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Nonprofit Radio for October 20, 2017: Disaster Relief & Your Event Pipeline

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My Guests:

Gene Takagi: Disaster Relief

Gene Takagi

We kick off with Gene Takagi explaining how–but first, whether–your nonprofit can help disaster victims. You need a lot more than a big heart and a CrowdRise page. Gene is our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group.

 

 

Pat Clemency: Your Event Pipeline

With Pat Clemency at Fundraising Day 2014

Get committed major donors from your events by making them transformational, not merely transactional. Pat Clemency has before-, during- and after-event ideas. She’s president and CEO of Make-A-Wish Metro New York and Western New York. You’ll learn lessons from Rochester and Buffalo. (Originally aired on October 24, 2014.)

 

 

 


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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of arjun. Oh sucks in ic acid urea if you wet me down with the idea that you missed today’s show disaster relief, we kick off with jean takagi explaining how but first weather you’re non-profit can help disaster victims we need you need a lot more than a big heart and a crowd. Rise page genes are legal contributor and the principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group and your event pipeline get committed major donors from your events by making them transformational, not merely transactional pat clemency has before, during and after event ideas she’s, president and ceo of make a wish metro new york and western new york you’ll get lessons from rochester and buffalo that originally aired on october twenty fourth. Twenty fourteen on tony’s take two i learned something from my mom’s death we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dot m a slash pursuant also by wagner, sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers, wagner, sepa is dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit apolo see accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and tell us credit and debit card processors you’re passive revenue stream tony dot slash tony, tell us a genuine pleasure to welcome back jean takagi every time he’s on it’s a genuine pleasure. A real pleasure. He’s, the managing attorney of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco, california he edits the wildly popular non-profit law blogged dot com and he’s the american bar association’s twenty sixteen outstanding non-profit lawyer he’s at g tak welcome back, jean takagi. Thanks, tony and my mind. Sincere condolences on your loss. Thank you. Thank you very much, jean. Thank you for that. Um, how you doing out there? What? What? So what? We’re in transition transition season whether what’s the weather been oh, actually, the weather’s been all smoky for you hasn’t it been? It has been and going right in line with today’s. Northern california fires weight got a little bit of rain yesterday really light, but it it helped, but we’ve seen you know more than two hundred forty thousand acres. Burns forty two death more than a billion dollars worth of insured losses so it’s really hit it pretty hard up here, and you’re getting impact hours away from from the sort of the where the most devastating fires are. Smoke and ash et cetera, right? Yeah, well, we’re not getting ashot here, although the particulates in the air have been a dangerous levels. So we’re encouraged teo, stay indoors for many of those days, but at least not visible. Ash in san francisco. No smoke, though. Yeah, that’s definitely feel the smoke and those with sensitive breathing issues. I’ve got to really be careful. So as you said, of course, right in line with our discussion, besides the devastation in the california fires, of course, houston, um, florida on dh not only natural disasters, of course. Las vegas shooting there’s ah, there’s. A lot of potential for non-profits teo do good work if they’re suited for it. Yeah, i mean that’s, that’s very true. And we’ve had a very tough year in terms of natural and man made. Don’t forget puerto rico. Yes, thank you very much. I i don’t want to make the mistake of puerto rico is part of our united states? Yes. Thank you for that. Thank you very much, jane. Yeah, and, you know, people want to do good things. And, you know, as he said, a lot of people want to give with their heart on dh people run charities, and those people also want to do something. So the question, you know, is like, well, what can we do and what’s the first question that we should be asking if we are in a non-profit were ceo are chief fund-raising perhaps or a boardmember well meaning boardmember what’s the first analysis we should weigh should we need to look to well, i think the first thing you have to do is you have to look at your mission because, you know, your mission dictates what you’re allowed to do. So if you have a purpose of raising funds to help homeless people in new york, all your donors have entrusted you with their money for that specific purpose. So even though the board and the employees might say, oh, my gosh, we’ve got to get relief out to puerto rico let’s, take the money that we raised in the past that we have. In reserve and dedicated towards puerto rico. While that might be a really admirable and understandable a desire, you’ve got to remember that you owe you own obligation to your donors who had given for homeless people in new york in that case. So checking out what your mission says, and he got a look at your articles of incorporation, our certificate of incorporation and by-laws how you’ve been marketing to your donors to figure that out? What kind of trouble might you get in with, say, the new york attorney general, if you’re a charity that ah, it does have the mission you described and nonetheless sends some relief money, teo puerto rico, or anywhere outside new york, right? I think you know, i think most regulators they’re going to be a little bit easy if you’re raising new money. Tio go outside of your mission that’s not what you’re supposed to do if it’s outside your mission, but i don’t think they’re going to come down hard on you for that, i think where they may come down hard is where one of your donors complain that their money was used for something that wasn’t intended, because that was not within your mission. So if they use existing money and it’s that that hurts what the organization is able to do in terms of furthering its current mission, that becomes the problem i see on dh. Yeah, it only takes one one upset donorsearch tio to write a letter or start an inquiry and you could end up in some trouble. Yeah, or drag it through the media, and then you get a bunch of upset donors, you know, you know, the mission was really something that they were connected with, which, you know, led them to make the donation in the first place. Um, if you let’s say your mission is brought enough that enables you to to send relief of some type teo outside your state way. Have i heard rumors about these things, like charity registration laws and such on other other operating rules that require you to be registered before you start working in another state? Yeah. I mean, that part of your area of expertise, teo. Healthy? Yeah. You’ve got to be careful if you can actually do programmatic work or have boots on the ground in the foreign state you may need to be qualified to operate there, so there may be some additional filings that you need to do again. If you’re you got a limited presence, nobody gets hurt. Nobody complains regulators within that foreign state are probably going to be happy to have your help in the event of a disaster, and probably the risk is going to be low. But what if somebody gets hurt? Yeah, that’s, that’s where you could get in big trouble and when you’re raising funds from a new area, so if you if you got boots on the ground in texas but you’re in new york or california charity and you’re not registered in texas, what if somebody starts to complain about why isn’t my money helping those? You know that i intended to give two? What are you doing with my money? And they start to complain to the attorney general in texas, that might be an issue if you don’t have a good explanation for why you haven’t registered in, perhaps it’ll be a slap on the wrist, and they’ll just tell you, teo, teo, register now and maybe give you a small penalty but if somebody complains loud enough and you you really haven’t been responsible with that money that that could get you into some big trouble. Understand? On dh, why and why take the chance you it’s just it’s. Just not the way to operate. It’s, time for a short break. Jean, please indulge me. We have a slightly different format. Now. Pursuant they’ll help you find your existing donors who are hiding in your file. The ones who are prime for upgrade how do you identify them? And deep in your relationships, they’re free. Webinar is find hidden gems lurking in your file aptly named it’s past eleven, or is over. So why am i talking about? Because it doesn’t matter if it’s over you watch the archive just like non-profit radio it’s the same thing, so it doesn’t matter that it’s past. You will find the archive at the non-profit radio listener landing page tony dot m a slash pursuing also they have a new content paper for you and that is twenty seventeen digital year end fund-raising field guide, which are the channels and advertising strategies that give you the highest return on investment. How can you tweak your year end campaign based on your donor expectations and what are the insider tips on digital fund-raising from some of the biggest non-profits i think you’ve heard me say big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Here you go. The weapons are in the paper or on the non-profit radio listener landing page. Tony dot, m a slash pursuing capital p now i want to get back to jean talking disaster relief. Thank you for that indulgence. Gene. Um, let’s, let’s continue. So i was just saying that you know, it’s, why? Why put yourself at risk? It’s just it’s not what you’re bored should be advocating it’s, not what you should be pursuing if if if you don’t belong there because there are alternatives, i think that’s absolutely treat, ernie, i think you know, not just in terms of the filing, but in terms of whether you have the infrastructure to actually do work over there and whether people donating to you in a foreign state is the best use of charitable money to get relief down into that state is another question you have to think about. So would it be better in certain cases for you say, hey support one of our, you know, charities that we’re friendly, whether we have a relationship with in texas, for example, for hurricane harvey relief, why don’t you give to the community foundation of houston? They’re they’re a great organization. They know you know what they’re doing, and if you have a pre existing relationship with that organization or you vetted them in the past, maybe it’s better to have your donors give directly to them rather than to you and for you to figure out howto fund-raising in texas? Yeah, andi let’s think through what you’re committing, teo again, the motivation is purely altruistic, but what you’re getting yourself into in terms of logistics, you know, if if you’re not on a lot of a lot of drives, i see are not for cash, but therefore things that people need clothing specifically and or maybe housewares and things. Now you’ve got this truckload of stuff, not near where the disaster is, you know, it’s not so easy to get truckloads into a disaster zone. I mean, think about you have to think about what you’re committing yourself to absolutely, and it may cost more to transport those non-cash in that foreign site, then it then the materials are worth, in which case the health is almost useless. You do have to be careful. I don’t want to completely discourage e-giving good like food and clothing. Sometimes that can be helpful. But if that’s really true, when you’re local to the disaster, you’re far away. Cash is so much better. Yeah, because of that logistic concern and all right, so you mentioned, you know, potentially partnering with a charity that that you’re familiar with and directing donations there. What about what about you, fund-raising would you be allowed to fundraise and then give all the cash? Let’s assume it is cash now because you’re distant to the to the charity? If if that’s not within your mission. No, i guess not. Then, right? Yeah. It’s. Not within your mission’s. Kind of the same thing again. The risk is probably low if it’s new money. So you know, if you have a broad enough mission or if you could see that there’s no geographic limitation in your mission. For example, if you’re like a humane society or s p c a. But you don’t say exactly that. We only help people who are for you. Know animal welfare in new york, perhaps then you can you can start a campaign to provide for support of for animal welfare in these disaster stricken regions. Um, and and you can do it through through grants a cz well, tony, so you can raise money from your own donors who are interested. As long as you’re very clear about why you’re raising that money and that it’s going to go to the to the disaster stricken area rather than been locally, you’re clear about that. Then you might find that that partner, charity or potential grantee with which to give that money to rather than try to start a new program, a relief program, it somewhere where you have nobody there. Okay, okay, um and there is ah, resource i’m aware of if you don’t have some kind of partner, really pre existing partner relationship. Charity navigator is very good about being proactive in the face of disasters. I get their emails and they’ll put up a page with charities that they have vetted and redid highly. That there is that our local to the disaster area. So that’s a that’s a method i mean it’s designed for individuals, but certainly a charity that wants to do this work and find a partner, and they don’t have one you could use the charity navigator resource is yeah, i mean, they’re they’re different ways to vet potential grantee charities and the more money you’re going to send, of course, the more vetting that you would be expected to do charity navigator can be a helpful resource is resource for charity’s looking for, for donating, for maximizing their effectiveness and efficiency, and hopefully avoiding any scam charity second about the sad thing is, whenever disaster hits, you get a number of scams that are out there that proclaim themselves to be true charities, and perhaps they even have five, twenty three status, but they may not really be doing the work that they’re doing. So you do really want to be careful, especially as a charity, you know, who should be the great example to its donors that you know howto that e-giving and ensuring that charitable funds are properly spend it. If you’re the bad example than have what donors trust, you know you you want to bet them very carefully. So do you think charity navigator is not? Sufficient for a charity vetting another charity correcting it depends upon, you know, upon all of the circumstances. So if if you’ve got a huge grant to make, then probably want to do a little bit more work than that. But if you’re you know, you’re going to give ten thousand dollars to hurt, you know, for hurricane released in charity navigator recommends community foundation there. I think you’re pretty safe. Okay, okay. Um, and you need to be careful in your in your materials if you are goingto be encouraging these gifts that you are targeting a charitable purpose. Ah, charitable class of people and not a subset or some certainly like a family or something. Yeah, and that gets really tricky because, you know, individually, you know, we may go. Oh, my gosh, i know somebody in puerto rico, and they could really use the help so i’d leave my charity to direct money towards maybe another charity in puerto rico. But maybe i’d actually like to direct my money straight to this family because they just got this really compelling case. Oh, and i put up an ad on my website looking for my donors in california. Uh, to give money to help this one family in puerto rico? Well, if the donors are making the gift and just using the charity as a conduit to get it to individuals specific individuals that are named, then that gift is not tax deductible. It’s not considered a charitable contribution, it’s as if they gave directly to the individuals that they’re trying to get their money. Teo and if the charity, all they do is act as a conduit and that’s that’s going to be problematic, and if the charity then give the donation receipt to the donor thing that your your your money is tax deduct deductible, despite you directing it towards individuals now i can get the charity in trouble so different ways to do that, but a lot a lot of people are getting that wrong where a lot of charities, they’re getting that wrong and have to be here. Yeah, right, so we’re talking about charities. I mean, if you as an individual have family in florida or puerto rico and you want to do something as an individual, then you know we’re not we’re not that’s, not what we’re talking about because you’re not. Claiming that the gift to you will be examined our deductible from federal income tax, right? So by all means you should you should support your family, members of your friends that are there that are hit by disaster and don’t want to discourage that at all, but if you’re trying to give to a charity and get a deduction for it, then then you’ve got to think about making sure that you’re not using the charity just to the condom. And charity has to make sure that it doesn’t allow itself to be used just to the conduit, although i should add that the charity might add examples of individuals that helped. I say we help all of you know, we’re helping all of these families, including be specific ones, make your donation and trust us to put it to bed. Yeah, well, that’s, you know, of course that’s just that’s very good storytelling and good marketing is toe personalize your your broader work t the individual level, right? We’re not talking about that. We’re not talking about your your what? Your marketing, but what you’re claiming we’re their money goes, is not to that family that you just highlighted in a you know, a very touching video. That’s that’s what? That’s. What we need to avoid, right? Okay, so since we’re talking about individuals, what about individuals raising money for a charity? Weii, we see some of that. We see a good amount of that. How does that work? Yeah. So that’s that’s always tricky. So a lot of charities don’t like it when individuals are starting to raise money for them because the individuals may say different things about the charities, some of which may not be true. Um, and the individuals maybe raising money that go to themselves first. And perhaps they’re going to give some or all of it to the charity. Charity has no control of that if the money is going to the individual’s first, uh, also, the donors who gave to that individual won’t get a charitable deduction for giving to just another person and not giving directly to the charity. So it becomes if it’s done informally like that. Like you just all give money to this one person and this person, then you know, who’s promising to give it to charity actually does give it to charity. Well, that person gets a deduction, but all the other people that donate it to that one individual don’t get it right. And that person gets a deduction for all the money that was given to him or her because those were a gift, right? Because those were gifts to an individual and that lets you use may. So i collected ten thousand dollars in gift those were those were just personal gift from person to person on dh if they go over the gift threshold and they may have to pay, then people have to pay a tax, but we’re not going that high, so let’s, say, an aggregate from, you know, fifty friends. I collect ten thousand dollars, i think. Give that to a charity, aiken aiken claim a ten thousand dollar charitable income tax deduction, assuming i meet other limitations and, you know, exempt things like that, but generally, i could claim that deduction for the whole amount. Yeah, you might be able to the charity may not know that you’ve collected it from other individuals. They just hey, we got a ten thousand dollar gift receipt for ten thousand dollars. Thank you very much. Um, on the other hand, you know, the friends that gave the money to you if they hear about this, and especially if he didn’t give all ten thousand dollars right charity? But you said well, and i had three thousand dollars worth of travel costs in my time we had overhead, right? Right, yet that’s going to upset a lot of people that’s the wrong way to do it, but there is a right way to do it. So so if the charity authorizes an individual and you know, the charities will naturally authorize own employees to fundraise on behalf of the that the the organization through, you know, the organizational means, like the website and fund-raising events and all of that, if their sanctions but, you know, they could make unauthorized volunteers to fund-raising a swell and boardmember zehr often fund-raising on behalf of their charities, you know, as individuals who are authorized to do so? Sure, but they’re not collecting the money directly themselves or if they’re taking a check, they’re immediately giving it over to the charity, and the check is going to list the charity’s name on it? Yes, right? Okay, okay. Let’s. See where? What about what about helping businesses can can a charity fund-raising help businesses that air devastated by a disaster? Yeah, it’s a good question, because some people go, can i make a grant to a for profit organization that kind of kind of strange but charity’s can engage in grantmaking or, you know, providing assistance to businesses in different situations, and this plays out a lot in disasters in the event of a disaster. So if the business owners are it’s a small business, a mom and pop store in the mom pop are are needy and distress as a result of the disaster. After that, business might be their lifeline, and providing assistance to the business in that case might be fine. It also might be finding a broader sense if the community was deteriorated as a result of a disaster. So investing in economic development and combating community deterioration and blight, that’s all charitable purpose. So as long as again it’s within your mission to be able to give such support, you could do that also lessening the burdens of governments of the government says this is something that you know is public works we need toe, give back and develop our small business community here. That got terribly hit by the disaster. If the government is doing it, probably used tenants. Okay. Would that include infrastructure repair, too? Yeah, it would. Okay, so all sorts of things that you could do, you can you can help building costs, rebuilding cost. The one thing is, you know when to stop when that bible that’s probably the time with charitable. Okay, right. We don’t need to be buying partnership shares in the private in the privately held company. Okay, we’re buying in. We’re going to go. We’re going to become general managers of the llc. Alright. That’s beyond the pale. Okay, hyre now, there was something pretty high profile talk about individuals. I know you. I think you know, i don’t know much about sports but this there’s a guy named j j watts and he plays one of the sports balls. Hey, does something in in sports hey raised thirty seven million dollars for orm. Or maybe you think it’s still being counted for harvey relief in houston through his foundation. But there’s a lesson there that you want to talk about? Yes. What is? Football player with a very, very popular what? I called him what’s i’m sorry. Does your watts restaurant? I don’t even know whatever he plays baseball with j j watt. Pardon me, mister. What? Okay. Pit so and very compelling figure. And he made an appeal after hurricane harvey to collect money raised money for relief in houston. And, you know, at first, you know, his ambitions were very small. I think it was even less than a million dollars that he was hoping to collect to give back, and he has a foundation. So a fiver onesie three foundation that he runs, and they i think they’re really focused in on sports programs for children. But he heard about that, you know? Well, didn’t hear hear, just hear about it, but he, you know, he was in houston, so he was just well aware of the hurricane in the immense damage that it has done, so he wanted to make a difference. So he went on to a crowd funding site called you caring. Uh, and he wanted to raise money. So my wilson here is he did, you know, top thirty seven million dollars, and i think he stopped the campaign right now, but this is a foundation that was very small, it and i applied his efforts and believe me, you know, he probably raised by that otherwise might not have been raised. So for that that’s fantastic. On the other hand, i don’t know that his foundation really had the infrastructure and was prepared to do relief work in all of the sudden they have thirty seven million dollars, they don’t know how much staff they had don’t know how much expertise they had in this area. So there you know, there’s, some criticism, and i think disaster relief. Oh, and charities are likely to face criticism right away because getting aid to the individuals is very difficult to do and having a plan to do it. It is tough, it’s hard just to give to anybody who puts their hand out and although you want to that’s not the responsible way to do it, so they’ve got to come up with a plan if they’ve never done it before it’s going to take more time for the plan. So i think the lesson there is just in terms of figuring out again, as we said. Before, if you’re a foreign charity coming in, if this isn’t the work that you do you want to think about, you know what the best way to make use of that money is? Perhaps, if you, you know, i had been the figurehead for a campaign by the community foundation, or he decided to give, you know, the money he raised to the community foundation that’s actively involved with multiple non-profits on the ground, working with smaller communities in that area that could get the money to the people who needed it the most, or or you know, the the need to address the needs right away might have been more efficient. So i think that’s the one without wanting teo, criticize the foundation itself, and j j watt, you know, participation in doing tremendous work, it would be great to see the money just really effectively and efficiently used and not for building brand new infrastructures in a brand new area of charity that an organization has never done before. And i want to credit eugene with something that you alerted me to in las vegas. The clark county commission chair was raising money, and he was not. Clear where the money was going until you jean takagi i asked about it and then and then he became transparent, so unfortunately have to leave it there. But credit, credit hat’s off to you, jean, for in increasing transparency and fund-raising we’ve talked about it so many, many times. Congratulations for that. Okay, what? I’m not sure packing climb full credit, but i’m glad that that they responded alright. Small victories jean takagi he’s, our legal contributor managing attorney of neo check him out at non-profit law blogged dot com and at g tak thank you for so much, gene. Thanks, tony. My best. Thank you, pat. Clemency and your event pipeline coming up first, wagner, cps there’s so much more than just cps way beyond lots of added value, they do go way beyond the numbers. They’re true to their tagline, major gift, best practices and common mistakes. It’s, one of their archived webinars, covers five best practices and five common stakes equally balanced. See how they do that it’s like a balance it’s like thea it’s, like the assets have to equal liability snusz owners equity it, see how balances five and five but then they add the single most important thing you can do to have a more successful major gift program, so if you’re thinking you’d like to beef up your major e-giving program or benchmark against others, get some outside perspective, perhaps on your fund-raising never hurts to have ah, fresh set of eyes and and ideas lofting over what you’re already doing. No need to sign up. No need to register it’s archived. Watch it right now, it’s the major gifts webinar and it is that wagner cps dot com click resource is than webinars to browse everything, everything else that they have ah quick resource is and then you see the full collection there blawg other webinars and those guides that you’ve heard me talk about world. The templates and sample policies are that’s all under guides, so check out wagner cps dot com resource is and then go to town apolo software you’re non-profit but what kind of accounting software using using software made for business and i never gave this a moments thought never inside my ken i liketo work that word, kenan whenever i can into ah, until conversations it was never within my cannon just like that word. Can um, but when apple is became a sponsor, it seems to make some sense you need accounting software that is made for non-profits that’s what you are and his age of niche software, and help us a knish knish and i’m not comfort with can i like a lot niche it’s a little affected? Try to stay away from that in this age of niche software, you deserve it. So whether using quickbooks or terrible cash or one of microsoft products or sapi whatever super duper whiz bang books, whatever you’re using, those are for business except the well. The super duper whiz bang books is not for business, but if it did, if there was such a thing as a super whiz bang books, super duper was bank books than merely about duper. Then that would be for business. But you’re non-profit so take a look at apple owes accounting it’s accounting software designed for non-profits and to find them you go to non-profit wizard dot com now time for tony’s take two i did a video on something that i learned so far from my mom’s death earlier this month. The importance of end of life planning my family is so good, and i am all of us or so grateful that she died quietly in a hospice very soothing pastoral place. I’ll shout it out, vilma re claire in saddle brook, new jersey, where they do comfort care and they understand managing management of pain. It’s on twenty five acres and there’s trees and the rooms are beautiful and not sterile like a hospital, which is not to put down hospitals but totally different missions on dh no alarms, chai ming and beeping and people scurrying in the hallway. Not like that at all. So ah, hospice hospice planning. I’m encouraging you to give thought to your own or your family members end of life planning it’s just it’s it’s got new importance for me, and i could see the value of it for my mom, for our family to mean hospices for the support of the family, just a cz much as the patient, so end of life planning. Take a look at the video it’s at tony martignetti dot com i’m sure there’s a lot more than i have to learn about my mom’s death that this is what i’ve got so far that was tony take two let’s, take a look at the live listener love where’s it going out is going out to ann arbor, michigan, woodbridge, new jersey and woodbridge. I gotta compliment you, woodbridge. You’ve been very loyal. Uras loyal is seoul, south korea, so woodbridge special listener love live listen, i’m about to you. Tampa, florida, staten island, new york, delmar, new york. Oakland, california. Los angeles, california, california. Of course our thoughts while los angeles in the south, but oakland near the devastation, as gene and i were talking about live love to all those locations and live listeners. Let’s, go abroad to germany, we can’t see your city, but gooden dog nonetheless federal, argentina, hanoi, vietnam vietnam has been occasional, but not too much glad you’re with us. Hanoi thank you, live love to you, seoul, south korea, on your haserot comes a ham nida and san pedro, san pedro, costa rica i might know some people in some pedro i know some people in costa rica. I wonder if that could be sheri and ah, shari and gary. Live love to san pedro, costa rica affiliate affections. I feel like going out of sequence. So what? You gonna beat me up for it so grateful. Lots of affections to our affiliate am and fm listeners. I’m so glad you’re with us and the podcast pleasantries to the over twelve thousand so glad that you are with us the bulk of our listening audience. Thank you, podcast listeners pleasantries to you. Here is pet clemency with your event pipeline welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand fourteen we are in times square, new york city at the marriott marquis hotel. With me now is pat clemency. Her seminar topic is the event pipeline turning event guests into major donors. Pat is president and ceo of make a wish metro new york and western new york kayman c welcome to the show. Thanks, tony. Pleasure to have you you have a pretty desperate territory new york city and western new york it’s an interesting territory, but i think it really is empowering in the sense you get a chance to say all sorts of markets in which you can raise money and it’s really the opportunity to understand how donors react in their markets. And and you know what? The universe was they? Won’t want to make a difference and how far west does western new york go in your we cover the major cities of buffalo and rochester seventeen counties it’s just go over to buffalo. It does. Okay, so we don’t have the middle of the state, but we have a new york city in nassau county and then seventeen states counties upstate. What do you see that non-profits are not quite getting right around events and transitioning donors from events. Well, i think, you know, we all start with special events. I mean, there’s, no question about it, i think it is the recognition that there is a discipline that can make those events were quarter and smarter and are part of a major gifts strategy if we see it as an event that we efficiently come into and go out of without seeing its capacity to build a pipeline of donors for other kinds of fund-raising particularly major gifts, i don’t think we make it a lot of candy, so today we really talk to have great dialogue around the issue about some of the things that we can do to make a special event three distinct parts it matters deeply what we do before going into the event, we’ll talk a lot about planet, but planning in a different way, that really makes us understand who is coming, who are the prospects the day of the event? How do we really connect the donor’s? Not just with the event, but with the mission and how they can make a specific difference and how we then engaged him in the journey, not with the event, but with the organization over time. It’s really the third ingredient in and so it really is very helpful to think about it as more than simply even itself. I’m gonna ask you to talk even closer to the mike because we have now we have the background noise because lunch lunch is over, so stay nice and close. We don’t pick up too much outside background noise. Well, let’s start with the natural place of planning. What? What should be redoing as we’re planning the event to be planning transitioning hyre attendees to teo to our donor ranked i think wolber too often we start berkeley just a rather than the strategy. What are we trying to do? And who are we trying? To attract and we also need to cast a wider net if you think of the donor pyramid. I mean, we’re looking at our past event guests and hoping people who will be new to the event will also come, but we’re not looking for the clues that people give us. And so we found there was great opportunity looking at direct male donors give one hundred dollars more, and when we did some wealth screening, we found out they gave us one hundred dollars, not because that was their capacity, but we had a box and they checked it and they gave us one hundred dollars, but we understood it. When we looked at it, they had so much more capacity, but we never got around to asking them. So looking a little bit more broadly and thinking about the strategy of engagement, we basically said, if you look at an event just as a single time, we’re going to invite him again next year. But if we look at the event and over late, a lot of the major gift strategies we have the ability to change the whole dynamic, your royalty won’t be that the event it could be that the institution and would be a longer term engagement if we get that right in the planning stage. That’s what we want, right? We don’t want just coming up year after year, and does this include people who come? They may only come one time because there connected with the honoree or just a friend of the organization brought them way convert those kinds of people. Well, you know, it’s very interesting we learn a lot from our buffalo rochester offices because they have a very different evergreen strategy. Honorees are looked at differently than we look at them in new york city, and they are on it for body of work. So as a result, most of their strategy is thinking about how do you get the same donors to renew at higher levels each and every year? So now we’re beginning to implement that, saying, regardless of the honoree, how do we get more of our sponsors to renew? And then for those one time donors who come because of a gala honoring, we need to do some more screening and think about who else in our boards within the make-a-wish family knows them, so that the relationship can transition to the organization, not simply around the honoree. What else can we learn from rochester and buffalo? Well, you know what i think it is? The universal is people want to make a difference, and we just have to make sure that we’re not leading with what we need. But we understand that the first conversation is the donor’s needs, and the donor wants to be able to make a difference how our job is to take them on the journey by showing them how treating them like an investor. And that is a really key difference. Very often we ask for what we need, and we never think from the donor perspective, what about the organization will really resonate with them for the long haul? Do you really feel that upstate or western new york is better than downstate new york at this? No, no, i mean, they they’re scale is very different than ours. I mean, it’s, a smaller scale. But we i think the best thing about fund-raising is if we are open to understand the best practices exist everywhere they learnt from us. We learn from them and i think it’s. Fine, but i think the interesting thing is in every market, if you begin to institute this practice of looking at a bent donors not just as jonas sporting event on an annual basis but really, truly look at it as a pipeline wei have seen donors seventeen hundred dollars to ten million dollars or from our five thousand dollars to five hundred thousand dollars. It isn’t a journey overnight, but the fact of the matter is some of our very largest major gift owners. Their entry point was at an event it was how we dealt with that that made all the difference as to whether or not that became a continued transaction. We sell a ticket, you come to our event or if it really became a transformational relationship with the mission of the organization, are there other specific things that we should be doing in our planning? Aside from the concept of the lifetime donor, the longer term relationship? Are there things specific to a no to the invitations? Who invites them? How they’re invited before the event? What else should we be doing specifically? Well, we began talking about if we were to really make this part of our major gifts strategy, what are the shifts that we need to make? And when you think about it, our invitation is to an event we needed teo even change the messaging we’re not just inviting you to invent. We’re inviting you to share and join in this extraordinary mission and that’s very subtle, but it’s a very big difference. And so we even change the fact that when you come to a gala is a perfect example. Think about how we spend the first hour at cocktails just kind of wandering around. Instead, registration is outside, so the minute you enter the doors, you are coming in and part of a community of like minded people who believe that this is some of the most important work we can do for kids. And you are meeting wish families and volunteers on board members course searching you out as a guest that evening, in that first hour becomes a really important message about we welcome your involvement in this remarkable work. How do we convey that message in our cocktail hour? Well, it’s really about storytelling and changing? Who tells the story? So if you think about it very often at a gallop, whether it is during the cocktail hour, it’s during the main speeches of the night, putting up the ceo, they’re putting up the board chair. We’re talking about the past. We’re actually talking about statistics and how much money we raised in our case, somebody wishes granted when we change the dynamic of who the storyteller wrists really should be the people who experienced the mission first hand and as we tell the story through their eyes, it says to a donor here’s exactly what your donation would do here’s exactly how it makes a difference in that moment for a lifetime that’s a very different relationship from the beginning of the point where that donor enters the gala, if we’re going to focus on storytelling at our events and it might be a very big one memory big gala or might just be a smaller could be anything smaller, gathering, maybe even a meeting. Absolutely we need thio sounds like have a very consistent message that the leadership is conveying that trickles down to all the employees and then also the board is conveying right when we need to have consistency and messaging well. You don’t have consistency in a couple of things. I think you have to have consistency and messaging for sure, but you also have to build a culture where the board and the staff are engaged in thinking about who’s there, you know, there’s, not a throwaway seat in any event, and when you think that it matters most, there is a greater level of engaging on the part of the board in the staff pretty work that gets done who’s at those tables who should we know how we welcome them? What would be important to them? And it allows boards to be successful? You know, something tells me you’re from boardmember i’ve given you every contact i have there’s, nobody else i can approach hold this empowers boards to reach out to other people that the organization knows and be champions at night for the cost. So there are signs that we’re assigning people, too, to meet specific people during the evening during the event absolutely and beyond that, you’re the eyes and ears. Every single person has a role, kind of just surveying the room and learning what what they’re hearing that night and reporting it back. So, justus, we schedule an event on a day before that event takes place. We also have the debrief date by which boardmember volunteer staff get together. What did you hear? What did we learn? In very often? One piece of information about somebody was in the room is magnified. Then buy another piece of information and out of that then becomes thought. Okay, the event is over, but it’s only really big beginning in terms of engaging that donor long term now in the life of the organization and so part of the debrief is what’s next. What are some of the opportunities? And you’re right, we have to be on the same page. If someone were to say to us post event, i’d love to be involved how you have to be able to convey what the options are many and there’s not going to be one that works for everybody. But everybody needs to know here some of the ways that you could be involved in an ongoing basis. So we’ve transitioned from beginning the planning stage two day off now, or we’re at our event. What else? A little bit there. Sorry, that was allowed. What? Else should we be thinking about oh are executed the day of to create this transition? Well, i think the other thing that you could do very, very well is start with the strategy what’s the message that you’re trying to convey that should be the threat of connection to everything that’s being done that night and for us was really talking about the ripple effect of wishes in the ripple effect of wishes is a moment in time, yes, but it also has a lifelong impact. So one of our speakers was a thirty five year old executive with a wall street firm. He was a wish child seventeen years ago, and so the impact or him wass it had a ripple effect through his life. The life of his brother, who they really had a hard time when he was diagnosed with cancer. As the family would tell you, everybody’s diagnosed cancer, you know, said everybody has cancer feels like and so the threat of connection of his wish was in that mama with his brother. But it was also over his life he became a wish raining volunteer helping others but imagine his role now explaining to people in his way that this investment that you will make tonight in support of this event, hasn’t it has an impact come on the future generation of kids who are just like me, that’s a that’s amazing way to tell the story. So the first part is what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to show the ripple effect over time, cross families in communities, and so all of those voices were part of the program that once that strategy is that you can always worry about the logistics next, but you’ve got to get that piece of it and too often in event planning for the night of we think about the logistics, but we haven’t really thought about the strategy and that that’s, what we lead with and that story telling is is just a one part of it. Next is if you’ve told the story, then you’ve gotta provide a tangible way for people to make a difference, and so we don’t. We do a lot of fund-raising at night, but its not around an auction for things. We had one great item this year, and the rest is all about an auction to allow people. To sponsor wishes and that’s the meaning of it. You go from the programme which told the story from the perspective of families who have experienced it and then give people the opportunity to share in joining the mission by sponsoring future wish it was incredible to watch the little store ones, and some don’t respond to the wish. A season for wishes any or twenty five thousand dollars donation in the room, about an individual wish, right down to a thousand dollars and watching the room right up every time somebody was part of the community that was making a difference was really an extraordinary thing. It allowed people to know that this was a really special thing, that in this time in place, we’re all making a difference. We got to take a break, tell us credit card and payment processing. How about a passive residual revenue stream that pays you each month? You can check out, tell us payment processing, because that’s, what this is going to mean for you as one of their partner non-profits, you will get fifty percent of every dollar telling skits, half of what they earn from the businesses that you refer. Goes to you and they have this incredible offer that is only for non-profit radio listeners you refer business, they’re going to look at tell us, is going to look over their processing fees and determine whether they can save the business money if they can. Then of course, that business hopefully we’ll sign up with tell us, because that’ll mean a revenue stream for you. But of course, you know that’s up to the business. If tellers can’t save them money, you get two hundred fifty dollars, tell us cannot help them by saving them fees they’re going to tell us is going to give you two hundred fifty dollars. So who is this apply to think about businesses that you’re boardmember zone local merchants that maybe the local dry cleaner or maybe a car dealership or it could be a target store? Whoever it is, local merchants supporting your work? Um, restaurants, dealerships, maybe i mentioned car dealerships of storefronts any kind? Independent artists, your family members, anybody that takes credit card payments. If tell us can’t save them money, you’ll get two hundred fifty dollars, and again, if they sign up with tell us, you get half the revenue each month that’s the continuing residual revenue stream. Check out tony dot, m a slash tony tell us that’s the only place where you going to find this two hundred fifty dollars offer now, let’s, go back to pat clemency. I’m going to ask a little just sort of a digression just about the logistics of that that auction for wishes. Did you have people predetermined that would that would be bidding on on any of the any of those auctions and those wish auctions way we thought about was, how could we make it? And i don’t mean to suggest the whole thing’s really know. Not only did you have one or two people who you knew would get the ball rolling, they were all legitimate that’s we wouldn’t do that, but but there’s a couple things that we were able to do before tony. So three board members came forward and said for new donors who never made a donation before to make a wish, the ability to come and make a difference for a child that’s a pretty important thing. But how much more would they feel the impact of that initial donation if we came up with a challenge match, so three of our board members got together and one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars was put up in advance. They pledge this and they would match donations of two hundred seventy five thousand, so that was a huge thing. We also knew from a couple of donors at the wish auction for somebody who couldn’t be at the gala, they were out of town was still a way to participate, so for people who weren’t there and want to participate that’s part of our culture now you always have this opportunity give even if you can’t be there. So we knew a handful of dahna they do it’s what you do for the ones who couldn’t be there, so they have already pledged it, and they made that commitment right before, and so we let people know that we were able to do that. Those two things are done in advance. We know that if if people know that the donation they make is going to be doubled there’s a likelihood that they’re going to give a little bit more on dh, then the other one to find a way to let donors who just can’t not be there that night. How else could we participate when it’s about wishes anybody can participate? And i think that helped a cz well, so that’s kind of the two things we know going into the night come and way announced to the audience and then the third part of our trilogy stories after the event, what do we need to be now? Follow-up should be planned during planning, right way we should be thinking about what our follow-up is gonna be while we’re doing the advance planning it is, but we’re hearing a lot that night, and you’re understanding what the individual journey might be for donorsearch we can talk about own overall strategy were also listening to the donors needs as well, and that we hear that that night so that’s that’s an important thing. But, you know, i i think there’s a couple of great examples, our ten million dollars donor started out as a seventeen hundred dollars, went on. He bought tickets to a mets game where they were doing a benefit for make a wish and to see the journey after some of the events, it was where he got to the traditional stage was when he was able to make a difference for the individual wish kids. So he began to grant wishes and then began to think, well, if i could grant a wish, i wonder if i could do more. Then he began to grant a wish a month for five years. Sixty kids, when you think about that and that his attitude wass but i could inspire others by this, and i have to lead by example. So in his office building, he took down some of his paintings and put up something that we have designed, which was simply a tree, acknowledging those wishes that have been granted so simple. First name of a child and a wish. And when you came up into his lobby, you immediately saw that this was somebody who was champion the cost. So he then, as he got closer after after having been an event donor now he’s making a difference for children. And so when it became time to start thinking about the next generation wish children, you know, in two thousand thirteen, we were thirty years old and we had grand on ten thousand wish and we had a big bowl dream for the future. We want to grant the next ten thousand wishes because we understood now importance and impact. I want to grant those ten thousand wishes in a decade. Well, how do you sell somebody on a big, bold dream? Will you go to your best investors in the cause? And he said, well, i like to give you a down payment on the future. And that became the largest individual gift in the history of make-a-wish worldwide from an individual. And think about that for the for the future of this organization. You know, here was somebody who went from seventeen hundred dollars, two. Ten million. But it was never about ten million dollars for hemos about the ability to change ten thousand lives. So you think we moved from transaction? You know, i give you tickets to this event because you gave me a donation moved to the transitional stage where we could say thank you for making a difference for that child to the transformational stage would thank you for making a difference for the future of the mission that’s where the journey goes if we take our special event and understand that each of those stages the preplanning the night of and what happens after are all distinct but equally important segments that can help that donor journey. Okay, we still have a couple of minutes left. Anything you want, teo. Hopefully you do have something you want to share that we haven’t said yet. Well, i think, you know, one of the things that i was really struck by wei had our gala on june twelfth this year, and there was a couple who had come forward and they were security. They secure the honore, and they were great in helping support the fund-raising around ten. And as they thought about sending a letter out two people to solicit funds from business colleagues and family and friends, i learn a lot when you see the letters say, right? And this one just simply said we got involved with make a wish because we learned about Micah 6 year old who want to be a ballerina. We stayed involved because over the years, we’ve seen hundreds and thousands of kids whose lives have been forever changed, and what i realized was here was a couple who came to an event. Was a cultivation event just to learn about make-a-wish and they heard that story and that stayed with them, and now we have an event for which they were such an incredible catalyst as a couple raised one point, six million dollars the fund-raising they did was extraordinary, they’ve been doubted wishing for security, and yet they never lost sight of the fact that it was at an event that was learning about that one child that touch them and made them want to do more. I don’t think i really understood that power of their motivation until that moment, but what i did but, you know, that’s, the discipline that we need to put in place, that’s the story telling you a story telling all the way in which we don’t look at this as a transaction it’s so much more an event can be so much more and could be such a powerful part about how we welcome donors into the extraordinary missions that we all support gonna leave it there. Ok, tony, thank you. My pleasure, pat clemency. She is president and ceo of make a wish metro new york and western new york and thank you. For bringing lessons from rochester and buffalo. Thank you, my pleasure or listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand fourteen. Thank you so much for being with us next week. I may do sexual harassment in non-profits may check that out. Spend some time with that. If you missed any part of today’s show, i’d be seat. You find it on tony martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com wagener cps guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, sepa is dot com appaloosa counting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and tell us credit and debit card processors you’re passive revenue stream tony dahna may slash tony tell us our creative producers claire meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez, and our music is by scott stein you 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 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 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 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 October 13, 2017: Development Assessments

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Glenn Kaufhold: Development Assessments

What are they? When do you need one? What’s included? How do you use the info? Glenn Kaufhold of GKollaborative walks you through.

 

 

 


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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 last week was a tough one for me. My my mom died last thursday, october fifth today’s show is dedicated to my mom, jacqueline, and you know, i’m not sure she totally understood what podcasting is and what the show is about. She certainly had a general idea that it was for the good of non-profits and what she would want is for me to keep going and, you know, do a great show in her in her memory. So that’s where we are, andi also related to that. I want to welcome two new listeners henry and soo in old japan. Neighbors of my mom welcome henry and sue. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into paris, ca vivica, try a phobia. If you scared me with the idea that you missed today’s show development assessments, what are they when you need one? What’s included? How do you use the info that you get going? Kaufhold of g collaborative walks us through it all on tony’s. Take two e-giving tuesday. We’re sponsored by pursuant. Full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dot m a slash pursuant also by wagner, cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wittner cps dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit appaloosa accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and tell us credit and debit card processors you’re passive revenue stream tony dot, m a slash tony tell us it’s a pleasure to welcome to studio first time guest glenn kaufhold he has been a successful non-profit leader for thirty years, he created gkollaborative spelled with a k in two thousand ten to provide strategic advising to organizations, particularly those in transition or start up phase. He’s, also co founder and co author of the blogger at fund-raising wonks dot com his business is at gi collaborative, dot com and he’s at fund-raising wonk and i’m very pleased to welcome glenn kaufhold to the studio. Thanks so much durney great to be a pleasure. Thank you for coming on. She shout out your mom for eightieth birthday. I’m here in town to celebrate my mom’s eightieth birthday this weekend. You want what’s her name? Peg kaufhold peg. Happy birthday pay happy eighty. Well, we have a wonderful, wonderful night out with your with your family. Everybody gathered for the big celebration. Kool all right, development assessments. I feel like we should just start with what is it? Well, i’ll give you an analogy, it’s, like, imagine if you haven’t gone to the doctor for ten years and somebody in your family dies early and that kind of shakes you up. So you go to the doctor and they ask you a ton of questions, they do it lots of blood work, lots of scans, all sorts of tests to really give you a baseline of how you are. You know how your health is so fund-raising assessments are very much the same thing. It’s it’s looking at, you know how you’ve been fund-raising i usually go back about five years. What are you doing? How successful is it? What’s it costing all sorts of metrics we interviewed tons of people on we look at not just fund-raising but things in the organization that effect fund-raising were impacted by fund-raising it could be your board and how your boards engaged in it. Your other volunteers that could be staffing it could be technology could be policies and procedures, governance issues of the board we often get into a lot of different things, okay, if you’re ah, now i get a lot of request for help getting to the next level. How do we get to the next level? And a lot of times those organizations that are very event driven have a gala, maybe they have something else, but they’re like one or two main events and then just, you know, sort of not well organized around individual fund-raising that that sounds like a case for, you know, on assessment to the sea where you where you could go and and also teo calculate your r o i on those couple of events events could be enormously enormous time sucks, and not for for so much money sometimes, yeah, absolutely and that’s one of the one of the things that we look at and it’s it’s an area in an assessment that i am really hard on my client about because i am the anti event fundez i’m never happier, you know, when i’m killing a gala on dh, you know so many and, you know, when i go into these organizations and the development director hates the gala, the executive director hates the gala, but you’ve got boardmember is, you have volunteers that love these things and the assessment, you know, honestly looks at them and looks at the data time that goes into that goes on at most, we have to make sure the flowers match the bunting. I mean, it’s crazy, exactly, because into the exactly and, you know, many of my clients don’t even calculate the staff time that goes into a gala. Oh, that’s a that’s a big over some it’s, a big oversight and, you know, enormous time, hundreds of yeah, i’m excited when i work with an organization that’s accurate actually calculated it. And when you put all this together and you present data like this, two boards especially, you know, they’re like oh, okay, andi, you know what i’ve had i’ve worked with organizations that have, you know, killed off their gallows because they saw that it really wasn’t working, but part of the assessment is not just a recommendation to stop a gala or a golf tournament, i hope not, but here’s what you can do instead here’s, you know, hairs how you could raise more money, great. You know, kate, how about before you go ok? Case in point i love cases l of stories, but about how to transition out of i mean, we can’t just, you know, i mean, you share advice had a transition away because we can’t just tell a body no more gala. I mean, maybe we gotta scale it down a little bit or short, make a public case. I mean, advice on moving away, transitioning away from the gala. Oh, absolutely. We you know, we work with our clients on that. You know, so case in point, i didn’t assessment years ago for a community college system out in california, and they had to gallows one broke even. And they were basically entertaining faculty and staff. So you know nothing. And then the other one, you know, maybe made thirty or forty thousand dollars. And when we announced to the board that this needed to go away, this gala just needed to go away. We created a middle donorsearch program. We created a program to attract donors between in that case twelve hundred and ten thousand dollars a year, you know, with with emphasis on our monthly giving to help. It be successful? Um and you know, a design and launched that program for them now they’re last gallon netted forty thousand dollars before they factored in. Staff time. We launched this new program before factoring for factories. And i’m losing. Quite quite likely. We created this new program in five months. They brought in fifty nine donors. Some of them were knew some of them were gala sponsors, so it was part of the strategy to move those donors over. And we raised over one hundred thousand dollars from the fifty nine from the fifty nine people, and it cost me the design and printing of a brochure. Yeah, that was it. So they raised a lot of money. New donors sustainable. Don’t write let’s. Exactly. Let’s focus on the sustainability because the gala has to be recreated every single year. Absolutely feels. I mean, you’re not literally starting from zero. You do have sponsors that air maybe have been with you for a while, and but you’re iran reaser news, it’s a whole new working with vendors of honorees. And how e-giving or not the iran aries. Maybe around that there’s a lot of start up time, even. If it’s a well established, so let’s talk about that versus the sustainability of an individual giving program, which is what you’re talking about, the genesis of so i mean, you’re absolutely right events have to be recreated every year, even though you have an infrastructure, but you you create a program like, like a middle donorsearch program or you create a monthly sustaining donor-centric you know, this study that i was to tell you about, we’re out in california, and we did a lot of house parties, we’re parlor party, some people call them, so i had boardmember zay had volunteers who were opening their home and, you know, bringing in their networks of people, bringing in existing donors in a much more intimate way in a in a way where the staff could really make connections to those donors and build relationships with those donors and with the right stewardship, you have the ability to continue to renew those donors without having to go through the whole expensive, creating a gala just to get return guests and so much more satisfying to i said it’s, instead of working with the caterer and the band and the deejay on the videographer and et cetera, the florist you’re working with, you’re working directly with your donors to sustain them, to build those relationships so that they are going to be with you indefinitely and there’s, so much more satisfying than whether the bunting matches the flowers and and working with board members to host these house parties. I mean, you know how many people out there have had boardmember sze who said, oh, i can’t ask my friends for money, i’m afraid to ask, but, you know, it’s easier and more comfortable to do a house party, so they are board members, you’re volunteers feel good about what they’ve done, thie organizations building those relationships and getting the revenue for a lot less cost. All right, hold your thought. We’ve got to take a take a break. I’m mixing up now, the the sponsor and answers we have so many of them. So we’re going to go out just briefly on going talk about pursuant because they will help you find your existing donors. I mean, glenn is helping you get new existing new donors now, once they’re in your database, your existing donors, some of them are hiding their prime for upgrade once they’ve been with you for a while, how do you identify those ready for upgrade deep in those relationships? Their next free webinar is finding hidden gems looking in your file aptly named it’s on october seventeenth at one o’clock eastern, but that doesn’t matter because you couldn’t follow the archive. You could watch you archive so if you could make it on october seventeenth at one eastern, great, but if you can’t like the vast majority of us, sign up anyway and you’ll get an email about when the archive is ready. You register at the non-profit radio listener landing page, which is tony dot m a slash pursuant also pursuing has a new content paper for you. Twenty seventeen digital year end fund-raising field guide ok, that’s a bit of a mouthful. What? What are the channels in the advertising strategies give you the highest our ally. Gonna we’re talking about our ally for events. Check this out. The field guide to help you tweak your year end campaign based on donor expectations. Get insider tips on digital fund-raising there’s. A whole lot more in this content paper. You go to the non-profit radio. Listener landing page tony dot, m a slash pursuant with a capital p okay, glenn, thank you very much for your indulgence. We could do this a couple times a new format for for me, but i think hopefully is going to work if you’re if you’re willing ready and you’re not walking out now, okay? Okay. All right. So now, it’s my, uh my a challenge to remember exactly where we were. Ok? We’re talking about dark parlor meetings. Yeah, these intimate gatherings that will be so much more satisfying and you’re going to have much more time with more meaningful connections, more meaningful donors than a room full of people that you have to sift through to get through to the ones that are the half a dozen on your list that you need to talk to that night. Exactly. You know, and at parlor events or house parties, you have people who are coming because they know why they’re coming and they want to be there. You know, how many gallons? Alright, i’m going to the gala because my friend bought a table and i need to help phil. We don’t even know why you’re there, i’d rather is a development director. I’d rather have a house party once a month than have to do a gal always focus on the five or six couples, exactly one hundred percent of whom are viable. It’s interested? They know why they’re there. Yeah. Okay. All right. I hope we’ve made that point. I think they think they have the right gal. Is that i mean, it doesn’t only apply to golf. Golf outings. Could be another another time. Suck with small roo. I when you really analyse it. Okay, so that’s, an important part of development assessment. So all right, some of you give me some of what you’re going to get in a development assessment. Like some of the well, well, i guess we’ll yeah. Well, let’s do it this way. What do you get in one of these? So we ask you for lots of data. My people who are pulling the data for my clients all cursed me out. But we often end up his friends. Eso are asking for a lot of information. A lot of data. We do a lot of interviews, and then you get a report back that ah, has a lot. Of has that that data interpreted for you. So, you know, a section we might have a section of the report on annual giving, and we’ll be okay. Here’s, the data here’s what we found here are the trends, and i find that many executive directors, board members, they don’t see the data at this level, maybe the development director’s looking at it, but in a lot of small shops, they don’t even have time to to really do that, so so you’ll get that that data we’ll give you our analysis. All right? Here’s, what we see is going on, you know it for example, this was happened with one of my clients, their annual giving went down for two years, and i went back to her. Why the dip? Well, it turned out they had changed their name after a merger with another organization oneaccord donor base. They didn’t know when they do. They’re weird branding problem serious. So so we look at the analysis, and then we’ll give the recommendations. So you know you’re i have a client now. That’s got a direct mail program and they’re they’re sending the same letter to their donors. They’re lapsed. Owners and acquisition names so well saying, you know what? Look at look at this guy here are some here are some, you know, different ways to approach this, to increase your your success with that. So every, you know, the plan is not just here’s. The data here is ours. Now our analysis here’s some actionable things hear things that you can do going forward, and we try to break those down into short term and long term best bets. Ok, for the client, you mentioned interviews. Who who gets interviewed so we typically i mean, if these always start with the ceo, i actually won’t take on an assessment project if the ceo is not my client because i want the top leadership doing so it’s the ceo could be the c o o could be the chief marketing person of the chief financial officer, the development director, everybody on the development team, no matter what their position is and then usually the board chair, the chair of the development committee, if they have wants some other board members if they’re engaged in fund-raising so we try to we try to get perspectives from from all different sides. Any donors putting aside the boardmember, let’s, let’s, hope that one hundred percent boardmember zoho xero that’s often provoc part of your assessment, but let’s assume they are putting aside boardmember donors, andi, just straight major donors, or i’m bleeding into more like a campaign. Yeah, campaign assessments. Moore is like a campaign feasibility, bilich she’s, bilich thank you, idle. I’m trying to think back of the assessments that we’ve done. I don’t think we’ve interviewed any outside donors who were not boardmember because they’re they’re typically not involved in the day today fund-raising operation of a of an organization. All right, all right, um, when, when is a good time? Tio, do an assessment? Assessment’s happened. I mean, i mean, any time’s, a good time. If you’re going to take a look, if you gonna hyre gie collaborative, sometimes i tease idealware today’s taking calls it. They typically happen. Because something has happened in the organization so it can be a new ceo who’s coming in who wants to get a handle on what’s going on in fund-raising i didn’t assessment last year where a longtime ceo is getting ready to retire, and she wanted to make sure she was leaving the organization in a good place for the next person. Oh, that’s really cool. Yeah. That’s, i really re something, you know? Yeah, if you don’t more than one of those where the person is leaving and two i’ve done, teo, i think they’d be rare. That’s thinking eso it’s, you know, it’s a change in leadership or there’s a new vp of development of director of development and the ceo wants to really kind of give that person ah, foundation to start to build from it could be an organization that has gone through a murder. I did one of those last year to organizations that had recently emerged the ceo. That sounds like you had another case. You told me where the branding was. Not very good after the merger. That was not the same. That was not the same thing. This was this was a client that, you know, two organizations merged to development shops, and the ceo said, hey, come in, take a look at what both of these development operations were doing and tell me how i should organize this going forward on dh so that was a fun project to work on because we, you know, it’s, really too assessments in one on gave her a plan going forward of what needs to remain local, what, neat, what? Khun b, centralized and had he leveraged the resource is you have and make sure you’re, you know, really operating it peak efficiency. So a merger happens on organization’s getting ready for a campaign on dh because it very often in the campaign you want to start with an assessment of your current program or a situation i have now, as a client is going into a strategic planning process, and i’ve never seen a strategic plan that didn’t include increase our resource is so they’ve said, we want to do an assessment of our development program concurrent with a strategic plan, because we know there’s things that we want to do, we’re going to have to up our game with fund-raising now, if you are going into a campaign, you don’t see this as being subsumed in a campaign feasibility study. They’re really two different things develop development assessment often happens before a campaign feasibility studies, so you’re with that you’re assessing the organization’s ability, too, do a campaign and on ability, the ability to be able to sustain their annual fund-raising while they’re in a campaign. So so you really want to make sure your house is in order before you go into a campaign? Where, as a campaign feasibility study, you know, we’re working internally, of course, on case for support and give pyramids and all those tools, but that study is very external with, with potential donors, lots of interviews, focus groups, really getting a sense of the donors perception of the organization of the leadership, their reaction to the case for support, where they might fit in in the campaign, you know, where they could see themselves. You know what issues are important to them? You can see this organism is a good explanation. One is more internally focused internal and the other is outward looking at perceptions exactly of the organization. Okay, cool. Thank you. All right, so you gather, you gather a lot of data, you do a lot of interviews, then i guess you go home and assimilate all the info you got. And what what what’s the next step. So i hide in my office and i you know, as you say, i said, assimilate the date, i do the analysis, we write the report on dh, then, you know, along the way along that process, i generally have a lot of conversations with the development director, you know, i’ll do a chart on, you know, major gift e-giving over the last five years, and i might send that to the development director and say, hey, is this right? Did i get this right on? And i had the situation recently where it wasn’t right? And, you know, there were reasons why wasn’t right, you know, we they fix the data that they gave me and, you know, we went on s oh, there’s, a lot of back and forth, a lot of questions that happen. I’ll circle back with people i interviewed say, hey, you think you said this? But, you know, explain better. Then we create a draft report it is sent to. The ceo for his or her review on dh that’s important because we want to make sure that there’s nothing in the report that the ceo thinks will be inflammatory or, you know, sometimes i say i agree with you, but let’s present it a different way, or there may be issues around staffing. I won’t, for example, in a report, criticize staff that’s there, but if i see something, i’ll write a separate memo or have a phone conversation with the with the exec director s o we go through that process, there’s also a verbal interim report before they get the draft. So when we’re in the middle of the writing, you know, i’ll schedule a call with a client, eric, just thes air some of the key themes that that we’re seeing, and this is what’s likely to come up s o we send and then we said in the draft, get the feedback, finish the final report and then present to the organization it’s, usually to the board of directors. It might be to the senior leadership team, it could be to the development staff, we will do a a power point presentation that doesn’t go. Through every single page of the report, because some of these reports going to lengthy, but we’ll give it, will give a presentation with the highlights in person to the client right now. So anything first of one, mind listeners, we’re talking, teo, i’m talking to what we all are. I’m i’m channeling all of you, so i don’t know if that means i wre we, but i’ll use eye, but you’re all here glenn kaufhold, principal founder of g collaborative. We’re talking about development assessments, how he does them and what they are generally, um, you said anything negative, that you see staff wise. It goes in a separate sort of executive memo. Does the board is the board privy to that, or you leave that to the ceo to deal with? You wouldn’t expose let’s, say, you know you found a really weak. Vice vice president, you know, keep keys, leadership position. You think he or she is particularly weak? You would only share that with the ceo? Yeah, exactly. You’d be more diplomatic. What would you say? What would you say to the board as you’re in your in your presentation share i i wouldn’t say anything to the board unless the ceo wanted me to a zay said before this, i consider the ceo my client on dh here she knows best how to communicate with the board on, and i don’t want to say anything to aboard that is going to cause problems for the ceo the next morning. S o if there’s if there’s a situation and i had one a couple of years ago, somebody had been promoted into the vp position who just wasn’t right? You know, this this person was excellent at donorsearch relationships was heading stewardship previously, and we said to the ceo, you know what put this person back into stewardship because that’s where they’re happy that’s, where they’re good that’s, where their effect of this person isn’t right to be the v p but i say that i say that to the ceo. Because then i let him her, you know, decided the ceo was the one who decides on hiring and firing and deploying staff it’s not shouldn’t be the board’s responsibility, so i feel that then the ceo khun khun, deal with that whatever way it makes sense. What if we alluded to this earlier board? Fund-raising is lackluster it’s not where it should be it’s not one hundred percent how do you convey that to the board first, what they should be doing and then how they how they can improve themselves. So the report always includes a section on board giving. So we will look at, you know, the percentage of participation and giving the average gift, you know, were they giving to annual giving? Are they giving to a campaign or what are they giving too? We don’t present the data name by name, although we do it name by name, but we don’t present it that way, so it’ll it’ll give them that snapshot, but we have a dog is a dog in the hallway way can’t hide it remains. We’ll shout it out so don’t not in the studio on the other side of the door. It sounded small enough, but i still want to be outside of the door, so we, you know, we will in the report gives suggestions on ways boardmember sze can can get involved, and then i will often have conversations with the v p of development on here’s what i found and i’ll ask the question, how are you engaging the board? Bored, bored involvement and fund-raising is not a one one size fits all you know, i’ve seen people say, oh, okay, next board meeting, bring five names, you know, that doesn’t work if you if you have to work with board members, one on some people, some people may want to do a lot more than bring a list of five names, exactly somewhere, not comfortable doing that, but there might be comfortable hosting a party with those five couples exact. So, you know, you gotta get meat, everybody where they are fund-raising is more than e-giving i mean, they all should be given in some respect of you were outlining. But beyond that, beyond their own personal gif ts on dh that’s, not one size fits all either no, no. Beyond that, you have to meet them. Where they are, where there were, there were their comfort level is, yeah, and you know it, bored, engaged, but also comes another up and other parts of the assessment. So, you know, in in the context of annual giving, we were talking before about the house parties and middle donorsearch programs and things like that. Most of my clients don’t have those kinds of programs, or if they do, they’re really not activating them, so i will talk in the report. I’ll make recommendations. Your board members can can do this and some of the value behind doing middle donorsearch programs, and i talk about board involvement, ah ha, in dahna relations and stewardship, because we look at that in the report, i’ll make recommendations for how to involve board members in thanking donors and participating and ongoing donor engagement programs. Okay, okay. What what’s your sense of how successful non-profit dorian in having robust board fund-raising programs are having the kind of participation that they ought to have. You’ve done a lot of assessments. Do you still do you still feel like this is? Ah, weak area for a lot of organizations, it is a week. It is a weak area. But i question our expectations around that. So here’s here, this is this is what got me going on this. A couple of years ago i presented at aa f p conference in fort lauderdale and the closing session was a panel discussion. I don’t even remember what the topic was. But there was a lot of q and a, and somebody in the audience asked the question of how can we get our board members to raise more money? And one of the palate panelists up there’s a woman named terry temkin whose purse it’s become a friend and she, you know, she said that she said, you know, we just have to get over ourselves. Fund-raising is staff driven? If you get one or two or three board members who will help you? Great. But are you know i think our expectations on board involvement have to change. This is pretty radical, it’s very radical ninety nine percent of the guests and you’re the other present have had for seven years of said, you know, it needs to be it needs to be where nufer fund-raising initiatives begin, it needs to be one hundred percent support board members need to do their part whatever again, whatever they’re part of comfort is what their comfort level is in fund-raising you know, the expectations generally very, very high, and yet we’re all frustrated because people aren’t living up to their weight reduced expectations were still trying to get to keep trying to get boardmember is to step up to i think we need to think about our expectations of what is really likely and then going back to what i said a moment ago about personalizing board engagement don’t tell them bring five names don’t ask five people, okay, work with us to come up with a plan that’s comfortable for you and makes you feel good, okay, let’s remind me that we’re talking about this in case i forget about the response unanswered, but okay, this subject of thie expectations. Versus the reality i want, i want to come back to and we got a lot more with glen and development assessments coming up right now tell us credit card and payment processing. Does your organization need a passive residual revenue stream that pays you every month? All right, tell us is a new sponsor telling in a couple weeks and we have a long time with them. So we gotta work into this. But here’s, what we’re talking about credit and debit card processing. That’s what that’s? What that’s, what they do as a partner non-profit you okay? So they’re going to be asking you for referrals within your community will get to that and you, as one of their partners, get fifty percent of every dollar that tell of skits, so every dollar revenue non-profit every dollar of revenue fifty percent of that from your your referrals goes to you all right. And they have an incredible offer that is on ly for non-profit radio listeners, you refer a business in your network think businesses owned by board members think local companies that support you and your community could be an independent artist, family members, if you’re if you’re smaller organization, any body or organization entity that accepts credit cards? That’s it we’re talking about okay, tell us is going to evaluate their their current arrangement with their payment processor? If tello’s cannot save you, i could not save that person money. They’re going to give you two hundred fifty dollars. You the organization that referred them if tell us can’t save them money, you get two hundred fifty dollars. Alright, you’re only going to find this at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us tony dahna em a slash tony tell us, it’s all described. They’re in a very sexist, extinct paragraph the offer for non-profit radio listeners think about the companies that you can refer and check that out their landing page. Tony dahna may slash tony tello’s. Um, i think that okay, i’m gonna go. We’re gonna go back to glenn that? Yes, tony’s take two. Of course, where’s because i’m on the wrong page. That’s the problem. Okay, my latest video is is giving tuesday and if you don’t have giving tuesday totally sewn up. That’s ok it’s not too late, although too late is approaching. Check out the video. You know, we just and we just devoted a show to this two weeks ago. So, you know, we have the advice of jessica schneider from ninety second street. Why? Amy sample ward, our social media contributor. They had ideas and assurances that you still can do something. You know, you start small, of course. First year, if that’s, what if it’s the first year, but we do recommend, you know, getting on giving tuesday at some level. And so you can check out that show from two weeks ago. And plus, my video has lots of links. It’s basically e-giving tuesday roundup. So you find the video where else you know where you don’t even need me to say it e-giving tuesday video it’s at twenty martignetti dot com and that is tony’s take too. And i feel like we should do live listener love, s cetera. The etcetera, of course, is very important. So live listeners are in tampa, florida. Woodbridge, new jersey, woodbridge very consistent woodbridge been over over several weeks, maybe even more even longer. Woodbridge, thank you so much for being with us. Live. Listen, love out to you, oakland, california. Wonderful newburgh, indiana wonderful live listener left to you um, let’s do some live love on facebook jackie, jackie, pvc maria simple john campy rick chamness live love to you on facebook! Thank you so much, facebook can you like, can you share? Can you send ah, what do you sense stars or something? No that’s on that’s on periscope somehow you khun, you can like this like the facebook live video and little things stream into the video i forget on on periscope their hearts i don’t know what they are you can’t even put a hard on i figure out what they like you or they look like like and low give him lots of love and share and share here sharing is critical so facebook live love and let’s go abroad for some live listen, love, we’ve got took over ozawa, japan commit you are got munich, germany gooden dog on we’ve got okay also, tokyo, japan konnichi wa for tokyo and someone in the dominican republic o dominican republic thinking about you so glad you’re with us. Thank you. Thank you. Live love to all the live listeners and, of course, the podcast pleasantries come very quickly, soon after love listener loved over twelve thousand of you listening on your devices in your time whenever it’s convenient for you pleasantries to the podcast listeners. Thank you for being with us and the affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners throughout the country affections to you, however, or whenever your station fits you into their schedule, i’m so glad you’re with us. Let your studio no, let your station no affections to ur am and fm listeners. Okay, glenn, i know what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the expectations this is going to be a challenge for me, but the expectations versus now in this new format, i don’t get a break the expectations versus the reality of board e-giving so you’re feeling like a mike my hearing you correctly, you think we should reduce the expectations? Well, i want to clarify one thing. I don’t think we should reduce expectations about boardmember is giving themselves to the organization, you know, if you’re on a board hundred percent, you have to you have a one hundred percent and whether an organization sets, give or get number or some organizations say it’s, you know, one. Of your top three charity gift for you. You know that one hundred percent there is there are no excuses for that. All right? Where i’m saying we have to be more realistic is bored expectations for fund-raising and not not to necessarily to diminish our our expectations that they participate but toe look inward for so this is where the assessment can come in is, how are we engaging with our boardmember is one of their wee asking them to do? Are we doing it individually in this size? Yes, in ways and where they are we need and where their comfort level, it might just be something very small. Yeah. Ok, yeah. And, you know, you also have part as i see this with, you know, what’s on my clients, you have board’s thinking of couple organizations that are umbrella organizations in an industry, and they have executive directors of other non-profits populating their boards. Well, it’s unrealistic to expect that those other executive vectors air going to fundraise because they’ve got that responsibility for their own organization. So you have to look at board, you know, board composition. You have to look at how people were recruited. I had a client recently said by board members were not when they were included, they weren’t asked to give money. Hey, we need to change that. So so, you know, if you have that kind of situation, maybe you have to say, you know, i don’t know what we can expect them to do it at this point, but i think we have to be realistic about exploitation and again, one size definitely does i guess i’m playing devil’s advocate zoho like challenging a little bit, but so do you feel that every boardmember should do something again? This is beyond their own personal gift do something to support the fund-raising even if it’s just ask a friend or, you know, if it’s something very small, do you feel everybody should be doing something? Or do you feel that there is some board members that we just make your personal gift and ended there? Is that appropriate? No, i think i think that every boardmember can do something and should do something it could be you were just talking about giving tuesday, you know, there’s, no reason why every boardmember even if they’ve got competition, you know, when their own jobs, they can’t fund-raising that much for you, there’s no reason why they can’t promote your giving tuesday campaign on their own social media personal social media pages there’s no reason why boardmember sze can’t pick up the phone an hour before a board meeting and just call ten donors to thank them for their gifts because that’s important to thank you’s a great one, thank you. So there are there are lots of ways that board members can participate in the fund-raising process that isn’t sitting down and asking somebody for twenty five thousand dollars for sure on the phone calls to donors are really important. Sometimes you have used boardmember sze tio to come with me on solicitations, just having a boardmember there brings credibility, even if they don’t need to ask or they you know, they don’t, they’re not comfortable asking just a company in you just like going? Well, i think we’re saying the same thing that i mean it’s, basically, but it has to be personalized, has it has to be on dh that should really be done at the point where they join the board. Really? I mean, isn’t that what you’re going? To be, you know, we do have, aside from your personal gift, we expect that you’re our key volunteers, you’re our key stakeholders in this organization, we need you, and we expect you to do something to help our fund-raising let’s talk about what the different opportunities are and pair you with a mentor on the board, who’s an established boardmember you khun tag along him or her? You know, i think that’s the way i think there’s a lot of value and doing it at the intake stage. Yeah, yeah, and you know what? I also i’ve seen this happen to you. No board members come on boards because of their other because of other expertise they have, you know, subject matter, expertise or they bring financial acumen or whatever something law, what hr hr, you know so but again finding a comfortable way for them to be involved on dh not expecting them to bring five names, they’re not expecting them to raze x amount of money in given you, they may just not be able to do that, but they could make phone calls to think donors they can come to donorsearch events and, you know, say hello to people. I mean, there’s things that everyone could d’oh. You talk about being, i guess. There’s mid term and long term recommendations. Eyes, there’s something short term, like within the next month. That’s, that’s unrealistic on not so much. You know, i think i think there are things that you could do in donor relations and stewardship, that you could turn around that quickly. For example, you know, bringing names to a board meeting and getting asking what everyone to come a half hour early and make phone calls. So those are the kinds of things that you can do pretty quickly. Okay? Others take a little more time. All you know, and it also depends on the staff availability. You know, i work with a lot of clients that just, you know, they’re staffer maxed out, so it takes them ah, little time to to, you know, change course on dh it’s also up, sometimes up to the board and then aboard engagement. I remember an assessment we did a couple of years ago, and one of the recommendations was to create a middle donorsearch program. And i showed them data. And in all that one boardmember sat there in the meeting said, this is brilliant. We have to do this now, she’s like, okay, you know, who’s going to join me, who know how we’re going to get this done and get it done now. And so sometimes that that happens also feels good, very gratifying to have your assessment considered brilliant. Oh, i love it. Yeah. Boardmember william was going to do that. Okay, um all right? Yeah. I’m trying todo what listeners have a sense of what the action items are that come out of dahna an average assessment. So okay, so outside a middle donors help the transition off the event driven fund-raising that you’ve been that that cycle you’ve been stuck in, you know, for years or what? What else can we expect? Sort of action item wise. So a lot of action items again and donor relations and stewardship you can implement immediately action items buy-in annual giving. So that’s case i mentioned before, where a client was putting their their acquisition there live bugs inside buns in the same mailing, you know, they can change that immediately, or as soon as the next time the male egos out or if it’s right? I hold, i thought now listeners were going to say, well, how come how come tony, let him get away with live one side bun? We have jargon jail on non-profit radio and i think i’m sorry. I think lai brunton sideburns is a common so i’m the arbiter of what’s jargon jail in what’s not it’s last year, but not this year and some year meaning somewhere in the past, but not this year and further than further further in the past. On last year that’s what like bonsai bonem but i think if you were, if you were wondering why i think this is basic terms, i think i think i’m having a lot of people s so i’m not easing up on george in jail, so if you’re not going so lots of interruptions here, you have to do it so it’s hard for you, you have to hold your thoughts. Ah, so you know, things like that, it could be and i’ve i’ve done assessments where they’re not doing enough teo retain their donors, you know, they’re focusing on acquisition, but they’re not doing enough to retain the argast recommendations for the tension critical way. Have something. What is seventy percent? Donorsearch lost dahna nutrition every year. It’s crazy way all know it costs toward a choir a donor than it does to retake guest number one hundred said way. We’re drilling it in, but but none but nonetheless still important that’s still important it’s not cliche. It’s critical. Yeah, yes, it does cost a lot more. And don’t a retention save your donors. Don’t go out and get having to replace seventy percent of your donors every you know, business works like that. Not at all. So there could be recommendations on. Are all those people that came to your gala? Ah, what can you do to try to convert them from being a transactional donor to what i call an intentional donor. Okay, go ahead. To find that, please, jorgen. Just so a transactional donor is. I paid a ticket to go to the golf tournament or paying a ticket to go to your gala. It’s a transaction, an intentional gift would be ok. Somebody’s, come to the the the gala and then here’s something they like. They go to your website and say, you know what? I’m going to become a monthly donor that’s an intentional gift. Okay, this comes up a lot of my work. I’ve been doing a lot of work recently in the hospice non-profit hospice world. And so in those kinds of experiences around my moms who spent just her last day in the hospital, i’m honored to work in that space. My god. But and, you know, the end of life care. Yeah, so critical. So better to go out a lot of the money that that the gifts that come in tow non-profit hospices their memorial gifts. So your mom died and were incoming way people might make gifts. That’s a transactional kind of abila marie claire in saddle brook if you want to do anything on the memory of jacqueline martignetti villa marie claire saddlebrook. So that’s a transactional gift. So where? You know, this is where the art of fund-raising comes. And how does that hospice organization take those donors? How did they communicate with them? How do they help them understand that’s purely a transactional donor. Otherwise? Yeah. Initially. What? What? Their money’s for one. What hot non-profit hospice as its i’m finding it’s it’s a little understood part of our health. Care system are non-profit healthcare. Until until you’re in a crisis. Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, what can a new organization like that due to educate on the importance of for the patient, the importance and value for the family. And so they can make at something that becomes your you call an intentional donor-centric treyz actually donor-centric with me. We got a lot more on development assessments coming up with glen. Of course, wittner. Cps. They do go way beyond the numbers. Major gifts, best practices and common mistakes could be something that glen and his clients would be interested in. It’s, one of the archive webinars. That weapon regular creates, um it’s not done by a c p a, of course they bring in outside. Experts tell you about major e-giving. It covers five of each of these best practices and common mistakes. And then it was the single most important thing you can do to have a more successful major gift program. So they got this one key that there, there, there. Is that the hook? It gets you in the webinar, but it’s worth it. You need to beef up your major gift program. Maybe benchmark. Yours. I want to talk to glenn about benchmarking. Make a note of that benchmark against others in assessments. Could we talk about that? Sure. Okay. Um, yeah, benchmark. Your gift, your major give program against others. Good to get some outside perspective. I think so. You don’t have to register. This one is already archived. You can watch it right now. Wuebben wittner, you know, just going way beyond. Just see piela and you’ll find it at wagner cps dot com click resource is then webinars if you want to browse everything they offer, click resource is and you’ll see the full the full collection abila abila software let’s. Figure this out. Okay, you’re non-profit but you use accounting software made for a business now, i had never thought about this until apolo see became a sponsor of non-profit radio. But it makes some sense to me you need something is made for you. This is twenty seventeen software there’s so much niche software you’re non-profit you shouldn’t be using business accounting software like sage and quickbooks. Those things were not made for you. Abalos is its accounting software designed for non-profits from the ground up. Okay, easy, affordable non-profit. Accounting software there at non-profit wizard dot com. Now, have you wondered why it’s non-profit we said, dot com that i’m asking you to go to instead of apples. Dot com. Well, very simple accountability. Apple o’s is checking to see how many non-profit radio listeners go to check out their site, and they’re doing it through this vanity. You are l non-profit wizard dot com for simply, if we’re not getting the click throughs and the referrals, they’re not going to be a sponsor anymore. It’s that simple. So if you have questions about accounting software, if you’re not so thrilled with your accounting software, if you’re willing to look at alternatives and alternative that is made for non-profits, then i need you to go to non-profit wizard dot com, see the value there and go further if, if you think it makes some sense for you. Non-profit weather dot com for apple owes accounting software okay. Thank you. Going my pleasure. Let’s. See, let’s. Ah, i’m going to do. Ah, where were we? I know what i want to talk about benchmarking. But where were we before that? Do you remember? Okay, i don’t even market. Ok, see, listeners to go back and say, oh, tony, what moron? Moron? Oh, that no, no, i am not john kelly on. I’m not talking about the president, but tony. Like what a moron you can’t remember. But, you know, it’s. Not so easy. You try it sometime. Let’s, talk about benchmarking. Is that appropriate for is that appropriate for a development assessment? Teo, look outside the world on dh show where you stand in relation to it. Ah, i haven’t done it in the turn in the context of my assessment work because there are so many variables, you know that that come into play, you know, i’m trying to do a benchmark, and that takes a lot of time. Yeah, and so i try to keep the fee on the assessments, you know, reasonable enough, but, yeah, there is benchmark. And i’ve done some of it. I one of my very first clients was a performing arts center and they hired us to do an assessment which we did and, you know, have kept us on. I’m still working with them, you know, seven, eight years later on dh, they wanted to boost their membership at a tte, the thousand dollar level and up, and they asked me to do some benchmarking, which i did, which was really very useful to see where they were in comparison, going back to the hospice feel that i was talking about before we went to break, you know, i would love to do some benchmarking on non-profit non-profit hospice conversion rates of those memorial donorsearch transactional donors to intentional dentures and really see not just to help you see, i mean, you’re non-profit where you’re at with that, but to understand what organizations air doing toe bump that up, andi, you know, why are some people having ah hyre conversion rate, then than others, but in the assessment itself, it hasn’t come up. I don’t say it could look a right. Somebody might request it, but also your arm or internally focused more internally, and you have thirty years of experience or you know what? What the possibilities are. How a shop can run smoothly and how to get a rough running shop would be more smooth. That’s, that’s basically the value that people finding your assessments essentially. Okay, what do you like to see staff doing with this after it’s done? You got these midterm recommendation, long term recommendations a ll the data analysis, it’s all been presented. What? What ideally should staff be doing with this? Well, staff, your shaft will get onboarding yeah, well and lorts i mean, should really, really internalize it and think about their systems think about what they’re doing have assessment. I just finished the data collection was very arduous for this particular client really difficult on dh they said to me, you know, after we were done cursing you out, we actually learned a lot from this because we learned there there are better ways of tracking data. S o so i you know, i hope that staff will take the recommendations and they may not accept all of them and some of them they can’t implement because there just isn’t enough staff, and our assessments often will not only look at the staff they have but help you with recommendations. Of how you should be staffed s o sometimes they just can’t do these things, but they can start to make changes by eliminating gallows and golf tournaments. Tto help them move in that direction is but there are changes that they can make around stewardship around donorsearch actions. So if if your organization is for example, taking two weeks to acknowledge a gift their immediate things you can do to look at your system, you look at your processes and tighten them up so you could bring two weeks down to two days. S o i want i want staff to be internalizing these things on dh teo implementing what makes sense for their their organization, all right? And then how about the board, the more the same thing? If if there are fund-raising initiatives that we recommend, like a middle donor-centric activities to start moving your annual fund, donors, your middle middle donors up to major gifts, you know? So there are things that they can start to do in that area. They, as i said before, can have a role in ongoing donor relation and also support for this and support for this maybe this is an impetus for, um, greater fund-raising so that there could be more resources to bring on more staff to get to the next level. Exactly. There’s, there’s, budget allocation, shins, there’s. You know, i’ve seen these assessments change, development committee’s and what they’re focused. And so instead of the development committee, just sitting there listening to the development rector give a report, they’re engaging mohr and they’re participating in the process. So these air these air, very these assessments really help healthy for board members, and i love doing board presentation because eyes go wide open their hearing things they had no idea about on its getting them toe beginning them to think, yeah, all right, what? You shared a bunch of stories you have? Ah, yes, maybe a longer term story where buy-in organization did an assessment then you heard back from them, or maybe you kept working with them and they grew as a result of this arduous assessment process. Great question. And no, i’ll tell. I’ll tell listeners this this was not planned. I didn’t know he was going to ask this, but this just came up this week, so my my very first client was a community. College system in california did an assessment, and i worked with him for a couple of years to start. We had emerged to foundations and then ran it for a couple of years for them until they could hire somebody. And i just it’s been five years since i stopped working with him, and i called the chancellor just this week because i’m writing up our experience. There is a case study for another client. They asked me to do a little benchmarking i’m going back to that topic on i and i called her with some some questions and how it was going, you know, kind of her own perspective on things. And so this was this was a a situation where they were raising a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, they’ve increased that and now, seven years after we did the assessment, they’re starting a fifteen million dollar campaign and there are poised to close their first three one million dollar gifts. They’ve never had gifts at that size, they’re engaging alumni, they’re engaging their retirees. She really pointed all of the things that they’ve been able to do since that assessment on what’s great for me. Is she’s actually? She has invited me to come back. She wants to reassess their operation and excellent. See, you know, see where is that? Where it’s grown over the last the last seven years. Very gratifying. It is that’s really gonna listen to you? All right, we’re gonna leave it there, ok? Glenn kaufhold g collaborative is his company. You’ll find them a tgi collaborative with k dot com. And if you go to g collaborative dot com slash assessments claim has a lot more information about this. He did it for the show. It’s like a landing page for the show. And you can fill out a basic assessment. Yeah, so there’s a little bit. A little quick. There’s a little quiz that you can fill out and then you submit that and we will send you are g calera tive guide to development assessments. He’s also at fund-raising wonk. Glenn. Thank you again so much. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Pleasure next week. Oh, yeah, you’ll like it. Whatever. It turns out being, it’ll be good if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported. By pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits, data driven and technology enabled pursuing dot com wagner cpas, guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner, cps, dot com apple is accounting software designed for non-profits. Apple owes accounting non-profit wizard dot com and tell us credit and debit card processors. You’re passive revenue stream. Tony dot, slash tony tello’s, our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam lewis is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, and this very cool music is by scott stein of brooklyn. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. 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 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 dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff 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 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.

Nonprofit Radio for October 6, 2017: Getting To The Next Level

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Laurence Pagnoni: Getting To The Next Level

Laurence Pagnoni is author of the book, “The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution.” Based on his work as an executive director and fundraising consultant, he has proven strategies to get you to the next level of fundraising revenue. (Originally aired November 8, 2013)

 

 

 


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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 to our newest sponsor, tello’s credit card and payment processor. They’re out of norman, oklahoma, but they serve the world welcome. Tell us so glad you’re with us. Thank you for supporting non-profit radio. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of lymph node itis if you inflamed me with the idea that you missed today’s show, get to the next level. Lawrence paige nani is author of the book the front non-profit fund-raising solution based on his work as an executive director and fund-raising consultant, he has proven strategies to get you to the next level of fund-raising revenue this originally aired on november eighth twenty thirteen and i did have to make a switch from what i announced last week, we will get oracle net sweet on later this year. I’m working on that on tony’s take two e-giving tuesday, responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by wagner, sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers witness oppa is dot com, you’re not a business you’re non-profit kaplow’s accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and tell us they’re turning payment processing into passive revenue streams for non-profits tell us processing dot com here is lawrence paige nani will get to the next level. I’m very pleased that lawrence paige no knees book and his work bring him to the studio. He has spent twenty five years in the nonprofit sector and was an executive director of three non-profit fitz he’s been a faculty member at the gnu heimans center for philanthropy and fund-raising we’ve had guests from there, and the coach is a group of executive directors with the rutgers business schools institute for ethical leadership. His book is the non-profit fund-raising solution. Powerful revenue strategies to take you to the next level lorts back. Tony, welcome to the studio. Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here. It’s. A real pleasure to have you know, i love having live in studio guest. It just makes it that much more special. Congratulations on the book, it’s. Just it’s out this month, right? Yes. Just a few weeks ago and and delighted. It has a robust sales so far. Excellent, very good for you. Thank you. I have to ask you this. I’ve wondered about this since i first saw your name, which is years. Why isn’t it panjwani wipe agnone? How did you i’m not martignetti why did you? Somewhere along the lineage you went to patin? Tony had that happened? It’s my grand. My grandmother would like your question. It’s, lorenzo, antonio peggy oni that’s your your it’s, like a little birdie operate you’re you’re ah, expression of it is accurate, and but, you know, in american vernacular gets paige no knee. I hate that. I hate that your grandmother would love the pan uni i was a beautiful name. It is operatic. Um, the non-profit fund-raising solution. What is the problem? Well, under capitalization of the sector plagues more than seventy seven percent of non-profits they i have a vision, but they don’t have the money to implement it. And many organizations spend years on a plateau under two hundred fifty thousand dollars trying to execute their vision for some small non-profits ah, humble budget is more than adequate, and they’re doing good services and they are meeting their vision. So don’t mean to imply that. You need money too, do your work and they’re amazing volunteer organizations. But for those organizations that that need money, i wrote the book in that spirit of trying to help them, tio, to go to the next level, which is such a ubiquitous question. I mean, i get that a lot on dh. I work only really in the planned e-giving and the charity registration niches. But even i am asked a lot. You know, how do we get to the next level? Can you help us get to the next level? So there are a lot of organizations that do want to go to increased fund-raising revenue. It’s the number one question i get when i give seminars or public trainings, and somebody inevitably will wander up to that micah’s i say in the introduction and and ask me, how do you get to the next level? And on the one hand, it’s a poetic question, but on the other hand, it’s for my sensibilities, it’s a business question with mathematical methods behind it. And the book tries to explain that if you get your leadership, understanding the vision for what the next level looks like if the board supports that vision if you think about hyre level strategies and you work on changing the culture of your organization so that the organisational development matches that vision that’s the foundation, there’s four aspects are the foundation for going to the next level, and then the rest is tactical most fund-raising is tactical. The strategy comes from the organization, and we’re gonna have time to talk about the organisational development as well as the strategies and tactics, because i love that we have the full hour together. So the symptoms of this problem are mean ah, event to event fund-raising or maybe sole source revenue streams? Yeah, most foundation grants have ah, three year limit. There are some exceptions to that, of course, places like the robin hood foundation, which see themselves as long term partners, um, but event to event without any cash reserves and some organizations just go year two year like that and and and make do and with a little bit of luck and and providence, they they squeak by, but it’s hard to plan having an impact on your mission and on the sector. The field of service, if you will, that you’ve chosen if you really want to help at risk kids, i have a better chance at getting into college or getting the right on the right employment that’s a great example because it’s, exactly it’s for you, you do have to plan for years that’s a life cycle of a child and if you’re you know, as you say, just getting by year to year, how can you plan for that child’s future? You can’t you can’t plan for your own that’s, right? Do you think that since we see such a reliance on events, i have a theory? I don’t, but you khun you’re free to disagree that the reliance on events is so that people can avoid what they fear, which is having to sit across the table from someone and looked him in the eye and ask them for a gift. Well, it’s, funny as best as i understand it, and i’m always learning events were yeah, the history of them goes back to having an opportunity to thank your individual donors. They weren’t actually fundraisers unto themselves, and then they course morphed into that when in fund-raising when the event ah, is linked to individual giving and get in to get the individual giving program. They always raise more money because the point is that the twenty percent of your individual donor base who gives eighty percent generally on your revenue since the recession. We see it’s maybe seventy. Thirty. Um, they need to be talked to individually and thoughtfully, and having tough conversations with donors is part of that territory. And i think a lot of people are, um, are shy about that. Money, of course, is one of the great taboos of life and so it’s fraught with ah, emotional issues. Um, you allude to cem cem research done by stanford about the dominant revenue source. We’ll flush that after us. Sure. Well, you often hear people say that they need a diversified revenue base. Yes, and i’ve heard that for years as a fundraiser. And as in the former executive director, i used to worry about how much time and energy that talkto have more than one or two revenue streams. So a few years ago, stanford university ah did research on one hundred and forty hundred forty one non-profits that that had gotten over the fifty million dollar marks annual budget. What they discovered was a surprise that those organizations generally had a dominant source of revenue and possibly a secondary source of revenue and wasn’t as diversified as smaller non-profits. But they also said that smaller non-profits still needed to diversify until they got to that plateau. Ah, when or they got to that level, when they could break through for a dominant source of revenue. And the reason this is interesting is that those non-profits that got over fifty million. They knew everything. There was to know about that dominant source of revenue. If it was individual giving, say, for example, habitat for humanity. Their dominant source of revenue is individual giving, followed by in-kind donations, followed by foundations. Um, they knew everything there was from about individual giving. From ah there, first acquisition, to plan giving and the whole continuum within those two ends. Yes. We are going to ah, take a break, and we’ll of course continue with lawrence, and we’ll talk a little more about the the inflexibility that we’re talking about now and that sort of tradition of of dominant source giving, but then we’re gonna move on and we’re going to talk about what it takes for the organization, too develop within before he can get to the next level, so hang in there. 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. Lawrence paige nani is with me. He is the author of the non-profit fund-raising solution. So before the break, we were talking a little about thiss dominant source so they knew their dominant source and maybe a secondary source very well. So it’s so it’s not so bad. Teo teo, be focused that way. No. Ah, it turns out that that that there are different levels in every revenue source of from an average level two quite skilled level. What they had a have, of course, in their dominant source of revenue was they had to have deep and abiding expertise. Ah lo, staff turnover amongst the fund-raising staff was very important for those organizations because the institutional memory of with their donors had to be preserved. It’s called development for a reason it’s a developmental process. So if you’re walking the walk with a donor through their lifetime of giving, if they get comfortable with a fundraiser, the chances of that fundraiser being able to raise more money are much higher now. Of course, that’s that’s ah juxtaposed to the chronicle philanthropies article this past year, which showed that the turn of the dissatisfaction amongst fundraisers with their organizations was extremely high. Yes, and i we talked about that on the show. Did you? Yeah, i was distraught to hear that. And because fund-raising is a noble profession, and when it’s not respected, the process is not respected than people expect returns too fast, or they expect the fundraiser toe come in with donor’s ready to g o without having to cultivate them for your mission. And these are very irrational ideas dominate the conversations around fund-raising but it’s called development for a reason, and those non-profits that god above fifty million that had a dominant source were they had a patients to their culture, and they respected the cultivation process and they closed, you know, on on major gifts much more frequently than those that didn’t have that culture. What was the first organization that you were executive director of? Oh my, it was a soup kitchen for the homeless in richmond, virginia, and i’m guessing there are a lot of lessons you learned there. Oh, my goodness, i i on the and in the book i tell the story of how i forgot about the board no, i didn’t. I didn’t technically forget about board. I attended board meetings. I prepared my reports. I i had the board book ready and met with the committee’s when they needed me, but in my soul they were superfluous, and what was really important was getting the programme metrics right and getting the fundraising going. But i came to see how the board ah, in my second executive directorship, here in new york, at harlem united, i came to see how the board i could give the organization a gift that the ceo cannot, which is the gift of longevity and survivability, and that great word that we use in the sector sustainability. So in your ah experience in was in west virginia, richmond in virginia, at the soup kitchen. Were you sort of dragging the board along as you as you worked on the metrics that were important to you or you would just take kicking them was more my style. Okay, so clicking from behind? Well, there was the italian way, the italian right? More like a bull bull in a china shop. But ah, the urgency was, of course, that homelessness was extremely bad. The single room occupancy hotels in richmond, virginia, were closing at a rapid rate, and the homeless shelters were were increasing. So we had a a profound sense of urgency, and then right in the middle that the aids epidemic was becoming clearer to us. And so there was this sense of urgency, and we in fact founded three different organizations. Ah, as spin offs to to our non-profit but i came to see the value of board leadership and bored endorsement and and to recruit people that did add value. Not everybody is meant to be a boardmember and i had made the mistake of just recruiting volunteers that had a passion for the board. Without necessarily having the business, talents and skills that i needed to fulfill the mission that we were, we were aimed at over ten to twenty years, and we’re going to talk later on about one of the opportunities that you’ve identified leadership counsels for maybe the type of people that you’re talking about not suitable for the board but have interest and passion. And so there may be another role for them. Yes, so let’s talk about the board now the board has to metoo it’s essential at the board be developed before the organization is going to get to the next level? Oh, yes, ah, a lot of ceos inherited inherit aboard when they take a job that isn’t necessarily up for the task, and they wait on the sidelines for something magical to happen with that board, and they don’t necessarily see themselves as an intervening variable to bring the board to the next level themselves. But i recommend in my book that they do see themselves as part of the change process for the board by meeting personally with board members by recruiting people who have the skills and talents that they’d be delighted to have. In leaders and that’s not all they’re not always easy processes. They take time, but you’re trying to develop a shared vision on the board. Exact between the executive leadership and the the ceo executive director and the and the volunteer leadership that’s. Right. This could take a long time to align a vision. It can, but there are plenty of examples where it happens rather fast. I mean, the board share one. The board in richmond, virginia. The board of harlem united here in new york. They were united around the being thought leaders in the field of of ah, innovative health care for people who fell outside the health care system, the homeless and indigents. And they they i saw their revenue streams from the government, both federal and state, as needing to be reformed so that they could get the funds that were needed. For example, in nineteen ninety one there were no article. Twenty eight healthcare, primary care, organised clinics. For people living with aids, they were only the peruse of mental health. So what the board did with the executive staff leadership is they formed a statewide organization called the adult they health care coalition. And they changed the way the revenue stream were structured so that article twenty eights could include primary care for people living with aids. Article twenty eight is a federal state of new york state state health. S o that you could receive third party medicare reimburse. Okay. Okay. It’s. An amazing revenue stream. Extremely stable. And it helped people keep people out of hospital emergency rooms so you can provide care at a much lower rate. So sometimes revenue streams have that level of complexity to them. And you need a board that could understand the thinking behind them. And sometimes revenue streams are easier to understand. I mean, i think that’s why people often gravitate to foundation grants. They can look at a foundation’s website. They could understand the application process, and they throw there their hat in the ring to see if there are going to be, you know, lucky. Let zoho focus on again the achieving this shared vision across the board. So it certainly takes place in inboard recruitment board meetings and a month after month. I mean what’s the what’s, the executive director’s role in trying tow align the board with this with a common vision. Well, one of my great teachers, carl matthiasson, who was expert in board development hey used to say that a board will talk about anything and then he’d pause and he’d say, if you let them sound the point, the point was that the executive director ah, in in private dialogue with the board chair or the executive committee had to understand how to create an agenda that was consistent with where they were headed, so that the organization didn’t waste a lot of time. Often times, you know, can you imagine tony in an average year, how many board meetings i sit in and listen? And so much of what boards talk about is not is inconsequential to their their deepest desires and goals, paperclips and on dh office supplies a cz one example, you know, thinking ok, go and no on the worst, and the executive director doesn’t want to be micromanaged, you know you hear that language a lot. Of course. On the other hand, the executive director is under macro managing and the opposite, of course, of micro management is macro management and macro management is about the strategic alliance of the vision and here’s, where you see a lot of executive director’s, check out the and it leaves them vulnerable to being micromanaged. So i encourage in the book for the culture of a board to be robust and that the ceo see him or herself as part of a shaper or leader in that now lot of non-profit see, youse will read that and they would go well dahna you know, i’ve been doing of course i’ve been doing that for years, but when you look across the sector that’s not necessarily the habit off many ceos, they they often see themselves as just employees of the board and they and they abdicate that board leadership responsibility, yes, even though they’re not the named chair of the board, but you’re advocating that they still have a strong role in board leadership that’s, right? And some ceos who were former program directors and then that he became the ceo, they’re not by their character change agents. So what i’m describing is a character of a ceo that’s really a change agent because i’m interested in high performing non-profits that that solve the social problem that they set out to solve, whether it be reducing teen pregnancies or having more kids get through the school system successfully or or adult employment, for example. Um, so those ceos of those kinds of organizations generally are changing agents and it’s not to say there’s something bad about the ceos are not it’s, just that i think that they have to think about a different place in the sector that might be better suited for their skills and talents. Okay, let’s, talk briefly about the gift of significance that you recommend from from board members and you in the book, you have a calculation for what that ought to be boardmember boardmember and we don’t really have a chance to go through that calculation. But what? What? Why not a significant gift? Why? Why is it a gift of significance? Well, that’s a significant point. Most boards think about board trust e-giving as giver. Get, um dahna and then there’s. A third part of that is unsaid, which is give, get or get off. Get off! So i never liked that. And i taught at the united way here in new york city for many years i taught their board seminar and and did the given get policies and there’s wisdom to that and i’m not opposed to give and get policies, but i think there’s a ah much more thoughtful way to engage the process, which is to have a conversation about a gift of significance. What for you when you look at your philanthropic giving in the past few years, given your current income, what is a significant gift that stands out amongst all your, um, you’re you’re giving and the reason that this is a particularly good approach for trustee is that a trustee is stepping up in a leadership capacity toe inspire other donors to give by their giving, and they have to see the connection between how they think about they’re giving and what they want the donors of the organization to do. Because the development director or the vice president, institutional advancement or the ceo needs to say, my trustees have stepped up, they’ve made leadership gifts one hundred percent a hundred percent they khun cumulatively give, um, you know, twenty six thousand seven hundred fifty three dollars, i’m that precise when i calculate the cumulative giving of aboard and reported back to two donors and the donor’s often laugh, but i’d rather give them the real numbers to know that this is a real process if you’re if their boat donors, if you’re trustees on your board, that can’t give a gift of significance, but it’s not sure everybody can give the gift of significance. I mean, i’ve had its what’s significant to that exactly. I’ve had consumers of services that that social work, term consumers or program members on the boards that i’ve worked at and and i’ve used the same principle with them, it could be five dollars could be fifty dollars, but for them, it’s a significant gift and it’s in phrasing it that way is a gift of significance. It captures the energy that we’re looking for around thinking about being ah fund-raising leader and, of course, ideally, too, from time to time, you want to ask the board to stretch beyond their normal giving, which is when you’re in a campaign or ah, special drive or there’s an anniversary, things like that. So continuing with some of the strategies that you recommend, um, you like like parlor gatherings over what’s, a parlor gathering could be in an office conference room could be in your living. Room ah, parties with a purpose is that is the general frays. And the purpose is the benevolence that the party it’s not a party for a party sake it’s a party for purpose. And the purpose is to sponsor and endorse and give money to the charity that is is the primary focus. They’re ninety minute gatherings. I describe the actual methods and roll out and is very user friendly chapter but, ah lot of organizations keep waiting for that moment when they’re going to go to the next level and fund-raising, of course, is a practitioners art. So here in the parties where the purpose you see avery practical method that you could roll out in two to three months, sixty to ninety days in fact, one of the smaller non-profits that listens to your radio program read the book their whole development committee. They’re all volunteers. Well, i love them because they’re listening. Yes, i don’t care what they do fund-raising wise. Frankly, lawrence, i don’t care if they bought your book or not. They’re there listening to the show that you could stop there. I love them, whoever you are, we love you. You know who? You are we love you. I’m sorry, i know it’s true and they they are going to do a party that when they called, i said, i’ll give you a free as i do anybody, i give anybody of free ah forty minute phone conversation about questions they have about the book, or i also come into organizations to meet with the development team or aboard team anyway, so i gave them a free consultation and they wanted to do a party with a purpose in the future, and i said, oh, no, we’re going to have it before the year and we’re doing it now and they’re going to be doing it right after between christmas and new year’s. Excellent more with lawrence paige nani is coming up first pursuing they’ll help you find your existing donors who are hiding in your file the ones who are prime for upgrade how do you identify them? And deep in your relationships with them? It’s the next free webinar that’s the way to find out is find hidden gems lurking in your file looking you have these gems, they’re looking it’s november seventeenth at one o’clock eastern, but that doesn’t matter. You sign up to watch live or watch the archive, and when the archives available, you get an email, so register at the non-profit radio listener landing page, which is tony dot slash pursuant remember capital p wagner cpas. They do go way beyond the numbers some articles do you do you do missions, trips? If you have missions, trips, they have an article on missions, trips, contributions if you’re not doing mission strips, what about promises to give versus intentions to give? When do you record a receivable? You don’t know? You know you need to know this, but you do lots of valuable resource is way beyond the numbers. Wagner cpas dot com click resource is then blawg stop wasting your time using business accounting software for your books using quickbooks or sage, but you aren’t a business you’re non-profit you’ve heard those rumors, you are non-profit apples accounting is designed for non-profits built from the ground up for you, working in non-profits to make your accounting easy and affordable, they’re at non-profit wizard dot com, tell us credit card and payment processing. Welcome again to them. Does your organization need a passive residual revenue stream that pays? Like clockwork every month that is tello’s payment processing their partner non-profits get fifty percent of every dollar that tell oh skits and the merchants love them so easy to work with. Tell us processing dot com now time for tony’s take two. My latest video is giving tuesday are you on board? We did a whole show on this last week. My video includes lots of links. It’s e-giving tuesday roundup plenty of info for you plus remember there’s the possum shooting video and one of the links is how to cook your possum. I like to do mine the way the guy in the video does with sweet potatoes and bacon after i’ve captured one humanely my possum meals so start all that with the video at tony martignetti dot com and then go from there for the roundup in all the links that is tony’s take two let’s do the live lesser love it’s got to go out even though i’m prerecorded this week the love goes out. The love is emanating out from here on west seventy second street in new york city to the people who are currently listening live currently then now when it airs on the sixth. So live love to you you know who you are you don’t you don’t! You don’t really need me to define it. That’s true live love out to the live listeners and then the podcast pleasantry to our many, many multitudes, many scores like hundreds of scores of podcast listeners, the pleasantries go out to you so grateful that you are with us. You are the biggest chunk of our listeners. Thank you so much for being with us pleasantries to the podcasters and the affiliate affections to our am and fm listeners throughout the country. So glad that you’re station hosts the show so glad that you are listening you might give them some feedback. Let them know that you are in fact listening so that they no, that non-profit radio has an audience on their station am fm stations throughout the country, affections to listeners there, here’s more with lawrence paige, no knee and get to the next level let’s talk more about parlor gatherings. Lawrence you do is avery vory askew, said user friendly chapter, you have a lot of very robust advice, and i’ve always liked the idea of a small, intimate gathering so we’re goingto focus on my prejudice for these types of events, not to the exclusion well here on the show, and we don’t have a chance to talk about everything all the strategies that you have in the book, but the book is full of lots of fund-raising strategies i happen to like the i never heard them called parlor gatherings, but i like, i like that idea. Um, who should host these thes parlor gatherings? Generally? There’s one one host who has a good network of friends, were colleagues, family members and khun turnout twenty five to thirty people. Um, i’ve been it parties where the purpose parlor gatherings that have as much money as seventy five that’s a big parlour. Yeah, but they have, you know, they’re people with big names, and they have big networks and s o mostly, the host is responsible for inviting the guests, mostly the host. Now, in some organizations where our host doesn’t feel that they could deliver twenty five to thirty, people, maybe they have a co host or i’ve done three hosts and each of them commit delivering, you know, ten people and and that’s worked very well. Especially because they’ve had the support in partnership of two other people that they like and they’re going to do it together and they see it as a ah fun thing to do. I love the fact that most of the the expense budgets on parlor gatherings are a couple hundred dollars. We don’t put out a lot of fancy food. We use cheap wine or no wine at all, depending on the organization that always has to be thought through. Um, and we don’t spend money on trinkets or literature. Um, um if the if the host once, um ah, paper invitations as opposed to just using ah elektronik invitation service like ping ah, the host then has to pay for the cost of that, not the organization. And um and as i said, they are usually planned in sixty to ninety days. Okay? And you want you want nobody to talk for more than five minutes. That’s, right? Who? You should talk. Well, it has to be somebody that that people can emotionally connect with generally a client or consumer who is prepared to deliver and it’s comfortable talking to a group of those could be very tender. Intimate moments when it’s when it’s someone who’s benefiting from the services of the organization. That’s right, it’s seen i’ve seen tears in in colleges, scholarship recipients, but the cause is something causes you mentioned run much more deeply even than education. Yeah, i people who have healed from years of recovery, people who have been supported in their process of coming out of jails and prisons, people who i have ah been through adoption processes. I mean, their stories are extremely powerful, and telling a story is what you need to help them work on and prepare for, so that they have some flare on some theatrics to it where the the audience makes eye contact with them, and that that they have good hand gestures and that they’re articulate and everybody, of course, has their own style. I’ve been where some climb i’ve been to some parties with a purpose where the clients are are very stove oj and they have a quiet manner, but nonetheless, your grandmother would appreciate it slipping little italian, italian and there you are, italian listeners. Ah, they’re they’re quieter in their presentation, but nonetheless still powerful because they prepared still very moving. Very moving video is often good at larger events, but in smaller events ah, the intimacy of the smaller room gives gives good stage two to two personal witness who else should be talking? Well? The the some official from the organization of boardmember or volunteer or staff member ceo doesn’t have to be to see you. No, no, the ceo is more than happy more than welcome to think of him or herself, but again in a high functioning fund-raising culture, everybody should be empowered to talk about the money and teo, talk about the money in a way that that other people get it and doesn’t have to be the ceo there. There’s a one of the stories i tell in the book is a first party with a purpose for a small agency in brooklyn substance abuse recovery agency. They never did any private fund-raising they’d always relied on government grants and their first time out, they raised twenty six, twenty seven thousand dollars. They had two clients tell their story and ah boardmember, who never saw herself as a fundraiser, stood up and was crying after listening to the two consumers tell their story and she burst out with a five thousand dollar pledge and somebody else in the room matched it, and none of that was prepared. But it was prepared conceptually, because we do have a bias in who we invite, that we try to invite people that we know something about, that they have some means now we’re not. We’re not strict about that, but we do ask the question on do seek people who have that some level of affluence now, a lot of smaller non-profits say right off the bat, i don’t know anybody, you know, with the that level of affluence, and i say, okay, well, let’s work with what we have, and but amazingly, they always find somebody who writes that eighty percent of the rooms check on dh rehearsing you like tio, you’d like to rehearse. These rehearsing is very important, you know, the penultimate example of steve jobs that before he passed away at at apple, his his launches of new products were legendary, right? That he practiced those for weeks six, seven weeks every single day, running the whole team through rehearsals and himself, and anything worth go doing is worth practising foreign preparing well for so don’t think you could just, like, call the client up the night before and say, would you speak tomorrow at our, you know, party with a purpose? That’s not the way to do it? And what about the important follow-up to your parlor gathering well? Ah ah ah part of the second speaker or the third speakers role is to ask for funds and and a pledge form has handed out, and some people fill it out right there and it’s collected as people leave and for those that don’t hand the pledge, forman follow-up is necessary first of all, follow-up is necessary for everybody to say thank you, wei have a rule of sending out our thank you notes and forty eight hours business hours, which a lot of non-profits find, you know, really? Ah, hi rule to meet, but we think it’s important that people get both paper and email, thank you’s, and they get a cumulative understanding of what happened at the party because a lot of donors are going to leave and they’re not going to know the cumulative results that they participated in that twenty six or twenty seven thousand or five thousand or twenty, five hundred was raised whenever share that impact. You want to share that impact, and you want to be let people feel the good vibes of that they participated in, that they made it happen. And so the thank you notes need to go out the the results need to be go out by both female and paper. And then, of course, the e-giving history needs to be recorded in your database and there’s. No excuse for a non-profit whether they’re volunteer with no budget, not having a database, as i say in the book, you can go to e base dot or go get a free database that was developed by the rockefeller family foundation at my website. For the book the non-profit fund-raising solution dot com there’s links to free databases, or you could just use a good excel spreadsheet and stay organized or an access that a base that’s comes with your you know your computer there’s no excuse these days for you don’t have toe spend, you know, ten thousand a month with razors, edge or something, thank you for sharing those resources to leadership councils we alluded to these earlier what’s the role of a leadership council. Well, a non-profit has a board that that worries about its governance. Generally we say that the executive staff is supposed to be worried about one, two, three years of management, and the board should be thinking about five to ten years. The pentagon, of course, has a seventy five year strategic plan, so they know where they’re going to be. I would like our sector to know a lot more about where it’s going to be, but no pat, no matter how powerful your board is, you still need mork community endorsement for your organization and the leadership council gives you that it’s a non governance structure. Some people call it honorary councils or advisory councils. I like the term leadership council because it’s, what we’re looking for, we’re looking for them to be leaders and sometimes those leaders khun step up and say things that your board can’t say, or your executive staff can’t say about your cause. And as we saw this pit last year or two years ago with planned parenthood, there were many people on its leadership council who spoke up. In their defense, where they’re bored, needed to keep, ah, quieter, acquired or voice. So leadership councils are very important. And sometimes you put people on leadership councils who don’t want to do the heavy lifting of governance. And sometimes you put them on because you have good feelings about how they love your organization, and you want to maintain that relationship, but they’re not appropriate for the board. So it’s a it’s, a mix of characters. We’ll take a break for a couple minutes. Keep talking about leadership councils. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup 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 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. Duitz i’m christine cronin, president of n y charities dot orc. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. What is our leadership council going to do? I lied endorse for legitimacy, credibility, they’re there to say we like these guys what they’re doing, we endorse and it there’s power by that association with their name, and they don’t even have to do anything just to have that happen. We do want people to do things on the leadership council. They’re generally a couple things. We want them to come to an annual gathering of the leadership council so that they could get their own personal update about the organization. Secondly, we want them to to meet with us individually, us being the development ofthis war, the executive office. We want to meet with them individually to talk about their own gift to the organization, plus their network of possibly doing guess what? Ah, party with a purpose for their network. So there’s a lot of in few inches integration of the tactics in part two of the ball, while part one is all about the way you think about fund-raising part two is all about the the intermarriage of various tactics. For example, in a leadership council, i think i mentioned this in the plan giving chapter you could have a leadership council just for the people who are part of it playing e-giving that there is a chapter devoted to plan giving. There is the only reason lawrence’s here. We’re not talking about that chapter it’s. The only thing that drew me to the book. I read it from backward. I read it, i read that chapter first. The plan giving is, ah, well, many times non-profits overlook having a plan giving society for their donors that that give through their bequests or their wills or insurance policies or whatever the mechanism and having a leadership council of your plan giving group is very important. Ah, there was a small client i worked with here in east haven, connecticut, the shoreline trolley museum. They’re in the in the midst of closing on a two million dollar campaign so that they could have proper buildings for their antique trolleys. They have one hundred antique trolleys, which tell the story of the trolleys from the eighteen hundreds. Amazing place. My kids love it and the ah, they never had paid attention to their legacy. Their their plan giving. Ah, donors and we started to talk to them or and organized that group. And they have a leadership council now off their plan giving donor and twenty, twenty one people joined the first year. And i think four five have joined the second year, and they were unsung people who had thought about e-giving for the future where i think you would know better than i, but something like a low seven percent of people think about a plan gift. Whereas in there course of their life, like eighty five or ninety percent of people think about giving but upon their death, they generally just leave their money to their to their family. Yeah, there’s. Some small percentage of people that have, ah, charitable bequest in there will yes, when the leadership council is advocating and endorsing, who were they advocating in endorsing, too? Ah, to the press to other thought leaders conferences during the height of the aids epidemic, the leadership council that i put together at harlem united many of those leaders would would mention in their addresses about aids and howto compassionately. Respond. They would mention that they were on the honoree council of harlem united. It meant it meant legitimacy for them and for us that they would mention that it worked both ways you had ah, leadership council, you said in the book that had fifty five members? Oh, yes, what that sounds huge. Yes. And i had the same response to the ceo, and he turned around and said, but look at my mission. I’m i have to represent, you know, thiss whole county and there were, i don’t know twenty four or five smaller towns in this county, and he represented three sectors, not just the nonprofit sector, but government and business and real estate was a big factor of that. So he needed a large counsel, and he saw the wisdom of that and he i actually had a staff member hired to manage that leadership council, and it brought him it was a wise move. It brought him a lot of impact because he he didn’t neglect his leadership council. A lot of times leadership, council’s air started. I see i go in and, um, auditing an organization and i look at their letterhead and i see, i say, oh, you have an advisory council says here? Well, yeah, but not really learns i said, what do you mean? Well, we really don’t you know, that was a couple years ago, and it was so and so’s idea and and it’s just fallen by the wayside. You see there’s an example where the culture of the organization didn’t embrace the tactic tactics don’t raise money. Yeah, excellent on their own, they need a culture to nest in and if they’re if they’re if the tactic is in an organization where the where it’s loved and cared for it then produces results, so then they get the crazy idea that, oh, well, the leadership council never really did raise much money for us, totally disassociating themselves from lack of developing it and creating a plan for it. At harlem united, our leadership council was reviewed every year, and the plan was updated and revised and evaluated, and that was brought to the boardmember that the board? I’m sorry at a board meeting, we we always had cochairs for the leadership council, male and female, pretty consistent about that for capital campaigns, male and female leaders of the campaign cabinet and those two leaders i would invite to come in and give a state of the union of the our leadership council to the board, and it was and the board members would go to the annual gathering of the leadership council. The board members were asked to do that, and so there was nice synergy and harmony there no competition, we have just about a minute and a half before to wrap up, and so i want to spend that time asking what it is that you love about the work that you do well fund-raising is a noble profession and it’s a bridge builder between the idea that you have that will make the world a better place and the money you need to actualize the program. And so the methods of fund-raising are build that bridge, and and you love building bridges, and absolutely one of my old teachers used to say, if you build bridges, don’t don’t be surprised when people walk on them or walk over you, but nonetheless fund-raising is that bridge between the non-profits idea and the reality of making it happen? There are lots of very good ideas in the book it is the non-profit fund-raising solution. Powerful revenue strategy is to take you to the next level. Lawrence paige nani lawrence’s l a u r e n c e panjwani perfect. Thank you so much for being guests. Been a pleasure. I’ve been delighted to be here, and i wanna shout out just quickly to all by blogged readers. About forty, five hundred of them raise your block non-profit fund-raising solution dot com and you can sign up there to be on the block. Outstanding. Thank you again. Thank you. Next week development assessments with glenn kaufhold if you missed any part of today’s show, i’d be seat. You find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com regular cpas guiding you beyond the numbers. Regular cps dot com stoploss accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and tell us credit card and payment processors welcome again, tell us passive revenue streams for non-profits tell us processing dot com a creative producer is claire my off family boats in the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez and this cool music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit video. Big non-profit ideas for the out there, 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 took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is, we’re here now 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, talk 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 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 September 29, 2017: Giving Tuesday Friday

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Jessica Schneider: Giving Tuesday Friday

It’s not too late to make a splash for Giving Tuesday, November 28th. But “too late” is fast approaching. Jessica Schneider from the 92nd Street Y has your last minute tips, tricks and strategies.

 

 

 

Amy Sample Ward: Giving Tuesday Friday

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Schnoll oppcoll hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week it’s, laura packard she’s been a guest on the show and she got dissed directly personally by donald trump. You may have seen her story. She has stage four cancer, hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was tweeting to the president about health care policy and the collins gray and bill, and he blocked her. He doesn’t know that. He’s messing with a non-profit radio guest now he’s out of bounds. Laura, i’ve got your back. You have a lot of courage. Congratulations on being non-profit radio listener of the week. We love you, laura packard and i so admire what you’re doing. Congratulations. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into ginger vos toma titus if you come to me up with the idea that you missed today’s show e-giving tuesday it’s not too late to make a splash for giving tuesday, november twenty eighth jessica schneider from the ninety second street why has your last minute tips tricks strategies, then it may not be too late, but too late is fast approaching amy sample ward has what you need for giving tuesday success in the social networks she’s, our social media contributor and ceo event in the non-profit technology network it’s giving tuesday for the hour today on tony’s, take two e-giving tuesday, responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by wagner cps guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit apolo see accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and we’ll be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com what a pleasure to welcome jessica snyder to the show. She is the director of strategy and collaboration at the ninety second street wise belfer center for innovation. She spearheads several i love that word spearheads levin. Use that in a long time. That’s good that’s a good buy a word, good resume word, too. I should remember that my never search for jobs, but for friends. She spearheads several initiatives and programs, including e-giving tuesday, the women in power, fellowship and social good summit she’s worked at rent the runway, general assembly and the paley center for media. You’ll find the y at nine to wide dot or ge and she’s at your pal jess. Welcome, pal, your pal. Just i love that. What would you do that twitter ideas? Very clever like that your pal? Just, you know, by the time i got around to joining twitter, which is sad that i didn’t join it right away, kind of every form of jessica or just schneider on been taken on. Yeah, i don’t know where how that came to me, but i i thought about changing to something more professional, but at this point, i think it, you know, stay with it, no latto partnership work, and i feel like i’m you know, people spell well, i love it. Yes, you should stick with it now don’t it’s not unprofessional, it’s, just different messes difference. Clever falik um, okay, so let’s kick off our power on giving tuesday with a little bit of history? Sure, that’s things started it with henry, tim’s and who’s been on the show, henry in twenty fourteen. I’m talking about giving to them, but give us a little background. Sure, i think i’ll start just by explaining a lot of people when they hear i work at the ninety second street y and giving tuesday what the connections there is. So if you don’t live in new york city or you aren’t familiar with ninety second street y, we are one hundred and forty three year old community in cultural organization on new york city’s, upper east side. We are everything you associate with the community center. We have a very renowned pre school programs for the elderly school of the arts dance classes with jim, i work in the belfer center for innovation, and our center is really tasked with taking ninety uae’s mission core concepts that have really been the foundation of the institute for the past hundred forty years of building community, of civic based dialogue of philanthropy and thinking about those in a twenty first century context. Okay, so i give him that background just because of people like why is this community centre the hump of giving jesus thats why don’t your that’s the connection e-giving tuesday, i think is supported by all those exactly fit so well into all those. So back in two thousand twelve, henry tim’s, who is now our executive director at the time he headed up one of the centers at ninety y he just had this this idea there’s black friday and cyber monday, two days that unite the retail community, as we all know, to great advantage for them. Great advantage for us. And what if there was a way to unite the philanthropic community as well? And he often jokes, you know, someone was going to claim that tuesday, why am i not the good guys? So, yeah, from the beginning, it’s been a very simple idea, but we spent very little time planning it. Our first year, we kind of last year was when two thousand twelve we’re going to our six year now you spent a couple months just gathering a coalition of people in the philanthropic world and by that, i don’t just mean non-profits a nutritional sense, there were houses of worship, schools, corporations, small businesses, families, associations, way they’re the first year i was there the first year starting oh, yeah. Okay on. And it was really just kind of put out a call that we want to make this day special. We want to bring everyone together. You want to incentivize giving one? To get people excited about giving and let’s, just as an experiment put it on the calendar all kind of got into the world together and worked very closely at the time with our friends at the united nation and foundation in there brilliant communications team helping kind of home dellaccio nastad watch your show, she also runs gelato get us out of d c, where you went to school, you went to georgetown, runs gelato shop for shops? I don’t know, but she still i don’t think she would, you know, she’s, now that we work heading up come some of their social condition and we were, which is sure fascinating and definitely worth reaching out to her because they’re doing really interesting work there. Yes, so we just kind of launched and he said, we’ll be cool. One hundred people participated, a hundred organizations did something that first year on ultimately we ended up with twenty, five hundred participate organizations that we knew of who could kind of officially registered through our site and then just on social media, that data start hearing about all these cool things happen around the country, so we knew we were we were onto something and i’ll just say the first year and this kind of continues to be our ethos, so talk about it, but more as we go along it’s always been a very open movement. We’ve never said this is the right way to participate in giving tuesday or the wrong way. We’ve never supported one platform over another and one cause over the other. We just want to see people uniting, um around the idea of giving back and not just money, but also time probono work advocacy, it’s all any form of giving is what i have to say. Now, what was the moment of we’ll be able to talk about fertilization? Like what was the very first thing about giving tuesday within an email from henry to some people who said, i’m thinking about this let’s have a meeting or when did you first come up that you can remember? Yeah, i was brought into it about a month into the process. From what i remember, it really started with henry and our other colleagues, asha curren just traveling around and having cheating on the show with us, i think, if not last year, two years. Ago talks e-giving tuesday. Yes, yes. He’s, our chief innovation officer at ninety y but we didn’t want to ever be the owners at this movement. And even though we always say we’re the home where the stewarts but we wanted this to be built by the community to start what do you remember? Is the starting the first time you heard? I think it was even the phrase giving tuesday. But like the first time you had this concept, i think the first time for me personally was henry pulling me into his office at the time. There’s. No, even now, there’s no one who works on giving tuesday full time. And i was doing different work at nine to and he just said there’s, this cool idea immediately clicked with me and intercepts if i would help with some partnership work for it, i think on henry’s and it maybe start with a conversation with kind of u n f and kind of that was the start. I think there was a dinner party where the idea was first tossed around and people reacted very positively to it. But i think henry would remember that better than i do there? Okay. So you were near the near the you were like a month in? Yeah, yes. Labeling the embryonic. We’re still in the embryonic stage. I think ways when there was enough momentum that henry realized he couldn’t do this on his own and manage a massive department at a large non-profit where he needed a someone else on his team e-giving sometime and and brain power to it. So let’s assure people now, september twenty ninth so i got all of october and most of the vast majority of november. It’s not too late right now, it would have been better if you had been planning. Like since the summer. That would have been better. But it’s not too late. No, no, definitely not. And i think there’s again, i will go back to c p times there’s no right or wrong way to bird to spain giving tuesday. So i would say the there’s many non-profits for whom giving tuesday is really the cornerstone of their fund-raising for the year and in january, when they lay out their fund-raising plan for the year more their volunteers and plan or their advocacy plan e-giving tuesdays a cornerstone. Of that, and they kind of plan all year around it. But there’s other organizations who are new to giving tuesday who exactly at this time, two months out or like, yeah, maybe we should try something this year and i think what’s really great about how e-giving tuesday he functions and how it is a great opportunity for non-profits to try something new, to do some experimentation, way about rule without rules. And if there is some idea that’s just been circulating on your team, maybe e-giving tuesday’s the perfect time to give it a chance. So not too late at all earlier, you planning the better, but especially if you’re kind of new to giving tuesday and aren’t sure what you’re going to do just the first year doing something smaller. Small start small, right? Exactly, yeah, don’t be overwhelmed, right? It’s not an overwhelming thing. There’s not rules and reports. And aside from what you want to do internally, there’s no, act like this is this is why so many people thinking has flourished because has not managed centrally there’s there’s a resource there’s, a page of sight of tools will get to the tools and resources. And then from there, it’s, you’re own your own desire. Start small. Do something modest, make it the cornerstone of your your fourth quarter, if you like exactly. Okay. I like tio. What else? You know what? Also we gotta go to break. Where was your two fingers? Two minutes ago? I didn’t see them. I didn’t see them these. And then i didn’t see the one. All right, sam says time for break. I didn’t see any fingers. Okay, let’s, go out for a break and then we come back. Of course, jessica and i just getting into giving tuesday 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 schnoll ideas for the other ninety five percent and when i was about to say was that another thing i like about it is there’s so many vastly different calls to action? People think of giving to say nothing of money first, but by no means is it limited to raising money? Give me some other examples that you’ve seen yeah, i think one thing i love about giving tuesday is it really is a way to bring people together, and giving is just such a universal value, it’s something that really unites us. And i think one of the reasons giving tuesday last year really resonated with people. I think we’ll see that again this year is you no matter your politics, no matter you know, the many things that divide us, giving tuesday and the unity that can happen around giving it’s just really amazing to see how that can bring people together is such a common a common thing, so in particular kind of volunteer events on dh in person activations are some of our favorite things to see around giving tuesday. One thing that just popped into my head from last year is there’s, a group called city dads so that’s it it’s in many cities it’s ah meet up group it’s organized around meet ups on and it’s a just dad’s getting together to do volunteer work and kind of create camaraderie and sabat the fact their dads it’s just kind of organizing principle it’s more of a volunteer group, and they partnered with plum organics x, which is a baby food company. And on giving tuesday in cities around the country, they went, teo homeless shelters and other places where people drop off clothing and food kind of assemble little packets that could be given to those in need. And it was just it was giving tuesday, people are looking to do something, and they were able to just organize this event that brought all these dads together, and often i feel like it’s mom to get a lot of the credit or we’re getting out and volunteer work and two year old to shine a light on that kid’s and baby food exactly be moms, but school exactly, and and for plum organics just a great opportunity for them to highlight there social good work and how they give back to the community justice. Such a natural fit so that that pops to my head one of the really most exciting elements of giving tuesday that’s developed over the past few years, and we kind of recognized it was happening and have been trying to support it, but it started very organically are giving tuesday community movements, so these are kind of locally organized coalitions of non-profits businesses, governments, schools in cities, towns, counties and states around the country. Last year, they’re around eighty five of them. Everything from e-giving tuesday, illinois e-giving tuesday, new york e-giving tuesday, charlotte e-giving tuesday, dallas sometimes they re brand more significantly than that to tiny little towns. There’s one in bethel, alaska, which is just a thing just a couple thousand people, they have one one stop sign in town and all the non-profits throughout the day took turns standing at that non-profit and collecting money, but also raising awareness that was then split amongst the non-profits in town and then they had almost like a science fair, but for non-profits, where they call to set up booths and people could come and learn about the different services, either because they want to give back or because maybe that could benefit that from them and really isn’t giving tuesday as a rallying point, but i also want to mention the community campaign so just really what happens if someone steps up and each one of these cities not even necessarily? Non-profit but an individual sometimes soc with non-profits eyes like i see the power of giving tuesday, i see how it can bring people together, and i want to create something grassroots in my hometown and really own it and really personalized giving tuesday not just in my organization, but for the people around me i wanted for the community it’s so lovely, and we as a team, i’m have someone on our staff now, um, who works with us part time, really? To support those community leaders and excellent okay, so let’s get it. I want to get some of the support that’s there, and i’ll just add, though, but what’s really exciting to see in the community aspect is how they support each other and how, when there’s a new community leader that comes on board how people within the already on the giving tuesday team not at ninety weinger out in the world offer advice and say this is what we learned. Oh, you’re a comparable size city here’s how we there’s there’s a ninety white community around community work exactly exactly. You know, i should have asked you just let’s get some basic stats out of the way? How many organizations do we know participated last year? We’ve talked you talked already about some of the things they’ve done, but i want you working how many tens of thousands this’s not me evading the question, but we’ve stopped counting because really, when we reached movement capacity, it’s just impossible to do b of activations and over one hundred countries that we know of it’s so vast we ask people to sign up on our web site, they could be little official partner would or not, but because it’s open source there’s no reason for people tio need to do that, and it’s isn’t a good measure of where we are. So we say hundreds of thousands of organizations on bank lose again, not just non-profits some of the stats we do like to quote is last year online, the twenty five’s e-giving tuesday, one hundred seventy seven million dollars was donated that we know of on lauren homes on, so that does not include offline. It does not include anything that happened outside of those twenty four hours, eight and that’s only dollars and that’s only dollars and just kind of other exact action we talked to talked about and get and and, you know, if a boardmember does one hundred thousand dollar match that day, that’s not in that amount, so it really is just a small fraction of the total giving but it’s nice for us because we can use it to kind of benchmark year over year and see where xero growth is, at least from from that metric i’ve seen petition drives, you know, it’s critical petition for your cause. All right, so let’s get into what people confined if they maybe they’ve done something in the past, they like to do a little more whatever or if there’s the first year, and they’re not that acquainted with it. What are they going to find at e-giving tuesday? Dot org’s? Sure. So i would say the best place to start is the download our complete tool kit, which is a very long document. I would at least art by skimming that which has kind of the basic language e-giving tuesday timeline, timeline, press really sample social media and i think also it’s helpful, because when the best things you khun dio when you’re starting giving tuesday at your organization is to get e-giving tuesday, team going not just one person running giving tuesday, so the toolkit isn’t just for you to read and like, oh, now i can run, giving tuesday starita lead to read and then become a leader of your organization around giving tuesday, but there’s lots of plug and play tools like tweets and press releases if you wanted to work on being a mayor or a proclamation mayoral proclamation tool kit yeah, which i know seems very specific, but it’s something that people love to do and it’s such a great just morale booster when that proclamation comes in a few days before giving tuesday and you’ve been plugging along just to know i remember our first year was mayor bloomberg time gave did one and and we were it was one of those moments that first year where it made us feel really so i just want to share that feeling with people, but i would say one is going to get through the tool kit and just going understanding what it’s all about case studies are a great place to go so that we all have a case study which has for non-profits and kind of the other types of organizations that that could participate local non-profits larger non-profits and with the case studies, if something piques your interest because the others, they’re pretty short, you can just kind of google the organization and giving tuesday and and find out much more see, you know, but the page look like and, you know, really delve more into that, and the other thing you do on the site is signed up for for our newsletter that also get you listed as an official giving tuesday partner in-kind of one and the same and then you’ll get when we add resource is you’ll be aware of those webinars webinars webinars coming? I can’t listen about the top of my head, but bojan e-giving tuesday at orc slash events now you’ll see a list of what’s coming up i know we have one with fire spring next week yeah, there’s always new things being added and leslie, we have a blog’s so as we have examples of what’s coming up for this upcoming year, we update that and we love it when people submit to our blogged what they have in the works less like tio here where this great organization or run e-giving tuesday campaign and more where they were great, we’re a great organization run e-giving to state campaign here’s what our campaign is here’s what we learned last year and how we’re changing because we really want the community to be learning from each other ideas to make the pie bigger, not to get you a bigger slice of it. Excellent and that’s all giving tuesday dot org’s exactly all e-giving tuesday, there was even a year there’s a plan giving toolkit that’s what you do plant giving consulting so everything is close to me close to my heart yeah, you could make plan giving part of your of your giving tuesday plan giving workplace giving if you work with a of for-profit who or even your own non-profit if they do workplace giving, you can think about how to use giving tuesday to incentivize enrollment to poor, bigger gifts on that day. Really limitless. Okay, bonem so i pulled together some some stories from that from this’s from the toolkit, like local non-profits, you know, and again to emphasize your point, this is not only by no means is this only for big organizations. There’s a of the naacp rat free library in baltimore, maryland there, when they’re one of my favorites, somebody from you know, what, two people i got two interviews from people at at ntcdinosaur provoc technology conference, i think we’re talking about energizing volunteers, and they were to ana panel two out of a panel three were from the naacp rat free library, you love them e-giving tuesday wise, yeah, what i personally love around giving tuesdays is when people use it to be collaborative and creative, and i think their campaign is a great intersection of those two. They’ve run a similar campaign the past two years where there’s they find, like the closest football game closest in time football game this year, it was against cleveland, and they challenge a library in that city teo fund-raising contest and then the losing flues and everyone’s a winner except one’s, raising less money but the executive director of the losing library has teo like, if i can remember if they want or not last year, but as much of a football fans, i yeah, but the executive director of that of the other library would like to dress up like edgar allan poe and have to read the ravens and it’s all under the hashtag book bowl e-giving tuesday on they raised i think around forty thousand dollars from that and i mean for a library, when you think about library fund raisers, you know, make sales, i mean it’s it’s online it’s bringing young people in social it’s fun, it’s kind of goofy and just the celebratory nature of it is is so in the spirit of giving tuesday dahna xero i love it’s a small organizations, i mean that’s, what non-profit radio is small and midsize shop from ours from our survey results we which is not so i’m not scientific. About ninety percent of respondents have budgets of less than ten million, so that’s at least we know it’s kind of taking advantage of our website and our resource is but also data we’ve we’ve seen from organizations like blackbaud about who’s participating and mohr and more every year, donations are going to smaller and mid size non-profits okay, people think that, you know, i think it’s one of the misconception people have around giving days or coming tuesday is it’s like the big guys, your elbow, their ways, and but this is really an equalizer, and you know what? Just just to dispel that that myth, i’m going to read some of these organizations that are that are that i got from the e-giving tuesday took it home of the sparrow in extent, pennsylvania, right? That’s not that is not an international organization table in chapel hill, north carolina, in tulsa stem alliance, tulsa, oklahoma, better future facilitators, akron, ohio. Malvin, pennsylvania baker industries so you should not be you should not be put off by your size around giving tuesday. In fact, you should be energized by your size lawyers for children don’t meet me these organizations. You just not heard of operations supply drop in austin, texas okay, so we’re putting that putting that mr bed killing it? Actually, i’d rather not die just sleep because it could wake up let’s, just kill it and it won’t be resurrected because it’s not a holy body. So all right, what else? What else can we say about giving tuesday for a couple minutes? I’m sure i would say another thing we’re just really excited about going into this next year, and i mentioned that we had one hundred global activities and one hundred treyz last year, but specifically there are now thirty five, global movements. So these are countries where an organization like a ninety second street y equivalent has stepped up and said, we want to really own giving tuesday not just at our organization, not just in our town, but for our entire condor country. And these are places have no thanksgiving, no no tradition of black friday or cyber monday. It is so amazing to see we just had in the past couple weeks giving tuesday india e-giving tuesday, panama e-giving tuesday, liberia is new this year and kind of like i mentioned with our community leaders e-giving tuesday here in the u s we kind of bring everyone together, but then just to see how they all learn from each other, it’s been one the most fascinating aspects of the movement as we’ve grown and i think it’s a really powerful on giving tuesday, which has been since the beginning to say to people, no, every act of generosity counts. It means more when we get together something really cool when you give on giving tuesday and you go on your facebook page and you see all your friends are also giving and talking about it. And then to think this is having a global scale. There’s someone in tanzania painting a house, there’s someone in, you know, bangladesh donating blood and to know that’s all happening on this single day. I think that messaging really resonates with people. And again at that time of year, it’s goingto holidays just to be celebratory. And how cool is that? They were all coming together to do something positive. Awesome. You know, you were gonna leave it there because i think you’re not standing that’s outstanding. Get involved with giving tuesday. The place to go is giving tuesday dot or ge? I’m sure jessica at your pal, jess. You having to help you? If you want a tweet, her, your pal jess on. And, of course, the ninety two, ninety secretary. Why, you know, shout them out because that’s! What started? But that’s not where you going to find the resource? Is there at nine to why dot or ge, but really the place you want to start he’s giving tuesday dot or ge? Is that right? Direct and also, of course. Follow us on social media on twitter and facebook. What the organization on twitter on twitter it’s e-giving choose e-giving two’s okay, no day, rios. Guess e-giving twos and at your pal just thank you so much. Of course. Outstanding court also. Know what you can hang around, right? I like that. Okay. Okay. When? When amy sample ward comes on, i will introduce you. All right, so we got a lot more on giving tuesday. Coming up first. Um pursuant the intelligent fund-raising health check. Have you gotten this thing yet? You’ve heard me talk about it for a couple weeks. Download it for nine key performance indicators. Those kp eyes. Hippies. You gotta have your kp eyes. You gotta have, you know, it’s the best practices that’s out now. It’s kip he’s okay. Or alive. That’s what? I call them hippies. That sounds like a breakfast seal. Like i want my i want i want chocolate milk. With mike hippies this morning, but kp eyes there’s ten universal characteristics of organizations that are thriving in fund-raising universal this is this is big the’s. The ten biggest ideas in the universe. This is duitz wait. So which is which is bigger? A solar system. No solar system is inside the universe, right? Isn’t aren’t solar system subsets of universes? Yeah, yeah. So this is not just i mean, if yeah, if these were dying, um, solar system ideas are no ten. If these ten solar system characteristics of thriving org’s, then i would say, you know, it’s really not worth it, but he’s a universal. So you’ve got you’ve got to go get the ten universal characteristics, not merely solar system. Um, get the free paper it’s at its on the non-profit radio listener landing page that pursuing has set up. And, of course, you know where that is. It’s a tony dahna may slash pursuant. Remember the capital p you’ve got to do that well, your cpa’s they do go way beyond the numbers that’s what they say and actually do it weinger cpas. They’re adding value way beyond accounting. They have all these policy statements free. Resource is for you again, just like just like giving tuesday. Dot org’s. They have something on fiscal sponsorship policy. They have a fiscal policy agreement. Now. We just talked about fiscal sponsorships. About a month ago, jean takagi was on with andrew shulman, and the subject was physical sponsorships for the hour. So if you want a lot more detail on that, there was september first september first show. So if you want a lot more detail on that, you can find an agreement. You could find a policy rechner, cps, giving these things away. They have ah, accounting policies and procedures manual ah bank statement review form. You know you’re reviewing bank statements. Hopefully you’re doing it every single month. Are you are you checking everything that you should be? Let the cps tell you what you should be reviewing when you do your monthly bank statement reviews each month your monthly each month that’s redundant. When you do these, you want to have a checklist in front. All right? So somebody more policies sepa is giving free advice. Go to regular cpas. Dot com quick resource is then guides stop wasting your time using business accounting software for your books. Quickbooks sage? Yeah, they’ll be fine if you were a business, but you’re not you’re non-profit you’ve heard rumors to this effect, right? You’re non-profit kaplow’s accounting. It is designed for non-profits from the ground up meat from the outset, from the ground they have non-profits in mind, not corporate entities. So make your non-profit accounting do it easier, appaloosa counting easy, affordable designed for you. They’re at non-profit wizard dot com now time for tony’s take to my latest video is giving tuesday. All right, now, that’s. That particular video introduces this. Show so if you’re listening to the show podcast or affiliate or alive, you don’t really need the video because you skipped that you could skip that step, but there are links below. Teo e-giving tuesday roundup that i’ve got, including a video that where there’s possum shooting in the background you gotta you gotta check out this possum shooting video that i did in the in the mountains of tennessee. Um, yeah, just check out the possum shooting. So e-giving tuesday sort of video and round up that is all at aa my site, which is tony martignetti dot com, which i momentarily forgot. Okay. Um, let’s see? Got any sample ward on the phone on? Dh jessica schneider can hang out with us. You know, any sample ward is she’s a social media contributor. She’s, the ceo of antenna non-profits technology network. Her most recent co authored book is social change any time everywhere about online multi-channel engagement she’s at amy, sample ward, dot or ge and at amy rs ward. They are, of course, is for rene. Welcome back, amy rene. Hi. Hi, that’s. Why i give you this if you serve. Yeah, if you serve intro. That so you could get a little high so you can do slow. It felt so appropriate after such a long intro, it was just like the period at the end of the sentence. Okay, meet jessica schneider. Any sample ward? Hi, jessica. Hi, amy, nice to meet you, telefund lugo jessica can hang out with think we’ve even emailed before, but this is our first time getting teo talk on non-profit radio together. That is true for sure that, ok, eso jessica can hang out with us, and i, uh, i took the liberty of ah, hailing us of her of her extra time. So is that okay, right? I would love that. I knew you would. I knew you were giving person. All right, we’re talking about giving tuesday. Let’s see you. You have some, you know, you’re you’re a strategist and also a tactician. We talked a lot about strategy. I think with jessica let’s, get into some tactical ideas you like you like having people set up in advance. To who, you know, we’re going to be your champions. Well, when we talked about this before and other contacts now for that same, like a e-giving day, like giving to this whillans, you know, so it will not be new tto learn that i’m a fan of letting your community lead instead of the organization be the one out in the lead. I really think that a day let giving tuesday where you’re trying to reach as many folks as possible, but we all know and a lot of what’s going to capture their attention is storytelling and people really being able to speak clearly about the value of your mission. And i think it’s much better when other community members are making that appeal versus just the organization, because everyone’s going to respond to that same? Well, of course, the organization thinks it’s important. You worked there. You know where? Hearing that from a community member. Can can actually be really powerful and potentially change people’s mindset click through and learn a little bit more so i always recommend for organizations, especially organizations where this will be their first time participating and giving tuesday to set up. It doesn’t have to be an overwhelming, like fifty person list, you know could be five people, but make sure you have kind of a social media champions list of people who already have social media accounts, they already know how to use them. They’re probably posting frequently so there, you know, the folks that are connected to them on various channels aren’t going to be surprised when all of a sudden they’re posting about this, but they don’t have to be, you know, quote unquote vips, they don’t have to be superstar, don’t teo? Yeah, what matters is that the people that they are connected to like them and respond to them and engage with them, right? That doesn’t matter what their job title is are or where they live, anything like that, they haven’t engaged group of friends and family and an extended network that’s really what’s going to make him a great champion i’m giving to you so recruit them ahead of time, make sure they know that yes, i’m often in to do this for you, but you’re not making them do a bunch of work, so you’re telling them will send you example, facebook posts their example tweets, we’ll send you photos you can use so they know that what they’re being asked for as their voice in their leadership. But you’re not making them to a bunch of work to come up with what to say and some of those example resource is people will find at giving tuesday dot or ge jessica, how about that idea of the community speaking for you? Yes, i hundred percent agree with everything that amy just said, and it reminded me, i think those of us who work in the nonprofit world, everyone listening right now, um, often thinks on giving tuesday, you know, you get a lot of emails it’s giving tuesday donate to our cause and it’s very important to think about how you’re going to stand out in that crowd, but at the same time, there are so many people who aren’t part of the philanthropic community who don’t give online who are. Going, tio not get any of those emails on giving tuesday and that’s, why it’s so important to think about how you’re going to reach them as well and thinking of your community, is your ambassadors, you know, i might get five or six e-giving tuesday emails, someone else might not get a single email, but they’re going to see something in their facebook freed from there. Best friend from high school saying, no, i support cancer research, it’s giving tuesday. It would mean a lot to me. If you gave to this organization, they do amazing work, so just just think about that and ah, and how you confess, utilize those ambassadors on giving tuesday, amy let’s, go back to you. What else? What else do you think? Well, i think beyond just engaging folk, something that we have heard a lot of organizations ask us about or rather kind of complain about is something very, very tactical that i think often organizations don’t think about until they’re in the moment, and that is a number of organizations have discovered that, you know, it’s giving today they’re participating, you know, dollars air coming in there, super excited, you know, they’re trying to keep that momentum going throughout the day, and they want to post on twitter on up state that says, oh, my gosh, you are goal for the day was to raise five thousand, and we just hit seventeen hundred, you know, help us get to the next amount and all of a sudden they’re hearing from their executive director or maybe their development director that that is not an improved post and that, for whatever reason there executive director or whomever else is giving this approval doesn’t want to share that kind of a milestone, and they’re like, well, but i’m in the middle of typing this tweet what else am i supposed to say? What’s going on? And it may sound surprising, but we have i’ve heard this dozens of times now from organization saying what what should i have done in that situation? Well, i guess my advice is to not get yourself in that situation. It is not yet giving. Tuesday is not the middle of you know the morning and you want to post that update so as you’re doing, you’re planning for this year’s giving tuesday think about what milestones you’re going to want to celebrate and get those approved ahead of time. Maybe it isn’t. Every single dollar that comes in your organization feels comfortable reporting that’s fine figure out what kinds of milestones you do have approval to celebrate so that you don’t have to be in the middle of typing that tweet and find out you can’t send it really think about how you khun frame different milestones throughout the day, as asked anybody that’s ever listen to public radio is going to know that they are ex first that that thinking about hey well, you know, our goal for this hour was two thousand and we’re eighteen fifty who, you know, do we have collars in the last ten minutes to get us up to two thousand? Figure out what those milestones are and how you can celebrate them and how you can use them as kind of another motivational asked throughout the day. All right, how come some organizations might not want to share dollar amounts that since you used that as an example, what? Well, the feedback i’ve gotten, i mean, at least in organizations where to come to me for advice about this is that today? Well, there are a number of different situations, but the majority of them is that they were worried that they wouldn’t hit the ultimate goal for the day and that they would be posting these messages about, you know, we’ve made it to this number, can you keep giving? And that people would perceive that as we’ve on lee made it to seventeen hundred, and we thought we’d make it to five thousand. Um so it was it was like they were intimate painting a perception issue, so they didn’t want to say the numbers i said, okay, okay, jessica, anything you want? Not maybe if not that specifically just about getting thinking ahead in your community i had about communications, that is, i think amy brings up a really great point that the milestone issue? Definitely i hadn’t heard that specifically, but it makes a lot of sense to me, but in general, i would just line up tons of potential tweets and facebook post you probably do less frequently on giving tuesday, but a few facebook posts funny gifts, which ifs like to pronounce it some images using that giving tuesday logo just have it all ready to go, because once the day starts, you know who knows what’s going to happen and having those just said you can cut and paste them if you were running around that someone else can cut and paste them in and you know they’re approved, we’ll just you don’t. Toby developing graphics that day more you could get ahead of time. Agree? Just make your life a lot easier if you and i have talked about that again. Other contacts having having images lined up in advance. So you’re not scrambling. I mean, you do that for you do that for ah, for ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of for a lot of organizations getting images lined up in advance also means making sure you have approval there. Probably, you know photos of people. So making sure that the photos that you want to be able to use on that day, or one where you actually have approval to use those photos, everything is good to go. So that, again, you don’t get stuck in the middle of drafting, opposed, because you don’t have approval. But i also think giving tuesdays a great time to think about images that aren’t just, you know, like a photo that you have taken of a room full of people, but an image that you create with some easy online tools, so that they could be more like graphics. Mostly, i’m making the recommendation because you’re probably going to be posting many times during the day compared to a normal day. And so, using different graphic struck, they can help. Just keep the post feeling fresh and new content out there. A little bit more appealing for folks to share when there’s a graphic sametz chart about all that you did in twenty seventeen that goes along with that tweet that’s asking people to get so it feels like you can get a little bit more information into the post and i’ll just add one more thing to that. Just a best practice we’ve seen is just using the giving tuesday has to hash tag often people. The first tweet of the day, the first facebook post they say it’s giving tuesday and don’t think to continue that throughout the day, and if they’re talking about campaign or doing this great storytelling work-life so i think as much as possible and in terms of approval when it comes to the giving tuesday logo and e-giving tuesday heart, we love to see creativity around that so well in advance. If you want, take the heart and give it to your graphics team or find some twosome probono work for you and change the colors. Whatever you want to do, you don’t have to run it by us and we love it when we see images pop up on giving tuesday that air. Using our logo in a creative way. Cool, cool, me, that’s. What you’ve always loved about giving tuesday is the decentralization. So exactly, and i think for a lot of organizations e-giving tuesday’s the first time, or the only time during the year that they really operate like this, that they would participate in a more global campaign, but also that they are asking for money in a way where they’re actually asking their community member for to make that asked, or that they’re doing it on social media versus, you know, really relying on a direct mail appeal, etcetera. All right, ladies, we’re going to take our take our break. When we come back, we’ll continue the convo. Everybody 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 they are 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 were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m jonah helper, author of date your donors. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. No big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Oppcoll we’ve got to do the live listener love, of course, we’ve got live listeners right now in laos, people’s, democratic republic of laos welcome live love to you and federal argentina also germany, gooden, dog, united kingdom don’t know which country i never, never just assume it’s, england, i don’t do that. Could be scotland islander whales united kingdom live love to you bring it here into united states who got younkers a little above new york city, brooklyn multiple brooklyn, multiple manhattan, tampa, tampa, florida live love to you, boston, mass. Bensalem, pennsylvania. Woodbridge, new jersey live love going out there all those places we’ve got someone in ukraine can’t see your city i’m sorry, but we know you’re with us and also in ah, china knee, how we’re south korea, but they’re out there there’s always someone from south korea, always always have sole on your haserot comes to harm nita. I know you’re out there on the heels of the of the live listeners love has to come to podcast pleasantries because there’s over twelve thousand of you listening on whatever device, whatever time and i am very glad that you are with us pleasantries to the podcast listeners. Thanks for being with us and the affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners throughout the country. Affections to you. Thank you for your thank you to your station for hosting us. And thank you to you. Thanks to you for listening. Non-profit radio affections to our affiliate listeners. Okay. Um example, word. Let’s. Go back to you and find out let’s. See what else? What, what? What advice do you have around giving tuesday? Let’s? Keep it so simple. Well, some advice that i have e-giving tuesday actually come from other a crowd funding type situations and research from crowd funding black forms who, you know people are using for all different types of campaigns all throughout the year, but their research of what makes a successful campaign one of the indicators of a campaign that will be successful and meet it, um, you know, posted goal are ones that regularly post updates on the page so that the content is different even throughout the day or throughout the campaign. If you know another it is not giving tuesday, i think that’s a really smart because you’re sending people to the same link over and over and when they click through, they’re going to want to see that something different, right? So making sure that you’re sending them to that link over and over, that you’re, you know, just like you would if it was a little like news ticker kind of page, you can edit that paige and make sure that you’re putting an update at the top, not the bottom. Every time folks click through, they see oh, it’s, an updated eleven thirty a m and we’re halfway there, great that’s something really short and exciting that maybe i’m one of your champions. I could just copy and paste that as a tweet myself, right? So it’s just a way to keep it fresh on the page, but also to give other people fun, exciting things to share on and help spread your message. Yeah, cool, you could do that right on your on the e-giving page? Absolutely. Okay, okay, jessica, anything you wanna add with respect to keeping the content fresh all day? Yeah, i would say that you’re giving tuesday doesn’t have to be a single day event again based on our limited survey research, about only about a third of organizations just do something on giving tuesday either it’s the middle of a campaign, the start of an end of the year campaign, sometimes the end of a november long campaign. So just a long line of what amy was saying if you are sending people to a page on giving tuesday and then throughout the course of a month or even if it’s a week long campaign, just think about what you could do on giving tuesday throughout today to make it make it unique and incentivize or different stories you could be telling, especially if the page is going to be up for longer than a day. Yeah, okay, and you you, of course, you always want to know what we’re measuring, what what ar metrics going to be for this campaign that we’re engaged in? Well, in my experience, something like giving tuesday feels like a very fast, action packed type of campaign, even a jessica saying, even if more than one day it’s still a pretty intensive, fast moving thing on dh. In my experience, that means that other folks in the organization, whether that means other staff leadership or boardmember i want to know if it was successful, justus quickly, they don’t want to wait three months for your next, you know, development update to learn about the success of the day and being able to report on that means you’re going to have to know in advance. So start thinking about this now is you’re doing, you’re planning, what are you gonna want to be able to measure and report on to know if it was successful or not? Because it may be that you didn’t set up yourself to be able to report on those things that you hadn’t thought about it. I used to give me an example aa lot of folks like tracking on giving tuesday kind of the reach of their messages because as we know, it isn’t just about the dollars range that day, but new folks who signed onto your newsletter people who maybe saw your messages and shared them so folks who were engaged in other ways and that means that you might want to set up certain tools you might wantto have a customized bentley or or other girl short ner link for your donation page that you’re using in all of your tweet so you can really see within that girl short ner screen how many tweets retweet that’s getting? How many folks are looking at how many people are clicking through you might wantto dive into your google analytics and set up some campaign you girls so that you can separate facebook traffic from email traffic from twitter traffic, for example, on dh you know, maybe you don’t care about those things just using those examples, but if you haven’t set them up ahead of time, it’s going to make it really difficult if you wanted to be able to report against those goals and of course, those air going to flow from what are your goals for the day, which which you’re always a proponent of, and we’ve also again talked about it many times. Why are you? Why are you in giving tuesday? What? What at the threshold what do you want to do for the day? Which jessica and i were talking about earlier? It could be any number of things from ah, community. A community day of service. Teo, i mentioned petitions. Could be dollars? Could be new volunteers, you know. What do you what’s your goal or goals for? The day and then that’ll drive. What you going to measure? What have i learned? Something from you through the years. I like it. At least that if i learned at least that much through the years. Okay? Yes, i like it. Okay, i’m trainable. Just anything you’d like to add, you know, metric wass no, but when one nava metrics, i think amy made a great point. But when, when she brought up reporting to board members and senior leadership, it just reminded me how important it is in advance of eating tuesday to get buy-in from that. Like, i love that you need to report to board members because it means that board members know it’s giving tuesday, and they’re excited and engage with your campaign and whenever there’s a reason i know all boards or different, but to engage your board around fund-raising in a new and different way, as opposed to kind of the traditional ways is great. So, yeah, i just i love that idea of getting the board onboard early and keeping them in the loop throughout the day and seeing how you can leverage their connections. And, of course, if a boardmember is willing to do a match always huge that especially if they’re planning on making an end of your gift anyway, saying to them, why don’t you use your end of your game, teo, as a match to kick off our giving tuesday campaign? Okay, cool, uhm ehm anything you’d like to add about e-giving tuesday way, i guess i’m the last thing i would want to say is that i don’t want to feel intimidated by the idea of participating and e-giving teams we have a small community of supporters are because i’ve never really done online fund-raising before, like you were saying, it doesn’t have to be a big fund-raising goal for you, maybe it’s just a chance for you to go get more people in your community to know about the programs you offer, recruit a new boardmember figure out that you have a handful of champions, right? It might just be kind of an introductory year with a lot of other goals that are still really important. Ilsen jessica, i wantto clothes with you tell tell me what you love about the work that you’re doing. I love that every giving tuesday i hear stories that we didn’t know campaigns, we don’t know we’re going to be happening happening that are just so heartwarming and show that there is such creativity in the nonprofit sector and that people are really thinking outside the box and want to experiment and want to try new things and in a way, that’s just just relate to it the more i just that it’s just so heartwarming that that e-giving tuesday khun really be this opportunity. Teo, bring us together to show, like, with the best in people and in just a fun, celebratory way. And i just love being witness to that. And you know where the home of giving tuesday, but really is a movement that’s built by families, individuals, all the non-profits out there so just yeah, thank you guys. Roll. Participating are considering participating. Absolutely. And you’re little more than a witness. You know, you’re a facilitator. Facilitator? Yes, but it’s it’s what all of you are going to do? That’s going? Teo make e-giving tuesday, two thousand seventeen. Amazing. Awesome. Amy, you wanna leave us with anything inspirational? Last? Well, you did. You know i don’t want to jump spot again. You did? You said you said don’t be put off by the size of your organization. Jessica and i had said that earlier, right? Small lords jumpin goto give it go to giving tuesday dot or go check it out. Okay, so i i don’t mean to put you on the spot again. You’re awesome. No, alright, that’s amy sample ward, our social media contributors ceo of inten you’ll find her at amy rs ward and jessica schneider. She is at your pal jess. Ladies thank you so, so much. Thank you for happiness. Thanks so much, tony. And thanks for paying for the conversation. Just said i was fun. Yes, agreed indeed. Thank you, jessica. Next week, oracle net sweet. They have lots of free offerings for non-profits you don’t know about this from oracle, that sweet you shall next week. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com and these are our sponsors. Pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuing dot com regular cpas guiding you beyond the numbers. Wetness. Cps dot com stoploss accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com. Our creative producers, claire miree sam recruits is on the board is the line producer show social media is by seeing shadows in this cool music. By scott steindorff. Do with me next week for non-profit big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out green. 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 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 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 September 22, 2017: Robertson v. Princeton

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Doug White: Robertson v. Princeton

Doug White is the author of “Abusing Donor Intent: The Robertson Family’s Epic Lawsuit Against Princeton University.” He returns to tell how trust eroded between donor and university, and a $35 million gift from 1961 ended in a messy lawsuit. He’s got lots of lessons to share to help you avoid the same. (Originally aired May 9, 2014)

 

 


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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. Hey, you could catch maria simple on msnbc this weekend. She’s going to be on your business with j j ramberg on sunday at seven thirty a m eastern, so check out our prospect research contributor maria simple on msnbc sunday morning. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with care. Arai assis, if you wormed in with the idea that you missed today’s show robertson v princeton doug white is author of the book abusing donor intent, the robertson family’s epic lawsuit against princeton university. He returns to the show to tell us how trust eroded between donor and university and a thirty five million dollars gift from nineteen, sixty one ended in a messy lawsuit. You’ve got lots of lessons to share to help you avoid the same and that originally aired on may ninth twenty fourteen on tony’s take two five minute pg marketing we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by wagner, cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com you’re not. A business you’re non-profit apple owes accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com here is doug white with robertson v princeton first piece. I am very glad to welcome back to the show and back to the studio. Doug wait, author, professor, advisor to non-profits and philanthropists he’s on the faculty in the masters in fund-raising program at columbia university. Abusing donorsearch intent is his fourth book. You’ll find him at doug white dot net. Welcome back, doug. Wait. It’s, good to be back and to see you again. I have to ask the question. That’s on everybody’s mind though. Cerebral ischemia. What is that? That’s? A well, that this week that’s that’s. What? I’ll suffer if i find out that someone had not heard this week’s show a cerebral it’s a form of a stroke ice since kenya’s had a sense that’s what? It was what i wanted to ask you, being an attorney and all. You probably come up with all of these terms. Yeah, well, we make the well back. When i was practicing law now we would make these things. Up there the way were we would defend against people who had made them up as if the slip and fall in aisle seven on the relish that’s that caused it, and an approximate cause of the ischemia twelve years later, that that was there was actually a cause and effect relationship and that’s what we were trying to defeat it’s great to see things haven’t changed and that’s actually kind of a segue way to a lawsuit story. I don’t know, i’m sure that’s true and that’s why i don’t practice law any longer because i was not interested in the relish bill in aisle seven, but this lawsuit that we’re going to talk about is a lot more meaningful than then slip and falls and trips and falls. You you spend your a lot of time thinking about ethics and fund-raising last time you were on, we were talking about your book around ethics, and this is, uh, donorsearch trust and loyalty. How were all these? How are all these related in your in your professorial authorship? Mind? Well, someone might accuse me of having a cerebral something else because of all of the mishmash that goes on. In my head on this stuff. But i won’t. But really, i think that there’s a lot to think about in the nonprofit world that we don’t otherwise think about, we think about fund-raising and we think about boards and all of those things are important, but i’m tryingto get a handle on what society does with its non-profit sector and how the non-profit sector responds back, and so it takes me to these corners that are really weird, and in this particular case, it took me to a story that had something to do with trust and a lot of money and a huge university. And the question is, how could someone accuse princeton of doing something so egregious and that’s? Not an easy question? Answer. In fact, when i went into this story, i didn’t think princeton was really all that guilty of anything, uh, ok, because, uh, as i read through the book, i sensed you trying to be objective. But in the end, i was left with the sense that you felt princeton really had wronged this. The robertson family. You want to tell the end right now? I’m trying to get people to buy the book here in the story. There you go there. Is going to see oil or alert? We only have an hour together. There’s lots of information that people going by the book around because you were just going to school is going to touch the were scratching the surface that’s in a mere hour. The book is very well worth buying. Nine just kind of yes, i know, but now that was the that was okay, we’ll get into the details of that, but i think it’s sort of a tease, you know, that is that was kind of what i was left with, and two thousand six i had finished the book called charity on trial and was interviewed on television station in washington, and somebody brought up the princeton case because i had written about it a little bit, it hadn’t gone anywhere. It was still in the lawsuit stage, and the interviewer asked what i thought of the princeton case, and i thought that princeton had a pretty good case to defend themselves on. I said that at the time, and i felt that for a long time because i like i’m sure many, many people feel like a place like princeton really has its act. Together and is a pretty good place, and i say that knowing that it’s, i still feel that way. But there were issues that i discovered along the way that i felt really made them look bad. Okay? Okay, and we’re going toe t c we’re going to follow your evolution, okay, you’ve you’ve you’ve come, you’ve come around. I know you’re thinking has evolved. Let’s, let’s not tease any longer. This this goes back to ah nineteen. Sixty one gift from charles roberts heimans set up a little bit for you. Charles robertson, co founder of the great atlantic and pacific tea company the mp supermarkets nineteen sixty one gift to princeton university. Well, let me just do a little bit of a nuance on that. Exactly. The wife, marie robertson, who is the heiress of the mp fortune. She funded it, right? She actually tent. Technically, did fundez yes way say that there were donors, but technically, there was one donor, and that was marie robertson. Okay, but charles robertson, her husband was such a large player in the gift you’re gonna you’re gonna hold my feet to the fire on the details. Well, you’re an attorney and i can’t. Well, i was i was that’s the second time. Now you’ve accused me. I’m not an attorney, sabelo you’re recovering attorney. Yeah. I mean, i do fund-raising more than i do. Attorney work. It plays a part, but i didn’t say it disparagingly. I say it with no i d s marriage, but but you should hold me to the fire because you wrote a book and oh, and i’m glossy. Andi, i you know, ignoring details. Okay. Yes, go ahead. Marie robertson was actually the donor. Yeah, technology. But we think of them as donors and that’s. Fine. She was the heiress of the mp fortune and her one tenth share of the stock when it became available to be invaded after the trust was dissolved in nineteen. Fifty seven was about ninety million dollars. She got ninety million dollars one day from the trust. And charles, her husband, her second husband. I was an investment adviser and he new two things. One is not only should this stock portfolio within the family be diversified, he also did not have any faith in the management of the mp at that time, after the original people died off. He didn’t think it was going to go anywhere. And he was actually right on dh. You could predict anything, but in this particular case, he was right. The mp actually filed for bankruptcy just a few years ago. I don’t know what status today, but it did have a lot of difficulty. The stock did go down, so they were right to a diversify. And also the other part of that in terms of wealth management planning was to make a charitable gift to save on huge, huge taxes. The marginal tax rate at that time was ninety one percent. So this brought them to the woodrow wilson school at princeton university. It did. Ah, charles was a graduate of princeton, so let’s get that out and they were both very interested. Or he was really the intellectual driver behind the gift and it’s purpose. He was very interested, but they both were. They were both interested in international relations. This was an era of that. Today we find it hard to even think happened. There was an optimism in the united states, and there was a lot of challenge because of the height of the cold war, too. In nineteen sixty one, kennedy had just been elected. And so there was the sense of america. Khun do it. There was this idea that we were going to go to the moon, which we did. There was this idea that we could almost conquer anything which we didn’t. But there was a sense, this vibrancy and the robertsons felt that it would be really great if we could go to a really great school, like princeton, the woodrow wilson school which existed before the gift, by the way, and have people go into the foreign service of the government to go out and spread american values, not in any political sort of away or ideological sort of way other than democracy, but do it through the idea of foreign service through a peaceful way. And so the idea was to get students who were at the woodrow wilson school graduate program to then go into the foreign service oppcoll the negotiations ensued, of course, a lot of talk about what the donor’s objectives were, and how to achieve those objectives of a sze yu put it, you know, the broad goal of strengthening the foreign service in the united states. And using the doing that through the woodrow wilson school, their phrase was strengthening the united states government pretty clear, it’s clear, but it’s also abroad. The specific phrase that i think we are probably gonna have to talk about a little bit is the phrase particular emphasis, the idea that students would go into the foreign service area or some branch of the government that had dealings with the foreign service, and that the school would put particular emphasis that’s in the document on putting those students in those positions. Okay, we’re gonna take our first break. Onda of course, doug white stays with us. We’re going to keep talking about the the evolution of this, the the gift and the lawsuit and the lessons, of course. That’s, you know, that’s important that we want to leave you with takeaways so that you can avoid something like this may not be epic in your in your case, but could still be very seriously want help you avoid problems like princeton had with his donors. So 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. Duitz welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m sorry, i can’t send live listener love today. Ah, directly live, because we’re pre recording today, but doesn’t you were listening live. I send you my thanks. Thanks for listening. And, of course, podcast pleasantries to those of you listening everywhere else but live very glad you’re with us. The now we have an hour, but we only have an hour. So we have to fast forward a little bit now, too. How things started. Teo devolve from charles and marie the parents to bill robertson, the son of charles and marie. Things started to break down over time in the in the relationship. One of the interesting aspects of this case is they started to break down a lot sooner than princeton had been saying. Charles robertson himself was very upset. Within a few years of the gift with the lack of results at the school, he had done a lot of research on what the school could do. He had talked to important government officials before setting up the foundation. And by the way, this was a foundation to support the program at the woodrow wilson school. Today, it would be known as, ah supporting organization back in nineteen sixty one, they didn’t have that, but that’s what effectively acted as and so he was on the board as well as two other family members. So there were three family members and for people from princeton on the board of this foundation called the robertson foundation that’s important, i think three family members, four people from princeton, absolutely. That was important for a lot of reasons that turned out to be one of the reasons that there was eventually a lawsuit, but it was also important for the irs to give its blessing to the charitable stature of this organization. So charles robertson knew that princeton would have the four votes they would have control. There was no real question in his mind, but he also wanted to have the families input too over the years over the generations. And so there was this balancing act that they were trying to accomplish, and i think they were all going into this in good faith. There’s no, in my view, any question about that? At the point, the gift was made, but there was always some question as to what the school was going to do. In other words, this was going to be a great program for international relations, and it is today. And i want to be clear about that it’s one of the best in the united states or the best in the world. But the gift was made in order to make room for students to go into the foreign service. That was the whole point of the gift. That was the point of the gift. It wasn’t to make the woodrow wilson school great. It was to put people into the foreign service or in the foreign relations positions in the united states government and that’s what wasn’t happening. And only a few years after that, charles robertson started to look at this and say, what’s our progress, and over the years, i don’t know the exact figure right now, but up until twenty or two, i would say perhaps thirteen to fourteen percent of the students actually went into the government, which was an abysmal failure from charles robertson’s perspective, and so he was upset from pretty pretty much the beginning, and i got my hands on documents that proves this. This was not something that bill robertson is inventing he’s able to show me letters that his father wrote angrily. I mean, there was a lot of emotion in these things to show that he was very upset with the progress of the woodrow wilson school bill robinson comes into the picture because he’s young at this point in nineteen seventy two i think he graduated from princeton himself, so he wasn’t really old. He came out of the board after one of the other family members went off and took basically his father’s place on the board on his family portion of the board in nineteen eighty one after his father died. And so bill took over that mantle of keeping a sharp eye on the progress of the woodrow wilson school graduate program, and continue to be unhappy with it. So it did go from charles to bill, but another dynamic here that we don’t often times take into account. What i tried to describe in the book was bill’s intense loyalty to his parents and in this particular case, his father he felt that his father and mother put this gift the hugest gift basically that had ever been given to a university to that time. And he felt that things weren’t being done correctly. And and his mother, too, was very there’s. Ah, something you say in the book that that bill feels very strong that his mother relied on on princeton and this gift up until her death? Yes, on dh. Trusted them. Yes. Yes, this trust was a big deal, and trust is a big deal in all of our lives, and i don’t know that we really analyze it well or feel it about it their way we might, but i feel strongly that both bill excuse me. Both charles and marie were hoping for more from this gift, and they were trusting princeton probably more than they should have been, but that’s another issue point is that by the time bill took over his seat on the board, things were not improving. And so bill kept up that as i say that that i on on the progress, that isn’t what triggered the lawsuit, but that was always ah, thorn in the side of the of the meetings on dove, the progress of the woodrow wilson school, they were not happy on dh there. I don’t know that there was based on what i’ve seen, i can’t say that i would actually say that there would be a point in that forty year history where they were ever happy. Okay, um, i have my favorite character in in the in this epic lawsuit, but i’m not going i know that i want to. Hold that dahna print co-branded an investment committee plays a big role here, and i think that has a lot and has a lot to do with the donor university relationship. Print go. You’re right, it’s the princeton investment company, i think. Oh, company. Yeah, those committee no. Close, close. Not bad. I’m gonna check you on that. Okay. Okay, go ahead. Check me out. Okay. While you’re doing that, i didn’t bring the book with me that i never bring the book because i don’t want to be, you know, page seventy four. You said all right, i’ll have to check later. This is the problem. Open book tests in high school. That’s why they don’t want to go ahead. All right. So the idea of going into a broader strategy for investing was anathema to bill, as it would have been to charles. In fact, part of the original document talked about how investments had to be put together. The idea was that print cho had been established a few years earlier, and the princeton and dahna, which had gone into several billions of dollars. At that point, i was going to be managed in a more modern way from them or traditional life and bill was way in the early eighties. Now we are in the early eighties. Yeah, we are actually. And charles did not want to get too risky with the investments, and neither did bill and bill, by the way, grew into a financial investment advisory capacity in his own right outside of this. And so he had some chops when it came to investigate. He also didn’t want to go to what became a pretty big norm at university investment houses. And that is to say, by the nineties late nineties, especially the idea of alternative investments was very, very popular, and the thieves were hedge fund these head from investing foreign in foreign companies. Yes. Now every every i have to say that what i was in this business in the investment business for charities, i understood there were lots and lots of asset classes and that’s fine way should always be on the cutting edge of understanding how finances and investments work. But they’re became a time when everything was going up and this happened throughout the two thousands to ana and what became really popular was what we call alternatives. Or the alternative investments like you say hedge funds and other things, and bill was really against that idea and print cho was going forward. He went down to print go because they were in another office and said, show me around and tell me what’s going on. And he was just not impressed with the idea of alternative investments and, quite frankly, again oppressions being what it is in twenty late that’s exactly what brought down these university endowments. In fact, princeton was so reliant upon investments they had about fifty percent or a little bit more in their endowment devoted to alternatives which, when i was in the world of investments back in the early nineties, we would think of two or three percent of a large and and so it got turned upside down, and that the tension was whether print coe should be investing the foundation assets along with the university endowment or and in the eyes of the roberts bill robertson that it should not print go should not have control over the investment exactly and that’s what triggered the lawsuit? It was that issue if you’re looking at one moment where the decision was made to actually file a lawsuit. It was one bill robertson finally got fed up after the after the board for two three voted to go to print cope, put the assets in the print going by the way that thirty five million dollars had grown to about eight hundred million dollars. That thirty five million dollars had grown to about eight hundred billion dollars by two thousand. Wow. Okay, that’s. Excellent perspective. All right, now we’re in the lawsuit. What else did the the lawsuit alleged besides the investment? Misappropriation? Well, not miss probation, but they were a couple of expenses and things like that. That right lawsuit alleged what happens? And you probably know this much better than i. But i learned this a little bit more during the course of writing the book. There was a complaint filed. We feel something is wrong, x and then there’s a response. And then in the process of looking at the issue’s, the plaintiffs have an opportunity to go through what’s called discovery. And in the process of that discovery, they discovered a lot of things that they didn’t know beforehand. So the original complaint had to do a lot. With print go, and it also had a lot to do with why students weren’t going into the foreign service. But during discovery, the plaintiff’s found that a lot of the money wasn’t being spent well, either. For example, people excuse me. Other departments at princeton were getting money from the foundation, and those departments weren’t really helping with the woodrow wilson school. The school princeton defends that and says, i’ll just use the phrase they use academic freedom. They say that academic freedom allowed them to make all of these decisions and bill’s perspective, as well as as well as the attorneys. Of course, for the family was that academic freedom, while it’s a cherished concept and we really want to make sure that we never really violated it still has its limits. You can’t, for example, well, maybe you can we don’t know this never was adjudicated by judge or jury so it’s we’ll never really know. But there was this guy this comment during the depositions, where the attorney for for the robertsons asked one of the president’s what what kind of expenditure would be allowed? And the person said, well, almost anything and the attorney said well, how about the hiring a basketball coach? Would that be allowed? And he said yes, oh, my yes, oh, my that’s a university president. That was the university. Yes saying this i forget whether it was the president or dean, i think it was the president and he said yes, because if we need to hire someone at the woodrow wilson school who likes basketball or whose husband or wife, teacher, our coaches, basketball or some connection and that brings that person to the woodrow wilson school, then we will spend that money on the basketball coach’s salary. Well, you can imagine how the robertsons would react to that. Yeah, and understanding that there is an idea, a fundamental, cherished ideal of academic freedom, we still are violating something very fundamental when that answer comes to the fore. Um, now listeners know that we have jargon jail on twenty martignetti non-profit radio, but i didn’t want to put you over there very simple. You know, the complaint that’s just i’m going to get you out of jargon job because i’m glad that you’re back for a third time on the show, so an attorney is going to get me. Out of the u s attorney’s doing all the time. We’re not all they are not. I’m not practicing law. I am not practicing law. There is that explicit. If i made that clear, those who do practice law often are getting people out of prison. It’s one of the noble or things that we do is restore someone’s freed that they do. They do pronoun trouble eyes restoring freedom to those erroneously held incarcerated. So yeah, the complaint is just that’s the way you you have a complaint. So that’s, how you start a lawsuit and discovery is exchange of all kinds of documents, and in this case it was emails and letters. Metoo certainly notes of notes of conversations you wanted. There was a lot. There was a lot in there that, as you said, the robertsons discovered that they hadn’t known about what was going on with the money in this discovery process of thousands of pages, you know, thousands of pages. Not all of them were stingingly terrible. Now, of course, a lot of it’s very mundane. Very, very monday, and you just have to sift through it because you never know when that nugget is. Going to pop out. But, yes, they found that this money was being spent all over the place at princeton and princeton will say, look, a woodrow wilson school is a great place. Okay, well, there’s, no question about that nobody’s arguing that but what we’re talking about is the intention of the donor and the document that was signed in nineteen sixty one that princeton agreed to, and so that the woodrow wilson school is a great place is true. But your relevant to this this question, the other thing was academic freedom. We can spend money pretty much however we want to. And the robertsons wanted to pull back on that. The another big issue in this was the how the robertsons legal fees are being paid. And that was being paid through the banbury fund. Another robertson family foundation let’s touch on that just lights. Just a little. Okay, princeton didn’t want that to happen, and the robertson said that they could do it. They got opinion letters from their attorneys and also had some precedents from the irs, both in private letter rulings and revenue rulings. So they were, i think, firm ground, but princeton still fights that battle today. They still say that it was improper for the banbury fund, too. Pay the robertson legal expenses. But from what i could say they were they were in a good place to do that. The robertsons work. Okay, um, starting to hint at some of our lessons for later on there was issue in the complaint also or in the subsequent complaint after the discovery around financial transparency. Yes. And disclosures that had not been made to the yeah, the robertsons family. Towboat robertson. So not only do we have these money, these dollars being spent their being spent without the family’s knowledge one was a a building that was being constructed almost entirely from the robertson. That was wallace all while, asshole. Yes. And if you ask bill robertson what the big reasons he went to court work, wallace hall was one of the three and a large part of that was they were not told this was taking place. So in other words, they took the position that not only could they use this money outside of direct connection to the woodrow wilson school, they didn’t have to tell the family about it. Forty three is this warner hall? I’m sorry. While us all was not part of the woodrow wilson school, not at all. It was not so to bill robertson. This is as far afield is hiring the basketball coach and paying for it exactly. He was very upset about that, and i don’t blame him. I mean, there were a lot of places where princeton didn’t have toe go to a lawsuit that could have done so much, and we’ll get to those in lessons later on. But when wallace hall came about, bill was livid. Yeah, well, s o you know, the institution does bad things, and then it covers it up and that’s the that’s, the financial transparency that was that was lacking, and it became part of the complaint. I’ve got more, of course, with doug white and the robertson lawsuit coming up first. Pursuant, their newest resource, the intelligent fund-raising health check downloaded for nine key performance indicators to measures your organization’s health. Ten universal characteristics of orders that are thriving in fund-raising eleven pipers piping, twelve drummers drumming i confess i had looked those up. I thought it was eleven lords leaping and i think it should be because you want to hit you wanna punch the the thehe liberations eleven lorts leaping i think i think the blue a chance that well, the who wrote the twelve days of christmas i think you blew a chance anyway, it’s not eleven lords leaping things. Only seven of those, but go to aa teo tony dot slash pursuant that’s where you’ll find the intelligent fund-raising health check acquisition campaigns pursuing had the webinar to help you acquire new donors. Now watch the archive, it’s. Never too late. Well, it’s going to be too late soon, actually, but it’s not too late. Now again, tony dahna slash pursuing the webinar is going to drop off that custom page that pursue it has for non-profit radio listeners. So get there. Check out that web in r and you can download the intelligent fund-raising health check also. Tony dot m a slash pursuant you gotta use a capital p wagner, cps. 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Get the non-profit software, the accounting software that is built for non-profits from the ground up, and that is from apple owes appaloosa counting it’s designed for non-profits from the beginning, i think you got that you got the message non-profit wizard dot com that’ll take you to ap clothes and you’ll discover apple of accounting for non-profits now time for tony’s take two my latest video is five minute marketing for planned e-giving i stripped out the most important moments from this show several weeks ago where i did the whole first segment of the show on planned giving marketing, but five minute plan giving marketing quick, quick bursts for your events for your newsletter, whether it’s printer, digital for some printing when you’re printing emails and things, sorry when you’re printing envelopes, envelopes lots of quick ideas in there, distilled almost thirty minutes down to the essential three very tough task. But check out the video it sze three minutes of five minute marketing for plan giving it. Of course, that is at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s. Take two. And here is more of doug white talking about the robertson v princeton epic lawsuit. The great you’re still here, right? I am cool. So we have now this lawsuit and the discovery and the and the amended complaint based on what the robertsons learned through discovery. And this lawsuit is on for six between six and seven years. I imagine the relationship was pretty damn difficulty between the foundation board and the princeton university. Ah, the administration and the people who are on the board from princeton university. They have to get together for board meetings. Excuse me. Yes, they do. And the bill, sister catherine ernst, described it as having a boardmember and then attorney, then the boardmember and then attorney all around the table, and not only the family, but also the princeton side of the board. It was very tense. They describe how in the early days when charlie was alive, that the relations were very good. There would be lunch at the president’s house. There would be a lot of camaraderie, even the problems were developing. The relations were pretty good by the time the lawsuit comes around. Nobody’s talking. Anybody aboard? Yeah, board meetings. And it became the antithesis of what? And again, i teach board governance at columbia. And we talk about the need for ah, transparency and fluidity. And, you know, trust and none of that was was was there during this lawsuit so it’s very, very tense there, even they were actually having meals in separate rooms. That’s, right? They family really saying we’re family boardmember zand the princeton university board members would would have lunches in separate rooms. That’s, right? They did need an adult to come in and take things. It was they ended up doing there for the settlement, but at this point, it was just i can’t imagine how tense that had to be. Yeah, and over six, seven years, yes, right, yes. Okay, um, let’s. Bring us to the settlement. Twenty eight a lot of things are going on. First of all, it’s true that the robertsons we’re running out of money, even though the banbury fund was funding the lawsuits, the love fees added up to about forty five million dollars on each side, which is an incredible about the money and even a place like the banbury fund was starting to feel that now, if i’ve been a part of those teams, i’d probably still be practicing law. Yes, i would have been. The buildings are so easy when you’re in a lawsuit, but i just never got that far. I stuck it out for two years, and i never made it to this level. Well, the judge retired the one that everybody bonded. Teo in light and respected. He retired. The judge’s clerk left to go work for the princeton lawyers, which was interesting. The new judge could only give it one day a week. And that was maria psychic. And she i was only going to be able to do it for one day a week, which stretched the lawsuit out even further. Give a dog a car there. And so there was a lot of delay and and i get this even though we kind of make fun of this from time to time, that even though there was a delay and there was a slow down, the work still had to be continued. The law fees were continuing. And so the question of being able to pay for this was a very acute one for the robertson family. On the other side of the coin, the princeton investments were going south because the crisis was taking place. And they were, as i say, and alternatives. And so they were having a liquidity problem. I think they probably only source of liquidity. Most fat during that time was probably tuition paying parents was just a very tight time. They might not acknowledge it that way, but that’s pretty much how i see it. And so they were both ready. I think, to talk settlement. They had tried beforehand they didn’t get anywhere. Bill originally wanted to take the entire endowment away and put it somewhere else. And that would have been a really riel problem for the princeton. Because if for no other reason, it would have been a real blow psychologically to this story. I really university. I get what they wanted to do there, so they were going back and forth. And the question was, should we force the university to repay all these dollars that they had misspent, which could have been an excess of about two hundred billion dollars back into the foundation? Or can we just take the foundation away? Or can we split away from the foundation and they wanted independence? They wanted to say, okay, we want money to go do our own thing, that is, to say what my parents were doing, who his parents were doing, and the and princeton really didn’t want that, so they said, okay, what we’ll do is we’ll consider chopping off some of this money and giving it to you if you let us keep the rest of it, you guys go away and that’s, basically, what happened? They did bring in an adult david gal fan from milbank tweed who came in and his whole approach was saying not to say who had the better argument legally, his approach was, how can we get out of this mess? And i think he was a good voice. He was not part. Of the litigation. And he was a good voice to be brought in at this time, and he actually did the settlement. He was very good. And the settlement wass that princeton would reimburse the banbury fund the forty five million dollars for the legal fees. And in addition to that, over a period of time, the university would pay fifty million dollars to a new foundation. It’s called the robinson foundation for government. And it now exists it’s, a family foundation, and has its own work and does what it’s predecessor was supposed to do that is to put students into the federal government. But it is completely independent. Totally invested in university. Yeah. And then the rest of the money which probably added up to around six hundred fifty or seven hundred million dollars. Because during that period of time, during the crisis, the dahna came dahna shade. But let’s say six hundred million then was left. I don’t know exactly. The robinson foundation, by the way, was dissolved the original one. And so the money that was in it and was left for princeton went into its general endowment specifically for the woodrow wilson school and today the robertson family does not have anything to say about how that money is being used. There is a complete divorce. Okay, i think that can bring us teo somethings that charity’s can can take away. Um, i still haven’t revealed my favorite character, but we haven’t talked about that person. Um, agreements, should we start with a gram? And this was all went back to the to the phrase a particular emphasis. So do we, which was in which was in the original document creating the foundation? Yes, let’s. Talk about what? What level of scrupulous nous we need to have around agreements with donors. Let me preface it by saying the this this conversation, this part of it right now has a lot to do with understanding that this lawsuit was a story and it’s true and it’s big but it’s really? A reason for being important is that almost any charity and almost any donor i can get into this bind. So it’s not just ah, large family or a large university. Any endowed gift or any restricted gift really, really needs to be put together with what i would call the lessons you want. Bring us. We could easily be talking about a ten or fifteen thousand dollars gift easily, easily and that’s really one of the big messages here? This isn’t just about princeton has got a lot of interest, but it’s not just about princeton and so donors and charities both have to be aware of this when we say when we use phrases like in with particular emphasis, it has a meaning, but it doesn’t have an absolute meaning doesn’t mean that one hundred percent of the students are goingto go to the federal government, but it also doesn’t mean zero percent or ten percent. So we have to have an understanding you and i about what particular emphasis means if it were seventy or eighty or ninety percent, i don’t think charles robertson would have had any problem. I think even if he were sixty or sixty five percent, part of the problem was not just the results, and this is another thing they discovered was that princeton never really cared whether the students we’re going to go and the evidence of that was they never asked on the application whether they were interested in going into the federal government, so there. Was that part of the equation? So and i think you can relate to this as an attorney, we sometimes think of the laws being black and white and here’s what’s, right, and here’s what’s wrong. But a lot of phrases we use are are vague on purpose. They they’re meant to be because we can’t assign a value our specific numeric value to the word emphasis we just can’t do that. And yet, it’s an important idea in an agreement. So if a person is making an agreement today, one lesson is too if you’re going to use that kind of a phrase, uh, define it a little bit more than they did. One one word that gets us into trouble, i think, and fund-raising agreements and that is the word in perpetuity of the phrase in perpetuity because in perpetuity has has a meaning if you look it up. It’s very clear what that meaning is it means forever and forever has a meaning. And so, by definition, we cannot put into legitimately into an agreement, in my view, the word perpetuity because we cannot know what’s going to happen forever. So we have to be more careful. And crafting the language that we’re using. I want i made a gift to my own high school. This is a in the nineteen eighties of deferred gift. Where’d you go to high school exeter, phillips, exeter. And it was back in the day when pulled income funds were popular. You probably remember that yourself. None of our listeners will. There were there was a thing it’s, an antique drug in jail. Again. Well its way. But we have to define it’s now an out of date. Really? Life, income gift. A method through which donors got variable income for for their lives. And the variability became a big issue when interest rates were declining and the varying the variations were all down. And these have pretty much falling out of favor among among non-profits so that’s enough for me. So then come front. When i was doing the agreement, they said and i wanted to honor my english teacher and they said, this is back in like, nineteen, eighty four they said, you know, this going to sound weird, but we might not teach english forever, right? I thought, how is that possible? But it may not be possible. But it was also not conceivable that we wouldn’t be riding horses forever. So had an escape plus, saying that if this ever did happen that they be able to use it to a purpose is closest possible. Something, something that deals with ian practicability of yes, continuing the gift. Yes, and i’m tryingto bring this and tryingto respond to your question about how donors can and charities. Khun b take steps to avoid what happened to princeton so that we don’t just use words capriciously. We just have about a minute before a break, and there’s certainly board implications here, too. I mean, the princeton board reviewed the documentation and probably was involved in in a good degree in the negotiations board oversight of gift. Yes, this is a good example of that. Now, i don’t really fault the board at princeton to too much because it was nineteen, sixty one and not twenty fourteen, and so we’ve learned a lot in the last half century about board oversight and so forth, but that said thie gift was basically shoved through. It was a last minute quick kind of a thing had nothing to do with there at the time current capital campaign and the president really did not have the fullest discussion with the board about this gift, and they should have so board oversight of that process is really critical. We could go out front brake, and when we come back, doug and i will keep talking about the lessons from this epic lawsuit robertson v princeton like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup 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 were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, i’m bill mcginley, president, ceo of the association for healthcare philanthropy. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. As we make our agreements more specific and and defined terms as you’re suggesting, we can actually get into trouble because the specificity now binds us two teo, try to predict what’s going to happen and try to predict what issues are goingto a result. So there’s a there’s a balance between specificity and flexibility there is, and when i was saying earlier that we need to be more specific, er not use words capriciously, you’re right, i had that in mind to that there is a balance and it’s there’s always going to be tension. And so the question is, how do we avoid this kind of a thing going into the future? And one of the things that you can avoid has nothing to do with the agreement. It has everything to do with relations. If princeton had done so much differently, this wouldn’t have gone to where it went. But it was the lack of trust, the erosion of trust over the decades that really set the stage for this. Then you can go to the agreement say you’re not doing this well if you have the trust going on at the same time, you don’t need to go to the agreement, say you are or are not doing something but that’s it so so that’s probably the best lesson that anybody can learn from a charitable perspective anyway, to stay in touch with the airs at the donors and the heirs forever. This is an obligation, and if you don’t feel you can do that, you don’t feel you, khun obligate your success is that the organization to do that, then don’t promise to do that that’s part of the deal here in plan giving, when i was in plan giving, doing these kinds of things and talking to you too plant giving directors, i would say you’re you’re actually making an agreement here that will go on for well past the time you’re here, and probably perhaps well past the time you’re even alive. So many generations of successors after you are going to have to do what you’re agreeing to do today, keep that idea in mind when you make these agreements and this particular agreement, nothing was going to erode the idea of a federal government or the need for foreign relations, but still there could have been mohr a trust and more. Specificity, i think, in the agreement, although i don’t think the specificity was the issue here, i think the idea was pretty clear, i mean, with particular emphasis might be a vague term, but it does have enough of a meaning and enough of an understanding by people who consider the table to know that thirteen percent just doesn’t cut it. You know, you know, the good communications and keeping in touch, and in this case, there were there were different presidents who could at any time i thought when, when there was a new president, he or she could have said, you know, we’ve made some mistakes in the past, obviously i was not in charge then, but here’s what here’s, what happened and here’s what we’re gonna do, teo, and make sure that this doesn’t happen again, that humility is so crucial, especially the non-profit i can understand boisterousness from ah for-profit especially if it’s a big one, but at a non-profit there’s this extra special place that non-profits haven’t talked about that in the other book, the non-profit challenge where that humility plays a large large role or should now, just so you’ll know, since this book was published other organizations, air writing reviews and trying to talk with both me and princeton. Princeton refuses to talk about it. They give the same press release that they give that they gave after the settlement they do not want to acknowledge, but something went wrong. How they could possibly agnostic. Now i could understand them having a defense, but to say they were totally in the right, it blows my mind, you know that? Yeah, that sounds like lawyers giving advice and and driving the decisionmaking vs people who are more interested in the long term relationships with donors and alumni. That was paul volcker’s perspective. I interviewed him because he’s, a princeton alum, and he also had a perspective on this situation at the woodrow wilson school. And he was complaining about the woodrow wilson school separately and before the lawsuit ever came, so he was doing it entirely independently. And when the lawsuit came around, he told me, i think the lawyers are driving this. They’re saying, princessa can admit to nothing but i’m thinking, okay, i get that it’s not good, but i get that. But here we are, what, five years? Seven years. Six years after the settlement and they’re still saying we didn’t do anything wrong. Is bill robertson willing to talk now? Yeah, bills bill is going to be speaking with me up in boston next week. Oh, i could’ve had bill roberts instead of you. You could have a visible the name in the lawsuit instead of the guy who just follows it later on, you’re in the gundam, maybe it’s somehow it’s done now. Alright, alright, to settle for this second best. Okay? And so, as we are crafting these agreements again, the board’s role in reviewing agreements whether whether it is appropriate to buying this organization forever in perpetuity, or should we stop short of that and the board is really the last step two that can raise a red flag for the organization it is, unless you can come to some agreement as to what in perpetuity means as they did at the a museum of ma metropolitan museum of art a few years ago. And philippe de montebello said, we think in perpetuity really means seventy five years on the donor agreed to that. Well, that’s ok, that’s coming is a definition. There was a definition, right? So in perfect, what he didn’t really mean what it means in addiction, right? Fright, but yes, you’re right, i think the board has to be very cautious of that. My favorite character, we didn’t talk about her, but you dedicated the book to jessie lee washington. I did, i don’t want to, i’ll let you explain, but we just have it. We just have a couple minutes explain the crucial role just a jesse was an employee at that. The university was asked to look into endowments at the divinity school and found some irregularities and did a report, and it was put away for a while. Then she left on dh. Then the lawsuit became really big, and she said, you know this? What i was working on in the divinity school is very similar to what the lawsuit is alleging. So she came out and went to the lawyers for princeton with seth lap ido and said, i have a story to tell you, and when she got on the phone, seth said, we’ve been waiting for you to come. He didn’t know who it was going to be, but he figured there would be some other person in princeton who would be familiar with this activity that princeton was doing in the endowment accounting and she really represent she she i think, was very courageous. She put her reputation on the line and said, i am willing to go on the record to say what’s wrong here, and he dedicated the book to her, and that was so touching. And i think, well, she’s, my favorite because i believe that most people want to do the right thing and she’s a perfect example of stepping forward being courageous the way you describe most people in non-profits and donors want to do the right thing. I think you’re right. I know you’re right. Doug, wait, author, professor, advisor non-profits and philanthropists. He hangs out at columbia university teaching at the masters and fund-raising program. You will find him at doug white dot net. The book is abusing donorsearch intent. The robertson family’s epic lawsuit against princeton university it’s a very, very good story and very well told doug white. Thanks so much. Thank you, it’s. Good to see you again. Pleasure. Did you think that i was going to wrap up this show without live? Listen, love. Podcast pleasantries an affiliate affections lima, lima, lima podcast pod papa papa an alfa alfa. Certainly not certainly not can’t happen. So the liveliest naralo let’s go abroad. I like the start abroad today in ah poon a india i believe i’m not sure i’m pronouncing it right, but india is definitely with us. Germany. Guten tag. We can’t see your city, russia i’m sorry, we can’t see your city. I don’t know if i should be surprised there, but we cannot, um anybody else abroad? Yes, none, none name none in china ni hao and nobody from nobody from south korea. You know what? I bet south korea’s there, but we just can’t see them, so i’m certainly going to send on your haserot comes a ham nida to our listeners in south korea, there always there and, uh, come in a little closer to home. Coming. Georgia, georgia, i cracked again. Elizabeth, new jersey! I know elizabeth well, i don’t know this, but this is my grandmother used to work at a plant. It was a pharmaceutical plant in elizabeth going back-up a number of years. Elizabeth, new jersey live. Listen love to you also live love goes out to tampa, florida. Woodbridge, new jersey, south orange, new jersey. Why would get jersey checking in lots of places, mostly north. Let’s. Cool, though. And bayside, new york and queens live. Listen love to each of you. Thank you so much for being with us and we’ve got to send the podcast pleasantries to the over twelve thousand listening in the time shift. Thank you. Pleasantries to you. The affiliate affections are am and fm listeners always goes out my affections to you as well. Next week, it’s all giving tuesday, including amy sample ward. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com here’s our sponsors pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuing dot com regular sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers when you’re cps dot com at plus accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and we’d be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dotcom are creative producers. Claire meyerhoff family woodson’s the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez and this music is by scott stein do with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out on the green. Thanks. 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 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, talk 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 expect it 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.