Tag Archives: Nonprofit boards

Nonprofit Radio for May 31, 2021: BFD: Board Financials Dilemma

My Guests:

Andy Robinson & Nancy Wasserman: BFD: Board Financials Dilemma

What do you do for board members who can’t read your balance sheet? The authors of “The Board Member’s Easier Than You Think Guide To Nonprofit Finances” can answer that. Andy Robinson and Nancy Wasserman explain why understanding finances is critical so board members preserve your good work and protect themselves. Do their eyes glaze over when the numbers come out? We’ll help your board achieve financial literacy.

This originally aired on March 2, 2012 as show #81. This is show #540. Take a trip back in time with me. Of course, in 2021, your board members still need to understand your financials.

 

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:11.44] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and it’s March 2nd 2012.

[00:00:32.74] spk_3:
Who is that low energy uninformed imposter and that music. It’s May 31, This week’s show maybe from the deep archive, but that doesn’t mean we bring back a

[00:00:36.73] spk_0:
Host from six ft under.

[00:00:49.24] spk_5:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit

[00:02:24.44] spk_3:
Radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh I’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of Takayasu says arthritis if you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show B. F. D. Board financials dilemma. What do you do for board members who can’t read your balance sheet? The authors of the board members easier than you think. Guide to nonprofit finances can answer that. Andy Robinson and nancy Wasserman explain why understanding finances is critical. So board members preserve your good work and protect themselves. Do their eyes glaze over when the numbers come out, we’ll help your board achieve financial literacy. Yes. This originally aired on March two, That was show # 81. This is show # 540. So take a trip back with me in time. Of course, In 2021, your board members still need to understand your financials, Antonis take two planned giving accelerator. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Here is B F D Board Financials Dilemma.

[00:03:08.34] spk_0:
Andy Robinson provides training and consulting for nonprofits in fundraising, board development marketing and earned income. He specializes in the needs of groups working for human rights, Social justice, environmental conservation, historic preservation and Community development. Nancy Wasserman has over 25 years of experience in community finance and social enterprise development. Her particular skill is working with clients on projects that must satisfy both financial and social or community goals. They worked together to co author the book, The board members easier than you think. Guide to Fund to nonprofit finances, published by Emerson in church. And I’m very glad that their collaboration brings them both to the show. Andy nancy. Welcome. Thank you.

[00:03:17.16] spk_2:
Thank you. tony

[00:03:18.37] spk_0:
Pleasure to have you both Andy. Pleasure to have you back

[00:03:22.21] spk_2:
to talk

[00:03:22.98] spk_0:
with you again. Thank you Nancy. Why is this important for board members to care about the financial condition of a charity?

[00:03:45.04] spk_1:
Because that’s really what your charges as a board member, you have the responsibility to make sure the organization is achieving its mission, and the way the best way to do that is to make sure it has the resources it needs to do it. Um And the financial statements and the finance, nonprofit finances is how you know, um pretty quickly what’s going on, especially if you’ve you’ve got that information. You also have some responsibilities to the community um to deliver non profit um uh that does achieve its mission and does it in a responsible and fiduciary fiduciary appropriate way.

[00:04:15.65] spk_0:
So board members are have a fiduciary duty to the charity, right?

[00:04:20.82] spk_1:
Absolutely to the charity and to the public at large.

[00:04:25.06] spk_0:
So why do you say the public at large?

[00:05:01.24] spk_1:
Why? Because the the uh in the U. S. The Internal Revenue Service typically gives charities a uh nonprofit designation which allows them to receive contributions and issue um tax deductible receipts. And because the US is for going that tax um on those on those dollars and giving the public a public benefit, um the IRS exercises oversight of non profit charities and make sure that they really are, um, delivering on their charitable

[00:05:03.78] spk_0:
purpose. So, there is some public money in here. It’s foregone foregone tax revenue

[00:05:10.61] spk_1:
at a bare minimum. Often there’s also, uh, direct public money from government grants or government contracts.

[00:05:19.64] spk_0:
And how about, um, financial problems that can occur within the, within the, um, within the charity? Like, um, you bring out an example in your book of, uh, people not getting their salaries paid, things like that,

[00:05:44.34] spk_1:
you know, you there is that, that oversight potential here, you’re, you are running a small business and, um, you want to make sure that your employees are well cared for, that you’re achieving your mission in, in the world at large. Um, sometimes in, in charities will see folks um, you know, giving up salary, um, and, or, um, deferring payment um, out of the goal of achieving the mission of the organization in the long term, um, that seriously hurts the organization because um, people aren’t really watching what’s happening with the money. Where is it coming in? Where is it going out?

[00:06:14.34] spk_0:
And Andy? Um, isn’t there potential personal liability for board members? When when there are problems like this, like nancy’s describing?

[00:06:21.51] spk_2:
Well, let me do the disclaimer here, which is that neither nancy nor I or attorneys and we can’t give people legal advice.

[00:06:34.24] spk_0:
Okay, Well, there’s no, yeah, I know we haven’t, nobody’s giving you a, I don’t know. The listeners have not given you a retainer fee, so not yet. No.

[00:06:54.34] spk_2:
Okay. I will say this. Um, if there is non payment of payroll taxes, for example, if a sensation goes into debt doesn’t pay the I. R. S. Or state taxing agency’s board members are individually liable for that. Most most expenses. Board members are protected from being personally liable on but there are some exceptions. So I don’t know that that’s what drives this conversation. Board members are simply looking at the balance sheet as a way of making sure that they’re not personally liable. That’s one level on this conversation but there’s a whole lot more levels having to do with the stuff that nancy was talking about. Are we being efficient meeting our mission? Are we tracking our work so that we know we’re being effective and that’s really what financial management is about.

[00:07:41.24] spk_0:
Indeed. Okay. There’s certainly a whole spectrum of reasons why board members should care. I just wanted to bring out the last one which is, there is the potential of, of personal liability. Um, let’s see. Um, we have just about a minute before a break and I’m hoping nancy, why don’t you introduce the idea of the financial dashboard and then we’ll talk a lot more about it right after this break.

[00:08:27.44] spk_1:
Sure. The financial dashboard is something we introduced that, that really gives you a one page sense of how the organization doing. What I’ve found happens with a lot of Nonprofits is that they, um, they give their boards just reams of paper and um, all of a sudden you get the budget and the performance and the balance sheet and there’s 15 pages of financial statements and most board members, even ones who do know how to read financials don’t plow their way through it. And so the dashboard is essentially a one page um, opportunity to get a sense of um, how are you operating financially? Are you being efficient and um, are you having an impact?

[00:08:36.84] spk_0:
Andy I want to throw a question to you quickly. We got a question on twitter from Mazarin. What if an executive director was found stealing one of the things nancy? And I were talking about uh, kind of fraud issues earlier. Um, would you give them a second chance?

[00:09:12.94] spk_2:
Oh boy. Um, well, I’ll be curious to hear nancy’s answer to this. My initial response No, followed by. It depends. And um, I actually was on the board of an organization where we found the opposite problem, which was the board Executive director was pouring money into the organization. He emptied out his retirement account, but he wasn’t telling anybody he did this because the grants weren’t coming through and he was too embarrassed.

[00:09:24.35] spk_0:
So that’s a, that’s a, that’s a problem of being over generous though,

[00:09:28.57] spk_2:
it was paying for himself. We ended up firing the guy and the reason was he wasn’t disclosing to the board what the board needed to do its job. And I would say the issue in that case isn’t so much as misdirection lying. So I am obviously theft is a bad thing, but the board needs full disclosure from the executive director to be able to do their job well. And that’s really where I would go on that.

[00:09:57.14] spk_0:
And how about you nancy? Uh Andy was curious to hear your answer and

[00:10:35.14] spk_1:
I know I would say um again like Andy, it depends um probably depending on the amount of severity and this situation. Um You know, if if the executive director was borrowing $20 from the petty cash um when they forgot to bring um their wallet to work one day. Um clearly that’s not, not egregious enough to to fire somebody. But if uh they’re helping themselves to the uh to the checking account and redirecting grants into their own bank account probably caused fire them

[00:10:41.92] spk_0:
even if they pay it back. Right. That really, even if they pay back with interest, that really doesn’t

[00:11:01.04] spk_1:
matter, does it? I mean, the thing about nonprofits is, you know, they’re not your own private fiefdom or your own private business, there a community, um, engagement where the reason, you know, you have a board of directors that, um, are the final legal responsibility for the organization. Um, so you really shouldn’t be operating it like your own private business.

[00:11:34.14] spk_0:
Let’s talk a little about the dashboard now nancy, the financial dashboard we introduced earlier. Um, it’s a one pager, which I think will be a relief to people is that they’re not getting a sheath of financial, uh, forms and, and, and balance sheets. But what, what, what do you think, what are key parts that should be in this financial dashboard? That to sort of streamline the overview for for board members?

[00:13:19.34] spk_1:
Um I would say that that there’s really three parts to it. There’s a financial part where you’re looking at, you know, sort of what’s our total budget? Um You know, every board member of every organization should be able to very quickly say whether the organization is a $300,000 a year organization or $5 million a year organization? That’s sort of a basic um sense of scale. Um Are we making money or not? Um Do we have net income? Um uh Do we have cash on hand? Those kinds of questions? Um Do we uh do we have a network or we, you know, if everything had to be liquidated today? Um would there be any any money left over or any value left over? Um, that that was tangible value, not just, uh, goodwill. Um, we also want to be looking at at how efficient the organization is and efficiency changes depending on what the organization does. It’s, it’s really a sense of being able to measure you against yourself or against industry standards. Um, and it’s, you know, the, the level of what it costs to deliver, um, services, for example, to severely challenged populations versus what it takes to deliver services to, um, highly educated people in, uh, an urban area where they’re all easily able to get to something. Um, the cost levels are gonna be different. And, and we’re not saying that they should be the same, but to know, um, what it costs for you to serve your clients, um, what it costs to have volunteers, um, and then the impact. And I don’t know, Andy if you want to talk a little bit about that, uh,

[00:14:00.04] spk_2:
how you measure whether you’re meeting your mission or not. And there are often new miracle measures that you can think about. You know, if you’re a land trust, how many acres are you preserving if you do mentoring with Children? How many adult Children matches do you have? I sometimes this is long term tracking, which is hard for a grassroots organizations to do. But in most fields there are ways of measuring your impact in terms of the number of clients you’re serving or the number of audience members who are involved. And hopefully there’s some measures that you can come up with that act. The quality of your work as well. Okay, So people here is, we could get this all on one page. You would have data from two years ago. You’d have data from last year, you’d have data from the current year. You could lay them out and see what the trends are. All

[00:14:22.34] spk_0:
right. That’s the financial dashboard. I love how you guys have this little dance worked out where nancy talks about the financial and efficiency parts, but then she throws it over to a co author, uh Andy for impact and you have it all worked out sort of sort of taking the show over. But it’s ok. It’s in a good way. Um which which leads me to question. All right. So I have to ask when two of when you co author a book, how do you decide whose name comes first? Did you just do alphabetical order or did you flip a coin or uh See I’m too narcissistic to co author with anybody, but but how did you guys work that out? How did you decide

[00:14:47.34] spk_1:
that? Andy Andy’s alphabetically. First on first names and last names. And um, the honest truth is is he did a lot of the writing work, um, where as I did help him with content. So it was very easy for me to go first.

[00:14:58.48] spk_0:
All right. So if I had come in, you wouldn’t have looked only at martignetti you would have also looked at Tony and then I’d have fallen maybe to the bottom, uh, which is probably where I would have had much to contribute to this. So you’re wise not to take me even though I pitched you

[00:15:13.78] spk_2:
otherwise, your name is well known in the community. We might have put your,

[00:15:18.15] spk_0:
uh, your publisher would never have approved that. Um, one of the questions

[00:15:23.80] spk_3:
that we asked before the

[00:15:46.94] spk_0:
show that relates to what we’re talking about now is, um, do you believe all your board members have at least a general understanding of your financial position and 70% said yes, 30% said no. So that’s pretty good, 70%. But the 30% they’re not really very confident a general and that was just a general understanding. Um, Okay. So the, uh, that’s the dashboard. Um, Andy should these things be devoted only to the, the authority of a, of a finance committee?

[00:16:19.64] spk_2:
No, I mean, I think a really good use of the finance committee is the oil stuff down. The rest of the board can understand it provides support to the rest of the board, serve as mentors and back up for the people on staff who were doing this. This book is not about how staff members need to do financial management more effectively. But the reality is a lot of people who are executive directors or even finance directors need help and one of the goals of Finance Committee is to give them that help when they need it. So a way to think about this is so excuse me, if the board is operating at a high altitude and the staff is down on the ground, flashing through the weed, the finance committee is sort of in the middle there providing a bridge between those two groups of people and

[00:16:51.53] spk_0:
so that means that financial dashboard is for the whole board to review. Right?

[00:16:55.99] spk_2:
Yes. How absolutely

[00:17:10.44] spk_0:
was that? A heck yes. Is that you can say hell yes. Okay, Yes. Okay. We have another question on from twitter, um, reminding listeners, you can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non profit radio board members need to look at the impact of the organization and I guess this is for you, since you talked about impact. How do you measure if you’re meeting your mission or not? I guess she’s looking for a little more detail.

[00:17:22.20] spk_2:
Okay. Well

[00:17:24.42] spk_0:
obviously depends what your mission

[00:18:14.04] spk_2:
is. There are some standard benchmarks for how you’re doing. If you work with substance abuse, there are networks that do that, that can talk about ways of tracking your impact. For example, how many people come through a program get clean and stay clean if you are a food bank and you’re delivering food to the community. There’s a number of metrics there that come out of America. America’s harvest. I forget the name of the national network, but they’ll tell you how much money you should be spending more or less based on the population that you’re serving and how much he pounds of food you can put out into the community. Pretty much every nonprofit upset has some metrics that are relevant. And the trick is to learn the ones that are relevant type of organizations who, and then try and adapt them to your particular needs.

[00:18:18.52] spk_0:
And that would be important for the executive director to be recognizing certainly. And then right. And then conveying that to the board.

[00:18:25.04] spk_2:
Yes. And in some cases, depending on the size of the organization, there is some board work to help find those numbers. I mean, I work a lot with really small organizations who has, his staff are overwhelmed and would be great to say to a finance committee on a volunteer basis. I’m trying to figure out what the relevant metrics are for part type of organization who would be willing to do some research and bring that back to us aboard. But in a larger organization. Yeah, that’s going to fall the staff.

[00:19:01.64] spk_0:
One of the other questions we asked pre show, does your board have a committee devoted to financial issues? About 80% said yes and the remainder roughly 20% said No. Um, Nancy, does there, does there have to be a finance committee?

[00:19:48.74] spk_1:
Um, there does not have to be a finance committee. I think it really depends on the size of the organization. Um, the level of support that the director might need. You know, how complex the organization is and uh, also how savvy uh, the board is. If most of the board understands financials and feels quite comfortable with it in a small organization, um, you could get away without a finance committee. I’d say you want one in any organization that’s about to undertake any kind of major financial growth or change or, um, uh, new initiative um, in a larger organization. Um, it just is a great way to assist, um, either the finance manager or the executive director and developing budgets and exercising oversight because things don’t happen is exactly as people plan them to

[00:20:17.64] spk_0:
with me today are Andy Robinson and Nancy Wasserman co authors of the board members easier than you think guide to nonprofit finances. Um, let’s, let’s talk some about diversifying income sources uh, nancy, you make a point of having that in a couple of chapters of the book. Um why is that important first?

[00:20:30.64] spk_1:
You never want to be totally reliant on just one funder. Um You don’t want to be in a situation where um, if that one funder suddenly says, we don’t like what you’re doing, um that you’re suddenly scrambling and having to find uh, other ways to support your activities and your programs and what you do for the, for folks in the community.

[00:21:01.74] spk_0:
I think we’ve seen a lot of that in, in our recession, uh, agencies that rely exclusively or too heavily on, say, government fees for services or maybe even government agency grants or, and, or foundation grants, uh, those of all sources that have been cut

[00:21:44.34] spk_1:
back. Indeed, that’s true. And that’s part of what, um, it’s both diversifying types of financial support, but also, um, the number of supporters within each type, so you’re not totally reliant on just one foundation or one charitable donor, um, and, uh, and that you have that diversity of donors and foundations and government and, uh, your own revenues, If there’s a way for you to do that.

[00:22:06.74] spk_0:
We have a comment again from twitter. Um, just gonna point out to, uh, the person who wrote that, john that we did talk earlier about individual personal liability for non profits. You may have missed that part of the show, but you can always catch it on the archive on ITunes and our itunes pages. non profit radio dot net. Um Then

[00:22:08.54] spk_3:
what are

[00:22:09.81] spk_0:
Andy some of the sources of income that a nonprofit might look to that they’re not currently exploiting.

[00:23:09.44] spk_2:
There’s three big buckets here. tony The first book, It is private giving. Private giving is foundations, corporations, individuals and of course people leave behind when they pass away the big category there as individuals and within private giving about 80% of the money. Year after year comes from people and most of the groups that I work with don’t invest enough time and energy raising money from individual donors. So that’s the first category. Second category is public funding, that’s government funding from earl state, local, regional, municipal, all the government levels. And as you already indicated, this is a shrinking resource right now. And the groups that I think are getting hammered the worst during the recession or the that are relying on government. The third bucket is earned income, which is non profits arching for the services they provide are in some cases selling goods community and of the three, that’s the biggest of all this is sort of the surprise for people is that earned income is about the same amount as private and public funding put together when you look at all the nonprofit across the country.

[00:23:24.14] spk_0:
That’s interesting. Yeah. You don’t generally see that in in fundraising reports like giving us a earned income is not part of their

[00:23:29.40] spk_2:
private philanthropy. They’re very clear the numbers a little skewed because if you’re a private college and you’re charging tuition that shows up as earned income if you’re a private hospital and you’re charging a nonprofit hospital, you’re charging for medical services that shows up as earned income. So those numbers really sort of skew the data. But I work with a number of organizations where I’m always pushing them to say, is there something you do that you can package up and sell you have some skill that people would buy from you?

[00:23:59.24] spk_0:
It’s time for a break.

[00:24:57.64] spk_3:
Turn to communications, where would you like to be heard? News outlets, conferences, podcasts, blogs, that’s all earned media and turn to, can help you get it. They’ve got the relationships. What about your media that’s owned media turn to, can help you improve that as well because your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. It’s time for Tony Take two planned giving accelerator is the online membership community that I have created to teach you how to launch your planned giving program. I’ll teach you step by step through trainings, live trainings, resources, podcasts, Ask me anything sessions. All of those are each month and we will get your plan giving

[00:25:00.08] spk_0:
program launched

[00:26:01.64] spk_3:
members of the first class, the one that started in january. Some of them already had gifts by three months in by March, so that three months into a 12-month class gift commitments already coming. So that can happen for you to you can be getting gift commitments in the first three months. The next class starts July one. I have priced this very reasonably, Especially when you consider, well, first of all, it’s just reasonable. But then when you consider that the average charitable bequest is $35,000. Take a look, it’s all at planned giving accelerator dot com And that is Tony’s take two. Yeah, we have boo koo but loads more time for B. F. D. Board financials dilemma. Mhm. Mhm.

[00:26:05.74] spk_0:
Andy Robinson and Nancy Wasserman with me. We’re talking about BFG board financial dilemma. Andy earned income. What can a charity possibly do? What you should be looking at to try to make some money off their activities their work?

[00:26:24.94] spk_2:
Well, the question I always ask groups that are wondering about this is what do you have, what do you do or what do you know somebody else ought to have or do or no most non profit during the service business. We deliver services. Sometimes we have expertise in that area and you know I mean there’s a structured brainstorm that people can do around this. A lot of what we do in the nonprofit world is pivot away and the really entrepreneurial organizations look at what they’re giving away and they say paying market for this and you know we can we can spend the rest of the show talking about this. I don’t know if you want to, but there’s a lot of opportunities there and I see many, many organizations could be more self sufficient financially if they got at figuring out what they know and how to package it up.

[00:27:18.01] spk_0:
Is there an example you can share with us a charity that didn’t realize what they had and and then ended up being able to exploit it and make some money from it?

[00:28:14.04] spk_2:
Well, I’m an author of a book on this subject called selling social change and what’s my favorite example of this? Um, you know, I’m for a group for years in Tucson Arizona called Native Search. Their seed banks on native american crops and you know what they do is protect beats from going extinct by planting them and growing them and distributing them and probably 30% of their of their income. It’s details, their seed bank and they sell it. What they recently started doing, which was fascinating is they opened something they called the school and these are people who want to learn about how to protect seeds, grow them, pass them on to the next generation’s really about biological and genetic. Pay money and they come to Arizona for a week and they get trained and everything you need to know to run your own seed bank. And it’s an organization that was sitting on this for probably 30 years, only recently realized that people would pay for that knowledge in a classroom setting. They

[00:28:29.49] spk_0:
have been doing that all for

[00:28:30.41] spk_2:
free. They hadn’t been training other people, they’ve been taking care of the seeds, but they hadn’t been teaching. I see, okay. And they realized there are a whole renaissance of local agriculture in our country right now and they thought we could tap into this. There’s a market here for people who want to learn how to do this. And so they started doing this and they’re doing this four or five times a year and it sells out and they’re starting to move it around to other parts of the country. So that’s one example.

[00:28:54.90] spk_0:
That’s an example of knowledge. They had a knowledge and a skill that was very marketable.

[00:29:12.54] spk_2:
That’s right. And until you have what you need for better worse is you need someone in the organization who has an entrepreneurial jean who can look around and say, you know what, somebody’s going to want to buy this. And not every nonprofit is blessed with people who think that way. And I think part of what nancy and I are trying to do in our professionalized is to get more of that thinking out into the nonprofit community way

[00:30:07.24] spk_0:
and the related to uh diversifying income. I I had a comment from linked in this, uh, woman had just had a board meeting this earlier this week regarding the need for transparency and distribution of responsibility. When it comes to the finances, bookkeeping and reporting function of their historic nonprofit theater, they’ve been doing their thing. Uh, they’ve been doing things their way a long time. And one big problem is that they have a banker on the board and he doesn’t see the problems. Um, uh, so it sounds like, and and then she says, I was able to get the check writing privileges moved to another person. This is sort of segue into a conflict of interest conversation, but sounds like maybe he was the only one writing checks. Um, I secured a nice grant from a foundation and they want a financial audit. I’m moving for a review. However fear we won’t get any more money once it’s known how ignorant the board is about accountability uh nancy. Uh And he’s laughing nancy. Let’s bring you back. What would you what would you say there?

[00:31:44.94] spk_1:
Well you know how are we defining accountability here? Is there a lack of what a financial audit might uncover? Um Is impropriety? But it sounds like that’s not the case. Um More likely it’s going to um It’s not the financial audit per se but the form 9 90 that you file with the I. R. S. Which ask you now to tell us, does does the boards look at financials um How does is the board of informed, has the board seen an audit? Um uh Did they review it and approve? Um It’s really um you know there there’s sort of two sets of questions. The very pragmatic, did did you get an audit? Did you review it? Did you look at it? Um And then the more important question in my mind, which I think is the question we’re trying to answer with the whole book, which is, does the board really understand what all these numbers are telling them? And ideally with with a financial audit and accountant has come in and um, spoken directly with the board of directors and walked through each and every page of it and talked about why the financials are the way they are and what they mean. Um And I think both Andy and I have seen numbers of organizations where um there’s a lot of people sitting around the table and they leave it to the banker, um or the investment professional to, you know, they they know about numbers and they handle it and it’s really something that everybody needs to know how to do. Um, if only to make sure that the mission of the organization is uh, fully addressed by the board and the organization.

[00:32:28.44] spk_0:
This also relates to the conversation about diversifying income. I mean, here this woman, uh, I believe she’s a fundraiser, there, a volunteer fundraiser and uh, trying to diversify income source, getting a grant but fearful that the grant may not be renewed because there isn’t transparency and accountability that the, the the grant source will probably be seeking.

[00:32:45.74] spk_2:
And this is another point that was raised, sort of came out of sideways. Is this question about separation of duties, which is, you know, in a healthy organization, people break up that work. One person opens the envelope and somebody else writes the checks and somebody else approves them and somebody else gets the bank statement and balances the checkbook. And the idea here is that you’re trying to avoid mischief and fraud and if somebody says, oh I’ll take care of all of these things, maybe they have good intentions and they’re going to be perfectly honest about it. But you really need to break that into separate pieces so people can have oversight over each other.

[00:33:15.64] spk_0:
Let’s segue into the conflict of interest, um, Andy defined for us. What a conflict of interest is here. It’s so often,

[00:33:58.74] spk_2:
Well, my sense of it, at least in terms of the context we’re having here, is that if you serve on a nonprofit board, your job is to put the needs of the organization above your own personal needs. And where this plays out sometimes is people who try and receive a benefit from serving on a board. That the personal benefit that has nothing to do with advancing the mission of the organization. Where this gets tricky is that in a lot of voluntary organizations, there are inherent conflicts of interest. But if you goes to a private school and you’re on the board, your job is to advocate for policies that are going to benefit the Children in the school, and in some case that means they’re going to benefit your kid individually and sort of sorting those things out can be challenging. But the bottom line is the decisions you make have to put the needs of the organization in front of your own personal need

[00:34:19.83] spk_0:
nancy. How can we try to avoid conflicts of

[00:35:47.04] spk_1:
interest? One of the best ways is to have a written conflict of interest policy where you’ve already addressed some of the situations that are likely to happen before they happen, um, where you sit there and say, you know, define what it is that is seen as either a real conflict of interest or perceived conflict of interest, which might be a case where um, somebody was, for example, can somebody bid somebody who serves on the board of directors bid on a project while they’re still on the board of directors or not? Or do they have to resign before they even submit a bid? Or do they only resign if they’re awarded the bid, or do they have to resign? Or can they simply step out of the room for the discussion? Um Those are the kinds of questions that got kind of uh can get kind of challenging, um, particularly when any member of the board stands to benefit financially, um, from any decision of the board. Um That’s uh an outright in my mind and outright conflict of interest. Um, and, um, in most boards, you want to make sure that person doesn’t participate. And it’s, it’s always easier to have that discussion, um, when there isn’t a hot potato sitting in the room, that’s, um, somebody’s thinking that they have every right to be part of the discussion. Um, and you have to therefore bring up both the fact that somebody in the room is feeling uncomfortable that this person is present. Um, and, um, it gets a little bit more tense in those sorts of situations. Prevention is having a written policy that folks have already talked through and everybody feels responsible for making sure it’s enforced.

[00:36:11.93] spk_0:
So prevention ahead of time much better than dealing with it when it’s a, a crisis or a potential crisis.

[00:36:13.83] spk_1:
Right? And, you know, it also, um, is the transparency issue you want to make sure that your presentation to the community at large is um, is as an accountable organization, um, that that gives everybody um equal opportunity to benefit from um, the organization’s purchases.

[00:36:34.49] spk_0:
Is this the kind of policy that a board member should sign and review every year or something

[00:37:00.13] spk_1:
like that? It’s not a bad idea. Oh, you know, it depends on the nature of the organization. I you know, I’ve worked with a community loan fund and that’s absolutely required that you disclose um your conflicts of interest each and every year and that you review the conflict of interest policy every year. Um The other thing that’s incredibly important is disclosed, disclosed, disclosed.

[00:37:05.21] spk_0:
We have just a minute before a break and anything you want to add to conflict of interest discussion.

[00:37:11.17] spk_2:
I think the main thing is that if you see it, you have to name it after. If your board member and you smell something like this, you have to have the courage to bring it up. And as nancy said, it’s much easier to do this if there is an existing policy in place first,

[00:37:23.56] spk_0:
if somebody sees something like this Andy again, just a few seconds before a break, who should they bring it up to you? I’m a board member. Who do I talk to?

[00:37:39.83] spk_2:
Probably go to the chair first and say, I think there’s something fishy here, let’s talk about it and I would start there and then presumably the board, the chair will bring it to the full board. Mhm. Mhm

[00:37:50.53] spk_0:
Welcome back to big non profit ideas for the other 95% on Tony-Martignetti non profit radio nancy, let’s talk a little about financial statements. What

[00:37:53.91] spk_3:
what uh what are the basics

[00:37:55.71] spk_0:
first, what’s the

[00:38:11.62] spk_1:
overview? Um there’s really two major statements that everybody um has to deliver ones the balance sheet, which is a snapshot on any given day. Um Typically the end of the month or the end of the quarter the end of the year, um Which outlines um what the organization owns and what they owe and what they’re worth, which is the difference between everything they own. Um less everything they owe um As far as its paper value is what they would be worth on that day. Uh The other major statement is the statement of activities, also called the profit and loss or A. P. And L. Um Which is where do you get all your money, your income, your revenues from. Um And then what does it go to pay for all your expenses? And the bottom line there is your net income at the end of and of a certain time period. Uh The statement of activities is more like a movie. It covers a period of time. Uh Typically uh the beginning of the year to the end of the most previous sorry the most recent months. Um So if we were on a board uh today we probably wouldn’t see the the statement of activities through the end of february because somebody would have had to have it all cleaned up as of yesterday, but we could expect to see something through the end of january. Um And depending on what your fiscal year was um would determine the beginning period.

[00:39:45.42] spk_0:
We talked earlier about full disclosure. So I’m gonna make a disclosure. The only accounting course that I’ve ever taken I dropped out of because I was I was I was going to fail. So um so I’m perfect for this book. This it’s very informative and it is an easy read and it is helpful guide um nancy help me understand this was always seem like magic to me on a balance sheet. How is it that the assets equal to the liabilities? How does that always come out? So equal? I mean uh it’s intended that way obviously, how does that

[00:40:01.35] spk_1:
possible? It seems like um now you’re asking somebody who was not trained as a classically trained accountants,

[00:40:07.75] spk_0:
you can’t pull back. Now your name is on the book, your name is there, I’m looking right at it says nancy Wasserman,

[00:40:12.49] spk_1:
but it’s um it’s based on double entry bookkeeping which was developed by the chinese and it’s uh follows up from the abacus and um really was sort of uh uh amplified by the Italians in the renaissance essentially when you put an entry in double entry book, keeping everything that goes up, something has to go down and uh it all balances out in the end and the cash comes out. And if your balance sheet that’s like number one, if the balance sheet, if the total assets does not equal the total liabilities and equity, um it is an incorrectly prepared balance sheet and they call it a balance sheet.

[00:40:51.96] spk_0:
Right? Yes, exactly, I love that my italian forebears had something to do with confusing me now in the current day. Um Okay, what how can we help uh Board members nancy, who whose eyes kind of glaze over when they get to the balance sheet, Aside from looking to see whether the two uh the assets and liabilities equal, which they always

[00:42:08.60] spk_1:
do right. Step number one, the balance. Um Number two, um Do your total current assets, in other words, what what can be cash within a year’s time, um exceed your current liabilities? The things you have to pay off with cash in a year’s time. And so are you liquid or not? Do you have, do you have cash available to do things? Um This is the place where you’re looking for those payroll liabilities or payroll tax liabilities. If there’s a number there that’s frighteningly large, um you’ve got a big problem and if it’s payroll tax liabilities, um you as a board member may be personally liable. Um What are your long term liabilities look like? Is that that’s your debt basically. And you know, does it make sense to you? Is that number reflects the debt? You know the organization has um your net net assets. Now, you know the language of accounting is kind of like greek and um I sometimes think they made up all these names to make it even more confusing.

[00:42:17.36] spk_0:
It would be so much easier if it was, it was italian,

[00:42:19.74] spk_1:
it could be,

[00:42:21.37] spk_0:
it would be, it would, there’s lots of cognitive and it’s a romance language. I think it would be, I’m sorry.

[00:42:56.20] spk_1:
No problem. But that total net assets number, which simply means, you know what this organization more. Um, if it, if it had to liquidate today and um, if that’s a negative number, you should be concerned. Um, and, and there’s certainly many organizations where that is the case. Um, so those are the big things on the balance sheet. You know, does it, does, it sort of makes sense to you to the fixed assets and their value. Um, feel like what you have if you suddenly see something that shows that you have a fixed asset of, you know, equipment worth $100,000 and you’re scratching your head because you have no idea what you have for equipment. Um, Something’s wrong with the balance

[00:43:10.68] spk_0:
and you should and should ask that question. Absolutely. You mentioned earlier frighteningly large numbers, I mean, is part of what we should be doing, looking for anomalies.

[00:44:01.79] spk_1:
Um That’s really what you’re looking. You’re looking for things that, you know, that don’t make sense or don’t feel right or that you can’t um if you can’t, if it doesn’t feel right and you can’t really explain it, you want to ask questions. Um, and, and the numbers, you know, the thing about numbers is um, they’re pretty um, they’re very, you know, they’re either on or off and um, it’s harder to lie with numbers. Um, so you’re gonna know right away that you could have frighteningly large numbers with a, with a complex organization and that would be fine. Um, if if they’re they’re balanced out, if there’s cash in the bank, if it feels like there’s equity.

[00:44:37.09] spk_0:
Mm This is a critical subject. Another question that I asked on the, on the pre pre show survey is for those charities that do have a board committee devoted to financial issues. Are you confident that each committee member is fluent in your numbers and understand your financial position? Only 25% said yes. The remaining 75% were either no or not sure and no was pretty large. About 60%. We have to stop there. Andy Robinson and Nancy Wasserman are co authors of the board members easier than you think. Guide to nonprofit finances published by Emerson and Church Andy Nancy. Thank you very much for being guests.

[00:44:50.52] spk_1:
Thank you Tony.

[00:44:56.59] spk_0:
Thanks for having us. It’s been a real pleasure. And also thanks to your publisher, Kathleen Brennan at Emerson in church for her promotion assistance for the show.

[00:45:35.69] spk_3:
That was fun. A bit of nostalgia. I had to keep in a short burst of eye of the tiger had had to do that. Thank you for ramping back in time with me Next week. Our 2021 nonprofit technology conference coverage continues. Oh, conference coverage continues. I like that. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o.

[00:45:49.59] spk_5:
Our creative producer is Clan Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein. Mhm Right, thank you for that. Affirmation scotty be with me next week for nonprofit radio Big non profit ideas for the

[00:45:56.39] spk_3:
Other 95

[00:45:58.99] spk_5:
go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for November 2, 2020: Boards And Asking Styles

My Guest:

Brian Saber: Boards And Asking Styles

Brian Saber returns with his new book, “Boards And Asking Styles.” Your board’s Rainmakers, Go-Getters, Kindred Spirits and Mission Controllers all need to work with each other, your CEO and your staff. Brian shepherds you through how to make that happen. He’s president of Asking Matters.

 

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Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

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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[00:02:12.84] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host is non profit radio your favorite abdominal podcast? I certainly hope so. You know there are seven days in a head, Ahmad, Of course, that’s the noun form. I’m so proud of myself. When I discover a new word that I have to open with this on. I want to thank Miriam Webster for sending it to me that I can discover it and be so proud. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. Id Bear the pain of leishmaniasis If you bit me with the idea that you missed today’s show boards and asking styles, Ryan Saber returns with his new book, That’s It. That’s the title boards and asking styles. Very straightforward. No fluff in the title reserved all the fluff for the book. We explore how the asking matters work that he pioneered will help strengthen your board responsive by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o and by dot drives, raise more money changed more lives. Tony dot m a slash dot for a free demo and a free month non tony steak to a November webinar. I’m very pleased to welcome Brian Saber back to non profit radio. He’s president of asking matters home to the asking styles which help people understand and embrace their unique strengths. As fundraisers, he’s spent his entire career asking for money for nonprofits. I’m gonna telethon, Caller. I made your gift officer and executive director and now as a consultant. His first book was asking Styles Revolutionize your fundraising. His latest book We’re Here to Talk About Today is boards and asking styles. A roadmap to success. Asking matters is that asking matters calm and he’s at Brian Saber. Brian. Welcome back to the show. Congratulations on the new book.

[00:02:21.54] spk_0:
Thank you, tony. Thanks for having me back. I’m glad to see that Cove. It has indulged your wit at all.

[00:02:28.16] spk_1:
Thank you for recognizing that I haven’t undoubtable wit. I’m, uh I’m floored by that s oh, what a way to launch. Tony is wit. Uh, it’s not dull. It’s definitely not dull. No,

[00:02:40.64] spk_0:
it is not. We can use all of it that we could get these days.

[00:03:24.74] spk_1:
Yeah, we could use even even my just barely a Ndlela wit. Thank you. Uh, no, you gotta have fun. It’s my show, you know, whatever the hell I want to do, I mean, I just, you know, we’re gonna We’re gonna learn. But if we’re not gonna have fun, I’m not gonna bother personally personal. So lets you Mm. Let’s start out with the asking styles. We gotta lay the groundwork for the for. The handful of listeners don’t know aren’t well acquainted with the asking styles. Let’s lay that framework for folks. Then we’ll see how it helps your board. What’s his asking styles thing? Great.

[00:04:30.64] spk_0:
So the asking styles were developed a decade ago. Now by my co founder, Andre kills dead and myself. We develop them because everywhere we looked in the field, we saw people who said I’m not a fundraiser. I’m not this. I’m not that in particular. We saw it with the boards. Most board members have come onto boards. Will say I’ll do anything but fundraise. I’m not a fundraiser. I hate fundraising. I can’t ask my friends for money and so forth. And we knew how critical boards were to fundraising and that the type of fundraising. We were talking about the more significant gifts that come from developing relationships one on one, that that fundraising was all based on personality and relationship. It was much more art than science, and we had to help people understand where they fit in it so they could be comfortable. So we went about figuring out what makes someone’s asking style. We felt two characteristics. How one interacts and how one thinks were most important, how one acts on the extrovert introvert spectrum, how one thinks on the analytic, intuitive spectrum, and based on that there would be four basic styles and that you fall into one quadrant or another, but with a little bit of another style that no one felt cleanly in one box. There were some people who were uber this or uber that so such analytic introverts, the type of people who sit behind a computer writing code all day and such intuitive extroverts that, you know, creative just floating all over the place. You could never pin him down with massive ideas, but that most of us were somewhere in between had a little bit of this and that and we wanted people understand that. So we created this rubric for the field for the field of non profit to help everyone feel more comfortable and understand how to fundraise more successfully. How to tell their story in their own way from their own strengths. Not to worry about an elevator pitch, not to worry about reciting lots of outcomes measurements if they want to speak from the heart and a different, passionate, visionary way not to worry about that piece of what really sold them was outcomes and goals and plans that they had to speak in the language that was authentic to them. And that would be compelling, uh, to the donor, Teoh, a prospect or a current donor. So that’s that’s what we developed and meeting

[00:06:25.34] spk_1:
meeting board members. I realize this is not only for board members, but that’s our conversation today, and that’s you’re saying that’s where you found it. Most relevant, and then where they where they are, what worked with what you are type of person that you are in the quadrant will identify the quadrants and versus trying to make you something that you’re not, makes you uncomfortable

[00:06:29.20] spk_0:
right, and we started with boards than spent a number of years, much more focused on staff, developing a lot of materials in depth courses in a membership in such a brother. I bought Andreae now seven years ago, which is hard to believe. So I

[00:06:44.65] spk_1:
was going to say Now this started with you and Andrea Kill Stead, who’s been on the show. And then what? You pushed her out. You took her expertise on, then pushed her out for a nominal buyout.

[00:09:47.96] spk_0:
I broke her kneecaps and said, That’s it. Off you go. Um, you know, Andre is a She is a huge go get her. She’s a big ideas person and she has brought a tremendous amount of the field. But it was at her instigation because she said, You know what, Brian? I like really building these things. I have these big ideas. They’re running. It’s not really me, and I can see where you because my secondaries mission controller and I could do this plan full stuff where you would be better at running it and and and Andrea is significantly older than I am. I don’t think she would be bothered by my saying that. So she within a different point in her life and she said, Let’s let’s do this So I took it over. And as you may know, she went on to then build capital campaign, uh, toolkit with Amy Eisenstein. That’s been another great thing in the field. Yeah, so I took it over in, uh, 2013 and have spent the last seven years really developing the styles. Everything from the iconography you see now Thio the application of the styles in many ways, and I’ve got done trainings across the country and lots of conferences that are mostly for staff. And interestingly, I’m now circling back to board. And I’m doing a lot of board work, a lot of board trainings. And out of that came this idea that my second book should really be focused on board. When I started, it was pre now with this and and the the additional complications of being the board member and of running a non profit in many ways, they asking styles or even more important, because boards have to be at their best. In order for the organizations to survive, everyone has to be at the table. Helping to build resource is and everyone has to work together in a collegial way that create some synergy and makes everyone feel like they’re part of a team. And it’s hard to get to know board members anyway, when all you do is meet every two months for two hours and maybe you’re in a committee or two and that those meet once in a while. Now it’s all by zoom. Everyone’s overwhelmed zoomed out, and yet it’s more important than ever for people who feel their team and you have new board members I’ve seen. I’ve been delighted to see a number of announcements lately of organizations that have brought on new board members during this time, which is, you can imagine is challenging. You think of a board member coming thio their first board meeting, sitting in a room and getting to meet and experience other people and see how things really work. And now it’s all by zoom, which is much harder in a very different dynamic. So so, understanding the styles and how everyone interacts is even more important for on boarding a new board member. Look, you work, you get

[00:09:50.28] spk_1:
to recruit when we talk about recruitment to exactly but so Let Tze identify the styles. So you have things to spectrum. You got the analytic, intuitive spectrum, and you have the extrovert introvert spectrum. So if you know, put the extrovert introvert on the vertical and the analytic intuitive on the horizontal, you get four quadrants. So what are those? What are those for?

[00:10:14.26] spk_0:
Eso top left. You get the analytic extroverts. The rainmaker always goal oriented. Uh, driven, competitive. Keep their eye on the prize. Knows they’re succeeding based on the numbers, right? Did I reach this goal? Did I bring this money? Gets to to raise as much money. Then you have the intuitive extrovert top, right? The go getter, big vision thinker. Lots of energy brings people along with their enthusiasm on always sees the opportunities. So is bringing that big passion and excitement about the future. Anything’s possible. Then you have your intuitive introvert, your kindred spirit. Feelings oriented. I am primarily kindred spirit were our hearts on our sleeves. Everything is personal for us. No matter how hard we try to make it otherwise. And because we have that, uh, sense of sensitivity, we are sensitive to others. We tend to be very accommodating. We want other people to be heard and feel good and such. Also good skills for fundraising, different from the core rainmaker skills. And not to say a kindred spirit can’t be goal oriented. And a rainmaker can’t be compassionate and attentive on then mission controller. The analytic introvert bottom left. The Eagle Scout who always gets the job done. Very methodical, systematic plan ful and best at sitting back and listening and absorbing what’s happening. Great listener and observer, which, as we know, is so key to fundraising. So those the styles and they all complement each other and work well together can sometimes frustrate each other. But, um, but those are the styles,

[00:12:01.78] spk_1:
okay? And we each way each most likely have ah, primary and a secondary correct. So you’re you are kindred spirit and mission controller.

[00:12:13.21] spk_0:
Yeah, I am pure introvert. They which surprises people since I do so much public speaking and training. So people who know about the acting profession of lots of actors actually are shy or introverted, and you get in front of an audience and you do your thing.

[00:13:37.94] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They help you build relationships with journalists because of a relationship built by turn to the New York community. Trust got to features in The Wall Street Journal. That’s what happens when you have the existing relationship. And then when you want to be heard, the newspapers, the outlets, they take your calls. But you gotta have the relationship set up ahead of time. That’s what turn to is gonna help you do build those relationships. They specialize in working with nonprofits. One of the partners, Peter Pan A. Pento, was an editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The right turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to boards and asking styles. Perfect example of that. Aside from Brian Saber, uh, I’m seeing a lot of interviews with Sasha Baron Cohen because he has a Borat sequel out, and he has said, I’ve read it in online and I saw an interview with him. Eso he said a couple times. He’s primarily a shy, shy guy, but you know, he has characters who are obviously grandstanding. No, it alls, you know, it’s off, but s Oh, absolutely, And I and you people can go to asking matters dot com and you could find out which one of these you are right. You right. You could just do three minute little three minute quiz or so right?

[00:14:03.18] spk_0:
Exactly. Thank you. Yeah. You want it to be true. False questions. True. False? Yes. No, you know.

[00:14:10.12] spk_1:
And you The site admonishes us. Don’t spend a lot of time e I already did it. I didn’t just do it last night knowing we’re gonna prepare. I already know that. I’m, uh I’m primarily a kindred spirit as well. By birth. I’m a kindred spirit by birth but a go getter by practice and

[00:14:28.55] spk_0:
teach your primarily kindred spirits secondarily. Go getter.

[00:14:31.79] spk_1:
Yeah, secondary. Go get e No. Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:34.64] spk_0:
Pure, pure. Intuitive is what it’s saying. Massive, intuitive. Yeah, a lot of gut on the idea. Not a lot of planning percent. That’s a problem. A problem you got a plan ful person to about right? Yeah,

[00:14:49.44] spk_1:
I know. Now we need all four. But that’s why that’s why I’m not on any boards. Just do it. We’ll look back in six months.

[00:14:57.59] spk_0:
I’m not on any boards either. As a matter of fact, it seems it feels like a busman’s holiday to me. And I’m going when they’re gonna want me to fundraise. Andi. I’m not a big process person. Like go getters are much more into process. So Andre and I, over the years had to figure this out because she was pure process. Idi ated out loud, you know, lots of ideas. She could sit for hours and my eyes would plays over like I can be very cut to the chase. The Mission Control. Okay, let’s just do it. Let’s just lay it out. Let’s just get to the details and do it. And we finally realized that our meetings could only be a certain length of time. And I say all that because that been a challenge for me, with boards and any groups at all where I’m sitting there and I’m a little impatient, like Okay, let’s I just want to move to the next thing. I don’t want everyone talking and processing. I’m happy to go with someone else’s idea. Let’s just move it along. Three.

[00:15:52.31] spk_1:
Our brainstorm session is such a three hour brainstorm session is such a bore?

[00:15:57.24] spk_0:
E identified something in the 1st 10 minutes way Had something in the 1st 10 minutes. What? What did you say? Say it again the idea seemed pretty good to me exactly three

[00:16:11.09] spk_1:
hours ago. We could’ve had lunch and dinner by now.

[00:16:13.21] spk_0:
Exactly. Caught a good movie and come back just for the conclusion. First

[00:16:27.74] spk_1:
it sounded pretty good to me. Oh, right. Exactly. Contrary. Thio Brainstorming ideation session. All right, so, um all right, so let’s apply this to the board. So, as you had said, it helps if we know who is what. What is who on the board. What do we have? Do we have a imbalance of rainmakers and no process people to back them up, you know? Right. So we need tohave way. Need to have a balance,

[00:19:11.44] spk_0:
right? I mean, think of any planning session. Let’s let’s say you’ve got right now. There’s so many issues nonprofits, air facing. So let’s say it’s an issue of Well, what programming do we go forward with knowing that the current conditions are going to probably last into next summer? Okay, let’s make that assumption is aboard. Here we are. What are we going to do? Is an organization so the rainmaker is going to say Okay, well, what’s the goal? Right? What’s the goal of all of this? What outcomes. Do we want what we want to? Um, you know, we want to maintain We want Thio, serve our clients as well as we can. We want to stay fiscally responsible that then you have the go getter. Who’s saying the visionary who saying, Well, this could be the opportunity to pivot right opportunities, not problems, solutions, not problems. Let’s think out of the box. This could be the chance. We were looking for the kindred spirit. The very heart oriented person is saying, Well, we can’t forget the clients. We can’t forget the staff, you know, we need to you know, it’s really important that we come through for everyone, whether it makes the most financial sense or long term sense or not. And the Mission Control is saying Okay, great. I agree that we have that goal. I agree. You know, we could be something different. I agree. We have to care about people. But how are we going to get it done? It has to be realistic. And you can see where If you have an entire board of one or the other, you’re you can’t get the work done, right? Right. You need someone to check what you’re doing. We all need checks and balances and we need different voices. So once you look at the style so that you can see where if you’re going to do strategic planning, you need to have the four styles around the table to come out with a strong plan. Otherwise, you’re gonna have a plan that’s missing either the goal and outcomes or the big picture or the heart or the structure. And then and then you’ve got to fund. Then you’ve gotta work your way back into it Too late. Okay, way made a plan. But now Wow. Turns out we don’t know how toe executed because we didn’t have any mission controllers in the group or, you know, we didn’t think big enough. We went right into the weeds because we didn’t have our visionary in the group and so forth. So

[00:19:39.34] spk_1:
let’s talk about recruitment. If we’re, uh we’re gonna bring folks onto the board. Uh, you want this to be one of the factors I mean, there, there, obviously, you know, we need accountants. Maybe, you know, whatever. Whatever skill sets, you have gaps. And of course, those those really are predominant in your board selection. But you’d love for folks to find out what these potential board members asking styles are. Yes. So send them toe asking matters dot com as your recruiting them.

[00:19:44.29] spk_0:
Yeah, right. Wait three

[00:19:46.87] spk_1:
minutes. They print the report. Okay,

[00:20:13.04] spk_0:
Sorry. We don’t want you any go getters by you know, the reality for almost every night fucking is. We don’t get to pick and choose that much when we’re looking for board members. So some organizations really can. Others, at the very least, though, can say, Okay, we’re looking at our board, and we really seem to be missing kindred spirits. That’s bad. So lets

[00:20:15.89] spk_1:
you gotta have your You gotta have your kindred spirits. That’s

[00:20:18.26] spk_0:
bad. Absolutely. Eso eso when we go out, let’s keep that in mind, right, Because we might have more candidates and way might have more candidates, and we could put on in any one point. We might be bringing people on in classes, and we might want this first class to include another kindred spirit or two, and we might put off other people for a year. So it’s another factor. It’s not just a factor in who to choose, but how to understand who you’re choose, right? How to understand maybe what they’re saying and where they’re coming from. And to be ableto envision how that person would interact on the board, given that person style and the style of the board to get a sense of whether the person fits in or how the person would fit in. So it it not only helps you choose but helps you understand what you’re

[00:21:20.83] spk_1:
and you may not have. As you said, you may not have the luxury of selecting from half a dozen, you know, potential board members. So at least the one person that is before you know what his or her style is. And, as you said, how they’ll how they’ll work with the rest of the board. Right? Okay, okay. And and this applies for the for the CEO to write mean CEO board chair relationship. Don’t we want to know where those were? Those two folks stand

[00:21:40.34] spk_0:
right? I mean, you’re not going to choose one based on their style, but based on their style that they’re going to have different strengths and challenges and in their in their roles as the two leaders and in terms of how they work together. Because you, if you’ve gotto generally, the CEO is reporting to the board share most regularly. If the relationships going well, they’re meeting regularly. The chair is, in a way, guiding the CEO. The CEO is guiding the chair, Um, and so if you’ve got a chair, who’s a go getter and you have a CEO who’s a mission controller, especially when you have people who are diagonal to each other on the grid? Okay, who are you might call them polar opposites. There could be a challenge working together. One wants all this detail, the others flying by the seat of their pants. Ones, you know, very sensitive to criticism. The others just throwing it out there, vice.

[00:22:50.24] spk_1:
Because because if there if there, uh, diagonal diagonal to each other, then you’ve got You’ve got an intuitive extrovert. Uh, no. An intuitive introvert working with an analytical extrovert,

[00:23:15.24] spk_0:
right? I know. As a kindred spirit, intuitive introvert, that rainmakers, thes analytic extroverts can challenge me. I can get a little anxious because they’re very assertive. And for may I read assertive sometimes to personally, they’re not doing anything wrong, right? They’re just they’re being themselves. They’re bringing certain traits to the table, and I’m reading them a certain ways of kindred spirits. So now if I know, uh, this is why we might be having that challenge. We could talk it through and and at least understand each other better, like in any relationship. Um, in any personal friend relationship, any relationship, understanding the other person helps you depersonalize what’s happening.

[00:25:34.41] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Tony is take two. I’ve got a webinar coming up It is. Start your plan. Giving in 2021. It’s a quick shot is gonna be just 50 minutes in and out. We’re gonna talk about what plan giving is how to identify your best prospects, where to start your plan giving program, how to market and promote your new program. And then I’m gonna leave plenty of time to answer your questions, which actually is my favorite and arguably the most important thing. Getting your questions answered. So there’s plenty of time for that. That’s it. Join me. It’s Thursday, November 19th, three o’clock Eastern time, which means two o’clock central, which means one o’clock mountain, which means noontime Pacific. No discrimination here by time zone. I do not discriminate against time zones. Everybody’s everybody’s. Everybody’s got a time. That’s the way it is. So, uh, quick shot. How to start your plan? Giving or start your plan giving start your plan to giving in 2021. You sign up for the webinar at planned giving accelerator dot com slash webinar. I hope you’ll be with me. That is, tony is take two. We’ve got plenty of more time for boards and asking styles You have, ah, formula. I don’t want to scare. People were math, math phobic, but very simple formula. You say teamwork plus camaraderie equals synergy. Yes, what’s behind that involved? There’s no there’s no regression analysis. You don’t have to know absolutely sine or cosine or tangent or or anything

[00:25:34.89] spk_0:
like that. Absolutely nothing. I was thinking. I was trying to think through as I was developing this book, what I wanted to say and why. And I came up with that, that that having the best board a board that really is on fire, if you will to me involved, uh, involves two things or is dependent on two things one teamwork, the ability teamwork is respecting everyone being able to hear other voices, uh, respecting decisions that come out of committee and so forth, respecting everyone sitting around the table and having an equal voice and things like that. That’s teamwork. And, um uh, Michael Davidson who? I do a lot of work with his quote in the book. He’s

[00:26:25.70] spk_1:
He’s been on the show

[00:26:26.81] spk_0:
e adore Michael and I’ve learned so much about governance from him over the last two decades. I’ve known him actually about almost 20 years because we met at Hudson Guilt. He was doing work for them, and I was working for them. Uh, and he talks about teamwork a lot because he’s a rower, as you know, and you have to be a strong team, you’re not gonna get anywhere.

[00:26:52.84] spk_1:
His company logo is is a right right,

[00:27:25.04] spk_0:
the board coach and it’s rowing and he talks about so he talks about teamwork. He talks about how you can do your job. If you don’t know what it is, you won’t do it. If you don’t think everyone else is doing it right, you have to be a team. It’s one of the reasons why I think everyone has to fundraise on the board because that’s what makes the strongest fundraising team. Not having a fundraising committee and saying over those five people are responsible for all the fundraising board is going to dio, so teamwork is very important and camaraderie. You also have to like each other not to be friends, but to you need to find it worth being in someone else’s company. And even if someone is very different from U. S. O. U. And that comes from getting to know people, not Onley sitting around the board table. But in a more familial way, it’s That’s the reason why some of these social engagements just before, after a board meeting, having board members go out to dinner together. All of that is really important. That’s why they do it in the corporate world, right? That’s why there are all these team building events. They build camaraderie, not just on the camaraderie helps the team work. But

[00:28:08.93] spk_1:
I don’t have Thio build the comrade. I don’t have to walk across hot coals barefoot

[00:29:29.74] spk_0:
E No, I wouldn’t do that either way. Okay? Yeah, No way could just have dinner together. We can have dinner together at one organization. I I had. I had board members in rotating groups of 4 to 6 go to dinner after a board meeting. So there were six board meetings during the year and twice a year each board member went out with a different group of people. So everyone got to have dinner with everyone during the year and such. It helped, Um, so when so looking at the asking styles, you can understand better how to work as a team. And you can also understand what, what types of activities would help build camaraderie? Because we’re all not going to like the same things. I, as a kindred spirit, don’t want to go to a big party with the whole board. I’d much rather go to a small dinner or just have a one on one coffee, right? If I could do that with a few board members, over time, I’m golden. I build that relationship if you send me Thio. The board president’s house to schmooze with all the other board members doesn’t work as well for me. Given my style, it doesn’t mean you don’t do it, but just a ZX with training and other things, you have to have a variety of activities to appeal to everyone. Just like you have to let people have a variety of stories to tell their own stories because everyone’s gonna go to tell the different ones. So eso building camaraderie, um, you do have to proactively work it. It part of that it overlaps both is making sure everyone has a voice right that everyone feels they are part of this group, that they’re integral to it, that people hear them see them. And so it goes back and forth, the teamwork and the Senate and the camaraderie. And that’s what gives you the synergy. So that’s how I came up with that concept. Okay? Yes. Okay.

[00:30:38.54] spk_1:
You you talk about Well, actually, before we talk about some process for meetings like making sure voices get heard, you have some concrete ideas. How about a story? Can you, uh, can you share something? In the 20 years of asking styles where you’ve seen a team, whether board or not, I mean, board would be ideal improve their outcomes because they became asking styles aware they became they were red pilled and finally e saw the saw the wisdom of asking styles.

[00:32:40.04] spk_0:
Wow, we’re going there. You? Mm. Well, I constantly hear stories. There’s someone on the website I often hear from from executive director slash CEOs who have these ah ha moments about their board chairs for sure who have these Ah ha moment about their boards, Whose then see the challenge, why their board is so challenged in some way and can address that. Who? Who realized g. I’m providing staff often say I’ve given the board all this information. I don’t know what why they why they keep asking the truth of matter is have they read it all? And if they’ve read it, have they interpreted it all and stuff? And the truth that matter is that we’re not necessarily giving every board member the information they need. So I constantly hear these ah ha moments from staff who say, Now I know what this board member needs. If I’m going to engage this board member effectively in fundraising, this is what I have to give this board member. I’m giving them the wrong information. So I hear that a lot that that has really helped. I did some work with Esperanza Academy, which is a private 100% tuition free and privately funded girl school north of Boston. Um, it might be in Lowell. I’m trying to remember where they are now. On. I worked with their head of development and then did a training herself and said it was extraordinary how how the asking styles moved her board ahead. There was a fundraising in terms of working with each other. It just took it, took them to, Ah, a whole new level. And I think I’ve always felt the beauty of the styles is that she point before you don’t have to know any big logarithms. There’s no jargon or anything. It’s very simply put, e don’t use fund these words and and all of this stuff e talk very plainly about it in the styles are very plain. I don’t try to make this scene like, uh, you know, like the you know, what is it? The theory of relativity, The theory of relativity.

[00:33:20.95] spk_1:
That’s where you get into cosign on C can’t

[00:33:23.16] spk_0:
exactly or pie or whatever Very straight

[00:33:27.13] spk_1:
first, unjust non jargon.

[00:33:29.54] spk_0:
Yeah. And so yes, so tons of ah ha moments. Um uh, respecting people to work with each other differently, working harder to make sure all voices are heard. Um uh,

[00:33:43.66] spk_1:
let’s pick up on that. Voices are heard. You have some. As I was saying, you have some concrete ideas about board meetings, making sure some folks you gotta check with them in advance, etcetera. So what? Her voices get heard at board meetings,

[00:34:04.24] spk_0:
Right? Well, I, for one, virtually never talk in a large group as a kindred spirit of mission controllers Air similar. I don’t often give my opinion in front of a large group. I don’t often ask a question. I don’t take up a lot of time in a group like that. Um, so I might have a very valid and important point that the group needs to hear that the chair wants everyone to hear. And I’m simply not going to express it in the group. And you see the people I trigger. I train all the time. You have guests all the time. You know which guests you have thio work harder, thio, or give the or wait longer to allow them to pull their thoughts together. That’s happening around the board table. And it’s happening even more so now with the video that with Zoom because everyone does tend to talk over each other. It’s hard to know when to stop. It’s harder than it was in person. Looking around the room where you feel it, you feel who’s going to talk next, Right here. You’re not sure. And then two or three people blurt out at the same time. So someone like me is going to be even less likely to participate because that blurting out and talking over someone is more awkward for me. Yeah, so

[00:35:20.44] spk_1:
you get into that rhythm where everybody stops on, then you beats and everybody talks. Everybody stops to more beats everybody, you go ahead. So then they all go ahead to beats later, right? Yeah.

[00:35:31.89] spk_0:
Dance, right. It’s a and I’m not going to do that dance. Necessarily. A lot of people won’t. So So if

[00:35:42.34] spk_1:
I promise that I won’t be, uh, talking over you, I’m just being a smart ass.

[00:35:46.35] spk_0:
Me to s o a chair. A smart chair who really wants everyone’s voice heard and taken into account needs to either reach out to those board members in advance and solicit their opinion or specifically call on them, make time for them right When I train, I look around that room and we’ll actually in advance of training. I will ask the CEO or whoever engaged me. Who should I be watching out for in one way or another who’s going to talk too much? And I’ve got to make sure that person doesn’t monopolize, are training who’s not going to talk because And regardless of what I’m told in advance, I see who’s not participating and I make sure everyone’s participating. It’s not that they don’t want to, or that they don’t have anything to say. It’s just that this is a tough venue for them. Be in a room with 25 other people and all the noise and people talking over each other. So you either have to solicited in advance or solicited in the room or solicited afterwards or send out a questionnaire, asked people by email to tell you in advance, you have to make sure that everyone’s voice is heard,

[00:37:12.83] spk_1:
and that’s a part of teamwork and camaraderie to ZX respect. Yes, yeah, that you’ve become aware. Now you’re red pilled. You know, some people are not gonna speak at the meeting or being very. It’s gonna be uncomfortable for them to do it. You have to make allowance for that. And that s so that builds up your That builds up teamwork and camaraderie. People feel respected there, literally being heard

[00:37:51.73] spk_0:
right now. Some people just, you know, talk a lot and don’t mean to cut anyone else off and want to hear the voice. And then there’s some people who just want to hear their own voice. And actually, one of the pieces of board membership is it’s not for everyone. You have to believe in teamwork. You have to believe that the team comes first. I’m not saying that the styles in any way can identify who would want to be on a team or not, because it’s much more complicated than that. But but there are challenges to group work, and those challenges impact certain styles more than others,

[00:38:12.92] spk_1:
Right? So yeah. All right, let’s talk about fundraising. How does this out of the styles impact board? Fundraising? Yes.

[00:40:53.41] spk_0:
So that we’re working on the whole decade, obviously. Uh, yes. Since they asking style started from a fundraising bend. It’s a very critical ways. The first one which we talked about earlier which is the number one way, is in terms of the story that each board member is going to tell. What is a board member going to stay in the in the most? In the simplest format, you run into someone, and the person said, Well, tell me about X y Z organization. What is it? You is a board member going to say to try to excite that person? What’s your story that is going to be impacted by your style? Whether, as we talked about it, whether it’s very goal on, strategy oriented, visionary oriented, hard oriented plan oriented? Okay, then you have Well, how is each of you going to go about this process of identifying and cultivating and maybe asking for money? And I say, maybe asking because the most important roles Board member, the most important role of board member can have in fundraising in my mind is the identifying, cultivating, thanking, recognizing piece everything but the ask. When it comes to the ask, some board members will ask on their own or with other board members. But in most organizations, you could bring the executive director and head of fundraising or someone else, to sit there in the room with you and actually say, tony, would you consider a gift of $10,000 for X y Z? Um, it’s all the other work that’s so important Thio for board members to help with. And that’s where style really matters. How are you going about going to go about cultivating as a board member? What’s comfortable for you? You have to take into account to some extent what what works for the donor? We don’t know. We usually don’t know the donor style, but if we don’t ask board members to do things they’re comfortable with, they’re going to be reticent about doing them. And they may not do them well, right? Well, I don’t want I don’t want to send my board members out out to slaughter, basically, by sending them out to do things they won’t do well and it doesn’t serve the organization well, so eso I will would think through if I have ah, big special event. My extroverted board members ago ended be better ambassadors of those events than the introverts who don’t tend to go up to people they don’t know and engage them in such. They’re going to be better at one on one effort. Uhh. Some people are going to be better at communication written communication, writing lovely emails with lots of great information in them. Some are going to be better at picking up the phone and having a quick chat on dhe. People will partner in different ways based on their styles.

[00:41:41.91] spk_1:
Time for our last break dot drives that drives engagement dot drives relationships. Dot drives is the simplest donor pipeline fundraising tool. It’s customizable, collaborative, intuitive. If you want to move the needle on your prospect and donor relationships, get the free demo for listeners is also a three month. You know that you go to the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant. We’ve got but loads more time for boards and asking styles.

[00:43:06.10] spk_0:
So if I would like, um uh, I have a donor in mind and I bring something. The table is the CEO or the chief fundraiser, a za kindred spirit. I may look around to see who compliments me on the board, right? Or if I’m let’s say I someone has a relationship, OK, Soo is a go getter, and Sue has a relationship to this donor, so I want to go with Sue? Well, I’m a kindred spirit and Susan go getter and whoa! It turns out that our donor is a mission controller. So now how am I going to engage? So what is the best role for Sue? Is the go getter to play? And what might we have to watch out for? Right? How would we wanna make sure Sue doesn’t trip over herself? A za go getter going with me to see a mission controller? So it gives me a road map as the staff member, or certainly is the board members to how I could be effective, what my challenges might be. Even in the initial contact, we talked about this all the time of asking matters that from kindred spirits and mission controllers are much less likely to just pick up the phone and call someone out of the blue, even if it’s just calling to make an appointment. I don’t I never liked the phone, and I feel lucky that most of my career has been in the age of email. I will almost always email first if I know. I don’t know. Well, and I know the donor just wants me to call It is different, but most of the time we don’t know who. Uh, we don’t We don’t know people that well and I’m going to I’m going to write first by email. And if I know a board members that way, I’m not gonna push my board member to pick up the phone. I’m going to say, Do what’s comfortable for you If it’s comfortable to send an email, Do that. If you know the person well enough to send a text and the text. If calling and trying to catch that person is what works for you do that, so I help the asking styles help bring fundraising to the board member in a way that’s palatable.

[00:44:01.99] spk_1:
Got some ideas about you. Caption it. Under keeping board members committed, exposing board members to program Share your ideas there.

[00:44:57.99] spk_0:
Most board members do not experience or or view programming often enough. Board members come to organization excited by what you’re doing. They have a lot of passion. Yeah, I’m on the board now. I’m so committed. I love what you do and then end up spending almost all their time in board meetings that are mostly about procedure and budget and can be very dry the most organizations today or bringing program staff for program participants to board meetings on a regular basis. I hope everyone listening today is doing that, and so board members get some exposure the 10 or 15 minutes every two months. But that’s minimal. Board members have to C programming ideally, in person right now. That’s really hard. Maybe through zoom through video, maybe through a Q and A with various program directors and such. And again, the asking styles will impact what type of interaction will keep board members committed. So if I want to keep my mission controller board member committed, I need to keep focusing on the plans and making sure the board that board member feels good that we’re going about our work in a very methodical, systematic, well thought out way. That’s what and to share all the information about plans because the Michigan that that is the material that the Mission controller board member can absorb and appreciate. I’m not gonna do that for the go getter. The go getter isn’t gonna look at those plans, right? The go getter is gonna wanna have a telephone call with the program director with a or Or meet lots of participants and engage those participants and maybe participate in programs, whereas some people might feel it a little awkward to do that, the go getter will jump right in. So for my go get a board member, I might do that for my rainmaker. You know, a ZX. You can see the same themes keep coming up with this idea of strategy, vision, heart and plan strategy, vision hardened plan. So you got it. You have to bring that to each board member and then bring that into the It’s the meeting.

[00:46:43.30] spk_1:
I would rather you say the heart first. Uh, that’s the kindred spirits. I’ll fix it in post production. I’ll move.

[00:46:55.26] spk_0:
You do that. You do that. The only way I can always keep everything straight is to always go go clockwise. Yeah, no matter what I do, I’m always saying Rainmaker, go Gator. Kindred spirit, Mission Control and using my hands to remind me now that everything is vision is Elektronik. I’ve actually the vision. The image is reversed on the screen. And now that ever you could see my hands, I’ve had to learn like yoga, teachers and others. Yes, you gotta be. Oh, right. Yeah, exactly. So it’s a new skill I’ve learned the last seven months

[00:47:23.99] spk_1:
you’ve got. You’ve got the benefit of no video here. Yeah,

[00:47:26.58] spk_0:
exactly. Like my hands doing anything.

[00:47:34.08] spk_1:
Audio podcast. Yes. Mm. Alright, What else? What else do you wanna? You wanna talk about that? We haven’t talked about around asking styles in the board

[00:47:39.82] spk_0:
asking styles. And

[00:47:41.33] spk_1:
you wrote a whole book, for God’s sake.

[00:47:42.97] spk_0:
Yeah, I can imagine

[00:47:43.91] spk_1:
more. There’s more than what I asked you what

[00:47:48.45] spk_0:
it is, though, you know, though, I don’t want to scare people off either. And as you know, tony, it’s not a big book, and it’s purposely not a big look. It’s actually only 16,000 words. If people know anything about books, it’s only 100 pages because there are lots of beautiful full color photos and graphs and things like that. It’s a book you can read in a two sitting,

[00:48:06.04] spk_1:
which I appreciate. I like all the photos, something the pictures I sometimes have authors on. I’ll say, you know, there’s no pictures or there’s not enough

[00:48:13.77] spk_0:
well in my books. The only book in full color. I want to say that cause I’m really proud of it. It costs a lot more to make it, but, uh, but the styles Aaron color right? The graphics are so so. It’s actually very pleasurable book. And the reason for that It’s really important for every board member to read it right.

[00:48:29.73] spk_1:
Easy read. Do it over a weekend easily. You could do it in a day if you had to, but yes, so we hope

[00:48:52.16] spk_0:
to say, you know, today we covered a lot of the major points in it, about about recruiting, camaraderie, teamwork, telling her story, leadership and such. Those are the major piece in the book. The one thing I’ll say is that you’re pushing the book, I guess, is that it has a bunch of exercises and questions to ask yourself is Well, and the important thing is not is not to believe that G if I if I’m going to address the challenges on my board, it’s got to be some big project I need to bring in a consultant or boy, this is gonna be a lot of hard work. There are lots of small steps you can take.

[00:49:15.92] spk_1:
Yes, you finished the book with the next steps?

[00:50:03.86] spk_0:
Yes and yes. And all along the way there are some exercises the next time you have zoomed called do a breakout room and just ask. People spend five minutes saying, Okay, my style is this. What does that mean for how I work with you or something? You’re going to build teamwork and camaraderie. And so I want people to take away that that make improvements toe how your board operates, which is so vital to how your organization gets through this and thrives in the future. Uh, does not have to be a big, overwhelming project through the asking styles and lots of other means. You can take small steps and get there. The

[00:50:08.46] spk_1:
book is a pleasure. It’s a pleasurable pleasure to read. It’s an easy read. You want to know your style. You goto asking matters dot com. Do the three minute survey. Send your board members as a little fun exercise chat about it. That’s you know, that could be a next step, but

[00:50:18.71] spk_0:
absolutely that

[00:50:24.46] spk_1:
a whole chapter of next steps and, like you said questions throughout. Okay, Brian Saber, Thank you very much. Uh, have you. Actually, Absolutely. So the book. Get the book. There is more depth. There is more depth in those 16,000 words than than a lackluster host can cover with, even with an exemplary guest. Eso. The book is boards and asking styles. A roadmap to success matters that asking matters dot com and Brian is at Brian Saber and Brian. Thank you again. Real pleasure. Thank

[00:50:52.97] spk_0:
you. Don’t have a great day. Good luck to everyone.

[00:51:31.56] spk_1:
Thank you Next week next week. I got it here right next week is Oh yes, next week is low cost fundraising software and what’s really happening with non profit revenue. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com. Responsive by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o and by dot drives, raise more money, changed more lives tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant for a free demo and a free month for listeners. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty, you with me next week for non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. Remember, it’s your favorite abdominal podcast. Go out and be great.

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host it’s our three hundred fifty and show you heard that live music scott stein is with us and lots of other people. Thank you, scotty, you’re welcome. We’ve got two listeners of the week first. Dan kimble he’s, a product specialist at apple, owes software he’s always tweeting and retweeting aboutthe show very grateful. This week, he posted congrats to tony martignetti and his upcoming anniversary show, grateful for you’re and mr show, grateful for your promotion of non-profit work. Dan, i’m grateful to you for your support of non-profit radio. Thank you so much. Congratulations on being a listener the week on show number three hundred fifty also fund-raising fox they’re on the road right now between buffalo grove, illinois and downtown chicago. They tweeted that this will be great road trip listening to which i retorted, this is like an hour trip from buffalo grove to chicago that’s like that’s a commute? Not a not a, not a that’s, not a road trip, but okay, if you insist, maybe in chicago that’s a road trip congratulations. Fund-raising fox drive carefully even though you’re only going across the street, thanks for being with us on three fifty oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with copper. Oh, poor foreign yuria! If you wet me down with the idea that you missed today’s show, it is the three hundred fifty of show seventh anniversary of non-profit radio coast clear meyerhoff is with us with me live in the studio. We’ve got that live music and more to come give aways from pursuing and cure a coffee all our contributors jane takagi, maria semple and amy sample ward, our sponsor ceos are going to be with us. I’ve got new am and fm affiliate stations to introduce we got non-profit medio math quiz and i’m already exhausted. We’re on facebook live! Check us out right now from the tony martignetti non-profit radio page facebook live! We’re also live tweeting, join us! Use the hashtag non-profit radio on tony’s take two thank you. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com tomorrow half welcome back to the studio, tony. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Wonderful to be here for the three hundred and fiftieth show. Thank you. Yes, i love it. You’re the creative producer of the show. Of course. Thank you. I helped you start the show from one back when it was the tony martignetti show for two weeks back in the day two thousand ten also? Yes, of course. There’s a seventh anniversary seventeen minus ten seventh anniversary president of plant giving agency that’s me, you’ll find claire at pg agency, dot com and at claire says z what’s going on climber half what’s up in your what’s up in the pg agency. Well, we’re working on a lot of different projects. I’ve got a lot of wonderful clients and working with parkland hospital foundation in dallas. Cool, a couple of other clients in texas and a couple clients in florida and ah, united way and lots of different people. And i’m staying here in new york for a couple days of my friend bette’s house in westchester county, and i drove into the city this morning with the convertible top down and here i am, cool it’s a beautiful day for a top you drive to scott stein. Welcome back to studio. Thank you for having me. Great seeing my pleasure. Of course. Scott’s dying. The composer of our theme song. My voice is cracked theme song like i’m fourteen cheap red wine of course you’re gonna be playing cheap red wine on dh another wine related song as well you’ll find him at scott stein music dot com don’t go to scott’s stein dot com i did that that somebody it’s an australian motivations motivational speaker don’t go to stop sign dot com go to scott’s in-kind music dot com and he’s at scott’s time music also so glad you’re with us. Great beer. Cool. Cool. Uh, we got, uh we got track record on the phone. He is the ceo of pursuant to years, sponsor of non-profit radio. The renewing way with us to the end of the year. So grateful for that. So so grateful for pursuance, sponsorship and love of non-profit radio trade ryker, welcome to the show. Tony. How you doing today? It’s? Great it’s. A beautiful day for three. Fifty how are you doing in where you from? In texas. Where? You calling from? I’m in the dallas area. The big d. Okay, cool. I want to thank you. I want to thank you so much. Not only for being here today, but for pursuing sponsorship of non-profit radio. Well, tell me, first of all, congratulations. Three hundred fifty episodes. What a milestone. Unbelievable. We appreciate so much. See great work that you and the other sponsors provide the opportunity for you to do for the non-profit states your gift way. Love what you do, and they’re just proud to be a sponsor. Thanks, tony. Thank you so much, trent. Um, you you are so generous at pursuing there’s there’s. This constant resource is available. I mean, i’m talking about them every single week. It’s webinars info. Grams. Content papers? Uh, it’s it’s. Amazing how generous you are. What? What? Acquaintance with what’s coming up for pursuing the rest of this year. Well, a lot going on. Thank you for that. We really believe in giving back the non-profit states in any way. We can. We learn a lot by working with our clients were in partnership with them always. We’re always thirsty. Learn mohr and then share what we learn. Through a variety of webinars and white papers and other things that we do, no matter how large or how small you are, we’re hopeful ableto help some folks out, you know, for the second half of the year, we’ve been working hard on something that over the years we’ve learned things. One of the things that i think most important is that the smaller non-cash profits that don’t have the resources to hyre firms to help him out of that at a deep level, we’re trying to make some of those tools more accessible youand your listeners have known that we’ve been working on that for a while, wade got some exciting things on the horizon to make better sense of all that data out there that that folks have and be able to make that more actionable and getting better results without having that we’re not having to spend a lot of money, so we’re driven by by creating tools, you know, i think that that’s an opportunity out there right now, there’s more competition than ever out there for the same dollars and stay on top of mind for your constituents and being able to keep up. In that to a conversation is really important, and while there are a lot of great point tools out there would like to call them, and we encourage everybody to use things like that that are free or very inexpensive with non-profit states being able to pull that data together being ableto you have the appropriate relevant conversations to your here’s donors and your prospects and volunteers on your advocate, you are really important so that some of the stuff we’re working on cool and, you know, small and midsize non-profits that’s the audience, you know, where we’re big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, and i’m always saying every week, actually, a couple times a week pursuant data driven technology enable ana, i know and that’s that’s a big no that is a challenge area for small and midsize shops. Yeah, not always accessible, i think you know the big non-profits have a lot more resources, and while we appreciate the opportunity to work with them and learn from them, i’m really driven for the drive system for the quote unquote little guy, the small, the medium sized non-profit that’s passionate about what they’re doing and that most of the time spent, you know, driving for the mission of the organization and fund-raising is an important aspect of that, but how do we make that more simple? How do we make it more accessible? How do we make it more affordable? And so i think that the market will be really excited about some of the stuff that we’ll be bringing out twenty eighteen by way of tools to apply all of that. We’re taking the concepts that you hear out there about business intelligence and artificial intelligence, predictive modeling, and we’re going to simplify that to make it as easy as the way you might use google maps and make it easy for the smaller, medium sized non-profit put it to use and to raise more money and more connected to their constituents. That’s what’s really important, excellent trench. Well, i look forward to sharing the word of all that stuff as it comes out with our with our audience with our over twelve thousand growing on die again. I know you’ve got to go and i thank you very much again for your support of non-profit radio. Thanks so much for being with us, trent. Congratulations, tony. And everybody out there keep supporting tony and the great work that he does. Keep up the good work for your non-profit have a great show, tony, and keep up. Keep it going. All right. Cool. Thank you very much, trent. So long. All right. We’re gonna go out for a first break. We got tons more coming up. Oh, my god. We’re just scratching the surface for god’s sake. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent reminded we’re on facebook live got some folks with us shout out tio maria simple is there dave lynn, thank you so much. Uh, who else we got? Gary astro cool welcome shoutouts to facebook live! You can join us at the tony martignetti non-profit radio page were also live tweeting used the hashtag non-profit radio. Join the conversation on twitter um, we got a we got to give away let’s do a giveaway we’ve got got coffee gif ts from cura coffee and we’re giving our first pound of coffee too silver mark he’s at this is ah, his twitter idea at silver mark make-a-wish did three hundred fifty is awfully nifty returns of the day for those great things you say i mean, you know that’s, you got to give you got to give some kudos for creativity not great! Those are not great lyrics, but that’s just our okay cheats memorable! I think he may have used it may be recycled. He may have used that for another contest. I don’t know, but that silver mark, thank you so much you’re going to get a pound of coffee from cura coffee and claire, won’t you tell us about your coffee? Cure a coffee directly connects coffee lovers with farmers and families who harvest the finest organic coffee beans. With every cup of courage, you’re joined your effort to expand sustainable dental care to remote communities around the world. We are direct trade, a direct trade coffee company with direct impact brought directly to you, creating organic smiles beyond the cup. Cure coffee, dotcom. Thank you, claire. In that beautiful radio voice, she’s got that. She talked pretty talk pretty good. My abc radio cbs radio serious. You left off serial. I work too serious. Serious. Next time. Don’t be modest. I was then except when they launched on september twelfth, two thousand won cool. Oh, that xero auspicious. That you know that and i get it. You know, again shadow to cure a coffee. Coffee. The ceo is a dentist. He’s practicing dentist that’s. Why? When you get a pound of cure a coffee that’s, why they when you get a compound of your coffee, the gift goes, goes to silver. Mark will include a toothbrush and i think luke’s dental floss. But there’s aural. Care? Yes, because that’s. Why, he says. He says expanding sustainable dental care to remote communities they’re they’re giving back to the communities where the coffee beans are raised. Dental care, they’re giving money for dental care in those communities, communities and in central and south america. On he is a he’s a practicing dentist. He couldn’t be with us. I beg him to couldn’t make it he’s between patients, you know, he’s doing a root canals. You know, it’s got saliva around everything all right? Um, scotty, you cannot i want you to play first song for us. Sure. Um again, scott scott stein, now a pianist, songwriter, vocalist, composer, arranger tell us what you’re gonna play first. I’m gonna play a tune from the record that i just put out just a little bit ago the records called travelling companion and the song is called wine soaked tart we’re keeping ah, wine theme here we do. We got cheap red wine, wine soaked tart. People are going to get the wrong impression of me here, you know, but it’s ah it’s a little tune that way have this idea that as songwriters in his artist we have to be, you know, really down in the dumps to really, like, create great music, you know, you have to really be eo, suffer for your art and it’s not true. It helps it’s, not total teacher. But this is something that is not what kind of zooming out and kind of, you know, being grateful for for what you have i was i was on honeymoon with my wife when i woke up in the middle of the night with the idea for the song, okay? And scott stein, wine soaked heart off his newest album, traveling companion. Dahna i love what you give me. You lying so tired, let me ramble through the square like this september breeze is used to know, nor would you give me your line so tar, let me pull it all together. Then they pull my fuse, paul. Sametz it’s six in the morning and i can’t sleep. It was lying about a strange hotel bed. Buy-in sounds of my lover. Do not keep me waiting. Just the ryland to the rumblings bouncing around inside my head. I what would you give me your wine? So tar, let me revel, sing in the shadow of the spanish hill. You know what, give you wine so let me pull it all together. Limit my fuse part. It’s been a long time coming, but we made it here going to step out on the block, and the noise is going to get off the grid. Tune out everybody but the one i love. Let the world revolve around us like a couple of barefoot kid. Oh, yeah. Love to give me a wine. So tar buy-in let me ram on the land of the authors in the poet it’s on the scene. Lorts give you wine. So tar. Let me pull it all together to limit my bar for my future. Call it predictable. I don’t care. U b roll footage. Cue the montage here. The movie strings. You only get so many years. Be so self aware before the exterior starts to fade in. On this left are the important thing. Duitz because you want forever with a wild, wild heart. What would you give me your line? So tar? So down, breathing him. Don’t try to think so much law to give me a line. So tar, let me pull it all together. My fuse, par. Put my fears apart. Buy-in got stein one so tart thie album is traveling companion. Get the album at scott stein music dot com scottie, thank you so much. Thank you, absolutely love it, love it and there’s more to come. We got we got course, cheap red wine coming up, indulge me while i announce a couple of new affiliate stations. Would you please? All right. W p h w in harpswell, maine live listener love to you. Ah, philly. In effect, i should say affiliate affections to w p h w so glad you’re with us. They’re in the freeport brunswick area of maine, just northeast of portland. Welcome. Welcome to the affiliate community. W p h w also cabe og ki bong ninety seven point nine fm in bandon, oregon. And that is oregon, not oregon. There’s no. E at the end of oregon, oregon offgrid admonished it’s, oregon. Brandon, oregon. There are pacifica station that’s. Very cool on. They happen to be all along the pacific coast in county, oregon. Now, why’re they k bog. I found out k bog glamarys come off cranberries. Very organ is a very big cranberry producing state. Really? And this region of of oregon is bandon is the cranberry capital of oregon. Really cool. Have you been to argue? Okay, bob, i’ve been to oregon. I’ve been to portland. I’m joined a portland for the organ for the first time this october. And then i will only have two states in the us. I have not visited well, that’s very and north when you’re so young through so i need to oh, thank you. I need to get a speaking engagement in alaska and in alaska, north dakota. Okay, that should be well. North dakota is easy, one for you. North dakota sametz least visited st in united states. Listen, alaska people threat well, the glaciers that while there, while we have them, okay, that that’s very cool, you’re going tohave portland. You’re really a great food scene. Great fruiting, love, ah, really quirky place. So our new affiliate stations w p h w and k b o g. Welcome to the affiliate community affiliate affections to those listeners. I’ve got more stations coming up. We got jean takagi on the line. I know we do. Jean takagi is the principle of neo, the non-profit exempt organizations. More group he’s at g tak e ta ke yet it’s. The wildly popular non-profit lob log dot com. Hello, jean takagi. Happy anniversary, tony. Congratulations on three. Fifty. Thank you, man. That’s so cool. Thank you very much. I’m so glad you’ve been with us so so many years from the very early days you were you were one of the very first shows, like you were in, like the first, fourth or fifth show or so and, uh, contributor sense. Really geever it’s been awesome, but you have to come back and visit me here in san francisco. I know. Well, you should come. You know, you could come to new york. I did visit you once in san francisco years ago. But you could come to new york, too. That invitation is open. You could come to the beach in north carolina if you like peaches. That’s tony’s having a big, fat oregon. Maybe we can all meet there in oregon. That’s. Not too far. Yeah, but i’m thinking about a fall trip, actually out west. So i will. I will let you know. Just you know, jeanne, i i emailed this to you a lot, but i want to say it to you. You know, i’m so grateful for the time that you put in for the listeners. Of small from small and non-profit med small and midsize shops it’s a non-profit radio so grateful for the time contribution you make, you know, month after month, you red block posts about the show. When you’re gonna be on, you’re a terrific i just i’m so grateful to have you as our legal contributor. Thank you so much, james. Thank you, tony. Thank you for making all of this information from all of your great contributors available. Teo non-profit sector it’s it’s. Invaluable. Thank you. Uh, what do you got going on, gene? But you got a little little takeaway. Will tip you wanna leave? Leave us with? Sure. You know, i thought i’d talk really briefly about having a politician appear in your charity event. We recently had way did have someone forced chamber. Yeah, it got a lot of attention, so i didn’t talk about that specifically wanted to make sure everybody knew that political leaders can be invited to speak on issues of public policy and issues of importance that charity events. But you’ve got to be careful about it, so make sure you know five oh one see threes aren’t allowed to engage in election. Nearing, so provide instructions to the politicians or their staff, people about not campaign campaigning or speaking on political campaign issues. Uh, you know, at the charity event, and if they start campaigning, you might choose to interrupt politely and strategically, if possible. You know, sometimes that may not be possible if it’s the president of the united states, that might be very, very politically challenging to do that. But afterwards, don’t wait long at the end of the speech of possible make a statement about the charity being a partisans uh, organization don’t wait several days and have the statement come from the top of your leadership. So jean, what is the worst case scenario that could happen to a five a one? C three non-profit if, for instance, a candidate came and super campaigned and broke all those rules and you didn’t do anything about it, what’s what could happen? What’s the outcome right now, the rules say the remedy is taking away its five a onesie three tax exempt status so that’s the rule you know, right now in the political climate, president trump and the republican party platform say that they want to get rid of that rule, but they haven’t gotten rid of that ruled yet, so they would actually like to open up election hearing toe all five, twenty three public charities. But that hasn’t happened yet, and it may never happen. We hope that it doesn’t happen, but the rule right now don’t let it happen because you could lose your tax. Exempt that claire’s got another question for another question. Have you heard about a cherry that has lost its tax exempt status? Because of that? Yeah, it happens pretty rarely and particularly much more rarely. I haven’t heard of any since the new administration. But you would see a handful every year lose their tax exempt status for just that reason. Okay. Interesting. Cool. Very timely topic as always. Jean jean takagi, always on top of things s oh, so grateful, gene. Thank you so much. Thanks. What a pleasure. Thanks, tony. Thanks, clarence. Got have a great thank you. Thanks for your good wishes. So long, gene. We got we got alex career alt-right not not yet. Okay, we’ll get to him. Um, let’s. Um, let’s. Take our little break. Then we got we got we got a little business. Actually, but we have tons of stuff coming up. You still got the math quiz? We got more giveaways. I got morning am and fm stations. We got live listener love coming up. I gotta do the live listening. But look at this for those of us, those on facebook like this list of live listeners amazing it’s a scrolling off the printer, the live listeners we’ve got. And, of course, on the heels of that comes the affiliate affections on the podcast pleasantries, cheap red wine coming up all that first you got to give a shout to pursuant we know them. We just met the ceo but i got eggs. I got to do my promotional thing because i do want you to check them out for the free resource. Is that that trade? And i were talking about infographics, content, papers, webinars. And even even if it’s paid trainings and we have a great prize coming up great grand prize that’s all i am permitted to say at this moment about the grand prize but it’s related to this? Just check them out for resource is tons of stuff for free. They are data driven. It’s it’s. Not just a tagline for them. They help you work with data sorted out, figured out, use it, so you’re not overwhelmed. Check him out. Pursuing dot com quick resource is all the stuff is right there, and we’ll be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. They make millennial money, these air, these air really cool. Claire, they it’s a night for your charity, it’s, live music, dancing, stand up comedy, and they work in fund-raising through spelling bee that’s fun, because millennials are really spelling peer-to-peer. The resident millennial. I feel like i have to confirm this, okay, when you write your lyrics, they’re spelled correctly, yes, what, nobody sigh, and nobody sees them, right. Okay, check out they have a video, they’re really cool. Video show you what a night is like for your charity, it’s, that we b e spelling dot com and then just talked to alexx career, and hopefully we’re gonna be talking to him shortly. And i gotta do tony steak to now, which is my thank you too the way it goes from the people who are just with us today live on facebook hello, thank you for that. But the listeners the over twelve thousand listeners i’m just so grateful that the audience has grown so much in seven years. Thank you, thank you for being part of non-profit radio the trend is always upwards. I’m grateful for that if you let me in your inbox every thursday through the insider alerts, which if you’re not getting them, you can get them at tony martignetti dot com. Thank you for letting me in your inbox every single week. If it’s youtube our fans, their subscribers, they’re on youtube there’s a new video every week twitter, thanks so much for following me reach meeting this show tweeting about the show just enormous, enormously grateful i just got us you know this is an anniversary time to time to say thank you, thanks so much. And speaking of the latest video aside from the three fiftieth which you don’t need now because you got to show you don’t need the previous video, you might check. Out the one that i did most recently before that it was feels good in sixty nine and that’s all i can say about that video, you just have to watch to see what the sixty nine is all about. And, of course, that’s at tony martignetti dot com feels good in sixty nine, and that is tony stick to we got maria simple online. I’ll bet we don’t have a reassembly yet. Wow. Okay, i’ll tell you what, let’s do a little math quiz clay morrow, because i’m really good at math. So exactly, um, and i’m a lawyer. So we picked a non-profit radio math quiz. So you know, we’re gonna sing a song writer writer on dh lawyer, former engineering student i story story for you to bring your slide rule uh, i can not write. Or your engineer, you may need your engineering calculator for those. Ok. Ok. So here’s here’s the math quiz? Because tony’s been doing this show for a long time now, since since twenty ten, it’s a lot of shows that he’s very prolific. We have three hundred fifty shows, so i’d like to kind of figure out some things that some numbers that we’ve accomplished over the years. So would you say how many guests average per show phone and live in studio? Yeah. Live in studio and then plus you gotta bring in the conference guests. I mean, sometimes there’s like three and four panellists. I’d say average. Okay, average, uh, one point seven three let’s. Say two. Okay, let’s round it. So three hundred eighty shows. Two guest per show we have. Who gets it first? How many is that? I hope that i hope that some hope that seven hundred, seven hundred okay, so how many steps are there to climb up the stairs from seventy second west? Seventy second street to the studio here. Oh, you could take the staircase around here. I do it all the time. How many steps? Which is saying? Oh, sam, sam sametz again. Twenty. So twenty steps, times two hundred fifty shows is that’s. Got to be that’s. Gotta be the same. Seven thousand fifty seven thousand. Scott so you did bring a slide rule? I yes. Yes. It’s right in here. All right, all right, all right. So, tony and scott, how many times during each show would you say scott’s music is played during each show. Oh, that’s a cool oh, that’s like how many times is the number one appear on a dollar bill? One, two, three for i’d say it’s probably five. I’m thinking five so what’s time to a two hundred fifty. I don’t know the seven, seventeen, fourteen hundred plus three. Fifteen degree was kottler against that’s got with all right. All right, i swear i’m not i’m not just like peeking over the over the engineering because a ringer is i didn’t know that, it’s. All right? I don’t know. Who’s going to bring her. Okay. How many times have you taken the show on the road? Oh, my gosh! Conferences. Oh, that’s. Probably like, i’m afraid that’s an easy one. Well, ten. So let’s say eleven. So what percentage i can’t even do? The percentage of eleven of the three hundred fifty shows are were shows on the road but you cut me off the delays. I get more than one interview per unconference less now last non-profit technology cover. That was twenty, thirty two interviews in one conference. So there’s thirty two right there, right in three, two and half days. I got thirty two interviews, i’d say probably come away with twenty times eleven conferences. That will be two hundred twenty interviews out of no, that can’t be right. Two hundred twenty. That sounds too high. No that’s. Not right. What am i doing wrong? It’s probably not that high it’s probably it’s. Probably been like one hundred. Oh, those air segments that you’re messing me up. Segments two segments per show. So seven hundred segments. Two hundred let’s. Say, two hundred something two hundred twenty five of those maybe have been conferences or so two hundred out of seven hundred segments. Okay, so the last questions for may out of seven years of shows, i probably come and do it live. Maybe, like, three times a year. So i’ve been here maybe twenty one times. Uh, yeah. In the early days. Yeah. You’re blowing me off in the early days? No, i invited you all time. You never came up? No, i yeah, don’t twenty more. That sounds like a lot. And you know, the last time i was here in the studio, i left tony and i saw another man who works in broadcasting. I met someone. Really? Really. Cool. Right after i left tony show. Oh, you met lester. Lester holt? Yeah, i went down to nbc and lester home. You’ve treated me a picture. You facebook me a picture of you and lester. So today stepped down, you know, the talking alternative studios where we are live on nbc, and then i guess you could go down, continue going down on the show to last. So what are you doing in new york? I said i have clients here and stuff like this came from this non-profit radio show. Oh, and cause i realized later that lester worked in radio. So radio people like even if they end up working in tv or whatever, they still really love stick todo zoho he’s. His eyes lit up when i said, ready brady was cool. Absolutely, absolutely. All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for the non-profit. Your math quiz created, produced. This is what she’s, the creative producer. Well, what a surprise. No surprise. Came up with this last night. Like eleven. Thirty my maria semple, decide your simple cold. And i was actually calling on her a little early because she was not at fault when i said maria symbols online, but she is now anyway. Fremery a sample. Hello there, how are you our social media contributor? Immense. I’m sorry prospect restarts contributor. I’m doing great, our prospect research contributors. You’ll find her at the prospect finder dot com and she’s at maria semple on, and she has been a long standing oh gosh, but going back also many years hyre contributor to non-profit radio. Thank you, maria, thank you so much for the time you put in a month after month for our listeners. Thanks so much for my pleasure and congratulations on three hundred fifty and looking forward to three hundred fifty more. Oh oh, my god, they’ll be seven hundred. Okay, i don’t know what i’ll be another seventy years. Oh, my god will be forty. What is that? Twenty, twenty four? Um now cool. Where you now? Where you calling from? Maria semple? I am in new jersey. You’re home in jersey, okay, cool. Very simple loves the new song you facebook live. Do you love scott’s new song? Thank you. Yes, i did. I really liked it a lot. I’m gonna have to go see where i can find it. I think he said it was scott stein music dot com. So i jot that down that’s exactly right. And get the album. Traveling companion. Yeah, she lives out facebook live. All right. Um, summary of you. You got a little tidbit for us today in respect, research land. What do you see? It’s one on there? Yeah, well, you know, i thought it was just kind of focused on teamwork a little bit because, uh, sort of staying in the spirit of, you know, your three hundred fifty shows wouldn’t have happened with without a lot of teamwork there in the studio and from your regular contributors and so forth and all the conferences you’ve attended and really focusing on how important prospect researches to the development process. But that really it’s only one component of the development process on and really try to encourage folks if if you’re wearing that, that prospect research had either as a your sole function within the organization, or maybe one of the functions that you do and your everyday job to try not to work in a vacuum and to try and get a seat at the table. If you can try and see if you will be allowed to attend those development committee meetings and so forth to really play a role in the overall development cycle so that information that you’re able to glean from important conversations can be incorporated into the work that you d’oh alright, it takes a village. It takes a village, is what you’re saying. I think it takes a community text community to raise money and number, and, well, of course, non-profit radio is a part of that, but so is prospect research. All right, the team approach i love thank you for shouting out the team. We do have a great team. We do have an excellent, cool team. I shot them out of the end of every show. Claire scott, sam. Oh, our social media, social media, of course. Social media, susan chavez, all part of the team. Yes, thank you for that. Thank you so much. Cool. Maria, i want to thank you so much again for being part of the show. Thank you very much. And again, wishing you many, many more. Thank you, maria. I gotta give shut out to people who are with us on facebook live. We got we got tons more still. Aunt mary. I know her on david insta with us. Gary astro jimbo xero welcome, jim dahna gillespie rivera ray meyer mary-jo chamberlain michelle libonati oh, my god. Old good friends. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. You could join us on facebook live at tony martignetti non-profit radio page and we’re also live tweeting and use the hashtag non-profit radio. Is that true? That’s true, isn’t it? Um, let’s. See, we got a make on line. Scott. Sam. Any buy-in the line? Okay, then, uh, let’s. Go to i got some new ah, so new affiliate stations and i’d like to welcome. We’ll continue bilich community absolutely am fm stations throughout the country. We got a new one. Que tiene que eighty eight point one fm carbondale, colorado and w c s q one o five point nine fm radio coble skill in upstate new york. I know. That you know, couples skill. Well, i went to plattsburgh state, so i know you would know. Yeah, i know. Yes. Did you know is it’s uh, you know, that’s coble skill, not kabul skill. It’s it was called didn’t know. I didn’t know that i do now, but it’s spelled like kabul, but it’s coble told only one day only one b all right, thank you very much. Like right would be no e at the end of oregon. Okay, you’re right. Couple would be all right. My gobble kabul it’s coble it’s called bilich latto global scale koegler and i’m so glad they’re with us that’s w c s q one o five point nine fm andi i know couple skills. I got a ticket there once. Yeah, it doesn’t. Eighty eight, i think route eighty eight. I don’t know. Interesting fremery take out there, but i’ve got to take a lot of other places in upstate. You got you got a tear, right? Hearing even all the good places. Saratoga, you got a parking ticket right here on seventy second street after one show. That’s a parking ticket that was parking moving violations, or you’re in the big time. Yeah, i did get one. You’re you’re coping skill. I’m pretty sure it was on eighty eight. You gotta hire a lawyer when you get a speeding ticket. That’s the best thing to do. I had to do that once, actually in virginia? Yep. Virginia. You know what? Because anything over eighty, of course, that was not me. I saw it on a sign. But if you happen to be one who was pulled over for dui strike more than eighty is reckless driving. I’ve been there. You get you get a misdemeanor. You know, mr metoo convey. Imagine if you sign the back of that ticket. Mr metoo conviction in virginia for doing over more than twenty miles per hour over the speed limit or over eighty miles per hour. But you could. So i’ve heard you can hire an attorney. You know, they send you letters and for a very reasonable about they’ll take care of it. And the lawyer that took care of mine, i chose his letter out of about twenty letters because his name was will robinson. Oh, cool. Thank will robinson. I didn’t get that was virginia. That was virginia. Virginia. I didn’t get here because i would have picked him through. Thank you. Will robinson? Yes. Be careful in virginia on ninety five. I’ve heard it could be bad. So, yes, eso brand new stations now in main oregon, colorado in new york. So lots of new affiliate affections going out when? When we get to that. So so many affiliates do we have a terrestrial radio? Couple dozen. I really don’t know the exact number. Look where they ended up partying more than twenty. Woman. Twenty. So a score score was more than a score. We gotta score. Plus more than stone. Just don’t get that matthew’s teo what’s that teo give our leaders. Tio penn was that old word for a for a ten cent piece. Whatever a dime in the tie. I can’t remember to bits. We got to bet your two bits worth of that isn’t isn’t cubine oh, is it that those dying what’s two bits i don’t want it was a dime. Now two bits a quarter. We’re almost a two bit we could were around to putting wimpy say, it’s worth burglar hamburger um okay, let’s. See, uh, i want to i want to. Do some more music. Yeah, i’m ready for more music. Scotty stein. Oh, it’s, time for the time, for the theme of non-profit latto now, this is this is legit. I never stole this music from scott start. We have, we have no way of really license, license and he’s been with the show ever since. It’s a couple of years now, you know, i didn’t go back and look at when the licensing agreement started, but if you have been a few years, yeah, cheap red wine, this is scott’s dying cheaper what what’s the album, the cheaper ones snusz from a two thousand nine record, i did called jukebox and get their jukebox. I’ve seen him live ilsen him in and bars clubs. I’ve seen him do cheap red wine a few times. Scott stein, the theme song for non-profit radio, cheap red wine, all right. To be, they just keep on talking sooner. Later, i figure around just so what you mean. You see, in romantic advice from a village, i’m looking for answers upon a tv screen. Buy-in wait can agree on nothing. We can’t tell our ups from our downs. We’re disappointed in each other. Nothing baby. And i love that we have found. You know, you used to find me charming, but i can’t figure out how. And you said you thought it was handsome. But doesn’t matter now. So keep falling. Five foot sounds as long as your time. Well, because i haven’t got any promises about a cheap one and down. You know, some girls live in diamonds. And they won’t talk to the cut of clothing that i wear. Well, i’m reporting for the good stuff, and you’re too easily distracted to care, relying got too many options, and so i’m gonna do the best that i can, but you have some competition one day when i’m a wealthy man said, you know, you used to find a job, but i can’t figure out how you see your toes, and it doesn’t matter now. So came falling from my post as loans. Your time will allow, because i’ve got a runny promises by achi, brenna wine and wait let’s, raise the glasses. You drink the better days. The other people’s kids are. They don’t like the things we say, and i’m thinking, because of everything that i want flash nothing. Three signs his work permit for each other, as long as with you, nobody else in my nobody’s way. What? You know, you used to find the jumping, but i can’t figure out how and you see, your father was handsome. Never mind it. Don’t matter now, so get for from a punch on monday, tom. Allow about her any promises, a cheaper one. Teo. Yeah, man, that song is under my skin. I can’t help it. I just love i just love cheap red wine from the first moment i heard i knew it had to be the thing that theme song thank you so much. Thank you for your, you know, for communion to have me on and getting congratulations every fifty and, uh, you know, supporting local independent music. Absolutely. Absolutely love it. Thank you. I’m glad you’re part of the show chanpreet out every time. Every time we got we got alex career alex were called and he’s the ceo of we’d be spelling you hear me? Talk about it every single every single week. Super cool spelling bee fundraisers we be spelling dot com. Hey, alex. Career. Hey, what’s up. Tony, how you doing? I’m doing great. How are you? I’m doing fantastic. Thanks so much for having me on for the three hundred and fifty of the exciting stuff. Absolutely. I just wanted to hear you tell people. You know, in your own words what we be spelling is all about, and i’m grateful that you’re part of the show week after week after week. So, you know, give us give us the short version. What? What? What tell me about we’d be spelling absolutely. So we’d be selling the lifetime of game show. We have a live band with comedian judges. What we do is we take this wacky event repair with non-profit and we use it a za fundraiser. So we start peer-to-peer campaigns with all of the spellers. They raised a bunch of money like marathon runners in the lead up to the event. And we come together. We have ah, party of an event that it’s spelling bee only in name, but feels a lot more like comedy. Game show. Yes, cool! I love that it’s all it’s, all entertainment i’m you know i’m always saying, is that it’s not your seventh grade fundez not your seventh grade spelling bee, not you. It is not your grandmother’s, not your grandmother spelling that. What do you got coming up? Anything exciting? Going share? Yeah, so we’ve been really busy this year. We’ve been doing about two to three events a month from the top of the year axel next big event is august twenty third in brooklyn were going to be part of the brooklyn comedy. Festival so that’s a really fun event we’re partnering with. They tell you to raise the money at a big event with a whole bunch of comedians participating in fellers that august twenty third at union pool in williamsburg, brooklyn. Excellent. Excellent. Yes, and it’s a night for your charity, it’s ah, it’s fund-raising for your charity individually. S o you know, check out the video. We be e spelling dot com and then just talked to alexx. I mean, you could see what a what a what a cool guy is, right? I mean, it’s, no trouble. No trouble. All right. Appreciate it, alex. My pleasure. Thank you for calling in. Thanks so much for being part of the show. For your sponsorship. Of course. In two to three hundred fifty and three hundred fifty more shows. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. Let’s. Go teeny sample war. Who? Thank you. Thank you. Alex let’s, go to any sample ward. I know she’s on. Hello, amy. Sample ward. How are you? Hello. I’m doing well. Congrats on three. Fifty. Thank you. Aimee semple ward, our social media contributor. Ceo of intend the non-profit technology network. She’s at amy rs. Ward the ours for rene. Um and thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, i can’t believe that. I mean, i remember five years ago getting to be on the show. Can you believe that it’s been five years? I know you were on your guest on the one hundredth. You’re a guest on the one hundred, and then i just fell in love with the whole idea of prospect of sorry mixing him up social media and being on the show every single month. And, uh, yeah, two hundred fifty shows ago. It’s. Amazing. I know. Five years. Absolutely. So. So, you know, there are there were tools that didn’t exist five years ago that now we get to talk about on the show. Indeed, there were indeed there were so glad so. And let me say to you, i am grateful for the time that you put in every month to educate non-profit radio listeners in small and midsize non-profits thank you so much. Amy really means a lot to me. Thank oh, my god. It’s. My pleasure to get to share. Cool. Thanks. You give us. We just got a minute or so. Give us something you’d like to share. Well, one thing that i was thinking about that i will not put any any political commentary around, but i was reflecting earlier this morning about being on the show, talking about social media five years ago. And would we have ever thought five years ago that we would have politicians using the same tools that organizations are using right, like, five years ago, it was such a difference reality when it came to that, and now it’s normal, that articles would be quoting a tweet or a facebook post or facebook live stream, you know, from from d c i think it’s really interesting what that will mean going forward? Yeah, i think five years ago, politicians were just kind of figuring out whether twitter is something they should put their name on, is it? Is it safe for me to be associated with this platform now? It’s zits fundamental and you’re way behind if you’re not, you know? Yeah, i mean, we have, you know, elected officials using facebook live stream when there, you know, doing presentations on the floor, how does that change their relationship to their constituents? I think i think it would mean a lot. Get shifted pretty quickly. Okay, cool. Wait, what did you have something you want to know? We got it. Okay, we gotta let me go and we’re happy. Three. Thank you, thank you so much. Thanks for being part of the show. Amy. Of course. Thanks, amy, and we got to go to a break. When we come back, we’ve got got more giveaways. We got live. Listen, love podcast, pleasant she’s, an affiliate, affections. You gotta hang around, stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to 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. Lively conversation. Top trans sounded life that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i am his niece, carmela. And i am his nephew, gino. Ah! My niece’s name is carmela. Come on, that was carmela and gino metal, niece and nephew there. Now they’re not yet there. Now thirteen and eleven, they’re italian. Let’s, give something right there. A little talent, let’s. Give something away. I got some more cure a coffee. Um and this time it’s going to seth perlman. Ah he’s at s j perlman p r l m a n and he tweeted better, brighter, bolder broadcasts for those who give back yeah, you know that’s an attorney that’s, that’s that’s about what you’re gonna get. You know, i know it’s great just writing for a living. No such problem not very good and i’m grateful for him tweeting out and using the hashtag non-profit radio three fifty for today’s show. So we’re sending him a pound of bolder kira coffee for seth perlman. Claire cura coffee directly connects coffee lovers with farmers and families who harvest the finest organic coffee dean’s. With every cup of cure, you join our effort to expand sustainable dental care to remote communities around the world. We are a direct trade coffee company with direct impact brought directly to you, creating organics miles beyond the cup. Cura coffee dot com your coffee dot com love them. Thank you so much, cura, for sponsoring those two giveaways and we got a grand prize to give. Away the grand prize is going to cheapen cole she’s at non-profit chapin and she tweeted for today’s show congrats to tony martignetti on celebrating non-profit radio three fifty seven years of enriching inspiring content on an amazing podcast exclamation mark thank you! Thank you so much. We got the grand prize for you and that is a seven part webinar training siri’s sponsored by pursuant are our sponsor. I hope they’re not at their sponsoring. Too many eyes not distribute the sponsorship dollars too broadly. I mean, don’t forget non-profit radio for god’s sake. Claire, what about that? What about that seven port? Serious? Well pursue it is proud to sponsor a seven part webinar siri’s with some of the world’s top fund-raising experts, including gael perry from fired-up fund-raising the donor relations guru lynn wes for simon scribe er from change fund-raising leah eustis s f r ee and founder of blue canoe see change strategies founder mark rovner and a rachel muir c f r ee what’s that stand for cfr certified fund-raising executive and then there is also a c f r ee what’s that advanced certified fund-raising and then there’s and then there’s double advance. D a c f r double advanced, which and then it has an asterisk at the end too. And then you drop a footnote at the bottom of the page and it says that you’re super sort of fundchat yes, so go for the cfr, which i just made up. In fact, it looks like dale perry. Looks like cal perry just joined us on now. Hey, just join us on facebook. Hello, gail pantry. So joined lisa martin game and joined hello, lisa. Jeff lane joined wow, let’s vote for lots of friends from and vot nor the value altum pan high school. Thank you so much, jeff. Lisa um, panda reso mary-jo chamberlain didn’t realize this show had so much math. Now, this is a special because it’s got a three, five zero in the title. So not to worry come back and not a lot. Nothing so much math every time greg rajic am i going to saying no, no, i was left thinking you did mind you don’t mind my lip sync when you were singing it all now and listen if you want to sing harmony like you know what does that mean? I have jack in jail, jack in jail, not proper radio jock in jail, i don’t know. Not sure harmony is normally the lyrics is that what the lyrics is now it’s like when you sing, when people sing together, one sings like the team, the melody and the harmonies, like another part, like the background, or sometimes what’s the lyrics what’s that what’s that i hear the words that’s, the word zoho fancy way to say it works the melodies, the tune this is why i have drug in jail. Um, i like to write the words first and then i do the lyrics after let’s do live listen alone using one minute. So what? The end of the show home? My god, no, no, alright, live! Listen love, i can’t do i can’t doing languages look at this live love! I’ve got to get out besides everybody on facebook, shalem, malaysia, seoul, south korea padano dune yano, italy thanks for being with us. Italy, brazil, austria, germany non-cash yang, china let’s bring it into the u s new york, new york multiple in new york city, potomac. Marilyn brooklyn, new york. Stuart scott stein, who hails from oakland. California. Madison, wisconsin south orange, new jersey. Swan’s bar in north carolina, whoa! Swan’s morrow, mendham north, new jersey, woodbridge, new jersey. New winds or new york. Tampa, florida st louis, missouri hyre hobson, houston, texas live listener love i got into the ophelia affection before you cut me off. Sam, i am and fm stations throughout the country. So glad you’re with us. It’s the affiliate affections. Thank you for being part of the show and the podcast pleasantries. I’ve got to go out to the over twelve thousand podcast listeners. I am grateful you are with us. Sam is cutting me off. I wish i could be more effusive. We got to go. Duitz snusz stein. Claire meyerhoff. Thank you so much for being with you. Thank you. Thank you. Being with me for three. Fifty next week. Personalized philanthropy. Steve myers wants your fund-raising to be seriously, really donor-centric he’s with me for the hour. If you missed any part of today’s show where i beseech you, as i do every week find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled and by we be spelling supercool spelling. The fundraisers we b e spelling dotcom are creative producers. Claire meyerhoff sam league rules is the line producer shows social media’s by susan chavez. Our 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 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 but 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 July 21, 2017: Look Good To Creditors & What Boards Get Wrong

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Paula Park: Look Good To Creditors

Loan? Credit line? Bond issue? Paula Park reveals how to impress creditors when you’re knocking on their door for money. She’s senior vice president at BankUnited.

 

 

 

Gene Takagi: What Boards Get Wrong

Gene Takagi

You may have heard rumors that your board isn’t perfect. We’ll run through the most glaring offenses you need to look out for. Gene Takagi is our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group.

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent get excited for next week it’s our three hundred fiftieth show seventh anniversary i’ll say more in a few minutes and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into psych ataxia if i tried to focusing on the idea that you missed today’s show look good to creditors loan credit line bond issue pull a park reveals how to impress creditors lenders when you’re knocking on their door for money, she’s senior vice president at bank united and what boards get wrong? You may have heard rumors that you’re bored isn’t perfect. We’ll run through the most glaring offenses you need to look for. Jean takagi is our legal contributor and principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group i’m tony take two, sixty nine and three fifty, but not four hundred nineteen. Responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com my pleasure to welcome first time guests to the show pullup park she’s. Senior vice president responsible for new business development in the non-profit hyre ed and healthcare sectors at bank united’s commercial banking she’s, a banking industry probono over twenty five years of experience focusing most of her career on the banking needs of tax exempt organizations before bank united, she was with wells fargo bank. You can email paula she’s offering her email. People are at bank united that dot com welcome polish pork high thank you. I’m very excited to be on the three hundred and forty nine forty nine that’s. Amazing, thank you very much. It’s almost set seven years called seven wow, seven years what’s one week between friends, right, seven years. Thank you very much. Um, yeah, i don’t know if i’ve had, uh i don’t know if we’ve had a bank around before. I think you might be our first banker. We’ve talked about financial things, but we’ve had, uh, more investment advisors you’ve had, you know, invite investors. We certainly had accountants on you. Might be the first banker zoho that’s. Exciting. Three forty nine. Right? Right. That’s like a low percentage. I feel i’m in the one percent you’re in the europe urine the point o o one. Yes. Okay, so we want to look good for creditors. White let’s. Just make something explicit. Just in case there are maybe or eggs that i haven’t thought about this. Why is it advantageous for them to borrow money? Well, you know, there’s. A lot of reasons for borrowing money. And first, i’d like to say that these air my opinions and up the opinions of my bank. Okay. Okay. Disclaimer. Thank you. So, you know, it helps you expand the reach of your own money. So not every organization can afford to do everything they need to do today. But, you know, do you have a long term risk repayment show source for a short term needs that’s a great reason to borrow. So you want an asset that will last you for the rest of your life. But you don’t have all the money today, okay? Like real estate. Like real estate. But you have the cash flow to support that. Maybe you want to think about borrowing, maybe it’s a great alternative to renting. Ah, and also non-profits use it to help them with their seasonality of their cash flows. Okay, that would be a credit line. Yes, and cried. Um, one of the purposes. Do you see clients coming to you for borrowing? Yeah. I mean, it’s, mostly capital and cash flow. Sometimes we bridge capitol campaigns. So again, back to this that, you know, you have pledges, but they’re going to come in over ten years. But you could buy that asset today if somebody will finance those pledges. Okay, so if there’s the right kind of documentation against those pledges, right? Like, if they’re biting their legally binding, right? I guess that would be part of your due diligence, and they allow lending. You have to let them, you know, they have to say in them that you could borrow against. Okay. All right. We’ll get to the details. All right. Cool. So so you have this future basically receivables? Yes. And you could borrow against them. And under the right terms? Yes. Okay. All right. All right. So it’s, mostly for assets and credit lines. Cash flow is mostly assets and cash flow. Okay, cool. Well, sam, just hand me the list of live listeners were bursting with live listeners who want to hear about looking good to creditors. Okay, we’ll get to the live. Listen, love that comes later. Okay. Okay. So, what should we think about before we approach a creditor lender and start an application or even to start inquiry? What do we need to have in line first? Yeah. I mean, i think you want to get your story together. You want to understand yourself and why you’re approaching them what you’re asking them for, you know, is there collateral? Can you offer collateral? You want to understand your own finances, and you have to be able to explain them to a bank in a way that they can understand wth? Um, okay, so we can’t just voice the whole bunch of documents on you and let you sort through it. Yeah, i know that’s an awful approach that does happen. And that tends to be the last thing you pick up. Don’t do this. Don’t do this. Don’t you throw a whole bunch of random things, really? Organize it. Think about your approach. Think about what you want to tell folks about yourself. Um, if you have a compelling story about yourself, tell it. And you have to be able to tell the story. Behind your numbers, because if you can’t tell it, nobody else can understand, okay, so you’re going to ask is this is this now is this? We’re like an initial phone call just like inquiry call i call up and say, you know, we’re thinking we have a cash flow issues, you know, we’re thinking of fifty thousand dollars credit line would be valuable for us, right? I could that would help us make payroll when you know things like that make our rent payments, et cetera, eyes this in an initial call, or do i need to have these things in line before i even call you and say, i’m thinking about doing this? Are you able to help? Yeah, i mean, i love asking questions, so don’t expect that the person on the other end of the line isn’t gonna have a ton of questions there are even in the usual cold, even in the initial call try to feel it out and see if it’s something you’re interested in or not, um and get an idea of what they’re looking for. Why, you know how they’re going to pay you back? That would be part of the initial conversation, because if it’s something you know you can’t help somebody with you don’t want to spend too much time on your trying to feel it our right. You’re beginning contrary, maybe the popular opinion. You’re not just throwing money at every organization that comes because you because it helps you make money, right know now you know. Okay. There’s due diligence. There’s a lot. I do know. How are you going to repay? All right. So how are we going to repay? I mean, if we need to borrow, how do we repay? Well, so, you know, there’s there’s. A couple of different ah, ways to do that. One is, obviously you have excess cash flow every year. So on a long term repayment, you know that extra hundred thousand dollars you have every year goes to pay the term long town. Okay. Okay. With, you know, with the capital campaign, you play it down, you pay it down, it’s the pledges come in and for lines it’s around your seasonality. So you know your your contract started. You perform the service now, it’s. Three months later. And you’re starting to get paid lines when i was in. College lines meant something different. I am not referring to the white lines now. No white lies a credit line. He’s a credit local. Just making sure. Yes, so would credit lines it’s based on your seasonality. So wants your money starts coming in from your government sources. You should be able to pay those back down, okay? Or maybe your donors, donors or your biggest and, you know, whatever that is. It’s it’s lines are meant to be drawn down and repaid and drawn down and repaid over the course of the year, and most of them have a thirty day cleanup. So you’re not supposed to use them for thirty consecutive days. Oh, meaning thirty days you’re supposed to be paid off within thirty days within it. Within thirty days of every year consecutively you have to pay a line of credit town. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, keep about my organization. Can’t keep a balance. No, the idea is to show us that we’re not your permanent working capital, that we’re just a temporary solution. Otherwise, that usually shows evidence of a larger problem. Yeah, because i say all right, right. If there’s always a balance, then the credit line isn’t the right vehicle for you, right? There’s always a balance because, yeah, you have a systemic issue usually. Ok, which is you’re you’re going to try to get at before issuing the line, right? I try to figure that out. First poker. Sometimes things aren’t as visible. Okay, we’re gonna talk about that. We’ll get more detail. Right? So we got we got to go away for our first break for a couple minutes, and then we come back. Of course, paul and i’m gonna keep talking about looking good to creditors. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website. Philanthropy. Dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Uh, paula okay, um, so now we’ve progressed past. We’ve gotten past our initial inquiry call, okay? And we’re still viable. Yes, we haven’t. Slobbered we understand our financials. Oh, how would you want to see you? So when you say understand your financials on what you’re looking for, what kind of explanation? I mean, you know, numbers tell a story and what we want to hear the story behind the story. So we want to understand, you know, what you’re doing out there, you know, how you’re helping people, but also how your funding helping people, what your cash flow cycles like, you know, why you’re goingto borrow you know, you’re you’re building a new homeless shelter? Why do you need it for how many people are going to stay in there? How do you how are you going to pay it back? You know, um, you know, how do you budget? How do you work towards your budget? I the one of the my pet peeves is when somebody tells me they don’t track their budget, that scares me. Oh, that’s, terrible ally, i admit that. To a potential lender. Yeah, i’ve had that several time. We don’t track our budget. We don’t track to our budget and money. And yeah, we don’t do internal financial statements. We don’t track to our budget, right? That’s about that’s a bad sign? Yeah. That’s a that’s, a big red flag right there. It’s like, how do you know what you’re doing if you don’t keep track, right? Yeah. How do you know? How do we know we’re going to get paid back-up wi calendar if if you’re not if you’re operating from a budget. So at the end of the year, you figure out if you made it or not. Yeah, december thirty first. Yeah. Scary. Scary. It’s bad. We shouldn’t be operating that way, but that’s systemic. I mean, that there’s a there’s. A problem with board oversight there? Yes. What is not executing its fiduciary duty? Okay, i don’t know if jean takagi is listening, but he and i are gonna talk about some of the things boards get wrong. That’s one of them? Yeah. Okay, now. All right. So next step durney. What is the next? How would you define the next? So so what? I usually do is i gather financial data. So i asked for three years of audited financial state man’s your current year today how you’re tracking to your budget, you know, some sort of a numeric picture of how you’re going to pay me back. You know, what’s the funds flow if it’s aline what? Your cash flow cycle looks like that’s. Another red flag when somebody says, i don’t know what my cash flow cycle looks like. Um, you know, what’s your plan to pay me back to cash flow cycle well, that’s, your receivable cycle. So most organizations, especially government funded, have a very typical we know. Yes. Okay. All right. So we know, on the end of the quarter, we were very rich, and then we draw it down from the end of the quarter. Because our government pays us, the state sends me. It sends us to check every quarter, and that sustains us for the three months and right. And then we have other revenue sources, like events. And then we have individual donors account for right. Thirty percent of our revenue like that. I mean, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s it and you. Show me your cycle s i collectibe bunch of financial dad and then what i like to do is come visit, meet in person, see what you look like, see where you work here, what you sound like in person and, you know, asking a lot of questions and again have you tell me your story? How can we impress you now now you’re we’ve given the documents now coming on site, right? Right? How can we impress you so that you will give us the loan? Whatever it is that we’re that we’re looking for? Yeah, i mean, first of all, i always bring somebody with me and they’re usually the credit person, one of the credit people, so if you don’t impress them, does that mean they’re the ones who make the decision date? They either make the decision or influence the decision, okay? And you know, if they’re not impressed, that’s it but the end of the line and how to impress them. So you know again, you tell us your financial story. You tell us how you’re going to pay us back. You tell us about what you dio and how you do it. If you have a great program that you can show us that that’s going to really impress us. That always helps a lot. Ok, so show off our facility. Oh, yeah. Even if it’s not directly related to our loan. Yes, absolutely. Okay, you know, bring important people. Bring the cfo. Bring the executive director. Boardmember bring aboard matter-ness boardmember i love when they bring boardmember bring a boardmember show how committed everybody is, you know, talk about why they’re there and how much they love it. And, you know, it’s and the personal impression means a lot. You know, if you leave a meeting and you don’t trust the people you spoke with, they don’t sound articulate. They were confusing. You know, the chances of getting the loan get lower and lower. What about its summertime? Okay, if i show up at this meeting shorts and flip flops. Yeah, shorts and flip flops are a very bad idea. I’ve had it happen. Birkenstocks, you name it. Cut off jean shorts. You know the bank for god’s? Yeah. Think about your audience. You know, even if you have casual fridays, you should probably hold off on showing me your casual fridays until i know you better invite you for monday through thursday. Yeah. Invite me monday through thursday if you don’t want unless we’re doing a barbecue sacrifice your casual friday. Yeah, yeah, but don’t turn up in your casual friday close. I want to bring my credit people it doesn’t mean they’re in suits and dresses. Yeah, we just sweat it out and suits and you’re in your flip flops. They feel insulted. Okay, what else? Anything else? Tip of ways we can impress you. Tips inside of these the pro tips. I mean, you know, the pro tips. I guess one of the things we talked about was pricing hot off the show. But pricing bad banks, you know, come up with a score card on you. They basically take all your data and important into a financial model. And we come up with a risk rating for you and it’s. A number, man. Every bank has a different range, but the idea is the same. And and the number we come up with for you goes into usually some sort of a pricing model. And based on the number your price changes like there’s no, your interest rate. You interest rate, right. So the mohr um risk-alternatives and some of that’s quantitative. So you can’t really change that, it’s. Just a number driven there’s a portion that’s, qualitative and that’s. Where impression and how you sounded in how your story sounded. That all goes into the quantitative piece. Quality. Yes, qualitative piela that that moves your number around. What would you say that proportion is quantitative qualitative in deciding this risk rating? I mean, quantitative hyre okay, but sixty, forty years? Seventy, thirty, thirty percent. I can influence about a third that’s. A lot of my rate by putting on a good show having good present that making a good presentation, right? Right. I mean, there’s, nothing you khun dio, if your numbers are never going to work, there’s nothing you can do to change that. Okay, but if your numbers do work there’s a lot you could do to move, move it around and and put yourself in a different place. Okay, so, you know, i think that’s an important thing to consider is is what impression you’re leaving people with, you know, think about before you have before you call before you meet. What impression am i? Trying to give you what are some of the numbers that go into the these these? Yeah, that go into the risk lady. Yeah, s so what we do is we take your you typically it’s three years. We take your last three years of audits, and we lined them up against each other so we can look at trends. And we re like ratio analysis. We like, first of all, we do a percentage for everything. So revenues is, you know, made up of seventy percent this and ten percent bad expenses. We break every line item into a number and a percent. And then we blind him up so we can say things like, why did your program express spence? Increase relative to your revenue? Why was it twelve percent last year and this year, it’s? Thirty ah, wei take numbers and we pour them into a whole bunch of ratio analysis. Leverage is an important one. It’s basically debt to net assets. All right, we’re getting into jargon jail territory now? Yeah, you just defined leverage. That’s. Good it’s. A ratio of debt to net asset that to net assets. We look at liquidity numbers, which can be all different. It could be a gross numbers. Something like cash and i’m restricted investment. You can be a ratio like sabat current assets minus current liabilities. That could be current assets divided by current liabilities. So there’s a whole bunch of different numbers to look at. And then they think the most important one is debt service coverage ratio here in jargon. Jill. Yeah. Yeah, i know, but i can tell you thie d s c r the common. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s, your operating access plus interest appreciation operating access that we have to find that. Alright. Wait. All right. So let’s, just leave it with dug a hole here. Alright, jargon, but you get me out. Get me out of this hole. I mean, this dark hole, all right, basically shows us how you can pay us back that we have the capacity to pay you back. Yeah, it has to be better than one. If you want more detail in that email. Female polar at people back tonight at dot com. Okay, i got out of that slow. Okay. So, what’s all right, so you’re going toe. You’re doing deep evaluation. This is your your due diligence, right? God, quantitative and qualitative. What are some red flags? That that, yeah, what is a red flag? Yeah. I mean, you know, you’re looking for big, big red flags are ah, negative net assets. So negative equity negative equity means you you own less than you owe you. Owe more than you. Everything, including our copier are if we owned property, whatever all our assets yet or less than our liability. Yeah. That’s, that’s a big no, no, but, you know, this debt service number we’re talking about is below weinger okay, skip over that. Okay? You’re okay, you’re below one the one that’s bad that’s bad. You’re operating continually at a loss like year after year after year after year here on it’s getting worse, okay, you know, so the trends are getting worse. You know that? The number that you’re looking at two pay your backs getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Right? So your risk the risk of this money that you’re going to be lending is rising and rising, right? What? It may just be so high that when that we can’t even help you. Right? Right. All right, red flags. Any other red flags? Birkenstocks, you’ve got a deal. Killer it’s not a deal killer. I’ve done, i’ve done deals for cookie people and strange outfits, but but there, but they paid more. They might have paid for that race probably were hyre yes, stocks, birkenstocks will cost you, you know? I mean, they’re they’re lovely, but not not, not when you’re meeting the credit people, right? And if you go out to meet with people and for burke, they don’t understand what they’re talking about and they can’t tell you why they’re expenses. Air hyre this year, and they don’t manage to a budget and you walk in and the ceiling’s falling down, you’re like, i don’t know if i want to do that. What if we’re lending for renovations because our ceiling is falling down? Well, that would be we’re borrowing. That would be a different story. But if this is like your not that, you know, your i’m in for working capital and you know, the book just fell on my head. I’m a little worried, okay? Yeah, but you have deeper issues beyond. Yeah, there’s more keeping your program’s going in. Your staff paid yes within which these programs and staff are residing is not stable, right? Your buildings falling apart. Yeah, this is fun. And you? Oh, well, let’s, get back to some of the fiduciary duties that the board should be overseeing. What if there’s excessive compensation, right? I mean, you know, there’s not a hard and fast rule for executive compensation. But i do think that if you see stuff that’s really out of the norm, it does raise a big red flag. And one time, for example, i was looking at the nine. Ninety of social service that their financial statement there ought. It looked a little odd, so i went to the nine. Ninety to see if i could dig a little deeper because there’s. A lot of information in there. And i found out thea president, ceo and cfo. Were husband, wife and son. Oh, no. The social service was it’s operating at a loss, but the three of them together made over two million dollars a year. And the headquarter hyre? Yeah, hop on. The headquarters was being rented from the president. Man, i didn’t do that loan, right? Yeah. That’s. Egregious. Yeah. That’s. Great. Where’s, the board i don’t know. And it’s it’s, you know, it’s, a founder run entity. So, yeah, that has to sell that story. Yeah, and i won’t tell you who but it’s when you know very marriage. One wife and son. Yeah, and the three of them are making two million dollars over that’s a lot for a social service. Especially one that’s operating at a deficit. Right? Him? Yeah. So, you know, i look for things like that. Google, sir. Oh, you mentioned. Oh, okay. You mention financial statements, flandez these come with a lot of footnotes? Yes. When i was in law school, i had a professor who he was so keen on the footnote being so important that the answer to an exam turned on whether you read the footnote or not. Yes, absolutely right or wrong in big way. Whether you if you didn’t read the footnotes. Footnotes i read, i actually i read the footnotes first before i even look at the financial numbers because their stories in there because that’s, the football i love the footnotes. Yeah, there’s. A lot of stuff in there. It’s. Very interesting. Um, all the good stuff’s in the footnotes if we’ve got stuff buried in the footnotes that we would rather you didn’t see? Should we just let you read it on your own? Or should we come out clean and say, you’re going to see cem, some improprieties or some, you’re going to see some red flags? Let me talk about these shoes. In other words, should we reveal it, or shall we leave it to you two? Maybe you won’t find it. Yeah, it’s always better off to come up front with things make cerini find it, maybe we find it and and you know what it is and and and if it’s on google, if i can google it, you have to tell me, because if it’s out there, i google search everybody everything yeah, bad press um and if it’s out there on google, everybody knows so china hide it it’s better to just tell you story a pride. It always sounds worse when you dig it up on your own. Absolutely well, that’s. Like being ten years old, it’s. Much better to go to mom and say you did something bad. Then have her discover that you fed the broccoli to your dog. Right? Right, it’s. A deal killer. When you find something on google and it’s egregious for me, it was liver, but i have cut it into little bits at a smother it with ketchup. I always say, if you covered cutting little bits and spread it around the plate, it looks like a lot less right, right. At least hide it under the mashed potatoes. Yeah, hide it or just diffuse it when it’s dense on the plate. That’s when? It’s scary, right? Just just last night, this came up, somebody cooked me liver, even smothered with onions. I just i’m not a liver fan myself, but you got to come clean. He gotta come tell up front. You know, we don’t like liver here in this organization, right? That’s, right? And we want you to know and here’s why? And here’s but here’s what we do instead we have other sources of iron right supplement. Wei have other sources of good protein. That’s right? We’ve finished. They were in vegan. They were even begin here. Yeah, there are good. So alright. Come clean. That’s. What you’re saying? Come clean. Dafs piela all right. Um anything else? All right, so now we’re getting to this, the evaluation, the number’s sounds like we’re just reduced to a bunch of spreadsheets cells, right. While we tell you story too, we tell you story and writing. Oh, so you tell us your story. We tell you, we tell our credit people your story. Okay. Okay. So are you? Basically is your role basically too be an advocate for the would you put it that way and advocate for the non-profit is that too strong of a navigator? As long as that they’re worth advocating for. Okay. Okay. Until they’re not your advocate until they’re not worth advocating for. Yes, absolutely. So you’re the liaison. I’m really a front face of the credit organization. Credit institution, bank united on dh. You’re working between the organization of the credit right in the middle person? Absolutely. I kind of represent both to each other. Anything else we can do to get the best rate possible? We just have, like, a minute and a half left. What could you d’oh? Besides, have great numbers tell you. Good story. Where the right clothes? Show me your show, mia programs. Okay, alright. Stuff recovered. Yeah, i can’t think of anything else in that case tell me why you love. You’ve been in banking and lending twenty for over twenty five years. Why do you love this work? Yeah, i mean, i’m here for the not-for-profits so i’ve always been a not for profit. I started lending to not-for-profits in nineteen, ninety and i’ve been hooked ever since. I love to be involved in the projects i love to be involved in the missions i love to meet the people i’ve set on board. I’ve done volunteer work. I’ve worked. It not-for-profits too and i just i just want to help the the not-for-profits helped the universe. Our cold is to go to that to go to the ribbon cutting oh, i love going to the river cutting that’s like your shining moment of glory when all the all that work you did paid off for everybody. Yeah, so that’s fun. We loved the ribbon cutting and we try to bring some of our bosses to the ribbon cuttings too, and let them see how great we are, where their money did something good for a change. Outstanding cool part. Thank you. Thank you. Ballpark. Senior vice president at bank united park at thank united dot com. Thank you again. Thank you so much. Jean takagi and what boards get wrong is coming up first pursuant they have ah, well, they have something, but you have seen a lot of midyear fund-raising reports now we’ve we’ve crossed june thirtieth and benchmarks being discussed everywhere, you know, whether you’re living up to what the community is doing or not, but one of the most important trends and how do you make the most of the best sense out of them for your organization? What if you’re not hitting the benchmarks that other people have created on dh? How do you keep rising above if you’re if you’re ahead? That’s what the next webinar comes in for from pursuant it’s, the state of fund-raising midyear checkpoint with ceo trent riker he’s going to be on the show next week for the three fifty and senior vice president jennifer abila they’re gonna help you push through your third and fourth quarters if you can’t make it live on july twenty fifth, watch archive either live or archive go to pursuing dot com click resource is then webinars. We’ll be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers make millennial money that’s my own that’s my own alliteration that’s not there so don’t don’t blame alex queer. We’d be spelling for that, but listeners have been talking to alex. I know he’s the ceo there he’s also going to town next week and you could be next. You could be a b you could be you could be next. Look at this. What is brilliant mind since that what? You’re witnessing it at work right now. Um, b next, check out the video at we b e spelling dot com and then pick up the phone for pizza. Talk to alex and look, look what his number is. Nine to nine to two four bees. Okay, see, i’m not the only one now the time for tony’s. Take two. Sixty nine and three. Fifty. I’ve got a new video. Feels good in sixty nine. Get the filth out of your mind. Get it out! This is a family show. Although i don’t know anyone under twenty one. Why anyone under twenty would listen. But in fact, if you are under twenty one and you can prove it to me, i’ll make you listen for the week. Get me at tony martignetti sixty nine is a new position for me, it’s. Hard it’s a hard position. Watch the video and it will all become very clear. Next week is the three hundred fiftieth non-profit radio we’ve got all the regulars that iran, including jeanne kaguya, was coming on very shortly hyre meyerhoff she’s gonna be with me the ceo’s from pursuing and we’d be spelling live music with scott stein he’s going to play our theme song, of course, cheap red wine and another and we’ve got giveaways from pursuant and your coffee. How do you enter the wind post your most creative? Congrats on the three fiftieth use the hashtag non-profit radio three fifty post will pick the best ones those will be the winners here’s that hash tag non-profit radio three fifty you’ll find my sixty nine and three fifty videos at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s take two jean takagi. He, uh you know, he’s been listening to tony take two he’s been on for a couple minutes. You know who he is? He’s, the managing attorney of neo non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the wildly popular non-profit law block dot com and he is the american bar association’s. Twenty sixteen outstanding non-profit lawyer you’ll find him at gee tak gt a k jean takagi. So great to have you back. Welcome back. Thanks, tony. Great to be back. My pleasure. We’re talking about some, um, some mistakes that boards make. What, uh, what brings this to your attention? Well, it’s been in the news a lot on dh governance on every level in every sphere of ah, our country has been coming to a lot of attention and whether things were done properly up on the top or not, um, has become a big issue, and i think there’s a common saying the tone is set at the top and the tone of proper governance on non-profit boards really sets the whole tone for the organization and when you don’t have boardmember that air prepared to set that right tone, there are there are problems that follows, and those are the things that get into the news, okay? And we were just touching on just a couple of those with with paula park a few minutes ago, some talking about some of the fiduciary issues fiduciary duties that board members might be ignoring if they’re if they’re not. Properly prepared for, you know ah, credit application sabat okay, but aside from that let’s, see, what would you like, tio? What would you like to start with you? Pick you pick somewhere. We got to get a bunch to go through. But you pick something to start. I feel like i always dictate to you. You choose. Okay. Let’s do allowing. No, i’m sorry. Go ahead. What would you like to do? Well, i could actually let’s start with sort of conflict of interest transactions and that’s where boardmember sze decide that they want to sell services to the non-profits on whose board they sit and, you know, some some sort of say, all of that should not be allowed. And with private foundations there’s ah, much stricter rule that prohibits most of those transactions. But with public charities, it’s usually not sort of absolutely prohibited in some cases, a conflict of interest times action is actually to the organization’s benefit. Like kinda boardmember says, you know, i’ll give you rent at half of the market rate on you. And you can use my my offices to run the organization. That might be a very good deal for a public charity, but where board get in trouble is where one member of the board says, well, you know, i’ll sell you these advertising services for the organization, and my usual rate is five hundred dollars an hour, but i’ll charge you four hundred dollars an hour, and maybe that is what you know that person’s rate is when they’re selling him tto fortune five hundred companies. But for this little one hundred thousand dollars a year non-profit a four hundred dollar an hour rate for advertising is probably excessive. And if the rest of the board just blindly goes along that’s as well he’s giving us a twenty percent discount let’s go with it that gets boards in trouble. Yeah, okay. Would that fall under that eyes that a conflict, conflict of interests? Yes. I mean, there may be several laws where it could be a problem, but on sort of the federal level on the federal tax level, along with being a five a one c three organization and the public charity, you’re not allowed to engage in on access, benefit transaction where somebody like a boardmember gets an excessive payment. And if that happens, what? The irs could do would say, hey, you know, that was excessive, really, nobody should be paying a charity this side should not be paying more than let’s say, two hundred dollars an hour for those services, so you were overcharging two hundred dollars per hour and what we’re going to make you do, as the irs says, we’re going to say you have to return that excessive portion back to the charity, and then on top of that, we’re going to charge you a tax for violating that rule, and that will be twenty five percent of the excessive amount that you charged. And if you don’t fix that within the tax year, we’re going to charge you a two hundred percent penalty under the mountain, all right away, if any boardmember approved that transaction and they knew or he really should have known it to be excessive, we’re going to hit them with a penalty as well. Oh, my goodness. Okay. And i think you and i have talked about this not recently, but xs benefit transactions. I think we’ve covered this. This yeah, and then very i love that you point out the possibility of individual fiduciary penalties and my saying individual money, penalties for the board members, personal penalties. Yeah, really, really rare. But, you know, if if boards look like they colluded, teo benefit one of their fellow board members and weren’t really looking after the best interests of the organization, they can be imposed. Okay, okay, let’s go to aa, not preventing misappropriation, our misuse of the of the ah, the money’s that come in or the other other assets of the organization. Yeah, i mean, that’s a great segue way because one misuses overpaying a boardmember really is overpaying anybody. So maybe you’ve got a friend. And, you know, that friend is offering this great deal to the organization according to your friend, but maybe it isn’t such a great deal. Or maybe it’s for services that the organization really doesn’t even need. So he’s saying, you know, i’ve got this great storage facility. You guys should rent it, and you know, i’ll give you this this great deal on it, and so the organization goes ahead on, rents it but actually never uses it because they never needed that storage facility. Well, that would be kind of a waste of assets and potentially, a diversion of those charitable assets to benefit somebody’s friend. And again that back and get people in a lot of trouble about cyber security risks what’s the board’s responsibility there? Yeah, cybersecurity czar really hot button issue right now and then we’re seeing it everywhere from, uh, people getting their social security numbers stolen or credit card number stolen and identity theft associated with that. So when non-profits are collecting what they call personally identifiable information information that can be associating with a specific individual, they’ve got certain rules that apply, and these are specific to the states. So there’s certain rules that apply that say, you’ve got to really maintain and protect this information, and if it gets out, if your sites that contain this information are breached and those things that released a lot of states say you’ve gotta notify the individual who’s data has been breached and taken so that they can take steps to protect themselves. So really big deal now you you will have already breached the law if you didn’t create secure systems preventing certain breeches and hackers from getting at that data. And if you fail to notify possibly donor’s information, for example, or some buyers of your services or goods? If you don’t notify them of that reaches well, you could be violating another law. So a lot going on there in cyber security. Actually, another really interesting one was recently there was some ransom where that that was came out and hit not only for-profit organizations but some non-profits is well and ransom. Where is basically where somebody hijacks your site and some of some of your site, maybe for processing donations or for selling goods and services. And so you really rely on having them up every day while the hacker takes over your site says unless you pay me let’s, say, you know, ten thousand dollars by tomorrow, i’m going to keep your site hacked and it may take you, you know, even with your experts a week, two weeks to recover it, and maybe you’re gonna lose a lot more money if you do that now, what do you do? Yeah, we just had that nationwide within about the past, not not not just nationwide internationally with in the past, what, six weeks or so? See, i think the wannacry ransomware i don’t know if it’s called a virus or something else. But yeah, it was widely prevalent in a lot of organizations, and organizations have to figure out how to deal with that and it’s best to figure those things out before it actually happens, rather than after the fact we just had a guest with in the past. I’d say that in the past two months, mark last night was shine mark shine. I think, talking about cyber security on how to ensure against it, the different policies that are available. Teo, to protect your organization in the event of a breach s so you could listen to you could look back at that it’s just with i’m sure it was mark shine just in the past couple months, okay, let’s. See, um, let’s. I do want to get teo another, another popular blawg, not not as popular as non-profit law block dot com, but we’ll we’ll give ellis card or a shout in a couple minutes. How about yeah, investments what’s the what? I don’t think you and i have talked about this one, the board’s responsibility around the investment policy statements of the organization? Sure. So, you know, even some smaller charities, you know, they got reserves and order some of them anyway. If they’re lucky, enoughto have not have to live sort of day by day, have some reserves on dh. They may want invest those reserves rather than just keep it in in a checking account, for example. And if you do have assets for investment was a charity. There are state laws that are associated with prudently investing those foreign investor axe. Yeah, on dh those are really important to pay attention to so some charities and some have come to us for service. You know, when when the market is it is it’s hot on the market has been pretty good lately, you know, they’re also served deals out there, and some are like going no, you know, we would like to invest all of our our money in this hedge, but, uh, and they may not even know what a hedge fund is. And i don’t know that anybody actually knows what a hedge fund is, because that covers so many different broad groups of investments, but they tend to be wildly speculative, meaning you could make a ton of money on them in a short period of time, and you can lose a lot of money in a very short period of time and that type of speculative investment making unless it’s part of like a prudent portfolio where maybe, like ten percent of your assets are devoted to those that are, you know, much more speculative, but ninety percent are in much more conservative investments can be a real breach if you put all your money’s in one basket, which it’s never good ideas, we’ve learned from our our parents or our kindergarten teachers. Um, you know, you’ve got to make sure that the portfolio of different investments you have is prudent, and so you’ve diversified your risks and not put it all in some wildly speculative investment, and that could be not only a breach of your fiduciary duty but reach a prudent investor rules and there’s a rule we don’t wantto get into jargon jail, you’re always about the impression that the acronym uniforms prudent management. Of institutional funds act, and it says that you have to look at different concerns when you’re investing on dh. It really talks about conservative investing in a portfolio with an eye on what your mission is as well. Gene, just give that acronym and what it stands for again, please, i talked over you sure upmifa upm i f a, the uniform, prudent management of institutional funds act. If you google upmifa and your state, you’ll find what the law is, and i think that’s in forty nine states, i think maybe pennsylvania’s the outline, hold on. All right, all right, thank you. I’ll try teo, keep my tongue civil from here on, but all right, let’s, go out for our break. When we come back, i’ve got live. Listen, love a ton, and we’ll give a shout out to another law block that you might be interested in state with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Krauz hyre hopes could be with us next week for the three hundred fiftieth show as well. Jean takagi, listen, let’s, do the live listener love because we’re bursting here. Tampa, florida bronx, new york and if we got all five boroughs, we got multiple manhattan. We got bronx. We got staten island. Um, we have brooklyn where’s, queens, queens. Let us down. All right. We got four out of five and multiple said, multiple manhattan, woodbridge, new jersey. That’s not far. Laura, laura, laura, belinda, california live listen and love to all of you, but also to torrington, connecticut. I’ve been to torrington, that’s, a nice little town. I did some consulting there. Uh, social service agency. Torrington. And you have that that renovated theater right in downtown. I love that’s, very pretty. Minneapolis minnesota lives their love to you also new bern, north carolina and midlothian, virginia. Midlothian, midlothian live listen love. However you pronounce it let’s, go abroad. Not too many people abroad, nobody, nobody in asia, nobody at all in asia. This, i think, is the first show where there’s, nobody from asia. Wow. Okay, uh, they’ll be back. Uk? We can’t we can’t we see uk, united kingdom so we don’t know whether it’s whales or ireland or scotland or england we don’t know well, you’re in the uk so we always give always give you know you got to do the you got to recognize that there’s more than one country in the united kingdom, please and germany, good talk, live listen love all our livelong sinners on dh so of course, on the heels of that has got to be the podcast pleasantries because we’ve got over twelve thousand podcast listeners in the time shift. Thank you. Pleasantries to our podcast listeners, never forgetting them. And then, of course, the affiliate affections to our am and fm stations throughout the country. And by the way, i have four new stations to introduce next week on the three, fiftieth four brand new stations joining us throughout the country from new york, colorado to washington. I think porter stations but for the current stations listening today affections to our am and fm listeners. Thanks so much for being with us, everyone. Thank you, jean. Thank you for that indulgence. You know the thanks that you know the gratitude has got to go out, right? You know that? Absolutely. Thank you. Um okay. So let’s give a little shout out to ah, another. Another non-profit attorney ellis carter. She she she curates the charity lawyer blawg, cherry lawyer block. And you know, ellis carter. I did turn and she’s a wonderful person and a great attorney. Alice and i have had a chance to speak together and work together on the few occasions you’ve worked together too. Cool. All right. So on her block post going back, i think it’s two thousand nine there was one of her earlier poster, if not her very first post. She links to you while she mentions a bunch of your problem ideas. And i want to give a shout out to your block. Of course. Non-profit non-profit law block dot com where listeners can check out all your list of all ten because you did a post for this show, which actually you do that every week, which i always appreciate every time you’re on, you do opposed. So if you want to see the full list of jeans, go to non-profit loblaw dot com. But ellis carter has charity lawyer blawg and she’s got a couple on there. That i want to talk about, like micro managing staff are you are you comfortable talking about ellis carter’s board governance mistakes? Yeah, absolutely actually give credit to her. She came up with a list of ten, and then i just added a few more to to her list, and so she recaptured all fifteen together on her block, but she was the one who came up with micro managing staff and it’s a really important one because i think he probably seen it as well. Tony, where board members start to get involved and then go around the executive director and start to give directions to the staff. Yes, i have and creates all kinds of political trouble and reporting line trouble and yeah, yeah, but, you know, part of that can be the responsibility of the ceo to and blurring lines and, you know, having boardmember do things that maybe you’re not appropriate, like, you know, day to day tasks and things. Yeah, and so, you know, oftentimes when you, this is a kind of a growing pain for some non-profits as well, because when you’re on all volunteer non-profit organization, it is where the board members involved. With everything as well and and managing volunteers in that case. But once you start to grow up a little and have staff and haven’t executive director, the board members have to know to pull back and, you know, for one thing, boardmember should know that individually they have no inherent authority to do anything. They don’t have the authority to manage staff it’s only collectively as a board where they have authority officers like your executive director or your ceo perhaps might have the authority to give limited direction to the staff to ceo would obviously have have the ultimate authority there with respect to the staff, but just knowing where your boundaries are, it’s really important and from a liability standpoint, board members, if they start to mismanage, that could get hit with unemployment claim, which really makes up, i believe more than ninety percent of all directors and officers insurance claims our employment related and if they’re directed against boardmember themselves, and if you don’t have dino insurance boy, that that could be a huge problem for individual boardmember so they really have to be careful of that. Another one on ellis’s list is airing disagreements outside the board room and that reminds me of the very timely, like complaining about your attorney general to the new york times as an example, it just happened today airing disagreements outside the boardroom what’s the trouble there? Yeah, and obviously as a non-profit when you’re taking positions, you wantto have one position that you’re setting out to the public you don’t wantto have ah, divided ah statement that you’re giving to a public where some persons involved with the organization are on one side of an issue when other persons are other side of an issue and it looks to the public that the organization is poorly governed, poorly managed, and can’t even make up its mind on what its messages and therefore could jeopardize support. So aaron aaron, you know your disagreements outside of the boardroom, a really big problem for the organization in terms of its, you know, public relations, but also a huge, huge problem for the boards themselves because, you know, tony, if you and i were on the board together and we had a disagreement over a key issue on dh, we got a chance to discuss it, of course, when we go out you know, even if i may have disagreed with you and, you know, your side won, i’m going to be supportive of that. I might not say very much about it, but i’m definitely not going to say, well, i, you know, in in public that i disagreed with it because what happens if i start doing that is i’m a chill further board discussions, you know, if you don’t kick me out of the board for doing that, the board might find itself very, very leery of, you know, raising controversial points because you got this one person who’s going to be a blabber mouth and start teo, reframe everything and criticize you personally outside of the organization, a really big problem. The place for the robust discussion and disagreements is within the confines of the board meeting and maybe discussions that take place in committee or or even know our board members having back channel communications right privately on the phone or email, but publicly wait, where were we? Face-to-face we present one face yeah, and this along with your duty of loyalty to the organization as well, you’re supposed to act as a board member in the best interest of the organization. Not in your personal best interests. All right? Yeah. You don’t want to hurt the organization by by airing your grievances outside. Thank you very much. Looking forward to talking to you next week on the three. Fifty of jean? Yeah, i’m really looking forward to three. Fifty congratulations. Thank you so much, jane takagi you’ll find him at non-profit law block dot com and at g tak gt a k next week three fifty three five oh, how many times i have to say it, make sure you enter to win our giveaways post your most creative congrats with the hashtag non-profit medio three fifty can’t wait for that great fun! If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com we’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com our creative producers climb hyre half sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez and this fantastic cool music is by scott stein be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and degree. Sametz buy-in 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 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 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 August 19, 2016: Your Supercharged Board & Your Content Calendar

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Dolph Goldenburg: Your Supercharged Board

Dolph Goldenburg reveals his wisdom for revitalizing your board committees; making your board meetings effective; and keeping engagement civil. He’s the author of the book “Successful Nonprofits Build Supercharged Boards.”

 

 

 

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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 grow a foe set if i saw that you missed today’s show you’re supercharged board dolph goldberg reveals his wisdom for keeping engagement civil, revitalizing your board committees and making your board meetings effective. He’s, the author of the book successful non-profits build supercharged boards and you’re content calendar what belongs in it? Who do you need to help create it? How do you get the buy-in and how about resources to help you? Our can do content calendar committee from the non-profit technology conference is laura norvig from e t r james porter at the end fund-raising founder of non-profit marketing guide between those on tony’s take two solitude. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. We be spelling dot com. I’m glad that dolph goldenburg is with me. He is managing director at the goldenburg group. Before consulting, he was executive director of an aids service organisation. In atlanta and an lgbt community center in philadelphia, he has more than a decade of fund-raising experience dafs company is at goldenburg group dot com dolph welcome. Thank you, tony it’s. Good to be on. And i have to give you a very you know, it’s, i’m not tryingto humble myself and, uh, you know, be in your in your pocket right away. But i have to apologize because, uh, when i first introduced the segment, i called you dolph goldberg, but that is not correct. Your name is dolph goldenburg. No worries at all of the common short shorthand for the name. Well, okay, well, but inappropriate shorthand. You you have it’s, like calling me martignetti. You know, there is that there is that syllable in the middle. So it’s, dolph goldenburg all right. And you were just recently married. Just last month. I wa sai wass after about ten years together, my husband and i decided to make it legal. So we had a very small wedding with just friends and family outstanding. And that was up in new england, right? That actually was indeed deep, deep south georgia. We’re going ok. Thie twin city metropolis twin. City of helena mcrae, georgia. Okay. I don’t know where i got northeast, but new england. But you are exactly opposite. A small town, georgia. Wonderful. Congratulations. Thank you. And congratulations on this book. Um, why, uh why do we need a book on supercharging boards? That’s. A great question. I have been an executive director for about a dozen years. And? And what i found is an executive director. Was that both my my work as a needy, but also the organization’s mission was was always either supported or made more difficulty because of the board. And what i found was that the time that i would invest in board development and the board would invest in its own development always paid strong reward. You have an interesting personal journey. Is tio how you came to write the book? I do. Actually, i i had been at a housing aid service organization gosh, for about almost five years or so and and realized that i was starting to have a midlife crisis. And so, unlike most people have a midlife crisis, i didn’t have an affair. I didn’t get a corvette. What i did do was i gave ten. Months notice that my job as an executive director and i planned an eight month long sabbatical and my my plan really on that sabbatical. Wass to think about what? What i had done well in my career what i had done poorly in my career and then really kind of put all of that down in terms of my lessons learned around board development and so through that door during that sabbatical, i sort of travel the world. I went to vietnam and cambodia for two months. I hiked around in peru for a month. I hide out west for a month. But between each of those trips, i would come back home. And i would work on this book, which, while it is very short, took, you know, about five or six months to write, and it has tend different zoho areas of topics of improvement for boards were only going to have to time to touch on three, maybe four depending how we go. But, you know, so the message is, you know, you gotta buy the book for the foot for the full ten. I love that message. Thank you. Thank you. All right, and and you’re you’re being very gracious there. I messed up your name. I got your wedding location wrong. We’re starting. I i can’t imagine interview it’s starting worse. But you’re being very kind and gracious, so we’ll get to it. It can only get much better now. Hopefully, i have more the facts, correct. You know, i feel like the interview’s going well, thank you. I do two. Absolutely. All right. Let’s get started. Rules of engagement. You want you want to seymour? Civility on boards? Yeah, and, you know, and and not just not just civility, stability is really important. But board have to sit down and say, what rules are we going to live? These are not the governing rules. These air, not the expectations that every boardmember should have, but they’re really you know, how are we going to interact with each other? What behavior is okay? And his not okay. And civility is a big part of that, you know? But you know, as some other examples we have all seen the boardmember who was the naysayers? Whatever comes up, they try to shoot it down and that’s not on ly unproductive for the board, but it’s also really unproductive for that individual boardmember because what ends up happening is if every time they open their mouth, people sort of roll their eyes. And they just tuned the naysayers. Yeah, this is the person loses credibility. But right now, how are we going to deal with this? Ah, this gadflies, this nay sayer. Well, so i believe that the first thing we do is we help the board developed its own rules of engagement. And so as an example, what would come out of that is, you know, being the naysayers is not okay. And once the board has generally come to alignment on that note, i did not say concensus, but actually come to alignment because, you know, if ninety percent of the board feels that way that’s probably what it should be. So, you know, so once the board has come to an alignment on, for example, may saying is not okay or, you know, or what happens in the meeting stays in the meeting, those types of things. Then when people move beyond that and kind of step outside of the rules of engagement, then the board chair or the governor’s chair can have a conversation with that person and really start to bring them back into alignment on the rules of engagement. Okay. And, of course, the naysayers air going toe may say that rule so on your your your point about alignment? Not not one hundred percent consensus, right? Right. We want to be prepared for the naysayers today. Say that they saying rule right? Yeah, i love the way you said. Okay, well, i spit it out fast. All right? I’ll tell you what, let’s, take our guy lily for a break. And dolph, of course, you and i are going to keep talking about the supercharged board, revitalizing committees and making meetings effective. 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. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent adult let’s let’s hit a few more of these rules of engagement. Ah, i don’t want you don’t want this to sound like a battlefield plan or something, but but ah, in fact, your first one is the is the civility rule. So this the board meeting’s should not be a battlefield. All right, working through committees, we’re going. We’re going to talk a little about revitalising there shortly, but you gotta work through the structure, right? Right. So so one of the rules of engagement the board’s often come up with is if someone has a great idea the place to bring that is to the appropriate committee, not to the full board. And then you really let the committee deliberate on that idea developer recommending agent if it’s appropriate and bring that the full board because really, the full board just doesn’t have time to deal with all the good ideas that are percolating up. Is that it? Absolutely. The the work of a bored is done in its committees and one of the one of the things that i always kind of saying, this is sort of the committee math, if you will, is that if you have got five committees that meat between every board meeting for just ninety minutes, what that means is that committee dill deliberation is seven hours boardmember can’t be seven hours long, but when you have five committees each meeting for ninety minutes, you get more deliberation and you get better recommendations and decisions coming to the board. There also is an expectation that boardmember sze will prepare for committee and full board meetings. Absolutely, you know, nothing is more demoralizing both to senior staff and bored leadership, then for board members to show up having already received the meeting packet, but not having read the reports on these financials because then, really, what happens is the committee reports are just reading what they’ve already written what’s mohr has part of that expectation not also means there’s an expectation on the staff, and that expectation is that meeting packets go out with enough lead time that board members can actually review them. I swear i’ve been to board meetings where there are members opening their their packets for the first time, and, you know, they’re there cramming ten minutes. Before the board meeting is about to be called to order, right? And you know what those boardmember often don’t realize is that it is painfully obvious in the meeting who read the meeting minutes and the meeting packet and who did not read the meeting packet it is it comes out, you’re you’re gonna be you’re gonna be you’re gonna be exposed, you might not be called out, but it’s going to be obvious, right? All right. Um, confidentiality right way got to keep the organization’s promise is close to us, right? And it’s, not just confidentiality within, like, in terms of inside the organization’s. Obviously, what is said in the board meeting does not go outside of the organization, but it all does not go to other staff. So, you know, so any staff member not present in the board meeting should also not be privy to the deliberation of the board and one more that you have rules of engagement dahna whether you have authority to represent the organization, talk about that one, right? So, you know, so oftentimes they’re our board members, i shouldn’t think oftentimes sometimes there are board members who feel that they have the authority to speak on behalf of the organisation every now and then. In fact, when i started one, jobs and executive director someone to actually find a contract on behalf of the organization, they were not a boardmember they did not have the authority to do so, and we had to find a way to back out of that contract, you know? So they also do not have the authority to individually sign a contract unless the board has voted and given them that authority. Now all these rules should be adopted by the board, right? That’s what you were saying earlier, but right, right, but and i also think that the board should sit down and see and have a discussion and see if there’s other rules of engagement that are appropriate for them as a board and again to meet these air different from expectations, you know, you know, expectations are, you know, attendance personal giving expectations are a little bit higher level than rules of engagement, right? And that’s, another part of your book expectations, i just i feel like a lot of guests have covered those, but i’ve never seen you know, we haven’t talked. About rules of engagement and and some of these that you’re talking about, like the like the civility and the the the naysaying, the naysayers way have covered those before. So i like like, this whole this also area the book, and if i could say the civility is really a very positive way of saying no bomb throwers kind of like naysayers, we’ve all seen bomb throwers and board meetings and it’s it’s not effective for the board, you have any, uh, any and any bad stories you want to tell. Oh gosh, you know, i’ve only been permanent executive director of your organization, so i don’t want to get anybody in trouble by telling that story, but by telling a story, but but i will share with you that that i have seen one board where, at every single meeting, you know, this person was completely and totally negative, not just being in a sayer, but completely and totally negative about everything and, you know, was literally throwing, you know, little mini bombs into the meeting to kind of set up disagreements between other board members and then we just sit back and watch them fight for goodness. And obviously that someone who we had to move off the board, i should say, right, right, totally negative influence. Yeah. Okay. Um, let’s go teo to our committee structure, revitalizing committees. Why don’t you want to open this when our pal you want to start with with this kind of work, you know, one of the things that i said before that, you know, really ineffective board, a supercharged board does the vast majority of its work through committees, committees will always have a larger bandwidth and a deeper bench of expertise to deliberate on strategic issues that are facing an organization is part of that one of the things that i recommend is that every committee have an annual plan, so, you know, so they know what they’re responsible for that year. Ideally, they’ll have to read a four goals for the year, but then they also say, ok, if we’re gonna have, you know, six meetings every other month, meeting one we want to cover x meeting to we want to cover something else meeting three, so so that way they’re always moving the ball forward on these projects, but they’re they’re also making sure that what? They do is in alignment with the strategic plan and the organizational goals. You said it earlier. The work of the board is done through the committees. Right. Okay, so we need our committees to be effective and revitalized. As you say in the book, let’s, talk through some of the essential committees. Just in case people are not familiar with the work of the executive committee is so, you know, so often times. And let me say that some organizations have justin executive committee. Some organizations have just a governance committee, and some have both and there’s. And depending what the structure is, sometimes there’s some overlap between those two committees. But, you know, typically what the executive committee does, is it it sets the agenda for board meetings. It it liberates or makes decisions on behalf of the board between meetings when absolutely necessary, that should not happen on a regular basis. And then if there’s not a governance committee. Oftentimes the executive committee is also responsible for enforcing expectations, you know, ensuring the committee’s air meeting on a timely manner, ensuring that conflicts of interest are disclosed and deliberated and voted on by the full board. But if there is a governance committee that typically goes to the governing committee now, just like the committee’s air setting ah plan for the year is the executive committee setting up a board plan for the year? Absolutely, you know, ideally in its first month of the year, the new executive committee wants to sit down and think about what the strategic plans goals are for the year, determine which committees can help drive those goals forward and then and then work with those committees. They developed their annual plan as well. Now off. And i think also a part of that, and this is going to bleed over a little bit latto making meetings effective. The executive committee also needs to figure out what the organization’s calendar is, including the board calendar, and make sure that that is in the plan as well. The all the committee chairs sit on the executive committee, right? And it depends for some organizations. Every committee chair sits on the executive committee and other organizations. That’s, just the officers and, you know, again, to a great extent, it probably depends whether there’s a separate governance committee or not. Okay. Okay, so it’s so. Meaning, if you have a separate governance committee, then what? You, you don’t need all the committee chairs on the board, on the executive committee. So, you know, so, so if you’ve got a separate governance committee, then you might actually want all of the committee chairs on your executive committee, because because then what they’re doing, they’re setting the agenda, and and they’re doing sort of, like, very high level board work. But if there’s, not a governance committee and the executive committee, is also responsible for enforcing expectations, ensuring disclosure of conflicts of interest, you know, those those legal obligations that every board needs to be taken care of? You probably want a smaller group of people working on that, okay, so strike three for me, it’s a good thing. I’m the host of this show because i misread that one, too, okay, sorry here, all right. Yeah. It’s a good thing. I’m in charge of the show. All right, let’s. See what else? Another committee finance. And i was finance. Is this the same as the investment committee on a lot of boards krauz investment? Yeah. So? So a lot of aa lot of boards called the finance committee, the finance and investment committee. Some board called the finance an audit committee, but, you know, but typically, especially in the smaller organizations, the finance committee ends up being responsible for the audit, for investments and everything that falls underneath it. Okay. And, of course, a lot more detail in the book. You gotta you just gotta get the book. I’m going to say successful non-profits build supercharged boards. Now the committees that we have they are they’re all supposed to be meeting in advance of full board meetings, right? You i think you recommend a couple of weeks before, right? Right. So in the in the ideal world between every board meeting, all of the committee’s need as well, because every committee is in some way responsible for goals in the strategic plan and it’s helping to drive that forward. So if the committee’s air not doing their work between board meetings, the board meetings are just honestly, no, do not do not move the organization forward is not all right, let’s talk about the fund-raising or development committee what’s your advice there. So, you know, in terms of the fundraising committee, i think it is absolutely critical that and again, this is often for small and medium sized organizations that either have did either have limited or or no fund-raising staff, it is absolutely critical that they start their year looking at actual fund-raising strategies from the prior year determining what was effective, what isn’t, or going, what, as a committee and an organization they want to do again in the coming year and, you know, and i also think it’s it is essential that the fundraising committee have a voice and what the board give get is going to be they don’t ultimately have the decision, but they should have a voice in that on that that goes over to one of the expectations of board board e-giving right, okay, right now, each of these committees needs to have a staff liaison. This is this is going to get a little staff intensive, i am i? I am all about every committee should have a staff liaison. And and really, the role of that staff person is not to run the committee, but it is to help keep the committee on track. And so, as an example of the staff liaison, would help the chair buy-in putting together an agenda and sometimes that’s a friendly reminder sometimes it’s being pleasantly persistent, which is a nice way to say kind of nag, but, you know, but to make sure that the chair puts together an agenda and that it goes out to arrange all logistics for the meeting, so is a room reserved. You know, if you normally have iced tea at your meetings is they’re iced tea there to make sure that the agenda is sent to all of the committee members before the meeting, along with any other information that they’re supposed to review. And then finally, in the ideal world, your staff liaison also takes minutes at the meeting and then send those to the chair of the committee to review and approved before they get sent out. What about the executive committee? Is the ceo or executive director? They have a staff liaison to the executive committee. So in really small, non-profits, you know, so organizations that might only have two or three staff members, yeah, than absolute. The executive director end up serving as the staff liaison in a medium sized organization where the where the ceo or executive director has an executive assistant themselves. They might task the executive assistant with that. Okay. All right, that’s, the that’s, the well we should. We should talk on touch on that that there might be a program committees also that based on your you all your programmatic work, right? And the tough thing with program committees, especially when when the organization has staff, is to ensure that the program committees are operating at a strategic level and not an operational level, and to make sure that the committee really understands what their role is in that respect. And so on example, that i that i often give is, you know, whether whether program operates from seven thirty to three, thirty or eight to four is probably a staff decision. You know where as whether or not a program measures its outcomes is a strategic decision. Okay, right. We don’t want our board meddling in the day to day operations hiring, hiring and supplies and mundane things like that that are taking away from the boards much higher and much more strategic purpose. Right? Okay. All right. Let’s. Look att effective meetings now you talked about the agenda is the importance of agendas. Anything more you want to say about about how important those are? Oh. Absolutely so to me, the real point of putting together an agenda is not just to tell everyone that’s going to be in the meeting, what will happen at the meeting, but it also forces the act of putting together an agenda forces the person leading the meeting to really think through what their goals are for that meeting and to make sure that what happened in the meeting supports those gold. I like your suggestion of putting time limits on each agenda item. I do that when i for the few meetings that i that i conduct usually i’m sitting in them, but i’m not leading them, but when i do, i like to put the time limits so everybody sees it in black and white, and i don’t know how you feel about this. I appoint a timekeeper so it’s it’s somebody different than me? I’m paying attention to the substance of the meeting and the flow, but not the exact timing. Absolutely. I always believe there should be a timekeeper in the ideal world, someone different from the person running the meeting, but the other thing on time and this is something that i’m really adamant about. Especially when there’s a call an option or if or if it’s an entire, you know, teleconference meeting is the meeting has to start on time, so, you know, so even if you don’t have a core on well, you go ahead and you get started when we when we delay the start of a meeting, what we’re really doing this, we’re punishing the people that showed up on time, and we’re rewarding the people who did not show up my welcome. What can we do without what could we do without a quorum, though? Well, so so there’s some things you could do, like, obviously you can’t take votes, but you can start to have some of those strategic discussions. So, you know, so anything that is a report out or just a strategic discussion you can still do without a quorum. You can’t take any votes without a quorum, but you can, you know, but you can have those discussions, okay? And, um, i also think that from from day one, your first meeting, you tell people it’s going to start on time and then you actually do start on time and the late comers they’re going to get the message from meetings too and forward, right, and and also share with you, especially again when there’s a call an option or if the meeting is entirely by phone. You know, i am all about the meeting starts on time, but also late comers. You hear the ding. But we don’t stop the meeting to reintroduce you, to tell you who is present, to tell you what we have already done because otherwise will interrupt the meeting three or four times. So the way i tended when i run those meetings, the way i tend to ask people calling into phone conferences late is to wait until they have something to say in a conversation, and then they introduce themselves. And so for example, they would say, this is dalton, and i want to add, and then they would essentially say they’re comment. Okay, okay, we just have a minute before we have to before we have to wrap it up and let’s leave people with the the importance of minutes in our minute. I’m starting the importance of the minutes, the committee, and it went on the board minutes, you know, so the minutes are the official record of what the committee has done, as well as what the board is done. And, you know, in the ideal world, someone from the outside should be able to read those minutes and have a good sense of the official action of the organization, as well as its goals and issues that it is working on resolving outstanding. We’re gonna leave it there. Dolph the book, thank you, my pleasure. The book is successful. Non-profits build supercharged boards, get the book there’s so much more in it than we could cover here on non-profit radio, i thank you very much. Thank you, your content calendar coming up. First, pursuant, you know who these people are? They have developed tools that help small and midsize non-profits raise the money raised the money that you need to raise falik prospector and velocity. You know, i talk about thes time after time because they’re helpful, and they’re perfect for our audience, even the velocity tool, which was developed for their internal consultants pursuing consultants, running campaigns for their clients. Well, you could get the tool without the without the consultant and that when his velocity and prospector, one that helps you manage time against goal full dashboard keeping you on task day after day, week after week toward that campaign goal, check out these tools at pursuant dot com and we be spelling spelling bees for non-profit fund-raising this is not the spelling bee you grew up with, probably because they bring in stand up comedy, there’s, dance, there’s, booze, there’s, live music. And somewhere in there, the squeezing a spelling bee and fund-raising and not just fund-raising that night, but fund-raising in advance. So it’s ah, i love this because it’s just unusual fund-raising model i haven’t seen spelling bees for fund-raising i got knocked out of a spelling. Bee once on the word lettuce, can you believe it? Let us because spelling bees i don’t know if they’re this formal, but the ones i was in you couldn’t make a mistake and i went, i said, l u e t you see, but it’s too late. I had made the mistake. You’re out out on the word lettuce killed me and the winner of that spelling bee one on aeronautics hyre like i could’ve had the whole thing, but i choked on lettuce. Ever since then i’ve only eating kale. All right, check him out. We be spelling dot com and b is b e now, time for tony’s. Take two solitude. This is important for you because you work in a giving profession. You’re even if you’re back office, you know that your office is giving. Your organization is giving its saving lives. It’s, it’s changing the world. This is this is draining, exhausting work. And you have to take time for yourself. So i strongly suggest. And i hope you did this summer. Or you will as the summer comes to a close. Get time alone. Unconnected. No phones, no text, no e mail disconnected. No. Instagram no snapchat get away and i urge you ah, a little a little jovially in my video this week, it is way beyond typical weekly videos. This one even has a cast and crew. So we need to check out my solitude video. No, a solitude with a cast at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s take two leinheiser love. They will do it a little concisely this time live love going out to everybody. Who’s listening. Now, at this moment you know who you are. You know where you are. The live love goes out. It goes out every single week. Whether alive or pre recorded, the live love goes out. What follows that it’s the podcast pleasantries. I am so grateful for all the tens of that tens. Ten thousand over ten thousand not quite tens of thousands, but the over ten thousand listeners listening in that time shift whatever device, whatever time, whatever activity you are engaged in pleasantries to you and likewise affections to our am and fm affiliate listeners throughout the country, from upstate new york and outside philadelphia in lancaster county to washington and oregon and california and points in between. Affections to our affiliate listeners on the am and fm stations here’s, a panel from ntcdinosaur, and we talked about your content calendar. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc non-profit technology conference were in san jose, california, at the convention center, and this is also part of ntc conversations, my guests, now our laura norvig, james porter and heavy larue miller going to meet them very shortly. First, i have to shout out the inten thie ntc swag item for this interview is popcorn from microsoft, microsoft popcorn, and i have it from our production assistant, anna hannah who’s. Excellent, that this is very good popcorn. Great. We’re gonna add this to the swag pile carefully. Of course, they don’t want it disseminated across the pile and making everything oily, but i will take a couple pieces for myself. Microsoft popcorn okay. See, the closest to me is laura norvig she is a digital media strategist at tr james porter is associate director for external relations at the end. Fund-raising clolery miller is a founder, the founder of non-profit marketing guide, which is that non-profit marketing guy dot com laura james e-giving welcome, thank you. Thank you telling e-giving welcome back. Absolutely good, thank you. Content calendars and you creating communications harmony. That is your seminar topic. Uh, let’s start the star in the middle. James, what do you think? Non-profits they’re not getting quite right could do better about content calendars or maybe even just having one? I don’t know, right? Yeah, well, it starts off with just having one, but i think a lot of the the problems stem from first of all, not knowing what you want or what you need. There are a lot of tools out there and so is something that i wanted to get across. Was that you, khun? Try things and if they don’t work that’s okay, but i think one of the biggest problems is just not not realizing what you need and what what you want. And if you need something from or long term planning. You need something for data. The project management. Do you need a tool? That’s going to be everything? Or do you just need to fill in gaps with some of your existing tools? There’s a whole host of other problems. But i think step one is just really trying to figure out what you want and what your organization needs are. Okay, laura, anything you want to add at this overviewing point? Well, i know sometimes people struggle with as james said, trying to make your calendar maybe do too much and you wantto keep it simple. One of the other things people experience is getting people to actually use the calendar, so keeping it simple can help. Okay. Okay, kivi, anything for us to get us started kick us off. I think people know they need to plan, but then they don’t have time to plan, and so they run around and don’t feel strategic field too busy feel like they’re too many priorities. But then they don’t give themself a chance to stop and think. And the editorial calendar really is a way to stop and think and be more strategic. Okay, on the editorial calendar is the same, but it’s our can’t content calendar, right? Something okay, um all right, so let’s, let’s, uh, let’s get started with what should be in one? I don’t know e-giving you want to kick us off? What some ideas? What? Sharing your content calendar. So in order for it to be an editor of calendar there three pieces one is the communications channels you’re sending out your content in the second piece is the timing behind that when things are going out and the third piece is the messaging what you’re actually talking about so it’s, what you’re talking about when you’re talking about it and in which communication channels, you have to have those three things or in my mind, it’s, not an editorial calendar. Okay, james, you’re doing a lot of nodding. Yeah, i would also add to that that it’s important to also have who is responsible and who is the driver for these things and for for our content calendar anyway, because if you have a lot of people using it, you need to know who to go to jazz questions about that item who’s going to be in charge of posting. It so i think it’s also important to have that, and then i i also would add that making sure somewhere maybe it’s, not in your exact tool, but we’d like to put it in our tool is to also include your audience so that, you know, for each item in your editorial calendar who the audience is going to be, that that’s the right who the messages that particular messages for yeah, but to be very specific about it. And so we you could even do it, split it out by channels so that if you have different audiences on different channels, but the for me that it’s very important to be specific about the audience. Okay, okay, laura, anything you’d like to add about what belongs in our calendar. I think those are pretty much the basics. And then, uh, we sometimes layer on top the pushing out to social and so you could use your calendar as a tool to track so again the channels. But yeah, tracking them twitter and facebook, as well as a block poster newsletter. Okay, okay, very good. What? Yeah. So? So where were you? We’re developing a calendar. That’s got that gun, each message or each campaign? I mean, does it have has our campaigns that also has messages within the campaign? Is it? Is it that granular? I think that’s going to depend on your organization. You know, whether that’s the way you messages through a long campaign and that’s, one of the things we talked about was the long term planning. You can stretch the campaign out over time, but not that’s not gonna fit all or yeah. Okay. Yeah. And i would just add that for us, it does include every message. So for example, we had campaigner on giving tuesday. That was a video campaign, and we had a different video being pushed out every day. And so each one of those messages was individually posted on the editorial calendar. Along with what channel they were being pushed out through every day. For how long? How long before giving tuesday did you start this? There were five. There were five videos, and then the whole campaign we started when you got a tease, it let people know things were coming, so yeah, it was about about a week in total for the campaign. Okay. All right. Anything else you want to say about what belongs? What that covers it. Okay. I like the idea of making sure somebody’s responsible for each each item, right? You gotta know who to talk to without responsibility. This calendar is not goingto not going to get accomplished. Yeah, we actually go to the level of kind of the process planning. So not only who’s maybe writing a block post. Who’s got snusz edited who’s going to copy, edit it. Who’s goingto posted who? You know. So, dan, are you? There were a lot of non-profits that only had one person in their communications department. However, so in that kind of situation, you know, you don’t need to write your name on every single box, right? Well, that could be a message for the ceo. That’s i like that. Look at all this. My name is next on all this and expect me to achieve this. All right? Uh, who was involved in adopting this this calendar? Because we need to have make make sure that the organization is going to accept it. It’s going to buy-in, but they need to be a part of the process. I would think that makes it a lot easier to have them accepted, so give you let’s start with you had around, we start to get this thing well, at what stage we bring others in, right? So i think it is going very from organization to organization and then session. We did talk a lot about getting buy-in from program staff because they’re often the source of the content that’s where the really good stories come from and getting there buy-in as content creators really seeing themselves as communicators is really important, but then it’s also important to get the executive team involved because they’re the ones that really need to set the strategy for the messaging and lots of times there’s a lot of conflicting priorities, too many priorities, too much going on, really a lot of mixed messaging and in those situations it’s really up to the management team to provide some direction. But you know, those air, those air, often times for communications, director’s relationships that have to be built over time. And so i always urge a communications department to just do it, do it themselves. Do it to manage their own workload. And then hopefully over time, you’re really making it a much more organization wide tool. Okay, how does it work within your organizations? Get getting the organizational buy-in yeah, yeah, i would just say that i think you khun get people’s opinions, but it really matters the most of the people who are going to be using it the most on the day to day, those people have to be the most comfortable with it and really be the most okay with it. So, yeah, it is important to get by and from other people, but it it could also be a problem when you have an existing tool that is there already. And you have a new staff coming in and the new staff say, ok, this tool doesn’t actually work for me. So it was something that i mentioned in the session that i thought was important. Wass that to do periodic check ins. And maybe every six months, you kind of a gut check and ask the staff are using the tool. Is this tool still working for us? Do we need to add anything to it? Do we need? To consider changing it because just because you’re using it doesn’t mean it’s working. So i think it is also important to have kind of periodic check ins to make sure that it’s doing what you needed to do, okay, get laura has that work in europe? Well, that yeah, that’s one of the things we talked about in the session was was not being afraid to change your tool if it’s just not working in sometimes that’s a little hard to dio, as i was saying, we work in an orgy where sharepoint is kind of designated bi i ity but it really wasn’t working for us, so i did have a small enough content team that we just kind of went rogue, and and we’re using our own solution with trey lo and yeah, yeah, any other online resource is that you want to share for creation of your of your editorial calendar, a valuable patrol? Oh, fan myself. I’ve also used a base camp before they base camp base camp base camp has been useful and something i mentioned the session to was that i thought it was useful to for me anyway. Tohave in one place. Both a project management software and a content countering which trailer could do as well? It’s a certain degrees, you know, but and it starts getting messy when you have lots of systems and lots of tools, so the more you can integrate things or just have one tool that could do most things. There’s, no one to look and do all but that’s. Why i like to i like to base camp for having the project management and also a more robust calendar. I’ve seen a lot of organizations use google calendars very successfully because you can layer them what you can do with sharepoint too. But it but there could be so you could have separate calendars. But then you can have a view where there rolled up and you can see all of the calendar’s together. So maybe you have, you know, one of your silos if you have a siloed organization development or something and maybe program staff and they’re each working on their own calendar with either ideas or post there actually writing and then the editorial staff could see them both together. Get a bigger picture. Okay, xero the conflict points right cd you. Have too much content, too little. Yeah. Okay. All right. Where else should we go with with our content calendar? You know, we have ah, good. Another ten minutes or so together. What? What else should we be talking about? Well, i definitely think in this session, the buy-in was still a big issue. I don’t know give me waited like audience members were having trouble with having getting buy-in yeah, what? I think that was a big one, as well as the too many priorities and not enough strategy. So, you know, i really encourage people to just do it themselves if they’re not getting direction on what the limited number of messages should be or what the strategy really is. I say go ahead and you decide is the communications director and believe me, you’ll get feedback if you do something, they didn’t like it but it’s better to go ahead and provide some of that internal leadership from sort of managing from the middle, then to keep kind of floundering around. Yeah, and i think it also can be very tempting to say, okay, we have this editorial calendar, um and that’s our strategy, but it’s it’s not having editorial calendar isn’t a strategy and of itself, so we did talk about long term planning and needing that strategy, so the editorial counter needs to be informed by a strategy, but i think you can fall into the trap that you have the editorial counter, you’ve put everything on it, but then you forget about the strategy, okay, it’s, when you go over and you do the strategy and it doesn’t match with your editorial caldnear calendar, i think that was that was a problem that that came up in, that those two things don’t planning and strategy aren’t always hand in hand, and i would also just add that there was a fair amount of angst in the room about people feeling like planning than miree resulted in this rigid system that they couldn’t then produce any timely content within on. So, you know, what i always tell people is, you know, practice the rule of thirds, so a third of the calendar should be original curated content. Another third is you repurpose ing your original and curated content, and then you leave a third of your calendar open because, you know, stuff is going to come up, you may not know what it is, but something’s going to come up, so don’t over plan, but make sure you do have strategy built into that original content in that third in the in the repurpose content in that second, third, ok, yeah, that’s, really important. So i used to work for the international rescue committee, and they deal with man made and nature made disasters. And so you always needed to have that flexibility in your calendar. So even if it was a big women’s themed campaign in the spring that you have been planning for six months, you need to be able to have a little bit of room within that messaging to be flexible. If a tsunami happens or an earthquake happens or, you know, there’s, famine somewhere you need to be able to quickly pivot. Teo needs that. You need to react you right away without jeopardising everything else that you’re trying to get accomplished and a good content calendar. As katie said, we’ll leave room for those things. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profit to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. 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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. How do you deal with the case? Where you’ve you’ve got your calendar on dh? The organization is not respecting it. Maybe i don’t know if this is just the buy-in but, you know, other other other teams are saying no, no, no, i need this now, you know, or or some some something comes up from above that comes down from above that is now impinge ing on your ability to keep up with your own calendar, you know? But you respected my calendar when i showed it to you six months ago, and now you’re ignoring it for this other administrative thing or for this program problem or this fund-raising problem. But what you you dissing my calendar? What? What do we do? Stop dissing might stop beating up my calendar. Whatever you do, laura. What? Teo? Well, i think one of the things we talked about was showing people the process of what it really takes to roll out communications to kind of push back on that last minute. Itis because there is a process and it needs to be followed. So unless it’s an emergency coming directly from the ceo, you know, like step off, i can’t make that a priority now waken talk later. I mean it’s a process of education. So gotta make yourself heard. Yeah, i would agree with that. I think the mohr outside players can understand how much times something takes, how much time it takes it posa blogged, or to edit a photo or something that they the constant calendar maybe doesn’t do a great job of articulating that. Like how much lead time you need? Sure, it doesn’t get x product up, so it might be very tempting to say oh, well, you’ve got this big, you know, forge a hole between item one and item to let me put something between those two. And no, i need those four days to get item to done. So i think the education that you have to be able to say no and i need the four days i cannot do that. Otherwise item two will get done. So i think content calendars are not good at that. So that’s where the education piece comes. And james, you also talked about reinforcing it in face to face meeting. So if you have, like, a regular staff meeting where you khun very quickly go over the calendar, then it’s it’s going to start to become more clear. Okay, make it public office. Oh, yeah, we we go over. So we have ah, communications meeting once a week. And as part of that meeting, we review the content calendar with somebody from our program’s staff is balls that they’re aware of what’s going on? Sometimes you do need to check what’s in the plan right now. So i think in those situations, you just need to be very clear and articulating the trade off. So if you’re going to bump something, you’ve been planning for something that’s more timely. You need to actually say hay. We’re bumping this thing way, rescheduling it. Or are we completely throwing the work out? There’s an implication here? All right. And there is no plan for this reason, right? There was a purpose for this. And this is what is not now going to be fulfilled. Right? And sometimes you can use it later. You know, if it’s more sort of evergreen in nature, you just bump it down a month. Other times, you know, it’s lost work. But those were strategic decisions that you have to make and that’s where again, having some executive understanding of the communication strategy is important to help the communications team really make good decisions in those situations because they do come up all the time. All right, when are our boundaries respected? Right? Yes. Like i said, stop dissing my calendar. All right, so you guys spent the you all spent a lot of time, uh, in your session. What more should we be talking about? We’ve got another, like, four minutes for five minutes. What else? Whatever we talked about or what more detail maybe about something we we didn’t cover in sufficient detail. Come on. How’d you do ninety minutes together? What would you do for ninety minutes? Well, we turned it back on the audience quite a bit and had them tell us more about what the challenge is, where they were facing so and then you want share some of those challenges that we haven’t talked about? Yeah, short for detail going. You know what? One of the one of the challenges was also just time straight up. We don’t have enough time. So something that can can happen with a constant calendar, which i mentioned. When i was talking with then you have to schedule into your schedule the time to put things on the content calendars, it becomes another task on your list, you know, there’s another half hour of my time when especially for non-profits i don’t have a huge communications staff, it almost seems like it’s, just another thing that you have to do and there’s only two of you and you need to get everything else done. Anyway, i was thinking even just one yeah, i know we had a lot of people we did a little poland said, how many of you are our team of one? And you’re like a third? Yeah, of people who are just by themselves on, and so i think time was a big thing, but but i think that it content calendar can actually give you back some time, because if you’re it helps you plan longer term, if you’re going to use it that way, and so you, then you don’t have to constantly be thinking, well, what am i turning out next week? What am i posting on facebook on friday? Because of, you know already you’ve already done it, so yeah. It can it can take time to do, but it can also make you use your very precious time better than you would without it. All right, so you think it’s worth doing it for the one person short? I think it’s worth it for the one person shot because it just kind of keeps you accountable for what you’re doing rather than every day saying what my posting today, you know, one of the things i shared was that i originally used to do a lot of winging it, and i had a certain kind of a siri’s of facebook posts that i wanted to do, and every monday i was sitting down and thinking of one, and then when i kind of laid it out in a spreadsheet is like, you know what? I can plan like ten of these and schedule them in advance, and now i don’t have to think about it again, so thinking ahead in a calendar kind of way, actually, it did end up saving me time. Good is it worth if you don’t feel you can put every you know, every facebook post into account encounter having you’re bigger, you’re bigger items. All right, we know there’s gonna be a press release required for this announcement, and we know there’s going to be something coming out of the board of trustees meeting and this month, you know, so maybe just putting the biggest items there, you know, maybe not the day to day at least you got something down, right? You got a framework give me to work from yeah, so like a lot of people will just do their block post in their email, assuming that they’re going to repurpose all that into social and so they don’t talk about every single thing they’re going to talk about on facebook same thing with video that tends to be a little more production heavy, and so you’re doing video. You kinda want to treat that almost like a block post in terms of the production schedule to give yourself the time to do it, but you’re right, there’s bigger chunks of content are usually what goes on the calendar, and then a lot of people just sort of in their daily work process. No, that that’s going to go out on facebook or twitter, what other social channels are using? Okay, all right, laura, why don’t you wrap us up with final motivation? Why this is worth doing well, it’s going to help you see the big picture and it’s going to help you navigate your daily to do list a cz well and i think it’s just going to keep you more confident that you’re staying on task and hitting the themes you want to hit for your communications. Okay, thank you very much. Laura. James givi. Thankyou. Thankyou. Tony there. Lord norvig, digital media strategist that e t r james porter, associate director of external relations at the end fund-raising guide and also author and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc thank you so much for being with us next week. Design on a budget and communications mythbusters. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we be spelling dot com. Our creative producer was claire buyer off sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez. And as music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. 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