Tag Archives: leadership

Nonprofit Radio for February 20, 2023: Talent Development

 

Preeta Nayak & Lindsey WaldronTalent Development

With a few practices, you can turn your talent development process into an employee retention tool, a leadership pipeline and a step toward greater inclusivity. Preeta Nayak and Lindsey Waldron, both from The Bridgespan Group, talk through their article, “How Nonprofit Leadership Development Sustains Organizations and Their Teams.”

 

 

 

 

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[00:02:28.03] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure to welcome Preta Nyack and Lindsay waldron to nonprofit radio Pretty Nyack is a partner in the bridge span. We’re gonna do that again. No, I can’t have that, I can’t watch the first three words, it’s terrible. All right, let’s do it again. Bridge span group. Do people have trouble with that bridge span group? No, I don’t know why, I don’t know why people would, I did Okay bridge span group, the bridge span group, the bridge span group and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of necrotizing ulcerative ginger vos dermatitis. If you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show talent development with a few practices, you can turn your talent development process into an employee retention tool, leadership pipeline and a step toward greater inclusivity. Preta Nyack and Lindsay waldron, both from the bridge span group. Talk through their article On Tony’s take two. Non profit radio 50 redox here is talent development. It’s a pleasure to welcome to nonprofit radio free to Nyack and Lindsay waldron. Preta Nyack is a partner in the bridge span groups SAN Francisco office and head of bridge spans leadership and community services, she’s co author of the book nonprofit leadership development what’s your plan a for growing future leaders Lindsay waldron is manager in the bridge span groups boston office. She worked on the development and facilitation of leading for impact bridge spans, two year consulting and capacity building program for nonprofit executive teams. Bridge span is at bridge span dot org to lindsey. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:35.58] spk_1:
Thank you. tony It’s great to be here.

[00:03:18.23] spk_0:
I don’t know who’s the expert in which subjects. So you know, if I call on somebody and then, you know, if you want to pass it off and say no, peter knows that better lindsey or vice versa. Of course, you know, feel free to do that. It’s not, I won’t consider it anarchic. If you, if the person I asked doesn’t, doesn’t fulfill the, you know, fulfill the question. So let’s see overview. I’ll just throw it out and one of you can take it and then maybe the other wants to contribute something more. What is not going well for nonprofits generally in, uh, in talent development? Well, why don’t you start us off? There we go. Yeah. You

[00:04:36.92] spk_1:
jump in. I’ll jump in and, and, and name some some challenges. Um, and then, and then Lindsay definitely invite you. I invite you to jump in as well. I mean, I think let’s, let’s be clear everyone in this moment. Every organization across all sectors is, uh, facing a set of talent challenges that, um, you know, that have been precipitated by sort of layers of crisis. Right? So we, we had, we experienced covid. Um, and what that meant in terms of the workplace. We’ve experienced the racial reckoning and the questions that has led us to ask, We are, we’ve, we’re facing is it inflation recession is in both our people quiet quitting or are they getting laid off? Like there’s just a, there’s just a set of things that is also affecting the nonprofit sector now in particular, I think I would say that for the nonprofit sector, if you’re a nonprofit leader, you know, you have historically and probably even today not had the resources at your disposal to really invest in your leaders. We, we invest first in, you know, in our constituents and our clients and the people were serving and we put ourselves last often times and that means we don’t have some of the habits we should have. And it means all of these pressures than can hit us harder. So I know I’m talking about at a high level there, but I do think it’s a very real challenge.

[00:05:25.18] spk_0:
We put our own selves last. It’s like the, it’s like the founder who doesn’t pay themselves for the first three years of the, of the nonprofits existence. You know, we, we, we put our, we set up maybe perpetuate that and we put our teams are, I don’t know, arguably our most important resource, our, our staff, our teams. Um, you know, last, right?

[00:05:28.28] spk_1:
Yeah. And then, and that might, you can maybe do a sprint that way. Right. But what is social change? Not a sprint. Right? More than America cannot

[00:05:39.08] spk_0:
right lindsey, please.

[00:06:42.36] spk_2:
Well, just to just to build on that, you know, I think what, so what that leads to then that lack of investment is the turnover and increased rates of turnover that we’ve, that we’ve seen. So bridge fan has done some research. We cite a lot of other research in the, in our article as well. Um, you know, estimate, we estimate that one in four senior leaders leaves their role every two years. Right? So eight years you’re kind of looking at a whole new, a whole new team, which is, which is just difficult. And we also know that a huge reason for so much of voluntary turnover among nonprofits is for lack of career development and opportunities. Right? So that, that turn over that turnover treadmill that has a real cost associated with it. Both a financial cost for organization, The cost of recruiting hires, the cost of training new people and it has a cost on the impact side as well trying to fill new positions kind of, you know, constrains the amount of impact we’re able to have through the programs and services that nonprofits run. So I think that really kind of puts a pin in the problem itself.

[00:07:00.28] spk_0:
It takes a new employee three months just to know for sure. You know where the bathrooms are. I mean it takes, there’s a lot of, there’s a learning curve and so right. That impacts the services. Um, very interesting what you said about the volunteer 40% of voluntary Tony over is not feeling like there’s opportunity. So basically like I’m in a dead end job, I don’t see any advancement here for me. So I’ll go somewhere else. Is that, is that it essentially putting it crassly dead end job.

[00:07:48.21] spk_2:
Yeah. Or you know, not feeling an opportunity for professional development, right? Like not every organization is structured like a professional services firm, like a law firm for example, that has a clear ladder up. But regardless of whether or not there’s, you know, a clear, a clear up the task at a given organization. I think the point that we try to make, um, in this in this piece is that there are many ways to grow professionally. Um, whether or not, you know, there’s a new role or a specific new job on the, on the horizon.

[00:09:16.58] spk_0:
Funny you mentioned law firm, you know, a normal progression like associate partner maybe name partners. You know, I practiced law for two. Well in some respects they were two short years, but for me, there were two of the longest years of my life and I, I couldn’t stand it because in large measure I was dreading the partnership path because I was looking at the partners, they were all gray eyed, miserable divorced from their spouses or estranged from their Children. Like that was the last thing I wanted to do was follow their path, but I know that’s, that’s not the, that’s not the example you were giving. But your example conjured, uh, some hysteria in me as I recalled Not wanting to be like, I don’t want to be like those people, I don’t want, I don’t want to advance in this career. If I have to look like those people 15 years from now, I’ll be miserable. So I bailed out after two. Okay. But on to more, more, uh, more encouraging talent development progressions and scenarios. They’re not all, they’re not all bad in law firms, but a lot of them are outside. So, uh, so like we’re looking for, you know, like transparency, right? We want to transfer you, you cite the arctic in your article, which we’ll, we’ll give folks a link to shortly, you know, transparency and consistency. We’re looking for some, we’re looking for something, some bedrock that we can rely on so that we, uh, we know there’s a future for us in this, in this organization.

[00:11:13.49] spk_1:
I think, I think that, yeah, I think that’s right. And I, I think that one of the things that, um, because we don’t have, you know, the habit of investing in ourselves investing in our people or that, you know, it’s when it does happen, it tends to be a little bit at hot, right? You’re sort of a little bit making it up as you go along and the real, there’s, there’s sort of two challenges there, right, at least, right. One is that you’re right Tony you don’t get, you’re not providing anyone with visibility of like, how is this gonna happen, right? How how will will somebody invest in me? Right? You just don’t know. It’s not, it’s not predictable. The second is, and this is a really important point that we try to make repeatedly throughout the article, is that when you do things in that ad hoc way, inevitably it leads to inequity in the results, right? Inevitably. It’s the people who are the least connected, often the most different from people who are in the most senior thoughts, who aren’t going to get what they deserve right, because it’s going to be through some informal relationship or oh, Lindsay, you’re just like me in this way we connect and then like I give you an opportunity and if we don’t stop to actually ask ourselves, oh, is everyone, are all the lindsey’s getting opportunities and what kind of opportunities are they getting? And are we systematically having that conversation with everybody? That’s the only way you’re gonna get to some of the equity goals that I know many of our, many of our nonprofit leaders have rightfully kind of established now for themselves. They said we want to have a more inclusive culture, we want a leadership team that looks different from the team today, but the only way you’re gonna get that is by creating some systems and habits

[00:12:00.32] spk_0:
you say that, um, nonprofits fill the top leadership positions internally at only half the rate that for profit employers do. So it feels like we’re, we’re abandoning the people that we know the best, the ones that have worked for us. We’re, we’re not, we’re not promoting them. We’re doing it only half the rate that, that companies do it. So we’re not like we’re not investing and we’re abandoning the folks who seemed like the best shot because we know them, they have a history with us rather than bringing somebody from the outside

[00:12:37.68] spk_1:
well. And the other, the other piece there is that those people from the outside there, there are moments to be clear, you should have a mix of hires in your organization. People, you’re growing internal leadership. But the, the success rate on external hires is for all the reasons you would imagine not as not as high, right? Because those are people who are to some extent unknown and who don’t know you. And so it’s not just that you’re not giving people internally a chance. You, you may also then be like, it may take a lot longer to get to a two to a higher that really works

[00:12:45.70] spk_0:
Lindsay, was there something you wanted

[00:13:06.41] spk_2:
to add there? No, just the point that, you know, as as pre dimension, external hires are kind of less likely to be successful and they’re, they’re also more expensive to attract, right? It’s like this, the cost of turnover and kind of relying over indexing on external hire to fill leadership gaps in your organization is, you know, there’s a real cost to that, which again, it just like all builds the case for a thoughtful approach to leadership and talent development that that we outline and are excited to talk about

[00:13:23.14] spk_1:
today. Okay,

[00:13:43.57] spk_0:
so let’s, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna make improvements in D. E. I were going to make improvements in retention, we’re gonna reduce turnover. Your first idea is craft competencies who wants to wants to introduce us to crafting competencies? Just pointed to Lindsay Lindsay. I guess that means you do, if you had pointed first, peter would, but she did you go,

[00:15:36.99] spk_2:
No, I got it. Well. So I think you know, the first, the first question is what’s a competency was kind of a big, big words are just to break it down. We talk about competencies at the end of the day. They are kind of a unique set of skills and capabilities that people need to perform, you know, and develop in their work today and and to develop in order to be successful in an organization going forward. Um so a competency could be something like strategic thinking or communication or you know, data analysis analytics, mission orientation, there’s, there’s a whole number and we kind of outline some of the more popular competencies that we’ve seen in our work with nonprofits over the years. But the idea is, you know, there’s such, there can be such value in, you know, as a nonprofit leadership team, Distilling the set of competencies. It shouldn’t be an endless list. But say, you know, what are the top five or the top 10 that matter most for the people in your organization, Right. It’s really critical that, you know, folks in our organization are able to bring an equity mindset to this work. So what does that actually mean? Let’s spell it out right and name that as a competency. We want people to invest in developing or, you know, ability to communicate with our clients with people. We serve with funders with policymakers. That is a critical competency. So what is good look like on that dimension for people in our organization? So the process of kind of naming the, the skills and capabilities that are critical for people in our, our organization to develop in order to promote our mission, advance our our work um, that in and of itself, you know, we found both with our clients in a bridge band right to be a really a really valuable exercise that kind of lays the foundation for this approach to talent development

[00:16:04.63] spk_0:
pre to you. You distinguish between core competencies and leadership competencies. Why did you flush those out for

[00:17:12.09] spk_1:
us? Yeah, I think one of the things that um, you know, Lindsay mentioned that it’s, it’s valuable to to name together as an organization, A relatively small set of competencies that you’re trying to build in all your your employees right. Um at the same time we recognize that there are going to be a set of folks who may be taking on broader leadership or more complex challenges for the organization and they may need to have an additional and slightly different set of competencies that they have to grow into as well. And so we encourage teams again to just think still try and keep lists short. You’ll see in the article we name some of the most popular but but also recognize that yeah, there are some things as you take on more that that you may need to build um additionally to what beyond the core competencies and those are the leadership, we call them leadership competencies, you could call them all sorts of things but but we distinguish between core, which is something that you know, everyone in the organization you would hope would grow on and leadership which would be for a subset of folks taking on more complex tasks.

[00:17:50.26] spk_0:
And it’s important, let’s just stay with you preta it’s important to recognize that the competencies today may be very different than the competencies that we need both. Core and leadership in the future. Although I would think especially leadership would would change but if we’re gonna look ahead, I think it was, well it was one of you who said earlier, you know what what what got us here basically what got us here is not what’s gonna get us ahead, you didn’t, you said it more elegant ever said, it said it more eloquently than I just did but but what what got us here is not gonna work for the future so we gotta, we gotta be looking ahead to competencies as well.

[00:20:10.22] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely. And this is where I’ll just name, you know lindsey and I have both had the opportunity to be in, I don’t know, hundreds of leadership team conversations where the, where where folks are sitting together and actually trying to wrestle with this question of like oh yeah what are, what is it we mean by leadership or talent in our organization, what are the competencies we want to name? And those are really energizing conversations right? Because to your pump point tony you realize like you’re not trying to, you know, just name what you do now, you’re trying to think ahead like what what is the organization we may be in the future and what does that mean? We’re gonna need in our staff and in our leaders and you know some of that’s gonna be the same, there’s some things that you want to continue but some of it’s gonna be different and that that can be a really exciting conversation, I think the other thing is that um what’s what’s often fun about those conversations is you can just have, you know, I think Lindsay you use use the, you think, you said strategic thinking or strategic mindset like you could actually just like even sitting together with others and being like well when I mean when I say that when I say someone’s being strategic, this is what I mean and then like you’ll realize that like you’re not always even speaking the same language and actually one of the most important things about competencies is is actually then going one layer more to describe them and describe them in like observable ways because that means then like tony when you join my team and I say look I want you to be more strategic a lot of times people will walk away and be like I don’t even know what you meant, what what is she talking about but instead I have to say like so here actually is what I mean tony like I mean when when a problem comes your way, I want you to I want you to show me that you can break it into pieces and and tackle that piece, piece by piece with with your staff right? That’s what strategic means and that’s the kind of language you need in these competency definitions so that everybody can kind of say like oh that’s what I need to do, that’s what this organization needs, it was really powerful,

[00:20:30.11] spk_0:
peter trust me you would not want me working on your team, I would be a terrible employee of any company, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t even get, I wouldn’t even get hired. I would just I would probably just not even show up for the interview. I would I would book it and then just to prove that I’m independent, I wouldn’t show up. I wouldn’t

[00:20:31.15] spk_1:
even then you’re right. There are some core competencies that were they missing out

[00:20:36.22] spk_0:
on. I have core arrogance. I think that’s that’s my arrogance is arrogance. One of the core skill sets. One of the core competencies.

[00:20:43.16] spk_1:
We it has not been frequently named. It has not been frequently. Not

[00:20:51.04] spk_0:
frequently. It’s very diplomatic of you. Thank you. Um Alright let’s so lindsey, let’s go. Was there anything else about crafting the competencies from anybody that that we didn’t talk about? You think folks should know?

[00:21:44.34] spk_1:
Oh I will say I will, I’ll name one more thing which is just that a mantra we have in the in the competency sort of list processes. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So do not be the organization that spends 6 to 12 months trying to identify your competencies. That’s 6 to 12 months that have not been developing those competencies in your people, right? Because you’ve been worrying about the words that you’re using. I’m not saying words don’t matter at all. But like you know get most of the way there and try it and then you can always come back and adapt your list if you need to. So yeah, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good Lindsay

[00:21:48.27] spk_0:
you wanna introduce us to uh, co creating professional development plans.

[00:22:13.76] spk_2:
Yeah, sure. This is a fun one. you know the, the way that we introduce the concept of an effective um, professional development plan um, is through kind of a really fun example, um, which is by asking, you know, nonprofit leaders that we work with. Let’s reflect on how you learned how to ride a bike for the first time, right. Um, and tony if I asked you that question, right, assuming you know how to ride a bike. Um, what, what did that, what did that look like?

[00:23:00.03] spk_0:
Well, my, my mom and dad would take me out and I had a bike with, well started with a tricycle, right? We start with a tricycle and then we, we got, I graduated to a bike and they would put training wheels on it, of course it had training wheels and they would kind of hold the handlebars one of them with me as I rode even with, even with the training wheels in the beginning I think and then eventually the training wheels come off and mom and dad are left behind and I bike away.

[00:26:08.07] spk_2:
Yeah, and now here you are a bike rider. Um, no, it’s a helpful, like what you just described is a very kind of active and involved process of you kind of learning while doing right with people kind of by your side, you know, making sure you don’t like fall too hard and and coaching you along the way. Um and I think that’s a really helpful kind of picture to keep in mind as we think through well, how do people learn, how do we expect people to kind of grow and develop some of the competencies that we just developed. Um and it’s not by just reading about it, it’s not by attending a training on how to ride a bike or by watching a video. And I think I elevate that contrast because what we, what we often, what we often see like many nonprofits are, are guilty of this is, you know, an expense budget that’s kind of tied to training and development and more often and then not like that, you know, that the default is well, attend this training online or go to go to a seminar or kind of like learn about it, read about it, which is fine and which is necessary to a certain extent, but that’s not gonna help you develop the skill. Um and so there’s a, there’s a body of research that has kind of resulted in a framework called the 70 2010 around how how people learn, which is that 70 per percent of learning happens on the job that happens while doing it happens while you’re kind of pursuing that stretch assignment, right? 20% of learning really is kind of anchored in thoughtful coaching mentoring and development, right? So pre to for example giving me pointers along the way the work that your parents were doing right, kind of coaching you along the side, holding the handlebars, making sure that you knew what you were doing, Giving you tips, you know, and then there is a role for kind of learning through reading through more formal training, but that’s really you know closer to 10% and so it’s you know that that mindset, that allocation of how I think through how I want to develop myself, how I’m going to kind of become better on some of these dimensions that we that we name as organizations, those competencies that matter. I think we we encourage and we even include a template in our set of resources around like a development plan that kind of brings to life the 70 2010 approach and the great news is this right I mentioned before a lot of, a lot of organizations out there, they have a training and expense budget, Right? But that’s really at the end of the day, that’s kind of like the 10%, so much of learning happens on the job. So if if we could invest more in thoughtfully developing those stretch opportunities that preda alluded to kind of at the beginning of this conversation, um that’s great, that’s the most effective way people learn and it’s also one of the least expensive way to kind of teach our people to, to mentor them through more of an apprenticeship model.

[00:26:53.88] spk_0:
So how do we develop and we’re supposed to co create these right between the manager and the person who reports to the manager co co create the plan. But how do we Make the plan when we don’t know what the, what the opportunities are gonna be for the 70% part of the 70 2010 rule, how are we going to craft up? I mean, we don’t just create opportunities to see the person succeed or not. I mean, how do we how do we develop a plan around something that’s uncertain for the future? The the 70% part, the on the job part, we don’t we’re not really sure what’s coming.

[00:28:00.88] spk_1:
Well, i if I can jump in Lindsay, I’ll just say, I mean, no, you’re not sure of everything that’s coming, but you know, a good amount of what’s coming. Right? So if you’re, you know, you know, um in particular, I mean, obviously will vary by um by competency. Right, let’s remember that, right? You’re picking your your decided in advance together, there are these two or three competencies maybe that you’re going to really focus on? Well, let’s say it is about communications, it was one that that Lindsay mentioned earlier. Well, you might not know all the big presentations that are, that are gonna come up in the next year, but you know that there’s, you know, there’s the annual staff gathering. There’s the there’s um, you know, there’ll be at least a couple of updates to the board, you know, that, you know, you have a sense of what’s coming right and so you can, you and then you can together look for those opportunities. So the other thing to know is that if we agree, you’re gonna work on communications tony we might pick out a couple of things that we think are gonna be opportunities in the next couple of months. But then we should also revisit this plan at least once a quarter and say like, okay, what, what opportunities came up and what might be coming up in the next quarter so that you can continuously be updating it right? You can’t plan out a year and can’t plan out a year,

[00:29:11.81] spk_0:
especially for the, the arrogance building skill set. No, we didn’t, those are gonna be particularly particularly hard to come by, but, but I’ll fight for them anyway, let’s flush out the coaching and mentoring part a little bit the 20 and the 70 2010 that I think maybe, I don’t know, it feels like sometimes it’s left to sort of, you know, people kind of find a mentor on their own might be in the company, maybe, maybe you’re saying ideally it should be in the, in the organization or, but it’s, it’s left too much informality and it’s left up to the mentee to go find somebody who will mentor and coach them. I think you want it to be much more formalized in the organization, don’t you Lindsay? Go ahead lindsey.

[00:31:16.80] spk_2:
Yeah, yeah, well I was, I was just kind of observing, observing Preta’s like head nodding and I think, you know, I think that is ultimately the goal and then I think that that it speaks to kind of like the third piece of this puzzle that really makes it all work, is making sure that your, your supervisors, your managers throughout your organization are kind of taking ownership over their team’s development are kind of stepping into that role of coach so that my team of, to my team of five, my team of however many I’m aware of what they’re working on, right? I’m thinking about what opportunities I can help create for them and with them and I’m and I’m actively kind of coaching them through providing providing constructive feedback on what they’re doing well on what they need to to improve. And so often it’s the case that me in a supervisor role, I could be that coat, I should be approached to my, to my teams, those I’m supervising and at the same time it may be that, you know, there’s a, there’s a certain competency that I’m really focused on developing and my current supervisor isn’t the right person to support me on that. Right? So they’re, there are certainly opportunities where I might seek outside counsel, um, an expert on a certain topic to help coach me on something like public speaking, for example on on data analysis or or something like that. Or I may I may, I may seek out coaches from folks within my organization that don’t directly supervise me. So it’s not kind of a one size fits all situation, there are kind of different avenues and at the same time I think it’s our, our perspective that that talent development often hinges on an organization’s ability to kind of equip and hold their their management, their their supervisors accountable for developing their teams. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Oh,

[00:31:43.22] spk_1:
I you know, honestly, I just keep imagining tony like learning to ride this bike and his parents at his side. And as you were describing, I was thinking to myself, I guess we should all whatever that competency is that we’re trying to develop whatever that skill is. We should be asking ourselves who’s gonna be like those parents who trusted tony enough to get him a bike right to put him on the bike, but then who he trusted enough that if he was going to fall, they would be there to help him right? Like it’s like you’re gonna kind of asking that question of yourself as you’re building the skills is who are the people and it’s probably not just one person, right? It’s probably a set of people you go to under different circumstances, but it’s that environment of management support that I think the best kind of like talent rich organizations have created, they’ve created that environment.

[00:35:38.89] spk_0:
You, you all are making me picture my little block on uh orient way in Rutherford New Jersey where I learned to ride a bike and there were too many, there were too many trees, you know, because the trees upend the sidewalk slabs so it’s all bumpy and it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a good environment, but you know, that’s where I grew up orient way Rutherford New Jersey, I hope they’ve repaired the sidewalks in the past 55 years or so. It’s time for Tony’s take two nonprofit radio 50 for the planned giving accelerator, it’s the re ducks, it’s a reminder that you can get 50% off planned giving accelerator tuition by using the code non profit radio 50 the accelerator, the class begins in early March and you’ll be done with it with me. We all together will be done by memorial Day, so no impact on your summer March april and May will spend an hour a week together, you’ll meet with me and all your peers in the class and I will step you through launching planned giving at your non profit there’s no homework from week to week, there’s incredible peer support. We share challenges as well as successes together. The outcomes are incredible like $4 million from a small humane society in Georgia and $2 million from community development organization in Oregon and five new board gifts from another small organization in also in Georgia, a child development agency. So lots of lots of good outcomes. Your outcomes can be just as good. It’s all, it’s all available to you. It’s at planned giving accelerator dot com, You’ll see how to proceed and you’ll get the 50% off with non profit radio 50. Any questions about the accelerator naturally you ask me tony at tony-martignetti dot com. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got the book. Ooh, we’ve got boo koo but loads more time for talent development with pre to Nyack and Lindsay waldron. What about the idea of not leaving this to the mentees? Like the organization should be assigning or how do we, but it might the leadership might not know who the best mentor is for somebody. How do we, are we leaving it to the mentees to go find their own or what, how we, how do we formalize this but not make it overburden over overbearing. I’m very interested in this mentor mentor relationship. Maybe I never had a mentor as an attorney that maybe that’s why I dreaded. Uh I dreaded from promotion. I didn’t want to be like those people. Maybe I didn’t have a good mentor in in the law firm. How do we, how do we help Pope folks not have the same crushing defeat in their career that I had.

[00:35:42.41] spk_1:
I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to manage that tony but

[00:35:49.27] spk_0:
I’m unmanageable. I told you I don’t want, you don’t want me to work for you. Trust me. Exactly. You just said it, I’m unmanageable. But for the other folks who are, who are manageable, how do we help them get the right mentor?

[00:36:51.79] spk_1:
I would actually one question I would suggest even before that is like, is actually trying to just get a sense of who has, who has someone that they’re relying on that they’re able to turn to. And again, these development plans are an opportunity to ask that question. Who’s got me and you know, who doesn’t because I think that like you may not, it may not be that big a stretch. It may be, you know, a small set of people who don’t already have the connections they need that. You can then focus your energy on. Um, and, and so I think just the other thing I’ll just name is, I think generally when organizations for profit, nonprofit ask this question, they do find that the folks who are often left out are those who aren’t, haven’t traditionally been in that employment space, You see women who don’t, who often are lacking a mentor, people of color. And so you know, again, some areas where you can kind of double down and focus if other folks are, are seem like they’re doing okay

[00:37:41.56] spk_0:
alright. I see. So we can use these at least quarterly check ins to which we’re gonna get to the check in. All right. So then the remaining we got 70 2010, the remaining 10% is formal Lindsay like you said, go to a webinar seminar, go to attend a conference, that’s the 10%. That’s I mean we need to budget for that because there is a role I would think especially in in developing like a new competency that may be an early stage of developing a lacking competency skill set, you know, hearing, hearing listening to a webinar or going to a conference on it might be very valuable. So we need to budget that also.

[00:38:16.15] spk_2:
Yeah, for sure. Like a concrete example we use in at our organization at at bridge band which is focused on strategy, right? And operating effectiveness. But a lot of, you know folks that come in to our organization like need a pretty solid like quantitative background because a lot of our, you know, we use a data driven approach right? But if I’ve never opened Excel Microsoft Excel for example, It’s gonna be hard to just start doing immediately. And so there are so many tutorials kind of online and person around like what are the basics, right? How can I invest again? Not 100%, but like 10% of my capacity to just kind of familiarize myself with this thing, understand the basics, get my bearings and then start to apply that learning um on the job.

[00:39:04.71] spk_0:
Uh I should have asked you earlier. So it’s your suffering under a lackluster host who’s unmanageable, lackluster, arrogant. See these are all the traits you don’t know all the reasons you don’t want me working for you rita, you don’t want, you don’t want me in the bridge band organization. Um, you know, what’s the, what’s the basis for the, the conclusions that you drew? What? This is all based on Lindsay. You referenced hundreds of conversations but was this a survey or was this intentional research or it’s just organically grown, gained over time. What who wants to talk to why you have the credibility in this space to help

[00:40:27.68] spk_1:
us? I can talk a little bit about the path. Um, because tony you actually mentioned at the top, top of our time together the, the book I’ve written with a colleague plan a right on developing developing future leaders and that was over a decade ago we wrote that and we did that was research that was talking with um, uh, folks in the field who are leadership and talent development experts to understand what are the best for profits and nonprofits doing to create leadership pipelines. We then have like a set of general practice is to anchor our work in and building on that. We have then worked with. I think we are now probably at over 200 teams we’ve worked with in cohorts to apply these principles and that’s where we get the reps and refined it and where like some of these stories that you see even in the article come from. So, so it’s been a, we’ve tried to take our own medicine, so to speak, like we did the 10% desk research and then we wanted to apply it in the field and like actually just understand what’s going on and what’s hard, you know, what, what’s easy on paper, hard to do in practice, what kinds of tools might help that sort of thing. Anything else you’d add Lindsay?

[00:41:51.97] spk_2:
Um, I think we’ve also like in addition to coaching those nonprofits right around the country around the world at this point we also are learning within our organization, right? So, so a lot of like the structures that we, that we discussed were kind of trying to like eat and breathe ourselves. So I I have a development plan, right, 70 2010, I revisit it um, twice a year actually with my mentor, we talk about it, I talk about my strengths, my weaknesses, you know, where I need to, where I need to develop what that could look like to kind of reach the, the next level within my career at the organization, whether or not really that means a new role, so to speak, I know that I’m kind of growing regardless. Um, and, and so that, you know, it kind of motivates me to, to stay at this organization because I know I’m constantly learning, I know there are people who are investing in me and I have clear insight into what it takes to be successful in our organization because we’ve kind of spelled out those competencies, we’ve we’ve made what is often implicit explicit for everyone in our organization, right? Not just the folks that kind of our proactive in seeking it out.

[00:42:13.74] spk_0:
Are you supposed to be revisiting your plan at least quarterly? I thought you said you said you’re only doing it twice a year.

[00:42:20.92] spk_2:
I’m Oh I I will say I I have development conversations and we’ll get to this next right? I have development conversations with my supervisors and with those, I supervise, you know, every every couple of weeks or so. Right. So regularly we’re talking about like what am I doing? Well where do I need to improve? And we kind of have this framework of the competencies we care about to kind of reference.

[00:42:47.66] spk_0:
Okay. I just wanna make sure you’re not violating

[00:42:49.63] spk_1:
your I

[00:42:51.89] spk_0:
mean, I can’t lessons from a bunch of hypocrites, but Okay, you’re not you’re not you’re not hypocrites. Okay, Okay, what are you saying? I’m sorry, I was just talking

[00:43:02.95] spk_1:
unmanageable,

[00:43:04.33] spk_0:
I talk over my manager, it’s terrible. He’s unmanageable. I get him out, get him out. He’s unmanageable.

[00:43:11.36] spk_1:
Sorry, I was gonna say it’s a feedback rich environment and and tony maybe that’s another reason why you would not you would not you would not want to be with us because we would be telling you regularly what we love and what you can do better. How’s that?

[00:43:51.36] spk_0:
Yes, what I can do better. It’s again very, very tactfully put. Thank you. Uh there are there are there are expletives that could substitute but you use the tactful way. Um let’s tell a story peter you mentioned. Yeah, you have you have three examples for each of the three, you know, we have craft competencies, co create professional development plans and and then we’re gonna get to consistent development conversations those check ins um tell a story. Somebody, somebody this is worth talking about the professional development plans. Your your your example was shocked to see if I said it right shocked the Sustainable Energy Foundation, which I love Shaq Shaq T and Energy going together. I don’t know if they intended that when they created their Foundation, but I like it. Who wants to tell the story about shocked and their professional development plans?

[00:45:09.01] spk_2:
Yeah, I’m happy too. I’m happy to kick us off. Yeah, shocked is an as an organization based in India um that we supported through through a version of this process, through this kind of offering that we um that we deliver for cohorts of nonprofits and our main point of contact was actually an HR professional who had been doing this work for, you know, over a decade, but was was still new to this framework of of 70 2010. Um and so, you know worked with his leadership team with his ceo um to develop a set of competencies as we discussed right? They went through that process with with some bridge span support, we’re able to articulate what matters and then focus first on developing you know that what we often see with the organizations we work with is they don’t roll it all out at once. That would be really hard. But often first you know the it’s the work typically of the executive team of the leadership team to align on what competencies matter most in their future leaders

[00:45:27.93] spk_0:
you make that point that leadership has to set the example

[00:47:35.76] spk_2:
exactly, leadership has to set the example. So once they’ve done that then they kind of you know they start to walk the walk and this hR professional who was in a leadership position um He provides the example which we highlight in the article around a competency that he was working on which was improved communication right in public speaking. And so he named that as something that he needed to develop. It went on, his development plan, you know? And in this case he actually sought out somebody who was not his kind of like direct supervisor, direct boss, I’m forgetting exactly who it was but say it was a board member right who he admired who had a very strong concise and effective communication style and he he sought out that individual as a mentor and what they I would do is check in again like every quarter um to kind of review and assess how am I doing, How am I progressing against this really important skill that will help me grow in this role. That will help me be successful as a leader within this organization. And so that’s just one example and I think you know you point to a piece that we name like you leader you have to lead by example right? Because this is the type of thing as Preda mentioned up front, like it’s easy not to invest in talent, right? It’s easy to focus all of our attention on the programs we’re running on the services we’re offering on the clients that we are serving because those needs never never stop. Right? It’s and so the grind of just our day to day is it’s real but taking the time and discipline to pull up and reflect on our own learning our own development, our own professional growth um is critical and so if a Ceo or director of HR can find the time to do that can be candid and transparent about their growth areas, right? Everyone has growth there areas right? Even the C. E. O. S of the top companies out there, nobody’s perfect. We’re all growing right? That in turn kind of helps make visible um to others throughout the organization that like oh if the Ceo or the director of whatever department has time to do this and is taking charge of their professional development, then I can do that too. And that helps create this kind of culture of learning development of feedback

[00:48:30.51] spk_0:
completely contrary to the Jack Welch at general electric style of management to I know everything I am perfect. I have all the answers. Just just come to me. Uh, but he’s he’s long been his theories anyway. I think I’ve been debunked. All right, thank you. Good story about shock. T Yeah, it’s interesting that he chose a board member to, to uh, to help. I mean, he went to a volunteer leader, you’re saying,

[00:49:20.64] spk_2:
Yeah, and it can’t, I mean that’s, that’s the point. I think it’s, you know, I think an organization can play a role in kind of making those connections like the mentor match, so to speak. But I think it, you know, it also requires there’s a role for kind of your supervisor or manager to play and there’s also a role for each individual to play and taking ownership over their professional development and growth, right? So I might say, oh wow. Like creed is so awesome at the way that she engages clients, right? And I really, I really want to learn from from her. So, you know, I to have the agency to kind of reach out and seek, seek out mentors that spike on some of the skills and dimensions I care about. Um you know, is very much like that’s totally possible. There’s nothing preventing me from from doing that. And if you kind of like create the culture within your organization that, that is, you know, that that happens. So that is the norm that people are receptive to that. Um, I think that that can enable great things.

[00:49:39.92] spk_0:
So preta let’s talk about what we’ve, we’ve alluded to a couple of times. The the 3rd 3rd recommendation, consistent development conversations, these check

[00:51:58.23] spk_1:
ins. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was just, um, I was just thinking as for, you know, for folks who are listening to this. You know, there, there there’s value in the whole system, there’s value in putting in place these competencies and, and development plans and, and all of that. And you know, there’s also a question of like, well, what could I do as an individual tomorrow, Right? What could I start doing? And I, and, and I think actually the important there’s a lot because at the heart of all of this is regular conversation between a manager and a direct report or someone in their sort of network about where is it you’re headed? What are the skills you’re trying to build and how do we make sure you’re actually getting effective opportunities to build it right. And those effective opportunities are probably going to be on the job. And so that and it’s the regular conversation, right? So I had a, had a conversation Um, just yesterday with for 30 minutes with a mentee relatively new mentee someone when I’ve just been chatting with regularly for a couple of months and you know we we spent most of the time just kind of kind of getting to know each other and then talked about one particular problem that was on his mind and it was 30 minutes and we’ll do it again in a month. you know, and it’s a it’s just a little bit of a muscle you start to build and then in six months I will we will know a lot about each other and there will be a lot of space for that hard moment for him to pick up the phone or send the chat or whatever he needs to do because because those moments you can’t really schedule, can you write those are those are those are unscripted. Right, So so I just think it’s that muscle that gets everybody comfortable with like sharing feedback, sharing ideas, celebrating the winds, you know, sometimes like having a good cry, whatever it is that it’s that pattern that I think um really sustains that the relationship. But then actually if you have a web of those in an organization, it really sustains the organization

[00:52:20.38] spk_0:
and and to your point earlier was that the the formal check ins with with with the the supervisor, those should be at least quarterly, but but but mentors you’re saying, you know mentors mentees, I mean that can be on the fly as as ad hoc as needed or you know, maybe could could also be scheduled to?

[00:52:31.42] spk_1:
Yeah, I mean I like I’m a huge fan both in my professional and personal life of the recurring, the recurring appointment, you know, set the recurring appointment, have it for the half an hour monthly, you may end up canceling it or not using it, but like put it in there and and I I just really encourage everyone to be doing that with with the advisors in their life, whether they’re formal managers or or mentors or something else.

[00:53:21.30] spk_0:
Do you have any other action steps or for either of you? I love stuff that people listen on a Tuesday and they can think about it Wednesday and then they implement on thursday. What anything else for from either of you that we can act on immediately start taking action steps. No, this is all 100% theoretical, there’s no value

[00:53:58.99] spk_1:
in. Yeah, no, I think that I mean that the This the simple sort of thought exercise I would encourage people to do is like if you download there’s a 70 2010 template, we’ll share the materials but you can probably make this yourself. It’s not rocket science, right? It’s a couple of what are the couple of skills or competency areas, you can use our list or you can come up with your own or Google, there’s plenty of banks online available and then what do you think the 70, is going to be for you in the next few months on that thing. What’s the activity you’re going to do? What’s the coach, you’ll have do it for yourself as the first step and then share it with your manager or maybe or actually even better share it with the person you manage, right? Let them know how you’re thinking about this and maybe those, their wheels will start turning too. So I know that would be uh, just an easy way to get started lindsey. Any other suggestions?

[00:56:03.01] spk_2:
Well, I think just, you know, I feel like most of the people, I imagine a lot of folks listening like they may not have a set, a very like clear, explicit set of like what are the qualities, characteristics and skills I need to develop to be, to be great at my role in my organization over the long term and if that doesn’t exist, that’s, that’s okay. I think I think just kind of carving out some time for some self reflection um, on, you know, what, what are the assets that I bring to my role to my organization? How can I build on those, what are some things that I’m that I’m working on, right? That I need to continue to develop and then, you know, that becomes, you know, the, that becomes in large part the focus of my development plan, but again, it shouldn’t be like, we want this to be an asset based approach, right? So like building on strength. This is all I think one of the, one of the lines going through my head that I’ve I’ve, you know, started to appreciate um you know, at this point in my career is just this notion that feedback is a gift, right? It can be easy to get defensive, it can be easy to think like, oh, what am I not good enough at what am I doing wrong? But at the end of the day, like creating this culture of feedback is so critical because it it helps us grow as individuals. How am I going to get better if I don’t know, kind of where I need to to grow. Um So I just keep kind of thinking about that like self self reflection. Um I think is is really a critical piece of this

[00:56:04.79] spk_0:
process. Self reflection, introspection. I like I like I like introspection. It doesn’t do me any good, but I like I think it’s an admirable thing to spend time on where can we get the article? So because there are a lot of links to other to other research, other articles, there’s two other stories where where can we read the article?

[00:56:54.44] spk_2:
Yeah, well it’s available on our website, right www dot and dot org. Um and you know, we’re really excited actually because it’s we’re we’re kind of in the process of developing a new a new space on our website, um, that houses all like, not just this article, but all of the nonprofit knowledge we’ve, we’ve collected over the years on areas such as talents, on financial sustainability, on strategy, on organizational effectiveness and so our goal at bridge fans to kind of disseminate these tools, these resources which are all free as far and as wide as possible so that, you know, nonprofit leaders across the country around the world can can pick them up and apply for them like what, what is most useful? So go to our website.

[00:57:38.63] spk_0:
So Okay, so is there a spot at bridge span dot org that uh, someone just politely put it in the chat I guess was preta while while lindsey was talking. So bridge band bridge span dot org slash insights and then slash library. Alright, we’ll put it in the show notes.

[00:57:44.25] spk_1:
It’s unfortunately a bit of a mouthful of a U. R. L. So,

[00:58:05.82] spk_0:
okay, we’ll include it. I feel like craft competencies, co create professional development plans, consistent development conversations. Those are the three, three Tenets of the article. I know you three CS if you had, if you could tease out four more sees, you could do like the seven seas of talent development. Wouldn’t that be clever? The seven seas of talent development and there’s a bridge band group so that the bridges spanning the seven seas of talent development. If you could tease out four more sees, you know, I would, I would recommend it.

[00:58:26.15] spk_1:
But

[00:58:28.82] spk_0:
There are three, Pardon

[00:58:30.70] spk_1:
Me, we can come back with the next 4Cs.

[00:59:00.78] spk_0:
Yeah, so we’ll do a follow on with the with the remaining forces. Now these are very three very valuable sees and they are free to Nyack and Lindsay waldron. Preta is a partner in the bridge band groups san Francisco office, Lindsay, waldron manager in the bridge bands, bridge span groups, boston office and the company, the organization pardon me, is at bridge span dot org. So Preta Lindsay, thank you very much. Thanks for sharing all this.

[00:59:05.07] spk_1:
Thank you.

[00:59:06.37] spk_2:
Thanks tony

[00:59:46.52] spk_0:
next week managing your nonprofit for resilience with ted village. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff 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 B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for October 10, 2022: The Smart Nonprofit

 

Beth Kanter & Allison Fine: The Smart Nonprofit

That’s Beth Kanter and Allison Fine’s new book, revealing the potential of smart technology and artificial intelligence for your nonprofit, and the entire sector. Beth and Allison are with us to share their thinking.

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:44.94] spk_0:
Oh, I neglected to mention, you hear me, you hear me do an intro to the show and then we’ll chat uninterrupted and then I’ll do the outro and then I could say goodbye Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of infra occlusion if you made me chew on the idea that you missed this week’s show. The smart non profit That’s Beth Canter and Alison finds new book revealing the potential of smart technology and artificial intelligence for your nonprofit and the entire sector.

[00:00:56.53] spk_1:
Beth

[00:00:56.87] spk_0:
and Allison are with us to share their

[00:00:58.74] spk_1:
thinking

[00:01:28.01] spk_0:
on Tony’s take to debunk those top five myths of planned giving, sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I. T infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper.

[00:01:32.30] spk_1:
What

[00:01:32.54] spk_0:
a pleasure to welcome

[00:01:33.29] spk_1:
back

[00:01:41.59] spk_0:
Beth Kanter and Allison Fine to the show. Both been on multiple times, although you know them uh they they they each deserve their own special

[00:01:47.79] spk_1:
introduction.

[00:01:49.33] spk_0:
Beth Kanter is an internationally recognized thought leader and trainer in digital transformation and well being in the nonprofit

[00:01:56.46] spk_1:
workplace.

[00:01:57.94] spk_0:
She was named one of the most influential women in technology by fast company and received the N 10 Lifetime achievement

[00:02:04.82] spk_1:
award.

[00:02:05.48] spk_0:
She’s at Beth Kanter and

[00:02:08.97] spk_1:
Beth

[00:02:30.78] spk_0:
Kanter dot org. Alison Fine is among the nation’s preeminent writers and strategists on the use of technology for social good. She’s a member of the National Board of Women of Reform Judaism and was chair of the National Board of Naral Pro Choice America Foundation and a founding board member of Civic Hall. Allison is at a Fine and Alison Fine dot

[00:02:34.94] spk_1:
com.

[00:02:36.18] spk_0:
Bethan Alison welcome back to nonprofit radio

[00:02:40.69] spk_1:
Thank you for having us. tony

[00:02:43.75] spk_0:
congratulations on the book.

[00:02:47.60] spk_1:
It’s very exciting. The response has been tremendous so far.

[00:02:52.45] spk_2:
So both of our 4th book and 2nd collaboration together.

[00:02:56.91] spk_1:
Second,

[00:03:20.05] spk_0:
yes, you’ve co authored the network non profit if I’m not mistaken. Alright and fourth book for both of you. Congratulations all around. I would actually like to start with the last sentence of the book. If every nonprofit in the sector can transform itself into a smart non profit we can transform the world end quote. Uh does anybody want to claim authorship of that particular sentence? Is it possible for co authors to remember who wrote each each sentence throughout the

[00:03:28.19] spk_1:
book?

[00:03:29.76] spk_0:
Not, no,

[00:03:31.30] spk_1:
not possible, but so

[00:03:33.14] spk_0:
then All right, Allison, what what uh what does it take to become this uh ideal. Smart non profit

[00:04:33.67] spk_1:
So a smart non profit tony is an organization that understands deeply how to stay human centered and by that we mean putting people first, internally and externally using the most advanced technology organizations have ever had at their disposal. This this, you know um family of technologies like ai machine learning robots and so on and by doing that tony we can stop the incredible hamster wheel of business frantic business of organizations just playing a daily game of whack a mole with email and telephone and ongoing meetings. All of that road work can be done by the technology, freeing up people to build relationships and tell stories and build communities and solve problems and do the deeply human work that most of us came to the sector to do in the first place.

[00:04:45.71] spk_0:
And you you used the word business that was not business, that was business

[00:04:52.15] spk_1:
in the U.

[00:05:08.43] spk_0:
S. Y. Yes. Okay. Um Alright. So there are many uh considerations for becoming a smart nonprofit and some some important roles of leadership that that come out in the book. Um Beth anything you would like to add to the to the intro to our conversation.

[00:05:25.86] spk_2:
Um Sure. What Allison laid out so beautifully is the key benefit of that nonprofits get from embracing this technology and that is the dividend of time and that time can be reinvested either in building better relationships with donors or or clients or stakeholders or also could be reinvested in the staff to free up time. So we’re not. So as you said, the busy work takes up a lot of time but it also takes up a lot of cognitive overload and maybe if we had more spaciousness we would be less exhausted. Um and and more inspired and less burnout.

[00:06:15.66] spk_0:
Yeah the that that dividend of time is throughout the book. And uh well except that hypothesis for now I have I have I have some questions about that, some little skepticism about that, but for now we’ll accept that the dividend of time will indeed accrue to people who work in in in smart nonprofits and to to the to the organization generally. Um Are

[00:06:18.75] spk_1:
you skeptical that it can be created or are you skeptical that people will know what to do with it once they created it? No,

[00:06:27.95] spk_0:
well I don’t wanna I don’t I don’t want to challenge right off the bat but

[00:06:33.36] spk_1:
uh

[00:06:52.52] spk_0:
skepticism that that it that it can be realized. Not not that people will know what to do if it does get realized, but um yeah well let’s come back to it, let’s leave the hypothesis uh as as as perfectly fair and and uh something to truly aspire to because there are as you say, and as you lay out mostly in the last chapter, um there are great places that the sector can go when we realize this uh this dividend of time. Um

[00:07:10.37] spk_1:
let’s

[00:07:19.93] spk_0:
talk a little about, you know, some of these elements of being a smart non profit Um beth let’s stay with you for you know, human centered. What what do you what do you all mean by by that?

[00:08:00.23] spk_2:
Well I guess we use another term in the book um called co batting and really with that I like that because it’s like figuring out what the machines can do best. Right that the automation technology there’s certain tasks that the technology is really good at doing. And those are things like analyzing large amounts of data and automating kind of rote tasks. But there are there’s stuff in our jobs that humans should do and always do. And that is the relationship building, taking the donors out to lunch. Like you were telling us you took a donor out to a nice restaurant recently. You know that’s not something the automation is going to do for you. Um and being creative having empathy, making intuitive decisions. And so when we use this technology leaders really need to understand like what is the right workflow and always keep humans in

[00:08:19.06] spk_1:
charge?

[00:08:21.28] spk_0:
What what’s the what’s the

[00:08:25.05] spk_1:
how

[00:08:25.33] spk_0:
can we how can we make sure that we center humans in in adopting this this smart technology?

[00:09:29.83] spk_2:
Well I think the first step is to ask to talk to them and get their feedback and their input in before you even like grab the software off the shop? It’s not about that at all. Um you really have to start with. Um you know, what are the points of pain? What are the exquisite pain points that we want to address by adopting this technology and getting feedback from the end user’s whether that staff clients donors and then, um, setting up a, you know, an understanding of what the journey is, what the workflow is and where you divide things. And then you begin to go look at software tools and uh, and and find vendors that are aligned with your values and once you’ve, or technologists that are aligned with your values and then once you’ve done that, you can begin to start with pilots and uh, an iteration on it before you get to scale. This is so different tony than social media, which both Allison and I have talked to about where we’re encouraging people to just jump in experiment fail fast. What we’re saying with this technology is that it’s really important to, um, to go slowly and to be knowledgeable and reflective about it.

[00:09:53.74] spk_0:
And reflective. Yes, reflective is, uh, something else I wanted to ask about. So what you read my mind fantastic being reflective Alison, what is why, what’s that attribute about for the, for the smart non profit

[00:11:37.25] spk_1:
So this is, um, something I’m deeply passionate about tony Um, I don’t know if, you know, I had a first career as a program evaluator and uh, it’s very, very difficult to get, particularly smaller nonprofits who are so busy and so under resourced to take a step back and not only think about how is what they’re doing, Getting them closer to the results that they want to do, but how can they improve over time and we need them to understand not only the human centeredness that beth just spot on, you know, outlined, but in particular tony how are we making people feel internally and externally about our efforts? Are we making people feel seen and known and heard or and this is particularly important when we talk about smart tech, do you feel like a data point, just you know, a cog in large machinery? Um that’s just getting lost um and we know that feels terrible, everybody has experiences of feeling being made to feel small by organizations and nothing is more important in our work, particularly in the social service and human service areas of making people feel known and heard and yet it is just the sticking point for the sector that it is the thing that gets left off and again we’re back to the business of work, so we want people to be reflective of. Is this the right technology, are you solving that exquisite pain point that you had? How are you making people feel when machines are now doing what only people could do until just a few years ago, you know, through smart tack and is it solving the problems that you set out to solve?

[00:12:00.50] spk_0:
Uh Yeah, I I admired that idea of, of reflective because you know, it’s it’s closely related as you said to being human centered uh you know, thoughtfulness um and it goes to like preparation to um it

[00:12:23.51] spk_1:
also goes to leadership right? You have to have a leadership within an organization that isn’t so brittle that they are open to learning about how to improve and there are too many organizations that are so fearful of being seen as not doing something well that they won’t openly and wholeheartedly be reflective about their activities.

[00:12:42.57] spk_2:
And it’s also about the culture too, and we’ve used this word a lot dizziness and when we have a culture of business and people are multitasking and there’s back to back meetings. They don’t have that space to be reflective. So um and and that’s so required to um to make the changes that you just read about the last line of our book, you know, to get to that place

[00:13:23.79] spk_0:
and we’re gonna talk some about the leadership. Uh you talk about being trustworthy and empathetic, we’ll we’ll we’ll get there. Um Another, another attribute you you mentioned um beth is being knowledgeable, knowledgeable about the tech and I think it’s limits too. But what would you you say it you’ll say it more eloquently than I will.

[00:13:33.54] spk_1:
I

[00:13:33.74] spk_2:
think we can both say that both Alice and I can say both eloquently, but I’ll kick off with um when we say knowledgeable and we’re and we’re saying this to leaders, we’re not saying that you need to know how to code. Um you know, roll up your sleeves and write the code but you need to understand um

[00:13:51.97] spk_1:
what goes

[00:13:57.94] spk_2:
into the code and whether it’s biased um the data sets it’s been trained on and you need most of the time. A lot of leaders in the nonprofit sector when it comes to technology it’s kind of push back, you know sent down the hall to the I. T. Department and we’re really asking leaders to lead in because there’s you know potential challenges which Allison is really great at explaining.

[00:14:16.56] spk_1:
Alright

[00:14:18.19] spk_0:
well Alison explain those but then maybe you can tell us a story too about

[00:14:22.12] spk_1:
uh

[00:14:22.80] spk_0:
about like the degree to which a leader needs to be knowledgeable.

[00:15:38.16] spk_1:
Uh So we’re talking about um this family of technologies tony that is very quickly becoming embedded in every single part of organizational life. Right? This is not a you know fundraising software, smart tech is going to be embedded in the finances and the back office and the coms and development and everything. And the idea of having machines automatically paid for things or screen resumes or screen people for services is a fundamental shift in who is doing work and how it’s being done. Right? So when you understand that premise, you have to have the C suite leaning into this to underst and what it means when your staff is doing different things than they used to do and when people on the outside are engaging with machines instead of people, these are fundamental shifts. So one area. Um Well too I just mentioned that are so important is if you are automating the screening of resumes, then the assumptions that some programmer put into that system and the resumes that were used to test it for looking for certain kinds of employees with certain kinds of skills are going to be biased. I can tell you that right now, right. They are going to have a bias. And largely that bias is going to be against, you know, people who are black and brown or or women.

[00:15:57.35] spk_0:
It’s gonna be in favor of white men.

[00:16:40.39] spk_1:
Exactly. Because that is what employment looks like. Those are the questions we use those are the expectations that we have and the programming was done most likely by a white man. Um So if you don’t know what to ask. The creator of that software that you’ve just bought that is going to quote save you a ton of time looking at resumes. Um but also screen out um people of color and women then you’ve just an incredible disservice to your organization and the same if you are providing housing services or food services to people in need, the same kinds of biases are going to be found in these systems, right? This is a systems problem. And that’s why as Beth was saying, this is not a technical problem. This is not something where you say go I. T. Guys go find us a good product. You know, they’re not looking out for your organization’s interest in equity. That’s what leadership is for right, setting those moral standards, setting that compass and making sure that your values are aligned in everything you do and how you do it as an organization.

[00:17:59.64] spk_0:
Yeah. You both are very clear in the book that this is a leadership issue, not a technology issue. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They have another interesting newsletter this week advocating for the use of cliches. Their argument is that cliches shouldn’t be ruled out entirely but used judiciously. Like not don’t go overboard either. Whatever you think about cliches, my point is they’re thinking about them. They’re thinking about how best to communicate your story because your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Now back to the Smart non profit any any stories, can we can we tell a story at this point? Alison

[00:18:23.00] spk_1:
sure there are, there are social services agencies around the country um that we’re using smart tech systems to provide um food assistance. And only after the system had been in place for several years. tony did they find out that it was literally leaving out black people from the system. In the opening chapter of our book, we talked about a screening tool called V. I. Speed at uh

[00:18:39.80] spk_0:
three times.

[00:18:40.55] spk_1:
I

[00:18:42.50] spk_0:
just kept saying it. V. I. S. P. D. D. Yeah.

[00:18:50.81] spk_1:
Yeah the I stood at that was programmed by um why white man with very good intentions that unintentionally was leaving black people out of getting priority housing in hundreds of communities around the world, four years before the social workers finally got heard saying, we know this tool doesn’t work on the ground, we’re using. It, it is not screening people correctly because the questions were biased against people of color who have so much trouble getting into public systems.

[00:19:32.89] spk_0:
You you have three caveats sort of that that you uh you make very clear and bias is one of them. So we’re just talking about that um responsible use is another another of the three beth can you can you talk to uh what you’re thinking about responsible use and sort of thinking through problems?

[00:19:59.01] spk_2:
Um Sure. Uh it’s kind of like taking a Hippocratic oath that you will do no harm. Right? So the example that Alison just laid out, obviously there was harm done by keeping people screening people out for important services. Um so so it it who’s um non profits to do uh something that we call threat modeling? I know it’s a big scary term and word and it comes from the internet cybersecurity but

[00:20:11.51] spk_0:
didn’t frighten me.

[00:20:17.94] spk_2:
Okay, well it might frighten some people we have had that reaction, um but it’s just basically

[00:20:19.33] spk_0:
not profit radio It’s very savvy listeners here.

[00:20:21.72] spk_2:
Absolutely,

[00:20:23.24] spk_0:
this is this is a higher echelon audience than you’re

[00:20:25.77] spk_2:
right, of course, your

[00:20:26.90] spk_0:
other podcast. So please

[00:20:28.49] spk_2:
threat

[00:20:29.80] spk_0:
modeling is not intimidating to us.

[00:20:31.51] spk_2:
Okay, so threat modeling is actually having a brainstorm of all the possible things that could go

[00:20:36.33] spk_1:
wrong.

[00:20:42.33] spk_2:
Um if you uh implement this technology um what what harm could be done to the end user um if they if they were given um let’s say you have a buy right? And in fact the Trevor project is an example of an organization that did this threat modeling. They wanted to they had a problem. Um they had, you’re familiar with the Trevor project,

[00:21:02.88] spk_0:
explain, explain what what

[00:21:04.80] spk_2:
okay, so they provide uh

[00:21:07.10] spk_0:
counseling

[00:21:23.42] spk_2:
to yes to L. B. G. T. Q. Youth, you know through text and online phone, if you will. And so they’re dealing with kids who are in crisis and a whole, you know, um continuum of issues and they have councilors that there who are volunteers but they’re trained in this very specific, very sensitive type of counseling, especially when young people are coming to them in crisis. And so um so the problem was, you know, they needed to scale um and get more counselors in there so they could help more clients. And so they decided that they wanted to use a bot,

[00:21:44.37] spk_1:
which

[00:22:33.01] spk_2:
is, you know, automated response. We’re all familiar with thoughts, you know, buy a pair of sneakers online or trying to make a doctor’s appointment and you encounter a bot. And so rather than replace the counselors on the front line with this technology that won’t be human center, it could be potentially dangerous. Um especially with a sophisticated self learning bot, which could learn through, you know, and learn through interactions and say the wrong things and that could be devastating to an end user who’s in crisis. But what they decided to do was to use the bot for training simulations. So they took data from real conversation, stripping all privacy information and they use this to train their bot, which was a highly sophisticated software that was self learning. But they said that this spot will not be on the front lines with anybody, will only interact with um for training simulations. So what this did was free up a lot of time from the staff in terms of delivering trainings to more quality control. So they were able to get more counselors on the front

[00:22:51.82] spk_1:
line, so

[00:23:01.15] spk_2:
it’s an example of being human centered, but it’s also an example of that dividend of time and and repurposing it um and also uh making sure, you know, so it’s doing no harm. Yeah,

[00:23:15.16] spk_0:
and that and that responsible use. Okay, okay. Um the other the other caveat you have, so you have, you have three caveats bias, responsible use and privacy. Talking about ethical standards who’s uh, who’s who’s most interested in talking about privacy Allison Fine, raised their hand first.

[00:25:08.25] spk_1:
Yes, I did. Um so this is not a new issue, right, We’ve been dealing with digital privacy um for a long time, but as a sector haven’t really ever gotten our arms around it. tony right in that we has a sector have just subscribed to. I think we think the lowest expectations from the commercial side, which is you try to get as much personal data as you can write. You ask for those emails and you leave. You might let somebody unsubscribe from a newsletter, but you don’t delete their emails. Right? And a much, much more ethical model we feel is in the european union, the G D P R. I can’t remember what that stands for. But the idea is that, um, the people, the consumers, constituents, donors, volunteers are in charge of their data and they get to tell us how they want to be engaged with us, right? They get to tell us that they want to be forgotten entirely from our systems. They don’t want to be on any of our list. They don’t want to be in our systems. And that flipping over of the model we think is very in keeping with being human centered, right? It’s very in keeping with the values that we’re trying to, uh, in view in this whole concept of smart nonprofits, right? That we shouldn’t fear, um, asking people what the value we provide to them is. Right. Do we brought enough value in having their email for them to want to stay with us or are we just turning through again, as we said in the beginning, turning them through systems like the cogs in a great big machinery. So we think the smart tech is going to generate even more data than the last 10 years of digital tech, which is astonishing to think about kind of mind blowing to think about

[00:25:18.86] spk_0:
Because I think didn’t you cite 90 90% of the data that we have is in the past two years?

[00:25:34.41] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah. It is remarkable to explode. And so we need to be, we need to raise the bar on our ethical considerations on the use of data and the relationship that we have with our constituents. They need to trust us more. The fact that the nonprofit sector along with other sectors, the degree of trust is going down. tony is, is not good and we ought to hold ourselves to higher standards of privacy and data protection.

[00:26:52.20] spk_0:
Two weeks ago, Gene Takagi and I talked about that exact subject in a show that I called in nonprofits do we trust? It was just, it was just two weeks ago. It’s time for a break. 4th dimension technologies, your tech is an investment invest wisely. What’s the state of your office infrastructure? Should you give remote or hybrid employees tech allowances or just give them the equipment outright or both or neither. How’s your disaster recovery plan? How’s your backup working? four D. Can help you with all these investment decisions, check the listener landing page tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But you know they go one dimension deeper. Let’s return to the smart non profit Do we know what the impact has been on, on business? Uh,

[00:27:02.62] spk_1:
coming

[00:27:13.65] spk_0:
out of the G D P R has, it, has it had the devastating effect on business that the business community in europe was, was claiming when they were, uh, lobbying against it or trying to, you know, trying to weaken it. Do we, do we know I’m putting you on the spot. Do either of you know, whether that’s had such a devastating impact on european business?

[00:27:25.95] spk_1:
It’s been fine. And, and look, companies, commercial companies here have had to put, uh, more effort into privacy issues when they do work in the european

[00:27:37.36] spk_0:
union,

[00:27:40.59] spk_1:
you know,

[00:27:40.96] spk_0:
California

[00:27:41.82] spk_1:
for Nya are holding people to the same standards now. Um, but it hasn’t had a huge negative impact on business,

[00:27:50.70] spk_0:
you know,

[00:27:51.44] spk_1:
it’s fine.

[00:28:01.23] spk_0:
Okay, okay, now this, this smart tech artificial intelligence we’re talking about, this is widely used commercially, Right? I mean, isn’t this, I don’t know, fundamental to amazon google the 24 hour chatbots that beth mentioned, you know, you see a little about 24 7, the likelihood of that being a live person at four in the morning is very, very small. This, this is, this is ubiquitous in the commercial sector,

[00:28:22.79] spk_1:
isn’t it?

[00:28:23.82] spk_2:
Yes, it is, but I think we’re at this point um, uh, Allison likes to call it the heel of the hockey stick where it’s going to the cross of this technology has come down. It’s becoming democratized and it’s becoming more accessible to non profits of all sizes.

[00:28:41.29] spk_0:
You

[00:28:42.67] spk_2:
don’t have to be nasa to use this.

[00:28:51.56] spk_0:
All right. Now to keep yourself out of jargon jail. You’re gonna have to explain the, uh, the hockey stick on a graph metaphor. So go ahead, tell us what X and Y are and why it looks like a

[00:28:54.63] spk_1:
hockey stick.

[00:28:55.50] spk_2:
Okay. It’s okay. So imagine a hockey stick, right. Or I should do it this way. I’m looking at my

[00:29:02.71] spk_0:
nobody can, nobody can see your hands, but we all know what

[00:29:04.91] spk_2:
happened, but

[00:29:05.98] spk_0:
not sophisticated enough to know what hockey sticks.

[00:29:20.11] spk_2:
It basically shows. And this happens with technology. Um, is that, you know, early adopters use it because it’s very expensive, experimental. It’s unproven. And as it, the technology improve and the cost comes down and it becomes more accessible to consumers and small businesses into organizations. The adoption rate starts to skyrocket. So it goes up. So you see sort of a flat line and then a steep hill or steep mountain increase in

[00:29:35.49] spk_0:
X’s time. And why is technology adoption?

[00:29:39.42] spk_2:
Yes.

[00:29:40.76] spk_0:
Yeah. You’re better at

[00:29:41.91] spk_2:
charts than I am.

[00:29:43.65] spk_0:
Okay, well, you, you, you invoked the metaphor of the hockey stick. You gotta, you gotta be able to stand behind it now.

[00:29:48.41] spk_2:
Oh, I guess I guess I should.

[00:29:50.13] spk_0:
All right. All right.

[00:30:31.21] spk_1:
It’s not just nonprofits adopting this now. tony I would say that it’s all medium and small sized organizations in every sector that now has available to them, technology that they couldn’t afford just a few years ago. And that’s, that’s what the difference is. The technology is a brand new, it’s just become very affordable for smaller organizations. However, as I mentioned before, just because it’s available and just because it’s affordable, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right stuff to grab off the shelf. And that’s the part that’s that’s the impetus for us to write this book. You need to know what you’re grabbing and using, Yeah,

[00:30:42.60] spk_0:
the availability to small and midsize shops, I think is through is throughout your book. Um, let’s tell another good story. The one with the, uh, uh, the repurposing of the school bus routes to deliver food instead of drop off Children during the pandemic because Children were no longer going to school. So they repurposed school busses to drop

[00:30:55.43] spk_1:
off meals.

[00:30:57.87] spk_0:
Who knows that story best.

[00:30:59.76] spk_2:
Yeah. So, you’re, you’re talking about research at Carnegie Mellon University and you’re talking about Pittsburgh school system and

[00:31:07.96] spk_0:
Pittsburgh school system.

[00:32:38.23] spk_2:
United Pittsburgh school district or whatever it’s called. Um, so this was at the very beginning of the pandemic when we were in the shutdown and um, and kids that are in schools that are in poorer areas relied on the school lunch program to get their meals right. And so if schools were shut down and, and, and students were tele community, there’s no way to get this food. So they used a machine learning algorithm to re engineer the must routes to take the food to the kids in the most efficient way. It’s really interesting how during the pandemic, you know, there was a little bit of a silver lining. I know it’s awful. But there was a silver lining for some nonprofits to really push and to innovate. And I think food banks in a way we’re forced to do this. Um, there’s another example in boston of the boston food bank completely automating its inventory and it’s stocking to become a lot more efficient. And at one point they even were experimenting with having robots come in and stock the shelves because most of the food banks, volunteers are older and they were told not, you know, during the very early part of the pandemic, not to, you know, come in because it could be dangerous to their health. Um, and that’s also a great kind of idea story, use scenario to think about to do the threat modeling that we were talking about earlier. So let’s just say for example, food banks. So let’s let’s bring in the robots and have

[00:32:38.99] spk_1:
them stock

[00:32:40.47] spk_2:
the shelves, you know, so, but you also have to think about that volunteers who are coming in, um, to do this type of work. Those were their lifeline in terms,

[00:32:50.89] spk_0:
yeah.

[00:32:51.75] spk_2:
How are they going to feel and how are we going to redesign the volunteer job and how are you going to encourage them to come back in and make them feel safe and welcome into the food

[00:33:02.13] spk_1:
bank. Right.

[00:33:02.86] spk_0:
Less feeling less unless they feel useless and replaced by machinery. And this is all the organization thought of us. And now they now it’s just a bunch of metal replacing us metal and plastic parts. So yeah. Alright. Also being human centered, reflective,

[00:33:59.75] spk_1:
but that that’s that’s the dividend of time, tony if you can say all right, we used to have these uh, you know, two dozen volunteers who came in and were stocking shelves all the time. And now we’ve automated that task. What is it that these, you know, lovely people who wanted to help could do that would be so, you know, deeply human and centered as you say, and uh, you know, in in improving our relationship with our clients. Maybe they could be calling clients. So what else do you need? You know, what else is happening for you or just saying hello to somebody, Right. I mean, there are all sorts of wonderful human things that those people could now do if they want to um that they never had the time to do before. That’s the that’s where this is again, a leadership issue of really thinking about how do we want to use our human capital in the next chapter of organizational development?

[00:35:40.16] spk_0:
Okay, I think that’s an excellent example of the dividend of time that we’re we’re about a half an hour in or so. So let me uh let me try my, my skepticism out on you that we I’ve heard this before, that there was gonna be, there were promises of increased productivity and increased time. I’m thinking of smartphones, we’re going to give us more time and they certainly make us more productive, but I don’t I don’t I don’t see studies saying that we we have so much more time. I see that time being absorbed now you might say, well maybe I’m making your case for you that time being re allocated. Unthought feli unwisely. But I don’t I don’t see people walking around feeling that they’ve got so much more free time since the widespread adoption of smartphones 10 years ago or so. Um Another video conferencing, you know, whatever teams uh zoom, I hear more about zoom burnout than I do about feeling that I’ve got so much more time available because I don’t have to go to meetings. I don’t have to go to the office. Um You know, so those are a couple of the paperless office. That was another paper, the promise of the paperless office was going to be so much so much more efficient for us and I think that was gonna save time because we wouldn’t have to file papers and it was gonna save office space because we wouldn’t need storage and these promises. Um I sound like a whining 60 year old, but these promises have not come

[00:35:44.78] spk_2:
to not

[00:35:46.09] spk_0:
come to fruition in the

[00:35:46.96] spk_2:
past. So I’ll take what I’ll tackle the zoom fatigue thing and, and then Alison can kind of related to smart text. So

[00:35:56.32] spk_0:
I guess I should say uh, it’s not whining. I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeonly 60 year old.

[00:36:00.94] spk_2:
Well you’re not a curmudgeon and you never whine.

[00:36:03.79] spk_0:
All right, Thank you.

[00:36:52.45] spk_2:
So, so if you take zoom fatigue, right? Um, and that came from stanford University and basically what is causing it is the flight or fight response that is going on in our bodies when we see the grid. I mean, there’s some ways to mitigate it. But what happened is is that nonprofits like many businesses all of a sudden were forced to pivot to becoming remote distributed teams. We never really work like that. So the idea was, let’s just all make, get a zoom meeting. Let’s just take everything we did in person and just plop it online. And what happened because everybody was doing this there was, we didn’t really evaluate how do we collaborate effectively. What do we need, what can we do? Like a synchronously so we can make use of our synchronous or real time experience. So we can make meetings shorter. There’s research from Microsoft that shows that if you have stacked back to back meetings without taking a break your level of stress just stays the same throughout the day. And so if organizations were reflective, knowledgeable

[00:37:07.39] spk_0:
and kind of prepared, they

[00:37:16.17] spk_2:
Would have looked at and said, Okay, so let’s look at how we can, you know, stick to a culture of maybe a 20 minute meeting with 10 minute break in between or have a zoom number per day that we know that we’re not going to schedule more than x number of meetings, which would then think to how do we rethink our work? Um So it’s not just the technology, that’s true, the technology doesn’t create the dividend of time. It’s a combination of the technology with thoughtful leadership, reflective leadership as we’ve been saying, that can then change the culture.

[00:37:41.25] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:37:51.31] spk_1:
And let me let me let me build on that tony So we have an entire generation of digital technology That was intended to make us go faster, right? That was that’s what it has done. We are at a point now, we’re checking your email on average, 74 times a day is quote normal, right?

[00:38:04.53] spk_0:
We’ve gone from uh let’s say facts to email, to texting to to to um slack.

[00:39:36.27] spk_1:
We we we get that this technology, smart tech ai automation is not that technology, it is a fundamentally different kind of technology that’s intended to do things instead of people not to have us do more, But as Beth just said, it’s only going to do that. If we implement it thoughtfully, right, if we end up in the same place where we are checking on the box 74 times a day shame on us. The stuff has the potential to relieve us of so much administrative wrote work that just eats up everybody’s day. And if we can co bott well and have the bots do what they’re supposed to do and the people do what they they’re supposed to do, we can actually re humanize work. But as you know we’re just at the beginning of this process a lot of this is theoretical and that’s again is why we wrote this book instead of jumping in and grabbing the stuff and adding it onto your existing dizziness, frantic nous culture, we need you to stop and think and figure out how to do this. Well you know

[00:40:34.55] spk_2:
there’s some research that’s from M. I. T. Sloan school that looked at the effectiveness of this technology and um and where it is effective is if people don’t just focus on the efficiency of it that is to, okay well we can get all of these tests done way more efficiently because people aren’t cutting and pasting from different spreadsheets. Um But we’re not gonna fill up people’s with more work to do so it’s not to go faster, it’s really to be more effective and so if this technology can be implemented and it can kind of relieve some of that stress and pain of overload then that has an impact on morale and people feeling good about where they work and there is a synergistic impact that the study found that where efficiency and kind of effectiveness, let’s work together. So there’s so that can have more people feel better about their work, they do better, they get better results, they’re less likely to quit, there’s less likely to be turnover and the organization moves forward in a in a better way with better outcomes.

[00:41:09.01] spk_0:
Right, Okay. Alright. And that’s that’s if if it’s adopted with leaders consciously being human centered, knowledgeable, reflective, prepared. Uh and we’re gonna get to trust and empathy. Um All right, well you may have moved me from skeptic to uh cautious optimist.

[00:41:16.14] spk_2:
I was gonna say, what are you still are you still a little uh

[00:41:34.32] spk_0:
you know the history, the history has not has not borne out that leaders have adopted the new technology reflectively thoughtfully and prepared. Lee um It’s just so I’m just basically,

[00:41:36.18] spk_2:
pardon

[00:44:17.51] spk_0:
Me, they never had its 2022. Now they have the book, they didn’t have it when we went from facts to email or email to slack or email the text and text. Alright, Alright. No, no it’s okay. Um so leaders please uh keep listening. It’s time for Tony’s take to debunk the top five myths of planned giving, that’s my free webinar coming up. It’s Tuesday october 18th at 10 a.m. Pacific one o’clock Eastern I say free webinar but it’s not free for everyone. It’s free for you because you’re gonna use checkout code tony T. O N Y couldn’t be simpler. I think you have to put it all in caps too. I’m not sure about that part but do it all in caps to be safe. So I’m gonna be talking about debunking these insidious, pernicious top five myths of planned giving, I hate them, I loathe them, they are loathsome, that’s why I loathe them because they keep people away from planned giving like the one that says plan giving is gonna ruin all your other fundraising. It’s going to take away from your annual gift and your major annual giving and major giving. Debunk. We’re gonna debunk that and for others as well. So join me very simple to sign up. Of course. You go to our gracious host site. We are thoughtfully hosted by N. P. Solutions. So you go to N. P. Solutions dot org. You click workshops, you’ll find me in the list and then when you’re checking out use that code tony do it in all caps and it’ll be free for you. Not for everybody, but for you, I hope you’ll be with me. Let’s debunk these Hateful Top five Myths. That is tony stick to we’ve got boo koo but loads more time for the smart non profit with Beth Canter and Alison fine. Let’s let’s talk some about the leadership. That’s perfect. So you mentioned the three things I really want to talk about trustworthy empathy uh, and curiosity and I have to get this in. If you had an H then you could have spelled out tech trustworthy empathy, curious, high minded

[00:44:18.40] spk_2:
human, human centered,

[00:44:26.89] spk_0:
human centered. You need, you got the T. E. C. In the book. I was looking where’s the H. All right. Uh, what does it look like for leaders to be to be trustworthy? To adopt Trust?

[00:44:34.88] spk_1:
Who

[00:44:38.64] spk_0:
who who’s the best, who’s the most trustworthy explainer of of trust?

[00:44:43.00] spk_1:
I

[00:44:43.18] spk_0:
don’t care. It could be either one. Okay, Allison Trust is yours. We got to go in order and then if we can come up with an H uh centered, but that you already have that in the in becoming a smart non profit That’s that. You already covered that one. So you can come up with another one. Um Herculean, heroic, heroic, Herculean, Right. Trust Alison, Why why is this trust?

[00:46:58.76] spk_1:
Important? So organizations are making a bond with people in their communities, right? We are, we are asking them to come along on a journey with us, uh, to be clients to be donors, to be volunteers, to engage with us in some way and trust is the stuff that’s sticking us together, right? It is social capital. It is thinking that an organization has your best interests at heart, not just their best interests at heart. And um, I feel like for 20 years, so many organizations have been going moving so quickly on this hamster wheel advised by people who make a lot of money off of transactional fundraising and transactional engagement online and have lost sight of the fact that unless and until people out there trust that you are doing the right stuff in the right way, nothing else matters. And we’re all trying to scale way too quickly, tony without really understanding the fundamental D. N. A. Of making sure that we are entirely values aligned from what we want to do to what we’re actually doing to the outcomes. And again, you know, beth and I feel so strongly that the nonprofit sector is such an incredibly special place, right? We are the epicenter of the world for you know, providing human services and doing advocacy work and it is such an incredibly brave, difficult work and yet we still have a ways to go in asking are the leadership of organizations both C suite and the boards to raise the bar to be more transparent uh to to ask more questions about how they’re doing, to measure their outcomes, to uh take care of their people internally and externally better. And so that’s why we put trust so high up on the scale of what we want organizations to be focused on.

[00:47:19.32] spk_0:
I think leaders feel when they’re there

[00:47:24.02] spk_1:
falling

[00:47:24.70] spk_0:
short in in in in in the aspirations that you just described. I think I think folks feel it it’s just but they’re on that hamster wheel and it’s, it’s hard to take, it’s hard to take that step back and and acknowledge what you’re feeling and be introspective as an organization.

[00:49:01.87] spk_1:
Let me, let me, let me describe something though. That’s really important. tony that we as a sector don’t talk nearly enough about. And that’s what Beth and I called the leaky bucket in fundraising. Right? So year one, you get 100 donors by year two, you’re down to 25 of those. You’ve lost 75% of those donors Because you’re so busy filling up the bucket again because you’ve lost 75% the year before and all you’re doing is this transactional fundraising, the email, the direct mail to fill up the bucket again. All of the measures of fundraising success are front loaded, right of did we hit those, you know, revenue targets for this year? Very few organizations are really focused on donor retention and how to increase it. It’s never been at a board table for discussion that I have been at in many, many years, many, many organizations of being on the board and that is where the panic comes in. And it feels terrible to staff and you know, my heart just goes out to all of those people who are in a panic about hitting those revenue numbers knowing that what they’re working with is hemorrhaging donors every single day and that’s where, you know, just in my heart of hearts tony I just want everybody to stop, just stop and take a step back and figure out how to improve your relationship with donors more. So they stay longer with you and you’re not in this panic every day.

[00:49:25.83] spk_0:
Allison, we’re gonna come back to you for for curiosity beth let’s talk about empathy,

[00:49:29.41] spk_1:
I’m

[00:51:40.41] spk_2:
sure. And I think the empathy is, needs to be turned within first before it gets turned outside to the donors to solve um, what what Alison was just talking about. But so empathetic leadership means the ability to understand the needs of others and being aware of their feelings and thoughts. And unfortunately it’s viewed as kind of like a soft skill. Um, and it’s not always linked to performance, um, indicators, right? And so I think it’s really important, especially with what we’ve been through in the pandemic, um, that organizations really need to have clear expectations with their managers to lead in a way that is supportive of, of employees and that supports and contributes to their overall well being and they can do that and still get work done. Um, and I think that like don’t get me started on well being, but um, well being has to be put center and it has to be raised up and given as much importance as fundraising metrics or, or other financial metrics, especially given what we’ve been through. And so this includes checking in training people to like actually observe on their staff and making sure that their, um, you know, caretakers for each other’s well being. And it’s, you know, like a one on one check in isn’t just about, hey, where’s that report? Where’s that proposal? But it’s also how people are feeling what their energy is. Like what their job experiences like what could be improved, which gets us closer to that conversation around technology. So, um, the types of skills and competencies that make for a culture of care or empathy or self awareness and self regulation, adaptive skills, active listening coaching with powerful questions, observing for signs of burnout. Being able to give and receive feedback in a way that doesn’t cause stress, disrupting microaggressions, inclusive facilitation, having those difficult conversations sometimes, which is too nice. But there’s ways to have those conversations that aren’t devastating and genuine perspective, taking. Being able to see it from other people’s points of view. And it doesn’t, I don’t think that makes us weaker. I really think it makes us stronger.

[00:51:54.81] spk_0:
You know,

[00:52:05.03] spk_2:
it’s not a bunch of, you know, reaction when I wrote the happy, healthy. Yeah. Right. We get the, you know, that’s a bunch of hippie crap. Yeah.

[00:52:07.04] spk_0:
I didn’t say that when I talk to you. You

[00:52:08.92] spk_2:
didn’t say that. Of course you wouldn’t say that. You’re too smart.

[00:52:25.83] spk_0:
Thank you. Well, you hardly know me, but thank you. I’ll take it anyway. Um, I know a lot of what you’re describing to is vulnerability. And I think vulnerability is a sign of uh is evidence of confidence that you’re, that you’re strong enough to be vulnerable where lots of people think it’s a sign of weakness that you’re showing, you know, you’re, you’re showing your human side and you know that I think that’s terribly misguided. Um alright, if we’re gonna, we’re gonna, I’m gonna keep you uh not beyond our allocated time. Let’s go to Alison for for curiosity.

[00:52:48.83] spk_1:
Why is it important?

[00:52:50.46] spk_0:
Yes. Why is, why is curiosity a valued trait for leaders?

[00:54:31.33] spk_1:
Uh, you know, the world is moving really fast tony and we have um, a lot of organizational leaders who think tech is not their thing, right? Tech is for somebody else and it can’t not be your thing. If you’re running an organization right now, it’s too important. It’s threaded throughout everything that your organization is doing and you can’t just lean back, You need to lean into it and to do that? You need to be genuinely curious about in our case for smart tech, What is this stuff and why is important and how is it different from the last generation of technology and what could we actually accomplish if we didn’t spend three quarters of our day responding to emails? What is possible out there in the world. And you know, my heart breaks for so many of the nonprofit folks that beth and I talked to who have such good intentions and are so deeply unhappy with how stressful their jobs are or how unrecognized they are by the C suite um or how um pressurized they feel. So it is just uh innately important for organizational leaders to be genuinely curious about, where do we go from here? Right. The world broke two years ago in so many fundamental ways the political economic stress of this moment is wearing people down but we can’t stay here tony we need to go somewhere and we genuinely believe that the family of technologies we call smart tech creates an opportunity to be different in the future to make work joyful and much more meaningful and rewarding and you can only get there if you’re genuinely curious and engaged in understanding the technology

[00:54:58.39] spk_0:
and I think curiosity and empathy are interrelated to curiosity about your people as beth was for all the, in all the ways Beth was describing. That’s

[00:55:08.56] spk_1:
exactly right

[00:55:12.54] spk_0:
alright. Um I don’t suppose the beth I don’t suppose you on the fly came up with an H for to spell out tech for us. Did you?

[00:55:23.89] spk_2:
You

[00:55:24.77] spk_0:
Have that one already?

[00:55:27.02] spk_2:
Humility

[00:55:28.26] spk_0:
Humility is a good one. There you go.

[00:55:29.86] spk_2:
So let’s riff on that humility in

[00:55:31.81] spk_0:
the second edition, you can add, you can add humility and spell out

[00:55:35.20] spk_2:
text and then we’ll footnote and say suggested by tony

[00:55:44.65] spk_0:
Thank you. Yeah, humility. Right. Isn’t that simple? Yeah, related to being empathetic leaders don’t need to know everything, do they?

[00:55:49.85] spk_1:
Oh gosh

[00:55:50.62] spk_2:
no listen

[00:56:15.01] spk_1:
we you know the reason why we wrote the network on profit tony was to take that idea of the hierarchical model of leadership and organizations out of the equation and say the point is somebody else in your network has the answer. You don’t have to have the answer yourself. You just have to know how to go about getting it right and and that of of flattening your organization and your worldview is so important to being able to survive all the uncertainties of what’s happening right now.

[00:56:52.37] spk_0:
Since we started with Allison, Beth I’m gonna let you wrap us up please. There’s so much more in the book. There are use cases, you know, we don’t the book, we can only scratch the surface here. You gotta get the book. That’s the point. You get. They talk about increasing program capacity, fundraising, back office automation, including a lot of talk about human resources. Um you just you gotta get the book which is the smart non profit but beth why don’t you leave us with inspiration and wisdom?

[00:58:30.19] spk_2:
Okay. Um we’ve been through a lot the sector has been through a lot. I mean the world’s been through a lot in the last 22 plus years with the pandemic and accompanying other crisis is and as Allison is outlined and I think we’re we are like at a precipice where we could just either go down the rabbit hole of you know a human capital crisis and spiraling out and people leaving the field and organizations just, you know, stopping business and, you know, leaving lots of people who are vulnerable who need their services. I mean, that’s we can’t go there. We have to pivot. And I think that um, smart tech is part of the tools that can help us get there. But again, their tools, they also need this empathetic leadership that we’ve been talking about and we who can also steer and change the culture to put people first. Um, and um, and I think if we can have all of these things together, working for the organization, the Smart Tech plus the culture plus the leadership, uh, we’ll be able to move forward in a post pandemic world with much better outcomes with happier staff, with staff doing a better job with donors, feeling seen and heard and wanting to, you know, um write bigger checks if you will with clients who are receiving the services that they need and we’re on a path to a better world. It’s not gonna be easy, but uh, we believe that non profits can do this.

[00:58:48.89] spk_0:
That’s beth cantor at Beth Kanter and Beth Kanter dot org co author Alison Fine at a fine and Allison Fine dot com. The book is the smart non profit you can find it in either of their two sites,

[00:59:00.00] spk_1:
Beth

[00:59:00.35] spk_0:
and Allison, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing

[00:59:03.70] spk_2:
genuine

[01:00:00.00] spk_0:
pleasure next week. Eric Sapperstein returns after many years. Let’s talk about waking up excited and going to bed fulfilled. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech You find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C O and by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box, the affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff showed 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, you’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 3, 2022: Your Dismantling Racism Journey

 

Pratichi ShahYour Dismantling Racism Journey

Starting with your people, your culture and your leadership, how do you identify, talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit? My guest is Pratichi Shah, founder & CEO at Flourish Talent Management Solutions. (Originally aired 7/8/20)

 

 

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[00:01:58.44] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast and oh, I’m glad you’re with me, I’d be thrown into necro psychosis if you killed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. You’re dismantling racism journey starting with your people, your culture and your leadership. How do you identify? Talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit. My guest is pretty itchy Shah founder and Ceo at flourished Talent management Solutions. This originally aired july 8th 2020 on Tony’s take two, let’s debunk plan to giving myths. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I tion for in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D just like three D but they go one dimension deeper here is your dismantling racism journey. It’s a real pleasure to welcome welcome. I’m not welcoming. I’m welcoming, I’m welcoming, she’s an HR strategist and thought leader with 25 years experience in all aspects of talent management. She’s making her face when I say 25 years human resources equity and inclusion and organizational development in the nonprofit and for profit arenas. She’s founder and Ceo of flourish Talent management Solutions. The company is at flourish tMS dot com. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:10.09] spk_1:
Thank you so much tony I appreciate being here.

[00:02:14.25] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure pleasure to have you um and I’d like to Jump right in if you’re, if you’re ready. Um,

[00:02:20.35] spk_1:
absolutely.

[00:02:48.05] spk_0:
You know, racism and white privilege most often look very benign on their face. Um, I had a guest explain why use of the word professional in a job description is racist. I had a more recently, I had a guest explain how not listing a salary range in a job description was felt racist to them. So how do we begin to uncover what is inequitable and right under our noses yet not visible on its face?

[00:03:34.85] spk_1:
Yeah. You know what it often it starts with listening. I mean to state state a bit of the obvious. It really does start with listening. It’s understanding for organizations. It’s understanding where we are. Um, so it’s listening to the voices that may not have been centered. We’ve become better as organizations and being responsive to staff. I hear that a lot kind of, hey, this is what my staff is telling me. This is what we need to do. But the question is is are you responding to the voices that have possibly been marginalized? Likely been marginalized or oppressed in the past joe. General responsiveness is not the same as centering the voices that really need to be heard. So it’s first off just understanding where you are as an organization and listening to the people who may have experienced organization in a way that is different than you think.

[00:03:50.19] spk_0:
So when you say general responsiveness is not what not adequate, not what we’re looking for. What do you mean by that?

[00:04:45.05] spk_1:
So a lot of time the voices that are saying, hey something’s wrong or we need to do this or we need to do that are not the voices of those that have been marginalized and oppressed. They tend to be maybe the loudest voices. They’re speaking maybe from a place of privilege and that needs to be taken into account. So being responsive, for instance, if the I call it kind of the the almond milk issue being responsive to a staff that says in addition to dairy milk for coffee. This is back when we were in fiscal offices, um, we need almond milk too. But the question is is are we listening to the voices of those that weren’t able to consume the dairy milk? It’s not a perfect metaphor. It’s not a perfect analogy because that one ignores actual pain and it just talks about preference. But are we list listen to the voices of people that have been oppressed who have, who have been, who have heard the word professional or professionalism wielded against them as a, as an obstacle in their path to success in their path to career advancement. Those are the voices that we need to listen to not the ones who have a preference for one thing or another.

[00:05:08.34] spk_0:
Um let’s be explicit about how we identify who, who holds these voices, who are these people?

[00:06:03.47] spk_1:
It’s people that have have come from. It’s particularly right now when we talk about anti black racism, we need to center the voices of those from the black community. And that means those who have either maybe not joined, not just not joined our organization for particular reasons, but maybe they have not joined our board. Maybe they have not participated in our programs, Maybe they haven’t had the chance to. So it’s really from an organizational perspective, think of it as understanding what our current state is. So how does your organization move people up? Move people in move people out if we don’t have the voices in the first place? Because maybe we’re not as welcoming as we should be, then what does the data tell us about? Who’s coming into our organization? Who’s leaving our organization, Who’s able to move up into our organization, what our leadership looks like, what our board looks like. So at times the fact that there is an absence of voice is telling in and of itself and our data needs to be able to explain what is going on. So that data needs to be looked at as well.

[00:06:52.58] spk_0:
Alright, so we need to very well, good chance we need to look outside our organization. You’re talking about people that we’ve turned down for board board positions turned down for employment? Um, I’m not even gonna say turn down for promotion because that would presume that they’re still that that presumes are still in the organization, But I’m talking about very likely going outside the organization. People who don’t work with us, who aren’t volunteering, who aren’t supporting us in any way, but we’ve marginalized them. We’ve cast them out before they even had a chance to get in

[00:07:10.44] spk_1:
potentially. Yeah. And then actually probably probably there is something that they have not found palatable or appealing about working with us or being a sensor or being uh to your point of volunteer. So so we need we need to look at why that’s happening.

[00:07:36.46] spk_0:
Okay. I’ve gotta I gotta drill down even further. How are we gonna identify these people within within our organization as it is? How are we gonna figure out which people these are that we’ve marginalize these voices of color over the let’s just like in the past five years, what have we if we’ve done this? How do we identify the people we’ve done it to?

[00:08:33.53] spk_1:
Yeah. It’s a really it’s a complicated question. It will differ by organization, right? It differs by what your subsector is, how things flow within a subsector. The size of the organization. A really good place to start is understanding who has turned us down, why have people left? So take a look at exit interviews. Even if you’re not doing exit interviews, we know that there is not always uh an HR presence in a lot of our organizations. If there aren’t formal exit interviews, first of all, let’s make time for those because we need to understand why people are leaving. Um but if if there isn’t a formal HR presence, what do we know about the circumstances under which someone left organization or said no to a job offer or said no to a board position or a volunteer. It’s also important to ask, expanding our definition of stakeholder groups, engaging with all of our stakeholder groups as as broadly defined as possible. And within those groups, understanding are we reaching out to a diverse audience to say why would you engage with us? Why would you not engage with us in any of those roles? So, yeah, it’s gonna be a little bit harder to understand the people who are not there because they’re not there.

[00:09:02.40] spk_0:
Yeah. Okay, Alright, so, alright, um we go through this exercise and and we identify we’ve identified a dozen people, um they’re not they’re not currently connected to us and uh it may be that they have had a bad experience with us, that they may have turned us down for employment because they got offered more money somewhere else. That could that in itself could be, let’s

[00:09:18.28] spk_1:
say that

[00:10:08.31] spk_0:
in itself could be uh not something other than benign, um but let’s say they moved out of the state, you know, they were they were thinking about, so, so in some cases they may not have a bad have had a bad experience with us, but in but in lots of cases they may have, they may have turned down that board position because they saw the current composition of the board and they didn’t feel they felt like uh maybe being an offer, you know, a token slot or whatever, whatever it might be. I’m just, I’m just suggesting that some of the, some of the feelings toward the organization might not be negative, but some might very well be negative of these dozen people we’ve identified in all these different stakeholder or potential stakeholder roles that they could have had. Um what do we reach out to them and say, how do we, how do we get them to join a conversation with an organization that they may feel unwelcome him?

[00:11:21.79] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And and I think right now, especially we tread carefully. Um we tried carefully and we honored the fact that they in fact might be getting that same question from many other other organizations, friends, colleagues, family members, in which people want to understand something. What we’re seeking to do is not be educated on the overall picture of white privilege, white supremacy of dominant narrative and dominant culture. That’s on us. That’s on all of us individually to understand that, that is not the member that is not up to. The member is of oppressed societies to have to tell us that, Right? So what they, what we want to understand is kind of, what did you experience with our organization? What was the good? What was bad? And first of all, do you even want to engage with us. Is this not a good time to do that because they’re already exhausted. I said to a colleague recently, you know, we can’t even understand the reality of what it’s like to live there to live that reality and for many to lead the charge, right? Because they’re also showing leadership in the movement. So to we can’t even understand what those layers of existence are like. So I think it’s treading very carefully and should we have the ability to engage with someone because they have the space, the energy, the desire. Then I think it’s understanding and asking kind of what’s going on for us? What where did you find us either not appealing or where did you? Why did you not want to work with us in whatever capacity we were asking? And it’s asking that question.

[00:11:50.37] spk_0:
Okay, well that’s further down. I’m just trying to get to like what’s the initial email invitation look like?

[00:11:55.10] spk_1:
It depends on the organization. It depends on the organization. It depends on the relationship. I wouldn’t presume to give words to that to be honest with you because because I think it also depends on the person that you’re asking. I don’t want to offer kind of a blanket response and inadvertently tokenized people by saying, oh, of course you’re gonna want to engage with us. So I really think it’s dependent on the situation.

[00:13:35.19] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They had a very smart newsletter this week. We often can’t predict news outcomes, but we often do know news is coming, for instance, hurricanes during hurricane season, the Duffy decision on abortion and the november midterm elections. We know in advance that there’s going to be this news. The smart nonprofits turn to communication says prepare talking points for all the possible outcomes in advance and they’re the ones that get the day one quotes and the op EDS and they own the issue on social media. So prepare your messaging in advance, then launch when the news breaks. It’s brilliant turn to communications. Your story is their mission. You can get their newsletter which is on message at turn hyphen two dot c o. Brilliant. Now, back to your dismantling racism journey. What are you inviting them to do with you have a conversation, share your experience with us, is it?

[00:14:42.37] spk_1:
Yeah, essentially. I mean, that’s what it boils down to. But again, it really depends on where the organization is. Right. So this is your data collection moment. This is information collection. Where else are you collecting information? What what else do you know? What other steps have you taken to begin that educational process because there’s there’s kind of a dual purpose here, right? It’s understanding who we are in, where we have contributed to structural racism, to pretend to a culture of that does not support differing viewpoints, differing populations, that is in some ways upholding white supremacy or is completely holding upholding white supremacy and its culture, there’s that general education of understanding all of that and then there’s understanding what our organization’s role is, right? So it’s both. And um so it’s really highly dependent upon where is the organization uh case for us, who you’ve talked to? The head of Equity in the center describes a cycle that is brilliant um around awake too, woke to work. Where are you in that cycle? Are you, where are you on? Um where are you and being pluralistic? Where are you and being inclusive? All of those things depend on what you’ll ask and how you’ll reach out and if you even should reach out there maybe work that has to be done internally before that reach out can happen again, just being considerate and sensitive of those who are willing to talk to.

[00:15:09.48] spk_0:
Yeah. Kay was our guest for the last most recent special episode on this exact same subject. Thank you.

[00:15:16.71] spk_1:
Yeah. The the organization is doing and has been since its inception has been doing incredible work. K is leading that work. Um and and both her words always contain wisdom and the products that they’ve put out are extraordinary.

[00:15:48.30] spk_0:
How about in your work are you facilitating the kinds of conversations in your practice that you and I are talking about right now, Do you you bring these outside folks in sometimes too to to have these conversations

[00:16:16.58] spk_1:
sometimes. Yeah, sometimes again being highly respectful of if they didn’t want to engage with us, do they even want to talk to us right now? My work really is around um, having an organization understand where it is right now. So what is its current state? What is the desired future state? Right. So we know that we want to be a racially inclusive, racially equitable organization likely that’s already been defined. But what does that mean for us as an organization if it means solely in numbers piece right? Like we want to be more divorces aboard. Okay, that’s fine. But beyond that, how will we make ourselves have a board culture that is appealing to those people that we want to bring in to work with us? So it’s kind of defining both current state and understanding current state to finding future state and then developing the strategy to get there.

[00:17:00.63] spk_0:
Okay. And now you and I are talking about, you said you know, we’re still data gathering, so we’re still defining the current culture as it exists. Right. Okay. Okay. And your work, you you centered around people, culture and leadership. Can we focus on leadership? I feel like everything trickles down from

[00:17:05.04] spk_1:
there.

[00:17:27.69] spk_0:
I don’t know. Are we okay. Are you okay, Starting with a leadership conversation or you’d rather start somewhere else? Okay. Um, so what what is it we’re looking for leaders of our listeners of small and midsize nonprofits to, to commit to you.

[00:17:30.41] spk_1:
I think it’s first of all committing to their own

[00:17:32.40] spk_0:
learning

[00:17:33.56] spk_1:
and, and not relying on communities of color to provide that learning. Right? Again, Going back to what we said earlier, it’s not relying on those who have been harmed or oppressed to provide the learning. So first of all, it’s an individual journey that’s a given. Okay. Um,

[00:18:32.11] spk_0:
can I, can I like to like things like people, I like action steps. Okay. So we’re talking about our individual journey, our own learning. I mean, I’ve been doing some of this recently by watching Youtube, watching, um, folks on Youtube of course. Now I now I can’t remember the names of people, but no Eddie Glaude. Um, so Eddie Glaude is a commentator on MSNBC. He’s just written a just released this last week, uh, biography, well, not so much a biography of James baldwin, but, but an explanation of baldwin’s journey around racism. Um, so that’s one example of, you know, who I’ve been listening to. So we were talking about educating like learning from thought leaders around yeah, privilege structures, whether reading books listening to podcasts.

[00:19:00.76] spk_1:
Absolutely. It’s around, it’s around structures, but it’s also understanding things that we do all the time in organizations and how I as a leader might perpetuate those, right? So it’s sometimes the use of language to your point about the use of the word professional. Um, language tends to create our reality. So, and and it either language will build a bridge or not. So how do we use our language? How do we use our descriptors? How do I show up as a leader? Um, as in my own kind of inclusion or not? So, I think it is absolutely that it is looking at thought leaders around things like structural racism, around the use of language around people’s individual experiences to get that insight and depth, because it’s not just an intellectual exercise. This is emotional, too, and therefore has to have emotional resonance.

[00:20:10.42] spk_0:
Okay, thank you for letting me dive deeper into what about personal, you know, your own personal journey, your own personal education, uh, fact finding and introspection. You’re talking about something, you know, and it’s no, no revelation. This is it’s difficult. It’s painful. You know, you you’re very likely uncovering how you offended someone, uh, how you offended a group. Um, if you were, you know, speaking in public and something comes to mind or how you offended someone in meetings or, you know, multiplied. I don’t know how many times. I mean, this introspection is likely painful,

[00:20:12.44] spk_1:
likely likely. Yeah, more often. More often than not, I can’t I can’t really envision it. Not at some level being painful.

[00:20:21.92] spk_0:
Yeah. But you’ve caused pain. You know, that there’s a recognition there. Yeah,

[00:20:27.16] spk_1:
exactly,

[00:20:27.62] spk_0:
painful for you. But let’s consider the pain of the person or the group that you.

[00:20:33.80] spk_1:
Exactly, right. I

[00:20:34.78] spk_0:
don’t know, offended, stereotyped, mean to put off, you know, whatever it is, you’re

[00:20:40.73] spk_1:
that’s right. And that that’s why the work as much as I know, you know, to some degree, people want this to be work that can be kind of project managed if you will or it can be put into a process or a series of best practices or benchmarks

[00:20:53.94] spk_0:
to

[00:21:05.75] spk_1:
some degree, not very much, but to some degree. Yes, absolutely. The some a little bit of that can happen, but that in and of itself is a bit of a dominant narrative, right? That in and of itself is kind that that centering white culture. So I think what we need to understand is this is not just going to be again to sorry to be redundant, but it’s not just gonna be intellectual. The fact that pain has been caused dictates that this be emotionally owned as well. It can’t be arms length. It can’t be just intellectually owned with a project plan that I keep over here on a chalkboard or something like that.

[00:21:41.49] spk_0:
Emotionally owned. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Um All right. So I made you digress and deeper. What else, what else you wanna tell us about leadership’s commitment and and and the importance of leadership commitment.

[00:23:23.38] spk_1:
Yeah. So, so it needs to be explicit. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be baked into the leadership. Whatever leadership structure of the organization has, it needs to be an ongoing piece of that leadership. So it’s not a, hey, let’s touch base on our quote inclusion initiative. If it’s an initiative first of all, that’s not really doing the work anyway. Um but it’s not something that lives separately from ourselves. Let’s have HR kind of check in on this or let’s have the operations person check in on this, that that’s not what this is about. It’s really, it’s authentically being owned by leadership to say, yeah, I know it’s gonna be painful. And in looking at our organization, we’re gonna need to understand why our leadership is remarkably homogeneous. Which in the case of many nonprofits, it is if you take a look at Building movement project and the unbelievably great work that they’ve done twice now, they just put out an update to their leadership work around how people move through the sector or don’t and how people communities of color and people of color are represented in our leadership. We can begin to understand that by and large, they’re they’re not. Um though i that is an oversimplification in some ways. So I would encourage people to go to building movement Project’s website and check out their work. Um but you know what, why are we so homogeneous? Why is our board? So homogeneous? It’s it’s also unpacking and uncovering that. So to your point earlier about, you know, how do we look at people and how they move through the organization. This is where you look at Who is present, right? Not just who’s not with us, but who is with us? How do people get promoted? How does that system work? Does any does everyone have the same information? Is it a case of unwritten rules? Is it a case of some people move up because they’re similar or they have 10 years of experience, which is something that we like to say.

[00:23:45.71] spk_0:
How

[00:24:08.90] spk_1:
Do you get 10 years of experience if you’ve not been given those chances to begin with? So is there life experience that we can that we can begin to integrate in our conversations? Because life experience is equally valuable. Are we putting too much of a premium on higher education, education and its formal kind of traditional form. Are we putting too much of a of an emphasis on pedigree of other kinds of those, those are the things that ultimately keep people out. So taking a look at leadership and and having leadership commitment ultimately means looking at all of those things, there’s an overlap and how we look at leadership or people and or organizational culture.

[00:24:24.52] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah, of course, this is a it’s a continuum or

[00:24:27.44] spk_1:
Absolutely, absolutely. And the areas bleed into each other.

[00:24:38.31] spk_0:
Yeah, of course, yeah. Um, you know, subsumed in all this, I guess. I mean, it’s okay for leaders to say, I don’t know where the where the journey is going. I don’t know what we’re going to uncover, but I’m committed to having this journey and leading it and and right. I mean, supporting it, but I don’t know what we’re going to find.

[00:24:54.28] spk_1:
Uh

[00:24:55.50] spk_0:
Right,

[00:24:56.39] spk_1:
right. And that in and of itself can be uncomfortable for a lot of people. And that’s the that’s the kind of discomfort we need to get okay with.

[00:25:03.34] spk_0:
Yeah. Alright. Yeah. This, you know, I had I had a guest explained that this is not as you were alluding to, uh it’s not the kind of thing that, you know, we’re gonna have a weekly meeting and will be these outcomes at the end of every meeting, then we’ll have this list of activities and, you know, that then, you know, it’s how come it’s not like that. How come we can’t do it like that

[00:25:26.67] spk_1:
because we’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of years of history, and it’s because we haven’t been inclusive in the ways that we do things and we haven’t allowed whole selves to show up that it is um It’s complicated and it’s messy because it’s human.

[00:25:44.56] spk_0:
Alright. So it’s not gonna be as simple as our budget meetings.

[00:25:48.62] spk_1:
Absolutely different. Different kind of hard.

[00:25:52.76] spk_0:
Alright. And we’re gonna have an outcome at every at every juncture at every step or every week or every month or something. That’s

[00:25:58.65] spk_1:
right. That’s right. And if we expect it to go that way. Um We are likely going to give ourselves excuses not to press on

[00:26:56.36] spk_0:
it’s time for a break, fourth dimension technologies. Are you seeing technology as an investment, an investment in your people, the people you’re helping, the people who work for you, the people who support you, an investment in your sustainability and investment in your programs four D. Can help you make better tech investment decisions. Check them out on the listener landing page at Just like three D. But you know, they go one dimension deeper. Let’s return shall we to your dismantling racism journey. Alright, so that’s what it’s not. What, what does it look like?

[00:27:59.80] spk_1:
It absolutely looks different for every organization. It absolutely looks different for every organization and that’s why it’s so critical to understand kind of where are we right now? Um where are we? As far as all of the components of our organization? Right. So volatile. Again, volunteers board staff culture. You said, you know, we were talking about people organization and leadership, which is obviously a lot of my work. Um, it is getting underneath all of those kinds of things to say. So who experiences our culture? How um so we do engagement surveys, Right. A lot of times we do engagement employee surveys, that kind of thing. Are we looking at those disagree in a disaggregated way? Are we asking different populations to identify themselves? And are we looking at what the experiences are by population? Are we asking explicit questions around whether or not you feel like you can be yourself in this organization, Whether you can provide dissenting opinions, whether you feel comfortable approaching your boss with feedback, um

[00:28:01.00] spk_0:
whether

[00:28:01.73] spk_1:
you feel comfortable volunteering for particular work, whether you feel like you understand what a promotion or performance management processes, whether you get the support that you need or to what extent you get support that you need either from colleagues, boss, leadership etcetera. So it’s looking at all of those things and then understanding are they being experienced differently by different communities within our organization?

[00:28:26.10] spk_0:
You mentioned disaggregate ng. That that’s where the data is not helpful, right?

[00:28:31.94] spk_1:
That is where we look at the data in terms of populations.

[00:28:35.58] spk_0:
Oh, of course. Aggregating. I’m sorry.

[00:28:39.09] spk_1:
Oh, that’s okay.

[00:28:40.34] spk_0:
You’re stuck with a lackluster host? No, of course, yes. Aggregating

[00:28:44.36] spk_1:
early in the week.

[00:29:00.70] spk_0:
Thank you. You couldn’t say early in the day, but thank you for being gracious. Okay. Yes. We we we want to disaggregate of course. Um and look by population and I guess cut a different way. I mean depending on the size of the organization, um age, race, uh

[00:29:25.54] spk_1:
race, ethnicity, um of physical ability, orientation. All of those need to be in the mix. Um gender as well. Including gender fluidity. So really looking at all of our populations and then understanding, you know, for these particular questions, is there a difference in how people experience our organization? We we know then what we do know is that if there is a difference that there is a difference, we don’t know that there is causality unless they’re unless you’ve asked questions that might begin to illuminate that. Right? But there’s there’s always that difference between correlation and causality and then what you want to do is get underneath that to understand why the experience might be different and why it might change along lines of gender or race or ethnicity or orientation or physical ability.

[00:29:57.07] spk_0:
We we we wandered, you know, but that’s that’s fine. I

[00:30:03.50] spk_1:
people

[00:30:09.82] spk_0:
culture and um and leadership all coming together. Um where where where do you want to go? Uh I mean, I would like to talk about people, culture and leadership. What’s a good, what’s a good next one?

[00:32:27.52] spk_1:
Yes. Well, so, so this is what you’re doing, right? As you’re you’re collecting information and all of those three areas. Right? And one so a couple of things that I would add to that is when you look at people, you’re looking at their experiences, when you look at the leadership, you’re looking at commitment, makeup, structure, access all of those kinds of things. When you’re looking at culture, you’re looking at how people experience the culture, Right? And so what, what is happening? What’s not happening? What’s stated out loud? What’s not stated out loud? What are the unwritten rules? There is also the piece that that forms all of these things, which is operational systems. Right? So things like performance management, things like um where people may sit back when we were in physical offices having access to technology, all of those kinds of things, particularly important now that we’re not in physical offices, so does everyone have access to the technology and information necessary to do their job, to do their jobs to do their work? So it is looking also at your operator side and saying, how do we live our operational life? How do how do people experience it, who do we engage with to provide services for our operations? How do we provide services if you will, for lack of better term to our employees? So it’s also looking at that because operations ultimately permeates organizational culture, people and leadership, Right? Because it kind of sustains all of that. So taking a look at that too. And finally, I would suggest again as part of this and as a wraparound is what is the internal external alignment? Right? So I often hear people say, hey, you know what, this is the subsector we work in, people would think that we’re really equitable, but internally we are living a different life than what we are putting out to our stakeholders and our constituencies externally. So what is what is our external life? And how does that need to inform our internal world? It’s not unusual for me to hear that the external life, the way we engage with stakeholders or the way we put out program Programmatic work is actually may be further along to the extent that this is considered to be a contain, it’s further along than the way that we’re living our life internally. So

[00:32:31.20] spk_0:
there’s dishonesty there disconnect that

[00:32:34.70] spk_1:
there’s a disconnect

[00:32:36.18] spk_0:
disconnect

[00:32:36.88] spk_1:
for sure and possibly yeah, dishonesty and hip hop maybe even hypocrisy.

[00:32:47.12] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. But again, all right. So that now we’re looking like this is organizational introspection. Exactly. There’s individual learning and introspection. Now we’re at the organizational level right? Being honest with our with our culture and our messaging.

[00:33:05.70] spk_1:
Right. Right. And and so what I try to do is to help organizations kind of look at those things and decide how we might evolve give in the future that we’ve set our sights on and given some of the principles that we’ve laid out. How do we kind of get there? How do we, how do we evolve our systems? How do we evolve our people practices? How do we evolve our culture. So hence the need to look at all of these things that centered around people, culture and leadership.

[00:35:27.37] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take to debunk the top five myths of planned giving. I hate these insidious, pernicious myths like the one that planned giving will hurt your other fundraising and the one that you need a lawyer because plan giving is so complicated. I will debunk the top five myths in a webinar on Tuesday october 18th at 10 a.m. Pacific time, one p.m. Eastern time. but the time doesn’t matter because if you grab your spot for the webinar, you’ll get the video. This is 2022 you don’t need to be there. We’d love to have you live, but you don’t need to be there. I will be debunking these insidious myths in plain simple language and I’m gonna weave in my stand up comedy. The host is NP Solutions. They’re hosting, you are hosting me, they’re hosting us. That’s what hosts do they host their hosting? You go to N. P solutions dot org and click on workshops. What could be simpler. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got the boo koo but loads more time for your dismantling racism journey with Gene Takagi. No, no, it’s with who writes this copy? I need an intern so badly, desperately. So I have somebody to blame. Please. You’re dismantling racism journey with pretty itchy Shah and intern resumes are welcome. What about the use of a professional facilitator? Because well, first of all, there’s a body of expertise that someone like you brings uh but also help with these difficult conversations. Talk about the value of having an expert facilitator. Yeah,

[00:36:50.97] spk_1:
absolutely. So, so, you know, I think I think there’s always a level of objectivity and and and kind of an in inside look by an outsider that you that you benefit from. We go to experts for everything from, you know, our health to the extent that we have access to those experts, which is a whole different conversation on race and oppression. Um, we we want that external voice. What I would say is it’s likely not going to be the same expert or the same facilitator and I say expert in quotes um, for everything. So for instance, I am not the voice to be centered on educating an organization around structural racism. I don’t think I’m the right voice to be centered. I would rather center voices like those at um, At race forward at equity in the center at those who have lived the results of 400 years of oppression. So you might want to call in someone for that discussion for that education. There are people that are better and more steeped in that and whose voices should absolutely be centered for that. Um, you might want to call in a voice for White Ally ship because there is some specifics around that that we need to talk about without kind of centering white voices. I’m

[00:36:51.22] spk_0:
sorry that white Ally ship. Yeah. What is that?

[00:38:01.95] spk_1:
So if we think about the or the organization, right, and are kind of culture and our people um, who who on staff sees themselves as an ally. And how can they be good? How can how can white people be good allies? Right. And how do how do we further and embed that in the culture. Um, and then finally, so keeping that in mind that there are gonna be different experts or different facilitators for different things, you know, who is going to be the person in my case, this actually might be me is to help us evolve our culture and our systems so that we can be more equitable and take a look at that, who’s gonna provide the training because there are skills necessary right to have these com conversations. There are foundational communication skills, there is the ability to give feedback. Um, there is the ability to communicate across cultures, across genders, across across groups. There is ability to be collaborative. So so also strengthening those skills while we continue to look at those things. But to think that all of this help is going to come from? One source is not ideal and unlikely it’s even inappropriate because everyone can’t be everything. I don’t try to be the voices that I can’t be, it’s inappropriate for me to do that.

[00:38:26.14] spk_0:
What what else do you wanna, what do you want to talk about? You know, given the level where that we’re at, we’re trying to help small and midsize nonprofits inaugurate a journey around racism and white privilege.

[00:39:44.81] spk_1:
Yeah, I think, I mean, look, first of all I hear a lot of organizations say like what what is the access point, like what do I get started doing? We put out a statement um in some cases we are experiencing some dissonance between the statement that we put out or the programmatic work that we do and the way that we’re living internally. So it is really understanding kind of why where are we now through all of the ways that that we’ve been talking about over the last several minutes. Where are we now? What is it that we’re not doing that we should be doing, What is it that we need to be doing? How do we define for us if we have an equitable culture, if we are living racial equity, what does that look like for us? Um how does that affect our programmatic work? How does that affect our operations? Everything from our finances to our people processes to when we are back in an office, even our physical setup. How how does that affect us and how would we define that future state? So it’s understanding what is my current state, what is my future state and then understanding how we get there and it’s likely gonna be along all of the areas that we said. Right? So individual journeys, some group and individual skill building, um some evolution of our systems and some understanding of kind of how we can support each other and support ourselves for those that are that affiliate with a particular group. Um and then kind of moving us along to that place of where we want to be. So it is it is understanding where you are that determines what your access point is. But I would say if you if you have done the work of putting out this statement then there then look for look for where you’re not living that statement internally.

[00:40:22.11] spk_0:
That sounds like a very good place to Yeah, to start your search for for an access point because it’s so recent, your organization has probably said something in the past 56 weeks.

[00:40:23.77] spk_1:
Absolutely

[00:40:26.78] spk_0:
to that, to that statement.

[00:40:43.46] spk_1:
Exactly. And and we are incredibly, I would say and pardon the use of the term, but almost fortunate that so many thought leaders have been kind and generous enough to share with us their thoughts on this moment, so not just within the sector, but all the way across our society. So many people have taken the time and the patients and the generosity amidst everything else that they’re living through, they have agreed to share their thoughts, their leadership, their expertise with us. So there is a ton of knowledge out there right at our fingertips and that’s a that’s another really great place to start and to center the voices that most need to be heard

[00:41:15.89] spk_0:
at the same time. You know, we are seeing beginnings of change uh institutions from Princeton University to the state of Mississippi

[00:41:37.59] spk_1:
right? Absolutely. To hopefully, you know, the unnamed Washington football team and to Nascar and places where we, I didn’t know that change necessarily was possible, but we we are same change and and the important thing is is to not be complacent about that change,

[00:42:41.88] spk_0:
right and not and also recognize that it’s just a beginning. You know, removing confederate statues, um taking old glory off the Mississippi flag. These are just beginnings. But I think worth worth noting. I mean worth recognizing and celebrating because The state of Mississippi is a big institution and it’s been wrestling with this for, I don’t know if they’ve been wrestling for centuries, but that flag has been there for that just that long 18. Some things I think is when that flag was developed. So it’s been a long, it’s been a long time coming. So recognizing it for what it is and celebrating it, you know, to the extent that yeah, to the extent that represents the change, the beginning of the beginning of change. All right. Um well, you know, what else, what else, what else do you want to share with folks at this? You know, at this stage?

[00:43:50.39] spk_1:
You know, I think, I think the main thing is um dig in, We need to dig in on this. We need to dig in on this because in the same way that that we have been living this society societally for so long. Our organizations many times are microcosms of society. So if we think as an organization that were exempt or that were already there, we’ve arrived at like a post racial culture, that’s not the case, that’s just not the case. Um, so where do you want to dig in? Where do you want to dig in, chances are good you are doing some version of looking at issues within your organization, whether it’s your annual survey, if you do it annually or whatever in which you can use that information to begin this journey. So dig in from where you are. It’s one of those things that if you’re waiting, if you’re waiting for kind of the exact right time or further analysis to begin the journey again, it’s not it’s not based solely on analysis. There is a p there is certainly information. There’s data that needs to be understood. But if we’re waiting for endless analysis to happen or to kind of point us to the right time, that’s not going to happen. The intellectualism needs to be there. But again, as we said in the path, as we’ve said a few times during the course of our conversation, this is about emotional resonance and an emotional ownership and a moral obligation. So, dig in, dig in wherever you are right now,

[00:44:38.44] spk_0:
what if I’m trying within my organization and I’m not the leader, I’m not even second or third tier management or something, You know, how do I elevate the conversation? I presume it helps to have allies. What if what if I’m meeting a resistance from the people who, who are in leadership?

[00:45:11.35] spk_1:
I think look for the places where there may not be resistance, right? So look within the organization. Um, if there is resistance at a particular level, then you know, who do you have access to in the organization where there isn’t that? And I think, I think starting out not assuming that you have solutions if you have expertise in this area, if you have lived through the oppression as a member of a community that has lived through the impression, particularly in the black community, I think you’re coming from one place if you are, if you are not in that community and saying that you have expertise, I think you have to be a little bit more circumspect about that and introspective about what you can offer in this vein. Um, and I think, I think we want to look for the places where there is some traction, I think in most organizations, it’s not unusual to be getting the question right now,

[00:45:47.45] spk_0:
and what is the, I don’t want to call it outcome. What, what, what what can the future look like for our organization if we do embark on this long journey,

[00:46:18.02] spk_1:
uh, cultures that are equitable in which people can show up as their whole selves, um, in which there is not only one right way to do things which tends to be a very kind of white dominant Western culture, linear sequential way of, of managing work of managing communications, etcetera, but that in fact work can be approached in a number of different ways and that solutions can be approached in a number of different ways. People get to show up and give their all to these missions that we all hold very near and dear. And so they are able they’re empowered. They are able they are celebrated without sticking to a set of preconceived guidelines or preconceived unwritten or written rules that don’t serve us anymore. Anyway,

[00:46:44.78] spk_0:
when you started to answer that, I saw your face lighten up your I don’t know, it was a smile, it just looks like your face untended. Not that you’re nervous,

[00:46:55.65] spk_1:
Your face changed,

[00:47:06.37] spk_0:
started to answer the where we could be. Uh yeah, it was, it was palpable. Alright, alright. Are you comfortable leaving it there?

[00:47:09.88] spk_1:
I think so. I think so what have we not covered that? We need to cover for your listeners,

[00:47:15.60] spk_0:
you know that better than I getting started. That’s

[00:47:34.18] spk_1:
fair. Look, you know what, this is, this is the future that is written with many voices and and while I think I can be helpful, I don’t presume to be the voice that has all the answers. I definitively don’t. I definitively don’t. And so what we have not covered is actually probably not known to me, but I dare say someone, someone out there does know that and and they will likely be putting their voice up, which is exactly what we want.

[00:47:47.19] spk_0:
Yes, we will be bringing other voices as well. Alright,

[00:47:50.25] spk_1:
no doubt. Yeah,

[00:48:02.94] spk_0:
she’s founder and Ceo of flourished Talent management Solutions and the company is at flourish tMS dot com. Thank you so much. Thank you very very much.

[00:48:05.97] spk_1:
Thank you. Thank you for opening up this space and having the conversation

[00:49:10.60] spk_0:
a pleasure. Uh it’s a responsibility and happy to live up to it. Try trying next week Beth Canter and Alison fine on their new book the smart non profit if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies their I. T. Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for September 26, 2022: In Nonprofits, Do We Trust?

 

Gene Takagi: In Nonprofits, Do We Trust?

Gene Takagi

Public trust in nonprofits is eroding. Why is that, what does it mean for our work, and what can the nonprofit community do about it? Gene Takagi, our legal contributor and principal of NEO Law Group, returns with his insights.

 

 

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[00:00:52.08] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of fragility as angry. Um if you nailed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show in nonprofits, do we trust? Public Trust in nonprofits is eroding. Why is that? And what can the nonprofit community do about it? Gene Takagi are legal contributor and principal of neo Law group returns with his insights On Tony’s take two. This is not planned, giving

[00:00:57.14] spk_1:
we’re

[00:01:41.13] spk_0:
sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c. O. And by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box the affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. It’s always a pleasure to welcome back Gene Takagi, you know who he is. Of course he he we owe him the introduction that he that he deserves, but you know who he is, He’s our legal contributor, Managing attorney of neo the nonprofit and exempt organizations law group in saN Francisco he edits the wildly popular nonprofit law blog dot com, which you should follow and he’s a part time lecturer at Columbia University. The firm is at neo law group dot com and jean is at G tech. Gene

[00:01:58.66] spk_1:
thanks

[00:01:59.11] spk_0:
for being back Welcome.

[00:02:00.73] spk_1:
It’s great to be here.

[00:02:03.15] spk_0:
It’s always a genuine pleasure. Thank you.

[00:02:07.78] spk_1:
We’re

[00:02:20.77] spk_0:
talking about public trust today. Uh not only your concerns, but you’re, you’re seeing evidence of. And I’m certainly reading some things too about eroding public trust in nonprofits. What what are you seeing? What are you thinking about that?

[00:02:27.69] spk_1:
You know, my first thoughts, tony is that trust really is the foundation of, of good relationships, right. No matter whether we’re talking about person to person,

[00:02:39.09] spk_0:
person to

[00:03:18.40] spk_1:
charity, you know, person to other institutions and charities I think are especially reliant on trust because if you’re asking people and groups and organizations to give money to you, um, they’ve got to trust that you’re gonna do use that money for charitable purposes, not for personal gain, not for other things, but for the charitable purposes that they want to support. And when trust erodes in our charities, that’s really a red flag and sort of a harbinger of things, bad things that could follow. So trust is really important, I think, um, to talk about. And the study, the most recent study that came out from independent sector and Edelman Data and intelligence found that there’s low trust amongst all institutions. So maybe not completely surprising, but less than a third say the trust, government, large corporations and the news media

[00:03:35.93] spk_0:
and

[00:04:08.91] spk_1:
charities, relatively speaking are better than that in terms of the trust factor, but it’s been dropping and nonprofits as a, as a sector, The trust and nonprofits now is 56%. The rest either are neutral on it or have a distrust of nonprofits, only 56% and only 36% trust philanthropy or foundations and grantmaking organizations, so that’s really, really low. And women’s trust and non profits dropped even more than than men. Um, and I think another flag to point out is our younger generations, especially gen Z

[00:04:17.56] spk_0:
really

[00:04:18.43] spk_1:
have a distrust of nonprofits. Um, and

[00:04:22.83] spk_0:
with

[00:04:23.75] spk_1:
the wealth transfer that’s expected from baby boom generation to millennials and two gen Z, that’s got to be alarming to nonprofits. And I, I think it’s just worthy to call out right now.

[00:04:35.97] spk_0:
Do you know what that number is among gen z. Trust in nonprofits that in the independent sector include that in in their survey.

[00:04:49.81] spk_1:
Well, the statistic that I, I saw that that called out to me was 57% of gen z. Americans say giving directly to individuals makes a bigger impact than giving to nonprofits. So they would rather give to individuals on go fund me or another crowdfunding site than to give to a nonprofit. They find that more trustworthy.

[00:05:16.77] spk_0:
There’s another dimension to the, to the trust, which is government, trust in nonprofits. And you could read government as congressional or, you know, I. R. S. But you know, they they, the the U. S. Government has bestowed the charitable deduction so that the money is used for, as you said, you know, for charitable purposes as disclosed in your organizing documents. And if if I’m thinking more of Congress, you know, if congress feels that

[00:05:43.59] spk_1:
the

[00:05:43.80] spk_0:
nonprofit community can’t be trusted, you know, we could start to see some erosion of, uh, clawback of some of the, the benefits that nonprofits enjoy. Tax free status, for instance, and the charitable deduction to name a couple of

[00:06:00.50] spk_1:
wildly

[00:06:01.37] spk_0:
wildly valuable ones.

[00:06:22.64] spk_1:
Yeah, and that’s such a great point because just a few days ago, there was news about a case in Minnesota where government funding to feed poor Children, um, there was a huge scandal involving tens of millions of dollars. So, um, it really speaks to two if government stops trusting nonprofits or certain government agencies and cuts funding to agencies, how harmful that might be to charities and the beneficiaries they’re trying to serve.

[00:06:35.87] spk_0:
I think that one was even worse. I think it was like $240 million dollars

[00:06:41.59] spk_1:
worth

[00:06:42.04] spk_0:
of pandemic aid money. I saw that in, in Minnesota is supposed to be going to feed Children during the pandemic and, and pocketed. Yeah,

[00:06:52.51] spk_1:
patterns there as well. It’s, it’s,

[00:06:55.94] spk_0:
yeah,

[00:06:58.09] spk_1:
it

[00:06:58.93] spk_0:
is. It’s, it’s, um, and then of course there’s always been Charles grassley. I mean, he’s been, he’s been nipping at, uh, foundations and donor advised funds for for years

[00:08:03.64] spk_1:
now. Yeah. And in fact, the whole charitable sector, I think, um, and a significant portion of our lawmakers, um, take a consumer protection perspective of, we want to protect donors, um, and not strengthening the nonprofit sector perspective they want to create laws that will per, you know, try to prevent, um, uh, fraud or misuse of charitable funds as if this is rampant amongst the nonprofit sector, which my position is, it is not, but there are certain high profile cases that hit the new york times and the Washington post and all the other newspapers. And there’s so much media coverage that focuses on scandals because that’s what’s gonna sell right. The tweet or the short snippet that people’s attention span will, will actually stop on. Um, it’s gonna sell much more if it’s a scandal rather than a long term growth in in impact. Even, you know, the, the great news that child poverty has, has been really declining in in the country, which should be huge news gets short shrift compared to some of the big scandals that we hear about.

[00:09:08.60] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah. When I name dropped Charles Grassley, I should have said Senator, senator from Iowa, Republican, senator from Iowa Charles grassley. Um, yeah, right. It’s, it’s the scandals that, that’s, that get clicks that sell papers that get attention. I remember, I’m sure you do several years ago there was a scandal among an, an organization supposedly raising money for Navy Veterans like Navy Navy Veteran Foundation or something like that several years ago, but it was very high profile. Um, what was the other, do you remember, I don’t mean to put you on the spot. It’s okay if you don’t remember because I don’t the, uh, the veterans organization that was accused of squandering, you know, tens of millions of dollars on lavish retreats and high, high executive salaries. But, but, but it it had it had great outcomes. It was, it was funding lots of veterans organizations.

[00:09:25.25] spk_1:
I think the one you’re talking about is the Wounded Warriors.

[00:09:29.11] spk_0:
Thank you. Yes. Project.

[00:09:51.07] spk_1:
And yeah, it’s, um, it’s always difficult. Um, looking at an organization through the eyes of the media, um, about how, you know, how well or unwell they did. I don’t want to create, um, you know, uh, discuss particular scandals too much other than to say that they create problems for the whole sector. So, you know, that’s, it’s just something to be aware of. And they’re not necessarily reflective of the vast majority of nonprofits out there trying to do good work and help people.

[00:10:17.64] spk_0:
The 99.99% you know, our our that’s even higher than the nonprofit radio 95% No, uh, 99.99% of nonprofits are not scandalous. And could they, could many of them be running more efficiently. Yes, but we’re not, we’re not talking about mere efficiency. You know, we’re talking about erosion of trust because of high profile crises or scandals malfeasance.

[00:10:37.97] spk_1:
Yeah, high

[00:10:39.21] spk_0:
profile,

[00:10:39.92] spk_1:
not

[00:11:55.21] spk_0:
representative. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They know the nonprofit community and they know pr and journalism. Both partners are former journalists peter pan a pinto, one of the two worked as senior managing editor at the Chronicle of philanthropy. And after that he was at the council on foundations. So he understands the nonprofit space very well, which means he understands your challenges, understands how important pr and being a thought leader is to to your work. And the two of them together know how to build relationships with outlets, not just with journalists, but you know, also podcasters, um, conference organizers. So they understand nonprofits, they understand communications, how to build relationships and that’s what’s gonna get you heard across all media. So let’s turn to turn to communications. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o Now back to in nonprofits. Do we trust?

[00:12:00.88] spk_1:
It takes me to another tangent though, now that you talked about efficiency, tony and that’s kind of, we’ve talked about it before and you’ve talked about it with the writers of uh, article or a letter called the overhead myth. I don’t know if you recall

[00:12:16.06] spk_0:
that many years ago. Yes. The C E O. S of charity Navigator better business. Bureau wise giving alliance and guidestar.

[00:13:08.09] spk_1:
Yeah. And you know, they were saying that we shouldn’t, you know, base ratings on a charity in terms of how worthy they are to receive funds from donors simply based on overhead ratio. You know what their admin and fundraising costs are relative to their programmatic costs and those are really wise wise words, um, that that were stated in that letter. But even today we still see organizations even high profile ones that talk about their low overhead ratio. And it can engender trust um, in their organization at the expense of trust of other organizations that legitimately have higher overhead ratios because the infrastructures and you know, the things that they need to do may be completely different. So it’s not fair to, you know, compare across the board and across the maturity of an organization. So

[00:14:06.82] spk_0:
another very valuable thing to invest in is is research, research, uh, maybe maybe going beyond research, activating a new program that, you know, that may or may not succeed, but you have to invest upfront, you know that it’s annoying the folks who hold different opinions about wise investment in technology, you know, it’s Uber should be losing money for the 1st 12 years, you know, because it’s investing in the future. Um, Tesla, you know, non profit unprofitable for many years, but you know, look where they are now, but, but in the nonprofit sector, you know, we don’t we don’t allow that that research and um, spending on innovation, we consider that overhead like, you know, like, like rent, which rent happens to be important too, but you know, something, something um, rent is not a good example, but sort of, you know, frivolous or you know, self indulgent when it could very well be research and and scaling up for for a for a dynamic

[00:14:29.60] spk_1:
future or even things like a living wage.

[00:15:22.90] spk_0:
Yeah. Good. Exactly. Thank you. Yes. Um, yeah, I I don’t like the, you know, I don’t like the double standard where we we we praise it in in some industries, but we we we criticize it uh, in in non profits. And I’m thinking specifically about investment in the future and whether that’s people or programs or even technology, technology is a is a valuable investment. It saves time. It creates productivity, makes people more comfortable at work. It enables them to work out of an office now and be remote, give them that benefit, which so many people are craving now, you know, but these are these are all wise investments, not not um, detrimental overhead.

[00:16:33.02] spk_1:
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And there’s a way to do it cheap. You could invest in technology on the cheap and that might have long term adverse consequences, including to kind of the sort of the data protection and privacy issues that can result. So if you’re really thinking ahead and investing in, not only just technology, just to be sort of more effective and efficient in the short term, the protective of your beneficiaries and your staff and others your donors in the long term, um, then you need to make more of an investment in that. And that’s another thing where, you know, we lose trust if you if you sort of blow your donor lists that are supposed to be private and you know, other big companies get ahold of it and start to target your donor base for unrelated things or even if they’re related sometimes, but not your organization and it was due to a slip on your part or your technology and information technology protocols. You can run into trouble. So again, investments have a double edged sword there. Great. But they can result in a loss of trust too if you’re not managing it properly and you compromise people’s information.

[00:16:41.40] spk_0:
Um, and also, you know, you mentioned living wage but investing in people so that people stay with your organization.

[00:16:48.75] spk_1:
All

[00:16:49.07] spk_0:
right. And that that starts with a living wage that also impacts to on technology. Uh, you know, time away professional development. You know, these are, these are investments in staff that people see and appreciate and make longevity with your organization more likely than you know, than than to to jump ship every six months.

[00:17:11.75] spk_1:
And that builds trust to write, I’m much more comfortable working with you if you’ve been with the charity for 10 years, Tony than if you were hired three months ago and there’s always a different person I’m talking to as a donor.

[00:17:31.13] spk_0:
Absolutely. Yeah. All right. You have some insights into what we as a community or hopefully even individual nonprofits can can start to think about take to their C. E. O. S. Take to their boards. This is always where you Excel gene.

[00:18:33.73] spk_1:
Well in the first steps are kind of simple. Um you know, it’s be compliant yourself, make sure your own houses in order. Um so we can sort of raise all of the issues with where you can lose trust with organizations. Um but even though 99.9% of the organizations are well intentioned, I can’t say that 99.9% of the organizations are compliant. Um so working to make sure you’re compliant Working to make sure that the tone is set at the top with the strong board of directors that is actually providing direction and oversight and not just simply helping you, you know, with fundraising and otherwise just rubber stamping the decisions of the leaders. I think it really is important that the tone be set at the top of the organization through the board of directors. A

[00:18:34.26] spk_0:
tone say say more about the tone.

[00:19:11.50] spk_1:
So the tone of placing the importance of a trusting relationship with our beneficiaries with our employees with our other stakeholders. I think that’s really important and that should be reflected in policies. So it’s not good enough to say, you know, this is what we believe in. So the, you know, one of the hot topics today is a board sets a diversity equity and inclusion policy. But if that policy just sits on the shelf and that’s the end of the discussion of it. And there are no actual changes or action plans attached to that that’s gonna maybe harm the organization more than help it. So the tone at the top means a board that is doing its role in moving that organization forward and focusing um not only on doing good work and, you know, metrics for for programmatic success, but on building trust within and outside of the organization.

[00:20:07.00] spk_0:
And that that Ceo board chair uh Ceo executive committee, if the board has an executive committee relationship is key to this. I mean, they they all whether it’s two people or the Ceo and a committee, you know, need to be uh you know, committed to the same, not only the same mission, but the same uh strategy for getting there. You know, the same commitment to the things that you’re talking about, this needs to be a a unified

[00:20:08.30] spk_1:
working

[00:20:09.10] spk_0:
group at the top between the Ceo and the board leadership.

[00:21:55.36] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s absolutely critical tony I agree. There is, however, sort of another dimension to this which adds complexity and that’s kind of the feeling amongst particularly younger generations. Again, and why there’s a little bit of distrust is too much power focused on the top of an organization without sort of distributing leadership and and the right to participate in this. You know, the bigger decisions of the organization being dispersed throughout the organization and getting input from beneficiaries about um you know, how the organization should evolve or um move forward in further its purpose if we’re not really thinking about getting other voices in it, and particularly if our boards are not very diverse, um that’s gonna engender more distrust as well um with with an organization and this leadership. So while what’s happening at the top level and the relationship between the Ceo and the chair of the board is critically important, it is really important to also make sure that leadership, authority and power is being dispersed down through the organization and that the board actually can listen to directly um input from some of the staff. Um and we shouldn’t create like a wall between board and staff completely. You know, that there’s a little bit of um new thinking on that because the old old ways is like the board should not micromanage right. We should not interfere with staff decisions, which is partly true, but it doesn’t mean that we create a complete block. So the board members don’t see the staff members and the staff don’t see the board and they just don’t know each other. So, um there is a sort of a balance there that needs to be taken.

[00:22:20.82] spk_0:
Can we, can we say a little more about that in terms of examples of how this could be done? Like you’re you’re talking about staff, but also the beneficiaries of the programmatic work. Uh is this um like, I mean, certainly beneficiaries could be members of the board or or is it more an advisory committee, but then to your point, you know, you don’t want it to just be a committee that the board doesn’t listen to. The ceo doesn’t listen to. You know, how can we uh actually execute on on some of this in terms of staff and beneficiaries?

[00:24:23.71] spk_1:
So there are a lot of different ways that it might be done and there’s no one right way for, you know, for all organizations, but getting other voices involved can be done in, you know, um through committees as you suggested, but they can’t just be advisory. If you’re really gonna disperse power, you have to give them some power even if they’re not made up of only board members and some people call any committee that is not composed of only board members, they call them at advisory committees. And because of the name, they think that they can only give advice to the board, but they don’t have any management authority. But that’s not true. You can give these other committees management authority, the way you can give a Ceo or CFO management authority, the board can delegate authority down to these other committees. These non board committees as well. So that may be one way of getting power dispersed through the organization, that that committee might be made up of some employees, some beneficiaries and maybe there is a pipeline so that some of the other people that you’d like to put onto a board, but you might not know very well, you might not have enough experience in certain things that you’d like to have them develop more knowledge of the organization and the work before they possibly a strong candidate for joining the board, but that could be a vehicle or an on ramp to being a board um board member as well. And again, creating a more diverse and stronger board with diverse perspectives and understandings of what the organization does and who it impacts. So I think there are definitely ways and we’ve seen this in other models as well. Some that have worked with some organizations and same models not working with other organizations. Hill Ocracy is sort of one example of that. What

[00:24:24.13] spk_0:
is that drug in jail? What? Hill Ocracy.

[00:25:53.62] spk_1:
Hill Ocracy is a form of management where there are still remnants of hierarchy, but a lot of decision making is made in kind of circles and circles might be employed, they might be employees and others and circles have certain autonomy over their body of decision making. So you might have a circle based on HR issues. So it’s not just one person with the final say, it’s this circle or a group in the law, we would just call it another committee. But um in hypocrisy there all circles and and this was used by some high profile for profit companies and some nonprofits, some had success with it, Some didn’t. So um there are other models out there as well, not one size will fit all, but again, there’s an administrative cost to trying to implement new models, um, but new models or maybe the way that we want to go and their movement organizations all over the place that are impacting how nonprofits and for profits are to be governed and managed. And we should be listening to some of these forces that are out there because they will gradually shape what we’re doing. You can see this by some younger people not sticking with employment as long as they were the great resignation and stuff. If you feel powerless within an organization or if you don’t feel the organization is representing what you want, your employer to be doing, they may not stay and having a little bit of say in what the organization is doing, even if it’s just the starting points because you can’t jump from point a to, you know, to the ideal point in one step, it’s gonna take a long, a long time to get there. But just to seeing that progress may be assigned to somebody to to say, I’m gonna stick around here and and find out

[00:26:35.35] spk_0:
alright creating vehicles for right people’s voices to be heard. Um, and you’re right, it’s, it’s incremental, but just the, just the showing of some progress, some initiative to uh, opening up the leadership, opening

[00:26:38.15] spk_1:
up

[00:26:41.97] spk_0:
strategic decision making, could be, it could be uh, you know, valuable to, to folks right? And encourage them to, to stay versus looking for someplace that’s more inclusive. Yeah.

[00:26:53.98] spk_1:
You know, if your Ceo doesn’t trust the board or if your employees don’t trust the ceo, how are you going to expect donors and your beneficiaries to trust the organization? So it really trust has to be built throughout the organization.

[00:28:41.45] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies. Are you seeing technology as the investment that it is not as an expense, but an investment in your sustainability, your staff productivity, your staff happiness, um, satisfaction, an investment in your donor relations through your crm database. Uh, it’s an investment in your organization’s work and its future. That’s what technology that’s where your technology ought to be thought of. And fourth dimension four D. For short can help you make those investments wisely so that you’re not squandering on something you don’t really need. Like maybe your backup is sufficient, but you need the multi factor authentication installed, etcetera. So you know, they can help you think through smart technology investments. That’s it four D. And you know where the listener landing pages to check them out. It’s at tony dot M A slash four D. Which by the way is just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Let’s return to in non profits. Do we trust? What else do you see Gene as as things we can we can think about besides this sort of distributed, I’m calling it distributed leadership or maybe you call it distributed leadership. Yeah.

[00:29:32.73] spk_1:
So other things. Maybe some simple tips guard private data. We talked a little bit about it before with technology. If you’ve got data that you’re promising that will be kept confidential. Make sure you’re guarding that. Be careful about automating and depersonalizing interactions with technology as well. Like we could have a sort of a voicemail for everybody and you know, hit one if you want to do this. It too. If you want to do this and completely not let any donor speak to any individual without, you know, spending an hour on the phone that may not be, uh, seen as something that would build trust. So we have to be careful of our uses of technology there as well in our communications. Um, if you’re going to say something, um, don’t talk the talk. If you’re not going to walk the walk, right? So don’t make promises that you’re not going to keep

[00:29:41.70] spk_0:
that for an example of that is A D. I. Policy,

[00:29:45.44] spk_1:
right? Exactly

[00:29:46.80] spk_0:
written and never, never executed or remains written once and never evolves.

[00:31:13.44] spk_1:
And if you have a campaign to engage in a particular, uh, you know, program and you don’t raise enough money. And so that program never runs, you better be explaining this to your donors. Um, why that happened. And the possibility that that might happen when you start fundraising for it. So don’t just say, you know, after the fact when they complain that said, well we didn’t raise enough. So we used your money for other things that’s not going to engender trust. Um remember your mission and your beneficiaries don’t exist in a vacuum, right? Um, so it’s not just about your organization. And if you your numbers go up, um whatever metrics that you use financial performance or number of beneficiaries served whatever they are, you shouldn’t look at it as a silo. You should be looking at the entire ecosystem in which you are participating. And that would be, you know, open up things like environmentalism like you might not think environmental, your organization’s not environmental organization, but if climate change continues and creates hardships that, you know, scientists are predicting, predicting you probably will have an impact on your mission and your beneficiaries. And so to sort of think, just, you know, outside of that, that silo you want to be thinking about what your impact of your decisions will be, not only on your organization and beneficiaries, but on your allied organizations, on the broader community and what will that do to trust as well. So,

[00:32:03.91] spk_0:
a lot of these ideas, a lot of what you’re saying could be, you know, germinating in an advisory committee, you know, how could we look differently at at our contribution to climate change and what climate change means to us in the future for our for our for our people and for our work, but also what could we be doing right now, You know, even if we’re not an environmental organization siloed as you’re saying, you know, we still have an environmental impact. So what what contribution to to minimize climate change or reverse climate change can we make as well as planning for the for the future? Uh you know, that that those kinds of conversations can come out of these um advisory committees that is that are comprised of staff and and beneficiaries. I mean, these are the folks that live the mission day to day.

[00:32:36.09] spk_1:
Yeah, I love that idea to tony Sometimes the board may not have um or feel that they have the bandwidth to sort of discuss these sort of broader issues. Um and they’re a little bit more focused. So having the help um the advisory committee on an issue like like climate change for a non environmental organization or an organization whose mission is not focused on the environment. I think that would be great.

[00:32:45.06] spk_0:
Yeah. And I want to reiterate your point that which I’ve never thought of, advisory committees can be granted policy making authority and and and change within the organization. So whatever that looks like, you know, you can bestow that that authority

[00:33:05.16] spk_1:
Absolutely, and you can give them a budget to even sort of to putting

[00:33:11.20] spk_0:
money behind it. But that that yeah, money talks. That’s a that’s a big step granting them a budget granting them some granting them authority to make change that’s empowering and an advisory committee. All right.

[00:34:01.14] spk_1:
I think, you know, one area of trust that we haven’t spoken yet, but maybe, um why I as a lawyer and talking about these things and you’re not getting it from another consultant, is that the laws can also impact trust and non profits have to decide whether they want to set a position on certain laws. And um, some of the things that I’m thinking about is the deductibility of charitable contributions. So, we’ve had an above the line contribution where non itemizers could deduct as well because of Covid. Um, but that was just temporary. Um, and now there’s sort of a push for, well, we should make a charitable contribution deductible to all taxpayers, and not just about the 10% of taxpayers who itemize, who tend to be, you know, have a little bit more wealth, or some, in some cases a lot more than those who don’t itemize.

[00:34:17.90] spk_0:
Is it that small? The proportion of taxpayers who itemize is around 10%,,

[00:34:22.34] spk_1:
10-13%, is what I’m hearing.

[00:34:24.86] spk_0:
Okay,

[00:35:52.18] spk_1:
So, um, again, you know, part of trust and distrust has to do with concentrations of power and wealth, right? And when the 1% or the .1% control so much policy control the leadership of pivotal organizations in all sectors, and in government, um, there’s going to be a distrusted institutions. Again, that, you know, one third of people distrust big institutions. Um, and, you know, that concentration of wealth and power is, is the reason why. Um so laws that sort of enforce that. So if we just give you no deductible, make make tax benefits to, to richer people who can deduct, who can itemize their deductions and not to others that may feel really unfair to the public. And another reason for distrust. So, will your organization’s, even though tax policy is probably almost no organization’s mission, it has an impact. Um, and so it may be something that organizations want to take a look at. And there are organizations like independent sector of the National Council on nonprofits and others who the Tax Policy center that that can explain this a little bit. But you you may want to take a look and see if you want to put a position on it. And one of the things that I also think, um engender distrust is when the media miss reports, the law in one area where the mis reported it is a lot of media say, charities can’t lobby and that’s just not true. Um, so charities can lobby on things like, you know, the the above the line deduction. Um, and and on other things as well, and there are just certain limits that apply, but they’re often generous, So learn a little bit more and we can build a stronger sector?

[00:36:21.84] spk_0:
Well, you and I have talked about the the lobbying limits on previous shows, is it is it safe to say that the law hasn’t changed over the past? I don’t know, 23 years maybe, since you and I have talked about this.

[00:36:34.17] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:37:06.11] spk_0:
So, so at Tony-Martignetti.com, you can search gene Takagi, you’ll find many episodes that he’s on and one or one or two are about the uh, the lobbying limits, I think, I think the last time may have been 2020 when the pre election. So we may well, with the, with the election in late The election in late 2020, so we may have done something like in mid-2020 or so on the lobbying, uh, exemption or Well, that’s not that’s not that’s not the right phrase. What the limits of lobbying and you make the you just said, you know, they are, they are generous in some cases. It’s not it’s not that it has to be a de minimus proportion of your budget or something.

[00:37:24.83] spk_1:
Yeah, the

[00:37:26.87] spk_0:
yeah,

[00:37:27.68] spk_1:
the losses insubstantial which scares the majority of charities away from doing any of it, but it turns out it can be fairly generous limits to engaging in lobbying.

[00:38:01.79] spk_0:
Okay. Um, and the point that you made before that, I was going to say something about that too. Well, sorry, what did you say? Right before you were talking about the uh, the permissibility of some lobbying activities. You made a point? Yes, thank you. The last thing we want is for Donating to charity to be perceived as, uh, as an elitist activity. That only the only the top now you’re saying whatever 10 or 13% of the population can, can give because they’re the only ones who get the advantage because they’re the only, they’re the ones who itemize their deductions. The last thing we want is for donating to charities to be perceived as an elitist activity.

[00:39:13.92] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely. tony and with, you know, with our current tax policy, how it works. Um, then I don’t want to get too complicated with that. We are seeing a shrinking middle class. I don’t think there’s anything denying that people, most people have less discretionary income. So if we look at the fundraising statistics now, the giving statistics, we see that, um, even if giving goes up Giving from kind of the middle class and smaller donors has shrunk, um, and, and quite significantly, and it’s, it’s the people, um, that have put in huge contributions that have made up for that. So the Mackenzie Scott, you know, with, I think $13 billion dollars over the last few years, they’re making up for that. But that can change the way nonprofits run if, if it’s all about, again, elite, wealthy, powerful individuals who make the big contributions that then have the ear of the boards of these organizations that then talk about policy and they create policy or, or advocate for policies that keep that dynamic in existence. So it is problematic.

[00:40:52.59] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony Take two. My latest video on linkedin is this is not planned giving uh it’s short under two minutes. I give you an example of what is not planned giving and remind you what planned giving is, how simple planned giving is when it’s done right, when you start with simple gifts by will. But I’ve got kind of a lighthearted back way of looking at it through what planned giving isn’t in the opening. So latest video on linkedin, you’ll find me on linkedin. My name is tony-martignetti by the way that has escaped you. And uh it’s my latest video there That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for in nonprofits. Do we trust with Gene Takagi? Look at this dark potential that people look at at the United States as alright, the wealthy control government because of dark money and and the Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court uh wealthy control business because only wealthy people start and or run run businesses and grow them and only only white males have the access to capital to start businesses. And then and then the perception that um the wealthy control the nonprofit

[00:41:13.41] spk_1:
sector, you

[00:41:21.27] spk_0:
know, and the wealthy control of media, you know, this is all this is all very uh a very detrimental, very dark cynical way of looking at the at the country, but I’m not I’m not sure that where that’s far away from

[00:42:10.55] spk_1:
it. Yeah, I agree. tony And I think past generations, you know, including ours, you know, we’ve always kind of done better than our parents. Our parents were lucky enough to put us in that position. But the younger generations now economically um and maybe, you know health wise and mental health wise, they may not be doing as well as their parents overall and they’re questioning kind of the system because of that. Um and we maybe didn’t question it because our generation did better than our parents um in those terms. But now there is just legitimate questioning of do we need to change these policies and these dynamics and these power structures and um you know, organizations have a say in this and and use your voice, get get people to vote. Maybe that’ll be my my one of my big messages vote

[00:43:27.00] spk_0:
voting is fundamental to although, you know, in a lot of states that’s being eroded you becoming more difficult, although in a lot of states it’s easier to um you know, another thing that comes to mind when, you know, you’re talking about the generations below the the the boomers not doing as well as the one before them. Um The FDA just yesterday recommended mental health screening at regular uh regular doctor visits, like an annual annual health health checkup for everybody under 65 And and they had been considering this policy that this recommendation is just a recommendation to the medical community from from for years before the pandemic. This is not, this is not pandemic-related recommendation. They had been considering this for years before the pandemic that there’s a lot of stress and anxiety among the population under 65 and 65 is basically the baby boomer cut off within a couple of years.

[00:43:59.55] spk_1:
And then, you know, as you noted, this was even before Covid that they’ve been advocating for this and now with Covid and the mental health issues that are sort of go along with not just the disease, but the isolation that many are experiencing and long Covid, which is sort of an underappreciated under recognized problem and disabilities maybe creating more disability, disabled americans than anything. Um, since you know, the World War two, I think would be the last one. It’s just, it’s mind blowing

[00:44:01.44] spk_0:
and I and I and all this does contribute to a decline in trust in all institutions and nonprofit. The nonprofit community is a major institution in the country. So you know, that’s, that’s how this is all related

[00:44:15.09] spk_1:
to what you

[00:44:21.48] spk_0:
and I are talking about. I want to make that connection explicit that anxiety among the population creates anxiety for nonprofits and, and and distrust and disbelief in nonprofit work. Whether that’s justified or not perception is reality.

[00:44:36.71] spk_1:
Yeah, I agree. tony

[00:44:40.74] spk_0:
All right. I don’t know. So we had, we had said one of the things we’re gonna talk about is what happens, what happens if this continues? I mean, I already painted a pretty dark cynical scenario. Um, is there anything more you want to say around? You know, what, what the implications are if the community doesn’t start to help itself?

[00:46:25.73] spk_1:
Well, maybe on a more micro looking basis, it just means for a charity, they’re gonna experience diminished fundraising. Not everybody gets Mackenzie scott, Jeff Bezos money. Right. Most of them are relying upon a pool of donors, um, many of which are aging, um, and may age out of their donor pool. Um, and shrinking again, middle class, shrinking, discretionary income for many people, meaning West donations. Um, we might see more direct giving to individuals as people are saying, well, I don’t trust charities overall. I’d rather just give to my friends who say, you know, somebody is in need as crowdfunding fight sites just continue to, to grow in importance and also in in power as well. Um, and that’s just gonna be to the detriment of, you know, beneficiaries of our charity. So again, in the micro level, we make less money, people trust us less. Our employee retention is less. Um, our donor pool is shrinking and we can help less people even as the need for our services increases. So that’s kind of the dark side look of it. Um, we can try to be the nonprofit that stands out and you know, is the trustworthy non profit from, from a public perception standpoint. Um, that’s good. But again, don’t see yourself in a silo lift yourself up with all the boats in the water and, and really try to strengthen the nonprofit sector where you can, and, and advocating on some of the laws that make things more fair, I think is a good start there

[00:46:41.97] spk_0:
advocating maybe there’s a way of partnering

[00:46:45.00] spk_1:
with other

[00:46:55.64] spk_0:
organizations, not, not in all in all things. I don’t mean a legal formal partnership, but you know, if, if there’s, if there’s a way of working together for an event or, or some kind of advocacy,

[00:47:03.61] spk_1:
you

[00:47:11.44] spk_0:
know, we’ve had shows on the values of that and how to do that. Um, so that everybody, you know it, so that it’s, it’s not seen as a, as a zero sum within your, within your community that if if if someone else, some other organizations benefiting, then you’re losing. You know, that’s not the way to look at,

[00:47:25.67] spk_1:
at,

[00:47:26.47] spk_0:
at the world and and that not nonprofit support. We we all could be or a couple of couple of organizations together could be rising together.

[00:47:37.64] spk_1:
Yeah, I’ll add that the independent sector survey, the Edelman Data Intelligence survey that we mentioned at the start of the show also has some tips on building up trust within the sector. So it’s not all of dark outlook. It’s just encouraging people that the importance of this is very, very high. Um, so let’s go out and actually make things happen? So that, that dark outlook doesn’t happen

[00:48:05.70] spk_0:
within independent sector. Gene, what’s the, what’s the name of the you’re saying? Edelman data?

[00:48:11.03] spk_1:
Yeah, I think they contracted out with Edelman E D E L M A. And Data and intelligence and their third annual reports. This is an annual report is available on the independent sector website.

[00:48:26.66] spk_0:
Okay, thank you. Edelman E D E L M A N,

[00:48:30.68] spk_1:
correct.

[00:48:49.24] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Uh, you mentioned the five oh one C four’s a little bit, but there have been a couple in the news very recently, most recently the uh, Patagonia companies, uh, sort of evolution into a uh, a new nonprofit, a new a new five oh one C four. non profit the hold fast collective.

[00:51:57.05] spk_1:
Yeah. So the founder of Patagonia and his family member, they were the principal owners of Patagonia and they decided to give up ownership of the company, but you know, they gave it not to a charity, but to a 501 C four organization. Um, it’s called the social welfare organization and for listeners who aren’t maybe familiar with it, you probably are familiar with many five oh one C four organizations themselves, like the N. R. A. Planned parenthood, the A. C. L. U. Sierra Club. So these are advocacy organizations that have kind of charitable like purposes. Um, but our can engage in unlimited lobbying and can engage in election nearing or political campaign intervention? Supporting political candidates and political parties, as long as that’s not their primary activity or purpose. So this is sort of the source or one of the big sources of where dark money comes in tony that you mentioned with the Citizens United Decision before donor that wants to support a candidate but stay hidden from public view about their support of the Can rather than giving directly to the candidate, could give to a 501 C four organization and the C Four organization can get their money’s into the candidate. And the donor that is disclosed is the C Four organization, not the donor to the C Four organization. So that’s how you can create dark money. And with the Patagonia case, it’s very clear who the donor was. So we don’t expect that to be the dark money that we’re as leery of, but it’s still, you know, a huge gift which, you know, for somebody who believes in in in the environmental movement I think is a great gift. But news media miss reporting it or some news media are mis reporting it as kind of something that doesn’t get a tax benefit because a donor doesn’t get an income tax deduction for giving to a five oh one C Four organization the way they do if they give to a charity. Um but there are other tax exemptions that apply like a gift tax exemption or in a state tax exemption. So this gift is overall saving. Um uh mr Schwinn nerd um the owner and his family probably somewhere in the realm of $800 million in taxes. Um So it is not completely a no tax benefit transaction. Again this is not to disparage them for taking advantage of a system that allows for these gifts Um to go with with some tax benefits, but it’s not just the income tax deduction that matters in in donations there for for very wealthy people like billionaires. Um the gift and estate tax exemptions which can be 40%, right? So it can be very very high higher than income tax they matter. Um and so that’s something to be aware of that. Um this is a very wealthy person who gave up much of the ownership share, I guess all of his ownership shares to this 501 C4 organization, except really importantly 2% of the gift. Overall gift was given to a trust that’s not a nonprofit.

[00:52:14.55] spk_0:
Yeah those voting, those are the 2% of the voting that are the voting shares,

[00:52:58.58] spk_1:
right? So because they’re in control of that trust with with some close advisers um they have not given control out of Patagonia, right? They still can control Patagonia. Um And again they’re taking advantage of existing law what what it allows but it allows billionaires to not give up control of their company, get an $800 million tax benefit for giving or you know $3 billion Uh to a 501 C4 organization that could spend nearly half of it on endorsing political candidates. Um So it’s kind of an interesting tax system that that allows for that.

[00:53:18.19] spk_0:
And if if you consider that, you know supportive of uh of a liberal progressive cause because the whole fast collective the the new C4 is is devoted to uh the ill effects of climate change, you know, reversing climate change, impacting climate change. Uh So if you consider that of a left cause, then there’s an example on the right side with uh mr barr seed and the marble Freedom Trust. Another five oh one C four.

[00:53:44.39] spk_1:
Yeah. And that sea forces led by Leonard Leo who maybe the person most responsible for the changing of our Supreme Court and therefore the decisions on things like abortion might be largely attributed to mr Leo,

[00:53:56.21] spk_0:
fundraiser and activist and very well connected guy in conservative circles.

[00:56:20.34] spk_1:
Yeah. And used to be Executive vice president of the Federalist Society whose mission was to change the composition of the Supreme Court. So um I I don’t think that’s controversial and that’s just what their goal was. And they were very effective at achieving that goal. But this $1.6 billion kind of same thing. There there are some tax benefits that go along with it. There’s no income tax deduction. Um and mr uh c passed away. I think this was given after his death. But another big contribution to an organization led by somebody who has immense influence and now a huge war chest that can be used for political activities. Again, the primary activity cannot be political campaign intervention. Um, but some people believe, or many people believe that means 49% of the funds can be used for political campaign intervention. And that’s kind of the source of dark money. Although again in this case we do know where the donor came from. Um, so it’s not dark in that way in terms of hidden donors, but it’s still donations that didn’t go directly to the political candidate. It went through five oh one C four first, get the tax benefits for that, which his heirs, I guess would appreciate. Um, uh, and the impact of that again, is that? Well, in both cases, very wealthy people are able to keep control with people who they trust or their family members of their money to be used for political purposes. They can’t use it for themselves to, you know, to buy huge houses and boats, but they can use it for things that were very important to them. But that means for people like us and most of your listeners, tony is like, what influence do we have compared to that individual who gave billions of dollars to influence political elections. Um, and you know, what, you know, can we change our Supreme Court sort of composition the way that they’re able to do, probably not by ourselves. So it again is, is the reason why people go, hey, these are nonprofits that they’re using to do this. I don’t trust non profits, this is what they’re used for. And charities kind of get lumped in because the ordinary, you know, people, the lay person doesn’t know the difference between a five oh one C three and five A one C four organization.

[00:56:36.19] spk_0:
Yeah, and that’s right. And it’s it’s if it’s mentioned in a in in press coverage, you know, it’s mentioned in passing that it it’s it’s an organization that’s distinguished from from uh charities. But you know, it’s like, it’s like a sentence or two. You know, it’s it’s never it’s never a focal point. So your point is correct that people just lump them all together

[00:57:00.57] spk_1:
and flows through nonprofits and that’s why we shouldn’t trust nonprofit.

[00:57:04.97] spk_0:
So the wealthy control government and they control politics and they control business and media and and nonprofits.

[00:57:18.46] spk_1:
Yeah, that’s that’s what we, We’re finding more and more is the case, but we’re trying to change policies and change minds about this so that we can see that the impact of the 99.9% out there is actually even bigger than the impact that we mentioned about a few individuals. Um, it just has to be organized. Um, and non profits are way to do that.

[00:58:21.68] spk_0:
Well, that’s a, that’s a pretty good way to close. Probably we should have closed with what our community can do. But you know, you’re suffering the lackluster host. So uh you can rewind to that section and then uh fast forward and you can end with that if you want to. Um, but but jean, you know, always thank you, you know, sort of reality, but also wisdom and inspiration. And and not only um ethereal pedagogical inspiration, but you know, ideas that we can we can we can act on. So thank you. Thank you.

[00:58:24.63] spk_1:
Thank you Tony. And your closing statement is actually always the greatest ending. So, I’m looking forward to hearing it.

[00:59:39.16] spk_0:
Okay, All right, thank you jean. Next week. Let’s see what develops and why do I even say uh, next week if I don’t know what’s coming up next week, but we’re here we are. We’re talking about trust and part of that is transparency. So I’m being transparent that I don’t know what next week’s show is gonna be, I know what the 1 to 2 weeks from now is gonna be. We’re gonna have beth cancer and Allison fine talking about their new book, but I can’t promise that for next week because well, that would be a lie and that’s going to reach the trust because they’re not on next week. Next week. Uh, it’s up in the air, but trust me, it’ll be just that’s conclusory. Just trust me now, I hope you trust non profit radio I’ll find something good if you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com responses by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box, the affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four

[00:59:48.37] spk_1:
D. Just

[01:00:03.54] spk_0:
Like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. A creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff to show 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 B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Here it is, Jean, go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for August 1, 2022: Tech Policies That Reduce Toxic Productivity

 

Marina Martinez-Bateman: Tech Policies That Reduce Toxic Productivity

First, what is toxic productivity? Then, as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people who work with you? Finally, what are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez-Bateman, from New Coyote Consulting. (This is part of our continuing #22NTC coverage.)

 

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[00:02:04.85] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with sudo a graphia if you wrote to me saying that you missed this week’s show tech policies that reduce toxic productivity first, what is toxic productivity then as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people you work with? Finally what are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez Bateman at new coyote consulting this is part of our continuing 22 NTC coverage On Tony’s take two. Please start your plan giving with will’s part do we’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c. O. And by fourth dimension technologies I Tion for in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant for d just like three D but they go one dimension deeper. Here is tech policies that reduce toxic productivity. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 N. T C. The 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by the very smart folks at N 10 will help us all use technology in our work with me now is marina Martinez Bateman. They are ceo of new coyote consulting marina. Welcome.

[00:02:10.16] spk_1:
Hi thanks for having me it’s a joy to be on the show.

[00:02:31.96] spk_0:
Oh joy thank you very much and we’re just getting started joyful already I love it. Thank you your session topic is tech policies for reducing toxic productivity. Natural question is how could productivity possibly be toxic? What what is this thing?

[00:04:06.63] spk_1:
Well, it’s like anything else, right? You know, you buy a couple of pairs of nice shoes that you like. It’s not toxic, there’s nothing wrong here. It’s just engaging in some, you know, some trade some some joy of craftsmanship. If you start buying shoes instead of food, buying shoes instead of paying the rent, then you have a real problem, right? And productivity is like that, you know, it’s just like any other thing that we engage in, we can do it so hard that it hurts us. Um toxic productivity is when we will choose work over things that we need like taking lunch breaks or moving our body or engaging with family and community things that sort of are essential to our mental and physical health. And then you know what happens is as we engage more and more with this toxic level of productivity are actual real true product. Our output diminishes and then we see our output diminish, we get really upset about that and then we double down on being more and more productive and and then our output diminishes because we’re exhausted and we’re not getting filled up in other places and we double down again and it can lead to, you know, you can create uh you know really unhealthy spaces, you can um you know make yourself ill, you can hurt yourself. You can get hurt. You know how many people have fallen asleep while driving um because they’re working too many hours. Um you know, how many times do we make really silly mistakes when we’re exhausted? Um Those things sort of creep in and creep in and then your identity starts to change into being someone who can’t get things right, who isn’t able to perform when that was never a part of your reality. You’re just engaging way too hard in work. Thinking that that’s the answer to your problem when really it’s the cause.

[00:04:55.89] spk_0:
And before we go further and toxic productivity, let’s remind folks in case there’s any question. Uh, you said, you know, and it replaces being filled up by other spaces like community, family friends. Let’s remind folks of the joys that and and maybe there’s even research that shows the physiological changes when we’re engaging in things that are not work.

[00:06:45.10] spk_1:
Yeah. Yeah. So you get different parts of your brain activated when you’re engaging in hobbies that are different from your work, um, your creative life. You know, if you have a creative job, um sometimes doing something that’s not so creative or doesn’t require a lot of like big innovative leaps. Um can be nice, like, you know, tidying up or taking a walk or um doing something physical, like hiking or going out into the outdoors, going fishing and camping etcetera. Or even going shopping or going to the movies, like those things when they’re safe. Of course, because it’s still covid right now um are important to engage in because they activate other spots of your brain and also just your body moves differently on a hike than it does in the office or at a desk. Yeah, first of all it moves your standing desk, even if you attach a treadmill to it or something can never really replicate going outside. Um and then, you know, were people even introverted people need other people. We just do, we’re not um we cannot exist completely alone. Um we have to be able to engage in the people that we have in our personal bubble, However big that bubble is we have to be able to sort of like activate um that empathetic drive that we all have as humans or that, you know, the vast majority of us do. Um and we we just have to be in in concert, you know, how many of us have been at work, especially in the nonprofit sphere and things are sort of looking gloomy and we’re thinking, oh, the world is filled with bad people, everyone’s making terrible choices. This is the worst. You know, And then you go to dinner with a friend and you’re like, wait, the world is wonderful, this is great, everyone’s making great choices. I bet all these people are just trying to figure it out because that human connection needs to exist for us to be people in the world, which is you know why we’re here is to be people.

[00:07:04.40] spk_0:
Thank you for that reminder. We are we are communal, we are social,

[00:07:08.46] spk_1:
even

[00:07:33.77] spk_0:
the most introverted to some degree still as you said, you know with however however however many or few it may be uh contact community. Alright. Alright. So what are nonprofits doing that uh is leading us to toxic productivity and we’ll certainly get to the solutions. But what are we doing to? I don’t wanna I don’t wanna say improve it to induce it, induce

[00:11:52.01] spk_1:
it. Yeah. I mean part of it is that we have these and these are, it’s great that we all want to end hunger and that we you know, no one’s being like though But it’s hard when you have 16 people and they’re all making 20-50 to 100% less than they could make in the free market trying to end hunger from a small office with broken chairs and a raccoon that won’t leave the trash alone. You know like we are so severely under resourced in non profit and that’s not our individual fault by any means. It’s the culture and the structures of the culture that we live in um where poor people are the people that build this country and their labor is so exploited that they are um kept poor so that the rich can stay rich. Um and then we get the nonprofits and generally those are the people we serve are the poor or people who are missing something from their, their experience or their needs. And uh, and we’re under resource too. I mean it’s a whole, it’s a whole culture, right? It’s a whole structure, It’s a whole system that’s made to make it so that we have these incredibly vast missions and we have a broken pencil and our own gumption to make it happen. And um, and it is, you know, we as individuals cannot solve that entire problem by ourselves. One, we can’t solve the problem that we’re working on by ourselves. We can end hunger alone. Um, even the most vast and well resourced organization would have to work with others in order to make that happen. Um, and part of that. So we have this like we have these vast resources. We are severely under resourced. We have these vast missions. Yeah, and were severely under resourced. And then, um, what we as organizations do on the, on the organization to organization level is that we compete with one another. We don’t coordinate with our organizations in our same sphere or it’s hard we find it hard to coordinate. Um, we also don’t recognize that we’re under resourced. Um, frequently we will sort of like, you know, when you get a bunch of nonprofit workers together in a room, we’ll joke about, you know, how we don’t have a chair that works in our computer is 15 years old and all these things. Um, but we don’t talk about how that makes the mission harder to do. And nor do we talk about how we’re still hitting goalposts were still crossing finish lines were still making things work. And where did those resources come from in general? They come from the individual workers. Um, and some of us have vast resources to put to this and some of us don’t. Um, but there’s no adjustment, a there’s no adjustment of expectation based on how much resource we’re individually putting into the work to make it across the finish line. And there’s also no um, it’s seen as an individual failing if we can’t do this impossible work with very little resource in the, in in in terms of money, in terms of time, in terms of support, in terms of whatever we’re all fighting an uphill battle. And um, and our organizations frequently lean into that martyrdom and lean into that, you know, while I was working 17 hours yesterday, while I was up at two o’clock in morning, finished with this grant, Well, I was, you know, and um, and it doesn’t have to be like that. I mean if we live in a world where we think that our clients deserve education, food, um, healthy ecology to, to roman community art, all of these things, you know, medicine and um, recovery and all these things that we provide to people if we think that our clients deserve that. How come we’re not getting that for ourselves. Like how many of us are pushing off things like doctor’s appointments? How many of us us have skipped um, significant times in our family members lives because there was some campaign or something that had to go on. And then also how much of that um, happens because of expectation, you know, when we start a nonprofit, we’re working with nothing. We work our way up, we become leaders in the, in the sector. And then it doesn’t seem weird to us that the people of the workers that are coming behind us are experiencing the same hardships that we experienced because it’s normal for us to struggle in this way.

[00:13:14.45] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications media relationships, you know, how important relationships are in fundraising. They’re just as important in media exposure. Both of the turn two partners are former journalists, including one peter Pan a pinto who was an editor at the Chronicle of philanthropy. So they both know what to do and what not to do to build your relationships with journalists. Those relationships are going to get you heard in the media, turn to communications. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o now back to tech policies that reduce toxic productivity. A lot of what you’re saying is that it’s it’s culture and and mindset. So I guess you’d like to change the culture and change the mindset and change the investments. Um, so please, let’s, uh, let’s start talking about what we can do differently.

[00:14:17.04] spk_1:
I think what we can do differently is it starts with the leadership and nonprofits. People who are lower on the work chart do not have as much power, although a lot of people, especially right now with the great resignation, um, a lot of people who are lower on the r chart are sort asserting their power by leaving, um, environments that are toxic or don’t work for, um, what their vision is for the future. I think gen z is a great motivator for us to all take a look at how we’ve been working in the past and how it has harmed us and how if we don’t get right and start cycle breaking, we are going to be perpetuating the same harm that was done to us, which while it’s not fair that we were harmed, it’s also not fair to, to sort of sloth that off onto others. Um, but in leadership in the non profits, we have to stop thinking that because it happened to us. It’s okay for it to happen to other workers, especially younger workers.

[00:14:18.77] spk_0:
Like it’s some sort of, you know, rite of passage, you pay your dues and then you’ll then you’ll emerge a better leader in the, in the sector, you know? That’s, that’s silly. Yeah.

[00:14:31.40] spk_1:
Yeah. And

[00:14:32.07] spk_0:
punishing to be, you don’t have to be punished to be successful.

[00:14:41.74] spk_1:
Exactly. Can we be like, can we be the non profit executives and ceos that we needed when we were younger and that we didn’t get, can we do the things that that would have helped us to heal or would have helped us to be safe or be properly resourced or succeed even if that’s not something that we experienced when we were younger in career.

[00:15:03.98] spk_0:
Alright. Um do you have specific uh specific things that leaders can, can encourage? Like you must take time off. So, you know, I don’t wanna see anybody not using their vacation time. And you know, these folks who say, hey, I haven’t had a vacation in four years. I’m so proud of myself thinking like, don’t blame me, that’s your own

[00:15:23.35] spk_1:
fault.

[00:15:24.55] spk_0:
Yeah. It’s been that long. It’s your own fault for not taking, you know? So what, what, what can leaders do, you know, specifically to avoid this? The toxic productivity

[00:18:02.90] spk_1:
is, Yeah. That that sort of thing where it’s like, well, it’s not my fault that Sharon hasn’t taken a vacation in seven years saying that is a thing we can put to bed and we can say actually, if I’m in charge of this organization and of course we work together with our boards and advisory council sometimes with governmental agencies, whoever we’re helping to steward this change with. Um but if I am the Ceo here, I am the executive here then if someone hasn’t taken a vacation in four years, that’s, that’s on me. Um, This is the, this is the container I’m building for workers. Um, I see my view my duties as the Ceo very explicitly to keep the people in my, you know, in my organization safe. That’s one of the things that, that I have, you know, task been tasked with is to keep people safe. Um, if I can tell people what kind of work we’re doing and where we’re going and what our goals are, then I have to take responsibility for their safety during that journey because I’m the one taking them at that place. I’m the one on that journey with them. Um, and so asking, you know, why is it, why is it that Sharon feels like she can’t take a vacation. Um, Is there something going on internally that is making that happen? Does she not have anyone who’s trained on the thing that she does? Does she, um, has she not gotten a performance review in four years and she’s so she doesn’t feel like she can take a vacation because she doesn’t even know how well she’s doing her job. You know, there’s just a bunch of little things that we can look at and it takes time, which most of us don’t have. And I advise leaders to look at our plate and find out where we’re being performative lee productive, How many of the things do we do every day That looks like we’re doing something but at the end of the day it doesn’t actually, it doesn’t actually contribute to the mission. We can spend three hours on something and um and not only are no more Children fed, they’re not going to be on that labor that we just did, but it looks really good. It looks like we’re doing a lot. How can we cut that out and then focus on, let’s get somebody cross trained on Sharon’s job so that she can finally take a vacation. Let’s let’s make this a safe space for our workers to make healthy decisions. And the truth is that because a lot of our sector has for so long leaned into this under resourcing of workers, there becomes a pathology around being under resourced. There becomes a sort of like um system wide martyrdom.

[00:19:20.63] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies. They have an offer for you. An exclusive offer for nonprofit radio listeners, complimentary 24 7 monitoring of your I. T. Assets for three months. They’ll monitor your servers, network and cloud performance, they’ll monitor your backup performance all 24/7. Any issues they will let you know ASAP Plus at the end you will get a comprehensive report. After the three months They’ll throw in a few surprises a couple of things as well that I did not mention. It’s all complimentary and it’s for the 1st 10 listeners. The offer is on the listener landing page, go grab it, tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. And this offer goes even deeper than that. Let’s return to tech policies that reduce toxic productivity. There’s something called the brotherhood of suffering.

[00:19:23.27] spk_1:
Exactly.

[00:19:24.01] spk_0:
It’s it’s I’ve read about it in prison populations where I mean the phrase says it, the brotherhood, sisterhood, um the hood of suffering, the uh the shared experience among all folks of being in something that’s ritualistic, punishing suffering difficult. And then and it ends up being a source of almost pride.

[00:19:52.07] spk_1:
Yes,

[00:19:52.65] spk_0:
that we’re suffering this way together, right? I’m sure you want to turn that on its head and and disabuse us of

[00:21:28.90] spk_1:
that. It’s and it’s hard, it’s entrenched. There are people for whom for whatever reason and then this does become an individual problem. Once you’ve done all of the systematic things around alleviating that suffering around creating um you know, the concept of abundance even as we’re in these systems where we’re under resourced and part of that is acknowledging how we’re under resource and and and speaking its name out loud um which is capitalism and racism and colonialism. Um once we sort of do that in our organizations, there are still going to be people for whom it is necessary they need, that they feel for whatever reason that that this is what they have to do, this is how they have to work. Um and and in general what I find um in the times that I’ve managed to create this package, which is really hard to do, Well we have all these other external forces sort of like working for us to have this hero complex to keep in this savior mindset. Um When I’ve been able to make this abundance package the sort of container where we can all work in abundance towards our common goals. There are a couple of people who will leave and sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it’s not thankfully, but sometimes it is messy. Um But it’s because they need to be in an environment that feels like home to them and that toxicity is going to feel like home until they make the choice to step out of it and and recognize that this is this is a choice that that they’ve made their systemic issues at hand and then there’s individual issues at hand and we as C. E. O. S can do a lot to solve the systemic issues and also we can never make someone heal

[00:21:54.39] spk_0:
themselves. What’s some of that performative work that you uh that you mentioned, just if you could take off two or three things that are performative but lacking in value and and and benefit

[00:22:13.27] spk_1:
um staying in the office on a day when there’s no reason to, you know, if uh something like something tragic frequently happens, if there’s something terribly tragic in our community,

[00:22:19.73] spk_0:
requiring

[00:23:47.90] spk_1:
requiring everyone to keep their butts in their seats is just ridiculous. No one’s working. That’s not gonna happen. Um, even sort of staying in the office when there are things going on that are, are wonderful. Um, for example, uh, if it’s, you know, if we are living in a beach town and it’s a great surf day and we are a surf, you know, protecting the surf non profit everybody goes surf. Like come on, this is our whole thing. Like it doesn’t make any sense. If we are, say we are, you know, very into free media and we have a free media conference in town, nobody should be expected to come to work. We should get tickets to the free media conference and we should go to that. Um, you know, there are a lot of things I think, um, you know, if we’re a big sports town and our team is winning, nobody’s going to pay attention to work. There’s no reason to be here. All of these things. You know, they’re all individual to the nonprofit. Then there’s also things like, you know, some of us and I’m one of these people, I admit it, I love to see a meeting room packed with people. We love it. But half those people do, they need to be there. Do they really do this really important to, to the running of the nonprofit that, that, you know, so many people are there for an hour doing nothing and, or you know, getting information that could have been in an email or you know, etcetera. Um Yeah, I think there’s some people have gone into the, Oh, I can’t remember what they call it, but they do 15 minutes stand ups every morning and they’re never 15 minutes long. They always run over.

[00:23:55.84] spk_0:
Yes.

[00:24:43.06] spk_1:
Yeah. The morning huddle. I mean if the morning huddle makes you guys productive and it helps your nonprofit do the thing you’re, you’re put here to do great. But a lot of times these huddles are just performative and it’s awful and everyone’s so tired because it’s the first thing in the morning and there’s no reason for them. Um I think also there’s a lot of like email checking that happens throughout the day for me as one of the ways that I am performative li productive and and my my only employee is remote. We’re all remote here so no one’s watching me. No one can see me in here. But I will sit here and check email because I want to quote unquote, feel productive. And so then I spent 2.5 hours moving emails around the digital space doing nothing and I leave and then I leave, you know, I have to go to lunch or it’s the end of the day or something. I didn’t need to be there and do that. There was there was no reason.

[00:28:05.26] spk_0:
Alright. Those are good. Yeah, good examples. Thanks. It’s time for Tony’s take two. This is still my silver jubilee in planned giving and august is still national maker Will month. So let’s take part due of starting your planned giving program with wills. These are gonna be reasons 45 and six reasons one through three were last week reason number four. There’s no lifetime cost to your donors. These are long term gifts. A gift in a will is a gift of cash to your nonprofit at the donor’s death. So no lifetime cost for your donors giving by will sustainability. This is all about the sustainability of your work, your mission, your values. That’s what the conversations are all about. It’s the survivability of your work in the long term. That’s what the conversations are about. That’s what plan giving is going to help supplement is gonna really be more than a supplement. It’s going to be critical to your long term survivability, your sustainability reason number six endowment, whether you have no endowment and you need to start growing building one or you have a modest endowment, you want to grow it more or you have a good size endowment and you still want to grow it more because when do we ever say the endowments big enough? No need to add to that anymore. Let’s stop that. Cut that off. That. Never. So wherever you are with endowment, even if you’re at $0.0. Most of the gifts by Will the vast majority come unrestricted and that means you take as much of that unrestricted money as possible and put it into your endowment. That long term savings for your nonprofit, that you’re only spending a little bit of the income or maybe even less than the annual income each year. That’s how you grow that endowment gifts by Will I realize there’s tension there. You have immediate short term costs, expenses that you have to cover as well. But as much as possible, those unrestricted dollars that come from gifts by Will’s sock that away into the Endowment, That’s how you build your endowment. And of course that helps, uh, reason number five, your sustainability. Right? It all works together. So that’s reasons 4, 5 and six for starting your planned giving program with wills. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo Yes, the boo koo is back, boo koo, but loads more time for tech policies that reduce toxic productivity with marina Martinez Bateman. Is there more that, that we can ask of our of our leaders. You not that you haven’t given given, given a lot of, a lot of advice, but uh, is there any more that, that we can expect from our leaders to help us make the right choices.

[00:32:17.95] spk_1:
Yeah. And part of that is so we are in a unique space as leaders where we are suffering from the exact same ailments that our people are suffering from and we are suffering from the exact same structures of oppression that our people are, something, I mean not the exact same ones, but we’re here. We’re in it, right? So all of that. Um, you know, all the systems that are set up to make it so that personal health and art and the environment and food and health like um, communities and all these other things that we fight for right in the nonprofit sector. All these things are devalued, we’re in the same boat. Um, and also we do have power within the walls of our organization. Sometimes it’s limited, Sometimes there’s other factors at play, but we have more power than anyone else in the building almost um, with very few exceptions and so part of it is that we have to make certain sacrifices as leaders, which I think all of us know, but those sacrifices are probably not going to be the ones, the ones I recommend are not gonna be the ones that we expect. So, um, we need to protect our own time. We need to be seen eating lunch. We need to be seen taking time to move our bodies. Um, a lot of the things that we do as leaders are are the second we get to work the second we log on whenever our day starts, we are being seen by everyone of the organization. Even if it’s a small organization, even if it’s a remote organization, we don’t realize how visible we are. Um, and so when we model these behaviors for people taking vacation, telling people about how wonderful and restoring the vacation was, reassuring people um that it’s okay to take vacation for themselves, leaning into abundance even though we know what the budget is and we know scarcity very intimately um making those choices um that are that are on mission, um that are values driven because that’s what we’re called to do. Um and then having to make tough calls as a leader is it’s why we’re here, it’s why we got put in this seat. Um it’s why we sought the seat, we wanted this position most of us and um and so it’s time to sort of like what we sacrifice when we have this out, like when we’re modeling this good behavior is we sacrifice any delusions that we might have had towards the productivity nature of of, you know, performative productivity, right? So those big meetings have a ton of people in them that are really kind of just ego strokes for us, we can get rid of those, that’s a sacrifice that that is a good sacrifice to make. Um a lot of times we do things like we have those big meetings because we’re not feeling very productive, but we want to see everybody’s face, you know working. Um and really what we needed to do was take lunch and start taking lunch probably three months three or four months ago or years ago or 10 or 1520 years ago. Um and then we would feel productive and filled up and we would need a big meeting of 15 people that doesn’t do anything. Um So so modeling the behavior ourselves is very very important and um and specifically in a way that is seen um It can be very hard because as leaders we want to say well I’m gonna take I’m modeling the behavior, I’m gonna take off early, I’m gonna go home and um that is valid and if we need to do that we should do that. And also say okay everybody we’re going home early this day is just whatever happened this day is in the pits, let’s go home early. If we can of course some of us can’t do that because we have certain service obligations. Um But we can do things like look around the room, take the temperature of the room and say all right, everybody we’re getting you know pizzas delivered or whatever. Uh We’re just going to sit down and hang out together and blow off some steam. I can feel it, we just we’re not doing productive work right now. You

[00:32:40.29] spk_0:
know, be thoughtful, be intentional about creating about the culture you’re creating and that culture starts with leadership. Whether whether you might be the Ceo or you might be a mid level leader, you might be uh lower on the work charter. Lower level leader, but you’re still leading two or three people. Right? I mean it applies. This is not only for the ceo your ceo but this is not only for C E O S. Alright.

[00:32:58.79] spk_1:
Yeah. The people like your choices are going to be dependent on what’s up with the people and focused on them and then model the behavior that you because you know that a lot of us don’t realize how seen we are in our organizations were very, very visible if we’re in a leadership position.

[00:33:17.88] spk_0:
Yeah, interesting. You made the point, you know, even even in a virtual organizations like yours? Virtual company. Well so flesh that out. How do you feel like folks know when you start logging in, when you’re reading email etcetera. How is that seen, how is it seen,

[00:34:04.48] spk_1:
how am I checking in? You know, if we have a digital chat platform, how am I checking in? Am I showing up? Am I saying Hey I’m here. Am I asking questions um am I you know, am I asking for feedback? You know, am I am I visible enough for you? Am I you know, am I bugging you too much like um and listening to people interesting people when they tell you what’s going on with them? Um and also trying to remember, it’s very hard, it can be very hard with everything going on that you have to do as a leader. But when someone says, hey I’m gonna be out for the afternoon, put it in your own calendar and make sure that you don’t reach out to them during that time. Yeah.

[00:34:31.80] spk_0:
Right. Those, those uh slacks or texts or emails, whatever it is that start sorry to bother you on your day off. But, but of course the university and the gator cancels everything before it. But I need, you know, blah, blah. That, you know, there’s so much of that could, you could just wait until the day off is over. So the week off, you know, and, and you, you said earlier, you know, cross training so that people feel they can take time and so that the organization doesn’t suffer when they do

[00:35:20.51] spk_1:
exactly if so, and so doesn’t have the thing. I’ve cross trained this other person, which of course, you know, it’s easy for me to sit here in my office and say cross training when a person listening is looking at me like what with what resources with what people, but that’s where the sacrifices come in. You have to say, okay, well, this vanity project of mine doesn’t happen because cross training is happening instead or this. And somebody bristled when I said vanity project, I know it, but we all have them, They exist. We’ve got to accept that that they exist. So instead of the thing I want, we do cross training because that’s, that’s, and eventually I’ll get the thing I want probably, especially if it’s mission aligned. And it makes sense. But we have to prioritize workers needs and comfort because we have a lot of options here. The people that we employ have less options than us have fewer options than us. And so we need to to honor that.

[00:35:33.89] spk_0:
What about some questions that you got questions or comments you got in your session and what, what do you what do you what stuck out for you?

[00:35:56.29] spk_1:
I always get this question in all, every time I teach this training, I get this question. And it’s some version of the, you know, my co worker, my direct report, my boss, my board member is very into toxic productivity. They’re very into this. They’re they’re the ones that are always, you know, I was answering emails from the hospital when I was in labor with my second daughter or, you know, all of this stuff. Um, that’s, that’s very badge of honor. You know, we wear these sort of like wounds like metals and non profit. Um,

[00:36:14.11] spk_0:
that’s the personhood of suffering. The personhood of suffering. It isn’t bad. They do become a badge of honor. I’m always the last person to leave the office. Yes.

[00:39:21.34] spk_1:
Yes, exactly. Yeah. And uh, and and and this person is that they’re they’re toxic productivity is harming people. They’re pushing the culture, you know more and more to work more and more. Um, they have unrealistic expectations of people that work nearer with them, etcetera, etcetera. It’s harmful. And what I always tell people is, you know, you can do this. Uh first of all, your proximity to this person is not a coincidence at some point, you guys probably saw eye to eye on this or were working together in tandem to create something that really worked for you. Um you know, I look back on my nonprofit career and one of the my best times, one of my favorite times in my career was just deeply into toxic productivity. And so was everyone else around me. And it was wonderful because we were all on the same page. We felt like such a good team. We were so unified and the way we thought about things and the way we thought about things was deeply unhealthy. Um, but I tell them, you know, you can tell this person, especially if you really care about them outside of work. Um, you can say, I think we’re in a toxic relationship. I think we are operating in a way that is making each other less healthy. That’s not not helping us thrive. I want to try and heal from this. I think that healing is going to bring about a really incredibly positive change not only for me, but for the work that we’re doing here. Will you, will you heal with me, will you come in this on this journey with me and you can ask them with sincerity and the truth is that you can’t do anything else other than that. Just ask them and if they say no, you can’t keep asking them, you have to you have to respect that and everyone has has their own path, you know and not everyone is going to hell at the rate that you are going to hell at, not everyone is going to hell the way you think you should or they should. Um Some people just have other journeys and so if you are that person’s boss you can make decisions about, okay well we’re going in a different direction, we need competencies around healthy productivity, you don’t have the competencies around healthy productivity that we need, therefore we’re no longer a good fit and that hurts. It’s hard to say those things, but if I had, you know if I said you know we’re gonna go we’re gonna move towards gap accounting, everyone, you know, we’ve got to do things uh best practices ways and and not have you know our accounting all willy nilly and our account at the time was like nope, I do my accounting on post its and I will never not do that. You can’t make me change then we would have to get into accountant, wouldn’t we? So it’s the same thing when we’re trying to create this healthier productivity. If someone doesn’t want to learn or become competent in this in this new work way, we can’t keep them on just because we like them or because of what they did in the past that was helpful. Um, we can honor them and say that, that, you know, thank you very much and we can also release them to continue on their own journey, whatever that is.

[00:39:39.03] spk_0:
What have we not talked about that? Uh, you want to?

[00:39:50.18] spk_1:
Um, good question. Uh, I

[00:39:58.22] spk_0:
mean I do my best to channel our listeners, but you’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I’m just coming to it. So maybe the stuff that we, I haven’t raised,

[00:40:02.09] spk_1:
Yeah, let’s talk about perfectionism

[00:40:04.55] spk_0:
because perfectionism

[00:41:37.88] spk_1:
is a, we know for a fact, we know that perfectionism is a, is a feature of white supremacy. Perfectionism is um pervasive and insidious in our culture as a whole, but also a nonprofit culture. And so when we are practicing healthy productivity, when we’re trying to learn how to do things differently, the fact that we’re doing things in a way that we haven’t done them before means that we’re not gonna be as good, effortlessly good at them. Um, as we were before, even if we were doing something that ultimately harmed ourselves and our organization and our mission, we were really good at it for a long time, we had a high level of proficiency. So when you sort of like decide to go home at five o’clock and walk around the block and then take a bubble bath or whatever. That’s not gonna feel super good because you’re not gonna be super good at it. Um I can’t tell you how many times I used to buy coloring books because I was like, I need to be less, you know, work centric and I need to do creative things. I miss being creative and so I would buy those adult coloring books and I would hurt my fingers from coloring so hard because it had to be perfect. Um and then I would think, okay, no, I can’t do this, it’s too, it’s too physical, this coloring is to physical, I’ll go get in a bath that will relax me and I would sit in this bath just tense because I’m supposed to be relaxing and I’m, and I’m not doing

[00:41:42.14] spk_0:
right,

[00:42:34.73] spk_1:
Exactly right and but it’s not working because you, you’re not familiar with it, it’s hard. The first time you did anything, it was just kind of a little bit difficult and a little bit unwieldy and overwhelming and you know, for those of us who have been neglecting our other, the other parts of our lives for however long because of work, it is daunting to go into a place, we feel very new act, especially when we’ve been in a place where we feel extremely um you know, experienced and Exactly yeah, so the perfectionism of like if you are going to engage with your community and if you are going to engage your creativity and you’re going to go on a hike and you’re going to, you know, reclaim the other part of your life that isn’t work, be willing to do it badly

[00:42:38.22] spk_0:
because

[00:43:06.34] spk_1:
It’s that important, you have to be able to do it badly because you have to get through that sort of like new, unwieldy part. Um and it’s okay to say like I’m really new at this, I’m only going to hike for 15 minutes or I’m only going to sit at the trailhead and look at the hiking place and then I’m gonna go get back in my car and go home there. There’s no level of engaging with your non work life that is not going to be beneficial. There’s no, it’s not like you have to hike to the top of the mountain. I mean, this is part of the toxic productivity that’s been, you know, making this this bad scene this whole time, right, is that we feel like we have to um do everything the best the most, regardless of what else is going on.

[00:43:29.56] spk_0:
You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna start your physical fitness journey with a triathlon. You know, you’re gonna run around the block and in a week you’ll be able to run around the block twice, pardon me, or

[00:43:37.66] spk_1:
maybe just walk to the end of the block

[00:43:51.58] spk_0:
or whatever, however you start, right? But but starting and you’re saying, you know, your embrace the discomfort because it’ll become comfortable and you’ll get better at it. You know, you’re in a pattern now where you’re, you know, you’re like you said highly efficient, highly efficient at toxic behaviors.

[00:44:40.44] spk_1:
You’re really good at this and you can be really good at something else too. I mean I remember there was an interview with terry crews who is an actor and he’s very muscly and um, people always ask him, how do you get so buff? Like you always, and he said, look, the gym is my happy place. And so I can’t tell you a person who doesn’t really like the gym how to get like me. I look like this because I hang out at the gym all the time. It’s my favorite place. But he also says, you know, go take, if you really like something, take it to the gym with you. So if you really like romance novels or mysteries or something, go and go and take your mystery novel to the gym and just sit there, read your mystery novel and then go home and then, you know, you don’t have to pick up a weight. You don’t have to do a single thing. Just hang out there because it’s for a lot of people like the weight room at the gym even, especially it’s like a very new place. It’s pretty foreign. There’s a lot of traditions. There’s rules, You don’t really know what they are. Um, so climb acclimatizing yourself to a new place, you

[00:45:01.71] spk_0:
know?

[00:45:03.53] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:45:06.13] spk_0:
Alright leave us with with something inspirational, please marina,

[00:45:11.70] spk_1:
there’s been

[00:45:12.13] spk_0:
A lot of inspiration summit up some up 40 minutes as best you can.

[00:45:56.91] spk_1:
Well when we think about how much we as non profit workers on an individual level, on an organizational level and on a sector wide level have been able to achieve and and move the needle on with with how little we’re given if we made sure that we ourselves were properly resourced in order to do this transformative work. Imagine how much more could be accomplished by people who are showing up fully in their power to this mission work. I mean it’s incredible. And then also the thing I like to remind everyone in my trainings is that this is generational work. I have generations of people behind me, you know relatives and ancestors who have done their own mission work and I will have generations of people in front of me doing the mission work that they’re called to do and all I have to do is show up for my part my link in that chain

[00:46:15.19] spk_0:
marina, Martinez Bateman ceo. New coyote consulting. I have to ask why is it new coyote consulting. What is that?

[00:47:51.63] spk_1:
Its new coyote because I wanted a name that spoke to my ancestry which is Mesoamerican and uh and which spoke to my sort of like presence and the way I show up and the Aztec there’s an Aztec god way which means very old coyote and um I thought he’s um frequently gendered as a as a male but very also frequently gendered as non binary or female. So I’m non binary. It felt very like I felt a lot of kinship with with that and then um old very old coyote is a storyteller and he teaches through storytelling so that felt very appropriate to me as well. You know, he’s not didactic, he’s not teaching humans lessons or if he is ever teaching humans lessons, it’s in this very jokey sort of way. Um, he brings people along with him on journeys rather than sort of like telling them to go places. Um, and I uh, I also feel like in the context that I’m in, which is a very white context and a very colonizer context frequently a lot of people will call my work new, they’ll say that the things I’m doing are new, these new ideas, their new concepts and for me they’re not new. They’re very, very old. Um, but also new coyote is a transformer. He’s a trickster. So he, he becomes the thing that you need in the moment and I thought, well then we’re a new coyote, we’re not a very old coyote, we’re a brand new one. So that’s why I named us new coyote. Yeah,

[00:48:02.71] spk_0:
again marina Martinez Bateman Ceo at new coyote consulting marina, thank you very much you’re

[00:48:09.07] spk_1:
welcome. Thank you so much for having me on

[00:49:33.75] spk_0:
you’re welcome to and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of the 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10 next week increase data literacy across your nonprofit you see how all these data and tech topics are fit together. It’s all very highly produced here very highly. If you missed these things just don’t happen if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three D. But they go on to mention deeper and now they’ve got the offer, grab the listener offer at the landing page. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff 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 you’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great