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Nonprofit Radio for November 20, 2015: Get Creative & Safeguard Your Donor Data

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Lissa Piercy: Get Creative

Lissa Piercy

Thought about poets and other artists as part of your board meetings, trainings and conferences? How about open mics? Lissa Piercy reveals why you need to consider these and how to get them done. She’s executive director at Strength of Doves.

 

 

Scott Koegler: Safeguard Your Donor Data

Scott Koegler has tips on how to preserve and protect your donors’ sensitive information. How much do you need to save? He’s editor of Nonprofit Technology News. (Originally aired on December 6, 2013.)

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into tableau paralysis. If it came to mind that you missed today’s show, get creative thought about poets and other artists as part of your board meetings, trainings and conferences. How about open mikes? Lissa piercy reveals why you need to consider these and how to get them done. She’s, executive director. At strength of doves and secure your donordigital scott koegler has tips on how to preserve and protect your donor’s sensitive information. How much do you need to save he’s, editor of non-profit technology news that originally aired on december six twenty thirteen between the guests on tony’s take two five minute planned giving marketing responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com. Dr a trip or journey in a car also an internal, biologically determined urge to attain or satisfy a need. It is after ten p m on a friday night, and i’m standing alone in a laundry room in boulder, colorado, a student in a social entrepreneurship program my whole life is waiting for me back in boston, i am watching the live stream of a national poetry slam competition. I am watching the first poet i added to our roster win a national poetry slam competition. I am fist pumping the air, i am stumping my foot! I’m screaming to an empty room. I’m remembering yesterday when i questioned why i had taken on the task go starting a business in the first place. I am crying and smiling and balancing computer and cell phone and laundry and coffee and laughing because this is what a start up looks like when i opened my computer one hour before tomorrow on a friday night and cringe at the emails that all seem urgent that all scream no sleep when the coffee wears off and the grant application start to blur when the mission feels miles away from my office when my office is really just a coffee shop or a living room or a kitchen when i stare at spreadsheets that looked like foreign language, like potential failure or future like risk risk, a situation involving exposure to danger. Also, every time i have ever followed my gut, sometimes you’ve just got to throw out the plan and follow your gut, grit, courage and resolve strength of character. Also small, loose particles of stone or sand. And some days i feel like sand small enough to slip through the cracks of this foundation i am building. In those moments, i think of the poet who risks reputation on a national stage to proclaim her love of women. The poet who tells the story of her sexual assault so that a girl in a middle school classroom can finally feel safe confessing the violation of her body. The poet who rejects gender pronouns and reminds me that this world has never been binary. The poet who run straight into vulnerability and somehow comes out stronger for her honesty. These poets so purpose into fists i wanted to raise at a world that took my father away. These poets raised their hands. Up, don’t shoot taught me to proclaim don’t shoot in my name, these poets, the heart of these poets heart, hollow, muscular organ also the center or innermost part of something. And aren’t we all just trying to find the innermost part of something thing? It took poetry and entrepreneurship for me to find the innermost parts of me. Lissa piercy she is co founder and executive director at strength of doves, an agency which is itself a non-profit the represents socially conscious, activist spoken word artists, they connect poets to venues and organizations. They’re at strength of doves dot com and lissa is at lissa poet the sapir c welcome to the show, thank you so much for having me beautiful energy. Tell us what is the story behind that? Well, i was actually commissioned to write that poem by the center for social impact learning, which is part of a graduate program with middlebury it’s, located in monterey, california, and they asked me to write a poem for their launch of this social centre. So i put up a facebook status and asked my entrepreneurial friends to tell me the words they think of when they think of social entrepreneurship and i got a bunch of words and a lot of them are in that poem, so dr grit risk. And so then i put a poem together for the launch of their center, and the name of the poem is is called dr excellent. All right, so we’re talking about maur creativity inside your organization outside the organization, using poets and other artists to sort of open things up. Yeah, and let’s, let’s start with, like, internally intern where where might we bring in? Argast? S o i think that internally creativity and a non-profit you can start with your board meetings or even just kind of your regular staff meetings. So i like to say that you know, a lot of the time we think about innovation when it comes to our programming or our products. We don’t always think about innovation when we’re thinking about how we run a meeting on a monday morning or board meeting so it can start with kind of basic creativity like, for example, there’s, an organization called the millennium campus network. Their board meeting, one of their board members told me recently, was the best board meeting she’d ever been tio, they didn’t use poetry, but what they did was they created a hackathon in their board meeting, so they were really creative about how they put the board meeting together, which i thought was fascinating. So i talked to abigail, who had created that plan, and she said that for them, creativity started with the way they set up the room. So thinking about what’s on the walls of your room in your meeting and what? What are you doing to kind of create a setting that feels different than other board meetings? Do our other monday morning meetings? I think, for example, there’s, a site called button poetry, it’s, a youtube channel and there’s tons and tons of spoken word poems. They’re they’re typically about three minutes long. You could even just play a poem at the beginning of your meeting, and it opens up a part of the brain that gets you thinking in a different way, and i just think so often we look at meetings is something that we dread going to and sitting through. So you start by infusing something different at the top of your meeting, it can really shift and change. The whole energy of the meeting do you think it’s risky toe invite meeting participants, too, do their own performance? No, i think actually you’ll get surprising results if you do that. When i found i run open mic set conferences so, like the opportunity collaboration, i did some stuff with the school world forum, and what i’ve found is when you invite the community to be part of being creative, they bring inside you, that you didn’t know that they had, and often those things can actually be used to infuse organization with new life. So yeah, bring in, bring in creativity from people that already you’re sitting at those meetings with you for sure, and we’ll see another side of people. Yeah, absolutely. It may not be poetry. I don’t know. It might be a song. It might be a guitar that they play someone’s a drummer. Someone has a poem and someone else plays behind them. I mean, the the options are endless when you bring in creativity in new ways. You mentioned opportunity collaboration, which is very collaborative and that’s where we met just like a month or so ago. Six weeks ago. Roughly. Yeah, in mexico? Yeah, and i run there open mike every year. And i talked teo jury in aunt over the team that put it on every year. And they said that one of the reasons why they like having the open mic is that it brings collaboration in a new way on people rave about it because they get to see those different sides of people. Also, something that i’ve often said is, you know, if you meet me and we talked for five minutes, you might find out that i live in boston or that i run strength of doves you’re not going to know intimate details of my life if you see me perform in an open mic, you know how hard it was to start my business, you know, personal details about losses that i’ve been through, and we connect in a deeper way, and then collaboration is richer because we care about each other as people, not just a cz business partners in a collaborative, collaborative setting, listening to drive, we learned some very intimate details about your dad’s death. Okay, very energizing, right? Well, let’s, go out for a break when we come back listen, i’m going to continue, of course, talking about getting creative. We’ll have live listener, love, et cetera. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent live listener love got st louis, missouri, brooklyn, new york and new york, new york new york’s checking in excellent lovett i’ve listener love yes, let’s go abroad always have very loyal seoul, south korea of listeners. Remarkable. I don’t know if it’s the same person all the time where people it’s multiple multiple in seoul, anya haserot for mexico city, very close to where lissa and i first met because we were in x top a at the opportunity collaboration we were talking about mexico city. Welcome live listen her love to you. What can i do? Keitel look, it’ll there was my thank you anytime and also in japan, tokyo and osaka checking in konnichi wa live listener loved all of our live listeners, and of course, we never forget affiliate affections for our multiple many am fm stations throughout the country. Affections if you’re listening on the terrestrial stations and, oh that’s, ah, terrestrial affection! I gotta work on that there’s something there and station affection, terrestrial and also podcast pleasantries never forget the podcast listeners over ten thousand i’m painting houses, washing dishes, whatever. It is you’re doing as you listen. Pleasantries to the podcast audience. Okay, listen. Thank you for helping. Yeah, now i have tried it with any time. Spanish mexico city that’s. Why? I like opportunity collaboration because i get to be i get to speak spanish more than i do on my regular day to day life. Do you do to poetry in spanish? I have a couple of lines in spanish in my poems. Everyone smile in my international women’s day poem. I talk about the venezuelan constitution, so i say constitutent dahna venezuela, but i typically i like there’s a line about using spanish because i’m not of dissent. That is latin at all, so i’m careful about how okay? You know what, that’s a much larger conversation about appropriation. And don’t betray yourself appropriately. You would feel yes, exactly. Um all right. So, let’s, keep talking about eso these internal. This idea of board meetings? Yes. Now i have had a lot of guests recommend. In fact, one michael davidson was just last last week recommending having people who are benefiting from your services come and deliver a presentation at every board meeting. So they are sharing. Fashion their tears about how your organization save their lives, improve their life, you know, maybe there’s some creativity there, you could ask someone like that toe do a performance instead of just read some paragraphs. Yeah, so one thing that i think is really important to note is, especially with organizations that are working organisations working with youth tons toe already think about maybe creativity, poetry, open mikes. It doesn’t only need to be youth there’s a lot of opportunity to do some writing workshops in any demographic i really believe, and if you’re producing content like that, you can have someone come in. It also, though, gives the opportunity to let’s say, you’re an organization a non-profit that’s working outside of the united states, but your board is primarily in the united states. If you do a writing project with the people that you’re working with on the ground and you bring back some of those writing samples and they’re available on the table during the board meeting during the coffee break, that’s the kind of thing that people in your board can look at even if you don’t have time to be reading their material or having a guest come into the actual board meeting. Okay? I mean, even in that case, you could have maybe someone who’s trained reading those store absolutely a voice artists or something like that fresh rather than just the one dimensional reading painting with a broad what else? Any other ideas? You know, the internal internal creativity as well? One thing that comes to mind is, you know, every organization faces kind of pain points, things that they’re struggling with. There are a lot of conversations now around diversity. And how do you talk about diversity within organizations? There are other challenges the leadership changes that happen or, you know, anything that happens internally. I really think that that organization should think about looking to more creative ways of having conversations around those tough things. Later on in the show got ilsen nasco mrs who the really amazing poet with the dialogue arts project, is going to be reading a poem on air and their organization will come in and do a full training, and they use spoken word poetry at the top of the training to get everyone’s kind of juices flowing. And then they do trainings around diversity around. Pain points within organization, so for those organizations that are going through maybe a transitionary moment or need some kind of a different training instead of just checking the box with, oh, we talked about diversity think about looking for creative resources that are out there to bring into those training’s you’ll have a better experience and your staff won’t feel like you’re just checking the diversity box, which i think is really important. Am i out of touch if i keep saying poets instead of spoken word artist? No, no, i have i missed twenty fifty by mr change of century, i think. First, i think the biggest distinction that often happens is a slam poet versus a spoken word poet. Slam poetry is a form of spoken word. It’s a competitive style of spoken word at least that’s the way i distinguish. But yeah, spoken reports are definitely poets the way that i think about it and this definition is different depending on who you talk to is spoken word or performance. Poetry is performed from, like the tip of your pinkie toe to the tip of your finger out the top of your head and you can also be a written poet that is publishing books as well. You’re also thinking about how am i presenting this poem beyond the page and that’s? Kind of what a spoken word are a performance poet is doing in my definition of it. Okay, so so if i say a spoken word artist. Yeah. That’s that’s what? I mean, that could be the same as poet or official versus slam performer. Yes, exactly. Slam is competitive. Yeah. How did americans turned poetry into a competition sport? Well, it’s gotten a lot more people paying attention to it. That’s for sure. So hey, that’s, it started. It originated in chicago. A guy named mark smith who is a construction worker, and then here in new york. There’s the moth that’s like storytelling. There’s also the nia recon is another location that does poetry slams you’re american. Say it one more time in new york weekend. Okay, mahogany brown is a poet. She’s actually on our roster. And she’s, an amazing poet who hosts their poetry, slams their team when you compete against their team. You come prepared, let me tell you. Okay. New york has some great poets. Okay, now, what’s. Your background you have. Ah, what is this? Oh, so social around? Yeah. How did you get into poetry? I started doing open mikes in college after i lost my dad and i went through two and a half years where i lost seven people in my life. And this is a lot of grief and poetry was the only thing that could really motivate me to get out of bed and go to things. I was running the open mic group on my college campus and then actually turned down the opportunity to apply for a fulltime social work job to figure out how more of these amazing social change poets could be earning a living from their poetry. And now we have strength of doves where we put poets in performance opportunities and workshop opportunities toe to really bring this to kind of communities that haven’t necessarily thought about spoken word. Poetry is a tool because it really is a tool. And the other thing i’ll say is the reason i think spoken word in particular, i think all forms of art are important and open up our brains in new ways spoken word is extremely accessible, so a really strong spoken word artist, in my opinion, is using poetry and using language in a way that someone who’s maybe never thought that they liked poetry or never thought of themselves as a creative person before can now access a really creative art form and begin to open up the idea from themselves that, hey, maybe i could write, or maybe i can open up this creative things, but what do we say to the people whose eyes glaze over? Oh, poetry it so it’s beyond may i don’t get it? Yeah, you know, it just doesn’t reach me. Listen, tio, watch two videos on button poetry or go search dialogue, arts project poets, strength of doves, poets i really have never seen it happen where someone said, i don’t like poetry on. When it’s exposed teo a couple of videos and said, i still don’t like poetry, it’s just not what you’re thinking of when you think of poetry. If you had a boring english class on poetry, poetry does not need to be born, i promise. Give me a subject that you like, email me a subject you like and i will send back a poem. That you will like about that subject. Okay. Do you want to show your email? Oh, yeah. It’s lyssa at strength of does dot com. Okay, listen, l i s s yes, challenge me. I guarantee i will be able to draw you in with someone else’s problems. Okay, cool. Let’s go outside. Our organizations have a like a mirror. So before we bring in carlos yeah. Conferences, galas, gallant fund-raising events. Why are fund-raising event so boring? I’m sorry if i’m offending anyone out there, but i just think we need to address this. So these gallows where you have a dinner, any of a bunch of speeches and so there’s a moment at a lot of these events where, you know, people are eating dinner and kind of talking to each other, and then you want to get everyone’s attention. So someone clicks on a glass, someone in charge of the organization says, welcome, everyone kind of turns their attention begrudgingly to the stage, and then they’re a bunch of speeches sometimes there’s really fascinating stuff in those speeches, but we’re not really our attention isn’t necessarily drawn immediately to the stage. The person sending welcome welcome zoho please hide me. I want to hear my gladstone brandraise oversignt neo-sage chimes. If you’re in a fancy paint bonem bungalow exactly. So it’s dead? I think everyone should try finding a spoken word poet and putting them on that stage. That’s, the way you get people’s attention don’t even say welcome like we just opened our secondly, just drive a trip or journey in a car really loud, really punchy everyone’s going to turn to you if you want to go a step further, you can hire a poet to write a commission to poem about your organization, and now in three minutes you’ve explained everything you’re doing. You’ve got everyone’s attention and you just invested all this money and all this time and creating this event. Don’t you want to vent the people going to talk about after the fact they’re going to be more likely to talk about it? If it’s different bringing a poet if you don’t for some reason believe, listen with all their energy and zeeland enthusiasm, think about what happened in beginning this segment we threw you in with lissa was completely different different format you said you turned into well. What is? That that’s, the only way latto college, did it with their market radcampaign recently. All right, we got carlos andres gomez, award winning poet member of the dialogue arts project, on twitter, he’s at carlos. A g live. Is there anything you want to introduce before before carlos carlos, let me say, just say, welcome, welcome to the show so much. Tony thinks my brother, carlos i’s, anything you want to say, i just want for everyone out there. That’s not, you know, always listening to spoken word. This is such an amazing opportunity. Godless is kind of a titan in the community and just does really amazing work, using poetry to have really important conversations. Carlos, please. Thank you so much. This poem is called tense. I’m holding my friend gino’s hands and asking the army recruiter for more information about the marines. Please, i say he fits with his cufflinks, pause it, his necklace through his shirt drags the back of his hand across the close shaven sand paper of his chin. Gino is staring him down through the island. Artie wears like a middle finger. We watched a stranger caught between the train movements of a machine and the churn butter in his body. Just like mine. Two months before, when i said, hell no toe a trip to the gay club, i just don’t want to leave and he went on it be like colonizing the space, i said which sounds a lot better than i’m uncomfortable i wouldn’t know how to stand what do i do if a song i like come on in zambia i walked the dirt roads of a slum my pinky finger intimately wraps around the smallest digit of the most infamous guy on the block. He was my friend. It is how friends walked the streets there. When i greet my iranian friend’s father, we embrace chief twice in thailand. My host casually patted my leg the first family dinner, i nearly jumped out the window, thinking he was reaching for something else. Everyone laughed, probably confused as to why this strange foreigner had been trained to be so foreign to the gentle touch of a man, a passer by give me and gino matching name i tongue the word around in my mouth. Feel the tender sting, make a home in my torso, stare at the word brotherhood splayed across the camouflage banner. The recruiter stares down the table, and though it holds the secret code to life’s, great questions, it’s corrected, stutter and suddenly overcompensating stands blend into the decorations behind. So much so that i can barely even tell he is still there. He pretended, if we are not, begin sorting and then re sorting the three lonely pamphlets dwarfed by the large rectangular table where they now six boys. Please. I’m just doing my job. His mouth bag in a voice so small and so human. It makes me feel like i have just blurted out a secret. This man has given his life to guard like freedom. Carlos andres gomez! Carlos, thank you so much. Thanks, carlos. Thank you so much. Let’s. Send tony. I don’t know why i have watery eyes. I just first listen, you know, i would need to think about it more, but but it moved me because i do so that’s. The kind of thing that dialogue arts project works. I would start with wood with poems to kind of open up a new space in everyone’s head and kind of i mean, the energy, even in this room, while we’re listening here in the studio just calms down. And there’s, you can start having conversations about your own experiences that can lead into deeper conversations for more shared understanding within your organization. Carlos, we have just like, a minute and a half or so. Do you want to share anything about that? About the poem? Yeah, sure. I mean, i was, i think, there’s there’s. So much to be there’s. Someone is so easy to have a very, i think superficial, topical conversation. If we if we wantto engage someone about gender or sexuality or any of these huge hot button issues or topics or anything related to identity and i think the biggest thing that dialogue arts project believes is that using personal narrative and using something artistic as a medium for that personal narrative that is the most that is the most, i think dynamic way to enter a conversation, because that that home, the true story, right about me walking down the main walk with the university of pennsylvania and i think me telling that story. It immediately invites other people that share stories in a way that that i think invites people into a vulnerable space, as opposed to having an intellectual discussion that doesn’t have any stakes involved and ultimately is not a meaningful conversation. Carlos on, listen, we have to leave it there. Excellent regardless, thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you, much less a piercy cofounder, executive director at strength of doves, its strength of doves, dot com and again on twitter, she’s at lissa poet thank you, thank you, thanks a lot. Coming up, secure your donordigital first pursuant, they reached out to me today to renew their sponsorship, like two months early, before i had even asked the email says their leadership is pleased with the partnership, and that gives me two thoughts. First, you need to check out their fund-raising tools because they are perfect for small and midsize non-profits pursuant, dot com is where they are. Second, if you want a partnership with non-profit radio let’s talk, i get results for sponsors now. It’s time for tony’s, take two my video this week is five minute marketing for planned e-giving it’s, a tiny piece of a ninety minute program that’s packed with easy and smart marketing strategies around planned e-giving if you want the teaser video it’s at tony martignetti dot com, if you want me to deliver the full program to train your office or conference audience, let’s talk that’s tony’s take two for friday, twentieth of november forty fourth show of the year. Scott koegler is the editor of non-profit technology news and used to be our technology contributor. He was there from the beginning for a long time. They’re at n p tech news dot com and he’s at scott koegler on twitter from the december six twenty thirteen show here is secure your donor. We’re talking about safeguarding your donordigital what are the, uh, what of the potential risks here if donordigital is compromised? Well, there’s a lot of actually tony and what’s, probably the biggest one is that not just the beta is stolen, but the information about your donors is compromised and that’s something that has made a whole lot of headlines recently well, over the last few years, actually, um about, you know, different different companies having having their data breached, having there credit card information, solan and now people losing, losing the privacy of the credit information identity theft by another word. So there are implications that are certainly public relations you don’t want to be, you know, it may not be a headline if you’re a smaller midsize shop, but you can have a public relations problem among your donors and volunteers without it being in the headlines. There’s legal implications and you couldn’t even have, like some financial problems mean, if people if it comes to the point of people suing you, are you having to pay for damages? Definitely, definitely. You know that i moved to south carolina recently, and last year i think it was earlier this year, actually, the the the state government website was breached. And supposedly all of the information that that anyone who has filed tax returns in the state oh, my goodness. Stolen. So, you know, i mean that’s bad enough. I haven’t actually heard of anyone who was, you know, was affected by having their identities stolen. But what happened was that the state, aside from the, you know, the political and and other kinds of just, you know, general discussion about how things were handled badly, they had to offer a free subscription service to an identity theft, monitoring service to literally everyone in the state. Oh, my and a couple people. And so on, top of on top of having to rebuild their infrastructure and, you know, tighten down their security. Um, you know, they have that financial burden, but, you know, just added something. So yeah, financial consequences definitely did this stuff the car during the five days when governor mark sanford was off with his girlfriend in in argentina, is that when that happened, it could have i don’t know, i you know, it could have been an argentinean internet connection. I’m good provoc story on he’s reputation has since been rehabilitated because he was he was elected. Tio what the house of representatives, i think for for south carolina? I think so. Although i have to i have to admit that i haven’t really followed much of the south carolinian political situation, even though i should have. Okay, well, you’re you’re new resident. Well, i am your break now did vote so i guess it’s good. What part of the problem with identity theft, though, is that people the bad people don’t use the data right away because they know that everybody who’s data was compromised is eyes on the lookout, but they’ll wait. I mean, they’ll wait three for five years and use the data then when your date of birth and social security number haven’t changed and maybe even your address hasn’t changed. And and by then people are not on the lookout for the for the theft because it’s been so many years since it occurred. Exactly exactly, and then it’s also hard to track down where that breach came from, because if it wass, for instance, of small provider, small company or a small non-profit they got they got breached? Uh, may not have been reported, right? Not everybody owns up to it, and actually not everybody actually knows that they’ve been breached. Right? Rights, it’s not in the hacker’s. Best interest to notify anyone that had that great yeah, yeah, now it gets it gets discovered by some audit. Or maybe the hackers will sloppy or something like that, but yeah, i’m sure there are lot of instances where organizations don’t even know that it’s happened. All right, all right. So if we’re going to protect our donor data, what do we need to be thinking about first? Well, the first thing is pretty obvious stuff is that, you know, if you don’t need the information, don’t keep it, don’t collect it, don’t get it one of the pieces of information, of course, that that non-profits do want whose credit card information, uh, and some sites you know, amazon in particular, and pretty much any e commerce site collect credit card information and then there’s a convenience to the chopper. The store that information? Yes. And, you know, it’s convenient and in a situation like amazon, people may go back there and by things you know, almost daily, and so in that case, it really is a convenience, so you don’t want to. I don’t want to keep entering my my credit card information every time i buy something for non-profit that that, um the frequency is probably significantly less than what amazon gets, and we would certainly hope it’s more frequent, but reality is they’re probably talking about a few times a year at the most. Yes, so in those cases, um allow the credit card information to the energy you sure that’s over a secure line and that’s here’s a jug and peace for https that’s uh uh that’s the secure website connections that links the website that someone’s feeling to the with a back end server store some reason, scott, i know that http is hypertext transfer protocol, right? And then i believe the asas a few yeses for secure. Okay, sorry, sorry. Nobody cares about nobody cares. Um, so and that part right there just means that someone monitoring are tapping into the line isn’t just catching the data while it’s streaming by them on dh collecting it that way, that’s the first line of security. But the second one news, you know, use the information, make the transaction, get the get the donation into the bank account, and then just don’t record the credit card information. And just by doing that, you’ll probably solve. I’m going to say at least fifty percent of the of the problems that a data breach can cause for constituents for donors. There’s other information that would fall into those to that category, i’m thinking, like date of birth, social security number, even even address? Yeah, address an email. I mean, you don’t want those to be compromised. Yeah, here’s an interesting piece of security information. Did you know if you have a person’s first name date of birth and their zip code, you can find out through there first name, date of birth and zip code that’s enough to identify? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. We wouldn’t you? Yeah, when you say it, it makes sense, but somebody wouldn’t think that those if you’re not, if you’re not in a security role, you wouldn’t realize that those three things can be really damaging and you could find everything about those. So i mean, date of birth, i mean, probably non-profits don’t have to save date of birth, right? Date of birth, you know, probably they probably do need address information in order to send maybe a ten, ninety nine, you know, donation form at the end of the right, right? But certainly so security number is not necessary. I don’t think that’s required for ten, ninety nine. Well, non-profits aren’t sending ten, ninety nine’s. They’re just sending they’re just sending acknowledgement letters. Okay, so, yeah, ten. Ninety nine’s that’s for contractors. So so it wouldn’t you wouldn’t need it. It wouldn’t need you would not need it for donors. All right, but so there’s there’s information that we should save. But we should look scrupulously at what we are actually preserving is the point. Okay, what you need and don’t even ask for what you don’t need. And those things that you do need no dahna on a short term basis, like credit card information. Just believe it. Okay, okay. There’s still information that you need and there’s information that you want to keep. You want to keep the name, the donation history, maybe their activities. You may want to. Keep their their their address, and they want it. Particularly if you do send out snail mail kinds of information. You know, newsletters do still go by on paper. Uh, okay. And so there is information that you want and here’s, one of the ways that south carolina system was breached tonight, if they could have avoided the entire disaster with the effects of the disaster. Maybe not from a public relations standpoint, but from the effect on its citizens. By encrypting the data with health so well, where he talked about, you know, using a secure internet connection tps. And that applies and encryption to all of the information going across the internet wire. But once it reaches the program that stores the data, um, you know, that data is stored in a database, and the database is usually, um, pretty transparent. In other words, you can open the database. Look at the information and it’s you know, it’s in english. It’s in what’s, commonly called clear text. So it’s, you know, you can look at it with a human being can read it and understand it. Um and i know it’s easy and it’s the way that things are stored most of time. Um, what south carolina did not do. And actually, a couple of others didn’t dio notable ones are adobe and link them okay? Not small names and people that you would think would know better. They did not oppcoll the contents of the database. So what that means is if the data is not encrypted, hacker gets in, they download the database and they can use it’s all visible in clear text. Okay. Okay. All right. So so the data that we do store, we should consider encryption, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Encryptions pretty easy. Most databases have it as a non option. You could just, you know, take a box and bingo. It’s all encrypted. So we have to also consider where this data is safe, right? It’s? Lots of different places and including portables. Right? Um, sure. Cellphones get lost, laptops gets stolen, all those kind of things happen. Uh, i don’t know that. There’s an additional answer there. I mean, certainly you can password protected cell phones and laptops, but typically people don’t do that. Yeah, well, we’re going to get to policies that that they should be doing so, but they’re also the data is on servers. In your and hopefully your server closet is secure. I’ve seen a lot of servers that including businesses, small businesses where, you know, it’s in a like a ah whole janitorial closet or something up on a shelf. Definitely not secure it all, but data can also be in the cloud exactly that it could be in the cloud. And it’s kind of a counterintuitive. I’ll just give you my personal take on this. I think on. I believe that data is stored in a all right. You know, properly created cloud environment. It was much more secure than something that’s residing in your server. Uh, at your office. Okay, what did i tell you? Why? You know, first of all, servers in officers are managed by by people in those offices, typically and except for, you know, very large, non-profits most of those people are not, um, it’s, not a full time job to manage the security of the server right there doing other things. They have a full time job for a part time job and a piece of a part of a tiny portion of that time you maybe to make a back-up with the server on the other hand, cloud based systems, it is business it’s only business. Not only are the, uh, typically bound by terms and conditions of the contract with that you have with them to protect your data if they’re breached, uh, rage stands to lose their entire business just from the bad p r so it’s in their best interests to keep their, you know, their customers, clients, data secure, you know, they those kinds of environments, too, support the https secure connections they do typically encrypt the data. I’m not saying you don’t need to check those things, but i do believe that it’s, no overall, safer environment, leave it in the hands of the professionals. Okay, we have we have to go away for a couple minutes when we come back. Scott. Now, keep talking about safeguarding your donordigital. We’ll get into some of the policies that you should have. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m dana ostomel, ceo of deposit, a gift. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. All right, scott, we know what data we’ve got and what we need to save and not save way we know where the data is stored, what kind of policies should we have in place? Yes, well, as you mentioned, it’s it’s a good thing to have a policy that says, you know, you need to secure your devices with a password so that every time you use that needs to be long, then, um, in my experience that that may work in corporate environments where the item shop has the ability to actually manage the devices that were used by their brother employees, but in an environment that says generally as loose as a non-profit becomes pretty difficult to force for one thing, you know, you’re your volunteers may already have bones that are being managed by their brother employers, so we got a conflict in that in that area, i’m still it’s a good thing to do. Um, certainly you want to be sure that the staff isn’t writing things down on pieces of paper, so if they are recording things, they are being recorded in a digital format in a secure form that so that whatever protections are being enforced in the room that digital connection are being used. They may not be one hundred percent, but it’s better than nothing for sure. We should also have policy around who has access to different pieces of data, absolutely. And that has to do with the, uh, the applications that you’re using to store your information some of the more simplistic applications, for instance, locally, you know, homemade databases, spreadsheets, things like that have very limited security options, right? Most of the most of the non-profit applications that are available commercially, i have what they call multi level rules so you can define a roll of manager out of the data entry work no, no hosting, volunteer and different kinds of rules like that in each one of those can have different levels of access to information. So somebody who’s carrying around a tablet that in the event registering people for the event, they only have access to the data entry function for that piece, it certainly would not have access two historical e-giving and other other information has already been recorded when i go teo cem, clients on i’m using their database there’s data that i can’t see? Social security number. For instance, i i can see that it’s preserved, but all i see in that field is a bunch of stars. Date of birth, i think is another one. Or maybe i see the year, but not the day in the month. Something like that. So there there are there are data, ways of preserving and i log on to that database so it knows who i am and what level of access i have. Exactly. When i was, that reminds me of when i was in the air force, i had i had top secret clearance. And then beyond top secret, there was something called psyop. Yes, i which wass was those top secret? T s psyop was the single integrated operating plan. And then, yes, i was for extra sensitive information. So you could have t s and then you could go beyond that, and then beyond that. And then there’s, you know, obviously there people who had hyre levels of security clearance beyond me. But i had top secret c i a p ece. Anyway, uh, so just just exactly as you told me that. Tony, you kill me, right? Right now. There. Are other reasons i need to kill you. Is that another doing? Just revealed. Okay. All right. So the software can help us. All right. So this is part of our policies is who who has access to what? On a need to know basis, right? That’s, basically, what do you need to know? To do your job? Sabat. Exactly. And there’s one two things i’ll bring up here one is that, you know most well, most a lot of instances of breach come from not getting rid of logging access. That is not necessary any longer. So someone leaves the organization. The very first thing that should be done is that loggins should be deactivated. Deleted whatever. Yes, at the very least. Password changed. But there are lots of, uh, lots of instances where that wasn’t done immediately. And the data, you know, goes away and let’s face it. No, it it’s not just a friendly departure. That person is more likely to take action immediately than they are, you know, months down the road. So quick action is is really, uh, you know the right thing to do. Let’s, talk a little about insurance. There’s, there’s, cyber insurance. There is dahna and, you know, i haven’t really looked at the prices for those, but i’m sure that that very is based on the amount of information, the value of your database, all those kind of things, but i would say that most of the large insurance company i’m looking at the hartford and shove, for instance, they offer what’s called a data breach insurance, uh, which is exactly what we’re talking about here. It’s protection against losses, protection against lawsuits from, uh, problems occurring based on the loss liability, all those kind of things i would say it’s definitely something we’re looking into. And of course, you know, hindsight will always tell you that you should have done it. But, you know, pryce will make that determination for you, okay? We’re not holding you to the standards of oven insurance broker, so you don’t need to know the price, but but important for people to know that it exists and and as you suggested, you know, if you have a bad person, maybe they left on bad terms or maybe they’re still working for you, and they just have some bad intentions no policy is going to prevent them from getting what they want if they’re if they’re industrious enough like and an interesting statistic. Seventy five percent of a raw data fresh and i’m talking well, i guess it could be called hacking, but david left, this use of data happens internally of that seventy five percent, fifty percent of it is from physical, just physically copying the data onto a thumb drive. Or, you know, some other ceo or something like that. So it really, you know, most of what’s gonna happen is really gonna happen within the organization. That’s frightening and this heartening unfortunately true. You’re a former ceo, right? Chief information officer, chief technology officer on the corporate side. What? What more do you want to impart? I haven’t asked you about, uh, lock the doors. That’s that’s probably the biggest and most difficult thing that we had to contend with making sure that the facility is secure. Now those when i was doing that, cloud computing was really not a big issue. So locking the doors, you know, for a crowd environment doesn’t really does it really work? That said, we are still there’s still paper records that your store in provoc hammocks and almost any organization and locking doors were locking the file cabinets or some other way, securing access against the paper records. Still it’s still the right thing to do, and we’ll we’ll avoid some of the day the press that we’re talking about. Yes, excellent. We’ve been talking about digitised data, but there’s still lots of paper records and just simple locks on a file cabinet on blocks on doors, andan that server door that you know that those hallway closet servers that i see where it’s the maintenance you know, it’s it’s above the slop sink that’s crazy frank, that is one one other issue that i’ll talk about and that is what’s called social engineering and has nothing to do with data. Uh, it’s it’s really old fashioned and involved. Usually telephone, but it could be personal approaching face-to-face. Okay, you know, we talked about the three pieces of information that will lead to someone really knowing who you are, right? Uh, first name, date of birth and your zip code. You may not say all those things to the same person at the same time, but social engineering involves people making phone calls into an organization. Talking to different people and pulling different pieces of information from those different people and then assembling those outside so they’re pretty easy to, you know, called secretary and they, you know, i’m trying to get the thie owners birthday gift, you know what? They were on dh, you know, by the way, you know, at another person calls in to another person in the organization and says, you know what? Town today with them mean, now there you go, right there, three piece of information, yes. Wow. That’s okay, those air bad there’s a bad actors, but but but if somebody wants it, they can they can put it together over time. And andi, even if even a small organization, even if there aren’t that many people, if they can call they could do it over time, they can have a have ah, accomplice maybe helping. So one time it’s a man a couple weeks later, it’s a woman asked in different things, your office isn’t going to protect against that exactly. Then we’re not as people, we’re not wired to think, you know, in that kind of devious way to protect ourselves. Okay? All right. All the more. Reason for thinking about this thing about cyber insurance, i think, exactly, exactly all right next week, there’s no live show affiliates. I will have a show for you, but i don’t know which one. Yet more important than that. I hope you enjoy your thanksgiving time for family and friends over a long holiday weekend. Enjoy. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits whatever type of work you do to improve our world pursuant dot com, our creative producer is claire miree off. Janice taylor is today’s line producer gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director. Welcome gavin doing an outstanding job. The show’s social media is by diner russell, while susan chavez is on maternity leave she’s having a little baby today. Congratulations, susan. Our music is by scott stein with me next week be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Amador is the founder of idealised took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for November 13, 2015: Your Engaged Board & In-Kind Gifts

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Michael Davidson: Your Engaged Board

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We’ve got a listener of the week. Congratulations, michelle clan in boulder, colorado. She tweeted that she’s challenging her board toe listen to six shows before their next board meeting. I love that non-profit radio is helping michelle’s board, and i hope they’re gonna listen to this week’s show very relevant about boards. Congratulations, michelle clan non-profit radios listener of the week i’m glad you’re with me i’d be forced to endure bronco candid i assists if i inhaled the idea that you missed today’s show you’re engaged board michael davidson says you’re boardmember zehr happiest when you ask them to do more, not less, he tackles how to recruit and maintain the engaged board. He’s, a consultant and bored coach and former chair of governance matters and in-kind gif ts maria simple, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder, returns to share her advice about in-kind gif ts how do you find these non-cash gif ts their value and the right appraiser? When do you need an appraiser? Maria answers it all that originally aired on october tenth twenty fourteen between the guests on tony’s take two sincerity still trumps production value responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com very glad, very glad to welcome back michael davidson. He has helped over a hundred boards, has over thirty years, working with non-profit boards and leadership of many organizations. He’s, lead consultant for the united way boards, serve new york city board training program and teaches at the new school university and adelphi university, along with being former chair of governance matters. He’s been an attorney, criminal prosecutor and bakery owner. Those cookies were delicious. His coaching practices at board coach dot com michael davidson, welcome back. Morning, tony. Great to be back. It was you were on. This is really momentous too. May you were on the very first show that’s amazing it was it was july fifth, two thousand ten. And that was back when it was called the tony martignetti show. Yes, i didn’t even think to include non-profits with that it’s it’s about me with that. Um but yeah, so five and a half years ago. That’s amazing and we’re still talking. About board way. We’re always talking about boredom. Would exgagement ford fund-raising yes, you had a block post recently that stimulated mito to think that you need to come back. The engaged board have some traits of unengaged board. Yeah. It’s. Really interesting that the thing that prompted this article was a kind of a ce national study which said that, you know, boards are all committed to the mission, but a very large percentage of them are unengaged and and that’s the reality. I mean, that’s, that’s what? I see boards who people get brought in, they have a great they believe in the mission. Whatever the mission is and their extraordinary number of wonderful missions that people get involved in and they bring him in and they put him on board. But no one quite knows what to do with them and how to really engage them. And i keep looking at that question is i work with boys and for me, it’s thoughts to boil down to this a really simple stuff that i think organizations khun d’oh. The first one is that people get connected because they believe in the mission they want whatever it is, it’s, they always come with passion. They come into a passion for this particular cause whether it’s, you know, helping in greve families or a particular a disease that you know that they think really needs to be addressed or theater or whatever it is, and then they sit him around a table away from the mission. Yeah, and the connection with that mission kind of dissipates into the details ofthe finance and management and oversight and all that kind of stuff, and they get further and further away from the passion. Okay? And so for me, one of the keys is you kind of keep keep him connected with the passion, and there are very simple things that boards do to do that, okay? We’re going. We’re just like overviewing of the you get these three areas of traits of engagement were overviewing them and then we’ll get into detail on great. We’ll come back and hit him each one, so okay, what’s, the what’s, our second engaged board trait that the second one is having high expectations and enforcing those expectations. It’s a job enforcement enforcement like a cop. Okay, but not, you know, good cop, bad cop, good cop. And i can’t marry the cop murray, the cop fremery company on a corner that you know, you know, and it’s making sure that it’s everybody’s clear about what the job is that they agree that they’re going to do the job, and then there’s a process to encourage, supposed to enforcement, encourage and car encourage them to continue doing the job at the best of their level. And the thing that’s really interesting about that is it’s counterintuitive. I got a board executive director ization. Oh, my god. If i asked too much of my boy, the leaf and that’s. Not true, i think it’s totally the reverse. I thinkyou mohr. You ask of people the happy they are okay. In the end, they engaged. All right. Excellent. Well, go into detail on that. And then. Well, the third round. The executive director has responsibility. Absolutely. The executive director’s key, i believe, to the whole process. Too many executive director zoho my god, the board is by boss and i better not push adam and i better not try to tell him what to do because the fire me so i can’t tell them what to do. And that’s totally wrong. T e d is the professional in the room. We all arts board members were all amateurs. Thie edie knows what the organization needs and has. To really serve as a coach for the board behind the scenes, working through the chair, working through the officers, working through the executive committee but always serving as a coach to move the board forward in the direction that the organization needs. You’re coming at this not only as, ah coach on consultant for boards and organizations, but you’ve you’ve been on many boards and you’re on many boards right now. Right now. Two, two alright, i know i know you wouldn’t do it to have been on many in the but yes, ooh now, yeah, yeah. Okay, won’t you shout out ones you’re on? Well, one isn’t really interesting organization and it’s a great story, actually, about boards, it’s going critical community works and we worked to bring theater into schools, and we work to connect schools with theater and all sort of connect kids with a history of their neighborhoods. It’s a very interesting connection between education and theater and arts and history, and we went through a period, actually where we almost closed the doors, the model, the business model was no longer sustainable. Uh, schools no longer had the money to pay for these kinds. Of things in the school to bring kids to plays and things like that because the nature of budgets and we were almost ready to shut down and the board with some great board members really did a very tight analysis of cash flow and of what programmes were sustainable and what programs we’re not sustained. Serious introspection, siri’s introspection with detailed analysis, detailed financial analysis of what? What sustainable and what’s not sustainable. And we cut what’s, not sustainable. And we’re left with a few basic things that are sustainable and i think the organization’s going to revive and it’s a lot of it is his board work with the executive director. And just a minute before our first break what’s the what’s, the other organization, the others. My synagogue board. I’ve been on there for too many years. Okay, like i come off. Come on. I used to be chair. I left for a while. They brought me back. It’s, you know it’s. A community obligation for me. Okay, well, what’s the name of the society for the advancement of judaism run the upper west side napor side of new york city. Okay, there’s, another upper west side. Somewhere in the world. All right, you’re gonna get something. I do enough of this new york centrism. I mean, personally, i’m the center of the universe, and then new york revolves around me, but it’s also, you know, it’s. Another sort of center around. May i do enough of that? So don’t get in trouble. All right? Let’s, go out for this break when we come back, michael and i’m going to keep talking about these three traits of engaged boards and of course, i’ve got live. Listen, love, etcetera, stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy. Dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Okay, michael davidson. Um, let’s, go back to the first part. Now, personal experience. It starts with a personal connection. It’s yours with a personal connection, but you have to maintain we’ve got to keep it up. You got you got you, you’ve got to keep it up. And there are really two very simple things that boards can do to keep it up. One is you bring the mission into every board meeting. So as part of the agenda for every board meeting, you have somebody telling the story. Yeah, either a staff member or a client, someone who comes in to talk about the impact that this program has had online client story lines. I mean, that could be tearful, it’s tearful, and it serves a number of purposes. First, it reinforces the mission connection. But the other thing that it serves when you asking boardmember is to go out and raise money they got have stories to tell, no one’s going to get interested about statistics of a program and the numbers and so on and so forth, right, they’re going to get interested in the impact on dso boardmember sze have got tow have these stories, but what’s important about the way adults remember things right? We don’t remember stuff that we’ve read as well as stuff that we’ve heard. So you have a real person in there talking about a real event versus a couple of paragraphs, there’s just a couple of paralyzing the latest program achievement exactly where so so you do that, then the other side of us, he bring it into the board boot. The other side of it is bringing the board members out to the program. So you build in an expectation, which is we’ll get the expectations, but you build in an expectation that every boardmember has to visit a program twice a year. Shut off to the program, just go there, watch it, talk to people, ask questions, learn about what’s going on and then another expectation is every boardmember is expected after they visited a program to come back to the board and tell this story report their report and so they talk about how they reacted to this. So now you get to results from that right? Number one, it reinforces that you got to go visit program because you don’t want to be the only boardmember who never had a story to number one and number two. Now, i’ve got my story that i heard, and i’ve got your story that you heard from us, and now i’ve got twice as many stories to tell about the organization so it’s two very simple things that maintain the mission connection. And then on top of that, every board meeting you’re hearing a story exactly right so it’s in front of them, not that’s, not a special that’s. Not a special meeting. That’s every every meeting, every meeting. It’s on the ejecta, it’s on the job. Okay, um, yeah, i guess. I mean, you said it, but i want to dive a little deeper with it. The boards tend to lose that. That personal connection, the passion that brought them there turns into a monthly budgetary analysis, staffing levels, competitive analysis. You know which things are important too. But that becomes the sum, the whole thing that’s, right. And that and that’s, when the board members get together and it’s, you know, another part of it which i didn’t quite push in that in that. Article is that it’s about the group it’s about the team part? A big part of what motivates board members is being part of the team. We don’t liketo operate on our own, not we’re not good as human beings. Is that right? We are best in groups. We all know that we do our best. We are best our best selves come out in groups, something some groups not so good. But mostly our best selves come out in groups. And so you want to reinforce that sense of a team at the board meeting? Yeah, so it can’t all be just a little business, and the more you know, the detailed business it’s got to be the big stuff that that we joined together around, and you give people an opportunity to express that as they asked questions from the staff member or the client has come in from the boardmember what had a, you know, a visit that they’re reporting on, and that conversation builds the sense of a team i’m standing. Yeah, sometimes it’s really simple. The emotion comes through that’s, right? And you know, it is it’s about the emotional tony. You’re absolutely right. We were not rational creatures. We are emotional creatures. We will use our rationality to explain emotions that’s good and maybe to control them sometimes, but mostly we way run by our emotions by our sentiments and that’s that driver have we got to pay attention to that? You know, i sought out my professional life is a lawyer. So all the legal stuff about boards, i know it, but i kind of forget it because it’s not as important as the emotional side and we have plenty of guests talking about the legal side. Yeah, yeah. Good genes. Akagi are regular legal contributor, often talking about board the fiduciary obligations, etcetera. Yeah. All right, let’s. Go to the expectations. Yeah. Let me ask you a threshold question. Do you like to see expectations in writing absolute for a perspective board? Absolutely. Coming on the board. Here’s what we expect you got that right? You recruiting me to come on my on your board? I’m asked the first question i ask is so what’s the deal and i want to see it. You know, if it’s just told well you’re supposed to do this, you’re supposed to do that it’s kind. Of vague, right? I want to see it in writing, okay. And seeing it in writing. Well, first of all, to get to that writing. Where do you get to that? Writing from where do you get to that written list of expectations? The board has got to agree to it, you know, like a job description. Yeah, but it doesn’t come from the outside. It’s gotta come from the inside. There’s. No outside authority that can write that. That contract for you, it’s got to come from an agreement on the part of the board members. This is what we expect off ourselves. Okay, so that’s that’s that’s a conversation. So the executive committee works on this are usually, ah, governance committee. So the governance committee would take a look at what? What are the expectations for board members? Come up with what they would propose. Put those on the table, have a conversation with the board and get the board to approve it. The vote on it? Yes. This is this is it. This is what we expect, and they and their very specific, you know, how many board meetings were you expected to attend? Yeah, that every boardmember is expected to serve on a committee the number of side visits, the personal contribution site visits are the program yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the broker was just ok the contribution, how much? Everybody i believe every boardmember should write a check it’s going to be different in different organizations, but they got to demonstrate their old commitment. What’s the expectation for fund-raising you expect around the fund-raising do you ah, like to see all board members have a certain the same minimum? Or is it more tea to your yoga really varies? You know, much bigger organizations that have, you know, museums, theatre groups, and so on they will put in and many others too, if they’re more, um, more mature organization will put in a number five thousand dollars, okay, smaller organizations, they struggle with that our listeners are more small, make it small and many eyes they they struggle with that because they say, look, if i put that hyre number half of my board can’t do that, you know? So what we do with the smaller organizations, for starters, is simply say every boardmember is expected to make a personally significant contribution, so what is personally significant mean, you have to have a conversation about that, and for me, i have a i have a kind of ah rule of thumb, right personally significant means you have to think before you write the check, right? Ok, over the check that you don’t have to think about that’s not significant, right? It’s got to be significant relative to what you do, maybe it’s a hot one of the top three charities or some other standard like that. Once you get it started, then you congratulate inching up overtime, ok, but you started with the notion of it being personally significant, and you like to see this as you said, personal gift not not, give or get it’s, give and get given and given and that’s an injunction conjunction okay, we’re both lawyers do that. So that’s, right, former, former well and happy yeah, i’m happy about it. So, yes, it is, and because i believe every boardmember has got to make a personal commitment, right? And i believe they’re better board members if they’ve got as they say, skin in the game and that they’ve written a check and they’re going to pay more. Attention, because they’re they’re investing in this, and they’re also getting out and are also getting involved in, you know, selling tables for the gala, the gulf, whatever it isyou know all of that kind of work as well, but it’s kind of because they can’t do that work unless they put themselves on the line. You can’t go to your friends and ask him to contribute for the gala because if we’re going to say, i hope you’re what are you doing? Yeah, you know, we dwelled on this. We’re talking about expectations gentle, but we dwelled on fund-raising because i found something that i i was asked to do some board we search some research about boards back when i was an employee is on my st john’s university. No, no letter home where you really saved me. I’m in france, tony from nineteen, ninety seven it was an article i found fund-raising realities every boardmember must face, quote to demonstrate their commitment boardmember sze must first make a generous gift proportionate to their means. End quote nineteen, ninety seven we were still talking about this. We were always told years the same story. Yeah, the dynamics don’t change? Yeah, yeah. Why is that? Because, that’s, the reality of what we’re dealing with, right? We’re dealing with the reality ofthe volunteers with dealing with the reality it’s a uniquely american phenomenon. Okay, we take people ordinary people from all walks of life, right? And we asked them to be responsible for charitable organizations to be the stewards of these organizations, to guide the organizations to support these organizations. It’s a very strange phenomenon. If you think about it, right. When you ask people, you know, i want you to serve on my board. So here’s the deal. Right. Okay, i’m expecting you. Come six meetings a year. I want you to serve on a committee. Okay? I’m asking you to pay for the privilege. And as a bonus, you get to ask your friends for money. Okay? That’s the deal, right? It is, but we do it. So it doesn’t. The dynamics of what make this makes this challenging. Never change. They never change because it is inherently a challenging back-up proposition. Tohave all of our charitable work, all of our non-profit work run by volunteers. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That’s. A very articulate explanation. That’s. Why it’s the same in nineteen nineties not going to stop lt’s not going eighteen years from now. We have the same conversation. All right? Hopefully we know a little bit more with some or expectations a cz you’re departing the board, you want to know why people leaving? Yeah, and sometimes these conversations are really interesting exit interviews, the exit interviews. So i’ve been involved on on the selection panel for a thing called a non-profit excellence awards non-profit excellence awards, which is award given every year in new york city for excellence and non-profit management. So one of the organizations that we were doing a site visit on this year, i was talking about the fact that one of their very serious major contributors on the board was announcing that he was gonna leave. So one thing is, oh, my god, but, you know, we love you buy or someone sat down with him and said, well, what’s going on tell us why you’re leaving and basically what he said was he says, look, i’ve been on this board for five years, i’ve been on the finance committee for five years, i do finance every day, i’m tired of doing finance. I don’t want to serve on finance anymore, so i’m getting off the board and the chairman said, you don’t have to serve a fine and it’s not the only connection i already committee. What what would you like to be interested in? What would get you interested? And he wanted to serve on the program committee, which worked on the evaluation of programs on their metrics, on their outcomes and things like that? Bingo! He didn’t leave that’s a grand slam grizzly. I didn’t lose the big donor major, but what’s happened. And now he’s happier and the organization hasn’t lost his ten. Now, sometimes in an exit interview, it doesn’t quite work that way when you find out from someone stepping off about the board. What was your experience? What worked for you? What didn’t work for you? How do we how could we make it better? Who does these exit interviews? Ceo. Exactly. Director, i think not. Fellow boardmember fellow boardmember. Yeah, i would. You know, it could be the chair. Yeah. Could be the chair of the governance committee. Is the trouble? Could be with the executive director. That would be the board relationship. Yeah, so? You figure it out, you know, probably the most neutral. If there’s trouble. I mean, there might be trouble. Yeah, but usually the most neutral. Be the chair of the governance committee because that person might be having some trouble with chair of the board. Yeah, you mentioned is governance committee now? Twice. What? That’s? Not a very common committee. It’s more and more common. It is what we expect of our governance committee. Well, it used to be what was the nominating committee. Ah, so it’s job was bored. Recruitment. Now, it’s it’s taken on a larger roll off of the life of the board. So it looks at the by-laws it looks at board procedures. It manages the process of evaluation on which we hadn’t gotten to of board members. Because once you have those expectations, expectations are only useful. If you review and evaluate let’s talk, you know what you mean? That piece of paper, your notes, the guy, the guy wanted his notes at the beginning and handed it to him. And now he’s holding them now into quarters. Not looked at it once. You know this, you know the self atop your head. Give me. The notes back stop fiddling with that. The director is that folded up in the little quarters was gonna rip it up into shreds. Putting his shredder alright board of al u ation. Yeah, so we have expectations. You have expectations, right? So it’s a number of different ways sometimes boardmember typically serve a three year term. That’s who we should like that folk. So sometimes what you do is when the person is coming up for for potential renomination. That’s when you do a review, should this person be nominated again for another term? That’s one way another way is i think i’ve left. I’d love to have and some organizations do it every year there was a conversation chair, the governance committee chair of the board, depending upon who you know, it was best to have that conversation with each boardmember every year. So how you doing? How have you done against these expectations? How do you feel about your performance? What are you hoping to do next year? So it’s that you know it’s the kind of a thing that any manager would do with an employee that their supervising right? You don’t just given employee job. Description and hope that they fulfill it right? You review them on a periodic basis so with a boardmember you do it once a year and you find out what’s going on and hopefully re energize the person, maybe you find different things for them to do and that they’d be engaged in, and someone so it’s an active process of interaction with every boardmember we’re just a couple minutes left here. I want to get teo the executive director’s responsibility in feeding you call it meat eating meat to the board and that’s it’s a really subtle process, but it’s really important and there’s two sides to it. One is there are really important questions that board should be dealing with, you know, what’s our financial future what’s our prospects. What of our programs are sustainable? What pro? What should we be seeking for outcomes of our programs? Where we going now? Sometimes executive directors don’t want their boards in cage that knows that because they want to make those decisions themselves, but they are the sea important things that you can get an executive can get important understanding and knowledge from smart board members and and make it a collaborative process. So they got a they have to be willing to trust the board. Teo, do this kind of stuff. But so how did the executive director get to do it? They do it suddenly they do it through the board chair. They do it to the executive committee. They make suggestions. They guide the work, they ask questions. You know, my my first experience on a board, i was a young lawyer, right? So i got recruited to this board of a senior service agency on the west side. They needed a lawyer on the board, so i got to be on it again. The western again. Oh, god. Not that we hear you’re new york accent, so it’s. But sooner or later, i became a lawyer, became the board chair, right? I would meet every week with the executive director, and she would tell me what she needed from me. She would tell me what she needed from me to get from the board. And we worked this a tina and that’s, a good executive director does that she’s a partner with the board chair and guiding the work off the board. But at the same time has to be willing to trust the board and be willing to put some of these meaty issues on the board table, because that means that he or she are not going to able to totally control him, right? The board is going to have a say on these questions as they should, and if if the if the offerings heir to minuscule who’s when we start to get disengagement, of course i mean you we recruit smart people, yeah, with good experience in all of their professions and lives and businesses, and we don’t give him challenging challenge do right? It doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, the more the challenge, the happy where you are. Yeah, that’s your that’s the irony you said earlier and i intruded to thee. The more you give, the happier you’re bored will be that’s, right? Yeah. Okay. All right. Let me ask you last minute. What do you love about this work? You’re doing around boards, it’s the people they’re so interesting and it’s the missions this so interesting. I mean, the range of things that people find important to do in life and to achieve in society is enormous. And i never would predict it. I mean, right now, right now, i’m working with a group that works with kids newyork city again in harlem, right? Teaching, um, ice hockey. Okay? And and and the parents and the kids this’s important? Not just sports, but charitable. They’re really changing kids lives by ice hockey. I dealt with another organization, new jersey, now across the river, right provides support for families who’ve lost the joy of a child. Grief counseling. Yeah, everybody thinks about grief counseling for adults who’ve lost spouses, right? But for you, no. So the rates for me what’s exciting is this range of things causes interests that people can get engaged in. Michael davidson, board coach many years experience over one hundred boards working with them, you’ll find his practice at board coach dot com. Thanks so much, michael. Why pleasure. Welcome back. So you get in five years. You have, you know, i know it won’t be that long. Yeah. Tony’s take two and in-kind gift’s coming up first. Pursuant. Online tools for small and midsize shops they’re committed to our community ceo is trent ryker. He saw the passion for mission in the twelve years he worked in non-profits also saw how under resourced so many organizations are the tools that they have are smart, they help your fund-raising you’ll raise more money and they are affordable pursuant dot com my video is still up on how sincerity trumps production value. You can see the earthquake in new york city last week, and i read from a hilton hotel letter in brooklyn broken english, but the sentiment definitely came through on that video is at tony martignetti dot com that’s tony’s take two for friday, thirteenth of november forty third show of the year. Here is in-kind gif ts with maria simple marie sample is back she’s, our monthly prospect research contributor and the prospect finder she’s, a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot com her book is panning for gold. Find your best donorsearch prospects now she’s our doi n of dirt, cheap and free. You can follow her on twitter at maria simple. Welcome back, maria! Hey there, tony, how are you? I’m doing very well. How are you today? Just fine. Thank you. Go that’s. Good. We’re here to talk about gifts in-kind on this fall. Afternoon what way are we are but i first need to just quickly mention to you that apparently i am having a three year anniversary with your show this week. Really? You’ve been tracking your well, you know, who’s been tracking it is lincoln. Oh, really? You saw an anniversary notice on lengthen. This is this is your third year it yet it sent out an anniversary notice. Tio my connections and i all of a sudden started getting all these congratulatory notes this week. So i thought, well, that isn’t that appropriate that here is my my weak teo, reconvene with you so it’s been three wonderful years. Wow, that’s really something i would if you had asked me, i would have thought it was i would’ve said it was more like two holy cow that’s. Terrific. I get those notices i but i don’t always read all of them. Usually i just read the birthday notices. I don’t always read all the work anniversary notices, but i also noticed they send them out throughout the month, so they don’t. They don’t only come in the beginning. So maybe i just maybe i haven’t gotten yours yet. You’re three. Three year anniversary, but happy anniversary. I’m glad you’ve been with me for three years. Thank you for having me for three years. Wonderful. Oh, thank you. My pleasure gifts. In-kind let’s. Make sure everybody understands what a gift in-kind is. Yes. That’s, right, let’s do that first before i get thrown off into jargon jail first, first out of the gate here, so gets in-kind would really be anything other than monetary donations. So typically they would be considered donations of food, clothing, medicines, furnishings, office equipment, building materials and, you know, even sometimes services that air provided by somebody could be considered ah, gift in-kind as opposed to a gift in cash that they might give to your organization. So if they’re providing some sort of a specific service and then not charging you for it, i know that, you know, sometimes consultants will do that on on a pro bono basis, so that would be considered a gift in-kind as well, i could throw out another example that i’ve worked on a few times. Gifts of artwork, art collections are also gifts in-kind i worked on a really interesting one once it was a presidential memorabilia collection. And it included a picture. It included the resin, the one of the nixon resignation letters, original signed. I think there were five or six that he signed, and it also had a picture of that famous picture of jimmy carter, menachem begin and anwar sadat. You know, the three of them are shaking hands well, thiss was a deep into six figure art collection, but so they can be really interesting on dh cars. I’ve worked on a couple of classic car donations also, which can be quite valuable. I know you mentioned automobiles. I was just thinking of classic automobiles, but, um, yeah, they can be that could be kind of fun to work on. Well, so, you know, it must have been interesting. I’ve never had the opportunity myself to be working directly with, uh non-profit while they’ve been, you know, fortunate enough to receive something, you know, of that type of value on also, you know, it got me to thinking about, you know, well, what if i were a small to midsize non-profit and have the millionaire next store living in our community and maybe people didn’t even realize they were housing any type of art collection or one or two even significant pieces in their home? And you know what? You know? What do you do? What is the next step that you do if you find out that perhaps it’s somebody’s left it to you and there will or they could be making the gift while they’re still alive? When then, you know, it got to be really complicated as i started to research this a little bit to try and figure out. Well, what is the non-profit need to do first, in terms of valuing the artwork? So what did you do? I’ll tell you what organizations i kind of came up with that are reputable in terms of places you would turn to, but i’m curious to know how it worked out. How did you appraise the artwork? Yeah, well, let’s, let’s, take a step back and make sure he understands the for a gift that’s valued over five thousand dollars. And again, like maria said, this is we’re talking about non-cash gifts, so not this is not cash or stock, but something other than that. Over five thousand dollars, the irs requires what’s called a qualified appraisal and that’s a term of art and the qualified appraisal has certain requirements, and a qualified appraisal has to be done by a qualified appraiser and that’s also a term of art, and they’re certain credentials that the irs requires the place that i turned for the presidential art collection anyway was thie american association of appraisers i think i’m pretty sure they’re based here in new york, and i believe i contacted them first for some recommendations specific, too presidential memorabilia, was it perhaps the american society of appraisers? Because my research shows that they’re the oldest organization founded in nineteen thirty six, and they think they are in the new york area, okay, could have been, but i think there’s another one, too, which i think is triple a american association of appraisers or american appraisal association, so we could try either one of those, but yours is here’s more bonified because you actually research that i’m remember i’m living off the top of my head. Yeah, i actually am. I can actually post a list, uh, post show onto your facebook page, but there were actually sort of six top societies or associations, if you will that that my research turned up one. Was that one i just mentioned the american society of appraisers which, according to this particular web site that lists them, says that this one is the oldest and then there’s the art dealers association of america, thie appraisers, association of america. Well, there’s the triple oh, yeah. There’s that could’ve been it. Okay, please go. Thie appraisal foundation, thie international society of appraisers and the private art dealers association. So i thought that was all interesting. Then i got to wondering if you can actually turn to any of the major houses that actually, you know, the auction houses like those that you might be seeing featured on something like antiques roadshow. Ah, but i didn’t know if that was, uh, if people turned to those types of auction houses to help, you know, evaluate the worst oven item. Certainly an auction house, i suppose, would get involved once there. It actually want to, you know, offload that particular items so that they will end up having the cash. Uh, i i would imagine that would be the case for any non-profit other than a museum who would want that gift, perhaps as part of their dahna display, yeah, it’s it’s it could go broader than that, you know, there are ways that non-profits khun use gifts in-kind in their mission that that are permissible and are not so obvious, like hospitals can use artwork because they can decorate waiting rooms and hallways and things. One of the classic car donations that i worked on was for a university, and we were anticipating using the classic convertible in there athletic recruiting because they thought that seventeen eighteen year olds, when they’re thinking about what college to go to to play sports, might love driving around in a being driven around in a fifty seven chevy, i’m pretty sure that’s what it was convertible, so there are different charitable uses that they’re not as obvious as like you said, you know, the museum, there can be other charitable purposes for for these types of gift no, yeah, i hadn’t thought of that. That sounds great, actually, i can i can really see how an organization might want to step back and think about how it could fit in, as you said to their overall mission or two attraction like in the case of the college or university. There with their son sports department. Really wonderful stuff. And of course, there’s. Also the other examples you gave you no services could be gift in-kind so that’s obviously being used used up immediately a point that i want to make. Two is it’s sort of subsumed in what were saying? I’ll make it explicit. You have to find the right kind of appraiser. There are like i mentioned presidential memorabilia there. Our appraisers are specialising just that. So if you had a ah, a fine art photograph that was being donated to you you need to find someone who specializes in not only find our photography but they may even specialize in the particular photographer the artist or the era if it’s ah it’s ah it’s! Not a contemporary piece of art so you have to find and this goes into the irs requirements. Do you have to find someone who specializes in precisely what it is you’re being given? If it’s an automobile automobile appraisers it’s just like a medical specialist you have to find the right kind of person. Maria, let me ask you about trying to find gifts in-kind i mean, these don’t only come from wealthy people, i don’t want people to be left with that idea. They’d only come from people of wealth. What about ways of ah, finding gifts in-kind in your community? Well, that got me to thinking about not not just the individuals in your community who i might be capable of doing this. But then i started thinking about all of the corporate programs that are in place, for example, that have gifts in-kind as part of their overall corporate social responsibility, so they may have a corporate giving program, a corporate foundation, then they may have a separate set of programming related to in-kind on dh. Then i was wondering, well, how could a non-profit potentially find who are the corporations in my area? Or, you know, i’m a non-profit in need of, um, you know, whatever women’s closing to help the women in our shelter be closed in the winter months or something like that, you know, where could i find that actually found? Sure, there’s multiple websites, but i found a non-profit website that that looked like it would really be helpful front for your listeners to know about and it’s a good three sixty have you? Heard about that one. Oh, i don’t know. It is what is a good three. Sixty dot org’s. Yeah, good. Three. Sixty dot org’s. And so you can go into this if you are a non-profit and you’re, you’re in search of product donations. Um, and you cannot go. You can see the companies that are there. And then, if you’re a company that wants to list your product donations, you can list what you have available on dh. Of course, if you’re an individual that would just like to donate to this particular or a good three sixty dot org’s, you can do that as well. They’re looking for monetary donations. Always. So i just thought it was a pretty interesting, almost like a clearinghouse. It looks like to me. Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s, why you’re our die end of dirt cheap and free. Anything else you found out there about trying to find these types of gif ts? Um uh, i was thinking about this might be more suitable for organizations that are, you know, related to being near the water or maritime or marine environment organizations. But, you know, i have touched upon yacht’s in the past. And trying to figure out, you know, yacht owners and so forth. But, you know, sometimes there will be people who would like to actually donate their yacht, just like people would want to donate a car supposed to try to sell it on their own. So boatinfoworld dot com would allow you to search by state or county or zip code for a list of boat owners near you. So, you know, if we have anybody in the, you know, marine related industry listening to the call, they might want to check out boatinfoworld dot com to get a list of boat owners. Um and it could be something that they would want to start cultivating relationships with those individuals getting them and involved in cultivation events, etcetera. You always go the marine wear because you have a sailboat. I know you don’t have in-kind wave that in dahna that’s. Ok, you are you donating your sailboat? No, not anytime soon, you know? Okay, you work quick. Answer that too. Okay? Okay. Where? L should we go with this? What if in terms of well, i’m sorry? Was there anything more about finding potential gifts? In-kind or is we? Exhausted that. Um then i start thinking about real estate, and i was wondering, well, how would you find out if you want it to proactively find if there is real estate, that could be potential for donation? And i was thinking, well, i guess if you got involved in developing a solid relationships with realtors in your area or, you know, even the banks, um, that, you know, unfortunately these last few years, we’ve seen such high foreclosure rates and so forth there might be some opportunity there if you have conversations with bankers in your community or realtors to find out about some potential properties that could become available, you know, before as a donation. All right, we have to go out for a couple minutes, we come back, i have a couple of tips about real estate gifts that marie is talking about, and we’ll keep going on gif ts in-kind stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation, really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. I’m peter shankman, author of zombie loyalists, and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, maria simple. Hey there, what would i say in jersey? What up? How you doing? Yeah, doing that’s just yeah, i was born in jersey and i was raised there, so i don’t like that that kind of organized crime overtone around new jersey, but sopranos obviously hit that home. A couple of things that i wanted to reinforce about real estate that that you have brought up real estate can be a very, very good gift for non-profits it can also be a really lousy gift. You have to do your due diligence around real estate and basically it’s the same as if you were buying a home or condor coop do the same too diligence before you put that charity name in the oppcoll the the chain of title so you want to do an environmental assessment phase one. If that raises any issues, then you have to go to a face to assessment if the land has buildings on it or a home, whatever you want to make sure that the building is all in code. So there’s there’s that kind of an inspection, a building inspection title search to make sure that there wasn’t there isn’t some defect in the title, basically all the things you would do as i said that you, if you were, if you were buying the place to yourself, whether it’s got dahna buildings on it or not before you took ownership of a piece of property, you want to make sure that it’s clean in all those ways environmentally title code and building inspection wise. Oh, and if you do all that, then you can end up with a really valuable gift of real estate. So you you bring up an interesting point. I hadn’t really thought about that chain of title that you just mentioned hyre so if i’m understanding you correctly, does that mean if if somebody were to approach an organization let’s say while they’re alive and they say, you know, i’ve got this undeveloped piece of land we want to leave, too. I would like to donate to your non-profit organization, and if you decide to say pay well, great and take that piece of wind and then immediately sell it and let say it’s sold within, you know, three months time, and if you didn’t go through maybe something in the environmental assessment and then somebody down the line says, wow, i can’t believe x y z non-profit, uh, ever owned this piece of land it happens to have had, you know, contamination on it or whatever you’re saying, it could end up coming to bite you in from almost like a pr perspective if your name’s somehow attached to it. This’s like a law school exam there’s a bunch of things in the inn. That hypothetical you just gave me? Yep. Pr. Yes, but i think even potentially worse than that. Although pr can be pretty bad. There’s a potential for legal liability. If it’s if it’s an environmental mess, then all the owners in the past and i’m not environment the lawyer, but i know a little bit a very little about it all. The all the owners in the past are potentially liable for not having cleaned it up or possibly for having contributed to the mess. So and that applies to individuals to so yeah, that’s. This is why we do environmental assessments. You can. You can. Get in some really sticky legal trouble if they’re turns out later on a couple of owners later or something to be an environmental problem and, you know, you didn’t know about it, you didn’t insure against it, things like that. Go ahead. I i was just wondering, what about, in the case of somebody who is willed, a piece of land or a property that had some sort of an environmental issue from years ago? Let’s let’s, you know, think about somebody who may be owned a family run gas station for a number of years, or something like that, or on oil related business oil tanks or something, and then the spouse dies. The person continues to all the remaining spouse, continues to own the property, has no heirs and decides to leave it in her will to a non-profit so then i’m wondering what the impact is mean in this case kayman non-profit to say no, we don’t want it no, thank you. Yeah, again. Sounds like a law school, hypothetical, by the way, i do recognize you turning the tables on me, asking me questions on guy, and i don’t appreciate it, so you may not. Reaching your four with me? Yes, thie the amount of time that you have tio renounce a gift. I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s called in a will varies from state to state it’s typically ninety days or, you know, maybe longer for any beneficiary of a gift by will to turn it down. You don’t have to accept something that’s in a will. So if in your hypothetical the non-profit would want to do its due diligence around that real estate before it accepted the gift, and within the time period that it can still turn it down, if it doesn’t want it. The only thing that came out of your earlier one was you said the the charity sells the real estate that’s a whole other issue. If it’s sold within three years of the time of the date of the donation, then that has implications for the donor’s charitable deduction. The donor’s charitable deduction gets reduced because if the charity unloads, i’m using an unkind word, but i’m not using a loaded word but gets rid of that gift within three years of the date of donation. Then it’s presumed that the donation was not part of their charitable mission not within their charitable mission and therefore that the irs goes back to the donor who claimed the donation and that and the deduction associated with it possibly years earlier and reduces it from a fair market value to a cost basis. Don’t a deduction on that could be a huge difference between what it costs the donor to get something and what the market value of it was when they made the gift so big implications if charity does not use a gift if does not use a gift for at least three years, i have to go out in about a minute. Maria so i kind of took over your segment, but but you were asking me questions. So it’s your fault? Um, well, no, i mean, you know, you’ve given us so much food for thought, really? And i think, you know, the bottom line is you really have to be able to, you know, seek out the right appraisers, seek the advice of financial and law professionals when you’re going to be getting any sort of a significant gift. Ah, oven in-kind gift any non-cash related gift that you really do need todo your homework and and and know what what to look for here, i think it’s, good stuff. There are a couple of liars publications that will help you publication five twenty six, which is called charitable contributions, and also publication five sixty one, which is about gifts in-kind and those qualified appraisals and qualified appraisers i was talking about. Okay, maria, we got to leave it there. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, tony maria simple are doi end of dirt cheap? You’ll find her at the prospect finder dot com and on twitter she’s at maria simple. I’m pre recorded this week, so can’t do riel live listener love by city and state, but the love still goes out of course live listener loved everybody listening live on this day podcast pleasantries, too, are over ten thousand, whatever you do in painting a house, washing dishes, driving subway, ing, walking, running, tread, milling, elliptic, politicizing whatever you’re doing podcast pleasantries, toe all those listeners and affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners throughout the country. 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What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card, it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s, why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts, tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. 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Nonprofit Radio for November 6, 2015: Collective Impact & User Personas

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Kimberley Jutze: Collective Impact

Kimberley Jutze

Kimberley Jutze explains what collective impact is and what you need in place to assure the success of your CI network. She’s chief change architect at Shifting Patterns Consulting and we talked at Opportunity Collaboration 2015.

 

 

Debra Sharp: User Personas

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Me with Debra Sharp

What is a persona? Why are these fictitious people important to your website? How do you build them? Debra Sharp is digital director at Manifest Communications and we talked at the 2014 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) hosted by NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network.

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host we’ve got a new affiliate. Kors chaos eighty nine point three fm in olympia, washington chaos radio from the capital city chaos in the capital welcome welcome chaos that makes two capitals that non-profit radio is in also km jozy fm in salem, oregon. We’re taking over the west sacramento you’re next. Welcome chaos. We have a listener of the week, stephanie zito she’s at wandering zito xero tio and she tweeted, quote, if you’re a non-profit leader, you should be listening to tony martignetti end quote she’s, a very smart woman. Congratulations, stephanie zito non-profit radios listener of the week i’ve got a bunch of turncoat friends to say hello to my networking group the b n i backstabbers meeting for lunch without me right now. Right now at the place i recommended jack’s on west forty first street. The food is very good. I hope you choke on it and that’s independently. Opie choke independent. Not a collective joke. I want the fifth person who chokes tohave to witness the first four choking before him or her unbelievable untrammeled malevolence nonetheless, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with brad east alsace if i had to digest the idea that you missed today’s show collective impact kimberly jets, he explains what collective impact is and what you need in place to assure the success of your c i network she’s chief changed architect at shifting patterns, consulting and we talked that opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen and user personas what is a persona? Why are these fictitious people important to your website? How do you build them? Deborah sharpe is digital director at manifest communications, and we talked at the twenty fourteen non-profit technology conference hosted by n ten the non-profit technology network. I’m tony steak, too sincerity trumps production value we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising their data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing to dot com here is kimberly jesse with collective impact welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage at the opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen i’m with kimberly jet c we are on the pacific ocean at the opportunity collaboration kimberly is chief change architect at shifting patterns consulting shifting patterns is a beak or that works with change. Makers to enhance financial and organizational sustainability she’s helped organizations in africa, asia, europe and north america. They’re at shifting hyphen patterns dot com and you’ll find her on twitter shift pat consultant can’t really welcome to the show thank you so much, tony. I appreciate you having me as a gift, i guess. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks. I love it. And we’re on the ocean. Yeah, uh, the sun is setting. Uh, well, we we got maybe an hour or so before sunset roughly. The ocean is beautiful and got nice breeze. That’s, right? This is great. I can’t think of a better location to radio anywhere. I cannot either. It doesn’t beat the new york city studio. I’m sorry, sam. This is better. We’re talking about networks for social change and collective impact. What? I see the phrase collective impact a lot. What is it? What are we talking about? So collected is an approach to developing networks. And so essentially what it’s about it’s. A more robust form of developing and network. And so what happens is a group of organizations will come together and they could be all non-profits they could be a mix of non-profits as well as businesses and government agencies, and they come together because they have a common goal that they want to achieve, and they realize they can’t do it on their own and one of the pre conditions for a successful it. A collective impact is making sure that there’s enough resource in place, there’s actual leader, but basically someone who’s a champion for the effort. Okay? And in addition to that, making sure that there’s some shared measures okay, we’ll get into the details. I just, uh i’m gonna ask you to talk a little bit louder when you when you get your next chance, okay oppcoll about it. All right? So this could be you said non-profits and for-profit and government coming together. We’re not just talking about collectives of strictly non-profit that’s correct. Although it can be non-profits as well. It depends on what’s what’s what? Why they’re coming together. Okay, what? Distinguished for me between collective impact and collaboration? Sure, there’s. A lot of what i see. The buzzword collaboration a lot. Yes. So collected is actually an approach to collaboration. It’s a much more robust approach. Where there’s a common agenda first. Of all there’s, some shared measures and there’s a champion who’s leading the effort. Okay, fair to say that it’s more formal than a collaboration. Yes, it’s more formal and there’s also a support system in place because there’s what’s called a backbone organization and so a backbone organization is an organization that provides support to all of the members of the collective impact effort. Okay, we’re gonna get there because that’s a new organization that gets form not necessarily this early, okay, we’ll get through it all right, but you typically wouldn’t buy-in. I don’t know. Maybe i shouldn’t say, but a mere collaboration. It yeah, there’s, different clothes, there’s, different kinds of collaboration, so collaboration could be a partnership. It could be a coalition. It could be a network. It could be an alliance. It could be an association there’s all different types of collaborating with him. Where does collective impact distinguish itself? Yes, a collective impact distinguishes itself because it’s not necessarily a type of collaboration. It’s a method it’s, a method for bringing it about. Okay, okay. Uh when is it appropriate for an organisation to start thinking about creating a network like the one we’re like what we’re talking about? Sure, yeah there’s certainly some conditions that need to be in place. So first of all, there has to be an interest in partnering with other organisations. So we need to get our board involved in making this decision or in exploring it or no. Yeah, i think you probably would want to consult with your board and have a conversation with them. Another factor that’s really important to take into account is the kind of issue that you’re working on. Is it an issue where it makes sense to work with other organisations? Is it a large, complex issue like, uh, like domestic violence? Sure. Poverty alleviation? Absolutely. What opportunity? Collaboration is all about you talking about big issues like this not getting a change to the local traffic law regarding pedestrians and bikes. Right? Well, that could be a large company. It’s. A bed. And you were going to see you like new york. You have that’s? Yeah. So it’s the kind of issue where there’s a lot of different stakeholders. And they are all affected by the issue. And they have a stake in action. What happens? That’s? A more appropriate issue, as you were, wouldn’t make sense would be something where it would just be a program that could sort of address that particular issue. I suppose you’ve been working on this. Your agency has been working on it for some time, and you’ve made some progress, but you don’t feel like there’s big attraction toward a goal is that appropriate, then is, like it’s a bigger problem than one organization can handle that’s? Absolutely right, yes, that’s, exactly right it’s an issue that one organization can’t handle on its own and there’s a need to work with other organisations collaboratively to come up with a solution, right? How do we figure out which other organizations those should that’s a great question. So a lot of times what happens is you’ll start off with a fairly small group and it could be within the same organization, or it could be other organizations that kind of know each other and they’ll come together and they’ll talk about it’s like, hey, we’ve got this problem, we’re all struggling to solve it. We’re coming at it from different angles. How can we address this? And then what will happen is one of the one of the first steps is to figure out doesn’t actually make sense. Does it make sense for us to work together? Are the advantages of collaborating worth the potential risks that are involved. And some of the things ovaries, qualitative stuff. You know, there’s not really gonna be a measure of this it’s. Gonna be opinions, feelings. There how you interact with the other potential stakeholders thatyou might bring in mrs all very kind of squishy stuff that’s a great that’s, a great insight, and so there are so much i have one great question, okay, two out of twelve or so badly i’m sure yes, you’re absolutely right. There is a relational aspect to it, and there is what’s called the soft side of collaboration where you’ve got to focus on the relationships. But there are there are some metrics. So for example, the collective impact forum, which is an online network of resource, is for people that are involved in collective impact, they actually have what’s called a feasibility chart, and they actually ask some questions like so, first of all, is this the problem that effects people and altum organizations that are coming at it from different angles? So it probably makes sense to look a collective impact, you know, our their resource is in place to address this particular issue. So so things of that nature, where can we find this organization? Yeah, so it’s www dot collective impact forum dot org’s and if you look under the resource is manual, you’ll see. It it’s called a feasibility tool. Okay, cool. I look, i love these resources for listening. All right? So, there’s gonna be a lot of due diligence that goes into this too? I mean, let’s say, you know, it’s, another non-profit or one of the organization’s you’re considering bringing is another about profit or four or corporation too. You gotta do your due diligence to make sure that that the organization, whichever it is, is sustainable, viable. They have a decent, strong board. They have leadership that’s committed to this that’s all you gotta do a lot of diligent that’s, absolutely right. And regardless of whether you used collective impact or any other approach, it’s really important to do your due diligence? Yes, absolutely. And so that’s kind of that kind of goes into some of the risks that are involved in collaboration. So for example, if you don’t do your due diligence up front, like you said, if you don’t check off some of the things that you mentioned, then there’s the risk that partnership won’t work. Another factor another challenge that’s involved is in power dynamics in the relationship he goes egos, even agendas, even agendas like for example. Some partners that might be large organizations that have a lot of resource is they might have a specific agenda, and it may be being an unequal partnership if they have a lot of power. So that’s another factor that used to be taken into account. They didn’t think that shooting getting ding, ding, ding ding you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way how do you how do you level the playing field? I mean, if you know that this large organisation is gonna be valuable to you, can you level the playing field so that there’s equal power across all the all the members? I certainly think it’s possible and that’s why it’s so important up front to kind of talk about how are we going to form this partnership and focus on the relationships that are involved and that’s really fundamental? And i think a lot of times what gets organizations into trouble is they’re interested in working together, and they moved too quickly into action, and they don’t pay enough attention. Teo what’s going on behind the scenes in terms of the duitz bilich dilgence due diligence factors and also in terms of the relationship dynamics. And so i think one way to do that is to have a conversation up front about what is our purpose, what turned and us for being here and also talking about whatever are one of the resource is that we’re going to commit what does some of the rules that we’re actually going to play? Because i could i see a situation where there’s a lot of excitement in the beginning. Oh, this is gonna be great. We’re going to solve the problem is so much short of time. If then if we were all working alone let’s, move ahead and you have to take a step back. That’s absolutely right, it’s so fundamental to take a step back and think about i mean it’s kind of interesting. So the process for developing collaborative relationship is really similar to kind of what we’re doing here and so opportunity, collaboration, it’s all about convene, connect and collaborate. And so the process of developing a collaborative relationship is very similar. It’s about painting it’s about bringing people together, it’s doing community mapping, finding out who is in these communities that’s affected by that particular problem and what is their role? And is there room and doesn’t make sense to include them in in in the particular collaboration? And then once you figured out, you know who the key players are who’s involved and you start bringing them together, then you need to talk about what’s our purpose, what’s our goal. What do we want to achieve? And there needs to be a strategy behind that. And then on top of that, you also talk about the process, the process of working together, the softer side, like the due diligence, like the relationship building all of those things air fundamental. And then once you’ve gotten those two pieces in place, then you can start moving into action and then measuring the impact of the results that we get the measurement too. Yeah, shouldn’t this be all be part of a written document? Yes, absolutely. And so one of the best practices for collective impact is having what’s called a framework a strategic framework where you actually write down you, who are the key players. What one of the goals you know, what’s our mission. You what are the resource is there gonna be brought to bear on this? Who is the backbone organization? What is their role so typically a backbone organization? Yeah, so a backbone organization. They play a support role for the for the collaboration work that occurs and it’s really fundamental in a lot of times collect collaborative efforts don’t succeed because there isn’t a support mechanism in place and so phone organisation it could be an existing organisation. It could be a member of that collaborative partnership or that collaborative relationship that takes on that role, it could be forming a new entity like you mentioned so there’s a variety of different options that are there. But the main goal mean purpose is to be able to support that effort. And by that i mean being a champion for that effort, making sure that there’s progress that there’s some quick winds in place, continuing to make sure there’s mo mentum, um, establishing linkages between between members of the collaborative effort fund-raising could be absolutely make-a-wish absolutely making sure their resource is in place. Ok, so if it’s not well, yeah, if it’s not a new organization, then all the organizations have to contribute. Resource is to the to the backbone, or one of them has to contribute. Resource is maybe one again, maybe one is outside that’s, a big part of their contribution, but we have to devote resources to this. Absolutely, yeah, there has to be part time staff that’s, right funding technology. Yeah, everything that all the organs that all the partner organizations have. And if and if it’s a new organization, if the backbone is going to be something new, then i mean same thing. It’s gotta be staffed, incorporated and funded, etcetera. Exactly. Okay. Exactly right. Do you, seymour? Where? It’s. Where? There’s, a new backbone organization created vs it’s. Ah, it’s provided the backbone support is provided from one of the partner organizations. You see one more than the other that’s. A great question, andi. I think it really varies. So the ones that i’ve been involved in it’s been primarily newer new entities, but that have been formed. But i’ve certainly been aware of other cases where it’s being one organization that’s pretty well resourced in his able and willing to take on that role. It could even be a thunder that takes on that. So it really depends. Okay. Okay. That’s. Cool. Yeah. Fundez that’s committed to the to do the work you bring them, you bring the collaboration to them and see if they can provide this. Reese basically, backbone support. I mean, all this back off this stuff that we need keep the collaboration operating. That’s. Absolutely right. Okay. So let’s, talk about the measurement we gotta figure out if this thing is working two years later, we want to able to look back and say what we’ve done or not done. Yes, you’re talking about yeah, so measurement is really fundamental because just like in anything in life, how do you know what impact your having unless you’ve kind of taken a look and seen, you know, where the progress is based on where you want to go? And so with collective impact on any other, even any other kind of collaborative effort, it’s really important to make sure that there’s some sort of measurement in place so that starts with the strategy part, but defining up front what’s our goal what? Our objectives and and what are our measures gonna be? How we’re gonna measure progress toward gold, right? What were the indicators? Ok towards measuring progress? Um, i could see a place where agendas would come through in measurement, right? I mean, what you measure is goingto determine whether this is successful. And if one, organizations got an agenda, they might, you know, they might want to influence the measurement and sway it, by the way. There’s a soccer game in the background. So if you you hear cheering and kicking it’s ah, it’s soccer for football. If you’re listening in europe. Yeah. So measurement is measurement is pretty important. Yes, it is absolutely. And, teo, as you point out, you need to have indicators and agendas. Certainly is an issue that comes into play. I would say another issue to his resource is you need to make sure you have resource is in place to be able teo, to show what those outcomes are and to be able to take corrective action if it’s needed okay right, resources to support the measurement that’s, right? And yeah, okay, yeah, i could just i see a lot of potential conflict areas. That’s, right. New collaboration, right? And you also collaboration and with measurement to you also get a backbone organization that’s gonna take responsibility for making sure, like holding all the members accountable for providing the data to measure impact and for also consolidating that data, analyzing it and making sure it goes back to the members and the members. And even the backbone organization helps spread it out into the communities everyone’s aware of what’s going on is there a point where a number of organisations in the collaboration just becomes unwieldy? We can’t do this with ten organizations or age, and of course when i say organizations including government agencies, too, you said they could very well be mean, ten sounds like a sound ten sounds like too many is that? Is that wrong? Well, there really is no limit to what really matters is that you make sure that whatever issue it is that you’re working on, you’ve gotten a full representation of that particular system, so collective impact or even other collaborative efforts could be a small as two organizations that are partnering up to you hundreds of organizations that are working together. Obviously the more organizations have, the more important it is to have resource is in place, and the more critical it is to have a backbone organization there that can kind of play this fundamental role of making sure that everyone’s being held accountable for what they’re doing, members are communicating with each other, work is getting done, we have measurements for results and information is flowing and only within the within the within the collaboration, but also out into the community. All right, i think, it’s time you share an example, i’m talking a lot of abstract, yes, share an example. Sure. So one example i have is is a network that i’m currently working with, and they are face-to-face organization that promotes immigration reform. And so i’m working with the head of this particular organization or the head organization of this particular network. Yeah, with back-up they are the back booker, that’s, absolutely right. And so i’m working with the backbone. Teo, help them grow and diversify their funding so that they can better support their members. And so their members are actually independent. Non-profits there’s about because the back bone’s connected to the hip, bone, hip bone’s connected to the knee bone. Yes, i know. But there are other member organizations, right? Right. And so it’s all about helping them it’s helping head of backbone organization get the resources they need so that they could better serve their members. Okay, and how’s it going? Yeah, yeah. So this organization, um uh, i’m happy to mention them international justice for our neighbors. So national justice for our neighborhood neighbor. Yeah, and so they were formed, um, a few years ago. And so what they do to their home mission is to serve as a ministry of hospitality or low income immigrants throughout the united states that are in need of legal immigration services and can’t afford them. Who are the members? So the members are actually non-profits and they’re called justice for our neighbors, and so they’re located throughout the entire us, and essentially, what they do is they hyre full time attorney job. It is to provide these legal immigration services to low income immigrants who often have no place else to turn. And so my role is, as i said before it’s, to help the backbone organization, the national justice for our neighbors, growing diversify their sources of funding and at the same time, i’m also working with some of the justice for our neighbors members. Teo also helps them develop their fund-raising skills, and teo also help them out with developing stronger and effective boards. How does this national see? I’m a small time thinker? I was thinking, like local community, maybe statewide, but do you think that a national coalition? Hyre how did they court? I mean, how does this work coordinate? Do they meet? They meet once a year or something. Or what? How do we coordinate this thing? That’s? Absolutely right. They do meet once a year, and so they have what’s called a roundtable. And so representatives from all the different members and all of the headquarter staff, they all come together in a particular area. And what they do is they meet. They share best practices. They have, they meet with each other, they learn about what each other’s doing. Then they talk about their progress overall as a network. How many clients are they serving? What are some of the opportunities they have? What are some of the challenges that they need to continue to work on? Anything you can share around here? The problems that arose that hopefully got overcome? Uh, you probably want talk about problems. They didn’t get it, but anything you can share that way, you know? Well, so i think one of the biggest challenges is that when you’ve got a network that spread geographically, it’s really hard to have relationships it’s really hard to develop it, maintain those relationships and so the round table is a great example, it’s a great opportunity for people to cut for members of that particular network to come and meet face-to-face and to develop those one on one face to face relationships. And a lot of times it’s been so valuable because when they go back home, they can then continue to maintain those relationships, and they can call upon each other, especially if they’re in areas where there not so geographically far from each other. So for example, there are a number of non-profits that air in texas, and so this’ll obviously, immigrants kayman immigration, immigration assistance, obviously critical in texas? Absolutely, yeah, into because there’s a least a few of them that are in texas. And so this was a great opportunity for them to meet each other face to face and talk about. Okay, well, how we work together because, you know, we are kind of spread throughout texas, but the same time we’re not so so hugely, far apart from each other. And so how can we coordinate on things like, you know, strategic planning? How can we coordinate on maybe joint fund-raising the relationships are important because there’s gotta be trust among partners. Otherwise, problems are gonna become insurmountable, even if they’re not big ones. If, if i mean it, the partners arnold trusting each other based on these relationships, i don’t think it’s got much likelihood of success. That’s absolutely right. How many partners air in this so it’s, a national network, about fifteen organizations. Okay, all right, so i was way off when i said ten, my att least fifty percent larger. All right, all right. Any other, just before we leave our little case study, any of you like a little lesson learned from the from this from this example that you can share maybe something you weren’t thinking of in the beginning or something. You learn new in this in this organization? Yeah, i would say probably one of the key things that i learned that relationships are so fundamental, they’re so important. Yeah, and i love the fact that the national organization, they’re so focused on their mission, which is providing great service to their members, and they are extremely well focused on that, and they’ve got a strong team in place and i think that’s so important, so oppcoll for long term success, the relationship is obviously touch that what else do you think is key for from long term success? This type of collaboration, i think it’s really important to have a strategy in place and knowing where you’re gonna go and how you’re gonna get there. That’s that’s also fundamental. Okay, so that thinking that upfront? Yeah, that upfront thinking yes, and then certainly having a backbone organization, there needs to be some sort of sport and a lot of collaborative efforts failed because there is no support. Places. People come together and they’re like, hey, wei, need to take action. We need to do something, but then it’s, like, okay, well, if nobody’s dedicated to making sure another beating happens, if no one’s contributing resource is to make sure things get done, well, then it’s really hard to move forward together. Yeah. What happened? We talked about yourself another two minutes or so to get ashore. I think one thing i’d also like to talk about is, um, what it’s like to kind of form a new network because that’s also a challenge. So we have about two minutes or so short. So i think there’s been one challenge that we talked about is like maintaining an existing network. And i think there’s another one which kind of plays into which is about forming a new network. And this whole idea, you know, how do we bring people together and how we make sure we have the right people in the room and making sure that we thought through our process for working together, finding a backbone organization, making sure that we’ve got a resource is in place. Those air all big challenges when you, when you start to form a new collaborative effort. All right, i guess you would believe that a consultant can be helpful in this. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, i am too. I like consultant. Yeah, well, certainly. I think you might need one. You know, if it’s a new, if it’s a new collaborative effort. And if you don’t have someone already in place that has a lot of resource is if there’s, not one organization that has a lot of resource, is or has experience with this kind of thing and can help take on a leadership role. It might be useful to have a consultant. What is it that you love about your work? So what i love about my work is being able to work with organizations that are making a positive difference in the world and helping them reach a point where they can be effective and helping them to reach a point where i’m no longer needed. And it’s it’s so rewarding to be able to do that. You don’t mind making yourself up? No, not at all. All right, kimberly jetson, chief change architect. That shifting patterns consulting you’ll find them at shifting hyphen patterns. Dot com and again on twitter. She’s at shit. Pat consultant kimberly, thanks so much. Thank you, tony. Real pleasure. Durney martignetti non-profit radio coverage of, uh, opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen in x top of mexico. Thanks so much for being with us. That was cool. Being on the beach with kimberly. Tony, take two and unity. Is our user personas are coming up first pursuant they’re online tools help you raise more money it’s that simple? I can’t make it any simpler. Nothing about these tools is an experiment. They’re tried and they’re proven like velocity there tool for fund-raising management is proven by the fund-raising consultants at pursuant, they use it to manage their clients fund-raising and it works so well that they released it to non-profit so now it’s available directly to you, basically, they cut out their own consultant. You don’t need them. You can if you want, but you don’t need him. It will help you be more efficient and you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com my video this week explains how sincerity trumps production values what’s important in your communications is the genuineness of your words, whether it’s, video or print or email whatever i share an example from a hotel in mexico where i got a very sincere note written in bad english, but the sincerity came through the video. Is that tony martignetti dot com that’s tony’s take two for friday, sixth of november forty second show of the year here is user personas with deborah sharpe welcome. To tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference two thousand fourteen use that hashtag it’s fourteen and tc with me now is is debra sharpe she’s digital director, manifest communications and her workshop topic is user personas it’s not about you it’s about them. Welcome to the show thanks, tony. Pleasure to have you bond just come a little closer to the mike, would you please so that everybody can hear you? Thank you, user personas i know very little about them, so i’m not gonna even try why don’t you explain what they are and why they’re so critical? Sure well, there are they are really essential part of web development and you’re only going to get as good a website is thie kind of strategy and thinking that you put into it at the fun and and part of that fun end is creating these user personas, which are really fictitious people there people you make up, but they’re based on very real segments there’s supposed to be able to help you understand who were the users coming to your website and what do they need? What their motivations, what their goals when they get there because what’s really deadly, especially working with with non-profits but it happens with all kinds of organizations and companies is that you get website development by committee from the people who work inside an organization was all about what they want to say to people, what they have, what they think is important, what they want to put out there, and often what happens is they just don’t have a good understanding of who’s actually going to come to the website and why they’re coming and what’s most important to those users. So that’s, what user personas will help you do? So we need to be thinking about who the people are that’s come that air coming versus what we want to say and put out as sort of a bulletin board for them all to read right and be able tio create a hierarchy, even of information and of users as well, because there’s a lot that goes into thinking about what what a user is, and when they come to your site, you might think that let’s take a non-profit you might think you’ve got your your clients with people, use the services of the organization, you may have volunteers. You may have donors and all of those may then segment into teo different groups themselves and what happened sometimes i’m sure everybody’s been to a website like this, where you have no idea where what you’re looking for is it’s like, how do i get there? And i’m clicking and i’m going here and i’m going there and about three or four kliks later, i’m still getting frustrated and guess what? I’m out there leaving, you know, and not all of those users may be of the same priority of the importance, for example, just give you an example that we worked on. We’re going so many, but one of the things i shared yesterday was a thiss was a consortium of healthcare organizations who came to us, and they wanted to get a very public conversation started about the expected tsunami that’s coming and health care with our aging population, something like in twenty years was goingto be something like love two times as many people over the age of eighty and four times as many people over the age of sixteen that’s going to be quite a dent in how we care for people. And many of them with chronic health care conditions. So this consorting with all kinds of health care organizations really wanted to be able to put some african scene policy conversations that there they thought they came to us and they said, okay, we have to reach those people, those people who are going to be over sixty. We did our research, we did some homework, we started put looking at user personas, who were the people involved in this conversation, and we did what was really revealing with some social media listening we did and what we found out and this and social media listen, i’m a great advocate of that because it’s very, very natural setting in which to be able to get information surveys are great focus groups could be helpful, but they are artificially set up context so that people are very aware of what they’re hyre answering their very where, what they’re saying, where in social media you’re actually being able to judge in, evaluate what people are saying when they’re not being observed, when they’re just commenting on blog’s and when they’re talking to each other and what they’re sharing, what their concerns are. And what their challenges are, what they’re pissed off about and what we found out about out with that is that it wasn’t the direct users, it wasn’t these people over sixty was their children, so we’re talking people in their forties, so the other ones who were talking people in their fifties, those are the people who are worried about what’s happening. So when we created the website that’s who we had in mind, okay dahna we are we’re going tow pause for second america’s the is the the team here to do a demo? Okay? We’re going to pause for a second. These user personas then are really quite critical. How do we get started in the process of creating one? Well, and we’re going to create many right all representative of constituents, different groups, exactly so there’s its research and in a number of different ways. First thing to look at his historical data. So you want to be able to look at your your website analytics and everybody should have google analytics it’s free it’s one of the best ways to be able to measure what’s happening on your website who’s coming what they’re doing there. And that’s, what you really want to dig down into sea? What are people doing right now on the website that’s? One of the biggest ways that you have to learn the second thing you want, teo does that? Does that include knowing where they’re coming from, where the good referral sites are? Sure, okay, i mean, it might just be from google itself or i mean, now the referral traffic isn’t necessarily gonna help you in determining how you’re developing your website. I mean, that’s more about marketing and how you’re reaching people. You’re driving traffic to the website, but all of that is going to be helpful. A cz you plan to make any kind of a redesign start any webb’s not start a new one? Obviously because you won’t have accepted in the redesign, then you’re gonna wanna survey people. That’s, always helpful to have an existing website, put a survey up asked people questions about what they’re finding about the website right now, what’s most important to them what the information they’re looking for. Are they able to find what they’re looking for? You just ask the more full denture things about, uh, that’s going to give you information and understanding how they’re approaching your website right now. Then you’re gonna want to talk to you, major stake lifters. And you’re gonna want to do one on one interviews and that’s gonna be really that’s to me the most helpful in some ways because you’re really then starting to say, ok, let’s, get some donors to this organizations that want to talk about what’s important let’s. Get the people who used the services and talk to them about what’s important etcetera, etcetera and even internal stakeholders. You want to talk to people within the organization? Start getting a sense of what’s working what’s not and even blue sky. What if anything that you would like to see here could there be here? But then, once you start doing that, then you have to get the information on who these people are and how they interact with the web and that’s. One difference that’s. Very important. We worked with some amazing clients, and most of them have truckloads of audience research. They know where their audiences are, but the kind of research that you have, a kind of data you have on people in the offline world. Doesn’t necessarily translate to online, and by that, i mean, so tony, if i were to talk to you and i’m trying to figure out what kind of an online user aren’t you? Are you a two point? Oh, user, do you like to share things? Do you like to talk with people? You like to have a community? Do you like to be able to know? Read stories about somebody else and what’s happening in your life? Are you a lean and hurling back person? What i mean by that is way called someone a lean in experience and more of an immersive experience. So you’re somebody if you’re all lean in person, you want to have your hand on the mouse, you want to be doing stuff and clicking stuff, using tools, getting it, being able to make your way around something in a much more sort of game like immersive way or you lean back where you want clinton served up and you want a video to watch you want cem really compelling copy to be able to read that packages things really nice. So if i don’t know what kind of used ru ru, time strapped. Even are you the kind of person who okay, i need to read three headlines here scan and if i don’t get it, i’m out of here. Are you that kind of a person? So for example, if we’re talking to potential major donors, most of them are times trapped, so you need to be able to know if that’s a really major consideration a limitation for them. How did you build your user experience? So you’re gonna satisfy their needs and expectations, so if i don’t know that stuff about you and i let’s say, i think that because i have so much important information to say, i’m going to put it all up here, i’m not gonna prioritize that i’m not gonna make a hierarchy. Meanwhile, you have about forty five seconds to teo give to my website, i’ve lost, yeah, yeah, i’m not gonna find what i’m there for. I had a goal when i arrived and i have not met it and i gave you a minute before, whatever the i mean, the stats were probably even shorter than that on i’m departing and i only looked at i wasn’t deep it all i looked at. One maybe two pages or something, and i can’t find the beginning of what i’m looking for. Okay, so we need to know all these different constituents so well, because we’re going to start to build a fictitious person, right persona. Exactly. Okay, wait there yet can we start with that process yet? Or is there more to do yet? Well, you have tio no, then you start to give you want to understand who they are, their cycle graphics and what their relationship to the issue is. You want to be able to them, not about what they’re what their needs are on the website, with their expectations or what they’re coming there with, and then what their goals are. What is it that they actually want to get out of the website? And once you start to do that, you start to get a blueprint of these individual users and what they’re going to one of the things thie examples i shared in the work dahna wass klein, it’s actually also health related. This was for a client in the area of cancer screening. And if you go into a google search right now, i i challenge you. Just put in cancer screening in google and you’ll see what comes up with a top ranking websites and their deadly i think it’s just an avalanche of coffee and information on text to make your way through, i think of the average site web md or or even cancer dot org’s yeah, there’s just there’s, so they have millions of pages. It seems like and it’s all very text intensive, and i’m not sure how well it’s uh, how well it’s organized you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way debra and i have been interrupted twice, now way. We’re doing our best. We were when you’re non-profit radio and you’re not bloomberg or cnn sometimes have to share the stage on dh that’s what’s happening at ntcdinosaur, wearing stage with the one of the generous sponsors of ntc bm they have the stage now, so deborah and i are behind the stage and that’s what happened the first time, and now it’s happened a second time because i had to help the help response to start their program, but we’re unrelenting, debra or not, we’re not. We’re not giving up it all that’s. Why it sounds a lot different, but the substance is still here. Thank you for your patients, deborah way. Will person twice thank you very much. So where we were at stage, where i’m getting lost in millions of pages, seemingly millions of pages of cancer data from my search, andi, i’m frustrated and leaving, right? So of our client came to us with a problem, and that was, uh it was actually a particular province and candidate was alberta health services, the agency that’s responsible for delivering health care there, and cancer rates were going down, and they wanted us to put up a website about screening so that people could understand what they have to do and why it’s important all the details and how do you prepare for it and all of the questions sametz all these other sites, so we started to dig in a little bit more about who were the users who were the people who are going to come and use this site, and something started to really emerge for us and that especially in that age category of women between forty and sixty and these are the people, especially when you’re talking about breast cancer were really, really confused. I don’t know what it’s like in america, exactly, but in canada there are different guidelines depending where you live. So the provinces have their own individual guidelines for wednesday. Appropriate time to get screened for various things nice. And then there are national guidelines. And, uh, the national guidelines changed about a year and a half two years ago, and this kind of created a lot of confusion and and there’s a lot of information being put out a lot of media reports and it’s just normal human behavior when you have a lot more information on a lot of confusion, what do you do? You don’t you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You throw your hands up in frustration and hope for the best right? How people stop getting screened in the same numbers. So that was the problem. So recognizing that was the problem. Sort of talking to women like this understanding who they were. Thiss forty. And this became our bull’s eye it’s woman forty to sixty and who? She wass how she interacted online, what she needed. They did not want a lot of information. They just wanted simple, clear answers. Please, will someone tell us what to do? Does it? Forty? I get screened is a fifty. I get screen, we don’t know. So we set out to make a website that really fulfilled those needs and the website welcome to go. Get to it. It’s screening for life dot c a and it’s. Very simple. Four is the number four no it’s not spelled out fo r. Okay, so what we did is we created a little tool that greets me when you arrive at the website there’s there’s. Just a big question that says not sure if you need to be screened for cancer and it asked you just click on the right figure and find out and there’s uh, two silhouettes of a man and a woman there. And you picked the right one for you. Oh, and as soon as you click on it, you get this slider where you can just now slide your age. And as the slider changes, the silhouettes changed shape. So it looks if you go down for anyone who’s going to look like a twenty one year old little bulge in the weight get into the fifties. Exactly. So it kind of is a little neat. We gave some buddies people something to interact with right away. So it gets you engage gets you a little bit closer the website, but right away, as soon as you say okay, female slide fifty four boom. You have your answer, and then it gives you just very, very basic information about what you need to know. And if you go no further than that on the website and that visit, we’re totally happy we don’t need you to go anywhere else. We know that you have the very basic information if you want to keep going, there’s a lot of information, if you want to figure out howto prepare for oscar, you can do that way need to relate this back to use their personas, right? But because we had done our homework way up front in terms of figuring out this was the problem there a bunch of users, for example, that cervical affects young women from the wallet text women for the time in the sexually active colorectal cancer affects both men and women. But we understood from doing we did personas for all of those people. We even did persona because the client wanted us to for the boyfriend of the the young one. Excellent. So because of that, how hiv affects that, but what i’m saying is because we did all these personas. And we understood what the problem was. We understood that the most important user was this forty to sixty year old women that’s, who was coming that’s, who were those that’s who was seeking the information most that’s, whose expectations we needed to fill right away. And we knew that we had to do it in a very simple way, without having to make them dig, because they didn’t want all that information. They wanted a simple, clear answer. And we didn’t have to make them. Process of the persona you had said earlier. They get to the point. They even have they have names, wey? No, because we don’t. Our research, we know their online behavior gets to the point of we know what? What sites? They get their news from regular. That sites they go to regularly. What kind of detail in these fictitious people? Okay, that’s. A little bit more of the media profile when you talk about how they consume good times. That’s it important for these particular women? What we what we drill down into were things like where they lived professionally, what their relationship was, for example, way have different personas when we’ve got to our primary one. So we had one where she was kind of a professional woman in that she’s familiar with, uh, online et cetera her motivations to start taking better care of herself. She’s had a friend. Who’s died from breast cancer. We fill in all these these things and her motivations because she has had a wake up call. And she wants us to start taking better care of herself and that’s. How she’s going to come to be investigating cancer screening way had another persona, she’s more of a rural person who lives in alberta, not really taking care of herself very much kind of is like that stop broke don’t fix it sort of thing. I don’t run to the doctor and everything, but her children are the ones who have been after her. They’ve been reminding seen the news they’ve been watching it so the influences in life so this sixty year old person lives on a farm and who’s who’s like this, stoick, the staunch stoic who really doesn’t have a lot of, you know time for doctors, but it’s at the urge of her daughters, who are making her pay a little bit more attention and start to take care of herself and get scream. So those that that’s the kind of information, then once we have that what air there needs online, what did they do? How does that? What is this woman? He’s? Very two different people knowed how do they interact in the online world? Oh, and again, that comes into the speed at which we want to serve up information the tool which we wanted to do not make people read a lot, because we had our rural women in mind, i didn’t want to give it that sort of very text, you know, dense copy information. So those air, how those pieces start to unfold and then the goals, of course, what do they want out of it? That may be a little bit different as you go in, like our professional woman, she may want a little bit more deeper information for those of the kinds of things, okay, sense, yeah, yeah, and the that i mean, clearly that the time is considerable for doing the research to create these goes into creating the personas dahna but i you know, i think that if you really want people to achieve their goals on your site and achieved their goals, not your goals for the for them, but achieve their goals on the site, it seems it seems very clear. Yeah, i ask helen yeah, takes time, but in terms of time, how long is your site going to be up? No, that would be the ants and don’t you want people to be successful on it every single day? Not just occasionally, when someone has more time to spend than the average. So if you spend three weeks creating these personas three to four weeks doing that up front, my my suggestion is that it’s a really worth investment of time when you’re gonna have a site that’s up for two to three years, who who creates the personas and we want to avoid website by committee when you mentioned earlier who’s actually sitting down and creating the people in willing up my world because i work at an agency, we provide that service and we do it though, in a collaborative way with clients. So we will talk to them about what we’re going to be doing will inform them of what kind of research tools will employ. We might be talking to them are usually almost always talking to them and talking to some key stakeholders within their organizations in addition to outside users. And then once we have started to get a handle on, it will have a meeting will sit down with them and review the research, review the findings with them and then the final personas they have to approve everybody’s got to be in on it. But we do provide that service. Okay, but non-profits khun do with themselves you can. There are ways to do it. We left in our workshop we had actually a worksheet that we handed out. We actually asked everybody okay, pick a website that’s near and dear to your heart. Pick one user and now fill this out and we gave them all the areas to fill out. And then we had a couple volunteers come up and norvig breathing after bring up their website, then walk us through the use. Of ok, so it can’t be done internally, but with time, commitment, but obvious value benefit at the at the end of the process, user personas, percent. Okay, something could be a lot of fun, too. It can be actually mean they’re used, they become your little family. Yeah, yeah, you get to know them very well. Ugo. Alright, thank you very much. Well, thank you, my pleasure. Deborah sharpe is digital director at manifest communications in where we’re in a hurry in ontario, in toronto. Thank you. Alright, excellent, thank you very much. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of anti season non-profit technology conference, and i want to thank debra for being a good sport and two interruptions. Now we’re in the back alley, almost of the of the science fair, but the substance is still valuable, so thank you very much, debra. Next week, you’re engaged board with michael davidson. If you missed any part of today’s show finding on twenty martignetti dot com, where in the world else would you go pursuant, you’ll raise envelopes more money. I’m not talking those number ten’s with your logo on them that is, sitting in your office, waiting to be stuffed by volunteers. I’m talking about those fourteen by twenty inch padded numbers filled with money, pursuing dot com our creative producers. Claire miree off sam liebowitz is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Kayman like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked, and levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti m a r t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com.

Nonprofit Radio for October 30, 2015: Don’t Be The Founder From Hell & Chilling Laws And Regs

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Jim Nowak: Don’t Be The Founder From Hell

Jim Nowak heads fundraising for the dZi Foundation, which he founded. How did he and the Foundation manage his transition from executive director to chief fundraiser? He talks candidly about the board, job descriptions, ego and more. We talked at Opportunity Collaboration 2015.

 

 

Gene Takagi: Chilling Laws And Regs

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host it’s our halloween show ghosts and goblins and ghouls hope you enjoy your happy halloween this weekend and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with carp itis if you came up with the inflammatory idea that you missed today’s show, don’t be the founder from hell, jim, no ac heads fund-raising for the zi foundation, which he founded. How did he and the foundation manage his transition from executive director to chief fundraiser? He talks candidly about the board job descriptions, ego and mohr. We talked at opportunity collaboration just a couple of weeks ago and chilling laws and regs thes air no tricks. Jean takagi has actual and proposed laws that will scare you into action. He’s, our legal contributor and principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group on tony’s take two between the guests tech videos from mexico we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com here’s jim nowak and the founder from hell from opportunity collaboration welcome to tony. Martignetti non-profit radio coverage of opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen were on the beach in x top of mexico. My guest is jim no act he’s, president and co founder of zi foundation. They’re at deasy i that’s deltas, delta zulu, india from my air force days dot org’s dc i dot or ge, and we’re talking about avoiding being the founder from hell. Jim is not that jim. Welcome. Thanks, tony, for having me on the show. Appreciate it. It’s a pleasure. I’m glad we got together. What? Two days ago, right? I think we’re connected. And, um, all right, you’re not the founder from hell, and we are gonna take this really have one side of the story, so i don’t have it. I’m trusting you because one of your board to collaborate to corroborate your your side. But you’re doing a session here. Yeah, i presume you’ve been. You’ve been vetted. Yeah, i’ve done done the session for the six years i’ve been coming. Job pretending collaboration. I keep offering. You know, i don’t need to do the session, but it seems as i always say, nobody ends up at that session by mistake, you know, people and it’s been interesting people, aaron, really tough situations, very emotional, you know that the social sector is a tough space to be in and their people are very passionate and it can be really charged, but we do our best to try to give people some tools, maybe walk through these these these difficult situations, all right? And in the six years i’ve been doing, you’ve never been challenged by anyone who said, no, that guy is the ceo. That guy he’s the founder from hell, no never had that challenge, but haven’t i know, but there, you know, again, i would say i only have one perspective to bring to it there are people that have different perspectives and say that would never work that are absolutely, and i’ve had some of them as guests, but but we’re getting the founders perspective, which i haven’t had before. Yeah, um, let’s, start with your history with the organization. I’m the cofounder and now i sit is president. We started our work in the fall. Seventeen years ago. It was around an expedition that had been climbing in the fall for a number of years and small expedition to climb memoria twenty three thousand four hundred foot what’s. The name of it from maury fremery. Yeah, three miles to the west of everest, on the nepal tibet border. Doing a new route has never been climbed. I was on there in eighty nine. Now back in ninety eight and in ninety eight found out about small girls home that was financially failing, huh? Raised money in my local community to help bail this girl’s home out. That was the genesis of our work. Where’s. Your community. Where were you living then? I was living the vail, colorado, that and shortly after that moved to where were based now in ridgeway, colorado, southwest corner of colorado. Down by telling. Right. Okay. And how long have you not been the executive director? I was executive director for the first thirteen years. Okay? And then we started into a process of identifying we wanted to shift from there and bring someone in with better financial skills than than myself. But and it was early, early on, it was identified by my board that they want me to say connected to the organization i carried the history carried. A lot of the donors carried those. Relationships on. They want me to become the development director. Okay, i’m going to get to the details of how that all played out. That’s that’s, critical part. So it was for you, it’s been four years now since you were executive director. Is that right? Correct. Okay. And there is a new executive director. Hired and same person have been in the position for years. Yeah, we feel like we we did a really thorough an extensive search. Get a job and he’s still on the job saying individual okay. Okay, so, he’s uh, he’s executive director, um correct, mark. Mark. And you won’t get a shot at mark. Yeah. Mark rikers, mark rikers. And you’re the president. Correct. Okay. Let’s, uh, let’s start with the board’s role in this. What i think is really interesting eyes that it was the board recommendation that you stay it wasn’t you as founder dictating. I want to stay with this organization. Thie impetus for having you remain came from the board. And also the impetus toe hyre an executive director came from the board, so it was to phase. It was like we need two. And as my board affectionately refers to jim, if you get hit by a bus, this organization could potentially go down in flames. So the impetus came from some very skilled and wise board members that had experience in the nonprofit world. Had experiences changed management leaders. We’re just very savvy and saying let’s, make our organization more sustainable and increase our bench bench strength. There had to be a lot of trust, a cross, you and the board. I mean, you had to believe that the board actually wanted you two remain and in the capacity that you ultimately became president and which is chief fundraiser for you have put a lot of faith in you’re in your board members telling you that believing what they were telling you. Yeah, and this is a really an emotional space for founder’s teo walk into because you could certainly believed that you were in a situation where you were being replaced, you know, and, um, that certainly took ah, was it took a while for me? Because that was my first reaction. I don’t think it was an unusual one. Um, this changing roles and organizations is really tough work, i think it’s exceptionally tough if you’re the founder, if you were the very first person working on your own, you know, from monstrous hours and generating the organization. But pardon parcel of that is that i always had the belief that eventually, you know, in organizations everyone leaves eventually, and i always had in the back of my mind that the most important thing was that this organization lived on beyond me. And this was certainly a major stepping stone to that. What about the the composition of the board you mentioned? You had some change management people on your board? I’m talking about the importance of having the right skill set on your board to help this transition. Yeah, i mean, it’s it’s, kind of like who’s. Do you have the right people on the bus? You know, and early on in our evolution, you know, we had a lot of people that knew a lot about paul, and that was great, but they were all foreigners, you know? And they had great skill, great passion and that but the evolution has been to bring in buy-in people with sound non-profit experience people who were changed management leaders that basically had their own consulting firms that actually helped corporal eaters and non-profit lee, just walk through these really challenging transitions in the evolution of the nor is a t had that expertise. Oh, yeah, we have that three people that change management expertise. Yeah, that was that was really hughes. And then more than anything, maybe was that i had specifically two individuals that i trust implicitly, that they actually have my back and that that boardmember board members that this was, you know, they had long non-profit experience, but that this was the way the organization could go and that i was not being, you know, put out to pasture and that that that this would be a very fascinating time for me to be able to find out what i really wanted to do instead of having to do everything you also had to trust that the board has the best interests of z in mind that and that their vision is at least, you know, parallel to yours. I mean, it may not be identical, but they yeah, they’ve got z in their in their hearts and and that that really, you know, one of the two individuals i trusted implicitly had been there at the first board meeting in my kitchen table, you know? And now we’re actually we have our board meetings at his board table on the fourteenth floor in denver office, you know? So i mean, that’s been a long evolution, but that had been fourteen years of that relationship, so yeah, i really knew that they had my had my back, a lot of trust ways, but not without a lot of emotion. And a lot of baggage, i’m sure is a tough, you know, you know, talk about the emotional, you know, you just just feel, is this the where am i actually going? What was actually going to happen to the organization, you know, what’s gonna happen to me because i really impassioned about this work and want to stay in this space, you know? So yeah, a lot, a lot of challenges and a lot of ups and downs, and i would say that that period tow walk through that and feel confident it took a couple months, it made it really took a couple months, and we laid out a very deliberate plan on the evolution of this after about a month into it. So i was starting to get on board a month of emotion. Yeah, the emotion continued, but then it started become irrational process. Yeah, because it started to develop and expand into what could be and i didn’t see that initially. Oi! All i saw was what what what i thought was being replaced yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Initially that’s it. Yeah, yeah. All right. But you obviously overcame that. Yeah. Oh, and to add to that in this process. And, you know, one thing that was really fascinating is that our entire board bought into the concept that as we moved into a new executive director, that the executive committee and myself would be the five people that would decide, and it would be unanimous on who we decide if we didn’t find them knives like your daddy way did not find that person, we would scrap it for six months and then come back okay, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive tony martignetti dot com that’s t i g n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way we’re going to get to the search. I spent more time on the board. You mentioned you had a lot of longevity on the board, not not just the one the one guy who started your kitchen table and now you’re on his floor. But you you yeah, you had other board members with long longevity, they understand the organization, they they have the best interests of z in their hearts to jury. I mean in our by-laws boardmember sze sit for three years, they have to be voted back on for another three years. They could walk away from the organization or immediately go to an advisory board that gets all the information doesn’t vote after a year, they could be voted back on the board, but wave have everything we’ve had people that stayed a long time. We’ve had people that cycled and cycled out. I think that’s a really healthy for the cycle more than anything. New ideas, new energy, new vision. You know, new new things. Yeah. Onda connection disease work. Yeah. And and that that solid underpinning has always been that people have been there to anchor it. Not just myself. Uh, let’s talk about the the search that that that search process you said it was the executive committee of the board, just four people. And you? And did it have to be? You had to be unanimous. Vote on who the successor would be. Okay. He obviously had a lot of there. Had to be a lot of trust in that process. Yeah, from the rest of the board members. So well. And you too, you know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All five of you have to. Well, actually, the whole board had trust the process. Yeah, they had delegated the vote to the executive committee and you, but the whole board had trust this process. Yeah, they really did. And so there were some mechanisms that engaged staff engaged other board members, whether it was an opportunity for the three final candidates to be in our office and ridgeway and people to come there and meet them and to sit in on a conference call with all the board members. Anyone that wanted to patch in, we actually had the three final candidates work with our financial officer for an hour. And as questions around that they were in a closed room also. With our the paul country director who was in country at that time. So they they all spent time with them. So it was really a deal where everyone had input. But there were five the executive committee and myself that were decided. Maybe a little detail. But i’m interested. What was the mechanism for staff to give feedback to the five people who are going to do the vote? It was basically threw the board chair. So they say the staff whether it was the financial officer in the whole country. Director, they gave that input directly back to the board chair on the board chair. Disseminated that too. The selection committee. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Was there a outside search consultant? No, we all did. With is completely just posted it publicly. Well, we posted it in all sorts of spaces, you know, on you threw the peace corps on on, were located in a remote area in western colorado. So speak on the western slope. So we had lots of people in the denver area. Certainly. Um what we ended up through our network’s way ended up with sixty for paper applications now on dh. So that was what we started to wed our way through and pretty short, or there were a third that it was really crystal clear. Yeah, yeah, way too much of a stretch. And people asking too remote work remotely in new york for this job. So glamarys and that was deal that we want people in the office, you know, you know, face to face on dh, so that i was a real process. And and once we cold that list, then all of the board members were assigned. The executive committee searching me were assigned a certain amount of people to deal with, to make phone calls, too. There was a list of questions to be asked, and then that information was brought back to the search committee, and we started to just with labbate, whittle it down. Job job descriptions. You’ve identified that as being critical, setting boundaries. About what? What you’re what you’re gonna be doing as president and not doing with the exec director is going to be doing let’s, let’s flush that out job description. Yeah, that was that was really critical, you know, so to speak. What? You know, what was mark’s role? What was my role in what was our rule? You know, and how are we gonna work? Basically in the same office. And how is that going to make this kind of lateral move to be in charge of of all development, really focusing and digging into that, which is something i certainly had done, but i was doing a lot of different things, too. So that was just really critical and also having our executive committee really get into the weeds on that. And then, you know, it’s all about really owning that once it won once things transition about assuring mark who became the executive director, but during the process, maybe at the point where he was offered the job or at some point he had to be reassured that this was not going to be a founder. Syndrome situation that he was stepping into. Yeah. What was that like? How did you? Well, we did that with all of our three final buy-in indefinite detail. And that was something that we put forth. This is how this out was this how it’s changing. Okay. And, um, you know, i mean, this is probably a good time and, uh, it’s about somebody’s ego and, you know, what’s the what’s, the main driver, is it about you is about control, is it about not allowing the organization to grow past you and evolved past you? Or you’re going to keep a stranglehold on it on dh make things miserable for not only marked, but everybody else in the organization, so i want to double it more detail on how those three candidates got god assured that this was not going to be a disaster situation they’d be walking into mean, it had to be more than just the written job descriptions. Yeah. You know, i think one of the things that was really interesting is we weren’t, you know, quite often in this the executive director search or changes organization. What happens is it’s because the, you know, the staff’s upset programs are not being delivered properly, and financially, you’re you’re in dire straits. I mean, it was a kind of that’s, a standard, why you’re changing. We actually came from a really strong position, and we felt it was inappropriate time to make the shift financially. We were in good shape, staff was quite happy with what they were doing, and programs were certainly evolving at that time. So, you know, nothing was perfect, but we certainly were not in the crisis mode that’s quite often, what happened, so we were on the front end of this, but we were again realizing the vulnerability of of me is the founder. And they also had to be assured that you personally wood abide by the job description, yeah, on everything that’s being said. I mean, you know, this is all in writing, and it all sounds good, but, you know, i was the new executive director could walk in and, you know, this guy jim is just blowing everything out of the water that we talked about, and now i’m in a bad spot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of really latto had to trust you. Yeah, and it’s a pretty standard situation. Yeah, you know, it’s pretty standard, um, that it be negative. Yeah. Is that the name? And quite often i do hear that people cycle through, though that first executive director didn’t work out. Now we’re into our second one, you know, we were fortunate, and maybe i don’t know why, but i guess mark and the two other candidates believe me, you know, i mean, i really think it comes down to you know that and reassurance from the executive committee. No or trust. Yeah. Latto trust there’s a lot of stress. Yeah. We’re taking a big step here. Like i said, the paper documents are fine. But in the end, they could be end up being meaningless. It comes down to a human connection and right and trust. Yeah. Yeah, ego. You mentioned it before, so let’s explore that mostly your ego that you had keep in check for the for the good of z. Yeah, i think so. I mean, i’m no no expert, trust me, but i guess at the core of this is i’ve always held a belief of doing your best to hyre smart people than yourself on that doesn’t intimidate me. It makes us a stronger organization. So that’s a core belief of my mind. Um, i why would i not try to bring the best and the brightest board members to the board, the best and brightest staff to the board? Um, that’s, just a core belief of mind that that’s what’s going to make a sustainable organization, you know, that’s where the oil starts for me, all right, you know, and, um you know, again, that core belief that my biggest responsibilities this organization lives on beyond me. Yeah. It’s bigger than you. It is much bigger than me. And then you, you know, from one person operation tow for people in colorado in twenty five in the fall. And, you know, fourteen girls is where we started serving over thirty thousand people now it’s way beyond me. I play an inter call roll i have in trickle power because i am the founder, but i’m on ly a piece of the puzzle and that’s that’s a healthy place for nor ization obviously there was a transition period where you had a share, a lot of corporate knowledge with mark as the new executive director. Absolutely. You know, one of the things that was interesting way we’re in an office situation where we had two basic office rooms and initially mark and i were going to work in the same room and i just was, like, that’s not gonna work. We took the office next door. We’re connected by a door, but we can be close and have our own private space that i didn’t want him to feel that i was. Looking over his shoulder, yeah, ever, you know. But there was institutional knowledge, you know, of our organization and what we done, and our relationships and our funding and our partners, and how we did things and where we worked and all that stuff that had to be transferred over. And that takes time. That’s, just a constant process of answering those questions. Mark was incredibly quick study, but, i mean i can’t imagine i’m thinking back out for years now, but, you know, he was really getting it after four months, six months a year, you know, it takes time and it’s, you know, and transferring those relationships, introducing him to those relationships is key and again, taking that letter will move away from that, you know, so that’s, what an and in a way, we also identified that it was an opportunity for me to become maur engaged in the board. You and i now sit on the board. I had never sat on the board first. No, there was not next-gen has founder no, no one. I was fonder, i said as the executive director, but i did not sit on the board and you don’t have a vote now. I didn’t have a vote that i don’t have a way or not right now you’re on the board, but you don’t have a vote, correct. So i’m basically straddled the board on the kind of clutch between the staff from the boy. Why that decision to not have a vote i already have enough power is what the board felt and i think that that’s the accurate. That definitely was another risk situation for me where i was like, wow, i’m losing control. Yeah, but founders have immense historical knowledge, respond relationships, they have immense power with organizations. And although that did feel uncomfortable, it was the right decision. Yeah, and quite a lot. Itjust wass, you know, a lot of this feels like it has to be the right people. I mean, here you’re you’re you’re saying, you know, you struggled with not getting a vote being on the board, but not having a vote, but in order for this to work and for the board to be comfortable, you had teo swallow that you had to accept that and, you know, another person might not have been able to yeah, i think a lot of this, yeah, trust and and the personalities people have to be right now, it’s, not the right people. Then you’re not gonna have the trust and and we’re going toe end up with what i’ve had guests on the show say that which is when the founder leaves the leadership role here. She has got a several ties. Yeah. That’s really the default right? But it sounds like if you arrive the right personalities. You don’t have to, you know, except the default. Well, i think there’s a couple things that play into that one is most times when people are shifting executive directors, it is a crisis situation, and maybe the management wasn’t very strong for so that’s that’s a pretty standard situation. I mean, i for us, we’re coming from ah, solid footing and the thing that was the constant phrase that we we used in our search was we need to find somebody with correct emotional intelligence to come in and not gutsy, but to build on paan what we’ve already created. And so that was it was really the baseline kind of tag line that way worked off the position as president created opportunities for you that you didn’t have as in the leadership role is founder yeah, let’s, talk a little about that because i think it was important for you to recognize that there was opportunity for you and the board was making that clear in the new president role. Yeah, and there i think the opportunity around it was too deep in my relationship with board members. And as i say, be that clutch between what’s happening in our work on the paul what’s happening with staff and that but a zai moved into the development roll exclusively. Really? What happened is at a time. I mean, i had time to follow some more creative, creative things i mentioned there was a knopper to nitti where we were invited from a little town that’s less than a thousand people in ridgeway, colorado, to create enter an event in italy and in france, where there’s a charity cycling about where it’s it’s basically a fancy count for cyclists, that i mean, they have massages and right insane amounts. That was three days of riding with over twenty five thousand feet of climbing racing. And so basically we were able to bring in individuals who had financial capacity to commit to raising a significant amount of money for the foundation. Through this this leverage point through their friends. And you would not have been able to pursue this no way, and found a rolling no on and much band with way too much band with. And then what happened out there, that is, we actually then deepened our relationships in london, in the uk, and we were a register as a charity in the uk. So now there’s the zi foundation uk and we have a board of trustees over there and they basically carried the work of the zi foundation in the uk raise funds for in the paul that money flows through the u s and then in the fall so that basically become a whole new revenue stream that we never had, nor would they have had anywhere near the bandwidth to take something like that on so it’s all those opportunities you know, and looking around the corner what’s next and being very creative about it and that’s been very, very rewarding for me. Simple question in in rap why the title president instead of director of development or institutional advancement? I think the board really wanted to honor my legacy with the organization, you know? And instead of just director of della development, they just wanted to honor my title. Is cofounder present your morning thank you for sharing really some personal stuff, talking about trust and ego and being the right personality. So i want to thank you very much for for sharing. Yeah, thanks. I’m happy to share. With anybody it’s it’s, i think one of the things that happens is in these non-profits u u you changed from being stood sometimes teacher, and i’ve been able to share this with a lot of people it’s tough work at that level and i’m happy to share with anyone. So thank you for having me on pleasure, you’ll find him at zee foundation dot org’s, it’s dc i foundation dot org’s tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage at the opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen on the beach i know you hear the waves breaking in its top of mexico. Thanks so much for being with us. Great convo with jim noah hoexter shared some excellent, really and personal stuff live listener love. We got new bern, north carolina, san diego, california, washington d c that’s alive listener loved going there how about st louis, missouri and durango, colorado live listener love to all of you so let’s go abroad. So south korea always so grateful soul always checking in on your haserot asahi, japan! Konnichiwa and buenos aires, argentina is with us love that you’ve been. You’ve been with us a couple times buy-in mazarene we know star days, of course. We never go beyond live listen love without podcast pleasantries for the over ten thousand listening in the time shift, whatever you’re doing, what’s the latest i heard was painting a house listening to tony martignetti non-profit media while painting the outside this i was very explicit. I want no was the inside the outside she’s painting the outside of her house to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Whatever you’re doing as you’re listening to the podcast pleasantries to the podcast listeners and, of course, affiliate affections began our am and fm stations throughout the country next week. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be next week. We’re going tio, we i i’m going to be welcoming a new affiliate. I’ll give you a hint. Mission await, not mission. Impossible agent ninety nine, agent ninety nine is the hint and that’s as far as much as i am permitted to say at this time. Tony, take two and chilling laws and regulations with jean takagi coming up first. Pursuant, they help you raise more money. They have online tools like prospector, which helps you. You find the donors in your database who are most likely to upgrade to higher levels of giving and velocity, which helps you manage your fund-raising time against goal, lots of analytics associated with velocity to manage fund-raising online tools for small and midsize shops that’s what they’re about that’s. Why they’re perfect sponsor for non-profit radio take the tools that you need and leave the rest behind pursuant dot com i have a video introducing other videos on technology, their interviews from ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference, which is hosted by the non-profit technology network and ten and in ten ceo. You all know this amy sample ward who’s, our social media contributor on each month she was with me in mexico at opportunity collaboration, where i just got jim, no ac interviewed and she and i shot a video by the pool. Is this just becoming too complex? I don’t know. Amy and i were in mexico an opportunity collaboration, and we did a video all the rest was just kind of background and the video is introducing a bunch of other videos about technology, wearable and mobile tech is one of them your disaster recovery plan and a couple of others. The video is at tony martignetti dot com that’s tony’s take two for friday. Thirtieth of october forty first show of twenty fifteen. Jean takagi is with me. You know him? He’s, the managing editor, managing attorney of neo, the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. And he edits the popular non-profit law blogged dot com on twitter he’s at g tak and i am very glad. He’s back live non-profit radio welcome back, jean. Thanks, tony. Great to hear about your your time at opportunity. Collaboration. Yes, i know you were there. You went a few years ago. Is that right? Yeah. It’s been some years. I hope to go again one day. Okay. Yeah, we had a terrific time. And ah, amy was there as well. Very smart, very smart conference on poverty alleviation throughout the world. Well, lots of bright, bright people are incredible, and we have more interviews coming up. I have a couple that i a couple more that i recorded on the beach, and then i’ve got a whole bunch of other ones book. So lots of smart opportunity, collaboration, people coming up and, uh, and you’re one of them. Your opportunity, collaboration alum with me every month. Um, we got some troubles. Well, some concerns troubles, maybe troubles for non-profits in some chilling laws and regs because some non-profits air not operating the way they’re supposed to and some government officials would like tio, have a little greater oversight. Yeah, i mean, it’s, you know, that’s kind of how, how law sometimes work and it’s scary how it works, there’s some sort of scandal that gets onto the front page of the newspaper on some legislator decides, well, we’ve gotta have a law, and sometimes, you know, they’re thinking teo, be very reactively in terms of fixing a problem, but they do not see what with the broader effect on, you know, the ninety nine percent of the non-profits that are not doing anything wrong, stealing or committing fraud and what impact that might have on them. So it’s all a little distressing, and sometimes, you know, from a cynics perspective, it seems to be a little self serving for the for the legislator who might be up for an election, teo sort of rally the public outrage over situation to get some of these laws passed if they’re if they’re ballot, measure propositions or if they’re just something that the legislators up for. Reelection on. So yeah, without their yeah bashing non-profits i don’t know. I don’t know if it’s it’s not as bad as media bashing, which eyes rampant and nobody seems to object to. But but it’s getting a little let’s get a little worrisome. I mean, you know, it’s, always the it’s. Always the bad guys, the bad actors that get the headlines. And then we get the knee jerk reaction from the politicians who, like you suggested i have their own agenda as well. Um, it’s getting a little chilling? Yeah. Yeah. Scary times first, for sure. And especially with media and the internet just ramping up all the information that’s out there and trying teo attract attention scandals to seem to be the juiciest stuff out there. Yeah, that’s zoho get the headlines, gets the headlines and and causes the reactions that could be adverse. All right, so let’s, let’s, let’s. Start here in in new york, i have seen some local headlines. You want to talk about it? To the queen’s library ceo in the county of queens in new york has nothing. Nothing. Totally above aboveboard about spending and that’s causing problems. Yeah, and that it’s their former ceo now he was terminated at the end of last year, and that was after there there are many boardmember is tryingto protect that that person as well, and i’m not sure that they were doing their their full due diligence on the matter when they were trying to protect him, but ultimately he discovered that, yeah, he was spending fairly lavishly on very, very questionable, if not unlawful expenses. Well paying for fruit executive staff to like a tender maroon five concert and then spending several thousand on batter spending several hundred dollars on wine bottles. Tio entertain. Well, now, wine i could see i like wine, but maroon five, i don’t know. Maroon five. Is that worth a couple thousand dollars? Good, i don’t know. I don’t know them if it was. If it was bruce springsteen, you know it might be justified. No, of course, it’s not just i’ve got five love that. Okay? Okay. All right. But, yeah. It’s it’s lavish to take your executive staff is an employee morale event and spend that much money. And there were there were, you know, over three hundred thousand dollars. That issue with lavish expenditures, probably. Never reported his income by the employees so that that was enough latto haven’t fired, but the stories have been breaking since the late bladder half of two thousand fourteen in all of the local new york papers on and picked up by the new york times as well. Um, and you know, this summer a city council member from queens decided that, you know, there should be something done about this, and i i think she comes from a good place and said that there should be some sort of oversight bill that requires executive level officers of organizations that are funded by the city that receive at least fifty percent of their funding from the city to file the conflict of interest disclosure forms that age city agency employees have to file and file them manually. And you know, that type of disclosure requires some normal stuff like name in home address and principal occupation, but it also asks for disclosing any business interests that the employees or their spouse receives that represents more than ten percent of their growth income now requiring that of government employees. I understand that what? Why, that may be necessary, but non-profits our private organizations come, and if you ask that from every in-kind executive type officer of a non-profit is getting compensated, and sometimes they’re just making, like thirty thousand thirty five thousand dollars a year and saying that you’ve got to disclose all of these things, including what your spouse’s making and where they’re making their income that’s going to really chilled the desire toe to serve, um, for those organizations and it’s going to cost a lot of money to for boards of those organizations to try to enforce that type of annual disclosure on what happens when when, you know, they miss a disclosure. And this is why the mayor decided that that this was something that he wanted to support, but, um, the city council member is sort of taking it back. They had a hearing, and they’re going to take it back, and then they’re going to re craft it. But there’s already state and federal disclosures required so this is going to be pretty burdensome and duplicative and sometimes not consistent with what’s already required that they do with the city in the state, i’m sorry the state and the state, the fed, right? Because iris requires conflict of interest disclosures. Is that what you’re talking about? Yeah, yeah. Ah, okay, yeah, so your concern is the the chilling effect that that this is gonna have that people going to be reluctant to take on. I think it was ceo well was certainly ceo executive director, but it was also including, i think, cfo’s. Um ah, they probably any of those sweets, right? Okay, um, you know what? What do you think? And we have other examples coming up. Unfortunately, what can? What can a non-profit do? I mean, lobby the local lobby, the local city council person, who’s, who’s coming up with these reactionary ideas? Yeah. Or just generally educate their stakeholders about what’s going on and why this might be bad for these organizations. So they’re latto small organizations out there, and then this is really going to hit them or could hit them pretty hard that they let people know that this is something that can affect their livelihood, then, yeah, certainly they can either engage in some lobbying on the bill, and public charities are allowed to engage in lobbying. A lot long does it’s not substantial, and they’re pretty generous limits. And we talked about that before, huh? But yeah, this is kind of khun khun b self defense loving too, which might be subject to the exception to the limit. So this can affect their their health and livelihood inability. Teo, do their mission. So go out there, educate people about it. And yes, send it. Send a letter to your legislators and say this is not a good idea. And yeah, as you said, jim, we have talked about the limits around lobbying and advocacy work. So if people want to go to tony martignetti dot com and just search either jean’s name or why do jean’s name and then also lobbying, you will find the show where we talked about this, that entire topic, what the limits are around lobbying and an advil advocacy. Um, we have just about a minute before a break. Gene, you want to introduce us to what’s going on in aa california there’s a proposal about suspending activities? Yes, it’s now, not just a proposal. It actually just got past a few days ago. Our problem will get it a few days ago. It d’oh the new law on january first. And i’ll just sort of revealed before the break boardmember personal liability on the ability to tell an organization to transfer all of its assets to another organization for a little technical. Oh, my if that’s not a cliffhanger of boardmember personal liability. Ham, california crazy out there, that ninth circuit. But i know this is not federal. Okay? Let’s, go out for the break. Gene and i are going to continue provocative conversation. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. More live listener love food jiao china has checked in ni hao all right, jean california what’s going on, but boardmember of personal liability, transfer of assets and you you got you past this thing. Yeah, well, the attorney general it’s a regulation so it’s not a statutory law meaning that the legislative body didn’t elected officials didn’t come up with this law. It’s executive branch officials that passed it solicited some comments from the public and let me just give you some framework on it. First, i i understand why the attorney general’s office wanted to come up with the law that said, okay, we need thio make sure that charities are actually registered with us and are complying with the registration requirements because we need to know who’s out there. And this is probably true of every state where their tens of thousands of charities that have sort of let their registration slip, possibly because they think if they filed with the irs, that they didn’t know that they have additional state filings file in california, we have three filings with different agencies that you have to keep up with, and sometimes organizations particularly smaller ones that might not have professionals that are on top of their legal compliance and filing obligations. Sometimes they forget teo and let this one slip, and this one isn’t the one that’s done by the accountant’s. Usually either the count didn’t sort of take care of the tax for me, the i r s forms of the state tax agency forms, but this one is a charity registration for in which you’re well aware, i am it’s part of what i do, yes, yeah, exactly, but now the penalty they’re saying it’s like, we’re really wantto, you know, wrapping up our enforcement of this, and so we’re going to say if you operate and you’ve been suspended and you could be suspended for missing filing more, filing an incomplete filing, right and again in california, we have three separate filings with the secretary of state, the franchise tax board and the attorney general nypmifa miss one of the secretary of state or franchise tax court filings that can cause you to become automatically suspended with the a g’s office as well on so just slipping on those things, which some of them are very easy to file if you know about them. I can get you suspended and then if you operate while you’re suspended and this is where they’re they’re saying, well, if if you operate while suspended the age, he has the right tempos, boardmember personal liabilities, personal liability on boardmember that must be paid by the board members from their own money. This wouldn’t be covered by insurance thiss wouldn’t be covered by the organization itself. It couldn’t indemnify that boardmember for this it’s got to come out of the board members own personal pocket for operating while suspended, and there are, you know, there may be as many as one hundred thousand organizations in california. They’re not compliant with their filing regulations and charity registration regulations. You know, i think there’s some foreign organizations that are operating here that haven’t registered properly, yeah, that’s a that’s, a lot of organizations that to be subject to this draconian regulations, gina that’s important to point out that we’re not only talking about organises non-profits that are domestic in california, what incorporated non-profit in california, based in california, we’re talking about non-profits from throughout the country who are soliciting in california, that makes you subject to those three filings franchise tax board, secretary of state and a g that you’re talking about? Yep. And i think it’s more than the estimate of i i i saw was that your blogged or someone else above estimating one hundred eighty thousand? Like, i think it was fifty thousand domestic and then one hundred thirty thousand. Beyond that, i think it’s more than that. I mean, especially if you start counting online solicitations, email the california’s, the most populous state in the country. I think i think it’s more than one hundred eighty thousand that i saw that very well could be true. I was a little bit modest with numbers just because we don’t know some of those who just sort of been abandoned and dropped out. Okay, but being yeah, there are a lot of organizations that could be subject to this, and you wonder if you, you know, when you promulgate regulations like this and now non-profits air looking for board members and they’re trying to get the the most qualified in the best and support of board members that they confined, how many people are going to go? Well, you know, i’m a little bit worried about all of these. Things and ah, again, i don’t want to run the risk because boardmember is a typically volunteers and they don’t like stay on top of sort of the technical aspects of did we actually file with all three state agencies? They typically just reviewed the irs form nine, ninety submissions, if that so, yes, this is very distressing and for operating all suspended, not only can the g hold boardmember personally liable, but they can tell the organization you must transfer out all of your assets to another organization. Holy good, even big foundation you they could say literally, you must transfer out one hundred million dollars of your assets and give it to another organization because you’ve been operating while you were suspended. Yeah, so let’s talk about let’s talk about operating while suspended. So you failed to make of some arcane filing, although i it’s part of what i do with the franchise tax board now. Okay, so you failed that now you’re suspended, suspended means you’re not feeding people anymore. You’re not sheltering domestic violence victimssurvivors anymore. You’re not protecting the waterways of california anymore because you’re supposed to be suspended. You stop work and all your employees go home without pay. Is that what we’re talking about? Suspended. Yeah, basically can’t engage in any kind of operations while suspended. And if you try to keep helping the rivers and the oceans, and the and the survivors and the victims and the homeless and hungry, then you’re liable for have for the for the penalty of having a transfer all your assets, right? That sounds crazy, right off the ventilator. It’s, it’s, it’s really crazy and non-profit i’m going to do that and what the g has said to us and i launched a campaign here tryingto kapin get the a g to reconsider this and i had independent sector the national council non-profits cal non-profits united way’s, california lines for justice, the ceo, board source the non-profit insurance alliance group all fine on this so that they recognize that there was some national attention, that there was some big concerns about this, but unfortunately did not go through and the ages view is basically trust us. Even though we’ve got these broad, broad powers were not going to abuse them and we’re going to only attack use them against the very, very bad actors, and i just think that’s bad, yeah, may start out that way, but six attorneys general from now, who knows? All right, that’s a really that’s a really impactful one for anybody. Any organization operating in california soliciting in california? I don’t want to say operating soliciting donations in california. You need to make sure you are compliant. Holy cow! Okay, let’s, move. We just have, like a minute and a half left. Jean let’s. Move the federal tax court disallowed a couple of big charitable deductions, like over several million dollars in one, because donors or not, providing proper substantiation of their deductions? Yeah, i mean, so these weren’t that long ago, and the irs always wins on these cases, by the way, when donors tried to challenge them, take always win. So charities make sure you write proper forms in the first one, which was durden versus commissioner there’s just a deduction of twenty five thousand dollars for cash contributions they they were making to their church, and the church gave them a receipt. But the receipt missed the statement that you must have for donations of two hundred fifty dollars or more. A statement that says no goods or services were provided by the organization in return for their contribution. If you miss that statement, you can’t make up for it after the person the donor has filed their tax returns. It too late. Too late. Because that’s basically screwed it’s not contemporaneous anymore. Jean right. I’m sorry. I want to leave listeners with irs publication five twenty six it’s for people who make charitable donations it’s for your donors. But it has all the guidelines in it that that your donor’s need and that you need to be providing them when it’s your when it is your responsibility? Iris publication five twenty six gene, i’m sorry we have to leave it there. Great point, though thank you very much, jean takagi. You’ll find him at non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter he’s at g tack next week. Great show coming up very, very good show coming up, but i don’t know what it’s going to be. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com where in the world else would you go pursuant? Lots of tools for small and midsize shops. You’ll raise halloween bags more money. I wish i could elaborate on this, but we’re running a little at a time just trust me big, big halloween bags like the ikey of those blue bags, not the tiny little things you get in the drug store when you buy a four pack of batteries filled with money. Those big hockey bag filled with money pursuant dot com our creative producers claire meyerhoff, janet taylor’s, the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez dot com and our music is by scott stein happy halloween be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox. They have tv. They have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist. I took two or three years for foundation staff. Sort of dane toe add an email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles? Best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

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

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Hillary Schafer: Run Like A Biz

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

 

 

Gene Takagi: Program Your Board

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