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Nonprofit Radio for September 29, 2017: Giving Tuesday Friday

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My Guests:

Jessica Schneider: Giving Tuesday Friday

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

 

 

 

Amy Sample Ward: Giving Tuesday Friday

Amy Sample Ward

It may not be too late but “too late” is fast approaching. Amy Sample Ward has what you need for Giving Tuesday success in the social networks. She’s our social media contributor and CEO of NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network.

 

 

 


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

Nonprofit Radio for September 22, 2017: Robertson v. Princeton

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Doug White: Robertson v. Princeton

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

 

 


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

Nonprofit Radio for September 15, 2017: Run Like A Biz & Program Your Board

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Hillary Schafer: Run Like A Biz

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I need a pancreas. Ole affected me for last week’s pancreas volodya, sis, if you hard into me with the idea that you missed today’s show, run like a biz hillary shaefer brought her twelve years on wall street to the jefferson awards foundation, where she is executive director. She shares her ideas from building core infrastructure to employee policies that originally aired september eighteenth, twenty fifteen and programmed your board. Your board probably recognizes its fiduciary responsibilities, but does it know it’s rolling overseeing programs? Jean takagi is our legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo that also aired september eighteenth twenty fifteen tony’s take two five minute planned e-giving marketing responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by wagner cps guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit apple of accounting software designed for non-profits they’re at non-profit wizard dot com and we’d be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com here’s hillary schaefer run like a biz. I’m glad to welcome to the studio hillary schaefer. Prior to joining the jefferson awards foundation as executive director, she worked as the head of us institutional equity sales in new york. For citigroup, she was one of the highest ranking women in the equity business in the late nineties, she was the executive director of economic security two thousand fighting to save and remodel social security. The foundation is at jefferson awards dot org’s and she’s at beard hillary on twitter welcome hillary schaeffer. Thank you very much. Glad you’re in the studio. Thanks to be here. Eight and a half months pregnant. Eight and a half months pregnant. We got you at the right time. What what’s behind this twitter id beard? Hillary it’s. My maiden name is beard. Okay, until re beard was taken, i presume and hillary beard is probably taking swiped by some. I had that done on youtube. Some joker i hope he was named tony martignetti stole the channel name tony martignetti and i have you riel tony martignetti but he doesn’t use it. So it’s ah, people don’t have trouble finding me? Not that anyone’s looking, but if they were looking, they wouldn’t have trouble finding me on youtube. Um, tell me about wall street what’s it what’s it like making a living equity say institutional equity sales what’s it like, what does that mean, that’s that place, like, actually, frankly, loved it. I did it for twelve years. I went into wall street thinking i would do it for two. Yeah, we’re really, really fell in love for long enough to stay for twelve instruction equity sales is basically where you manage the relationships for the largest institutional investors who invest in stocks. Okay, so on behalf of citigroup, so on you’re like, on account, uh, liaison to big companies buying stocks. Sort of. Yes, i minimize their eyes like so egregiously. Okay, clearly egregiously. So, what do you how do you how do you keep big institutional buyers happy? What you have to do, too, with more of their blackness is making money, right? So investing in stocks that go up and shorting stocks that go down. And so ah, lot of the business of the equity business of citigroup is to provide really good insights and ideas and research into the companies that they care about and delivering that content into your clients in a way which is consumable. Smart fits with their investment style. It helps them make money is really the core of what you do. Okay, but then there are all of these other services that citigroup offers and help clients run their money from financing stocks. Teo, all of the things that go around the core of running that business, okay, banking and credit relationships, things like that, things like that. Okay? And so core of that business is sort of managing that entire relationship to make sure they get the resource is that they need in orderto successfully run the business and a transition to non-profit work. What? What occasioned that, frankly, hurricane sandy, i had left wall street. I have two little kids already at home. And i decided that i wanted teo figure out what i wanted to do next. I had no idea what that was. Actually, frankly thought it would be in the finance world. Yeah, and hurricane sandy hit new york. And i was sitting in my living room working on a business plan for a finance business okay, and i just got really passionate about the idea that there were children who had gone to bed safe and sound the night before that woke up with no signs of food or shelter or warmth, their security. And so i went to work from my living room to create programs that generated millions of more meals, hundreds of thousands of blankets and warm winter coats for families all over the tri state area and my husband on dh, the executive director of robin hood both basically sat me down and said, please don’t go back to finance the passion that you feel around helping people is so significant. Do something else. Stay in the non-profit so you gave away your entrepreneurial dream, the plan you’re working on, you’re going to start your own business. I did put that aside, although running a non-profit is inherently credibly entrepreneur. Okay, if it’s done right, i think that’s done right. All right, all right, tell us a little about the jefferson awards and the and the foundation. Sure. So we we basically power public service. We’ve been around since nineteen seventy two started by jackie kennedy. Senator robert taft. Junior and my father, sam beard and the original idea was create a nobel prize for public service in america. Celebrate the very best of the country. You celebration to not only say thank you to people do amazing things, but also as a force multiplier to inspire others to do something good. We then translated into programs that accelerate and amplify service for people of every age. So, starting about ten years ago, we became one of the largest creators of public service in the country through training mechanisms and programs that engage individuals again of all ages to do service ranging from the donation of a single book from a child to a child all the way up. Tio young people in adult toe like who are impacting millions of lives and it’s ah, jefferson awards so what’s the awards side of this. So when the awards is the celebration peace. So we are effectively the gold seal of service in america. We give out a we give out jefferson awards the national level, you would know basically every name. Okay. Who’s, one of jefferson word over the last forty three years. And then we have a media. Partner program, where we partner with ah, local affiliates, newspapers, etcetera but primary news outlets in communities all over the country. But today, reaching to seventy eight million households on dh, they are empowered to take the jefferson award and celebrate local grassroots unsung heroes. All right, a nobel prize for ah, for outstanding program work and and saving lives for impact impact. How about the foundation itself? Just number employees, just a quaint little bit number of employees annual budget. So it’s about twenty seven, employees, we have a, uh, about a ten and a half million dollar annual budget, of which much of that is in-kind it’s about a three and a half million dollar operating revenue budget. Okay, and we’re going to go out for a break in roughly a minute or so. So just, uh, give us a little overviewing of what? What some of the lessons are that you brought from equity sales on dh wall street. Teo, your charitable work. And i think the biggest thing is just that any organization, whether it’s for-profit or non-profit, needs to be world class in order to be successful and that starts with everything from how you manage and set your employees up for success to your back end systems that govern how you pay your rent, you know, pay your expenses and collect your revenues to don’t hurt management. Teo everything that you do needs to look and feel like you set for-profit world, but it’s really for impact. So i’m guessing you believe non-profit is your tax status? Not your mindset? Correct? Yeah, cool. Okay, of course. Hillary stays with us. We go after this break. I hope you do too. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way dahna welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Hillary schaefer let’s ah, let’s, dive into some of these lessons that you’ve brought with you this world class let’s start in the back end investment in infrastructure like c r, m databases, data management so that’s a that’s a terrific place to start because really every non-profit is powered by who they reach and how they reached them and how they communicate with, um and management of relationships, whether that’s a whether that’s, a donor, whether that’s, somebody, who’s won an award from our perspective, whether that somebody who has just invested in you are in your programs and how you understand that relationship, how you manage that relationship is all driven by the back end. Traditionally, people would use spreadsheets or just use, you know, sort of word and lists in their own brains, and fundamentally, it doesn’t get you as far as you need to get, and technology today is so sophisticated and there’s so many great great data pay systems that can integrate seamlessly with your website and with donor management tools and with, um, all mechanisms that you need to communicate effectively and really segment that communication into something that makes sense for that individual. It’s. Almost a shame not to you not to use it. Yeah, segmentation, and we’ll get to the benefit of that. I’ve had other guests. My voice just cracked like i’m a fourteen year old. I’ve had have a congratulations e. Everything else operates at, uh, the requisite age at fifty three. But my voice occasionally. Yeah, so we’ll get to the value of segmentation because people want to talk to personally, not not and mass and like everybody else, but so but this can be hard to invest in me, we’re talking about this is not serving program directly. This is not helping people directly. How do we overcome that mindset that we can get by with, you know, the lackadaisical, the the database that we’ve got her the internal processes we figured out our work arounds, you know we’re okay. It’s it’s finding you say that, right? Because they actually when you invest in a really good database management system and and client relationship manager, which is what c r m stands for, um, what you get out of it, that multiplier effect that you can get from having true, powerful relationships and understanding of all of your constituents, all consolidated is worth every dollar you know, and frankly there’s so many great systems which are out there, and they’re not that expensive. The most expensive part is the time of your staff, an external consultants, which you often need teo, take what is all of the stuff that you’ve cobbled together and to make it work for your organization. So an organization as an example we had brought in sales force. We use sales force. Um, we frankly had the wrong system installed with sales force. It took us a long time to figure out how to get the right system installed in all of those things. But it’s also taking us the better part of eighteen months to clean our data. Teo optimize our data to segment it appropriately so that we can communicate effectively with everybody in the way they want to be communicated with and a fair amount of staff time. And it’s that investment of taking somebody away from something that looks like perhaps it’s more important to their day to day life and put them into what’s really tedious work in order to be a better organization. But for us, if i think about it, if we have a database that reaches sixty thousand people, our ability to grow from an organization that reaches sixty this sixty thousand two, two, six hundred thousand to six million all contingent on us having optimized rc era this is key. So if you want to scale, you have to have the infrastructure to support that every organization wants to be at the next level i get so many questions about, you know, how do i get to next level? Can you refer me to somebody help us get to the next level? But i think often they don’t they’re not set up to get to the next level. They don’t they don’t have the support that they need, even if they were able to teo, multiply by ten there, you know the size of their their outreach. Without data, you have no chance. I’ll give you a great example in the nonprofit world statistic terrifies me, but something like sixty percent of donors don’t repeat on average across the non-profit space every year. Yeah, don’t come back, right? Well, don’t patrician right that’s because we’re not loving the people who are there. Everybody is focused on the next level. No, you’re focused on the next person you forget about the person who’s already said to you with their dollars. I care about what you d’oh at the heart of that is your database management system. I had a guest, peter shankman, um social media expert and marketing guy and his book is called zombie loyalists and basically had a last december. I think i had eternal you’re all your clients and customers into zombie loyalists that love you so much that they’re zombies for your work, and they’ll do your marketing, your pr, your communications for you, but ah, some of what he says boils down to the way to get the client you want is to be awesome to the client. You have that’s exactly right? I mean, i think about it from a from a fund-raising perspective. What the great fundraisers tell you is you should have four contacts with a donor for every time you ask them for something. No in orderto have those four contacts but matter to them, you need to know what they care about that needs to be in your database. You need to understand them that meets not only being your head. It needs to be institutionalized in your database. Ah, and then you need to have systems which set up, which push you to reach out to that person to make sure that you’re not forgetting to touch them four times before you go back to them and say, here’s, your invoice your sales force is a really cool example that you mentioned because for small shops it’s ideal, they’re the first ten licenses from sales force are free to non-profits and then they have a very deeply reduced ah fee for going beyond ten licenses. But i think for a lot of listeners ten licenses is enough for more than enough. So, you know, on i’ve had guests on from the non-profit technology conference and t c talking about the benefits of salesforce, you know, i think that’s right and sales force khun b a terrific tool it’s also it could be not that expensive or if you have the budget, the amount of tools that they have that you khun scale in two really optimizing take you to the next level are huge, so we don’t have we personally don’t have the budget we would love to have to spend with sales force, but we have a big, long wish list of things we would like to spend on specifically with sales force, with the tools that they have something bothering me to my head. Now, i didn’t mean to say lackadaisical databases, i meant to say lackluster, lackluster debate. Lackadaisical database doesn’t make any sense, it’s lazy, lazy self, you know, so that people could be lackadaisical. But the databases lackluster let’s talk a little about the segmentation of the benefit of communicating with people and showing that you know what their interests are when their birthdays are what they, how they like to be communicated with let’s, explore this know people are people, and everybody wants to feel touched individually. Nobody wants to feel like they’re part of a marketing campaign or that they’re part of a sort of a blast. People want to be touched individually. It’s why things like instagram work because they feel touched by a photograph ah, it’s the same thing with with donor or constituent segmentation everybody wants to feel like especially in the nonprofit world where you’re talking about emotion, you are effectively touching people where where they want to improve the world, but you’ve gotta understand which part of it inspires them. Yes, ah, and and also people like being cared for around the things that matter in their daily lives that have nothing to do with you. Ah, their children, their children’s ages what they d’oh? Ah, what their hobbies. Are where they like to travel all of those things. It just matters it’s all about having one on one of relationships. And the better your relationship is, the more likely you are to be able to maximize. And everything you’ve mentioned is data worth preserving its all data. You have to have people love it when you send them a note that says, happy birthday, no, super simple. It is very simple now. So what kinds of reminders do you get? Based on what kinds of things aside from birthday? What? Yeah. What others? Ah, it tends to relate to things that people have told you. Okay? And so for us, it would relate specifically to our program. So we have five different programs that have very, very different calendars. So that could relate. Teo, i i just need to get us a of the date because i know you desperately want to come to our national ceremony in new york city in march. Ah, but it could also be i know you really want to be. Ah, judge at our students in action conference in minneapolis. Ana and so getting that date to you in plenty of advance. Notice it really gets down to that level. All right? So the the value of segmentation and investment in infrastructure what about investment in consultants? You mentioned consulting? Nobody knows everything they need to know, but this could be tough to bring, bring other people in and have a fresh set of eyes evaluating you. It’s interesting on the consulting sight because i i personally have two two minds about consultants. Often i feel like you get charged too much for a percentage of somebody’s brain no on dh that’s the greatest risk with consulting. Ah, but also often they’re just expertise. You don’t want to bring in house. You can’t afford to bring in house, but you need somebody who has fresh eyes who knows something really specific that you don’t know ah, and with without which you can’t can’t go to the next level, you can’t execute effectively. So sales forces a terrific example. Um, there are so many tools inside sales force that enable you to do things like optimize your data and get rid of redundancy and all of those things, um and to, uh, to make it spoke for your organization for think the ways. In which you want to connect with people, i couldn’t do that myself, and i don’t have anybody in house who could do that for me. Could you just send your data data manager, database administrator to a sales force conference or course, yes, we do that too, okay, but it’s not enough, and for the cost of bringing you know you’ve got you’ve got away out the cost. So the question is, can you find somebody who is affordable to you in your organization that helps bring in those that kind of expertise in? I’m their things like building out an effective communication strategy where if you don’t have a big, robust communications team who can think about everything from database management, teo email to social media to all the things that go into digital infrastructure ah, and communications calendars and all of those things. At some point, it becomes really smart to bring in somebody from the outside to say, i’m building you a structure i’m helping you think about inside your organization, for you what a structure would look like, that you can afford let’s turn to our people i think my voice is my voice was crack again, it’s. A big bag, maybe. Yeah, you know. Uh, so you’re important asset, probably your most valuable asset. Most important, most expensive it’s expensive. I would guess inside most non-profits that that people are seventy eight percent of cost big, big, big percentage, um, and making impact in the world all relates to the people who you were in power to make that impact on your behalf as as either a full time employee or an independent contractor and losing employees is as expensive as losing the donors we were talking about, if not more so, you know woobox the amount of time you then need to spend teo find the person, bring them in house, and on average, it takes six to eighteen months to really optimize an employee. That’s a long time to invest in somebody new if you have somebody who’s good who’s sitting there right in front of you. The most important thing with people always is that they feel like they’re being set up to succeed. And they’re being given the tools that they need. Ah, to succeed. All right, how do we do this? Ah, well, that everything from the really basic and can feel very cumbersome to a management manager piece. But ah, gold setting and reviews, letting people know where they stand, being really straightforward with them about what they’re doing that’s terrific, and where they need to develop development goals is a big, big, big piece, and i don’t mean development is in fund-raising i mean, personal development, professional development around how can you be a much more effective employees? For the most part? Certainly in my experience, whether it’s on wall street or in the nonprofit world, when you sit in a review with somebody, they barely hear the good stuff ninety nine percent of what you tell them could be good. Everybody waits for the butt, the but needs to be real, meaning it needs to be i understand you here’s, where i see helping to take you as a human being and as a professional to the next level, and being able to deliver that in a way which is non threatening but having systems and structures around delivering reviews around goal, setting around, holding people accountable to those goals and around understanding them and wanting to be on their side are all the the most important things you can do, and it doesn’t matter what. Kind of an organization you’re out to do that my guest last week, we’re from the university of pittsburgh, and they were talking about incentive pay something that pitt has set up. They’ve defined what an exemplary fundraiser is. It’s basically achieving two hundred percent of your goal. But that’s a big organization, university of pittsburgh, might there be other ways of implementing incentive pay around? Aside from strictly money, money comp, you know, incentives are interesting in non-profits because, um, a, for the most part, non-profits don’t use sort of base bonus type structures, but there are tons of other ways that you can make somebody feel really good about what they do and whether that’s simply celebrating their accomplishments to the other employees into your board. People really thrive on that, but it can also be other things, like giving them an extra days vacation. Um, you know, sending them home on purpose when their kid’s sick and you tell them that family comes first, you know, all those things that’s really more around culture, but there are there are smart things you can do where you say, you know what? I don’t have the dollar to give. You. But i do have a day to give you or two or whatever it is. Whatever it is, that you’ve earned benefits structures are very important. Um, covering people and their families, and how you do that and how you communicate it. Incredibly important and totally under sort of undervalued in the mindset in the nonprofit world about what that means to an individual. And you say, i care about you and your health, and i care about your family in there. We have just about a minute left or so we have a couple more than more than a couple minutes. How much time do we have left? Sam? Okay, dahna then let’s. Ah, my mistake. Let’s. Keep talking about some some policies around employment. Maybe around training. You’ve got a new employee. You’ve spent the requisite amount of time recruiting you believe you’ve got the best person, the orientation, the training process, the onboarding process oven employees that one of the single most important things that you d’oh. So with us, justus a simple example. First, everybody gets a very long, very detailed employee manual that they have to read where they really understand what the operating premises are of the organ you’re holding your hands, like four inches apart for inches. It’s not four inches thick. Okay, okay. They’re recording, so that would be way too much street. All right, but i use my hands a lot. I think i’m going to italy and one hundred in italian, so i didn’t think you were using them enough. That must be the eight and half months. Pregnant part. Yes, i understand. Ok, the but having that set of expectations in somebody’s mind where they read it? They have to affirm it. They have to tell you that they’ve read it. That tells them everything from how many vacation days they do have, how they can accrue more vacation, what the benefits are to them, how they can get in trouble, how they can stay out of trouble. What a whistle blower policy might look like. All of those things very, very important, but then bringing people into the culture of the organization into your programs where they really feel armed. Tio ah, to be an effective employees. Ah, it’s. So fundamental. So we we set up a schedule time with all of our program managers. We have our end of its staff. When they come in they go. They shadow individuals who do either their job or even other jobs inside the organization. Because you’ve got to understand the entire organization. I think in order to be effective in your silo. Um ah, and then we do profession. We were very open to paying from people doing professional development and encourage it. Ah, and then we do regular staff retreats where everybody comes together and we work on pieces that feel like they might be holes in the skill set to the entire organization again. Investment where its infrastructure or people? You just you can’t shortchange these things and expect to scale on grow the organization. I mean, for the amount it costs me, tio run a staff retreat every year, eyes about one percent of what it costs me to pay my staff. Yeah, that is a very worthwhile investment to make that staff be a leverage oppcoll army. We’re gonna leave it there. Hillary shafer she’s uh, executive director of jefferson awards foundation there at jefferson awards dot or ge and again on twitter. She’s at beard, hillary. Thank you so much, hillary. Thank you. Real pleasure and gun muzzle tough. Congratulations on your pregnancy. Thank you very much. Jean takagi and program your board coming up first. Pursuant acquisition campaigns. They had a free webinar to help you acquire new donors. That was back on august thirty first. But it’s not too late. This is not a date news. No, no one current news. You can watch the archive. Go to tony dot m a slash pursuant capital p please. And the info was there to watch. The archive video tony dahna em a slash pursuant for the archive on acquisition campaigns. Rechner, cps. They do go way beyond the numbers. They have lots of policy statements for you. Ah, more than from last week. Ethical conduct for board members, disaster recovery, investment policy, independent contractor versus employee checklist i know non-profit struggle with that. We’ve covered it and there’s a lot more resources at wagner cpas dot com quick resource is then guides that’s where you get all this good info stop wasting your time using business accounting software for your books you aren’t a business you’re non-profit appaloosa counting is designed for non-profits built from the ground up to make your non-profit financial management simple and affordable. Please check this out. Our new sponsor, apple, owes its fund accounting, advanced reporting, donation tracking and there’s mohr included in annapolis. Accounting it’s all in one, easy to use. Go to non-profit wizard dot com now for tony’s take two. I still got this five minute marketing for planned e-giving i condensed down to the to the, uh most essential information twenty five minutes. Hard to believe that i could talk for twenty five minutes and it not all be critical. I had difficulty with that, but the whole concept of distilling it down. But i did. And i got it down to about three minutes. Roughly and that’s the best of the five minute marketing tips that i’ve got for you for planned giving. I want you to get started with your plan giving marketing. Watch the tips. Check out the video. Three minutes worth it’s at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s. Take two. And here is jean takagi with program you’re bored jean takagi he’s, a principal of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. Gene has been gene has been a regular contributor to show it’s got to be going on three years. Gina i if it’s not three it’s very close. He had it’s, the non popular of the non popular beautiful he had it’s the popular non-profit law blawg dot com non-profit law blogged dot com it’s very popular. And on twitter he’s at jack g t k happy new year jean takagi. Welcome back. Happy new year. Tony it’s. Great to be on. Thank you. I love having you. How long have you been? A contributor every month, i think it’s been a little over three years. A zit? Is it over three? Love it. It could be i think we met three years ago at a bar in san francisco, if i remember, right? Oh, for sure. It’s not like we pick. I picked you up there where i knew you before. I’m not that easy with contributors. I mean, yes, we we knew each other. And then we certainly did meet that’s, right? With along with emily chan? Yes. That’s. Right. Um, let’s see, our board has our board has some responsibilities and around program you’re concerned that they’re not they’re not fulfilling those responsibilities. Yeah, i just feel like there’s there’s, maybe some lack of attention paid on the boards roll on program oversight? I think so often went especially when you talk with lawyers or accountants were talking about financial oversight and we’re saying we’ll make sure you’re solvent. Make sure you have enough money to pay off your debts. They become do we don’t really talk very much about programs, but certainly the management folks and the thunder’s air talking about programs and whether they’re effective and efficient that furthering the mission. So, you know, i thought we should explore a little bit about what the board duties are in in that event as well. Can you just remind us first, we’ve talked about this a while ago. There are three duties that board members have. I was faith, hope and chastity, or on the greatest of those is but yeah, the three duties are the duty of care and that’s act with reasonable care in providing direction and oversight over the organization, the duty of loyalty, and a lot of that has to do with avoiding conflicts of interests that are not in the best interest of the organizations, but are more for the best interest of an insider and the duty of obedience which lawyers air very interested in, and that’s a bang with both the outside laws of you know, that apply to the organization and the internal laws like the by-laws and other policies that the documents may have those air the three to be to be concerned with. Okay and and around program program is essential. Man. That’s what charity’s exist for his programs? Oh, my voice just cracked like i’m a fourteen year old exist that’s. Exciting stuff. Now that it is, it is that’s. Right? Well, you make it interesting. That’s. Why? I love having you back. You make the what could very well be a dry topic. I think you make it interesting. And listeners do too. Yeah. That’s. What? Charity’s air here is for a program. Yeah, exactly. I mean, who cares? The indie at the end of the day, if we’ve got great financials, it’s none of our programs are effective, and we don’t do a service to the community. Precisely. So what? What do we need to be doing? What to boards need to be doing around around program. Well, i think in meeting those three duties, the critical aspect for boards to make sure they’re reasonably informed. Ah, and just get a program report every month or every two months. You know, a ten minute program report from the executive director or program director is fine and good. But does that mean the board really understands the programs and whether the advance the mission on do they understand how the program’s advance emission? And did they ever ask you more difficult questions about are the programs effective? At advancing the mission. Or do we have alternatives? Or should we think of alternatives that might be able to advance that mission mohr effectively or more efficiently, given the limited resources that we all have? First up in this is and we have talked about this, your mission needs to be very clear. Yeah, and one of the things you have to do is make sure you go back. And this is the lawyer speaking, make sure you go back to your articles of incorporation and by-laws and make sure that the mission statement that years, thinking that you’re furthering is consistent with what the law says your mission is, and that’s that’s how it’s displayed on the governing documents and figuring out whether we are effective at meeting our mission. Now we’ve gotto identify cem numbers, right? I mean, it’s, not just gonna be a ten minute report from the program director, we’ve got to be looking at some numbers to figure out whether our we’re having the outcomes that we want, right and it’s such a such a difficult question and that’s, why it’s it’s all about keeping informed? Because you know the whole area of program. Evaluation and that cantor and and a lot of institutions like the stanford center on philanthropy in civil society and mckinsey and, you know, the non-profit cordially foundations under the all have been raiding all sorts of things on program evaluation and how we need more metrics and, you know, but all of that is great, but this is really hard stuff for a lot of non-profits to do so, yes, trying to figure out what what measurements are are important for us to figure out. Are we advancing our mission effectively? And then are we advancing it efficiently is really hard stuff, i think tip typically non-profits will, you know, measure how much money we’ve raised, how many visitors we’ve had or people with served, how many members we have? What is our overhead ratio on? We’ve had discussions on that topic as well, and, you know, those are interesting figures in all important, and i don’t want to downplay that, but what about, you know, then, you know, the number of clients served, for example, does that really tell us what impact that’s done? No before the clients and you know, the program staff may know that, but how does the board know that if we have? If we served two thousand clients last month, did we did we serve them by giving them one meal? Did that change their lives? Did we do more than that? Did we provide services? What? What and impact are we trying to aim for? And what results are we getting those air really difficult things to try to figure out. But i think the board needs to push the organization in that direction. Of trying to figure out are the programs that write programs? Are we effectively implementing it? And if you want to, you know, evaluate your executive and evaluate your programs. You’ve gotta have a good understanding of that. I feel your passion around this, jean. I really do. It comes it’s it’s palpable. Now, in managing these programs, it’s not the board’s roll. Teo to be day to day there’s clearly there’s a delegation that has to be happening. Yeah, absolutely. And and the board certainly has the ability to and should be delegating if they have staff in an executive director. Particularly, um, delegating those duties on those people. And especially, you know, holding the executive accountable. And tasking executive and making sure the executive has resources to be able to do this, to try to figure out what measurements should we take? Teo, evaluate our programs. What what’s important? What do we have the capacity to do now? And what? What do we aspire to do? What are outside stakeholders wanting? What are the foundations saying we must have? And what are the donor’s expecting from us and how to our competitors provide that type of information back? I think we just need to push our executives. We’re lucky enough to have them to figure some of those things out. And none of this has done overnight. Of course, tony. But you know, you you’ve gotto work at this, and sometimes you’re going to move forward, and sometimes you gotta move backwards. But you’ve got to keep pushing, pushing ahead. You just asked five or six really difficult but critical questions. Um, it’s a good thing. This is a podcast cause now people can listen. Go, go back to the past one minute and listen to those five or six questions. Jean just just named, you know, difficulty, but but but critical. And and yet the board’s oversight responsibility remains, and that can’t be delegated. That’s, right? So you know, the board, khun delegate management, but the board can’t delegate its ultimate oversight of the organization and it’s, you know, it’s responsibility to plan the direction of the organization. So status quo, if you know if that’s all you’re satisfied with and you don’t aim to do anything else with that, you know, that may not that may indicate that you don’t have the best board in place, and i was a little shocked. Teo learned, i think two days ago guidestar held a web cast, and there was a survey done of executive directors, and seventy five percent said they were unhappy with their boards and there’s a big disconnect there seventy five percent approved. Okay, what else? What else, uh, is part of the boards oversight of program? Gene? Well, you know, one thing i kind of want to emphasize as well is that i don’t want to put all of this on the board of directors, and i realized that the vast majority of board members are volunteers and have busy lives otherwise and are doing an amazing job. Trying to contribute to their organizations, the disconnect with the exec director is usually because of communications and a lack of understanding of their respective roles. So i just want to put a little bit of a burden on the executive director as well, to make sure that they are emphasizing board development and helping the board understand its responsibilities and sometimes bringing in experts, even though they may cost a little at the outset. Khun b really valuable to an organisation to try to figure out what these roles are, and again put in a little investment up front, and you can get payoff down the road even if you have some failures along the way. But it’s just that continuing to push forward to trying to understand what you’re doing who’s responsible for what? On figuring that stuff out the metrics themselves again. Our khun b, you know, exceedingly difficult if if i asked you give us metrics on changing laws when we were fighting for civil rights, well, that might take years or decades to get any measurable results per se that might make a thunder happy. And you know what would have happened in the early sixties you know, civil rights organizations just had their program shut down because boards didn’t get the right metrics. That would have been ridiculous, right? So we have to understand the limitation of these measurements as well, but continue to try to figure out what important steps or benchmarks we’re shooting for and what’s important to do, even if we don’t get the metrics. Ah, and make sure our funders and donors and stakeholders understand those limitations. Well, just a minute or so before before breaking what? What kind of expert would help us with this? What would we search for? Well, there there are some consultants out there who specialize in program evaluation, and there there are definitely resource is out there. I have named a few organizations already, but let me give you a few more the foundation centre and they’re grantspace website has got some excellent resource is on program evaluation, the national council of non-profits also has some excellent resources. They’re they’re definitely resource is out there. And if you look for non-profit consultants who got program evaluation exper thirties, i think that can be a starting place. This is also a ripe area for collaboration. Amongst organizations that are serving similar populations, or half similar missions, to try to meet together and talked about how they’re measuring, you know, their program, results and what would work for maybe, you know, across the sub sector that that they’re serving, all of those things are really important. I think again, executive leadership is really important to get the board in motion, but the board also has to hold the executive responsible for making sure that happens as well. Let’s, take a break. Gene and i, of course, will keep talking about the board’s responsibility around program and the executive director’s, too. Lynette singleton and at lays, right. Thank you for thank you very much. For those very, very kind thoughts on twitter. Hang in there. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist market 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-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, i’m kate piela, executive director of dance, new amsterdam. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. More live listener love junction china ni hao, the netherlands gary indiana the home of christmas story, right? I’m pretty sure a christmas story that movie took place in gary, indiana live listen, i’d love to gary, indiana, and we’ve got a couple checking in from japan, hiroshima and kobe konnichi wa, farmington, michigan live listener love out to you. We have a question from twitter jean very loyal listener lynette singleton asks, do we know why there’s this lack of love between executive directors with and their boards, any ideas what’s contributing to that? I think i’m sorry, tony, that i think there are a number of factors that make be contributing to that, but i think the first is lack of understanding of the rules at each place and then it’s it’s a matter of communication between the two parties there are greater vacations that that board’s place on executives and reliance on the executives tio tio make do with limited resources to produce amazing results, and that can sometimes be a very heavy burden on the executive without a lot of support from the board and exactly what the board’s role is in supporting the executive director’s. Also, i think they’re many areas where there’s a lack of agreement or understanding between those roles and, you know, fund-raising is actually one of the areas of ax. Actually, some controversy, i think, you know, is the board involved. Is the board’s role no to raise funds for the organisation. From a legal perspective, i might answer no to some extent, from a more operational perspective, i would say, of course it is, so they’re they’re different considerations, and that was a charity navigator study, right? I’m not sure. I thought you said i’d start with, i’m sorry, the organization that did the webinar. Okay, okay, god start. Pardon me. Ok wave talking, talking about program meeting the mission, but there’s also legal requirements around program as well. Sure, and then the board should make sure that the executive is ensuring that the program is in compliance with whatever applicable laws might be there, whether it have to do with the facility of the organization or the employees and volunteers working for it, their basic risk management steps that they may want to take a swell, including ensuring that there’s proper insurance that, for whatever activities are are involved. Obviously, if you’re doing a summer day camp involving rope climbing and like that that’s going to be a little bit more significant in terms of risk management than if you’re just doing administrative work, but lots of legal compliance things, licensing, permitting and in all of those think, well, can board members be personally liable if laws are being broken and that’s why we have directors and officers insurance, isn’t it? Yeah, part partly why we have that it’s usually, you know, if there’s some sort of negligence involved when the board members acting not as a boardmember but is a volunteer for a program, then you’re probably looking at commercial general liability insurance to protect against, you know, somebody slip and fall and blaming the volunteer who was right supposed to set it up on the board members, directors and officers. Insurance will really protect against decisions that the board made that ultimately, you know, in hindsight, we’re negligent or grossly negligent, and, you know, if they decided to hold a program in involved involving bungee jumping with six year olds and without adequate supervision that, you know, that would be the type of negligence that could get boardmember personally liable for something like that. But volunteermatch boardmember czar really, really, really rarely held personally liable absent some sort of malfeasance or self dealing really benefit themselves. Okay, i’ve seen some six year olds on the subway that i wouldn’t mind having participate in that that bungee jumping off a cliff i could i could give them a little shove to get them started, but not not kids. I know nobody related to me only only what’s people i’ve seen in some pipe it that it go well, now they’re real. I’ve seen him in the subway, i just don’t know who they are. I can’t name them, but i could point them out easily. Probably on my way home. I’ll encounter a few. Um, what else should we be thinking about? You know, your get before i asked before we do that, you’re an anarchist. Also, you’re making us. I got two troublemakers on the show today. You are making us ask questions that are very difficult, but but critical? Yeah. You know, i think of lawyers and consultants more broadly, that’s what what we do, we can implement the changes that we talked about, what we want to raise the questions because we want boards and executives to really be thinking about these things and discussing them. And that’ll help break down the barriers and the misunderstandings and hopefully make more executive directors feel that their boards air great, make more executive, make more boards feel that their executive directors are doing a great job as well. As i said, i feel your passion around this. We have just about two minutes. What? You have another thought around this? Yeah. You know, just tio, make sure that again and i’ve talked a little bit about this is that there are limitations to what metrics can provide to an organization and some things just take a really long time to figure out research i mentioned lobbying on civil rights issues is one example, but research as well, you know, for going to engage in research of a new program and how it’s going to work or developing a new medical device or drug that’s going to be beneficial to developing nations and that the people there who might not have the resources to be able to afford these things, we’ve got to be a little bit experimental. And i know you know, there’s been preaching to the choir about embracing failure and sharing it so we can learn in advance, but that really is something that all echo as well, that, you know, we’re going to get metrics and sometimes the metrics they’re going to show we failed, but if we never fail, that means we’ve never really pushed the envelope of making a more substantial change, and we’re just sort of, you know, relying on making little incremental changes, and we have to think about our organizations and say, are we detective organization that just wants to stay status quo? Do we want to make little tiny? Incremental changes year by year or do we actually want to look at solving or advancing our mission in a really big way and actually take some risk and find some programs out there that might be more risky and that might fail and help educate our funders and our donors and our supporters that this is what we’re doing and not everything is going to work, but this is the way to advance, you know, our cause lawyer with a heart, jean jean takagi, really so grateful that you’re contributing to the show? Jean, thank you so much. Thank you, johnny. And thanks for basing this serious subject today. That’s all right, uh, we have a little fun with it. You’re an anarchist is no question cubine you’ll find jean at non-profit law blogged dot com that’s the block that he edits and he’s at g tack on twitter. Thank you again, jean, thanks so much. Next week it’ll be a good one. You have my word. I don’t know anything about fermentation. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com and these are our sponsors pursuing online tools. For small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuing dot com wagner, sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers. With your cps dot com. You’re not a business. You’re non-profit stoploss accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com, and we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com, a creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, and this terrific music is by scott stein of brooklyn. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be going. 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Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is 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 talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. 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Nonprofit Radio for September 8, 2017: Video Storytelling & Deep Pockets

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Yasmin Nguyen & Sheri Chaney Jones: Video Storytelling

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In a crowded video internet, how do you tell that compelling story so your message moves others to take action? Sharing their smart strategies are Yasmin Nguyen from VibranceGlobal, and Sheri Chaney Jones, with Measurement Resources. (Originally aired September 4, 2015.)

 

 

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Maria SempleHow do you find pockets of wealth in the communities you serve? Maria Semple reveals her secrets. She’s our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder. (Originally aired March 28, 2014.)

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of pancreas ola thigh assis if you hardened me with the idea that you missed today’s show video storytelling in a crowded video internet, how do you tell that compelling story? So your message moves others to take action. Sharing their smart strategies are yasmin win from vibranceglobal and sherry cheney jones with measurement resource is that originally aired september fourth, twenty fifteen and deep pockets. How do you find pockets of wealth in the communities you serve? Maria simple reveals her secrets. She’s, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder that originally aired march twenty eighth, twenty fourteen on tony’s take two five minute planned giving marketing. We’re sponsored by wagner, cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit apple owes accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com is them. We be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We be e spelling dot com here are yasmin win and sherry cheney jones with video storytelling welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc twenty fifteen the non-profit technology conference we’re at the austin convention center austin, texas we’re kicking off our coverage with this interview. Are my guests now? Are jasmine win and sherry cheney jones welcome. Thank you. Thank you, it’s. Good to be here. They’re seminar topic is stop shooting videos. Start unlocking stories. Jasmine win is founder and ceo of vibranceglobal and sherry cheney jones is president of measurement resource is let’s start sherry, what are non-profits not doing quite a cz? Well as they could with video interviews, storytelling? What? From my perspective, because we help non-profits measure and communicate their impact in value, they often are focusing on their impact. So how are they changing lives and changing circumstances there, too focused on the activities. So, really understanding what your true impact is and telling your stories from there. And you’re trying to elicit really heartfelt story telling stories. You know, emotional. We want emotional impact. Okay, what would you have you have? You know, i think that a lot of times we focus so much on the technology, the process of doing video and also the questions. That we ask people, and so we don’t focus enough on the connection and really, when you are able to provide a space for someone too open up to feel that they can speak about their passion, be grateful. They then create that connection that we can then capture and witness through videos and so it’s that focus on that connection rather than just the information or that exchange. Now, as we are today, you’re asking people to get in front of lights and cameras or and mike’s andi, open up. Yes, men. How are we gonna start this process first? Let’s, start with how do we find the right people? And then we’ll get into coaching them and and getting their best performance and storytelling out of them. But how do we find the right one? Yeah, absolute. Tony that the key thing is selecting the right people. And that starts with being mindful of who your audience is. You know, we found that the most impactful, ah, relevant person to interview talk with are a representation of our audience. So, for example, for appealing to a donor’s, then it be great to have a financial supporter donors to be able to speak in their language in the same mindset for them to connect and relate. So think about the group’s. We want this interview to be meaningful for and select people from that constituency. Right? Volunteers, donors, board members. Yeah. Ok. And someone who’s were well respected. Who’s. Our ticket who’s also a very passionate and a champion of of our particular cause to be able to speak for us but also, at the same time, carry the torch for our audience so that they can connect with them. Sure, anything you want to add to finding the right person is sure. I always say, think about your wise. Why do you do it? You do, but not just why does your organization do what it does? But why does your funders fund you and whitey? You’re participants participate. And when you’re finding people to tell your story, you want to make sure that you are covering those three perspectives. Okay, three wives. The three wise. Yep. Three wise men know e wise? Yes, different wise. Okay, sure. Let’s, say with you now. So we found the right people. How do we start the process of making them? Comfortable evoking the really heartfelt emotion that we’re tryingto chief? Sure. Well, i will actually default to us because he’s really good at that, you know, i’m i’m the one that helps you create the content think about what you should be eliciting and he’s when it does the great interviews, maybe you’re more on the on the production side. I’m more on the defining what what questions? You should be asking what impact you should be drawing down of them stuff like, okay, we’ll come to you very shortly. Okay, okay. We got plenty of time together. Twenty five. Just great. Yeah. You know, for someone to be at ease. You really it’s it’s? Really? About how you think about the interview or how you think about it being on video? A lot of times, people focus on the act of, you know, being on camera so they feel like they’re being evaluated. They’re being judged or in an interview, maybe you think of, like, a job interview or or some others where they have to perform, and they have to be perfect. And what that does is it raises this level of anxiety where you have tio feel. Like you have to know not necessarily be your best to be your most authentic. Authentic. Yeah, you’re you’re going to be your best if you’re most if you you’re most attentive, you just you write, which is hard to get and even on even in still right videos, pictures it really is okay, yeah, how are we gonna do so down? So so part of that is in the initial invitation is instead of hey, can you do a testimonial keen? And you come on camera and do a video it’s about framing it in a way that helps them give instead of being put in a position to perform. And so what i mean by giving is, you know, i’d like to invite you to come and share your story so that we can help inspire others like you. You know, we we want to put you in a place where you can be of service to others, and when you’re in that mindset of being of service, to be able to share your experience and insight so that it can help others, it takes that pressure off because now it’s about your own story, your own experience. And there’s no right or wrong. And so that that’s the first step is the mind set piece. Okay, so let’s try to avoid characterizing it as testimonial. Do you know, do something that way? Put a label on right or even an interview? It should be more of a conversation, and i find that mom i doing so far, you’re doing great. My failing is a failing grade know you’re at least a b plus or something. You’re doing great. You’ve done this a few times. I have a lot of securities right already. Absolutely cool. Yeah, s so tell me more. So so so that’s the first step is setting up the frame for for what? That experience is like giving them information so that they feel prepared, you know, even some questions not necessarily for them to prepare a script, but for them to at least be a tease to know what to expect, that there’s not going to be this sort of curveball, or they’re gonna be blindsided because people have a lot of anxiety around, you know the uncertainty. And so that that’s another element. And then once you actually get into the session, then then it’s really about creating that space? I go through a specific routine if i find that someone’s either really nervous or they’re very tense, where we do an exercise called a ci gong, slap on what that is is where you basically take your hand and one hand and you slap thea part of your front part of your arm all the way back to up to your chest, and then you do on the other side and then down to your legs and then back up through your back and then on your head as well. You do that a couple times having how hard you’re slapping, just just so just like just like this. So you’re going back like this and and and then down to your chest and then back-up and what you’re doing is you’re activating the various different meridian parties and your body, your head too as well, too. And then once you do that a couple times, you’ll notice this sort of tingle. It just activates the energy and yourself and so that’s physically gets you ready. Another gong xi gong slap? Yeah, yeah, you can google that nok will be on youtube. The other parties is also getting you into what we call the vortex or the zone or, you know, the peak performance state and so, you know, i listen to some music, so whatever music kind of gets you going here, the whole goal is to are we asking the person i interrupt all the time, you know, that’s bad that’s, bad technique, a weapon? You don’t have a conversation, really? So we’re asking the person in advance what’s your kind of music or bring bring some of your favorite music, you can bring some of that, but even before the actual interview, i will take time to have a phone conversation, just tow learn about that, okay, build that report so it’s not. We’re not meeting for the first time on camera and, uh, and that way, we feel like we’re friends and i can ask them about different things, so the whole goal is to get them out of their head and into their hearts, because when they start speaking from the heart when they start opening up that’s when the magic happens outstanding. All right, 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 surely now let’s, come to you with questions. Um, well, jasmine alluded to a little bit, but the types of questions where you’re aware your expertise comes in. It’s sure, in terms of thinking about what? Why are you doing this video? I’m sorry i called you jasmine jasmine? Pardon me? Sorry about that. Yes, you have been eluded. So what’s the purpose of the video you’re shooting. Who is your audience? What do they care about? And what we know about is although fund-raising is up from where it was pretty great recession levels, people want to know that there their money is actually making a difference. So no longer can we just say, oh, here’s a cute kid, i’m going to tell you my story about, you know, my family people really want to know that there’s a collective impact going on that there’s, you know, in the measurement world, the outcomes that you’re achieving. So you want to think about what are those outcomes that you know that people want you two to be showing and then making sure your interview questions air addressing those so people are telling their stories around how they experience the outcomes that you are saying that you’re achieving how they’re experiencing a perfect and we’re going to get really kind of personal, right? Like how i saved your life improved your life, help your child, etcetera. Yeah. So, you know, we have a list of twelve outcomes that typically non-profits air achieving like increased knowledge increased, gilles, you know, maintenance of new behavior, reduction of undesirable behavior. So no, those going in before you start asking your questions and let your interview we know that you’re going to want to know about, you know, how did this program increase your knowledge or help you get a job or, you know, decrease your, you know, risk for heart disease or whatever it is that you’re non-profits doing, make sure the questions are aligned with those important outcomes. Should we stay away from giving exact questions? You will be asked one, two, three, four, because i find in doing my show that that then leads to scripted questions, lead to scripted answers and and that’s not from the heart, that’s from appearing, like memorized so so sherry but we want to give them topics, right, but not exact questions. Is that? Is that the best practice or what? Either, either, yeah. I found that i could give them some questions and with a disclaimer that, you know, these are some of the similar types of questions that will be asking and then also explain to them how to prepare. So just think about some bullet points or just some stories that may be relevant but not necessarily prepare a script per se as well to so that that it alleviates the anxiety, but you’re also making sure that they don’t have a prepared answer. Percent yeah, yeah, like i said, then that’s not that’s, not the impact you’re gonna want, all right, anything else, before we get to the actual either of you need anything else before we get to the actual session with mike’s and lights and cameras that we should be thinking about? We didn’t talk about yet, you know, i think that’s that’s pretty much covers it for now we’re going to go and dive a little bit deeper into our session, then during that time. Yeah. Oh, well, i mean, there’s stuff you’re going to say in this session, you you won’t say here is that well, actually, you know, know what? We’ve got someone holding back. Of course not. Your size is okay. Okay. All right. I want shortchange non-profit ready. You know, of course, that all right. All right. So now we’re in the session, so presumably we’re in some kind of studio. These got a microphone because it might just we could just be doing audio, right? Possible? Absolutely. But might be lights and camera also who’s best toe ask, what do we do when we’re in the studio? Now? I could i could do that. Okay, yeah, you know, it’s again, it’s first getting them into that state it’s a two part process getting them into that place where they’re not thinking from their minus their speaking for the heart, then the next step, then it’s it’s like a dance. Then you’re the lead. And so through your mindful questions that you’ve designed, you’ve created both to communicate impact illicit to bring it out from them, per se. You’re also thinking about what is the overarching storyline that you’re trying to create. So one of the things that well, that we’re going to discuss in our session is the frame where for an appeals type of video, you know these air the videos that ah, non-profits play at their events to appeal to, you know, fundraisers and donors. And so there’s a seven start, seven step formula that i generally recommend to my clients as a guide for creating questions to elicit out those components. So the first part is, is that emotional hook or that connection? Something, whether it be a piece of data, something that’s compelling, or a story that just gets people that initially engaged. So they want to continue to watch the next step, then is ah gratitude appreciating the people that are there the people that have already supported you recognizing them so then they personally feel connected. Engaged. The third part then is impact showing the difference that that their support up until this point has made to show that you have traction, and that your stewards of their support this far. Then the next step is really diving into the importance of the purpose of the mission. Why are we all here? Why is it important to support us then? The next step is to is to paint a picture of what the future can be. So this is where we are. But this is how much we can this is how many more people we can serve. This is the greater impact that we can do. And then then goes the call to action, which is this is how you can help. This is how you can be a part of us achieving this bigger future. And the final part is that emotional clothes wrapping it up, tying it back to either the mission or or completing the circle of this story that leaves them with this emotional connection. But now they’ve see why why we’re doing this. They also know how they can be a part of it and that’s the framework in which we start to create questions that we start to elicit out in each of the different interviews. Sherry, this is a real art because that’s a lot to pack into what’s probably gonna be, you know, like a ford of five minute video or so bad. It’s doable, of course. Yeah, yeah. And i mean, in the session, we’re going toe share case study where one organization was ableto talk about their recreational programme with kids, but at the end of the day, they were able to demonstrate how they had a fifty seven thousand seven hundred seventy percent return on investment in those chilled children in terms of really transforming their earning potential over their lives. Just buy this, you know, recreational after school program and talk about and your fund-raising appeal if you’re able teo to share those stories, talk about those kids experience and at the end of the day, say, oh, by the way, give us five hundred dollars, and we’ll turn that into two hundred eighty nine thousand dollars for these children over the course of, you know, their lifetime that’s, very powerful and, you know, checkbooks are flying nah bins what if we’re in our studio session and it’s not going so well? Our interview is not really loosening up very tense you’re not getting the kind of emotion you’re hoping for. What what can we do to you? Break that besides achy gong slap anything else we can do? Like in them in that moment? Loosen him or her up? Yeah, yeah, you know, first of all, i always try with something with physiology. So some physical movement, whether it be breathing or others just to kind of, you know, shake out some of the stiffness there. If that doesn’t work, then i should start to shift into what are they passionate about? We totally go off or off camera off mike now, mike, or even even if the camera’s still on, but i shift their focus on hey, you know what? What do you know? What are you most passionate about? Tell me about your favorite, you know, and start getting really personal, and when they start to then connect with what really means, you know something to them, then it slowly they slowly start to kind of open up in that way. So i found that to be really effective, it might actually be a good idea to keep the camera rolling or the mike rolling because you might capture something really good whether they know it’s being captured or not. They’re there more of these because you’ve broken that i see you looking the tension about okay, let’s, create anything you want, but i was just saying, you know, a lot of it is the magic and editing, so if you know that framework that yasmin laid out and you know, that’s, what you’re going for, your looking for those nuggets that you’re going to put into that framework when you go to create your video and edit it together. And that that’s a really good point. Sherry, is that you know, when you’re looking at the post production editing process, you wanna have someone on your team that understands the story framework here? Not just someone that’s really a great good, you know, an editor or your your brother in law who knows howto video. But someone who understands the purpose understands the story’s understands elements of marketing as well so that they can put those pieces together in a meaningful way. Alright, we have plenty of time together. So you took some now about postproduction. We moved into that suddenly, that was well done. Thank you, baizman. What? What more about postproduction? Aside from let’s not have an amateur doing it. What else? What else can we say? You know, post production actually starts with preproduction. Always found that it’s very, very important to know the roadmap rather than shooting a bunch of content audio or visual and then just dumping it on to someone and saying here, figure it out so it’s it’s it’s essential to be involved throughout the process s so that’s, really, the key part here and then the other part is, is to understand buy-in to have someone who really understands the dynamics of human conversation per se, you know, there’s certain ways in which people speak that are more flattering than others. And so it’s it’s a very subtle nuance of how to cut the foot the pieces and then start assembled them together and then tie in either music or other elements that enhance that experience, whether it be visuals or other things as well to it sounds like you’re strongly suggesting that this be done by a professional. Yes, absolutely on dh they be involved from the beginning? Not just that you’ve given them a raw video file, and now they have to try, too. Kraft, what you’re describing? Great. Yeah, yeah, i think specially for your your fund-raising appeal videos and maybe the things on your website you’re going to ask people to donate to your cause. But i think for and you can correct me if you disagree, but for your maybe website testimonials or other things, you know, in our session, yasmin’s going to actually do one. On his iphone so just depends on what the purpose again understanding what is the purpose of the video? Your beauty that’s an excellent point. Yeah, i mean, we were we were talking last several minutes about the least, i think the the video that shone at the gala that ideally is evoking tears and and moving a room of seven hundred people or, you know, whatever, but on the other end of the spectrum share your point is really well taken. This could be very low production value with somebody with an iphone on dh can still be very, very moving. Yeah, absolutely doesn’t the production values don’t have to be high to be compelling? Yes. Depends what your purpose is. Yeah, and and and again, it’s, just starting with understanding, understanding your purpose, understanding your audience, understanding your call to action on and then finding the right medium for that. Um, i’m still going. Yeah, absolutely. It’s it’s really about having a storytelling mindset, it’s about having a mindset of thinking about what? What are we doing right now? And is who is this meaningful for? And then let’s just capture that moment, especially with technology these days. With, you know, our smartphones or iphones or android phones, you know, the cameras and the equipment is so advanced and it’s, i mean, you could capture a great experience bar trying to do it in the dark, but, i mean, if you think about wow, if i’m constantly thinking about how can i share this moment with someone else and who would benefit and why they would benefit, then then you’re you’re ready to go and as far as, like professional editing, you know, quite honestly, people can edit themselves, but really, i find that, like ninety plus percent of the clients and people i work with it’s a tedious process and that’s something that if they can learn how to improve the quality of capturing the experience that they can handed off to someone else, even if it’s simple edits it’s accessible and affordable for just even the average person who’s just doing a video for their they’re easing or something like that by phone has been picked up his phone as he was talking for those who are not watching the video as a visual. So i mean, it’s just it could be just that simple. Sure. You look like you want to add something. No, i’m just a green. Okay, oppcoll we still have another couple of minutes left together. What if i not ask you that? What have we not talked about? It doesn’t matter what stage of it is, what more would you like to say? It’s a great topic, i think. Just a kind of reiterate it’s about thinking about this experience, the interview or the video really as an opportunity for for you to help someone else give and and the way that they give is through their insights and experience. So we appreciate the opportunity to be here with you, tony, to be able to share and so it’s a it’s, a conversation and it’s an opportunity to give, and i think that really, when you start thinking of it this way, it alleviates a lot of stress and anxiety around the experience. Yeah, i’d love to leave loved leave it there, but we still have a couple minutes left, so i’m gonna press it’ll further on something i was thinking about when you’re recording. Do we do we need tohave an interviewer? Or should we just let the person kind? Of go free form and on dh hit on the topic questions hoping that they’ll do that or we need to have an interviewer. I i think yes, i think so. And unless the person is experience and very skilled with being able to create a connection themselves with either the camera, they’ve they’ve had either training or they could do it naturally. But i would say that the majority of the people are looking to have an interview because the goal is to experience a moment of connection. And how can you experience a connection without having some other person person? Lester trained to connect? Yeah, yes, directly to account. And so to answer your question, yes. Ah, it’s important to have at least someone there to connect with. Okay, yeah, sure, because i think it’s not it can be very scripted, and we’re trying to avoid that scripted feel so an interviewer helps reduce that that scripted feel better, more connection, okay? And, ah, there is one story i’d like to share and it’s about giving as well, too, and sherry’s heard this story a number of times because we actually start third i’m speaking together here, but last year, we were at the non-profit technology conference, and both of us were there to writing. So you guys last year, samaritan picked you up last year we missed each other in d c. Yeah, so sure. And i were both staying with our good friends neil and heather. Now new one. Heather had this amazing ten year old daughter named kendall. And every morning when we sit down for breakfast, kendall would just light up the room and she’d ask questions, and she will have about a minute left. Okay. Okay, so, so so anyway, you’re trained, so i know what you know. I’m gonna tell party there’s just to the store here, and i will re kapin the session here. Don’t worry about the way we wanna hear your story. Okay. All right. So so then ah, went the last morning that were there. She just barely looked up from her bowl and i said, hey, what’s going on, you seem different and she said, yeah, i’ve got to go sell girl scout cookies today i said, well, what’s wrong with that. People love cookies she said, yeah, but every time i get out there i get rejected and so i said, yeah, gosh, you know, i totally understand, so i asked her i said, hey, candle, how much of your cookies she said they’re four dollars a box? So i said here, here’s, twenty dollars, once you give me five boxes, she said really has like, yeah, it’s like, but here’s the thing i don’t eat cookies myself and so she but i want you to do what what i want to do is i want you to give these cookies to five people that you’ve never met before. All of a sudden her eyes lit up, she ran to her mom and said, mom, guess what? We get to give cookies away then? And i said, now here, kendall here’s, the reason why i want you to give those cookies away cause i want you to know what it’s like to make someone’s day. I want you to see, hear and feel their appreciation, and then when you’re out there and you’re asking someone to ask by a box of cookies, try this instead. Ask them hey, is there someone in your life that you really care about? I’d like to help you make their bay by giving them a box of cookies. So what we’re doing is we’re creating an opportunity for someone to give and so similar to this interview experience when you create an opportunity to give you shift that dynamic, so outstanding, we’re gonna leave it there. Thank you very, very much. You your favorite cookies with thin mints, by the way about us so good on this. Emotions are number two yasmin win he’s, founder and ceo of vibranceglobal and sherry cheney jones’s, president of measurement resource is non-profit radio coverage of ntc twenty fifteen the non-profit technology conference, thanks so much for being with us deep pockets with maria semple is coming up first, wagner cpas they do go way beyond the numbers for you. They have got dozens of policy statements for you to download a wireless device policy like no talking or texting while you’re driving for business purposes. Segregation of duties for financial oversight this chart will designate for you who should sign the checks? Who should write the checks? Who posts the accounts receivable? Who approves the payroll? It tells you who to assign each of these task too, and a bunch of other tasks. There’s a whistleblower policy, a conflict of interest policy, a travel policy, dozens of policies too many for me to name them all, go to wagner cps dot com creek resource is then guides stop wasting your time using business accounting software for your books you aren’t a business you’re non-profit appaloosa counting is designed for non-profits built from the ground up to make your financial management simple and affordable. It’s fun to counting, advanced reporting, donation tracking and more it’s all in one easy to use software they’re at non-profit wizard dot com check that out now. Time for tony take two i cut down my five minute plan giving marketing tips to a video that’s about three minutes long took it all down twenty five to three did the phone segment on the august eighteenth show? If you want a quick refresher video, you can have the takeaways in a three minute video. Plus, of course, there’s a link to the full facebook live video it’s at tony martignetti dot com for those five minutes plan giving marketing tips that is tony’s take two and here is marie a simple with deep pockets. Maria semple is with us. She is the prospect finder, the trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot com, and her book is panning for gold. Find your best dahna prospects now she’s our doi end of dirt cheap and free ideas. You can follow her on twitter at maria simple. Welcome back from vacation, maria. Thanks, tilly. Great to be back here with you. I’m glad you are. Where were you on vacation? We took the kids who are both in college. We took them on spring break and went down to riviera. Maya in mexico. Was this a selling vacation? I know you’re an avid sailor. No, it was land based. But it was wonderful. We did get out on a little catamaran to play that they had available at the resort, you know, to take out on your own. Just, you know, a smaller one. There was fun. There were times where your college kids thrilled about going on spring break with their mom and dad and sitting on the beach instead of being with their friends and drinking beers. Actually, they were. They were just fine with it. And, yeah, we won’t address the other. Part of that, i’m sure if they’re below twenty one that i’m certainly don’t drink beers or anything, are they? They’re they’re of age. They put it that way. Okay, okay, um, well, i’m glad you’re back. Uh, we’re talking about finding pockets of of affluence in communities. This this comes up in your practice, it does. It comes up a lot in, especially when i’m doing seminars or workshops in front of live groups, you’ve inevitably always have somebody raised their hand and say, g, we we really like to know a little bit more about our communities in terms of affluence. What what are the more affluent, zip zip codes on dh then, you know, what is philanthropy looking like in general amongst high net worth individuals? So i thought it might be kind of interesting for us to take some time and talk about what some of the resources are that are available online to kind of examine. You know, both of those areas. Okay, before we go online, is there any chance of starting with your immediate internal resources, like you’re bored? You could could you start there, perhaps? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You could definitely start. With your board what what i think is usually helpful, though, is if you very often, if if you goto your board and try and have a conversation at a board meeting or a development committee meeting and just kind of say, well, who do you know, give us the names of everyone, you know, you know, sometimes it’s better to kind of have maybe sort of almost vetted list first to se gi these air, some people we’ve identified or these air some affluent zip codes we’ve identified in our region? Does anybody know any of these people, or does anybody know anybody in the in the zip code? Because then now you’re getting them to really focus in on some specific people or some specific communities, and then, you know, versus them just trying to figure out who they know in their entire world or roll adex, okay, so we’re going to go online to try to generate these resource is start t these resources to try to generate lists and give people names and communities and things like that, too, jog their memories. Yeah, i think i think that works at a little bit better for a lot of boards, because a lot of people are a little bit more perhaps reserved, or they say, well, you know, who is it that you want me to bring to the table here, give me a little bit more parameter around that. Okay? Well, you’re our diet of dirt cheap and free, so where should we get started with this? So, you know, the census pulls together a lot of great data about communities, and that really is the basis for a lot of these statistics that you can get regarding not only where income levels are and wealth, but how what the makeup is of the population, right? So this could have implications not only for the fund-raising side of your non-profit but also thinking about programs and services that you offer. And, you know, maybe you have certain services that are more geared toward females are more geared towards certain types of populations, maybe immigrants, so you would want to know how you know, what is our population, makeup and how well, with this programme are service you’ve made have a sense that this might be something that you want to offer at your non-profit but not knowing the exact make of of the community you you would probably be, you know, better off. Just kind of doing a little bit of research to see. Well, just what are the numbers of the people in that community that make up that population? Ok, how do we access the census data? So one source is directly from the census itself. It’s it’s called american fact finder. And the website is a fact finder to roman that’s, the numeral two three arabic. We know that’s the arabic numerals, right. The arabic numerals, right back finder to dot census dot gov. So that is a pretty good place to start, because what you can actually dio is you can put in your specific zip code that you would like to do a little bit of research on. And you can get information, for example, like the average adjusted gross income for that community versus the entire state. What charitable contribution deductions are in that zip code. So that could because tito that’s very interesting. Yeah, it’ll. So i had gone in in prep preparation for this particular show today. I went in and put my own zip code in and saw that the average charitable contributions were three thousand sixty two dollars, right? So if you’re trying to think about where tio really start mining specific communities, it could be an interesting way to see if that how about community compares to other nearby communities, and you can also look at income income statistics there you can look at income, you can look at average adjusted gross income. You, khun look att estimated median household income. Andi khun, look att house values as well. So i thought that was kind of interesting because a lot of people will say, well, g, you know it it seems to be that the communities where there might be hyre hyre home values could potentially then translate to higher income bracket and potentially hyre giving as well, yes, interesting so you can you can play with these different variables of income and assets and charitable deductions average terrible reductions in the right zip code, for example, in my zip code. One thing that i found to be kind of interesting when i looked at the estimated median house value in in two thousand eleven as it was broken down by race, um, the asian community came out highest at just over five hundred seventy five thousand. The next highest level was the white population at four, sixty nine and change. So it was interesting to see how, how even they can break it down by race, based on the information found and census data. Okay, and that’s all that fact finder to dot census dot gov, right and another site as well. Which is it? City dash data dot com mom, where you can look at a lot of this broken down but focusing first on the census site that i mentioned the fact finder site, you can download their data into excel spreadsheet. So i thought that was interesting, because then you can you know, if you if you needed to do any type of reporting at your in you can take those spreadsheets and share them with other people within your organization, be that, you know, staff, or or bored, you can also sort you can also sort by different variables, right? Absolutely. And then they also had poverty, statistics and statistics around veterans. So if you were looking to try and figure out where the poverty stats, where, you know, maybe you’re trying to develop programming for lower income children in your community or something like that. You can try and take a look at where those stats are also some non-profits are addressing the needs of veterans, and so you could try and determine what the numbers of veterans in our communities and trying to come up with programming for that specific population. Okay, that’s a very good one. I love that one. Ah, yeah. All right, you mentioned city hyphen data. Dot com city data city data dot com there’s a hyphen in there? Absolutely. And i can put these on your facebook page, if you like after the show. Well, yeah, i’m going to do the takeaways and i’ll have a bunch of them. But you, khun, you can then add some or two you’ll be able to add beyond what i what i put in the takeaways. Okay, okay, terrific. So there again, you can search by zip code and again, you can look at the those adjusted gross income figures, charity contributions, home values again broken down by race and so forth. And, you know, you can a lot of the data you’ll you’ll note it’s laid out a little bit differently. So i think what i would say to your listeners is checked both of them out. See what type of information it is that you want to pull out of this. Andi, see if if if the data is going to be useful for you, it’s presented a little bit differently on the two websites. But i have a feeling that the actual core of where all the data is coming from. It’s really? All from the census. Oh, interesting. Ok, same data differently presented. So youse both lookit lookit? Both. Okay, absolutely. This is an example. You know, i love this example of ah, value that the government provides us through the through the census. Yeah. It’s all it’s all there, it’s free. And so why not take advantage of you know, all of this? All this work legwork somebody else has done for you. What else you got for us? So then i was beginning to think about, well, let’s, look, a philanthropy in general and the mindset, perhaps, of high net worth individuals and two interesting studies that are out there. One is by bank of america. They do a high net worth study on the last one was done at the end of two thousand twelve and another a source that i do want to give some time to talk about is the chronicle of philanthropy because they did something in two thousand twelve called hyre how america gives you remember that and the make of america’s study it is quite lengthy. They do have an executive summaries well, and that girl is a bit longer. So but of course, if you if you just google the bank of america hi network study, you’ll get right to it as well. But what i thought was kind of interesting is that, you know, that they profile how the high net worth individuals are giving now. So where the state of giving wass and at that point in time when they did this study and also how they might be projected to give so i would really encourage the non-profits to take a look at that, especially if they’re looking to, you know, really increase their individual giving program. Ah, most high net worth individuals just to kind of understand where the mind set is for these individuals. Okay, so this is sort of after you’ve identified people that this isn’t really to identify pockets of affluence in your community, but how to deal with those affluent populations, right? Why they why they give what motivates their giving? What motivates their giving? Right? So trying to trying to figure out where they’re giving, where, where might it be going? What is their mindset? So it’s one thing to be able to identify those pockets, but then how do you interact with them? How do you take that data and make it useful for you? Right? So one thing that i found interesting on on one of the pages of the report was that of that particular report was that the high net worth donors are increasing, they’re increasingly directing their gifts towards operating support. Ah, and this is something i get all the time. When i hear at my seminars, people will say, well, you know, the foundations and corporations they really want seem to really want ty, they’re giving to very specific program, nobody wants to fund operating support, but here in this report, they’re saying that they are open to the high net worth individuals are open to ah e-giving you contributions toward operating support. So i think that this is a huge opportunity for non-profits to focus up, because obviously these donors do understand about overhead. They understand that there has to be money for the lights and the heat, et cetera, and i think that you can easily direct some of your conversations to that. That sector. All right, we have to. We have to take a break for a couple minutes. Maria, when we come back, we’ll keep talking about these deep pockets, how to find them. We’ll talk about that chronicle of philanthropy survey, and i know that you have some others, so everybody stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively clamber station top trends, sound advice, that’s tony martignetti, yeah, that’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. Oh, and i’m travis frazier from united way of new york city, and i’m michelle walls from the us fund for unicef. More live listener love going abroad, sweden, iran and carefully uk but it’s not spelled carefully like the word of course, i could be bringing mispronouncing it, but it looks like carefully to me. C e r p h i l l y welcome live listen, love also tampa, florida, atlanta, georgia, moorestown, new jersey and two unidentified in the u s so if i didn’t say your city, your state, you could be you could be masking, which which which i can’t say i blame you for, but we know you’re out there. We see you very vaguely somewhere in the fifty states. Maria simple. I want to thank you for including a picture of me on your the prospect finder, micro fiber cleaning cloth. Thank you like that. I don’t know how i feel about my face being smeared across people’s monitors and smartphones, but but i think there’s a little picture of you and me in the studio, on the arm, on your cleaning cloth. Thank you very much. You’re very welcome, very welcome. So i decided that sometimes that some of my speaking engagements i might be able to hand that out and be a nice little thing that people could keep and think about our faces for years to come. And i noticed, too. If i if i stretch it vertically, it makes me look hydrocephalus. Oh, my goodness, i haven’t tried them, and if you stretch it horizontally, then looks like i’ve gained about one hundred twenty five pounds. Can i send out some listener lovas? Well, three times? Well, because of your show, i was asked to go and speak to women in philanthropy of western massachusetts back in february, and they’re huge fans of your show. And so i just wanted to give a shout out to them and say hi, thank you very much. Women and women in philanthropy western mass and they’ve invited me to come, but they’re booked until, like, next mayor april or something like that. Twenty fifteen not talking about this year. They’re booked until spring of next year sometime. So tired. Organized group. Yeah. I have time to make my reservations. Um okay. Let’s. Go back to our deep pockets. Was there anything more you want to say about the bank of america study of high net worth philanthropy, or we finished with that? No, you know it’s very in depth, really good projections i found on pages sixty three to sixty five of the study of how they’re giving now and how they’re projected to give so people are feeling a little overwhelmed with study, and they want to at least try and figure out what wears what this all means for me. And where should i go with it? I would say they should focus on pages sixty three to sixty five study that’s incredibly valuable, because and so is the fact that you said earlier there’s an executive summary, because if i was listening and i heard sixty five pages in a survey, i think i’d move on to your next suggestion. But that’s, just me, but it is called the bank of america study of high net worth philanthropy, and as marie said, you can search for that and get it for free. What do we got over the chronicle of philanthropy? This how america gives thing. So what they did back in two thousand twelve, they, uh, they decided to make an entire map of the united states you can put in your zip code and get a lot of data. On where philanthropy is for those specific zip code. So i thought that was kind of interesting because, as you know, the chronicle is one of those resource is that a lot of people really rely on. Um so when i gone in, i put my zip code in, i took a look at they give a breakdown by total contributions what the median contribution is. And then they also give you the median discretionary income. Um, and then they give it as a percentage, they give you the percentage of income given. So i thought that was it was pretty good. They give a breakdown as well by demographic. So you just have an idea. You can look at a breakdown by age, race as well as education level of the population. Uh, just in case that was of interest to you. And they give a breakdown by income level of giving. So if you wanted to see, like they break it down between the people who make between fifty, the study basically starts at assuming on income level of at least fifty thousand. So fifty thousand to one hundred, and then one hundred, two hundred, two hundred. And up and then all income levels help me understand how you would use all these sites. And i know there’s another one one of two we’re going to get to but some claim gives you ah, project a task a need. How would you use all these different sites? You go to all of them? Or do you? You find some from some sites and other info from other sites. How do you approach this? Well, it really depends on what specific piece of information they want. Most of the time they’re giving me the name of an individual. Teo actually profile for them, and other times they might come to me and say, well, you know, we’re interested in it banding and doing some proactive prospecting, you know, where are some of the more affluent neighborhoods that we should be looking to perhaps hold cultivation events? Um, sent mailers out, too, so they’re just trying to identify what are those pockets near them that they should be potentially targeting if they want to get into some proactive prospect and get some new names of people associated with their organization? Right? And if that’s your that’s, your charge, the ladder to find those pockets. How would you how would you approach that? So i would probably go. Teo, both chronicle of philanthropy study, as well as the census data to try and identify where those hyre income levels are and those those locations where people are giving more. So they be more of, i guess, the more likelihood of success if they’re both approaching people with higher incomes and also are accustomed to giving hyre levels of money. Okay, okay, on. And then, of course, you have to devise. You know, what is going to be our plan if we want to go to that entire zip code? What? You know what? What are we going to do? Are we going to divide the mailer to go to all the households there’s in every door direct program, for example, that the post office runs where you can target specific zip codes? Um, every every door direct, no shoot. Right? We’re out of time. Let’s. Hold that every door. Direct, let’s, let’s. Talk about that next time. And ah, unfortunately have to leave it there. So there are some other resource is that you have? Which we will include? You can add to the to the takeaway is that i do on the facebook page, okay, sure, absolutely. Thank you very much, maria simple, the prospect finder at the prospect finder dot com, and on twitter at marie. A simple thank you, maria thank you next week, run like a business and program you’re bored. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. These are our sponsors weinger sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner, cps dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit apolo see accounting. It is software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com, and we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com creative producer is claire meyerhoff. 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Nonprofit Radio for September 1, 2017: Fiscal What?

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Gene Takagi & Andrew Schulman : Fiscal What?

Fiscal sponsorship. You’ve probably seen it and don’t know what it’s called. We’ll fix that as we cover what it is; who does it; how it can help your work; getting started; and what can go wrong. Gene Takagi is our legal contributor and principal of NEO, Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations Law Group. Andrew Schulman is with Schulman Consulting.

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We got two new sponsors to welcome today. Wittner, cpas and apolo software welcome, wagner. Welcome apple, o’s. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I get slapped with a diagnosis of collect a zia if you tried to milk me with the idea that you missed today’s show physical what fiscal sponsorship you’ve probably seen it and don’t know what it’s called will fix that as we cover what it is who does it, how it can help your work getting started and what could go wrong? Jean takagi is our legal contributor and principle of neo non-profit and exempt organizations more group and andrew shulman is with shulman consulting. They’re both with me for the hour. Tony take two sponsor love responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled pursuing dot com and by wagner sepa is welcome wagner guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit apolo see accounting software designed for non-profits welcome abalos, they’re at non-profit wizard dot com and by we be spelling. Supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We be the spelling dot com. What a terrific pleasure to welcome back jean takagi. You know him? You know, i’m for pizza, but he deserves a proper introduction. Of course. He’s, a managing editor, managing attorney of neo, the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. And he edits the popular, wildly popular. You should be usually following this blood non-profit law block dot com highly recommended by non-profit radio and he’s, the american bar association’s twenty sixteen outstanding non-profit lawyer he’s at g tack on twitter welcome back, jean. Hi, tony it’s. Great to be back. Ah, pleasure and were joined. Bye, andrew showman. He runs the only consulting practice in america focused on fiscal sponsorship, showman consulting, assisting both sponsor organizations and fiscally sponsored projects. He’s, an active member of the national network of fiscal sponsors and a probono consultant for the taproot foundation. His companies that showman consulting, dot com and he’s at am shulman. Welcome, andrew. Thanks for having me, tony. Good to be here. Pleasure. I’m glad you both with me. Thank you for the hour we got we got a big topic this fiscal. What? This fiscal? Sponsorship. Gene let’s, let’s. Start with you. What? What? What are we talking about? Fiscal sponsorship. But it is a little bit of a complicated topic. We have an hour together, which is great. The pickles sponsorship can mean a lot of things. And so when people use the term pickle sponsorship, many of them are thinking of it as a kind of using another organization to raise money so that they could get a charitable project off the ground without forming a new non-profit. But it also refers to other types of relationships as well. But it generally refers to the ability of the charitable project to get the benefit of a five a one c three and raising money through five twenty three through the relationship of the project leaders with the five o one c three o’clock you are approached by a lot of, well, intention, zealous people who want to start non-profits and you just mentioned this can be an alternative to that. Do you have you guided people in this direction? Oh, and it has been successful. Yeah, absolutely. Tony so it works is a great incubator for charitable ideas that organizer’s may not be. Sure of you know, we’ll get off the ground or not, but they’d like to give it a try where might be for a limited scope, it might be for you no one event a year or we’re going to just do it for one year and see what happens. It’s great to have a another charity out stairs and things, you know will sponsor even we’ll, you know, we’ll sort of recognise this is an internal project of ours, and you can work with us to do it. And if it works, maybe spend off later and you form your own non-profit so it works of the great incubator, and i often advise smaller organizations that don’t have a lot of administrative expertise. Teo, think about pickles and jean have you also worked in your practice with the sponsor organizations? Yeah, with several sponsors throughout the country, tony and on their way to do it right into ways to do it wrong. So hopefully we get a chance to look into those things a little bit more. Okay? Sounds good. Andrew let’s bring you in. I know your practices both on the sponsoring side and also the the sponsoring a project side. Anything you want to add at the at the outset, the way tryto break this down for people. I would just just echo what you said about, you know, its sponsors have bean a lot of different things, and you know, it the most interesting thing that i’ve run into is that everyone has a, you know, a little bit of personal experience, i say they were looking at physical processes through a keyhole, and if you sort of pull back there’s actually a whole landscape of different things that it means and different ways that could work. So that’s, what it’s really about? Okay? And i got i got, i guess, validation for the two of you being expert in this area, someone e mailed me someone who works in non buy-in the fiscal sponsorship and said that both jean and andrew are experts on then, of course, now we’re on facebook live live listeners if you want to follow us. Ah, watch the video facebook live! Go to the tourney martignetti non-profit radio page, facebook and document hello, reed reed says gina’s, an awesome expert. Thanks for the topic. Absolutely, reed. You’re in the right place. You should be here every every friday one to two eastern. This should be your your staple friday at one. O’clock! But i’m glad you’re with us today read on also vanessa jones is on facebook live hello? Vanessa. Hello. Um okay, so yes, you both said lots of ways to do this, and in fact, there are models a through f so we’ve got six models, but the two of them are the most popular a and c i don’t know why it’s not a and b maybe we can bring that up with the national, the the national national network. Thank you. Thank you, andrew. National network of fiscal sponsors, but anyway and see the most popular. So we’re going to spend time there, but let’s see andrew let’s stick with you. What? Just let i don’t want to tick off six different models because we’re not going to spend a lot of time on four of them. But just what? What are the distinction? Like what? What characteristics distinguish generally between the six models? What kind of different things that we see in the six different models and then we’ll have time to focus on amc. Okay, okay. Yeah. I will go through all of them individually. But, you know, the key differentiator is elearning and this is something jean will hopefully timing as well. Is the legal relationship between the bumper and the project? Ok? And so do you. Think of it. Spectrum, you know is at one and where the project is essentially the eyes of the law of the ira. Just the program pasta. Looks like they decided to start up a new program. It was much the same way to the regulators, you know, down to, uh, c is one where the project is actually a separate legal entity has its own. We got standing, but just does not have usually does not have a five. One two three on those using the answer for that. So there’s all between there there’s all different relationships on different setups, but basically dependent on what that relationship looks like. Sort of what level the project is at in terms of their i don’t know their situation of you know, either. Incorporated. You have any standing? Okay. Okay. So, it’s a different relationships between the two. Andrew, when we come back to you, i need to speak up a little louder. Okay, try toe latto. Right. A little post it note on your by your phone. And speak a little louder. Okay, so you remember through the hour you’re coming in to buy it for everybody. Okay, now i did find, you know, contrary to popular belief. Actually research these conversations before i have them. And at fiscal sponsorship dot com there’s an article by someone who i think is pretty well known in this area. Greg gregory colvin on my right, gentlemen, he’s he’s written a book. Yeah, i don’t have that right. Yes. Okay on dh he’s got a chart. So if you go to fiscal sponsorship, dot com in this paper by him which is called presentation on fiscal sponsorship also aptly named good for him there’s a chart. And it has the a through f and lays out different basic characteristics. And whether it’s a separate legal entity and we’re the charitable of nations belong and things like that. So if you want to, you want to get more detail on the six. Certainly khun consultant jean takagi or andrew goldman. But if you want to see a simple chart, then you could go to fiscal sponsorship. Dot com. Okay, gene let’s. Um, let’s, let’s. Start toe. Break these down. Model a. Way let’s say we just have, like, a minute or so before break. So why do you just given overviewing of of what? A model, eh? Looks like jean sure. So it’s actually exactly what andrew? It said it. It really is an internal program or unit of the fiscal sponsor. And what happens is the project leaders, the people who come up with the idea that they want this project sponsored, go up to the physical sponsor and say, hey, can you develop a internal program within your entity within your charity, but delegate management of it up on the one thing that separates it from just being a plain vanilla internal program? Is that there’s a fiscal sponsorship agreement that allows the program organizer’s or the project organizer to spin it off at any time? They decide that the fiscal sponsorship relationship isn’t right? Or they decided that there finished with the incubation and they want to set up their own non-profit bible, twenty three entity and then move the programme over into that new energy so that basically modeling in that shop? Okay, cool, well done on. We’re going to dive in further on that and talk. About the pitfalls contracts. Bond, gentlemen, what i do want to do is i want to approach this from the perspective of a potential sponsors, because we’ve got, you know, over twelve thousand people working in and around small midsize non-profit. So they’re all potential sponsors, so that i want to look at it from that perspective more than the perspective of the potential projects. Okay, so everybody stay with us. Fiscal sponsorships continue. 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, uh, they’re ninety five percent got a bunch of people who joined us on facebook live. I love it, rob meger, dahna lechner character chicky and i think we’re headed to the beach. Gary astro, welcome, welcome. Uh, is that kurt? Kurt hildebrand? Okay, welcome, facebook, live. Glad you’re with us. Um, okay, so. Uh, your name is jean, not sam. Sorry. Nobody’s name here starts with an s so that was that was a big faux pas. Okay, gene let’s, let’s. Go a little further with model a. Why? Let’s again? From the sponsoring organizations perspective. Why would non-profit want teo taking an internal project from some bunch of ruffian startups? Start up people with a lot of passion, but not any business sense. What’s the advantage to the that sponsor organization. Well, hopefully they have a little bit of business. Otherwise you wouldn’t take them. Yeah, all right. That’s, the main reasons why a physical sponsor and existing charity would say, hey, i’m willing to sponsor your project and actually make it an internal program of our entity. The main reason they should do that, it’s because it furthers their own charitable mission. So that should be the number one reason what ends happening sometime by maybe less informed leaders of some organizations that might be willing to physically sponsor a project is that they think that it might be a way to make some additional money on. And they might say, hey, we can raise funds for this program. But you know, bring in a little of that for our own general admin purposes, and maybe that that’ll that’ll effectively give us more resource is to do everything else. Okay, well, right, because andrew there’s a fee associated with this, right that the sponsoring organization charges the project. Yes, i think that’s correct, usually it’s space, either on the revenue that’s raised percentage or face on the expenses of that project. Okay, and what, what, what, what? What’s. A typical range what’s fair. Well, it depends on the model depends on a lot of things, but i would say anywhere between five and fifteen percent. Okay. Okay. Uh, in the rain. All right. We’re just right now. We’re just talking about model a sow is that? Does that apply for model a five to fifteen percent? Yeah. Model a. We’re probably looking at four of us st nine. Ten. Fifteen. Okay, a little bit hyre right, because the organization that sponsors is taking on a lot of responsibility, right? Let’s, start flushing that out. Yeah, exactly. There. They’re taking on all of the legal responsibility all of the risk in terms of liability for the project. A cz well, as taking on the financial management of the donations that are coming in and how they’re being piela being spent all that money being spent, the employees rest if there’s paid employees so there’s a lot of a lot of pieces for the for the for the pompel okay. And what what’s the board’s obligation here before we before we take this on it. It sounds like something we shouldn’t do just for the revenue. Wait, let me just let me just start with that question. We should not do it. And i think gene was alluding to this. We shouldn’t do it just for the money. Do i have that right? Yes, i would say nobody should get into any part of non-profits to make a lot of money. Okay? And, of course, you know, even e guess, even if it furthers your mission. But you know, if you’re not really into the whole idea, but you just feel like you could let’s say it does meet the criteria that gene mentioned definitely furthers your charitable mission. Ok, got that. But then wait. We could make some money at it. You know where we’re like, lukewarm on the relationship idea. But, you know, we could make nine or ten percent that’s. This is not the way to go about it, right? Right. Right. Yeah. It really also requires the sponsors have there processes of infrastructure in place to do what? Well, i know there’s. We’ve talked about the book that six ways to do it right, andi, i know jean government have flogged their six ways to do it long from a legal standpoint in my world. From the operation standpoint, there’s, probably about a hundred ways to do it wrong on one of them is trying to take on a project as a sponsor when you don’t have your own infrastructures, set up well, and your financial processes and on all of that work is not sort of ready for prime time than if you take on someone else’s. On top of that, you’re just setting yourself up for bad situation. You alludes in the book? I didn’t. I didn’t make the connection explicitly. The book is by gary coleman. Is that right, greg? Greg coleman, thank you. Six. What is what is the exact title of his book? Jean correct me if i’m wrong, but i think it’s a fiscal sponsorship six ways to do it right? Yeah. That’s absolutely right. And and greg corbin is the guru oh, on this topic, tony he’s he’s really led the whole movement on dh written really? The seminal book and probably only full sized book on the matter. And it’s any non-profit actually wants to start a physical sponsorship program or hasn’t, you know, has started doing it kind of informally, but not really gotten their ducks in order. They should buy this book and read it very carefully. Okay. Greg colvin, fiscal sponsorship. Six ways to do it right. Is that right? That’s? Right. Okay, jean let’s flush out some of these legal responsibilities that ah, sponsoring organization is taking on under model a what does the board need to consider and be aware of? So apart from from the mission of the project, they want to make sure that they got the right sort of project leadership in place. They obviously, as andrew was saying, you’re taking on not only all of the responsibility, the legal responsibility, the project and the financial management responsibilities project, but everything to do with the project is to do with your organization as well. So it’s there any risks involved in that project? The liabilities are going to be the physical sponsors you’re not isolated from that. So you’re taking on all that responsibilities the board has got to think about on dh sometimes he delegates this off to management that the project is well to find enough to be able to do it, but i like it when boards actually approved the projects and take a look at the application, which might include bios of the project leaders, um, and any special rigs that might be involved with their activities. So if there are working with children no, if they’re going on outdoor expeditions or if they got a camping program, is going to be dealing with research for on any see more than just sort of playing administration in an office they’ve gotten think about the risks and whether they have the right insurance in place and all of the infrastructure things that andrew said they’ve got to get in order before the accept the project, those are all the things that the board has to say. Yes, we’re prepared. To take on this particular project because we’ve got all our ducks in order to be able t o i handle the management and oversee all of the management of this particular project, its employees and volunteers and everything else. All right? I’m i’m getting i’m getting tired now of talking in the abstract i want i want toe implore you to tell me a story. So, gene, can you have you have a client story you could tell about a model, eh, fiscal sponsorship that that went well? Sure so ah, a typical model a project make may come in that say says we’ve got this great idea. We’re going teo run an after school program for children’s education in this area of a city that doesn’t get much of those services. We’re not sure you know if it’s gonna work or not, we project that we’re goingto bring in about one hundred thousand dollars a year, and we’re not sure of funding outside of the first year we’ve got some donors and foundations, perhaps that if we have a five a one c three, they will commit. So we’ve got this first year commitment of one hundred thousand dollars we’re not sure after that, if it’s gonna work, so we’re looking for a physical sponsorship relationship to start out with, and that might be kind of the first cases of saying from the physical sponsors point we’ll have you done anything like this before? Have you raised funds before or, you know, how did you get this initial one hundred thousand dollars worth of commitment on dh? What risk is there going to be involved in your after school program? What exactly? When are you going to do who’s going to manage it? Do you need employees? You know, are you going to be all volunteer, right? Those are the types of questions that need to be asked of this particular project that we’re talking about and sometimes stop, you know, in that particular project that i’m thinking of, you know, ended up becoming a great project for that sponsor, the people that brought in the project, we’re really focused on program and fund-raising they didn’t want to worry about all the admits, what filings to make? They didn’t wantto worry about payroll tax withholdings or insurance developed beings called the government’s policies, or even putting together a real board of directors, andi get all of that through the physical sponsors that works really well for the project and the programme leaders. The fiscal sponsor gets this project because they’re also interested in in-kind of children and youth programs in their area, they get this great project that gets a lot of attention, does very well, not only for the first year, but for subsequent years after that, and a great long term relationship arises, and the project actually ends up staying with the physical sponsor, not just through an incubation period that they never want to leave the fiscal sponsors. If you imagine tony one hundred thousand dollars, if we’re talking about even ten percent in administrative fees that’s only ten thousand dollars that’s the project would be paying to the physical sponsor in order to get all of those things. All of the insurance policies of filing no set up that a great relationship that can happen. Okay? And it’s continued, gene has been successful staying with that sponsor organization for many years. All right, andrew, i’ll give you a chance when we get the model. See, i’ll give you a chance to tell a story. Ok, not to worry, okay, um, but still i model a andi want remind listeners i’m talking. Teo jean takagi, principle of neo non-profit exempt organizations, law group and our our legal contributor. And andrew shulman, principal at shulman consulting shuman consulting dot com and we’re talking about fiscal sponsorships right now. Model a. We’ll get to the model, see, and we’ll find out why be got skipped over andrew, what do you what do you like to see you mentioned? There is a lot of things that can go wrong. Tick off some things that you like to see in a written agreement, and i’m presuming that there should be a written agreement. Everything i read said there ought to be a written agreement, but sometimes there isn’t, or a lot of times there isn’t so let’s, just assume that non-profit radio listeners are going to do it right. There is going to be a written agreement between the two entities. What do you like to see in that agreement? Well, i like to see i like to see a lot of things, i mean, okay, i mentioned before, nothing, one of the most important one is how you know a clauses in sections that that will tell how this relationship might end it already if and when it’s ready to be ended by either party. So if the project isn’t doing well and the practically there’s aside, okay, we’re you know, we’re going to close up shop. There should be part of the contract that say, ok, when that happens, here’s, how we’re going to do it wording and andrew, including the possibility of spending off to a different supporting organization, right? Right. So that’s the other side, if it does well and they decide either way, we need to move to a different sponsor that maybe has mohr provoc rise more services or more services. Tailors are specific needs or we want to go out. We’re at the point where we’re big enough people enough, we get our own. Five. One, two, three. You know what? How? What are the rules? And one of the for the processes dictates that so that that should all be in the contract, i’m i also like tio put in again, i’m not a durney venus, but i like to also put in the expectations of both the sponsor that the project should have for the sponsor and that the sponsor has for the project, so that gets into a little bit of process. And, you know, when, how long should we expect as a project that’s gonna take us a sponsor too? Latto check when we need to, you know, make a payment to a vendor or to review a contract before we before we do it, how, you know, if we’re if we’re applying for institutional grants from foundations, what’s the role of the project of the sponsor in that those kinds of things as well so that that’s the kind of stuff that usually gets skipped over in a lot of cases, but i found that to be successful as a sponsor, you really have to set the expectations up front of both how you’re going to operate with the project and what you expect from them. Jean would you want to add on the contract side so just clarity about that, that the project and all of the funds raised for the project are really funds raised for the physical sponsors, the party that signed the contract with the physical sponsors so the project leader they’re not registered to engage in fund-raising themselves and they don’t have five a onesie three status out neither the physical sponsors, so they have to realize that when they’re fund-raising there fund-raising as agents of the five a onesie threespot co sponsor, and they’re raising funds for an internal project of that sponsors so it could be restricted funds that they’re raising but it’s not funds for their separate entity or anything like that. So when they spend off, they might form a separate entity. But ultimately all of the funds belong to the sponsors, so there should be that legal understanding and the contract has got to recognize that. Because if you run into an issue with the irs for an attorney general or other regulators, that documentation has got to be perfect, even though ultimately the sponsor should be willing to transfer out the assets that you’ve got a suitable successor that’s willing to take on the project, including if the project leader’s create their own five a onesie three entities, now they’re going to be little caveat to be careful about. So here we go. One of the reason why the termination is because the project leaders have failed miserably and even embezzled money from the organization. Well, then you don’t wanna transfer assets out to something that they created that you know, would be imprudent for for the physical sponsors board. So little caveats like that you gotta be careful about, and then when they draft an agreement, you want to make sure that the sponsor is protected and doing it in the right way. Okay, we’re going tow. We’re going toe. All right, hold on. There just latto close that model a conversation. When we come back, we’ll do the model c will move to that. See what the differences are. See. See what it means legally, andi, i have to do in the meantime, do a little business first, beginning with pursuant, they’ve got a new free content paper for you. And that is the intelligent fund-raising health check. Health care is in the news. This is a fund-raising health check evaluates state of your fund-raising it includes nine key performance indicators. I think those air kp eyes if you want to be jargon e, but we’re not, we’re not here. Ninety performance indicators and ten characteristics of organizations that thrive. Where do you go? You go to tony dot m a slash pursuant twenty dollars starts pursuing check out free resource is from our sponsors pursuant weinger cps welcome again. Welcome, wagner. Welcome to non-profit radio. They are a cpa firm based in madison, wisconsin, and true to their tagline, they do go way beyond the numbers. They are also very generous with tons of free resource is they’ve got a page and has dozens of policy statements for you, including all the policies you need to make your form nine ninety complete like committee meetings, disclosures on fraud, document retention, lots of others and you’ll be hearing me talk about thes from week to week got to check these resource is out too, you know? Different but valuable absolutely from wagner cpas there at wagner c p a’s don’t forget, the less at the end dot com weinger cps dot com you’re quick resource is then guides stop wasting your time using business accounting software for your books you are in a business, you are a non-profit you’ve heard rumors to that effect welcome apolo software, our second new sponsor, this this week. Apple juice, apple of accounting is the product, and it is designed for non-profits. Don’t use the business software for non-profit your non-profit europe near you are born, used one that was built from the ground up for non-profits financial management. Simple, affordable it’s called apple, owes accounting. It includes fund accounting, advanced reporting, donation, tracking everything you need in one simple software, and you want check out apple of software. You want to see what what apple’s accounting is about. You go to non-profit wizard dot com that is our sponsors, those are our sponsors, welcome new sponsors. I’m very grateful for that. And now it’s, time for tony stick, too, and i am imploring you to show love to our sponsors are our listeners, whether you’re alive. Podcast or affiliate? I’m so grateful. That was not a side. That was a sign of gratitude that everybody’s with us. Um, i need you to ah, i need to check out the sponsors. It’s important. We need them to stay with her us so that we can continue to attract great guests. I can continue to take the show on the road to conferences will get outstanding speakers. They’re the conference speakers. I need you to support our sponsors on their new ones coming october first. So you may hear me mention this again. But for now, pursuant regular sea pia’s appaloosa counting on dweeby spelling. I need you to check out all our sponsors if they if you think they can help you, please let them check them out. Thank you very much. That is tony’s take two and i am with jean takagi and andrew shulman. We’re talking about fiscal sponsorship. Gentlemen, i think we’re ready to move. Teo model. See, unless unless somebody has something burning that the lackluster host did not cover in model a. So anybody, anybody have to say something about model, eh? Okay, going, going, gone. Thank you, thank you. Um, let’s. Move to model c and, uh, give it to andrew. What distinguishes model c from model, eh? Church model c is more of an armed blink relationship. Aunt it’s usually just face around a, uh, candy to space around a specific activity or even a specific grant about me from the project that the project is soliciting through the sponsors tax id number. So basically, in this case, the project, it is not a division or unit sponsor, but they have their own legal status. They usually registered within their state as a charitable organization, but they don’t yet have a five twenty three or don’t have a five, twenty three andi so they remain distinguish where here is that instead of handing off all of that administrative were to the sponsor with model, eh? I don’t see a lot more of that falls on the project, but they’re really just utilizing that. Five, twenty three status of the sponsor two taken tax deductible. So so is this just temporary? Until the the project gets its five. A onesie three designation from the irs, it can be can be temporary. Can be longer term candy. You know, there’s. A lot of uses. I know we haven’t gotten the story time. Yes, but there’s a lot of uses. For model b, the art where if you can imagine, a documentary filmmaker is doing a film that has a terrible purpose heimans telling an important story and they want to raise money via donations. I willbe tax deductible from the donors. And so instead of going through the process of getting their own twenty three, they can actually go through a physical sponsor of the model t and do it that way. Okay, uh, and reminder. I should’ve i should’ve mentioned it earlier. Andrew, remember to speak louder. Okay, write yourself a note and then look at the note to you’ve got to look at the note after you write it. Uh, jeanne model see what you want to add. So i’ll just build on what? But andrew, it just said a lot of times this is a project that thought by arts groups, sometimes by by research group, and they may not actually deformed the non-profit they might just be individual. So proprietors in the case of artist oh, are they might be just a for-profit type of al, l, c or business corporation, but beached in some sort of charitable effort. So the general idea here is they want to raise some money, and they’ve got some willing funders either donate or make grant to this specific project, but the funders and the donors the donors want to get a tax deduction for making the grant, but they can’t make a grant to liken individual artists and just take a deduction for that right on the foundation may not be able to make a grand to an individual artist without jumping through more hoops that they have to do under the regulations when they give to non charities, so both of them would rather give to a charity. But the fund what the artist maybe doing and in that case give it to the physical sponsor and the physical sponsor has the ultimate legal control and discretion over what they’re going to do with the money subject to the restrictions that the donors put. The donors are not going to say you have to give it to this individual artists what the donor’s going to say is we want teo produce oh, are we want to fund the production of a documentary on penguins in argentina and there’s only one, you know, so maker that’s actually doing that and they’ve made that, you know, typical sponsorship contract with the physical sponsor and what the models see. Agreement is a pre approved grant relationship. So basically their physical foncier’s saying, yes, we’ve already vetted this project. The artists on, and we know that they’re doing the research and they’re competent, and we trust them to be able to use our grant money properly. So if we raise the money, teo fund this project, we’re going to re grant it to this person, and this person is going to deliver the project for us, and then we’re going to make sure that it gets published. Distribution is simply because that’s, what a person on league it is, people, that’s, the typical marvel. Okay, so there’s that. There’s. More vetting involved. Do i have that right? Yes, going to be quite a bit of betting in in advance, just to make sure that this person isn’t just pay themselves, you know, for their their own living and, you know, housing expenses, but not do anything charitable with the money or build that they sell to a private collector. So it never gets into the public realm. And it’s just a way for that person to make extra income on their parents, donated the money and took a tax deduction for that that was completely improper and unlawful. So the sponsors got to make sure the vet that, if we’re going to enter into this relationship, are our role is a grantmaker, just like a private foundation might, you know, have a role to vet all of their grantees. But when you’re not going to give a grant to another public charity, you know, the responsibilities and the vending has got to be a little bit stronger, because you have to make sure that your money that you’re giving your charitable monies, that you’re giving us a fiscal sponsor, are only going to be used for charitable purposes. And they’re not going to be a fuse for private benefit. Jean do we know why model b got skipped over? Why did we get screwed? Well, pick first shot at a b b is around and this probably as the third most common of the fiscal sponsorship forms and it’s a little bit of model aimed he combined in that the project is owned by the physical sponsors, but rather than as in model a, where all the employees, volunteers and the contractors all are employed or hired or contracted by the physical sponsor. The entire project is going to be contract id out a single independent contractor in the model b, so you own the project because you want to control the project result, but you hired an independent contractor who would probably be the project leaders that brought the project to you in the first place, and they’re not going to be your employees, but they’re going to be independent contractors to it, and they’re going to supply all the services that our program services the cynical sponsor will still do most of the back office stuff. So is it too late there? Insurance would cover it, but they would hyre out an independent contractor. Can we have movable? Can’t we move? See up to be and be down to see since since sees more popular than be or is it xero late for that? So what? Who created this created this? I don’t know what greg’s mom and creature grantmaking. Dr gramm. We’re popular bin b but b if you look at it in terms of control and responsibility of the fiscal sponsor a is the most responsibility for the physical sponsor is the next most and he’s the least i see. All right, so we were working down a xander was saying earlier. It’s the relation what distinguishes these six is the relationship and we’re working. We’re working toward less less responsibility for the sponsor. Is that a through f? Do i have that right? At least eight, just like different variations. All right, all right. We need to get greg on here. Explain his nomenclature. But thes e the one who created this morass. Okay, we have it. We have a bit of a naming problem. Yeah, if you haven’t noticed. Yeah. Model, eh? My late model. Be okay. Uh, andrew, tell us a model. See story. Sure. So remember to talk loudly. I okay, i’m trying to tell me if i’m not because i’m trying to tell me what i need to talk even more loudly. Ok? Ok. You said okay, go ahead. I worked with. Okay, great. So i worked with an organization that association for non-profit news organizations on dh part of what they do is offer physical sponsorship metoo start up non-profit news entities. So i think, like the local ah, websites that have serve lots and all of the country with all the investigative reporters i’ve gotten laid off from newsrooms they’ve all got out started their own websites to cover local governments and things like that, and they offer a fiscal sponsorship in mile see to those entities to help them get started because and sometimes to stay for a very long time, because the gandhi’s are folks who are starting these entities that aren’t looking to you manage, you know, a non-profits they’re not looking to worry about out getting there there five, one, two, three status and and all of that on this organization that’s those folks, obviously they know who they are. They’re watching them very closely and know they’re acting as the five twenty three for all of those organizations. Okay, and that is that relationship continuing? Yeah, they have a have a great program. They have. Ah, i don’t know, probably upwards of twenty or so. And, you know, like i said, sometimes makes sense for that’s, awful, sponsored project and either model to separate out on their own. And sometimes it makes sense for them to stay, because, you know, if you had a certain level of size and fund-raising staff, bond, all that kind of stuff, uh, it’s, just a really good deal for you to be sponsors. And so, you know, especially in this day and age where a lot of funders are concerned about overhead and have lots of questions about overhead. I always tell people you’ll never have lower overheads in which her under physical sponsorship. We’re going to go out for our last break when we come back. Of course, live listeners love that. We’ve got to do that, and we’ll explore a little more than due diligence. Yes, and, you know potential risks. In our last seven minutes or so, stay with us. 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It’s a family um andrew who’s, that who’s that sick rings that you andrew genes genes used during this so it’s probably it’s probably andrew’s genes used to hearing all this. I was ranting, you see, listen, specially love jean um okay, let’s, talk a little about some due diligence. Jean i gave you a shot earlier. Let’s andrew let’s, talk to you now about let’s. Hear from you sorry up my voice just cracked like i’m a fourteen year old on some or the due diligence that is sponsoring organization needs to do, you know, detail. We like actionable details for our listeners lorts sure, well, i think. You know, especially if you’re either either model, either either model, right, looking, too, to take on a sponsored project. You know it. This is a relationship. This is a marriage, essentially, that you’re getting into. So if you start with that apprentice, you think about, you know, in a business sense, all of the things that you want to make sure you know about the folks that you’re, you know, metaphorically getting into bed with. So you obviously want to know about their experience. You want to know about their support networks, whether two people raise money or, you know, bring on more people to help their project evolved. You want to know, you know, if they’ve had any, obviously, any criminal activity or anything like that, for sure, it also you want to find out about their plan. So, do they have a business plan or aa program plan? Do they have a fund-raising fran? Do they? You know, is there any money committed at this point already, like you guys mentioned before, that’s sort of ready to go if they’re able to get this that status, you know, those are the kinds of things that you really wantto dig into and understand, and that, you know a good official sponsor will have a pretty well defined application process that, you know, may have multiple rounds of interviews with the, you know, the staff of the mon for the board of the sponsor. In some cases, you know, like inside you, you do want ideally the board to make this decision or help you make this decision to take on these projects or even to start a sponsorship program because they are the end of the day, the one who’s, you know, they’re on the line at the end of the day, their fiduciary responsible for for the whole thing. So, you know, it should be you should at least have some input into that. Where do you see the responsibility for this do dilgence residing? Who does it? Treyz who i think who on the organization is doing it. So go ahead, and because usually the staff, you know, whoever it will be involved in working with the project from the path of the sponsor, would take the lead, maybe with some help from from some key boardmember okay, jean, did you have something more about through? Dilgence yeah, i just wanted wanted to add that it really is critical that the physical sponsor understand, particularly in the model see situation that there there one’s fund-raising forth the project, even though the project is housed in a different legal entity and that they’re going to make grants to they’re responsible for all the monies and all the responsibilities associated with the donors or the foundations, including e-giving a grant reports back to the foundations, and if it’s government funded the audit requirements that go along with that and that’s where you get the hefty, like the fifteen percent physical sponsorship administrative fees that andrew was talking about, government audits are incredibly difficult to do and expensive but fickle sponsor has got to be prepared to do all of that. They’ve got to make sure they’ve got adequate strapping to be ableto handle all of these and treat all of these is restricted funds and have all of the infrastructure, all the right policies over the right agreements, all of the right qualifications to do business if they’re in different states and registrations, you know, tony, you’ve got to be prepared to do all of that, and that made depend upon each project that they get, they may be incurring additional responsibilities that they’re going to think about on dh what if they what if they don’t do it right? Jean? What? What are what are some of the potential penalties were the worst thing that that happens is of course, the project gets into huge trouble, and they, you know, they engage in some sort of political activities and all of us and you jeopardize your own five twenty three status or a child has been hurt because of the negligence that they’ve got that have exhibited, and you don’t have enough adequate separation in the model c or it’s, a model a and its internal project of your physical sponsors. So you’re completely responsible for the liability, and you may find that you don’t have enough insurance because he went, anticipating those things and the bad if you weren’t really prepared for it. So those air the two worst case scenario. Ah, andrew. It sounds like you really should have some outside help and expertise. If you’re if you’re going to take this on. Well, i would i would recommend it. I mean, i think you especially if you’re doing it for the first time. So are a lot of people come to me or i’m sure jean when they’ve already got a couple of projects underneath, um, i say a lot of people get into this accidentally or at least unintentionally and, you know, like we said, they’re six weeks to do it right there’s a lot of ways to do it wrong on in the operation side of things and you know it, khun khun very quickly go from a really good thing, tio not so good thing in your whole team is now focusing all their attention on these projects and it sort of eating up all of their bandwidth on dso, you know, having some of those processes procedures in place on getting all those things set up is really important again, going back to the due diligence, the written contracts, i guess both of you have seen cases where it’s just been a handshake mary-jo absolutely, yeah, happened a lot. And then when when there’s a termination that happens, there’s a conflict about what? What should be done into who’s, you know, the funds belong to a lot of complexities when they don’t do it right at the start. Dahna andrew was something wanted ad about the downside of a handshake agreement. It’s well, i would i would just say that whether or not there’s a handshake or even a contract, you know, we’ve talked a lot about model a model see, and they are very specifically laid out, but what do you see out in the wild if there’s really a spectrum of how they operate? And some of them i’m not always done to the letter of the law and monsters don’t realize it, and, you know, some of the very long to get by obviously would recommend doing that if you don’t know what you’re doing, but it was really, you know, there’s a lot of variability out there, so if you are thinking of becoming a sponsor or you are a sponsor and you’re not sure you definitely want to talk to somebody who knows what they’re doing, gene, there is no legal definition to these right? That there’s no one legal, definitely fiscal sponsorship isn’t defined in any code or regulations, so cynical sponsorship. Is just referring to these relationship that are ultimately defined by the contract and that’s why you needed a written contract, because we need to know what relationship you actually have and the biggest, biggest thing, and where everything often goes wrong is misunderstanding that an outside legal entity other than the physical concert could not fund-raising for the project, even those of the individuals associated with it are fund-raising for the project, they are on ly doing so as agents of the physical sponsor. So the physical sponsor ultimately has control over all of the funds it is raising. And if it’s going to re grantham out, it’s going to re grantham out under its own legal discretion and subject to what they call all variant of powers in accounting language, basically saying that ultimately, the physical sponsors board has full control over them of those assets, subject to the purpose restrictions or timing restrictions that might be involved with the donations of the craft. Okay, we’re gonna leave it there because i think it’s ah, i think it’s appropriate to leave it on. Ah, sort of a note of caution. This certainly can do wonders for your charitable. Mission and your work, but i feel like what i’m sensing from from the two of you is you know, you got to do this right? So i’m going to sort of leave it on that cautious still a little bit of a finger wag that admonition tone that you probably need some expertise and you’ve got to make sure you do this correctly. Is that okay, gentlemen, anybody disagree with that? How can you? Okay, not at all. Okay, so i want to thank you very much. Andrew shulman. You’ll find him at shulman consulting dot com and at a m shulman and jean takagi editing the very popular non-profit law block dot com and he’s at g tak gt. Okay, gentlemen, thank you very, very much. Thanks, tony. Thanks, anders. Thank you so much. Have a good one. Pleasure. Thank you. Again. Next week, video storytelling and maria semple returns with deep pockets. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it. I’m tony martignetti dot com. I love our sponsors pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com regular cpas guiding you beyond the numbers. Weinger cps dot com kaplow’s accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, and this very cool music is by scott stein. You’re with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Yeah. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine am 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 gotta 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 idealised took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe, add an email address. Card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s, why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i 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 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.