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Nonprofit Radio for March 30, 2018: Financial Management Software

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Karen Graham & Andy Wolber: The Donor Journey

Nonprofit Radio is never boring. Even talking about financial management software. Listen as Idealware publicly releases their guide to selecting the right software for your nonprofit. It’s important! Trust me, Karen Graham and Andy Wolber will convince you.

 

 

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me, i’d be thrown into assaf ago dahna if you made me speak the words you missed today’s show financial management software don’t leave you do need this non-profit radio is never boring even talking about financial management software. Listen as idealware publicly releases their guide to selecting the right software for your non-profit it’s important, trust me, karen graham and andy wolber will convince you i’m tony steak, too. You will join this club we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio by wagner cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com bye tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna may slash tony tell us i’m excited because we got an announcement here with public announcement, but s so i’m gonna introduce the people we’re going to be making. The announcement first is karen graham. She is a sought after speaker, trainer, writer and consultant with expertise in technology, leadership and innovation non-profit software and digital strategy. As ideal wears executive director she leads a team of researchers, presenters and writers who create technology. Information. Resource is that helped non-profits put their visions into action. She’s at karin t graham idealware is at idealware and idealware dot or ge. Andy wolber he’s, a technology consultant to non-profits. He teaches a course on non-profit and government technology for grand valley state university, and writes about google in the enterprise for tech republic. He’s at a wolber and wolber works. Dotcom welcome count graham and andy wolber. Thanks, tony. Somebody talk, please. Okay, okay, you’re welcome. My pleasure. I’m glad to have you thankyou for, ah, reserving your public announcement. Karen graham of this report for non-profit radio. What is the report? You don’t need to be back on the show and have a chance to talk about something brand new. Awesome, yes, i can hear the excitement in your voice. You might try to kick it up a little level a little notch, but i hear it, i hear it. What is the report, what we publicly announcing? This one is a guide to financial management software for nonprofit organizations, and i would say this is particularly suited for small and medium sized organizations, and i know that your audience, too so that’s great, absolutely and and for anybody who is thinking that maybe their current accounting software or financial management system is not meeting all of their needs, and they want to explore other options. Okay, we’re going to talk about cem ways you might you might know that some symptoms of that and, uh, we’ll go through the report and all let’s see let’s ah, quaint people remind, i love idealware i love the mission of idealware, but you will articulate it better than i i don’t know if you’ll be as enthusiastic as i am. I hope you will be remind people what does idealware all about? Well, i am the executive director, so you would hope that i would have enthusiasm. I am hopeful my fingers across. Yes. You know, tony, i thought it was it was kind of funny to me that you said the show was never boring even when we’re talking about financial management software. Because when you invited me, i was thinking like, i’m excited to be on the show, but you probably picked me to be on the most boring show of the whole year, so let’s, try not to make it that way. I’m excited about all of the work that idealware does even when we’re talking about a topic like this, which is maybe not the most sexy topic, i guess hyre i’m excited about all of our work because it helps people solve real problems and helps them operate there non-profit organization better and make good decisions without as much stress and uncertainty. We exist to help those people who work in non-profits who are responsible for technology decisions, but they don’t necessarily have a technology background, and so they need resource is they’re smart people, they need knowledge resource is to help them think through their decisions and help them understand trends and best practices. And so we do impartial research on technology topics, and then we publish guides and workbooks software reviews, and we also do a lot of online training and in person workshop to help people to make those kinds of decisions with confidence. Now i have ah first became aware of idealware years ago, before i knew there was a karen t graham affiliated with it because people used to recommend what the the the fund-raising data but was fund-raising database report was it was the c r m or was it? Fund-raising nancy now, with so many years ago, i can’t remember, but but it had to be good. Do you remember the official title of the one i think you’re talking about? The official title is the consumer’s guide to low cost donor-centric sustainers okay. And it’s now in a fourth edition, i believe, and that’s been one of our most downloaded publications ever. We used to yeah, people would refer it to refer me to it. Oh, and andy wolber don’t worry, we’re gonna get to you. I don’t want you not forgotten, andy, you’re there. I just want to get through some important info about idealware yeah, people used to just mention it to me. Like i said before, i even knew what idealware was, and so i went and looked at this report, and this is an analogy i make sometimes sometimes you don’t seem thrilled with this analogy that i make to consumers union, but to me, you’re the consumers union, their consumer reports that consumers union is the non-profit that creates consume reports of non-profit technology, you did these unbiased reports, we’re going to talk about how you make sure they’re unbiased and you now in that one, you had the that’s colorful side by side chart with features and, you know, dots for which features existed in different ones, and to me it was the consumer reports of non-profit software, i loved it, and we were i’ve been talking about idealware on non-profit radio on and off, and even before i like i said before, i knew there was a guarantee. Graham so, um, i don’t know how do you feel about that? Consumer reports analogy, i some people have compared us to consumers union, others have compared idealware to gartner or forest are sabat that doesn’t really bother me on a good okay. What? Okay, yeah, i think that all of those organisations are well respected and trusted. No resource is. And in a way, i’m proud that idealware would be in that same category. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. I that’s why i put you there an objective objective research. Okay, we have just like a minute and a half before break. Oh, andy, we’re going to bring you in after this first break. Karen, how do you assure us in a minute and a half that this report is unbiased? Objective, not sponsor driven, etcetera. I’m glad you asked about that. We have a very strict firewall between our editorial process and our funding process. And so on this report, i actually worked on securing funding through sponsorships. And the student reader might notice that the sponsors have products that are covered in this guide. But let me ask andy. Andy, did you know who the sponsors were? While you were working on the research? I had no clue. Better say no. Good. Okay, now, karen did karen, did he have an important thing? Did he ever ask? Did he ask? No. Okay, i want make sure he’s honestly could have one of our partners on the report. And important partner was fm a, and they contributed a lot of expertise to this report. And at one point there executive director asked me who the sponsors were and i said, you know ill that i can’t tell you who they are because i don’t want to buy us the research. So that’s something that we take very seriously. We we don’t let any of the people involved in the research team know who the sponsors were until the report is ready to publish. And it’s it’s, not a pay to play situation. Our sponsors are all very dedicated, teo. Advance. Acknowledge in the sector to helping people make better software choices, whether they choose their software or somebody else’s, they want to get fit. And so they committed teo funding this and letting us publish something that they got no approval over. All right. And he got to say two words before this break. He said no and know so thank you for that big contribution, andy. You’re done now know that’s not true, but we do have to take the next. Okay. Yes, we got to take a break. Pursuant. The current paper is demystifying the donor journey. You heard me last week talking to taylor shanklin about this. You heard it. So why do you need this thinking paper? You don’t. But for someone who did not hear the show, their life is incomplete. I might i would go. So far as to say, even inadequate without it, send them to the paper, then send them to last week’s show for more detail. Their life will be complete. You will be a hero. It’s demystifying the donor journey it’s at tony dot m a slash pursuant radio. Now back to financial management software guide. Okay, andy wolber let’s bring you in your research around this thing. What what was the research process? How’d you go about creating this guide for us? Well, we looked at the start of the existing i’ve worked with la non-profits so i brought a lot of personal expertise to talk to some folks, various organizations that i’ve worked with over the years that deal with various financial packages and also spoke a little with some of the effort make insulting who are working with of wide variety non-profits and systems as well. So we looked at the landscape. What is this fm a karen mentioned it also does that stand for something anymore? Or are they like aarp? That doesn’t want to be the association american, retired persons or nail that doesn’t no longer wants to be the national abortion rights action league, are they? Just an fm a or do they stand for something? Yeah, karen, i’ll defer the u n if that’s an acronym or not, do they stand for anything? I mean, i know the stand for things, but what do their letters stand for anything or now? Yeah, i think it started as a financial management, so see it? I don’t want to say the wrong big radio, though, but they just go buy fm now and it’s an organization, a nonprofit organization that provides consulting and outsource services for accounting and financial management for other non-profit okay. And what was their role in this guide? Andy, do you want to talk about that? Sure. Well, what was interesting is so they don’t have had initial ideas and an initial list. Sorry. Hey, hear the systems we see and use a lot. I looked at that and said, well, you know, what about these? And so we widen that search and scope a little bit. Andi also did some tweaking updating of some of the so our features and focus. So we brought into the look a little, uh, based on just serve other packages that are also used in the field there’s a wide variety of solutions, there’s several things that vendors have moved systems from, you know, being client server only to cloud. And so that there’s been a lot of movement in this in this sector in this industry, so we started with some of their their ideas and their list way expanded added to it, andy i well, since, since karen says she doesn’t exactly mind my analogy to consumers, union consumers report which not exactly overwhelming endorsement, but i’ll take it from her. I analogize this to their toe a buyer’s guide. It looks like a buyer’s reads like a buyer’s guide to me. Um, now, um, let’s, let’s define a little deeper. What what it is we’re buying. What? What characterizes a financial management system? What, what? What pieces doesn’t have that that we’re thinking about possibly changing if we’re reading this buyer’s guide? Sure. Well, at the core of this is a system that helps you, you know, understand helps a non-profit major, typically an executive director and other leadership, both staff in volunteer understand where the organization is financially and so in a small organization, that sort of thing typically sits at a no it’s core it’s the, you know, accounting system. So you’re just you’re really trying to understand what you’re where your financial position is, okay in the twenty, thirty years ago term aarp enterprise resource planning no, sir. Came in tow scope. Um, and those sorts of systems started to heimans allow an organisation to track financial for on the financial implications ations of both products and people activities throughout the organization. So as you get bigger, your financial system starts saying compass mohr system and i saw a sort of a spectrum of you may even mention this in the report. Maybe that’s that’s where i got the idea from spectrum. So there was simple. And then there was a little more sophisticated in the middle. And then there was the aarp. These enterprise resource planning systems eyes that affair. Is that a fair assessment of what the spectrum looks like? Yeah. And and what that is and what’s interesting about it is that unlike in some organizations where you start and delineate by the size of an organization, you know, a small organization has a small system in the financial management world. It’s a little different. It’s more. Related to how complex or how many things you need to track. So a small organisation with a large number of funders and a large number of programs actually has a pretty complex accounting and financial management, so they may actually need amore complex system than a organization has a very large budget but really has only two or three programs and two or three funders, okay, makes a lot of sense. All right. Um, uh, charity graham let’s bring you back. We were going to say this several times throughout the show, but where can people get this report? Oh, great question if you if you’re listening to the show live, if you go teo idealware dot or ge it’s right on our home page, it won’t stay there forever. So if you’re somebody listening to the podcast later in time, you could just go on idealware dot or ge and there’s a search box on the home page. If you just type in the word financial, you’ll get right to it. And then you can enter your name and email it just to register and then it’s a free download. You’ll get a pdf document. Okay, thank you. For not asking. Name, address, organization, title budget size, annual revenue, zip code. You know, etcetera. Thank you, it’s. Very. You know, i bristle at those things. So it’s. Well, we personally asked a few of those things, but they’re optional. And that just helps us to make sure that what we’re sending two people is relevant in the future. If they option to receive our e mails. But that’s also optional. Okay, i guess when i saw the form, i realized they were optional. Okay, very good. Thank you for that. Um okay, let’s. Stay with you. Karen, how might we know? What is some symptoms now? The report goes through, like six or six things or something. That’s not just touch on what some symptoms might be for needing a new financial system like, you know, just two or three. And these people are gonna get the reporter. I mean, it’s free for god’s sake. So they’re going to get it so that’s, just touch on a couple, right? I’ll try not to overwhelm me with too much detail here. One thing that stood out to me here is when people are manually entering data into two different systems that could be a sign that maybe their current accounting system is not really meeting their needs, or maybe maybe it actually could meet their needs if they invested in some kind of integration. Now what’s an example of that together, like what kind of what kind of data would you be putting in two different systems? Give me a concrete example, the thing that i see most often, and maybe andy wants to chime in on this, too, but i think i see most often is donordigital so it used to be that before there were good donor-centric was tracked in the organization’s accounting system, and so they would enter individual donors and the date that they gave and the amount that they gave, and it was any kind of restricted gift, you know, they’d have information about that, and so that have it has stuck with a lot of organizations, and now they’re entering it both in their donor-centric and there financial management system. Now you could argue that that’s not actually necessary at all tohave the data in both places, at least that level of detail but but if you do want to still have that data in both places. Now, there are ways, depending on what system you choose and what kind of integration you have to automate that a little bit more, so that you’re not manually king in all those details in two different places. Ok, ok, give us another common symptom. You see, um, and if you want to chime in on that sure. Well, i mean just it. And answer a little of what you said. The payrolls, another area that you people manually receiving data. But another symptom is things like a lot of spreadsheets. It’s, an organization is using a spreadsheet to track the status of all their different grant. That is often a sign that they could benefit potentially from a different financial management system is actually designed toe help them, uh, track their spending. And for all of those distinct grant that’s one of things that the organizations really struggle with when they work with a system that can only handle a couple of coding fields that really can’t scale teo do sort of comprehensive fund accounting to track the the grand program number of grant programs that they actually have. So that’s another for the another sign that the symptom is, you see lots of spread sheets on the side being used to say, ok, and program a we’ve spent this much program would be sametz spent this much in that has it can be hard to tease out from actual financial statement s oh, man that’s good indicator. So you mean so for each different program? Or fund? They have a different spreadsheet. Is that what you’re describing? Yep. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We used to hear about that from from one of our sponsors. Um, which is mentioned in aa? It’s just mentioned you mentioned apple o’s in aa a sidebar. They used to make that point about that being not so that they’re not being efficient. Okay, the guide also talks about access from from certain devices. Like if you have to go to a dedicated computer thio dua certain task right? To say a little more about that, andy sure, that that’s really the root of a lot of organizations that used to see they’re still working with insults or a client server or single system software? Um, yeah, that that’s still out there still widely used, but that can be difficult for folks to actually get access to information. They have to be on site on the local network to get information. Or they have to do the shenanigans of a remote log in or remote desktop and looking at a screen through ah, some sort of ritual display system or in their face so that many systems have transitions from needing to. Be on site thai there being hosted or being in the clouds. Some of the newer systems are sort of cloud natives and work really well and some older systems to our club native. But work really well, either within in a browser and also some of them support apse on mobile devices. So that’s, another sign is if you really do need more multiple people to access data easily from different locations. You start toe look in a new system, karen. A few years ago, it ntcdinosaur i captured an excellent panel interview. That was, in fact, it had someone who i think is an advisor to robert winer. Is he c an advisor for you on some? Yes, he has. He has been a subject matter expert for some of our research in this. Okay. And he’s also been a speaker on some of our webinars. Okay, excellent. Yeah. I thought i remembered an affiliation, so he was one of three or four on the panel and the this is what i love about ntc. I mean, the panel was devoted to this niche topic of maybe you’re blaming technology when people and or processes are the problem. So with that leading, you know, there might be a problem other than your financial management system in your non-profit can you can you talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. But i might rephrase that to say almost certainly you’re blaming technology when people in processes are at least part of the problem. So yeah, let’s not overlook that. One thing that i know we found in the research was that option. Somebody will think that she needs a new financial management after a package when really, what she needs is to revise her chart of account. And so what? The chart of accounts is for people who thank you for keeping him. Thank you for keeping yourself out of jargon. Jail. Yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s just the kind of the master list of categories of revenue and expenses. So you use that in financial reporting, you use that to connect every transaction that you enter in your accounting system, teo, to the overall categories. And so is you. Find yourself explaining coding to your board of directors when you’re presenting the financial reports to them. If you find dafs miscoding things when they’re you know, writing down what something should be charged, too on their expense report or their recedes, then that’s probably a sign that you need to review your chart of accounts and think about revising that first before you start looking dafs software change, okay, can you give us another example? I know that could be hundreds of things, but another there’s another example, come to mind of where the person or the processes that there were people there, the processes are the are the trouble anything else? Well, another example that i see all the time, which is not limited financial management software, there are all sorts of technology is user adoption issues, and, you know, sometimes people aren’t really getting the full value out of the software because they haven’t done the training, they haven’t customised the settings to fit their needs, things like that so that’s important, too. Okay, and you work with a lot of non-profits and karen didn’t ask you to chime in this time. By the way, karen, if you say the word chime again, i’m cutting off your mic. So you got to find another word. You said it twice, china’s twice. Now that’s enough! So if you you have to find another word, you have to find another word to invite andy, i’ll goto with the saurus or something while i’m talking. Andy, another word to invite andi, teo contribute, but you can’t use that either, because i just did to something that you may have said or add on, you can’t use that either a andy, you work with a lot of non-profits do you see? What were some symptoms? You see where people, about your you’re in a difficult position of having to say it’s, not really technology it’s you. But you know what are some other symptoms? You see where people are blaming technology erroneously? Well, i think i found the sea. It was people were repeating a process that air doing a process in a way that is no longer optimal it’s sort of a habit that folks have gotten into that can be done more efficiently. So i think of things way report we mentioned something like expensive fi, which helps people track expenses, and so the you were tools. Now, it’s an app on your phone to take a photo of an expense report you can start to capture data that way the older way, you know, taking the stuffing the receipt into a folder or into your bag, and then digging it out once a month and going through the grueling process of no king in the details is a process that doesn’t have to happen. So for my perspective, i see people missing that chance to take advantage of some of the newer tools that left the more differently. And since many folks they’re carrying around, you know a phone that has a camera on it. Let’s, let’s, use that camera in a useful way to save the taiping time. Yeah, people just don’t know. So that’s. Why this buyer’s guide, my phrase, is it’s my show so that’s it that’s, the explanation that’s. Why this buyer’s guide is so valuable because it opens you up to things, you know, you see things that you’re doing manually, that you don’t need to anymore, you can be questioned, your processes that that’s important, right? Yeah, i did, and i think that’s actually hoping way. Think, yeah, has folks get a new system and explore what system will work for them? That’s a prime time to look, look at your processes, do some process mapping, which i find a fun exercise of, you know, working on a a dry erase board with lots of markers and post it notes and things to sort of figure out who’s doing what win in this process. How can we redesign this so that we’re doing less work, and we’re getting the information we need quicker. Okay, that’s, an excellent leading to what i actually want to talk about next, which was how to get into selecting a new system. Um, who’s, uh, because because workflows, you know, mapping your workflows is a part of that. Who wants to speak to that? Most eloquently, i’ll let you decide amongst yourself. Okay. That’s. That’s. Good. So i’m gonna point. Parenti graham okay. Congratulations. With democracy of two eyes is frozen. Frances. No wonder we have trouble united states. Fifty million. Okay, that gets it in the report that there may be drilled down on one or two that i think are important way. Ok? Yeah, we’ll stay. We’re not goingto yeah, we’re not gonna talk about all the way can’t do that. I tell you what, i’ll let you let you think about thea the couple i’ll walk through the first one or two and then you can mention one or two that are important to you. And you can give some thought to that while we take this break bradunas cps, they’ve got an archive webinar that may pique your interest. Prepare your nine ninety for success. If you are one of the fortunate organizations that delights in completing the full nine ninety. Not that sissy easy or the end postcard, but the full then you want to listen to wagner’s advice? The webinar includes common mistakes and most damaging mistakes. Obviously the ones you mostly want to avoid. It’s all at wagner cpas dot com click resource is than webinars now time for tony’s. Take two. You will join this club. I joined about six months ago. It’s the, uh, it’s the dead parents club. And i have found that people who have lost parents, i know it. This is there’s a bond there’s an empathy and an understanding that i did not have before i lost my mom last october. And now when i talk to people who are in the club, um, i feel it, you know, and i realized that i just never really understood the magnitude of it. Of course, you know, you heal over time and you learn to accommodate and accept over time. But i just it’s become apparent to me over these five months. So november, december, jerry fremery much, five, six months that the people who have lost a parent, they just get it at a level that all the rest don’t. And yeah, i just became very clear to me while i was having a chat with a friend who had lost a father three years ago. So you’ll join the club and i hope it’s many years before you do my video on this. Is that tony martignetti dot? Com now let us return teo karen graham and andy wolber for idealware is release of when i called buyer’s guide selecting financial management software for your for your non-profit karin t graham is executive director of idealware and andy wolber is a technology consultant to non-profits ok, karen, you did your homework for ah, for that time. Okay, cool. Thank you. So talk about all this. We’re not doing all that now. I told you, we’re not doing what we’re not doing, all these people going to get the report and it’s important to put this in context. So we have thirty steps that happened before you even start looking at potential solutions. Okay, that is step for the first three are about getting the right people at the table and making sure that you understand your current situation you needs and requirements before you start looking at software options. Okay? And then there was the work of a mistake that i think a lot of people make they jump right into looking at the products, and then they become very oriented toward which product has the coolest bells and whistles. And they’re not thinking about which product is. The best fit for our needs? Yes, they’re not aligning, right, right. That is critical. So you’ve got to do your research up front before you start looking at packages and getting demos and, you know, being wooed by sales people. Um, andy, that was a very good overview. Thank you, karen. Okay, and you’re gonna get people are gonna get the report for god’s sake. They’re gonna goto idealware dot or ge it’s either gonna be on the home page or they’re going to go to go the search box and search the word financial it’s free for pizza. Just get it, andy let’s, go back to the workflows how does how does mapping workflows relate to your your search for a new financial management system? Well, i think it really is about that time both the folks who need operational data and the folks needs or decision making data and looking at how information’s getting into your system and then coming out on a recording size. So on the input side, things like you’re tracking expenses, you know, if we can simplify that process that’s fantastic if we can simplify payroll so we’re not recoding that each time. I go in and be properly allocated. That’s. Fantastic. If we can pull donordigital into the system in appropriate ways appropriate permission that’s useful. And then on the reporting side can the program majors the staff get the information they need? The board have the ability to look at information. How rapidly does that cycle time occurred? You are bored still dealing with princessa reports air they logging in and looking how our systems, howard decisions about financial matters being tracked and recorded or discuss um that’s where process mapping comes into play and that’s why it’s so important to get all the people who touched the different aspects of that process involved in the selection. And then? And then, as you’re mapping what happens, you see gaps where technology can fill in or what? How does it contribute to the the well with the report identifies as the next step which is starting to look at software solutions. How does mapping relate to the software you identify? Pain point. Okay. Okay. So process mapping is is what are we spending a ton of time on that? Yeah. It’s really painful. So things like we’re spending x amount of time. You know, every month, every year, doing program allocations were spending way too much time trying to understand or put together a report for a donor, our thunder, in order to appropriately say, here’s, how we spent your dollars sort, that sort of fiduciary responsibility grant recipient has so it’s it’s that piece where you’re saying, you know, we’re burning a lot of staff time and effort on this. How do we start to fix that? And looking at then what? You know, what does that make? What if we were to alleviate that peace? If we automate payroll, if we automate expense tracking, if we automate or streamline different processes? Um what? What benefit have what does that free up that let’s? Just start to think about other things. Aunt checker, tackle other challenges. You okay? So i i understand now. Thank you. You see, this workflows on the on the board and you nine people are involved in it, and it takes weeks to produce. And you know that that kind of a pain point. Exactly. Okay. Okay. Cool. Alright, now. Something interesting? No, no. Shutter mike off. No, you cannot. I said you cannot use that word. Again, i don’t want to hear it. Yes, you can. You can you can mention something related. Please, please do i will another way. That process mapping can be helpful is to prevent you from replicating a bad process in a new system. So as an example, let’s say you map out this process and you get to a step where mary makes a photocopy of the expense report and filed it in a certain place in the basement, right? And when you’re doing the process mapping, you can ask the question, why did she do that? Why is that necessary? And you might find out that there’s really no reason to do that anymore. Maybe there was five years ago, but now it’s not anymore necessary. So then you won’t look for software package that makes that process easier. You’re just goingto eliminate that. Ok, ok, i’m giving you a time out because you use the word chime when i admonished you. Not too. So i’m going to andy. I was going to ask you this question i was going to, but now i’m not you’re in time out. Um okay, andy a cz you’re considering these systems and something new and how it relates to what you were existing systems are. The report makes clear that they don’t always all play well together. And yeah, and you’re not going to talk to me because i put karen in time out, so you’re not going to speak to me. Is that what is that? What i’m hearing? You know, you can hear me. All right? I hear you. Fine. Yeah. Ok. You’re not punishing me because i will just shut the show down. It’s, over it’s over. Okay, i’ll just start reading. I’ll just read. I’ll just read the guy that people don’t have to download. I’ll just start reading. We’ll put people to sleep. Okay, theo audiobook that’s, right? Ah, produced your notebook. Yeah. Then i’ll have. Then i’ve licensing troubles with either way. I don’t get involved with those people on illegal and in a legal battle anyway. All right, so you need to think about compatibility, right? Yeah. You need to look at what? What other system needs to speak to? So there’s a couple things that when you’re looking for a new system that may naturally walk you down a particular path, and sometimes it is simplest to stick with with with a vendor that makes him the adjacent product. So something that already is designed to track your donor? Management, maybe they also make a financial package, right? Like blackbaud damn well blackbaud sounds force is one of the classics are examples of this with things like razor’s edge, which is the donor management system covered in the other guide you mentioned, and then financial edge next-gen which is designed to work well with its other tools. So if you’re in a circumstance where you have ah, don’t particular donorsearch system it naturally lends itself to work well with another that’s that’s a particular case, thie other is some systems that you may be dealing with, where you’re dealing with a system installed on server many vendors that used to offer those now offer a posted or cloudy alternative, so it may be that you can stick with the system from the same the same similar software you’re familiar with, but a different package or solution from that vendor that gives you a little more flexibility and ability to access data. But you i think that the report says you just want this to be one factor, right? You don’t want to go, okay? We have sales force for constituent relationship management, so we’re going to do sales force. For financial management, and we’re not going to look at anything else. You don’t want that to you. I want to go that way either, right, right. It should be a just simply be a factor that as a system for consideration to your list, okay, you really have to consider a much broader range of things, okay, i understand. All right, i just, you know, you don’t just automatically go now. What about help with financial enough, with the transition once we’ve selected, ah, vendor, can we reasonably ask for help with the data migration? Is that a fair game? That will depend to some extent on the coolest the system you’re moving toward most of the as you basically is. You get larger in scale and the price point the ladder. Um, you do have the ability to get vendors. They are familiar and can help you move data from one system to another. In other cases that you know what you’re you’re a very small sort of grassroots agency, and you’re just using your going from track and stuff and excel or just your bank account statements to something, you’re less likely to be able to get that help. But often you can turn to a you know, turning your accountant turn to a professional firm that can help you with that transition is you get a little larger. Okay. Okay, karen, you’re you’re aah! All right, you’re out. Um, let’s, talk about the so the this transition, the when is the good time to make the transition? What this this whole transition process is going to look like from from our existing to our new financial management system. Most of the people that we talk to as experts for this report suggested that it’s best to do it at the beginning of a new fiscal year. And but that also might mean that you will be running the new system in the old system and parallel for a little while as a way of testing to make sure that everything’s working correctly. And they also suggested that an organization should plan maybe three to six months lead time before they’re cut over date for the transition time period. So it’s going to take awhile to train the users, make sure that everything is configured correctly and test everything running parallel. That that sounds like that’s. A pretty time intensive deal is running two systems parallel. Well, it is, but your financial data is pretty important that it’s accurate. So many organizations will decide that it’s worthwhile to do the extra effort of double entry to have the confidence that it’s absolutely accurate. Okay, okay, i see, and how long would you do that? I think that varies. You’d have to evaluate, you know, how important is it to do a really thorough test? How much work is it for me? You know, if i was to do this, that idealware i would probably do it for a couple of days. Honestly, they’re pretty simple. And the stakes are fairly low for us. But if i were, say, the humane society of the united states, i might plan a little more than a few days. Okay. Yeah, you were alright. So all right, just gonna value on complexity. Which andy is a point that andy made earlier too. Okay, we have ah, fair amount of time left. I feel like we should get to the gate to the landscape of of systems, can you? Karen, can you? Ah found now i’m feeling bad that i put in time out. I never i don’t think i’ve done that before. I get to first, but so i’m now i’m feeling bad about it. So i’m sorry i made i made do it may do it again. I’m not sorry enough to not never do it again but so don’t transgress. But are you can you talk? About sort of an overview of the of the marketplace before we get to a couple of specifics. Sure, there are a number of systems that we covered that have all of the core functionality that you would expect in a financial management system, including the general ledger like, which is just tracking all the transactions in and out expenses, and, um, and income and things like that. It will also generate the three most important standard report that people use for financial management, the balance sheets, the income statements and the cash flow statement of cash flow or cash flow projection. And so you know, those all those systems that are in the first section of system listings in the guide i’ll have that basic functionality. Some of them also have some additional features that are a little more advanced, like payroll management, yeah, budget planning, more advanced reporting and coding and allocations. And and then there also is a group of tools that we thought was worth covering, even though they’re not specifically for nonprofit organizations and those are either low cost or even free services that are fairly simple, and they’re designed more for like freelancers entrepreneurs. Small businesses, but some non-profits have actually found them to be a good fit for their needs, too. We’re going, we’re going to move to a break, andy, while while we take this short break, i’m going to ask you, teo, reflect upon what karen just said and see if there’s anything additional you’d like to add. Gotta take a break, tell us credit card payment processing this’s, a long tale of passive revenue for you, you encourage local businesses that are already supporting you. Most likely they take credit cards. Will they move their payment processing over? To tell those tell us, of course, will look at their existing payment structure and give them a proposal with most likely lower fees. When they make the change to tell us you the non-profit earned fifty percent of telesis revenue for every single transaction indefinitely. Check out the video it’s at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us for this long tale of passive revenue. Now let’s, go back to financial management software, the financial management software show with cannon andy, andy, anything that your reflection leads you to want teo add into what karen said. Sure, the thing that most notable for me in that first category of of system is that there’s a whole set of things that have moved from being client server to now hosted or or clouds those very clear distinctions answer how their systems are being offered. The he think in all of the systems to also keep an eye out for is the cloud. They are more advanced, incapable of supporting any sort of eyes, eyes. Something to look for. An fbi application programming interface for flandez programme and solution exchange information with programs and applications from other vendors. Okay, so a key thing to look for it, you know, what is this the vendor list that the system’s integrate with? Some of them have taken the step of having things like a sore. Where you concerned? Browsing looked for all the integration. So i’m looking for a payroll system. Hey, guess what? It works with the payroll vendor we used so that’s that so that sort of thing is, this is a first big step in that in that larger service system solution category. Ok. Thank you. Um, so let’s in our in our closing several minutes or so, let’s, let’s, talk about some of the individual ones. Now, karen, i do want to ask you how come in this report, uh, buyer’s guide. There isn’t. There isn’t one of those colorful charts like i was describing for the c r m that first brought me to idealware four, five years ago. How come, how come not not in this report? This is the first time that idealware has really covered this topic in death, and so we wanted to start by just looking at the landscape and helping people understand what their choices are and what the major points of differentiation might be that’s not to say that we won’t do something more in depth at some point. If there turns out to be a demand for that, then we well could. But this actually does use a little different methodology than a consumer report where we’re doing demonstrations of all the tools were working with the vendors to verify that all the information we write about them is factually accurate. That sort of thing is a little more involved process that we didn’t undertake at this first past looking at financial management system. So so the argast so this is the inaugural financial management system report, and you chose to publicly release it on non-profit radio. This is this is a double a double big deal. It’s your first one. No. Yeah. Listen to that enthusiasm, boy. Oh, knocking me over. Oh, my god. All right. Um ok. I get enough enthusiasm for all three of us. So that’s all right? I’m amusing myself. Um, okay. Eso are we comfortable naming a couple of these? You got you got abila financial edge. And you mentioned that one financial force fundez easy. How should we what’s the best way? I mean, i didn’t. I guess i didn’t really want to go. I item by item one of the features of this feature that you know, but how should we, uh, andy, i’ll defer to you, you’re you deal with a lot of zsystems what’s the best way to get people acquainted with the, uh, the landscape across these that we haven’t already done. Yeah, well, you know, actually using approach it took when it first started trying to sort some of this out. Okay, i think there’s some logical appearing now say that they can’t be used with other systems. Um, i think the system i’m most likely to see organizations use is some variant of quickbooks, right, that’s, that’s widely used. So i think you set that aside, start to look at them. You zsystems probably naturally lend themselves working well with partner systems. So things like financial force, which would pair very well with sales force because built on the same core platform, microsoft dynamics, which would be very strong if you’re working in that saying microsoft, cr, m, world and zsystems and then in financial edge obviously pairs well with blackbaud so those those sorts of solutions, you know, and then you start to move more towards a range of other things, you know, things like sage intact, which is many people will be familiar with because of it. That’s one of the solutions that epa dot com has endorsed on dh support so things like like that’s, our cloud solution would be familiar to many accountants across the country that would be likely helping organization. And then you move to the smaller set of all the smaller, more start up sorry they’re beyond start up in a blanket, but they’re still in there not not as wide market traction necessarily as those others and what gets interesting. They’re sort of the small business models pricing model, very significantly pricing it’s, less expensive. Well, it’s, just it gets interesting. So you look at things like freshbooks which is structured in charging by the number of clients you were tracking in the system. Kiss you, which is adding bundling for a fee of software plus access to a bookkeeper on a monthly basis. Uh, wave which is free, but charges based on a percentage of your financial transaction xero which is cloud native and really focused on building out a lot of connection. Tow hundred, the different system. So those types of zoho books which is more of a part of a bundle there, wanting to sell your old bundle of things that make your needs what’s interesting to meet is how the larger, more established, typical systems are embracing cloud and starting trying to evolve to add connections. And the smaller one are tryingto rapidly iterated in order to serve, to provide more robust services and more built out systems. So that’s for me that’s. What makes this landscape interesting? Yeah. Okay, so the bigger ones are trying to collaborate more. And the smaller ones are trying to get be more robust in and more comprehensive. Exactly. And the rate at which each does does those things is really fascinating. There’s a there’s. A sidebar. I think it is on on pricing. Some. Some are very upfront. And the prices are clear on the on their site. And you can get started immediately with a credit card and then others. They’re not transparent about pricing. Yeah, this is something i find very interesting, i think. It’s symptomatic of a little bit of serve. What? I reference just just now, the traditional vendors have been able to do the survey, you know, call us, you know, sort of the please inquire if you’re interested. If you have to ask about price, you’re not really, you know, it’s, you know, you need to be large enough to be able to have that conversation. Um, the more forward thinking cloud native systems and some are evolving rapidly are more transparent about providing price. There is a bit of irony and some of this i find that some of these vendors will you look at their sight and you say, oh, you know, buy-in pricing financial information is very important, and then you look for pricing and you can’t find it, which seems to be a very critical piece of priceless information to me. Yeah, all right. So some just they want to have a conference. They want to have a conversation with a sales person, in some cases in others it’s also about making sure the system system and really meet your needs so it can be for useful and constructive purposes. Not completely unreasonable, but but absolutely but it’s, very interesting, metoo to the vendors. They’re cheating the public pricing and that’s that, well, they still need to have that conversation right. We just have about two minutes left. Karen, how do you feel about systems that are specifically designed for non-profits versus systems that are not like a quick books? You have an opinion on those on that one versus the other. If i were just to be randomly assigned it non-profit and i had to advise them on which three products they should take a look at, um, i might say without knowing anything about them, i made say, let’s, look at three that are built for nonprofit organizations, but but that’s not to say that the ones that are built for kind of general purpose can’t be a good fit. So in some cases, especially where they need, they’re pretty simple. Those can actually be a very affordable and practical option. Okay, okay. Um, let’s see, we just have, like, a minute or so left. Andy, you want to you want to give me a closing thought, andy in ah, in about thirty seconds. We’re lucky to have a lot of options. Understand your need. Oh, and, uh, be open, tio, rethinking how you work and making sure that your financial system is working for you and that you’re not just putting data into the system to create reports. Yes, thank you. I love especially be be willing to rethink that’s. Andy wolber, technology consultant to non-profits he’s at a wolber and wolber works dotcom guarantee. Graham, would you like tio wrap up in about twenty seconds since andy covered that i want to go in a little different direction and say that, you know, every non-profit leader is expected to understand the basics of financial management, like they need to know how to interpret a balance sheet. Um, but there’s not as much of an expectation that they know how to select software and how to get the most out of their software investment, i think that’s something that needs to change, and i hope that by reading this guide that non-profit leaders will be able to acquire some of those skills. All right, get the report for god’s sake idealware dot or ge on the home page or search for the word financial and those closing words from karin t graham, executive director of idealware she’s at guarantee graham idealware is at idealware dot or ge, thanks to you both. Thank you, my pleasure. Next week, a conversation with adam braun, founder of pencils of promise. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled tony dahna, slash pursuant to radio weinger cpas, guiding you beyond the numbers when you’re cps, dot com and tell those credit card payment processing your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tell us. Ah, creative producers claire meyerhoff, sam liebowitz is here is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez. On our music is by scott stein of brooklyn. With me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking alternative network to get into thinking. Dahna good duitz are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi. I’m nor ing. Sometimes the potentially ater tune in every tuesday line to ten eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Beyond potential live life your way on talk radio dot n y c. Are you feeling unhappy with your body, shape or size? Ever feel out of control with food? I’m elizabeth from nourish the soul, and on the show, you’ll uncover the route to these imbalances and discover a permanent solution. Latto having a healthy relationship to food and your body. Join us every thursday morning at eleven a, m eastern time on talk radio dot. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? 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Listen, live at our new time on thursdays at twelve noon eastern time. That’s, the conscious consultant, our awakening humanity, thursday’s twelve, noon on talk radio dunaj n y c. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oh, hyre!

Nonprofit Radio for May 5, 2017: Idealware New Release!

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Karen Graham: Idealware New Release!

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Schnoll hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I come down with high potro pia, if i saw that you missed today’s show idealware new release, karen graham, executive director, would idealware announces their new publication to help you use technology smarter. She has a discount for non-profit radio listeners, you need to know this organization and it’s valuable work and this new resource antonio, take two sexual harassment in non-profits we’re sponsored by pursuing two full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, wee bey e spelling dot com i am so pleased to have karen graham back on the show and in the studio this time she’s a sort after speaker, trainer, writer and consultant with expertise in technology, leadership and innovation non-profit software and digital strategy. As idealware sze, executive director, she leads a team of researchers, presenters and writers who create technology information resource is to help non-profit leaders put their vision into action thereon idealware dot or ge and she’s at karin t gram. Welcome guarantee, graham. Thanks, tony. That’s. A pleasure to have you in the studio this time. What’s the tea for the tea and karen tigre off. Theresa theresa now, karen teresa? Yes, we must. Yes. Ok. Last time you were on the show was from sixteen and t c the non-profit technology conference last year. And you were talking about virtual order eggs idealware is a virtual organization. And you were talking about how to manage that tell us about idealware i really think this is something that i mean we highlighted you made you idealware listener of the week a month, a couple months ago or so. And i really do that for organizations it’s, usually for people. But idealware is outstanding. Tell us i need to know more about how extending it is. Thanks. I think it’s outstanding tio it’s a great place to work and that really a privilege to lead idealware but so here’s, what we do, we are a small nonprofit organization, and we also exist to serve small non-profits actually non-profits of all sides. But i think that the smaller ones that don’t have a lot of internal resource is about technology that don’t have people on their staff can stand to benefit the most from what we dio and are we talking about something like eighty five or ninety percent of non-profits exactly, i mean, this this show is a big non-profit agent for the other ninety five percent when we know that upper five percent has these professionals that you’re talking about, but i don’t know, maybe the other may be a small percentage of the other ninety five does does also, but not very money, right? Well, and we we know, i think your listeners probably understand that technology is really important for non-profits heard rumors to that effect on the show you so hopefully i don’t have to persuade people of that, but but we also know that a lot of non-profits, especially the smaller ones, really struggle to tap into the power of technology and it’s because they’re lacking the knowledge and the skills, and the resource is to really take advantage of it, and so idealware tries to be part of the solution to that, and so the core of what we do is impartial research on technology for the nonprofit sector and i’m gonna stop you at the impartial research partner. Do you object to me saying that you’re the consumer reports of non-profit technology? Some of my colleagues might object to that a little bit, but i think that’s a great shorthand way of describing what i do bilich dahna certainly all the feature you don’t take advertising companies don’t donate their software to you. I don’t think for evaluation do they just do not donate it all right? Ah, so your objective in that respect on dure i think your reviews are my voice just cracked reviews are just as comprehensive, and we’re going to talk about that exciting. We’re gonna talk about that in the announcement. That’s coming up, but yeah, i mean, you’re impartial objective. I’ve been citing idealware reports for years before we met before, i really was familiar with what idealware was just years ago on the show, because someone mentioned one of your reports. That was it was a comparison i think of of donorsearch hannes mint software or it might have been fund-raising software, but but i went through and i read the report and i saw the chart with all the bullets of different features, and it talked about features that you might need based on the size of your organisation and it just since then it struck me as very similar to consumer and just as valuable as consumer reports. People tell me all the time that they have that kind of experience where they’ve come across one of our consumers guides and you’re talking about the consumer’s guide to low cost donorsearch zsystems which is now and it’s, maybe fourth or fifth edition. I am that’s why i’m talking, you have to tell me what i’m talking about, and i rarely know. We just released the twenty seventeen edition in partnership with an ten a few weeks back, you know? Why aren’t you called the non-profit technology network? Well, it’s where they stole it, you should be the non-profit technology network. I don’t think that you know amy amy’s on the show every month, she’s, our social media contributor. Yeah, and there should be a social technology non-profit technology network, not them. Well, they’re they’re the network because their membership organization and idealware is not some of the misconceptions that people have about us, is we’re? We’re not a membership organization. And we also don’t do one on one consulting with non-profits i guess our bottle is more like a publisher in that we’re trying teo create some economies of scale in doing research and creating publications and resource asses that can benefit lots and lots of people, and so much of your your content is free. Yes, we’re not what we’re about to announce. Although we got a discount for this into the cracked voice, we’ve got discount for non-profit radio listeners coming up teasing, but but so much of your content like that survey. But you said i was talking about for five years and consumer guide that was free. I mean, i just went on your website, someone had referred me to it, and we talked about it on the show, right? So so much of your content is free and on our website, people also find workbooks that guide them through different kinds of decision making processes. Right now, we’re working on a new work book, which will come out in another month or two about developing security and bring your own device policies so it’s not just software that idealware covers it’s also policies and best practices and so that’s maybe the difference between idealware and consumer reports okay, that we’re not just doing reviews, but we’re also trying to help people get the most out of the technology that they have with policies and administrative practices things right? So you’re more you’re more robust than your consumer reports, plus that’s a policy in his administration best practices more than all right, all right. Let’s ah, that’s how we want to do this let’s go out for our break a little early when we come back we’ve got the big announcement the major announcement major announcement of the new uh, the new guide on dh then we’re gonna talk through it 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 t i g e n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website. Philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Dahna welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent guaranty graham, karen, theresa graham you have a major announcement major a love letter could say major award was not a major war, but you have a major announcement. What is the publication that is brand new that idealware has it’s the field guide to software for non-profits excellent twenty seventeen version yes isn’t even is even available now. It is now available on amazon, amazon, and i’m excited to say that this year, for the first time, it will be available as a kindle ebook as well as a paper version. Congratulations technology organisation uses smart use of technology all right, so we wanted to do that for a while. So so it is the field guide to software for non-profits, and we have a discount graciously provided by idealware if if you go for non-profit radio listeners, if you go to idealware dot org’s slash non-profit radio couldn’t be simpler. That’s a idealware dot org’s slash non-profit radio you will get the discount. The instructions are right there, and we’re going to say that multiple times throughout the show. Congratulations on the twenty seventeen field guide. Now, this is an updated version of previous work-life s we have published this book before, but it’s been a few years, and so this year we just went through every single word of it, and we checked all the research and updated a lot of thing things. And so this is significantly different than the previous version because, as you know, technology that changes so fast that a book from twenty fourteen is hardly even relevant anymore. So, almost even last year, it’s. Too early last year. Now the field guide. This reminds me of something i had in boy scouts and boy scouts. I had a field guide where it taught how to build a fire. Proper use of an axe. Ah, so it reminded me of my boy scout field guide years is there’s a little thinner? My boy scouts. Well, my boyfriend’s got field guy was more compact page size wise, but it was a it was a fatter thing. Well, and it’s it’s not unlike that kind of field guide, i think. And in two ways one, your maximum ship in there. I don’t know how to build a city teepee. Fire versus log cabin. Fire, you have that we don’t have, you don’t have that. But but we’ve got all the basics of forty some different categories of software in here, but i think the way it’s like that kind of field guide is that it’s it’s, fairly lightweight it’s ah, how many pages is this? About a hundred ninety pages? And so it’s not going to go in depth on any particular subject, just like, you know, with building a fire, you’re not goingto read about all about the history building fires and, you know, three hundred different ways to build fires in different conditions similar to that this is going to spend maybe two or three pages on each category of software, but it will give you everything you need to know on the fly. And and then, of course, if you want to dig deeper into a specific topic, there are lots of other resource is like our consumer guides that will help you do that. Okay, all right, fair enough, it’s also, i think, like like a traditional boy scout field guide or other kinds of field guides in that it’s useful for people who have a lot of experience. But also for beginners. Okay, that is important, right? So you don’t have to be ah, a tech geek, teo, to benefit from field guide, right? And likewise, in my scout longfield gotta remember, boy scouts was founded by i mean, it did have a history, but baden powell latto buy-in powers, the founder of boy scouts. I forget the year i actually even i figure this century, but, ah, lord powell. Nonetheless, um you are probably often asked what is the best software for human resource is or fund-raising management or accounting? And that that doesn’t that doesn’t sit so well. It’s not that’s not a valuable question to ask, is it? Have we talked about this before? I think we either have or i’m just very insightful, so let’s just assume the ladder i’m from the midwest, and so when people ask me questions that i think are stupid, i usually don’t say so outright, okay? I didn’t say stupid i tried to be very nice about it, but i said i’m not the most valuable or helpful question, but honestly, when people ask me what’s the best fund-raising software example inside, i’m thinking that is the wrong question, but the right question is, what is the best fund-raising software for me or for my organization? And that answer will be different for every organization s o that that’s a really key component of idealware approach is that we don’t say which software is the best, but rather we help people make that decision for themselves by understanding a lot of detail about their own requirements. What is possible to do with software and then what they’re different options are and what the strengths and weaknesses of different systems might be. And you have a whole section in the book devoted to selection, selection and implementation, and i’m going to take a little romp through the the table of contents cause i want people to see we’re going to do this. I’m going to just a couple times through the show, but i just wanted people to get an idea of the breath of what’s in this what’s in the field guide me so there’s there’s, a major section on back office and productivity and within that there’s accounting and credit card zsystems document management, email calendar, fire file, back-up recovery firewalls, hr office management, then there’s, a major section on analytics analyzing your organization’s data. Ah analyzing paper data, custom reporting tools, dashboards, maps and geographical information measuring social media, online listening program evaluation. All right, so we’re going to stop there for now, but that’s just a couple of the major sections. I mean, other section collaboration, constituent management. So i just said, we’re gonna stop there and i kept going, but so i get, you know, i’m excited by this because the the number of topics you cover and the depth and then there’s a section on helping you helping choose and in and within each of the conversations, the topics you’re talking about, if you’re small organisation with under a thousand records or a certain budget, you know, this might make more sense than if you’re a larger organizations with a thousand twenty five thousand records, etcetera or larger, you know you’re breaking it down so there’s great value here i want people to understand that, alright discount idealware dot org’s slash non-profit radio okay, and don’t forget the case studies too. I think that’s an important part of this book we start right towards the beginning with three case studies and there’s a fourth one at the end in the implementation section and those what we found is that those were able to put it all together. Those hypothetical yes, hypothetical, but realistic. Yes, syria is very important. Footnote. I was trained in law school. Always read the footnotes hypothetical but realistic. I mean, put together by you by obviously, by the team that wrote this and idealware yeah, right, but they’re all of the scenarios and there are based on riel organization, but we’ve used a little bit of poetic license, i suppose. Okay, you’re out about it. I mean, not you. Well, you’d buried in footnote, but i mean it. Sze imprint, right? Its imprint. You’re right. They are hypothetical case studies, but i think that they help people. Teo, imagine themselves in that situation and think about all the different kinds of software and kinds of decisions about technology that they need to make. All right, all right. That’s going to aa detail now that we know that there is no best package in each of these areas, it depends on your organization. All right. Um, you’ve got a section on what every organization needs. I mean, there seems to be basic. Not what package or what system or whether online. Oh, our cloud based or installed is better. No, not that. But basic areas of function that it seems like every non-profit should be using technology in. Right? All right. So let’s, let’s, let’s, cover a couple. Those like you start with a back office. Productivity. What are some that just every organization ought to be using. Well, just about every organization needs. Some way to manage their files to do file back-up things like that. They also need an e mail system for internal office emails, so and calendars ofthis software for word processing, spreadsheets, things like that. So that’s that’s the type of thing that falls under this category and now, if you’re gonna have email, you’re obviously online, so you’re going to need virus protection, right? And probably should be looking at firewalls to okay, okay, um, and the reason we put that first is because if that stuff isn’t an order, it’s not really worth while to be paying attention to some of the communications and outreach tools it’s it’s like trying to paint your walls when your basement is flooded? Um, you know, there’s just kind of a hierarchy of needs that non-profit has have when it comes to technology, and so you need to take care of the back office and make sure that that stuff is is just working well, you have a solid internet connection, that sort of thing first as a foundation for everything else, let’s not go too far on the home improvement metaphors, because i’m a cz good at that, as i am at sports, which i confused the other day the field goal i thought that was baseball, so i thought that was the three pointer so let’s not go too far get agreed. I’ve tried to repair toilets, i had to replace the handle and i end up cracking the tank. I didn’t have to take it off, but when i put it back on, i tightened it too hard and the islamic cracked unaided old toilet for the for the five, ninety nine handle i was trying to replace aunt, of course a plumber to go with it, so let’s end the home improvement and metaphors and don’t start on sports. Alright, alright, but those constraints okay, so, you know, a lot of times i get the question how do we get to the next level? And some of these basic tools are that? I mean, if you’re if you if you don’t have a good file management system, if you’re working with more than one person, if your organization is more than one person, you need to be file sharing files and they’d be backing them up. So, you know, how do you get to the next level? You need to have this. I don’t want you the word foundation these basics because the foundation is the bottom of the house, so but you need to have these basics before you can get to the next level. Okay, let’s, go a little further on some basics like you talk about the analytics measuring how effective the organization is, right and that that is often the next place that organizations go because using data well is something that can have a huge impact on an organization’s ability to deliver on their mission. Once you’ve got those those fundamentals taken care of, then they’re often moving, too. Um, you know, what kind of tools do we need in place to collect data to manage data and then to report on it and use it to tell our story, but also to make decisions about the organization from day to day about, like, how do we allocate resources? How do we do future planning dahna can help with all of that, and so we cover a number of analytics tools and dahna presentation tools in here, ok, can help with that let’s move to the all important area of fund-raising donor relationship management, things like that, what is most likely needed in place for that stuff and that’s actually, the area that i probably know most about when i was a consultant, i did a lot of software selection process passes with organizations that we’re looking at donorsearch sustainers or grants management systems are or, you know, whatever the appropriate system was for their type of organization. And, you know, these days, almost no one can manage their constituent dahna and excel anymore and it’s becoming more and more risky, i think, to use a customized system, especially as a smaller organization, because the cost of that the cost of ownership for that and the limitations of it can often be really unattractive compared to cloud based systems. And so that you will find in a lot of idealware is work, including in this book, that we tend to nudge these smaller organizations toward software’s, the service and cloudgood based solutions you do especially for data management. Yeah. Okay. Why’s, that why’s our preference for those you think for the smaller or eggs. Well, it’s, there are much more robust features for security. For one thing, i mean that’s, not something. That a lot of people think about straight off, but i do because i want everybody’s data to be secure and well backed up, and so when you’re using a cloud based system, the the level of back-up insecurity is usually much more than any non-profit could afford on its own if they were doing that in house. And so i mean, really, if you are hit by hurricane and you like your office floods, i don’t know you lose electricity, whatever, you can’t access anything there, then if you have a cloud based system, you can go to another location and log in and immediately you have access to everything again. So that’s just one example. Not that people are facing hurricanes very often. Well, the midwest girl tornadoes, it can happen. It could just be a power outage in your local areas are in your office, but your home is okay. Or you can get to somewhere else. Someone else’s home and operate from there. Or you can use your battery and still work. Or maybe your computer just crashes and then you lose a bunch of stuff. If it’s not well backed up, you know. So it was just nice to have all that taking care of it’s also, i think at the then he just for a small organization, teo, just try to take advantage of tools that have been developed based on the most common needs of non-profits like yours and people have a tendency to think that they’re they’re really special, and they are they’re all special, but but sometimes there needs as non-profits or not as unique as we believe they are, and ultimately it can be more effective to just adjust your business processes and your expectations a little bit in order to take advantage of inexpensive, easy to use tools that exist that probably addressed ninety percent of your needs and the rest, you have to question whether those air true needs or if they’re just preferences, ok, you are right, and whether people processes might be able to just adapt right a bit. Now i know that there’s ah, a lot of hesitation to adapt people to the technology. The feeling is that the technology should be assisting us in the way we work. But, you know, if you have to compromise and ten percent of what you what the way you worked to get ninety percent of what you need. It seems like that would be a fair. There’ll be a fair trade off. Yeah, and i hold those two things intention all the time, you know, like, while i’m saying, just compromise and sort of go with with what everybody else is doing at the same time out of the other side of my mouth, i’m saying, like, no, you need to be innovative and on don’t just accept what everybody else is doing, do something different. So it’s, i don’t know some somewhere in between those two extremes is probably the right way. Okay, okay, um, and we’ve had we’ve had guests on actually from talking about subjects like what if your what if technology isn’t your problem? That was a good panel. I think that was from think that was from twenty fifteen. You know, where you’re blaming technology, but really it’s people, attitudes and culture that are your issue. And it was a bunch of software consultants, some of them two of them were our consultants for sales force. You know, help organizations implement sales force in their in their offices, and they were suggesting that, you know, technology can’t solve problems that are people based, i would say amen to that some of their speaking yes, yeah, that that’s part of the reason that in this book, we include the section about defining your needs and making comparisons and managing an implementation process, because there are so many people issues that can easily be overlooked there. And so here’s one example, i talked with an organization that had gotten new software maybe a year ago, and they were the executive director was so frustrated because nobody was using this new software, and i started to ask him questions about their process and, you know, like, who was involved in selecting the software who had input into this? And she said, well, it was it was a boardmember who just sort of did this as a project for us, and so they researched options, and they recommended a package, and then we just went with that, and so the staff who were the end users of the tool had no input into the process at all, and they felt that it was being imposed on them on dh, so of course they’re going to kind. Of dig in their heels and and not go along with that and because, first of all, they didn’t feel included, and secondly, it didn’t meet their needs the and they hadn’t had a chance to express those needs. And so there are a lot of things that you because they weren’t included, right? Yeah, there are a lot of things that you could do early on in a process like that that paved the way for user adoption down the road and that’s important because you could spend easily, like forty, fifty thousand dollars on a case management system, which is one of the categories that’s covered in the field guide just in the first year, and if people aren’t using it, that is a lot of money that’s being wasted and that’s a huge opportunity cost as well, because if you’re not using the software for what it’s intended to do, then you know, maybe you’re not serving people as well. Maybe you’re not getting good data about the impact of your work, and that inhibits your ability to raise money in the future. And, you know, there’s just like a lot of consequences to a bad software. Decision and a badly run implementation process if you want to find that that show that i was talking about the panel which deals with the issues that karen is just mentioning, i don’t know what we called it for sure, but i remember two of the guests that were on it, and i think one is an idealware adviser robert winer. Yes, right. He’s a good friend of ours. So you could go to tony martignetti dot com search. His last name, whiner w e i n e r and also tracy kronzak was on that panel. So k r o n t z a k. So if you searching through their names, you’ll find that that particular show um okay, let’s, let’s start to go into a little detail about your expertise, which is in the constituent relationship management and donor management system area, right of the of the book. Um, what’s ah, where should we? Where should we start when we’re talking about constituent relationship management? Well, probably idealware is most popular. Resource is air about donorsearch zsystems so that’s that’s maybe a good place to start because every non-profit organization, i think, has donors and so reserved about them to manage you won’t be an anarchist than all right, we’ll do it your way. Uh, is the donor management is a subset of considering management because they’re they’re wanting some of your donors and the others are vendors and employees and volunteers, right? All right, so you don’t know management let’s go there, let’s, go there. What do you want to know? Where, um i wanna take a break, and then we’ll compose our thoughts about dahna management systems and count and i will will continue very shortly. First, i need to talk about pursuant. They have their fund-raising camp coming up and this is a one day intensive on site. It will challenge the way you think about identifying major gift prospects and managing a portfolio and managing and managing a relationship pond leading up to your your solicitation you’re asked. I know you need to raise more money. I hear that all the time. And if you want to take your fund-raising to the next level, aside from software, obviously what we’re talking about all day today. But in addition to that, there are processes that you need and relationship management methods and that’s. What this boot camp will help you with and space is limited. They aren’t keeping it to a small group. It’s the fund-raising boot camp you go to pursuing dot com click resource is and then training we be spelling spelling bees for millennial fundraisers fund-raising it’s a night out to raise money for your organization this is not a night that is benefiting half a dozen organizations. These are custom made for you in your location and it’s not your seventh grade spelling bee with dance and stand up comedy and live music, et cetera. It’s all gets set up, it’ll get set up for you it’s your organization’s fund-raising night check out the video is that we be e spelling dot com and they get in touch with ceo alex career and you could find out more it’s all that we be e spelling now. Tony steak, too sexual harassment in the non-profit workplace i’m interested in what your experiences it’s, timely it’s in the news and i but i don’t see anybody talking about it with respect to non-profits, but pretty confident it’s there i blogged this not this exact topic in two thousand eleven, i blogged about sexism in the non-profit workplace not identical, i know that, but that’s the closest i’ve come to this topic before now, and this the stories were rampant. It was my most commented post that was back when i used to write block post now, of course, it’s all video, but it was the most commented post, so since it’s in the news, i’d like to bring it home to non-profits and i’m interested in aa hearing from victims hr professionals, attorneys richness is to something inappropriate. Anybody with an opinion about sexual harassment in the non-profit workplace let’s, talk about it. You can comment anonymously on the video i disabled the requirement for email address so you can do it anonymously, and the video is at tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two. Karen graham is the executive director of idealware idealware dot or ge she’s at karin t gram and i need to take my another romp through the contents of the field guide on section five collaboration board support software elearning file sharing internets and portals learning management systems online chat section six constituent management, which we’re about to talk about. Well, i was going to talk about it broadly, but karen anarchist so would do it her way. But there is a section on constituent relationship management, advocacy oriented cr, ems all in one case management donorsearch panitch mint systems volunteermatch judgment zsystems um fund-raising and events a major, major what’s their crowd funding a peer-to-peer fund-raising systems event, an auction management event registration foundation grants research, online auctions, online donations amazing. I’m just reading through the table of contents you’ve got to get this thing is the field guide two non-profit to software for non-profits and of course, your discount is at idealware dot or ge slash non-profit radio get the get the get the darn thing. Get the discount. You gotta have this thing. It’s an amazon forgot. Take him and that’s it. That doesn’t say anything, but you gotta have this lots of things on amazon that are worthless, but this is not among them. All right, thank you for indulging my romp through the contents, etcetera. Okay, so if we’re gonna talk about dahna management way, dont have to dive into that, you know, we’re not going back now. Now we’re not flip flopping. No use committed me. All right. Um, we need to use the book says for most of the ability to handle both gifts and pledges, including recurring gift that sounds pretty basic. We need to handle these things, right? Right, ok, where do we go? How do we decide or what should we be thinking about in determining what’s, our what’s, the best dahna management system for us? Well, some of the things that i think differentiate different fund-raising programs are how much they emphasize pledges and recurring gifts, although more and more, almost every non-profit is doing that these days. There also are some differences in these systems in terms of how they handle relationships, and i don’t know if that’s actually i don’t i don’t really see that highlighted here, but that’s something that i have personally found varies a little bit from one system to the next. So just to get a little more more specific on that let’s say that my husband and i are both involved in an organization we give jointly as a household, but i’m on the board of directors and he is not he volunteers for another particular activity, but i don’t, you know, so we each have our own individual relationship in preference is related to this organization. So it’s a rocky marriage, it’s not table, is not stable marriage it’s a great marriage, you know, but but partly because we sometimes do our own thing. And so organizations need constituent relationship management system that can honor people as individuals, but that can also treat them in some cases as a household. So that’s that’s a feature that i think it’s important to look at and see if that seems user friendly to you, you and and sort of meets your needs there. Another thing that might be a priority for some organizations and not for others is whether the system is is available not just available, but really functional on a mobile device so that’s essential. I mean, don’t we know, like something like seventy five or eighty five percent of emails or something are opened on mobile devices now and websites needs? I mean, if your website is not mobile response of your donation pages, not mobile responsive. I think you’re way behind the curve that’s his standard at this point, but i know that’s just elearning but let’s say, you know, i’m a development. Director, do i want to be able to look up a donor right before i’m going to meet with them while i’m on the train and just read a little bit about their history or after my meeting? Do i want to be able to log some notes and created follow-up task about that donor on my phone? Those are things that some systems support really well, and others really don’t, and you’re probably not going to find great support on a mobile device for complex reporting analytics assembling a mail merge, you know, that sort of thing is what you would rip out your desk, right? But but some of those things related to meetings and interactions with donors are some systems support that really well on mobile devices, and and others haven’t really made that a priority yet, i would say they’re probably all moving more in that direction. Okay, okay, um, credit cards, we gotta talk about credit card processing and often that is handled by a third party. So for example, i actually try not to name specific technology vendors very much when i when i talked like this because i don’t want to give the impression that idealware favors one over any of the others. But i will say the book has reviews, it does it doesn’t kayman number saying and think, yeah, yeah, also for credit card prices processing, i can tell you idealware has an account with authorized dot net as our payment processor and and that integrates with our donor management system and so that’s a very common way of doing it. You’ll have a payment gateway that actually handles the credit card processing. But then the data is shared with your donor zsystems and that’s, where all the records of the gifts and donors and histories live. Okay, i don’t want you holding out on non-profit radio listeners. I mean, the discount is very nice, but we gotta go beyond that’s. Just the money we get value. Okay, you’re not holding back. I won’t let you. Um, yeah. And the book actually is very clear about naming. Like i said, different different vendor’s alternatives. Pricing. What might be appropriate for your size organization, etcetera. Consumer reports, plus reports. Plus just report. Yes. Um, can we talk a little bit more in general about serum? Do you mind if we could just get me off! You took me off. Well, we’re just we’re lifting off. You know, we’re in the helicopter were just going up higher and metaphors flying. I don’t know what a pilot either. All right? Yeah. Let’s talk about you because i think you feel strongly about it. You tried before and i said no. And now you’re back to it a third time. Okay? I’m just going to keep pushing. We would like to say i i think it’s important to look at it. We could wrap latto out. Let’s, move to fund-raising. Go ahead. What do you want, it’s important to look at? The whole landscape of different kinds of serum. And one one choice that people have to make is do they have it all in one constituent relationship management system? Or do they have specialized tools for different purposes? So think about it non-profits constituents, their donors, clients or service recipients. You know, whatever that might mean for your organization patrons, maybe, maybe its members, volunteers. And there are a number of different kinds of constituents that non-profit is interacting with. And what about vendors? I mentioned vendors could be included in here. Definitely. Okay. Trustees mean there are higher level of volunteer, right? That’s. What? I think that’s should be treated as a separate constituency. Okay, so lots of i mean, there are probably thirty or forty different kinds of constituents that the car brainstorm if you took the time. So so one way to do it is to choose one tool like one. Great to rule them all. You know, one one tool that sort of does everything. And in the book, we describe that as the swiss army knife approach. So if you think about a swiss army knife it’s, a great multipurpose tool that you can put in your pocket. It’s, inexpensive, lightweight. If you need to build a house, you’re probably not gonna use a swiss army knife, right? Yeah. That’s. My problem about specialized tool when i try home improvement that’s my toolbox. Yeah, on the tweezers. I didn’t find very valuable for the toilet repair. Well, so if your needs are pretty simple and if simplicity is important and if a low cost is is really essential assed. Well, then that’s what’s army knife approach might actually be really great. I mean, it doesn’t have a phillips and a flathead screwdriver way. Really versatile. Gotta fish. Official remover. I mean it’s de scaler. I mean, my swiss army knife is quite robust. Probably got eighteen or twenty things on there, so we have some exam glass screwdriver. Thie i glad the way the eyeglass screwdriver weaves into the corkscrew. It’s. Amazing. Have you seen that the corkscrew hold the eyeglass screwdriver because it has a little groove and it rolls into the corkscrew. He’s. Brilliant. Brilliant. So don’t don’t diss my my swiss army knife. All right, well, i’m not s o those those all in one kind of tools. They could be great. They work, they can work. All right. That’s, one way of doing it. But there are also choices for first specialized tools. And so there are a set of software applications for case management, which is that’s, where you would keep track of your client’s service recipients. There are some very specialized tools that are made for arts organizations that handle data about patrons. Ticketing not sort of thing. There that’s that’s a whole other events event ticketing, event processing, payment, processing, sponsorship. Okay, that’s a digression. Goods are their specialized tools for membership. Organizations or for association management, clearly, for doner management, we’ve we’ve probably talked about that enough your expertise there are all sorts of lt tools in this this space as well, and s so if you’re using maybe three different things one to keep track of your client’s one for donors, one for volunteers, then you likely need some way to tie that all together. And so that might mean an a p i that might mean just a process of wei have jargon jail on non-profit radio a p i that you know, i’m not even going to say what that stands for, ok, what is because it doesn’t matter what it means. Is it’s just a way for different databases to talk to each other? The way for them to exchange data? I’ve heard the phrase a p i call it’s a calling data from another system or table or something like that, right? All right, sharing data. Watch your step non-profit radio jargon jail. So there are more and more ways that air developing now to share data between systems, i think that’s becoming more important as organizations become more sophisticated and start to use more of these specialized tools, but then they think, well, wait a minute. What if we want to know how many of our donors are also volunteers? We need to get those system to talk to each other. Okay? And that’s tables, tables all talk to each other in the background, right? The tables are all talking to each other. It’s gonna be okay? Yeah. All right, all right. That’s, that’s. I have a degree in information system, so i know about tables and all right? We don’t have a prize when i was in college, though. All right now there’s some gold here when you start to get into actual talking about particular system donorsearch panitch mint systems. Um, let’s say, you say among the best values for organizations starting out or that have a small list fewer than a thousand records is little green light. I hope you don’t mind me saying this that’s missing that’s in the book it’s in the guy uh uh, which offers a basic package at four hundred twenty five dollars, plus discounts for new users via text soup. All right, so i mean that’s, the kind that’s. A level of detail that thing gets the guy gets it. I mean, it actually starts talking about now. Let’s, talk a little about tech suit, but some people may not be acquainted with with what that is and how it can help there. Technology work pre-tax soup is wonderful. There, there. Ah, good front of idealware as well along with and ten and texas does many different things, but one thing that’s really relevant here is that they are a distributor of discounts on software and hardware tools for nonprofit organizations. So so, for example, if you want to get adobe products at a deep discount, then you khun sign up for tech soup. You can register with them, and then you’re able to do that. I got my headset, which i used in my home office. I’ve a wireless had said at about an eighty percent discount, and the box came packed with tootsie rolls. Uh, and i got that through text soup. So cubine ended the cookie rolls. Well, it wasn’t actually. Valium sets dot com, i think, but they distribute their non-profit discounts through text soup. So eh? So if you’re looking for any of the software that is covered in the field guide or really any kind of technology tools for your non-profit i think it’s it’s good to at least check tech suit to see if they have a discount and not just not just software. I didn’t realize that i thought it was i i just always thought it was software, but you got you got headsets. So any technology product you’re looking for, right, look for tech soup. What’s their site was its text soup, dr dot or ge. And i should spell that since we’re on the radio because the other day i was talking to somebody about it and they said, oh, so what’s the website for duck soup. Duck soup, right? Marx brothers? Yeah. So it’s th s o u p dot org’s. Okay, okay. Or should i say e at the end, it doesn’t have any at the end of soup right now. The french tc h s o u p dot or ge? Yes. Okay. Okay. Texas dahna excellent hardware, too. All right. Um, you know, you talk about donorsearch prophetic. You talk about the bloomerang zsystems you’re going to blackbaud i mean, this is to me this is just gold. Um, all right. Let’s, take a break. And when we come back, i may get into a lot more of this gold because we should. We should share some of this with listeners. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on 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. I’m dana ostomel, ceo of deposit, e-giving and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m gonna continue my jump through the table of contents there. Section eight is communications, email, broadcast, email, email, discussion lists, graphics and multimedia mobile under mobile has broadcast texting mobile, aps, mobile friendly websites, social media, of course, facebook, linkedin, twitter, web’s under websites, content management systems, landing pages and micro sites online advertising search engine optimization. All this in the table of contents for the field guide, section nine choosing an implementing software. And karen and i are going to talk about that no in a fair amount of detail, so you get the guide for god’s sake, what else can i say? Idealware dot org’s slash non-profit radio field guide two software for non-profits don’t go to amazon directly go teo idealware dot org’s slash non-profit radio get your discount and then you’ll you’ll end up in the amazon, but get the discount the insider discount for listeners. Okay, karen let’s, talk a little about some detail or so i read about about little green light. You recommend you like that, one would say, you know it’s, not like you say, you know, best buy or something, but it says among the best values for organizations with fewer than a thousand records. Little green light people should look at that, right? A little green light and all of the suffer companies that were mentioned here were well rated in our consumer guide. Okay, we’re goingto fair now, right? We’re going to talk about more. So still talking in that up to a thousand records section dahna perfect. You like them? Well, sure, they were also very well rated. And don’t think that that is it’s a system that has some more robust features that might be useful to a slightly larger organization. Now, how do you how do you know this? All right. So i read that sentence before. Among the best values for organizations. I have a small list. A few thousand record, little green light, and now we’re saying don’t perfect. And also bloomerang is another one. How do you know what? What? Going testing. Is he’s gone through? Well, i’ll tell you about our research process. How did what’s behind this sentence that says, among the best values, how do we know that i should say that in every single one of these categories we have done some level of research in the constituent? Relationship management category. We’ve done a great deal of in depth research to compare these tools. So this is this is one of the most well research sections of the you’ve done, the research idealware itself has done the reese right and it’s not that we have used every single one of these systems, but we have we’ve talked teo a number of people who have expertise in the field and gotten their ideas about what are the important features and what are the important products to look at. And then we have looked at thirty some products and conducted demonstrations. We’ve surveyed them to get their answers to a long, long list of questions about features and capabilities and pricing and on and the company itself, you know, is it a stable company, that sort of thing? So so we’ve conducted quite a bit of research there, and then we’ve also for our consumers guide too low cost bonem management systems, we’ve done in depth demonstrations of a number of thes systems that go beyond the initial demonstrations and there, you know, maybe two additional hours of looking through every detail of what the software khun d’oh. Okay, excellent. That’s another great we shot that you mention that before the consumer guide, right? Yeah. All right, um, and we also fact check all that data with their all that information with the vendors as well. So before we publish anything they will sign buy-in off that what we’re publishing is factually accurate about their product. You mentioned bloomerang also has an availability for up to a thousand records, right? So that’s, another one to look at and that’s kind of a newcomer to the market that did not appear in the previous edition of the field guide. Not that they’re brand new. They’ve been around for several years now and are pretty well established. But that is an example of one that’s a little bit newer is j love bloomerang is that j dellaccio he’s been on the show years ago? First rodeo what’s, not his first round. I don’t know if he was with bloomerang then, but he’s been on the show also mentioned su mac offers a free basic cr m for up to five hundred records and charges just two hundred forty dollars a year for five hundred two thousand records. Right? Semak when that’s just one example of a number of these tools that are very affordable, even for tiny organizations. So we’re finding that even like some volunteer run organizations that have a budget, maybe even under one hundred thousand dollars a year are still finding that it’s valuable to them to invest in dahna management software and if they can get it for, you know, thirty, forty dollars a month, then that’s affordable? Fair enough. I agree, all right? And then, uh, there’s blackbaud i mean, they’re they’re in the small market, too. Um, blackbaud offers e tapestry the field guide says, yeah, okay, that’s, another option to look at. And i mean, in my opinion, where blackbaud really shines is with mohr enterprise applications and larger organizations, but they do have a product that was well reviewed for smaller organizations as well. Ok, that’s z tapestry, you tapestry, right? All right, we’re going to switch. We’re going, toto, how to choose what is best for your organization choosing implementing, um, number one. You want us to define our needs? You mentioned this before. We’ll say we’re more about this, right? Well, and actually, i would back-up from that, i think the static the first step is to determine whether you really need new software or not. Okay, so back to the story i told before where there was a softer package that was chosen without a lot of input from the staff there there wanting to change to new software, you know, they just want to start over, but is that the best thing for them? Maybe maybe your existing system can be modified added on to so let’s, talk to our vendors for the existing system and see if that can be scaled uppers or modified someone write about this already. I know. Yes, that zoho storming through the third cat. Why go through the tremendous effort and expense and frankly, a drain on morale, sometimes of making a software change? If you don’t really need tio drink, sometimes it’s better to improve what you have and and make sure that you’re not changing. Make sure that you’re not thinking that it’s a feature problem when really it’s a user adoption problem. People get confused about those things, the way people are using it versus what it might be able to do, right? That’s the distinction you’re making okay and that morale problem comes about because it’s, you know, if you’re if you’re doing a significant stuff where change learning a new system is a big deal it’s a big change in an organization it isthe alright, your says i can take up a lot of people’s energy and it can also productivity khun suffer for a while. It’ll probably bounced back up to a higher level than previously once you’ve gone through that, but productivity khun suffer during a change for sure, all right, after we know what our needs are, we go to a short list right a couple times, but i just have like a minute and a half left for this topic, i would suggest looking in depth that no more than four and take control of the demos. That’s my best advice for people who are shopping for software don’t just listen to the vendors jogging will fly through screen sharing and they’ll fly through for forty five minutes, but but but but you don’t even know if they want to impress you and show you all the bells and whistles and, you know, that’s great! I used to sell software i know i know how. That is, but but you want to make sure that you’re seeing the things that are most applicable to your situation and seeing the same thing would say, you look at three different vendors. You want them all to show? Like, how do you enter a pledge, or or whatever it is that you decide is an important business case for our use case for you. You want them all to show the same thing so that you could make a fair comparison. We just have to wrap up with the idea that you might need a consultant. You might consider getting a consultant to help you with this software selection, right? And having been a consultant, i can say that if you do some homework before you work with the consultant, that will be a much valuable, more valuable engagement for you. And it actually will be probably more enjoyable for the consultant as well. If they have a well educated client who knows the right questions to ask and has thought through their needs a bit before they start working with you. But it is sometimes very valuable. Tohave a consultant walk side by side with you and help you with this process it’s the idealware field guide to software for non-profits non-profit radio listeners get the insider discount goto idealware dot org’s slash non-profit radio karen graham you want to follow her on twitter? She’s at karin t graham t for theresa and the organisation with all its outstanding resource is is that idealware dot or ge? You gotta check this organization out and the field guy just get the darn thing. How many times have i said it? Karen, thank you so much. Thank you, tony. Real pleasure. Next week, it’s risk management day healthcare funding and data breaches and don’t glaze over because we’re gonna make this fine and interesting. If you missed any part of today’s show, i’d be seat. You find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Betty mcardle is our am and fm outreach director shows social media is by sea soon chavez and this cool 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. Hey! Buy-in 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 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, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make you feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for April 22, 2016: Virtual Orgs: Managing Remote Employees

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Heather Martin, Karen Graham & Amy Sample Ward: Virtual Orgs: Managing Remote Employees

What does it take to successfully manage offsite employees? You start with the right mindset, people & jobs. You also need tools, rules & etiquette. Heather Martin & Karen Graham are in the trenches on this and they share their wisdom. Heather is COO at Interfaith Family & Karen is executive director of Idealware. We talked at the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Then, Amy Sample Ward is with me live to share her tips and lessons learned as CEO of Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), an organization with several remote employees.

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Heather Martin & Karen Graham at 16NTC
Amy Sample Ward
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Oppcoll hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host we have a listener of the weak dan kimble in fresno, california. He’s, product specialist at apple owes software at ntcdinosaur just was non-profit technology conference just last month, dan couldn’t say enough good things about the show. So, dan, i thank you so much for loving non-profit radio congratulations on being our listener of the weak dan kimble okay, last friday, i made a mistake last friday was not tax day last week was a pre recorded show, and i hadn’t realized two weeks in advance that you had until the eighteenth for your taxes. I you know, i have accountants and bookkeepers and and attorneys and financial planners dealing with these these mondo ass ity mundane when two triviality things i have a show to produce. Please, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer. You’re a thrill incontinence if you leak the idea that you missed today’s show virtual organizations managing remote employees what does it take to successfully manage offsite employees? You start with the right mind set people and jobs. You also need tools. Rules and etiquette heather martin and karen graham are in the trenches on this, and they share their wisdom. Heather is ceo at interfaith family and karen is executive director of idealware we talked at the twenty sixteen and to see non-profit technology conference, then amy sample ward is with me live to share her tips and lessons learned as ceo of non-profit technology network and ten they have several remote employees on tony’s take two between you’re good data worth fifty thousand dollars, we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, also by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay for mobile donations crowdster dot com from ntcdinosaur are heather martin and karen graham on virtual organizations managing those remote employees welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference hashtag is sixteen ntc we’re in the convention center in san jose, california with me now are heather martin and karen graham. Heather is sitting closest to me and she is the chief operating officer. Your faith family. Karen graham is executive director at idealware. Ladies. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks, it’s. A pleasure to have you both. I’ll be here. Oh, thank you. Your topic for the session is virtual organizations managing remote employees in the leadership track. All right, back-up we need to be a little more open, i guess, to virtual employment opportunities. Is that right? Yes. Yes. We’re finding that there’s more talent out there that you might not be able to tap into if it’s only in your local community on dh just there. So you can open yourself up to the whole world. You can potentially the whole country if you’re willing to do that on dh. However, it’s not an easy thing to do necessarily. And so we’re hoping to give some tips and techniques for people who are managing virtual employees or who are virtual employees themselves. Karen so you think it’s a combination? We’re not doing it as much as we could and those who are not doing it. Maybe you’re not doing it as well as they could, right? I think some organizations are held back by fears of, like some of the ms about remote employees. You know, i won’t be ableto know what this person is doing. They’re going to be folding laundry and eating cupcakes all day, things like that and that. Okay, it’s not always untrue, but almost always. But, you know, most most people are pretty conscientious and very productive at home, and in fact, i think i’m probably more productive when i work from home or away from a group of people than i am when when i’m in the middle of all those interruptions. Okay, heather, you you virtual also, i am not virtual, but i manage virtual employees in eight different cities. Oh, excellent. So we have a manager of a different city employees and someone who works virtually you’re virtually my entire team is virtual okay? Arika, uh is the whole company? Yes. Idealware all right. And that’s a recent change for us. So whereas other has a great deal of experience with this it’s really nufer me. And so for the last year, i’ve been learning what it’s like to convert from almost everybody in a brick and mortar office toe having everyone worked from home offices. So i’m really curious what brought about that change? It started with one person who was remote and then as new staff were hired, we just looked for the best talent wherever we could find it and didn’t worry as much about having everybody in one central location. And so just gradually, we’ve evolved into having people in three different time zones and things spread across the country. Ok, whether it sounds like we need to first get over our own objections to know it’s got to be a local employees, i don’t want to take this on somebody wrote. One of the things that we’re finding is the old culture within some organizations is if i don’t see it happening it’s not happening. Ah, nde. We were that’s embedded in a lot of cultural, a lot of older organizations, and once we get over that and we put in some processes to handle that, people get more and more comfortable. One of the things we’re finding and karen alluded to this also is if you hire the right people, then that idea that i don’t see it it’s not happening and trusting your employees is really key in managing virtual organizations. Where do we, since you’re the manager of a different location, people in a different city? Where do we start with this? Should we start with the hiring process? Cerini so i think what’s, very important, is identifying before you’ve been hyre someone what the skillsets that this person needs, what are their goals going, toby, what is their job going to be? There are definitely some roles that cannot be done, virtually so that it’s, not for everyone, it’s, not for every organization, it’s, not for every position, okay, so identifying where it belongs, okay, can anything you want to add that stage? Not yet, okay. The let’s, let’s. Start with some tips. Okay, wait. We’ve identified what types of people we need, what kinds of skills we need up. Well, actually, i’m taking a step back. What are some things that were sometimes of jobs? Heather, that definitely should not be virtual. You think i think that if you’re a type of person that needs teo, if your role needs to be interacting with people on a regular basis to get something done within an office. So an office manager, um, things that need to have interactions with other people on a regular basis and i don’t know if you come up. I’m talking, karen, if you came across any of this as you all went virtual, but i’m finding that it’s been very difficult to have a virtual employees if their job is to sit down with you and communicate with you on a regular basis and get stuff done enough physical environment. Okay, okay. Gary, i would agree with that and that’s a challenge that technology khun partially solve. But it can be really challenging. Okay. All right, let’s, move it to technology. Will get the tips and, you know we’re playing time together. What are some tools that you find just essential for this? Certain? Here we are at a technology conference, so it makes sense too, really focus on that one of the tools that we use most often at idealware to keep in touch and to sort of simulate the water. Cool the water cooler. Conversations that tend to get lost with a virtual team is chat. And and so we use google maps for our email and calendars and document management and everything. And so it felt natural for us to just use google’s chat tools as well. And we have a channel set up called the virtual break room and there’s usually a little bit of activity on there every single day and people will just post like, oh, it just started snowing outside or my cat is sick. O r, you know, just kind of that casual conversation. That’s not really work related. And yet it’s, so crucial to building a cohesive team and feeling like you really are part of each other’s full lives. How cool is that? Because you have to try to simulate what? What? Being in the office is like you mentioned the water. Cooler tryingto virtually simulate that so that it feels like on office space, another that makes it mine. Yeah, going backwards, you know you’re you kind of have to go backwards in order to make this effective communication is key. What all of the tips, all of the technology, everything you use, it goes back to the ability to create cohesive communication between people who are not physically in the same space. So the same way karen has her virtual water cooler. We use skype for business on a regular basis, and if you want to talk to someone, you’re usually on skype, you click on it, you have a video and you have a quick conversation something that may not necessarily be as effective if you try to do it through email and it probably faster on email has been detrimental somewhere, sometimes to our employees, because they’re just getting hundreds and hundreds of these. And if you want a quick answer, there’s all these other tools like these chat tools that make it a little easier. Okay, okay. Karen, please aren’t our process. That idealware for kind of identifying what technologies we needed to help us as a virtual team really started by looking at what gaps were there that were left by by not being in the same place together. So one of the things that you misses, a lot of nonverbal cues, tio what people are thinking, how they’re reacting to something, and so we use video a lot as well and that’s always our default, what video platform way use google hangouts primarily, but we also have some other, like peskay and other tools that we use for external meetings as well. And so with heather, you know, we actually just met for the first time about five minutes ago, you were in person, yes, but were bent on we’ve been on video chats together several times before, and i feel like we kind of know each other. I knew what she looked like, michael workers know when i get a haircut when i get a new outfit, even though it might be four or five months between seeing each other in person, 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. Duitz are using video every day. Yes, i probably spend, on average two to three hours a day on video chat there’s that comment through a lot, a lot of video in depending on the positions and who’s working with who? Yes, we actually have a staff meeting through webex, where all twenty eight employees get on to video chat, depending on who’s available and who is not in their pajamas. Sometimes people bow out because they don’t want to be put on video, but it’s really helpful to see people and to connect with them at a visual level, even if they’re not physically in the same space where where humans we want way respond to community and and i think visual visual cues as well, it helps a lot to be to be seeing people. People have a tendency. One of my first experiences with this virtual nus was i was working at ibm, and i was project managing. I was doing strategy consulting as project managing the implementation of lotus notes, and we needed the tech team to do work in in order to get the implementation done. The tech team was in armonk, new york, i was living in virginia and we were implementing this to staff nationwide, and what you do is each project manager had to get in touch with the tech team, get them to do stuff, something broke. You had to go back to them, and what we found was i happened to goto, our monk, for our training, and i went into the room where the tech team was sitting and introduced myself. After that, everything seemed slightly easier. And it was just because when i picked up the phone and i ask them to do something, i knew who i was talking to, and they knew who i wass and just having that physical connection made things so much smoother, okay, you said a lot more eloquently than i did. Thank you. Thank you for helping me recover let’s, identify other tools, it’s gotta be google docks, google calendar or something else, what do using collaborative document systems are very helpful for virtual teams, and actually so at idealware, maybe, not surprisingly, since we’re ah, research and knowledge organization, we have mostly introverts on our staff, and i’ve actually found that when we do brainstorming, sometimes it could be more productive. When we do it virtually by typing notes and ideas into a shared google doc than when we actually do it in person, it helps those introverts kind of get there, get there, say, without feeling like they have to jump into the fray of a really lively conversation and gives them space to think a little bit when they need teo and then participate when they’re ready. Cool. So that’s an interesting benefit of working in this manner you see anything like that? I do. I also think that not only the technology tools are important, but laying the groundwork with expectations is key to making sure that everyone’s on the same page so we back in the hiring no, no, no, not unknown in the hiring, but how? How you’re actually running it. So with karen, if you’re if you’re having a conversation, they do it through video conference for us. We’ve set out some and i know you also have communication charters to make sure that when people are connecting with each other, they know how to connect with each other. Charter, what is this? So, for us way, d’oh, d’oh! Basically, what we do is when we hire someone new when they first come on, they get oriented. One of the things we asked them to dio is to talk to us about how they like to be communicated with and sometimes they can’t answer that question up front. But for us, it’s really important to understand if you don’t like email or there’s people, especially we hear this from various employees, they hate the phone, they don’t want to pick up the phone, they don’t talk to someone, the phone rings and they actually like shake. I don’t want to, but if you were to text them or chat with them online, they’d be more than happy to respond to you. And so understanding how people interact on to communicate with their communication makes it so much easier because you don’t have those visual cues. You can’t see if you’re walking into someone’s office and they’re super busy or super stressed or someone’s sitting there on dh, so we like to set it out ahead of time, so let people know what works for them. And similarly, we have eleven golden rules for working as a virtual team and they charter or the golden rules. Whatever we’re gonna call them, okay? They mostly addressed communication. Our number one rule is assume positive intent, which can be hard when you don’t know that somebody didn’t sleep last night because they were up with their baby or, you know, you missed some of that stuff that you might find out at the water cooler, so assume positive intent is is the number one rule. But then we’ve also talked about, for example, with video chat, it can feel very intrusive to just have that turned on all of a sudden, like someone is calling you and without warning, so we have a practice of doing kind of a virtual knock on the door through chat, and if i want to talk to dan, i’ll send him a chat and say, how are you free right now? Is this a good time? And then then we start the video conference, so there’s just a lot of it’s, a lot of etiquette and respecting each other’s time. Um, another thing we do is with email if there’s an urgent reply needed, then we’ll put that right in the subject line because we get such a huge volume of email. That that helps us to scan and know how to be responsive, teo each other when it’s really needed way have to avoid abusing the urgent your gym tag, too, right? Right. Okay, share another golden rule of the eleven golden rules. I wish i had the memorized, but i don’t want to know what well, okay, we start with positive that’s a great one, right? Another one we talked about was email length. And at what point, when you’re writing a four screen email, does that mean it’s time to pick up the phone or or do a hangout? So that’s that’s another one? We have some guidelines about that. All right, let’s. See so cem cem, other tips about doing this successfully emails a big one for us also, my rule is if i have, if i’m on the third email on the same topic, i’m picking up the phone the minute that you have to go back and forth at least three times it’s too much and it’s so interesting. I was at a session this morning and i just heard the best. The best line about email email should be five lines it should tell me who you are, what you want me to do when you want me to do it by why i need to do it for you. And there was one more that i don’t remember, but if it’s longer than that, you’re going to lose people’s attention it’s gonna go into a file and people may never get to it. If you really need something urgently, whether you flag it or pick up the phone like this is the phone is there or create a chat and do it immediately like don’t put it out there into the ethernet and then hope that someone’s going to respond to it in the way that you would expect them to take time to get comfortable with us? Absolutely. If a person is not accustomed to being a virtual employees very much so. And i also think that setting the expectations up front and letting people know that this is not an easy thing is very helpful because some people feel really lost out there, and what we try and do is when a new employee comes on or someone starts to work virtually who wasn’t working virtually before, let them know that that this might be difficult, there’s going to be a learning curve, and we’re here to work with you on it. You’re not just out there by yourself, and you have to do it without anyone any support, karen, have there been people who decided not to work for idealware because it was one hundred percent virtual, has that ever been a ish? You know, we haven’t encountered that. We did have i’m thinking of one staff member in particular, who is very social and enjoys that aspect of working in an office. And so when he became a home based employees that it was an adjustment for him, perhaps more than some of the rest of us who aren’t quite as social and interactive and, uh, it just it took a little bit of of patients and adjustment on his part, i think, for all of us, it also was very important for us to have our own local networks and people that we could interact with, and so many of us will occasionally work from a coffee shop, or i have a group of local friends and colleagues who also work from home for for various ventures, and so one thing we did was because none of us get to have a holiday party with our co workers. We had one with each other, and i i hosted it at my house, and we had maybe six or seven people there who all work independently from home. And so that was a really fun thing to do to kind of a substitute for the social aspects of working with your own team at an office every day. Is there an annual or semiannual gathering of all the tell us? Fifteen employees of idealware uh, dr bonem right? Fifteen? No, we have five. Oh five oh, yes were fairly small teams and you get together physically at least once a year or so way don’t have a set routine, but yes, at least once a year, we’ll all get together. And in the past year, we have gotten together a little bit more often, too, because, well, various reasons i don’t need to come into here. But, you know, there are times when there’s a big change in the organization there’s a big project that you’re working on that just require you to be together more often. Mother, how about you you have to bring these people from eight cities together. We dio way do, and it was a really interesting learning for us when we first started to expand into these other cities. At first, we didn’t bring that anyone in to meet the internal staff in our boston headquarters. Now, anytime a new employees starts at whatever level, if their virtual they come and do a couple of days training in boston with us just to meet everybody, see what the national office looks like and annually. We have a staff retreat in boston where we bring everybody in for two days to get together and brainstorm and talk and just get to know each other. Okay? That’s interesting like the onboarding process has to be face to face. I think that you can’t you can’t get away from what you get the value you get of meeting someone in person, and if you can and if it’s available financially resource wise, timewise, even if you can get together once a year or even at the beginning so people can meet each other in person, it’s invaluable karen would be one hundred percent virtual doesn’t do employees would they get to meet someone face-to-face physically, we have not made a hyre since we became one hundred per cent virtual, so i’m not. I’m not sure what our plans will be for that, but a related issue that non-profit should think through if they’re considering going to a virtual team is is off boarding our when employees exit, how do you handle that? And we were dealing with that right now. We have an employee who is going to be leaving idealware and so we’re thinking about well, ok, how do we collect the stuff that is in storage at her house? The equipment that is ideal wears equipment that that she has in her possession right now? How do we have a farewell party for somebody on really make that a meaningful event when we can’t physically be together? Those those air, all they require creativity and thoughtfulness, and i’m sure we won’t do them perfectly, but that’s something we’re learning. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. The off boarding right. All right, hyre we still have a couple more minutes together. Uh, you well, party. Your session was gonna be ten key steps. Way covered. Any of the ten key? Steps i think you’ve covered most of them in a variety of different ways, but the other thing that we do just one other tip while we’re at it is i’ve spoken to other organizations who have virtual friday drink beers, get togethers, and friday afternoon everyone gets on video, gets their glass of tea, glass of wine, glass of beer, whatever it is and makes it a very low key social environment on video, which takes getting used to when you’re not when it’s not something you do on a regular basis, but it does give you that personal connection again, that you don’t normally get on a day to day basis. And so there’s things like that that you khun dio that seem a little farfetched sometimes that are really helpful. Hi, great, we’ve i’ve had lunch with one of my co workers where we just get on video together and we’re eating and and just chit chatting about things, and it felt very awkward at first but ended up being a really enjoyable experience for both of us. So i recommend just taking some risks getting out of your comfort zone a little bit. I’ve done a wine, wine, chat with who’s there were maybe half a dozen of us the furthest was in in vancouver. I think so. But, you know, you know, half a dozen people what kind of wine do you have? We’re toasting mean, it could be fun. I mean, it is fun, it could be done. It doesn’t have to involve alcohol way happening. Choose wine, you could do a cough, you can do a coffee date and have everyone you know, on video drinking, whatever their seventeen dollars, coffee is heather would use for video, so we use webex when we do our staff, our staff meetings, we’ve used skype for business. We’ve tried google hangouts also, it depends on who’s running the session and what technology they want to use. We haven’t found the perfect one yet we’re still looking. I think that some of the challenges with video are the number of screens you could get on at one time and who you can see equality has improved significantly over the last five years, even but at first, when we were doing this, the line would drop or you couldn’t hear someone or it was pixelated, you know, i’m feeling like i’m talking old school a little bit, but the technology has improved enough that it makes it seem a little bit more realistic and in person and you can get the visuals, which was something that was a challenge. You couldn’t get the facial expressions without the high definition and the faster response time. All right, so i’m gonna wrap this up and bring it full circle, that kind of belief in the technology i can help listeners overcome their reluctance. We talked about initially and in mindset because that’s really what you got to start, and i would also say the technology isn’t the savior to this it khun definitely help it, but you need all of the other pieces to i feel like you shouldn’t use the technology technology to drive this, but there are some great technologies out there that can help with pieces of this. I couldn’t have said it better. All right. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Heather martin is chief operating officer at interfaith family and karen graham, executive director idealware ladies. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks. Great advice. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc san. Jose, california, thank you so much for being with us. Amy sample ward is coming up first pursuant and crowdster pursuant has a free webinar dahna relations of the disney way if walt disney was your ceo, how would you treat your donors? How would you inspire staff? What would you do differently? 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Left a fifty thousand dollar bequest in his will. So my question to you is do you have bad addresses that need to be cleaned up? It could be worth your time the video and the story tony martignetti dot com and that’s tony’s take two we got to do live listener love we’re going to be without live listen, love we’re going nowhere with this. The core can’t alienate the core we got to do the live listen love it’s going outside st louis, missouri westbury, new york that’s out in among alan florin park, new york floren park, new jersey. Pardon me. New jersey, newark, new jersey. New yorkers. They don’t like that. It’s florin park in new jersey. Make no mistake about that. San jose california’s with us. New york, new york, fort lauderdale, florida. Ah, multiple, actually. New york, new york. Thank you. New york city checking in. We got to go abroad. Tokyo, seoul. Ah, well, multiple in japan besides tokyo, nagoya su wan bit. No, beijing is china. 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I sure am every sample word our social media contributor and ceo of intend, the non-profit technology network there it and ten dot or ge she’s at amy r s ward her latest book is social change any time everywhere kayman sample ward. Welcome back. Same it’s. Fun to get to follow-up anew. Interview from the ntc. Yeah, no kidding. And congratulations on a very successful non-profit technology conference. Thank you. I can’t believe it was already a month ago. Hard to believe i agree. That’s that’s. True. Now you sound a little echo here. You and your ah, you in your office. And and ten, i am in my office. If it sounds a little echoey, i can it’s not bad. No, don’t have. It just sounds. It sounds different. It sounds different. Cubine, have you, uh, have you hung all your your artwork? You have your carpeting down in the new office. Maybe that’s a way. Do have carpeting, and i have a big print right in front of me. Well, it’s under it will get better as we unpack even more. Okay, just sounds like a different environment. That’s all you’re, uh you’re all settled now in the new office in portland. Yeah, we’re all settled. Word. We’re up and running. Yeah. It’s fun to be in a new space. Cool. Congratulations. All right. Thank you. So i know you. Were listening. Teo, heather and karen and and ten, of course, is a virtual organization. How, how many, uh, in office versus virtual employees does then ten have good question we have i think this is something that i thought was interesting that i wanted to bring up from listeningto, karen and heather’s interview with you from the conference was i actually think there are mohr organizations who have teams or individuals that maybe virtual while they still have a physical office than there are organizations who are one hundred percent virtual all right, and they have no physical presence, so i think a lot of organizations, when they’re thinking about this, how do we adapt to virtual staff? And what of the policies with the advocate ex center? I think a lot of that comes from, they still have a gn office, but now they’re trying to incorporate folks and make people who aren’t in the physical office feel included versus just everybody is having the same kind of remote situation, right? That’s. Interesting because heather and karen idealware, where karen is ceo is a hundred percent virtual and heather at interfaith family is not so right. And you are you are hybrid too, yet you have i know you have people in the portland office, and then you have remote employees? Yep, exactly. Someone ten people. You have ten people here in portland, and then we have five people that are remote, okay? And they’re in different time zones to write not all pacific. Exactly. And i think that’s one of the big considerations with a physical office versus remote staff is that it can become easier or the default time for everything to be in the time zone where the office is, even though you have staff that are another time zone. So i think it’s a challenge, but very important. Try and be mindful of time zones when you try and say, oh, my gosh, you know, we’re having a conversation. We should totally loop someone in to realise thirty six p m their time, they’re not online. They’re not waiting for you to invite them to this meeting. Yeah. Interesting. All right, so how do you how do you manage that, then? On dh something early in the morning? If your east coast staffers are talking, you know your office isn’t open yet. Same thing. Exactly, i mean, when i previously was based in new york as a remote employee of intent, whereas now i’m in the office, there was another employee that was on the east coast, and we found the morning to be super productive because the two of us could just, you know, get through all kinds of things on, and we we often worked together on projects it in that way. It was very convenient that we were the two awake early and could get some stuff done and then present it to other staff when they woke up and got online. But now and ten has just one person in east coast time, one person in mountain time and then remote or, i guess, to eastern and then to pacific outside of the office. So it spread enough that i think it helps us force that conversation. You know, we have to say, okay, we have people in enough time zones. What time is it? Really? Right now on dh once, once it gets after two or three o’clock in the portland office, it gets pretty quiet because we know we can’t engage other staff across time zones. Yeah, all right? Do you have mindfulness? Basically means you have to be mindful of this not planned meetings for three o’clock pacific. Exactly. And you know so many of our meetings, and i don’t think this is unique to intend, but so many of our meetings are already kind of reserved on the calendar, right? You you already know when your staff meeting that’s going to be because it’s a recurring meeting and so just making sure that you use those recurring calendar items as a way that start building in that pattern of this is these are the times during the day you could meet with folks. I think that really helped, because then outside of that is when people, maybe, you know, just kind of go head down and work on their own. Whatever is on their to do list. And you set a pattern by the meetings that you schedule in advance. Okay. Yeah, i see. All right. What about the personalities the heather and karen mentioned one of them mentioned. You know, then a lot of introverts, karin said i do. Do you find that in a few different people’s personalities when we’re talking about virtual hi. I actually don’t find it to be different than if you were all in the office together. I mean, i think that if everybody was all in one office, you’re naturally just by probability, right of humans. You’re naturally gonna have some folks that maybe regardless of their personality or just not folks who maybe process in real time in a meeting and are gonna have something to say there people who want that information and they want to go back and think about it before they have an answer, whether they’re an introvert or not. That’s just how they process information. And so in a in a meetings, they were all in one room. Whoever is running that meaning it’s probably i would hope, you know, reaching out to folks who are quiet in the meeting insane. Do you? You know, pulling something out? Do you have something you want to share? Their questions that’ll help you think about this, you know? What are we not considering and that that process, that kind of managing a meeting happens whether everybody’s all in the same room or you’re all of that google hangout? Or you’re talking to two people? In a instant message conversation, you know, i think being thoughtful and intentional about how you interact and kind of manage meetings and manage conversations, it’s the same lessons it’s the same processes, andi, i think, you know, karen’s point about sometimes using those online tools that folks feel like they can participate when maybe they wouldn’t have spoken up in a meeting that could totally be true. I think for me and that antenna it’s really about just regardless of how this meeting is happening, is everybody contributing or does everybody have the answers they need so that we can end the meeting and you know where to go back? Do you find it difficult? Tio include members, employees when if the meeting is by phone, you know and like three or four people are sitting in the conference room or something. And then however, many people are remote and it’s just and thereby phone, not video. Sometimes you have to be very mindful that there are two other people on the phone and it’s hard for them times for them to speak up because they don’t know when the pauses air coming. I mean, you find any awkwardness? Around that, yeah, that’s a good point, i think. Well, two things they’re two strategies one if it’s i think anton has a similar experience, as karen and heather both shared in the interview that if it’s an internal meeting, if it’s really just with other staff, we wouldn’t use the phone, we would use video conference people can kind of raise their hand, or they can post a chat that says, hey, i want to bring something up once we’re done with this point, you know it, and we can manage that easier when it’s on video and then the other strategy that that i think is really helpful, just like best practice generally for mediums, is that if we’re having the meeting, we have a shared document where we’re taking notes, so sometimes that means we could kind of go down a rabbit hole, right? And three of the five people in the meeting are going off on this thing with the other two people maybe don’t want to lose a thought they could just put it into the notes, doc, and we come back to it once we’re done with that rabbit hole, right? We’re we’re still capturing things in a couple different channels, plus as the best practice. Now you have notes from that meeting, right? Yeah, school. All right, all right. Um, what about the part about bringing new employees in who aren’t accustomed to working remotely? Yeah, i think it can be very overwhelming for a new staff person. We try and include processes, best practices, etiquette, social norms in our orientation, but not we don’t do it as a great you’re an employee for the next two hours. We’re going to tell you how we do everything in this, like, remote team versus office environment instead, you know, maybe there’s a section of the orientation where you’re talking with your manager, whoever you’re going to be working with and they’re talking about, okay, these are the meetings were goingto have regularly here’s how you and i are going to check in here’s how i encourage you to check in with others and then in that conversation, you know, talking about some social norms around how to engage folks that are remote verses in the office and where to post content for others to see it and, you know, so we kind of embed the lessons around how we want to operate together into the full process of orientation it’s not a stand alone great here’s how to use instant message er, right hand here’s, here’s, howto chat with folks or hey, remember that these folks were in these time zone, so send them a quick ping before you try and call them, right? Because you don’t know, you can’t see them, so maybe they’re gonna call already or something. You know, i like the suggestion of some virtual knock on the door before you open a video chat with somebody well, and, you know, we honestly we do that in the office, i can see you, but that doesn’t mean that i know if you’re actually muted running a webinar just because it looks like you’re sitting in your desk, so because we are all online or on the phone or running webinars, whatever it might be, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the office or not that’s become kind of standard practice. I am somebody before you walk over to them anyway. Eyes that right? Okay, see, it’s so been so long since i had to work with other people in an office. You had to work with you one of punishment that wass well, okay, i don’t think i’d be a very good employee anymore. We’ll put it that way. Yes, i can see that. Thank you. I don’t think i would hyre myself. I would. I would. I would kill it in the interviews. I mean, why kill it? I mean, i would i would i would kill a possibility. Yes, i would ruin my chances in the interview stage. I would not be a good employee, but so i didn’t know that. So so so in offices, people you i am someone before you, uh, you go and knock on their door anymore before you just walk down and see them. Well, i think part of it is that most staff don’t have a door because we’re working in an open, more collaborative space. And so folks may go behind the door to run a webinar, for example, and then you definitely know they’re offline or not available for you to go talk to, but sometimes you might just be on a phone call and have your line muted for a minute, right? Because someone else is speaking of course, because you’re not speaking out loud doesn’t mean you’re ready for somebody to walk right up to your desk and say something because one ear can still hear the phone call, so okay, i yeah, it’s been since ah nineteen when’s the last time i worked for somebody else was nineteen, no, two thousand three, two thousand three was my last employer for you. Did you know, i think defect tio the idea of being in office where people have really accepted that norm of let’s, just quickly hop on a video call right and have this conversation kind of face-to-face even though your remote, it also means that the folks who really are in the office have to anticipate that at any given moment of the day, they could be in the background of someone’s video, you could be walking past somebody who’s on, you know, has their camera on or maybe the way they’re seated, you know, you’re kind of close enough to them that if they hop on a video and don’t move their screen, you’re kind of in the background doing your email on dh i think that’s just part at least at an ten. It isn’t seen as a negative it’s seen as like, oh, well, i was talking to you, i saw that so and so was was, you know, talking to this person, i didn’t realize they were in the office. Could you tell them this for me? You know? And it makes it feel that much more connected. I can see what’s going on right now that we’re in a new space. As you noted, when when i first talked on the phone, we’re in this new office, we’ll remote staff haven’t seen the new office, and so on monday, everybody in the office wanted to have a conversation about okay, we’re in here now, like, what else do we need? Do we need more chairs or tables? Is there any? Are there any problems we need to address in? There? Were you know, there were problems with, you know, sometimes if we turn the air on it’s too loud for webinar rooms, it’s just too noisy in the room and, you know, just surfacing these issues that you don’t know until you get into the space. Well, all of the remote staff requested to be part of that conversation because they want to know what we’re struggling with. They want to know that if they hop on a quick, you know, video call with us and somebody’s complaining, or or something, they could say, hey, is it because the air is on and it’s really loud, like i understand what you’re going through? I have some insight into that. They want to be a part of it. Cool, all right, that’s, a human, human connection. All right, we gotta take, we got to go away for break. We come back, you and i’ll keep talking about remote employee management. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that or an a a me 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 just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. If you have big dreams in a small budget tune into tony martignetti non-profit radio, i d’oh. I’m adam braun, founder of pencils of promise. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I mean, what about the face-to-face like, do you have face-to-face orientations for new employees? Or do you have annual gatherings where everybody’s together? How do you manage the face-to-face part? Definitely. I think the face-to-face piece is huge. I mean, we we consider some amount of the video calls to be, quote unquote face-to-face you know, we don’t want things to be completely removed into just documents, so we have ah, move a few different layers so that every day at nine thirty pacific, regardless of where you are in the world, if you are working that day, you are expected to be on aa meeting, where every single staff person is able to check in and say, hey, tony, i’ve been waiting on this thing from you so that i can follow-up or this is my big priority today, so if you see me in my head bowed there on, don’t bother me. I got a big deadline, you know, whatever, it might be this on your list, but away for every single staff person to be visible to everybody else, whether they’re in the office. Or not. And then every monday, we have a full staff meeting. That’s actually programmatic. So you know whether it’s a proposal first from somebody or a certain team wants to give an update whatever that might be, you know, formal agenda every monday, but twice a year, all staff come to portland for a full week of planning meetings and happy hours and lots of eating. And and then outside of those two meetings, you know, we have our conference. We have our own events that also bring all the staff together. Okay, off course. The portland food scene is it was worth gathering around exactly so cool sametz priority than planning meeting second. Yeah, we have the trucks, the trucks, air. The trucks are key. You can have. Yeah, there are only two blocks from the office now, but that would mean a lot of trucks, but i’m being a new yorker. I’m calling them trucks. They’re called cart their carts, right? Not trucks? Yes, their carts. Right. And what you call a collection of carts? What is that called? A cart pod. A court pod, right? Right. Just like whales. Write a card pot. But, you know, you call it a pod? Or would you say i’m going to the cart pod? Or you just say, i’m going to the pod, you say i’m going to the cart, the cart’s? Oh, you don’t say pot. Ah, ok, ok. Yeah, it’s. Very important. But anyway, so you do this twice a year, twice a year. All in ten step. Okay, very good to know. Alright. So that’s different than the heather and karen managed things, but cool. Okay. Okay. And then, of course, yeah. You’re conferences drop the whole staff together. Two leading change on tc, right? Yeah. Okay, exactly. And i think, you know, as much as there were all there to run the conference. We’re also there a couple days early. Everybody gets to catch up and see each other in person. But i also think there’s a lot to be said for doing something together, you know, by the end of the week, even though we didn’t spend the weekend casual planning meetings and eating food from the food cards, you know, we get to the end of the week and feel like everybody has certainly bonded has certainly had all kinds of conversations because we just we just ran the whole conference together, right? It really creates an opportunity for there to be a lot of connections. What else came out of that conversation that you want to talk about? We still have a couple minutes left. Yeah, well, i thought one thing that we could chat about were some justice, you know, kind of kind of boring things around policies think at inten we’ve found to be really important so something that organizations may not think about, but karen alluded to this at the very end when talking about, you know, staff person, that leaving the organization and they have all this equipment, the organization really should be providing that equipment, just like you would to someone that’s in the office. So even though you’ve been hired as a remote employee, that doesn’t mean you don’t need a laptop in a second monitor and a phone and all of those pieces. So thinking about policies that treat a remote staff person just like you would a staff person, as in the office, and i think that also goes further to say in the office, right? And ten pays for all of all of the office for the electricity and the internet and everything else. So, do you have policies that they for staff who were working from from their home as they’re expected space, that you will reimburse them for some of their internet or some of their phone cost? Etcetera? Okay, very, uh, very thoughtful policies you have. Okay, do what i think something else that karen heather brought up was, you know, remote staff feeling like, oh, today i’m going to go work from a coffee shop or today, you know, i just need to get out of my house has been sitting in my living room for four days straight, right? I think it also goes a really long way to make sure that feeling of freedom is shared between folks in the office and folks who are remote so that you don’t create this feeling that, like remote staff have it better or folks in the office have it better, everyone should feel like, hey, i really need to write this article and i want to focus. I’m going to go to a coffee shop and sit by myself for two hours. It doesn’t matter if you work from home or you work from the office. If you’ve created that culture, everyone should get to be a part of that. No. Okay. Egalitarian. Right. Okay. Yes. Um what else? What else came out of that that you want to talk about? Well, one thing that i thought was interesting that was brought up right at the end that end ten has a different version of is that idea of ah, kind of virtual happy hour. And i think part of it for us, the reason why it isn’t necessarily happy hours because again time zones, you don’t want to tell somebody that is three hours ahead. Hey, you should wait until eight. Get back on your computer, have a glass of wine. Would you like to be part of the team right now? That doesn’t feel very fair. So instead, what we have is a weekly lunch. So in the office here we turn on a google hangout and, you know, open up the line, essentially and that any of the remote folks can also call in if they’re free. It’s not required it’s. Not like people in the office have to stop right at noon and start eating. Lunch on video. You know it’s just anybody that wants to have lunch together and chat the line is open, you can hang out and you know, it’s gonna happen every single thursday. So if this thursday you can’t do it, no big deal. But next thursday, you can call in on dh. It just creates that kind of open conversation space where you can chat about sometimes work sometimes good ideas for work, but also just random things. What are you doing for the weekend, etcetera? Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. Alright, we have to leave it there. Any sample ward? Our social media contributor. Ceo of antenna and ten dot or ge she’s at amy rs ward. Amy, thanks so much for sharing. Intends remote, you know, management stories. Thank you. Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you. Next week, gene takagi are legal contributor returns with election year advocacy. What’s allowed. And what gets you in trouble? Plus, we have another excellent interview from ntcdinosaur. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, i implore you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world i’m very uncertain the way forward with this. I need to know the path i have to find the path ahead. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com, and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now, with apple pay for mobile donations. Crowdster dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows. Social media is by susan chavez, and this great 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. Buy-in buy-in what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe. Add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

A Smart CRM Survey

A free and valuable comparative survey of software for nonprofits was introduced to me by Maria Semple on Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio when she and I were talking about constituent relationship management (CRM) and its importance for prospect research.

Our segment together was “See The Right CRM System.”

My listeners know Maria. She’s “The Prospect Finder,” a smart and incredibly resourceful prospect research consultant–and a monthly contributor to my show. (If you don’t have in-house research, or your research staff is stretched, you should talk to Maria.)

On the August 10 show, she explained why you need to have the right software managing relationships with your employees, those you serve, donors, volunteers, vendors, community supporters, related charities in your community and all your other constituents. (I do hope you recognize donors are not your sole constituency.)

A Consumer’s Guide to Low Cost Donor Management Systems” compares 29 offerings and provides detailed analysis of 10 of the most popular, including eTapestry and DonorPerfect. Each system costs $4,000 or less. That’s ideal for my listeners in small- and mid-size charities.

The guide is objective, written by Idealware and NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network (whose membership director, Amy Sample Ward, will be Nonprofit Radio‘s social media contributor starting next month). All they ask is your name and email. That’s perfectly reasonable and appropriate. (I’ve seen free stuff where a phone number was required. No thanks.)

Consult this really helpful, free survey if you’re looking at CRM systems.