. The last words I write to it actually evokes the history of both organizations and our approach to information, which is to be candid about the real information about the sector to really show the sector as it is. So the people in the sector can can do good and make the world a good as it could be. Um, see, So Jacob what? What is the the advantage for non-profits? Our audience is small and midsize shops. How will they benefit from the new from candid? Well, you know, for the first year, you know, from the perspective of a small to midsize non-profit, not a latto current change. Both of the parent organizations programs are continuing, and we’re trying to strengthen them. But over the long term, we think that together we’re going to be able to serve the field as a hole in I’m totally new ways, and I’ll mention a couple. One is to provide a multidemensional view of the work of trying to create social good. What’s happened in the past. We’ve had these fragmented databases grant information over here, information about non-profits over their information about social indicators in 1/3 place, and we believe with databases and resource is and networks of the two parent organizations, GuideStar in Foundation Center. That candid can offer that full of you. Um and that’s gonna be important for small non-profits that don’t have the resource is to constantly hyre consultants to God and do a ton of research or don’t necessarily have the network’s toe have connections, too. The biggest foundations or, you know, the partners that might allow them to do more together. Um, and we also think that the set of resource is that the two organizations provided, um, can be presented in a way that’s just easier for non-profits access organized in a way that that really brings to the top. What’s most important? That’s one thing. The next thing is that by bringing the two organizations networks together, we think we can begin to weave together many of the different fragmented activities around the field. And for a small to medium sized non-profit, the most concrete example is filling out a proposal for foundation funding. But right now, if you were applying to 10 foundations, you’re probably filling out 10 proposals that are all different from each other but are actually asking a lot of the same questions on. And there’s a ton of waste in that process. And not only is their waist i’ma non-profit side, it makes it harder for foundation’s tto. Learn and compare with their peers. And when you look at the networks that Guide Star brings with some of the major technology platforms Google, Facebook, Amazon or major national donor advised funds. Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab. And then you look at the network that foundation center has with local partners all around the country and indeed, all around the world, hundreds of them where their actual training’s actual relationships. You have a combination of bricks and clicks of a cyber network and human network that we think it’s really powerful. And so we believe that together we’re going to be positioned to begin to establish some common systems of how information flows around the social sector, not making judgments about one organization versus another, but just creating some efficiency in how people learn and how they share their story as an organization. Will we be seeing new new new tools and databases and similar to the Teo well, the foundation directory or the 9 90 offerings that Guide Star has? Will What what’s What’s plan? So right now we’re going through a process of trying to really understand each other’s tools in a much deeper way. Um, we certainly both parent organizations knew the other organizations core tools. We didn’t know him from the inside. So we’re going through that process right now. All of that functionality needs to continue because the ability to find a foundation or I learned about a non-profits programmatic objectives is going to continue R sort of medium term opportunities begin to weave them together so that we can, in one interface, begin to see how these different types of information interact. Um, there are some brand new products that we’re looking at. I’ll give one example is give lists, which are lists of non-profits recommended by experts or that reflect the portfolio of giving of a given foundation. There a number of other ways to generate them. Um, and that’s a tool that we’re that we’re working on right now. But the truth is, right then we have a lot of separate tools. What’s most important is to create a user experience that’s easy for people, and that helps them do their jobs better. So that may mean overtime, just like in the this combination of two organizations that we built that we blend together some of those tools, but keep the core functionality just make it easier to use. Tony, I think it’s, you know, it’s important. Both organizations have you No one through the the Syrians of you, you tell them I work in foundations dunaj, murcott, GuideStar. And usually they know you were sort of one thing. Like I’d say, Oh, yeah, I get nine nineties there or, uh, foundations that are in your foundation director online. Individually, we do so much more than that. So it’s taking all that so Muchmore putting it together, focusing and making much more tighter building synergies between the existing products and services, then building some new ones on top of that. But most important is making it really easy and clear for the user howto access. Exactly what that non-profit Exactly what that foundation social entrepreneur individual donor needs to do what they want to do in the world. Yeah, Andi, I’m glad you mentioned individual donor. This is Guide Star has been a wonderful, important resource. I think 10,000,000 users last year, Jacob. So this is all coming together for individual donors, too. So it’s so it’s ah, holistic in that in that respect that it’s it’s all elements of the community as well as people who are supporting it. A cz well as institutions that are supporting it. Yeah, way talk. You know, we sort of all state non-profit sexually say philantech sector. I think we’re all struggling for exactly what you call the sector. I mean, sometimes I hear it candid. We’ve been, you know, talking about the social sector. Because in today’s world, you have non-profit. You have individual givers. You have social entrepreneurs. You have be corpse. You have corporate social mance ability. You have a mission or impact investing. You have a lot of different kinds of organizations and individuals. They’re using a lot of different mechanism to create good in the world. And that is something that we feel as a combined organization. We can capture and synthesize and put out a really powerful way. All right, we’re going to take We’re gonna take our last break standby text to give. They’re five part email. Many course dispels myths around mobile giving. Earlier, Asher was dispelling myths around fund-raising. These do not mobile. Giving these these gifts do not have to be small gift. They could be in the hundreds. They don’t need to go through the donors phone company. That’s one way of doing it, but you don’t have to do it that way. And phone companies typically put a cap on these gifts. That’s why the misconception that they have to be small double digit gifts to get the email. Many course from text to give you text. NPR November Papa Romeo to 444999 I want to do the live listener love and and there is a lot of it. We’ve just going to go down the list of alternating between abroad and domestic. Young San Young, San Korea, Korea On your haserot comes a ham Nida Live listener loved their Henderson, Nevada, Tampa, Florida New Bern, North Carolina. Special, of course. Teo New Bern. Close to where I live, Washington, DC Reid City, Michigan. San Francisco, California. Brighton, Massachusetts. And Hanoi, Vietnam. Sand Salvador, El Salvador. I think that’s new. San Salvador. Welcome. Live love to you, Palestine. We can’t see specific region. We just know there’s a listener in Palestine, New York, New York. We have multiple and Brooklyn New York. Where’s Bronx? Queens? Staten Island. They’re not checking in today. Uh, but that’s all right. We’ve got Manhattan and Brooklyn live love to each of our ah, live love goes out to each of our live listeners. And, of course, the podcast Pleasantries toe are over 13,000 listeners in small and midsize non-profits, where they’re an executive director, fundraiser boardmember consultant to non-profits. That’s sort of the declining proportion that you each bear to our audience. The pleasantries air with you. I’m glad that you’re listening on the on the time shift in the podcast when it fits into your schedule. So glad that you’re with us. Pleasantries to our podcast listeners. We have, Ah, we have but loads more time, actually. For for Candid with Jacob Christopher, Harold on Brad Smith, Bradley Case Smith Don’t be formal. Let’s see well, some of the materials from Promise that Candid will further increase transparency and collaboration. Nasha and I were just talking about collaboration around giving Tuesday. Brad, how is this? How is candid going toe foster collaboration among entities within within our community? Well, you know, if you start to think about it, the two most important things to know if you’re going to collaborate our first of all sort of the lay of the land who is doing what? Where let’s say you’re under certain charter schools, you’re interested in animal rescue. You’re sitting human rights, whatever you need to know, and for a specific geography where you wantto work, who’s already working there and where the resources are flowing. And then the second thing you want to know is, Well, what to those that are already working on this issue? Know about it. If you don’t know those two things, you’re you’re likely to put your money where you can see they’re not needed or it won’t be effective. And if you don’t really know what people have already learned, you’re basically gonna be recreating the wheel. So with the vast resource is that both organizations bring to the table of candid, we’re going to be able to actually for geography issues and causes. So you, who’s doing the work on the ground? The different flows of money that air coming metoo support that work where there’s probably more money than I should be going where there’s not enough money and when there’s no money at all, and also by by capturing the outcomes and output to these organizations through our profile program, the research and evaluations and case studies who are issue lab resource. We’re also going to be able to tell you what’s working and what’s not. So you could really hit the ground running and figure out who the best partners are for you work. You know, the lack of collaboration in our sector in our sector is what keeps it from being more than the sum of its parts of the world. Needed to be more than the sum of its parts. You can pull all this all this together breath. We can pull it together. We’re already putting together quite a bit of it, obviously. You know, for some, geography is more difficult than the other. And we have global ambitions. We already have a lot of global relationship, do a lot of global work. Obviously, no one’s ever going to be comprehensive for the entire world. We have a really good shot at being pretty close to a conference on a lot of this information in the US. Okay. Okay. Uh, and of course takes time to develop this with the expertise and the data. The data gathering are, um oh, and and I apologize. Uh, your Bradford Smith, not Bradley got that wrong for that that happens all the time, But most people just call me Brad. I know. Well, that’s what I’m doing. But you could’ve corrected me. I would have been offended. Redford Cat. Okay, um, now I see lots of offices. Um, are those the old those of the foundation Centre offices in New York? Williamsburg, Virginia, Washington, DC, San Francisco, etcetera. Those those foundation centre offices? No, they’re actually have both offices. We had overlap in way have overlap in Washington, D C. And in the Bay Area. And we’re consolidating those into single offices in both places. And the other locations are either foundation center locations or, in the case of Williamsburg, where guys start has the bulk of its tech and customer support step. Okay. Okay. Um, Jacob, I wouldn’t ask you last time you were on several years ago, it was talking about the the overhead myth letter that you and I, Ken Berger and Art Taylor had signed as a CEO’s of ah, Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau. Wise giving alliance. Do you feel like way overcome that now? Are we gotten past the the anxiety that was Experian that donors were experiencing about overhead and the overweighted focus that some donors were putting on overhead. Are we past that now? I wish I could say we were, um so I don’t think so. I do think, though, in the last few years we’ve made some real progress. At least the nature of the conversation I hear within the sector has completely transformed the assumptions that non-profit leaders are making the way that some of the data platforms talk about and share information. Even the way the journalists address these issues, I think has shifted. But I think we have a long way to go to really have that message get into the minds of donors we keep in mind just in the U. S. We’re talking about 100,000,000 people. Um and we have decades of having reinforced this this false idea that the administrative cost ratio was a proxy for the quality of Ah non-profit. So I’m hopeful, but I also recognize it’s gonna take a while and a few other things that are going to be necessary if we’re going to get to that future where donors are really paying attention to results in potential and not an inappropriate accounting ratio And the most important thing is for non-profits to proactively offer an alternative to say I don’t want to be held accountable by this accounting ratio. I want to be held accountable according to results against my mission. And I define that as X, y and Z, and I really does put the onus on non-profits to articulate whatever numbers they think makes sense for their strategy in their mission. Um, and this is something that I think that candid will be especially well positioned to facilitate. We’ve already had 71,000 non-profits achieved transparency seal on Guide Star, which is now part of the Candid Portfolio, with many, many thousands of those providing specific quantitative, programmatic metrics that we can focus on instead of looking at, um at the administrative cost ratio and then, increasingly, some of our platform partners. He’s, you know, big technology companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are really thinking about how they might be able to help distribute that information as well. So I see a path to a future where the overhead myth is truly dead. But I think we still have a ways to go. All right, Jacob. Any any bitterness that that Brad is the CEO on your the executive vice president. Any lingering bitterness there? I mean, of course. Of course not. You know, Brad and I have known each other for a decade on, and we we have a pretty good sense of our strengths and weaknesses. And, you know, I think we both think that the two of us can each play important leads in this new organization, but that you need to have a division of labor on DSO. Brad is the chief executive. He’s leading the organization, and my primary task is to really think through the long term vision and strategy for candidate. We’re calling it candid 2030. Um, we’re really trying to think about big technology trends, big social trends and how those match up with our current capabilities, what we need to build, what we could accomplish over the next decade. So a lot of my attention is on that. But on that long term, um, and that’s really only possible, because I can count on Brad as he, you know, make sure that candid as an institution is coming together and, you know, becoming the institution. It we think it could be. All right, Brad, we still have a couple minutes left together. What else you want us to know about? Candid. That I haven’t asked you. Well, first of all, just, you know, a few things we learned from this. I mean, I think there’s a lot of interest in organizations in the nonprofit sector emerging, combining, working together. There’s a sense sometimes that there’s too much duplication. What organization doesn’t know what the other one’s doing and a lot of people are sort of seeing this is is really kind of an inspirational story because first of all, the idea came from us. I was a thunder for years. Jake, You know, I worked at a Ford Foundation Jacob murcott Hewlett Foundation and we, we, you know, probably presided over our share of shotgun weddings right where we basically used grants to tell non-profits they needed to work together or submerged. And those seldom really are successful. I think one of the keys to success of this is inspiration really came from the two organizations. The second thing is the thinking of Jacob mentioned taking up have known each other in a lot of different roles. They could was my program officer right When I was foundation center, he came and he did his first White Glove inspection tour, a cz, the program officer from the Hewlett Foundation to see if we’re worthy of continued support. Now we’re working together in this relationship, but that really establishes a foundation. The third thing is, the we learned to work together is organizations are tech. Teams are marketing our sales different kinds of teams through specific confidence building projects. Before we decided latto actually combine the two and then the last is the role of incredibly strong, dedicated board that you asked the question about you know who the CEO is. All those things were negotiated early on by the board, Um, and they had to master an enormous amount of information about the both organizations in order to go through those negotiations and did a fantastic job. So there’s a whole back story to this. What I think has a lot to learn from in terms of how these things work in the future for the sector. I like the idea that you’re you’re walking the walk in terms of merger and collaboration, Jacob, we have we have about two minutes left. Anything you know, you’d like to like to add? You sure? You know, I think it’d be good to just talk about division of Labor for the field as a whole. Um, and you know that a meeting a few days ago with a number of partner organizations, and we’re we’re talking about the need to figure out where and when do we defer to each other? Um, and that there are lots of topics where candidates Not the expert, um, say board governance of non-profits. And we want to defer to our partners at board source on that, um, we may have something Teo bring, but we we recognize that they’re playing a role, and we want to support that. And similarly, we hope that the field will look at us and say when it comes to questions of organizing data, which often can be really boring. But it turns out a really important. We hope that the field will embrace, um, things like data standards that we propose and know that if we are suggesting that these air the 10 questions we need to ask about a particular topic that we put a lot of thought into figuring that out and that we hope others will adopt that language. And the flip side of that is that that puts the onus on candid to really be accountable to the field and to really listen to the field and to ensure that the voices of those who are impacted by our decisions are heard and those voices are folded into the decisions we’re making. So we really do hope that the field will help us succeed, Um, by adopting some of the standards and tools that we’re putting forward. Um, and we also hope that the field expresses what it needs so that we can listen to make sure that we make the best choices possible. Alright, Tony, your international listeners heard there’s quite a few out there We are. We’ll have more and more information of that kind would be talking about tonight, um, from around the world, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America. We have strong partnerships. We’re going to develop more, and it’s an important part of the future because, you know, this is a a increasingly globalized world we live in and are the information we provide. You have to take account of that. All right, that’s Bradford Case Smith. He’s the president of Candid. Andi with him. Jake of Christopher Harold, executive vice president of Candid. You find Jacob at Jacob. See Harold and Candid is at candid dot or GE and www dot candid dot org’s Gentlemen. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, pleasure. Good luck and good luck. Okay. Next week, we’re gonna have more smart tech gift guests from 19 and t. C. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you find it on tony martignetti dot com. Responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits, Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash Pursuant by Wagner SEPA is guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr to 444 999 Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Label, which is a line producer, shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy. And this cool music is by Scott Stein You with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great oppcoll. You’re listening to the Talking alternative network. Good. You are listening to the Talking Alternative Network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in sometime potentially ater. 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Nonprofit Radio for July 1, 2016: Purpose Driven Branding & GuideStar Platinum

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Laura Ferry: Purpose Driven Branding

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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, we have a listener of the week kapin coal from the san francisco bay area she’s at non-profit chapin and she tweeted, quote, catching up on last month’s tony martignetti non-profit radio and i here at non-profit meg is listener of the week congrats girl. Well, when you shout out a listener, the weak you become one if you are the first to do it and that’s what shape? And did nobody’s ever done that before? And she used the hashtag non-profit radio, which i am always grateful for. So shape and cole, congratulations are non-profit radio listener of the week and i’m glad you’re with me. I come down with bronco candid i assists if i caught wind of the idea that you missed today’s show purpose driven branding, you need to be deliberate in the partners you select when you venture into co-branding laura ferry helps you package yourself to potential partners, find the right ones and select the relationship that makes the most sense for your objectives. Laura is the founder of goodcompany and guide star platinum even nico guide stars lead on non-profit strategy and evaluation walks you through their new platinum level and how to get there. You’re non-profit probably has a guide star profile already, and if you haven’t contributed to it, it looks bad whichever level your app even we’ll help you out on tony’s. Take two fund-raising fundamentals we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant. Dot com my pleasure to welcome laura ferry to the show. She is the founder of high low laura. Let me give you a formal introduction, please. Founder of goodcompany, a brand citizenship consultancy. She has over fifteen years of marketing strategy and alliance experience. And her clients include partnership for a healthier america, hewlett packard, pbs kids, petsmart charities and national public radio. They’re at goodcompany strategies. Dot com laura faerie. Welcome, paul. Hi. Great to be here, tony. Okay. Oh, hi. You’re ready now? Yeah. Okay. Because we’re on your on. All right. Okay. Um, let’s start at the like there’s. A basic level of you know, co-branding and strategies with partners. And what? What do you feel that non-profits are not? Getting quite right about this field, i think one of the most important things about bringing a non-profit and a corporate culture together in a partnership is to really try to understand each other’s position coming into it. I think one of the biggest challenges is really seeing that other side and trying to bring those two together and integrated effort. So one of the key things for making that happen, mr, really come to the table understanding what your organization brings to the martin our ship on how that aligns with okay, okay, and we’re going to we’re going to get to that because that isn’t you’re right, that’s a very important part. What what do you bring? What? What are the what are the, the potential partners? And most most often, i don’t know that always companies, but most often their companies. What? What are the company’s looking for? The corporate partners are you are usually looking for somebody some organization to align with that has similar values brand values, it’s the corporation has selected a cause that they want there, corporation or brand to be about that is usually the first step toward them identifying a non-profit partner, that fits their goals. Ok, okay. No, please go ahead. Continue. I was going to say, and they also are looking for non-profit partners who have that mindset of plenty together. A sortie xero relationship that benefits both parties. You mentioned, i think the phrase brand value and at the outset, i don’t wantto don’t wantto make universe cerini but we have jargon jail in-kind martin and tony martignetti non-profit radio, but we’re just getting started, so i’ll, you know ah, light sentence. But but and plus, just some of these phrases are unfamiliar to people in non-profits help us understand what brand value what does that mean or whatever? Maybe maybe through examples. What are examples or what does that mean? I think the best way to think about that is the trumpet to use the term brand citizenship and what corporations were trying to dio or how they benefit from working to do things that support social impact. And there it is. But really it’s like putting a halo on a corporate brand and giving it a social profits selves, it helps them engaged at the consumer level in a meaningful way. That address is on an empathetic way what the consumer is is concerned about in the world. So that’s, how causes come together with corporations and corporations create brands that are good citizens in the marketplace? Okay, i can’t like that that halo analogies uh, yeah, cool, alright, i mean, not that they’re not that they’re bad to start and i need a halo, but no, they’re they’re they’re not well, that’s. Why? I’m not sure that sainted i think saint, did you have a nimbus around you? But a halo for halo is for angels, right? And the nimbus is i think, for saints, so so we’re not putting, you know, to point your gear brand in the direction of of giving it a purpose to solve. The social problem is really relevant today because today’s consumer, similar ennio consumer in particular, is looking for corporations to solve business problems in a way that they no longer really necessarily have faith that the government can d’oh that’s where all of this conversation around france being good citizens has emerged hard to imagine a loss of faith in government. Yeah, just can’t conceive of that. All right? How about some examples whether they’re big famous? Ones or or smaller ones, you know, i mean, because our audience is small and midsize non-profit so it doesn’t have to be a, you know, big famous one, but sametz samples before we take our first break in a couple minutes. Yeah, i think what your switch you’re seeing out there is brand associating themselves with causes like, uh, that that emerged from, like starbucks is a great example starbucks has hyre a lot of initiatives that our focus on solving social problems, everything from making sure their employees have college degrees, too. I’m starting a dialogue at the register on talking about it’s, just like race, which howard schultz, john give it, give it, give a try and actually got a lot of flack for it, but he did try to start a conversation around a really relevant special topic on dh now starbucks is also taking its surplus of food supply and donating it at the end of every day. All of those acts are all of those programs that they’ve developed help them put that halo on their bread and have and create that brand feeling about starbucks that day that they care about what the rest of us care about howard schultz is ceo of starbucks. Yes, okay, okay, that’s, a that’s, a good example to go out on, we’re going to take our break, and when we come back you and i’ll keep talking about purpose driven branding, 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. I feel like doing live listener love right now we got it, we got to send the live love to everyone who is throughout the country throughout the world. We know we get listeners from routinely from asia on dh germany, ups and mexico very often. So live listener love, of course, to was in the u s listening friday one p m eastern, but sending that live listener love international as well. You know who you are live listeners podcast pleasantries, that’s where the over ten thousand are listening in the time shift whatever device in time and activity you’re in the midst of while you’re listening i’m glad you’re with us pleasantries to the podcast listeners and the affiliate affections cannot continue without sending the affections to our am and fm listeners throughout the country. Whatever day of the week. Whatever time your station has scheduled us, i am glad you’re with us. I know somewhere, even on weekends, affections to our many am and fm affiliate listeners throughout the country. Okay, laura ferry, thank you for indulging me while i, uh, send live. Listen, love. Podcast pleasantries and affiliate affection is very important to do. Um, okay, well, reassure me, please, and us that this is not on ly for big organizations and international corporations to come together, but we could do this on a small level local level as well, right? Yes, of course she could. And one of them is the most amazing thing is a small business is known for it philantech please. So there you could really approach these partnerships at a local level. They’re small non-profit using the same steps toward really, you know, developing an effective partnership that really helps promote your mission and engage people in that cause while at the same time helping that local business got from those ability for being a good community, citizens and, of course, on the local level, smaller organizations have that advantage. You know, you may be seeing potential partners at events in your community chamber of commerce, which a lot of non-profits belong to, you know, you’re you’re meeting potential partners probably a lot more often than than big scale non-profits like you’re rubbing shoulders with them, you know, often routinely. Okay, so let’s go where you wanted to go. Because this is important. On what? Identifying what it is you bring to the table to help your potential corporate partner maximize that brand value. Look at me being old jargon e l love this it’s great it’s. Great. So i think i like just throw some questions out for your audience to think about that. You know how before you approach a partner, these air the casings to think about how can your non-profit help foster that brand citizenship or bring that brand halo to that corporate partner and fearsome test? Look for ways that that your mission aligns with the cause that that corporation cares about even goes far is being doing a research ahead of time, looking at their corporate website, trying to understand what they may already be doing in the corporate social responsibility area and seeing if you’re a good fit. Okay, now and in terms of that, laura, could we look to see who they may have partnered with in the past? That may be a related mission. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I don’t want you to go through the list too fast because i may have some questions for you. Okay. Okay. So, uh another really key factor, and developing any partnership is to make sure that you have support across the organization. So once you found and identified that partner, make sure that that they’re all of their resources are also bringing, uh, their resources to the table. So you really want to put in all hands on deck partnership and know that you have, you know, a little support on both sides of the partnership to really have the most effective intact together. Yeah, so is this something that on the non-profit side, the board should be apprised of right? And maybe, i don’t know, maybe even approve. Absolutely. I don’t really know any non-profits who wouldn’t take a big strategic partnership and have the board weigh in on it. So absolutely. Do you want to see these? Once we’ve identified our partner, is there a written agreement between the parties? Yes, there usually is. And and that could be a non disclosure. That could be a contract between the two organizations. But you’re usually sharing brands which are assets that you have to protect legally at those people, uh, are aware of that. So you want to be sure you have an agreement in place that, uh, that legal allows you to share brands and also gives you the option of reviewing and approving how your brand is being used on the other side of the partners? Yes, yes. Excellent. Good. Brand management is really important. Okay. Okay. Uh, all right. Go ahead. What else? Ah, in terms of the value we bring to the corporate partner hey, there’s, this isn’t always the case with all partnerships. That kind of depends on what kind of relationship we’re trying to build. But if you could engage that corporations, employees in your efforts to support whatever the campaign, you’re putting together with corporations or any kind of the program that just lends itself to engaging employees that’s a really great asset to your charity, because that could be, you know, for a small company, hundreds of new brand advocates for you as a non-profit and it can also lead to along a longer term relationship with that corporation because those folks actually become your supporters is part of your campaign. I’m thinking, like, top my heads, our mentor possibilities, but it really could be any could be any volunteer activity, right? That sure. Okay, you have any examining going on? Yes, i do. And one of the really wonderful non-profits i work with this kaboom, which is an organization that builds playgrounds across the country they built over sixteen thousand. So far on that is, uh, a, uh non-profit that typically it’s not there. Only it’s like the only vision for the cause of play, but they typically bring in corporate employees to come actually do those playground, though. So if god carmax, for example, is one of their big sponsors. So if there’s a local playground build near carmax locations, carmax employees actually go out to that site. And participate in the playground built. So it brings a lot of team building. Is it feeling good about the company? He worked for? It’s really? On exciting and meaningful, an authentic way to engage your employees and volunteering and coming together at a company. Excellent. Now this would have would feed what you said earlier about millennials. And if it’s a it’s, a company that has a lot of young employees, they’re they’re looking to blend their their professional life with social change work, right? Yes, absolutely they’re also looking for opportunities to connect socially, so by bringing them together are providing them with access to volunteer opportunities. They have a chance to meet new people and share in an active there that they can feel really good about doing together. So we do the playground build all day, and then we meet for beers after that’s ideal, right? Exactly. Ok, yeah, exactly, ok s o that’s called the the employee engagement so that’s i’m just i’m just i’m just amplifying. It was reiterating what you said but valuable to think through how employees could help your cause and the value that that brings to the to the company. In terms of engagement and company spirit, maybe i mean some company he comes. Some companies even have a requirement right for so many service hours, i guess per year or something like that? Yes. That’s their true. Okay. Excellent. All right. The employee engagement. All right, what else? What else you got? I think one of the things that you need to remember to is that alright, relationships require work. So the best ones really flourished when both parties begin with shared common interest singles and really bring that value together to the table and get really creative about what it is you want to do together. We mentioned a playground, bill that’s. One option. But could you also tie that teo retail promotion? Where, you know, at the register, you ask customers to donate a percentage of their transaction? Tio just to the kaboom cause todo playground and in our local communities, those are great ways not only to engage on the employee’s side, but also at the consumer level. You’re connecting there as well. Okay, you got any other? I love stories. And i some of the feedback i get from listeners to is that they love. Stories to any other, any others examples doesn’t have to be of the volunteer. I think a lot of really interesting things happening with designers who are developing, uh, fashion lines and products to support causes that they care deeply about you may recently have seen tommy hilfiger launched a line with a non-profit called runway of dreams to design an apparel line for learning disabled kids, so they he’s actually created a very stylish line. That’s easy, tio, pick off and get on so that’s one example, lady gaga and elton john just launched a product ah called love bravery at macy’s that is really interesting and showing some real promise for supporting both of their independent foundations. Um, there’s also social enterprises emerging everywhere, which typically a lost non-profit partnership uh, brands like tom’s where buy one give one are now partnering with coffee companies and a whole range of ah causes that are out there in the field helping in developing countries. Ah, gymboree and kapin kaboom is another example of a baboon partnership that i’m really excited about is cook doing parted with gymboree than on and gymboree launched a line of play where it last year called hop and roll and a percentage of of all of the apparel line that was sold to supporting kaboom cause, uh, employees and all the stores competed on the one who the store who raised the most funding for, um for by selling product to consumers actually won a local playground bills. So it was really well integrated program that involved engaging both employees and consumers, and we’ll do good campaign. Excellent. So so what? The higher level, this this clearly even product development is possible. You you’ve given a couple examples of where special products were developed. Okay now, again, small and midsize non-profits out. They may not get that far, but there still is. They’re still great potential for doing this on on a smaller scale. Sure. And, you know, there are local non-profits that further causes that are being supported by local business all the time. Alex’s lemonade stands are happening everywhere. So there are local restaurant night where percentage of that night sales that stone into a local cause. Uh, so those airways to engage through retail, whether they be restaurants or, you know, apparel stores, local grocery to support the cause is that that local communities? Yes. Excellent car washers. I mean, we know whatever whatever is in your community on dh. Yeah, i think you’ve just touched on the point that if there’s already some relationship between you, you know, maybe they’re just giving twenty five hundred dollars to your and you will run, walk or something like that or, you know, they’re sponsoring you in some other way. Maybe, you know, leveraging that existing relationship and approaching the company about going deeper. Yes. That’s that’s a great way to think about it. In fact, i’ll go out on a limb here and say, i think there have been in charity work happening at the local level, two small non-profits and local businesses for a really long time and corporate brands that are now just catching on to engaging at the local level through store retail stores in campaign. So i do. I do agree with you. I think a lot of really exciting things can happen at the local level. And you can actually work that backwards. Now. Goto the corporate side too. Support your non-profit on a national basis. Yeah. Cool. Now, if laura, if we want to get this started? I mean, isat do we need to go in with fancy, you know, a fancy presentation the first time? Or is it really just a conversation the first time to sort of explore? I think it’s important to go in there, having done your research and really understanding who that company is and what they care about most and what they’re trying to achieve by participating in a collaboration with a non-profit on dh and if you can show that where you’ve connected the dots before you go in there and tell that story in that meeting, how you deliver it is is not as important as the story you tell. So, you know, i like to have power point that some people are better it just articulating, um, you know, the connections that they’re saying and they’re there, what they see is a value and bringing these two organizations together verbally so there’s really no magic answer. It surely just depends on what you’re comfortable with. All right? Long story. Good. All right. Um, i took a little off track and mohr mohr for ah, showing value to the potential corporate partner. What those questions to think through i think you want to, uh, talk through what kind of first take a look at your organization and what you khun gray in terms of marketing resources to support a campaign that could be anything from interesting promotions and campaigns that you go that you have going on or have plans for and how that company can integrate into that. That planning, uh, if you have basic marketing tools in place and you’ll reach a lot of people, tell that corporation all about it because that’s that’s an audience that’s really going toe the thrill that corporation is supporting because they care about that would include your social media. Your newsletter, your website, just really what ways can you give visibility to the partnership from a marketing and communications standpoint? And one of those numbers look like they’re lower numbers and they’re not going to blow a big corporation away. That’s okay, just talk about the resources that you do have and on the investment that you’re willing to make, too, to share that corporations part of the partnership to your stakeholders in your community and, you know, are there ways to connect employees like we talked about? Really? Looking at all the way around the scope of possibility for bringing the organization’s together. And i think that’s that’s really what you want to have in your story and your pitch, too a corporate partner for a small business, you can use the same principles that yeah, absolutely you yeah, and and you want to go in confidently because you you do have the you do have assets, you know, you mentioned, like, all the social media properties and and your own brand value and your dedicated volunteers, you know, you do have networks and assets that you, khun bring to the relationship. You want to be confident about this. This is not a humble ask, right? Okay, i guess you agree. Okay, ok, cool. We have just like a minute and a half left. What? What? What have we not talked about or what do you wish? I’d asked that i haven’t. Please one of the most marks, most remarkable statistics that i’ve seen that i’m trying to build on right now. And i’m heading tto licensing expo next week in las vegas to talkto companies about working with my non-profit clients no license their brands to consumer. Product program, because i think there is an opportunity, tio cell cause branded products, uh, not all of them fit, but quite a few of them do, and and i’d like to see that development and really that’s, based on some cohen research that came out that says that eighty seven percent of consumers latto products associated with the cause over the left twelve months that’s, a khan twenty fifteen research data points that is a really strong one, so it is an opportunity, i think, to make a connection at retail. So how can you develop more product, not just promotions, but products that actually can activate? I thought about your mission in people’s homes and in their daily lives through product, we have to leave it there. Thank you very much, laura. Thank you, thank you, laura faerie, founder of goodcompany. There goodcompany strategies. Dot com. Guidestar platinum with even nico is coming up first. Pursuant velocity is one of their online tools. Why do you need it? You don’t, you could keep on managing your fund-raising the same way you do now and keep on expecting different results, and you will prove yourself insane. Or i suggest you can keep your fundraisers on target by prioritizing activities, measuring their time against goal, making smart decisions about what to do each day and each week, and following up on time with donors and potential donors, tracking milestones with potential donors. And, of course, all the tools and the dashboard that go along with that all in velocity. It was created to help pursuant fund-raising consultants manage their client campaigns, but now you get the pro tools to manage your own campaigns, and that doesn’t matter whether you have one fundraiser or you have a team or you’re an executive director doing your fund-raising you need management tools too keep you on track and all these other things. I was just talking about velocity. It helps you raise more money, you’ll find it at pursuant dot com. Now, tony’s, take two fund-raising fundamentals. Have you checked it? Out it is my alter ego. The other podcast i do. I produce it for the chronicle of philanthropy and it’s. Very different. Different format length. Um where? It’s only ten minutes. Ten to twelve minutes. And it’s once a month. Not a weekly it’s on the chronicle of philanthropy website philanthropy. Dot com it’s. Not at tony martignetti dot com. Did i mention my side is tony martignetti dot com telefund dot com and it is devoted to fund-raising that’s, that’s all we talk about now that that’s pretty wide topic, but we don’t get into the stuff that is legal. Andi even, you know, social media, you know, started tangential prospect research getting old, tangential. So it’s devoted to fund-raising. But we talked about events, grants planned e-giving major annual, um, crowd funding. Those are just some of the ones that come occur to me off the top of my head anyway. Fund-raising fundamentals quick burst. Once a month, you’ll find info at twenty martignetti dot com there is info there on dh fund-raising fundamentals is also on itunes. As is this show that’s tony’s take two. My pleasure to welcome even nico to the show as guide. Stars lead on non-profit strategy and evaluation issues. Even nico helps non-profits share their full story, using the guide star profile and to use the information to make better decisions. She has over twelve years of experience in strategic planning and evaluation in the social sector. Having worked at fsg social impact advisors and mckinsey and company, she has a phd in physics from oxford university. Dr niko, welcome to non-profit radio it’s. A pleasure to have you. I have to ask you right off with this phd in physics. Does this non-profit inertia trouble you? Well, i probably have a better understanding of non-profit inertia, maybe that anyone else having having a degree in physics and, you know, learning about inertia and all the forces that actor in the world so i often him, you know, both and used and delighted when i hear some of those words from science trickling into into the social sector as well. Well, i’m going to challenge that. You may know the most about it. I i studied up and i learned that for a mass point. The moment of inertia is just the mass times, mass times the square of the perpendicular distance to the rotation access i equals m r squared, of course, and that point mass relationship becomes the basis for all other moments of inertia. Since any object can be built up from a collection of point masses, how do you feel about that? I think that just proves that these days, if you have the google and wikipedia and access to all of the sources, then maybe you don’t. Maybe you don’t need to study quite a quite as much. How dare you? How dare you suggest that? Where do you come off? Well i just introduced you. We never even got started yet. All right. Um really? I mean, honestly, okay. Guidestar, guidestar, dot or ge? They have ah, niu platinum, the new platinum club, the platinum level tell us, just give us an overview about this before we go into detail. Yeah, now absolutely so it’s funny. So i’m you know, relatively new to guide star i’ve been with rose for about six months, but i feel like that gives me kind of a unique view on what we’re doing and some of the new things that we’re doing and what’s most exciting. And i would say one of the most exciting things that we’ve done, you know, really for a long time is to have to have released problems. So platinum is so we recognize non-profits for sharing information through guide star and it’s, not just sharing it with us, but it’s sharing it with a lot of other stakeholders, including donors thunders, you know, other non-profits and audiences, and we recognize that non-profits with what we what we call a seal of transparency so that’s, really and platinum is our highest and knew it seal of transparency and a recognition of the kind of really interesting and much more meaningful data that non-profits can share with others. All right, cool. Now, uh, let’s, let’s, give some background, tio, guidestar and and its value. What kind of stats do you have on this guidestar dot org’s thatyou khun boast about in a number of unique users each month? I mean, come on, you know, you have this, you know how many? How many people? How many people in america are you to me, but being sort of like a cross between, obviously we are non-profit ourselves a social sector organization, but also in company, because we do run guys start that or that we, you know, we do well, we deal a lot with digital data. So yes, there are a lot of numbers out there that sounds very impressive. And i would say one of the things that really drew me to guide stars is just a scale of reach that we have. So a few of those numbers of guy estrada or ge gets about seven million visitors per year. And this this is a cross section of both, you know, donors who might be coming to us advisors. Who are working with foundations and advising them on the strategies and the partners that they have, as well as non-profits who come to us directly to either, you know, look for their own information in some cases, and of course, to look at their peers. So seven million visitors, i would say that we have also, you know, one thing that we that i didn’t know about before guys start before coming here is that when you participate without your data doesn’t just stay on guidestar dot org’s, you know, as great as that is, it actually flows to a lot of other places in the sector, so we have over one hundred ninety, partner kind of websites, platforms who who used this data and they sit with their audiences who again tend to be donors or, you know, for crowd funding for point of sale giving for donor advised funds. E-giving so, you know, through that kind of network of one hundred ninety partners, we we you know, millions, not just seven, but, you know, tens to hundreds of billions but could could even be more than i equals m r squared could be could be i don’t know how that applies to anything but is completely irrelevant. But now every organization that file’s in nine ninety is already on guide star, right? Yes. Okay, i know you want to make this point even more emphatically than i did for are over ten thousand listeners throughout small and midsize non-profits you’re already there. Yeah, i think this is this can’t be over kind of emphasized, so a lot of people might think that it’s kind of like linkedin where you have to go and create a profile. The fact is, if you do file a form with the irs, but you are already on guidestar, and so really, the thing to do is to kind of google yourself, sees your guy’s profile, comes up or come to guys start at borg and sort of google yours up with us. Search for yourself and see what’s there because i’m finding that a lot of non-profits especially your, you know, fantastic audience, maybe a sort of smaller to ms sidle midsize organizations doesn’t know that they’re already on their and maybe their profile is looking a little sad. Yeah, what would they have if they’ve contributed nothing? Well, they might. Have their basic nine, ninety form as a button, and otherwise, you know not much off perhaps a few of the fields from the nine, ninety that’s named their ceo, but not much else. Okay, now, tio, you said to move up to the platinum or two moved a level you recognize non-profits for their contributions, and you have different levels. Bronze, silver, gold and platinum. And now, okay, why don’t we? Well, what comes before bronze, like, if you’ve contributed nothing, is that the aluminum foil it’s, like a sheet of paper? No. Well, try to stick. I mean, okay, your degrees, physical physics, not chemistry, but try to stick with the pattern. It’s all there, all medals. Let go that’s! Better than aluminum foil. Yes, lead, pb. Okay, so i know all about science and chemistry. Pb lead. Yes, lead that’s a better one than aluminum foil even. Okay, so if we have nothing, my organization has not contributed anything to the guidestar dot or ge. How do i get to the bronze? No, no. That’s a great question. So, i mean, the first thing to do is to actually claim your profile. I love that works claim, you know, it’s sort of obviously connotation, some level of ownership, but we have got to start obviously can’t just let anyone modify any organizations profilers needs to someone who represents that organization needs to, you know, come to us and say, hey, i’d like to you know, i’d like to be in charge of the content on my profile, and so all you have to do is come to you guys, start that orc and there’s a nice button up, you know, a field up top that says update your profile that takes you through some of the instructions. But the first step is going to be to, you know, tell us that you want to claim your profile. By coming to our website, then we will do a little bit of due diligence to make sure that we verify that you can, in fact, modify the organization. You want to represent your weinger bonem fundez just that your bona fide? Yeah. Okay. And then after that, your kind ofyou have access two as a set of tools that let you contribute the information. All right, all right. So that’s bronze and and how do we move up? Yeah, so broad. I mean, one thing i’ll say about bronze bronze are is kind of the basics, right? Unless you climb the podium. You know, the olympics coming up later this summer, it gets you on the podium, right? It sort of means that you you could be found as an organization that is a legitimate organization working in the social sector. All right. And more than just your more than just your nine, ninety, is there? Yeah. So, it’s, just, you know, you can say kind of what your programs are. You can obviously a little bit more about who your leaders are. And frankly, you can also make sure that your correct address appears with your organization. Like you wouldn’t believe, but i know a lot of us move around, and this could be a problem even having the right address, foreign organizations that, you know, step one, you’re on the podium with ron, get over is basically contributing some your actual audited financials or some equivalent. So the nine, ninety, you know, we love we know it, we love it, but it’s a little bit dated and it’s not the same audited financials. So if you if you want to get the silver, you can contribute some additional information about your financials and that just increases trust in your organization. All right, wait, wait even let me stop you doesn’t have to be an audited financial statement cause a lot of small organizations don’t don’t have to do that and don’t do it it’s very expensive, right? So i would say one passes the auditors statement, the other passes the tool basically give you some of the fields that we need that kind of give us a little bit of the equivalent, even if it’s not audited. Okay, i don’t see how you’re very egalitarian there, all right? All right. Gold, gold wolber gold is basically helping tell your story, right? You’re not just your financials, you’re not just your tax form, you’re not even just your address. It’s really about describing what you’re trying to do and what strategy is you’re using to get there? So is allowing you to tell your story in your own words, so more narrative in the gold, more free form, okay? And the pinnacle blast them? Yes, xena, zenith of guidestar presence. I don’t know where they were going to go, you know, diamond emerald next or what? I know well, you have to go like like, you know, it is kopperman basically says, you know it, if gold is the town halls and platinum is a little bit the show, right show it. And so what we’re what we’re looking for there is for organizations to tell us about some of the measures that they use to track their progress in results. So it’s, it’s, more quantitative, you know, give us the measures, but i would say it’s still very inviting for organizations of any size, okay? Because we basically were not dictating to you what you should measure, we’re just asking what you already do and what you care about and what you talk with your board about already in terms of outcomes and impact, is that a is that where you’re going with this? Well, i think we’re starting a basic, even just the outputs, right, sort of what activities, how many people are you’re serving? You know, if you if you have, if you have compelling information about what happens to those people that, you know, you might think of those mora’s out out outcomes, then we are definitely want to know that as well. Okay, i understand. All right, we’re gonna take a break, and, well, professor niko and i have plenty more time left. Teo, go through the rigours of equal m r squared, and so please stay with us, and we’ll keep talking about guide star, platinum and guidestar generally. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Duitz hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Eva, i elevated you. I called you professor nico. I should’ve just said dr niko. Doctor, have you ever been a bit? Have you have been a professor of physics? You have not right. Okay, i did not recall that in your in your bio, but i want to be sure. So it’s just it’s. Just it’s. Just dr nico. Not not, professor. Um, okay, so no. So after platinum, i don’t know. The best thing i was thinking of was like, you’re gonna have to go, like american express black, but of course, that’s not a metal. So i don’t know where you’re going, but clearly you need you’re going to need more because you’re gonna have a lot of organizations in platinum in a few years and then you’re going to want to distinguish even higher than that. So i hope there’s planning for the expansion in the future, the up on the upside. Well, it sounds like you have some good, great ideas, tony. And if your listeners teo all years yeah, i was thinking, do we go gems? Do we go planet? Do we go colors? Planets is a good one. Oh, yeah, we just found another twelve hundred forty seven planets? I think so. Planet says you’ve got a lot of potential upside potential with planets. That’s a good one. Um okay, so we understand what these levels air about and let’s see what’s so wanted it was anything more you want. Talk about the terms of the of the platforms of the ladder or whatever metaphor you use, teo, describe these different levels. Anything more you want to say about that? I think i think we’re pretty good, although i just want to say that i think what’s really interesting is that it’s already? So we have about over six hundred organizations currently who have gotten to platinum and what’s nice. Is that it’s? Not just some of the big guys? Of course we do have those represented, but it is actually organizations just like ones that are hopefully listening. So i just pulled out a profile here for a little organization called the adult life training incorporated it’s out of fort wayne, indiana. It’s got, you know, an income revenue of, uh, a few thousand dollars on dh what’s. Fascinating is, you know, obviously i can read a lot about their mission. They’re trying to help hyre they’re trying to help people gain employment, but when you go to that platinum results, you see, you know, you see some really fascinating things, like they say here the number of clients that we served, it happens to be thirty eight and twenty fifteen, so now you know, something, they they’ve touched, you know, the lives of almost forty, people hyre here are how many certificates have been earned by those people in terms of further training, the one hundred fifty four and then here’s the numbers of here’s, the number of hours of training that has been delivered and it’s almost six thousand hours of training. And, you know, i’m just saying that i think this kind of information is extremely valuable for other non-profits to see and understand and for donors and thunder to see and understand that’s an excellent example. Thank you. Even what’s the name of the organization again. Shout them out again. It’s called adult life training think and it’s out of fort wayne, indiana. Excellent. Excellent. All right. I hope adult life training is listening, but okay, so that’s a great example of a very small organization. Thirty eight. People served in a year, but hyper local and they’re ah, they’re in the platinum club, you’re in the club, all right? All right. Um, what kind of feedback do you get from donors of potential donors? The individuals using guide star, you know, share some of those hopefully positive stories? I’m sure they are. Well, what kind of stuff do you hear? Oh, i think, you know, donors really these days are increasingly coming online toe look for information about non-profits and i’m sure we all talked about a lot about millennials, but we all know the trends there that increasingly people look for information and people are curious about not only, you know, they do care about some of the financials they do, but they really want to know what? What are some of the results? What does the work look like? They want to see some of the pictures, um, of people being health, and they want to understand the scope of work that a non-profit might be doing. And so we just see a lot of interest in this in this kind of information from donors and hence the new platinum level because that gets to what you’re describing people are seeking. How about from non-profits do you? You get it anecdotes from organisations that are grateful that you’re there because you enabled ah ah! Gift. Absolutely so way enabled give through our through our platform there sort of donate now buttons on our platform, and obviously, as i mentioned, we enable a lot of a lot of non-profits come to us actually, because they are trying to participate in the amazon smile program that’s sort of millions of dollars are moving through the program where someone could buy a book and give to their favorite non-profit at the same time, we actually provide the back end to that information, and so they want to be featured on there, and they come to us sense of mr info and his current with amazon and its current with all those one hundred ninety other websites. So, you know, we definitely see non-profits just being thankful that we save them time and we increase their exposure to all of those different audiences, and they don’t have to maintain a separate profile with all of those different order, which for small non-profit would be a humongous a little more about these hundred ninety partners you have what are some other examples of types of organisations or companies that are using guide stars, expertise and and gathered information? Yeah, great. Great it’s. The second one. Oh boy, thank you. Two in two in thirty minutes. That’s. Great. Thanks. So so one one great example. So all of the major donor advised funds of national donor advised funds that that facilitate e-giving for donors are using guide stars data. So obviously, fidelity, schwab, those those kinds of funds we also, as i mentioned, obviously participate in a lot of that kind of point of sale giving programs. Amazon probably being the biggest one. And then the third sort of the third kind of group of people are, you know, there’s, a lot of crowd sourcing crowd funding web sites out there, you know, global e-giving give well, grassroots or great there’s a lot of sort of crowd funding websites that also are looking for non-profits teo, you know, to be features there, and we provide that information as well. Excellent. Those are some very big names. Cool. All right. We just have about two minutes or so left. Eva and i want to touch on the overhead myth. The the idea that the best way to evaluate a charity is tow no one number. And that is how much of its revenue does it spend on, quote overhead that this bad this bad moniker for all non program expenses. What is guidestar doing to help defeat this myth? We’ve been very active on this because we we think that judging a non-profit by their overhead ratio is just, you know, playing wrong. It’s it’s sort of like judging a business by their cost, without understanding that returned that they might be generating. So what i think it’s wrong to we’ve been active in campaigning and always had sort of a letter to donors, a letter to thunder’s about the overhead miss and how they should be paying more attention to how they think about, you know, how they compensate non-profits for the work, the true cost of the program and briefly overhead is people its executive directors, it it if they are the people also doing the work and being out there in the world promoting the work. So, you know, that that’s been a part of the campaign, the other thing i would say, just a link back to our problem conversation is, you know, so far, we said two donors, please don’t look at the financial ratio, right, it’s sort of like telling people, please don’t think about the pink elephants what’s the first thing you think about, you know, the pink elephants, so i wouldn’t feel like wave tell people not to look at that as the sole measure of success, but we haven’t had a lot to offer. Instead, i feel like we’ve gotten more. We’re going to get their offering them something else compelling to think about it. Look at all right? We have to leave it there. Eva listeners can look back to that show that i had on had with the jacob harold, the ceo of of guide star and the other two signers to the overhead myth letter about two years ago. October was that october. I think twenty thirteen maybe was almost three years ago even thank you very much. Thank you. You’re very welcome. Thank you. Even ico representing, of course, guidestar dot or ge next week, maria simple returns with political giving. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line. Producer gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director. Shows social media is by susan chavez. On our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. 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, sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, 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.

Skip Wealth Screening For Planned Giving

Torn window screen

photo credit: quinn.anya via photopin cc

I consistently preach this to clients and audiences: small-and mid-size nonprofits need not spend money on wealth screening to find potential Planned Giving donors. You have all the data you need in your fundraising or CRM database.

Query your data for age and giving consistency and you’ll find your best Planned Giving prospects.

If you don’t have age info, consistency alone will work if you’ve been around for many years. Lots of my clients go back many decades, sometimes into the late 1800’s. But 20th century roots will be fine for you to rely on giving consistency as a proxy for age.

If a donor has been giving for 30 years, for instance, they’re probably in the age range you’re after.

If you don’t have giving data going back far enough to extrapolate age, then before you pay for an age overlay from a screening service consider this. Can you survey your donors with a reply card in your next mailing? If you don’t want to ask for date of birth, ask for age. It’s worth considering before you make the plunge into age screening.

An important word about giving consistency. Ignore gift size.

I literally mean if a donor has given you just $5 a year, and they’ve done it for 18 years out of the past 20, or 25 years out of the past 30, then they are an outstanding prospect for a charitable bequest, which is a gift to you in their will. (I said a lot about starting your PG program with bequests in this series for GuideStar.)

The students at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Center for Excellence heard me say this just last week.

Age and giving consistency. That’s all you need to get started in Planned Giving.

Large shops will want to move beyond bequests, so they may wisely invest in wealth screening further down the road. But it’s not needed at the outset.

Small- and mid-size nonprofits can have very respectable PG programs that start and stop with gifts by will.

To launch any program–big or small–you can skip wealth screening.

An image of the promotional postcard for Nonprofit Radio showing Tony Martignetti in the studio.

Nonprofit Radio for September 6, 2013: The Overhead Myth Letter Signers & Good Overhead, Bad Overhead

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

Listen live or archive:

My Guests:

Art Taylor, Jacob Harold, and Ken Berger: The Overhead Myth Letter Signers

Art Taylor
Art Taylor

Jacob Harold
Jacob Harold

Ken Berger
Ken Berger

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written “To the Donors of America,”  The Overhead Myth letter created a lot of buzz in the nonprofit community this summer. My guests are the three co-signers, the CEOs of Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, GuideStar, and Charity Navigator. Art Taylor, Jacob Harold and Ken Berger will explain what led up to the letter, why it was necessary and why they feel “many charities should spend more on overhead.”
Gene Takagi: Good Overhead, Bad Overhead

picture of Gene TakagiGene Takagi, our legal contributor, helps you understand what may be sensible and appropriate non-program expenses for your nonprofit, and what you should avoid. How do you protect your board, officers and employees, but not go overboard on overhead? Gene is principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO).

 


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What is that music? This is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent and i am your aptly named host. Yes, we have new music, new music this week that was cheap red wine and it’s going to be our music going forward. It’s by scott stein and if you’d liketo meet scott, you can go to the facebook page. We have a little q and a with scott stein. I’m very glad that you’re part of the show. Welcome scott. New music and a new year luciana tova for those who are celebrating fifty seven, seventy four oh, i hope that you were with me last week. I would suffer idiopathic ridiculous apathy if it came to my attention that you have ms trim tab marketing. James eaton is president and creative director of the tronvig group. He explained how something small and seemingly insignificant, like the trim tab that’s it helps to steer a ship can make a big difference in your marketing and more social. Now what amy sample ward, our social media contributor and ceo of non-profit technology network and ten, had thoughts about how to manage the internal changes. When you make social media a part of your office culture this week, the overhead myth letter signers written to the donors of america, the three co signers of the letter are the ceos of the better business bureau wise giving alliance guide star and charity navigator our tailor jacob harold and ken berger, who explain what what led up to the letter, why it was necessary and why they feel many charities should spend mohr on overhead. Plus your questions and good overhead, bad overhead. Jean takagi are legal contributor helps you understand what may be sensible and appropriate non-profit graham expenses and what you should avoid. How do you protect your board officers and employees, but not go overboard on overhead gina’s principle of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo-sage san francisco i’m very pleased to welcome the three ceos who are the co signers of the overhead myth letter. Art taylor is president and ceo of the better business bureau wise giving alliance they’re at give dot or ge and he’s with us from arlington, virginia. Jacob taylor is president and ceo of guidestar there at guidestar dot or ge jacob’s calling from washington, d c and ken berger is with me in the studio. He’s, president and ceo of charity navigator at charitynavigator dot orb, gentlemen, welcome hi, good afternoon, glad to be here. It’s. A pleasure. Glad to have all three of you. I do want to ask you in the beginning, tio, try to be concise with your answers, because way, have lots of info to cover and just about twenty five minutes together. So tree, please try to keep that in mind. Really my first question. Art galleries for you. How did you get to be the first signer on the letter? How did you guys decide the sequence of the signatures? That’s, what struck me? Well, actually, i’m not sure about how that came about. I think we probably just threw a golf tee around. And whoever got the point got the name of their first. Okay, i don’t think there’s any significant. So about the order of the names. I think we used different orders for different events that we appear at and different communications that we send out. So, there’s. Nothing to be read into my name being first on. Okay. That’s. Very cordial of you to say. The only pattern i could see was alphabetical by first name art jacob and then ken that’s all that’s all i was able to discern, um, let’s, let’s, stick with you there. All right, you guys are the three. You represent the three leading sources of information about charities. Um, let’s start with you first and then jacob, and then can tell us what’s special about your organization, the wise giving alliance how’s it has it has a little different than the others. Please aren’t well, we’re one of the organizations that will actually make a judgment about how we feel about charity’s accountability and where, as i said, we’re primarily focused on whether a charity is accountable to the public, and we have a set of twenty standards that we use to measure the extent to which we believe charities are accountable. The’s standards were developed with the assistance of the non profit sector. It took us a little more than two years to devise the standards back in two thousand one when we last revised. Hm. And so we really feel that they represent the interests of donors, as well as the aspirations and hopes of charities that want to be accountable to their donors. All right. Thank you, jacob. How about how about guide star? Sure. You know, the big contrast i would make with my two colleagues organizations here gets right to something that art said, which is that guide star itself is not an analyst or raider or provider of judgment. What we are is a platform for data from all across the sector. So we have data on every single non-profit in the country for many, many sources, and we want to share others analysis, because we do think that the sort of analysis done by better business bureau wise giving alliance charity navigator can be very informative and important for the field. And we see it as our role to bring together the many different voices and and present them in a systematic way. And jacob, how many hits are you getting on the web site each month? Let’s, let’s. Just establish how relevant thes sites are for donorsearch schnoll sure. So last month we had about one point. Two million unique visitors. Excellent. Okay, unique visitors. Excellent art. I should have asked you how many? How many hits are you getting or if you can say unique visitors each month? Yeah, i don’t know if it’s unique visitors, but we get about one. We get about five and a half million report hits every year. So five and a half million times. Someone will come to our website to see a charity report can. How about charity navigator? What makes it different and and how? How popular. Well, you know, i just want to say first that i think, you know, between the three organizations were about fifteen million dollars in budget trying to oversee a one point five trillion dollars sector. So there’s, this much need for their, you know, all of us. And there’s a lot of us, i think similarities even more than the differences. But we also i do make a judgment, and we have a, you know, five level star rating system scale from zero to four stars. And we have about thirty metrics that we used to make those judgments. We also engage the sector in that. And also we have all one point six million non-profits on our website with information about them, even if they’re not currently rated. Let’s, let’s. Move to the letter itself. The overhead beth letter from believe june is when, when it was formally announced. Jacob the letter cites the misconception that overhead is a poor measure of a charity’s performance. How did that misconception arise? You know, when there’s a vacuum, something has to fill it, and i think there’s a desire on the part of donors as well as journalists, academics, researchers and non-profits themselves tio try to have a way to make judgments about the non-profits sector, which is very diverse and where there certainly are variances been in quality. Uh, and i think people saw the overhead ratio of something that had some meaning i’m sure my colleagues will talk about how it is not meaningless. It’s just what i would call a filter that helps us still filter out a few bad cases, but not a proxy for for equality and, you know, it fiddled it filled that vacuum, and my hope is that over the next few years, as we systematically gather a number of other types of information across the field, that we can offer an alternative that is much more meaningful and useful and helpful for the field on broader that that alternative being much broader than looking right just that overhead, anybody else want to add? To what you feel led up to this serious misconception about our ways, you know, we at the wise giving alliance, we’ve always i believed that you should look at a broad spectrum of things when you’re assessing a charity’s accountability, and while we have financial ratio metrics, address fund-raising and administrative costs, those are just two of twenty different areas that we look into. And, boy, we must ask charities almost three hundred questions before we can actually no of all twenty of those standards, okay? We’re actually met, so we’ve always group believe that there should be a broader look at what a charity does in order to really know if they’re accountable. And so when this opportunity came up for us to come together and share with the public that belief, we were all for it. So that’s sort of how we come into the table can how about you? How’d we get to this misconception? Well, i think it’s been over a lot of years, and i think that there’s been an ongoing debate over the question of what accountability measures should be those that we use the urban institute has done studies, of course, dan piela has gotten a lot of traction, and i think, you know, the views are wide ranging from we should have absolutely no accountability for overhead. There should be it’s meaningless. And i think all three of us were concerned that we be not throw out the baby with the bathwater that there’s a sort of a balanced place. We need to get to. We’re going take a pause for a couple seconds and course will continue with the three ceos of three co signers of the overhead myth letter and live listener love. When we come back, stay in there, talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Do you need a business plan that can guide your company’s growth? Seven and seven will help bring the changes you need. Wear small business consultants and we pay attention to the details. You may miss our coaching and consultant services a guaranteed to lead toe. Right, groat. For your business, call us at nine. One seven eight three, three, four, eight, six zero foreign, no obligation free consultation. Check out our website of ww dot covenant seven dot com are you fed up with talking points? Rhetoric everywhere you turn left or right? Spin ideology no reality, in fact, its ideology over in tow. No more it’s time. Join me. Larry shot a neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven easter for the ivory tower radio in the ivory tower will discuss what’s important to you society, politics, business and family. It’s provocative talk for the realist and the skeptic who want to go what’s really going on? What does it mean? What can be done about it? So gain special access to the ivory tower. Listen to me. Very sharp. Your neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven new york time go to ivory tower radio dot com for details. That’s. Ivory tower, radio dot com e every time i was a great place to visit for both entertainment and education. Listening. Tuesday nights nine to eleven. It will make you smarter. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com dahna duitz i love our new music, scott stein, live, listener lover get live listeners all over the country, in fact, and, of course, all over the world. Asia checking in, but we’re going to start domestic san francisco, atlanta, bloomington, indiana what if that’s the centre at indiana university. Leesburg, virginia. North kingstown, rhode island, south portland, maine. Walnut creek, california in san diego, california lots of californians live listener love there’s lots more coming, lots more live listeners glad you’re very glad that you’re with us and i never want to forget podcast pleasantries for the nine thousand or so that listen in the podcast love you too. Um, let’s see ken berger, you’re sitting here in front of me. It’s true i am. You are the only shill willing to come to the studio. How do you feel about this? That the rating organizations bear some responsibility for the evolution of this this overhead misconception? Well, i think you know, when i when i learned about the origins of charity navigator, part of the challenge for us was that the only standardized information that was available to us way back when was thiss financial information on the nine. Ninety. That’s, really all that there was that we could look at it. We always tried to communicate to our users that finance and overhead is just part of what you should look at. That’s always been part of our message, and i think part of our problem part of our responsibility is, we never really got that message out loud and clear enough. And that was where charity navigator one point o had to start. Yeah, it was all that was available. Yes, yes, but, you know, and so we’ve been trying to do bang the drum louder and louder over time, to let people know there are other things that are critical that have to be considered in the most important of all, being the results of the work. Okay, you other guys, anybody wantto weigh in on your organization’s responsibility leading up to this? No, i take it, you know. I’ll just say that i think, you know, we what we didn’t do ratings, we certainly presented the ratio on our site, and, um, i don’t apologize for that, but i think there was always room, as can said for further context provided to users and two donors about how that could be a meaningful peace, but not a full, full story. And then i would also argue that the blame where the credit or the responsibility, however we want to characterize it, goes far beyond any organization that did a rating but all the way to non-profits them cells, which, you know, reinforce this myth by literally, quite literally, billions of times a year, you know, prominently displaying their own ratios on their sites and at times they do that with complimentary data about programmatic results, which i think is very powerful. But when they do that alone, when they they on ly share that information, they really reinforce the myth in a problematic way, and so i would encourage all non-profits to ensure that if they are sharing, they’re they’re financial ratios, that they only do that in the context of their programmatic work and the results they’re achieving their communities, and they might have been doing that in response to donors who were, you know, picking up on it and picking up on the misconception i mean, there’s been a lot of talk about it and that that may have been, albeit sort of, you know, inappropriately waited response, but it may have been a response to the public, so the demand for those for those numbers, i think that’s absolutely right and it’s essentially create a vicious cycle where i think no one wanted it tio kind of spin out of control, and it hasn’t. So now where we’re pulling it back, trying to put things inappropriate contact trying teo affirm this multidemensional approach that we’ve all been talking about write your letter is is addressed to the donors of america, not to the charities of america. Dahna um yeah, go ahead, there’s some something more okay, there’s something i would like to say. You know, i think one of the things that really strikes us is that when a message goes out there, as some people are promoting that what? You should look at his results and results alone and forget about all this overhead. In this other financial business and what not in these other ratios? I think that it’s really ridiculous, and i think it’s really unfair to donors, i think that in a sense donors have made a very rational choice in looking at proxies to some degree, because the reality, as we know from years of research, is that is that the vast majority of non-profits do not publicly report on their results, and in fact, if you take it a step further, the vast majority of charities don’t have any data on their results to report upon. And so it’s not fair. I think two entire, you know to say, well, donors, you know, you should be looking at this when in fact there’s nowhere for most of them to go for most cause areas. For most types of charities, you don’t have robust information. So in addition to the advice that jacob gave about the overhead being paired with the results, i think there’s a fundamental message that charity’s more and more have got to step up to the plate and really take on this matter off results if you want people to look at things other than overhead. You have a really obligation to give them the most meaningful. The most important information which we agree all is about your results. Yeah, the conventional wisdom for for a lot of years has been that our results are unmeasurable were too complex for the work that we do is too abstruse, teo quantify results and that’s still happening. And in fact, we spicy and increasing drumbeat. There are more and more of these kind of particles we see coming out saying, well, we’re too complex. It’s two unique were too it’s, too expensive, there’s any number of a litany of excuses, quite frankly, and we’re not saying that you have to be perfect and it has to be robust. We just want to see charities begin to get on this road and do the best you can just started. Don’t say that. It’s. Impossible. We know that it’s, not there’s. Plenty of resource is out there to help our tailor. The point i would. Oh, please go ahead. There. There are the reasons people give to charities are very complex. And quite a bit of it goes to the extent to which people trust the organization the extent to which they trust people are trying to achieve the organization’s mission and trust can be measured. You are sensed by people, sometimes more so than it can be measured. You know, when we feel that the people in an organization are giving it an honest effort, that they’re working hard to achieve the goals of the organization. We tend to trust that organization, mohr and their different ways of looking at that it’s not always extent to which, you know, we see these results printed so, you know, that has to be factored in, and sometimes trust goes to the extent to which people feel comfortable with how they’re spending their money. And while we don’t like that, it’s still part of the complex mix of what drives people to give to chairs art the letter goes so far as to say that many charities should spend mohr on overhead. What what was behind including that? Well, you know, you can certainly look at some organizations who like to tout the fact that they spend, you know, very small sums of money on overhead and and want to point out that that makes them somehow better than organizations that maybe spending mohr that’s. Dangerous, because if an organization really needs to spend more money on overhead and and that amount is reasonable, they should move in that direction, rather than in a direction that would keep them from being an effective organization by not spending that money. So, i think, that’s, the point that we’re trying to make here. If an organization needs to spend more money on overhead, and they’re still within reasonable boundaries for what would be comfortable for for them and for their board members, they should look in that direction. They should. They should do that, including overhead for long term growth. Minute. This constant struggle between the immediate need and and the the desire to have build scale and capacity for the longer term. That’s, that’s very, very challenging. Yes, that’s. You know, that’s, what boards and executives of non-profits are charged to do? We have to balance the challenges of explaining to a doubting public that he spent expenditures are worthwhile and that they will lead to results. Uh, that’s the role of the board and that’s the responsibility, i think, of the executive running that organization to make sure that the people understand the directions that they’re headed in art taylor is president, ceo of the better business bureau wise giving alliance jacob harold, president, ceo of guide star, and ken berger, president, ceo of charity navigator. And we’re talking about there overhead myth letter that the three of them signed i want to take a moment, send a little more live listener love, hillside, new jersey, yonkers, new york, new york, new york, baltimore, maryland and bloom dale, ohio live listener love out to all of you let’s, go to some some questions we did a lot of pulling for listener questions, and i want to thank all three of your organizations. Thank you and your staffs for retweeting my tweets, looking for questions and really, i wantto do one think all three of you and your and the staff, they were working with me. Really very, very, very helpful. Thank you for that. Um ah, question came from amanda. Pee on da on twitter, she’s at living united who decides and how do you decide what is program and what he’s overhead? These areas can be pretty overlapped and sort of pretty vague boundaries. Who want to take that? That question from amanda p about program versus overhead. How do we decide? I think part of that can be in discussion with your your auditors to help ferret out. Make sure that you’re using the best practices in the policies that air in place to make that determination. We do know that, you know, i bought it. Work is as much an art as a science and there’s some ambiguity there. But there are some experts that have worked with a lot of organizations that you can, i think, rely upon, you know? And the other thing is to remember that were typically looking at larger organizations, those of us at least those of us that are doing these ratings. So those kind of organizations that need to do a gnawed it and to have that kind of expertise they can work with that professional to help make certain that they’re allocating those costs appropriately, that our overhead and that are not overhead and let’s also remember that when we’re talking about overhead, there are two subsets of that in particular, one is fund-raising and the other is administrative, and there was some important differences between those things, and as we’ve been talking about the importance of overhead, a lot of what we’ve been talking about is especially in the area of the administrative, the infrastructure jacob can mentions the fund-raising overhead is there a another? This is another question i got from a couple of listeners about the cost of raising a dollar that phrase, the cost of a dollar raising the dollar, any any guidance around that? What can we what can we offer charities? Well, so you know, i would say this distinction is is an essential one, um, and that when we talk about investing in yourself and investing in training or strategy or internal systems, that really falls into this category of administrative overhead and that’s something that in general, i’m very sympathetic when an organization says we need to invest in ourselves on we need to be able to think in the long run and that ultimately the way that we’re going to maximize effectiveness is by being a strong and effective healthy organization with fund-raising you know, i think that when you look at the cases of fraud, which i believe are rare but it’s still important for us to address, they more often fraud and or gross mismanagement, um, they more often fall into the category of fund-raising fraud or front fund-raising mismanagement, i’m not going to offer any sort of a, uh, redline a particular number where it’s, fine, if you’re below and it’s bad, if you’re above because the non-profit sector is simply to divers for that, i will say that, you know, the vast majority of a dollar raised is going teo fund-raising costs, especially when those air outsourced to professional fundraisers, you know, that’s something that to me is not a red flag at least a pink flag is worth exploring, but i also recognize that, you know, philanthropic capital is the fuel of the non-profit sector, and it does cost money to raise money, and we have to defend non-profits ability to invest in their own fund-raising while recognizing that there are those cases where it goes too far, aren’t we have find it interesting? Yeah, that in our evaluations, about forty five percent of the organizations we evaluate failed to meet one arm or of our twenty standards, but only about twelve percent failed to meet because of some financial ratio issue, whether that be fund-raising or administrative. So, you know, we like to help donors appreciate that if you’re just focusing on these overhead numbers, you might be giving to organizations that you wouldn’t give, too, if you knew more about him. So there’s also the flipside of overhead, which is over relying on them, can can lead you to support organizations that you might not want to if you do so, we think that our financial ratios are probably at the right place, given that so few fails to meet those financial ratio stands. Okay, that puts it in perspective. Thank you. All right, let’s, stay with you. We have a question from the council of non-profits in washington d c on twitter. They are build np capacity. Should we still use overhead? Is it so charged a word? Now that we should be using something else instead, well, you know, the word overhead is a generalization, as we’ve just discussed, what we’re really talking about here is where their charity spending a reasonable amount on administration and program and fund-raising and those are the three categories that we use should we continue to use that those three descriptions? Absolutely, because organizations do need to know how much their spending on these particular categories for purposes of comparing their effectiveness in these particular areas, effectiveness isn’t simply program effectiveness, it’s also, you know, making sure your administration is effective and making sure your fund-raising operation is effective, and i don’t think you can do that without keeping score financially to go along with what you’re doing. From programmatic jacob question from jean takagi who’s, our legal contributor and on twitter he’s at g tak wonders, why did it take so long for the overhead myth letter? Um, you know, a fair question, and i’ll i’ll say that, you know, part of it is just the coordination and that you know, the power here it that our three organizations that have some differences have different approaches, sometimes differences of opinion. Came together because we did share a belief that we have the field could move beyond are our focus on on overhead, it just takes a while sometimes to coordinate that across organisations that even as we are friendly there there elements what we do that are in competition with a city with one at the same time, though guidestar, charity navigator and others did sign a similar agreement back in two thousand nine. So we did do this before. I think part of the differences that, you know, you have the damp a lotta phenomenon, and i also think that and jacob and guide star was very instrumental in this, trying to have a way that tangibly the non-profits could actually sign on and be involved and engaged in the process which pulled people in in a way that weren’t wasn’t in that original effort in two thousand nine. Yep. That’s right. Gentlemen, we have to leave it. Okay. Very, very quick. Back-up. Go ahead, jacob. Oh, just that. And the one thing that has that there’s now hope that their new alternatives emerging and that we can begin to fill the vacuum with something else i want to. Thank all three of you, alright, can burger just said, amen. Thank you, taylor president, ceo wise giving alliance. Jacob harold, president, ceo guidestar. Ken berger, president, ceo of charity navigator you confined art on twitter at wise giving. Jacob is at jacob, harold and ken is at ken’s commentary. Gentlemen, thank you very much for being guest. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. Been a real pleasure. We take a break, go away for a couple seconds when we come back, tony’s take, too. I want to express some gratitude, and then gene takagi on good overhead, bad overhead. More live listener, love. Stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get in. Duitz nothing buy-in good. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Hi, i’m ostomel role, and i’m sloan wainwright, where the host of the new thursday morning show the music power hour. Eleven a m. We’re gonna have fun. Shine the light on all aspects of music and its limitless healing possibilities. We’re gonna invite artists to share their songs and play live will be listening and talking about great music from yesterday to today, so you’re invited to share in our musical conversation. Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a. M on talking alternative dot com. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Buy-in hi, i’m bill mcginley, president, ceo of the association for healthcare philanthropy. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Oppcoll got more live listener love, rocklin, california, brooklyn, new york, clinton, maryland, dallas, texas live listener loved to you let’s, go abroad. We’ve got seoul, korea, seoul so so loyal. Such always someone at least one of a couple of today from seoul. Thank you very much for listening on your haserot and chongqing, china usually have more from china, but only one today. Chung ching, china ni hao, time for tony’s. Take two and i want to use this time to just thank you very much for listening. I am grateful for your support of the show. I’m in your ear right now and i thank you for that. Radio is a very personal, maybe even intimate medium, i believe. And i thank you personally for listening and supporting the show. Thank you very much. And that is tony’s. Take two. Just my gratitude for friday, the sixth of august sixth of september. Who writes this copy? Who writes this copy to sixth of august, the thirty sixth show of the year. Jean takagi he’s, the principal of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco he edits the popular non-profit law blogged dot com and as i said earlier, i’ll give him another shot out on twitter. He’s at g tak welcome back, jean tony, how are you? I’m terrific. What was what was your take on that conversation? You know, i thought it was really interesting. Tony, i really appreciate the fact that the three of the signers of the overhead myth better came onto this show and we’re willing to discuss discuss that issue. I think it’s a really important one to recognize. Excellent. And i was grateful as well it was. And that was the first time i ask can off mike that’s the first time that the three even have been together in a live for him like this. The only other time was answering a newspaper. Reporters questions and, you know, newspaper is a secondary medium to radio, of course. So very glad to be the first time that they were all three together. Live s o. You have some thoughts on good overhead, bad overhead. I got some questions, gene, that really worded differently, but fell into the category of this. How do we decide what is appropriate? Yeah, i think. That’s a great question. Tony and it’s. Difficult. To answer because it’s so specific tio the organizations in the circumstances that may be applicable to that organization so it’s hard to make generalities. Which is the whole reason why it’s hard tto rate charities based on their overhead. But i think we can, you know, lissome general principles of what might be good overhead and what might be problematic. Okay, you have some from categories, then that that we should start with the good, i believe, sure. So i think education is a really good category educating particularly your board of directors so they can understand their responsibilities and how they can best contribute to the organization. I think boards are largely an untapped resource for many charities and investing in educating and engaging them. Figuring out how to best engage report, i think, is really valuable then educating your executive director or ceo. I think that’s so important as well, often times ditigal dd is charged with implementing a plan, and that person may not have the experience or the educational background to do all the things that are required to implement that plan. Perhaps no translating their vision into organizational priorities are setting realistic budget providing. A useful employee feedback, you know, defining and delegating properly assessing organizational needs on dh communicating those two all the stakeholders of the organization, the eighties are charged with doing so much and so many different areas, and they may have tremendous skill and leadership, but they may lack certain certain skills or experience in certain areas, and i think boards have got to make sure that they put into their budget equipping that executive director with the information or consultants or other materials that she or he needs to get the job done. Thiss ah lot of what you’re talking about falls in the category, i think of professional development for the board, for the executive officer on that would also trickle down to the staff as well. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, i call it education rather than professional development, because professional development sometimes seems like a benefit that you’re giving out to your to your employees. And i think these air just crucial investments, both in making sure that you’re properly equipping your organs, you know, perhaps you’re your most important organizational asset, which people, um and also in terms of just, you know, making sure that you’re going to retain the best people if you’re not educating them, retention is going to be a big challenge, all right? What’s another category of what you deem acceptable and an appropriate overhead expense stop purposes by saying i am a lawyer, chun hee’s. I’m bringing that perspective into this and and others will have other perspective to offer. All right, jeez, what’s coming boy, go ahead regularly at the morris with for me as a lawyer, making sure that you’ve got the right policies in place is really important. I think sound policies can improve on organization’s operations, can help prevent really costly mistakes and keep in organizationally a new organization legally compliant, which can be valuable in so many ways. So that would the expense aside from time to time to create policy and then have it approved by the board, might involve consultants in areas that the organization’s lacking expertise? Yeah, absolutely so anywhere from an auditor, regardless of whether you’re require an audit or not under under laws, maybe an audit or financial review, khun raise cem cem, sufficient information or materials for the board or the executive to consider an internal control policy. Financial management policies getting other consultants involved or lawyers to deal with conflict of interest, document retention, whistleblower issues figuring out what type of gifts are ok to take and which ones are not ok to take. Most organizations don’t have gift acceptance policies and that’s something that they should look into, and i think you’re going to raise maybe an issue of expense reimbursement later on and that’s another good policy to have to make sure that everybody’s on the same page well, okay, around that you and you and i have talked about a lot of these policies in the past, in detail, so around that expense reimbursement there was there’s, an interesting case, a to college, a college president who spent one hundred forty thousand dollars on a trip to china, and it is justifying it. Could i don’t remember the name of the college. I don’t do you? Yeah. It’s, westfield state university and their president was abin da bao. Okay, he’s he’s. So that expense, among other things, it’s. Not just that expense, but among other things. But that one caught my eye because it’s on its face, it would seem so outrageous. But there’s things. We don’t know, like how many people were there and, uh what? What the outcomes were i mean, that could be a justifiable expense, that kind of money for a trip it was to china. I’m pretty sure yeah, absolutely. So i don’t know enough about it to really comment on it any more than to say that, yes, on its face, it can look like it’s going to be difficult to justify expense, but that’s, as it was characterized by the media on dh i don’t know that we have all the information or if the media has sametz displayed, you know, the information that would raise sort of public outcry where otherwise it might be kind of boring to know what justifications there were for such an expenditure. Perhaps there were good reasons teo increase the amount of revenues that coming from from china, or support or toe otherwise in attract students from from there, if that was indeed one of the goals, i think there’s more that needs to be learned about this before criticizing it, and the board or the executive committee of that board had requested and risk steve thirty page audit, i believe, and i think they’re going to need to go through that pretty court carefully. It just raises the point that it’s really without all the facts, as you’re saying, it’s really impossible to know whether one hundred forty thousand dollars for a trip to china or fifteen percent spent on program in a year or are more vice versa in a year is appropriate. You just if you just can’t draw these lines the way one of the ceos i think it was jacob, harold said, you know, and we were talking about i was talking to those guys you just can’t know and be so precise with dollar amounts and percentages, yeah, in some ways are in many ways i would say that st tony, i guess there are the exceptions and aren’t there are always exceptions, but if a charity that’s focused on poverty relief is paying for, you know, first class entertainment, first class flights to paris toe entertain their staff members for retention purposes. I upleaf that’s bad overhead, but, you know, outside of the really obvious examples, it is sometimes difficult t criticize a charity, but i don’t think we can downplay whether donor-centric tae shins are reasonable or not, if you’re transparent organization and that information is coming out through the media through the charity rating sites through your nine ninety, you’re going to want to make sure that that you’re aware of certain expenses that might catch people’s eyes and turned them the wrong way because of public relations and the goodwill that the charity has is, you know, other other than the people of this that that are supporting the charity, another one of the charity’s most important resources that that goodwill so you don’t want to harm that you want to avoid the perception of a bad expenditure. Yeah, especially if it looks like a blatant rip red flag out there. What’s another category you you have for us in the in the good overhead section. A few risks that you have the right insurance investing in the, er, right technology, kind of another area, i think, in terms of raising the effectiveness and efficiency oven organizations performance even currently, and not just building skills for the future. I think you gotta look at things like technology are using data technology, that’s going to be more expensive, upkeep and that’s creating inefficiencies. In the productivity of your staff for that hinders prevents reasonable expansion will knew technology allows for more effective and efficient ways of advancing the mission, communicating with the donors and supporters, finding new donors, you know, mobilizing advocacy efforts, measuring and analyzing impact. And i think measurement tools is another thing there’s a demand now from from lots of sources about well, if it’s not overhead it’s about, are you creating positive impact? And if that’s the big question out there now what? How our charity is measuring that i think are may have mentioned that a lot of charities, they’re not showing that in their nine nineties, we can’t really determine howto review charities based dahna on impact and part of that is because it’s so hard to measure, but what investments are you making there then? I think the last thing i wanted to mention with building engagement and collaboration collaboration is it was such an important part of being more effective and efficient and taking great ideas to scale where, where it makes sense and that all costs money, and if you’re going to label that is overhead and then i think you have to make sure that you’re putting your money in the right place. One of those questions that i read from a listener was, you know, he’s overhead, a jaded term now. But, you know, maybe i’m probably doesn’t really matter what the term is, but investment is something that i think that sounds more positive than overhead, and it seems to fall into. I think it sort of captures a lot of what you’re talking about in terms of engagement. You know, in investing in people and maybe joint ventures and things like that, we have to go away for a couple seconds. Jean, of course, will stay with us, and we keep talking about good overhead, bad overhead. Got a little more live listener, love, stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. No. Got more live listener love, vietnam live listener love out to you, warrington uk and mara pole, ukraine live listener left each of you. I’m sorry, we don’t have vietnamese or ukrainian covered in the studio here. We do have japanese, though. Konnichi wa to you, yokosuka! That was terrible. Let me try that again. Yokosuka and osaka i could eat you are gene let’s, let’s move, teo bad overhead some something’s in the fall into that category you think probably are hard to justify. Yeah, there are certain transactions that i think or expenses that they’re going to be more difficult to justify than others think again there they’re going to be exceptions to some of these, but generally speaking, if you’ve got transactions that appeared to benefit insiders like boardmember zehr officers mohr than the charity’s intended beneficiaries, those are going to be difficult to justify, and you’re going to want to think carefully about whether you should make those expenses and then whether they’re really of reasonable advantage to the organization if that was to come out in the open. So those are one type extravagant expenses way before we before we moved to benefit another if that one hundred forty thousand dollars china trip is really resulting in very trivial benefits and never with the expectation of muchmore benefits to accrue to the organization but was really about sort of making sure that a president or ceo was traveling on a very enjoyable trip. That’s compensation, that’s that’s not that’s, not an organizational expense that that it’s going to be easy toe to justify in and of itself, and finally appears, you know, having significant expenses on furthering some other cause other than your mission other than your state admissions, then that may be a problematic expenses well, and that may be a violation of your duty. Teo ensure that the charitable, recent sources are used for that particular mission. So if you’re an organization with a mission to improve the lives of children with leukemia, you shouldn’t spend significant amounts of the charity’s money tto help disaster victims in the local community, even if that’s a wonderful cause because that’s not your mission, you mentioned the insider transactions, and one of the policies that were supposed to have when we were talking about good overhead was was conflict of interest policies, but that is not. Supposed to deal with the the insider transactions? Yeah, in part it does, but we can. We can have work transactions that are going to pass the legal requirements of conflict of trance. Interest transactions are not necessarily bad if a director or boardmember is offering an organization rent and one of you know his or her office spaces and that’s slightly below fair market value or nor more than fair market value, that might actually be the best deal for the organization to take. And that deal might be fine. But on the other hand, if you had other choices that were equally viable and it looks like you’re benefiting one ofyou, directors air, doing him or her a favor by renting out when it their offices and that can be problematic, and then you want to you want to factor that into the decision for that particular transaction. You have some thoughts about fund-raising expenses and how they may or may not be good or bad, excessive or or appropriate. Yeah. And there again, it’s it’s really about the care and the diligence at the board and the executive are exercising in determining what is an appropriate amount. To spend on fund-raising expenses and what is to be gained out of it sometimes you know fund-raising expenses are going to be expensive, and if you’re building a new campaign and intending to raise a lot of money, you may have to invest a lot in that to get the right people there. Tio use the right strategies for marketing, but again, you’ve got a sort of manage both what your needs are and what your donors and the public’s expectations are. Well, yeah, it’s a tricky area that’s very hard, though, because the public’s expectations air being set by thie overhead myth misconception, for instance, and what and what they do see some charities publicizing the way i think it was jacob harold, you know, said hey didn’t use the fund-raising expense example, he used the overhead ratio example, but those don’t expectations are very hard to two teo to manage well, impossible to manage their very hard to know sometimes, yeah, i think one of the questions that that has been raised on twitter around the show as well with what you know are the signatory to the overhead midst letter going to do about changing don’t expectations, and i think they’ve got limited power to do it. I mean, it’s, great to shut some sunlight on this issue, but, you know, your donors are your donors on dh you’ve got no, you know, here’s, another overhead expense that you should be spending on is educating your donors about why you’re spending the way you are on if you can tell them exactly what you’re doing and be open with it, hopefully that’s going to justify it for your particular backs of circumstances, but you can’t just simply, you know, expect donors to understand it very, very high overhead ratio initially, uh, let you know, let them figure out for themselves that it’s going to actually result in better impact and lower overhead ratios in the future. You know, companies deal with this, you know, expectations. I said it’s, impossible to manage, not manage, but i don’t know, maybe i’m splitting hairs here, but persuade mean over time, and it does take time, and it does take money. People’s perceptions do change. I mean, look, a tte political candidates who are disgraced and then, you know, win win congressional offices or running for mayor or something on dh, you know, and have a good chance of succeeding. Look at, you know, your own your governor in california, for instance, people perceptions about people can change perceptions about companies can change. Weii just have about a minute left. I mean, it can be done, but it’s a very long and i think expensive process. Yeah, i absolutely agree. And i think it is important for platforms like like this and be open the overhead mid letter and and your show, uh, tony, for people to understand, you know, overhead averages about twenty five percent across all industries in the for-profit world and thirty four percent across service industries, at least according to one major study and a lot of non-profits are scared at anything that approaches over twenty percent and, you know, maybe that’s not right. And sometimes you need the initial overhead expense to build infrastructure uh, before you move on to more efficient systems, and that means your overhead, rachel is going to be bigger as well. So educating more and more people about this through through the media, through other platforms, but also on the organizational level really, really important. Durney martignetti non-profit radio we’re trying to be the change that we want to see in the world jean takagi is principal of neo in san francisco non-profit and exempt organizations law group. You’ll find his blawg at non-profit law block dot com, and you’ll find him on twitter at g tak jean, thank you very much, as always. Thanks, tony, my pleasure. Next week, scott koegler returns he’s, our tech contributor and the editor of non-profit technology news. We’re going to talk about internal versus external social media and communications tools and platforms very much want to thank my three ceo guess the three tenors, i don’t know there were the they were like the three tenors. I don’t know which one would be pavarotti, who were the other three placido domingo and i put it in janice ah, former opera singer on the spot she can’t name the third just she can’t name the third she will as soon as we sign off, i know i’m i’m sorry, janice, if you like this show, then you’ll like my podcast, which i do for the chronicle of philanthropy. It is fund-raising fundamentals it’s monthly and it’s ten minutes each podcast and it’s on the chronicle of philanthropy website and itunes have some more lingering live listener love that io, doylestown, pennsylvania. Bethpage, new york. Port. Charlotte, florida. And tokyo, japan live listener love to all of you. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Gemma’s taylor is today’s line producer. The show’s social media is by deborah askanase of community organizer two point oh, and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules i’m loving this new music. What do you think you could tell me on the facebook page? What you think of the new music? I hope you’ll be with us next friday, one to two p, m eastern. Talking alternative broadcasting at talking alternative dot com. Duitz e-giving didn’t think the shooting. Good ending. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, waiting to get you thinking. Cubine are you a female entrepreneur? Ready to break through? Join us at sixty body sassy sol, where women are empowered to ask one received what they truly want in love, life and business. Tune in thursday, said noon eastern time to learn tips and juicy secrets from inspiring women and men who, there to define their success, get inspired, stay motivated and defying your version of giant success with sexy body sake. Sold every thursday ad. Men in new york times on talking alternative dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. You’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. This is tony martignetti athlete named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio friday’s one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting are you concerned about the future of your business for career? Would you like it all to just be better? Well, the way to do that is to better communication. And the best way to do that is training from the team at improving communications. This is larry sharp, host of the ivory tower radio program and director at improving communications. Does your office needs better leadership? Customer service sales or maybe better writing are speaking skills. Could they be better at dealing with confrontation conflicts, touchy subjects all are covered here at improving communications. If you’re in the new york city area, stop by one of our public classes or get your human resource is in touch with us. The website is improving communications, dot com that’s improving communications, dot com improve your professional environment. Be more effective, be happier. And make more money. Improving communications. That’s. The answer. Talking dot com. Hyre

Make 2010 the Year YOU Start Planned Giving

Man Giving Gift

I’m writing a year-long series of articles for GuideStar to help nonprofits get started in Planned Giving with a bequest marketing program. The penultimate, fifth article, is out today.

While it’s probably too late to start your program in this, the fourth quarter, you can start planning for 2011. The series has been going since February.

If you really want to dig into bequest marketing, here are the first, second, third and fourth pieces. They build on each other to lead you through the process of inaugurating your program.

Bequests are the place to start your Planned Giving program. They are always the most popular gift in any program, regardless of what type of work you do and who your donors are. Why? I explained that in this November 2009 GuideStar gem, “Get Going On Planned Giving.”