Meet a company where one of the employees is a wellness coach for all the others. Mandy Kutschied and Sam Hanley are with The Fresh Perspective Group. They share practical strategies for employee wellness; ergonomic resources; a 4-day work week; productivity tips; and, talk about the ethics of wellness coaching in the workplace. Sam often hears things she cannot reveal. This is part of our coverage of the 2025 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#25NTC).
Anne Paschkopić: Email Deliverability
This comes up frequently at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, because the rules often change about whether your emails get delivered and how they get treated by email providers. Are you right to only mail to people who’ve recently opened a message from you? No. Is it good practice to make sure everyone has opted in to your list? No. Anne Paschkopić explains why these and other former best practices, are no more. She’s from M + R. This conversation is also from #25NTC.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. This is show number 740, which means we are a mere 10 shows, 10 weeks away from number 750. Nonprofit radios, unbelievable. 10 weeks away. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with dextroduction if I looked to the right to see that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate with what’s up this week. Hey, Tony, more conversations from 25 NTC. Employee wellness. Meet a company where one of the employees is a wellness coach for all the others. Mandy Kuthi and Sam Hanley are with the Fresh Perspective Group. They share practical strategies for employee wellness, ergonomic resources, a 4 day work week, productivity tips, and talk about the ethics of wellness coaching in the workplace. Sam often hears things she cannot reveal. Then Email deliverability. This comes up frequently at the nonprofit technology conference because the rules often change about whether your emails get delivered and how they get treated by email providers. Are you right to only mail to people who have recently opened a message from you? Now Is it good practice to make sure everyone has opted into your list? No. Ann Paskaic explains why these and other former best practices are no more. She’s from MNR. On Tony’s take 2. The federal budget, part de. Here is employee wellness. Thank you for being with our 25 NTC coverage. We’re all live at the Bal Baltimore Convention Center. With me now are Mandy Kutchide and Sam Hanley. Mandy is vice president of people at the Fresh Perspective Group. Sam Hanley also at the Fresh Perspective Group as wellness coach. Mandy, Sam, welcome. Thank you so much pleasure, pleasure to have you. How’s your conference going so far? Good. It’s awesome both of our first time here. Have you done both first? Oh, this is a very good conference, isn’t it? I mean so far? Yeah, it’s great. This is our 10th or 11th. Uh, having the podcast here, yeah, capturing interviews, it’s a very good conference. You chose you chose well it’s a good vibe. Um, and your topic is what employee wellness really means and why it matters. Um, Sam, let’s start with you because I don’t know any other companies besides the Fresh Perspective group who I’m just meeting today for my first time, uh, that have a wellness coach. Maybe it’s very common. I don’t know, but, uh, why is it so let’s answer the second part of the, uh, the topic. Why does it matter? Why does it matter? Come a little closer to the mic. Yeah, thank you. Um, I think it’s very rare to have someone as a wellness coach on a team. No, not very common. Um, typically speaking, many orgs have human resources, so it’s even a shift to be more people oriented and so I have a background in counseling and behavior analysis, so my intention is to support the company as a whole. In the culture and how we operate and embed wellness into our culture but also on an individual level level so supporting employees one on one whether that’s just venting or need an emotional release or something’s going on at home because home life and work life are so interwoven together so how can I support our employees as as human beings. OK, um, and, uh, we’re not gonna do this right now, but part of what we’re gonna talk about is what the ethical considerations are when people vent versus talking to their HR director. It’s very different, I imagine. OK, we’re gonna talk about we’ll, we’re gonna get to that. um, Mandy, what, what, why does the you’re a vice president there, officer? Why does the fresh perspective group, um, invest? I mean, you’re paying, uh. Paying salary to Sam and benefits, but she is a benefit. He program is a benefit to the employees so but I don’t mean to answer my own question. Why, why is the fresh perspective group investing in employee wellness to the to the point of hiring someone to do it? Yeah, we think it’s incredible incredibly um critical to our success. So the company itself is a people centric organization that does sales force consulting and manage services for nonprofits who are. Struggling with their technology as we’ve heard throughout the day and we know that what we’re selling is our people the the the keynote speaker this morning 10 minute gap or the sound went out but also she was talking about, um, we, you know, technology part of the, the issue with adoption or how we use it is like the people using it are really designing how it gets used um so what we’re selling is our people, our consultants, obviously they’re great. At tech, but they’re also human beings and we know that in order for them to support the nonprofits that we serve, we need to be supporting them as humans um so that’s really critical and one of the ways we want to do this is by being different in how we structure so I came out of HR I almost 20 years of HR um and there are some legal ramifications and sort of legal things you have to think about when you try to structure support in this way, but we knew that we really wanted to be people centric. Want to build something that was different, that really took care of the whole human and we were going to do that with intention and with care and part of that was having a wellness coach that was focused on the individuals. Yes, yeah. Well, she’s a founding member, so we all founded the company in July. We’re only 8 months old. Yeah, it’s a new venture. Yeah, so she’s been here since the beginning really helping us a people-centric culture through the decades of the practical strategies for employee wellness. Sam, I’m guessing that is more suited for you. I’m just answering. I’m, I’m not, I’m, I’m not committing you to anything. This is from your session description. You looked a little nervous. Practical strategies for employee wellness. You’re committed to this. Yes, OK, um, Mandy and I and I it we’ll we’ll talk to you so when employees are on a big project, so allowing a bit of breathing room afterwards, what does that look like afterwards, what do you, how do you how do you? Looking at what do you what do you say to them? Uh, what is your plan? What does your schedule look like? Is your calendar completely jam packed in full, or do you have space to take lunch? Do you have space to go for a walk? Do you have space to take an afternoon off? Our pay time off policy is very flexible, um, so if you need to take a Friday off, go take a Friday off. We also work 4 days a week, Tuesday to Friday, so we every week have Monday off. Um, so all employees except for myself work 32 hours a week, um, and so having that Monday allows just natural breathing room in our everyday week in itself because it’s embedded in that. So our every all our team members have that day to get appointments done, relax, be by themselves at home. Weekends are always busy doing errands and family functions and events and all that stuff, so just allowing that space and making it sacred so. We all know not to ping anyone on a Monday, um, so after projects making sure that continues to be sacred, but also checking what’s your schedule look like? Is it jam packed? Can we, can we check you is this you emailing to remind people or is it you knocking on, you’re probably not you’re virtual knocking on doors but how do you practically how do you do it? What do you do? Yeah, a one on one or 15 minute call. Your plan, how are you doing checking in? What does your rest look like afterwards? What’s your workload look like? Is it is it manageable? Do we need to support you in finding ways to take things off of your plate? Do you need to lean more on other team members and just giving them the autonomy to make those choices but still being proactive in that check in? What does that look like? Yeah and Sam has um scheduled one on one sessions with everybody who wants to they can opt in or opt out. Most of our folks opt in. Um, she’s so she’s taking that sort of like individual care, but then if she’s hearing something, so for example I think this is a good one, we, when we were launching as a company, there was a lot of heavy lifting from our marketing team right away when you launch a company, right? There’s a website, there’s branding, there’s material, so our marketing team is one person and one consultant, and they were doing a ton to get us ready and so Sam had been meeting with the our director of marketing individually noticed. That you know there was just a lot going on so after the launch um we worked with the marketing director and their supervisor and we said OK we’re gonna get, we’re gonna throw a couple extra days and we’re gonna ask if she has the capacity to take that time off and she did we said great, go like rejuvenate a little bit and recover and restore so you can come back refreshed um and she did, she said, oh, I feel like I can actually come back and like feel excited instead of daunted and drained and. And tired, so it was a it was a good sort of in the moment recovery plan. Now Sam, if you hear from someone that they’re overburdened, maybe they need to they need do you have a link to the CEO do you how do you get the person the help that they need. So in one on ones it’s what does that look like for you? How can I support you in your communication with others to be able to lean on them. Um, do you feel comfortable talking to the CEO or talking to your supervisor in, in getting support, um, I think that’s 1414 now. I was relevant for folks to know how big an organization we’re talking about 5 or 14, so you were saying that uh you’re asking. How comfortable do you feel or then can you be a voice on their behalf if they don’t feel comfortable, but then if they don’t feel comfortable, you’re going on their behalf. They know they came from you. How does that give them greater comfort ultimately everybody knows that it came from them. Yes, I think that plays into the ethical consideration so just really. Staying grounded in the relationship with that person and knowing that I’m only doing anything on their behalf with their consent and having that discussion first so if they want me to speak on their behalf or support them in that way then it’s important that I have their permission and that we do that together. I want it to be. Involved partnership to get help them help them get what they need. What if they aren’t comfortable with you speaking on their behalf, but this remains a challenge for them, and obstacle it’s burdening them, but they’re not comfortable speaking or having you speak on their behalf, then what? That’s that’s difficult. So a part of my job too is looking for themes so on in my one on ones are the themes that are coming up is communication being lost is one team feeling more stressed than another um so then I talked to Mandy and we figure out how can we support this individual, um, theme or this team team as a whole, um, and we yeah. And that’s why I think like in our session we talk a little bit about the evolution of workplace wellness and the history from you know industrial era to post COVID time and a lot of it is around the systems that we set up so there may be individual themes of burnout or um not feeling like there is that sort of self advocacy or self care that you can enact with your supervisor because maybe it’s a lack of emotional intelligence or empathy from. The leadership, so if we’re seeing those themes, then we know our systems need to improve. We need to train our leadership on EQ and emotional empathy and how do they have engaging conversations with their direct reports or is it more around like how we work and how we’ve designed work? Do we need to rethink those systems and structures, um, because sometimes it’s at an individual level, but a lot of times it’s on a systems level. Has this all come up in just 8 months? I mean it’s come up in other organizations for me over the last 18 years, yeah, but we haven’t experienced as much of that, not to any extreme. Yeah, yeah. OK. Um, since we sort of touching on ethics, what about, um, confidentiality? I mean, are you, are you sworn to confidentiality if the person doesn’t want anything revealed? Yes, OK, OK. And then, but your role is to try to aggregate themes, but. That might not be that might not be part of a theme. It might just be individual and the person so like is there a resource of referrals like would you make a referral to a deeper consulting that you can’t do or therapy basically we’re talking about therapy yeah so yeah if there’s deeper concerns or things coming up, yes, it’s referring out to counseling services. Can I support you in finding the appropriate service provider to help you with your mental health? Um, I, I had a thought there, um, I think sometimes at work, you know, you, you have something going on in your life and you go to your manager and so you dump your emotional things that are happening for you to your manager and the manager isn’t always equipped to support that person and so both people are kind of feeling disconnected, not sure where to go from there something’s there’s kind of a bit of a. Elephant in the room and so I’m, I hope that I can be that mediator of come let’s let’s chat get get what you need off your chest and then let’s move forward into that problem solving piece so I can be there for the empathy help you problem solve so you can go to your manager and say hey I’ve had a death at home I I need more space my brain is not in it this week whereas I think like Mandy said um historically there’s just that pressure to perform. Form and get work done no matter what else is happening in your life. So how can I help people move through that process a little bit smoother and still feel heard and supported and know that their workplace has their back even when something else is going on in their personal life. Encourage everyone to take their lunch break away from their screens, um, so, uh, there’s even a couple individuals at work where it it was encouraged to put that into their calendar. They just blocked off for lunch. No one can book a meeting at that time, so that kind of holds us accountable to actually take our lunch, um, rather than meetings just be booked and you then don’t have lunch, you’re not eating, you’re not taking time away from your screen, you’re not getting up and moving your body, um. So in that lunch break going for a walk, uh, we also have every week I post something and it’s often around that physical health so moving our body um snacks, getting exercise water yes. Stretching was an issue. I was she’s very good at reminding me to drink my water. I don’t drink water. I think ergonomic is also in the virtual world there’s a lot of because we’re working at home and we haven’t really thought about ergonomics set up to be physically supportive we’ve talked a little bit about how do we make sure folks have the right level for their computers so they’re not um putting pressure on shoulders and how do they have the right chair and we have a budget for that so we can support standing you got it yeah I have a walking pad, yep. see me in my walking. Oh, it’s just like why is it not a treadmill? It doesn’t go as fast. It’s just walking like a desk you’re walking you’re OK. We had Beth on a couple of years ago because she had just written a book on wellness for nonprofits she had a co-author too. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the co-author’s name, but Um, she was, they were advocating, um, doing walking meetings, physically walking out and you’re you’re in a meeting. Why not, right? Our brain works differently that way, yeah, getting fresh air and the repetitive movement of our body walking there’s real digital screen fatigue happening right now, so it’s like how can you also make sure you’re limiting some of the screen time. Uh, you have any other tip tips so the pad I’m sorry, it’s not what’s it’s OK um what else do I appreciate that you’re sitting on a ball, so you’re just you’re naturally moving your body and it probably feels more comfortable on your body to be that way. I use it at home it’s actually born of an NTC. In previous years they contracted with a furnishings company for the booths back when we had booths 10 by 10. This is your first ATC, but every year before this it’s been 10 by 10 booths, and the company that they use, uh, is expensive. Like a chair is like $300 or maybe I’m exaggerating $200 for the 3 days, right? And then, but I wanted a nicer chair, so I was like a 4 or $500 chair for 3 days. That’s a. That’s that, you know, I, I got my my ball and just blow it up and I’ll spend $0 and I’ll be more comfortable and you’re $500. So it was born of a couple of years, I think last year was the first year. I just got tired of the ergonomic chair expense. So yeah, yeah, OK, so, uh, yeah, it’s movement, right? Is core like centering taking even 5 minutes to step outside, sit on your front step. Breathe in some observing outside what do you see for distance it helps your eyes like you need a yeah just that quick yeah reset, refresh, change of environment for a moment can be really helpful in getting you back and refocused, um, having snacks at your desk, chewing things can be helpful for your nervous system, help regulate just simple little things, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, that oral sensory feedback, yeah, more crunchy or like like peanut butter is sticky, so you’re, you’re working your oral motor and it can just be helpful to regulate your body so it doesn’t have to be anything major, right? We don’t have to get our 10,000 steps in and we don’t have those types of initiatives at our at our work, um, but. Just getting those small little things 5 minutes away from your desk standing up yeah it can be in your in your 5 NASA says the optimal nap is 22 minutes scientists and they know this 2 longer than they. Longer than that and you’ll feel groggy and a little disorient maybe not disorient groggy when you wake up shorter than that, not restorative. So the optimal nap according to NASA 22 minutes but I’m a proud napper. I love. Yeah, OK. Um, the 4 day work week last year at NTC we had advocates, we had, we had the leader of the 4 day work week. Um, nonprofit. I, I forget what 4 days a week or I forget what it’s called, but he, he and a couple of panelists, including someone from N10. N10 has a 4 day work week here. Patty was on, um. but you chose Mondays off instead of Friday would have been the natural choice, I think for a lot of organizations. Why did you choose Monday? It was really intentional. So the again, the organization that we work in is consulting and we consult with nonprofits and so just the organic cycle of the stuff we do, we felt, um, there’s a lot of Tuesday Thursday meetings with our nonprofit clients so there was like uh inherent Tuesday could be meeting heavy day Wednesday could be. Down work day Thursday could be meeting heavy day. Friday we’re taking that feedback and kind of making changes and Monday we rest. So it just like it worked with I think um for us it worked because of who our clients are. It’s gonna be different exactly yeah you got it, yeah, exactly. It’s also an interesting mind shift too because most people work until Fridays and so you’re getting ready for that weekend naturally with. Community and so then you’re having your fun on the weekend and then you get that Monday oh yeah I have Monday and it feels more productive naturally because that’s what we’re all used to so you can get your chores done you can schedule in your massage um you can get the all the the housework done. OK, an intentional choice to make it to make it and just to be clear we’re talking about a 4 day 32 hour work week, not a 4 day 40 hour work week 2 hours. Yeah, yes, that’s what the campaign is all about. We, we had the panel on, yeah, that’s it. Yeah, OK. OK. Um, you mentioned massage. I’m, I’m a massage, I do, it’s not luxury, it’s it’s part of taking care of myself massage massage advocate as well. Yeah, we have quite a comprehensive benefits. acupuncture, it’s part of the, yeah, we’ve got different levels for folks, right? So depending on what you opt in high deductible, low deductible, but it’s acupuncture, yeah. It’s I I’m I’m from Canada too and so Mandy is from here, um, so we, we, we’re a little bit different anyways, um, so I can’t always speak to what I can’t always speak to that. But I think a lot of Americans consider that a luxury. Like when I’m at the resort for a week, you know, I’ll I’ll get a, I’ll get a spa treatment. I’ll massage, but it can be very, I mean like yeah very yes exactly physical touch that. Muscle movement and it I mean we have uh I have a coworker, we have a coworker at the Fresh perspective group who goes in for medical reasons monthly and because she can’t move her neck otherwise and it’s like she needs that and it is it’s not, it’s not nice to have it’s need to have. And, and, and can I go one bit deeper than physical touch is the human touch. Like this is something I never want a robot to do. I don’t want AI massage as as good as some, some, uh, medical services company may tell me that it is, uh, I don’t want it. I want, I want the human touch. We want to be seen and heard. Um, 4 day work on site counseling. I think we kind of talked about on site. It’s all virtual you can check in any time. I mean if you’re in a crisis, and I, I need to I need to I need to. I very much encourage everyone to book one on one, same day, any time, any length of time that they feel they need. And is there routine check-ins too like do you have a monthly or weekly with everybody or how does that work? Yeah, it’s about monthly for about 45 minutes, yes, yes, yeah, some opt for more and some opt for none some have their own um counseling services outside of the workplace too that they’re very regular and feel very well supported in that way so yeah. Uh, creating a culture of wellness at work. I mean, it comes from the top down. The CEO must be devoted to this, yeah, definitely, and, and again that was very intentional when we were setting up the organization. She was very much, um, a fan of a people centric culture, so I wanted to make this into policy process practice, so things like the 4 day work week, but also, um, when we have a decision and you know. You know we have to prioritize something we tend to prioritize people first and that means our clients but also our employees and then we might prioritize, you know, the tech or the finances and they go hand in hand, but we’re often um we’re really looking at the impact on the person so when we look at our benefits package when we look at our time off policy like all of those things we take up people. First lens too and like is this really improving the wellness of our culture or is it not um so thinking about just those systems are really important um so I’ve been really happy and you’re right from the top down like you have to have the buy in of the CEO or it’s never gonna stick um and I think she’s a huge advocate for wellness which is makes it a lot easier for sure. Uh, have you hired any new team members since the inaugural team? OK, um, so we only have a sample size of one, but what was the reaction when they were told that there’s a wellness, you’re, well, the wellness. Uh, the wellness coach, yeah, we have a wellness coach on on our team. What was the reaction? I think it was a huge draw so, um, part of the recruiting process, everyone we talked to the candidates before we made our final selection we’re all very excited about it. I think at first we had to explain it because it’s not something you see often so there’s a lot of education around this is. Resource for you they’ll be, you know, counseling available they’ll also just be a coach there to help you with your sort of own understanding of all of the dimensions of wellness, um, and it’s a 4 day work week like all those things were huge draws. I think it got us the the the big candidate pool that we saw, uh, and the final candidate that was selected was very excited about it. outstanding and uh productivity. I don’t know you don’t have a, you don’t have a control group. it wasn’t a pre-A and now how do you measure the productivity of the wellness program? It’s a great question, and we talk a little bit about metrics in our in our session tomorrow, um, because you’re right, there’s no control group pre wellness coach and 4 day work week and sort of people centric culture, but I think the metrics you we. And look at and use are a lot of the ones that other places have things like your employee engagement scores so like net promoter um but also just feedback. I know you know feedback is um is often seen as anecdotal but like anecdotal data is still data and so feedback from employees um we we haven’t um launched a net promoter score survey yet but we’ve gathered like you know monthly feedback on different offerings we’ve talked. The the staff, um, but I think turnover is like the biggest thing I look at it’s a lagging metric, um, and nobody has left. Well, always a good thing, right? Like no one’s like, I’m out of here, this isn’t working for me. There’s no exit interview data, yeah, exactly, um, so I think those are just big things to to keep an eye on and then there’s just, you know, participation rates of who’s engaging with the the services we offer, the programs we offer, um, their satisfaction from those programs and all of that that you can measure. Right, Sam, can you leave us with a wellness tip that we haven’t talked about yet? I’ll put you on the spot. You must have a deep repertoire of a tip tip. Yes, yes, your screen or away from screens. OK. Um, Mandy, Mandy, uh, vice president of people at the Fresh Perspective Group. Sam Hanley, wellness coach at the Fresh Perspective Group, Sam, Sam, you go by Sam Andy. That’s yeah that’s our duo name now. It’s the the the team, thank you, thank you very much for sharing. Thank you for having us. Thank you very much. And thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit technology conference, where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. It’s time for Tony’s Take 2. Thank you, Kate. Very similar to what I said last week. The federal budget process is still ongoing in Washington DC. There are hearings, there are negotiations going on, and there are bad things in the budget for nonprofits. For instance, uh, uh, something that I didn’t mention last week, the, uh, the permission of the authority for the Secretary of the Treasury to singularly denote that a charity is a terrorist supporting organization. Now, you may recall, that sounds familiar, because back in late last year, There was the House resolution. Remember 9495, it was the nonprofit killer bill, a lot of people called it. That’s what 9495 allowed them to do. Now that that didn’t pass in the last Congress, so it’s not called that anymore, but the, the unilateral authority for the Secretary of the Treasury to designate a charity in that way and thereby, you know, canceling the charitable status, that is part of the proposed budget. Um, there are also the, the big funding cuts to, uh, USAID and the State Department for, uh, for foreign funding, um, so, you know, there are, there are bad things in the budget proposed for the nonprofit community. I’m urging you to contact your Congressional representatives, senators, and your House of Representative, House of Representatives representative, your congress people. Uh, let them know how important your work is and how important our nonprofit community is that you don’t want to see it threatened. That you don’t want to see funding cuts. How vital the work is that all the members of the nonprofit community do. Uh, I had said last week, I, I, I had a LinkedIn post last week that had a link for how to find your senators and your congressmen or or congresswoman. Um, you know, it’s easy to find. You don’t, you don’t need my LinkedIn post. It’s just last week I had done it, but I do urge you to reach out to these folks. I’ve been doing it, I’ve been, my people, uh, the, the, the three that I call, you can only leave messages, it’s unbelievable, and nobody ever picks up. But if that’s, that’s all you can get, that’s fine. They need to hear from All of us how important. The nonprofit community is in the US. And that is Tony’s take too. Kate I remember in high school we had to, one of our assignments was to actually make an email and then send it over to our congressman. So if a high schooler can do it, I think anyone can do it. Uh, absolutely, yes, it’s not hard to, you can reach them by email, by phone, uh, you can go in person because they have offices throughout your state, however you do it. It’s, it’s, yeah, very doable. We’ve got bou but loads more time. Here is email deliverability. Thank you for joining our 25 NTC coverage. We’re live at the Baltimore Convention Center. My guest now is Ann Paska. Very close. Pashka Pitch. There’s an accent over the sea, which is an unusual character. accent is. Yes, it is. Uh, well, it’s actually my wife’s last name. I’m Pasky. She was co-pitched. We’re married now we’re Pask pitch, uh, and she was born in Yugoslavia, which doesn’t exist anymore. OK, yes. Yeah, so I haven’t seen that before. I don’t know if it’s definitely a lot of our friends thought we were joking until they saw it on our legal documents, but it’s, uh, we didn’t wanna pick one over the other. Well, did you decide who goes first? No, we just thought Pakay. I agree. OK, OK, wonderful. Uh, she’s Ann Paskaic, managing production specialist at M. They probably just say, yeah, it’s uh we are a consulting firm, uh, we do digital work, advocacy, audience research, advertising, uh, mostly digital, some PR social media, well, most of that’s online as well, um, we work with nonprofits across the country and across the world. Your topic is email deliverability. Have the rules changed? That’s almost an ironic or sarcastic question, uh, because they have indeed changed. We’re gonna talk about. Uh, you know, so we’ve had this topic over a few times in the past 3 to 4 years, uh, probably because the rules are, are, are changing. So, so the answer to your question is, uh, or maybe it’s a rhetorical question. Yeah, the answer is yes, right? It’s mostly changed. There’s some things that have stayed the same, um, I mean for a given level of same, of course we’re sending emails and. Not just uh mail and phone calls anymore, but some stuff is the same but a lot has changed. For instance, uh, you say in your session topic, are only mail the people who’ve opened recently. Oh no, that’s not true anymore. Now it’s clicked. Only mail to people who have clicked. So where, where do we get started with this? Is this an OK place to start or what? I think this is a great place to start because I think who do you email? How can you tell that they’re consenting is essentially the question, you know, of course you’ve got people who hopefully have opted in um at a minimum you wanna give them the language that says you’re getting emails maybe you have a confirmed opt in, but then once they’re on their list, how can you tell that sort of ongoing consent? I think that my approach to this is, you know, deliverability can be really technical and complicated, but you just have to remember that the people on the other end are humans and you’re trying to read those signals to try and understand what’s going on with the human at the other end. In terms of the opens question, um, of course Apple came out in 2021 with the Apple privacy policy for emails, uh, which basically said it’s common knowledge, it may not be common, it’s not so common, but, but you’re the expert so I glad you thank you for breaking this down for us, but, uh, just in case there are any listeners who didn’t, uh, who didn’t know that, uh, I’m with you. I did not know that Apple came out with this, uh, 4 years ago now. Yeah, so give us the history. No, no, I’m not, I didn’t want you to gloss over. I just want, I didn’t want, I don’t want anybody to be uh disappointed if they didn’t, they weren’t aware of this common knowledge. That’s true, that’s true. I I I assume obviously it’s my. If you were watching your email open rights, if you’re in the part of your industry that does that, you probably saw them go haywire in early 2022 and that is because of this change. So what Apple did is they said essentially You know, when somebody opens an email, the way that we track opens is whether or not they download a tiny little tracking pixel, so essentially an image, and when you download that it sends a bunch of additional information to the CRM that you’re using, whatever, um, where are you, what’s your IP address, what device you’re on. And essentially Apple said, you know, we’re really big on privacy and we think that that’s too much information. So what they did is that anybody who opted into this new policy, which they opt you in by default, so pretty much anybody with an iPhone has opted in, yeah, yeah unless you’re a real nerd and you’re like, I’m gonna go 3 levels down on the menu and turn it off. Um, what they do is they essentially open the emails on your behalf. So instead of like Ann Paska Pitch Malden, Massachusetts, my home’s IP address, if I have an iPhone, then that privacy policy just says, oh this was opened by Apple and you know Pasadena, California or wherever that IP address is, so it is protecting my privacy. On the marketer’s end, instead of getting, well, OK, probably a human person downloaded this tracking pixel and we can see where they are, we can see what their devices, you just get well Apple opened this and because Apple opens that for everybody with an iPhone, just a lot of people, what happened is Openreach just kind of went everywhere. Um, it depends on the email tool you’re using. Some email tools that, you know, this is confusing, we’re gonna separate it out, we’re gonna, we can look at the signals and say. This is a human eye open, um, yeah, you know, like oh it’s Pasadena, California and Apple’s IP that’s a machine, you know, it’s a little more complicated than that, but from our end we were able to be like, oh OK, this is human open, this is machine open. Usually they prioritize looking at those human opens your open rates go down. For everybody else, the CRMs went like, I don’t know, it’s still an open, it’s all the same and so their open rates went up because everybody with an iPhone was quote unquote opening everything, yeah. And then coming back to the like how do you target your emails um before this change we said you know opens are good top of the funnel indication that somebody is probably looking at your email, you know, it’s a bit of a rough it was a it was a rough statistic even then because of course if you have all your images blocked or you’re just on a slow connection and the images don’t load, doesn’t matter if you read the email, it’s not going to download that tracking pixel and track it as an open. And then on the flip side, if you’re one of those people that opens an email in order to delete it, that was tracking as an open, but an open was still kind of a good indicator that at least a human was using that email address and probably looked at your email. OK, right, that that we could say. Yeah, and it was like a good rough estimate. And of course Apple comes out with this change and everybody’s like, well now I don’t know if a humans looked at it, uh, you know, the machine is doing this and I don’t know if somebody’s completely ignoring it, um, so a lot of organizations said, well, I’m not going to take into account Ops anymore because I don’t think it’s a good good success. So we’re talking about the users or the the email the email providers. Uh, neither the, the nonprofits who are sending our email, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, we’re part of this too. OK, so we don’t know what to. Yeah, yeah, you know, like I’m somebody reading my email. I’m not gonna notice the difference. Inbox providers, they can still get all that information because they have access, you know, if I’m Gmail, I own the inbox, even if you’re looking at it through your Apple iPhone. So they’re still getting the same data. It’s just us as marketers who are using a third party tool that’s, you know, only tracking opens through that little pixel. That’s where our data starts to get weird and our decisions about who to send to has this whole other variable. OK, so let’s drill down on that because that’s what our listeners I think are gonna be most interested in um at least in this around this part of the, this part of the topic, who should I be mailing to or who should I be scrubbing off. Or whatever that’s not the right. Who should I be dropping off our list because they’re not engaged. They’re bringing down our engagement rate. They, they don’t, they don’t open or maybe we, we don’t know if they open or even if we assume they open but they don’t click, they’re still bringing down our engagement rates because because the providers know all this, right? You know, they know what you see, they know if you, if you, if you open it or if you only look at it in your um. The browser, not the like the preview pane yeah yeah if you only see the preview pane you know if you click, you know if you open or open and then click. They know everything they know how far down you scroll. They know how many times you looked at it. They they know if you like after reading it, did you like carefully file it away in a file folder or did you delete it? Did you forward it? Did you, yeah, like all of these things they’re collecting every single data point. And feeding into their machine learning and we’re over here with that for your emails to people’s inboxes or not that’s the subject. OK, so what’s your uh expert advice? Who should we be taking off our list or if you want to approach it in the positive, who should we be mailing to so. I’m gonna say you should actually be emailing people that open and this is not what we thought was gonna happen when Apple came out with this whole machine thing but it turns out um whether you’re looking at just machine and human opens or rather whether you’re able to distinguish between them or they’re just in a big pool, you can’t tell the difference, different tools are different. Opens are still a really good indicator of whether somebody is using that inbox and it turns out that that is good enough for inbox providers um yeah pretty low threshold it it is a pretty inbox, yeah, well, it’s not just somebody owns it, it’s that. So sorry, I’m I’m gonna, I’m I’m gonna do other sidebar. So Apple’s robots will only open emails if one that email is landing in the inbox. So if you have a bad reputation, your email is going to spam, the robot’s not gonna open that essentially they’re like this isn’t good enough. I’m not gonna open it. Probably nobody’s gonna pull this out of spam and look at it. They also only open emails if somebody’s actually using that inbox. So if you, you know, we talked about me changing my name when I got married. I’ve got an Ann Pasky email address. If I don’t use that anymore and I stopped using it, so I stop logging on, then Apple’s gonna stop opening those emails for me, you know, they’ve they’ve they’ve got a lot of server space but it’s not infinite, so they’re not gonna spend it on people who aren’t using their email. So, if you get that machine open, it might not mean that I actually saw it, but it does mean that it 1 landed in my inbox and 2 that I am actively logging into that account. And it turns out, and again like this is not what I thought was going to happen, you know Apple came out, we said you should look at pulling back to just looking at other indicators, but what we saw is that the groups who were like I’m gonna wait, I’m gonna like wait until I see problems uh by targeting these opens that may be humans and may be machines they never had problems um they they saw that continuing to email. Active addresses whether or not those people were actually engaging with their emails in terms of opens kept them in a healthy deliverability spot. OK yeah, alright, so, so encapsulate to summarize that for our listeners who are not technologists but they’re certainly technology users uh into a sentence or two that we can digest. Yes, so if you are targeting your email list based on activity and open is a good indicator of activity. That was very concise. Thank you. I hope it was helpful. Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s not the only indicator, you know, I think you should also be looking at clicks, you should be looking at things that aren’t deliverability related but are important to your program, whether that’s donors or event attendance or whatever other indicators somebody’s giving you that they’re going to be engaged because Tony, deliverability is not the point, right? It’s a tool, it’s a, it’s a requirement if people aren’t gonna read your emails if they can’t see them, but ultimately most people aren’t running a program where the goal is to deliver emails to the inbox. They’re trying to change the world. They’re trying to like talk to people, yeah, so. That’s why I say like also target people based on recent online actions because that’s what you’re actually going for. It’s not all about the technology and it’s it’s a yes, absolutely. It’s an online but it’s a nonetheless. Um, OK, making sure everyone has opted in. No, that’s not quite true anymore. Now we want double opt in. What, what, what’s the issue here? This is, this is a big one and one that I think is really different in the nonprofit space compared to, you know, obviously a lot of the advice out there is for for profits, you know, assuming you’re you’re selling the shoes or something like that. And this is where I feel like my take is maybe a little controversial but it’s based on what I’ve seen you don’t have to do a confirmed opt in if somebody is, for example, donating. They are putting down their credit card information they’re saying I care about you as an organization and I’m giving you my money and it is OK to just say, hey, thank you as part of that we are opting you into email. Obviously always give people the option to unsubscribe um you know there are some situations where you might want to do a confirmed opt in where it’s something like. Uh, we have an organization that sends, uh, cards to children in the hospital, and a lot of people want to do that, but they don’t actually care about signing up for the email list. So that’s a situation where we might want to do a confirmed opt in or a double opt in. Um, or anywhere where you’re a little bit worried about the quality of names you’re getting. So if you’re having people like sign up at a at an event and they’re typing things into an iPad or even if you’re writing your name on a piece of paper, that’s where you might want to make sure, hey, are you, did you make a typo? Is this really your email address? Did you really mean to sign up and send them that email confirmation that they have to click on to confirm, you know that? That is what a double opt in is, yes. you did not explain that. Yeah, we have jail. Yeah, opt in, confirmed opt in. It just means I put my email in on a form, but then I have to go to my inbox and click that link before I actually start receiving emails. Yeah. We do that all the time exactly a couple times a week. I mean it seems routine, OK, but that’s a double opt in so initially we’ve included you but please confirm. And then you confirm through clicking on an email, yes, yes, and that is kind of the gold standard of opt in, but of course a lot of people don’t do that so you have to kind of gauge what are my quality of names, what’s the likelihood that they’re going to see that one single confirmation email versus maybe the quality of action that brought them onto your list. How does this impact deliverability? the the inbox providers know whether there’s a double opt in? They do not. All they know is what happens when your email gets to the inbox that they own or you know, that they provide for your subscriber, their customer. Um, I guess they do it, yeah, yeah, they’re providing a, yeah, they’re providing a service to the user who is your supporters probably, um, and I feel like it’s important. I’m talking here about, uh, mostly free mail providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, you know, Hotmail, AOL, um, when we’re talking about. Uh, like, like a corporate inbox provider, um, meaning like I have a company and our IT team runs the spam filters versus Google running the spam filters. Those rules might be different. Most nonprofits lists are, you know, individual people using those free email boxes. The rules are a little bit different if you’re, um, mostly talking to corporations. Well, now we get to what which email address people have provided. Isn’t the personal, isn’t the personal email more valuable because it’s less likely to change through a person’s life? Yeah, yeah, but I think it also depends on like what context you’re talking in, um, you know, like I I just signed up for your list and I give you my work email because this is a work relationship so uh different organizations are gonna be relating to people in different parts of their lives. Right. Well, I guess it, I guess it depends on the relationship from the user perspective, which, which you gave us the second rate email because you might change your business and then I would lose you. I might, I might, but I don’t know. I’ve been in MR for almost 13 years now, so it’s, it’s pretty good. I just always have. I, I’m not disparaging your joining our list. Thank you. I’m grateful that you joined the list. I’m not disparaging the email you gave us. I’m having an academic discussion about which is, which is more valuable. I would have, I would think that someone’s Gmail or their, their home, their home, their personal account would be uh a more valuable over time. Address that I think all other things equal somebody’s probably gonna be on their personal email address for a longer period of time, but the thing to think about with deliverability is what what does that person want? Look how smart you are back to the top. I’m I’m wildly digressing and to the topic. Well, I can only speak to my area of expertise, so you’re doing great. Thank you for trying to build up. Um, no, but I think it’s a good question because it’s asking what is valuable to you as the sender versus what is valuable to the recipient if, uh, you know, we’re talking about, um, I mean yeah, let’s keep using me as the example. I’m like, OK, I want I want to know when my recording comes out. I want to know what other sessions you’re doing. That’s a work topic. I try to have good work life boundaries, you know, not always perfect, but so I wanna be like I wanna know when that’s coming out at work and you know be able to forward that email straight from my work email to my marketing email. If your email came to my personal inbox I’d be like no I don’t wanna think about work. I’m trying to trying to see when my pizza is delivered. I’m trying to see what my grandma sent me last week kind of thing. So it is, it’s relative. I might get upset I mean not me, but the hypothetical me might get upset if you’re sending work emails to my personal inbox. So I think that is a thing to be balanced. Like, sure, if I leave my job, you can’t email me my work email address anymore, but that’s where I want it. So I digression. Thanks for using yourself as an example all the time. I don’t know. Does your grandma send you stuff online? She’s pretty savvy. She does sometimes. She’s she’s got an Apple watch. Uh, she’s very, she is 92 and pretty savvy. 2. Yeah, I wouldn’t have even thought that old. Wow, 92 in an Apple watch it? Yeah, she does get her email on it? Uh, I mean, I don’t know if she gets her email. She does try to answer her phone on it sometimes and that’s it’s a little hard, but she’s great. She’s trying, yeah, yeah, not afraid. Apple Watch 92 savvy. Yes, let’s get into some nasty acronyms. Uh, we’ve, we’ve talked about these in the past. I was telling you off mic it was either last year or the year before we did email deliverability from uh at an NTC. SPF or DKIM first I live on the beach, so to me SPF is the sun protection factor. I look for at least 30 sometimes I I may transition to 50. I know that’s not what you’re talking about. Uh, let’s acquaint us first with these before we get to the deliverability advantages or disadvantages of each. Yeah well you know what I I’m gonna actually throw a third one in there and that’s D D M A C, OK, yeah, yeah, we’ll take one at a time. What’s our SPF? Gosh, OK, now I feel like you’re quizzing. It is a sender policy framework SPF. So there you go. Alright, yeah, and what’s its relevance to us in in the deliverability subject? Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna actually bucket these together. I’m not. No, no, so I think that these are, these are really important to understand. They’re very technical. I will say you only need to understand them once, probably, uh, the first time that you set up your email system, and then you only have to change them if you either change your domain name or send your change your sending IP address, which you probably don’t know what your sending IP address is, so TLDR if you move to a different email system. You know, whoever you’re sending from owns that IP address. All of these different frameworks are just different ways to say, hey, I’m sending an email and I’m allowed to do that and I am who I am, so I like using myself as an example. This doesn’t apply I’m not a bulk sender, but if I were a bulk sender. We’ll use MNR. M&R sends a labs post periodically, you know, I write about deliverability you get in your inbox. Um, the SPF DIM and DMmark are all different ways of saying hello, this email is indeed from M&R. I’m not spamming you. I’m not spoofing. I have permission to send, I have permission to use this IP address and these things all line up, um. Part of the reason I’m bundling this together is honestly, I have spent time trying to understand the technical differences between these and what all of them are. And it doesn’t stick in my head because I don’t need it that often. I mean we needed this initially when we set it up set up our email with our provider, yes, yeah, you, you need to talk to your your email provider, your CRM, whatever you wanna call it, and you need to have access to your DNS, which is the back end of your website essentially, yes, exactly, and it is essentially taking different pieces of code from different. Places and pasting them in other places to say what I said that you are a legitimate you’re sending OK so I think it’s bucket. There are a lot of really great resources about these. I, I will be honest, I am not one of them. I can tell you that you need to have it and I can tell you you should check and keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t break, but it is. Hopefully you set it and forget it. If we don’t have an IT uh CIO or an IT director manager, who should we check with? You should check with whoever you are sending your email out of. So your Salesforce, your Fonterra, every action, they will have their support team, um, so one of these again, uh, I don’t have a best friend of mine, one of those, they, they will. have to set up for you to provide the code to say you know we own this IP address and you’re allowed to send from it, but they will be able to help you through the other pieces because obviously they they want you to be able to send email successfully out of their system so they will be able to walk you through the technical difficulties or hopefully not difficulties, the technical details, give you the code, tell you where to put it, talk to if you don’t have an IT team, whoever is the best person with access to the back end of your website. Um, and that sort of thing that they’re gonna be a good resource. This is all about proving that you are who you say you have to send this. Name the sender that we’re telling you it’s coming from. It’s both the domain so whatever parts after the at sign of the email address, so MRSS.com for me uh and the IP address that is owned by that email tool that you’re using. OK, OK, um, we can spend more time together if if there’s more you want to say about deliverability that we haven’t talked about yet. Let’s see, I think the one other thing I wanna say is that um it’s really important to pay attention to and that means some sort of monitoring or reporting system. uh I think that it it is it can be tricky, right, because if you’re a small nonprofit, you don’t have a ton of resources, you’re gonna try to not pay attention until there’s a problem. That can be costly because then first of all you, you have a problem that you haven’t noticed for a while um and then it can be harder to fix and then you’re also trying to fix it at the same time you’re trying to figure out how can I tell if I fixed it. So I think it’s worth taking a little bit of. of time and setting up a couple of tools that will let you monitor what your deliverability is. Is it still generally better to have a mail to a smaller list that’s more engaged than a larger list with a lot of unengaged addresses? That’s a that’s a yes no question and I like to say it depends. um I think that what you wanna look at is how many people you’re actually reaching. I’m not gonna say like smaller is always better. I’m, I’m honestly more in that middle part. I wanna try and figure out how many people you can reach to maximize your program without hurting deliverability and kind of find that line and stay just on this side of it, um. Look at your actual numbers oftentimes if you’re sending to a huge list of people, the only big number is how many emails were sent and how many emails were delivered. You wanna look at, you know, we like to look at percentages, but you wanna look at like who in terms of numbers is actually opening or clicking and especially donating or taking action or signing up for your events or whatever that end goal is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, so there’s value, you just said this. I’m just reiterating. Uh, there is value in looking at the metrics, some key metrics. I don’t know, once a month or something or maybe more. It depends on how often you’re sending email, but I, I will say not once an email. Um, deliverability can be kind of volatile. So if you’re looking at it once an email is a good way to give yourself a scare and like have a false false positive in terms of there being a problem. Uh, once a month is usually good for most people or once a campaign. Um, and just taking a look at looking at that performance, if you can looking at performance by recipient domain, so dividing up and saying what was the open rate for my gmail.com subscribers, what was the open rate for my Yahoo.com subscribers because all those inbox providers have their own spam filters, so. Even though they use the same kinds of data, their users have different data points, so a decline consistent trend with one provider compared to the others, you might have an issue with that provider web person or IT provider. Rules at that provider. I mean, if you, if it’s noticeable enough that if it’s if it’s enough of a decline that it’s, it bothers you. And if it doesn’t bother you if it’s only a couple of maybe it’s not worth spending time on that. Yes, take a step back, look at your whole program. Yeah, I mean it’s good to look at individual domains because if Gmail thinks you’re you’re absolutely peachy and Yahoo thinks you’re sketchy, why would you do anything about Gmail? Why would you cut back on, you know, maybe main fix that you have is is to send to less engaged people and more sorry less unengaged people and more engaged people and if Gmail says, yeah, no, everybody’s engaged, why would you cut back sending there if the problems with Yahoo. OK, savvy advice overall. Thank you. All right, Ann, Ann, and Pasaic, managing production specialist M and give your grandma my good wishes. I admire 92. I do plan to fundraising, so I work with 70, 80, 90 year olds and I don’t know any 90 year olds with an Apple Watch, so she’s an outlier on, on the good side. On the on the Ambitious. Yeah, in the connected. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ann. Thanks for sharing and thank you for listening as 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting. Next week, healthier productivity from AI with Mika Whitlock and Jason Shim. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.
Jenn Lejano & Jess Ray: Connect Small Donors To Your Major Donor Event
Jenn Lejano and Jess Ray show you how to connect folks who would never come to your expensive event, to your expensive event. They’ll help you broaden event support by engaging donors you’re probably leaving on the sidelines, with actionable strategies to engage your entire donor base. Jenn is from Fresh Eyes Digital and Jess is with The Adler Planetarium. This is part of our coverage of the 2025 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#25NTC).
Genie Gratto: Add Experiential Elements To Your Events
You can learn from big brands to create buzz and emotional connections around your events, without spending the money they do. You’ll engage your supporters emotionally as you incorporate experiential and interactive features into your events. Genie Gratto is at GWRITES. The resource she shared is here. This conversation is also from #25NTC.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Did you notice last week’s show was all AI? This week’s show also has a theme. I, I want you to know that this show is meticulously, scrupulously planned week after week. These things don’t just happen. It’s not random. It’s, it’s carefully plotted week after week. And I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the embarrassment of Catahora if you woke me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate with what’s going on. Hey Tony, we’re all about events today with two conversations from 25 NTC. First, Connect small donors to your major donor event. Jen Le Hanno and Jess Ray show you how to connect folks who would never come to your expensive event to your expensive event. They’ll help you broaden event support by engaging donors you’re probably leaving on the sidelines with actionable strategies to engage your entire donor base. Jen is from Fresh Eyes Digital, and Jess is with the Adler Planetarium. Then Add experiential elements to your events. You can learn from big brands to create buzz and emotional connections around your events without spending the money they do. You’ll engage your supporters emotionally as you incorporate experiential and interactive features into your events. Jenny Grotto is at Grs. On Tony’s take 2. The federal budget Here is connect small donors to your major donor event. inaugurating our coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference with this very interview right now that you are listening to. It’s our first one of the, of the, of the conference. We’re all together in Baltimore at the Baltimore Convention Center. Where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting software and services in technology for nonprofits. My guests now are Jen Lehano. Did I say your name right? I should have asked you off mic. Leno is good. All right. And Jess Ray. Jen is a partner and co-founder at Fresh Eyes Digital. Jess Ray is associate director of individual giving at the Adler Planetarium, which we all know is in Chicago, Illinois. Jen, Jess, I’m sure to get confused, uh, you’re not even you are sitting in alphabetical order if you get, but, uh, my first, my first and last name, right, Jen, Jess, welcome. Thank you, pleasure to have you. Thank you for kicking off our, our coverage of 25 MTC. Your session topic is connect small dollar donors to your major donor event. Uh, let’s start, uh, down the end of the panel of two. Jen, Jen, Jess, exactly. I did that on purpose. Just testing us. Uh, I wish I could, I wish that were true. Uh, OK, Jess, thank you. Um, yeah, uh, this is not even something that I would that I think is on the radar of a lot of event fundraising planners, uh, nonprofits, just like overview, we got plenty of time together, but overview, uh. Well, why did you think we should be doing this? Why did you feel this was a necessary topic? Well, um, first of all, the Adler is really inclusive, so we wanted to make sure that we were, um, bringing everyone into our space, and we also wanted to take advantage of our wonderful partner Tom Skilling who Chicagoans will know and he really connects with people so that was our thought is how do we um. Use him in a way that is both makes sense for him as well for us in taking advantage of our event that otherwise we would ignore. OK um and are you, are you both in Chicago or I am yeah OK and uh is the Adler Planetarium. Uh, a client of specialized digital. Oh, OK, so we have a client, uh, a client consultant relationship. All right, um, why don’t, why don’t you give us your overview. So I think, you know, one of the things when Jen. Really, are you sure? Are you sure it’s Jack? Damn. There’s only 2. I mean, I have 50 50% chances and I blow it every time. I’m not buying lottery tickets for that, Jen, that’s what I said, yeah, um, so you know, one of the things when we were working with the team at Adler, uh, you know, their celestial bash, which is their annual fundraising gala was coming up, and you know one of the things that they talked about was like, you know, how do we do more with our individual donors? We have this event. The ticket price for that. Event is not for individual donors, right? It’s a mid major more on the major side, um, in terms of the ticket price because it’s a fundraising event, it’s a large gala, um, you know, it’s, it’s not something that like your everyday $50 donor is gonna probably attend and our advice actually was ignore your gala. Right, so it was, uh, we shouldn’t actually be making this about the gala or about um the major donor event but we should engage people by using the celebrity Tom Skilling, um, uh, you know, using the gala uh timeline as a deadline for the campaign and we should build an individual giving campaign pre-event that helps drive momentum and drive interest as we’re getting up to that event. So the goal was really actually don’t try to. Great individual donors into your major donor event, but let’s give something for individual donors to get excited about that connects to your event so that was that was kind of how we were approaching it. OK um and and Jess, so connect to the event but not so you’re not inviting. Uh, when you say small dollar donors, which I, you know, I appreciate, you know, a lot of, a lot of folks in our community will say modest donors, like, like you’re insulting them if you say they’re small donors or small dollar donors, but you’re not commenting on their character. They’re not small people. They just make small gifts. I just call it what it is. So, so thank you for saying small dollar donors are not modest. I mean, I don’t mind modest, but small, they make small gifts. They’re not, they’re not small people. All right, so you’re, you’re connecting with the gala, but You’re not inviting the folks to the gala, is that right, Jess? Correct, OK, so explain the connection, but you don’t get an invitation. uh, say, say a little more Jess. So one of the things we also took advantage of was our theme for the gala and which was on Wonder and so Todd does just inspire wonder and all when you interact with him. So we created a special campaign and like Jen said, use the bash event date as the like ground. point to say oh we have a match in place we need to get it in by this date and that’s how we used it to circle around and taking advantage of also um the media that we had around the celestial event because we were honoring Tom to mention to the wider base like our WGN. Post about the campaigns, yeah. I’m sorry. OK. All right, get the word out about it too. So the small dollar donors. Uh, the campaign to the small dollar donors, does it mention the gala or it just says it just uses the gala, very little, so yeah, and that was intentional. So I think like one of the things as consultants that we’ve seen is um nonprofits tend to overemphasize the importance. I’m Jen yeah there we go. You got it you got it this time. Now you can get the lottery ticket, um, yeah, but we have. There’s plenty of time to spoil, um, but so many nonprofits come to us and say, oh, we’re having this event and the event really becomes the central focus for the organization and it is kind of exclusionary to most of their donors, right? And so you know we talked about like could we, how do we get individual donors kind of involved and finally it was like we don’t, right? Like we don’t try to get them involved in the gala but we use all of that energy and. The effort that the nonprofit themselves are putting into the gala to create a campaign that will work for individual donors and so we didn’t talk about the gala a lot in email communications or in social posts things like that um we did talk about how Tom Skilling was being honored at the upcoming gala so that it wasn’t like we were hiding it but um but really I think the advice is I mean we’re kind of flipping this on its head, right? The advice is not for you to like get your small dollar donors involved in your. Major donor event it’s actually to ignore the major donor event and get your small dollar donors uh involved ahead of time and there are things that I think you can do at an event right that could um I mean if we didn’t have time to pull this off this year right? but I think like you could have kind of uh uh you know a thank you wall or something at the event that’s thanking those individual donors the one thing that I think Tom did really beautifully at the event. Was he made sure to call out the campaign because he was really proud of the campaign we we branded it the Tom Skilling great space Challenge, right? And so it was, you know, help raise $35,000 and it’ll be matched dollar for dollar and he posted it on all of his social networks, things like that, right? And then when he was at the event he was like, I am blown away by how many people donated and how many people love Adler and this campaign was a. Amazing. And so at the major donor event he was talking about the individual giving campaign and his impact that he had by running that campaign with Adler was the yeah let’s let’s give a shout to this guy Tom Skilling the Adlers in Chicago I don’t know. It is if anyone is listening, if anyone is listening from Chicago, I’m sure that by right now there’s like screaming because he’s he’s just the most authentic genuine person you’ve ever met. He’s the weatherman from WGM. He’s a weatherman, yeah, he’s been a weatherman for 45 years but he recently retired. OK, so he’s he’s on. Just retired and so we also took advantage of him retiring yeah now he’s spending his time in Hawaii and Chicago, but yeah, so he fled Chicago. I’m sure Tom would not do that. um, so what, um, what did the campaign look like? So give us a little more detail on what, uh, so yeah, I mean, so we um we developed uh the. Campaign plan, uh, the number of emails we were gonna send, uh, recommendations on social posts, and then, um, our amazing designer Thelma Andre who’s here volunteering at NTC, um, she developed the graphics and so she did this kind of, um, cartoonish, uh, you know, because it’s a really fun campaign, uh, the Tom Scaling Great Space Challenge and all of Adler’s, uh, brand colors and guidelines, um, and you know, and again a lot of this really rested on. Tom’s own promotion because he has a very engaged active Facebook following and um and he’s definitely sometimes one of those all caps posters you know like he’s just so enthusiastic and so he promoted the campaign multiple times and was often ready before we were saying like just let me know when I need to put this on Facebook I’ll do it my followers will do anything I know they will um so you know so we developed kind of all of the assets for the uh for the digital campaign. Um, and worked with the Adler team on, on how, how long was the it was just 3 or 4 weeks before the, before the thing. We didn’t want it to be too long. We really wanted to have it in a condensed time frame, which is how we often run a lot of digital campaigns, but, um, and you know, and then with the goal of to meet the matching gift for the 35,000 dollars, yeah, yeah, and you had a donor who was, uh, stepped up to do that we did that match, OK yeah. Um, I mean, what else are you gonna, I know you haven’t done your session yet because the sessions haven’t started. We’re, we’re in the midst of the opening keynote right now. That’s what you’re in the background. Um, what else are you gonna share? We still have time together. What else are you gonna share with your audience? I mean, we actually, we have two sessions that we’re presenting and they’re in the it’s both about the same campaign but from a different angle so we have connecting the small dollar donors um and then also like utilizing a celebrity influencer right? like so how do you make the most out of working with somebody like a Tom Skilling, um, how do you make the right asks, um, how do you prioritize your asks when they have limited time. Um, and so we’re doing two sessions actually kind of related to that campaign. Alright, let’s focus on the dollar donor side, um, and what else, what else is there on the, the small, you know, like actionable strategies is what I’m just reading from your, your session description, actionable strategies for engaging your entire donor base. What, what did you do? This is, is this the first year you did this? Small dollar donor campaign for before I gave up a major event, OK, yeah, yeah. What we really focused on. Was capturing the right tone and messaging so that it related to everyone and donors are donors, but you do speak a little bit differently to your average everyday small dollar donor than you do maybe a major donor or an institutional donor, so making sure that it came through an Adler’s authentic language and audience um. Voice, but as well as it made it made sense that it was coming from Tom Skilling so that was really important to when he’s talking through his Facebook to make sure that it sounded like him, even though it was wrote by the Adler so that was a really big part was to make sure that you’re speaking at the right way to your donors that make them feel like they’re part of it even though they are not attending the event that we had minimize, they know that it’s still happening but they don’t feel left out. When you were uh defining who’s gonna be part of the campaign, what what kind of criteria did you use in querying was it any size gift or what kind of period of time, what what what what were your parameters? We did have a special page that any gifts given towards that, so we ranged from I think $5 to somebody gave a $3000 gift into that campaign. um, so that all counted and then I think yeah Jen said. 23 weeks during that period also counted I means be invited to join the queries uh yeah so it was it was the full file it was the full file minus um the folks that they had already identified as invitees to the to the the everybody right, right, and I think I don’t in years past you had you had done an invite. Kind of out to everybody, right? And and that was the thing that they didn’t want to repeat, right? Because it was like uh it’s very tone deaf. Yeah, like nobody’s gonna buy those tickets, right, they were all digital, so we didn’t do any, we don’t do at this time. But actually when we look at when we crunch the numbers, a lot of them were first time donors that we had garnered through Tom. he has great outreach and engagement. OK, so you, you were able to acquire some new donors. And uh what about the, the overall revenue the arbuilding since 2020 and this was a 35,000 dollars, right? OK. And then didn’t we get you got that one we did we um we also had an anonymous donor reach out that was so um inspired by this campaign to say that they want to make sure we meet that match no matter what and we responded back, well, we’ve actually already met it. Thank you so much. We do still have a gap on our event uh goal and they’re like, how much is it? and said oh it’s about $45 like no problem, and they just sent us a check for $5000 yeah, outstanding. There’s something about planetariums. What is it? How come I love? I grew up with the um uh in New York City, the Hayden’s because we have the sky above us and so can look up s looking up to the sky. It’s a universal thing that brings us all together. Yeah, very well. So you didn’t think much of that movie Don’t look upon. I actually didn’t see that one. Do you know? Do you know? Oh no, it’s a big, it’s a great satire of our current politics and There’s this, there’s this earth threatening asteroid or major outer space object headed to Earth, and there are a lot of people who who don’t want you to know about it, so they just say don’t look up. satire. It’s it’s pure satire. Leonardo DiCaprio is very good. Um, is Amy Adams, I think too. I’m not sure about Amy Adams, but Leonardo DiCaprio is very good. You’ll love it’s a good satire. I’ll have to check it out. Thank you. Don’t look up. Um, alright, anything else that we we still have some time if uh if you do, is there anything more you’re gonna say that uh you haven’t shared don’t hold out on nonprofit radio listeners on the side. I just, you know, I just think it’s, um, I think again it’s like a little bit about approach and just thinking, you know, instead of starting with the question of like how do we bring these people into this big event. Of thinking a little bit more kind of audience first or donor first, right? Like so we know these folks are not gonna buy tickets to this, right? And even though I mean it was an awesome event I got the chance to go and you know you’re walking around the planetarium blah blah blah but yeah, I mean donors just don’t think of right they don’t have the resources or they don’t believe that they have the capacity or they just don’t or they. but don’t have interest, you’re not you’re you’re not one of the top charities. So yeah, they don’t, they love you, but not that, not just not that much. So there’s just, there’s, I mean you were not in that way, yeah, but, but you were realistic about that. These are folks that are not gonna come. Like the odds of them buying a ticket are so small. So let’s, and so Jane, you had the idea of let’s try to do something else like that. How do we engage them and how do we meet them where they are and I think like especially when you’re in kind of and I know Jess can speak to this more right but when you’re in the chaos of um prepping for an event and when it takes up kind of all of the air in the room especially for the entire staff right like it’s it’s all hands on deck for that kind of an event and it’s so critically important in terms of fundraising. Um, that it can be really tough to step back and be like, oh but how are we engaging the folks who are not coming to the event, right? And so I think the planning started early. I mean we started talking about this spring, yeah, like in the in the spring and the event was in September, right? So we started just kind of percolating on like how are we gonna do this and what is a way we can do this it’ll be really effective um and help you with a fundraising goal. It’s not gonna bring in the million dollars of your major donor event right? um but. There is kind of a place for individual donors to be a part of it even if we’re not specifically saying like you know this is our annual gala campaign like we would never call it an annual gala campaign because also nobody gives a shit about that so like you know like it just right right so I think like um but you know the the team at Adler is just I mean first of all they all work incredibly well together and I think have really great lines of communication and I think that ability to kind of be like. You know we don’t wanna we don’t wanna just send out a blanket invite we don’t really know how to do this but we wanna do something and um because I do think like the mission is so inspiring and they’re I mean their assets, their um their voice, their tone. Um, it’s one of the most fun brands that we get to work with, um, because it’s, I mean if you you should follow them on social media, their social media is really fun and incredible, um, but you know they just, it, it’s all very heartfelt and everybody really loves being there and you can kind of see that and feel that in their communications and that’s what we wanted to make sure it came through in the campaign as well to engage those donors authentically is really important with us so we don’t wanna be talking down to anyone. And make them feel that they are welcome in our space even if they aren’t at the event. Yeah, you’re not ignore them for the whatever the two months that lead up to the campaign I mean the gala when when like you said um it’s all, it’s all hands on deck. Everybody’s devoted to it and we’re ignoring what I don’t know, 80% of our file or whatever right exactly that’s exactly what we don’t want to do, right. All right, yeah, and anything else you feel like we’ve I feel like, yeah, I think so. Alright, alright. You’re Jenjano, uh, and co-founder of Fresh Eyes Digital, Chicago-based, and Jess Ray, associate director of individual giving at the Adler Planetarium, also Chicago, of course. Um, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jen. And Jess, you got it right. Thank you, thank you for come back year after year and then like names or something. Thank you very much. Thanks for sharing and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC the 2025 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting. It’s time for Tony’s Take-Two. Thank you, Kate. We’re in the process now in Washington DC that the Trump regime’s uh proposed budget is under consideration and it has to be approved by the Senate and the House, which means it can be amended by the Senate and the House. I’m concerned that there are things in this budget that are very bad for the nonprofit community, including individual members of the nonprofit community. Uh, I wrote on LinkedIn, uh, about this extensively. Uh, by the time you hear this, it’ll be last week’s LinkedIn, uh, long post, about as long it’s like one extra character I could put in. So about the longest you can, it’s the longest you can put in LinkedIn, um, but I’m urging. All of us in the nonprofit community to stand together in support of the community at large, because we all know how important all the work is that all of us do. Throughout the community and standing for individual members, nonprofits that are being targeted, like. Harvard University and the public broadcasting system. My encouragement in that LinkedIn post is to contact your House Representative and your two senators and not just do it once but multiple times, even if you can take 5 minutes a day to call the 3 of them. One at a time, and then on the 4th day, go back to the top of the list and call the 3 of them in the next 3 days. We have to keep up the pressure. The nonprofit community is so much stronger when we stand together united. Again, for the whole community, but also for each of our individual members. Cause when they go after one, and they succeed, they go after a 2nd, they succeed, it’s like a row of dominoes. And you know what happens to the dominoes that are lined up right after the 1st 1 and the second one. If you want, you can take a look at the LinkedIn post from last week, or just Be calling your congress people. Repeatedly To keep up the pressure that the nonprofit community and it’s each of its, each of its members. not be targeted by this budget. That is Tony’s take 2. Kate I don’t have much to add other than everyone has the right to make sure that their voice is heard, and if you like can’t go to protests and you just wanna stay home, stay home and make a phone call. It’s all you gotta do. There are a lot of ways to be involved and, and the lots of different forms of activism. You’re right. We’ve got Boku but loads more time. Here is add experiential elements to your events. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference. We’re together in community at the Baltimore, Maryland Convention Center. Our coverage of 25 NTC is sponsored by Heller Consulting Technology services for nonprofits. With me now is Jeannie Grotto, communications strategist and consultant at GWrights. Jeannie, welcome to nonprofit radio. Well, thank you for having me. It’s good to be here. I’m glad you are. Thank you. Your session topic is add experiential elements to nonprofit events on a budget. And uh why don’t you give me an overview of what, uh, some sense of for our listeners in small and mid-size nonprofits, some sense of what uh what experiential events. Yeah, I mean, you know that’s anything where you can have sort of an interactive. Thing something that you’re doing like something that your audience members are doing that um allows them to really participate in the event in a different way so they’re not just passively engaged in the event they’re being part of it, being part of that event story. um. And we can do this without uh like affectation I mean we can we can weave it into the event. Absolutely. I mean I think um really what you’re trying to do anytime you have an event uh and you this doesn’t have to cost money is really think about the story that you want that event to tell so it’s almost like a three act structure. Right, it’s like act one is leading up to the event and kind of how are you preparing people to come into where you are. Act 2 is really at the event itself and then act 3, which is actually the hardest I think um is following up afterwards and how are you keeping people engaged in the mission. Um, and in the work that you were hoping they would get out of the event. OK. Oh, interesting. Alright, so good, we can weave this into our longer term goals for the event, which is longer term participation not just for an afternoon or exactly exactly and I think that’s the hardest, especially for small nonprofits, I think, um, and medium sized even large ones. I always talk about yeah yeah I mean I talk a lot about and and have been part of teams um where there’s a big event maybe a big annual event and the whole organization ends up in what we call this kind of whirlpool of the event itself um everybody gets sucked into this world. And then all of a sudden like there’s very little other work happening in the organization and so even people that are not used to working on events are working on it and being part of that process and so everybody gets sucked in then you have the event there’s all this adrenaline leading up to that and then you know you’re working really hard at the event. And then everybody hits the wall at the end of the event and everything stops and that is the part that I think is hardest for uh nonprofit staff if you know if you’re a corporation that has regular corporate events you have a whole events team and that’s all they’re doing so they’re used to that cycle of like following up afterward and getting people to. Participate in different ways um I think it’s harder for staffs that are either less experienced at events or just smaller staffs to really do that final push after the event and kind of carry it all the way through but that’s when you get the most bang for your buck with people connecting to your mission. Yeah, yeah, and you might try to unmute, um, see, see, see what happens, see what happens, uh, because since it’s just two of us, unmute our loudspeaker. We’ll see, um, you have some uh advice or strategies that we can learn from big brands in, in, uh, experiential events. Yeah, I mean I think that people, people really do look to big brands and think oh like they’re the ones that can do this so the the examples that I used in my session, um you know for example IKEA has an app that uses augmented reality you can pick out a piece of furniture. You can point your camera at your room, your living room or whatever, say you’ve picked a couch, it’ll put the couch in the middle of the room for you and you can really see what it looks like and um you know what they’re trying to do is engage you in feeling more confident about your purchase and feeling more comfortable with what the product’s really gonna look like um and that is a cool experience too like it’s really cool to be able to kind of place the couch that you haven’t purchased yet, right? Um, yeah, so it’s it’s like there’s a try on room for for furniture exactly and you know I mean it’s, it’s not cheap to develop that software that 3D software. My husband is a 3D software engineer. I know what it takes to get that stuff up and running. It’s hard and um and so that’s not the kind of thing that a nonprofit is gonna do, of course, but again it’s that that like you’re trying to engage people’s emotions and you can do that at kind of any scale. So another example I use. Um, you know, we’ve got to give love to Taylor Swift and so Taylor Swift had, um, worked with Spotify to do this installation right before the Tortured poets department was released and it was this library installation in LA. It was in Glendale somewhere, um, and it was just this thing you stood in line and then you could move through the library. There were little interactive elements. There were places where you could write things down, you could read little lyrics that weren’t released yet, so it was like a little puzzle, yeah, and you. Of course both Spotify and Taylor Swift have huge marketing budgets, but you know you can always have you could put out a set of journals for people to leave messages in at your event that costs the cost of the journals and the pens and you give people prompts to put in those journals and that doesn’t cost anything but it does allow people to have just a little bit of interactivity if it again you know like if that is an appropriate thing tied to your mission. In some way you get, you know, the prompts need to be tied in or whatever, it allows people to have that kind of tactile activity that then they can, you know, really. Feel part of the mission and part of the story. And then just to follow that thread, what what would you end up or pull on the thread or mix my metaphors, um, what would you do with those, those journal prompts that people write no I’m sorry, you’re providing the prompts, I mean the journal entries, well, yeah, you could use them in a number of ways. I mean, obviously you wanna make sure people know how they’re gonna get used before you use them, um, and one of the other pieces that I always recommend is to sort of think through any kind of interactivity or experiential element. Um, in ways that fit different needs, so not everybody is gonna be able to write something down. You might have folks who either can’t see to do that, maybe they, you know, aren’t able to and so figuring out maybe an alternative thing, maybe they can leave some voice memos that you could use or maybe there’s some other way that they can interact with those prompts but again it’s just, you know, that’s the kind of thing where people can come up it’s kind of like. Little activity station they can be part of it if you wanted to use that as user user generated content on social or on websites or things like that that would be one way maybe it’s something where you are even in kind of real time bringing up copies of the journals and having people read pieces of them out loud you know I mean I think like really it’s it’s less about the details of the activity and more about. How can you sort of think very creatively about ways to engage people experientially at the moment in ways that are tied to your mission? So we’ve kind of segued into from big brands to what nonprofits can do. So, I love the journal entry, uh, journal idea not not expensive like you said, but experiential nonetheless. What what other strategies tactics? Yeah, I mean, so there’s kind of three principles that I like people to really think about so one of them is indeed that it needs to be really interactive and so there needs to be something participatory about it. Um, something else that I like people to think about is, um, making it sensory, you know, like not just thinking about sight, um, thinking about sound, thinking about taste, touch, you know, all of the think about all the senses and how to engage those in different ways and you don’t have to engage all of them in any of these things, but that also. Locks a little piece of this which is that you know it provides different things what’s the music you choose like you know if you’re gonna be choosing music to play you know as people are walking up on stage or something like that like how is that gonna fit in to whatever your mission is, whatever your theme is all of that um and you know again it’s um. It’s just part of thoughtful event design, but if you are really thinking about how to tie all of these pieces back to your mission, it can be really helpful. So for example, um, a music example is when we had the Grace Hopper celebration. I used to work for Anita B.org and they have the Grace Hopper celebration every year which is a big, big, big and well funded conference that serves women in tech from around the world and so we. We had to create a playlist of songs that could be used um you know it breaks and things like that and we had a lot of criteria we had to meet to be able to they needed to be empowering they needed to be clean like the lyrics needed to be clean we needed to think about the needs of audience members from all around the world and all different cultures and religious backgrounds and so we had to it took us a long time to make this list of songs. But that was again it was intentional and then you know you know did you Helen Reddy, I am by chance? I think we did. I think we did, although we were it was the International, it was a song of international women in it was it came out in 1977 or something like that. I know we were skewing a little more contemporary, but I think, you know, that one always shows up. So what are you gonna do, yes, Simon and Garfunkel, please. These are all my favorites too, not for the, not for the tech women’s uh women’s tech conference. Alright, um, OK, no, so music, yeah, music. What other like, alright, so I would not have thought of music. What, what other sensory, I mean, aside from we’re gonna get to some hopefully like some activities type things, but, but just general sensory. Uh, visuals, visuals, sounds, I mean we’re probably not thinking about, right? I mean, I think you know if so for example if you’re doing visuals, I mean you know of any kind, you wanna also think about what about the folks who can’t see it, you know, I mean, is there, are there gonna be ways for people to get audio description? Are there gonna be other ways for people to interact with something. Um, is there a tactile element? So one of the ideas that I put in or that we talked about in the session was, um, you know, letting people vote on something, um, with some sort of tactile object. So I think uh like I was talking specifically about, um, in Iowa City there’s a restaurant that like does this coffee bean voting thing during the primary and during the caucus season. And there is something really satisfying and a lot of people with a lot of different abilities can do it where you’re like picking up a coffee bean out of this bowl of coffee beans and then you’re dropping it into this glass jar for each for the candidate that you’re choosing and you’re hearing that and it’s like hitting that pool of coffee beans and you’re hearing it like maybe rattle against. The jar on the way down um and you know and then you’re able to stand there and look at kind of where the levels are on the different candidates and kind of get a sense of where the caucus might go in that part of Johnson County um and you know I think that nonprofits could use an idea like that maybe there’s you know maybe you’re asking folks for input on. You know, 3 policy priorities like what are the ones that you think are most important in the coming year or um you know any other thing like that you know something that where people can kind of give their input in a real tactile way and then also you’ve got. The opportunity to take pictures of that and you’ve got these kind of nice layered looks and you can use those pictures to sort of show that like what people are feeling who came to the event there’s all kinds of ways to sort of spool this out good visuals yeah OK OK. Um, Anything else uh you wanna transition well, the, the, the third thing that, um, that I did not say is sort of the third principle is that, um, is that storytelling aspect of it and like really helping folks feel like part of that story of your events. So what again this. It’s back to that sort of 3 act narrative that we were talking about like where do you want them to come in on that story line? How do you want them to feel part of it and the more emotional connection they have with that story and often these interactive activities can help them build that connection um. The more they have that connection they will again support your mission in so many ways they’ll take action on your policy issues they’ll be more likely to be donors they’ll be more likely to like come back and maybe volunteer they’ll open your emails you know I mean there’s just so many ways in which this stuff ends up paying off in the long haul. Um, how about, um, activities that we can, uh, I’d like to talk maybe some activities before or during and then post and how you can, uh, because the, the post engagement is so important. So maybe one or two that you know during that you’ve seen or recommend, I mean you you can’t recommend because it depends on your mission, your events give us some mind opening uh an example or two, um, so I’m gonna give you one. I’m gonna tell a story that I uh I told the group and I also had shared in one other thing so before I came to this conference the Saturday before I went to a writer’s conference in DC, um, just it was a one day conference it was sponsored, uh, or run by Barrel House magazine, which is their press and a literary magazine, um, they do also put out books and I had never been to the conference before. Um, it’s about 200 people, so it’s much smaller than NTC, and it’s a pretty low budget conference. It was $85 to register and so one of the elements that they have of this is they have editor speed dating, so they have editors from different genres you can print out a few pages of what you have. Everybody got one ticket for a speed date as part of their registration, but. Um, you could purchase more if there was time you could purchase more for $5 a ticket, which gave them a little bit more revenue, um, and so you stood in this line and then they would bring everybody into this auditorium and sign you out to an editor and then they read your piece really quickly and give you some feedback. Well, you know, though I was standing there with an essay that I have worked on a lot and I feel like it’s in pretty good shape, I knew that it needed more work feeling a little. Vulnerable and I know I was not alone in that and I look over on the wall next to the line and there is an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper and it doesn’t even have the barrel house logo on it. It just had conversations and connections practical advice for writers in their like brand color and it was like you know white text on the red brand color and then down below it just with black text on white it said you are doing great. And right there in that line I’m like, oh look, they see me and now I feel really kind of connected to this magazine. I’m gonna go home and subscribe probably you know and like um and it just it was this like little tiny moment. All it took was somebody thinking about that ahead of time thinking about what the audience was gonna need thinking about ways that we were gonna be interacting and recognizing that all of us standing in that line we’re feeling really vulnerable at that moment and we might need a little encouragement and just leaving it where we could see it. It didn’t take any work at all and almost no money. Incredible, but yeah, it took it took you need to be intentional. Alright, alright, uh, OK, before we leave the uh intro event to get to the post event. Any more advice about how to conceive of what works for you? I mean you, you, you hit it hard, you know, mission, obviously a mission related, maybe part of bigger goals for the um for the event as well as the organization. Anything else that. Yeah, I mean, I, no I mean I think it’s gotta have some sort of, it’s gotta give you an emotional connection yeah that’s like somebody’s got this is your responsibility to come up with correct something experiential for us. No, I mean I yeah this is something that I think any event staff like any team that’s putting together an event should just be thinking about like where are these places that you can kind of set these little intentional. Um, spots for people to engage and for people to be part of this conversation with the organization because that’s really what it is, right? It’s you’re, you’re trying to build a relationship and that’s what brands want the big brands wanna do they wanna build that relationship with you through emotion through connection so that you’ll buy their stuff in this case, you know, we can do the same thing in the nonprofit sector. But do that through different means, but it’s still the same effect. You wanna build emotion and then you wanna use that to leverage to get connection. OK, excellent emotion. Yeah, if you hit someone in the heart, you know, then I think the brain follows, uh, plus they’re saying the next day, oh my God, I went to this fun afternoon. I was, uh, you know, it was, I thought it was gonna be a typical charity lunch, but it turned out they had, you know, whatever and we were doing this all together and. So much fun when I got greeted this way or it could be something at the coat check, you know, whatever it is, right, so let’s go event are we continuing our experiential time? Sure, and the post event is the more challenging for sure because you’ve got people who dispersed. It’s not like you can just sort of set up a table. Um, but some of the ways that you can build that connection and keep that connection going is I know that like we’re moving as a sector away from just sort of sending people home with a bunch of random swag, right? Um, nobody needs little stuff that is just gonna sit around their house or that it’s gonna end up in their kids’ basket of junk, yeah, or more tote bags and things like that, um. But what I would say is that there might be a thoughtful piece of low lift swag that you can send home with people that will let people continue to engage. So for example, examples I talked about yesterday were um. If you’re a literacy organization like sending someone home with a bookmark with maybe some ideas for how they can stay involved on that bookmark maybe they’ll use it maybe they won’t but you know if they’re working with if they’re interested in a literacy organization they’re probably a reader and so you can probably um assume that they will be reading books and they might use it um I also suggested that like another low lift idea was if you’re an environmental organization. Send people out the door with a packet of seeds. It doesn’t have to be like a specially branded packet of seeds. Um, I know TechSoup is here. They’ve got these like beautiful little pots with little seed things embedded in them, yeah they do. It’s lovely, um, but I see, yeah, and seeds exactly grants, exactly, um, but you know it doesn’t even have to be that elaborate. It can just be go to your local hardware store, get a bunch of seed packets, print. Out some labels with your logo and you know sort of a thank you for being part of our our growth or something I don’t know um put that on the packets and hand those to people as they go. Some people will plant them some people will take them home and put them in that drawer, you know, the junk drawer that has the other seed packets like I have that I haven’t planted yet exactly, but at some point I’m gonna open that drawer and I’m gonna take out that seed packet as I’m cleaning out the drawer and be like, oh right. I need to re up my connection with this particular organization, you know, so it’s, it’s ways of sort of leaving things with people after the fact um the other idea that I shared yesterday is, uh, if you’ve got a big keynote speaker that might be, you know, that is of real interest to your audience which is hopefully what you’ve brought in um. Having them maybe do kind of like a behind the scenes or backstage message that’s beyond the keynote that’s sort of like thanks so much and here are ways that you can continue supporting this organization and then emailing that out to folks after the fact so they have or texting it to folks however you’re regularly communicating with people so that they have that too as a little takeaway and just a reminder that you know the organization was thinking beyond the end of the event and you should be too. OK, um, have you ever seen anything where you’re welcome to say no, this is a harebrained idea, like with a male, I mean, everybody was in one place at one time, but, uh, like ship a surprise or mail a surprise or anything like that after event. I have seen a little bit of that, but I actually also suggested to folks that one kind of during the event during the event you could absolutely. Have some sort of letter writing station where you are perhaps having people write letters to policy makers or to you know whatever you know whoever and then you’re mailing those after but you could also have people write letters to themselves that you mail like a month later that again you know by then they’ve forgotten that they wrote the thing and then it comes in and they’ll remember as soon as they see the envelope of course but it’s like this. Just this post touch point that’s like oh yeah get you back to that moment when you were writing that letter to yourself so maybe it’s about asking you, you know, maybe you’re asking people to make some sort of pledge of what they’re gonna do when they get back from the event or get home that evening or you know whatever and then they get it in the mail and they’re reminded to take the action and they’re reminded of the event and they’re reminded of your connection to them and then theirs to you OK. Anything else? What, what else, uh, what other topic, uh, did you cover in the session? I don’t want you to hold out on nonprofit radio listeners. I mean that was, that was the big, the big thing. There were tons and tons of ideas, um, and I did, uh, I did share this in in the collaborative notes, but I would also be happy to share that link to kind of a two-page handout that has all like all the ideas I shared in the, uh, entire session. Um, I’d be happy to or can you just say it now? Uh, it’s, it’s a Google doc. It’s like a PDF on Google, but yeah, but you could absolutely include that in your show notes if you wanted. I mean, I think that, um, I always believe that more ideas out in the sector is better than fewer, so I have no. Right of ownership to any of them and I’m happy to have people take them and use them as inspiration and you know really make their events engaging and exciting and emotionally connected. OK, yeah, we’ll get the link from you and we’ll put it in the show notes for the Google Drive. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you so much for having me. Oh my pleasure. Thank you, Jeannie, for sharing all your ideas. Jeannie Grotto, communication strategist and consultant at Gs. Thanks, Tony. My pleasure and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti Nonprofit radio coverage of the 25, 2025 nonprofit technology conference where our coverage is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. Next week, 225 NTC conversations that are random, disjointed, and unrelated. Wait. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.
Kim Snyder & Shauna Dillavou: PII In The Age Of AI
Artificial Intelligence and big data have transformed privacy risks by enabling malicious, targeted communications to your team that seem authentic because they contain highly accurate information. Kim Snyder and Shauna Dillavou explain the risks your nonprofit faces and what you can do to protect your mission. Kim is from RoundTable Technology and Shauna is CEO of Brightlines. This continues our coverage of the 2025 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#25NTC).
Gozi Egbuonu: Balance AI Ethics And Innovation
Gozi Egbuonu encourages you to adopt Artificial Intelligence responsibly, in a human-centered approach. First, be thoughtful with the threshold question, “Should we use AI?” If you go ahead: Create a thorough use policy; overcome common challenges like staff training and identifying champions; manage change intentionally; and more. Gozi is with Technology Association of Grantmakers. This is also part of our #25NTC coverage.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d turned dromatropic if you unnerved me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to introduce it. Hey, Tony. Our 25 NTC coverage continues with. PII in the age of AI. Artificial intelligence and big data have transformed privacy risks by enabling malicious targeted communications to your team that seem authentic because they contain highly accurate information. Kim Snyder and Shawna Deleu explain the risks your nonprofit faces and what you can do to protect your mission. Kim is from Round Table Technology, and Shawna is CEO of Bright Lines. Then Balance AI ethics and innovation. Gozi Egbuonu encourages you to adopt artificial intelligence responsibly in a human-centered approach. First, be thoughtful with the threshold question. Should we use AI? If you go ahead, create a thorough use policy, overcome common challenges like staff training and identifying champions, manage change intentionally, and more. Gozi is with Technology Association of Grantmakers. On Tony’s take 2. Tales from the gym in addition to my gratitudes. Here is PII in the age of AI. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio coverage of 25 NTC, the nonprofit Technology Conference. We’re all together at the Baltimore Convention Center, where our coverage of 25 NTC is sponsored by Heller Consulting Technology services for nonprofits. Our subject right now is PII in the age of AI. Personally identifiable information in the age of artificial intelligence, safeguarding privacy in a data powered world plus we’re adding in the topic. Alright, already the show’s over. I wanna thank you all for coming. Uh, we’re, we’re here all week. Uh, be sure to tip your servers, um, and we’re adding in the topic a little more privacy please. Colin, diving into data privacy. All right, because, uh, our guests, um. Ask to combine topics which made a lot of sense. Um, but, uh, before I introduce the guest, well, now, let’s do it this way. So we have, uh, stand by there. We have, uh, first is, uh, Kim Snyder. Kim Snyder, um. I gotta take a deep breath. I do, uh, Kim’s title. I’m gonna hyperventilate trying to get enough air to oxygen in. I’m only 140 pounds. I don’t carry enough in my lungs to carry this, to carry this title of virtual digital privacy Project and program officer. You know Joshua Pesca is thanked for that word salad of it’s all nouns. It’s all it’s all one adjective. 12 nouns. Joshua, you’re, you’re out. Anyway, and then CEO doesn’t get any easier. OK. Also with us, uh we have a special guest who’s gonna give a couple of syllables. Uh, let me introduce Miles. Miles, say hello. Hi everyone, it’s Miles with Fundraise up. Thanks Tony. My pleasure. Miles is sponsoring the hub next door at Fundraise Up, so I, I thought I’d give him a little. He asked to give a shout out, so I said sure. And uh they’re giving away free socks. That’s what fundraise Up is all about socks and what else do you do at fundraise. Right, so we help nonprofits raise more money with AI and we do that by not using any identifiable information and are completely compliant across the globe. All right, that’s what a segue and not even reversal incredible. All right, you’ve overstayed your welcome. That’s enough. OK. OK. OK, thank you, Miles. No, thank you. I, he was, I, I did invite him after he pleaded. OK. So we are talking about PII. So Miles, a perfect segue, beautiful segue into personally identifiable information. Uh, Amy, we’re gonna do the overview, so I’m gonna ask Kim. Virtual digital data, virtual digital privacy project and program officer. I’m gonna ask Kim Snyder. No, I’m gonna, no, I’m hitting it hard. Uh, so for an overview, why, why do we, why do we combine these two topics? What are our issues around personally identifiable information and, uh, and artificial intelligence? Kim Snyder. So they both center on the issue of personally identifiable information. So on the one hand we’re talking about what kinds of regulations exist, how do you manage your data I’m too far away. Don’t whisper, Kim. Everybody hears you. Oh, go ahead. I’m waiting. Um, now you, you edit this, don’t count on too many edits. Oh dear, OK, alright, so, um, we’re talking about personally identifiable information which for quite a while for the last couple of NTCs have been talking about this here and. For quite a while it’s been about more about regulation this year I have to say it’s about having our data out there and vulnerability and so looking at data management and how do you start to take stock of your data so that it is less vulnerable and the person the people whose data it belongs to is also less vulnerable and the other topic which I’m here with my co-facilitator um. Uh, Shawna is with all the amens and I’m here. I’m just like I’m a man, yeah, in the, yeah, so, so talking about how that what constitutes personally identifiable information, how much that’s expanded in recent years and Shawna, what’s what’s your bright lines, how are you related to. Yeah, yeah, so Bright Lines, I founded it 4 years ago. We are a doxing prevention company for folks who don’t maybe know what doxing means. Yeah, it’s define it please. When folks will use your personal information or sensitive information, they’ll post it publicly, essentially posting your documents, that’s where doxing comes from with the intent to incite others to do you harm. So there’s like a malevolence there, right? I don’t usually consider it doxing if someone posts like. A relatively available email address from like a professional setting. I do consider it doxing when it’s your personal email address and the intent is to ask others. It could be your birthday, it could be, could be your wife’s or my man right here, yeah. the PII PII is an expanded. No, I never, no, no, actually I came out of US intelligence community. I was there as a much younger person and in a different age in the United States and in terms of our national security. It was really progressive national security person, um. The whole community, yeah, the I I’ll just say the I mean the intelligence community, yeah, yeah, I don’t usually get too granular with that um but the. Was it in the session description it would have said OK yeah we can talk about that. OK, well, I, I’m not sure I’m, I’m pretty sure, but there again it’s one thing when it’s like out on the airwaves. First is when it’s in like a session thing yeah and at at the time when I was there I was detailed out to the DEA this might have been what you read, to train them on finding their targets on the US side of the border of drug trafficking organizations so we were using these same techniques. I was training them in these like techniques to find people. We reverse engineered that now four years ago after the 2020 election when. Folks were going after Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss for just passing a piece of gum while tallying ballots in Georgia they have a penthouse in Manhattan now have the keys to that penthouses. Um, OK, interesting. So reverse engineer I see reverse engineered your, uh your prior prior work. All right. um, so referring to your session description, uh, how AI and big data are transforming privacy risks by enabling aggregation. So your concern is that the, the. Attempts at uh. Spamming people, not spamming but spoofing, fishing, they can, it can be so granular and so accurate that they, they look more and more real. This is a part of our problem, right? OK, and people and agencies, people are using artificial intelligence to gather this information and then and then put it together and collate and then threaten. So they will, so I think we could probably tag team on this. Do you wanna do the production part? So what we see is them gathering data. There’s a lot of data that’s out there about all of us, and I will. If there’s one point folks take away from me talking today in addition to my hype madness, it’s that this is not your fault. Our clients come to us and they say, oh, if I just hadn’t shared so much on public on social media publicly when I was younger and it’s like no no this had nothing to do with you. Your public records are being scraped by data brokers every day. If you own a property, if you’ve ever registered to vote someplace, if you have a driver’s license, which you have to have if you wanna get on an airplane, that data is being sold or scraped. So that’s the data that’s the source data for data brokers. So yeah, sometimes for free, for a, yep, OK, but publicly available, you don’t need to be, not an agency there’s no kind of like legal process to gather it exactly. This is why law enforcement officers, like certain law enforcement agencies now go around legal process and we’ll just buy data from data brokers. Oh, so much easier than defending a subpoena. to prove it to a judge to prove it to a judge and then if this if they move to quash the subpoena, you have to defend it. Exactly. So AI can now gather data from various sources, so it could be used to scrape these sites. It can then be used to connect data. Let me share a story. We got a phone call like a very concerned client. They had just received a phone call themselves from someone who claimed to have. Photos of theirs compromising photos from an old Snapchat account and on the call they described a photo that this that our client knew they’d taken right it was a photo of a room they were describing a room and the clients like, I remember that room. I remember that poster that they’re describing. I think I might have posted it on Instagram one point it was public, but how did they get my number? How do they know where I work and. My response was like, this is a scam. Someone scraped, someone bought a scra of LinkedIn. Maybe they connected that to your phone number. Maybe you have your phone number connected to LinkedIn because you use it from MFA for multi-factor authentication. They connected that to a handle on Instagram, probably using your face, a facial recognition. And then they just made this phone call and talked to you about your employer finding out about these photos, which was a bluff because your employer’s name is listed on your LinkedIn profile. It’s terrifying for her. And Kim has taken it a step further. So you can stitch all this together, right? and you can process all this data at speeds that never were possible before, but you can also use generative tools to create things so you can. Easily mimic a style of someone so you can also so you part of that data that you grab off of LinkedIn or social is somebody’s writing style so you can, you know, generative AI is really great tone and style and also events. So if you’re posting about events and things happening you could get. An email from your purportedly from your executive director or a colleague referencing that event and things that happened and people who were at that meeting it depends on how public the data is and then you know that can be used as a basis for a you know phishing email um that is a lot more convincing phone call yeah or a phone call this person that called our client was a human but they don’t have to be we’ve seen cases where EDs are being impersonated. And it’s video and it’s audio of them that is so convincing to the people that they’re reaching out to and this is it’s trivially easy to do right in our session in fact we had which one is the real Kim and there were two videos of me and one of them was not me um it was AI me but that cost me $29. To take that, so it’s not inaccessible. These tools used to be it used to be like really hard to do this or 25 cents and it’s like a photo in 3 seconds of audio, and they can make those videos, yeah, and you can have me say you don’t even need me saying the alphabet or or Kim’s title for Christ’s sake or half of Kim’s title. I did say you could swear. I didn’t say you could take the name of the Lord. There’s a difference. There’s a difference. There are boundaries even on nonprofit, there are boundaries. This is Chris. I’ve, uh, I’ve gotten, I’ve gotten these, uh. Dear Tony, I know I could have called you at my number or or written to you at my address accurately, uh, but I chose this method instead. So now I know they’ve got my email and my phone and my address, uh, included a picture of my home, which they probably got from Google Maps or, or right, and, uh, I, I some kind of bitcoin bitcoin scam. But how did that make you feel uh the first one I was a little like. Yeah, I was a little nervous, but, but I’ve gotten, uh, we all have gotten Bitcoin scams in the past, but this one had, like, you know, like you’re concerned that amount of information a lot of, yeah, yeah, it had the right and uh I, you know, I, I ignored it with some trepidation and then like a day or two later I got another one and you know I knew I was just kept coming. It was bullshit. Yeah, I saw one of those from one of our threat intelligence partners, someone who swims in this every day, and it terrified him and his wife. Yeah, because it’s so it’s so close to you. It’s why receiving one of those phone calls or back in the, I would say back in the day I got really energized around Gamergate started to try to support the folks who are being targeted by Gamergate. This is back in 2015, and they would describe what it was like to have like, you know, I sleep with my phone next to my bed. And or under my pillow and to have that be the stream of all of this like directed hate messages like you should kill yourself or I’m gonna do this to you or I’m going to do this to your parents or whatever the case might be. It’s so proximate that technology removes what feels like barriers between you and everyone else, and the issue with doxing so terrifying is that you don’t know who it is. It could be anybody. How do you walk down the street? How do you like sleep in your home, not terrified? You don’t know. I never thought about that. Who’s coming after you? Thank you. I never thought you bet new nightmare unlocked. Yeah, no, no, you know how, but Tony, so you get these things because you’re you’re killing me. It’s supposed to be reassuring us here on nonprofit radio. Well, you’re terrifying. We’ll get to that. We will get to that party eventually we’re we’re great parties, but, but, OK, so you’re, you know, more public person, uh, you, you know, nonprofit radio, so, so you. Get these things it’s a little unsettling and unnerving for you, right? yeah like so imagine how like a nonprofit staff person who happens to be working in an organization that may be more targeted by malicious actors, OK, so one is so your staff member starts to experience this and this may this could freak people out, right? So that’s who we’re thinking about. Um, and kind of raising the awareness, OK, yeah, I mean these are folks already dealing with some level of cortisol at a on a regular basis because of work because of their mission. I think we’ve spent enough time on motivation, and let’s let’s, uh, let’s let’s transition, uh, not subtly very abruptly to what the hell do we do? What do we do it already. Is it already too late? It’s never too late. I’m sure you’re not gonna say it’s too late. No, I wouldn’t be here. Yeah, well, I also believe it and I’ve had those moments. Listen, I live in DC and DC DC Health Link had their data leaked and taken a number of years ago and my child who had not even turned a year old had her social security number lost in that breach and I was like, oh man, she’s not a year old, you know, like how is this? This is the world we live in, right? And I turned to my partner and I was like, this is just, I don’t even know why we bother. And she’s like, you can’t, you of all people can’t have that feeling. It’s OK that you do right now, but you have to keep going. No, there are plenty of ways to ameliorate it. Yes, let’s get, let’s get into them. So what we’re with you. Why don’t we start? Go ahead and then we’ll go to Kim. Yeah, I think you can think about this so the individual as the vector to threat to the organization that can be reputational financial threats to the organization could make it hard to fundraise if you don’t support that person very well. Um, you, you would harm your reputation, say, or, um, it could make you look illegitimate to your funders, right? So if you can think about where the risks are to the organization, that’s one set of what to do, right, action items, and I might leave that with you and speak more to the personal. So when it comes to protecting yourself as an individual, there are plenty of ways that you can work to remove your data online was referring to Kim, not me. Oh yeah, no, Tony’s not gonna take that part no Kim’s got that, um, Kim. I won’t try your title um when it comes to the individual, listen, all of us have data out there again it’s not our fault we have lived a life, right? Like we’ve done things it’s, I think it’s a betrayal of trust in our own local governments that they sell this data and no one’s ever asked us for consent they’ve never informed us, etc. etc. etc. OK, so what do you do? You can sign up for one of those services that removes your data from data brokers we consider that like um. Like taking Advil, right? Like it’s like kind of taking care of some of the pain and some of the symptoms. What we also recommend is like looking back to the source data itself. So if you own a property that you live in, we always recommend that people consider moving it into a revocable trust that they don’t name for themselves. You’ve seen too many estate attorneys call it the Tony Martignetti revocable trust. Exactly exactly a different a different name to the revocable trust. That’s it. So now the ownership is obscured its data that’s already out there from prest. This is the argument that our interstate attorney always gives us and we have to educate them on this. They’ll say, oh, but it’s your name’s gonna be on the document granting it to the trust, but your name was there before on tax documents. The way data brokers work is that they’re constantly pulling this data down and renewing their data set. So when the new data comes down at this address, they want the most accurate, the most recent. they’ll overwrite it. So it may be that you lived at that address at one time but you don’t any longer and if someone’s looking for that address, it’s not your name on it. So it will get overwritten, especially over time. What we’ve seen wildly enough is that when that piece comes out, it’s like a house of cards. When you pull that property record out the rest of it tends to fall apart. We see our clients less and less on ownership is kind of a uh. a core or a hub to to other data yeah absolutely yeah I think there’s some connections happening there with like app user data that’s also on an ISP that’s connected to the house, etc. etc. is there other pieces about that location um that create profiles anything else we can do on an individual level besides the uh property ownership. Another big vector is voter data and I know that’s probably not popular in this audience because a lot of folks believe a lot in the voter file and voter data and using it and I, we often see voter data on getting used mm. Getting bought and getting scraped and so we will recommend that folks apply for programs in their states called address confidentiality programs or safe at home programs they’re always set up in with uh survivors of intimate partner violence in mind but a lot of the programs are pretty expansive, so if folks are concerned about stalking or harassment they can also apply and that then gives them a proxy address in some states like in New York across all agencies. So the DMV is now not going to sell your home address and your name. They’re going to sell your your name and your proxy address together. And and shout out the names of those programs that you would look for at your state. Address confidentiality program or safe at home. If you’re interested, the National Network to End Domestic Violence NNEDV.org has a comprehensive up to-date list of those programs. OK, awesome. Kim, uh, before we turn to Kim, uh I think you’re the perfect question perfect question answered. Person, you’re a person, you’re a person. You’re neither a question nor an answer. You’re you’re just a person with a lot of answers. Um, I read once, it’s so hard to unforget, you know, to unlearn things that, uh, the value of, of stolen data is really in the future is more financial like so that the bad actor can act without you tying it to a specific event. So my credit card, let’s say a credit card number is compromised, it’s of more value if it’s 3 years old than if it’s just a couple of weeks it was just stolen a couple weeks ago. Is that true or is that incorrect? I can see that. I can see that being true. Maybe we’ve gotten a little bit better banks and credit cards have gotten better about just reissuing new cards. Websites tend to push you to change your password when they’ve alerted you that there’s a breach, so I, I think. The private companies more so in government agencies but private companies I think have caught on to that a little bit and I think there is some truth if it’s not for financial means but really someone trying to go after you, we call that a ideologically motivated attacker. What we saw you used the word vector before I did, yeah this is my background so they um. What we found with uh a university, a client that’s a university, their students were being targeted. Some of these outside groups showed up to student houses over the summer. The students had already graduated. We’ve gotten some of their address stuff removed. The addresses weren’t available in connection to their names online any longer. So what we think happened was that those addresses that was screenshot and saved. That can happen, yeah, so it’s not a perfect fix. However, what if you have one as an intelligence officer, if you have one data point, so you have that screenshot, but then you have all these other things telling you that Shawna Dilla no longer lives at that screenshot address, you might show up there, but you’re not gonna spend a lot of time on it because you can’t verify it. You can’t confirm it with another source. Makes sense? Yes, thank you, thank you. All right, Kim, let’s turn to you on the organizational level. What, uh, what can we do, uh, there to. Protect ourselves from what’s already out there. How do we help nonprofits and small and midsize are our listeners. Alright, so for many years the the kind of mantra has been to verify, verify, verify verify. I thank you very much, that’s Kim Snyder and Shawna. No, I’m joking. She’s like I’m we’re out of time. No, we’re out of time. Are we out of time? No, I’m only child I fall for jokes very easily. I wish I had known. I wish I had so many. I had so many more. I had so many more in mind for you specifically talking about a targeted attack. Oh my, talk about a vector vector I was coming right at you. I could have written that you’re you’re putting this on the airwaves. You know how vulnerable you are. Oh man, I got all kinds of advantages. All right, I’m sorry, I interrupted you. What was I talking about dying. Go ahead. OK I’m sorry. OK, so we used to talk in cybersecurity world about, you know, verification verify, verify, verify that was the mantra, right? So now we kind of reshape that so that it’s vet and verify so have kind of multiple ways of verifying especially incoming requests. Anything kind of trust your spider sense is what I’d say if something seems a little bit off like what what are we talking about? So if you receive an email, if an email comes and it, you know, it comes from your development director who’s saying who’s referencing something that you just went to the panel or if it comes from accounting, write a check if any money is involved. And it wasn’t like completely expected even if it was a little expected actually I’ve seen I’ve seen this happen where people got into um nonprofit systems and using AI can scan what’s going on very quickly. And then target things that are about to happen from kind of things that are OK, so, so I would, so the instinct instinct, OK, use your, use your instinct but also make it a policy, make it a process that you just follow uncomplicated process for verifying like any financial transaction needs to be verified even if it’s expected, yeah, so yeah, so you wanna walk through that. You just get much, much more deliberate. About verification and and who is it coming from and you don’t want to. Confirming, did you send this email or not replying to the email, but my phone yeah exactly yeah you you send this email about this rush transaction or or routine transaction. Do it in a different format right different channel, yeah, so you know, and even though the instinct may be email back quickly but no right um but then what you do also is create a culture in your organization where that’s OK to do where it’s OK to take that extra 30 seconds minute to you know verify to ask someone for their time to say I just wanna check, did you send this to me? Um, and in that way it’s OK even if it’s because he’s actually director you can say, did you send this to me? I just wanna make sure and so that that’s an OK thing to do. In fact, that’s a good thing to do. Now we can’t they have to be boundaries around this because we can’t do it for every, every message we get so you mentioned. financial financial transactions and no no no not nervous at all financial no no no financial transactions, any kind of initiated correspondence where they’re asking you for something or for some information. I saw a scam recently where the uh an an old employee was trying to be reinstated and wanted to go around HR to IT to get their accounts reset up like I’m I’m coming back and it was like using the person’s middle name so it’s already a little bit fishy but. They went all the way up to the CTO of the of the company and said hey so and so and these people were friends on LinkedIn and like had shared messages back and forth so the attacker knew this was a personal relationship. hey so and so I’m trying to get reinstated. They’re telling me you need to go to HR, but like I but I can do this. I just need to get my account access back up and online and the CTO is like no. Oh bro, you gotta go through HR. I can’t do anything because they had those controls in place, but small and let’s be fair, small and medium sized organizations don’t, so I’ll just take care of it now or we don’t have a, we don’t have a we don’t have any clear guidelines that we give to people for all requests we need to go to HR. I thought of another. Potentially nefarious request you send your logo. Could you, could you, I need a I need a high def for the logo, you know, the, the, the, the JPEG I have is, is not good. I need a high definition logo that could be that could be to produce a check that could be to make a spoof a spare a spoof website, um, OK, I mean, but it seems innocuous send a logo, yeah, it’s very easy to spoof a website, right? So you know, you know, check. Also check where it’s coming from, right? So you know I’ve had an organization where there were two spoofed, um, there’s spoofs on both ends a spoof of the funder, a spoof of the the grantee. Can you tell us more about that story? It’s a really good one. So yeah, so they, they got into an organization’s, um, you know, Microsoft environment. I asked the questions here whoops. Go ahead. Uh oh, off the mic. 3 like 30, go ahead. So, um, Anyway, that’s late in the day. And I’m thirsty. Yeah, late in the day it’s not it’s, it’s well it’s almost 3 o’clock. You’ve been going since then nonstop. Um, anyway, all right. So the organization had someone get into their systems for a very short time, but in that short time they were able to tease out some information again this is AI can help with this kind of analysis short you know canal is a lot of data that it can grab very quickly and um identified some upcoming financial transactions which were rather large and so um in order to kind of trick. The person to sending to the wrong place, they set up fake websites, fake websites for the foundation, fake websites for the grantee, and domains not websites domains, and so then they had emails coming back and forth you could hardly see the difference and so the, the, the real people, the real people were communicating with the bad actor on both sides and the money. And he got sent to the wrong place, OK. Yeah, that was, that was actually no they did great, but, but it was that was a happy ending, but not necessarily. We started with Shawna, so we’re gonna end with Kim. give us oh no we did OK well I’m not Shawna, your mic is down but that she still gets through. She talks and laughs so loud you hear her over Kim’s mic. No, I didn’t, I did not but one more thing before, before we unless we’re totally out of time, um, don’t shoot the messenger. So create a culture. This is another thing that’s any size nonprofit can do where if something happens, if you click on that thing, if you did that thing that you feel like uh. That was really dumb, right? Make it OK to report that and you don’t get in trouble and there’s no shame and blame because it happens so but yeah the the no blame kind of we encourage you to. You know, say it, yeah, call yourself out, yeah, and there’s no punishment, you know, some organizations like they don’t want bad news at the top, so. All right, we’re gonna leave it there, OK? All right. That’s Kim Snyder. Virtual digital privacy project and program officer Roundtable Technology and Shana Dela Vu, CEO CEO Bright lines. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Shawna. It’s a pleasure. Shawna laughed her ass off. I’m a good sense of humor. All right, I love it. Uh, and thank you for being with a, uh, well, whimsical, I’m not sure it covers it. Raucous maybe, uh, at one point, uh, uh, uh, anarchical because, uh, there was a question that I did not answer. Uh, session. Uh, thank you for being with us at uh 25 NTC for this episode sponsored by Heller Consulting. Technology services for nonprofits, virtual digital privacy project and program officers. It’s time for Tony’s Take-2. Thank you, Kate. A new tales from the gym episode just happened this morning, this very morning. I was minding my own business as I do on the elliptical. And overheard two women talking. One lives here permanently, and the other one who said her name. Sandra Lynn, uh, she lives in North Carolina, but not here in Emerald Isle. She lives, uh. In the Raleigh area, like that’s about 3.5 hours, 4 hours away, roughly. And she was lamenting, Sandra Lan was that uh that she can’t live here full time, house prices are high. And she also still has, uh, her mother and her father-in-law, so her husband’s father are still both alive, and so she needs to stay in that area, but she was, you know, looking forward to retiring here sometime but lamenting that she couldn’t live here now. And that got me thinking as I was on my. 6th or 7th uh interval on the elliptical. I do 88 episode 8, Not episodes. What did I just say? 8 intervals. I do 7 intervals of a minute, take a minute in between, and then the last interval is 2.5 minutes. I was toward the end and it got me thinking, listening to Sandra Lynn. That, uh, I’m grateful that I do live here full time, permanent. This is my home. And that, you know, it’s that there are other people who don’t live here who wish they could, you know, so, uh, you know, I, I add, I have, I have a long list of gratitudes, but I don’t specifically say grateful that I live here in Emerald Isle full time. So I’m gonna add that to my gratitudes that I do every, I guess I’ve told you every 2-3 times a week. I’m adding. Gratitude that I live here in Emerald Isle full time in this beautiful place and I have the ocean across the street. Uh, your own gratitudes. I hope you’re, I hope you’re doing your gratitudes out loud, at least a couple of times a week. That is Tony’s take too. Kate. You do sets. Uh, well, sets are for, yeah, no, that’s different intervals. Intervals on an elliptical, you do a minute hard and then a minute resting. And then a minute hard and a minute resting, it’s called high intensity interval training, HIIT high intensity. It just means you do intervals of things like you sprint, yeah, I don’t run, I’m on elliptical, but you might sprint and then walk, and then sprint and then walk and sprint and walk. Those are called intervals. Sets are like you do 3 sets of 10 if you’re, if you’re on a weight machine or something like that, or maybe pushups, might be 3 sets of 10 or something like that. I don’t know, they seem, there seems to be a different, well, I think the interval is because you’re still active, you’re just resting in between the high intensity intervals. Gotcha. That makes sense? Yes, and I am grateful that you have a beach house. Yeah, because you get to, yeah, you get to visit and uh laze around and uh. What is the word I’m looking for, uh, not schmooze, but, uh, you get to, uh, I don’t know. I can pretend that it’s my beach house. Yeah. You can for a week, yes, but then, then I’m very happy to say goodbye. After a week. Love you too. We’ve got bou but loads more time. Here is balance AI ethics and innovation. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference, where our coverage is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. With me now is Gozi Egwanu. Gozi is director of programs at the Technology Association of Grant Makers. Gozi, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Awesome. Thank you for having me, Tony. Pleasure. You’re welcome. Your session is AI strategy for nonprofits, navigate ethics and innovation. We have plenty of time together, but can you give me a high level view of the the topic and the session that you did? Sure. So the session was really, um, and was really spearheaded by Beth Cantor, uh, and it basically provides uh a balcony view of where we are in the sector in terms of AI adoption, ethical responsible AI adoption, the nonprofit and philanthropy sector. And so, uh, we really start with what we found in the Technology Association of Grantmakers state of Philanthropy tech survey that we did in 2024. In that survey we found what many grant makers are currently doing with AI as far as you know are they testing are they experimenting? Has anyone rolled it out enterprise level, which is, you know, at the organization wide level and what we found is that. And which mirrors quite what we’re seeing in the nonprofit world is that most folks are not using AI in terms of, you know, anything that’s crazy, you know, innovative at this moment it’s really just kind of, you know, meeting summaries, you know, taking notes, that sort of thing, um, and so and but in addition to that we found that while 81% of folks are using AI, uh, sorry, while, uh, oh sorry, 81% are using AI but only 30% have AI use policies, so. You’re using it but you don’t have any guard rails you have no way to tell your teams or your staff, hey, this is what we don’t put into the AI this is what we do put in so you’re really running the risk of having your information potentially used in a way or trained uh an AI model that, um, you know, could potentially put your members at risk, your grantees at risk, whatever the case is for your organization and so. With that little bit of an overview it basically came down to the importance of AI experimentation and really do starting slow starting at the very base level working with your teams to kind of talk through should we use AI if we did use AI what would that be for? So thinking about the use cases, the business, um, the business use like what what would be the business case for it and then you know assembling a nice team of folks, you know, as advisers or experimenters and champions at your organization. Uh, to really kind of help you all start doing that experimentation in a safe and low kind of like low risk way, um, and then from there really defining whether or not AI is your, your next move and then once you do have decide that AI is the next move you wanna move into that next level of the AI maturity which Beth, you know, covers really um really well uh you know you go from that exploration to discovery and then you move into experimentation and ultimately enterprise eventually. Um, but what we’re finding is that most folks are not there yet. They’re still very much experimentation early stage, very early stage, um, and, uh, you get to kind of get to see a case study of it through the work that Lawan did at her organization United Way Worldwide. OK, well, we don’t have with us, but you can provide a lot of context, lot of, lot of detail, I just said you could talk. All right, um, are, are we, do you know the you might not be part of what you surveyed, but was there even intentionality around should we, should the should we use question or did it just kinda happen because people started, people started hearing about it using chat GPT. Well, you know, with one of the questions that we did on the survey, we found that like there’s quite a few folks that are using it in what we call shadow use or shadow AI, which is basically you’re using AI but your organization doesn’t know what you’re using. I see. Alright, so that’s not intentionality at the organization level. No, no, no, I would say not, not. Uh yeah, so we really want to encourage the intentionality which is don’t start using the AI unless you all have that collective organizational conversation of is this something that we should be doing? Is it useful? Is there a business case to go with it? Is it relevant? Does it make sense? Is it safe for our organization? does it align with our ethics? And then consider going into experiments. OK, let’s explore that question a little bit uh now in 2025 because I, I suspect at 26 NTC we won’t be asking the threshold question, should we, should we use? So what, what, what belongs in the conversation if we’re, if, uh if we’re at the stage where Well, uh, individuals may be using it, but we don’t know. Or if nobody’s using it and we’re trying to decide enterprise wide, you know, is there not, we’re not even at the is there a use case like but should we, should we explore it? What goes into that conversation? Sure, um. Again that you know, really thinking about the business case. So when you’re having that conversation about should we use AI, then you have to think about what would be the specific usage of it, right? So say you’re the finance team and you’re considering using AI, what would be the benefit of using AI versus doing the doing the the work flow or process that you currently have and you’re thinking of having AI do? so you really. Kind of have to have that conversation like an in-depth conversation about the process that you’re doing right now. Is there anything wrong with it? Are we losing anything? Could we gain, uh, productivity, time in our days and our schedules if we were to move to using AI to do this one process or this one, this one work flow? Then at that point you think about, OK, maybe we do get a benefit out of it now that we get a benefit out of it. What are some of the things that we have to be concerned about now that we have a benefit is it that now we don’t wanna make sure we wanna make sure that any financial information that could be sensitive to any of our donors or their their personal information, do we not want to have that being able to be, you know, used in the AI model or whatever system that we’re using so you know, you, you start with here’s how we do. Things here’s how AI could potentially benefit and then you move into that conversation. OK, if we did, what are some of the risks and concerns really thinking through all of them as much as you can, we know that you can’t think for every single possibility, but as much as you can kind of write it out and map it out as a group with several folks in the room, the better that you are at being able to say yes or no on moving on with AI as that. Potential new solution. OK, and a part of what goes into this intentionality is a usage, a use policy, your, your, you know, you want us to be thinking about ethical uses. OK, uh, what, what are the, what are, what are the ethical concerns? How can you, how can we talk through those? Well, you know, one of the key ethical concerns is that we know that most AI models that exist now, including open AI, were trained on the internet, and we know the internet can be, uh, wildly biased, wildly biased, filled with lots of terrible things. Not only biased but misinformed, misinformed wrong yeah complete nonsense in a lot of cases, um, and so if you’re using these open AI sources that have been trained on the internet, then you have to be really careful about deciding to use it against, say your theory of change. So if you’re an organization that is er. Be uh vulnerable populations groups that are already kind of under attack, whatever the case is, do you want to have AI making or informing your decisions related to work that you’re doing with these vulnerable groups? More than likely no because the AI may choose to do things that are more in line with the group that is. Biased that may have you know may be unethical and so you want to make sure that whatever you’re using the AI to do that it isn’t putting the organizations and the people that you support and serve in harm’s way so really thinking through, hey, if we’re gonna use it in this way, maybe we need to use it in a way that does not put these groups in harm. Maybe we just focus on using it internally like folks do for the meeting. Notes because that’s a very low risk thing whereas if you’re you know input you know uh decisions about whether or not to continue funding an organization or trying to measure or not whether or not their impact is aligning with your organization’s missions and values some of those those questions are not as clear cut as yes or no, whereas an AI that is trained on purely just wanting to see impact, purely wanting to see a return on investment, which is not always the case of what happens in philanthropy. Then you really have to take, take a step back and say is this the most ethical decision to go forward? Could we be putting organizations in harm? Now you can control what a model is trained on, yes, but that requires something proprietary, right? You have, you have to pay a developer to, uh, to create that. I get I don’t know it’s called a small language model. I don’t know what it’s called, but something that’s trained only on your own data, but your own website, maybe your own documents that you that you provided, but that, that requires a fee and a and a developer. Exactly, it it can it can cost, it can be expensive. The other option is if you don’t want to go the route of creating your own AI you do a paid version because we know the free versions of AI specifically I’ll talk about open AI there’s not a whole lot of freedom or flexibility in turning off the settings to prevent it from training the model on the data that you input. And so in that case you definitely need a use policy because some folks would probably just be like I really need to you know analyze all of this data on all of the groups that we served in this, you know, community that is already really, you know, under attack or potentially in in harm’s way and then now you’re putting that information into the AI to have it, you know, into the free AI to start doing it’s now. and now the AI has all of these people’s information and can now use it to provide it to other people who may look them up or want to find data on. That’s you’ve you’ve shared data that it’s gone. I mean it’s yeah yeah yeah there’s no control. So yes, enormous intentionality, care, um. And what if we don’t have a, you know, we don’t have a, a chief technology officer, chief information officer, you know, it’s an executive director, CEO, and, and maybe decent sized staff. I don’t know, 35, 40 people, but they still don’t have a chief technology officer. How do we, how do we uh ensure the intentionality and care that you’re, that you want us to? Yes, um, there’s a couple of ways, and I think oh good, I think at the core of it you don’t have to have a CTO and even yourself you don’t have to be a technologist. I would never classify myself as a technologist, but we can, there’s ways to find training. There’s plenty of training and 10 it has fantastic training for AI certifications for professionals in in the nonprofit sector, um, and I’d love to share that and 10 and tag are teaming up and we will be offering one for philanthropy professionals very soon. And so these are opportunities, a very, you know, relatively easy ways for people who don’t have that technical background to learn about the AI itself, get themselves familiar familiarized with, you know, what they need to be doing to protect themselves and their staff, ways that they can start to experiment in a safe, you know, safe space, um, so and there’s plenty of also free tools, free education. I will, you know, even I, even though I’ve talked. About OpenAI a lot. OpenAI just announced their OpenAI Academy which has all free resources and tools for learning how to utilize AI for anyone and so there are plenty of free resources out there and people online, you know, uh, there’s plenty of folks on LinkedIn that I see on a regular basis that are sharing information and providing some guidance for nonprofit leaders as well as, uh, folks. That are just not technically inclined so there’s ways that you can kind of upskill and train yourself to understand how to use AI even if you don’t have that technical experience in house. Say a little more about this partnership, can you uh and it’s technical association of grant pardon mechology Association of grants thank you um. Yeah, so I don’t have a whole lot of details to share, but essentially if you’ve, if you’ve used any of the great training and certification resources on the N10 website, we are essentially trying to make a parallel version of that same professional certification for nonprofit leaders using AI for. Our foundation leaders and so uh you can expect really a kind of a similar learning process but however it’ll be tailored to some of the different functions and needs that we find at the philanthropy you know at foundations versus what you would see at a traditional nonprofit. OK, so I’m sorry, it’s intended for professionals I should say. Um, Alright, what, so thank you. You know, that’s important ethical considerations, um, anything more on ethics because, uh, then I I want to talk about the policy, what belongs in your use policy, but is there more about ethical concerns? OK, OK, OK, enormous. I mean if you, if, if you’re exposing your data. And, and it’s gone. It’s, it’s out there like you said, right, um, our use policy that, uh, only 13, 30% have, although 80% are using AI. What goes into this use policy? The use policy essentially just outlines what you and your team should be thinking about before you ever use any AI, so. It’s kind of that no go or go kind of conversation so if it’s sensitive data, if it’s information related to any of your members that you just wouldn’t want anyone to have outside of your organizational members probably wouldn’t want to put it into an AI system so it just kind of outlines, you know, essentially guardrails for for teams and and staff to understand how to best utilize it. And I think some folks are also, you know, thinking about the environmental impacts of using AI are really now making sure that their data use policy or the AI policies are also, you know, having folks be ethical about how they’re using when they’re using AI right? so you know if it’s to do something that could take you probably about the same time that the AI does, don’t use the AI um if you’re just, you know, just tossing anything, any old thing and they’re asking questions all day probably also not a very useful. Use good use of AI you really wanna think about AI very strategically and intentionally, right? You wanna make sure that if you’re going to the AI, it’s for something that you know it’s gonna save you significant amounts of time. One of the things that I often will use AI for is drafting, you know, large descriptions for events. That takes me sometimes hours if I give it to AI, I can do it for me in seconds and the key to descriptions of events, yes, like, so we have webinars events that we have on our website, yeah, so you know I, I, I, I don’t wanna sit there talking about all the learning that you’re gonna get out of it and the objectives and this and that and so AI, I’ve trained, I have like a GPT that is based on kind of like my voice that I provide it like hey here’s the prompt, here’s what I’m kind of looking for. It provides me a draft and then I use that draft and I manipulate it how I want. Um, and so you really wanna make sure that you know when you’re prompting the AI or you’re using the AI, it’s they’ve measured it. I think one prompt uses as much energy. I think it’s like an entire city like it’s crazy. It’s like like it, I, I don’t use my quote me on that, but it’s enormous. There’s quite a bit of energy, and I can actually actually share a link to um one of the stats that came out about it. There’s a researcher that’s been sharing a lot about it, um, and she was just interviewed by, uh, I believe it was Doctor Joy Bullumwini on, uh, by the, um, the. AI justice uh group that she she leads, um, and so there’s a lot of it there’s a lot of energy being used so if you’re gonna use it, you wanna make sure that it’s for something that you don’t need to, you wanna learn prompting good prompting, so you can get what you need out of it and then you can make, you can, you know, refine it and make it better. Sometimes you may have to go back in and ask the AI to refine, you know, what it did, but you really do wanna keep it to a minimum. You don’t wanna be using AI. Constantly because the energy use and the impact on the environment is extreme extreme that gets over to the ethical concerns as well exactly because it’s yeah so yeah you’re you’re just really um basically telling your teams here’s the here’s what we expect out of you when you’re using AI and these are the things that could result in consequences if you don’t follow this policy OK um. What else, anything more about the policy, what, what, what belongs in there? Um, You know, I think the the key things is like you know making your team’s aware of the types of AI that are provisioned because that’s another thing some organizations have taken the decision to block certain AIs that they don’t want you using or even turning off certain AI functions in their uh current tech stack. So, uh, you wanna make sure that it’s really outlined very clearly the types of AI that are in use and also it may, you may wanna include something in there about how you, uh, communicate your use of AI to your teams or other people outside of your organization so. Kind of a, a nice, nice little bucket of what’s internal external, and then also where can you go if AI and where should you not go disclosures to the public um why would there be some uh some platforms or that are that are ruled out? Well, because You know, one of the things that I’ve seen some members talking about within, you know, the tag space is that there are some AI that do not allow you or some systems that do not allow you to turn off the AI function meaning that you don’t have any control of how that AI is taking your data that you have in that tech stack or that tech tool. Oh, you don’t have control no yeah and in in fact there was actually a conversation about a specifically a DAF uh platform that actually. Made this clear to many many many of our members who use it and so that is something that you really have to be concerned about is do you have any level of control if you don’t have any level of control and how the AI is using your data in that system there are organizations that would likely say this is a this is not a system that we would allow you to use. OK, it’s a good example. Um what else uh came out of the session? We still have a couple more minutes together. What else did you talk about in the session that uh that you can share with us? You know, one of the great things that we did was we did these scenarios, um, that Beth Beth put together about, you know, what are some of the things that you would say if you’re in a situation when where, you know, say for instance, uh, your organization is really excited about using AI they wanna jump head first and they just wanna start using AI without, you know, and and they they basically just want you to start rolling it out and get your teams on board. Um, and so in that scenario we really talked through all of the processes, you know, first of all, that first conversation that we talked about, like, should we even use AI that didn’t happen, so that needed to happen. The other part is also, you know, how fast do we wanna roll things out? What are some of the different change management principles that we should be thinking about as a team that could make AI adoption more beneficial and successful so really, you know, starting slow but really starting at the very beginning of like should we or should we not like that should be your because truthfully many organizations do not need AI. It’s true. I mean, it’s just the reality. Some organizations will never probably need to use AI, and then there’s a whole lot of them that probably will. So that question of like, should we do it has to happen first, um, and I think if you’re doing it on your own as a rogue, stop, do it on your own time. You want to practice on it, do it after after hours on a weekend. Exactly, exactly, not on our computers, not on our sisters. Yeah, yeah, if you, and that’s actually one of the things that, um, you know, we’ve seen a lot of our members and foundations, and I think Beth has also seen with, you know, some of the work she’s done in the in the sector is that a lot of foundations are now trying to just get to the staff and say, hey, look, we know that you’re using, can you just tell us and try to make that trust, build that trust with each other and I think that’s gonna be really a good way to help prevent a lot of the issues. Alright, let us know, but then stop. No, there’s no repercussion for reporting yourself, but only, well, only after what you report after the report date, you’re liable. All right, stop it. Exactly. OK, going rogue. All right, um, anything else? Uh oh, questions, any, uh, provocative or memorable questions that came. From the audience I’m trying to think. Um, No, well, you know, the one that had come up was just, uh, you know, there was a, there was someone at the front that had asked about, you know, AI hallucinates, and I was, and, you know, should you hallucinates, yeah, and she and the, the person was basically saying, you know, be careful using it as an organization because it could give you answers that are just factually wrong and so you know our response was like yeah you’re right AI does hallucinate but that’s why it’s incredibly important and I. And I didn’t even say this myself, but at the beginning, which is if you use AI, you always wanna make sure that it’s for something that you have a certain level or high level of expertise or knowledge about. So you know if I’m asking you to write descriptions for me, I know about the event details so that I’m not just gonna let the AI write a description and let it go and put it on the website. Yeah, that sounds good. I’m gonna put it no you review it, you make sure that. The details it’s including are correct. If there’s any statistics or numbers that are being used, you can go and verify those data. So if you’re ever using AI for anything, you should always have a human in the loop. There should be someone that’s able to verify the information, especially if you’re someone that’s not knowledgeable in that specific thing that you ask AI to do. You need someone who is either that or it’s gonna be written at such a high level that it’s maybe that has no value. Exactly, exactly. All right, how about we leave, are you OK leaving it there? Oh, you feel like we covered this? I think we did. OK. All right. All right. Go the Abuno. Euanu Gozi Ebo. Director of programs at Technology Association of Grant Makers. Gozi, thank you very much for sharing all that. Thank you for having me, Tony. My pleasure and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. Next week, 225 NTC conversations to help your fundraising events. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. And now the donor box is gone, I miss our alliteration fast, flexible, friendly fundraising forms. Uh, I miss that. All right, well, I am grateful to Donor Box though for 2 years of sponsorship, very grateful, grateful. There’s another gratitude. I’m grateful to Donor Box. Now that they’re not a sponsor anymore, I’m grateful to them. No, I, I’ve been grateful. I just haven’t said it. OK. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.
We launch our 25NTC coverage with the CEO of NTEN, which hosts the Nonprofit Technology Conference, sharing the numbers and the experience of this year’s Conference, earlier this month in Baltimore, Maryland. They’re Amy Sample Ward, and they’re also Nonprofit Radio’s technology contributor.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. We’re kicking off our 25 NTC coverage this week. These two segments are both from 25 NTC. It was a wonderful conference. I think the best. Uh, this was, I believe, the 11th year that I’ve hosted nonprofit radio, uh, in a studio at the nonprofit technology conference, and I think this was the best one. You’ll hear Amy and I talk about that. So excited, legitimately, you know, some people say, uh, I’m excited. No, I’m excited that we are launching, inaugurating, kicking off our 25 NTC coverage this week. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of ramidenia if you pained me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate with what’s coming. Hey Tony, this week it’s 25 NTC. The CEO of N10, which hosts the nonprofit technology conference, shares the numbers and the experience of this year’s nonprofit technology conference last week in Baltimore, Maryland. They are Amy Sample Ward, and they are also nonprofit Radio’s technology contributor. Then the human factors driving your CRM success. Don’t blame your tech first when it feels like your CRM database is letting you down. Human beings, the tech users, have responsibilities that proceed and must align with your technology. Rubin Singh returns to enlighten us about business processes, inclusive design, personal and professional growth, and more human factors that impact the success of your CRM database. He’s founder and CEO of 10th Consulting. On Tony’s take 2. Tales from the gym. Meet Roy. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. DonorBox, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is 25 NTC. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio coverage. Oh wait, I should do what Amy loves. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. What a genuine pleasure to welcome. The CEO of N10, the host of the 2025 nonprofit technology conference, Amy Sample Ward, welcome. Thank you. I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten to see in person witness live the Podfather intro. So yeah, exactly, it doesn’t have the same power, you know. Uh, so, uh, we’re here at 25 NTC. We’re at the uh Baltimore Convention Center. Oh, I, I should have said that our coverage here is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. Very grateful to Heller Consulting. How’s the conference going? CEO. It’s going great from community perspective, you know, I think we didn’t really know what to expect in this moment right from the community perspective, yes, I mean you know there’s always special things um there’s always opportunities to continue refining. Uh, but you know, from the, from the community side and kind of what we spend so much time focusing on, you know, the community experience, we just, you know, would anyone actually. Feel like coming when they woke up Wednesday morning would be, you know, like are is anyone even gonna be in a space to have conversations or wanna go to a session, you know, and we’re not trying to pretend that everything is fine and normal or that those things exist, you know. I like we’re certainly embracing that and yet we’re trying to embrace it within a reality of well we’ve all planned for this conference to be here so so it is still a a structured thing and and how porous can we make it in real time together to also meet whatever needs are emerging by maybe going to a session that was already planned and you know the speaker had prepared but from that conversation came something. Oh my gosh, we, we need a space, we need to keep talking about this right now and what do we do, right? So I’ve heard a couple of stories like that anecdotally that I’ve got I’ve learned so much I need to learn more now and you realized what I didn’t know and I I need to connect with that person or, you know, um, I heard it from an audience, uh, like talking to somebody who was sitting next to the person who was talking to me and then also to this for. Speaker, I, you know, I need to connect with, I forget whether it’s him or her or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Um, I need to learn more from this person. Alright, let’s let’s, uh, you know, I always like to ask you the numbers you know how many folks are with us here in real life in Baltimore, Maryland. I don’t know that I actually have the accurate numbers. We, we’re. Uh, 1800 registrants overall, but given how many shifts are happening, I don’t know exactly, and, well, I’ll finish my first sentence and then I’ll add a second so I don’t know how many folks are necessarily in person because we don’t. Require if you’re in person you have access to the virtual and so folks that couldn’t come for whatever reason didn’t necessarily have to tell us that so we don’t totally know or they could have even come one day and then gone virtual another day that’s right so I don’t totally know how many folks are in the room. I know that I think catering told us that over 1600. Silverware were used at lunch today. So just for lunch today I guess that yeah I know I only used one and I used one upstairs even so it’s a proxy for right so that’s how many people ate lunch I guess. OK, um, talking about the conference experience, uh, we’re gonna bring in someone who was a previous guest Aia Aria Ma, come on, come on, Arya. you can share my mic, just share my mic. Yeah, let’s make it easier. Um, because this is her first NTC, and I, I, she was saying, she was saying things that I think you would want to hear as CEO. So I said, if you want to come back, well, it’s not gonna be quite that long, but, uh, yeah, it’s not gonna be quite that long, but thank you. Uh, if you wanna talk to the CEO, let Amy know that, that, uh, what, how you feel about your first NTC. So this is Ama. Um, her company, uh, are, are you just, you say your company, so I don’t have to look back two pages. OK, I’m, I’m the principal consultant founder of Lunara, so I do consulting with environmental conservation nonprofits. Um, first of all, thank you. This has been amazing. I’m actually from Baltimore, so just jot down from Boston, do a quick family trip, and the people here, I feel. Like NDC really has curated an amazing group of people where it’s not really about networking but really connecting and knowledge sharing the accessibility here it really feels like the staff are here looking out for the for the participants and it’s just been an amazing time connecting with people the bird like the feathers of a bird table conversations, the comfy chairs like this is I’ve been to a lot of conferences. And it’s definitely one of a kind. So thank you so much for curating an amazing team, curating amazing people who come here. It’s been a really great time for me. All right, thank you so much for being thank you for being one of those amazing people that is here, right? Thank you. I so appreciate that. Of course, of course, lots more NTCs in your future. OK, good. Thank you. Thanks for coming back. Glad you did. I, yeah, a little treat for you. I knew I knew you would want to hear something. Thank you. You’re welcome. Um, So, oh, I turned up for that was turned it up for our, yeah, OK, um, alright, so we have about 1800 people. Well let’s call it 1800 between friends, just as a round number. That’s good. OK yeah, we, I mean, I think there were like 12 people who just showed up and registered on site yesterday, so. Yeah, the number is a moving. When we talked a couple of weeks ago, you said people just show up. I was amazed at that. OK, it happens. OK. There’s always room at the NTC, you know. Yeah, well, we’ll add another chair. What did Ari just say? There’s a staff. Thank you for the staff, looking, looking out for all of us. Yes, of course. We’re accommodating. We’re, we, I’m a member, so I’m not staff, but I’m, I’m part of the N10 the N10 community. I don’t want to call it the the NTC people call you NTC. Yeah, I know Amy. She runs NTC in a way they, they, yeah, um. The commons experiment, yeah, I mean, I hope like we could talk about it for a minute. I’m just gonna preempt your intro and say for people who run conferences as part of the larger work of your organization, right, not that not that you’re an event planner, but people who are listening to the show and have organizations that have conferences as a part of your programming. Would love to learn what you are testing because we, as I said the other day you know there’s that like analogy or whatever like oh I pulled the band-aid off and just you know tried something we we found every band-aid and we pulled them all off at once and tested everything is is different this year. There is not an exhibit hall with pipe and drape and 10 by 10 squares that you have to walk through, uh, hallway hallways of corridors of, uh, it’s an open space, open plan. The studio here is set up right behind all the chairs that are facing the stage where the main stage where all the keynotes are and the awards were given. Um, we’re by the food station. Well, the food is here. It’s just the the hall is open. There’s not anything dividing us. Yeah, we sold no exhibit booth packages. Uh, and I admire it, I admire the attempt at change. Look, even if you, I’m not, you’re gonna decide as a team what you’re gonna do, but even if you went back to 10 by 10 cubes, uh, pipe and drape next year, I would still admire the 2025 experiment because you are trying something that radically different. You’re not bound by what every other conference does and what you. Uh, what N10 has done year after year after year for 24 years, this is our 25th, your 25th NTC. So you’re not bound by, by your own history even. I just, I admire the outward look, the fresh look, even if you go back to the way it was last year, I still will never stop admiring what you did this year. Thank you for saying that. I mean, I think. It in some ways was was and is a huge risk to say we don’t we’re not even selling packages that would equate to hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue um so if anyone’s listening and would like to write a check, please let me know um. But it just didn’t feel like that hard of a choice for us because it feels like every year all we want is to get closer and closer to an experience for as many people as possible to be in community and we, you know, getting rid of the booths was just one thing there’s also, you know, sessions are working in different ways and there’s. More furniture in this room that is not from the convention center, you know, it’s not rounds with chairs. We actually rented every piece of furniture from a local furniture company, um, just to, I can say the name that’s my show, not the Freeman Company. We’re not we’re not using that. We actually have put on an entire, you know, 1800 person conference in a convention center without a decorator, um, so we. Did everything ourselves so that we could control and make it just how we wanted it to be. You rented how many chairs you found a source for all these, all the everything, yes, every, every vendor is local, every maker is local. Yeah, you have a little shop. There’s there’s a market, local, local vendors that yesterday I saw cutting boards, uh, I see art, uh, that’s all I saw, but there’s a market over there, local, local vendors love it. You, you also do something smart that I learned, uh, one of your team members told me. That uh you you have your staff retreat in the city where or one of your annual retreats in the city where next year’s NTC is gonna be that’s very smart that way all everybody has walked the building we’ve all stood there and said, do we think this is really where badge printing could go? Do we really think this is. Because we also make basically every decision as a team for the conference, so you know there’s no one person on staff whose job is the conference and they get to make the decisions we we do it together or we say who wants to be in this decision, you know I think we’ve even talked about some of the the way Zen10 works um on the show before but. Yeah, so it feels good to have everybody be there, which means this late summer, early fall we’ll all party in Detroit and see what 26 NTC is gonna look like. OK, 26 NDC NTC in Detroit. Uh, no, it’s very smart and you’ve walked out. in the hotels we can make a couple of restaurant suggestions if somebody comes up because we, yeah, yeah, we went to that place. Yeah, very savvy, very savvy. I admire it. I don’t know. I just feel like I would never have thought of that. Like if I was a CEO I would, I wouldn’t need somebody else to suggest that. I think I never would have thought of that. Can I ask you a question? Do I get, is that allowed on nonprofit radio? OK, OK. I had an anarchist in the previous, uh, OK, I was gonna ask you, you know, I know, I mean with 160 plus sessions every year you have a hard job of only doing 30 or so interviews or or 20 or whatever the number is, right? Yeah, yeah, because it’s that’s only a fraction of how many sessions you could have um chosen from. But even still, I’m curious from the interviews you’ve had from, from a day and a half or so. This is content different this year? Like, is there, is there trends or or interesting notes surfacing because of the time we’re in, because of the moment we’re in the moment of under this administration, the the shifts of of the sector, but also even just like this weird moment around AI and the moment around, you know, all of those different pieces, is there something that you’ve seen? Artificial intelligence, yes, more panels on artificial intelligence. I, I requested more so we’ll have a couple more um. Yeah, I, that’s that’s what I was thinking it’s artificial intelligence, um, you know, the, the political environment, it comes out a little bit, but, uh, first of all, a lot of our, well, yeah, no, it comes out you know of course beyond the fundraising, uh, I was gonna say the fundraising panels have mentioned it, you know, but, but, um. Uh, also in the tech, uh, we just had a panel on personally identifiable information, how to preserve that, um, and including from government intrusion and subpoena, um, so you know that would not have been a topic last year would have been a thought, a possibility, um, so yeah, I’d say those mostly the AI and then the the the political and the, um, data, data protection, data protection, yeah, yeah. Um, Is uh is is Max here? Max stage managing? No, he hasn’t for a number of years a few years yes, yes, and I didn’t see Or Louise here. No, she, it’s not her spring break. Oregon already had spring break, so she is very mad to miss her first. TC. Oh, is this the first one? I think so many years at least, or yeah, I think so. She’s about to be 9. That’s right, yeah, yeah, I guess she missed Denver too because that was she was in school then, but yeah, so those are the only two that she’s ever missed, yes, even as a little babe, yeah, so we don’t have like a family photo booth photo from this, yeah, she has them like up on her, on her, you know, cork board in her bedroom. Yeah, I know he has all the NTG. In like the photo, you know, yeah, parent, yes. Um, How’s, uh, you know? How, how are things, uh, how’s the team, how’s the team doing? Thank you for asking. Um. I, I’m just looking because they’re in that room. That’s our, that’s our staff office so that we can see if there’s any issues, but that’s where everybody’s working the halls on fire or something. You’ll see it’s like a uh um called um smoke towers or fire towers. So, so we’re on, we’re we’re down on the floor, but up maybe 40 ft or something there’s windows and that you’re saying that’s the it’s like in the mall, you know, where the security is behind the one-way glass up above, yeah, that’s, yeah, so staffs up there’s too high, we can’t see in you know staff is OK, I think. Like Any any organizations group of staff, you know, there’s. A staff person dealing with this other issue that’s not work related and somebody you know caring for a relative and somebody trying to help their kid that’s having this struggle is that you know so. Uh, the team is OK. We’re a great team and folks have just been like. Even reflecting in real time like God we’re just like showing up for each other so strong and we feel so like happy to get to show up for each other these these few days together but also try to hold that like you know behind that or underneath that or around that. Life is hard for everyone right now in so many ways that have nothing to do with putting on a conference or or replying to your work emails or you know it’s just like everyone is always carrying these these other things that they’re thinking about um and we know and we’ve and we’ve heard from community members as we do every year that. We want the NTC to be a place where like you can set all those burdens down like it’s OK to talk about all of that stuff you know this is not like a perfect professional face you know like what does that mean? What what is my professional? I don’t know. You know, but also I think it’s a little bit hard for staff to feel like they get to do that too when we’re working so hard to create that space for the community because we’re also like on radio and calling catering and you know we’re like doing all these other logistic pieces so in some ways the staff like miss out on the on the best opportunity to do that that we have every year because we we’re we’re kind of behind the scenes but usually on Friday. Less logistics are happening because it’s the final day of the conference and then you know all but one or two people will get to be at the general session and listen to the keynote and everybody will get to like just go to a bird’s table at lunch or go you know people will really get to kind of come out and and. Enjoy it for a little bit. And when does the team depart on Saturday? Yeah, we fly out on Saturday. Oh yeah, we’ll, I mean Friday, Friday afternoon. Oh yeah, our stuff is getting palletized and taken away at 3 p.m. tomorrow. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yes, and like we have volunteers, we have, you know, we have um. I mean it’s end 10. We have a spreadsheet, you know, and every storage bin is numbered and we know what goes in bin number 1 and bin number 2 and you know you just look at the spreadsheet and everybody knows what has to go. I see. Of course we have a spreadsheet for that. Yeah, wonderful, um. Yeah, I would say, and I’ve told others this, uh, this is, this is, I think this is the 11th, uh, NTC that nonprofit radio has come to, yeah, uh, I think it’s the best. I do, I do, you’re just saying that because I’m sitting here and I’ll push you off the yoga ball. I said it to somebody else. No, it’s, yeah, you know, you know, uh, no, I really do admire the open plan. I love. It’s, yeah, it’s just a better feeling, you know it’s not a congested feeling we’re not confined to a 10 by 10 cell. Right and like just from an attendee’s perspective, you know, we didn’t want to shrink it down to only a room of 1800 chairs in theater seating or something, you know, like there’s all this open space. Do you wanna just sit on the floor and build Lego? Go for it, you know, you wanna drag a chair away from a table and talk to somebody else? Go for it. Right, we, we, it’s called a pre-con when before you have an event we have a meeting with, you know, the head of every part of the facility, right, uh, like here’s the security, right, like, you know, one rep from every part of the building comes and you have this precon meeting. And they are like, OK, who are you? it’s like just the day before or a couple of days before or is this we do we do it, no, no, no, we do it Monday so you’re on site, you’re like ready to go. You’re starting to load in and usually events that do this like send one rep from N10 right? we send all of us, all 16 of us show up because each of us are here, right? And you’re supposed to say like, you know, is there any info about your attendees? Is there anything the team should know, you know, and we say. If our attendees want a chair move, that chair is moving. Right, you’re not radioing me for like an approval. If attendees walk up to you and say the water is out, you’re refilling the water, right? Like this community is making the space. Our job was just to make sure water stored in there 16 of us right that you can take direction from, yes, and I mean if they say we’d like a whole another part of the building and could you bring catering there that please don’t do without our approval. Right, but we really want to have a, a place that is just open. Make it. Do put the chair where you want it to be, right? Like Ryan, bring your penguins and set them up. Apparently everybody’s like putting in the chat who gets to take them home, you know, like that feels like a gift to ourselves and hopefully a contribution that’s additive to the sector to to have a space that’s like that or that tries to say. What does it look like? We’re, we’re not a trade show. We’ve never been an actual trade show, but what does it look like to say, yeah, there’s no booths, just talk to each other. And honestly like there are some providers who are here for the very first time and they’re like what? What am I doing? What, what am I supposed to do, right? So we need to do a better job of setting people up whether they’re a provider or a sponsor or just, you know, attendee what to expect, what do you, what does it mean to just walk into this huge room and pick, pick a velvet couch to sit on and talk to somebody, you know, but just walk up yeah um. I, I, I just heard someone’s heels. I, I looked because I thought I heard pickle. I thought it was pickleball, but there is pickleball here. We have there’s pickle ball. There’s ping pong. Oh yes, and the pickle ball tournament yesterday, you know, it ended in, I’m not gonna say controversy, um, but it was heated because E0’s very own Carl came in 2nd place and he desperately would like that trophy. Is there a rule about employees? No, no, no, no, but Carl keeps he has spent a year reminding everyone that last year in pickleball he lost in the first round, but to the eventual winner. Right, it’s just, it’s just like, you know, the, the drama of a bracket process and so he wanted to redeem himself this year, right? He made it all the way to section. Yes, right, Carl. Alright, alright, and Carl is celebrating, I think, 18 years as an N0 staff person. He’s our IT director. He started as an AmeriCorps Vista. That’s incredible. Yeah, is he the longest? He’s the longest. And then how many years are you since membership I’ve been, I’ve been, I started at the NTC like the, you know, two days before 11 NTC was my first day as membership directors, um, and, and Ailey’s right behind me at 13. 0, she’s she’s outstanding. She curated this table that we’re sitting at. Uh, she got the chairs that we’re sitting on, um, she chose this spot for you all to be able to see everybody coming in visibility. Yes, it’s very nice. Yeah, Ali on her game, her thank you. All right, I know you’re busy. Thank you, CEO. I hope Aria was a nice surprise. It was such a gift. Thank you for doing that. I so appreciate it. I’m gonna tell the whole team with our at our daily debrief, um, and. And I look forward to the next time Gene and I get to be on the show and I have slept in some reasonable amount of hours prior to talking into the microphone, but I really value you being here and creating a digital platform for so many of our community members to get to share, you know, all of their smarts beyond these walls. So thanks for thanks for the collaboration. Yeah, lots more. OK. Amy Semple Ward, they’re the CEO of N10. They’re our technology contributor here at uh nonprofit Radio. Thank you. Um, and thank you for correcting me, parent, parent, yeah, yeah, you’re right. I mean, I know you’re right, but thank you for the, thank you for the correction. I’m, I’m a trainable boomer. You’re very trainable. We’ll leave it there. Thank you also for being uh with with uh nonprofit Radio’s coverage of 25 NTC where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor Box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you, a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges. Helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs. Helping you, help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now it’s time for the human factors driving your CRM success. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference. We’re at the Baltimore Convention Center, where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. My guest now is Ruben Singh. He is founder and CEO of 1/10 Consulting. Ruben, welcome back to nonprofit Radio. Thanks for having me, Tony. Good to see you again. This is, I think your 3rd, maybe 4th, 4th you’re counting, you’re more accurate than I am. Um, your session this year is the human factors driving nonprofit CRM success. Uh, I don’t know, I wonder, do you see people often or organizations often blaming technology when the problem is more team and human? Yeah, that’s exactly the the premise of it, Tony. I, I, um, uh, I’ve I’ve often found myself as a consultant coming into situations where Um, you know, the client we’re working with at the prospect we’re speaking with says, ah, we need Salesforce or we need, you know, uh, this particular solution or virtuous or something else, um, and, uh, you know, because they’ve had a bad experience with the technology that they were with, uh, and so, uh, as I’ve seen this so much throughout my career, um, and then you know you start peeling back the layers of the onions. And then you see, oh well, you know, the business processes are not fully defined. There’s not, you know, a plan for adoption, there’s not a plan for governance, uh, and so what I’ve realized is that, um, often times, uh, where the, the, the failures happen have really has nothing to do with the technology at all. So yes, that’s exactly what the premises of this uh of this um workshop. So the symptom I don’t know, cycling through, uh, platforms like, oh we need Salesforce, and then they have Salesforce for 3 or 4 years and then they realize, oh, no, Salesforce wasn’t really the solution. Now we need we need the Microsoft platform, right? Does it happen like that? That’s definitely a part of it. I think there’s also, you know, just there’s always this sense of urgency um as new technology comes along. Um, that uh we don’t, if we don’t innovate, we’re gonna fall behind, um, and we’re seeing a lot with, you know, AI now as well. Um, it’s, it’s no different, you know, everyone say well if you’re not using AI for your solutions, uh, you know, you’re, you’re gonna be left behind, you’re gonna, your organization’s gonna fail when really. Um, that is, that is really forcing organizations to adopt certain things that they’re not, they may not be ready for their, their processes may not be in place, their data might not be ready. So, um, so just like we’re seeing right now with, you know, the latest trend of technology, um, feel the organizations we work with just feel compelled to to to rush into whatever the particular trend is, um, and sometimes there’s business pressure also. Uh, you know, if this particular system failed, you know, new, new CTO comes in and says, ah, I need to prove myself or I need to get something going, so oftentimes they try to get the, the, the cart before the horse. You mentioned business processes a couple of times. What what kind of processes should we, so now we’re getting to what the human factors are that you need to have in place for the technology to be successful for the CRM. Well, what kinds of business processes are you looking for? Sure. Well, um, first, are they defined, are they documented? You’d be surprised how many nonprofits I walk into where, you know, they could be operating just fine, um, but there’s no nothing really documented and that’s fine, that’s where, you know, consultants like ourselves who would come in and help, uh, understand them, review them, define them. Um, and then there’s some that are just, uh, not very, uh, as you as you learn more about their business processes, you see that there’s, um, just inefficiencies, uh, that are there as well. So what kinds of business processes are we talking about? Just some examples. Yeah, um, fundraising, for example, so check come, you know, stack of checks come in, you know, what are the different processes to get that data entered into the system, or it might be donor advised funds, you know, what is the process around that? Or you know, we have a uh uh a series of files that need to be uploaded or it could be an application. process for programs uh that that might be so it it it could be um the grant distribution process what’s the reviews and applications that process who needs to review, who needs to approve before a grant might be approved. So, um, so there’s really a cross grant making fundraising program delivery um there’s there’s all kinds of steps that needed to happen and we ultimately want the the system, the technology to make it work as efficiently as possible. So we we we heavily rely on business processes to make sure that we’re. Um, that we’re creating things that ultimately makes the systems more efficient. So the technology is supporting the business processes not not we’re not relying on the technology for the business process, but it’s, it’s supplementing what our processes are. That’s exactly it. I would, I would add one more thing to that, you know, in addition to the technology supporting the business process, it also has to support the strategy. So that’s kind of one of the other points that we’re gonna be talking about later on today. Um, is to make sure that there’s a clear strategy. What is it that as an organization you’re trying to solve, um, how do you know that you’re successful? What are those markers or indicators to confirm that you’ve, that you’ve, you’re successful because we want again the technology to support that, uh, we want the technology to be able to track and report and monitor to make sure you’re meeting your goals, so. Uh, as a technologist, it’s a little bit tricky sometimes because they, they, you know, the clients often expect us to come in with a technical solution and, you know, code this and configure that, but we, we like to kind of step back and say, you know, what is it that you’re trying to solve? What’s your strategy? How do things work? Where can we create some efficiencies, then we start building. OK. Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s often important to have that consultant perspective to take a step back because you’re, you’re probably often. Uh, at 110th Consulting, and I’m, I’m gonna ask you to remind listeners why it’s 110. I think I remember, but we’ll get to that, we’ll get to that shortly. Um, you know, you’re, you’re often, um, confronted with, you know, we need, we need new technology. That is not our, that’s not our feedback. Amy. It is, it is feedback. OK. OK. There we go. Thank you. Oh, can you just try it with a lower volume? We’re uh we’re we’re, you can tell we’re live here at we’re, we’re just turning on the loudspeaker because the plenary session just ended, so we have a we have a loudspeaker and it was feeding back. OK, so that was us, that was us. Tala. All right, we’re accountable. I’m accountable. I feedback. It’s time for Tony’s Take too. Thank you, Kate. We’ve got a new tale from the gym introducing you to Roy. Uh, I met Roy by. Same way I hear about lots of people, uh, overhearing other people talking about Roy, uh, after he had left. And I know who he is. I’ve, I’ve seen him around. Uh, I’d say Roy is probably early to mid 70s. And the, the thing that the uh the two guys talking about Roy were focused on. Was that, um, well, he talks a lot, I agree. Uh, and he doesn’t put the weights away after he uses this one machine that he focuses on a lot, spends a lot of time on, and, and he actually grunts a lot when he’s on this bench press type machine. Uh, I had not noticed that he doesn’t take the weights off like you’re supposed to, but these two, guys did, uh, as well as talking about how chatty he is, and, you know, that he, he like, uh, just spends too much time in between his sets. Talking to other people. Maybe even annoying other people, uh, they did, they didn’t say that, but. They didn’t like how much he talks, and they don’t like that he doesn’t put the weights away. So I was, uh, so I was keeping an eye on Roy, you know, after I saw, I saw him again, and, um, word must have got to him about the weight part. Uh, he didn’t, he didn’t talk any less, still very chatty between sets. But he did start putting his weights away after he was done, takes them off the machine, puts them back on the rack where they get stored. So that’s good. So Roy did uh improve his bad gym behavior. Now, how did he get wind of the idea? That he’s not. Practicing good gym etiquette, I don’t know. Uh, I, I, I had nothing to do with it. I just stay out and listen and, and I happened to watch well, cause I heard about Roy once I learned his name, so then I was paying more attention, and that’s when I saw that he, he, uh, exercised good gym etiquette. So, but how he came to change his ways, I don’t know. I swear I had nothing to do with it. So that’s Roy at the gym, uh, along with many of our other characters I’ve introduced you to, uh, through the, through the many months. Roy at the gym, the community gym where I work out, uh, 44 times a week. And that is Tony’s take 2. OK. Are you sure you haven’t spoken to Roy before? Because he sounds familiar. I don’t think so. You might be, you might be thinking of Rob, Rob. There was Rob. He was the Marine Corps. Remember Semper Fi? He was talking to a another former Marine, and they ended their conversation with Semper Fi, the the Marine Corps motto. You might be thinking of Rob. I, I’ve seen Roy, but I never knew his name. OK. Hm. A lot of our names that are short. Well, it’s a couple. Try to keep track of all the characters at the community gym where I go, try to, maybe we should start a database. We should do, maybe we should start a CRM database. We said. We’ve got Fuku butlers more time. Here’s the rest of the human factors driving your CRM success with Rubin Singh. So you’re often confronted with our technology sucks, you know, we need this platform is not working for us. Nobody, I don’t know, nobody ever seemed to have learned it right. It doesn’t, it doesn’t work with what we’re doing, what we’re trying to do, and but you need to step back and say that there may very well be something deeper than your platform. OK. Absolutely, and you know there there’s there’s that and and I’d say also there’s been times if I’m being totally honest, Tony, where I’ve don’t don’t don’t be disingenuous, don’t lie to no I can’t do that, um, but, uh, you know, I’ve I’ve been part of teams early, early in my career where, um, you know, we have, we’ve completed the project. We have finished on time, we’ve finished on budget, we checked all the boxes for all the requirements that we met, but at the end of the project, at the end of the go live, honestly I, I felt kind of uncomfortable. I felt uneasy. I felt sick to my stomach because I knew that despite all the things that we’ve done for the technology, the nonprofit is not set up for success in the long run. Uh, some of the ways that I sense that were, um, they, you know, maybe all the users were really excited about the technology, but maybe the leadership was not fully on board, so they may not have, um, you know, they have not modified their processes, how they’re gonna do reporting, how they’re going to measure progress, how they’re going to measure performance, um, if they’re not really bought into the system, um, the whole thing’s going to fail. Um, also another key thing is governance. For leadership, the leadership buy-in is essential, uh, I think we may have talked about, or if it wasn’t you, it was another NTC how to get that leadership. It’s, if, if, if the leadership isn’t committed, leaders who are listening, CEOs, uh, executive directors listening, if you’re not completely committed, I mean your teams, your teams know that they figure it out and their commitment, uh, uh, is gonna be equivalent to yours for sure. If you could spend tens of $1000 on a on a new CRM system, if not more, but if you as a leader are gonna say, OK, you know, fundraising meeting, you know, fundraising, you know, check-in is going to be on Monday and everybody bring your spreadsheets, um, forget, you can forget the investment that you made in that CRM system, you’ve lost adoption right there holistic look remind us why your your company is one. Yeah, you know, well, um, you know, we’ve exclusively worked with nonprofits and, and very early in our, in our startup phase, uh, we worked with a lot of, um, uh, faith-based organizations, um, and, uh, it was, it was funny that as I was working with different organizations whether it was a synagogue or a church or a mosque or or cordura. Um, they all seem to have this 10% concept, this giving back of 10%, uh, to back to the community, back to causes, back to the good of, of the whole, um, and I thought that, you know, despite all these different faith traditions being so different, there was something that was, uh, you was a common thread amongst many of them, and so that’s kind of where 1/10 the consulting came from, yeah. I had it close. I thought it was, I thought it was giving I was giving back, but giving back 1/10. Yes, exactly, exactly, um, you, you, uh, your session description talks about inclusive design as a as a means to. Achieve the the CRM success that we’re looking for. Uh, say, say more about the design process, inclusivity. Yeah, well, well, we feel strongly that any technology that is meant for everyone should uh include as many people as possible as part of the design, otherwise, um, there’s gonna be blind spots. Um, uh, you know, this might seem, uh, you know, unrelated, but I was reading some stories about how when Um, uh, there’s crash test dummies, um, were being used, um, to test the safety of vehicles. They were based on a male body of 5′ 970 pounds and, um, the, and as is the 2011 University of Virginia study that showed that women were much more likely to be harmed or hurt in an accident. Um, than men were and 47% more it was like a pretty ridiculous number, so, um, just makes you wonder like when, when these vehicles and safety were designed and assessed, were they really thinking about different body types, different people? Well, the same thing applies to, you know, technology, um, the story I often give people is, um, you know, even my own parents, my, my elderly, uh, you know, parents, you know, from an immigrant community when they signed up for the COVID vaccine. Um, it was a process that was clearly not designed for immigrants and it was not designed for elderly, um, you know, it was, it was a the application form was very, uh, cumbersome. There was a lot of information you had to have, have prepared you cited this in a year or two in the past, yeah, the online form was not, uh, well, not user friendly for 70 or 80 year old, yeah, yeah, and so. Um, and, and so like, and then you, you also hear that uh well the immigrant communities are not signing up for the vaccine and, and it’s a public health problem. So, um, you know we feel that CRM is the same day is the same way that um it often times I walk into a room for a design session and I have the IT professionals there or because they’re the ones who can give us the quickest answers, um, or we have the people who are like the quote unquote super users who are the most technically proficient. Um, but you know, to me, if we really want to have inclusive design, we really want to see what who who’s not at the table. Let’s maybe have people of different ages, different technical proficiency, different, you know, socioeconomic, different uh parts on the company hierarchy because if this system is really designed for everybody, we need to get as many different thoughts, ideas, perspectives involved, um, to me, uh, often times if we overlook that, um, it, it, it ends up being a gap that we have to fix later. Um, you, uh, you also cite, um, this being valuable for uh professional growth. How is that? Yeah, and this is something, uh, as I get older, Tony, I’ve been reflecting on on a lot and uh I’ve been, um, I’ve I’ve felt this in my professional career and I’ve I’ve had the um privilege to uh teach as an adjunct professor close by here at University of Maryland Baltimore County. And it’s something I often tell my students, it’s like, um, you know, if, if you really want to be good consultants in this space, um. You know, we, we often times focus on the, the, the credentials or the certifications and you know we go crazy with the certifications and, and you know so we can present that and say, ah this is, you know, this is who we are but in my experience what’s been most useful and also has been useful to to the success of our projects is really being an expert in the industry that you’re working with, being passionate about the industries that you’re working in. Um, so for for us we tend to have a focus on the social justice sector, um, and it’s, you know, in my tradition, in my blood, and my, in my, uh, upbringing to be working with these types of organizations and really understanding the ins and outs of, of these organizations, and I feel like that’s been able to, um, uh, it’s it’s been something I’ve been uh able to bring to my projects, bring to my implementations, um, and the love and care that we give our clients and. It’s, it’s been very helpful so it’s something I, I encourage folks to, um, you know, to, to work on becoming experts work on becoming um keeping up to date with what’s going on in the industry so if you’re a nonprofit technology consultant being fully aware with the challenges with grant making or you know how government funding might be affected these days or you know taking an opinion on how AI can help or harm uh nonprofits. Uh, taking an opinion on data privacy and where it fits, so, uh, what I’ve seen is that what our clients need is not just, just people who are experts at the technology, but experts at the industry that they’re working in. And what about professional growth for for folks in nonprofits as they’re looking at their own businesses? I mean this is sort of a broadening exercise where folks are learning. there as you’re you’re suggesting for consultants, the folks nonprofits learning outside their own areas of expertise. Yes, yes, absolutely, um, an example of that is, you know, uh, to me I realize that, you know, equity and and technology is, is, is ultimately, you know, uh, it’s super important for inclusive design and inclusive systems, um, so for me that meant, um, I was gonna become a. A certified DEI practitioner, um, so I went and, you know, went through the classes, got my certification, and, and that was something that I, I wanted to make sure that was part of who, who I was. So while you might think that this might not be part of your part of your, um, technical credential, um, this might not be part of your technical credential, um, it, it having that business credential or having that expertise was super important, um. Another example could be change management. Um, so if, if you feel that change management, excuse me, change management is something that you’re passionate about, by all means become a certified credential change management professional because it’s only going to make all your projects, uh, more successful. Get you outside your comfort zone. Yeah, I mean I think there’s I think there’s value in that. I’ve I’ve seen it professionally, um. Just, you know, challenging, challenging yourself, you know, outside outside your normal boundaries and and and it really applies to any industry, so as I tell my students, if you’re a The technology is everywhere, so you know if you wanna do fashion tech, become an expert in the fashion side of it a sports tech, become an expert in the sports side of it doesn’t really matter, um, but it’s really just about, you know, what my clients over 27 years of of of this work, um, they don’t really care how many salesforce certifications I have. They don’t really care about, you know, what they, what they care about is do I understand them? Do I understand their business, do I, you know, what, what else do I bring to the table? There’s lots of tech consultants out there, but what else do you bring to the table? So it sounds like we’re in your backyard, uh NTC. You teach at University of Maryland Baltimore County. Yes, yes, yes, just uh uh right right outside 20 minutes from here, so it’s nice, we’ll see you again next year. I don’t do you know where next year’s is? I believe Detroit, but, uh, wherever it’s gonna be, I’ll be there. We’ll be together. Um, what else, what else are you gonna share on this topic that, uh, you and I haven’t talked about yet? Um, we are gonna, I think the one other thing, and, um, it’s not something I talked about, you know, a few years ago, but it’s just so much more relevant now is, um, you know, again as far as the, the human factors that that uh affect CRM, it’s also uh looking at um, you know, how bias and discrimination can make their way into the systems, um, so whether it is algorithms that are built, whether it’s AI models, um, and, uh, making sure that we have. Checks and balances in place to ensure that the data is um not toxic in any ways or or the data is not skewing results in a in a way that could um hurt or harm communities. I think one example I if I can give a specific is, you know, if you are a nonprofit that uses an algorithm for recruitment volunteer recruitment or application reviews, um, you know, making sure that those do not, uh, uh, create skewed results, making sure that. There’s a checks and balances process to make sure that that that the results are not discriminatory, that they’re fair, they’re unbiased, um, and that’s something that, um, organizations are really grappling with how do we do that? So I have some, some models that I’m gonna be sharing as well today that I’m pretty excited about on on how you can create some checks and balances. Yeah, um, I mean it’s uh I wish I wish I had my diagram I could bring up here too. Yeah, but um, yeah, yeah, um, but it’s basically just um being intentional about, OK, you know, if again starting with strategy, so let’s say it’s a volunteer recruitment plan and you say, you know, I and I had a lot of this well we want to increase our, our diversity in our recruit in our volunteer pool so you know it’s, it’s basically setting some measures for that. um, we wanna have 20% of, of this particular demographic or 40% of this and then it’s really just um creating some checks and balances just like in any. Um, in any implementation of of technology there’s gonna be a, a testing phase, there’s gonna be a data validation phase. So what what I’m proposing is we also have a a a a a bias detection phase. We also have a, um, you know, um, uh, a sort of um discrimination and bias, uh, check that we essentially do so in that case we will just like we have parameters to say these are the percentages we’re looking for, what are the results for it? So, um, so it’s, it’s not rocket science, but, but it’s really just making sure that when we build our test plans out that we’re also checking for bias and discrimination. I know a lot of work on LinkedIn. Have you written a book? Um, in the works, Tony, in the works you mentioned it or maybe I’m just that you ought to write a book. OK, uh, you’re working on a book, um, early stages, yes. But um but yeah, now there’s I’ve I’ve kind of captured a lot of thoughts um over the years about this and you know these are things that were just kind of things I uh thought about, you know, like uh you know this doesn’t feel right or this could be done in a more equitable way or this is this is not really doing good. Even though we’re calling it tech for good, um, and then, you know, being in communities like this at N10 and NTC, uh, made me realize, oh, I’m not the only one who thinks like this. There’s others who who are who have also found some weird stuff in out there in the implementation world and and I think, um, you know, as a consultant who, who now has started my own practice, um, I realized, you know, I don’t have to just continue being part of the problem, you know, I can. Uh, I can try to shift some things and, and, um, share my stories to, to make sure that we, we, we, we collectively do better. OK, now, you know, I imagine you’re, you’re part of a minority faith community in the United States. How does that inform your practice or or how does it open your eyes to the inequities that that we were you know, you’re doing more to fight than I am. I bring voice to them, but you’re actually doing. Well, well bringing to it is is very important, so I appreciate that you do that, Tony. Um, uh, yes, as part of the sick tradition I think um it’s it’s a few things. um, I mean it really does fuel a lot of my work, um, you know, the sick tradition is a very um deep in in community service and in justice and in collective liberation, so it it really is a fuel for, you know, the, the, the focus on the social justice sector. Um, but I would say, yeah, absolutely, you know, being a visible minority does, uh, help me have, uh, that the radar is always on. Um, you know, and, um, I, I’m, I’m very aware, hyper aware of of things that just don’t feel right or that that that that don’t sit well with me, whether it’s happening to me or someone else, um, so you know, early on in my career I was, you know, thinking to myself, ah, you know, I’m just learning the ropes, let me just follow along what everybody else is doing and you know, different practices that might happen in in implementations themselves and technology implementations. I’ll just go along with it. It’s fine, um, but now I, I didn’t it right, yeah, so now I kind of sense that, you know, I feel that agency that I can, you know, I can, I can speak my mind, I can step forward and say, yeah, you know, this, this persona building exercise we’re doing for marketing, you know, of, you know, guessing what. Different races and demographics might feel about our work. Yeah, it doesn’t, that’s not great. That’s there’s other ways to to get that information that doesn’t sit here and, and, you know, enable stereotypes, uh, you know, we can use archetypes, we can, you know, we can ask people directly why they could come to our nonprofit or don’t come. So there’s there’s alternatives out there, you know, the tried and true methods are not always the best, um, they’re not always the most equitable, so you know, let’s let’s brainstorm other alternatives. Did finding that agency come from starting your own business or before then? I think it was a combination of being in circles of other technologists of color that, you know, where I, I felt very empowered and said, ah, you know, we’re not the only ones, you know, like other people feel this way and collectively. You know, there’s things we can do better, um, and then yes, starting the company and I I recognize that comes with privilege, um, and not everybody can speak out the way that they want to, but, but definitely starting starting my own practice and being very transparent with my customers about, hey, this is who we are, this is what we’re about. If we see something that doesn’t feel right or that the data that you’re requesting from your clients is is overreaching, we’re gonna, we’re gonna raise our hand and and you know what I thought might have deterred. Customers is actually um uh had customers gravitate towards us. They want to be held accountable. Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m glad you found your voice it’s always good to see you, thank you very much. Thanks so much. My pleasure. Singer and CEO. Thank you for joining us for our. 2025 nonprofit technology conference coverage in the Baltimore Convention Center and thanks to Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits for sponsoring nonprofit radio at 25 NTC. Next week, more from 25 NTC PII in the age of AI. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, Donorbox.org. I’m gonna miss that alliteration. Donor box is going away this week. Fast, flexible, friendly, fundraising forms. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. 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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Notice. I expertly wished you happy Saint Patrick’s Day last week when it was Saint Patrick’s Day, so prompt, so timely, right there, so no need to apologize this week for wishing you happy Saint Patrick’s Day week, a week late. We’re right on time here on nonprofit Radio. And I’m glad you’re with us. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of cataphagia. If I had to repeat the words, you missed this week’s show. Pretty sad when the, the bar is just set at. Being on time with a happiness wish. That’s, that’s, that’s a sad state. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, to introduce this week’s show. Hey Tony, this week it’s join us at 25 NTC. The 2025 nonprofit technology conference is next month in Baltimore. Non-profit radio will be there. You still have time to join in person or virtual. N10 CEO and our technology contributor, Amy Stammple Ward reveals all the learning and fun you can expect. Then Great value in sustainable giving. Dave Raley is the author of the book The Rise of Sustainable Giving. Our subscription economy has spawned a change in donor preferences and great growth in recurring donations. Dave shares his expertise on incentives, creating a thriving sustainer program, naming, converting donors to sustainers, what the future looks like, and more. He’s the founder of Imago Consulting. On Tony’s take 2. Tales from the gym. If they can do it, we all can. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, Donorbox.org. Here is. Join us at 25 NTC. I’m ready to record with Amy Sample Ward. They are the CEO of N10. Uh, they’re also, of course, our nonprofit radio technology contributor, but today it’s the CEO of N10 role that we are here to talk about because we’re talking about 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference. It is coming up April 16, 1718 in Baltimore, Maryland. Let’s talk 25. Amy, can’t wait to hugs, hugs. Uh, and, you know, I, I know that most of your time at the NTC you’re recording for nonprofit radio, but what’s nice about it is you’re not in like a recording studio. And so I can always walk by and just listen to who. You’re talking to and um I always see other people standing there listening, um, or taking photos, you know. Yeah, I love, I love the visibility. Yes, we’re, we’re gonna be, we’re in the hub in the commons, which is where all the meals are, all the all the uh keynote sessions, all the general sessions are right there, everything. What else? What else? The receptions, receptions, yes. Uh, so I, I feel like, you know, we’re just, by the time this is airing, we’re just gonna be 3 weeks out. So we probably should focus on the online. Version of uh you know, people register for the in-person conference. Even in person, like they will walk up on day 10, you get walk-ups every year. Oh, all right. Well, all right, so then let’s keep that open. All right, yeah, you you can still register to join us in Baltimore. Of course there is an online only virtual side of the conference that you can also register for and never leave your home or your office or wherever you are. That’s right. There’s, there’s a version for uh each in person and online, and if you need to switch, you can go, this is all on the website, there’s a little spot for switching from virtual to in-person and vice versa. And if you register for in person and end up not coming or you came and you felt like there was too many sessions to choose from, or you could only come for 1.5 days of the, of the 3, you have access to all of the online content, just like somebody who registered for only online. It’s all So if you register for Baltimore, you’re basically registering for both, essentially, because you can access all content. Right, for next, for the following 3 months, I think you can get access to all the, all the, uh, virtual sessions because there are a number of virtual only sessions, but as, as you just said, OK, you get access to both really if you, if you, OK, so all right, so let’s keep up the possibility then. so, you know, where should we show up if we’re, uh, if we’re walking in. Uh, of course, all the info is at.org naturally. But you know, just where, where are we in Baltimore? Where are we going? We’re at the Baltimore Convention Center right by the harbor, and I don’t believe that there’s another event happening in the convention center, um, but at least the area we’re in is very clearly just us. You can walk right through the sky bridge from the Hilton or walk from the Sheraton. They’re connected to the building, um, and Of course, as always, there are lots of other activities that happen that aren’t in the convention center, but all the sessions, all of the main conference stuff will all be in the convention center and We’re trying something that we’ve never done before, um, but because of the physical proximity to the stadium, we, with thanks to the financial support of three of our sponsors, have bought out two sections in the stadium for attendees that want to, to all go over to the Baltimore Orioles game together, uh, Wednesday evening. So, like, knock on wood for Memorable weather, whatever. I don’t want to just say good because it seems like it’d be good, you know, jinx, but um and this is free. This is free. Yeah, you got sponsors covering hundreds of tickets for, yeah, yeah, that’s outstanding. Baltimore Orioles game. OK, that’s that’s the football team. Noball. Oh they play baseball? All right. Well, baseball, no, that’s good. Baball is good. That’s right. That’s right. OK. um. Oh, I thought you were joking, but you were being serious. No, I was joking. OK, OK, good. OK, good. I was like, oh gosh. Yeah, so it’ll it’ll be fun and I think that. Somebody from our group, I mean, it doesn’t need to be me. So maybe, maybe we can convince the sponsors to do it. Even goes down on the field and says, Hey, everybody from the conference is here, and we all get to wave. So cool. I thought you were gonna say you’re gonna sing the anthem. Oh my gosh, no, they would pay me not to do it. All right. Um, so let’s remind folks that NTC. The nonprofit technology conference is not only for technologists. We, we say this year after year, but we have new listeners each year and maybe somebody didn’t listen to last year’s NTC TS TS show. Let let’s make this very, very clear. It’s not only for technologists. Well, it’s, it’s such a complicated thing because on one hand, I would say it’s 2025. We are all using technology to do our job. And so in some ways, we’re all technologists, but This is not a conference that was founded 25 years ago or still today operated with the assumption that everyone that is making decisions about technology or using technology or wants to know, like the latest developments of technology, see themselves as The IT director or or has technology in their job title, right? And so the topics, I mean, there’s, I think 162 with the latest count or whatever in the spreadsheet, you know, of of sessions, but there’s so many opportunities in sessions and out to talk about all the other implications beyond any technology system, you know, it’s not necessarily. Just about which CRM which database are you using? It’s why, why do you even have that data in your database? Where did it come from? Do you know when you could get rid of it? Do you have a retention policy? You know, it’s all these other pieces that impact, yes, our technology systems but also impact our work and how we can do that work and technology is just in in the mix of it all. There are multiple tracks that that are not that involve technology naturally that overlap but fundraising, there’s a fundraising track, there’s a diversity, equity accessibility track, um, there’s a leadership track, you know, there’s, so there’s lots of different subjects across these 160 some uh sessions, and some of them will be. Uh, I’ll be talking to the speakers from some of them, a subset of them, for future episodes of nonprofit radio. Of course, that’s what I’ll, will be on the hub, uh, will be in the hub at the Commons recording. Um. I love the, you know, if you do go, if you go in person, I had to, you know, I’m looking at the lunch, it’s incredible. We had to, I think we talk about the food every year, but I got, I got, I’m reading now. I’m reading from the lunch description for each of the three days, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. All meals at the NTC. Include a range of options for gluten free, vegan, vegetarian, low carb, low salt and low sugar dietary needs. Menus avoid or label the inclusion of peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, eggs, cow’s milk, soybeans, sesame and wheat. Halal, kosher and celiac meals are available on request, and if you need a space away from the cacophony, look for signs for the quiet tables. It’s such a thoughtful damn conference. I mean, this is just around the food, but that’s a microcosm of the thoughtfulness around NTC. Well this is a quite a core value of, of NTC and N10. Tell us how you, you think about what people need. At a conference and and how you execute on that. Well, maybe I could start with the food that feels um especially relevant, what you don’t know, or externally doesn’t know. Um, we have, um, I will say an animal rights activist organization, uh, that you can anticipate who they are in the community, glad they’re in the community, glad they come to the conference, learn from sessions, you know, presented sessions, etc. Who Has, um, for a number of years, tried a few different campaign strategies to have the conference be entirely vegan. I am vegan. I have been since I was still a teenager, you know, I I don’t disagree necessarily, but as an insight, and I’m glad that there are conferences that are able to be all vegan, but our community has Members in it who have allergies that make uh all vegan, you know, diet at a conference where it’s just all set out on the table, not something they could eat at. Um, and we have folks with disabilities who, even if they don’t have an allergy, they have food related needs that allow them to be comfortable and manage their day without having to go back to their hotel room, right, to eat, um. There are a lot of different things that come across someone’s decision making mind when they’re standing at the beginning of that like buffet table, right? And some of them are dietary, medical, health related, some of them are emotional, some of them are social, right? Like, what if you don’t recognize any food on that table? None of this food is from a, a shared culture that you have. We have people from 16 different countries coming to the conference, right? You might not be allergic to any of them, but if you don’t know what any of them are, and you’re trying to have professional conversations and you’re really trying to get along with this person that you just met in a session, right? And maybe you wanna work for them, and now you’re faced with a bunch of food that you don’t know what it is. That’s very difficult, right? And so we think about Accessibility in a lot of different ways at the conference, and what are the pieces that we can put in place that make it so people are comfortable, they have some things that they can recognize and anticipate throughout the day. It’s why we have coffee and tea at all different hours because Again, culturally or from the time zone that you’re in, right? You, this might be when you want coffee. Uh, so we really wanna think about how do folks move through this space without having To use up all of their decision making or all of their thinking for the day on where do I need to go? Is there gonna be food there? Can I get more water? What do I need to do? Like, we want all of that to be in place so that people are using up their brains saying, wow, what should I think about AI? Oh, wow, what should I learn about this new data standard? What, right? We want that to be where people can spend their thinking and not on Am I gonna be able to eat here, you know? It’s all very thoughtfully done. You, you, you, you call it accessibility and ease, uh, and I, I just caption it as thoughtful, thoughtful. A lot of thought goes into, uh, hosting over 2000 people, right? How many, how many do you think we’ll have. Well, I mean, unfortunately, we have in person, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, it’s so similar to 2020 in which, um, that was the year that it was meant to be in Baltimore previously. Um and with the start, uh, it was scheduled for March 23rd through 25th, 2020. So that was right when We were the first event that was canceled with the governor’s, you know, declaration that events are. I remember, I remember tearful. Yeah, because we made the choice to cancel before the governor, before any governor had stopped events, and so we had to make the choice to cancel, knowing that it would mean we’d close the organization because we’d have to pay all the fines. And thankfully, our lawyer found that the cancellation to the convention center, uh, has to be in writing, and we, we never bothered to tell them we weren’t coming because that felt self-evident, and we had spent a week telling the community and the governor said, hey, there’s no events, and we’re like, what we’re, we don’t have to pay. I mean we still have to pay some, but We didn’t have to close as an organization, right, and pay every dollar we had, um, but now with all of these just erratic and harmful changes that the administration is unleashing basically every day. We’re having, you know, we’re hearing from folks asking for a scholarship. They just lost 75% of their funding because of what’s happened, you know, they still want to come to the conference. They, they know that that’s where they can connect with people and get resources and, and learn. But they are firing staff, they, they have no funds. So we’re giving scholarships out to, you know, anybody who’s writing to us um in those situations, and we have continued the regular rate for anyone within about 100 miles of Baltimore that is maybe, you know, a a a local in that way to try and keep um it accessible. To folks who are really having those impacts. Um, so we’ve seen a lot of, not a lot, but a number of folks in February need to move to virtual because they Their organization no longer has funding, you know, um, which is Difficult and just outrageous that we’re in this place where organizations, you know, are somehow the target of I don’t know. I, I, I don’t even know how to frame what the situation is. Yeah, we talked about that. Yeah, so that is gonna impact how many folks are there. I mean, I’m sure they’ll still be, um, you know, 2000. Regis registrants, it’s just by the time we get to April, what will be the mix of a couple 100 online, you know, people in person, who, who, who can still physically come, you know? Um, and unfortunately, we’re having folks from a few of the non-US countries say, hey, I’ve been advised not to come to the US. So I’m not going to travel there anymore, and I’ll just be a virtual attendee. Which is also infuriating because this is a global community and I Don’t like that we would have, I mean, we’re just talking about accessibility, right? And, and that all the elements that we try to control so that we can create a, a place where folks really can be together and share their ideas and build power and, and make relationships that are beyond any of these, you know, oh, you work in a different organization. Who cares? We can still share our ideas. We can still figure this out together, right? And To have folks Feel unsafe is is. Not what we want, you know, and obviously not in our control, not in our, not our doing, but it still on a bigger scale to have folks feel unsafe entering the United States. Right. It infuriating. All right, let’s not end on an infuriating note, although, uh the the realism is uh realism and not ignoring. I feel like, I feel like too many. Too many of our community’s content creators are ignoring the reality that it’s besieging us every single day. Yeah, it is every day. I, I, so, you know, reality is essential. I, we’re living it. So, well, that’s a great pivot. We could end on something uh positive, which is the three keynotes that are coming because Alyssa Richardson. Her work is just on what you’re talking about. How do communities use the technology they have access to social media, etc. to shine a light on what is really happening in their community, to have some access to power through truth and information. Um, she has written books, she’s a professor, she has a, you know, whole lab, um, at UCLA or USC, um, and it’s just really An incredible person, so she’s One of the keynotes, just as you were just saying, why are we not talking about this, um, and Doctor Ashley Xu, who is the author of Against Techno Abelism and you know, kind of trying to counter this idea that technology is here to cure us and make us perfect because we don’t need to, you know, what what if we get rid of disabilities, which is such a Elitist ablest idea like this disabilities are in so many people in so many different ways, and that’s not that something’s wrong with them, you know, um, technology isn’t some cure or solution or path to perfection, right? That’s no, no, no, that’s so antithetical to, to what, at least in the community we’re talking about with technology. So I’m excited for her talk, um. But we also have Michael Running Wolf, who’s worked on indigenous language projects through AI. So yes, it’s probably unavoidable to talk about AI, but can we talk about it rooted in absolutely using it in ways that help us as the users, as communities who didn’t get to necessarily have access. To build open AI or anything else, right? So what, what do we, what, what can we learn um from Michael’s projects really rooting those technologies in um communities most impacted. All right, 3 outstanding. Keynote speakers, you’ll enjoy one each morning. Right after the breakfast. Yeah, or you can even, you know, if you’re a slow eater like me, save your breakfast and eat it while they’re talking, yeah, and savor your breakfast because it’s all in the same place. It’s all ins and of course the virtual attendees are are part of that part of the the keynotes as well, and they’ll be having breakfast, you know, on their own, just your camera will be off while you’re eating your Cheerios. Yeah, exactly. All right. Uh, so April 16 to 18, uh, Baltimore Convention Center, all the info is at n10.org. It’s right up the top of the website. You can’t possibly miss it. Join us in person, come see, come see nonprofit Radio at the Commons in the hub. We’ll have our studio set up or join uh 25 NTC virtually, but join. It’s, it’s worth it. It’s, it’s, it’s a smart savvy conference. That’s why this is the. 11th NTC that I’m bringing nonprofit radio to because the speakers are savvy and smart and they benefit all of us and as Amy, as Amy said, we all work with technology in our jobs and so the nonprofit technology conference is for you. Be with us. Thank you, Amy. Yeah, see you there. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Sounds great. All right, bye. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s DonorBox, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you, a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges. Helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs. Helping you, help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now it’s time for. Great value in sustainable giving. It’s a pleasure to welcome Dave Raley to nonprofit Radio. He’s the founder of Imago Consulting, an advisory firm that helps organizations create growth through innovation. He’s the author of the book The Rise of Sustainable Giving How the Subscription Economy Is Transforming Recurring Giving and what nonprofits can do to benefit. That’s what brings him to the show. You’ll find the book at sustainablegiving.org. You’ll find Dave Raley on LinkedIn. Dave, welcome to nonprofit Radio. So good to be here, Tony, and good to actually be, as we were saying offline on the other side of the mic. I’ve appreciated listening to the show and glad to be on it. Thank you very much. Thanks for being a listener. Congratulations on the brand new book. Oh, thank you, thank you, it’s been uh. Quite the journey, 3 years, um, 438 hours of writing enumerate the stats in the book. I, I have a friend who, um, because I I I’ve worked a lot with uh charities through the sort of the marketing agency space, Tony, and so I had a friend comment like, Dave, you don’t need to track your time. You do know that, right? And I thought, I don’t know, I just like tracking things, so I don’t want to track my steps every day, but I will track the number of hours I poured into this. This, uh, this, uh, passion project for sure. So as you were writing over those 4, you were you were keeping a log. I was keeping a log and thinking I don’t know if this thing’s ever going to. To be done candidly, I think the 1st 3 years, probably the 1st 2 years were like, OK, 1 ft in front of the other, and, uh, such a, such a huge effort, um, but I’m really proud of the book, uh, the early reception, and just I’m really hopeful that it makes a significant difference in our sector. It has that potential, absolutely. Um, if I may, I’d like to read from, uh, the foreword to, to sort of frame us a little bit, uh, your, your forward is by Gabe Cooper, CEO of Virtuous who’s been a guest on uh nonprofit radio also. The reality is that nonprofits are fundraising in a world that no longer exists. The total number of donors giving to nonprofits has consistently decreased over the past decade. Donors are more distracted than ever, and they receive a constant stream of ads and personalized messages from their favorite brands. Most donors still desire to make an impact in the world, but it’s become infinitely harder for nonprofits to break through the noise. That’s, uh, that’s as far as I got on the book. That’s page uh XXII. I stopped. I didn’t even to the pages. That was great. I didn’t even get into the Arabic numbers, so I, I stopped at XXII. Um, now, so. Uh, it’s getting hard to get through the noise. We’re, we’re fundraising in old methods. That was a little frame up. Why don’t you please give us, uh, your take on, on Gabe’s wisdom there. Yeah, you know, I, one of the meta sort of topics that I’m really passionate about is what does sustainable innovation look like? Uh, the book is certainly about sustainable giving and recurring giving in light of how, um, shifts have changed, and we’ll talk about that shortly, but You know, to respond to the way Gabe positioned that, number one, we are absolutely in the middle of a generosity crisis, um, and, uh, that is in North America, that the number of Americans that are giving to charity today is less than, uh, last year and is less than the year prior. Now, as those of us in this industry know, often the amount of dollars that are being given to to philanthropy, um, by individuals is increasing, but that’s thanks to largely mega, uh, you know, billionaire donors, which go for it. I would love them taking their, their philanthropic giving as well, but I do think there’s something about how do we teach the next generation generosity and what does that look like? Um, but to Gabe’s point about models, um, one of the things I always, uh, say is that it’s really important not to confuse your organization’s mission with your model. So your mission is about what your organization, your cause is, uh, is trying to change in the world. Your model is how you do that, right? Including how do you fund doing that. And so when I think about sustainable innovation, I think every organization, every institution, Is really somewhere on that organizational life cycle curve, you know, that S curve you see in like business books, you know, where it’s like infancy, early growth, mid-growth, slowing plateauing and decline, right? Every organization goes through that, and that’s just kind of a like the, you know, fourth law of thermodynamics for organizational health is that those models do age out. And so for me, um, the reason innovation is so important is because it helps us create new S curves, new models to effectively accomplish the mission that our organizations are called to, so. Innovation is critical, uh, models do shift over time, and one of the models that I’ve seen shift, uh, tremendously over the last decade is what’s been happening in the space of recurring giving, namely for the charities that have historically been left behind, uh, Tony, 3 quarters of charities, um. have historically not been able to really tap into strong, growing, resilient giving, you know, they’re not the local public television or public radio station or museum or, um, you know, 1 to 1 sponsorship type of organization. They’ve done pretty well over the last 100 years, uh, with Rick Gibbing, but it’s really the, the food bank, the rescue mission, the relief and development agency. The, uh, the think tank that hasn’t been able to really build strong growing resilient, recurring giving until really the subscription economy and the rises of subscription economy has essentially led to changes in how we consume. You know, the average American today, Tony, has, uh, more than 12 subscriptions, maybe to their chagrin, right, I know 96% of us I think have more than one. And yeah, I was 9. 9.8%. I have at least one subscription, adults, um, and what’s the number you just cited a number of subscriptions. Oh my gosh. All right. Um, before we get into the sustainable, let’s let’s define the subscription. I mean, Yeah, no, the Amazon Prime and Netflix are ubiquitous, but let’s just, let’s just make sure we’re all starting at the same place. What, what’s your sense of the subscription economy? Yeah, and you know, you, you hit it on the head. I think everyone kind of intuitively knows what it is today. Um, 10 years ago when I first started talking about this in the industry, Tony, I had to explain that, you know, what do you mean? You know, subscription. I was like, well, have you heard of Netflix? Oh yeah, OK, I get it. But today it’s really the rise of recurring ongoing, um, transactions in every area of our life, in our business lives, you know, we’re on Zoom right now. I don’t know about you, but I have to pay for the Zoom subscription. Um, you know, I listened to Spotify this morning while I was writing my latest wave report, the weekly column that I write on innovation, that’s a subscription. I had to change the batteries, by the way, in my Arlo camera, um, uh, some people use Ring. Uh, these, these doorbell cameras. Yes, right, you have a subscription, yeah, you make a point. You have a subscription to your doorbellion to your door. If you would have told me 10 years ago that you’re going to be subscribed to the doorbell company, I would have said, uh, no thanks, that’s not great. And yet I gladly spend, you know, whatever $15 a month to know when an Amazon package gets dropped off. One that that strikes me is that we used to pay. One time you used to buy a subcri you used to buy the product Windows. Windows you used to buy the, the operating system and every couple of years there was a new operating system and you have to spend $200 or $300 to, uh, now and, and other things similar but you now have a subscription to Windows 365. It’s called 365 and, and that’s the way you now access the Windows operating system. I don’t know, just, I don’t know, 78 years ago it wasn’t that way. Yeah, well, and I don’t know about you, but or your listeners, but I went uh kicking and screaming, you know, you’re like, no, I wanna own my software. I wanna own my music. Until you start to realize, oh yeah, how long did it take me to go from Windows, whatever, 95 to it was XP first and then 95. It’s like you would, you would end up with this like grossly out of date software because you’re too, I don’t know they meet you, but I was too cheap to, you know, get the next set of software to the point where it is so that ongoing value proposition, which by the way, is a key lesson for fundraising. Your proposition, yeah, but you have to, you have to like the reason I I give money to Spotify every month is not because I’m renting music from the music company. It’s because there is an ongoing each month I’m receiving novel value, and that is what’s uh helping me continue to stay in that subscription. And so I think software, I now look at it as a gift, right? I started uh started my company. And Mago just uh just under 3 years ago and I was so grateful that I have to spend several $1000 in, you know, in software costs. I knew I could I could subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud, to Google Workspace, to Zoom, and get a lot of value and spread out that cost, um, but that their ongoing value is so powerful. Share some of the uh stats that you have about sustainable giving, why this is so important for nonprofits. Yeah, there’s, you know, there’s certainly some of the, um, the commonly used stats about the value of sustainable giving, which just to rattle through a few of those, average retention rates, 78 to 86%, that’s versus a multi-year, you know, single gift owner we call them. That typically they’ll retain about 42%, so, you know, almost double or in some cases literally double the the uh the the retention rate, significantly high, higher long term value, 5 to 7 times the long-term value. They’re 6 times more likely to leave an organization in their estate, um, or legacy plan, uh, if they’re a recurring donor. I was just doing a seminar with a Group that does uh recurring or I’m sorry, does legacy giving, Tony, and they, um they just did a study of all of the organizations and all these state gifts they’ve monitored and the number one most predictable factor, um, after an after a donor had been on the file for 10 years, so. The first one was longevity, but the second was frequency. It was the frequency of giving and so recurring givers were the most likely um indicator that they would be a legacy giver. That’s outstanding. What can you shout the company name? Yeah, Canopy Resources, um, for Ministry. They’ve got two different brands. Oh sorry, no, C A N O. OK, OK, but don’t spell it right, the incredible value. And but there are some less known statistics. Neon, the folks over at Neon looked at over 200. They found the average charity from 2019 to 2024 grew recurring 127%. So this is not, um, you know, I’m a big believer in seeing, you know, what changes on the horizon and what waves, you know, are coming. This is, this is an opportunity that’s not something that’s just coming down the line. I’m not here saying, hey, I wrote a book, Tony, in 2 or 3 years, this is going to be a big deal. It’s like, no, no, no, it’s a big deal right now, and it’s been a big deal the last couple of years. But, and this is critical, my, I feel like part of my role in this sector is to help people to connect the dots that it’s a big deal now, but then what do I do about it? And so really the, the third part of the book is ultimately, well, the 2nd and 3 parts of the book are how to take advantage of the subscription economy and then how to build and grow a thriving recurring giving program. Also recurring donors, uh, you make this point, give 25% more than their, their recurring donation commitment. Just, just flush it out a little bit quickly. Yeah, the, you know, and, and I, I’ve had some, as I’ve been speaking about this at conferences, I have had occasional people come up to me and say, yeah, set it and forget it, right? And I’m like, no, that actually it turns out in the subscription world that doesn’t work either. But really your recurring donors are the most generous single gift donors, meaning the average recurring donor um on a file will give in addition to their annual recurring giving another about 25% in single, what we call single gifts, right? So it’s the year-end gift, it’s the emergency relief gift. And so when I work with organizations to map out their cultivation of recurring donors, I’m we’re always looking at what are you doing to give your recurring donors additional gift opportunities, um, how are you messaging that to them because just as much as some organizations might think, well, you know, we should just uh not send any uh additional asks to our recurring donors. No, the opportunity is really to. To cultivate them because they are, they’re the most bought into your cause. So when there is that disaster or that uh crisis situation or that year end, again, those major times of year, those donors are often the most responsive. So what we’re seeing is that That this uh subscription economy that’s ubiquitous as you described. Has led to a change in donor preferences on the charitable side so sort of the, the corporate side has taken this and accelerated it and, and it’s like we said now ubiquitous. People are expecting this on the and, and looking for it even on the, on the charitable side. So it, so it’s a, it’s a shifting donor preferences, would you talk about that in the book. Yeah, and it’s really about um a lot of these trends, um, start on the what I would call the consumer side, right, which is just it’s it’s it’s setting tones. I remember I I started in the industry in the early days of digital fundraising and um I remember when people were were worried about putting their. Credit card in online and I remember when Facebook came out and clients would say, hey, should we do fundraising on Facebook and I would say, no, it’s a good, it’s a good relational platform, you know, it’s a good way to connect with your alumni or whatever, um, because it wasn’t intel several years of in this case Facebook being around and people becoming used to basically their consumer lives and their social media lives intersecting. That’s when then. You know, in this case, I think it was the Haiti earthquake that was the real uh linchpin moment, um, in the late 2000s when Facebook and the Red Cross raised, I think it was $30 million overnight and it just, that changed the landscape. Of people being willing to give related to their social media presence. Well, if it weren’t for several years prior to that of people getting used to using their credit card online and all these other things, it wouldn’t have paved the way for generosity. And so I’m seeing the same thing, the subscription economy is not new. I don’t have to convince people that it exists when I speak now, but I do have to help them understand how that has really laid the groundwork for people’s philanthropic behavior changing. You call in the book subscription philanthropy. Yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s your phrase. I had I had I’m crediting well, and the funny thing is, you know, and I don’t want people and I talk about subscription giving too. I want to be careful on the reason I didn’t use that in the title of the book, by the way, was I don’t want people to think I’m trying to, we’re trying to make philanthropy and generosity a consumeristic act. Now there is a value proposition and there’s a value exchange, and sometimes, by the way, there’s goods and services that even exchange hands. If I watch your public, you know, television station or I visit. The museum or I get the, you know, the free book resource, there could actually be some form of sort of good or service that exchanged, but what I’m trying to point out with subscription philanthropy is that really, um, there are some lessons we can learn from those subscription worlds and we can apply them to today. I remember when the streamlined purchasing uh um pages, I’m thinking of, you know, Amazon, one click buy, when, when those were emerging, they were influencing. Well, they were influencing what donors expected from an online transaction, and that influenced what nonprofits had to. Had to create that we had to make a, you know, more seamless online not a purchase but an online giving process because people expected that from the, from their commercial side. So this is, you know, it, and I think that’s terrific. I think there are lessons that can be translated, they learned from the commercial side to the charitable side, uh, that’s, that’s all to our benefit on the, on the charitable side. Totally agree, totally agree. So let’s talk about, you know, now we have to, you know, I always remind listeners, you know, you got to get the book because there’s only so much we can talk about in an hour. So you got to get the book at um at sustainablegiving.org. Of course, we all, uh, you can also get it through Barnes and Noble and Amazon, etc. um, but you know, give Dave’s landing page some hits because uh. He’s a metrics guy he’s tracking the metrics on the. You’ll you’ll end up with a copy of the book either way, but you may as well make, uh, make the gateway through, uh, sustainablegiving.org. So. Uh, we’re, we’re jumping a little ahead, but I, I do want to talk about some of the incentives. So now, you know, we’ve talked about sustainable philanthropy, how important sustainable giving is, how that’s created a subscription philanthropy, so that’s what I meant, subscription philanthropy model, um, some of the incentives if you wanna, if we wanna move into this. We, we, we don’t feel like we’re doing it well enough, the, uh, the way the Gabe Cooper quote, you know, suggests that we either not doing it, which is really unwise, um, well, you know what, let’s take a step back. Let’s go to, let’s go to the nonprofit that isn’t doing. Uh, isn’t doing sustain or giving. And we’ve already explained why, why it’s important. We’re not, we’re, we’re past the, the motivation step, but what should we think about, you know, like what should we bring, what do we need to bring to our vice president? What, what topics do I need to, as the vice president bring to the CEO or what issues, you know, what help me make the case, I suppose, for the nonprofit that may not be, uh, unwisely, unfortunately, but, uh, doing this type of giving. Well, the first thing I would say is you have a recurring giving program. Whether you call it something or you’ve actually spent any time on it, whether it’s any good. I have not met a nonprofit that does not have donors who have chosen to give on a recurring basis. The question is whether or not you’re taking advantage of that and whether or not you are creating growth. It actually again reminds me of the early days of digital, where I would, I would go and, uh, to a charity and I would say, hey, I think we can really help grow your, you know, your online giving. And they would say, oh, it’s already growing 20% a year. And I would be, and I would say, but how fast could it be growing because the reality is just with adoption, people are going to choose of their own volition. You know, in this, in the case of digital, to give online, in the case of subscription giving to give on a recurring basis. So first thing I would say is you have recurring giving um going on in your organization and so it’s about understanding what is that today and then what could it be in the future. I am a huge believer in the potential and, and really painting the picture for that. So I always like to ask people, you know, how many, how much, how many donors do you have today? How much are they giving on a recurring basis, because Nobody’s starting from zero, and that’s actually the good news. So that’s the first thing I would do, um, uh, certainly give them a copy of the book, that’s apparently, uh, work, uh, the book’s only been out, Tony, but, uh, just for a month as we record this, but it’s been really powerful when you have that kind of like I could try to convince you of something or I could let this third party podcast episode or you know or actual book, um, uh, you know, do some convincing for me, um, but. I think it’s really just recognizing that you do have a recurring giving program. The question is, are you going to do anything about it? And, um, and once you know kind of where you are today, that’s where you can start to um forecast for lack of a better term, like what would it look like to grow this program, and, you know, what, how might that enable our our mission that our organization is trying to accomplish? You’re, you’re thinking, you know, as I was reading. Made me sort of reimagine the work that I do, uh, it’s sort of a different framework. My, my work is planned giving fundraising consulting. You, you listen to the show, so you probably know that, um. You know, and there are, uh, clients that have donors. I’m thinking about a handful of people, but they, they’re doing their recurring giving, they’re just doing it every year. They’re putting $1500 or $20,000 into, you know, on the planiving side into a charitable gift annuity. So you, you got me thinking, you know, well, all right, so. In, in, in my practice, I’m seeing this. I, I don’t think that is recurring giving. I, you know, but what, what value proposition we’re gonna get, you know, we’ll get formally to the, to the value proposition. We’ve, we’ve teased it like 4 times now. We will get to it. I, I promise our listeners, um. You know, but what am I offering these folks, you know, so some of them, uh, have come to expect maybe a comp to the annual gala at which is like a $500 a person ticket. So there’s $1000 you know, that, you know, I, I hesitate to be, uh, too, too, um, lofty in my own like self-aggrandizement, but I meet with them often, you know, there’s that, um, I’ve introduced them to the CEO. And in one case I’m thinking of uh an attorney who I introduced to the chief legal officer at a client. So they’re, so they’re getting it just got me thinking, thinking differently about my work. Yeah, uh, uh, uh, you just gave me a little different framework to think about, um, which was very kind of, uh, opening to me. So thank you. Oh, you’re welcome. Well we’re seeing it in planned, which, you know, you would think, well, planned giving, like that’s the opposite of recurring recurring giving is transactional. No, well, this is what we’re here to learn that sustainable sus sustainer giving is not transactional, that’s not what you want, but the, the, the stereotype is, well, planned giving is totally relational and, and this recurring giving is totally transactional. All right, so we’re here to break that down for you’re wrong about the sustain the sustainer giving. And there is overlap between the two. it was kind of a broadening thing as I was reading the book. Well, and even there’s a reason that you don’t see in the book, uh, save for maybe one or two spots. Um, I don’t refer to it as monthly giving. I refer to it as recurring giving. I didn’t call it I did I make a mistake? No, no, no, but I’m, I’m actually, it, it reinforces the point that you’re making, which is, is planned is at least certain parts of planned giving actually a form of recurring giving. You know, I go back in the, in the early part of the book, the kind of the ancient history studying humanity and Plato and you know, different people around philanthropy and the earliest form of recurring giving was the ancient Jewish people and the practice of what they called first fruits, you know, it’s like if you’re a If you’re a farmer or you’re a shepherd, then you would take the 1st 10% of your crop or your, you know, your livestock, and then you would bring it to the temple, which was the local central, you know, essentially authority for the Jewish people, and they would, um, They would then as a part of that process, they would then feed the, the poor and the widows and, and care for, care for those in need in their society and so that was a form of recurring giving. Now did it happen every month on the 1st and 15th? No, it happened every season, turns out because when you’re an agricultural economy. Uh, that’s when that happens, but this idea of this pattern of, of giving, and I do think we’re seeing lots of areas of fundraising, including plan giving, including what I would call major gifts, you know, middle or major gifts that are seeing their own influences, um, in recurring giving, you know, I had one client, uh, a couple of months ago, we ran a campaign. For new, you know, recurring donors to the organization, uh, and they had one donor sign up for $5000 a month, and I said on their credit card, and they said, yep, somebody’s getting a lot of miles, right? Um, but that donor, that’s the, that was the comfortable giving level for them versus another donor that might be $50 a month or or $20 a month, right? And so I do think we’re seeing this form of philanthropy intersect other, you know, uh, areas of philanthropy as well, and it’s all kind of, um, I think working together to increase generosity. I agree, yup, absolutely. We are seeing it. OK, thank you. Now, let’s, let’s talk about some of the incentives uh uh uh that uh you can use to induce folks. To, uh, into sustainable recurring giving, tick off, tick off some of your your favorites from the book. Yeah, you know, and I think with incentives, especially when I write about those in light of the subscription economy, people think again the more the consumer side, and there are certainly incentives that are literal, you know, it’s what we would call a backend premium, you know, like. Uh, you know, I donate and I get a copy of the latest book or I get a, you know, a chotchke of some form, um, and those are a form of incentive, um, really incentives are about helping move the donor to that point of decision, um. So some other incentives that I like though, um, so, uh, classic fundraising, but an absolutely powerful incentive is a match or challenge grant for recurring giving. So not just a sort of we have an overall match, but no, we have a donor that has agreed to match every first gift or the first few months of every, every new recurring donor that signs up. It’s a win from a middle and major donor perspective because you can actually uh use that to say, hey, you can help us multiply giving. Um, but then it’s also a very motivational thing for donors. Um, I’m a big fan of, um, uh, multipliers depending on the organization. So like if some organizations do a lot of like gifts in kind or volunteer service where you can say every gift, uh, every dollar you send results in $30 or $10 worth of impact because of the donated goods we have or the, you know, the volunteer force that we operate, so multiplier. Um, I would call deadlines and goals candidly a form of incentive, you know, um, so I’m a big believer in saying, hey, by this date, because of this very specific need and this very specific reason, we’re looking for, you know, 150, uh, you know, monthly partners to help accomplish this, you know, this vision. Um, and there’s other, there’s others, but those are some of my favorites, um. Could you do the bounce back for me? Explain, explain the bounce back is a device, um, and I, you know, my first job was in direct mail, so it’s it’s a direct mail specific term, but, um, is really a device that you send that then the donor’s gonna return. So I, we used to do this um with some of the shelters we would work with, we would do a Thanksgiving place map. And we would allow, um, donors, we would send the placemats to donors and we would say we were going to use these when we serve the Thanksgiving meals, the week of Thanksgiving. Would you consider writing a note of encouragement to somebody who’s down, you know, um, and that’s like a really beautiful bounce back device because it’s like, yes, I would love to do that, um, for, for those listening that are familiar with the concept of child sponsorship, you know, letter writing is actually a form of a bounce back like I’m gonna write a letter to. To, you know, the, the person that I’m sponsoring, um, so it’s just some sort of involvement device, um, that engages the donor. It’s time for Tony’s Take 2. Thank you, Kate. Another tale from the gym. Uh, an uplifting one, not, not a whiny one like Mrs. Blood and Soil last week. Uplifting There’s a man who comes to the gym. I see him 3 times a week, probably. He comes in in a walker, and he needs help. He has a friend who comes with him each time the friend holds the door. They park the walker alongside the wall, and then the friend helps him over to the bike, stationary bike, and this guy does the stationary bike. He’s certainly 80 plus, uh, could, um, could be mid to at least even could be mid 80s, maybe even a little higher. But there he is Several times a week. Coming in his walker, but he makes the trip and he does the stationary bike for, I don’t know, a long time, you know, I’m not cocking the guy, but he doesn’t just do it for 5 minutes. And then there’s a woman who comes in, not as often as the man in the walker. Uh, she works on the treadmill. And she has supplemental oxygen. She has a cannula. In her nose, and she has a small oxygen bottle in a backpack. And she does the treadmill, and not also not for a short time. We’re not talking 5 minutes. So, Of course I don’t know these people because, uh, I, as we know, I keep to myself in the gym, just try to listen to others and do my business and, and depart. But if the man with the walker who needs help getting from the, from the where he leaves his walker over to the bike, and the woman with the supplemental oxygen, if they can be working out. We all can. They inspire me. They make me realize there’s no excuse when I don’t, you know, sometimes some mornings uh don’t really feel like doing it. I think of, uh, I think of these folks. So if they can do it, we all can. And that is Tony’s take too. OK. I think you should go talk to these people. I mean, I’m not a gym person, so I don’t know like the gym etiquette, but I mean if they don’t have like headphones on, I think you should go like introduce yourself, go talk to these people, see what their story is. You do, right? I don’t know. Uh, neither one of them owns uh headsets, I don’t think. They don’t, no, they’re not wearing AirPods or headsets or anything. I don’t know, you know, I like, I like to keep to myself in the gym, you know, because, especially the man, the man on the uh on the um on the bike, he does a lot of talking on the bike. Um, you know, it’s the chatty, it’s the chattiness I’m trying to avoid. I don’t know. Uncle Tony, you’re a little chatty yourself where you wanna be. Uh, when I want to be, yeah, I turn on the charm. I turned the charm on, but, uh, in the gym, I just, I turn it off, I keep to myself, you know, I’m still the New Yorker. I, it wasn’t, I lived in New York 15 years. I didn’t grow up there. I grew up in New Jersey, but close to New York City, you know, and these folks are, it’s, it’s North Carolina, small town. Different sensibilities, uh, and I’m making, uh, unfair rationalizations, uh, and, and, uh, stereotypes and rationalizations, but these things are important, stereotypes and rationalizations. Right. OK. Well for now. For now, you’d leave it. OK, thank you for now. We’ve got uu but loads more time. Here’s the rest of Great Value and Sustainable Giving with Dave Riley. Do you know the movie about Schmidt with Jack Nicholson? Well, I mean I know it, but I don’t know. He has a pen pal that he’s he’s he writes to this as his life is a spiral down after his wife dies, um, he writes to uh I think it’s, I’m pretty sure it’s. Yeah, so you hear him. Like probably 3 or 4 times in the movie, he’s, you hear a voiceover of him writing to uh to explain how his first world problems are uh spiraling. Well, there is, by the way, a principle in that story, and that is the power of human connection. Um, in fact, the first, um, uh, shelter that I ever worked with on a recurring giving program was called Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. I write about them in the book. And the first program I ever worked on, Tony was what they call a meal a day program. So it was this idea of if you give, it costs about, um, at that time with goods and service uh donated goods, it was like $1. $20 or something like that, a meal. Um, and so if you do the math, that’s about $35 a month, pay for $35 a month, you can join our quote unquote meal a day program. But Tony, a couple of things. Number one, it was a ton of work, and number two is it didn’t work very well, like it had a pretty low fulfillment rate. Um, these were in the old check writing days, by the way, that’s how long I’ve been in this industry, um. And um you’re gonna have a hard time dating because I’m 63, so you’re you look like 40 something, so you’re a way to go, yeah, 43. I’m right behind you. Um, the, but the, um, the reason I bring that up is because what one of the things we did that when we pivoted the program was we made it. About the actual guests at the at the mission. Now you had to be careful, uh, you know, privacy, all those sorts of things, but we made it about, um, this idea of you are helping to care for the women, children and families that are at the mission, which at that point was more than 50% of their guests. And Tony, when we shifted from being about meals, which are, if you think about it, inanimate objects that like, well, I guess if I don’t give this month a meal doesn’t happen, sort of abstraction to human connection. To the actual, this is, this is a story of a person and we may have changed their name and, and changed their photo for their privacy, but this is a story of a person you’ve actually directly made a connection with when we made that human connection, the fulfillment rates immediately went up by double digits, like literally overnight, we pivoted from meal a day to this representative sponsorship, and it was a huge lift in fulfillment because we made that human to human connection. So I think of Nicholson and his, uh, pen pal apparently. Yeah it was that human to human connection. How did you get to uh the Union rescue mission? The, the, it sounds like I just kind of hearing your voice that that work really moved you. How did you, how did you get into that work? Well, I grew up in Southern California was was really the part of the reason why it so moved me, and I remember, um, volunteering in high school at um at uh one of the missions downtown San Julian and San Pedro Street, right there, Skid Row, the original Skid Row, Los Angeles. And, and you say in the book that’s one of the most dangerous places in the country. Yeah, it’s one of the most difficult place to this day, it’s yeah, it’s it’s a difficult environment, um, and I’ve I slept at the mission downtown and, um, and served and uh so for me, my first realization that I could do um professionally. The kind of work that I, uh, feel like I’ve really am, am wired for the marketing and fundraising and business and, you know, that kind of stuff. Uh, Tony, the first time I realized that was when I, um, got a job at a fundraising agency. Um, this was 20 years ago, uh, called Master Works, and it was the realization that wait a second, I actually actually could have a career, professional, fulfilling career where I actually am able to help. Uh, causes, um, and the first client I ever had, Tony was Union Rescue mission. So it was, it was doubly, it was a double whammy. It was a personal passion of mine, having grown up in Southern California and having experienced that, but then also right at the point where I realized that my life’s work could be about helping with uh issues and situations like that. And so it’s just, it’s always been close to my heart. How old were you when you started the volunteer work? Oh, the first time I probably went down to Skid Row, I would, I would have been a teenager, um, yeah, early high school, you know, 1516, something like that. That’s not for 15 or 16 year old. What do you remember what was it, was it your parents or what moved you where most people are hanging out with their boyfriends and girlfriends. You know, I, um, it was a school related activity. It was a, it was a, uh, one of the missions down there that did like a shoe exchange, you know, donate, uh, lightly used shoes and then we pair them up with people and so I remember it was the one of the high school teachers that, um, basically said, hey, we’re getting on a bus, we’re going down, we’re going downtown. So then you’re like literally, I was, you know, sorting shoes and stuff, but then you’re helping, you know, uh, individuals find shoes that were great for them and their needs and I just, I still remember that today. And candidly, you know, I just wrote about this week the the question of are we teaching generosity to our children, um, Tony, because now fast forward however many years, 25, 30 years, uh, from that point. Um, I’m a dad, you know, I have two daughters, they’re ages 11 and 14, and I’m asking the question, like, am I, are they seeing me and my wife display generosity? Are they have are, are, are they having experiences that they’ll be able to tell 30 years from now that impact the way they choose to live out generosity in their own lives. Um, and so it’s been a more introspective time, uh, but yeah, thanks for asking that question. And how do you think you can motivate an 11 and 14 year old to, to, to be generous? Oh, I love that. Um, so the first thing, and I was just, this was very top of mind, so the first thing is to, um, make it visible. I think so much of generosity these days can be invisible, and I mean, this coming from a guy who literally just wrote a book about recurring giving, which is generally automated and You know, EFT or, you know, ACH preferably or credit card. And so the first thing that I think especially for us today is how do we make that visible, um, and Uh, that’s the first one. The, the second is, um, how do we, uh, the phrase I use is normalized generosity. I think, um, I think there’s, there can be, uh, an issue with kind of virtue signaling for lack of a better term, like, you know, you look at me, I’m so generous. However, I’ve been guilty of like not talking about my passion for generosity and I think that’s candidly just as. Not just as bad. I don’t know what the right phrase is, but I want, I want my kids, I want the people that are in my life to know that generosity is just a part of who I am. And so in our family, we, we want to do things that help people’s help our kids see that generosity is a way of life. It’s not like, oh, at the holidays, you know, it’s like, no, this is something that we do on an ongoing basis and we actually just had a conversation with our kids. Um, this last week, um, because a local charity, uh, actually it’s a national charity called Atlas Free. They do a lot with human trafficking. Um, our local church actually partnered with Atlas Free to do a, um, a, a program called Freedom February, and there was this idea of the phrase they use is do what you love to fight what you hate. And so do something that you’re passionate about, but essentially raise money to help fight human trafficking. And so my girls, um, on their own said, we wanna, you know, we want to do baked, you know, goods for, uh, for, for, uh, fighting human trafficking. And so my oldest made French macarons. We just spent some time in France, so she’s all about that. My youngest made cake pops and cookies and they sold them. And it was so cool. I have a picture on our website of them at the at the the the Sunday market, you know, selling their, their baked goods, and just the joy on their faces. Number one, they got to do what they love. They actually really do enjoy baking, but this idea of like we are making a difference and, um, I think that’s a memory, I hope, and I think they will, will stay with them for the rest of their lives and will maybe subliminally but will shape future decisions that they have around generosity and the joy of giving. No, you’re, you’re clearly thinking through it for your, for your children, um. Let’s go back to the book. Thank you for a little, uh, personal digression. Uh, we, uh, teased a couple of times, as I said, the, the value proposition. Now this is all part of your, uh, 76 or 7? No, he’s 77 steps, 7 steps to a thriving sustainer program, right? Uh, we don’t have time for all 7. You just, you gotta get the book because, uh, you know, we’re gonna, we’re just gonna, we had a couple. Uh, I would really like to talk about the crafting, uh, your, it’s your number 3, crafting. The an ongoing value proposition. So here’s where we’re explicitly defeating the Myth misunderstanding that this is transactional work, not at all, not at all. Uh, give us your, give us your thinking about, uh, you, you, you make it clear it has to be holistic, you know, ongoing quarter in the slot on, on the value proposition. Absolutely, yeah, you know, in in classic fundraising, you know, that we talk about the offer, you know, how, you know, how much will, you know, a dollar do kind of a deal, and this is an expansion of that. Um, and I do borrow a lot and quote in the book, the, the folks at Next after, they’ve done a lot of work on what I would call single gift value propositions, so like what is, what does it look like to create a value proposition for a single gift, but really it’s not a big stretch to say, OK, what does an ongoing value proposition look like? And so, Um, so a couple things. Number 11 of the mistakes I see organizations make is they use their single gift value proposition and they just say, hey, would you give us that monthly? So, Union rescue mission, classic example, the best single gift offer for the the mission was a meal and shelter, was this like, you know, very low on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it was a survival need. It was very easy, easy math, you know, $1 could basically a little more than $1 could provide a meal. Um, but like I said, the meal a day program, which is equivalent equivalent of saying let’s take our best single gift offer and just ask for that monthly, was the meal a day program. The fulfillment rates were not good. Um, so, so the first thing is I would just say be careful not to just assume that your best fundraising offer that you might use for single gifts is the same as your best fundraising offer for ongoing recurring giving. So some things to look for as you um define your ongoing value proposition. Um, the first thing is just to be super clear on the problem your organization exists to solve. Then, The second step is to really list out what I call your value claims, and again, this is borrowed heavily from the folks at Next after, but what are those things that are um Uh, that, that That are unique to your organization that helps to answer the question of, yes, we are the solution for this particular problem. Um, and then what you want to do is you list out those value claims, then you, uh, prioritize those. And the best way I know to do that is to actually talk to donors. Um, and so I don’t mean that euphemistically, by the way, Tony, I mean actually talk to don’t like call them, set up interviews, talk to donors. I’ve done that a lot with organizations as a third party, um, but until you actually understand what really motivates the donor and fires their imagination. Then, um, you, you’re just going to be guessing, you know, so talk to donors, and then I would say make sure you answer the question, why is this necessary on an ongoing basis? Because again, unlike uh single gifts, this is a donation that will hopefully be made month after month, year after year, and so you want to have a very clear ongoing need and the ability to then affirm the donor on an ongoing basis as they get towards that need. You make the point too that you should try to target um survival, safety, belonging, those again, those basic sort of Maslow needs. I think every organization has the ability to communicate its need in those sort of lower level survival, safety and belonging needs. And I think, and this is especially for organizations that tend to be a little bit more maybe esoteric or a little more um. Philosophical, you know, we help equip people with knowledge, which is true, but I think the question to for me to that type of a charity is, how does what you do contribute to the survival, safety or belonging of the people that you serve? And um, it’s so important to articulate your need in those terms and not in these kind of like higher functioning self fulfillment. You know, kind of needs, it’s just, um, and that’s really a classic fundraising lesson, you know, the, the more we can talk about how what we’re doing contributes to the survival, safety or belonging of the people we serve, the more just candidly emotionally resonant, um, the program will be with donors. Which one of your other seven steps, uh, to a thriving program? What do you, I’m feeling, I’m feeling very altruistic. We’re talking about talking about your daughters and now what which one what do you want to talk about? Well, we’ve had really two. We’ve hit the first one which is to benchmark your program and by the way, we do have a a vet blueprint guide, um, that is free, uh, Tony, so if folks want to get that, they can get that at sustainablegiving.org. Um, but so the first one we had is a benchmark your program, which is just how many, how much, how many donors do you have today? How much are they giving, and, and that’s a great place to start, crafting an ongoing value proposition and then, you know, just to pick one, I would say, um. I would say let’s talk a little bit about growing your program because that’s hard for you to pick, it’s hard for you to pick a favorite. They’re all my children. Yeah, so the 6th step is really to grow your program and I want to just point out one, there’s a number of things we cover in that that chapter, but one of the things we talk about is sometimes organizations make the mistake of focusing on the wrong growth lever. Um, so there’s two ways to get more new donors into your recurring donor program. Number 1, acquisition, straight, the first gift is a recurring gift, and then number 2 is what I would call conversion, and that is they’re an existing donor, single gift owner, and that you’re and they are becoming choosing to give on a, on a recurring basis. And the mistake I see is that organizations will focus on the wrong one of those two. and so they will be, for example, an organization that really their offer and who they are is really um tuned to them being what I would call a conversion focused organization, where really the best, most significant um success they’re going to see is by acquiring donors as single gift owners and then converting them to recurring. Um, but the mistake I see is I come in and they say, well, we’re running, you know, um, I don’t want to knock a channel, we’re running ads, uh, specifically for acquiring new donors, but nobody’s responding, and it’s like, well, actually your offer and your program are much more conducive to getting a donor in the door and then converting them. And then vice versa, sometimes organizations are very conversion focused when they could be acquisition focused. And so in the book, I’d say, what are the, the, the basic um components of an offer that is more conducive to acquisition. So just for example, um if it’s a highly visible need, very clear solution. Um, and it’s got a very clear specific price point and it’s widely understood. So, uh, for example, uh, not a client, but an organization I’ve respected over the years, Operation Smile. Uh, one of the things they do life saving surgeries, operations, certainly cleft palate, uh, surgeries. And it costs about, I think it was $270 to do a surgery. That’s a perfect acquisition offer because it’s super visible. Like you can literally, photos and video can tell the story of Operation Smile without doing anything else. It’s a very clear solution. We do these surgeries, very specific, you know, need, uh, an offer amount, $270 to a surgery, and that’s like a slam dunk for acquisition. Um, but a lot of organizations, and I would say a majority are more their uh their need, the need is takes a little explaining, um, the offer is not as clear and so it’s more about how do we get donors into the, the front door, giving that first gift and then. Move them candidly within 30 to 60 days, typically to then giving a monthly gift or or a recurring gift. And so that’s just one of the the levers and I write about that in the book of how do you know which one you should maybe uh uh put more emphasis in. You make the point in the book about the 30 to 60 day period. That’s the, that’s the period where people are most likely to convert. You want to flush it out a little bit? Yeah, it’s, it’s the, you know, people ask me when is the most likely time for a new, new single gift owner to convert, and we’ve already answered it, but it’s really right away. It’s that 1st 30, 60 days and I don’t know exactly why I have some hypotheses, you know, I think one of the reasons is that is the point in time when it’s the most fresh to that donor. They’ve made an initial decision to give a gift. Um, and by the way, this is a beautiful thing when you do have crisis type fundraising or disaster funding because those have classically been the most difficult donors to. Get to give a second gift. Um, but thanks to the subscription economy, we are all much more wired to be, uh, willing to do that and so. Um, you have the opportunity to basically within that 1st, 60 days to say, uh, basically two things affirm and invite, affirm that gift, you have made a difference. Thank you so much. You are the type of person that cares deeply about this cause, so you’re affirming, affirming, inferring, but you’re also very directly and indirectly inviting them to stand with the organization on an ongoing basis. And when I do a curve of um when people are most likely to uh convert, the highest time is always in that 1st 30 to 60 days, and then it falls candidly off a cliff for a while and then about a year later it might bump up again. So I’m not saying you can’t get people to convert to monthly giving on an ongoing basis, but that first introduction is, is really one of the most critical windows to uh to do that. You have a little advice on uh naming your sustainer program that that struck me because I, I have a sort of contrary opinion about naming, uh, what I don’t like legacy society, you know, plan giving recognition societies like stay away from legacy and heritage, please. There’s like ubiquitous, it could be anywhere, it could be any charity anywhere leg the legacy society, but share your advice about naming the recurring giving program. I think the short version is, um, and I think I opened that chapter with the Shakespeare quote, you know, um, you know, what a rose by a name, smells sweet, right? But I do think having a name meaning something that you can refer to as essentially a proper noun of the program is helpful because then when you’re referring to it in communications or you’re referring to them, the recurring donor, there’s like the shorthand, there’s the name, where a blank. I think it does create belonging. Um, but, and I outlined in the in the uh chapter on designing your program, really there’s two broad ways to do that, and I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here, but one way is what I would call descriptive naming and so that’s like, um, basically it’s our, uh, friends of the family program where you’re literally describing the program, and then there’s what I would call fanciful naming. Um, and that is where it might be more of a metaphor, you know, like Charity Water has the spring, right? Um, and I give some examples of programs in that chapter, uh, and I wouldn’t prescribe one way or the other, um, fanciful or descriptive, uh, but I would say having a name that you can refer to is actually really helpful and, um, and, and a piece of the puzzle. Beautiful, thank you. And so we still have several minutes together, but I kind of like to close on your, your thoughts about the future. That’s your last chapter in the book, the future of sustain or giving, trends you’re seeing. Uh, in terms of mindset, yeah, you know, it’s one of the things that really caused me a lot of consternation in the first year, uh, since of saying I think I should write a book was. These things are changing, right? So how do you, how do you write a book that is then, um, you know, going to stand some test of time? And I will say, uh, those of you that are fundraisers, you know, there’s there’s some real timeless fundraising principles in the book, and so it’s not just certainly not a fad book, uh, or at least that’s not the goal. But I did feel like it would, I would be very remiss to not um include a section in the book on how recurring giving is continuing to change. And so I break that into a couple of different categories. Um, I talk about, um, where what people might think of in terms of technology and how technology is continuing to shift. Um, you know, there was a, there was a comment you made earlier that I was thinking about, you know, in terms of how people are choosing to give, um, I can’t remember offhand, but the, the, the reality is that um technology is shifting. Um, I think I saw a stat the other day, more than 50%, I don’t remember the exact percentage. Of, of, uh, consumers today prefer to use what is called a digital wallet, right? So that’s the thing where I double click on my phone, um, and I can choose my Apple credit card or my whatever Bank of America credit card. And so, you know, things like, um, that the charity I just mentioned that my daughters um did a fundraiser for Alice Free, I was able to You know, standing at the bake sale, you know, actually go in and make a make a gift and use a digital wallet. That’s a big deal when you’re when you’re not on a computer and I don’t have my credit card handy or whatever. So I do, I do have a chapter on technological advancement. I have a chapter on how AI is actually enabling um some capabilities around. Uh, recurring giving I think is really powerful. Um, I do think the donor experience will continue to evolve. You mentioned the one click checkout. I still don’t think most nonprofits have the equivalent of a one click checkout, so I write about that. Um, and then, um, I write about some, some, uh, innovative ways that organizations are thinking about financing, um, recurring giving. Uh, I’ll give you one simple example because that sounds maybe, uh, pretty high level. Um, some of the most innovative organizations I’ve seen have basically, uh, created a system by which they can reinvest in their recurring giving program from new donors. So they basically talk to their board and they say what we want to do is we bring in 10 thousands or millions of dollars a year. We want to reinvest the first. 10 months of value from any new recurring donor, um, to then grow the program and so what it ends up doing is it basically creates a snowball effect where instead of just Uh, you know, investing whatever the number is, um, every month in a straight line, which creates, by definition, linear growth, like, oh yay, you know, it’s growing. When you double down that investment and double down and double down, you essentially get a compounding curve and so I know of organizations that have grown, um. Double and triple digits because they are, uh, basically reinvesting. They understand the value of a new recurring donor and they’re reinvesting that in. And so that’s not very common today. I don’t see that a lot, but where I do see it, I see really explosive growth and so I wanted to shine a light on some of those trends. And where would you reinvest in in promotion, marketing? Technology, well, it depends on what your growth engine is, um, so for some folks, if they’re more of an acquisition oriented, uh, institution, then acquisition versus do more, yeah, do more, you know, face to face or whatever, um, versus an organization that might be more conversion oriented, it might be like, actually, we need to invest more in our single gift acquisition because we know that’s what fuels the funnel for for recurring. And just generally too, you, you anticipate a sustainer first mindset. Yeah, that’s the, that’s the, I don’t see that um completely across the board, but I couldn’t come away and not see that the some of uh many of I would say the fastest growing charities today have this sustainer first mindset and they either have had that for a long time, you think of organizations like the Compassion, International or World Vision, they’ve had that for a long time. Or, um, Charity Water is a more modern equivalent where they’ve had it for, you know, 89 years and that’s created significant growth, and then now they are, um, sort of diversifying their focus, but is it is this kind of this sustainer first mindset, at least for a significant period of time that seems to have been really correlated with rapid growth. The book is the rise of sustainable giving how the subscription economy is transforming recurring Giv, what nonprofits can do to benefit. Uh, person who wrote it is right here in case you, you probably put those two things together by now. Dave Raley, you’ll find him on LinkedIn, you’ll find the book plus the free resources. At sustainablegiving.org. Dave, thank you. Thank you very much for sharing and, and you have my good wishes for your, your daughter’s philanthropy. Oh, thank you. Well, and I, I hope for, for the rest of us, you know, that’s just it’s a deep passion and I do think that sustainable giving is a part of that. So thank you, thank you for investing the time and reading that book and drawing out those insights and, and, uh, yeah, I’m just, I’m just really uh hopeful for uh for our our sector. Next week, mental wellness amid the political chaos. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor Box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. I love that alliteration. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.