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Nonprofit Radio for January 31, 2020: CEO/Chair Relationship
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My Guests:
Alex Counts: CEO/Chair Relationship
Your CEO and board chair need to forge and maintain a strong partnership. Alex Counts shows us how. He’s a consultant, and founder of Grameen Foundation.
Amy Sample Ward: #20NTC
Amy Sample Ward, CEO of NTEN and our technology and social media contributor, joins for a quick chat on the 2020 Nonprofit Technology Conference. Nonprofit Radio will be there and you should too!
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Transcript for 474_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20200131.mp3
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit [00:00:16.74] spk_0:
radio big non profit ideas for the [00:00:19.67] spk_2:
other 95%. [00:00:44.44] spk_0:
I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown in taquito amino acid E mia If you brought me down with the sappy idea that you missed today’s show CEO chair relationship, your CEO and board chair need to forge and maintain a strong partnership. Alex Counts shows us how he’s a consultant and founder of Grameen Foundation on [00:00:48.09] spk_2:
Tony’s Take. Two planned giving for the decade were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As. Guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali [00:01:18.14] spk_0:
Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant er Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Now let’s, uh, meet Alex counts Pleasure to welcome him. He’s adjunct professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and a non profit consultant. He’s founder of Grameen Foundation, which has grown to become a leading international humanitarian [00:01:31.93] spk_2:
organization. He’s got a book Changing [00:01:41.95] spk_0:
the World Without Losing Your Mind. Leadership lessons from three decades of social entrepreneurship, which is a chronicle of philanthropy. Editor’s pick. He’s at Alex counts dot [00:01:47.38] spk_2:
com and at Alex counts. What was your name again? Alex counts. Thank [00:01:49.06] spk_4:
you. It’s great to be here. [00:01:53.22] spk_2:
Pleasure. Thank you for coming into the city on the studio. Um, tell us about the founding [00:01:58.65] spk_0:
of Grameen Foundation. Interesting roots in Bangladesh. [00:02:00.69] spk_4:
Yeah, I was is a college student. I was taken with the work Mohammad Yunus was doing to empower the destitute women of Bangladesh through micro credit, and he would go on to win the Nobel Prize. But I kind of it was Grameen Bank. That was Grameen Bank. And I had this vision in college of If we could take his model and exported to other countries where there is poverty, that would be could be a real breakthrough. It was simplistic, but and I But it was basically a good idea. And so I went in, apprenticed with him for about a decade in Bangladesh, and then I Then I said at one point, it’s time to start kind of an international hub for helping people apply the Grameen Bank ideas to other countries. And so he said, Well, here’s $6000 which I thought was a lot of money to start an organization with. It wasn’t but we were just kind of on a wing and a prayer started What became growing foundation in 97 on Guy was completely unprepared and all sorts of ways to run a non profit and start one. But we went forward and it worked out. [00:03:07.30] spk_0:
You you say sort of hastily because you’ve got a lot going on. You had a lot going on 10 years living in Bangladesh. You fluent in de she Bengali Bangla. Is it Bangalore? Bengali? Is it? It’s It’s [00:03:11.32] spk_4:
Bengali and English. It’s Bangla in being Ali. [00:03:14.13] spk_3:
Okay, Um, [00:03:15.10] spk_2:
I’ve been [00:03:21.23] spk_0:
there. I spent I spent two weeks between Bangladesh just in Dhaka and Sir Lanka, which is also a beautiful country. Yeah, [00:03:23.50] spk_2:
my sense of Bangladesh [00:03:24.46] spk_0:
was ah, lot of poverty and a lot of very hardworking people. Thes tiny businesses in the micro stalls is I’m thinking of old DACA, but people working hard and you know, whatever their niche was, uh I [00:03:39.12] spk_2:
saw a lot of hard working, dedicated people, [00:04:10.25] spk_4:
Absolutely both in the cities and in the rural countryside where I spent a lot of my time and learn. That’s why I really learned Bengali well, but it is my mentor and board chair, Susan Davis. So I met in Bangladesh. She was a Ford Foundation representative and I was, Ah, Fulbright scholar initially, and she said, Listen, Alex, she’s a lot of these pithy statement She said, In a country that doesn’t have enough jobs, by far doesn’t have a social safety net. You have two choices. You work for yourself tiny undercapitalized business in most cases or you starve. And so people, whether they’re intramural ability, is robust or more limited. Starvation is not a great option. So people try to start these tiny businesses. [00:04:22.68] spk_0:
That’s when I saw yeah, s O. That’s the micro micro lending. And then Mohammed as and all I can imagine, what someone could do with it isn’t even $1000. Is that too much? [00:05:00.83] spk_4:
So the loans for the first decade of Grameen were typical. Loan was about $70. So your way you’re buying, you know, five chickens and you know you know how to raise chickens. But you never had more money to have more than one u five chickens. You sell the eggs, you pay off the loan with the sales of the eggs. And at the end of the year, you have five chickens that air your asset maybe more assets than you’ve ever had a productive assets you’ve ever had in your life. And Mohammad Yunus is in sight. Was but build a banking system that can actually be viable through making $70 loans and then $100 loans if they pay back and later, larger amounts on and and And that was the essence of his brilliant innovation. [00:05:15.94] spk_0:
And you were, You were how many years that Green Foundation as founder and CEO [00:05:21.27] spk_4:
18 years s. I ran it for its 1st 18 years. It was a It was a fantastic ride. And again when we finally started, get some headway is when I realized that a couple things that I need to be fundraiser in chief. That wasn’t something I could delegate and that I needed to craft a very important relationship with my board share. [00:05:40.90] spk_2:
And those [00:05:42.86] spk_4:
two insights probably where the, you know, helped us reach kind of escape velocity and get it to erase 10 $2025 million in the year, as opposed to remain a little tiny, non [00:05:51.46] spk_0:
profit. What a skilled guest you bring in the board. The board chair relationship so smoothly. So not like the boorish host of the show. We’re just abruptly changed course. [00:06:04.48] spk_2:
All right, so, uh, yeah, so we’re here to talk about Well, you know, we’ll shout [00:06:08.30] spk_0:
out your book a couple times, uh, changing the world without losing your mind. But [00:06:12.67] spk_2:
we want to focus [00:06:23.81] spk_0:
on something that I saw an article that you had written in The Chronicle of Philanthropy about the CEO board chair relationship. Susan Davis was one of your one of your chair. Was she your first? She’s my [00:06:28.99] spk_4:
third chair. But when we finally I finally got the relationship right was with her, and I give her most of the credit for that. I kind of fumbled it with the 1st 2 board chairs, mainly my fault on dhe. She helped me kind of figure out how to make that just a magical relationship [00:06:43.90] spk_0:
on dhe critical to the success of an organization you saw Grameen on. You felt it. You saw it and felt it in your relationship with Susan. You saw the organization benefiting and you felt it personally. [00:07:44.00] spk_4:
I had an ally. I wasn’t so alone. She gained my trust on She would sometimes, you know, step in and do things that I was either incapable of doing or just didn’t have the skills. I mean, it’s just a perfect relationship on. And, you know, she wasn’t the prototypical white male businessman in their sixties with a lot of money, but she brought other assets, and and then, you know, we were ableto have a more traditional board chairs coming after her. But she was in the roll for six and 1/2 years, and she, you know, the the article you mentioned in The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The origin of that was I was giving a talk at The Chronicle about my book and about how I went from a completely underprepared non profit executive director, succeeding on some level. And I just kept coming back to my relation with Susan on then the couple of four chairs that followed her, and they said, Would you write an article on that on that you you mentioned so many times you’re talking? I said I’d be thrilled to, and It was a pretty narrow topic, but it got a good response and got me here to be talking with you. [00:08:10.38] spk_0:
Your life has led you to this moment. All points of it’s all downhill from here. Pretty much non profit radio. I feel bad after our lunch, then [00:08:11.79] spk_4:
downwardly mobile life. [00:08:13.24] spk_0:
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Uh, [00:08:19.52] spk_2:
all right. So let’s talk about, um Well, the let’s get into some of your some [00:08:22.27] spk_0:
of your advice around this around this relationship, you siphoned it down into 10. I don’t know if we’ll get time for 10 because we want to talk a little about Cem Cem, General governance. But [00:08:32.03] spk_2:
why don’t we, uh why don’t we just [00:08:39.14] spk_0:
tease the 1st 1? We got a minute before before first break about, um, respect the chair needs to earn respect if that the [00:09:14.59] spk_4:
chair is seen is just a kind of a defender of the CEO, uhm, and someone who’s just tryingto make his or her life easy and keep the bored out of their hair or in any other way doesn’t really have the respect to the board. Then his or her job is much harder because the board chair is kind of a liaison between the staff and the executive director and the rest of the board. And that board share has to earn the respect of both parties in order. Play that bridging role effectively. And Susan did it. Sometimes people do it by writing $1,000,000 checks, but Susan didn’t have that at her disposal of time. So she did it in other ways but was able to get earn the respect of me and the staff. But very importantly, the the rest of the board. [00:09:24.62] spk_0:
All right, I’ve seen board chairs that were wealthy and wrote big checks and still didn’t have the respect of the board. So if there’s respect based on that, I think it’s kind of shallow and it doesn’t necessarily follow even. Okay, let’s take our first [00:09:38.40] spk_2:
break wegner-C.P.As They go beyond the numbers. They’ve got videos, effective governance. [00:09:43.61] spk_0:
For starters. We’re gonna talk a little about that toward the end of the show. Um, [00:09:47.70] spk_2:
also i nine [00:09:51.74] spk_0:
tips. If you happen to have immigrant employees, they’ve also got a video on high impact grant [00:09:53.83] spk_2:
proposals, sexual harassment awareness, way beyond the numbers. This is not just [00:10:16.94] spk_0:
your average accountancy, for God’s sake, on other videos, you gotta wegner-C.P.As dot com, Click Resource Is and recorded events. I just got late breaking news that Amy Sample Ward will be calling in around the bottom of the hour. Onda will spend about five minutes talking about 20 NTC, the 2020 non profit technology conference, which is in coming up in March in Baltimore. So I know you wanna hear her at the bottom of the hour. Um, in the meantime, let’s go back to ah CEO chair relationship. [00:10:33.01] spk_2:
Yes. Oh, I don’t I don’t think [00:10:40.81] spk_0:
money first necessarily creates respect, And if it does, I think it’s a kind of a shallow Well, it’s one [00:10:42.10] spk_4:
thing to earn. The respect is the board share. You have to show that you’re invested. Ah, and so Susan would show that by showing up prepared by doing her homework. Talking with Helio money and writing a check that is meaningful for someone and meaningful for the organization is another way. But you’re right. It’s no way incomplete. You need to be a fair minded. You need to kind of promote the right kind of dialogue of the board level craft agendas that makes sense that you know, Don’t don’t let the board becoming their micromanaging or rubber stamp, but occupy that really nice middle ground. Yeah, it’s All I’m saying is, is that it’s possible to earn the respect of the board, even with bored with some wealthy people. If you’re yourself aren’t personally wealthy by doing other things on that, some people I think some people just regard it is you know you need the board. Share is just absolute mandatory to be made your wealthiest person, the board and I might have thought that. But I saw that. It doesn’t need to be. [00:11:38.93] spk_0:
Yeah, I would reject [00:11:42.13] spk_3:
that. Um, by [00:11:42.47] spk_0:
the same token, you do want the board chair tohave the back of the CEO in times of crisis. Well, [00:11:56.76] spk_4:
right? I mean, people, you know, have all non profit CEOs if, unless they’re completely risk of hers, make mistakes, mismanaged things mismanage external relationships on dhe, you know, it’s it’s, I think when our new chairs in place, how they react to the first time that happens on whether they both publicly and privately support the CEO on dhe make them feel secure in the aftermath of their bungle eyes. Probably a lot will determine. A lot of everything will go after that on Susan. You know, a time would come maybe six months later, where Susan would talk with me and her successors, who are also very good and say, you know, that thing that you did in six months ago? They didn’t work out, you know? What did you learn from it? Andi? Are we Do we have things in place to prevent that from happening again? But at the time when you’re at your low point and at risk of making further poor decisions in the aftermath of trying to cover up or deal with one bad decision, having the board share be empathetic and supportive and not pointing a finger is I found a central [00:12:54.10] spk_0:
is the board is looking to them for leadership. You know howto way still behind this CEO or are we not? [00:13:19.11] spk_4:
How do we digest this, right? And then that’s where the board chair’s leadership did not gloss over. It does not say this mistake was meaningless, but also not to say panic, but to say I’m on top of this. I’m gonna disclose to you the board what’s going on in a level appropriate to your role. I’m working with the E D. And [00:13:19.32] spk_2:
now if it’s [00:13:19.72] spk_4:
a life endangering mistake for the organization that it might go under, [00:13:24.10] spk_2:
then I think [00:14:07.87] spk_4:
you need to take a little different tact. But if it’s just a setback and embarrassing though it may be, you know you need to really inspire confidence in everyone. But also just, you know, to get the best out of the CEO of the executive director. You know, first and foremost is have them feel like you’re their ally, not someone who’s trying to, you know, embarrassed. And I’ve seen this. I’ve served on boards for all you have and others listeners have board shares to whatever. There’s a mistake. They feel it’s kind of a public embarrassment for them, and their job is to avoid blame themselves. Maybe they have public standing, and then that that has on and particularly that could kind of poison the relationship with the E D. You know, nothing flat. Yeah. [00:14:09.12] spk_2:
Do you? You have a [00:14:20.00] spk_0:
preference for executive director versus CEO? I’ve had guests prefer the CEO. Others say it doesn’t really matter much. Do you have ah preference, you [00:15:06.71] spk_4:
know, in the organization’s I’ve served in. It’s been I’ve been the president and CEO. There’s some executive directors that aren’t the chief executive officer that sometimes is the chair in executive chair. That’s interesting. So Esso and again I’m not. I’m not a super techno person on this, but I think smaller nonprofits tend to be. You talk about AIDS on, and sometimes they don’t have a vote at the board level, whereas in large organizations, that tends to be a president CEO with a non executive chair. And I’m just, you know, and even when grooming Foundation was small, somehow we adopted that nomenclature, which at the time I didn’t care about or think it all about. I was just trying to raise enough money to pay this, you know, costs the next month. But anyway, that’s that. That’s what we adopted. Yeah, [00:15:10.49] spk_2:
okay, but now you have the [00:15:13.66] spk_0:
luxury of looking back and snickering. That’s right! And admitting that the first to board chairs the relationships warrant as robust, as supportive as they could have been made [00:15:22.92] spk_2:
at the time, [00:15:26.10] spk_4:
I viewed the board and managing my relation with the chair, and fundraising is kind of necessary. Evils not, is not as something to be the cornerstone of building the organization. That was That was my fundamental mistake until I finally got it right. [00:15:37.80] spk_2:
Let’s talk a little about [00:15:46.84] spk_0:
selection of, ah, board chair. Do you like to see it come from? The board would like to see. I’ve seen organizations that have a assistant assistant chair, rice chair, vice chair, executive vice chair, and then it’s presumed that they’re gonna move into the chair. You like to see that kind of [00:15:56.58] spk_2:
ladder? Well, first, [00:16:44.61] spk_4:
I think every rule in terms of building aboard you should be, you know, willing almost every really should be willing to break. So one point. We had a very well known, very wealthy person joining our board, and we thought about installing them his chair for more or less the moment that joined the board. And that might have worked. But we didn’t didn’t come to pass, but in general I think you want someone of your chair who served on your board with distinction for, you know, three or four years at least. I like the idea of a vice chair, but I’m a little out made out of the mainstream on this I don’t think that vice chair should necessarily be the chair elect. I’d like to see a vice chair in that role really perform so that they earn the chair. Roll a za po. And that’s why sometimes having to vice chairs, I’ve seen that work nicely. But oftentimes the vice chair is [00:16:47.08] spk_0:
the two vice chairs are sort of competing to be that really like we friendly competition for the chair shit. German ship. [00:16:53.76] spk_6:
It’s a [00:16:56.00] spk_4:
secondary aspect. Yeah, it’s Ah, a TTE The point We had our vice chair on the West Coast and I thought that having a second vice chair who was quite busy when entered a And [00:17:05.04] spk_5:
that’s what one [00:17:05.41] spk_4:
things that happens. You can’t predict a vice Jared chair can enter the role in a semi retirement, have a lot of time to put in. And next thing you know, they’re appointed as happened to me, a CZ the as the CEO of a publicly traded company and their ability to put time in is changed. So we we had a vice chair who was the dean of ah of a university in a university on the West Coast. I said, Well, what if we had a vice chair on the East Coast also to kind of cover this part of the country and on. So that worked. [00:17:34.62] spk_2:
But in another way, was [00:17:35.89] spk_4:
a kind of let’s, let’s see, between the two of them, which one of them, you know, is it inspires the confidence of the board on shows the commitment that would make them the ideal. You know, successor chair. [00:17:48.14] spk_2:
How do you like to [00:18:10.16] spk_0:
break in? I think my voice just crack. How’d you? 14. Huh? How? Let’s give some authoritative. Ah, tony. Er, how do you like to, uh ah, inaugurate the relationship? New chair? You presumably. As you’re suggesting. You know, if you worked with him 3 to 4 years, So the non new person to you. But I knew in that relationship. You in that position. [00:18:12.91] spk_2:
How do you like to [00:18:13.67] spk_0:
kick off the that new relationship? Well, [00:18:17.02] spk_4:
in an ideal world and running a nonprofit where you never have enough resource is and you’re always trying to cram 14 months of work into 12 months and you can always do this. [00:18:26.54] spk_2:
But an ideal [00:18:26.99] spk_4:
world. I’d like to spend a good kind of a good day with the person you know, both with a structured agenda and somewhat unstructured, maybe going to a baseball game together just to really get to know them and bond with them, if that’s possible. On [00:18:39.97] spk_2:
the other [00:18:40.21] spk_4:
thing that kind of evolved. This is, you know, I’m thinking back what work is that each board share wanted gonna put their stamp on the their leadership not to not to just contradict or do something different than what the prior wanted done, but [00:18:55.72] spk_2:
something that [00:18:56.11] spk_4:
they had seen. Maybe work in another non profit or in the corporate sector. And [00:18:59.91] spk_2:
I would just [00:20:59.49] spk_4:
say, unless it didn’t make any sense to me. I said, Let’s let’s do that Let’s you know this person didn’t kind of imposed this idea when they were, say, vice chair, just to give you two examples. You Bob bike Feld, who succeeded Susan in the role he thought that it was. It was a very important from a governess perspective to gather a couple board leaders and the head and our general counsel on me every six months to basically evaluate the performance of each and every board member in person and on, and so and you know when people were doing really well. So well, let’s let’s prepare a resolution commending them at the next meeting. Will we draft that if the person wasn’t referring? Well, well, who’s gonna take them aside? We’ve never done that before. But it was just something he thought you know would work. And I just said, You know, you want to bring that in. This is gonna be one of your signature things that comes in your first year. I’m totally behind it. Let’s make it happen. Or another thing he wanted is for me to bring in that. Susan wasn’t kind of didn’t That wasn’t her style, but it’s like let let Bob lead the way he wants to. And let me not just grudgingly say, OK, I’ll do that if you want, But I think this could be a great idea. And you, Bob also pushed me to write for the first time emergency succession plan, which I embarrassed to say that, you know, 10 years in the Grameen Foundation, I had never even know what that was. But and he said, you know, write, write up a memo for those of your listeners and aren’t aware you know, what should we do if you’re suddenly incapacitated or killed? And and so I put it off for a while, it was more confronting than I thought, but I finally did get it done. And that was something he achieved in his first year. Um, and again I was I was just kind of trusted that that was something of useful. And I put my full attention to kind of implementing a couple of ideas that he had and and when every new board chair came in, they kind of had a few ideas. And I would just unless they sound crazy to me and I I need to get the convinced I would just, you know, not just back from kind of half heartedly, but fully [00:21:01.64] spk_2:
say some more about [00:21:02.28] spk_0:
the semi annual board evaluate individual board member evaluation process. [00:21:07.64] spk_2:
Well, you know, [00:21:19.90] spk_4:
we would gather on a table. I think we did it a few times. That can recall, and it was no one ever called in. Our vice chair flew in from San Diego for it. We did it in Washington and literally, you know, it was just it was sickness. See, [00:21:22.95] spk_2:
one of the [00:21:23.40] spk_4:
things I’ve come to believe that came from Susan. The Before Bob is that term limits are [00:21:29.14] spk_2:
kind of [00:21:31.76] spk_4:
a quick fix kind of mandate, and that really what you want board members to do is to is to kind of go through their orientation and [00:21:37.70] spk_2:
then to go [00:22:09.31] spk_4:
into a period of what I call High Performance is a board member where they’re giving it their all their money, their time, their reputation, their con connections, etcetera. And then ultimately, all board members, I think, ultimately go into what is called coasting, where they’re just they’re not really giving their all because their interest is in another organization. And so Bob’s this term limits air saying, Well, most people go to coasting after six years, so let them just term out at six years. But the truth is, some people term out. Some people go into that mode after 18 months, and some are going strong in 18 years. So this was a mechanism to just evaluate the kind of the wherein the life cycle was each individual on the board where what should they be commended for? On what should they maybe be taken aside and said, you know, board member ex. You know, if you could get back to performing like you did four years ago in terms of showing up prepared, participating discussions, your committee assignments, raising money, giving money, You know, we think you should re up for the board when your turn comes up. But if not you, maybe not. Ah, and that can’t be done. The blunt instrument of term limits or other things. This [00:22:42.14] spk_2:
is this. We would [00:23:01.77] spk_4:
spend 34 hours together evaluating every single person aboard. And how might we support them better. But how might we ask them to support us more? And you can’t? You can’t take a cookie cutter to that. And so it was. It was a pretty rigorous process, but it was. It worked, and it made the team that was at the table. They’re just feel like they were in a position to, and it had them participate differently. This is the vice chair chair of the Governance Committee and the general counsel me in the chair. You know, we would then pay attention. More panel, evaluating each number individually, correct. And [00:23:17.25] spk_2:
and then once you start [00:23:54.67] spk_4:
that, then you know, you kind of observe the board in a different way. When you know you’re gonna be six months later doing that again and you start to think, Gosh, might I pull this board member aside even now and commend them or redirect them a little bit even if I’m not the chair? Because I know that this evaluation and it creates a kind of accountability because we told the board that we were doing this. It wasn’t done in secret eso it was rather than have ah, this kind of straitjacket of term limits. We created this kind of culture of accountability, of board that just brought out the best in people. And when their interests moved on, they kind of voluntarily said, You know, this will be my final term and thank you all for whether I served for three years or 13 years on it. Just for me. It worked a lot better. [00:24:20.39] spk_0:
Your ah contrary and in terms of the mainstream, thinking about board term limits, yes, but you have this important semi annual evaluation as well, so that a CZ your nerves, you said people will either recognize that they’re not performing, or they’ll bluntly be told that they’re not performing TX stations, [00:24:27.96] spk_4:
right? That’s and it takes effort on [00:24:29.76] spk_2:
because this is a lot of time [00:24:30.60] spk_0:
commitment. How big? I’m sure the Grameen board grew over time when you left. How many people, you [00:24:36.52] spk_6:
know, I like [00:24:37.33] spk_0:
value waiting. Yeah, I’ve heard of much [00:25:10.86] spk_4:
smaller and much larger board’s working, although I’m not quite sure how. But I think the optimal number aboard if they’re one of the responsibilities is raising money. The optimal number is between 15 and 20 and that’s what it was for almost the entirety of my time there, I think over 20 you get some negative dynamics, including, you know, people don’t show up. They’re not even noticed because the numbers are too big. And if you get under 15 you know, you really need a lot more fundraising muscle than you unless you just have a bunch of billionaires on the board. And so it was always. It was always in the high teens on, though I gave myself authority to have up to 25 on the bylaws, but gave us authority. But we never we will always, always between 15 and 20 right? [00:25:23.08] spk_2:
So this is a big time [00:25:23.82] spk_0:
commitment because Now you’re doing between 30 and 40 evaluations per year because you’re evaluating each person semi annually and several hours devoted to, ah, a conversation with each one twice a [00:25:46.59] spk_4:
year. And the follow up that you promise, saying they’re there that after each board member would just say so what feedback or what? Commendation or accolade or redirection, Do we need to give this board member based on our discussion and that that would mostly fall to the five of us in the room [00:26:01.15] spk_0:
and there was implicit in that s o. Some board members are getting commended on brothers or not, but we all know that we’re all being evaluated. So when it comes time for commendations, some names air left out, that’s where it was only, [00:26:06.05] spk_4:
um, you know, it was [00:26:06.63] spk_6:
only twice [00:26:55.17] spk_4:
in our history where we actually had to take a board member side and urged them, not Thio run for re election. So if when this works well, it’s really becomes an informal accountability process where people opt out before they have to be kind of pushed out. And, uh um, and yet you need to be willing to do that if the time comes, and in one case, you know, way took a board member aside and we just said, It’s you know, it’s time for you to step aside and is interesting He said it that years later he told me he said, Well, as mad as hell at the time, but you and the chair were right. I just couldn’t see it then. And eso it’s that magical thing where people basically, whenever there flames, starts to be not so bright for in terms of the, you know, being a champion of the board, they just they know it and they and everyone knows it. And they just say again, Allah, I’ll serve out my term and I’ll step down and again whether that’s three years into their service or 15 years, it’s just based on. Are they giving it their best? And [00:27:10.43] spk_2:
not [00:27:10.61] spk_4:
everyone you know people’s interests move on. I mean, it’s a natural human phenomenon. Yeah, [00:27:17.33] spk_0:
yeah. Very interesting. Interesting process. You mentioned election of board re election of board members. That was that not managed by an executive committee just deciding whether someone would remain Who were the electors, the whole board, the [00:28:36.84] spk_4:
whole the whole board Now there’s a nominating what we close it in our model. We had both the governance committee that worked on our kind of internal governance, and the nominating committee was merged in the same committee and another boards I’ve been on Those are two separate things and on and, you know, when you only have 15 18 members. There are only so many committees you can have when your larger boards could have more. But yeah, it, in this case, the default was when someone’s three year term came up. Um, you think the default is that they’re gonna be reelected if they want to be. But there is a process that again the governance committee chair is part of that group that is, that meets every six months on day would take what are our discussions and bring them into the governance committee. Um, but Maur, I think that committee was more about adding new people to the board more of the nominating committee, but But ultimately every board meeting or every other board meeting, if someone’s three year term was up, they would be reelected or more than likely, or they would prior to that announced that they weren’t seeking re election and it would be handled that way. Okay. [00:28:38.92] spk_3:
Okay. Um, [00:28:40.17] spk_2:
let’s ah, let’s take, [00:29:30.12] spk_0:
uh, let’s take this break. And, uh, if you wanna you got a little longer in this break, And now we’re gonna talk to Amy Sample Ward as well. So, uh, stand by. Don’t go anywhere, though, Okay? You don’t have time to go to the bathroom. Just drink water, bathroom breaks or later, uh, his break quote. We’ve been very happy with Cougar Mountain. It’s rare to encounter a problem with the software, but they’re always there to help walk. Help me walk through it. End Quote that Sally Hancock in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Maur raves about the Cougar Mountain customer service. Cougar Mountain has a free 60 day trial, which is on the listener landing page, which is at now time for Tony’s Take two. Your decade plan for planned giving. Um, this is not only the beginning of a new year, which is now close to 1/12 over already, but that means that we’re nearly 1 144th of the way into the new decade. So my, uh, belief is my It’s more than a belief. It’s almost Fact, [00:29:49.25] spk_2:
if you start [00:30:01.17] spk_0:
your planned giving program this year, you are gonna be astronomically ahead, and you’re gonna be you’re gonna be shocked at where you are by the year 2029. Those 10 years [00:30:07.79] spk_2:
you’ll be you’ll be at [00:30:21.72] spk_0:
a point where you can be projecting planned giving revenue for future years based on the revenue that you will have had in like years. 6789 That’s how far ahead you will be in plant giving and you think plan giving that. You know, people die. The gifts come, but we don’t know when those when those episodes air gonna happen. Yeah, but once your file is large enough, once you have enough planned giving donors in your file, you’re gonna start to see trends. And of course, you can’t predict to the dollar amount. [00:30:46.78] spk_2:
But you can give yourself some comfort with a range that you expect to receive in cash each year, [00:31:22.81] spk_0:
going forward from really like your 789 and forward, but certainly from your 10 on. So my urging is that you if you are not doing plan giving fundraising 2020 is the year to start the beginning of the decade. I say a lot more about this in a video, which is your decade plan for playing, giving. I lay out the plan. I don’t just say where you’re gonna be in a decade. I show you how to get there step year by year in the video, which is at tony-martignetti dot com. And that is tony. Take two now. Uh, late breaking. Let’s bring in Amy Sample Ward. She’s the CEO of and 10 and our social media and technology contributor. And [00:31:44.64] spk_2:
we’re going to spend a few minutes talking about what’s coming up at 20 NTC. The 2020 non profit Technology conference. Welcome back, Amy. Sample Ward [00:31:46.85] spk_7:
Bake. I’m happy to be on happy 2020. [00:32:02.29] spk_2:
Thank you very much. Yes, indeed. First time we’ve talked this year. Um, it’s not too late to say Happy New Year because we know each other so well. And, uh, I haven’t seen you Haven’t talked to you since January 1st. So happy New Year. Happy, happy, Happy decade as well. [00:32:05.44] spk_7:
Well, And where we’ve just started the Chinese New Year. So [00:32:10.41] spk_0:
indeed, Yes, Yes, indeed. Balloon. You’re here. Um, [00:32:13.04] spk_2:
so we’ve got this little thing coming up. It’s not [00:32:24.41] spk_0:
so little, um, being snarky. It’s in Baltimore in March 2020. Non profit technology conference hosted by and 10 non profit radio will be there on the exhibit [00:32:29.49] spk_2:
floor. But before we get to that, you tell us what? What? Why should [00:32:31.89] spk_0:
we be attending? [00:33:07.15] spk_7:
Oh, my gosh. I am really excited for this year because I think, as you know, you’ve You’ve been a handful of times now, so you can probably speak to this yourself too. But every year we’re always trying to make it better than it was, of course, the year before. And each year we feel like, Okay, this is the best we’ve ever done it. But how could we make it better? And I think we’ve got some really good plans this year that do that. Of course we have. You know, this is a big three day conference there, 2200 plus people altogether. And it doesn’t have to be, you know, just one type of non profit or one type of job in an organization. If you are listening to this, you are welcome at the number of [00:33:17.73] spk_2:
probably [00:33:18.57] spk_7:
that you could learn and do there [00:33:19.84] spk_0:
It is not only for technologists, not only for technologists, [00:35:24.80] spk_7:
right? Well, I mean, it’s 2020. Everyone in a non profit is using technology, right? Like it doesn’t. It doesn’t really matter how what your job titles has on your business card. There’s pieces of technology you need to use or make decisions about to be effective in your job on. There’s folks from every job title and people who have been in the sector for a year, and people have been in it for 40 years. You know, it’s it’s really like a cross section of everybody, Um, and we have over 150 sessions, so plenty of opportunity to go learn. But outside of that, something that we feel makes the NTC really specialists. How many opportunities there are for you to meet other people and share ideas or come to the conference of that one burning question like you just wish you could find somebody that’s figured out a way to get mail chimp to do that One thing you know, like we want to make sure you really do find that one other person. So we have a lot of kind of community based programs that happen as part of the agenda, and we have even more of them this year. We’ve We’ve always had what we call birds of a feather. So you know, funny things like people will do. You know, people who love watching a certain TV show or something as a table topic at lunch. But other people will do things like, you know, they use a certain tool or something so they can all meet each other and chat. But in the afternoons we’ve started this year what we’re calling knowledge swaps where they’re Maur intentional. They are about, you know, something work related, something you want to do something You’re having a challenge with, something that you just did really well And you want to make sure you can share that knowledge with other people so folks can sign up to basically, like, find other folks and hosted a conversation together on the topics a little bit easier than saying you want to present for 75 minutes for a session, right? Like maybe you just want to find four other folks and share ideas. So we built that into the agenda each day on and we’ve also expanded our career center. That isn’t just for people looking for jobs. A really big part of the community of the career center is mentorship. So being able to sit down with somebody for happen our and share feedback, whether it’s about their resume or it’s about, you know, the evolution in your own career. So what? Whatever side of that coin that you would be on the career center has lost of opportunities for you, um, and would love for folks to be a part of that. [00:35:51.11] spk_0:
Okay, um, we just have, like, a minute in a minute or so left, so details of registration. Where do we [00:35:58.54] spk_2:
go with the dates? Radio? Don’t even say the day everything. But the date is today. [00:36:10.72] spk_7:
Yes, the dates are March 24th 26 it’s in Baltimore. At the convention center. There’s hotels of all the various price points, whatever place you have, a membership number two, whatever, all around the convention center, and you can go toe intend that orc Slash and T. C. You can see the full agenda. You can review some of those community programs I was talking about. We’ve got Rachel Affinity Spaces support for folks who want prayer room, meditation spaces, lactation access. All of those things are part of our conference. So we really want it to be something that folks are ready to learn and meet other people and talk. This is a resource for you. And if there’s a way we can make it easier support you being able to participate, we will do everything we can to do that. So please Goto intend that work slash NPC. Check it out. If you need anything, let us know. But hopefully we see you in March. [00:37:05.76] spk_0:
This is an excellent conference. Yeah, I’ve been there. I think this is the sixth year. [00:37:10.06] spk_2:
Do you think I think it’s the 60 [00:37:20.04] spk_0:
year I’ve brought the show, so we will be on the exhibit floor where were sponsored by Cougar Mountain Software at the conference. So we’ll be side by side. We’ll be getting. I’ll be getting 30 plus interviews. Last year I got 32 interviews in two and 1/2 days, and then we air them. That [00:37:28.44] spk_7:
must have been a record. 30. [00:37:45.78] spk_0:
32 is the is the largest I’ve gotten. Yeah, it had been like 25 27 or so, but so were booked up. Eso. When you’re at the conference, come on the exhibit floor. I believe you’ll see us in boots 5 10 and 5 12 On DDE comes he’s come Say hello will be the noisy one with probably with spotlights, because we might shoot video. So but very smart, very smart speakers in lots of different topics around technology. And Amy’s Point is, I want to drive home. We’re all technologists. It regardless of what it says on your business card, you’re no longer using index cards and transparencies. You know, the overhead projectors. They’re gone. We’re all using technology, and this conference is for people at all different levels. Whether it’s on your in your job title as C I O. Or You’re just a user of technology [00:38:22.71] spk_2:
and you have to say good bye. Thank you very much. [00:38:24.45] spk_7:
Okay, thank you so much. And I will see what your booth. Because I always loved getting to do an interview with you. [00:38:29.16] spk_2:
Absolutely. It’s our only time to go face to face. Yes, we’ll see you. I’ll see you in Baltimore. [00:38:36.00] spk_0:
All right. Thank you for that indulgence. Alex Count. It’s usually [00:38:38.44] spk_4:
a great conference or close to where I live. Yeah, it is fabulous. Maybe I’ll see you. There is [00:38:49.80] spk_0:
really a very smart place. Hundreds of brilliance because I wish I could interview more than the 32 or so whatever I’ll get. Um so just remind listeners Alex counts. Ah, consultant, founder of Grameen Foundation. And his book is Changing the World without Losing your mind. Leadership lessons from three decades of social entrepreneurship. We’re just scratching the surface. You know, where we’re We’re focused on the CEO chair relationship today, but obviously the book goes way beyond [00:39:11.33] spk_3:
that. Uh, [00:39:24.52] spk_2:
lots of lessons in 30 years. Now it’s Ah, you got a good You got a young face. You got a baby face. Check out, check out his, uh, check out his headshot tony-martignetti dot com’s gonna baby face. Um, So let’s, uh we divert a little bit, but these are all valuable topics. [00:39:28.92] spk_0:
I mean, this board evaluation process is semi annual thing is really very interesting. I hadn’t heard anything [00:39:35.22] spk_3:
like that. Um, [00:39:36.96] spk_2:
let’s talk Thio. Let’s talk to [00:39:43.47] spk_0:
communications. You like you like frequent regular communications between the CEO and the chair. [00:40:28.73] spk_4:
Yes. I mean, there’s no. You know, when you when you talk with someone, you come in. Mike, come on with an agenda of what you think is going on the organization, but especially if you’re not rushed on your in person, where that’s possible, you know, you stumble upon in the process of just kind of ruminating on what’s going on the organization, some opportunities and assets and some kind of dangers and risks that you didn’t even go in thinking about because you’re you know, you’re with someone who’s also internalized. The organization is smart, is committed on DSO. I always, you know, I would wouldn’t want to talk with Susan or Bob or Palm or it’s, you know, have have kind of regular calls, you know, maybe two or three a month, but also in with a strict agenda but also sometimes has really unstructured. You know, it’s been a long dinner with them and, ah, a mixture of bonding and just kind of, you know, thinking out loud brainstorming and and just really kind of creative ideas can come up there. And if you’re I did tell a story. One of my board shares went from being semi retired of a very demanding job three years into his role. And while he did stick with it for another two years, which surprised me my ability to spend time with him, quality unstructured on rushed time was compromised. And and that was and I missed that. And our partnership suffered a little bit. As a result, he was still very good and because of his job, had more money to put into the organization. But his ability to kind of have that Maur kind of on structure brainstorming time was severely constrained. [00:41:16.49] spk_0:
Yeah, Yeah, it was more just a formal time together. Yeah. [00:41:21.06] spk_2:
And you think about think about friends, you, How much just happens [00:41:28.85] spk_0:
in free conversation over over a meal in a glass of wine. You [00:41:47.13] spk_4:
think of some something to do together that just you hadn’t even thought of and just being in their presence. You’re like, Well, why don’t we try that, um and and so that that time together again, so many of these things Fundraising, managing board relationships. They’re very time consuming. But when you do them well and invest the time, it’s just they pay back many, many times, but you need to be able to kind of spend the time on what you know, my wife and I call the important but not urgent on If you invest in that, just magical things can happen. [00:42:01.10] spk_2:
And then this kind [00:42:01.89] spk_0:
of thing you have to make time for you aren’t gonna find the time when I when I find the time will, will have an unstructured meeting. But today we’re having an agenda. When I find the time when we find the time to get [00:42:12.38] spk_2:
time is not gonna tap you on the shoulder and make itself apparent that you have to make the time. There’s never gonna come in timers. I’ve got two free hours today. Let’s have a meeting with meeting with. I’ll have a call with my board chair. It’s not gonna happen. You have to make the time consciously [00:43:04.04] spk_4:
and you know, and it’s also becomes something, if you know is it can’t became with each my board shares, particularly Bob like Failed and Susan, where I just enjoyed being around them. They had a lot of grace for me when I made mistakes. They kind of puffed up my ego. When I was doing well, we found common interests or developed them on. They never took cheap shots at me, even in private. If they were going to be constructive, they tried the most sensitive way to do it. That didn’t deflate me. And so it just it ends up being. Gosh, I went. When do I get my next time with Susan? Tony Learn Thio kind of, you know, to commiserated, to celebrate. It’s just always like a special thing. And so you know, they make more time for it, and you developing that personal chemistry. Even if you’re very different people like we were, you could develop it, but it it it needs to be a, you know, a high priority [00:43:19.30] spk_0:
on. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in the C e o chair relationship. Like any relationship, let me take this last break and we’ll come back to Gilling with tension points. [00:43:31.35] spk_2:
Turn to communications. Do you find yourself scratching [00:43:39.57] spk_0:
your head, wondering how some nonprofits always seem to get mentioned in the news? It’s not because they’re big here. We are talking about relationships. It’s because they have relationships with journalists when they don’t want to be quoted, they just have [00:43:48.44] spk_2:
a relation. They’re not looking for something they have a relationship [00:43:59.65] spk_0:
of standing relationship with journalists turn to can help you do that. Their former journalists, including from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. So you want to build those relationships in advance. So when the news breaks and you can contribute to it and want to be seen on an issue, you’ve got the standing relationship. Your call, most likely more likely than not, will be taken over not having that standing relationship. They return hyphen to dot CEO. [00:45:00.25] spk_2:
Let’s do the live listener love and there’s quite a bit of it we are in. Ah, it’s the start. Domestic Woodbridge, New Jersey Tampa, Florida New York New York multiple. Glad to see you. Thank you very much. New York, um, live love to each of those cities as well. A Seattle, Washington in Chicago, Illinois, um, as well as Lincoln’s in North Carolina. Well, cool North Carolina. I’m in Emerald Isle, not today, but, uh, live love. I’ve loved to each of our domestic live listeners. Now let’s go abroad. Seoul, South Korea. Always so loyal. I’m always so grateful. Seoul, South Korea Multiple listeners Annual Hasso comes a ham Nida Woodbridge, New Jersey [00:45:05.27] spk_0:
No, I’m sorry. That’s not fair. Not that’s That’s, uh that’s not foreign. That’s not very funny. [00:45:07.74] spk_2:
I’m from New [00:45:08.17] spk_0:
Jersey. So you know, I’m from I grew up in Rutherford Multiple, [00:45:44.57] spk_2:
Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan. Often we have Japanese listeners. Thank you, Japan. Konnichi wa um Chapultepec de Chapultepec Day. Hinojosa, Mexico When I started this when you start this France Rahm bouquet that was the same city was with us last week as well. Rambo. Yea. And I apologize if I’m not pronouncing it right. But live love Thio out to our for listeners officers in France, um, Oxford in the United Kingdom and also in Korea Sue on Oh, someone else. Besides, uh um besides soul thank you. Live love out to you. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Moscow. We’re, uh not quite Everyone say every hemisphere I mean every continent, but we’re close live love [00:46:45.55] spk_0:
to each of our live listeners. Thank you so much for being with us and the podcast pleasantries toward over 13,000 listeners. In the podcast Pleasantries to you. I thank you for being with us week after week, whether you binge it all and listen to eight episodes on a weekend or you’re spreading it out. Pleasantries to our podcast listeners. Um, that was our Ah, live. Listen, love in the podcast pleasantries. And now back to, uh, CEO chair relationship, which we’ve got butt loads more time for. Ah, and Alex counts. Okay, Moments of tension. They’re gonna crop up [00:47:51.47] spk_4:
inevitable in a certain way. Healthy. I remember. And in the article I talked just referenced in passing that, you know, one time I had some tension with Susan Davis and I went to the vice chair kind of probably overreacting to that and wanted to try play Mommy off against Daddy or something, you know. And Yvette Dyer, who is our vice chair at the time, said very profound and basically said, You know, the tension is an inbuilt part of that relationship, even when it’s the healthiest. And as I thought about that more I thought about you know, your non profit executive directors. Sometimes they’re too aggressive, they need to be reined in, and the board feels it. But it’s really the responsibility that share to give that feedback. On the other hand, some this wasn’t so much my fault, but some executive directors and CEOs are too cautious. I need to be pushed to be more aggressive and had Ah, And again that will come, uh, probably is the sense of the board, but often best conveyed by the chair. And initially, that may not be that well received, um, and and may create some tension. But again, there’s in all healthy relationships, especially this one. That’s that’s one of the aspects of it. And once I realized that and you see, I had the benefit when I was working with Susan, that I’d already been the chair of another non profit board. She had previously been the executive director of a nonprofit, so we kind of understood you [00:48:12.53] spk_0:
had been in each other’s roles. Very important, always [00:48:15.15] spk_4:
possible. But but but actually quite it valuable it You’ve kind of sat in that person’s, you know, chair and and you can understand a little bit more why they’re doing what they’re doing on DDE. And so that that tension just was, you know, was really part and parcel of a healthy relationship. Is, as I came to see, not didn’t see that you immediately [00:48:36.62] spk_2:
too timid sometimes CEOs in what respect? Not aggressive. Just [00:50:05.15] spk_4:
say, you know whether it’s setting their annual goals for, you know, whatever societal positive impact they want. Or some CEOs want a stockpile money rather than spend it on their programs of their team star of the organization. Just because they just they’re always worried about running out of money. So or sometimes it’s about, for example, keeping it a non performing employees on giving them one more chance that could go on for four or five years and on. And, you know, there was one case where I probably stuck with it. A chief operating officer longer than I should and a board chair came in and said, You know, when you’re gonna ease him out. You know, he’s creating a lot of dissension in the organization. Even that was raging, reaching the level of the board. And I needed to be pushed Thio to recognize that this person wasn’t performing and so get my errors would tend to be more about being too aggressive, too much of a risk taker, and I would need to be reined in. But like I had my examples where I was foot dragging and on the board. If the board doesn’t tell you that your your staff probably won’t directly on dhe. You know they’re the ones that to be a kind of observe your performance and push you. And of course, ultimate decision usually remains yours. But if you don’t follow that enough, you’ll find yourself out of a job at some point. And so if there’s a there’s a kind of a creative tension there, [00:50:06.72] spk_0:
particularly staff won’t tell you if it’s the c 00 that we’re talking about. Yep, that’s the source. [00:50:13.58] spk_2:
You liketo have staff participate, attend [00:50:21.06] spk_0:
and participate board inboard means and not just the C suite. Yeah, that’s what [00:50:21.61] spk_4:
I did something that people who it [00:50:24.35] spk_2:
kind of [00:50:51.40] spk_4:
naturally evolved in Grameen Foundation, where from when we had a very small staff initially is you know, I would have some staff that would present to the board. Maybe they weren’t as good at presenting his. I was. Maybe they were better, but but to give them that experience, to demystify what the board is by having them, and the board could see the quality of staff I had, whether it was, hopefully they were impressed. Sometimes they’re, like, you know, realize that you had why I had to step in and do this, but I ultimately not only had the senior staff as we grew, you know, sit around the board table and either present or observed, but I would say any available staff member quite radical. Could you sit in an outer ring and observe? And it just it had this kind of ability to demystify the board where a lot of non profit employees like [00:51:08.63] spk_2:
What is [00:52:23.45] spk_4:
the board do and they’re not doing enough. And what’s their role? And why do we have to work so hard to prepare these board meetings and when they can actually sit there and observe the board deliberating and we would we would go one step further, which is where a t end of the board meeting the board would all leave board members except for the chair, and I would facilitate a debrief with all the staff who were present. Summons might be 2025 staff members, and they could all say, I thought the board had a really intelligent conversation about that. I thought that they totally avoided this topic and had a really, you know, bad discussion about it, and we would just we wouldn’t try to argue them. And so it because a lot of people came to work for me, as I learned is that the board was this mysterious thing where the CEO would go off in a room and maybe the CFO would make a 45 minute presentation and then be ushered out of the room. And it just felt like a this kind of secret society that was making decisions about them that they had no visibility into. And I kind of went the other way of just absolute transparency, including sometimes the board. My staff would see the board grilling me, and they would see me sometimes perform well and defend their interests. You know, some board member wants a new program that made no sense, and I would say, No, we’re not gonna do that makes no sense. And sometimes they’d see me stumble. But again, it just made it more of a human, just just just a group of people trying to help us in a different type of role than you have and let them watch you at times and you get to watch them perform and evaluated and and so it just took all that mysteriousness out of it, and I thought was healthy. Now, at times, you know, I did. I have an occasional board member say, Well, what [00:52:43.95] spk_2:
if we What if [00:52:47.15] spk_4:
we close down this whole project? You know, maybe that would be a good idea. And then the people running that project sitting in the background Does it cause anxiety that you need to manage? Yes, there were. There were problems with that. But the benefits way far outweigh the costs in my mind. [00:53:01.32] spk_0:
Okay. Interesting. Yeah, The typical is staff member of presents, and then is, as you said, ushered out. Yeah. [00:53:12.65] spk_2:
All right. Awesome. Opening our minds. Um, you have some thoughts [00:53:13.51] spk_0:
about upgrading aboard where we have, like, two minutes or so left or something. So [00:53:18.60] spk_2:
we got a good [00:53:19.21] spk_0:
Okay, we have about three minutes left up the timeto upgrade first. What do you mean by upgrading aboard? Well, [00:54:16.61] spk_4:
I I believe that I’ve studied it. That about 80% of non profit boards in this country or some version of dysfunctional either micromanaging or only 80 or well, you think that low occasionally I say that I ask people who challenge me and more often it’s that they think it It’s more than that. But whatever most up a solid majority and the reason s O I. What I say is, Is that it? You know, if you’re upgrading, I’m saying, if you want to take a dysfunctional board to mediocre or a mediocre board too high performing it could be done. But you need to do a couple things. One. Is there no quick fixes? If anyone tells you they can turn a board materially increase their performance in 90 days, adopting you know, four techniques. It’s not gonna happen if if you want to increase the quality aboard materially, significantly mark your calendar 3 to 5 years in the future. And one of the things I most often hear from executive directors is, Well, I’m gonna wait for my board to start performing, and then I’ll really engage them on and support them. But they need to prove to me, and I said, No, that’s the wrong way. Look at it. You need to start treating them now. Whoever is on that treat them now is if they’re high performing, bored, invest in them that way and then given a couple years of lag time, they’ll emerge to be the board that you deserve. But you need to treat them now like they’re the board that you deserve, even though they’re not yet, um, and so [00:54:47.20] spk_2:
that may just [00:54:47.78] spk_4:
spending intensive time, helping to create real wins for them and a great experience of being on the board, which is gonna be different for each board member [00:54:55.99] spk_0:
and challenging them to spend more time to get more responsibility. [00:54:59.46] spk_2:
That’s right, but also [00:55:00.20] spk_4:
making it making it pleasurable and enjoyable for them to do so not because their guilt or manipulation, but just out of a sense of opportunity. So again I go into in the book, I talk about how once that once I kind of got that at the care and feeding of board members. I think most executive directors and CEO spend probably could spend 3 to 4 times Maur of their time and effort in cultivating these board members. And the payback is immeasurable. But it’s it’s not gonna happen 90 days if if you’re if you’re gonna just read an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, apply a few techniques and then you know are they performing better in 90 days. It’s just not. That’s not how groups evolve and function. But if you do it over an extended period aboard, and then you just add one good new member a year. Ah, and they raised the level of everyone a little bit, and that’s that’s how this goes. But if you stick with it for a couple of years, it could be miraculous. [00:55:59.64] spk_0:
We’re gonna leave it there. That’s outstanding. Is Alex counts his book again, changing the world without Losing your mind? Leadership lessons from three decades of social entrepreneurship. You’ll find him at Alex counts dot com and at Alex, [00:56:14.52] spk_2:
counts. Thanks so much, Thank you Pleasure. Next week, our Innovators, [00:56:30.41] spk_0:
Siri’s continues with the return of Peter Shankman on neuro Diversity. What that means for you as an employer and for your employees, the those who are New road divergent. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com [00:56:41.16] spk_2:
by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is [00:56:59.82] spk_0:
there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Our creative [00:57:00.60] spk_2:
producer is Claire Meyerhoff. [00:57:41.08] spk_5:
Sam Liebowitz is the line producer on the board shows. Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein of Brooklyn, New York, with me next week for non profit radio Big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great talking alternative radio 24 hours a day.
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Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit [00:00:16.74] spk_0:
radio big non profit ideas for the [00:00:19.67] spk_2:
other 95%. [00:00:44.44] spk_0:
I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown in taquito amino acid E mia If you brought me down with the sappy idea that you missed today’s show CEO chair relationship, your CEO and board chair need to forge and maintain a strong partnership. Alex Counts shows us how he’s a consultant and founder of Grameen Foundation on [00:00:48.09] spk_2:
Tony’s Take. Two planned giving for the decade were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As. Guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali [00:01:18.14] spk_0:
Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant er Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Now let’s, uh, meet Alex counts Pleasure to welcome him. He’s adjunct professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and a non profit consultant. He’s founder of Grameen Foundation, which has grown to become a leading international humanitarian [00:01:31.93] spk_2:
organization. He’s got a book Changing [00:01:41.95] spk_0:
the World Without Losing Your Mind. Leadership lessons from three decades of social entrepreneurship, which is a chronicle of philanthropy. Editor’s pick. He’s at Alex counts dot [00:01:47.38] spk_2:
com and at Alex counts. What was your name again? Alex counts. Thank [00:01:49.06] spk_4:
you. It’s great to be here. [00:01:53.22] spk_2:
Pleasure. Thank you for coming into the city on the studio. Um, tell us about the founding [00:01:58.65] spk_0:
of Grameen Foundation. Interesting roots in Bangladesh. [00:02:00.69] spk_4:
Yeah, I was is a college student. I was taken with the work Mohammad Yunus was doing to empower the destitute women of Bangladesh through micro credit, and he would go on to win the Nobel Prize. But I kind of it was Grameen Bank. That was Grameen Bank. And I had this vision in college of If we could take his model and exported to other countries where there is poverty, that would be could be a real breakthrough. It was simplistic, but and I But it was basically a good idea. And so I went in, apprenticed with him for about a decade in Bangladesh, and then I Then I said at one point, it’s time to start kind of an international hub for helping people apply the Grameen Bank ideas to other countries. And so he said, Well, here’s $6000 which I thought was a lot of money to start an organization with. It wasn’t but we were just kind of on a wing and a prayer started What became growing foundation in 97 on Guy was completely unprepared and all sorts of ways to run a non profit and start one. But we went forward and it worked out. [00:03:07.30] spk_0:
You you say sort of hastily because you’ve got a lot going on. You had a lot going on 10 years living in Bangladesh. You fluent in de she Bengali Bangla. Is it Bangalore? Bengali? Is it? It’s It’s [00:03:11.32] spk_4:
Bengali and English. It’s Bangla in being Ali. [00:03:14.13] spk_3:
Okay, Um, [00:03:15.10] spk_2:
I’ve been [00:03:21.23] spk_0:
there. I spent I spent two weeks between Bangladesh just in Dhaka and Sir Lanka, which is also a beautiful country. Yeah, [00:03:23.50] spk_2:
my sense of Bangladesh [00:03:24.46] spk_0:
was ah, lot of poverty and a lot of very hardworking people. Thes tiny businesses in the micro stalls is I’m thinking of old DACA, but people working hard and you know, whatever their niche was, uh I [00:03:39.12] spk_2:
saw a lot of hard working, dedicated people, [00:04:10.25] spk_4:
Absolutely both in the cities and in the rural countryside where I spent a lot of my time and learn. That’s why I really learned Bengali well, but it is my mentor and board chair, Susan Davis. So I met in Bangladesh. She was a Ford Foundation representative and I was, Ah, Fulbright scholar initially, and she said, Listen, Alex, she’s a lot of these pithy statement She said, In a country that doesn’t have enough jobs, by far doesn’t have a social safety net. You have two choices. You work for yourself tiny undercapitalized business in most cases or you starve. And so people, whether they’re intramural ability, is robust or more limited. Starvation is not a great option. So people try to start these tiny businesses. [00:04:22.68] spk_0:
That’s when I saw yeah, s O. That’s the micro micro lending. And then Mohammed as and all I can imagine, what someone could do with it isn’t even $1000. Is that too much? [00:05:00.83] spk_4:
So the loans for the first decade of Grameen were typical. Loan was about $70. So your way you’re buying, you know, five chickens and you know you know how to raise chickens. But you never had more money to have more than one u five chickens. You sell the eggs, you pay off the loan with the sales of the eggs. And at the end of the year, you have five chickens that air your asset maybe more assets than you’ve ever had a productive assets you’ve ever had in your life. And Mohammad Yunus is in sight. Was but build a banking system that can actually be viable through making $70 loans and then $100 loans if they pay back and later, larger amounts on and and And that was the essence of his brilliant innovation. [00:05:15.94] spk_0:
And you were, You were how many years that Green Foundation as founder and CEO [00:05:21.27] spk_4:
18 years s. I ran it for its 1st 18 years. It was a It was a fantastic ride. And again when we finally started, get some headway is when I realized that a couple things that I need to be fundraiser in chief. That wasn’t something I could delegate and that I needed to craft a very important relationship with my board share. [00:05:40.90] spk_2:
And those [00:05:42.86] spk_4:
two insights probably where the, you know, helped us reach kind of escape velocity and get it to erase 10 $2025 million in the year, as opposed to remain a little tiny, non [00:05:51.46] spk_0:
profit. What a skilled guest you bring in the board. The board chair relationship so smoothly. So not like the boorish host of the show. We’re just abruptly changed course. [00:06:04.48] spk_2:
All right, so, uh, yeah, so we’re here to talk about Well, you know, we’ll shout [00:06:08.30] spk_0:
out your book a couple times, uh, changing the world without losing your mind. But [00:06:12.67] spk_2:
we want to focus [00:06:23.81] spk_0:
on something that I saw an article that you had written in The Chronicle of Philanthropy about the CEO board chair relationship. Susan Davis was one of your one of your chair. Was she your first? She’s my [00:06:28.99] spk_4:
third chair. But when we finally I finally got the relationship right was with her, and I give her most of the credit for that. I kind of fumbled it with the 1st 2 board chairs, mainly my fault on dhe. She helped me kind of figure out how to make that just a magical relationship [00:06:43.90] spk_0:
on dhe critical to the success of an organization you saw Grameen on. You felt it. You saw it and felt it in your relationship with Susan. You saw the organization benefiting and you felt it personally. [00:07:44.00] spk_4:
I had an ally. I wasn’t so alone. She gained my trust on She would sometimes, you know, step in and do things that I was either incapable of doing or just didn’t have the skills. I mean, it’s just a perfect relationship on. And, you know, she wasn’t the prototypical white male businessman in their sixties with a lot of money, but she brought other assets, and and then, you know, we were ableto have a more traditional board chairs coming after her. But she was in the roll for six and 1/2 years, and she, you know, the the article you mentioned in The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The origin of that was I was giving a talk at The Chronicle about my book and about how I went from a completely underprepared non profit executive director, succeeding on some level. And I just kept coming back to my relation with Susan on then the couple of four chairs that followed her, and they said, Would you write an article on that on that you you mentioned so many times you’re talking? I said I’d be thrilled to, and It was a pretty narrow topic, but it got a good response and got me here to be talking with you. [00:08:10.38] spk_0:
Your life has led you to this moment. All points of it’s all downhill from here. Pretty much non profit radio. I feel bad after our lunch, then [00:08:11.79] spk_4:
downwardly mobile life. [00:08:13.24] spk_0:
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Uh, [00:08:19.52] spk_2:
all right. So let’s talk about, um Well, the let’s get into some of your some [00:08:22.27] spk_0:
of your advice around this around this relationship, you siphoned it down into 10. I don’t know if we’ll get time for 10 because we want to talk a little about Cem Cem, General governance. But [00:08:32.03] spk_2:
why don’t we, uh why don’t we just [00:08:39.14] spk_0:
tease the 1st 1? We got a minute before before first break about, um, respect the chair needs to earn respect if that the [00:09:14.59] spk_4:
chair is seen is just a kind of a defender of the CEO, uhm, and someone who’s just tryingto make his or her life easy and keep the bored out of their hair or in any other way doesn’t really have the respect to the board. Then his or her job is much harder because the board chair is kind of a liaison between the staff and the executive director and the rest of the board. And that board share has to earn the respect of both parties in order. Play that bridging role effectively. And Susan did it. Sometimes people do it by writing $1,000,000 checks, but Susan didn’t have that at her disposal of time. So she did it in other ways but was able to get earn the respect of me and the staff. But very importantly, the the rest of the board. [00:09:24.62] spk_0:
All right, I’ve seen board chairs that were wealthy and wrote big checks and still didn’t have the respect of the board. So if there’s respect based on that, I think it’s kind of shallow and it doesn’t necessarily follow even. Okay, let’s take our first [00:09:38.40] spk_2:
break wegner-C.P.As They go beyond the numbers. They’ve got videos, effective governance. [00:09:43.61] spk_0:
For starters. We’re gonna talk a little about that toward the end of the show. Um, [00:09:47.70] spk_2:
also i nine [00:09:51.74] spk_0:
tips. If you happen to have immigrant employees, they’ve also got a video on high impact grant [00:09:53.83] spk_2:
proposals, sexual harassment awareness, way beyond the numbers. This is not just [00:10:16.94] spk_0:
your average accountancy, for God’s sake, on other videos, you gotta wegner-C.P.As dot com, Click Resource Is and recorded events. I just got late breaking news that Amy Sample Ward will be calling in around the bottom of the hour. Onda will spend about five minutes talking about 20 NTC, the 2020 non profit technology conference, which is in coming up in March in Baltimore. So I know you wanna hear her at the bottom of the hour. Um, in the meantime, let’s go back to ah CEO chair relationship. [00:10:33.01] spk_2:
Yes. Oh, I don’t I don’t think [00:10:40.81] spk_0:
money first necessarily creates respect, And if it does, I think it’s a kind of a shallow Well, it’s one [00:10:42.10] spk_4:
thing to earn. The respect is the board share. You have to show that you’re invested. Ah, and so Susan would show that by showing up prepared by doing her homework. Talking with Helio money and writing a check that is meaningful for someone and meaningful for the organization is another way. But you’re right. It’s no way incomplete. You need to be a fair minded. You need to kind of promote the right kind of dialogue of the board level craft agendas that makes sense that you know, Don’t don’t let the board becoming their micromanaging or rubber stamp, but occupy that really nice middle ground. Yeah, it’s All I’m saying is, is that it’s possible to earn the respect of the board, even with bored with some wealthy people. If you’re yourself aren’t personally wealthy by doing other things on that, some people I think some people just regard it is you know you need the board. Share is just absolute mandatory to be made your wealthiest person, the board and I might have thought that. But I saw that. It doesn’t need to be. [00:11:38.93] spk_0:
Yeah, I would reject [00:11:42.13] spk_3:
that. Um, by [00:11:42.47] spk_0:
the same token, you do want the board chair tohave the back of the CEO in times of crisis. Well, [00:11:56.76] spk_4:
right? I mean, people, you know, have all non profit CEOs if, unless they’re completely risk of hers, make mistakes, mismanaged things mismanage external relationships on dhe, you know, it’s it’s, I think when our new chairs in place, how they react to the first time that happens on whether they both publicly and privately support the CEO on dhe make them feel secure in the aftermath of their bungle eyes. Probably a lot will determine. A lot of everything will go after that on Susan. You know, a time would come maybe six months later, where Susan would talk with me and her successors, who are also very good and say, you know, that thing that you did in six months ago? They didn’t work out, you know? What did you learn from it? Andi? Are we Do we have things in place to prevent that from happening again? But at the time when you’re at your low point and at risk of making further poor decisions in the aftermath of trying to cover up or deal with one bad decision, having the board share be empathetic and supportive and not pointing a finger is I found a central [00:12:54.10] spk_0:
is the board is looking to them for leadership. You know howto way still behind this CEO or are we not? [00:13:19.11] spk_4:
How do we digest this, right? And then that’s where the board chair’s leadership did not gloss over. It does not say this mistake was meaningless, but also not to say panic, but to say I’m on top of this. I’m gonna disclose to you the board what’s going on in a level appropriate to your role. I’m working with the E D. And [00:13:19.32] spk_2:
now if it’s [00:13:19.72] spk_4:
a life endangering mistake for the organization that it might go under, [00:13:24.10] spk_2:
then I think [00:14:07.87] spk_4:
you need to take a little different tact. But if it’s just a setback and embarrassing though it may be, you know you need to really inspire confidence in everyone. But also just, you know, to get the best out of the CEO of the executive director. You know, first and foremost is have them feel like you’re their ally, not someone who’s trying to, you know, embarrassed. And I’ve seen this. I’ve served on boards for all you have and others listeners have board shares to whatever. There’s a mistake. They feel it’s kind of a public embarrassment for them, and their job is to avoid blame themselves. Maybe they have public standing, and then that that has on and particularly that could kind of poison the relationship with the E D. You know, nothing flat. Yeah. [00:14:09.12] spk_2:
Do you? You have a [00:14:20.00] spk_0:
preference for executive director versus CEO? I’ve had guests prefer the CEO. Others say it doesn’t really matter much. Do you have ah preference, you [00:15:06.71] spk_4:
know, in the organization’s I’ve served in. It’s been I’ve been the president and CEO. There’s some executive directors that aren’t the chief executive officer that sometimes is the chair in executive chair. That’s interesting. So Esso and again I’m not. I’m not a super techno person on this, but I think smaller nonprofits tend to be. You talk about AIDS on, and sometimes they don’t have a vote at the board level, whereas in large organizations, that tends to be a president CEO with a non executive chair. And I’m just, you know, and even when grooming Foundation was small, somehow we adopted that nomenclature, which at the time I didn’t care about or think it all about. I was just trying to raise enough money to pay this, you know, costs the next month. But anyway, that’s that. That’s what we adopted. Yeah, [00:15:10.49] spk_2:
okay, but now you have the [00:15:13.66] spk_0:
luxury of looking back and snickering. That’s right! And admitting that the first to board chairs the relationships warrant as robust, as supportive as they could have been made [00:15:22.92] spk_2:
at the time, [00:15:26.10] spk_4:
I viewed the board and managing my relation with the chair, and fundraising is kind of necessary. Evils not, is not as something to be the cornerstone of building the organization. That was That was my fundamental mistake until I finally got it right. [00:15:37.80] spk_2:
Let’s talk a little about [00:15:46.84] spk_0:
selection of, ah, board chair. Do you like to see it come from? The board would like to see. I’ve seen organizations that have a assistant assistant chair, rice chair, vice chair, executive vice chair, and then it’s presumed that they’re gonna move into the chair. You like to see that kind of [00:15:56.58] spk_2:
ladder? Well, first, [00:16:44.61] spk_4:
I think every rule in terms of building aboard you should be, you know, willing almost every really should be willing to break. So one point. We had a very well known, very wealthy person joining our board, and we thought about installing them his chair for more or less the moment that joined the board. And that might have worked. But we didn’t didn’t come to pass, but in general I think you want someone of your chair who served on your board with distinction for, you know, three or four years at least. I like the idea of a vice chair, but I’m a little out made out of the mainstream on this I don’t think that vice chair should necessarily be the chair elect. I’d like to see a vice chair in that role really perform so that they earn the chair. Roll a za po. And that’s why sometimes having to vice chairs, I’ve seen that work nicely. But oftentimes the vice chair is [00:16:47.08] spk_0:
the two vice chairs are sort of competing to be that really like we friendly competition for the chair shit. German ship. [00:16:53.76] spk_6:
It’s a [00:16:56.00] spk_4:
secondary aspect. Yeah, it’s Ah, a TTE The point We had our vice chair on the West Coast and I thought that having a second vice chair who was quite busy when entered a And [00:17:05.04] spk_5:
that’s what one [00:17:05.41] spk_4:
things that happens. You can’t predict a vice Jared chair can enter the role in a semi retirement, have a lot of time to put in. And next thing you know, they’re appointed as happened to me, a CZ the as the CEO of a publicly traded company and their ability to put time in is changed. So we we had a vice chair who was the dean of ah of a university in a university on the West Coast. I said, Well, what if we had a vice chair on the East Coast also to kind of cover this part of the country and on. So that worked. [00:17:34.62] spk_2:
But in another way, was [00:17:35.89] spk_4:
a kind of let’s, let’s see, between the two of them, which one of them, you know, is it inspires the confidence of the board on shows the commitment that would make them the ideal. You know, successor chair. [00:17:48.14] spk_2:
How do you like to [00:18:10.16] spk_0:
break in? I think my voice just crack. How’d you? 14. Huh? How? Let’s give some authoritative. Ah, tony. Er, how do you like to, uh ah, inaugurate the relationship? New chair? You presumably. As you’re suggesting. You know, if you worked with him 3 to 4 years, So the non new person to you. But I knew in that relationship. You in that position. [00:18:12.91] spk_2:
How do you like to [00:18:13.67] spk_0:
kick off the that new relationship? Well, [00:18:17.02] spk_4:
in an ideal world and running a nonprofit where you never have enough resource is and you’re always trying to cram 14 months of work into 12 months and you can always do this. [00:18:26.54] spk_2:
But an ideal [00:18:26.99] spk_4:
world. I’d like to spend a good kind of a good day with the person you know, both with a structured agenda and somewhat unstructured, maybe going to a baseball game together just to really get to know them and bond with them, if that’s possible. On [00:18:39.97] spk_2:
the other [00:18:40.21] spk_4:
thing that kind of evolved. This is, you know, I’m thinking back what work is that each board share wanted gonna put their stamp on the their leadership not to not to just contradict or do something different than what the prior wanted done, but [00:18:55.72] spk_2:
something that [00:18:56.11] spk_4:
they had seen. Maybe work in another non profit or in the corporate sector. And [00:18:59.91] spk_2:
I would just [00:20:59.49] spk_4:
say, unless it didn’t make any sense to me. I said, Let’s let’s do that Let’s you know this person didn’t kind of imposed this idea when they were, say, vice chair, just to give you two examples. You Bob bike Feld, who succeeded Susan in the role he thought that it was. It was a very important from a governess perspective to gather a couple board leaders and the head and our general counsel on me every six months to basically evaluate the performance of each and every board member in person and on, and so and you know when people were doing really well. So well, let’s let’s prepare a resolution commending them at the next meeting. Will we draft that if the person wasn’t referring? Well, well, who’s gonna take them aside? We’ve never done that before. But it was just something he thought you know would work. And I just said, You know, you want to bring that in. This is gonna be one of your signature things that comes in your first year. I’m totally behind it. Let’s make it happen. Or another thing he wanted is for me to bring in that. Susan wasn’t kind of didn’t That wasn’t her style, but it’s like let let Bob lead the way he wants to. And let me not just grudgingly say, OK, I’ll do that if you want, But I think this could be a great idea. And you, Bob also pushed me to write for the first time emergency succession plan, which I embarrassed to say that, you know, 10 years in the Grameen Foundation, I had never even know what that was. But and he said, you know, write, write up a memo for those of your listeners and aren’t aware you know, what should we do if you’re suddenly incapacitated or killed? And and so I put it off for a while, it was more confronting than I thought, but I finally did get it done. And that was something he achieved in his first year. Um, and again I was I was just kind of trusted that that was something of useful. And I put my full attention to kind of implementing a couple of ideas that he had and and when every new board chair came in, they kind of had a few ideas. And I would just unless they sound crazy to me and I I need to get the convinced I would just, you know, not just back from kind of half heartedly, but fully [00:21:01.64] spk_2:
say some more about [00:21:02.28] spk_0:
the semi annual board evaluate individual board member evaluation process. [00:21:07.64] spk_2:
Well, you know, [00:21:19.90] spk_4:
we would gather on a table. I think we did it a few times. That can recall, and it was no one ever called in. Our vice chair flew in from San Diego for it. We did it in Washington and literally, you know, it was just it was sickness. See, [00:21:22.95] spk_2:
one of the [00:21:23.40] spk_4:
things I’ve come to believe that came from Susan. The Before Bob is that term limits are [00:21:29.14] spk_2:
kind of [00:21:31.76] spk_4:
a quick fix kind of mandate, and that really what you want board members to do is to is to kind of go through their orientation and [00:21:37.70] spk_2:
then to go [00:22:09.31] spk_4:
into a period of what I call High Performance is a board member where they’re giving it their all their money, their time, their reputation, their con connections, etcetera. And then ultimately, all board members, I think, ultimately go into what is called coasting, where they’re just they’re not really giving their all because their interest is in another organization. And so Bob’s this term limits air saying, Well, most people go to coasting after six years, so let them just term out at six years. But the truth is, some people term out. Some people go into that mode after 18 months, and some are going strong in 18 years. So this was a mechanism to just evaluate the kind of the wherein the life cycle was each individual on the board where what should they be commended for? On what should they maybe be taken aside and said, you know, board member ex. You know, if you could get back to performing like you did four years ago in terms of showing up prepared, participating discussions, your committee assignments, raising money, giving money, You know, we think you should re up for the board when your turn comes up. But if not you, maybe not. Ah, and that can’t be done. The blunt instrument of term limits or other things. This [00:22:42.14] spk_2:
is this. We would [00:23:01.77] spk_4:
spend 34 hours together evaluating every single person aboard. And how might we support them better. But how might we ask them to support us more? And you can’t? You can’t take a cookie cutter to that. And so it was. It was a pretty rigorous process, but it was. It worked, and it made the team that was at the table. They’re just feel like they were in a position to, and it had them participate differently. This is the vice chair chair of the Governance Committee and the general counsel me in the chair. You know, we would then pay attention. More panel, evaluating each number individually, correct. And [00:23:17.25] spk_2:
and then once you start [00:23:54.67] spk_4:
that, then you know, you kind of observe the board in a different way. When you know you’re gonna be six months later doing that again and you start to think, Gosh, might I pull this board member aside even now and commend them or redirect them a little bit even if I’m not the chair? Because I know that this evaluation and it creates a kind of accountability because we told the board that we were doing this. It wasn’t done in secret eso it was rather than have ah, this kind of straitjacket of term limits. We created this kind of culture of accountability, of board that just brought out the best in people. And when their interests moved on, they kind of voluntarily said, You know, this will be my final term and thank you all for whether I served for three years or 13 years on it. Just for me. It worked a lot better. [00:24:20.39] spk_0:
Your ah contrary and in terms of the mainstream, thinking about board term limits, yes, but you have this important semi annual evaluation as well, so that a CZ your nerves, you said people will either recognize that they’re not performing, or they’ll bluntly be told that they’re not performing TX stations, [00:24:27.96] spk_4:
right? That’s and it takes effort on [00:24:29.76] spk_2:
because this is a lot of time [00:24:30.60] spk_0:
commitment. How big? I’m sure the Grameen board grew over time when you left. How many people, you [00:24:36.52] spk_6:
know, I like [00:24:37.33] spk_0:
value waiting. Yeah, I’ve heard of much [00:25:10.86] spk_4:
smaller and much larger board’s working, although I’m not quite sure how. But I think the optimal number aboard if they’re one of the responsibilities is raising money. The optimal number is between 15 and 20 and that’s what it was for almost the entirety of my time there, I think over 20 you get some negative dynamics, including, you know, people don’t show up. They’re not even noticed because the numbers are too big. And if you get under 15 you know, you really need a lot more fundraising muscle than you unless you just have a bunch of billionaires on the board. And so it was always. It was always in the high teens on, though I gave myself authority to have up to 25 on the bylaws, but gave us authority. But we never we will always, always between 15 and 20 right? [00:25:23.08] spk_2:
So this is a big time [00:25:23.82] spk_0:
commitment because Now you’re doing between 30 and 40 evaluations per year because you’re evaluating each person semi annually and several hours devoted to, ah, a conversation with each one twice a [00:25:46.59] spk_4:
year. And the follow up that you promise, saying they’re there that after each board member would just say so what feedback or what? Commendation or accolade or redirection, Do we need to give this board member based on our discussion and that that would mostly fall to the five of us in the room [00:26:01.15] spk_0:
and there was implicit in that s o. Some board members are getting commended on brothers or not, but we all know that we’re all being evaluated. So when it comes time for commendations, some names air left out, that’s where it was only, [00:26:06.05] spk_4:
um, you know, it was [00:26:06.63] spk_6:
only twice [00:26:55.17] spk_4:
in our history where we actually had to take a board member side and urged them, not Thio run for re election. So if when this works well, it’s really becomes an informal accountability process where people opt out before they have to be kind of pushed out. And, uh um, and yet you need to be willing to do that if the time comes, and in one case, you know, way took a board member aside and we just said, It’s you know, it’s time for you to step aside and is interesting He said it that years later he told me he said, Well, as mad as hell at the time, but you and the chair were right. I just couldn’t see it then. And eso it’s that magical thing where people basically, whenever there flames, starts to be not so bright for in terms of the, you know, being a champion of the board, they just they know it and they and everyone knows it. And they just say again, Allah, I’ll serve out my term and I’ll step down and again whether that’s three years into their service or 15 years, it’s just based on. Are they giving it their best? And [00:27:10.43] spk_2:
not [00:27:10.61] spk_4:
everyone you know people’s interests move on. I mean, it’s a natural human phenomenon. Yeah, [00:27:17.33] spk_0:
yeah. Very interesting. Interesting process. You mentioned election of board re election of board members. That was that not managed by an executive committee just deciding whether someone would remain Who were the electors, the whole board, the [00:28:36.84] spk_4:
whole the whole board Now there’s a nominating what we close it in our model. We had both the governance committee that worked on our kind of internal governance, and the nominating committee was merged in the same committee and another boards I’ve been on Those are two separate things and on and, you know, when you only have 15 18 members. There are only so many committees you can have when your larger boards could have more. But yeah, it, in this case, the default was when someone’s three year term came up. Um, you think the default is that they’re gonna be reelected if they want to be. But there is a process that again the governance committee chair is part of that group that is, that meets every six months on day would take what are our discussions and bring them into the governance committee. Um, but Maur, I think that committee was more about adding new people to the board more of the nominating committee, but But ultimately every board meeting or every other board meeting, if someone’s three year term was up, they would be reelected or more than likely, or they would prior to that announced that they weren’t seeking re election and it would be handled that way. Okay. [00:28:38.92] spk_3:
Okay. Um, [00:28:40.17] spk_2:
let’s ah, let’s take, [00:29:30.12] spk_0:
uh, let’s take this break. And, uh, if you wanna you got a little longer in this break, And now we’re gonna talk to Amy Sample Ward as well. So, uh, stand by. Don’t go anywhere, though, Okay? You don’t have time to go to the bathroom. Just drink water, bathroom breaks or later, uh, his break quote. We’ve been very happy with Cougar Mountain. It’s rare to encounter a problem with the software, but they’re always there to help walk. Help me walk through it. End Quote that Sally Hancock in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Maur raves about the Cougar Mountain customer service. Cougar Mountain has a free 60 day trial, which is on the listener landing page, which is at now time for Tony’s Take two. Your decade plan for planned giving. Um, this is not only the beginning of a new year, which is now close to 1/12 over already, but that means that we’re nearly 1 144th of the way into the new decade. So my, uh, belief is my It’s more than a belief. It’s almost Fact, [00:29:49.25] spk_2:
if you start [00:30:01.17] spk_0:
your planned giving program this year, you are gonna be astronomically ahead, and you’re gonna be you’re gonna be shocked at where you are by the year 2029. Those 10 years [00:30:07.79] spk_2:
you’ll be you’ll be at [00:30:21.72] spk_0:
a point where you can be projecting planned giving revenue for future years based on the revenue that you will have had in like years. 6789 That’s how far ahead you will be in plant giving and you think plan giving that. You know, people die. The gifts come, but we don’t know when those when those episodes air gonna happen. Yeah, but once your file is large enough, once you have enough planned giving donors in your file, you’re gonna start to see trends. And of course, you can’t predict to the dollar amount. [00:30:46.78] spk_2:
But you can give yourself some comfort with a range that you expect to receive in cash each year, [00:31:22.81] spk_0:
going forward from really like your 789 and forward, but certainly from your 10 on. So my urging is that you if you are not doing plan giving fundraising 2020 is the year to start the beginning of the decade. I say a lot more about this in a video, which is your decade plan for playing, giving. I lay out the plan. I don’t just say where you’re gonna be in a decade. I show you how to get there step year by year in the video, which is at tony-martignetti dot com. And that is tony. Take two now. Uh, late breaking. Let’s bring in Amy Sample Ward. She’s the CEO of and 10 and our social media and technology contributor. And [00:31:44.64] spk_2:
we’re going to spend a few minutes talking about what’s coming up at 20 NTC. The 2020 non profit Technology conference. Welcome back, Amy. Sample Ward [00:31:46.85] spk_7:
Bake. I’m happy to be on happy 2020. [00:32:02.29] spk_2:
Thank you very much. Yes, indeed. First time we’ve talked this year. Um, it’s not too late to say Happy New Year because we know each other so well. And, uh, I haven’t seen you Haven’t talked to you since January 1st. So happy New Year. Happy, happy, Happy decade as well. [00:32:05.44] spk_7:
Well, And where we’ve just started the Chinese New Year. So [00:32:10.41] spk_0:
indeed, Yes, Yes, indeed. Balloon. You’re here. Um, [00:32:13.04] spk_2:
so we’ve got this little thing coming up. It’s not [00:32:24.41] spk_0:
so little, um, being snarky. It’s in Baltimore in March 2020. Non profit technology conference hosted by and 10 non profit radio will be there on the exhibit [00:32:29.49] spk_2:
floor. But before we get to that, you tell us what? What? Why should [00:32:31.89] spk_0:
we be attending? [00:33:07.15] spk_7:
Oh, my gosh. I am really excited for this year because I think, as you know, you’ve You’ve been a handful of times now, so you can probably speak to this yourself too. But every year we’re always trying to make it better than it was, of course, the year before. And each year we feel like, Okay, this is the best we’ve ever done it. But how could we make it better? And I think we’ve got some really good plans this year that do that. Of course we have. You know, this is a big three day conference there, 2200 plus people altogether. And it doesn’t have to be, you know, just one type of non profit or one type of job in an organization. If you are listening to this, you are welcome at the number of [00:33:17.73] spk_2:
probably [00:33:18.57] spk_7:
that you could learn and do there [00:33:19.84] spk_0:
It is not only for technologists, not only for technologists, [00:35:24.80] spk_7:
right? Well, I mean, it’s 2020. Everyone in a non profit is using technology, right? Like it doesn’t. It doesn’t really matter how what your job titles has on your business card. There’s pieces of technology you need to use or make decisions about to be effective in your job on. There’s folks from every job title and people who have been in the sector for a year, and people have been in it for 40 years. You know, it’s it’s really like a cross section of everybody, Um, and we have over 150 sessions, so plenty of opportunity to go learn. But outside of that, something that we feel makes the NTC really specialists. How many opportunities there are for you to meet other people and share ideas or come to the conference of that one burning question like you just wish you could find somebody that’s figured out a way to get mail chimp to do that One thing you know, like we want to make sure you really do find that one other person. So we have a lot of kind of community based programs that happen as part of the agenda, and we have even more of them this year. We’ve We’ve always had what we call birds of a feather. So you know, funny things like people will do. You know, people who love watching a certain TV show or something as a table topic at lunch. But other people will do things like, you know, they use a certain tool or something so they can all meet each other and chat. But in the afternoons we’ve started this year what we’re calling knowledge swaps where they’re Maur intentional. They are about, you know, something work related, something you want to do something You’re having a challenge with, something that you just did really well And you want to make sure you can share that knowledge with other people so folks can sign up to basically, like, find other folks and hosted a conversation together on the topics a little bit easier than saying you want to present for 75 minutes for a session, right? Like maybe you just want to find four other folks and share ideas. So we built that into the agenda each day on and we’ve also expanded our career center. That isn’t just for people looking for jobs. A really big part of the community of the career center is mentorship. So being able to sit down with somebody for happen our and share feedback, whether it’s about their resume or it’s about, you know, the evolution in your own career. So what? Whatever side of that coin that you would be on the career center has lost of opportunities for you, um, and would love for folks to be a part of that. [00:35:51.11] spk_0:
Okay, um, we just have, like, a minute in a minute or so left, so details of registration. Where do we [00:35:58.54] spk_2:
go with the dates? Radio? Don’t even say the day everything. But the date is today. [00:36:10.72] spk_7:
Yes, the dates are March 24th 26 it’s in Baltimore. At the convention center. There’s hotels of all the various price points, whatever place you have, a membership number two, whatever, all around the convention center, and you can go toe intend that orc Slash and T. C. You can see the full agenda. You can review some of those community programs I was talking about. We’ve got Rachel Affinity Spaces support for folks who want prayer room, meditation spaces, lactation access. All of those things are part of our conference. So we really want it to be something that folks are ready to learn and meet other people and talk. This is a resource for you. And if there’s a way we can make it easier support you being able to participate, we will do everything we can to do that. So please Goto intend that work slash NPC. Check it out. If you need anything, let us know. But hopefully we see you in March. [00:37:05.76] spk_0:
This is an excellent conference. Yeah, I’ve been there. I think this is the sixth year. [00:37:10.06] spk_2:
Do you think I think it’s the 60 [00:37:20.04] spk_0:
year I’ve brought the show, so we will be on the exhibit floor where were sponsored by Cougar Mountain Software at the conference. So we’ll be side by side. We’ll be getting. I’ll be getting 30 plus interviews. Last year I got 32 interviews in two and 1/2 days, and then we air them. That [00:37:28.44] spk_7:
must have been a record. 30. [00:37:45.78] spk_0:
32 is the is the largest I’ve gotten. Yeah, it had been like 25 27 or so, but so were booked up. Eso. When you’re at the conference, come on the exhibit floor. I believe you’ll see us in boots 5 10 and 5 12 On DDE comes he’s come Say hello will be the noisy one with probably with spotlights, because we might shoot video. So but very smart, very smart speakers in lots of different topics around technology. And Amy’s Point is, I want to drive home. We’re all technologists. It regardless of what it says on your business card, you’re no longer using index cards and transparencies. You know, the overhead projectors. They’re gone. We’re all using technology, and this conference is for people at all different levels. Whether it’s on your in your job title as C I O. Or You’re just a user of technology [00:38:22.71] spk_2:
and you have to say good bye. Thank you very much. [00:38:24.45] spk_7:
Okay, thank you so much. And I will see what your booth. Because I always loved getting to do an interview with you. [00:38:29.16] spk_2:
Absolutely. It’s our only time to go face to face. Yes, we’ll see you. I’ll see you in Baltimore. [00:38:36.00] spk_0:
All right. Thank you for that indulgence. Alex Count. It’s usually [00:38:38.44] spk_4:
a great conference or close to where I live. Yeah, it is fabulous. Maybe I’ll see you. There is [00:38:49.80] spk_0:
really a very smart place. Hundreds of brilliance because I wish I could interview more than the 32 or so whatever I’ll get. Um so just remind listeners Alex counts. Ah, consultant, founder of Grameen Foundation. And his book is Changing the World without Losing your mind. Leadership lessons from three decades of social entrepreneurship. We’re just scratching the surface. You know, where we’re We’re focused on the CEO chair relationship today, but obviously the book goes way beyond [00:39:11.33] spk_3:
that. Uh, [00:39:24.52] spk_2:
lots of lessons in 30 years. Now it’s Ah, you got a good You got a young face. You got a baby face. Check out, check out his, uh, check out his headshot tony-martignetti dot com’s gonna baby face. Um, So let’s, uh we divert a little bit, but these are all valuable topics. [00:39:28.92] spk_0:
I mean, this board evaluation process is semi annual thing is really very interesting. I hadn’t heard anything [00:39:35.22] spk_3:
like that. Um, [00:39:36.96] spk_2:
let’s talk Thio. Let’s talk to [00:39:43.47] spk_0:
communications. You like you like frequent regular communications between the CEO and the chair. [00:40:28.73] spk_4:
Yes. I mean, there’s no. You know, when you when you talk with someone, you come in. Mike, come on with an agenda of what you think is going on the organization, but especially if you’re not rushed on your in person, where that’s possible, you know, you stumble upon in the process of just kind of ruminating on what’s going on the organization, some opportunities and assets and some kind of dangers and risks that you didn’t even go in thinking about because you’re you know, you’re with someone who’s also internalized. The organization is smart, is committed on DSO. I always, you know, I would wouldn’t want to talk with Susan or Bob or Palm or it’s, you know, have have kind of regular calls, you know, maybe two or three a month, but also in with a strict agenda but also sometimes has really unstructured. You know, it’s been a long dinner with them and, ah, a mixture of bonding and just kind of, you know, thinking out loud brainstorming and and just really kind of creative ideas can come up there. And if you’re I did tell a story. One of my board shares went from being semi retired of a very demanding job three years into his role. And while he did stick with it for another two years, which surprised me my ability to spend time with him, quality unstructured on rushed time was compromised. And and that was and I missed that. And our partnership suffered a little bit. As a result, he was still very good and because of his job, had more money to put into the organization. But his ability to kind of have that Maur kind of on structure brainstorming time was severely constrained. [00:41:16.49] spk_0:
Yeah, Yeah, it was more just a formal time together. Yeah. [00:41:21.06] spk_2:
And you think about think about friends, you, How much just happens [00:41:28.85] spk_0:
in free conversation over over a meal in a glass of wine. You [00:41:47.13] spk_4:
think of some something to do together that just you hadn’t even thought of and just being in their presence. You’re like, Well, why don’t we try that, um and and so that that time together again, so many of these things Fundraising, managing board relationships. They’re very time consuming. But when you do them well and invest the time, it’s just they pay back many, many times, but you need to be able to kind of spend the time on what you know, my wife and I call the important but not urgent on If you invest in that, just magical things can happen. [00:42:01.10] spk_2:
And then this kind [00:42:01.89] spk_0:
of thing you have to make time for you aren’t gonna find the time when I when I find the time will, will have an unstructured meeting. But today we’re having an agenda. When I find the time when we find the time to get [00:42:12.38] spk_2:
time is not gonna tap you on the shoulder and make itself apparent that you have to make the time. There’s never gonna come in timers. I’ve got two free hours today. Let’s have a meeting with meeting with. I’ll have a call with my board chair. It’s not gonna happen. You have to make the time consciously [00:43:04.04] spk_4:
and you know, and it’s also becomes something, if you know is it can’t became with each my board shares, particularly Bob like Failed and Susan, where I just enjoyed being around them. They had a lot of grace for me when I made mistakes. They kind of puffed up my ego. When I was doing well, we found common interests or developed them on. They never took cheap shots at me, even in private. If they were going to be constructive, they tried the most sensitive way to do it. That didn’t deflate me. And so it just it ends up being. Gosh, I went. When do I get my next time with Susan? Tony Learn Thio kind of, you know, to commiserated, to celebrate. It’s just always like a special thing. And so you know, they make more time for it, and you developing that personal chemistry. Even if you’re very different people like we were, you could develop it, but it it it needs to be a, you know, a high priority [00:43:19.30] spk_0:
on. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in the C e o chair relationship. Like any relationship, let me take this last break and we’ll come back to Gilling with tension points. [00:43:31.35] spk_2:
Turn to communications. Do you find yourself scratching [00:43:39.57] spk_0:
your head, wondering how some nonprofits always seem to get mentioned in the news? It’s not because they’re big here. We are talking about relationships. It’s because they have relationships with journalists when they don’t want to be quoted, they just have [00:43:48.44] spk_2:
a relation. They’re not looking for something they have a relationship [00:43:59.65] spk_0:
of standing relationship with journalists turn to can help you do that. Their former journalists, including from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. So you want to build those relationships in advance. So when the news breaks and you can contribute to it and want to be seen on an issue, you’ve got the standing relationship. Your call, most likely more likely than not, will be taken over not having that standing relationship. They return hyphen to dot CEO. [00:45:00.25] spk_2:
Let’s do the live listener love and there’s quite a bit of it we are in. Ah, it’s the start. Domestic Woodbridge, New Jersey Tampa, Florida New York New York multiple. Glad to see you. Thank you very much. New York, um, live love to each of those cities as well. A Seattle, Washington in Chicago, Illinois, um, as well as Lincoln’s in North Carolina. Well, cool North Carolina. I’m in Emerald Isle, not today, but, uh, live love. I’ve loved to each of our domestic live listeners. Now let’s go abroad. Seoul, South Korea. Always so loyal. I’m always so grateful. Seoul, South Korea Multiple listeners Annual Hasso comes a ham Nida Woodbridge, New Jersey [00:45:05.27] spk_0:
No, I’m sorry. That’s not fair. Not that’s That’s, uh that’s not foreign. That’s not very funny. [00:45:07.74] spk_2:
I’m from New [00:45:08.17] spk_0:
Jersey. So you know, I’m from I grew up in Rutherford Multiple, [00:45:44.57] spk_2:
Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan. Often we have Japanese listeners. Thank you, Japan. Konnichi wa um Chapultepec de Chapultepec Day. Hinojosa, Mexico When I started this when you start this France Rahm bouquet that was the same city was with us last week as well. Rambo. Yea. And I apologize if I’m not pronouncing it right. But live love Thio out to our for listeners officers in France, um, Oxford in the United Kingdom and also in Korea Sue on Oh, someone else. Besides, uh um besides soul thank you. Live love out to you. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Moscow. We’re, uh not quite Everyone say every hemisphere I mean every continent, but we’re close live love [00:46:45.55] spk_0:
to each of our live listeners. Thank you so much for being with us and the podcast pleasantries toward over 13,000 listeners. In the podcast Pleasantries to you. I thank you for being with us week after week, whether you binge it all and listen to eight episodes on a weekend or you’re spreading it out. Pleasantries to our podcast listeners. Um, that was our Ah, live. Listen, love in the podcast pleasantries. And now back to, uh, CEO chair relationship, which we’ve got butt loads more time for. Ah, and Alex counts. Okay, Moments of tension. They’re gonna crop up [00:47:51.47] spk_4:
inevitable in a certain way. Healthy. I remember. And in the article I talked just referenced in passing that, you know, one time I had some tension with Susan Davis and I went to the vice chair kind of probably overreacting to that and wanted to try play Mommy off against Daddy or something, you know. And Yvette Dyer, who is our vice chair at the time, said very profound and basically said, You know, the tension is an inbuilt part of that relationship, even when it’s the healthiest. And as I thought about that more I thought about you know, your non profit executive directors. Sometimes they’re too aggressive, they need to be reined in, and the board feels it. But it’s really the responsibility that share to give that feedback. On the other hand, some this wasn’t so much my fault, but some executive directors and CEOs are too cautious. I need to be pushed to be more aggressive and had Ah, And again that will come, uh, probably is the sense of the board, but often best conveyed by the chair. And initially, that may not be that well received, um, and and may create some tension. But again, there’s in all healthy relationships, especially this one. That’s that’s one of the aspects of it. And once I realized that and you see, I had the benefit when I was working with Susan, that I’d already been the chair of another non profit board. She had previously been the executive director of a nonprofit, so we kind of understood you [00:48:12.53] spk_0:
had been in each other’s roles. Very important, always [00:48:15.15] spk_4:
possible. But but but actually quite it valuable it You’ve kind of sat in that person’s, you know, chair and and you can understand a little bit more why they’re doing what they’re doing on DDE. And so that that tension just was, you know, was really part and parcel of a healthy relationship. Is, as I came to see, not didn’t see that you immediately [00:48:36.62] spk_2:
too timid sometimes CEOs in what respect? Not aggressive. Just [00:50:05.15] spk_4:
say, you know whether it’s setting their annual goals for, you know, whatever societal positive impact they want. Or some CEOs want a stockpile money rather than spend it on their programs of their team star of the organization. Just because they just they’re always worried about running out of money. So or sometimes it’s about, for example, keeping it a non performing employees on giving them one more chance that could go on for four or five years and on. And, you know, there was one case where I probably stuck with it. A chief operating officer longer than I should and a board chair came in and said, You know, when you’re gonna ease him out. You know, he’s creating a lot of dissension in the organization. Even that was raging, reaching the level of the board. And I needed to be pushed Thio to recognize that this person wasn’t performing and so get my errors would tend to be more about being too aggressive, too much of a risk taker, and I would need to be reined in. But like I had my examples where I was foot dragging and on the board. If the board doesn’t tell you that your your staff probably won’t directly on dhe. You know they’re the ones that to be a kind of observe your performance and push you. And of course, ultimate decision usually remains yours. But if you don’t follow that enough, you’ll find yourself out of a job at some point. And so if there’s a there’s a kind of a creative tension there, [00:50:06.72] spk_0:
particularly staff won’t tell you if it’s the c 00 that we’re talking about. Yep, that’s the source. [00:50:13.58] spk_2:
You liketo have staff participate, attend [00:50:21.06] spk_0:
and participate board inboard means and not just the C suite. Yeah, that’s what [00:50:21.61] spk_4:
I did something that people who it [00:50:24.35] spk_2:
kind of [00:50:51.40] spk_4:
naturally evolved in Grameen Foundation, where from when we had a very small staff initially is you know, I would have some staff that would present to the board. Maybe they weren’t as good at presenting his. I was. Maybe they were better, but but to give them that experience, to demystify what the board is by having them, and the board could see the quality of staff I had, whether it was, hopefully they were impressed. Sometimes they’re, like, you know, realize that you had why I had to step in and do this, but I ultimately not only had the senior staff as we grew, you know, sit around the board table and either present or observed, but I would say any available staff member quite radical. Could you sit in an outer ring and observe? And it just it had this kind of ability to demystify the board where a lot of non profit employees like [00:51:08.63] spk_2:
What is [00:52:23.45] spk_4:
the board do and they’re not doing enough. And what’s their role? And why do we have to work so hard to prepare these board meetings and when they can actually sit there and observe the board deliberating and we would we would go one step further, which is where a t end of the board meeting the board would all leave board members except for the chair, and I would facilitate a debrief with all the staff who were present. Summons might be 2025 staff members, and they could all say, I thought the board had a really intelligent conversation about that. I thought that they totally avoided this topic and had a really, you know, bad discussion about it, and we would just we wouldn’t try to argue them. And so it because a lot of people came to work for me, as I learned is that the board was this mysterious thing where the CEO would go off in a room and maybe the CFO would make a 45 minute presentation and then be ushered out of the room. And it just felt like a this kind of secret society that was making decisions about them that they had no visibility into. And I kind of went the other way of just absolute transparency, including sometimes the board. My staff would see the board grilling me, and they would see me sometimes perform well and defend their interests. You know, some board member wants a new program that made no sense, and I would say, No, we’re not gonna do that makes no sense. And sometimes they’d see me stumble. But again, it just made it more of a human, just just just a group of people trying to help us in a different type of role than you have and let them watch you at times and you get to watch them perform and evaluated and and so it just took all that mysteriousness out of it, and I thought was healthy. Now, at times, you know, I did. I have an occasional board member say, Well, what [00:52:43.95] spk_2:
if we What if [00:52:47.15] spk_4:
we close down this whole project? You know, maybe that would be a good idea. And then the people running that project sitting in the background Does it cause anxiety that you need to manage? Yes, there were. There were problems with that. But the benefits way far outweigh the costs in my mind. [00:53:01.32] spk_0:
Okay. Interesting. Yeah, The typical is staff member of presents, and then is, as you said, ushered out. Yeah. [00:53:12.65] spk_2:
All right. Awesome. Opening our minds. Um, you have some thoughts [00:53:13.51] spk_0:
about upgrading aboard where we have, like, two minutes or so left or something. So [00:53:18.60] spk_2:
we got a good [00:53:19.21] spk_0:
Okay, we have about three minutes left up the timeto upgrade first. What do you mean by upgrading aboard? Well, [00:54:16.61] spk_4:
I I believe that I’ve studied it. That about 80% of non profit boards in this country or some version of dysfunctional either micromanaging or only 80 or well, you think that low occasionally I say that I ask people who challenge me and more often it’s that they think it It’s more than that. But whatever most up a solid majority and the reason s O I. What I say is, Is that it? You know, if you’re upgrading, I’m saying, if you want to take a dysfunctional board to mediocre or a mediocre board too high performing it could be done. But you need to do a couple things. One. Is there no quick fixes? If anyone tells you they can turn a board materially increase their performance in 90 days, adopting you know, four techniques. It’s not gonna happen if if you want to increase the quality aboard materially, significantly mark your calendar 3 to 5 years in the future. And one of the things I most often hear from executive directors is, Well, I’m gonna wait for my board to start performing, and then I’ll really engage them on and support them. But they need to prove to me, and I said, No, that’s the wrong way. Look at it. You need to start treating them now. Whoever is on that treat them now is if they’re high performing, bored, invest in them that way and then given a couple years of lag time, they’ll emerge to be the board that you deserve. But you need to treat them now like they’re the board that you deserve, even though they’re not yet, um, and so [00:54:47.20] spk_2:
that may just [00:54:47.78] spk_4:
spending intensive time, helping to create real wins for them and a great experience of being on the board, which is gonna be different for each board member [00:54:55.99] spk_0:
and challenging them to spend more time to get more responsibility. [00:54:59.46] spk_2:
That’s right, but also [00:55:00.20] spk_4:
making it making it pleasurable and enjoyable for them to do so not because their guilt or manipulation, but just out of a sense of opportunity. So again I go into in the book, I talk about how once that once I kind of got that at the care and feeding of board members. I think most executive directors and CEO spend probably could spend 3 to 4 times Maur of their time and effort in cultivating these board members. And the payback is immeasurable. But it’s it’s not gonna happen 90 days if if you’re if you’re gonna just read an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, apply a few techniques and then you know are they performing better in 90 days. It’s just not. That’s not how groups evolve and function. But if you do it over an extended period aboard, and then you just add one good new member a year. Ah, and they raised the level of everyone a little bit, and that’s that’s how this goes. But if you stick with it for a couple of years, it could be miraculous. [00:55:59.64] spk_0:
We’re gonna leave it there. That’s outstanding. Is Alex counts his book again, changing the world without Losing your mind? Leadership lessons from three decades of social entrepreneurship. You’ll find him at Alex counts dot com and at Alex, [00:56:14.52] spk_2:
counts. Thanks so much, Thank you Pleasure. Next week, our Innovators, [00:56:30.41] spk_0:
Siri’s continues with the return of Peter Shankman on neuro Diversity. What that means for you as an employer and for your employees, the those who are New road divergent. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com [00:56:41.16] spk_2:
by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is [00:56:59.82] spk_0:
there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Our creative [00:57:00.60] spk_2:
producer is Claire Meyerhoff. [00:57:41.08] spk_5:
Sam Liebowitz is the line producer on the board shows. Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein of Brooklyn, New York, with me next week for non profit radio Big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great talking alternative radio 24 hours a day.
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Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other 95% on your aptly named host. I’m firing a listener. Steph Marie p. Left this iTunes review on March 11th 2018. Quote content is great. Okay, but universal. No. Gator cancels everything preceding it. Tony often chastises his guests or asks a question and then bulldozes them When they reply, it can get awkward and off putting. For example, a guest started off a response with good question, Tony. And he admonished the guest for saying that rude and weird. End quote. Steph, Marie P. Get off my show off. I want you to stop listening. I do not want you to be listening to my words. You don’t get me. I am in no way going to try to explain me to you because it would be over your head. You don’t have a sense of Well, maybe you do have a sense of humor. I’m not gonna go at home now. I’m not gonna go there. Maybe you have a lovely sense of humor. But you don’t share mine or you don’t even get mine. Let you don’t have to share it. You just have to understand it and you don’t. So I want you off the show. So here’s what I would implore you. I beseech you to do first. Unsubscribes Don’t stop yet. Don’t pause and stop yet. I want you to go. Whatever platform you’re listening is probably iTunes. That’s where your review was. Unsubscribes unsubscribes. Okay, now then you have to do that. Come back. Hit. Stop Not pause because we’re stopping. Stop and go away. Do not listen to this show again. Next thing I know, you’ll be chastising me because I’m lewd and weird to imaginary interns. You don’t get me and you never will. Please stop listening, Steph. Marie P. Get off my show. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. Now that Steph miree P is gone. I can say that with enormous confidence I’d be hit with favoritism if you beaned me with the idea that you missed today’s show Its program day manager program with a c. R m. The Rite CR M can help you run day to day program operations, track client relationships and outcomes. Host training’s manage certifications, organized transportation and Maur. Our panel was recorded at 19 NTC and there, Jake Grinstead from simply 3 60 Leah kopperman with Cash, Chi Williams at the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council and Meta Channel from Top Cloud Consulting and Co. Learning for Your Programs. This 19 ntcdinosaur encourages you to look at a more collaborative training culture, which pushes the bounds of Who is the educator. They’re Deborah askanase at Oracle Met Sweet the Sheik, A. Phillips with Tech Soup, NGO Source and Kevin Martin from J. Camp 1 80 on Tony’s Take two Living Trusts Responsive by Wagner, C. P A is guiding you beyond the numbers. Regular cps dot com By koegler Mountain Software Denali Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for non-profits tony dot m a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non-profits, your story is their mission turned hyphen to DOT CEO. I feel so much better. Burden off my shoulders here is manage your programs with a C. R M. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 19 and T. C. You know that it’s the 2019 non-profit Technology Conference. You know that we’re coming to you from the convention center in Portland, Oregon. What you don’t know is that I am now with Jake Grinstead, Leah kopperman, Chi Williams and Meta Channel, and their seminar topic is not just for fund-raising anymore. Managing programs With C R M zsystems You also know that all of our 19 NTC interviews are brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact. Let’s meet the panel. They are again Jake Grinstead. He’s founder of simply 3 60 Leah kopperman, director of data and C. R. M at Kesha Chi Williams is the executive director at the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council, and methanol is seated furthest from me. And she’s the principal at Top Cloud Consulting. Welcome. Happy to be here. Have all four of you. It’s a big panel, but way can accommodate Absolutely. Thank you. So I’m not sure is this is this, uh, let’s start down at the end with the metal. Is this is emerging, or is Am I just not aware that your C R M database can be used to manage programs? You’re welcome to say that I’m just not aware. Yeah. So it has been around for a while, but definitely in the nonprofit world, it is an emerging awareness that it can be used for a program metoo management. Okay. And what, Metta, Let’s stay with you. What do we need to have in place so that we can do this way? Just need us, C r m databases that it, or are there other things we need to have? No. So you have to have the right kind of serum because not all CR ends in the market right now are capable of supporting program data. So you need to have right tools and write features in the Sierra system to support this. Okay, Right kind of cr M. Okay. Uh, so we’ll come back to that because we have 1/2 an hour together. Um uh, let’s see. Hey, why don’t you sort of give us Ah, a headline and a lead? Uh, that anything more? You could say that to introduce us to this. Yeah, I think that while using serums for program management and it’s itself not new, it’s much more broadly recognized. My organization, I felt like even just four years ago, Coming on working on ours for five years ago, people were like, That’s Syrians are for fund-raising. And I’m like, No, this makes sense. This is how it’s gonna work for us. And I had this vision and I was able to find the people that work with, but it wasn’t a conversation anyone else was having. And now I go into a session and everybody’s like, Let’s talk about program management. So are you a pioneer or early adopter? Early A doctor. I think the pioneers were way before me. All right, All right. Leo, what’s the advantage of doing this? Well, I wanted to also remarked that the organization that I’m with Kesha we’ve been using C r. M to manage our program since 2012. So we were really early adopter Warren earlier. You weren’t. You sure you want a pioneer? Why can’t I personally wasn’t I was not with Kesha and 2012 with the organization. I would I would say so. Yeah, I think so. Okay. That’s not a scientific survey statement. It’s just got gut instinct. Think so? Okay. Yeah. Um, Lee also credits herself with being That makes it sound like nobody else believes it. I believe I do believe it. Teaching me how to sign a sign up for a Twitter. He had a start. My account on Twitter. Now we have Susan Chavez is my mind that the show and my company’s works from works as our social manager. But she was not the social manager in 20. We’re not sure where this 2014 or 15. We’ll have to look at what it will say. Joined. Right? Right. My name’s has joined it, I’m sure was maybe Susan can tell us. Okay, maybe she’ll look, I know it was not 16. I know. I’ve been on longer than 16. Okay. Uh, okay. And, uh, Jake, what’s the advantage to doing this? What? Why? Why? Why not just do it Separate different management for our programs? Sure. I think there are a few advantages of having a serum for non-profits programs, and one of them is allowing for more time for your program staff to really focus on what they do best. Focus on their passion, focus on why they were hired, and that’s to actually manage the programs that they have. So having a non-profit serum allows you to cut some of the administrative overhead that doing doing this type of work with multiple different systems, maybe on paper, maybe an excel, maybe in different databases. By bringing that together, you make it a lot simpler and cut down on that time. But what if the comparison is with ANAP location? That’s that’s designed for program management versus managing your program through the C. R. M? So I would argue that if it program is designed to manage your sorry if application is designed to manage the programs, it quite well might be a program crn that’s probably see around. We should probably back-up is giving you Siara here, Jake Constituent Relationship management. So it’s any application that helps manage the relationship that your organization has with your constituents and your constituents might be the people you serve in the fund-raising world. Obviously, it’s the donors and the people who help support you. But in the programme world, it’s those the people that are involved in your mission might be volunteers. It might be the people use serve. It might be others involved with whatever your mission is. All right. All right. So So since I got I gotta go, Leo. Because with grand grand, I’m sorry. I gotta go to Chi because of the grand theatrics that you gave Jake, I have to go back to you. So what are we? Wait, What are we talking about? Are we not talking about, Like, salesforce and razors edge yet for program management, right? We are we talking about Exactly. I would say that Razor’s edge doesn’t really support program blackbaud other blackbaud tools. D’oh! We’re talking about service. We are talking about a fund-raising C r m being used for a, uh, just just a c r M serum that theorems air, not natively just for fund-raising. Those xero ends there for any constituent management, although some are designed very much for fund-raising like Razor’s edge. But sales force. And that’s the reason my order, when we were doing all of our evaluations of many serums, they were out there in 2013. We ended up choosing that one because it was more of a platform that we could use for program management, Um, versus something that was just set up for fund-raising. But CR rims are for everything. I would argue that if you did not have a program cr em, you’re probably using sheets of paper or spreadsheets. That’s really the alternative. Okay. Okay. Well, that’s exactly what medicine to you have to have the right kind of cr m. Yes. Yeah, it’s time for a break, but, uh, Sam didn’t tell me. Now he did. Wagner CPS. They’ve got a free webinar on August 21st Fair labor standards act nuts, bolts and updates. Now, today is August 16th. So the odds of anyone listening live or archive, which means anybody, because that’s only two ways you can listen, if you could just say theon of anybody listening doesn’t matter. Live our archive. You’re wasting syllables here, Thea. Odds of anybody listening on August 21st are slim to xero. So watch the archive. Um uh, it’s a wagon or yeah, we call these waiting to call these things. These wagoner webinars webinars. So this wagon R is the Fair Labor Standards Act. Calculating regular rate of pay and overtime pay for employees or for yourself that counts. You count to understanding, paid versus unpaid time and a lot more. You’ll find this wagon are the archive thereof. At wagner cps dot com, you click resource is and then recorded events. Let’s do the live list or love. I feel like doing it early today. Um, starting native, starting domestic, I should say not. Maybe not native but domestic. Ah, Sacramento, California on Hollister, California and Tampa, Florida. And those were abroad will get their Hammond, Indiana, special Live listener love after Hammond, Indiana. Franconia, Virginia. Franconia, Alcohol Franconia. Know whether it is, um uh, no, that’s Peru. That’s abroad. I wish she would organize his better. Sam. Really? You could do a better job for me. What kind of support is this? It’s unbelievable. I don’t have interns or don’t even get producer support. So also all jumbled up between domestic and abroad. I gotta figure it out. Salt Lake City. All right, That’s, um I guess he would consider that domestic. Yeah. Salt Lake City, Utah Live. Listen, love. After you do New Bern, North Carolina Live love to the new burns. Ah, Hell’s Kitchen, New York. I love I love that Hell’s Kitchen shows up as a separate entity. It’s not New York, New York, it’s Hell’s Kitchen, and that’s the only neighborhood in New York where that happens. We don’t get we don’t see, um, Nomad or Dumbo or Upper East, but Hell’s kitchen specific. I love that. I admire that. How do you How do you do that helps get you probably even know what I’m ranting. I don’t even know what I’m talking about. Um Raleigh, North Carolina. Live love out to you as well. Cool. That’s a Carolina today. Um, Now let’s go abroad With which had a better organized list from Shanghai. Doesn’t do by continent during Times Hemisphere released. You could do atmosphere. That’s only four of those. For Christ sake, you could do atmosphere. It’s only four of them. Shanghai, Shanghai, China Showing how you with us often. Thank you so much for that For that loyalty. NI hao Ni Hao and Seoul SEOUL, South Korea Also so such loyal, loyal, live listener love the soul Annual haserot comes a ham Nida Mexico CITY, Mexico Witnessed our days when a star dies. Mexico City and Tehran, Iran. You’ve been checking in occasionally. Now, Tehran. Thank you for coming back. Um, our keep. Ah, Peru. That would be Ah, put yours up. Portuguese now? No, the only spanish. So I ve been a star days When a star days for arctic quip Peru Thank you for being with us. Um, that’s everybody abroad. And, uh so live lister, love. Thank you so much for being with us and the podcast pleasantries. Because we have over 13,000 people listening in the time shift and the pleasantries go out to you wherever we fit into your schedule. I’m grateful pleasantries to you, and we know that we are minus one. Where ah, 13. Like 13,500 minus one from now. Going forward. Not just this week. I’m not going to say her name anymore. Uhm And so why did I wait till you may be wondering why that we tell today this review from, uh, that person was march 11th 2018. I don’t check that often. I don’t I don’t look at the reviews like every month even, uh, but I have seen it. I have. I’ve seen it long before today. I just was ignoring it in the past. And then the last time I saw it, I don’t know. Whatever it was a month or so ago, it annoyed me. So So that’s why that’s why uh, no, I haven’t been annoyed for for these 18 months since March or something of last year. But I’ve been annoyed for the past week, a month or so, and now I’m over it. Therefore, we’re moving on to Ah, what we’re doing. We’re continuing, of course, with Jake Grinstead, Leah kopperman, Chi Williams and methanol talking about managing your programs with Sierra. One of the fundamental differences is that in fund-raising CR M in fund-raising world, right, The kind of fund-raising data that every organization maintains is fairly typical. So whereas for programs, that is a huge where I d And so your CNN system needs to be able to store and manage all those different kinds of data, that’s a prerequisite to be used as programs. Okay, Okay. Uh, so you were just backing up a little asking about, like, different kinds of Syrians. I’ve certainly worked in social service agencies where in the past they’ve had what’s called a case management system and that really is what the social service frontline staff would use to manage the clients that they work with. So that’s really very parallel Thio, the kind of idea that we’re talking about a program management system and the advantage of not having a separate program management system and a separate fund-raising system is often there’s overlap between who your constituents are, and somebody who participated in one of your programs may very well end up becoming a donor or somebody who participate. Somebody who’s a donor may become a volunteer, and if you’re managing your volunteer program and you’re managing your client base through the same system, then you have up to date information and email addresses. Postal address is interests, etcetera, and so you can use it both for the client and and for the fund-raising. All right, so I think I’m trainable here. But let’s make sure so you can have a generic C R M that will manage fund-raising and Andi program operations trainable. I would take this a step further and say, In addition to what Leo just said, your program crn might often be very helpful to your development. Your fund-raising department. There are so many times where your fund-raising team are going to need to ask the program team for certain statistics and reports and data about the programs that they run because they’re gonna need that for their grants and etcetera to do their fund-raising. And so if the data is in the same place. If everyone’s using the same tool, the same crn the development staff would be able to have access directly to the reports and the information about the programs that are being run without having to tie up program staff. Time to actually pull those that information separately. That’s another advantage of bringing those things together and what xero. OK, OK, in your program description. Have you done your program already? You have your on the downside. It’s great. Okay, um, nobody came with a glass of wine in the bar is open, even my drink. Okay, Jake, that is not water. I guess that’s vodka. Leah has a metal bottles. We don’t know what’s in that. Two women down the oak. That is already finished. I think I That’s Jim, not water. Alright, So good. I’m glad I’m not hindering the fun and excitement part of social part of 19 nineties E for any of you. Okay, so in your program, in your session description, you take off a whole bunch of things that can be run through a c. R. M. Tracking client relationships and outcomes run training’s manage certifications, organized transportation. Is it worth taking through. Is there enough to say about each of these about how the C R M should can be used to do each of those things? Or is that too much in the weeds? The way that we handled the panel was each of the four of us did like a case study, where we talkto sort of soup to nuts how we use our serum to manage one particular thing. I don’t think there’s enough time here to run through, but that that is how we handled it in case studies. My brief. I don’t know if you’ve got a little example of how shit uses when it might be helpful for sure so way. But we can. We could do brief examples. So you each have a different CR M doing something different. Yeah, because because all the organizations that we are working with or at our do different mission and Jake you’re the consultant here. No, I actually 36 from the founders simply for 60 were actually creating a C. R. M that is designed for programs. That’s why we started something for 60. I work from non-profit where we found it frustrating that we couldn’t find a good program. Cr m. And so with that organization I actually started and founded simply 3 60 to do that to fill that need. Okay, so in the session, I actually talks about one of our founding clients s O, That I use that as a case study and represented them talking about how having a program crn for them has been so helpful thing. American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey. Okay, Okay, I’m willing I’m willing to hear the case is from each of you, But you realize that we don’t have 75 minutes. So So I know on dhe. I appreciate that you aren’t all nodding, is it? But what happens when you start talking? You get into your stage hit, and all of a sudden you’re three minutes. Story becomes 12 minutes, and then we’re out of luck. So I have to cut off everybody else, and everybody will be pissed off at you. And they’ll wonder why they didn’t go to the drinks instead of coming here. Should have drinks. Why? I waste my time here because they didn’t get to tell the story. So everybody gets, uh, okay, so we’re 13 minutes. We’ll make this the longer sessions as 27 figure. We spent a minute bantering, so we’ll go to 28 which is about 15 divided by four. I’m impressed with math, but I haven’t finished it yet. 15 divided by four is less than four. It’s like three minutes and 1/2. So everybody gets about three and 1/2 minutes. I’m gonna I’m gonna try my best. All right? So everybody gets three minutes and 30 seconds on Duh. At the three minute mark, I’m gonna let you know that you only have 30 seconds left and we’re gonna hold you to this s o I since I feel bad. That meta is sitting at the end doesn’t have a devoted Mike. And I feel second bad for, um, for Kai, who also is has to share my So let’s start at the end. With Metta, you have three and 1/2 minutes to tell the story at, um top cloudgood. The top cloud consulting shared in the Okay. Get closer to the study of one of the clients I work with. The organization worked in the areas of health and wellness. They programs such as individual and group therapy for physical humans on wellness programs. So before I started working with them, they were managing their data. Alden spreadsheets. It was spread all throughout the organization with all the program teams. Every time that the team’s wanted to pull any kind of report, they were pulling that out of individual spreadsheets and manually formatting into the desert former and that was taking them days. Thio create a report. So number one it was a giant waste of organizations. Resource is on number two. Everybody knew that pulling the report was like pulling teeth, so they were not even using reports as much as they should. So after we moved there, they tied to the Syrian system. The reports were quick, instant, instantly available up to date, not for five days old on the organization started using reports as a feature much more frequently because it was available so much more easily. That’s so concisely I didn’t get to give you a warning. Uh, you’re here a little more You want to say Okay, tell our stories, and maybe, maybe maybe maybe the host will develop some questions. You black lackluster. Who’s No? No, you still get your three minutes? You still get your three? What? I say three and 1/2 actually. Three minute warning. He’s cutting it down, so I don’t know, You know, meta exceed XL, but you could be You’re welcome to be lackluster. Please. OK, eso I work with the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council. We provide training and resource is on wildlife rehabilitation. We have membership. We have classes, we have certification. We have a practicum. We use our serum to manage all that often. It’s the same people doing all of that. And then maybe they have an extra $5 they’re helping us out with the $5. Or maybe they’re volunteering for us. So we get to see all of that before we have C R. M. We had an old system and we actually lose data. Wait, hold on. I’m sorry, Amy. Sabat Ward, Stop distracting the guest on top of radio. You had your chance. You had your shot. Just distracted CEO of intent is distracting, distracting Leah and J everybody making this wave on camera. All right, I’ll spot you an extra 15 2nd All right? Yeah. So before we had our modern serum. We were losing data like we have a registration that would get lost because the system in between one server and the computer, it would just disappear. So we have people showing up for classes and we have no record of them. Really. A lot of issues with trust, all sorts of problems. So with the modern serum were able Thio one have everything in one place. I know to trust our data. We haven’t come directly from our website into our system. We’re able to track our measure, tracked measurements, assessment of how the students are doing, how they’re engaging with us. It’s It’s quite an interesting set up, Andi, I guess I want to mention one interesting thing we found as we talk about our case studies because they’re all very different. You know, I’m contracting with hosts and doing sending certificates to students and all the stuff that happens in between there. But we found this similar framework. We are all even though our products are very different. The steps we need to go to are very similar and so we’re hoping to kind of create some data models for other non-profits to dues to be ableto have program management CR ems. And how are you? How are you collecting that? Well, I’m working with a couple of different groups on that, but user user studies just people. It’s really just people like the four of us getting together and walking through these scenarios and saying, Oh, okay. This flows into this, which is this, and this is always an assessment piece. Even if you might not call it assessment. This is your registration, your enrollment, something that sort. This is your program piece. Oh, this might be an add on. If you have a case management your assessment might be Did they find a resolution? But there’s these really core similarities, and so I’m excited to see where that goes. Okay, I appreciate that. You actually did accept my admonition. Thio keep things concise. Haven’t given a three minute warning yet. Okay, now, Leo, don’t blow it, okay? I’ll do my best. Really? Okay, so So it kiss it. We air the LGBT Q Jewish organization in the US, where national and focus on our mission Shin is too have full inclusion of LGBT Q Jews in Jewish life and one of our programs that we do is where we train the leaders of Jewish organizations to have more inclusive environments for sorry for Jews who are participating. And it’s not the water over the vodka. So we that we do in sort of regional programs and we do a year long program, say, in Chicago, where the Jewish Community Center and the bunch of synagogues and the, uh, I don’t know if there’s a Jewish community foundation. Whatever the Jewish organizations are in the area, they all commit to this year long program and we offer them training and help them set goals to make their organizations more inclusive. And we provide them with coaching services over the course of the year and the way that our Sierra Miss and then at the end of the year, they you know, sort of report back to us through a survey about, uh, how they felt about being participants. And so the way that we manage that program with our serum and we happened to use sales force is that we way use existing data in the sales force. Instance toe understand what communities might be the next ones to offer a program in right Well, look, we’ll see. OK, we have enough people, maybe in Cincinnati, that maybe that’s the next community. Well, where will offer a program? And then we can do marketing using that C R M to the all the Jewish professionals working in Cincinnati and and advertise the program and reach out and say, We’re going to be running this and will you enroll? Then we have a sign up process where organizations will sign up and add the that information about their organizations baseline measures of where their organization is at in terms of Do they have gender neutral bathrooms? Do they have a new LGBT clue of LGBT affirmative group in their community? Do they have a bullying policy? You know, all these different kinds of measures. We asked them up front when they fill out the form and they tell us where they are, is a baseline. And then they, during the program, set a bunch of goals. Those all their goals go into our serum and then our coach has access to all those goals and works with them over the course of the year. Two. Help them reach those goals. All those girls also populate a dashboard that we have in the serum, that our executive leadership can look at any time and see 80% of the current leadership project. Participants are you know, they have started on 40% of their goals. They are still waiting to start on 10 and they so we can see they can see the progress without having to ask anybody. That’s just there in the dashboard. And our fund-raising team can also use that to make a case to a donor because it’s just right there in front of them. They can log in any time and do that so and then at the end they do a survey and we and we find out one of the things we want to do is change mind set, openness, three minute warning, okay. And we want to change the mindset of the participating organizations. So we asked them at the end did they see new opportunities for LGBT inclusion in their communities. And one of our measures is what percentage of organizations reported that and we have about 80% of our participants reporting that they did see new opportunities for inclusion. So it’s been very successful all right, Jake. So yes. So one of my founding clients, the American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey. They are an affiliation of summer camps in the United States, and their mission is to help in rich lives through the camp experience. So they help train camp staff. They help parents figure out which camps to send their children to and just generally promote the can’t summer camp experience in United States. Um and so I want to touch on another potential benefit of a program serum that we haven’t been touched on already. But we haven’t properly articulated yet, which is the benefit that it can give to constituents themselves. So the people who are actually benefiting from the program can really benefit from their organization having a program xero. And I’m gonna give you an example of how at the American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey, they have this amazing program. This wonderful lady there named Rene, who is in charge of helping parents find the right summer camp for their children. And she works oftentimes one on one with parents to help them find the camp. It would be good for them and so what we were able to do once we had all of the camp, all the member camps that are affiliated with this organization into a program. Crn we were able to start exposing that information on their website directly and gave parents a chance to go to the website, fill out a form as to what their children might be interested in. You know how long the camp should be, How much it should cost nb be able to actually search for summer camps right there on because they had now this one see Iran, where all of their camps were together. They could trust that the information that was e-giving that was being given out on the website would be accurate to these parents. So then parents could actually indicate that they were interested in the camp camps, then had a member’s portal through the sea Iran that they could log into on dhe. Then camps could see which parents had indicated their interest. They could also now register for training events. They could basically take advantage of all the benefits that the was giving them. So by using simply 3 60 in this case, they were actually able to give both their member camps and the parents that they served better access to their own information to the information is in the system and better serve them with the programs that they have. Can anybody else site benefits to the those they’re serving constitutent people themselves? Well, maybe not people, but the environment. The what? I like Jakes. He didn’t say it, but he has one aboutthe texting. Oh, sure. So another organization I’ve worked with has they run programs for kids, toe, get kids out into the countryside for the summertime incredible organization on. And they they have bus loads of children that get on the buses at the Port Authority. But you work for me, work for any schools, or is this all play time for this is this is a thing. So what happened is I was in college in London and I found, became a counselor to summer camp, and that was it. Camp was like the rest of my life. I was obsessed with this. So this organization runs five summer camps, and the kid’s got on buses. They went out to the countryside, but then, when the buses came home There was often this situation where parents might be late to pick up their children or they didn’t know exactly when the buses would arrive. Maybe the buses would come early. And so, by using a program, Sierra and we suddenly had this ability to send out mass text messages. Two parents, as the buses were sort of a narrow waves. Often, arroway whatever and say, Hey, just so you know, your child’s on their way home, Can’t wait to see you. Please make sure your at this place at this time and that we hadn’t even anticipated that this could be something we could do with a program. Xero. So what we actually talked about in our in our session was this idea that there are sometimes these unexpected benefits as well on dhe. This was a great one for us. Yeah, you’ve been You’ve been listening for a while. You have a question, But you have a question you like to ask. Oh, okay. You know what? I’m gonna shut you out. What’s your name? Joanne. Joint. Crabtree joined Crabtree from Washington from Washington non-profits in Vancouver, Washington State of Washington. So Joanne missed a session not just for fund-raising anymore managing programs with the arm zsystems and came here to listen to this. 30 minutes, 30 minutes. Short version. Thank you, Joanne. Thank you very much. Check out non-profit radio. We have way. Have lots of good panels. Not This isn’t the only one we do lots of good stuff. Thank you, Joanne. Okay, Um, we just have Yeah, okay. Anybody else want to shout out? Ah, a constituent benefit. Because I think that we’re here for the people or the environment or the animals. We’re, you know, we’re serving anybody else Want to shout out a constituent benefit, but has to be in, like, 30 seconds? Okay, Get much closer in one of the organizations that I worked with the program data and fund-raising data was separated on the program. Later was once we combined the two systems and brought the program later into the CIA room along with the fund-raising data, it’s suddenly help. The organization will stop, get along with each other much better, because previously, there was a lot of this manual data exchange between the two teams and the teens were frustrated, like concentrated, questing and not receiving the data that they want benefit not only to the recipients, but to the provider’s as well. All right, we got to leave it there. Thank you so much. Thanks, Tony. Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you’re welcome. They are Jake Grinstead, founder of simply 3 60 Leah kopperman, director of data. And see our Emmett Cash Guy Williams, executive director of the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council. And Mitya Nadal, principal at Top Cloud Consulting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being with Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of 19 NTC. Thank you, Joanne. Joanne Crawford. Thank you. Are our audience member for the panel. And of course, all our panels are brought to you by our partners. That act blew in while we’re here in 1990 Sea ActBlue free fund-raising tools to help non-profits make an impact. Thanks so much for being with us. Need to take a break. See how Sam gave me the proper proper See when I get good support, the show runs. If I could just get decent support from everyone, we need to take a break. Oh, I said that host sucks. Cougar Mountain software, Cougar Mountain software quote We use Denali Fund for non-profits. It’s easy to track how much is in each fund fairly simple to use, and the training to be helped the training to be very helpful. I need an intern so bad, so I have somebody to blame for this ship. Copy. It’s unbelievable, and the training is very helpful and thorough. Customer service has been responsive and caring. End quote. That’s Laurie D. Oh, God, Lord, he’s from a church. I’m sorry. I don’t know if Laurie Listen, Um, another quote. All the features of a sophisticated fund accounting system at a reasonable cost. End. Quote. That’s Kim T. From Lawrence Township Cookie Mountain software. That’s what this is all about. They have a free 60 day trial. You’ll find that on the list in our landing page at tony dot m a slash Cougar Mountain. Now time for Tony’s Take two living trusts. You start your plan giving program with charitable bequests. That’s definitely the place to start. You’ve heard that mantra many times from my lips. If you want to go further and you don’t have to, you could just stop with requests and have a very respectable, planned giving program. But if you want to go further living trusts or revocable living trust. That’s an excellent next step. It’s easy for everybody to understand, for you and for your donors. My Living Trust video is at tony martignetti dot com, and that is Tony’s Take two. Let’s do a live listener love update since we did it early Now more people have checked in Ann Arbor, Michigan is with us. New York, New York, New York. See, I’m sorry you can’t be in Hell’s Kitchen in New York, New York If you were in Hell’s Kitchen, you would have got you. We got shouted out as Hell’s Kitchen, but you’re elsewhere. Just New York, New York. But glad you’re with us. Live, love to you. And also Osaka, Japan, Japan. Checking in. Thank you, Konnichi wa and young son, South Korea. On your haserot comes a ham Nida. Thank you for joining us Live love to all of our live listeners. And now it’s time for Cole earning for your programs. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of 1990. See, that’s 2019 non-profit Technology Conference. We are in the Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. All of our 19 ntcdinosaur views are brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact with me Now our Deborah askanase, Latika Phillips and Kevin Martin. Seated next to me is Debra. She’s the social impact manager for capacity building programs at Oracle. That Sweet Shikha is a program manager at NGO Source and grantmaker. Success four. NGO Source and grantmaker maker Success at Tech Soup, NGO Source and Kevin Martone is technology program manager at Jay Camp 1 80 a program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation that was the longest I’m out of breath already with dellaccio sources into Kevin is a program, but he’s not the foundation, but he’s a program Oracle Met Suites. Two words. I’m exhausted already. Introductions. OK, your program topic was Reinvigorate your programs through multi directional learning. Let’s start with down the end. Kevin Martin, Please let’s define our terms. What are we talking about? This multi directional learning? Great. So Avery jargon e-giving drug in jail on non-profit radio. It will get the three of you out of jail in our session. We definitely We started pretty early explaining what that actually meant. So Okay, so I’m not the only one I know So So, um, really, the the session in this topic is really about his, you know, Traditionally, sessions are one way there’s someone on stage, whether it’s a lecture or in a webinar or some other training’s environment, who all the knowledge is going from that person who’s the expert to the audience. The learner, right? So multi directional is. I’m not assuming that that person has all the knowledge in the room that instead you’re embracing the fact that everyone in a training program has knowledge and expertise. And so you have learning from learning toe Lerner, Lerner, the teacher and teachers. So it’s all different direction, really, So So can I expect to pay less for conferences in the future. And I’m part of the training staff. I should be Compton right Free hotel E. Get free airfare. Compton. That would be good. I’m teaching. I’m in the audience, so it’s still hard work. It’s hard work. Thio create facilitated session that does multi directional, But I’m in the audience. I gotta work hard too. I should be to learning more my voice just alright, theoretical. I’m learning more. All right. Um, Jessica, why don’t you help us? Uh, bring us into the topic little bit. Give it like a headline in the lead. So why we needed this session? Well, we definitely needed the session. I think that it’s time to begin the show organizations how how to turn traditional events into something that is Maur engaging something on opportunity for everyone to contribute to these different solutions. And I was needed for organizations non-profit or for-profit. But I was as to be a part of it because I attended two different multidirectional events through next week. Oracle build a thon events of four NGO sores and in that in those opportunities for me because they were multidirectional and because it wasn’t just someone just giving me information. Given my team information for us to download and and to turn around and apply, I was actually with a team of people I was learning at the same time they were learning, and my goal throughout this whole process was to basically eliminate the time or decrease the time living in time. But decrease the time that I was spending on a billing for NGO source. And when I started this process, it took me over 30 hours a month. So process building for our team. And because of the multi directional opportunities with nets with Oracle, I’ve been able to get down my building process to less than 10 hours. Now, had I been in just a one on one session with another person, it probably would have taken me a lot longer to get to where I am now. But we had we working in teams, and so we’re all learning we were all contributing to this process. So that’s how that’s how I see it working. And I think that if we begin to we non-profits begins to look at what we’re considering. Traditional events, for instance, Webinars and think of ways that how we can actually turn those upside down to have Maur engagement to have more involvement from everyone. One. Okay, Debra, um, this sounds to me like anarchy. Why not? Why not gonna be a free for all? Well, trouble, trouble. It always sounds like gold, but it isn’t. The session was designed with the belief that everybody in the room has the answers. Right. So you walk into whatever you’re designing, whatever programmer event you’re designing with this theory that at the end of it, everyone’s experience is so much more enriched because his answers aren’t coming from the quote unquote experts. They’re coming from the people who are also doing the work out in the field or living the experience. And they have just as much validity with what they have to share as others. So a good facilitator. You have more of a facility, Kevin. Kevin was getting to this. You have more of a facilitator than a presenter. There can be some presentation elements. Like a good facilitator has figured out how to make the experience a shared facilitated latto next-gen facilitate these. I have facilitated you. Have you facilitated or just attend? Have Kevin Martin still three facilitators here? Well, as well as attendees in Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I’m focused on. Yeah, one step at a time. I know. I just stands multiple. We all can learn from each other and you multi directional. All right, is co learning the Is that just a synonym for multi directional or is co learning something different? Anybody? I would say it’s elearning. It’s similar. Um, so yeah. All right, so we’re expanding the idea of who’s the present? We’re gonna learn from elearning elearning for everybody. Um, the advantages. I made them clear. We all have something to contribute. Not only the person on the lectern, but we all Okay, so should we talk about how to organize your next staff training? That’s so so that so that it can be co directional slash multi directional slash red, amber green. Kind of learning. I don’t know what traffic lights. No way. Like our next staff training. So I remember our wedding too small and midsize non-profits. That could be just two people. They’re called learning all the time, but let’s say it’s university. Some Let’s colleges, universities, hospitals call mid size. They’re doing lots of staff trainings. They have faculty meetings. They have dr meetings. They have, uh, other provider meetings. Learnings. Training’s right in service. We can We can use this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. At our session, we actually have people to read is I’m just nothing. All right. Even though I suppose the, uh but all right, I’m stuck in the old model like I’m a dinosaur. I mean, an anachronism. Um, the person at the I’m gonna put in health care setting. But the person on stage has her master’s degree in nursing degree. She has a master’s degree in nursing. She’s got an MBA, and staff is all you know. They’re the B s ends and the R ends. No masters degrees. We still should not all be learning from the person with the MBA and the Russian downstage. And we should also be we not all should be learning from the person with the MBA and the master degree in nursing. Doesn’t she have the most into a part in the room where we’re just all a bunch of B s ends and our ends? I would say that well, number one, there is still a place for the traditional, right? There’s gonna be times where somebody is the expert who’s coming in, and the goal of that session is to get their knowledge to other people. But in the example that you just gave, those are ends who were in the crowd they have experienced in the field. And so some of that experience might be helpful to add to what the expert is saying may potentially in more theory, where’s they have more on the ground experience so they can share that with each other and with the presenter. And like never says that enriches everyone’s now the thing that was a bad example. Also that ahead of the training right, there’s this belief. The expert often has the belief of what the people in the audience want to learn. And so there’s work ahead of the training, with Cole earning as well where you can ask people. Well, what would you like to be happening in the training? And what would you like to get out of the training? And I believe that’s a piece of it, too. That’s multidirectional where that their their direction is coming from their audience. Okay, okay, let’s start with Jessica because it’s been a while since you got a chance, Doc. So we’re going to set up this staff in service training? Um, let’s keep it in the health care vicinity. What we wear. Deborah’s just saying lead. There’s lead time preparation time. How do we get started setting up our next staff training this way? Um, great question. And we did talk about this in our session I raised for I feel like for great points. Okay, They were they were not ego problem. It’s good thing we stuck you in the middle. So s so to get started. My recommendation was the number one. It’s the first of all. Think of the roadblocks. What roadblocks do you think? Well, actually, let me if I can rewind just a bit, I’d say that the number one step would be to discuss what is the goal? What is the overall world coming together? What is what do we want to get out of this? Okay. And then from from that, then start to think about what are some of the roadblocks that would actually hinder us from turning this traditional event into a multi directional. What are some potential role blocks? And then I said that we need to think about the time, the time. That is gonna the time that is going to take for this to happen. What are the time restrictions for this? What time needs to be invested in the beginning? Because I know. And for me, when I participated in the opportunities with Oracle Net suite, there was so much time invested into our team beforehand. I mean, at least 10 hours, and so that’s something to think about. You know? Are you willing to invest that time and then distributing that, distributing those responsibilities? And then I say that we need to think about what are some of the disadvantages actually of flipping and event, because there could be, You know, as Kevin said, there is definitely still a place for those traditional events. So we have to think about that. And then, of course, what are some of the advantages? So I think once you map out those four things in addition to the goal, I think that’s definitely a great a great start. So in the instance where we are having a you said, that’s a staff meeting and we’re gonna have something. So then again identify what is the goal? What are we trying to learn? And then, I think, identify people within the community who have some experience in that they may not be an expert, so to speak, but they have a lot of experience, and so I think that that’s also helpful. And then there. I think that it’s also helpful to have people who may not necessarily have hands on experience, but they do have some knowledge of what we’re talking about, because then they also have, uh, some, you know, they’re able to make some type of contribution. Okay. Okay. Uh, Debra, what are what are some of the potential roadblocks that mentioned might exist? Thio Converting your training thio, multi directional, multi directional multidirectional. Debating what the training is, of course, will be different road blocks ahead of time. There’s the time that you put into it by redesigning, rethinking, getting out of your space that you’re used to thinking about. I think that’s hard. It’s also it can be challenging to get buy-in from your organization for this new kind of not only just programming event, think about like a fundraiser that you’re having. How would you incorporate it multidirectional in that If there’s a near some training element of that, it can be challenging to get some buy-in. The other roadblocks that ah, that could happen is so you have the multi directional training and it turns out the other directions are not so interested in contributing right. What happens then? I think that that’s very real. That has never actually been my experience Does That has never actually happened. But you do have sometimes less participation than you would desire. For example, time for our last break turn to communications, PR and content for your non-profit. They help you tell your compelling stories and get media attention on those stories, as well as build support for your work for your mission. They do media relations, content marketing, communications and marketing strategy and branding strategy. There a turn hyphen to dot CEO. Finally, a sponsor message that was uneventful. Chase got butt loads more time for Cole earning for your programs. I want it. Well, I’m gonna go to Kevin and I want to talk about some of the crew’s some of the advantages of doing this aside from what we’ve already identified a few times, everybody learning from everybody else. And there’s so many different perspectives in the audience, and we bring all those perspectives in What are there other psycho social advantages that we haven’t talked about? Whatever. I mean, I would say things you just talked about are the main advantages. But I know those are off the table. Yeah, so for in terms of our attentions fan, I think I know leaving a lot of sessions and helping with managing conference conferences. Phones come out pretty early in a lecture. And so, by having these multi directional options where you stop speaking from the stage and you give everybody option the top talk and share it gets them back engaged in the energy level gets up often in the session. That seems to be the other big. Yeah, I could see different voices. I mean, I know when I speak, I have not done go learning, of course. Not sure that I ever will. But big ego ego problems, you know, But, um, irrespective. So what I’ve done so far, You know, I noticed attention perks up when I start asking questions. I started asking, and I don’t I don’t like to leave questions till the end. I take questions. So I guess I should say, When I start accepting questions, people start raising their hands. There’s different voice, you know? Said, Let’s start popping up the other. The other half of the audience wakes up, you know, I’ve got results to speak of it. That was funny. Labbate would have to sleep off the street. Nobody, nobody, nobody Just take it seriously. I probably I could see I think that is true. I could see that. At least they weren’t using their phones way. You know, I just point I do see voices or, you know, people broke up with other voices are heard throughout the room in questions. Yes. We’re gonna mention think about the traditional weapon off. Right. And you were right. And you can see your analytics. Where, like, Oh, look at all these people. They’re not Actually. Live your weapon on what you can’t say. You can see. So if you can think of turning the webinar upside down dafs multidirectional learning, I suspect the engagement will go away. Okay. Okay. Um, time limits time. Need other Latika. Talk about that. Okay, let’s let’s go to That’s our preparation. So where do we go now? It’s a day off. Are we in day of way. You know what? There was one thing some, uh mentioned pulling. You talk about pulling in advance, finding not only what you want to learn, but whether whether people will participate, can you? Let’s talk about how do you find out whether people will actually participate? So you don’t end up one U unit directional when it’s you intended go. Directional defendant Multi direct depends on what it is for the build with on events that we run, for example, we make it really clear. First of all, we assign a team captain on the net sweet side. And then we assign a point of contact on the non-profit side. And we say at the end of this event, you will have to present not the employees but the actual non-profit customers so that they present their learnings to the other customers and we sort of designed the day. So there are no surprises. It’s really clear this is what’s going to happen if you’re participating in it. And so I think you complain. I mean it that way, where everybody walks in with a showed expectation of what’s gonna happen. Okay, Okay. I was envisioning an event that’s different where it’s not all everybody presents at the end. But we’re the role learning from each other during Kevin run by an event like that can happen. Okay, How do you make sure that audience members are gonna participate in the way I just described? I think I mean, it’s well liked. Ever said it’s definitely part of its preparation. So like there’s actually a book called The Art of Gathering by Preah Parker. And she talks about the meeting or the training or whatever the gathering is. Starts as soon as you invite someone and yours should be spending time preparing them to let them know So, for example, there’s a there’s a communications training that I do. And in one of the first communications I have with any of those participants, I asked them to send a photo of themselves. And I’m very clear. I’m saying, when we do webinars when that photo shows up, that means you have to speak. And so it’s like you’re gonna get called on. And so it’s sort of prepping them to say It’s not just me talking. You have to be ready. T share your experience. And so there’s little steps like that you could do in advance to just prime them for when they get there that they’re gonna be speaking and not just listening. Okay, Okay, what do you do? Anything. Anything different in terms of preparing the audience? E. I think that it’s also good to identify everyone’s role. So if we are looking at the model that we’ve talked about teacher, teacher, the Lerner, Lerner, the teacher and learn it’s a learner. But even within that, I think that rolls should be defined for day of plain that a little bit. So when we participated in the build a thon, it was very important for us. Well, for me, toe have a note taker. There was so much information being exchanged, and it was just impossible to gather information to retain it and also apply it all at the same time. So there was one person that we designated to be one that was actually documentation. So that way, when we leave, we have steps. We have everything documented for the future and to move forward. And I also think that it’s important to identify who is actually going to be. If it’s if it’s an event set up where you can actually begin to apply and move forward with action steps at that time, that I think it’s important to have who is going to be that person? Luckily, we were able during the building down to actually go live with a lot of the different things that we were building, you know, we didn’t have to wait for testing. We were able to go live with that. But it was important to identify who was gonna be that person. Also, to identify who’s going to be in charge of accountability and follow-up. Because once we leave here, then then what happened? So it’s important to know what the next steps are. And did this actually work? Was this really beneficial? And it’s hard to really? Well, I was going to say it’s hard to tell day of for me. I I knew at that that day of the building time that this was very beneficial for my team. I just knew it. But you actually really see the results weeks and months after the fact. So the follow-up is very important. So just identifying rolls and who’s doing what, even though we’re all learning and we all have the answers. But then how else are we contributing here? All right, all right. So we go to a day off now. Okay. Let you go. Stay with you. What? What is this? What does it look like? Day off is It’s like this is the room, like, start with the room. Is it set up the same way with a traditional seminars. Yes, it set up the same way it could actually be set up in and broken off into groups that I don’t really think that there is a right or wrong way to set up something like that. I think that if it is set up in a traditional, for instance, classroom style or meeting south, I think that you can also even incorporated a workshop section where people actually kind of break off. So I think that that’s fine. I don’t think that the way that this set up is that Okay, that was a question. Well, it was interesting to me. I’m a newcomer. Yeah. In our session, they were in the traditional meeting style set up. And when we asked them to do some of the breakout work, right, the co learning, we thought we said, Turn to the person next to you. We said sorry. Away from the like, turn to the person next to you. And instead they all said, Well, can we just get up in form groups based on what we want to talk about? And they did. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, anarchy way. Well, let’s just go with it. Well, yeah. Community wants it. We’re supposed to hold it. It’s supposed to be supposed to be learner, too. What did you say? Audience to learn a teacher. I was wondering if you’d said no. You lose all your bona, fide, all your credibility Credibility. Yeah. No, it was so much fun, to be honest, I don’t know. I’m lecturing. We’re doing it my way. Um, okay. What else? What else do you want to go, Debra Day of? Tell me about what they have. Looks like we still got a few more minutes. Why don’t you want to give me a model? Work with her? You wouldn’t listen. General Health care. Mom, Your healthcare mind your model. Our nurses, nurses training day on on infection prevention, post surgery. So a couple of key pieces start with sending expectations. Make sure you have different voices the day off, and then make sure that there’s time built in for the teacher. Loner, loner, loner, loner, teacher. Right. So if you start with setting the expectations that setting up the room at the beginning, what’s gonna happen is structured time now, as Lucia was describing. But is it always where there’s structured time for the cold learning or you can’t just raise your hand and say, I have a point that I had used my downstage hand again. I have a point that, uh, that I want to make to the group. It doesn’t work like that. I think that’s informal elearning if you want to set it up for sort of formalized elearning that I do think we need some structure. Okay, Yeah. And so once you set up the day and then perhaps you’ve set the stage for what is actually gonna happen. So maybe there is a little bit of a training for 15 minutes. In the beginning, that’s like, this is the information you have to know. And then and then the important pieces. Well, how are you going to take that and add to it by the goodness of the intelligence of the people in the audience? And you have to build. You have to bake that in in some way, whether it’s an activity and there’s lots of great books on, like how to plan these kinds of activities where people learn from each other, um, or whether it’s an ideation exercise right and people spitball ideas. And then they turn to each other and talk about them. And then they iterated again, whatever it is. So that’s their learning from each other. And then at the end of the day, there has to be some way in which the learning is consolidated. So there’s the learning, Frito, that happens, happen stance in different groups. But then they have to learn from each other. Like, how did the groups each develop? And how did they exchange of information with each other? So you have to You just have to organize it. Facilitated is there Is there a resource that you gave out or that we can refer people to their white paper? Awesome, Reese. Okay, what is it? Tell us. Where can we find I? Actually, the first name that I can’t That was the multi multi directional bingo card. Okay, I know. It’s just basically a It’s a chart. And we, um we list 88 different traditional events, and then we have every every dynamic teacher to learn a learn a teacher Lerner, Lerner and so in the chart, the goal was to have the participants took him. Plead how feels different exchanges are happening for each one of these different traditional events. And so, yeah, we do wear working. Listeners find that it’s on. It’s in the collaborative, knows that it is in the collaborative notes. So you go to end 10 dot or GE go to the euro in the 19 multi-channel half, and then you know you’re well, we’re in 1980 CEO, and then your your session hash tag is multi path. Okay? And that’s where this resource is. That bingo card called a bingo card anymore. It doesn’t look like you find only because we were using that as our as our game as I workshop piece help the because depends to begin to start rebuilding their events. All right, we’re gonna leave it there. We’ve identified the resource. We’ve defined what the anarchy looks like. So I encourage you do not have the ego that I have and actually attempt this. Try this because we can all learn from each other. You couldn’t learn from each other. There wouldn’t be podcasts. That’s what much Give your altro out your outro. Deborah askanase, seated next to me is social impact Manager for capacity building programs. at Oracle Net. Sweet Machiko Phillips, his program manager for NGO source and grantmaker success at Tech Soup, NGO Source and Kevin Martin is the technology program manager for Jay Camp 1 80 which is a program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation. Thank you so much, Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks to you for being with Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of 19 NTC. All are 19 ntcdinosaur views are brought to you by our partners Act Blue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact Thanks for being with us next week. Another good one. No firings. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com Responsive by Wagner c. P A is guiding you beyond the numbers. Regular cps dot com by Cougar Mountain Software The Knowledge E fundez They’re complete accounting solution made for non-profit tony dot m a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non-profits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit Ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking alternate network. You’re listening to the Talking Alternative Network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in Sumpter potentially ater. Tune in every Tuesday at 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show Beyond potential. Live Life, Your Way on Talk radio dahna N Y C. I’m the aptly named host of Tony martignetti non-profit Radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other 95% fund-raising board relations, social media. My guests and I cover everything that small and midsize shops struggle with. If you have big dreams and a small budget, you have a home at Tony martignetti non-profit Radio. Friday’s 1 to 2 Eastern at talking alternative dot com. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business. Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested? Simply email at info at talking alternative dot com are you a conscious co creator? 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Vanessa Schnaidt & Gabriel Sanchez: Your Ultimate Communications Toolkit
Our 19NTC panel of communicators explains how to develop your communications plan and the core principles you need to abide by. They’ve got templates, checklists and worksheets galore! They’re Vanessa Schnaidt from Cause Communications and Gabriel Sanchez with First 5 LA.
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Brian Lauterbach is from Network for Good. He reveals how automation can enhance your donor communications, engagement and stewardship. This was also recorded at 19NTC.
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Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week, actually. A retired listener of the week, Patty Donahue. When she was executive director of the Tailor Conservatory Foundation in Taylor, Michigan, she enjoyed my show and insider alerts. That’s what she said. What’s not to enjoy? Of course, we take her at her word. That gig ended ended just last week with her retirement. Congratulations, Patty. I’m very happy for you on the celebratory retirement time on. And now she says, Keep doing the good work that you do, Patty. I will. And a grateful community thanks you for your work. Congratulations on your retirement. Congratulations on being our retired. Listen er of the week. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I go through in itis If you swelled me up with the idea that you missed today’s show your ultimate communications tool kit. Our 19 ntcdinosaur of communicators explains how to develop your communications plan and the core principles you need to abide by. They’ve got templates, checklists and worksheets galore. They’re Vanessa Schneiter from Cause Communications and Gabriel Sanchez with 1st 5 Ella, then automated fund-raising. Brian Louderback is from Network for Good. He reveals how automation can enhance your donor communications, engagement and stewardship. This was also recorded at 19 NTC on Tony Steak, too. Summertime is planning time. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service, fund-raising Data Driven and Technology Enabled Tony dahna slash pursuing by Wagner CPS Guiding YOU beyond the numbers regular cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations. Made Easy Text NPR to 444999 Here is your ultimate communications tool kit. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 1990 si. You know what that is? It’s a 2019 non-profit technology conference. You know where we are. We’re in Portland, Oregon, at the Convention Center. Thanks for being with our coverage of 19 NTC. This interview, Like all of ours, are eyes brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact. My guests at this moment are Vanessa Schneiter and Gabriel Sanchez. Vanessa is vice president at Caused Communications, and Gabriel is director of communications at 1st 5 Ella. But Gabriel welcome. Thank you, Tony into the show, Tony. Thank you. Thanks for taking time. Absolutely. Um so where your topic is ultimate communications tool kit, tried and true. Resource is everyone can use ultimate communications tool kit. That’s that’s, uh, pretty impressive. It’s not just the penultimate. It’s the ultimate, the altum ultimate. All right, we’re going to see I’m not in, but this is radio. Yes, Yes, you can do about your africa. I appreciate your information. Okay, uh, make you keep these promises. All right. Um what, what? To start with you, Gabriel. What belongs in a communications tool kit? Well, every every organization needs to tell their story. They want to tell their story in order to drive action and move things forward. And what we’ve learned and what I saw was my exposure to the kid was about three years ago is that there’s not a lot of learning in one place. And that’s what makes this tool kit So great is that it’s pretty much everything you need to know in one place that you can start from, and in order to both tell your story to engage your audiences, to talk to board members, to talk to donors, to engage members of the public, the people you want to serve. It’s just a great tool kit in order for you. Teo, help Dr Understanding of what you’re trying to do and to get people onboarding your mission. Okay, Vanessa. So what’s in? What’s in the tool kit? One of the components of our ultimate took it. Yes. So the communications tool kit offers best practices and really practical advice for every communicator in your organization. So everything from how do you make the case within your organization for the value of investing in communications, too. How do you put together a communications strategy to make sure that you have the right goals and tactics to drive that progress forward? And then we also get into a lot of different tactical element. So more specific surround best practices in media relations or how communications Khun support fund-raising effort. So it really is meant to be a soup to nuts, very breath oriented toolkit to help communicators at any stage of their communications journey. Okay, on who’s developed this tool kit is that the two of you and the third person on your panel who was not here, Courtney Clarke So the where is the where where is this from? Absolutely so. The the communications tool kit is authored by and created by Caused communications, which is thie first non-profit to focus on communications effectiveness in the social sector. The tool kit was originally published in 2002 last updated in 2005 and over the last few years has been undergoing this massive expansion and update project that Gabriel, as one of our partners, has been contributing Tio Courtney as well on DSO. Although it is authored by cause communications, it’s really important to us to make sure that in order for it to be as relevant as possible for today’s communicators, we receive input and feedback from the very communicators it is meant to help. So that’s where our colleagues like Gabriel come in in really helping us identify what kinds of resources and information e-giving be most valuable to them. All right and tool kit is something that’s available to the community without subscription or that’s right way. Find it. The communications took. It is available on the Cause Communications website, which is at caused communications dot org’s slash toolkit. In addition to the toolkit itself. You can also find five interactive digital lessons that we put together with the support of Courtney and her team at Form one. There are really cool way Teo get a taste for the rest of the content in the tool kit. So those those lessons are on topics ranging from branding to media relations to competitive analysis to fund-raising and measurement and evaluation. Okay, okay, yeah, everyone wanted to and Tony’s. One of the great things about the toolkit is that it’s intended for a broader audience, not just those involved in communications, but those who might be leaders of organizations. Or maybe they’re involved in development or other sectors because it helps those folks understand the importance of communications and the role it plays in order to help them do their jobs better in many ways. And we’ve seen this in smaller non-profits and smaller organizations, there is not a dedicated communication staffers. Sure, it’s distributed right, or sometimes you have many people who are directors of development and communications. Those are two big jobs, right? And so having an understanding of communications is very helpful, and and that was one of the original intentions of the guide was to help him just inform and make that case for communications with within organizations so that they make that nothing. Because communications is actually a time saver for a lot of leaders for executive director Seo’s of organizations, because it will reduce the amount of time they need to communicate because they’re essentially putting an all in one place, as opposed to having Siri’s of meetings and check ins and putting out fires. And I know Vanessa was very careful to say at the outset this for all communicators. So you’re going that it’s irrespective of your position. If you’re facing the public. Well, maybe not even his could be internal communications as well, right? That’s right. And I just had a breakthrough moment That’s right and trainable. I’m tryingto wonder. Okay, it’s not about me. It’s not what you think. Communications these days is not just a roll. It is a a practice, and we want to make sure that the toolkit is there to support anyone in a non-profit, or social sector role. Regardless of what their title says On there there business card. Everyone is a communicator these days and has an opportunity to contribute Teo Thie, expanding the reach and the impact of their organization. All right, it’s time for a break. Pursuant, they’ve got a podcast. It’s go beyond hosted by their vice president, Taylor Shanklin, who has been a guest on this show and the friend of the show. Recent episodes are self care for leaders and four digital trends for 2019. That’s just a little sample you’ll find Go beyond at pursuant dot com. Slash resource is now back to your ultimate communications tool kit from 19 NTC since caused communications. Does this for the community so generously give a shout out? What does cause communications do so? Caused communications works to support non-profits and foundations, strengthened their impact and a cheat their mission through stronger communications and marketing. So we do that by making available tools and resources and trainings for the sector. And then we also offer consulting services as well. All right, how about 1st 5 L. A. What about Gabriel? Well, they’re all about kids. Did you know 90% of the child’s brain is developing aged five? That’s a critical time. They did not know that it’s a critical time, you know. I know we’re making a lot of connections here at NTC, but the inner child’s bringing your making 1,000,000 connections a second. So it is a critical time for childhood development. And so voters, in their wisdom 20 years ago dedicated a tobacco tax to help fund programs. And we’ve now shifted to advocate for early childhood development programs like developmental screenings, preschool access and other ways to help help kids grow ready to succeed in kindergarten and in life. And so what we’re dedicated to doing is helping improve systems, make him work better for parents and their kids so that these kids grow up to do great things. You have communications principles that I derive from your world is not the principal’s themselves, but principles for day to day and long term. Gabriel, you start to take off the first of what I hope is gonna be many communications principles that you’re going to share with listeners. Well, I know it. In my part of the presentation I made yesterday, I was talking about how it’s important to think of all communication strategies and turned them inward for internal communications. I know you mentioned earlier about my breakthrough moment. Don’t gloss over it. No, course not. There’s a great breakthrough because your staff is one of your most important communicators right there, the ones where, in the age of social media, where everyone has a public persona and their posting on social media, everyone has the potential to be a spokesperson for your organization with you. Like it or not, that’s not to simply that’s not to scare people. But it’s also to remind him of the opportunity you might have in that you can reach new audiences is if you’re pursuing internal communications, which helps you with your organization. Alignment with helps you with your brand ambassador type type of programs, as well as employing engagement. So if you’re using internal communications, where those goals you’re going to help build your brand in ways that you might not, you can’t do officially through your official channel. So so oil that principal down to ah sentence. What’s the principle here? Think of your staff first, okay. And then, of course, you know not to negate everything. You just said that, like sometimes I like Boyd points. My I’m not sure my 1st 5 years were formative for my brain. I’m sure they were. You’re sure they were Tony? Not sure there was robust. They ought to have been. OK, but you gotta You gotta communications principle for us. Sure. Just Azaz Gabriel mentioned to put your staff first. We also believe in putting your strategy first. So more than we do a lot of polling and surveys at our organization on DH. We’ve learned over the years that while more than 95% of non-profits say that they value communications and its role in helping them achieve their their mission, less than half of non-profits have a dedicated communications plan. I’m not surprised by that. All right? And so the process of putting together a communications plan that aligns with your organization’s strategic plan is a great way to make sure that all of your efforts are working in unison with with each other and that you can really prioritize your time mean we all know that non-profits have way too much on their to do list and far too little time to get that done. And so a planning process can be a really helpful tool and making sure that you’re focusing on the most important things first okay. Have a communications plan. When I say okay, now, I presume the tool kit will help you develop your communications plan. That’s right. It goes over all of the basic elements of a communications plan. It even includes some tips for how to make the case for why you’re senior leadership should support the development of that plan. All right, Wei have more principles doing Gabriel have Ah, well, the principle you can share. I was talking about earlier my presentation how you can apply a crisis communications approach right to internal communications. When you’re going through a time of organizational change. Now I’ll give you four quick steps for crisis communications, and I’ll talk about how you can apply them internally. And that’s you want to be able to one. Somebody sounds their phones. I don’t Gabriel just took ownership. Go. Alright. Alright. So crisis averted. Okay, so yes, crisis cubine. How you gonna respond to this crisis? First on the show. I’ll use this perfectly as an example. Number one you ignore. Assume it was a crisis. Yeah, Yeah, but never one. You would acknowledge the situation. Hate. My phone went off, Took responsibility. Didn’t just late that it lay there. You got somebody else? Everybody stare out. Exactly. Step two is you take responsibility and you say you’re sorry, Tony, I’m sorry. And three, you explain what you’re gonna do next. I’m going to turn off my phone so it doesn’t happen. It ever happened again. Never happen again. And then for when? Hopefully you invite me back, I could remind you. Hey, I turned off my phone so that we wouldn’t have the same problem that we did last time. So what about the appoint? A blue ribbon panel? Isn’t that know me? Or is that you could put that in there? That old school? No. No, you can’t do that. It’s important to fact find. But it boils down to two. And step three, you want to explain what you’re going to do, right? And so, in times of organizational changes, the same thing, right, because you you work. You talked with plenty of non-profits. They’re always changing their adapting to new conditions. And sometimes it’s hard because it’s your staff that have are going through that, and you need to be able to explain its home. And sometimes some things don’t go The way you you wanted to. You need to take ownership of that and explain what you’re going to do to fix it. Okay, so it’s taking that same approach, you lying crisis communication and interns to your internal stand in times of change. Exactly. And in many ways, the best crisis communications is actually pre crisis planning where you’re averting crisis. That’s what you want to go to. So if you think of it that way and you’re applying those principles, that’s an external strategy. But internally, it’s a great way to keep people in line to keep people engaged and motivated. OK, Vanessa, you it’s your turn. You got communications principle for us. I do, and I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Tony. So we hear a lot about the importance of nailing that elevator pitch right? Well, I’m here to tell you that there is no single elevator pitch that is going to be the magic bullet for your organization. In fact, you need to tailor your message, depending on who you are speaking with this so there’s no one size fits all solution. There’s no one size fits all message, so it’s really important that organizations as they’re developing messages, think about what is it that really motivates each particular audience group that you’re trying Teo engage with and then create a bridge between the messages that you’re putting out there and the mission of your organization with what what your audiences really care most about. So in a sense, it’s using your it’s. Using your audience is motivation to connect that back to your organization’s mission. Alright, so, Taylor, your messages. Here are your messages again. My fundamental brain capacity. Tell your messages. Yeah. Now I have had guests who have gone through the exercise of having their board learn a new elevator pitch. You’re it. Sounds like you’re welcome. Tto disagree with other guests and but on the show over in Have we had this show in half years? Certainly everybody is not monolithically thinking so. The uniform elevator pitch not so not so helpful, you think? Well, I think there’s definitely a time and a place for developing that that pigeon, and it is important to equip your board members, for example, with some really simple talking points that they can use. But what’s going to be most effective is if that boardmember then has the comfort level of taking that message and really making it their own riffing on it, depending upon who they’re talking about. You talking? So yeah. No, I don’t I don’t know that this guest was recommending, you know, rote memorization of the identical, The identical pitch for all you know, whatever. 12 boardmember tze Maybe it was just talking points, okay? And then you should be as a boardmember. You should be comfortable enough tow Taylor that message And I said riff on it. Based on who you’re talking to, whether it’s a funder or somebody at a cocktail party, fundez becomes more. Just to be sure, the audience that you’re talking to, we got more principles if you want to keep going. This ping pong thing with are we have re exhausted communications principles. Well, I was going to talk a bit more again about internal communications and how critical it is. And I think another principle is linking the two where you should think about your external strategies and open essay was talking earlier about having a communications plan and strategy, and you should have internal communications in that same breath. You shouldn’t think of it is afterward, or a bolt on our Oh, yes, we’ve got to tell the staff, too. It should be within the same breath as you’re talking about it. You have your audience. Is your internal staff should be on that list as well. Doesn’t have to necessarily be number one, but it should be included so that they’re not thought of as an afterthought. But instead, you’re looking to engage them because one of the principles I was talking about is that your need to love your staff because those are the ones who are helping you to get the people you want, which is donors or media coverage or what have you. And they’re there for you. And you have to respect that. And you also need to look at it to where? Another way. A practical way to look at this is if you can’t sell an idea to your staff the people that are most bought into your mission that says I agree with what you do, I’m going to show up here every day. Do you work for that? Yeah. Then maybe your idea is not good. Okay. All right. So again, internal communication with urine. Think about it. It’s half in your eyes. You’re planning your own communication. Exactly. Think about stuff, okay? And building on the whole idea of tailoring your message to your audiences. It’s also really important. Don’t assume you know what your audiences want, but how do you find out what they want? Well, you asked. Um, it’s a really simple principle, but one that is often overlooked by non-profit professionals today and asking your audiences or understanding what motivates them is isa really easy way tio? Understand what what motivates them, how you can more effectively introduce your organization to them. And it’s something that we did as we were updating the the communications tool kit. So that’s where we brought in communications directors like Gabriel or implementers like communications interns or program managers or development directors. Folks who maybe don’t have communications in their title but have almost in a default kind of way, become the primary communicators for there. They’re non-profit, and so we brought them all together. We had several different workshops where we sat back and we really listen, Tio, what is it that you need in your day to day life? on. We were able to replace some of our anecdotes that, quite frankly, were so old. They become folklore in our organization with a really wonderful insights that let us know what today’s communicator needs in this digital era, where with the democratization of of communications and social media, everyone has a megaphone on their cell phone. What are some of the audiences that we might be talking to? Sure. So audiences would include board members who are not only an audience but also a messenger for your organization. You might consider talking to your donor’s. Think about speaking with your volunteers, folks who intern with you and also individuals who benefit from this from the services that your organization provides. Could even go broader. Mean journalists could be part of your communications plan. That’s right, whether that’s sort of, you know, outdated press releases or that maybe people still do them because you have to. But building relationships with journalist that’s right, could be a potential funders. People in the community government, depending on their work, the work you do okay, all of the above, all the above, and then they used data they want. They want information in different formats. A journalist, you know, might want bullets that they could carve a story around or craft a quick interview for. And then you have to know that they’re on a deadline versus funders would want more, more, more data. Rich Moore. Outcome driven. And not so much a headline and a lead. Exactly. Okay, I think you hit on something there. Tony is again twice in 20 minutes. It’s amazing. I think that the best point is stop. We’re wrapping it up is have a story. You have to have a story. You can’t just say we’re doing this. It’s great. You need to be able to explain it, and I’ll give you a quick tip. And this is something that you is gonna help you connect. You want to be able to Both are three things. You want to personalize human eyes and dramatizes story. You need to be able to make it two. In order for your story to be effective, you have to be able to personalize it. Say it affects people, might hurt them or health. Um, you need to humanize it. And so that way, in a sense of they can empathize with what’s going on and then you need to dramatize it. Need to say like there is some urgency there. We’ve got to fix this or else people are still going to be getting hurt because you could certainly talk about a number or statistics or fact and saying 1,000,000 people you know are affected by hunger every day or what? Whatever kind of fact, you figure. But it’s just a number that’s tends to be abstract. Yeah, no, we know you want to get storytelling, and I like your personalized human eyes and dramatized train. All right, let’s, uh we’re going to move away from the communicate buy-in principles. Now, you, uh, you talked about some best practices for moving a printed piece online. You say pdf doesn’t cut it. Or maybe maybe a. Pdf isn’t bad, but it’s not sufficient. May be necessary because it’s so common. A format. So what’s, uh what’s the trouble? Vanessa? What way? Not getting right about moving? Our resource is online. Well, so pdf so are still a valuable way tio share and communicate information. But as as you’ve pointed out, it’s no longer sufficient as thie on Li Wei as more of us are accessing resource is from our phones. Thie action of downloading a pdf is really cumbersome and not very convenient for today’s communicators. And so, as we’ve been updating and expanding Thie, the communications tool kit we were thinking about OK, how do we make sure that the content is not only relevant but as accessible as possible so that folks who actually use it on DH in that process we’ve partnered with Form one and came up with some really fun solutions for How can we break free from just relying on this This pdf and taking some of the content and best practices and concepts from our toolkit and putting them into a format of these interactive digital lessons. So giving people a chance tto learn by doing, giving them a chance to go through some fun exercises from the convenience of their their phone on DSO. In partnership with Form one, we’ve got these five great lessons on our website. It caused predications dot org’s slash lessons and those cover co-branding fund-raising measurement and evaluation, competitive analysis and and give you a chance to try it out right there. I think one of the other great things, too, is it? It’s much more share a booth challenge you have with Pdf. If you find a great lesson, you say, Oh, you want to share it with somebody? That’s a Tony. I want to send you a tip. I would say chicken download the pdf look Att Page 15 in the bottom right corner for the tip I’m talking about. That’s really hard to do. But if instead, if you have it where it’s much more digestible in a digital format much more cerebral and it’s going to help you, you’re gonna get to what you need quicker. What are some of these formats alternatives that we’re talking about? What you visualising data obviously. Pdf No one duvette Well, we’ll talk about one dimension ifit’s green. But pdf not very rich in visual ization. What are what are some alternatives? Sure, so there are no great infographics that you can put together, but something as simple as a pole Khun B. Really engaging, so putting together little bullet points and in fact so putting content together in smaller, digestible formats that is going to be a lot easier not to not only consume, but as Gabriel mentioned share So a wide of a wide range there of a different ways that you can consume that information. Okay. And a lot of organizations, they have a lot of great content already in these Pts, which is not t knock that. But it’s an opportunity to look at what you’ve done in the past and think about how you can reformat it where it’s much more digestible and terrible. So that way it doesn’t feel daunting. Thatyou have to redo everything. The contents there just think of ways you can make it more digestible by asking what your audience is looking for, what has been the most interesting or what’s the most thing you get. Most asked about his organization. Have that up front. Okay, Yeah, I gather the pdf is not going away, but it’s no longer sufficient because this is the 2nd 2nd panel where we’re talking about. In fact, the title of the other one yesterday was No one is reading your pdf like something like a great panel. I went there. Yeah, you stole their content later. No way were aligned when you recorded it and made it so much easier. Well, yeah, so I I Maybe, I guess. Yes. Pdf sorr no longer the and all. That’s right. And it was so much more we could do visually. Exactly. And it was really through that process of listening to our target audiences for this tool kit that we came to that conclusion on. So it was It was insightful contributors like Gabriel who who let us know that it was It was okay for us to experiment and to get a bit more creative. So in this way, we let our audience is be a barometer for our risk taking. Okay. We still have almost three minutes left together. Let’s spend a little more time. Two minutes. What else? What else did you sharing your 75 minutes with you already? And we haven’t talked about yet, but I was gonna share one of one of them. One each. It was you. You tend to grab the mic. Go ahead. Go ahead. I’m conscious of it. Thank you. We’ll get her share. I wanted to share some information. We ask tips from our audience. What is the best piece of communication advice? David, What you hear? And one of them I That was fantastic it is. Tell the truth. I mean, you want to put it in context with stories, but tell the truth. Great piece of advice. Good, especially in our current in political and government environment. And tell the truth, I shouldn’t need to be said. But it’s important to say Well, we also heard Keep it simple, don’t overthink things and test test test along along the entire process on DSO that really that really showed us that there was incredible wisdom in that room. And really, the most important tool in our tool kit is each other on DH. There’s an entire network here on DSO. We’re thrilled to be here at 19 and NTC to be able to tap into that that wisdom on DH, share it with our colleagues back at home, all right, and the way they are sharing this wisdom is by having you go to cause communications dot org’s slash tool kit for the ultimate communications tool kit, and you can also go to cause communications dot org’s slash lessons for the pdf alternatives. That’s right. Alright, they are Vanessa tonight, vice president that cause communications, and Gabriel Sanchez, director of communications at 1st 5 l A Thanks so much. Thanks, Tony. Thank you. Don’t hear opportunity. Thank your local. Thank you for being with our coverage of 1990. See all our 19 ntcdinosaur views brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising tools to help non-profits make an impact. We need to take a break. Weinger SEPA is They’re accountants. You know what they do. For goodness sake, do you need help? You help your 9 90 Need a fresh set of eyes on your books? Ah, some other kind of financial related accounting related audit. Possibly help you know where to go. You start at wagner cps dot com. Do you do diligence there and then check out, then talk to your coach to Don’t just check him out. I mean, you could see him on the website. It’s one dimension talkto pick up the phone. He’s been a guest. He’s not going to pressure you. He’ll tell you honestly whether Wagner CPS can help you or not. Get started at wagner cpas dot com Time for Tony’s take two. Summertime is planned. E-giving planning time. This is an ideal opportunity. You’ve got a little relaxed schedule. Your boss does. Maybe the board needs to be involved, too. And they do also. Probably no board meeting’s over the summer. So the you can work on your proposal your plan and, ah, pitch it upstairs where it has to go and get some attention paid to it so that you can have, ah, fall rollout or maybe a January rollout. So I think this is a good a good time to be doing that. Um, As you know, I recommend starting with charitable bequests those gifts by will for your organization that might be the place to stop. That might be. Your entire plan is just promoting charitable bequests. You could go further, but you don’t have to have a very respectable program with just request. But any case, bequests are the place to start. That’s where you want to begin your plan. There’s a little more from the beach on Ah, Cancun, Mexico, in the video at 20 martignetti dot com, And that is Tony. Stay, too. Now here is automated fund-raising. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of 1990 si That’s the non-profit Technology Conference in Portland, Oregon, were in the convention center This interview like all our 19 ntcdinosaur views is brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact. My guest at this point is Brian Louderback. He’s vice president of programs and capacity building at network Fur. Good. Brian. Welcome. Thank you, Tony. Absolutely great. To be here is always Thank you. Thank you. And your topic is three ways automation will make Sorry. Will modernize three ways. Automation will modernize your fund-raising. This is like the click candy of seminars. Three ways. Seven steps. You’re familiar with our work rhymes for things you didn’t know. All right, all right. Exactly. Um, I am familiar. Listeners are familiar, but go ahead for the new listeners who may not recall what is the work of network for good? Sure. So what we’ve done is really taking a legacy of, I would say online giving enablement when we started 15 years ago and helping provide non-profits with a space to conduct philanthropy online and teach him how to do it. That mission has really evolved over the last day decade, and now what we’re doing is taking all those dates and data and with renewed determination have a set of products that really helped new to fund-raising executive directors Or certainly first time development managers create an infrastructure that’s going to enable Mohr annual giving and certainly from individual gifts on DH to infuse a little bit more revenue and retaining donors into their non-profit bloodstream and remind listeners you were last on with Lisa Bonano. Yes, you were. You were remote. You were supposed to think you were supposed to come to the studio. Yeah, Couldn’t make it. Southwest Airlines was not cooperating with our schedule going from the airport or something. I did? Yeah, they’ve grounded the plane and everything you know? Not really. They would have a via say Sure on DH. That was when we talked about the work of network for good. Listeners can find that at tony martignetti dot com, But for today we’re talking about automation. Yeah, So what’s the trouble? Why are non-profits slow to adopt? What? Wait, Give us the headline here. It’s a little bit of everything. Our experience has been in helping about 200,000 non-profits for the last decade. Obviously, we have access to a lot of data and what we’re seeing is a CZ we from the outsiders outside perspective. Rather, there’s been a tectonic shift in how consumers interact with the world and consume content. It’s now Khun B personalized Curie. Eight curated and the frequency of it can be controlled all by the customer, the consumer. And so what we find is in trying to push non-profits in that direction. Two things happen. One. There’s sort of this legacy belief that because we’re a tax exempt were somehow non-cash were technology exempt. You know, in the sense that well, we’re non-profit, people should know that we don’t have to do all those things because we’re put bing over money and programs, and rightfully so. But in this day and age, what we see is you need to invest, Yeah, you Not only do you need to invest, but you need to embrace and exploit the functionality because we see a need to be to really create a relationship with a donor at every level at least, and using digital technology to do it at scale. Because I think as we see the a massive influx of millennial donors and certainly lagging Gen X donors, they interact with the world in ways that a number nine envelope just won’t facilitate. You know what I mean? And so what? What the need is is not only to raise awareness about the need of technology, but let’s help that small or beleaguered or emerging nonprofit organization do it the right way by not only embracing tech but embracing what automation can bring from a proper tech stack. You know, you didn’t say the phrase, but I’m thinking as you’re listening to your scarcity mindset, Yeah, we just we’re non-profit We can’t invest in in writing in digital automation. You know, our manual processes have worked for so long, so well, right, we have volunteers will come. Exactly. But so and I actually, you know, acknowledge. Ah, that perspective. However, how do we know as a non-profit that we’re doing well? Is it because we have a 30% donor-centric retention rate and set a 25? And so I think what what our sector needs to do quite frankly, is to look in the mirror and demand Ah, hyre level of output and strategy and really, you know, donor-centric City to use a cliche. But you know, donor-centric fund-raising That’s nothing new we talked about it for decades, right? But But the idea is centralising. Yeah, the donor’s preferences over what is easy for the fundraiser to execute. That needs to be the discussion and how to get that done. Because in a world where we can subscribe to anything that we want through a Web platform through online, look at Netflix. I mean, Netflix does not renew its customers by sending them a letter 30 days before their subscription is going to expire, right? And so the idea that we, as non-profits Khun, do that in a household that is heavily digitized and automates all of its payments. Teo, certainly, you know, their mortgage utilities, and then everything they do is generally online. I mean, even my grandparent’s don’t send me a $5 bill in a card anymore. You know, I get noticed from Amazon that Grandma Lauterbach just, you know, give me $50 have to go online to retrieve it. So non-profits cannot continue to hold up their tax exempt status and the fact that we’re a charity to absolve themselves from the tectonic shift that has happened now and how consumers interact with the world. Let’s start with storytelling. Yes. I don’t have too many too many panels this this year on storytelling. Okay, I have in past years just I mean, it’s so general. What? You know what? What can we do digitally to automate storytelling, making more effective all the things that story would be compelling? Heart wrenching? Yeah, moving, Make it about. Make it about the people you serve as opposed to the money that you need. You know, non-profits have perfected ways and hyre consultants to figure out even more creative ways to frame their financial need. Well, as far as I know, there’s one point 3,000,000 and counting non-profits out there that all have a financial need. And so it’s not necessarily to distinguish yourself from all the other non-profits, but if you do it right, you do it automatically and distinguish yourself. And that is talk about the unique impact of your mission. Start quantifying outcomes instead of outputs. You know, it’s not enough to say that we feed the homeless. How many people do you feed on a weekly or monthly blazes? And how does that mark mitigate the problem in that community in that neighborhood? Let’s talk about impact. You know, that’s that’s the impact, not the outcome, right? Right. Outcome is a number of meals because I think what non-profits need to do is understand that I believe and see that donors aren’t giving to non-profits. They’re giving through them. And what I mean by that is in effect, donors are outsourcing their desire for public good and impact in their communities to non-profits who have demonstrated they have the capacity to execute and achieve programmatic outcomes. So if we’re not talking about that, two donors were wasting, you know, we’re we’re wasting column inches, so to speak, on paper and email on websites. Talk about why you exist and what happens when you are fully financed. The goal of a non-profit isn’t a balance a budget. The goal of a non-profit is to achieve a mission based outcome for its community. Where’s the automation? Come in. How do how do we use automation? Yeah, tow have these successful stories, right? So what it comes from is fusing together the available channels to us and, you know, let’s just keep it simple for the moment. So we have email, we have direct mail. We have social media and text. And so the idea is we need to leverage automation to fuse those channels together to create an actual donorsearch spear. Ian ce. Because the goal is, you know, I would say we’re moving beyond a era of Doner management to a new era of donor and engagement. And so a lot of the terrain donorsearch from Doner Management. A donor engagement. Okay, Yeah, yeah, of course. Right. And so into the idea that one communication and annual report or invitation to a cultivation event is somehow you know, that combination of things ends up constitutent donorsearch stewardship. I think that’s really that’s limited thinking. What do you want to see instead, right? What? What didn’t start what I want to see. It’s what donors want to see. What donors want to see is the systematic communication of the impact that their gift or all gifts added up achieve for a new organization. So don’t tell me when it’s time to give again. Tell me when you are going to make more impact, and so in that message needs to get appropriated in texts, in social media and email, and then integrated with direct mail. I’m the last person that says, Oh, direct mail’s dead it’s not. It will always be a fixture in what it is and how it is. We communicate with donors, but I think you know what changes is, how many times in how many touches that particular channel could be effective to that particular segment. And so the rial need here is to think about how everyone consumes information, and it’s all done on phone or not all but we see a vast majority of it on phone. And the big headline here is age is no longer that determining factor for what channel’s someone will use to interact with your organization. Rather, it’s going to be a combination of multi touch that’s going to really drive a campaign message because, like, think about in the context of counter urine giving on. We talk about campaigns and data, but the reality is it’s only non-profits. Their campaign is comprised of a ah direct mail piece that goes out on some Magic day between the day after Thanksgiving and probably before the 23rd of December, and they expect these miraculous results and so on, and some of them get them because they have loyal, committed donor. Does that look past the channel? The message and see that logo and align with didn’t want to fly their flag. But the other side of it is that a campaign is the, you know, systematic communication of information to drive a group for people to get a result. And that can’t happen in one channel. You have to remind people, you know, it’s the same phenomenon where you send a direct mail peel out, don’t get a response. But then you sent an email out a month later and you see this Number nine come back into your office and that is proof positive that a multi-channel touch is what’s going to compel Mohr gift giving participation, but most importantly, Maur engagement of donors so sticking with his story telling talk about being multi-channel and digital. How do you feel about what’s your advice around? Because I pretty common practice empowering our are beneficiaries to tell their stories themselves. Yeah, you know, empowering them with the phone or some simple instructions. Sure, I think that’s well and good, but I think we would agree is a sector that is extremely difficult to get donors to jump through that hoop and make that, you know, make that make that commitment to take an action. I mean, I would argue, probably. There are many board of members of boards of directors that are slow to do that. And we all know about their accepted if you do cherry responsibility. So I think, yes, capturing the perspective of the donors is great, but they’re not the one delivering the program. They’re not working with the person that is the beneficiary of let’s capture the beneficiaries. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Beneficiaries right is powering them. Yeah, I think to the extent that it’s possible, Absolutely. But, you know, in the construct of like human service organizations, it’s probably I think we all would generally agree that the people that we’re helping house feed and give medical care aren’t in a position or, you know, if we want to Mads low. This discussion aren’t really thinking about. Gosh, how do I help this non-profits? Really? How do we get it? But it’s time for our last break Text to give. They’re five part email. Many course dispels the myths around mobile giving. You do not have to be small double digit gifts. They can be in the hundreds. They don’t have to go through the donors phone company. Those were a couple of the myths that are dispelled. You get all the display shin of the mystification if you get there. Five part email many course. And to get that it’s one part per day. You text NPR to 444999 We’ve got butt loads. More time for automated fund-raising you Khun, you can solicit there. You can solicit totally. You know, selectively. Of course. You know we want to be careful about exploitation. All right, But But I think the first whillans Argo and another way I’ve had some guests recommended empowering the people who are delivering the services, like sort of putting the focus on them as the heroes of the organization and letting them tell the stories that they of the work that they’re doing. Oh, absolutely, in the conveyance of the benefits, right. But to do that, you need to have a technology or a system or a process to harvest all that great information and that storytelling byproduct for lack of a better term and bring it in and approach effectively appropriated and distributed to, among all channels to the people that care about the most. You could do that from direct mail to YouTube channel tio. Sure texting with Linc. Yeah, and this is not Teo marginalize any of those ideas because they’re not only are valid, they’re good and they’re best practices. However, most non-profits that’s not step one step one for a non-profit is to understand their O to have shared visibility within the organization. And it can be at the volunteer level two but a shared visibility around what the organization achieves and make sure everyone is communicating that externally. So it starts at a staff and volunteer level. And I would argue Stage two is enlisting the beneficiaries, let alone the donors, and delivering that message. Because until non-profit stop talking about their fund-raising go goal as the Rays on Detroit to fundraise, then I think there’s more work to be done at the organizational level. So I would say it’s about the It’s about a sequence in about what stage appropriate based upon the human and financial resource, is that I had that an organization has part of what you were talking about, and you mention this, but with cult action, the engagement, a cz, the cult action as engagement had. What’s your What’s your advice around technology and supporting that? Ah, so you’re automation automation? Yeah, So it is automation. You know, people kind of use the phrase, set it and forget it. That’s not inaccurate. But it kind of creates this belief that once we automate acknowledgement and engagement, then we don’t have to worry about those donors or that group or whatever the opposite is true. What automation allows you to do is focus on the things as a fundraiser that you always wanted to focus on, but never of time. And that is what is the impact or what the result from this email did this subject line work that is called action work? Did this text message get engaged with, and so it allows the fundraiser instead of worrying about, you know, getting the email out or getting the letter out, it allows the fundrasing think about what is what is the actual result is this channel for this campaign achieving what I need to? And then if it’s not how doe I re calibrate or optimized, how do we answer that question whether that channel is provided giving us our ally, right? Well, so the first step, you know, the natural inclination of a fundraiser obviously see like is it bringing in money? And that is the I would argue that is the penultimate metric, the ultimate metric. First, to figure out if you’re if you’re content and if your message is resonating, is people are people engaging with it? Are they opening? Are they clicking and so wants you? Once you’re able to measure the, you know, a hopefully a steady increase in the level of engagement, then I think that’s when you can start to go to the next, not the next level. But then the second consideration is it raising money, right? So because there are many great messages you can put out there that engage a donor that don’t necessarily have to quote unquote culminate with a gift or philanthropy eso I would argue that the number one metric that every fundraiser needs to be thinking about today and moving forward is engagement, as opposed to just participation, just the amount raised and the date that it came in. And when is it up for renewal because, you know, engagement. There’s, ah, hyre relationship between an engaged owner and a second gift alone increase gift. Then there is, you know, just how many solicitations do they respond, Tio, Um, you part of what you say in your session description is increasing efficiency. Yeah, with the fund-raising platforms, right? What? What can we do? So the way the thing about efficiency is like, I was, you know, I’m a dumpster fundraiser of 12 years right before he returned to a big bad consultant and then network for good and all that funds. And I would I remember 80% of my day wass in a delivery. Logistics. How do I get this email out? How does this postcard go out This invitation Go out. And and so the idea is, let’s be planned ful about what all those touches are going to be throughout the year. Let’s use technology to automate as many of them as possible so that we can stay focused on the thing that actually matter. What What are some of the tools that you don’t think enough non-profits air using or are aware of or or tools within platforms? Yeah. What what? What’s under exposed? I think what’s under exposed is like, for example, in the donor management systems out there. Are you able to produce text and email, let alone integrated with direct mail communication? I’m not talking creating a list or a segment. I’m talking about actual fund-raising cockpit, right? Whereby you Khun Sure, pull your list, your lead select and all that fun stuff. But then create and schedule campaign to deploy a text, deploying email also and then to produce a direct mail piece that works within that er that fits within that message framework on DH, then also the portability of that content over to social channels Instagram, Facebook, you know? So I would say that the thing that non-profits need to be looking for again it’s going back to my statement about we’re moving. You know, donorsearch will always be something we need to do and the highest priority. But we need to move beyond technology a zey donor-centric construct and think about in terms of donor gauge mint. We have to manage our donors and segment our donors so we know who to ask for what reason what time and what they want to hear, And how do we begin a relationship with them? So, yeah, it’s looking at at the platforms out there that allow you to doom or than enter and report and analyze data. That’s a critical thing that we always need to dio. But then it’s like, Okay, how do we How do we take the insights from that analysis and apply them to production and engagement? And so that’s that’s That’s where we’re going. I think that’s where we need to go. Is a sector? Is Mohr software companies looking at the what neat. What constitutes engagement and creating a optimal donor experience. And the donor experience just isn’t a timely acknowledgement letter or a nice looking website. Instead, it’s end end throughout the year. How are we going to make sure this person knows we’re doing the job they subcontract us to do with their $10 gift, let alone their $10,000 gift? Okay, Uh, you got some big ideas. You get something? We got some time. We got another full three minutes or so. What? What else you gonna share? You haven’t done your session yet? No, no. What else? You’re gonna sew one of things that were going to share tell people were so Network for Good is releasing a white paper that we did on will be released at the at our session on Friday, and then we’re going to share it with the rest of this sector. But basically what we did is three year study that followed 2000 non-profit organizations and knowns that use multiple channels of digital technology to communicate. And those that did not the headline here and this probably doesn’t surprise you. The headline is that those that used to arm or channels to communicate and solicit and thank donors and year and giving had a higher average gift by about 40%. And those that did. I’m surprised we need data to make this point. I know I’m not talking about being donor-centric and multi-channel well, multi-channel not as long as donor-centric right, but it’s been a long time exact multi-channel. You’ve got to go where the people are. Well, that’s the thing is like, I think what what the sector has lacked is and an example that we could be held up and pointed to a success. While it’s a commercial example, I love it and we deconstructed in the white paper what Netflix does to achieve a 91% customer retain tension rate. They simply used data, segmentation, text and email and then, of course, have great content online, right? And the combination of those things and everything that gets touched in the in delivering those things create this composite profile of their users, so they know exactly what to say and what exactly what? Content to position. Now, that’s an extreme example. But I use it because Netflix doesn’t have this oughta magical technology that does it all forum. They’re doing the spadework that every non-profit has the ability to do at any stage, right? You don’t have to have a full time digital fundraiser or a data analyst to be able to do this stuff. It’s about basic block and tackle and being planned ful as opposed to react. All right, so this is a case study of Netflix, and yet case the lessons for non-profits. It’s not out yet, not out yet, be released on Friday and then the whole sector the following week, where we’re going to get it so you can get it at network for good dot com on you confined it on Facebook A ce Well, yeah, and we’ll be launching on. We’ll have a couple of webinars around it to really present the findings. But most importantly, is to present some how to things that non-profit due to, you know, starting quote unquote tomorrow. One of things that we’re offering is a no digital navigation kit. Basically, how to make a case to aboard that they need to invest in fund-raising how to make a case, your boss, that you can work more efficiently with technology. Basically, it helps the fundraiser make a case internally that guys, we have to adapt. And here’s why. Because sometimes fund-raising our struggle to make that case to a board or two a boss. And so do you want to make that easy For part of the cases? You’re already experiencing it right through Netflix. Amazon, right, Zappos, your experience in this this seamlessness and this great experience they’ve all raised the bar we now need toe be dragged along raised, raised up to mix my metaphor drag along. But everybody’s experience Our donors are experiencing this everywhere else online way. You need to be there too. And we’re creating this cognitive dissonance. Everytime we don’t, we’re gonna leave it there. All right, he’s Brian Louderback. Hey, thanks so much, Tony. And he’s the vice president of programs and capacity building and networked for good. You’re very welcome, Brian. My pleasure. This interview, like all the others for 19 NTC brought to you by our partners attacked Blue Free fund-raising tools to help non-profits make an impact. Thanks so much for being with us next week. Yolanda Johnson. She’s women in developments. New president If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits, Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuant by Wagner CPS Guiding YOU beyond the numbers weinger cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations made easy text NPR to 444 999 A creative producer was Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the lying producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein of Brooklyn, New York. Thank you, Scotty. You’re with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great. You’re listening to the Talking Alternative network. Wait, you’re listening to the Talking Alternative network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in sometime potentially ater. Tune in every Tuesday at 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show yawned potential Live Life Your Way on Talk radio dot and Y C aptly named host of Tony martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other 95% fund-raising board relations, social media. My guests and I cover everything that small and midsize shops struggle with. If you have big dreams and a small budget, you have a home at Tony martignetti, non-profit Radio Fridays 1 to 2 Eastern at talking alternative dot com duitz. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested? Simply email at info at talking alternative dot com Thie Best designs for your life start at home. I’m David here. Gartner, interior designer and host of At Home Listen live Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. As we talk to the very best professionals about interior design and the design, that’s all around us right here on talk radio dot N. Y c. You’re listening to Talking Alternative Network at www dot talking alternative dot com now broadcasting 24 hours a day. Do you love or are you intrigued about New York City and its neighborhoods? I’m Jeff Goodman, host of Rediscovering New York Weekly showed that showcases New York’s history, and it’s extraordinary neighborhoods. Every Tuesday live at seven PM, we focus on a particular neighborhood and explore its history. It’s vibe. It’s Field and its energy tune in live Every Tuesday at 7 p.m. On talk radio dahna, you’re listening to the Talking Alternative Network.
Nonprofit Radio for June 7, 2019: Disrupt Unconscious Bias & Your Normal Is My Trigger
Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio19NTC, ageism, Barbara Grant, bias, brand, Brevity & Wit, Communities in Schools, Crux Consulting Consortium, culture, difference, Eve Gourley, Food Lifeline, generational difference, generational differences, International Center for Research on Women, Joe Schaffner, Minal Bopaiah, Nonprofit Technology Conference, Sara Boison, unconscious biasNonprofit Radio
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Joe Shaffner, Minal Bopaiah & Sara Boison: Disrupt Unconscious Bias
Our panel encourages you to dive deep into your own biases and how they influence you and your brand. Then deconstruct and disrupt those you no longer want. They’re Joe Shaffner at International Center for Research on Women; Minal Bopaiah with Brevity & Wit; and Sarah Boison from Communities In Schools. (Recorded at 19NTC)
Barbara Grant & Eve Gourley: Your Normal Is My Trigger
Accept without blame that your normal is not everyone’s. This panel helps you recognize differences and manage across generations. They’re Barbara Grant with Crux Consulting Consortium and Eve Gourley from Food Lifeline. (Also recorded at 19NTC)
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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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xero Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of trick Otello, Sis, if you split hairs with me over whether you missed today’s show disrupt unconscious bias. Our panel encourages you to dive deep into your own biases and how they influence you and your brand, Then deconstruct and disrupt those you no longer want. They’re Joe Shoffner at International Centre for Research on Women Minal, BOPE IA with brevity and wit, and Sarah Boysen from communities in schools that was recorded at 1990 si. Then you’re normal is my trigger except without blame that you’re normal is not everyone’s. This panel helps you recognize differences and manage across generations. They’re Barbara Grant with Crux Consulting Consortium and Eva Corley from Food Lifeline that’s also recorded at 19 and TC Tony stay too pissed in Brussels, Responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash Pursuant by witness Deepa is guiding you beyond the numbers regulars wetness cps dot com My goodness and by text to give mobile donations made easy text NPR to 444999 I got that one already is enough. Here are Joe Shoffner, Middle back-up Aya and Sarah Boysand from 1990. Si. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of 1990 Si. That’s the non-profit Technology Conference. We’re in Oregon, Portland, Oregon, at the convention center. This interview, like all our 1990 si interviews, is brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising. Tools to help non-profits make an impact with me are Joe Shoffner, Mental BOPE Aya and Sarah Boysen. Joe is senior communications specialist at the International Centre for Research on Women. Excuse me. Mental is principal consultant at brevity and wit, and Sarah is director of digital strategy for communities in schools. Welcome everyone. Thank you for your pleasure. Have you, uh, we’re talking about your seminar topic, which is disrupting unconscious bias as we grow our brand. Uh, let’s start down at the end. Sarah. What? Before we unpacked What? Unconscious biases? What What’s what’s the trouble? What are non-profits not getting right about growing their brand that you wish they would? Well, I would say a lot of non-profits are really struggling Teo identify where some of the problems are coming from. In terms of things like hiring a promotion in terms of the communications, I think a lot of organizations are starting to see that diversity isn’t something that just could be thrown around is a buzzword. But it’s something that they actually have to embody within the organizations, and from there it usually flows through the word. Okay, mental. You want to add to the headline on the leave? Um, yeah. I mean, I agree with everything. I think I’m sorry agree with everything, Sarah said. And I think in this day and age, brands do need to be very conscious of diversity and equity and inclusion if they want to have a brand that’s still relevant. I think thie millennial general generation is probably the most inclusive generation of it’s time. America is more diverse than it’s ever been. And if you want to appeal to all segments of the United States, if you want to be a global NGO, and in the end, the in the era of social media where a misstep can go viral, it’s really important that brands protect themselves by having an awareness of how unconscious bias could have affected their brand. Okay, Joe, you want to lead us in a swell, I think the one point, I would add is, is that unconscious bias within a browned is both individual and group. So in order to work as a team to tackle unconscious biases that come out in your brand, you have to alert look internally as an individual and as a team. Okay, let’s define unconscious bias. What do we mean? Sure, So they’re going to throw it to me since I have the degree in clinical psychology. And so I’m technically supposed to be able to do this. So it’s It’s easier with slides and with visuals, to be fair, if you are a picture of the brain. But I’m gonna I’m gonna do this via just speaking and see how this goes. Basically, within the human brain there, two systems of thought. There’s automatic thinking, and there’s deliberate thinking. Dahna condiment talks about this and his work thinking fast and slow. I prefer the words automatic and deliberate, because you can have delivered thinking that is fast as well. And unconscious bias happens because thie automatic thinking pathways, which air dictated by the limbic system, which contains the amygdala and the hippocampus. And those are areas that are really responsible for creating emotion and creating memories tend to fire together. And what that allows you to do is to make quick split second decision. So, for example, if you’re in a dark room and you you walk in and it looks like there’s a snake on the floor, you would recoil. Now, if you turn on the lights, you may find that that snake is actually a rope. And so you’ve based your data, your based your reaction on what your brain has perceived and made a split second decision that’s protected yourself. We’re talking about such decisions about people. Yeah, so if people in groups, yeah, so if you are not exposed to people of a certain race. But all of your data has been for movies that portray that raised negatively you may have if you meet somebody of that race, your initial reaction, maybe based on poor data at the same time, that automatic system can protect you. So I used to be a rape crisis counselor in a previous life, and a lot of women have said that they had the sense they had a flag that said maybe this guy was dangerous, but they didn’t want to be biased against them. And that’s not the time to just go against your bias is what we really talked about in our session was that if you want to mitigate biases, you have to start employing that more deliberate system of your brain. And bring your unconscious biases, too, your awareness, and really start to look at whether you’re basing those decisions on accurate data or not. If you’re a woman who’s in a position where you physically feel threatened, you need to get yourself out of that space first. But then reflect back as to whether your fear was based on something realistic or whether it was based on a past memory that was maybe inaccurate for that situation. Or worse, just something culturally that understood. Yeah, and grossly. It could be grossly and actually wrong, and but it it could be really accurate. And it it’s up to every individual to really do the work to explore where their biases air coming from and be able to respond from from their deliberate thinking from their from their executive functioning part of the rain. Rather then just that primal urge of their brain. Okay. And then Sarah on I may even be asking youto repeat what already said, But I’m trying to I’m processing this. And you all have been thinking about this for months. Relate this back now to brand, please. Yeah. So in terms of the brand, I mean one thing I can say that, at least in my organization, that community schools, what we’re doing is we’ve implemented diversity equity and inclusion work. So what we were doing is we’ve identified a taste of the basic level that there’s some work that we need to do organizationally, right? So we recognize that as we work with one point 6,000,000 students across the country, that each of us individually may, you know, we all hold biases, and it’s up to us to do that work to ensure that we’re able to better serve our students and better understand their circumstances. So what is happening at my organization is that our board of directors is actually mandated that we implement d I work across all of our affiliates across 26 states and D. C. So there’s work that’s being done from the top down and also from the bottom up. So what we’re doing as well is that we’re we’re going to our affiliates and we’ve actually way have affiliate representatives that are on a d. I planning team. And what they’re doing is they’re actually creating a tool kit, and they’re creating actual work flow for the entire organisation for us to follow in order for us to better serve the students in our community. So this sounds like I mean, even though I asked you about Bram, this sounds like mission. I mean, it goes right to it, really is more of your work and your what your mission is. Absolutely. I feel that if you can’t address a lot of the things that go on in terms of diversity equity inclusion, I almost feel like you really can’t as an organization served. You know, many of the populations that way Do you want to help? So d I needs to be identified as a core value of the organization? Absolutely. It’s time for a break. Pursuant. The art of First Impressions had a combined strategy, analytics and creative to captivate new donors and keep them coming back. It’s all about donorsearch acquisition. It’s on the listener landing page. You want to make that terrific first impression so that your donors stay with you. They’re attracted to you and they stay retention as well as attraction. You’ll find it at Tony dahna. I’m a slash pursuing with a capital P for please. Now back to disrupt unconscious bias. I mean for a non-profit. Hold on. I want to find out what his communities in schools do. What’s the work? S o Right now we serve one point 6,000,000 students across the country. Essentially, how it’s structured is we play psycho. Nader’s within schools. So we work with school district and schools and state offices. We have sight coordinators in schools that helped afield. Resource is between the schools in the community to help the students and their families. Okay, pulling together resource is from local communities. You’re in 26 states. Yes, we’re 26 states in D. C. Okay. Community resource is for the benefit of students. Yes, So it is. It’s academic and community resource is so good example would be like if a student comes in and their and their families facing homelessness instead of the student putting that responsibility on the family and the student, the site coronated will help so one identify what some of their needs are and work with those in the school as well as some of the folks in the community to ensure that the students able to get the resources that they need so they could focus on school. We’re gonna know I was just going to put a finer point on Sarah’s comments and say that you know, for non-profits how you execute your mission is your brand. And so that’s why I like if there’s bias and how you’re executing your mission, that is a reflection of your brand reputation than in the space and goes back to, you know, how do you want to be known in your community in the country? Okay. Okay. Um, so from your session description, your dive deeper into our own biases on how they influence us on the point being made that we’re not only talking about organizationally, but also individually, Um, how did they influence us? I mean, it could be positive. My my thinking is that it’s I mean, I think, is that it’s mostly negative. But it could be positive, I don’t know. Or is it all negative? How did the job your turn? How does how does how did these biases influence us? What’s don’t go by me? What’s the consensus of the pattern? Sure. So I think one thing mental untouched on was the snake versus rope on DH. You know, applying that to Ah non-profit setting where it shows up is actually because there’s so many things going on at one time that you have to make decisions quickly so you don’t have a lot of time. It feels like to process and to think about these decisions that you’re making so to an extent, what we wanted to focus on them. The session was how to bring that out and discuss it in an honest way with those in your organization and also focus on who is in the room who is at the table discussing this because you do get caught in these cycles sometimes of having the same people making these decisions, whether it’s events, whether it’s what photos you’re choosing. Teo, display the Bowler hat brand. What project you’re taking on and a great way to mitigate that is bringing other people in from different backgrounds, different perspectives, different views and how you work together to come up with solutions of that. Create that change. Okay, the how and the who Let’s talk about some of the house. How do you bring it up? So one of the things that we’re working on at I c e w is the International Centre for Research on Women is an event checklist. So we’re aware that with all these quick decisions we’re making, sometimes you bypass the thought process and how to, uh, figure out how who’s on the panel for the events on DH? The checklist brings into mind, um, you know, who are you bringing in for the planning stage? I think that was the most important point that we came out with is who’d you bring in the room? And then you look at, um what photos? For the invitations you look at, you have considerations of who’s on the panel. So, for example, if you have a panel on talking about youth and there’s no one represented who is in the category of youth, right, so, uh, kind of bringing all those perspectives to the table. Okay, Sarah, anything you can add about who should be in this conversation? Yeah, I’d liketo piggyback on what Joe was talking about. So for me, like working in the use sector, what I’ve seen is a lot of times you have people who are making decisions that, uh, that that impact other people. And one of the things that I really want to challenge, not only just ourselves, but other non-profits do is to really allow the people that we’re serving to be the experts on their lives like, yes, we have the resources and the tools to maybe empower them, um, to shift course of change. But I really do feel that we’re doing ourselves a disservice by not bringing the people that we serve into the conversation to be a part of the solution. And that’s one of the things that including when their school age Absolutely that’s do-it-yourself. Absolutely. And I for us, I mean, there’s definitely a perception that young people aren’t ready for leadership right now, but many of them are already leaders in serving in their communities, and many of them are very well versed in what’s going on and some of the problems at their peers phase. So we’ve actually found it to be incredibly powerful toe bring in students early on in the process. When we’re doing the programs, when we’re doing projects and asking them, Hey, what is going on? And what do you feel would actually be a viable solution? And we actually just did a student in it. Evasion Challenge in Las Vegas and we had four students. Three of them were from Charlotte, and 11 was from Michigan. And they actually presented ideas that they worked with on a student team to help mitigate some of the issues that are happening at their school on. It was a great opportunity, one for adults to kind of just sit back and listen to these students. But it was also another opportunity where we were actually e-giving Students of resource is to be able to actually create change in their own neighborhood mental about how to raise your advice, how to raise this in in your organization. Yeah, it’s an interesting question because I think it’s sort of organically being raised in a lot of non-profits right now because, like I said, the younger generation of employees who are coming in are very aware of this and really wanted When you have an intergenerational office, Yeah, and and I think, really, when we’re talking about building diversity, equity inclusion when we’re talking about building inclusive cultures, what we’re talking about, his power dynamics. And so you really need to be able to study power to be successful in any diversity and inclusion initiative. And that means working with leadership. If leadership is not bought in that diversity and inclusion needs to be a core value of the organization, it is unfair to put the burden of change on people who have lesser power. And and that’s really critically important for organizations. Understand, once leadership is bought in, then it needs to be like any other operations or business unit where there is actual commitment in time and money and metrics for progress. How do you get this buy-in What? So much of the power is white and male. Yeah. Andi, let’s assume the leadership is because a lot of it is not all but a lot is Yeah. How do you How do you go to the CEO? The white male CEO and try to get this D I core value buy-in from? Yeah, the guy whose power he perceives is being threatened. Yeah, so not assumes. Powers xero some, but But ah, lot of guys do. Yeah. So how do you overcome that? Yeah, so that’s a big question. So I’m gonna take it in multiple ways. Got two and 1/2 minutes now we have more than yeah. No, that’s a really good question. And I think it gets to their multiple approaches. First of all, like somebody died. So I would not recommend somebody like me because I’m much better at strategy than I am as an executive coach or facilitator. I think it takes, um, Riel s o. I worked with a lot of diversity inclusion. Consultants are facilitators, and they’re exceptional at their ability to have a conversation at that level That doesn’t trigger people’s defensive isn’t Isn’t this almost essential? Tohave an outsider facility trained facilitator. Sarah, you’re shaking. Did you did you use a a facilitator? Yeah. So currently way Do bring in outside facility. Other conversations I’ve had with other guests. They’ve said that it’s almost essential because it’s doing conversation. Could break down. Yeah, rapidly. And you need you need sort of an outside there. But, I mean, I think of a diversity inclusion consultant almost like a family therapist, like their job is to give you that outside perspective and help you to see things in a new way on DH, then within, like, sort of having those conversations. There’s multiple things that you could speak to. Some people like to go the fear and avoided through, which is what I mentioned before about brand reputation. You know, if you want your organization to continue to be successful in the 21st century, you need to get on top of this. Bring a Brown. Once gave a talk at Were Human last year, where she said, If you are a leader who is not talking about diversity and inclusion, you will not be a leader in five years from now. And if you are going to talk about it, you were going to mess up and you were going to fall flat on your face and you were going to make mistakes. And you need to learn how to be an evolved enough leader to make public mistakes. And like rumbled through it and get through to the other side. So it takes a lot of it takes a very mature leader to be able to do this. The second part is to make what people like to call the business case, which is There’s research that shows that shone and this is from the for-profit sector. But companies that have diverse product teams have three times as many patents as companies that don’t. So the leveraging diversity will inevitably help your programs, your operations, your bottom line. And that’s really important to know, especially as we live in a more globalized world. I mean, I remember growing up is an Indian American. I didn’t think most of the television and most of the magazines were relevant to me. I didn’t buy any of that stuff. Nobody got my dollars because nobody was marketing to me on the third way is really too, you know, I think that there are enough white men like Joe, and you probably like you, Tony, who are you who are men of conscience? You know who who understand that you shouldn’t. There is a business case to be made, but you should just write this was the right thing to do for God’s. You shouldn’t always have to make the business case to do the right thing. And more importantly, like how, like, Why don’t you want to create a place where you wouldn’t recruit the best talent? You know, like Sara shared an experience today in our session. I’ve had a similar experience of being in organizations where we wanted to give our best. But the lack of an inclusive culture made us leave. And so you’re losing exceptional talent because of unconscious bias or because of your lack of commitment to including creating an inclusive culture. And so if you want to create the best products and services, if you want to have the best programs, if you want to have the greatest impact, this is is absolutely critical to all of those goals. And so diversity Inclusion isn’t something you do because it’s nice. It’s something you do because it’s mission critical and a strategic goal for every organization. I feel like the conversation has been raised to another level just within the past few years, and that may be the result of black lives matter now metoo. More recently, metoo No, because for so many years it was just It’s the right thing to do. But now, on DH, that was unavailing, obviously, to the white power structure, white male power structure, because things weren’t changing. So doing the right thing wasn’t sufficient a za motivation necessary but not sufficient. But now you know we’re so buy-in next level, we’re making the casing in different ways. That you can argue should have been, should not have been necessary. But Aziz said change wasn’t happening. So, you know, making the business case, for instance, Yeah, If you have to bring it, bring it to the bottom line and say you risked relevance, you risked losing talent. Well, I think it’s a communications professional, and other communications professionals here can speak to this. It’s important to speak to the values of your audience, and I think it’s it’s hubris on the part of people who actually care about these things to believe that the other person must think like you in order to be able to enact diversity inclusion initiative. I really think that Dee and I needs to take the same approach that truth campaign took to smoking. They created a multitude of ads, and they basically was like, We’re going to target everybody. We’re going to target everybody based on whatever they care about. And so when you would see the ad, maybe one out of 20 adds spoke to you, but then they got 20 different archetypes that they could speak to. So they weren’t saying, Oh, you have to care about this one thing in order for you to buy into this way of living. And I think diversity and inclusion needs to take that approach that different people are going to be motivated by day, different things. And we need to be able to speak to all of those motivations instead of sort of rank ordering and saying This motivation is better and more noble than this other motivation. I think that’s really judgmental, and it doesn’t move anything forward. Okay, Joe, we haven’t heard from you in a while. What you want to contribute? So, uh, we focused a lot of the session today on, uh, workplace, but I would extend that to say, particularly for white males. Um, this is a conversation that I think needs to be had in the home. A school on the street because of some of the issues that we’re facing. It worked. We bring in tow work. It’s not just something that comes up at work. So it’s something where to have a coffee with someone and and just try to shift perspective a little bit. And there’s in the us in particular is a lot of this attitude of pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Um, which, yes, that’s worked for some. But there are others who don’t start out at the same level where there is race, gender, economic way, same level. But you don’t have the same opportunities, right? Don’t have. You don’t have the power. Yeah, So it I think by avoiding, um, even reflecting on that, that’s where the biases come in. And that’s also where we continue doing the same thing, Um, at work, at home. So it’s like, how do we create that shift? And part of that? Is this through honest, open communication? Ok, uh, we still have, uh, another two minutes or so. Two and 1/2 minutes. What else have you done your panel yet? Yes, you have. Okay, So what else you had 75 minutes with in front of an audience. What else did you talk about? That we didn’t talk about here or more detail that we didn’t go into enough. We got a couple of bones talk about white privilege of fragility. Sametz. Well, actually, actually want anything I want to bring up was we had a bingo card which included some of these terms, but we did have, ah, exercise on privilege. So essentially, we made some statements. Uh, and people would raise their hand if they felt that reflected on them on DH. Keep their hand down if they felt like it didn’t which there’s been a breach has such a sure such as? I have no college student loans. There were some that raised their hand, Some that didn’t, um that one’s a little easier to answer than others. Like I’ve never been bullied. Some might think, Uh, yes, I’ve kind of been believed, but it hasn’t been to the level of what I think. Other people have been bullied. So what we focused on through that was that it’s a little more complex. It’s not binary either, or sometimes the decisions made in those moments, um, are more complicated. And I think That’s kind of what we want to focus on here. Um, so relate this back to white supremacy. Yeah, sure. Um so white supremacy, white power, White power, White privilege. Okay. Yeah, No. So a lot of, for the most part, this is just to reflect on the fact that the privileges are there. I think that’s Ah, it seems simple, but for a lot of there are a lot of people who will not associate themselves with privilege. Or they’ll say, But I grew up in a poor area without reflecting on the fact that maybe someone else of a different skin color or different gender also did. But it’s staggered. So that and this white powers, you say, white privilege. It’s structural. It’s ingrained in our systems and our institutions, um, and and too tow have those conversations. And to create change, we really have to be reflective and admit that they exist. Okay, way. Have another minute left. So let’s, uh let’s give the wrap up sorrow that I asked you to start with you. Have you mind wrapping up what you want to leave people with? I just really want to challenge people to do the hard work of really looking within themselves to identify any bias is that they may have on and just know that it’s a lifelong commitment. I think a lot of people go into it thinking like, Oh, I’m going to do, you know, for three hour sessions this year and I’m going to be woke check, Yeah, and you know, I definitely want to challenge people, not to feel the pressure to be quote unquote woke. I feel like that’s a word a lot of people have been throwing around recently, and I just think that people need to just do the work consistently in order to be able to change their perspective on different peoples in places and things. All right, we’re gonna leave it there. Thank you very much for all three of you. Each of you think they are. Joe Schoffner, senior communications specialist at the International Centre for Research on Women. Manabu piela, principal consultant at Brevity and Wit, and Sarah Boysen, director of digital strategy for communications for communities in schools. Thank you again. Thank you. Thanks to you for being with Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 1990 sea as non-profit technology conference in Portland, Oregon. This interview. Like all our 1990 si interviews brought to you by, or partners that ActBlue free fund-raising tools to help non-profits making an impact. Thanks for being with us. We need to take a break When you see piela CPAs, it’s in the title. You know what they do? Do you need one? Do you need a new one? If you think you might need help or your tinkering around the edges of maybe changing accountants, check them out. You goto weinger cps dot com. Do your due diligence there, of course, and then pick up the phone. Talk to the partner. Yet each tomb who you know because he’s been on the show twice already and he’s going to be coming back. He’s not high pressure. He’ll explain whether they can help you. All right, that’s the process. Get started at Wagner’s cps dot com. Now time for Tony’s Take two. My video is pissed in Brussels. Yes, uh, manic in piss, and that is what it’s called. I’m not being crude, so if you turned off well, if you were to turn off the volume or shut me down, then there’s no point in me saying Don’t because you’ve already done it. But for those of you were still here, like on the fence. Don’t be offended, because that is what it’s called. There’s a statue in Brussels, Belgium, called manic in piss. Okay, maybe it’s peace in Belgium on these manic and peace, but it’s spelled like this. So, um yeah, so I got I got assaulted. I got assaulted by the little statue. Um, he pissed on me and you can see it. You can see it on the video at tony martignetti dot com and then go to Brussels, Belgium, and get some for yourself. Just keep your eyes in your mouth close. That’s all on DH, that is Tony’s Take two. Let’s do the live. Listen, 11 the, uh And you know what comes after that? So the live love goes out. Thank you for listening. I’m grateful. The live love to those of you listening at, uh, Friday 1 p.m. Eastern time. And whatever time zone you might be in, the love goes out to you and the podcast pleasantries My gratitude to our over 13,000 podcast listeners. Sometimes I wonder why you stay with with all the I don’t know the talking about piss and everything else. But you have you have you still here? So the pleasantries go to you and you should stay. Don’t Don’t wonder why Leave? Leave the wondering and the and the worrying to me about that you just stick around Ana. Now here is from 19 NTC. Your normal is my trigger. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of 19 1990 Si. That’s the non-profit Technology Conference 2019. We are in Portland, Oregon, at the convention Center. This interview, like all our 1990 si interviews, is brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact. My guests now our Barbara Grant. She is CEO of Crux Consulting Consortium sitting next to me and even Gourlay. She’s director of information systems at Food Lifeline Barbara Evey kruckel. Thank you. Thanks for having a pleasure. Pleasure. Your topic is a little provocative Little bit, er when you’re normal is my trigger unpacking multiple generations and white privilege. Let’s start with you. What? Uh what do we need to know? Give us Give us the headline in the lead. Well, what’s going on here? You fundamentally, you have a normal that you view the world of particular way. That is your way of viewing the world. And you think that’s the real way. That’s the truth of the world on you interact with it like it’s absolute, but you don’t appreciate. You do sort of live your life like other people’s normals of the same as your normal. And that causes real problems for people, particularly in regards to white, privileged white. People think that they’re the normal and they don’t attend to the concerns of people of color, and people of color lose out, significantly weaken all these different measures of public health will show that. But it’s very hard for people to see why their behavior is white people houses impact on people of color, and we’re going to delve into the dynamics, underlie the and really give people some access to engaging with how that their behavior has these negative impacts on the world. Okay, what what are some of these negative impacts? Barber? Well, I think that first we start with generations. And so what we’re trying to look at is that if my definition of What is normal is not your definition of what is normal. So, for example, what should be on a recruitment form like if you’re filling out a job application, should you ask people for their gender or not? So some generations would think? Of course, it’s a recruitment Forman application. You put your gender male, female, other generations would think, Why are you assuming my gender? Other people, other generations might think I don’t want to work here because clearly you’re more interested in my gender than my qualifications for the job. And so part of what we’re looking at is it’s not about one thing being bad or good. It’s about looking just to understand. The fundamentals, like Evil is saying, is that there are different definitions of normal and they shape your judgments and the shape your behaviour. And how can we look at that together? In-kind oven on blaming context because too often when we try to talk across differences, what we find is that people are talking, blaming like I think this is normal. You think that’s normal and I’m judging you is wrong. Uh, without trying to make excuse, though. But if we’re talking about across the generations. It’s what those of us and the older generations were brought up with Your butt s o to not make its use something but we can relearn wear depends on which people you’re tryingto hyre were trainable were trainable. Well, I think I just take it from a perspective of utilization based perspective. If you’re trying to hire people who aren’t exactly like you, it might be useful to understand what they think is normal because those are the people you’re trying to hyre those people are trying to work with. It’s not like what you think is wrong or how you were brought up is wrong. It’s just now there are five generations in the workplace, maybe for the first time in human history, because we’re all living longer and we’re not leaving. And we’re actually caring what younger kids kick would think. And another traditions. Other generations, you know, people who are younger really haven’t been accorded a voice, and people who are older either died sooner or left the workplace. So now we have five generations, all of which have been shaped by different understandings of what’s normal and so part of what we’re trying to do is to say these air who were working with on purpose. And so how do we create a workplace that is inclusive and gets the job done that we want? E. What is this normal that we’re talking about? If everyone’s normal is different or their cohorts that so you just coalesce around sort of more or less together. But But as an individual, what’s what goes into my normal? What goes into your normal what? What’s the normal? What are we talking about? Yeah, because you don’t you don’t think about it. It’s like you wake up in the morning and sort of put on your normal right. What is it? The world just seems to be to you a particular way. And the way that it seems to you isn’t necessarily the same way it seems. Other people want me to think about it. I mean, I don’t get too conceptual, but it’s an interesting talking to delve into right, like the context of your world and the content of your world are different things. If you’re a man, you have a view of the world in an expectation of what public safety feels like So it’s you know, too. Am your your friend’s house. You don’t call for a cab. Gonna walk home like it’s an hour. Like as a man, you have a view of whether that’s safe or not, and you’ll have your own opinion of it. If you’re a woman, you’ll have a very different view of that. Now there’s no Is there a reality or whether it is or isn’t safe to walk home? No, there’s no actual like, objective measure of what safety looks like, But I’m a lot of people don’t really understand it. Don’t appreciate that. They do have these. These contexts they view the world through. When you actually start attending to them, you realize that it’s not just like a couple of things. You have this entire world view on this entire perspective that informs everything about your existence, and you’ve probably never thought about it. Once you start thinking, you start finding things that you wouldn’t choose to believe. You know you you have come to believe that based upon experiences that you’ve had and lessons that you’ve learned and you pick up these ideas and you know it’s really good work to do that reflection figured out because it’s not just about race. I mean, it certainly has an impact on race, but it can affect your relationships that can affect your success in business. Your coworkers, like everything that you do in you, your life is in form. But this context and doing the work of digging into it’s really important. We like to look at it from levels in your workplace. In your non-profit. There are things that people you’re trying to attract, people you’re trying to retain professional development, how fast people are promoted, what’s appropriate use of technology in the workplace, What’s appropriate professional behavior, what’s appropriate communication, all of these things of what is appropriate in the workplace, these air. What you think is normal is common sense, and so, but that normal common sense is different, according to these different five generations. And we think it’s pretty funny because we catch ourselves all the time saying, Oh, I guess I thought I just what I thought right? But But it’s not funny when it happens in a space where the dominant normal gets to decide. Like I might think, it’s funny that you think that, but if you are in the dominant position, then that’s what it is. It’s gonna happen. So part of what we try to do is to just open up the conversation so that its future oriented decisions, instead of how we’ve always done it in the past. I had a panel last year at NTC, and, uh, it was related to this topic, and the subject of job descriptions came up, and it was the use of the word professional. You know, a professional makes makes a professional appearance. Yeah, well, that exclude, I think the guests. It was a panel of, I think there were three think there were three. And it was, I think, was Raja Agarwal on everything. He was sitting next to me and he said, So that excludes everybody with dreadlocks in a white privilege world. Those are not professional. So does that exclude everybody who’s black because their hair is different and you know, so that’s where that dominant. But the perspective is different than a note. A new miracle perspective. Yeah, but just to use the word professional, I mean, it’s an office. I do want people to be professional, but then, you know, professional appearance. You know that’s different than comporting yourself as a professional. You don’t even need to say professional. In the job description, you can consult season, think out of an interview. So it’s fun when you start scratching away at that word like professional like, What does it mean to be profession? Doesn’t mean, like no skilled at using office communication tools for understanding. I was 14 XL, but doesn’t mean where’s a shirt and tie e mean it does mean those things, but unless you actually do the work of unpacking it, you don’t know what you mean. And it could be really detrimental to people like my own personal experience. I’m originally from Ireland. Dahna immigrated United States and was about 20 because I immigrated. I interrupted my college experience, and I never actually finished college. But a lot of job descriptions will say, you know, college degree required, and that’s that’s an assumption that people make about, like hiring that that’s a normal for people that if you’ve been to college, you’re there somehow qualified or somehow more capable of doing a particular job. Now I like, almost finished going. I was like one semester away from getting done and I have no regrets about coming to United States like that was absolutely the best decision I made. It was totally worth giving up, called my degree for. But you just got to really take the time to really investigate what you really mean by what you say because it has an impact on people and those impacts show and they’re often invisible. I think if you talk to people, United States, no one’s ever well, very few people will actually claim to be racist or will endorse racist perspectives. Or, you know, it’s very, very rare to find someone who’ll do it. If we do find them, we isolate them pretty quickly. But racism’s vivid and clear it. She was really clearly in the statistics. So how does it keep happening, like word of these, these negative influences come from. You have to be able to look beyond the surface in order to see that, and that’s where this but this work is about. I think what’s really important about the generations conversation, why we’re using this as a vehicle for talking about privileges, that this is a fun and accessible, an easy way to get into this conversation is not anywhere near is. Confronting is talking about race. It can be challenging, but generations it’s it’s a It’s a fun conversation right on dure. Your topic is generations and white privilege. So let’s overlay the white privilege to this. But now we’re at a disadvantage. There’s three white folks talking about white privilege. Well, one of the things we found is that oftentimes one of the dominant mentalities is that people of color should help us talk about white privilege because we don’t know how, which is once again, kind of layering a burden there. So part of one of the thing you just said is why people we don’t ever learn to say the word white like that’s because it was normal. Like if you look, if you read a book, a novel, the characters air never described by the color of their skin unless it’s not white because, like so you don’t say, he walked into the station, his skin was pasty, like the underside of a dead halibut. You know instead, But you would say like this. He walked in, She walked in, they sat down. He set down his skin, was dark, like cinnamon ice cream or something like it’s only described if it’s not white. So these are the kinds of things that that why people have to be able to start talking about. And so but no one ever talks about generational differences too much, either. So we tried it. We call it Training wheels is like if if I can try to talk to you across a different generation if I’ve had people come up. I was working with the A different client group last year and someone came up and said, You know, now I understand how to talk to my son, who’s been living in my basement, and I feel like we’ve never been able to talk to each other like I get it. Our definitions of normal are different. You know, there’s a There’s a lot of desire as what we call a part of a week circle. So, like we are all different generations. But we’re part of a family or we’re part of one circle we already identify as though we were just different, whereas across other things, like race or class or other dominant privileges way don’t see ourselves as a wee we see is us and those people. And so part of what we’re trying to do is even within our circle of who we already think is us. How do we talk across differences well and respectfully. And then how do we use that experience to try to talk across these bigger differences that are a little bit more charged? What kind of worker is the two of you doing together? You’re doing work for food, Lifeline Barbara. Yes. So I’m a consultant. I worked with international NGOs, NGOs, local domestic non-profits, and one of my clients for many years has been food lifeline, which is where I met Yves. And so there was even even if it’s even, that’s right. And so so and our work together is been issues around, trying to change a culture within their non-profit and also doing a move and trying to figure out how we do that move in a more inclusive way to this glorious, gorgeous new hunger solution center that they’ve just taken off the ground. And so a lot of my work has been with this system, and so we met, and here we are. Okay, um, and how did this topic Come, Teo, how each of you get drawn to this topic in the concerns. So one of things I’ve been studying since I do work with many non-profits and associations across the country has been this kind of she drops out in there. This this as I worked with years of all stripes and sizes and you’ll find me at six for 62 What I’ve found is that for the last 6 62 5 to 10 years, people have been very anxious about all these generations in the workplace and also about the great retirement fear that all these people are going to retire. We’re gonna have a leadership gap. And so I started studying what that meant to have a generation retire and what the composition was of the domestic and international non-profit in particular Workforce were all these leaders about to leave what was gonna happen with succession planning and became very interesting to see that they didn’t leave and then the next generation. So those easters air, now 26 at the top. And so now there are people in 1/5 generation. So everyone was all like, oh, skies falling is going to be four generations. And then these people are going to leave. They didn’t leave and these guys came. And so it’s a phenomenon. Now that is very interesting. And people are trying to figure out who are you trying to hyre? And it’s a very different mindset of tryingto hyre now when you’re trying to hyre outside of an assumed normal of a generation, and that could be across lots of industries and sectors. So I was drawn to it by my clients who were concerned and also, by finding it very like. It’s an interesting inflection point in our history as a sector time for our last break. Its text e-giving They have the five part email, many course to dispel the myths around mobile giving. You get one part each day it’s over five days soon as you sign up, they start coming. And then four days, Uh, we say four days hence, yeah, in four days hence, right that the right, Yeah, Hence his post post fact, post facto four days. Expos facto of the of the sign up, you get the remaining courses one a day. It’s an average of one per day. One is also the mode and one is also the median as well as the average. That’s what you get per day after you sign up for the course. What you do at by texting npr to 444999 And we’ve got butt loads. More time for your normal is my trigger. You baby. How about you? Barbara knows me from Food Lifeline and in my work, I’m the director of information systems for Food Lifeline. And what you do in that role is not only manage the system, but also the Iast systems. All the databases that base are works. I’m involved in every aspect of the organizations activity, right from our entry level staff and our new stuff right up to the executive team and then the CEO. So I cross the generations. Anyway, when we started talking about doing this the session together, some of the real issues that I have in my work came up in our discussions, and we really got into them and use this methodology to address those concerns. And we actually cover some of this in the presentation. And it became not just an opportunity to talk about what we love, what we what we care about, but actually to develop food lifelines business as well. So it’s really, really become really engaged in. It’s really become part of our work. Um, okay, you say, in your description, used the framework of generational understanding and predictable triggers to have deeper conversations. I paraphrased a little bit. But what is the general generational understanding of predictable triggers? Is that first of all, is that one that one one of the processors, too? So one of the things that we’ve found is that there are some predictable triggers that will show up across generations. For example, if we say Oh, you know, some of those people are so entitled there’s a whole set of people in the room that will not and laugh and say, I know you’re talking about in a whole other set of people in the room who will feel like the mute button just happened and disrespected and turned off, or one of our other favorites is when someone says, Well, this is the way we’ve done it successfully for the past 10 years and they think that. And so I have now sealed the point and half of the other people in the room think, and so it must be a relevant. And so some of the things that I feel like the most normal thing in the world for you to say someone else receives, like like you just said something completely different. There’s a very real world challenge that I have with this with regard to training and you software. So if I had, like, a new tool like any of the vendors here at this conference, if I had their suffering, if I take this out to the staff, it’s okay. We got this great new tool. It’s going to be awesome. It’s gonna make a big difference in your work. There’s two kinds of responses I’m going to get from older people, you know, boomers and maybe Gen Xers. You’re going to say, Okay, we’re going to training, which means we have to hire a trainer. We’re gonna have a training day and a reason to calm. We’re going for coffee and bagels and everyone going to sit in chairs and listen to the training, and then we’ll go through it. When we’re done, you’re going to find her and you take a binder to death you sent in your desk and okay, you’re trained. Now go and use the software, which means no one’s trained and they just sort of sit there and stare at the screen now. But when I when I try to train people who are younger, like millennials and sisters, it’s an entirely different model on approach. They don’t need that. What they need is give me a can account. Let me access the sulfur and sit down with me for like an hour and show me the basics and then go away would be available. I want access to the knowledge base online. I want to able to watch videos on the Web site. A chat room for users is great, and it’s an entirely different model of training. And my real challenge with that is that in order to train those easters in the millennials how to use the software, which is really what I need to do because they’re the ones that are gonna be using it anyway, I have to convince the leadership that it’s okay and that it’s safe to do that. So we do the training day, we forget about it, and we trained this Easter’s. It’s that there’s a lot of different generational challenges in the workplace that we have to go. Um, but I feel like way diving into the depths of this. I mean, I feel like we’re talking around it a little bit. Are we? Are we getting to the meat of the real issues here? Well, we’re getting to the middle of a generational issue. Just be circum superficial. So one of the most important things Tony is that is just the fundamental except acceptance that you might have a different normal, that it might guide your worldview like Eve’s even example there was and then to say, Okay, so then what? What do I do if my normal is this other thing? But once you fundamentally accepted that it’s different than thinking. Well, those people are idiots, and they should just do this thing or everybody knows, or common sense. People leave that stuff behind, and then they approach the issue like, Well, then how do you do it across five generations? And that’s the attitude where we can then begin to talk about privilege and dominant privilege, because many times, if people say well, you know you’re white So therefore you’ve inherited all of the benefits of being white, and then a person of color has not. There’s all kinds of stuff that goes off in people’s minds like, Well, I’m not racist and it’s not my fault. And I worked as hard as the next person, and it’s all defensive, defensive, defensive. It’s not curious, like if we go back to the other part where we have with generations, where people are like Okay, people have different definitions of normal, what do we do next? That’s curious. That’s like saying we’re we and we have to do something forward. But when we get into issues that are more charged and that are more layered with blame and oppression and dominance, then people generally defend and any kind of diversity training or an attempt to do that generally ends up with people often feeling worse than they felt before and more blamed and more isolated. So part of what we’re trying to do is to bring these two things together and to say, if you can learn this way to move forward with curiosity, what if we took those same tools into these conversations and to say wow your experience of being a woman in the workforce is very different of being a man in the work force or your experience of being cyst. Gendered is very different of my experience of being trans or your experience of being a black woman. Professional manager Leader is very different from mine of being a white woman, professional manager, leader Like what? I work for Microsoft for 10 years and at one point in the building, I was often the only woman in the whole huge restroom. And I would get startled if I saw another woman in the restroom because it was so unused to there being another woman in the building, you know, super different, then going to the theatre where women will wait for, you know, 15 minutes and then I walk in and out of the of the restrooms, right? And so So this is just something to start noticing that your experience is different and if you can fundamentally just accept that without blame, then you can say, OK, what is the workforce we want of the future? And how do we acknowledge that our experiences have been different? Someone may have had a glass escalator and somebody else has been clawing through a ceiling. But once were here together in this organization or in this moment in history, How do we lean towards each other with curiosity? Even you mentioned earlier? I think he said some of the physical manifestations of this among the people who are not the elite in the privileged. Yeah. Oh, our sound like you were referring to research of physical physical manifestations of this in terms of health outcomes. Yeah. Yeah. So, like life acceptance E on DH infant mortality or 22 rates. You can really see health outcomes on people of color in United States. What? We would actually we’re just setting this. Yes, we were talking about the impact of red lining on communities of color. Um, throughout the sort of last century, people color, black people couldn’t buy houses in neighborhood hoods and the weapon looking buy houses. And if people did buy houses in those neighborhoods, white people would leave. And judging the price of the property, this isn’t long term impact on the ability of their children to go to college or, you know, be set up for life. And so you can actually check? Was it like net and come or no wealth for for people, white people have a lot of black people I think is actually about xero. On average, across the population is a really impact on people’s lives and immeasurable. We still have another five minutes or so together. What else can we say about this topic? One thing that I think is really important for me, for your listeners and non-profits is like Take a look at all of the issues you have in your organization. Like what’s holding you back in good terms of growth, that every step of the way you’re going to find some touch of technology and each of those things. I think that’s a contemporary phenomenon. This is this is the era that we live in, and if any of those areas, if you investigate, I bet you find generations underlying those conversations. This is this is not just like an abstract thought exercise around understanding privilege. This is very riel way have, ah, my organization. We’re dealing with a challenge right now. Unlike who makes decisions about process about system, Wei have many experienced people who might be sort of boomers or Gen Xers have been trained, and they’ve learned their skills at a time whenever technology wasn’t a major part of their work. They’re now dealing with that migration to a system that’s very much technology based there, having to get on databases if they’re fundraisers they’re dealing with, like online giving an email and that kind of stuff ability. Younger people who are native in that in that world and they’re coming in wanting to participate, expecting different systems, to be available to them and then not having access to that expertise. It’s challenging. I think we’re going to see in a lot of non-profits shift from expert expert lead programs, toe having technology and performance management systems and business intelligence systems driving management for organizations. There’s a major cultural shift happening in the realm of technology. You’re gonna have to understand how that impacts in the community and the culture of your organization or to be able to deal with it. And one of the things I was I’d say that builds right off of what you talked about about digital natives, one of the one of the huge questions that’s happening right now in our culture in this country is, What does it mean to be native? And what does it mean to be an immigrant or a refugee? And who do we let in? What does that mean? Toe let in and when we look a technology across generations, there’s a concept of at one point people became digital natives. And that’s somewhere in the middle of the millennial generation, where you were born into a system where you had rights and you had privileges and you understood the language. And often when I’m working with people with generations, I’ll say, What does it mean to be a native citizen of a country? And so people will say what you have rights, You know where your addresses and even comes down to, you know, the right language to use. So first generation children well often have to inform. Their parents know you don’t have to say that to school or a siren doesn’t mean that they start interpreting the culture for their parents. And so it’s the same thing with digital native kids who basically interpret the culture for us and say, Oh, no, let me fix it for you. Just hand it over and so but this whole idea of understanding what it means to be in a land a digital land in which you are not native, in which you feel anxious where you feel like things, are at risk, your privacy is at risk. Your data is at risk. You don’t know what you’re doing. You feeling that and allowing people to have some time to think about that generationally. It’s slightly safer. But then it it it rolls back around to say So. What does that mean when we think about who has rights and privileges in our whole society, and what does that mean? And how are we translating that with each other and thinking about, for example, in public education, when your children are your English speakers and the parents may speak primarily another language? How do we think about is our system in English only system in school? Or do we think if we really want family engagement, we have to reach across that in some way? We’ve to begin to think differently. So a lot of the things that we’re talking about with generations and technology while we’re here, you know what the anti unconference and we both have technology backgrounds. And so he’s There are people to some extent, but we also are, you know, we are. You know, Eva and I are not exactly the norm in many other ways in our lives as well. And so we have the experience of not being the dominant norm in a space. And so we bring that to this conversation, not just to say that we’re white people, so we know everything about people of color instead, what we’re saying is that we’re white people and we understand what we’ve taken for granted as the dominant normal. And and we’re trying to figure out a way for people to have conversations that doesn’t involve blame and separation. We’re often times it’s like what I call the diversity sidecar, where you take all the people of color and organization. You put them on the diversity committee, and you kind of sideline them from the main business, right? Right. And so instead, what we’re trying to talk about is what if we were all You know what I call that? I call that divers Committee. Yes, they’re not. They’re not doing diversity for the organization. They are a showpiece committee that is diverse. I call that the divers committee and many of my colleagues who are amazing engineers or consultants or leaders or architects or artists. They’re not invited first to be on the top engineering or architect or artist committee. They’re invited to be on the diversity committee as an assumption because there are people of color. And so part of what I think we have to do is to begin talking about this because it’s not just because what we want to do is tow have organizations and a society where people are able to bring their best expertise into the space and we can talk about it. We’ve got to leave it there. All right, thank you. She’s Barbara Grant, CEO of Crux Consulting Consortium. And next to her is evey Gourlay, director of Information Systems of Food Lifeline Ladies. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thanks to both of you, This is non-profit Radio coverage of 2019 the non-profit Technology Conference from Portland, Oregon. This interview, like all brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits Macon impact. Thanks. So much for being with us next week. E-giving Tuesday with Asha Curren It’s not too early to start your planning. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you Find it on tony. Martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits, Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuant by Wagner’s Deepa is guiding you beyond the numbers weinger cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations. Made easy text. NPR, too, that for 44999 creative producers Clam Meyerhoff Sam Lee Board says the line producer Thie shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein be with me next week for non-profit radio. We’re a little late there, Scotty. Yeah, big non-profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking Alternate network way You are listening to the Talking Alternative Network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in sometime potentially ater Tune in every Tuesday at 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show yawned Potential Live life your way on talk radio dot N Y c Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business. Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested? Simply email at info at talking alternative dot com Thie Best designs for your Life Start at home. I’m David here. 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