Tag Archives: nonprofit culture

Nonprofit Radio for April 10, 2023: The High Growth Nonprofit

 

Matt ScottThe High Growth Nonprofit

Matt Scott returns to talk us through his new book, “The High Growth Nonprofit.” He urges you to shed the 5% growth mindset and plan for exponential growth with your rapid growth plan. Matt is CEO of CauseMic.

 

 

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[00:01:19.31] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your Aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. And oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of gero morph. Um Is um if you made me lose my mind because you missed this week’s show The high growth non profit Matt Scott returns to talk us through his new book, the high growth non profit he urges you to shed the 5% growth mindset and planned for exponential growth with your rapid growth plan. Matt is CEO of Cosmic On Tony’s take 2:23 NTC shows coming. We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Here is the high growth non profit It’s my pleasure

[00:01:54.73] spk_1:
to welcome back, Matt Scott to non profit radio He is CEO and co founder of Cosmic A Portland Oregon based consultancy, helping nonprofits leverage best in class for profit methods to grow their organizations before cosmic. He was a fundraising leader on the inside of numerous young and fast nonprofits One of which he helped take from $275,000 to $51 million dollars in seven years. We’ll be talking about that one. He’s the author of the book, The

[00:01:56.66] spk_0:
High Growth non profit Proven steps

[00:02:14.23] spk_1:
to quickly double your revenue and drive impact. The company is at cosmic dot com and Matt’s book is at cosmic dot com slash book. Matt Scott. Welcome back to the nonprofit radio

[00:02:17.02] spk_2:
Thank you for having me saw this on the calendar and was feeling pretty stoked about

[00:02:21.16] spk_1:
it. Thank you. Oh, you just look five minutes ago like you haven’t been anticipating it for the past month.

[00:02:26.62] spk_2:
I absolutely looked last night and was okay.

[00:02:30.26] spk_1:
Alright. I’ll accept 12 hours of excitement is, is terrific. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations on the book, the high growth, non profit

[00:02:42.82] spk_2:
Thank you. Yeah, I think uh if any of your, if any of your listeners have ever have ever written a book, they will probably relate. It took me twice as long as I thought it would to

[00:02:54.74] spk_1:
write. Yes, I’ve heard that numerous times. Right. All right. But it’s done. Congratulations.

[00:03:00.58] spk_2:
Thank you.

[00:03:04.07] spk_1:
Let’s talk with, with a 30,000 ft view. You, you reference different uh degrees of views in the book and one of them is 30,000 ft. What, what’s a high growth? Non profit

[00:03:42.37] spk_2:
I think a high growth, non profit is an organization that is looking to go beyond incremental growth. Um, an organization that’s looking to double their revenue and impact Over the next 2-3 years. Um and it’s an organization. Yeah, that’s that’s willing to take bold calculated risk and also follow some some process and systems to get there. Um Yeah, it’s an organization ready to invest in growth.

[00:04:06.79] spk_1:
Okay. That’s audacious doubling in 2-3 years, growth revenue and impact. Alright, so one of the early chapters makes it clear that if we’re gonna achieve high growth, we need to outgrow Our 5% mindset. Yeah, help us through.

[00:04:17.67] spk_2:
Yeah, this is, this is my favorite exercise or tip or uh out you know, just learning from the book um because it’s worked time and time again. Big small, it scales at every size organization. It’s quite simple. It’s most organizations especially fundraisers are guilty of this. They set these really low revenue targets and then they like to wildly exceed them. Um At least that’s what I do know that was a frontline fundraiser um but

[00:04:39.75] spk_1:
really classic uh under under over, perform under

[00:05:52.32] spk_2:
undersell over. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So outgoing the 5% growth mindset is this idea that most organizations look to grow, say 5 10 15% you know, and the reality is you don’t actually have to do anything differently in order to grow that incremental growth. You just have to do what you’re currently doing and do it a little bit better. And so what we encourage folks to do is to kind of gather around a whiteboard with their team and say, answer this question, what if we had no choice but to double our revenue with half the resources over the next three years, what would we do? And it’s awesome because in a resource constrained environment, you’re forced to uh get creative innovation comes to life and you’re forced to ruthlessly prioritize. And that’s usually how you can begin to set a path towards exponential growth. Um And we’ve, we’ve seen this, we’ve seen this work at lots of clients and I think it’s something that uh that is an easy thing for a leader to do.

[00:06:01.45] spk_1:
And in addition to having an audacious growth goal mindset, you need to have a plan for achieving audacious goals, which is what to me, this is what the book is all about. It’s not enough to just be audacious in goal setting. We need to have a method of getting there that’s going to be different than what we’ve been doing.

[00:06:20.66] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. I, I could, I could say I would like to be £50 lighter by my birthday. But if I don’t actually have any plan to, you know, to replace, uh to, to drink green tea and eat more vegetables, I probably am not going to get there.

[00:06:42.53] spk_1:
I love the idea of exponential exponential growth. Let’s talk about the North Star and why don’t you talk about the North Star? What’s our North Star?

[00:07:04.73] spk_2:
Yeah, I think what’s, what comes to mind for me is, is unlike a mission statement, a North Star is sort of this, this guiding light for your organization. It’s more about the why. Um And you know, the analogy kind of comes to mind like as you’re a kid and you’re exploring and you know, or any explorer really. And the thought is that this North Star can kind of take you in a certain direction, It can always guide you and point you there. And it’s something that when I was at Team Rubicon nonprofit that, that, that re purposes the skills of military veterans to, to assist folks who have been affected by disaster. Um

[00:07:26.80] spk_1:
That’s the organization that you grew referred to in your bio.

[00:07:31.76] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. I was a part of, uh, I was a part of our rapid growth there and in fundraising and, uh, there was a lot of people involved in that but, but the organization was ran by, um, this guy named Jake Wood, a former marine. Uh, if there’s any marines listening, I apologize. There’s no such thing as a former marine, a marine, I should say.

[00:07:53.23] spk_1:
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:08:39.45] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I hope I still make his Christmas card list, um, for making that error. But, yeah, Jake pounded the North Star in our head to be the best disaster relief organization in the world. And we were really encouraged to take these bold calculated risk and it was, it was that guiding star to say, hey, when we’re, when we’re at a decision point, when we’re trying to figure out what to do, look to that North star and say, is this going to get us closer there? Is it gonna guide us towards that direction? And I think it’s important for an organization or a leader to set the organization’s North Star and to communicate that frequently. So, you know, that cosmic, we were laser focused on helping uh fully fund every nonprofit organization. Um That’s a pretty big bold audacious thing. It’s like being the best disaster response or in the world. And throughout the journey to get there, you’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna have all these decision points and it helps you, I think filter through them.

[00:09:07.47] spk_1:
I like that. The book is filled with examples of basically you, you’re walking your walk, you use a lot of examples from, from cosmic,

[00:10:22.84] spk_2:
yeah, from cosmic, from clients like um honestly, the book is filled with, with just as many lessons that were learned from trying something and it not working. But one of our cultural principles is success is not final and another one is the future belongs to the curious. And I think the combination of those two things are what, what allows an organization to try, try new approaches. But then when something works well to examine it, to look at it, understand why it worked or why it didn’t work and what’s still missing about it and to refine it. And so I try to share examples from our experience um because I’m so goal oriented and sometimes I share with, with Bobby, someone was like my thought partner, my operational partner here at Cosmic, just, just the other day I shared with her was like, gosh, you know, uh I was like, I wish we were growing faster. And she said, Matt, we more than doubled, you know, last year ourselves. And we helped 22 clients double at the same time. Like, let’s take a breath and like, look at what, what worked and what didn’t and what we accomplished. And I think that, that, that, that’s what I tried to include in the book was the stories from those lessons learned. And I hope, I hope it comes through.

[00:10:30.12] spk_1:
It does, it does true to your uh walking your talk. I said you, I said you walk your walk, you walk your talk. True to walking your talk. Uh your North Star. One of them is to fully fund every nonprofit, you know, you do know there’s about a million and a half of them, right?

[00:10:52.72] spk_2:
Yeah, there’s, there’s far too many probably to realistically reach. And I gotta be honest, like we’ve refined that over the years to be those that align with our values. Like I actually, I hope that there’s certain organizations that don’t have access to my book and don’t actually put to use these practices

[00:11:27.25] spk_1:
but you’re scaling back scaling down a little bit. Alright. That’s that’s perfectly reasonable with the universe of a million and a half or more but true to your North Star, you are giving this book away books just go to cosmic dot com slash book and give a name and an address and you’ll ship the book for free.

[00:11:33.51] spk_2:
Yeah,

[00:11:35.22] spk_1:
I’m not gonna ask why you’re doing that because it’s your it’s your North Star. That’s why.

[00:12:11.19] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. I think um yeah, we give away free strategy calls to and I’m gonna be honest, like a lot of the calls are folks that aren’t necessarily in the right mindset or in the right place to benefit from the approach that we take. But we still want to help them. So we’ve developed a free curriculum. Like we’ve, you know, I just wanted to capture some of the lessons that I’ve learned and so many, I’ve gotten so much free advice over the years, um that I’m so grateful for that. We wanted to put some of those thoughts down on paper and, and share those with books and um yeah, just help people, help people grow and scale and it’s the easiest way to, to distribute our knowledge out there.

[00:12:59.59] spk_1:
You have a chapter on and all your chapters are short this quick. This is a, it’s a quick read but valuable and I mean, it has to be valuable. You get it for free. So it has just infanticidal value and then you have, if it’s just infanticidal value, then you have a positive R O I because cosmic is paying for the shipping. So culture. So one of your, one of the many chapters, culture, culture is the glue. How do we I think folks probably understand why that’s important but how do we create the culture that we want?

[00:16:51.67] spk_2:
Yeah. So um I kind of already shared with you two of our cultural principles that cosmic, right? And I can still remember and recite all seven cultural principles at Team Rubicon. But I’ve also worked at two other places in my career where I actually cannot recite even one of the cultural principles because they were a poster on a wall, right? So when I think about cultural principles, they need to be what guides your team in the absence of your presence. So, just a few years ago when it was myself and Bobby and one full time person here at cosmic uh Franny who still works with us. Um I remember gathering her and saying, sharing with her. There’s gonna be a time when we’re not in the room, you’re gonna be alone in the room and we’re going to make a decision about how we need to move forward. People are going to question that decision and we won’t be there to answer it. And I need you to look to these cultural principles, to guide you and to provide them with context as to why this decision is made. Um so that we can all be aligned and so that we can all move forward together. So I think when you know, to address your question, I think of two parts, one is like, what is the importance, the critical part is that you have, that your team has something that they can fall back on to filter through their actions, their ideas, to understand your decisions, all those things in the absence of your presence, it’s really important how to get there. Um It’s as basic as sitting down and writing down, like, think about yourself. Think about your top performing people on your team, the best people you’ve ever worked with. If you’re just building your team from scratch, what are the characteristics of those folks? What is it that they have in common? Where is their overlap and start to write those things down? Don’t go with these lofty like integrity and things like that’s kind of baseline. I hope that wherever it is that you’re working, right? But go with like what is uniquely you and then you can actually refine them and that’s how we come up with fun stuff like at Team Rubicon. Uh One of my favorite cultural principles was uh your mother is a donor. So when we think about how we’re going to reinvest the money that is given to Team Rubicon to serve folks affected by disaster, think about it as if your mother gave us that money. And that was a really cool right way to frame that up. And so at cosmic, we’ve, we’ve got fun ones to write like sleeves up at Team Rubicon was gets it done. So the you can start to put a fun spin on it and then how you move it into action. Um I found is you repeat it all the time and you call it out all the time. Um Are you familiar with strength Finder, tony It’s, it’s a, it’s a gallop kind of generated thing where you fill out this survey of millions of people filled it out and it kind of identifies what are your top five strengths of all these different strengths, right? And a lot of folks use strength finder, but they’d go to a half day session and then they never talk about it again. And the same is true about cultural principles. They take a day a week, a month to define these cultural principles. They’re passive, they’re on a poster and they’re not ever talked about. And so you have to like when you see sleeves up, when you see success is not final, whatever yours are, you have to call attention to call it out and say, hey Franny, that was amazing. You know, that was a success is not final moment for you. This is thank you. You know, this is what works about it. I think that’s what I would say about cultural principles is define them but, but revisit them often. Um that’s how you’re gonna be able to fully leverage them.

[00:16:58.18] spk_1:
What guides your team in the absence of your presence? I love that.

[00:18:00.50] spk_0:
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[00:18:01.24] spk_1:
about yours. Success is not final. What does that mean to cosmic?

[00:19:25.63] spk_2:
Yeah, to cosmic. It means um we actually do, I learned again, I learned this kind of thing at Team Rubicon. We did this thing called an after action report which is sort of came out of the military culture where we would evaluate, hey, we just responded to hurricane Harvey. What worked? What didn’t, what was missing? What was confusing, right? Um And so what we do here at cosmic and is we actually evaluate like, like literally we did a retrospective on writing this book. Um You know, I think it was a success. I can’t wait to come out with a second volume, but I’m like, okay, what are all the things that need to be, that need fixing? You know, that could be better about how we approach this? Um And there was a ton of them and then how taking the lessons that we learned about the, the editing process, like the outlining process, um the boiling it down to two, like you said, I mean, it was written in a way for to be, to be, you know, kind of digested on a domestic flight. But we, we try to put like the key lessons up front. Well, that actually came out of another project that we worked on where the audience of, of our curriculum said, you know, the just like the lesson learned upfront was really helpful. So it’s taking that success from one thing and applying it to what worked well this time. And also looking back and saying, what didn’t work, what did not go well about that fundraising campaign that we just ran? What, what didn’t go well about that digital transformation that we just did and how do we address that for the next go around so that we can improve upon how we deliver, you know, services to clients and impact to the world.

[00:19:59.77] spk_1:
As you said, each chapter has to takeaways upfront right under the title of the chapter, there’s two shaded boxes that are going to tell you what that chapter is all about.

[00:20:09.22] spk_2:
Yeah, you can skip the chapter if you, if you’re really short on time or not intrigued by what it says or no,

[00:20:53.24] spk_1:
you should, I think you make this point if one doesn’t appeal to you that you should read it all the more to find out what it is that you’re missing about the takeaway that, uh, that you’re not getting, you know, what, what it is you don’t understand about the takeaway that, that makes it, uh, interesting to you. So, read a couple of pages and, and come away enlightened. Yeah. Um, you talk something about, well, actually let’s get a little deeper in your, in your own life that this team Rubicon sounds like it was, I don’t know, transformational for you, you know, so grounding you, you took away a lot from your time at Team Rubicon.

[00:21:15.16] spk_2:
I sure did. Uh the, the opportunity, you know, for, for your more established leaders who are listening to this uh 22 year old Matt was given way too much responsibility.

[00:21:17.65] spk_1:
Military that, that comes, that comes right from your founder. Jake. Military does that 18 year olds are given incredible responsibility right out of right out of high school.

[00:24:28.53] spk_2:
Exactly. If you give people clear direction, commander’s intent, um, as Jake would call it, uh, and, and, and, and, and a sense of connection with one another, a sense of codependency with one another. Um Then, you know, even if you fail, if you’re failing forward, you’re gonna do. Okay. Right. So, uh for me at Team Rubicon, all of the places that I’ve worked, I’ve, you know, have taught me a lot. Um but I learned about, I think the 30,000 ft at team Rubicon, the power of having a really strong uh direction that we’re headed at the horizon level and then how to operationalize it is really critical. So, um I was given the opportunity to, to buy, given the opportunity, I mean, there was a problem and, and someone let me, let me just tackle it right? Um To, to lead 2.5 digital transformations in my seven years, but I had never done that before. Um And so learning a lot from that are developing a mass market fundraising program, building out a fundraising team, um you know, partnering with marketing, all of these different things that uh that were so, so important to who I am today and how I lead today and how I help others lead is because of the lessons that I learned. And I’m gonna be honest, a lot of stuff did not work um at all. And so I’ll share an example that maybe will resonate with folks like one of the things we do and I talk about it in the book is that the strategic planning process is completely broken. At most organizations, right. It takes 3 to 6 months. It cost over $200,000 in staff time and consulting. And usually it, it ends up with this 50 page strategic planning document that nobody reads and is completely in actionable. And a team Rubicon, what we would do is we would actually develop strategic plans every six months. We were putting new ones out there and we would look back and laugh at where we thought we would be. Sometimes we, we thought we were like going to the moon and actually we ended up at Mars or sometimes we overshot, sometimes we fell way short. But the plan was like a good place to deviate from. It was, it was, it was something to guide us, but it was not a desk, a destination, the planning process, you know, um what’s it? Uh I’m gonna mess up which general this was. But one of these famous generals talks about how plan is useless, but the act of planning is really, is really what is really useful because it brings people together and gives people a common understanding. And so a team Rubicon like we would fail all the time at our strategic plans. But, but we were always had a bias for action over a bias for documentation. We always had a bias for getting things done. And um yeah, I’m very grateful for the time that I had there because I don’t think I would be able to support so many organizations today if it weren’t for the opportunity to fail early, um, and succeed early, you know,

[00:24:43.08] spk_1:
G S D getting it done, right. You talk like you were in the military, like operationalized commander’s intent, you know, you, you sound like you were a para marine yourself.

[00:25:01.56] spk_2:
Oh, gosh, I have three, I have three brothers who served in the military. Uh, but I did not have any military jargon or discipline whatsoever before going to team Rubicon. So it’s 100% byproduct of my as my time as a gray shirt and it has nothing to do with uh with uh my level of service stops at the nonprofit sector at Fortune.

[00:25:22.42] spk_1:
Alright. And great shirts of course. Were the team Rubicon volunteers? Right. Exactly. Where the great shirts. Yeah. Alright. So let’s explore a little more of the strategic plan. You, you spend a couple of chapters on it, having an adaptable strategic plan and why don’t, why don’t you bring in another organization? The talk about the uh SFP the Salon to Family Project.

[00:25:47.39] spk_2:
They’re

[00:25:48.32] spk_1:
adaptable strategic plan.

[00:29:48.15] spk_2:
Yeah. So what I what I favor is is action over over documentation, right? But documentation is important. So capturing your strategy on a single page, it’s like what are we trying to achieve? What are the key, how are we going to do that? What are the key strategies on how we’re gonna do that? Right. So Salon to Family project. When they first started working with us, they actually pair marginalized Children or women rather so just women who were largely ignored in the community with orphan Children. And they create what they call these forever fan families where they are not just a temporary placement for orphans, but rather a wraparound care service. A long term commitment of family goes well beyond, you know, a kid graduating from high school, say right, you can still call your parents well into life and then you care for one another. Um And so when they were thinking about how to grow and they really needed to grow, we started to identify, okay, well, if we were going to double revenue, how would we go about doing that? What are the key areas we’re going to focus on? So we capture that in a strategic plan and then you essentially look at okay. One of them was going to be, we’re going to really lean into peer to peer fundraising because that was there was an opportunity there for them. And another area was cause marketing and really thinking about how to leverage corporate marketing dollars instead of corporate philanthropic dollars. Most nonprofits go after donations, but those are very limited versus marketing dollars are kind of infinitely scalable. So those were just two of the strategies that made sense. Then we developed all these tactical things. Like if we’re going to focus on fundraisers, we need to have little things like we need a good peer to peer fundraising platform. But more importantly, like, let’s think about donor segmentation or, or supporter segmentation donors, volunteers, fundraisers, advocates within the fundraisers. Like, are these people network mobilizes? Can they get a lot of people to attend the event and donate on their behalf? Um Sharing a ton of context. But my point is that there were all these little ideas like we need to coach people who are passionate about Salaam to but who are not professional fundraisers on how to ask people for money. So a fundraising coaching series made it in there so big ideas, little ideas, they all get added in and we scored those based on impact. How much impact would they have on our ability to double revenue against that key strategy, how with cost, you know, time and money, like a fundraising platform cost money, it takes time and money to draft an email series and build out an engagement flow, right? And so by doing this more action oriented strategic planning process, what we did was we started to develop, uh we were clear on direction and we were clear on how we were gonna get there and we really thought about what should be done first. And um and as a result, the organization was able to, you know, leverage all kinds of cool stuff, a Travelocity grant to film to build brand awareness. Like we built a really big peer to peer program, but also kind of what I was sharing about team Rubicon and cosmic is like our identity shift over time. And what to uh to Marissa the executive director’s credit. She saw an opportunity and actually the connection between family, the forever family in the faith based community in, in the US, the donor base. And that there was a strong connection there that they were, they weren’t really maximizing or taking advantage of because they weren’t directly connecting the two. So that’s that a plan is a good place to deviate from that I was talking about is as you move through the process of growing, you need to success is not final stop and evaluate what’s working, what’s not what’s missing. And she found that opportunity and leaned into it with these frameworks and they’ve been very successful. They’ve, they’ve grown up, they’ve doubled more than more than once. Um So, yeah, just a little bit more about, about Salam to and how they leverage that growth strategy.

[00:30:03.61] spk_1:
Explain about the one page strategic plan, the O P S P, talk about this in the book too.

[00:30:53.97] spk_2:
Yeah, this is, this is like my favorite uh my favorite thing um because it aligns everybody and it’s the simplicity. It’s hard to get down into a single page, right? But, but essentially at the very top, it’s what are we trying to achieve? Okay, let’s say we’re trying to double our revenue. How are we gonna do that? I talked about that already. What are the key strategies? Um okay, then who should we be targeting? Uh like who should be going after? Let’s say one of your key strategies is to, to take an audience led approach, right? So one of our clients is Surfrider. Well, who they’re going after is mass market, major donors, uh you know, certain corporate partners, etcetera. And then what motivates them? Well, they have four programmatic pillars. So that’s really like, what are we talking about? What do they do? They,

[00:31:02.76] spk_1:
what do they do?

[00:32:35.42] spk_2:
Surf rider is a group of a collection of chapters. There’s over 80 across the the country. And what they do is they work collaboratively to put forth legislation to protect beach access, to protect clean water, to reduce plastic pollution and to reverse the impacts of climate change. And why people support surfrider are different. Somebody who’s interested in plastic pollution might not be interested in beach access. Um So what we, what we want to capture on that page is who are we going after? What, what’s the core message? What are the, what are the major drumbeats? What are the times when everybody? So World Water Day super important for them. Um Some of them are planned and some of them are unplanned. So the rainfall that we just experienced in California really damaged coastal communities, but that was an unplanned drumbeat. So the ability to look at this one page strategic plan and say, should we respond to this disaster? Does it align with our, our strategy towards doubling revenue? Um It gives people a filter who are execute Urz and who are operational ist and leaders to look at and, and glance at and say, yeah, we need to lean into this opportunity and it means that we’re gonna have to stop doing these other things um temporarily or otherwise to get there. So, uh yeah, that’s a little bit about what’s captured in the one page strategic plan. It’s sort of the, what are we trying to do and how are we going to do it? And who are we targeting? And where should we focus our efforts?

[00:33:45.99] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two A week before the 2023 non profit technology conference. And already we’ve got a dozen interviews booked. Who I’ll be talking to conference presenters about. Oh, like data driven storytelling with Julia Campbell, inclusive culture on your board. Oh, using your voice to lead quiet, quitting. Perhaps personalized fundraising at scale. You might see these and lots of other shows are coming up in the months ahead. If you are at the nonprofit technology conference swing by booth for 24, I’ll be there talking to all these future smart guests along with heller consulting our 23 NTC sponsor. Thank you again. Team Heller for sponsoring. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got Boo Koo, but loads more time for the high growth non profit with Matt Scott.

[00:33:55.02] spk_1:
You talk about intentional discoveries,

[00:33:58.21] spk_0:
these sort of internal

[00:33:59.86] spk_1:
interviews that are, that are valuable, explain what that’s all about.

[00:35:50.48] spk_2:
Yeah, for this, I’ll use an example when we were working with Mercy Corps, uh non profit large established organization. Uh They provide humanitarian services across the world in over 100 countries and some of the most difficult places and their fundraising and marketing team is about 65 people. So big department within that, they got lots of senior leaders and we were helping their, their fourth C D M O and four years get the team aligned. So she was relatively new in the seat. And so what we encourage is to do stakeholder interviews with each person. In, in her case, she had within the department, there was about 12 directors just in the department, senior leaders for her. Um and it was about interviewing each of them and figuring out, hey, what’s working, what’s not, what’s confusing, what’s missing, you see that kind of common theme and gathering all this input from your team on the regular revisiting it with them once a year is really effective because it allows you as a leader to do the stakeholder interviews, even though you already work there, you already know who those people are and what they face. Well, chances are by just slowing down, taking a pause and actually having a conversation with your team. You know, if you’re, if you’re truly doubling. If, if you, when you, when you grow revenue by 25%, of your systems will break, that’s been our experience. So by pausing and slowing down and doing interviews with the various stakeholders on your team and understanding what’s working, what’s not, what’s missing, what’s confusing. You can begin to prioritize where your clarity needs to, where you need to provide more clarity where things need to be re prioritized, where, where you need to address problems that are popping up, that are new problems that you weren’t expecting because you just moved to a different phase of growth.

[00:36:12.43] spk_1:
That that’s a whole nother good topic because if you’re experiencing this rapid growth or you’re, you’re in the midst, yeah, you’re in the midst of it. Prioritization is key.

[00:38:06.72] spk_2:
Mhm Yeah. And that’s actually you talked about what is something else I want to talk about in the book. It’s uh something we found really useful is um is Larry Griner is a, is a researcher who years ago, uh you know, wrote an article in HBR about the evolutions and revolutions of organizational growth, growth. And how as you move through the stages of growth, the inevitable crisis, crisis is that come up as you move, the pain that you’re going to experience the solutions that you put in place to address that phase of growth is inevitably going to lead to crisis in the next phase of growth. And so we used to pass out the original article and it was very much written from a for profit lens. But yeah, sorry Harvard Business Review. Yeah. And uh we just received so much positive feedback from, from clients that were taking through our rapid growth program, which is this transformational process um that were like we need to rewrite this for nonprofit specific audience because there’s some uniqueness to that, like it’s particularly resource constrained, you know. So we did that. And it’s one of the chapters in the book, I talk about like the various phases of growth and the five different ones and how as you move through them, you’re gonna inevitably come up with new challenges. But that’s how I think those, those two questions for the two topics we just talked about come together. It’s like by doing those interviews, re checking in with your team frequently as you move through the phases, you’re going to be able to um see more clearly from their lens from their vantage point when things are breaking. And when the solutions that you put in place, when you are moving from an entrepreneurial environment to one where you have decisive leadership is inevitably going to lead towards like a sense of I need autonomy. I’m being told what to do too much, you know. So you have to check in with your team regularly as you move through the phases of growth.

[00:38:18.85] spk_1:
That’s like you had a lot of autonomy at Rubicon.

[00:39:32.20] spk_2:
We, we did until I didn’t. And so it’s funny because Jake is a friend of mine still. And one day we were talking about, you know, we were both sharing with each other. How long do you think you’re gonna stay? Um And uh for me, it was, became so clear, I was like my identity, I am a builder and a doer. I am not a maintainer. And so as soon as my job becomes more and more narrow and it becomes more when to maintain state status as opposed to like what we’ve just gone through for the last seven years. That’s gonna be the moment when I when it’s time for me to uh yeah, to move into the gray shirt as a volunteer as opposed to a staff member role. Um And so yeah, I think that’s that, that was my own experience in my own journey and in evaluating when it was time for, for me to, to kind of move on. But I was given a lot of autonomy and then it started to get rained in, you know, um because it had to, we started have department budgets and processes and, and I was like, yeah, this is necessary and this is not for me. Yeah,

[00:39:43.60] spk_1:
let’s talk a little about hiring, you say higher when it hurts but, but you need to have a couple of things in place before you before you do something that sounds reckless. So what, what, what’s, what’s higher when it hurts.

[00:40:26.97] spk_2:
Yeah, this is some advice that I was given by, uh, now the chief operating officer at a major Humane society, but came from a consulting background when he and I were talking about me building this consulting practice and I thought about it was like, gosh, that is so on point. Even when I’m at a nonprofit, right, you always feel like you want to put more bodies in place, right? Like if we only had more people, we could achieve more. Um And we were talking about it from a, a cash flow perspective. Don’t go hog crazy on hiring too many folks because you don’t wanna have to lay people off if, if you, you know, if it’s a temporary need, you need to evaluate when, when you need to hire. So I’ll share this because I think it’s so valuable for, for folks who’ve made it this far into the, into the podcast episode,

[00:40:41.42] spk_1:
but nonprofit radio listeners are not dropping off. Okay. Good,

[00:40:46.11] spk_2:
good with

[00:40:47.23] spk_1:
us till the end. I’m sure of it. Especially talking about, about high growth.

[00:44:29.39] spk_2:
Okay. So yeah, help us be the best, best selling book in the free book category by making it this far. Um So World Bicycle Relief, I, I share this story. This is one of our clients and uh and they there you really unique because they’re not just a nonprofit, but they’re also a social impact business. So they ask for financial donations, but they also sell a Buffalo bicycle to communities in countries across across the world. And they do this to help provide education and access to health care and jobs. Um And let’s just take in, in certain parts of Africa, like the terrain and the infrastructure in Kenya is really different than that of Colombia, but they operate in both places. And so their marketing team is stretched really thin because they’re not just serving the donor audience, but they’re also trying to serve the various social impact audiences in different countries and produce materials that will help those social businesses and entrepreneurs that they’ve set up in country to sell these bicycles to service these bicycles. And so they’re stretched really thin, right? And naturally you just want to go to, I need a higher. But what we did first with them is we gather their marketing team and we said we want to show you how to think like an internal agency, how to think like a marketing firm internally within your organization. So this tip is something that I think nobody, most nonprofits don’t even think about, don’t say nobody but I haven’t come across any yet. So one of the things we do at at cosmic and this is common practice in any agency or consultancy is you think about your time as billable and non billable and billable time is essentially time that we spend building to clients but as an internal agency, it’s things like writing coffee, uh building out workflows, um merging contact records, whatever all these different things. Non billable time is not bad time. It’s things like professional development, it’s things like paid time off, it’s admin time going to staff meetings, getting a line, things like that. And so what we told we we shared is like you need to actually evaluate where all of the time is being spent as an internal stakeholder and determine your billable time divided by your total time gives you what’s called a utilization ratio. And so at cosmic, you know, our team of 16 Served 28 clients last year. And we have, we have currently over 65 work streams going on that are across all these different clients. And how in the world does that few of people do that much work? And the reality is we are very meticulous about understanding how much time it takes to do. Uh If we get asked to create an annual report or build a landing page or build a workflow, we need to understand how much time it takes for the project manager, the content strategist, copyright of the designer, right? And so we taught this to world Bicycle Relief’s marketing team to actually keep track of your time and to set targets for billable versus non billable. And what they found was where they were spending time and where they weren’t spending time. And then when they got request from the major gift officer for a one off, uh, you know, uh, one pager, they were able to evaluate how much time that was going to take and the impact that it was going to have and they could then prioritize their work through their backlog in a way that they had never thought to do before. So that’s an example of like going back to higher when it hurts. Chances are it hurts right? You’re stretched, then there’s more to do than time to do it before hiring, stop and take stock of where you’re actually spending time and what can go and what needs to stay. And only when it really is like your team is running hot and consistently running hot. And if you look ahead and you’re saying, gosh, we’re having to turn down high impact work because we don’t have the capacity to do it. That’s when you should hire. But you don’t really know that unless you’re actually keeping track of your time,

[00:45:02.59] spk_1:
did you think of something that you want to talk about? That? We haven’t yet.

[00:45:07.27] spk_2:
Yeah, something else I would like to share. Uh

[00:45:10.25] spk_1:
Alright, success. The only author I can, the only author I can remember who doesn’t know what he doesn’t have more to share their overwhelmed because there’s so much value in the book you don’t know what to choose from.

[00:45:49.76] spk_2:
Oh, that’s, that’s kind I, yes. Well, I, I will share, I’m very grateful to, to be on, on your show again. And the work that you’re doing to support the community, I think we’re aligned there. You know, you’re giving away this podcast constantly for free. And I know how much work it is to produce content. So I uh I appreciate you having us on and I really hope that people find this book to be useful. And I guess I would share, please provide feedback because success is not final. And if there’s elements in the book that you’re like, that didn’t land or we wanted more of this, um That’s the only way we know, right? Like what episodes you should, you should make a nonprofit radio or, or what chapters should make it into the next book.

[00:46:30.92] spk_1:
Alright. Alright. Challenge. The listener’s, you’re getting it for free, so give feedback. I’m not ready. I’m not ready to end yet though. There’s a couple of things that we still want to talk about. We um you talk about a rapid growth plan and there are three parts of it. We’ve talked about the first two, we talked about the one page strategic plan. Uh You talked about your, the project backlog, right? Which becomes these, these ideas to execute the one page strategic plan. That’s your does your projects and impact versus as you, as you described, just reminding folks impact versus resources that need to be allocated to that.

[00:48:09.36] spk_2:
Yep. And then the third, the third part the third part is, well, a plan is great and prioritization is great, but we have to measure how effective this thing is, right? So we develop a simple KPI tracker, key performance indicator tracker to measure the success of the plan. And so I’ll just use an example what might show up on a KPI tracker. So let’s say, let’s say you’re your donor base is aging and your file strength, your retention rate is good, but folks are getting older and so you need to acquire more new donors, right? Um Okay, how are you going to do that? Let’s say you turn towards maths market fundraising audience to get there. Uh There’s two things you need to do. One, you need to think about your plan giving approach and two you need to think about because that’s where the strength of your file is and to you got to acquire new supporters. So what KPI S matter? Well, we find with online giving that it comes down to website traffic conversion rate and average gift amount. If you can get more people to your website and more of those people give and they give more money, then you’re gonna raise a lot more money online right? Then when you think about, okay, well, what’s that retention rate look like? How many of our supporters are moving from one time to monthly? Um What’s that upgrade look like? And retention rate looks like? Um So those are all these KPI. So for when you go back to the one Patriot eg plan, you think about, well, what were our house, maybe one of your houses? We’re gonna build a robust legacy giving program. Which, which tony I know, you know more about than I do. So I don’t, what do you think are the KPI S that people should measure when they’re thinking about building out Planned Giving program?

[00:49:10.00] spk_1:
Oh, well, first of all, you’re not going to acquire new donors through planned giving, but some of the, some of the key metrics, uh how many conversations you’ve opened about, about the topic, how many solicitations you’ve actually gotten to um might be just how many meetings you’ve had around this topic, which is different than the conversation. You know, you may not have quite opened the conversation but you had a meeting to, to suss out the possibility. So, you know, those are so there’s three like number of meetings, number of conversations opened, number of solicitations made, of course, number of commitments. Yeah, donors are willing to make. So there’s, there’s four early

[00:50:50.10] spk_2:
ones. Yeah, exactly. And so the, the KPI has to match up to whatever your strategy is and it basically needs to, it needs to be I think of KPI S as both leading, there’s leading indicators and then there’s trailing indicators. So the leading indicators you described are like how many conversations, you know, we’re open. Uh meetings have, would be a very early leading indicator. And then how many, you know, conversation now you’re starting to get a little bit further, the trailing indicators. Um You know, you start to evaluate at different phases. Like are we gonna hit our goal? Is this strategy working or is it not working? Does it need to be adjusted? So the idea is that together those three things and by the way, throughout the book, I hope it becomes clear, but I’ll just share my own personal experiences when in doubt, make it as simple as possible. Create KPI S. They’re easily trackable that you don’t have to spend a lot of time going into a lot of different systems. Get this data. You want to be thinking about how do I make this as easy as possible? I don’t need to spend any time describing what it means when we say website traffic or conversion rate or average gift amount. We don’t have to describe what it means, like number of laps donors or whatever. Um And you just want to have your system set up so that your KPI dashboard you can regularly look at and not have to spend a lot of time building out. People think like, oh, data driven and you know, people, people want want a Ferrari when what they need is a Kia, you know, and they don’t even have a pit crew to like help them racist formula one car around the track, like find the Kia. Find the Kia that’s, that’s, I guess my metaphor advice on that,

[00:51:12.56] spk_1:
that’s the rapid growth plan and, and the one I do want to close on know your strength, that I know your strength chapter. Do you know your strength?

[00:53:47.17] spk_2:
Yeah, I think that this, this rings true both on an individual and an organizational level, right? Um And where is it that, that you are uniquely positioned to drive impact like nobody else can. Um I mean, you know, how, how it is, I think about like organizations that come to us and they think they’re the only ones solving the water crisis. You’re like, actually there’s a lot of people doing exactly what you’re doing. Um And I think it’s, I think it’s just really important to have a clear idea of, you know, what problem are we uniquely positioned to solve in a way that is unique to our culture? So I’ll use, I’ll go back to team Rubicon as an example to drive this home because we talked a lot about it. Um When you think about disaster response, there is response, the immediate response. Uh Well, there, there’s, there’s like preparedness, you know, readiness is the community ready for disaster. Then there’s the actual like response to the disaster and then there’s a long term recovery, right? And Team Rubicon, when we first got started, our strength was really in the response because we were able to pull from the military culture to very quickly respond. We didn’t have a lot of bureaucracy. We didn’t have a lot of red tape. Um, but it was really challenging to get into the recovery business in the early days by business. I just mean, the business of serving folks affected by disaster, not making money on recovery, but like, you know, that’s a different, that was a different organizations strength. That’s a different skill set to be able to build out rebuild communities affected by disaster re roof homes. And all that team Rubicon really didn’t get involved in that for a really long time in their trajectory. And it wasn’t until they had clearly uh they had leaned into their strengths on the response side and they had really figured out what worked and then they thought, okay, how, what worked in there that could work with, with how we would go about the recovery and how does that compare to someone like the Red Cross and how they approach the rebuild effort? Um So knowing your strengths and knowing your sector is super important. It’s like, what do you, what’s that North Star? What are you trying to achieve? What’s your cultural principles? What, what makes you uniquely good at what you do and lean into that relentlessly and stay focused on that and don’t try to become the latest thing in every category. Um I guess is what I would say at a, at a high level. Um Is there something that stood out to you in that chapter. Tony that I didn’t talk about their,

[00:54:16.97] spk_1:
no just identifying and leveraging what you’re strong at instead of trying to go broader. You know, some people and some organizations may try to improve weaknesses rather than double down on their strengths.

[00:55:24.82] spk_2:
Yeah, people do this all the time, right? Like that’s a good point. I’ll share one more thing and I know like more and more and more. I am really comfortable with the visionary role. Like I love starting things. I don’t particularly enjoy finishing them nor does my team like it when I tried to finish things because I’m not very good at that. It’s really hard for me. It’s a hard muscle to kind of push through. But I have like found Bobby, my operational partner. She’s the magic at 10,000 ft. She connects the executioners with the 30,000 ft vision and makes project plans and makes sense of things and loves finishing projects, not starting them. So knowing your individual strength as a leader to and figuring out like, am I more comfortable in futuristic vision planning? Um or am I more comfortable in operational izing things and figuring out what you need as an operational partner? Because really nobody has it all like you just don’t and you might be able to flex when you absolutely have to. But your best flex is going to be their worst, just standard operating procedure because that’s their strength right. So I found that we’ve been able to grow a lot faster in clients to like we, we work with a lot of clients that are C E O s that don’t have operational partners or sometimes they get in the way. And it’s like knowing when you should stop and when you’re, when the operational ist should pick up is really an important thing to distinguish

[00:55:57.57] spk_1:
Matt Scott. The book is the high growth non profit Proven steps to quickly double your revenue and drive impact. It’s at cosmic which is cause C A U

[00:56:00.65] spk_0:
S E M I C cosmic

[00:56:09.47] spk_1:
dot com slash book and it is free to you, including the shipping, shipping, shipping is covered. Matt. Thank you very much. Thank congratulations again on the book. Thank you for sharing your thinking.

[00:56:17.16] spk_2:
Yeah. Thank you, Tony. I really appreciate

[00:56:19.24] spk_1:
you. My pleasure.

[00:57:09.85] spk_0:
Next week, I’ll bring the 1st 23 NTC interview and they’re all gonna be excellent. I’ll just pick one. That’s extra excellent. Yeah, extra excellent. Exactly. Next week’s show is gonna be extra excellent. Just like I said, if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We are sponsored by donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. 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 information, Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 3, 2022: Your Dismantling Racism Journey

 

Pratichi ShahYour Dismantling Racism Journey

Starting with your people, your culture and your leadership, how do you identify, talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit? My guest is Pratichi Shah, founder & CEO at Flourish Talent Management Solutions. (Originally aired 7/8/20)

 

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:01:58.44] 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 of your favorite abdominal podcast and oh, I’m glad you’re with me, I’d be thrown into necro psychosis if you killed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. You’re dismantling racism journey starting with your people, your culture and your leadership. How do you identify? Talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit. My guest is pretty itchy Shah founder and Ceo at flourished Talent management Solutions. This originally aired july 8th 2020 on Tony’s take two, let’s debunk plan to giving myths. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I tion for in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D just like three D but they go one dimension deeper here is your dismantling racism journey. It’s a real pleasure to welcome welcome. I’m not welcoming. I’m welcoming, I’m welcoming, she’s an HR strategist and thought leader with 25 years experience in all aspects of talent management. She’s making her face when I say 25 years human resources equity and inclusion and organizational development in the nonprofit and for profit arenas. She’s founder and Ceo of flourish Talent management Solutions. The company is at flourish tMS dot com. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:10.09] spk_1:
Thank you so much tony I appreciate being here.

[00:02:14.25] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure pleasure to have you um and I’d like to Jump right in if you’re, if you’re ready. Um,

[00:02:20.35] spk_1:
absolutely.

[00:02:48.05] spk_0:
You know, racism and white privilege most often look very benign on their face. Um, I had a guest explain why use of the word professional in a job description is racist. I had a more recently, I had a guest explain how not listing a salary range in a job description was felt racist to them. So how do we begin to uncover what is inequitable and right under our noses yet not visible on its face?

[00:03:34.85] spk_1:
Yeah. You know what it often it starts with listening. I mean to state state a bit of the obvious. It really does start with listening. It’s understanding for organizations. It’s understanding where we are. Um, so it’s listening to the voices that may not have been centered. We’ve become better as organizations and being responsive to staff. I hear that a lot kind of, hey, this is what my staff is telling me. This is what we need to do. But the question is is are you responding to the voices that have possibly been marginalized? Likely been marginalized or oppressed in the past joe. General responsiveness is not the same as centering the voices that really need to be heard. So it’s first off just understanding where you are as an organization and listening to the people who may have experienced organization in a way that is different than you think.

[00:03:50.19] spk_0:
So when you say general responsiveness is not what not adequate, not what we’re looking for. What do you mean by that?

[00:04:45.05] spk_1:
So a lot of time the voices that are saying, hey something’s wrong or we need to do this or we need to do that are not the voices of those that have been marginalized and oppressed. They tend to be maybe the loudest voices. They’re speaking maybe from a place of privilege and that needs to be taken into account. So being responsive, for instance, if the I call it kind of the the almond milk issue being responsive to a staff that says in addition to dairy milk for coffee. This is back when we were in fiscal offices, um, we need almond milk too. But the question is is are we listening to the voices of those that weren’t able to consume the dairy milk? It’s not a perfect metaphor. It’s not a perfect analogy because that one ignores actual pain and it just talks about preference. But are we list listen to the voices of people that have been oppressed who have, who have been, who have heard the word professional or professionalism wielded against them as a, as an obstacle in their path to success in their path to career advancement. Those are the voices that we need to listen to not the ones who have a preference for one thing or another.

[00:05:08.34] spk_0:
Um let’s be explicit about how we identify who, who holds these voices, who are these people?

[00:06:03.47] spk_1:
It’s people that have have come from. It’s particularly right now when we talk about anti black racism, we need to center the voices of those from the black community. And that means those who have either maybe not joined, not just not joined our organization for particular reasons, but maybe they have not joined our board. Maybe they have not participated in our programs, Maybe they haven’t had the chance to. So it’s really from an organizational perspective, think of it as understanding what our current state is. So how does your organization move people up? Move people in move people out if we don’t have the voices in the first place? Because maybe we’re not as welcoming as we should be, then what does the data tell us about? Who’s coming into our organization? Who’s leaving our organization, Who’s able to move up into our organization, what our leadership looks like, what our board looks like. So at times the fact that there is an absence of voice is telling in and of itself and our data needs to be able to explain what is going on. So that data needs to be looked at as well.

[00:06:52.58] spk_0:
Alright, so we need to very well, good chance we need to look outside our organization. You’re talking about people that we’ve turned down for board board positions turned down for employment? Um, I’m not even gonna say turn down for promotion because that would presume that they’re still that that presumes are still in the organization, But I’m talking about very likely going outside the organization. People who don’t work with us, who aren’t volunteering, who aren’t supporting us in any way, but we’ve marginalized them. We’ve cast them out before they even had a chance to get in

[00:07:10.44] spk_1:
potentially. Yeah. And then actually probably probably there is something that they have not found palatable or appealing about working with us or being a sensor or being uh to your point of volunteer. So so we need we need to look at why that’s happening.

[00:07:36.46] spk_0:
Okay. I’ve gotta I gotta drill down even further. How are we gonna identify these people within within our organization as it is? How are we gonna figure out which people these are that we’ve marginalize these voices of color over the let’s just like in the past five years, what have we if we’ve done this? How do we identify the people we’ve done it to?

[00:08:33.53] spk_1:
Yeah. It’s a really it’s a complicated question. It will differ by organization, right? It differs by what your subsector is, how things flow within a subsector. The size of the organization. A really good place to start is understanding who has turned us down, why have people left? So take a look at exit interviews. Even if you’re not doing exit interviews, we know that there is not always uh an HR presence in a lot of our organizations. If there aren’t formal exit interviews, first of all, let’s make time for those because we need to understand why people are leaving. Um but if if there isn’t a formal HR presence, what do we know about the circumstances under which someone left organization or said no to a job offer or said no to a board position or a volunteer. It’s also important to ask, expanding our definition of stakeholder groups, engaging with all of our stakeholder groups as as broadly defined as possible. And within those groups, understanding are we reaching out to a diverse audience to say why would you engage with us? Why would you not engage with us in any of those roles? So, yeah, it’s gonna be a little bit harder to understand the people who are not there because they’re not there.

[00:09:02.40] spk_0:
Yeah. Okay, Alright, so, alright, um we go through this exercise and and we identify we’ve identified a dozen people, um they’re not they’re not currently connected to us and uh it may be that they have had a bad experience with us, that they may have turned us down for employment because they got offered more money somewhere else. That could that in itself could be, let’s

[00:09:18.28] spk_1:
say that

[00:10:08.31] spk_0:
in itself could be uh not something other than benign, um but let’s say they moved out of the state, you know, they were they were thinking about, so, so in some cases they may not have a bad have had a bad experience with us, but in but in lots of cases they may have, they may have turned down that board position because they saw the current composition of the board and they didn’t feel they felt like uh maybe being an offer, you know, a token slot or whatever, whatever it might be. I’m just, I’m just suggesting that some of the, some of the feelings toward the organization might not be negative, but some might very well be negative of these dozen people we’ve identified in all these different stakeholder or potential stakeholder roles that they could have had. Um what do we reach out to them and say, how do we, how do we get them to join a conversation with an organization that they may feel unwelcome him?

[00:11:21.79] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And and I think right now, especially we tread carefully. Um we tried carefully and we honored the fact that they in fact might be getting that same question from many other other organizations, friends, colleagues, family members, in which people want to understand something. What we’re seeking to do is not be educated on the overall picture of white privilege, white supremacy of dominant narrative and dominant culture. That’s on us. That’s on all of us individually to understand that, that is not the member that is not up to. The member is of oppressed societies to have to tell us that, Right? So what they, what we want to understand is kind of, what did you experience with our organization? What was the good? What was bad? And first of all, do you even want to engage with us. Is this not a good time to do that because they’re already exhausted. I said to a colleague recently, you know, we can’t even understand the reality of what it’s like to live there to live that reality and for many to lead the charge, right? Because they’re also showing leadership in the movement. So to we can’t even understand what those layers of existence are like. So I think it’s treading very carefully and should we have the ability to engage with someone because they have the space, the energy, the desire. Then I think it’s understanding and asking kind of what’s going on for us? What where did you find us either not appealing or where did you? Why did you not want to work with us in whatever capacity we were asking? And it’s asking that question.

[00:11:50.37] spk_0:
Okay, well that’s further down. I’m just trying to get to like what’s the initial email invitation look like?

[00:11:55.10] spk_1:
It depends on the organization. It depends on the organization. It depends on the relationship. I wouldn’t presume to give words to that to be honest with you because because I think it also depends on the person that you’re asking. I don’t want to offer kind of a blanket response and inadvertently tokenized people by saying, oh, of course you’re gonna want to engage with us. So I really think it’s dependent on the situation.

[00:13:35.19] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They had a very smart newsletter this week. We often can’t predict news outcomes, but we often do know news is coming, for instance, hurricanes during hurricane season, the Duffy decision on abortion and the november midterm elections. We know in advance that there’s going to be this news. The smart nonprofits turn to communication says prepare talking points for all the possible outcomes in advance and they’re the ones that get the day one quotes and the op EDS and they own the issue on social media. So prepare your messaging in advance, then launch when the news breaks. It’s brilliant turn to communications. Your story is their mission. You can get their newsletter which is on message at turn hyphen two dot c o. Brilliant. Now, back to your dismantling racism journey. What are you inviting them to do with you have a conversation, share your experience with us, is it?

[00:14:42.37] spk_1:
Yeah, essentially. I mean, that’s what it boils down to. But again, it really depends on where the organization is. Right. So this is your data collection moment. This is information collection. Where else are you collecting information? What what else do you know? What other steps have you taken to begin that educational process because there’s there’s kind of a dual purpose here, right? It’s understanding who we are in, where we have contributed to structural racism, to pretend to a culture of that does not support differing viewpoints, differing populations, that is in some ways upholding white supremacy or is completely holding upholding white supremacy and its culture, there’s that general education of understanding all of that and then there’s understanding what our organization’s role is, right? So it’s both. And um so it’s really highly dependent upon where is the organization uh case for us, who you’ve talked to? The head of Equity in the center describes a cycle that is brilliant um around awake too, woke to work. Where are you in that cycle? Are you, where are you on? Um where are you and being pluralistic? Where are you and being inclusive? All of those things depend on what you’ll ask and how you’ll reach out and if you even should reach out there maybe work that has to be done internally before that reach out can happen again, just being considerate and sensitive of those who are willing to talk to.

[00:15:09.48] spk_0:
Yeah. Kay was our guest for the last most recent special episode on this exact same subject. Thank you.

[00:15:16.71] spk_1:
Yeah. The the organization is doing and has been since its inception has been doing incredible work. K is leading that work. Um and and both her words always contain wisdom and the products that they’ve put out are extraordinary.

[00:15:48.30] spk_0:
How about in your work are you facilitating the kinds of conversations in your practice that you and I are talking about right now, Do you you bring these outside folks in sometimes too to to have these conversations

[00:16:16.58] spk_1:
sometimes. Yeah, sometimes again being highly respectful of if they didn’t want to engage with us, do they even want to talk to us right now? My work really is around um, having an organization understand where it is right now. So what is its current state? What is the desired future state? Right. So we know that we want to be a racially inclusive, racially equitable organization likely that’s already been defined. But what does that mean for us as an organization if it means solely in numbers piece right? Like we want to be more divorces aboard. Okay, that’s fine. But beyond that, how will we make ourselves have a board culture that is appealing to those people that we want to bring in to work with us? So it’s kind of defining both current state and understanding current state to finding future state and then developing the strategy to get there.

[00:17:00.63] spk_0:
Okay. And now you and I are talking about, you said you know, we’re still data gathering, so we’re still defining the current culture as it exists. Right. Okay. Okay. And your work, you you centered around people, culture and leadership. Can we focus on leadership? I feel like everything trickles down from

[00:17:05.04] spk_1:
there.

[00:17:27.69] spk_0:
I don’t know. Are we okay. Are you okay, Starting with a leadership conversation or you’d rather start somewhere else? Okay. Um, so what what is it we’re looking for leaders of our listeners of small and midsize nonprofits to, to commit to you.

[00:17:30.41] spk_1:
I think it’s first of all committing to their own

[00:17:32.40] spk_0:
learning

[00:17:33.56] spk_1:
and, and not relying on communities of color to provide that learning. Right? Again, Going back to what we said earlier, it’s not relying on those who have been harmed or oppressed to provide the learning. So first of all, it’s an individual journey that’s a given. Okay. Um,

[00:18:32.11] spk_0:
can I, can I like to like things like people, I like action steps. Okay. So we’re talking about our individual journey, our own learning. I mean, I’ve been doing some of this recently by watching Youtube, watching, um, folks on Youtube of course. Now I now I can’t remember the names of people, but no Eddie Glaude. Um, so Eddie Glaude is a commentator on MSNBC. He’s just written a just released this last week, uh, biography, well, not so much a biography of James baldwin, but, but an explanation of baldwin’s journey around racism. Um, so that’s one example of, you know, who I’ve been listening to. So we were talking about educating like learning from thought leaders around yeah, privilege structures, whether reading books listening to podcasts.

[00:19:00.76] spk_1:
Absolutely. It’s around, it’s around structures, but it’s also understanding things that we do all the time in organizations and how I as a leader might perpetuate those, right? So it’s sometimes the use of language to your point about the use of the word professional. Um, language tends to create our reality. So, and and it either language will build a bridge or not. So how do we use our language? How do we use our descriptors? How do I show up as a leader? Um, as in my own kind of inclusion or not? So, I think it is absolutely that it is looking at thought leaders around things like structural racism, around the use of language around people’s individual experiences to get that insight and depth, because it’s not just an intellectual exercise. This is emotional, too, and therefore has to have emotional resonance.

[00:20:10.42] spk_0:
Okay, thank you for letting me dive deeper into what about personal, you know, your own personal journey, your own personal education, uh, fact finding and introspection. You’re talking about something, you know, and it’s no, no revelation. This is it’s difficult. It’s painful. You know, you you’re very likely uncovering how you offended someone, uh, how you offended a group. Um, if you were, you know, speaking in public and something comes to mind or how you offended someone in meetings or, you know, multiplied. I don’t know how many times. I mean, this introspection is likely painful,

[00:20:12.44] spk_1:
likely likely. Yeah, more often. More often than not, I can’t I can’t really envision it. Not at some level being painful.

[00:20:21.92] spk_0:
Yeah. But you’ve caused pain. You know, that there’s a recognition there. Yeah,

[00:20:27.16] spk_1:
exactly,

[00:20:27.62] spk_0:
painful for you. But let’s consider the pain of the person or the group that you.

[00:20:33.80] spk_1:
Exactly, right. I

[00:20:34.78] spk_0:
don’t know, offended, stereotyped, mean to put off, you know, whatever it is, you’re

[00:20:40.73] spk_1:
that’s right. And that that’s why the work as much as I know, you know, to some degree, people want this to be work that can be kind of project managed if you will or it can be put into a process or a series of best practices or benchmarks

[00:20:53.94] spk_0:
to

[00:21:05.75] spk_1:
some degree, not very much, but to some degree. Yes, absolutely. The some a little bit of that can happen, but that in and of itself is a bit of a dominant narrative, right? That in and of itself is kind that that centering white culture. So I think what we need to understand is this is not just going to be again to sorry to be redundant, but it’s not just gonna be intellectual. The fact that pain has been caused dictates that this be emotionally owned as well. It can’t be arms length. It can’t be just intellectually owned with a project plan that I keep over here on a chalkboard or something like that.

[00:21:41.49] spk_0:
Emotionally owned. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Um All right. So I made you digress and deeper. What else, what else you wanna tell us about leadership’s commitment and and and the importance of leadership commitment.

[00:23:23.38] spk_1:
Yeah. So, so it needs to be explicit. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be baked into the leadership. Whatever leadership structure of the organization has, it needs to be an ongoing piece of that leadership. So it’s not a, hey, let’s touch base on our quote inclusion initiative. If it’s an initiative first of all, that’s not really doing the work anyway. Um but it’s not something that lives separately from ourselves. Let’s have HR kind of check in on this or let’s have the operations person check in on this, that that’s not what this is about. It’s really, it’s authentically being owned by leadership to say, yeah, I know it’s gonna be painful. And in looking at our organization, we’re gonna need to understand why our leadership is remarkably homogeneous. Which in the case of many nonprofits, it is if you take a look at Building movement project and the unbelievably great work that they’ve done twice now, they just put out an update to their leadership work around how people move through the sector or don’t and how people communities of color and people of color are represented in our leadership. We can begin to understand that by and large, they’re they’re not. Um though i that is an oversimplification in some ways. So I would encourage people to go to building movement Project’s website and check out their work. Um but you know what, why are we so homogeneous? Why is our board? So homogeneous? It’s it’s also unpacking and uncovering that. So to your point earlier about, you know, how do we look at people and how they move through the organization. This is where you look at Who is present, right? Not just who’s not with us, but who is with us? How do people get promoted? How does that system work? Does any does everyone have the same information? Is it a case of unwritten rules? Is it a case of some people move up because they’re similar or they have 10 years of experience, which is something that we like to say.

[00:23:45.71] spk_0:
How

[00:24:08.90] spk_1:
Do you get 10 years of experience if you’ve not been given those chances to begin with? So is there life experience that we can that we can begin to integrate in our conversations? Because life experience is equally valuable. Are we putting too much of a premium on higher education, education and its formal kind of traditional form. Are we putting too much of a of an emphasis on pedigree of other kinds of those, those are the things that ultimately keep people out. So taking a look at leadership and and having leadership commitment ultimately means looking at all of those things, there’s an overlap and how we look at leadership or people and or organizational culture.

[00:24:24.52] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah, of course, this is a it’s a continuum or

[00:24:27.44] spk_1:
Absolutely, absolutely. And the areas bleed into each other.

[00:24:38.31] spk_0:
Yeah, of course, yeah. Um, you know, subsumed in all this, I guess. I mean, it’s okay for leaders to say, I don’t know where the where the journey is going. I don’t know what we’re going to uncover, but I’m committed to having this journey and leading it and and right. I mean, supporting it, but I don’t know what we’re going to find.

[00:24:54.28] spk_1:
Uh

[00:24:55.50] spk_0:
Right,

[00:24:56.39] spk_1:
right. And that in and of itself can be uncomfortable for a lot of people. And that’s the that’s the kind of discomfort we need to get okay with.

[00:25:03.34] spk_0:
Yeah. Alright. Yeah. This, you know, I had I had a guest explained that this is not as you were alluding to, uh it’s not the kind of thing that, you know, we’re gonna have a weekly meeting and will be these outcomes at the end of every meeting, then we’ll have this list of activities and, you know, that then, you know, it’s how come it’s not like that. How come we can’t do it like that

[00:25:26.67] spk_1:
because we’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of years of history, and it’s because we haven’t been inclusive in the ways that we do things and we haven’t allowed whole selves to show up that it is um It’s complicated and it’s messy because it’s human.

[00:25:44.56] spk_0:
Alright. So it’s not gonna be as simple as our budget meetings.

[00:25:48.62] spk_1:
Absolutely different. Different kind of hard.

[00:25:52.76] spk_0:
Alright. And we’re gonna have an outcome at every at every juncture at every step or every week or every month or something. That’s

[00:25:58.65] spk_1:
right. That’s right. And if we expect it to go that way. Um We are likely going to give ourselves excuses not to press on

[00:26:56.36] spk_0:
it’s time for a break, fourth dimension technologies. Are you seeing technology as an investment, an investment in your people, the people you’re helping, the people who work for you, the people who support you, an investment in your sustainability and investment in your programs four D. Can help you make better tech investment decisions. Check them out on the listener landing page at Just like three D. But you know, they go one dimension deeper. Let’s return shall we to your dismantling racism journey. Alright, so that’s what it’s not. What, what does it look like?

[00:27:59.80] spk_1:
It absolutely looks different for every organization. It absolutely looks different for every organization and that’s why it’s so critical to understand kind of where are we right now? Um where are we? As far as all of the components of our organization? Right. So volatile. Again, volunteers board staff culture. You said, you know, we were talking about people organization and leadership, which is obviously a lot of my work. Um, it is getting underneath all of those kinds of things to say. So who experiences our culture? How um so we do engagement surveys, Right. A lot of times we do engagement employee surveys, that kind of thing. Are we looking at those disagree in a disaggregated way? Are we asking different populations to identify themselves? And are we looking at what the experiences are by population? Are we asking explicit questions around whether or not you feel like you can be yourself in this organization, Whether you can provide dissenting opinions, whether you feel comfortable approaching your boss with feedback, um

[00:28:01.00] spk_0:
whether

[00:28:01.73] spk_1:
you feel comfortable volunteering for particular work, whether you feel like you understand what a promotion or performance management processes, whether you get the support that you need or to what extent you get support that you need either from colleagues, boss, leadership etcetera. So it’s looking at all of those things and then understanding are they being experienced differently by different communities within our organization?

[00:28:26.10] spk_0:
You mentioned disaggregate ng. That that’s where the data is not helpful, right?

[00:28:31.94] spk_1:
That is where we look at the data in terms of populations.

[00:28:35.58] spk_0:
Oh, of course. Aggregating. I’m sorry.

[00:28:39.09] spk_1:
Oh, that’s okay.

[00:28:40.34] spk_0:
You’re stuck with a lackluster host? No, of course, yes. Aggregating

[00:28:44.36] spk_1:
early in the week.

[00:29:00.70] spk_0:
Thank you. You couldn’t say early in the day, but thank you for being gracious. Okay. Yes. We we we want to disaggregate of course. Um and look by population and I guess cut a different way. I mean depending on the size of the organization, um age, race, uh

[00:29:25.54] spk_1:
race, ethnicity, um of physical ability, orientation. All of those need to be in the mix. Um gender as well. Including gender fluidity. So really looking at all of our populations and then understanding, you know, for these particular questions, is there a difference in how people experience our organization? We we know then what we do know is that if there is a difference that there is a difference, we don’t know that there is causality unless they’re unless you’ve asked questions that might begin to illuminate that. Right? But there’s there’s always that difference between correlation and causality and then what you want to do is get underneath that to understand why the experience might be different and why it might change along lines of gender or race or ethnicity or orientation or physical ability.

[00:29:57.07] spk_0:
We we we wandered, you know, but that’s that’s fine. I

[00:30:03.50] spk_1:
people

[00:30:09.82] spk_0:
culture and um and leadership all coming together. Um where where where do you want to go? Uh I mean, I would like to talk about people, culture and leadership. What’s a good, what’s a good next one?

[00:32:27.52] spk_1:
Yes. Well, so, so this is what you’re doing, right? As you’re you’re collecting information and all of those three areas. Right? And one so a couple of things that I would add to that is when you look at people, you’re looking at their experiences, when you look at the leadership, you’re looking at commitment, makeup, structure, access all of those kinds of things. When you’re looking at culture, you’re looking at how people experience the culture, Right? And so what, what is happening? What’s not happening? What’s stated out loud? What’s not stated out loud? What are the unwritten rules? There is also the piece that that forms all of these things, which is operational systems. Right? So things like performance management, things like um where people may sit back when we were in physical offices having access to technology, all of those kinds of things, particularly important now that we’re not in physical offices, so does everyone have access to the technology and information necessary to do their job, to do their jobs to do their work? So it is looking also at your operator side and saying, how do we live our operational life? How do how do people experience it, who do we engage with to provide services for our operations? How do we provide services if you will, for lack of better term to our employees? So it’s also looking at that because operations ultimately permeates organizational culture, people and leadership, Right? Because it kind of sustains all of that. So taking a look at that too. And finally, I would suggest again as part of this and as a wraparound is what is the internal external alignment? Right? So I often hear people say, hey, you know what, this is the subsector we work in, people would think that we’re really equitable, but internally we are living a different life than what we are putting out to our stakeholders and our constituencies externally. So what is what is our external life? And how does that need to inform our internal world? It’s not unusual for me to hear that the external life, the way we engage with stakeholders or the way we put out program Programmatic work is actually may be further along to the extent that this is considered to be a contain, it’s further along than the way that we’re living our life internally. So

[00:32:31.20] spk_0:
there’s dishonesty there disconnect that

[00:32:34.70] spk_1:
there’s a disconnect

[00:32:36.18] spk_0:
disconnect

[00:32:36.88] spk_1:
for sure and possibly yeah, dishonesty and hip hop maybe even hypocrisy.

[00:32:47.12] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. But again, all right. So that now we’re looking like this is organizational introspection. Exactly. There’s individual learning and introspection. Now we’re at the organizational level right? Being honest with our with our culture and our messaging.

[00:33:05.70] spk_1:
Right. Right. And and so what I try to do is to help organizations kind of look at those things and decide how we might evolve give in the future that we’ve set our sights on and given some of the principles that we’ve laid out. How do we kind of get there? How do we, how do we evolve our systems? How do we evolve our people practices? How do we evolve our culture. So hence the need to look at all of these things that centered around people, culture and leadership.

[00:35:27.37] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take to debunk the top five myths of planned giving. I hate these insidious, pernicious myths like the one that planned giving will hurt your other fundraising and the one that you need a lawyer because plan giving is so complicated. I will debunk the top five myths in a webinar on Tuesday october 18th at 10 a.m. Pacific time, one p.m. Eastern time. but the time doesn’t matter because if you grab your spot for the webinar, you’ll get the video. This is 2022 you don’t need to be there. We’d love to have you live, but you don’t need to be there. I will be debunking these insidious myths in plain simple language and I’m gonna weave in my stand up comedy. The host is NP Solutions. They’re hosting, you are hosting me, they’re hosting us. That’s what hosts do they host their hosting? You go to N. P solutions dot org and click on workshops. What could be simpler. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got the boo koo but loads more time for your dismantling racism journey with Gene Takagi. No, no, it’s with who writes this copy? I need an intern so badly, desperately. So I have somebody to blame. Please. You’re dismantling racism journey with pretty itchy Shah and intern resumes are welcome. What about the use of a professional facilitator? Because well, first of all, there’s a body of expertise that someone like you brings uh but also help with these difficult conversations. Talk about the value of having an expert facilitator. Yeah,

[00:36:50.97] spk_1:
absolutely. So, so, you know, I think I think there’s always a level of objectivity and and and kind of an in inside look by an outsider that you that you benefit from. We go to experts for everything from, you know, our health to the extent that we have access to those experts, which is a whole different conversation on race and oppression. Um, we we want that external voice. What I would say is it’s likely not going to be the same expert or the same facilitator and I say expert in quotes um, for everything. So for instance, I am not the voice to be centered on educating an organization around structural racism. I don’t think I’m the right voice to be centered. I would rather center voices like those at um, At race forward at equity in the center at those who have lived the results of 400 years of oppression. So you might want to call in someone for that discussion for that education. There are people that are better and more steeped in that and whose voices should absolutely be centered for that. Um, you might want to call in a voice for White Ally ship because there is some specifics around that that we need to talk about without kind of centering white voices. I’m

[00:36:51.22] spk_0:
sorry that white Ally ship. Yeah. What is that?

[00:38:01.95] spk_1:
So if we think about the or the organization, right, and are kind of culture and our people um, who who on staff sees themselves as an ally. And how can they be good? How can how can white people be good allies? Right. And how do how do we further and embed that in the culture. Um, and then finally, so keeping that in mind that there are gonna be different experts or different facilitators for different things, you know, who is going to be the person in my case, this actually might be me is to help us evolve our culture and our systems so that we can be more equitable and take a look at that, who’s gonna provide the training because there are skills necessary right to have these com conversations. There are foundational communication skills, there is the ability to give feedback. Um, there is the ability to communicate across cultures, across genders, across across groups. There is ability to be collaborative. So so also strengthening those skills while we continue to look at those things. But to think that all of this help is going to come from? One source is not ideal and unlikely it’s even inappropriate because everyone can’t be everything. I don’t try to be the voices that I can’t be, it’s inappropriate for me to do that.

[00:38:26.14] spk_0:
What what else do you wanna, what do you want to talk about? You know, given the level where that we’re at, we’re trying to help small and midsize nonprofits inaugurate a journey around racism and white privilege.

[00:39:44.81] spk_1:
Yeah, I think, I mean, look, first of all I hear a lot of organizations say like what what is the access point, like what do I get started doing? We put out a statement um in some cases we are experiencing some dissonance between the statement that we put out or the programmatic work that we do and the way that we’re living internally. So it is really understanding kind of why where are we now through all of the ways that that we’ve been talking about over the last several minutes. Where are we now? What is it that we’re not doing that we should be doing, What is it that we need to be doing? How do we define for us if we have an equitable culture, if we are living racial equity, what does that look like for us? Um how does that affect our programmatic work? How does that affect our operations? Everything from our finances to our people processes to when we are back in an office, even our physical setup. How how does that affect us and how would we define that future state? So it’s understanding what is my current state, what is my future state and then understanding how we get there and it’s likely gonna be along all of the areas that we said. Right? So individual journeys, some group and individual skill building, um some evolution of our systems and some understanding of kind of how we can support each other and support ourselves for those that are that affiliate with a particular group. Um and then kind of moving us along to that place of where we want to be. So it is it is understanding where you are that determines what your access point is. But I would say if you if you have done the work of putting out this statement then there then look for look for where you’re not living that statement internally.

[00:40:22.11] spk_0:
That sounds like a very good place to Yeah, to start your search for for an access point because it’s so recent, your organization has probably said something in the past 56 weeks.

[00:40:23.77] spk_1:
Absolutely

[00:40:26.78] spk_0:
to that, to that statement.

[00:40:43.46] spk_1:
Exactly. And and we are incredibly, I would say and pardon the use of the term, but almost fortunate that so many thought leaders have been kind and generous enough to share with us their thoughts on this moment, so not just within the sector, but all the way across our society. So many people have taken the time and the patients and the generosity amidst everything else that they’re living through, they have agreed to share their thoughts, their leadership, their expertise with us. So there is a ton of knowledge out there right at our fingertips and that’s a that’s another really great place to start and to center the voices that most need to be heard

[00:41:15.89] spk_0:
at the same time. You know, we are seeing beginnings of change uh institutions from Princeton University to the state of Mississippi

[00:41:37.59] spk_1:
right? Absolutely. To hopefully, you know, the unnamed Washington football team and to Nascar and places where we, I didn’t know that change necessarily was possible, but we we are same change and and the important thing is is to not be complacent about that change,

[00:42:41.88] spk_0:
right and not and also recognize that it’s just a beginning. You know, removing confederate statues, um taking old glory off the Mississippi flag. These are just beginnings. But I think worth worth noting. I mean worth recognizing and celebrating because The state of Mississippi is a big institution and it’s been wrestling with this for, I don’t know if they’ve been wrestling for centuries, but that flag has been there for that just that long 18. Some things I think is when that flag was developed. So it’s been a long, it’s been a long time coming. So recognizing it for what it is and celebrating it, you know, to the extent that yeah, to the extent that represents the change, the beginning of the beginning of change. All right. Um well, you know, what else, what else, what else do you want to share with folks at this? You know, at this stage?

[00:43:50.39] spk_1:
You know, I think, I think the main thing is um dig in, We need to dig in on this. We need to dig in on this because in the same way that that we have been living this society societally for so long. Our organizations many times are microcosms of society. So if we think as an organization that were exempt or that were already there, we’ve arrived at like a post racial culture, that’s not the case, that’s just not the case. Um, so where do you want to dig in? Where do you want to dig in, chances are good you are doing some version of looking at issues within your organization, whether it’s your annual survey, if you do it annually or whatever in which you can use that information to begin this journey. So dig in from where you are. It’s one of those things that if you’re waiting, if you’re waiting for kind of the exact right time or further analysis to begin the journey again, it’s not it’s not based solely on analysis. There is a p there is certainly information. There’s data that needs to be understood. But if we’re waiting for endless analysis to happen or to kind of point us to the right time, that’s not going to happen. The intellectualism needs to be there. But again, as we said in the path, as we’ve said a few times during the course of our conversation, this is about emotional resonance and an emotional ownership and a moral obligation. So, dig in, dig in wherever you are right now,

[00:44:38.44] spk_0:
what if I’m trying within my organization and I’m not the leader, I’m not even second or third tier management or something, You know, how do I elevate the conversation? I presume it helps to have allies. What if what if I’m meeting a resistance from the people who, who are in leadership?

[00:45:11.35] spk_1:
I think look for the places where there may not be resistance, right? So look within the organization. Um, if there is resistance at a particular level, then you know, who do you have access to in the organization where there isn’t that? And I think, I think starting out not assuming that you have solutions if you have expertise in this area, if you have lived through the oppression as a member of a community that has lived through the impression, particularly in the black community, I think you’re coming from one place if you are, if you are not in that community and saying that you have expertise, I think you have to be a little bit more circumspect about that and introspective about what you can offer in this vein. Um, and I think, I think we want to look for the places where there is some traction, I think in most organizations, it’s not unusual to be getting the question right now,

[00:45:47.45] spk_0:
and what is the, I don’t want to call it outcome. What, what, what what can the future look like for our organization if we do embark on this long journey,

[00:46:18.02] spk_1:
uh, cultures that are equitable in which people can show up as their whole selves, um, in which there is not only one right way to do things which tends to be a very kind of white dominant Western culture, linear sequential way of, of managing work of managing communications, etcetera, but that in fact work can be approached in a number of different ways and that solutions can be approached in a number of different ways. People get to show up and give their all to these missions that we all hold very near and dear. And so they are able they’re empowered. They are able they are celebrated without sticking to a set of preconceived guidelines or preconceived unwritten or written rules that don’t serve us anymore. Anyway,

[00:46:44.78] spk_0:
when you started to answer that, I saw your face lighten up your I don’t know, it was a smile, it just looks like your face untended. Not that you’re nervous,

[00:46:55.65] spk_1:
Your face changed,

[00:47:06.37] spk_0:
started to answer the where we could be. Uh yeah, it was, it was palpable. Alright, alright. Are you comfortable leaving it there?

[00:47:09.88] spk_1:
I think so. I think so what have we not covered that? We need to cover for your listeners,

[00:47:15.60] spk_0:
you know that better than I getting started. That’s

[00:47:34.18] spk_1:
fair. Look, you know what, this is, this is the future that is written with many voices and and while I think I can be helpful, I don’t presume to be the voice that has all the answers. I definitively don’t. I definitively don’t. And so what we have not covered is actually probably not known to me, but I dare say someone, someone out there does know that and and they will likely be putting their voice up, which is exactly what we want.

[00:47:47.19] spk_0:
Yes, we will be bringing other voices as well. Alright,

[00:47:50.25] spk_1:
no doubt. Yeah,

[00:48:02.94] spk_0:
she’s founder and Ceo of flourished Talent management Solutions and the company is at flourish tMS dot com. Thank you so much. Thank you very very much.

[00:48:05.97] spk_1:
Thank you. Thank you for opening up this space and having the conversation

[00:49:10.60] spk_0:
a pleasure. Uh it’s a responsibility and happy to live up to it. Try trying next week Beth Canter and Alison fine on their new book the smart non profit if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies their I. T. Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great

Special Episode: Your Dismantling Racism Journey

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My Guest:

Pratichi Shah: Your Dismantling Racism Journey
Starting with your people, your culture and your leadership, how do you identify, talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit? My guest is Pratichi Shah, founder & CEO at Flourish Talent Management Solutions.

 

 

 

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[00:01:49.94] spk_0:
welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. This is a special episode of non profit radio to help you be the change around racism and white privilege. You’re dismantling racism, journey, picking up from our last special episode, starting with your people, your culture and your leadership. How do you identify talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your non profit? My guest is pretty sheesha. Founder and CEO at Flourish Talent Management Solutions were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for non profits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non profits, Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot studio. It’s a real pleasure to work. Um, welcome. I’m not working. I’m welcoming. I’m welcoming pretty sheesha. She’s an HR strategist and thought leader with 25 years experience in all aspects of talent management. She’s making her face when I say 25 years, Human resource is equity and inclusion and organizational development in the non profit and for profit arenas. She’s founder and CEO of Flourish Talent Management Solutions. The company is at flourish. Tms dot com Prodigy, Welcome to the show.

[00:02:01.84] spk_1:
Thank you so much, tony. I appreciate me here.

[00:02:44.80] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure. Pleasure to have you. Um, and I’d like to jump right in your if you’re ready. Um, absolutely. You know, racism and white privilege most often look very benign on their face. I had a guest explain why use of the word professional in a job description is racist. I had a more recently, I had a guest explain how not listing a salary range in a job description was felt racist to them. So how do we begin to uncover what is inequitable and right under our noses yet not visible on its face?

[00:03:07.84] spk_1:
Yeah, you know it often it starts with listening. I mean, to state state a bit of the obvious. It really does serve listening. It’s understanding for organizations, it’s understanding where we are. Eso it’s listening to the voices that may not have been centered. We’ve become better as organizations and being responsive to staff. I hear that a lot kind of Hey, this is what my staff is telling me. This is what we need to do. But the question is, is, Are you responding to the voices that have possibly been marginalized? Likely that marginalized or oppressed in the past? General responsiveness is not the same as centering the voices that really need to be heard. So it’s first off just understanding where you are as an organization and listening to the people who may have experienced organization in a way that is different than you think.

[00:03:41.67] spk_0:
So when you say general responsiveness is not what not adequate, not what we’re looking for, what do you mean by that?

[00:03:50.11] spk_1:
So a lot of time, the voices that are saying, Hey, something’s wrong or we need to do this or we need to do that are not the voices of those that have been marginalized and oppressed. They tend to be maybe the loudest voices there, speaking maybe from a place of privilege, and that needs to be taken into account. So being responsive. For instance, if the I call it kind of the almond milk issue being responsive to a staff that says in addition to dairy milk for coffee this is back when we’re in fiscal offices. Um, we need almond milk, too. But the question is, is, Are we listening to the voices of those that weren’t able to consume the dairy milk? It’s not a perfect metaphor. It’s not a perfect analogy because that one ignores actual pain, and it just talks about preference. But are we listening to the voices of people that have been impressed who have who have been, who have heard the word professional or professionalism wielded against them as a pad as an obstacle in their path to success in their path to career advancement? Those are the voices that we need to listen to, not the ones who have a preference, for one thing or another.

[00:05:00.05] spk_0:
Okay, let’s be explicit about how we identify who who holds these voices. Who are these people?

[00:05:19.34] spk_1:
It’s people that have have come from. It’s particularly right now when we talk about anti black racism, we need to censure the voices of those from the black community, and that means those who have either maybe not joint, not just not joined our organization for particular reasons, but maybe they have not joined our board. Maybe they have not participated in our programs that maybe they haven’t had the chance to. So it’s really from an organizational perspective, think of it, is understanding what our current state is. So how does your organization move? People up, move people in, move people out. If if we don’t have the voices in the first place because maybe we’re not as welcoming as we should be, then what does the data tell us about who’s coming into our organization, who is leading our organization, who is able to move up into our organization, what our leadership looks like, what our board looks like? So at times the fact that there is an absence of voice is telling in and of itself, and our data needs to be able to explain what is going on so that data needs to be looked at as well.

[00:06:44.14] spk_0:
All right, so we need to very well, good chance we need to look outside our organization. You’re talking about people that we’ve turned down for bored, bored positions turned down for employment. Um, I’m not even going to say turned down for promotion because that would presume that there’s still that that presumes there still in the organization, but I’m talking about very likely going outside the organization. People who don’t work with us who aren’t volunteering ho aren’t supporting us in any way. But we’ve marginalized them with cast them out before they even had a chance to get in.

[00:06:47.88] spk_1:
Potentially. Yeah, have been actually, probably probably there is something that they have not found palatable or appealing about working with us or being a sensor or being off to your point of volunteer. So we need we need to look at why that’s happening.

[00:07:28.04] spk_0:
Okay, I’ve got it. I got to drill down even further. How are we going toe? Identify these people within. Within our organization as it is. How are we gonna figure out which people these are that we’ve marginalized these voices of color? Um, over the just like in the past five years. What have we if we’ve done this, how do we identify the people? We’ve done it too.

[00:08:44.48] spk_1:
Yeah, you know, it really is a complicated question. It will differ my organization, right? It differs by what your subsector is. How things slow within a subsector the size of the organization. A really good place to start is understanding who has turned us down. Why have people left? So take a look at exit interviews. Even if you’re not doing exit interviews. We know that there is not always a nature, our presence and a lot of our organizations. If there aren’t formal exit interviews first, well, it’s my time for those because we need to understand why people are leaving. But if if there isn’t a formally h your presence, what do we know about the circumstances under which someone left organization or said no to a job offer or said no to a board, position or volunteer? It’s also important to ask, expanding our definition of stakeholder groups, engaging with all of our stakeholder groups as as broadly defined, us possible. And with in those groups understanding, are we reaching out to a diverse audience to say, Why would you engage with us? Why would you not engage with us in any of those roles? So, yeah, it’s gonna be a little bit harder to understand the people who are not there because they’re not there. Okay.

[00:10:02.96] spk_0:
All right, so All right. Um, we go through this exercise and and we identify. We’ve identified a dozen people. They’re not. They’re not currently connected to us. And ah, maybe that they have had a bad experience with us. Yeah, they may have turned us down for employment because they got offered more money somewhere else that could that in itself could be that itself. Could be not something other than benign. Um, but let’s say they moved out of the state, you know, they were they were thinking about. So So in some cases, they may not have a bad have had a bad experience with us, but in but in lots of cases, they may have. They may have turned down that board position because they start the current composition of the board. And they didn’t feel they felt like, maybe being offered, you know, a token slot or whatever. Whatever it might be, I’m just I’m just suggesting that some of the some of the feelings toward the organization might not be negative, but some might very well be negative of these dozen people we’ve identified in all these different stakeholder potential stakeholder roles that that they could have had what do we reach out to them and say way? Get them to join a conversation with an organization that they may feel, uh, unwelcoming.

[00:10:10.53] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s a great question, and I think right now, especially we tread carefully. Weigh tried carefully, and we honor the fact that they, in fact, might be getting that same question from many other other organizations friends, colleagues, family members in which people want to understand something. What we’re seeking to do is not be educated on the overall picture of white privilege, weight supremacy, off dominant narrative and dominant culture that’s on us. That’s on all of us individually to understand that that is not the men that is not up to the member. It was a press society started to tell us that. Great. So what they What we want to understand is kind of What did you experience with our organization? What was the good? What was that? And first of all, do you even want to engage with us? Is this not a good time to do that? Because you’re already exhausted, I said to ah, calling recently, You know, we can’t even understand the reality of what it’s like to live the re it to live that reality. And for many to leave the charge right because they’re also showing leadership in the movement. So, Teoh, we can’t even understand what those layers of existence or like, So we think it’s treading very carefully. And should we have the ability to engage with someone because they have the space, the energy, the desire, then I think it’s understanding and asking kind of what’s going on for us. What? Where did you find us? Either Not a feeling or Where did you Why did you not want to work with us in whatever capacity we were asking? And it’s asking that question.

[00:11:40.34] spk_0:
Okay, well, that’s further down, right? I’m I’m just trying to get to, like, what’s the initial email invitation look like?

[00:11:46.71] spk_1:
It depends on the organization. Eventually organization. It depends on the relationship. I wouldn’t presume to give words to that, to be honest with you, because because I think it also depends on the person that you’re asking. I don’t want toe offer kind of a link. It was on December inadvertently token ice people by saying, Oh, of course, we’re gonna want toe engage with us. So I really think it’s dependent on the situation,

[00:12:10.64] spk_0:
okay, and and what do you inviting them to do with you? Have a conversation. Share your experience with us? Is it?

[00:13:12.23] spk_1:
Yes, essentially. I mean, that’s what it boils down to, but again, it really depends on where the organization is, right? So this is your data collection moment. This is information collection. Where else are you collecting information? What what else do you know? What other steps have you taken to begin that educational process? Because there’s there’s kind of a dual purpose here, right? Is understanding who we are in where we have contributed to search for a race of them, to pretend to a culture that does not support differing viewpoints, differing populations that is in some ways upholding white supremacy, or is completely holding, upholding white supremacy and its culture. There’s that general education of understanding all of that. And then there’s understanding what our organization’s role is right, so it’s both and eso. It’s really highly dependent upon. Where is the organization case? Warez You’ve talked. Teoh, the head of equity in the centre, describes a cycle that is brilliant around awake to woke to work. Where are you in that cycle? Are you? Where are you on a where you in vain? Pluralistic, Where you and being inclusive. All of those things depend on what you’ll ask and how you’ll reach out. And if you even should reach out there, maybe work that is to be done internally before that reach out can happen again. Just being considerate and sensitive of those who are willing to start, you

[00:13:46.24] spk_0:
know? Yeah. Okay. Was our guest for the last most recent special episode on this exact same subject. Thank you.

[00:13:53.53] spk_1:
Yet the organization is doing, and it has been since its inception, has been doing incredible work. A is leading that work on dhe. Both her warrants always contain wisdom, and the products that they’ve put out are extraordinary.

[00:14:25.14] spk_0:
How about in your work? Are you facilitating the kinds of conversations in your practice that you and I are talking about right now? Do you bring these outside folks in Sometimes too. Teoh have these conversations

[00:14:27.53] spk_1:
sometimes? Yes. Sometimes again, being highly respectful of if they didn’t want to engage with us, Do they even want to talk to us right now? My work really is around having an organization understand where it is right now. So what is its current state. What is the desire in future state? Right, So we know that we want to be a racially inclusive, racially equitable organization. Likely that’s already been defined. But what does that mean for us is an organization if it means solely in numbers piece rate, like we want to be more divorces aboard. Okay, that’s fine. But beyond that, how we make ourselves have a board culture that is appealing to those people that we want to bring in to work with us. So it’s kind of defining with current state and understanding current state to finding future state and then developing the strategy to get there.

[00:15:44.34] spk_0:
OK, now you and I were talking about you said you were still data gathering. So we’re still defining the current culture as it exists. Right? Okay. Okay. And your work, you You centered around people, culture and leadership. Can we focus on leadership? I feel like everything trickles down from there. Very chill. No, I don’t know. Are we okay? Are you okay? Starting with a leadership conversation or you’d rather start somewhere else?

[00:15:51.24] spk_1:
No, we can We can start that. Fine.

[00:16:04.54] spk_0:
Okay. Um So what? What is it? We’re looking for leaders of our listeners of small and mid sized nonprofits to to commit you.

[00:16:10.34] spk_1:
I think it’s first of all committing to their own learning and and not relying on communities of color to provide that learning right again, going back to what we said earlier. It’s not relying on those who have been harmed or a present to provide. The learning is the first of all. It’s an individual attorney. That’s a given. Okay,

[00:17:09.24] spk_0:
I like toe things like people. I like action steps. So we’re talking about our individual journey, our own learning. I mean, I’ve been doing some of this recently by watching YouTube watching folks on YouTube. Of course, now, right now, I can’t remember names of people, but no Eddie Glaude eso Eddie Glaude is a commentator on MSNBC. He’s just written just released this last week. Ah, biography. I am not so much a biography of James Baldwin, but but an explanation of Baldwin’s journey around racism. Um, so that’s one example of, you know who have been listening to. So we’re talking about educating the learning from thought leaders around yeah, revealed structures with reading books, listening to podcasts

[00:17:44.20] spk_1:
absolutely around its around structures. But it’s also understanding things that we do all the time and organizations and how I, as a leader, might eventually those right. So it’s sometimes the use of language to your point about the use of the word professional language tends to create our realities so another language will build a bridge or not. So how do we use our language? How do we use our descriptors? How do I show up as a leader in my own kind of inclusion or not? So I think it is absolutely that it is looking at thought leaders around things like structural racism around the use of language around people’s individual experiences to get that insight and depth. Because it’s not just a kn intellectual exercise. This is emotional to and therefore has to have emotional residents.

[00:18:47.24] spk_0:
Okay, thank you for letting me dive deeper into a personal your own personal journey, your own personal education, fact finding and and introspection. You’re talking about something, you know. And it zzz No, no revelation. This is It’s difficult of It’s painful. You know, you you’re very likely uncovering how you offended someone. Uh uh How you offended? Ah, group. Um, if you were speaking in public and something comes to mind or how you offended someone in meetings or, you know, multiplied, I don’t know how many times I mean, this introspection is likely painful.

[00:18:50.74] spk_1:
Likely? Likely. Yeah, more often. More often than not, I can’t. I can’t really envision it. Not at some level. They painful,

[00:19:08.88] spk_0:
but you’ve caused pain. You know that there’s a recognition there. Yeah, painful for you. But let’s consider the pain of person or the group that you, uh I don’t know, offended, stereotyped. I mean, put off whatever it is you’re

[00:19:31.28] spk_1:
that’s right. And that that’s why the work. As much as I know, you know, just some degree, people want this to be work that could be kind of project managed, if you will. Or it could be put into a process or a series of best practices arrangements to some degree, not very much, but to some degree, yes, absolutely. The sum of a little bit of that can happen. But that in and of itself is a bit of the dominant narrative, right. That, and of itself, is kind of at that centering white culture. So I think What we need to understand is this is not just going to be again, Teoh. Sorry to be redundant, but it’s not just gonna be intellectual. The fact that pain has been caused dictates that this be emotionally owned as well. It can’t be on life. It can’t be just intellectually owned with a project plan that I keep over here on a chalkboard or something like that.

[00:20:18.34] spk_0:
Emotionally owned. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Um, all right. So I made you die aggressive. Deeper. What else Rails you want toe? Tell us about leadership’s commitment on dhe. The importance of leadership. Commitment?

[00:22:22.54] spk_1:
Yes. So? So it needs to be explicit. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be baked into the leadership. Whatever leadership structure of the organisation has, it needs to be an ongoing piece of that leadership. So it’s not a Hey, let’s touch face on our quote inclusion initiative. If it’s an initiative, first of all, that’s not really doing the work. And he went, but it’s not something that lives separately from ourselves. Let’s have HR kind of check in on this or let’s have the operations person checking on this, but that’s not what this is about. It’s really it’s authentically being owned by leadership to say, Yeah, I know it’s gonna be painful. And in looking at our organization, we’re gonna need to understand why our leadership is remarkably homogeneous, which, in the case of many nonprofits, it is. If you take a look at building movement project and the unbelievably great work that they’ve done twice now, they just put out an update to their leadership, work around how people moves in sector or don’t and how people, communities of color and people of color are represented in our leadership. We can begin to understand that by and large, they’re they’re not on the why. That is a no oversimplification in some way. So I would encourage people to go to building movement projects, went site and check out their work. But you know what? Why are we so homogeneous? Why is there a board so homogeneous? It’s It’s also unpacking and uncovering that. So, to your point earlier about you know how we look at people and how they move through the organization. This is where you look at who is press right? Not just who’s not with us, but who is with us? How do people get promoted? How does that system work? Just any. It does everyone have the same information? Is it a case of unwritten rules? Is it a case of some people move up because they’re similar? Or they have have 10 years of experience, which is something that we like to say. How do you get 10 years of experience if you have not been given those chances to begin with? So is there life experience that weaken that we can begin to integrate in our conversations, these life experiences equally valuable are we putting too much of a premium on higher education, education and its formal kind of traditional form. Are we putting too much of, ah, of an emphasis on pedigree of other kinds of those? Those are the things that ultimately keep people out. So taking a look at leadership and having leadership commitment ultimately means looking at all of those things. There’s an overlap and how we look at leadership or people and or your organizational culture.

[00:23:01.74] spk_0:
Yeah, of course, this is a it’s a continuum or

[00:23:04.18] spk_1:
absolutely, absolutely, and the areas bleed into each other.

[00:23:25.68] spk_0:
Yeah, of course, yeah, um, you know, I subsumed in all this. I guess it’s OK for leaders to say I don’t know where the where the journey is going. I don’t know what we’re going to uncover, but I’m committed to having this journey and leading it and right, I mean supporting it. But I don’t know what we’re gonna find.

[00:23:32.52] spk_1:
Right, Right? Right. And that, in and of itself can be uncomfortable for a lot of people. And that’s the That’s the kind of discomfort we need to get okay with.

[00:24:03.54] spk_0:
Yeah, all right. Yeah. No, I had I had a guest explain that this is not as you were alluding to, uh, is not the kind of thing that we’re gonna have a weekly meeting and will be these outcomes at the end of every meeting. Then we have this list of activities and you know, the you know, it’s how come it’s not like that. How come we can’t do it like that? Yeah, because

[00:24:07.08] spk_1:
we’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of years of history, and it’s because we haven’t been inclusive in the ways that we do things and we haven’t allowed whole Selves to show up that it is, um, it’s It’s complicated and it’s messy because it’s human.

[00:24:21.44] spk_0:
All right, so it’s not gonna be, is simple. Is our budget meetings

[00:24:28.54] spk_1:
right? Absolutely kind of hard.

[00:24:29.50] spk_0:
All right, we’re gonna have an outcome it every every juncture at every step or every week or every month. Yeah,

[00:24:35.03] spk_1:
that’s right. That’s right. And if we expect it to go that way, we are likely going to give ourselves excuses not to press on.

[00:24:44.44] spk_0:
All right, so that’s what it’s not. What what does it look like?

[00:26:08.14] spk_1:
So it absolutely looks different for every organisation. It absolutely looks different for over organization. And that’s why it’s so critical to understand, kind of. Where are we right now? Where are we? As for us, all of the components of our organization, Right? So, Roland again, Volunteer’s board staff culture, You said, you know, we were talking about people, organization and leadership, which is obviously a lot of my work. It is getting underneath all of those kinds of things to say. So who experiences our culture? How eso we do engagement surveys, right? A lot of times we do engagement employee surveys, that kind of thing. Are we looking at those dis Agra and adjust aggregated way. Are we asking different populations to identify themselves? And are we looking at what the experiences are by population? Are we asking explicit questions around whether or not you feel like you can be yourself in this organization? Whether you can provide defending opinions whether you feel comfortable approaching your boss will be back whether you feel comfortable volunteering for particular work, whether you feel like you understand what a promotion or performance management processes, whether you get you the support that you need or to what extent you get support that you need either from colleagues bus leadership, etcetera. So it’s looking at all of those things and then understanding all of a being experienced differently by different communities within our organization.

[00:26:14.24] spk_0:
You mentioned dis aggregating. That’s where the data is not helpful, right?

[00:26:20.02] spk_1:
That is where we look at the data in terms of populations.

[00:26:28.43] spk_0:
00 Aggregate. Of course, aggregating You’re stuck with a lackluster host now, of course. Yes, aggregate

[00:26:32.47] spk_1:
early in the week.

[00:26:48.84] spk_0:
Thank you. You couldn’t say early in the day. But thank you for being gracious. Okay? Yes, we we we want Teoh disaggregate. Of course um, and look by population and I guess, cut a different way. I mean, depending on the size of the organization, um, age race, uh,

[00:27:38.81] spk_1:
raises ethnicity of physical ability, orientation. All of those need to be in the mix gender as well, including gender fluidity. So really looking at all of our populations and then understanding, you know, for these particular questions, is there a difference and how people experience or organization we we know Then what we do know is that if there is a difference that there is a difference, we don’t know that there is cause ality unless there unless you’ve asked questions that might begin to illuminate that right. But there’s there’s always that difference between correlation and cause ality. And then what you want to do is get underneath that to understand why the experience might be different and why it might change along lines of gender or race or ethnicity or orientation or physical ability.

[00:27:45.14] spk_0:
Way wandered, you know, But that’s that’s fine.

[00:27:49.50] spk_1:
People in organizations are

[00:27:57.94] spk_0:
people, culture and leadership all coming together. Where where do you want to go? I mean, I would like to talk about people, culture and leadership What’s a good? It’s a good next one.

[00:28:42.74] spk_1:
Yes, well, so so this is what you’re doing, right? Is your collecting information and all of those three areas right and want it. So a couple of things that I would add to that is, when you look at people, you’re looking at their experiences. When you look at leadership, you’re looking at commitment, makeup, structure, access, all of those kinds of things. When you’re looking at culture, you’re looking at how people experience the culture, right? And so what? What is happening? What’s not happening? What state it out loud? What’s not stated out loud. What are the unwritten rules? There is also the peace are that that forms all of these things, which is operational systems, right? So things like performance management, things like where people may sit back when we were in physical offices at having access to technology. All of those kinds of things particularly important now that we’re not in physical offices. So just everyone have access to the technology and information necessary to do their job to do their jobs to do their work. So it is looking also at your operational side and saying How do we live our operational life? How do how two people experience it? Who do we engage with to provide service is for operations. How do we provide the service is, if you will, for lack of better term to our employees. So it’s also looking at that because operations ultimately permeates organizational culture, people and leadership, right, because it kind of sustains all of that. So taking a look at that, too, and finally, I would suggest again, as part of this and as a wraparound, is what is the internal external alignment, right? So I often hear people say, Hey, you know what? This is the subsector we work in people with think that we’re really equitable, but internally, we are living a different life than what we’re putting out to our stakeholders in our constituencies externally. So what is what is our external life, and how does that need to inform our internal world? It’s not unusual for me to hear that the external life, the way we engage with stakeholders or the way we put out program programmatic work is actually may be further along. To the extent that this is considered to be a continuum. It’s further along than the way that we’re living our life internally.

[00:30:19.33] spk_0:
Dishonesty there this disconnected It

[00:30:24.39] spk_1:
is a disconnect for sure. And possibly yes, dishonesty and hip hop made even hypocrisy.

[00:30:35.76] spk_0:
Yeah, All right, but again. All right, so that now we’re looking like this is organizational introspection. There’s individual learning and introspection. Now we’re at the organizational level, right? Being honest with our with our culture and our messaging.

[00:31:13.64] spk_1:
Right? Right. And so what I tried to dio is to help organizations kind of look at those things and decide how we might have all given the future that we’ve set our sights on and given some of the principles that we’ve laid out, how do we kind of get there? How do we How do we have all of our systems had a way of all of our people practices? How do we have all of our culture? So hence the need to look at all of these things that centered around people, culture and leadership. What about

[00:31:33.64] spk_0:
the use of a professional? A facilitator? Because, Well, first of all, there’s a body of expertise that someone like you brings, uh, but also help with these difficult conversations. Talk about the value of having an Anek Spurt facilitator.

[00:32:22.73] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely So So you know, I think I think there’s always a level of objectivity and kind of in inside Look by an outsider that you that you benefit from. We go to experts for everything from you know or health to the extent that we have access to those experts, which is a whole different conversation on race and oppression. We we want external voice. What I would say is it’s a likely not going to be the same expert or the same facilitator. And I say expert in quotes for everything. So, for instance, I am not the voice to be centered on educating an organization around structural racism. I don’t think on the right voice to be centered. I would rather send your voices like those at, um at race forward at equity in the centre at those who have lived the results of 400 years of oppression. So you might want to call in someone for that discussion for that education. There are people that are better and more steeped in that and whose voices should absolutely be centered for that. You might want to call in a voice for White I’ll ally ship because there is some specifics around that that we need to talk about without kind of centering white races.

[00:32:53.93] spk_0:
I’m sorry, White ally ship. Yeah. What is that? So

[00:34:04.64] spk_1:
if we think about the or the organization right and are kind of culture and are people who who won staff sees themselves as an ally and how can they be good? How come Apple boy people be good allies, right? And how do how do we further and embed that in the culture on dhe? Then finally, So keeping that in mind that there are gonna be different experts or different facilitators for different things, you know who was going to be the person in my case, this actually might be May is to help us evolve our culture and our systems so that we can be more equitable and take a look at that. Who’s gonna provide the training because their skills necessary rightto have these conversations. There are foundational communication skills. There is the ability to give feedback. There is the ability to communicate across cultures across genders across across groups. There, his ability to be collaborative. So So also strengthening those skills while we continue to look at those things. But to think that all of this help is going to come from one source is not ideal and likely it’s even inappropriate because everyone can’t be everything. I don’t try to be the voices that I can’t be. It’s inappropriate for me to do that.

[00:34:18.84] spk_0:
What? Um, what else do you want? Oh, what do you want to talk about? Given the level where that we’re at, we’re trying to help small and midsize nonprofits inaugurate a journey around racism and white privilege.

[00:34:33.95] spk_1:
Yeah, E Look, first of all, I hear a lot of organizations say, like, what is the access point? Like, What do I get started doing? We put out a statement. Um, in some cases, we are experiencing some dissonance between the statement that we put out or the problematic work that we dio and the way that we’re living internally. So it is really understanding. Kind of. Where are we now? Through all of the ways that we’ve been talking about over the last several minutes, where we now what is it that we’re not doing that we should be doing? What is it that we need to be doing? How do we define for us if we have an equitable culture? If we’re living racial equity, what does that look like for us? Um, how does that affect our programmatic work? How does that affect our operations? Everything from our finances to our people processes to when we’re back in an office, even our physical set up. How how does that affect us? And how would we define that future state? So it’s understanding what is my current state? What is my future state and then understanding how we get there and it’s likely gonna be a long all of the areas that we said right? So individual journeys, some group and individual skill building some evolution of our systems and some understanding of kind of how we can support each other and support ourselves for those that are that affiliate with a particular group, Um and then kind of moving us along to that place of where we want to be. So it is. It is understanding where you are at that determines what your access point iss. But I would say if you if you have done the work of putting out the statement, then there. Then look for look for where you’re not living that statement internally.

[00:36:26.93] spk_0:
That sounds like a very good place to yeah, to start your search for for an access point because it’s so recent. Your organization’s probably said something in the past 56 weeks, absolutely close. Are you hearing to that to that statement?

[00:36:46.33] spk_1:
Exactly. And and we are incredibly, I would say important the use of the term, but almost fortunate that so many thought leaders have been kind and generous enough to share with us their thoughts on this moment. So not just within the sector, but all the way across our society. So many people have taken the time and the patients and the generosity amidst everything else that they’re living through. They have agreed to share their thoughts, their leadership, their expertise with us. So there is a ton of knowledge out there right at our fingertips, and that’s a that’s another really great place to start and says center the voices that most need to be heard

[00:37:18.87] spk_0:
at the same time. You know, we are seeing beginnings of change institutions from Princeton University to the state of Mississippi,

[00:37:40.47] spk_1:
right? Absolutely. Teoh. Hopefully, you know, the unnamed Washington football team. And to not far and places where we I didn’t know that change necessarily was possible. But we we are seeing change. And the important thing is is to not be complacent about that change,

[00:38:44.72] spk_0:
right? And not and also recognize, that it’s just a beginning, you know, removing Confederate statues, um, the room taking old glory off the Mississippi flag. These are just beginnings, but but I think worth worth noting, and they worth recognizing and celebrating because the state of Mississippi is a big institution and it’s been wrestling with this for I don’t know if they’ve been wrestling for centuries, but that flag has been there for that. Just out long 18. Some things, I think, is when that flag was developed. So it’s been a long it’s been a long time coming. So, recognizing it for what it is celebrating it, you know, to the extent that yeah, to the extent it represents the change getting up the beginning of change. All right. Um, well, you know, for teaching What else? What else? What else do you want to share with folks at this. You know, at this stage,

[00:39:19.56] spk_1:
you know, I think I think the main thing is, um didn’t dig it. We need to dig in on this. We need to dig in on this because in the same way that we have been living this society really societally for so long. Or organizations many times are microcosms of society. So if we think as an organization were exempt or that were already there, we’ve arrived at a post racial culture. That’s not the case. That’s just not the case. So where do you want to get it? Where do you want it again? Chances are good. You are doing some version of looking at issues within your organization, whether it’s your annual survey, if you do it annually, or whatever in which you can use that information to begin this journey so diggin from where you are. It’s one of those things that if you’re waiting, if you’re reading for kind of the exact right time or further analysis to begin the journey again, it’s not. It’s not based solely on analysis. There is a P. There is certainly information. There’s data that needs to be understood. But if We’re waiting for endless analysis Toe happen or Teoh kind of point us to the right time. That’s not going to happen. The intellectualism needs to be there. But again, as we said in the path as we said a few times during the course for conversation, this is about emotional residents in an emotional ownership and a moral obligation. So diggin, diggin wherever you are right now.

[00:40:46.20] spk_0:
What if I’m trying within my organization and I’m not the leader, not even second or third tier management or something, you know, How do I elevate the conversation? Uh, I presume it helps to have allies. What if What if I’m meeting a resistance from the people who are really in leadership?

[00:41:16.68] spk_1:
I think Look for the places where the remains, not the resistance, Right? So look within the organization. If there is resistance at a particular level, then you know who do you have access to in the organization where there isn’t that? I think I think starting out not assuming that you have solutions. If you have expertise in this area, if you have lived through the oppression as a member of a community that has lived through the impression, particularly the black community. I think you’re coming from one place if you are. If you are not in that community and saying that you have expertise, I think you have to be a little bit more circumspect about that and introspective about what you can offer in this vein on. And I think I think we want to look for the places where there is some traction. I think in most organizations it’s not unusual to be getting the question right now.

[00:41:50.41] spk_0:
And what is the I don’t want to call it outcome. What’s what look in the future look like for our organization? If we do embark on this long journey?

[00:42:02.14] spk_1:
Yeah, cultures that are equitable, in which people can show up as their whole Selves, in which there is not only one wrote right way to do things, which tends to be a very kind of white, dominant, Western culture, linear, sequential way of of managing work, of managing communications, et cetera, but that in fact, work can be a purged in a number of different ways, and that solutions can be approached in a number of different ways. People get to show up and give their all to these missions that we all feel very Narron dear. And so they are able, they’re empowered. They are able they are celebrated without sticking to a set of preconceived guidelines or preconceived, unwritten or written rules that don’t serve us anymore. Anyway,

[00:42:59.20] spk_0:
When you started to answer that, I saw your face. Lighten up. He your You know, it was a smile. It just looks like you’re faced untended. Not that you’re nervous. You’re facing hard to answer the where we could be.

[00:43:03.60] spk_1:
Who doesn’t like to imagine that future?

[00:43:09.30] spk_0:
Yeah, it was It was palpable. All right. Are you comfortable leaving it

[00:43:12.77] spk_1:
there? I think so. I think that what if we not covered that we need to cover for your listeners?

[00:43:18.70] spk_0:
Your know that better than I a place there at getting started.

[00:43:24.11] spk_1:
That’s fair. Look, you know what this is? This is the future that is written with many voices. And and while I think I can be helpful, I don’t presume to be the voice that has all the answers. I definitively don’t. I definitively don’t. And so what we have not covered is actually probably not known to me. But I dare say someone. Someone out there doesn’t know that. And they will likely be putting their voice up, which is exactly what we want.

[00:43:50.07] spk_0:
Yes, we will be bringing other voices as well. All right.

[00:43:53.06] spk_1:
No doubt. Yeah.

[00:43:54.31] spk_0:
Petition Shaw. She’s founder and CEO of Flourished Talent Management Solutions. And the company is at flourish tms dot com Petitti. Thank you so much. Thank you very, very much,

[00:44:13.89] spk_1:
tony. Thank you. Thank you for opening up this space and having the conversation. Ah,

[00:45:04.76] spk_0:
pleasure. It’s a responsibility and, uh, happy toe. Live up to it. Try trying. Were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com My Cougar Mountain software, The Nolly Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for non profits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant her mountain for a free 60 day trial. And by turned to communications, PR and content for non profits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo. Our creative producer was glad Meyer, huh? Shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide. This music is by Scots. Many thanks to Susan and Mark for helping you get this special episode out quickly with me next time this week for non profit radio, big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for March 20, 2020: Your Organization’s Health

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My Guest:

Jamie Bearse: Your Organization’s Health
At ZERO, The End of Prostate Cancer, they have a culture grounded in high responsibility, high freedom, transparency, accountability, curiosity and adaptability. They’re a Nonprofit Times 50 Best Places To Work. Jamie Bearse is ZERO’s CEO.

 

 

 

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[00:00:27.68] spk_0:
This is Sam Liebowitz, the line producer for tony-martignetti non profit radio, and I have a message for you from tony this show to its pre recorded today. When I recorded it, the 2020 non profit technology conference was going ahead. Not surprisingly, it’s been cancelled, no less grateful to Cougar Mountain software for sponsoring non profit radio at the conference. So I’m going ahead with Tony’s Take two. I thank you for your understanding. I hope you’re well and safe and taking care of those close to

[00:00:49.14] spk_2:
you. Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%.

[00:01:26.61] spk_1:
I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. You’d get slapped with a diagnosis of metastasize, a phobia if you missed our seventh show in the Innovators. Siri’s your organization’s health At zero the end of prostate cancer, they have a culture grounded in high responsibility. Hi freedom, transparency, accountability, curiosity and adaptability and Maur. There are non profit times, 50 based best places to work. Jamie Burst is zeros CEO

[00:01:33.34] spk_2:
on tony Stick to 20 and T. C were sponsored by

[00:01:34.00] spk_1:
wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com.

[00:01:39.02] spk_2:
But Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund

[00:01:41.34] spk_1:
is there. Complete accounting solution made for nonprofits. Tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day

[00:01:48.12] spk_2:
trial and by turned to communications,

[00:01:50.95] spk_1:
PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO.

[00:01:58.94] spk_2:
It’s a real pleasure

[00:02:29.30] spk_1:
to welcome Jamie Burst to the show. He is CEO of Zero the End of Prostate Cancer. Over 15 years, he’s held nearly every job there, and they’ve raised about $100 million for the cause. Zero has six consecutive years as a non profit times. 50 Best places to work. Jamie has been a congressman’s press secretary, a reporter and editor, a radio deejay and a movie theatre projectionist. He writes comedy as a hobby. Zero is at zero. Cancer dot or GE, and he is at Jamie Bearse Bursts. Welcome. Welcome

[00:02:36.66] spk_2:
to the show, Jamie Bars

[00:02:38.74] spk_5:
I tony thing for having

[00:02:39.70] spk_2:
me on. It’s my pleasure.

[00:02:43.72] spk_5:
Quite a bit of research that many years back before you uh uh, get being a projectionist.

[00:02:52.31] spk_2:
Uh, yeah, way Have always saying on

[00:02:52.93] spk_1:
this show that I need an intern. Whenever I make a mistake, I say I need an intern to blame to blame for that mistake. But

[00:02:59.36] spk_2:
yeah, we don’t We don’t actually have

[00:03:03.77] spk_1:
interns. This is All of this is all either uncovered or, uh, somebody at zero. Give it to us.

[00:03:08.04] spk_6:
I

[00:03:08.10] spk_2:
mean, I don’t know who’s the US. We might talk about us. Me? Um, so So you’re doing some innovative things at

[00:03:16.23] spk_1:
zero. The way you define the culture with the culture of there is based on and the way it’s it’s service oriented. Um, we’re gonna get into all that. We get the full hour together. Obviously. The place to start, though, is acquaint us with. We’re gonna be talking a lot about what goes on at zero of as employees. What is zeros work?

[00:04:57.51] spk_5:
Sure. Our mission is right there in our name. Um, hear the end of prostate cancer. We’re being too and prostitutes or by advancing research, improving the lives of men and families and inspiring action And how that breaks down that we fight to increase prostate cancer research funding. Uh, we inspire action among men and families through a run walk series that we have that 47 cities across the country from L. A to New York to Minneapolis, to Miami and all points in between. And we have ah ah, quite a Amiri out of programs in order to be able to help like Krusty Cancer. And uh, at the top of that list that I’m most proud of is this program called 0 360 that we step in to have a patient navigator palpitation for free, doing comprehensive work on their behalf to being able to reduce financial distress. But a patient goes through while battling cancer research shows that nearly half its about 40% actually of cancer patients and quitting their treatment altogether because of financial issues. So we step in and help pave the way so they can get better and have a happy, healthy life with that, with their family going forward.

[00:05:01.95] spk_1:
And I presume there’s some kind of lobbying that you’re doing is well, for, ah, awareness among our our leaders.

[00:05:48.14] spk_5:
That’s right. We do advocacy work. I just just concluded our annual zero prosecutes or summit down in Washington, D. C. Where we had advocates from all of the country actually coming in from 40 states, and, uh, we send them to Capitol Hill to fight for, to protect an increase prostate cancer research funding. Onda, um, interesting side Good here is that not a lot of people know this, but the Department of Defense, please, is a significant role in the war on cancer. Um, like I said not. Not many people know that, but what they do. And there’s a program called the Prostate Cancer Research Program within the Department of Defense that has done some pretty significant breakthroughs and prostate cancer treatment screening,

[00:05:54.68] spk_2:
even

[00:06:18.15] spk_5:
for new treatments for prostate cancer in the last eight and 1/2 years. And, uh, you, uh, screening tool that is able to identify if you have an indolent to mark or an aggressive one. That’s really our, um, our advocates work over the years, and coming out to this summit has really paid off in a big way to be able to helped three million American

[00:06:22.71] spk_1:
those recent breakthroughs that you just described. They came from the department defense.

[00:06:49.45] spk_5:
It was funded by the Department of Defense. They go out to institutions around the country from places like Johns Hopkins, MD. Anderson Um, University of California, San Francisco. Institutions like that do you do the work, but the funding is geared toward being able to rush brilliant ideas from the science bench to the patient’s bedside is rapidly and constantly as possible.

[00:07:11.74] spk_1:
Okay, um, and you’re right. That 40% figure is startling that 40% of men end their treatments for prostate cancer for financial reasons that that’s that’s I don’t know, it’s upsetting. It’s annoying. It’s frustrating on its Shouldn’t be, uh, she’s

[00:07:15.73] spk_2:
okay. Um, how many employees

[00:07:18.30] spk_1:
at AA zero?

[00:07:21.35] spk_5:
Right now we have 32

[00:07:23.64] spk_2:
including victory

[00:07:24.60] spk_5:
and the year somewhere closer to 40. 39. 30 38 39 please.

[00:07:38.64] spk_1:
Oh, are you You’re gonna be close to 40 body into this year. Okay, that’s that’s pretty substantial growth for a 32 person organization. And, uh, on that includes virtual employees, right?

[00:08:11.50] spk_5:
That’s right. Yeah. We have employees all around the country. I would say about half of half an employee there in the Washington D C area. Uh, and then we have chapter directors that are scattered around the country. Several in California. I’m outside of Boston. Uh, yes, Chapter director and Texas in Minneapolis. And another one in New Jersey. And, um, another one in l. A.

[00:08:15.27] spk_2:
Okay, so you you have virtual over. Well, is on site. Okay, well, I bring that out

[00:08:38.03] spk_1:
because I think that has implications for a lot of what we’re gonna be talking about. The core values. I mean, how do you have you instill those in virtual employees who don’t have whoever who don’t have the benefit of on site on dure high touch? And that’s, you know, that can be isolating. So hopefully we’ll get a little into what? What your work is to make sure that that doesn’t become the case. The reality for the for the folks who are virtual

[00:08:51.04] spk_2:
yes. So, you know, we want to get into some of

[00:08:53.91] spk_1:
the details of the culture. We just have Jamie. We have about a minute or so before our first break. Okay, I’ll let you know when they’re coming up. So, um, you want to just talk a little about just briefly and just sort of tease it and we’ll get into Maura lot a lot more about being like, um hi. Responsibility and high freedom,

[00:10:14.88] spk_5:
I’m sure. Absolutely. Um are our culture is what sets us apart in order to be able thio make ending prosecutor a culture driven passion. If you Will and, um, in Global will break that down. Um, as we talked throughout the hour. But what it comes down to having the right values that everybody shares across the organization. It’s, um, committing thio, um, five aspects on how we over communicate with each other in order to be able to drive clarity. Um, and it comes down Thio, as you just said, Hi. Hi. Responsibility and high for Gemma’s bringing people into the organization that have a high level of, ah, off, uh, self regulated self management, um, that have high responsibility. And when individuals with the high level of responsibility. Um, I’m sorry. Individuals with a high level of responsibility are entitled Thio High level of freedom. And we’ll we’ll dive into that too.

[00:11:22.58] spk_1:
Yeah, we absolutely Well, all right. We got to take this break about 30 seconds wegner-C.P.As so that your 9 90 gets filed on time wegner-C.P.As so that your audit is finished on time so that you get the advice of an experienced partner who you know, just on the show. But last week, you two and ah, and the firm experience as well, with a nationwide non profit practice with thousands of audits under their belt so that your financial needs are not only covered but well covered, and you get the benefit of lots of their vast experience around nonprofits. Wegner-C.P.As dot com The place to start your due diligence as you’re exploring the possibility of new work for help with the 90 or audit. Okay, um, now let’s go back to your organization’s health. Jamie burst CEO at

[00:11:24.40] spk_2:
zero. Um what? What does this mean,

[00:11:28.83] spk_1:
20 to be high responsibility,

[00:11:54.01] spk_5:
I’m sure I actually have my gift. Thio steer back to, um make him actually make the case for organizational health there. There’s a lot of, uh, organizations out there that believe if you’re the you’re the smartest organization out there, then you’ll be successful. Um, and I don’t necessarily believe that that is true. I think that

[00:11:54.80] spk_2:
that that

[00:14:59.64] spk_5:
helps. Ah, but it really starts with having a healthy organization, an organization where folks within it are our, um are honest with each other in a way that they embrace vulnerability based on trust, and, uh, we can get into exactly what that means. But what it kind of looks like is that it means that it’s okay to say that I made a mistake, or you’re better at this than I am. Or, um, I messed this up, but, uh, next time I’m gonna do even even better than when you have that vulnerability. Been trust with one another, you’re able to engage in healthy conflict, and conflict happens. Ah, in any relationship, any organization. But I tell you how you handle that conflict in a way that you’re you have confidence of communication, that you get what you want while preserving the relationship that you have in a way that’s acceptable for everyone who’s involved. And, um, that looks like, um, understanding if I think that when it comes to conflict, people are either either one of the other, either people are bulls in China, shops or people are conflict of waiters. Now there’s some people who are also kind of ambidextrous without depending on the situation. Sometimes they’re bulls in China shops, and sometimes they’re just avoid complex altogether. But understanding your colleagues and what their appetite is for conflict and how they handle it and engaging in healthy conflict, where you really hear each other out in a healthy manner allows you to drive to commitment together on DDE. That looks like, um, excuse me, That looks like, um asking clarifying questions of like, Okay, you know what? I’m What I hear you saying is X y Z, and that gives a chance for the other person. Thio change that. Clarify that, or confirm. Confirm that that that’s, um that’s what everybody’s saying. That that way we’d have a good, clear understanding of what decisions are being committed to what goals are being committed to. And when that happens, it sets up an atmosphere for a peer to peer accountability in which, you know, something doesn’t go the way that we’ve committed to doing something. It opens the door to asking questions and getting really curious about like Okay, what I thought we committed to was X y z, But what happened was a b. C. Um, you know what happened or what changed along the way and being able t o get an understanding of how things fell apart. And if, um, if maybe, um that that accountability looks like, um seeing, uh, your kind truth, which is, you know, being able to give somebody feedback in a way where you care personally but challenged them directly

[00:15:05.46] spk_2:
on.

[00:15:11.64] spk_5:
And, um, that that comes down to saying that you acknowledge, um, how much they care about the cause and how much they care about their relationship.

[00:15:17.93] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:15:38.64] spk_5:
I want to do and I mean job, but also challenges them directly on improving. But when you have all that working together, the trust, uh, healthy conflict, that commitment, the peer to peer accountability that really wipes away a lot of the B s that can happen in organizations, the water cooler talk that goes on. And then you can really just roll up your sleeves and get to work and focus on results.

[00:15:44.52] spk_2:
Yeah. Jamie, where do these

[00:15:45.98] spk_1:
ideas come from? You kind truth and over communicating vulnerability based trust. What’s the genesis of these ideas?

[00:16:11.24] spk_5:
They come from different places, but But I really loved what isn’t Is an author out there, uh, by the name of Patrick Ngoni, who put out a book a few years back called The Advantage by organizational. Health trumps everything else in business, and he talks a lot about vulnerability. Based trust is having healthy conflicts. So some of it comes from there, and then

[00:16:18.18] spk_2:
some of

[00:16:34.64] spk_5:
it, uh, sort of picked up along the way and really puzzled puzzle piece this together. And some of the ideas come from, uh, Silicon Valley and Netflix in the amazing growth that they’ve had through the years. Um, and then from her mother,

[00:16:37.34] spk_2:
Okay. From other

[00:16:38.27] spk_5:
places just picked up along the way.

[00:16:40.24] spk_2:
One of the things I don’t

[00:16:41.08] spk_1:
know about you.

[00:16:41.71] spk_2:
Are you the founder of Zero?

[00:16:59.16] spk_5:
I’m not actually, I The organization started in 1996. I came on in 2002 as, uh uh, doing communications. And, uh, we did really well. And that CEO at the time, And I think a couple of years later came to me and said, Hey, you know, there’s a lot of transferable skills on, um, getting media placement, Thio getting people toe donate to the organization. So,

[00:17:09.53] spk_2:
yeah, come

[00:17:10.74] spk_5:
through and responsibility from there,

[00:17:12.37] spk_1:
right? All right. I know. I know. You progress through lots of different responsibilities. Um,

[00:17:17.97] spk_2:
okay. What? What does um, what is high freedom? Translate to

[00:17:23.69] spk_5:
Hi, freedom. High responsibility have freedom. Uh,

[00:17:26.55] spk_2:
you know

[00:18:21.44] spk_5:
that if you’re, um if you’re getting your job done, if you’re hitting all of your goals and you’re behaving with three values that we sent off across the organization and ex selling on all of it. Then year entitled to having high freedom. Which means, um, we don’t track personal time off. Believe in, uh, have being able to establish work life balance by taking the time that you need Thio? Uh, yes, Teoh, go to the doctor’s office, take a vacation. Um, you get your car fixed. Whatever it takes in orderto have that work life balance because if you again going back to the high responsibility part, those who are highly responsible are not going to abuse the system because they constantly want to stay on top of They’re they’re game stand off of their job and the tasks that they have to do and really excel it.

[00:18:26.18] spk_1:
Yeah, yes,

[00:19:06.24] spk_5:
when that happens and we don’t need to micromanage And, um, it also but also ties into, um, being able to give, um direct in the moment can to feed back another way that were much different from other organizations. But do you like end of the year reviews? Instead, we thought with with giving feedback in the moment, Why wait? It’s almost, you know, Why? Why wait, uh, nine or 10 months to the end of the year just to talk about some of the things that you could have corrected. And in the winter of spring, you hear the feedback now and corrected.

[00:19:07.11] spk_2:
So that means, like, as

[00:19:08.09] spk_1:
a project is ongoing, you know, there’s a justice is constant of feedback loop, as as something goes well or goes badly.

[00:19:17.32] spk_5:
Yeah, way.

[00:19:24.84] spk_2:
Just look down. Just I’m What does this look

[00:19:25.48] spk_1:
like? I’m trying to drill down. So people get a sense of what the what the work patterns are and communications patterns?

[00:19:33.04] spk_5:
Uh, yeah. The constant feedback loop is, uh, mostly around or three values that we have and that’s being humble, hungry and smart.

[00:19:40.84] spk_1:
Yes, you’re a J HHS.

[00:21:02.94] spk_5:
That’s right. Right? You got it. Humble breaks down into, um, it’s very it’s very straightforward. It’s putting team accomplishments in front of your own. You go hungry means that you’re driving for success. You’re looking for that? I’m next opportunity. Um, you’re good with stepping in outside of your, um your job description or your area of expertise to be able to help others across the organization and smart as a little nuanced. It’s It has a lot to do with, um, emotional intelligence rather than book smarts. And that comes down Thio being being attentive listener and understanding how you’re behavior in your actions affect others across the organization. So ah, lot of the feedback happens around those values. They believe that everybody’s gonna make this cake, but, um, everybody’s gonna fail and hopefully we fail fast. We learn from those mistakes and, uh, way we strive for for success. But it really starts with having those three values lived by all the time and being able to get feedback on how you’re impacting others through two or three values. Um, is what set this up for? For that success?

[00:21:32.11] spk_1:
Yeah, HHS humble, hungry and smart, I thought of health and Human Service is, but I know it’s not that on Dino. It’s not humanities and Health Service’s either. That was something that I think of the Carnegie Mellon University, but I was flashing back. But so So there’s a lot of communication around these three. Like, this is the Those are the three, um, sort of bedrocks of feedback. Is that right?

[00:22:05.43] spk_5:
Uh, yes, because again, if we were behaving in a way that humble, hungry and smart Everything else falls into place. Uh, after that, it really goes back to you know, if you’ve made a mistake or you’re not, um, you don’t, don’t you? Ah, you know, cast the right way. Um, you know, those things happen. It’s inevitable, human. But But if you’re your behavior is in a way, what say that, um example

[00:22:07.00] spk_1:
stories, air. Good. If you can think of something, that’s

[00:22:56.58] spk_5:
a good one. Um, sure. Um so if if, um if I’m being humble and hungry. But I’m not, um, sort of lack that emotional intelligence in a way that I don’t. But to really understand fully how my actions are, the things I say, uh, fall on other people and how that how it makes them feel or motivates them. Then I sort of turn into an accidental mess maker like I’m driven and want to succeed. You hungry? I’m humble and putting a put the team first. But if I don’t understand how my actions are affecting others and not inspiring them, that I’m going around an organization and making messes all over the place rather than really understanding how You know, my words or actions are falling on others.

[00:23:01.54] spk_1:
I’m getting nervous that I could never survive it. Zero? I

[00:23:05.00] spk_2:
don’t know. I would want to. I certainly would strive

[00:23:06.75] spk_1:
to. I’m not by any means putting down what? Your what? Your Ah, the way you work. I’m just not I don’t

[00:23:13.00] spk_2:
know. I hope I hope I would It would be something like that.

[00:23:15.15] spk_1:
Out of that I inspired too. But I’m not sure that I would

[00:23:18.44] spk_5:
touch people all the time. It’s not. It’s not an issue of Ah, you know, if you if you fall off in one way or you’re not being, you know, if you’re missing one of these, uh, out of HHS, uh, we caught you along,

[00:23:33.09] spk_2:
okay.

[00:23:41.04] spk_5:
And help you help you get there and being well rounded. Tell me when. Yeah, if you refused to be, embrace the values of our culture.

[00:23:43.53] spk_2:
Yeah, Dad. And

[00:23:44.62] spk_5:
then it’s done. That’s when it’s time. Just part ways.

[00:23:47.34] spk_1:
Somebody says this is gonna

[00:24:29.99] spk_5:
fire anybody or part ways with anybody because of the mystical or hey, we’re all pulling together for certain budget number or a certain number of patients helped, you know, There are outside factors that have have an impact on that. No. Why should anybody get punished? A replica reprimanded for outside forces that impact our ability to drive to a goal. It’s only internally and really self managing yourself around these values. Its what you can control. And if you’re open and willing to be coached, we’ll get you there.

[00:24:30.75] spk_1:
Okay. Maybe I’d have a shot. Uh, keep my

[00:24:33.42] spk_2:
eye before

[00:24:36.61] spk_5:
that. He’s going back. Um hey. Started 18 years ago. I’m not sure the organization were higher. Uh,

[00:24:45.52] spk_1:
that’s true for a lot of us. Uh, I’m not sure I’m qualified for some of the jobs I used to hold, but

[00:24:51.13] spk_2:
I’m not. I’m not sure I’d want

[00:25:15.02] spk_1:
them anymore, either. I think about I think about the dysfunction that I used to survives in some places and, uh, okay. Plus, I was in the Air Force, had five years. Ah, Whiteman Air Force Base in the Air Force. And, um, there’s not a lot of at least then I didn’t see a lot of emotional intelligence. Um, in any case. Okay, well, I’m gratified to know I’d have a shot. I’d have a mentor. I’d have some help

[00:25:20.20] spk_2:
this has I have lots of questions, but this has implications

[00:25:22.98] spk_1:
for obviously, you’re sort of you’re alluding to it

[00:25:28.17] spk_2:
toe higher for hiring. How do you screen

[00:25:29.01] spk_1:
for someone who was gonna embrace HHS?

[00:25:33.04] spk_5:
Yeah, that’s a great question.

[00:25:34.72] spk_2:
It’s

[00:25:44.54] spk_5:
funny. Would be, uh stop. Say this in the two parts one is, uh we have, ah, a lengthy interview process where we, uh, make sure that, uh, more quite half the organization, but I would say, get 8 to 10 people across the organization, end up meeting the candidate to get to know them.

[00:25:55.54] spk_2:
I’m not

[00:26:12.51] spk_5:
sure that that somebody, especially the potential direct report of this person, spent some face time outside of the conference room of the the office where we typically would have interviews to just get out and grab a cup of coffee or whatever. Just you see what they’re like outside of the office to really get to get to know them.

[00:26:16.55] spk_2:
Yeah.

[00:26:36.94] spk_5:
And then, uh, we’ll get through the interview process, its funding. It always seems to fall on me when it gets to the later stages of the interview process. Thio, ask all these really quirky questions that I don’t think anybody’s ever done before. And I ask things like, um, tell me. Tell me about, um you know, what would your friends of your colleagues say? It’s most annoying about you.

[00:26:41.45] spk_1:
Oh, jeez. I killed myself. That would be

[00:26:51.64] spk_2:
I don’t mean I killed I killed the interview, and I don’t mean I don’t mean I’d kill it. I mean, I’d kill my chance if I started talking about what my friends think of me. Oh, my God. Yeah. What your friends say, Oh, my God,

[00:26:56.38] spk_5:
About you.

[00:27:05.28] spk_1:
Yeah, well, he he does stand up comedy, you know? But I don’t. He’s berating a little bit. I don’t know. He worries about commas in e mails.

[00:27:09.54] spk_5:
I did that.

[00:27:15.93] spk_1:
Yeah. What would my friend said? What would you have that I’m kind of? I’m just tinkering around the edges.

[00:27:16.84] spk_2:
That’s a great question. What would my I think you know what I think my friend would say. I think he’s a He’s a loyal guy. Like he’s the guy who puts people together all the time. He’s always drawing. It’s a guy who always creates the Air Force for Union and the high school reunion and the the law School reunion. You know, this is the guy. I think he’s always putting us together, even through all the years when we had kids

[00:27:36.04] spk_1:
and because I don’t have kids. So when people have kids and they couldn’t make the reunions, I would still keep in touch, would send pictures to the people who couldn’t

[00:27:43.52] spk_2:
come. I would I would say they probably would say, I’m like the connector. I’m the people The guy who, like brings through the decades

[00:27:50.71] spk_1:
has been bringing people together. I think that’s what they would say.

[00:27:55.63] spk_2:
That is, that is, I know I

[00:27:57.81] spk_1:
was focusing on the comes in the e mails I was being Hearst to myself. I was being humble, was trying to embrace you. Humility.

[00:28:05.19] spk_2:
But that’s cool. I don’t have another turn

[00:28:06.61] spk_5:
it around and say, What kind of people do you find less knowing,

[00:28:11.04] spk_2:
uh, people who don’t

[00:28:28.03] spk_1:
treat people with respect? You know, just that could be ah ah, and in consideration on the subway. Or it could be harsh words, or it could be just I think of unkindness. I mean, it’s unkind to leave food in the office refrigerator for too long. Um,

[00:28:33.08] spk_2:
you know people who don’t treat others with respect

[00:28:35.05] spk_1:
those people, those people. Really? Yes. Because

[00:28:38.59] spk_2:
sanadi

[00:28:39.04] spk_5:
handle it.

[00:28:40.78] spk_2:
Um, on the extreme, I

[00:28:49.33] spk_1:
will, uh, this is on the far side. I will. I will not deal with them as much. I will. I will keep a distance because it could be infectious. And I don’t want to be infected that way. But for every other part of the spectrum,

[00:29:06.04] spk_2:
um, I try. I try to coach I mean, you know, but it’s Yeah. I try to help Andi. I certainly

[00:29:12.83] spk_1:
am acting the way this is turning into. You’re not charging me 300 bucks an hour for this. Are you starting it starting into a therapy session?

[00:29:24.50] spk_2:
No, I tried toe way around. Usually. Don’t let people do this. You’re an anarchist. No, but I’ll follow. I’ll finish

[00:29:25.65] spk_1:
the thought since I started. You asked.

[00:29:27.73] spk_2:
I try to act

[00:29:28.61] spk_1:
in the way. I’m always acting in the way that I would like to be to be acted upon or, you know,

[00:29:42.02] spk_2:
treated the way I like. I treat others the way I like to be treated. So certainly by setting an example. But for a lot of people, that the example isn’t enough. Um, so it’s those ones in the middle that don’t that don’t learn

[00:29:53.92] spk_1:
from me by example of others that you have to sort of sit down and, you know, and that that could be difficult. How am I doing?

[00:30:55.34] spk_5:
You know how great I mean, the reason for those three questions is it, uh, drives to one of those values that I just talked about because, uh, smart We’re having that emotional intelligence that you understand. You have a good understanding of what what your weaknesses are and how people view you. Almost. I wouldn’t say at your worst, but like, you know what’s most annoying about you. At least you have understanding of how you behave and interact with other people and have that we see how that basic understanding and then know how you can rub people the wrong way. And then it also tells me of, um, you’re aware of what kinds of of of people sort of rub you the wrong way and how you sort of Copa that are managed. That and, uh, you know, if it was a real interview, I might choke down a little bit more on that You know how. How would you treat those kinds of people that I know you’re the most when you come across them? If if you were working out there So it’s sticking

[00:30:56.03] spk_2:
a gun

[00:31:01.67] spk_5:
on my quirky questions. Gonna come in a way of trying to get an understanding. Do we? Do we have a humble, hungry, smart person coming in the door?

[00:31:05.07] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:31:11.52] spk_5:
right off the bat. Because we know that they’re gonna be a rock star in their time If if if they’ve already got it figured out.

[00:31:46.54] spk_1:
Yeah. Yeah. All right. We got to take another break, Jamie. Hang on. Cook, Amount and software. Their accounting product, Denali, is built for non profits from the ground up so that you get an application that supports the way you work that has the features that you need and the exemplary support you’ve heard me talk about That understands you and how you work. They have a free 60 day trial. It’s on the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant. Now, time for Tony’s Take

[00:31:48.88] spk_2:
two. 20 ntc. The 2020 non profit technology conference coming up.

[00:33:25.40] spk_1:
Um Mmm mmm. Mmm. Mmm. March 24 25 26 in Baltimore. Maryland non profit radio is going to be there on the exhibit floor. We are sponsored there by Cougar Mountain Software as well. So we’re gonna be sharing an oversized booth, a double booth. I’ll be doing tons of interviews, as I you’ve heard me say through the years. I think this is the fifth year I’ve brought this show to the non profit technology conference. I know that we the interviews are not a TTE. This stage, because we’re pre recorded today are not quite are not booked yet. But I know we’re gonna get 30 or more last year with 34 36 interviews in two and 1/2 days, all from smart, smart people who are doing sessions at the non profit technology conference, and I’m there to get picked their brains for your benefit. And then that helps them as well, because they get to be heard by 13,000 people over 13,000 instead of just the 50 or 70 or 100 that came to their. Their session at the conference so worked out quite well, very grateful to be sponsored by Cougar Mountain software there. If you’re going, come see us boots 3 16 and 3 18 is where we’re gonna be and you’ll be hearing a lot more about 20 NTC on. I’ve got a video on it at tony-martignetti dot com, and that is tony. Take two. Now, let’s go back to your organization’s health. My guest is Jamie Bursts, CEO of Zero. The end of prostate cancer. Um, are Jimmy? Um, so

[00:33:28.37] spk_2:
that was interesting. Like I said, I usually don’t

[00:33:30.78] spk_1:
love Guess. I know I stopped short of those kinds of introspective questions that I have to answer, but

[00:33:36.68] spk_2:
I feel like I was having sort of a Dick Cavett moment. You know, you don’t think you know Dick Cavett?

[00:33:42.35] spk_5:
Yeah, of course

[00:33:43.01] spk_2:
he’s watching

[00:33:43.98] spk_5:
him on HBO.

[00:33:45.11] spk_2:
Yeah,

[00:33:45.54] spk_5:
I think that kid going talking about baseball or history, whatever.

[00:33:49.94] spk_2:
He used to really open up. And, uh, he would talk

[00:33:53.07] spk_1:
about himself. Not as much as he would give the guests time, but

[00:33:56.95] spk_2:
he didn’t shy away

[00:33:59.29] spk_1:
from personal questions, and I always admired that him. I’ve been studying him on YouTube because some of the old stuff from the seventies is is clipped on YouTube.

[00:34:14.76] spk_2:
So I feel like I was a kind of a Dick Cavett move it. So thank you. Okay,

[00:34:15.02] spk_5:
well, hopefully we had ah revelation for you, I think. What? What happened

[00:34:19.17] spk_2:
there? Uh,

[00:35:00.80] spk_5:
you’re talking about asking those kinds of questions and probing to see if you have the values that we’re looking for. Brings it back to what I was saying earlier about vulnerability based trust because it’s not just the admitting your mistakes and weaknesses, but it’s about opening up and sharing something about yourself, Uh, that you typically wouldn’t And, um, that vulnerability based trust it’s really the glue to relationships, if you can. You sort of let your guard down and talk about, um, you know, talk, talk about you know what’s going on your head or what’s going on in your heart on your life. You typically wouldn’t share in a normal work environment that helps forge a stronger bond,

[00:35:07.33] spk_2:
absolutely within

[00:35:08.57] spk_5:
our colleagues at zero. And when

[00:35:11.04] spk_2:
we’ve got

[00:35:20.61] spk_5:
that the strong bond happening through vulnerability based trust, then it makes it really makes all the other things that happened in an organization. Like I said before the conflict stuff, um, it makes it easier to overcome.

[00:35:27.94] spk_1:
Yeah, I can absolutely, absolutely see that. See what you called vulnerability based trust. I just think of his trust. But maybe I’m thinking of it more on the friend side, You know, you’re applying it to a professional environment. But, you know, I think of the relationships I have with my friends. I mean, I

[00:35:44.09] spk_2:
open up to them, I trust them, and I become vulnerable. And they become vulnerable to me

[00:36:07.13] spk_1:
as they tell me things about their kids, their husbands, wives. That’s the, uh, again, I’m through something of it on a friendship level, and I would just call that trust. You’re You’re in a professional environment. They have to be some boundaries. Uh, so I can I see. But I like I said, I mean, I just think that is trust among friends, so I can

[00:36:12.34] spk_2:
see. And I could see how that

[00:36:17.85] spk_1:
would help you transcend other problems in the workplace.

[00:36:52.91] spk_5:
Yeah, that’s right. I mean, um, you know, having building trust is it’s really a key with loved ones. Thio building a strong relationship. So but why should it be any different with your colleagues? I think a big part of that trusted to be vulnerable and owning up to your mistakes. You know, holding up, asking for help and talking about your talking about your experiences and sort of a two degree your innermost thoughts. Because if you do this, then you feel sort of that deeper trust within the they work with every day and now

[00:36:57.88] spk_2:
s so you’re transcending. You’re transcending

[00:37:30.26] spk_1:
the average work relationship by exponentially. The average work relationship is a bunch of people who put together they don’t get the opportunity to meet each other before they’re hired. The way yours you’re describing, At least you have a better chance because because there’s so much exposure in the hiring process and I do want to get back to the hiring process to we’ll get there. That’s my job. But s o a bunch of people put together and then they have to coexist 8 10 hours a day. But

[00:37:30.46] spk_2:
they never really get to know each other. You know, they have lunches occasionally, and they have drinks. But it is There’s not really that they’re not really

[00:37:47.64] spk_1:
becoming vulnerable to each other in the environments that I’ve worked in and what I’ve consulted. I mean, I don’t see that I don’t see this level of trust among employees. It’s just a bunch of people foisted on each other, and they’re sort of treading water, doing the best they can in relationship building.

[00:37:58.73] spk_5:
Um, yeah, I’ve seen that and just about every workplace that I’ve ever been. And uh, besides uh, besides where I’m at,

[00:38:07.09] spk_2:
besides Iraq, Yeah, I

[00:38:37.93] spk_5:
agree with that way. Do our best to make time for that way encouraged. That happened during the matter, of course, of the of the work that goes on within zero. But then, you know, for example, way. Try to reinforce that on a weekly staff meeting that we have many, many staff meetings intending. Organizations are dull and they’re boring, and people will sit down and read off a bunch of numbers or a bunch of metrics. Key performance indicators and self people’s eyes bleed, and

[00:38:41.14] spk_2:
they

[00:39:05.42] spk_5:
taking notes, get hand cramps, and they would rather be anywhere else. But sitting around the conference from table listening to all that stuff. So instead, we we take time in our staff meetings to sort of build up team members a bit. It’s sort of a time Thio to come together, and sometimes we’ll go around the room with the question of Of getting to know each other more of Like what? Um, you know how many siblings do you have? And you know, where do you fall on that? That order or something that’s a little bit more difficult to answer? Like, um, something that was a big mistake that you made at work last year. How did that affect you out of that changing?

[00:39:18.68] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:39:41.88] spk_5:
that way it’s sort of open people up, Thio being able to have that to be vulnerable and courageous and a little bit in some ways, Thio speak up. And that would strengthen the bonds with for their colleagues. And then, um, it also makes them more approachable

[00:39:42.84] spk_2:
to

[00:39:44.76] spk_5:
when you can be vulnerable.

[00:39:46.04] spk_2:
I’m guessing you

[00:39:50.10] spk_1:
you have. Ah, I’m guessing you have a low turnover rate, Long employees. D’oh!

[00:40:07.31] spk_5:
Yeah, we D’oh! If you look at just the leadership team, um, see, how many years of experience, including if you could mind with the, um 40 46 years across five people. So I’ve been with your English over 18 and then I have Ah, our chief development officer is, But I’ve worked with her for 10 years.

[00:40:13.78] spk_2:
Are key

[00:40:26.81] spk_5:
of events for 10 years, are our senior vice president of marketing communications For six and 1/2 years and a new person to the team has been, uh, any personal leadership team.

[00:40:49.60] spk_1:
Okay, but those first couple you cited, you know, 10 years, eight years, those there, especially for a chief development officer. You said 10 years for the vice president of development. That’s a That’s a long that. You’re Yeah, Well, you’ve earned it. You’ve earned it. That’s a long tenure. Um, I got to get back to the more, uh, more mechanicals. Although the philosophy is really, really stimulating. Um,

[00:40:59.75] spk_2:
let’s go back to the hiring. What’s what’s the next steps?

[00:41:02.23] spk_1:
Ah, the potential candidate or candidates? A couple have met lots of people throughout the organization. How do you come together and make your decision?

[00:42:20.78] spk_5:
Um, uh, we use the humble, hungry, smart framework on how we talk about people, Not not exclusively. But of course, like many other places, we’ll talk about the skill sets that are involved. Um, we could talk about things like, Oh, this person. They really know how to get razors agile. You know, this person had great demonstrated experience at their past job or she raised, you know, x amount of dollars and Stuart of along, you know, x number of donors or whatever. Uh, but by and large, we keep coming back to the framework of what did you think of not come across as being, you know, humble? Or today you really get an understanding of, um, now that they’re gonna be an attentive listener, how do you think that there are their personality will sort of match up with others who are gonna be on this team. And, uh, and if everybody’s sort of, you know, largely in an agreement that that that that the persons home hungry, smart and has a good background to them and demonstrated experience do the job way, pull the trigger and bring them on board?

[00:42:36.43] spk_1:
Do you, as CEO, have ah, right of veto or you’re just You’re just a member of the team, the way equal to everyone else in these kinds of conversations. Decision, order.

[00:42:59.20] spk_5:
If I tell people that I don’t tell people, I don’t tell vice presidents or other team leaders across the organization who they have to hire, But I do step in and tell them who they should not hire. Like if you know, somebody candidate ends up. Um I am talking with them in a red flag. It’s raised that, uh I don’t I don’t think that they’re that they have all three values for us. Thio work

[00:43:03.37] spk_2:
with to

[00:43:05.40] spk_5:
be able to without dedicating a significant amount of time to get them there. But I think a person’s gonna be

[00:43:13.89] spk_2:
okay. Because because you

[00:43:15.81] spk_1:
do meet individual, you meet individually with every candidate, right?

[00:43:20.24] spk_5:
Yeah. Eventually.

[00:43:22.90] spk_2:
Right? Right. Okay. God, you have the

[00:43:29.84] spk_5:
key to the culture of being being able to bring in just the right people who work, you know, if it succeeds.

[00:44:03.47] spk_1:
Alright, Jamie, I’ve got to take our last break turn to communications their former journalists so that you get help building relationships with journalists so that your call gets answered when there’s news that you need to be on top of so that you stay relevant, including they are former journalist at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. So they understand the work that you are doing and the community you’re working in, they are at turn hyphen to dot ceo, and I want

[00:44:03.95] spk_2:
to say that the live love

[00:44:04.91] spk_1:
um We’re pre recorded today as I mentioned, so I don’t can’t shut you out by city and state, as I would like to, but, uh,

[00:44:11.75] spk_2:
you know,

[00:44:12.04] spk_1:
you are If you’re listening to the live stream Friday one

[00:44:16.85] spk_2:
o’clock Eastern time, then the love goes out

[00:45:12.11] spk_1:
to you Live. Love, live. Listen, love. Thank you. I’m grateful that you are listening to our live stream and the podcast Pleasantries toe are over 13,000 listeners. However, we fit into your life of your binging at the end of the month. Or if you’re more consistent pleasantries to the podcast audience, I’m grateful that you are with us as well. Thank you so much. We got butt loads more time for your organization’s health, and Jamie burst burst by the way you spelled b e a r s e So looks like Hearst, but with a B. So if you’re looking for him on Twitter, it’s at Jamie Bursts, which is hearse with a B. Um, we were Sometimes I take these brakes and messes me up way. We’re still talking about the hiring, whether you get a veto or no. Okay, so, um, they’re hiring. Process anything more you want to add about that the hiring before we before we move on,

[00:45:14.96] spk_5:
I think we covered it.

[00:45:15.90] spk_2:
Okay, in sufficient detail for people to get get a flavour

[00:45:23.02] spk_1:
of what it’s how this how this works, Um, you know, sort of mechanically and and in the details.

[00:45:27.42] spk_2:
What about evaluation?

[00:45:28.55] spk_1:
You already said You don’t have your end evaluations or maybe you do. But I guess they take on West less weight because there’s there’s there’s routine feedback. Is there a formal evaluation process? How does that work?

[00:46:30.06] spk_5:
Another reason. A formal evaluation process, because we just believe in in AA real time feedback, Asai said. Before it’s, uh, feedback largely comes in, uh, you know, the form of ah, the framework of, ah, being humble, hungry, smart of you asking, getting curious and asking questions of Okay, What? How you manage this project or what you communicated Thio. You know, this person or this donor? Um, I didn’t see that as being very humble. Tell me about that. And, um, you know, here’s here’s how, uh, like, shared in away from my own experiences of where maybe I wasn’t humble and, um, how how I would have handled it differently and, uh, try to give them some coaching and mentoring so they do it different next time around.

[00:46:32.64] spk_1:
Do you meet with every staff member individually?

[00:46:39.60] spk_5:
Uh, Thio give feedback like

[00:46:41.96] spk_2:
that? Yeah,

[00:47:07.76] spk_5:
sometimes. But I’m not always the one in there. Um uh, Scott, everybody on the our leadership team also, you know, living values and being able to coach and mentor others across the organization that, you know, they’re they’re responsible for the staff that were on their teams, but you were necessary. I’m I’m I’m always willing to step in and help catch them alone.

[00:47:14.76] spk_2:
Okay? Okay. Um, I want to go back to high freedom. Does that

[00:47:32.23] spk_1:
include in dealing with the men and the families that you’re working with? Like in terms of problem solving? If there’s a difficulty with the organization or something to do, our staff members empowered to take action or you know, or is it is it? I think I know the answer, but I want to ask it this way. Or is it more bureaucratic? You know the way Ah, typical organization would have to go through Ah, making an exception.

[00:48:35.95] spk_5:
Uh, no. Uh, it also know a centrist bureaucratic It, um it applies to their work out in the field and working with patients and families who have been impacted by this. Um, it goes thio being able to be, um, highly aligned, but sort of but highly aligned but being empowered to take independent action when were highly aligned and understand. Um, the values are highly aligned and understanding what’s most important right now for the organization or what our goals are and every different situation than you have the behind over freedom in order to be able to act autonomously on behalf of the organization. Thio, get the job done. Don’t believe in micro managing by any stretch of the imagination?

[00:48:40.10] spk_1:
No,

[00:50:20.34] spk_5:
it does to our managing others within the organization. Um, I was try to coach them. Uh, sometimes they get you end up in a way that they have a certain vision for their team. Are they have a certain way that they wanna see something that we’re working on get executed. But I will tell them that you know, if you can get people 80% of the way there on executing on your vision, and that’s a massive win That’s huge. Went because they bought in to what your what your vision is, how you’re telling it to them, their understanding, how you’re how you’re communicating to them, and that’s terrific. But if you try to push beyond trying to get from 80% of them, executing on your vision to 100% that really starts to take on a life of micromanaging, exhausting work for you. And eventually that staff member of that team, team members is gonna get resentful and not trusted that they can go out. And, you know, we make their own decisions that we try to, like, pull it way back. Good, solid clarity of like what the goals are, how we be good goals on. You know what the mission is, how he behaves, what’s most important right now. What are our most important goals in any given time frame? If we have good clarity around that sort of step back and let people, um can’t manage themselves and strive to tea, leaves the mission and hit our goals without being micromanaged, that’s Ah, that’s another element of hi freedom.

[00:50:34.06] spk_1:
Interesting. Interesting to hear you see that marginal 20% as being counterproductive in the Marshall. 20% meeting expectations. You’re saying 80% instead of 100 becomes counter could become counterproductive.

[00:50:37.60] spk_5:
Yeah, you’re,

[00:50:38.19] spk_2:
uh

[00:50:39.08] spk_5:
you know, a company that’s making widgets. You’re looking at spreadsheets and things like that of like, Okay, our best radio return is like when we’re selling this many witches. But if we sell like too many, then our return on investment starts to drop off their He’s got diminishing returns. It’s what they call it and

[00:50:54.91] spk_2:
that you’re

[00:50:55.46] spk_5:
in a company that’s making widgets. So yeah, I would say that that’s, um that’s sort of the cut off for us. Uh, you know, we’re talking about organizational health

[00:51:05.65] spk_2:
here.

[00:51:13.42] spk_5:
You’re trying to really get them thio be 100% for for your vision than just gonna set you up for failure Way.

[00:51:19.16] spk_1:
Just have, like, four minutes or so left.

[00:51:21.21] spk_2:
Let’s let’s talk a little about your virtual employees. What do you

[00:51:25.18] spk_1:
do? Dio ensure that the’s er that HHS is instilled in nam and that they’re getting the feedback that everyone who’s ah on site is getting on and make them feel part of the team. What do you do for the virtual folks?

[00:52:33.10] spk_5:
Sure. Well, one is that we have, ah, weekly staff meeting that everybody gets on video so we all can see each other and communicate with each other while we’re doing some team building through that. A zay were talking earlier that one of the things that we do in staff meeting is it’s such a small thing, but it’s so empowering. So we take not even five minutes of staff meeting. We do something that’s called hashtag. You’re proud and through that, every every staff meeting that we have, there’s three people on staff. Go and then the next week, another three people will go, But each person calls out somebody else across the organization for living our values until a story about you know why they think that person is being humble home. We’re smart and it’s really empowering, and it draws people in no matter you know where they are. You know, whether their offices in yeah, Sacramento or where I am in Boston and

[00:52:34.88] spk_2:
we’re

[00:53:46.06] spk_5:
all points in between. A couple of other things that we do is there’s a tool that’s out there now. That sort of market is for internal communication is a slack, and it sort of Ah, people haven’t heard about it. It sort of a cross between Google chat Facebook A little bit for no internal communications divided up by channel. And you got to put you in certain little fun things in there. Like you get these, uh, a little energies and thumbs up smiley faces for different messages that you put in a different channels that better there. So we make it sort of, um, interactive in that way. Uh, that’s just happens to be, you know, where the world going with social media. So we kind of embrace that, and that helped draw people together. And the byproduct is also it takes all of this internal communication off emails focus externally, focus your email externally without it getting all clocked up with all of these internal messages that people get TC on. Yeah, at nauseam. So that’s just one of the tools in Red Show way. Help build that strong team cohesion. No matter where people are across the organization. And, uh, a few others. But I know that we’re pressed for time, but you know what? One other.

[00:53:51.08] spk_2:
Yeah, go ahead. One other thing that

[00:53:52.28] spk_5:
I would say is that

[00:53:53.17] spk_2:
my door is

[00:54:03.09] spk_5:
always open. I held, um, office hours every day for anybody that wants the common and chat things out of how they can be more feel more connected to others in the

[00:54:17.04] spk_1:
That’s a great That’s a great tactic. Office hours every day. Open office, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right. We could still have a couple

[00:54:25.94] spk_2:
minutes, right? Yes. Get Yeah, we have a couple minutes left. Um, let’s, uh you mentioned

[00:54:27.79] spk_1:
before over communication did we did really talk about that. And we just didn’t label what we were talking about in the at the time over communicating.

[00:54:36.36] spk_5:
Sure. We could talk about that. It’s It’s, um it’s critical. Um, I also got, um, not from

[00:54:44.12] spk_1:
so we didn’t We didn’t do that. Okay, let’s we got about two minutes. You go ahead.

[00:56:34.43] spk_5:
Sure. That also comes from the the advantage by Patrick Ngoni and actually didn’t, uh, people sometimes don’t hear your message until they hear it for the seventh time. And, um, I don’t think I really realized that until the seven time that I read that book. Yeah. What it means is that sometimes leaders are or the chief reminding officer and reminding people about, um of of the values of reminding people about the mission to reminding people what’s most important right now. So t over communicate that in different ways, whether that’s putting it a male or a black message or by phone or video, face to face or by video they’re having heard the same message in multiple platforms helps it to sink in in a way that people really understand it. Um, I also said before about you know, that commitment of asking, clarifying questions like, Okay, what I hear you saying is this is that what I’m hearing and that gives people a chance to clarify it and get what’s being said straightened out? And we also have a role, a swell, that John silence dissent, meaning, you know, for having for having a meeting and talking about all these things on. I’ll say like, Okay, we good to move on. And, um, not everybody speaks up and says Yes, yeah, I’m good, Yeah, no concerns for me. Um, then we treat it like descent because that way it allows people to commit thio a decision that’s being made and it sort of invites them like Okay, you know, if you’re not speaking up. Done. You know what, Um, what’s on your mind with you bothering you?

[00:56:41.13] spk_1:
What’s holding you back? Okay, Silences, descent. All right, All right. Jamie Burst. We gotta leave it there. I really enjoyed this. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[00:56:45.98] spk_5:
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

[00:56:58.20] spk_1:
My pleasure. Jamie Bursts, CEO of zero. The end of prostate cancer. Zero is at zero cancer dot or GE and he’s at Jamie Bursts. There’s excellent. Thank you. Zero proud hashtags are proud. Uh, next week, build your grantmakers relationships, which is the panel that I hosted back when there was a foundation center. Of course, now they’re merged with guidestar. But when there was the foundation center, I hosted a panel there, and we’ll hear it next week. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com

[00:57:26.47] spk_2:
Bye, Cougar Mountain Software

[00:57:45.33] spk_1:
Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant mountain for a free 60 day trial. And by turned to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Ah, creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Lee Woods is the line producer.

[00:58:28.78] spk_4:
There’s the music shows. Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. You With Me next week for non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great talking alternative radio 24 hours a day.

Create A Culture Of Philanthropy Throughout Your Nonprofit

TonyMartignetti.AFP1 moderation

Last month I hosted a panel for AFP’s New York City chapter on creating a culture of philanthropy throughout your office: way beyond the development staff to include the CEO, finance office, program staff and facilities workers. Everybody.

The panelists were:
Terry Billie, Director of Corporate & Foundation Relations for Goodwill Industries of NY and NJ
Matthew Bregman, VP for Development at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
Brian Saber, founder and president of Asking Matters

We had a lively, fun conversation over breakfast and there were lots of excellent questions from the audience!

Here are takeaways from our hour-long discussion:
— it has to start with the CEO; if your CEO embraces fundraising, the enthusiasm will trickle down
— each person in your organization can contribute to a positive fundraising culture; it can be as simple as a smile and “hello”
— everyone your staff meets should be treated as a donor; either they are or they could be
— over in finance, reports to funders should be seen as promoting fundraising, not as favors that help development staff
— your business and program departments should accept training from fundraising staff about simple ways to create a fundraising culture
— everybody else can accept training on how their jobs support fundraising
— it starts with hiring; consensus was that an enthusiastic attitude can make up for a lack of non-critical skills
— if you you’re constantly fighting to get fundraising recognized, it may not be the right place for you

Many thanks to the leaders of AFP NYC. A special shout to Holly Koenig, who first tapped me for the program.

Here’s the video!