Tag Archives: Multnomah County Library

Nonprofit Radio for July 12, 2021: Your Fun Volunteer Program

My Guests:

Liza Dyer & Corina Sadler: Your Fun Volunteer Program

As our 21NTC coverage continues, Liza Dyer and Corina Sadler share their stories of transforming volunteering from in-person to off-site. Then they share their lessons. Liza is at Multnomah County Library and Corina is with Volunteers in Plano.

 

 

 

 

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Transcript for 549_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20210712.mp3

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[00:02:04.84] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of like the Asus if you dried me out with the idea that you missed this week’s show, your fund volunteer program As our 21 NTC coverage continues, Liza dire and Karina Sadler share their stories of transforming volunteering from in person to offsite. Then they share their lessons, Lizza is at multnomah County Library and Karina is with volunteers in plano Antonis take two, the new york city studio were sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. And by sending Blue the only all in one digital marketing platform empowering non profits to grow. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in blue. What do you say we get started here is your fun volunteer program. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 ntc The 2021 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot C. O. With me now are Lizza dyer, who is volunteer engagement coordinator at Multnomah County Library, Portland Oregon and Karina Sadler. Volunteer resources supervisor. The city of plano texas at volunteers in Plano. Welcome, Lizza. Welcome Karina.

[00:02:10.34] spk_1:
Thanks for having us. tony

[00:02:11.57] spk_2:
Hello,

[00:02:17.44] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure. You each have a CVA after your name and uh, tell us what it I know it’s not cardiovascular accident. So tell us Karina, what what is C. V. A. What is that? What do you both? Uh, credentialed with

[00:02:28.14] spk_2:
the C. V. A. Is a certified volunteer administrator. Is a global credential for leaders of volunteers if you have at least three years experience. And then it is an ongoing professional development networking and educational credential.

[00:02:57.34] spk_0:
Cool. All right. I don’t think I’ve seen that one before. I mean, everybody knows the fundraising ones and the events. I haven’t seen a one for volunteer professionals. So interesting. All right. Yes, there are volunteer. Well, we know there are volunteer professionals. There’s a credential. What’s the organization that you get the credential from

[00:03:07.24] spk_2:
The Council for Certification and Volunteer Administration. And there are 1100 of us around the world and growing.

[00:03:15.44] spk_0:
Okay, Well, you don’t want too many. If if you get right, if you get too many, then it’s then it’s it’s watered down. Its liquefy. Its not as valuable. So you want to manage the number of CVS out there. You know, you don’t write, you want it to be something special.

[00:03:30.24] spk_2:
We’ll make that decision when we get there.

[00:03:32.84] spk_0:
Okay. Are you an authority? Are you an executive in, uh, in the agency?

[00:03:37.43] spk_2:
I’m on the outreach committee.

[00:03:39.74] spk_0:
Oh, so it’s your job. So you disagree with what I just said? You’re you’re trying to you’re trying to reach out. You’re trying to expand the C. V. A. Credential, not not restricted.

[00:03:49.50] spk_2:
Bring in more voices from leaders of volunteers all over the world.

[00:03:56.14] spk_0:
More. Okay. Not fewer. Alright. But soon. But be careful though. If it gets too watered down, it won’t mean as much, it won’t be as valuable to.

[00:04:00.87] spk_2:
That’s a good point.

[00:04:19.44] spk_0:
Now, I’m alive, Noma County Library and the city of Plano because it won’t be as valuable. Alright. Um So you each have stories of how you transformed your volunteer experiences in the pandemic. And then we’ve got some takeaways For future future programs, even when we end up back in person. So listen, let’s go to you to tell the tell the story at the Multnomah County Library 1st.

[00:05:23.74] spk_1:
Absolutely. So at my county library we of course like everybody around the U. S. And around the world had to pretty much shut down very quickly. And we were in the midst of planning for our summer reading Volunteer program. And summer reading is a program every summer where kids and families read all summer long. And the whole point is to encourage people to read all summer long so they don’t lose those reading skills between when school ends in the spring and starts back up in the fall. Right. That’s called the summer slide when your skills slide because you’re not keeping up. And so the volunteer program is all about encouraging families and helping kids get excited about reading for fun. And because of COVID We couldn’t have volunteers in person. And normally we would have almost 900 youth volunteers In all of our 19 library branches. So in the span of about two weeks, we completely shifted that program to be at home and virtual. And if you’ve ever tried to get a youth to do something in person that’s already challenging. But then to get them to do it from a distance is another thing. So we really wanted to make it fun and meaningful and you know, they’re already online so much with school. So we had a lot of offline options as well. And that way we could still engage them as volunteers. They still have something to do over the summer and it would still be promoting our summer reading program and letting people know in their own neighborhoods that summer Reading was still happening. You could still, uh, do things with the library online and that there was still reading to be done over the summer.

[00:06:09.24] spk_0:
Give us a little depth what was what was a one or two examples of what you, what you devised.

[00:07:45.64] spk_1:
Yeah. So it was actually kind of an interesting time because I was redeployed to the Emergency Operations Center for Multnomah County at that time. So I got kind of pulled in at the very last minute, um, to start this up with a number of staff at the library who’d been working on this. And so they had already put together some ideas for activities that the kids could do from home. And it’s, you know, of course you think about social media, Right? But a lot of our volunteers are under 13. They’re not really using social media. It’s their parents, their older siblings who are doing it. So we really wanted to focus on things that they could do that would be just for them. So like things like doing chalk drawings in their neighborhoods, in any language that they speak. Um, we knew that we ended up having about 220 230 volunteers doing this from home, and 48% of them were fluent in another language besides english. And I think we had 14 other languages represented. So they were doing chalk drawings, um, and saying summer reading, sign up online or making signs and distributing them to their neighbors or doing pop up stands where they would have the summer reading game board and different materials with them that they would set up in a park. One person set up at a farmer’s market. And these were things, I was not saying, hey, here’s the contact person at the farmers market. They were doing it. These were the teens leading these activities and of course we were giving them ideas and and things like that. But really the success was because the teens had been given that, that, that authority over what they got to do. So they got to choose what activities they got to do. And that was really way more fun than us Just saying, here do this.

[00:07:52.84] spk_0:
You’re a teenager at heart. I love that

[00:07:55.44] spk_1:
you

[00:07:56.37] spk_0:
trusted them and they didn’t let you down. It’s great. And you can, you give them absolutely some basics and sent them off. Excellent

[00:08:06.21] spk_1:
Karina. How about, uh, let’s say sorry. We also provided them with the materials to do the activities. So we didn’t just say, oh, we assume that you have all these art supplies at home because you may not. So we provided the supplies to do those things as well. Okay,

[00:08:21.34] spk_0:
Guerena, what’s the story at uh, in play now?

[00:09:15.74] spk_2:
Yeah. So when Covid hit, I was in the exact same situation like Lizza, everything got turned off and I felt like our adult program, you know, our adult volunteers were kind of somewhat prepared for what they needed to do, um, for their families and in their workplaces. But I was very worried about the teens, how they were going to react being cut off from our summer of service program. So I really wanted to create something specifically 14 volunteers. We usually have 300 to 3 50 in our program and they’re doing things at the library similar to what Lissa was talking about. But we also have them out at summer camps, especially events, a lot of in person social interaction. So I created a bingo style game, just the classic bingo board. The P and plano is really big. It’s our, it’s our icon at the city. So I called it ping go. Um, each

[00:09:22.32] spk_0:
you messed with, You messed with, You messed with the tradition of bingo.

[00:09:26.57] spk_2:
I did. We

[00:09:36.84] spk_0:
deserve it. That’s pretty gutsy. Well it’s been with us for hundreds of years. I don’t know, maybe thousands of years. People blame bingo. And then in plano you call it bingo. Yeah, that’s all right. When he

[00:09:37.94] spk_2:
really turned a lot of stuff upside down.

[00:09:40.22] spk_0:
Okay. Now what in Portland do you call Portland? In Portland? You call bingo bingo in Portland,

[00:09:45.94] spk_1:
you know, yet to be yet to be determined. I was so inspired by Karina’s program that we’re actually looking at adapting that for our summer reading program this year to say that we’re going to have um you know, one of the activities be a bingo board but we haven’t decided on branding yet. We need to consult with our marketing manager.

[00:10:06.84] spk_0:
All rights gutsy. Alright, bingo. You said the P. in plano is big. You know, I don’t know that. I mean, I didn’t know that.

[00:10:12.78] spk_2:
Yeah, it’s an iconic P.

[00:10:14.70] spk_0:
It’s important. All right. It’s important that words start with P and Plano, is it Okay? All right. All right. So please go ahead Karina.

[00:10:56.04] spk_2:
So I, you know, I used the squares in our bingo board who provides safe at home activities for the teens. They could earn service hours by completing the game board. Um, it also allowed me to leverage many of the partnerships I have built over many years at my program by reaching out to other departments, other organizations and, you know, asking for an activity that I could put on my board. It got people’s interest. They were happy to see something positive going on during that time. And then in our third and final month, I had all the teams submit their own ping go ideas. And our last board was completely uh, selected by the volunteers.

[00:14:54.84] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to Communications, the Chronicle of philanthropy, the new york Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today stanford Social Innovation review, the Washington post, the Hill Cranes, nonprofit quarterly Forbes, Market Watch, goodness gracious. That’s where turn to clients have gotten exposure. You want that kind of exposure. You want that kind of press turn to has the relationships to get it for you. Turn hyphen two dot C o. Your story is their mission. It’s time for Tony Take two. Sometimes I miss the new york city studio days. Remember SAm SAM at the board, Help me out with the uh, with the live listener love. He would uh, check the check the I. P. Addresses of everybody listening live and tell me the cities and states and countries. Um and I’m thinking about this especially because next week is an anniversary show tease. Uh and that was very special on the anniversary shows. You know, every july we would get everyone together, scott stein brings his, would bring his keyboard and Claire Meyerhoff was there and we’d get some other folks sometimes to drop in. It was just great fun. So there are times when I missed the studio days uh and the live stream that went along with that overall, I’m much happier producing the show the way we do now. But there are moments of angst when I I missed those new york city studio days, so just letting you know, I haven’t forgotten SAm and the studio, The studios, we were in three different ones. We started on West 72nd Street, then we move to west 76 I think, much further west. And then the last one where he still is now is on West 33rd I think it is maybe 32 good italian restaurant down the street. Uh if it’s still there cafe nana, cafe nana. If you’re in new york city, can you tell Sam lives on the west side. He only has Sam lives on the west side. So he picks all the studios that are with either within walking distance of his apartment or easy commute by subway. Don’t need to go over to the east side. Sam Liebowitz. All right, That is Tony’s take two send in blue. It’s an all in one digital marketing platform with tools to build end to end digital campaigns that look professional are affordable and keep you organized for goodness sake. They do digital campaign marketing. Most marketing software is designed for big companies and has that enterprise level price tag send in blue is priced for nonprofits. It’s an easy to use marketing platform that walks you through the steps of building a campaign to try out sending blue and get a free month. Hit the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in blue. We’ve got but loads more time for your fun volunteer program. Give us a little flavor of some of the board theme, the ping go board themes.

[00:15:35.94] spk_2:
Yeah. So we partnered with the police Department and had a section of safety minute videos. The teens could watch and learn some safety tips from the police Department, similar with our fire department, checking out some tours of the fire stations and learning about what the fire department does. The census was going on. So encouraging their family to complete their census was a square going out and getting exercise doing uh outdoor social distance scavenger hunt with our museum calling or zooming with the relative to say hi, okay.

[00:16:00.64] spk_0:
You brought in the the institutions of Plano, Cultural Law enforcement fire. Cool. Alright. Alright. So we’ve got you you each have some takeaways that that folks can used in. Mhm. Creating their own volunteers activities. Right? So what what the coroner? Let’s stay with you. What what what what are some lessons learned here that folks non private media listeners can benefit from.

[00:16:50.04] spk_2:
I think it’s great to be specific when creating engagement opportunities to narrow down your audience to create something just for teens or just for seniors or being very um specific in creating activities that would interest them and having at home options. I think going forward will be a bonus will be a plus. Not every child’s home has the same resources as their neighbor and being able to provide them with an engaging activity that connects them back to the community regardless of how many resources they have access to really strengthens that trust.

[00:17:14.94] spk_0:
And I guess you could segment by other categories also besides age. I mean maybe section of the neighborhood that you live in or I don’t know school that you go to, depending on the size of your community, you know? Um, yeah. Whether you’re new to the, I don’t know, you don’t want to start dividing people like whether your native in the town or your or your, you’ve been lived here less than five years. Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe

[00:17:43.54] spk_2:
I’ve seen other organizations. There was a food pantry, a senior living to hospitals from all over the US that took my idea and made their own boards and they made them as inclusive as they wanted or specific to their audiences they wanted. So people can get really creative when you give them an empty bingo board. Okay,

[00:17:45.34] spk_0:
Lizza. You got something you can share for us.

[00:18:53.14] spk_1:
Yeah. So one of the things that I started doing throughout last summer was asking our volunteers to send us pictures of them doing these activities or to send us pictures of just like their chalk drawings or their summer reading pop up stations. And then I took those photos and then put them into our weekly email newsletter that we were sending to the volunteers. So it created a kind of online feedback loop of hey here in a normal time, we would be able to see each other and we would see the things that we’re doing. But because we’re all spread out through throughout Multnomah County were not able to see that. And so being able to share that back helped to elevate the teens and their work and show them, Hey, your artwork that you did has made it into our official newsletter. And you know, for me, I’m just like, oh, that’s just such a simple thing for me to do. But for them, it’s a sense of validation that they created something that was then sent out to hundreds of people and it got included in our end of summer reading report. We used it on social media, you know, and of course we made sure to get permission and everything from, from folks. And that was just a really cool way to spread that. And 11 thing I got from a couple of teams, they were like, oh yeah, I don’t have social media, but I asked my dad to put this on his social media. And so it was just, you know, it created a kind of family experience. whereas before it would be kids coming to the library and their families aren’t really involved at all. And so this created a different kind of opportunity that we’re going to stick with this year.

[00:19:39.24] spk_0:
Yeah, I was just gonna ask about the summer’s coming up. We’re recording in basically mid april. You’re already planning your summer reading program. Are you are you going to try to make it a hybrid or strictly virtual again or? Well I mean the activities weren’t all virtual but distanced I guess I should say distanced or how are you? How are you conceiving of it?

[00:20:44.04] spk_1:
Yeah. So it’s funny you say that you know we must be planning, we started planning summer reading 2021 in September of 2020. So it’s basically a rolling programme for us. It takes so much planning and preparation and working with different organizations that we partner with and um, just planning everything for the next year’s theme. And so each summer reading each year there’s a theme. And so this year our theme is reading colors, your world. And so we have gotten teens to submit their own black and white drawings that are gonna be, I think one or two of them will be printed on the summer reading game boards. So of course, all of these things, you know, you have to backtrack, you can’t just say like, oh, we’ll have this by summer. No, we’re like getting these printed now. Um, and then all of the drawings that were not going to be on the game board, we’re putting them into a coloring book. And so the coloring book will be put together by the library, but then distributed to all of our patrons that are coming into place. So it’s not just, you know, an insular volunteer program of only volunteers get this. No, this is this is everybody can get this. And so yeah, we are going to be opening up recruitment in actually next week for summer reading volunteers and um, really focusing on what volunteers can do in that the two months between when we start recruiting and when summer reading actually starts, um, which is mid june. And so we’re going to have zoom backgrounds that they can use for their classes. Their online classes. We’re going to have, um, we’re going to have them submit ideas for bingo boards. So that was the idea that we are borrowing from Corinna. And so we’re going to ask them, you know, in these two months because we have some really excited volunteers and they just want to get started right away. So, um, so yeah, so we’re almost like doing this pre planning this pre volunteer program for the two months between and one of the things I’m working on

[00:22:15.34] spk_0:
itself is a valuable take away. You know, think about something to engage folks from the time they sign up to the time your program formally starts. If you’ve got like you’re saying two months, you know, people are going to maybe lose interest. You know, you want to keep them engaged to get them and start their engagement before the thing actually formally starts. So, alright, another committee. You got another valuable takeaway. I want listeners to to pick your brain to get the best of your brains.

[00:22:52.94] spk_2:
Yeah, I definitely was not planning in september Yeah. For a summer. Um, but I think just having communication with your volunteers, we surveyed, um, are teens at the end of our summer game. Got their feedback if they wanted this again, even if we were in person or not. So we’re still kind of weighing options and figuring out what we’re going to do. But I expect ping, go to return and hopefully be more interactive now that in texas we are open and having some more opportunities for people to socially distance get together.

[00:23:10.04] spk_0:
Okay. All right. So advice their, keep in touch, keep in touch with folks throughout the year. Even if it’s just lisa, I’m sure you do that. I’m sorry, Liz, I’m sure you do the same. You know, you’re in touch with your summer volunteers throughout the year. You must be right,

[00:23:50.74] spk_1:
definitely. Yeah. We have other volunteer opportunities to that. Some of them volunteer year round. We have virtual team councils. And so those are things that they’re gathering every other week or sometimes monthly, depending on which council that they’re part of. And so they’re continuously engaged or we’re asking them, hey, you know, you participated in summer reading last year were planning and we want to know what you think about this. So we’re regularly checking in with them and then of course they get folded into our regular volunteer pool and get our monthly newsletter to find out what’s happening at the library and, and our status because we’re not currently open to the public except for curbside pickup. So, um, so definitely engaging them not just as volunteers who do things for us, but as community advocates and people who care a lot about what we do.

[00:24:07.84] spk_0:
Any more. Any more takeaways, the lessons that we should learn from your either of your experiences about our own activities. Volunteer activities.

[00:24:38.44] spk_2:
I would just encourage people not to be afraid to try something new to be creative to pilot. an idea. It brings joy to people and people want positive, happy fun things going on. Even if it’s a tough year, it still resonates with a lot of, of families and that connection is just really strong. So don’t be afraid to be creative.

[00:25:11.94] spk_0:
Yeah. How about we leave it there? It sounds good. Right? That’s that’s great. Parting words. All right. They’re both CVS certified volunteer administrators. Did I get that right? Volunteer administrators. All right. And they are Eliza dire at um, multnomah County Library. She’s volunteer engagement coordinator and Karina Sadler. Volunteer resources supervisor for the city of Plano for volunteers in Plano. And Lizza Karina, thank you very much.

[00:25:14.74] spk_1:
Thank you so much. tony

[00:27:24.34] spk_0:
My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you and welcome and thank you not welcome. We’re wrapping up. We’re not welcoming. We’re thanking you. I’m thanking you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 ntc where we are sponsored by Turn to communications turn hyphen two dot C O. That’s it. Short show this week. It’s a quickie a drive by a wink without the nod, a shake of flash. If I keep this up, it won’t be a short show, A new york minute, two shakes of a lamb’s tell blink of an eye, A jiffy a hot minute Next week It’s the 550th show, our 11th anniversary. Who How many podcasts do you know that are 11 years old and produced 550 episodes and abdominal to boot. Claire Meyer off will co host, will have live music from scott Stein, our contributors, our sponsors and guest awards. Would you care to guess what the awards are called if you missed any part of this week’s show? I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Re sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. And by sending Blue, the only all in one digital marketing platform empowering non profits to grow. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in Blue, our creative producer is clear. Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein. Thank you for that information scotty, You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio for the 550th show. Big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great. Mhm Yeah.

Nonprofit Radio for December 2, 2016: Find Fantastic Volunteers & Board Unity Or Dissent

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Liza Dyer, Gina Roberti, & Taryn Kearns: Find Fantastic Volunteers

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(L to R) Liza Dyer, Gina Roberti, & Taryn Kearns at 16NTC

Who is your ideal volunteer and what are your best strategies to find them? Our panel shares online and offline tips, including lots of resources. From the Nonprofit Technology Conference they’re Liza Dyer from Multnomah County Library, with Gina Roberti and Taryn Kearns from Reading Partners.

 

 

 

Gene Takagi: Board Unity Or Dissent

Should “shut up” be part of your board meetings? Gene Takagi, our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO), returns to weigh the pros and cons of dissent on your board vs. speaking with a singe voice. (Originally aired on 12/5/14).

 

 


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Transcript for 317_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20161202.mp3

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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. We have a listener of the week. Urban stead. They messaged me. Caught your radio show today we’re a small non-profit in philadelphia. Found your show absolutely relevant and helpful. Absolutely relevant. Unhelpful. Not just relevant. Unhelpful. Absolutely. Thank you very much. They do urban farming with at risk youth in philadelphia, which i love that’s where i went to law school. Temple, temple university law school. Now the beasley school like the old, like that old show with mrs beasley the rag doll on was that a family affair with brian keith and mr french anyway? Ah, urban st they’re at urban stead and urban stead dot or ge? Thank so much, herb instead. So glad that you found non-profit radio and that it helps your work. What work? Congratulations on being our listener of the week. Urban stead. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into pica if you forced down my throat. The idea that you missed today’s show find fantastic volunteers who’s, your ideal volunteer. And what do your best strategy is? To find them, our panel shares online and offline tips, including lots of resource, is from the non-profit technology conference there lies a dyer from multnomah county library with gina roberti and taryn kearns from reading partners very literate group also bored unity or descent should shut up. Be part of your board meetings. Jean takagi are legal goal legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations. Law group returns to weigh the pros and cons of dissent on your board versus speaking with a single voice not originally aired on december fifth. Twenty fourteen on tony’s take to your trump challenge. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we be spelling dot com here is find fantastic volunteers from auntie si. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc the non-profit technology conference in san jose, california. This is also part of ntc conversations. We’re in the convention center in san jose. Naturally, where else? Where else would we be? And my guests? Yeah, session topic is fantastic volunteers and where to find them we’re going to meet the guests very shortly. First, have to do a shout out for the swag item for this interview, which is a very hot item appreciated by all three women on the panel. It’s ah, it’s, a red box it’s, a red box, one night rental only liza holds her movies longer than i’m a night, so this is no value to her. But gina and taryn love it, and it is from unleashed unleashed technologies. Red box promo code. One night, we added to the swag pile. And don’t walk away with it, ladies, alright, let’s, meet our guests. Liza dyer is first of all, she has the professional designation cv a certified in volunteer administration. She’s, a program coordinator for volunteers services at the multnomah county library and multnomah county, encompasses portland, oregon. And it’s, oregon not oregon. There’s no e at the end of oregon, i’ve learned that many times. Gina roberti is community engagement manager at reading partners. And taryn kearns is the americorps volunteer coordinator at reading partners. And i started closest to me. So liza is closest to me. And then it’s gina and then taran they’re topic is yes, the fantastic volunteers and where to find them. Let’s, talk down the end there, taryn. What is it that you ladies field non-profits or not getting maybe quite right with volunteers. Gino was in with the face is coming. What you got stuff i want you look it’s. Tough looking issues. You really like the question? Okay, what is it? Well, i’m sorry i directed for tarrant, but i’ll give you the follow-up if she doesn’t, she doesn’t lackluster job at it. Then you can you khun ad on? What do you mean she will do great. Karin, what are we not getting right about volunteers? I think there’s a couple things that we’re not getting quite right volunteers. Perhaps one is retention a lot of non-profits struggle with retaining volunteers, long term reading partners, we retain roughly thirty percent of our volunteers year to year doesn’t seem like a lot of volunteers. We do retain our amazing, but we’d still need to constantly invent new strategies to keep those volunteers engaged, excited and coming back for more to serve our population. You’re retaining thirty means you’re losing seventy percent of your volunteers each year. True? Yeah. That’s. The same as donorsearch a tous ticks no non-profits lose seventy percent of their donors each year. All right, gina, how did she do anything great? If anything, you’d like to add teo terrans assessment of what? We’re not getting quite right. Well, she did great. Okay, i actually think attention. So retention one problem a problem. I actually think we’re really fortunate reading partners where we have dedicated staff to focus on volunteermatch judgment. And i don’t think all non-profits have the capacity to have paid staff. So i feel like that’s you need people who are focused on volunteers and engaging them, appreciating them and developing the program. So i feel fortunate reading partners, but i know that’s not everywhere, and so i feel like that’s what we’re getting wrong in the nonprofit world do we have strategies to help people who aren’t devoted to volunteer management but have other responsibilities as well? We have some ideas for them. You came to the right place, we will have some okay way have twenty five years together, so okay, we do have some ideas, okay? Liza, anything you’d like to add? Yes, oh, something that really leads into a retention is that a lot of non-profits don’t know what they’re looking for in a volunteer, so they don’t know who they are actually trying to attract before they want to retain them. So they go out and they say, yeah, well, take anybody if you believe in our mission will take you, but you don’t really focus on what they’re skillsets is what their knowledge, their background, their availability. And so once you can do that and figure out who your ideal volunteers are, then you can work to engage them and retain. Them for the long term. But it starts with that first relationship. Excellent lead in let’s. Begin there. How how do we identify who the ideal volunteer is? Yeah, perfect. So something that you can do is create a volunteer persona and figure out who? Just like, when you do marketing personas or daughter personas, you can figure out what are the specific skills that i’m looking for and all of that khun lead into a position description. But you also need to think about. So if i am recruiting somebody who can teach computer classes, who are they? Where are they currently at? What is their availability like? So in portland, we have ah, few tech companies, not as money is down here in silicon valley, but we have a few and so, you know, do they have daytime availability? Maybe if they have a corporate responsibility program, they can come and and volunteer during their work time. But if not, well, then you kind of have to taylor, you’re programming maybe have your computer classes at days and times when volunteers are available. Okay, what should we be thinking about? A cz we build these personas? What attributes? Yeah, so you want to think about not just their knowledge and their skills, but also their beliefs or their values? Because if somebody doesn’t have alignment in terms of your organization, then you might not be a good match. So on the one hand, if i am recruiting a bunch of volunteers to stuff envelopes doesn’t matter that they believe in army mittens, maybe, maybe not. If i’m recruiting somebody to teach classes like, for example, citizenship classes at multnomah county library, i’m gonna want somebody who believes in the things that we do and making sure that they have a welcoming personality that can make sure that people feel welcome and also that they believe in the concept of intellectual freedom so people can come in, use the library. We’re not judging them. We’re not censoring anything. We believe people should have free access to information. You know, if somebody doesn’t believe that we’re not a good fit for that. Gina, are there other attributes we variables we can describe to our volunteermatch personas? I think liza covered a lot of really well, well, the age wouldn’t talk about age. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Well, i think it just varies per per volunteer opportunities like reading partners. We have one type of volunteer that we look for. So and for us, it’s fourteen, to retired is the age range which brought age, so we have a bigger audience that we can recruit for. But we also we have a volunteer opportunities monday through thursday between nine and five. So what liza was saying is, here in silicon valley, it works for us because there’s a lot of companies and they have huge corporate social responsibility departments who helped, you know, connect us to the companies, but, you know, oftentimes we’ll find high schoolers there over programmed and, you know, they’re only available between three and five or people who don’t have the same corporate culture of volunteerism they want to do evenings and weekends, and that doesn’t necessarily fit for reading part doesn’t work for you. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Other strategies for finding the ideal volunteer. Taryn besides the user, the volunteer persona. Did you talk about others in your your in your own? Do you programmed yet? Yes, you did. Okay. Ten. Thirty? Yeah. Were there other ideas? Are we exhausted that that part of it? No. I think that there’s so much to talk about a sfar strategies go if you want to get into that and, you know, separate from identifying the ideal volunteer. Okay, great. So based on each type of volunteer that you’re looking for, you need to really assess the community as faras. What kind of resource is either online or actually in person are around you, it’s helpful to be so aware of what schools are around? Maybe if any clubs meet at local coffee shops during the day. So as you get that information and create either a visual layout or just have it in your mind, you can start to target those locations for either long term volunteer opportunities or short term and fill those needs match those volunteers are available at certain times and have different interests with the needs of your organization. So what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna go into the coffee shop and start talking up reading partners and whatever organization is that they may be a strategy for the coffee shop. What if there’s a no solicitation sign on the door? Well, we’ll probably have to obey by that sign, but most places you feel like you go into a place and it’s a gut feeling that you get if they’re open. Teo connecting community members with local opportunity. Right, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Dahna other strategies? Anybody i don’t necessarily have to pick on you. You want to raise your hands? Anybody guidelines? Yeah. Another thing that you can do is you can survey your staff and find out what our who have been the most successful volunteers in the past. And so, if you say, pick your top ten percent that you would say, i want these people and i want to clone them, and i want to have volunteers at that level on lee, what is it about them? So is that their age? Are they retired? Are they high school students? So they have a lot of technical knowhow. Or is it somebody who has, you know, they are willing to just do what needs to get done? Like if you have a clerical volunteered, you don’t need somebody to go above and beyond necessarily. You just need them to be reliable, dependable and get the work done. So who are the volunteers who have been the most successful? And then you can use that to create your ideal volunteer. And then you, khun specifically target your recruitment for that type of person. And plus you this ideal volunteer that you want to clone? How do we find her? Yeah, you know, who does she know? How could she connect us to people like her? Absolutely right. Okay, okay. Excellent. We got other before we go online or not, i know you have online strategies to we’re not there yet. Other offline in real time. Face-to-face strategies for recruitment. These are excellent. I’d like to build upon that point you just made about how can you talk to someone that’s? Your perhaps ideal volunteer, maybe sametz already volunteering for you and get that person to talk to their friends about opportunities. Peer-to-peer volunteer recruitment is one of the most successful strategies because if you haven’t in, you know sametz already volunteering for going elearning organization and they can vouch for you going to tell you how awesome it is. You know, exactly when i’m teaching kids and their learning and it’s great, you’re much more likely to want to even just try it out and see if it’s a right fit for you, right? Yeah. And i think that using people’s personal networks leveraging those to create further connections is so useful. Excellent works for reading partners is that you get a lot of of your volunteers through testing volunteers with public latto personally. Okay. Anything else we should talk about? Offline. Real world? Yeah. It’s something that i saw it actually in a cafe in nashville, tennessee was a table number sign. You know, you place your order and you get a table number sign has we’re number the restaurant. It was in a restaurant, okay? Restaurant. And so i get my table number and it’s two or whatever and the rest of it is actually a kind of restaurant barbecue, you know, it was like it was like a healthy, you know, like begin. Yeah, s o they have those in tennessee as well. Although it was one of the one you were at the world. I was at the one and only you have it and you were at it. And so i get my numbers are in, and it has the number. But it also has a brochure about a dog rescue non-profit and it was specifically on the back of the tent, the number ten, it was. No, it was it was, you know, sticking up out of ah, like a metal holder and so on. Both sides that had information about volunteering a great partnership. Absolutely. Okay. Have any of you done that successfully with local businesses where they’ll they’ll basically let you have your solicitation materials? No, but like restaurant did mention that to us. And that is on my list of things that we will do next here in silicon valley. You got some places in mind? Yes. Okay. Okay. Next interview. I’ll update you. Okay? You’re presuming you’re gonna be back. Don’t don’t be presumptions will determine that in a couple minutes. Okay, uh, that’s. Excellent. You got ladies. You’re full of ideas. Anything else off line? I don’t mind if we talk more offline before we go online. Nothing else, really world. I think one more thing is another in person. Strategy is inserting yourself the organization into local community events. Say the community center is having a resource fair for non-profits maybe homeowners association or any other business to come and have a free table. Talk about what they do. Connect people that air interested from the community that’s a wonderful way. And often you, khun basically get a free space to just either recruit volunteers or spread organizational visibility. Once you create a presence for yourself and you start going to these types of events and meeting the same people over and over, they’ll say, ok, actually remember seeing this logo. I remember seeing your face, you’re here, and i like it, right, right on dh, there are community organizations, like maybe a chamber of commerce or something, exactly, uh, yeah, okay, karen, i don’t know if you know, gina agrees with very much of what you say, a lot of nodding, i say they work very closely together, we dio, she approves of everything i don’t you don’t not when she speaks, though, so you’re very disapproving of mentally, not idea, so you are okay, we believe you. Okay, okay. Okay, so let’s go online. Who wants to start? Gina, once you start, do you in the middle? Some online strategies you have for recruiting volunteers? Awesome. Fantastic volunteers. Yes. That’s a very good question. So i would say speaking for us at reading partners, we have actually always had our typical social media pieces of facebook, right? And this year our specific region has utilized twitter more. Andi, i think we honestly we have just skim the services to what we can do with our online recruitment on we definitely pay for facebook ads and things of that nature on dh has been extremely helpful. But it’s working it’s working. But you know what the problem is with that is that you need more money in order to make that happen. So it took a while to get some movement on. As soon as we got movement, we realized our budget is depleting. We had to go for the second movement. And now it’s like, what is it going to look like to continue that the ads and things of that nature. Okay, so so you were spending more than fifteen or twenty dollars? Yeah. Yeah, you’re okay. And what does that look like? Way have fourteen regions and we all need ads and our eight regions. And what does that look like for marketing budget? Ok, sorry, so facebook ads, but they’ve been valuable. You most definitely paid off. Yeah, yeah, liza, how about you and multnomah public? Yeah, so we utilise all our social channels as well. So facebook, twitter, instagram also flicker. We post photos there as well, and something that some of our volunteers participating is called a m c l hel p so m c l multnomah county library. Hel p is a selfie that you take while you’re helping or volunteering, right? So, yeah, so we every year we have a summer reading program and to encourage kids to read all year long. And we have eight hundred volunteers close to eight hundred volunteers for that program, ninety percent of which are under the age of eighteen years old, so ninety percent are under eighteen. Yeah, and those are our volunteers. That’s. You know the participants. We have over one hundred ten thousand participants just for the summer reading program. So we were looking for a way to engage our summer reading volunteers. Many of whom have smartphones and want to take selfies, and so we encourage them. Hey, take a selfie while you were at the library hashtag it this or, you know, put it on instagram and show your friends what you’re doing this summer, and so that could be a way to recruit volunteers and get them to you show their their other friends what they’re doing for the summer. What are we doing in the channels in these facebook ads or instagram? Whatever to advertise the the volunteer possibilities, what we what we saying? What are we showing, etcetera? A great regular facebook campaign reading partners, which each week we have a feature called thank you tutor tuesday we feature a picture of the tutoring question and the student they work with if both have photo permission don’t use real names in many instances, but it gives a glimpse into either of them working together or them doing something fun together. Maybe during a spirit week with cem, funny props of what it looks like for them to be volunteers, and also matched that with a quote from them about their volunteer experience that lets them speak from their own perspective and give people that do follow us on social media is chance to say okay, maybe i could do this and work with a student that looks super happy and keep with their tutor. Right? Must be other stuff we could talk about online before we before we go to the next topic. What else? Yes. Oh, at melanoma counting library. We have a monthly volunteers spotlight, which is not a new thing. Many organizations have monthly voluntary spotlights to showcase what their volunteers were doing, and what that is is it doubles as both a recognition tool and a recruitment tool. Because you are recognizing the volunteer by saying, hey, you are so great that we want to talk about you and we want to post you know, this blogger on on our website, and then we share it on our social media channels, but also when other people see that they see oh, that’s, what a volunteer does who you know is teaching a citizenship class or is delivering books toe homebound patrons. I’m interested in that not just learning about somebody else doing that, but maybe i can do that, too. And so it doubles. Is recognition and recruitment excellent, excellent. All right, i like, uh, thank a tutor tuesday. Gotomeeting every partners your own hashtag was that your idea? I think it was a collective decision. Okay, i like i like a little rations. So on this show, i ii send live listener love because show street live, i have podcast pleasantries for the podcast listeners. I’ve affiliate affections for the am and fm station listeners, you know, so i do tony’s take, too. I’m over the moon with, as listeners of the show will know, with a liberation. Okay, uh, well, should we go? There we go offline. Anything else? What? I got online on the networks go online network. So good. I want to say, i don’t know if we even mention this, but we definitely use that reading partners, you know? Volunteermatch and, you know, volunteermatch croup, mint websites get amount of our two shot out. Some of the ones that you use a helpful idea. Why am i drawing a blank? So we definitely is craigslist volunteermatch is an idealist, idealist, idealist. We’ve done volunteer center, which is more local to the francisco bay area, but we’re on many and all, especially more local, more local, you know, centered silicon valley pages. Okay, that’s been a huge help over those who know where to go or choose to go to those kinds of pages for volunteer opportunities right way, use volunteermatch and also hands on greater portland, which is part of the hands on network through points of light and so hands on greater portland is more focused on the portland metro area. Volunteermatch of course, you can search through, you know, different areas, but is more national. And so both are great because with volunteermatch if you get people who moved to portland, we have a lot of people moving to portland, then they already know about volunteermatch from their past community, and so they just switched to portland, and so we find a lot of people who moved to the area are looking through volunteermatch postings and finding us, and even if they’re not interested in the specific position that we’re recruiting for, they will then be drawn to our website, find something else, apply and then become a volunteer. Yeah, you know, i want to mention one more that is it’s probably giving us some success because it’s fairly new it’s next door and for when you’re trying to engage the community when a a current volunteer for us, lives in the community in which we’re serving and they post about it it’s that peer-to-peer but of a larger network of community members that maybe we’d never even touched, which has been a really cool thing to try out. It’s cool, it’s cool. What next? Next door next door? Yeah. Okay. All right. Go. Another one that i haven’t used for recruitment yet, but i have scene people who are seeking volunteer. Opportunities uses read it. So i have a google search alert for anything mentioning volunteermatch portland, oregon and it’s just a way to be aware of what’s going on in the area and sew something will come up and somebody will say post on reddit for the portland read it general think gina likes your ideas about to put it in her notes way steal the best ideas, okay? And and so they you know, they’ll post hey, i’m looking for a volunteer position where can i go? And then people talk about hey, you should try the oregon food bank. You should try free geek, which refurbishes, you know, older computers and gets him into the hands of people who need them. And so those air probably the two that i see most often is is the oregon food bank and freaky, but then other ones will say, oh, well, i’m really wanting to volunteer at an environmental organisations so somebody might recommend friends of trees or something like that, so yeah, and that’s another thing is that with oregon food bank, you can. I’ve personally volunteered there, so i’m a huge fan. I had a birthday party there. I had a fallen bir birthday where i volunteered and then ones on the other side, i think of the first has to be mine, to be funny calling peer-to-peer and so, yeah, so volunteering at the oregon food bank, posting a healthy on twitter and instagram, and then we went to a place called oregon public house, which is a non-profit pub in portland and had beer eso with any of those aiken then go online and say, hey, have you tried oregon food bank? Because they’re great and here’s, why? All right, let’s, just move. Teo some of the partnerships, i think my voice just broke moved too. But thirteen years old. But partnerships you talked about finding and cultivating partnerships. Now we just touched on his very lightly. We’re talking about the possibility of what i mentioned chambers of commerce when you were talking about local organizations. Is there more we can say about finding and cultivating these partnerships? To find volunteers who wants to go wants to volunteer to talk about partnership volunteering opportunities? I can certainly speak briefly more gina’s area of expertise. She’s, right? I shouldn’t say anything quite the experience cultivating partnerships, but it’s important, teo follow-up i don’t know if you need to call it a strict list of partnership planning steps, but haven’t idea of first what you can offer or what your strengths are as an organization, then see what that potential partner can also offer you it’s making sure the relationship is mutually beneficial. If you want to move forward with more of a formal agreement in the future, make sure both parties are really going to get what they want out of it and along the way, sorry, go what types of organizations are we talking about? You have some examples? Yeah, we have one of our strongest partnerships within the silicon valley region of reading partners is with the department at san jose state university here, locally it’s child in the adolescent development and their students who go through several different classes learning about various stages of child development, and they come to us. We have a program tailored to their needs as far as a service learning requirement, and their program it’s little bits is actually tailored to our curriculum and tutoring so local college you could look at college university another example of successful partnership. Organization? Yeah, new partnership we have just going on is with actually a food truck collective that’s all over the basement. Portland. I know, right? Okay. Great terminology around trucks, which you’ve gotten since i was there, but a cluster. What was it? A pod? A pod, right. That’s right apart? Yes, i heard that. It’s a cluster of trucks. You don’t call it a cluster or collection? You call it a pod, but their carts there lorts their carts, not truck that’s, right? That’s why i’m getting that wrong to not trucks the cards, but you would never say i’m going to the part of cards. You would just say i’m goingto just like on the pot. I mean, you might say that, but i wouldn’t wait. Don’t have carts here in silicon valley. Well, their truck’s, but they call them courts, owe their trucks. You put your right thumb and there’s a lot of a lot of times. They’re trailers that really there that you can’t drive them. They just have to hitch onto something. But either way, they’re called the coal carts. I’m going to the cards or the pod, but not the part of cards. Not say that you would be laughed out of portland. Okay, um, we gotta wrap this up in a few. Actually, this one fast. All right. Well, guy’s got about another minute or so let’s focus on the partnerships. What was the one you were just mentioned? The new one you were starting at? It’s called off the grid. Food trucks and group. Yeah, they have a very important emphasis on community in their markets. So we’re able to get an in with one of their markets in san jose. And we’re gonna have a regular appearance at there sunday. Food truck gathering its great. Let me turn the liza. You have any, uh, successful partnership type organisations? Yeah. So, atmel, uma county library. We don’t have too many formal partnerships in terms of volunteer, but we do reach out to our there’s, a local cohort cohort of library students from emporia university. And so they meet here in portland. And so we can send information about different volunteermatch positions that we have for them, and then they can come and get engaged. There’s also? Ah. Library media specialist program. I believe at portland community college. And so we can easily reach out to that college. Okay, so look, a civic organizations is tearing. You were saying like minded organizations where there are potential volunteers. All right, you’re gonna wrap it up. There are ladies cloudgood some excellent unison. Amazing, remarkable panel. Okay, liza dire. I have to turn. I know should with multnomah county library and know that m c l but she’s a cva so divided volunteered ministrations and the program coordinator for volunteers served asses and next to her in the middle is gina roberti, community engagement manager at reading partners and taryn kearns americorps volunteer coordinator also at reading partners. Ladies, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Excellent. Lots of ideas. That’s a good resource is do i love the tools? Durney martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc sixteen the sixteen. Ninety cf courses the hashtag but it all stands for non-profit technology conference in twenty sixteen at the san jose convention center thank you so much for being with us board unity or dissent coming up first pursuant fund-raising like a boss that’s therefore part webinar siri’s starting in january if you like to bake, you could fund-raising like a cake, boss. Your master discovery questions major gift solicitations, prospecting and prioritising and getting your board to fundraise oh, that’s, critical board fund-raising you can’t make all four sessions, no problem, they have you covered. You’ll get the recordings info is at pursuant dot com slash training slash webinar and again it’s called fund-raising like a boss, we’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising are you kicking off millennial engagement in our new year twenty seventeen do it with stand up comedy, live music, dancing and raising money and spelling. Check out the video at we b e spelling dot com now tony steak too. First, i did your trump challenge video. Now this week i have your trump challenge reduction director’s cut and the director’s cut you will find that toluca, the jack russell terrier and i have a challenge for you at your end going forward based on what tallulah and i believe might be in store under a trump presidency to lula has very good insight wait and that’s why i enlarged her part in the reduction director’s cut version both videos, the original and the director’s cut or at toni martignetti dot com and that’s tony’s take two here is jeanne takagi with board unity or descent. Jean takagi. You’re out there, right? I am, honey, i know you are. You’re the managing attorney of neo, the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco, that’s still true, right? Absolutely. And fire yourself, all right, and you also still edit the popular non-profit low block dot com, and on twitter, you’re at g tak gt a k right, all correct, okay, just like the check. Double check the biographical information every every once in a while. And plus, being an attorney, i don’t like to ask questions that i don’t know the answer to, so i knew that was all correct. All right, gene, we’re talking about unity and dissent on your board this arose from, although we’re not going to nit pick the details of this, but this arose from a university of virginia proposal that that board members silence their descent and there was a little bit shocking for some people to read in the paper when they read about ebba talking about so sad, discouraging or actually prohibiting dissenting board members from publicly expressing their view. And that was just a proposed policy that somehow got released to the public, and some people were very, very upset about it thinking of it a censorship um and that caused them once, you know, the public was made aware of it. There was all sorts of articles in the washington post and other newspapers about it, and they rescinded that part of the proposal, but they kind of added a more common governance spot after about well, you can talk about your descent publicly, we won’t. We won’t chill that from happening, but once a decision is reached by the board. The board members each have a responsibility to ensure that the board’s actions and decisions are successfully implemented. So they really downgraded their initial thought. But it was a a source of a lot of controversy at the time. And i think it’s a really interesting subject. Yeah, i love that. Some dissenter released to the public, the non dissenting policy hyre and that there that’s interesting at virginia. I just this is just a small detail, but they call their board the board of visitors. I thought that was interesting. Hey, i i i do it. Well, i don’t know what the historical artifact of that is, but it is their governing body. Yes. This’ll all go back to the days of this is from thomas jefferson, i think is the founder of via university that’s a little bit ironic and some people’s mind about, right? You know, quenching public dissent? Yeah, this statesmen who spoke out of, um and they’re doing just the opposite. But askew said it turns out they’re not doing it, that that part of the proposal was was killed. There is, in fact, value in diversity and dissent. On aboard, right? Yeah, absolutely way need tohave open discussion. And in a lot of governance, experts will say having a culture that encourages open dissent is actually one of the most important indicators of bored effectiveness, the opposite being, you know, usually a culture of group think and rubber stamping one person’s decision and all just sort of reinforcing, you know, the first point of view that comes up rather than actively debating and thinking about, you know, critically thinking about what would be the best decision of the board amongst all of the possibilities. So so every board vote should not be one hundred percent in a unanimous in fact, it’s you’re saying it’s a good sign if there’s there is disagreement. Yeah, but, you know, from from time to time and that’s, you know, a pet peeve of mine and many other lawyers that work with non-profit boards to see by-laws that say board actions will only be taking taken if there is a unanimous vote in favor of aboard actions. That’s really just chills. You know, the board from discussing, you know, individual boardmember from discussing their dissenting opinions. That’s part of some by-laws of some organizations that has to be a one hundred percent vote. Yeah, after my gosh, she is an uncommon to find consensus. A xero required vote, teo get bored. Action. Well, but consensus could be an easy majority or two thirds or something, but but you see it often that it’s one hundred percent unanimous requirement. Yeah. It’s not uncommon. I wouldn’t. I would i would say, you know, it’s, not the majority of by-laws permit that, but certainly i’ve seen several that that require one hundred percent consensus vote in order to take aboard action, and that is to promote their culture. What they feel like is a culture, a beauty. Mmm. All right, there are ways of dealing with the descent in a in a board discussion on dh valuing the honesty and the openness and the diversity if you just if you just manage and facilitate the conversation yeah, you know, you’re absolutely right. And i think it takes a really skilled chair of the board or whoever is the presiding officer at the board meetings to really encourage that. That dissent without letting it, you know, devolved into infighting and ah, and, uh, a culture where nobody wants to be there, and everybody is apprehensive about showing up at the next board meeting because there is that culture of stress and tension and disagreement. So it is a bit of a balancing act, and i think it actually like many, many things take some exercise. The effort, teo, create that culture of open dissent where, you know, people can descent. This takes place in families too, doesn’t it? Tony, especially in italian cultures, open dissent and at the dinner table, but always mine afterwards. Yeah, i went after the thanksgiving dinner at my cousin’s house. When, when i was walking down the sidewalk in getting into the car to drive home, i realized how quiet it was. I felt like i had been in a springsteen concert for, like, four hours. And then i was back at home and my ears were almost ringing. Yes. So there’s a healthy descent at least among my cacophonous family. Yeah, for sure and my part of the family. And i have ah, through marriage, some italian family as well. And yes, it is this healthy dissenting atmosphere, but it’s very vibrant it’s encouraging of discussion. Um and at the end of the day, they can move forward. So, you know, creating that culture is not necessarily the easiest thing, especially for non-profit board, who may not meet so often like the way family gets to meet andi, everything gets remedy, you know, the next time they have dinner, but when you meet, like once every other month or once every quarter on and that’s, the only time you see these people, you may be a little hesitant about, you know, starting a fight by by presenting a dissenting views. So i think it takes practice. And, you know, one way you might practise is and there’s some dangers to this as well. But in short, formal, just say creating a doubles advocate for a particular issues, you know, in a particular issue, maybe where the board all sees the thing, you know, in the same light and would all vote unanimously in favor of it. Maybe at that time assigning one person to just raise issues and take the other part and encouraging discussion to see what happens. And you may end up with still the same opinion, but ah aboard that’s learned to discuss things a little bit more. Vigorously and critically look att issues and weigh conflicting viewpoints. There’s a policy governance model from interestingly, from a married couple, the carvers that has some very good ideas for howto manage this whole process and maintain good governance. Yeah, and they’re they’re aspects of the carver policy governance model that i really like and and it is a model that encourages discussion, even passionate disagreement, i think they say to rip represent the diversity on the board, hopefully the diversity in all kinds of ways, on the board, with different perspectives in different ways of looking at things. But i think part of the model says is once you’ve made a vote, you know whether it’s a unanimous vote or if it’s a five for a slim majority vote and that’s enough to take board action, the ceo and the staff have got to treat it the same way. It’s a board decision in favor of going a certain direction and that’s what needs to be implemented. And so the carver model goes on to say, you know, if a boardmember two cents, you know, with that, well, you should absolutely record that descent. So in a five, four vote, you’ll record those who have presented their dissenting opinions, not necessarily by name. However, if they don’t want their name to be to be entered into there, if they’re minutes or public, they may feel that that might chill future board discussion if they’re not in the majority. So, you know, it could just indicate that there was a five four vote and anybody who wants to be on record as dissenting should have their name recorded otherwise, maybe not, but if if the if you do disagree with it and you want to go out and publicly say it, we don’t chill that process, you let them say that, but they’ve got to balance that with a duty of confidentiality, so they have to make sure that they’re not releasing confidential information out there. They have to be careful of not chilling board participation in future discussions. So if they go, you know, john smith disagreed with me, and he came up with all sorts of terrible arguments in favor of that. Well, that’s not going to be a healthy way to descend, you know, naming out individual board members who disagreed with you and, you know, taking down their argument without the chance for them to present the side. And then i think what’s important about the carver model. The balance is that if a boardmember disagrees, they should go on to say, on the record, whoever they’re speaking out to in the public, that the process used by the board with proper so they disagreed, but they were in the minority. But the process used was proper to get all those things out there and that hopefully we’ll create a good culture of open dissent and ability to expect dissenting views in public without harming the organization. All right, there was a lot in there that this is getting into the details. Very interesting of of good governance, right? I mean, a lot of times we talk about good governance and it stops with well, you should have a conflict of interest policy. You have a whistle blower policy document retention. But this is getting into the process of board meetings that create good governance and proper oversight. Yeah. And you know, onboarding typically take actions that board meeting. So how boardmember things air run? How their chairs, what type of discussions you choose toe have. Board meetings when in the meeting do you take your, you know, place your most important discussions? Maybe it shouldn’t be approving the board minutes right at the front where everybody, you know has the energy to vigorously discuss important issues. Maybe that gets put in the back. So prioritizing what you’re goingto, you know, discussed at the board meetings and creating that culture of open descent and possibly allowing everybody toe argue different points beforehand, circulating that in the board agenda and sort of meeting prep materials would be a very good and healthy way to get bored to be able to discuss the most important things to the organization because boards are ultimately in charge of the organization. You mentioned the agenda, and this ah, this carver policy governance model, which, by the way, you’ll find it. Carver governance dot com has something to say about the agenda who should be creating the board agenda because that could that could be a source of of dissension also is what belongs on our agenda for the month or whatever. For the for the meeting. Yeah, that’s, that’s absolutely true. I don’t actually, i’m not familiar with how, how carver’s model treats who will create the what’s? What typically done is is bored chairs. After conferring with the executive, the executive director’s, ceo of the organization developed the agenda. But i think knowing what i do about policy governance, it is openly encourage other board members to chime in as the chair developed the agenda. Ah, figure out what topics are most important to the organization and figuring out at that point how to proceed with finalizing the agenda and the meeting materials beforehand on dh that’s, very consistent with what carver recommends in there in there model, which is that the board developed its agenda. Not that the ceo create the agenda for the board. Yeah. You know, that’s, uh, i don’t wantto go too far off, but that’s sort of the problem with when the board acts by written consent because whoever drafts that that consent and circulates it is possibly planted just one point of view and argued only one side of it. And that can be very persuasive. And nobody has had a chance to look at the other side. So developing an agenda with only one point of view can make things look very, very. One sided in developing organisation melkis rubber stamped the chairs decision. Okay, we’re going to go out for a break for a few minutes. You mentioned a consent agenda for the break you’re in, george, in jail for that, and we come back. I’ll offer you a quick, a quick parole stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m dana ostomel, ceo of deposit, a gift. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’ve got more live listener to love to send out ottawa on ontario, canada, ottawa, the capital city of canada welcome live listener lived to ottawa in china we’ve got coming. Ni hao my first guest, gail bauer, did some work in china for the great wall foundation. I believe it is. I know she did work with a couple of clients in china. We’ve got hanoi, vietnam, we’ve got turkey, germany and seoul, south korea on yo haserot turkey and germany. I’m sorry, we can’t see your cities your mask, but we know that your country is represented live listener love to you and naturally podcast pleasantries, everybody listening in the time shift wherever the heck you maybe arjun takagi the you didn’t actually say the phrase consent agenda. I put that together for you and locked you up in george in jail. But you said consent and you were referring to agenda, so i’ll give you half a break. So could we explain what consent agenda is sure, andi, you know, i didn’t realize that i did not say that i thought i was accused and i was guilty, okay, but i don’t think we’re buy-in consent agenda. Is basically a group of routine, typically procedural, self explanatory, noncontroversial decisions that the board has to make, like approving the minutes of the last meeting, approving committee actions that were very non controversial and it’s done all in one action. So rather than going through them one by one and having a lot of discussion about each one if they don’t deserve that discussion, it’s just something that should have been read before the meeting it’s all presented on the consent agenda, one person moves to adopt it, it gets seconded, approved and then it’s done and you don’t have to spend, you know, half to your board meeting talking about thes routine on controversial board actions that everybody should have read beforehand and instead of, you know, having them read it at at the meeting and wasting everybody’s time. Thank you very much. Probation granted a parole parole granted program when how do we know when a boardmember has gone too far? You suggested that its fine for board members to speaking descent as long as they’re they’re not speaking on behalf of the board and they and they say that. But when does the boardmember go, too? Far, yeah. I wish i had one easy answer to that. And i think i mentioned before, you know, balancing against being a balancing that openness against the duty of confidentiality. So not giving away any confidential information and also not harming any individual on the board or sabotaging, if you will, the board action that ultimately was taken by majority vote, even though you were dissenting on it. So if you try to unwind and unwrap it, that that’s probably not acting in the best interest of the organization could harm the organization and their four year breaching your fiduciary duties. But exactly when when you cross the line is not always clear, for example. And if you thought the boarded approved an unlawful action, both well, it’s going to be you do need to speak out. And at worst case, you need to bring it to the attention of ah, the authorities in much more common cases. Maybe it’s something if you if you feel very strongly about that, you send a private letter out each boardmember and the ceo. And if somebody asks you about it, you just say you disagreed with it vigorously. But the process used again was proper, and a majority voted the other way. And if you really can’t live with that decision, think about resigning from the board, okay, the private letter to the individual boardmember is that’s an interesting approach, but that’s discreet but still could be very firm, right? And i think it allows you to state your argument in a way that you can get all your points across the way you might not be able to do at a board meeting when you know everybody’s interrupting each other and there’s this vigorous discussion amongst, you know, five, ten, fifteen, twenty people all trying to chime in in a short amount of time. Would you be asking if you felt that strongly about something for the board to reconsider its decision and have the discussion again at another board meeting? If it’s the type of decision that can be reconsidered, maybe it’s something that’s going to be? Ah, a strategic ah plan for the future and not a contract that has already been signed on dh where you can’t back out of it. If it’s something that far off enough that the board decision can be reversed in the organization can change course without any harm, and then yes, i think the board can reconsider it if if they didn’t get a chance to hear your arguments, perhaps because the board meeting cut short and didn’t give a chance give you the opportunity to put out all your points that you thought were very important, sending it in a board letter, at least to the chair of the board. But but possibly toto, all board members and and the executive might might be the right thing to do. Do you see money? Occasions? And we just have about a minute and a half left where an outside facilitator could be valuable for for these these kinds of difficult discussions in board meetings. Yeah, you know, i think when when the board starts to disagree each other and creates this culture, not only have open dissent but of open ah hostility, yeah. So just where they can stand each other anymore, i think you really need to get a facilitator to help. Ah, figure out the process and howto get boardmember to understand their different viewpoints. You also have tio select board members very carefully, not only for for their diversity and skills and backgrounds, but also for their ability. Teo operate in a culture that that encourages dissent on where they they’re not afraid to speak out, even if they may not be in the majority view point. That’s, that’s really important in our democracy on, certainly in aboard as well. My voice just went up like a high school girl like you often voice cracked like a fourteen year old, and i do that all the time. No, but it is very important. That’s, a very, very interesting point two to bring in the recruitment process, the not only the skill that you might be seeking real estate attorney, whatever, but fitting into the culture of the organization and the culture of the board. Yeah, i i think that could even be a valid statement for the organisation when it when it, you know, think about all of the valleys that it wants to to promote is encouraging dissenting views as a core governance or organizational values. Okay, jean, we’re gonna leave it there. I want to thank you very much. You will find jeans, blawg at non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter, you’ll find him at g tack again. Jean, thanks so much. Thank you. You have a happy holiday. Thank you very much. You two we’ll talk next month next week seven security pitfalls. They’re not sexy, but they are very important. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com ah, creative producers claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and this cool music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything people don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff sort of dane toe add an email. Address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. 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