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Nonprofit Radio for December 13, 2019: Zombie Loyalists

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My Guest:

Peter Shankman

Peter Shankman: Zombie Loyalists
Peter Shankman is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book “Zombie Loyalists” focuses on customer service; creating rabid fans who do your social media, marketing and PR for you. (Originally aired 12/19/14)

 

 

 

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[00:00:14.44] spk_2:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non

[00:00:36.83] spk_3:
profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d turn ex ophthalmic if I saw that you missed today’s show. Zombie Loyalists. Peter Shankman is a five times best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book, Zombie Loyalists, focuses on customer service, creating rabid fans who do your social media marketing and PR for you. This originally aired December 19th 2014. I like to play it once a year. It’s it’s really valuable. Great lessons in here on tony Stake to Thank You for 2019 were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software, The Nolly Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant. Martin for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Here’s Zombie Loyalists

[00:02:46.75] spk_4:
Peter Shankman is a well known and often quoted social media marketing and public relations strategist. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists. He wants you to create rabid fans who do your social media marketing and PR for you. He’s got super ideas and very valuable stories. I’m very glad Peter Shankman is with me in the studio. He’s the founder of Haro. Help, a reporter out connecting journalists with sources in under two years from starting it in his apartment. Horror was sending out 1500 media queries a week to more than 200,000 sources worldwide was acquired by Vocus in 2010. He’s the founder and CEO of the Geek Factory, a boutique social media, marketing and PR strategy firm in New York City. Peter is on NASA’s civilian Advisory Council. You’ll find him at Shenkman dot com, and he’s at Peter Shankman on Twitter. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists, using great service to create rabid fans. I’m very glad his book brings him to non profit radio and the studio Welcome, Peter. Good to be here, tony. Thanks Pleasure. U, um, live on the West side of Manhattan and you and you, there’s ah, there’s a pretty well known five star steakhouse. I’ll get Wolfgang’s not far from you, but you pass it to go to a different steakhouse. Direct Morton’s correct. Why is that

[00:03:42.22] spk_0:
more. I am a zombie loyalist to Morton’s. What does that mean? I love the service, the attention to detail, the quality, the sort of where everyone knows my name mentality. When I walk into that Morton’s or any Mortons around the world, they have a tremendous custom relationship management system. When I call one number in New York or anywhere in the world, it they know who I am by my cell phone. And, uh, I’m treated with just, you know, phenomenal. Uh uh. Happiness toe here for me and my wishes were granted is aware. I know we have it, eh? Happy hour, Holiday party coming up at Morton’s next couple days. And, uh, you know, as always, I forgot to call and make a reservation. You know, I called and yesterday and said, Hey, I need a chance to get a reservation for seven people. Um, you know, there’s a night at, uh, 7 p.m. Which is, you know, the week of the holiday party. And they looked and they said, Oh, well, and then I guess their computer system kicked in. Of

[00:03:50.26] spk_6:
course, Mr

[00:04:34.44] spk_0:
Shankar, not a problem. I’ll get the Florida, you know, have it. We’ll have a great booth for you. That about, um, you know, and well, uh, tell us names. The people attending, you know, you know, you know, they’re gonna have specialized menus for them and their names on it. They really they have, ah, really high level of service that they provide, Not just to me. That’s the beauty of it. You know, it’s one thing for everybody. Yeah, it’s one thing if they just provided to me, but they do that for everyone. And, um, that is huge because, you know, being able to call when a normal person makes reservation. And not that I’m special. I’m actually rather abnormal. But when a normal person makes a reservation and says No, Martin says, Okay, greater you celebrating anything? So, yeah, it’s my wife’s birthday. That’s always after anyone. So you know what? It’s my wife’s birthday. Great. What’s her name? And her name’s Megan. Whatever. And you you go in and they and you sit down on the on the menu. It is Happy birthday. Make it. And then Megan, whoever she happens to be well, in the next 45 minutes, you know, taking 50 selfies with her menu and that’ll go online. And when her friends, you know, want that same experience, they’re gonna go. Morton’s

[00:04:49.82] spk_4:
you say in the book, you get the customers you want by being beyond awesome to the customers you have. And that’s why I want to start with that Morton’s story, which is in the middle of the book. But they do it for everybody, and then they have the V. I. P. S as well. And there’s the terrific story of you tweeting tell that story. That’s a good story.

[00:05:09.16] spk_6:
It’s a good

[00:05:09.54] spk_0:
story. Stories. I was flying home from a day trip to Florida and was exhausted and starving and

[00:05:15.98] spk_4:
they trip meeting. You’re flying down

[00:05:48.08] spk_0:
down to 6 a.m. Lunch meeting flew back same day one of those one of those days, and I jokingly said, The tweet Hey, Morton’s, why don’t you meet me at Newark Airport when I land with a porterhouse in two hours? Ha ha ha ha ha. Um, you know, I said it the same way you’d say winter, Please stop snowing things like that. And I landed, uh, find my driver and said, Next, my driver is a is ah, waiter in a tuxedo with the Mortons bag. They saw my tweet. They put it together. They managed to bring me a ah, a steak and and, you know, as

[00:05:48.25] spk_6:
great of a

[00:07:24.94] spk_0:
story, is it is it that’s that’s It’s a great stunt and it’s a great story and it wasn’t staged. It was completely amazing. But you know, that’s not what they’re about. They’re not about delivering stakes to airports. They’re about making a great meal for you and treating you like world when you come in. And you know, if they just did that, if they just deliver the state of the airport but their quality and service sucked, you know, it wouldn’t be a story, you know, like they did for Peter. But, you know, my steak’s cold, you know? So what it really comes down to is the fact they do treat everyone like kings. And that’s that’s really, really important, because what winds up happening, you have a great experience of borns, and then you tell the world, you know Oh, yeah, great dinner last night. That was amazing. I would totally there again. And as we moved to this new world, where review sites are going away, and I don’t I don’t I need to go to yelp reviews and people I don’t know. You know, if they’re shills, whatever the case may be, I don’t know. Or trip Advisor. Same thing. I want people in my network quite trust and people in their network who they trust by default, I trust. So that’s gonna be that’s already happening automatically when I when I land in l. A and I type in steakhouse, Not me. I know I know where the steakhouse Donnelly, but if someone typed into Google Maps or Facebook Steak House in Los Angeles, you know they’ll see all the State Council’s on Google map. But if any of their friends have been to any of them, they’ll see those first. And if they had a good experience, only if the sentiment is positive, will they see those first. And that’s pretty amazing, because if you think about that, the simple act of tweeting at a photo Oh my God, thanks so much more to love this. That’s positive sentiment. That network knows that, And so if you’re looking for a steak house, you know, and your friend six months ago had that experience. Oh, my God. Amazing state. This is a great place. The sentiments will be there. And and And the network will know that network will show you that steakhouse because you trust

[00:07:26.34] spk_4:
your friend. And this is where we start to cultivate zombie loyalists. Exactly. Is through this awesome customer service of the customers you have. Say more about something.

[00:07:34.15] spk_0:
Yeah. I mean, you have so many companies out there who are trying to get the next greatest customer, You know, you see all the ads, the Facebook post. You know where 990 followers are? 10 are 1000. Follower gets a free gift. Well, that’s

[00:07:48.17] spk_6:
current

[00:07:55.66] spk_0:
saying, screw you to the original 990 followers who you had who were there since the beginning. We don’t care about you. We want that 1000. You know, that’s not cool. Um, the the companies who see their numbers rise and you see their fans increase in there. They’re, um um revenues go up. Are the ones who are nice to the customers they have. Hey, you know, customer 8 52 It was really nice of you to join us a couple months ago. How you know, how are you? We noticed that you posted on something about a, uh you know, your car broke down. Well, you know, we’re not in the car business, but, you know, you’re you’re two blocks from our our closest ah, outlet or whatever. And you know, once you if you need to come in, have a cup of coffee, will it use the phone? Whatever. You know, those little things that you could do that that really focusing the customers. You haven’t make the customers. You have the ones where the zombies who tell other customers have great your

[00:08:36.38] spk_4:
And this all applies to non profit, certainly as well.

[00:09:13.47] spk_0:
But even more south. Yeah. I mean, if you know, non profit, constant worry about howto make the most value of the dollar and how to keep the dollar stretching further and further. And ah, you know, you have this massive audience who has come to you who’s a non profit. Who said to you, You know we want to help Here we are volunteering our help and just simply treating them with the thanks that they deserve. Not just a simple Hey, thanks for doing it. but actually reaching out, asking what they want, asking how they like to get their information. Things like that will greatly increase in donations as well as, um, making them go out and tell everyone how awesome you are, letting them to your PR for you.

[00:09:17.54] spk_4:
And that’s what a zombie loyalist does. And this is for this. Could be donors could be volunteers in the organization who aren’t able to give a lot. But giving time is enormous,

[00:09:30.38] spk_0:
and, you know, if they have such a great time doing it, he’ll bring friends. As as zombies. Do you know zombies have one purpose in life? Really? Zombies have one purpose in life that’s defeat. It doesn’t matter how the Mets are doing. It doesn’t matter, you know, chance that they lost anyway. But it doesn’t matter how how anyone’s doing. You know what’s going on in the world economy. It doesn’t matter. What matters with Zombie is where they get their next meal because they feed and they have to infect more people. Otherwise they will die Zombie loyalists of the same thing. All they have to do is make sure that their custom they tell the world we all have that friend who does it. You know that one friend eats nothing but the olive garden because Oh, my God, Is greatest breadsticks everywhere, you know? And they will drag your ass the olive garden every single time they get that chance. That’s a zombie,

[00:10:04.54] spk_4:
loyalist. And you want them to do that for your non profit. And there’s a big advantage to being a smaller, smaller organization. You could be so much more high touching. We’re gonna talk about all that. We got the full hour with Peter Shankman. Gotta go away for a couple of minutes, stay with us.

[00:10:54.79] spk_3:
It’s time for a break. We have used the service’s of wegner-C.P.As for many years. Their service is excellent. The auditors provide clear directions and timetables. They’re professional and thorough, but also easy to work with. The answer questions promptly End quote. And that is from an HR professional in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Heavenly Hillsboro. That’s from a movie who can Ah, who can name that movie? Heavenly Hillsboro. Not to get off topic, though, but I just did. Do you need that kind of c p A support with clear directions and timetables. Easy to work with answer questions promptly. Professional and thorough. Wegner-C.P.As dot com Now back to Zombie loyalists

[00:10:59.87] spk_4:
Peter, it doesn’t take much Thio stand out in the customer service world does it

[00:11:09.02] spk_0:
really doesn’t, you know. And the reason for that is because we expect to be treated like crap. You know, I love this example. Whenever I gave speeches, I asked, I asked you in the audience, Who here has had a great flight recently, like at least one personal raise their hand. Okay, what made it great and without fail there. And, well, we took off on time and and I had the seat I was assigned, and we landed on time and like so you paid for a service. They delivered that service and you are over the freaking moon about it, like that’s the state that we’ve become. You know, that’s how bad customer service has been that you are just beyond thrilled that they did exactly what they said they were gonna do it. Nothing more.

[00:11:37.94] spk_4:
Less than 20 minutes in the post office line exam, and I’m ecstatic

[00:12:12.47] spk_0:
exactly. You know, it’s so we really are at a point where we only have to be one level above crap. I’m not even asking my client to be good. Just one level of crap. You know, if everyone else is crapping your one level above that, you’re gonna win. It’s my favorite. My favorite joke. Some the two guys were out in the woods hunting in the woods in the or just jog. It was the 1st 1 sees Ah, bear. And they see this barren bears raised up is about to strike, and the 1st 1 reaches down and tightens up his laces on his running shoes and the studio. Don’t be community. You can’t outrun a bear and just kind of need to understand how wrong. You know, I love that joke because it’s it’s so true. That’s the concept. You know, all you have to do is be just a little bit better than everyone else, and you’ll win the whole ball game.

[00:12:24.54] spk_4:
Now we have to set some things up internally in orderto have the structure in place to create the zombie loyalists.

[00:15:46.52] spk_0:
Yeah. I mean, you have a You have a ah company where the majority of people in your company are afraid to do anything outside the norm. You know, I mean, look at look at a cell phone company. You know, you call them. Could you have a problem, right? 18 T or T mobile? You call them that? Your problem? They’re actually the customer service will handle your caller. Actually judged and rewarded based on how quickly they can get you off the phone, Not on whether or not they fix your problem. How fast that how fast they can get you off the phone. Which means how many more calls again? Remember, I worked when I worked in America Online. We all had to do a day of customer service every month just to see what it was like. That was a brilliant idea. But you know, again, it says it was a system called Vantive for you to sign on and assumes you signed on. If you weren’t in a call, you know, that was tacked against you. If you’re in a call and it went over a certain amount of time, that was tacked against you. So the decks were stacked. Not in the favor. The customer. There are some companies out there who allow their customer service employees to simply be smarter about what they dio and do whatever it is they need to do to fix the problem. Um, you know, my favorite story about this Verizon Wireless I went overseas was in Dubai, and I landed to buy, and I turned my phone had gotten global roaming on my phone. Which 20 bucks for every 100 megabytes. Okay, so I land and I turn on my phone and it says, um, before I’m even off the plane, I get a text that you’ve used $200 in roaming charges. What the hell? You know, $300 by talking about the plan, wegner, Something’s up here. So I called Arise and a nice guy answer the phone. Oh, yeah. I mean, the first thing that was Yes, sir. You do have global roaming, but it doesn’t work in Dubai. Okay, well, that’s not really global. That’s more hemispherical Roaming, I think is the issue. And so he said, Well, look, I’m gonna be here for a week. I said, you know what? You have my credit card on file, Bill me like, I don’t even like 1000 bucks and let me have the phone for, like, a week and, you know, that, you know, 500 bucks and I’ll go over to gigs would just do something for me. Sorry, sir. I’m not authorized to do that. You can look. So what do I have? Well, you can pay $20.48 a megabyte. I’m like, I’m sorry. Seriously. Which equates essentially to be charged 2048 seconds. 3048 cents. For every I think the times for every four seconds of the video Gangnam style if I decided to watch my phone like this is pretty ridiculous. So I simply hung up, hung up on your eyes, and I went down the street to the Dubai. The Mall of the Emirates, which is the largest mall in the world, has a freakin ski slope in it. And I’m not joking. And as a ski slope in this mall and went to one of the 86 different electronic stores in this mall bought an international unlocked version of the same exact cell phone I have went next door to the local sim card store, bought a SIM card that gave me 20 gigabytes of data at 1000 minutes of talk for $40 I then put that in my phone because I it’s an android phone. I simply typed in my user name and password for Google and everything imported. And Verizon did not get a penny on that trip. Um, how easy would have been from Horizon to say, Okay, you know what? We’ll cut your brake. They still make a lot of money off me. And I would tell the world how great Verizon was to work with and how wonderfully how helpful they were. Instead, they guaranteed that I will never They will never make a penny from any international trip. And I take, what, 15 of them a year. Because now my cell phone, um, by international cell phone that I bought all I do is pop out the SIM card in my land wherever I am putting a new SIM card. So

[00:15:47.22] spk_4:
and you’re speaking and writing and telling bad

[00:16:15.23] spk_0:
jokes and your eyes. And every time I tell the story about variety, I make it a little worse. Apparently, Verizon tests out the durability of their phone by throwing them kittens. Read this or not, but you know, the concept that all they had to do all the energy was in power Mark, and it wasn’t Mark’s fault. Mark was a really nice guy, but he was not allowed to do that. He would get fired if you try to do a deal like that for me. And so it’s this concept, you know. The

[00:16:15.36] spk_6:
funny

[00:16:15.56] spk_0:
thing is, it comes down If you

[00:16:16.82] spk_6:
really

[00:16:50.24] spk_0:
want to go go down the road in terms of a public company like Verizon of where the issue is, you could even trace it to fiduciary responsibility because the fiduciary responsibility of any company CEO all the way down to the employee is to make money for the shareholders. Future responsibility means by not allowing me, they don’t allow in. Mark the customer service agent to to help me on and take a different tack is actually losing money. Too many CEOs think about the next quarter. Oh, we have to make our numbers this quarter. I’m fired companies in other countries to nothing with next quarter century, and they make a much bigger difference because the thing okay, what can we do now? That will have impact in the next 5 10 15 years, you know, and really implement the revenue that we have and an augment and companies Americans don’t know nothing about them. That’s a big problem.

[00:17:15.80] spk_4:
I’d buy a product line that has a lot of natural and recycled materials. Seventh generation and their, um, their tagline is that in our every decision, we must consider the impact on the next seven generations. It comes from an American Indian.

[00:17:21.38] spk_0:
It’s great. It’s a great line. I mean, just thinking about how much money would have made for me in the past three years over just just in my

[00:17:27.31] spk_4:
overseas, you’d be telling a story about like them about Morten like the one

[00:17:54.51] spk_0:
about a lot of people listen to me and they wegner for a time when you Googled roaming charges variety, wegner, Google Horizon, Roaming charges. My story about how I saved all this money really came up first because I did the math. And if I had not called Mark and bought my own cell phone and done this, I would have come home to a $31,000 cell phone bill and you damn over rising one damn thing about that up to bad. Sorry about the fine print

[00:17:56.40] spk_4:
and plus the employee who sold you the quote. International plan, right? I’m sure you told her. No way. I’m

[00:18:03.56] spk_0:
going to Canada and they’re going to buy. I’m assuming she didn’t know where to buy was she thought it was near Canada, but yeah,

[00:18:09.37] spk_4:
long story short. I couldn’t use it. All right, So employees have to be empowered. There’s to be. We have to be changing a thinking to the customer has to come first. The donor of the volunteer

[00:19:40.75] spk_0:
don’t volunteer, you get at the end of the day, where’s your money coming from? Look, if you’re not profit our Fortune 100 where’s the money coming from? You know, And if you we see it happening over and over again. We’re seeing what you’re seeing right now. Play out every single day with company uber uber. It’s so funny cause uber makes you know the value of $40 billion right now. But that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything. If people are running away in droves, which people are, there’s a whole delete your uber app movement hard. Oh God. Yet people are living. What’s the problem? Well, it’s several number one that uber is run by a bunch of guys who honor the bro code. The company was actually started by a guy who, in on business in business, insider said he started the company, get laid. His goal was to always a black car when he was leaving a restaurant to impress the girl he was with that he came out and said that And you see that culture run rampant throughout uber from their God mode, where they can see they actually create. There was, Ah, read this amendment visited center as well that they created a hookup page that showed or, ah, walk of shame Page that showed where women were leaving certain apartments like on weekends. And we’re leaving certain place on weekends, going back to their home. It was obvious that they, you know, some guy and I think they did that. And of course, just there their whole surge pricing mentality, which is, you know, two days ago there was, ah, a couple of the terrorists of the biggest Harris attacking in Sydney at that at that bakery, and Sydney Uber and Sydney instituted surge pricing for people trying to get out of harm’s way, you know, and and they later refund it.

[00:19:48.41] spk_6:
Oh, it was a computer

[00:20:07.46] spk_0:
glitch. You know, I’m sorry. You have a stop button. And you can when you see something happening like that, there has to be someone in the office. You know what? Not cool. We’re gonna take care of that and hit the stop button. And it was yet bad. Tons and tons and tons of bad publicity. You know, I was having an argument with one of my facebook page facebook dot com slash peter Shankman Because they said, Oh, you know, So what they don’t They don’t turn surge pricing don’t have enough cabs. They’re, you know, people can’t get home. I said, I’m pretty sure that the on Lee come, but I’m sure that no one had cab companies that I’m sure that there wasn’t anyone who had enough cars. They’re private cabs, uber’s whatever. Yet the Onley stories I read about cos screwing up during the event where uber not Joe’s Sydney cab company. You know, I didn’t see him screwing up because he didn’t turn on surge pricing. You gotta You gotta respect your customer after,

[00:20:40.16] spk_4:
as we’re ah training for that, then not only trying to change that mind ships well in in trying to change that mindset, rewards for custom for employees that do take, go to go the extra

[00:21:01.89] spk_0:
mile Well, first of all, if you give the employees the ability to do it to go the extra mile and understand they won’t get fired, you’re not gonna get in. Try always to tell every one of my employees you never get in trouble for spending a little extra money to try and keep a customer happy. You’ll get fired for not doing it. You know you’re fired for, not for seeing an opportunity to fix someone and not taking

[00:21:06.61] spk_4:
not doing everything that you could

[00:21:44.36] spk_0:
know. Ritz Carlton is famous for its current hires people not because whether they could fool the bed sheet but for how well they understand people. Because in Ritz Carlton’s mind, it’s much more important to be a people person and be able to be empathetic, and that it’s such a key word. Empathy is just so so sorely lacking. You know how many have called customer service? Yeah, you know, I have to have to change my flight. Might my My aunt just died. I really D’oh! Okay, great. That’s $200. I just want to go now. Earlier, You know, you show up at the airport, your bag is overweight by half a pound. That’s $25. I just can you just cut me some slack note. So empathy and giving the custard, giving the employees the ability to understand that the customer that sometimes you can make exceptions and it is okay to make changes.

[00:21:51.27] spk_4:
And this is where a smaller organization

[00:21:53.57] spk_6:
has huge advantage. It’s easier to change.

[00:22:01.54] spk_0:
That’s what kills me. You know, I go to these try to frequent small businesses when I can. I get you something small businesses and they won’t they act like large businesses, you know, in the respect that they

[00:22:06.46] spk_6:
don’t have.

[00:22:06.91] spk_4:
Ah, they want to be respected almost

[00:22:46.53] spk_0:
don’t have, like, a 6 6000 page code that they have to adhere to. They can simply, uh, do something on the fly. And yet, for whatever reason, they won’t do it. And it’s the most frustrating things. And look, guys, you’re acting like a big your act like Mega Lo Mart here, you know, and you’re not Mega Lo Mart, and you’re just Joe’s House of Stationary whatever it is and, you know, not be able to help me. You’re pretty much killing yourself because you don’t have 85 billion customers that come to the door after me, you know? But I have a pretty big network. And for a small business, two get killed socially, as social becomes more and more what? How we communicate, You know, it’s just craziness.

[00:22:56.18] spk_4:
You know, we’re pretty much in a world, I think, where something almost hasn’t happened to you. Unless unless you share

[00:23:41.18] spk_0:
it e joke that, you know, if I can take a selfie. Was I really there? Um but it’s true, You know, we do live in a world where, you know, I remember God 10 years ago. Maybe not even not even 10 years ago. I was one of the first people have a phone in my camera, you know, And it was like, 24. That’s why you can ring my phone. Right? And it was like a I think a 0.8 megapixels. You know, it looked like I was taking a picture with a potato, but it was It was this. I remember it was 2002 and I was in Chase Bank and there was a woman arguing with the teller and I pulled out my video. You know, it was the crappiest video you ever seen. I pulled it out and I said, You know, I started recording and the woman behind the cat woman, the kind I was doing The woman behind the counter was talking to the customs, saying, You do not speak to me that way. You get out of this bank right now and the country was saying, I just wanted my balance, and you and your manager comes over. I

[00:23:54.71] spk_6:
get this whole thing

[00:23:55.15] spk_0:
on my little crappy three g Motorola folk phone, and I remember I posted online and Gawker picks it up. I gave him E mail. The headline I put on my block was, you know, chase where the right relationship is at. Go out yourself, you know? And it was It just got tons of play and the Gawker picked it up. It went everywhere, totally viral. So

[00:24:11.97] spk_6:
it’s one of those things here, just like, you know, this is in

[00:25:02.50] spk_0:
2002. It’s 12 years later. How the hell can you assume that nothing is being that you’re not being recorded. You know, I I ever blowing I sneezed a couple weeks ago and, uh ah, not to get too graphic here, but I needed a tissue big time after I was done season. I remember going through my pockets looking for desperate, looking for tissue, looking around, making sure it wasn’t on camera somewhere that someone didn’t grab that for the next viral sensation. You know, I got I went to high school with a block from here, right? If the amount of cameras that are in Lincoln Center today were there in 1989 90 90 be having this conversation entirely, I’d be having a conversation behind bulletproof for myself. Yeah, so you know, you’d be you’d be talking to. You have to get special clearance to visit me probie at the Super Max in Colorado. It’s one of those things that you just like. My kid, who’s who’s almost two years old now is gonna grow up with absolutely no expectation of privacy the same way that we grew up with an expectation of privacy. And I’m thankful for that because she will make a lot less stupid moves, you know? I mean God, The things that I thought, you know, in in high school I thought

[00:25:18.88] spk_6:
the stupid isn’t the

[00:25:24.18] spk_0:
world. Thank God there wasn’t a way for me to broadcast that to the world in real time. Thank God

[00:25:32.01] spk_4:
creating these zombie loyalists. And we’ve got to change some. We gotta change culture and thinking and reward systems. Let’s go back to the cost of all this. Why is this a better investment than trying to just focus on new donors?

[00:25:39.30] spk_0:
I I love this analogy and give your fun analogy lets

[00:25:42.56] spk_6:
him

[00:26:18.95] spk_0:
in a bar. And there’s a very cute girl across the across the park and catch my eye catcher. I go up to a go. You know, you don’t know me. I’m amazing in bed. You should finish your drink right now. Come home. Let’s get it on. I’m gonna impress. I’m that good Chancellor should get throw a drink in my face. Go back talking to her friends. I’ve done a lot of research on this. That’s probably now let’s assume let’s assume an alternate world. I’m sitting there on my phone. I’m just playing like, you know, some no boards are frantically and she’s over there talking to friends, one of her friends. Holy crap, That’s

[00:26:19.53] spk_6:
Peter Peter Shankman. I’ve heard him speak. He’s in this

[00:26:22.95] spk_0:
fantasy world. I’m single, too.

[00:26:27.13] spk_6:
He I think he’s single and he’s having the amazing guy I know. He has a cat you ever get. You should totally go talk to

[00:26:48.71] spk_0:
him the very least. I’m getting this girl’s number. That’s PR, Okay. And what do we trust? More me with my fancy suit collar going over the seventies. Leaders in Hi, I’m amazing. Or the girl saying, Hey, we’ve been friends since their grade. I’m recommending that guy. You should trust me on this. Obviously, that that’s where good customer service comes into play. And that’s where corporate culture comes into play. Because if I have a great experience with you and at your company, I’m gonna tell my friend when they’re looking and I will stake my personal reputation. And there’s nothing stronger

[00:26:58.24] spk_4:
than that. And these are the people who want to breed as his eyes

[00:27:00.65] spk_0:
are stronger than advertising stronger the marketing

[00:27:03.15] spk_4:
and they’re gonna share. People want to share

[00:27:10.38] spk_0:
that. Think about the Internet runs on two things. It runs on drama, drama and bragging bragging and drama. And if you if you need any proof of that, you go and look at all the hashtags with crap that’s happened, you know, bad customer service, bad, whatever. But

[00:27:19.84] spk_6:
then look at all

[00:27:28.34] spk_0:
the good hash tags. You know, when our flight’s delayed for three hours and we lose our seat Oh, my God. I hate this airline. The worst A line ever. But when we get upgraded right hashtag

[00:27:29.24] spk_6:
first class bitches or

[00:27:30.13] spk_0:
whatever it is, you know, like that

[00:27:31.80] spk_6:
on the whole, because we love to

[00:27:33.27] spk_0:
share its on Lee a great experience if we could tell the world. And it’s only a bad experience if we could make everyone else miserable about it as well.

[00:29:23.57] spk_3:
We need to take a break. Cougar Mountain software designed from the bottom up for nonprofits, that means for you that it has what nonprofits need, what you’re looking for. Like fund accounting. Critical. Um, no more spreadsheets for your restricted funds. Fraud prevention, outstanding customer service. You will get a free 60 day trial on a listener landing page at now. It’s time for tony steak too. And I thank you for all your support in 2019 as we wind the year down. Um, lots of listeners. Grateful. Grateful for all the 13,000 plus listeners week after week. Um, those podcast listeners. Thank you so much. If you listen live. I’m grateful to you. You know, I’m always sending the live love as well as the podcast. Pleasantries, Of course. Thank you. Uh, even when there’s just six or eight or 10 people listening live, it gives me energy. I love knowing that there are a couple of people scattered throughout the world. Doesn’t matter, really? Doesn’t matter. Listening live. I’m grateful for that. Thank you. Tuning in life. Um, and maybe there are other ways that we’re connected. If it’s ah, through the Facebook page. Twitter, um, linked in. Nah, there’s not too much unlinked in too much activity on linked in some. But however it is you’re connected. Oh, the inbox. If you’re getting the insider alerts, thank you for that. Every Thursday. Getting those. Thank you. However, it is your with non profit radio supporting non profit radio. I thank you very much. And that is Tony’s Take two. Let’s continue with Peter Shankman and Zombie loyalists.

[00:29:33.82] spk_4:
Peter, you have a golden rule of social media that that a good number of customers like to share and people are gonna keep doing

[00:30:18.21] spk_0:
it. People will always share. Um, again, it goes back to the concept that if you create great stuff, people want to share it because people like to be associated with good things. If you create bad stuff and my stuff, I could meet. I mean anything from, like, a bad experience, too, that content people not only won’t share that, but we go out of their way to tell people how terrible you are. Yeah, um, you know, how many times have you seen companies fail horribly? Uh, you know, after major disasters when companies were tweeting, um, you know, completely unrelated things after after random school shooting? No, it was after the shooting at the theater in Aurora, Colorado. The Dark knight, the tweets.

[00:30:19.13] spk_6:
Hey, shooter’s, what’s your plans for this

[00:31:12.47] spk_0:
weekend? You know, and I’m just going, really, you know, But of course, the thing was, the thing was retweeted millions of times, you know, with a sort of shame on the way. So wait, We’re society. Like I said earlier, that loves to share. When, When great things happen to us but loves to tell the world when we’re miserable, because we’re only truly miserable when you make everyone else miserable. Um, it’s funny, you mentioned, Ah, generosity. Siri’s the one of my favorite stories, which goes to sort of a bigger picture of culture and somehow when you’re just doing your job, because that’s what you’re supposed to do your job. But you don’t realize there are ways to get around that. I I listened to your podcast, among others, when I’m running through Central Park on Dhe, more like if you know my body type more like lumbering through Central Park. But I get there. I’m an iron man, I have that. And, ah, so I go to Central Park and it’s super early in the morning cause I usually have meetings and I don’t run fast. I run like I really don’t run fast, but But as I’m running,

[00:31:16.56] spk_4:
but let’s give you the credit that you have done a bunch of iron Man,

[00:33:02.26] spk_0:
I have try. I do. I do it, you know. My mother tells me that I just have very poor judgment in terms of what sports I should do But, um, on the flip side, I’m also a skydiver, which is with my weight is awesome. I fall better than anyone, but so I’m running through Central Park. Last year it was February, February of 13 and 14 of this year. And, um, it was around 4 45 in the morning because I had a Canadian meeting and have you 10 miles. So four foot of the morning running about, but hopping around 1979 88th Street on the east side in the park and a cop pulls me over. And what you doing? Look at him. You know, I’m wearing black spandex. I have had it’s five degrees. I don’t want you playing checkers, you know, like I’m running and it’s like, Okay, can you stop running? I’m like, OK, does that give the park’s closed? No, it’s not. Look, I’m in it. Look around. There are other people who know part doesn’t open this exam like he’s ago. Would you have any idea? And you’re like, No, I’m running because what you name, I’m like, seriously, I’m writing you a summit. I’m like you ready? Made some. It’s for exercising. I just want to clarify that you’re writing. And sure enough, the guy wrote me a summons for exercising in Central Park before it opened. The charge was breaking the violating curfew. You know, I’m like I get the concept. The curfew is to keep people out after 2 a.m. It’s not to prevent them going in early to exercise, to be healthy. I’m like, I’m not carrying a six pack. I’m not drinking a big gulp. I’m not smoking. I mean, I’m doing something healthy, and you’re writing me a summons for it. Um, I said I’m gonna have a field day with this. I said I have some fathers. This will be a lot of fun. I’m not. You know, you’re just doing your job Serve even though you have the discretion not to. But Okay, so I go back home, take a picture of me, take it, e mail it to a friend of mine in New York Post front page New York Post next day. No running from this ticket. York Times covered it. Runner’s world covered. I mean, I went everywhere. Gawker covered it, you know? And my

[00:33:06.66] spk_6:
whole thing was

[00:33:10.15] spk_0:
just like, Dude, you have discretion. Look, at me. You know, I’m not.

[00:33:10.85] spk_6:
I’m not even going super fast, for God’s sake.

[00:33:13.39] spk_0:
I’m just just trying to exercise here, you know? And

[00:33:16.08] spk_6:
of course, I went

[00:33:16.47] spk_0:
to court, and I beat it. But how

[00:33:18.25] spk_6:
much money

[00:33:21.19] spk_0:
they cost the city for me to go to court fight this thing. You know, every employee you have to give your employees the power of discretion. The power of empathy to make their own decisions. If you go by the book, bad things will happen.

[00:33:28.71] spk_4:
And again, small shops. So much easier to do. Yep. Flatline flat organizations.

[00:33:58.10] spk_0:
I worked with a nonprofit animal rescue non profit. A friend of mine was a skydiver and shut him out. I can’t, but But there’s a friend of mine, Scott, ever. And she was killed in a base jump several years ago, and her husband asked to donate her memory to this non profit. So I set him a check, and about three months later, I get a coffee table book of mail and I was living by myself. The time I didn’t own a coffee table. It was, you know, more money to spend on my flat screen. And I remember I call I look at this coffee table guy throw I throw in the corner. I look at it over next couple days. It pisses me off on how much How much of my donation did it cost to print? Melon produced this book to me, and so I called them up. Well, sure. We believe most of our donors are older, and I prefer to get a print version as opposed to, like digital. You know where they throw it away, Like you don’t traditionally, but Okay, um, I’m like, So So you’ve asked your you’ve done surveys in. You’ve asked, You

[00:34:23.15] spk_6:
know, we just assume the

[00:35:03.43] spk_0:
most number older. I’m like, Okay, I open my mouth lineup joining the board and spent the next year interviewing customers, interviewing every current and past donor about how they like to get their information and shock of shocks. 94% said online. And so over the following year, we launched Facebook page, Twitter page. Um uh flicker account, YouTube, everything. PS the following year for that, donations went up 37% in one year in that economies, right ran away tonight. Donations went up 37% in one year, and they saved over $500,000 in printing mammalian reproduction. Imagine going to your boss, boss. Revenues up 37%. And we saved 1/2 $1,000,000 in Boston about your really good beer. You know, all they had to do was listen to their audience, be relevant to the audience you have, and they will tell you what they

[00:35:09.51] spk_4:
want. We have tons of tools for segment.

[00:35:11.34] spk_0:
Oh, my God.

[00:35:11.93] spk_4:
You gotta listen to what segment you want. People want to be.

[00:35:31.37] spk_0:
You know, someone someone asked me today. You know what? What’s the best way? I knew nothing about their company. What’s the best social media outlet for me to be on? Should be on Twitter ship on Facebook, I said, I’ll answer that question. If you can answer this This this question to ask you is my favorite type of cheese Gouda or the number six. I understand that’s not a real question. Look, neither is yours like I can’t tell you where the best place to be your audience can. I said, Go ask your audience. Believe me, they will tell you there’s a gas station. The Midwest come and go. I love the name K u M and G O. And there, Tad,

[00:35:47.60] spk_4:
you can read more about

[00:35:48.35] spk_0:
the tagline is always something extra. I

[00:35:51.22] spk_6:
mean, come on, the jokes just

[00:35:52.39] spk_0:
right sells for God’s sake. But

[00:35:54.88] spk_6:
then I’ll take themselves too seriously, that ghost knowing the name of

[00:36:06.27] spk_0:
the company gas station. And I remember there in Iowa and I went to visit a friend and I went I was like, You’ve got to get a photo of you in front of coming goes And the

[00:36:08.77] spk_6:
beauty of this is that some of their employees

[00:36:09.59] spk_0:
actually look at their customers when they’re on their phones. In the stores

[00:36:13.27] spk_6:
go. You know what you use Twitter or Facebook?

[00:36:15.25] spk_0:
And they say,

[00:36:19.93] spk_6:
Oh, you and the record that information and they know it. Customers will give you so much info if you just ask them, because then they feel

[00:36:42.42] spk_0:
invested. They feel invest in your company. They feel like they that you took the time to listen to their non profit requests or their their their questions. And they feel like they’re radio for Harrow. Every month we have a one question Harrow survey, you know, heroin question survey, and it would get like 1000 people respond. I’d spend the entire weekend emailing Everyone responded, thanking them personally and took my entire weekend. But it was great because I would wind up happening. Is that you know, if we took their advice and launch it on Monday with the new thing?

[00:36:45.69] spk_6:
Oh, my God. How did this They took my advice?

[00:36:48.15] spk_0:
Yeah, was your advice to 800 other people Advice. But we

[00:36:51.82] spk_6:
took it and it just

[00:36:52.67] spk_0:
It just made them so much more loyal. And they tell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people we get in. There were days. I got three days where I was in Temple one morning, the Garment Center synagogue and my phone. I feel like phone getting really hot in my pocket, which is not normal. And I start hurting. I look at it. It almost fired. It had frozen because we were mentioned in Seth Gordon’s morning blogged, and at that time, I was getting emails. Every time we get a new subscriber and the phone actually frozen and was locked and and was like overheating, I t at the battery and reset the entire phone because we’ve got so many new 14,000 subscribers in, like, three hours.

[00:37:26.40] spk_4:
I’ve seen some scene you say. Excuse me? You say that customer service is the new advertising, marketing and PR. Yeah, it

[00:37:59.32] spk_0:
really is. Well again. You know, if we’re moving into that world where so imagine a lava lamp. And I love that. I can use this now. Imagine a lava lamp. A lava lamp has water, oil and a heat source. Right. Heat source heats the oil. The oil flows with water. It makes pretty colors. I’ve heard it looks really good when you’re high. Now I’ve heard. Now imagine if crystals imagine if you’re, uh, everyone you meet in your network, okay? Is a drop of oil. The water is your network. And

[00:38:00.84] spk_6:
what is your world? Everyone you meet in your

[00:38:19.92] spk_0:
network from from the guy you’re sitting doing the radio interview with to the guy who serves you ice creams, local deli to the guy who does your dry cleaning to your girlfriend to your wife to not same time to your kids. Second grade teacher to your second grade teacher years ago. Everyone you meet is in your network, You know, right now, when Facebook first started I would see the same weight

[00:38:26.85] spk_4:
from a kid. I was in high school, his post with the same weight as like my current girlfriend, which is ridiculous. I don’t need to know about everything.

[00:38:55.92] spk_0:
My friend from junior high school’s doing even talking kid In 15 years, Facebook’s getting a lot smarter as Google. Now I see the people I communicate with the most okay, and if I if I reach out and connect with new people, they start rising in my feet and my stream. If I don’t they fall. It’s just like a lava lamp. Every person you connect with is a drop of oil. That heat source at the bottom that’s rising. Raising or lowering those drops of oil is relevance. So imagine the heat sources relevance. And the more I interact with someone, the more the higher they go

[00:38:56.87] spk_4:
in my network in the more I see of them, the more trust level

[00:38:58.84] spk_0:
there is. When I’m at a bar and I meet someone in a restaurant or conference, I meet someone. I don’t need

[00:39:05.32] spk_4:
to connect them. I don’t need to go on Facebook. Friend request

[00:39:08.37] spk_6:
that, you know, awkward

[00:39:09.04] spk_0:
friend requesting is when you stop to think that last

[00:39:10.41] spk_6:
time my

[00:39:10.56] spk_0:
friend requested some of the real world was second grade. Will you be my friend? My daughter’s doing that because, you know, it’s like

[00:39:15.91] spk_6:
cat Will you be my

[00:39:16.85] spk_0:
friend? Kind of. The captain will be here,

[00:39:20.10] spk_6:
but you know, it’s this awkward thing. Who the hell friend Request someone. If I hang out with

[00:40:09.71] spk_0:
you the bar and we connect again and we talk and we go out of dinner and we’re having a good time. We’re friends. I don’t need to first request that you, you know, that’s going away. Friending following liking and fanning is all going away. What will interact is the actual connection. So if I meet with you and I have a good time with you and we talk again if I use your business, if I go to your non profit, if I donate, if I volunteer, whatever network knows that the more I do that, the more interact with you. The more you have the right to market to me and the more you will be at the top of my stream in the more I will see information about you, the less I will have Thio search for you. But if you do something stupid or we’re no longer friends Yeah, you’re gonna fade. I don’t unfriend. You just disappear. Unfriending is also awkward. I dated a woman. We broke up. It was nine months after we broke up. Neither of us want friend, the other one, because it’s just awkward. I woke up in front of me, but you know the concept of not having to do that of just, you know? Okay, I haven’t talked in a while. I don’t see

[00:40:25.45] spk_4:
your post anymore. It’s the real world. And if you’re not feeding zombie loyalists, they can start to defect. No question about it. I want to spend a little time on. If you’re not talking to them, giving them what they want,

[00:40:27.55] spk_0:
talking about their information, helping them out, they will gladly go somewhere else to someone who is. You know, if I have a great experience of the restaurant every week for three years and then

[00:40:37.25] spk_6:
all of a sudden overtime,

[00:40:37.67] spk_4:
I’m noticing less unless that restaurant’s doing less and less

[00:40:49.65] spk_0:
to ah, take care of me, you know, and maybe management’s change. And I don’t feel that you know I’m ripe for being infected by another company. I’m right for someone else to come. You know, Peter, because if I tweet something Wow, I can’t believe I have to wait 40 minutes for a table that didn’t used to be like that. If if someone else is smart restaurant, they’re following me, and they’re gonna great. You

[00:40:57.17] spk_6:
know, if there’s no Wait, no, wait over here. Why don’t you come to black storms

[00:40:59.58] spk_4:
will give you a free

[00:41:04.21] spk_0:
drink, you know, you know, and that right there, that’s first sign of infection. And I might become infected by another by another company becomes on the little us

[00:41:34.71] spk_4:
for them. And so let’s take. You have a lot of good examples. Let’s take a one on one situation. How can we start to cure that? The simple act of realizing following your customer’s understanding when they’re not happy on fixing the situation before it escalates, you can contain a small outbreak, a small outbreaks, well, viral outbreak. You can contain that by getting the right people finding out what the problem is getting into one room, fixing their problem, healing them. You have a good united story right back When was Continental?

[00:41:51.51] spk_0:
I was, Ah, frequent flier and booked a trip to Paris on Dhe was very angry because they charged me $400 looking for you. I remember what it was. And, uh, I call the CEO. I just just for the hell of it. I’m like, I’m

[00:41:54.09] spk_6:
gonna I wrote a letter and email before Social, right? Ryan e mailed the CEO like this. Ridiculous. I’m free,

[00:42:33.06] spk_0:
like, 30 minutes on my phone rings. Hello, Peter, Please hold for Larry Kellman, CEO of Coming little. And I’m like, Oh, crap, you know, and get on the phone. He’s like, Peter, I did. Miss Jackman radio started these fees of their new um, we sent that note. I’m getting it and see it. We’re gonna wave them for you, But you have any more problems, you know, feel free to call me and I end up the phones the next 40 minutes, sort of staring at it like holy crab Larry killed on the CEO of United Airlines just called me and, uh, talk to me, and it was like it was like God coming down and say you now have the power to levitate your cat. It was just ridiculous. And so, you know, I have been faithful to Continental and now united ever since. On Dhe. They continue to treat me with respect and do great things, and they’re

[00:42:40.40] spk_6:
they’re improving. They were

[00:42:41.25] spk_0:
getting a lot of crap over the past several years, and there really are starting to approve. It’s nice to see

[00:42:45.01] spk_4:
and not only, of course, your own loyalty, but you’re

[00:42:47.19] spk_0:
my God. I

[00:42:47.98] spk_4:
was only loyalist for them and how many times how much it’s unquantifiable

[00:42:52.59] spk_0:
attract so many friends to united. I’ve made so many friends. I mean, my father, you know, he only flashing at it now, which means he only drag. He dragged my mom on the Internet and I only drink my wife. You know, there’s a lot of lot of work that way.

[00:43:10.40] spk_4:
We gotta go away for a couple of minutes when we come back. Of course, Peter and I are gonna keep talking about his book comes out in January. Zombie Loyalists,

[00:43:37.94] spk_3:
Time for our last break. Ever wonder why some nonprofits are always mentioned in the news? It’s because they work to build relationships with journalists who matter to them, turn to Communications can help do that for you. They are former journalists. They specialize in helping nonprofits build meaningful media relationships that lead to great coverage. They’re a turn hyphen to dot CEO. We’ve got butt loads. More time for zombie loyalists.

[00:43:44.04] spk_4:
You have some examples of zombie loyalist leaving and mass like dominoes. Netflix. They’re both They’re both in the book. So if so one leaving if you know you’re gonna start the cure One leaving?

[00:44:13.48] spk_0:
Yeah. And that’s the thing. You know, the little expand beauty, the Internet with the hashtag, everything like that. It doesn’t take a long time for those things. Just blow up in your face. And you know, the other day everyone’s a Twitter is responsible for us losing another non you’re responsible for using, you know, And if your product isn’t great and you’re your actions, don’t speak well of who you are. Then there’s no reason your customers should stay with you, you know? And it was l Social media is really hurting. I know you’re hurting yourself. The only difference is that social media makes it easier for the world to know.

[00:44:29.12] spk_4:
Yeah, they’re just telling the story. Dominoes and Netflix are good example because they they bounce back. They took responsibility and

[00:45:01.77] spk_0:
they both owned the dominoes, came out and said, You know what? You’re right. Our pizza and we do have a problem. We’re gonna fix this and they spent millions fixing it. And sure enough, they’re back with a vengeance. Now, I may or may not even have ordered them around in a while, and I live in New York City. That’s that’s a That’s a sacrilege. But you know, I have the app on my phone from oversea. No traveling somewhere. I’ll be in Sheboygan or whatever. And you know what? Do you get it 11. 30 at night when you’re flights, Lady land Dhamma? Um, which reminds me I should probably flip side. Look at someone like Netflix. They also were screwed up. You know, they were losing that. Tried to switch between the two. They came up with a new name and it was so gross and public. Oh, man. Again, you’re watching the same thing happen with uber right now. Seems to be really interesting to see if they’re able to repair themselves.

[00:45:16.67] spk_4:
Listening is important, but both those both those two examples, they listen to their customers.

[00:45:21.49] spk_6:
Think there’s a

[00:45:46.06] spk_0:
problem with listening because everyone’s been saying, Listen, listen, listen for months and years and years and years now, But, you know, no one ever says that you have to do more than just listen. Listen, actually follow up. Yeah, it’s one thing to listen. You know, I used to having my wife. I could sit there and listen to her for hours, you know? But I don’t actually say anything back. She’s just smack me, you know, and go to the other room. And so you really have to. It’s a two way street. Listening is great, but you respond. And look, I think it’s that further Twitter so great, because someone was complaining on Twitter and we went online. We we saw

[00:45:49.60] spk_6:
the complaint that we fixed their problem and gazes. How about if the

[00:46:17.14] spk_0:
problem don’t exist in the first place? You know, because the great thing about Twitter is that you have people complain on Twitter. The bad thing about it is there, complaining about you on Twitter. So it’s like, What if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? What if What if you empowered your front desk clerk to fix the problem so that I didn’t have to tweet hurts is my favorite story about all this, huh? I used to rent from Hertz religiously. Um, and then I went to Ah, Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport has passed April. And I gave it, was giving a speech and go, Oh, my name is supposed be on the board, you know, second car, and it

[00:46:21.72] spk_6:
wasn’t Okay.

[00:46:22.52] spk_0:
What happened? I got upstairs. I wait 40 minutes on the VP line. Um, after 40 minutes, they finally said, you know, there’s Ah, uh, only one guy here. A lot of people might have. Better chance we go to the regular line, okay. Probably told us that a little earlier. The regular and spend 45 minutes wait in the regular line. It’s now been.

[00:46:39.15] spk_4:
Are you tweeting while this is happening?

[00:47:15.85] spk_0:
Well, I didn’t know I was actually not only tweeting I had enough time to create a mean that should give you some idea of how long I was online with myself. I mean, I get it to the counter, how I can help you. Yeah, I was downstairs. The VP doesn’t tony. Oh, you’ll be a preservation room upstairs. Yeah. Okay. Let’s let’s put a pin in that. They just sent me up here, like right? They have to help you. Well, it’s not really They you guys for the same company. I mean, I could see the reservation on the screen. You you can help me. Sorry, sir. I can’t help. You have to be happy next. Like you just next to me. Okay, so if you know anything about Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix Um, all of the rental car coming through in the same place. Yeah. So I walked 50 feet.

[00:47:18.81] spk_4:
It’s a bus. Takes you to the big the big A civilian. Where? The role. Next week

[00:49:14.67] spk_0:
I walked 50 feet from the cesspool of filth in depravity That was hurts to the wonderful Zen Garden of Tranquility that was Avis. And in four minutes, I had a nicer, cheaper, more nicer, less expensive car given to a woman named Phyllis, who was 66 moved to Phoenix from Detroit with her husband for his asthma. I knew this because she told me. Um, she smiled at me. She brought her manager out and said, adds another refugee from Hertz and I said This happens a lot. They’re like, Yeah, I’m like, Wow, you think they have done something about it? And so on the way out in Avis, I thank them. I walked past hers. I shoot the casino, sort of. Look at the look of the beast. I get my Avis carnage at my hotel. I want to go to a hotel. I write a wonderful block post about my experience called Peter and hurts. And terrible. Horrible. No book could really bad customer experience. Do you have a kid? You find rewriting titles about your blood Post that you have to do with kids books. I do not like hurts, Sam. I am. And and, uh, I included in this block post the five things I’d rather do than ever, uh, rent from Hertz again. I think number three was It was Ah, ride a razor blade bust through a lemon juice waterfall. Um, with just, you know, and it’s a But of course, the next day hurts reaches out to me. J. Manuel is the head of North American customer service. That’s all you’re But I’m like, you know, we’d love to have up Nick. No, Like you’re not gonna fix the problem. Number 17 Avis car. I’m never going back to her. Number two through five people yesterday, five people interacted with all of whom had the chance to save me and keep me as a customer for life. A customer had been so happy, and I would have loved you. Five people blew it. So don’t waste your time trying to convert me back. You’re not going to. What you want to do is spend some of that energy retraining your staff to have empathy and to give them the ability and the empowerment to fix my problem when it happens. Because five people it takes every single employee to keep your company running. It takes one to kill it. Yeah, PS Avis reached out, um, to thank me personally. And ah, I am now just this ridiculously huge, loyal fan of Davis and always will be.

[00:49:23.79] spk_6:
You have a pretty

[00:49:28.14] spk_4:
touching story. But when you worked in a yogurt shop, you’re really young way. Have a couple minutes, tell it, tell it could stay.

[00:49:38.48] spk_0:
That was in the east side. Which again is yet another reason why I live in the West Side. Nothing good ever happens on Manhattan’s East Side. So I was. I was working and I can’t believe it’s yogurt, which was a store that I think back in the I c B Y. No, no TCB. Why was the country’s best yogurt the country’s I C B I. Why was a poor I

[00:49:49.81] spk_6:
can’t believe that you can Blame is

[00:49:58.44] spk_0:
not your yogurt with a poor attempt to capitalize on his TV. But I’m working at this store and I go every day and make the offer to clean the floors. I do.

[00:50:00.19] spk_6:
You know, a

[00:50:19.94] spk_0:
typical high school job. And, uh, it was during this summer and houses of people walking by It was like Second Avenue or something. And there were these brass poles that hung from, you know, there was awning, right? It’s only that there were the brass poles that held the awning up and they were dirty as hell, right? I’m sure they’ve never been polished ever. And

[00:50:20.09] spk_6:
I found I found some brass

[00:50:21.29] spk_0:
polish in the back, all right, but in the back and went after anyone outside, and I’m positive polishing the polls. My logic was, if the polls are shiny and people saw them. Maybe they come into the store. Maybe they’d wanna, you know, buy more screenplays and the manager came out.

[00:50:33.99] spk_6:
What the hell are you

[00:50:35.48] spk_0:
doing? I told him what I thought.

[00:50:36.78] spk_6:
I’d hate to think. Get inside.

[00:50:38.56] spk_0:
You know, there’s no customers in there. Okay? I’ll make sure the yogurt still pumping it full blast. And I quit. I just quit that job. I mean, I couldn’t even begin to understand why someone would invest. I mean, t own a franchise, bring 50 grand to at least to buy that franchise. Why wouldn’t he invest in the two seconds it took a little elbow grease to make the posting That might bring in more customers. What the hell And you know,

[00:51:01.06] spk_4:
But you’re not paid to think

[00:51:11.06] spk_0:
you’re not paid to think my favorite line. Yeah, um, I just I encourage if any kids are listening to teenagers. If you if you boss says that to you, quit, quit. I will hire you. Just quit. It’s probably the worst thing in the world that you could possibly do because you have customers who you have customers who every day can be helped by people who are paid to think, and that’s the ones you want. Here.

[00:51:22.03] spk_4:
We got to wrap up. Tell me what you love about the work you do.

[00:51:57.46] spk_0:
I get paid to talk. I mean, my God, that’s the same stuff I used to get in trouble for in high school. But on a bigger picture, what I really love about it is being able to open someone’s eyes and haven’t come back to me. Um, I run a series of masterminds called shank Mines Business masterminds shank minds dot com their daylong seminars around the country. And I had someone come to meet, you know, I took your advice about X y Z, and I started listening a little more. And I just got the largest retainer client I’ve ever had in my life by a factor of four. She goes, and I just can’t even thank you. Never said gorgeous bottle of tequila can’t even thank you enough. Oh, my God. Being able to help people, you know, at the end of the day where I have yet to find another planet suitable for life, I’m looking. So we’re all in this together. And if that’s the case, you know, why wouldn’t we want to help people just little bit more. You know, there really isn’t a need to be, as do she is, as we are as a society, we could probably all be a little nicer to each other, and you’d be surprised. A little help.

[00:52:15.83] spk_4:
The book is Zombie Loyalists, published by Pal Grave. McMillan comes out in January. You’ll find Peter at Shenkman dot com and on Twitter at Peter Shankman. Peter, Thank you so much. Pleasure

[00:52:27.05] spk_0:
was mine. Thank you.

[00:52:30.74] spk_3:
Next week I’m working on it. Trust me. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers. Wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Math and software The Nolly Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant. Montaigne for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO

[00:53:13.54] spk_2:
creative producers Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein be with me next week for non profit radio Big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for August 24, 2018: Your Website Redesign & Overmarketing

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My Guests:

Oren Levine, Lisa Ghisolf, & Emily Patterson: Your Website Redesign
It’s your step-by-step guide to a website makeover. Let’s include gaining stakeholder support, managing contractors and using data to drive better engagement. Our panel from the Nonprofit Technology Conference is Oren Levine with International Center for Journalists; Lisa Ghisolf with GizmoCreative Factory; and Emily Patterson, founder of BeeMeasure.

 

 

Amy Sample Ward: Overmarketing
Amy Sample WardIt drives Amy Sample Ward bananas. Let’s talk through her issues and preventative measures. She’s our social media contributor and the CEO of NTEN, Nonprofit Technology Network.

 

 

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Oh, hi, hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into a habit ood if you told me the dull idea that you missed today’s, show your website redesign it’s your step by step guide to a web site makeover let’s include gaining stakeholder support, managing contractors and using data to drive better engagement. Our panel from the non-profit technology conference is orin levine with international centre for journalists. Lisa gets off with gizmo creative factory and emily paterson, founder of be measure and over marketing it drives amy sample ward bananas let’s talk through her issues she’s, a social media contributor and the ceo of n ten non-profit technology network i told you to, i’m wagging my finger, responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuing capital p well, you see piela is guiding you beyond the numbers. Weather cps dot com bye tello’s durney credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tello’s on by text to give amglobal donations made easy text npr to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine here is your website, redesigned from non-profit technology conference. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference. We’re hosted by the non-profit technology network, coming to you from new orleans in the convention center. This interview, like all our eighteen ntcdinosaur views, is sponsored by network for good, easy to use donor-centric software for non-profits, i guess now are orin levine, lisa gets off and emily patterson, or in his director of innovation at the international centre for journalists. Lisa is founder and creative director at gizmo creative factory, and emily patterson is founder. Be measured that’s b e like the insect welcome buy-in. Your seminar topic is gourmet taste on a pizza budget. Tackling a website, we design for small non-profits, and i noticed that in your session description, use the word small three times. That’s perfect for non-profit radio because our twelve thousand listeners are in small and midsize non-profits. So i don’t have to admonish you or remind you even taylor, your comments too small and midsize or no, i don’t, because it’s, you’re right, it’s in your dna, it’s in the dna of your workshop topic, anyway, get carried away. Personal. Okay. What what are the challenges? Let’s, start down there with emily on the far end? What are the challenges with website redesign? Hyre? Definitely, i compare website redesigns, teo doing laundry, at least at my house. Okay, that it’s something where it feels like you put all this work into it, and then when you’re done well, there’s a whole new basket of laundry, and you need to start all over again. Yes, it’s, a project that it could take over here and then it’s. You know, another year passes by and it’s, time to start redesigning your website all over again, because technology and trends change so frequently, something you have constantly have to keep up with. What do you part of what you described way? Have you done your workshop yet, or it’s coming? No it’s tomorrow at one thirty and that’s a preparation for you? Okay, she’s like a batting range, putting, putting green. I don’t know too much. I don’t be doing sports analogies that that was a mistake i don’t anything about. I don’t know anything about either of those sports, football or tennis, so okay, what do you need? What do you need to have in place? Could we start with you? Lisa, can you could you adjust that one? What do you need to let in place? But think about before you embark on hiring someone to do it or doing it in house? What do you need to think about? You really have to think about weirder site is now and if it’s working for you and if you comptel, if it’s working for you, since we generally have analytics, but also are you getting the results that you want out of it? Are your constituents getting what they need out of it all of that kind of thing? And then it’s just improving upon what you have if its content or design usability, all of those things, okay? Or you want to add wear at the pre stage now, exactly. And this is in some ways where the small comes in, because one of things your back of your mind is, is what resource is do you have realistically to approach the project, which will probably be less resource is than you would love to have? Especially if you know you’re looking at other websites and say, oh, i’d love to have a website like name your large corporation here and because you’re not small non-profit you can’t. And in addition to the questions, lisa was passing one of the question, in fact, you need to ask is, you know, why do i have a website at all? You know, it’s really gets down to what am i doing? I’m murcott what’s the purpose why do i want people to visit me in the web but who’s coming to visit? What do i want them to do when they get there? And by being really careful about asking those questions that helps you match what you could do there to the limited budget you’re going toe? How do you overcome this stick of the orange? How do you overcome not knowing what could do? It is not your site is not doing it now, but it could, but but you don’t know. What it could do because you’re not already exploiting that. How do you feel that gap, that knowledge gap? Well, it’s ah, sort of a balance between what what it’s already doing, what it could do and what you wanted to do. And a lot of what we talked about in our own organization was trying to distill down of all of our laundry list or went backto the laundry analogy, a laundry list, emily’s basket wish list of all the things you wanted to do or could do or might do an ideal world. It’s really important to try to focus down on a few very, very critical things that you want the website to do. Focus your efforts there that both helps focus the minds of the people who are responsible for the website and then focusing your budget on a realistic set of goals you can achieve. So you might brainstorm and then and then and then focus exactly two realities. Okay, okay. See about something else you pledged to cover in your workshop. Hold your feet to the fire. Think about who to hire. Whether you need is who wants to take this one first? Whether. Whether you need expertise, we don’t necessarily have to go in line. One, two, three, three, two, one, which i don’t i don’t like that, but we can now for now anyway. There’s soup for now, but i’ll bring it up if we keep up with us whether whether you should a lot of small orcs probably do need help, right, then we’re gonna need some technical help. This website project definitely on dh speaking as a designer and developer, generally i come in when they don’t have those resource is on staff, or if those people are overwhelmed and speaking to lauren’s point, sometimes you can brainstorm with those people and find out exactly new things that you may not be aware of ways that you can integrate databases better, etcetera on improving communication. So, you know, so much of it is just what you’re re sources are and what you’re willing to put forth. So you’re often in the role of having tio make the expectations fit the budget. Yes, we can’t do that yet. I know you would love to, but if you want to do these other things that you said were playing top three priorities. And we can’t do this. You can’t have six priorities. Yeah, i’m a big believer in phase development, so if you could do it in six months, then we’ll do it in six months when it’s more feasible. Okay, how do you, uh, how do you message that reduction down, too of reality when it when you’re talking to the ceo executive director? Oh, gosh, i mean, i basically put it the exact same way that we can do this in six months. We can still make it happen with the budget that you have, but if you want to put more towards that, then of course, we could make plenty of things happening now, so okay, so bring it down. Arika money. Yes. Way to spread it out. You can have it, but it’s gonna take longer. Okay? In fact, one of the things we talked about in the session is sort of tricks. I learned i was emily start going out orders don’t get going out at one point, i want i want to head over to emily because she’s really the expert on how to manage to ceo seo, i’d better let her speak for that. I’m not going sequence. I don’t want you to continue, okay? My my one question is that one of the now now a great host, it’s time for a break, pursuing their newest paper is pursuing e-giving outlook it’s a roundup of all the fund-raising data that you need, they took the latest fund-raising reports boiled them down to the essentials into a concise content paper, plus there’s a video archive of the weapon, or that they did around this whole subject. It’s, an ensemble piece, paper and webinar both on the listener landing page. Tony dahna slash pursuant capital p for please now, back to your website redesign say something talk emily yeah, it was like they had a message to you, ceo message manage expectations about the top level uh, so i think one of the things that people don’t realize, especially at the top level around website redesigns is just yeah, how much, how much work and how much? And thus time and money is involved, and i think having teo yeah, message and set expectations around that is a big challenge buy-in vices that i’ve worked and now in a zoo independent consultant, my point of contact is typically, you know, you’re marketing director or your communications person who have, who handles all of communications and all of fund-raising so kind of a mid level person and being able to work with them to help them set expectations with there with their boss around the web website, because i think a lot of a lot of executive directors, you know, they’re a little bit detached from the project and, you know, they’re looking online, and they’re seeing all of this awesome stuff that other organizations or, you know, even for-profit companies are able to dio and they don’t realize, you know how much time and money needs to go into that. I’m going to pick up on on emily’s point, that becoming the position of being the non-profit that’s working with cos, you know, we were designing the web site, and one of the things we try to make sure of is we knew internally in our own organization who who is responsible to make the final decision so that, you know, family’s talking the communications director, she needs to know that when the communications director says we’re not going to do this, then hearst boss is not going to come down two weeks later and say, well, actually, we are let’s keep that anyway, because that’s, how you lied to basically blowing your budget and changing your plans. So it’s, very important as an organization is a nonprofit taking on the project to be clear in advance. Who are the decision makers? Who are the real stakeholders, who is going to make the decisions and who needs to stay out of the way? That’s perfect. So who should be let’s? Go to you family? Who should be part of this design team? I mean, i think having one clear a person who is ultimately one person is in charge. Yes, having been in the position where three people are making the decision, you know that doesn’t really work. So ultimately one person has to have the final say. So we are we are not doing this, but i think lots of people should be involved and be able to have their input because you will otherwise get in this situation. Where oranges years, months later i don’t know. How’d we get this? Yes or no? You roll that definitely derail your project. If all of a sudden you had someone pop up and say hey, what happened? Teo x y z i thought we were doing this, and then as a consultant to be the person who says, oh, sorry, that’s not in the budget, i think it’s so we need to think through in the beginning stages, who are the stakeholders? So but with the web, but at our website affects everybody. Lisa, how do we decide whose we can’t have too many people in the process? I already said that how do we decide who should be part of this process and who should be sidelined? A big part of that for me is design theory. Tio it’s basically starting off with talking to all of the people who are going to be using the site. So if it’s one person from the board, one person from the staff, one actual end user, et cetera, and they don’t necessarily have to be people who are involved in the decision making part of it. But fighting out how they actually use the site and how they would like to use the site and how it all fits into the overall organization makes a huge difference in the end result and how successful it is, okay or anything you want to add to this? Yeah. And that’s another reason why inside the organisation it helps to have somebody you can sort of manage some of those relationships internally in some ways be a bridge between the organization and the external party. I in some ways fulfill that role in my organization. I’m not responsible for the site, partially because i have experiences a web product manager, i’m ableto some ways mediate, i suppose, between some of the internal forces intentions and our external external vendors, and that makes life easier for them because they have fewer people to talk to, and we’re clear decision making it makes life easier for us and that we’re able to resolve some of our issues ideally before we start having to pay for it’s going to more detail on this, managing the contractors or contractor whatever that is doing the process. Emily, you’ve got something you want. I was going to say that i think having your communications director or someone at that level lead the project is a good call because they’re in a role where they khun both understand more closely, like the technical side of what we’ll need to go into this because they’re close enough. To the project, where they might be in a role where they’re updating the website. But then there also. Removed a little bit from it and more into the business side of things where they can understand the bigger picture and the business decisions and the important role that stakeholders play. Where i think if you put the website in the i t department and have that management come from that side, they might spend more time kind of focused on how is everything working exactly and ignore the business side of war on the into the code? Okay, okay, let’s, let’s talk more about managing the contract with doing this project for us out. How do you? How do you like to be managed? I don’t like to be managed, but well, essentially the biggest thing is always communication on both ends of it and setting expectations. Some people love to talk only via email, some are i need to get on the phone with you to make you understand this and it’s an inter generational thing, it’s just it’s. Everybody certainly has different feelings on that bye, setting up expectations of how often we’re going to talk, how we’re going to talk, how we’re going to be managing all of these assets, all of these things that makes things so much easier down the line, and you don’t have developers who disappear or gaps in knowledge where well, we have no idea where we’re hosted right now, which is a huge deal, because so many people don’t really know all their passwords and everything. So let’s, let’s move to something else that you were are going to cover tomorrow. Use of data, you said data tio dr better flew and better engagement. Who’s the everybody plays family, right? Emily, you’re got two thumbs pointing to you. Yes. Yeah. That’s. The data portion of it is really my specialty. Okay, so we’re going to talk a little bit about what the stakeholder they wrote to me in for the stakeholder section because i had had this other presentation that oren saw where it was about using data to kind of manage people’s personalities, but definitely needed to manage personnel. That was that was different. There was somewhere else. Yeah. Is that another? Another kind of interested? Okay, about how you can take the day that you collect and then use it. Tio appears the different sort of questions and issues that pop with your different stakeholders, but definitely before you embark on your redesigned some suggestions about, you know what sorts of data people should look at, a lot of it depends on what sorts of issues pop up with your various people who are involved. I really kind of feel like there’s kind of three basic types of issues that it will happen, you know, there’s the sort of person who doesn’t you might have it from your executive director or from another person, your organization, they don’t necessarily want to spend any money, so helping to make the case that we need to make this investment and we need to invest in better technology, you can use your your google analytics user testing surveys a variety of different things to get a good picture of what’s going on with your audience because who’s using your website is not necessarily reflecting the needs of the person using your website isn’t reflecting. You know the needs of the people in your audience, they’re not in your office, they’re not the same. Okay, what else about data? I’m so you also get the person who is has all the fun ideas, maybe, you know, reads a lot of things. Online about the latest trends, and we need to have this widget and that widget and helping them get a good perspective on, you know, what’s really going on with our users where we really having problems with our site right now that definitely need to be fixed in the in the redesign, you can use google analytics things like back-up they have a funnel feature to see you. Nowhere in your process is people you’re losing people dropping out, leaving your side, and then i love surveys and user testing as a way to hear from riel people how frustrating it is for them to use certain functions on your website. So who would you send those surveys to? Is that that cut across all your constituents metoo donors, board members, people who are engaged, engaged with your programs, receiving your service is all those people get survey like that? It depends. I’ve done ones on the website, which i think are nice. Google has ah, very low cost pop up sort of survey you may have seen them before that you can answer a couple questions, and then there’s typically kind of an open end response, which is a great source for people’s france. Ok, things are kind of questions. Do we ask? You can certainly ask about user rolls if you want. If it’s important for you and your your website to understand who’s used what constituency you would word it this way, but what constituency they fit into. We’re delivering services, etcetera. Okay. What? What else do you want to find out? That’s? Fine, but you could totally keep it super simple. And just as something like, you know, what brings you to the site today? Are you satisfied with your experience? If not, you know what recommendations do you have for us? Those three questions? I think we’ll get you a good picture of what’s going on. I mean, i’ve had guests on who say the best survey is, like, five fewer questions. Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay, so short is not problematic. It all it’s preferred? Yeah, especially if you you know, you’re kind of you’re popping up at them. They’re coming to your sight because they’re trying to do something else. So you want to keep the survey short because you’re kind of interrupting their experience? What else can wait? Talk about around this? You’re going, you’re going to feel ninety minutes tomorrow. Well, let me add another more point about data again. I’m coming at this from persuaded emily. So i thought the data when emily stop, okay or you can talk about data. Whenever we took a breath, i thought that was the end of the day that i could talk for days about data e talking about okay, just the one small point i wanted to make again back to managing expectations, it’s away to also manage expectations your stakeholders had about people who are wedded to. We’ve always had this section on the website i love this information is valuable and it’s useful to be able to go to analytic state and say twenty, people visited this page in the last five years. We don’t need it. Okay? Spell, myth it’s also a legacy pages that people are tied to strongly, but nobody else cares it’s also testing out processes to like, how long does it take someone to actually make a donation or to find the volunteer form or something like that? Does it take to long for them to get there and they get tired of it? And they just leave, or does the executive director have an idea that they love this particular feature, but no one’s clicking on it or they wantto accident actually everyone’s clicking on it. And we don’t know that unless we actually get true user data, so it helps it. A lot of scenarios are based in reality. You know, the numbers no like yeah. All right. Uh, okay, so we still have you just took it five or six minutes together. What else can we talk about on this topic website? Redesigned. You promised a step by step guide. We missed any step. Well, there’s, plenty of stuff. Cemetery. Alright, so name some names, something we haven’t talked about it content auditing of your current site. So actually, i’m going to cut you off there, like three or four sessions ago, we talked about content, name another one and another step way of linking on it that we haven’t talked a lot of sessions, police about post launch care and the whole yeah, because to me kind of the laundry analogy to but to me, a website is a living, breathing thing. And just because you’re done with it, because it launched does not mean that it is done. You need to keep feeding that for google to pay attention to and for your users to pay attention to. You also need to be aware of the ongoing costs of maintaining the site and keeping it secure. Ilsen and already you have a laundry. Now you wanna bring laundry and maybe a lot of what you want. I’m thinking more about sort of laundry all of a sudden, you know, chris created out of no where in your hamper, because what happens is part of the consequence. If you’ve been really successful, i think in managing expectations and limiting the scope of your redesign and coming up with a very clean site, that means there are going to be items that fell off the must have list that are now on the might have list or nice to have list, but after launch that’s an opportunity to sort of incrementally add in some of the things you may have wanted to do earlier as budget becomes available. That’s part of what lisa was saying about it’s, an ongoing project not only maintenance but ongoing improvement i remember, but i used to work at a large non-profit before people with sort of a background in your television program, you would say that keep iooking cleanse the website done, and i think least i mentioned at the beginning of our talk it’s never done that’s an ongoing lisa, do you see? Oh, our emily also commonalities around things that people want but don’t really need or, you know, durney generalities about things that they say is a top priority, but really it’s, not any any generalizations you could make around that. How about home paint sliders? I was just thinking that way, but everybody loves big sliders, right? No one clicks on them. They really don’t know. They don’t stop it to go back. So many guys attract many home page sliders. Yes, they get teo slide too, i think. Yeah, they and then they go to what they really want. Okay, i think people, maybe this is at least as different impressions. But i think there’s just too much emphasis and too many politics around the home page and what goes on on the home page because most sites people are coming in sideways, you get a lot of people coming in. From search, especially if your sight is well designed and has, you know, all the ceo best practices. People will come in to your bog post or to your content pages, and they’ll never see your home page. And so in projects i’ve been involved with, the home page gets very political and can stall things. Okay, that’s, old thinking that everybody’s coming directly to our our main, our main domain. And everybody wants a piece of it. Yes, there’s a lot of fighting about. Okay, so you are generalizing about okay, george, as i was going to bring this up before, but yeah. There’s a lot of oh, you know, my department needs to go on the home page. This is very important. Very important to this organization. All right, all right. What else could we were going to flush out? A little bit more? Got another couple minutes left. What one thing is, i was going to advise i came up with a bunch of sort of tips and tricks. If you’re inside the organizations that have ways too, to keep your stakeholders, i was going to use the word under control. But that’s a bit of a loaded term, but back to the prioritization, you know, prioritization is really critical, you know, making those choices about what you want to do and there’s been lots of cases in several projects i’ve worked on when you know your stakeholders might have a long list of things they want to do. And as somebody who’s running a project it’s really important to learn how to say pick one really focuses the mind i sway for, you’re not going to need that. That sort of thing to really help helps sort of focus the issue. Everybody gets one right, you could. You could name as many as you like, but you’re gonna get one priority. Okay, okay, yeah buy-in talking to clients. I used to say to people, you know, we can do this, you know, or we could do this and that response, wass, what can we do both. So i have learned to rephrase it and say, here are three options, pick one, okay. We asked what you, uh so what do you love about the work that you do? You know, organizations i work within cos they’re so wide ranging that it always amazes me what you can learn, what you can pick up and all of the commonalities of them too, you know, there there’s so many things that they’re all trying to get across, even if they’re a tiny little organization. So it’s, um, and making a difference with it with the actual and product from what they can about you are what you love about this work. I think what’s really interesting about the work is one year’s going setting off on a website redesign you think you’re doing a technology project, and it almost inevitably ends up being a management project because i think we’ve alluded to it before that the company’s your organization’s website is really related to how it’s organised how the organization works and you end up sometimes having more conversations about how the organization works and how we’re running on what our strategies then, about technology, about the actual some introspection. Okay, emily, i’m gonna give you ten or fifteen seconds. What do you like? What you love about this work your work about the work that i d’oh. I mean, i like that it’s always changing. I specialize in data stuff and it’s a field that’s constantly evolving. So i like that aspect of being able teo, keep up on it and always be just like our websites. Yeah, conley evolving. Always changing. Never finished. All right, they’re orin levine, director of innovation at the international centre for journalists. Lisa lisa it’s. A guess off. Yeah. Sounder and creative. Director of gizmo creative factory and emily paterson, founder of be measured. Thanks so much for being with us. I think this interview like all of them here it eighteen ntc sponsored by network for good, easy to use dorner management and fund-raising software for non-profits. Thanks so much for being with non-profit video coverage of the twenty eighteen non-profit technology conference. We need to take a break. Wagner. Cps for pete’s sake, talk to you. Eat huge tomb. You know the man. You heard him on our four hundred show. Did he sound high pressure to you? Of course not. He sounded like the gentleman that he is gentlemanly and professional. Check out the farm of course. Got to do your due diligence. Do your research weinger cps dot com then pick up the phone. Talk to you, wagner, cpas dot com then moved to real life now tony steak too it’s finger wagging time. I want you to plan ahead so that you make time don’t just look for it try to find it. You make time for yourself yourself over labor day weekend time alone, its restorative you heard last week steve rio talk about thie the benefits throughout your day of of mindfulness and presence, and even maybe ah meditation for a couple of minutes. I mean, they do virtual meditations of bright webb, he said, every day for five minutes, take time for yourself. Make time for yourself over labor day weekend, even if even if part of it is a nap. It’s restorative, you’re in e-giving profession you give you give, you have to be a little selfish and take make that time for yourself wagging my finger and there’s a little bit more on that in the video at tony martignetti dot com what a pleasure to have amy sample ward back. She is our social media contributor. Ceo of intend the non-profit technology network her most recent court third book, social change, anytime everywhere about online multi-channel engagement she’s at amy, sample board, dot or ge and at amy rs ward. Welcome back, amy. I think having me back, it’s always a pleasure. You’re always you’re always welcome back. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Should be a surprise to you. We always work well, i hope that you’ll let me know if i get cut from the roster will stop taking your calls. Know that we’ll have to wait on the phone. I’ll call in with a different say. I have a question to make up a different name. All right. Um, we’re talking about over marketing over marketing. This is a, uh, a bothersome thing for you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, i think it’s probably bothersome to everyone. That’s. Why it’s not successful? Yeah, it’s. In the long run, it annoys people and they turn off. Okay, i think that’s true. You know, maybe we’ll look att cem symptoms of over marketing so that you can do some self assessment. I think it’s it’s, probably one of these things is much easier to see in other people which may be coming totally right. I think it’s definitely hard to self diagnose your organization as an over marketer and instead very easy to look at other communications, other websites, what have you and feel like? Oh my gosh. You know and just to be clear, when i say over market and maybe this is a point of clarification between the two of us, i am curious how you define it. But for me, over marketing is when you market everything equally instead of choosing as an organization what your priorities are. Okay, so it seems very scattershot the marketing then from that those kinds of organizations very scattershot, everything is equally urgent. Everything is equal, equally impactful. Everything is, you know equally the thing that you want people to do right, then yeah. Okay, interesting might might my sense of it is it’s it’s i’m more looking at the frequency you know, if i get too many emails too many if i see your twitter you know, blowing up my twitter stream you know, i see i see too much from you it’s it’s too much it well in however, you define the time but e i’m seeing too much, um, well, and i think that that frequency piece could is, you know, one of the ways that over marketing manifest, because you could also say that it, um, you know, separate from frequency, it could just be type it could be that you are just like your web site is, you can’t even navigate it because every single thing has to have its own space on your home page that’s the call to action and whatever, you know, there’s different ways that it might manifest, but frequency certainly is a big one. Ok? And christie’s bleed over. I mean, you know, if your if your website has everything is an equally high priority, then that’s the trouble you were, you know, that’s, the trouble that you’re that bothers you the most is that every everything is urgent going on and everything has a page, every page is called action. You know, his first came to me as an idea because someone sent me an email with i printed it. It’s literally the the email signature is a half a page and i did not printed in eighteen point five i put it in twelve point fund. A very reasonable size. I’m this person’s email signature is a half takes up a half a page, right? I’m sure that the emails they’re sending two people are, you know, a very reasonable, like hi, tony, and then a couple sentences and thanks so much. And yet their signature is three times that. Yeah, yeah. Or more. It’s, you know, there’s itt’s. Well, i gave it away. It’s a he you know, it’s it’s it’s filled up with i mean there’s like zoho linked in you are el there’s a well there’s there’s web sites. There’s a you are elves, but then they’re not linked. And then separately there’s www the length number one w w was like number two and number three and there’s the mailing address and there’s. Ah, fax number off a twenty eighteen a fax number on then there’s and then there’s some congratulate, you know, self promotion stuff about anniversaries. How long he’s been in different lines of business and it’s it’s a half a page. So that’s what? Put this on my radar? You know, i guess i’ve subconsciously i’ve probably been thinking noticed it certainly, but tio got into my consciousness and i asked you about it and you said, whoa drives me crazy. So so here we are here we are. I’m just commiserating in the things that drives, but it’s for a good purpose, we’re helping where i’m not complained, my larry david, i’m not i’m not complaining, i’m helping, but, you know, what’s so interesting to me about that, like, the starting place where this conversation is that so many organizations, i don’t think, ever think about the signature line of there down both from the perspective that that, uh, i mean, that’s, you know, hundreds if you count all of your different staff, hundreds of messages a day to community members that could be reinforcing your organization’s brand or voice or mission having a standard, you know, signature block for everyone in your staff that, you know, great, everybody has the right information there, we probably don’t need to list our fax machine, you know, for all of those things because i see so many times where you know, one person, one organization writes at one way another person you can’t they don’t have a signature block, all you see is like, thanks, amy and me, but who? Are you, you know, co-branded spectrum that’s a missed place for just reinforcing the brand of the organization, but so few organizations know that you’re their signature block is kind of a passive called toe action space. Um, and at intend, we test that and we have a we use our goal for non-profits account, and that allows us if anyone listening uses the google suite for your organizations, you have, you know, females, you know, you could just administer as an organization what everyone’s you could add, like a call to action at the bottom of of the signature, and you don’t have to worry that some staff forgot to put it in, like, you could just administer that, and it is immediately in place for all of your emails, and we change that regularly, but we also track that and, you know, there are people that click on that signature link where we’re promoting that and you see and actually click through and register. So it is a place to call people to action. It is not necessarily a place to successfully call them toe action with eighteen different things that you’re saying, you know, it needs to just be one and have it be something that’s actually relevant to why you’re emailing people vs maybe, you know, links all of these different awards and promotions. You actually test different signatures. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Eminently doable. Eminently testable. You know us, we test everything. Okay. That’s, you technology network? Yes. Bonem all right. So let’s, let’s encourage some self assessment. We just have about a minute or so before before taking the first break. Um, i thought of i thought of some symptoms that you might that that that maybe hitting you in the face if you’re if your engagement numbers are declining, if you’re if you’re of actual follower numbers or connections, if that’s, you know, if people are dropping off that way, so i thought of either one of those, you know, people might still be following you, but they’re not engaging that’s, that’s bad or they might just stop following you or being connected. No thing can in fact, tonight, adam a nuance to those numbers. Certainly it’s healthy to have people stop following you on twitter or toe unsubscribes miree male because it means people are reading it and it no longer, you know the priority in their life, it’s not the topic that they care about it’s. Fine, you don’t need to feel bad of someone on subscribe to the newsletter but that’s the point you’re making tony is that if you are getting in ten people unsubscribes sections one new person subscribing then your ratio is a little off you want tohave, you know more people continuing to subscribe. Then you have a fall back off. Thank you for refining my point. Thank you. I mean, i mean that generally we gotta take a break. Take a break. Tell us enough with the talis moughniyah. Lt’s you’ve heard them. You’ve heard them from charities that referred companies for credit card processing and, of course, those charities air getting that revenue each month that long tail you’ve heard the talis moughniyah, lt’s from companies who are using tello’s for credit card processing. I bet you could use more revenue. Tell us long stream of revenue. You know how this works? You refer cos they take on tell owes you the non-profit get fifty percent of the revenue from those fees. Watch the video at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us now. Back to amy sample board. Thank you for that indulgence. Yes. All right. So, indeed, big numbers, you know, that’s bad and unsustainable. You know, you’ve got your tenant followers a day and one new follower, your that’s that’s, not sustainable. Um, let’s. See, um, if you i thought you know how about reading your own stuff reading your own to spend a little time romping through your own, you know, your own twitter stream your own instagram, facebook, these things boring you your own website, have you read? Have you read the last a couple of weeks of content on your website? A few if you have something that’s regularly updated that that often does it bore you? I would say that’s a bad somebody i think what’s interesting about that suggestion and that so many people we’ll overlook is that we, of course i have read all of it listed it, right? So the idea that we would go back and look at it feels like some time wasted because, of course we wrote those tweets. Are we, you know, posted those pictures? Never, but the value in what you’re suggesting is not look at any of those. Single post it’s look your feed without looking at your whole timeline or whatever, right? Like, just look at for twitter, profile and all the content in order that’s been posted or your instagram profile or your website, because that’s where you can really start to see from your followers perspective or your community’s perspective. Whoa, you know, this is this is what it felt like, or this is what it sounded like. I think that’s something we don’t do often enough it’s organizations because we don’t feel like we need to, because we’ve already reviewed all that content when we posted it individually. Yeah, we wrote it ourselves see, this is this is why you’re an author, co author of two books, and i’ve never written a book because you you put a finer point on it. No, i’m the shallow guy, i got this idea and then you refine it, give it depth and meaning and eso like on the comic book writer, and you’re the you’re the writer of books that actually get published by, you know, by well known publishing companies. Yeah, but i haven’t even done one of those yet. Yeah, ok. Er and you just and i’ve been thinking about it, and you just heard it. And you you put you put, you add depth and, uh, greater meaning to it. So thank you. What a team. You know, good teamwork. Yeah, work. If i didn’t have this show, you could because, you know, i don’t think you need me to get started, but i need you to add the depth and the color enough beating myself up. Okay. Um, no. I’m having fun doing it. So what are you? Nobody. Nobody listens to this show anyway, so nobody here’s the nobody here is the self loathing. Oh, that’s not true. Thousands of people listening. Yes. Don’t remind everybody said you have more in your list in this moment. Don’t remind me more of my list more my list. What of these of these things? I have more. I have things on my list. I can add, um, i have one more staff complaints if the staff, if the staff is feeling that their content is you know, however, they describe stale o r, you know, repetitive. You want to pay a lot of attention to that because they’re the ones producing the content. So if staff or if you’re hearing from staff, i think that’s a bad sign, what do you what do you have totally eye? You know, now i feel obligated to add depth and color all of your suggestions, but the piece that i would add there is i feel like it’s, not just staff saying that it’s repetitive, but the conversations that you might over here amongst your staff that are kind of like a warning sign warning flag that you’re maybe doing over marketing is when people are saying, you know, i’m marketing this in someone else’s say, no, the postcards you know, went out yesterday for this someone else, eh? Zoho on twitter were saying that you have people, you know, you’re cross team isn’t talking about the same thing, then you’re probably doing, you know, equal parts promotion of five different things at once and that just naturally not going to be a successful your community members can’t take in five different request to do something that are different and actually do them all for you. Very bad sign if there’s conflicting messages across your across your team, i thought it was this i thought this was the priority, right? Okay, what else? What else do you have on your symptom symptom list? Well, i don’t have as many symptoms. I have a list that’s, more like things that you khun d’oh. Okay, um, yeah, okay, we could switch over there. I’m game for some guests. I would say you’re not a baby, we can talk about a few things underneath is i really liked the idea for organizations, you know, of course, we all know that we should have, like, a content calendar and marketing plan and all of these things. But the reality is i’m going toe just operate within reality that we don’t have those things or we have them and they’re not updated or or or whatever. So instead of saying, oh, just go finish off that editorial calendar that you should have instead of that recommendation, i’d say just pick a team. It could be every month it could be based on certain weeks that, you know, we’re leading up to events, whatever. And having a team i think, really helps people across the organization, you know, in whichever team there in know that they can still talk about their team. Or their program or their service. But do it in a way that still aligned and advancing whatever over our james focus organizationally needs to be the priority. So it maybe we can use in ten for an example. Course i could speak to that, so we might say, ok, this month’s needs to be focused on the ntc, but we still have membership campaigns that happened, we still have course promotions that need to happen, you know, where there’s still all this other work, but we don’t need to be saying register for the nbc become a member. Sign up for this course that’s happening next week, you know, apply for this program because that’s not going that’s, where we get into the half a page email signature, you know, someone said saint arthur, steam is auntie si lets people say culwell instead of just talking about membership, i’ll talk about how members engaged at the ntc instead of just talking about, of course, next week, i’ll say this course has a similar topic at the mtc, and this is a way for you to continue your learning. You know, it just gives people more oven umbrella that they can talk about their programs while still staying. Kind of on message. Okay, yeah. I can i can i can toss out one for recommendation, and that is to put yourself on your own lists, make sure that you are seeding yourself so that you’re seeing the feed, the posts, hearing the podcast, whatever it is the same way, same frequency as everybody else. Yeah, and then had a way to do that. It’s not just getting your own organizations emails, because to your point, there are lots of different channels were using in ten does this and i’ve talked to a number of our other organizations who do this, too, whether you use black, which is kind of an internal messaging tool, or you have an internet or whatever tool you’re using for kind of internal content and conversation. Most of those tools there’s probably a way where you can have your organization’s account, your twitter account, instagram show up in there and that way you have essentially, you know, one channel in slack or whatever you used that just is showing all of your tweets, so not only can you see when a tweet has gone out, but what it was about, and then you can very easily scroll through and say oh, my gosh, way! Look at what we have been saying or what we haven’t been saying or whatever on dh you don’t have to say, okay, now everyone on staff has to create a twitter account and go follow the organization and check it every day. You can just pull it into a central system so everyone can see it. I see. Excellent. Okay, okay. She’s, the co author times two. Amazing. All right, let’s, take another break. Okay, let me take a break text to give you’ll get more revenue because text to give makes e-giving easy for your donors. If your donors can send a text message, they could make a donation to u not only simple also affordable and secure the way to get more info and to claim your special listener offer you text npr two, four, four, four, nine nine nine couldn’t be any simpler. Npr. Four, four, four, nine, nine, nine we’ve got about six more minutes for over marketing with amy um, we run really medicine, okay? Please go ahead. So this suggestion is coming from a place where at and ten, we have definitely seen return on the work, but also in recognition that if you’re if you’re organization is suffering from over marketing, you’re already putting in the time to do a bunch of work so let’s just move that work to something else, and that is the idea of promo, okay, it’s, not just for your big annual fundraiser or, you know, once a year event for anything programs for things that are year round, even creating again, you’re already doing this work because you’re already over marketing, so instead of putting it all out as an organization, all the work you did to come up with those tweets or those block post or whatever put them into, you know, a a shared document or a wiki or google doc or whatever, and instead of sharing them on your own feed, share them with community members that can that are interested in that that maybe participate in that program before whatever that they want to be out in the community scene is talking about your work and promoting it and it’s still getting out there. People are still hearing about your programs, but you aren’t saying okay, well, our twitter feed today is going to have to cover all ten of these topics you say today we’re covering this topic, but we know that we’ve supported community members and they have access to these promo kits. Tio help us spread the word excellent using yes using your most dedicated constituents, friends, followers sort of a back channel way of getting them to help you promote board members boardmember could be idea for that, right? Okay, are for sure, all right, i’m going to get one out because i know you’re going to say it, i’m gonna get out first, okay? If you feel you’re over marketing on promoting your own work, share the work of others instead. So the obvious, you know, sharing on facebook, facebook shares, they’re so they’re so rare. Now facebook shares please share other people’s content obviously twitter, the re tweets on twitter or you go or spend that time going out and finding, you know, curating the content of others and sharing that because, you know, it’s relevant to your community. I know you’re going to say that yes, well and i think something to remember to when when you’re thinking about content and mixing it up so that it isn’t just you talking. About the thing that you want people to do over and over, another place where you could look to content in addition to sharing, of course, you know that i’m always going to say, share other people’s work and rise up the community is just as you are doing, too be the one that reminds your community that they can take a break, that they can have fun, that the world is really hard, it feels right now, and so much is going on, and we’re always asking our community to take action to support us, whether it’s fund-raising or advocacy or local actions. But maybe you are also building community and building trust with them by being the voice that says, you know, we hope that you take a saturday off and just be with your family or go to the zoo her, you know, go for a hike and and you aren’t always calling them toe action that you’re also treating them as full people that need to take a break and be healthy too. Yeah, that space space critical. We had steve rio on last week talking a lot about that he’s. Interesting do you know, do you know steve rio, bright webb? I don’t know. And i know i heard he’s, based in vancouver. Andi has twenty five employees. Maybe that includes contractors, but they’re all over north america. Very interesting. Okay. Um, they do. They have. They have virtual meditations. You probably heard me or not. Uh, not not mandatory optional, but they do a forty five minute virtual meditation every day a couple times a week. Sorry. Three times, three times a week? Um, yeah, i think yeah. Mindfulness, you know, presence. Oh, and, you know, there’s there’s research that shows that that that helps you be be more efficient in your in your workday. Um, every sample would really have, like, two minutes left. Um, you have another. You wantto recommend something else. If you feel you’re over marketing, do you have another recommendation? While the other piece that i was going to suggest is kind of the office that and that is just in case there are listeners who are, like, no, our problem is that we never marketed anything we never, you know, actually promote ourselves because it’s all you know, maybe they’re your web site is is just kind of content, because your programs or your round and you don’t feel like you have timely things, so if somehow you are on the opposite end of the conversation and feel like you need more help finding ways teo to market, i would say, just look through whether that’s, your social media accounts, your website, whatever and look for those empty spaces places that i think organizations could really take advantages putting in in their twitter bio or their instagram bio, or whatever that you know, a girl that shows up right there and the short kind of narrative box you have to write something, put what feels more like a timely kind of a call to action or reference a campaign that you’re running or whatever that is, and put a girl in there that doesn’t just go to your home page, same with your email signature. Look for those empty spaces where you can make it feel more timely instead of just the permanent kind of here’s our home page here’s, what we do here is our mission statement she’s amy sample ward she’s the author i’m not you’ll find her at, you’ll find her and amy sample ward. Dot or go! And also you should be following the woman for god’s sake, twitter is so much wisdom coming follow-up for god’s sake that’s the end of it just for pizza. Just follow at amy rs ward. Thank you, amy. Thank you, tony. My pleasure always next week. Maria semple returns with real estate for prospect research. If you missed any part of today’s show i deceit, you find it on tony martignetti dot com. We are sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuing wagner, cps, guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com by telus credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream tony dahna may slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr to four, four, four nine nine, nine a creative producers clam meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez. Mark silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein of brooklyn. You with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking alternative network to get you thinking. E-giving cubine you’re listening to the talking alternative network, are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down? Hi, i’m nor in sometime, potentially, ater tune in every tuesday at nine to ten p m eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Yawned potential. Live life your way on talk radio dot n y c buy-in. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business, why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Yeah. Are you into comics, movies and pop culture at large? What about music and tv, then you’re in for a treat. This is michael dole. Check your host on talking alternative dot com. I’ve been professionally writing comic books, screenplays and music articles from fifteen years. Catch my show secrets of the sire at its new prime time slot. Wednesdays, eight p m eastern time, and get the inside scoop on the pop culture universe you love to talk about. For more info, go to secrets of the sire dot com hyre. You’re listening to talking on turn their network at www. Dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Are you a conscious co creator? Are you on a quest to raise your vibration and your consciousness? Um, sam liebowitz, your conscious consultant, and on my show, that conscious consultant, our awakening humanity, we will touch upon all these topics and more. Listen, live at our new time on thursdays at twelve noon eastern time. That’s, the conscious consultant, our awakening humanity, thursday’s twelve, noon on talk radio dot. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Buy-in

Nonprofit Radio for January 12, 2018: Free Coaching In 2018 & Maria’s 2018 Plan

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Curtis Springstead: Free Coaching In 2018

SCORE coaches small nonprofits nationwide through its network of volunteer specialists in marketing, HR, technology, management, finance and more. Curtis Springstead is from the northeast New Jersey region and he reveals how to get free, ongoing support for your organization.

 

 

Maria Semple: Maria’s 2018 Plan

Maria Semple

Maria Semple has strategies for your fundraising, digital marketing and prospect research. She’s our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder.

 

 


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Welcome to twenty martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas to be either ninety five percent on your actor named oh, i’m glad you’re with me, i’d suffer the effects of organ neo-sage if you got taste saying you missed today’s show free coaching in twenty eighteen, four coaches small non-profits nationwide through its network of volunteer specialist in marketing, hr technology management finance and mohr kurt kurt springstead is from the northeast region, and he revealed how to get free, ongoing support for your organization and maria’s twenty eighteen plans. Maria semple has strategies for your fund-raising digital marketing and trusted research prospect, research contributor and prospect finder. I thought he’d take you twenty eighteen plans all this month responded by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enables, tony got a last person and by wejust piela guiding you beyond the numbers. Western piela dot com hello durney credit card processing into your press of revenue stream. Tony dahna made black teller i’m pleased to welcome kurt springstead to the show. He is a certified mentor and chairman for the score northeast new jersey chapter his near forty year career was in information technology and ranged from programmer trainer and adjunct professor. Tow it, director, consultant and non-profit boardmember score is at score. Mentors and score dot org’s. Kurt springstead. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It’s. A pleasure to have you, um, score. Now, i i grew up with score being the service corps of retired executives, but that’s ah, that’s. Old news, right? Yes. We’ve dropped that. That acronym? Because it turns out that nearly half of us are working to some degree, many full time in some part time. Okay, so so i was like, like, aarp is no longer the american association of retired persons. It’s just aarp like that, right? Like that. Okay, um, and score is nationwide and supported by the small business administration. Technically, we have our own funding from the directly from the government, and we’re a partner of this administration. They just kind of helped me or the money out. Okay, okay. But of course, score is itself a non-profit so people can give to score and support the work. Well, the way we have our own non profit foundation called the score foundation. Okay, in order to to accept funds donated from the public or from corporations that want to sponsor is because as a government agency, which is what we are, we obviously can’t take donations. Oh, you’re still you like you’re a part of small business administration? Not just i thought, supported by the website says, supported by i thought that meant like you get grant, you get a grant from score. I mean, from s b a. But what exactly happened? Wear actually empowered by an act of congress and they give us a small grant that they they ask our big brother, the spd administer. Okay then, when someone tried to donate a large sum of money a few years ago, we had to figure out how to make advantage take advantage of that. So i created the square foundation, which then sponsors various programs that were involved in whether it be training or outreach. They allow us to be more effective than what we get from the government. Okay, so the yes. So the score mentors are acquainted with non-profits not wanting to turn down gift if they don’t have to. Absolutely. Well, we we end up in our particular chapter having to raise nearly half of the money we need to operate. So we understand all the all the issues that not-for-profits okay, excellent. Eso s o score is i think i feel i feel like my voice just crafting a score score score score is mentoring that is on coaching that is available nationwide, including for non-profits let give us a sense of the breath of this. What? What? What non-profits could learn? Sure. So, yeah, one of the key services we do offer is confidential and free mentoring for as long as you’ll have us. And, you know, there’s about thirteen thousand of my friends in three hundred thirty chapters across the country with people who have done everything you can imagine serial entrepreneurs, uh, people with industry specializations, i spent a lot of time as you mentioned it, but we have people who are retard lawyers piela people have come from not-for-profits organizations and so on, and then what we offer you is whatever services you might need it’s really, in terms of a coaching, a relationship. So if you were people come to us with simply a gleam of an idea, i’d like to create an organization or like to create an entity that does the following and i need to know where the steps are. What are my resource is? How do i make it happen? And since most of us and our careers have been down that road already, either in for-profit or not-for-profits we can i tried to tell you where the where the dangers are and what kind of decisions you might have to make. Okay. And that’s, that’s, that’s pre startup. But our listeners are are already in non-profits, you know, vast majority is already in non-profits so i first of all, i just love the idea that this is available to us as us taxpayers and non-profits ah, you know, in part supported by our small business administration. I love that guy like that, right? So actually, you should be really important. Happy the taxpayer because for every dollar the government gives us, we return fifty dollars. I don’t think there’s any other group in the government that actually gives money back. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. So the yes. I mean, well, you know, we tend to see a lot of people who are looking to start a business, but probably nearly half our business. People who already in business. Ok. For a significant period of time, and so the services are the same. The questions they’re sometimes different not trying to find out necessarily where to go, but we have some trying to grow or i’m thinking of adding a new line of service, or i’m struggling with managing the people that i have a client come to me has been a business for twenty five years, and suddenly the numbers went went rid. She had no idea why that happened or what was going on had, uh, any number of people who come to us with, uh, you know, i just we feel we need to grow. We need to serve more of our clients. We’re not getting out to the the community we were designed to serve. How do we make people aware of us? How do we get volunteers? All those kinds of questions that we run into excellent. Okay, so so even though it’s small business administration, you know that there’s a reason that you’re on non-profit radio i want listens to b b certain that they can avail themselves of this inn non-profit so so whether it’s marketing or law or human resource is a righty or accounting? What? I mean, like any any business functionality is available for the is available as coaching and mentoring that i haven’t run into anything yet that i can’t find, you know, the reality is that for, you know, a cz you’ve mentioned, i’ve been on board and, you know, i’m i’m running a fifty person ah, small non-profit myself locally with the team that i have, so i’m struggling to find more money trying to struggling to find volunteers, i’m tryingto struggle to keep them engaged, too. Figure out how i can reach more clients, which is one of the reasons is wrong with you today. What can i do to make sure that everybody knows our service is out there? So we have the same kinds of problems, the same issues. So, you know, sometimes you need legal advice, and i appreciate the nuance that there are some regulations and some decisions that are different for those of us who are in a not for profit status and the have you got a charitable registration you need to set up? How do you? Some of the legalities of when we hyre people on how we treat them are a bit different howto do with the tax situation. I mean, one of the most interesting questions i get it someone has come to us, has had a for-profit business i have working with a woman who’s been teaching art for a number of years, but now she wants to turn it over and offer some of her courses for free on the internet. And she was going to look for grants. Well, unfortunately, she’s a commercial operation and the number of grants for a commercial operation are quite small. So we started to talk about how she might look at establishing an aw for-profit and attract people to make donations to that business. So i, you know, i’ve only been with score about three years, but i’ve been all over the map. So in terms of those kinds of questions, i can’t help but notice the similarities between my four business work in my not-for-profits although, as every business has its own unique nuance, um where where we do our best to help with that? Yeah, we have to take our first break so you just hang out for a moment and it’s time for a break. Data driven fund-raising field guide that is their newest resource on the listener landing page. There was more data generated in twenty, sixteen and twenty, seventeen, and in all of previous history made that is amazing and it’s too much for you to deal with a field guide to help you translate the data. You have the fever got into actionable inside, drive your fund-raising so you can act on your data, not be stuck in its muddled through it. You know that, ah, fancy report that you get out of your fund-raising starita basis is not worth anything. If you can’t act on it and have it helped you in your fund-raising what is taking what they’ve learned in working raise large organisation, and they have boiled down to basic principles for you in data analysis. The data driven fund-raising field guys it’s at tony got a flash for students capital p now, back to springstead and free coaching in twenty eight i’m with kurt springstead on, we’re talking about score, which is consulting, coaching, mentoring, that’s available to you in all these different areas that that kurt has been touching on anywhere in the country. Him he happens to be in the northeast new jersey chapter, but how many three hundred chapters you said throughout the country, country hundred thirty welcomed the beauty of it is we have a significant number of clients that we service, uh, who who are comfortable with an exchange of e mails, and we’ve also started in the last year or two significant amount of mentoring the video conference, so if the particular expertise you need isn’t in the small team, in your neighborhood or in your your area, then with some help your you, khun, search and find a person anywhere in the united states, and you can make the arrangements to work with it. I was working with the young man who originally met with him in kentucky or talk with him while he was in kentucky and one day we were chatting while he happened to be in china working on this project, so we’re no longer bound by the code we working. Okay, excellent. All right. Very good to know. All right, so if someone wants to work with score, we want to take advantage of this vast consultancy basically that that’s free to us way get started with the the website it scored out. Or gore or how oh, that is the most efficient way to do it. Okay, you go to score dot organ, you’re going to find one of several buttons that it’s going to or hidden around the screen or on the screen that will tell you, you know, meet with a mentor. And at that point, you’ll be asked to you know what? How do you want to do that? Face-to-face email whatever you type in very minimal information that your name and address phone number email a little bit about what you want to talk about and hit entering within two business days. Somebody is probably going to be back in touch with you trying to establish the appointment to move ahead and you make a distinction between mentoring and consulting? How do i know which of those is better for me? Okay, well, actually, there you’re going to be with one person. We find that we have to wear a couple of hats were primarily mentors and had been a consultant most my life. I could make a hope, a simple distinction. A mentor, a guide you through the process asks you questions, ask you to probe things, operas you advice and counsel and points it out, but allows you to come to your own conclusions. We make no judgments about what it is you’re proposing to do or how you propose to do it, because ultimately it is your business. But there are times when what you need is information and instructions specifically how to do something and when we can do that, you know, we can’t practice law, and we can’t do the work of people do, but we can we can help you review a business plan, our build, you know, proposal to a bank. We’re going to coach you on that when i was a consultant, i i also would charge you to do that work or i do it for you. We are not. Equipped to fill out your business plan, but to help you go through that. So most of the time were mentors were were advising coaching, encouraging, sometimes supporting when times get tough. But every once in a while you need someone with the main expertise. Oh, and that’s, when we put on our consulting hat for a bit of time. Now, how do you get familiar with the work of the non-profit before this before this initial meeting? So so the initial meeting is for the purpose of, of understanding. What is it you want to accomplish? Where are you? What have you done so far? And then establishing a game plan? And one of the key things is do we need other players in the meat in the mix? That’s the advantage i have i i i’m probably meet with you with someone else anyway, just because more people that are listening, the better hyre information will gather anyway. But then if i know that there’s a particular expertise or challenge at the moment, then i can go out and make sure that i have the right person with me at that time, or i might need to do. Some more research to find out through my other channels, other partners that we work with to make sure that we have the information that you’re going to need or the access so the resources that you want. So that first hour, so it is really sort of like the doctor taking your vital signs, we need to kind of know what we’re dealing with first, before we start begin to do any kind of diagnosis. I mean, many people come to us, i think they have just a quick question. They want to get answered, and and that may be true, but oftentimes during the dialogue, they come to the conclusion that they there’s more than they had asked for the problem’s bigger or the questions are broader than they had thought and that’s that’s why we look at that first meeting is simply this sort of the diagnosis, okay? And you’ll stay with them. You said it’s a cz long as they’ll have you. Right, so the ad varies a bit by by chapter, but in our our chapter, the basic model is if i were to work with you, for example, i would intend to work with you for as long as you have me and as time would go on, i would expect you would need to have many different resource is, and you’d need things well beyond whatever my expertise might be. So i’m going to just make sure that i’m going to be your single point of contact with score throughout that entire relationship and get you the resource is that you need within score and without way our research, your partner, the fda, there might be a time when we need to reach out to there were two other governmental agencies, for example, to help you with something you’re trying to do and that’s the ideas we have that you can you can build that relationship with deaf. You not constantly telling your story to new people who might show up the answer a question, i suppose it’s something general, i’ve had guests on talking about, you know, planning on dh here we are in january talking about planning for the new year, i suppose it’s like, you know, i don’t feel like my will keep it in your in your ballpark, you know, i don’t feel like my eye is is adequate. You know, but i’m not really i mean, i don’t feel like the programs we have or the methods we have, like we’re two spreadsheet dependent, but, you know, i’m not really sure what direction to go or what, and i don’t know how much you know, money i need to spend, i suppose it’s something you know as general is that, uh, you know, sort of nebula nevertheless, is that well, that’s actualy pretty specific. Thank you, really? For that i was trying to give you a hard i was trying to give you a hard hypothetical. Yeah, so the whole idea’s, because i happen to have that the main expense, i’d start asking in little more in depth questions and understand and why you have these feelings with the challenges are what, what your current situation is preventing you from doing what things you think you’d like to be able to do, and we could talk about whether or not your system would do that. And then because i’ve had thirty or forty years, i can start to help you figure out how to shop for a new solution. If that’s the right case i could give you. Some ideas of what the orders of magnitude of expense might be the time to get these accomplished some thoughts about the steps of going forward, you know, recently have been advising a couple of people who are creating app in their particular space, and it’s it’s been a lot about strategy? You know what kind of a platform that we put it on when i have no money to start with? And then what do i do if i open up my app and i suddenly become, you know, huge, i’ve got, you know, one hundred thousand users where am i thought i might have a thousand on the first day, so all those kinds of things, you know, we’re equipped to do it, and, you know, it doesn’t it’s not always going to happen in a one hour session, and we understand that, yeah, of course, yeah, now i assume this is all confidential, absolutely pr every year we’re we’re required to re certify on our code of ethics and the number one tenant is confidentiality we that’s built into the when you actually agreed to be a client, you’re you’re covered by that, and i could just tell you from my own experience, unless we engage of one of my colleagues into a into a particular client, i’m not likely to be speaking about your personal situation with other members of the team. Frankly, just no, no need to do that. So you could be you can be absolutely certain that whatever we talk about it it’s just between us. Can we bring in other people from the organization? If i want, maybe it’d be helpful for you to talk. Tio my c f o r a boardmember can we can we engage multiple people on our on our side? Absolutely. We recently had a team of from my office to meet with the entire board, a new organization to provide some residents living facilities for people with special needs. And they were struggling with there being pressured but costs. And so it was important to get the full perspective from from their, uh, their leadership to what they thought their challenges and issues were. And that was so we had a nice big meeting, so we’re oftentimes it’s scaled up. And that sounds like a good story. Good non-profit story. How were you able to help? Those folks they st louis where they, you know, they gave us a rundown on what they saw, their challenges and what the in terms of the quality of people they needed toe hyre because of the concern for the people that the population they were serving, the challenge is about how they were funding the business. There were some options available to them, given the structure of some of the reimbursement that’s available through healthcare plans and such on dh ahs well as the diversity of their program, and we were able to share with them from our differing expertise. I had someone who had financial background, and there was another one with people back, personnel background, and i looked at some of the systems approaches, we were able to provide them with some frankly, in their case, so a way of sort of prioritizing the many challenges that that they had, and that seemed to be a recurring theme by the way that we run into many of the existing businesses there are there are so many things we could work on that sometimes we can’t make up her mind, which is the one that, uh, it’s going to be the most productive well and that’s, that and that’s a big challenge, of course, in the non-profit community, especially now, as you know, if if if we see government funding reduced to the point, where are our state can no longer offer services, you know, i think a lot is going to fall to non-profits and prioritization is going to be the challenge. I mean, this is gonna be so much more that needs to be done. Can we do it? Should should we be doing it on def? So you know how right? And, you know, i think the other thing is that for many clients of in both the non-profit world as well, the for-profit world, sometimes the best be that outside force or that outside opinion, um, your board is a good team, your volunteers were good team, but you you are not already looking through a filter based on your day to day knowledge of what, what you do and how you’ve done it. We come in with with none of those constraints, we don’t we don’t know everything about the business, so we’re not afraid to ask stupid questions or two proposed the idea from another industry or another space that perhaps could be adapted to your space. One of the interesting things we teach some business start up ideas, and one of the concepts in there for one of the leading thinkers is that there are no new business models. There are simply people who were innovatively applying business models into a world where they have not traditionally been used thinking of things like amazon into the book market, for example. So sometimes it just creates it’s just good to hear somebody who doesn’t already have the corporate think, if you will say, agree with your idea or think that your priorities are correct. What about around social media? If i if i feel i’m struggling, i’m not sure which which channels to be in? Um, i’m not you know, i don’t feel like i’m thoroughly engaged with people you know is help with social media within within the score of expertise to a degree, yes, i would be we find that more often than not just because of this, the fact that it moved so quickly, even with some of the the younger subject matter experts that we have on our team it’s just hard to keep up, so we understand i mean, frankly, is an organization we were struggling every day and constantly checking to make sure that what we’re investing in, what we’re doing is social meat is working, but so we can give that some overviewing could put that in the context of other efforts that you might be doing to get your workout, but we also can help you identify a partner if that turns out to be the right thing, because there are two aspects to it through the strategic aspect, which we can offer probably more help with, and we have we have, you know, hundreds and thousands of resource is on our national website on a variety of topics, several of which are around that we also produce a webinar every week on a different topic and oftentimes social media’s his way one part of that so we can provide that overall information, but sometimes it’s uh, i will just tell you that score we’ve hired a contractor who actually implements a lot of our strategy and making sure that we’re getting post out, helping us figure out howto measure and find out if it’s actually working if we’re if we should be boosting post if we should be buying at how are we using our google place that nature so we can get you two started in that the right direction? Sometimes all we can do is help you be a good customer when you have to go out and buy a resource. Because you what? You really someone who could come and spend time, day after day doing the work for you, which were just not structured, right? Right. That’s, not yours. Ok, but but you can’t help identify the questions we should be talking. We should be asking potential vendors and identify the for us, you know, a process for for hiring, whether it’s frankly, whether it’s, a social media manager or ah or an outsource cfo or right. I mean, you can help with that, you know, acquiring the expertise? Absolutely. And so it will be better than just sort of, you know, hitting up google and looking for the one in neighborhood. Yeah, we’ll give you some some measurements of some things you can ask during the interview. What should you look for in their in their background or in their proposal, if that’s the right thing and some sort of sense of perhaps with the fees and costs on toby, i’m thinking about this, too. In terms of finances, you know, a lot of people, lots of people get into non-profits started non-profit because they have enormous passion for some cause and let’s put aside the question whether forming a non-profit was the right business decision to make or not because they already passed, that they’re already incorporated, but they often are lacking the business savvy that it takes two to scale and sustain. And i think i think financial issues particularly stand out what you know suppose suppose that’s me, i mean, i got a lot of passion and i’ve already incorporated is a non-profit but i’m not sure i’m accounting correctly, you know, people talk to me about ah, accounting software, you know, how do i start? Right? And you have the reality also is this significant potential legal and issues if you don’t do that sort of thing, right? So yeah, that is that’s a very common peace. I would just tell you that very few people who go into business a cz well, who might have a passion for a not for profit uh, area really ever intend to be the business person they wanted. They want to serve the population, they wantto feed the cause they want to, you know, sell the best pizza, whatever it might be. So and then they say, oh, not so now. I’ve got to run this business thing and double these forms, and the government wants something, and i got to write a check to this guy and i just, you know, what’s all this about and that’s where we can provide a couple of layers of support sometimes it’s simply where those of us who are from score who have the financial chops of the management chop could just be that that mentor we meet with you on a fairly regular basis, help you realize, you know, figure out howto watch the pulse in your company and make some of the long term, bigger decisions if you’re comfortable doing the day to day checkbook and that sort of thing, okay, for other people, it’s it and, you know, maybe you’re lucky and you you’ve blossomed you in your really big skill, you know, i was on the board of a couple of not-for-profits that are, you know, had million, multi million dollar budget. So we we had professional accounting firms to do it eso again helping to find the right people. But also, you know, people will tell you, make sure you do the right accounting and so on. But you need to go with them and help them explain to them well, what your strategy, which your long term plan for the organ ization? Where am i going to go next? Because that might affect what they do today. So we can help you crystallize and formulate those plans on growth situations. And then you have someone who could do the day to day blocking and tackling. If you do need sources of funds, where do i find that? You know, if i’m not for-profit i have some opportunities. Perhaps go for grants. How do i write a grant? Where would i find a grant writer? Do i need a grant writer? That kind of thing all come up as we go forward. And then also how do our their limitations on the money that i have? I can tell you that in my organization. There are certain things that i can’t pay for with the money the government gives me to operate, but i can pay for with the money i get through donations off. All right, so these are all factors that we many of us have expertise we have their knowledge of and worst cases again, we will help you become the better informed consumer of services for by a professor. All right, we have to leave it there. I just wantto make sure that people understand, too, that there are a lot of do-it-yourself resource is at score dot org’s articles outlines templates. Kurt mentioned one hour webinar every week, so i’m encouraging you for twenty eighteen to check out, score, score, dot or ge and at score mentors. Kurt springstead thank you so much, my pleasure. We need to take a break. Redner’s here’s a testimonial, i was on my new position when i began working with regular piela my confidence, i can have grown knowing that i can rely on the professionals to answer any questions and make recommendations that will ensure the success of our non-profit you were given sound advice enabling us to increase investment income while at the same time, protecting you. Ask that. I trust and respect our audit team on the forward to their annual visit and vote. That is, from a midsize religious organization in the big graft. Dahna look at this. I mean the people of more than piela e-giving investment income on that’s. Good advice. And the person looked forward to their orders. I don’t think you have no properties are looking forward to order. I think they’re more feared, maybe dreaded, but it’s not a fortune from the midtown religious organization in the mid west and diversity of expertise reminds me of all the guys that they have all the guys, guys, guys, all these forms in ten places and white papers on diver subject oppcoll way beyond accounting. No, lecter goes way beyond the numbers for their clients. You know that you’re supposed to change audit firms every three years to get a fresh perspective on your practices on the first set of eyes looking over your books and your management management processes. You want the advice of a firm that goes broads help you? I think you know beyond the balance. So that is what i’m always saying. They go beyond the numbers talking on one of the people you could talk to. Is you too, who’s? Been a guest on the show martignetti piela dot com that’s not tony. Take two. Well, it’s almost for your twenty eighteen planning there’s. More coming after this one next week. Takagi what is the new tax law metoo for your twenty eighteen? Hundred. And on january twenty sixth, it’s gonna be me and amy, i’m gonna be talking about starting your plan e-giving programs in twenty eighteen, and then amy sample ward is gonna have her twenty, eighteen plants, just like maria has plans coming up very shortly. We’re supposed to have joe garrett. Unfortunately, he had a family emergency, couldn’t make the day that we were gonna be recording, so we’ll get joe garrett back fund-raising plan. But instead of joe playbook, that i get that, but i’m always got, so we have got you covered for the whole year, all month of january, that is all you got to do. My pleasure. Welcome. Maria semple, prospect finder, trainer and speaker on prospect research. Latest book is magnifying your business. Six tools and strategies that growing your business or your non-profits our joy and if they’re free, get the prospects finding dot com and at maria semple welcome back, maria semple. Happy new year. Happy new year county. How are you today? Thank you. Doing great. Thank you very much. It’s. Good to talk to you. And and you’ve been thinking through what i’m calling maria’s twenty eighteen plans. What are you going to start with? So, you know, i thought i would give a little bit of a mixed some tips that i might be, you know, might have offered through my focus. Well, it’s, um, it’s really focused in on prospect research in particular. And just, you know, trying to make sure that non-profits are a cz short up, as they possibly can be for the upcoming year. Okay, so that book might like that magnifies your business school gravity’s growing your business or your non-profit looking talking about? Yep. That’s the one that’s, the books magnifying. Okay, i wanna make sure that was it. All right. So what? Do you want something? Well, you know, i was thinking about thie importance of really solidifying your relationship with individuals. Andi, this is where i think non-profits really have the greatest strengths on dh, their greatest opportunities as well, for growing. So, you know, when you think about, you know, launching a major gift effort or maybe upgrading your major gift effort, this is really the year to do what if you haven’t done so already? So, you know, sort of a first step that you might consider doing is to do a database screening. There are a number of companies out there that will screen your entire donordigital base, um, so that you’re really able to kind of elevate those those prospects that might be hidden in your database and give you an opportunity that you know where to focus your efforts. All right? So you’re encouraging diversifying into an individual e-giving program if you don’t already have one that’s, right? That’s, right? But you need to know where we’re to focus so very often if you’ve got a board that’s been changing out a lot or you’ve got, you know, a lot of staff changes and so forth. And you really don’t have that longevity and people really standing who’s in that donor database, so you’re able to sort of look at it on your own, obviously that’s seen cheapest way to do it right? Because now you’re not, you know, outsourcing anything, they’re not paying anybody to screen the database, but i really find that when when organizations take an opportunity to do that, it gives them the chance elevator to the top, the names of the people they should really be focusing in on. So, you know, you might even do it. Has a lot of the companies will allow you to send in a batch and test your database to see, you know, if it’s going to be worthwhile. Thio do the whole thing. Okay, um, something else you want to have in place before you do a major gift on individual individual giving program, major gifts or welchlin yeah, you’re gonna end up with maybe get program if you take this important step starting individual e-giving program’s going to end up with major donors, some are goingto give more brothers, but either way, you want to have ah, constituent relationship matters in a database. You crn database in place on dh. There are very affordable ways of doing that there’s so many different cloud services and there’s some that you just played by the records. So when you’re starting small, you know, you don’t have to have the major’s your commitment, maybe database, that, uh, that is only going to have a couple dozen names in the beginning, but you want to have a way of capturing all those relationships all those different data points with people because of something that you just mentioned area staff turnover, when when one person leaves, they’ve had all the conversations with, you know, half your donors, uh, you don’t want to lose weight, and i talked about that. You don’t want to lose all that precious information, right is right, and, you know, it’s a problem as as i’m sure you’ve seen in your own consulting that happens time and time again, where you get in there and you talk to an organization and they say, you know, well, you know, i’m new here, i’m only on the job three months i’m really not sure what those relationships were like on dh then you find out that you know, a lot of conversations and so forth, which simply not recorded anywhere. Elearning yeah, i mean, the last thing that you want to do is call the donor and say, hi, you know, my name’s, maria semple, on our new year of the organization, and i’d like to get to know, you know, for your interest, why do you give to us, you know, i mean, you should know that you should know all of that information. Yeah, i just had that conversation with your your predecessor two months ago, so so database screening find find people on, of course don’t only pay attention to the wealthiest in your in your in your database on that also have your e r n, right? Okay, you’re you’re also encouraging, looking into recurring yeah, you know, this is a place that you have an opportunity to garner, and i’m going to say those smaller gifts, those people that will commit ten dollars in most twenty dollars a month, whatever it is that’s hating their credit card, everybody so, you know, many of us are already used to paying whatever netflix, whatever this monthly charges that’s hitting our credit card accounts. On dh so it’s already sort of been absorbed into our monthly budgeting and so forth. And so if you can convince people to start setting up a recurring, uh, payments to your organization that’s going to go a long way to helping booth and of course, you’re not talking to the major gets here. You are talking about getting people in, perhaps at a much lower entry point and keeping them engage. I think it’s pretty standard practice, but i was going to make this explicit no on that donation page that you’ve got. You want to have a button for making monthly or something like that so that the person who is giving at a level that could conceivably be the monthly recurring donation could easily do it, you know, you know, ryan and i have to go in someplace special to make a set of recurring giving, i think that’s pretty standard, but i want to make it quick, make sure hyre no, that could be it could be very valuable. And you know what we get on saying that people just forget about it and fills, usually until their credit card expires, and then they’re reminded oh, yeah, no, i got this thing, and then and then sometimes that’s an opportunity for you asking for upgrades when a person is reevaluating. I mean, yeah, there’s always a chance that they’re goingto stop those donations at a point like that. But there’s also a chance that they’ll they’ll increase it. So you use a of failed transaction as an opportunity to essentially increase. Yeah, yeah, and, you know, it’s an opportunity for you to really start using the language that you would use, maybe with a major gift donor-centric tuo invest on a monthly basis in our organization, you know, you might have a monthly investments that you have set up for, you know, for yourself, for your for one kings or, you know, whatever we’d like you to take just ten dollars and twenty dollars a month and invest with our organization in the future viability of the organization. So, you know, give that compelling story, give that compelling reason why they should be engaging and investing with you on one thing faces, okay? And that’s, uh, you wanted to be telling them stories about about your outcomes, basically, what a big part of the story. Selling that’s, right? That’s right night. I saw that you actually had done them a video recently, you know, kind of on this topic as well. You know, you’ve got to be able to thankfully tell your story and, you know, there’s a lot of information out there on the web, all you need to do is really do a google search for non-profits storytelling, um, there are a lot of experts in that arena i’ve seen some of them speak even at the american marketing association conference on dh you know, the thing that you have to get across to people is, yeah, you’ve got your stats on, you know, those important metrics that you’ve got to be able to communicate, but that’s usually not what’s going to sell somebody right on on wanting to invest with your organization. So you’ve got to be able to humanize it and tell stories about the impact that your organization has on the community and, you know, making sure that you’re kind of a hearing too, really good storytelling, a beginning, a middle and an end and really understand all the different types of stories that there are out there. There’s a reason why we can’t remember, you know stories about whatever little red riding hood and the three little pigs, right? There’s a certain set up to those stories, you can learn tons of information about that on the web, and i really encourage you, teo teo, focus focus in on getting the story straight not only for your major gift donors, but also across the board at all we know right now definitely cross for this matter from e-giving five dollars a month with five dollars, more than they need to know what you’re infected and we’ve had listen, we have a guest here too. You go, teo durney martignetti dot com and search storytelling, the the guests we’ve had on that subject will obviously come up. Yeah, you got to share your impact? Um, you’ve also been thinking about trying to capitalize on sigil ambassadors? Yeah, yeah. So talented people. Yeah. So, you know, i’m sure that this is something that amy sample ward talks a lot about when when she’s on your show, tony as well. But, you know, you want to think about engaging people to be able to help amplify your message. Right? So, you know i think we’re all asses point sort of accustomed to seeing campaigns were online where your friends or maybe joni there their birthday, you know, raising money for an organization on behalf of their birthday, that type of thing. So those types of sort of crowd funding these people are digital ambassadors for an organisation when they do that, all the people that were involved in that bucket challenge, they were digital ambassadors, right? And there were some that were really, really strong, obviously that the first family, the first guy that kicked it off, they must have had a pretty good following to get to get kissed off as well as he did, but you wanted to try and figure out who those digital ambassadors are if you don’t have any really it’s time to start recruiting some on broadening your outreach, even if you have to think about some paid opportunities, you know, on facebook such as, you know, i don’t know ads are boosted post, yeah, big book and also twitter yeah, yeah, you know, as you find the people who are most network most deeply connected and you start a campaign you wantto be working with them. And this is something that any and i have talked about to work them back channels. You get them enthusiastic and you get them talking before you start your public campaign, right? Get there. And you get that they’re connected to help you in the public. And so that i know that people who follow you, uh, people who were with you and you have the most followers fanned. Whatever. You know, those were the most connected are going. Teo, be active participants in your campaign. Maria, we gotta take a break. We’re going toe. We’re gonna come back and talk more about yeah, ambassadors. And i know you have some resources share finding them right now. I gotta take a break. Elearning credit card payment processing brovey check out the video at tony dot m a flash tony, tell us explained the process of businesses joining tell us on having their credit cards, other payments process by tello’s and reminds you that you are going to get fifty percent of the revenue that hello elearning that’s a long revenue stream because they have one hundred percent satisfaction rate. So you can be assured that the business is going to be pleased, and you’re going to be earning revenue from this four, a good long time every single month. Also, the video for their, uh, one hundred percent satisfaction and the price match guarantee. You go beyond that. Tell us, can’t save the money that you started to tell us, and you’re getting two hundred fifty dollars. So it’s worth starting. Think about businesses. That next-gen tio, you know, as the rest of you watch the video. Think about like, a local body shop where, by the way, out there, all wearing masks and your protection jewelry store the area where they make a pie with the crust recognize from a bakery where hope that we don’t have very good. Um, think about that think about the businesses that you’re you’re boardmember zoho family members only any of these potential referrals to tell us for credit card processing, you just have to generate some interest to check out the video. That’s brightstep teo, your long tail of revenue. Tony got a last tony tellers. Now, look, rebecca miree simple and her twenty eighteen plan. You have some resources for finding who the deepest, most networked ambassadors are among your constituents. Yeah. Yeah. I have some resources that you might want to consider looking into. First of all, i came across a great white paper download that blackbaud put together. They put together a nice free guide. And it’s actually called super has the kids program how to create a super advocate program. So there i read through it, and it looked like there were a lot of really good chips in there. So that might kind of give you the first time ideas about how the framework and what it is that you might want to do and, you know, it really is going to be able to create opportunities foreign organizations most committed supporters really did take more action hyre value actions than than a typical supporter. This’s why you’re our joy and of your cubine free, right? So that the guide is free, but the guide three guys? Yeah, another one, right, yet so a couple of other things actually one that you brought to my attention called attentively, which is one of the blackbaud solutions actually wait give you the opportunity to identify whose influential so they say that a mass email files with social data and so that you can better understand the social side of yours supporters. So if you do have an email list, it is an opportunity to see who amongst that list might be really great social ambassadors reorganization, that’s attentive dot leaves they’ve got a y yeah, they they also make the point that home email i just better don’t. Usually the one people used to sign up with social network, so if you have a file of of home addresses, home email addresses attentively that’s not that’s not well, my treat so that’s not a free one, but no that’s correct zsystems blackbaud but value there and finding the most connected people and you got zaptitude what is zaptitude about? Yes. Zaptitude right. Kind of an interesting name. They have one of their service offerings is called good influence. And i learned about this company a few years ago. And i actually met some of the folks behind the company at one point and met people at the american marketing association conference who use this tool. Two years ago, you been holding out on us. You got a couple of years. You’re feeling it now in january twenty eighteen, you know, i’ve got i’ve got to keep some gems for you. I don’t think w hole not on non-profit idealware way. Never talked about you and waited. All right, maybe you alright? I get it out? Yes. So anyway, they have they have a tool called good influence and basically it it’s an opportunity to is your existing customers because this is used side both, you know, businesses and non-profit so in this case, your existing donors to dr support through new donors. So it’s a platform that really again helps to amplify not so much doing the search like thehe tentative job l y product would do, but really, this could be a platform for you. Teo, try and scale off your digital ambassador efforts. And when i was going back and reviewing some information about the current leadership team i’m looking at the bio of the founder and ceo is kind of interesting in marinette, we talk about the good influence product with the bat phone for the social activation engine for the famous i spoke a challenge current, so i’d be interested in having another conversation with him, actually myself. Teo, figure out more about how exactly the good influence taught. It played into that. I stuck a challenge. Okay, cool. And that’s that information about that is that zaptitude yeah. Dot com. Right. Okay. That’s that that to write? Well, you would be our most likely contributors. So let’s, get some prospect. Researcher idea. That is okay. So i was also thinking about a new arena we haven’t talked about before, which is maybe trying to research some of the companies in your community that are set up as the corporations and so i know, you know, you know why i don’t want to get thrown in the jargon jail so let’s, talk a little bit of what? You know well, listeners know that’s okay, well, that’s all right, gene cog and i’ve talked about the corpse on there now, and they’re they’re social, social good missions, not sickly, profit driven, but they certainly can be profit making, so you’re okay. You’re okay, cool. Cool. Ok, good. So there’s, actually a website called b corporation dot net. Uh, where you can go and search by state and see, you know what? All the big corporations are right in your state on dh. Then, you know, you’re kind of using, you know, good old fashioned prospect research looking at that company, trying to figure out who’s behind the company and so on and so forth and trying to learn a little bit more about him. You know, these people already have a social mission built into their companies. Perhaps the work that you’re doing can align some way with a particular social mission. So, you know, i think it’s an opportunity for you two. Maybe developed, um, uh, some relationship with him. Yeah, most of the time. It’s, private companies, so relationship supply. The companies that are set on our course. I love it. It’s, like it’s, like doing the same kind of research assay. Would foundation wear where they would be court they’re aligned with, and whether you might fit in. Yes, in-kind. What do you got for us? You mentioned a family you mentioned foundation so it’s touch upon that for a moment. If you have not made your annual trust to your local cooperating collections of the foundation center in your in your next the woods it’s time that you do that no, we’re going ahead and get a subscriptions directly to the foundation directory online. So if you have the funds to do it and you do a lot of foundation’s research definitely worth while having that tool in house, but it is available fourth grade if you go to the foundation center or one of their cooperating collections in your community. So what i recommend is to try and focus in instead of the really big foundations in your state, which everybody seems to kind of know today everybody goes, everybody goes, yeah, focus more in on the foundations that are the family foundation’s, even if they do not seem to have a lot of assets and some you will even notice some will come up xero and assets and don’t let that turn you off because if they had gone through the effort of setting up the framework for a sound of private foundation, but there may be, you know, a plan in the future that that family is may be planning to sell business and funding the foundation, and you don’t know what the thinking is behind it and it’s going to get to know them a little bit. So don’t discount the ones that you even see with xero asset, okay? And you trying to find connections between your non-profit and foundations not only terms of mission, but you know, if you’re looking in your state, you’re looking for a board connections two are some kind of some kind of relationship, right board connections, mission over laugh, it could be that they are literally in your county or in your town. So these air opportunity three to try and develop relationships with some of these people don’t forget, i mean, if it’s a family foundation, people behind the whole thing on dh there’s, you know, it’s just happens to be the vehicle by which they are, um, you know, putting all of their philantech through so it’s worthwhile, taking an opportunity to research it there if you don’t have any access, any way of accessing the foundation centers products you could do a similar type search on guide star okay, another case, and as you do your research, don’t be afraid to bring lips of foundation board members and foundation names to your board meeting try to have a board members or, if not at your meeting, circulated some other way, but have your boardmember scrutinizing the foundations that you’ve found that align with your work and start getting people you’re boardmember you know where the where the connections might be, but we gotta leave maria, thank you very much. Happy new year, thank you are joining of thirties and free, you’ll find her at the prospects finding dot com and at maria sinful next-gen takagi what’s the new tax balm for your twenty eighteen fund-raising plan if you missed any part of today’s show, i didn’t think you’d find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuing online tools to small and mid sized non-profits data driven and technology enables twenty dollars, by pursuing your guiding you beyond the numbers regular piela dot com and tell us credit card payment processing your passive revenue streams. Tony got a last tony killers our creative producers try my family, which is the line producer shoretz social media site. Shadow and its wonderful music. In-kind you give me that? We’re not from the radio. Big non-profit ideas for the odd third, ninety five percent go out and records. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah, insights or no presentation or anything, people don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or p m so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane. Toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Webinar: Jumpstart Your Planned Giving

I’ve got a free webinar on the basics of getting your Planned Giving program started for small- and mid-size nonprofits. There’s a lot you can learn and there’s a lot you can do to kickoff your program. We’ll cover types of gifts; best prospects; marketing; resources; and answer your questions. It’s hosted by Perlman+Perlman. 

Registration: tony.ma/JumpstartYourPG