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Nonprofit Radio for September 18, 2015: Run Like A Biz & Program Your Board

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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My Guests:

Hillary Schafer: Run Like A Biz

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Hillary Schafer brought her 12 years on Wall Street to the Jefferson Awards Foundation, where she’s executive director. She shares her ideas from building core infrastructure to employee policies.

 

 

Gene Takagi: Program Your Board

Gene Takagi

Your board probably recognizes its fiduciary responsibilities, but does it know its role in overseeing programs? Gene Takagi is our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO).

 

 


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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’ve got a listener of the week naralo brancati on twitter he’s at bronco leggio he’s in roma italia, where i’m headed shortly and he’s a frequent retweet er of non-profit radio posts, which i very much appreciate so listener the week carlo hey, congrats to latto you messed it up. Lincoln got two lattes cioni carlo chaillou bello, thank you very, very much, carlo. I’m glad you’re with me. My cat would bear the pain of odo psoriasis if she had to hear that you missed today’s show run like a biz hillary shaefer brought her twelve years on wall street to the jefferson awards foundation, where she’s executive director she shares strategies from building core infrastructure to your employee policies and program. You’re bored. Your board probably recognizes its fiduciary responsibilities but doesn’t know its role in overseeing program. Jean takagi is our legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo and this is from our show on january tenth, two thousand fourteen on tony’s take two work smarter, responsive by pursuant, full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com. I’m glad to welcome to the studio hillary schaefer. Prior to joining the jefferson awards foundation as executive director, she worked as the head of us institutional equity sales in new york. For citigroup, she was one of the highest ranking women in the equity business. In the late nineties. She was the executive director of economic security two thousand fighting to save and remodel social security. The foundation is at jefferson awards, dot, org’s and she’s at beard. Hillary on twitter. Welcome, hillary schaeffer. Thank you very much. Glad you’re in the studio, thanks to be here. Eight and a half months pregnant, eight and a half months pregnant, we got you at the right time. What’s behind this twitter id beard hillary it’s, my maiden name is beard. Okay, until re beard was taken, i presume and hillary beard is probably taking swiped by some. I had that done on youtube. Some joker i hope he was named tony martignetti stole the channel name tony martignetti and i had you riel tony martignetti but he doesn’t use it so it’s ah, people don’t have trouble finding me. Not that anyone’s looking, but if they were looking, they wouldn’t have trouble finding me on youtube. Um, tell me about wall street what’s it what’s it like making a living equity say institutional equity sales what’s it like, what does that mean, that’s that place, like, actually, frankly, loved it. I did it for twelve years. I went into wall street thinking i would do it for two. Yeah, we’re really, really fell in love for long enough to stay for twelve instruction. Likely sales is basically where you manage the relationships for the largest institutional investors who invest in stocks. Okay, so on behalf of citigroup, so on, you’re like, on account, uh, liaison to big companies buying stocks. Sort of. Yes, i minimize their eyes. So egregiously okay, clearly egregiously. So, what do you how do you how do you keep big institutional buyers happy? What you have to do, too, with more of their blackness is making money, right? So investing in stocks that go up and shorting stocks that go down. And so ah, lot of the business of the equity business of citigroup is to provide really good insights and ideas and research into the companies that they care about and delivering that content into your clients in a way which is consumable smart, if it’s with their investment style, um and helps them make money is really the core of what you do. Okay, but then there are all of these other services that citigroup offers and help clients run their money from financing stocks. Teo, all of the things that go around the core of running that business, okay, banking and credit relationships, things like that, things like that. Okay? And so core of that business is sort of managing that entire relationship to make sure they get the resource is that they need in orderto successfully run the business and a transition to non-profit work. What? What occasioned that? Frankly, hurricane sandy, i had left wall street. I have two little kids already at home, and i decided that i wanted teo figure out what i wanted to do next. I had no idea what that was actually, frankly thought it would be in the finance world. Yeah, and hurricane sandy hit new york, and i was sitting in my living room working on a business plan for a finance business, okay? And i just got really passionate about the idea that there were children who had gone to bed safe and sound the night before that woke up with no signs of food or shelter or warmth, their security. And so i went to work from my living room to create programs that generated millions of more meals, hundreds of thousands of blankets and warm winter coats for families all over the tri state area and my husband on dh, the executive director of robin hood both basically sat me down and said, please don’t go back to finance the passion that you feel around helping people is so significant. Do something else. Stay in the non-profit you gave away your entrepreneurial dream, the plan you’re working on. You’re going to start your own business. I did put that aside, although running a non-profit is inherently incredibly entrepreneur. Okay, if it’s done right if it’s done right. All right, all right. Um, tell us a little about the jefferson awards and the and the foundation. Sure. So we we basically power public service. We’ve been around since nineteen metoo started by jackie kennedy, senator robert taft junior and my father, sam beard. And the original idea was create a nobel prize for public service in america. Ah, celebrate the very best of the country. You celebration to not only say thank you to people do amazing things, but also as a force multiplier to inspire others to do something good. We then translated into programs that accelerate and amplify service for people of every age. So, starting about ten years ago, we became one of the largest creators of public service in the country through training mechanisms and programs that engage individuals again of all ages to do service ranging from the donation of a single book from a child to a child all the way up to young people in adult toe like who are impacting millions. Of lives and it’s ah, jefferson awards so what’s the awards side of this. So when the awards is the celebration peace. So we are effectively the gold seal of service in america. We give out a we give out jefferson awards the national level, you would know basically every name. Okay. Who’s, one of jefferson word over the last forty three years. And then we have a media partner program where we partner with local affiliates, newspapers, etcetera but primary news outlets in communities all over the country. But today, reaching to seventy eight million households on dh, they are empowered to take the jefferson award and celebrate local grassroots unsung heroes. All right, a nobel prize for ah, for outstanding program work and and saving lives for impact impact. How about the foundation itself? Just number employees. Just a quaint little bit number of employees. Annual budget. Yes. So it’s about twenty seven employees, we have a, uh, about a ten and a half million dollar annual budget. Um, of which much of that is in-kind it’s about a three and a half million dollar operating revenue budget. Okay, and we’re going to go out for a break. In roughly a minute or so, so just, uh, gives a little overviewing of what? But some of the lessons are that you brought from equity sales on dh wall street. Teo, your charitable work, and i think the biggest thing is just that any organization, whether it’s, for-profit or non-profit, needs to be world class in order to be successful, and that starts with everything from how you manage and set your employees up for success to your back end systems that govern how you pay your rent, you know, pay your expenses and collect your revenues to don’t hurt management, teo everything that you do needs to look and feel like you set for-profit world, but it’s really for impact. So i’m guessing you believe non-profit is your tax status not your mindset? Correct? Yeah, cool. Okay. Ah, of course hillary stays with us. We go after this break. I hope you do, too. 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. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Hillary schaefer let’s ah, let’s, dive into some of these lessons that you’ve brought with you this world class let’s start in the back end investment in infrastructure like c r, m databases, data management so that’s a that’s a terrific place to start because really every non-profit is powered by who they reach and how they reached them and how they communicate with, um and management of relationships, whether that’s a whether that’s, a donor, whether that’s, somebody, who’s won an award from our perspective, whether that somebody who has just invested in you are in your programs and how you understand that relationship, how you manage that relationship is all driven by the back end. Traditionally, people would use spreadsheets or just use, you know, sort of word and lists in their own brains, and fundamentally, it doesn’t get you as far as you need to get, and technology today is so sophisticated and there’s so many great great data pay systems that can integrate seamlessly with your website and with donor management tools and with, um, all mechanisms that you need to communicate effectively and really segment that communication into something that makes sense for that individual. It’s. Almost a shame not to you not to use it. Yeah, segmentation, and we’ll get to the benefit of that. I’ve had other guests. My voice just cracked like i’m a fourteen year old. I’ve had have a congratulations. Thank you. Everything else operates at, uh, the requisite age at fifty three, but my voice occasionally. Yeah, so we’ll get to the value of segmentation because people want to be talked to personally, not not and mass and like everybody else, but so but this can be hard to invest in me, we’re talking about this is not serving program directly. This is not helping people directly. How do we overcome that mindset that we can get by with, you know, the lackadaisical, the the database that we’ve got her the internal presses we figured out our work arounds, you know, we’re okay. It’s it’s finding you say that, right? Because they actually when you invest in a really good database management system and client relationship manager, which is what c r m stands for, what you get out of it, that multiplier effect that you can get from having true, powerful relationships and understanding of all of your constituents, all consolidated is worth every dollar you know, and frankly there’s so many great systems which are out there, and they’re not that expensive. The most expensive part is the time of your staff, an external consultants, which you often mean teo, take what is all of the stuff that you’ve cobbled together and to make. It work for your organization. So an organization as an example we had brought in sales force. We use sales force. Um, we frankly had the wrong system installed with sales force. It took us a long time to figure out how to get the right system installed in all of those things. But it’s also taking us the better part of eighteen months to clean our data. Teo optimize our data to segment it appropriately so that we can communicate effectively with everybody in the way they want to be communicated with and a fair amount of staff time. And it’s, that investment of taking somebody away from something that looks like perhaps it’s more important to their day to day life and put them into what’s really tedious work. Ah, in order to be a better organization. But for us, if i think about it, if we have a database that reaches sixty thousand people, our ability to grow from an organization that reaches sixty this sixty thousand two, two, six hundred thousand to six million all contingent on us having optimized rc era. This is key. So if you want to scale, you have to have the infrastructure two to support that every organization wants to be at the next level i get so many questions about, you know, how do i get to next level? Can you refer me to somebody help us get to the next level? But i think often they don’t they’re not set up to get to the next level. They don’t they don’t have the support that they need, even if they were able to teo, multiply by ten there, you know the size of their their outreach. Without data, you have no chance. I’ll give you a great example in the nonprofit world statistic terrifies me, but something like sixty percent of donors don’t repeat on average across the non-profit space every year. Yeah, don’t come back, right? Well, don’t patrician right that’s because we’re not loving the people who are there. Everybody is focused on the next level. No, you’re focused on the next person you forget about the person who’s already said to you with their dollars. I care about what you do at the heart of that is your database management system. I had a guest, peter shankman, um social media expert and marketing guy and his book is called zombie loyalists and basically had a last december. I think i had eternal you’re all your clients and customers into zombie loyalists that love you so much that they’re zombies for your work, and they’ll do your marketing, your pr, your communications for you, but ah, some of what he says boils down to the way to get the client you want is to be awesome to the client. You have that’s exactly right? I mean, i think about it from a from a fund-raising perspective, what the great fundraisers tell you is you should have four contacts with a donor for every time you ask them for something no in orderto have those four contacts but matter to them, you need to know what they care about that needs to be in your database. You need to understand them that meets not only being your head, it needs to be institutionalized in your database. Ah, and then you need to have systems which set up, which push you to reach out to that person, to make sure that you’re not forgetting to touch them four times before you go back to them and say, here’s, your invoice your sales force is a really cool example that you mentioned because for small shops, it’s ideal, the first ten licenses from sales force are free to non-profits and then they have a very deeply reduced fee for going beyond ten licenses. But i think for a lot of listeners, ten licenses is enough for more than enough. So, you know, on i’ve had guests on from the non-profit technology conference and t c talking about the benefits of salesforce, you know, i think that’s right and sales force khun b a terrific tool, it’s also it could be not that expensive or if you have the budget, the amount of tools that they have that you khun scale in two really optimizing take you to the next level are huge, so we don’t have we personally don’t have the budget we would love to have to spend with sales force, but we have a big, long wish list of things we would like to spend on specifically with sales force, with the tools that they have something bothering me to my head now, i didn’t mean to say lackadaisical databases, i meant to say lackluster, lackluster debate lackadaisical. Database doesn’t make any sense lazy, lazy self, you know, so that people could be lackadaisical. But the databases lackluster let’s talk a little about the segmentation, the benefit of communicating with people and showing that you know what their interests are when their birthdays are what they, how they like to be communicated with let’s, explore this know people are people all right, everybody wants to feel touched individually. Nobody wants to feel like they’re part of a marketing campaign or that they’re part of a sort of a blast. People want to be touched individually. It’s why things like instagram work because they feel touched by a photograph ah, it’s the same thing with with donor or constituent segmentation everybody wants to feel like especially in the nonprofit world where you’re talking about emotion. You are effectively touching people where where they want to improve the world, but you’ve got to understand which part of it inspires them. Yes, ah, and and also people like being cared for around the things that matter in their daily lives that have nothing to do with you. You ah, their children, their children’s ages. What? They d’oh? Ah, what their hobbies. Are where they like to travel all of those things. It just matters it’s all about having one on one of relationships. And the better your relationship is, the more likely you are to be able to maximize. And everything you’ve mentioned is data worth preserving its all data. You have to have people love it when you send them a note that says, happy birthday, no, super simple. It is very simple now. So what kinds of reminders do you get based on what kinds of things aside from birthday? What other kind of yeah, what others? Ah, it tends to relate to things that people have told you. Okay? And so for us, it would relate specifically to our program. So we have five different programs that have very, very different calendars. So that could relate. Teo, i i just need to get us a of the date because i know you desperately want to come to our national ceremony in new york city in march. Ah, but it could also be i know you really want to be. Ah, judge at our students in action conference in minneapolis. Ana and so getting that date to you in plenty of advance notice. It really gets down to that level. All right, so the, uh, the value of segmentation and investment in infrastructure. What about investment in consultants? You mentioned consulting? Nobody knows everything they need to know, but this could be tough to bring, bring other people in and have a fresh set of eyes evaluating you. It’s interesting on the consulting sight because i i personally have two two minds about consultants. Often i feel like you get charged too much for a percentage of somebody’s brain no on dh that’s the greatest risk with consulting. Ah, but also often they’re just expertise. You don’t want to bring in house. You can’t afford to bring in house, but you need somebody who has fresh eyes who knows something really specific that you don’t know ah, and with without which you can’t can’t go to the next level, you can’t execute effectively. So sales forces a terrific example. Um, there are so many tools inside sales force that enable you to do things like optimize your data and get rid of redundancy and all of those things, um and to, uh, to make it spoke for your organization. For think the ways in which you want to connect with people, i couldn’t do that myself, and i don’t have anybody in house who could do that for me. Could you just send your data data manager, database administrator to a sales force conference or course, yes, we do that too, okay, but it’s not enough and for the cost to bring and you know, you gotta you gotta weigh out the cost. So the question is, can you find somebody who is affordable to you in your organization that helps bring in those that kind of expertise in? I’m their things like building out an effective communication strategy where if you don’t have a big, robust communications team who can think about everything from database management, teo email to social media to all the things that go into digital infrastructure ah, and communications calendars and all of those things. At some point, it becomes really smart to bring in somebody from the outside to say, i’m building you a structure i’m helping you think about inside your organization, for you what a structure would look like, that you can afford let’s turn to our people, i think my voice is, my voice is crack again. It’s. A big bag, maybe, you know. So your people important asset, probably your most valuable asset most important, most expensive it’s expensive. I would guess inside most non-profits that that people are seventy eight percent of cost big, big, big percentage, um and making impact in the world all relates to the people who you were in power to make that impact on your behalf as as either a full time employee or an independent contractor. Treyz and losing employees is as expensive as losing the donors we were talking about, if not more so, you know woobox the amount of time you then need to spend teo find the person, bring them in house, and on average, it takes six to eighteen months to really optimize an employee. That’s a long time to invest in somebody new if you have somebody who’s good who’s sitting there right in front of you. The most important thing with people always is that they feel like they’re being set up to succeed. And they’re being given the tools that they need. Ah, to succeed. All right, how do we do this? Ah, well, that everything from the really basic and can feel very cumbersome to a management manager. Piece, but ah, gold setting and reviews letting people know where they stand, being really straightforward with them about what they’re doing that’s terrific, and where they need to develop development goals is a big, big, big piece, and i don’t mean development is in fund-raising i mean, personal development, professional development around how can you be a much more effective employees? For the most part? Certainly in my experience, whether it’s on wall street or in the nonprofit world, when you sit in a review with somebody, they barely hear the good stuff. Ninety nine percent of what you tell them could be good. Everybody waits for the butt, the but needs to be real, meaning it needs to be i understand you here’s, where i see helping to take you as a human being and as a professional to the next level, and being able to deliver that in a way which is non threatening but having systems and structures around delivering reviews around goal, setting around, holding people accountable to those goals and around understanding them and wanting to be on their side are all the the most important things you can do, and it doesn’t matter. What kind of an organization you’re out to do that my guest last week, we’re from the university of pittsburgh, and they were talking about incentive pay, something that pitt has set up, and they’ve defined what an exemplary fundraiser is it’s basically achieving two hundred percent of your goal, but that’s a big organization, university of pittsburgh dahna might there be other ways of implementing incentive pay around? Aside from strictly money money come, you know, incentives are interesting in non-profits because, um, a, for the most part, non-profits don’t use sort of base bonus type structures, but there are tons of other ways that you can make somebody feel really good about what they d’oh and whether that’s simply celebrating their accomplishments to the other employees into your board. People really thrive on that, but it can also be other things, like giving them an extra days vacation. Um, you know, sending them home on purpose when they’re kids sick and you tell them that family comes first, you know, all those things that’s really more around culture, but there are there are smart things you can do where you say, you know what? I don’t have the dollar to give you. But i do have a day to give you or two or whatever it is. Whatever it is, that you’ve earned benefits structures are very important, um, covering people in their families and how you do that and how you communicate it. Incredibly important and totally under sort of undervalued in the mindset in the nonprofit world about what that means to an individual. And you say, i care about you and your health, and i care about your family in there. We have just about a minute left or so we have a couple more than more than a couple minutes. How much time do we have left? Sam? Okay, dahna then let’s. Ah, my mistake. Let’s keep talking about some some policies around employment. Maybe around training. Like you’ve got a new employee, you’ve spent the requisite amount of time recruiting you believe you’ve got the best person, the orientation, the training process onboarding process oven employees that one of the single most important things that you d’oh. So with us, justus a simple example. First, everybody gets a very long, very detailed employee manual that they have to read, but they really understand what the operating premises are of the organ you’re holding your hands, like four inches apart for inches. It’s not for interesting. Okay, okay, they’re recording, so that would be way too much street. All right, but i use my hands a lot. I think i’m going to italy and i’m hundreds in italian, so i didn’t think you were using them enough. That must be the eight and half months. Pregnant part. Yes, i understand. Ok, the but having that set of expectations in somebody’s. Mind where they read it. They have to affirm it. They have to tell you that they’ve read it. That tells them everything from how many vacation days they do have, how they can accrue more vacation, what the benefits are to them, how they can get in trouble, how they can stay out of trouble. What a whistle blower policy might look like. All of those things very, very important. But then bringing people into the culture of the organization into your programs where they really feel armed. Tio ah, to be an effective employees. Ah, it’s. So fundamental. So we we set up a schedule time with all of our program managers. We have our end of its staff. When they come in they go. They shadow individuals who do either their job or even other jobs inside the organization. Because you got to understand the entire organization. I think in order to be effective in your silo. Ah, and then we do profession. We were very open to paying for people doing professional development and encourage it. Ah, and then we do regular staff retreats where everybody comes together and we work on pieces that feel like they might be holes in the skill set to the entire organization again, investment where its infrastructure of people you just you can’t shortchange these things and expect to scale on grow the organization. I mean, for the amount it costs me, tio run a staff retreat every year, eyes about one percent of what it costs me to pay my staff. Yeah, that is a very worthwhile investment to make that staff be a leverage oppcoll army, we’re gonna leave it there. Hillary shafer she’s uh, executive director of jefferson awards foundation there at jefferson awards dot or ge and again on twitter she’s at beard hillary. Thank you so much, hillary. Thank you. Well, pleasure and gun muzzle tough. Congratulations on your pregnancy. Thank you very much. Tony steak, too. And program you’re bored with jean takagi coming up first. Pursuant, billboard it’s, integrated management of email landing pages, micro sites, donation forms, mobile pages, mobile mobile communications. And this and the social networks. Really? I mean, a lot of stuff that hillary and i were just talking about infrastructure. You’ve heard guests talk about multi-channel engagement billboard by pursuing is multi-channel engagement management, including the analytics with strong data and analysis and you’re constantly learning and revising and learning and fixing and improving that’s how you get better, so supporting all this. All the engagement through multiple channels is this, uh, tool billboard, which will, as everything pursuing, does help you find tune and raise more money pursuing dot com. My video this week is the second set of ntc non-profit technology conference video interviews. The subject is work smarter there’s distance collaboration, moving your data and files to the cloud walk to work that was with beth cantor and re to sharma encouraging you to make walking part of your work day not as a break, but as part of your day, take your meetings walking and two other video interviews. Links to those interviews are under my video at tony martignetti dot com that’s tony’s take two for friday, eighteenth of september thirty seventh show of the year here is jeanne takagi with program you’re bored jean takagi he’s, a principal of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco gene has been gene has been a regular contributor to show it’s got to be going on three years gina, i if it’s not three it’s. Very close. He had it’s, the non popular of the non popular beautiful. He had it’s, the popular non-profit law blawg dot com non-profit law blogged dot com it’s very popular. And on twitter he’s at gi tak g t k happy new year jean takagi. Welcome back. Happy new year. Tony it’s. Great to be on. Thank you. I love having you. How long have you been a contributor? Every month, i think it’s been a little over three years. That is it. Is it over three? Love it. It could be. I think we met three years ago at a bar in san francisco. If i remember, right? Oh, for sure. It’s. Not like we pick. I picked you up there where i knew you before. I’m not that easy with contributors. I mean, yes, we we knew each other. And then we certainly did meet that’s, right? With along with emily chan? Yes. That’s. Right. Um, let’s see, our board has our board has some responsibilities and around program you’re concerned that they’re not. They’re not fulfilling those responsibilities. Yeah, i just feel like there’s there’s, maybe some lack of attention paid on board the board’s roll on program oversight i think so often went especially when you talk with lawyers or accountants were talking about financial oversight, and we’re saying we’ll make sure you’re solvent, make sure you have enough money to pay off your debts, they become duitz we don’t really talk very much about programs, but certainly the management folks and the funders air talking about programs and whether they’re effective and efficient, that furthering the mission. So, you know, i thought we should explore a little bit about what the board duties are in in that event as well. Can you just remind us first, we’ve talked about this a while ago. There are three duties that board members have i was faith, hope and chastity or on the greatest of those is but yeah, the three duties are the duty of care and that’s act with reasonable care in providing direction and oversight over the organization, the duty of loyalty, and a lot of that has to do with avoiding conflicts of interests that are not in the best interest of the organizations but are more for the best interest of an insider and the duty of obedience. Which lawyers air very interested in and that’s obeying with both the outside laws of you know, that apply to the organization and the internal laws like the by-laws and other policies that the documents may have those air the three to be to be concerned with. Okay, and and around program program is essential. Man. That’s what charity’s exist for his programs? Oh, my voice just cracked like i’m a fourteen year old exist that’s, exciting stuff. That’s it is. It is that’s. Right? Well, you make it interesting. That’s. Why? I love having you back. You make the what could very well be a dry topic. I think you make it interesting. And listeners do too. Yeah. That’s. What? Charity’s air here is for a program. Yeah, exactly. I mean, who cares? The indie at the end of the day, if we’ve got great financials, it’s none of our programs are effective, and we don’t do a service to the community. Precisely. So what do we need to be doing? What the board’s need to be doing around around program? Well, i think in meeting those three duties, the critical aspect for boards to make sure they’re reasonably informed ah, and just get a program report every month or every two months. You know, a ten minute program report from executive director or program director is fine and good. But does that mean the board really understands the programs and whether the advance the mission? Ah, and do they understand how the program’s advance emission? And did they ever ask you more difficult questions about are the program’s effective at advancing the mission? Or do we have alternatives? Or should we think of alternatives that might be able to advance that mission mohr effectively or more efficiently, given the limited resources that we all have? First up in this is and we have talked about this. Your mission needs to be very clear. Yeah, and one of the things you have to do is make sure you go back. And this is the lawyer speaking. Make sure you go back to your articles of incorporation and by-laws and make sure that the mission statement that years, thinking that you’re furthering is consistent with what the law says. Your mission is. And that’s that’s how it’s displayed on the governing document and in figuring out whether we are effective. At meeting our mission. Now we’ve gotta identify cem numbers, right? I mean, it’s, not just gonna be a ten minute report from the program director, we’ve got to be looking at some numbers to figure out whether our we’re having the outcomes that we want, right and it’s such a such a difficult question and that’s, why it’s it’s all about keeping informed? Because, you know, the whole area of program evaluation and that cantor and and a lot of institutions like the stanford center on philanthropy in civil society and mckinsey and, you know, the non-profit cordially foundations, and they all have been raiding all sorts of things on program evaluation and how we need more metrics and, you know, but all of that is great, but this is really hard stuff for a lot of non-profits to do so, yes, trying to figure out what what measurements are are important for us to figure out. Are we advancing our mission effectively? And then are we advancing it efficiently is really hard stuff, i think tip typically non-profits will, you know, measure how much money we’ve raised, how many visitors we’ve had or people with served? How many? Members we have. What is our overhead? Ray shone with had discussions on that topic as well. And, you know, those are interesting figures and all important. And i don’t want to downplay that. But what about, you know, then you know, the number of client desert. For example, does that really tell us what impact that’s done? No, before the clients. And you know, the program staff may know that, but how does the board know that if we have if we served a thousand clients last month, did we did we serve them by giving them one meal? Did that change their lives? Did we do more than that? Did we provide services? What? What and impact are we trying tio aim for? And what results are we getting those air really difficult things to try to figure out. But i think the board needs to push the organization in that direction. Of trying to figure out are the programs that write programs? Are we effectively implementing it? And if you want to, you know, evaluate your executive and evaluate your programs. You’ve gotta have a good understanding of that. I feel your passion around this, jean. I really do. It comes it’s it’s palpable. Now, in managing these programs it’s not the board’s roll. Teo, be day to day. There’s clearly there’s a delegation that has to be happening. Yeah, absolutely. And and the board certainly has the ability to and should be delegating if they have staff in an executive director. Particularly, um, delegating those duties on those people. And especially, you know, holding the executive accountable and tasking executive and making sure the executive has resources to be able to do this, to try to figure out what measurements should we take? Teo, evaluate our programs. What what’s important? What do we have the capacity to do now? And what? What do we aspire to do? What are outside stakeholders wanting? What are the foundations saying we must have? And what are the donor’s expecting from us and how to our competitors provide that type of information back? I think we just need to push. Our executives were lucky enough to have them to figure some of those things out. And none of this has done overnight. Of course, tony. But you know, you you’ve gotto work at this, and sometimes you’re going to move. Forward, and sometimes you gotta move backwards, but you’ve got to keep pushing, pushing ahead. You just asked five or six really difficult but critical questions out it’s a good thing, that’s, the podcast cause. Now people can listen. Go, go back to the past one minute and listen to those five or six questions of jean, just just named, you know, difficulty, but, but but critical. And and yet the board’s oversight responsibility remains when that can’t be delegated. That’s right? So, you know, the board, khun delegate management, but the board can’t delegate its ultimate oversight of the organization and it’s, you know, it’s responsibility to plan the direction of the organization. So status quo, if you know if that’s all you’re satisfied with and you don’t aim to do anything else with that, you know, that may not be that may indicate that you don’t have the best board in place, and i was a little shocked teo learned, i think two days ago guidestar held a web cast, and there was a survey done of executive directors, and seventy five percent said they were unhappy with their boards and there’s a big disconnect there seventy five percent. Prove it. Okay, what else? What else, uh, is part of the boards oversight of program? Gene? Well, you know, one thing i kind of want to emphasize as well is that i don’t want to put all of this on the board of directors, and i realized that the vast majority of board members are volunteers and have busy lives otherwise and are doing an amazing job trying to contribute to their organizations. The disconnect with the exec director is usually because of communications and a lack of understanding of their respective roles. So i just want to put a little bit of a burden on the executive director as well, to make sure that they are emphasizing board development and helping the board understand its responsibilities, and sometimes bringing in experts, even though they may cost a little at the outset could be really valuable to an organisation to try to figure out what these roles are and again put in a little investment up front, and you can get payoff down the road even if you have some failures along the way. But it’s just that continuing to push forward to trying to understand what you’re doing who’s responsible for what? On figuring that stuff out the metrics themselves again. Our khun b, you know, exceedingly difficult if if i asked you give us metrics on changing laws when we were fighting for civil rights. Um, well, that might take years or decades to get any measurable results per se that might make a thunder happy. And you know what would have happened? In the early sixties, if, you know, civil rights organizations just had their program shut down because boards didn’t get the right metrics, that would have been ridiculous, right? So we have to understand the limitation of these measurements as well, but continue to try to figure out what important steps or benchmarks we’re shooting for and what’s important to do, even if we don’t get the metrics on and make sure our funders and donors and stakeholders understand those limitations. Well, just a minute or so before before a break gene, what? What kind of expert would help us with this? What would we search for? Well, there there are some consultants out there who specialize in program evaluation, and there there are definitely resource is out there. I have named a few organizations already, but let me give you a few more the foundation centre and they’re grantspace website has got some excellent resource is on program evaluation, the national council of non-profits also has some excellent resources. They’re they’re definitely resource is out there, and if you look for non-profit consultants who got program evaluation expertise, i think that can be a starting place. This is also a ripe area for collaboration amongst organizations that are serving similar populations, or have similar missions to try to meet together and talked about how they’re measuring, you know, their program, results and what would work for maybe, you know, across the sub sector that that they’re serving, all of those things are really important. I think again, executive leadership is really important to get the board in motion, but the board also has to hold the executive responsible for making sure that happens as well. Let’s, take a break. Gene and i, of course, will keep talking about the board’s responsibility around program and the executive director’s, to lynette singleton and at lays, right. Thank you for thank you very much. For those very, very kind thoughts on twitter. Hang in there. 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 godin. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked, and 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. Well, 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 guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, i’m kate piela, executive director of dance, new amsterdam. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. More live listener love junction china ni hao, the netherlands gary indiana the home of christmas story, right? I’m pretty sure a christmas story that movie took place in gary, indiana live listen, i’d love to gary, indiana, and we’ve got a couple checking in from japan, hiroshima and kobe konnichi wa, farmington, michigan live listener love out to you. We have a question from twitter jean very loyal listener lynette singleton asks, do we know why there’s this lack of love between executive directors with and their boards, any ideas what’s contributing to that? I think i’m sorry, tony, that i think there are a number of factors that make be contributing to that, but i think the first is lack of understanding of the rules at each place and then it’s it’s a matter of communication between the two parties, there are great expectations that that board’s place on executives and the reliance on the executives tio tio make do with limited resources to produce amazing results, and that can sometimes be a very heavy burden on the executive without a lot of support from the board and exactly what the board’s role is in supporting the executive. Director’s also, i think they’re many areas where there’s a lack of agreement or understanding between those roles and, you know, fund-raising is actually one of the areas of x. Actually, some controversy, i think, you know, is the board involved is the board’s role dahna to raise funds for the organisation. From a legal perspective, i might answer no to some extent, from a more operational perspective, i would say, of course it is, so they’re they’re different considerations, and that was a charity navigator study, right? I’m not sure. I thought you said i’d start with, i’m sorry, the organization that did the webinar. Okay, okay, god start. Pardon me. Ok wave talking, talking about program meeting the mission, but there’s also legal requirements around program as well. Sure, and then the board should make sure that the executive is ensuring that the program is in compliance with whatever applicable laws might be there, whether it have to do with the facility of the organization or the employees and volunteers working for it, their basic risk management steps that they may want to take a swell, including ensuring that there’s proper insurance for whatever activities are are involved. Obviously, if you’re doing a summer day camp involving rope climbing and like that that’s going to be a little bit more significant in terms of risk management than if you’re just doing administrative work, lots of legal compliance, things, licensing, permitting and in all of those things, well, can board members be personally liable if laws are being broken and that’s why we have directors and officers insurance, isn’t it? Yeah, part partly why we have that it’s usually, you know, if there’s some sort of negligence involved when the boardmember acting not as a boardmember but as a volunteer for a program, then you’re probably looking at commercial general liability. Insurance to protect against, you know, somebody slip and fall and blaming the volunteer who was supposed to set it up, the board members, directors and officers insurance will really protect against decisions that the board made that ultimately, you know, in hindsight, we’re negligent or grossly negligent, and, you know, if they decided to hold a program in involved involving bungee jumping with six year olds and without adequate supervision, that would you know, that would be the type of negligence that that could get boardmember personally liable for something like that. But volunteermatch boardmember czar really, really, really rarely hell, personally liable absent some sort of malfeasance or self dealing benefit themselves. Okay, i’ve seen some six year olds on the subway that i wouldn’t mind having participating at that bungee jumping off a cliff. I could i could give them a little shove to get them started, but not not kids. I know nobody related to me, only only what’s people have seen some hype it that it go well, now they’re real. I’ve seen him in the subway, i just don’t know who they are. I can’t name them, but i could point them out easily. Probably on my way home, i’ll encounter a few. Um, what else should we be thinking about? You know, your get before i asked before we do that, you’re an anarchist. Also, you’re making us. I got two troublemakers on the show today. You are making us ask questions that are very difficult, but but critical? Yeah, you know, e think of lawyers and consultants more broadly. That’s what what we do, we can’t implement the changes that we talked about, what we want to raise the questions because we want boards and executives to really be thinking about these things and discussing them, and that’ll help break down the barriers and the misunderstandings and hopefully make more executive directors feel that their boards air great, make more executive, make more boards feel that their executive directors are doing a great job as well. As i said, i feel your passion around this. We have just about two minutes. You have another thought around this? Yeah, you know, just tio, make sure that again and i’ve talked a little bit about this is that there are limitations to what metrics can provide to an organization and some things just take a really long time to figure out research i mentioned lobbying on civil rights issues is one example, but research as well, you know, for going to engage in research of a new program and how it’s going to work or developing a new medical device or drug that’s going to be beneficial to developing nations and the people there who might not have the resources to be able to afford these things. We’ve got to be a little bit experimental, and i know you know, there’s been preaching to the choir about embracing failure and sharing it so we can learn in advance, but that really is something that all echo as well, that, you know, we’re going to get metrics and sometimes the metrics they’re going to show we failed, but if we never fail, that means we’ve never really pushed the envelope of making a more substantial change, and we’re just sort of, you know, relying on making little incremental changes, and we have to think about our organizations and say, are we detective organization that just wants to stay status quo? Do we want to make little tiny, incremental changes year by year, or do we? Actually want to look at solving or advancing our mission in a really big way and actually take some risk and find some programs out there that might be more risky and that might fail and help educate our funders and our donors and our supporters of that, you know, this is what we’re doing, and not everything is going to work, but this is the way to advance, you know, our cause, a lawyer with a heart, jing jing takagi really so grateful that you’re you’re contributing to the show? Jean, thank you so much. Thank you, johnny. And thanks for basing this serious subject to make a that’s. All right, wait. I have a little fun with it. You’re an anarchist is no question you’ll find jean at non-profit law blogged dot com that’s the block that he had it and he’s at g tack on twitter. Thank you again, jean, thanks so much next week, smart interviewing with cheryl nufer talking about behavioral interviewing and job descriptions. Heather carpenter is co author of the book the talent development platform. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Thanks for being with me today and i assure you the singing will return make no mistake pursuant full service fund-raising you’ll raise submarines more money i’m not talking about those one little person diving bells that xy ologists go down into study. I’m talking about ohio class ballistic missile submarines with one hundred fifty five person cruise plus twenty four ballistic missile tubes filled with money pursuing dot com i gotta send out live listen, love affiliate affections and podcast pleasantries were a couple of weeks ahead, but you know the live listener love goes out to everybody who is, in fact listening live whatever country, whatever state, whatever city live listener love to you affiliate affections to our many am and fm station listeners throughout the country and the podcast pleasantries too are over ten thousand podcast listeners in that time shift listening whenever you darn well please damn well, please, whenever you damn well pleased. I can say that our creative producers, claire meyerhoff, hard to believe we have one sometimes, but she’s there sam lever, which is our line producer. The show’s social media is by susan chavez susan chavez dot com on our music is by scott stein. Lorts and 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 got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist. It took two or three years for foundation staff to 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 dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money on it situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

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Oh, hi there! 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 it’s a two hundred fifty of show who this is going to be a great one. We have a new sponsor pursuant, they’re a full service fund-raising agency with lots of tools and intelligence for small and midsize shops organisations just like yours pursuing dot com they’re a perfect fit with our mission and our listeners i’ll have more to say about them later. Welcome pursuant, our newest sponsor. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me! I’d be stricken with familial history. Oh cited articulos iss, if i inherited the mere notion that you missed today’s show it’s, our two hundred fiftieth show and fifth anniversary with me as co host is going to be claire meyerhoff she’s, our creative producer, we have music, comedy, giveaways and fast talking. All our regular contributors are going to be with us that’s maria simple she’s here in the studio jeans, akagi and amy sample ward going to call in, plus the composer of our theme music, scott stein and fast talking auctioneer and bid caller bobby d elearning. Who is going to win the work? We cuss a walking challenge between me and adam weinger you’re going to be glad you’re with us on tony’s steak too. I got to say thank you farewell to our sponsor opportunity collaboration, thie unconference on poverty alleviation that will ruin you for every other conference it’s not until october and their ninety three percent sold out so glad that non-profit radio helped them get that far. I’m going to be there. I’m gonna be at this unconference in x top of mexico in october if making connections with people reducing poverty will help you do your work, check it out quickly because it is definitely going to sell out opportunity collaboration dot net, thanks so much for having been a sponsor non-profit radio. You can join today’s show on twitter were live tweeting the show use the hashtag non-profit radio i am, uh i’m pretty thrilled about today. One of the reasons i’m thrilled we have to cool guests in the studio who you know on going to bring on first claire meyerhoff she is non-profit radios creative director was anybody hearing what i just said? Teo okay, i don’t okay. This is live and we got a problem with my mike it’s. Been working for two hundred fifty, two hundred forty nine shows on two. Fifty it’s not it’s, not up to the task. Um all right. I’m gonna introduce claude meyerhoff again because people should know that aside from being the show’s creative director, she has a deep background in radio w t o p in washington, cnn’s washington bureau, abc radio and hosted serious except nash’s editorial director at plan giving marketing now. Okay. Marketing specialist just in case. And if people heard me introduce you twice, i think that’s fine. I don’t mind that. And on twitter, she’s at claire says that’s easy. Yes, since i was calling it ah, the first couple shows were the tony martignetti show and yeah, i was not as well known as george clooney. Right? So you’re making ad non-profit radio and now it’s on the mic flags it’s on everyone’s. Cool. Thank you. Since the very beginning since we had dinner at ruth’s chris and cary north and i said, you know, i i i’d like to do something like this. Yes. You try to talk me out of it. Maria semple is also here in the studio, as she is the prospect finder. Of course, our monthly contributor on prospect research trainer and speaker on that subject prospect researcher website is the prospect finder dot com. Her book, which is now a free download on her site, grab it it’s valuable panning for gold. Find your best donorsearch prospects now because she’s working on a new book, which we’re going to hear about she’s our doi end of dirt cheap and free ideas follow her on twitter at maria simple welcome to studio maria! Hey there! Thanks for having me today. So cool i’m glad you’re here. We’re always talking on the phone. Absolutely. And s so excited to be here for the two hundred fiftieth shows his good stuff. Thank you very much. You i went back. You were first on non-profit radio on october first, two thousand ten so almost five years ago, you were you were ah, guest. Then that was that was our twelfth show two. Fifty today. That was chilling over twelve. And then you started becoming a monthly regular contributor with the august twelfth, two thousand eleven show. That’s good stuff, so call it four years. Let’s. Go. Next month will be a four year anniversary. Absolutely. Oh, and you know, you brought some of your top tips were going to talk about throughout the show. So you will have some, uh, some ideas from our doi n of dirt, cheap and free. Um, let’s. See where we are? Um, i think it’s ah, it’s. Time to give away something we got. We got a bunch of giveaways for today. And our first giveaway is a bag of cura coffee. And this is going to maxine smeaton. She messaged me, quote, i live in london but came to a foundation center event you presented when i was in new york city. I’ve been downloading the podcast ever since. Thank you. Oh, no, maxine thank you, back-up cure coffee is going to be coming your way. Cura does great great work with dental care for their coffee being farmers and crime are off one to tell us little more about your culwell. Cura coffee directly connects coffee lovers with farmers and families who harvest the finest organic coffee beans. With every cup of cura, you join our effort to expand sustainable dental care. Two. Remote communities around the world, we are direct trade goodcompany with direct impact, brought directly to you, creating organic smiles beyond the cup. That’s. Beautiful. What a trained voice. So, maxine, congratulations, you’re going to get a bag of coffee from kira, and i thank you very, very much, maxine, for loving non-profit radio. Thanks for downloading it and listening all this time, one of our one of our ten thousand plus podcast listeners, and we’re going to, we’re going to do it live. Listen, love, of course, we got tons of live listeners, that’s, that’s, of course, going to be coming along with affiliate affections and podcast pleasantries. Let’s. See, i would. I would like to move to we have some some music. Scott stein plays is the writer income of the composer and singer of cheap red wine. And that is our theme song. And scott, unfortunately, is booked with a gig. He’s actually, music directing a show here in new york called held momentarily. About six strangers stuck on a stalled subway car. That’s why it’s called held momentarily because if you’re in the subways in new york, we are being held momentarily due to traffic ahead of us it’s, a musical comedy and it’s, part of the new york musical theater festival. And if you are interested, you can find tickets at n y m f dot or ge because our scott stein is music director for that show held momentarily on de so i went to his studio. I recorded him. And here is scott stein. Scott’s time. Welcome to the two hundred fiftieth show. So glad you could be part. Well, thank you for having me and congrats on two. Fifty. Thank you. This is a really nice milestone for thank you. You’ve been with me. Uh, well, the music has been and through you, it’s, been probably a couple of years now, i think, yeah, that sounds about right, it’s, uh, it’s, what i have been with you sort of say in spirit, but i would have been sort of bits and pieces and then, but in person while i was there for two hundred, right two hundred now, for an effort to fit your needs, and your and i have your music licensed, yes, is not something i’m beautified, yeah, that’s, a little it’s, all open up on dh. You know, i just i love this song, so wait here. Cheap red wine. Yes, we can go on on your upright in your studio. Apartness is hints, apartment studio, i should say no, but it’s, a one bedroom apartment studio, and, indeed, all right, here we go. They just keep talking. So later. I think around just what you mean? You sing a romantic advice from a bill on france’s among tv. Wait. Oppcoll work-life used charming buy-in finger. No way. Wait, just wait! Wait, strike! Tio, wait! Buy-in wait, duitz you used to wear. Wait bonem today. No way! Nobody else. No way! Wait! Yeah, you know, used kayman hyre. Wait, wait! Wait. I love it. Thank you very much. Scott. Yeah. Pleasure. Thanks, man. Thanks so much for being part of two. Fifty. Yeah, thanks for having me. And for, you know, supporting supporting your independent artist. Like make? Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Cool. Scott stein. So glad you could be part of the show. Scott is awesome. You’re so lucky to have him he’s. So talented. She bread, wine. I love that show. The other people. Yeah, yeah. It’s a it’s a cool song. It’s ideal. Okay, we’re gonna go away for a couple minutes. Break coming up. Maria has got some prospect research tips. We got more giveaways, comedy and that work. We cuss a walking challenge me versus adam weinger let’s see who’s going to win? I think i’m gonna wipe the floor with him. Stay with us. 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 p m so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent in our two hundred fifty of non-profit radio got to do the got to do the live listen love gadsden, alabama, st louis, missouri. Hubert, north carolina. Augusta, maine. San francisco, california, philadelphia, pennsylvania and there are others. But to those listeners in those cities live listener love going to you, let’s, go abroad. Lindenhurst, new york that’s not abroad. I’m sorry. That’s long island that’s. Never yeah, and clear mind talking about it, perhaps along falik no, i’m talking about i’ve listened to love to lindenhurst and also beaumont, texas live listen, love but now we can go abroad tokyo always checking in, always grateful for our tokyo listeners live listener love, konichiwa also, seoul, south korea multiple soul listeners, as always remarkable. So loyal anya haserot, you are korean listeners. Marie samples got cem, some prospect research tips. Did you? What did you do? Go back and comb your four years of non-profit radio? Or what would you do? No, no. You know, i decided to just pull out cem cem tips that i’d be using if i were just talking to somebody or just doing a speaking engagement, just sort of the top sites that i think people should be aware of. So i brought a few those with me today. If you want me to talk about yes, you’re our diet of dirt cheap. So talk about talk about a sight. Okay, great. So, you know, i’m a fan of talked about this before setting up alerts, so i wanted to remind everyone that you set up those google alert it’s and, uh, the other two that i’ve been actually getting a lot more hits on since i set it up for your show to test it actually was talk walker dot com and mentioned dot net, i get so many more hits on that than i do on google alerts and ah, on the reason why i had tested it a couple of years ago on your show was because i i’d read an article that google might be doing away with their alert service at some point, right? We talked about it, and even even if they hadn’t done away with it, it was not very robust, right? It was disappointing. Yeah, yeah. And then the results continue. Tio go down, down, down. So i i i definitely love the talk walker dot com. And so my my advice around, though, using those would be set him up for your top ten donors, you know, put their names in in an alert so that if something comes up about them, you can call them, congratulate them, you know, hopefully not commiserates, but okay. And i’ve since we talked about it i’ve been using both of those i used talk walker and mentioned dot net different ones because they give each allow you a couple for free. You have different alert set up on each of those cool. What else? Well, so well, i thought we would also spend a few minutes talking about nosa knows a search because it’s ah it’s definitely one of those sites that has both a a free and a fee based component to it. So for free, you could do some foundation research on knows that site, but it’s also a great compilation, ifyou’re doing individual research, esso they have various levels where you could either pay for a month or pay for a year. So it’s a good pay as you go type of service. So that’s why i kind of think it falls under that dirt cheap. Okay, it’s a little more about noser so knows that enables you to go in and input an individual’s name, for example, and be able to actually find out if they’ve given any major gifts to any organizations. So it’s an opportunity to as you’re doing in depth donorsearch research on those heiner hyre net worth individuals find out where they’re donating gifts tomorrow. If this sounds a valuable stuff, right? Well, i’m thinking about about how we might apply it to our plan. Giving marketing. Yeah, absolutely. I would really like to know more about our donors. Yeah, absolutely. So, it’s it’s a pretty valuable service. So it’s ah, i think it falls under blackbaud not if i’m not mistaken, but it’s certainly an opportunity for you to check it out because they have both free and be based stuff. So okay, so there is a there is some free to it, right? Yeah. In keeping with the door. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, we have ah, i believe we have any sample ward has called in. Maybe sabat ward, you know? Hey, i’ve been on for a while. I wasn’t sure how could most nicely interrupt? No, no. Okay. You’ve been out for a while. All right? Well, i’m not sure sam saw you, but i’m glad you’re there. We gotta introduce you, of course. Ceo of non-profit technology network and ten, which runs that very cool non-profit technology conference where we got hundreds. Well, twenty five. Outstanding. Excellent. Smart people interviews her most. Recent co authored book, social change. Anytime everywhere. And you can follow her on twitter at amy rs ward hello. Hello, you have you have been on non-profit radio since the one hundredth show? That’s when that was the first show you were on. Exactly. I i know i’m so i was actually thinking about it today to interview shows. I started to do the mental map, and then i decided to not do the mental map of how long has he been that’s? Well, it’s three years, we do fifty shows a year. Yeah. And you’ve been since the hundred. So to fifty minus one hundred. One hundred fifty, divided by three. Yeah. Uh, i mean divided by fifty three years. Yes. Oh, that’s, uh, that’s. A good run. Thank you so much for being on the show almost every month. Oh, my gosh. Thank you for not getting tired of me after three years. Yeah, well, you know, what’s going on there it and ten. What do you guys focus in on out there in portland, oregon? Well, i’m currently calling you from a rest stop on the side of the highway because max tonight are on vacation. With your husband. You know you’re doing this for us while you’re on vacation? Yeah. I mean, we’re just getting started. You being on the highway out of at a rest area. Alright. Where where are you? What city or what, highway? Well, i have no idea what city. I don’t know that this is a city there’s, mostly forest. Um, are you in oregon? We’re on highway ninety seven. Are you in oregon? Even were still in oregon. Okay. You’re in oregon, southern oregon. Okay. Okay. Where you headed on this great vacation where we’re headed down to lake tahoe. Oh, my that’s. A long drive you got you got nice. You’ve got a long drive. It is? Yeah, about about a third of the way through. Already got up early. Yeah, but i think back in the office, you know, everybody’s pretty excited. Because last week was the orientation week for the sixteen vigil inclusion fellows. So those sixteen folks, they’re all now post orientation out in their eight different cities, working with their host organizations on digital inclusion programs so that that piece is all in motion. And now everybody’s kind of locked in planning for the september conference. The leading change summit. Okay. Yes. Which i will be at. I have my own my charity registration web idea. I’ll bring bring wireframe and looking for some beta testers when we get to that stage. So yeah, you know, i’m gonna be with you for a leading changing when we’re doing that september, right? Thirteen. Sixteen. Number thirteen through sixteen. Thirty dc. I remember that’s, right? Ok. Yeah. Ok. Well, listen, i want to thank you. So i want thank you so much for doing this while you’re on vacation. Give our regards. Send non-profits and live listener. Loved to max, your husband, please. I will and drive safely and have a wonderful, wonderful time in lake tahoe. Awesome. Thank you. And you all have a wonderful time finishing the rest of the two hundred fifty it’s. So yes, we are a great time. Thank you so much, amy. Thanks, everybody. Bye bye. Any sample ward got lover ceo of inten non-profit technology network tomorrow. If you gave quite a little, you and other have you been to a lake tahoe? I happen to like zoho it’s, one of my favorite beautiful places. Why? Why? I have never been tell tell may well, like north lake tahoe is kind of cool because you have, like, the old fashioned cal naval lodge and that’s where, like maryland and and and sinatra hung out. And the county va lodge actually straddles the state line of california and nevada. So there’s like a line right through. So it’s just, you know, it’s kind of a historical place. It’s also, if you if you’re a fan of godfather one, i believe it is. Is that when there are no two is that we move to? Yeah, but when michael was in charge of the family, yeah, they’re in late, and they get the house gets shot up and stuff that’s, that’s like tahoe as well. So, you know, if you’re a fan of the godfather siri’s, as i am okay, okay. Yeah, like like tahoe. You like cuba? You like all the all the settings were going to give away? We have another giveaway, claire. And, uh, we’re gonna give away the plant e-giving marketing prize, which is? Well, we congratulations to the winner of the prize sponsored by the company that i work for planned giving a marketing that’s pg marketing dot com were based in pennsylvania. We helped all kinds of non-profits with their plan giving marketing, we are not part of the plan giving industrial complex. Okay, we actually help you, and so please visit our website. We have a great gift for you. It is a fifty dollars, these a gift card, a cool and that is going to give mohr twenty four in vancouver, washington, because, you know, they’re just they were just so sweet. They tweeted happy birthday non-profit radio and i just thought that was so sweet, you know, it’s it’s simple, but it says it it’s one of my birthday non-profit radio so they are at give maur twenty for they are a e-giving day is coming up in september, i think of september fifteenth for their region, but but certainly check him out on twitter and you tell me a little bit more about that organization that more twenty for about, um, well, that’s. Why i was just saying that they’re they’re supporting a because i have a processing issue important, and i’m still processing it. They they are about a local giving day ah e-giving day around the vancouver washington area. Trying to get people to, you know, like like like so they help all charities in the vancouver area. Yeah, charity that’s all charities in current cooper washington, which is not vancouver, canada. Course that knows the state of washington state’s, our vancouver are very on vancouver and you could check them out because they’re given more twenty four on twitter at give more twenty four give for twenty four number two fundchat better. I’m going to tweet them right? Just like you are at clare says it’s easy. Okay, okay, i will do that. All right, um, we have, ah, a little something. Claire, since you are a plan e-giving marketing specialist, i, uh, have a question that i want teo very, very important plan giving marketing question about whether whether it’s smart to be including charitable gift annuity rates on in marketing right in your marketing. Well, you know, when you’re promoting a charitable gift annuity no, what is that? Oh, my god, what’s happening? What? What is happening? I believe, uh, you know, i think i think we’re in the future, tony, tony, we’re in the future because, you know, you have a lot more gray hair, but thankfully, you still have a lot of hair. I don’t think that was possible that we could come to the future. You have fallen into a time and tunnel it’s june twenty fourth, twenty, forty five, twenty, forty five clear that makes me eighty three and that makes me thirty seven i don’t know, i don’t feel a day over eighty one and your hair is still belong. Well, that’s, because in the future they have a magic stick that you just wave over your head and and you have beautiful golden highlights and deep rich base color sabat hello and welcome to tourney martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent it’s our one thousand four hundred fifty it show and i’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with benign prostatic hyperplasia if wait a minute. I am stricken with benign prostatic hyperplasia bph i got it! It doesn’t matter whether you listen, i’ve got it so let’s. Leave the diseases alone. It’s, our one thousand four hundred fiftieth show. And i’m glad claire meyerhoff is my co host today. God, claire, your hair looks great. Thank thanks so much. And you know, tony, i got to the studio a little bit late because you know, am tracks. Bullet train was delayed. It took me twenty minutes to get here to get to new york city from d c can you believe that? I know twenty minutes. That’s. Incredible, incredible. Oculus. Well, there’s, no way to run a way to run. I’m gonna call it. I’m gonna call joe biden’s great grandson. But that’s okay. We are hosted by google mind warp. Of course. So now time is meaningless. Grand love that so let’s get started. We’re talking about how eighteen million non-profits khun stay relevant now that poverty has been eradicated. Universal hyre education is free, global warming has been solved. And then amazing global cooling was headed off. The palin panels eliminated all disease. Turns out sara was much smarter than people give her credit for it’s. So sad that she died in that tragic ego explosion and all our historical sites are funded by the trump foundation for old buildings. I haven’t torn down yet. And you know what? All the homeless dogs and cats have homes every child can read. When when? What is it that sort of thing? That trump was elected president? I don’t know. I was around like your four hundred four hundred show. It was sometime around there. I think it was. Was he before or after that first black president? What? What was his name? I think his name was obama, not president sasha obama. President barack obama’s obama first one obama senior, right, that’s, right. And then it was sasha came a few after him. And who was the president before that? And then i think it was trump. Well, trump was somewhere in there before. Oh, yeah, president for her, for her, something remember is very short term president. He didn’t last one term. That guy was beached. I mean, converting the lincoln bedroom to a casino. I know. And, you know, it was amazing because i remember at the republican national convention that year he came out to announce his vice presidential choice and he was like, okay, oh, you idiots, i got news for you. I’m going. I’m going to tell you who my who? My vice presidential candidates going. Toby he’s going to do amazing things going kick congress in the butt he’s going to be fantastic. Here he is. I’d like to announce my choice for vice president of the united states. Missed a gary abuse e i e o i remember. Yeah, it was right for that’s. Come. I forgot all about that, but yes, from president then and then he fired him on inauguration day. I know that was great. You’re fired, right, right after three inaugurations, like noon by twelve. Fifteen that the guy was fired. Yeah. And you know, trump did all these other things too, like, remember he there were those. There were the hearings, the senate judiciary committee hearings for that supreme court justice. And they were they were asking him a lot of questions, and i thought, oh, this guy is never going to get confirmed. But then, you know, supreme court justice, meatloaf did a great thing. He started singing hey started singing paradise by the dashboard light and then senator elizabeth warren remember she like god and meet lo slap and did they do? With, you know i want wait no that’s a different song, but paradise by the dashboard light that’s a cool one that’s a great and that’s s o they were singing, you know, trump really? You know, when it comes to non-profits especially like a you know, he just teaches wrecked things, didn’t and he also wrecked a lot of our beautiful national landmarks. Well on, give the guy credit. We have that water slide going down the grand canyon, right? The trump water slide that’s the grand canyon on a park and he you know, he’s. He did get his face put on mount rushmore, although they have chiseled it off. So that was good. I gave ten dollars to that on go fund me. Remove remove the fifth face removed the room. Remember it. The billboards removed the fifth bullet. They gotta go fund me dot com ten dollars. All my friends, i put it on facebook. Remember facebook? I know so so. And sometimes you get into these like dramas with people from high school where people like criticized it was terrible, it’s that now we don’t need no way have that mental telepathy thing where we all just know, whatever i was thinking it was cool for a run. I mean, it brought people together, you know, i i deserve whatever that guy’s name was, i can’t remember, but, you know, he made a lot of money, but it just didn’t just in last, i mean, the advertising took over and people just obviously migrated away. Yeah, and now we have the mind meld, and so we just, like, i just think something like tony is going to take us out to lunch and then it happens i don’t have to put it on facebook like, hey, maybe tony will take us to lunch, i just think it remember that remember that trump presidential library with the with a swim up bar and the song? Yeah, yeah, and then he had the follicle transplant center in the presidential library, remember? And and you know what? This is the first thing i remember about trump that really affected non-profits because a lot of my clients really got mad, so he came up with that whole directory of, like, best practices for non-profits and he said and he said, and i and i remember him being on tv. He was announcing. It goes yet, you know. So this is the number one thing. I think you should offer. Fi, you development directors and hyre showgirls. That’s what that would be best pregnant, raised more money that way, if you had, if you had the showgirls, its development, people waving the future because we’re headed back, we’re going back. We’re headed back cool, oh my god, wow, and, you know, we learned so much we learned we learned about when we went to the future, we learned about the past, we learned what happened when oh, no, no, it was that government can be. It can’t be that had to be like the mushrooms. I don’t think so, yeah, it’s not going to have the crystals, but that was a cool that was a cool look at the future. Don’t you think it was that gold thing? Things are gonna be good in the future. They are. So we’ve got what we have now. Really? Okay, i think now, back in back in show two, fifty, um, let’s. Uh let’s go to aa a lot more coming up, but i have to spend a little time talking about pursuing but we have other stuff coming up, jean chicago’s going to calling in their work. We work, we hustle eyes coming. Um, but i have tio shout out our brand new sponsor response pursuing absolutely full service fund-raising agency pursuant they are data driven, technology driven. I have the chance to talk to their ceo trend. This guy has a deep background and fund-raising and he understands the challenges of small organizations. They’re going to be a perfect sponsor for non-profit radio. We have tons of web tools on dh. They also do onsite capital campaign consultant. So if you go to pursuing dot com it’s amazing just pulled down what we do on the on the site and you see everything from, like i said, capital campaign counsel to media and data services. They are full spectrum, and i feel like that makes them perfect for non-profit radio small and midsize non-profits because you just use what you need. And then as you grow there’s more available to you on dh, there is an excellent way to get to know them coming up. They are going to hosting a free webinar, four keys, toe optimizing donor engagement and i put together ah, short link for them. So if you want, if you want to check out that webinar goto, tony dot, m a forward slash new pursuant no caps tony dot m a slash new pursuant the webinars on tuesday, july twenty eighth, wanted to eastern and i know that this one is short notice and for our affiliates, you know, it’s it’s passed by the time you’ve heard it, i understand that, but there are going to be others, lots of others, because pursuing is really generous about sharing their intelligence, they they really are so in the meantime, check out pursuing dot com look at everything they do, and if you can’t make that seven twenty eight webinar on optimizing donor engagement, it’s at tony dot a slash new pursuant and pursuant, thanks so much for sponsoring non-profit radio. Really grateful. I have to say thank you, i just have tio spent my tony’s take two saying thank you to everybody who is such a terrific supporter of the show, whether you’re getting my email alerts in your inbox every week or you’re listening live like lots of people do so regularly or listening from one of our affiliate stations throughout the country or the podcast, you know, however it is. Youre supporting the show, spreading the word on twitter, facebook so grateful really two hundred fifty shows five years there’s no way we’d be where we are if there wasn’t just tremendous support for non-profit radio, so i’m so glad that it brings value too small and midsize shops. I always always have you in mind when i’m thinking about guests when i’m putting together to show trust me small and midsize shops first the first time last that’s that’s, who’s who’s on my mind so i want to thank all of you for ah let’s support five years worth. Thank you so much. And that is tony’s take two for friday twenty fourth of july sorry, yeah. Twenty fourth of july and twenty ninth show of the year we got jean takagi uh, chicago’s on the line. Jim takagi, how are you doing? I’m doing great. Tiny. Congratulations on to fifty. Thank you. So, so much. Gene is our longest running contributor to non-profit radio hyre he and it’s, the very popular law non-profit law blawg dot com. And uh, he’s, the principal attorney at neo-sage non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco and on twitter he’s at g tak. Gene, you have been with me since july twenty seventh, two thousand eleven. Longest running contributor. That’s fantastic. Tony the time. Where’s the time gone. It’s. Incredible. Four years every month. Um, i’m just so grateful. You know, we, uh we started. I went back with the first topic we covered together was so you want to start a non-profit which seemed like a logical place to start. Yeah. I mean, you know, just thank you so much, gene, for taking time to prepare every week and for being with me with us every single week for every single month. Everybody that’s, right? Every every month. Yeah, i don’t really read inviting your more off. Thank you. What what’s going on? There neo-sage what your clients are. Concerned about, but they’re few things going on night. One of the things that were really excited about is that board source has listed advocacy as a keyboard responsibility earlier this week, and they just updated their their seminal book on dad possibilities of non-profit boards and for the first time, advocacy became a keyboard responsibility and we think that’s that’s just great. So that’s one big advocacy, okay, we’ve talked about that lots of times, and maria simple and i have talked about boards being advocates, right? Marie? Absolutely being friendraising er’s advocates out in the community mirriam you and i have talked about that a lot online ambassadors, right? Yeah, absolutely. There, there you’re you’re they should be it at least your biggest and best right? What else do you know about? Oh, sorry. God. Sorry. Uh, i was just going to concur with both of you on that and apart from the friendraising and fund-raising some serious issues that might affect all non-profits and we’ve been kind of leading some advocacy efforts on that, both on the state level, for us with cal non-profits on the national level with the national council was non-profits and some others. As well. And then some of those provisions air, like the charitable deduction provisions that are congress is looking at right now and and where those air going. There’s, charitable registration requirements, better being promulgated by the state. Um, that are becoming a little bit more scary for non-profits if some of these things go through, it would be like if you fail to, you know, be missed a filing and you continue to operate, we might hold your board members liable for needing to operate on that suspension period. Also, scary things happening that that non-profits have a chance to push back on. And when, when you’ve got board members and others, you know who are willing to advocate on your behalf, beneficiaries, that that you’re serving, it can really make it. Okay, okay, so there’s gonna be a lot for us to be talking about in the in the coming months. That’s always okay. Okay. Hyre all right, jean, i really i want to thank you very much. Thanks for thanks so much for being part of the two fiftieth and and and so, you know, such a long running history. Thank you. So, so much great. Thank you so much. And have a great rest of the show. It’s. A pleasure. Thank you, jean. Thanks a lot, maria let’s. Spend a couple minutes on. Ah, couple more your, uh, your tips for prospect research. Okay, good. So so this tip has to do with visiting your local library. You’ll remember i’m a huge proponent, our local lagers. And so one of the online database is that i really love that the library is called reference yusa. Esso. I really wanted to bring that back as a reminder for everyone. Because it’s a source that will allow you to really find business owners in the community find businesses themselves in the community. And you can actually you can get is as focused as looking for them within a specific zip code. You can open it up to a county wide search. A state wide search. So it’s really? I think it’s. A great way to do what i like to call that proactive prospecting. So if you’re trying to get some new lists and maybe if people to send invitations to within specific industries and invitations for maybe an upcoming walk or a gala or something that you’re having, i think that that’s a really terrific resource. Great one reference, yusa reference. Use a dot com. Well, if you go to reference, use a dot com. It is a fee based resource, but many, many libraries will carry it. It’s usually accessible, right, using your your bar code on your library card, you can access it for free. So, you know, in keeping with our free theme, of course, i know you love the library’s. Yeah, what else is on your list? Eso you know, i’m always always a fan of also giving linked in some love wanted to remind everyone to go to non-profits dot linked in dot com because they’ve got tons of great resource is for you on that on that site. Andi, you could do a lot of proactiv prospecting there is well, you get access to the fee based version for free as a non-profit esso. I would really encourage you to take a look at non-profits darlington dot com see what they have there on take advantage of the proactive prospecting you. Khun dio i think the sp one of the early times if it wasn’t the very first time i met you was when you were doing a panel on linked in for non-profits years ago. Like at the westchester county. A f p or something? Yeah, you there were. There were a couple of you jerry stengel was on. Yes, and mark and mark. Mark that’s. Right. Exactly. Mark helping mark helper. Thank you. Yeah, that may have been i don’t know if that was the very first time. No, i wasn’t. The first time was when we had met, but i think we were all three of us were on your show. You were phil. You were saying filming, but you were taping from now on. We’re doing this show from there. And you did have a song because we did do what we did. Cope. Present a panel together on the topic of lincoln’s. Okay, and then we used it on the show. All right. We’ve got just a minute or so left before we gotta move to our next give away. We got to get away coming up there, meyerhoff you’re not you’re honest. You’re on deck. Man on deck. What can you tell us in a in a minute, maria? Well, in another minute, i just want to remind everyone to ah, to make sure that you’re finding out whatever your library has for free. Take advantage of all the different ways you can set up a google searches and really focusing them down so that you’re getting the search results that matter to you. Ah, you’re only interested in where somebody is ah, connected to a non-profit make sure you filter it down to include site, colon, dot or ge ahh and then that’ll just bring up the search results on a person’s name where they’re connected to a dot or giff you’re trying to find out where they’ve donated or where they’re spending their volunteer time. Outstanding. Cool. Thank you very much. Let’s. Give something away. Uh, this is going to mak pritchard because he was so generous. He blogged his top social change podcasts and don’t you know named non-profit radio he’s number one i love that that’s also. Mac. Mac pritchard, you are going to get a bag of cure a coffee with every cup of curare, you join our effort to expand sustainable dental care to remote communities around the world. Cure a coffee. Frankly, they’re just the best. Thank you, kara mara there because they’re like i said earlier they were doing this dental care for their for their coffee growing farmers. They had just done something in nicaragua that they sent a dental team of sixty people to nicaragua, unopened five dental clinics while they were there. Incredible. There, there they’re walking the walk of cura. Um, we got a couple minutes. Tio have a little. We’ll chat time, but sam says are not too much time. Okay, then, uh, that’s, that’s, that’s, the end of the chat and let’s go to a break coming up after the break, coming up after the break. Yes, thank you, ladies, thank you so much. Coming up after the break, we got the work week hustle walking challenge. Bobby d l is going to be joining us and adam weinger goingto watch me wipe the floor with that. A weinger. I hope, anyway, 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 godin, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising 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 are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other. Ninety five percent, joined in the studio with my co host for today, our creative producer, claire meyerhoff, and also our monthly prospect, research contributor maria simple ladies again, so glad you’re with me, like, so right to be here. All right, we’re going toe. We’re gonna do this workweek, hustle, walking challenge. We got, uh, we got adam weinger you’re on the line right at him. Hey, tony, thanks for having me. My pleasure. Thank you, adam. Thanks for being with me. I won’t remind everybody. Adam has been a guest. Ana non-profit radio from the non-profit technology conference. He was one of the speakers there in twenty fourteen, and i talked about improving your matching gift program. And that was the april twenty fifth, twenty fourteen show. He’s, the ceo of double the donation he’s at two ex donations on twitter and double the donation dot com and ah, when hey was he was inspired by what he saw last week because we had a show talking about walking and work in the same time. And he was inspired by that, i guess to challenge me to a work week hustle. I do not know how many steps he walked this week. He does not know how many i walked, but we’re going to find out. We’ll see who takes the lead. So, uh, thanks for reaching out. Adam. That was cool. Definitely. How has your walking been going? The sleek i’m doing fine don’t don’t don’t tease me now i’m doing okay. I’m doing fine. And of course, our prize the winner gets ah! Slice of new york city pizza. Right? You’re gonna come up to new york and absolutely and buy me a slice of pizza. I take mine with mushrooms and anchovies. Please. You can even have two slices if you went. Okay, we’ll see if i win. Okay, bobby d l are you with us? There i am. Tony, thank you so much for joining us from arizona. Bobby dee has also been a non-profit radio guest on february twenty seventh, twenty fifteen he and i talked about improving auctions and cash calls for your fund-raising events. Bobby dee is the twenty fifteen world automobile auctioneer champion. That means he’s number one champion in automobile auctioning and he’s the twenty fourteen us big calling champion on twitter. He’s at called a call to auction at call to auction and you’ll find his sight called to auction dot com. Thanks very much for being with us. Bobby deol two hundred fifty and show. Well, what? What a player. Tony, i’m actually here at the arizona chapter of ft at their conference. I’m in a hotel room right now with an honor to be at this conference and then to be a part of this celebration. So congratulations. Thank you very much. And, adam, i’m so glad you’re part of the two fiftieth show to thank you. All right, we have a traveling mate. My pleasure. All right. We’re going toe going to increase the drama a little bit. Uh, we’ll play. We got some appropriate music, and then now bobby d i am goingto okay. We lower that a tad labbate attack. Okay, bobby d i’m going to announce mine my number first. So, bobby, you want to go ahead, homey? Well, what i want to do is i want to find out how many steps you have, and what i’m gonna do is i’m gonna call off the number of steps, and if you have that number of steps, just go ahead and say yes. And then i’ll go up and we’re gonna find out what your limited. So we’ll just go ahead and get started now. Tony, did you walk over five thousand steps, please? Bobby, you’re insulting me. Five thousand five thousand. Did you walk over ten thousand steps this week? Way over ten. All right, ten. How about fifteen? Fifteen metoo walk over fifteen. Fifteen. Way over way. Over, please. You’re in some twenty. How about thirty thousand? You walk over thirty thousand. I did do over thirty. Come on, bobby, about thirty five. How about forty thousand there’s? My number. There’s a i got forty thousand one hundred eighty six bonem. All right. Thank you. Forty thousand hand pub. Forty thousand one eighty six. Okay, it’s adam’s turn. Go ahead, bob. Now, adam, work. We’re gonna go a little bit quicker. Okay? So we’re gonna have computed five thousand. Indeed, i did. About ten thousand. Yes, i did. Fifteen twenty, twenty five thousand year. Thirty thousand sets. I went over thirty thousand he’s over thirty. How about thirty five thousand? What is that? A yes. About forty thousand? Yeah. How about fifty thousand? No. Okay, we’re four thousand. Did you get forty one thousand steps? I got forty three o ee o. I got screwed. I got screaming. Just want, like, one more time. What would you say, bobby? D if you’d taken the stairs one more, maybe you could’ve beat him. No, there’s too many escalators in the city. I want to ask you to shut down on dh. Plus what? When i’m walking upstairs, i do two at a time. I do doubles that way. Sam, turn off that crummy news. You was wrong. You would rob tony. Not the music you have robbed when i did. I’m serious, but when i go upstairs, i take two at a time. So you got a double my upstairs all the time. I have. Oh, man, i do my steps twice. Time going all right. No, it was closed, tony. It was a valiant effort. Adam weinger, uh, okay. All right. I owe you. I got screwed. All right, now, all right. I’m not such a bad loser. All right, adam. Pizza place. Alright, my favorite. I’ll take you to your favorite pizza place in new york city. Okay? We got to wrap it up. Thank you so much, guys. Thanks for having me. Thankyou, bobby d thank you. Adam. Congrats, toady. I got to say, well, i lost, but thank god for the two. Fifty. I got you. Thanks. So i’m gonna thank you. Thanks so much. Uh, cure a coffee and plan giving marketing for being our giveaway sponsors today. Claire meyer huff. Thank you so much for being in the studio. It was wonderful. To be here and i can’t wait to be here for the three hundred show your maria semple. Thank you so much. Oh, great to be here as well. Thank you and susan chavez. Thank you out there. You’re in san francisco. Thank you very much for your help. Our social media manager with today’s show. Thanks so much. Been great fun. Thanks everybody for getting us this far. Two hundred fifty shows. I just love doing this show. I just love it. Next week two ntcdinosaur views from some smart speakers at ntc non top non-profit technology conference i was at this past june. If you missed any part of today’s show, how could you? How could you miss that? Twenty fiftieth. Find it on tony martignetti dot com pursuant full service fund-raising they’re perfect for non-profits. Just like yours. Data driven, technology driven, pursuing dot com. Welcome. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is a line producer. Shows social media is by susan chavez susan shop dot com. And this music is by scotty stein of brooklyn. Yeah, awesome scotty stuff in the house with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and greet you. Show that. Thank you, labbate. 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 p m so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe adam. Email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for May 22, 2015: Linkage, Ability And Interest & Crowdfunding Legal Tips

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Opportunity Collaboration: This working meeting on poverty reduction is unlike any other event you have attended. No plenary speeches, no panels, no PowerPoints. I was there last year and I’m going this year. It will ruin you for every other conference! October 11-16, Ixtapa, Mexico.

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My Guests:

Marie SempleLinkage, Ability And Interests

Maria Semple

Introducing the LAI principle for rating potential donors. Maria Semple walks you through it. She’s our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder.

 

 

 

Gene Takagi: Crowdfunding Legal Tips

Gene TakagiGene Takagi is our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group. He raises your consciousness about legal issues around the popular crowdfunding sites.

 

 


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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 new affiliate to welcome k y r s eighty eight point one and ninety two point three fm in medical lake spokane, washington i’m looking forward to helping your non-profits welcome kyi rs thank you so, so much for being with non-profit radio and being our newest affiliate, k y our s oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with ngom nail blast iq limb, fadden apathy. If you gave me the bad news that you missed today’s show linkage ability and interest introducing the high principle for reading potential donors re a simple walks us through it she’s, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder and crowdfunding legal tips jean takagi is our legal contributor and principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group he raises your consciousness about legal issues around the popular crowd funding sites and he walks us through those on tony’s take two non-profit radio on the road and third sector responsive by opportunity collaboration, the working meeting on poverty alleviation that will ruin you for every other conference, i’m very glad that maria samples back with me she’s, the prospect finder, a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot com, and her book is panning for gold. Find your best donor prospects now exclamation mark she’s our diet of dirt cheap and free ideas you can follow her on twitter at maria simple. Welcome back, maria! Hey there, tony, how are you? I’m doing terrific, lee. Well, how are you today? Just find a little bit of allergies going on, but other than that, you know, i think everybody suffering, though, right? Well, i suppose i see you have a lot of allergens in new jersey. You know this here seems to be particularly bad. I have not been bad in past years, but ah, i don’t know. What’s going on this here against the it must have all exploded at once. Okay? I’m allergic to some people in new jersey. Ilsen listen, my family that’s what you know or not you mostly my family. Um all right, my mom and dad don’t listen, so they wouldn’t know that i just said that there, but they’re big fans. Of the show, but they don’t they don’t. Listen, um, this l a i linkage ability and interest. We’re using this for tracking and rating are potential donors. Is that right? Yeah. That’s, right. You know, i thought it would be an interesting topic today. I was i was recently asked to speak about this on another person’s webinar. And i was thinking that it was something you and i had not covered in the past, um and it’s certainly something that is freon dirt cheap, right? Because it’s being done by dafs board volunteers and, you know, khun really involve a lot of different people in this process and it’s probably, you know, a pretty important part of the overall fund-raising process when you think about it because, you know, we only have so many hours in a day in a week, in a month in a year, um, so we really need to be able to focus on where allocate our time and our resource is right. So human resource is funding, etcetera? Um, so, you know, we’re trying to really get down to is answering that most basic question and fund-raising is really how to qualify people. Right? So hopefully, you know, at the end of the next few minutes together we’ll we’ll come up with a process for your listeners that people can start to implement. Okay? All right. So, uh, what’s think our first part linkage? What is it? What i mean by linkage? Linkage to what? Right? So linkage to the organization. So how how is this person linked to your organization? Who is that? Ah, that individual that might stand between you and that prospect. So, you know, it could be that you have a boardmember who has access to this individual, maybe maybe it’s a staff member or ah, some other volunteer with the organization, so they’re really kind of like, in lincoln terminology, they’re really just two degrees separated from you. Um, and and in some cases, somebody might be more than two degrees separated on dh, then that’s going to really kind of affect how well linked they are to your organization already and how much they they already know about you, right? I have to i have to quibble with you about something now linked in did not create that two degrees of separation. That correct that comes from kevin bacon that’s, right? I don’t i don’t want the social networks taking over our r ah, story traditions, that is a kevin bacon, you know, story, whatever you’re called that is not attributed to linked in dot com, alright, right know it’s? Not absolutely, but of course, lincoln can help you in this process when you’re trying to determine linkage, right? So if you’re just trying to figure out you have a known individual, maybe they’ve come teo ah gala or something, and you’re trying to figure out, well, who can really help us, you know, cultivate and potentially solicit this individual? We want to engage them a little further in in our cause? Um, and so, you know, certainly lincoln is one of the tools that you might be able to use, i think, you know, why not use that technology that’s there to help determine how many degrees they’re separated from you? I’m not objecting, teo, speaking to that in terms of linkage and proximity to the organization. So geography, i think, in my opinion, could potentially play a knopper tune ity here into linkage. So if you really a small non-profit and you serve a very small geographic area um, you know, is this prospect living in that geographic area, or do they live somewhere else in your state? But maybe they have an interest in funding your type of cause. So, you know, i do think that that geography can play a role in this as well. Okay, okay. Um also the e-giving history, right? In terms of our their their closeness to the organization, another way of measuring that is how often and at what level have they been giving and how regularly, absolutely and, you know, we’ve all heard of the stories in the press, right of people who passed away, they leave a lot of money to an organisation, they were on ly donors that say very modest levels, but they were consistent, right? So they zsystems long time donors and and, you know, i’m preaching to the choir was talking to you about this, tony, but, you know, certainly passed e-giving history is even if even if the gift amounts have not been very high, i really do think you have to take into account that longevity how long they’ve been with you? Yes, on dh that’s particularly true looking for potential donors in planned e-giving but yeah, that that committed person who’s been giving and, you know, maybe you’ve heard me, you probably have because we’ve we’ve done seven hours together say that, you know, even if it’s ten dollars, a year or ten dollars, a couple of times a year, but they’ve been doing it for for a long, long time, like eight out of the past ten years or twelve or fifteen out of the past twenty years i mean, that’s ah, that’s a lot that’s a that’s, a really committed person, even at low, low level. So you want to consider them as potential? Maybe not for what you might consider a major gift, but certainly for potential volunteering planned gift or maybe moving them up the the e-giving in the giving ladder, you know, that consistency is really important, irrespective of the size of the gift. Yeah, alright, thanks, maria. So you know, i would agree with you, right? You’re you’re on safe ground. Yeah. Course. Plus, i i feel bad. I feel bad about my rant about the kevin bacon phenomenon, so i don’t want it. But you know me well enough that you know there’s no harm done. No, i’m intended no harm intended. Maybe harm done, but i didn’t intend any, but i don’t think so. What’s ah, what’s ability all about after linkage. So the a for ability. So really it’s it’s, really? The ability rating is it’s based on their ability of what they can give and not what we think they will give. And so that could be two completely different numbers, right? You might be talking to your board members and your board will say, you know, well, andre, go in either direction. Right? So the conversation might be something like, um, you know, where we really think that this person that we, the board, think this person is certainly capable of contributing to our annual campaign or our capital campaign at a level of, you know, five thousand dollars and, you know, maybe your research reveals that this person, you know, has never given anywhere near that amount. Maybe all of the donations use i’ve ever been able to find out what they give to other organizations in your community. Maybe two hundred dollars, and below. So certainly, you know, you wanted to raid it in that you know appropriately in terms of their ratings for the ability, but it could also be in the other direction so the conversation could be g we think this person capable of donating five thousand dollars and your research reveals that in fact there, you know, they made in the past in the recent past a twenty five thousand dollars, um, commitment to another organization. So knowing that you’re potentially leaving money on the table by not asking for a higher amount. Yes. Okay. Okay. Let’s, uh, let’s go out for our break a little early and if there’s more to say about ability, of course we will. And then we’ll we’ll cover interest, and then we got to put this all together. What the heck do we do with all this info that we’ve got? Stay with us. 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. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. The small midsize shops that’s who were always about i got live listener love, cartersville, georgia. Marquette, michigan, san francisco, california, duncanville, texas cool and carmel, indiana special belated birthday wishes out the carmel, indiana live listener loved to each of you there’s others out there don’t fret if you’re still listening, there’s others out there and more live listener love coming. And of course, we’ve got our podcast pleasantries for everybody listening some other time on some other device unknown to may be many of us, but pleasantries to the ten thousand podcast listeners, and we got more. We got more love coming out, so don’t worry about that affiliate affections. All right, maria, um, anything more that we want to say about ability, that the person’s ability to make a gift, how much we think they can they’re capable of giving now, i think i’ll stay a little bit more about it in the next few minutes after we cover interest, because i want to go over some general levels of ability, so we’ll get into that when we get into the rating, okay, be little mysterious on me. Okay, that’s. All right. Okay, then. Let’s, let’s go to our interest. What is this about? So, really, you know, here we’re trying to understand, you know, if they could really be engaged in the organization, how interested are they? Do they have a specific area of interest, you know, are they connected to you because of a particular passion that they have or maybe there’s something that actually connects them to your program? You know, maybe you serve people with disabilities, and they have ah, family member, a close family member who is, you know, has disabilities and may or may not be using your services currently, you know, so what happens here is that, you know, way understand their interest so that we can fulfill a need that they have to make the world a better place. Um, and then, you know, they’re really going to be only too happy to invest in your mission or your services or your building campaign or, you know, whatever other major campaign you’re doing, perhaps an endowment campaign or a legacy planned gift campaign. So, you know, you’re really looking to fulfill a need that they have understand what they’re interested in and helping them fulfill their mission. So, you know, having a general idea of what they’re interested in is certainly going to come into play in your overall research right now, someone could be, you know, very closely connected under linkage and have very high ability, but maybe maybe they’re not connected. Maybe maybe they’re not well now, if they’re not, if they’re connected, there wouldn’t be uninterested. Let’s see, i guess around my point is someone could be very high in one or two of these, but quite low in another one that’s, right? Like maybe interest, maybe interest is very high ability is very high, but linkage, nobody knows them, they’re not connected to us at all, exactly. And then and then what do we do there? We’ve really got to find a path to that individual because, you know, if they have ah, hi ability than it’s pretty darn likely that you’re not the only person knocking on their door trying to get a gift. And now this can also apply for foundations and corporations to right. This is not just individual ratings or what you know, i want to apply this more. For individual ratings. But, you know, i suppose it could certainly apply for for foundations and corporations as well. So much of what i focus is on is individuals, but i think you could probably apply this very same formula to your foundation, corporations and corporations. I’m thinking, especially local businesses, local corporations. I mean, i guess it could apply for bigger ones too. But, you know, if your if your campaign is around cultivating local local business people, and then i think these things would apply equally. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we got are lei i laid out. Now what the heck we could do with this. Okay, so well, let’s talk about a typical rating system and how you would potentially callie up some points because what we’re trying to do here ultimately is trying to figure out who are our best prospects. Where should we be focusing our time? So this is a very general number that you might suffer in this rating process is going involved. Mathematics? Yes, very simple math, because, look, i’m not a math person either. All right, you’re probably more of a math person than maybe implant giving. You have to. Do division. No, i think i really think it’s just straight up addition. Alright. Additions. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Especially as long. There’s. No log. Arrhythmic found formulas or no, no, nothing like that. Okay, the total number of points that you can get is fifteen. Okay, your absolute best prospect is going to be raided. A fifteen. And this is how it breaks out. By the way, i got this off of a document that i found on a peace website. So if you just google les i principal it’s probably one of the first three hit that you’ll get on google lay our principal. Okay, but can we also get you? Teo posted as a comment on the on the facebook page. Takeaway here it’ll be up by three thirty or forty no around four o’clock eastern today. Could you do that? Sure. Thank you. Alright, so go ahead. So fifteen so linkage. So you’re going to go from a score of zero through four xero would be if there’s absolutely no record of giving and no contact with that donor that they’re rated xero for linkage. Okay, alright. So there’s? Yeah. There’s what i was talking about before somebody could be very low in something, okay, you’re xero now you said, xero four, can you do one to five? Um, well, for purposes of the download that i got from a p, it went from zero to four, so one would be if they made a pledge, but no gift, or maybe a one time or a memorial gift. Your organization. I’m just making trouble. All right? Xero will still xero before i prefer one to five, but we’ll go with yours. Okay, good. Um, two would be if they relapsed, or just an occasional donor. Your organization three would be if there are frequent donor let’s, say annually, but number four would be if there are frequent or current major gift donor-centric. The best would be five since i since i said at the outset, we have a maximum of fifteen points. We’d have to kind of stick with xero through four rating system for the purposes of this discussion anyway. Oh, so they’re not all going to be zero to four then, okay? Because correct, because that would only be twelve c i can multi actually multiplied, actually. Just multiplied three times for so you know, so give me a break. All right? All right. So go ahead. Now. Ability. We have different now. How many? How many do they break out to ability xero what? Seven. Okay. Let’s. Just seven. Okay. Ah, let’s. Just let’s. Just sample them a little bit let’s, not read all seven categories. Okay, so there will be if they’ve given you from one to twenty four hundred dollars, a four would be somewhere between fifty and nine. Ninety nine thousand dollars on day seven would be five hundred thousand and above all right. But of course you would. You would scale that to your organization if your largest if the largest gift you’ve ever gotten is one hundred fifty thousand dollars, no point in having half a million dollars on your scale. Right. So you scale, you scale your scale appropriately scale the scale. All right. I hope you haven’t from with this, because i am. I don’t know if i can’t tell if you are, but maybe it’s, maybe it’s tze pretty new to me, so i’m enjoying it. Okay, what do we do? S o that’s xero to seven for ability. You’re recommend, right? So we got four and seven. Eleven. So the next one must only go xero toe four. Yes, exactly. Xero for instruction at that time, i did subtraction. All right, go ahead. Interested xero no interest, no knowledge or very minimal knowledge. Okay. In your organization, on at the other end of the scale of four would mean that they’re actively involved in your organization. They volunteer. Or perhaps they’re aboard, or even a past boardmember right? Or maybe think about even a past honoree. So so for many organizations where an annual gala within an honoree is is somebody you know, if you haven’t honoree like that, certainly they would have had some more in depth connection to your organization. Hopefully, yes. Okay. There’s a good ones. Especially. Honoree that’s that’s one people might not have thought of, but all right, it’s it’s cool. All right, so we have totals in each of our three categories. I’m guessing we’re going to add these up, right? So then you would add them up. And as i said, you have a maximum of fifteen. So now you have some decisions to make, right? Like, what is that minimum score that your organization is going to need to have in place before you put that person into a a pipeline for one on one cultivation and solicitation? Right? Because you’re only gonna have, you know, so much staff and or so many board members committed to helping you reach out to do some of these major gift solicitation efforts. You know, you have to figure out how many prospects can we end up with that’s going to be manageable? Because if you give somebody an unmanageable number than people get overwhelmed and what’s gonna happen, they’re probably not going to do an awful lot. No, you know what i look? You know what i love about this is for small and midsize shops. This replaces what could be a very expensive wealth screening process and, you know, the compay cos teo to do that for you, and then they’ll stratify you’re prospects on dh. Then you’ll you’ll proceed from there, but this is for for smaller shops, you know, there’s time involved in doing the research here, but but if you could do that, um, it’s a way of stratify ing your prospects and then you got your you got your what was the top score again? Fifteen. You got your you got your fifteen toe, you know, maybe you’re fifteen to thirteen is your top prospects and then twelve to ten. Obviously, second tier, you know, but you stratify and then you apply resource is appropriately. Does that sound that’s unreasonable? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you mentioned well screening. And even if you had or are planning to have a wealth screening done that’s really going to help answer that that a part of ability helpyou, stratify where they could potentially be giving to you. So, you know, maybe you know about linkage to your organization. Maybe you know, about interest and maybe a wealth screening. Is what’s going to help you really flesh out what their ability is? Without, you know, doing major in depth research like i would normally dio i mean, you know, if you’ve got access to a wealth screening product, definitely see what the what the screening rating is going to be, even on that process through the product that you’re using. Okay? All right, so you’re now you were saying that i guess there’s a threshold may be below which you would not apply resource is, you know, maybe it’s i don’t know, i think it would depend organization by organization, but like, maybe it’s five or seven or something below a scorer now that my reaction to tony was maybe a five or seven for a small organization where, you know, you really have very limited manpower, both on staff and volunteer side. Um, yeah, you don’t want to discount anybody have again, you have to apply resource is smartly, exactly every potential, you know, every potential donorsearch can’t be can’t be pursued, but you know what else this does? It helps you see where you might have weaknesses with prospect, who would otherwise be strong. So in our example, you know, if ability and interests are high but linkages low and that puts the person below whatever you’re cut off is let’s say, it’s seven there i did division again, i was taking half the score. I’m like my mathematics game if there’s seven or below, but that’s, because they’re linkage is really low, but ability and interest are are doing well, then, you know, maybe now you’ve identified somebody who you want to try to get close to the organization and maybe that doesn’t take so much to do, you know, you know what i mean? Yeah, exactly. And it could be just, you know, a matter of sitting around and and having a very concentrated development committee meeting where you’re able to then try and figure out. Okay, look, these are our prospects that rated pretty highly for ability and interest if we could only determine what the linkage piece is, you know, so and that’s that would be a really good exercise to engage your board members in the fund-raising process because it’s still part of the process, right? It’s it’s just that there may be not involved in the direct ask because, sure, there are certainly a lot of board members who say i’ll do anything for you in the development process just don’t make me do the ad, so this is a a terrific way to engage them in the fund-raising process, and maybe they would get excited about, you know, getting out, doing some of those ass also interest mean ability, we’ve gotta face it ability is not much organization could do around ability, but interest, like if linkage is high ah, an ability is high, but the person just hasn’t shown a lot of interest. Maybe now maybe they’re not interested so that, you know, i have to consider that possibility. They just may not be interested, but if you’re not convinced that that’s the case, you know, maybe there’s some program or something that you can use as a connection and use your linkage, their relationship to try to get that person more interested in your work because they they rated low in that in that part, right, that that would be a great use of a cultivation event, for example, san, is that pool of people i’m seeing this as a way not to just stratify people, but also identify where weaknesses are with with potential donors and where you might apply. Some resource is to get them rated hyre in your l a i system? Absolutely. All right, we got another minute or so. Is that right, sam got? Yeah, just another minute or so, maria, you wantto leave us with something around l a i well, you know, good research is really what enables matching the prospects with e-giving opportunities, right again, as i said, so you’re fulfilling a need that they have to make the world a better place. So e i think if you just sort of keep that at the forefront of everything that you’re doing using the lazy eye principle, um, and always making sure that everything that you’re doing in terms of your communications, any engagement that you have with people, make it his donor-centric a possible it’s, not about you the organization. Okay, ultimately, yes, it is. But when you’re talking with people it’s, it’s trying to find that point of engagement that’s really going to get them excited and motivated and really want them to make an investment in your cause. Maria simple, the prospect finder dot com and at marie a simple thank you very much. Maria semple. Great. Thanks a lot. Always a pleasure to have you. Thank you. Hope you don’t mind that i had some fun with the l a i i don’t think so. You don’t take that stuff personal. Tony, take two and crowdfunding legal tips coming up first opportunity collaboration it’s a week long unconference in x top of mexico in october, around poverty alleviation, it’s structured but it’s, unstructured it’s structured with lots of unstructured time. So you, khun may connections and get to know the people who can help you with your work. There’s over three hundred people there you meet over meals. Drink. You mean in the ocean i had i had meetings with two women who became guests of the show we met in the ocean. It was nina chanpreet core and lena srivastava. They were on after i met them in the ocean. Well, we met on land, but then we planned our meeting for in the ocean. Um it’s ah, no power points, no keynotes. Every session is in a circle very collaborative. And i think you’re getting a sense of how it’s, not like other conference, is much better. I loved it last year and i’m going again this year in october opportunity collaboration, dot net non-profit radio is going west. We headed to phoenix actually leave tomorrow. Phoenix, l a san francisco, and in portland if you’re in any of those areas or between l a and san francisco, because i’ll be driving, then ah let’s, try to meet up my itinerary and video are at tony martignetti dot com third sector today. That’s ah, site run by amy davina. She has lots of contributors, including marie, a sample i was going to ask maria simple about that i’m going to see if she’s defecting the third certain sector today i doubt it, but she was on. Was it contributed to third sector today? Um, they have tips, strategy’s, good ideas for non-profits they are at third sector today dot com and they are at third sector today on twitter, but the third is the number three, of course that’s thea arabic number three not the roman numeral three don’t do ii rd do at arabic number three rd sector today on twitter use the arabic number that’s tony’s take two for friday, twenty second of may twenty first show of this year and now i’m very glad. That gene takagi is with me he’s, the managing editor of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco, he edits the popular non-profit lob log, dot com and on g tack on twitter. He is gi tak, which is much easier than third sector because there’s no arabic numbers to explain whether used the arabic or the roman. Aggie tak, welcome back durney great to be back. Thank you, and i’m looking forward to seeing you on my west coast trip in ten days or so. Absolutely, yeah, we’re going to sit down that’ll be a pleasure. Um, you’re concerned about our brand in our name and there’s, a legal issues you want people to be aware of around the very popular crowd funding sites, right? And i’m actually picking up off your conversation with aimee semple ward of and ten last week last night. Yes, you are. Ah, and you know amy and you discuss sort of the differences between an individual raising funds for a charitable purpose, like for the victims of of the earthquakes in nepal and a charity actually raising funds, and amy was pointing out how individuals through go fund me had actually raised almost double. What a big charity half for that. And so i just wanted to work off that a little bit about about saying, well, when people give a contribution to an individual, even if it’s for charitable purposes, there is no charitable deduction for that gift. Where if they make the donation to a charity, that’s using a crowd funding site named this’s done properly, they can get a deduction for the gift of doom, or little little intricacies involved. But that’s a huge difference. Okay, wait now, if we give to an individual’s crowd funding campaign. But as amy and i were talking about there’s, there’s, there’s pretty simple ways of getting the money directly to the charity so that the individual doesn’t doesn’t have to pass it on and and then so if we so if the person has that set up, and then we get an acknowledgement from the charity, can’t we get a can we get a charitable income tax deduction that way? Yeah, that would be where an individual is authorised by the charity to represent the charity and set up the crowd funding site. But much of crowdfunding is done by individuals who are just doing it for charitable purposes, and amy mentioned example of somebody saying, well, you know, i have friends who are on the site in the paul, and if we get them the money, they can help victims immediately, directly themselves, and it doesn’t have to go through any bureaucracy, all right? Okay, well, that’s not using a charity and they’re not going to get a receipt from a charity for that type of donation. There was a fire in san francisco. I believe it was last month and a ninja vigil wanted to raise funds. Really? Charitably inclined, well intended on. And what he did was he raised one hundred fifty thousand, which he had no idea he was going to raise that much. I think he was planning to raise a few thousand to help some of the victims of that fire. He raised one hundred fifty thousand dollars. And, of course, if you give it to an individual, that the individual has no power to say that you gave it to a five, twenty three organization, and therefore you get no deduction. Okay, okay, i see. I see the distinction. Yes, all right. We also need to be aware of who is raising money under our name. Yeah, absolutely. So if charities are involved in an individual says to you, well, i’d like to raise money for your project, and i want to use a crowd funding site. The game has got that problem about, well, whether the charity is actually the named recipient on the crowdfunding site for the donations or where the individual is, and the individual’s own account is collecting the money, and then the individual man transferred that money to the charity again, you have the problem of the donor getting no receipt from the charity because the donation the check wasn’t actually to the charity was, too the crowdfunding site sort of processor that’s going to the individual and not to the charity it all unless that set up separately so that that the charity is the recipient and the individuals is basically just the agent, whether an employee or a volunteer that set it up for the charity that the donor has got to really beware of that, and of course, donors have to be where if they ever give two individuals because maybe doesn’t go to the victims of the earthquake in nepal are the victims of the fire in san francisco. Maybe itjust goes into somebody’s pocket, and you don’t really know how, because that may never get reported that’s true and and on the charity side, it seems like it would be its worth is investigating to see whether your name is being used by people that you haven’t authorized. Yeah, but how can we do that? That’s a great point, i think the easiest way to do it is just to google the charity’s name once a while, and you might even google it with the term crowdfunding just to check to see if anybody is started. A crowdfunding campaign with the name of your charity, but you’re actually not seeing any of those funds, and sometimes when they have checks, go out to the acronym of your charity. It’s very easy to set up before profit business with the same acronym and have all the funds go into that account. So fraud is a possibility, like when when you’re giving crowdfunding sites. So you want a cz a donor again? You want to be really careful about making sure that any donation that you make through a crowd funding site is actually going to the chair. I never thought of that setting up. See, i’m not a savvy thinker like these criminals are, and frankly, i never thought of incorporating a business that has the same initials as ah, as a charity as a big time charity and then and then collecting checks. Yeah, it’s actually a good tip for internal controls of the own organization because any volunteer or employee that handles cheques could also do the same thing with acronyms. So be very careful about that in your internal control you mentioned doing searches, but, you know, even severe way is and i i think every organization should do this is have alerts set for your name, whether it’s google alerts now, some time ago, maria and i talked about how google alerts were not really being not very sophisticated, and we weren’t even sure they were still supported. But there are other alert it’s companies that are free, they’ll give you a free like mention dot net is one that i use for my name and also for the hashtag non-profit radio and they give you a couple for free. Then. After that, you have to pay. But i think it’s, very smart. And then i have other alerts for my company and the show name and everything. I think it’s very smart to have alerts set for your organization name so that you you find out when it pops up real, you know, real time or near real time buy-in blog’s or on sites or, you know, wherever i think that’s fantastic advice in the press. Yeah, probably somebody might write about you in the press. Yeah, so all right, but from a risk management perspective, too. All right, gene pool. Uh, and, you know, beyond even the deductibility donation issue, if somebody’s using your name out there and harming it in any way your, you know, the loss of the value of your brand and the trust of the community is far more can be far more important than any loss of deduction by don’t. Yes, for sure, we’ve talked about that reputation. Um, what if we’re thinking about a cz, an organization engaging on a crowd funding site? We’re thinking about having a campaign, maybe it’s around an event, maybe it’s around a program or a building whatever it is. What? What? What tips? You have fur going about this dahna great question. And there there are so many crowdfunding sites out there. There are few that people are are well aware of who you are. Many people are well aware of, like kickstarter and indeed go go, go fund me or just a few of those, but there are literally thousands of crowd funding sites out there now, and you want to make sure that you’re connected. If you do connect with a crowd funding site that you’re connected with a very good one with very strong reputation with the clear understanding of what the terms are of the agreement and what type of seas they may be collecting, they also may be regulated if they’re providing fund-raising solicitation service gettinto, you’re getting into the whole morass now with the charity registrations, charity solicitation, registration morass yeah, which you’re an expert at, you know, if you know if there’s soliciting for you, if they’re controlling or receiving any money on behalf of your charity, and not just threw a payment processor like paypal, but they’re actually controlling it in one of their account or even if they’re advising you as to what to put in the content of your fund-raising solicitations, then they may be regulated as a commercial or professional fundraiser, or is fund-raising council basically anybody that’s soliciting or providing advice to the charity on solicitations and that’s, a regulated, regulated area that they’re gonna have to think about registering not only in the state in which they might be located, but in any state in which they’re engaging in felicitations without spending that could be all states so that’s something to be very careful now that okay, let’s, let’s, be careful now. That would be a burden if they were considered. And of course, the laws vary state by state. This is why it’s such a huge morass. I was going to use an expletive, but we’re on too many terrestrial affiliates. I can’t do that but it’s a morass. Okay, so because the different state laws but if a crowd funding site operator was considered a commercial now i lost it a fund-raising fund-raising counsel or you are a professional solicitor. Then you’re saying that that site would have to register, right? Yeah. That’s like would have to register. And the charity actually has some responsibility as well to make sure that they’re not engaging in a contract with a commercial fund-raising professional fundraiser fund-raising solicitor fund-raising counsel that is not registered, right? Well, then there’s disclose yes, the organization has the obligation in a lot of states to disclose those relationships and also teo disclose the start of any solicitation campaign using one of those individuals or companies, right? Right, whether it’s, crowdfunding or not, but let’s try to stick with crowdfunding, alright, i don’t wanna lose anybody here, okay, that for that morass, i think that’s as deep as we can go, but you have a but let’s give you a shout out. You have an article on this not that we’re wrapping up or anything, but on this solicitation and solicitation registration issue and on the issue that that the crowdfunding site operators could be considered fund-raising council, et cetera. Right? You have some blood post on that right at non-profit law block dot com? Yeah, definitely. If you just do a search on the block sight on crowdfunding, you’ll see a number of articles. Okay, some of them discussed that issue. Okay. Excellent. Right. But let’s weigh. Just have a minute and a half, by the way, before our break. Let’s, let’s, look at some other tips. I mean, if you’re if you’re going out to a crowd funding, you’re evaluating crowd funding sites. What what other things should you be looking about? Well, i think you want to look at how the system works, though some crowd funding sites are actually set up, his donor advised funds and that’s where their charities themselves and if they are charity themselves, what they’re going to do is they’re going to take the donation, which is going to be made in their name, and they’re going to take the advice of the donor to re grant it to your charity, but they actually don’t have the legal obligation to re granted to your charity. In that case, the only time when that’s really at risk if your charity happens to be in trouble, basically with the irs and spider onesie, tree status is in dispute or the attorney general is thing you’re doing something unlawful, then the crowdfunding site that’s a donor buy-in fund may decide that it’s not going to re granted to your charity and still re granted toe another organization with the same charitable purpose. So that’s. One thing to think about is what type of entity, whether the charitable entity or for-profit, ended the year crowdfunding site. Alright, let’s, we’ve got to go out for our break. We got some more tips that gene will share and got you some more live listener love, so 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. And naomi 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 are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m peter shankman, author of zombie loyalists, and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Time to send affiliate affections to all our affiliates around the country, especially jet out for k y our s. But all the affiliates love the am fm stations that are part of the non-profit radio. I don’t know, empire is that? Is that overstating it is ah, network. Maybe network is more appropriate. Empire maybe empire in june. By then it’ll be an empire. Let’s uh, let’s do more live listen love new bern, north carolina and tuscaloosa, alabama live listener love out to you and let’s go abroad. We have ah couple in japan, okazaki. And also super imahara, japan. Konnichiwa, brahma, sweden is with us. Welcome brahma, sweden. I don’t i don’t know how to say in your language, what’s the closest i can get our union. Yes, germany. Guten dog. But i know you don’t speak german in sweden and cerini i i know that but that’s that’s about the closest i can come. But i do know that seoul, south korea, multiple, as always on io haserot italy is with us, but i can’t see the city. Italy. I don’t know what you’re always masked. I don’t know you, roma. Vanessa. Uh, not really, gioia. Tauro, one of the chinchilla terra cities manure ola real majority i’ve been to all of them i wish i knew where you were, but live listen love to italy and also moving up north to ontario, canada sudbury live listen, love there also sorry jean had too little world tour. I hope you don’t mind that i love hearing where all the listeners in-kind that’s cool, is it? Yes around world. Unbelievable. Brahma, sweden i love that. Um, okay, more tips for evaluating on dh comparing potential crowd funding sites that we might use? Sure, i mean, one of the things that you have to look at is whether the crowdfunding site has rules about making a charitable contributions through their sight or not. So kickstarter doesn’t allow for general unsupportive solicitation and sorry, i’m restricted solicitations you have to solicit for a particular project starter, okay, so if you solicit for particular project now, you’re raising just restricted funds and not unrestricted funds. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re counting systems and that your your infrastructure is is ready to support that. You also have to figure out whether you’re issuing the proper type of receipt. To donors. So in kickstarter, again, if you’re raising for a particular project and tip what is very typical for kick starters, you raise funds and you give something to the donor or the or the contributor to the campaign in return for that a right, too, the first production of a book or were some some benefit there? So now you’ve got a quid pro quo contribution potentially if it’s not just the low cost of minimus item and you’ve got an issue, a proper receipt to that donor that says, well, here’s, your gift of one hundred dollars, but you received something of value of twenty five dollars, in return. Therefore, duck double portion of that payment is seventy five dollars. Something like that has got to be given to the donor, and if the crowdfunding site isn’t able to facilitate the charity to be ableto offer those proper quid pro quo disclosure statements, then you’ve got a problem. You just gotta make sure that your crowd funding sites are where the charity laws well, okay, there’s also a potential fees the side to make money sometimes off the off the money that’s raised so there’s feet potential and then also donors in formacion some of the sights will not share the donor information with you, ray, which is, which is a problem in fees. Yes, you do want to compare fees to make sure that they’re not exorbitant in relation to the type of campaign that you want to conduct. And it also may indicate whether the crowdfunding site operators operating with in-kind of the ethical parameters that charity’s think that they operate. And so for example, if a crowd funding site and i don’t believe any of the major ones do this. But if a crowd funding site is saying, we want to take a portion a percentage of your donations that let’s say exceeds ten percent or twenty percent, that that may really be a problem, and you may actually run into other regulated areas if you start to take a exorbitant fees where you’re actually sharing donations with a for-profit entity oh my yeah, i could see trouble there. Ok, ok, go ahead. Sorry, but typical a credit card processing fees three and a half percent on goff often there’s kind of ah, crowdfunding site c to provide that platform for you and then the credit card processing the to taking those donations. So, you know, anywhere, uh, you know, three to four to five percent for each of those things are a total of up to ten percent. It’s probably pretty common amongst the big crowd funding site operators. Okay, okay, privacy issues, right? There’s the issue we just mentioned are they sharing the donor information with you but privacy information? What are they doing with the data? People’s people’s data? Yeah, absolutely. And that’s another issue about whether they’re regulated, professional or not. So without diving into that too deep, if they’re really just providing the platform for you, they have to disclose your donors. And if they’re not willing to disclose your donors, you have a problem because that that information you’re entitled to and in many cases, you may have to report that if it’s a large contribution to the i r s as well so that’s that’s just ah, something that you need. I think when a charity uses a crowd funding site in terms of protecting the privacy of the donors, you do absolutely want to take a look at the crowd funding site operators privacy policy tto find out whether the donors that are contributing there are are going to be now subject to a bunch of others similar campaigns and have their emails splendid with solicitation or whether they’re going to give up other, you know, information that might create both legal or just a donor relation problems for your charity. We just have about a minute and a half left one minute actually left. Just today in the chronicle of philanthropy, i saw the minnesota attorney general suing a company called savers, and they’re they’re a brick and mortar store, and they give part of their part of the revenue or from items they sell goes to charity. But the charity’s aren’t being sued, but they’re being named and he was, like disabled american veterans, absolute epilepsy foundation, lupus foundation. So, you know, this is all related to your point that reputation could be out there even if you’re not doing something wrong. Yeah, and why you talked about monitoring how your organization is being used? Because sometimes and they don’t know about this particular case, but sometimes a commercial code venture, which is a little bit of a jargon the term but any for-profit that uses the charity’s name to say, well, if you buy from us will give a portion of the proceeds to this charity may be done without your knowing it as a charity, not knowing that they’re using your name and they should obviously be be letting you know that that’s happening. But you you do have a responsibility as a charity to make sure that, you know, when somebody’s conducting a campaign like that, we have two reportedly on your behalf. Jane, we have to leave it there. I thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you in ten days or so. Jean takagi at g tack on twitter and the non-profit lob log dot com thank you very much, gene. Thanks, tony. See, you bet next week to ntcdinosaur views emerging tech trends and now get buy-in if you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com where else would you go? Opportunity collaboration with world convenes for poverty alleviation. It’s outstanding and it’ll ruin you for every other conference opportunity collaboration dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff sound. Liebowitz is on the board as the line producer shows. Social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. I love when he affirms what i just said. 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 am 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 idealised took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is 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 dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for April 24, 2015: On Your Tech Horizon & Volunteer Issues

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Opportunity Collaboration: This working meeting on poverty reduction is unlike any other event you have attended. No plenary speeches, no panels, no PowerPoints. I was there last year and I’m going this year. It will ruin you for every other conference! October 11-16, Ixtapa, Mexico.

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Amy Sample WardOn Your Tech Horizon

Picture of Amy Sample WardThere are two trends you need to be ahead of: The web is becoming mobile-first and donations are coming in digital currency. Amy Sample Ward is our social media contributor and the CEO of Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN).

 

 

 

Gene TakagiVolunteer Issues

Gene TakagiYou love your volunteers. But they have issues. Gene Takagi shares his concerns around liability; qualifying and training; using employees; and driving. Plus, we’ll talk about the issues around Sweet Briar College’s closing. Gene is our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group.

 

 


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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 developed biliary calculus if i got stoned by the idea that you missed today’s show on your tech horizon, there are two trends you need to be away aware of and ahead of the web is becoming mobile first and donations air coming in digital currency. Amy sample ward is our social media contributor and the ceo of and ten non-profit technology network and volunteer issues. You love your volunteers, but they have issues. Jean takagi shares his concerns around liability, qualifying and training using employees as volunteers and driving. Plus, we’ll talk about the issues around sweet briar college is closing, genes are legal contributor and principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group you got antenna and neo and both on the west coast on tony’s take two thank you. Responsive by opportunity collaboration, the working meeting on poverty reduction that ruins you for every other conference i love having amy several word back on the show and here she is she’s the ceo hello, how are you good? I’m not used to getting to be on the first half. I know. I know that. Let me give you a proper introduction because we want people to know that your most recent co authored book is social change anytime everywhere about online multi-channel engagement and that your block is that amy sample war dot org’s and that on twitter you’re at amy r s ward for ah, ours for rene. Hey. Hello there. Hi. Yes. Congratulations on a very successful non-profit technology conference. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for being part of it again this year. I was thrilled. I loved it. And we haven’t played your interview yet from there, but but we will. It’s coming up. I had twenty five great great interviews from ntcdinosaur just last month. Right? Early march? Yeah, early martignetti i know. Oh, you cut out a little bit there. Are you on a regular ah, landline. I am on a regular phone. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah. Okay. You just cut out a couple of syllables, okay? No problem. Um, let’s. See? So we’re concerned about google paying muchmore attention now, too. Mobile friendly sites. What? What is this? About well, i think we’ve all you know, we’ve talked on the show before you and i about way’s tio recognize in all of your different channels where folks are coming from and google as one of the probably main observers of where people are coming from was using the web has also noticed, of course, that you know a lot a lot of web traffic weather, that two things we would consider social media, like twitter and facebook for just general web surfing looking things up on websites is coming from mobile devices. That doesn’t just mean somebody smart phone, it could be a tablet, you know they’re not sitting at the at their desk on a full computer, and the experience of using the web on a smaller device, especially when you don’t have a full keyboard can be unpleasant, to say the least. You imagine trying tio apply for a job or fill in a donation form or, you know, even write more than couple sentences on a lot of websites. It’s really tough to dio? Yes way! We’ve all had that frustration. Yeah, and google has already made adjustments in their algorithm and in other pieces. Of how you experience the web to try and support the best experience you can have. And this week they also added into their algorithm, teo help support search result rankings whether or not the content was mobile simply so if you were doing a search on your smartphone for something you probably want tohave prioritized for you, content that you will be able to read once you click through on that search result, right? So it isn’t necessarily saying that if you if you don’t have the most beautiful, mobile friendly website, that you will no longer show up in search results there or anything like that, it’s, just helping people on other devices hopefully find content. They can read easily on the device they’re using. And google says on their, uh, their blah ge. And i’ll include the linked to their announcement of this in the takeaways on the facebook page that this is going to be a quote, a significant impact in our in our search results. Yes, so this’s something that yes, you and i have talked about it. But now, because google search is changing its algorithm, it’s become quite a bit more urgent. Yeah, i think it’s become more urgent, and i think it also, um, you know, it will certainly impact what people think about when they’re thinking about search engine optimization. Ceo a phrase that anybody who’s ever tried toe look up, you know, how do i make my sight? Hyre in search results, how do i make my sight easier to find? Seo search engine optimization is the term that they would have come across and traditionally best practices around ceo were things like, you know, making sure that your titles had a title tag so that search engines could find what the title of that page was easily and, you know, you spell out people’s names that aaron photos so that they’re, you know, linked and associated with that page, things that were about the text and about what would be called the metadata behind the page, the things that maybe don’t show up but that a search engine can still read and tell what’s on that page and you know, at least this is being transparent and everyone’s being told exactly what they can d’oh, which is great, but it just means that when you’re thinking about search engine optimization, it isn’t just content and metadata is also how accessible that content is for people that might want to read it. And this this only applies in terms of the google search results. They will only be hyre analyzing for hours or or indexing for mobile friendly sites if you’re doing your search from some summer night mobile device, right? Like you said, phone or tablet cetera. Okay, okay, now it may not be for everybody. I mean, maybe maybe there are sites that don’t have very many visitors coming to their site from a mobile device. That’s true, i think everyone should be checking their analytics on your web site c see what portion of web traffic you already have from from mobile devices. I know at and ten we have a lot. We have around a third of our visitors, especially when you drill down into people who visited the site by clicking through from one of our emails when we send out an e mail for example, our monthly connect newsletter, which is a compilation of guest articles from the months a lot of people reading that and clicking through our reading on a mobile device. So for us, we knew that was really important to make sure the site was accessible in that way. But i know there are plenty of organizations who haven’t made made updating their website to be more mobile friendly a big priority, because when they look at their analytics, they see so few people coming that’s kind of ah, catch twenty two argument, of course, if your site is just impossible to read, well, people aren’t had come or there at least not going to stay on the site, so then you won’t have those hyre numbers, but if you do know your audience and or you know you’re content, maybe the content you you have is something that inherently is for people who are on a computer looking it up. You know, i recognize there’s, some nuance, that argument, but i think for most organizations, it is something that we need to work on doesn’t mean you have to drop everything you’re doing and make sure you have a mobile friendly website by monday morning, but i think recognizing that it is important and will only become more important going forward anyway, we can start making certain changes priorities now and build out for more complete mobile friendly websites. Overtime. Okay, thank you and thank you for keeping this all in perspective. And that was why i pointed out that it’s just search results that air from mobile devices. So while you may be impinged, you’re not going to be lost in certain google search results, okay? Let’s keep things in perspective, especially single, especially since my sight was flagged by beth cantor as being non mobile friendly when she was if you block this issue and she was talking about you being on the show, and she pointed out that tony martignetti dot com is not mobile friendly. Thank youfor, yeah, she called it right out, but what i would say and this isn’t a biased opinion because i’m on your show. I think that there are a few different kinds of web sites when it comes to qualifying for being not mobile friendly, so their websites that you click through and of course it looks just like it does on the web on your phone, which is how the tony martignetti site look, but when i’m looking at your site on the web, it’s also pretty straight forward, right? There’s a big main section of posts of content and then a sidebar. So if you are on a mobile device, it’s easier to just tap that main column and view that content, then say, if you were on, i mean, we can even use the antenna website. Our home page looks just like yours that you know you’re going to see the full thing just zoomed down into a tiny device, but because our home pages and designed like yours where they’re just kind of one column of content and then a sidebar it’s difficult to know how to drill down how to tap and scroll in because it’s just so big. So i would say for you at least, even though it isn’t necessarily passing all of the tests and getting all the green check boxes by google’s mobile test, it is still something that i could functionally access. Where, as you know, we definitely don’t think that the inten website if you hit the home page, at least, is easy to navigate by trying to come in. Okay. And we’re gonna, we’re gonna go out for a break. And then we’ll talk about where there’s mobile friendly test site is. So that people contest their own sites and will keep, continue keeping this in perspective. And we’re gonna talk about bitcoin and digital currency. 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. And levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising 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 for her. 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 guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent let’s do some live listener lovelace start abroad this time today in korea, we’ve got young sun, young, jean and soul all checking in korea on your haserot japan, only only tokyo today maybe others will check in, but a couple in tokyo can eat you are and also brooklyn now i’m sorry, that’s not very nice. Brooklyn, new york thank you for listening. Brooklyn that’s unkind sorry, you’re united arab emirates, you a even with us three, four times or so welcome from the united arab emirates we cannot see your city, but we know that you’re with us live, listener love always podcast pleasantries to people on the time shift, wherever you are, whatever device you’re listening on. I know it’s, i know we’re mobile abila optimized for podcast purposes, so you could be listening on the tablet or mobile or other or phone whatever you’ve got netbook we are ah, we’re optimized for that on the audio side, so podcast pleasantries and, of course, affiliate affections and i’m going to give a special shout out to our affiliate km jozy in the mid willamette valley. Because we’ve got amy amy on right now we’ve got the mid willamette valley around the portland and kaiser area non-profit radio for the capital and kaiser affiliate affections toe everybody throughout the country listening and one of the affiliate stations. Okay, i’m jozy have you ever been down there to visit them in? Ah, in portland and kaiser? Amy, i’ve never visited the station, but i’ve certainly been tio most everywhere in their service area. Have you ok, you’ve been down to the mid willamette valley? Oh, yes, ok, i’m hoping to get there and on the west coast trip after you have to let them know this mobile friendly test site that my sight failed. This’s what you were referring, teo green check boxes, green checks and little or you get red x is it’s i think if you just search mobile friendly test site and google, you’ll you’ll get it instantly. I also tweeted it already while we were talking on the non-profit radio hashtag that’s from the general you are if you’re listening and you’re really quick and you’ve got your browser open, you could just type in. Google dot com slash web masters flash tools flash mobile dash friendly. And it all take you to the test. Okay. All right. That’s. Very multi-channel of you. Thank you. I got red x is for, um, uh, text is too small. Lynx too close together and ah, there’s something else and was content wider than the screen. Um, yes. Yeah, that may. That may have been the third one that there were three things and i only wrote down two for somebody. Yeah, may be content to what? Yeah, something like that. That’s, right? That’s, right? All right, but we’re gonna work on it. We’re going to first look at the percentage of people who come from a mobile device. I would say, though, that my podcast in defense but the podcast site where people go to actually listen. If you’re not subscribed, we gotto listen. That is mobile friendly. So i passed one out of two sites is good. Exactly. And i think that’s a great segue way, whether you mentioned is that or not too how to think about what you should do with your life. Folks that are listening are also getting those red xs and failing failing the test you don’t necessarily overnight. And like i said before monday morning, you don’t need to come into the office with a whole new site that’s totally mobile friendly, but if you know that there are specific pieces of content, parts of your website, certain actions that you’re regularly promoting make those the top priority for being mobile friendly for you. Tony, you know that you’re not necessarily telling people every day on twitter say hey, go read every part of my website you’re telling people to go listen to the show live or or go download the podcast and listen, you know, on their commute home and that pathway that clicking through from twitter over to the listen side and browsing whichever episode they want to listen to. That experience is mobile friendly on dh that’s i think what really matters right now for your content, you can work overtime to optimize the rest of your site, but the pieces you’re regularly promoting and the pieces of content people would probably want to access from all different kinds of devices you have made accessible school. All right, i feel all right about that. Yeah, things keep things in perspective. Exactly. Exactly. I mean on the other side, you know, i’ve i’ve said the inten website also failed those tests, you know don’t feel bad about that, but we knew that, you know, over a year ago when we started and is part of why we started our website redesign and have definitely made accessibility a central part of the redesign. So, you know, we didn’t know that april twenty first, when google was changing that over was coming, but our site a launch next month, the new site. But in the meantime, you know those pieces where we know people are trying to visit from all different kinds of devices we have made mobile friendly, you know, from the very beginning and that’s been the case since we launched those different tools. So the conference website, you know, when your live at the mtc and you want to look up the schedule, that experience has been mobile friendly from the beginning, our community platform where people are, you know, participating in online discussions, things like that, that pathway, you know, getting an email notification that somebody replied to you and log him in and, you know, participating there that those processes are mobile friendly. Even though hitting the home page of intend that organ, at least for one more months is not all right. Well, very sensible on dh planned out. Okay, i see sam. Sam just went to the site and he’s checking the double diamond and talking alternative sites that we both passed. Sam, no talking alternative did not did not. All right, well, he’s, keeping it in perspective again. All right, set a four times already. Anything else you wanna say about this mobile friendly issue before we moved to digital currency and bitcoin? I guess the last thing that i would say is if you’re going on tio, you’re going online where and running the test. Checking out your sight know that on the google site where you’re doing these tests, they have also included some really helpful overviews of what to do, depending on what kind of site you have. So you can get tips specific to the type of website you have if you’re using droop a laure, wordpress or tumbler or you know, whatever, however your side is built, they’ve anticipated that and those questions and there are some some really easy to follow steps on you. Know potential ways to make your sight mobile friendly without having to do an entire website redesign. Excellent. Thank you, bitcoin. Now i first got introduced on while the show to bitcoin from non-profit technology conference last year twenty fourteen there were a couple of guests from canada holly, holly, wag was one and jason shimatsu, holly wagon, jason, jim and jason especially was talking a good deal about bitcoin, but it’s becoming now, and i’m probably just in the past year, it’s becoming a lot more popular. Wall street journal had an article, so you thought it made sense to talk about yeah, attention has definitely been bitcoin proponent in the end ten community and i think this year at the mtc, he and david neff and a few others had facilitated a conversation during one of the connect sessions as well. So if folks are interested in talking more theirs definitely a contingent in the end ten community that is happy to answer questions that already taking that coin as donations that they’re non-profits i’m happy to get folks connected. Is that conversations they want tohave after today? Outstanding thank you. And of course, you don’t have to. Be an intend member toe get a lot of the benefits on dh participation at intent, but you should be a member because it’s really a great value, but you don’t have to be so let’s acquaint people with bitcoin this this digital currency? Can you do that? Yes. So i think you know there’s, at least in my conversations with organizations there’s two pieces to try to conceptualize one is the actual currency bit he like what? What does that mean? Like a kind of money that i can’t put in my wallet? So that’s just how it’s going to be you know you can’t request that it turns into a money you can put in your wallet, but it is a digital currency totally operated and administered online. The the record of you know how many bitcoins honey you have versus how many i have is is part of the public record and administration of the currency online, so at any time you can go online and see what the what what it’s valued at what a single bitcoin is value that and how much bitcoin is in circulation and where the other part that i definitely hear. From organizations when we’re talking about bitcoin is how how does that translate? Like, how would we touch that as a non profit organization? And i think one way to think about it is, you know, when we when organization started accepting donations on line one one kind of action that a lot of organizations are very familiar with now was setting up a paypal account, right? So we set up that account, we connected it probably to our organization’s bank account for direct deposit and everything. And then we just put on our website that button, right that’s the button that donate by paypal that’s basically the same experience you khun offer now to people you can sign up with a bitcoin processor bit pay is probably the most prominent and it’s the same thing you’d get you set up your account so it’s connected to your bank account, because in the end you really will be getting bitcoins converted by bit pay into direct cash donations, so your end of the equation will still be that same experience where it’s cash that’s being donated and you’re sending off that email that thanks for your donation of you know x amount of dollars and here’s, our charitable information, you know, for your tax violence? Yes, it helps quite a your enough. They’re so bit pays managing. Okay, somebody on, you know and tens website click the button i you know, bit pays taking the donations of those bitcoins, converting them in there current, you know, real value into cash and putting that into our accounts. Yes. So it it’s worth having a processor so that you are dealing with u s dollars or canadian dollars or whatever your currency you might be british. Don’t imagine there’s many non-profit who want to unnecessarily be accepting bitcoin donations as bitcoin. Managing them is bitcoin and then looking for opportunities tio use that bitcoin is a currency where their pay, you know, be accepted these donations we’re keeping it as bitcoin. And then we’re changing this out and that’s for two reasons. One now you’re an organization who’s got, you know your bank account and most of your money on your financials all managed. And then over here you have this one. Probably very tiny pool of a totally different currency, which is just a difficult administration process, right? But the other part of that is that last year, the us government said bitcoin is actually considered for taxable purposes as property and not his currency, so that means you would need to be men, you know, managing and eligible to be paying a gains and all of that, you probably don’t want todo, right? Yeah, the easiest way to think about that the implication of that part of it is if you were trading in securities, it’s it’s treated luxuries like property, which is security is stocks and bonds we’re talking about, not like, like currency or cash, and you don’t want to be dealing in that and in that and having to worry about fluctuations and exactly like you just said capital gains and losses, and so, um, especially because bitcoin for organizations who are now accepting donations is bitcoin, you know what they’re actually getting in, that donation is similar to, you know, maybe other kind of alternative online donation campaigns where what you’re getting is a donation of three dollars or ten dollars, you know at a time so the idea that you would be getting all of these kind of small little chunks of bitcoin that you’re having tio account for and track and voter henschel li pai against capital gains and losses like, oh my gosh, that just sounds like work you don’t want to dio so using processor that will just convert that at that moment of donation into the cash on your end and give you that donation, you know, you send your your e mail receipt to that donor and you’re done standard process i think it’s so much more realistic we have ah, we have run out of time, so i’m just going to say this that another advantage to bitcoin is that the the processing fees are lower than credit card fees on dh, of course. Well, in many cases, there isn’t a b okay. Ah, and we’ll have ah links on the facebook page takeaways amy sample ward on twitter at amy rs ward. Thank you very much, amy, thanks so much for having me. My pleasure as always. Thank you, tony’s. Take two and volunteer issues coming up. First opportunity collaboration. This is the annual unconference in x stop a mexico. It was last october was my first time going again this october. The subject is poverty alleviation in all its different forms, and there were people working around social justice or working directly with the poor. There were people doing health and sanitation. I met people doing water projects, for instance, whatever it is that you’re doing in a poverty region to alleviate, and ideally reduce well should, say, eliminate, ideally, eliminate the poverty. Um, if it’s, if that’s the type of work that you’re doing, then opportunity, collaboration is something that i suggest you check out. Amy sample ward is going to be there actually, this year, they are at opportunity, collaboration, dot net. If you’re at work, is it all related to poverty reduction? I was honored by hermandad last night. The organization that does water projects brings fresh water, too poor parts of the dominican republic. And you were with me. You really did make it a double honor because non-profit radio listeners stepped up and i thank you very much. I’ll have details next week, after all the gifts have come in. Ah, and i’ll do the video, etcetera, but i’ll have a little more for us next week. But at this point, thank you very much. That’s tony’s, take two for friday, twenty fourth of april sixteenth show of the year. And i’m very pleased that our other west coast contributors here that’s jean takagi he’s, managing editor, managing attorney of neo non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the popular non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter he’s at g tak e ta ke welcome back, jean. Hi, tony. Great to be back. Oh, thank you. Great to have you back. Um, we’re talking today about volunteers. There’s there could be issues that non-profits maybe overlooking and they may think just because it’s a good hearted volunteer and they’re non-profit doing good charitable work that there won’t be any legal problems. Yeah. It’s an interesting thing. I want to say that volunteers are really the life blood of many, many the vast majority of non-profit. So we really love volunteers. But we want to think about protecting our organizations and protecting our volunteers as well. So i think we at least have to consider some of the possible liabilities that might be created by the acts of volunteers. And in some circumstances, they could be considered employees. Yeah, volunteers could be considered employees if you decide you want to pay for their services. So sometimes that that seems pretty obvious. If you pay somebody there, they’re probably either an employee or an independent contractor. But a lot of people think, well, if i pay somebody who used to be a volunteer, maybe i can keep them on volunteer status. As long as i call that payment a stipend. That may not be true. It all okay. That’s. That’s? Yeah. That’s just doesn’t smell good either. No. Okay, so what are what are some of our, uh, issues as we as we drill down some of the potential liability? Well, i just think about if you if you hired a volunteer and you decided that you were going to go, you know, you had a summer camping program supervising children, and you brought in a volunteer. And that volunteer ended up doing something terrible that got one of the children hurt. Now, what type of responsibility should the non-profit have, you know, would respect protecting that child, who, whose parents decided to send them to that summer cap and trusted the vault, the non-profit teo, to protect that child. So that’s sort of just opens up the the sort of kan, if you will, or pandora’s box of all of the potential issues that might be involved with bringing in a volunteer. Okay, that’s, ah, that’s, a cool example. The the recruitment right or the or the hiring of volunteers, for instance, right? So, i mean, if you if you hired in that example, if you hired somebody that had a criminal record of sexual abuse and predatory behavior again, children, my gosh, you know, you should be held responsible for not not doing some level of screening when when allowing that an employee or volunteer teo interact and possibly supervised kids in those situations for employees, oftentimes you must screen them. You must do a background check by law. In many cases, when they’re working with children with volunteers, they might not fit under the same category in terms of the, uh, legal protections for the children. But it really is up to the non-profit to create some polish he’s to make sure that when they’re recruiting, when they’re hiring, that they’re doing so without negligence and doing so with reasonable care under the circumstances. Yeah, you’re also concerned about how much authority of volunteer has yeah, you know, so, you know, we can imagine again if we put that volunteer, and maybe we did screen that person, so there is no criminal problem in no predatory behavior. But the person has never actually worked with children before, and now all of a sudden there’s a fight between the kids or, you know, kid has an allergic reaction to food, and he doesn’t know or she doesn’t know what to do and so clearly delegating authority, providing some sort of supervision, some sort of training for that person, probably limiting their authority, especially in the beginning so that you’ve got somebody who knows what to do it in, you know, totally foreseeable circumstances when you’re working with children or when you’re working in whatever environment the volunteer is going to be working, it is really important you just don’t want to throw the volunteer out there and say, do this, and you’re on, you’re on your own, you know, in this conversation, a lot of what we’re talking about just sounds like it’s perfectly parallel with the the way you bring on ah, new employees, i think so. So the more responsibility of volunteer has and it’s close to ninety percent of all organizations that are completely run by volunteers. So that’s really a lot of non-profits that that really dependent on their volunteers and of the other? You know, ten to fifteen percent, a lot of the programmatic work is aided by the assistance of volunteers, so we’ve got to be very careful if they’re really taking on the rolls, even though they’re doing it out of the, you know, goodness of their heart if they’re taking on the rules of responsibilities, of running a program, supervising other individuals, supervising children, you know, and doing whatever work that needs to be done that you’re going to rely on is the non-profit that it’s going to be okay? You’ve got to make sure that you pick the right people and that you adequately equipped and trained them so that they could do the job they were set out to do so then also following this parallel than discipline do write an evaluation, yes, just the same way you might hyre volunteer, especially if they’re going to be working a lot of hours, or they have a lot of supervisory authority or just a lot of the individual autonomy and doing what they’re doing without a lot of direct oversight, you’re going to also hold them to your, you know, code of conduct, which is something i would recommend. That organization tack for their volunteers? Certainly a job description that’s very clear in terms of what is expected, who that person supervisor is and, you know, the statement that they must take the direction of that supervisor who’s in charge, and if they’re not following that code of honor, or if they’re in subordinate t the supervision, i think you’ve got to be ableto have some disciplinary procedures similar to an employee, but of course they’re not they don’t get the employees protection that employee’s house. So, you know, if if you feel like there’s just an unsafe or very bad environment caused by a volunteer, you have to be prepared to terminate that volunteer should there be a contract with volunteers or something that they signed that’s not legally binding as a contract? Yeah. And, um, really good showing your legal back-up sarrantonio agreement might might not be binding on a volunteer that’s entering into a contract for providing free services to the non-profit it may or may not be binding, depending upon how you phrase it, i think most non-profits don’t necessarily want it have legal, you know, lawsuits resulting from a breach of contract by a volunteer who failed to do their duties. But some sort of informal, maybe non binding agreement or memorandum of understanding for the volunteer, i think is great. So even if we call it a volunteer agreement just specifying what their duties are what’s expected of them and what type of disciplinary actions might follow if they’re unable to perform their jobs or unwilling to perform theirjob, i think all of that is a good idea. Okay, um, we’ve been talking about protecting the non-profit. How about protections for the volunteers? I mean, there is something called a volunteer protection act. Yeah, and i think for a lot of volunteers, many of them serve on the board of organizations. I know i served on a few boards, and i would like to know that i’m protected in case something i do in the scope of my duties for that organization result in a lawsuit coming and perhaps the lawsuit that that hyre where the lawsuit alleges that both the organization and the volunteer director are defendants, the volunteer director will be looking for some sort of protection in that case if here she was totally acting reasonably in the scope of their duties. But if their suit, personally, some money might have to come out from their personal countess organization doesn’t have the money to indemnify the director, even though the organization may be required to understate laws. So we’ve got this federal volunteer protection act that’s out there that says that volunteers generally aren’t liable for simple negligence if the actor within the scope of the volunteers responsibility, but that’s another good reason for having some sort of written agreement that actually spells out the volunteers responsibilities so that’s actually very clear and that would be protected for the volunteer is well, in that case, i should let you know that that limited protection is contingent on many things, and if somebody that got hurt said that the director or other volunteer was grossly negligent and simply negligent, then the volunteer at protection act may not protect that. Volunteer it all, so insurance becomes a very important thing to protect volunteers. And for the organization itself, toe have adequate insurance of for liability for directors and officers, which often cover other employees and agents and volunteers. That would be important. Finally, i think the protection that volunteers have to worry about is what if the volunteer themselves gets hurt in the scope of the duty so they’re volunteer at the summer camp, who in this case is perfectly doing a great job in his excellent is wonderful for the children, but he trips over a log on a hiking path and breaks his arm. Who pays for that? And if the non-profit is goingto, you know, have to pay for that. Dino coverage will not will not cover that, probably volunteer accident insurance at the non-profit might consider getting to protect their volunteers. In case that happens, guys, the volunteers may be personally responsible for paying their own medical costs, even though they were acting completely in the scope of the responsibilities for the non-profit the d a know that you mentioned the directors and officers insurance, you and i have talked a good bit about that when we’ve talked about board generally bored issues and protections, and we have talked about to the you just mentioned the potential for personal liability of board members as as fiduciaries to the organization, but now you were talking broader, and that could be personal liability for non board members. If volunteers are going outside the scope of their responsibilities, it sounds like yeah, so if they’re going outside of the scope of the responsibility, volunteers could certainly be held liable and non-profits or small and don’t have a lot of money and the non-profit doesn’t have any insurance. Well, then the person that got hurt might say, you know, i don’t really want to do it, but i’ve got to sue you because you’ve got the deeper pockets than this non-profit that has no money, no, you’re going to have to pay for my medical costs because you had me on this hiking trail and i tripped and it was dangerous, and i didn’t sign a waiver of liability, which may be something else we could talk about, so, you know, i’m gonna have to sue you, and you’re gonna have to pay for it and there’s no insurance to cover that, then, you know, wait, we just have a couple of minutes. Before a break, and then we’re gonna move on to ah sametz use around the sweet briar college closing, but the the volunteer does always have the possibility of just saying that they don’t want to do something, just say no, yeah, that’s sometimes got to be the best volunteer tre tek shin and the non-profits have to make sure that the volunteers feel comfortable of saying, i don’t have the skills or the background or the experience to do what you’re asking of me, so you can either train me and i could get up to speed on that or you’ve got to find somebody else. Those volunteers field pressured into doing something that they can’t handle that’s going to look really bad on the non-profit well, maybe i’m not qualified. Teo, be the range official on the shooting at the shooting range or the archery range. Yeah example, and there was a lawsuit filed where somebody was instructing on scuba diving ono instructed, and it wasn’t a certified scuba divers. Oh, no, don’t well, i was i was a lifeguard at the town pool when i was sixteen. All right, all right, i think what? Let’s, go out. A little early for our break. When we come back, jean and i, i’ll have a little more live. Listen, love domestic this time, and jean and i are going to move to the sweet briar college closing. 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 philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to retweet 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 guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. If you have big dreams in a small budget tune into tony martignetti non-profit radio, i d’oh. I’m adam braun, founder of pencils of promise. Let’s do domestic live listener love and i want to give a shout out to brooklyn, new york. I feel bad that i was mean to them. Brooklyn, new york love you love you. Thank you for being with us. Woodbridge, new jersey, seattle, washington, oregon. We can’t see that i don’t know what town, but oregon is with us st louis, missouri, san francisco, california and multiple san francisco’s not only gene altum pandu jersey welcome live listener love going out to all our domestic live listeners. And then we joined a couple of a couple joined us from abroad. Denmark i am not going to offend you by attempting to pronounce the name of your city in denmark. But we see you denmark and we see loads in poland live listener love jean sweet briar college is having some trouble getting a lot of popular press because they’re closing. Andi just have, you know, like five minutes or so teo sort of summarized there’s a possibility that the court in in california may substitute its judgment for the board and determining whether sweet prior should close. Yeah, i think it’s in virginia, virginia, i’m sorry. That’s right. Sweet. Bar virginia, you’re absolutely right. Thank you. Yes, it’s, you know, woman’s college in virginia and the board decided that it’s going to close down shut down the non-profit after the summer session and they said basically, they’ve got insurmountable financial challenges. Um and, you know, boards generally have the authority where there isn’t a voting membership structures, so not a voting member ship structure like a union or a homeowner’s association, but most non-profits just are run by their boards, and when there isn’t this voting member substructure board generally have the authority to close down the organization if they think that the best way to advance the mission uh, it is to close down because other organizations just khun khun operate mohr effectively and more efficiently, and they no longer had the capacity to do so. But in this case, the a lot of, you know, teachers, faculty, duitz i’m nam and i write, you know, we’re saying this is ridiculous, you know, this is maybe just a failure of this board and this president to be able to turn this college around, um and they even convinced the county’s er attorney to file a suit on behalf. Of virginia seeking to block that closing and force the removal of the board and the president. But the judge said that, you know, the county didn’t, you know, not quite have the right to sue on charitable trust grounds, but did have the right to say that, you know, to sue at least there was no decision made on this, but did have the right to sue on violating the charitable solicitation laws, which basically say, if you’ve given money to support the advancement of the mission of the school that may be closing, the school is not in the advancement of the mission, so you can start to use money you raised recently that where were you already knew you were going to close the school and use that money to close the school so that’s basically the limited judgment that that the judge has made and now a whole bunch of other lawsuits, all looking at all these different legal theories are sort of popping up. And so this goes to the er intended purpose of the gifts no one gave to sweet briar with the intention of the money being used to close the college right? I right now that i think they’re proceeding with the closing, the board and the president, but they’re using unrestricted funds now there’s a question about even if we didn’t specify that this fund was specifically or, you know, a professor or one part of it wasn’t designated, but yeah, even argast resonated, but we don’t think you could use it to close down the non-profit now, personally, i don’t think that argument is goingto work because, again sometimes advancing the non-profits mission is not necessarily keeping it afloat if it’s just bleeding money and not doing a very good job purse during the mission, there has to be some discretion if if the board is in charge of the organization to be able to close down and i don’t know sweet briars like sort of specific governance issue’s on whether the board has really tried that, and it is somewhat problematic that they didn’t actually go out and seek some help from the alumni and students and faculties and donors and supporters about what they were doing and that they continued to generally fund-raising when they already you made the decision to close down, i think those are all problematic statement, but i do find it difficult to have a court come in and say that no, you can’t shut down the non-profit all, you have to keep operating. So you feel that the undesignated unrestricted gif ts to a non-profit really are to be used at the discretion of the board and the trustees. Yeah, but they’re held up toe a fiduciary duty, you know, to work in the best interest of the organization. And in that case, you know, really in the best interest of the organization’s mission of how well it can advance the mission and it’s interesting you you opened with the best way to advance the mission may be to close the institution. Yeah, in some cases it is and, you know, no institution lives forever, you know, every institution that we know of has some life. Okay? Okay, um, the we still have a couple of minutes left. There’s the issue of i wasn’t sure we’d have time for this, but the standing, whether whether alumni have the right to sue a college, help us understand that he has i mean, i think that would be the case of any non-profit organization do. Other people apart from the board members have the right to sue the non-profit because they feel like the non-profit isn’t doing a good job. Well, if that was the case, they would probably see the non-profit and the board members. And if that was the case, i don’t think you’ll find very many people deciding to volunteers, board members. Mmm. So some people that do have standing in this case are voting members again, you know, typically you see those in, like, labor unions, homeowner’s association’s, professional associations where members actually elect the board members and you might get the proxy notice just like a shareholder has for-profit corporation to vote for who you want on the way ported nineteen members are like shareholders and have the right to suit the organization and the board, but if they don’t have voting members, we probably don’t want people in the general public to be able to sue a non-profit because they don’t think the non-profit is doing a good job, and they may not see any of the, you know, the things that the board members see in terms of understanding what non-profit is actually going through it’s, not you. Know, they may not know anything else about the non-profit that back-up, you know that it provided the service that they want benefited from, and they don’t want it to stop. Even though we asked donors to invest in our organization, the law is not seeing them as investors, shareholders. The way, ah, shareholder, that that allex board members is seen in the law. We have to write, so they fired all the contribution that i make to a charity doesn’t give me the right to sue the charity, because i don’t like what they do. We gotta leave it there. Gene takagi, thank you so much. Managing attorney of neo and it’s, the non-profit law, blawg dot com and is at gi tak on twitter. Thank you very much, gene. Next week, we have two ntcdinosaur views, multi-channel storytelling and your disaster recovery plan, one’s, uplifting and the others potential crisis. If you’re not managing things right, if you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com, where in the world else would you go? I don’t really sing that very well. Where in the world else would you go? We’ll drop this shortly. Don’t worry, opportunity, collaboration, the world convenes for poverty reduction, it’s, an outstanding unconference it will ruin you for every other conference, really that’s, true opportunity, collaboration, dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our 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 p m so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe. Add an email address 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. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this public radio host majora carter innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for February 6, 2015: Corporate Coffers & Committee Confab

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Linda LysakowskiCorporate Coffers

Linda Lysakowski smallLinda Lysakowski, ACFRE, is a development consultant with nearly 30 years of experience. She wants you to systematize and formalize your corporate appeals; pay attention to small companies; and be more strategic with cultivation.

 

 

 

Gene TakagiCommittee Confab

Gene TakagiGene Takagi returns. He’s our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO). He’s all about committees this month! How are board committees different than advisory committees? How much authority should be delegated to them? What are the pros and cons of executive committees?

 

 


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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. Welcome again to our new affiliate km use e eighty eight point five and one hundred point seven fm in salem and keizer, oregon non-profit radio for the capital and kaiser km jozy, thank you very much for being with us. We’ve got a listener of the week. Jenny are nez she’s, a huge supporter of non-profit radio on twitter, always recommending the show and sharing our tweets she’s at jenny or nez jenny, i’ll send you a video of the non-profit radio library. You pick a book and it’s yours. Congratulations on being our listener of the week jenny are nez which it’s kind of reminds me of dizzy yarn is from the i love lucy show. I don’t know. I wonder if that’s a granddaughter are you are you the granddaughter of dizzy? Have a show from the archive today? And a rich archive. It is here’s our february seventh twenty fourteen show i’ll be back at the end. 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 very glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of a calcula if i had to shoulder the burden of knowing that you were going to miss this week’s show corporate coffers. Linda, listen kowski a c f r ee is a development consultant with nearly thirty years of experience. She wants you to systematize and formalize your corporate appeals. Pay attention to small companies and be more strategic with cultivation and committee. Khanfar ab jean takagi is back he’s, our legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo is all about committees this month. How are bored? Tum it he’s different than advisory committees. How much authority should be delegated to them? And what are the pros and cons of executive committees between the guests? Antony’s, take two. I have an abundance of alliteration were brought to you by rally bound peer-to-peer fund-raising and by telephone bill reduction consulting t brc. Getting your money back from phone bill screwups. My pleasure to welcome to the show, linda. Like kowski, she is one of one hundred professionals worldwide. Toe hold the advanced certified fund-raising executive designation. She has thirty years in non-profit development and one of her many books is raised more money from your business community. She’s at linda lissa kowski dot com you could follow her on twitter where she’s at l listen, kowski llc linda lisa caskey, welcome thanks, tony it’s. Glad i’m glad to be here happy to be with your audience today. Thank you very much. I’m glad you are too, and i i think it’s safe for me to speak for them to them, for them that that they’re glad you’re here too. Tell me about this cfr lots of lots of people are cf ari’s certified fund-raising executive, but you’re in advanced certified fund-raising executive, right and the uncertified fund-raising executive i used to be able to say i was one of fewer than one hundred, but just recently, within the last couple of months, we accepted number ninety nine and number one hundred into the fold um and it’s really an honor to be counted among the cfr ese it’s, a long, grueling process, but i think it’s well worth it in the end, it’s it’s a process that you go through if you’re really dedicated to this profession and one hundred of us at least are. And you have to be invited. Teo too do the work to get the a before your cf, ari. Well, the process is that you have to be a c f ar e already. Andi, i have been in the profession ten years or more. And then what makes us a little bit different from the cfr e to see if our reprocesses you take an exam and the review committee looks at your exam and make sure there’s no ethical violations on your record and then you’re automatically approved with e f r ee it’s really a four step process? It’s the application itself, and then you do take a written exam, which is obviously a little bit harder than the cfr e exam. And then you put together a portfolio showing your work and at least two a p f r ee piers will review that portfolio and then the third part of the fourth part of the process is on aural exam. Where again, about three, of your peers will take you through about a three hour process where you give your oral answers to questions that are thrown at. You by this group sametz pretty grueling process. Ok, i happen to be a u a c f r ee ultra advanced there’s there’s. Only one of us, though. I know that that’s. Pretty cool. I guess i’m gonna have to try to get to be number two in that group. Well, i don’t think you’re qualified. I’m sorry. Probably not. It’s the next level up, but it sze very secretive, like the masons for, like free masons. Usc fr ee. Okay, so i have to learn a secret handshake that well, if you’re qualified, but i don’t believe that you are. I’m sorry. Okay, okay. We’re talking about corporate giving. And specifically, i think small companies, but but before we get into big versus small there’s lots of forms of corporate giving, right, but it’s way beyond just just money. Yes, yes, there is. You know? And i think sometimes we kind of forget the many ways that corporations who contribute to the non-profit world besides e-giving cash, which most of us are familiar with cash or grant there is in-kind there’s corporate volunteer programs, which can be really magnificent for a lot of organizations. And some corporations like to do sponsorship? Not so much of sponsorship of events, but other sponsorship may be sponsoring one of your program. Something like that. So there’s a whole variety of pockets you khun delve into? Yeah, there’s also giving of inventory, right? Gif ts in-kind right. Right. Ok. And i’ve had some clients really be very successful with gifts. In-kind i could also tell you a bunch of horror stories about gifts and well, okay, we’ll hold the heart stories, but just, uh well, maybe, but we know that just want to set the ground work. We know there’s lots of different ways that we could be approaching cos on dh. You also want people to think broadly about the kinds of companies they approach you. We’ll identify a lot of under the radar businesses, right? Right. And i think a lot of times we tend to always look at those the company’s in our community whether their banks are hi tech companies. But there’s, every community has a couple companies that everybody thinks someone that’s like. Okay, how can we raise some money from the business sector? And they all tend to think of a big company. I called the willie sutton theory that’s probably because i spent a lot of years in banking before i was involved in the nonprofit world, but, you know, they one day it’s really sudden white, he robbed banks, and he said, because that’s, where the money is and sometimes that’s the impression that we get some of those big companies but us for all the money is i am to live near las vegas and in our community, it’s, let’s go after the big casinos because, look, i have all this money, and we just kind of roll up with our little plastic cup and asked him to fill it with money, and it doesn’t always work that easy, right? So let’s, identify some of the, uh, the under under the radars and you like your name, like pest control movers, landscapers, right? Small, small companies that are often get overlooked by the way that that willie sutton story according to wikipedia, he didn’t really say that. That’s a pocketful. You know, i just heard that recently to that it was actually a reporter who described that statement to him, but by still called the willie sutton xero describe doing me, whether he said it or not, that’s hard. I don’t think we’ll take away your cfr designation because i hope not it’s, not that that’s not really an ethical breach. It’s, just a little fib a little fairy town not doesn’t reach the eye to the level of ethical oversight, i guess in the next edition of the book will have to say that statement was described to willie said it or not, ok, let’s, talk about some of that well, how to get started with this. I mean, i would think now we have lots of different sized companies on. We have lots of different ways that we can approach various sized companies, so that creates a lot of variables. Should we be starting with what our goals are? Starting with goals is always important. Looking at how many companies, realistically or in your community, how many you think you might be able to reach and that’s going to be based a lot on how many staff and or volunteers you have to reach out to the business community. And i really stressed the word volunteers because sometimes staff people think they have to do this all by themselves and i have found that the best way to reach the corporate sector is tohave appear make that peer-to-peer solicitation. So if you have volunteers on your board, your development committee, ah, a special committee that set up just to do a corporate animal appeal, you’ll be able to use what i call the five to one rule, and this is a pretty common thing and fund-raising that no one volunteer is to make more than five calls when you’re talking about going out, personally visiting with someone and that’s what we’re talking about because personal solicitation is really the only way to get to the corporate community. I find direct mail doesn’t work, and most of the time, phone calls don’t work because the decision makers don’t take phone calls or open mail, okay, you through a lot of stare in terms of volunteers and how to approach and whether events versus one on one is best, so we’re gonna unpack that we’re going to take a break for a couple minutes when we come back. Linda and i well, keep talking about corporate coffers, stay with us. 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. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Time to send some live listener love stew start domestic new york, new york, minneapolis, minnesota, new bern, north carolina live listener love to you, seoul, korea got many people in seoul and others that are whose city is masked. So soul i wonder if you know the three or four people in seoul who are listening. Or do you ah, do you all know each other? I wonder. Can non-profit radio bring you together in soul? And of course, for our korean listeners on your haserot many in japan, tokyo, ujiie and one or two others were not sure who are who are masked japanese sorry to our japanese listeners. Konnichi wa ok, linda, listen kowski let’s, unpack some of that stuff that you let us into let’s begin with how to approach the companies you you suggest in in your book a cultivation event? Yes, i think cultivation events are a great way to get to know the business leaders and have them get to know you. Lots of times. The organizations think they just go knock on the door or send a letter and suddenly they’re going to raise all this money from the business sector, but these businesses a run by people, we have to remember that, and people need to get to know your organization before they’re going to support it. So i’ve had some very successful cultivation events were business leaders are invited in, always hosted by another business leader not hosted by your executive director or someone within your organization, and i think that’s one of the keys to success here is who does the inviting? I remember one working with the homeless shelter group, and they had a key business leader in their community invite other business leaders in they thought they’d get about twenty, some people, they sent out seventy five invitations, and just about everybody they invited showed up mainly because of the host so that’s a big key teo successful cultivation event. You profile that example in the book and then go a little further and talk about how how moved the breakfast attendees were yes, what we did was we started this it’s seven thirty in the morning and on the east coast, especially of the united states, i think you know, if you want to. Get business leaders have it first thing in the morning because they want to come in, get out there and get back to their office before the day gets away from them. So we had a seven thirty eight, fifty eight, fifteen very brief agenda. We just kind of explained a little bit about what the shelter was homeless shelter, what they did, the thing that really sold these people wasa tour, which was led by a former guest of the shelter who was now gainfully employed at his own apartment. And when he took these business leaders around and show them the shelter and said, i sleep over there in the corner, it really hit home that this organization was doing something valuable for its community, that it was turning people’s lives around, then it was making the business environment better. So of course they were really eager to support the organization, and some of them wanted to write out checks immediately, even though we had said to them, we’re not asking you for money at this event, and we actually didn’t take their money. We said, no, we’re going to come back to you later, but you know we just want you to see the shelter and see what we’re doing here, and it really made a huge impact on that community talking about business leaders, companies, what’s your experience with professional practices like lawyers, maybe dentists, orthodontists i think that’s another category i usually often call it business and professional again. I think the best way to get to doctors is through another doctor in the best way to get the lawyers is through another lawyer. These are all really busy professional people, and they don’t often have a lot of time, but they will make time to speak with a calling. So they the key is getting your volunteers who can open the doors to these people and that’s, how you’re going to be successful and what’s our next step then after this cultivation event, which moves people i love the idea of hosting it on site that’s, that’s just so brilliant instead of having it at a restaurant or a hotel or something, have it. If you have a facility where you can tour people around, i just think that’s a very as is you cited that could be really moving what’s the next step. After the after the event, the events over now, okay, after the event, then one of the things that i suggest people is that they hold an annual corporate appeal involving volunteers, and what we did, for example, with that shelter is the volunteers who were so excited about it a z i said some of them wanted to write out a check, but a lot of them said, hey, when you’re ready to go out and talk to people about contributing to the shelter, count me in. I’m ready. Teo, help you with this project. So we developed a list of volunteers based on that cultivation breakfast and those volunteers all set. Okay, i’ll see these five people. I’ll see those five people. And we organized a really well honed annual corporate appeal and there’s a whole chapter in my book outlined how you go about doing that. It would probably be take up the rest of your show. And maybe the next three shows teo, tell everyone how it worked. But the key is involving volunteers letting them choose who they want to go see and seeing their peers. Because that’s, what gets you in the door and that’s what’s going to get you the money and need a long run? I would like people to know, too, that the book is very detailed in terms of how to go about these steps that has a planning timeline and a sample invitation and a questionnaire for after the after the event. So there’s there’s a lot of good advice in the book and detailed advice and linda, i think, did you wantto offer a listener discount? Tio anyone who’s interested in in the book raised more money from your business community and within the next couple of weeks also have an accompanying workbook being released. Raised more money from your business community this year that gives you step by step directions on and that code. If you go to charity channel dot com and look at the bookstore you just put in the code all lower case linda al i n d a twenty fourteen books and you’ll automatically get a fifteen percent discount not only on that book, but on any other books that you order at the same time. So okay, so you go to charity channel dot com and the code is linda twenty fourteen. Books, right? Okay, usually i like to see that could be non-profit radio or tony rocks or something. But linda, i think of that, linda twenty fourteen books. We’ll work, it’ll get you the fifteen percent. Of course, if used tony rocks, you get thirty five percent, but in, but not this. Not this time around. All right, so we’re talking about volunteers. Volunteers are critical to the success of this. Do we need to train these volunteers? Oh, absolutely. Even though volunteers, maybe sadio i’ve done this a zillion times you went, i sort hesitate to use the word training sometimes because nobody thinks they need training. But we always had a kickoff celebration where we invited all the volunteers to come in. Somebody in the organization made a compelling case for support. And when i worked in the university, for example, we would have a student come in and talk about the fact that they were not there on scholarship. They wouldn’t be able to afford the university. So we have somebody that makes a compelling story for why we’re doing this. Why we’re raising money and then you do need to give people some basic guidelines about you know how to make the call and how to fill out the pledge forms and when to make a report back to you. So it is there’s some work involved in it, but i think it really can be very, very helpful if you can get these volunteers in twos and excited just again remember that these are business people, they don’t want toe meat for three hours at a time, they want to come in, probably first thing in the morning and have a meeting that’s over within about an hour to one hour and a half and make it is easiest possible and keep your timeline short don’t give people a six month time frame. They’re only making five calls, and they should be able to do that and about a six week time frame you recommend ah five call limit because i presume you don’t want people to be overwhelmed by a list of twenty or twenty five names or something. Exactly what happens is some annual we have some over enthusiastic volunteers payable. I know this person and i know that person and give me fifteen or twenty calls, and what happens is they never make any calls because fifteen or twenty just too intimidating, they pull out their list and they say i’ll work on that tomorrow. I don’t have time to think about it today, so give them five it’s a very manageable number. Now i wouldn’t say we never she sometimes we have somebody only make three and that’s fine. If they’re three quality calls, sometimes we have somebody who could do six or seven. But i try to keep it to five to one because that’s a pretty realistic number and it’s proven to work. What if the person comes back and says, i’ve done my five tonight? Can i have five? Five more ready todo eso you will give the more after that don’t always give him five to start with, okay? After they’ve done their initial, they can they can come back for more. Okay. And, uh, and what are they asking in these calls? Well, there you are again, presenting a case for support, which shows that you have various ways that businesses can support you. They can give a gift. They can restrict a gift. Maybe, for example, to scholarships for school. Something like that, they could. Give a gift. In-kind i’ve had some organizations that have been ableto build about a third of their building because they had everything donated from landscaping to excavation to furniture, toe windows to cement so you could get gifts in-kind you can get cash, you can get other volunteer support, but primarily we’re looking at things in effect, the bottom line, so we’re looking at cash and give in-kind mostly. All right, why did you tell one of your gift in-kind disaster stories? If if it’s not too long, well, i could give you a couple of them, just one one took one pick, the most of it was that i think is probably the most interesting one because i live in the state of nevada, i had someone offer, give this wasn’t really a gift. In-kind it was a cash gift, but they had a real struggle was trying to determine if they should take a gift in-kind from a brothel because here, it’s illegal business in many counties so that they’re not offering the gift in-kind are they way? That would really be quite interesting? Yeah, i mean, but gives in-kind i’ve had gifts of land offered which needed a half a million dollars worth of oil remediation that’s a gift in-kind you probably don’t want to take well, yeah, because you don’t want to have contaminated soil. Tohave teo remediated, but you’re glossing over the brothel example, but i we’re going to linger on this for a couple moments. I thought you might find that one interesting. Well, you were right because i go to the lowest common denominator, you know, mike sense of humor’s generally basin lowbrow in the gutter on dh i’m proud of that s o have have you had clients offered gifts from from brothels? I have and some have taken them, and some haven’t, because they said they’re not doing anything illegal in that particular county, but others don’t take them because they feel like it flaunts the mission of their organization. But the key teo give in-kind and unusual gifts like that are you have tohave gift acceptance policies in place that say what you’re going to accept and what you’re not going to accept. Interesting right there is the issue is do we want to take money from organizations that are contrary to what are companies that are contrary to? What our beliefs are, what our mission is about that could apply for, well, really could apply and just about any circumstances, but i’m thinking, particularly of, like domestic violence, possibly or health related charity’s certainly any of the faith based religious charities and that’s where, you know, you really need to be careful about what you’re going tio except and the things that volunteers need to have before they’re asked to go out, make calls, they need to know what kind of gifts you’re going to accept. What other kind of support does the organization have to give? Two volunteers that are making these five calls? Well, i think they need to have some staff that’s going to support these volunteers because volunteers are going to i guarantee there’s a volunteer they’re going to call you. Oh, i’m supposed to make this call today, but i lost my my information that i was because the handout can you send me another fact sheet, or can you send me another pledge card? I don’t have one and i have an appointment this afternoon, those of the kind of things that staff need to be there to support people and i think most importantly what you need to give volunteers as a program that’s worthy of support. If they feel in food that your program is really doing a lot of good in the community, they will be proud to be part of your team that’s going out asking for money so that to me is the most important thing that you need to provide volunteers. How about the chair of this annual business appeal? How do we how do we make sure we have the right chair person? Well, that’s a really important that because you wanna have a chair person that is well respected, well known in the community can command respect is enthusiastic themselves. I had one gentleman wants to volunteer for a volunteer firefighters group, and he showed up at a meeting with and this is a top ceo in the county. He showed up with a fire helmet and red suspenders because he was so into what this would do it. He didn’t even take the time to change that e one to make his commitment well known that he supported the volunteer firefighters. He thought they were doing fantastic work, which they were and his enthusiasm was contagious. Everybody else got excited about the campaign because he was excited about it. Outstanding. Okay, um, we have just a couple minutes left. Linda, tell me what it is that you love about the work that you do and you’ve been doing for for thirty years. I think what i really love the most is being able to help people fulfill their missions and so many of the things that, you know, i can’t just take off and run to africa and help dig wells or do a lot of different things, but i can help people raise the money to do those wonderful things. That’s what i enjoy about it the most. Because when charities come together, they can do when people come together should say into charities they can do enormously good work, that individuals can’t do that government and corporations aren’t suited for right? Absolutely. Ok, linda, listen kowski i want to thank you very much. Why don’t you, uh, remind people how they can get the discount on the book, go to charity channel, dot com and then put in the when you look at the book list, just put it in it’ll ask you if you have a discount code and you put in l i n d a all lower case l i n d a twenty fourteen. Okay, linda, on the strength of this conversation we had, i’m going to promote you to ultra cfr, so you are now right? Well, thank you. I’m going to put that in front of my initial see if anybody recognizes thie organization is small but distinguished, you’re now you’re now using new a c f o r e. You will find linda, listen kowski at linda lacey kowski dot com, and on twitter she’s at l lacey kowski llc, thanks so much for sharing your expertise, linda. Thank you, tony, for having me, it’s been a pleasure. Okay, bye! So long. We are sponsored by rally bound. You know them? You’ve heard me talk about them. They do software for peer-to-peer fund-raising at rally bound dot com. And we’re also sponsored by t b r c telephone bill reduction consulting. And they find errors in phone bills when ah, the phone company has charged you for things that you didn’t ask for or overcharged you from what you were quoted, they will find those errors and ah, get reparation. Get money back for you. Who needs that fancy word? Reparation that’s not it’s. Not really. Even a reparation. They get your money back from the from the greedy phone company that miss build you and they’re being they’re at t brc dot com the the show segments today corporate coffers and committee conned fab remind me of a ah, a bit. That was on the johnny carson show in nineteen sixty eight and johnny’s guest was jack webb. He was the star in creator, a creator of the nineteen fifties and sixties tv show dragnet and his character on the show was lieutenant joe friday. So i want to play this for you from johnny carson show nineteen sixty eight my name’s. Friday. I’m a cop. I was working general robbery when i got a call from the acme school bell company. They’re gonna rob, been a robbery. Guess what, my clappers. Yeah, your flowers. Yeah, you know, sings inside of falik makes a claim. The players that’s, right? We got on clappers in business, okay, hyre what’s that things are not going back. What kind of plans were stolen on this case or copper clappers? Where were they? Osili you have any ideas who might have taken the copper clappers from the plaza? Well, there’s one, i fired-up manage where he’d get even. What was his name? Latto cooper. You think that’s, right? I think what? Cooper got my cover. You know, with his plot, cooper is from, yeah, cleveland. Yeah, things. What makes it worse. They were clean, clean, copper clappers, right, what do you think? Cleveland’s plug cooper would come pure clean cover covers. Only one reason. What’s that. He’s a kleptomaniac. Over discovered the copper clappers were coming. My cleaning woman, clifford. That figures see if i got the facts straight here. Player clipper discovered your old copper clappers kept in a closet. We’re coming by. Clark cooper. The kleptomaniac from upleaf kayman now is that about. Latto what’s that fiver text. But romania. Claude hooper, from cleveland kopperman clean copper clappers, were kept in the closet. Yes, back-up clobbering. Excellent. Nineteen. Sixty eight. Johnny carson and jack webb. That is tony’s take two for friday, seventeenth of february sixth show of the year. Jean takagi is back. He’s a manager. Tony, you know what to say. Hello, eugene. Look, the guy doesn’t even know the protocol has done this. I don’t know forty times or something. Hang on there, gene. But hello, gina’s managing attorney of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the popular non-profit law blawg dot com and is gi tak at g tack on twitter hello jean takagi it’s been nearly that’s, right? Your it’s, your excitement, enthusiasm i it’s exudes the audience and the and the guests. We can’t help it. Okay, we’re talking about committees this week. You are concerned that whether where you’re questioning whether there should even be bored committees right aboard doesn’t necessarily have tohave committees. I’m just questioning the concept of whether every non-profit should have committees, and particularly for small non-profits with small boards of directors, committee’s may make sense, and sometimes they may not make sense, but there are a lot of kind of misconceptions about whether you have tohave committees. Okay. And what what is what governs? Whether you, whether you have to or not, basically, i mean, you know, the usefulness of a committee is where aboard has got a lot to two, got a lot of governance responsibilities, and they may want to delegate some of those off two smaller groups that might be able to address the civic issues with more focused expert teeth. And, you know, it may be particularly helpful to be able to recruit persons outside of the board, to participate in committees as well. So those are good reasons for having committees but it’s not a good reason to have a committee if you largely just bring people in without much direction. They sit around talking, you know, come up with a few pieces of advice and share it with the board, who sort of disregard that advice and decides on their own what to do. And a lot of committee members feel very disempowered and not very productive or feel that it’s not a very productive use of their time to participate on committees, and they largely become ineffective. Yes. So there are clearly issues of efficiency on dh or inefficiency, let’s. Get some some terms down. We could have standing committees. We could have ad hoc committees. We can have a task force. Can you help explain these? Sure. Well, typically, you know, standing committee, the committee that has a perpetual existence until you know the board or some body decides that that committee doesn’t need to exist anymore but talking generally perpetually existence and ad hoc committee is usually organized to address a specific task on dh at hot committees are often referred to his task. Of course, taskforce is, although i don’t really see the difference between the two. They have defined life spans, and usually, when the assigned task is completed or can’t be furthered anymore that’s when when that committee saw what would be an example of something that an ad hoc committee would would be working on, they might work on the capital campaign or ah, particular event, for example. Okay, i saw some examples of leadership transition to if they’re if we’re in search of a new ceo. Yeah, absolutely. That’s. Another great example. Okay, it was just a good but now it’s just it’s. Just a good one on important. Well, thank you. Okay. Let’s, see, eso now weaken also have board committees and advisory committees. And you mentioned having people outside the board on committees. So can you help us understand this? This distinction? Sure. You know, i think it’s a really common misconception that you can have somebody that’s not on the board served on a board committee. First distinction is that a board committee is made up of on ly board members and nobody else you can have other committees that are not bored committees. And they could be delegated with authority to andi, those other committees non board committees order for them to right now, khun b, composed of both directors and bond directors or simply just non directors. People from the outside and why i actually prefer the term non board committee latto advisory committee is that these committees could be delegated with management authority and they can have significant authority. But the difference between the board committee and these non board committees is that only a board committee can be delegated toe act with all of the power of the board and there’s certain limitations to that authority as well. But boredom it ease can act in place. Of the board, in many, many circumstances where as a non board committee could not actually do that for pete’s sake. Okay, so non board committees, though, can be can be authorized by the board. Teo, do some narrow function or something, right, but not but not be delegated all the responsibilities of the board is that is that is that correct? Yeah, so they can actually have substantial authority, but they can’t act in place of the board. So where aboard action is necessary. Often times it will say a board or a board committee can take this action, but a non board committee would not be able to do that. What a non board committee might be able to do, though, is tio make decisions on fund-raising or on policy advocacy or program decisions, they might be able to approve a lease or something else. The board may wantto ratify those actions later and board oversight over committee actions is really an important part of governance, too, okay, and all the authority given a committee, whether it’s, a board committee or non board and i guess even whether it’s standing or ad hoc all is given from the full board. Is that right? Yeah. Generally that’s, right? So so the board of directors is going to delegate certain authority to to these committees, and they’re going to want to get some sort of report back from what these committees, if they’ve been given any sort of authority to take action so that the board khun khun, monitor and provide oversight over those committee actions. Now, i think the standing committees aren’t those aren’t those fairly common. Yeah, i think it’s it’s very common for organizations dafs standing committees, although, you know, i might venture a pretty aggressive guess and say that a lot of standing committee’s it’s not the majority of standing committees are pretty useless. Uh, okay, be careful for a lot of smaller organizations. A lot of standing committees are again not very useful in acting in place of the board, and they might be good for giving advice. But then there there might not be a need for perpetual existence on dh they’re off. They’re obviously going to be many, many exceptions to that, i would say generally, boards have to be very careful about having standing committees that are not active and that air not tasked with specific duties that feels very, very empowered to carry out the duties and provide recommendations to the board or take actions in place of the board if they’re bored. Committees or take management actions have there been delegated without authority? Yeah, otherwise, if these committees become ineffective and boardmember start to feel their time is being wasted, you’ve got a big donor relations problem among your most committed or formerly most committed volunteers. Yeah, absolutely. That’s. I mean, if you’re a boardmember tony, would you like to sit around at a committee meeting for two hours and then report back to the board and the board just listens to the report and then just move on carrying on businesses normal without taking any action on those? You know that reporter recommendations let’s, let’s, talk about the executive committee on di. We pulled listeners and you helped pole gene before the show. Thank you very much. One of the questions was, do you have an executive committee of your board? And ninety percent looks like maybe a little more than ninety percent said yes, and and the remainder said no? Nobody said not sure. So thes executive committees at least for listeners of non-profit radio are very common, but there’s pros and cons yeah, absolutely on dh. So, yes, i think executive committees, they’re probably the most common form of committee on dh they may make a lot of sense for a larger organizations, especially if they’ve got boards that have difficulty meeting on a relatively frequent basis and executive committee is a good way to continue to provide oversight over the organization in between boardmember ings and executive committee may be ableto act in place of the board. Teo, you know, pass like bank resolutions to open up a bank account and do some of the sort of ministerial duties that that boards need to do some time. So for those reasons, executive committee’s could be very valuable the danger or the primary danger. I think with executive committee, that if you over delegate authority to the executive committee, you could disempower the board so the executive committee could be the core leadership group that sort of takes hold of the organization and just creates a power discrepancy between the executive committee, board members and all the other board members so that the executive committee pushes through. Its agenda and takes all the action’s necessary to push through its agenda, leaving the rest of the board disempowered and feeling inactive and not very helpful to the organization at all. And just as he said before with back-up disengaging your your your biggest donors, which typically include includes many of your board members, you could do the same thing by giving too much power to an executive committee than this enchanting those boardmember donors who are not part of that committee, where do you draw the line? Well, not where? How do you draw the line about? If we are going to have an executive committee, how much authority that committee should have versus the full board or other committees who decides this well, it should be the board and that’s where way commonly don’t see anything defined in terms of limiting the executive committee’s authority and that’s, one of the sources of problems often by-laws say that the executive committee just can act in place of the board. Um, in between board meetings and that’s, the limit of the authority that’s been given to the executive committee, so they’ve got almost blanket authority to do almost anything. In between board meetings and that’s, not a good governance structure so e-giving specific tasks or limiting executive committee, too, performing only certain tasks, and maybe acting maura’s a reporting body to the rest of the board. Maybe the way too structured for most organizations, there are some organizations where the executive committee needs to be given a little bit more authority, but the board has gotta be ableto exercise oversight over those executive committee actions as well. So getting reports back at the next board meeting ratifying perhaps the most important executive committee actions taken after vetting the supporting information is really part of a board studio. All right, we’re going toe go out for a break. I want to send some live listener love, too. San francisco, california, rockland, california state college, pennsylvania and at least one person is masked in the u s so if i haven’t sent live listener love to you, you’re you’re masking yourself, and we know that you are the national security agency in in in suburban washington, in virginia, stay with us, jean, and i’m going to keep having our committee confab. 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 guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Podcast pleasantries out to everybody lift, listening on the time shift and especially listening. Not now, but he will be on twitter at counting charity. Brian, thank you very much. I’m glad your morning commute is so much better now because you listen to non-profit radio while you’re driving carefully, i hope you’re listening. You driving carefully? Are you? Are you at the speed limit or below? This is critical, brian. Thank you very much. We have listeners in iran. We have lots of listeners in china shen jin, non jing and others in china wishing you happy. New year cerini inquire chaillou. Okay, jean takagi. Um let’s say there’s a woman who wants tio these heir, not her words. These air. These are my words. There’s, a consultant who wants to basically kill executive committee’s. Eliminate them in all cases. Simone joyo. Do you are you familiar with her work? Or have you seen her around? You know, i think she writes for the non-profit quarterly. I believe that’s where i saw it on, by the way. She’s a safari also not a u f o r e. She has not attained the ultra designation yet. I have not. Bestowed it upon her, but i don’t know her that drug in jail for you, tony. I know you, weren’t you, jeanne. Now you were not listening in the first half of the show, jean you, if you were, i snagged you. If you were listening the first half of the show, you would know that the ufc ari, is something that i hold, which is an ultra advanced certified fund-raising executive. I hold it. And now, in the first half of the show, i bestowed it upon guest linda lacey kowski, but i have not bestowed it upon anyone else but that’s. Okay, gene, i’m sure you were prepping for the show. I know you were. I know you were busy thinking about our our committee conned fab conversation. So there are people who, well, simone, anyway, she feels very strongly about there should not be executive committee’s at all. I think it’s ah, great discussion, tohave for some boards. But, yeah, i think that’s, really just being provocative and stimulating, whether executive committee’s should really be granted with broad authority. I think, for the most part, especially with larger boards and boards that may be spread throughout the state or throughout the country. Executive committee’s still can be very useful, okay? But it’s a worthwhile discussion to have and your point earlier was that it’s the full board that should be deciding this, not just the chair and the and the ceo, right? And it should be in a good note that only the board can create a board committee and executive committee should be aboard committee. So executive committee should be a committee that’s composed of only board members. And if that that’s the case again, the board is the only body that can create an executive committee. The chair, the executive director they can’t commit. Create the committee themselves. Okay, how about staff support for board committees? What should that look like? Well, first reference, there’s. A great article in blue avocado that came out recently on staffing committees. And i recommend that all your listeners staff support of committees is just so crucial. It’s really important to make sure that the committees are well equipped with the information they need to carry on their duties and connected to what the organization is actually doing on the ground, and not just in theory and in documents so providing that support understanding for it, for the staff that better involved. In providing support to the committee’s understanding why the committee members are there and are looking to help the organization and understanding how to best communicate information to them and facilitate the way for the community committees toe act including, you know, figuring out how to get the information to them in the right form, within the right amount of time in advance of a meeting or an action that needs to be taken, providing them with the right facilities and, you know, even providing the right food and drinks that that’s the incentive to bring the committee together, all of those things could be tremendously helpful. We talked earlier about the advisory committees on another poll question for listeners was, do you have advisory committee or committees? And about sixty three percent said they do and the remainder well, about thirty, thirty percent said no, and then the rest weren’t weren’t quite sure so, like two thirds do have advisory committees let’s explore this little deeper than they could be valuable, you suggested it, but let’s go deeper in bringing outside expertise into the into the into the organization and supporting the board. Yeah, and i can’t emphasize enough. That i think an advisory committee and non board i’m sorry, non board. I meant non board. I know you. You prefer non board, i said, screwed that up non-profit ese well, and advisory committee can be okay for the bomb for committees that are delegated with management power. So if they’re going to strictly have advisory privileges, i like advisory committee. I don’t particularly like advisory board because board suggests that their board members with fiduciary duties, if you have fiduciary duties, you have potential exposure to personal liabilities for failing to live up to those duties. And we’ve talked about that. Yeah. So the great thing about being an advisory committee members if it’s truly advisory, you don’t have any fiduciary duty, and that makes it much easier to recruit individuals who might not have the time or it might not have the desire. Teo sort of meet all of the fiduciary duties of being a boardmember, but really, like the organization. Which case, you know, you can recruit them on an advisory committee. That committee might just meet once every six months. Or it might meet even less than that. Or it might just be a body. Of people who executive director can phone, you know, phone every once in a while just to bounce ideas off of on get they’re a pain in perspective, so in that way you could just really widen your resource pool, forgetting expertise and experience and perspective that might be missing from the board. And i just think it’s such a valuable tool that many organizations are able teo utilize, but a lot of organizations are really not taking advantage of the ability to do that. I think that’s a shame if they’re not it’s, not utilizing that that very valuable cool. It sounds very valuable for the, uh well, here we go. Very valuable. Yes, it sounds really useful for the for the ceo tohave that that list of advisors that he or she can call and pick their brains and, you know, sort of be even in, like, an off the record discussion because we’re not in a board meeting and we’re not talking to someone who has the fiduciary duties. Yeah, i think it’s so valuable to be ableto have that for for the executive director and the executive director might have know their own sort of clos. Closely held advisory body and the board might actually have its own advisory body as well on dh it’s, nice for the board to be able to participate and network amongst themselves. And, you know, boards have fund-raising responsibilities, as you often discuss with some of your gas. But acting is ambassadors to the organization and bringing in not just financial support but expertise to the organization and introducing them to people who might be interested. It can also result in future donors as well. And so i think advisory committees are just fabulous ways too. Teo grow the resources of an organisation. Just about a minute or so left jean i think i saw on your blogged link to a site called board cafe. Yeah. Are you familiar with that? Is that that? I presume? I’m pretty sure it was your board. Your your block. Right. So is that a resource that you’d recommend? Yeah, i think. Bored cafe was adventure. Initially launched by compass point non-profits services, based in san francisco. It’s, a management support organization that’s recognized widely is is one of the best in the country on dh. It may have been taken over by the the online magazine blue avocado i mentioned earlier i’m not sure that board cap they still exist. The blue avocado doesn’t that some edited by jan mathos oak of the california association of non-profits and is a fantastic online journal highly recommended for a number of non-profit issues, including h r and committees and what’s the name of that site again that she had it at blue avocados. It’ll be on, i think, blue avocado dot org’s okay, we have to leave it there, gene, thank you very much. Great, thanks always a pleasure. Jean takagi, managing attorney at neo non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco, you’ll find him at non-profit law blawg dot com, and on twitter at g tak i’m back next week. Friday the thirteenth matt scharpnick explains elegant and strategic design what is it? How do you achieve it? And why is charity water so talked about also amy sample ward returns she’s, our social media contributor, ceo of n ten non-profit technology network and based in portland, oregon. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com remember there’s a g? Never mind we’ve heard enough. Of that. K m, u z eighty eight point five and one hundred point seven fm in oregon, salem, kaiser and the mid willamette valley. Welcome again, thanks so much for being with us. I do stand up comedy. I did a set last month, and the video is up at tony martignetti dot com. Check it out. Our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer. 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