Tag Archives: nonprofit fundraising

Nonprofit Radio for February 14, 2022: Fundraising Amid Polarization

Drew Lindsay: Fundraising Amid Polarization

From The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Drew Lindsay uncovers the details from his two recent articles reporting on the impact of political polarization on nonprofit fundraising.

 

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

 

 

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

I love our sponsor!

Turn Two Communications: PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is our mission.

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

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

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

Transcript for 578_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220214.mp3

Processed on: 2022-02-11T19:45:46.468Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2022…02…578_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220214.mp3.730624931.json
Path to text: transcripts/2022/02/578_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220214.txt

[00:02:25.84] spk_0:
mm hmm. Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. It’s the valentine’s Day show. I hope you and your valentine or valentine’s can snuggle a bit and do something special together or at least share that you’re special to each other. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into para que sis if I had to hear that you missed this week’s show fundraising amid polarization from the Chronicle of philanthropy. Drew Lindsay uncovers the details from his two recent articles reporting on the impact of political polarization on nonprofit fundraising on tony stick to an example beyond polarization into conspiracy theory. Last week I said Amy sample ward would be on this week. You have no idea what it’s like working with these big time celebrities. There was a calendar mistake and it would be indiscreet of me to say who made the mistake. Amy, we’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C o here is fundraising amid polarization. It’s my pleasure to welcome to nonprofit radio Drew Lindsay. He is a long time magazine writer and editor who joined the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2014. He previously worked at washingtonian magazine and was a principal editor for teacher and M. H. Q. Which were each selected as finalists for a national magazine award for general excellence In 2005. He was one of 18 journalists selected for a year, Long Night Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan. You should be following him. He’s at Drew Lindsay C. O. P. If he was Drew Lindsay COPD that would be chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But he doesn’t, he doesn’t have COPD. He’s at the Chronicle of philanthropy. So Drew Lindsay C. O. P. Welcome

[00:02:35.66] spk_1:
Drew, appreciate it.

[00:03:24.84] spk_0:
My pleasure. Thank you. We’re talking about two of your very recent articles in the Chronicle. one is donations in the balance fundraising in the age of polarization. The other is advice for fundraisers caught in the middle of political battles. I’d like to start with a quote from, from the second of those. And then, uh let’s let’s talk about what’s going on, quote at the extreme our episodes where blocks of disaffected donors protests and organizations position or work. But fundraisers report that even casual encounters with supporters can lead to challenging conversations about political and social issues. End quote. What does your reporting tell you what’s going on? Drew

[00:05:00.44] spk_1:
Well, it’s interesting how this story even came about in the sense that um for that I’ve been asked to do for six months. Very deep stories on fundraising. What’s going on. So, I’ve been talking a lot of sources, a lot of fundraisers, a lot of consultants just generally to see stories that I should pursue. And almost as sidebars, um, these individuals had mentioned and oh yeah, this is going on. This is sort of we’re encountering this daily. Um, and I also saw there were some stories where some of these, um, sort of collisions of politics in a sense popped up and became news stories. Um, so I decided this was sort of worth the story for us. And I think, um, importantly for us, I think we write for a audience that is largely fundraisers in the sense I have often is that they’re not very connected with each other. They often think their work and their problems and their challenges, they sort of face a little bit of isolation. So we wanted to talk about the daily experience as best as we could to sort of in one sense, make nonprofits, their leaders and fundraisers realize, hey, we’re not alone. It’s not like we’re doing anything wrong. Um, at times it’s that we’re encountering this because the way the country is and, and the way things are playing out. So that was our goal with this story, um, is to offer a glimpse. I don’t by any means suggests that my reporting covers at all and that this is happening nationwide. I do think it’s common enough that people are going to count encounter maybe just in a casual conversation and maybe something bigger. But we wanted to show that happening.

[00:05:21.54] spk_0:
Yeah. You know, you say in one of the pieces that non profits are bringing together large numbers of people who just reflect society’s divisions and the country is divided polarized. So nonprofits are sometimes in the Crossair. Um, you know, let’s talk a little about, you know, social media and what, you know, how things can inflame, you know, so quickly. And, but the anonymity behind that

[00:06:31.54] spk_1:
to, I think one of the interesting things, some of the veterans that I talked to about this issue said, you know, the, the country has, you know, this is not new to fundraising in the sense of encountering donors or others who disagree with the organization for some reason, but, and there are examples in the country’s history. Talk to one fundraiser who have been, you know, working since at least the civil rights movement, he said, she said, this is, you know, this, it’s been part of what we’ve dealt with a long time. I think there is some sense that social media um accelerates this intensifies. It amplifies it, um, that, you know, people are, as we all know, people are very quick on social media to be in their own camp one and two to react to whatever they see in the moment. Um, without measured thought without context. Social media itself is not a great, um, you know, a great means of conveying nuance of conveying, you know, um, deep background and context. So I think people are reacting sometimes too quickly to things that are not put forward in the right way, which just inflamed the situation in a sense.

[00:06:46.64] spk_0:
And then you have the anonymity to it. Also, you quote, you quote someone who wonders if the people there, that she’s talking to day to day, you know, it might be trolling anonymously, you know, and and inflaming

[00:07:55.34] spk_1:
I think that’s true. I think it’s unsettling for people that you don’t know. Um you can be sitting in a development officer communication office and you are putting forward messages from your organization and you can have um, what’s called clap back people reacting on social media to what you’ve done and you really don’t know. Is this a supporter? Is this, uh, alumni that is upset? Or is this someone from the outside? Is this someone who has no connection to the organization whatsoever will happen to see this and reacted. And so it’s a little hard as a um, you know, steward of your organization to understand how to react to those kind of things, because it may just be somebody who’s Who isn’t again, isn’t a supporter and doesn’t even know much about your organization just responding to those 160 characters in the tweet. Yeah,

[00:07:56.50] spk_0:
it could just be a troll threatening to stop giving who’s never has given and and maybe never even heard of your organization until they

[00:08:48.84] spk_1:
Yeah. And I think some of the in the advice piece, I think some of the folks really tried to help put that in perspective, that you can’t just assume that because you have a mini firestorm on social media, that that is all your supporters, that if someone on social media declares, I’m never giving you this organization again, that may not be true and maybe something I thought about it in the moment and so to try and also that it it often doesn’t represent had several organizations. Tell me, you know, something that happens on social media that probably doesn’t represent our whole constituency. It’s it’s maybe a small minority and you need to keep that in mind as you react as you respond. That isn’t all what’s on social media doesn’t represent your whole supporter base.

[00:09:45.14] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Thought leadership. Do you or your nonprofit want to be seen as leaders in a public dialogue, not merely participating in a conversation that involves your work. Wouldn’t it be delightful? Wonderful to have media call you to get your opinion on breaking news. It takes time to learn that credibility to build those relationships. But it’s eminently doable. Turn to can get you there, turn to communications. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o now back to fundraising amid polarization. Yeah. You you say the group at M. I. T. The Free speech

[00:09:47.61] spk_1:
Alliance,

[00:09:55.04] spk_0:
You know, they based on your reporting or at least up until your reporting. You know, they had something like 500 followers but Almost 150,000

[00:09:56.36] spk_1:
alumni,

[00:10:10.64] spk_0:
but but a vocal a tiny minority but but vocal inflammatory and that you know that leads to um the potential of donations being used as a one of your 11 of the folks you quote says as the donations can be a screw that’s

[00:11:14.84] spk_1:
turned. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s um I think that’s one of the things that surprised me about it is that I knew that that you know, people sometimes talk about on social media and letters or you know, they’re responding, there’s an organization to a message that they may say in that individual response I’m never gonna give. It was interesting to me to see that some critics of an organization now have taken it and become more formalized since uh the M. I. T. Case. You you mentioned um the Free speech Alliance has not taken this step, but they are considering forming a donor advised fund in which they would encourage um supporters of their free speech issues to instead of giving to M. I. T. They would give to this donor advised fund. And then it would in a sense, be held as leverage as they try to convince the university to to pursue certain free speech principles that they adhere to. So um that somebody gets surprised me is that in some cases it’s become a little more formalized in terms of how you used donations as leverage.

[00:11:23.24] spk_0:
Yeah. You saw this at Washington. And lee also,

[00:11:55.44] spk_1:
that’s correct Washington lee the free speech group there um has I think 10 to 12,000 supportive followers. I won’t say supporters that, you know, they, when they sent out an email, they have a base of about 10,000 and they have encouraged repeatedly to their supporters to withhold their contributions to the university as a means of getting the university to pay attention to them. They feel the university we disagree that they feel they have not, their views have not been heard. And so they are trying to, in a sense, use donations as a way to make the university pay attention to them. Um, so

[00:12:15.24] spk_0:
yeah, at Washington and lee, it’s around the, the treatment of general lee, the, the administration took his name off the chapel and that, that seems to have incited ignited the, the, the organization called the general’s readout. That’s correct. I guess they’re the Washington and lee generals.

[00:13:05.94] spk_1:
And I think it’s, I think Washington is an interesting case study of this in the sense that, um, you know, it’s an older institution. Um, it has that history going back Washington lee or in the name and its current, there are a number of, of um, individual supporters, faculty alumni who would like them to consider dropping lee from the name of the institution itself. So they have that pressure at the same time as an institution, they made the decision to take the name of lee off of the sort of central chapel to the college. It’s now called the university Chapel. So, um, this, this generals readout is not, is not, I’m happy with the decision to drop leaf from the chapel name, but others are not happy with the university because it’s not taking lee out of the college name itself. So, um, in a sense, they’re feeling this pressure on all sides

[00:13:27.44] spk_0:
on 11 side believes they’ve gone too far on the other side believes they haven’t gone far enough. That’s correct. And then, and you know, non profits are caught in the balance. Um, and your reporting suggests this is, you know, across all missions. I mean, we’re talking right now about education, but you’ve talked to folks in the arts, social services, Environmental.

[00:16:32.74] spk_1:
It’s true. And it’s, um, that it was interesting to me and I think, um, the social scientists I talked to David Brubaker, um, sort of put this in context, in the sense that, you know, nonprofits, any, any organization in the country at this point, schools in particular, you’re seeing a flash point, any, any organization or group in the country that is bringing together large groups of people behind a mission. Um, it’s sort of subject to this because the nature of that mission now gets called into question. So yes, you see. Um, uh, so I think that’s one thing I think there’s another viewpoint we ought to consider in that, um, there are, there’s some pressure on groups, in a sense of taking it, you know, I’ll just say it’s their outside their lane, you know, since they may be doing environmental work, or they may be doing health work and if they take up an issue or cause um, I think the one that’s most, most, most top of mind for me is an environmental group, um, stands behind Black Lives Matter or takes up an issue like that. They even have some liberal supporters, people who are part of their constituency, kind of them saying you’re an environmental group. I’m not, I’m not supporting you for your stand on Black Lives Matter and supporting you for your work in the environment. So, um, I think it’s it’s across a lot of different cause areas, um, perhaps most, I would say it’s most intense, perhaps at schools, colleges, universities, um, in some sense, those are places where supporters feel a real personal connection to those institutions and they, in a sense, have much more invested in what they’re doing and how they’re doing than say, uh, supportive for a health group that is behind its mission to reduce produce cancer, to do certain things. So, um, and, and there’s a sense of belonging to those institutions. And so, um, a lot of talking to schools and colleges, that sense of belonging is sometimes hurt when or change, that’s their their relationship with school changes, um, when they feel like the mission is now, or the school has gone off and done something they don’t agree with. So, um, colleges and universities also see themselves as um, societal change agents in a sense. They may be seeking a change in, in the society that some of their online may say, Well, that’s not something I see as a positive. So I would say it’s most intense that I was surprised. Um, David Rubin acre put me onto this. Um, the number of clergy and churches that feel because of Covid caught in the middle in a sense and that they are, you know, obviously, you know, bringing large groups of people together. And the question of whether you have in person services, worship group meetings, kinds of things, whether you wear masks and things have become real contentious to the point that, Um, David pointed me to the survey, four and 10 pastors recently surveyed said they are considering leaving the field and this is a real distension. This dynamic is a real problem for them. So

[00:16:42.83] spk_0:
yeah, the masking is in churches is interesting, but I could see it in theater groups

[00:16:47.74] spk_1:
too. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:20:41.24] spk_0:
We’re gonna, we’re enforcing masking for the safety of our, of our patrons. Well, you’re going too far, you’re giving into fear. And then if they don’t have a masking requirement, then you’re not keeping us safe and we’re not. So for that reason we’re not going to come to the right to the congregation or to the theater. Yeah, It’s time for Tony’s take two drew and I are talking about political polarization, hurting nonprofits. There’s a story this week that goes even more extreme. It’s more extreme in what’s driving the pro driving the impact and in the impact. I can’t think of anything more benign than butterflies except maybe tofu butterflies at least you know, have have independent flight tofu, you shake the plate and just jiggles. So tofu might be more benign than butterflies, but butterflies are pretty darn benign. Not according to some conspiracy theorists who claimed that the National Butterfly Center, a nonprofit in Mission texas is a refuge of human smuggling and child sex trafficking. There’s no evidence to support any of these claims. It’s a, it’s a gross conspiracy theory. Sounds very much like the, the pizza parlor and pizza gate in Washington D. C. With the, with the theories the National Butterfly Center has had to close because they’re concerned about the security of their staff. I mean, I presume the butterflies would be safe, although maybe the butterflies are the ones, maybe they’re spiriting aliens across the border. Uh, so the center has had to close because of these concerns about safety. It involves the border wall. There’s, there’s a segment, there’s a segment of the border wall that’s near the, the butterfly center and, and the center objects to the wall being built through their property. That’s what seems to have given rise to the, to the theories claimed to be happening at the National Butterfly Center. So you know, you can, you can find that it’s again, National Butterfly Center in mission texas. It has been in the news just this week. So you know, Drew and I are talking about trends. I mean he’s a journalist. He, you know, he has dozens of people that he’s spoken to. I see this one case. I’m not saying it’s a trend. It’s not one case doesn’t make a trend, but it’s quite disturbing. And you know, it could happen to any nonprofit really. I mean, I don’t see how an organization can be exempt and I can’t think of one that’s more innocent than a butterfly center. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for fundraising amid polarization withdrew Lindsay listeners, you may notice a change in sound quality. That’s because we lost the internet connection and uh, I’m now on my phone. But non profit radio perseveres through technology, uh, disruptions and disappointments. But there’s no, there’s no, we’ve, I’ve been at conferences and had the lights turned off around me. So there’s no, there’s no stopping. non profit radio Drew, you had mentioned racial equity statements and black lives matter, but it could be something as seemingly innocuous as an auction item that incites people.

[00:21:40.34] spk_1:
Yeah, I think Auction finishing. I talked to some, some consultants and fundraisers in the west or some rural areas where 10 or 15 years ago, no one thought twice about Putting in, um, say an afternoon at the gun range as an auction item or auctioning off a piece of weaponry or some sort of accessory. No one thought twice about it now, 10, 15 years later with school shootings and other things starting raising the profile and issues concerning gun safety. Those are really questionable. Yeah. At the same time they’re part of the culture in some of those rural areas. So fundraisers think really wrestle. I think, you know, there are other things. Even something as basic as a holiday, email or video for any given holiday particularly say around the christmas season is a real cause for anger for people. How do you, how do you, um, write something that isn’t offensive at the same time? It’s not gonna gonna still has meaning still has something some some back. So, um, yeah,

[00:22:15.34] spk_0:
all right, interesting. You know, interesting times. Uh, important. I think just for consciousness raising. So uh, nonprofit leaders are aware that there’s the potential out there. So let’s, let’s talk a little bit about advice for, for fundraisers, which, you know, draws from your second piece. And the first idea is that prepare.

[00:24:01.44] spk_1:
Yeah. And I think a lot of the folks that I talked to really want to put notice leaders on notice that this is part of your job as a nonprofit leader as an advancement leader is to consider this and prepare your staff. Um, part of, you know, the advice is often that a position the group takes or a new program or something needs to be firmly explained and put in context of the organization’s mission. And um, you know, that can be done at a high level. But the thinking and strategy behind it needs to be conveyed to the gift officers. That needs to be conveyed to the donor communications staff to steward folks. They all need to be prepared for even perhaps have talking points prepared for individual conversations with donors for putting out their own communications so that, you know, a stepped in organization takes that is rooted in mission. Those routes have to be made very clear to folks. Um, so that’s a little bit on leadership. I think leadership also has to look at gift agreements and look at, um, what those policies call for, what gives it that can accept what’s the contingencies for them. Um, that was something everybody suggested that the groups ought to take a second look at in in lieu of this kind of political context out there. Um, I think there’s also some sense that, um, Gift officers in particular needs some process put in place for them. That if they have really awkward, uncomfortable, even sometimes offensive conversations with donors that they have recourse, they have a process. They know what, how the organization will handle those situations. You can’t leave your Gift officers out there alone to deal with this and manage it on their own, that, that they have to feel supported backed up. So a lot of this starts with leadership and proper preparation.

[00:24:32.14] spk_0:
And your reporting suggests there’s there’s a shift away from donor centrism and, and into, uh, you know, you’ve, you’ve alluded to it a couple of times that the mission and values of the organization, that, that in the past this might have been something that organizations rolled over on just to appease appease donors, especially major donors, but not so much anymore. You’re seeing a trend away.

[00:25:17.94] spk_1:
Well, I, I think, um, and you know, put this in context, I think there there’s donor centrism that people embrace, say, 15, 20 years ago, some veterans in the field talked about, there might have been a time where the donor could call the shots on these things and this is a long time ago, but people have begun, I think, to move away from that strict and embrace of donor centrism and there was some sense that, you know, the gift that someone is giving you is for the mission and purpose of the organization. And again, your conversations have to tie whatever you’re doing into that mission and purpose of the organization. Um, so it’s perhaps, um, A little bit of a shift away from the focus on the donor and what they’re doing for the organization as opposed to here’s what the organization is doing. Um, so I think that’s true. And, and again, it was the veterans mainly talking about this and that there was a time again, 15, 20 years ago where donors called the shots. So

[00:25:46.24] spk_0:
and that also helps the organization root the, the controversy in, in its own, in its own work. And so that this is not, you know, just a reflection of the times. It’s not a whim that we, you know, we, we read a headline and we’ve taken a stand, but this is rooted in our, in our work, what we

[00:27:04.04] spk_1:
believe absolutely that and that folks may, you have to make clear when you make a change or you make a position, similar things you really have to read and strategy in your mission because people can too often see you as reacting to the headline, putting a finger to the wind, trying to react to the times. And you know, it’s one of the things about social media that was interesting in my conversations with both you for to hear two things you hear, you know, um don’t, there’s a temptation when you’re getting for the flap clap back on social to sort of pull back and not do as much and folks that, you know, you can’t do that. You’re not, you’re not, you know, you’ve got to continue to advance and promote what you’re doing in your cause. But at the same time you have to consider that social media is an incredibly condensed prism through which to view something and if you need to do the work to tie something into mission and to provide context and nuance, Keep dynamometer going to social social has to be done very carefully so that you can make the connections that are necessary for people to see how this ties back to your mission. Um, so that’s it sort of contradictory advice in the sense of you want to keep doing social, you want to resist the temptation to pull back, but at the same time you gotta be careful what you do and really craft it well. So,

[00:27:18.64] spk_0:
and then likewise, you know, having difficult one on one conversations with donors don’t, don’t shy away from them as well as its the advice you were

[00:28:09.04] spk_1:
hearing. Well, it was really remarkable and a lot of fundraisers, you know, there are some challenging and difficult conversations and um really they need to hear out from people some borders what the concerns are. And again the conversation is bringing about to explain calmly and, and you know, um, without reacting defensively, in a sense to how this ties to mission I think um, I was surprised and that a number of fundraisers talked about those difficult conversations actually leading to a deeper relationship with a donor and sort of getting you beyond some superficial sort of things and getting the donor perhaps to understand more about the mission of the organization. So that part of the advice that don’t shy from these conversations is there can be a real benefit from. Um, so, but at the same token, there are some people are gonna walk away, but that there are some benefits,

[00:28:28.04] spk_0:
it wasn’t it the ceo of the Salvation Army who told you that that when, when he has these conversations, they almost almost uniformly lead to, uh, an understanding across on both sides.

[00:28:52.64] spk_1:
Yeah. And I think that that suggests there has to be a process in your office for when perhaps you get an email back or you get, um, some sort of response or negative reaction to seek out a personal one on one conversation, those can often, you know, people are disarmed by those and suddenly you see each other as humans and things change, the dynamics change.

[00:29:08.24] spk_0:
So yes, considerably right, right. 11 thing that came out of the reporting that I was, I was surprised that was the idea of in these conversations sharing your own personal views.

[00:30:15.34] spk_1:
Well, attention that since the peace has gone out, that’s the most reaction I’ve got from people and some suggesting and that’s not what you should do. I think, um, I think as the piece suggests that there are some fundraisers who really feel like their job is not to censor themselves that, that in a sense, you know, they’re putting their whole self into the job and for them to censor. Um, I think perhaps one way to look at it is, you know, your personal view of why this fits within the mission of the, the, you know, I don’t think you need to sound off on things that are completely unrelated to the topic, but if you have a view of an organization position or program or what it’s doing and how it matches with your beliefs and what the organization should be doing. That’s a way to frame it. Um, as opposed to, you know, you know, if this conversation strays into say gun rights, it’s not like you have to pop off on that just because that’s how you feel. But try, you know, you don’t eliminate your personal, um, views when it comes to things that are really related to the organization and is said to make you a a more three dimensional person for for the donor, if you explained how your views high end to why the organization is important to you.

[00:30:22.94] spk_0:
Yes, you’ve, you’ve said it a couple of times relate how it relates to the, to the mission and values of the organization,

[00:30:28.74] spk_1:
right?

[00:30:29.27] spk_0:
Um, being willing to apologize when you when you do make a mistake.

[00:31:38.34] spk_1:
And I think that, um, you know, there are a couple example of, of organizations that perhaps did something that touched off something they did unintentionally. And I think, um, and again, I’ve had some response since the piece has been out, but being upfront declaring it a mistake, not trying to wrap it in some sort of pr gauze as if really this is what we intended and oh, you’re, you know, you the donor or not understanding how we came out, you know, just sort of upfront be upfront about it. I think some readers that I’ve talked to since the piece came out suggested that if a donor is offended by something, it’s not, there isn’t necessarily a mistake on your part and you shouldn’t be automatically apologizing for something. It’s, I think the piece and I probably didn’t frame it correctly is suggesting more where, um, you know, the organization truly has made a mistake in terms of language or something. And again, the the idea is to be upfront, um, to not try to hide that just leads to erosion of trust. Um, but by the same token, not to assume that every time someone objects to something, you’ve done that it is your mistake. Um, so if that makes sense.

[00:31:47.65] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah. And that’s a fundamental of crisis communications to and if if the organization has made a mistake,

[00:31:55.14] spk_1:
absolutely

[00:31:55.83] spk_0:
be out front with an apology,

[00:31:58.26] spk_1:
you know, right,

[00:32:04.34] spk_0:
yep, control of the, of the narrative. Um, and then, you know, finally you alluded to it earlier, but I’m gonna flush it out of it. Not to panic if people say they’re gonna withdraw their support.

[00:32:40.44] spk_1:
Yeah, I think that’s the case, and again, it’s it’s numbers and particularly looking at noise on social media or noise of, you know, phone calls or response, you know, keep in mind, um, you know, that you have a very large constituency and supporters, um, I know of, of a couple of nonprofits that had, um, something touched off, you know, phone calls or social media and they felt compelled then to write to their entire constituency about it. And then long behold their entire content. You know, 90% of the constituency had no idea what anybody was talking about. And all you’ve done is raise it to their attention. So keep the criticism, the protests, the concerns raised in context of your broader, um, set of supporters.

[00:32:58.24] spk_0:
What’s some of the other reader feedback that you’ve heard?

[00:33:46.34] spk_1:
Uh, it’s been it’s been good in a sense. I I described this as you said it to a glimpse of what’s happening. And, you know, I never in our reporting want to suggest that this is universal or anything we’re describing. And I really didn’t want this to be seen as a glimpse. Um, and, and this is not that people are seeking me out. But if I continue to talk to people for other stories, they will mention this story and said, oh, yeah, you know, you’re right, this is happening. And it’s often the what you and I have talked about in the small ways that this sort of tension is creeping into everyday work. There are some cases where individuals have mentioned, yes. Because of our stand on this, a million dollar donor walked away and, you know, that’s this is a reality. So, um, I’ve heard it just in casual conversations that I’m doing reporting on other stories. That a confirmation in the sense that this is an issue for a current in front of mine for a lot of people.

[00:34:20.44] spk_0:
All right, well thank you for making us aware and sharing some of the advice advice based on your reporting. Again. The pieces are in the chronicle of philanthropy donations in the balance fundraising in the age of polarization and advice for fundraisers caught in the middle of political battles. He is Drew Lindsay at Drew Lindsay C. O. P. Thank you. Thank you very very much.

[00:34:22.03] spk_1:
No, thank you for your time. I enjoyed it.

[00:35:36.44] spk_0:
My pleasure. Next week For sure. Amy Sample Ward returns to talk about the 2022 nonprofit technology conference. Talk about celebrity culture. But I will work through it. I’ll work through their booking agent, attorney Pr staff virtual assistant. I will get them here if you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications Pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein. Okay, thank you for that. Affirmation scotty Be with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for September 28, 2020: End Of Year Fundraising

My Guest:

Jen Frazier: End Of Year Fundraising

Jen Frazier talks you through. What do you want in your workplan? How does the pandemic impact your strategy? It’s a comprehensive convo for your 4th quarter. She’s founder of Firefly Partners.

 

 

Listen to the podcast

Subscribe to get the podcast
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

I love our sponsors!

Turn Two Communications: PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is our mission.

 

Dot Drives: Raise more money. Change more lives.

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

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

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

View Full Transcript
Transcript for 508_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20200928.mp3

Processed on: 2020-09-25T17:21:40.263Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2020…09…508_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20200928.mp3.715250400.json
Path to text: transcripts/2020/09/508_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20200928.txt

[00:02:04.74] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% on your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of or a facial granuloma if I came to learn that you missed today’s show. End of year fundraising in Fraser talks you through end of your fundraising. What do you want in your work plan? How does the pandemic impact your strategy? It’s a comprehensive convo for your fourth quarter. She’s founder of Firefly. Partners on tony Stick to Planned Giving accelerator were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo and by dot drives raise more money, changed more lives. Tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant a free month. My pleasure. Thio Invite for the first time to the show, Jen Fraser. She founded Fire Fire Fire Fly Partners in 2007 and has more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. She’s been at Planned Parenthood Federation of America and part of the team that planned and executed the march for women’s lives in 2004. Ah, high point in her career, she lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her two kids and gets around mostly by bike. Jen has a knack for putting things together, from project budgets and puzzles to Ikea furniture. The company is that Firefly partners dot com, and she’s at Jenna T. Firefly like Rufus T. Firefly, who knows that movie reference? Rufus T. Firefly. But she’s Jenna T. Firefly with one end. Yeah, T Firefly. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:20.24] spk_0:
Thank you so much. Great to be here. And yeah, it’s just it’s Jen at Firefly. So it’s done up. It’s It’s just Jan with one in at 80 Firefly or Twitter. Not genital.

[00:02:20.93] spk_1:
Your Twitter, your Twitter.

[00:02:23.02] spk_0:
It’s Jen at Firefly. Partner Janet Firefly is my Twitter, but it’s not Jenna T. It’s Jen at sea. It’s eight.

[00:02:30.95] spk_1:
Okay, look, look back at the email that you sent me on you said Gente Firefly. So I immediately thought of Rufus T. Firefly.

[00:02:40.24] spk_0:
Well, I like it. I like the reference to so that’s okay with me.

[00:02:49.04] spk_1:
It’s old Groucho Marx, but it doesn’t, but it’s it’s totally inapt because that’s not your Twitter. So your Twitter is

[00:02:58.44] spk_0:
Gen. At Firefly Gen. At Firefly. Yeah. Oh, well, I know I just Okay, Right

[00:03:16.27] spk_1:
now, we’re I’m quibbling. No, it could be Jenna t Firefly. Or it could be Jen at Firefly. Alright, so no. So your email was not incorrect. All right, so I take that part back. Your email was not incorrect. It’s just how we’re reading letters. E n a t I read. Oh, I read Jenna T Firefly and you read it, Jen, at Firefly, Your middle initial is not Is your middle initial by t By any chance?

[00:03:29.71] spk_0:
It is not.

[00:03:30.78] spk_1:
Because then I would’ve had a big score. All right? It’s not all right. Alright, so All right, so Alright, alright. I do apologize for saying your email was incorrect. That’s not true. It’s okay. Jenna T Firefly or Jen at Firefly. I’m sure you’re gonna get a ton of new followers now because we

[00:03:49.57] spk_0:
just wait. I gotta go. Look this up. Get this

[00:04:12.44] spk_1:
into the ground now. Yeah, OK, but I like the Rufus t Firefly reference to, so All right, I’ve got some construction going on here. You may very well here. There you go. There’s banging. You might hear some cutting banging, uh, crow borrowing crow. Barring my deck is being replaced. And, uh, you know when when you can have a contractors who works, you don’t tell them and send them off the job.

[00:04:18.91] spk_0:
No, you do not. You know, they show up, you put them to work.

[00:04:40.44] spk_1:
That’s right. And they continue working. And I don’t You don’t You don’t stop the working contractors so we’ll persevere. Uh, it’s just like in the background. But that’s the that’s the construction noise is on my side. In case yes, there is there wondering. Um, all right, end of your fundraising. What do we have Thio Do you have to keep in mind, like overview first and we’ve got plenty of time to spend on some details?

[00:06:01.64] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s obviously that time of year. Um, it’s ah, it’s a particularly crazy time of Europe, but we can’t can’t stop the end of your fundraising. For most, you know, non profit sits the bread and butter moment for most org’s. Um, I would say what we’re hearing and what we’re seeing from a lot of clients, which we’ll talk about in more detail, is certainly the Should we do it? How do we do it this year? Super crazy? I would say Absolutely. Yes, yes and yes, very enthusiastically. You have to ask on Dhe. You can’t be afraid. Can’t be shying away from it. But I’d say the biggest piece that’s different this year. Um, it’s sort of the contextualizing and sort of the way you’re going to go about your messaging. Um, obviously, people know kind of the fundamentals, generally speaking. But I would say the biggest mistake we see nonprofits do is you sort of have, like, not that much messaging. It’s a little bit cold. And then suddenly you’re like, Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You just, like, go straight in to the asks, like right away. And you hammer your supporters, um, which you know, might work OK in some years. But I’d say this year it’s certainly worth thinking about sort of again, like the context, the ways in which you’re approaching that messaging, but certainly try to mix it up also a little this year. Maybe not. Just go straight with just hard core messaging, messaging, messaging. Ask ask ass. We’re gonna talk about some of the ways you can kinda add a little bit, um, into your typical end of your messaging for folks who have only ever done sort of just straight like, Oh, well, I’m going to do a couple of things around giving Tuesday and then I’m gonna just hammer the last week of December or something like that. I would encourage you toe start now and start planning earlier and start thinking about some different messaging, arcs and timing to just provide your list a little more relief on dhe to sort of stand out in different ways because it’s gonna be Yeah, I think looking for some of the few fewer dollars it might be around this year. It’s gonna be more important ever than sort of like really refining and honing messaging that you go into the end of your with

[00:07:13.72] spk_1:
it. Sounds like some of what you’re suggesting is a little softer compassion. Maybe absolutely no,

[00:08:46.24] spk_0:
that I think you’re right on it. Za compassion space. I think that, you know, really key components that folks would you typically dio and definitely should try to dio, maybe even more so. It’s not just sort of the typical sort of Hey, look at all the great things we’ve accomplished this year, which is always a real key piece of any end of your look at the great things that you know we’ve accomplished together. I think some of the big pieces years also messaging and we standpoint from your non profit to your supporters, even if they haven’t been that responsible, been, um, real active in giving this year because it’s been a little bit of ah, anomaly for everyone still really contextualizing. It is we, but also really recognizing that everybody is in the same boat right now, and everybody is in a obviously very uncertain, unknown, probably economically challenged position. But that doesn’t change the work that you’re doing the organization and the critical nature of the support that folks can give to really help. You know, diseases don’t stop in a pandemic. We obviously get worse there. You know, the environment obviously isn’t getting any better. All whatever your cause might be. It’s still critical work. It was critical before. It’s still critical. Don’t try to downplay sort of the need to stone message about the importance of the work you’re doing, but obviously be very compassion. Leading I think with the messaging is probably one of the more little things in the context of this and saying you’re Yeah, I

[00:08:49.94] spk_1:
understand. What are some of the pieces that you feel belong in your end of year work plan

[00:08:57.04] spk_0:
in the work plan? So I think some of the things that folks are kind of experimenting with even more so this year is ways to make your messaging connect with your folks. So some of the suggestions I’ve heard from people that were incorporating with some folks is even just doing small video snippets that you might embed or drive You can either embedded in the messages themselves that you’re sending or have links. You know, just just have ah, still of the video that links to the embed on your site. Things like that from your either from your executive directors, maybe, or some of your program people, or even most effectively, some of your he volunteers that you might have, or donors that have been long time supporters of the organization, um, to really bring again that message and bring that face to face element into your messaging when obviously we’re all in a very disconnected distanced world right now, bringing the face of the organization so I can not just the team members by folks who are out there doing your work. If you had the opportunity to host or do some virtual event work, or maybe did your gala remotely this year providing snippets there again and or links back to that on your website so that people can, you know, kind of review if they weren’t able to attend the you know that live version of it you know, China showing some of that work and again showing some of that interactivity that you are incorporating. Um, and if you didn’t have the opportunity to do that this year, you could even right now incorporate um opportunities first with live fundraising, even during your end of your campaign, I know it’s gonna be a busy month for folks, but especially early in the month, you could hold a little virtual fundraising event a ZX part of your end of your If you’re feeling

[00:10:58.56] spk_1:
early in which month

[00:11:01.24] spk_0:
early in December. Sorry, it’s sort of in the heavy. Giving somewhere either around giving Tuesday at the beginning of the month or somewhere that you find is a strategic moment for you, probably not as it gets closer to the end of the month because there’s just too much going on. So it’s a either leading up to or right around or immediately after. Um, you could do it. Thank you. Virtual kind of giving an opportunity. Thanks for all the work that we’ve done this year. Help us. You know, with a big push and end of your there are lots of different ways you can sort of incorporate that messaging into your into our potential. Like many live event, even in the December time frame that really draw enthusiasm into

[00:11:50.84] spk_1:
your I have a couple of a couple of questions around. What you just asked, What were you just talking about? The video snippets. Might we put those what, on a like a fundraising landing page?

[00:12:12.14] spk_0:
Yes. Yes. I mean, you could certainly obviously host them in the m e o or YouTube, but you embed them on a landing page, that right there as they’re watching it, they have the opportunity to give right at them, motivated the You can bend them and bend them right on your donation form for sure. And they can play right there as your and then they could give right at that moment. That’s your best case scenario. Don’t Don’t make people click too many times. You’ll lose them, obviously. Or don’t just send them to you. A video off YouTube. That doesn’t provide them the opportunity to give

[00:12:32.17] spk_1:
that a call to action. Right. Andi, we’re talking End of your fundraising. So that called action is make a gift,

[00:12:38.26] spk_0:
Make a gift and yeah,

[00:12:40.48] spk_1:
mentioned fundraising, Many events. They’re a little more about that flesh. Shut out. What do these look like? How do we promote them? How do we get folks to come to them?

[00:14:50.34] spk_0:
Yeah, I mean, just like obviously, with any event now in the in the virtual space, you can do it just as easily as this. Like you can hold a zoom call. You can provide folks links. Obviously. Zoom in any of these, you know, virtual. You know, Dylan, you want to provide security so that you’re not going to get spammed or you have too many other folks coming in. But if you send it out to your list or a segment after your list, you can also find this is an opportunity to say, Hey, my already active donors, I would like those folks to come to a special event. You could also make it sort of like a V i p kind of event or things like that, for for segments of your lips, like you’re high level donors or things like that, we could make it more personalized setting where smaller groups are coming together and having the opportunity to interact with each other. Lots of times, we we suggest, folks. Then hold a zoom in a conference style where you’re presenting and your attendees air and sort of listen Onley mode and you’re presenting content. And so the important pieces there are, you know, think about the message and you wanna put forth you obviously right, a full script. You’re doing lots of promotion again if you’re doing it in a very segmented way, you’re targeting those messages only just a smaller subsets of your list, or you could make it more broad, but you’re going to provide a secure log in for folks you’re going to then say, Who’s gonna be on that? Maybe maybe it’s just a now or two of, you know, thinking again. Highlights of the year. We want to really think you know folks who’ve turned out for us. We want to show some of the results. You’re putting together a little script, and you’re obviously building a message there of motivation, care, compassion, connection with your, you know, with your supporters and and providing throughout opportunities where you’re showing a link to give opportunities where you can again, like in bed. Some of these videos, later on a landing page of people weren’t able to attend and alive instance. And it’s all about compassion, first connection, understanding the importance of the work that you’re doing and just doubling down on the mission of your organization that work again. It’s still is still critical, but it’s really important to sort of just draft a script. Make sure you have, like if you’re gonna have key guests come in, you have them all and sort of that they’re in presenter mode. And so if you’re passing the baton, everybody knows when they’re speaking what they’re speaking about. You kind of drafted that all ahead of time and, you know, you could do run through. I highly recommend doing doing run throughs before you actually show up for a live event so that everybody knows sort of the cues and handoffs and all that and what’s gonna come next. And oftentimes people will put live, you know, snippets in the middle of prerecorded content, which helps sort of take the pressure off of, you know, needing to be live and speaking for the whole whole time. But usually an hour or two is plenty, and that’s all people really have to give, you know, a lot of times to attend some of these live events. I think people feel like they need to come up with, like, tons of content and tons of time. But mostly, we say, keep it short and sweet.

[00:16:43.65] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Just this week, a friend got an extensive quote in Business Insider magazine. I asked him how he landed it. He had a relationship with the journalist the writer called him when he needed someone with recruiting expertise. Turn to will help you build journalist relationships like that so that journalists call you. That’s how solid the relationships are. Turn to specializes in working with nonprofits. One of the partners, Peter Panda Pento, was an editor at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. They’re at turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to end of year fundraising. I’m hearing folks are mhm. I don’t know if burned out is too strong, not burned out with it without, But I’ll use it getting burned out with screen time.

[00:17:50.74] spk_0:
Oh, yeah, you don’t Your everybody right now is and I just call it zoom fatigue. Even if you’re not using Zoom gonna hang out whatever urine screen fatigue, screen fatigue. So I would say the other piece there is sort of make it fun, you know, make it like, interesting. And like people have been having I’ve seen really fun like little parties where people are, you know, encouraging other people to sort of show up, dressed up like have your like, maybe make it a virtual holiday party and giving that kind of thing and sort of like, you know, you’re not doing a lot of going out right now anyway, so go out, but stay in and sort of like, make it, um, make it fun as you can and make it sort of party like or really again, it’s It’s a good opportunity to really think and be in a space of gratitude for the folks that have continued to show up for your organization through obviously, what’s very topsy turvy kind of year and just again reemphasize the work that you’re doing and it is to continue it.

[00:18:08.44] spk_1:
So let’s talk about the pandemic because that’s obviously still in full bloom and will be through the end of this year. We’re talking end of your fundraising s. Oh, you did mention being mawr compassionate. Softer What other? What other advice are you giving around messaging?

[00:18:16.94] spk_0:
So I think it’s an interesting thing right now as you’re planning this, if you think about hosting either just the message you’re going to do in your emails or if you’re going to do some of these sort of adding video content or even go to live, think about the timing and which is gonna happen to us. You’re going to do this messaging in what is probably gonna be a really extra hard time, because we’ve had maybe a little bit of a respite over the summer where you’ve actually been able to go outside and you’re your mental space is probably okay right now. But really be thinking about were months into then winter and really being enclosed, and it’s gonna be a double down. I’m a little.

[00:18:55.59] spk_1:
We’re talking about doing something in late November or early December,

[00:18:59.16] spk_0:
like think about what? That’s going

[00:19:00.66] spk_1:
to full month. So it’s full all of October and all of November away,

[00:19:52.14] spk_0:
right? So you’re already like, you’re like, I’m I’m, you know, feeling even, maybe a little bit. Like I think this is gonna be a hard winter for a lot of folks just because of, well, who knows what’s gonna happen? The election, that whole You know, what not, but because the pandemic isn’t going away and I think it’s probably going to see a bit of a surge again, as we do with, like, most flu like, it’s just one of those things you kind of just be really cognizant of, like how to think about again, my personalization. And again, this is where you could take take your your segmenting with your list very seriously and kind of say okay, great thes air folks that I’m gonna go maybe a little bit softer with my message, you know, because maybe they have been on my list that haven’t been as active. Think about ways you can sort of take your key mission elements and, you know, just maybe try toe, tweak it in a bit. Maybe that you haven’t before or just think about ways you can serve again, like personalized it or keep it, um, you know, try new hooks. Try new ways to help people think about the ways in which your work Think about what’s been happening with the organization over the course of the year during the pandemic and how you maybe have had thio toe alter what you do a little bit or tweak it a little bit because of the, you know, distanced space were in and really, you know, to find that a little bit better for folks or help people make the connection. Sometimes, obviously, people aren’t seeing maybe how your work is tied or has been affected by the pandemic. Highlight some of those things because I think

[00:20:37.55] spk_1:
vulnerability like, don’t be afraid to be vulnerable.

[00:21:11.04] spk_0:
Absolutely, absolutely, like differentiate your messaging by. Here’s how we’ve been impacted. We’re right here with you were having struggles to don’t over downplay like doomsday and messaging, but sort of just be up. Be honest. We all been like we’ve been struggling. This has been a hard year for everybody. Here’s how it’s impacted us and put that out there because I think one of the things that’s been most helpful or multiple most interesting for us. Working with org’s is that vulnerable space. The don’t try to put on the sheen of Like Everything’s fine. It’s all gonna be OK. It’s OK to sort of say, you know that you’re worried and and the impact that is actually having on your work or how you had to

[00:21:24.25] spk_1:
appreciate that That that honesty absolutely openness again vulnerability.

[00:21:29.64] spk_0:
Its key. I think so. The compassion with you know, the this key. But I think the vulnerability is probably even a better word. Thio

[00:21:36.97] spk_1:
genuine. It shows that you’re genuine, sincere, absolutely human,

[00:21:41.55] spk_0:
E I mean, that’s

[00:21:43.29] spk_1:
lose our humanity over

[00:21:44.49] spk_0:
this. This is the space where the humanity I feel like actually Muchas there zoom fatigue. It actually, for me is help sort of bring a lot of humanness into people that I’ve had a very professional relationship with in the past, where you’ve actually been like Oh, you know, my kids were running through or, you know X is happening you’ve got contractors in your house, you This is it. This is life. This is who we are and really leading with that human to human connection. We see people in

[00:22:13.08] spk_1:
their kitchens. Absolutely. I saw someone in a in a bedroom because the kids were out in the other. The other parts of the house. I think that’s why should. She was in her

[00:22:49.34] spk_0:
best, like everyone’s trying. And so you’re like carving out your own. You’re trying to carve out a space to do your work. Be a partner, be a parent with all the different, be a daughter’s. You’ve got multi generations and houses. You’ve got all sorts of things happening, and it’s it’s showing in a way right now, which I think is actually quite beautiful on Dhe. I think if organizations can really lead with that space, I think that’s where people feel. The connection is what drives people to give. I mean more than sort of like Certainly it’s the impact that organization, but it’s like the people doing the messaging connect with the people who are, you know, driven to give. That’s you’ve got those key emotional moments that drive the giving and so trying to find those and again leading with that humanness vulnerability. It’s critical, critical right now more than anything, and people are starving for riel connection. And not just these sort of like Okay, great here these Polish, you know, webinars and hear all these great glassy materials. It’s like actually, we really, like yearn for the person connection that human connection is critical. So I would say, Definitely lead with that.

[00:23:39.04] spk_1:
I’ve always thought you know you just because you just referred to glossy pieces. I’ve always thought that sincerity Trump’s production values

[00:23:47.84] spk_0:
I don’t

[00:24:06.22] spk_1:
have toe have pro mix and lighting and pro video someone sincere with a with a phone in their hand, shooting themselves for 30 60 90 seconds with a heart felt thank you. Or here’s our need type message that I think that trumps all the whatever.

[00:24:31.64] spk_0:
I think that’s actually a good sort of also like kind of lesson or take away is like, don’t be afraid to try some of these things because you don’t have the right equipment or you don’t know what you’re doing, or it’s gonna feel like you’re gonna mess up well, good do. And don’t worry about having out like the best microphone or the lighting isn’t right or you’re gonna Look, you don’t have, like, look perfect. You know, you’re what, like, this is absolutely time. Just let all that stuff go. I think maybe before you’d have been maybe trying to be, like, put together a more polished video piece or something like that and have to have higher production team or something like that to do it. And I think a lot of times in the past you have folks would be really afraid to be like I can’t do like a video piece like, I I don’t I can’t afford to do that or whatever we get. You can, because you just have your you zoom or your Google meat or whatever, do it yourself or your phone exactly like you can do it. And it’s still with that connection that is going to drive people to give the glossy production piece like Not that you can’t. There isn’t a space for doing that at some point, but it’s not critical. It’s certainly not needed, and I think it doesn’t resonate as well,

[00:25:14.04] spk_1:
so you could have ah piece from your CEO or executive director? Totally. We’re talking about embedding email before embedding video email before, it could be something simple like that,

[00:25:23.54] spk_0:
Absolutely. And I honestly think that, like one of the things we’ve been trying to do a firefly is actually, I love executive directors. You’re amazing. You’re keeping it all together and you run all that stuff. But honestly, it’s the highlighting of the more of the front line staff. And the people like doing the dirty work. Sometimes you just want to be like those of the stories that, actually again, sometimes are told is often. And there’s sort of these bigger, yeah, kind of impact pieces. But if you just talk about you know Jane Smith, why is she does the work that she does? Why is she motivated? Even, you know, like, why does she show up every day and do the work that your organization,

[00:25:58.89] spk_1:
how your gift, how your gift helps me Jane do that work

[00:26:10.64] spk_0:
right? Exactly like that’s like, Yeah, I mean, I’ve had we’ve had some of the most amazing conversations with folks who are just why they’re motivated to do the work that they do every day at your organization is probably some of the most compelling content that you have, in addition to, obviously, the real life story of the impact you know, getting into and again like, maybe that’s the other pieces you’re highlighting if you have ah, direct impact type of organization, a story right from, you know, some family that’s been impacted by the work that you do, and they could tell their story. It’s again that getting as personal and real right now as possible is the motivator. Toe giving, I think the connection there.

[00:26:46.94] spk_1:
What about giving folks options? How much to give?

[00:28:41.24] spk_0:
Yeah. And again, this is again depending on how much data you have, your systems and how well you can segment, I’d say one of the biggest mistakes we also see people doing is not segmenting and giving folks, uh, different giving levels. Um, if someone has given, you know, $50 before, certainly starting them at 100 or something like motivate them like push them to go higher. Someone’s already given you 250 bucks. Start them, you know, with the form that says 500. I mean, like, really sort of try toe, motivate something, but you don’t want to give somebody, Obviously the $50 donor. Don’t drive them to the $500 form. So you do need to have a little bit of that segmentation. So this education and if you can’t or don’t know how to do dynamic gift arrays on your form based on, you know, don’t be afraid to even just say I’m going to create two or three forms and I’m gonna segment and send people toe for, maybe, or see if you can’t do in a dynamic format, don’t be afraid to at least try and give folks those different options. It is. There’s a million statistics out there about when you drive someone to a form that is higher, giving levels they will give more. They will. I mean, they just will. So go there, Get you know, mind your data. Find a way. Do whatever tools you have, find a way toe pull out and segment. You’re either non donors and drive them into at least an entry level of, you know, $25 starting going up or your mid level and your high level and drive them to the appropriate forms with the right giving levels don’t just sort of send them to that one generic form. You will see that a result with just a little bit of extra work to segment, um, and drive to the appropriate form.

[00:28:42.91] spk_1:
Absolutely. What about asking to make it monthly?

[00:30:06.74] spk_0:
Yeah, this is a moment where I think there’s always a little bit of tension for folks. Certainly, we want to just get the gift. Um, if you’ve got folks who and like, you know, there’s different, different times of the year that I think you could try to do one time to sustainer campaigns. Some argue very much. The end of your isn’t the time to try toe to do that because you’re just trying again, like get these, you know, mortgage gifts at the end of the year. But I find that if you could move into the that, the mid mid level donors that have been consistently will give, like a gift here, a gift there. This is a perfectly good time. Thio sort of turn it into sustain Ear’s for the following year. Again, if somebody is even giving you into the hundreds or thousands of dollars before do the math or again If you have the abilities with your tools toe, have it do it dynamically for you. Make it just so that that they become a recurring giver. They’re obviously going to get Mawr, but it feels like less impactful for them every month. Oh, you’re just going to give $20 a month? Oh, and you know what that’s gonna be because they’ve only given you. Maybe they’ve given you 100 $50 before as a one time gift or a couple $100. But if you turn it into that Oh, if you could just give us $25 a month, that’s equal to you know, three coffees or whatever. Um, obviously, we all know that the how the math works. So But I would say, Don’t try to take your you know, if somebody’s Onley giving you once before or those types of done again, it’s all about the data that you can collect a one time donor on Lee. Obviously, they’re gonna be less likely to just suddenly turn into a sustainer. But those folks who have given you a gift here and a gift there, or they give you every time it end of year. But that’s the only time they give those air really key people to sort of zero in on and say those air critical and more likely to turn into sustain er’s attend

[00:30:39.10] spk_1:
up here. So you do it for the right folks. And then it’s not likely that you’ll see a reduced end of your performance by asking, Would you like to make it monthly?

[00:30:50.94] spk_0:
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s your again. They have to look at your different data points. So if you say well, they would have given me $250 as a one time gift it in a year. But now I’ve turned them into a you know, a $40 month sustainer. Obviously you’re getting you’re getting $40 rather than 250 at end of year. But obviously the impact for your organization is much greater. Oh, yeah, you have to sort of. You have to look at the data carefully so you don’t just go about. My overall gifts might have decreased slightly, but my overall long lasting impact of the organization has certainly gone up.

[00:32:57.64] spk_1:
It’s time for tony stick to planned giving accelerator. I told you last week we extended the first class. So the first class is gonna start January 1st 2021. This is a brain dump. Everything I know about how to start and grow your plan giving program, I am going to teach to plan giving accelerator members. You want to get your plan giving program started in 2021. You’ve heard me talk about this so many times on I’m not done. By the way. Uh, if you don’t have a plan giving fundraising program, you can start in 2021. You don’t need a lot of money. You don’t need expertise. This is not only for your wealthy donors. It’s not gonna hurt your other forms of fundraising. All these air myths that people use to make a plan giving this black box this complex thing that they don’t think they can do on their own. You can. I’m gonna teach you how become a member of planned giving accelerator. You got to get everything I know about how to get this program started in 2021. All the information you need more detail and how to join is that planned giving accelerator dot com. I hope you’re going to join me, that is, tony. Stick to Let’s return, shall we to end of year fundraising with Jen Fraser. Just the importance of segmentation a couple of times.

[00:34:21.14] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s critical, and I know that we work with a lot of organizations, and that’s a burden or a barrier. It’s like this. There’s a There’s a level of effort there, that a lot of work. They’re still just sort of sending the same message. So their whole list and, you know, you get mixed results with that, I’d say not Not effective, you know, really, Overall is a strategy. So even simple segmentation that was like, You’ve never given before you’ve given once or you’ve given multiple times like almost every tool out there can allow you to segment. At least that was, you know, those kind of big buckets, Um, and in the messaging that you’re sending, obviously is a lot more of a gratitude stance, even with non donors. Just thanks for being a part of our community and that sort of stuff. You can still find ways toe. Thank people for being on your list the type of gratitude that you then put to a previous donor is much greater. So you can certainly be like Thank you for this. Think if you’re a lifetime giving amount, Thank you for, you know, also, um if they if you also know they’ve done other things, they volunteer. They’ve come to events like again. The more data you can find out about and the more personalized those messages can become, the better. You know, the stronger the connection you’re gonna make with that individual on the receiving end of that, the more they’re going to be motivated to go. Oh, they this organization cares. They’re paying attention. They know that I’m involved. They know what I dio and they care.

[00:34:36.16] spk_1:
They’re acknowledging there, thanking their grateful thinking before right?

[00:34:39.56] spk_0:
Not

[00:34:59.84] spk_1:
gratitude. Yeah, there’s back to humanity. Gratitude, gratitude, compassion, humanity. All those things really should often be in our fundraising or always be always be not just often always be in our fundraising, but like I hear so many times we will each heard 1000 times in the past six months so much more now because of the pandemic, because folks aer isolated, reach out and be that much more humane.

[00:35:10.68] spk_0:
Compassionate? What The compassion

[00:35:14.49] spk_1:
heartfelt, but I can’t think of any other adjectives.

[00:37:15.73] spk_0:
Well, those were all perfect on. That’s like, you know, and I would suggest that you do some sit down, you know, even just your team or you can, you know, get some messaging help from folks or whatever, but just sit and marinate in that space for a minute. Like, really think about your messaging. Really think about being in that compassion and vulnerable all those operatives you just listed in that space and thinking, What do I want to hear? You know, from organized Because obviously everybody that works and non profit almost I would say 100% of them give. It’s not their non profits. So think about what motivates you when you receive a message and, you know, really kind of double down on that and say, Gosh, alright, and spend the time if you can. Um, you know, if you’re starting now very much like, what can we do? How can we pull the data out? How can we learn more? How could we segment better? Um, and taking that time, we’ll have, um, really, really big impact on the outcomes that you’ll see in the giving space in the giving time because it’s a again, the more personalized, the better that connection, the deeper and the more you can you not be in a space of gratitude, I think is critical. Um, and it doesn’t have to be this huge burden so it can. Even even simple segments can make a big difference and taking people have given over. You know, you have to look at your giving and figure out where your thresholds or I won’t and say, Oh, these are the exact dollar amounts where you want a segment. But you look at your overall giving and you find where those breaking points are and where you really like, have a smaller again. How do you really, really, really pamper some of those high dollar donors and really show how much you care? What can you get back to them? Are there things that you can actually physically get back? Are you Are you sending gifts back or what? Do you? Are you sending stuff in the mail? What is it that helps really differentiate and show those folks, um, you know that you care in your

[00:37:22.94] spk_1:
That’s where a personalized video could be outstanding, like a or one of the other companies that does that, you know, Right? Snippets. 30 seconds a minute on the fly. You You’re walking Well, I walk on the beach, You’re walking on the beach. That’s the first thing I think of. But you’re walking on the sidewalk. Wherever you are. You can shoot a quick video to thank someone for a gift that just came in.

[00:39:01.72] spk_0:
Ah, 100%. That’s actually profit one. I didn’t actually talk about that. It’s That’s the follow up and the next steps. So you know, you get the gift. Amazing. What does that immediate auto think? Look like? I think a great opportunity. There is also. Yeah, Do maybe a video there or again. That’s that, Like viral piece, obviously. Then how can we help you really be motivated to just tell a couple of their friends about the work that we’re doing? Maybe they’re not even on our list. Maybe they’re not obviously gonna get incorporated into your end of your giving. But how can we then take this as an opportunity to grow your just overall this size? And then just to double down on that anybody that’s new, that’s coming into your list during this as a space. How are you welcoming them into your organization? IDEO personalized quick videos from again BDs or other staff? Or again, like the folks who are impacted by your work. Those all really bring a new person onto your list s so much more deeply, quickly. And then if they come in and they’re new, understanding that segment if they come in new in the in the next, you know 90 days how your messaging them and welcoming them and easing them into, you know, a gift. Ask like you don’t again like First Message like Out of the Gate. Even though it’s end of year, it’s suppressing the right folks to as well, a segmenting the right folks to the right message to. So there are. There are several different streams that happened in there, and certainly these tools that have really great marketing automation set up make it that much easier for folks You’re not, and they’re trying to do like a ton of like, re segmenting and re personalizing and data manually work on the automation pieces, understanding when folks are coming in and the different ways they’re coming in. And if they do that first gas, what’s the next? What’s the next and next? And

[00:39:30.44] spk_1:
so are there some tools that you like that you can

[00:41:30.91] spk_0:
recommend? You know, pretty much all the tools Right now, I think male Champ has good stuff for folks were just looking for a pretty, you know, good industry point for messaging. We use all use the market animation that’s involved, the every action and engaging network tools are great because then they just high right into those you know, donation forums that you make as well in the system. Obviously, um, even illuminate There’s great messaging automation. There’s so many email marketing tools out there, but those are the ones we work in the most. I would say that we find the majority of our clients, um, in and I’ve really Then, you know, I’m surprised I’m not surprised. It it feels like a lot and then be like, Oh, I gotta, you know, turn and, like turn into a data scientist almost to figure out how to, like, really do effective segmenting and messaging. But there are some simple automation is you can set up in these tools to really help take the burden off of you as well. And you can set a bunch of this stuff up, obviously a lot of time. So when the frantic nous of the like giving Tuesday to end of Your madness happens, most of those were already set and you have the message in there. Obviously, it’s not like a big surprise right now. You should have two sets of messages going on right now. Outcome A from the election and outcome. Be like Just do yourself a favor and right both sets now because you don’t wanna have to be scrambling. So many people in 2016 had all their yea Hillary messages already written. I hadn’t even thought that it would go the other way and let were literally scrambling. I don’t want to think about the other outcome, but unfortunately we have to say that’s a possibility. So do yourself a favor and just be ready with, you know, both both sets of messaging ahead of time so you can, you know, push the right one forward and you’re not scrambling at that moment to come up with the right messaging in that. What could be pretty devastating outcome.

[00:41:33.36] spk_1:
So so one letter has a picture of rays of sunshine. Another one. Another one has a dumpster fire

[00:41:40.26] spk_0:
on even then,

[00:41:42.23] spk_1:
conflagration in

[00:41:43.25] spk_0:
a sea. Hard as that is, it is challenging. And as it is, trying not to be overly doomsday if that with a bad outcome on the election end of your giving this again still gonna happen and still critical, and it actually might be even. Sadly, it’s sometimes the bad outcomes or more motivator. But either don’t try to capitalize it on too much and don’t try to be too dooms days. You kind of have to weave, and they’re in the middle between not like the world is on fire and we’re dying. We have to give and, you know, organizations or

[00:42:14.95] spk_1:
and let’s be egalitarian because I I don’t do politics on plan Giving that profit on non profit radio. Maybe doomsday scenario for you is a Biden,

[00:42:24.90] spk_0:
Absolutely. I mean, absolutely, that’s what they either outcome. You have to be ready with how your organization is kind of position, either outcome, So you have to start it just be like whatever that means for your organization. The outcome will obviously have a big impact. So just be ready with both sets. That’s Yeah, keeping it, you know, keeping it neutral. Just be ready in whatever that looks like for your

[00:42:50.20] spk_1:
order testing. Testing? How do we know if we’re doing these things correctly? How do we test different outcomes? What should

[00:45:26.99] spk_0:
we be testing? There is a lot, you know that you can still dio I’d say probably one of the most critical is, um, you know, in the midst of it, you could test subject lines because that’s obviously the first thing that’s gonna motivate somebody to get to hope it. And obviously, then there’s the subject line. Testing Almost every tool obviously has a B testing. And in the midst of it, you can send out and again when you are making your plan and your campaign calendar for the year, you build in some time for some testing and almost all these tools within take the winter and push push the winter to the fullest. Um, the other big one is, um, testing your landing pages and or you’re giving pages. So if you’re not familiar with something like Google optimized or something like that, take the opportunity now ahead of time and put a form A and form be could be things like one column or two column or one step or multi step different language. Different fields that you show that air default or required. There’s lots of different ways you could test and optimize your form again. Maybe you could start testing and seeing how a form with a video or without how those air resonating even ahead of time and take that information and put that into the equation of saying, Okay, great, you know, with our list, because every list an audience does perform a little bit differently. You can obviously go look and see what industry trends air showing. Um, there’s been big swings of, like, the one step form or the multi step form or the whatever, but you can try some of those, but I find that actually, what’s even more than the one step of the multi stuff? You could kind of get that down, but then within that you’ve got messaging in a tree fields on dhe, just overall. Um, you know all those conversion rates, you see what’s happening for, like abandonment rates and that sort of stuff. So looking to see which of those air happening on your form, so and then you know, beyond the subject line, Um, the message, content and layout itself. You could test, you know, more of a. I think we always, you know, we tend to move towards less content is better, But again, every every list performed a little differently. So just think about like Mawr images, fewer images, less words, more words in your messages themselves. You contest that now you know, do a lot of baby against that and then the follow up again, like we just talked about through that immediate think once you do get a conversion, what what’s the best thing to put in that next message? Should it be, tell friends, should it be like test that like what? What’s pressing for people? Once they do make a gift or do do a particular action? Always test that the next action, because that’s the most critical moment in the life cycle. With that, with that, you know, supporter, they’re already there. They’re motivated. You’ve got their attention. What’s that? Next thing you’re asking is you test that for

[00:46:30.28] spk_1:
sure. Time for our last break. Dot drives dot drives Engagement dot drives relationships dot drives is the simplest donor pipeline fundraising tool. If you want to move the needle on your prospect and donor relationships, get the free demo for you because you’re a listener. There’s also a free month. It’s all at the listener landing page we’ve got but loads more time for end of year fundraising. General, we’re testing some of these things like subject line or videos, message content. What’s the minimum size test like if you’re sending If your segment is 25 people,

[00:46:42.68] spk_0:
well, then you’re

[00:46:44.87] spk_1:
what What makes a legitimate test?

[00:46:47.71] spk_0:
I mean, I was a Yeah, depending on the size of your list, Um, I would like to get 10% you know, 5 to 10% at least of your list as a test. But, you know, you would like to ideally have, you know, again, depending on the size of your list, if you’re only gonna have under 100 or something like that, any any segment. Generally speaking, you’re not gonna have statistically significant amounts in there. Let’s say you have, but that’s okay. I mean, I would still say test But you have to know that there are There’s a break off point where you’re not going toe have, like, really statistically significant data. But you’re going to say, Hey, this this is the data I’ve got. I’m gonna run with it even if it wouldn’t pass the stats test, you know, test are

[00:47:32.22] spk_1:
it’s worth testing. Even a segment

[00:47:35.23] spk_0:
of sizes. Small. I would test, but I would say try to take a least a 5% sample. Um, I like a 10. You know, at least a 10% sample of your list and do run out side by side and then give it. You know, I would like to also give it. I give it 12 hours, you know, to look through like, how often people open 2012 to 24 hours before you then blast the winner to the remainder of the list

[00:48:01.36] spk_1:
for the other 90 to 95%. Yeah, okay. But you prefer 10% test.

[00:48:06.09] spk_0:
I mean, I would say you want again. Then like have a 5% getting a 5% right. 10% of your list, get a B, and then they get the winner to the remaining 90

[00:48:21.27] spk_1:
percent remaining. 90%? Yeah. All right. We got some time left. What? What? Haven’t asked about what? Haven’t you talked about that?

[00:48:26.37] spk_0:
You know, I would say, You know, I think there’s a lot of content in here. Maybe just sort of like a quick recap of sort of the Yeah, well,

[00:48:35.52] spk_1:
radio is jam packed with information that

[00:48:39.99] spk_0:
people like. Well, I’m talking. Well,

[00:48:41.54] spk_1:
they that’s podcast is ideal. Go back. Listen again.

[00:48:44.97] spk_0:
Listen again. You can always go back and

[00:48:47.10] spk_1:
take notes for your office to have discussions. Uh,

[00:48:54.91] spk_0:
tomorrow Tomorrow. It’s already remember September

[00:48:55.45] spk_1:
releasing this the week of September 28th

[00:48:58.33] spk_0:
grade. So fourth quarter is a week away. Yeah, I would say also, I was just pointing. Maybe a couple of resource is for people. If people are not familiar with the M N R benchmarks study that comes out every year and are seminar, so their website

[00:49:17.10] spk_1:
Hold on, hold on. Are you saying the letters m and r like Mike November Romeo or M

[00:49:26.17] spk_0:
and R and are

[00:49:26.84] spk_1:
thank you

[00:50:21.76] spk_0:
like Mike and Ross eso my NMR. But their website is m r s dot com, because it’s m and our Strategic Service’s, but it’s M R s s dot com. They have a benchmarks study that they put out every year. That is like a data playhouse, like they have. They get data from not just their clients. They put out these big, huge surveys and they bring in all this data and they analyze giving trends to the million degree, their charts and graphs and data and insights and all these things that you could go in. Look for your particular verticals. You can look for your list size. You can look for outcomes. They look at all sorts of factors along the giving spectrum and sort of say, here are basically industry trends across all these non profit. So if you’re looking for, you know, advice, like, what are other people seeing what air? You know, folks, you know, best practices that they’ve seen that great results. It is chock full of data in there. I mean, there are a million of these, like my favorite ones come from seminar. I think black would actually puts out a great um, it’s again like a giving guide. Neon serum has a great giving guide There, just lots of, um industry kind of stalwarts in the in the space that have these guys where you could go read and get information and sort of kind of, you know, put more arsenal into your I don’t like to use military or, you know, gun references, but it’s like putting more information into your tool belt. I’m saying, Great, I’ve got more tools. I’ve got more data and more thoughts about how I’m going to structure my end of your campaign to make it successful.

[00:51:14.27] spk_1:
Non neon C R m A ZX Well, as blackboard

[00:51:18.98] spk_0:
black bodies have one good ones

[00:51:21.34] spk_1:
s dot com

[00:51:28.06] spk_0:
like those are the three biggies. I would probably throw out there, um and really thought

[00:51:29.99] spk_1:
the platforms that you mentioned for email or and segmentation and personalization you mentioned mail chimp, Was it every action illuminate is that the

[00:51:54.27] spk_0:
41 illuminate illuminate engaging networks every action, you know, those were sort of the big ones that we have again. And also then I just mentioned neon neon is a great platform as well. Platform. So there are several, um, you know

[00:51:59.33] spk_1:
e take you off your Oh, no, you wrap up, but

[00:52:43.70] spk_0:
no, no, no. Those are good. I was gonna say that one’s r e just hammering home sort of again like that. The vulnerability and humanity and the messaging. I would say, if anything, just don’t use your standard messaging this year. That’s probably my biggest take away is really take a look at your messaging, your vulnerability, your positioning shiny impact being and that kind of, oh, bananas vulnerable self testing. Why you can at this point, um, make the time to do some testing. There’s nothing worse than also, then sitting out great messages and having them land on really kind of non high conversion landing pages. I guess the biggest thing I haven’t mentioned yet, which I’ll really throw it is mobile, mobile, mobile.

[00:52:52.30] spk_1:
Of course, it’s like it’s very you need to be mobile optimized by now,

[00:52:59.23] spk_0:
it bears repeating please. Almost. It’s like really start with your forms on a website on a phone, like something

[00:53:05.21] spk_1:
like 75% of emails or opened on a mobile device.

[00:53:08.41] spk_0:
At least I think that number every time I see one, it just keeps going

[00:53:12.38] spk_1:
going up. Maybe tonight

[00:54:54.34] spk_0:
eso your email and that landing page. Like those two pieces, I can’t stress enough because you’re gonna ask You’re gonna do video. Make sure that video, you know, everything is all former. Just test the heck out of everything like you really need to be like and as much as you can you can you use like, an email on acid to test on multiple platforms. So in multiple devices, because you know, email on acid as a tool that lets you as a non profit push your message and and those landing pages and, well, the emails on email and acid Google after my different operating systems. But a email on acid will show you what your email looks like on an iPhone 10 on iPhone six on an android, this on a galaxy, blah, blah, blah. And then you can say, Oh, because it looks amazing on your iPhone, but looks like garbage, you know, on the Samsung. Well, you know, you have thio look across all the devices and then you go Or are they reading this in Gmail? Are they reading this and outlook? Are they reading this and whatever So it’s email clients and vices. Let me tell you, that alone will keep you busy. Just testing on acid. Yeah. Email on acid. I mean, really, it’s crazy the amount of information that you see, and then you have to go back into the code and tweet like what has been quite a bit of this time. Like when you change your design, you change your layout, radio, you have to take it. You have to take into account the operating system and the device that somebody, the email client and then the device that somebody is looking because, um, it’s a crazy world there. That’s that’s probably the hardest part of making sure your emails look well. The landing pages are less taxing, but still take into account the operating system and the device.

[00:55:14.74] spk_1:
All right. Thank you. I wanna ask. I want to close by asking you what? What fun thing you have put together lately? You said you’d like to put together planning budgets. Ikea furniture. What have you done? Fun put together.

[00:55:20.44] spk_0:
I’m actually right now in the midst of redesigning my kitchen so that

[00:55:24.76] spk_1:
you have big contractors stuff going on.

[00:55:27.34] spk_0:
Well, I’m in the planning phase.

[00:55:29.32] spk_1:
Design you design. Okay, I’ve

[00:55:31.04] spk_0:
got a phase one right now where I’m gonna be heading to Ikea pretty soon and doing a pantry and sort of a built in area around my refrigerator. That’s my That’s my next one project and having answered, that’s my face one. So that’s just sort of blend a little bit with some of the existing kitchen before I can then carry that piece forwarding to the other cabinets and things like that.

[00:55:53.49] spk_1:
You ever looked to Container Store for organization stuff? Container store?

[00:55:58.94] spk_0:
I do love that. I kind of get lost in the madness of the container store because I love organizing, like in compartments and things like that. One of my favorite.

[00:56:08.21] spk_1:
Work it into your kitchen. I could door hanger or something.

[00:56:11.63] spk_0:
E I’ll see. Yes, it’s combination. If you have the E. K. F writes the structure and then in the container store gives you like all those storage options. But

[00:57:23.63] spk_1:
like all right, thank you very much. Jen. The company is that firefly partners dot com And she is, of course, at Jen at Firefly. Yeah, not Jenna T. Firefly. Next week, more from 20 NTC. Most likely if you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo and by dot drives raise more money changed more lives for a free demo and a free first month. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein It with me next week for non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be

[00:57:27.33] spk_0:
great. Thank you, Thank you so much.

Nonprofit Radio for February 22, 2019: Flash Fundraising & DEI and Governance II

I love our sponsors!

Do you want to find more prospects & raise more money? Pursuant is a full-service fundraising agency, leveraging data & technology.

WegnerCPAs. Guiding you. Beyond the numbers.

Credit & debit card processing by telos. Payment processing is now passive revenue for your org.

Fundraising doesn’t have to be hard. Txt2Give makes it easy to receive donations using simple text messages.

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

Listen Live or Archive:

My Guests:

Matt Scott: Flash Fundraising
Prepare. Launch. Engage. These are the essential elements for rapidly and successfully fundraising when breaking news intersects with your cause. Matt Scott from CauseMic talks us through.




Gene Takagi

Gene Takagi:DEI & Governance II
Gene Takagi and I wrap up last week’s thoughtful convo on diversity, equity and inclusion, with mechanics for your board: by-laws; recruiting; committees; decision making; oversight metrics; and more. He’s our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group.




Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

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

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

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

Sponsored by:

View Full Transcript

Transcript for 427_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190222.mp3.mp3

Processed on: 2019-02-24T04:09:03.387Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2019…02…427_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190222.mp3.mp3.516903415.json
Path to text: transcripts/2019/02/427_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190222mp3.txt

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 forced to endure your Asef Feliz. Um, if you blew my mind with the idea that you missed today’s show flash fund-raising Prepare, launch, Engage these air the essential elements for rapidly and successfully fund-raising when breaking news intersects with your cause. Matt Scott from Cause Mike talks us through and d I and governance to Jean Takagi and I wrap up last week’s thoughtful conversation on diversity, equity and inclusion with mechanics for your board by-laws recruiting committee’s decision making oversight metrics. He’s our legal contributor and principle of Neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group attorneys take to act blue. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuant by Wagner CPS guiding you Beyond the numbers wagner cps dot com By Tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash Tony Tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text. NPR to four four, four nine nine nine Here is Matt Scott with Flash fund-raising Matt Scott is CEO of Cause Mike and an industry leading Non-profit fundraiser. He helped Team Rubicon scale from two hundred fifty thousand dollars in annual revenue in two thousand eleven to thirty million dollars in two thousand seventeen twenty seventeen. He’s led the company to help a diverse range of non-profits raise millions of dollars online, including Movember Volunteers of America and the Humane Society. He’s at Matt B. B. A, and the company is at cause Mike Crew and cause. Mike dot com Matt Scott Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me really appreciate it. Pleasure, Pleasure. We’re gonna talk about flash fund-raising. And so I presume that the first thing Teo need to have in place is preparation so that you know, like what kinds of topics and issues are going to cause you tow burst into this flash Yeah, absolutely. So we kind of defined flash fund-raising as any time bound campaign, meaning it’s not going to be an evergreen campaign they’ve got running all the time. But to your point, Tony, it’s really rooted in in this notion of what kind of big moment they’re related to. The impact of your non-profit has in the world is newsworthy. Right? So how do you leverage or capitalize on those newsworthy moments? They relate to your organisation in order to raise funds and awareness. And Dr supporters Okay, so we really kind of finding is that Yeah. And, you know, if something relates to your mission in the news on and you are silent, you know, then I think you risk becoming irrelevant. Yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean, whether you were somebody like our client u s A for UNHCR working with, you know, refugee communities all around the world, or you’re someone like Mercy Corps who we work with. Who could capitalize on, uh, you know, the hurricane in Puerto Rico or the earthquake. And, Paul, you really gotta look for opportunities to be relevant in the news cycle. It’s an opportunity for you, Really, You know, both get your brand out there, but also to acquire new supporters. How How suddenly do you need to be ableto activate when we’re going to get to the preparation? Were not act activation yet launching yet. But I mean, how how quickly do you need to be ready to go? Yeah. I mean, I think it’s really important that that you’ve got the systems and process and method in place in order to capitalize on a news cycle within those first twelve to twenty four hours. I mean, if you take something like Hurricane Hardy Urmila Maria last year and you look a, you know, just really what does that cycle look like? It’s within the first twenty four to forty eight hours where the news is mace drawn to it. And that’s when you’ve got the greatest opportunity, too. Galvanize your base of supporters as well as engaged new supporters. I would say you need to move quickly within the first twenty four hours on the news cycle. In order, Teo really kind of be relevant. And then so I guess tangential to this because we’re talking about fund-raising. But you also want to have a communications plan in place so that you can activate quickly. Journalists. You want to be in touch with bloggers, other influence leaders influencers that you want to be in touch with when again when you know as you’re saying, something hits the news. So you can you can activate quickly on the communication side. Not, you know, not fund-raising related, but trying to get out to the media. Bloggers fear, etcetera. Exactly. I think of kind of two approaches to the communications plan, and both of them you absolutely had on in the head are all about being prepared. The first one is having a list of media outlets in building a relationship with those media outlets and people there prior to master over some news moment, right? So that they know that you’re a trusted source. You don’t want to use that news moment as a as a chance to reach out to them cold. You really kind of want to build that relationship in advance. Also, you want to think about how do you make it as easy as possible for you to be featured as a subject matter expert in the event of a newsworthy event? How are you going to make. It is easiest possible for them to ask you critical questions or to provide context of how your organization is driving impact to solve whatever problem it is that you’re facing. The second piece of it is really comes down to having a multi-channel communications plan, and this is a lot more in the work, you know, in the control of the non-profit. So that includes everything from, you know, SMS. Mmm. So text messaging, chap pot, email, marketing, social media, paid ad paid search How do you develop like a full multi-channel communications plan that ultimately has a single narrative and across all of those channels, but the actual messages slightly different, unique to those channel requirement. Yeah, excellent. Excellent. And listeners you’ll remember had Peter panepento on, and I think it was December and around his book, which I can remember the name of. But we talked all about communications plan and a public relations and a media strategy. Take back public relations. That’s not quite right having a media strategy. And we did talk about what what Matt is talking about, you know, having in place relationships and a plan in advance. So if you want to hear a flower on on a media strategy, including flash moments, go to tony martignetti dot com and just search Peter panepento and that that show will come up. It was a pressure was last December, or was it was November. Okay, so, Matt, so thanks for that. Well, digression on communications. I put you on the spot because that’s not your not your expertise. But thanks for thanks for weighing. And that was that was valuable. Um, all right, so let’s go back to strictly the fund-raising. And what what technology do you need to have in place in advance? Yeah, that’s a great question. So first and foremost, you need I make sure that you have a sierra. Some of our favorite theorems, their sales force for kind of some other organizations that wanted fund-raising solution. All in one, there’s Sierra something like fund-raising straight AA lot of more established organizations. They’re using products like, uh, like blackbaud, Right. But at the end of the day, you wantto want a place where you can collect dahna information as those donations start to come in. Beyond that, you also need to think about like, the top of funnel. So from acquisition, how are you really keeping track of which acquisition channels are working? So if you put out those paid Searcher paid social ads, how can you ensure that you’re seeing return on investment? You need a way to capture thie email address at the very least of the supporter or some form of communication, like a phone number, so we can text you also, of course, need a way to collect donations. So some of our favorite platforms for that include give lively, which is entirely free for non-profits pretty much disrupting the space right now. Getting integrate seamlessly with sales for you also got stuff like classy or fund-raising, both excellent classrooms and innovative sales lorts. And so you want to have a way to kind of take those donations right? But you also want to have an email service provider in place and, increasingly, more and more our clients. They’re seeing a lot of success around text messages and using SMS and Chapa. So we think it’s really important that you also have, you know, leverage a platform like Twill Leo, which you know is an amazing product that is near free for non-profits on and allows you to send one on one SMS and mmm messages to your constituents. So I think in terms of overall, you need a way to acquire and track your acquisition channels. You need to see our AMAH place deposits that in for me, Agent, you need to make sure that you have a way to process donations. Then you gotta have on the communication side, at the very least, a stronger but no service provider as well as an ability to text message your your constituents. I say those are the fundamental elements. Of course, there’s a lot of other a lot of other things that can go into a great text back, But those were really the fundamental Okay, we’re gonna take our first break. Matt. When we come back, I’m gonna, uh, tease out something that you sort of suggested. You didn’t say it, but I just sort of blackbaud razor’s edge. I wonder if those air getting antiquated even though they’re so huge. I mean that not those that razor’s edge product. So we’re going to die aggressive labbate. So give thought to that You got, like, thirty seconds and then I’m going to be on spot again pursuant their newest free E book, The Art of First Impressions. It’s all about donor-centric track new donors making it You need to make that smashing hit first impression. That’s what this is about. The book. It’s got six Guiding principles of Ineffective acquisition strategy. How to Identify your Unique value. Plus, it’s got some creative tips. You’ll find it at the landing. Paid the listener landing page tony dot m a slash pursuing capital P for please. All right, now, let’s go back. Tio, Matt Scott and Flash Fund-raising. So So, Matt, it was just like an inflection and you’re in your voice. Is blackbaud becoming, ah, dinosaur, even though it’s enormous in the market? Or Or did I misread your tongue? Uh uh, political answering this question now he’s hitting on you at the end of the day. Here’s what I’ll say. We’ve moved dozens of organizations off blackbaud and on they’ll force. We have yet to move anybody from sales first blackbaud. Um, but at its core, this is this is kind of the fundamental difference on, you know, sales forces really disrupted the space and the main different. You’ve got an open source platform where you’re able to use best in class female service. Best in class. Uh, you know, text messaging or best in class fund-raising. And you’re able to integrate all of those things in an open way where blackbaud forces you really to use their products. So when you think about you know it’s really come down the innovation, it seems like everybody else’s innovating. And and I think that it’s really important that non-profits go down the way where they’re going to have the ability to capitalized on major trends in the market, like the ability to monitor what’s going on on social media or the ability to really robotically track. Uh, you know, your ad spending conversion and as far as I can tell it can’t say that I You know, I’m all knowing about Blackbaud by any means. But I will say that, you know, we’ve been very satisfied with sales force and the ability to recommend that in class solutions to our non-profit clients that integrate into a system seamlessly really interesting. I So I’m boiling it down to open source versus proprietary. Ifyou’re on Blackbaud, you’ve got to use their plug ins. You gotta buy there. You gotta buy their add ons exactly. Right. At the end of the day, they weren’t forced to innovate. They were really the only players in the field of battle, you know, five years ago. And that makes a really big difference. The sales force still have first ten licenses for ah non-profit are free. That’s correct, gang. With the non president’s success, pack the first ten licenses training non-profit or free. Um, And then you’ve got to, like, give lively right there. Entirely free non-profits that integrated sales, They’re seamlessly. You’ve got a lot of non-profit discounts for Tulio. Male chimps. You got a lot of options there that just aren’t available. Okay, Okay. Say, Say what? What? What’s the programme again called on Sales Force sales force. What? Oh, non-profit success back. Okay, we’re given unpaid, unpaid shoutout to sales force because all right, so I think they need it. Yeah, right. They should be our biggest. Have four corporate sponsors. They should be the largest stations. Should be owning this. No owning this show. No, I own the show. It’s like a carry away. It’s not Salesforce non-profit radio, but yeah, they OK, I agree. All right, So I heard you. I heard you’re right. I read you. Right. I’m glad. Okay. Um, so we’re still in the preparation stage. You’ve got something called a campaign kit. What? What is this? We’re still in preparation. Yeah. Yeah. So really help our fine set up in advance, right? Like, what is that Multi-channel communications plan Look like? You need to make sure we have clearly defined brand guidelines. So what is your voice? What is your tone with style? Uh, what do you want to get out there? It’s really important. We start going across all these different channels because you want people to know, to be familiar with your brand. You want them, whether it’s the first that they’re hearing about you or their longtime supporters, you don’t want any surprises, right? You want someone to know this is a team Rubicon, This is mercy. This is the Humane Society. I know that because it’s strong. Brand guy won. Second thing you want to do is have a graphic kit teed up. So let’s say that you’re you know, the origin Humane Society. One of the clients. They respond to disasters as well. So if you know that that’s not your primary mission. But it’s something that is a service you provide. So when there’s wild fires, for example, they went down to California and rescued puppies and kittens to what other lies have been displaced. They pre-tax and we set up graphics in advance that had direct needs that showcase the work that they were doing that connected a supporter. The actual impact in the field. You also want to have a list of talking points, right? These are things that anybody on your team can point to, a reference that Khun clearly simply articulate. Exactly the you know what the purpose of your work is. That’s a really key point. And finally you really wantto have kind of the sample emails. Text Pete up. So these air urgent appeal emails are urgent appeals tax that clearly again demonstrates your target audience. The impact that you’re having, the fields and the urgency. It is important the customizes for each and every event. So it’s important that you don’t just think about it. It’s like, Okay, I’m sending out this temple it every time. Uh, but at the same time, there are, you know, there are certain aspects of it that you can pre planned for us. The final piece of, you know, kind of a campaign hit, if you will, is segmentation. We spend a lot of time helping our clients segments, their communications. It’s all about meeting each and every constituents on their preferred platform with their preferred message. There prefer time Dr Conversions to derive from using for the non-profit. So we like to think about donor-centric fund-raising and advocate. And within each of those major profile sites you need to develop a multi-channel communication plan, cleared grand guidelines, great visual, clear messaging on the talking points and lots of appeal. That action. What about making this all or subsets of it available publicly so that you can engage some people who might want to do their own like Peer-to-peer campaign around your your flash campaign, you share these share the stuff publicly. Absolutely. You just hit it on the head, Tony. I mean, you talk about Peer-to-peer fund-raising, right? These are people who are passionate about your cause, but they’re not professional. Fundez. Yeah, right. You have to deliver to them the tools and the messages that will resonate with care with your potential supporters, their friends and family. At the same time, the majority of people who donate to a peer-to-peer fund-raising page are not really in it to support the organization. They’re basically in it to get their friend their family off their back, over off their doors. Kept that at the end of the day, how do you transition somebody from being? I made a donation to Tony, too. I made a donation to U. S. A. For UNHCR. Yeah. Lorts begin to send them through the channels. So that bad because our okay, we’ll spend more time talking about making that transition. Where do you like to share? Where would you like to see clients share these docks for the people who wanted take it to the next level and do their own peer-to-peer fund-raising. Well, my favorite is keep it easy. And I think text messaging is rapidly becoming the way that we distribute fund-raising coaching serious tio clients. Fund-raising techniques like favorite. Okay. First for sharing the tools for people to create their own peer-to-peer campaigns. Oh, yeah. Okay. Where you going? Where’d you like to put the repository of these? The tools the guidelines. You know, the graphics, etcetera of the sample emails that people can use. What? Where do you like to see that stuff put? Yeah, I mean, if you if you’re only gonna host it in one place, having on a site the you own your own website, It is really important. But I actually think it makes a lot more sense to break it off over time and defended out by a tax ID. Now, you know, don’t give it to him all of once, but instead send them little bits of information that they could take action on right away to drag. Okay, so, like so, like, every every twelve hours. You mean in this in this Because this is going well, this is going to be pretty short lived campaign, right? We’re talking about, like, a week or two or something isn’t even that long. Yeah. Yeah, I think two weeks is actually the okay. So how often do you sending out tio thes people who really want to activate the next level do their own peer-to-peer campaigns. How often you sending out new stuff to them by text with? Within the first twenty four hours, You want to send things out like two, three times, and then it tapers off. So then it’s kind of every day for the first week, and then you want you want to kind of spacing out every other day. You can kind of run spring in in three day period. We find that that’s the max that anybody wants to receive multiple communications per day. But that’s where that multi-channel engagement strategy comes into play. Thinking, email, social. A phone call, right? You’re kind of sharing the burning across channels so that they’re interacting with your brandy today on getting kissy stay. But it’s not always delivering the same channel. OK, OK, What about, um, having some influencers like pre positioned that people that you know are going toe? Uh, create that peer-to-peer campaign. Or at least if they’re not going to do a campaign, they’re goingto help you get the message out. But having this in the, you know the prepare a story of proprietary stages, you got ten or twelve key influences, you know, love your mission. You know, if it’s UNHCR, the High Commissioner for Refugees and there’s a refugee crisis, you know they’re going to jump on it, these ten or twelve people? What about having those relationships in place so that they’ll start blogging? They’ll start emailing whatever you know, whatever they do, treating Teo help you build momentum. What about having those relationships in place in advance? Oh, absolutely. That’s the preference. I mean, one of the great examples that comes to mind right off that is Anson Mount, who’s a great celebrity supporter. Team Rubicon, Um, you know, building up that relationship with Anson in advance and then basically empowering him. And so create custom fund-raising Vegas for Anson to be ableto fund-raising for Team Rubicon in the event of a disaster in Texas. So he was, you know, filming a television show for A in Texas, and it was a perfect opportunity for him to reach out his constituents. But all that was set up in advance of the disaster season to be more or less knew that most likely there will be a disaster in Texas, that here they’re setting up that influence relationship, giving him the talking points e-giving in the sample Social media post really empowered into Ray’s about forty eight thousand dollars Teamviewer response to flooding in Houston All right. I’m gonna admit that I’m a pop culture. No, nothing. I don’t know this guy, Anson. Who is that? Uh, it’s amount is, uh well, he’s huge co-branded teamviewer columns of a great celebrity Porter. But even after, um and he was the lead on hell on wheels and he also most recently played in a marvel movie as well on, you know, fair track, maybe. Okay, he’s a great guy. Okay, I’m sure he is, but it’s, uh, you know, I’m not. Yeah. I mean, if you’d said Al Pacino, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have asked you. Who is that? You know, So I got a bunch of clients who were looking for that pompel ball club buddies. Support has been even relating. Yes. Uh, okay. Just generational difference. No problem. Okay. All right, So we got we got everything in preparation now its launch time, and we need to know who’s gonna who’s gonna pull the trigger, right? Yeah, we having a clearly defined who Didn’t your maker go? No, go critical because, like, we already talked about first twenty four hours Really important. So we recommend Ma Bargain was down with too much process. It’s important for you really have, uh, you know, check the balance is in terms of copy, make sure the things that spell correctly that you’re not speaking or offer ends, but that decision to go or no go she’s really lead with a single person. So they’re they’re given the information that says we feel like for all intensive purposes, with traffic, it’s really high, you know, highly spoke about in the media. Let go, or we feel like that. If we were to activate right now, we wouldn’t really necessarily be included in on the conversation. We’re not going to get a lot of media. It could get a lot of in front of a lot of supporters then. Probably not going. Why would you feel the ladder? What would lead you to conclude? To not not activate? Yeah, I mean, well, let’s take you could be popular. That disaster response here. Let’s take hurting. Hold the urn and Maria write one hit after another. You have to begin to really think about Donorsearch a Teague and the fatigue of of society as a whole. So timing is really important. Hyre segment of your communications. Which media outlets he reached out to, you got to take into account how much you’ve already gone through. You know, your supporter lists and how much you’ve already asked them. So that really influenced things. Like a decision. That’s just one data point. Like what’s the frequency of the storm Who was hit how long ago to be asked for support? Um, how did Airbase responded that those are some of the elements. Okay, Okay, so s so if we decide not to go, then the show’s over. So the conversation over. So let’s go the other way. Now, let’s decide that way. Are gonna we’re gonna launch. Um what? What? What’s What’s first thing we need to do, the CEO or whoever the decision maker is, has said yes, she’s approved. Where do we go now? Yes, this is where if you have a fund-raising tool like fund-raising classic, give lively. You got that? Get that fund-raising page set up right away. Home and because you already have, you know, kind of prefect communications plan that we talked about. You begin to activate that. So you get those emails in place, you begin to send out, start with the channels that are really busy. So text messaging doesn’t take long. Social media doesn’t take wrong. And depending on what your brand you know, look, it feels like it’s important not to miss good for great meaning. People want to see what’s going on behind the scenes. So if you’re responding to disasters and example and you’re in the planning phase and you’re really getting ready for a response that you don’t get have powerful visuals of light the people affected by Thorne it’s important to show that behind the scenes wolf because it’s raw, It’s interesting and it’s easy to get out. So I would say, Start with channels that are really easy to just share information with and then work your way towards the channels that are more work, like email, where you’ve got a draft more more. Give me some examples of that behind the scenes early on. I guess that’s like first twelve hours or so content. Like what? Yeah, so examples might include, uh, your team monitoring storm. Or they might include in from, you know, meeting time that you’re preparing or getting your go bags around here. Any equipment you need to get out the door. What’s happening? Place dramatically behind the scenes. In the case of refugees like, you’ve got terms of people working around the clock trying to find out more information from the field so that the field team can make informed decisions. All that kind of content is interesting and engaging, and it can just be shot on a smartphone, right? Just simple. There are updates. Maybe it’s somebody from your field team or your program. He’s literally just shooting a thirty second video that you know is framed. Well, well lit light in your face horizontally shot. Just quick tips on how to make them look better without spending a lot of money. But it’s just someone standing there saying, like, Look, this is These are the actions that were taking right now, and it’s thanks to the generous support of supporters like you, where we’re looking for people who financially contribute were dedicated to solving this crisis. This is what we’re doing Those air, like really, really impactful communications. Yeah, people do like, behind the scenes, absolutely that you’re drawing them into the crisis before as it’s unfolding to you that you’re trying to learn more, you know, you’re keeping them informed. I mean, if you’re going to fund-raising around a crisis or an incident, Um you Ah, yeah. I mean, you want to draw them in and you said something that really struck me. Please, when you when you’re doing quick video, please. Please hold. Hold the phone horizontally, not vertically. Act can’t stand those little frames. You get a little one inch by one inch frames you get when it’s vertical, for God sake. Okay, this is, uh we’re running a little long, so, um, let’s let’s go to engagement. So we’ve already We’ve already launched. We got our You’ve already talked about SMS and M M s and having chatbots replaced. Let’s move to engagement now. Yes, this is really the most the most important part, right. Uh, be your authentic self. So first and foremost, we want to express gratitude in a compelling and interesting, unique way. I highly recommend using a tool called can written. Um, this is one of our favorite tools for clients and integrate seamlessly with sales for us. It allows you to literally send and written cards by a robot, um, to each and every one of your supporters and comic, We actually have, like, a great pricing deal with them. So Chan, this plug there, but you’ve been retired there, But anyway, I think starting with a few card is really important. Is that going to help you stand out? The second thing you want to do is you want to send somebody through a new supporter. Welcome. Serious. And this is different, depending on whether they made a one time gift a recurring gift. But the serious should really be focused on first and foremost, expressing gratitude and immediately shifting toward the impact that they’re having in the field. Yeah, sure. Right. We like to talk about it. OK, that I’m going to give you give you an extra minute. Let’s go toe up. Great. Let’s goto let’s jump to upgrading. You touched on it earlier. You want to move these these one time donors to something more? You got a minute? I’m holding you to it. Yeah, so basically up their strategy is if you’ve got a one time donor-centric heidtke percent most e-giving difficult to do in a minute. But I would say Send them through a multi-channel supporter. Welcome serious. Quantify that impact present to them opportunities upgrade to a mostly get. To be honest, you can come to cosmic dot com on download our free guide on how to build a month e-giving program in ninety days. And I think that’s all I could do in a minute. Okay, that’s all right. Okay, so But it’s important to try to move These donors passed the incident that you were flash fund-raising for. Okay. Sametz got CEO of Cause Mike. You’ll find him at Matt b B a. And the company is at cause Mike Crew and cause mike dot com Where you could go for the resource is Matt just mentioned that Scott. Thank you very, very much. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. We need to take a break. Wittner, CPS. They have a new archive. Webinar for you. It’s accounting update. What has changed that? Wagner knows intimately, and you just need to know the basics off. That’s what they’re going to cover for. You. You don’t want to know the bait. You don’t want to know the intimacy of it. You just need the basics. For instance, new requirements for financial statements. You might not like to know a little about that, all right, and there’s other stuff that they cover in this accounting. Update. Webinar Go to Wagner cps dot com. Click Resource is then webinars to view the archive. Hey, it’s time now for Tony’s take Do I’m back Live ActBlue. Yes, ActBlue. I’m very grateful to them. They are non-profit Radios Sponsor, Premier, sponsor AT and TC Thie twenty nineteen Non-profit Technology conference. It’s March thirteen to fifteen in Portland, Oregon. P D. X. We are in a booth together. Boots five o eight and five ten. I’ll be doing tons of interviews for the show, Of course, that will be using over the ensuing months, and ActBlue will talk. Be talking to folks about the value of small dollar donations. You know them for political fund-raising Grassroots fund-raising three billion dollars worth over three billion dollars worth. Think about them for your non-profit fund-raising getting small dollar donations into the mix. That’s what they’ll be talking about. Um, they have a giveaway they have on site training. Giveaway on site. Did I say on site training giveaway that we’ll be doing at the booth? So come see us. I’ll be doing lots of interviews. Come say hello. If you’re at ntcdinosaur course, come buy boots five o eight five ten. Say hello to me. Metoo folks from ActBlue thank them for sponsoring ActBlue at the conference. Ah, and there’s a little more AA plus. Ah, mention of how hard it is to get good video talent on my video at tony martignetti dot com. And we’ll be talking about this more. Nineteen ninety Si, always a pleasure to welcome Gene Gene, the law machine. He’s our man. He’s the managing attorney of Neo, the Non-profit and exempt Organizations Law group in San Francisco. He edits the enormously popular non-profit law blogged dot com. He’s the American Bar Association’s twenty sixteen outstanding non-profit lawyer. He’s at G tak G Ta k. What else can I say about him? The best thing I think I most enjoy saying is Welcome back, Jean. Thanks, Tony. It’s great to be back. Yes, after just last week. Um, you were the twenty sixteen. You know, you realize now that that American Bar Association Outstanding non-profit lawyer thing, that’s three years old. Now it is. So we’re gonna have to get a new tagline for that or something. Are you going to run again? Can you? Can you be nominated again? I think maybe when I retire Tony, hopefully that’s some years away from that. That’s the Lifetime Achievement award. Yeah. You want to stay away from those? That’s that’s a death knell. Lifetime achievement award. You’re coming to a close when you get one of those. So you don’t You don’t want that yet. Okay? I want to thank you again for our very thoughtful the conversation last week. I don’t know. How does thoughtful, sincere conversation on this difficult diversity equity inclusion topic. I listened back to it on di just Thank you. That’s what I want to thank you very much for doing it. And for being a generous and sharing partner with me. Well, thank you for having that discussion with me to Tony that those air difficult discussions toe have, but I think really necessary ones. And it’s great to share that. Share it with the audience. Yeah, absolutely necessary. On DSO now, this week, which we didn’t get the cover. We want to turn some of this discussion into some action points for the board, and you have a lot of ideas around the board’s by-laws. Yeah, I think that’s right. So, you know, once you’ve committed that that, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion our topic of last weekend today are really part of the fabric of your organization’s core Vallon. You’ve got a champion for that, and they see it is organizational values they want on Believin in an equitable a system where you know all people are created equal and should have equal protections of law on equal rights. Unequal access. Once you’ve decided that that really is something that you want to do. And it’s not just about furthering your mission, which, you know, might be, too, um, advanced after school education. But you want to do it an equitable manner so that you’re not just favoring one you know group over other groups. And so once that’s decided, I think a really good sign of embedding those values into the organization is to put it in the organizational policies and the by-laws are really one of the core governing documents of the organization, and they’re really provisions there that can reflect the board’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusions. Okay, um, and there’s, uh, there’s a lot that the board Khun do. Some of this is difficult. I want to point people to your blood post at non-profit law block dot com. You go into more detail there, and we have time for today about different provisions within the by-laws. But one that struck me is the is the selection of directors, and, well, I guess it’s too at the way you have The Post organized the selection directors in the qualification of directors, you know, again, challenging gets into should there be quotas or not? But, you know, say a little. It’s a little about the that selection and the qualification of directors. That was really apparent. So you know, a lot of people are focused on Well, the boards of non-profit organizations are really no more diverse, and they were twenty years ago. And sadly, that’s you know, with many non-profit leaders saying diversity on our board, this really important but not no riel action taken, you know, a sector over the last twenty years, and boards are still disproportionately dominated by white people and not with a lot of people of color, particularly in leadership positions. And the bigger the organizations are. Those discrepancies get get even worse. White males were talking about white males. Yeah, primarily, although there are a lot of females on especially smaller organization board, but still not not a lot of women of color on those boards. So addressing kind of some of those, you know, the discrepancy between non-profit leaders saying, this is really important, and the lack of action or achievement in advancing diverse boards or board composed of diverse populations is problematic. And so it’s not an easy thing to fix. But one of the things that you may think about is to determine Well, how are you? You know, qualifying board members. Do you have certain qualifications that say, you know, we we need board members toe, have this background with this education, or come from this particular area? Um, is that a good thing or bad thing? You know, sometimes you can say a quota like you mentioned way want, you know, a minimum of thirty percent of our board members. Uh, to be made up of women. So, you know, recently there’ve been some movement. California, I think, being going on one of the states in which they said, if you’re a public company operating here based in California, that you must have a certain percentage of women on your board by certain period Oh, interest line, though. Having a quota for non-profit corporations on board when when they haven’t really moved very much, could be effective. But there is sort of the disadvantage of Well, what if we said, you know, they had to be, uh, no, fifty percent Asian American? Andi, let’s say an organization and serving Asian American communities, we said the board has to be composed of fifty percent Asian Americans. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? And, um, you know, that’s a little bit more tricky to discuss. If we’ve got, uh, you know, uh, population where they’ve not been, where they’ve been marginalized and they haven’t been reflected. Well, fifty percent might be a good thing in terms of we. We’re not going to make them tokens in this organization if it was ah white dominated board, for example. But compare that if we said, Well, at least ten percent of our board must be African Americans, and we’ve got, you know, eight people on our board. So that means one boardmember they’re going to look for to be an African American person. And how are they going to feel if you know the reason they were picked? Because they’re African American. You know, that’s that was the determining criteria that you can’t really do it that way. I think you shouldn’t do it that way. That’s my opinion. So if you’re going to set a quota, you have to make sure that you’re looking at overall what your needs on the board are. So maybe you say, Well, we you know our serving African American population so we don’t have anybody African American on our board. So we lost that perspective of knowing how best to serve these communities. But bringing one member on the board and saying, Well, you represent all African Americans and give us your take on what they need is unfair. Yeah, that’s not only not only unfair but silly, it’s not fair to the person and just unreasonable Jean, I have to take a break. Got it pursuant their newest No, that’s Ah, that’s actually not the break that I need to take. The day break I need to take is tell us, can you use more money? You need a new revenue source. You know, you get the long stream of passive revenue when the cos you re far too Tello’s process their credit card transactions with Tello’s watched the video, then send the potential companies to the video. So it’s at tony dot m a slash Tony Tello’s We got to do the live listener love Oh, and there’s a ton of it to holy mackerel. Way far out. Well, whoa! Let’s go abroad. Um Brazil. Beirut, Lebanon. Seoul, South Korea. Bangalore, India. Hanoi, Vietnam. Lima, Peru. Moscow, Russia, Iraq in Baghdad and Yosh Car Ola in Russia Also well live listener Love to all the foreign listeners. That’s remarkable. Live love out to you Here in the States. I’ve got multiple New York New York. We’ve got Tampa, Florida got Providence, Utah, not Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, Utah Hello, Utah. Live love to the listeners who are with us at this very moment and the podcast pleasantries to those who are with us. At some other moment, maybe a couple days. Weeks could even be sometimes, you know, I see downloads Not uncommon, you know, like eight weeks later. Wherever, wherever we fit into your life into your podcast listening regiment pleasantries to you, the podcast listeners. All right, Jean, Thank you for that. Um, yeah, expecting. I mean, that’s that’s just gross tokenism and unreasonable, you know, expecting one person to reflect on the entire community, even if it’s just a neighborhood, you know? That’s that’s awful. Alright, so again, you know, like we talked about last, you and I talked about last week. We said between the two of us were these things, they’re challenges. He’s issued a challenge, but they’re not insurmountable. Theyjust take thought, you know, and some back and forth. But the these challenges can be overcome. I think so, too tiny. So, you know, you may determine on the board that you’re looking for a new board members, but not only to bring you perspective with respect to a particular population that your organization may serve. But you also may need somebody with the financial manager with background and somebody who lives in a particular geographic area and now you know how to get your candidates. He made sort of way in all of those things, and this might be house on some universities determined who to accept. You know their students when when they assess their applications, there’s sort of taking a look at all of the things and maybe the fact that a particular candidate is African American. And the example I gave to you where there is nobody with that identity on the board currently is a heavier weighting factor. But the fact that that person also has this financial experience and also comes from the geographic area that’s also not represented him. We have to think of of identity groups of being intersectional because, for example, I’m not just Asian American. I’m also a male. I also have a certain educational background. You know, certain social economic status, certain physical ability, status, a certain sexual orientation, certain gender identification, and we all encompass multiple multiple identities, and we bring different things to the table. So just sort of thinking about that and how people can contribute to an organisation overall and how you might waste certain things a little bit more at a particular period of time because it’s underrepresented in your organization. And I think you just have to sort of treated as a totality. And so while quotas, I can be helpful in some ways, especially if the board has shown no movement, adding just one member to take a good picture. And I think wait, talked about sure is in a terrible reason. You do it. So you want to make sure that you’re giving that person or those persons, preferably two or three board members. Toe bring in if you’re. If you’re picking a racial identity group, I I think really they’re bringing two or three people in minimum. Um, if you don’t have any persons that that belonged to that group, existing is really important. And making sure they have a voice and power within the organization. Well, athletic ability. I’ve seen pictures of you playing soccer. Is that your? Is that your sport now? Okay. That volleyball was a volleyball. Okay, about volleys, E. I thought you were bouncing a ball off your head, but that wouldn’t be followed. Well, that’s not that’s not good volleyball. So maybe I remember wrong. That was years ago. But I remember I don’t know. Maybe you were giving me potential pictures for a head shot or something Where they were on your website. It was playing was playing viable alt-right you’re in the sand. You’re like you’re wearing a suit in your barefoot in the sand, aren’t you? Rate a little bit old now, but yeah. Go play. Okay. Volleyball. All right, all right. Um, so let’s move. All right, so that’s that’s That’s very well said, Gene. And again, your block Post at non-profit law block dot com was into a lot of other areas in the by-laws of terms of meetings, compensation, different committees. That was a good committees. Well, we did talk about you having I made the point of having a diverse committee versus diversity committee. You make a good you make a good point in the post About diversity Committee could be valuable not being a committee of the board, because then it could be more inclusive. And you don’t consider you don’t have to bring everyone into your board. You don’t worry about expanding your board flesh out a little bit. That diversity committee that’s not a part of the board. Yeah, so you know, there there, maybe, at least in the initial attempts, difficulty to bring in that particular identity group to your organization. If you’re not really doing anything with you know that targets programs or that targets a particular aspects of what you do with respect to that identity group. So I’ll use Native Americans, for example, on DH saying, Well, we don’t have any programs that when we’re not planning on any, but we would sure like to have somebody who brings us that perspective with respect to what we do, Well, that’s going to be hard for somebody to want to be on the board, just to give you their perspective unless they’re tied to the organization in multiple other ways. But if you are looking for them just to sort of give you a little bit of voice, they might be a little bit more amenable to joining the committee that, you know, that might have a limited life man to see you know whether you really should be addressing Native Americans in your programming. Or maybe you’ve got a Native Americans on your staff, and you’re not really sort of thinking about what their particular perspectives or needs might be. That might be different from from other people. So, um, breaking committees together at hot committees or task forces and bringing in people from different backgrounds. Teo give you some advice, You know, on a high level might be a good way to start, and eventually that might lead Teo bringing them onto the board. If if you know it gets further along and you want to empower them and their ideas and they’ve got great things to contribute and you know it’s a way to bring your values that you are the organization’s agreed upon values. You know, more toa wife in what they’re doing by having the perspective. You also say that one of the activities of that diversity committee could be to conduct a diversity audit or D d I on it. Not just deficit but diversity, Equity inclusion, audit on DH giving that report voice. And then there’s a question where that should be public or not. But I thought that was that was particularly striking as well. Had an impact that can really be helpful to an organisation because you don’t know what you don’t know. And if you don’t have other perspective on it, you may never be able to find out. So bringing those people in-kind can really help. We gotta take our last break Gene. When we come back, let’s let’s talk about some decision making some oversight on a switch away from the from the by-laws nous. Really, our last break is text to give. Can you use more money? I need a new revenue source. Here’s the second one was repeated. Another way of doing it. Mobile giving learn about it with text to gives five part email. Many course fiv e mails away one a day break through some of the MS no mers and misunderstandings around what it takes to get into a text to give program the way to get the five part many course, which is five emails. One a day, you text NPR to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine. All right, and we have got several more minutes with Gene for for our DEA and governance, too. Conversation, um, some decision making. Jean. You know, the basically, um, you know the oversight. How does that on DH? How does how does that how is that influenced by thes de issues suren and another really challenging area that that can be very organizational specifics. I’m going to really be speaking in generalities here, or maybe giving you a few examples of what it might be. But and I think first, you know, people who are leaders and nonprofit organizations really talk about being, you know, mission centric really centered. You know, all of their decisions should be made based on on advancing the mission in the best way possible. But, you know, with respect to some organizations if you advance your mission, but without considering your values, you really Khun go a stray from what you want the organization to be, so you know you’re You might feed homeless people, for example. But certain minority groups might be excluded because they aren’t receiving communications about those services in the language they understand or you might educate students. But you’re only serving those who can access your school, which might be in a more wealth the community and you might be protecting the environment, but not in places where marginalized communities lived. And in one example that’s close to the Bay Area, you might be. You might have an immense, an impactful grantmaking program, but failed to protect your employees from harassment and discrimination. Right? And so embedding D I values in how you oversee your organization and how you plan for their future and how you set policies. It’s really important because they can address all of those things, and there’s no shortage of examples where you know your values and diversity. Equity inclusion are not part of it where things could go go wrong. So hiring the CEO, selecting consultants, determining executive compensation How do you evaluate executive? All of those things don’t be influenced by the valleys that the organization have. And if you know, diverse, equitable and inclusive, um, practices are really what you wanted your organization to stand for. And really you think that’s going to be the best way to advance your mission and have, ah, happy, satisfied, fulfilled staff and volunteers and happy donors? I think you’ve got to start thinking about those things. You’re raising your raising consciousness. You know, again, we’re shifting from discussion toe action. If your organization is committed to d I as a core value, you know, then you’re you’re raising consciousness about what you could actually do to act on it and not just talk about it at board meetings. Let’s take a minute. You We only have about two minutes left. Was there a case in San Francisco that you were referring to her? That you said the Bay Area where our non-profit got into some trouble or what? Yeah, it was more a PR issue, but with Silicon Valley Community Foundation here, one of the biggest truckers in the world, you know, you know, they they ran into some some employees harassment at issue. And maybe, uh, leadership there was was not looking at that particular issue as muchas, sort of their core mission rather than than the set of values. So it really is just an important part of every organization I think is how you carry out your mission, Not just what your mission is. Yeah. Um, all right. I feel like, you know, we’re a little short, but I feel like we should wrap it there, Gene, because that’s I think that’s just perfect. Perfect. Wayto summarize our hour and a half of conversation. So I thank you again for covering this having this conversation, these conversations with me. Thank you so much Sharing, Gene. Great. Thank you, Tony. You’ll find him at G Tack. And, of course, non-profit. Lob log dot com Gene Gene, the law machine for insiders. Gene and I are going to talk about diversity, equity inclusion and your financial planning next week, your CEO board chair relationships with Aisha Nyandoro. And that’s going to spill over into a little about what Gene and I were talking about about intentionality of the selection of your board members. Because I know that we’re going to cover that because pre recorded that with Isha, see how it all blends together should not happen. Stance, for God’s sake. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you. Find it on tony martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits, data driven and technology enabled tourney dahna slash pursuant capital P by weather CPS Guiding you Beyond the numbers Wagner cps dot com by Tell US credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream Tony dahna slash Tony Tell us, and by text to give mobile donations made easy. Go ahead and text NPR to four four four nine nine nine. Fine. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the line producer shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy and this cool music is by Scots. Dine with me next week for Non-profit radio Big non-profit ideas for the either ninety five percent. Go out and be great you’re listening to the talking alternative network. E-giving. You are listening to the talking alternative network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in sometime potentially ater tune in every Tuesday at nine to ten p. M. Eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show Yawned Potential live life Your way on talk radio dot n Y c. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates interested? Simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Do you like comic books and movies? Howbout TV and pop culture. Then you’ve come to the right place. Hi, I’m Michael Gulch, a host of Secrets of the Sire, joined every week by my co host, Hassan, Lord of the Radio Godwin. Together we have over fifteen years experience creating graphic novels, screenplays and more. Join us as we bring you the inside scoop on the pop culture universe you love to talk about. Wednesday nights eight p. M. Eastern Tough radio dot in life. Thie. Best designs for your life Start at home. I’m David here. Gartner, interior designer and host of At Home. Listen live Tuesday nights at eight p. M. Eastern time as we talk to the very best professionals about interior design and the design that’s all around us right here on talk radio dot N. Y. C. You’re listening to talking Alternative Network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Are you a conscious co creator? Are you on a quest to raise your vibration and your consciousness? Sam Liebowitz, your conscious consultant. And on my show, that conscious consultant, our awakening humanity. We will touch upon all these topics and more. Listen, live at our new time on Thursdays at twelve Noon Eastern time. That’s the conscious consultant, Our Awakening Humanity. Thursday’s twelve noon on talk radio dot you’re listening to the talking alternative network.

Nonprofit Radio for August 19, 2016: Your Supercharged Board & Your Content Calendar

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

I love our sponsors!

Do you want to find more prospects & raise more money? Pursuant is a full-service fundraising agency, leveraging data & technology.

It’s not your 7th grade spelling bee! We Bee Spelling produces charity fundraiser spelling bees with stand-up comedy, live music & dance. It’s all in the video!

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

Listen Live or Archive:

 

My Guests:

Dolph Goldenburg: Your Supercharged Board

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

 

 

 

Laura Norvig, James Porter & Kivi Leroux Miller: Your Content Calendar

Laura Norvig, James Porter & Kivi Leroux Miller at 16NTC

What belongs in it? Who do you need to help create it? How do you get buy in? And how about resources to help you? Our can-do content calendar committee from the Nonprofit Technology Conference is Laura Norvig from ETR, James Porter at The END Fund and Kivi Leroux Miller, founder of Nonprofit Marketing Guide.

 

 


Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

You’re on the air and on target as I delve into the big issues facing your nonprofit—and your career.

If you have big dreams but an average budget, tune in to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

I interview the best in the business on every topic from board relations, fundraising, social media and compliance, to technology, accounting, volunteer management, finance, marketing and beyond. Always with you in mind.

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

Sponsored by:

Vertical_Color
View Full Transcript


Transcript for 303_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20160819.mp3

Processed on: 2018-11-11T23:33:22.023Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2016…08…303_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20160819.mp3.261978147.json
Path to text: transcripts/2016/08/303_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20160819.txt

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

Nonprofit Radio for August 12, 2016: Master Google AdWords & Master Your Decision Making

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

I love our sponsors!

Do you want to find more prospects & raise more money? Pursuant is a full-service fundraising agency, leveraging data & technology.

It’s not your 7th grade spelling bee! We Bee Spelling produces charity fundraiser spelling bees with stand-up comedy, live music & dance. It’s all in the video!

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

Listen Live or Archive:

 

My Guests:

Jason Shim & Mark Hallman: Master Google AdWords

With Jason Shim & Mark Hallman at 16NTC

Google has $10,000 of free advertising for you each month. Are you taking advantage? Learn about the program and how to plan your campaign. Also find the best search terms to bid on and stay on track as AdWords evolves. At the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference I talked to Jason Shim, associate director of digital strategy and alumni relations at Pathways to Education Canada, and Mark Hallman, president of Evergreen Digital Marketing.

 

 

Karin Hedetniemi & Jayme Nelson: Master Your Desicion Making

Karin Hedetniemi & Jayme Nelson at 16NTC

You make hundreds of decisions a day: some simple and some complex. What’s the science and art behind making good ones? We discuss how to pare down choices and ask yourself good questions. Karin Hedetniemi and Jayme Nelson are from the Inside Education Society of Alberta. Karin is director of business and human resources and Jayme is an educator. This is also from 16NTC. It’s NTC Canada Day on Nonprofit Radio.

 

 


Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

You’re on the air and on target as I delve into the big issues facing your nonprofit—and your career.

If you have big dreams but an average budget, tune in to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

I interview the best in the business on every topic from board relations, fundraising, social media and compliance, to technology, accounting, volunteer management, finance, marketing and beyond. Always with you in mind.

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

Sponsored by:

Vertical_Color
View Full Transcript


Transcript for 302_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20160812.mp3

Processed on: 2018-11-11T23:34:07.983Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2016…08…302_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20160812.mp3.660463211.json
Path to text: transcripts/2016/08/302_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20160812.txt

Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer accident, missus if you unnerved me with the idea that you missed today’s show master google adwords google has ten thousand dollars of free advertising for you each month. Are you taking advantage? Learn about the program and how to plan your adwords campaign also find the best search terms to bid on and stay on track. As adwords evolves. At the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference, i talked to jason shim, associate director of digital strategy and alumni relations at pathways to education canada and more coleman, president of evergreen digital marketing and master your decision making you make hundreds of decisions a day, some simple, some complex what’s the science and art behind making good ones. You’ll learn how to pare down choices and ask yourself good questions. Karen headed niimi and jamie nelson are from the inside education society of alberta. Karen is director of business and human resources, and jamie is an educator. This is also from sixteen ntc today is ntcdinosaur abila day on non-profit. Radio attorneys take to love your work we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant to dot com. Here are jason shimanto, mark holman from auntie si welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen auntie si the non-profit technology conference. We’re also part of ntcdinosaur say, shin, we’re in san jose, california, at the convention center on day three of the conference. My guests now are jason shim and mark holman will meet them very shortly first have to shout out today this this interview’s, not just one a day, but one interview swag item, which is a ah brand dahna and it’s from ah on good from on good many ways to wear it and also ah ah, yo, yo alighted yo yo, which we don’t have enough don’t know brought enough frame, i can’t demonstrate my you’ll go, yo, yo prowess! I used to be able to walk the dog doo around the world, you know, rocket out horizontal butt back-up you’ll have to take my word for it that i can still do it, so this joins our swag pile. All right, jason shevawn jason is associate director of digital strategy and alumni relations at pathways to education in canada. Thank you. Very welcome back, jason. Thank you. Believe it was two years ago. It ntcdinosaur good, mary and more. Coleman is president of evergreen digital marketing. Mark, welcome to the show. Thanks, tony. My pleasure. All right, gents, we’re talking about how to be a google adwords superhero waken rock this now let’s talk first about the ten thousand dollars per month program for non-profits who who knows this program best. Is it free? How do we where we find it? What is this? Who knows the best? Go ahead. Yeah. Basically it’s ten thousand dollars of in-kind advertising given by google every month. It’s rule over grantspace oh, there’s there’s no limit to it as long as you keep me in the grant requirements and basically it’s in-kind so the little adds it show up on the top the google search results and that’s what you get so it’s a great program be part of. Okay, where can we find info for people who’ve never heard of this before? Google’s website is, i believe it’s google dot com slash non-profits or for canada’s, google dot cn non-profits okay, and you get ten thousand dollars a month? Yeah, a month free. Edwards. Yeah, free average it’s. Not a cash it’s non-cash granted in-kind advertising, but every month limited to three hundred twenty nine dollars per day. But every month on going, as long as you meet the program requirements, there is no expiration date. Okay, did you find it very hard to qualify if you’re i mean, if you’re in the u s and your five o one c three or if you’re in canada and you have the wherever the equivalent designation is, um, you’re a bona fide non-profit is that about all it takes are very much if you meet the requirements for being a registered charity, then you’re pretty much good to go. Okay, well, that’s outstanding, alright, i’m not sure how widely known that is, but it is now because everybody listens to the show. If they’re not, then they do. They ignored at their peril because then i don’t know. All right? Well, let’s, talk about some campaigning. Where should we start with our google now? We’ve got three hundred eighty nine dollars a day forever. Where should we start our campaign? So i think that one of the first things to start off with is really identifying you know what your organization’s your mission is? And then how you can align some of those add words to to align with, you know, with that that mission. So for example, for pathways to education canada, you know, our mandate is to help high school students that they’re living in low income communities to graduate from high school. So anyone searching for any topics that are related to, you know, dropout prevention or helping the high school students day in school or people that are living in communities that we serve, you know, whenever there searching for nothing’s really to education and drop you? No, we make sure that we sort of an ad. So, you know, they confined our resources more easily and that we can get access to nothing’s like tutoring and mentoring and, you know, access to scholarships and things like that. So it really helps connect people with the resource is out in the community, you know? Yeah, how do we think broadly about what keywords people might be searching for? Him and, you know, i’m sure every organization could name half a dozen off the top of their head, but how do we go beyond that? Maybe listening on twitter? I don’t know. You tell me, how did we go beyond what it comes to it comes to mind immediately. I think, it’s, you can start with a sort of ah thought experiment and just trying to get into that the heads of other people and really, you know, using your, you know, just general empathy. So when you, for example, mark and i, we used to live in a way we’re sort of used to work together in kitchen waterloo at a place called cries in family counseling services. And what we did was we were trying tio create ad campaigns to target people who are looking for things that couples counseling. Nothing is the market for key which couples counseling. You know, the bid rate is quite high, you know, for it. And then when you think about it, you know, by the times a couple realizes they need couples counseling. You know, you may have to pay more than what you have for those kind of words. You rewind it, you know, a month, six months prior. You know what? What kind of things might that couple be going through? And, you know, trying we wind up that way. So the kind of things maybe bidding for it’s, like, you know, i’m having challenges, you know, communication with i suppose, you know, how do you resolve money issues? Fundamental difference of opinion about children. You know, things like that that, you know, you dahna you at the end of the path, you know, but for people who would require a couple’s counseling you how to get to them a little bit earlier to kapin act them with the organization. So really it’s just a lot of service sitting there and thinking, oh, i love that idea of thinking ahead because you actually beat the competition that is paying the higher price for couples. You know, for that phrase couples counseling, absolutely relationship counselling you can get. You can beat the competition if you’re thinking a couple of months earlier. What are they talking about? Like money? Children finance center? Yeah, cool. On another example, i can provide and american and speak to this. Ah, bit as well. When we part of the service that were offered was credit counseling, and the thing is, like payday loan places like they’re they’re willing to bid up to, like fifteen dollars per click and the google lad words eyes limited to two dollars per click maximum. Okay, so you really have to be extremely creative when you’re thinking about, you know, for some of those services where you also, you know, essentially competing against for-profit right on do you know, how can you think about, you know, okay, so for people that are running into credit issues down the road, you know, what might have looked like six months prior? And, you know, maybe, you know, people are searching for, you know, troubles making their bills or looking for, you know, initial, you know, information about me, you know, loan consolidation or things like that, you know, before they get into that critical, you know, the moment where you know, they’re they’re living on sort of impact back loans and yeah, so it’s just a lot of thinking and but one of the greatest tips that i think we received when we first discovered hardware it’s from the ultimate guide. To adwords by perry marshall, you know, way highly recommend that book through the ultimate guide to edwards. Yeah, it’s called okay. And if one of them was read cosmo magazine and, you know, i think cosmo magazine provides a lot of lessons around, you know that the way that it cost one magazine covers designed, you know, it’s it’s designed to entice, you know, people that are going through a shopping check out to pick up a copy immediately, and i mean, it’s been the best selling woman’s back-up dean since nineteen seventy to know so, you know, they really done that in the print industry on the transits quite well into design in-kind adwords campaigns, you know as well 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. Dahna oppcoll is pathways to education canada using google edwards ten thousand dollar month program? Yeah, yeah, ok, and mark, you have other clients that are as well, successfully, yeah, a number a number and you’re going with jason’s saying as well to part of the big part of adwords is trying to think of you know how how our people need our programs and services are looking for us if you’re doing banner ads or magazine dad, you have the opportunity kind of show what your your services are in google search is very specific, you can’t think of what our people looking for it so how two’s the wise all the questions for help versus the opportunity of having made a scene at where you can put a big, you know, big, full page description of what your services are. This is really an opportunity for people who are actively searching for your programs and services and bring them right back to website. So it’s a really important program tohave from non-profits okay, after we’ve set on decided on a set of at words, phrases that we can afford to bid on how do we i’m thinking next stage is monitoring our our results day today is that if i skipped anything but, well, there’s there’s a process there’s the whole setup piece, which is your campaigns, i groups keywords creating your ads, but one side nuts and bolts piece of it is done gather it is the moderate peace and add words and google analytics are fantastic for that they show you click the rates that should you conversion rates if you have that set up impressions and something, and really manage actively and make wise decisions on a short term basis and that’s what actually drew me, tio adwords and that grants program originally was the fact that i came from a auto back-up under we have the auto trader, which is it’s, a paper magazine, and anatoli, you’re hoping to see people come in and say, i came here because i read your magazine without words, jason first showing the dashboard the first day i’m like, okay, we can actually see that accent or people clicked this ad in this time frame. It went back to her web sight and took actions, so get the monitoring in the politics part of is a really big piece it’s important? Okay, yeah. Jason, won’t you talk about this more? Yeah. What’s really great is that you can really make data driven kind of decisions, which is, you know, one of the hallmarks of working in digital, an example i would give us, you know, we we had run a campaign to get supporters to donate their air miles to our organization, and we worked off the assumption that, you know, people want to give their, you know, their airline miles, you know, the goodness of their hearts because, you know, you know, but what? We quickly realized that, you know, they think the ad copy was something along the lines of, like, hey, you know, i don’t need your airline miles to ah, charity focused on youth and, you know, the click through rate on that were abysmal, like they weren’t fantastic people converting, so we, you know, we sat down and went back and thought about it, and the ad copy that did perform better was, hey, i don’t have enough miles teo to go on a trip, you know, donate them to our charity instead, which reflected the kind of reality that some people face when you realize that you need, like maybe ten or fifteen thousand miles. You wanna trip in two thousand? Yeah, and they just want to, you know, do something good with it. And, you know, because they can’t go anyway, and that one converted three times better and it’s amazing to be able to get death the metrics around that and really support some of those hypotheses around. You know how hard people thinking, how are they behaving? And you can really test those out. And conversely, you know, sometimes you know the hypotheses that you come up, you know, fall completely flat as well. But it’s, you can always go back to the data rather than relying on sir. These, you know, anecdotal, you know, kind of gut feelings. You can still have toast, got feelings, but you consistently validating them over and over again with the data, which makes us think, edwards, you know, when the most compelling platform’s teo really experiment and run campaigns. Mark, you mentioned something. I want to die aggress to an add grants. You said adwords and add grants what’s with the ad grantspace program. Yeah, granted, we’re actually talking here for non-profits adwords is a platform that google has five times in that sort of business is, you know, and you can pay for ads today. But i grantspace the non-profit program that’s just ten thousand dollars month. Exactly. Okay, exactly. All right, e-giving a straight. All right. Okay, well, all right. So now we can monitor results like day to day, right? I mean, we and at the end of a week, we can see one phrase, one word is performing quite well. Another is not so weii stop bidding on the on the underperformers that basically what what we do? Yeah, basically straight a be testing and if one odds working other ones not if it’s we’re talking incremental increases. Here is what we’re talking about. One point five click through rate versus the one point seven or two point three it’s not always an eighty twenty of this huge disparity. Okay, but over time, you can make these incremental increases and really improve your presence, and we’ll set up typically set up two ads per at group abila play them out like jason mention. We make assumptions about what’s going to work, and we’ll quickly learned that it does or it doesn’t and they get to go on. We’ll pause the one ad, create new adam, obviously reset the process and move forward. So kind of a fun game that i have with my summer intern. So we get a summer intern every summer, and what i do is i challenge them to a competition. So every week will come up with an ad and you’ll see what the results are. And then we face off every week, so the lower performing at gets paused. And then we were both trying to create a better one every week. So, you know, by the end of the summer, you sort of have this, like, hunger games, you know, style of creation. You know, only the strongest survives the best click through and the best results and conversions. Okay, all right. And pathways education canada benefits. All right, they’re the winners. All right, do-it-yourself time together. What? Let’s? See what else? You, uh, campaign what else can we say about a campaign but the ongoing but i think waken speak a bit to the google grantspace oh, program. So if you max oh, it’s, your ten thousand dollar grant does there’s a few. Of requirements in there, you max out your the ten thousand dollar grant for two months out of the prior six months a cz well as maintaining certain kind of quality metrics around new york, like two rates, and also setting up conversions non-profits are eligible to apply for the grant bro count, which is forty thousand dollars a month, which is nearly half a million dollars a year in in-kind ad revenue and, you know, that’s that’s a great way for, you know, larger non-profits or international facing non-profits to get additional kind of exposure grantspace pro it’s called that’s pro. Okay, ru is pathways education dahna grand pro now, yet we’re out run away, but i know that america is a bricked with several clients against pro against yeah, we have a few that working with the grands prix accounts again. It’s the more than international reach or the national across the states reach the reality is a lot of our smaller non-profit to have a regional focus, a search based so there’s a limitation, sometimes near population, searching for programs and the relevancy in just the raw reach doesn’t there sometimes, but for the bigger the big organizations absolutely it’s a fantastic way to actively manager account and and really reach out. Okay, okay. You are. You also spent some time talking about keeping your skills fresh. As as adwords evolves. What is that about what happens? I think that the platform is constantly changing. And s o back in toronto, i teach additional marking classes in the evenings. And one of the things that i tell my students is that in one working in adwords and analytics, that the platform can change at any time on do you have to adapt to it? That’s part of you know, being, you know, working in digital. So an example would be, you know, if when, when google changes algorithm for search, you know, you have to respond to that. And you read up on, you know what the new algorithm changes? Maybe an adjuster campaigns accordingly. Another one is sometimes the platform itself changes. So you log into the interface and, you know, the buttons of switch debate or there’s. A new feature or a new tab. It’s? Very disconcerting. Yeah. Especially people. We’re not, you know, native digital. You know, you just used to something for years. And then without an announcement, it’s different. Yeah, so you have to keep on constantly beating and adapting and everything, but part of it is that, you know, even though, you know, for people who have been doing it for a while, you know, and maybe a little bit disconcerting to, you know, have everything shift, i think it’s also an opportunity for people who are completely new to the platform, i mean, it hits the reset button for ever, right? So if you’re if you’re brand new getting into edwards, i mean, it’s a great opportunity jumpin you’re at the same level of everyone else. So, you know, it’s it’s also, i think, a positive thing for people you do not feel intimidated about jumping into it cause i know that when you first log into the dashboard it’s like it’s, a lot of buttons and everything, but you know it, it’s, you know, both of us, you know, we start doing adwords about seven years ago when we were working at a smaller non-profit and, you know, it’s been a constant kind of learning and evolution, and we’ve seen so much change on the platform, but, you know, the more time you spend in that, you know, it’s, the analogy we used in in our in our session was, you know, we’re not the kind of like superheroes i got bitten by a radioactive spider and wasn’t dad with all these superpowers to do add words, we would be more like, you know, the batman or the ironman in-kind things where, you know, just a regular person who, you know, that man went away for, like, five years, you know, into the mountains to, you know, train and honed his skills and everything. So, you know, similarly, i think it’s a lot of reading so really is start off with a you know, just that the ultimate guide to edward’s weii read that book cover to cover many several times. Okay, is there a i presume there is? Ah, blogged that block for edwards so google keeps yeah, google keeps obl argast adwords dot black spot dot com and that’s not asleep. Grants focus but that’s where all the new updates come out. Oftentimes the update will come out a few days before they get around the block post. So part of the fun as you log in. And you think things were happy? Like, oh, shoot where’s my reports button, but they are constantly changing things and they are constantly improving. That’s part of the fun of google’s, they’re always innovating and, you know, a few weeks ago they went from having ads in the top the stop the search is off and the side too, just the top. So jason’s thing it’s an opportunity to have you say that’s what i noticed that s o for advertisers, you know, we were used to having, you know, three or four spots across the top, plus five or six more down the side. Now we’re down to two or three or four at the top has become really competitive, so if you’re willing to spend the time and research and learn the program, you’re competitive, you could be up there. So it’s, not it’s, not it’s, not something you’re like. Jason said begin with immediately and be up there, but you can learn it quickly and to spend the time. That’s what? We both started a lot of reading a lot of time out the side of our deaths and a lot of time at night, you know? Just just learning the craft. It is definitely a worthwhile investment in time because i think that for all the organizations i’ve been involved with after implementing the edwards grant, like, you see a good spike in traffic, you know, in your google analytics, because people are finding the organization and all the the services you offer much easier and better. And, you know, mark has a similar in-kind of experience with the organization that he works with, like, just getting general traffic over to your site for better awareness and, you know, connecting with existing supporters who are looking to make a donation like no one, no one google’s like, you know, i have too much money, you know, how you know who can i give it to you? I don’t, yeah, yeah, me strategic, yeah, all right, now you had a superhero theme your your session? I see now i am not a dc comics guy or, like, superheroes, guys, so hyre were you challenging? You’re challenging audience members, too identify with a superhero name themselves a superhero now? Yeah, not actually named themselves, but the whole approach was that you could be a superhero as well, and you can learn the craft, you can hone your skills, you could be a superhero and you really do live responsibly. The digital marketing record in your organization to learn this and, you know, it’s there it’s free it’s free money from google’s free ahjumma, google if you dont having not using it is a bit of a disservice. So step up, be a superhero and you know, okay, take it up. What is excelsior in? You’re in the ghazal jutze river in the session description says excelsior that’s how you ended it, excelsior all right, so that was that was just like a superhero. Kind of like exclamation that comment is the marvel comics. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Part of superhero theme is also, you know, the spider man quotation. You know, with great power comes great responsibility and that’s good if you have an opportunity to connect with someone and you missed that opportunity, you know, that could be someone who was searching for, you know, help with their rent to what their anxiety or depression or help you with some of their personal challenges. Kapin you can’t be serious. You’re absolutely way. Have a couple more minutes left. What have we not talked about or what you want to see? More detail may be something we covered too quickly. You spent ninety minutes in a session, so i know you got more. You got more knowledge than nineteen and a half minutes. I think that one of the questions that we ask this, you know, how much time does this take, you know, to do adwords. And to be honest, i wish i could say that, you know, it’s, you know, you can always make you know the case and be like, okay, i’m going to spend this amount of hours and you know, you’re your organization is going to support you all the way to do it. But, you know, the reality is, you know, sometimes you get you know, you’re really busy and non-profits and no this’s another thing to do on top of the you know, the ten or twenty, you know, items on your list for the for the week. And i guess what i want when i want a share is that when we both started out doing add words like we really were doing it off the side of my desk, you know, to try and prove that viability that you know, to bring in new traffic for our site. So you two, i guess whatever advising people are looking into adwords is you don’t know that this way. Do you know if if you to have a passion for it and are willing to do, you know, a bit in your spare time to even, like, get the initial ball rolling like it’s worth it? You know, even just to prove the viability to the organization because i know could be hired to try negotiate for that time and resources and initially to get started, okay, but you’re encouraging. Yeah, for sure and the other part, guys don’t expect you have to spend two, three, four hours per week and build all your campaigns the first it can be a slow burn, it’s non going grant you khun step a a few basic campaigns to start with you learn the accounts, learn how things work and build from there that’s often often times your clients of just become super overwhelmed because they want to have this full blown fifteen campaign hundred ads that i’m going to spend my ten thousand dollars, but it’s a race today you don’t need to you and that’s actually very good point too. We always talk it’s not about spending ten thousand dollars of spending the money properly, and you might spend five dollars, a month or a thousand dollars a month. But if you’re reaching your target and the people need to find your finding, you dori with ten thousand dollars, worry about doing it properly and make you spend the money properly. And i think one of the great things, both antennas, that there’s ah, a community of people that are using adwords this well. So, you know, one of the things i was really important for our session is like it’s, not only to show people how to use adwords, the google adwords grant better, but also, you know, reminding people like, you know, don’t forget to reach out to those around you because we’re all facing similar challenges, and we’re all along, you know, a spectrum of you know your movies to experts and you know, whenever something changes and all the experts become newbies again and so making sure that, you know people recognize you. There’s always help. You know, just around the corner just, you know, don’t be afraid to ask for help when especially in the country. Nufer is there a, uh, maybe xero community of practice around add words, you know, in in ten? Not yet, but we should yeah, but i mean, you know, they’re very liberal about ah, a couple of people interested, and now they’ll support it, ok, there isn’t yet, but yeah, the entire community is very giving. So even without a formal structure around around edwards, there’s still help. They’re absolutely just posted one of the one of the one of the community boards you any and ask ask for help, ok? And the one thing that i would mention is that american speak to some of the more advanced you said, just so you know, i think there’s there’s certain things that you khun dio with the free adwords grant, but it also helps pave the way for a charity to explore usage of paid advertising as well, and that, you know, the edwards grant is a great way to sort of explore those initial kind of foundational steps before moving to the paid advertising or what you have. Demonstrated clearly return on investment for you’re on schnoll can about what you can persuade the leadership that there’s value, then maybe they’ll start to invest some of the organization money. Is that where we’re headed exactly? A string itself is an expert, as you understand there’s gaps, we might know jason talked about competing with the pity loans places are competing with payed counselors and professionals add words is a really competitive market, but if you can show yourself is an expert and so you know what, here’s what we’ve done, but there’s a few gaps over here would like to other, you know that on some paid, you know hyre big key words or potential duitz, um, banner advertising, the google explain network or even potentially do some advertising on youtube that’s all within the average platform, i’m in a number of my clients and people i work with have their google grants account and also separate google adwords account is paid and google’s fine with that, they there’s no wish with that as long as you’re not competing on the same let’s name keywords in your paid account and you’re free account latto issue okay, okay, so you can you can do both side by side. Exactly. All right, exactly. Okay, should we wrap it up there? You think we’ve anything else? Well, before we do any other good, you have to raise something that made me think any other good questions that came from from the audience in your session. You want toe one highlight eleven were around some of the kind of technical details and that there are quite a few kind of, you know, technical, administrative details, you know, related to, you know, properly administering your adwords account. So one question that did come up during our session was, you know, what? If you’re inheriting account that, you know, it is quite old and, you know, it may not have been well administered in the past, you know, how should you even start to, you know, fix it up, and our suggestion for that was to, you know, to break it down into buckets and just start changing it one campaign at a time to try and use proper structures and applying very method a logical approach to it, rather than sort of the scattershot approach that may have been used. But if you’re inheriting a campaign that has been a total mess, then, you know, chances are it’s not performing very well. You may as well just wait. You know, most paul’s most of the campaigns and restart everything. Three other question that came as well, it was just, you know, are on general support. And one thing that i like some of the google reps here at ntc mentioned is that there is a support line as well. So, you know, it’s it’s amazing, because there was a lot of companies that don’t offer, like, direct phone support. We’re talking about telephone support. Yeah. So from google. Oh, yeah, yeah, it was actually a number that you can call, you know, if you’re adwords grantee that you know, if if you need help navigating, you know the main panel or creating ads or whatever, you know that there is, you know, entire support team that you can pick up the phone and call and they will help navigate through summer. The challenge is excellent. So that that number is available. Okay, that is rare. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let’s, leave it there. Thank you very much. Thanks. Alright. Jason shim, associate director. Of digital strategy and alumni relations at pathways to education canada, and mark coleman, president of evergreen digital marketing. Thank you again, gents. Thanks, tony. Thanks, thank you very much for being with us. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference. Thanks so much, master. Your decision making is coming up first. Pursuant, like google adwords and making good, smart decisions pursuant helps you raise more money. Their tool velocity keeps you on task. Working toward that fund-raising goal. It was developed for pursuing fund-raising consultants so valuable for their client campaigns that they rolled it out directly to you. You, the small midsize shop. Use it yourself and get the value you need without the consultant. Check out velocity at pursuant dot com. Time now for tony’s take two. Do you love your work? I hope you do. I hope that you do something that engages you inspires you that you just feel so strongly about, you know that we throw the word passion around so much, but you just feel it that look, not every single day you’re going to work out, wake up some days and say, god, i hate this job. Oh, god, i wish i could just stay in bed, pull the covers over, but nine or ten days or eight or nine or ten days out of ten do you wake up and you just feel great about the work that you’re going to be doing the lives we’re saving, the the transformation, the change that you’re making in the world. I hope you feel good about it. I hope you feel great about it. Not just like it. I hope you love your work. Oh, and if you don’t, if you’re among the many who i see great faced on the subways, they don’t look like they’re happy going to work. I urge you to look to make that change small steps a little bit of a time start to see the light at the end of the tunnel i just urge you tow love the work that you’re doing i hope you do that’s tony’s take two live listener love i gotta send it out the live love goes out all the time so grateful for our live listeners listening right now at this moment now on august twelfth live listen love to you podcast pleasantries there can’t be live love without podcast pleasantries it can’t be just like the affiliate affections that air coming up podcast pleasantries to the over ten thousand listeners in the time shift. I’m very glad you’re with me pleasantries to you and those affiliate affections are multiple many am and fm stations throughout the country. Let your station know that you’re listening so that they know non-profit radio is valuable in their weekly schedule affections to our affiliate listeners. Here are karen headed niimi and jamie nelson with master your decision making welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc that’s, of course that’s, the non-profit technology conference hosted by intend the non-profit technology network. This is also part of ntc conversations we’re in san jose, california, at the convention center on my guests are karen already said karen headed niimi and jamie nelson, and their session topic is the science and art of decision making. Karen is director of business and human resources at the inside education society of alberta and she’s sitting closest to me and jamie nelson is an educator at the inside education society as well, ladies, welcome. Thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure. Indulge me, please. While i just highlight our swag item for this interview, which is from think shouts a t shirt from think shout! And according to our outstanding piela hanna, this is a minimalist star wars theme. She can point out that there’s ah, minimalist death star and a minimalist. What else is there? Millennium falcon. See it! See the minimalist millennium falcon that’s, an mmf minimalist millennium falcon. For those of you who are not on the video, i’m sorry. Go to real tony martignetti dot com r e a l and you can watch the video there. It’ll be there shortly, so we’re adding this to our second day swag pile. All right, that’s. Where it goes, the science and art of decision making. Karen what? What are our challenges around decisionmaking? Well, i’ll tell you a little bit of the backstory of this session, okay? Came to the non-profit technology conference last year for the first time, and i am not a techie, but i want to learn more about trends and issues. And after it was over, i was very overwhelmed. And i thought it would be really need if there was a session on another life. Important topic to kind of give my brain a break. So weii well, had to choose this one, but i don’t know. You know what? It just came out of the universe. But i was here to make decisions about technology solutions, and i was having some trouble, and yeah, so i just thought, you know what? I need to learn more about this and so it’s been a good long years journey. And here we are spent a year curating content a little bit. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Jamie wanted to share. What did you what have you learned in this curation process? So karen invited me in after she’s done. Quite. A bit of the legwork, which was wonderful on dh, so for me, it was really trying to look at the three different kind of areas of decision making, so we talked about the science on dh. Then we talked about what it’s like to take in additional information, and then we kind of talked about some of the influences, and i think for me, one of the big things that i learned is is too to understand the systems that are happening every time that we face a decision. And that was really, really important because, like karen said, we’re here at the ntcdinosaur decisions a cz non-profits we’re faced with all kinds of, like, really important decisions on dh, so being able to kind of understand that process was really, really valuable as part of this whole building of the presentation, okay? So there’s, the science, the influences and the process all around our decision making. What did the count since you did most of the duration will give you the chance. What? What do you learn about the science of decision making? Well, it drew a lot from the work of dr daniel kahneman, who wrote the book thinking fast and slow and he’s very respected in his field. He’s, a psychologist. And he also won the nobel prize in economics for some of his work. So okay, smart guy. He basically proposed that our approaches to judgment and choice take their two mental systems or modes of thinking one of them is sort of fast and instinctual. Then the other is slower and deliberate. So that was sort of based on the different types of decisions we have to make, like whether whether it across the road now versus whether to buy a new home are hard wiring. You know, we come free built right way. Have different types of thes to these two methods of decision making. Break down into the types of decisions we have to make for sure, like one is mohr sort of natural? The fast thinking that we do is effortless is just something we do is we navigate our life. We drive the car down the road. Okay? Slow thinking is more deliberate. It’s more logical thinking through procedures. Little more algorithmic. So it takes more mental effort to do logical thinking decision making. It takes longer. Okay, more deliberative. Process? Yes, exactly. Um, is that all you learned on for you in the years that all the science you master and that’s it? No. I mean, we boy, you could go on forever. I mean, a decision making is such a huge topic. You can look at it from a leadership aspect. Marketing behavioral economics. It’s huge. We just sort of focused in this session on, you know, information overload in an increasingly digital world. And how that’s we process that kind of information differently. Then then what? What we’re hardwired to do? Just perfect. Because, that’s, what you suffered after an ice twenty fifteen mental fatigue you were you were distressed and overloaded. Exactly, there’s. Not that you suffer from ntcdinosaur. The after effect was it was so much value, so much value. You were you were you were shell shocked. All right, so how can we start to help people in their decision making? And, you know, let’s, take the the normal in our conversation. Let’s, take the normal day to day decisions. Not this. Something is simple minded is crossing the street. But you know some fair minded work decisions or personal decisions. But it’s not. His monumental is whether to buy a home, whether they have a child but, you know, you know what? Like, what am i gonna have for dinner tonight or ah, whether i should have my parents over or, you know, i mean, average sort of day to day decisions, sort of in the middle of the spectrum, very fair, fair enough, very good point because our brain doesn’t doesn’t prioritize all the decisions we have to make in a day so we could be spending a lot of mental energy on things that are a trivial nature. Andi and then we don’t have enough reserves for the important ones, you know, when when we’re expending mental effort in our slow thinking we are we’re the brain is using twenty percent of our body’s energy. Oh, gee, so we’re using up more of that energy in our in our logical processes. So if there’s a new way of losing weight, i just obsess about whether across the street now definitely can i can i lose twenty pounds? Not that i have a lot to lose, but but but, you know, yeah, i obsess about whether to put the stamp on the envelope right side up or upside down. Can i drop some pounds? You may drop some pounds. I know, i know. All kidding aside energy not calories, energy. Okay, assuming energy. Okay, but, i mean, you do. You are depleting some of your resources. If you spend too much time on thing on decisions that just ultimately don’t matter that much. Ah, so, you know, some really good advice is to look at how you are. You know, how? First of all your energy when you’re making these decisions, you don’t want to make them when you’re tired and hungry. I mean, this is just obvious when you’re feeling emotional things, you can monitor about yourself in a busy life. We just go, go, go, go, go. We don’t have this sort of transition zone to kind of recent reset our mental mode to the next transition zone. Right? We don’t. We don’t have. Okay. Okay, jamie, anything you want to add at this? Ah, scientific stage. Yeah, well, i think a lot of people can can relate to that. And that transferred really well from kind of talking about how, as an individual, we make decisions and what influences us whether it’s past memories, past experiences, you know, the time of the day, how much you’ve had to eat, i think it really translates well when you’re talking about the non-profit world is a cz well, so if you are thinking about some major decisions that you need to make, you want to make sure that you’re you’re planning your board meeting an appropriate time of the day, you know, like so people are feeling fed if you feel really happy if you’re in a really good mood than that can actually make you less thoughtful in your decision making. And so we’re not saying that, you know, everybody should be kind of new thriller on happy in a board meeting, but just keeping these kinds of influences in mind. So in your day to day life, if you’re if you’re making decisions on what project to work on or if you’re making some of those bigger organization all decisions just keeping these influences in mind, khun b can actually have quite an impact, and that was really surprising me to me to find out all of these external factors and how you know, just one of the stories. That, karen tell, told in the session today, was how if you’re holding a warm liquid like a cup of coffee, yeah, you actually feel warmer feelings towards the people person that you’re chatting with, which makes sense culturally, like we get together over coffee all the time. And so and usually when someone asks you to go for coffee, it’s not because they want to yell at you, it’s, because they want to have ah positive, you know, productive kind of conversation, so that was was really interesting to think about and and that’s, what i loved about this session is it helped us kind of connect with our our own processes, but at the same time, we can think about how it influences our day to day work. Excellent, i like toe like that exploration of holding a warm liquid, what other other influences are there that we haven’t talked about yet? Ah, well, we’re we’re influenced by almost everything in our environment, you know, our natural impulses when you know if i look at you and i see i might be able to detect that you’re angry, just buy one or two words that you say in the tone, you know, whether makes us happy if you ask someone if they’re happy and that’s a beautiful brightstep durney day, they’re more inclined to say that they’re happy than they are on a cloudy sort of moody day. You know, we are feeling beans before we are thinking beings and so, you know, this translates in our day to day life. All right? So how do we dahna control some of these things? The one that we can control? You can control the weather, but our feelings, our state? How do we how do we sort of harness that? So that we do make better decisions? Well, you know, a very simple thing you khun dio, is before you’re making a decision. Put yourself in a neutral state of mind, you know, you can. You can just say write down everything that you did yesterday, step by step in sequins i got up, i had breakfast, i drove to work, had my day of work, came home, walk the dogs you’re just sort of reset it’s like it’s like your computer, your rebooting your computer on. Then you’ve shifted your mental mode, you know you’re not bringing in. Maybe your emotion and your anxiety and whatever you’re kind of reset, and then take the appropriate approach for what type of decision that that it is, you’re making. You want to just take a step back, you need this transition zone, you know, it’s hard, all the switching we do all the time, you know, between with multi tasking, you know, they’re really saying, well, what you’re doing is, you’re you’re, you’re just doing attention switching, and that is very depleting in our mind, in our body. So, you know, having a little, like, if you go to a therapist and you have an appointment, your appointments probably going to be about forty five minutes, not an hour, because they use some time to prepare. Have your session sometime to externalize what just happened and and collect some notes and be ready for the next person, you know, that’s logical. I see my yeah, i see my therapist for three hours, three hours, three times a day for a week, so i don’t know how she’s managing externalization she’s got just needs she needs to download, just like on the only person we could see each of those three days or practices suffering. I’m humble, unpaid, well, externalizing information. I mean, it’s coming at us, and i mean, we we learn our brain like spatial, you know, and and the context of the environment that we learn in having all of this information coming at us. It’s. I mean, yes, lists are still important in this digital age. It’s still important to you, externalize some of what’s going on in your mind so that you can look at it as an observer in your environment, rather than you know, yeah, okay, little dispassionate, yes, once removed, but but clearheaded, i see your hand, all right. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation. Top trends. Sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio and i’m gale bauer from sponsorship strategist dot com dahna. Anything else about these influences? Because we’re going now, we’re going to move to the process. Okay, but anything more about the influences? Well, i mean, biologically speaking, good moods. I mean, meant to us and our ancestors that environment was safe. We could we could relax a little. We could let our guard down, but that makes us less vigilant. You know, a bad mood. Singles tow us. Something’s wrong. I might need to protect myself. There might be a threat. I need to pay more attention. So, yeah, emotions. Like i said, we’re we’re thinking or feeling beings before we’re thinking. Okay? We moved to the process of decision making. I mean, i feel like we’re sort of there, but it sounds like yes. Yeah, well, i want to go there next. Well, one thing about the process, there is a lot of choice in today’s world, you know. Example, in the session we gave was going to pick out aspirin. You know, when you look at the isle of there’s, a spare for migraines and for sore muscles. And for all the different reasons you might have an ailment. But ultimately, maybe it’s the same product on homes have thousands and thousands of our possessions um, there’s research that shows that actually having too much choice leads us to make poor decisions, and we’re also dissatisfied with them. So having in the process fewer, fewer good options, but just a few and fewer variables, okay, aaron is nodding a lot what you wantto into this? Well, i think that that ah, really translates well, when we’re thinking about that, the options that a lot of non-profits faces thinking, well, we can go in this direction, and we could do this kind of program are or use this kind of tactic, and what karen saying is is really like pairing that down and then making that decision and and the process of paring it down requires a decision as well. But i think a lot of us can agree that after a brainstorming session, it’s pretty obvious what some of the best options are, and then kind of taking a moment and taking a break, especially in, like, a working meeting where everyone has a chance to kind of reset and then that makes that actually makes the decision process easier on dh that is really profound that sometimes people just want to kind of powerthru and say, it’s, getting towards the end of the day like we just need to make a decision. And that’s exactly right. You just need to make a decision. So in order to do that, you have to kind of think about all of these, all of the influences that air that are wrapped up in that. Okay, okay. We still have some time together. You spent ninety minutes on this and in your session, so has it goes quick, here’s a lot more to say and have enough time that well, i mean, okay, the other the other part that we touched on in the session of the end was about creativity, because how can you choose the best option if you haven’t even imagined it? So part of it is developing some flexible thinking skills to, you know, be experimenting a little whimsical. And, um, you know, that requires sometime sometime in a calm mental state to do that kind of creative exploration. Eso we didn’t exercise in the session. We just ask everyone, what could you do with a marble? You know, similar to google? Asking what can you do with a pencil. Let’s. Try and see what we get. And some of the answers were like super unique jamie metoo, can you ask the audience? Okay, what can we do with the marbles? So, it’s kind of fun? Yeah. Some people went really practical right away. Like i could hold it. I could put it in my mouth. I could put it in my head. I could put it on the table on dh. Then other folks also kind of went more creative right away. So one of our participants said you could write a haiku about it which i she’s like it’s, not that left field, but but in the activity they had on an opportunity to work just by themselves, and then to share and build upon. And i think what was really apparent is that a lot of the folks who participated said that that once they connected and started to build upon existing structure, then it it was really additive and really complimentary. And they started to go in more creative places. Cam, you know, along this line we were talking about the complexity of problems today, and a lot of our problems are crossing borders and what is required? You know, i read something today about borderless leadership on dh you need a different skill set to address some of these problems. And so some of the things we talked about beyond creativity, where was critical thinking skills, you know, to look at all of the information coming at us and to be able to discern what is true and what is not true, what are some reliable sources, you know, and to be able to synthesise some of this information together with that, we talked about being able to ask good questions, because that helps you ultimately make a better decision if you can clarify things so it’s kind of a lost art, you know, we reward people at work for having the answer rather than having a really good question and children asked several hundred questions a day on. Well, you probably ask a lot as an interviewer, but i do know i’m also child, i’m asking a thousand questions today in our day today, life like way asked everyone in the room, like, see if you can keep track of how many questions you ask today is probably going to be very few. Ah, very good skill to develop question answering how does that help us make better decisions? Jamie well, for me, i mean, in our work with the inside education, we we ask a lot of questions, so we do environmental programs with our students on we talked about natural resources in the environment and in that is this critical thinking piece. And so i found that if a student asked me a question and i turn it back to the rest of the classroom or or answered them with another question that it helps start to kind of peel back the layers and let’s folks realize they start to consider the question from a different perspective. So i used the example in the session, you know, the first time a student asked me, well, what’s the difference between coal and charcoal. First of all, i couldn’t believe that i didn’t know the answer and it’s not a life changing thing, you know, like, i’ve gone so far without knowing that, and that was fine, but once i realised that it made me think to myself like, what else don’t i know about the world? Like, why don’t i know the difference between those two things and that’s the power of questions is that i know, like karen said in a professional life, sometimes if you’re if you’re in a meeting and and there’s questions about the reasoning behind the project that you’re working on, folks, khun bristle they can feel really defensive, but the power of asking a really good question is that it expands that horizon, and it helps you start to think about the bigger picture on dh then in that you’re able to think creatively and shift the paradigm and that that can only be helpful, you know? Okay, okay, we still have a couple minutes left. Let’s tease out. Come on. Ninety minutes in a session. Zoho back on non-profit radio listeners. Yeah, number. I’ll never have you back, bill it all related to the related to good questions. And critical thinking is really about how we learn on dh and, you know, if you notice someone’s thinking process, if if if there’s a bias or they they they have a distorted reasoning, you know, we get defensive when people point out our errors. So the best way to help people see that. They have maybe a flaw in their thinking is too created a learning experience for them to see the insight for themselves. Tohave a lightbulb moment an ah ha moment your mental mode shifts more easily when you discover it for yourself. How do you create this kind of moment? Teachers are good at creating this moment. What teachers are good you turned away from the mic, she said teachers were go to creating this moment on, i guess one of the ways that that i do that in a classroom with students is i you know, if we if we ask in opening question like what’s, a type of natural resource that we used to create energy, you know, some kids might have the answer right away and then others will be like lightning and it’s like, okay, so why did you say lightning? We don’t get electricity from from lightning, but why that? And then it helps them instead of saying no, you’re wrong because they’re they’re right. Lightning is electricity, but instead then we can kind of have a conversation about it, and then the student can come to the conclusion themselves organ can work through the process themselves and say, okay, wait a second that doesn’t make sense, there’s nobody running around trying to capture lightning so that we can have power in our homes, but in that it doesn’t it’s that experience, and i think it resonates more with a student. I mean, this is such a trivial example, but like karen said, if if there’s this this bias that occurs or this kind of error in thinking, i think everyone can relate to have someone if you have ah colleagues saying you’re wrong, the rest of the conversation doesn’t always go really well. So instead, you know yeah, you came you can and it’s not avoiding the conversation, it’s just helping them kind of see, because that’s, the only way that that folks can kind of overcome is that if they experience that process themselves, it can be really hard to try to convince someone that they’re wrong and you’re right. But by building that experienced by kind of understanding how our mind works and how thoughts are created, you can you can help increase that knowledge and expand the conversation instead of shutting it down and making it kind of antagonistic. Okay, okay. That sounds like a pretty good place to wrap up. Yeah, i think bernie’s copulation like you. All right. See, the closest to me is karen headed niimi, director of business and human resource is at the inside education society of alberta. And if the same society is jamie nelson who’s, an educator at inside education ladies, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you. And this is that i thank you for being with us. Twenty martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference. Thank you. Next week. I just don’t know you’ll have to trust me. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com creative producer was claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is a line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by susan chavez on our music is by scott stein thank you for that scottie with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great kayman what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on 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, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric 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.