Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host, and I’m the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d come down with giganto mastia. If you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, to tell us what’s going on. Hey Tony, it’s our penultimate 2025 nonprofit technology conference show. First, Put the fun in fundraising. Sarah Angelo and Dinesh Nadar want to see you have enjoyment, pure fun, in your fundraising. They reveal the psychology behind gamification and share elements and case studies of successful gamification. This will help you shift the power dynamics between your donors and your nonprofit. Sarah and Dinesh are both from Daffodil. Then Adopt new software. Our panel supports your new software project with step by step advice around leadership, champions, communication, preserving ideas, requirements, migration, smooth launch, post launch strategies, and more. They are Melissa Dickinson, Evelyn Dickinson, and Nicki Nen, all from Logical Alternative Inc. Their titles are Ace, Diva, and Maven respectively. On Tony’s take 2. Ask hard questions. Here is, put the fun in fundraising. Thanks for being with our 25 NTC coverage. We are together at the Baltimore Convention Center, where our coverage is sponsored by Heller Consulting. Our topic now is putting the fun in fundraising, gamification strategies for donor engagement. With me are Sarah Angelo and Dinesh Nadar. They are both co-founders with another person, not with us, of daffodil. Um, Sarah, why don’t you start with, uh, you can explain what the daffodil does. It’s not, it’s a lovely name, but, uh, it’s not descriptive of your work, so tell us what you do. First of all, Tony, thank you so much for having us. We’re really excited to be here at NTC in Baltimore. This is Daffodil’s first NTC and The reason why it’s our first NTC is we are a new company. We were actually founded at the end of last year, so still in our first year. Thank you newlywed. It is our newlywed year. Congratulations Dinesh, so exciting for us to be invited to speak at NTC this year and present on this topic when we’re still kind of a baby startup ourselves. What do you do? Uh, so what Daffodil does is we are a strategic philanthropy platform that connects high impact nonprofits with donors that are looking to make an impact with their philanthropic capital. We work with donor advised fund holders, wealth advisors, uh, philanthropic consultants, foundations, and really the the entire universe and ecosystem of people who help make charitable giving. Uh, and we are that mechanism for directing that gift and providing impact and accountability into the gift itself, and we do that through a tech for solution. That’s right. The platform is called Daffodil yeah like the host of this show, your your platform is aptly named as well. Dinesh, why don’t you get us get us started with the uh. Gamification strategies. What um what what are we talking about? What what well no what is gamification? let’s start with the basic um so the way we think about this is, uh, a lot of nonprofits time and effort is spent in communicating the impact. That they have uh on the communities and um they are doing that while they’re actually doing the work to support those communities. And when we think about gamification, we think about how um this could be made a lot easier for the nonprofits but also made appealing to the donors in terms of how they’re viewing their impact. And so the way we think about this is there’s already so much data out there about nonprofits and their work, they leverage social media. They leverage newsletters, um, there is so much information out there with the IRS and so one way of looking at it is, uh, taking all of the data that we have and putting it through layers where it becomes visually appealing to the donor in terms of how that impact is being shown. And so, uh, we look at this as, you know, when a donor comes in and they look at uh what a nonprofit’s work is they see uh almost like an impact journey of this is what they’ve done. You know, a few months back, and this is how they lit their impact and this is what the impact of their donations are. And so it’s all, yeah, it’s basically bringing the gamification aspect into how impact has been visualized for the donors in some ways the visualizations but yeah if if I were to reduce it to one question. when you ask people why do you give? Why are you motivated to support a cause? why do you contribute your time and resources? The answer that you hear most often is to make an impact. Donors give because they want to because they find it satisfying. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. And very often nonprofits kind of lose sight of that and how they’re communicating their impact and how they’re engaging with their donors. They focus on maybe minutiae or things that are unique to that organization rather than solving that critical question at the heart of why a donor chooses to give. They give because they want to. It allows them to be part of a community larger than themselves to have an impact. There’s a cognitive resonance and there’s an emotional resonance tapping into that, that’s the gamification. You’re making giving fun again. You’re making giving part of what a donor wants to do. OK, yeah, let’s say a little more about making it more fun and um. And and the psychology behind this gamification. Absolutely so donor motivations are really key to why they give and the psychology, the behavioral psychology of how we think about donations and giving and philanthropy, a lot of it has grown out of consumer psychology and what we know about people’s spending habits in general. But when you restrict it to the philanthropic landscape and there are so many great reports on this, I really like the CCS fundraising report, Giving USA. Uh, the fundraising effectiveness project, these are all people who are doing fantastic work about understanding donor motivations to give and what it often comes down to is there’s this social aspect, there’s this aspect of wanting to be part of something bigger and make that investment. And when you don’t have that uh connection, you don’t have something that’s pushing you to make that gift your your dollars stay dormant there’s so many people that want to give that want to make a difference and they just don’t know how. So how do you see this methodology pushing the the donation? So what we do at Daffodil to solve for that is we make it really seamless for uh for donors to give with nudges with uh monthly sustainers where they opt into making a monthly contribution that goes out to high impact nonprofits we do the matchmaking for them. And then as a result they’re going to get ongoing visibility into impact and accountability metrics so instead of having to chase down that information from 7 different nonprofits that you support on their timeline every month we’re making sure that you’re seeing what your gift really does the outcome of your giving, which is what supplies so much of the joy and satisfaction of making an investment in your community. OK, and Dinesh, you’re you’re saying the the way you’re doing this. Frequent reporting is is visualized gamification, so, so like how, how are we turning the donation in the donation and its impact as you’re saying Sarah into a game visualization, um, I’ll give you uh kind of a hypothetical example of that so. Um, this is something we’re still kind of evolving from a daffodil perspective, but let’s say you are coming into daffodil or any kind of, you know, from, from a gamification perspective, you, you have an idea of what you want to donate. Um, but that’s where it is, right? You’re still figuring it out. And so, uh, imagine if you come into a platform where you go on a product where you go, OK, I would like to donate, um, $10 today, um, and so, uh, and we ask you a series of questions in terms of, um, are there specific cause you mind, are there specific geographies you have in mind? And you can almost kind of use that information that the donor provides to give them a retroactive perspective. If you had donated, let’s say 6 months back hypothetically, this is what your impact would have been. So we’ve kind of gamified the experience to the point where they’re actually seeing their impact if they had actually done it. If you had donated to this specific organization or to these causes, uh, in general, and this is how your money would have gone to these organizations based on our matchmaking in general. So if you, if you think about. Um, Daffodil is a platform trying to match make based on your causes, we can actually leverage that information and create that kind of network and say this is your impact. Does that make sense? But, but even hypothetically this would have been your impact if you had given. To this specific organization. It could be a specific organization. It could be organizations which are part of that cause area in general whatever causes you’re trying to support. So be, be, be, uh, you can restrict to specific organizations that you’re interested in or you can go broader in terms of these are specific geographies or I don’t want myself to restrict to a specific organization, but these are the specific list of cause areas that I’m interested in um for the. Uh, the 99 and 0.9% of listeners who are not, uh, daffodil clients because you’re very new and they haven’t heard of you yet, what can they and and our listeners are in small and mid-size nonprofits which I imagine is your target, uh, target demographic nonprofit. Um, what can they take away from the gamification and strategy? Yeah, well, there are 3 things I’d say to that. I’ll add one for you. uh uh talk to Daffodil might have been too modest to say sign up for daffodil. It’s free for nonprofits to join us. It is free to get in front of donors. We don’t charge nonprofits, so sign up, join up, join our, our mailing list, get daffodil.com. Um, let me tell you some more about other things that you could do to bring gamification processes into your fundraising and into ways that you engage with your supporters and stakeholders. The first thing that you can do, take a look at your messaging and ask yourself what question is this solving? If a donor is looking at my materials and looking at my communication strategies, what am I actually telling them? Is this solving their question of how am I making an impact and how are we making an impact together? So that’s one thing you could do. The second thing you could do, giving is supposed to be fun. If someone is volunteering with you, serving on your board, being part of your mission, they’re not doing it because they have to. They’re doing it because they want to. How are you respecting and leaning into the fact that they’re choosing to give you their money and their time? How are you celebrating that choice and making that an easier choice to make? And the third thing that I would tell you is have fun with your campaigns, have fun with your fundraising and don’t be afraid to inject some personality into it. In our session that we’re leading tomorrow, we’re talking about two case studies, one from a really large nonprofit in Minnesota and one from the mid-size nonprofit in San Francisco. And both had tremendous success with campaigns where they threw away their historic playbook and leaned into something that really resonated with their communities and was unique to their mission. It allowed them to re-engage donors who had walked away. More than 60% of donors give once and never give again. That is a huge opportunity that’s just left on the table. And when you get creative and think out of the box and inject some personality into your brand into your fundraising, that’s a huge opportunity to win them back. I’ve heard uh donor attrition rates even higher than 60 75% plus after the first gift, right, so share the story of the San Francisco mid-size nonprofit, what they did to throw away the playbook, have more fun. So this was a campaign that I ran about 4 years ago. And we knew that we wanted to do more digital fundraising and my pre daffodil days it’s hard to believe when you’re just a seed daffodil was just a seed in fact, a daffodil daffodil is a bulb. It’s a bulb, not a bulb. Alright, so you were, you were, you were in your pre-bulb. Alright, alright. Let’s take any further than we don’t grubs and worms and fertilizer and balancing in the soil that go ahead. So my pre-daffodil days I was a fundraiser. I was a frontline fundraiser at nonprofits of all different sizes. I was working for this organization in San Francisco that had a demographic that a lot of people assume don’t give online, a demographic that’s mostly older, older than 65. And I wanted to try something new, so just to have a little bit of fun, I found a local celebrity who was really well known to our mission area, um, not someone who’s a household name, not someone that has a massive social media following, but someone who if you were into her mission and into her knee, she’d say oh that guy, cool, and we asked him if he’d be willing to make two phone calls. And he said two phone calls like, OK, to people who are interested in what I do, sure. So we ran a campaign just saying give any amount and this niche celebrity is gonna randomly call two supporters and you’re gonna get 15 minutes to talk to him. Uh, this was a campaign that cost me $0 to put together. It just leaned into a relationship we already had with someone who cared about our mission. And the campaign was tremendously successful in re-engaging donors that hadn’t been active in 3 or 4 years. It had our largest open rates, our largest conversion rates, our largest forwarding rates, and it was something that was totally different than anything we’d ever done before. It was ring ring the celebrity is calling you wanna talk to him. And that unusual approach of what you get for donating um really resonated with people and two years later, many of those new donors who came in as a result of that campaign were still supporting. OK, so you helped to defeat your what uh what would have been a higher donor attrition rate after the after the first year 2 years later, many were still with you what you normally would expect to be like a 75% attrition rate was I think about 40%. Yeah, very good half um, your session description talks about, uh, shifting power dynamics between between donors and nonprofits. Dinesh, how, how are you doing that? Yeah, um, so the, the way we think about this is, uh, in terms of what a power dynamic is, um, so the funds obviously are sitting with the donors in general and um the, the way we think about this, there’s this aspect of nonprofits, um, having to solicit those funds in terms of, you know, from their perspective, like what is, what does this look like? And so shifting the part. in our view is basically creating a balance where um the information flow is more seamless in terms of how nonprofits are communicating their impact um is resonating with the doors in a way where it doesn’t feel like I’m being asked for something and that is why I’m providing this information as opposed to the proactive aspect of this is what we’re doing and donors. Actually appreciating that. So, so that’s where kind of, you know, the power dynamics of not being asked or tools to do something as opposed to being this is our impact and we’re communicating this and this, this is, uh, you know, the impact for work and uh so that that is an essential like the information flow kind of rebalancing the dynamics in some way we’re contributing here too we’re creating, yeah, we’re contributing work. Toward the solution to the problem that we’re all we’re all committed to the proactive aspect is what I would call out in terms of not being asked for it. So I think that contributes to the kind of the dynamics in some ways as well. And Tony, nonprofits waste so much time doing custom reporting this and bespoke communication for all different funders and supporters. What we’re doing at Daffodil is we’re reclaiming their time from that, uh, very custom, very unscalable action. Instead of being a development person who’s leading communication and talking to a portfolio of 100 different donors with 100 different ways that those donors like to hear from you, we are building something where your one approach to impact and communication and outcomes is what’s going out to your portfolio of 100 donors. Instead of having to focus 1 to 1, we’re one to many. So you no longer need to spend your time with these custom impact reportings and different ways of communicating to different donors because we believe that we’ve found the best way to communicate your impact to donors and we’re doing that for you. That’s contrary to a lot of advice which is segment. Be, be, be specific in not only in asking but also in reporting specific to what the person is that that cohort is is is interested in. Absolutely and when a donor joins daffodil we know what they’re interested in so we can do this for the nonprofit instead of having to customize their communication to each specific donor we take their impact information through our platform and we’re giving that impact and accountability data to our network of donors. OK, OK, um, we have a few minutes left. If there’s something we haven’t talked about yet, you’re as you plan, you said your session is session, but um what else is absolutely our session is just one step of what’s kind of next for a pretty busy 3 months for daffodil. Uh, we are a young company as we mentioned, and we are. Um, just wrapping up a pilot phase of our product, but in June we are launching our product to the Denver area. That’s where I’m from, uh, so any nonprofit in Denver, any supporter and donor in Denver, they can be part of what we’re building. We’re going to be hosting a launch event. You can stay tuned and follow Daffodil more for what’s going on in June, um, and then beyond that we’re going to be going live in different localities throughout the country. Through the remainder of the remainder of the year, that’s right, we’re going to be targeting Miami, where our third co-founder is based in New York where Dinesh lives, and other parts of the country where there are a large nonprofit presence. OK, Dinesh, where do you live in the city? Uh, Manhattan. What part of Manhattan? Midtown town in the 30s or so, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah, OK. Yeah, been there 20 years almost. Uh, like Madison Ave, Madison Madison 20, OK, right, I lived, uh, uptown in for, uh, 10 years. Now I live on a beach in North Carolina. OK. I did live 10 years in Manhattan. Um, all right, well, uh, good wishes for Daffodil. Thank you. Thank you Tony. Thank you for sharing about gamification, um. Yeah, and uh, so would you give a shout out Dinesh do it this time, how can people followffodil? Yeah, so just go there, um. It’s absolutely a bulb, um, and, uh, yeah, uh, that’s the easiest way to get to us, um, we’re on Instagram, uh, other social media as well. Look up Get Daffodil. You’ll find us there as well, and then, yeah, hit us follow, um, and then we’ll we’ll go from there. All right, thank you very much. Sarah. No, that’s correct. That’s incorrect. Sarah Angelo Sarah Angelo, co-founder of Daffodil, along with her, uh, to, uh, the other of, uh, how would I say, along with the second of three, that’s how I would say it along with her second of three, co-founders, uh, Dinesh and Nadar, and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting. Software services for nonprofits. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. Asking hard questions, I just spent 2 days. On site with a client, uh, and uh it was uh facilitated by uh another consultant. Uh, the subject of the two days of meetings was their, their digital marketing. And we asked a lot of hard questions. Like, you know, what should the organization’s primary messaging be? What are, what are our most, you know, most Mission, brand, and value aligned messages. Um, is our own messaging aligned, consistent, you know, across, uh, all our channels, print and digital, and all the platforms that we, that we use, uh, they’re, they’re predominant on uh Facebook and Instagram and Twitch. Uh, so, you know, so is messaging consistent and You know, what, what, what can we do better? What, what channels and platforms can we exploit more, uh, what should we be cutting back on, or maybe, maybe even ending. Um, do we have all the skills that we need in, in the team? Are there people on the team that need support or investment, professional development? Um, so, you know, it’s just, it was just a very, very valuable two-day exercise. Everybody felt very good about it at the end. Uh, it’s an exhausting exercise. Again, it was facilitated by someone who facilitates meetings and, and also knows digital marketing. That is not at all, neither one of those is MySpace. I’m, I mean I was there talking about planned giving and a little broader, but I was not leading the facilitation. You need, you need a pro to. To do this, to coalesce all the opinions and. Find the through lines, right, and just help manage the conversation flow cause there were probably 1010, 11 people around the table, so. Uh, you need, you need a pro helping you to do this, but just the overall thing is just, you know, it, it was valuable. It was, uh, it was reflective. People were genuine about what their needs are and about what they think they could do with a little more, you know, support or investment and Uh, what they feel they’re not, they or we are not doing well, you know. Um, you just A, uh, a reflective and informative exercise overall, uh, over, over two days. So I encourage you to have these occasionally, whatever subject it may be for you. For us, I said, as I said, it was digital marketing, but you may be aligned and or have concerns about something totally different. It’s just, it’s just valuable to take time away. Everybody puts their phone down, closes their laptops and participates in a. In an exercise devoted, you know, everybody’s attention. Focused on whatever the subject is that uh you want to cover. So asking hard questions, it’s uh it’s, it’s valuable, it’s insightful. And that’s Tony’s stick too. Kate, Sounds like you learned a lot and had fun. Uh, we did learn a lot. Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot to do in follow-up though too. You get all important follow-up, you know, things have to actually be implemented that you talk about. And yeah, it was, it was fun, uh, exhausting, but, but fun, yeah. And you said this was in New York? That was in New York City. Yes, I was in New York City for 2 days. Yeah. Yeah, you probably know my next question. Did you go to Broosh bagel? Well, actually, all right, I misspoke. I was not in New York City. I just said I was, I just said I was in New York City. I was not in New York City. I was on Long Island. I was, I was on Long Island. So no, no nosh at noro nosh at 85th and Broadway, not this time, no. Good. Anybody, uh, traveling to or living in New York City. Broad notch bagels. Uh, Kate knows it because her school was there, ADA, where she trained for two years, and I know it because she brought me to it. Yes, for after my graduation. Well Tony, I have to show you this bagel place, my favorite bagel place. Now I want people to know that that was not the Graduation celebration meal was not a broad notch. We went to a very nice restaurant to celebrate your graduating bagel, bagel shop. The only thing my uncle got me was bagels, bagel. Hey, but the bagel had salmon on it. It was, you got fresh sliced salmon. That was an upgrade. That, that was a meaningful bagel, graduation bagel. Yes, no, we did, we did it before. I do remember. Yes. Um, oh, we’ve got boooo but loads more time. Here is adopt new software. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference. We’re all together in Baltimore, Maryland at the convention center, and our 25 NTC coverage is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. The session we’re talking about right now is adopt new software, get buy-in, training and integration. My guests are Melissa Dickinson, Evelyn Dickinson, and Nikki Nen. Melissa is communications Ace at Logical Alternative Inc. Evelyn is founder and technical tech diva at Logical Alternative Inc and probably not too surprising. Uh, Nicky is also at Logical Alternative Inc. Uh, Nicky is client success Maven. Welcome, welcome everybody. Melissa, Evelyn, Nicky, welcome. Thank you so much. Thanks. We have an ace, a diva and a Maven. This should be very right, keep it light. Let’s not, let’s not, yeah, that’s, I love it. Let’s not take ourselves too seriously. Yes, thank you. Good, good. OK. Uh, I like I’m the boring one, host. Any schmo could be a host, but it takes talent to be an Ace diva or maven. All right, uh, adopting new software. So Melissa, let’s just start with you. Could you just give us an overview of the, the subject matter that you covered in your session about adopting new software? What high level view? Sure, um, so we’ve been doing this exact thing for about 35 years, um, so when we decided to come to N10 for the first time. Um, well that was a topic that was on the list and I said, well, if we’re gonna talk about a topic we should talk about that one, and so it’s a lot of material, you know, there’s many layers to that process, um, so we just kind of started from the beginning, the planning stages, um, how do you get buy in from your leadership team, how do you make sure that everybody is taken, you know, taking along for the ride you find your champions, um, and so we talked a lot about that in the session. How to make sure that your team is always communicating and in a safe space and you’re making sure to record ideas and possible risks and pitfalls and all that so we talked a lot about that then we got into the technical side of it which was your requirements gathering, how do you decide whether you can do it all in house or whether you need a consultant’s help, um, we got into what are the data migration sort of strategies and pitfalls, things that can come up along the way. Um, and then what do you do for launch to make sure your go live is smooth and finally what do you do post launch. So it’s just, you know, basically from A to Z, how do you get this done with the minimum amount of pain and the highest likelihood of success. OK. Uh, let’s let’s at least get through the, yeah, I was gonna say let’s at least get through the, the, the non-technical part up to and uh stopping short of requirements. But we, we might go further. There’s no reason not to go further. I’m not saying cut it off, but let’s at least get through the. The non-technical section. So, leadership, our leadership buy-in may just continue down the line, uh, logical progression. Uh, Evelyn, can you get us started with uh how we get leadership buy-in? Yeah, um, it’s, uh, sticky wicked. uh, you have to first make sure that your leadership really believes in the product uh absolutely believes in the cause, what’s happening, why you’re doing this, and, um, you have to get them to publicly acknowledge that to the entire team, um, you know, a lot of times and, and it actually came up in our presentation where folks, um, I think they. Especially your leadership, they want to hedge their bets sometimes they’ll be like we need this done, um, and if you get it done great and if you don’t then you know you fall on your sword it happens um I think you know we’re as leaders we’re all so pressed we’re so busy. And um so one of the things we talk about is making sure that you have a healthy organization before you get started you have a healthy um acknowledgement from your leadership team that this is an important thing and that the whole organization is going to be committed to it um so you’re not constant. um struggling internally, uh, with folks who who who maybe um don’t wanna commit the resources like at the management at the like, you know, uh, department levels, uh, because it does require, especially with larger implementations that affect the whole organization, um, it just requires everyone’s commitment so you gotta start there make sure that the leadership is committed it’s OK um. That, that could be let’s uh drill down a little further in terms of getting that leadership by so you’ve made it clear that leadership has to be committed, you know, publicly, but to get that leadership by to get that commitment, uh. I’ve had previous NTC panels other years say, you know, it’s valuable to have allies. Like if, if you feel a business need, it’s valuable to have an ally or two to help you make the case. Can we, can you talk some about getting the leadership to the point of commitment? Yeah, you know, it’s interesting that actually came up at our panel as well. Um there was there was one there who was um facing very similar issues and um she asked us after the presentation about that very thing. Um, she had a boss who was not, um, willing to get committed, and they were looking for solutions and, um, a lot of times you can go laterally within the organization so I should say I used to be the CIO of a multi-billion dollar company, um, so I have a perspective of being that person. Um, and so, you know, you just need to find um the believer, right at the, at the leadership level, um, someone. Is going to uh recognize the value of what you’re trying to accomplish and if they don’t then you know you shouldn’t start. I, you know that it’s hard to say that sometimes, but if you, if you can’t get there, you shouldn’t start, yeah, because you’re gonna fail and you’re not gonna get the commitment and then it’s gonna be twice as hard the next time, right? So you just have to, you know, you have to just reach out within the. find out where the, I hate to use these bus, the value proposition is, right? This is gonna save so much time or this is gonna save so much money and then you just have to find the person that that really has the bandwidth to care because we’re also pressed. And the, you know, you know, retrench and ally 6 months from now, you know, it may take some take some time across the organization’s Nicky. It looked like you were gonna add something, yeah, yeah, I just wanna add in there that in the process of figuring out what your solution is or what the change needs to be what we talked about in our presentation was interviews with people who who will be doing the process. So who will be using the software interviews with leadership and so various levels within the team and uh often within those interviews you find your champions and and you’re able to find and use those in your use case why why do we even need to make the change? Why are we going into the situation to begin with and then along with that. Um, logical alternative has all, you know, templates for gathering requirements and things like that. So in the process of doing the research within the organization of what’s needed, very often you can find the evidence that’s required to convince leadership the but the that particular challenge of finding the person to just say yes and stand behind it. Um, it sometimes it goes a little bit further and like Evi was saying that requires going lateral or. Using numbers sometimes it’s using numbers. Melissa, you, you, you actually raised your hand. I was gonna say exactly what Nikki just said Nikki covered it. The only other thing we talked about, yeah, bring the data, right, bring the data. So if you can come to leadership and say we did interviews with the whole team and 72% of them said that this is a pain point and it needs to be solved for them to do their job well. That’s hard to argue with, so that was the one thing. You know, just like Nikki said, and the other thing is sometimes we also had somebody in our panel who said everyone in the organization is too busy, does not have time to do this work, to do these interviews, and I said that’s the point at which you think about do we need a consultant to do these interviews. So yeah, and then we just kind of jumped out of step but you you’ve got to get the leadership in before you can take the time to meet with the. Has to to take the time to interview but once you do once you get down to the uh folks we call process owners or the people who are literally doing the work that you’re trying to improve upon that’s where the golden opportunity is uh you do the discovery you get findings you roll all those up and then you can make a presentation to the board that really usually drives. Evelyn, what did you call them process flows, the, the, the, you know, the folks who actually we used to call them. I don’t know is that an outdated I I got a degree in information systems in 1984. I’m actually trying to be more um when you have. Who’s a process owner they’re responsible for that or they’re the subject matter expert on a particular work flow. OK, yeah, maybe, maybe not the end user right they may be they may be the person who’s responsible for the outcomes of that or the devisor of it of Florida. OK. Uh, Nicky, so you brought up champions, uh, a couple of times. We’re not at the champ, so now we’ve got our, uh, public. Explicit commitment by uh by leadership, no question. Now the champions, that’s the next step, are the champions are the champions are the champ I’m not gonna do that to you all. But nor should I have nor should I have, um, ideally you’re gonna have champions within your, your user groups if you will and in leadership and on your implementation team and your champions are gonna be the people who are sort of your early adopters. They’re the people who are gonna help buffer the flow of complaints and grouchiness that is absolutely coming your way. Um, and, uh, and then they help. Keep the the optimism of this change going right? so they’re the people who are saying, hey, you know that thing that you used to hate? I think I, I just found the solution in here right? um, it’s also the person whoever is doing the roll out is also going to complain. You are also going to complain even if you’re leading this change. Uh, it’s best that you not complain to the people who are already grouchy, right? So your champions are your insiders. And um in leadership you’ve got a champion there maybe buffers. I’m not trying to change your language, but like they’re they’re buffers between the the you yourself and leading the leading the thing, leading the project, uh, are gonna be complaining. So they’re they’re buffers, maybe they’re therapists too. I don’t know, but they’re certainly protecting from the from the groundswell of, of discontent. You’ve created with this project, right? Evelyn, oh well, I was just gonna say that, yeah, not necessarily. Well, I mean, I, I tend to, I didn’t know, no you are not overstating that. I’m a very positive person and I also have a deep belief in humanity, um, so I’m a, I, I’m a martial artist, so I use a lot of kung fu, um, terminology and um. And, and that’s not uncommon in in uh business process change, um, so what happens is, is as you’re doing, uh, the interviews so you, you identify all your work flow processes that we’re gonna renovate you find the folks who are doing them and who have deep knowledge of those processes you document what we call the ASIS, then you identify and interview all of the folks involved as many as possible. And you mine that for information and in the process of talking to those folks um you find folks who are just really positive about this change they’re excited yeah yeah they’re really excited about it but the other cool thing is, is, is we’re talking about Grouch. is that you know uh everybody doesn’t approach everything from a positive perspective and that is super valuable so what you do is um when people are being negative you don’t take it personally you value that input and you um work with those folks and uh I like to call them risk managers, right? You value them you value their input, you sit down with them and say. What is what can go wrong, you know what is, please share your valuable perspective. Let’s make notes of that and what you do is you turn these people into champions you turn them into folks and say like, hey, we have got, we’ve gotta fix these problems. We, we need to address these concerns and let’s not that like Nikki mentioned this problem that you have, we can solve that we’re gonna. To take care of that. I mean, that’ll help convert this bottleneck that I’ve experienced for years is not gonna be resolved and and maybe that’s cynicism, maybe that’s fear of change, maybe they’re just not really great at, you know, technology, maybe, you know, their toaster broke that morning. Maybe they’re worried about losing their job or losing their relevance in the organization. So asking why they’re resisting what’s what’s, you may hear a lot of symptoms, but what’s what’s the real discontent. Evelyn, you mentioned something that I think maybe. Oh, yeah, so when you’re when you’re trying to read, thank you for translating, yeah, she speaks Evelyn, yeah, um, so yeah, your current work let’s just take a very simple example like you’re say you’re trying to rebuild your donor management work flow, right? So I like how she says that’s simple. We’re gonna take a simple example. Sorry, yeah, so you know you get a donation on the website, uh, it goes to, you know, it notifies you look and see how much money this person’s donated, whatever that process is, how you’re doing what you’re doing today and you make. A little flow chart or sketch it on the back of a napkin or whatever you need to do, figure out what departments are involved, what individuals are involved. So that’s the way we do it today. That’s the way our current systems flow exactly OK I was just trying to flesh it out for listeners, OK. Uh, I, I thought I heard it as Oz. I was like thinking of the Emerald City. I probably slurred it, but that’s kind of fun too. Well, we’re approaching, right? We, we’re approaching the Emerald City with our new software implementation. So the the the wizard is gonna grant this wizard is gonna grant us all our wishes and dissolve all our bottlenecks and and and your little dog too. That’s the wicked wish. No, we don’t bring her in, um. All right, Melissa, let’s turn to you because we haven’t heard from you recently. Uh, communications, uh, communications and safety, you, you mentioned in in the overview. What what’s the thinking of the, uh, of a logical alternative. So my role in these types of rollouts is a lot of training. I do a lot of the training videos, training repositories, um, sort of on the on the end where we’ve got the new thing in place and now we wanna make sure that everybody knows how to use it, that it’s sustainable. So if somebody leaves the organization, there’s this repository of training materials. So, um, yeah, that’s that’s that’s what, that’s the kind of communication that I’m doing in these sorts of rolls. OK. Yeah, um, so, well, safety, oh yeah, well, OK, that’s in the in in the interview process and in the during the process of the roll out. I’m sorry, I’m confusing it. OK, let’s just talk about the communication, no no I’m sorry. What’s your advice? Well, I think I just what I kind of started to say which is that which is that um. I would say, you know, keep in mind that the people who are here now may not be the people that are doing this job in the future or you may want to bring people along over a period of time so you you kinda wanna group your training groups, you know, so that you’re not trying to train people in different departments all at the same time you wanna take maybe a different approach or a different focus for each group so there’s a structure to the training planning and that’s part of our tool kit that we shared during the session. Um, and then once you have that structure, you sort of schedule your different groups, you have your group leaders, um, and then you have your tasks list that they’ve already given you in the process of the planning, right? You know all the tasks that everybody in that team has to do. So then you create videos for these usually in my case it’s a short video, maybe 20-30 seconds even just for one task at a time. And then we have a repository that we build that is accessible to everybody in the organization that can be added to at any time. So anytime we take a support request that wasn’t already covered, I make a video and I put it in the repository, and then we make sure that on the admin side of whatever system they’re using there is a dashboard that has access to all those videos with a table of contents. So if for some reason everybody in the org was gone next year, you still have that sustainable. OK, that is something that is on that? Yes, we’ll. Yeah, we, we provided a lot of tools in that session because we covered a lot of material. So yeah, absolutely. I also wanted to say, um, could you speak a little bit about um how folks learn differently so we create different tools for them. Yeah absolutely well I you know with with some of the tools that we have now to record video, it’s very helpful because they transcribe so if you’re more of a word learner rather than a video learner you know we kind of get that built in um we also have different types of learning sessions which can be hands on or um you know. I guess we just kind of find out who’s who are we training we often talk to the leader of that team and say, you know, is there a approach that would work better for your team? Now let’s now safety, uh, I was, I was taking notes as you were doing the overview. Where does safety fit in? Well that’s more talking about um the things that Nikki and Abby were talking about which is the um process of gathering all that information the as is right the and the planning, the requirements for your roll out so when you’re involving the team in these conversations you want it to be. Be egalitarian, you want it to be democratic as much as possible. You wanna make sure that you’re approaching it from a fun upbeat this is gonna be good attitude and you wanna make sure they know they’re in a safe space, especially when they’re being interviewed one on one, but also in a group setting that. If you have reservations, if you have questions, it’s safe to ask that because you wanna capture as much information as possible during that planning process during the requirements gathering process uh the more information you get, the better your chances of success and that is created by making sure that everybody’s voices are valued and everybody knows that they can share their thoughts and ideas. And Nikki, um, it, it’s important to record all these ideas that Melissa’s talking about. Yeah, can you expand on that for us? Uh preservation of all these thoughts and ideas. Yeah, for the most part Logical alternative has used uh audio recordings so that uh so that when one is conducting the interviews you you can be as present as possible and ask, ask questions and investigate whatever is coming up, um. It’s wonderful if you can have two interviewers in that space so that one person can take written notes, but um but yeah all of that information is gathered and then is used to inform next steps. That also comes uh brings up another safety point that Abby mentioned in the presentation which is when you when we’re recording the interviews we make sure to tell the person we’re interviewing. This is not gonna be shared with management whole cloth. It’s for our purposes we’re gonna take the relevant information, put it in the report in the repository, and, and anonymize it. Did I say that right? You did, yeah, it’s not an easy word, uh, yeah, that’s super important. Well, reality is often barriers to uh process efficiency have to do with individuals, so you know you you’re not, you’re not after that person’s job, but you, you wanna make sure that um we identify where the barriers in the process are so we can fix them. It’s not, it’s not personal, you know, Nicky, it sounds like you want to add something and and then we’ll, we’re gonna close. Related to that just it was brought up earlier that if someone’s afraid that they’re gonna lose their job or that they will become obsolete then then creating that space for them where they feel hurt and. If it’s possible to figure out that someone might be experiencing that kind of fear, uh find a way to offset it. Because they’re not gonna be completely honest if they’re if the fear is that they won’t be there after this roll out or that their whole existence, you know, the thing they spend 2 hours 3 hours a day doing will no longer exist. The likelihood that they’re not gonna share everything is pretty high. It’s all right thank you. They’re, uh, they’re the Ace, uh, the diva and the Maven, uh, all with logical alternative inc. Melissa Dickinson’s communications Ace, Evelyn Dickinson, founder and tech Diva, and Nicky Nan, the client success Maven, all stuck with, uh, just middling like host any. you need to work on that. I need to work on my self-esteem. I’m in the face of an ace of diva and a maven. I got no chance. It’s unbelievable. All right, thank you very much. Thank you for sharing good wishes to the company. Uh, and thank all of you for, uh, being a part of our 25 NTC coverage where we’re sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. Thanks for being with us. Next week, our 25 NTC coverage wraps up with your emergency marketing plan and your more diverse board. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com, and next week we’re gonna be together. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.