Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%
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- Listen to the December 11, 2015 archived podcast.
My Guests:
Sara Aye: Human-Centered Design
What is it? And what’s this process that puts people at the center of innovation for social change? Sara Aye is principal of Greater Good Studio.
Maria Semple: Research Pre- And Post-Event
Maria Semple is our prospect research contributor and
The Prospect Finder. She shares strategies for using research to support your cultivation events. (Originally aired May 2, 2014.)
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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week, shannon johnson, she tweeted, and i quote, you are a blessing to me and those who recently started a new non-profit organization i listened to your podcasts everyday endquote oh, my god, sachin, that is so lovely. Thank you. Are you doing it on the overnight to there’s a lot. There’s a lot of research that says if you listen tio podcasts overnight just with little headset on you can you can learn you can enhance your learning overnight, so please don’t stick the daytime hours. Shannon johnson, listener the week congratulations and thank you so so much! Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of clint, especially if you hit me over the head with the idea that you missed today’s show human-centered design what is it and what’s this process that puts people at the center of innovation for social change? Sarah a is principal of greater good studio and research pre and post event. Maria simple is our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder. She shares strategies for using research to support your cultivation events on tony’s take two between the guests knew video interviews we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com very glad that sarah is with me in studio from chicago. She co founded greater good studio in two thousand eleven to bring human-centered design to overlooked problems and underserved people. She does a lot of speaking about design and is a guest lecturer at kellogg school of management at northwestern university. She believes that by making research tangible, visual and memorable, we can generate the empathy needed to create mohr and better life. We’re going to talk about that research process. She’s at greater good underscore and att greater good studio dot com sarah, welcome to new york. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming in from chicago. Yeah, no problem. Always good to be here. It’s. Pleasure to see you again. We met at the opportunity collaboration we did. We have the same home room. That’s, right? Our colloquium that’s right? Our ground are our safe space every morning. That’s. Right. Good to see. You back? Yeah. Thanks. Um, yeah. Mohr mohr and better life. Not just better life, but more life. How it was research and design going to do that for us? Yeah. That’s. A great question already. First one’s. Great. Yeah. They’re all going down hill from here. So enjoy this one now. Well, you know, we started this company in order to work on social problems. And i would say that in contrast with our earlier careers, my co founder and i both were innovation consultants for many years. Cofounders your husband, my co founder, is indeed my husband shoretz give. Give george a shoutout. Let’s give george a shoutout after all, for being both a great co founder and a great husband. But we were essentially using design and the design process to solve business problems. So what that means is that a client would come to our consultancy and say, you know, we need to reach, you know, we need tio reach this new target audience or, you know, basically create a new product line, things like that. And so we would go out and conduct human-centered design. We would understand the end user we would synthesize design. Opportunities and brainstorm lots of ideas. We’d have a whole ton of fun learning and designing new things that would meet people’s needs. But ultimately, what we kind of came to is the conclusion that we were solving problems for users, but really, we were solving problems for businesses in order to, you know, make more money. And so we basically said, you know, business problems very important, lots of good people doing that we want to use the same process, the same set of skills and tools to solve social problems. Teo, solve the really challenging and honestly really interesting problems that don’t get as much attention from design as a field today. So more life, more life and better life through research and design. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we target, you know, we we work explicitly and exclusively with clients that are on a mission. S o many of our clients are non-profits the others, air foundations and in some cases, government agencies. But we have a really rigorous gut check process for determining who should be a client. And that includes, you know, are they are they serving a vulnerable population? And do they really believe that? This population can you? No can have its needs. Madden can can get problem solved. What is this human-centered designed were talking about. Yeah. So you say it like it’s. Ah thing like a new disease. Maybe i’m just what is human-centered design? Maybe i’m laughing about the fact that you say you human center human human-centered so i didn’t make it up. I certainly did not invent human-centered designed that said it’s a process it’s, an approach to problem solving. That’s really grounded in empathy. So it came out of stanford and, you know, large design consultant sees such as ideo that really started to propose this method off creating new products and services with the end user kind of at the center of that process. So typical product development. You know, you get some smart people in a room you say what’s the problem, the problem is acts. Therefore, the solution should be why? And then you go and build that we kind of take a couple steps back. So we start by understanding that end user their needs and context. For example, in a social sector context, you know, you might understand the end user as a client or a beneficiary who kind of comes into your office let’s, say, but then your understanding them just in your context and not in theirs. So the research that we do is always in an end, users context so for example, will be in someone’s, home looking anthropologist. It is very much like an animal in their environment. Yeah. And it’s, it’s, ethnography, it’s the study of people in their space and on their time. So we often will two observations that take a day, you know, to really understand what is going on with these with these folks and kind of how our offering may or may not fit into their life. So that’s kind of research the first stage and a lot of your work is not tangible product like salad dressing or the new container or a truck. Or you know what? But but actually programs. Yeah. So it’s a lot more kin to service design, which is an absolutely growing field that takes, you know, human-centered design and applies it to services. We would say that we apply it to programs in the same way. So our end product is because we work mostly in the us, the social sector is still more of a services based environment. Whereas in the developing world you get more product design. Like ah, solar, you know, lantern or a crop, you know, irrigation system to get more products that are kind of needed their wares in the developed world. In the us, we have a lot of products. What we need are oftentimes don’t have our great programs and great services that make a difference for people. Okay, we have just about a minute before our break. So why don’t you just tease the different steps of the research process? And they were gonna get a chance to talk about them when we come back from our from our break. Just what are different steps? Yeah, i can tease those. Well, we start with research. Like i said so understanding people in context and research is really just the first step. We then go through synthesis. Which is to say, we heard a lot of stuff. What’s. Most important, what are the design opportunities? Articulating those opportunities is really important. Then we brainstorm we generate ideas, lots of good principles there around generating many ideas in order to get teo a good idea once we have those good ideas, we prototype so prototyping would be the process of making an idea tangible in order to answer a question about it. So we’re still in that kind of fuzzy front end, and then we get feedback. Feedback would be kind of the most literate. Ivo and probably important step is, once we have those ideas to not just assume that they’re right, but go back out and get feedback and in order to reiterate them, okay, so i misspoke when i said, well, let’s, not say it the wrong way. So this is the design process, which begins with research correct design process. Okay, we’re gonna take a break. Of course you get you gotta stay with us. I mean, for pete’s sake, why would you not there’s live listener love coming up, and sarah and i will continue talking about human-centered design hanging there. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Live listener love st louis, missouri is with us. Clifton, new jersey. Uh, i used to spend time in clifton. My grandmother worked at a big ah, a big company might have been. Clifton, new jersey, ridgewood, new york. I believe that’s queens live lesser love in new bern, north carolina live, listener love, let’s go abroad fortaleza, brazil and mexico city, mexico live listener love mexico city that is so close to where sara and i met and there’s more live listener love coming for abroad podcast pleasantries never forget the over ten thousand listening in the time shift. Whatever it is you do dahna i heard a new one. Now i guess that was not into one painting the house that’s not so new. Whatever it is you’re doing as you listen pleasantries to the podcast audience and affiliate affections our am and fm stations throughout the country. Very glad you’re with us. Affections out to those to those terrestrial listeners. Okay, sarah, eh? Let’s, by the way. And sarah’s name is spelled a y e and what you think she only uses like she’s like just uses an initial sorry. A dot it’s. Her last name is es y e let’s. Get started in our in our process to talk about the the research step of this. Yeah, and i thought it might be helpful to share an example to kind of bring that to life. So stories eso won project that we did early on in our time at greater good studio was a project to redesign three cafeteria experience at a public elementary school. And our goal was to make that environment and that service more more conducive to kids eating healthfully. Okay? And actually, what we quickly found is that we wanted them to eat more and more balanced, because right now, kids would just sort of take one one dish, eat it and then tossing the rest of their lunch in the trash on you. You did this found this out in the research phase by watching them in the cafeteria. That was kind of the first start where you sat with them or you stood around like you were a monitor elected monitor all of those things. So initially we did observations. We sat with them and talked with kids. We talked with teachers and we just observed the mechanics of the lunch line, but then we had to get a little deeper. Why aren’t kids eating all of their food? Why are they skipping the vegetables, for example? And so we did some more in depth research, which in this case, in order to really empathize with elementary school children, we actually put video cameras on their heads, a little girl code, we’ll go pros. Yeah, we’ll you know, we’ll had camp to see where they look, what yeah, as they’re choosing their food in the cafeteria line and to really experience what it’s like to be four feet tall and not be able to see the food actually, until you get right up to the counter and are basically handed a tray. So we were looking at the timing that it takes to choose your meal and the social interactions in the lunch line. You know, one of the big complete conclusions there was that the lunch line itself is a complete waste of time and it’s supposed to inspire choice, but kids basically take what you’re given. We also found this out through working as lunch ladies. Did you lunch room attendant smoking, a hair put on here, glove absolutely way crept served and cleaned up for two hundred kids. Good, because that’s, another important user, you know, the students air one main user of the system, but the lunch room attendants are the other main user, so we had to empathize with them so that you wouldn’t even think of that because you’re trying to exchange the experience for the children. Correct, you would think of only the children’s perspective. See, this is so much more that i would just have a lecture system. I would just a mandatory lectures i every morning i something yeah, mandatory, right? Flashcards with cauliflower and succotash, you know, and turkey meatloaf on how those those those most touching pains just don’t okay? Behavior change is hard. And if you don’t understand who people really are and what their motivations are than you, you can’t really designed for them. S o alert working as lunch room attendants we quickly understood that you really want to see those kids eat because you made the food for them. You got it together lovingly you’re happy when they ate. You want them to? Be eating, but you’re also motivated to move them along quickly, you know, hurry, take your trade, go take her trade. Go. You want to get them to the tables as quickly as possible. And so what happens as a result of this is that kids are given no time, maybe one second to make a choice. They don’t really choose their food. They just take what they’re given because both sides are encouraging that the speed. Yeah, and so what we said, you know, it’s kind of a theory. One of our opportunities was how might we increase the time for choice? How about we give students a little more time to actually pick the food that they want to eat because they’re required to have a choice? And so that was the opportunity when we brainstormed, so so i should say, you know, we did some synthesis in order to come to that opportunity analyzed, you know, the behaviors across a number of factors, you know, before, during and after the lunch line. Is research the largest a component time wise of this process? I would say research and getting feedback are the parts that take the longest. And the stuff in the middle, the synthesis and the brainstorming can be done in a you know, a two day workshop, if need be s so yes, you had said earlier research is always on site, but then there is their back end. Research about what? What is good nutrition for children? I mean, you have an objective were trying to shoot for yeah, and, you know, we often learn about just as much as we have to learn in order to operate in that context. We don’t become experts in child nutrition for working on nutrition. We’ve done renter’s rights projects, we don’t have to learn all of the renter’s rights we have to understand our clan and there’s their situation. So working with the empty oh metropolitan tenants organization, for example, you know, we we observed their working hours. We sat with their call center reps who actually listened in on phone calls to understand them, but we don’t have to become subject matter experts are clients or the subject matter experts itself. Part of what you’re trying to do is gain insight into their their personalities, maybe the individuals who are involved in the process, but then then there’s the organization, personality and culture to whatever alternatives are prototypes you develop have to fit within personalities, absolutely. And you know that that this is a very big distinction between research and human-centered design in the corporate world and in the social sector because in the corporate world, the users that you talk with our kind of representative of a market so you might talk with ten let’s say mom’s about, you know, baby food, and then those moms air are essentially meant to represent, you know, a market of millions of moms who are buying baby food in social impact work. Your end users are the actual users that are going to implement the product or service that you’re designing, so you can’t just talkto one at that such a representative approximate exactly so in this case, the school was the client, if you will. And so we we engage. We had, i think about twelve stakeholders. Everyone from the school’s founder to the janitor actually was a really insightful interview, and he became kind of an advocate for work we spent. I think we did ten in home interviews with parents and kids. Tto learn about how they wanted to see their kids eating at school and you know what air their positive experiences? We weren’t so much focused on nutrition, like i said, because we weren’t actually able to change the food, so he called the project is training everything but the focus is that just a little digression? But is that a shortcoming in commercial design that they do use focus groups so much? And you’re talking to a proxy for the ultimate user and not they themselves? Yeah, so i will digress with you for a moment. I think that there are no other choice. If we’re going let’s do it. There are there are many challenges with focus groups, focus groups, i think have a time and place. I don’t think that time in place is exploratory research. I don’t know that you, khun generate ideas or truly understand needs when someone is in an out of context location with a lot of other people because they’re saying what they want you to hear and what they think the room will appreciate. Plus, you know, people are really bad at knowing what they did yesterday or what they will want tomorrow. So it’s really hard for us humans to project ourselves on anything other than the present moment, which is why we observed, we observe in real time, we watch people as they work as they teach as they serve and that’s how we understand them because they can’t tell you what they need. They don’t they don’t know it in a in a present way, they do it in a deep way. Yeah, i know. Yeah, i’ve seen seen that in other instances of i guess, of research, you know, surveys are not great because people, sometimes they’ll they’ll answer what they think you want to know or what they think the answer ought to be for themselves tohave esteem and said so but observation. Oh, yeah, and also user lead interviews. You know, we don’t really interview in a traditional sense, you know? You and i are sitting in a room, you’re asking me questions. I’m pretty much answering them. It’s a conversation, but, you know, i’m the interviewee. Ah, a design research interview is really different. It’s, ethnographic, it’s tell me about your your home. Actually, could we go see the bedroom that you’re mentioning? You know, tell me about your backpack? Let’s. Go there. Let’s. Look at it. And it makes the person the interviewee, if you will, the user in that in that scene feel really empowered if they can trust you and they can open up. We often in a feeling like therapists and people often end up saying thank you at the end of a session. Like i don’t tell that’s up to pete because nobody’s ever asked me about how i saved money, for example or, you know, negotiate things with my landlord who care no one’s ever cared to ask me those things before. So design research can actually be really engaging as a process. We moved to the opportunity. Yes, steps that were starting to identify alternative. Yeah. So we go through a process and we teach this process set at the kellogg school in other places where we go from the themes just like, what did you see in here in the world, too? The insights. What were the surprises and the moments of great need? And then to the how might we statements? Which are the opportunities and that’s where we go from describing the world to prescribing what? The world should be like esso how might we is a really powerful phrase for framing an opportunity in an open ended and generative way you’ve probably heard of hell? Might we statements, but i haven’t, but that’s because in my world, you know, i would come up with one idea and then that’s it, and i would just be wedded to it and i would never and i wouldn’t even ask for feedback. I would just say this is what well, like my lecture idea for the kids we just it’s just that’s a yeah lectures and flash cards and that that’s how you and i have trouble getting off the first idea i’m just so proud of it exact that i can’t give it up. It’s my ego now my ego is on the line. If my first idea is not the best, then what’s the point of what i’m going to try i’m but yeah, so i would not be you know i’m not a trained designer. Oh, tony show let me tell you, it s so help me if the opportunity stage how do i free myself from the first opportunity i identify tio have a broad enough mind for something that may be radically different from the first opportunity. Yeah. So the first key, i think, is framing those statements. Those how might we statements in a pretty open ended way? So how might me statement can be? It could be too broad as to not actually give you any ideas. Or it can actually be too small and narrow in order to just give you one idea. So a good example there is, if you we wanted teo work on ice cream. This is an example we use in our teaching. I keep it basically for me. For me. We’re working on ice cream here. Ah, how might we statement that is too broad would be how might we redesign dessert? Well, i don’t know. God, you know, for on why, which we wanted should we do new kinds of chocolate? You just can’t think of too many things, and they’re not directive enough. I almost get overwhelmed by that question. On the other end of the spectrum would be something like, you know, how might we design an ice cream cone? That is more, you know that an ice cream cone that carries two scoops instead of one. Well, you designed an ice cream scoop that carries two scoops instead of one like it’s. One idea where is something like? How might we design ice cream? To be more portable is kind of in that sweet spot of a how might we where i can think of a few ideas off the top of my head for how ice cream could be more portable? So that’s a generative statement and kind of getting those statements right, that makes you as a designer and as a facilitator able to inspire ideas and others, which is what you want? Oh, you teach us a tte the kellogg school around around you teach the whole process? Ah, yeah, opportunity. So, no, we teach the whole process from research through prototyping and with feedback, but it’s part of a larger social enterprise course. So once you have those great, how miree statements you want to move into idea generation and the first idea is almost guaranteed to not be the best idea. Sometimes we say that you have to get seven bad ideas out. All right, so i’ve got i’ve got a lot of bad stuff going. On at the rate i’m holding on to a lot of first ideas. Yeah, i feel like if i do something once that makes me an expert. Do you think that’s unreasonable? No, i don’t. In fact, i think i think the bias of our client’s expertise is often what’s holding them back from really innovating and thinking outside the box. The more you know, the less it is easy to open up to things that maybe are less traditional. So when we brainstorm, you know, we start with those how might be statements we say, how might we know? In the case of the cafeteria project kind of coming back to that. How might we increase the time for choice in the cafeteria? I think we had some other ones around. How might we increased the focus on food? Because kids were so social, they were just goofing off for twenty minutes and not eating on dh. How might we just increase their engagement with the food? And so, you know, we had lots and lots of ideas when we braced. Lecture and flash cards. Was that one of your idea? You know, it probably was one of the first one of the first things first worst but, you know, you get a group together in this case, we brainstormed with teachers and parents from the school. So brainstorming is a really fantastic moment in the process to bring in a wider range of people who are interested in solving the challenge and can can be creative. So we teach them how to sketch. Um, all our ideas are visualize so everybody who’s sharing an idea, they have to draw it on, and people get really nervous and say, i’m a horrible artist ha ha ha. But once we move past that and we force everyone to draw maybe five things everybody let’s, draw person, we all drop person together. See, that wasn’t so bad. Okay, now, let’s, draw school, we all drop box. Okay, it’s a school of done, you know, lo fidelity, we’re talking statue. So we, you know, we kind of rapid fire have those ideas. So we’re sitting in a circle. We’ve all got pens and paper, and we’re drawing and we’re saying, what if it was? Ah, you know ah, cart that served the food, you know, automatically? Or what if it was ah you know, poster at the beginning of the lunch line. I mean, just every idea under the sun, you kind of have to clear all those all those, maybe less exciting ideas out of. And one of the great things about brainstorming is you are inspired by the other people’s ideas. So you hear an idea and you say that makes me think of something else, and then you can kind of get to a good place in that way. I think we all know what brainstorming there’s. No censorship, right? Exactly. That’s not going that’s gonna fly so well. No, that would be little bit. That would be the brainstorm killer there’s, usually one in a room. Oh, there is. So we kind of pre empt that, you know, we say, how would you shut me down? I mean, shut that person down. Yeah, well, before we get started, we say, you know, one of the rules here for the next twenty minutes is going to be that this is a judgment free zone. So we are going to suspend our judgment. We know you are all very smart people. In fact, you’ve probably gotten this far because of your great judgment. But nobody is allowed to say anything other than that makes me think of this. You have to build on the ideas of others. And if someone is still saying, you know, we tried that back in the day, we would say, well, if you tried that back in the day and the problems still exist, then what did you learn from trying it back in the day? Because if it didn’t work, then maybe it could work now. So we generate all those ideas, and then we start to narrow and decide which ones. We want a prototype, let xgo to prototype. How do you start? Maybe can use the cafeteria example. You test your prototypes. Yeah. So in the case of the cafeteria, one of the ideas that kind of got the most traction and people were excited about with the idea of serving food in courses. So rather than a lunch line it all kids go straight to the tables. The l arrays come out from behind the counter and a lunch room attendant way of george in jail on non-profit radio that’s cool. L a is a very high, very highly complex term. You know, much room attendant, i hesitate to call them lunch, ladies, because, you know, there are men in this profession as well. And, you know, it’s, not the super kind of storm, but the lunch lady from attending for notices it yeah. You know, the keeping you out of george in jail? No, i appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate that as a listener shows well, they come out from behind the counter there, not behind a counter serving serving kids where there’s a big wall between them, they’re actually out between the tables and they have a cart with these long treyz. So the on ly tangible thing we designed was like tim. So you go to the authentic dim sum restaurants the ladies coming through with the card so karak little buns that i can’t identify but that’s, right? But but that they know that’s, right? And then they pretty much well, then we go back to the problem i take what they give me irrespective of what i asked for. I take what they give me so i just hope for the best and i cut it open. So that’s cool. A little dim sum cart. It is like some car cafeteria and its four courses spaced five minutes apart. So the services designed so that the first comes let’s. Say the salad and you have two choices for salad you can have, you know, chicken salad or green salad. So both both foods air on that tray and kids have as much time as they need to make their choice. Okay? And so what they dio is they choose what they want and they eat it. So we did test this. We started by testing it with ourselves. You know, just as a team saying, ok, how what would the timing be and how would we use? And, you know, we didn’t get real food. We had shredded food that was just made of paper from okay, so one of the big principles prototyping is that it’s low fidelity. You do things as quickly and cheaply as you can to simulate an answer that question. You know, ken, this work we have to jump to the the honest feedback stage because we just have, like, a minute and a half left together. So let’s start to get feedback on our prototypes. Yeah, absolutely. And so what we did with the cafeteria, so in general giving, getting feedback, honest feedback is hard. People tend to say, i love it. That sounds great, yes, totally, you know, and no one wants to hurt your feelings, but getting feedback on a prototype is a lot easier when you, um, can give them two choices and say, which do you like better this or that? And then they’re going to be a little bit more honest, but the best kind of feedback is behavioral. So rather than showing someone a picture and saying, what do you think? Which one do you like better? You actually act out that new service? So in this case, we prototype hit with one table of twelve students, and we saw their behaviors, they were standing up to reach the next tray. They were fighting for the carrots over the green beans, and they then, of course, we’re telling us afterwards, you know, this was really fun. This was really different. Um, the next stage of prototyping, we’ve now done a trial with the same foods in a before and after center ilsen we have to leave it there. Yeah, sarah a with a siren in the background, co founder of greater good studio. They are at greater good underscore and also greater good studio dot com. Sarah, thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for having me with pleasure. Thanks. Research pre and post event coming up first. Pursuant, one of their online tools is velocity. It makes your gift officers more productive and efficient by helping them manage their work flow. You import your own prospect data from your c r m whatever system you’re using that z multi platform, you know compatible. Um, there’s a personalized dashboard for each fundraiser to track there. Progress. It’s fully responsive. So whether you’re on phone or tablet or desktop laptop, it works and gives you high level perspective along with micro level so you can look at the campaign overall. Or you can look at your individual prospect prospect. Hopefully more than one prospect for your campaign. Be pretty short lived. Um, you know you’ll raise storage containers more money. I’m not talking those models that roll into your bed to put sweaters in for the summer. I’m talking deep, wide, cavernous ones that you filled with junk and put on the garage shelves and they don’t come down until you move or die, and then your kids are stuck emptying out your old junk filled with money pursuant dot com now it’s time for tony’s take two. I’ve got new video interviews who doesn’t love video? They are from the twenty fifteen non-profit technology conference. They will help you with your storytelling and you’re content strategy, lynx and my video introducing these videos are at tony martignetti dot com and all my videos on youtube. That channel is riel r e a l tony martignetti or just search my name in youtube, which is the second most popular search engine, so you’ll be in good company over two hundred videos i’ve got there and that is tony’s take two for friday, eleventh of december forty sixth show of this year. Here is maria semple with research pre and post event maria semple is with us she’s, the prospect finder, she’s, a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot com and her book is panning for gold. Find your best donorsearch prospects now she’s our doi n of dirt cheap and free ideas you can follow maria on twitter at maria simple. Hello marie. Welcome back. Hi, tony. How are you? I’m doing very well. How are you? Just fine today. Terrific. We have two follow-up something from last time you were on. We talked about you mentioned actually something that the postal service runs called called every donordigital. And we promised we promised that we would fill that out a little bit. Yeah, actually. It’s called every door direct the resort for connector. And in there, george, very different donor endure, but, yeah, i think we were talking about it at the very end of our last call together when we were discussing census data and delving deeper into zip codes and finding affluent zip codes and so forth. And you asked, well, what would you do with the information? And i said, well, one possible thing you might do is get involved in this program that the u s postal service has called every door direct. I think it’s also goes by neighbor male andi it’s. A very interesting program. Because within a zip code, tony, you can actually break down some household income data by route. Um, so if you were interested for example, in within even a specific zip code in trying to create some sort of a postcard that would go to every household that had the highest affluence in terms of of household income. Even within that one specific zip code, you can break it down even that much further. And so i thought it was a pretty interesting programme and perhaps worthy of a mention each piece to mail out ah, is seventeen point five cents oh that’s, cheap that’s cheap. Yeah, and also they should, though i i’ll just press set, though, by saying that they should have a nen depth discussion first with their printer or their printers air very much tied in. A lot of printers are tied in with this program, so they should either discuss with the printer or with the postal service to see what would be cheaper to go with they’re non-profit rate, they’re indicia, or is it cheaper to go with this program? But anyway, i thought it was pretty interesting because of the fact that you can really delve down by household income and really just get it to those households only yeah, and the other thing that the postal service promises, is that you? You you don’t have to know the addresses within the within the zip code that you’re targeting you just specify the zip code and this other data that you’ve mentioned, and they will they will guarantee that it gets delivered to all the addresses in that zip code that meet your meat, your criteria without you knowing what those addresses and names are exactly ugly and that’s a big stumbling block for a lot of non-profits is, they have a sense of where the pockets of wealth might be, but they don’t know, you know, short of driving up and down those stairs leading flows in those mailboxes, they don’t really know exactly how to do that. So this is very, you know, very geographically focused on, and it could be something to explore the printer that i was having a discussion with about this is based in new jersey there called chatham print and design, and i was asking them some specifics around this, and they were the ones that kind of enlightened me to the fact that in some cases, depending on how many suppose they wanted to hit and so forth. It might be cheaper to use their non-profit indicia instead, so you know something to think about something teo delve into, and i’ll make sure i provide the postal service web site where people can get started on exploring this further i’ll provided on your facebook page. Good were all posted takeaways later today, and the program again is called every door direct the postal service. So we want teo talk also today about research for events ah pre and post your cultivation events that’s, right? So, you know, very often, non-profits will hold smaller cultivation events either in somebody’s home or in their facility on there really geared more toward major donors, right? Or your plan e-giving donors, for example, and so i thought it would be interesting to talk about, well, what are some of the steps you could do from a research point of view before the event to prepare adequately? So you know who to target in what to talk about? And then after the event, what additional research do you think you should do after the event? Ok, so i guess pre event we’re starting with who were going to invite exactly so with the board, if i would think that you’d want to start it, they’re typically it is a boardmember or someone close to a boardmember who might be hosting an event at their home. And so you would try and ask your your boards to provide the names of maybe five to ten people that they think that they can invite to this event and of course, ideally thes people should have some financial means to contribute. Ah, larger gift to the organization and, you know, the the board then might also need some i guess you would call it education around why we’re even hope holding this event. No, now you’re suggesting these be people who can make a larger gift because we’re envisioning a pretty small event, right? This is not a major event with hundreds of people where you’re you’re, you’re prepping us for something smaller and a little more intimate. Yeah, you know, depending on the size of the home, i would say somewhere around twenty, twenty five people might be a nice, comfortable number. That’s why? I said, you know, if you’ve got the board and, you know, coming up with the name of, say, five to ten people each by the time the invitations go out and you get the actual level of, you know yes, responses to attending you might really end up with a good, solid twenty or twenty five people coming to the event and the advice on how many people you need to invite to get twenty or twenty five. Well, you know, you could have attrition rates anywhere from you, no one third to a half in terms of, you know, getting the invites out and then even right up to the day of the event, you could end up having cancellations because of things that just come up in people’s lives. That’s why i always suggest kind of over invite on and, you know, we’ll make it work, okay? And then once we know who these people are, what are we still doing pre event tio to make it clear where board members and the ceo and other sea level people should be who they should be spending their time talking to so there’s probably some sites that we’ve covered in the past, but i think the top websites, for example, that they might want to go to, of course. You want to start with google, google that person’s name? We’ve talked about this before in terms of putting quotation marks around the person’s name so that you’re you’re getting that name or if there’s a middle name or initial, you might include that in there. Um, if the spouses coming along google’s spouse’s name is well on dh find out where they’re connected to other nonprofit organizations. Eso sometimes you might have some prominent people on the list and you already know perhaps where they’re employed, but you don’t really know that much about where they’re spending their volunteer time and their donors so you can break google down even further by having them target just the sites that have a dot or gora dot edu in the search result. Okay, okay, so that’ll that’ll give you something some good information there also another great sight that i think would be good to delve into is the federal election commission website ways talking about that one, you know, try and figure out where else they are. They’re donating. Um, i was on a webinar a couple of weeks ago that actually talked about the high correlation between, um, political. Donation dollars and then how that could translate to the non-profit sector? Um, and that was ah, webinar that i had attended just a few weeks ago, and i thought that was very interesting because they actually played place quite a bit of emphasis on finding people who are contributing high levels of election dollars there i thought, well, this is something that non-profits should perhaps take a look at when they’re thinking about who’s going to be attending their cultivation events. We’ve done a show on political fund-raising too, i’m pretty sure i think we devoted a show to it. I know it wasn’t part of a conversation, i think we devoted something to it. Political fund-raising how about your own your own database to you’d like to know if the person made a gift recently so that if you see them at the event, you can thank them very much for that gift that just came in recently or if there’s some other information in your in your cr, m or fund-raising database you so you should be looking there too, i think. Oh, absolutely. So, you know, first off, hopefully you do have a good c r m keeping track of some of this great donordigital but yeah, knowing a little bit about how much they’ve given when they’re left skipped wass um, and then also knowing, you know, safe your your organization has various areas of programming let’s say you’re a why, for example, and you might have programs for the very young and and and older populations you might want teo figure out, did they even designate that their donation had gone toward, say, youth programming so that when you’re having that conversation and thanking them for their past support, you can allude to their past support specifically toward x y z program so that that would really, i think, go a long way, so that donor knows that, you know, you’ve taken the time to understand where my passions like, okay? And there are lots of sites that people can go to, and we’ve talked about scores of them through the through the shows we’ve done together. So once you’ve once you’ve done the research now, you need to share it so people know who, what this what this background applies to and who to be talking to about it exactly. That’s absolutely right. Okay, so you share it with the sea level people who are going to be there and a cz you suggested, hopefully they’re boardmember is there? Andi, you know what? You know, they have little conversation starters type especially if i think if it relates to the the organization to the person’s relationship with the organization, like a recent gift or something, or when where the giving has been the way you suggested, right? And keep in mind part of the reason why you also have the cultivation event is to get some new people in the door that haven’t made a donation to your organization before, right? So these are people that this could very well be their very first touchpoint with the organization. So you want to make sure that you are broadening your your talk during that cultivation event to enable people to understand what you know that a brief history of the organization in terms of you know who you’re serving now you’re some of your success stories and where the organization is looking to be poised to go in the future. We have to go away for a couple minutes, maria and i will keep talking about you’re a cultivation vents will move to post event. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they are levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Yeah. Live listener love let’s start in the uk bury st edmunds welcome i love it’s it’s berry bur why st edmund’s is he is st edmund’s buried there? Or is that something aspirational? St edmunds is alive and you’d like to bury him. I’m very interested that’s a that’s a cool name bury st edmunds you uk welcome live listen love to you musashino japan! I kind of feel like i said that with an italian accent musashino! But so if i’ve mispronounced it, i apologize, but you’re musashino. I’m not sure in any case you are ponyo korea has joined us on your haserot we had others from korea before beijing ni hao always listeners from beijing, and we have listeners in italy, mongiardino and murata, and i’m going to be in italy and not too far from either of those cities. I see they’re there in the north of italy, i’m going to be it at a resort in lago de guarda speaking at the festival del fund-raising i love that name festival del fund-raising the week of may twelfth, maybe you’re going to be there. It’s right on the lake it’s, a resort on the southern tip of lago de guarda live listeners love to everyone who is with us fremery a simple you’re with us from new jersey. You’re still there, right? Yes, i am. But i wish i were going on that trip. It sounds fabulous, just fabulous. Yeah, i’m i’m leaving on the the twelfth of ah living on the eleventh of may mother’s day yeah it’s going to be wonderful, infuriating festival del fund-raising bonem biaggio grayce that’s as far as i could go. So that’s not talking more italian, i’ll embarrass myself. Um, except for the except for the city in japan, i’m very good at pronouncing that in italian and, you know, i apologize to musashino we’re after are cultivation event now and, uh what what ideas have you got for us? Well, i think that right after the event happens, i’d say within twenty four to forty eight hours, ideally twenty four hours the team that put together the event staff board volunteers should really have a conference call that that should be scheduled as part of your overall event planning, build that right in and understand that, you know, the people who were involved and attended who are part. Of the organization should be on that calls you could really debrief. Um, people attending the event will hopefully understand that they’ve gotta have their listening ears on at the event because post event, they’re going to be asked to put those same listening ears on and be asked follow-up individually with some of these people that have attended the event, these events, the key is really in that follow-up tony, as you well know, listening ears, but that’s interesting for, like, bunny ears. Yeah, you do want to listen to the person’s feedback about about the evening? Yeah. What did you think? What was there anything that you liked about our programming? Is there anything that concerns you mean, this is an opportunity for people to perhaps, you know, air cem concerns, you know, your previous guest was talking about the financials and so forth. Maybe if you’re talking to somebody who is really into financials and numbers, they might start asking some very specific questions on that follow-up call about how the organisation is run fiscally on dh if you don’t have the answers so at your fingertips that’s okay, it’s okay to say that, but just indicate that you will certainly get that information right out to them. It feels like when i put my listening years on, then i would be wearing my father’s old shirt as a paint smoke, and i’d be laying down for a nap. I don’t know it just about think that listening years makes me sound, but but it’s not juvenile, it’s just that’s the way i’m thinking. Well, no, i mean, because there’s, there’s, there’s a difference between hearing what somebody says and truly listening to what somebody says, pardon me, i’m sorry, but i was busy. I was busy doing something else, never hearing, of course, that’s a stupid joke. Yeah, no, you’re absolutely, yes listening, listening skills, and this is a perfect time to be listening because you do want to know what resonated with the person you’re trying to cultivate them too profnet to the organization, you want to know what resonated and and what didn’t yeah, and in terms of prospect, researcher donorsearch research, this is precisely the type of information that you’re going to get on that on that follow-up phone call with the attendees that you’re simply not going to find for the most. Part online, you’re going to be hearing information about how they feel about your organization, you’re not going to find that anywhere online is a prospect, a researcher, right? I mean, there’s not going to be something, you know, hopefully there’s not gonna be some block post about your organization and really, really feel about it. It’s usually they should have any negative feelings, god forbid, um, but, you know, you want to be able to bring that information, then back to your organization and say, you know, g, you know, i just had a great follow-up phone call with this attendee and, you know, he really liked what he heard about what we were going on had going on with our youth program and as much, much more interested in having additional conversations with us around that that information must get into your donordigital base that becomes part of what you’ve done, your prospect research on, right? Yes. And and now we know we have this motivated donor, and by the way, you’re point is very well taken that the best some of the best prospect research may be the best comes directly from the person’s lips we’re not going to find it anywhere else where s so now we know we’ve got this cadre of people who we’re moved by the event and, you know, we know who wasn’t moved, so we know not to spend more time with them. That’s also valuable information, but for the ones you well, yeah, for the ones who were moved, where do we how do we take our research to the next level now? Well, you might then start looking through if you have access teo well, screening services make sure that you put their name through that service and you could even do that pre event if if you’d like, um and certainly sites like lincoln to determine, you know, a little bit more about their background in terms of their professional background, if they’re on lincoln and, you know, a host of other websites that you and i have talked about in the past, but you’re really trying to determine, you know what the best approach is going to be to this individual, what their level of wealth is and where else they’ve given before so any and all resources that you have access to in terms of doing. That research that are in the public domain, you’ll want to get access to that also there’s, you know, we talked about tony that research that you can’t really find online, you know, you might have somebody who’s very interested in the organization, but it could be a timing issue this just if you find out that they’ve got several children in college, for example, maybe a boardmember happens to know that it’s really important to know and in addition to all that the what about the person you need to figure out who in the organization i should say, who in the organization is going to continue the cultivation, maybe it’s the person who invited them? But maybe that person isn’t comfortable and maybe someone else in the organisation is more appropriate, yeah, that’s, that’s absolutely right. I’ve had i’ve helped put together some cultivation events where people have said, you know, i’m very comfortable inviting these people, but i’m not going to be comfortable in the follow-up and the ask certainly not the ask they might be okay to stay involved in the cultivation phase. Some people just really don’t want to be the one to make the ass. And if that’s the case, you certainly as the non-profit executive, you don’t want them to be the one to be make the ask because thie ask is likely either to get botched or not happen at all. Yeah, and plus, you just have ah, a volunteer boardmember or not who’s uncomfortable. You’re asking them to do something that they said they’re not comfortable doing that’s that’s a bad practice, right? Exactly. All right, so you find the right person, you developed a strategy and hopefully then you ends in a solicitation that that’s that’s what it’s all about, right that’s? Why we start the whole process with identifying and researching and ultimately it really does need to end up with an ask somewhere along the line. Otherwise, all of that work to put together the cultivation event will have been for naught. I couldn’t agree more marie simple she’s the prospect find her, you’ll find her at the prospect finder dot com and on twitter, you’ll find her at maria simple. Thank you very much. As always, maria, you’re very welcome my pleasure to have you again next week. Maria is back for the hour. She has a new book. Magnify your business. Lots of advice for non-profits. We’re going to talk about it. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits whatever type of work you do to improve our world pursuant dot com, our creative producer is clear, meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin doll was our am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by dina russell, and our music is by scott stein. You’re with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or p m so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe. Add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.
