We launch our 25NTC coverage with the CEO of NTEN, which hosts the Nonprofit Technology Conference, sharing the numbers and the experience of this year’s Conference, earlier this month in Baltimore, Maryland. They’re Amy Sample Ward, and they’re also Nonprofit Radio’s technology contributor.
Rubin Singh: The Human Factors Driving Your CRM Success
Don’t blame your tech first when it feels like your CRM database is letting you down. Human beings, the tech users, have responsibilities that precede, and must align with, your technology. Rubin Singh returns to enlighten us about business processes; inclusive design; personal and professional growth; and more human factors that impact the success of your CRM database. He’s founder and CEO of OneTenth Consulting.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. We’re kicking off our 25 NTC coverage this week. These two segments are both from 25 NTC. It was a wonderful conference. I think the best. Uh, this was, I believe, the 11th year that I’ve hosted nonprofit radio, uh, in a studio at the nonprofit technology conference, and I think this was the best one. You’ll hear Amy and I talk about that. So excited, legitimately, you know, some people say, uh, I’m excited. No, I’m excited that we are launching, inaugurating, kicking off our 25 NTC coverage this week. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of ramidenia if you pained me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate with what’s coming. Hey Tony, this week it’s 25 NTC. The CEO of N10, which hosts the nonprofit technology conference, shares the numbers and the experience of this year’s nonprofit technology conference last week in Baltimore, Maryland. They are Amy Sample Ward, and they are also nonprofit Radio’s technology contributor. Then the human factors driving your CRM success. Don’t blame your tech first when it feels like your CRM database is letting you down. Human beings, the tech users, have responsibilities that proceed and must align with your technology. Rubin Singh returns to enlighten us about business processes, inclusive design, personal and professional growth, and more human factors that impact the success of your CRM database. He’s founder and CEO of 10th Consulting. On Tony’s take 2. Tales from the gym. Meet Roy. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. DonorBox, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is 25 NTC. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio coverage. Oh wait, I should do what Amy loves. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. What a genuine pleasure to welcome. The CEO of N10, the host of the 2025 nonprofit technology conference, Amy Sample Ward, welcome. Thank you. I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten to see in person witness live the Podfather intro. So yeah, exactly, it doesn’t have the same power, you know. Uh, so, uh, we’re here at 25 NTC. We’re at the uh Baltimore Convention Center. Oh, I, I should have said that our coverage here is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. Very grateful to Heller Consulting. How’s the conference going? CEO. It’s going great from community perspective, you know, I think we didn’t really know what to expect in this moment right from the community perspective, yes, I mean you know there’s always special things um there’s always opportunities to continue refining. Uh, but you know, from the, from the community side and kind of what we spend so much time focusing on, you know, the community experience, we just, you know, would anyone actually. Feel like coming when they woke up Wednesday morning would be, you know, like are is anyone even gonna be in a space to have conversations or wanna go to a session, you know, and we’re not trying to pretend that everything is fine and normal or that those things exist, you know. I like we’re certainly embracing that and yet we’re trying to embrace it within a reality of well we’ve all planned for this conference to be here so so it is still a a structured thing and and how porous can we make it in real time together to also meet whatever needs are emerging by maybe going to a session that was already planned and you know the speaker had prepared but from that conversation came something. Oh my gosh, we, we need a space, we need to keep talking about this right now and what do we do, right? So I’ve heard a couple of stories like that anecdotally that I’ve got I’ve learned so much I need to learn more now and you realized what I didn’t know and I I need to connect with that person or, you know, um, I heard it from an audience, uh, like talking to somebody who was sitting next to the person who was talking to me and then also to this for. Speaker, I, you know, I need to connect with, I forget whether it’s him or her or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Um, I need to learn more from this person. Alright, let’s let’s, uh, you know, I always like to ask you the numbers you know how many folks are with us here in real life in Baltimore, Maryland. I don’t know that I actually have the accurate numbers. We, we’re. Uh, 1800 registrants overall, but given how many shifts are happening, I don’t know exactly, and, well, I’ll finish my first sentence and then I’ll add a second so I don’t know how many folks are necessarily in person because we don’t. Require if you’re in person you have access to the virtual and so folks that couldn’t come for whatever reason didn’t necessarily have to tell us that so we don’t totally know or they could have even come one day and then gone virtual another day that’s right so I don’t totally know how many folks are in the room. I know that I think catering told us that over 1600. Silverware were used at lunch today. So just for lunch today I guess that yeah I know I only used one and I used one upstairs even so it’s a proxy for right so that’s how many people ate lunch I guess. OK, um, talking about the conference experience, uh, we’re gonna bring in someone who was a previous guest Aia Aria Ma, come on, come on, Arya. you can share my mic, just share my mic. Yeah, let’s make it easier. Um, because this is her first NTC, and I, I, she was saying, she was saying things that I think you would want to hear as CEO. So I said, if you want to come back, well, it’s not gonna be quite that long, but, uh, yeah, it’s not gonna be quite that long, but thank you. Uh, if you wanna talk to the CEO, let Amy know that, that, uh, what, how you feel about your first NTC. So this is Ama. Um, her company, uh, are, are you just, you say your company, so I don’t have to look back two pages. OK, I’m, I’m the principal consultant founder of Lunara, so I do consulting with environmental conservation nonprofits. Um, first of all, thank you. This has been amazing. I’m actually from Baltimore, so just jot down from Boston, do a quick family trip, and the people here, I feel. Like NDC really has curated an amazing group of people where it’s not really about networking but really connecting and knowledge sharing the accessibility here it really feels like the staff are here looking out for the for the participants and it’s just been an amazing time connecting with people the bird like the feathers of a bird table conversations, the comfy chairs like this is I’ve been to a lot of conferences. And it’s definitely one of a kind. So thank you so much for curating an amazing team, curating amazing people who come here. It’s been a really great time for me. All right, thank you so much for being thank you for being one of those amazing people that is here, right? Thank you. I so appreciate that. Of course, of course, lots more NTCs in your future. OK, good. Thank you. Thanks for coming back. Glad you did. I, yeah, a little treat for you. I knew I knew you would want to hear something. Thank you. You’re welcome. Um, So, oh, I turned up for that was turned it up for our, yeah, OK, um, alright, so we have about 1800 people. Well let’s call it 1800 between friends, just as a round number. That’s good. OK yeah, we, I mean, I think there were like 12 people who just showed up and registered on site yesterday, so. Yeah, the number is a moving. When we talked a couple of weeks ago, you said people just show up. I was amazed at that. OK, it happens. OK. There’s always room at the NTC, you know. Yeah, well, we’ll add another chair. What did Ari just say? There’s a staff. Thank you for the staff, looking, looking out for all of us. Yes, of course. We’re accommodating. We’re, we, I’m a member, so I’m not staff, but I’m, I’m part of the N10 the N10 community. I don’t want to call it the the NTC people call you NTC. Yeah, I know Amy. She runs NTC in a way they, they, yeah, um. The commons experiment, yeah, I mean, I hope like we could talk about it for a minute. I’m just gonna preempt your intro and say for people who run conferences as part of the larger work of your organization, right, not that not that you’re an event planner, but people who are listening to the show and have organizations that have conferences as a part of your programming. Would love to learn what you are testing because we, as I said the other day you know there’s that like analogy or whatever like oh I pulled the band-aid off and just you know tried something we we found every band-aid and we pulled them all off at once and tested everything is is different this year. There is not an exhibit hall with pipe and drape and 10 by 10 squares that you have to walk through, uh, hallway hallways of corridors of, uh, it’s an open space, open plan. The studio here is set up right behind all the chairs that are facing the stage where the main stage where all the keynotes are and the awards were given. Um, we’re by the food station. Well, the food is here. It’s just the the hall is open. There’s not anything dividing us. Yeah, we sold no exhibit booth packages. Uh, and I admire it, I admire the attempt at change. Look, even if you, I’m not, you’re gonna decide as a team what you’re gonna do, but even if you went back to 10 by 10 cubes, uh, pipe and drape next year, I would still admire the 2025 experiment because you are trying something that radically different. You’re not bound by what every other conference does and what you. Uh, what N10 has done year after year after year for 24 years, this is our 25th, your 25th NTC. So you’re not bound by, by your own history even. I just, I admire the outward look, the fresh look, even if you go back to the way it was last year, I still will never stop admiring what you did this year. Thank you for saying that. I mean, I think. It in some ways was was and is a huge risk to say we don’t we’re not even selling packages that would equate to hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue um so if anyone’s listening and would like to write a check, please let me know um. But it just didn’t feel like that hard of a choice for us because it feels like every year all we want is to get closer and closer to an experience for as many people as possible to be in community and we, you know, getting rid of the booths was just one thing there’s also, you know, sessions are working in different ways and there’s. More furniture in this room that is not from the convention center, you know, it’s not rounds with chairs. We actually rented every piece of furniture from a local furniture company, um, just to, I can say the name that’s my show, not the Freeman Company. We’re not we’re not using that. We actually have put on an entire, you know, 1800 person conference in a convention center without a decorator, um, so we. Did everything ourselves so that we could control and make it just how we wanted it to be. You rented how many chairs you found a source for all these, all the everything, yes, every, every vendor is local, every maker is local. Yeah, you have a little shop. There’s there’s a market, local, local vendors that yesterday I saw cutting boards, uh, I see art, uh, that’s all I saw, but there’s a market over there, local, local vendors love it. You, you also do something smart that I learned, uh, one of your team members told me. That uh you you have your staff retreat in the city where or one of your annual retreats in the city where next year’s NTC is gonna be that’s very smart that way all everybody has walked the building we’ve all stood there and said, do we think this is really where badge printing could go? Do we really think this is. Because we also make basically every decision as a team for the conference, so you know there’s no one person on staff whose job is the conference and they get to make the decisions we we do it together or we say who wants to be in this decision, you know I think we’ve even talked about some of the the way Zen10 works um on the show before but. Yeah, so it feels good to have everybody be there, which means this late summer, early fall we’ll all party in Detroit and see what 26 NTC is gonna look like. OK, 26 NDC NTC in Detroit. Uh, no, it’s very smart and you’ve walked out. in the hotels we can make a couple of restaurant suggestions if somebody comes up because we, yeah, yeah, we went to that place. Yeah, very savvy, very savvy. I admire it. I don’t know. I just feel like I would never have thought of that. Like if I was a CEO I would, I wouldn’t need somebody else to suggest that. I think I never would have thought of that. Can I ask you a question? Do I get, is that allowed on nonprofit radio? OK, OK. I had an anarchist in the previous, uh, OK, I was gonna ask you, you know, I know, I mean with 160 plus sessions every year you have a hard job of only doing 30 or so interviews or or 20 or whatever the number is, right? Yeah, yeah, because it’s that’s only a fraction of how many sessions you could have um chosen from. But even still, I’m curious from the interviews you’ve had from, from a day and a half or so. This is content different this year? Like, is there, is there trends or or interesting notes surfacing because of the time we’re in, because of the moment we’re in the moment of under this administration, the the shifts of of the sector, but also even just like this weird moment around AI and the moment around, you know, all of those different pieces, is there something that you’ve seen? Artificial intelligence, yes, more panels on artificial intelligence. I, I requested more so we’ll have a couple more um. Yeah, I, that’s that’s what I was thinking it’s artificial intelligence, um, you know, the, the political environment, it comes out a little bit, but, uh, first of all, a lot of our, well, yeah, no, it comes out you know of course beyond the fundraising, uh, I was gonna say the fundraising panels have mentioned it, you know, but, but, um. Uh, also in the tech, uh, we just had a panel on personally identifiable information, how to preserve that, um, and including from government intrusion and subpoena, um, so you know that would not have been a topic last year would have been a thought, a possibility, um, so yeah, I’d say those mostly the AI and then the the the political and the, um, data, data protection, data protection, yeah, yeah. Um, Is uh is is Max here? Max stage managing? No, he hasn’t for a number of years a few years yes, yes, and I didn’t see Or Louise here. No, she, it’s not her spring break. Oregon already had spring break, so she is very mad to miss her first. TC. Oh, is this the first one? I think so many years at least, or yeah, I think so. She’s about to be 9. That’s right, yeah, yeah, I guess she missed Denver too because that was she was in school then, but yeah, so those are the only two that she’s ever missed, yes, even as a little babe, yeah, so we don’t have like a family photo booth photo from this, yeah, she has them like up on her, on her, you know, cork board in her bedroom. Yeah, I know he has all the NTG. In like the photo, you know, yeah, parent, yes. Um, How’s, uh, you know? How, how are things, uh, how’s the team, how’s the team doing? Thank you for asking. Um. I, I’m just looking because they’re in that room. That’s our, that’s our staff office so that we can see if there’s any issues, but that’s where everybody’s working the halls on fire or something. You’ll see it’s like a uh um called um smoke towers or fire towers. So, so we’re on, we’re we’re down on the floor, but up maybe 40 ft or something there’s windows and that you’re saying that’s the it’s like in the mall, you know, where the security is behind the one-way glass up above, yeah, that’s, yeah, so staffs up there’s too high, we can’t see in you know staff is OK, I think. Like Any any organizations group of staff, you know, there’s. A staff person dealing with this other issue that’s not work related and somebody you know caring for a relative and somebody trying to help their kid that’s having this struggle is that you know so. Uh, the team is OK. We’re a great team and folks have just been like. Even reflecting in real time like God we’re just like showing up for each other so strong and we feel so like happy to get to show up for each other these these few days together but also try to hold that like you know behind that or underneath that or around that. Life is hard for everyone right now in so many ways that have nothing to do with putting on a conference or or replying to your work emails or you know it’s just like everyone is always carrying these these other things that they’re thinking about um and we know and we’ve and we’ve heard from community members as we do every year that. We want the NTC to be a place where like you can set all those burdens down like it’s OK to talk about all of that stuff you know this is not like a perfect professional face you know like what does that mean? What what is my professional? I don’t know. You know, but also I think it’s a little bit hard for staff to feel like they get to do that too when we’re working so hard to create that space for the community because we’re also like on radio and calling catering and you know we’re like doing all these other logistic pieces so in some ways the staff like miss out on the on the best opportunity to do that that we have every year because we we’re we’re kind of behind the scenes but usually on Friday. Less logistics are happening because it’s the final day of the conference and then you know all but one or two people will get to be at the general session and listen to the keynote and everybody will get to like just go to a bird’s table at lunch or go you know people will really get to kind of come out and and. Enjoy it for a little bit. And when does the team depart on Saturday? Yeah, we fly out on Saturday. Oh yeah, we’ll, I mean Friday, Friday afternoon. Oh yeah, our stuff is getting palletized and taken away at 3 p.m. tomorrow. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yes, and like we have volunteers, we have, you know, we have um. I mean it’s end 10. We have a spreadsheet, you know, and every storage bin is numbered and we know what goes in bin number 1 and bin number 2 and you know you just look at the spreadsheet and everybody knows what has to go. I see. Of course we have a spreadsheet for that. Yeah, wonderful, um. Yeah, I would say, and I’ve told others this, uh, this is, this is, I think this is the 11th, uh, NTC that nonprofit radio has come to, yeah, uh, I think it’s the best. I do, I do, you’re just saying that because I’m sitting here and I’ll push you off the yoga ball. I said it to somebody else. No, it’s, yeah, you know, you know, uh, no, I really do admire the open plan. I love. It’s, yeah, it’s just a better feeling, you know it’s not a congested feeling we’re not confined to a 10 by 10 cell. Right and like just from an attendee’s perspective, you know, we didn’t want to shrink it down to only a room of 1800 chairs in theater seating or something, you know, like there’s all this open space. Do you wanna just sit on the floor and build Lego? Go for it, you know, you wanna drag a chair away from a table and talk to somebody else? Go for it. Right, we, we, it’s called a pre-con when before you have an event we have a meeting with, you know, the head of every part of the facility, right, uh, like here’s the security, right, like, you know, one rep from every part of the building comes and you have this precon meeting. And they are like, OK, who are you? it’s like just the day before or a couple of days before or is this we do we do it, no, no, no, we do it Monday so you’re on site, you’re like ready to go. You’re starting to load in and usually events that do this like send one rep from N10 right? we send all of us, all 16 of us show up because each of us are here, right? And you’re supposed to say like, you know, is there any info about your attendees? Is there anything the team should know, you know, and we say. If our attendees want a chair move, that chair is moving. Right, you’re not radioing me for like an approval. If attendees walk up to you and say the water is out, you’re refilling the water, right? Like this community is making the space. Our job was just to make sure water stored in there 16 of us right that you can take direction from, yes, and I mean if they say we’d like a whole another part of the building and could you bring catering there that please don’t do without our approval. Right, but we really want to have a, a place that is just open. Make it. Do put the chair where you want it to be, right? Like Ryan, bring your penguins and set them up. Apparently everybody’s like putting in the chat who gets to take them home, you know, like that feels like a gift to ourselves and hopefully a contribution that’s additive to the sector to to have a space that’s like that or that tries to say. What does it look like? We’re, we’re not a trade show. We’ve never been an actual trade show, but what does it look like to say, yeah, there’s no booths, just talk to each other. And honestly like there are some providers who are here for the very first time and they’re like what? What am I doing? What, what am I supposed to do, right? So we need to do a better job of setting people up whether they’re a provider or a sponsor or just, you know, attendee what to expect, what do you, what does it mean to just walk into this huge room and pick, pick a velvet couch to sit on and talk to somebody, you know, but just walk up yeah um. I, I, I just heard someone’s heels. I, I looked because I thought I heard pickle. I thought it was pickleball, but there is pickleball here. We have there’s pickle ball. There’s ping pong. Oh yes, and the pickle ball tournament yesterday, you know, it ended in, I’m not gonna say controversy, um, but it was heated because E0’s very own Carl came in 2nd place and he desperately would like that trophy. Is there a rule about employees? No, no, no, no, but Carl keeps he has spent a year reminding everyone that last year in pickleball he lost in the first round, but to the eventual winner. Right, it’s just, it’s just like, you know, the, the drama of a bracket process and so he wanted to redeem himself this year, right? He made it all the way to section. Yes, right, Carl. Alright, alright, and Carl is celebrating, I think, 18 years as an N0 staff person. He’s our IT director. He started as an AmeriCorps Vista. That’s incredible. Yeah, is he the longest? He’s the longest. And then how many years are you since membership I’ve been, I’ve been, I started at the NTC like the, you know, two days before 11 NTC was my first day as membership directors, um, and, and Ailey’s right behind me at 13. 0, she’s she’s outstanding. She curated this table that we’re sitting at. Uh, she got the chairs that we’re sitting on, um, she chose this spot for you all to be able to see everybody coming in visibility. Yes, it’s very nice. Yeah, Ali on her game, her thank you. All right, I know you’re busy. Thank you, CEO. I hope Aria was a nice surprise. It was such a gift. Thank you for doing that. I so appreciate it. I’m gonna tell the whole team with our at our daily debrief, um, and. And I look forward to the next time Gene and I get to be on the show and I have slept in some reasonable amount of hours prior to talking into the microphone, but I really value you being here and creating a digital platform for so many of our community members to get to share, you know, all of their smarts beyond these walls. So thanks for thanks for the collaboration. Yeah, lots more. OK. Amy Semple Ward, they’re the CEO of N10. They’re our technology contributor here at uh nonprofit Radio. Thank you. Um, and thank you for correcting me, parent, parent, yeah, yeah, you’re right. I mean, I know you’re right, but thank you for the, thank you for the correction. I’m, I’m a trainable boomer. You’re very trainable. We’ll leave it there. Thank you also for being uh with with uh nonprofit Radio’s coverage of 25 NTC where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor Box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you, a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges. Helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs. Helping you, help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now it’s time for the human factors driving your CRM success. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference. We’re at the Baltimore Convention Center, where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. My guest now is Ruben Singh. He is founder and CEO of 1/10 Consulting. Ruben, welcome back to nonprofit Radio. Thanks for having me, Tony. Good to see you again. This is, I think your 3rd, maybe 4th, 4th you’re counting, you’re more accurate than I am. Um, your session this year is the human factors driving nonprofit CRM success. Uh, I don’t know, I wonder, do you see people often or organizations often blaming technology when the problem is more team and human? Yeah, that’s exactly the the premise of it, Tony. I, I, um, uh, I’ve I’ve often found myself as a consultant coming into situations where Um, you know, the client we’re working with at the prospect we’re speaking with says, ah, we need Salesforce or we need, you know, uh, this particular solution or virtuous or something else, um, and, uh, you know, because they’ve had a bad experience with the technology that they were with, uh, and so, uh, as I’ve seen this so much throughout my career, um, and then you know you start peeling back the layers of the onions. And then you see, oh well, you know, the business processes are not fully defined. There’s not, you know, a plan for adoption, there’s not a plan for governance, uh, and so what I’ve realized is that, um, often times, uh, where the, the, the failures happen have really has nothing to do with the technology at all. So yes, that’s exactly what the premises of this uh of this um workshop. So the symptom I don’t know, cycling through, uh, platforms like, oh we need Salesforce, and then they have Salesforce for 3 or 4 years and then they realize, oh, no, Salesforce wasn’t really the solution. Now we need we need the Microsoft platform, right? Does it happen like that? That’s definitely a part of it. I think there’s also, you know, just there’s always this sense of urgency um as new technology comes along. Um, that uh we don’t, if we don’t innovate, we’re gonna fall behind, um, and we’re seeing a lot with, you know, AI now as well. Um, it’s, it’s no different, you know, everyone say well if you’re not using AI for your solutions, uh, you know, you’re, you’re gonna be left behind, you’re gonna, your organization’s gonna fail when really. Um, that is, that is really forcing organizations to adopt certain things that they’re not, they may not be ready for their, their processes may not be in place, their data might not be ready. So, um, so just like we’re seeing right now with, you know, the latest trend of technology, um, feel the organizations we work with just feel compelled to to to rush into whatever the particular trend is, um, and sometimes there’s business pressure also. Uh, you know, if this particular system failed, you know, new, new CTO comes in and says, ah, I need to prove myself or I need to get something going, so oftentimes they try to get the, the, the cart before the horse. You mentioned business processes a couple of times. What what kind of processes should we, so now we’re getting to what the human factors are that you need to have in place for the technology to be successful for the CRM. Well, what kinds of business processes are you looking for? Sure. Well, um, first, are they defined, are they documented? You’d be surprised how many nonprofits I walk into where, you know, they could be operating just fine, um, but there’s no nothing really documented and that’s fine, that’s where, you know, consultants like ourselves who would come in and help, uh, understand them, review them, define them. Um, and then there’s some that are just, uh, not very, uh, as you as you learn more about their business processes, you see that there’s, um, just inefficiencies, uh, that are there as well. So what kinds of business processes are we talking about? Just some examples. Yeah, um, fundraising, for example, so check come, you know, stack of checks come in, you know, what are the different processes to get that data entered into the system, or it might be donor advised funds, you know, what is the process around that? Or you know, we have a uh uh a series of files that need to be uploaded or it could be an application. process for programs uh that that might be so it it it could be um the grant distribution process what’s the reviews and applications that process who needs to review, who needs to approve before a grant might be approved. So, um, so there’s really a cross grant making fundraising program delivery um there’s there’s all kinds of steps that needed to happen and we ultimately want the the system, the technology to make it work as efficiently as possible. So we we we heavily rely on business processes to make sure that we’re. Um, that we’re creating things that ultimately makes the systems more efficient. So the technology is supporting the business processes not not we’re not relying on the technology for the business process, but it’s, it’s supplementing what our processes are. That’s exactly it. I would, I would add one more thing to that, you know, in addition to the technology supporting the business process, it also has to support the strategy. So that’s kind of one of the other points that we’re gonna be talking about later on today. Um, is to make sure that there’s a clear strategy. What is it that as an organization you’re trying to solve, um, how do you know that you’re successful? What are those markers or indicators to confirm that you’ve, that you’ve, you’re successful because we want again the technology to support that, uh, we want the technology to be able to track and report and monitor to make sure you’re meeting your goals, so. Uh, as a technologist, it’s a little bit tricky sometimes because they, they, you know, the clients often expect us to come in with a technical solution and, you know, code this and configure that, but we, we like to kind of step back and say, you know, what is it that you’re trying to solve? What’s your strategy? How do things work? Where can we create some efficiencies, then we start building. OK. Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s often important to have that consultant perspective to take a step back because you’re, you’re probably often. Uh, at 110th Consulting, and I’m, I’m gonna ask you to remind listeners why it’s 110. I think I remember, but we’ll get to that, we’ll get to that shortly. Um, you know, you’re, you’re often, um, confronted with, you know, we need, we need new technology. That is not our, that’s not our feedback. Amy. It is, it is feedback. OK. OK. There we go. Thank you. Oh, can you just try it with a lower volume? We’re uh we’re we’re, you can tell we’re live here at we’re, we’re just turning on the loudspeaker because the plenary session just ended, so we have a we have a loudspeaker and it was feeding back. OK, so that was us, that was us. Tala. All right, we’re accountable. I’m accountable. I feedback. It’s time for Tony’s Take too. Thank you, Kate. We’ve got a new tale from the gym introducing you to Roy. Uh, I met Roy by. Same way I hear about lots of people, uh, overhearing other people talking about Roy, uh, after he had left. And I know who he is. I’ve, I’ve seen him around. Uh, I’d say Roy is probably early to mid 70s. And the, the thing that the uh the two guys talking about Roy were focused on. Was that, um, well, he talks a lot, I agree. Uh, and he doesn’t put the weights away after he uses this one machine that he focuses on a lot, spends a lot of time on, and, and he actually grunts a lot when he’s on this bench press type machine. Uh, I had not noticed that he doesn’t take the weights off like you’re supposed to, but these two, guys did, uh, as well as talking about how chatty he is, and, you know, that he, he like, uh, just spends too much time in between his sets. Talking to other people. Maybe even annoying other people, uh, they did, they didn’t say that, but. They didn’t like how much he talks, and they don’t like that he doesn’t put the weights away. So I was, uh, so I was keeping an eye on Roy, you know, after I saw, I saw him again, and, um, word must have got to him about the weight part. Uh, he didn’t, he didn’t talk any less, still very chatty between sets. But he did start putting his weights away after he was done, takes them off the machine, puts them back on the rack where they get stored. So that’s good. So Roy did uh improve his bad gym behavior. Now, how did he get wind of the idea? That he’s not. Practicing good gym etiquette, I don’t know. Uh, I, I, I had nothing to do with it. I just stay out and listen and, and I happened to watch well, cause I heard about Roy once I learned his name, so then I was paying more attention, and that’s when I saw that he, he, uh, exercised good gym etiquette. So, but how he came to change his ways, I don’t know. I swear I had nothing to do with it. So that’s Roy at the gym, uh, along with many of our other characters I’ve introduced you to, uh, through the, through the many months. Roy at the gym, the community gym where I work out, uh, 44 times a week. And that is Tony’s take 2. OK. Are you sure you haven’t spoken to Roy before? Because he sounds familiar. I don’t think so. You might be, you might be thinking of Rob, Rob. There was Rob. He was the Marine Corps. Remember Semper Fi? He was talking to a another former Marine, and they ended their conversation with Semper Fi, the the Marine Corps motto. You might be thinking of Rob. I, I’ve seen Roy, but I never knew his name. OK. Hm. A lot of our names that are short. Well, it’s a couple. Try to keep track of all the characters at the community gym where I go, try to, maybe we should start a database. We should do, maybe we should start a CRM database. We said. We’ve got Fuku butlers more time. Here’s the rest of the human factors driving your CRM success with Rubin Singh. So you’re often confronted with our technology sucks, you know, we need this platform is not working for us. Nobody, I don’t know, nobody ever seemed to have learned it right. It doesn’t, it doesn’t work with what we’re doing, what we’re trying to do, and but you need to step back and say that there may very well be something deeper than your platform. OK. Absolutely, and you know there there’s there’s that and and I’d say also there’s been times if I’m being totally honest, Tony, where I’ve don’t don’t don’t be disingenuous, don’t lie to no I can’t do that, um, but, uh, you know, I’ve I’ve been part of teams early, early in my career where, um, you know, we have, we’ve completed the project. We have finished on time, we’ve finished on budget, we checked all the boxes for all the requirements that we met, but at the end of the project, at the end of the go live, honestly I, I felt kind of uncomfortable. I felt uneasy. I felt sick to my stomach because I knew that despite all the things that we’ve done for the technology, the nonprofit is not set up for success in the long run. Uh, some of the ways that I sense that were, um, they, you know, maybe all the users were really excited about the technology, but maybe the leadership was not fully on board, so they may not have, um, you know, they have not modified their processes, how they’re gonna do reporting, how they’re going to measure progress, how they’re going to measure performance, um, if they’re not really bought into the system, um, the whole thing’s going to fail. Um, also another key thing is governance. For leadership, the leadership buy-in is essential, uh, I think we may have talked about, or if it wasn’t you, it was another NTC how to get that leadership. It’s, if, if, if the leadership isn’t committed, leaders who are listening, CEOs, uh, executive directors listening, if you’re not completely committed, I mean your teams, your teams know that they figure it out and their commitment, uh, uh, is gonna be equivalent to yours for sure. If you could spend tens of $1000 on a on a new CRM system, if not more, but if you as a leader are gonna say, OK, you know, fundraising meeting, you know, fundraising, you know, check-in is going to be on Monday and everybody bring your spreadsheets, um, forget, you can forget the investment that you made in that CRM system, you’ve lost adoption right there holistic look remind us why your your company is one. Yeah, you know, well, um, you know, we’ve exclusively worked with nonprofits and, and very early in our, in our startup phase, uh, we worked with a lot of, um, uh, faith-based organizations, um, and, uh, it was, it was funny that as I was working with different organizations whether it was a synagogue or a church or a mosque or or cordura. Um, they all seem to have this 10% concept, this giving back of 10%, uh, to back to the community, back to causes, back to the good of, of the whole, um, and I thought that, you know, despite all these different faith traditions being so different, there was something that was, uh, you was a common thread amongst many of them, and so that’s kind of where 1/10 the consulting came from, yeah. I had it close. I thought it was, I thought it was giving I was giving back, but giving back 1/10. Yes, exactly, exactly, um, you, you, uh, your session description talks about inclusive design as a as a means to. Achieve the the CRM success that we’re looking for. Uh, say, say more about the design process, inclusivity. Yeah, well, well, we feel strongly that any technology that is meant for everyone should uh include as many people as possible as part of the design, otherwise, um, there’s gonna be blind spots. Um, uh, you know, this might seem, uh, you know, unrelated, but I was reading some stories about how when Um, uh, there’s crash test dummies, um, were being used, um, to test the safety of vehicles. They were based on a male body of 5′ 970 pounds and, um, the, and as is the 2011 University of Virginia study that showed that women were much more likely to be harmed or hurt in an accident. Um, than men were and 47% more it was like a pretty ridiculous number, so, um, just makes you wonder like when, when these vehicles and safety were designed and assessed, were they really thinking about different body types, different people? Well, the same thing applies to, you know, technology, um, the story I often give people is, um, you know, even my own parents, my, my elderly, uh, you know, parents, you know, from an immigrant community when they signed up for the COVID vaccine. Um, it was a process that was clearly not designed for immigrants and it was not designed for elderly, um, you know, it was, it was a the application form was very, uh, cumbersome. There was a lot of information you had to have, have prepared you cited this in a year or two in the past, yeah, the online form was not, uh, well, not user friendly for 70 or 80 year old, yeah, yeah, and so. Um, and, and so like, and then you, you also hear that uh well the immigrant communities are not signing up for the vaccine and, and it’s a public health problem. So, um, you know we feel that CRM is the same day is the same way that um it often times I walk into a room for a design session and I have the IT professionals there or because they’re the ones who can give us the quickest answers, um, or we have the people who are like the quote unquote super users who are the most technically proficient. Um, but you know, to me, if we really want to have inclusive design, we really want to see what who who’s not at the table. Let’s maybe have people of different ages, different technical proficiency, different, you know, socioeconomic, different uh parts on the company hierarchy because if this system is really designed for everybody, we need to get as many different thoughts, ideas, perspectives involved, um, to me, uh, often times if we overlook that, um, it, it, it ends up being a gap that we have to fix later. Um, you, uh, you also cite, um, this being valuable for uh professional growth. How is that? Yeah, and this is something, uh, as I get older, Tony, I’ve been reflecting on on a lot and uh I’ve been, um, I’ve I’ve felt this in my professional career and I’ve I’ve had the um privilege to uh teach as an adjunct professor close by here at University of Maryland Baltimore County. And it’s something I often tell my students, it’s like, um, you know, if, if you really want to be good consultants in this space, um. You know, we, we often times focus on the, the, the credentials or the certifications and you know we go crazy with the certifications and, and you know so we can present that and say, ah this is, you know, this is who we are but in my experience what’s been most useful and also has been useful to to the success of our projects is really being an expert in the industry that you’re working with, being passionate about the industries that you’re working in. Um, so for for us we tend to have a focus on the social justice sector, um, and it’s, you know, in my tradition, in my blood, and my, in my, uh, upbringing to be working with these types of organizations and really understanding the ins and outs of, of these organizations, and I feel like that’s been able to, um, uh, it’s it’s been something I’ve been uh able to bring to my projects, bring to my implementations, um, and the love and care that we give our clients and. It’s, it’s been very helpful so it’s something I, I encourage folks to, um, you know, to, to work on becoming experts work on becoming um keeping up to date with what’s going on in the industry so if you’re a nonprofit technology consultant being fully aware with the challenges with grant making or you know how government funding might be affected these days or you know taking an opinion on how AI can help or harm uh nonprofits. Uh, taking an opinion on data privacy and where it fits, so, uh, what I’ve seen is that what our clients need is not just, just people who are experts at the technology, but experts at the industry that they’re working in. And what about professional growth for for folks in nonprofits as they’re looking at their own businesses? I mean this is sort of a broadening exercise where folks are learning. there as you’re you’re suggesting for consultants, the folks nonprofits learning outside their own areas of expertise. Yes, yes, absolutely, um, an example of that is, you know, uh, to me I realize that, you know, equity and and technology is, is, is ultimately, you know, uh, it’s super important for inclusive design and inclusive systems, um, so for me that meant, um, I was gonna become a. A certified DEI practitioner, um, so I went and, you know, went through the classes, got my certification, and, and that was something that I, I wanted to make sure that was part of who, who I was. So while you might think that this might not be part of your part of your, um, technical credential, um, this might not be part of your technical credential, um, it, it having that business credential or having that expertise was super important, um. Another example could be change management. Um, so if, if you feel that change management, excuse me, change management is something that you’re passionate about, by all means become a certified credential change management professional because it’s only going to make all your projects, uh, more successful. Get you outside your comfort zone. Yeah, I mean I think there’s I think there’s value in that. I’ve I’ve seen it professionally, um. Just, you know, challenging, challenging yourself, you know, outside outside your normal boundaries and and and it really applies to any industry, so as I tell my students, if you’re a The technology is everywhere, so you know if you wanna do fashion tech, become an expert in the fashion side of it a sports tech, become an expert in the sports side of it doesn’t really matter, um, but it’s really just about, you know, what my clients over 27 years of of of this work, um, they don’t really care how many salesforce certifications I have. They don’t really care about, you know, what they, what they care about is do I understand them? Do I understand their business, do I, you know, what, what else do I bring to the table? There’s lots of tech consultants out there, but what else do you bring to the table? So it sounds like we’re in your backyard, uh NTC. You teach at University of Maryland Baltimore County. Yes, yes, yes, just uh uh right right outside 20 minutes from here, so it’s nice, we’ll see you again next year. I don’t do you know where next year’s is? I believe Detroit, but, uh, wherever it’s gonna be, I’ll be there. We’ll be together. Um, what else, what else are you gonna share on this topic that, uh, you and I haven’t talked about yet? Um, we are gonna, I think the one other thing, and, um, it’s not something I talked about, you know, a few years ago, but it’s just so much more relevant now is, um, you know, again as far as the, the human factors that that uh affect CRM, it’s also uh looking at um, you know, how bias and discrimination can make their way into the systems, um, so whether it is algorithms that are built, whether it’s AI models, um, and, uh, making sure that we have. Checks and balances in place to ensure that the data is um not toxic in any ways or or the data is not skewing results in a in a way that could um hurt or harm communities. I think one example I if I can give a specific is, you know, if you are a nonprofit that uses an algorithm for recruitment volunteer recruitment or application reviews, um, you know, making sure that those do not, uh, uh, create skewed results, making sure that. There’s a checks and balances process to make sure that that that the results are not discriminatory, that they’re fair, they’re unbiased, um, and that’s something that, um, organizations are really grappling with how do we do that? So I have some, some models that I’m gonna be sharing as well today that I’m pretty excited about on on how you can create some checks and balances. Yeah, um, I mean it’s uh I wish I wish I had my diagram I could bring up here too. Yeah, but um, yeah, yeah, um, but it’s basically just um being intentional about, OK, you know, if again starting with strategy, so let’s say it’s a volunteer recruitment plan and you say, you know, I and I had a lot of this well we want to increase our, our diversity in our recruit in our volunteer pool so you know it’s, it’s basically setting some measures for that. um, we wanna have 20% of, of this particular demographic or 40% of this and then it’s really just um creating some checks and balances just like in any. Um, in any implementation of of technology there’s gonna be a, a testing phase, there’s gonna be a data validation phase. So what what I’m proposing is we also have a a a a a bias detection phase. We also have a, um, you know, um, uh, a sort of um discrimination and bias, uh, check that we essentially do so in that case we will just like we have parameters to say these are the percentages we’re looking for, what are the results for it? So, um, so it’s, it’s not rocket science, but, but it’s really just making sure that when we build our test plans out that we’re also checking for bias and discrimination. I know a lot of work on LinkedIn. Have you written a book? Um, in the works, Tony, in the works you mentioned it or maybe I’m just that you ought to write a book. OK, uh, you’re working on a book, um, early stages, yes. But um but yeah, now there’s I’ve I’ve kind of captured a lot of thoughts um over the years about this and you know these are things that were just kind of things I uh thought about, you know, like uh you know this doesn’t feel right or this could be done in a more equitable way or this is this is not really doing good. Even though we’re calling it tech for good, um, and then, you know, being in communities like this at N10 and NTC, uh, made me realize, oh, I’m not the only one who thinks like this. There’s others who who are who have also found some weird stuff in out there in the implementation world and and I think, um, you know, as a consultant who, who now has started my own practice, um, I realized, you know, I don’t have to just continue being part of the problem, you know, I can. Uh, I can try to shift some things and, and, um, share my stories to, to make sure that we, we, we, we collectively do better. OK, now, you know, I imagine you’re, you’re part of a minority faith community in the United States. How does that inform your practice or or how does it open your eyes to the inequities that that we were you know, you’re doing more to fight than I am. I bring voice to them, but you’re actually doing. Well, well bringing to it is is very important, so I appreciate that you do that, Tony. Um, uh, yes, as part of the sick tradition I think um it’s it’s a few things. um, I mean it really does fuel a lot of my work, um, you know, the sick tradition is a very um deep in in community service and in justice and in collective liberation, so it it really is a fuel for, you know, the, the, the focus on the social justice sector. Um, but I would say, yeah, absolutely, you know, being a visible minority does, uh, help me have, uh, that the radar is always on. Um, you know, and, um, I, I’m, I’m very aware, hyper aware of of things that just don’t feel right or that that that that don’t sit well with me, whether it’s happening to me or someone else, um, so you know, early on in my career I was, you know, thinking to myself, ah, you know, I’m just learning the ropes, let me just follow along what everybody else is doing and you know, different practices that might happen in in implementations themselves and technology implementations. I’ll just go along with it. It’s fine, um, but now I, I didn’t it right, yeah, so now I kind of sense that, you know, I feel that agency that I can, you know, I can, I can speak my mind, I can step forward and say, yeah, you know, this, this persona building exercise we’re doing for marketing, you know, of, you know, guessing what. Different races and demographics might feel about our work. Yeah, it doesn’t, that’s not great. That’s there’s other ways to to get that information that doesn’t sit here and, and, you know, enable stereotypes, uh, you know, we can use archetypes, we can, you know, we can ask people directly why they could come to our nonprofit or don’t come. So there’s there’s alternatives out there, you know, the tried and true methods are not always the best, um, they’re not always the most equitable, so you know, let’s let’s brainstorm other alternatives. Did finding that agency come from starting your own business or before then? I think it was a combination of being in circles of other technologists of color that, you know, where I, I felt very empowered and said, ah, you know, we’re not the only ones, you know, like other people feel this way and collectively. You know, there’s things we can do better, um, and then yes, starting the company and I I recognize that comes with privilege, um, and not everybody can speak out the way that they want to, but, but definitely starting starting my own practice and being very transparent with my customers about, hey, this is who we are, this is what we’re about. If we see something that doesn’t feel right or that the data that you’re requesting from your clients is is overreaching, we’re gonna, we’re gonna raise our hand and and you know what I thought might have deterred. Customers is actually um uh had customers gravitate towards us. They want to be held accountable. Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m glad you found your voice it’s always good to see you, thank you very much. Thanks so much. My pleasure. Singer and CEO. Thank you for joining us for our. 2025 nonprofit technology conference coverage in the Baltimore Convention Center and thanks to Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits for sponsoring nonprofit radio at 25 NTC. Next week, more from 25 NTC PII in the age of AI. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, Donorbox.org. I’m gonna miss that alliteration. Donor box is going away this week. Fast, flexible, friendly, fundraising forms. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. 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Artificial Intelligence is ubiquitous, so here’s another conversation about its impacts on the nonprofit and human levels. Amy Sample Ward, the big picture thinker, the adult in the room, contrasts with our host’s diatribe about AI sucking the humanity out of nonprofit professionals and all unwary users. Amy is our technology contributor and the CEO of NTEN. They have free AI resources.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer with a pseudoaneurysm if you made a hole in my heart with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce it. Hey, Tony, this week A I organizational and personal artificial intelligence is ubiquitous. So here’s another conversation about its impacts on the nonprofit and human levels. Amy Sample Ward, the big picture thinker, the adult in the room contrasts with our hosts, Diatribe about A I sucking the humanity out of nonprofit professionals and all unwary users. Amy is our technology contributor and the CEO of N 10 on Tony’s take two tales from the gym. The sign says clean, the equipment were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is A I organizational and personal is Amy sample ward. They need no introduction but they deserve an introduction. Nonetheless, they’re our technology contributor and CEO of N 10. They were awarded a 2023 Bosch Foundation fellowship and their most recent co-authored book is the tech that comes next about equity and inclusiveness in technology development. You’ll find them at Amy Sample ward.org and at Amy RS Ward. It’s good to see you, Amy Ward. I do love the Pod Father. I know it makes me laugh every time because it just feels like, I don’t know, like I’m gonna turn on the TV and there’s gonna be like a new, new, new season of the Pod Father where we secretly, you know, follow Tony Martignetti around or something. We are in season 14. Right? Yeah. Um Yes, I appreciate that. You love that. It’s, you know, you like that fun. So uh before we talk about um the part of your role, which is the, the technology contributor to N 10, uh the technology, the nonprofit radio and we’re gonna talk about artificial intelligence again. Let’s talk about the part of your life that is the CEO of N 10 because you have uh have you submitted this major groundbreaking transformative funding federal grant application? Yes, we submitted it last night three hours before the deadline, which was notable because I, I know there were people down to the, the minute press and submit. No, we got it in three hours early to what agency um to NTI A they had, this is kind of all the work that rippled from the digital Equity Act that was passed in Congress a couple of years ago. And, you know, now, you know, better than to be in Jargon jail. What is NTI A, it sounds like an obscure agency of our, of our federal government. It’s not, well, maybe to some listeners it’s obscure but it is, um, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. And you, I think that’s obscure to about 98.5% of the population, you know, I think I, I think I’m obscure to, you know, uh being obscure is fine. Um Yes, the National Information Administration and um prior to this uh grant um from the federal level where folks from all over were applying, every state was also creating state equity plan, digital equity plans. Um What funds might be available through the state funding mechanism to support digital equity goals. But a lot of those at the state level are focused on infrastructure, like actually building internet networks to reach communities that don’t have broadband yet, you know, things like this and so very worthwhile funding endeavor. I mean, we need, we need to have 100% of the population needs but even with those state plans and the work that will come from them and the funding it will not, we are not about to have every person in the country have broadband available to where they live, right? Ee even with all of this investment, it, it’s not gonna reach everyone and that means that the amount of funding within state plans for the surrounding digital literacy work, digital inclusion work, you know, making sure people know how to use the internet, why they would use it have devices. All those other components is gonna be really minimal through the state funding because even if they used all of it on infrastructure, they wouldn’t be done with that, right. So um the federal government, yeah. So, so the kind of next layer in all of that is this federal pool where they’re anticipating grant making about 100 and 50 grants somewhere averaging between five and, and 12 million each. There’s gonna be exceptions, of course, there’s ma there’s big cities, there’s big states, you know. Um but though all those grants will be operational from 2025 through 2028. So four kind of concerted years of, of national Programmatic investment. Um And these are projects kind of on the flip side, those state projects where this isn’t necessarily about infrastructure and, and building networks or even devices very much, right? It’s mostly the infrastructure programming and you’re asking for a lot of money. So tell, you know, share the, share the numbers, what you’re looking for, how much money. Yeah, we’re our project in the end I think came out at about $8.2 million project and we’re hopeful, of course. Um and I’m, I’m truly curious, um listeners who are always tuning into nonprofit radio from like fundraising strategy perspective. I’d love to learn from you or, you know, email me at Amy at N 10 anytime I’d love to hear your thoughts when you listen to this. But you know, N 10 is a capacity building organization is we, we don’t apply for grants often because quote unquote, capacity building is not considered a, a programmatic investment to most funders, right? And so it’s just not something that um they will entertain an application from us on. And but with this, we have already run for 10 years of digital inclusion fellowship program that is focused on building up the capacity of staff who already work in nonprofits who are already trusted and accessed by communities most impacted by digital divides to integrate digital literacy programming within their mission. Are they a housing organization? Are they workforce development? Are they adult literacy, you know, refugee services, whatever it is, if you’re already serving these communities who are impacted by digital divides and you’re trusted to deliver programs, well, you don’t need to go have a mission that’s now digital equity. No, you digital equity can be integrated into your programs and services to, to reach those folks. Um And so we’ve successfully run this program for 10 years and had um you know, over 100 fellows from 22 different locations around the US and have seen how transformative it’s been. These programs have been sustained for all these years by these organizations, they now see themselves as like the leaders of the digital equity coalitions in their communities. They, you know, fellows have gone on to work in digital equity offices or, you know, organizations et cetera. So it feels great, you have tons of outcomes from a smaller scale program and the grant is to scale up, scale this thing up. Yeah. Yeah. So instead of, you know, between 20 to 25 fellows per year with this grant, we would have over 100 a year. Um And that also means that instead of, you know, if there’s only 20 fellows and maybe we can only cover 20 locations while with over 100 we can cover or at least give opportunities to organizations in every state and territory to, to be part of this kind of capacity building opportunity. All right, it sounds, it’s, it’s huge. It’s, it’s, it’s really a lot of money for N 10. Um uh It, it falls within the range, I guess a little, no, it’s like right within the middle of the range, you cited like 5 million to 12 million, you said? So, yeah, exactly. So our, our application is kind of in the middle there. Yeah, slightly to the low side of middle. But, you know, we just call it middle, between friends. Um Yes and I mean, we’re hopeful, knock on wood, we’re really hopeful that this is an easy application to approve because we’re not creating something new we’re not spending half of the grant in planning. We know how to run this program. We’ve refined it for 10 years. We know it’s very cost efficient, you know, and in the end of four years, 400 plus organizations now running programs that can be sustained is accelerating towards, you know, addressing digital divides um versus, you know, a small project that just end 10 runs. All right, listeners, contact your NTI A representative, the elected person at the National Telecommunications and Infra Information Information Agency. Yes, speak to your uh Yeah. Yeah, let’s get this. Let this go. All right. When do you find out when? Well, you know, there was very clear information about down to the minute when applications were due, but there’s not a ton of clarity on when we will find out. So, you know, they are, they are meant to programs that are funded are, are meant to get started in January. So I anticipate we’ll hear, you know, in a couple of months, of course, and I will let you know, we’ll do an update. I’ll let you know you have my personal good wishes and I know nonprofit radio listeners wish and then good luck. Thank you. I appreciate all the good vibes would reverberate through the universe would be a transformative grant in terms of dollar amount and expansion of the program. Transformative. Yeah, 100% and staff are just so excited and hopeful about what it could mean for just helping that many more organizations, you know, do this good work. So we’re really excited and I admire intend for reaching for the sky because you have like a 2 to $2.5 million budget, annual annual budget somewhere in there. Um And you’re reaching for the sky and great ambitions uh only come to fruition through hard work and uh and thinking big. So thank you, even if you’re not, I don’t even want to say the words if you know, they should blunder if NTI A should blunder badly. Uh I still admire the, the ambition. Thank you. And no matter what, it’s a program that we know is transformative for communities and we wouldn’t stop it even if you know, they make a blunder and don’t, yeah, don’t tell. All right. Listen, don’t tell your NTI A representative. You said, don’t share that part of the conversation. All right. Thank you for sharing all that. And thanks for your support. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds, both online and on location, so you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to A I organizational and personal. Let’s talk about artificial intelligence because this is not anybody’s mind. I can’t get away from it. I cannot. Uh I’m not myself of the concerns that I have. Uh They’re deepening my good friend George Weiner, uh you know, has a lot of posts, uh the CEO at the whale who I know you are, you are friendly with George as well. Talks about it a lot on linkedin uh reminds me how concerned I am uh about, you know, just the evolution. Uh I mean, it’s inevitable. This, this thing is just incrementally. This thing. This technology is uh is incrementally moving, not slowly but incrementally. I I and I, I cannot overcome my, my concerns and I know you have some concerns but you also balance that with the potential of the technology, transformative techno, the the transformative potential there. I’ll throw you. I was just gonna say, I totally agree. This is unavoidable. I can’t, you know, I cannot go a day without community organizations reaching out or asking questions or whatever and a place of reflection or, or a conversation that I’ve been having and I, I wanted to offer here, maybe we could talk about it for a minute. So, so listeners benefit by kind of being in, in one of these sides with us in the conversation is to think about the privilege of certain organizations to opt in or opt out of A I in the same way that we had for many years, you know, talked about the privilege of organizations in or, or not with social media generally. Like we think about Facebook and we go back, you know, 10 years, there were a lot of organizations who felt like they didn’t have the budget and like, practically speaking and they didn’t have the staff, well, certainly not the staff time but also not the staff confidence. Um I don’t even wanna say skills, but like even just the confidence to say, I’m gonna go build us a great website. They had a website, like they had a domain and content loaded when you went to it, right? But it wasn’t engaging and flashy and interesting and probably updated once, you know, and then Facebook was like, hey, you could have a page and oh, you can have a donate button and, oh, you can have this and oh, and you can post videos and you can, you know, it was like, well, why wouldn’t we do this? Right? And a bunch of our community members spend time on Facebook or maybe don’t even look for information on the broader web, but look for things within Facebook, you know, and, and have it on their phone and are using an app instead of doing an internet search, right? Like they’re, they’re going into Facebook and searching things. So they didn’t, those organizations didn’t feel like they had the privilege to opt out of that space, they had to use it because it came with some robust tools that did benefit them at the cost of their community data, all of their organizational content and data, right? Like it, it had a material cost that they maybe didn’t even understand. Right? And, and didn’t fully negotiate as like terms of this agreement. We’re just like, well, we have a donate button on Facebook and we don’t have one on our website, right? Not, not only, not only didn’t understand the terms, didn’t, didn’t know what the terms were right? Early days of Facebook, we didn’t know how and how many times how pervasive the data, data collection was, how it was going to be, how it was gonna be monetized, how we as the individuals were gonna become the product. And how many times did we talk? You know, I’m saying we like N 10 or, or folks who are providing kind of technical capacity building resources say you don’t know what could happen tomorrow, you could log in tomorrow and your page could look totally different, your page could work different, your features could be turned off. Facebook could just say pages don’t have donate buttons. And you know, I think folks felt like that was very, you know, oh, you’re being so sensational and then of course they would wake up one day and there wasn’t a button or the button really did work different, right? Like you people realize we’re not in control of even our own content, our own data. That’s right. The rules change and there’s no accountability to saying, hey, we need, do you want these rules to change? No, no, no, no, no. Like they set the rules and that was always of course a challenge. But we’re in a similar place with A I where folks aren’t understanding that the there’s, there’s no negotiation of terms happening right now. Folks are just like, oh, but I, I don’t have the time and if I use this tool, it lets me go faster. Because what do I have a, a burden of of time, I have so much work to try and do and maybe these tools will help me. And I’m not gonna say maybe they won’t help you. But I’m saying there’s a incredible amount of harm just like when folks didn’t realize, oh, we’re a, you know, we provide pro bono legal services and we’re based on the Texas border. Now, every person who follows our page, every person who’s RSVP do a Facebook event. Like all these people have a data trail we created that said they may be people that need legal services at a border, right? The there’s this level of harm that folks that are hoping to use these tools to help with their day to day work may not understand. I do not understand. Right. That’s coming in in silent negotiation of, of using these products. Right. And I think that’s, well, I can’t just in 30 seconds say, and here’s the harm like it’s, it’s exponential and broad because it could also the, the product could change tomorrow. Right. It’s this, it’s this vulnerability that isn’t going to be resolved necessarily. You, you said the word exponential and I was thinking of the word existential. Yeah. Both because I think I’m, I have my concerns around the human. Yes. Trade off is a polite way of saying it. Uh Surrender is probably more, is more in line with what I’m what I feel. Surrender of our humanity, our, our, our creativity, our thinking. Now our conversations with each other. One of the, one of the things that George posted about was a I that creates conversations between two people based on the, the, the large language that, you know, the, the, the data that you give it. It’ll have a conversation with itself. But purportedly, it’s two different people purportedly. Uh and I’m using the word people in quotes, you know, it’s a, a, a conversa. So the things that make us human. Yeah, music, music, composition, conversation, thought, staring and, and our listeners have heard me use this example before, but I’m sticking with it because it’s, it, it still rings real staring at a blank screen and composing, thinking first and then composing. Starting to type or if you’re old fashioned, you might start to pick up a pen, but you’re outlining either explicitly or in your mind, you’re thinking about big points and maybe some sub points and then you begin either typing or writing that creative process. We’re surrendering to the technology, music composition. I don’t compose music. So I don’t know the, but it’s not that much similar in terms of creative thought and, and synapses firing the brain working together, building neural nodes as you exercise the brain, music composition is that that probably not that much different than written composition. Yeah, brain physiologists may disagree with me but I think at our level, we you understand where I’m coming from and I’m kind of dumping a bunch of stuff but you know, but that’s OK. II I am here as a vessel for your A I complaints. I will, I will witness them. We can talk about them artificial intelligence. Also from George, a post on linkedin that reflects on its own capacity that justifies you. You ask the um the tool to reflect on its own last response. How did it perform? You’re asking the tool to justify itself to an audience to which it wants to be justifiable in, right? The tool is not going to dissuade you from using it by being honest about it, how it evaluates its last response. Well, yeah, I mean, I think, I don’t know, generative A I tools, these major tools that folks you know, maybe have played with, maybe use whatever you know, are programmed, are inherently designed to appease the user. They are not programmed, to be honest, they are. That, that’s an important thing to understand my point. We have asked the tool, what’s two plus two? Oh, it’s four. We’ve responded. Oh, really? Because I’ve heard experts agree that it’s five. Oh, yes, I was wrong. You’re right. It is 50, really? You know, I read once that it’s 40, yes, you are right. It really is four. OK. Well, like we, no experts agree that two plus two is five. So I think we’ve already demonstrated it’s going to value appeasing the user over, you know, facts. Um And that’s again, just like part of the unknown for most, at least casual users of generative A I tools is why it’s giving them the answers, it’s giving them. And what’s really important to say is that even the folks who built these tools and not tell you they do not know how some of this works. Some of it is just the the yet unknown of what happened within those algorithms that created this content. So if even the creators cannot responsibly and thoroughly say this is how these things came to be. How are you as an organization going to take accountability for using a tool that included biased data included, not real sources and then provided that to your community? Right? I think that string of, well, we just don’t know is not going to be something that you can build any sort of communications to your community on. Right. That, that is such a, a thin thread of, well, even the makers don’t know. Ok. Well, we have already seen court cases where if your chat bot told a community member this is your policy and it entirely made it up because that’s what, that’s what generative A I does is make things up. You as the organization are still liable for what it told the community. OK. If I, I agree with that, actually, I think that you should have to be liable and accountable to whatever you’ve you’ve set up. But if you as a small nonprofit are not prepared to take accountability and to rectify whatever harm comes of it, then you can’t say we’re ready to use these tools. You can only use these tools if you’re also ready to be accountable for what comes of using them, right? And I hope that gives folks pause, you know, it’s not just, well, you know, I talked about this with some organizations that, well, we would never, you know, take something that generative A I tools gave us and then just use it. We would of course edit that. Sure. But are you checking all the sources that it used in order to create that content that you’re, then maybe changing some words within? Are you monitoring every piece of content? Are you making sure that generative A I content is never in direct conversation with a community member or program, you know, service delivery uh recipient. How are you really building practical safeguards? Um You know, and I’ve talked to organizations who have said, well, we didn’t even know our staff were using these tools because we just thought it was obvious that they shouldn’t use it. But our clinical staff are using free generative A I tools putting in their case notes and saying, can you format this for my case file? OK. Well, there’s a few things we should talk about that. Where the hell did that note go? Right. It went back into the system. But it’s because the staff person thought, well, they can’t see that the data went anywhere because it’s just on their screen and they’re just copy pasting it over again. The harm is likely invisible at the point of, you know, technical interaction with the tool. The harm is from leaking all of that into the system, right? Um What happens to those community member? Oh my gosh, it’s just like opening, not just a door to a room but a door to like a whole giant convention center of, of challenges and harm, you know. All right. So we, we’ve identified two main strains of potential harm, the, the, the data usage leakage, the, the impact on our people in the uh getting our, getting our services um and even impact on people who are supporting us, trusting us to to be ethical and even moral stewards of data. So there’s everything at the organization level and I also identified the human level. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that human piece is important and, and not maybe on the direction that I’ve seen covered in, you know, blog posts and things. I, I, I’m honestly not worried in a massive way as like the predominant worry related to A I not to say this isn’t something that people could, should think about. But I don’t think the the most important worry about A I is that none of us will have jobs. I, I do think that there’s, there’s a challenge happening on what the value of our job is and what, what we spend our time doing. Because if folks really think that these A I tools are sufficient to come up with all of your organization’s communications content and then you are, then you still have a communication staff person, but you’re expecting them to do 10 times the amount of work because you think that the, you know A I tools are going to do all of the content, but they have to go in there and deeply edit all of that. They have to make sure to use real photos and not photos that have been, you know, created by A I based on what it thinks, certain people of certain whatever identities are like it, they don’t now have capacity to do 10 times the work, they’re still doing the same amount of work just in different ways if, if they’re expected to do all this through A I, right, just as, as one example. And I think organizations that can stay in this moment of like hyper focus on, on A I adoption really clear on what the value of their staff are, what their human values are that, you know, maybe you could say you’re serving more people because some of the program participants were, you know, chatting with a bot instead of chatting with a counselor. But when you look at the data of what came of them chatting with that bot and they are not meeting the outcomes that come from meeting with a human counselor. Are, are you doing more to meet your mission? I don’t know that you are, right? So I’ll give you that that’s data sensitive. It could be, I mean, there, there are, there are potential efficiencies. Sure. And, but, you know, are we, are we as an organization achieving them, right? And staying focused on not just, well, this number of people were met here, but were they served there? Were they meeting the the needs and goals of why you even have that program, you know, versus just the number of like this many people interacted with the chatbot? Great. But, but that’s a, yeah, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna assume that um you know, even a half a sophisticated an organization that’s half sophisticated before a, I existed had more than just vanity metrics. How many people, how many people chatted with us in the last seven days? I mean, that’s near worthless. I mean, you, you, I mean, it might be, I don’t know, Tony, I don’t know how much time you spend looking at the grant reports of, lots of times I don’t spend, I don’t spend any time. All right. Well, no, maybe it’s, maybe it’s the worst, worst situation than I think. But I, I mean, ok, so I’m, I’m, I’m assuming that there’s, but my point is the appropriate the valuable, the value of people. So, I mean, we should be applying the same measures and accountability to artificial intelligence as we did to human intelligence as we still are. We’re not, we’re not cutting any slack like it’s a learning curve or. So, you know that IIII I want our, our folks to be treated just as well in equal outcomes by the, by the intelligence that’s artificial as I do by the, by the human processes, right? And it’s, you know, I don’t want to go through this and say, have folks think like you and I are here to say everything is horrible. You could never use A I tools which like everything is horrible. Look around at this world. We got, we had some work to do. You know, there are spaces to use A I tools. That’s not what we’re saying. But the place where a lot, I mean, I’ve been talking to just hundreds and hundreds of organizations over the last 18 months and so many organizations like, oh, yeah, we’re just gonna, like, use this because it’s free or? Oh, we’re just gonna use this because it was automatically enabled inside of our database. Ok. Yeah, if it was so free and convenient and already available that should give you pause to say, why is this here? What is actually the product and the price? Uh if I give this back to the face, the Facebook analy. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And you can use A I tools when you know what is the product and the price. What are the safeguards? What is this company gonna be responsible for if something happens? What can I be responsible for? Yes, there are ways to use these tools. Is it to like copy, paste your paste file notes? Like probably never may that should just like, maybe we just don’t do that, you know. Um But sure, maybe there are places I had this really great example. I don’t know if I told this to you, but um an organization was youth service organization creating the Star Wars event and they were trying to like write the, like the evi language in like a Yoda voice. And they’re like three staff people are sitting there trying to come up with like, well, what’s the way a Yoda sentence works? You know, and they’re like they just put in the three sentences of like join us at the after school, blah, blah, blah, right? And said make this in Yoda’s voice and they copied, they were able to then use them. Right? Great. That was three people’s half an hour eliminated. They all they have the invite, right? The youth participants data was not included in order to create this content. You know, like there are ways to use these tools to really help. And I think we’ve talked about this briefly in the past, I really truly feel the place that has the most value for organizations is gonna be building tools internally where you don’t need to rely on. However, you know, these major companies scraped all of the internet to build some tool, right? You’re building it on. Well, here’s our 10 years of data and from that 10 years, you know, we’re going to start building a model that says, oh yeah, when somebody’s participant history looks like this, they don’t finish the program or when somebody’s participant history looks like this. Oh, they’re a great candidate for this other program, right? And you can start to build a tool or tools that help your staff be human and spend their human time being the most human impacts for the organizations, right? Um but oh very few organizations honestly are in a position to start building tools because they don’t have good data, they could build anything off of, right. Um they maybe don’t have budget staff systems that are ready to do that type of work. But I do think that is a place where we will see more organizations starting to grow towards because there is there’s huge potential value there for organizations to, to better deliver programs, better services, better meet needs by using the data you already have by learning by partnering with other organizations that maybe serve the same community or geography or whatever, you know, and say, yeah, how can we can like really accelerate our missions versus these maybe more shiny generative A I public tools that you know, the vast majority of the internet is flaming garbage. So a tool that’s been trained off of the flaming garbage, you know, it’s not going to take a long time for it to also create flaming. So be cautious if you’re thinking about using artificial intelligence to create your internal A I tool. Right. Right. So there, there, there’s a perfect example of the, the a good use case but also uh a um a concern, a a limitation, a qualification. That’s the word I was looking for 61. These words, sometimes the words are more elusive than I would like a AAA qualification. Um Its time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. In the gym. There are five places where there’s squirt bottles of uh sanitizer and paper towel dispensers and each location has a sign that says please clean the equipment after each use. And one of these stations uh is right next to the elliptical that, you know, I do. It’s actually the first thing I do. I walk in the room, take off my hoodie and just walk right to the elliptical twice. Now, I’ve seen the same guy uh not only violate the spirit of the signs but the explicit wording of the signs because this guy takes himself a couple of uh, downward swipes on the paper towel dispenser. So he grabs off a couple of towel lengths and he squirts it with the sanitizer that’s intended for the equipment and he puts his hand up his shirt and he cleans his, his pecks and, and his belly and it’s a sickening thing. I’ve seen it, it’s not a shower, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an equipment cleaning station. And, uh, so I, I, I’m imploring this guy. Yeah. Yeah. I, I guess I’m urging you to, uh, I’m just sharing because I don’t think anybody else does this. Uh, is there anybody else out there who does this? Probably not and not with these like surface sanitizers? It’s, it’s not a, it’s not a, like a, a hand sanitizer. It’s, it’s for equipment. So, you know, in the squirt bottle. So it’s not even appropriate for your skin. It is, it’s to clean hard plastic and, and metal and this guy uses it on his skin. So I’m, I’m waiting for the moment when he puts his hands down his pants so far, he’s just lifting his shirt. I, I’m waiting for when he puts his hands down his pants. Then I’m, then I’m calling him out. That’s, that, that’s beyond the pale. He, that requires revocation of your membership card. So, sir, the sign says, please clean the equipment after use. It’s not your equipment. That is Tonys take two. Kate. Does your gym offer like a shower room or a locker room? Yeah, there’s a shower. Yes, that’s a good question. Yeah, there’s a shower in the men’s room. Yeah. And he’s cleaning up there. It’s very strange. It’s gross. It’s gross. He sticks his hand up his sweaty t-shirt. Well, let’s hope he doesn’t go lower than that. Exactly. We’ve got bountiful book who bought loads more time. Here is the rest of A I organizational and personal with any sample ward. Yes. And we have, I, I would make sure that you have the link to include in like the show notes description. But, um, totally for free. And 10 doesn’t get any money. You don’t have to pay for anything. And 10 has free resources for creating, for example, uh, uh A I use policy for your organization that says, what are the instances in which you would use it or what are the instances in, in which you wouldn’t or, um, what types of content will you, you know, can staff copy paste versus what content or data can can they not um there’s templates for how to talk to your board about A I um how, how to build. Like we’ve actually looked at the tools and these ones we’ve approved for you to use. These ones are not approved, you know, all these different resources totally free and available on the end 10 website and none of them have decisions already made. We don’t say you can use this tool or you can’t use this tool or we recommend this use or not this use. Because ultimately, we, we are not going to make technology decisions for other organizations, but we want you to feel like whatever decision you made, you made it by thinking of going through the right steps, asking the right questions so that you can also trust your own decision, what whatever decision you come to, right? And that you have some templates to fill in um that were all created by humans designed by humans published by humans um to help you in that work. Um I think especially, you know, the, the the how to talk to your board and the um like key considerations, documents really just ask a lot of questions and say, you know, how different is it, if you’re say a animal foster organization and you’re thinking, OK, is a I appropriate for us to use versus uh that youth social service organization? OK? Very different considerations, right? And just helping people talk that through and, and see that the considerations are different for different organizations, I think is really valuable. As again, you consider ta facilitating conversation with your board. They’re also coming from very different sectors, maybe job types, backgrounds, experiences with A I. And so just like in your staff, there needs to be some level setting in how you talk about A I, because not everyone knows what A model is. Not everyone knows what a large language model. You know, these are words that have to be explained and kind of put out of the way and then to say, hey, it’s not all one answer. Not everybody needs to use every tool. And, and how do you talk about that, that with your teams going back to the Facebook analogy, you want to avoid the board member who comes to you and says, you know, artificial intelligence, we can be saving money, we can be doing so much more work. We can, we don’t even need a website. We have a Facebook page website. We’re not even sure we need all the staff that we have because we’re gonna be able to, we’re gonna have so much efficiency. So, you know, we need to OK. OK. Board member. All right. Yeah. So we’ve been here before. I mean, it’s, you know, probably I’m just gonna go out a limb and say it’s probably the same board member who had every board meeting says, does anybody know Mackenzie Scott? How do we get one of those checks. Right. Why don’t we get the Mackenzie? Yeah. Right. Right. Right. All right. Um, what else? Well, I was gonna also offer some of the questions that we’ve been getting, as, you know, we’ve been engaged with, um, a number of different organizations through some of our cohort programs and, you know, trainings for, for over a year now. And so maybe last year we were talking to them about, OK, let’s make sure you have a data policy, like just as an organization, do you have a data privacy policy? Do you know, so that anything you then go build, that’s a I specific whether that’s building a policy, building practices, building a tool, you, you have policies to, to kind of foundation off of, they’ve done that work, you know, now they’re looking at different products, they’re trying to create these uh you know, lists of like here’s approved tools for staff, here’s approved ways staff can use them. And just like we see with our Cr MS with our, you know, you know, email marketing systems, then they come back and they’re like, well, we, we reviewed it, we did everything and now it’s different now it’s a different version. Now they rolled out this other thing. Yes, like that is the beauty and the pain of technology, right is that it’s always changing and that we don’t necessarily get to authorize that change that it just happens. And so the rules change. Yeah. And so folks have been asking us, well, you know, how, how do we write policies with that in mind? And I think, um you know, if you are thinking about creating like that approved product list and, and you know, tools that aren’t approved or whatever, being really clear that these products have version numbers just like anything else. And so instead of just writing Gemini Chat G BT, you know, be specific about when did you review this and, and maybe approve it for use? Which addition was it that you were looking at? Is this a paid level? So staff could say, oh, it doesn’t look like I mine doesn’t say pro or you know, whatever it might be, right? Oh, I must be in the free one. OK? I need to get into our organization’s account or something. So the more clarity you can provide folks because right now of course, they could just do an internet search and be like, oh, there’s that product name, I’m gonna go start using it. It’s on the approved list. Um You know, folks, again, there may be new terms, maybe new product names that we’re not used to saying. And so folks aren’t as accustomed to looking at, oh, this is a different version of Chat GP T than this one was, you know. Um So just putting that out there for folks to keep in mind that these tools are, are really operating just like others that you are used to and there’s less of course documentation. But I’ve the questions we’re getting from folks is like, you know, the point I made at the beginning we can’t see anywhere in the documentation that explains why this is happening, right? They do, how could they document when the answer is, we also don’t know why that happens, you know, and so when you are talking to staff, especially if you’re saying, hey, these are approved tools and we have these licenses or here’s how to access them, training your staff on how to be the most human users of A I tools is to your kind of connecting to your human point going to be really important because we don’t want folks to feel that because they don’t necessarily understand how the mechanics of how it works. They’re just going to trust it without questioning the content or questioning, you know, for a lot of organizations who have built internal tools just as an example. It takes dozens of tries just to get the the model. Right. Right. So these other tools, of course, they’re not gonna be perfect isn’t real and perfect is absolutely not real with technology. So training staff, I’m like, how would I, how, how do I have some skepticism? How do I question what I’m seeing? How do I, how do I say even if it was internally built? This data doesn’t look, right. That doesn’t match my experience of running this program so that we don’t let it slip. Where? Oh, gosh. Oh, it was working that way for a long time. That’s also, um, I think, uh, a space where we as humans can be our most human, uh, you know, have some value add as humans. But again, staff need to be trained that they are meant to question these tools. Um, because that’s not, you know, I don’t know, a lot of organizations were like question the database. No, they’re like on the database, put everything in the database, right? And now we need to say no question, that report. It does that match your experience, you know, there was a long ramble but oh, absolutely valuable. The human, yeah, I the human contribution and of course, my concerns are even at, at the outset, you know, the, the early stage the seeding, the create seeding or surrendering the create creative process. Uh And now le let’s chat a little about this, the, the um the conversations. Yeah, I listened to the, I know the, the example that you mentioned earlier that George posted it was for podcasting. It, it was a podcast conversation around this and he gave them some, you know, some whole, some whole whale content and the two, the two were going back and forth and having a, a conversation. Yeah. Yeah, I listened to it and one thing I was curious if, if you caught as the pod father yourself um you know, it came across, you know, I’ve been had opportunities to see um a number of different generative A I tools and, and things closer to the, to the front edge of what things can do that are specifically like, you know, taking just a few seconds of you and then creating you. Um So hearing just like these, these could be any voices, these could be any people is like, yeah, OK. This is, this is what a I can do. It’s, it’s spooky. But when you listen to it, you can hear either you have a very bad producer and editor, you know, or this is a I because there’s certain um phrases that got reused multiple times, not just literally the audio clip of this whole sentence, you know, and the, and the intonation, the whole sentence clip was reused multiple times. Um So one of them, I think one of them was along the lines of that’s a really interesting point. Yeah. Yeah. And well, and there was one that was like describing the product. So it must have come from the page, you know, whatever source content um was provided. But, you know, it’s, I think that some of that is there and we as individuals, we as a society will decide if we give it value or not, if it’s, if it’s worth it to people to make podcasts through A I because we give it attention or we don’t like, I just I think naturally that will be there. Can I, can I just go on record or at this, at this stage and say that, that, that idea disgusts me. Oh, totally. But I do. And I, I realized that’s what Georgia’s Post was about. That. It’s now well, within conceivable, well, well, possible to create an hour long podcast of an artificial conversation based on an essay that somebody wrote some time. Oh, totally. Totally. I don’t. But I’m saying the reason, yeah, I agree with you. But I’m saying the way we, you know that toothpaste doesn’t go back in the tube by us, like we can’t turn it off generative A I tools can already make that. So we as, as individual consumers of content and as a society need to either say we’re gonna allow that and value it or we’re not, right? And, and not make, not provide incentive for organizations or companies to, to make that and, and distribute it. But I also think that the place in that kind of um video, audio kind of multimedia content that, that A I tools have capacity and will continue having more capacity to build is much more important than you. And I talked about this a number of months ago around Miss and disinformation is it’s one thing to say, made up voices, making some podcast about content like that’s garbage, right? But we can’t just like throw away the idea that that’s technically possible because organizations need to know A I tools are already capable of creating a video of your CEO firing your staff. You need to be prepared to say that was a spoof this is, this is how we’re gonna deal with this, right? Um Because while the like maybe further separated from our work, the idea of like content could just be created that way you and I can say we don’t value that whatever, but these tools are capable of, of spoofing us as, as people, as leaders, as organizations. You know, what, what would it look like if there was a video from your program director saying that everybody in the community gets a grant and you’re a foundation, right? Like these, these are real issues and I don’t want folks to confuse how easy it may feel for us to have an opinion that some of this A I generated uh content isn’t a value with the idea that it, it there isn’t something there to have to come up with strategy and plan for because, you know, we can say that’s garbage. But those same tools that made the garbage could make your spoof, you know, also labeling. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t trust every A I generated podcast team. I’m not, I’m not gonna call them hosts because there is no host um to, to label the content. I don’t trust, I don’t trust that that’s gonna happen because it was artificially generated. It’s not a real conversation. Yeah. Hello. For everyone that’s listening. Human Amy is here talking with human and Tony who I can see on the screen with me. Boycott your local A I podcast. I, I don’t know. There’s not, there’s not a solution. You’re right. We can’t, we can’t go back. I’m just voicing that we can say that it’s not something we value, we can say that this is why we don’t value it, right? The art of conversation, listening, assimilating, responding, listening again, respond, assimilating and responding. That that is an art uniquely. Well, maybe it’s not uniquely human. I don’t know if deer have conversations or, or what and we know whales do. So I take that back. It’s not, it’s not uniquely human, but at at our level, it, you know, it’s not just about we, we don’t converse merely to survive, merely to warn each other of threats. I’m suspecting that in the animal in mammal kingdom that wait are animals, mammals are mammals, animals? No, and I think it’s I think it’s a Venn diagram. Oh, so they’re separate. Ok. So there’s a two king kingdom phylum class order family genus species. I got that. I got that out of high school biology. I can, I can say it in my sleep kingdom phy class order family genus species. All right. In the animal kingdom. My suspicion is that more of the communication is about maybe like basic, like there’s a good food source. There’s a threat, uh, teaching young, don’t do that things like that. Survival more base, I doubt. You know, it’s about the aesthetic of the forest that the deer are in. But even if the birds are talking about the way the sunlight comes through the leaves, they are still alive. And I think what you’re trying to draw a distinction between is the value and even beauty of us having a conversation and the value of what comes of that conversation in our own minds and our own learning. But in this case, it’s recorded so other folks could hear it and, and I guess listen to it or be impacted by it versus it being a technical mechanism where we say, OK, here’s a long paper. Go make it sound like two people are discussing this, right? That’s not that that doesn’t fit the criteria of what we want or need to value in a world, that’s the world we want, right? Yes, the art of conversation, think something you look forward to, not something that you do out of necessity, right? And you know, there’s, I think a place where especially at end 10 conversations around A I have come back to is opportunities that A I tools may present for um different ways of learning different ways of accessing information. But again, those aren’t necessarily uh come up with two podcast host voices and then have them have a conversation about this, this research report you know, a lot of those tools could be made better but already exist, you know, different forms of screen readers apps that can help someone um maybe navigate the internet or, or, you know, summarize um documents to help them because they don’t want to read a 50 page document or they can’t read it for, you know, visually on the screen. So I think there’s space there. But again, it’s because you’re trying to preserve what is most human. And that is that user who maybe needs um accommodations of, of something that technology can provide. It’s not OK, let’s use technology to co create something separately over here and just hope people consume it, right? And to be clear, George didn’t post that thinking. Oh, great. Now everyone will want to consume this. No, it was, it was a demonstration. Um But I, but I, again, I’m just using that as a place to say, yes, there’s even conversations to say great, what accessibility could this create an agenda for, for our users? Right? But what’s most human is those users and their actual needs and not, you know, look what A I could do. Let’s just make different types of content, right? The last one I wanna raise is uh the one that caused me to use the word dystopian as I was commenting on uh commenting on Georgia’s Post, which was um the A I self reflection using uh having A I justify itself to the users that it is trying to attract and, and then relying on that, that as a, as an insightful analysis, as a thoughtful reflection, as, as contemplative of its own work that, that, that it’s doing those unique, those I think are uniquely, uniquely human actions, introspection, introspection, contemplation, pondering. How did I do? How did I perform? How can I do better? These might be uniquely human. I would argue there are a number of humans, I can see that don’t um Well, but I didn’t say I didn’t. That’s a different population. Now, you’re taking the whole, the whole human population. I’m talking about the contemplative ones. Yes. And there are, there are uh humans who are not at all introspective and questioning whether they could have done better and learning from their, from their contemplations. But I think those are all uniquely human activities. And we’re at, we’re now asking A I to purportedly duplicate those processes and analyze and contemplate its own work. Yeah. And as you said earlier, II, I and I, I certainly don’t trust it to be genuine and truthful. If, if A I is capable of truth, we’ll put that, we’ll put that existential question aside uh in its, in its analysis of its own work because as you, as you pointed out, the tools are built to, to be used by humans and the tools are not going to condemn or even just criticize their own work. Yeah, but we’re Yeah. And I think you heard of the challenge but there, I’m sorry, but, but there are humans who are deceiving themselves into thinking that, that the analysis and contemplation is accurate and uh genuine. Yeah. And I think part of the challenge I was gonna name is just that, that, that we as users, I’m not saying you and I uh individually but we as the human users of these tools are also setting ourselves up to be just, you know, dishonest in our use because we are bringing inappropriate or misaligned expectations to the product. We cannot, we, we cannot expect a tool that’s designed to appease us and to lie at the cost of giving an answer, you know, like uh we just wanna be able to do this to thoughtfully and honestly reflect on that or to say no, there is no answer, right? Um However, we had was the tools are designed to appeal to us. Right. Right. And when we are talking about that to be clear, you know, we’re really talking about generative A I tools, tools that are designed to generate some new content, new sentences, new answers, whatever we’re asking of it back to us A I itself is just such a massively blanket term that I don’t want folks to think nothing that could be considered an A I tool could be trusted to generate an answer because we’re, we’re specifically talking about generative A I there. But, you know, say you had like a machine learning uh model that was looking at, you know, 30 years of your program participant data. Well, that’s probably already a tool that isn’t set up to generate content. Uh You know, it’s not coming up with new participant data. It’s looking at the patterns, it’s flagging when a pattern meets the criteria, you’ve presented it to, you know, it’s maybe matching that data to something else. But again, you’ve said here are the things you could match it to et cetera. So this is not to say, Tony and Amy say never trust technology. They say bring expectations that are aligned to the tool differently to every tool that, that you’re coming to that hypothetical tool that you just described is being set on uh asked to evaluate your data, not its own data. It’s to evaluate your performance, your data set. It’s not being asked to comment and on and criticize or, or complement its own data. That’s the, that’s, that’s the critical difference. Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. No, nobody here is saying, well, not, I’m not saying that you’re saying we are, but you’re, you’re wise to remind listeners we’re not condemning all uses of generative uh A I large language models, but just to be thoughtful about them and, and understand what the costs are. And there are, there are costs on the organizational level and there are costs on the individual human level and, and the you, you comment on the organizational level because you think more at that level. But on the human level, another level layer to my concern is that the cost is quite incremental. Mm It’s it, it our creativity, our art of conversation, our our synapses firing. It’s just happening slowly with each usage, we become less thoughtful composers, less critical thinkers and it just so incremental that the change isn’t noticed until until in my critical mind, it’s too late and we look back and wonder how come I can’t write a letter to my dad anymore? Why am I having such a hard time writing a love letter to my wife, husband, partner? Yeah. What there are, I know someone who uh is a new grandmother and she has a little kit where you write, you write letters to your grandchild and they open them when they’re whatever, 15 or 20 years old, like a time capsule. Why am I having trouble composing a uh a short note to my grandchild? Right. Well, and I think, you know, just honestly, as a person in this conversation, not, not speaking, you know, um from an organizational strategy perspective, I think as a person that is your friend, Tony, you know, I would say, I don’t personally have a pro, I can write a letter and I’m, I, and I think a strong communicator, I, you know, it’s hard to make me stop talking. So, you know, I, I could write a letter. I know, for other folks, even without a, I, they might say, well, what goes in the le like, I just, what, what do I put in there? What are the main things I should cover whatever? And I’m, I actually have less, maybe of a strong reaction to the idea that somebody would use generative A I to come up with. OK, what are the three things I should cover in my letter? And then I’ll go write the sentences and more that what I hear underneath what you’re saying is actually the same, I think important value I have and, and wrote about in the book with a fua et cetera, which is in the world I want in this, in this beautiful equitable world where everyone had their needs met in the ways that best meet their own needs. Technology is there in service to our lives and not that we are bending our lives in order to make technology work, right? And maybe in that beautiful equitable world, there are people who, who have a technology. Is it an app? Is it called A I anymore? You know, whatever it is that says, hey, Tony, don’t forget today is the day you write the letter to your dad. It’s, it’s Friday, you always write it on a Friday or whatever, right? And, and make sure that you do it because you know, it makes you feel happy to write that letter. Maybe that’s true. Maybe in that world. There are some people who have a tool that help them remember to do that. But, but what’s important to me and what I think I hear and what you’re saying is important to you is that technology is there because we need it and want it and that it is working in the ways we need and want it to work and not that our lives are, are influenced and shaped in order to adjust to the technology. Yes, I am saying that I just, I am concerned that the, that our, our changing is beyond our recognition. We don’t see ourselves becoming less creative and I’m not even only concerned about myself. I, I can write a letter and I think uh 90 I’ll still be able to write a letter. But there are folks uh who are infants now, those yet to be born for whom artificial intelligence is going to be so much more robust, so much more pervasive in, in ways that we, we can’t today imagine, I don’t think. Yeah. And what are those humans gonna look like? I don’t know, maybe they’ll be better humans, maybe they will. I’m open to that but I like the kind of humans that we are or, you know. Uh so, but, but I I’m open to the possibility that there’ll be better humans. But what will their human interactions be? Will they have, will they have thoughtful conversations? Will they have human moments together that are not artificially outlined first and maybe even worse, you know, constructed for them. I don’t know. Uh but some of the, some of my concern, although, although some of my concern is about those of us who aren’t currently living and have been born and across the generations less for older folks because their interactions with artificial intelligence are fewer if you’re no longer in the w if you’re no longer uh working your, your interactions with artificial intelligence may, may be non existent. Um And I think, I think it’s natural as you’re older, you’re less likely to be engaging with the tools than if you’re in your twenties, thirties, forties or fifties. Well, my very human reflection on today’s conversation is that uh it is usually the case that we start talking about any type of technology topic and you constantly interject that I need to be practical. I need to give recommendations. I need to explain how to do things and I appreciate and welcome you joining me over here in theoretical land about the impact of technology broadly across our work, across our missions, across our communities, across our future. Um Welcome, welcome to my land, Tommy. Uh I have appreciated this, this one time opportunity to let go of the practical tactical advice and to, you know, have what I hope listeners, um you know, had some thoughts, had some reactions, uh truly email me any time. But, you know, I, I hope that if nothing else, it was an opportunity for folks to witness or kind of listen in as and maybe you were talking to yourself in your own head, you know, of, of a conversation about what these technologies can be, what, what we need to think about with them. Because in any technology conversation, I think it’s most important to talk about people. Uh That’s the only reason we’re using these tools, right? People made them people are trying to do good work with them. So, so talking about people is, is always most important and, and I hope folks take that away from this whole long hour of A I. Thank you for a thoughtful human conversation. Yes, Amy Sample Ward. They’re our technology contributor and the CEO of N 10. And folks can email me Tony at Tony martignetti.com with your human reactions to our human conversation. Thanks so much, Tony. It was so fun. My pleasure as well. Thank you. Next week, a tale from the archive. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Marinetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez la Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty you’re with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
Amy Sample Ward: A Post-Fellowship Conversation With Amy Sample Ward
What did they do over their Bosch Foundation Fellowship, who did they meet and what did they talk about for three months abroad? For a tease: How tech could save an island nation, and the future of the internet. Trivial topics like that. Amy is our technology contributor and the CEO of NTEN.
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[00:00:36.69] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite Heb Domin podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be thrown into toxicosis if you poisoned me with the idea that you missed this week’s show, Kate. Give us the highlights, please.
[00:01:10.66] spk_1:
Ok, tony, we have a post fellowship conversation with Amy Sample Ward. What did they do over their Bosch Foundation fellowship? Who did they meet? And what did they talk about for three months abroad for a tease, how tech could save an island nation and the future of the internet. Trivial topics like that. Amy is our technology contributor and the CEO of N 10 on Tony’s take two
[00:01:12.85] spk_0:
fair share. That’s fair.
[00:01:48.04] spk_1:
We sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor Boxx dot org. And Bikila grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraiser CRM visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. Here is a post fellowship conversation with Amy Sample Ward.
[00:02:20.21] spk_0:
It is a pleasure to welcome back Amy Sample Ward to nonprofit radio. They are the CEO of N 10 and our technology and social media contributor, their most recent co-authored book. And frankly, I think another one is due shortly uh is the tech that comes next about equity and inclusiveness in technology development. They’re at Amy Sample Ward dot org and at Amy Rs Ward. Welcome back, Amy.
[00:02:27.59] spk_2:
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to chat about so many things today. Yeah,
[00:02:56.76] spk_0:
it’s a genuine pleasure because it’s been several months because you were on this uh highfalutin fellowship, Bosch, the Bosch Fellowship, the Dishwasher Company Fellowship, which is so much more than uh dishwashers, of course, and vacuum cleaners. So you were in the Bosch Foundation Fellowship abroad based in Berlin, catch us up from there. What is sure. So look like for a summer.
[00:06:43.60] spk_2:
Totally, the Bosch Foundation is the shareholders of the Bosch Company. So I think fewer foundations and companies have this model in the US, but be more common in, in Europe where there is a commercial company and instead of having lots of shareholders and publicly traded stocks, the foundation is the owner and the foundation is a grantmaking organization. They provide grants for all kinds of, you know, nonprofits, um all around the world actually. And one of their programs is called the Bosch Academy where they have uh for nine years now, um a fellowship program that brings folks from truly all different industries and sectors to Berlin for a period of time. I was only there for three months but other folks are there for 69 plus months. Uh to really, I mean, I couldn’t believe it even up until the last day I was waiting for them to say, and here’s what you have to deliver, there was nothing you’re really there to pursue opportunities that you wouldn’t otherwise have kind of the mental space to do in your day to day, you know, work. Um So I was there for three months and all the fellows are on their own timeline. So, uh it was a little bit confusing because I think maybe at least in the US when I think of a fellowship, I think it’s like a cohort of people. We’re all doing like a program together that it, it’s much more of what we would call a residency. So people are on their own timelines. There’s no overarching programming. Uh Everyone is and I think it would be hard to do that because people really are from very diverse um backgrounds. So, while I was there as a fellow, some of my other, other fellow fellows, um you know, there was a GP from England who works in the NHS and had been leading their um digital health work. There was a former president um of Costa Rica. There was um someone from the State Department that now works at Brookings. Um researching industrialization that, you know, so there were people from all, all different backgrounds and interest areas and specialties and I would say the main kind of anchor that, that we did have together was twice a week. We all have lunch together, which feels like, ok, you just have, you know, lunch together, but really opportunities to sit at a, you know, a table that’s small enough, you really could have a conversation with everyone, you know, 10 or fewer people over lunch to talk about things with people who are working all different industries. It’s just not something we normally have the privilege and opportunity to do. Nor do I think we actively create those opportunities very much for ourselves. You know, and the, the kind of twice a week getting to sit together, share a meal talk about what is interesting to us. Um they often brought in speakers. So, um, you know, maybe it’s a journalist from one of the newspapers who’s coming in and sharing, you know, trends they’re seeing um in certain whatever they, you know, in the political section or, or whatever topic, maybe it’s um folks from Eu or German policy, uh houses sharing visa policies. We’re recommending, you know, all different opportunities just to learn and like sit together in conversation. So it was really powerful,
[00:06:51.00] spk_0:
former president of Costa Rica WW. What is he or she looking into?
[00:08:04.78] spk_2:
So, the fellow um that was there with me, that’s the former uh President of Costa Rica Carlos Alvarado was um pursuing now um is a teacher at the Fletcher School. And his fellowship was focused on uh designing a new framework for diplomacy that would support folks entering into this world of, of policy and politics with a mindset on collective wins and kind of personal integrity and that each of our stories do matter and influence how we can build relationship to make more inclusive and hopefully better for our planet and our people policies. Um So really thinking about, you know, how do we teach people to, to be in this, in, in politics in ways that don’t just recycle and repurpose the same kind of oppressive systems that, that got us to today. Very lofty.
[00:08:06.25] spk_0:
Of course, we’re gonna talk about what Amy sample ward was thinking about investigating, talking to people. This all sounds, it, it all sounds very
[00:08:48.22] spk_2:
freeing. It was incredibly freeing and honestly, because it was in Berlin and I normally live out in Portland, Oregon ha, having nine hours difference. Uh also was freeing in my calendar. I went from having, you know, my days are 8 to 4 scheduled meetings to there’s a lunch and then, you know, maybe I’ve got an early morning pacific time check in with a staff person and that was it for what was scheduled, you know, really being able to have the, the freedom in your scheduled day to, to think and do work and do work and think in the ways that you want to was a huge gift.
[00:09:00.67] spk_0:
Uh And you, you took time off from work, right? You, you reduced to 15.
[00:09:06.21] spk_2:
Yeah, I reduced my hours but I didn’t fully step out so that there wasn’t also like an administrative burden to change all of our processes or, you know, I could still run payroll like, you know, those types of things.
[00:09:19.97] spk_0:
And uh is this fellowship a paying gig? Do they?
[00:09:50.26] spk_2:
No, they don’t. Um They don’t give you the place. I mean, they give you the stipend so that you can cover the cost of having somewhere and they can help you find a place. But um you know, there were folks there who are single and don’t have Children and then we were there as a whole family with a child, you know, so everybody has such different needs with their housing that they, they just support you finding what works for you? Ok.
[00:09:54.44] spk_0:
Ok. Uh And you and your husband Max, uh daughter Oren, did you? You traveled? I’m sure you’re in Europe
[00:10:00.92] spk_2:
must have traveled. Yeah, we actually, we, well, I
[00:10:06.61] spk_0:
know you were in, I know you were in Warsaw, Poland. Yeah, because we got you for the 650th show from Warsaw.
[00:11:35.21] spk_2:
Yes, we did spend some time in Warsaw um doing some project collaboration work there. Um And then they got to experience Warsaw where I’d been before but they hadn’t. And then, uh the other trip that we took was to take Oren back to England where we used to live and show her around London. Um go, you know, she got to see some proper castles. That’s really what she wanted. Um And all the fellows, uh and Max non went on a trip down to Stuttgart, which is the, the home of Bosch uh as a company and uh history. And that’s also where the Bosch affiliated hospital is. And, um got to see so many other parts. It’s certainly the first factory floor that I’ve walked, uh and got to see, you know, this mix of, of kind of classic industry, you know, building these things in a, in a building altogether, mixed in with more of the recent tech innovations of, you know, a little robot that delivered you the parts that you needed to inspect. Um And if you got in the way the robot would stop, but then get very frustrated that you were never getting out of the robot’s way for it to go deliver its parts, you know, um things like that. So it was a really cool experience in getting to see really so many other sides to the world that, you know, II I get stuck in my nonprofit space and, and think about our work. Um So it was really cool. That’s
[00:11:53.75] spk_0:
the free, the free, uh a luxury for three months, you said? Yeah, you there three months, right? So uh what, what were you uh investigating thinking about? I’m sure you had meetings, you were talking to people.
[00:13:15.62] spk_2:
Yes. So many meetings, so many conversations. But my focus really. And though, you know, of course, I’m just interested in general meeting with folks who are trying to make the world better and, you know, I had lots of conversations or questions with folks to say, you know, what are you trying and what’s working? What did you try that didn’t work? Like, how do we, how do we get traction? How do we succeed in making the world better? Of course. But the start of all of my conversations and my meetings with folks was this kind of one I know you’re gonna say lofty. But one big question, which was what does an internet that is actually built on safety and freedom and sovereignty look like? And can we build that? And there were a lot of people who, you know, didn’t think it is possible. Um That, that, that, that those, you know, true freedom and true safety and true sovereignty couldn’t all be achieved like they, they couldn’t all three be at the same time or that a better internet wasn’t possible. Um But there also were people who were like, yes, it is possible and we can build it and please can we start yesterday? You know. Um
[00:13:49.21] spk_0:
So I, I got my first interruption. So the uh the, the folks who say No, it, it, it can’t be done. Do they feel that we missed the, the opportunity to have built the internet that you described or is it more that it was never achievable? Not that we not that we went about it or allowed it to develop on its own in i in the wrong way or unobstructed? I
[00:16:49.31] spk_2:
think that honestly, the folks who had the most pushback um in my conversations were folks who were honestly pushing back on my view of the internet now, you know, saying, 00, it already is safe. It already is free, right? Um And so it was less that internet isn’t possible and more like discrediting the place from which the conversate the question is being asked, you know, um and that we can, we can make a few policies and like, we’re, we’re good, you know, the internet’s good as it is. Um And there were also a lot of folks who felt that my focus on those three aspects was maybe the issue for them that, that safety, everybody agreed. Yes, the internet should be safe. Um Not as many people agreed. It should be free. And no, I don’t mean free by cost to access it, but like, what does freedom for each of us look like online? And I think that’s where folks had a little bit of like, but what does that mean? And, and can it be safe if it’s free? Right. Which are important conversations, but I, I think yes, it can be. Um But a lot of folks felt like sovereignty and these conversations about how do we acknowledge and establish sovereignty as communities was me saying it’s all anarchy, nothing matters. You know, there, there are no rules which is really honestly the opposite of sovereignty. Sovereignty is saying I want you to acknowledge that I have rules because my community has said this is what keeps us free and safe, right? Or, or whatever. Um And that the view is, that’s the role of government. But I think honestly, and I’m not trying to like, take this down a, a deep rabbit hole, but I really don’t think that a structure for something like a global system of the internet where we are all interacting all over the world, you know, regardless of which country’s government we we may live under isn’t enough to say that the internet could be free and safe and supportive and, you know, successful in all these ways because all these governments have issues with each other. And like the, you know, there’s communities within a country that are different from each other. Um And they’re there, I think should be passed to be able to say this is what this is, what’s right for our community. Um And again, I’m not trying to like devolve everything down into, into chaos, but I also don’t think I could accept the notion that what we have today. Is working. Um So I’m, I’m mostly saying it has to be something else and not that I have all the answers. Oh my gosh. If I had all the answers, what am I doing? Sitting over here holding on to them, you know, like, but, but we need to have the open space to find those answers or create those answers together and say, what could it be like versus saying this is good enough. Let’s put a policy that says, you know, don’t, don’t take it or something and, and that’s it.
[00:17:47.60] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Donor box, quote donor box text to give led one of our more successful fundraising events, a concert sharing the keyword short code and scannable QR code made giving easy for our supporters and they did give that’s from Josh Young, Executive director of Hydrating Humanity Donor Boxx, helping you help others. Donor Boxx dot org. Now back to a post fellowship conversation with Amy Sample Ward
[00:17:54.86] spk_0:
who were some of the folks that you were talking to?
[00:18:47.33] spk_2:
Yeah, good question. Um It was really a why I felt really interested in making sure I was talking to a lot of different folks because as you know, even the N 10 community has, you know, all different kinds of nonprofits missions, of course, people of all different departments in an organization, but also consultants and tech companies and foundations and you know, all these different folks. So I was meeting with of course, nonprofits um themselves, folks who see themselves in kind of a nonprofit technology vein, but also folks who are focused on um supporting refugees and connecting them with jobs and they kind of see that technology has to be part of that, right? Um But then I was also meeting with think tanks and foundations and folks who are, you know, kind of advocating or, or resourcing the movement around the internet and on other sides, you know, whether that’s giving money or, or talking to policymakers and government. Um So really talk to folks all across that spectrum and folks in Berlin, folks in Germany and folks more broadly in the EU,
[00:19:18.65] spk_0:
all right. Um I, I think before we, we talk about some of the folks who said, you know, let’s achieve this ideal internet and, you know, you said, let’s start yesterday, what you, you, I, I think it’s valuable for you to summarize where you’re coming from. What’s, what’s your sense of uh of our internet, our technology space and, and you know, it’s uh it’s utility for, for nonprofits.
[00:20:08.89] spk_2:
Yeah, I think that I believe all technology, including the internet should be something that every person, regardless of where they live or whether or not they have a job or how much money they have or, you know, what their interests are, can find AAA way um to be included there, whether they want to help create part of the internet or watch cat videos, you know, whatever they want that this is really a, uh this is really something that is for everyone. And I think a big challenge with that today is um, lack the lack of certain policies that make it accessible and affordable and available, you know, you know,
[00:20:28.82] spk_0:
let’s just start with accessibility. Right. There are pockets of the world and certainly of the United States where the internet is not taken for granted,
[00:23:08.24] spk_2:
right? I mean, there’s more than 45 million people in the US who couldn’t even have sufficient broadband internet to like be on a zoom call with us right now. You know, so the idea that, um, and I’m not saying this is your idea, but I, I do see out in the media, this perception that it’s like other far away places that don’t have the internet, we don’t have the internet all over the US too, you know. Um, and even the pandemic has not accelerated real work to address that, you know. Um, but there’s also the piece of commercialization around the internet. I think that has, of course, come from a lack of policies that, that made it so that, that couldn’t be the case. And the fact that of course commercial companies are the largest lobbyists and so they are able to make sure that the policies continue to work for them. But, you know, the number of folks who think the internet is Facebook and don’t leave Facebook and that because that’s all that they know that means again, they don’t really see how they are part of shaping or making or engaging in, in this global resource we have but also are a victim of, of what that commercialization means. The bubble that Facebook has created all of the, you know, algorithmic bias and hate that comes from that. Um So finding ways where both from the actual access point like communities could own their own networks and have the, the jobs and the profits from managing that all the way up to lots more people creating those apps or those tools, you know, I, I don’t think we need to build an internet where every single person in the world would ever use the same app because not every single person in the world needs the same app. Not everyone has the same phone, not everyone has the same computer, you know, like we don’t need to say that success in technology is when every single person is using it. It’s just when every person that it’s right for is using it, you know, and um building tools or online resources or websites or whatever else that, that aren’t viewed as like scale to the X forever and just, oh great. We succeeded. Everyone that needs this tool is using it, you know, and, and that’s good. Um But that’s really not again because of the commercialization of so much of the web. That’s not how it’s how it works right now. That’s not the incentive. Yeah.
[00:23:41.94] spk_0:
The commercialization, the access issues, the, the cost issues. Yes. Uh, there, I, I think probably, uh, a lot of, or all of nonprofit radios listeners, you know, we, we, we probably take the internet for granted. You wake up in the morning, you click in and it’s there. Um, and your technology is at your, at your bedside when you wake up. Although Beth Cantor would tell you that it should not be. You should
[00:23:44.03] spk_2:
not have to not be, not
[00:24:24.50] spk_0:
be, but the reality is, it’s, it’s, if it’s not at your bedside, it’s uh it’s in the, just the next room over, it’s very close and, you know, so, and it, it works 99.999% of the time. Uh I had someone in uh my, my plan giving Accelerator course he is uh is in based in Malawi. He didn’t even have stable electricity every night. For him. Our meetings were at night time. Um Three o’clock Eastern was nine or 10 o’clock. I think it was nine o’clock, nine pm for him in Africa. Standard time. He didn’t even have reliable electricity each night, let alone reliable internet though, right?
[00:25:24.65] spk_2:
And I think sometimes there’s this misperception again, not saying that this is your misperception, but um more broadly that folks that aren’t online don’t, don’t know things right. There’s so much that um we assume about folks who are not online and it isn’t that they don’t still know the news or that they still don’t, you know, or that, or that they don’t want to be online. It’s just that there are so many other barriers in the way, um, that are structural, not, you know, they’ve never heard of the internet and they don’t know what it is. Um, and so access isn’t just saying like, oh, yeah. Well, there was a, you know, we saw this in the pandemic um in the first, you know, year especially like, oh, well, we know all these kids aren’t in school and all these people need the internet. So we put up a, a wifi signal in this field. You can just drive over. Oh, and we’re just gonna sit in our car for four hours and work and try to do school. Like, what are you, what, how is this a solution? You know? Um So there’s, there’s so much that goes into that and always remembering that folks who aren’t online aren’t unaware, they’re just experiencing a bunch of barriers that they didn’t create
[00:26:16.81] spk_0:
it. It creates frustration. Yeah. Frustration and anxiety because they’re left behind. They know they’re left behind. They can’t access what uh what they know is available to lots of other people. All right, let’s, let’s bring it back to uh uh Germany Berlin. So you met with lots of folks who said, you know, yes, we can achieve this, this uh more equitable, more accessible, um, safer uh uh internet. Um What, what do they, uh, I don’t know, what, what do they want to do? Are you gonna, are you coming back with a bunch of partners that you’re gonna start lobbying and, and policy
[00:29:07.54] spk_2:
paper? Yeah, I think, I think we definitely were able to, um, build stronger relationships with organizations. We maybe new or even tangentially new. Um, because antenna is an, a global organization, there are folks from all over the world that are already in the community, but just the value of actually showing up at their office and sitting down for an hour, you know, really goes a long way and in building trust and relationship. Um But I think the other piece was having the energy that comes from conversations where people are not disagreeing with the premise of which we’re even trying to talk about but saying like, yeah, we are. No, we already agree like, let’s get to this part and really validating for folks. No, you’re not the only one like I’m from this community that you’re welcome to be part of or maybe you are, you know, know about, but there’s this whole n 10 community of people who also think an internet like this is possible and also want to build it, you know, you are not alone trying to like work in your tinyt corner and, and find a way, right? And whatever corner you’re in is needed. We don’t all have to do the same thing. We shouldn’t all do the same thing, right? Like you, if, if policy is your thing, go, go work on that. If, you know, supporting refugees, transitioning into jobs is your thing, go do that, you know, like wherever you are in the work is the right place to be. Um And so those were really, I think validating and generative conversations, especially for folks who felt like they were being told there was only one way to do this work. Um And you know, the only policy recommendations we want are policies that, you know, address A I, for example, lots of A I conversation in the summer in the US and, and everywhere else in the world, you know, and I kept saying, but there might be applications of technology that are specific to what they think A I is today. But wouldn’t it be better to write policy about any way that data was being used from, you know, a, a person or uh where, what, what accountability looks like for when there is harm. I don’t care if they used it in an A I garbage machine or they used it in my health records. I I should get to have the control, right? So helping folks reframe that it doesn’t have to only be a single issue or a single topic like that, that it’s all connected, it is all related, all of this technology work. Is connected and whatever piece you can work on, please go do it as well as you can. You know,
[00:30:07.82] spk_1:
it’s time for a break, increase donations and foster collaborative team work with Kila. The fundraisers. CRM maximize your team’s productivity and spend more time building strong connections with donors through features that were built specifically for fundraisers. A fundraiser. CRM goes beyond a data management platform. It’s designed with the unique needs of fundraisers in mind and aims to unify fundraising, communications and donor management tools into one single source of truth. Visit, Kila dot co to sign up for a coming group demo and explore how to exceed your fundraising goals. Like never before. It’s time for Tony’s take two.
[00:31:40.87] spk_0:
Thank you, Kate. Share share. That’s fair. Who can you share nonprofit radio with? I’d be grateful if you would give it some thought. Maybe it’s someone you work with somebody, a, a colleague, a peer, somebody, you work for your vice president, your CEO perhaps your board, I have gotten, I’ve gotten uh emails through the years that we stimulated a board conversation or I shared this show with my board and we were gonna talk about it at the next meeting, you know, friends and nonprofits people you used to work with assuming you don’t hate them still, you know, if, if they, if they fired you, you’re probably not gonna share this fabulous show with them. So, all right. So that’s out if they fired you let that go. Uh, maybe the job before that, the, the job you didn’t get fired from. I hope that you haven’t been fired. You know, you haven’t been fired that much. Um, nonprofit radios, exemplary listeners. So, never fired. Right. But if in the off chance, all right. So you’re not gonna share it with those folks who let you go. But everybody else you used to work with folks you used to work with. Perhaps I’d be grateful if we could expand the audience a bit. If you could share this show, I believe it’s helping you otherwise you wouldn’t be listening. Who else can it help? Who else ought to be listening to nonprofit radio? Please share with them. And that’s Tony’s take too,
[00:31:49.06] spk_1:
Kate. We’ve got, but loads more time. Let’s go back to a post fellowship conversation with Amy Sample Ward.
[00:32:12.84] spk_0:
This is all very interesting because you can correct me if my perception is wrong. Please do my perception is that Europe is much further ahead of North America. Forget the continent, the United States in terms of data security. Uh There’s the, there’s the GDPR in terms of holding uh holding the large tech companies accountable, you know, suing I see more lawsuits and, and, and successful either settlements or legal out other legal outcomes against uh uh meta Google. I see more of those. I see.
[00:33:15.13] spk_2:
Yeah, I think that I think that there are, I think there are far more um pieces in place in Europe, in the eu than there are in the U SI. Don’t think that they are adequate or, you know, fully functional to the needs of communities. Um And people, and there’s still a lot of them that are in flux, you know, the EU A I policies are, are still being shaped even though they’ve been discussed as if like here’s what they’ll do and it’s great that they’re actually not done, you know. So yes, GDPR is in place. But um there’s, there’s still a lot to be shaped, there’s even more to be shaped in the US. Um But yes,
[00:34:31.76] spk_0:
all right. That, that, that’s why I mean, I’m, I’m not hearing from you that there’s an attitude of complacency, you know, we’ve, we, we’ve achieved and I not, not that I, not that I expected you to say that, but just recognizing that they are further along, they’re, they’re, they hold companies, especially that I’m particularly interested in the company accountability uh around data usage algorithms uh forced, you know, uh forced uh usage like the way threads you have to be on Instagram to use threads. You, if you drop one, you lose the other. You know, I don’t, that, that rubs me that, that to me is it’s just unfair but they uh not, not to that particular degree that, that the eu has figured that out, but generally they seem to be more demanding accountability of, of the of the big tech companies, right? But, but not, but there’s a lot more work to do. I understand. OK. OK. Uh Is there a, is there a story you can tell about some NGO or other, other organization or person that feels like?
[00:34:36.94] spk_2:
I mean, I think we
[00:34:39.70] spk_0:
got something really good. Let me tell you about it. Yeah,
[00:34:48.26] spk_2:
that there’s no resolution that I have to offer. But I think, you know, this, I want to acknowledge that this is, these are the questions I sit with all the time. This is what my work is around and I’m not expecting every listener to be like, oh yeah, of course, like nodding along with me, like if this is your first time thinking about this because you spend your day on a different topic, that’s totally fine, you know. Um Welcome, welcome,
[00:35:11.63] spk_0:
welcome to a new conversation. Yeah, welcome to join or just take
[00:35:58.77] spk_2:
away them. Yeah. So I was, I wanted to offer this because I think it’s a, a way to root these ideas around sovereignty and freedom and safety in a real example. So we’re not just thinking of like some future world and trying to root it there, but, but a way to think about it now. And um we had the opportunity because another fellow um while I was who ended just maybe two weeks after I arrived. Um Kamal, he had created this um big event and, and number of meetings and brought a delegation of folks from Tuba uh Island Nation in the Pacific. Um And it was incredible to hear from them and to meet them. Um But, but really what’s happening there and why they came is um you know, island nations are, of course on the front lines of climate change and the impacts of climate change. Um As you are, we’re recording this as you’re hunkering down for, for a tropical storm, you know,
[00:36:19.11] spk_0:
medal on my beach. Yes,
[00:40:25.63] spk_2:
yes. And what uh what came out while we were, while, while the delegation from Tuvalu was actually in Berlin was they were um climate scientists have previously said their home, their land will be on uh uh unsustainable for living um for their community in this century. And that has been updated because of the impacts of climate change and the acceleration of, you know, the world. Um And they’re now saying within potentially 20 years and what does that mean for these people? Right? These are, these are real people, these are people who are having babies and having jobs and having lives, right? Um To not just have your world change because of climate change, but literally have your homeland underwater, completely, go away, the entire island could be underwater. Um So, uh part of the conversations um with them have been freedom, safety, sovereignty in the internet for a community that cannot say here is our geographic home um in the in this where that we can live at least in that geographic home. Um And so how do we create a digital nation state? How do we digitize place based culture and artifacts and customs and dances and you know, everything else that comes from who you are as, as, as a community. Um How do we digitize it when we can now? And what does navigating social services? What does you know, traveling the world and getting a passport look like digitally through digital governance uh delivery when you don’t have, you know, an address in that country anymore. Um And it’s kind of heartbreaking to, of course, think Tuvalu is not the only uh island nation that will be facing this, this um circumstance. But, but if you think of this happening in a, in a matter of years, it is everyone’s lifetime, it’s not, you know, a century from now. And you kind of like, oh let it go. It won’t be me, right? This, this is us, we 20 years. Well, we are the ones that have to find the path for this, right? And so, um I think those conversations were really um illuminating and I found it challenging to here and witness uh you know, folks responding to say, to kind of think of all of the many pieces of this and say, well, where do you wanna go live? But that’s not the que we’re not, that’s not the, that’s not the top of my question. List, right? Um It is, how are you the the community members in Tuvalu? What things would you need? How would you support the digitization of your own culture, of your own community? What what can we do to build the internet that you need then? How do we build it now so that we can, you know, like you wanna, you wanna build your new database before you migrate your data in, right? You don’t just get rid of the old one and then figure out what to do with the database. It’s this saying we need to build that safe and free and sovereign internet now so that we can support the citizens of Tuvalu existing in that internet before the before they, you know, don’t have the the land of their home. Um And yeah, I just want to offer that as a example, maybe a reminder that climate change is having immediate and real impacts on folks all around the world, but mostly as an illustration of what it means to think about the future of the internet and the need for, for the internet to work differently on a faster scale than like maybe would Microsoft and Google want it to be different, you know,
[00:41:42.29] spk_0:
and, and so many of the nations, people’s communities that are suffering most from climate change are contributing nothing to contributing dely to, to climate change. They’re not, they’re not responsible at all. The the industrial nations are, which are more hardened and more capable and have greater infrastructure and what are we doing to these other folks and how can we help them to help themselves? I mean, yeah, you make me think of just like how they get a driver’s license. How do I, how do I vote in the next election when I don’t, there’s no polling place because there’s no physical location anymore. Jeez. Yeah. All right. Well, I, that’s a, that’s a provocative, that, that’s a provocative case. Thank you. Thank you. Um What else, what else do you want us to know about?
[00:43:13.50] spk_2:
Well, one thing I thought would be interesting to you and, and interested in maybe your take or observations, like I’ll offer a little reflection and interested in your, in your hot take. But I, you know, met with foundations while I was there and, and asked about, you know, what’s a big priority in philanthropy here? What are the conversations and folks named a challenge that I think we all have some feelings about in the US as well, which is um minimum spend out by foundations in Germany. There’s, there is no minimum spend out. Um So there’s many foundations that didn’t spend any money that did not give any grants in a, in a certain year. And that organizations really feel the challenge of that because they don’t, what, what do we even do? Like, are we even, you know, working with you? Are we trying to get money from you. Um So that was a big issue and the other big conversation that felt and people named, you know, I think the US is more ahead of us on this. But um found some foundations starting to have conversations of, of general operating support instead of project specific, you know, funding. Um and what that requires of them, you know, there was a lot of folks saying like, but then what do we put in the grant agreement? What do, what do we expect for the reporting? And I was like, you know, me, I was like, why do they have to report, you know, um but they weren’t asking the questions of, you know, why don’t we trust our grantees or um why have we never done this until now? You know, they were asking very procedural questions like, well, what, what’s the form say? You know?
[00:45:47.23] spk_0:
Uh Yeah, the minimum spend. Um iii I like it uh here in the US. Uh Unfortunately, a lot of foundations consider the, the floor to be the ceiling. So they’ll spend their, they’ll spend their 5% and they met, they met the burden, the regulation and, and so they consider themselves completed and, you know, I don’t know, you know, I see a lot of them, I see a lot of conversations on linkedin about how things ought to be different and, and uh you know, occasionally I’ll, I’ll attend webinars where uh some, you know, foundation CEO panel, you know, they’re talking about what they’re doing anecdotally to, to overcome um the, the, the minimum spend being a ceiling and funding, funding tech as just I, it just, it belongs in everything. I mean, if, if the people are using Word and Excel, they’re using technology in their work. And II, I hope, I hope, I hope there aren’t many nonprofits that are still using uh index cards and, you know, dog eared, uh you know, written pencil spreadsheets like II, I used to do social research on Carnegie Mellon in the, in the late 19 eighties or early, early 19 eighties, 1984. I graduated. So, uh you know, so, but, you know, that’s all anecdotal. I mean, somebody writes a lofty linkedin post, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know whether it really hits home with the, the majority of big, you know, the, the, the biggest foundations that we could all name off the top of our heads that, that control, you know, access to probably 80% of the, the, the foundation capital or something. You know, there’s probably 20% of the cap, 20% of the nonprofit, the foundations are holding 80% if you follow that 28 80 20 rule, uh you know, is, is that, are those linkedin posts and those webinars, you know, are they trickling to the, to those kinds of folks? And are they actually, you know, are these real conversa uh are these heartfelt sentiments a lot of times or, you know, is this um placating, you know, platitudes, lofty, lofty uh academic type conversations that, that don’t result in real change. So you, you can sense my cynicism. Uh Well,
[00:46:36.50] spk_2:
and I, I wanna name also the piece that you said in there about technology. You know, I did ask funders, how are you funding technology? Do you have a, you know, tech capacity building portfolio? Is that something that you fund directly? Do you give every grant, you know, a line item for technology? You know, what, what are you doing? And I didn’t, there weren’t many foundations that had a technology, you know, portfolio or focus or, or, or um grantmaking space. A lot of what I heard was, oh well, you know, it’s 2023 technology is in everything. So we just know that it’s in all of our grants said. Oh, ok. So it must be, you have like a technology budget and every grant to support the tech and they’re like, well, no, because it’s just, you know, part of doing their work, we know they’re using technology. But right, and I said, right, so if technology is part of everything, then it’s nowhere. If it’s everywhere, it’s nowhere to you, you know, and we, you actually need to be providing the support for these organizations to give you this massive report on all of their data. You know, like
[00:47:04.00] spk_0:
you’re saying, you, you you’re saying, you know, that they use it, it’s, it’s ubiquitous. That doesn’t mean it’s free.
[00:47:20.60] spk_2:
Right. Right. And the train just have to use it. Well, is certainly not free, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, I felt just as, you know, head against the wall as I, as I normally do.
[00:48:38.43] spk_0:
Yeah. You didn’t have to go to, you have to go to the Bosch Fellowship for that degree of frustration. It saved the boss a lot of money there. Um No. All right. You know. So, yeah, I don’t have an answer. I just have, I have cynicism. I, I have a lot of questions, you know, is real change happening. Uh Is it better now in 2023 than it was in 2000? Yeah, I, I think we’ve progressed but, but not far enough and, and new issues are emerging, you know, now there’s on the, we’re, we’re in the midst of just scratching the surface of artificial intelligence. And, um you know, your, your coauthor of a was on a panel with George Weiner and Beth Beth Canter and Alison. Fine. And, you know, we talked for 60 or 70 minutes about the implications, the risks, the opportunities too, you know, but the inequities, uh you know, so that, that, that’s emerging now. So how are foundations reacting to that? What are, are they reacting? You know, it’s, it’s a lot of times it, it feels like the, the, the, the parallel or the analogy is that, you know, how slow government is to react to changes in, in the culture, in society. You know, equivalently foundations feel to me slow to react to what’s on the ground among their grantees.
[00:51:19.43] spk_2:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, maybe as a closing thought, want a name that I don’t think that even in an equitable world, it’s a, it’s a world where nobody gets upset where harm doesn’t exist, but it’s a world where there’s a path for accountability for that harm, right? It’s not that that perfect isn’t real perfect doesn’t exist. We’re not gonna go to some future equitable world where, where nothing bad happens, you still fall or you still, you know, get in a car accident maybe or, you know, whatever it might be. But, but there’s places to get care and reconciliation and support and restitution and all of these other pieces, right? There’s, there’s ways for us to be in relationship and work through things together. And I think there’s, it came up in some of my conversations, you know, folks thinking like I’m just so rosy eyed, I’m gonna get, oh we’re just gonna have some perfect world, you know, and I think the way that, you know, you are free is when you have not been free, right? The way you know, you are safe is because you have been unsafe. The way that you know, that you are sovereign is because you had to say hey, there’s some accountability that needs to happen because you were not honoring the sovereignty, right? So, conflict is always gonna exist as soon as there are two humans, you know, there will always be conflict. It’s just finding a world where we, we have the infrastructure and the mechanisms for us to manage that and, and be safe and free and sovereign to together in the world. So as we think about, how do we, how do we fund for that world? How do we build an internet for that world? How do we pursue our nonprofit missions for that world? I think it’s the same. It’s both saying there will always be some needs and how many of them can we eliminate so that we are able to really be happy and fulfilled and, and uh supported. Um So I think, yeah, I just wanted to name that. I, I don’t, I’m not looking for some perfect utopia that doesn’t exist but, but a place where, I mean, how many communities today feel like something horrible happened because of content on Facebook and they have a way to do anything about that. I don’t think a lot of communities feel like they have anything they can do about that, you know, um or, or, you know, they experience threats or hate speech online. Do they feel like they have any way to, to do something because they experience that? I don’t, I don’t know many communities who feel like they have a way to do that. You know,
[00:53:00.86] spk_0:
there’s a lot, there’s a lot wrapped up in that. There’s obviously, um, you know, a, a lot of that comes from the, just the inequities of, of capital, you know, uh, if we bring it back to foundations and fund and grantees, as long as the foundations, 20% of the foundations control, 80% of the, of the capital that’s available through private foundation funding to, to nonprofits. The nonprofits are always gonna be at the, at the beck and call of the, of the, of the gran tours. And if the grant tours are slow to change, then, then the redress is slow. It’s slow in coming. It’s, it’s inherent in the inequities of the, the, the financial, the capitalization. Um, you know, in, in terms of communities, you know, there’s always, I mean, there’s a legal redress but a lot of these things that you just talked about, you know, the bullying and, and um just a, a AAA oppression from technology companies. I mean, there’s no, there’s no real legal redress to that. There’s, there’s only, there’s redress to specific wrongs, you know, they breach their contract. Uh, this person committed, uh uh uh I don’t know the, the a digital assault. I’m, I’m calling that that’s not the legal term but committed a digital assault. So, all right. So I have a cause of action, either criminal or civil but, but those causes of action are, are narrow and we’re, we’re talking about bigger issues that there aren’t mechanisms for redress. Right.
[00:53:12.87] spk_2:
All right. Thanks for having that conversation. So, unlike our usual ones, I appreciate this space to get to cover lots of things.
[00:53:50.37] spk_0:
Absolutely. I mean, it’s not always, you know, tactical about what to, you know, how to use. Uh, uh GP four plus in, in, in your, in your next fundraising campaign. Uh, it’s, it’s, it’s not all about that. So I, I think it’s uh it’s refreshing. Yeah, actually, just talk about some things that are resolvable, but for which resolution is slow in coming, uh difficult to achieve. But nonetheless, nevertheless, a lofty pursuit, a needed pursuit, we never give up never. And
[00:53:56.41] spk_2:
maybe some questions or ideas that, you know, folks listening could go apply to their own work. That is about a different topic too. I would love to hear if folks do that. You know,
[00:55:04.41] spk_0:
the little feedback I get from listeners, uh which I’m not complaining about, I understand podcast listening is, is, is an animal that isn’t given much to feedback. At least at the level I’m on Joe Rogan may get a lot of feedback. But, uh you know, and, and uh the daily he made, but in any case, uh is that, you know, IIII I took this and uh brought it to my CEO or I brought it to my board, you know, we opened a conversation. Uh I asked people to listen. I sent the link to the board so that, yeah, those conversations happen. Yeah. Yeah. Good. All right. Yes. Uh, a lot of space for a, a different, uh, a different kind of conversation. Amy Sample Ward. They’re the CEO of N 10. They’re our technology and social media contributor. If you want to be in touch with them, they’re at Amy sample ward dot org. Uh, and Amy at Amy RS Ward. And uh maybe we should add the Bosch fellowship to your, to your bio officially for
[00:55:08.34] spk_2:
next year. Exactly. Thank you so much for having me, tony. My pleasure.
[00:55:12.44] spk_0:
Good to talk to you, Amy. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.
[00:55:23.06] spk_1:
Next week. Donor retention with Boomerang, Ceo Dennis Foa. If you missed any part of this week’s show,
[00:55:26.04] spk_0:
I beseech you find it at Tomm martignetti dot com
[00:55:44.34] spk_1:
were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms can say I can’t say I can’t do it. You
[00:55:47.42] spk_0:
can fundraising forms. See it’s a fabulous alliteration, but it’s uh it’s a little tough to say. I know. All right,
[00:56:12.81] spk_1:
fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor Boxx dot org. And by Kila grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraiser, Crm Vila dot code joined the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals.
[00:56:18.15] spk_0:
Yes, fundraisers, not fundraisers. Ok. Sorry.
[00:56:23.98] spk_1:
Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate martignetti. The show Social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.
[00:56:51.30] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scottie be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Please go out and be great.
If you have folks spanning the generations working or volunteering for your nonprofit, you may have noticed they learn technology differently. Lauren Hopkins shares the strategies for teaching tech across the generations. She’s from Prepared To Impact, LLC.
Jett Winders: Goals Aligned With Technology
Step back from your technology decisions before you buy the shiny, new apps. What are your goals for the tech? And how does the tech support your overall goals? Jett Winders from Heller Consulting helps you think through it all.
These both continue our coverage of NTEN’s 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, #23NTC.
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[00:02:07.29] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. And this is number 641 which means we are just nine weeks away from the 650th show. 13th anniversary coming in July. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of dextrose gas tria if you upset my stomach with the idea that you missed this week’s show multigenerational technology teaching. If you have folks spanning the generations, working or volunteering for your non profit, you may have noticed they learned technology differently. Lauren Hopkins shares the strategies for teaching tech across the generations. She’s from prepared to impact LLC and goals aligned with technology. Step back from your technology decisions before you buy the shiny new apps. What are your goals for the tech? And how does the tech support your overall goals? Jet Winders from Heller Consulting helps you think through it. All these both continue our coverage of N tens 2023 nonprofit technology conference on Tony’s take to share, share. That’s fair. We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Here is multigenerational technology teaching.
[00:02:29.17] spk_1:
Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. The nonprofit technology conference we are at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation
[00:02:31.98] spk_0:
for nonprofits. With
[00:02:34.41] spk_1:
me. In this meeting is Lauren Hopkins. She is social impact consultant at prepared to impact LLC Lauren Hopkins. Welcome to
[00:02:46.00] spk_2:
Nonprofit radio. Oh, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Pleasure.
[00:02:53.09] spk_1:
I love your topic. We’re talking about teaching to technology skills in a multigenerational workplace on the baby boomer. You’re a millennial. I am and we will try to bring in a couple of other Jen’s as well. We don’t want to exclude Gen X and sometimes it does sometimes feel a little left out or
[00:03:09.88] spk_2:
they don’t think they feel left out. I don’t think so. As long as we provide the tools, I don’t think so. Okay.
[00:03:17.34] spk_1:
Um And Gen Z, of course. Yes, we’re not going any younger than that. Now.
[00:03:21.41] spk_2:
We do have the traditionalist um younger or I’m sorry, older than the baby boomers. And we discussed that in myself. Okay, traditionalists, traditionalists. Yes.
[00:03:33.10] spk_1:
Okay. Because I’m a young boomer at 61 where traditionalists, I
[00:03:38.33] spk_2:
believe the traditionalists if I recall about 78.
[00:03:57.48] spk_1:
Okay. Well, there still are some 78 year olds in the workplace, especially returning to returning to work, perhaps second career. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I don’t want to leave out and I don’t want anybody traditionalists. So uh just give us, give us like overview. Why did you, why do you feel we’re not doing as well as we could training across the generations?
[00:04:45.23] spk_2:
Yeah. Well, you know, so I really enjoy teaching technology skills. I started as a social worker and I started to um teach technology skills in various sectors. And so Department of Social Services, teaching software implementation. And then I went to Aflac teaching the same thing and in the nonprofit field, and I really feel as though we have individuals within, within the various generations that still have a lot to learn and depending on the learning styles, their learning needs are very different. And so the strategies that we use to teach the technology could vary based upon the generations.
[00:04:52.04] spk_1:
So when you say their learning needs you there starting in different places, starting
[00:04:56.47] spk_2:
in different places and their learning styles as well,
[00:04:59.84] spk_1:
comfort
[00:05:01.18] spk_2:
their comfort and um and the tools and strategies that we will use to reinforce some of that learning some of the activities and such may be different based upon the generation.
[00:05:15.15] spk_1:
One of your takeaways is learning how people value training differently, they value it differently. That was interesting what I’m not, I don’t think of valuing training. So I’m obviously not in the mainstream. So that’s why I’m talking to you because I need help. So how do people value it differently
[00:06:12.37] spk_2:
across the ages if you think about it? Um with some of the, with the baby boomers and we the traditional list, they genuinely want to learn. Um They just may need some, some help along the way where we think of millennials and the Gen Zs. It’s sort of as if um they’re just expecting for the information um to be provided to them. And so we just want to make sure that we’re providing the information that they need to be, to be successful. So it really, it depends on how the information is provided that their values may change.
[00:06:20.18] spk_1:
You have some techniques to talk about. Yes, for training across.
[00:06:26.30] spk_2:
Absolutely.
[00:06:28.01] spk_1:
Let’s, let’s dive in. Okay. Don’t sell short now. And nonprofit radio listeners don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t hold out okay. But what’s, what’s the technique? Which, which one, what should we start with?
[00:07:08.68] spk_2:
Let’s start off with the traditionalists. Okay. Yes. So with the traditionalist one, one thing that we do well with the traditionalists and the baby boomers, we want to make sure that we are providing step by step tools and strategies for them to be successful. So if you are training on some technology skills, make sure that you do have the step by steps with screenshots available and really encourage them to, to go ahead and print that out. So within the training, if your training is virtual or if it’s in person, they can follow along really well. Also, we want to make sure to the best of your ability if we do have someone of a younger generation that maybe we can partner them together with someone of the older generation and they can, they can assist in the learning process.
[00:07:31.30] spk_1:
Students.
[00:07:57.50] spk_2:
Yes. Yes, both are learning because we’re talking about a multigenerational workplace. Um And so, um and also with the baby boomers and the traditionalists, they both prefer to learn within a traditional in person classroom setting. But we know that that’s not always possible. And so we want to make sure that we are um making some accommodations to ensure that they are getting the information in the best way that they receive it the best way that we can. Okay.
[00:08:06.56] spk_1:
So in person is better for the older folks
[00:08:11.28] spk_2:
better and well, let me say preferred is preferred for them. Um Research shows
[00:08:19.45] spk_1:
preferred their prey, but it may not be
[00:08:21.23] spk_2:
possible. How do you, how do you like to learn? Do you prefer virtual as a baby? You say your baby? Right. So do you prefer to learn virtually or in person as far as if you’re learning new technology skills? Yeah,
[00:09:01.32] spk_1:
I have a two part answer to that first is I generally don’t like it when guests turn the tables and put me on the spot. That’s the first, that’s the first answer. But the second answer I will go along with you. Is, uh, no, I prefer, I’d much rather be in person. Yeah. I also prefer speaking to in person audiences. Um, I prefer in person into like this. I mean, I have to do most of them over Zoom because the guests are from all over the country and I live in North Carolina. But, um, are you in
[00:09:10.28] spk_2:
North Carolina? I am from, I’m from North Carolina originally. I now live in South Carolina. Where are you, where are you from? I’m from Hickory and then I went to undergrad in high point and I also lived in Wilmington’s.
[00:09:21.44] spk_1:
Okay of those three. I’m the closest to Wilmington’s. I live in Emerald Isle. You know, the little beach town about an hour and a half above Wilmington’s. Yes,
[00:09:30.36] spk_2:
I do love it. Small world. Where’s hickory hickory hickory? It is at the foothills and so it is about an hour from Charlotte and about an hour and a half from Asheville.
[00:09:44.83] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. Foothills. Alright. Alright. I’m originally from New Jersey. Okay. Okay, cool. And you’re in South
[00:09:49.70] spk_2:
Carolina? I do live in South Carolina now Columbia, South Carolina settled down there. So
[00:10:30.84] spk_1:
that’s the capital of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. Don’t think I don’t know why. Yeah. Okay. So, um, yes, so I prefer in person, everything, audiences, learning interviews, um, meetings with, I do plan giving, consulting, fundraising. So I much prefer to meet donors in person, but a lot of times phone has to suffice. And for the older folks that I’m working with, they’re usually not interested in being on Zoom, they’ll do it for their grandchildren, but they’re not gonna do it for me, which is fine. So I pick up the phone, I got you. But I’d rather be in person whenever I can whenever I can.
[00:10:36.81] spk_2:
May I ask something? Then
[00:10:38.82] spk_1:
after my first answer to the last question you’re still gonna ask again?
[00:11:18.05] spk_2:
It’s not a question. It’s not a question. But as far as far as baby boomers and the traditionalist, I also recommend providing an option for them to call. That’s what reminded me uh providing them an option for them to call the, the training consultant, whoever’s doing the training in case they have questions. Um If there’s a phone available phone number, because oftentimes with technology, you know, we want them to email if they have questions or send a message. But with those two generations, they prefer to pick up the phone or if there’s an option to meet in person, not sure if that is possible. But um at least the phone option will be great better
[00:11:42.12] spk_1:
than email or text. Makes perfect sense. It’s what they grew up with. Exactly. And an email and text or what the other generations grew up with. Exactly. So follow up phone offer, phone, follow up anything else for dealing with Boomers, traditionalists? Not right now. Okay. What if maybe we’re gonna get to this. What? Yeah. Alright. So you are we gonna be talking about having multiple generations like in the same class? Yes, like you said, pair off somebody younger with somebody older. Okay.
[00:11:57.72] spk_2:
Okay. Yeah. So one of my suggestions is to um in your training plan, look at the learning styles of all these generations, figure out what is best or how each of them learn best and just implement various little nuggets that meet the needs of all of the generations. That is my suggestion instead
[00:12:16.66] spk_1:
of like what give me some sample nuggets.
[00:13:30.31] spk_2:
Sure. Yeah. And so for the, let’s start, let’s start at the top. So for the um for the traditionalist and for the baby boomers, like I said earlier, you may want to have a um a print out of the step by step guides for the Gen Xers. They love independent work. So for the activities to reinforce that learning, if you have some independent work that would be helpful um for the millennials, they also enjoy group work. And so after the session, if we have some group work, that would be great. And um we can reinforce their learning to by pairing them up with someone who’s a bit older and helping to strengthen both groups. And then for the Gen Z’s, they love videos, training videos. 3 to 6 minutes is the sweet spot videos of 3 to 6 minutes. Because remember this is the generation that goes to youtube for answers to almost anything. And so videos will be great. And so um if we can have trainings and then implement just little pieces that are catering to the various generations inside of the learning plan or the training plan, that would be ideal.
[00:13:37.53] spk_1:
Okay. So take a hybrid
[00:13:39.11] spk_2:
approach. Exactly. Touch
[00:13:45.58] spk_1:
everybody with what they need and this is all research based. We know Gen Z does much better. Exactly. Two
[00:14:01.32] spk_2:
six minute video. Yes. Yes. And for those who have attended the conference this year, the learning materials and my slides with the references are online. Okay, so they can pull that
[00:14:03.12] spk_1:
up, walking your talk. Alright. Yeah. Um what else other, other techniques across the generations? We got plenty of time
[00:14:22.38] spk_2:
together. Okay. So let’s go with the Gen Xers. They really enjoy being active and so their activities, if they can be active, that would the ideal um any type of gaming that would be great too. So um in their activities, if they can get up and move, if it’s in person or if it’s virtual, let’s set up a way that the activities can help them to just be active and implement what they are learning. That’s key.
[00:14:43.66] spk_1:
So active, meaning they get up out of their
[00:15:35.85] spk_2:
seats. Oh yeah, that’s good. Let me clarify, let me clarify. Yeah. So for active you could get out of your seat. But an activity. So what I like to do is say for instance, you have a, um, an activity plan for them to, let’s say I used to work at our local United Way, United Way of the Midlands in Columbia, South Carolina. And I taught the homeless management information system to about two huh 100 users. Right. And so what I like to do is after their New Year’s or trainings, I would email them a task sheet for them to complete their tasks. And once they finish that task sheet, go ahead and send me their work and I’ll look over it. So that is a way for them to be active. Now, depending on the resources that your agency have, you may have um some gaming um strategies or tools. My agencies did not have that. So we work with what we have. Um But that is a way just for them to be um to be actively doing something and to reinforce the learning that has taken place.
[00:16:40.97] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Stop the drop with donor box. It’s the online donation platform used by over 100,000 nonprofits in 96 countries. It’s no wonder it’s four times faster. Checkout, easy payment processing, no setup fees, no monthly fees, no contract. How many potential donors drop off before they finish making the donation on your website? You can stop the drop donor box helping you help others donor box dot org. Now back to multigenerational technology teaching with Lauren Hopkins.
[00:16:48.01] spk_1:
What about Gen Z. Anything? Anything further further for Gen Z besides the video?
[00:17:05.26] spk_2:
Yeah, just for, for Gen Zs and for millennials, one thing to note is that they love learning management systems or LMS as most people. Um Well,
[00:17:06.23] spk_1:
I have Jargon Jail on non profit radio. So I’m glad you opened with learning management system. LMS would have to call you out. What the hell is an LMS?
[00:18:48.07] spk_2:
Um So the LMS for learning management system that have a feel of social media. All right. So if we have a discussion board, if we um have some sections that just feel like social media, that you can put together a poster or um share a tidbit or tip of the day that just feels like social media that would be helpful. Now, if your agency does not have those type of resources, that is okay. Another thing that is helpful, especially for the millennials is if there is a blog for um this generation really enjoyed blogs. And so if there’s a blog where you as a trainer can introduce some tips, so say for instance, every week or two, you do a tips Thursday or tips Tuesday or whatnot and introduce or post a tip for them to be utilizing the system. That would be, that would be great also. And another thing as well, remember remember that with these videos, we have to have somewhere to store them, right? And so one thing that I do a couple things that I suggest finding a mutual place where we can store the videos via your, the L M s or maybe it’s a site that is open where you can store those, those videos, a screen share videos that could be helpful as well. Um And also I’m not sure if it’s possible, but depending on your agency, if your company has a, a, a, a company, youtube, see if it’s possible where you can record the screen of some trainings, just making sure that it’s not any confidential information on the screen. But see if we can store it on there. And remember too that the videos should be between 3 to 6 minutes if that’s not possible. 20 minutes or less, but the sweet spot is 3 to 6 minutes.
[00:19:19.53] spk_1:
Yes. Um What kinds of you already had your session? I did. What kinds of, what kinds of questions were you
[00:20:21.73] spk_2:
getting? Yeah. So I got a couple questions. One question that we got was for the baby boomers and for the um traditionalists if they are in this um in the classroom and um we cannot implement in person trainings, how do we teach them? What’s the best way? And so one thing that I really enjoy doing, especially with training software is for those generations, I really like to do one on one training. I love to do one on one training. And so what I offer them is let’s meet one on one now in my um in my work experience, we always use teams. And so, and I’ve also um I use some others too, but mainly teams, but let’s go ahead and share your screen. And what I like for them to do also is for them to drive the training. So I don’t, I always prefer if the learners, no matter what the generation is, if the learners will share their screen and, and drive and I will teach them as they practice. Dr
[00:20:32.68] spk_1:
meaning what they decide what the topics
[00:21:54.58] spk_2:
are, training, training agenda. Yes, we have a training agenda. Exactly. So let’s say for instance, I am teaching um a staff member at a local shelter how to check a client into a bed using a particular software. What I’m going to do as the trainer, if this is their first day, I’m going to ask them to log into the system. Be it the live system or a training system somewhere? They can mess up in and practice or whatnot and share their screen. I’ll give them a login, share their screen and I will teach them. All right. This is where you go to enter in the client’s name. Okay, go ahead and do that. Alright. Next, we’re going to click on such and such. Okay, go ahead and do that. Um And so that’s what I mean by driving. So letting them um letting them navigate and, and play around and see what it feels like also I do enjoy and I do suggest rather having step by step guides like I’ve mentioned before. But if your agency does not have that or you don’t have time to create it or whatnot, because we do know that a lot of nonprofits, they have a smaller staff and such or, you know, smaller department. So that’s okay. Make sure you give your learners no matter what the generation time to write notes, um write notes during the trainings. And so make sure that, you know, you’re taking your time and and can write, allowing them to write some notes that that is a huge tip.
[00:22:06.64] spk_1:
Any other valuable questions you got? Oh,
[00:23:01.81] spk_2:
yeah, let’s see here. I did have a question about um oh, confidential information. Um Someone asked me a question about um confidential information and sharing, not sharing the confidential information. But what if it is a part of the new software? Let’s say that it is an electronic health health record that your agency is in implementing. And so one of my suggestions is to just ensure that the company that, you know, the company’s policies and what can be shared during training and what should be only shared, you know, in, in the real world. And so that, that is um that is huge. Someone said that oftentimes that is the question, should we be sharing this or whatnot? So that’s my suggestion that just look at your company’s policies as far as the training or if y’all don’t have that, um, go ahead and implement something, what should be shared during these trainings, what can be shared or if we need to go ahead and make up some dummy data
[00:23:09.39] spk_1:
beforehand, dummy database.
[00:23:12.76] spk_2:
Exactly. And then sometimes with some databases, um if there’s not a dummy database, maybe that we can make up some data in the live one and just delete it. It just depends
[00:23:25.57] spk_1:
or something. Exactly.
[00:23:29.61] spk_2:
Exactly. Yeah. So that’s part of the pre planning process.
[00:23:34.53] spk_1:
You were going to have folks practice designing strategies. Now, how did you, we can’t practice here but how did you set folks up to? It was
[00:24:37.91] spk_2:
great. Yeah. So what I went ahead and did, I created five different scenarios of agency that are implementing a training, a tech training. And so what we did is we went around the room and we split up the individuals and um they went ahead and I created a pre created objectives for the scenarios for the, for the training plan and they put in place some activities for them. And then also that could be um that could be used to teach the information and then a skills check activity. So how can we ensure that the learner has um understands the information? And so it went really well. And then after that, after um after the groups, we probably spent 15, 18 minutes or so and then the various groups went around and shared with the entire um and with the entire class, their ideas one or two minutes, but they gave us some um some fresh ideas that they have utilized in the past. And then, um as they, as they were working in the team, how they brainstormed then went really well. Now
[00:24:57.73] spk_1:
skills check. Sounds to me like a euphemism for test.
[00:25:26.15] spk_2:
Yeah. Well, it doesn’t have to be though. It does not have to be a quiz. It could be say that that task sheet that I was telling you about earlier, do this, do this and then once you finish these tasks, send me say the client number or the client I D and I will check it out. I’ll check it out before you get access to the life site. I really like to do that or it could be um just do this worksheet and go ahead and write down the responses oftentimes to with these skills checks. They don’t need to turn them into, you know, if you want them to and that could be an evaluation part or evaluation strategy for you as a trainer to make sure, okay, our folks really learning what they need to learn but sometimes it’s a way for them to just practice. Mm hmm.
[00:25:47.36] spk_1:
What did you learn in your session? You know?
[00:25:51.06] spk_2:
Yeah. That’s a good question.
[00:25:52.91] spk_1:
I finally 23 minutes in decent question comes out of this guy. I
[00:28:21.56] spk_2:
love it. No. Um So what did you take away? Yeah, my takeaway was that I really through that activity of the scenarios and then creating a training plan. I actually came, came away and walked away with some good ideas, um, that I could actually use in the workplace or share with others. And, yeah. So, um, let’s see here. Oh, one particular group they stated that they would have a hybrid training, so to meet the needs of all of the generations, they would introduce a hybrid training instead. So virtual for some and then in person for others um that’ll be really helpful. Also making sure that we have a step by step guides um available. That is really good. Um I did have if I could go back to the one question that you stated about um about the questions that some folks asked. So one thing that someone came up to me afterwards, they stated that they work for um they work for Salesforce and they train um the Salesforce Salesforce software with different agencies and because sales force can be so customizable, she was wanting to know what are some suggestions or what is a suggestion that you have for the step by step guide piece, especially for some of the older generations or even the video piece also because sometimes you don’t want to create too many videos because the screens may change because it is customizable. And so um and I did ask her, I said, okay, Well, do you have relationships with these individuals? And she said, yeah, so, so she’s not just going in one day and then just leaving. So over time, I did encourage her to just get to know the learners, um try to figure out what their needs are and to create a video for that agency specifically for that agency that may be helpful. And then as the software changes, she may need to um recreate a video, but hopefully that will last a little bit for, you know, once they’ve been, you know, customize their screens have been customized a bit, but that is one suggestion. She said that was very helpful. Um So, you know, she may not, she said she didn’t have time to do the step by step right now guides. So that’s okay. Um But let’s see if we could do some videos and because the video should be 3 to 6 minutes. She said that maybe, oh, maybe I could do some short videos depending on the topic and go ahead and create those and share them with the agency. All
[00:28:50.26] spk_1:
right, Lauren. Um You want to leave us with some uplifting thoughts about, you know, why it’s important to be all inclusive in your training.
[00:29:29.53] spk_2:
It really is. Well, thank you and thank you for the opportunity. So this subject matter is very close to my heart. I really enjoy training and especially those of the older generation. Um No offense but baby Boomers and the traditionalists. Yeah, they’re actually my favorite generation to teach. And I think oftentimes as we’re thinking about technology, we sometimes leave out um, Gen Xers, baby boomers and the traditionalists and we sort of forget about those learning needs. Now. Um I did not share this and you might not, you might know, but I actually have a doctorate in curriculum and instruction and,
[00:29:37.18] spk_1:
yeah,
[00:29:57.86] spk_2:
that’s okay. And so, um so training and learning is just very close to my heart. So just remember that no matter what the generation is, um just please keep in mind their learning needs and that if they’re in the classroom, they might be forced to be in the classroom depending on their jobs. But they all have various learning needs and they have um they have value at the agency and we need to equip them with the tools to be successful. We really do. And so um so it’s just been, it’s been very, very good, it’s been a good experience and I really hope that folks can take some of this information and use it at their workplaces and in their communities, at
[00:30:53.57] spk_1:
the very, very least rages consciousness. You need to be aware, sensitive to the different values, the different learning styles, learning needs of everybody who’s in your workplace. Not just the folks who are new to the organization or not just the folks who are of a certain age of a certain age, of course, So raising the very bad, I mean, you’re going way beyond just consciousness raising, you have a lot of very good ideas too. But greater consciousness is
[00:31:14.33] spk_2:
absolutely. And one other thing if you don’t mind, the you brought up a good point in saying beyond the new user training, the initial training, remember that just because the users of any generation has completed, the new user training does not mean that they don’t need on going training. So we want to remember that and make that a part of the overall training plan for ongoing training.
[00:31:21.49] spk_1:
Our staff, absolutely, internal professional development. People want to feel supported otherwise, quite quick. Yes.
[00:31:29.61] spk_2:
Yes, absolutely.
[00:31:35.61] spk_1:
I would like to put something on the record that I am a very young 61 born, born in 1962. So very among the youngest of all the baby Boomers is me on the record. I love it. Dr Lauren Hopkins, Dr Lauren Hopkins. Thank you very
[00:31:48.43] spk_2:
much. Thank you. I appreciate it, tony. Thanks for having me. My
[00:32:03.59] spk_1:
pleasure. She is social impact consultant at prepared to impact LLC. And thank you for being with me for our 20 our 2023 nonprofit technology conference coverage where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits.
[00:33:23.25] spk_0:
Mhm. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Hello, who can you share non profit radio with? Maybe it’s among your friends, your colleagues who on your board should listen at least who on your board. Would you like to have? Listen, first step is you gotta share the show with them or who did you used to work with that you’re still willing to talk to. Could you by chance mention non profit radio on your linkedin or Twitter Mastodon? I’d be grateful if you tag me. I will certainly give you a shout out. And I thank you very much for thinking about who you could share non profit radio with and then sharing non profit radio. Thanks very much. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got just about a butt load. More time here is goals aligned with technology.
[00:33:54.88] spk_1:
Welcome to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. You know what that is? You know, it’s the 2023 nonprofit technology conference that is hosted by N 10 and that we are in Denver, Colorado. We are hosted by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. And from Heller with me now is Jet Winders, Director of Sales at Heller Consulting Jet. Welcome to non profit
[00:34:00.76] spk_3:
radio. Thank you for having me, tony. Pleasure.
[00:34:04.57] spk_1:
Absolutely. Your session topic is how to align your nonprofit’s goals with technology. That’s right. Why is this an important session? Why do we need this?
[00:34:24.12] spk_3:
Yeah. You know, for so many organizations and certainly for tech enthusiasts at a conference like this, sometimes we geek out on the and want to jump straight to what system or what tool are we going to use? And it’s really important to step back and think about what is the goal of using that tool. So what is your nonprofits goals to even start with and then align that with the technology? Because the technology is always advancing something the organization is trying to do,
[00:34:52.20] spk_1:
right? The technology is advancing, presumably your mission certainly is stable. Your goals are going to evolve to achieve achieving that mission. But we need to align these moving parts basically.
[00:34:57.38] spk_3:
That’s right. You know, non profits, they spend a lot of time building strategic plans and they’ll outline, you know, what those North Star goals are and then what those specific levers they’re gonna pull, you know, whether that’s increasing fundraising or awareness or patient outcomes. Those are the goals that the technology is driving towards the goal is never let’s adopt a new tool just for the sake of doing it.
[00:35:22.22] spk_1:
So I’m taking from your, from your learning objectives, identifying technology strategies and how those affect software solution. So what kind of technology strategies are we talking
[00:36:13.40] spk_3:
about? Yeah, you know, sometimes we talk about uh organizations, you know, approach to technology, how do they adopt it? What type of relationship do they want to have with it? So for some organizations that might mean we want to be the most innovative in the field were okay taking risks if it’s going to allow us to be a first mover or advanced something or show the sector something they haven’t done before while others might be, you know, we have to be conservative with our dollars. We want to do something that’s tried and true. We want to do what is proven in the space already. And so we want to do what our peers are doing. That’s a totally different relationship with how you might approach technology and the tools you might adopt. And, and that is just, you know, sort of a philosophy that different organizations adopt that can have an impact on what technology they ultimately select.
[00:36:26.61] spk_1:
Okay. Have you done your session
[00:36:28.41] spk_3:
yet? No, it’s to, it’s on Thursday. Okay.
[00:36:31.23] spk_1:
So walk us through, how are you going through it with your in your session? How are you approaching this?
[00:37:30.18] spk_3:
Yeah. So for first, what I like to get organizations to imagine is that changing technology is actually part of a broader operational change within the organization. And whenever you change technology, uh your business processes also have to change along with that. And your people also have to change whether that’s simply training to use the new tools or it could be new roles and responsibilities based on those tools. And so you want to put in contact context, a technology change with the broader impact that it’s going to have to try to make that change. The other way. I like to get organizations to think about it is that, you know, the technology is always advancing those broader goals within the organization. And so we want you to think through the impact that you’re trying to make first and always be. So starting with that impact messaging rather than, you know, again, getting into the nitty gritty of what tools we’re gonna change in systems we’re gonna change. We need to be centering the impact that it’s going to have at the organization for us to actually sell and make that plan for what we’re gonna adopt and what tools we’re gonna move forward. Okay. So
[00:37:58.19] spk_1:
yeah, centering the impact, right? Not centering the tools we’re not focusing on, not focusing on the tools. Um What is there a method of you? I think you have a method of um assessing different options, information systems options. You say what, what’s, what’s that assessment part
[00:39:15.54] spk_3:
about? Yeah, we take folks through a roadmap methodology that starts with, you know, real strategic discovery to understand what organizations are trying to accomplish. Uh you know, get those specific requirements of what do these tools need to do? It’s not about tool functionality. It’s about what do staff actually need to be able to accomplish in their day to day rolls and then from those types of requirements, build out what you need these systems to accomplish for you. So what role will those technology systems play within the organization? And then only then start to put specific names to what those tools are and that’s where you might actually go out to the vendors at the conference to start to fill in. You know, we need a tool that’s going to do this for our organization. Well, let’s find what tool that is. And you know, the way technology has changed over the years, there’s so many options out there. You know, whether you’re going to take an approach that’s based on a platform and build and customize it to meet all those requirements, or if you’re going to try to find more highly special tools and uh take on the sort of integration requirements of using, you know, tools from different vendors. So there’s not one size fits all anymore of, I just need a tool that does X. You really have to think through that broader approach and put the pieces together and make sure it’s all gonna add up to, you know, those, those goals and outcomes you described at the very beginning.
[00:40:14.31] spk_1:
What about the difference between the like sort of the all inclusive, like like a black box solution or Salesforce versus smaller apps that do different things like accounts payable or there’s an accounts payable vendor behind me. Um Behind us, we’re in the same boat behind us. Um or something else does. You know, it is a fundraising CRM is if you’re, if you’re trying to center the goals, there’s, there’s, there’s one, there’s a one, one size fits all system like that really makes sense. Yeah. Well, one can it, I’m, yeah, that’s such a neophyte question. I don’t know.
[00:41:11.54] spk_3:
It’s, it’s a great question because you are centering the goals and then you also want to look at your organization’s relationship with technology. So that is that example I I shared about whether you’re an innovator or you want to do best practices. You know, these are sort of guiding principles on what your relationship is with technology. Another example might be, um we want to build up our own internal capacity to manage tools and systems with a strong I T and operations department where another organization might say we’re first and foremost fundraisers and program managers, and we’re going to leverage experts outside of our organization to manage our technology. So that’s two totally different relationships with technology. So when you start to decide on your own guiding principles at the organization on what your relationship with technology will be that can then help you answer that question of whether it makes sense to use a platform where you’re going to be responsible for maintaining the integrations and maintaining the customization, or we’re gonna look to a single vendor who’s gonna provide multiple tools in the ecosystem because we’re going to use them as our experts and, and not keep that internal expertise.
[00:41:40.23] spk_1:
Is there a case study or story that you can share?
[00:42:06.58] spk_3:
Yeah, tomorrow, I’ll be highlighting, you know, three different examples of organizations that we worked with and, and took them through this process. And so you know, for one organization, uh they were really focusing on having tools that were easy for their users to use. They needed to look across the organization to a platform that could support five different departments within the organization. Um And they were prepared to take on managing that platform but didn’t want to build it all out from scratch. And so that organization chose salesforce as a solution that had built some of the purpose built mission tools that they needed on their platform already working with another organization on the
[00:42:42.44] spk_1:
salesforce. Absolutely. What kind of outcomes did they see that? You think they would not have, they would not have gained if they had done is the way it’s typically done or, you know, focused on focusing on the technology instead of their mission and goals.
[00:43:06.24] spk_3:
Yeah, I think the approach that they might have taken that I, in my opinion would have been a mistake would be to look at each of these departments in the organization individually. So they’d be looking at uh you know, their programs and uh mission support separately from fun raising separately from finance. They might have each submitted an RFP focused on what are the requirements for each of that department? And they might have chosen different systems based on in a vacuum, what looked best for that department and then none of it would work together and I T would never be able to support it. They never get any good analysis of how information is actually flowing within the organization?
[00:43:30.24] spk_1:
Alright, I kept you from another
[00:43:59.59] spk_3:
story. Well, yeah. Well, in uh in contrast, another organization really was looking at efficiency, you know, they were in that state of having different systems within each of the departments and their I T department recognized that they couldn’t support the different systems that had been chosen independently by different departments. And so they really focused on having a centralized I T structure that could manage and develop solutions on behalf of all of these different departments. They chose Microsoft as a platform because it was an extension of expertise that they already had already using Microsoft in some areas of the organization and then building on that. So they have a core competency now as an organization on Microsoft and are able to hire for those roles and maintain solutions across the organization that are sharing from that platform.
[00:44:49.16] spk_1:
If you’re centering your goals, there’s a lot of organizational introspection that’s got to happen first. So are you, are you looking to your strategic plan? I guess if, if you’ve got one that’s current, I mean, how does this, how does this exercise take place before you start talking about technology
[00:44:49.81] spk_3:
solutions? That’s right. You know, when and where
[00:44:52.24] spk_1:
also it’s c suite conversations. Is it down at the user level? You know, so please wear also. Yeah,
[00:45:30.76] spk_3:
absolutely. You know, when we start working with clients, it’s amazing how much work has usually already been put into defining those types of broader organizational, you know, goals, you know what those strategic plans are, those are often already, you know, their year three of a 10 year strategic plan and they may or may not be on track to achieve some of those lofty goals that got put out there. So, you know, technology is really downstream to support those goals. And we’re often, you know, when we’re working with somebody in operations or an I T kind of forcing them to dig up that, that document and, and confirm like this is still the path the organization is, is on, that’s what we’re trying to accomplish so that we can put our recommendations in context of what the whole organization is doing.
[00:45:52.09] spk_1:
Okay. Um And you had a third story.
[00:46:31.72] spk_3:
Yeah. Well, you know, I I shared uh an example of a Salesforce platform and Microsoft platform. We worked with another organization that actually left Salesforce, um really recognized that managing that platform was too much for the organization. They did not want to keep the in house staff to manage that. Uh They wanted to focus on fundraising, but, you know, didn’t really have the internal capacity to, you know, select apps or integrate with, you know, other online tools. And so they actually went to a purpose built solution, they went to virtuous that happened to have a lot of, you know, features and functionality out of the box for them with an easy on boarding process and a lot less ongoing maintenance and cost for them in the long run. And so, uh, there’s no, you know, perfect solution for everybody out there. It’s really about aligning what you need, you know, to work with and the tool and, and finding what’s going to be the right fit for you.
[00:46:57.27] spk_1:
You have some recommendations about evaluating different uh solutions that you might have, you might identify. Okay, they fit your, your, your stated goals. How do we make the, make the decision?
[00:47:28.65] spk_3:
Yeah. Well, one thing I discourage folks from doing is focusing on the old demo with organizations. You know, when we talk with folks, that’s almost the first things that they go to, you know, they wanna see demos of a bunch of different products and the demos only offer a limited insight into some of the usability, you know, how user friendly something might be. Uh people are flying through the
[00:47:33.69] spk_1:
screen, they could never replicate it, you could never replicate it five minutes after it was shown to you.
[00:48:15.84] spk_3:
That’s right. It doesn’t give you the full perspective. And so, you know, what we really encourage folks to think through, you know, once you’ve done that sort of identifying your goals, understanding what types of tools might be appropriate based on how you want to approach and use technology, then, you know, actually identify systems and platforms that could meet those goals. Sometimes there’s only one or maybe sometimes there’s one or two with big contrasts between them. You can actually do a lot more groundwork and understanding whether those are going to be a fit for you or not before you actually see the product, seeing the product is just that kind of final confirmation to see how it works and get a little more familiar. So how do you do
[00:48:22.87] spk_1:
this groundwork in your evaluation? How do you, yeah, what do you do before the
[00:49:07.82] spk_3:
demo? Yeah. So from, from your discovery effort and developing the requirements, the critical step is prioritizing those requirements against the goal. So you know, when you ask people what they need or what they want to be able to do, you’ll hear tons and tons of different things. And so the real critical period is prioritization of what is going to be mission critical for that fundraising strategy. That’s gonna get you double fundraising in three years or what’s that critical requirement? That’s gonna allow you to analyze whether, you know, multiple, you know, whether one of your program participants is actually participating in three programs so that you can actually see, see that rather than it being siloed data in separate program databases. So prioritizing what’s critical for you allows you to then look at different technology approaches and systems and narrow them down before you ever get to the demos. What
[00:49:24.98] spk_1:
else do you have planned for your audience tomorrow that we haven’t talked about yet.
[00:49:59.80] spk_3:
Yeah. You know, the last exercise I’ll talk folks through um is one way to, to map out your systems in sort of a pre work to any technology selection is to track what data is coming in to the organization where that data is stored, how it’s being used by different individuals and what other data folks would want and need. You know, sometimes a mistake that we see organizations make is they just think all data is good. We want to capture as much of it as possible, but that’s actually not the case. You really want to understand what data you’re already getting and where it is, but also what data you need to make critical decisions and who needs to use it. And when, because having that kind of map of where your data is, how you’re going to use it and what you need is really a lens that we can use to look at these technology systems of whether it’s going to support that or not.
[00:50:25.97] spk_1:
Okay. Anything else planned for tomorrow? I don’t know what you’re holding out on nonprofit radio listeners. I think we’re
[00:50:33.15] spk_3:
gonna talk about tomorrow. I think you’ve got the highlights for sure.
[00:50:47.12] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. These Jet Winders, Director of Sales the hell are consulting, which is our 23 N T C sponsor technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Jet. Thank you
[00:50:52.14] spk_3:
very much. Thank you, Tony Blair. My
[00:50:54.11] spk_1:
pleasure and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C 2023 nonprofit technology conference
[00:51:38.77] spk_0:
next week, equitable project management and make time for professional development. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by Donor Box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Check out donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff.
[00:51:41.05] spk_1:
The shows social media is by Susan Chavez
[00:51:43.71] spk_0:
Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by
[00:51:49.46] spk_1:
Scott Stein. Thank you for that
[00:52:00.34] spk_0:
affirmation. Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
Sounds boring. In anyone else’s hands, it might be. But Maureen Wallbeoff brings her energy and lightness to help us understand the symptoms of unmanaged tech; the value of a technology governance group; and strategies for easing common technology pain points. Maureen is The Nonprofit Accidental Techie. (This continues our coverage of NTEN’s 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, #23NTC.)
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[00:01:28.31] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d come down with Trigon Itis. If you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Technology governance sounds boring in anyone else’s hands. It might be, but Maureen will be off, brings her energy and lightness to help us understand the symptoms of unmanaged tech, the value of a technology governance group and strategies for easing common technology pain points. Maureen is the nonprofit Accidental Techie. This continues our coverage of N tens, 2023 nonprofit technology conference on tony Steak to a great non profit podcast. We’re sponsored by Donor Box with intuitive fundraising software from Donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Here is technology governance.
[00:02:18.51] spk_1:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. You know what it is. You know, it’s the 2023 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10. You know that we’re in Denver, Colorado at the Colorado Convention Center what you don’t know is that now I’m with Maureen will be off. We are sponsored at 23 NTC by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits and very grateful for their sponsorship. Maureen will be off is nonprofit digital strategist and technology coach at the nonprofit Accidental Techie with Maureen will be off. So she’s also aptly named and
[00:02:20.58] spk_2:
I say hello right back to
[00:02:23.13] spk_1:
our last interview.
[00:02:24.52] spk_2:
Wonderful. You worked with her where she Firefly partners hired her a million years ago. I, I was, I was one of the owners and a partner for 10 years staying in my hotel room this week. So
[00:02:43.12] spk_1:
I’m going to the Firefly.
[00:02:44.59] spk_2:
So am I will see you?
[00:02:47.30] spk_1:
There were a founder, founder and
[00:03:10.66] spk_2:
another 2008, some silent business partners came together and gave us an opportunity to start an agency. They gave us a little money and we were fully remote from day one when all we had was a O L instant messenger to chat with each other. That will tell you how long ago that was 2000
[00:03:18.04] spk_1:
and
[00:03:36.88] spk_2:
2018. So stayed for 10 years. And then I felt like I was so far away from the organizations themselves to actually lend a hand because we had people like Corley who were working directly with our clients. So I sold my shares and left the organization and started my own solo consultancy. At that point. I’ve
[00:03:43.04] spk_1:
known Jen Frazier. For just a few years. But I didn’t know that I’ve known you since you were on non profit radio last year. I didn’t, I just didn’t know about the connection.
[00:03:52.40] spk_2:
You know, we’re all connected here.
[00:03:55.08] spk_1:
So we’ll see, I’ll see you at the pizza party tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,
[00:03:58.82] spk_2:
tomorrow night.
[00:04:01.13] spk_1:
All right, Maureen. We’re talking about technology governance for accidental techies. Why did you feel that this was important enough that it merited a session at 23 NTC?
[00:04:52.55] spk_2:
Because most organizations, whether they’re large or small have simple technology or very sophisticated technology really struggle with managing it as a holistic ecos system. So the fundraising folks handle their tools, the communications folks handle their tools. But, but you know, when we bring these products, software CRM into our organizations, it’s really tricky to get it all, to talk to each other, to work well, to make decisions for the best interests of the organization as opposed to just the users of that system. So often when I work with nonprofit clients, it’s the first time, the right group of people, like a cross functional, collaborative group of people have sat down and made decisions about technology together with everybody’s interests and needs in mind and it makes your systems work better and it helps you get a return on investment.
[00:05:19.44] spk_1:
So we’re envisioning a nonprofit where there are disparate systems, like there’s an accounts payable there, maybe there’s a treasury system, maybe there’s another bookkeeping system or something. There’s, of course, a fundraising system, there’s an hr
[00:05:34.57] spk_2:
email marketing, peer to peer fundraising volunteers, etcetera.
[00:05:45.78] spk_1:
Now, what about the companies that endeavor to put all these under one, um, mass name? Like, like, I don’t know, the salesforce or Blackball. Do those actually help small and mid size? Our listeners are in small and midsize shops. There’s, there’s no, um, I don’t know, there’s no 1000 employees, uh non profit listening, most likely. So do those big, do those big names work for small and midsize?
[00:07:43.13] spk_2:
They can, they can if they’re governed, if someone is paying attention to them, if the right people are talking about what’s working, what’s not working. Usually what happens in the small to mid size shops is the stuff as a whole is not cutting it, you know, or you’ve got redundancy, you’ve got two platforms that do the same thing or more or even something as simple as multiple canvas accounts, you know, like let’s talk about what you have, bring it all together. Um Make sure that users are supported, make sure that you know what you’re spending on this stuff and that the data is moving around between the systems instead of um data silos because that’s really where the power of all these tools comes in is, yeah, you can pay your staff. Yeah, you can collect online donations. But if different people have different needs and they’re not sitting together collaboratively making decisions, it causes friction and frustration. Often folks feel like they need to be a technology expert in order to govern their technology. So they don’t do it or they feel like, hey, I’m paying for this thing. It should just do what it’s supposed to do. It’s like if you hired a new staff person and never on boarded them, they’re professional, they know what they’re doing. They’ll just come in here, we’ll give them a computer and they’ll go not going to perform as well as a person who is managed, overseen and kind of guided to be the best that they can be. Alright,
[00:08:07.30] spk_1:
let’s talk about some of these symptoms of unmanaged technology bundle stack stack like a pro totally pro tech stack. Yeah. What does this look like that? We know we’ve got an ungoverned stack surrounding us, engulfing us. Maybe it’s engulfing us like it’s an Amoeba were a little Amoeba also were something smaller than an Amoeba. Amoeba have to eat two and it’s being engulfed by this Amoeba tech stack.
[00:09:53.73] spk_2:
What some of the symptoms are, are things like I just mentioned, you’ve got multiple of the same function, three email tools. Why, you know, probably just one would be better that way you can get really good at that. In addition to only paying for one thing, staff are due doing a lot of manual work that could be automated. So I’ve worked with an organization, small organization where everything was people powered even though they were paying a lot of money for the technology that they had in house. So change management, user adoption, none of that stuff was actually being taken care of. Um Your technology budget can grow dramatically year over year and no one really knows what you’re paying for everything, waste of money, waste of time. Uh You can also have turnover on your team if they feel like they’re um their pain points or their ideas for improvement are not being heard, they will leave and then you’ll need to start all over again. So it usually hits, there’s a, there’s a plan problem. You don’t have a plan for how you’re going to use all this stuff together. There’s a people problem, your folks are not trained properly or don’t have the right skills to be successful using this stuff, platforms, maybe you’re not in the right system or there’s a big gap or a business process problem. So a governance group small and scrappy meet once a month and kind of do updates with each other. Hey, here’s what we’re working on in our area of the text. We’re
[00:10:04.66] spk_1:
gonna, we’re gonna get to the technology, to your T G technology, technology Governance group, but I just want to see any more, any more symptoms of malfunctioning
[00:10:50.44] spk_2:
large frustration and you might not, you might be confusing your supporters because if they have one platform that they’re using, that looks and feels very different from another platform like I’m a volunteer and donor and the rules are different. Um Depending on which system I’m using. Um You probably are not giving your supporters the seamless experience that all of this stuff that we say we have to have inside our organizations to engage our supporters effectively. Um You’re failing on that promise, you know, you’re paying a lot for something that feels clunky, frustrating lots of manual workarounds. So
[00:11:00.80] spk_1:
a solution is the technology governance can be who should be a part of our T G.
[00:11:32.53] spk_2:
The T G G is an interesting little animal because when you think about another meeting, like I have to be part of another group, I have to go to another meeting. It pre fatigues most of us, right? Like I’m not, not into that so much. But if you pick the main system owners or users, like the person who’s your database manager on the fundraising, somebody from marketing and communications, somebody from finance, you made the point
[00:11:36.59] spk_1:
earlier. This does not have to be a technology
[00:11:38.57] spk_2:
person. No, no, no, no.
[00:11:41.38] spk_1:
You may not even have a tech
[00:11:42.35] spk_2:
person. You probably don’t.
[00:11:44.44] spk_1:
Your, your I T support may be
[00:11:46.35] spk_2:
outsourced or your kid. You know, in some cases, depending on the organization. No, we’re not, we’re not, we’re not past
[00:11:57.47] spk_1:
the server in the dripping, dripping mop closet. Let’s hope.
[00:13:45.46] spk_2:
Let’s hope everybody’s in the cloud and they’re paying attention to security and password management and all that good stuff. But the technology Governance group meets once a month for four months, for an hour a month. And you’ve got to appoint somebody to come up with an agenda so that it’s a real meeting. It’s not just everybody sitting and complaint. I hate this. I’ve asked six times to get a new whatever, what, that’s not the point of this meeting point of this meeting is to talk about what you’re doing in your systems, maybe make some business process decisions. I’m working with an organization right now who is starting to make plans to text their supporters. They’ve got the platform in place, but they don’t have any business rules around it. So the data guy, the communications person and um a couple of other folks are part of this T G G and we just had our April meeting a couple days ago on Monday and the everybody shared updates for a few minutes, got the mic for about 10 minutes and then we spent the second half an hour hammering out what the communication policy was going to be for collecting text cell phone numbers and using them across the organization. So they were really able to say we want to provide the same experience to everybody, whether they’re filling out a survey or making a donation. And here’s how we’re going to set up our system so that they align with our business rules. They had never had a policy before. Never thought about texting organizations. So rather than having that happen in a silo just in communications, you need your data person who is going to make the change that says, you know, here’s my cell phone number and the check box that says, yep, I’m opting in you. Folks can text me that would have probably taken six months to pull off if we had not sat down and talked about it for 25 minutes. As a group,
[00:14:57.76] spk_0:
it’s time for a break. Stop the drop with donor box, the online donation platform. How many possible donors drop off before they finish making the donation on your website? That is tragic. You can stop the drop and break that cycle with donor boxes. Ultimate donation form added to your website in minutes. It’s freaking easy. So easy. When you stop to drop the possible donors become donors four times faster. Checkout easy payment processing, no setup fees, no monthly fees, no contract. You’ll be joining over 40,000 U S nonprofits donor box helping you help others donor box dot org. Now back to technology governance.
[00:15:02.65] spk_1:
Why did you say the group only needs for
[00:15:53.22] spk_2:
four months? Because when you’re first starting out, it feels like a big deal to say we’re going to be every month for the rest of our lives as long as we’re working here. So we’re taking a four month increments, four month increments. Um The other thing is these groups take a little while to gel. Right. You’ve never really talked about this stuff is a group before. Um, what, what gets raised in here, what needs to be, uh, turned into its own initiative with an owner like, hey, Kathy, you’re going to go work with whoever on this texting thing and then report back to the group next month. Um We’ve even had conversations like, um, what do we need from each other on these, um, codependent technology initiative improvements, problem solving stuff like that.
[00:15:56.26] spk_1:
All right, this is all fodder for the agenda, an agenda
[00:16:26.82] spk_2:
has to be an agenda. And you know, my, if I’m running the group for an organization, which I do often in these first couple of months to just like set it up and run it, facilitate these meetings, then I just hand it over to somebody at the organization and they keep running it. Um Do you know the four stages of group dynamics? Four stages of group formation? Okay. So you have forming storming, which is where the second meeting happens and people are like, you’re not letting me do what I wanted to. Then there’s nor ming where you start to settle in. That’s month three performing, you hit at month four where people know what to expect at these meetings. You often
[00:16:46.14] spk_1:
you’ve governed
[00:16:46.93] spk_2:
your technology, you are all done, then
[00:16:49.81] spk_1:
you have to start again with form.
[00:17:49.03] spk_2:
Every time somebody new hits the team, you go through these stages. But that’s another, another interview for something else. But the first four months you’re sort of figuring it out. Your jelling, you’re developing your group rules and the things that are important enough to talk about at these meetings and then send notes around. Somebody takes notes or you record the meeting and send the recordings around and everybody’s responsible for following up on their stuff. So at the end of every T G G meeting, you’ve got a little five minutes where you say, all right, here’s the action items coming out of this meeting. You’re going to do that, you volunteered to do this, you two are going to work together on that. And then the life of the meeting extends outside the meeting and between meetings and kind of gets people rowing the boat in the same direction instead of in a circle, which is what it feels like sometimes,
[00:17:52.03] spk_1:
right? So there’s work between the meetings collaborative like you expect of your committee’s on your, on your board should be right. You know, hopefully your board is not only working one quarter, two hours every quarter. That’s a, that’s a,
[00:18:07.17] spk_2:
that is a low performing board,
[00:18:10.24] spk_1:
right? Yes, that’s exactly responsibility, accountability, of course.
[00:18:16.58] spk_2:
And you’re working together in the in service of helping this technology meet your mission instead of individual teams, you know, kind of elbowing each other out of the way to
[00:18:32.69] spk_1:
anything else about our technology governance group. We
[00:18:35.64] spk_2:
should know it should go longer than four months. So I’ll just say most of the time you
[00:18:40.45] spk_1:
keep wrap it up,
[00:18:47.86] spk_2:
the other benefit to these meetings can be helping you with at budget time because tech is often spread, tech funding is often spread between different business units or cost centers at an organization. And so coming together and talking about what’s going to be in my budget, what’s going to be in your budget. So we need to work on something that benefits both of us whose budget should that go in? Um helps you earmark those funds for when it’s time to work on those projects.
[00:19:16.50] spk_1:
Let’s let’s move to um problem solving methods for for common pain points. So we identified the pain points that they’re more. Don’t hold out on non pop radio listeners like redundancy turnover,
[00:19:32.59] spk_2:
frustration out of control
[00:19:40.71] spk_1:
budget doing the same thing. What is there more? I think
[00:19:46.55] spk_2:
the other one that I think is poor business relationships with your technology vendors. Very
[00:19:53.70] spk_1:
good one. Alright. Frustration talking to
[00:19:57.99] spk_2:
them. Yeah. Not getting good service or not getting your solutions. Would
[00:20:22.51] spk_1:
we, we would probably default and say it’s the vendors problem. It could be, it could be our own, could be our own internal problems because we’re, we’re feeding the vendor six times a day with disparate number one priorities. No hr who told you fundraising was number one hr is number one and who told you that it was accounts payable that person is whacked. It’s hr, so you’re on the phone with me now.
[00:20:29.58] spk_2:
I’m number one now. Yeah. Um, the other way to think about that problem may not be the vendors problem and it might not even be a technology problem. Tony
[00:20:40.77] spk_1:
person. Right.
[00:21:17.03] spk_2:
Because we blame the technology 1st, 2nd and 3rd, the stupid XXX, whatever it is because we don’t have to interact with that thing. I don’t have to go to lunch with that CRM or whatever it happens to be its inanimate. So it’s easy to complain about the whatever but often you peel that back and that’s not the root cause. So if you fix what you think the technology problem is, you have the same problem later and it starts to become this unsolvable problem at your organization. You don’t have the app to take another run at it after the first couple and you just start living with it, which is never a good idea because it’s always going to get accommodation
[00:21:27.35] spk_1:
in your personal life in your technology boundaries, accommodation. These things are
[00:21:32.99] spk_2:
important, the right root cause. That’s right. Alright. So
[00:21:36.12] spk_1:
some, some you have some methods.
[00:21:44.30] spk_2:
Yeah. Yeah. So one of them is the five wise, have you heard
[00:21:46.86] spk_1:
the four stages of group dynamics? I know the seven colors of the rainbow, yellow, green, blue indigo
[00:21:55.21] spk_2:
violet.
[00:22:11.71] spk_1:
Those five crime families in New York? Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino Genovese crime families in New York. I do not know the wise. Okay.
[00:22:15.85] spk_2:
So the five wise are someone makes a statement like a problem.
[00:22:20.73] spk_1:
The three Wise Men Balthazar Melchior and the other
[00:22:25.68] spk_2:
one. Oh, gold Frankincense. And, but I don’t know who brought what
[00:22:34.06] spk_1:
Balthazar Melchior. See, I don’t even know the three Wise Men. Ebenezer. No, that’s, no, that’s the, that’s the Christmas story. Caspar Caspar Balthazar and Melchior. I think I’m pretty sure that
[00:22:46.85] spk_2:
I
[00:22:56.27] spk_1:
interrupted, rudely interrupt the guests. I know something else. I think of something else. I know so few things that I know. I have to shout them out whenever I get an opportunity. Alright, I’m sorry, the five wives,
[00:24:06.79] spk_2:
five wives of root problem identification. So somebody might say this email tool is terrible. I can’t segment my audiences like I can’t send to donors and non donors. It’s a pain in the neck to do that. Can’t do with stupid email tool. Why can’t you do? That is the first way and someone might answer that question. Well, um I can’t do it because we’re collect, we’re getting data from other places and putting it into the email tool. And so we’re not collecting that information over here. All right. So it’s not an email problem. It’s actually a data problem and it’s tagging, right? Like donor Tony’s donor, Maureen’s a non donor. There’s no easy way in your database to pull those audiences out and make sure that they get the right message. So that is probably a business process problem, not necessarily a technology problem. So that was a simple little example of one of those problem solving techniques
[00:24:09.43] spk_1:
that why was, why can’t you, why can’t we do this?
[00:24:12.69] spk_2:
Why can’t we do this? Well, I don’t get the data in the way that I need. Why don’t you get the data in the way that you need because we collected over here. Well, why do you collected over there? So yes, five wise people get annoyed. First two wives are easy as you go through wise 34 and five people get annoyed because they really have to dig deep and think about it.
[00:24:38.20] spk_1:
Okay. We can have the we could have the play on the five wise, the wise, wise, wise, wise, wise, wise, wise guys or the five wise
[00:24:53.50] spk_2:
problem solving. Another problem solving method
[00:24:57.75] spk_1:
method. You’re asking these questions internally, you’re asking these five questions. Okay.
[00:25:22.96] spk_2:
And literally sitting with it um in your technology governance, in your governance group or in a little spin off. Yeah, everybody’s got technology gripes and pain points and wishes that it was different or easier. They want the easy just today the Q R code to open my hotel room door did not work on my phone. So yes, I am right there with
[00:25:30.96] spk_1:
you. I still go for the, I still go for the cards. You so you go this
[00:25:35.82] spk_2:
time. But guess what? I had to go to the desk and get a card.
[00:25:40.32] spk_1:
I haven’t, I’ve never, I’ve never tried opening the, just give me a card, boarding
[00:25:46.67] spk_2:
passes, print the boarding pass and have it on my phone
[00:25:50.90] spk_1:
for the,
[00:25:52.50] spk_2:
everybody’s got their lines that they
[00:25:55.11] spk_1:
won’t do the hotel room because I don’t want to be tired
[00:25:57.83] spk_2:
and not able to get in and, you
[00:26:10.63] spk_1:
know, looking for my nap and then I gotta go downstairs again. Talk about first world problems. I have to go down to the lobby again. You’re more trusting on the hotel front.
[00:26:15.34] spk_2:
This time. I tried it. That would be the Hyatt Regency across.
[00:26:26.05] spk_1:
Can you stay on track?
[00:26:32.03] spk_2:
Apparently not. Apparently not. So that was one problem solving technique. What’s the problem and why are we having the problem so that you’re fixing the right thing,
[00:26:43.75] spk_1:
fixing the right past
[00:27:57.30] spk_2:
that one. So another um another common situation is uh people get frustrated because the technology doesn’t work. I don’t know how to do this or it’s too hard to do a thing. Um That’s usually a training issue, right? Like someone got hired, they gotta log in and thoughts and prayers. Here you go, you’re young, you can figure it out. You gotta people. If you take nothing away from this interview, please, please, please budget for training and support. Um Everybody needs it. Some of us are more naturally agile when it comes to technology. Others, not so much but the way you get a return on your investment of the state stuff that you’re buying and using is if your team is empowered to use it well, efficiently, effectively. And when we figure it out on our own, we usually don’t figure out the easy and effective way to do it. We sort of stab our way through it. I made it work that’s fine. So empowering your staff to be competent and confident in the systems that they’re using to do their jobs. Um, staff morale goes up. You’re spending way less time fighting the technology and more time using it. So, a common problem is this thing isn’t working for me or I can’t figure it out. So pay for some training. That would be. So,
[00:28:12.46] spk_1:
which is, which, why, why is this? Why can’t I do this?
[00:28:17.40] spk_2:
Why does, why is this so
[00:28:19.15] spk_1:
hard? Why doesn’t it work? Why doesn’t this work for me?
[00:30:06.95] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two non profit radio is listed on nonprofit news feeds. List of the great non profit podcasts. And if they numbered the list, we’d be number one, we’re top of their list. In fact, I believe their list is misnamed. It ought to be the great non profit podcast plus a couple others, but very great. Right. We’re at the top of the list. Very thankful, very grateful to non profit news feed. Thank you very much for the recognition and I would be remiss if I didn’t. Thank you, our listeners. You help us get the recognition. You keep the show. You know, it’s not always. Number one nonprofit radio has been on lots of lists where it’s like number 14 out of 12. Um, you know, we’ve been down, we’ve been down on some list but doesn’t matter, you know, the ranking doesn’t really matter. Although if I was gonna do one I would do it. Alphabetical. I think I’d do alphabetical with nonprofit radio at the top. Of course, because the alphabet is going to start with the end and then, and then it reverts back to a etcetera. The boring way. That would be, that would be my list. So thankful to non profit news feed and I’m thankful to you are dear listeners. Thank you very much for helping us get the recognition. It really is gratifying to be on any list of non profit podcasts. But, but I mean, if you could be at the top of the great one, you know, you may as well and that is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time for technology governance with the very un boring Maureen will be off
[00:31:37.87] spk_2:
another problem solving technique that is uh really easy is to map your ecosystem, like use power point or video or Miro or some white boarding tool. Zoom has a white board tool and literally make bubbles of all of the things that you have make a circle. My website is purple over here and my day databases over there and lay out what you have. Like most of the time, collectively, nobody really knows all the stuff that you have and the stuff that you’re using and what’s working and what isn’t. So figuring that piece out and having that map, that changes when we swap email tools or we change our volunteer system or a finance system, um, making that map be accurate will also help you pinpoint where the problems are really coming from. Uh blah, blah, blah. I hate our website but whatever, like it doesn’t work on a phone. Maybe that’s a problem who should be working together on fixing that problem? Is it really a problem or is it just a problem for somebody who’s using a Windows phone, you know, from 2015. So taking the time to have those collaborative conversations is also really, really helpful once you’ve got it all written out. Um And you can then, you know, we do have six email tools or three people have canvas accounts. We should probably consolidate that stuff. And
[00:31:56.98] spk_1:
what is this uh consolidated under what? Why, which, what, why are we
[00:32:06.51] spk_2:
talking? It’s uh it’s have as small a footprint as you can get away with. Just, just because you think you need something, people can sneak tools in without telling anybody, you know, like somebody inside a fundraising team goes a little rogue and says we’re going to add something new. Nobody else knows about it and you’re not getting the benefit of having that thing used to its fullest extent because tech is expensive and it’s kind of frustrating.
[00:32:31.66] spk_1:
Doesn’t have to start with. No,
[00:32:35.14] spk_2:
no. The five wise we was one of the problem solving techniques. The five wise is one of the problems solving
[00:32:39.88] spk_1:
techniques. So aren’t we on the five wise, we only did two of
[00:33:04.70] spk_2:
the five wise is a thing all unto itself. So the five wise helps you identify the root cause of your problems so you can fix the right thing. These are other symptoms with problem solving ideas for teams to use. If they’ve got people who say this is too hard for me to use. Why is this so hard? Not everything maps back to why you need to Google the five wise after this.
[00:33:15.49] spk_1:
In other words, you don’t
[00:33:16.50] spk_2:
know. I do know, but I think we’ve mixed them up a little bit. We’ve mixed our metaphor slightly.
[00:33:23.11] spk_1:
I guess you want to blame it on a lackluster host. No,
[00:33:25.66] spk_2:
never, never the
[00:33:27.58] spk_1:
most lust, lust, lust,
[00:33:32.81] spk_2:
lust.
[00:33:34.67] spk_1:
Alright. So, alright, so don’t look for everything to start with A Y like I was all right. We are on number four though now. So we finished mapping, we finished mapping looking where we have redundancies. People snuck shit in should not have your technology governance group advised you not to do that correct. We told you now your rogue rogue and do we boot you off or do we try to keep you in the group and remediate, you always
[00:34:04.63] spk_2:
get you to come along to the group dynamics. Please stick around and be one of us.
[00:34:14.92] spk_1:
Yeah, you’re better off on the inside.
[00:34:34.95] spk_2:
That’s right. That’s right. And then the last technique for the second to last is what I call a no filter, pain point activity. And what that means is you grab your team and if it’s virtual there, if you come to the session tomorrow, I do have in the collaborative document because it’s not possible. So if you want to make an Excel spreadsheet, it’s a no filter pain point worksheet
[00:34:55.07] spk_1:
and not on the website. It is.
[00:34:59.04] spk_2:
Yes, it’s under free resources.
[00:35:00.91] spk_1:
So, what’s your site?
[00:35:03.22] spk_2:
Meet Maureen dot com? Oh,
[00:35:05.17] spk_1:
that’s clever. I liked it from last year. I remember that Maureen dot com. Click free resources,
[00:35:10.61] spk_2:
resources in the top navigation. You will find this worksheet
[00:35:14.04] spk_1:
there. Okay. Now, let us know what the worksheet
[00:35:17.06] spk_2:
is.
[00:35:18.89] spk_1:
So much stuff, so
[00:35:35.09] spk_2:
much stuff. Um The no filter pain point worksheet is a place. It’s sort of a meeting and a worksheet all in one. So you grab your team and you dedicate 90 minutes and everybody is allowed and encouraged to list everything about your technology that bugs them
[00:35:44.20] spk_1:
even
[00:36:39.15] spk_2:
if, even if they’ve mentioned it 60 times and nobody did a damn thing about it. Even if um it’s from a new staff person who has fresh eyes and is looking at some wacky thing that you’re doing to work around some technology problem. And they’re like, is there a better way to do this? So everybody gets a chance to list out their stuff and then you organize it into those four P categories. Is this a plan problem? Is it a platform problem? A people problem or a business process problem? So that also helps you get to the root cause these meetings are super helpful. They’re cathartic number one, because people can unburden themselves of like I really hate this X Y or Z thing. You also start to talk about things like maybe tony hates this product, but Amy loves it. You might want to match up Amy and tony so that Amy can help tony figure out, you know, to get beyond the things that are frustrating or friction for you. So it’s a good way to kind of get allies there. If everybody’s like we hate this thing, then you can make plans to replace
[00:37:03.24] spk_1:
it from the bottom up. Yeah. Uh I’m thinking of a verb for change. We can advocate for change. Advocate. Advocate is the noun advocated. So from the bottom up to try to
[00:37:22.15] spk_2:
make change, that’s right because often the leaders that your organization to have allies. Yeah, often the leaders of your organization sort of, you know, that things are a problem but they don’t use these systems every day or even often at all. They’ve got an assistant who’s pulling reports or, you know, giving them the information,
[00:37:32.31] spk_1:
especially if it’s the God fly, the perennial tech whiner coming, you know, that that person needs, needs allies.
[00:38:20.97] spk_2:
They do and they need to feel heard and then you sort of prioritize stuff, you’re not going to get to all of it. Another way to break the pain point. Worksheet results down is what are issues, things that are problems and what our opportunities we want to grow. Our monthly giving program. Our current system makes us manually run our supporter credit cards every single month. I don’t want to grow my monthly giving program. If it means I’m going to have to hire somebody else to start to run these credit cards. So what are we going to do about our technology so that we can grow without it turning into a problem for our team? Yeah, issues and opportunities another way and you just pick, you keep that list as a parking lot. You can add new stuff as it bubbles up or appears and you just methodically work your way through those things. Instead of being an individual experience of a problem, you’ve kind of made it an organizational list of things that need to be addressed.
[00:38:44.22] spk_1:
I always bristled at the parking lot metaphor. It’s childish. It’s Q, it’s Q, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a wait list. You know, we’re gonna put your, your ideas. Plus I heard it said one
[00:38:58.84] spk_0:
since
[00:39:23.47] spk_1:
some training, I think I may have to go back to when I, when I was a miserable employee years ago, decades ago. And yeah, we were in some training and some, some facilitated. Well, that’s not quite on point. Let’s put your very good idea into the parking lot. And he was talking, he was talking to, what was a guy talking to a woman? Like he should have patted her on the head. It was so condescending, so condescending. He may as well have patted her on the head. I didn’t mean he should have, he may as well have just. The parking lot
[00:39:36.17] spk_2:
was supposed
[00:39:36.46] spk_1:
to be so proud. Look. I made the sticky, that’s over the window that nobody can see because the light’s coming
[00:39:43.46] spk_2:
through.
[00:39:44.00] spk_1:
Yeah. In the closet. I made the sticky on the back side of the closet door. My parking lot,
[00:39:49.78] spk_2:
a lower priority list.
[00:39:52.88] spk_1:
It’s just, it’s a, it’s a list of priorities.
[00:39:55.70] spk_2:
I’m gonna start using Q or waitlist. You’ve changed my mind.
[00:40:01.70] spk_1:
I don’t know. It seems like a very pedantic
[00:40:04.57] spk_2:
metaphor. It is. People get it. But I understand that the connotation that it can have. I told you,
[00:40:11.87] spk_1:
I don’t know. It seems like a child’s game.
[00:40:16.55] spk_2:
All right, you’re playing candy land and you kind of get stuck in the parking,
[00:40:25.53] spk_1:
remember? Candy land? Yeah. Right. Exactly. A parking lot. Or, or, or, yeah, or, or it’s like being in jail for monopoly
[00:40:28.84] spk_2:
or in the sand trap. If you
[00:40:30.42] spk_1:
golf golfer. Let’s not go too far with sports,
[00:40:34.20] spk_2:
not my
[00:40:35.19] spk_1:
metaphors sand trap is golf. Golf, golf, golf. I think we have one more. Y one more of the five wise which don’t all start with a
[00:40:46.46] spk_2:
complete misnomer. Yeah, I
[00:40:48.89] spk_1:
wouldn’t put it in the parking lot, but it’s just misnamed. We have one more,
[00:40:54.76] spk_2:
one more which is decided you’re going to focus on internal problems or external technology problems, things that affect your supporters, your subscribers, your volunteers, your donors or your internal process
[00:41:08.38] spk_1:
accounts, payable sources.
[00:41:23.99] spk_2:
Right. Right. So that’s the other way to kind of tackle these things. Usually, it’s a little of both. It’s a little of both. It’s very tempting to do either or it’s very tempting to be internally focused or completely externally focused at the expense of
[00:41:29.03] spk_1:
your ignore us. We need to help our supporters, our fundraisers, fundraisers are volunteers or donors
[00:41:37.77] spk_2:
on my back
[00:41:40.85] spk_1:
in the parking lot and
[00:42:22.45] spk_2:
we don’t want to lose value people. So a bit of a balance is good and, and take small bites. That would be my, my other guidance here is when you’ve laid it all out there and you can see it like in all its gross glory, all the things that you’re struggling with, you can either feel very pre fatigued like we’re never going to work our way through these things or we got to do them all. Like right now now that we know what they are just take small bites, be realistic. Figure out how much time your tech governance team, your T G G can spend on this stuff. Be realistic in your deadlines and expectations if people can go fast and it’s possible to go fast, let them but always be honest with yourselves about what you have capacity to do. Otherwise this will just be another governance group or another initiative that is too frustrating and
[00:42:37.86] spk_1:
nothing ever happens. Talk about another example, very big on preventing fatigue. I am not keeping track.
[00:43:50.14] spk_2:
Yeah, I think our nonprofits and generally people are at capacity, kind of tired running on fumes. A lot asked to do more with less um in our small to mid sized nonprofits, that’s really hard. You know, like they don’t have the budgetary shock absorbers that a larger organization might have to toss another consultant added or by another thing or throw money at a problem to fix it. Small to midsize guys got to be scrappy. They’re all spread really thin. Um And so I just want to make sure that people are not using magical thinking when they’re trying to fix their technology. It’s very tempting to do that. Um If you think you’ve got a technology problem and your first impulse is to switch it with something else, stop do those five wise, find out what’s really going on because you might move, spent all that time and money moving into something new and you still have the same problem and that’s, that’s not great. That’s not a good thing. I like people to be happy and optimistic at work. I feel like they’re set up for success to the best extent possible and that they are going to work together to solve problems. That’s kind of what nonprofits do and
[00:44:12.91] spk_1:
technology’s role is to support that,
[00:44:16.23] spk_2:
make it easier.
[00:44:17.24] spk_1:
Yet another support.
[00:44:19.63] spk_2:
Often it is something that is, does not provide good feelings. Yeah. Like my key card, like my Q R code this morning.
[00:44:47.86] spk_1:
Exactly. Right. I would love to get your, we only have a couple minutes left. I’m going to ask you to be brief on this. I can Artificial intelligence, chatbots, chat, GPT there. The, here they, I see. I’m not, I’m not stopping it, but I, I see more, I see more risks than then benefits. I don’t know, maybe it’s maybe at 61. This is the technology that I’m going to be the Luddite around. But what’s your, what’s your take? I don’t, I don’t want to prejudice your, your strong, strong willed person. You’re not gonna be prejudiced by my opinion.
[00:45:11.86] spk_2:
Um, I think that it’s not going away. So I think, uh, people like us who are, you know, hesitant, worried, um, concerned should get to know it and then decide for ourselves where it is beneficial and where it is not in our own work lives, our personal lives because it’s common is here now.
[00:45:27.94] spk_1:
Talking about boundaries, then get acquainted with it. Yeah,
[00:45:34.17] spk_2:
I know thy enemy, you know what I mean? Or know what I’m worried from the outside. Let me find out what I really should be worried about by playing with this thing or interacting with it. Um, I can tell you that I’ve got some organizations who are using it to write fundraising appeals in 30 seconds.
[00:45:50.44] spk_1:
Right. They use it as the first draft and then they modify, they put their own tone to
[00:45:56.35] spk_2:
it. So it can’t, you know, we’ve all been faced with that blank piece of paper. I know
[00:46:24.34] spk_1:
my concern is what my concern is. That that’s the most creative thing that a fundraiser that you take your example can do is be faced with a blank screen and create from that blankness versus seeding that most creative task to the artificial intelligence and then you reducing yourself to copy
[00:46:25.04] spk_2:
editor,
[00:46:53.10] spk_1:
copy editor. I’m not diminishing copy editors in the audience, the two or three of you and that may be listening, but it’s not as creative a task as working from, from nothing and creating something. So and then so that leads to my concern. Do we become less creative? Does that mean we become dumber on an individual level? On a community level? On a on a world level? Is it a dumbing down because it’s a seeding of the most creative work that I think we can produce?
[00:47:22.12] spk_2:
I hear you and I do agree with you to a certain extent. I also think if your Annual Giving manager is spending hours writing appeals when they could be stewarding a major donor prospect or doing some relationship building or mentoring a new staff person. If they don’t have time to do all that stuff, it might make sense to offload some things. Not that you’re going to use them just as is, but give yourself a bit of a starting point
[00:47:33.92] spk_1:
or use them sometimes
[00:47:36.01] spk_2:
but not rely on them all the time. Right?
[00:47:40.30] spk_1:
We’ve got to leave it there. Maureen. Brilliant.
[00:47:42.05] spk_2:
Always wonderful
[00:47:46.01] spk_1:
in Portland, Oregon
[00:47:50.01] spk_2:
24 24. Tony. Thank you.
[00:48:07.59] spk_1:
My pleasure, Maureen will be off non profit digital strategist and technology coach at the nonprofit Accidental Techie with Maureen will be off meet Maureen dot com. So smart. I love that meet Maureen dot com. Thank you for, thank, thank you,
[00:48:11.05] spk_2:
my
[00:48:11.57] spk_1:
pleasure to and thank you for being with our coverage of 23 N T C the nonprofit technology conference 2023 where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits
[00:49:17.65] spk_0:
next week. Best and worst of non profit newsletters and digital self care and healing. If you missed any part of this week’s show, you know what I beseech, you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by Donor Box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.