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Nonprofit Radio for April 24, 2020: 5 Questions & Working Virtually

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Heather Yandow: 5 Questions

Heather Yandow’s article is “ 5 Questions to Answer Before You Call a Consultant,” and she’ll help you avoid making a costly mistake. She’s founder of Nonprofit.ist.

 

 

 

Heather Martin & Alice Hendricks: Working Virtually

We talk through the issues encountered when managing remote staff: technological; generational; emotional; measurement; recruiting and retaining. Our panel is Heather Martin from Interfaith Family and Alice Hendricks with Jackson River. (Originally aired 11/2/18)

 

 

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[00:00:14.04] spk_2:
Hello and welcome

[00:02:14.31] spk_3:
to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d come down with hydrogen itis if you made me sweat with the idea that you missed today’s show. Five questions Heather Yan does article is five questions to answer before you call a consultant, and she’ll help you avoid making a costly mistake. She’s founder of non profit IST and working Virtually. We talked through the issues encountered when managing remote staff. Technological, generational, emotional measurement, recruiting and retaining. Our panel is Heather Martin from Interfaith Family and Alice Hendricks with Jackson River that originally aired November 2nd 2018. Tony Take to Our Innovators Siri’s were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As, guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non profits, Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo. It’s a pleasure to welcome have a Ando to the show. She is founder of non profit ist an online resource that helps payer nonprofits with the right consultants. She’s also a lead consultant at Third Space Studio, where she helps with Strategic Planning Board and leadership development and going from Good to great. Previously she was director of development and communications with the North Carolina Conservation Network. Her consultancy is at third space studio dot com, and non profit ist is at non profit dot i s t Welcome to the show. Had the Endo thanks

[00:02:14.64] spk_5:
so much for having me. I’m glad to be here.

[00:02:21.29] spk_3:
Thank you. It’s a pleasure. Thank you. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. So you work. You are a consultant. Um, I can I guess, that people have made mistakes in,

[00:02:31.59] spk_4:
I don’t know, maybe made mistakes by hiring. You know, that’s not that’s not what I want to say. Scratch that. Scratch the the the opening clause of that sentence. But

[00:02:42.27] spk_3:
people can make mistakes in their consultant hiring. If they’re not thinking ahead.

[00:02:50.04] spk_5:
That’s absolutely right. Make really costly mistakes. And they can waste a lot of time, their time and consultant time by not really having your questions answered before they go into it.

[00:03:01.18] spk_4:
Okay. Have you been in a situation where you didn’t you felt that the organization had not thought through enough what they really wanted, and it it wasn’t the right time to hire you.

[00:03:33.12] spk_5:
Absolutely. What? What I see are a couple of different problems that are reflected in these questions Wound that I see all the time and others might see. This, too, is, but people come without a clear understanding of how much they have to budget for some kind of engagement with a consultant. So we’re talking about a project, and that project could be anywhere from five hours of my time to 25 hours of my time to 100 hours of my time, depending on how deep we want to go. And having a sense of budget is really helpful with the front end.

[00:03:51.37] spk_4:
That’s that’s something that I ask. I do plan to giving consultant and and before I do a proposal, I have Teoh. I have to have a budget range, at least not going to be a number, but I have to have an idea. So I know that the things we just spent the past hour talking about can be achieved with the budget that the organization has in mind?

[00:04:12.04] spk_5:
Absolutely, absolutely. And if people are getting multiple proposals for this kind of work, which often happens and I encourage, it’s really helpful to be able to compare apples to apples. So you’re not just comparing on costs because that’s often not the most important variable. You’re really comparing on approach on personality fit on culture fit on all of these other variables that are going to give you a much better outcome.

[00:04:49.80] spk_4:
Yeah, okay, very wise. All right, So you’ve been on both sides, give you you’ve been in a non profit, and as a consultant, you’ve been you’ve hired non. You’ve hired consultants when you were I

[00:04:52.08] spk_5:
have higher consultant. And certainly, over the past nine years of serving as a consultant, I have had many of these conversations about getting to the proposal or the contract phase.

[00:05:10.65] spk_4:
Well, I admire you putting this these thoughts down because I’ve been a consultant even longer, and I never you know, I do

[00:05:20.84] spk_3:
these things implicitly, but to say to organizations, these are the things you should have in place, or the These are the questions you should be asking internally before you get to

[00:05:22.27] spk_4:
the start. talking to the first consultant. I think that’s I think that’s valuable and helpful. So thank you for coming on. I’m glad you’re here to explain.

[00:05:30.87] spk_3:
So the first thing you want, you don’t You don’t want some vague plan like board development or strategic plan you want you need. You want something more than that?

[00:07:35.05] spk_5:
Yeah, the first question that I want you to answer is what the challenge you want to tackle. What’s the question you want answered? What’s the sticky thing that your organization has been having trouble with over the past few years? So there’s two ways that I see. Organizations often go when they talk to consultants that are not helpful. One is what you just mentioned, which is? They come with a very big desire for a strategic plan. And when you ask why, the answer might be well, because our old one ended last year, we need to do it again, which is somewhat helpful but really doesn’t tell you what’s driving this desire to have these conversations. And I think that a lot of time, these ideas that fundraising plans, marketing plans for development plans, they’re things that non profit leaders know they can ask or they know that they’re good things have. But they don’t give you much of a sense of what’s actually driving the the need for this or what kind of behind it. One of the questions keeping you up at night about this topic. One of the things you really want to tackle to this effort. So one of being too babe, The other thing I see a lot when organizations talked to me is that they are really, really specific. So they have not only figured out what the that they want a strategic plan. But they have figured out every single activity that’s gonna happen over the next six months to make that happen. So they have designed a whole process without the aid of somebody like me who does this a lot and can really bring some of that outside expertise so sometimes are also getting a little too specific and often times they’re not really addressing the right challenge. So getting clear about that challenge can help a co design something that would really address it.

[00:07:47.63] spk_4:
Yeah, okay, so two ends of the spectrum, either too vague or too specific in terms of precise tasks they want

[00:07:53.77] spk_3:
done. And they’re just hiring you to execute what they’ve developed. Yeah, I’ve never been in

[00:07:57.30] spk_4:
that situation. I’ve had the too vague, but ah, not that not to to speak

[00:07:58.72] spk_3:
well, I work in planned giving. So it’s such a black box. Unfortunately, it should not be a I’m constantly railing against that. It should not be a black box. It need not be a

[00:08:10.16] spk_4:
black box, but so I think people are not sure what activities to do in planned giving. But if it’s

[00:08:16.74] spk_5:
I think it shows up a lot in requests for proposals, which I’m actually writing an article now about how they’re the worst, and people should think about what else to do. But often in a request for proposals, it will be very, very detailed about the all of activities they want the consultant to undertake.

[00:08:35.49] spk_3:
Well, I I guess, yeah, depending how precise it is that you made man just having employees do it, you

[00:08:42.48] spk_5:
know,

[00:08:48.19] spk_3:
you developed it internally. You may as well just have the person who helped develop it to carry it out. If you’re such experts in what the plan should be, why don’t you go ahead and do it.

[00:08:53.82] spk_5:
Well.

[00:08:54.41] spk_4:
Yeah.

[00:08:54.85] spk_5:
And you’re really not getting the staying for your buck of hiring an outside expert.

[00:08:59.47] spk_3:
Because

[00:08:59.89] spk_5:
we really do understand the process of round a lot of these conversations and how to structure them. How to really engage people, how to help you make change and make that change.

[00:09:25.58] spk_4:
We’re gonna take our first break. Other. Um, we come out of this in about 30 seconds, or so I I want to dive into ah board development a little bit. Like what? What? What kind of specifics would you want to see their and then we’ll carry on with the rest of the questions. All right, so it’s time for this

[00:09:55.79] spk_3:
break wegner-C.P.As so that your 9 90 gets filed on time so that your audit gets finished on time so that you get the advice oven experienced partner, eat each tomb, been a guest on the show, and the full firm that has a nationwide non profit practice with thousands of nine nineties and audits under their belt wegner-C.P.As dot com. Now let’s go back to five questions. Okay, Heather, um, so instead of we want board development what? What would you like to see that. At what level would you like to see the The plan fleshed out.

[00:10:49.34] spk_5:
So what I would really love is for an executive director, Uh, maybe aboard. Care to call and say, you know, we’ve done some thinking about our board. Maybe we’ve even done a little bit of an assessment of our board and we figured out we have these couple of challenges. We’re really struggling with accountability around, following through on tax or we’ve done some training on fundraising, but the board still isn’t really engaged. And then we can have a conversation from there about Well, what have you tried? What do you think behind it? What might we try together to help the board shift in these particular ways? So the important pieces are that you’ve done some reflection about what the challenge might be and what’s really behind that.

[00:11:00.28] spk_4:
It’s

[00:11:14.54] spk_5:
interesting you bring out board development because that actually links into question number two, which is, does everybody agree that this is a challenge and that there’s some need for outside help? So if we’re talking about a board, the executive director might have a particular opinion. Does the board chair share that opinion and if they don’t both see the same challenges or even see a challenge with the board. Then again, you’re not setting up the consultancy for you’re not setting up this engagement for success.

[00:11:35.40] spk_4:
So does everybody agree about the challenge? Whether this even, like, what’s the source of the trouble? Is that Is that what you mean?

[00:12:07.66] spk_5:
Absolutely. So if you really if you as an executive director feel like the board really has trouble with accountability or they don’t understand their roles and responsibilities, does the board chair who is really the leader of the board have that same assessment? Would they agree? If I show up to do a training on roles and responsibilities, how is that going to be received by the board? Is everyone on the same page, or at least the leaders on the same page about what? That challenges?

[00:12:17.94] spk_4:
Okay, I see. Yeah, yeah. Um, so that so if it’s let’s let’s continue with the example that board development, um, you you want to know? Do you want to know that the full board has, uh, I don’t have formally approved it, but at least discussed the idea that you know we need some help here is you want to go to that? You want to know about the full board or really, just like the Executive committee or what?

[00:12:39.97] spk_5:
I think it depends on board culture. I would say more people buying it is always

[00:12:45.95] spk_4:
better.

[00:12:46.73] spk_5:
So if there is a conversation among the full board about devoting two hours at our next meeting to this topic to bring in an outside expert to talk about this, that was the ideal that really sets me and any other convulsant up for success.

[00:13:12.88] spk_4:
And so I guess likewise. If there’s some kind of staff, um, I don’t know, uh, staff work that’s going to be done. Um, you’d want to know that the staff is, uh, has bought into the idea. It’s not just coming from the vice president or the CEO.

[00:13:24.71] spk_5:
Absolutely. If you want to develop a fundraising clan, is your development team brought into bought into the need to do this? Have they talked about what the challenges are? How whatever this fundraising plan is might help them move past those challenges. So it’s really the kind of idea of who are the key stakeholders and are they in agreement with the desire to have an outside expert come in? Are they in agreement about the challenge at hand?

[00:13:52.31] spk_4:
Okay, okay. Yes, the key stakeholders. Right. All right, all right. So, yeah, if you’re driving home the point that there’s gotta be gotta be conversations internally before we start talking to somebody externally, we got to know what our trouble is. And beyond that,

[00:14:01.89] spk_5:
right?

[00:14:27.72] spk_4:
And the key people need to be invested in the process to solving the problem. Okay? Absolutely. Right now, I want todo let you know that I let you. I let you suddenly go from question 1 to 2 without my without my buy in. It’s okay. I’m, uh Let’s just just, uh, tread lightly as we go forward. Okay? Um, all

[00:14:30.63] spk_3:
right. So the next one is a timing. When when do you want the project?

[00:14:41.07] spk_5:
Absolutely. So this is really important, because often time, the timing really impact when a consultant is able to help or not. So if you want a board retreat next Saturday, I may not be able to help, or even next month, someone may be booked up if you already have really important date for that project on a calendar and a consultant isn’t isn’t available. You may have to move on to another person, or you may have to shift the timeline, if that’s really the right person.

[00:15:09.84] spk_4:
So

[00:15:47.65] spk_5:
there’s one question about a specific dates on the calendar. The other question is just what’s really driving the timeline for the organization? Do you need this to be done by a certain date? Because there’s a grant deadline? There’s turnover on your board. There’s something else externally driving it. So at the front end, really thinking through Where does this fit in? In terms of our schedules can be really helpful in figuring out in that first phone call is this person is this consultant a good fit and and what might need to be shifted to make them a good

[00:16:23.74] spk_4:
you know as well. There has to be some receptivity for the consultant to push back and say, You know, that’s not a That’s not a realistic timeline for the scope of the work that we’re talking about, you know, putting aside it’s, you know, a board retreat on a weekend or at a board meeting, but you no longer term engagement like for instance, planned giving. There’s not much we can do in planned giving in six months. I don’t I don’t consent Teoh. I don’t agree. Toe. Six month engagement’s got to be at least a year. So it’s got You have to be willing to hear that what we’ve just talked about can’t be done in the timeline that you defined.

[00:16:28.98] spk_5:
I’m so glad you brought that up. I

[00:16:30.81] spk_4:
think

[00:16:31.55] spk_5:
I would

[00:16:32.52] spk_4:
say

[00:16:32.91] spk_5:
90% of the folks I talked Teoh, uh, have a over ambitious timeline

[00:16:39.86] spk_4:
on.

[00:17:27.44] spk_5:
And when we really start to dig into, uh, what are all the past but need to be accomplished, who were all the people that need be engaged? What are all the schedule that need to be managed? Often times we’re having that same conversation, and and I believe, as you probably do that particularly for these bigger processes where you’re really in terms of plan giving, building something new, doing a lot of research, having these important conversations, it just takes more time. And that’s important because it also means that it’s more likely to stick if you were having more conversations over more time. So when I do strategic planning I really like for that. Have a six or nine months time horizon that gives people enough time to really think through all the implications of that he changes were making gives the board and the staff opportunities to engage with each other in different ways. So, yes, pushing back on the timeline is really important to

[00:18:13.51] spk_4:
the strategic planning, I would think, uh, I mean, that’s, uh so I’ve never I don’t I don’t do that kind of consulting at all, but, um, yeah, I mean, there’s their interviews and have to take place and coordinate with people’s schedules. You know which board members just started a new business. So she’s gonna be in Costa Rica for eight weeks, you know? Uh, yeah, that’s that’s a particularly strategic planning. And I would think that’s a particularly long time frame. And then and you have to Ah, you have to be willing toe recognize that it may not be finished, even in the time that we have to find.

[00:18:20.24] spk_5:
Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:23.64] spk_4:
All right. All right. Um, so before we rush through Teoh points number four and five, uh, put now I’m putting on the spot about a bit tell Tell us a story. Um, something that, uh, you know,

[00:18:35.13] spk_3:
maybe maybe when the initial conversation took place, they hadn’t thought through it enough, and you advised them that they do some internal thinking and then you did command and you were genius, and they paid you

[00:18:56.61] spk_4:
double what? The contract amount, You know, anything like that where you know, the internal work was was made a big difference. You could tell.

[00:19:02.04] spk_5:
Yeah, I wish I had that. For where they paid me double. I

[00:19:16.69] spk_4:
don’t. You know, you haven’t been consulting long enough. I have a dozen of those. Oh, man, I have a dozen of those, but I’ve been consulting since 2003. 17 years. 17 years. You’ll get there, you’ll get there about it.

[00:19:34.04] spk_5:
I What I have is more of the lesson learned in failure of the cautionary tale, particularly early on in my consulting career, Um, kind of blindly believing one person’s viewpoint of the state of an organization and not truth checking that

[00:19:42.37] spk_4:
with

[00:19:43.04] spk_5:
other key stakeholders.

[00:19:44.75] spk_4:
What happened?

[00:20:45.44] spk_5:
And I was a new executive director, called for some work with their board. Um, the board was having some big problems with getting work done. Committees weren’t really functioning very well. They weren’t doing their fundraising. Very as I look back things that a lot of organizations are dealing with, I often hear some of some similar complaints. And so we talked about doing 1/2 day board retreat where we developed some action plans on how to get things back on track, and I discovered upon getting into the border treat. But the board did not see these as problems on, and that if I had done some more conversation or even some assessment survey work with the board, I would have discovered that they had a very different viewpoint of what the challenges were. And they were in some, some level of conflict with the executive director about whose work was this, how they wanted to be encouraged and Stewart as volunteers of the organization. And so it was a real lesson for me of that. That question Number two has the board chair in the executive director. Have they talked about that? There they in agreement. Does everyone see this challenge from the same viewpoint

[00:21:05.49] spk_4:
that sounds like, uh, may have become Ah, hopefully not tense, but at least awkward. While you were in front of the board.

[00:21:13.89] spk_5:
It was definitely awkward. It was definitely awkward. We recovered and they did some good work. Um, but

[00:21:20.98] spk_4:
it’s

[00:21:25.12] spk_5:
good. Waas. I learned definitely that I needed to have a more comprehensive understanding of organizations before I do that kind of work.

[00:21:30.20] spk_4:
Yes, not one person’s perception. All right. Was the executive director in the room while this was unfolding?

[00:21:37.44] spk_5:
She waas

[00:21:38.56] spk_3:
way

[00:21:39.15] spk_5:
had some good conversations afterwards. It wasn’t It wasn’t terrible, but it really did draw more of a bright line of this is what you thought was going on. And this is what the board thinks is going on

[00:21:51.58] spk_4:
and their difference. And we

[00:21:56.16] spk_5:
need to talk about why and how we can deal with those.

[00:21:58.01] spk_4:
Okay, good that it was early on in your career. Not This was just not last week, was it?

[00:22:02.64] spk_5:
But I was not last week.

[00:22:05.46] spk_4:
Okay, So you’re going uphill. That’s good. That’s good, right? Uh, right. OK, Your next one is around money.

[00:22:53.86] spk_5:
Yes. So we already talked about this a little bit that it is so important on the front end to have an understanding of what your budget is for any work not only for other reasons we already discussed, but also because it really signals to a consultant and signal to your organization that you’re serious about addressing the challenge. Uh, so if you have money built into the budget for if you go back to the board and have them approved a revised budget with a little bit more funding for some kind of special project throughout the year, it also signals to everyone that this is a serious issue and we’re going to devote resources to it. Plus super useful for us consultants to know what we’re dealing with And if it’s even possible, As you said,

[00:23:12.24] spk_4:
Yeah, yeah, And and, uh, you know your point earlier. I want toe reemphasize. If you’re getting getting proposals that run the spectrum of costs, then you’re not really making fair comparisons?

[00:23:25.02] spk_5:
Absolutely, Absolutely. You I definitely have seen organizations to particularly for these, uh, catch all terms like strategic plan will get a $5000 proposal and a $50,000 proposal, and they’re just not comparable.

[00:24:03.22] spk_4:
And then you end up wondering Well, okay, way sounds. Let’s say we could spend the 50,000 but what would the over the 5000 person have done if we told them that our budget was 50,000 cause we like what they’re doing for five, but it’s not nearly as comprehensive. Obviously, G, what would they have done for 15? And then you got to go back to them and, you know Oh, our way. We can’t spend 25. And so neither one is quite right. You know, that’s a big botch. That’s that’s a big time. Waste time suck. All right, all right. Be up front.

[00:24:08.60] spk_3:
And there is a responsibility on consultants to I think Teoh toe Ask if if money hasn’t come up, you gotta ask What? What are we looking at? What kind of budget do you have?

[00:24:40.70] spk_5:
Absolutely having that money conversation. And I tend to do it even earlier in the conversation now because what I find is that we can daydream about all of the wonderful things we could do together. And then when they say and we have $10,000 I have to sometimes really some of those things back in or I have to have. They have to make hard choices about all of the potential beautiful options I put out on the table. So I’m even now early in the conversation, asking trick so that we can really right size. Or I can present options in a way that helps people understand what’s possible.

[00:25:00.45] spk_4:
Okay, Okay. Uh, let’s go to your last question. What do you got? You insurance? It’s

[00:25:57.32] spk_5:
the last question, but I think it might be the most important one. And that’s how much organizational time and energy do you have to address this challenge. So what’s the bandwidth for this piece of work? Um, a lot of times you may see this. Two organizations think Well, I have a problem. So we’re just gonna throw money at it. We’re gonna hire consultants and they’re gonna hear our woes and go off and fix it and come back and present us with perfect plan to solve all of our problems. Um, that’s not realistic. Uh, I don’t believe that’s how consultants who want to really make lasting change in organisations often operates. So we always need organizational help. We need board time. We need staff time. We need If we’re in the case of fundraising, we need some reports from your database. We might need to look at, um, sit down with you and really go over your last strategic plan and think about what worked and didn’t and why? But we’re definitely gonna need the executive director’s Dan with and then the other key stakeholders.

[00:26:18.04] spk_4:
Oh, getting

[00:26:18.89] spk_5:
clear. Yeah,

[00:26:20.11] spk_4:
go ahead. Now you’re finished, you finish. I’ll remember mine.

[00:26:23.62] spk_5:
Those getting clear about do you have the bandwidth? And if you are trying to do a huge capital campaign and move the office and you’ve got transition of a key staff person or you’re hiring a whole set of people because we’re ramping up for the election if there are other organizational priorities going on sometimes I’ll say If I it seems like this isn’t the right time to tackle up a big project that you really don’t have the band with, you got some other competing priorities?

[00:27:25.14] spk_4:
Uh huh. That often gets in the way of the final step. Engagement? Uh, because other things are coming up. There’s a database conversion. There’s a gala, um, et cetera. It’s valuable to to talk about. I think, at the at the granular level, how much time this is going to take a least. At least in my work. Um, you know, I need a staff person, and I’ll need maybe 4 to 5 hours a month of their time or something. You know something along those lines so that they know what they can plan around, You know, everything you just said. Just getting a little more granular with it.

[00:27:34.77] spk_5:
Yeah, I will. Often as we’re talking through, really think about what’s the board time and attention we might need?

[00:27:40.33] spk_4:
What’s the

[00:27:50.34] spk_5:
halftime in attention we might need, um and really thinking about how does that fit in with what you already have going on over the course of the year? Can we find an hour of this board meeting and three hours is aboard retreat to do this work? Or is it is your plate already full for this year? That might be OK.

[00:28:01.28] spk_4:
Okay, um, final thought Heather before, before we wrap up, Just got about a minute left.

[00:28:08.34] spk_5:
So the final about is all of these points to being really intentional about the conversations you have internally before you pick up the phone and call a consultant really thinking through what’s our challenge? How much how many resources we have to devote to this. With our time as we convert to this, that’s gonna be you’re gonna get much better proposal from consultants. And in the end, a better engagement and a better product.

[00:28:35.08] spk_4:
Have a endo. We’re gonna leave it there. Thank you very much.

[00:28:38.32] spk_5:
Thanks for having

[00:28:39.35] spk_4:
my pleasure, Heather. She’s founder of non profit dot I s t non profit ist and her consulting is at third

[00:30:11.64] spk_3:
space studio dot com. We need to take a break. Cougar Mountain software, Their accounting product Denali is built for non profits from the ground up so that you get an application that supports the way you work that has the features you need and the exemplary support that understands how you work. They have a free 60 day trial on the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant non Tin. Now it’s time for tony Steak too. Our innovators Siri’s It just finished last week and I curated the eight Innovators into one post. We started way back in January with Edgar Villanueva that was de colonising wealth and Stephen Myers with personalized philanthropy. And it was back then in those dark days of January that I had to assure you that live innovators were coming and they did come. Um, we started off with Heather Macleod. Grant, that was social change is system change, and the innovators have been live ever since. Her Peter Shankman, Sherry, Kwame Taylor, Peter Heller, Jamie Bursts and Crisfield. They make up our innovators. Siri’s, um, you’ll find them curated, catalogued and captured with a video at tony-martignetti dot com. And that is tony. Take two. Now, here is the pre recorded working Virtually

[00:30:45.45] spk_6:
welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 18. 90. See the non profit Technology Conference 2018. We’re coming to you from the convention center in New Orleans. Second interview of the second day of our coverage. All our NTC interviews are sponsored by Network for Good, easy to use donor management and fundraising software for non profits. My guests right now are Heather Martin, CEO of Inter Paid family, and Alice Hendricks, CEO of Jackson River. Whether Alice welcome.

[00:30:46.64] spk_0:
Thank you. Welcome

[00:30:47.40] spk_6:
to non profit radio. What have you

[00:30:49.06] spk_7:
needed to be here?

[00:30:53.47] spk_6:
How’s the conference going for you, ladies? Great. Have you done? Yeah. OK, great. Excellent. Good superlative. Have you done your session yet?

[00:30:57.01] spk_0:
We did. We were on yesterday

[00:30:58.23] spk_6:
morning. Okay, so it’s all relaxing now.

[00:31:00.71] spk_7:
Now it’s partying

[00:31:17.03] spk_6:
drinks last night. Okay? All right. Your workshop topic is working. Virtual attracting and managing the best talent. I’m sure we have stats on how many org’s nonprofits have virtual employees, or at least what the trends are. It’s obviously growing growing wouldn’t be here.

[00:31:25.17] spk_0:
And not only in the nonprofit world in the for profit world as well. Um, especially in tech.

[00:31:30.24] spk_6:
Yeah. Okay,

[00:31:31.35] spk_7:
absolutely. It’s becoming it because of the technology that can a enable easily to work from home your chat technologies, videoconferencing. It’s become a thing and everyone is doing it now in exploring whether it works for their organizations a lot.

[00:32:10.25] spk_6:
Let me dive into the word everyone not to not to quibble with you at all. But I was thinking generationally, Are there 50 and 60 some things that are comfortable working, being virtual not well, maybe we’ll get to whether they’re comfortable having virtual employees. They will get to that. My voice was cracked like I’m 14. Get to that. But how about being virtual employees themselves? Are they comfortable? I’m over 50. So I include myself in that. Are we comfortable doing that or,

[00:32:37.59] spk_0:
you know, I think it actually depends on the organization, and it’s really dependent on the organization making the employee comfortable. And so I’m not sure I don’t know if you have any stats, but I don’t know. From an age perspective, there’s a very good question about an older generation being comfortable having virtual employees under them and managing them. However, as being the virtual employees, I think it’s all about how the organisation sets it up.

[00:32:48.94] spk_6:
Okay, so that there’s promise then for those 15. Absolutely. Let’s talk about it, since since we’re skirting around it, how about comfort or discomfort with having employees being virtual when you’re over 50?

[00:33:28.65] spk_0:
So I again, I I think that there might be an age discrepancy in the comfort. I also think it’s just personality, and I’m finding that when I talked to a lot of people who are looking to work virtual and they’re asking me, what can I do to go to my manager, my supervisor and quote unquote sell them on me, working virtually My answer to them is find out what the resistance is there is. Part of the resistance is we’ve always done it this way. I need to see my employees to know that they’re working. And how do you get around that some of the key things that we talked about in our session are setting very clear goals and making sure that those goals are being met.

[00:33:39.02] spk_6:
Let’s go to our talk about the gold goal setting.

[00:33:53.83] spk_7:
Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s not that much difference in terms of goal setting in terms of accountability for delivery, Bols, that you’re supposed to be doing so used that the real issue is communication, making sure you have a structure where there’s frequent communication and proof that you’re doing the delivery herbal. So you’re measured not on a punch clock style of. I get to work at nine and I leave at five, and therefore I must have worked during that eight hour period. You’re measured based on what is the work you were set out to do, And did you actually do that work in the time period? I said I would do it. So if you’re a project manager or working on a program area, you work with your you work with your supervisor on here, the things that I’m going to get done at a particular time, and if that’s not done, that’s, Ah that that could be a concern. That’s a problem with that view problem in a non workplace, too, but rather than time, it’s mostly based on work product.

[00:34:32.80] spk_6:
Okay, okay, so that should apply, Even if you don’t have any virtual, I

[00:34:36.21] spk_0:
think one of the things we’ve found is that working virtually is this or managing virtually is the same is managing in an office. But you just have to be much more intentional about what you’re doing. Much more intentional about your communication, understanding that you’re not gonna have that water cooler conversation, that someone’s not going over here something and understand where you are in a project and be ready to communicate with those people who are not physically in the office with the management and the psychology of the management is very similar.

[00:35:19.45] spk_6:
Very valuable to know on dhe make explicit. Um, how about attracting people, Teoh a virtual or attracting the right talent so that we’re comfortable that they’re gonna work in this work environment? What you thought

[00:36:07.43] spk_7:
Well, there’s two thoughts on that that I have one is What What is that? Your talent pool is the entire country or world should you see fit? And there are wonderfully talented people in places that aren’t in the city or town in which your organization is located, and it gives you this ability to recruit from a wide place. And you can also hire incredibly talented people from who have a wonderful lifestyle in a less cost of In my organization, we have people who live in a lower cost of living state than Washington, D. C. Where we’re based, and that allows me to provide a living wage and for my employees in that, um, but the other thing is just you. When you’re recruiting, you have to be very mindful of the interview process. And I think one of the things we talked about in our session was helping people figure out who these folks, how well they’ll respond to working virtually. How

[00:36:21.83] spk_6:
do you do that?

[00:36:25.92] spk_0:
Yeah, so some of the things that we recommend some of things that we recommend is number one. We use technology as a tool to enhance communication in a virtual environment, so sometimes you’re using video conferencing just for a regular meeting and you’re talking through Instant Messenger, and there’s other ways you’re using technology. So in the interview process, I always recommend that people use the technology that you’re going to require those employees to be using during their job if they can’t do an interview on Skype or zoom or appear in, and it’s very uncomfortable. It’s not to say that that might not be a good employee for you, but you have to be aware that there might need to be some training or development on that tool for them. And no going into that is important when you’re hiring that person.

[00:37:17.43] spk_6:
And if you see generally a discomfort with technology, that’s a pretty big red flag

[00:37:33.48] spk_0:
or a red flag that you might need to overcome or that person is not right for the position. And then the other question is some positions just don’t lend themselves to working virtually, and you have to be aware of that when you’re hiring also well. One of the the easiest ones that we look at is if your office manager and you’re managing the physical office days, it’s really difficult to be virtual when you need to notice that there’s a crack in the sailing where the vendor needs toe, you know, deliver something and be their

[00:37:47.97] spk_6:
way. Don’t have a tool for measuring the coffee level.

[00:37:54.40] spk_0:
Zack. Remotely There’s an app for that. You can probably

[00:38:19.72] spk_3:
time for our last break turn to communications. They’re former journalists so that you get help building relationships with journalists so that your call gets answered when there’s news you need to be on top of so that you stay relevant in your community. They are at turn hyphen two dot ceo. We’ve got but loads more time for working virtually with Heather Martin and Alice Hendrix or

[00:38:25.98] spk_6:
any others that stand out to you.

[00:38:38.00] spk_0:
I think it depends on the industry and what the job you’re doing. If you’re someone who does intake or you have to be there to welcome people into the office, you need someone physically there. There may be hybrids where sometimes people could work in the office, and sometimes people could work from home. And I think thinking this through before you move to a virtual environment or virtual job for that specific role is key. You can’t just say OK, tomorrow we’re just gonna go

[00:38:55.45] spk_6:
virtual Alice. How do you How do you create this environment That’s gonna be hospitable toe virtual. I

[00:39:00.49] spk_7:
mean, it’s all about culture. You have to create a culture where everyone is communicating well with each other, where people know what the expectation is on response times of communication.

[00:39:10.16] spk_6:
He’s gotta start at the top.

[00:39:11.37] spk_7:
It has to start

[00:39:14.72] spk_6:
a willingness to accommodate virtual employees. Okay, so it starts there. And then how does that out of the CEO trickling down?

[00:39:21.43] spk_7:
You adhere to it. So rather than walking from my office into someone else’s office and telling them what I think they should know that maybe two other people who aren’t physically there also need to know. I will do that on a slack channel, for example. So I’ll use an instant messenger chat program, and I’ll put them all on the channel and talk to them all together at once.

[00:39:39.10] spk_6:
You go through with a bar, or

[00:39:40.29] spk_7:
even if that’s the situation, because it requires amount of discipline because you don’t want to leave people out. The interstitial conversation that happens at the water cooler can also be done virtually, and that’s pretty important, too.

[00:39:58.41] spk_6:
Okay, Excellent. Excellent. All right, we’re gonna get the tools you mentioned. Slack Aslak Channel. Is that that a tool? Okay, okay. Chat. It’s a simple chance.

[00:39:59.54] spk_7:
Chance chance software. Yeah,

[00:40:01.53] spk_6:
you’re over my head, but I’m trainable. I could be a virtual employee trust

[00:40:05.65] spk_7:
way. Remind us in technology challenges there, but way remedial. You got the radio?

[00:40:16.81] spk_6:
Yeah, I’m very good at that. I mean, I got knobs and everything from buttons and old. I don’t know what they do. Um, okay, What else? Anything else about creating the environment making inhospitable.

[00:40:21.71] spk_0:
I think some of the things that some of the other things are making sure that your remote employees have the tools, whether it’s the technology or even a monitor to go along with that laptop that you’ve given them because some some people go into a new job, they’re given a laptop, they say work from home. And it’s not as easy as just. Is your home office conducive? And being able to help them think through what are the things that they need to set up in a virtual environment to make them successful and effective at what they’re doing? We talk about a little bit about security and knowing what the security measures are. You can’t go into a coffee shop and work from your computer. Number one. Are you on the Y? Fire? You on the public? WiFi? Are you on a virtual private network? Are you using your hot spot? You’ve to go the bathroom and your computer sitting in Starbucks. Do you leave it there and ask the person next to tow? Watch your computer while you go to I mean, we set policies around these things, especially in organizations that have a lot of regulations on data and accessibility for their information. These are things you have to think about when you’re creating a virtual environment.

[00:41:22.50] spk_6:
OK? It could be hip. Maybe. What’s the credit card? P C M

[00:41:26.22] spk_7:
p c I

[00:41:28.93] spk_6:
c. I Okay, what do you do when you’re at Starbucks alone? You’re on. You’re on a VPN virtual private network. But you have to go the bathroom. You gotta close up your

[00:41:47.08] spk_7:
laptop. You use the diaper changing table in and you pull it down in the restroom and put your laptop on that. Take care of your business, OK? This is very

[00:41:47.64] spk_6:
all right, though. I love the nitty gritty. Listen,

[00:41:49.82] spk_7:
I mean, we’re all about real life here. Way need

[00:41:55.79] spk_6:
to detail. You need clear policies around

[00:41:56.47] spk_7:
policies that people sign. And everyone is very well aware of what the security policies are.

[00:42:09.48] spk_6:
Protection, use of technology. You said the company’s versus your pride. Your personal technology. Home versus away from home. Okay, All right. Help me out here. Getting else what else belongs. Just ask you what else belongs in our policy?

[00:42:49.40] spk_0:
Well, so there were talking about there’s communication policies. How? I mean, one of the things that we found when we first started having more virtual employees. We started as an in office. Everyone was in the office. And as we grew into different communities, we had employees in different cities and states than our headquarters were located in. And things like when I send an email, I just need you to acknowledge that the email was sent. If you’re in the office and I send you an email and you haven’t responded, I could walk into your office and say, Hey, you get my email. Even if you’re not ready to respond to it, I know you’ve gotten it. And by five oclock that day, I’ll get an answer when someone’s virtual and you send an email, you have no idea if it got lost. Did it go into there Spam and you have to get some kind of communication

[00:42:57.78] spk_6:
with water. Quick. Got it.

[00:42:58.71] spk_0:
So we said a communication policy that says If I asked you something or requested something, you send an email back saying I got it and I’ll get back to you by Wednesday period. The end. It’s all set. And so that that you need to be very much more aware of those types of things and other community way have communication policies that go along with that.

[00:43:19.18] spk_6:
Okay, Alice, you wanna add Teoh or policy statement? I

[00:43:30.17] spk_7:
mean, the security, I think, is the most important. You know, the email security, the hacking potentials. You know what happens also, when someone is let go the lockout procedures, they have access to all of your systems. And they’re, you know, in North Dakota, somewhere at a coffee shop, you have to shut down all of their access to things. So all of that needs to be planned at the I t level in the company. What are you going to do? And how are you handling staff with remote devices?

[00:43:48.36] spk_6:
Can we do this if we don’t have a dedicated T staff person?

[00:43:52.26] spk_0:
We don’t have a dedicated Yes, it is.

[00:43:53.19] spk_6:
So the family says the answer is yes. Okay, because our were small and midsize non profits in this audience of listeners. So

[00:43:59.85] spk_0:
you onboard someone with technology? When they leave, you do the same thing. Onley with a virtual person. You don’t physically have them there. And so you have to do the same thing you would do if someone was in the office. But make sure you couldn’t do it while they’re not physically there. How did they get your computer back to you? Do they FedEx it to you? Are you going to go pick it up somewhere if they’re not there? And so just those types of things need to be thought

[00:44:42.20] spk_6:
through. Okay. Excellent. I love the policy statement details, because this is the stuff you have to think through. And then Alice, to your point, it has to be activated. Implemented on from the top. You can’t just have a policy and ignore it. You know, if it’s the CEO. It’s a sea level person whose, whose distant they to have to say, I got your email and I’ll get back to you by Wednesday.

[00:44:49.42] spk_7:
Everybody has to play by the same rules. There shouldn’t be exceptions or any accommodations for anything else. Yeah,

[00:44:54.62] spk_6:
okay, Um, how about let’s talk about some of the needs that your remote staff has been talking about, like managing the office? What special needs to the people who we only see a couple of times a year have?

[00:45:07.27] spk_7:
That’s a great question. I think they

[00:45:10.10] spk_6:
it took that long.

[00:45:53.38] spk_7:
They need community. They need a partner. They need a buddy. They need to know that they’re not all alone. I’m so frequent meetings daily. Stand up calls, Um, and Heather’s organization. They stand up. Call it Well, it’s It’s a phrase for on a daily time when you just spend 15 minutes sort of role going around. The company’s saying, Who’s doing what? That day or a day or a team? If you’re working on a project together, you know everyone’s together on either a video chat or a conference call, or it could even be during on a slack channel or a Skype Group or a Google hangouts or any type of technology that people can come together for a period of time. The more frequent that happens, the more connected they feel. And there is an issue of feeling lonely. It’s not that you’re just going off on your back room and typing all day long on your own. You need to be part of a community and part of a team. And the technology helps enable that and a Heather’s organization. There’s you do. What is it, a buddy?

[00:47:02.84] spk_0:
So anyone who is new, who comes on board, there’s a couple things we do. One is no matter what level you’re at. You come to Boston for a couple days toe on board. You actually see physical people. That’s probably essential. It’s really it was one of like he learnings. When I started working virtually is to know that there’s a physical person in a physical space, or just seeing meeting someone face to face gives you much more of a connection to them immediately. The other thing we do is when we hire people, we kind of give them. We give them Ah ah, a partner. So we hire a new associate director in L. A. And we put them with the associate director in Atlanta. This is not a mentor. This is not a supervisor. This is someone you can ask the dumb questions too. Like, how do I get my expenses paid? Or I’m sure they told me this during orientation, but I don’t know what to do about X, y and Z. And just having that person that you know you can go to is critical. Especially when you’re by yourself in an office or in your home. And you’re trying to go up the learning curve of starting a new job.

[00:47:11.86] spk_6:
Okay. All right. What else? Uh, anything else to be empathetic to our remote employees

[00:47:20.49] spk_0:
again? This is a typical management. I would say this you should be doing this any time is just everyone’s intent is good. Assume that is good. And there’s a good intent all all the time.

[00:47:25.68] spk_6:
That could be that That that’s gonna have implications for chatting

[00:47:30.88] spk_0:
any

[00:47:31.25] spk_6:
female. No, you can’t. You’ll never hear the well, Not never, but most of the communications. You’re not gonna hear the inflection in the person

[00:47:38.19] spk_0:
you don’t see the Sometimes you don’t see the physical. You don’t see the physical, you don’t get the inflection. And so, before you jump into anything someone sent. And I get this all the time and sends me an email and says I need blank Well, that could be taken in so many different ways. Are you demanding something from me? Did ice not get you something? There’s so much in just those three words. And so my first thing is to okay, they have good intentions. Let me follow up. You need blank by when? What is this foot? Get more information. They’re not. Now. They could be like You haven’t done something. I need it now. And recovery screaming. It could be screaming at you, but the default is not do that. And what we do actually is we have everyone created communications charter that says how they like to be interacted with. And so I understand if you are one of these people who sends very short emails, I also have the flip side where someone sends me seven paragraph e mails to describe one thing. And so if I understand how you interact, I could read that email with that understanding not to immediately assume that you’re yelling at me in the email.

[00:48:50.38] spk_6:
Valuable. Um, anything else? Anything else to be supportive again, Empathetic to the remote employees we covered it, recovered it. But I

[00:48:51.72] spk_7:
want

[00:48:51.84] spk_6:
to make sure we’re

[00:48:52.29] spk_7:
the only other thing I can think of is definitely getting together at least once a year with the whole team culture building.

[00:49:31.07] spk_0:
It’s tough. It’s tough in a non profit environment where you’ve got a very tight budget. But we have prioritised an all in person meeting in Boston. So we’ve got staff in California, in Chicago, in Atlanta and Philadelphia. We make sure that we try in our budgeting process to bring everyone to Boston for two days during the summer, not only for good brainstorming and and thinking and strategy conversations, but also so they can connect with each other and have that community and build that in person conversation and feel comfortable with each

[00:49:32.86] spk_6:
other. And you feel like once a year is sufficient.

[00:49:35.34] spk_0:
You know, if I had the budget to do it more, I worked a

[00:49:38.09] spk_6:
little longer, but

[00:49:43.42] spk_0:
all of that, yes, and so you have to take it for one of the the tools that we talk about is the airplane. I mean, yes, it’s expensive, but it’s a really helpful tool to really get past some of the boundaries that are put up when you don’t actually physically meet in person.

[00:49:55.76] spk_6:
Alice, do you have virtual employees? Also Jackson River

[00:49:58.50] spk_7:
30 30 Working 30. Promoting entire organization is virtual

[00:50:04.94] spk_6:
Oh my God! OK, where’s the Is there a physical office?

[00:50:12.07] spk_7:
There is a physical office with three people in Washington, D. C. But so we all behave as if we’re virtual. And there are many days that I don’t go into the office. So in its you know, it saves a lot of money and transportation costs. It stays dry cleaning bills for everyone. It saves child care expenses that you know it’s a very great way to have a lifestyle, because you you have that flexibility. There’s also downsides to it. There are days that I wake up in the morning at 6 a.m. and check email, and all of a sudden it’s too, and I haven’t eaten breakfast yet, and then I’m until six at night. So you know it’s a It’s the same type of work life integration needs toe happen in a virtual environment as well as a physical office space. You know, you need to know how to take a break.

[00:50:58.95] spk_6:
You mentioned saving childcare expenses. So? So the the remote employees. It needs to be understood that the remote employees may not be immediately accessible, right for a quick for last minute way. Gotta talk right now,

[00:51:03.52] spk_7:
So I think it’s about

[00:51:04.34] spk_6:
have something going on that is gonna hold him up for 10 or 15

[00:51:31.76] spk_7:
way. Try and make sure that people have adequate coverage to do their job during the day, the hours that they need to work. So we have a lot of employees that are at 30 hours a week because they want to spend more time with their families. Um, older Children can be met at the bus stop and take care of themselves for a few hours in the afternoon. But the expectations of performance air still there, You know, we’re pretty high stress. High standards of that. You know, we don’t want you to be distracted from your work. How do you

[00:51:35.21] spk_6:
manage? The West Coast versus East Coast is the West Coast. People have to do the West Coast. People have to start at 6 a.m. Local time.

[00:51:39.53] spk_7:
I think a lot of people do different policies on that. Our policy is that you work for the day that work the business day in the time zone in which you live. So it’s sometimes hard if we’re dealing with Europe and the West Coast at the same time, because the time zones don’t overlap as well.

[00:51:53.17] spk_6:
Everybody’s in Europe.

[00:52:04.21] spk_7:
We don’t have employees in your village of clients in Europe, so it’s Ah, it’s a situation where we have to manage that. But there are organizations that have West Coast people working East Coast hours way don’t have

[00:52:06.85] spk_0:
a as explicit policy that you work those hours. But we asked people how early on the West Coast, how early would you be willing to have a meeting so we will not set meetings with some people? Some people are early morning people, and they would rather work from 7 to 3 rather than 9 to 5, and so we’ll work with your schedule individually. And so I said, there are some meetings I will have on the West Coast is seven in the morning, but that’s due to that person willing to do that.

[00:52:40.83] spk_6:
We have a few minutes left. Still, let’s talk about some of the tech tools I was gonna ask you about. Slack. What dot com How do we find it or what they do for us?

[00:52:42.95] spk_7:
Black dot com It’s how you find it. You know, it’s it’s equivalent to Skype. Or there’s Google chat any type of chat software where everyone can log into. And then there’s you can make groups in them, so the term for a group in Slack is called a channel. And in our organization, we have a channel for one of the channels is named lunch. And if you’re gonna be away for 20 minutes or going to lunch, we just take we just like everyone who’s in the company on that channel and say, Hey, stepping away for a bit, I’ll be back in half an hour. So we are all know it’s almost a ZX, though you would see me walk out the door, you know. And instead of walking out the door, I’m just telling that channel what’s happening. There’s channels reach project. Also, Slack is a good ones.

[00:53:22.33] spk_6:
Black has already a verb. It’s like someone

[00:53:31.93] spk_7:
just like someone. It’s a verbal. You Skype, someone you trust someone. Do you remember a well instant messenger that that was a one matter, that you could use that?

[00:53:38.86] spk_6:
Well, I was. But, um OK, so slack for, Ah, for chatting. A quick, quick chat about document sharing is simple. Google docks or something better.

[00:53:44.99] spk_7:
It’s a simple Google. Microsoft has a great

[00:54:16.27] spk_0:
product. Microsoft’s one Dr SharePoint Microsoft Suite has has a document sharing software. Ah, cloud based saving system. Um, Skype is now escape for businesses and integrated with it. And so we’re using that in the office. And then there’s There’s a ton of independent ones out there, and it’s whether it’s video conferencing or it’s document sharing or its chatting. There’s a ton out there, and I think it could be overwhelming. And for us, it was evaluating what was best for our organization and what our upper management was able to use. We talked about this before, is modeling the behavior you want from your staff, and so getting upper management on board was key. So one of our project management software, we use a sauna, and we’ve tried three or four of them, and our CEO liked asana. And so if she was going to use a sauna, we’re all going to use this on. And so I think that’s really important. It’s got to be easy to use and work for your organization.

[00:54:48.64] spk_6:
Calendar Ring Simple is

[00:54:50.53] spk_7:
callin during Yeah,

[00:54:51.97] spk_6:
you have any other tools besides Google Calendar

[00:54:54.43] spk_0:
were using outlooks Calendar.

[00:54:57.04] spk_6:
Microsoft. Yeah, all right,

[00:54:58.43] spk_7:
I think.

[00:55:00.51] spk_6:
What other ah categories we need toe

[00:55:02.54] spk_7:
video chat video is really important.

[00:55:05.24] spk_6:
Describe a couple

[00:55:14.14] spk_7:
I couldn’t do one on video with Skype, you can do video with Google hangouts, but any time you can actually have an opportunity to see someone’s face and most of the calls we try to do as videos and we find that that works really, really well,

[00:55:21.05] spk_6:
river again, the sense of community.

[00:55:47.46] spk_0:
And if you can’t get together, that’s almost the next best thing. And video has come a long way. The technology is more seamless than ever before, and so at least you’re seeing the person. You might not get all of the nuance of the physical that that’s in the room, but you can see a emotion, or you can see a reaction to something which is super or their cat walking the cat. We could get a lot of pets walking in front of the camera while people are on video. This

[00:55:47.99] spk_6:
can be a lot of fun to talk about cats, but, you know, you have 30 virtual employees. Alice. Um, you have fun doing it. I mean,

[00:55:56.18] spk_7:
it’s awesome. It’s completely awesome is I love it. And, you know, the best thing is that that people have really formed strong relationships with each other. They when you ask them what they like most about working here, is they say each other. They say, the people I’m here because I have connected relationships with other people on the team. And to be able to create a culture where people feel connected to each other in a remote environment is is like That’s the thing I’m most proud of. Anything we’ve ever done. It doesn’t have to do their software product or what we’ve done to impact non profits is the fact that we’ve had a culture of people that have had a wonderful time working and doing productive, impactful things.

[00:56:35.99] spk_6:
Jackson River always had a largest proportion of employees virtual from the beginning

[00:56:36.56] spk_7:
from the beginning

[00:56:38.64] spk_6:
in the culture of the start, about about family

[00:56:49.97] spk_0:
well, we started as a 2.5 person organization in the same way. We got to probably about 8 to 10 people in the office, and then our growth took us into different cities and communities. And that’s when we became virtual because of the growth. And so we’re probably half in the office in Boston, and then half of our staff is outside and there’s one or two people in a city by themselves.

[00:57:03.41] spk_6:
We’ll leave it there.

[00:57:04.30] spk_0:
Excellent, Thank you.

[00:57:05.82] spk_6:
All right. They are Heather Martin, CEO of Interfaith Family, and Alice Hendricks, CEO of Jackson River. This interview, sponsored by Network for Good, Easy to use donor management and fundraising software for non profits. And this is tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 18 NTC ladies. Thank you so much.

[00:57:23.70] spk_0:
Thank you, thank you. Pleasure.

[00:58:06.32] spk_3:
Next week there’s a good chance it’ll be privacy. Best practices on. If that’s not next week, it’ll be coming very, very soon, and something else will be excellent next week. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As. Guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com But Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund is there Complete accounting solution made for nonprofits. Tony done m a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turn, to communications, PR and content for non profits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen. Two dot ceo Ah, creative

[00:58:45.84] spk_2:
producers Claire Meyerhoff Sadly, Boots is the line producer shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein You with me next week for not profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great talking alternative radio 24 hours a day.

Nonprofit Radio for August 9, 2019: Getting Buy-In & Your Tech Committee

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Liz Polay-Wettengel & Karim Lessard: Getting Buy-In
TDissent tactics. Rebellion. Resistance movement strategies. You’ve got to take risks if you want to move out of the past with fresh ideas that are supported within your org. Our 19NTC panel has examples of successful and failed risk taking. They’re Liz Polay-Wettengel with Interfaith Family and Karim Lessard from 7 Simple Machines.





Peter Schiano & Ilene Weismehl: Your Tech Committee
Peter Schiano and Ilene Weismehl say you need a committee to keep you alert to areas where you can better leverage technology. Your committee’s agenda includes budget, security, projects underway, and training. Peter is at Tech Impact and Ilene is with Community Catalyst. (Also from 19NTC)





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Transcript for 452_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190809.mp3 Processed on: 2019-08-09T19:45:33.607Z S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results Path to JSON: 2019…08…452_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190809.mp3.573287994.json Path to text: transcripts/2019/08/452_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190809.txt Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into oppcoll mope Legia if I saw that you missed today’s show. Getting buy-in descent tactics, Rebellion, resistance movement strategies You’ve got to take risks if you want to move out of the past with fresh ideas that are supported within your organ. Our 1990 seep panel has examples of successful and failed risk taking their Liz pull a wetting gal with Interfaith family and Kareem Lassard from Seven Simple Machines and your Tech Committee. Peter Schiano and Eileen West y Smell. Say you need a technology committee to keep you alert to areas where you can better leverage tech. Your committee’s agenda includes budget security projects underway and training. Peter is that Tech impact and Eileen is at community catalyst that is also from 19 NTC Tony stick to Living Trusts Responsive by Wagner C. P A. Is guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com I saw your eyes roll when I said Living trust. Do not do that. I didn’t know I roll on the preview to the Tonys. Take to you. Hang in there until Tony Stick do, and you’ll see that there was no need for that. I roll that I just saw Who else was sponsored by by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for non-profits tony dot m a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non-profits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to DOT CEO. Let’s go to getting buy-in from 19 NTC. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 19 NTC. You know what that is? It’s a 2019 non-profit technology conference. You know that we’re at the convention Center in Portland, Oregon, and you know that all of our 19 NTC interviews are brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising tools to help non-profits make an impact. You know all that. What you don’t know is that I am now with these Pele wetting gell and Kareem. Lassard is vice president, digital strategy and content at Interfaith Family, and Kareem is the CEO at seven simple machines. Welcome, Liz Karim. Welcome to the show Thank you. Thank you very much. Pleasure. Pleasure to have you. Your topic is you want a revolution. I want a revelation getting the buy-in you want. I love buy-in topics. Yeah, I’ve had a couple. Last year, there were two women. Um, I thought I’d write their names down, but, uh, way tagged them the buy-in bitches. That goes really well with what we’re talking about. Two. Okay, I hope it does more than you think. You know my Really Okay. Okay. Excellent. Uh, yeah, they were They were very into it, and it just it developed during the show. They didn’t come in being the buying bitches, but they left being the buy-in. Um, all right, so Oh, here they are. I didn’t write it down so I can call my own notes my own podcast that I wanted to because I want to shout them out. Carrie Lewis and Larry Koch. Last year’s NTC They were the buy-in bitches because they had the exact same topic. Um, you you you have something called descent tactics and resistant movement strategies. All right, we’re gonna get into those. Why? Let’s let’s start with the basics. But I’m teasing. I love resistance, movement strategies. This sounds like anarchy. I love it. Anarchy goods put back. Yeah. Okay, So since was said that I’m gonna for the benefit of the listeners who don’t have the multi color for color video. Lizzie’s hair will you describe the color of your hair? The colors of your hair? It’s what are they? Blue and purple and a little bit of pink. And it’s it varies. And sometimes it changes month to month because it’s very interesting. I’ve got a lot of compliments on your eye. Shadow matches one of the colors in the air. Yeah, Booth was matching blue in there. All right, So, uh, why do we have to have a top wise boys buy-in so damn important? Karim, let’s start down the end with you. Why is this so put your CEO. Yeah. Why? You got way? Why you all of you so much trouble. Why can’t we get your attention, right? Why can’t you? Why can’t we get you to believe what we know? To be fact, you know, that’s a really great question. Buy-in is absolute critically important because it doesn’t matter if you have a great idea. If you don’t have the sort of allies behind you. You’re not gonna go anywhere with. It’s going. It’s going nowhere. Um, so that’s we spent a lot of time in our in our presentation talking about what are the different tools that you need to bring in to make sure that you’ve got not just buying that, that you’ve got the ability to articulate your vision, your idea. Get that buy-in but also so that you yourself believe in your vision as well, right? Because getting you to believe and the way you pitch it not not not humbly Percent. We’re gonna get okay, I can’t. So far, I’ve done roughly 30 interviews. I’m doing 37 this whole conference. We’re done roughly 30 so far, and I would say it’s every second or third interview. You gotta have buy-in from leadership. Absolute. Got to get the buy-in because and I mean, that applies to any program. Whether it’s checker, it’s fund-raising, our program, its operations. If if the C suite doesn’t buy-in, you’re going, you’re hardly going anywhere, or you’re going nowhere and and buy-in and this is not just the C suite. It’s also your co workers. Your constituents It’s everybody you need to have the buy-in in orderto have that buy-in really have to believe in the idea that you’re you have to believe in it. All right? So I don’t know. Does that lead us to dissent? Tactics? Sure. Can we go there? What is this about his descent tactic? There’s, Ah, there’s a lot to be learned from from punk rock, right? There’s a There’s a lot to be learned about believing in what you’re talking about, believing in a little bit of anarchy. You’re a musician or am I Am a handy. I played both bass and drums. Where what’s the band? Come, I don’t have a band. I actually just play around. I play with Ladies Rock Camp in Boston and, uh, really support some of the stuff that they dio. It’s really fun. I play for myself, and it’s just a really good outlet. So you could have called this lessons from punk rock. I could have called this lessons from punk rock, but if Karim would you? I don’t know if you would buy into that, you know, the best way would you appear of bought into that? I would have loved to buy into that. I’m actually a former banker, so I love the fact we’ve got the punk rocker in the banker in one place. Okay, Okay. Former bank former. All right, All right. So acquaint me with us, please. With the descent tactics. So there’s there’s lots of different kinds of dissent tactics, and, you know, some of them you can use some of you can’t. You certainly don’t want to use any violent, distant tactics. Okay, but there’s a lot of buy-in that you can get theirs theirs direct descent tactics where you Okay, give me some examples. So some examples are you stand up to your CEO and say, No, I’m not gonna do that. And just very directly, just descent. There’s a lot to be said for that. For having your voice and being convicted enough in what you believe in. That’s not being humble. That’s not being humble at all. No, And you can’t really be humbled. This is a situation where you have a disability and modesty. It doesn’t no place it has no place here. And some of the stuff that we talked about also in this session is about really believing in yourself and having a voice and having chutzpah like that’s what we talked about, really is really just like having the Do you like the booth balls? Todo You weren’t gonna be offended. You you were. You were 8/10 of the way there. I turned a career before. This is the way they’re have the balls. I turned to Karim earlier, before we started, It was like, I can’t curse. I have. You can’t stop myself from cursing this time last year. Well, we did say buy-in bitches, but But that’s not one of the FCC. Seven words. But this time last year, non-profit video had I am enough of affiliate stations. So we’re bound by the FCC. So we couldn’t go too much further beyond bitches. But this year now, the bilich program has ended way had, like, 12 15 stations and that really got to never scale. So we don’t have so we’re not bound by that. So you can Okay, thank you. Can’t swear. So another way that you can apply to send tactics to what you want to do is repetitive, repetitive descent actives repeating over and over. What? This idea is what the change you want to make is being repetitive and being thoughtful about what you’re repeating. Because the more you repeated, the more people will buy-in, the more they will want to listen to why you want to make this change. Why this is important to the organization, to your department, to your idea on dhe. Then there’s also solution based descent tactics where you have an answer and you have a proven answer. And one of the things that we talk about is putting those tools together. Have those solutions in front of you so that you can say this is what we should do. This is why we should do it. Here’s a solution we should expect. It’s time for a break. Wagner, CPS. They’ve got another free webinar. This one is on August 21st. Fair Labor Standards Act nuts, bolts and updates. You want to calculate the regular rate of pay and overtime for employees correctly or for yourself? You want to understand paid versus unpaid time. And of course, there’s a lot more in the webinar. You goto Wagner cps dot com, Click Resource is and upcoming events. If you can’t make it live, you need the archive, go to weather cps dot com Click resource is and reported events simple. See the symmetry there? All right, now back to getting buy-in. This is provocative stuff. I love this one that’s helpful. Isn’t coming to have someone come with a solution and not just not strictly a problem. Yeah, we talked about that. You know, if you are if you have ah, a dissenting opinion and and you don’t have a plan, then you are a contrarian or a malcontent, right? You need to have a plan. And so will we spend our time talking about in the session is is that you’re gonna have to have a plan to be able to execute on your vision And by the way, having a vision that is separate than your organization, That is a form of dissent. And you just have to accept that you have to accept that you’re dissenting having say that again if you have a vision that is different than that of your organization, Yeah, you’re dissenting and so own that. Be punk. Rock that way on that. And then let’s start using the tools to get your plan put together, OK? Eso if we’re if we’re gonna use these descent tactics on again, I’m saying this as much for myself as maybe maybe not the others. Maybe, but that this is not only when you’re going to the C suite. This does apply for your peers, your colleagues, those working for you, with you and as well as above. Okay, yeah. I mean, part of part explicit again. Part of dissenting and backing it up is having a story. It’s also about having allies. You need to have allies you need to, like, build your There is strength in numbers. You need to build your band of a bunch of people. Want people believe this is true. That’s more persuasive than one person believes, right? So, starting a revolution, right? That’s what we’re talking about here, starting a revolution. I want a revelation, Right. You have to have your band of brothers, right? Your band of sisters. You know, your brothers and sisters who are who are at your side with their swords as well, believing in what you’re talking about. Their sports says words lorts lorts There’s a w in their report of the country sports s words towards. There’s a feeling there? No, but every word I’m a native New Yorker world York I’ma Nugent, New Jersey. I’m Swartz lorts. You know you’re not backing off that doubling down on sports? All right, I’m descending. Okay. Dissenting from mirriam Webster. Hey, Doesn’t get any rock solid than that. I mean, bedrock America of truth telling. I will fight that with with my story and my guts. Tell me you have some examples of rebellion. Let’s let’s digress a little bit. Karim, Tell me. Tell me one of your the example stories you’ve got. One of the stories is actually and we’re talking about punk rock. We spend a lot of time working with intra preneurs. People have great ideas like within their organization. And this 11 woman that we’ve been working with in particular, had been just battling in her industry for years for, like, 10 years to try to get a shift in how in a workflow very, very basic shift in workflow so that they could actually spend less time doing sort of administrative tasks and more time providing care for patients. And she really didn’t have all she was doing was complaining about it for a really long time. And finally, once we were able to start talking to her about it and building a plan, we were able to put together a a solution that saved a huge amount of time from this workflow in her organization. We think it’s going to shift the industry for, um, and now all that frustration. All that aggravation that she’d been experiencing for the last decade is now sort of coming coming to fruition because she’s she’s got a plan and she’s executing on it. What’s the work at seven simple machines? What do we do? Lots of data aggregation across disparate systems. So it could be It could be. You’ve got different payroll systems. You’ve gotta see Aram. You’ve got applicant tracking systems. All of those things need to be brought together into a single platform so that you can make sure that you’re turning data into actionable information. Okay. And how was it that you were working with this woman in health care? You know, we didn’t start in healthcare. We started. This is a woman that that I knew by by friendship, and I couldn’t listen to her complain anymore. You said a decade, A lot of pain. It was a lot of complaining, but then we started talking about it professionally, and we started putting it together, and it felt like a real thing. And lo and behold, it is a real thing, and it’s it’s taking root within that within the industry. And so if you’re complaining about something for that long, something has to change, right? So you have to have the idea. Put the idea together. You could be the one. If you’re complaining about your systems, if you’re complaining about you know the way that your organization is doing something, put a plan together to change that, it can be you. It doesn’t have to be somebody else. You can be the change. Absolutely. It starts with you because if it’s not you, who else is gonna do it? There is nobody I learned in the old Boy Scout rule. I learned there’s nobody named somebody else. That’s right. Somebody else not gonna pick up trash on the trail. That’s right. And so why? Why wait for somebody else to do it when you could do-it-yourself? Yeah, and you’ll do it best. Absolutely. Okay. It doesn’t require amplification. I agree. Absolutely white white. I’m not gonna amplify it. Um, okay. Resistance, movement strategies. What? I like you did. You did dissent. Tactics? What a resistance movement strategies, Corinne Well resistant. I mean, those air detent tactics, right? It’s the same thing. But anything you repackage, it’s, well, it’s it’s descent. But then it’s being methodical about it because you can’t If you think about people that have been revolutionary, no one’s doing it themselves, right? It’s a matter of like taking descent, being orderly about how you assemble what your your vision and then sharing with your allies and then acting on it. I mean, you know, Joan of Arc wasn’t by herself, right? Harvey Milk wasn’t by himself. You know, they all went through this process of finding their allies, starting with the scent, but then having a story that they could share, right, And that’s the thing. We work really well together. Listen, I do because I have some of these tools, but Liz is is an amazing storyteller, and you can’t. It’s not just a simple custard of writing something down in a grid. You have to be able to share the narrative if you’re gonna engage people in a in a very purposeful way. And the story is usually emotional. It’s a motion based. There’s if you’re complaining about anything within your organization, you have an emotion about that. So there’s a story to tell on this woman woman you were describing, Karim. Yes, she stayed there 10 years. Somebody else might have left. Yeah, she was doing it for 17 years complaining about everything. No, she was in the industry for 17 complaining for 10. But it was actually, though is very funny. It was really almost an act of love that she stuck it out. I mean, she cared about what she was doing to the point that she she almost couldn’t let it go. And while that story is about something in health care that really applies to non-profits because most of us are here because we believe in our missions and we love what we’re doing. We love what our organization’s air about. So sticking it out of love and telling that story about why something needs to change. That’s impactful. You’re gonna empower people who hear this. I know you are. You could be the buy-in bitches. Dude, that’s a one way s Meyer is part of the buy-in bitches. You got to be two way already. Got the original metoo buy-in, which is a hey is better than two buy-in bitches be to metoo. Um, okay, so let’s talk strategy. Okay, You’ve got Let’s say you’ve got Ah, but you got to start getting your peers together, so we gotta get some numbers. How did how did you get this and get myself started? Well, you start by creating the story, so you create the story that you need to tell, and you just sort of socialize it. You know, a conference like this is a great place of socializing idea because you’re around people who think similarly to you, and you can socialize an idea. You know, I was thinking about this. What do you think about that? That socialization can either manifest in different ways. You can booster story and help you move forward, or it can give you a different way of thinking, so it helps enhance what you’re doing. So so that’s a really good way to crowdsource. Yeah, crowdster kruckel crowdsourcing. I was gonna add to that. You know, one of the things, especially this is a technology conference and we use We talked about using the agile development methodology and being agile capital A being Angela, you can start with something very simple. You can start with just a hey, what do you think about this? You start with something simple, but then, if you’re willing to liberate, if you’re willing, Thio, try again and go back, take some learnings. Um, and can continue. Iterating. What starts out as a conversation between two people here at at NTC can turn into a ah, whole new platform by a revolution. A revolution? That’s right. Okay, that’s what we’re here for, right? So let’s say now you’ve got your peer support. They’ve come on somewhere unwilling. What do you do with their? Well, what do you what do you do with the recalcitrance? Leave them behind Kareem. Everybody who works for the council, it’s well, it’s funny, so that that’s part of it is one understanding your stakeholders are going through an identifying cause. He didn’t have to identify who champions are potential champions are you have to be able to know who you’re sort of collaborators are. But then you also need to know who the challengers are too, because you don’t call them enemies, Enemies, enemies too strong. Because you know what? You don’t want them to be. Your enemy sounds so permanent challenge. So by identifying the challengers there, they probably have some good reasons for challenging. And you need to understand those. You need to understand what’s in it for them. You know why? Why? They’re standing up to fight, because you are gonna have to overcome objections. Absolutely every single time. So you’re learning as you’re going. Yeah, and you need to be open to listen. You need to know cannot be open toe listeningto challengers because the challengers could really make your idea stronger. They absolutely will. They will. They’ll make your argument stronger, at least, you know, And they might make you right. You right there might strengthen the idea too. So internally for me, I turned to my CEO to challenge me when I have an idea. When I have a crazy, wacky idea of what I want to do, I turn to her because I know that she’s gonna challenge me. But it helps me think through that idea even further and makes my idea even stronger. You have you have some examples of? We’re gonna continue our process. I’m not leaving there, but I’m digressing a little bit. We’ll come back. That’s my responsibility. Get us back. Success, successes and failures in risk taking. You tell your dad cerini told the last neo-sage e-giving carrying Karim has a good failure story. I’ve got several just taking it. So actually, my father was a very politically active guy back in the back in the sixties. Um, and he first of all, he did decided take over the student union building at Cornell with some friends of his with the Black Panthers. That was That was not a well thought out plan because he could no longer attend that school. Right? That was a that was That was a short sighted aggregation of your allies. Is there? Is there a Is there a title to this movement? This this particular action like, is there a Wikipedia page for this action? There is. This is the What’s it going? Is it the Black Panther student union Take over at Cornell. Cornell? Okay. Yeah, it was It was about There were there were guns. Okay. Not well thought out. Not not well thought out. Okay. But then, actually, so interestingly enough, he did have, like, later on, he became a doctor and he actually started setting up methadone clinics in the Seattle area. And the whole point was to be able to provide a service that he thought was really important to a marginalized community. So this was important to him on, and it was more well thought out. Except it was also still Filoni ous right? So he felt like he felt like he was doing the right thing and he had the right allies to get behind it, but it was still against the law. And so this is one of those things where you have a great idea. But even if it’s a great idea and it might seem objectively like it’s a great idea, you really have to doom. Or you have to have a plan to goes from beginning to end front, back because otherwise, you know it’s only a matter of time before you end up in federal prison. What’s your Your dad is still living. He’s deceased. I was gonna ask what’s his next action gonna pay but carries on you carrying on? Look at you talking about. He would be thrilled that you’re talking about dissent and and revolution. But that’s the idea to do it inside the system. And if he had a thought out plan, he would have thought Just tried to change those laws first before go ahead and going ahead and opening this clinic. So if you have that plan of what goes where, then your idea can really come to fruition in a really impactful way. Okay, Okay. All right. Let’s go back to our process. We’ve got our strategy, will go back to our strategy. We’ve got our allies now. Now we need to persuade leadership. Is that the next stage? Yeah. The case, Yes. How do we open the door? Let’s say the leadership, Maybe they’ve heard some rumblings, but they didn’t take notice for whatever reason. So how do we open the door? Formally, you walk in that door and you start to speak. Because if you don’t believe in your idea at this point, if you don’t believe in what you’re talking about, if you don’t have your plan in your strategy than what are you doing with it? Can’t just like, take it and put it in your pocket. You have to open your mouth. You have to make a meeting. You have to have a conversation. You have to have the balls to walk into sea seaweed office and say I have an idea. I have a plan behind it. I have the reasons why it should be done. And you should listen to me. You need to be able to have that. That ability to walk in that door. What ultimate confidence? Yeah, and one of things we talked about this session is using. You know, I talked about coming from banking, using corporate tools t ve eloped the metrics that you need to be able to make your case right. So being able to make your case from a from a potential upside, But we also in a very downside risk avoidance, right? Those those are other things that you have to be able to communicate. Like the cost of doing nothing, right? That’s a thing. We’ve all we’ve all fought against. The way the opportunity cost. Absolutely not of that acting. That’s right. But you have to believe in that. You really have to If you’re going to go through all this trouble to go through what we’re talking about about this strategy. To get there. To prove your idea to yourself, you need to be ableto voice that you can’t just put it in your pocket. If you believe in this idea enough, you’re gonna walk into that C suite, you’re gonna walk into the board meeting and you’re gonna have a conversation about this and you’re gonna have the idea and the plan to back it up. You do believe in it. By now, you’ve been cultivating the idea among your peers, right? So have the ball, right and yeah, not not be. Ah. Well, we already said not be humble, not be modest, but exude the confidence. You know, in the passion. Don’t be afraid to show you that’s what I’m trying to be afraid to show the passion for your idea. That’s right. Okay, I’m in. I’m in the CEO’s sweet. Now it’s, you know, a formal setting. I have to be professional. And you know what? Whatever that means and and modest and no, no, you could have passion. I mean, it’s persuasive. Let them feel the emotion right. And in my own experience, having that passion means Maur to the sea. It’s just people in the C suite or on the board because they see how invested you are and how much you believe in that and having the allies behind you that also believe in that is powerful. How do you, uh, how do you convey the numbers that are about that air with you? Just say, you know, eight of us they’ll come in if you want. Is that good enough for you because you go in and Mass? Not in the first meeting. You don’t neo-sage storm the c suite storming the jail. That’s the ale. Um, okay, but no. But But you do talk about the numbers I’ve talked. I’ve talked to Liz and Annie and Joe and Pam, and they all agree, And you could ask them and it’s it’s prototyping and it’s surveys and it’s hot. It’s really aggregating that information. You have to be able Thio tell a credible story that you’ve got some supporting proof they’ve got to be able behind. You might not have him show show up there, but if you can relate the stories if you can aggregate the people that are that are in some meaningful way that that really helps a lot. And I do want to add that sometimes it’s not even just going to the C suite. It could be that you’re at in admin or managerial level, and you have an idea of your department. It could just being going to your boss. It’s not it’s not. It doesn’t have to be as big is walking into a board meeting or C suite. It could just be using these tactics and to put forth an idea that’s just for your department. Okay, for sure, you know, So I like to think they I like to think big, too. But I also want to bring it by institutional change. I want to bring it back there. It could start with Justice Department change. You know, it could start with a changing A system for volunteermatch management. It could be very simple. It doesn’t have to be a big idea. It could just be that you need Thio. Could be. You know, I want to be able to store my lunch for a week in the community refrigerator, and I have a way that we have a law. We have a policy that knows no personal storage overnight, right? Okay. It can be simple. It doesn’t have to be this elaborate change. A large organization. It can be simple. Like I want to store my lunch for for a week. Here’s my idea. And here’s the plan on how we could make that happen. And in the spirit of being agile, the power and that is with starting something with something smaller, something modest is that you get that success. You get that win, you go. Oh, wait a minute. I was able to do that. You got the wind at your back, right? Right. I may change. Why stop here? There are other things that I feel passionate about. Besides, my curdled yogurt changes and always have to be big way love. Big changes. But change can start really small, too. He’s going on a sword for his old yogurt, especially the Greek on my final lactose free one toe. Let’s get the green valleys going belly. Okay. We have, like, another minute and 1/2 or so. So, um, we started with you, Liz, didn’t we? Yeah. So, Corinne, why don’t you give us a wrap up you have to be too sure. You know, take a minute or so wrap us up yet the thing So that the title of the of the session is you want a revolution? I want a revelation. And the thing that lives articulates just really well, at the end of the presentation is that the revelation is that your voice matters and being able to see that evidence of your idea with dissent from the common opinion to see that idea coming to life is a revelation when you’re acting on it. And so, like, we’re just saying you establish a foothold by doing it. Maybe in small ways. But then, as you apply this process and you repeat it, you iterated, you can make bigger and bigger changes. And that’s the thing that we want people to carry. Okay. Okay, So are we. Agreed? You want to be the buy-in bitches? Be too sure. Okay. Yeah, totally comfortable with that. I’m comfortable with that. Okay. Okay. I’m gonna I’ll I’m gonna check with you before we march promoted that way as I did as I did with I want to shout out again, Carrie Lewis and Lower Koch. I asked them. Do you mind if I call the segment buy-in bitches? And they both emailed me back and one was in a new employer. And she said, Yeah, let me check. It was so I’m totally fine. We’ll check again just to make sure. All right, So, uh attn least preliminarily buy-in bitches v two They are Liz, pull a wetting gell, vice president of digital strategy and content and interviewed family and Kareem Lassard, CEO at seven Simple machines. Thank you so much, Karim. Thanks. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you for being with Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 19 NTC. All of our 19 ntcdinosaur views are brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising tools To help non-profits make an impact. We need to take a break. Cougar Mountain software maintaining separate accounts for each fund-raising. Daily expenses reporting to the board. These air all a challenge. That is why Cougar Mountain created Denali Fund to get you past these challenge ages. It’s your complete accounting solution. Specifically designed for 501 C three non-profits. They have a free 60 day trial at the listener landing page. Tony dot M a slash Cougar Mountain. Now time for Tony’s Take Two living trusts. Now, as I admonished, no need for the eye roll here. Um, you know, I always say that place to start your plan giving is with bequests, and that remains true. No changing, no going back on that. But if you decide to go a little further, these trusts, these very simple trusts can be a good next step in planned e-giving. We call them living trust. Sometimes they’re called revocable trusts. These things are set up by people who wanna avoid having a will, right, so they put everything into their trust. If it’s done right, a lot of times it’s not. But let’s assume it is because because they’re working with you so they know what they’re doing. So they put everything in their trust when they die. What happens? Well, just like a will. The trust says where everything goes, including where you know the residue, the residual whatever’s left after after gif ts to spouse and children, grandchildren, whatever’s left. That can be your charity. You can be the remainder beneficiary of these trusts and, uh, just like a will, because we say remainder beneficiary doesn’t mean we’re talking about pennies. There could be a lot of money left in the residual estate, all right, and that can be divided up and your charity can get a piece. I just had a client. Got $300,000 as, ah, residual beneficiary of these of a living trust, right? There’s a lot more on living trusts on my video at tony martignetti dot com. If you’re gonna roll your eyes, then don’t go to the video. I don’t want to see that, but these can be a valuable, valuable plan gift. You know it’s your life. The video is that tony martignetti dot com That’s all I’ll say. And that is Tony’s Take two. Now it’s time for your tech committee. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 19 NTC. That’s the 2019 non-profit Technology Conference. We’re coming to you from the convention center in Portland, Oregon. All of our 19 ntcdinosaur views are brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising. Tools to help non-profits make an impact with me now are Peter Schiano and Eileen Y Smell. Peter is project manager and consultant at Tech Impact and Eileen y smell is the knowledge and database manager at community Catalyst. Catalyst, That catalyst kind of cannibalistic catalyst. The catalyst. They’re not cannibals. Um, these When it goes well, Peter, Peter and Eileen welcome a pleasure to have you, um, our tech committee. Let’s start with you. I mean, what what? Why do we need a tech committee? There’s multiple reasons. Part of it is to ensure that staff are engaged in the process, to be sure that it’s not just held in the tech world, that you’ve crossed programmatic and cross functional staff who are involved in decision making and exploration on and who can also serve as ambassadors to the rest of the staff. Okay, okay. Bringing tech to the broader community. However, we define whether that’s just internal or external. I should have said that your workshop topic is moving your plan forward Tech committees that work, Peter. Anything you want to add? Thio do our headline, and you’re thinking about why a tech meeting or what it does when I talk about it often use the roots metaphor. And so the tech committee draws needs and pain points and requirements up from the roots, including requirements for new applications you might be using. And then it nurtures the Tech that’s available back down all the way into the organization. So they’re the purpose. The Tech committee is to keep that conversation evergreen about tech within the organization across in all the way down to every stakeholder. So it’s not just the purview of the vision leads or of the department leads or of the I T team, but they’ve got a conversation. If you got an idea, you know where take it, take to the tech Committee. Okay, Who belongs on our tech committee? That’s a good question. Let Eileen talk about how they chose who they’ve got their start there. Okay, so we looked both cross organizational. Both cross programmatic and cross, some functional. So we have senior managers in there, some people from our executive team, admin staff, and then feel team members, people who are actually doing work on the ground since they all bring a perspective of help us ask the right questions for the work that needs to be done. OK? And how many people is that we have seven people on our team? Okay, meets Does a tech committee meet regularly, or only when their tech issues. So are there. Always. DEC issues making. That’s all of the above and our team and Peter and I’ve talked about this is less pure tech and more governance. So we meet, um monthly. We have a right standing monthly meeting, and it’s high level strategy. So there were asking them questions like, What are the questions that are keeping you up at night? What air the problems you need to solve and then exploring ways that the tools can meet those needs. So for them, it’s it’s a little It’s not a how to use. It’s really exploring what the needs of the organization that needs our eyes. The committee led by or facilitated by by you. Okay, Is that is that a good practice? You think you have a tech person leading it? Well, in my case, I’m I’m kind of I’m an accidental techie, so I kind of bridge both worlds and that I’m the database manager, but I’ve worked in development. I’ve worked in other areas, so I think I think it e I don’t think it has to be someone in my role, but it is working well Yeah, Peter, I would think that that’s probably better Practice. Like to have a I mean, people are gonna be invited a ll the diverse groups that Arlene is describing gonna be invited to a tech committee. Now that I think about it, they probably expected to be led by someone who works in tech. Yes. So in our experience that the important thing is it needs to definitely be lead from within the organization. And it should be. It’s ideal. If somebody is a tech organization tech background that leads it, that’s not critical. I think what is important is that they have access to somebody that can advise them and participate that has that tech backgrounds. Look, if you have a nightie leader, that person can convene it and you’re all set. If you don’t have a nightie leader could be any program or executive leader. Anybody that wants to lead the organization lead the tech committee, but they need to be able to season those ideas with somebody that has tech depth and experience that can come from their board that can come from a volunteer donor. There are We offer a vote for virtual CEO service tech impact to be able to offer that kind of advice. But you should have somebody there that season it with. Think about the security implications. Think about what you’re trying to do has been done elsewhere. You don’t to reinvent the wheel dunk. Oh, customers. Plenty of great free software. Inexpensive, suffered will solve your problem. But that shouldn’t have to be the person. It leads it necessarily. Okay, how about the frequency of meeting you have Month only seems to make stands you want you wanna have, Ah, drumbeat. Where you’re constantly thinking about what’s important, what should be prioritized. How are the project that we put in flight? And the tech committee itself doesn’t execute every project. Their their job is the surface needs pick direction and then call for action. But they don’t have to be the one doing all the lifting. Right? Right, Well, because they’re not all technical mazarene was describing. In fact, most or not, you’re the only person on the committee I mean, yes, but there are people there, super users on the committee. So there are some people who are very savvy and understand the technology, so they’re not officially but they’re in the Luke. Okay, okay. Yeah, sure. The committee is not That is not a project management committee. This is surfacing. As you said, Peter surfacing needs you. Both said bring needs. Bring needs to the leadership. Is it sort of? Is the committee sort of maybe both. A buffer and a liaison between C suite and users. Is there any of that when you bring the needs? If you’re surfacing, needs thes needs to be have to be funded. That funding is gonna come from the C suite. So is that Is that one of the committee’s rolls to make make the case for the for the needs that the committee is identified, they might make the case. But also, you have to say that not everything that gets elevated in this group is going to become the next-gen did or a priority, even a priority. So, you know, if it becomes something where we say this is the way it is and they would help make the case, it wouldn’t necessarily be funding. It might be just making the case of how we can roll this out. It might be, you know, in the case of if you’re using a C. R M and might be just using it in a new way where you wouldn’t need funding, but you would need other staff engaged. Yeah, I think the Tech Committee they discussed the tech budget. They should be a voice in the tech budgeting process. They’re trying to set priorities for tech for the organization. So absolutely, that has has to have close contact with executive leadership. To be able to get that funding and then also buy-in for other resource is like time and priority and behavior change. It’s the hardest part. If change isn’t lead from the top, it won’t usually stick. And so it needs to beat your needed from the bottom. But then, once the commitment is there, you’ve got a lead by example from the top. And if you don’t have alignment with the executive team, then you’re not gonna be successful. Probably Eileen, how does your committee prioritize different needs that do get surfaced? So we, um, it has to do with really? Because they’re our capacity limitations. I mean, that’s some of it is like, what are the things that if we don’t do them, the work’s gonna stop I mean, that’s sort of where it’s at. In our case, we actually identify two priorities that went to we created really project management, working groups that then did implement, then did take it further. So it’s a kind of things that just get in the way of moving the work forward. That’s that’s how it is. And if it’s a nice toe, have, then that gets moved further down. Okay, so you have to arbitrate where everybody who brings a need feels that their priority, they should be priority number one. Right? Because you, Peter, you said that the organization has a place to bring its tech needs, right? So, uh, program fund-raising, other operations of finance legal. If you’re that big an organization and they’re all bringing needs, they’ve all got needs. And then to them, these are all. Each one is number one. Yeah, I’m one of the things that committee as the arbiter of these competing right. And one thing that’s that’s a helpful part of that process is they put together a backlog and that backlog. It’s re prioritized over time, and I’m a fan of encouraging those teams to publish their backlog and give people a sense of what things you’re thinking about. That helps that helps people get used to the fact that change is coming. So it helps with resistance to change. And it helps people think about. Boy, if we’re going to do a new donor management system, maybe in six or 12 months I’m gonna talk to my friends about what they’re used. Do they like it or not? Where if you tell me it’s starting tomorrow and I was much time to get engaged, and I could be thinking about how is that gonna affect my job? And I can be a better participant in that requirement gathering if I’ve had some time to soak on it. So it’s not always the world’s worst thing that things don’t get worked on right away. Sometimes you get a better outcome if they had a little bit of soak time, even if they don’t ever get him. At least I know they were heard. I meet on the list and I agree the other stuff is hopefully important. They’re working on instead, and you get a sense of transparency, which is nice. That’ll help assuage and also and has other benefits too. But terms of you know what I was asking about. People feel better. At least they heard their priority got on the list. It’s not where they want it to be on the list, but it made it session. I’m going to after this is how assessments can help build adoption. And that’s that’s that’s I think they’re gonna talk about what we’re just talking about. People are involved in the requirements gathering. They’re more likely to buy-in on its when it’s time to actually go implement and go live. Okay, I think a part of your session was Have you done in your session already? It’s tomorrow. It’s tomorrow. Okay. We’ll be approaches to craft rushing requirements and s. So how how do you encourage ideas to come? That is, that. Is that What is that? What approaches to crowd sourcing requirements that I’ll speak for that one? I guess so, Yeah, that’s the committee. Whichever parts of the committee are going to be touched by the software, it’s only finance. You wouldn’t go gather a lot of things from program if not to be involved. But for every area that it touches, say serum, it’s gonna touch everything. You ask those people to go back to their areas and then do a threshing session with their teams. And, you know, I actually will do a facilitation around multi voting where people get to put sticky notes for ideas and then go give them five votes. And if you’re passionate about something, you can put all five votes on one thing or distribute them as you see fit and the priorities rise up really quickly. But everybody feels like they were involved in this process again. That roots metaphor coming in from all sections, the organization leading into one central set of requirements. And no, they’re not in the final meeting, where those are all arbitrated, but they like their voice was in there. And you get the benefit of the best ideas. People will see it from another area. Go. I never would’ve thought of that. Brilliant. And you’ll get it in the system. I lean. You do something similar to that? No, but it’s a great idea. Okay, you will. I’m going to stop that immediately. OK, time for our last break. Turn to communications, PR and content for your non-profit. They help you tell your compelling stories and get media attention on those stories, all the while helping you build support for your work metoo media relations, content marketing, communications on marketing strategy and branding strategy. You’ll find them at turn hyphen to DOT CEO. We’ve got butt loads more time for your tech committee. We still have a good amount of time together. What maximizing the benefits and reach of tech you already have. Let’s spend time on that. Who wants to start with maximizing what you’ve already got? So a lot of organizations have a number of applications they’re not taking a good advantage of. And so seemingly trivial task of getting an inventory of what you’ve got and then publicizing it and publishing it someplace where people can get to it over time increases the chances that the stuff you have like should get used. And sometimes it exercise will also show you were using three different survey tools for no particular reason other than that happened in separate silos. We don’t have good cross training opportunities, but we all know a different tool, and you might make the choices to get standardized on it and letting people know which already have part of that is also nurturing the super uses that you were talking about and giving them a platform to share their expertise with their colleagues, whether through office hours or through lunch, and learn things like that so that they can raised the level of expertise of their colleagues and get people can all get deeper used to the system. A lot of the work I would do with with tech committees Virtual CEO role is making sure they’re getting the most of what they already own. It’s not just about doing new stuff. You’re spending more money. So you see a lot of you see a lot of this among the tech impact clients, not maximizing what they absolutely potential. And there are even the people who feel like they know it reasonably well. No, I know the system could do so much more. I’m too busy to get to it. But, wow, I don’t I don’t I don’t know what I don’t know or I know I wish these things were easier by it all the time. We get to it, and by getting those things to a tech committee, you can then thrash them and prioritize me. When it comes up on the list, you can figure out how to get the answer to get more juice out of the stuff you already own. I mean, have you seen that? Uh, I’m sorry. At a community catalyst where you’ve been ableto harvest greater potential, I don’t know whether to look over the mic or above below. No, it’s not because you’re too short. Well, all right. You guess you could do that, Peter. Okay. It just might. Okay, good. Yeah. Has that been your experience between the catalyst? This fire is leveraging. What’s there? Yeah. And it often has to be a reminder, because people get excited about the dew and un tried, say, like, you know, let’s can we do this? And it’s like what we do have, You know, we have something here and some people aren’t even using, like, we think we’re not even using to its full capacity. So it might be having new training’s people asked. In one module we have in our CR M, someone asked for improvements and that they’re unclear. And I said, Well, here’s the instruction sheet we created over time, they said, Oh, yeah, that helps And so sometimes it’s. People think there’s something new because they just need a refresher. They need to remind them. And it might be that changes are very minor compared to what they think you know. That’s just improving use. Okay, We still have Ah, good amount of time together. What else are you gonna talk about tomorrow? We’ll talk about surveying your gang so you can You can You can get things that might come in just kind of one off people. Oh, you’re in the community and give you this idea, but to explicitly, maybe twice a year reach out and asked for input. What hurts? What? Some cool things you’re doing. You think people would want to know about that hasn’t been shared yet. And this is surveying everybody serving your full organization in heaven. Having that survey results come into the committee’s here. What hurts What? People have things they want to do that weighs in-kind reports. We can’t get to whatever it is and so kind of. We’ll also talk about what we’re thoughts for. What’s the regular monthly agenda for that group? And what our agenda items that should be each handled once per month so twice. You’ll think about budget, at least wants to put it in and wants to review it. Okay, what else? We’ll also need to think about security. Security should be thought about everything you’re doing, but just kind of taking explicit look at security at least once a year. I don’t think it through else is on the agenda kind of the every. Every month you’re thinking about what were the projects that Aaron Flight? Just not that we’re managing, but we kind of wanna have oversight and especially ones that were recently introduced. How his adoption going. What are the roadblocks on? Why it’s not getting used so we could maybe make a tweak or some more training. What are any pain points people have come up with? What are any ideas that have come up and then for the priority list? Is there anything we’re ready to start? The bump next-gen for action? That’s kind of the every month agenda. But then you have to have time to deal with these periodic things, like, Okay, how are we doing against budget and what do we want to start doing to get next year’s budget together? Thinking about security thinking about policies and procedures. Way we’re doing more work from home. What does that mean? Way have tohave more capabilities for people to go to. Access Resource is remotely or tohave things control over their mobile devices. So if they quit, we can wipe our information thinking about job descriptions. Which job should be talking about a responsibility to have to be able to analyze data, to see trends and to see connections. What, You know what? Our job descriptions in terms of what tech skills people should be having that we seek a new hires kind of going through not just literally new applications that you might get thinking about. How do the people intersect technology and what some of the ways organizations can kind of build strength. Over time, I lean a community catalyst. What? What, uh, what do your agendas look like? Do you? You have You have something you do on a monthly basis or bunch of things to do a monthly it varies, and I’m actually gonna be restructuring. It’s soon, but I usually have some part where there’s a problem to solve where we need Thio. Uh, address that question and some of it I use for actually exploration because learning is another part that we’re going to talk about, that this group has to be constantly learning. It’s not just about the specific tasks, but that helping them understand the role of technology in our worth and how it links and what culture changes and how to help other people engage and just to look at it, a higher level, which isn’t where people naturally go. So there’s usually something on the agenda or have had some quiet activities. I’m saying I’m asking them a question asking them to actually take time with pencil and paper and start giving some real thought so that we can have some conversations. So it’s I don’t want to. It’s philosophical cause it does apply, but to some of our agenda is practical and some of it is really to help them get to a place of understanding technology’s role in our work. What are some of the things you do with the paper and pencil you have people deliberating about? So one was when we first moved to our C. R. M and people said, you know, we have a way of national organizations where partner organizations migrate them in. And they told me, do it right away. So I did. And then people was like, Well, what are we gonna do with it? And so I asked people to take time and think we have national partners. Why? So I had them say, like in a bubble, like a little cartoon bubble, like in three words like Tell me like three or four reasons that we engage with these partners or they engage with us. What is our relationship with them? And instead of thinking like, What fields can we put in in order to track it? That’s putting the cart before the horse. Yes, that’s but to really start thinking about like, Why do we need this relationships? How do we communicate with them? What do they want from us? And to go just deeper? And so I had them do that just quiet time and kind of manipulate a little bit. And then we came together and disgusted. And then you translate that into into fields into fields, and I really well, you know what we need to preserve about what do we need to preserve about these organizations, right? it is. And so when you know, I don’t answer it this way. When people say, you know, can you add a field for that isn’t what they should be asking me. They should be asking. They should be telling me why they needed and that’s what we’re getting for. So yes, so once we get to what they need, then I can implement, and then they contest it and they can see if it works. But to try to move, people wave like create a field for two. I need to know this for this reason, because the the what they want may already be recoverable through some food querying the existing data. It could be it could be or could not. But if if we don’t know the question, we can’t answer it. Yeah, what’s the purpose? It almost starts to overlap with data governance. Depending on how large you are, you might have a different team that’s doing that. But understanding hate data has to move between these two systems, so we better always call it kindergarten. And not Kay is really two different systems that when you go to line those data points up there, the same. And does the field already exist? Those kind of things. That level of detail maybe isn’t appropriate for latto Tech committees that they may. They may be a sub group that they push that off, too. But it does certainly overlap that the concepts of governance on the training front. We would encourage a tech committee to think big picture about that. Are there good onboarding experiences with people? And people often stop thinking about training after the word onboarding and that mrs most of the boat. Because most people’s onboarding experiences, it’s a fire hose. It wasn’t the teachable moment. I don’t need to use it yet. I’m not gonna remember it. So making sure that the onboarding experience is giving people things they could refer to later when they actually need it and then thinking about once they’re actually using the system and they want to use a deeper how are you supporting him in that? How can they go? Often people don’t do a lot of reporting at first, but then once they’re using it, if it’s useful, reporting should be the main win. That’s where you’re actually doing something with the data and often they don’t get that training in the beginning. And how did they get access to those kind of deeper features? How are they trained on how the systems change? Especially using cloud software might change every two weeks. And who’s responsible the organization for mastering the ongoing learning and echoing it back in your context, not the committee does this, but the committee’s thinking about who should do it and that they’re making sure that conversation and that planning is happening. So people are staying current on the tools they’ve got and on and on surfacing. Who’s doing experiments within the company? Somebody tried a new project management tool. It’s free and they love it and having a way to know that and to share it, to see if it resonates with anybody else and maybe get broader value within the organization. That’s that’s to me. A big part of what they do is letting people know across organization what’s who’s got, what knowledge and how they can spread that around. Let’s talk some about the policies, policies that the committee is. Is he preparing or reviewing Eileen What, what kinds of what kind of policies Your is your committee looking at, and this is actually something that I’m going to bring to them. They haven’t started on this, but one of them is. We’re, uh, in your two and 1/2 of our CR M were noticing that people aren’t updating records they’re supposed to be doing or not doing it the correct way. And so I need to bring to them that we need to figure out a new way, organizationally, to do this. Now, they’re not gonna be doing the data monitoring, but we have to figure out who’s gonna be entering the records. Who are the appropriate staff people. And how will we change this culture of engaging certain people to be updating things and nuts? And maybe I’m trying to think of how to phrase it. It’s a problem to solve. So right now, too many people have, uh, have the privilege of changing data. So I don’t know, something as simple as one person puts it in his avenue. Another person puts it in his A v e period. It’s gonna be a simple Is that a problem? That’s the walk in the park one. It’s more like people who don’t enter or entering. I guess that’s it. Like people who aren’t entering it or aren’t being careful enough, you know, abila like spelling misspelling the last name that’s you know, which I’ve seen. And so you know, that’s that’s a really serious one. Or like I said, you’re not entering it or not linking it appropriately to the right organization. And so it’s it’s lost, not entering conversation Well, that everyone is supposed to do. But yeah, as far as putting in the records. And so we It’s common, I think. What’s theorems that you have when you started? You let everyone do it and sort of see how it goes. And so we have to backtrack a little and say we need a little more quality control and so that’s real governance. So there’s a tension between having enough people to get the work done on having it done at a high enough level of quality where, you know, we’re not rife with ever. Yes, There you go. Okay. Well, yeah, but all I do is identify the problem. You gotta come up with a solution. Yes. Straddle that fence and I’m gonna engage the governance team toe Help troubleshoot this Of how we can identify. The staff were not gonna hyre admin staffs of somebody. We’re not gonna hyre new admin stuff. So it’s gonna be somebody who has another job that’s gonna have to do this, and they’re gonna need their health. Okay. Policies also go to things like security practices. What password, Man Policy. What’s the policy on what devices allowed to connect to our network? What we love to do and not do with thumb drives? Soto have to know that I need to have just the security policy and to get some advice on what should be in it and making sure you have it. And then is part of it when you talk about security. Reminded me of your colleague Jordan McCarthy. Oh, yeah. It was on the show in January. Yeah, talking about keeping your data, your data and your sight secure in 2019. That was, you know, Jordan from taking back. Okay, Yeah. He leads our security practice. Okay? And he can tell you about security in ways that multi authentication sign on anyway. So policies can also go to things that go beyond security. What’s one year? Lots work from home. From what locations. Are you allowed to work? And what happens when the remote employee lead? Well, first of all, who owns the tech at the hardware that they’re given and what happens to it when they leave? And what your policies around, how you recover machines were leaving a white remote machines? Were they supposed to store it in their home? Is it okay if it’s just on their desk or does have to be under lock? It could even be some like a clean desk policy so people can’t walk by and see confidential information if you’re not. Presidents actually tech policy, but overlaps because that’s the concept of locking a scream when you’re not in front of it and having a password. That old story that Steve Jobs used to fire somebody if they grab their apple phone and didn’t have a screen lock on it cause he didn’t want people seeing information about their products under development. Um, all right, so I think there’s a lot for your committee to be busy with. Sure one meeting a month is enough. You want to get you know what it is? I thought of twice a week I was able to entice them to do it more. Right. Okay, okay. Things that we talk about is the committee is also part therapist. People bring baggage when it comes to technology. They’ve had bad experiences with prior rollouts, either at this organization or elsewhere. They’ve heard rumors of somebody using this system you’re proposing to use that didn’t go well elsewhere. And so you have to kind of coach you’re alluding to. This is a change, management things. A big part of it is them giving people in their in their teams that they’re working with a chance to express their fears on, sir in doubt and kind of work them through that in advance. So why the time the zsystems actually getting rolled out? They’ve kind of heard the concerns, ideally, done something concrete to address them at a minimum, make him felt hurry, but ideally shown them how That’s Yes, that was true before, but here’s how they fixed it. That’s kind of the best way to allay fears. To say it was true. And it’s fixed, but not always that easy. Eileen, you’re running a committee, so I’m gonna give you the last word on moving your plan. forward to committees that work. What would you like to wrap up? What would you like to leave? Would you like to leave people with? I think it’s really essential to have the committee’s. I know that seems like a very considering we’re doing this thing. It’s pretty obvious, but I think it’s it’s a learning process, for B is a facilitator, and it’s it’s just critical to move things forward, to keep people learning, to keep people engaged in a real way not just, um, a symbolic engagement, which is like, You know, it’s very easy to say we’re gonna keep staff engaged, but this is, like, authentic, that they’re in the room helping to make decisions, helping to problem solve and see what’s behind the scenes. All right, we’ll leave it. There they are. Peter Schiano, project manager and consultant at Tech Impact and Eileen Y Smell knowledge and database manager for community Catalyst. Peter, Thank you very much. Thank you. Real pleasure. Thank you for being with Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 19 NTC. All of our 19 NTC interviews are brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising tools to help non-profits make impact. Thank you. Next week I’m gonna fire a listener at the top of the show. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony. Martignetti dot com were sponsored by Wagner. CPS. Guiding YOU beyond the numbers wagner cps dot com By Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for non-profits tony dot m a slash Cougar Mountain for free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for your non-profit Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot c e o. Our creative producer was Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be greet. You’re listening to the Talking alternate network. You’re listening to the Talking Alternative Network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in Sumpter potentially ater tune in every Tuesday at 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show beyond potential. Live Life, Your Way on talk radio dot N Y c aptly named host of Tony martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other 95% fund-raising board relations, social media. My guests and I cover everything that small and midsize shops struggle with. 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Nonprofit Radio for November 2, 2018: Working Virtual & Map Your Data To Your Audiences

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Heather Martin & Alice Hendricks: Working Virtual
We talk through the issues encountered when managing remote staff: technological; generational; emotional; measurement; recruiting and retaining. Our panel is Heather Martin from Interfaith Family and Alice Hendricks with Jackson River. (Recorded at #18NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference.)

 

 

Courtney Clark & David Mascarina: Map Your Data To Your Audiences
Feed your folks the data they crave. Courtney Clark and David Mascarina have identified 5 audience types and their data needs. She’s with Forum One and he’s from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. (Also recorded at #18NTC.)

 

 

 

 

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with strep. Oh, simba, leah if i had to read that you missed today’s show working virtual we talk through the issues encountered when managing remote staff technological, generational, emotional measurement, recruiting and retaining. Our panel is heather martin from inter faith family and alice hendricks with jackson river. I was recorded at eighteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference and map your data to your audiences. Feed your folks the data they crave. Courtney clarke and david mask arena have identified five audience types and their data needs she’s with forum one and he’s fromthe conrad and hilton foundation that’s also recorded at eighteen. Auntie si, tony, take two who’s on first, we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising david driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant capital p well, you see, piela is guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner, cps dot com bye! Tell us attorney credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made. Easy text npr to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine. Here’s working virtual welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc non-profit technology conference twenty eighteen we’re coming to you from the convention center in new orleans second interview of the second day of our coverage all our ntcdinosaur interviews are sponsored by network for good, easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits my guests right now are heather martin, ceo of inter paid family, and alice hendricks, ceo of jackson river. Heather alice, welcome. Thank you. Welcome to non-profit radio. What have you wanted to be here? How’s? The conference going for you ladies? Great. Have you done? Yeah. Excellent. Okay, great. Next one. That goes good. Superlative. Have you done your session yet? We did. We were on yesterday morning. Okay. So, it’s all relaxing now? Right now, we’re just partying. Drinks last night. Exactly. Okay, all right. Your workshop topic is working virtual attracting and managing the best talent. I’m sure we have stats on how many organs non-profits have virtual employees. Or at least what the trends are. It’s it’s obviously growing. It’s really growing wouldn’t be here. And not only in the nonprofit world in the for-profit world as well, and especially in tech. Yeah, okay, absolutely it’s becoming it because of the technology that can enable easily to work from home, your chat technologies, videoconferencing, it’s become a thing and everyone is doing it now on exploring whether it works for their organizations a lot. Let me dive into the word, everyone not to quibble with you at all, but i was thinking generationally, are there fifty and sixty some things that are comfortable working, being virtual? Not well, maybe we’ll get to whether they’re comfortable having virtual employees. They will get to that. My voice is cracked like i’m fourteen get that, but how about being virtual employees themselves? Are they comfortable? I’m over fifty, so include myself in that? Are we comfortable doing that? Or, you know, i think it actually depends on the organization and it’s really dependent on the organization making the employees comfortable, and so i’m not sure i don’t know if you have any stats, but i don’t know from an age perspective, there’s a very good question about an older generation being comfortable having virtual employees under the managing them, however, as being the virtual employee, i think it’s all about how the organisation sets it up. Okay. Excellent. All right, so that there’s promised them for those fifteen. Sixty something? Absolutely. Okay. Okay, let’s, talk about it. Since since we’re skirting around it, how about comfort or discomfort with having employees being virtual when you’re over fifty? So i again, i i think that there might be an age discrepancy in the comfort, but i also think it’s just personality, and i’m finding that when i talked to a lot of people who are looking to work virtual and they’re asking me, what can i do to go to my manager, my supervisor and quote unquote, sell them on me working virtually my answer to them is find out what the resistance is. There is part of the resistance as we’ve always done it this way i need to see my employees to know that they’re working. And how do you get around that? Some of the key things that we talked about in our session are setting very clear goals and making sure that those goals are being met. But let’s, go to alice talk to flush out the gold. Gold setting a little. Yeah, i mean, i think that there’s not that much difference in terms of goal setting in terms of accountability for delivery, bols, that you’re supposed to be doing so used that the real issue is communication making sure you have a structure where there’s frequent communication and proof that you’re doing the delivery ble. So you’re measured not on a punch clock style of i get to work at nine. And i leave at five. And therefore i must have worked during that eight hour period you’re measured based on what is the work you were set out to do. And did you actually do that work in the time period? I said i would do it. So if you’re a project manager are working on a program area you work with your you work with your supervisor on here, the things that i’m going to get done at a particular time. And if that’s not done that’s ah, that that could be a concerned that’s a problem, but that’d be a problem in the non workplace too, but rather than time. It’s mostly based on work product. Okay, okay. So that should apply even if you don’t have any virtual, i think one of the things we found is that working virtually is this, or managing virtually is the same as managing in an office. But you just have to be much more intentional about what you’re doing. Much more intentional about your communication, understanding that you’re not gonna have that water cooler conversation, that someone’s not going over here. Something and understand where you are in a project and b ready to communicate with those people who are not physically in the office. But the management and the psychology of the management is very similar. Okay, it’s, very valuable, you know, and make explicit. Yeah. How about attracting people, teo a virtual or attracting the right talent so that we’re comfortable that they’re gonna work in this work environment? What do you, what you thought? Well, there’s. Two thoughts on that that i have one is what one is that your talent pool is the entire country or world, should you see fit? And there are wonderfully talented people in places that aren’t in the city or town in which your organization is located, and it gives you this ability to recruit from a wide place. And you can also hyre incredibly talented people from who have a wonderful life style. In a less cost of in my organization, we have people who live in a lower cost of living state than washington, d c where were based, and that allows me to provide a living wage and for my employees in that. But the other thing is just you, when you’re recruiting, you have to be very mindful of the interview process, and i think one of the things we talked about in our session was helping people figure out who these folks, how well they’ll respond to working virtually how do you do that in an interview? Yeah, who’s best with that, heather so so some of the things that that we recommend, some of the things that we recommend is number one, we use technology as a tool to enhance communication in a virtual environment. So sometimes you’re using video comp, renting just for a regular meeting, and you’re talking through instant messenger and there’s other ways you’re using technology. So in the interview process, i always recommend that people use the technology that you’re going to require those employees to be using during their job if they can’t do an interview on skype or zoom or appearance and it’s very uncomfortable, it’s not to say that that might not be a good employee for you, but you have to be aware that there might need to be some training or development on that tool for them and no going. Into that is important when you’re hiring that person, and if you see generally a discomfort with technology that’s a pretty big red flag, or or or a red flag that you might need to overcome or that person’s not right for the position, and then the other question is some positions just don’t lend themselves to working virtually, and you have to be aware of that when you’re hiring also what are from? Well, one of the easiest ones that we look at it if you’re an office manager and you’re managing the physical office days, it’s really difficult to be virtual when you need thio notice that there’s a crack in the ceiling where the vendor needs toe, you know, deliver something and be their way. We don’t have a tool for measuring the coffee level. Zack remotely happen. And now there’s an app for that you can probably it’s time for a break pursuing they’re e book is fast non-profit growth stealing from the start ups. They want you to see this because they’ve taken the secrets from the fastest growing startups and applied those to your non-profit it’s free as all the pursuant resource is, are you accustomed to that? Come on, it doesn’t even bear saying it’s on the listener landing page that’s at do you know where tony dahna slash pursuant capital p for please now back to working virtual or any others that stand out to you? I think it depends on the industry and what the job you’re doing. If you’re someone who does intake or you have to be there to welcome people into the office, you need someone physically there. There may be hybrids where sometimes people could work in the office and sometimes people could work from home. And i think thinking this through before you moved to a virtual environment or virtual job for that specific role is ki you can’t just say, ok, tomorrow we’re just gonna go virtual zoho alice, how do you how do you create this environment? Gonna be hospitable? Toe virtual? I mean it’s all about culture. You have to create a culture where everyone is communicating well with each other, where people know what the expectation is on response times of communication has got to start at the top. It has to start a willingness that you absolutely to accommodate virtual employees. Okay, so it starts there and how does that how does the ceo trickling down? You adhere to it. So rather than walking from my office into someone else’s office and telling them what i think they should know that maybe two other people who aren’t physically, they’re also need to know i will do that on a slack channel, for example. So i’ll use an instant messenger chat program, and i’ll put them all on the channel and talk to them all together at once, even though you were the mark, even if that’s the situation. Yeah, because it requires amount of discipline because you don’t want to leave people out. The interstitial conversation that happens at the water cooler can also be done virtually and that’s pretty important, too. Okay. All right. We’re going to get the tools you mentioned. Slack, slack channel. Is that that it’s? All okay, okay. A chat. It’s. Simple chance a chance. A chance for you. You’re over my head, but i’m trainable. Alt-right i could be a virtual employees trust way. Mind of some technology challenges there, but we could get there. I’ll be there immediately. Got the radio stuff? Yeah. I’m very good at that. I mean, i got knobs and everything in front of buttons and all. I don’t know what they do. Okay, what else? Uh, anything else about creating the environment, making inhospitable? I think some of the things that seem or some of the other things are making sure that your remote employees have the tools, whether it’s, the technology or even a monitor to go along with that laptop that you’ve given them because some some people who go into a new job, they’re given a laptop, they say work from home and it’s not as easy as just is your home office conducive and being able to help them think through what are the things that they need to set up in a virtual environment to make them successful and effective at what they’re doing. We talked about it a little bit about security and knowing what the security measures are. You can’t go into a coffee shop and work from your computer. Number one. Are you on the y fire you on the public wifi? Are you on a virtual private network? Are you using your hot spot? You’ve to go the bathroom and your computer’s sitting in starbucks do you leave it there and ask the person next youto watch your computer while you go to i mean, we set policies around these things, especially in organizations that have a lot of regulations on data and accessibility for their information. These are things you have to think about when you’re creating a virtual environment. Okay? It could be hip, baby what’s the credit card p c m p c i b c i okay, what do you do when you’re at starbucks alone? You’re on you’re on a vpn virtual private network? Yeah, you have to go the bathroom. You gotta close up. You use the diaper changing table in and you pull it down in the restroom and put your laptop on that. Take care of your business. Okay? It’s? Very. You know, i love the ditty gritty. This are listen, i mean, we’re all about real life here. Way need detail. You need clear policies around policies that people sign and everyone is very well aware of what the security policies, our protection use of technology. You said the company’s versus your pride, your personal technology home versus away from home. Okay, all right. Help me out here. Getting else what else belongs all this? What else belongs in our policy? Well, so there’s, we’re talking about there’s communication policies. How? I mean, one of the things that we found when we first started having more virtual employees. We started as an in office, evan was in the office, and as we grew into different communities, we had employees in different cities and states than our headquarters were located in and things like when i sent an email, i just need you to acknowledge that the email resent if you’re in the office and i send you an e mail and you haven’t responded, i could walk into your office and say, hey, you get my e mail even if you’re not ready to respond to it. I know you’ve gotten it, and by five o’clock that day, i’ll get an answer when someone’s virtual and you send an e mail, you have no idea if it got lost, did it go into their spam and you have to get some kind of communication with one quick got it. So we said a communication policy that says if i asked you something or requested something, you send an email back saying, i got it, and i’ll get back to you by wednesday period the end it’s all set, and so that that you need to be very much more aware of those types of things and other community way have communication policies that go along with that. Okay, alice, you want teo or policy statement? I mean, the security, i think, is the most important, you know, the email security, the hacking potentials. You know what happens also, when someone is let go, the lockout procedures, they have access to all of your systems, and they’re, you know, in north dakota somewhere to coffee shop, you have to shut down all of their access to things. So all of that needs to be planned at the level in the company. What are you going to do and how you handling staff with remote devices? Can we do this if we don’t have a dedicated staff person? And we don’t have a dedicated staff person? Yes, face-to-face so the family says the answer is yes, okay, because are you know, we’re small and midsize non-profits in this audience, listeners. So you you on board someone with technology when they leave, you do the same thing on lee with a virtual person, you don’t physically have them there, and so you have to do the same thing you would do if someone was in the office, but make sure you couldn’t do it while they’re not physically there. How did they get your computer back to you? Do they fedex it to you? Are you going to go pick it up somewhere if they’re not there? And so just those types of things need to be thought through, okay? No. Excellent. I love the policy statement details because this is stuff you have to think through, and then alice to your point, has to be activated, implemented on from the top absolutely can’t just have a policy and ignore it. You know, if if it’s the ceo hyre it’s a sea level person whose whose distant you know, they too have to say, i got your e mail and i’ll get back to you by wednesday, everybody has to play by the same rules. There shouldn’t be exceptions or any accommodations or anything else. Yeah. Okay, um, how about let’s talk about some of the needs that your remote staff has we’ve been talking about managing the office? What what special needs to the people? But we only see a couple of times a year that’s a great question, okay? I mean, i think they way it took that long, they need community, they need a partner, they need a buddy, they need to know that they’re not all alone. I’m so frequent meetings daily standup calls on dh heather’s organization native oppcoll standup called well, it’s a it’s, a phrase for a daily time when you just spend fifteen minutes sort of roll going around the company’s saying who’s doing what that day or our a team, if you’re working on a project together, you know everyone’s together on either a video chat or a conference call, or it could even be during us dahna slack channel or a skype group or a google hangout, or any type of technology that people can come together for a period of time. The more frequent that happens, the more connected they feel, and there is an issue of feeling lonely, it’s not that you’re just going off on your back room and typing all day long on your own, you need to be part of a community and part of a team. And the technology helps enable that. And heather’s organization there’s you do? What is it a buddy? So anyone who is new who comes on board there’s a couple things we do one is, no matter what level you’re at, you come to boston for a couple days, toe on board. You actually see physical people that’s probably essential. It’s, really? It was one of like he learnings when i started working virtually is to know that there’s a physical person and a physical space or just seeing meeting someone face-to-face gives you much more of a connection to them immediately. The other thing we do is when we hire people we kind of give them we give them a partner. So we hyre associate director her in l a and we put them with the associate director in atlanta. This is not a mentor. This is not a supervisor. This is someone you can ask the dumb questions too. Like, how do i get my expenses paid? Or i’m sure they told me this during orientation, but i don’t know what. To do about x, y and z and just having that person that you know you can go to is critical, especially when you’re by yourself in an office or in your home, and you’re trying to go up the learning curve of starting a new job. Okay? All right? What else? Uh, anything else to be a empathetic to our remote employees again, this is a typical management. I would say this you should be doing this any time is just everyone’s intent is good. Assume that is good and there’s a good intent all all the time. That could be that that that’s going to have implications for chatting any female? No, you can’t you’ll never hear the well, not never, but most of the communications you’re not going to hear the inflection in the person you don’t see the sometimes you don’t see the physical, you don’t see the physical, you don’t get the inflection, and so before you jump into anything or someone sent and i get this all the time and sends me an email and says i need blank, well, that could be taken in so many different ways. Are you demanding something from me did ice not get you something there’s so much in just those three words? And so my first thing is tio okay, they have good intentions. Let me follow-up you need blank by when? What is this for? Get mohr information, they’re not now. They could be like you haven’t done something, i need it now and could be screaming it could be screaming at you with the default is the default is not do that and what we do actually, as we have everyone’s created communications charter that says how they like to be interacted with. And so i understand if you are one of these people who sends very short emails, i also have the flipside where someone sends me seven paragraph emails to describe one thing. And so if i understand how you interact, i could read that email with that understanding, not teo immediately assume that you’re yelling at me in the e mails. Excellent. Okay, very valuable. Are anything else? Anything else to be supportive again? Empathetic to the remote employees if we covered it, recovered it? But i want to make sure we’re the only other thing i can think of is definitely getting together at least once a year with the whole team culture building wants that, yeah, it’s tough, it’s, tough in a non-profit environment where you’ve got a very tight budget, but we have prioritized and all in person meeting in boston, so we’ve got staff in california, in chicago, in atlanta and philadelphia. We make sure that we try in our budgeting process to bring everyone to boston for two days during the summer, not only for good brainstorming and thinking and strategy conversations, but also so they can connect with each other and have that community and build that in person conversation and feel comfortable with each other, and you feel like once a year is sufficient, you know, if i had the budget to do it more, i want a little longer, but all of that, yes. And so you have to take it for one of the that the tools that we talk about is the airplane. I mean, yes, it’s expensive, but it’s a really helpful tool to really get past some of the boundaries that are put up when you don’t actually physically meet in person. Alice, do you have a virtual employees also? Jackson river, thirty thirty. Thirty. Revoting entire organization is ritual. Oh, my god. Okay, where’s, the is there a physical office? There is a physical office with three people in washington d c yeah, but so we all behave as if were virtual. And there are many days that i don’t go into the office so in it. So you know, it saves a lot of money and transportation costs. It stays dry cleaning bills for everyone. It saves child care expenses. If you know it’s a very great way to have a lifestyle. Because yu yu have that flexibility, there’s also downsides to it. There are days that i wake up in the morning at six a, m and check email and all the sudden it’s too. And i haven’t eaten breakfast yet. And then i’m until six at night. So you know it’s a the same type of work-life integration needs to happen in a virtual environment as well as a physical office space. You know, you need to know how to take a break. You mentioned saving childcare expenses. So so the the remote employee it needs to be understood that the remote employee may not be immediately accessible right for a quick, you know, for for a last minute way gotta talk right now. So i think it’s about have something going on that is going to hold him up for ten or fifteen way try and make sure that people have adequate coverage to do their job during the day, the hours that they need to work. So we have a lot of employees that are at thirty hours a week because they want to spend more time with their families. Um, older children can be met at the bus stop and take care of themselves for a few hours in the afternoon, but the expectations of performance are still there. You know, we’re pretty high street standards of that, you know, we don’t want you to be distracted from your work. He managed the west coast versus east coast. Well, what is the west coast people have to do? The westfield people have to start at six a m local time. I think a lot of people do different policies on that. Our policy is that you work for the day that work the business day in the time zone in which you live. So it’s, sometimes hard if we’re dealing with europe and the west coast at at the same time because the time zones i don’t overlap is, well, every boy’s in europe, we don’t have employees in your body to have clients in europe. So it’s ah it’s a situation where we have to manage that, but there are organizations that have west coast people working east coast, ours you have that way don’t have explicit policy that you work those hours, but we ask people how early on the west coast, how early would you be willing to have a meeting? So we will not set meetings with some people? Some people are early morning people and they would rather work from seven to three rather than nine to five, and so we’ll work with your schedule individually and so we so there are some meetings i will have on the west coast is seven o’clock in the morning, but that’s due to that person willing to do that, we have a few minutes left still let’s talk about some of the tech tech tools back-up that was i gotta ask you about slack. But what? Black dot com how? Do we find it or what you do for us? Blackbaud comets, how you find it, you know, it’s it’s equivalent to skype or there’s google chat any type of chat software where everyone can log into and then there’s you can make groups in them. So the term for a group in slack is called a channel. And in our organization we have a channel for one of the channels is named lunch and if you’re going to be away for twenty minutes are going to lunch. We just take we just like everyone who’s in the company on that channel and say, hey, stepping away for a bit, i’ll be back in half an hour so we are all know it’s almost a cz though you would see me walk out the door, you know, and i instead of walking out the door i’m just telling that channel what’s happening there’s channels for each project also. So slack is a good one. Scott argast black is already a verb. Just like someone you’d like someone it’s a verbal. You skype someone you trust someone. Do you remember a well, instant messenger? That that was a one man was that you could use that well, i was. But okay, so slack for for chatting. A quick, quick chat about document sharing is simple google docks or something better. It’s a simple a school back and microsoft has a great year. We have this product microsoft’s one dr sharepoint microsoft suite has has a document sharing software. Ah, cloud based saving system skype is now skype for businesses and integrated with it. And so we’re using that in the office and then there’s there’s a ton of independent ones out there. And it’s, whether it’s, videoconferencing or it’s document sharing or it’s chatting there’s a ton out there. And i think it could be overwhelming. And for us it was evaluating what was best for our organisation and what our upper management was able. Teo use we talked about this before is modeling the behavior you want from your staff and so getting upper management on board was key. So one of our project management software we use a sauna, and we’ve tried three or four of them and our ceo like hassan, and so if she was going to use a sauna, we’re all going to use this on you and so i think that’s really important. It’s got to be easy to use and work for your organization. Calenda ring simple is good calendar ring, yet you have any other tools besides google calendar? We’re using outlooks calendar. Yeah, okay. Microsoft again. Yeah. All right. I think what other categories we need. Teo a video chat video is really important to scrape. A couple couldn’t do one on video with skype you khun duvette dio with google hangouts, but any time you can actually have an opportunity to see someone’s face and most of the calls we try to do as videos on dh, we find that that works really well. River again, the sense of community and if you can’t get together, that’s almost the next best thing and video has come a long way. The technology is more seamless than ever before, and so at least you’re seeing the person you might not get all of the nuance of the physical that that’s in the room. But you can see it in emotion or you can see a reaction to something which is super helpful or their cat walking of the cat we could get a lot of pets walking in front of the camera while people are on video that’s gonna be a lot of fun to talk about cats, but, you know, you have thirty virtual employees. You have fun doing it. I mean, oh, it’s awesome. Oh, it’s completely awesome is i love it. And well, you know, the best thing is that that people have really formed strong relationships with each other, they when you ask them what they like most about working here is they say each other, they say the people i’m here because i have connected relationships with other people on the team and to be able to create a culture where people feel connected to each other in a remote environment is is like, that’s the thing i’m most proud of, anything we’ve ever done, it doesn’t have to do their software product or what we’ve done to impact non-profits is the fact that we’ve had a culture of people that have had a wonderful time working and doing productive, impactful things. Jackson river always had a largest proportion of employees virtual from the beginning, when the beginnings and the culture to start about about it in the family way started as a two and a half person organization in the same way got to probably about eight to ten people in the office. And then our growth took us into different cities and communities. And that’s when we became virtual because of the growth, and so were probably half in the office in boston. And then half of our staff is outside and there’s one or two people in a city by themselves. We’re gonna leave it there. Excellent. Very much. Thank you. Alright. They are heather martin, ceo of interfaith family and alice hendricks, ceo of jackson river. This interview sponsored by network for good, easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits. And this is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc ladies. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Way. We need to take a break. Wagner, cps. Do you need help with your nine? Ninety or your brooks? Are your brooks or your books of those books? And brooks properly managed? Well, i could help you with the books. Eyes financial oversight in place so that your money isn’t going to fly out the door over the brook talkto wagner, partner, eat huge tomb. I’ve gotten to know him. I trust him. He’ll be honest about whether wagner is able to help you. You know where to go. Wagner, cps dot com now, tony steak too. I was at the lou costello statue in paterson, new jersey. Remember lou costello of abbott and costello and who’s on first. So what’s the connection, i hope, you know what’s on first is you’ve got to know that i mean who’s on first. Now who’s, what’s on second. I don’t know’s on third. I hope you know what i’m talking about. The connection is you gotta have some sense of history because this this comedy routine and the abbott and costello you they were from the forties, and if you want to be really successful, implant giving and you going to be actively talking to planned giving donors, you need to have some sense of history from the forties or fifties and vietnam. My video is that tony martignetti dot com now it’s time to map your data to your audience. Nces, welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntcdinosaur the twenty eighteen non-profit technology conference day two we’re kicking off our date to coverage with courtney clarke and david mask arena all of our eighteen ntcdinosaur views are sponsored by network for good, easy to use donor-centric software for non-profits courtney clarke. Hello. Hello to you. Welcome. Let me give you a proper introduction. David, you could say hello. Hello, david. Mastering it from the convent and hilton foundation introduced himself. All right, david happens to be the digital communications manager at the conrad hilton foundation. And courtney clarke is managing director of user experience forum one. Welcome. Good morning. Thanks for having us kicking off. Thanks for kicking off with us. Hey, happy to be here. You’re workshop topic is data and audience connecting to create impact. Okay, let’s, start with you. David. What do you think? Non-profits aren’t getting quite right in this subject. Like, why do we need this workshop? To be honest with you, tell you, please beyond yeah, don’t wear really blunt with the arika there’s a lot of data collection that’s happening in the nonprofit sector, but people don’t really do anything with it. There’s like a statistics where it’s like a very, very small percentage of non-profits you do something with data? And, you know, for example, there’s so many data points that in any day, that non-profit collectibe we have overload, i mean, really was data over there’s like there’s, like this just beautiful dash was like, what do we do with this? You have to stay close to michael, okay? All right, so we’re overloaded. So courtney, what we’re trying to do and have you had your workshop yet? Yes, we had it yesterday, so you’re on the downside. Yeah, this is easy for you. So what you were doing and then? And what we’re going to do now is trying make sense of data that well don’t feel overloaded. Well, it’s, it’s mostly around communicating data and really being clear about who your audiences are when you’re doing that cause we have identified five different data, sort of consumers or data people who will consume your data, but they all need different amounts of information, different formats. So for example, like a data consumer, this is like an interested person in the public. Maybe they’re a news consumer. They don’t have a lot of domain knowledge always, and they don’t have a lot of data skills, so what, you’re giving them is going to be very different than, say, a policy maker or a date. A producer. Okay, someone who’s more in depth in the details of it already knows, has has a yeah, you’ve identified let’s. Take it from there. We’ve identified five different audiences. Is that right? That’s? Different, different types of audiences. Okay, what are what are the five? We should start there. Yeah. That’s okay, what? Five? I’ll start. Okay. The next one. So data consumer two and then three e before there’s a ping pong tournament here. But we’re not. We’re not going out today. Okay, fair enough. So first is i mentioned the data consumer. This is i hate it when people say general public, because here you’re not really targeting everyone in the whole world. So let’s be a little bit more specific news consumers, people who are already interested a little bit. Okay, okay. Like i said, not a lot of dough mean knowledge. Not a lot of data skill. What you’re calling this group the data consumer. So this is the person you’re like scrolling through your news feed you’re looking at your phone. Ahn, do you see an instagram? Post or something on facebook, or even in the press in the news. And what do you see? You see an infographic that’s, simple right language that’s easy to understand. The point is very clear. That’s for the data consumer. They don’t have a lot of power, but there are a lot of those people. Okay? Hey, name another one. The next one is the data actor. So this is who everybody is targeting. This is decision makers, policymakers on dh. These folks may have some domi. Knowledge may have a lot of durney domain knowledge, but they don’t have time. So even if they do have dana skills, the ability to analyze and understand massive amounts of data didn’t have time to do that. They have analysts who are helping them do that sort of thing. But very important people. They have the staff, they have the cloud. They have our policymakers decision. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. Okay, david, just give us our remaining three. So, of course, to consume someone has to share it. So you got a date? A promoter. So these were the bloggers he got you get the journalist. The advocacy for folks. This software developers, the entrepreneur. So these people are the ones who are, like projecting that data out there so that the consumer and the actor be able to see that. And then you have the analyst, which is very, very important a lot. You missed this one too. It’s, like now i have all these data is beautifully being shared out being read, who in a way is a domain expert, this staffer that’s going to be able to analyze and help advice, what to do with the data. And then finally, the researcher you got, you know, these air, the phd folks, these are you know, i was talking about like jin ho was their learning officer, that comet and hilton foundation she’s a researcher, and we recently did a site visit nairobi, kenya, for one of our grantees, shopko shining hope for community and they have rich, rich data they’re collecting around there, committing kibera and compare, by the way, is the largest of informal settlement in africa and think about, like, a size of, you know, central park in a compressor that seven thousand people and there’s so much data that they’re collecting about the community and helping them with their health care and, you know, with an education and such and community services in the way when she’s taught dana, she was just, like, drooling all over it. But she’s, like, i want to do something that and she’s such an academic she just wants to, like, basically designed something around it. So these air, like the data modelers is with the academics of phd folks that will help let’s take the data to a new level. Alright, much so our audience is small and midsize. Yeah, non-profit twelve thousand. So we’re talking a lot of people there in small, small and midsize shop. Yeah, they need to identify which of these audiences they’re talking to some some may never be talking to to the researcher, right? Or the or the data actor. They might not be doing lobbying, so they may not be. So you have to identify which audiences you’re talking to, right? You guys hear me? Okay. And your headsets? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. I don’t hear myself too well, but as long as you hear me, ok, you have to identify who you’re talking to you and then okay, so so i guess we’re going to get through now there are different data needs different ways of conversing about data with data to each of these different audience that’s right? You don’t have that, right? Yes, we’re mapping needs and method to the five different audiences and the knowledge that they have tio and the time, right? So i mentioned the policymaker. They may have some expertise. They don’t have time right on time, don’t time like the researcher. Whereas the researchers, like, get out of my way. Just give me the spreadsheet, all query my own database, okay? And then also in the spirit of being totally honest, so they have to be honest with yourself who you’re going to deliver the data to, like. If it’s your board, it’s your board and it’s. Okay, you know, and some people are like, oh, this is only for one very specific orders and that’s. Good, you know, because they’re being very, very honest with yourself. Okay, very good. So let’s, start with the ones that are most likely for a small and midsize not to be talking. So certainly data consumer. Yeah. That’s your nose. Your nose could be your donors. I know you’re not calling your donor’s, maybe even just board members. Okay? Data actor. Maybe it could be any decision maker that could be your board as well. It could be. It could be your boss. It could be somebody who is influencing budgets influencing programming. This is the person who has the power to make a change. So it’s therein you figure out which ones were going teo so they’re they’re in data promoter. That could be a journalist. Yes. Right. So that’s potential. The analyst remind me. What’s what’s the likelihood of a small mid size shot talking to the analyst sometimes yeah, for smaller medium non-profit portable. Forget it. Yeah, yeah. Bonem altum but scale that xero scales up now we’re not going right. We’re not going treatable, but let’s, just talk about it, okay? I think what i think what’s different, though, for smaller midsize non-profits is that the people listening may be the ones doing the analysis themselves. They may not have a supper analyst. Okay. Yeah, and many came from currently hilton foundations. They get smaller foundation. And a lot of us were multiple hats. So someone might be liberta both, but yet, yet they still move every important. Okay? They’re all in. Okay? Yeah. All right. So what do we do for the data consumer? How do we have a retailer to that audience? Yeah. They’re a couple of key things. That’s. What we need. Yeah. So one is use plain language when you’re communicating to them, they may not know who you are, what you do, why it matters. Plain language is really key. Sometimes people get a little too marketing me. Sometimes they get a little too research. E you need to be able to say what you want to say in a really simple visual with some simple language like you’re talking to your friends. Yeah, we were at a dinner party. You’ve got ten seconds to explain what this is and what matter-ness schooling for. Graphic. That will do it for you or something like that, right? Or even just like a data point point. Okay, we got to take a break. Tell us, for pete’s sake, think of the companies you can refer and start asking them that’s the first step. Well, actually, the first step is watching the video. Then you start referring the companies and talking. To them, you’ve heard the testimonials from the charity’s. You’ve heard the testimony from the companies. It’s. Time to get that long stream of passive revenue for yourself. Start with the video. That is the first step video. Is that tony dot, m a slash tony tello’s. Now back to courtney clarke and david mask arena from eighteen. Ntc what’s. The summary. Yeah, and a couple of that with something you mentioned visually could be motion. Could be a visual visualization of data. It could be a story. It could be a video that couples with the data because just it’s. Just a lot more impact for when you, when you when you pair it, but okay, let’s, start to make sense. Your data consumer is gonna be a lot more interesting story then your analyst or your research eggs? Absolutely. And during our session yesterday, there are people in the audience who talked. We talked a lot about how we paired data with stories because the narrative makes it so much more riel, it elevates the people that are actually being affected by this data. So there were some great stories about that. Okay, okay. Back-up let’s, go to the well, anything else about the consumer? I mean, this is this is this is probably our largest constituency. Yeah, so i think the other thing is to be clear about what action you want them to take because your data should support that action don’t just and and actually that came up from an audience member yesterday who said people weren’t being moved by the data and so that’s why they started pairing it with stories and once somebody gets hooked and they feel those heartstrings being cold or they feel that passion rise that’s when you gotta capitalize and be really clear what the action is, whether it’s donating, volunteering on asking for more information yeah, signing up for the male daughter, give us your new gives your email yeah, and think about the safety step back a little bit this like you have to identify goal, like whether you’re trying to accomplish with this data set and it would help you help you with to decide like what to share in how to share that welfare that’s always important place to start gold. What was the purpose of this, exactly what we’re trying to move people and then we try to move people to do and then be clear about exactly called. Okay? That’s, right? And the goal is the hardest part. Frankly, knowing the goal is the hardest part. It’s on so simple, but it’s like that ask why five times you got to get to the real root of why you’re doing this. All right? We’re talking about our actor actor. Okay, refresh my recollection, who’s, this decision makers, policymakers, people who are going to make the change that you want, sir. Yeah. Okay. Okay. How do we talk to these people that data. So the format is briefings sometimes it’s in the form of a press release. They need, like, think about a policy maker who has a staff and maybe they have to vote on a bill or make a decision. The staff member is the one who’s calling non-profits calling agencies and saying what’s happening in my district around this topic. So being able to slice your data by topic and location is really valuable to these folks and getting this summary out and again the action. What? Why does this matter and their actions going to be different than the consumer? Usually you’re looking for a decision, a vote, something exactly what you want to say more about the actual, i think something that’s adjustable something that if you could package it for them, like staying here, the key takeaways from this a swell, you know, think of this, like, you know, you know, working the communications team. And, you know, we provide press kits for people. And if you could provided that, you know, so so they could easily digest and help, um, guide them through the decision making process, i think will be the key. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And i guess also keeping in mind you you may not be talking to the principal. Yeah, right, right. It could be a staff staff, something. Usually it is so it’s. Gotta be it’s. Gotta be so your your urine for always going through someone to the decision maker way don’t love that. Right? Twice removed, twice removed from your there once removed from your data. Yeah, it happens. I mean, that’s what? Any communication, though. Anytime you’re putting something out, somebody could take it. Andi at their own commentary around it. That’s what? The data promoter that’s a that’s a benefit in a risk, right? Because they could date a promoter could be multiplying. Your audience is your audience, but they could be putting their own message. They could be manipulating the data in a way that may not be true to it. But, you know, were you everybody has had, you know, that journalist didn’t get the quote quite right? Yeah, you are taking over simplification exactly. If the press often has to do to make something interesting to readers, you know, put in a headline. Yeah, yeah, and the promoter should also think about, like, segmenting looking if they could do, like, a more targeted in a way, like, if they know specifically that they’re going to try to communicate. Teo, i think they’ll be the key as well. And you get to know your trusted data promoters, right? You know, the journalists or the bloggers are the advocates who you trust, who you align with the messaging around. So identifying those folks or maybe you don’t know them and you do a little research and you find out who you are, where, wes, you need to know within your sector who the influencers are. Absolutely yeah, i get a little bit of research. Goes a long way. Yeah. Back-up how do you feel about the standard press release? Since we’re talking about the audience of promoters, we’ll be sending it to either of you have, ah, opinion on press releases. Are they outdated there? Some school of thought that press release is dead. But it’s it’s still being used is using it. You’re still using journalists say they ignore them. Yeah, andi, and honestly goes back to relationship building, you know, like in communications, that our primary key is build relationships with with journalists. So when our press release passes through their deaths, they’d be able to, like sick. Oh, let me take a look at this and then dig deeper into the story for us. Just a little more let’s. Talk about building a relationship with a journalist before you want them. Tio, take some action for you to write about you in to quote you on that day’s breaking news. Yeah. How do we build that relationship when we don’t have a need? But, you know, we want to be in front of the person. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like i just it’s a good old fashioned relation building, you know, you have called them, reach out them email and called, you know, like you have no agenda, but i mean, this marketplace exactly you often cover way. Have coffee, exactly. What a concept. I mean, like, i’m also part of communications network conference, just another communications based non-profit unconference and a lot of journalists attend that and it’s a great opportunity, this plate, this form and ten is a another great form to meet people like i would add to that you need to be you need to understand that audience and you need to be curious about they have their own set of requirements that they’re trying to meet. They’ve got an editorial calendar there. Boss has told them what topics to focus on. They’re looking for. They need they need to youto help them connect the dots. So maybe don’t start with the ask, understand what they’ve been working on for the last month. What stories? What topics? And then being able to which, which, by the way, does not mean ask them what have you been writing me out? It means doing your research before you do the outreach, so that you know, so that, you know, you’ve shown that, you know, you show that you’ve taken the time to know what their beat is exactly not just asking you what do you write about lately? Well, it’s in the paper buy-in there dubai it’s on it’s, on the site, in the research, and then and then what are you working on next or what’s? The story you’ve been dying to write that you haven’t had the chance to there’s always a good answer for that and there’s a great conversation starter, especially like imagine putting yourself in their shoes, you know, like someone just roundly wants to have coffee with you, but you have no idea who they are didn’t even do any sort of research like and, you know, you have very, very busy schedule, and you have multiple crowdster headlines like we just need to remember they’re people tio don’t waste their time any more than you would waste. Teo spend the time with a potential donor. Exactly ask them what you’re worth. You’re not gonna ask them things that you want to know already write, write, write what is it about our work that he loves? Well. I’ve been giving to you for fifteen years, i think it’s, probably in my e-giving history, you know, don’t waste people’s time exactly, but but it is important to build relationships with exactly these influences. Okay, i would add to that there channels are largely on social media. If you talk to any journalists, they spend all their time on twitter. So if your twitter gene is not great it’s time it’s time. Learn what hashtags there using. Follow those channels, see who they’re following. See what they’re talking about. A great way to do research on also how to start to engage early on, even if it’s just observing. Okay. Okay. Very good. Okay, so i want you. I want to spend more time on that. I want to check my mike. Want to make sure that everything is good here. Okay, a little insecure about the way i sound. I don’t know. I sound you don’t sound good to me, it’s. Not okay to you, though, right? It’s? A little soft. Like i can hear myself. Really? I could hear myself, teo. You don’t hear me. According to richard it’s. Not as clear. Yeah, in-kind okay. And give. Myself a lot more volume. All right, now, my too loud. Ok, it’s. Good. Allright. Thank you. Time for our last break. Hoexter give quote, i compared a bunch of companies in my search for it hoexter donate company and text to give is the best hands down. They have b been beyond helpful. I can’t imagine anyone doing this better exclamation mark end quote that’s lauren bouchard from global commission partners in clermont, florida. Satisfied? She is with text to give you will be, too for info text npr to four, four, four, nine nine, nine. We’ve got several more minutes, and here they are for map your data to your audiences. Let’s, continue the analysts. Right. Data analyst. Refresh our recollection. David who is this? So this is the data expert this’s. The staffer that’s or consultant? That would help be a read data. Okay, and analyze it for you, like they be in a foundation. Now. I like the way i sound better. Okay? Like they’d be a foundation program, officer. It could be. Is that an example or no, i’m not necessarily. I mean, it could be a learning officer for the foundation meeting the one. Who’s like analyzing all the learning and data sets. Ok, he could be a data manager, you know, within an organization. Where would you? Where would you put a program, officer out of foundation? Someone who’s evaluating your grant proposal. Where? Where would they fit in these audience? Most like, i mean, it’s a little bit of both between the consumer and the actor, to be honest with you, because they’re both a decision maker. So they’re going to read the data and they’re also going to get this just like, okay, this is how my program is going and here’s how i’m going to act upon it. And here’s how i’m gonna adjust my strategy with it. Okay? Yeah. All right. So, let’s, go back to the analyst. How do we, uh, david? You keep going. What do we do with this? How do we talk to the analyst with our data? Go. No. Gosh, just give it all to them. Honestly, rod, they love him. They loved it. They love spreadsheets there. Said if they see a string of numbers, imagine like matrix type of thing. They’re like oh, my gosh, this is habit. Okay, okay. Yeah. It’s that simple? Well, they have, i would add that they usually have the domain a knowledge. Do you think of a policy maker? They haven’t education expert on staff or they may have an expert in international relations it’s that person who knows the domain quite well and feels comfortable digging through the data and furthermore to add to that, too is like if he providing which your goals and what your strategy is for and what they’re trying to provide the otherwise they’d be able to help you got guide you through the breeding process say more about that? Yeah, what shit a little bit, so think of him like, you know, like, if i’m like, if i am se the heather communications in the foundation and i’m like, i’m gonna talk to a data analyst we’re trying to accomplish x can you help me read through this day that what types of data sets can leave first collect and what’s up days says comey can provide so they’ll be able to accomplish that goal, then they were able to narrow down because otherwise they could they could. You stand in any sort of ways, but if you provide some sort of direction or gold. They’re able to, like filter things a little bit better for you. Okay, yeah, very good. Really good. And our last left audiences the researcher buy-in courtney yeah, the researchers are get out of my way and give me this red sheet they the like they may scan through your infographic, your visualization, your query tool. But really, they’re going to build their own query tool. They’re goingto grab that they’re the ones who are in sequel making pivot table like they’re doing all of it. Okay, we have jargon jail on twenty sequel i think people will know, but i’m going to pivot table. Alright, excel itself. Okay, sorry, i’m taking a data analytics class so i’m learning this stuff, so i’m excited to be able to talk about it just dropping, dropping top, but, yeah, i imagine you’ve got an excel table that is so large that you can’t open it x l can’t open it. That is what these researchers are are working in and they’re very comfortable working in and they’re the ones who may even be collecting data as well as analyze sing it for themselves, so think of it like a like a layer deeper than unless they got analysts who may rely also some visualizations. And of course, like a deep amount of pressure. But these guys are like they’re just like neck or forehead, deep of like numbers and data, and they want to do everything themselves. Yeah, yeah. So one one important thing here we have worked on a number of data projects and for non-profits or foundations any group who wants to attract many of these audiences, the keeping with researchers is you have, like, the get data page or sometimes we’ll put it in the footer and it’s, like, just download the excel spreadsheet because i keep saying it, but you got to get out of their way. Just give them what they want, okay? Okay. We have, like, another minute and a half or so do you have tools? And, uh, in your description, you mentioned choosing the right data tools. Any tools we can introduce briefly that you like, i mean, to be honest and this is like, tio, you get off being out of keeping it will be really hash tag riel here, please place if you’re old website have google and alex installed. I mean, you’d be surprised how many webs are out there and smashing non-profits believe that twenty nine, twenty nine percent of them are using do or not. Okay, okay did not have google and licks and police bare minimum do that and they said, like have i think the fun? Nothing is like have goals, you know, before it was like before you venture into the day the world? Yeah, there is there’s a great study that every action did called the state of non-profit data. And you can it’s from twenty sixteen. But it’s a great read a page i recommended. Okay, we’re gonna leave it with we’ll leave it there without recommendation. All right, all right. They’re courtney clarke, managing director of user experience at forum one. And david mask arena digital communications manager at the conrad hilton foundation. Courtney and david. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Pleasure. This interview along with all of our eighteen ntcdinosaur views sponsored by network for good, easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits. Thank you for being with non-profit radios coverage of eighteen ntc next week the buy-in bitches getting buy-in from your leadership. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com, responsive by pursuing toe online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuant capital p well, you see, piela is guiding you beyond the numbers. Bradunas cps dot com by tello’s, credit card payment processing, your passive revenue stream. 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Nonprofit Radio for April 22, 2016: Virtual Orgs: Managing Remote Employees

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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.

Heather Martin & Karen Graham at 16NTC
Heather Martin & Karen Graham at 16NTC

Amy Sample Ward
Amy Sample Ward, NTEN CEO

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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. 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