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Nonprofit Radio for June 10, 2024: Future-Proof Your Nonprofit With Apps, Tools & Tactics

 

Jason Shim & Meico Marquette Whitlock: Future-Proof Your Nonprofit With Apps, Tools & Tactics

Jason Shim and Meico Marquette Whitlock return from the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference, with their annual collection of tech to help you manage your tech. From collaboration to inbox management, from transcription to hidden Zoom tools, this panel will help you find greater balance and efficiency. Jason is at the Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience and Meico is The Mindful Techie.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer with Jejune. Oily, JJ June. Well, uh JJ June, Jun Ol, did you know I, I did you know ill. Did you know? I welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer with Je Juno iliitis if I had to digest the idea that you missed this week’s show. But first we have a listener of the week, Sharry Smith or it could be Chary. It’s either Cherry or Sherry. I’m gonna say Sherry, but it could be Cherry Sharri Smith from Portland, Oregon. Sharri gave us a shout out on linkedin when she was listing her favorite podcasts for nonprofits, Shari Shari Shari Shari. Thank you. Thank you very much for doing that. Uh You had a couple of other podcasts listed. Um Yeah, they, they’re, they’re good, you know, II, I know them. Uh hm. Ok. They’re good. But nonprofit radio is on the list. That’s the one that’s the one you want. So Sharry Cherry, thank you very much listener of the week this week. Thank you so much, Sherry. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s going on this week? Hey, Tony, congratulations, Sherry. This week we have future proof your nonprofit with apps, tools and tactics. Jason Shim and Miko Marquette Whitlock return from the 2024 nonprofit technology conference with their annual collection of tech to help you manage your tech from collaboration to inbox management, from transcription to Hidden Zoom tools. This panel will help you find greater balance and efficiency. Jason is at the Canadian Center for nonprofit Digital Resilience and Miko is the mindful techie on Tony’s take two chatty gym guy were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Here is Future Proof your nonprofit with apps tools and tactics. It’s a pleasure to welcome back, Jason Sim and Miko Marquette Whitlock to nonprofit radio. Jason is Chief Digital Officer at the Canadian Center for nonprofit digital resilience. How can we harness technology to make a difference in the world? That’s the question. Jason loves to explore with organizations. He’s on linkedin and the center is at CCNDR dot C A Miko Marquette Whitlock is the mindful techie. He’s a workplace well being strategist who helps mission driven professionals prioritize their well being so they can elevate their well doing. He’s also on linkedin and his practice is at Mindful techie.com, Jason and Miko. Welcome back to Nonprofit Radio. Thanks for having us for having us. This is a tradition. Uh We, we didn’t get to talk at the nonprofit technology conference proper, but uh we’re, we’re, we’re filling in now uh with your annual sort of review of apps techs and uh uh apps, apps uh tools and tactics. And it’s actually quite appropriate, I believe because we’re recording on uh May 1st. It’s May Day in much of the world, not celebrated so much in the US and Canada uh celebrating uh labor organizing and labor rights. However, in the US and Canada, nonprofit workers certainly uh have a right to the apps, tools and tactics that will make their work more balanced and productive. So I’m sure you agree, you both agree with that, right? We can come to terms on that. So, so why don’t we proceed? Uh Let’s go alphabetically by uh first name. So Jason, uh you go first, you get to introduce the first uh apps tools and, and tactic. Yeah. So thank you, Tony. Uh So before we jump into the, the tools, I think uh you know, 11 thing that we definitely, you know, keep in mind when talking about tools is, you know, the concept of tiny gains. And so, you know, having um the uh kind of perspective that, you know, uh one to the power of 365 is one, but 1.01 to the power of 365 is 37.7. And so, you know, that that notion of improving bit by bit, you know, 1% each day is kind of how we look at these tools that, you know, it’s not going to be, you know, uh you know, one tool isn’t necessarily going to solve all the things. But, you know, we’re going to be sharing uh various tools that can, you know, help kind of nudge things, you know, 1% at a time, you know, in that regard. So the incremental growth is uh is valuable, of course. Yeah, totally. So, so you know what the first tool that we want to highlight for folks is that it’s, it’s a tool that is actually built into uh Microsoft Word already. But uh um folks may not necessarily be aware of it in as much detail. Um And that’s that, that there’s actually a built in transcription tool, right in Microsoft Word. And so you can actually um uh when you find a little microphone icon on it that you can dictate directly into word, but you can also upload files uh into it. And so that, that’s a feature that’s not as well known uh that you can upload up to five hours per month per user inter software for automated transcription that is bundled in uh with your uh word online. And where is this microphone found? Maybe I’ve seen it 1000 times. I just haven’t noticed it. Where, where do we find the microphone? So typically it’ll be in the menu bar in the uh the, the top right hand corner uh of uh of Microsoft Word online. So if you’re accessing it in the browser, uh it should be in the top right hand uh uh section. OK. We had a session uh uh uh a panel at uh at NTC about tools that you already have that you may very well not be using. And they covered uh all of the office, office 365 has a lots of, lots of value in there that, that people don’t know about. And also Google, a lot of very uh free Google tools. Um Yeah, we, we, they focused on Microsoft 365 and, and Google. Um interesting, you know, they had like a dozen things that, that are, that you’re already paying for or getting for free and you’re just not, you, you just don’t know that they’re there, they’re hidden. So, OK. So consistent with that is the uh the transcription tool. OK. So up to five hours, you said up to five hours a month. Yes. And it’s, it’s super handy if you’re doing, you know, things like uh interviews or if you’re doing um uh uh yeah, the meeting notes, you know, those types of things, you know, some other tools already have, you know, the transcription part built in. But in the specific, you know, use case where, you know, you may be doing, uh say uh a program interview or something like that, that this is an additional functionality that’s uh that’s in there. So you’re uploading the audio file. Yes. All right. Interesting. I know, I know a guy who does a podcast. Uh II I believe he already has a transcription process in place. But uh I have to re evaluate because uh maybe this is, maybe this one is simpler. Uh And I don’t know if he’s paying for the uh that transcription process. I, I can’t recall what he’s, what he’s been doing for the past several years around transcription. But uh I’ll have him look into it. Miko. Welcome back, Miko. Good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Congratulations. Also on your new book, uh which you and I will be talking about in a couple of weeks. We’ll, we’ll get you back on exclusively for uh how to thrive when work doesn’t love you back. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yes, I know you and I will be talking in a couple of weeks. Um What’s next? What’s next on our uh hit parade of uh apps, tools and tactics. Well, so if you want to stick on the theme of things that people aren’t using, I would add Zoom to this category. And if I could, I wanna walk through just a few things that I think are pretty interesting in terms of developments with, with Zoom. So similar to Microsoft Office and Google workspace. Um Zoom is one of those platforms or tools that many organizations are using. Many folks have at least a basic paid subscription at the organizational level. And um these are tools that are constantly evolving. And so sometimes because we’re using them all the time, we’re not aware that there are certain features that have been added. Um So I’ll, I’ll share, I’ll just go through these really quickly. So the first is for lots of organizations, you know, it’s important that when people are identifying themselves, important, people identify pronouns. And so one of the ways people have been doing that is they modify the name in the way that that shows up and they add their pronouns. Uh But now for folks that didn’t know Zoom actually has a dedicated pronoun field, so you don’t have to do that. So um if your administrator has enabled this in the web-based um login for Zoom, um You can set that by default for your, for your own profile. Um And you don’t have to update your name when you pop into zoom to do that. It’ll your, your pronouns will appear automatically. So I think that’s one cool feature um where, where that’s appropriate and where that uh makes sense for folks to, to look into that uh another option. And this is about accessibility. This is also about making sure that um we recognize that people learn and process differently. And so you and I are talking uh we’re able to see each other um Right now as we’re recording this interview. Uh But for some folks, maybe they process differently and they actually need to be able to see the, the captioning, they maybe need to see some form of a transcript to be able to follow along and process information. And so for that, there is automated captioning that is built into zoom. Now, it’s not 100% perfect, but it’s there. Um It’s uh essentially computer generated captioning. Um There are a lot of languages that are covered by default in your basic paid description and similar to the pronouns field, your administrator or whoever is managing your Zoom account for your organization and log into the web based portal and enable this feature if it’s not already uh enabled. And what this allows folks to do is if someone is in a meeting um and they need access to um to, to close captioning that particular individual can enable that um for themselves. And for folks who don’t need it, they can leave it turned off or if they’re turned on by default, people can turn it off, uh, completely up to you as the user in terms of what, what you need. Um, I’ll share one final, um, thing and then we’ll toss it back to you, Tony. So one final thing that I think is pretty cool. So, uh, you know, many of us have probably seen like the news, um, where they’re doing the weather report and you have this, this person standing in front of a screen and they’re pointing here and they’re pointing there generally, what’s happening is this person is standing in front of a, a green screen and their technical team is projecting the images. So it looks like this person is actually pointing to a map of where you know, fill in the blank wherever you are, right? Well, you can actually simulate that when you’re presenting. So many of us are used to traditional screen share where you share your slides or you share your screen and then a box if you appear in a different place in zoom, but you can also share your screen in such a way that you are overlaid on top of your slides so that you have that weather man or weather person effect as well. Um Now the caveat here is you have to be aware of how this is showing up your lighting. In some cases, you might actually need to have a green screen in order for this to be effective. And it’s gonna require you to format your slides or your presentation a bit differently because obviously you’re taking up now a slice of the screen in addition to the content that you have on the slides. But a really interesting way to create a different type of experience um for folks that, you know, you are meeting with um or doing a webinar with, I think you can have some fun with that. Uh Like at the beginning of a webinar, like you’re immersed in your slides, you know, I’m, I’m surrounded by my valuable content. Uh you know, you could have, but I don’t know, can you uh can you control where you are or how much of the frame you get in proportion to your slides behind you or whatever, whatever the content is, I guess let’s just use slides. Yeah. So you like, I’ll be in the lower left so that you would make format your slides so that the lower left is always blank and you can do it that way you choose where you would have to test this out and, and, and, and try it out. So there are some limited features that allow you to do this directly into zoom. Um The other which is thinking about physically positioning yourself in reference to the camera. So you think about where you’re going to physically be and try that out, test it out for yourself. The final thing I’ll say is there are third party tools that work with Zoom that do this better. But nonetheless, I just wanted to point out that Zoom does have this built in feature for folks that at a basic level that want to try it out and have some fun with it. OK? So that’s the uh so pronouns can be uh automated, automatically populated, you don’t have to go and change your screen name. Um There’s the automated captioning and then the what is this, this background feature called? It’s called, it’s called set powerpoint as virtual background. OK. It’s aptly named, said powerpoint as virtual background. All right. Um Are you guys familiar with or, or recommending any zoom alternatives? I mean, there’s, I know there’s teams, of course, uh although most people iii I don’t know, 95% of the meetings I’m in are on Zoom. Uh Are you, are either of you finding alternatives to zoom for any, for any reason or, or something that other folks are using? That’s valuable. So what, what comes to mind is uh well, this isn’t necessarily an alternative to zoom for the video conferencing itself. Uh There, there is a tool called the O BS uh that if folks are looking for advanced uh video streaming capabilities, uh that uh O BS actually sits as an additional layer to your video feed so that you can further customize some of the green screen effects or being able to move um yourself uh uh into a corner, you know, like uh like Miko described, but it uh it gives a ton of functionality as well and it kind of sits as in um sits in between your video feed and something like Zoom or Teams or Google Meet and allows you to, you know, do all sorts of things like you could um the directly do like a picture in picture, you know, type thing if you want to do like an advanced video broadcast. So O BS is used quite a bit by uh uh streamers and such. But that, that’s uh uh definitely a tool that uh if folks are looking to explore uh for some more advanced functionality, uh it’s called uh O BS and it’s uh uh available and free. Oh OK. Cool and live streaming, live streaming. Yes. Yeah. Not just for live streaming. It’s also like if we’re on a Zoom call, that isn’t necessarily be live stream that you can activate it and it will uh you know, it will help you control, you know, some of the outputs of your video feed that way. So yeah, O BS stands for open broadcaster software. So essentially go to build on what they are sharing. So going back to the example of the weather person, if you wanted to create a highly produced and polished uh you know, presence that doesn’t look like a typical, you know, zoom or uh teams meeting um screen or presentation, you could add lower thirds, you can change a ho there are just so, so many different cool things that you can do using what Jason was was saying. Um And to pick up on, you know, your original question around alternatives. So to my, in my awareness, um you know, the Zoom, there’s Google Meet and teams I think are probably the top three and there’s, there’s a good reason for that, you know, there’s, there’s broad compatibility across um platforms and devices. Um And there’s, you know, some built in trust there that organizations have in terms of those, those big three. that, that said, I think it’s also a good point to make in terms of thinking about when we think about the expansion of tools we don’t have to use necessarily the the latest and greatest. Everything doesn’t have to be high tech, right? Everything there, there’s a, there’s room for mid tech and low tech and when it comes to meetings and collaboration, sometimes we forget what happened when we didn’t have these tools, right? We picked up the phone, we, we met in person. Um we had conference lines where people called in and we, we couldn’t have seen each other. You know, when I first started working in the tech space, I work with colleagues and manage teams that of people that I actually never met in person. And, you know, we would have phone calls and conference conference line um conversations and meetings. And that was the the primary way that we communicated and collaborated. And we’re seeing that in terms of digital wellness, there’s actually a benefit to that, right? Because we’re spending too much time in front of our screens. There’s research that shows that it increases, you know, cortisol levels and increases stress levels. And over time, too many of those back to back video mediated types of collaboration actually reduce engagement, reduce productivity. Um And actually, in some cases can be counterproductive. So we wanna be able to find that balance and also recognize that, hey, depending on what your intention is, what your outcome that you’re trying to get to sometimes just having an old fashioned phone call or working asynchronously um can be just as effective or sometimes more effective to get to where it is that you’re trying to go. Thank you for that. That, that’s a valuable reminder. Uh Yeah, because you can feel like, you know, unlike an in person meeting with, with many people, several people, you know, you can feel like you’re being stared at uh or, you know, you’re not, but people are looking at their screen, they’re not necessarily looking at you, but it looks to you like everybody’s looking at you and uh I can see why that interesting that cortisol levels rise like by the after a few hours of this, I guess or. Absolutely. And, and what you just described is a very real phenomena. So part of it is um the self view, right? You seeing yourself on screen and being self conscious about that and you can turn this off in zoom. So this is another feature you can you can turn off self view. So if you click on the three dots on your particular image, there’s an option that should be allowing you to turn off your self view if that’s an issue. Um The other thing, others are still so others are still seeing you. So you’re not, you’re not stopping your video, but uh you’re stopping your own self view. OK? And uh one final consideration here is that there’s, there’s research from Stanford University that actually shows that um this particular phenomena that you just talked about is, is compounded for women. Uh because we have different expectations about how women are presentable and show up on screen. And oftentimes there’s this um un assessed costs that we, you know, we just take for granted that that in some cases, women have to do more work in order to be what we think, what we deem of as presentable, right? So if you’re requiring folks to be on camera all the time, that sometimes is one of the the side effects if you’re not aware of that. Excellent. Yeah, valuable reminders. Thank you. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver. It’s their mission to move the Needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive. Fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and gross giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact, virtuous.org. Now back to future proof your nonprofit with apps tools and tactics. Jason, you have, you have something else for us. I know you do. That’s a rhetorical question. When I’m talking to me and Jason, we can go on for hours. It’s purely rhetorical question. Absolutely. So, uh the next step is, uh you know, along the lines of we talked about transcription earlier is uh some of the text to speech tools. So they’ve developed quite a bit in the last few years. And you know, the there’s a few that are out there that I’ll rhyme off, you know, Natural Reader 11 labs. And uh nr and so, uh in particular, um I’ve used Naet before and it’s super helpful when you need to record uh voice greetings. Um And if anyone’s ever experienced, you know, having to record a voice greeting and say like for a voicemail and you have to do like 20 some odd takes to do it that, you know, something like Naki can, can help streamline that. Now the, the special thing is that they have a lot of uh voice models that are available in different languages as well. So it really nails uh some of the uh the accents around the world as well. So, you know, uh given that I live in Canada that when recording, um some of the uh greetings for an organization that it uh uh it needs to be delivered in English and Canadian French. And they have specifically Canadian French models as well as many other language models uh uh for the, the text of speech so that we’re able to provide a script in both English and French and that it’ll read it off and, you know, you’re able to get it in one take rather than having to do, you know, 10 or 20 takes or trying to get multiple people to coordinate around the recording of that. So that’s an example of a tool that can help streamline uh in that regard. And, you know, there’s many other, you know, potential use cases that one was called is called N Yes, like parakeet with an N N and also natural reader and 11 laps. Sorry. What’s the last one? 11 labs? 11 labs. Yeah, and similar to the, uh you know, text speech and also uh editing you know, audio files and text uh is uh there’s a few different tools that, that do this, but the one that I, I’ll name specifically, um you know, with this functionality is a descript. Uh So descript is a tool that can help with things like uh let’s say if you have a transcript, um we have an audio file that you’ve uploaded to uh to descript is that they can do filler word removal. So, what it does is that it imports an audio file and then it produces a transcript for you and you can edit it like a word document and it’ll detect things like if you say, um ah and it’ll, uh it can automatically help you remove some of that. So, you know, let’s say if you added a few extra words and you’re speaking and you can edit the text that is uh in descript and it’ll automatically remove it from the audio file. Uh So, uh it without having to, you know, uh splice the audio file itself and looking at the waveforms that you can do it as uh edit the transcript and it’ll give you a clean audio file afterwards. That to me is, that’s incredible that you can edit it as text and then it, it goes and does the, applies those edits to the audio file? Yeah, it’s good. Uh I, I don’t know. To me that’s amazing. I don’t, I, you know, descript, it’s called D the letter D script. Yes, de D E. Yeah. And there’s additional functionality as well uh in, in the script called overdub. So let’s say if you are recording something and you left out a word that overdub can actually fill in the word for you. Uh If you, you trained a voice model to do it. So let’s say, you know, if I intended to say um you know, an extra word or a phrase or something that, you know, similarly you can enter in, you know, the word that you intended to say and it’ll uh fill it in for you so that it can uh it sounds seamless uh there. So, you know, for something like a podcast or, you know, whatever other um uh function that, you know, folks may be looking to accomplish there is that it really helps streamline some of the audio editing process rather than having to rerecord an entire section against placing and placing and everything that uh you can uh just, you know, type in the word and it’ll drop it in for you uh in uh your voice. So it learns from the rest of the file, how to pronounce the word or words that you’ve just inserted into the text file. You, you, you, you, you may have to do some training on it where you um Yeah. Uh but it, it does use E I voice cloning to uh to replace some of the uh the audio there. Damn. And, and I’ve used this, so I’ve used it for my podcast. My podcast producer uses this and um it’s, it’s, it’s saved us so much time. And as a matter of fact, Jason was one of the folks that we interviewed for the first season and we use this software to clean up our episode with, with Jason. Yeah, that’s incredible because I do some of that work uh in my own post production. But I’m, I’m using audacity. But like you said, Jason, I’m looking at the wave forms. Uh Anyway, it’s, it’s eminently doable. You just have to make sure you have the right spot and you play it a few times to make sure you have exactly what you want to take out. Uh but it’s not nearly as swift as text editing and, and, and you can’t add unless you go, you know, go record again and then the, the ambient noise is never gonna sound the same as it did on the day you recorded even sitting here at my same studio office, the, the ambient sound is different. Uh Wow, I, I’ll add one more thing in terms of how this works. And so you, Jason is right in terms of being able to edit the transcript. And so let’s just say, using that example, if I thought Jason gave a long, would it answer or maybe Jason said something? And he’s like, oh, well, actually, I don’t want to share that with my employer, can you take this out? Right. We can go in and edit the transcript that way. Uh, and then for the fillers, you can set it so that you don’t have to go in and manually remove the fillers. You can just tell it which fillers you want to remove and it does, it automatically, um, for you. And depending on which uh, subscription level you have, you can fill in, you can do not just fillers, but maybe there are specific keywords that are significant to you and your audience or to how you wanna edit that you want to remove. You can train the software to remove those specific things automatically. Oh, that’s very robust. That’s remarkable. I think uh descript. OK. Cool Miko. What’s next? All right. So I wanna talk about collaboration tools and training tools. So I do a lot of training for organizations, a lot of things I do virtually. And Google Jam Board is a digital um white board that I used. Um And I still use. But unfortunately, um Google is winding down that particular offering. They’re getting rid of it as of this fall. And so I, I wanna talk about a few alternatives for folks that either have been using Google Jam Board um and are looking for alternative white board tools or maybe you haven’t been using white boards and you just want to get, you know, you wanna come to the party, you wanna be a part of the all the fun. So I wanna give you three really quickly. Um The first is Fig Jam. So this is a white board tool by the company fig A uh F I MA is uh in the space think of think of Adobe. For example, uh a lot of designers use their UX tools and, and web developers use their UX tools to design products and design websites. But they have the separate product, Fig Jam, which is specifically for uh white boarding. And one of the ways that I use white boarding tools is if I have people doing exercise where maybe we brainstorming together, you know, we can the same way that you’re in the room in person and you get people stickies and people stick them on the wall or they sort them into different buckets, you can do the same thing, but you can do this essentially virtually. Um And so Fig Jam is one of those tools you have mirror uh which is another tool that’s in this bucket. And I know that the the Intend team actually uses this a lot. I know that when Jason and I served on the board at Intend, um that was a tool that we used a couple of times as part of our collaboration and you know, strategic planning process um to be able to do that virtually. And then the final tool going back to Zoom for a moment um is zoom has a white board feature. So for folks that weren’t aware of that and you’re, you’re not using it. Zoom has a whiteboard feature um and tied to the Zoom also has an annotation feature where you can annotate things on the screen. Um Both as the presenter, you can also have I I in my presentations, I sometimes have questions on the screen or like a scale and I’ll have uh participants use the annotation tool to indicate where they are on a scale. People can write on the screen or in this case, you know, if you want to use the Zoom whiteboard feature, you could do it that way as well. But those are three alternatives to Google Jam boards. Uh So fig jam mirror and Zoom White board and they all allow uh all the participants to contribute to the white board. Yes. And so they, they, they, they, they, they all allow that feature uh with the caveat that um they have the all three have the basic white board functionality, but they also serve, they have some distinct reasons why you might want to use one over the other. So just picking on mirror for an example um from my perspective, mirror has a very steep learning curve. And so as a trainer, I probably would not use mirror in a training where um folks haven’t been together before, they haven’t used a tool before. But if you’re using it over the long term and you’re able to train people on some basic things. So use your team over time. Then mirror is a, is a great tool for that. Um Fig Jam and Zoom white board are a bit more intuitive. And so depending on your audience, you wanna take those things into consideration if you’re using the Zoom whiteboard, which I’ve, I’ve never, I’ve never used. Um Are you just collaborating with your, your, your mouse? Is that how you, is that how you contribute to the whiteboard, your mouse, your stylus or if um I believe there are just like with Google Jam Board, you know, the, the way that Google Jam Board works is, you know, you, you can drag and drop text boxes and type in the boxes. Um And so that, that’s one option as well. Jason, I’m not sure if you have if you have familiarity with this or have other thoughts about the use. Yeah. Iii I believe uh yeah, you folks would drag their mouse and they can type in and uh it has a lot of parallel features to uh to jam board and, and, and neural although lighter for sure on that front. OK. Cool. Right. It’s your turn Jason. Yeah. So the, the next one that comes to mind is uh Minimus launcher. So it’s minimis. And what it is is that it’s an alternative launch screen for your phone. Now it’s uh launched initially in Android. And uh I believe the the iphone version is now out as well. And what it is is that it helps you get control over uh addictive apps. So if folks are finding that, you know, they are um in a loop or cycle of, you know, constantly checking their phone or things, you know, this is one of those apps that can help uh uh make a dent in trying to break that cycle a little bit. And so what it does is that it actually limits and changes uh your initial kind of phone screen uh and gives you a primary access to, you know, the apps that you need for, for work or basic functions. But if you do want to access uh something, you know, like social media um that it will prompt you and ask you, you know, are, are you sure that you would like to do this and you click, you know, yes. And then it will actually prompt you again, like, you know, you’re absolutely sure. And then, you know, you go to another screen and then they’ll say, OK, now give a rationale as to why, you know, you would like to, you know, check your, your social media. So it puts, you know, additional barriers up. Uh and then when you do move through it, it’ll allocate you 15 minutes uh to, you know, time box it so that you’re not necessarily stuck in that loop of, you know, looking down the screen and then you know, looking back up and like, oh my gosh, you know, an hour has passed. Uh so, uh really um uh a tool that can help regulate, you know, some of the uh the, the instincts that, you know, may be triggered around, you know, some of the uh those addictive algorithms that keep on feeding content that, that may keep us hooked to a phone and social media. This is like a uh a mother looking over your shoulder or you know, your own, your own conscience being, being uh awakened. Are you, are you absolutely sure. And then, and then you get a time limit even when you’re absolutely positively 100% sure. You, then there’s still a time limit. Absolutely. That Minimus Minimus launcher. Yes. OK. Cool. These are, these are really fascinating. Um I mean, so there are tools that can help us. We just, you know, we need to be conscious uh Miko, this is right in your right uh right. Aligned with your practice. We just need to be conscious about our uh or intentional and conscious about our desire to be, be uh be more productive, be less distracted. I mean, you know, you, you’re the mindful. Absolutely. I think the underlying thing here, both personally and professionally is uh being clear about what your overall intention is and what is the outcome that you’re driving for. So, being clear about those things is gonna number one help you determine which tools are the best tools for you to use right now. And as I mentioned before, sometimes the latest high tech tool isn’t the best tool. There’s the, there’s the, you know, the the mid tech and low tech also option exactly. Going to the phone. Exactly. So those are options as well. The other consideration is to consider that not only is it intention and clarity about outcome important for the reasons I just stated, but also because you have to remember that particularly for for profit entities, a lot of companies don’t necessarily always have your best interest in mind. What I mean by that is that they have to generate um time on screen. Um They have to sell ads and so their incentive is slightly different. Yes, maybe they want to provide a useful product, but they want you to use that product in a certain way or for a certain amount of time so that they can increase the share of the revenue or profit that they’re making. And so when you are aware of that, um it it becomes easier for you to identify the ways in which you might want to um recapture your time and recapture your attention using something like what um Jason just shared in terms of the Minimus stauncher. It’s time for a break. Donor box open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations anywhere, anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team and member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a bre and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations. Visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. In the gym. I like to go to the gym and do my work. I work out on the ellipse elliptical and then I go on the floor. I do a bunch of planks. I have to get some upper body work in. I’m not, I haven’t done that yet. I like to, I like to just get the work done, you know, take my time not rushing, but I like to get through the work. And it’s my uh kind of, you know, it’s my time. Theres a guy I know more about this guy’s life. I’ve learned over the past many months that his wife had a stent when they were on vacation in Florida. Uh And the surgeon said it’s a good thing, you’re not in the Caribbean because the medical care wouldn’t be as good. And you, you, she’d end up with an infection. She had to have a stent. She was have a suffering shortness of breath in Florida. It was, I know where it was, it was Miami. They were in Miami. It’s a good thing. They weren’t in the Caribbean. The surgeon says the guy’s boat, he’s having motor problems with his boat. Now, his boat is leaking oil and he’s got a, you know, this guy with the boat and the, and the, the, the, the wife needs a stent. The boat needs, uh, uh, a repair to the, to the oil line. Um, he went to an air show last week. Uh Cherry Point is a local uh the, well, not that low but it’s within a half an hour or something. It’s a Marine Corps Air station. He went to the Cherry Point Air show. I had over Memorial Day. The, the Blue Angels were there. I heard all about the show, like the guy was narrating the show but he, but he’s not even talking to me. He’s talking to somebody else. But, you know, it’s a community gym. It’s not that big. It’s certainly adequate, but it’s not huge. It’s not a 10,000 square foot gym. So, you know, you overhear people. So I, I hear him, you know, I like I got the narration to the Blue Angels Air show, you know, personalized uh to for us in the gym. So this chatty guy. But are you the chatty guy? Oh, don’t be the chatty person, the guy or gal don’t be the chatty person, you know, I don’t know. I’m not watching who he’s talking to. So, I don’t know if they’re suffering or they’re, they’re maybe just, um, you know, being polite, uh, you know, condescending a little bit but he gets his, he gets his oratory out. I mean, he’s, uh, sh, don’t be the chatty person in the gym to do your work just, you know, it’s nice to say hi. That’s different. But, you know, you don’t need to narrate the air show for everybody who didn’t get to go over Memorial Day weekend and the, and the motor with the, the oil line with the testing and you use a soapy water to, to spray it on the line to find the leak. And I know more about motor boat mechanics now than, uh, uh, than I’ve known in my entire life. I’ve learned in the past couple of weeks. I got, I got a short course in, in, uh, outboard motor maintenance and mechanics and, and troubleshooting chatty guy. Don’t be the chatty person in the gym. Just do your work. Just do your work. That’s Tony’s take two. It’s exhausting. It’s just recounting. It’s exhausting. Eight. You meet some of the funniest people in your gym first with the birthday guy and now with the motor guy. Yeah, Tim. Tim was sad with the birthday. This is a different guy. This is not Tim. Yeah, I don’t know the characters. Well, we’ve got Vuk but loves more time. Let’s return to Future Proof. Your nonprofit with apps. Tools and tactics with Jason Shin and Mikko Whitlock, Mio. I’m gonna ask you about one that, uh you have uh in your email signature. And we, we talked about this, uh I remember either last year or the year before, uh, but it, and I clicked on it as we’ve been, uh, you know, scheduling together, uh inbox when ready. So I’m, I’m, I’m imposing one on you. I know this is not on your list because we, we talked about it a couple of years ago or last year, but please reacquaint us with uh Inbox when ready. Ok. So Inbox prim ready is one of my all time favorite tools. And so I use Gmail. So for folks that are gmail users, this is a free plug in that you can um essentially install into Gmail and this only works on the, the desktop. So I wanna make, make sure people understand that if you’re dogging it from a computer or, or a web browser on a computer. But the idea is that um your inbox is if you’re able to hide your inbox after a certain amount of time or you are able to set it by default. So when you log in your main inbox is hidden, so that you aren’t sucked into the rabbit hole of sort of going down the hole responding to emails when your intention might be something completely different. As an example, maybe I was looking for the, the zoom link for today’s meeting and as opposed to logging in and seeing like, oh, I have, you know, 50 new emails. What if I don’t see any emails and I can just go to the search bar and, and type in Tony, uh you know, zoom link and I get directed directly to that email. I’m more likely to follow through on that and not be, be distracted. Um One of the other interesting things too is that we know from behavior change, being able to see metrics that actually show us, for example, in this case, how long we’ve been engaged in a certain behavior or how long we’ve actually been in our inbox for a day? Sometimes that awareness like, oh my God, I spent, you know, six hours like with my inbox open, that would be quite alarming, I imagine for a lot of people, right? And so those this particular tool allows you to see how much time you’re actually spending in your inbox in Gmail on a web browser. And that can sometimes be a tool that can be a catalyst um to help you shift um behavior if your desire is to actually spend less time um in your inbox. Now, the the the beautiful thing since this tool has come out, both Gmail and uh Microsoft outlook, which are the two, I think I would say most of those are the biggest sort of email providers in terms of the organizational space. Um they have introduced new tools including, you know, the ability to be able to snooze your inbox, you know, to be able to temporarily pause, you know, emails coming in for a certain period of time. And there’s a host of other ways in which you can um you know, manage your time in your inbox. Um that are something that you can use to supplement or to actually replace Inbox when ready. But I’ve been using Inbox when ready for so long. And it’s, it works for me that it is one of my, my go tos the idea of pausing your inbox. I mean, so it seems so simple and, but I never thought of it until you said it. I mean, the there’s just this simple functionality like maybe I just don’t wanna, you know. Uh Yeah, I, I just don’t need to see the incoming messages. Um There’s another simple thing that I, I think it was you guys who shared it with me years ago, which I did, which is just turn off the notifications. The little, well, I use apple mail. So for me, it’s a little, it’s a little red dot red circle that has a number of unread messages in it, just turn that off, just turn that feature off. Just let the email sit there in the in the dock for me. It’s a tool bar for others and you don’t have to be prompted uh that you’ve got 15 unread messages. It’s, it, it’s anxiety producing. Yes. And so one of the things that folks don’t re realize so, and I think um this happens in both the Android and the Apple device ecosystem where when you’re downloading a device or downloading an app, sometimes we’re still in a hurry that we don’t read the pop ups that let us know what’s happening. And so we just click. Yes. Agree. Yes, agree. Yes, agree. Because we want to get to the app. And what happens is generally what’s happening is what you’re saying. Yes to and agreeing to is in addition to sharing all your good data, you’re saying yes to um all the notification, right? Not a badge, the alerts, the badges and so on and so forth, right? And so the particular feature that you’re talking about are the badge notifications. Uh where for it could be for email, it could be for Facebook or Instagram. It shows you not only the app, but it shows you a little red dot on the apple device, for example, oh, you have, you know, 2000 unread Facebook messages or you have, you know, three new likes on, on Instagram and for many people, that’s a source of background stress every time you pick up your phone. And so I recommend for folks that unless there is a compelling reason, like uh like you’re some kind of first responder and you’re doing important work where you have to be, you have to know the minute someone is sending you one of those things because if you don’t, someone’s gonna die for most people. That’s not the case. Right. So, um, turn that off. Turn that shit off. Absolutely. And don’t be, you’re absolutely right. When you download a new app, they ask all those questions. Also. Location, share your location. Why do you have to share your location? Yeah. Right. Google Maps needs my location. That really, that’s about it. My bank does not need my location. I can deposit the check without it knowing what my uh well, you know what my IP address is or what or my, my my coordinates are. Um Yeah, don’t. Right. Mindful, mindful. You’re the mindful techie. That’s right. It’s, you’re aptly named as well. There’s a lot of aptly named things here. Um Yeah. Right. They, when you get the app, you’re anxious to get to the thing, take a breath and read. You know, you don’t, you don’t need all the notifications and alerts. OK. Let’s stick with you since I imposed one on you. Uh I took your, I, I took your uh your, your, your chance. So you had one teed up. Go ahead. All right. So I, I’m gonna share one I think is a favorite for both me and, and Jason so much so that I think we probably share this in virtually every presentation because it’s just such a phenomenal school. So it’s called Toby and it is a browser tab organization uh plug in. Uh That is, I think pretty much cross browser at this point. I know that you can get it in Chrome and Firefox and probably a couple of the other browsers. But the idea here is um you know, we routinely have meetings where, you know, you have to open a gazillion tabs that are relevant to that particular meeting. And for many people, you may be doing that manually. So you have a meeting with Tony and you’re like, OK, I gotta pull up the podcast together. I gotta pull up this, gotta pull up this. And so you’re, you’re, you’re trying to scurry around as the meeting is starting to open up all these different tabs. What uh Toby allows you to do is to essentially create collections of tabs and you just press one button. Um and you, you, it opens all those tabs automatically, right? And one of the interesting things with Toby in comparison to the built in bookmarks and, and mini browsers is that then you can share the collections with your team. So if, if you’re working on it, let’s say, you know, Tony, you have a, a humongous podcast staff and you have a central by set of tabs that you all have opened during your, your planning meetings. You could or someone else on your team could create a Toby collection, share that with everyone and then everyone has the same access to the same collection and it sort of standardized and people didn’t have the ability to create their own collections or customize uh on their own. And so it’s one of those things that it’s one of those going back to what Jason was saying about 1% better, you know, that ability to be able to save those few moments and to save that uh mental stress that we go through at the start of a meeting um adds up tremendously over time. This is another good, yeah, good point you made before to accumulated accumulated like background stress, even the the anxiety of seeing the badge with the 2000 Facebook uh messages unread or something, you know, just uh I didn’t get to, oh I’m so far behind and then, and then it becomes pointless to do it. But the number keeps increasing but you’re so far behind, you may as well let it go, but it’s causing more anxiety, more agita. All right. All right, Toby. So, so that falls under like uh um browser, browser tab management, browser management. OK. Toby Jason. Yeah. So the another tool that want to chat about is uh this may be something that is available for folks that they may not necessarily be using, but they just want to draw it to folks awareness. So, um for those that may already have an 03 65 subscription, you know, through their organization is that uh being copilot um has a commercial data protection uh uh flipped on. And so what that means is that, you know, when, when folks are using, you know, some A I tools that, you know, there, there may be a concern that it is the data is being used to train the model or that, you know, you don’t necessarily know that it’s going to end up, you know, being uh you know, pop up somewhere else, you know, down the road is that uh the, the commercial data protection feature, uh actually uh assures you that it won’t be used for the training of the model and it’ll be contained uh when, when you’re using it. And so, uh if you are using it, you just have to be logged in to your 03 65 account at bing.com/chat and then there’ll be a little green um shield on the top right hand corner that says protected. And so, you know, you’re, you’re able to use that and uh resting assured that, you know, the data that you’re, you’re putting in there isn’t being used to train a language model uh for the folks who are using um the generative A I function. So, uh so what it is is that, you know, it’s uh you know, the similar to things like, you know, GP T or uh you know, Google’s Gemini in that for this particular instance, uh that uh it’s uh the, the little green uh icon in the in the top. Right, assures you that, uh, uh, it, uh, stays contained to your organization. Ok. So it’s like firewalled off from, from, uh, the, the generative A I learning. Mhm. Yeah. And, and as a general tip for, for folks as well as for the other, uh, uh, you know, tools that they may be using around generative A I is, you know, to make sure that you’re checking the settings and the fine print uh that, you know, if you are using, you know, one of the free uh options as well, that there may be uh settings in there to uh turn off the um use the data for training data models uh uh for folks that may uh like to uh be a little bit more secure uh with uh their privacy and what they may be um putting out there. There’s also a concern uh when folks give one of these uh tools, their own data to learn, like, you know, I want you to write a letter to a donor in, in my tone and you, so you upload, you upload to the using in your prompts some of your own letters. And I want it in my tone with, you know, you, you need to be very aware of what you’re, what you’re providing for the learning act because I don’t know that it’s only, it’s keeping, it’s keeping your data only to this conversation, this, this uh this purpose that we’re we’re going back and forth about and whether it uses, it uses that your data that would otherwise be proprietary to you because it’s, it’s your letters, uh for some larger purpose. Absolutely. And that’s something to be aware of when, uh flipping on some of the features in some of these programs where, you know, they, you may be prompted you to flip on an A I feature or, or something, but, you know, in the fine print uh or even not so fine print, you know, it may say something along the line of like, you know, uh this will submit your data to a third party, uh you know, just giving you a heads up, but there’s a lot of additional subtext there where it’s like, OK, well, after it’s submitted to the third party, you know, what happens like is this going to be used to train, you know, the language model, you know, is, you know, this going to pop up, you know, somewhere potentially in the future or is, you know, or is it going to stay contained uh and not used to train the model? So, uh you know, those, those are questions that are worth asking, you know, as um you know, more and more A I features, you know, pop up along the way as well. What what third parties, third party is in the world, I think the broader point that I would make here too. And this is with social media. This is with um anything you post on a website. Um we technology has evolved to a point where essentially there’s a forever memory, right? Even if you take stuff down, it’s still there, still findable. It’s somewhere. Right? And so I always, particularly with younger folks, you know, say, don’t share anything, don’t text anything, don’t post anything on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat and tiktok that you would be embarrassed to see on the news, right? If you’re embarrassed to see it on the news, then don’t post it. Don’t, don’t share it very wise, sage, sage advice from the mindful techie. Uh Let’s do uh let’s do one, each 11 more each Miko. All right. So uh we know that the amount of information the V information has continued to increase and it’s virtually impossible for us from a human perspective to keep up with all of that. And so in this case, one of the ways that A I can be very powerful is by actually helping us to summarize, you know, voluminous um documents, videos and so on. And so one of the tools that we shared during our session is uh a plug in for chrome that’s called youtube summary with chat GP T and cloud. So chat GP T and Cloud are both um two different types of um A I tools. And one of the interesting things about this youtube summary with chat GP T and cloud tool is that it allows you to summarize youtube videos, web articles, and PDF documents. And so I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to watch your two hour training on fill in the blank topic. Maybe I just want, you know, just give me the cliff notes, give me the, the, the bullet points and let me dive deeper on the points that are most relevant to my particular question or my particular curiosity at that moment, this particular tool you just plug in a URL and it gives you a summary um to help you to really focus your time and maybe you decide or determine that, hey baby, this video doesn’t have what I need or maybe it does. I want to look at the last third of this and actually dive a little bit deeper. Um but it can be a powerful tool to save you um lots of time um with particularly with lengthy videos or lengthy documents, say the name of the, the tools again. So this is a long one. So it’s called youtube Summary. It’s all one. Yeah, I’m just reading the title that they gave us. So youtube Summary with Chat GP T and Cloud. OK. Yes. Thank you, Jason. Yeah. The, the, the last one I’ll share is uh it’s more of a mental model and a tool and uh you know, to, to really think about things on a two by two grid. And so the the, the model is called the, it’s also known as the Eisenhower matrix. And so when thinking about, you know, the various tasks that one has to do, and, you know, we, we shared a whole bunch of tools that help, you know, automate and speed up things. But it’s also to look at the tasks themselves and really take a look at, you know, what’s, what’s urgent and what’s important. And so on the two by two grid on one access, um you know, you would have an important and not important and on the on the other access, you would have urgent and not urgent. And ideally, you know, you um you’re spending your time on the not urgent and important things because you know, that’s where you can make, you know, a lot of your long term impact and you know, the things that pop up that are urgent and important, you know, those uh is uh you know, important for you and your organization and when you make short term impact and when you think about, you know, things that are not urgent and not important, you kind of have to ask, you know, well, why are we doing them? And so we want to make sure that these tools aren’t automating things necessarily that, you know, if it’s not urgent and not important, you know, automating but not, not urgent and not important is, you know, spending more time and resources to do things that aren’t important and urgent then you know, those things just need to be eliminated. So those can be thinking of the like the the email inbox is a very good example of non urgent, not important. Most of it obviously there are exceptions but most of email is non urgent and non and non important. Mhm. Yeah. So things like starting to, you know, junk mail, you know, checking through, you know, a lot of, you know, social media, you know, they can be, you know, distractions and time wasters and, and then uh you know, and then the other quadrant being the urgent and not important uh part where, you know, that’s where a lot of the tools can help, you know, automate or help, you know, kind of you’re delegating it out to, you know, the, the tool to help accelerate, you know, some of that and, and so, you know, I think this is a really great conceptual framework to as folks are looking at, you know, their tasks and matching it up to the tools that they’re, they’re using as well. And I know that, you know, Miko speak to, speaks to this, you know, really knowledgeably in his trainings and um around uh how, you know, it can be used effectively and uh I’ll throw it over to Miko as well. Uh uh If there’s any additional things to add on this front. Yeah. So Jason, I, I think you’re spot on, I think that the key here. So in the context of the tech tools that we’re talking about, um we shouldn’t just be using the tools just for the sake of using them. Like you want to be clear about the purpose and at least in terms of the organizational context, and I think it’s critically important as you think about urgent versus important. Also thinking about, you know, what are the resources that we have? What’s the capacity that we have? You know, when I was communicating director, one of the the the the the common pieces of wisdom from some folks when social media was emerging is that oh, you gotta be on all the platforms. Well, that was impossible. We didn’t have the staff of the resources nor did it make sense because our audience wasn’t on all the platforms. So asking yourself the question, what resources do I have? What time and capacity do we have? And you know, what goal are we trying to achieve and what’s good enough for now versus what we can build toward for later or perhaps what we can eliminate all together because it’s simply not relevant, even though everyone else is doing it or the conventional wisdom says we should be doing this or be on this particular uh platform. Um And I think we can apply that to A I right now, right? So um I am of the mind that it’s not an all or nothing, right? Not every organization needs to be using every single type of A I tool out there. Um It’s simply inappropriate in some cases and some cases that actually can be counter productive. So you wanna be clear about what outcome you’re trying to get to. Um And how the tool can support you and help you. Not how the tool can sort of replace you being a critical thinker and that’s, that’s actively involved in the process. Yeah, loss of creativity is, is my biggest concern about artificial intelligence. Use that, that we’re, we, we could see some of the most creative things that we do. Uh And listeners have heard me talk about this with uh we had an A I A couple of A I panels. Um The one, the first one was with um Arua Bruce and George Weiner and Beth Cantor and Alison. Fine. And we kinda uh I aired my uh my concerns there in, in more detail just about giving away the most creative things that we do. And over time us becoming less creative, less creative thinkers, less thoughtful thinkers or less critical thinkers. Um All right. So why don’t we leave it there? And, and Jason, I’m just going to reiterate it’s the Eisenhower Matrix, which I’ve followed for years and I try to think that way, but I don’t, I don’t do it routinely but that, that’s uh that two by two that you were describing is uh the Eisenhower Matrix and you said it, I’m just reiterating it for folks. So that, because it is a, it’s a very, it’s a very sensible way of, of planning. And Miko to your point earlier, uh, you know, it’s, it, it, it’s been around for generations. Old tools can still be valuable. Absolutely. And I, I would offer to your audience, Tony if I’ve reworked this, um, for the mission driven context. And I’ve, and I’ve annotated it. Um, and I’ve, I’ve given sort of a road map of how you work through this in a practical way. So if folks are interested in that, they can email me or, you know, we can give you a link to put in the show notes or however, it makes sense. But folks want access to that annotated version. Ok. The annotated version of the Eisenhower Matrix. Ok. All right. That’s Miko Marquette Whitlock. He’s a mindful techie. You’ll find him on linkedin and his practice is at mindful techie.com. Jason Sim Chief Digital Officer at the Canadian Center for nonprofit digital resilience. He’s also on linkedin and the center is at CCNDR dot C A. Jason Miko. Thank you. Thanks very much. Real pleasure each year. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Next week, we’ll take a hiatus from 24 NTC with Gen Z career challenge. If you missed any part of this weeks show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. You’re gonna be interested in the Gen Z you, you’re Gen Z. That’s me, Gen Z career challenge. We’ll see if it holds true for you were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your support, generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. This show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for April 18, 2022: Apps, Tools & Tactics For The Hybrid Workplace

 

Jason Shim & Meico Whitlock: Apps, Tools & Tactics For The Hybrid Workplace

 Work ain’t going back to what it was pre-pandemic. How can you and your teams remain productive, not merely busy? Jason Shim and Meico Whitlock reveal the resources that will lead you to rockstar productivity. Jason is from Pathways to Education Canada and Meico is The Mindful Techie.

 

 

 

 

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[00:01:54.94] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast and oh I’m glad you’re with me. I’ve come down with blue fro dialysis. If I saw that you missed this week’s show apps, tools and tactics for the hybrid workplace work ain’t going back to what it was. Pre pandemic. How can you and your teams remain productive? Not merely busy, Jason Shim and Miko Whitlock reveal the resources that will lead you to Rockstar productivity On Tony’s take two summer is coming sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o As we continue our coverage of 22 NTC, You know what that is. You know, it’s the 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10, you know who N 10 is because we’ve been talking about this for weeks and weeks. They’re the smart folks who help you use technology in all your social change work right now. Our coverage includes Jason Shim and Miko marquette Whitlock both returning to nonprofit radio Jason Shim is director of digital strategy and transformation at pathways to education. Canada and Mikko market Whitlock is speaker and trainer on mindfulness and technology. He is the mindful techie Jason and Nico. Welcome back to nonprofit

[00:01:58.54] spk_1:
radio Thanks for having

[00:01:59.13] spk_2:
us.

[00:02:33.24] spk_0:
Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. I don’t know if you guys have been on her three or four times. We’ve, we’ve been doing not uh, the NTC for since like 2016 or something. So it’s been a long time. It’s been a long time. Good to have you back this year. Your the topic is apps tools and tactics for hydrate workplace. Rockstar productivity, not mere productivity or increased productivity but rockstar level productivity. Okay, I’m gonna hold you to that.

[00:02:35.24] spk_1:
Mm hmm.

[00:02:36.44] spk_0:
Jason. Why don’t you give us a little overview of why you think this was an important topic for for Ntc?

[00:03:18.34] spk_2:
Yeah. Over the years I found that when sharing information at NBC and presentations that uh some of the feedback that we’re getting with people we’re feeding back well we love hearing about the tools and so, you know, this um presentation emerged as a, as a result of that really, you know, following the data and you know, the people have spoken and uh we put together this session to really reflect, you know, that there are tons of tools that are constantly coming out and these are tools that we have, you know, tried tested and have identified that, you know, they really help us in our kind of day to day work and we just want to share it with the world.

[00:03:37.04] spk_0:
And because there’s also a mental model component to this. So as as are mindful techie, what’s the what’s the mental side of

[00:04:48.44] spk_1:
this? The mental side of it that we talked about specifically in the presentation. Was this idea of moving from being busy to being productive. Right? So you can be busy answering emails, you can be busy and back to back zoom meetings. You can be busy attending all of those unsolicited calendar invites for various things and you could be exhausted and tired at the end of your day in your week, but you might not actually be making a difference in terms of moving the mission forward. And so the mental framing is really about how do we move from focusing on outputs? Right. I answered this many emails. I worked this many hours. Two outcomes focusing on OK. How many people did we actually serve? How many how many dollars did we actually raise? You know, how how did we make a difference today in someone’s life based on whatever the mission is of our particular organization. Uh And so the the tools are really that we talked about are really designed to help people make that that shift from dizziness too, productivity related to actually moving mission forward.

[00:04:51.54] spk_0:
What a critical difference distinction between being busy and being

[00:04:55.27] spk_1:
productive.

[00:04:57.07] spk_0:
Love it. All right. So why don’t you get us started? Why don’t we uh why don’t why don’t we start with some apps, tools and tactics. Mikko, why don’t you kick us off?

[00:06:59.14] spk_1:
Yeah. So, uh you know, I’m you know as the Michael Techie, I’m really big on tech distraction tools. And so um some things that I highly recommend our um for example, taking full advantage of the do not disturb feature that are available for your devices and so enjoy devices IOS device system to be the most common right? We have the watch, we have the phone, we have talent we we even have the you know the laptop or the computer in all those instances. The tools that we have have opportunities for us to silence stills notifications when we are doing things that are necessary for us to be um productive. So at work when we do focus on work related activities, silence notifications. And then also when we’re sleeping and when we’re resting and believe it or not sleep and rest are actually one of the most powerful productivity tools that we have. We didn’t talk about this in the session but it’s often left out of the discussion. People feel guilty for taking time off and resting. But it’s actually a requirement to to take care of yourself and to do greater work and so do setting your do not disturb settings. You can automate this. So for me for example I have my my phone and my tablet automated so that at um at about 9 30 every evening until about 10 a.m. The following day my notifications are silenced. And what does that mean? That means that from receiving text messages from receiving alerts from other types of apps on my phone unless I’m looking at my device. I’m not hearing the beep. I’m not hearing the ping, I’m not seeing those things flash across the screen. They’re not disturbing my sleep. Um during the night and when I wake up in the morning, they’re also that the first thing that sort of jolts me into my day, right, I’m able to ease into my day without having those things um turned on. So that’s, that would be one thing that that I would recommend in terms of um thinking about this idea of tech distraction um

[00:07:14.24] spk_0:
before you continue, I think you and Beth Kanter, we’re talking about this, I don’t know, 34 years ago using using the, using the very simple functions on your phone that that are available to keep you from being distracted using the do not disturb. I’m pretty sure it was you and Beth like like I said four years ago talking

[00:07:23.26] spk_1:
about the

[00:07:24.06] spk_0:
very simple nothing to download. Just use the function that’s already on your devices.

[00:07:43.54] spk_1:
Absolutely. And and they have evolved. And so one of the things that Jason and I talked about the other sessions that we’re not disturbed, for example, um some of the latest updates for android and iphone allow you to for example, make those um the shutting off of those notifications. Geolocation based. Right. And so like if you’re at the gym or you are

[00:07:51.30] spk_0:
actually

[00:08:26.64] spk_1:
physically driving, you’re physically at like an actual on site in your office for example, you can set it so that it recognizes where you are and it adjusts to notifications based on that maybe in the case of of, of Jason for example, he needs certain notifications on so that he can be alerted if there’s something happening with the babysitter. Right? And so maybe depending if Jason is leaving the house to go to work, maybe he wants to be able to receive text messages or calls from the babysitter but have everything else turned off. And so that’s an example of how you can modify those things based on what your needs are. So that you can um, you know, stay informed, be responsible, be responsive but also make sure that you are moving from busy. Too productive.

[00:08:33.24] spk_0:
Jason has an infant at home. That’s why Miko is saying that

[00:08:37.24] spk_2:
very relevant.

[00:08:52.64] spk_0:
That was very relevant. Yes, very relevant. Um before we moved to Jason, Miko, can we talk about the importance of rest and the glory of napping? I’m, I’m a huge proponent of naps.

[00:10:19.74] spk_1:
Yes. I’m a big proponent of naps. And one thing I will share is I talk about deep rest right? And depressed is a continuum that includes power naps that includes sleeping. It includes just shutting yourself off from external stimulation. So, one of the things that I share with folks is that um some of us have a hard time sleeping and sleep looks looks differently for everyone. Um, But there are other ways to rest and recover and recharge outside of just like when I give the example of sometimes when I take a power nap for example for me a power nap is about 30 minutes or less. Sometimes I am not during that time period able to get into a place of deep sleep and that’s okay. Sometimes the restorative power comes from simply taking a moment to lie down or just sit in a comfortable, you know, cool place unplugged from the devices set the timer and simply allow my body to relax that the the act of doing that even if I don’t fall into a deep sleep is also rest and restoration as well. And so a lot of us beat ourselves up because we feel like oh I didn’t get you know, x number of hours of sleep. Well maybe we expand the definition to focus on. Did you allow yourself the space to simply not do A bunch of things at one time to allow your brain to rest to allow your body to rest. If you did that then maybe that’s good enough for where you are right now.

[00:10:38.74] spk_0:
There’s NASA research that the optimal naptime is 22 minutes. I’ve I’ve seen that I’ve seen that in a couple of places. So yes, that’s what they recommend for people on the International Space station. 22 minutes optimal naptime.

[00:11:07.04] spk_1:
Yes. And I find for myself that I I set my timer for 35 minutes and what that allows me to do it because actually you actually need time to get to that 22 minutes. And so I build in the buffer to allow myself to actually lie down and get comfortable, You know, whatever it is and generally by the time the 35 minutes is up, I’ve I’ve gotten some maybe not a full 22, but I’ve gotten, you know, a sufficient amount so that when I wake up, you know, I’m feeling refreshed and not, not groggy.

[00:11:29.94] spk_0:
Okay, you’re welcome to take more than an extra 13 minutes it takes to get a lot of prep time leading up to your nap. You need to get just the right position. Just the right weight blanket, just the right pillow. I mean I’m not, you know, these are all things that I have my special quilt, My nap quilt, it’s just the right weight. It’s soft cotton. It’s it’s it’s ideal. So

[00:11:33.16] spk_1:
Alright,

[00:11:39.04] spk_0:
So take your extra 13 minutes. Get yourself you get a solid 22 minutes of rest. All right, Jason, let’s go to you. Let’s let’s um what what you know I mean, however you guys have categorized these. You just, you just go next

[00:13:28.84] spk_2:
what? Well, following on the lines of tech distraction. I mean, Niko spoke a little bit about the built in functionality and one functionality dollar highlight is a night shift in nightlight which are baked into IOS and android. So in IOS, it’s called night shift in android, it’s called nightlight. And these functions used to be separate apps and then with the latest releases that they’re, they’re not baked into the absent and what it is is essentially a red light filter that turns on when the sun sets. And the reason why this is important is that for folks who may find themselves staying up late at night, like if you’re up at like, you know, one or two a.m. And you’re trying to figure out why you can’t fall asleep for some people, the culprit, maybe the blue light that is emanating from screens. So if you’re staring at your cell phone without a red light filter on, or if you’re working late into the night on a computer without a red light filter on, your actually exposing your eyes to a lot of blue light, which is kind of stimulating, you know, bright light outside. So, you know, your body is thinking that it’s kind of daylight and so, you know, no surprise that, you know, that may lead to kind of sleep problems. Uh, so uh night shift and night light, our settings where you can flip the setting on and then as the sun sets, you know, your um, screen will kind of tint a reddish orangey glow and uh I have found that it’s made an incredible difference in being able to fall asleep and actually feel tired. I think there was a, for me a pre night shift, um, life and in a post and even more important for me now with a little one uh you know, at home and you know, folks, I have introduced this feature to, you know, have have noted that um they actually, you know, start to feel tired at, you know, the times of day when they’re supposed to be, and, you know, they’re experiencing, you know, fewer sleep challenges in that regard.

[00:13:45.64] spk_0:
Doesn’t the blue light suppress the production of melatonin, which is uh, isn’t it melatonin? I think that because people take melatonin supplements, if they, if they’re not

[00:13:51.50] spk_2:
sleeping well, I

[00:14:03.04] spk_0:
think the blue light suppresses melatonin and that’s why it’s good to filter it out toward approaching sleep time, so that your body produces the melatonin that needs, it needs to help you fall asleep. Isn’t something like that.

[00:14:19.94] spk_2:
Yeah, I think it’s helpful to be able to provide the body with the ongoing cues that, you know, it’s that, you know, it’s been built for and, you know, if we’re creating lots of like artificial light, um, you know, via our, our screens and, you know, moving beyond the screens to in general, um that, you know, if uh if folks are, you know, having like really, really bright overhead lighting, you know, in their bedrooms or things, you know, it’s, you know, it’s important to be mindful of, you know, those light sources late at night

[00:15:39.74] spk_0:
television, same thing, you know, it it serves no purpose to use night shift or night light on your, on your device and then your phone, you know you’re watching tv you know again that that that that blue light. Um Yeah I just saw something else. Uh This is it seems like the the theme running through this is sleep. But I just saw I just saw research about the darkest, the darkest and the darkest environment is best for sleep, the least amount of light possible. So if you have a light on your charger, you know put a piece of, put a piece of tape over that or turn it upside down. So the light isn’t not the L. E. D. L. E. D. S are very bright so and the slightest light. Um I see it alarm clocks in hotel rooms and then I unplug those things and then and then I try to be courteous to the housekeeper and I reset the time before I before I check out but led alarm clocks, you know, brightness brightness is is bad firstly

[00:15:40.20] spk_2:
I totally hear you there. I’m putting putting tape over things. I I I’ve gone over my entire bedroom with electrical tape and so you know it’s it’s almost like doing a light on it. There’s like a little glow of something. Alright electrical tape is going on top

[00:16:36.14] spk_0:
Of it. Exactly there there’s a kit, there’s a little kit that Amazon sells for like $6. It’s different size circles and different shapes, circles and squares with an adhesive on the back, you just you know peel it off a sheet and then based on how big your light is that, you’re trying to cover those different sizes and different shapes. Um So you can get a little kid too, but same thing, some some kind of tape or whatever, but you wanna you wanna, you wanna sleep in a gym, not just dim dark, you want to sleep in a dark environment? Um All right, I love it. So, we haven’t even downloaded anything. We’re just using the devices that are using the functions that are on our devices for to avoid tech distractions. Um Why don’t you give us something else? God will stick with you. And then we’re going back to Mexico.

[00:18:06.94] spk_2:
Yeah, the next kind of another kind of uh tool is something called Newsfeed Eradicate. Er uh So this is a tool that was introduced to me by, by Miko and it’s a plug in that you uh is available for for chrome and when you install it, you know, when you log in on facebook that you see a bit newsfeed of everything. Uh I mean, newsfeed eradicate er it does just that it eradicates the news feed. So it allows you to be more intentional with your social media consumption that um you know, when you dip into a social media networks like facebook, you know, they’re incentivized to try and keep you on there for as long as possible. You know, viewing all the ads and so on and so forth. But sometimes you just need to go to facebook to send a quick message or to like look up something and you need to get back out. And what this does is that it removes all the distractions so that you’re not stuck on the site, you know, which can often happen. So it actually shows an inspirational quotation instead and you know, if you want to post an update, that’s all you can do. Um and you can just focus on that Now. Newsfeed Eradicate er has evolved over the years as well to include other uh platforms. So it’s also added twitter linkedin, youtube, instagram, hacker, news reddit. So uh you know, I think this really reflects that they’re they’re listening to their audiences as well because those are also other sites that, you know, um during the course of a day, you know, if you’re going in just to check in and something uh that uh you know, you could end up staying there longer than than you wish and a tool like Newsfeed eradicate er uh you know, allows you to be more focused.

[00:18:25.04] spk_0:
Yes, the distractions that which which are designed, they’re built into the they’re built into the sights and the apps to keep you there longer. That’s why uh Yeah, so news where we find, where do we find news feed eradicate er how do we how do we turn that on?

[00:18:33.84] spk_2:
Yeah, so you just short short in in the the chrome plug in. Um uh, Chrome plug ins online. It will show up as news feed. Eradicate er and you can uh, you can install it there.

[00:18:47.04] spk_0:
Okay. Chrome plug in. Excellent. Alright. Miko. What do you have?

[00:20:51.94] spk_1:
So minus is related. It’s also a plug in for um for chrome, it’s called stay focused and it’s a plug in that allows you to really manage your time on those distracting websites. So for me, for example, I’m a political news junkie and so I could spend all my time if I could going down the rabbit hole of, you know, the political news, you know, headlines and the videos and the podcast and all those things. Right. And so what state focus allows me to do is it allows me to set up time budget. So for me, My daily time budget is 30 minutes. And what that means is I plug in all of my distracting websites and I can browse those for 30 minutes. And then after my time expires, if I’m on one of those websites, I get a pop up that says, shouldn’t you be working and then the page closes right and my time budget resets every 24 hours. And so what this allows me to do is to um find the balance between being productive but also, you know, engaging in something that’s actually fun or entertaining or interesting to me, but to Jason’s point about facebook, for example. Um there’s nothing wrong with facebook, you know, facebook is great. If you like to watch cat videos of panda videos, that’s great. But we have to be able to put parameters and boundaries around us so we don’t spend all of our time doing that. You know, one of the things we have to recognize is that especially with social media technologies, they aren’t um neutral in terms of tools like we tend to think that technology is neutral, but they’re not because as Jason pointed out, there are companies that are incentivized, you know, for a number of different reasons to keep us on their platforms as long as possible, right? That’s how they make money, right? How they monetize their, their their offering. And so it’s a tools like stay focused, allow you to strike that balance between saying, okay, I like to watch cat videos or I like to follow the political news fox or I like to follow what’s happening on Reddit. That’s okay. There’s something wrong with that. But I’m going to set some limits on that so that I can do that while also making space to, you know, get the work done and also spend time with family and friends and some of the other things that are really important for your life as well.

[00:20:58.14] spk_0:
So stay focused as a, as an app for android and iphone,

[00:21:03.54] spk_1:
it’s a plug in. That’s a browser plug in just like, like the newsfeed Eradicate er for, for chrome.

[00:21:34.94] spk_0:
Okay, Okay. Alright. 30 minutes. You’re pretty disciplined. I would have said it for more like six hours or something, you know, so defeated 10 hours and defeat the whole no, but I’m using the good, I’m using the good plug in. I’m using it. Alright. 30 minutes is very disciplined. All right. And then it shuts you said it shut the site down. If you if you go over whatever whatever site you’re on, if you, when you go over it, it pulls it down, shuts it. Yeah,

[00:22:04.94] spk_1:
So it’s, it replaces it with a with a pop up that says, shouldn’t you be working? Um now, and obviously they’re there. You know, if you’re determined enough, you can obviously work around like I can open another browser. I can do a number of other things. But the point is that hopefully that will be enough for most people to pause and to really assess. Okay, well this has been enough. I can I can come back uh and you know, I’ll, You know, I’ll be able to come back. I have another 30 minutes tomorrow. I really need to get back to this report. I’m working on. I need to go, you know, walk the dog or whatever it is,

[00:22:13.04] spk_0:
raise your consciousness, right? Give you the chance to be disciplined.

[00:22:18.24] spk_1:
Exactly.

[00:24:03.44] spk_0:
If you, if you want to override it and go back into un productivity then of course you can, you can figure out how to do that. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications content. They can help you create content whether that’s for internal audiences or for your outside audiences, whether it’s blog posts, social media, your annual report, reports for the board research that can help you create content and and content curation management. Have you got a lot of documents, some of which could be valuable on your website, on your blog. There might be good social media posts, but you don’t know how to organize them or their you need somebody to go through them to find the good stuff and separate the wheat from the chaff. Always like that. The wheat and the chaff, you know, they can help you with that too. So the content creation and also the curation, the management of your content organization there of all eminently doable by turn to turn to communications turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to apps, tools and tactics for the hybrid workplace. What’s the movie you both have talked about the way absent sites are designed to keep us on. What was the movie just within the past year or 18 months that that revealed the tricks the or the technology that uh, that all the big sites used to keep you on, was it? It wasn’t the social network that was the older one about facebook wasn’t it? The social

[00:24:07.02] spk_1:
network

[00:24:09.08] spk_0:
social dilemma. Thank you social dilemma. It’s exciting. It’s on HBO. It’s excellent. Thank you. Make up your social dilemma reveals all the technology that they’re using to keep you on intentionally intentionally. That you’re right. This this is the technology is no longer neutral.

[00:24:39.44] spk_1:
Yes. So yes. So the social dilemma talks about that. And um what you know, uh example that um that Jason gave us in terms of the news feed, which is sort of never ending, right sort of this infinite loop, for example, um you have other examples with netflix and Youtube where the default setting is for the next thing to play right automatically.

[00:24:52.80] spk_0:
Right? You

[00:24:54.73] spk_1:
can turn those off.

[00:24:56.94] spk_0:
So

[00:25:12.54] spk_1:
with netflix, you can turn off the automatic playing of the other things. You can also turn off what I find annoying is sort of the the audio preview. You can turn off the audio preview so that you know, when you’re flipping through different options. The audio preview doesn’t you know, you’re not sort of it’s not blaring at you as you’re trying to decide what you’re gonna

[00:25:36.54] spk_0:
do, you’re trying to sort through what to watch and every time you highlight something right, the preview starts all right, I’m gonna check, I’m gonna check the settings in all three, you’re the one that annoys the hell out of me. You know, I just watched a great movie. I like to watch a movie to the very bitter end that has the copyright year in the credit. But but they’ll but they’ll start streaming. They’ll they’ll they’ll, they’ll start streaming another movie or so. Or unless you click up into the upper corner to say continue the credits

[00:25:43.08] spk_1:
so

[00:26:23.14] spk_0:
You can, you can defeat it, but you got it, you got like 10 seconds or maybe 15 seconds. I think it’s always, you have 10 seconds to move the cursor, you know, go up and highlight continue credits and then, and then you can watch the indian credits and the and the music. And to me, they’re cutting the movie in half. Even though it’s, it’s the last two minutes to me, they’ve cut it in half the credits count. I want to see the credits. I want to hear the music. Alright. I didn’t even realize you could turn those things off. Okay. Check check settings. So check settings in all your streaming apps. All right, Thank you. Excellent. Alright. Uh, let’s see, Jason. You wanna you wanna take a turn.

[00:28:11.14] spk_2:
Yeah. So another section in the presentation that is on automation and ai tools and I’ll start with a really cool one that came out fairly recently and it’s called visual ping. So the the ul Firdous visual pain dot io. And what it is, is essentially a tool that will tell you when a site changes. Now. It sounds super simple, but you know, the specific use case maybe, you know, let’s say you are looking at a site and you’re having to check it regularly for, um, uh, an organization that is going to be announcing, you know, a round of grants soon and you want to be notified. But let’s say they don’t have an email notification system set up where they don’t have like a feed. Um, that means, you know, someone in your organization or you have to be checking that every day or maybe several times a day if it’s super urgent or you want to get in, you know quickly and what visual ping allows you to do is just you input the website and that, you know, you can allow um, yourself to, to draw a few boxes and say, you know, this is the area of the site that I want to be notified when it changes and it’ll send you a message when it changes or you can connect it to something like zap here to, you know, maybe send you a message on slack or however you wish to configure it. Um, but it’s, it’s really, really cool, you know, and especially when you look at some websites that, you know, may not even that are manually updated, this can be really, really useful. Um, so you know, for notifications of, let’s say if there’s, you know, I’ve used it for notifications of new charity registrations. Um, there, there isn’t necessarily a notification feed for that. So I usually just send me a notification every time a new charity is registered in Canada. Um, I had a friend, you know, share with me that they used it to get tickets for the latest marvel movie when they came out to be notified as soon as they were available. So you know lots of use cases for it and it’s it’s really taken off.

[00:28:21.64] spk_1:
Covid vaccination appointments.

[00:28:23.65] spk_2:
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:26.64] spk_1:
Covid vaccination appointments.

[00:28:30.34] spk_0:
Covid excellent. Uh Jason aren’t you getting too many things about new charity registrations daily? I mean aren’t there dozens a day?

[00:29:13.14] spk_2:
Yeah, they they it only um I think that the website only gets updated when it it does update. Uh so it is possible to actually go a couple of days without any notifications and I think that they seem to be patched updated. So when they are updated I’ll get a notification and then they’ll be like, okay, there’s four new charities registered today. I know that after the holiday season there’s a whole slew of them. Um You know, it’s uh yeah, it’s it’s just been kind of cool to to see that because otherwise, you know, I was checking the site like you know, once a week, just like, oh you know what’s new and now, you know, I think there’s some really interesting possibilities um for just being able to, you know, I see it as it as it comes up

[00:29:20.44] spk_0:
and what do you what do you do with that information? Is it just it’s just just for you to see the breath of charitable work being done in Canada or are you doing something with the new registrations as they come through?

[00:29:48.44] spk_2:
Yeah, I I was just curious to see, you know, them as they’re coming through, uh you know, I tried a little experiment where I connected it to uh happier um kind of process to automatically tweeted out. Um so, you know, I think there’s some, you know, experiments that, you know, I’m trying there, but um yeah, it was really just to stay informed and on top of, you know, the new organizations that are coming out and you know, what what what what are the new charities and what are they focused on?

[00:29:58.14] spk_0:
Interesting. Okay, okay, Mika want to take a turn, please give us give us a couple.

[00:31:44.24] spk_1:
Sure, so, yeah, so it’s sort of sticking with this theme about ai automation. Um, you know, a lot of us use, in terms of productivity tools, we use some version of the google suite of tools, so google docs, google slides, or we’re using Microsoft office or something similar. And something that’s really cool. Is that both of those actually have built into it, You don’t have to buy anything new, you don’t have to install the plug in, they have dictation features that allow you to actually speak as opposed to type so you can actually speak your notes, speak your outline, your agenda, whatever, whatever it is that you’re actually working on, and depending on the type of productivity style you have, depending on also your your learning style, maybe you’re not so good at typing. Uhm maybe if you’re doing brainstorming, maybe you just want to sort of, speak out loud as you’re outlining that report or whatever it is, and just have it sort of automatically be captured. Both Microsoft office and the google docs have the um dictation features like this built in. Um And there are there are other tools that folks are probably aware of, like outer ai for example, that integrate with zoom to actually do transcription. Um there’s also um close captioning, A lot of people aren’t aware of close captioning that is automated. That’s built into things like zoom and teams and teams that you can turn on to make your meetings more accessible. Um I think by default, it’s they’re they’re available in english um and you might have to pay an additional fee or hire a live trans transcriber if you wanted another language, depending on the type of meeting that you have, but nonetheless, those are features that are that are there um that can make life a bit easier for folks that are ai it’s an Ai driven

[00:31:53.54] spk_0:
if you’re doing this in the word sweet or google suite, you just search for dictation.

[00:32:00.84] spk_1:
Yeah, so I would if I am not able to set a pinpoint exactly where but what I would do is just go to the help menu and search for um for dictation or you can just do a quick google search. Um Those will be the two places I would start to to look for where in your particular version you might find

[00:32:18.84] spk_0:
that. And then also a good point about the closed captioning on zoom.

[00:32:22.54] spk_1:
Yes.

[00:32:23.15] spk_0:
Make make these also making technology more accessible as

[00:32:27.81] spk_1:
well.

[00:32:29.44] spk_0:
What what else? Miko let’s stay with you.

[00:35:36.54] spk_1:
Um So out of responders, so many of us are accustomed to this when it comes to out of office replies for email. Um I encourage people to use those to indicate um you know, your availability and and and things of that nature. Um but in addition to that, there are also out of responders for things like social media and so there’s I’m going to give you a low tech version and the high tech version. So if your organization, for example has a facebook page, I’m gonna give you the high tech version. Uh facebook has a feature that will allow you to set up an auto responder um to respond to people. So for example maybe you are a crisis hotline but maybe you’re not 24 7 and so people are reaching out to you through your facebook page, maybe you want an auto respond and let people know hey we’re not available between the hours of this hour and that our if you have an emergency please call this number or you know please make an appointment if it’s not urgent to come back the next day or whatever it might be right, so you can use your auto responder uh to to communicate and give people access to information if you’re not able to respond in the moment. Right? So that’s sort of the one of the high tech solutions sort of built into facebook um and I actually use this my personal, my organizational facebook page because I’m not, I’m not active on facebook, so I’m, I’m active on other platforms and so I use my auto responders let people know, hey I see that you found me here. I’m actually not here, I’m taking a break from facebook, but you can find me on linkedin, you can find me on instagram and here’s the information for that um low tech version of that is on this, I’m going to use twitter as an example, so twitter is another platform where I have a presence, but I’m not active, twitter is for this particular season of my life and work, not a tool that makes sense for me. Uh and so I made a decision that I’m going to take a break from twitter, so twitter does not have a built in auto responder, so what I’ve done is I’ve simply created a tweet that I have pinned that simply says I am not on twitter if you want to reach me, here’s how you can actually reach me, you can go to my instagram page or you can follow me or connect with me on linkedin and I’m happy to engage or two that way. So if you go to my twitter profile, that’s gonna be the first thing that you actually see, you’re gonna see that pin tweet that says I am out of the office where I’m away from twitter and here’s the best way to, to connect with me. So um auto responders I think are pretty cool when you’re using in this context. And so the high tech version is if the tool you’re using has that built in, you can do it that way and then given the example that I showed you with twitter where it’s not a native feature, um but you can still use it as such and this is important too for smaller organizations, maybe you have a small staff and it’s it’s not feasible. It probably doesn’t make sense from a communication standpoint to be Active on all the platforms at one time, but people might still be looking for you, that people might be looking for you on tiktok on twitter on facebook and maybe you’re not able to manage all those things, maybe you’re only able to manage, you know, instagram because you only have one person who’s working part time or whatever it is, right? And so you can acknowledge that people are looking for you across those platforms set up, auto responders if those things are available or just simply, you know, Panda message just says, hey, I know you’re looking for me here, but we’re taking a break, find us over here.

[00:35:54.54] spk_0:
I love it. You’re walking your walk, your your very intentional and mindful about what platforms you’re on. You said you you said at this phase, twitter doesn’t make sense for

[00:36:43.03] spk_1:
you. Yes. And I encourage everyone to think about that, particularly if you are managing a brand for your, for your organization, uh to consider like, yes, part of your audience might be on twitter, Part of your artists might be on facebook or on Tiktok, but if you realistically don’t have the capacity to manage those things, well, that’s perfectly okay, There’s nothing wrong with that. And so there are ways that you can figure out what’s one or two platforms that you actually can manage well, and then you can use the auto responder or another strategy to manage the fact that people are looking for you on those other platforms, but you simply don’t have the bandwidth to be on those right now. It’s

[00:36:57.73] spk_0:
also just very considerate. So that people, because because if people see a presence on a on one of the social sites, then I think it’s reasonable to assume that there’s gonna be some interaction if, if I if I try to engage with, you know, but but you’re being considerate and saying, you don’t don’t have that expectation because I’m not here, but you can find me in these other places and then I’ll be happy to engage with you.

[00:37:11.13] spk_1:
Very

[00:37:12.72] spk_0:
considerate, very considerate use of of the social network’s Jason, Jason.

[00:37:19.83] spk_2:
Yeah, so I would like to share a copy ai, so this is another really cool tool that it allows you to use ai to generate uh

[00:37:33.33] spk_1:
copy

[00:38:29.62] spk_2:
for various things, so I’ll give a few examples here. Um you can input something like a brief description of your organization, you know, what you do, or maybe, you know, you can copy and paste, you know, your case for support, you know, into it and what it does is it’ll generate you text based on what it is that you need. So let’s say for example, you would like to write social media posts that it can generate for you say, you know, 20 or 30 proposed, you know, social media posts with with content based on what you’ve input into it. Now, keeping in mind that, you know that this this is not intended to be like, you know, you copy and paste directly what comes out of this into your social media like that, this is more of a kind of a first draft kind of thing, but it can be a huge time saver for various things. So, you know, one example is for social media posts, another is um for landing pages, so if you’re trying to create, you know, landing pages for, you know, your website and you, you know, several of them that, you know, you can input the intent or what you would like and the system will auto generate, you know, within a few seconds, something that you know may otherwise take 10 or 15 minutes um or you know, depending on you know, how long you’re you’re making it um a 10 or 15 minutes reduced to a few seconds again for a first draft kind of thing that you can then tweak and evaluate. Um most of them are pretty good, you know that there’s some that you know, you definitely wouldn’t use but you know, I think that that’s the element of you know um the human in the loop kind of process to make sure that uh you know, this is working well

[00:39:11.12] spk_0:
that you said copy ai, is that is that an example of an app or that’s a general category

[00:39:17.34] spk_1:
of

[00:39:18.32] spk_0:
of the type of ai you’re talking about?

[00:39:20.90] spk_2:
So the website is copy dot ai

[00:39:23.52] spk_0:
copy dot ai. Okay, that’s an example of one of one. Okay, so

[00:39:39.42] spk_1:
Jason a question for you, so would an example be that let’s say tony were to take the transcript of this conversation and he wanted to generate social media from it. He upload the transcript to copy dot ai and have it do a first draft of social media for this conversation.

[00:40:41.21] spk_2:
Yeah, I think you could even um uh yeah I think put that in and then you could input, you know um uh you know generate uh generate a social media copy or landing page, you know, based on the, you know, the conversation, if you had a transcript available, uh the technology that it’s built on is built on a model called GPT three and that was released fairly recently and it’s it’s really really if if folks want to look beyond copy dot ai and want to dig a little deeper, um they can go to the open ai website and register for an account and it allows you to kind of peek under the hood and uh it gives a few options for folks to um, you know, have conversations with Ai or um try out, you know, you could input like very large blocks of text and ask it to, you know, summarize or explain, explain this to me. Like I’m a five year old for, you know, if you’re looking for like simplified descriptions

[00:40:44.42] spk_0:
and that’s a that’s an open ai.

[00:40:46.61] spk_2:
Yeah,

[00:40:47.71] spk_0:
open dot is it open dot ai,

[00:40:50.11] spk_2:
I believe. It’s open. Open ai dot

[00:41:09.41] spk_0:
com, interesting. Alright, alright, so we start to get a little more comfortable with artificial intelligence and not, not fear it. Uh and here, Alright, so it can give you a first draft, like you’re saying, instead of, so instead of looking at a blank screen uh it gives you a place to start for for a blog post or social posts. Alright, alright.

[00:41:31.31] spk_2:
Yeah, I think, I think it’s a big time saver and that like, you know, you could be spending like ours, you know, turning out those, those first drafts for um uh for some of this copy and, you know, really that this, you know, can save you those hours and really, you know, puts you more in a in a curation kind of mindset where you can, you know, take a look and tweak and kind of use those hours to um, you know, further refine um you know, the things that, you know, would otherwise be really time consuming to to put out.

[00:41:44.51] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:42:29.30] spk_1:
I was gonna say so, Jason, I think one of the use cases we talked about was, you know, summarizing long or complex documents. So like if you’re an advocacy organization, you’re following policy or legislation that’s coming out. You know, a lot of those things they come out and you have to have a be ready to have a rapid response. Right? And so something that can really help is, if you can use a tool like copy dot ai to say, okay, can you give me like a really rough summary of this, you know, 100 page, you know, legislation that just came out, um and and just highlights, right? So again, it’s not gonna be perfect, but, you know, it you can use that alongside, you know, humans actually sort of taking a look at and reading line by line. Um and it can help you to sort of again speed up the process of if you need to respond to that, maybe there’s something you don’t like and they need to be able to put out a press release, you know, saying what you like and what you don’t like or whatever. It might be

[00:45:25.49] spk_0:
excellent. That’s a very good case. Alright. And, and Nico, this is in line with, you know what we were talking about earlier being busy versus being productive. You may feel like you’re productive if you’re reading the 100 pages of proposed legislation, but you can be more, much more productive by having a tool. Give you a first cut through it and then at the very least I will give you a place to focus your attention. So then you go read the pages that are relevant at the very least right business versus productivity. You don’t, you don’t want the former strive strive for the ladder. It’s time for Tony’s take two in the summertime when the weather is hot. You can stretch right up and rush this guy when the weather’s fine. You’ve got women, you’ve got women on your mind. Yes. The summer time is coming up of course that was Mongo jerry. You know him, they do all that the sound effects with their mouth. You know that I always thought that was on a washboard, but you watch the videos and just their mouths the summertime, the summertime. So I’m reminding you two make your plans for summer, whether it’s time alone, which can be very restorative or time with others. Whoever that might be. Start looking at that summertime calendar. You aren’t going to find the time to do the things you want to do this summer. You’re gonna have to make the time. You got to make the time. Set it aside. Be intentional. You want to spend time with these friends, Book the weekend and then it’s in violet. Everybody trusts everybody else and your weekend happens. So just uh, my advice, please set that time aside for yourself for others. Book it off and preserve it so that you can enjoy your summer the way you want to, whatever it means to you however you want to do it. Make the time. You’re not gonna find it. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for apps, tools and tactics for the hybrid workplace with Jason, shim and Miko Whitlock, you guys have more. Right, I’m sure. Is there more, Is there more out there

[00:45:29.19] spk_1:
there? I mean, we we could talk forever. Um, so would you like us to go through another category and what would you like?

[00:45:37.29] spk_0:
Yeah, sure. You got please. What what’s, what’s the category introduced it. So we know what we’re talking about.

[00:46:01.68] spk_1:
So we’re talking about productivity. So this is category, Focus on productivity. And I’m going to highlight one around video. So there are lots of interesting video tools out there and I’m gonna group these together. So there are three. So there is Vidyard is one Bloom is the 2nd 1 and bonds Euro is the third. They’re all very similar.

[00:46:07.36] spk_0:
Say the first one again?

[00:46:09.28] spk_1:
Vidyard.

[00:46:10.48] spk_0:
Vidyard,

[00:46:13.38] spk_1:
Yes, V I D White, A R D.

[00:46:14.87] spk_0:
Vidyard and

[00:48:16.17] spk_1:
then loom. So they’re all very similar. Uh And the, you know, one of the more common use cases is particularly since we’re working a lot of us in the remote or hybrid setting. Um you asked me for example earlier, how do I find the dictation feature in google docs or in Microsoft word for example. Um And so in this youth case I could actually send you a video with the voice over with me on the screen showing you my screen and showing you step by step how to actually do it. So as opposed to simply just send you the instructions, I can actually show you and you could say, okay, well actually I don’t see it, I’m like, well, tony show me what you’re seeing. You could send me a video back, show me what you what you see and it can be asynchronous. So right now we are together having our conversation together, but maybe we are asynchronous, you know, maybe you’re in a different time zone. Um and you know, we are available to respond at different times. And so this allows you to send video back and forth. Uh and you know, help one another in a way that’s going to be more helpful than simply sending someone a list of things and an email do this, this and this, right. People can actually see it another use case. And this is something that, that, um, you know, Jason shared in terms of fundraising, you know, you know, how often do you make a donation and you receive nowadays, um, an email or if that at all saying thank you for your donation and that’s it, like, that’s all you get right. But how cool would it be if you got a sort of an email, you got a short video that was like, hey Tony, thank you for your 25 donation, $25 donation to save the Wells. I really appreciate it as a result of it. You know, you’re gonna save x number of wells and we appreciate your support and you’ve got like a 32nd video from somebody, um, you know, how impactful would that be. And so tools like this allow you to actually do that fairly fairly easily. So there’s so many use cases for this and one of the, the, the broader points in terms of productivity that allows you to make particularly hybrid or remote work more productive, particularly when you’re working a synchronously. So if you’re not gonna zoom together, you’re not together, you’re working at different times. Um, but you want to bridge the communication gap. Um, these can be powerful tools to help you do just that

[00:48:49.17] spk_0:
bonjour Euro is one that I know and I, and I use, uh, for exactly the way you describe it. I don’t do it with donors, but I do it with new members to my, my course planned giving accelerator when when someone has, has joined the course and paid the tuition, I send them instantly. I send them and I, I tease it with, you know, when I see your payment comes through, I’ll send you my special welcome.

[00:48:59.37] spk_1:
Yes.

[00:49:09.37] spk_0:
And then the special welcome is that it’s a 30 or 45 2nd video. It’s just I find that one makes it very easy to use. But you’re saying loom and vidyard also as good as bond or Oh

[00:49:58.57] spk_1:
yeah, so they’re, they’re very similar. And so maybe Jason can speak to like some of the nuances there that I’m not aware of. Another use case here too is, you know, you know, you mentioned you have your courses and so on. I do a lot of prerecorded things and so, you know, things like bloom can be super useful where I can, you know, maybe I don’t want to use them. Um, maybe I wanna use um, bloom because I want to share my screen. Maybe I’m doing drawings on the screen and I want to show people things I wanna point to stuff. I want to highlight different things. Uh, but I want people to be able to see me and hear me as well. Um, so a tool like loom for example, can be a powerful tool to help you to to to do that. So when people get you’re recording, it’s not just you, but they’re able to see you your slides, they’re able to see you interacting with the slides. Um and and so on.

[00:50:02.76] spk_0:
How is that better than using zoom? If you just recorded yourself on zoom and shared your screen, zoom has a white board feature,

[00:50:11.36] spk_1:
it’s just an alternative.

[00:50:13.06] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s

[00:50:13.45] spk_1:
just an alternative.

[00:50:15.46] spk_0:
Yeah. As you can loom you can zoom Alright,

[00:50:17.61] spk_1:
alright.

[00:50:18.76] spk_0:
It’s cool. Uh

[00:50:59.86] spk_2:
I’ve also found that for for figured um when I’ve had to troubleshoot any technical issues with any of the software that I’m using. Uh and I send in a video video detailing exactly what my screen looks like and what I’m doing as I’m narrating it. Um I up until I started doing that, I never got feedback from support people being like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing, thank you. Since I started doing that feedback that I get from support folks like thank you so much, you know, this has saved multiple back and forth emails and we can solve and diagnosed the problem in one shot. And so if you if you want to make a support persons day in your for technical issues, you know, record a video of your have any problems here you’re having and send that in

[00:51:02.76] spk_0:
and also be more productive.

[00:51:05.76] spk_1:
Yes,

[00:51:06.36] spk_0:
avoid the end, avoid the endless emails back and forth. All right,

[00:51:10.48] spk_1:
yes,

[00:51:13.06] spk_0:
Jason your turn.

[00:51:54.16] spk_2:
Yeah. So speaking of avoiding, you know, back and forth. A couple of tools that I’d like to highlight is addressing uh quite quite a simple thing. So, you know, I think folks tend to copy and paste fairly frequently on a day to day basis. So, you know, you go into one document and you need to copy something over into another document. But what do you do when you have many little bits of information that you need to shuffle over now? For most folks, you know, they may just flip back and forth over and over again. However, there are there is software that will make it easier to do that. Um So the specific software for Mac, it’s all the fly cut and the windows um equivalent is copy Q. That’s the letter Q. And the analogy I would use is that it’s kind of like a bucket for your clipboard. Or maybe a better analogy is a like a coffee tray. So instead of having to go back and forth to the coffee shop, you know, for each individual kind of request that you can just kind of put it, you know, in a tray and get it all at once. And then, you know, when you’re um moving between programs that you can, you know, copy copy, copy a whole bunch of different stuff. So

[00:52:27.41] spk_0:
Let’s say you could have 20

[00:52:33.75] spk_2:
different items, then you can move to, you know, where you actually want to paste the stuff and then, you know, paste paste paste paste, instead of having to go back and forth 40 times. You could, you know, just batch those all at once. And this is a very simple, but um you know, if you’re doing this like, I don’t know, 40 50 times a day and you multiply that over the course of a year, like this can save a huge amount of time.

[00:52:56.55] spk_0:
Why do we have to wait till 20, for somebody to think of that? I’m sorry, what did you say?

[00:53:14.35] spk_1:
I think equivalents have been around for a while. I think they’ve they’ve evolved over time, but they’ve been around for a while. Like the for particularly for folks that are like into programming and things like that, they’re probably we’re aware of these tools, you know? Well, before now,

[00:53:50.95] spk_0:
Alright, I was not alright, copy to you. Yeah. You know, from my intent interviews, my ntC interviews, I I was copying and pasting the tight onto I made a sheet for each for each interview. So I need the title, I need the uh the, the short bios of each person or the name and the title, but they’re not together. So I was doing them separately because they’re not together on the page and then I need the description and I need the learning outcomes. So it’s like four or five or depending on the number of speakers could be like eight different copy and paste for one interview. Alright so I can bulk copy and then bulk paste with copy

[00:53:54.69] spk_2:
queue

[00:53:55.75] spk_1:
or you could just hire Jason to create a process where it it’s great. It scrapes the website, it creates the sheets for

[00:54:01.25] spk_0:
you.

[00:54:06.98] spk_1:
Exactly. And you’ll just you know, take you 30 seconds and you’ll have all the things you

[00:54:14.84] spk_0:
need Jason. I don’t think I can afford Jason though. His expertise is being

[00:54:18.02] spk_2:
friends and family discount.

[00:54:19.10] spk_0:
Thank you. Alright.

[00:54:21.15] spk_1:
And he’s he’s on parental leave now so you can take advantage of that, you

[00:54:23.91] spk_0:
know? That’s right. I got leverage. Yes. Well it it paid paid leave.

[00:54:29.14] spk_2:
Yeah.

[00:54:44.64] spk_0:
I don’t have quite the economic but take the friends, I’ll take the friends and family discount. Alright. Um Alright let’s keep going. We got a couple more minutes, we can spend a lot more time um Do something else. Somebody I I’m not gonna call you guys decide who wants to go next.

[00:55:04.04] spk_1:
I’ll talk about timing. So we were working in a remote and hybrid world, I think all of us but I think yeah, I think all of us are probably in different time zones, right? And so I find um particularly in remote hybrid environment that I’ve I’ve there have been instances where I’ve gotten confused about times I was like and what time something is and I actually think this, this actually happened for our ntc session and I was like, well I thought this was an hour later, you know,

[00:55:10.55] spk_0:
oh my

[00:55:16.04] spk_1:
I did not know, luckily Jason, you know had the sense to to call and

[00:55:19.48] spk_0:
text. Yes.

[00:57:36.93] spk_1:
So we so we got that that part figured out. So one of the things that I that I love is a feature because I’m a I’m a big google calendar person. So I there’s a feature in google calendar actually to one is called multiple time zones requires no add on, you can go into your settings and you can, if there are frequent time zones that you’re operating across for your organization, you can add those. And so I’ve added those in terms of the clients that I worked with, what are the three or four most frequent time zones so that when I’m booking um appointments, I can see which time zone it is and make sure that it’s the right time. And then the other is the world clock feature that is very similar um that allows you to see what time it is in different time zones at a glance. Um and that allows um scheduling to to make things easier. Um and it’s for me like as someone who’s traveling and you’re working with people across multiple time zones, that helps me to understand, okay, what time zone am I in and what time zone is my is my client in and I’ll give you an example that was really relevant with the daylight savings time. So the place that I’m at now. Um so so some people that I know this, but when we have daylight savings time, not every time zone changes at the same time. Right? And so the time zone that I was in this year, um there was like a three week difference, right? Where there was, there was like, I wasn’t like no man’s land where like it was like regular time or standard time everywhere else. But like I’m still stuck in like this place where like I’m in purgatory or something. And so I needed to be very, very uh in tune with like what time it was for me versus what time it was, wherever it was that I was with the folks that I was actually collaborating with. So multiple time zones and the world clocks feature, I don’t need to add anything, simply the features that you can actually turn on by going into your settings into your google calendar. Um They’re similar features for for outlook for folks who are looking for those so you can google and and figure out what those things are. But something super simple, but actually super helpful in terms of helping you to be more productive when it comes to scheduling those those meetings.

[00:57:40.53] spk_0:
Alright, so, so world clock and multiple time zones that those are both features in google calendar.

[00:57:45.93] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:58:02.72] spk_0:
because I’m thinking when you said world clock, I’m thinking too, I use iphone, you can just set up multiple just on iphone set up multiple time zones for where your where your clients are. I mean I’ve been doing some collaborating with some folks in India now and

[00:58:03.28] spk_1:
absolutely

[00:58:07.82] spk_0:
It’s 10.5 hours ahead from eastern time where I am. So and and it’s a half hour difference in every time zone is not on the hour

[00:58:12.92] spk_1:
in

[00:58:16.82] spk_0:
terms of different so there’s 1.5 hours. Um And then in my class we had the trouble. Hawaii does not use daylight savings

[00:58:21.18] spk_1:
time. Funny

[00:58:22.92] spk_0:
there, but they don’t need it. So the class members from hawaii we’re late for or they missed the missed the class after daylight savings time. They don’t think of it. So

[00:58:33.96] spk_1:
uh

[00:58:41.12] spk_0:
get smart. Yes. Just be productive. You know, there are tools to help you with this. You don’t have to make the calculation every time. I love your kids like you’re traveling. All right. So I know you know from your home this client is plus three hours. But right now I just went back to So now they’re plus five or do I add the two or do I subtract the +25 plus one now, you know,

[00:58:59.12] spk_1:
So you’re you’re doing like a math problem right

[00:59:15.22] spk_0:
use your tools use the tools please use the tools. Um All right. Nico I let Jason open. So why don’t you wrap us up and give us give us one more and take us out with little motivation.

[01:01:14.21] spk_1:
All right. So I’ll give you one more and a little bit motivation. So the last one I’m gonna give you is a tool called what’s at business. A lot of folks are familiar with what’s app which is encrypted SmS platform. There are others like telegram and and and and like um but one of the things I like about what’s at business is um it allows you to number one have more than one WhatsApp number. So if you have just a regular WhatsApp, most people understand that. One of the limitations is that you can only tie one phone number to WhatsApp. And so I travel internationally. So I have an international number and I have a US number. But with the traditional WhatsApp I wasn’t able to use WhatsApp with both numbers. Well now I can because I set up a WhatsApp business account and I’ve attached my international number two that and now I can use both WhatsApp accounts um simultaneously. The other use cases for organizations. Um Going back to the crisis hotline example, maybe you’re using WhatsApp as a way to communicate with folks and have it be encrypted for example, um you can set up a catalog or a menu of services that you offer within what’s at business. You can set up auto responders so people can get a response if you’re not available. They can get a response of of like your office hours or how to contact you um doing regular times of who to contact if it’s an emergency. Um and you can allow ready access for multiple people to use the west top business account and be able to respond to messages. Um and and not have that limitation that you have with the traditional um WhatsApp that most people are familiar with. So um if going back to this time zone um challenge you also have multiple phone numbers for whatever reason, right? Hopefully for legal reasons um that you’re you’re able to use WhatsApp um business to help make that transition a bit more a bit more seamless. So um

[01:01:23.41] spk_0:
you

[01:02:24.40] spk_1:
know as we close out, you know, I really want to just go back to what we talked about at the top which is you asked us about the mental model for the work that we’re doing. And um it’s really again moving from being busy, right, taking off things on the checklist, ticking through those emails, you know, counting the number of hours that you worked and really centering the amount of your time and energy and effort on being productive and moving towards tangible meaningful, impactful outcomes for your work. And to apply this, not just for your work but also personally we can apply these same concepts to how are we um making ourselves more productive so that we can be more present and more available for our friends, for our family, for our colleagues and also for ourselves because ultimately, if we are not at our best, when we cant give our best and so we want to make sure that we are keeping that in mind as we think about this topic of Absolutely and tactics specifically in this hybrid world that we’re experiencing right now,

[01:02:45.30] spk_0:
That’s a perfect wrap up. Thank you and I’m gonna, I’m gonna ruin it now. You’re stuck with a lackluster host. It’s tragic. Really tragic because while you were talking, I realized, you know, we didn’t talk anything about email help. Help with the email email management. Are there, do you guys have anything I’m putting you on the spot now in a specific category, Do you have ideas for? I feel bad for ruining your outstanding rapper. We’ll just have to listen to, you have to replay it after we have, but we gotta hit email. You mentioned email, you have, you have tips for email management?

[01:03:12.20] spk_1:
We do. There are tons of tips and um, I’m gonna let Jason there was one you covered in the session um the inbox pause. You want to talk a little about that?

[01:04:23.19] spk_2:
Yeah, there’s a tool called inbox because it’s uh it’s made by boomerang and it’s a plug in that it’s, it applies for gmail and what it does is that it will hide your inbox until you’re you’re kind of ready to to view or that’s that’s one of the settings that you can have. But the positive boxes that when you press the pause button, it’ll stop the emails from coming in. So that uh you know, you can more carefully manage your time around how you process the email. So instead of you know, going back and checking and responding that you can actually, you know, schedule in time and your calendar be okay. This is my designated email checking and responding time. And not kind of have that temptation of having the email sitting in the inbox because you literally can’t see them until you hit the resume inbox. And then all the emails will come flooding in and then you can process it then and there. So uh you know this this kind of goes in line with what we shared earlier about, you know, um Newsfeed Eradicate. Er it’s kind of similar in its function and that um you know, this is to manage your attention and you know, help make it easier to uh schedule intentional time to to deal with those things.

[01:04:28.81] spk_0:
Okay? Inbox inbox pause. You have another, you have another email tool, Jason.

[01:04:35.69] spk_2:
I have one.

[01:04:41.19] spk_1:
Yeah, I was gonna okay.

[01:04:42.09] spk_2:
Uh

[01:07:24.88] spk_1:
so I was going to share uh it’s a strategy and then the tool related to the strategy. So the research shows that we spend more than half of our work time actually reading writing, responding to email. More than half of our work time reading writing responding to emails. So a significant chunk of our lives are spent nowadays, you know in our in our inboxes. And so one of the most effective things that we can do to manage that time more effectively and to actually lower that amount of time is to um reduce the number of decisions that we have to make about the things in our inbox. And one of the most effective ways to do that is by actually filtering things into different buckets um so that you’re not having to think about that because when when the when the email comes in it’s not just responding to that, you have to think okay do I respond to this? Is this spam and it will respond to this now do I respond to this later? How urgent is this? You’re having to think about all those things simultaneously and it becomes mentally and emotionally draining and exhausting over time. So I use Gmail and one of the ways I do this with Gmail is I use the multiple inboxes feature That allows me to sort things into um four different buckets. I have my main inbox I have um you know, alert for things like google docs. So if Jason and I are working on something and Jason’s tagging me, I can see that Jason tagged me and expecting a response. I have my newsletters right, so those are things that don’t require an immediate response. So those are things I want to go back to. But I don’t need to see that in my inbox and then drag it and drop it to manually to a folder and then the last one of the receipts. Right? So if I’m ordering things online, um I don’t need to see that receipt right away. So if I need to see that receipt for tax purposes or if we’re getting reimbursement, I know that it’s there in my my receipts folder and I can go back and look at that um later. And what that means is then I have those four categories. Then I’m spending less time sorting through my inbox and I can spend more of that time actually responding to the things that are actually the higher priority. So you can do this. Also for outlook, there’s a smart inbox feature that can support this. You can also set up filters um to route things to different in boxes. You can color code things based on who it’s from. For example. So if if your top priorities to respond to e mails from donors and to your your supervisor or the ceo of your organization, um you can flag those as a different color so that you can make sure that you’re always focusing on those things first. So there are many different ways you can do this. But the broader principle here is to um set up filters, Whatever system works for you in terms of filtering so that you’re spending less time mental and emotional energy processing email but actually being productive when it comes to the type of email that you’re receiving.

[01:08:14.27] spk_0:
Thank you. All right, thank you guys for going a little long again. I didn’t think of email until until Nico mentioned it, but so we went long. But so thank you for the graciousness being gracious around that. But I mean the stuff we talked about, you know, do not disturb night shift, night light news feed. Eradicate er stay focused, visual, ping auto responders copy dot ai vineyard loom bands, Euro fly cut copy queue multiple times. Well multiple time zones. Oh multiple time zones, World clock feature, right, what’s that business? Uh inbox pause and uh just being intentional filtering, filtering, filtering, filtering,

[01:08:18.97] spk_1:
filtering so

[01:08:29.27] spk_0:
Incredible. I was probably another hour and a half. Alright, they are, they are both both former board members of N 10. Jason Shim Director of Digital Path, digital strategy and transformation at pathways to education. Canada and Mexico market Whitlock the mindful techie, a speaker and trainer on mindfulness and technology, Jason Miko, Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing all this.

[01:08:48.07] spk_1:
Thank you for having us. Thanks

[01:08:49.59] spk_2:
for having us,

[01:09:46.77] spk_0:
absolute pleasure, loved it. Thank you. Next week We’re gonna have more from 22 NTCC asking for receiving and giving feedback if you missed any part of this week’s show. I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com responded by turning to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our Web guy and this music is by scott Stein. Thank you for that. Affirmation scotty. You’re with me next week for non proper. radio big nonprofit ideas for the The other 95% go out and be great. Mm hmm.

Nonprofit Radio for July 17, 2020: Mindfulness, Happiness, Well-Being Apps & Apps, Tools, Tactics

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My Guests:

Beth Kanter & Meico Whitlock: Mindfulness, Happiness, Well-Being Apps
From 20NTC, a survey of apps to help you increase resilience, work-life balance and calmness. My guests are Beth Kanter, master trainer, and Meico Whitlock, The Mindful Techie.

 

 

 

 

Meico Whitlock & Jason Shim: Apps, Tools, Tactics
More 20NTC panelists share their favorite resources for efficiency, raising more money and building stronger relationships. They’re Meico Whitlock, The Mindful Techie, and Jason Shim from Pathways to Education Canada.

 

 

 

 

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[00:01:08.14] spk_0:
hello and welcome tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with UV itis if I saw that you missed today’s show. Mindfulness Happiness Well being APS from 20 and D. C. A survey of APS to help you increase resilience, work, life, balance and calmness. My guests are Beth Kanter, master trainer, and Miko Whitlock, the mindful techie. Also APS, tools, tactics Mawr 20 NTC Panelists share Their favorite resource is for efficiency. Raising more money and building stronger relationships. They’re Mico Whitlock again, the mindful techie and Jason Shim, from pathways to Education on Tony’s Take

[00:01:08.96] spk_2:
two.

[00:02:39.41] spk_0:
You’re Dismantling Racism Journey were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers. Wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for non profits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant. Martin for a free 60 day trial and, by turn, to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo. Here is mindfulness happiness well being APs. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC. That’s the 2020 non profit technology conference. Regrettably, the conference had to be canceled, but we are forging ahead virtually. We are sponsored at 20 NTC by Cougar Mountain Software. The Nolly Fund is there complete accounting solution made for non profits? Tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for ah free 60 day trial. My guests now are Beth Kanter and Miko Whitlock. Beth is master trainer, speaker and author. Her latest book is The Happy Healthy, non profit co authored with Liza Sherman and Miko Whitlock, trainer on mindfulness work, Life balance and tech Distraction. And both are intend board members. Beth Miko for each of you. Welcome back. You’ve both been on multiple times. Welcome back.

[00:02:45.04] spk_1:
Thank you, tony. Happy to be here?

[00:02:46.70] spk_2:
Yeah. Thank you, tony. Thank for Fort. Thank you for fortune. Non.

[00:03:21.05] spk_0:
Absolutely. I’m glad to do it. I’m glad we could get the three of us together. And good to know that you are each well and safe mico in Maryland and Beth in California, but continue to be safe. You’re 20. NTC Workshop is mindfulness, happiness and well being. There’s an app for that, Miko, Uh, technology is a double edged sword. You’re the mindful techie. Um, this thing can be enormously frustrating, distracting, But there’s another side to it.

[00:03:59.97] spk_1:
Absolutely. So I think of technology as a tool. So you think of a hammer? Ah, hammer could be something that could be used to destroy. We can also be something to use. Teoh build something to create something. And technology, particularly APS that we’re talking about are very similar. So APs and technology are necessarily a replacement for social interaction of some of the things that we do in person. But it certainly goes a long way toward facilitating those things, particularly in context. You might have, um, some kind of disability, for example. We talk about long distance relationships. All of those are ways in which technology can be an asset, not a deficit for us.

[00:04:05.44] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. So we’re looking at the positive side today. Um, do you want to just start getting up? Do we have different categories of APS for mindfulness happiness and well being? Or we didn’t have glommed together. What?

[00:04:31.46] spk_1:
So I will start with just what I think is sort of the primary of the foundation. And I’m sure Bath will agree that maybe Beth can sort of rattle off some of the other categories as I’m going through this. But we start with the internal apse. So often times we have this discussion. It’s all about the external APS meeting, the things that you can download from an apple store or things. You’re going down from a website. But we have an internal app in the form of my opponents. For example, the breath meditation. All those are things that don’t require us to pay for anything. Things that don’t require us to pay an extra luggage fee when we travel because we have those things within us internally. And so we start with help people to understand what are your internal applications and how do you actually access those?

[00:05:08.24] spk_0:
Okay, Internal apse?

[00:05:10.54] spk_2:
Yes. And I think toe at building what Miko was saying. I think the most important one is how is your positive out outlook on things and trying? I mean, it’s unimaginable what were going on. But you can also you’re in control of your thoughts so you can try to think about positive things. Um, like, Ah, what? Where’s the blessing in this? Uh, take a look at some of the creativity that’s happening. Um, think about what? You’re grateful for, um, for me. I just adopted this in your dog. I probably would have done that, so I’m very grateful for that.

[00:05:59.84] spk_1:
Absolutely. And the one of the single most important things. People looking for a way to start with the internal apse. It’s just taking one deep breath. You know, when you find yourself rattled, you find yourself overwhelmed taking an opportunity to cause and to just take one deep breath that is actually mindfulness. Oftentimes, we think that we have to engage in Oklahoma session. That’s 30 minutes longer. You have to have a yoga mat. Have to have the right pants. None of those things are necessary for you to actually put yourself in that unmindful state in a more holistic and healthy state.

[00:06:15.79] spk_0:
Okay, just a single breath.

[00:06:17.65] spk_1:
A single breath

[00:06:18.84] spk_0:
doesn’t get any simpler. Start there. Yeah, because you want to share something that you’re grateful for. Please.

[00:07:22.55] spk_1:
I’m actually grateful for my mindfulness practice has been one of the things that actually help me to stay center during this time. That we’re in is one of the things that I used to make sure that when I’m using technology, you know, social media email, etcetera, that I’m actually using it in a way that actually advances my intentions for my work and how I want to show up on. And it allows me to actually be able to support people who are legitimately experiencing fear and anxiety and anxiousness during times like these. So I’m actually grateful to have the mindfulness practice in the half APs, for example, Like the inside timer, which I use this morning. It’s a timer app that allows you to, um, set a timer for your meditation or for the type of mindless practice their courses you’re able to connect with community of folks who are also engaged in similar practices on gives you a little time, different options at the end, what your practice has concluded. So that’s the way that I’m marrying. Um, what I’m grateful for in this moment with actually a positive use of technology.

[00:07:30.02] spk_0:
Yeah. What’s the name of that again? Fight timer in sight timer. Okay.

[00:07:48.04] spk_2:
And it can also I’ve been doing with a lot of my teams. We’ve been actually using that to start our meetings with a moment of silence. Just so everyone gets censured and we can focus on you know, the work at hand versus what’s going on outside are locked down areas.

[00:07:53.74] spk_0:
If you have an app that Oh, are we ready? Should we do it? I don’t want I don’t want to rush through the internal personal.

[00:08:00.72] spk_2:
Let’s let’s go, Teoh Weight

[00:08:03.58] spk_1:
categories. I can just ride out the categories and they may be back in China. What? She has it. That’s OK.

[00:08:30.24] spk_2:
Sure. I was just gonna go with our presentation, like health, health and fitness. And I’m Sam, uh, this happen, which is Fitbit. It’s also in your phone measures your steps, get you walking. And I’m really grateful that we can still go outside walk and I’ve been doing actually virtual walks with face time with folks and even zoom like we’re on now. Having walking for years.

[00:08:45.07] spk_0:
You’ve been doing walking meetings for a long time. Seven years? Yeah. You doing meetings? Walking view? Was that? Do you tell me you demand? Do you insist on walking meetings? Well, you still you’re

[00:08:45.84] spk_2:
never, never, never demanded because we also I call them strolling meetings now because not everybody you know is come walk. Some people stroll, and now some people Canada walk. So it’s, It’s it’s Ah, optional. But one fun thing is to actually get get Zoom on your phone and dio have everyone walk around the neighborhood. You’ll do that. Walk. Do that walking meeting. Get that exercise. The exercise and fresh air is important.

[00:09:51.78] spk_0:
It’s time for a break wegner-C.P.As paycheck protection program. Loan forgiveness has settled down. There haven’t been changes for several weeks now. Wegner has the info. Their latest free webinar explains the state of forgiveness. What’s forgivable? What documentation do you need? How to work with your lender? Goto wegner-C.P.As dot com Click Resource is and recorded events Now back to mindfulness happiness Well being apse with Beth Kanter and Mico Whitlock Best. I think the dog you just adopted was in the window. He no longer. But

[00:09:57.75] spk_2:
you saw

[00:09:58.65] spk_0:
it was in the night. He was looked like he was sitting on the window frame. He was looking out at the right. The bright sunshine outside.

[00:10:03.87] spk_2:
Yeah, there’s lots of squirrels in our backyards.

[00:10:07.76] spk_0:
You gotta give us another one before we go back to Mico, please.

[00:10:32.07] spk_2:
You Okay, So another one that’s important with health and fitness is to get enough sleep. I don’t. You know, some I’ve had plague induced insomnia. Ah, but you know, getting sleep helps your immune system and helps you focus. It helps you with your fuse. You know, you can have kids in the background. I have a college dormitory here whenever you

[00:10:33.04] spk_0:
have a life while you have

[00:10:34.98] spk_2:
a life. Yes. Right. So night shift. Um, it helps you adjust the light on your phones.

[00:10:39.27] spk_0:
Night shift on a phone. That’s a key. Yes. Yes.

[00:10:41.60] spk_2:
And don’t use your phone as an alarm clock and shut off the phone and electronics two hours before Ben. That’ll helplessly.

[00:10:48.24] spk_0:
Uh, okay. Why not? Why not use the phone as an alarm clock?

[00:10:52.81] spk_2:
Well, because you’re then looking at it. You’re looking at that bright light, and that’s what goes into your brain. And that’s what disrupt your circadian rhythms in your melatonin and the onset of sleep. And you don’t get his good night’s sleep. And we need to have we need to arrest for immune systems and for our own. Well, me?

[00:11:08.72] spk_0:
Yeah, definitely. Sleep is critical for health. Right? But if I have night shift on, does that not protect me when I set my alarm on my phone.

[00:11:33.68] spk_2:
Well, what it does, is it It makes the light on your phone warmer or less Kelvin’s, that a sunny day. It’s not scientifically proven that it doesn’t disrupt. There’s no science behind that. They say it does they? It’s a hypothesis, but I think it’s, you know, it’s a great app if you have to. Maybe a couple hours before bedtime and you’re working making a warmer light,

[00:11:40.88] spk_0:
right? Oh, night shift. Yeah, I was talking about the using of the alarm with night shift done, but

[00:11:52.54] spk_2:
well that if you use your alarm before bed, then you might be tempted to go and look at other things on your phone. You know, some people like me had poor impulse control, so I think the iPhone out of my bedroom. And I just heard I don’t get a look at stuff at least two hours before bed.

[00:12:27.54] spk_1:
And for me, it’s the impulse control has done it issues. So I actually do use my phone as an alarm clock. And so I used the feature called Do Not Disturb where essentially between nine and 9 a.m. Nine p. M. And 10 a.m. my notifications air silenced so that I’m my sleep in my morning routine aren’t disrupted by what’s happening. Now, if you’re like Beth and you have an impulse control issue and it’s getting in the way of your sleep getting the

[00:12:31.76] spk_2:
way label that you

[00:12:35.51] spk_1:
want to get a real alarm clock and charge it outside of your room or get some get the

[00:12:39.95] spk_2:
smart. You know, I have that. I have the moonlight won that wakes you up to moon beings, and I also used Do not disturb, but I still keep the phone in another room.

[00:12:47.34] spk_0:
Yeah, okay. All right. Uh, all right, we’ve established that Beth has issues.

[00:12:52.37] spk_2:
No, no, I’ve overcome them

[00:12:55.94] spk_1:
aps mindfully in order to help her with that.

[00:12:59.91] spk_0:
You used to tell me about, uh, you were obsessive with checking email. I think this was a couple of years ago. A couple interviews ago. You’re obsessed about checking email assumes you woke up.

[00:13:09.24] spk_2:
Yeah, I got over. That was a member of that, But that was part of, like, my own bad behaviors. And what I was seeing other people kind of led to the writing of the book.

[00:13:19.24] spk_0:
Okay, You’re undisciplined at the time. But you’ve recovered.

[00:13:22.74] spk_2:
Yes, because I felt the impact of being undisciplined, which was, you know, distraction, crankiness. And, you know, I didn’t get stuff done as much as I could. I would never have been able to write for books if I hadn’t started to, you know, use some of these techniques over the last seven years or so. OK?

[00:13:57.35] spk_1:
And I think the interesting thing about what I said is that the fact that many of us many more of us are actually forced to work virtually now we’re gonna have to contend with exactly what Beth is talking about. And I think it’s a beautiful thing that we have. Um we were able to put the other this session where we’ve actually, you know, going out and found these different Absolutely help you with that. And then, of course, you have the best book which provides Resource is so, um you know, fortunately for the folks now, they actually have a resource, whereas back, you know and her colleague had to figure this out on their own.

[00:14:11.64] spk_0:
Happy, healthy

[00:14:59.24] spk_2:
people say I will say though I would be totally transparent and honest. I’m a human and sometimes you know, you fall off the wagon and I must say we’ve been on in the house for a month because we started getting messaging about all the tech companies closed down. They did it before the government told them to. And there’s a lot of messaging going around here in the hot spot. You know, dunk a wild if you’re over a certain age or if you have immune issues. So so that did increase my anxiety bit. Um, and I And when my anxiety increases, I start to fall back into some of these bad habits that start to perpetuate anxiety. And I did that for a couple of days. And then I said, Get the pause button, stop and see what you’re doing stuff. Pull out all your tools and, you know, get yourself together.

[00:15:06.22] spk_0:
Alright. Self awareness. Self awareness is key. Yes, it’s an important point. Yeah. Bet they also see, uh, container of wipes in your background to just

[00:15:10.49] spk_2:
ugo you see,

[00:15:23.34] spk_0:
There it is. Yeah. Um, I’ve been looking at a lot of backgrounds recently. Doing 20 years, some of these, um there. This is interesting. What? What people choose for their background. You have Japanese.

[00:15:27.94] spk_2:
You see my pain collection, right? Next wipes are my fountain pen collection

[00:15:30.91] spk_0:
collection. I see them in a dark, dark wood

[00:15:39.44] spk_2:
k on my writing box. But that’s part of my morning routine is to write inspirational quotes and calligraphy. Alright. What? And I won’t be able to do that if I have my If I hadn’t turned my alerts off and and use Do not disturb

[00:15:45.44] spk_0:
and someone plays the cello. Is that a cello or bass?

[00:15:50.21] spk_2:
Yes, that’s my husband. And you could probably see Casey the piano. No, you can’t, but yeah, it’s a musical family to that helps to music. Even if you just use your phone, Just listen to, like, classical music or jazz, whatever. Whatever you can to

[00:16:03.88] spk_0:
Mikko, you don’t want to see your home.

[00:16:19.59] spk_1:
Well, this is my home. This is I call it the Sanctuary. And so this is one of the ways that I mentally make a shift and actually prepare for my day. And so, um, I actually started you mature coming on the virtual background that I have actually started to use that as a way to having conversations like this. People who are feeling anxious or overwhelmed to say like Hey, like, let’s have something fun to sort of take you out of your immediate state of panic or in gaiety and once ready, let’s do that. Let’s figure out how we can move forward together with this product that we have that or that we’re talking about. Um, it’s a good ice breaker. It’s a great conversation starter. And, like Beth said about starting your meeting with the moment of silence. This is not really a moment of science, but it’s a good way to sort of break the tension in the room to get the meeting started,

[00:16:50.64] spk_2:
you know, and also looking at me coz unloved what you had yesterday your beach. But this one in the mountains, it’s making me think of one of the apse that we were recommending called calm, which actually takes you into a place of nature. And you hear the birds, you hear the ocean and you know, and it can help you do, Ah, three minute technique that can help reduce anxiety, which is just a mental vacation. And, you know, more and more we’re going to be working at home, ever gonna have back to back virtual meetings, and I think we’re gonna have, like, meeting virtual meeting fatigue. And so I think, between meetings, if you could take that three minute vacation like open up calm the calm app, it’s also a webpage. And just like, listen, you know, pretend you’re walking outside the national parks now are live streaming hikes or even go for Mitt. You know, a quick virtual Nate nature walk between innings

[00:17:38.14] spk_0:
Beth is the app spelled like the word CLM? Yes, Yes. Okay, okay. We just have a couple minutes left. Let’s Is there another category of ah of app? Mico?

[00:19:52.54] spk_1:
Yes, eso. Let’s talk about something we haven’t talked about yet. So it’s like about connectivity and relationships. Eso there two things that I want to talk about here in terms of maintaining a sustaining connections, particularly since we’re spending so much time at a distance. Right? So the 1st 1 is called fabric spelled f A B R I Q. And this is an app for the iPhone for your android device that allows you to intentionally prioritize your most important relationships. So, for me, the way I will use this app is since I don’t live near my family. I live in a different state. I want to make sure that I’m maintaining those close connections. And so this app allows me to identify who those folks are. And then it gives me were periodic reminders about Have you checked in with this person? Gives me an option toe, take notes to collect my reflections. And so it’s a really good way to prompt yourself. Admit all the things that are happening to make sure that you’re checking in on the folks that are most important to you. Um, another app that similar to this is called the Five Love Languages at is called Love Nudge and is available for Apple and Enjoy. And it’s based on the five love languages framework developed by Gareth Happen. The most folks know this framework in the context of romantic relationships, but it actually applies to just any type of relationship in general, in terms of how we communicate, how we like to receive and give love, how I like to Rio receive and give I’m communication, so this particular app allows you to identify your love language, identify the love language of your partner or your colleague or whoever that might be in connection with. And then it gives you nudges throughout the week on how you actually can connect with that person using their love language. So, for example, if, um, if my partner likes to receive words of affirmation, I might be prompted toe leave a post that saying I love you on the refrigerator, for example, in a way that I’m connecting with that person. Does the weights toe really help you toe? Um, really make sure you’re nurturing the the most important relationships for you so that Greek and the five love languages app would be to that. I would recommend from this category around sustaining and nurturing and strengthening connectivity and relationships.

[00:20:50.69] spk_2:
And I would build on what Miko was saying on and talk about it from the perspective of the workplace. Well, being in the workplace is important to have this connective it Ian. Good relationships. It’s gonna be harder at a distance to do that. Um, so so one app is called Know your team, and it helps you build trust and relationships with your team. There’s assessments. There’s lots of tips for one on one check ins icebreakers and check ins for meetings. So you can. And I think I’ve seen a lot of these used over. You know, I’ve been working virtually from, like, 30 years. So a lot of these techniques really can work to help us maintain that human connection and relationship and trust in the workplace. And I think we’re gonna need that as we move forward to rebuild and move on.

[00:20:57.15] spk_1:
No more. The doughnut about is another one. That’s really interesting in this regard. So what?

[00:20:58.76] spk_0:
They again? What’s the name?

[00:21:15.83] spk_1:
Don’t at the pot. We’re going it specifically for slack. And so it’s about that randomly Paris people up for coffee dates. And so obviously, we’re sort of limiting the number in person interactions now. But we could do that to prompt people to have virtual, um, coffee dates or virtual doughnuts or virtual happy

[00:21:22.76] spk_0:
hours. Okay. Beth showing her coffee mug.

[00:21:25.99] spk_2:
Yeah, it’s Stuart. It’s too early for happy hour.

[00:21:36.84] spk_0:
All right, Beth, I’m gonna let you take us out because Miko, give us the intro. We just have a minute or so on the inspiration.

[00:22:51.49] spk_2:
Sure. Some inspiration, cause my good colleague John Heightened whose whose past, but wrote the book Donor Care Here. He did interview with Me about self care, but he also wrote about his self care techniques while he was facing his horrible battle with cancer. And one question he asked himself every day was, What rainbow am I gonna eat? And, of course, if you Google that it refers to eating healthy vegetables, a rainbow of fruits and vegetables in terms of colors. Chris, of course, having cast radio, eat healthy foods. But I thought thinking of it, There’s lots of rain bows out there in our neighborhood. Parents with the kids are drawing pictures of rainbows with colored chalk on the sidewalk. So when other families passed by there trying to find the rainbows, so we all need to look at the Rainbow’s at the end of this, it’s going to be the most horrible thing in the that we’ve ever experienced. That’s probably coming, but after that I see lots of signaling around some of the creativity and the kindness and the mutual aid and the dismantling of oppressive symptom systems in our lives that are happening, and I truly believe we won’t come back the same. But we’re gonna come back better and different and better. So we have to keep every day. Look for a blessing. Look for a rainbow. Look for gratitude. Um and dont adult well, in the darkness.

[00:25:24.34] spk_0:
Yeah, we will. We will. We will emerge. All right, I like that. Thank you very much. Beth. That’s Beth Kanter, Master trainer, speaker and author. Her latest book, The Happy Healthy non profit and Miko Whitlock, trainer on mindfulness work about work, life balance and tech Distraction. He’s ah, is the mindful techie. Thank you very much. Thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC. Thanks so much. We need to take a break. Cougar Mountain software, Their accounting product Denali is built for non profits from the ground up. So you get an application that supports the way you work that has the features you need and that exemplary support that understands you. They have a free 60 day trial on the listener landing page at slash Cougar Mountain. Now time for Tony’s Take two. You’re dismantling racism journey. That’s our newest special episode, and it’s now out on video. You will have a long journey. So start with this single step. My guest is pretty itchy Shaw, president and CEO of Flourished Talent Management Solutions. Starting where you are with your people, your culture and your leadership. How do you gather data about racist structures right under your nose? Who do you invite to the conversation? She helps you see the way forward. The video is on my YouTube channel in the racism and White privilege playlist. Check it out. That is Tony’s Take two. Now it’s time for APS Tools tactics with Mikko Whitlock again and Jason Shim. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 and TC 2020. Non profit Technology Conference. We’re sponsored at 20 NTC by Cougar Mountain Software. My guests now are Mico Whitlock and Jason Shim. Miko is trainer on mindfulness work, Life balance and tech Distraction at mindful Techie. He’s also a member of the Intend Board, and Jason Shim is director of digital strategy at Pathways to Education Canada. Jason is the chair of the and 10 board of directors. Miko Jason, Welcome very much. Welcome to the show.

[00:25:27.74] spk_1:
Thank you for having us.

[00:25:28.91] spk_3:
Thanks for having us.

[00:25:41.44] spk_0:
Pleasure. Yes. Pleasure. And I’m glad to know that you reach well and safe. Jason in Toronto and Miko in Maryland outside d. C. Good to know that everybody’s well shut out. Jason’s background for those who cannot are not seeing the video. Jason is on the bridge of the Enterprise. But not the classic, not the one I know. I mean, I know the movies. I know the TV best because that’s what I grew up with. But which version of the enterprise are you? Bridge. Are you on, Jason?

[00:25:59.57] spk_3:
This would be the one from the next generation. So, uh uh, 1701 D

[00:26:36.64] spk_0:
last image of it. He knows the ship designation. Excellent. Alright. And Nico is where I saw him last week. Uh, beautiful of forest mountains and a lake in the valley. Yes. The Blue Lake? Yes, my backyard. Your backyard just outside Washington. He’s got private lake. Um, okay, you’re 20. NTC Topic is APS, tools and tactics to be a non profit Olympian. Amico, let’s start with you. What? Uh, you just you guys have Ah, You do have some basic resources that are accessible and easy to use and are gonna increase productivity.

[00:26:53.96] spk_1:
Exactly. So it’s actually based on an idea that Jason had around the Olympics. And I know Jason. You want Explain the idea and Tyler connects.

[00:26:59.18] spk_0:
Okay, Jason?

[00:27:28.64] spk_3:
Yeah. So the Olympic motto is Ah, faster, higher, stronger. And, you know, there’s always ah, ton of tools that were always coming across. And I think one of the challenges is trying to make it really easy to categorize them. And so the Olympic model came to mind. So things that will help you and organization go faster, things that will help you raise higher revenues and things that will help you build stronger relationships. So generally, if any of the tools conf it and to any of those three buckets, then that also fits very well for non profit usage.

[00:27:34.74] spk_0:
Okay, so why don’t you Don’t you start us off. You want toe, start with faster, and you’ve got Ah, a couple of laps or resource is for us.

[00:28:00.54] spk_3:
Yeah, So I I know. Kick it off with, you know, just talking a bit about some of the automation tools eso speaking to faster. You know, I’m a big fan of Ah, uh, piece of software called Toby eso. Toby is, uh, a chrome extension that you can install that will make your bookmarks very easy to access. So, you know, if you go about your day to day, you may open the same pages every morning. But instead of having to open them all manually or taking them into the oil buyer Toby will live each a group of Marx together. Second, press one button and open your five news pages that you open every morning. It’ll load it all in the background. You just browse the tabs very quickly.

[00:28:24.46] spk_0:
Okay? Is that t o B y

[00:28:27.04] spk_3:
yet? That’s T O B Y.

[00:28:28.59] spk_0:
Okay. Cool for a for, uh, grouping your bookmarks, OK? Yeah. You got another one for us?

[00:29:24.35] spk_3:
Yeah. Another tool that all share is around automation. So I’m a big fan of automation. Is that anything that you can clearly defined in a step by step kind of way you can probably out of me. So my my favorite right now is the Xabier eso. Is that a p i e r ah? And we use it quite extensively. It has over 1500 different types of integrations so specifically Well, how we use it in our organization is for revealing information into slack. So Let’s say if a donation comes in, um, that it will really a notification immediately into shared slack channel for letter staff. Know that one has come in. So you don’t have to wait for a report to be generated every week or every day that you know, the moment that comes in that you know, people are notified and you can respond quickly to folks to let them know that. Hey, you know, thank you so much for making a contribution. We really value it. And we’ve seen some great results. So, you know, the moment that someone donates, you know, weaken within five minutes, be emailing them to give him a very personal thank you.

[00:29:38.24] spk_0:
Justin isn’t, say Pierre very robust to him. You can define your own tasks. Yeah, I think you should code your own, but you want to be a coder to do it.

[00:29:47.24] spk_3:
Now you can You can drag and drop in remix everything and it’s ah, it’s a great for folks who may not have, you know, it kind of coding background or even to maybe too technical. But if you are technical, there is a lot of capability that you can integrate into it. So it’s It’s great for people of all backgrounds.

[00:30:06.84] spk_0:
We go if you got anything in ah, in working faster before we before we go to revenue generators.

[00:30:56.01] spk_1:
Well, in terms of the fast Buck and I would focus more on productivity. And so there are two things that I want to set. Some tools I recommend. The first is around calendar ring and meetings. We recognize that when we look in the aggregate at hour work weeks, we spend so much time in meetings. But one of these we don’t account for the amount of time you actually spend scheduling meetings. So for folks that have spent a lot of time scheduling one on one meetings, and now a lot of us are working virtually using things like Zoom. One of my favorite plug ins is for Google Calendar and for Outlook calendar. So it essentially allows you with the click of one button to schedule a zoom meeting and to invite people to it. So right now, if you’re not using this plug in and you want to schedule a zoom meeting, you have to create the zoo meeting. Forgot what time is gonna be have to give the link copy and paste it, then send it to the people that are going to be a part of the meeting with this plug in. Essentially, create a calendar invite like you would for a normal meeting. And you you press the, you know, turn us into a zoo meeting. But most unplugging is installed, and then the Zumwinkel automatically generated. You just pop in the folks who want to invite and you send off the invite and that saves you a tremendous amount of time. If you’re scheduling a lot of zoom meetings,

[00:31:32.24] spk_0:
is there any is there not a plugging for I, Cal, those of us in the apple using the apple calendar? Now

[00:31:43.76] spk_1:
perhaps there is. But I’m only familiar with Google and and four for Outlook. So for the aikau folks, you about this research to see if there’s anything for them, but definitely for Google and for for outlook.

[00:31:48.29] spk_0:
Okay, and what’s it? What’s it called? That we look for?

[00:31:50.90] spk_1:
Just called the zoom calendar plug

[00:31:53.53] spk_0:
in. Okay. Yes, And the three of us had enough trouble, uh, be creating meetings. But one of you would get the invitation that came from my Cal After you create a after you create a creative meeting and then zoom then answered the aikau, one of you would get the invitation, the other would not. And then I Then I just ended up copying and pasting another standard email, and it worked. But yes, I have my own frustrations around. Ah, Zoom and Aikau working together. Guys, you got another one for for calendar ring.

[00:32:36.34] spk_1:
I do. So if you schedule a lot of one on one meetings, there’s two sets of souls that competitors and you can use either one if use both. One is called acuity scheduling. So a C u I t. Y scheduling. And the 2nd 1 is called commonly, um, c l E N D. Why, captain,

[00:32:45.00] spk_0:
tellingly right? E N d l Y

[00:32:55.39] spk_1:
el y yes. Yeah. So acuity scheduling and Calvin Lee. And what both of these tools allow you to do is to save the time, save yourself time, going back and forth, and I figure out when they get time to meet, right? So how many times do you spend time trying to figure out when to meet with someone, and especially just a brief meeting you could actually spend more time trying to schedule a meeting. Then you actually you actually talking to the person, right?

[00:33:10.00] spk_0:
That can be so. These

[00:33:51.91] spk_1:
tools both of these tools allow you to with Google Calendar, Uh, and with outlook to share your calendar in your availability and allow the person to essentially you send Emily, they see your counter. They could select the time the invite goes on your calendar. It goes on their calendar. And if you have a plug in like resume install forgot by your security scheduling with zoom, a zoom link is automatically generated. It goes in your calendar goes on their calendar. And if you want to set up reminders to automatically go out for yourself for them, those things were set up. But you essentially save yourself that back and forth. It just takes you five seconds to send in the link and then you’re done is in their court. It takes, um, you know what, five minutes or less to pick a time and get on your calendar and you’ve gotten back. Um, you know that time that you feel otherwise spent going back fourth, the e mail or by phone kind of figure out when works for you.

[00:34:44.24] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. You have to think about the time. The aggregate time you spend setting up meetings. I mean, I don’t It can’t be done in fewer than two emails each. And that’s I think that’s an outlier that’s at the low end, you know? And then a minute the meeting cancels, then your back to it again, uh, again, at least another four, but more likely six or six or eight between the two people and then and then And then, uh, maybe it doesn’t. It certainly doesn’t increase exponentially, but it increases considerably when you bring in 1/3 or fourth people. Fourth person trying trying to flight four people trying to schedule together. Yes, I think that’s at least partly at least 10 emails. Uh, you know, between everybody 10 and again, I’m not 10. Could be low, depending on, you know. And now we’re scheduling so many more meetings. So,

[00:34:53.79] spk_1:
yes. So So both of those sets of fools, I recommend to the streamline the process and get back a little bit of time.

[00:35:44.19] spk_0:
Talk about being mindful. Rightful of the time you spend scheduling meetings. Yes, a start time for our last break turn to communications relationships. The world runs on them. We know this turn to is led by former journalists so that you get help building relationships with journalists. Those relationships will help you when you need to be heard so that people know you’re a thought leader in your field and they specialize in working with nonprofits. They’re at turn hyphen two dot ceo, we’ve got but loads more time for APS tools tactics from 20 NTC. Okay, you got one for revenue. And before we go back to Jason, you want kickoff revenue?

[00:36:42.94] spk_1:
Yeah, so I’ll shift over to texting. And so one of my one of the tools I use is called text awful on t e t e x t i f u l text. Awful. And essentially, what it allows you to do is it allows you to, um, do email opt ins via text message. So say, for example, this were presentation and you want to give people access to the recording After this prison condition, you could say OK, text, you know, non profit Olympians should this number, and we’re gonna add you to the list and When the videos ready, we’re gonna send it to you. That is one efficient way to capture email addresses for large events. Large gatherings. I do it at my workshops. So if you want the slides, text this number. If you want to stay in contact text, you know little on purpose toe this number and you’ll be added to the list on the next message on update you’ll work. You received that. And so if you tie that into your fundraising efforts, you could see how that could be a great way to identify prospects and then be able to follow with them about actually working with the donating to your organization.

[00:36:54.93] spk_0:
Awesome. Okay, thank you. Text if all Jason, how about you on the revenue side?

[00:38:32.32] spk_3:
Yeah. So one of my favorite tools is ah, the judge. So that’s the I. D. Why a r d dot com and what it is this ah chrome extension that you can install that allows you to easily record videos s so they could be videos of yourself as an individual. Or you can record your desktop or your desktop with a little circle in the corner with you can in a reading. Ah, and how organization has used it is more around the stewardship side to show people the impact of their donations. Eso because I work with an organization that serves youth believing a low income communities across the country but we’re able to do is they were able to record very personalized thank you, um, to our donors using this software. So what we’ll actually do is, you know, to get folks attention because everyone’s getting tons of email in their inbox that the thumbnail will actually be an animation of someone holding up a sign that says the person’s name. So you would get something like the sign would actually say, Thank you, tony. And it’s actually written. It’s not automated, and then you click play, and then you know, the recipient would Here, you know, high tony, thank you so much for making a donation to pathways. Education Canada. You’re making an impact in the lives of people like myself in achieving our dreams, And the impact that it’s had is that this goes into the higher revenues. But you know it. It spills over a bit into the stronger relationships part as well, because it’s um, it’s very much. Ah ah. An individualized, personalized message that cuts through. You know, you’re the general kind of stuff that people normally get in their day to day inbox, and it really helps connect our supporters of more directly with with, uh, with the cause.

[00:38:57.62] spk_0:
Okay. Cool video. All right, eyes there. Another one around the revenue side. Anything else? No.

[00:38:58.52] spk_1:
You want to mention Bun bun Juro, which is similar to video

[00:39:07.87] spk_3:
Bob on joyless. Quelle is another video platform. That is Ah. Ah, quite helpful. Similar. That is also that you can easily create a video. So as be oh, and J o r o b for banjo.

[00:39:22.12] spk_0:
Okay. Thank you. Um, all right. So, uh, our third category was stronger relationships. You got something there, Jason?

[00:40:16.39] spk_3:
So ah, flipping back onto the texting side. Twilio has many different kind of tools, their offers, and so near twilio studio is something that has helped us connect with folks in that it allows us Teoh quite easily create. And, um, whether you want to create your own, like, interactive voice response, um, or if you want to create a more complex tree for you know, someone texts into a number that you can also take them through various paths. Where to learn more about your organization. The other way that we’ve used 12 you as well is for sending out text messages generally without with updates. Eso We’ve used the TWILIO platform to send out text messages to our students directly in order to remind them that events are going on S o. You know, that’s super helpful in terms of just being there. And you know, those kind of nudges. It’s similar to what we do in person, but it’s also using the tool to extend that reach and being like, Hey, just nudge, um, that this event is going on tomorrow on that really helps improve our attendance treats at events A ZX Well,

[00:40:42.67] spk_0:
because you have something in the relationship side.

[00:41:41.55] spk_1:
Yes, I have two sets of tools that are related to how we use social media, so we know that now more than ever, our social connections are really important and social media, you know, while it has some of this downsize, it also could be a powerful way toe keep us connected, particularly if we’re at a distance right. But one of things that we find that happens is we can go down the rabbit hole of sort of losing focus on why we’re on the platforms to begin with. And so the first floor wegner recommended For folks who are using Facebook on the best top, there’s a plug in called, um Facebook news feed. Eradicate ER that you can install for your browser. And essentially, what that allows you to do is to replace the news feet when you log into Facebook with the quote. And so what’s the reason behind us? Well, many of us have had this challenge will be Log into Facebook. You wanna wish someone Happy birthday? You want response a message. You want to comment in a group? Or do some of the activities actually connected to you to someone and you find yourself 45 minutes later in this rabbit hole of watching cat videos, a cute puppies running around or watching the you know, whatever the latest news thing is right on. One of the reasons for that is that you get caught up in the sort of the newness of with in your news feed, so this particular plug in allows you to replace the new seat with a quote, and it makes it more likely that you will be able to remember to pause to reflect and actually remember what your primary intention was when you log into Facebook to begin with. So again, that one is Facebook news feed eradicate er specifically for the desktop version of Facebook and for folks who are using Facebook to the browser way.

[00:42:18.14] spk_0:
Just, uh, we just have about a minute left. So this last one you’re gonna do, um, do it concisely, please.

[00:42:26.00] spk_1:
All right, so for Instagram, YouTube and Facebook for the mobile versions, essentially, what we have are each of these has settings that allows you to monitor your usage to set Ah, a timer or just that reminders on how much you’re using. You’re using those particular applications so that you want spending all your time on those, but you’re actually able toe sustained connections. You know, uh, get worked on and live your life. So check out the settings for those If you’re using those on the mobile version, if you want to get a better handle on how you spend your time on this for us,

[00:43:14.02] spk_0:
okay? We’re gonna leave there by my count will be ticked off. You You ticked off. 10 10 Different resource is in, like, under 20 minutes. So thank you. Very efficient. Very mindful. Very efficient. Very productive. Enormously als three. So thank you that they are. Ah Mika Whitlock, trainer on mindfulness work, Life balance and tech Distractions at Mindful Techie and Jason Shim, director of digital strategy at Pathways to Education Canada thanks to each of you Very much. Thank you, Nico. Thank you, Jason. Thank you.

[00:43:33.30] spk_3:
Thanks for having us

[00:44:41.18] spk_0:
pleasure. Next week, Gene Takagi returns with joining forces M o use to mergers. 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 Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for non profits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial And by turn, to communications, PR and content for non profits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo. Our creative producer is clear. Meyerhoff Sam Liebowitz managed stream shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our rep guy on this music is by Scott Stein Way next week for non profit radio Big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of zoho iq andthe assis if you stung me with the idea that you missed today’s show tech mindfulness our non-profit technology conference panel wants you to avoid technology burnout or overcome it if you’re already there, they have mindfulness advice for your entire office, your teams and you. They are beth cantor carry rice from carry rice consulting and miko whitlock of mindful techie and fringe benefits trigger you b i t tax law now requires your non-profit to pay unrelated business income tax on parking and commuting expenses you provide for your employees. Our legal contributor, jean takagi shepherds you through the new land he’s, principal of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law firm i’m tony, take two, show your gratitude. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio by wagner, cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps, dot com and by tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue. Stream tony dahna slash tony tello’s here’s our panel on tech mindfulness welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc you know what that is? It’s the two thousand eighteen non-profit technology conference coming to you from the convention center in new orleans. This interview, along with all our eighteen, ninety si interviews, is sponsored by network for good, easy to use donorsearch and fund-raising software for non-profits my guests right now are beth cantor carry rice and miko whitlock welcome all three of you. Thanks for having us. Our pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you very much. Carrie with cantor is master trainer, speaker, author, blogger and her latest book is the happy, healthy non-profit carry rice is principal at carry rice consulting, and miko whitlock is founder and ceo of mindful tiki. All right, your workshop topic is had a conker technology distraction and burn out and be more present for yourself, team and organization. All right, that’s pretty lofty presents. I feel like starting right in the middle. Carrie, we’re not so president so often, are we? Well, we broke up our session into our presence for ourselves, our presence for our team and our presence. For our overall organization, that was my focus was really about what are we doing to make it possible for those of us who aren’t members of the paid staff necessarily to remain present for the organization in a way, that’s not pushing them past their use of technology in a mindful way that to their own benefit as well as for the organization. Okay, so so each of you, i guess, has has ah, part of this three tiered presentation. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So then carry is the organization, right? Isn’t in the organization. Okay, the host needs some notes to keep this straight. And beth was yours. Climb the we the wean? Yes, ourselves that we being of teams or internal organization staff working together. Okay. And, miko, what is your part of this? The eye, the individual? Oh, you’re the individual. Okay. Okay. So how do beth and carry distinguish the two? The two years of years the organization so you’re outside the organization, extra marries outside the organization and remaining being present. And you’re here in the internal. Okay. Got it. Yeah, i do. Alright. So far. I hope i don’t lose it. I got it? Okay. We’re also trying to overcome tech burnout. You’re we’re all concerned about tech burn out what’s the trouble here, rico? Well, the trouble is twofold. So one is what i described his intention deficit disorder, where we have a lack of clarity about what it is. We’re actually focus on it in a particular moment. I don’t think that’s a crazy coin. I mean, i think that’s out there is an attention deficit disorder. Intention? Oh, intention. Attention. Oh, well, i’m glad i okay. Intention. Definite deficit disorder. I’d yes idea. Okay. I made that clear. Yes. And so part of the work i do is around people to take a step back and really reflect on what it is that you’re trying to do in particular the context of a non profit organization, what’s your role. And what are you pushing in terms of the actual mission and the outcomes for this one aspect of it? The other aspect of it is that we have to recognize that the technology is designed in such a way that is intentionally draining our attention. Right? So is, you know, we have push notifications that are set up by default, for example. For social media, for our mobile devices. And we have to understand that that’s intentional. But they’re also ways for us to control that we can turn off those modifications. We canoe certain absent applications to regain our attention, to be more present. But those are sort of two aspects of it lack of intention and then also the intentional effort by companies to actually take and hold and keep our attention. Attention. Okay, thank you. And welcome back to non-profit radio. Thank you. And i talked in twenty sixteen and the other person on the panel who i spoke to in twenty sixteen was best cancer. We’re talking about your was then your new book? Yes. Ok. Healthy non-profit healthy non-profit, which is still you can still get it. It’s. Not like it’s out of print or anything. But in twenty sixteen, it was new. And your co author wass lisa sherman. He’s a sherman. Is she here? Not this year, but this year. Okay. And how is this work today? Different than what we talked about in twenty sixteen and happy, healthy number off it. Well, if we go back to that radio program in your archives, we talked about self care and taking care of ourselves and talk on a culture of well being. So this is a subset of it on dh specifically how staff working together can be highly productive unless distract less distracted and get their works done. And i think what we’re faced with is something called collaborative overload, which is back to back meetings, too many emails, too many platforms, and that keeps us from getting things done. So a lot of what i talked about is how could you be more intentional about your work together to combat this distraction? Okay, we’re cement wristing phrases that lack of intention intension deficit disorder, collaborative overload. Carrie, did you come with the special phrase? Welcome to non-profit a radio is very ous a newcomer. Welcome, i always surround myself with the best, so you’re you’re non-profit radio. Exactly. I’m a non-profit radio way with you and beth in mikko doesn’t get much better than that. Um, well, i come from a world where my branding is called empathetic non-profit management, which is basically that all the stakeholders of the organisation should be treating each other the same way that we treat the recipients. Of the services that we provide so the empathy that we have towards the poppies or the homeless people, we provide the same level of empathy tours, donors towards board members towards members that we’re looking at each of those groups through that same empathetic lens. And so by doing that, and then combining that with technology it’s about changing the expectation of what we do internally on our team or what we do is individuals based on the work that meeko is suggesting that we’re saying, well, maybe that doesn’t all apply to the external stakeholders who aren’t actually getting paid to do the work that we’re doing as professional does not okay, there’s a lot here, we’re gonna unpack it. I’m the remedial person on the panel, okay? Because you all have been thinking about this for years, or at least, you know, it’s, right? I mean, years or at least months in collaborating around this on the newcomer. Well, same way. Okay. Right. Well, ok. I want everyone thinking out of an average. Okay, on average are so you’re quick learner. So bring me along. Yeah. Be respectful. Okay. Uh, it’s. Time for a break. Pursuing they have a new paper, the digital donation revolution how do you keep up in our one click to buy amazon world? Can you use more revenue? A loaded question? The paper has five online fund-raising tactics proven to work and save money proven tactics you will find the digital donation revolution on the non-profit radio listener landing page. Tony dahna slash pursuing radio now back to tech mindfulness look, i don’t know where should we go? I want to start with the i’d like to start with the i actually down the end. Okay, i will start the individual. This the lack of intention this is all around helping us to stay focused right now so that we can be more mission successful ways all it’s all for the good of the of the of the social yes, there’s the societal good. But if we don’t bring it down to the if we don’t start with the individual, we can’t be maximally efficient in helping change the world. Yes, my yeah. Is that a decent contacts i put in an early yes, and so it it starts. I use a framework to people to sort of have ah place to go when they get distracted, right? So distraction is inevitable. So we’re talking about is getting a tool, a framework that they can walk through. It starts with understanding your why or your purpose. So why you showing up? Why are you committed to the work that you’re doing and then understanding based on your based on your wine, your purpose? What your actual goals? And you might have many goals that you’re focused on any point in time. And once you identify what your goals are, you actually prioritize because he recognized that with multitasking were actually mohr effectively be focused on a few things, that we’re not very good. Multi taskers, actually, are we even though we think we are what there’s actually wait, i thought we were not. Are we? Am i wrong? Well, you could say i’m wrong, i’m wrong. Why? In the technical sense, one way you could talk to this is not only me and nico, am i wrong about them? I’m walking about multitasking, i thought we were not really, truly you can’t really multi task exactly on what it when you’re doing two different task, your brain is just switching back between. The two on every time it switch treyz delays, and it also uses up brain cells and raises quarters all of cortisol levels that raises cortisol levels. So i was right. Okay, how come nobody said i was right? I am going to tell you that i think you’re right. It depends on the way to find monisha audiocasting so silent when i know for me i was seeking information that wasn’t next time, i’ll give it to him as long as it’s deserved. I mean, of course, it’s wrong if i’m wrong say, i’m wrong, but if i’m right jump on it, you know, it doesn’t happen that often. There you go, give credit where credit is, tio. Yeah, i actually like transitioning between projects, it’s just that for me i have to set aside an amount of time that works best for me to make those transition and that time is probably more than ninety second i s actually it is more than ninety seconds. Another thing about multi tasking is it takes you several seconds to re find yourself. We acquaint yourself with the task that you left, but you’re not going back to that could take his lorts nine or ten seconds for more, you know, when you’re like bouncing just quickly. I mean, it could take it could take ten minutes if you were writing something, you know, if it is a bigger piece or something. All right, because it’s not just the switching cost is also the cost of actually getting back to the place where you left off, right, and then take some time, they sort of speed up again, right? Right. Okay. Okay. All right. So good. We’re focusing on the on the you know what? I have a question for you, though. Sure. How does the eye how does what you’re describing relate to what carries part of this is she’s here you’re talking about carrie, talk about the individual as off site worker or as a as a consultant to the organization, but you’re also talking about individual. How do your how do your topics today differ? Well, i was so that they overlap, and so when we talk about why we’re talking about obviously, the individual right organizations are not just things they’re made up of people and the same thing when we talk about boards and other external stakeholders, we’re talking about people and individually way have to be able to show oppa’s out best cells so that collectively, when we come together, we can maximize our collective right, carrie okay, carrie where’s the overlap, right? So if someone were following amigos presentation yesterday about thie ability to say yes and to be able to say no with intentionality, then i want a board member who feels comfortable saying no to me because then when they say yes to me, i know they really mean it because i know that they have the skill set to say my schedule is too busy to be doing that right now or it doesn’t fit into my why of why i’m involved with this organization specifically. Okay. Okay. Um, i saw you nodding. You wanted you wanted anything with beth that’s about this promise not to swear this time you can go back, tio? No, it was twenty sixteen. Or was it fund-raising day in new york city, so, like twenty, fourteen or something? My boys just cracked fourteen and the two thousand thirteen thirteen remember better than okay. Two thousand thirteen fund-raising day n y c and best drop the f bomb, but she promised not to do now because i have affiliate stations that are governed by the fcc way, we can’t use the seven, we can’t use the seven words that george carlin had a lot of fun with, okay, okay, in any case, the whole context or yeah, long term listeners will remember best dropping everything twice in the same, the same discussion that certainly new visitors can go to your archives. Thirteen was only on one time that year, you find cantor at twenty martignetti dot com get the twenty thirteen appearance from fund-raising day in new york city. Okay, with that contact. Well, there’s something you want to add to the discussion. So, yeah, i think the collaborative overload is made up of four, four things the four piece and they’re not bad words. I don’t get what you don’t sow planning, planning priorities, being president and then people. So our relationships, interaction with staff and how we work together, communicate and collaborate on projects can lead to burn out in stress and certainly having, you know, just for example, let’s say my phone’s here, right? Yeah. This is like techno fear in ce and a bunch of people are doing this at a staff meeting it’s getting in the way of getting things done. We’re not giving each other our full attention and intentionality. I even considered that maybe you have a word for this cycle of insulting, well talking techno fear with techno parents? Yeah, insulting technology. A little offended you? No, i’m not talking in a meeting and people were picking up their phones. I’d rather they walk out this way. I think they’re going to the bathroom and i’m not tracking their time, so they’re gone for fifteen minutes do-it-yourself trouble may i’d rather they leave and come back and do it while i’m talking. But here’s the thing and it’s a lot of what i talked about in terms of the week. We have to be intentional about the way we’re working together. So if there are work and we’re being explicit at a meeting, we’re not checking our phones during the meeting or a technology unless it’s supporting the technology or else it’s a device free meeting. Okay, all right, so waken new can help with policies. Ground rules were also are also trying. Teo set norms that have to do with acknowledging riel life happening. So for me, some having someone come into a staff meeting and say, i’m waiting to find out if my father’s okay in the hospital. So i’m going to be looking at my phone during the meaning of exception exactly, but sat having that norm set so that someone is sneaking away to look at their phone and distracted from the meeting, but to be able to share with the members of the team. This is why i’m distracted right now i’m doing the best i can than everybody else khun give that person support and make them more successful. I agree, and then the knot intentionality around it. Here’s the reason why? Okay, okay were rough about halfway through and we we’ve talked around way talked about this. Why this is important. I want to spend time on strategies. What is our listeners? They’re in small and midsize non-profits how can they apply this work to them? Or if they are an outsider? Or maybe even a virtual employees carry reitman might you’re you’re part of this. I told myself i also applied a virtual employees. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, i don’t want to drill down through yeah, yeah, and specifically, when it comes to technology wellness with external stakeholders, my rule is simplicity is that sometimes the complicated solutions like using, for example, slack for us to keep track of our conversations for a lot of people who don’t work in a corporation or in an office or in a non-profit they don’t know anything about that program, so coming up with a simpler solution and saying, oh, let’s, just use google chat or let’s, just use text messaging or something like that it’s a simpler solution for an external stakeholder than an internal stakeholder like the teams that that’s talking about where you can actually say, okay, everybody needs to get up to speed on this particular technology, but it’s really hard to do that when it’s someone who is a donor or a boardmember or an external consultant or someone who’s working off site, so you’d probably rather i didn’t say we’re willing it down for the lowest common denominator. I prefer not to use that phrase whenever possible, but i will i’ll stick with simplicity because that people keep it simple, silly, i won’t say stupid keep it simple, silly. Okay, good enough. Miko, how about cem cem, drill down tto strategies. Teo, you know, overcome this tech burnout. So the first thing i will say is that not every solution is a digital technology solution. And so starting with just taking time to really get clear about your intentions and as i was saying, establishing norms in terms of policies around how you actually meet and how technology is involved or not in those meetings and using the time at the beginning of the meeting just run through really quickly. Hey, guys, this is what we agreed to. No cellphone today. Is everyone okay with that and running through it that way? Don’t think i was out, and that would be the time to raise your hand and say my father’s in the hospital. I do. I’m doing the best i can. Okay. Okay, so but if you’re looking for a technology solution, there are a number of aps out there that are really cool that really help you too be clear about their intention and to help you not to spend as much time on your device is doing things that aren’t moving your mission. Or your wife forward. So i think a moment for example, moment is an app that you can download for the iphone and for android moment, yes, moments ok? And it simply keeps track of how often you’re actually using your phone and how often you’re actually using different aps. And so you can look at the data that you’re getting from this and actually haven’t awareness. Oh, i’m spending two hours a day on facebook. I’m spending three hours, you know, looking at instagram like us five hours out of my day. Maybe i could be spending that time doing something else so that simple awareness could be oh, really begins to instigate a shift in behavior. Okay, okay. Strategy strategy for the we the team one one one that’s real popular’s tohave an email charter which includes things like what is your policy around after hours emails which can cause a lot of stress. It’s not so much the amount of time it’s this sense that you’re on call all the time it’s just it’s just the just the existence of it. Right? So having a really formal policy about, you know, for normal business email, i mean emergencies and disaster relief and all that it’s an exception way. Don’t expect youto at reply to your email right away between seven p m and seven a m sometimes it takes, you know, making sure that the senior leadership understands this and is modeling that behaviour as well. Yes, i know it does not. If not c e o on down buy-in none of these strategies, they’re going to be our gonna be adopted, right? Exactly those exceptions ceo is allowed to look at her phone during the meetings. The whole thing crumbles, right? I mean, we got nothing to bases, all right? And that came up in our session as well. Someone asked that my ceo’s looking at the phone all the time and what i know there’s so many things i want to implement, but i can’t and i ask that person well, do you manage a team? She said, my senior management won’t listen to me and i said, you managed to team and i said, yeah, just your team listen to you well, most the time they said we’ll create that culture on your team exact change. You can change the way we roll yet. Okay, okay. That came out and came out on the previous conversation today to try to think about what the the context of that was. Oh, it was trying to get buy-in from above, actually way. Label them buy-in bitches. Bitches is okay. All right, all right, all right. It is ok. Carrie and laura, i think they’re very good team. They’re very good together that used to be at the humane society of us. And anyway, we dump them two buy-in bitches, but one of them said, if you can’t, you can’t make them get get the buy-in above. Then manage what you can on your on your team. So same same idea and then show it off to you know, when your boss sees how productive your name is being, they say what’s the secret why’s your morale so good, why is your productivity so good? And then you’re able to say, because we we managed expectations, we set norms and you’re actually you’re managing up and there was another, another instance that came up with in this case, it was a consultant, mike. My clients expect me to respond to them right away. How do i address? That expectation and it’s kind of well, you. If you reply, you set up the expectations. We know you break the norms. Yes. You know, when that you teach people how to treat you essentially you notice that the boundaries early? Yeah, yeah. Beth is right the first time if you respond immediately, that’s that’s the rule and that becomes, however, if you reply with or if you maybe make make a call instead of replying with email, you know, i don’t i don’t do after hours. I don’t do after eight p m e mails or whatever. I mean, i you know, i have my own life. You said the boundaries of the expectations early and i ninety nine people out of a hundred going to respect that, i think. And i read it it’s in my consulting contracts, actually, that i only do work between norvig snusz hours. Okay, well, you’re the mindful technique. You if your story miss up and get off that shot his mic off. Great, but but i saw kivi, larry miller speak recently if bloom khan and she was talking about the types of roles where we want to be responsive to our members in real time, and so having there be certain members of your staff who have a different work schedule where they’re in the office only twenty five hours a week and then they’re available evenings and weekends fifteen hours a week to be checking so that if someone posts and says, oh my gosh, what do i do about my dog there’s someone who can respond in real time and say, we can’t help you with that? Why don’t you try calling this emergency number but that they don’t have to work full time in the office if they’re going to be available during alternative hours? That’s something that they actually negotiate with their workplace and the expectations air managed and that it actually works really well? Kibby it was an example that give you gave, and i thought that was it great way of thinking of it when we do want to be able to be responsive during weird times, that’s also has implications across time zones yes, yeah, likewise world where the people on the west coast what’s the expectation and carrying your you know, maybe you’re a consultant to a virtual employees on the west coast. Are you? Are you expected to be up and working at six a? M or do you work the hours of your zone? There are policies that cuts both ways, right? But what are what is our policy? That’s when it gets back to the normal? No, we need to go with the norms are what the ground rules are. Yeah. What’s bloom con it’s a balloon khanna blew the bloomerang unconference they do a column around here? Yeah, yeah. Bloomerang does an educational conference, which i know a lot of other vendors do as well so that their their clients are actually getting a lot of information as well as using excellent products, you know, across the board. Okay, that j lo j love involving bloomerang, i guess founded bloomerang. Actually, i think he’s been on the show. A lot of good people now and even more good people. Like i said, i only i only surround myself with the best company. All right, you can place carrie. You still got a couple minutes left. Let’s. Go back to yumiko. You got another another strategy. Tip tool. Best practice? Yes. So you can take control when you come to digital vices like your tablets in your mobile devices, you can actually take control so the defaults might be set to push notifications to you. For example, every time you get an email every time someone likes a post on facebook, but you can actually adjust those setting so that you’re not getting pained every time. Is it really necessary to get a get a email every time somebody likes a post your comments on it? Is it really? That is a really essential? Is it essential? I don’t, i think not. Right? Well, israel, i imagine that could be circumstances where i might be the case. If you’re managing social media on behalf of her brand, maybe it does make sense if you’re monitoring comments, but as an individual, maybe not if it’s, especially if it’s getting in the way of you getting meaningful work. Okay. Okay. Excellent. So look at those defaults. Yes, because the platforms want you engaged. Exactly. Uh, that’s how they make their money? Yes, yes. Yeah. Linked in with the with the what is like that you can you can vote somebody with you. Give somebody a endorsement. Endorsement? Yes, with the endorsement. Oh. My god, it’s rampant? What do i mean? That first of all, they’re meaningless. It’s just an engagement hook. Yes, i think. All right, we don’t need to be notified. I’m obviously i’m sure you’re sharing my bias. Uh, sorry. Okay, but its host. No, no smiling. Now, you don’t think it is all right. Listeners are accustomed to this he’s rants. Okay, another strategy. Ground of something else we can do within the organization. Uh, what? What could we do? Root. Nice reflection. Okay, right out. How are your liberation? Okay, so, uh, because the stress and burnout is what i call fired-up leadership, our fire drill culture, which is basically oh, my god. The grants to tomorrow. All hands in the conference room let’s, get this done and and kind of if there are fired rell’s, you know which happened? It’s having the discipline toe push the pause button and figure out, is there a bigger systems issue or something we can address toe? So we don’t have this fire drill next time. Yeah. Weekly fire drills latto program. No, no one. And it pulls people off their work. It creates a lot of stress. And if the leader has that fire drill, leadership, culture, it’s, the shrill voice. It just causes a lot of stress. Yeah, and that’s, not productive, it’s giving me. I got a chill. I mean, i got a i got a physiological reaction, just as you were, and i didn’t even do it. And full fire drill voice. She didn’t run around or anything. I think it is all my fault. Okay, excellent. Zoho what about you said you call that routinized reflection? Yes. Ok. Ok. What about what about in the organization? Dahna dahna i don’t know. A collective time together. Devoted collective time. That’s not devoted to work. Well, i was kind of other reflection or something. Well, well, two things too quick. Tips. Okay, so so there’s the five wise, which is an exercise. When the fire drill happens, sit down with the team, do a twenty minute brainstorm. Why did this happen? Oh, because we didn’t have the grant on the calendar. So why did that happen? Oh, well, we don’t have a grantspace started before you drilling down, asking why? Why? Why? Why so that’s a really good practice? We actually find out the root cause we’re right through all the symptoms, right? If your record and try to fix it, thie other one is because we have bad time management tools were not using time management tools or headline management, right? Well, saliva flying there that’s mine. You know, sex on that time i was on the table didn’t hurt anybody. Okay? And the other thing is having look ahead. Rituals and ah, latto non-profits do this many don’t just like looking at you probably do this because you’re scheduling what’s coming up the next quarter, the next month, one organization that i know they have stopped days and stop days are they don’t have any internal meetings that one day a month, it’s actually a development team, and they work on getting that deep thinking done the creative planning, finishing up the proposal they didn’t right so it’s not filled with all the meetings and deadlines and stress. Carrie, i’m gonna give you the last shot. Unbelievably, this is we’re almost done last last tool tip strategy tech. I mean, idea what what you got both of my tools would be empathy and empathy. It would be self empathy. It would be taking a moment and assessing yourself and looking at all the expectations you have for yourself and others have for yourself and then empathizing and really thinking about what you’re actually going through. And then every other stakeholder you work with just walking a mile in their shoes and just imagining what’s challenging them. And how can you make it easier for them as well? The empathetic, empathetic also. Thankyou. All three. Very much. This one flew. Flew. Sometimes i gotta pull teeth. This one. Not like that. Okay, they are beth cancer, master trainer, speaker, author, blogger carry rice principal carry race consulting mika whitlock, founder and ceo mindful techie. And you are with non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc this interview sponsored by network for good, easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits. Thank you so much for being with us. Need to take a break, wagner. Cps before they go beyond the numbers, they cover the essentials for you. Nine ninety and your audit. Check them out at wagner cps dot com. You get to know them in one dimension on the screen. Then go three d real life. Pick up the phone. Talk to the partner. You huge tomb. Or of course, you can use the contact page on the site. If you prefer. I like to talk to people. I like to get on the phone with you. Very nice guy. Not going to let you down. Wittner, cpas, dot com they will take care of you and your auditing. The end accounting needs. Jean takagi is coming up now. It’s, time for tony’s. Take two. I hit this last week, the ninety six year old secretary um i didn’t know who writes this crap. I didn’t hit the ninety six year old secretary she’s already dead. But i did mention this last week and i should write this. I need an intern to blame. She this woman gave eight million dollars to two non-profits in her will had very unassuming lifestyle all of our old life. Nobody knew that she was anywhere near ah millionaire, you know, able to give away eight million dollars in her will. Ah, my takeaway from this is in the video, the little teases i want you to show gratitude toe all your donors. She was not a donor, but she could have been. And she if she had been, she would have been very modest. So that’s sort of a tease. Take a look at the video at twenty martignetti dot com leinheiser love we got we got we got tons where’s it going to it’s going tio let’s start with cambodia and ottawa, canada you’ve been with us a few times. Ottawa welcome back. Germany, gooden tog gergen, india i’m sorry. I can’t i don’t know. How to say hello in indian but the live listener love goes to you brooklyn, new york that is not foreign att least not in my in my book, maybe from people in queens. It is taipei, taiwan ni hao where’s our china. No one in no one checking in from china today. Um, bring it back to the u s, tampa, florida, brooklyn, new york, multiple new york, new york get the to get the two borrows know staten island, queens bronx not checking in today. San francisco, california is with us washington, d c and new bern, new bern, north carolina. The live love goes toe all each and every live listener and the podcast pleasantries that the vast majority of our audience over twelve thousand listeners each week the podcast pleasantries to you. Whatever. However you fit it into your schedule, you binge listen. Six hours on a time on on sundays, pleasantries to the podcast listeners and the affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners throughout the country. I’m grateful that your station carries us in your schedule and i’m grateful that you are listening. Analog analog will never die. I don’t care what anybody says analog is not going to die am and fm listeners affections to you now it’s. Time for fringe benefits trigger you b i t i i i can hear his heart beating it’s racing. He knows he’s coming in and he’s jean takagi he is managing attorney of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. Of course he’s, our legal contributor he edits the non-profit the popular non-profit law blogged dot com you should you should be bookmarking that are subscribing to that non-profit law block dot com he’s the american bar association’s twenty sixteen outstanding non-profit lawyer he’s at g tak welcome back, team takagi. Thank you, tony, how are you? Hey, you’re coming in booming. I love it. I’m doing very well. Thank you. Thank you, it’s. Good to talk to you, it’s. Been it’s been some time? I think it’s it feels like it’s been too long. I don’t know what has been but it feels like it. Welcome back. Thank you so much. Great to be back, tony. Thank you. So we’re talking about ah, cem cem tax law changes one specifically regarding is narrow category of fringe benefits and you be i tv. Ah, unrelated business income tax. We haven’t even talked about this for quite some time years. So remind us what unrelated business income tax is. Please? Sure. I mean it’s a great starting point. Because, um, a lot of folks have never had to deal with it before. And i are going all of a sudden have to have to have to deal with it now. But generally speaking, the unrelated business tax is on income tax that’s imposed on unrelated business trade income, which is income from a trader business that’s regularly carried on. So basically, with the same frequency and continuity is for-profit would do it. And that’s not substantially related to the organization’s advancement of its own charitable or other five a onesie three purpose unrelated business taxable income. That’s what? What? The income tax is going to hit now that people call it. You bit right, cubine? Yeah. Cubine for unrelated business tax. The acronym? Yeah. I’m wondering why it’s not a bit. Because it’s it’s unrelated to not eun it’s, not eun related. So i was. As i was thinking about this, i may adopt a bit you can stick with. You but if you want to be a dinosaur but the trend is moving now because one data point creates trend. It’s now moving toward a bit. Okay, so, quite roll off the tongue is nicely, but it really doesn’t. I think it’s coming is better because it’s unrelated itt’s a it’s, a sin tactically, grammatically, you know. Ah, naturalistic. All right, um all right. So, wait. So we have taxes on we have in minor ways or in, in narrow ways has put it that way in narrow ways on tax exempt organizations because the irs says that they’re primarily tax exempt, right? That what’s up. Yeah, well, i think what they are, they’re tax exempt on income from donations and on income from related activities that those air activities that substantially contribute to advancement of their their charitable purposes, and we never look at how their profits are deployed. So if, for example, a social services organization runs the coffee shop that had nothing to do with job training or anything like that, it was just ah, they bought a franchise coffee shop and they were making money. But using all the profits to go back into the social service stuff. That’s still unrelated, so any earnings coming out of that business would be taxable. Okay, um, and this gets to the three pronged test you mentioned it’s, trader business regularly carried on and, uh, not substantially related to the organization’s exempt purpose. That’s. Right. Ok, ok, we may. We may come back to these because i want to i want to get to the crux of this thing, and then i wanted tear it apart a little bit. I have a lot questions about why, why we’re getting, why, why this is being imposed on us. It doesn’t seem to fit, so you’re going to help you, khun, help all of us out. Hopefully, other people are questioning this, too. Although it’s, too late, it’s not like this is a proposal, i mean, it’s, it’s. A done deal. You have to deal with this thing so so if you have a bit liability, then you have to calculate how much tax you owe to the irs each year. Is that right? That’s? Right? So you’re gonna have to pay now, it’s a flat rate of twenty one percent attack on your puppet and you have to file. Thank you, john. Thank you for that thousand dollars arm or of of the unrelated business taxable income you’re going to have to file form nine, ninety with the irs, so that goes along with your regular form nine ninety siri’s filing, and this is important because this is going to hit churches as well that otherwise don’t have to file nine nineties, but if they’ve got unrelated business taxable income of a thousand dollars or more now they’ve got a file in nine ninety and paid twenty one percent tax on it. Oh, very yes, very interested, right. Churches are exempt from the nine ninety requirement, but now they’re going to file this nine ninety t assume t is for tony handup pick up. Okay? Yes. Interesting churches were swept into the nine. Ninety requirement under this. All right, what? They’ve always say if they if they had over a thousand dollars about unrelated. They always had to file this. But we’re creating new sources of this. We’re gonna have a lot more organizations and that’s. Why it’s important for churches to be aware of it now as well. Interesting. Yes. All right. Let’s, let’s. Get to the crux of it. What is the new source? What are the new sources that we are here talking about today? New sources of of it. So this all stems from what’s known as the tax cuts and jobs act on dh that’s basically congress’s new tax act. So i think most of us and we on an earlier show we talked about the tax reform act that hit and started to apply as of january first of this year two thousand eighteen. So under this tack fact there’s several provisions that affected non-profit on tax exempt organizations and one of these had to do their several that applied to to the labbate unrelated business income tax. But one particular thank you. Thank you very much. When in particular that’s. Quite distressing. Is that now a qualified transportation fringe benefits that’s provided by an employer to an employee is going to be taxable so it’s not any income that the non-profit is receiving it’s, actually, for most of them, an expense that they’re paying for a fringe benefit for their employees. Um and all of a sudden now they didn’t have to last year, but starting this year, they have to pay tax on giving a qualified transportation prince benefit to an employee. Okay, now it sounds like you’re you’re ah, you’re consistent with my thinking because you just drive. It is distressing, and i didn’t see how it was income because typically pre-tax income, but all right, so let’s, let’s define what is a i guess the acronym is q t fbi? What is a qualified but i’ve drug in jail, so, you know, i’m not could put myself in jargon jail. What is a qualified transportation fringe benefit now that is going to trigger a bit under the tax law, so it would include things like any employer provided shuttles to work transit passes that that you might give teo your employees so that they can take the metro or whatever hyre transit that that they have to get, get to work and workplace parking. Zaf employers air providing any of these things to their employees? Not that they’re getting any income from it, but the expenses that they pay out. You’re gonna actually have to pay an additional tax on that now. Yeah, i can’t believe this. Well, it’s dis incentivizing mass transit because they’re going to get tax, the organization that gives you money toward your transit pass or pay, but gives you the transit pass directly. Uh, this is like it’s, like the global warming and climate change enhancement act. Dis incentivizing that’s a lot of levels. I can’t believe the dis incentivizing mass transit usage by taxing the benefit. Ah non-profit employer giving it to employees it’s ludicrous. So i’ll give you a little bit of their ration. Now, if you call this a restless since jean so calm of the calming voice as i’m ranting. All right, go ahead. Yes. Give us the rational please. They’ve taken this away as a deduction from for-profit sa’s. Well, so before a for-profit employer that provided thes qualified transportation bridge benefits, upleaf shuttles and transit classes, workplace parking could deduct it. Yeah, before they pay income taxes on their net income, that kind of made sense, right? You know, it’s an expense to run your business and you’re trying to do do a good thing. Yeah, trying to attract attract labour that may come from a distance, so you’re helping them pay for or offset the cost of their commute? Yep. Then durand non-profits for-profit do not get teo. They lost that deduction. They lost that as of this year. So that’s part of the text you no cuts in jobs act so that that’s one area of new revenue for the government is despite the tax cuts. This is one area new revenue that businesses can’t deduct this and non-profits have to be taxed on it. So it’s kind of ridiculous, but this sweeps end a ton of charities, small charities included and churches that have no unrelated businesses they’ve never had to understand. You bet or a bit because i’ve never had any unresolved business better elearning income so that they would never file the nine, ninety they would never worry about paying this type of income tax, and all of a sudden they’re not making any more income, but they have been providing parting to their employees. Yeah, park and now i’m in transit. If they don’t file the night nineteen, they don’t pay the tax and they could get it, you know, with interest and penalties as well. What’s the rationale for equalizing corporate and non the corporate and nonprofit sectors. Why? Just because one loses a deduction, which also is a disincentive, teo mass transit and commuting it’s equally. But, you know, removing that deduction for for the corporate community is unequal disincentive tio teo taxing it on the non-profits but where’s, the what’s, the reason for having two equivalent make these two equivalent way if we remove the deduction for corporations and we have to, we have to tax it on the on the non-profit sides like they’re competing. What? What? What? What’s the rationale for trying teo equalize thes yeah, it’s a good question, tony, and i don’t know that i have a policy answer just no that’s, basically, that their explanation is to put everybody on the same playing field. But this doesn’t make sense. Non-profits inc organizations, because they’re doing public good, that businesses aren’t required to do so. I don’t get it either. All right, thank you. Let’s. Take a break, gene. Tell us moughniyah lll have a talisman eal ly elementary school is receiving a monthly donation from tello’s for the credit card processing of a company one of our parents owns likely the easiest donation source we have ever secured. End quote, monthly passive revenue that’s what? Tell us we’ll get you the easiest donation source ever think of people who are close to your organization? Who owned businesses who would be willing to switch their credit card processing. That’s what it’s all about. You get passive revenue indefinitely. Start with the video at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us now, let’s. Go back to fringe benefits that trigger labbate with jeanty jeanty. That could be like you could be a deejay. Or so our rapid jeanty. You like it? Jean d’you did a rap for us once. Didn’t you think you write a rap ones? I’ve written a few you well, i only labbate really perform. Yeah, you did one. You have many. But you performed one on the show like jean t gene t the gene gene t the law machine. Remember, jean, you could be ging t the legal of machine. Remember rum? What was that with chuck barris? Oh. Gosh! Oh, gosh. Oh, don’t got anything geever gene, gene, the dancing machine. Oh, yeah, i remember him. You’re going to be your gene gene the law machine. Gene gene, the law machine gt. All right, jean jean don’t think i’m going to forget this either. Gene gene, the la mission. All right, gene t i love it. Um, okay, so you’re you’re is as dismayed as as i am i i just i cannot see them. Well, i’ve ranted i can’t see the rationale for the equivalent ing equalizing the corporate and nonprofit sector dis incentivizing mass transit. All right. And then so let’s go through. I mean, how does this work in the in the three pronged test? Trader a. You bit a bit of it. I made a mistake. Labbate is has been, um um created when it’s something that’s ah non-profits carrying on a trader business that’s regularly carried on and not substantial related to the organization’s exempt purpose. I mean that this is not even doing this for-profit it. So, it’s not it’s a trader of business. This is not a profit. This is a fringe benefit, employees. How does this fit? And there’s no. Income generated either so it doesn’t fit. They just threw it in because there’s a system of taxing non-profit that has nothing to do with prince benefits, but they found a way to teo just stick it in, and it doesn’t fit your right so that part of the problem, although in one aspect what you said was true, you know, this is the law now, there’s, not much we can do about it, but in another part we can actually do something about it. So while the basic laws are there, there’s just a lot of open questions and a lot of misunderstandings and ambiguities and no way to understand exactly where it applies and where it doesn’t apply in certain circumstances and a whole bunch of organizations, including the national council non-profits the american institute of e p, a american society of association executives are calling on the treasury department, the irs to say, hey, don’t implement these, you know, laws yet because we have no clear guidance and we don’t have a way to tax plan for this because we don’t understand where it applies and where it doesn’t apply, and you’re saying it already takes effect. As of two thousand eighteen, the laws were rushed through without understanding. There are no regulations yet, so treasury hasn’t built regulations yet, right? So how do they enforce something where nobody understands exactly what it means? Our eddie, these organizations challenging the existence of this prevision or they’re just asking questions about it. Do you know? Well, they’re asking for a delay and implementation until there are regulations that are promulgated and regulations require comments. And so it takes a while to get done. But there are so many open questions, i don’t know that they can change the law in and of itself on left congress to become the law, but the regulations that are underneath it and we can discuss some of the open questions that are out there, they’re asking people to comment to the irs directly. And you, khun, you know, if you googled irs comment and tax forms ah, and you put the form nine ninety it’s it’s on ly basically email form nine ninety and say delay. You know, uh, imposing any liability on us until you tell us exactly what the rules are you all right? Now we will get to some. Of the questions i do want to make it clear that we’re not talking about employee’s losing the income exclusion for these benefits, right? That that remains intact. That’s that’s, right? So employees that get these fringe benefits don’t have to pay tax on it. So it’s pre-tax you’re not losing your pre-tax benefits up to two hundred sixty bucks a month for commuting and two sixty month for parking. That’s not right, that’s not employers that are paying for it are now being advised by some of their accountants. It doesn’t fit into their budget additional tax cut that benefits. Yeah, because the tax rate is twenty one percent, right? Correct. So twenty percent of two, sixty is fifty two. So this is costing if you’re giving your if e-giving the max for either commuting or parking, of course will be one hundred for if you’re doing a max for unemployed e you know, this could be roughly fifty bucks to one hundred bucks per employee in tax. Well, it will be over a year, you know, five hundred twenty bucks expand on this. All right? I was just doing it by the month. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. One hundred sixty bucks per person? Yeah. Additional tax on the non-profit. So if you have ten employees that you’re doing it for that over five thousand on dh that’s, a modest size non-profit right? All right, um okay, so you have to. So what? What’s what’s your guidance before we get to the questions? What do you recommend? Non-profits do gene be the voice of reason while i’m ranting, please? Well, first you got to understand how many employees you’re actually providing these fringe benefits to and do do you think that they are covered by the tack? So there are these open questions that that we haven’t started to talk about yet, but open questions. So if you’re providing parking transit passes or shuttle bus service is tio any of your employees consider how much tax you may have to pay on it, then you’re gonna have to figure it out in your budget. Can you continue to provide all of these fringe benefits and pay the tax, or do you actually have to do something else? And one of the other things he might do is take away the fringe benefits and just pay employees the income. For them to do with themselves now, that’s not a very attractive option toe a lot of employees. So it’s more than just the money you’re gonna have to think about in doing this. But those discussions have to be had now and comment to the irs and say we can’t we don’t even know how to plan for this until you tell us what the rules no. Yeah, because giving them giving it to the employees of straight income obviously raises their income tax liability. Exactly. All right? Okay. Any any, any more guidance how to proceed or that that exhausted? But i think that’s all the guidance i can give now, but the one area that we’re really uncertain about it, the whole parking area, okay? What’s going to pass the question and stuff on shuttle buses, which not too many small non-profits would do it’s pretty clear, but parking is like it’s just so full of opening that we don’t know what that means. Like suppose you suppose you offer parking too. Ah, guests of your office, you have a parking lot next to your building. My boys just cracked like i’m a fourteen year old building. On dure employees use that, too. What? What? What does that mean? Yeah, that that’s. One of the questions that we have is if the parking is available for anybody for free, then presumably allowing your employees to use it to shouldn’t count. But what if there are a limited number of spaces? So so we know that really, the general public is not using those bases. Or what if the spaces say employee parking only. So those are some of the questions that we have about parking. And what if you know what if the building is is owned by the employers? That doesn’t cost them anything to provide the parking. How do you figure out what the cost is? And how much do you pay tax on it? A lot. A lot of open questions. Okay. Uh, yeah. Um all right. So should we suppose were in that situation. Suppose we do. We we have a parking lot. We owned the building and the lot. Um, we should be talking to our tax adviser. Yeah, but times are tax adviser, and you ask for help again. Delay implementation of the rules. The irs should tell us in treasury. Department should tell us exactly when it applies and when it doesn’t apply, and right now they’re not saying anything because they happened figured it out yet either. So ah, and one more area i wanted to touch on sometimes it the charity isn’t really even providing the benefit themselves because it’s subject to this salary reduction, so basically the employees saying reduce my salary by two hundred bucks and, uh uh, you know, because i want to use that for parking is a pre-tax benefit, so the charity isn’t even paying for it, but the irs seems to have told us at least unofficial coyness when when officials, you know, told attendees at a big conference a couple months ago that the irs would impose you bit on these payments. Employers are made, you know, it’s coming from the boys themselves, it’s over jean okay, committed to this and and what aren’t there some some towns that require ah pra vision of transit benefits? And so aren’t there circumstances where employers might be doing it? Because it’s required by law? Yeah, and that’s so it’s not really a fringe benefit? Is it it’s a required benefit that you have? To give in new york city, washington, d c san francisco shot out. I’ll tell those cities and then the non-profits there you you’ve got some issues. Those are places that require require the benefit is a pre-tax salary reduction. Oh, come on. I mean that. Well, yes, clearly this has not been thought through, but that has to be an exception. That’s that’s not a fringe benefit. That’s ah that’s following the law that’s a legal requirement wrecks that are going to make that clear. But right now, we’ve just got the word of one official that says yes, they’re going to oppose you bit on it. And so that’s the best guidance we have right now. But we have no official guidance labbate gene of it. Um, did we know this was in the in the tax law? I know the thing was enormous. Nobody in congress read it. That was notorious. It was too big to read. It was rushed through. Didn’t have those the hearings that air routine and major tax revisions. Do we know this was buried in there? We well, only those who are paying a lot of attention. I knew it was in there. But it wasn’t the biggest problem that charity, you know, we’re facing. There are other issues with bill, so this particular provisions didn’t get a lot of attention until more recently. Ok, i see. Yeah, there were. There were concerns about. Taxes on large endowments, which we did get on the very high end right there. Remember, there was discussion about whether churches would be exempt from the the politicking. That’s, not the right word, what’s. The help me actually election nearing election, hearing that that still is a big concern for a lot of people that it’s been put into another bill again that that the irs can’t enforce against five twenty three’s, not just churches, engaging an election year. Oh, that’s in a bill that’s in the bill now it’s in the bill. Next. Oh, so and they’re certain factions of congress that continue to slip it into all sorts of bills because there’s a very strong republican platform buy-in that that is to really destroy, and i think that was president trump’s words destroy the johnson amendment, which is the part of five a onesie three that says five, twenty three can’t engage in election hearings, can’t, you know, become partisan political actors? Yeah, right, the johnson amendment yes, we’ve heard a lot about that. All right? Um, we got like, we’ve got to wrap it up so jean, i don’t know if the next time i talk to you will be ah, we’ll be the four hundredth show on july twenty seventh. Maybe we’ll get you in june. We’ll try. I’m not sure, but thank you very much for today and i look forward to talking again. That’s so do i, tony. Very excited. Teo, join you on the four hundred show as well. Cool. Congratulations, creek. Preliminary. Congrats. Thank you again. He’s at g tak e ta ke subscribed to this thing for pete’s sake. Non-profit law block. Dot com read it subscribed to it next week. Henry tim’s with his new book, new power. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuant radio weather. Cps, guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner, cps, dot com and tell us. Credit card in payment processing, your passive revenue stream. Tony dot mm slash tony tell us. A creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be glory. You’re listening to the talking alternative network e-giving geever e-giving hello, this is bruce chamois, coast of the web design and technology coach. 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