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Nonprofit Radio for April 17, 2015: Embrace Emerging Social Media & Your Content Strategy

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Lauren GirardinEmbrace Emerging Social Media

Snapchat. Tinder. Whisper. Secret. Lauren Girardin encourages you to experiment bravely with new channels. But who should decide where to spend your time and money, and what questions should they be asking? She is principal of Lauren Girardin Consulting and we talked at NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference..

 

 

Brett Meyer & Katie CarrusYour Content Strategy

Once you’ve decided where to be, what should you do there? How do you launch and stay consistent with your mission? Who’s responsible? Brett Meyer is director of strategy for Think Shout and Katie Carrus is director of online communications at Humane Society Legislative Fund. Also from NTC.

 


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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 listen er of the week, kim wolber or maybe overt. I’m not sure she listens to the podcast on her way to work as director of development, raising special kids in phoenix, arizona. So now she knows who she exactly is. Yes, it’s you came, she says, by the time i get to work, i’m usually fired-up about fund-raising today i listened to your peer-to-peer thirty report and giving days show, and i was secretly a little glad about the traffic on the freeway so i could hear the entire show. You’re an entertaining dose of encouragement. Oh, kim, i love it. Thank you very much. Look atyou longing for traffic so you can listen to non-profit radio that floors me. Congratulations. I will send you a video and you can pick a book from the non-profit radio library. Thanks. And congratulations on being our listener of the week. Oh, i’m very glad you’re all with me. I developed a parrot counselor abscess. If i was forced to chew on the notion that you missed today’s show embrace emerging social media snapchat tinder whisper secrets lauren girardin encourages you to experiment bravely with new channels like those, but who should decide where to spend your time and money? And what questions should they be asking she’s principle of lauren girardin consulting and we talked it ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference and you’re content strategy. Once you’ve decided where to be, what should you do there? How do you launch and stay consistent with your message on your mission who’s responsible for that? Brett meyer is director of strategy for think shout and katie caress is director of online communications at the humane society legislative fund. That interview is also from ntc attorneys take two between the guests a double honor responsive by opportunity collaboration, the working meeting on poverty reduction that will ruin you for every other conference. Here’s my interview with lauren girardin on emerging social media welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen we’re hosted by entender non-profit technology network with convention center in austin, texas. My guest is lauren girardin. She is a marketing and communications strategist. Lauren girardin consultant loren welcome back! Hi durney it’s, good to see you you’re were together in auntie si twenty fourteen. Yeah, we were all right. Your topic this year is don’t panic how to embrace emerging social media with infinite majesty and calm that’s, right? Very important avoiding shiny objects syndrome in social media is that not true? It is to a point i like to encourage people to avoid shiny object syndrome, so using something just because it’s new isn’t the right approach, but the idea is to experiment bravely. So by avoiding things that are new, we often miss out on what opportunities there might be. So if we experiment a little bit doesn’t have to be a full commitment, we can actually find out a new way of doing things are being noticed or of reaching new audiences like that phrase experimenting bravely, but not full not-for-profits it’s experimental before we start to talk about some of the some of the sites that we will like snapchat, tinder and whisper and secret, which i’m very much looking forward to because three of those four i don’t know. How do we evaluate when the next one comes out, whether whether it makes sense for us to to experiment bravely. So the question that we’re often asking ourselves is the wrong question. The question we ask is, should we be using snapchat? Should we be using tinder? That’s not the right question, so we actually to think about what the right question is on the right questions will depend on your organization, but very broadly are what are you trying to achieve? Who are you trying to connect with and engage? What do you trying tto learn? Because a lot of these emerging social channels give us away to learn something new and also then what do you actions real asking people to take in? Is that inaction that they can do because of that channel? So you have to think about the right questions as you’re evaluating these new social channels, all right? Hyre is it possible to be well, who should be? Who should be involved in these in these questions and answer sessions for new channels? So that’s a really good question, their school already only now, i hadn’t actually minutes, and i’m already good question. I know i hadn’t thought of that one before, because when i think of experimenting bravely, i think of sort of the the person looking out into the rising on their own it’s almost it’s, not an isolated practice, but it’s something to do that doesn’t need a committee that doesn’t need a big meeting that doesn’t need a big strategy behind it. And so i think the person that should be involved is the person that’s most comfortable on these channels. So someone who has used these channels for their own personal reasons. So sometimes the first step of experiment on bravely is to use the channels for yourself and then use them for your organization and then to bring it to people who are open minded about new channels who khun see potential rather than seeing negativity. So folks who are involved with your audience is directly are often the best people tohave rather than folks who are not out in the community. Okay, so maybe some of your program, your program, folks, program, people policy, people, fundraisers, anyone who is engaging with people and who could actually ask folks, they take out your phone, told me the apse that you have there. Let me talk to you about the kind of information you’d like to see from our organization on these new channels sometimes it’s really that anecdotal evidence that can help us make brave decisions about social media? Okay, anything else you want to suggest about the the, the general and the and the evaluation before we get into some some actual channel? Yeah, thie evaluation on the newer channels is is really tough because non-profits are looking for metrics we’re looking for measurement, we’re looking for numbers to make our case, and a lot of these channels just simply do not provide those numbers. They either don’t have any analytics built into their system or the analytics they have are not particularly revealing for non-profit so one of the things we need to allow ourselves is a little bit of uncertainty in this evaluation. We may never know the exact demographics of the people that we’re reaching on these new channels on dh, so what we need to do is just take a guess and start playing around really, if we’re not looking, teo, engage buy-in our younger say, tulani als should we still be looking at emerging channels? I argue millennials or younger, even right now, all right, you know, i would argue, yes, because you know, a lot of people say, oh, it’s, just teenagers that you’re using these and that’s what we said about facebook when it launched is, oh, this is just something for college kids. What does this have to do with me in my organization? And very quickly that khun change and snapchats a great example of that? The growth of the user base and snapchat is just astronomical in the past year, whether it’s going to stick around or not is another question, but we have to be nimble in social media, so sometimes it is about looking for what’s hot now and thinking, if there’s a way that we could make it useful for us because it’s really about it being his form. Okay, you know what, before we talk about the newer ones, yeah, let’s talk about the venerated one facebook is it really falling out of favor? I mean, i hear i hear a lot of people complaining considerably about they’re organic reach, having declined precipitously on facebook. Well, facebook is changing because facebook’s audience is changing, so facebook’s audience has gotten a lot older. It’s, one of the fastest age groups growing on facebook, is you know, in their sixties or older and so facebook is adapting to their audience, and they’re also adapting to the realities that they need to make money on dso for non-profits what we have to do is think about instead of facebook being our main channel, it’s been one of many and how are we designing hunting specifically that can work on facebook instead of putting out everything we have and being upset that it’s not working and some of that will be about being a little less self promotional, facebook is dialing down the self promotion that it allows people to share. And so if, if it doesn’t let us put that information out, either we have to find somewhere else. To put it all, we have to put out different information on facebook. Do you find your client’s questioning? Yes, facebook’s value? Yes, absolutely. Part of it is they can see the hard numbers changing, and part of it is that it continues of you’re the organic regional yeah, the organic reach Numbers and and 4 smaller numbers it’s requiring more effort and then there’s the question of will if i have a limited capacity myself in my organization, where can my time be better spent for better results? I think facebook still has a value if you’re not on facebook can affect your credibility, people will go well, are you really serious than if you’re not on facebook or twitter? But we can dial down our efforts there make sure the efforts were how much we’re going to devote tio and then take that time and spend it in a new way and see if we can find something else to add to our catalogue of social media repertoire. Eso let’s talk about something let’s talk about some of the newer ones tinder when what’s tinder tinder is a dating app, but it’s not like i have yes, everyone has that reaction. I don’t think of it as a social media, right? Okay, yes, you swipe left for somebody you like? Yeah, i can’t believe you’re not on tinder, okay? I’m married and i well, i think that would be something that we’re gonna stop here. Maybe not that much different, but okay tinder. So you swipe one way for somebody you want to see. But it’s also geo located? Yeah, it sze showing people who are close to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so you swipe. And if you both swipe yes, then you get access to message each other through tinder. So then you can set up a coffee or a date or something else like that. And tinder, you would think what good is a dating app for non-profits? How could you possibly use it? But it turns out there are few non-profits who views it really creatively. So what are they doing? So one organization used to match rescue dogs with people in manhattan, so they put up profiles for rescue dogs. And if you decided that you like that dog, you could then message the organization and take the dog on a walk or fostered in your home if you weren’t sure you were ready to adopt a dog or straight up atop the dog. And so they did this funds small tinder experiment to figure out if there was a way to use social media like tender not just in her, but other dating outstanding. Could you can you shout out the name of the organization? You know, e doing? I do not, but i will. I will tweet it. And find it later. Okay, it’s, in my presentation on friday. Okay, you’re tuned in on labbate 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. That and i’m kind of surprised that tinder dot com would allow would allow that that so that’s the cabin you that’s actually, i applaud them for that. It’s. Admirable. Well, so that’s the caveats. So tinder has a revenue model, they actually ask people to pay money for their service, and they also have advertising. So this is all considered advertising. So when these channels first come out tinder or what have you there is a kind of a beautiful period where you can get away with a little bit more and so now they’re becoming more formal. So the gap actually just tried to run a tinder advertising campaign, and they got shut down because they didn’t ask permission. So if non-profits are looking to do this, you should definitely always check to make sure that you’re allowed to have either fake profiles or personas or something like that. Okay, gap just want to show people in jeans. Yeah, or other tinder wanted them to pay. Yeah. Okay, but i do admire that they would allow it, you know, like it’s saying that we don’t take ourselves a ll that seriously that we won’t allow that we want to rescue dog matchup. Yeah, and, you know, and even these can be serious topics. There’s, another organization, amnesty international. They did a campaign to bring attention to human trafficking on tinder. It was very serious campaign. What do they do? You remember? Yeah. There was a series of photos and the women got first was a photo of a beautiful woman. And then the next photo you saw of her, she had some bruises. And then there was another photo where she looked even more abused. And it was about not all women have the same rights as women who are using tender, you know, it’s very popular in manhattan. It’s very popular in the us and also a couple of other countries. So it it allowed this serious topic to come through, but it made sense when you were seeing it there that not all women get to choose their partner or how their partner treats them or if they want to leave their relationship. Great education campaign soas faras. You know, tinder is still open to those types of discussions. But with your caveat that you better discuss it with them. Yeah? Or or just be really quick. Don’t put out a press release. We’re not recommending underhanded behavior. Never sneaky. Whisper what’s whisper about so whisper is one of these gossip paps, so whisper secret you quack are these abs that you can use to put up an anonymous post usually text base, and then you can just complain about something that you have to complain about. You can tell someone else’s secrets or one of your own, a lot of people use it when they’re feeling isolated or lonely, to talk about their their deep feelings they would never share on facebook with people who know they are on dh. These are really interesting apse because and has that anonymity or that perceived anonymity there’s some question on security on the steps of course, ok, but there and there that none of these ups or doing anything particularly grand, but a lot of them, you’re back, for example, is geo located and so it’s very popular with college students and there’s a lot of complaining about professors and classes and what’s going on in campus, and so they’re actually very riel social conversations happening on some of these. You cock in particular had a lot of college students talking about race during all of the protest that were going on last year and, you know, there’s a question of whether or not non-profit should be part of those conversations happening on these aps. And are you seeing non-profit using secret? Yeah, and and you quack also, yeah. So there’s one example and i believe it’s it’s anand’s organization. And i think it was in ireland that used one of these aps to it was secret because they were playing on the whole idea of secrets. And what they did was they asked men in there because that was their audience. Two send a picture in on their name and then, with their permission, put their photo and name up on secret and said, i have hiv and it’s no secret with their name and photo. And so that’s. Why kind of turning the tables on secret, really raising awareness about the stigma of living with hiv and aids? I’m telling my own, i’m sharing my yeah, and it’s and it’s, not a secret it’s actually something that’s part of me. And so they wanted to change the narrative about hiv aids sigma in their community and it was really experimental and, you know, a lot of times it’s experimental. Stuff gets you good media coverage and get you really interesting attention andan. Other examples get gas. When they were having all those problems in ray’s, colgate university, the professor’s banded together, so not a non-profit but non-profit could have been involved in this, and i sometimes think, should have they banned it each other, and the professor’s took over you. Cack colgate is a non-profit, the university that’s, true, that’s, that’s, a good thing you called me here in the u s tonto and the professor’s got together, and they took over the conversation and put out more positive messages on the app to overwhelm the conversations around racism that were boiling and boiling. And they decided they wanted to tamp it down, and they used the app in the way it was meant to be used in order to become part of the conversation and to change that conversation as well. Outstanding. Yeah, that was you back, right? Yeah, all right. Quarrel? That water is one that’s been around for a few years. I do a very little bit with quarrel, but so it’s spelled qu o r a right. What do you seeing non-profit potential what’s the potential there. You know there’s there’s two sides to this one. We have to stop your i’m sorry. Yeah. Let’s. Describe what quarrel. I’ll leave it for you because you’ll be more articulate tonight. Let’s tell. Make sure you understand what quarry corps is one of those question and answer site. So anyone can go on, make a profile and post a question, and then the community of core participants can answer that question, and they can do it seriously. They could be a little silly, but for the most part, cora folks take themselves seriously and it’s a professional venu kind of much like lincoln. So people do use it as a point of credibility. Okay, so now the non-profit potential, so they’re non-profit potential is in-kind twofold. So you have the people inside your organization. You have your spokespeople in your leaders, your staff, your board. They can go on and answer questions that are relevant to what your non-profits doing. And they can have that personal that personal view, really showing people that your organization has a lot of different messengers and having those answers, i come from people inside your organization, then speaks to transparency. So you’re both building up the credibility of your employees, but then also building up the transparency incredibility of your organization and charity water, which is so often held up as an example of an organization that does things well on social media actually did this a few years ago, where the ceo went on to kora and asked you answered people’s questions about the organization, which now the tech sector folks are big into kora on silicon valley types and so charity water knew exactly what they were doing that’s one of their audiences and so getting on there and reaching out directly to those people one on one answers was a great move on their part and really helped advance their prestige in the community. So i’m sure you can search for different topics and insert yourself into conversations that you believe your work merits being. Yeah, absolutely. So even if the question isn’t about your organization, you could jump right into the conversation and there are a lot of social chat apps and websites like this, so read it, which, you know a lot of people are talking about has very similar functions, and tumbler has a cuban eight feature as well that organizations i’ve seen use to answer questions and the one one of the nice things about tumblers that those questions can be asked anonymously, but then answer publicly so it’s kind of like a dear abby column latto comedia i didn’t know this feature of tumbler whose question answer yeah, it’s i’ve seen a lot of organizations that work in reproductive and sexual health used this feature because there is that idea that you want some privacy about these questions you wouldn’t go to mom and dad. Perhaps so planned parenthood uses this feature, as does sex, etcetera, which is run by answer out of rutgers university. Interesting. Okay, i only know the microblogging. The future of tumbler. Yeah. Okay. Interesting is always to get your get your organization in conversations and also to show that you have people who are relevant. I mean, that could help for media, perhaps if they if yeah, you’re showing that you have expertise? Well, maybe a voice in a subject. Yeah. Medium a google and find an answer in court and see that your organization five. That answer and they might come calling to interview you for an article they were writing. It’s it. It does establish your credibility in your knowledge on the subject. So within quarter especially you can answer a lot of questions on a particular tag or subject, and people will start seeing you as an expert in that area. I just learned that tweets are going to start being indexed by google. Searched. Yeah. There. There, there. Finally found a happy agreement. Somehow someone must have had a really good meeting. You has been in discussion for a long time, and they couldn’t agree. So good. The rumors. Yeah, yeah, because, you know, everyone wants an insider social media inside. I read a lot. I well, well informed. Yeah, yeah. I’m a sponge for information on this. I have a lot of tabs open in my browser’s, so they so they have been trying, you believe? Okay, yeah. Everyone wants to become the next search index. So actually, some of the apse that i’m going to be talking about on friday, some of them have these aims to become the google of images on do you know a lot of them are also trying to cultivate more positive messages to come through in those ways, too? So there’s fierce competition for for being the next hub for for these audiences and for search? You know, facebook has been trying to do that for a while, twitter as well, google plus, which is just changed itself again. All right, yeah, google plus seems to be struggling. It seems it has a high user base, they’ve got a lot of users, but the engagement numbers for that i’ve seen have been very low on dso just this last week, they’ve announced some new staff changes and that they’re going to be a fraction ing their google plus ap into a couple of different services, perhaps to target specific audiences. Better look for different types of engagement so remains to be seen how and if that can be relevant again. Okay, yeah. Um now i already have a session from from here. It ntcdinosaur where we talked about oppcoll snapchat pretty well and read it on tumbler although you just you drop something up to read it, but i didn’t know what other what other sites can weigh acquaint people with gosh, i wanted to talk about it, but that’s that’s my own obsession. I mean, what about feed, feed and kick there’s ask f m, you know, there’s every for every person, there seems to be a new social through these three foot together ascot from feeding kick no, you know, they’re each one is kind of its own niche, the one that i’m thinking about which i would love to see non-profits use and i haven’t seen that means it is called plague. Okay, well, piela yeah, it’s actually spelled the way that you think it is that such a stream saying for social right now, like feed, which is th e d all right, so this could be cutting edge and emerging news. I, you know, it’s about plague, i just think it’s really interested in what? I’m going to spread the plague about plague. So plague is an app that you can use to spread information so you join you don’t have to create an account, you’re immediately part of a network you don’t a friend people, you’re already part of the potential play. And you i can put a piece of information up and four people near you so it’s all that geo location can receive that information from you, and they decide whether that information is worth spreading or not. And if they decide it’s worth spreading from that one person, it goes out to form more people. And then those people decide if it’s worth spreading and it spreads. This information spreads like a plague exponential and yes, like so if you put out good information, your information can travel. So if it’s something that people like it khun spread as faras the plague network users go so it’s still newish so there’s, you know there’s not as many users in some parts of the u s and some parts of the world but if you can get a piece of information out there it could be very engaging. And i haven’t seen a non-profit use it yet. So i want to see who’s gonna be first across that line very short pieces of information or going to be several hundred words like a log post or or no it’s, not it’s. Mobile audiences so it would be short and then you can also do image is a swell so you can mix it up, but i would keep it short just because the mobile audience tends toe have short attention spans, right? Cool. What anything else you wanna tell us about plague advice for the for the for the the first for the first brave experimenter uganda, you’re going to want to hook it to something that’s happening now something that people are talking about now. So whether it’s an event or a gn anniversary something a current event in the news, i wouldn’t you know it wouldn’t use the dress that that we’re all talking about. Now the blue and gold were black and blue dress, whatever it was, but something that people are talking about now, because that’s going to be the kind of thing that people want to spread, that people want to pay attention to something about trending, trending or timely start? Yeah, and you should always think about doing that with your content because that’s really how people spread information is by whatever they’re already interested in. Okay, now i’m out of touch with black and gold are blue, like i don’t know. I don’t know the dress conversation, not as much of a hurry. I don’t have the same tabs open if you have one tab too few clearly has dressed think, oh, there’s, a photo that went out last week, a few days ago of address and people were up in arms, whether it was black and blue dress where a white and gold dress or something like that, people were arguing about it and then meeting about the colors of the dress. Yes, because there’s and then scientists actually started arguing about why we were seeing different colors in this dress. What is this relevant to anything having to do with anything in the world? That’s important, it’s it’s, not it’s, not no it’s, very frivolous, and we’re at kind of an ugly stage of frivolity and social media right now, and that trust is sort of being held up the totem for that ugly frivolity. You know what? We’re going to end it right there with the ugly frivolity of social media. Lauren girardi, she’s, she’s terrific, you’re great fun! Thank you very much. Marketing and communications strategist the company is lauren. Girardin consulting, and this is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference. Twenty fifteen. Thank you so much for being with us, tony’s, take two and you’re content, strategy coming up, first opportunity collaboration. It was a terrific experience. It really kicked us up to the next level. That was ross baird, executive director of village capital and again. There are lots of funders at opportunity collaboration. I said that last week. I want to make the point extremely useful. Contacts, projects, funding. It opens people that’s alberto vasquez, president of soc edad de dis capacidad in sodas, peru opportunity collaboration is a week long, nearly weeklong conference in x top of mexico and it’s around poverty reduction anywhere in the world. It’s in october. I’m going again this year. If that’s your work, you should check out opportunity, collaboration at opportunity, collaboration, dot net. I’m being honored by hermandad mention this last week and hope you’ll indulge me for this last week it’s, a charity that brings water to the poorest of the poor in the dominican republic. I’ve been helping them for a lot of years and saving lives in the d r and it would be for me a double honor if you’d be with me by supporting hermandad with a gift we can save lives together in the dominican republic and the honor together on the stage on april twenty third, i’d be very grateful for your support. Video and links are at tony martignetti dot com and i thank you very much. That’s tony’s take two for friday, seventeenth of april, the fifteenth show of the year here’s another interview from ntcdinosaur with brett meyer and katie caress on your content strategy. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference two thousand fifteen it’s hosted by antenna non-profit technology network. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center. My guest is katie caress she’s, director of online communications for humane society legislative fund. Katie welcome. Thank you so much for having me. That’s a pleasure. Thanks. For taking time on a busy conference, your workshop topic is content strategy one oh one, what are non-profits not doing so well? I could do better at around their content strategy. Well, i bet everybody here has the intention to do much better. I think that everyone here probably is looking for something like content, strategy and it’s, just a matter of kind of getting their leaders, the executives onboarding really what it does is it applies, like intention and focus to all of your messaging. It’s, the basic plan, or the idea that your messages need a plan, a plan, focuses plan strategy, yeah, that sounds like it starts with goals. Yeah, it starts with goals. It’s just a good idea to start with making sure that you understand oh, yeah, making sure that you understand what your business goals are and discovering how your channel usually is websites with content strategy, but it could be anything social email, whatever making sure that those platforms have goals that are tighter business schools. So you’re avoiding this kind of like sprawl and all over nests of what happens with web sites a lot of time and the ad hoc put this up, teo well, great now, right? I’m taking it back to come from a ceo or a boardmember on dh or someone else senior, and it becomes hard to say no, exactly exactly, and i think that a lot of people who were working on websites or other channels just kind of feel like they’re in this quagmire, right there just likes just drowning and content, and they don’t have the tools to kind of push back or, you know, carve out a better way. So what this says it’s, like, we acknowledge that you’re in this like situation where you’re getting input from stakeholders who had all kinds of varying degrees of a definition of what the website is for what this content is supposed to do so content strategy says everybody from their own perspective, everybody’s no perspective, their own priorities, different audiences and you end up with this website that kind of like pleases nobody, right? It doesn’t drive your business goals, so content strategy says let’s, ask the question of why, before we do anything and i think that’s kind of revolutionary who worked on the web even the past, like ten years. It’s it’s just this race to the bottom, like what you said, like publish all the things now, and this has kind of slow down let’s have a plan and it ends up like driving engagement that it improves your brand it, you know, drives up, conversions, everything if you can kind of get the buy-in take a beat and pursue this, ok, where should we start our conversation? That was great over that was excellent. Overviewing thank you. Should we get started? Well, you should get started by, you know, finding some similarly minded colleagues, right? So talk to your team members about this current problem. Probably everybody started talking about it. I’m sure they are. Right, so talk to them about this. Just, you know, new notion that people are pursuing get the, you know, good kind of the buy-in from your colleagues and then start reaching out to people who are, you know, a little above you who could be an ambassador for you to senior leadership and work on getting that buy-in from those folks and then you just start by where you’re basically telling them or trying to get them on board with. We need to be more strategic about this. Yeah. Here. Our problems. Yes. And here’s, what are potential outcomes are yeah, if we can be a lot more sophisticated about, like here’s. Why we’re drowning, right? He’s, our driving here’s where our pages aren’t really converting people here’s why there now, not performing to where we want them go and you can even, like, start with your business goal. And then you pursue an audit. We got a big hump, okay, just went away. Okay. Great. What that was that was the speakers, the thie non-profit radio sound system. A cz exemplary it’s beyond question. So that came from the austin convention center. I wish i could run. I could run. This convention out of the way we run non-profit really agree? I don’t know these losers here. Yeah, but so one of the great first step to take us to get an audit done right? And so it’s an inventory of all of your content, but then it’s the audit phase, which you’re you know, you’re evaluating page by page, and for some people, this could be like tens of thousands of pages on their website right lorts a couple hundred, you’re evaluating page by page and determining whether that content piece of content actually lines with what everybody says your business goals are it’s a pretty serious audit? Now you gotta look at every page, every page, and obviously, if you have hundreds of thousands of pages, or if you’re, you know, a merchant’s site you’re going, you’re going to do like a sample size of those pages, right? You’re the idea is to just see, really, hell, well, you’re you’re content is performing and a lot of times that drives a conversation that drives, you know, that gives you the ammunition to make the case that we need to make a change, so an audit is key. It’s the first place to start and then you’re pursuing just getting that content landscape kind of sketched out determining what you’re ecosystem is right. So let’s say, you’ve got like, you know, thirty things the organization works on for non-profit you’re gonna have all kinds of things somebody’s working on. So you get the executives and the subject experts to agree? Like what? Our priorities right where the organization’s priorities get really clear on that, and then look at how those priorities and those areas they’re kind of developed on your site. Do you have one thing that’s like this really, really weird offshoot thing? Just like favorite thing, and you have, like, forty thousand pages on it. This should all be driven by the mission. Yeah, exactly. I already should be pretty clear. Yeah. Moflow very yeah, smooth from your your mission statement. Yeah, but what you’ll find, but i think a lot of non-profit especially large ones like, oh, my gosh, there’s there’s competing goals were competing priorities, and competing interpretations of with that mission is all across organization, which leaves just, you know, a lot of strife and a lot of tension for folks who were like right in the middle of that content production system, like the web editors. So, yeah, the idea is to kind of, like, sketch out what your content ecosystem should be. So if our priority right here is, like farm animal welfare, we we should have, like, the depth of that contact your sights to reflect that, and it should also reflect what the current priorities are and the tone that you should using, etcetera. But if you have something that’s just, like, really, really low priority, it doesn’t make sense for that to have, you know, take up twenty percent of the site and you’ll find that that happens a lot of times, so okay, okay, so we were going to get some early stakeholders summerlee allies engaged with us, yeah, hyre who then starts to develop the content strategy? So, you know, you may have someone who is a content strategist on your team, like, if so lucky you a lot of places, all right, let’s assume not our audience is small and midsize. Non-profit yeah, exactly, i know, and i’m from a huge non-profit and we don’t have anything like that, so usually this falls on the shoulders. Of you know that editorial director of a website or, you know, a director of any filler online platforms and usually going to fall on them, and it doesn’t have to be like we’re going to do all of this right now. It can be baby steps. They can be like let’s just take on one like many project and apply content strategy to it, like run that through that screen, kind of demonstrate successive that way, teo to your stakeholders and say, look how well this worked. Look how we drove results this way by applying attention and focus to this, and then you could move on to a larger things, but it always usually kind of just germinates from the web team, maybe someone else, depending on how the organisation structure and maybe someone like development or design. Everybody has a part in this, but yeah. Then it just gets not only getting the work done and turning your website our platform into what you wanted to be. Okay, that all sounds very simple, but there’s gotta be more to it on. We got plenty of time to spend together. So where? Where do we go now? Well i mean, yeah, gosh, so it starts with the audit, you know, and you’re looking into how your, how you’re this map to your goals and everything, and then you might start with, like, a section of the website, maybe a section that you feel like the stakeholders there are going to be easy to work with, and they’re going to, like, excited about the process, and so you might start with that that that section that makes a lot of sense but very good to make it explicit, you got some of those early allies. Zoho leaving some of their content is the place to start, you know, and don’t start with someone who are a section of your organization who, you know, it’s been kind of contentious to work with them, and a lot of people talk about how content started she’s about, like therapy, right? It’s like all these relationships, because content is so personal, there’s so many people who were owning content across the organization and to them that that page that they wrote on legs, horse, immuno contraception is like their baby, right? Like, okay, well, this makes no sense to an audience this makes no sense to a user, how are they going to do that? So a lot of this kind of, you know, your revision work or whatever is collaborative, and you’re getting people on those teams who contribute to content and you’re all coming to a consensus on, like, what it should be based on, like what? We’ve all agreed on the goals, and we’ve all agreed on the audience, like, how can we change? And sometimes you get them involved in writing new stuff? It all depends on kind of the scope of the organization and how involved everybody wants to be, but it should be a collaborative process, and it could be merely taking, like, five pages that you took out from the audit and saying, like, okay, well, these pages are they really working for us? And so you get them involved in that early early stages so they can kind of see it don’t feel like they’re being put upon, right? A lot of this is relationship management, and so, yeah, you may take five pages and two of them make the cut on the new site, but you’ve all worked on that together. Three then you decide to retire or, you know, you can, you know, contingency plan it, right? Like have a couple of bourbons on it, and he composed it. But the whole thing should be collaborates. You have everybody going on the same page from beginning tend so we should be thinking also about our audiences. That’s, right, who’s who’s consuming this content, right? And so that’s. One of the first things you develop as your, you know, working on your goal, you’re also thinking about your audience. And so anybody who’s working in a content strategy, capacity and organizations should be talking a lot, teo, all the stakeholders throughout the organization who are touching that content, right? So my job would be to go to that course. Amina, contraception page owner i mean, like, why is this important to you? Tell me, i use this in your work, but do you really, really want to see this? And what do you want them to do with it on? Don’t get a lot of really, really good information out of that. It sometimes turns out to be less contentious than you may have thought it wass right? You’ll discover that like, oh, actually they’re you know, they’re worked, requires something different, and now i can pitch something different to them that’s more useful than like this page on the website that i’ve seen has gotten like twenty, views and past year and so it’s, just a lot of lot of talking relationship management, and then once you’ve got kind of, i guess that section worked on or even the whole site, then you just move on to a governance situation and actually see bret coming right here. Maybe he wants to speak on governance. Governance is actually brett’s section right? Red, you better hurry up, man. Come on. Get in here. Brett, please get in here quickly because we just transition to your section. Take your lanyard off, please. Red came in late, but we can accommodate him. And actually, we were just getting to the section on governance, governance. So please put on your headset because you’ll hear a lot better and filter out background noise. And wes is going to bring you into the picture. We got everybody, wes. Alright, outstanding welcome. Thank you. Okay. This is brett brett brett meyer, content strategist for think shout welcome. Welcome to non-profit radio. Thank you. Coming closer to the microphone, please should be within an inch. All right, excellent. Katie was doing an excellent job. Hopefully you were going to join us, but we would have gone ahead without you. So i don’t want you to think that you are indispensable. Great, but you did show up at the exact right time is very good timing if you’re going to be late was perfect great governance, governance around our our content strategy. What what does? What does that even mean? The governance of it governance is the plan for the plan. There are a lot of non-profits these days who are under the impression that they need to create as much content as possible, which is kind of the opposite of having his strategy. So governance ltu plan who is responsible for what? So you’re going to have probably a team of writers. Is that team of writers going to be able to publish content directly to the website themselves, or is it going to go through a review process? The whole thing around governance is making sure that people understand what their roles are and setting up the map for how content. Is going to move from creation through publication to the public. Okay? And as we are, these are these are written this’s, a written plan, this government’s plan. Ideally, it is going to be written down. Usually, it is more of a word of mouth thing, and people just have a general idea of what their roles are. We always advised that there is that kind of written plan or map of how things work, because people leave and new people come in. And if you don’t have that documentation for how things were supposed to work, it takes them a long time to get back up to speed. All right? 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 philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation. Top trends. Sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio and i’m gale bauer from sponsorship strategist. Dot com. Let’s, go into a lot more detail. Way got some time left together. What what? What what element do you like to see in in the government governance plan? Let’s? Take the idea where it is, it is written? Yes, we try to make sure that things aren’t just happening in the communications department because everybody’s going to have some sort of content that they want to get on the web site that day, we talked about getting the early buy-in great. So yeah, it’s it’s kind of along the lines of a cross functional team, you have to identify who the best writers are the people who are going to create content that’s going to have meaning for the users who were coming to the website and just generally making sure that they understand what their roles are, who is going to be creating the content who’s going to be editing the content? If you have that kind of evergreen content, they stuff that is going to be kind of a permanent fixture of the website. How often are you going to go back and take a look at that content again to make sure that it is meeting? The needs of the organization isn’t performing as well as it should be. So part of the governance is it also understanding what the metrics for success are and the metro for success are going to be a lot different for the about the organisation information than it would be for, say, the blawg or if they’re doing events? An event is a very time box thing it’s going to have a ramp up? They’re going to be pushing a lot of content or information around the event, but as soon as the event is past that usually doesn’t have a lot of utility as opposed to maybe some of the about us content you want to get across what the goals of the organization is, what the organization does. You want people to really understand what this non-profit is trying to accomplish its very important content, so they need to keep coming back and making sure that it’s working, writing down the goals means that they have something to measure against, and they’re not just creating content in the dark. Katie, i see you doing a lot of nodding, but there’s things you like to add, i mean, the only thing i would add to that i’m sure brett nose like you would think, really addresses the idea that content is like a living, breathing thing, right? The website this is living, breathing thing it’s very different than an email that you sent out to your list. You know, it has to be up there all the time. And so what? Brett’s talking about it’s so critical, teo to know that it’s not enough just when you hit publish, you know, it’s not like a print magazine. It’s not like an email, he just sent out not even, like log, you know, so that’s just the beginning when you hit publish and so this governance is so, so critical to making sure content is still performing, you know, a year from now or that you that you remember that it’s up, it makes a lot of times you have a huge website, people were like, oh, that that page, yeah, it happens to people who are, like, really deeply invested as well. Just i have a huge websites going to it’s going to take over if you don’t govern it let’s spend a good amount of time talking about the measurement and the success metrics go ahead, that’s your that’s, your area? Excellent. Yes, we’ve been doing a lot of data with our cloudgood data work with our clients recently, so we know for a fact that the home page is not the common way that people come into a website anymore. They’re using google, they’re coming in deep in into the site, through social media or through what’s called dark social, the people chatting each other, links on stuff that can’t really be tracked. No, you have to understand that any page of your website might be creating that first impression for folks, but the goals of the various types of content that you might have on your website are going to be different. So when we do work with clients, we try to help them understand that an event page, a page that somebody might google for. Oh, amplify austin, for example. What? We don’t know exactly what page they’re going to come into at first, but as the data starts to come in, you can see where they’re entering the site and you can help. You can come up with the metrics that are going to let you know whether or not that paige is successful, so if you’re coming into an event page with the registration, you want them to get the information about the event very quickly and decide whether or not they want to attend, and the next step from that would be clicking on the register button, which would be very different from a post on the block where you want them to consume the content and then probably share it. So the metrics there going to be slightly different. The important part is to recognize all the types of content and set up the different metrics that will indicate success for that particular organization, because it’s always going to be different, okay? And katie, we were using the interesting example of the equine immuno contraception paige thank, which could be a coin acquaint, contra or something. Yeah, i mean that that was so it was so benefit from governance. I would just so benefit from having those questions asked. Like, what does it mean for this page to succeed? What do you want your users to do with it? And then really, really, like, trail down and see if that’s happening. And i think that that could take care of so much like problem content on so many people’s websites, if you’re just sticking to you, like, really direct, objective measurement and then there’s kind of you take away all the, like, the sensitivity with that, like, okay, here’s this thing that i didn’t say like, you know, google said it, whatever, we still have several minutes left together, what what have we not talked about? Whatever i ask you that that you want to share? I like to, and i know that katie agrees with this because we’ve talked about it a little bit make sure that krauz understand the content strategy doesn’t have to be just about the website, and it shouldn’t just be in the communications department e channel it is multi channel and the development, the people in the development department who are sending out fund-raising letters that is a piece of content that is going to create an impression and if any one of these things is a little bit off message, i mean, we don’t want to get too far into the whole whole branding part. But if anything’s too far off message or strikes a wrong note with the supporters, you’re probably going to lose thumb, at least in the short term. I’m so glad you brought that up exactly whenever i’ve talked about content started, you know, a lot of people think like, oh that’s just for websites and even this idea that content is only on a website and just like no like a tweet is content any you know, period it’s, certain pages, that’s, all content that’s why i get so excited about this top because i really feel like it has, you know, with the ability to bring everything together and it can get kind of as big as you want it to be. But that’s what that’s? Why it’s so cool? And i the best organizations i’ve seen are the ones who are integrating every single channel into their content strategy and all just completely flows the same ethics, the same style, the same tone, the same priorities and goals and audiences were just really, really woven and deeply, inappropriately and it’s just like it’s cake. I love it! Brett katina, a zay mentioned, talked about getting some allies early on and then may be developing a mini project. Around some of their content. Do you have any other ideas you want to add about trying to get this? This team buy-in whether it’s in the early stage or or in the later stages, maybe some, maybe some departments are not as willing as others. What advice do you have there? Katie is absolutely right getting that early win always going to be important because then you’d demonstrate the success or what you can possibly achieve by having a written content strategy other than that getting that leadership buy-in early is it’s, not just from the team that you’re assembling, that that’s going to be creating the content. Leadership really has to support this and understand the value they already understand the value, because we’ve been talking about branding at the non-profit technology conference for a long time, there’s a lot of companies who’ve been helping non-profits developed this brand, but the content that is supporting the brand has to be taken into account too. So it’s not a big step for leadership to take, from supporting the brand to supporting the content that is supporting the brand. Yeah, like there’s, so much overlap with just brand and content. Strategy is the time o que onda geun this all all flows from our mission statement, so that seems like the place to start. Katie and i did talk about that anything you want to add about that non-profits have a built in advantage. They don’t have to worry about what the for-profit companies do because everything should be coming out of their mission and their values when your values driven organization it’s much easier to develop content that has meaning than, say, one, a big company that wants to sell you shoes and thinks that a good way to do that is by showing people succeeding let’s, leave it there, all right, brett meyer is content strategist with think shout and katie caress, director of online communications for the humane society legislative fund. Brett carry katy. Thank you very much. Thinking having real pleasure. Thankyou. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen austin, texas. Thanks so much for being with us. Thanks to everybody at the non-profit technology conference and intend the non-profit technology network. Thank you very much. Next week, two regulars are returning. Amy sample ward and jean takagi if you missed. Any part of today’s show? Find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go? Opportunity, collaboration, the world convenes for poverty reduction. It’ll ruin you for every other conference, i swear. That’s, true opportunity, collaboration, dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Shows social media is by susan chavez at susan chavez. Dot com on our music is by scott stein of brooklyn. Yeah, with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Buy-in 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 or no presentation or anything people don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun 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. 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Nonprofit Radio for April 10, 2015: The Agitator’s Donor Retention & Wearable And Mobile Tech

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Roger CraverThe Agitator’s Donor Retention

Roger Craver is The Agitator and his book is “Retention Fundraising.” He has strategies to help you keep the donors you’ve got.

 

 

 

Avi KaplanWearable And Mobile Tech

Google Glass. iBeacon. These and other devices and apps have implications for your organization. Should you pay attention and where? How do you avoid shiny object syndrome? Avi Kaplan is director of online strategy at Rad Campaign and we talked at NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference.

 

 

 


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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. Chelsea ferraro, quote, your show is such an inspiration to me and i enjoyed listening each and every week i do my best to encourage others to do the same end quote chelsea, i can’t ask anything more that is just outstanding. Thank you so much. You have my best wishes for your new job and i’m going to send you a video. And from that video, you choose a book from the non-profit radio library and i’ll ship it out to you. It’s yours. Congratulations, chelsea listener of the weak and thank you so much for loving non-profit radio i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with asthmatic sn ophelia, if i got wind of the idea that you missed today’s, show the agitators dona retention. Roger craver is the agitator and his book is retention fund-raising he has strategies to help you keep the donors you’ve got and wearable and mobile tech google glass ibeacon, these and other devices and aps have implications for your organization, should you? Pay attention. And where? How do you avoid shiny object syndrome? Avi kaplan is director of online strategy at radcampaign. And we talked at ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference on tony’s. Take two between the guests. A double honor and a fellowship opening responsive by opportunity collaboration with working meeting on poverty reduction that will ruin you for every other conference. I’m really glad that roger craver, the agitator is with me. He’s, the agitator at the agitator dot net he’s been shaking things up for a long time in big ways. He helped launch organizations like common cause greenpeace, the national organization for women and amnesty international. Damn that’s. Impressive. His book is retention fund-raising the new art and science of keeping your donors for life published by emerson and church he’s at roger craver on twitter and right now. He’s on non-profit radio welcome, roger craver. Thanks, tony it’s. Great to be with you, it’s. A pleasure it’s. A real pleasure to interview the agitator. I love that the agitator that’s cool like thank you. Did you think about the anarchist? Did you consider that or no it’s? No, i don’t need that much chaos. I think they’re stirring. Things up in agitating ways. Good. Okay, that’s sufficient? I understand. Um, why was there a need for a book called retention? Fund-raising well, for the last ten years, possibly fifteen years, american non-profits and european non-profits have been basically losing mohr donors than they’re gaining. And that is that is a real problem, not only for the present, but for the future, the history of fund-raising before then was the donors were fairly easy to come by, and the cost of acquiring them was relatively inexpensive. And so there was a sort of burn and turn mentality that so what if we lose the donors? Well, well, get new donors and simply replaceable that’s not possible anymore. And so people who are you caring about? Their organizations future need to be caring about holding on to the donors they have early in the book, you cite a twenty thirteen a f p association of fund-raising professional study that says that ah, a few things, but it starts with flat fund-raising every every hundred dollars raised from new donors was offset by one hundred dollars, in losses. That’s, right? And it got worse. It got worse in two thousand fourteen. It was off by one hundred six dollars really way are going the wrong way. Um, and then also that there was negative growth in the number of donors for every hundred dollars for every hundred donors acquired, one hundred seven were lost. That’s, right, that’s, right. Pretty a pretty frightening statistic when you couple that with the fact that the number of non-profit has grown enormously in the last thirty years. It’s grown from about six hundred thousand to a million. Five hundred thousand non-profits so many more non-profits chasing far fewer donors. That, in essence, is the problem. And why retention is so important, many more charities chasing many fewer donors. Right? Alright, so that is clearly unsustainable. Um, all right. So, what we gonna do about this? Well, that’s, what i asked myself after after watching these statistics for a long time, i decided there there really has to be an empirical way too. Find out why donors leave and what we can do to keep them in the bowl. Yes, the study and s so we set out to do and did a two year study of two hundred fifty non-profits in the united states and in the united kingdom and survey tens of thousands of donors to determine why they leave, and then what steps on organization could take to hold on to them? And that it is the findings from that study that i’ve encapsulated in this in this book, along with some quite practical suggestions on what organizations khun due to step in this hemorrhaging, we’re going to get to those because that you call them retention winds? Yep. Um ah! Finger pointing is not particularly valuable, but i’d like to do some anyway. My show, we’re going to do whatever the hell i want. Where do you think that? How do you think this problem arose? This lays a fair, lackadaisical attitude about how we treat our donors and doesn’t matter. We lose some, we’ll gain more back. Where does the fault line you think? Well, if it arose from the days when it was so easy and inexpensive, too acquire donors and at a time when direct response became very popular way of acquiring donors and so they the mindset became sort of it’s it’s. Easier to sign the purchase order for direct mail lists and printing than it is to really worry about how to take care. Oh, rather casual. Okay, so we consign this purchase order for an acquisition, mailing campaign or whatever, whatever channel we use acquisition, campaign and that’s easier than being introspective and evaluating and then improving the way we treat our donors exactly, because, uh, the the reality is that, uh, treating a donor well takes thought takes work, takes planning and, uh, takes the willingness to build a relationship between the organization and the donor and that that involves a lot more than simply mailing a letter or making a phone call. And i love that we’re talking to someone who has studied this problem. I noticed a non-profit radio last couple of weeks, i’ve been saying introspection a lot, this but it just seems to be coming up with a number of guests that non-profits i need to be introspective about whatever, whatever subject we’re talking about this that’s not enough it’s critical self evaluation. No, there isn’t. And one of the one of the reasons for that there’s a there’s a so called well there’s a horrible jargon term called brett. Best practice. Okay, what in the earth? Best practices are i? Don’t know, and i’ve been doing this for fifty years, but people latch onto that term and they most often compare their organization with other organisations and say, well, if we’re we’re doing about as well as the other other guy, so we must be using best practices but that you know, that there’s no introspection involved in that that’s that’s like reading the box score something it makes no sense. I mean, the other, the other organization might be doing it badly. You can’t you can’t just say that we were consistent with others they maybe, maybe underachievers. And by the way, we have non-profit radio we have jargon jail but best practices has been used so often that i’m not even sure that’s jargon anymore. It’s ah it’s. More like cliche. We should send it. Send ugo senate jargon jail within you. Teo, send you teo cliche camp, are you near? Are you near an airport? There’s a jets taking ice and you’re about thirty miles away. But one just came over, so okay, well, maybe we’re being a song that kept going. It didn’t stop. Right? Okay, we would’ve heard it if it stopped. All right, so we’ll put you in cliche camp, which doesn’t sound that bad joke it’s like for minor offenders. That’s a juvenile would be in there. That’s trade. I don’t use it. No, i don’t think there is such a thing. Best practice. Um, and i’ve been hearing state of the art a lot too. Maybe that’s replacing best practices, but there’s just a substitution. All right, spare us and thought thought leadership we could we could talk all day about jargon. Jail thought leadership. Yes, i know there’s a lot of it in non-profits and that’s. Why? Non-profit radio has drug in jail sometimes i let offenders off easy and other times probation is is harder to come by. All right, we’re gonna go out for a break. And when roger and i come back, we’ve got a good amount of time. We’re going to talk about some of these retention wins that are easy to do and and had a help you build trust with your current existing donors so they don’t depart. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst. Of fund-raising insights, published once a month, tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent we’re pre recorded this week. I’m sorry, i can’t send ah town and city live listener love but you know that i love are live listeners so that’s out to each of you listening live podcast pleasantries those on the time shift, wherever you are, whatever device whatever time. Whenever however many days or weeks later, you listen to non-profit radio pleasantries to you and never forget our affiliates. Very important affiliate affection out to each of our affiliates throughout the country non-profit radio was heard. Okay, roger craver. Now, how can we be sure that these retention winds are not cloaked? Best practices? Well, so he could be sure based on empirical data as measured from the responses of ah, thousands and thousands of donors. There’s. No conjecture here on my part. You know, there’s there’s, lots of so called best practices where the people say, well, you know, you ought to print your thank you notes on a very high quality paper. Or you ought to get him out within twenty four hours. Or you need tio send x number of cultivation pieces with no asks. And all that, of course, is is pure tribal wisdom, so our best practices, whatever you want to call it. So here we weigh in this study, we measured what people care most about and what they don’t care about and put it in priority order according to their responses, and came up with a way of of isolating the seven drivers that make for retention or flipside of retention of courses is attrition. And, you know, tony, all all of this is really based on apart from our empirical data, there’s a lot of common sense here, but common sense, it turns out, is a fairly rare commodity. Ah, the business of building relationships, which is what donorsearch tension is all about is based on two, two things consistency and reliability. None of this, uh, listening to this program have serious personal relationships that don’t have an element of substantial element of consistency and reliability by if i say to my spouse, i’m i’m going to meet you at seven thirty, and i’m persistently late or early or inconsistent with that. That relationship is not goingto laugh the same the same when it comes your have you been talking? To my wife, you’re describing my marriage, let’s, let’s keep personalities and personal lives out of this job. All right, well, people just translated into into the non-profit world if i if i receive a on appeal, a prospect appeal let’s, say from from an animal organization and it talks about rescuing puppies and cats, and i send them a contribution. And the next thing i know, i get an acknowledgement letter about the oceans and let’s save some whales that is not consistent, and i will not likely be back to that organization with another gift or if they send that acknowledgement letter and it says roger carver instead of roger craver call their their help line, and i get a rather surly or non-cash arika clerk, and he says, well, i may i try to get to it as soon as i can and isn’t very helpful. I’m not going to go back with another gift because that’s an unreliable organization, so we have to understand that relationships are built on trust and the two pillars of trust or consistency and reliability. Andi therein lies the key to retention because it leads to the next element of of retention, which is understanding the donors the importance of the donors attitude. You know, it’s it’s, not it’s, not the donors behaviour that we should be concerned about behavior in the sense of transactions giving money or not giving yeah, donors attitude that we need to care about because the organization bonem determines what that attitude is going to be by the organization’s action. Yeah, when you use organization is doing things that affect the donor positively, then the donor’s attitude will lead to behaviour that makes transaction increases. The size of a gift renews the membership, whatever, whatever the desired outcome. But it’s, not the donor per se, that is to blame are not to blame. It is the organization’s action. I have determined how that donor feels about the organization that something that folks really need to understand if they’re serious about donor-centric right? How did they perceive? Perceive your organization? Is it professional? Does it care about me as a donor? Aside from all the programmatic important work that it’s doing. But how does it treat our relationship that’s? Right? And that that tony that is paramount in ah, donors. Psyche. No, they people hyre non-profits to do a variety of of things a number of jobs sometimes is to make them feel good sometimes it’s to enable them to be able to tell their peer group that they’re doing this or that sometimes it’s, because they want to do a specific thing, but very seldom is what is that, what the organization claims it is in their appeals. Many people really don’t care that you have ten regional offices or that your ceo has appeared six times in the new york times, none none of that is important yet organizations just love talking about themselves, and nothing is more deadly and building a donor relationship that let’s move into these retention winds, which i’ll remind people are just reiterate these air based on empirical study, not not conventional wisdom or would just tribal wisdom that has been repeated at conference after conference. Just because one organization does it a certain way and they’ve been successful doesn’t mean that that’s going to be successful universally it’s not really lesson that’s amore that’s an anecdote. Um okay, you like saying thank you. That sounds pretty simple. Why does it why does this need to be? Why does need to be said, well, it needs to be said because sixty four percent of american non-profits don’t bother thanking their donors. We could start, we can start right there two thirds to two thirds of gifts or not not acknowledged and thanked. You’re saying are not are not acknowledged, thank some. Some of that third is acknowledged the sense of a tax receipt, but a tax receipt doesn’t go very far to build toward building a personal relationship. That’s a little cold? Yeah, yeah, patane has retained this receipt for your tax advisers evaluation? Yeah, exactly, exactly so they the importance of a thank you is that it is the it is an initial step in building a relationship, and we’ve learned a couple things through this study that that air quite important. One is it needs to be personal, and by that i don’t mean personalized i mean, personal sounding and warm, warm of heart and meaningful to the donor not necessarily long, but it really has to be real. Not way we’re so happy to have received your twenty five dollars gift, it will be put to immediate ineffective you sincerely, x y z that is not a that is not a thank you. Rather it is. Dear tony, your check arrived. I can’t tell you how happy it’s going to make sammy who tomorrow will have not only a meal, but he will have a toy for christmas heimans and so forth so it needs it really needs to connect the donor to the organization and the donor’s gift to a beneficiary in a real sense of the of the word. Something has something way before you get timely there’s no automatic rule that it has xero out within twenty four hours, but it should go out promptly after receipt of the gift. Because we in the studies we we’ve done the preferential time is forty eight hours, but donors are forgiving of taking longer than that. What they’re not forgiving of are these form printed, impersonal, thank you’s that just ring ring hollow. So that’s that’s the importance of saying thank you? One of the things you mentioned that i want to emphasize is that the thank you doesn’t have to be long? It doesn’t. I’ve heard this and said it many times on the show heard it from guests to be genuine and sincere does not require something long. No, i mean, i love you. If it’s if it’s said in a heartfelt way, three words does an awful lot to a relationship. That’s your right that’s it that’s an outstanding analogy. Cool. All right. Oh, and the book points out that there’s, um, resource is available around. Thank you’s. You have. Ah, there’s a thank you letter clinic at sophie, which is the showcase of fund-raising inspiration and innovation and your ovary thoughtful to point out that people can lift thank you letter ideas from there, but not copy and paste. No, not copy and face, but take, uh, lisa sergeant has put that together and done a terrific job, and she she has an attic full of ah, wonderful. Thank you. Uh, campaigns in there and get inspired by it. And by all means use that, you know, shaul had a saying the mediocre borrow genius steals and there’s lots of good stuff on sophie that’s that’s worth looking at that will give you ideas. And this thank you. Clinic is certainly one of them. All right, mediocre borrow and the genius steals hyre i’m in the wrong business. What we gotta transcend. The law’s a little more often, but there we go. You want us to be boring? What do you mean what’s behind that? Be boring. Let’s go back to the to the term consistency, one of the one of the realities of painful realities among most non-profits is they get tired of their of their same message, and as a result, because they’re bored. Uh, they they hyre another copy writer or the same copywriter and say let’s, let’s do something fancy or something that glows in the dark. Something different, something exciting? Well, that is that is not only a horrible waste of time and money. It’s also destructive of relationships, consistency is important and that’s what i mean by be boring. You may be tired of the same message you, mr or mrs organization of same message. But the donor isn’t tired of the same message. They they join for that reason and they want to stay involved for that reason, so be consistent. That doesn’t mean you have to copy the same thing every time, but stay on the same team that have produced the donor in the first place and the same the same way a good politician will give the same stump speech over and over again. She may be absolutely sick and tired of it, and the press may be sick and tired of it, and her staff may be sick and tired of it, but it is a speech that works with don’t with the voters, and it has to be given over and over again. You have a background in political consulting, too, don’t you? Yes, ideo i, uh, did a lot of work for twenty years for a number of democratic senators, presidential candidates and, of course, citizen advocacy work for groups like greenpeace, the seal, you and others that’s all tied to politics. You’ve been around, you’ve been doing this a long time. Did you say fifty years earlier? I believe just think, yeah, i’m probably older than most of the trees you’re looking at. Well, i’m in new york, so thie average tree life in new york and i think seven years, the street trees. So you got you got those? You’ve got those covered, but all right, you’ve been around it. I’m in i admire its wisdom, its wisdom coming shoretz empirically it’s empirical wisdom it’s not anecdotal. Here’s what’s worked for me in my client’s through the decades. Okay, you want to listen to donors, don’t you? Absolutely. And here here is on area that organizations can really score against the competition and can also help themselves because very few folks in the nonprofit world design efforts to get the feedback from their donors. You know the court corporate america spends billions of dollars getting feedback. If you go on an airline, get off that airline the next day you get a survey you goto to ah, hotel, the next day you get a survey after you’ve checked out my heavens, even ihop does a survey on the back of the receipts from their breakfast, and the reason they do this is they know that it, uh, that asking for people’s opinion builds satisfaction and builds loyalty, and it is so easy to do, and it is so inexpensive to do, but most non-profits don’t do it, and they just keep the mute button on rather than listen to their donors. But by having feedback mechanisms, you can find out that your website, uh, sucks when it comes to the donate page, or you can find out. That you’re donorsearch vis program isn’t good, and these these feedback mechanisms are there basically widgets that you can put on your website or questions you can put in your direct mail? Andi, uh, get get the donor’s opinion and, you know, tony one one of the thing on that you don’t have to necessarily get a written response or telephone response from a donor zamir act repeat, the mere act of asking for someone’s opinion and feedback will boost retention by thirty percent. That is a significant difference. Roger, we have teo to start to wrap up. We just have about thirty seconds left, and, uh, i want listeners, of course, to know there are many more retention winds in the book retention fund-raising published by emerson and church. Roger. Just spend a couple seconds. Small and midsize shops have a big advantage here, don’t they? They absolutely do. And i love your your slogan for the other ninety five percent because they have a huge advantage because they can do things personally. And a well run non-profit shop that pays attention to its donors will exceed, uh, return on investment by by five to ten times higher than the big organization roger craver he’s, the agitator to find omit the agitator dot net, and at roger craver on twitter, roger, thank you so much for sharing all that empirical wisdom. It’s my pleasure and i join chelsea and your fan club thank you coul write something nice and i’ll make you a listener of the week. Thank you again. Tony’s take two and wearable mobile and tech coming up. First opportunity collaboration. It was a terrific experience. It really kicked us up to the next level that’s ross baird, executive director of village capital. And there are lots of funders at o c. Extremely useful contacts, projects funding. It opens people that’s alberto vasquez, president of soc edad e dis capacidad in saudi’s, peru oh, see opportunity. Collaboration is a week long conference in x top of mexico centered around poverty reduction throughout the world. It’s in october you’ve heard me tell you i was there last year and i’m going again this year. If your work is related at all to poverty reduction anywhere in the world, check it out. Opportunity collaboration, dot net! I’m being honored by hermandad, a charity that brings water to the poorest of the poor in the dominican republic. I’ve been helping them save lives for lots of years, and it would be a double honor if you’d be with me by making a gift to hermandad, we can save lives together in the dominican republic and be honored together on april twenty third. That’s that’s really what i’m thinking video and links are tony martignetti dot com and i thank you very much for considering helping me save those lives. Are you a millennial interested in measuring social good? Then evaluate for change has your next career move they are recruiting for their millennial non-profit data fellowship. The ideal candidate is a millennial employed or volunteering at a non-profit and dedicated to using data to improve the nonprofit sector. Roger craver would approve of this very strongly. I believe the fellowship is part time and includes training, mentoring and a final capstone project. The application deadline is april thirtieth. Apply at evaluate for change dot com that is tony’s take two for friday, tenth of april fourteenth show of the year and here is my non-profit technology conference interview on wearable and mobile tech with abby kopperman welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen we’re in austin, texas, at the convention center in austin. My guest is avi kaplan he’s, director of online strategy for radcampaign brovey welcome, thank you durney pleasure to have you ah, your topic is wearable and mobile tech what it means for non-profits there’s, there’s a lot of new stuff out there, there is yes, just generally now we have plenty of time together, so you don’t have to pack it all into one answer, but generally, what does it mean for non-profits i think there’s a lot of exciting technology is emerging, a lot of organizations, they’re trying to make sure that they’re experimenting and taking advantage of all the technology available to them. Um and ah mobil’s, obviously a really great opportunity for engagement, but i think what it means is also there’s there’s um, it’s become a bit of a buzz word to me, you know? What are you doing on mobile? So what i think it means is it’s it’s an opportunity tio tio, come up with some some valuable ways to engage with their community um, but also to be really thoughtful and making making sure that you are investing your time and resources wisely in this area. Yes. We need to avoid shiny object syndrome. Yes. Okay. Because there’s, because there are plenty of shiny objects. Teo, to attract our attention. All right. What’s ah, what’s what’s. Interesting to you. What would you like to start talking about? Sure. Well, i think one of the starting points that a lot of non-profits today have when they think about mobile is related to their websites. You know, having mobile website being mullet going mobile responsive has become really wide, very widespread tactic your sight. If your sight’s not mobile responsive, you’re not creating a great experience for a huge portion of your audience. That’s growing. We have just interrupt. You interrupt a lot because i like to have yeah, absolutely. How many people view more likely to be viewing on mobile device? And then ah, desktop, what laptop? What kind of depends on on your audience? But you’re good, benchmark. Ah, somewhere between twenty and thirty percent for the average non-profit depends on your sector. Okay, if your audience is more you know, advocacy volunteer focused and expect that to be hyre through demographic is younger, more, you know, if you’re do something dot org’s there, i would assume upwards of fifty percent of their eyes. Ah, mole is mobile browsing audience i’ve had are your finger on the show, the ceo of do something she’s got a couple times, and also, you know, they have t m i their spin off for for consulting their head around, talking about that because you ceo of that ceo of do something yeah, that’s probably at least fifty percent buy-in likely hyre for, you know, for a larger legacy organization associations, i would expect around twenty percent, but, you know, it’s, easy to find, figure that out exactly for for your website with google analytics or another analytics platform if you’re have that set up. Ok, so we certainly should be paying attention to, uh what? How many people are viewing on our site through mobile? Now it seems a lot that ah, a lot of times in some organizations, people aren’t even going back to the website that often they’re more engaging on the social channels. Yeah, sure, i mean, that’s being conscious of where your contents being engaged with, right? You know, if it’s if it’s all in the facebook news feed or it’s, the grand feeds their, you know, whatever platform piece you observe people, you know, talking about your story, a lot of the social experiences on mobile as well. So being conscious of what networks folks are using to talk about, you know where that conversation’s happening, it becomes a mobile conversation as well. I think a lot of people don’t wind up at your home page for mobile, but the landing pages that they get, i don’t know what the status but it’s a email as well, it has shifted to mobile for sure. You know, even in the office, a lot of people, um, at their desks work with two devices because they just find email triage is so much easier on a on a tablet or ah or a phone, i do that myself often. Um, so then, you know, you want about the landing page and it’s mobile, you know, i know this is a cool phrase i’ve never heard this phrase email triage because i mean, that suggests it’s a way of medical. Emergency. We’re in a crisis and were triaging all our messages. Yeah, i mean, i’ve never heard that phrase it’s cool, all right? Yeah. I kind of just filtering through things. And, you know, i think a lot of the email platforms tryto try to help people with that and there’s on mobile people there’s some interesting applications to help people with that task. But email triage, female triage. So let’s, talk about if we do need to be mobile optimized moat, which is most likely, what should we be thinking about? How do we achieve this? Well, you the idea with ah responsive website is that, you know, in the design on the as you develop the site, you create break points so that, um, you know, you can you can have your site b device aware and, you know, send out different code two different devices based on, you know, to create a good experience for that. You know, taylor to each device, but for non-profits of a more cost effective way of creating good mobile experiences to create break points based on the browser screen size. So, you know, if you break this down for us to get a little technical, but i’m jorgen jail on non-profit radio, so they’re going to get to try and stay out of jail. Yes, you are. We’ll be quick, quick parole, sure. So you know you’re if your website has a style sheet that the browser loads you, teo latto, you know, produce the design in the browser. You know, the site will load with different layout of different elements on the page based on how wide your screen is. And so, you know, if you’re on ah, you know, a nine inch tablet or ah eleven inch tablet or, you know, fifteen inch screen the pixel with will determine the layout of the elements on the page, but only one set of code will have to be downloaded. So you keep your sight it’s a balance between the speed of your sight loading and an effective way to create a diverse experience without having to think about exactly taylor for every device. Okay, all right, so size is critical. What else? What else were you thinking about for? For responsive sites. Yeah. Yeah. Mobile responses. Yeah, well, you it does help toe to know what. Ah, you want to have a sense of the help. So, you know, this is a scent, a sense of the devices people are using. You can find that in google analytics. Yeah. I mean, if you’re you know, if you know if you’re working with you know, we’re radcampaign we build a lot of response of websites and what we often dio there’s ah ah, device lab actually in near our office in washington, d c and you can go and test on specific, though, but, you know, especially on the android platform there’s, so many different if you have a iphone there’s, you know, six different models, something like that since the beginning of iphone, but on android there’s thousands, you can check out those devices, load your site and and run testing it’s just exactly how it’s going to appear if you have the patience for that and the resource is too, if you’re developing a site in house it’s really worthwhile, especially if you you don’t have the experience of your executive director has, ah, unique device that nobody else in your pockets hasn’t really complaint. Why doesn’t this element load? Well for me? You know, it looks goofy and, you know, you hope to catch all those specific cases as you’re doing your testing, but hyre sometimes it’s it really is something quirky with that device or ah, you know ah, plug in or an extension somebody has and, you know, everybody’s browsing experience if you’re on a tablet on ah, desktop itt’s unique based on your your own quirky set up. So let’s, let’s talk about some of the wearable technology you that’s that’s part of your your workshop also what? What’s what’s exciting there. And where do you see for non-profits? Sure, i see this is kind of more on the horizon for in terms of being a worthwhile investment. But, you know, wearables are everything from, you know, the fitness tracking devices like the fit bid. And you know, microsoft has ah, fitness device coming out there’s a company called misfit thie apple watches coming out, i think in april so it all kind of tracking these analytics of user activity. You know your steps here. Ah, you know, fitness activities and so that’s interesting to me, i think. Just cause it’s creating the consumer familiarity of wearing a device that gives you some some feedback. Interesting piece for non-profit communications and engagement are is that these where these devices start? Tohave notifications built in that our people interacted them a little bit differently. Oh, explain. Explain how that works is this is new to a lot of people. Yeah. Gotomeeting notifications. What anybody means. Sure. So, i mean, just like you get a push notification. Have toe pull out your phone usually, um ah, like fit. But i think they have. They have a couple of models now. There’s there’s ah, small enough screen simple text, but you can just get it’ll pop up and you can read your text message right on the on the device. I don’t mind on your wrist, which saves you from taking your phone out and you know it for non-profit and that’s that’s becoming ah, more more devices are getting becoming popular that had have that feature not just for a text messaging, but you know any type of notification that can show up anything that dahna, you know, android has ah platform called android where are injured, watch and ah, the iphone abila watch is going to be coming out, and that has its own platform. So a lot of mobile labs the people already have installed on their phones, no instagram or yeah, you are snapchat or whatever it is you are goingto have be easily extend, be able to be extended tohave notifications going to people’s wrists, which for non-profits is something you know you could you i could easily see somebody getting very excited about that or leadership. Ah, kind of jumping the gun and saying, oh, we now we need to just send our donation forms everybody’s wrist so it just highlights the importance to be very conscious of people’s, patience and attention valuing the permission they’re giving you too. You know, if somebody does give you permission to bring their wrist that’s having responsibility not to abuse that to respect your audience and ah, be very thoughtful about yeah, and should you even go there if you don’t have that permission, which most organizations probably do not. This is all so new. And just because, you know, you might technically grow a list. Um, i think that’s an awareness you have tohave now with with text, communications, one of organizations that have been successful for advocacy with these, you know, sms campaigns and, you know, text to give you may have a growing, you know, lets the phone numbers you, they’ve given their permission, but maybe they don’t recall or they didn’t really understand ah, quite what permission they were giving, you see really have to be very careful with that. You don’t wantto attacks those relationships. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, so what’s, terrible is i just, you know, i just see that as something to be aware of that, you know, there notifications are becoming, you know, in the next five to ten years, it’s an increasing space, that people are conscious of day today, and there is an opportunity to create a good, you know, it’s, an interesting experience of engagement. Way to be very thoughtful about it. Outside. Kind of think. It’s kind of on the horizon is a very thinking about onda. Respectful of the relationship. And the permission you have been given, basically, is your point. 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 only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Let’s. See? I mean, do you still sticking with the wearables? Do you see that having value in particular sectors? What do you really think in there? Yeah, another kind of area. What ideas? Air occurring to you? Yeah. Another area of wearables relates to kind of well, i mean, everybody, they’re google came out with this thing called glass, which everybody was, you know, it kind of made everyone look like a yeah, but i tried one of those in-kind try it. But there was a friend of mine in new york who was one of the selected beta testers, i guess. Okay, so i had it on for five minutes or something. Yeah, it was cool. I talked to it. Yeah. So, you know, i saw stuff in the lenses. Yeah. Did it really go? Is really taking off the way everybody thought it was going to. I think the expectation was, you know, people got excited. Oh, everybody’s going to have a camera right in front of them. And you know, another screen there looking at it, you know? Ah, you won’t know that i’m you know, teenagers watching. Yeah, you know, breaking bad right in front. Of without mom knowing stuff like that. But the specialized experience for for ah, you know, that premise is about augmented reality, you know, engaging with with a task that you’re that’s in front of you with cem, helpful data or instruction, you know, available that you may have, you know, it’s that it’s more healthful have literally over laid on your on your vision for a specialized task, so it didn’t really take office must really take offers. All the early press is saying a revolution that’s i mean, i see that you asked about, you know, area’s fields where that could be helpful. I think in specialized fields, medical fields in you know where you need unique expertise, maybe in the in the field microsoft has a something called collins coming out and hollow, hollow, hollow lands like a hologram and the kind of really demos they’re just, you know, kind of whiz bang looking. But some of them are very practical, like they had. They had one demo where it was about teaching someone howto repair a light switch in their home, which doesn’t seem like a huge deal. But you could i could imagine you habitat. For humanity, coming up with holland’s demos for, you know you could maybe not need ah, you know, construction as many construction supervisors on site kind of doing involves years writing it as you’re watching it in your in your lens, maybe for howto latto spackle on yeah or tech support, you know, amazon has they have a set of ah, technically, you know, help support kayman what it’s called, but, you know, if you have an amazon tablet or fired-up well, whatever they have, if you get hit a button and then there’ll be, someone pops up on the screen and, you know, you say, you know, i don’t know how i tried to rent this movie and what’s going on, so i can imagine you could, you know, you could be doing some specialized task for for your free dramatic work, um, and carla, somebody with you, teo, you having trouble site from the troubles? You what you’re what you’re dealing exactly where you are immediate help? Yeah, i mean, i could see, you know, if you’re we’re here than non-profit technology conference, you know, maybe you have a navy volunteer who’s setting it, trying to set up radio and streaming set up for your for your live event on they’re having trouble, they could, you know, but on their hololens or whatever, and and have somebody help them literally. You know, figure here is that you know, i i don’t have audio xing the person routines, but somebody helping guys person helping you could see. And you can see them. And they can talk you through andi. Actually, you can do it as their asses were on with them. What is ibeacon? Ah, i beacons are kind of ah, there. It’s a sensor. You know, it’s related to it’s kind of a more granular location sensor. So we have gps, which are satellites that can, you know, peg your location. Ah, as a data point within, you know, i think it’s a few meters or something, maybe even like, twenty meters and ah, we have that there. Yeah, like there’s. Like location tags. Where i guess you’ve been in like a store. The shoplifting tags stop you from taking things out of the store. They know some radius of where that item is in the store. Ok, so i begins. Can they work? I think mostly off. Of the new bluetooth technology on bacon triangulate you within a space within a room. So if if there were i beacons in this room and we kind of tapping into that network on our devices, that could know where, where this device is within inches. So what’s interesting about that, to me, is the opportunity to create an experience, you know, a curated experience for for a space. So if your ah the most immediate, you know, application i see now is for museums where it’s very important, where museumgoers are in the space heimans what caught content that they were going to receive? Ah, what they’re you right, you what they’re going to receive, you know, if you’re here sharing as they moved through the experience, what what added value can you can, you know, perspective on the history of the pieces that, you know, they’re seeing or scientific information on the exhibit, you know, they’re looking at based on where they are, but also, you know, maybe the past they went through that’s how people interact with your contract, and now they’re gone, you could, you know, takes a lot of ah, resources, maybe to do this. But you could you could, if you could take that person’s path through your your space. You could say, you know, everybody who spent and really went through the butterfly exhibit, um, without them, you know, checking off a box. They’re raising their hand, or already, you know, send them all an e mail about our butterfly research or taylor this donation request to that group, which you could only do if you know they’ve, you know you have you have you have the space pegged with eye begins to be able to know where they are, and you have some request. Maybe at the beginning of the you know, the entrance way, you know, let us know, let it let us have for these permission way track. You’re right your your time through through our collection, right? Ok, but you’re going to start to see these around. I mean, there’s, it’s, it’s a little bit. It it goes back against that same permission thing, but also you know that that lack of consumer awareness about the data that is around there for us already, you know, it’s a little spooky sometimes, but, you know, if you’ve ever i don’t like sunpass or metro pass on your car. Sure, you know, there’s that if you have a subscription, uh, you know, to pay the tolls quickly, right? That is actually that’s, not the only place where that gets picked up. When you go in that little devices always picking out your saying, here i am, unique, the same thing that that’s on isn’t that how we find out what traffic l a is like ahead on our gps? Yeah, and there are implications for law enforcement using it for potentially determining speeding all kinds of things. But then also traffic volume, right? Right. So so but the permission you gave in in one location with ivy dickens, right? Yeah, that could be carried in other locations. Right. So if if if there’s a reciprocal relationship between, you know, the museum and other places in the city when they know, you know, send you could segment. Teo, the people on your list who are, you know, frequent restaurant. Goers that, you know, the stone, yeah, restaurant, whatever. You know, you know, and you know, you get, but you’ve got to know that that permission was granted. I mean, you’ve got to know that you’re granting that. Maybe maybe. I think, when you go through the butterfly exhibit, doesn’t, that doesn’t need to be disclosed. Well, i think they’re going to disclose to our partners were going to share with certain partners, and you’ll receive offers related platforms that are that are being set up for, you know, the way that it gets implemented. It’s a tricky thing, because the museum, you know, the point of permission may not even know the cascading effects of that permission. But that’s very risky that well, okay then they’re not fast drinking there don’t think they’re protecting their their constituents adequately if they don’t even know it’s very thoughtful of that air’s alright, we have just about a minute left. What do you want to wrap up with you? Time flies on non-profit sure does with with what’s what what’s, wearable and mobile and what non-profits should be thinking about. Yeah, i mean, i think my big takeaway with this is, you know, there there are some interesting technologies out there, but you should be very thoughtful. Make sure that what what you’re investing your time and resource is our in isn’t isn’t shiny object like you mentioned is gonna have a real specific value. Add for your audience. Um be thoughtful about the the comfort level of your audience in community, engaging with that technology and the maturity of the platform you know, there’s there’s, a few different i beacons there’s, there’s a few different, you know, implementations of that. So you wantto ghisolf about which? One you choose, make sure it’s one that you can support over the long term, as you have to continue to maintain that technology on be thoughtful about the hidden costs you know you, eh, it’s, not just the spend to implement and set up whatever you’ve started, you have to support it. You maybe have to train your staff. You have an ongoing communications, maybe you, you know, bee you’re likely going to need to generate and continue to develop it. So being thoughtful about those hidden cost and how you’re going to measure those and evaluate your success. Brovey kaplan he is director of online strategy for radcampaign brovey, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, tony. My pleasure. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of non-profit technology conference and t c twenty fifteen. Thanks very much for being with us. Thanks to everybody at in ten the non-profit technology network and and t c i love being there next week. Tomb or auntie? Si interviews embrace emerging social media and you’re content strategy on those new channels. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go? Opportunity, collaboration, the world convenes for poverty reduction. It’ll ruin you for every other conference, and that really is the truth. Opportunity, collaboration, dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liber, which is our line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and this terrific music is by scott steiner. Brooklyn. You 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 am or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealised took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gifts. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for April 3, 2015: Dan Pallotta And Charity Defense Council & Your CEO/Board Chair Partnership

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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My Guests:

Dan PallottaCharity Defense Council

He’s the guy behind the 2013 viral TED video “The Way We Think About Charity Is Dead Wrong.” Now he runs the Charity Defense Council, because nonprofits have no anti-defamation cause.

 

 

 

John FulwiderYour CEO/Board Chair Partnership

How do you cultivate this critical relationship? What should they be asking each other? John Fulwider is a consultant and author of “Better Together.”

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer scrub typhus if i got bitten by the notion that you missed today’s show damn piela and charity defense counsel he’s, the guy behind the twenty thirteen viral ted video now he runs the charity defense counsel because non-profits have no anti defamation cause and your ceo board chair partnership. How do you cultivate this critical relationship? What should they be asking each other? John fulwider is a consultant and author of better together on tony’s take to storytelling and a fellowship opening. We’re sponsored by opportunity collaboration, the working meeting on poverty reduction that will ruin you for every other conference. Terrific pleasure to welcome to the show, dan piela he’s, the founder and president of the charity defense counsel at charity defense counsel dot or ge he created the multi day charitable event industry when one hundred eighty two thousand people participated in the aids rides and breast cancer three days that plot a team works created he’s, the author of uncharitable how restraints on non-profits undermined their potential. You probably saw his viral ted video the way we think about charity is dead wrong. He’s at dan, pull out a dot com, and at dan piela on twitter, dan. Welcome to the show. Okay, tony, thanks for having me, it’s. My pleasure. Thank you for being with us. Did i beat the hell out of you when we were kids? No, i you know, be careful, ly i went to high school with a kid named tommy tony martignetti and, uh, the only fist fight of my life and i didn’t fare well in it. And when and when we spoke a week ago or so, i just had to make sure you weren’t the same. Tony martignetti but sounds like, you know, i’m not i i had never beaten anybody up. I’ve lost a bunch of fights when i was young, but i ran away from most of them. I was a pretty quick runner, so that saved me from a lot of beatings. I used to play hockey, i was a goalie, and when i would have a fight with someone with that right handed waffle glove, that was that was nothing for them to overcome that would put them out, right? You’re the big guy big guy in front of the goal, then it’s, right? Save the save the team from from aa a goal and trying to save the world now, are you you still skating it all skating on ice? You know, when the kids go skate and go skating with the kids i got three kids. I got triplets there. Seven there’s, seven years old. And so i dragged escape. Sometimes i tell people triplets really? How many? That’s? Wonderful. Congratulations on triplets. I think that’s great that’s. Terrific. Yeah, wonderful. Why do we need a charity defense counsel? Why do we need a charity defense counsel? Because, amazingly, unbelievably, somehow the nonprofit sector which organizes people on behalf of all kinds of causes is not organized itself. So if you look at any successful movement for change, there are a few basic functions that those movements have that the non-profits sack sector lacks utterly and completely so. Four things essentially first, we don’t have an anti defamation force, you know? So we get the famed in the media all the time, and we have no powerful organized voice to offer the general public and alternative point of view. You know, the gay and lesbian community has the anti has glad the jewish community has the anti defamation league. We have nothing like that. Now, what about independent sector? They would say that they’re they’re that kind of a voice. Independent sector isn’t chartered to be an anti defamation force, you know? So they do their work on the hill, and they try to make sure that, you know, they were originally charted to make sure that that the non profit sector never loses the tax exemption, so that was their original charter. So say they work a lot on the federal level on big public policy issues, but they’re not specifically chartered to be the media organisation any more than, you know, the some of the big, like the the human rights campaign is chartered to be a gn anti defamation mechanism for the gay and lesbian community that’s why the gay and lesbian community specifically has get glad the gay and lesbian alliance against defamation so we don’t have anything with that kind of specific charter and specific expertise. Secondly, we don’t have any kind of a public facing ad strategy, you know, the way the pork producers in the nineteen eighties got together and change the image of pork with pork, the other white milk bottles got together and came up with got milk in the face of big challenges by the bottled water in the sports drink industry wasn’t anything like that were never taken out a full page ad in the new york times to say anything about our sectors of the first two things, the third thing is we don’t have ah legal defense fund. So all kinds of counterproductive public legislation and regulation gets proposed, especially at the state and local level, and we have no apparatus for combating that are educating, for example, state’s, attorney’s, general and last but not least, we don’t have a database, we’re not organized, we don’t have a database of the ten million people employed in the sector, you know, we don’t have anything close to that, so we can’t bring that powerful voice to bear on the issues that we really care about. So the charity defense counsel is to fill those voids. Do you see the statistic that charity’s represent roughly a tenth of the gdp of the country, which would be around a trillion and a half dollars in assets and money through in a year? Do you? Is that something a little more than a trillion dollar annual sector? You know, it’s huge in the end, the idea that it doesn’t have any systematic form of a comprehensive treyz just this morning, as you mentioned, the pork board and milk and you know, i’m learning on the subway that a tablespoon of peanut butter has seven ounces of protein, you know, from the peanut board, so you know, yeah, imagine if you learn that, contrary to popular belief, the amount of money that charity spends on overhead is correlated to its ability to have an impact on them or that it spends on its own growth mohr impact that can have that would be great. We’re actually running digital billboards in very high profile locations on highways in massachusetts right now that tell people don’t ask if a charity has low overhead, ask if it has a big impact and that’s the first time that we’ve ever spoken to anyone other than ourselves about these things let’s talk a little about ah, something that i know you’re a strong advocate of. Ah, investing in fund-raising and what the failure to do that means for for people whose lives we’re trying to save. Yeah, you know the question is always asked, you know, what are you spending on? Fund-raising how much are you spending on? Fund-raising and the question is not what is your fund-raising costing you it? What is your unwillingness to invest more money in fund-raising costing you you know, you look for example, a wounded warrior project they didn’t exist fifteen years ago, and in two thousand six they were spending about a million five on fund-raising on, and they had about five million left over for programs they had about a forty four percent fund-raising an admin ratio, and you look at that and say, well, that’s beyond what any of the watchdogs say, so wounded warrior project should just cut down on that overhead. They went in the other direction, they spent more money on fund-raising so that’s six years later, they went from a million spent on fund-raising twenty million spent on fund-raising their revenue went from ten million to two hundred million. The money available for veterans went from five million to one hundred and fourteen million um all because they were willing to buck the system and invest in their growth and it’s that unwillingness of organizations to invest in growth because of the cultural pressure put on them. It’s literally killing people, it’s keeping these organizations miniature up against the scale of the problem, but they can’t grow, they can’t ever possibly solve the problem what the donor doesn’t realize. The donor thinks i want low overhead because that’s what they’ve been taught, but what the donor really wants is the problem to get solved. What the donor really wants is mohr of the hungry to get fed and, paradoxically, counterintuitively, the path to ending hunger and curing breast cancer isn’t toe lower overhead. It isn’t the lower fund-raising costs it’s increased those things so that we can grow the size of these organizations and they have a shot at combating these problems. I get it, i get enormously frustrated when i see that, um gives to charity are so consistent at two percent of of whatever the aggregate is that it was gross domestic product or something. We’re just way don’t we haven’t found the way to get people to give mohr without taking without becoming a zero sum game, which it doesn’t have to be. Yeah, exactly. Charitable giving has been stuck in two percent of gdp for forty five years now, which means the non-profit sector isn’t taking any market share away from the for-profit sector, it isn’t convincing consumers to give money to charity instead. Of the budweiser into hershey’s, and the reason is it doesn’t spend any money convincing donors to give their money to charity instead of budweiser and her she’s now her, she spent five hundred eighty million dollars a year trying to convince the public to part with their money for chocolate loreal spends one point five billion dollars a year on advertising, trying to convince the public to part with their money for cosmetics. By contrast, susan komen, the breast cancer organization in two thousand twelve spent twenty five million dollars on advertising against lorry as one point five billion, and we would criticize coleman even for spending that twenty five million dollars on advertising. Well, if you don’t let these charities go out into the public media, television, advertising, radio, advertising, newspapers, billboards the way, every other big consumer brando they can’t excite peoples imaginations that can’t compete with the for-profit sector for the consumers dollar let’s go out for a breakdown. Of course you and i’ll keep talking about the work of the charity defense counsel and investment and scalability stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’ve got a ton of live listener love we’re going to start in the u s del valle, a texas new bern, north carolina live listener loved to you, lincoln, nebraska and i believe that’s, our upcoming guests. John fulwider who says on twitter he’s hoping for some live listener love i have to admonish you live listen, love is a privilege, not a right, and those who ask for it sometimes don’t get it. So watch that. But i am i am very generous with it but it’s not common to be asking for the live listen love it’s a it’s a privilege daisy missouri st louis, missouri many in new york, new york right here, bold in massachusetts and denver, colorado and live listener love to you and lots of people out west to including san francisco live listener love. And then we got a bunch of broad will get two podcasts, all of massachusetts that you are born. Is that right? Maybe that’s tony martignetti that’s, the tony martignetti who beat beat the heck out of you and he’s listening, tony, i love, you know only because you have the same name, not because you beat up damp latto i wish you could hit you with his hizmet what you call that? That glove is the glove waffle glove. I appreciated you with his rifle glove, because clearly the the anguish and the pain remain. All these years later, you still remember tony martignetti i gotta send podcast pleasantries. Everybody listens in the time shift, whatever device, whatever time, whatever day pleasantries to you and, of course, affiliate affections to our many affiliate stations throughout the country. Love you too, dan. Do you distinguish between impact and outcomes? Do you make that distinction? People do you know, i thought about that before, not really. I i put them in the same category. I don’t, i don’t know. Maybe they’re maybe they’re some p people who ah, are more purist about that. Okay, but now seems a semantic difference only to you. All right, but you want people donors to be focusing on the impact. The lives that are being saved. Changed? Yeah. What impact is the organization having? Actually, you know, the problem with the overhead ratio is it’s overly simplistic. And, you know, we as a culture are addicted to simplicity, so we got to be careful that we don’t trade one simplistic measure for another simplistic measure, and you’re starting to see that addiction to simplicity play out with the measurement of effectiveness now, because okay, so effectiveness has become the new trend. The new buzzword. You got to be careful because if you start rewarding charities for effectiveness, then they’ll start to pursue the problems that are easiest to solve and show effectiveness on because that’s, where the money will be easy to get, especially from grantmaker and and the problems that are more difficult to solve will get orphaned. So you want to ask the charity what? What are your goals? What progress are you making toward those goals? And how do you know? So i don’t necessarily care if you’re making progress, you might be working on a very difficult problem, but i want i want to know whether you care about whether or not you’re making progress. I want to know whether you measuring whether or not you’re actually making progress on the problem, so, you know, i encouraged the average doner look, you’re always going to give to the red cross one when a tsunami happens, you know, when some one ofthe tragedy happens, you’re always gonna give one hundred dollars or something. But in terms of your overall philanthropy, what is the cause you really care about? Figure that out? Which one of you passionate about? Then? Do some research on the organizations that are doing the best work in that area the same way you do research before you buy a car? Same way you do a lot of research before you vote for a presidential candidate, you know you owe it to yourself. It’s your money? You’re a philanthropist too, even though you might be giving a lot less than within warren buffett. Philanthropy means love of humanity you’re a philanthropist respect your money and your investment take the time to get to know the charity called them up go visit them. Go for a site visit. They’ll be happy to take you on a site. Visit that’s the best way to learn about the work that they’re doing. Not by looking at some rating on a website i had the c p a send me ah comment when he saw that you were going to be a guest on hey does audit work, and what he’s seen is the focus on the overhead ratio encouraging non-profits to miss report on their nine nineties putting what are clearly administrative expenses and into program program lines on their nine, ninety or in some kind of financial report? Yeah, well, you know, that’s a that’s a whole kind of a big dark secret in the sector, right? The sector knows that the public wants low overhead, so the sector has figured out all different kinds of waiting to give the public low overhead. One of those ways is by underspending on the things that they really need. Another ways to joint cost allocation. Now i’m a fan of joint cost allocation, but on ly, if your definition of the cause is the same as the consumer’s definition of the cause because you know what percentage goes to the cause depends on hot entirely on how you define it. If you define it very broadly and you include all kinds of expenses that the donor doesn’t think of cause related in your cause related line items, well, then you’re going to show a very high percentage going to the cause. But, you know, you run the risk of duping the consumer if your breast cancer organization and that you know, the donor thinks the money’s going to breast cancer research. But what you mean is it’s going to education and it’s going to events, and some of it’s going to research, then to me, that’s doing it disservice to the donor. We have jargon, jail on non-profit radio, but i think you clearly explained what you mean by the joint cost allocation. Um, but training teo trying to transcend it’s. Ah, probation is hard to come by in drug, in jail. Let’s see, there’s ah, there’s. A joking with you. By the way, you sound like you found dead. You’re not. You’re not taking me seriously. Are you mi dan? Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. Jog in jail. It’s fun. Okay, no really being admonished. Um, this is ah ah, being adopted in a bunch of states, we’re seeing a regulatory trend where states are enacting by statute percentages that ah, either shouldn’t be allocated to overhead to be on a certain amount or must be allocated to program certain way. New york has jumped on the bandwagon. A lot of states air headed this way. Yeah. In new york, you know, they grants state grants to non-profits used to come with a twenty five percent overhead threshold. Then all of a sudden, as of january, andrew cuomo decided it should be. It should be fifteen percent, you know. On what basis? No, there was one organization, one one watchdog agency that once did a study to find out how much money should go to the cause versus overhead. And they serve in consumers and said, you know how much money do you think should goto overhead? Well, that’s like asking the general public. How long do you think jurassic surgery should take and then using? That is standard for thor asic surgeons. I mean, what does the general public know about how much overhead should be it’s? A complicated question. And it all depends on what you want is an outcome. The feeling is that it’s it’s partially public money because of the charitable deduction. So it becomes a political issue and come political issue. And but people say, you know, politicians say i want a lower overhead. I wanna lower overhead because i want more money going to the cause you know, overhead is part of the cause if you especially if you’re using money for growth if you if you can invest a dollar and fund-raising and turn it into ten dollars, wouldn’t you is a state want to put all your money into fund-raising instead of programs because you can multiply it by ten dollars? So you know, by forcing these charities not to spend on overhead, the state is getting a lot less bang for its buck. Out of its money overhead is part of the cause. Thank you. Outstanding. Ah, what? What? How do you know? How many states there are roughly that air there, even that have enacted these kinds of statutes or or considering them? Well, new york is a standout example right now, but but oregon past legislation that would strip the tax deductible status from from donations coming from charities that don’t meet a certain overhead threshold. Florida was about to do the same thing. Last year, the california attorney general was looking at eliminating the ability of charities to do joint cost allocation. Right now, the california attorney general wants to required charities to make a statement on any solicitation that there’s a professional fundraiser involved and to me, you know so well, why does an apple have to put on their iphone that there were professional engineers involved in people being paid, you know, x amount of money to build the iphone? Those aren’t those aren’t the questions you should be asking, what is somebody being paid? What you want to know is what value is somebody being producing for the money they’re being paid now? It could be somebody’s being paid very low, but they’re not doing a goddamn thing, so they’re the ones you know, really ripping the charity off. So you, you know, you really want to ask not what is the dollar amount, but what is the ratio of value to dollar spent? That’s the important question, you know, any business school student would be thrown out in year one if they didn’t do a cost benefit analysis duitz but we never do them with charity salaries. We look a figure four hundred thousand dollars we so that’s way too much get rid of the person or throw them in jail. You know what? How do you know that person isn’t capable of making for a million dollars in the for-profit sector? And then that that they haven’t produced three times as much in the way of a result of the lesser paid person? Would so it’s it’s just a really simplistic way of looking at the world in it, and undermines the donors and undermines state and undermines the clients that the charity’s ultimately serve? Another thing that i believe you encourage and ah ah, nde actually seth godin does to has been on the show, and he has three things he encourages organizations that do create ship and fail and the willingness to fail. And learn. Yeah, you know, well, that’s a big issue in the nonprofit sector is we don’t want non-profits to take risk on new fund-raising ideas with donor dollars? Well, if they can’t take risks that can’t learn and they can’t grow, if they can’t grow, they can’t solve these problems, you know, we don’t we let hollywood take all kinds of risks, you know, we let hollywood place two hundred million dollar bets on movies like sex and the city seventeen or, you know, the lone ranger which flopped or john carter, which flops, and this is how the big consumer brands learned they place these big bet some of them pay off some of them don’t, and on the basis of that, you know, they evolved, we don’t let non-profit organizations do that. I don’t know of a nonprofit organization that has a research and development budget for fund-raising i don’t even know of one that has a line item for it. I mean, can you imagine if apple didn’t have ah, on rnd budget for the new products that it wants introduce? I s o you quoted somewhere saying that restraints undermine potential just sort of service something all this up? Yeah, that’s actually, that it’s actually the subtitle parent restraints on non-profit attention, mind their potential. I really didn’t want that subtitle because i can’t stand the use of the word non-profit you know the words, it apologizes for itself. It tells us what what we’re against talks about our tax status yes, it does the larger issues. And the word profit comes from the latin for progress so that the term non-profit literally means non-profit gress you know it’s it’s the no sector? No, you can’t have money to advertise. No, you can’t pay people a swell as the for-profit sector does. No, you can’t take any risks, but please solve all the world’s problems for us. You know what i can’t stand is a lot of times i’ll do an interview with a reporter and then the headline writer will will label the story damn pull out of the guy who thinks charity should act more like business that’s not at all what i’m saying, i’m saying that you know we as a culture are not for a moment. Ready to give charities the big league freedoms. We really give the business. So please stop telling them to act more like businesses. If they’re too stupid to do it in the first place, they would act more like business if you would give them the permission to the just this week. Way learned that charity navigator’s ceo ken berger who’s been on the show a few times, eyes leaving. Does does charity defense counsel have any advice for charity navigator in their search for a ceo? They say they want to a technologist. Yeah, i think ken has already left. Um, yeah, i think i think there’s a tremendous opportunity here now, you know, charity navigator was funded by donor-centric new york originally, who had a bad experience with a charity. You know, it was hale house where a lot of the money was going to places that he didn’t feel it was going. And, you know, he made a great contribution of his heart and his wealth, and he felt betrayed. And as a reaction to that, he created charity navigator. You know, essentially for all these years to make sure the charity’s weren’t spending too much money. On overhead and salaries, the intentions, i believe we’re good, but the effects have been destructive now, you know, to their credit, they signed on to this letter telling the public a year and a half ago not to ask about overhead anymore, but focus on what ah outcome the charity is having, i think there’s an opportunity here for some kind of ah, of a merger with other organizations, for charity navigator to become much more nuanced and not so numeric and not so rigid. Overall, though, i think the issue is all of these evaluative efforts, whether it’s, you know, the wonderful work that are taylor does with the better business bureau wise giving alliance charity navigator great non-profits there’s, they’re relatively small in scale, you know, they’re they’re one million two million three million dollar organizations and americans give three hundred billion with a b dollars to charity every year we need on itunes for charity nationally, you know, we need a big, robust entity operation that can evaluate every charity in america using rich narrative as well as america data, it could be updated on an annual basis and that’s going to cost hundreds of millions. Of dollars sounds like a lot, but it’s cheap up against the three hundred billion we give to charity every year. We have to make some excuse me, meaningful investment in measuring all that. And, you know, charity navigator is just a way, way, way too small a scale to be able to do that you’ll find charity defense counsel at charity defense counsel dot or ge and you’ll find dan at dan piela dot com and at dan pelota on twitter. Dan, thanks so much for sharing. Thanks, tony. Have a great easter weekend. Thank you very much. Same to you. Thank you. Bye bye. So long, tony’s, take two and your ceo board chair partnership are coming up. First opportunity collaboration. Extremely useful contacts, projects funding. It opens people that was from last. Year’s delegate alberto vasco is president of society edad e dis capacidad in saudi’s, peru. It is the single most productive week i have spent all year. That’s gretchen wallace, founder and president of global grassroots dar for haiti, rwanda, uganda and the u s opportunity collaboration is a week long conference in x top of mexico devoted to poverty reduction throughout the world. It’s coming up in october, i was there last year. I’m going again this year. If your work is it all related to poverty reduction, check it out. Opportunity, collaboration, dot net. I have a new non-profit radio knowledge, base storytelling, the best non-profit radio guests on the subject of storytelling. The video and links are at tony martignetti dot com. Are you a millennial interested in measuring social good, then evaluate for change, has your next career move they’re recruiting for their millennial non-profit data fellowship. The ideal candidate is a millennial, employed or volunteering at a non-profit and dedicated to using data to improve the social sector. The fellowship is part time and includes training, mentoring and a final capstone project. The application deadline is april thirtieth. Apply at evaluate for change, dot com. I am being honored by a non-profit that saves lives in the dominican republic, they bring water to the poorest of the poor in the d r the organization is hermandad and i’d really like non-profit radio fans to be honored with me by giving to herman dahna i’ve been supporting the charity for several years, and i would love for us all to be honored together on april twenty third video is that tony martignetti dot com and i thank you for thinking about that, considering that that is tony’s take two for friday, third of april thirteenth show of the year john fulwider is with me. He helps non-profit chief executives, he combines coaching, teaching and training toe work exclusively with high achieving ceos. I want their leadership teams and boards to row in the same direction. His latest book is better together non-profits ceos and board chairs get happy and fall in love with the mission hope the book is shorter than the title. John he’s at john fulwider dot com and on twitter he’s at john m fulwider welcome john fulwider, thanks so much, tony, its honor and pleasure to be here. Thank you. I’m glad. And you’re you’re calling, ah, from omaha, nebraska. Is that right? Lincoln, nebraska lincoln, nebraska pardon me. I gave you live. Listen, love to lincoln. Pardon me. That’s. Right? Lincoln i hope you didn’t take me too seriously when i was admonishing you about requesting live listener love. Careful, they’re not at all ok, good. Don’t take. Nobody listens to call it it’s all in good fun. Okay, your book is ah siri’s of questions, which i love, that that ceos and board chairs should be asking each other. What? What shortcomings do you see in this relationship? That you want to be a partnership? You know, i wantto start with the possibilities that you can achieve from a really healthy and successful partnership before i get to the shortcomings, if i could. The possibilities are amazing. Too high achieving, growth oriented, talented, passionate people can really support each other and accomplishing together for themselves, for the organization and for the mitch and something they wouldn’t be able to achieve a part. And so it can be a really fulfilling effort asked, spend their wanting two, maybe three years of the board chairs leadership term together, really accomplishing something that they could both feel proud of at the end of those years. Okay, um, but i’m still gonna ask my question. Don’t be an anarchist now taking over the show. What? What? What now? I got two shortcomings or what? You know what? What’s typical of the board chair ceo relationship that that you see, and when you build that strong partnership, you can avoid a number of pitfalls. One of them is just failure to develop trust and transparency in your relationship, which was really the bedrock for leading together at the start. Next up, you can sail to communicate often enough, and as a result, neither the board chair nor the chief executive gets what she or he needs in terms of information to even run an effective board meeting, much less provide some really inspiring strategic direction to the organization. And the last thing that you can do is fail to establish clear expectations of each other. So you’re sort of casting about rudderless, not really knowing who’s. Responsible for what? And that’s not a fun or indeed fulfilling a productive position for either of the leaders to be. How about that trust the how do people? In these positions, let’s, take it’s ah, new relationship either. Well, the board chair is new, or the ceo is new to the organization. How do we start to build build that trust? You know, it really just begins in conversation, tony change begins in conversation conversation with your most important partner that being your board chair, if you’re the chief executive, the chief executive, if you’re the board chair, it’s just a matter of starting off the relationship, right with some open ended kind of deep questions that let you start to develop that trust and transparency from the very start in the book associate in the workbook associated with the book, i have lists of those questions that go from sort of short to medium so long, and you can kind of customize it based on the time you have, and you have them broken down into categories and then within the categories, there are lots of different topic areas marketing and accountability, and that’s right succession planning. So i really like this question and answer that i mean, i they’re they’re all questions to stimulate conversation and conversation hopefully is going to be honest and open and that helps us get to trusting partnership. Indian. Yeah. Ok. It is a virtuous cycle. Okay. All right. Let’s, let’s, talk about some of these questions. I like them so much. Um, you don’t mind if we start with marketing, do you? Would that be okay? No. Let’s, let’s. Go right into it. Ok, so you’re the way it’s laid out is you give some perspectives, cem quotes for thinking for the people. Tto consider on the subject and then ask your partner and there’s. Lots of ask your partner questions. And, uh, you know that you ask some very basic ones around marketing. What should our message be? Who needs to hear it? Where? Where does it need to be? Can two people, though sitting in a room together, answer these? They can begin to answer them, tony. And in a way that generates questions for other people. Let me use one of your previous guests as an example of how this could work. So you have a guest one or two weeks ago, talking about your board as brand ambassadors. And there was that there was that question, as i recall about, you know, what does our organization even do in terms of category where we capacity building organization or were we making social change organization? I believe your guest said, and and that’s a question that you and your board chair i’m just going to talk from the chief executive’s perspective because those of the clients i work with you can ask your board chair well, bored share what d’you, how would you categorize our organization and then ask your board chair? How do you think your colleagues on the board would categorise the organization and that helps the board chair decide? Well, hey, maybe i need to lead a discussion on this at the next board meeting because i’m not sure and i want to find out. So starting a conversation with your board chair starts conversations that she or he has with her or his colleagues. Okay, so these are not going to be questions that we’re going to sit down in a couple of our long meetings, and we’re going to have answers to no, we’re not going to figure it out for ourselves, but we’re going to we’re going to start the conversation. We’re going to use our knowledge at my knowledge as the chief executive of the leadership teams perspective and the board chair her knowledge of her colleagues on the board, their perspectives. We’re going to use it to narrow dance on our information, gathering our question asking for our colleagues. Okay, by the way, that guessed that you were referring. Teo, your board is brand ambassadors. Two weeks ago was roger sametz, um, also with the also in one of your marketing questions looking internally, how good a job are we doing? Getting our message to our own board and staff, you want some introspection here? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the one of the challenges that that i i always here when i’m working with not-for-profits is the staff in general are pretty dissatisfied with what they perceive as the boards level of knowledge about and interest in the organization. And then what i find when that when when we really examine it, the board tends to have more knowledge and information about the organization. Dan was the staff perception and so conversations about marketing and branding and the, you know, sort of internal outside perspective on the organization can be sort of a safe and comfortable way. For people to get rid of negative assumptions they might have about their colleagues. Okay, i’m going to move to one that also i find interesting internal threats to the organiser from like you ask who is a flight risk on the board who air flight risks on our staff? This is right. This is very, very good, like risk-alternatives would call it too. Yeah, absolutely, and it’s it’s something not not every organization really has the time or bandwidth to consider, but it is pretty hard to attract high quality talent. You are not for-profit organizations for various reasons everyone’s familiar with so once we have a really talented, high achieving, competent person on board, we need to take special care to ensure that we retain that person by continuing to challenge her or him offering a clear way up in the organization and so on. That could be the downside of term limits indeed, a can on the on the board side and boy, you know, if we get into the question of term limits will get into the question of government governance structures, and this conversation will get too complicated and i will wind up in jargon. Jail well, but you’re well, i’ll put your there, i’ll put your but they’re easily so you may end up there anyway, but let’s not let’s, not let’s. Not underestimate the capacity of non-profit radio listeners. The very sophisticated audience. Ah lutely. So i think they’re up for ah, governance conversation. We may we may get there, you that’s one of the other topics that you have questions around governance and accountability, but oh, i mean, if i can, if i can address term limits for just seconds under under governance, you know, that’s one of the frustrations of building a partnership with your board chair is that it’s a short term relationship. You could be doing all this work that i recommend, and i recommend doing a lot of work on this relationship only to have that person term out of the board chair seat one year from now, maybe two years, probably at the most three years. So term limits are a big deal in this context. I’m going hyre but as we’re identifying let’s say, you know ah well, who’s, the who’s a flight risk on the board we should be then the next question is going to be, well, what’s our succession plan for for that well, flight risk or, you know, whether it’s, term limits or whatever, for whatever reason president is going to be the position. So how do you how would you feel about having a neg zsystems chair and the planned successor? Whoever that is, the vice chair, whatever the the chair to be named in this conversation, could we do this is a three way? Sure, we definitely could do that. The first thing you need to do is have the two way conversation where you’re building the solid partnership with your board chair and honestly, if that’s all the two of you have the time, space and bandwidth to do. Just stop there, because you’ll be ahead of many other people who are in a leadership partnership. But if you can, by all means bring device chair, they’re elected the president elect that sort of thing into your discussions on dh and talk about how we can keep the strong leadership goodness culture flowing, but then also talk about how we need to customize the relationship to the prospective, the incoming board chair, because the nature of building trust with that person setting expectations, clarifying rolls, and the style and manner and frequency of communication, it’s all going to be different for that new person. Yes, customized, not not cookie cutter. And, yes, not one size fits. All right, right. That’s, that’s, offensive to the incoming person. Then, you know, right, alright, loss of trust there. We just have a minute or so before a break. Um, you would also like us under internal threats, to be looking at which of our programs is below par or failing. Sure and and that’s a great conversation. Tio have with your board chair, because you’re bored. Chair isn’t in the organization twenty six hours a day. Thinking about it, like like you are, doesn’t have probably that attachment to each of the programs, and so can offer and unbiased mohr outside view at what is working and what is not in the organization and honestly, can help you strategize about how to do the influence campaign necessary on your board, and indeed, with your staff, and maybe even your thunders, to eliminate a failing program in order to allocate resources to something that is creating social change. Let’s, take a break. When we come back, john and i are going toe. Keep covering some questions that the ceo on board chair should be asking each other. Hang in there. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth godin, 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 only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Got lots more live listener love tons of live listeners today serbia is with us life listen, to live out there. Mccarty in the philippines, mexico city, mexico. I’ll be flying there in october on my way to stop a for opportunity collaboration. Go through mexico city, reservoir, australia, bogota, colombia, seoul, south korea several in seoul not surprised. Always appreciative. Thank you very much on your haserot in japan, kawasaki and tokyo konichiwa also aspired. Germany good dog, it’s. Amazing let’s, bring it back to the u s newport news, virginia, omaha, nebraska. John omaha, eyes on and multiple in lincoln, nebraska so you’ve got some family there. I don’t know some people love you in lincoln, nebraska and pflueger ville, texas i love pflueger ville! Welcome live listener love to each person listening live. John, do you mind if we, since we’ve sort of headed in this direction to look what some succession planning for the for the board chair and for the ceo, we’ll do it, we’ll be okay. Your questions for for those two are pretty similar, so i would just take him in a bunch recognizing that nobody’s going to be in the position forever. What? What skills and qualities do we need in our next chair and our next ceo? Right? The reason i include the succession planning of questions in the book is because it really gives away toe have that conversation about succession planning, which is so sort of inconvenient and awkward and about your own mortality on a regular basis. What i recommend is that people go through this list of twenty four strategic discussion topics with their board chair one at a time really go through the entire list um, twice a year, so they’re having forty eight weeks of conversations taking four weeks off, but this just brings it up automatic so that it’s not awkward. Now that’s a that’s. A lot of time to ask. Ah, volunteer to spend is that you have you have clients that are doing that. This is realistic. Ideo i do have clients who were doing that. Okay? And what do we say to the board chair? Who may be reluctant to spend that kind of time? We’re talking about at least an hour a week, right? Sure. I mean, it can go faster or slower than that. What we say to the person is, i value your counsel and your input. And i know you joined the board because you felt like you have something to say. Um, you, you cared about the mission, and you felt like you had something to say about advancing the mission and getting mohr done for the social change cause that wee boat care about. And so i simply want teo give you the opportunity to be strategic about that as often as possible. And i promise that in our conversations, we’ll try to keep it at the high strategic, interesting and compelling level and away from boring taxable day today as much as possible. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We want to encourage the board to be looking at bigger pictures and not what the office supply budget line should be. How about let’s? Look, a little external. Now we’ve been doing a lot of introspection. You have a section on meeting community needs, right? I mean, this, the basic. What does our community need from us on dh? How are we doing in providing it? Yeah, this is this is really a question i like to use, teo, inform strategic planning processes. And so what i what i see this conversation as tony is ah, logical and easy progression from, uh, tapping the strategic thinking capabilities of the chief executive and the board chair and then moving that discussion to the executive committee or the officers of the board and then moving it from there to further board members in, say, a strategic thinking slot on the board agenda and then moving that all the way to the strategic planning retreat. So strategic conversations are happening constantly at all levels of the organization, but starting at the top it’s kind of like one of those chocolate fountains that you see at wedding receptions and so forth where it’s this yummy, gooey, rich chocolate and it bubbles out of the top, and it flows down to the next layer and the next layer, and then it bubbles back-up from the top strategic thinking happens in organizations the same way, okay, we don’t have to explain it to the person or maybe the people we’re going to have these conversations with as a strategic planning process, dewey. Because that has a lot of it’s our baggage to it that maybe people aren’t ready to take on or, you know, we have, you know, you’re completely you’re completely right, tony, i’m i’m working on a year long strategic planning process with a client right now, and as i’m doing the strategic, the preplanning interviews with the leadership team, they’re being kind enough to tell me, hey, some of us have some trepidation about that. The board says that has as well, you do want it to be clear at the board chair level, though, that you have a shared responsibility to, no matter how you phrase it or how you present it. Teo, get strategic thinking happening throughout the organization consistently. It can’t be something you do just once a year, okay? Or once every three years or something, and then it ends up on the show, which would be even worse. Okay, yes, these are that’s true and seen it this way. But these are very good strategic planning questions, even if you don’t want to call it a strategic planning process there. Very good strategic questions, i guess is what i mean. Um, you have a section on external threats. And we just have about a minute left. But so let’s. Just throw out that we should be looking at who’s, doing a better job than we are at providing program. Right. And that’s a that’s. A question that your your board chair is especially well suited to help answer she or he may have the answer himself just by being virtue of being a philanthropist in the community, caring about the issue, seeing what others have to say or your board chair main not know the answer himself but can go to other, uh, you know, really connected on that particular issue. People on the board who then can offer some information that again comes from somebody who has that outside. Unbiased, not thinking about the organization, you know, more than twenty four hours a day, like twenty six hours a day, like the chief executive is all right, lots of strategic and thought provoking questions. In the book, you’ll find it at john fulwider dot com. And john is on twitter at john m fulwider. Thank you very much for sharing john there’s. An even better link, tony at better together leadership. Dot com it’s, easier to spell. All right. Thank you very much, john. Thanks, tony. Next week. Do you know the agitator at agitator dot net? He’s. Roger craver and he’s with me. Next week, we’re going. To talk about donorsearch retention. If you missed any part of today’s show finding on tony martignetti dot com, where in the world else would you go, i think you have to be, ah, be over twenty to get that, i believe maybe, or maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t that long ago, but i hope you get it. If you’re over twenty opportunity, collaboration with world convenes for poverty reduction, it’ll ruin you for every other conference opportunity. Collaboration. Dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer show social media’s, by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. He was me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Yeah. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun 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. I took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe. Add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five.

Nonprofit Radio for March 27, 2015: Peer-To-Peer 30 Report & Successful Giving Days

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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David HessekielPeer-To-Peer 30 Report

The Peer-to-Peer 30 Fundraising Report reveals quick growth outside traditional events, but lots of longstanding, high-profile programs are continuing to decline. David Hessekiel, president of the Peer-to-Peer Professional Forum, has the takeaways for your peer-to-peer fundraiser.

 

 

Caryn SteinSuccessful Giving Days

What are the key components to make your giving day successful? How do you activate your community to make them super fundraisers? Which technologies are critical? Caryn Stein is vice president of communications and content at Network For Good. (Recorded at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, NTC, earlier this month.)

 

 


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Oppcoll hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with sclerosing carrot itis if i saw that you missed today’s show peer-to-peer thirty report the peer-to-peer thirty fund-raising report reveals quick growth outside traditional events, but lots of long standing high profile programs are continuing to decline. David hessekiel, president of the peer-to-peer professional forum, has the takeaways for your peer-to-peer fundraiser and successful giving days. What are the key components to make your giving day successful? How do you activate your community to make them super fundraisers? Which technologies are critical? Karen stein is vice president of communications and content at network for good that was recorded at the non-profit technology conference and t c just earlier this month on tony’s take two planned e-giving levels the playing field. Also, i got a ticket giveaway for rks see our affiliate listeners. We’re sponsored by opportunity, collaboration, the working meeting on poverty reduction that will ruin you for every other conference. I’m very glad that david hessekiel is here with me in the studio. He has twelve years. Working at the intersection of commerce and cause the co author of good works he owns and leads caused marketing forum, part of c m f is the peer-to-peer professional forum, serving leaders of athletic event fund-raising programs. Since two thousand seven, its annual ranking of america’s top thirty thon fund-raising programs has become an industry benchmark. They’re at peer-to-peer forum, dot com and he’s at dave cause on twitter, dave cause welcome hey, great to be here. It’s. A pleasure to have you from upstate westchester county. From rai. You come down. Thank you what’s this what’s this thirty roses peer-to-peer thirty report about i started looking at this field about a decade ago and was amazed that there were all of these major programs out there and nobody knew what was up, what was down, what were the biggest. So we decided we’d jump into the void and we would create an annual benchmarking program looking at all of the peer-to-peer fund-raising programs in america that we’re raising millions of dollars on dh and then rank them. And each year we’ve got people looking who’s up, who’s down, what’s going on. And what are the trends? What can? We learn from from those numbers. And what does the peer-to-peer professional forum? This is the group that we’ve developed that brings together people in peer-to-peer fund-raising peer-to-peer fund-raising being the activation of your supporters to activate their networks to give we originally called this group the run walk ride fund-raising because of that one is, um now, yeah, exactly what there’s a tremendous amount of money that’s still being raised that way. But the path forward is that people in this day and age want to do their own thing, and they want to be able to do it on their time, and they now have the technology that in ten minutes you can set up a fund-raising sight whether you want to give up your birthday, have a party or or do you run own run. So we’re advising folks in this field that they have to do the best job on their existing programs and start planning for the future but giving people right tools, okay, and your definition revolves around activating others, right? Activating this, activating the networks of your supporters. Ok, ok, eso lett’s jump into the report non-cash inal is doing best well, there’s. You know, we have a whole bunch of eight hundred pound gorillas in this field when you look at the biggest programs, even though there are a number of them that are in decline, you can’t just say, well, they’re not relevant any more. We’ve got there still raising hundred there’s. Exactly. Name a couple of the top three. Well, the top three would be relay for life of the american cancer society, the american heart walk from the american heart association and the march of dimes march for babies. Okay, two of those three were down last year. Heart walk was actually up. Relay for life is is truly the eight hundred pound gorilla in this field. The top thirty collectively raised one point six. Two billion dollars of that off that really for life raised three hundred thirty five million. In fact, it’s bigger than the next three combined. So it’s huge and the are Numbers show that the top 30 was down about two and a half percent, right, very much influenced by depressions in a few of these programs, especially relay for life, which was down forty five million dollars. Relay for life is who’s american. Cancer society okay, tremendous program involving millions of people. So a couple of huge programs down skews the excuse the the average overall and that’s. Why you’ve got a two and a half percent decline from twenty thirteen. Exactly. Okay, um, but then non-cash inal s o the reason that you’re no longer called run walk ride is because is this an amazing variety of programs that are out there, whether it’s, movember don’t see do you have a moustache? You’re going to grow on? And no, i’m not. But movember is state. Baldrick is the notebook. Movember is actually an organization called movember started in australia, right? Of course, that politics is shape they want so yeah, i want one ad. Once the outline, when ads, facial hair, the other one takes it off the head. Exactly. So november raises money for men’s health related causes, primarily prostate cancer and men’s mental health. And then st baldrick’s foundation, which is incredibly grassroots, raises money for children’s cancer research. And in that particular event, people get together and shave their heads. Yes, i’ve been invited to do some of those not to shave my head, but to give toe couple of strangers, you know, it’s amazing, we’ve got programs that air doing that we’ve got programs where folks are repelling off of buildings, we’ve got programs like charity water, where people are giving up their birthdays instead of giving, getting gifts, asking their network of friends to give and there creating wells throughout throughout africa, funded in large part by those types of programs. So it’s all over and it’s very, very exciting and people are looking for something different, and they can certainly find it in peer-to-peer fund-raising okay, and the numbers show that these nontraditional ones are are increasing, yeah, yeah there’s definitely increasing in number and they’re increasing in in in in dollars raised many of them from a much smaller base. But that’s that’s, the name of the game now is we’re probably never going to see another three hundred million dollar programme. We’re going to see hundreds of multi million dollar programs that that are tapping into the really ardent support off supporters of various causes now. So what does it take to inaugurate one of these? And we’re going to we’re going to have some time to talk about the the other three hundred. Pound gorilla that was organic, the ice bucket challenge we’ll get to that. But but if you want to start one consciously what? What are some things it takes? Well, i think that it’s let’s say that you wanted to create your own proprietary programming as opposed to the other door. We’ll talk about those two, those two doors. One is you create your own proprietary program. Best thing to do. I’m a big believer in crawl, walk, run, even though we may not be talking about those events and i’ve yet to see across all of it. Um, you want a pilot, these programs and see whether they resonate in a market, see whether they’re going to appeal to a demographic ah, that that you may not be capturing or go to your very core. A great example of this is the m s society. Emma society has a number of the biggest programs out there. Walk m s bike, m s but they created a few years ago, something called muck fest and muck fest is a takeoff on many of the obstacle runs. The mud runs that are out there, okay, created their own branded opportunity, and it’s muchmore going to a younger and millennial crowd than the folks who normally go to there to there events you want to identify where you could have an impact and not just be another metoo event because walks themselves tough to start now. Yeah, okay, andi, another have another tip for aside from the test market starts small pilot program. Well, the second thing it would be and this is really the low hanging food, especially for a many of your listeners that aren’t working at the biggest. Now a small and midsize. Exactly. You want to have a place on your site that gives permission and aid to groups that want that two people who want to raise money for you, but they may not want to go to your walk on the third saturday in september. They may want to do it right now. And so you want to have a page that says we want to support you in your efforts. If you want to dedicate your birthday, do this. If you want to have a party do that, if you want to create an athletic event, do this. If you want to go run a marathon, do that and it’s. Very easy. Easy for me to say, but relatively easy for you to set those up. Okay, so lots of options. Lots up right now there is another door that you suggested we just have a minute before break, so just explain that one briefly will come. But that’s really? What? I i just kind of let the cat out of the bag, but one door is you create something and you marketed that people will come to you to participate in shaving your head growing a mustache, doing a run. Cycling, which we should talk about in the second half is actually another big growth area that’s one and the traditional model. And the second model is to give people permission and aid in doing whatever it is that they want to do to raise money for you. Okay, all right, great tease, but what more needs to be said? Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent were pre recorded today, so live listener love it’s going out? I mean, i live the live listeners, i just can’t identify you by state and city and country today, affiliate affections always always lots of love out to all our affiliate listeners and kfc. Our listeners have a ticket giveaway for you very shortly in tony’s, take two and, of course, for our over ten thousand podcast listeners podcast pleasantries to each of you wherever you’re listening, whatever device at whatever time, we give a lot of options on non-profit radio they love the way you show the love, just like you’re suggesting lots of options. You don’t have to listen. Fridays, one to two eastern if you prefer not to, um, but we love the people who do. Okay? Yeah, we’re gonna get the cycling, but lots of lots of promise below the top thirty and these you were suggesting it already. You have said it. The smaller events. He’s, you know, a million are your three hundred thousand thirty thousand events. We’re goingto have lower levels, lots of promise below the ranked top thirty, tremendous. Amount, especially technology, has enabled even small non-profits to be able to offer their supporters an easy way to ask their friends for money on behalf of cause that their passion about through online fund-raising plush platforms, simple ones like crowd rise more complex ones that tie into your customer relationship management systems like blackbaud there is a whole spectrum of these of these programs out there, and they allow you to give your people options, and that is whether in what, whether it’s what they eat, what they raise money for, people want options now, and they want the ability to do things in their own time. Let’s, talk about cycling, big growth area it’s amazing, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, testosterone driven in this in a sense, not on ly guys doing this, but there is a culture of somewhere, i guess somewhere forty something guys who were spending a lot of money on bikes and are looking for ways to ride and to get together with their pack and go out there and do one hundred miles and that is driving tremendous fund-raising in especially the regional programs back about nineteen eighty in massachusetts, billy stars started something called the pan mass challenge because his mom had died of cancer, he decided to raise money for the date. Dana farber, center up there started off with a couple of dozen folks they ran, did a ride across massachusetts. Now they have thousands of people who do this once a year event a tte, various lengths. But the biggest participation is the longer events. Last year they raised forty nine million dollars. That success using a regional charity as the platform using cycling as thie activity is one that is being copied in markets across america. In columbus, ohio, snusz six years ago they started something called piela tonia ah, exact same model getting people. They take over the columbus area. Last year they were up eleven percent to twenty one million dollars. A program that was on ly started in two thousand and nine they’re in the pacific northwest. Is the obliterated these air going on all over the place? Really, really big and then related to that. Ah, here in new york, memorial sloan kettering cancer center took a different approach. Ah, supporter of there some years ago created something called cycle for survival and actual. Indoor cycling off season of that, they do it endorse on it. Do it enjoy. Yeah, they do actually have a great partnership with equal knox. They have locations all across the country. Last nap now they were up over forty two percent. Last year. They raised twenty million dollars in a program that just runs a couple of weekends. That’s like genius. So you don’t worry about licensing and coordination with police departments? Know exactly, but well, it’s just that everything’s long is that the key is that you have to have a lot of bikes on their very fortunate that they’ve got a great partnership with equal knock. So they got all of these locations and they can market to the people who belonged to those clubs as well as other people from the community. Equinoxes a fitness center. I don’t know if they’re so yeah, i don’t know if they’re nationwide, but that zaveri high end, beautiful set of clubs. Now, i remember when these things when i was young, things have evolved a bit since then. Used to sponsor people say, sponsor me, you know you you played me like a dollar a mile for every mile i walk or something, you know, and you give him five or ten books, andi, usually the collection came at the end, you know, i walked the seven and a half miles, so you only seven dollars and fifty cents with these. We’ve come a long way since yes, there still are many probably hundreds of thousands of envelopes across america in which change and checks is being collected, but when you look at the penetration of online fund-raising overall in america, probably you’re a digital guy, so you probably use it a lot. There’s a lot of people who are not in in traditional, i’m going to write a check for twenty five bucks or fifty bucks. A lot of that is still checks, but when you look at this field, about eighty percent of the money being raised is online. It is absolutely the leader in terms of online integration now sort of sort of in the in the contrast, there’s a quote in the report that great granddaddy events are fading. Yeah, and we talked a little about that even though there’s still some promise of the numbers. It’s interesting to see that some of these more traditional events are not are declining, and there is there a variety of it is a trend, it is hard to maintain the those events that were started in a few decades ago, where it was much more common for people to say, yeah, i’m going to go with my company team, i’m going to go on a walk on a saturday, people are busy there, everybody’s got seems to have two, two people working in the family if their traditional couple ah, they don’t aren’t aren’t as willing to do that, so it takes even a lot more work to keep and maintain programs that are raising one hundred million dollars. And now that people have other options, that makes it all the tougher but a lot of the those programs, i’ve also suffered for very specifically komen, for instance, that we don’t mention co-branding they have a home in had exactly have two of the top program race for the cure, okay? And the three day walks and their challenge has really nothing to do with anything we’ve discussed today. Ah, few years ago, they got wrapped up in a controversy about their relationship with planned parenthood. Has twenty twelve and they were able in a you know, they really messed up. They were they got people on both sides of the abortion issue angry at them, which is, i think, unprecedented and that led to you. I mean, we’ve never seen a drop in revenue like we’ve seen over the last three years at komen ah, they i think are starting to stabilize, but so that’s really a very specific case relay for life, you know, challenging to keep program as big as that, and they also did a massive reorganization a couple of years, american cancer of the american cancer society and that sorry that really messed mess things up yet, on the other hand, some other programs that are in that mold ah, alzheimer’s, the alzheimer’s walk, thie, american heart association and the hard walk they’ve actually shown some increases, and there that’s another trend, something that’s really important? If you’re going to get into this field or if you’re in this field, you know it just don’t put up a sign say we’re having a walk, you really need to concentrate on the techniques that had got to turn people who show up. Into people who raise money, there’s a lot of organizations where you have wonderful volunteers who are staffing your event, who are helping to organize your event and their their goal in their own mind is we want to have a lot of people show up, and they really don’t like to push people on fund-raising you need to instill a culture that says this is a fundraising event, we’re doing this to fight the disease or the issue that we all feel so passionately about, and unless you fund-raising you’re, you’re not fully buying it to what we’re about. That kind of cultural change, for example, which has been taking place at alzheimer’s, for example, has led to tremendous growth. Also, not all fundraiser are created equal. Every event should be analyzing who their best fundraisers are and should be giving them some extra love just like you do your shout outs. Yeah, they’re big time there’s one which one is that that has special jerseys for the top fifty? Brandraise yes, the american american die a bit toward a cure has all sorts of different shirts, whether you’ve raised over a certain amount, whether you’re actually with your patient whose all sorts of different forms of incentives and recognition means so much to those people who are passionate about your issue. Okay? And that could be longevity too. You’ve participated in the past five without exception. Unbelievable example. And if folks want to see ah, write up of this whole report at peer-to-peer forum dot com we did a white paper on this. We give this case example of st baldrick’s. They have something called the knights of the bald table. Oh, yes. And if you have participated for seven years and in each of those years hit a fairly high bar fund-raising goal, then they induct you. They have a sword. Yeah, the local the local organization gets a package right with a script on induction script and and a sword to get a plastic sword. I’d never had the privilege to be at one of these. It sounds funny. They say the average induct e who probably has been doing this this long because they’ve had been touched in some way by childhood cancer and their family or somebody they know most of them are in tears by the end of it. It’s very, very touching. And it’s. The kind of thing that keeps people going and people they want. They will do a seventh year because they want to be a part of that. Absolutely. Knights of the bald table, nice to the ball tables. Outstanding. I’m goingto let st baldrick’s know that we’re talking about them a lot today. Shut out the same baldrick. Ice bucket challenge not in you’re not in your top thirty will explain why that is. So we try to be an aide to all the people who make a career out of doing peer-to-peer fund-raising and in order to to benchmark who’s doing what and how they’re moving up, we require that all the programs we measure are actually organized by a non profit organization and on our tended to be multiyear events to be ongoing. Okay, so the ice bucket challenge was started at the grass roots and then got assistance from and people from the press association and a less tv i got involved and helped propitiate it and move it forward, but it doesn’t fit into our rubric if it had. We only let me look at money raised the u s that program is true is raised about one hundred and fifteen million dollars. It would have been the number two program on our list. Yeah, tremendous, amazing phenomenon i had barbara newhouse, the ceo of l s on the show and if anyone wants to check back and if you miss that, it was the october third twenty fourteen show spent the hour with barber and there’s also a video of that we did it was a video as a google plus hangout. So this video of that on my youtube channel which israel r e a l tony martignetti some other swine had taken tony martignetti from youtube before i got there. I’ve since eliminated him, but i kept the everybody knows the channel. So i had a cousin no that’s that perpetuate a stereotype. I don’t know why i’m not touching that with a ten foot pole. Tony that’s, your your valley wick. I know i did it badly too, but i’m in the tribe, so i you know you can do. You could do it. Um all right. So that was it was it was purely organic. Came from an a l s patient? Yes. And beyond the hundred fifteen million. That was for the less that was for the national organization. But did they do something to two hundred twenty million globally? It is all the affiliates. And did you do it, tony? Did you dunk yourself? I did not idea. I did. My wife did. It was being done all around the all around the world. And of course. A huge number of celebrities, etcetera. So, yeah, it was it was amazing, and it is again an example off how you can yeah, gotta make leave the doors open for people to do their own thing we may never see in our lives see another one on the scale of the ice bucket challenge, but we’re going to see ah lot of programs that raise significant amounts of money that weren’t created in the offices of one of our non-profit organizations. They were started by a passionate and creative supporter. Yeah, what other? We got another got another takeaway. We still have a couple minutes together. Sure, something we haven’t talked about, you know? Absolutely. It sort of goes with without saying, especially since where many people are listening to this on a podcast. And i know you use social media so well that you have to be thinking about using social e-giving your supporters, the tools to do that, i use that a personal example. I remember back to few years ago, i turned fifty, and i decided that i would do one of the climbs. M s society does a climb up one of the rockefeller plaza. Building sixty six story really? I didn’t know that very thing climb up the compass side of yeah, sixty rock, not the side inside, i’m not on the stairs, but i was still having a puppet and it was passing some thirty year olds felt very, very good, but i put it up on facebook and howard sutton burghdoff e-giving a shout out to you. This is a fellow i grew up with went to elementary school with we both share the ignominious distinction of having been bored on ground hog’s day anyway, i didn’t realize that howard’s mother had m s and the very graciously out of the blue gave fifty dollars, to this if i hadn’t put it on facebook, i never in a million years would have thought to send him an email or a note or call him up and say, would you support so that’s a great example, the next generation? I mean that’s almost talking about social media almost feels old school because now it’s all about mobile. I mean, you were all walking around with smartphones, we’re accessing all sorts of information that way and the tools are getting their where that’s going. To be the entry point and the contact point we just have about thirty seconds left, you have an annual conference who’s who what’s the value who should go absolutely great place for folks who are leading substantial programs in peer-to-peer for fund-raising if you are not raising a million dollars or more let’s say you there’s tons of free resource is webinars on insights that you can gather at peer-to-peer forum dot com and we’d love to see you. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, david. My pleasure he’s at dave cause on twitter twelve years working at the intersection of commerce and cause got tony’s take two and successful giving day’s coming up and you’re gonna hear some something consistent too, and my next guest do around the use of technology for those giving days. First opportunity collaboration it is the single most productive week i’ve spent all year that is from gretchen wallace, founder and president of global glass roots grass roots global grassroots in darfur hi haiti, rwanda, uganda and the us opportunity collaboration is a week long conference in hey stop in mexico, devoted to poverty reduction in all its different forms, lots of people working at the problem in different ways throughout the world i was there last year, i’m going again this year in october if your work is related to poverty anywhere in the world, check it out. Opportunity collaboration, dot net my video this week again from my laundry room, i’ll get out of the laundry room for next week, but back there this week explains how planned e-giving levels the playing field across all your donor’s. It is the great equalizer that empowers small and mid level donors, and that video is that tony martignetti dot com ksc our affiliate listeners in california i’ve got two tickets for you to the ksc our music video festival. It is at the vista theatre in los angeles on a mme april fourth and if you would like those two tickets, be the first one to tweet me. I listened to hashtag non-profit radio on chaos see our radio tweet that to me if you’re the first one to do it and i know you let you and casey are you listen to the show on tuesdays so there’s still time if you want to go to the ah music video festival. Hosted by chaos, tweet me be the first one. I was at and t c the non-profit technology conference earlier this month, and one of the very smart people that i spoke to was karen stein and here’s. My interview with her on successful giving days. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen. Our hosts are intend the non-profit technology network. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center. I guess now is karen stein. Karen is vice president for communications and content at network for good. And her workshop topic is the secret formula for successful giving days. Karen stein, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, tony it’s. Great to be here. It’s. A pleasure. Thank you very much. Thanks for taking time on a busy conference day. Yeah. It’s definitely exciting to be here at at the anti cia and see lots of old friends and make lots of new ones. So it’s zoho always in one of our favorite events. Excellent. This is my second year here doing interviews on dh believe this is your second my second year here. And, of course, network for good has been here for many, many years. So since around two thousand seven i think right for yeah, i believe so first ntcdinosaur long before amy sample ward was ceo, definitely definitely and i think it’s it’s growing into i think one of the premier non-profit events teo, be at it? I think so. I mean, that’s always what? You know, there are many conferences to go, teo if for both attendees and exhibitors, but this is when we definitely make a point to always, always be all right. I’ll see you again next year. Definitely make a date. All right, all right. We’ll set you up with an interview for twenty sixteen successful giving days. So now i think the biggest probably most popular, is giving tuesday what are some examples of other ones? Yeah, so different types of giving days, they could be based around the time of year they could be based around a region or an affinity group. So there are things like giving tuesday, of course, which is really the kickoff now for your in giving. And then you have things like give local america, which is focused more on regional giving and other kayman community foundation states have their own giving days. We actually helped maryland. Do e-giving day for their state and it wasn’t a maryland, yes, for their non profit organizations to the maryland non-profit association did e-giving day on dh then you have ah, non-profits who want to come together and do giving days around affinity groups so things like give out day, which was really kind of focused around issues affecting gay, lesbian, transgendered folks, and have those organizations come together not just to raise funds, but also to think about how to raise awareness and use those social networks as a zit means to get their message out. I had henry teams as a guest about a month ago or so roughly talking about the success of e-giving generally and how what a huge spike there was for twenty fourteen he certainly emphasizes the decentralisation of it and all the sharing tools that are available is that common across the successful e-giving days? Definitely, i think that the reason why e-giving days have become so popular is because online fund-raising has become so popular, and it really has decentralized and and decouple the idea of fund-raising and advocacy from just not just the organizations, but it’s really something that everyone khun d’oh! And to think about how you can couple that technology with the idea that we have these large social networks it’s really allowed that to take off in a very viral way, and we often talk about things going viral. This definitely has for sure, and i think it’s great on dh. So what are some other, you know, sort of common traits, important components of a successful e-giving yeah, well, the thing is that that makes giving dae so unique, and i guess so effective is that it’s really using that sense of urgency? And we know that a sense of urgency, especially in fund-raising campaigns can really motivate people to act when they otherwise would not. And so having that limited window of time really gets people excited and it’s very focused, you have a lot of energy kind of compressed in tow one day, twenty four hours, and it really gets people excited, and so i think, that’s one piece of it, right? I think it’s that urgency and to take that and then really empower people with a message and some fun sharing tools. So i think you hit the nail on the head there. Were thinking about how do you not just use social media as a promotion promotional tool, but to use it in creative ways with images, with videos with, you know, some kind of contests that could really encourage that excitement, right? Because that’s one thing that you definitely need forgiving day, you need something had to be fun, and you needed to be interesting, and you needed to be exciting because that’s really what is going to get people to pay attention to you and be motivated to share that with their friends and their family? And so we think that that’s really one of the things that’s, that’s really important, so it’s, that sense of urgency, the idea that you’re having fun but it’s also this idea of specificity, how do you become very specific about what you’re going to be raising funds for in that day? And we find that the most successful e-giving goal goal, it can’t really just be about general giving it needs to have something else to it. It needs to have something specific, so maybe that’s a specific program that you’re working on, maybe that’s ah specific goal that you’re working tour, but it needs to be something, you know, maybe you’re trying to open a new soup kitchen and that’s the particular thing that you’re built, you’re raising funds for its not just about your your cause it’s about that one particular thing, because having that tangible thing again helps you be more creative on and be very specific, and i think it gives people something to really grab onto you and share and understand exactly where their money is going. Okay, interesting the specificity. So do you find that organizations that are just more general say on giving tuesday? You help us out today, it’s giving tuesday, they’re not being a successful is the other right? I think that there is if you’re not specific, you’re not going to be as successful. And i think that it’s not enough to say it’s giving tuesday. So give it’s the same thing as if you were saying now, it’s time for our annual campaign so you should give to us that’s not compelling for a donor. And so i think that, you know, if you can get very specific about the cause that you’re raising funds for, maybe it’s a special, specific project. We see that that’s really makes a big difference because it also helps the non-profit get really clear about what their marketing materials are and what that message is, and it could help you stand out, especially on e-giving day we’re in so many people are actually putting out those fund-raising appeals having something unique can help you stand out above the rest. And so it’s really important for you to be specific about that ass because we know that that’s what donors are looking for, and that really does play into that idea of a e-giving day of really coming together to fund one particular thing that people care about, what should you be thinking about if you’re trying to decide whether e-giving day makes sense for your affinity group? Not let’s let’s put aside participating in something national, like give local o r e-giving tuesday, you’re trying to think about it for your own, like university, for instance, you know, how would you what do you need to think through? Yeah, i think that what you really need to think about a couple different things. I think you need this the internal staff to be able to do it it doesn’t have to be a large debt, but you do have to have someone dedicated to being the champion of that giving day for your organization, because it’s really just like any other campaign, you need to have a plan you need to have. Ah, you know, one who’s going to man those marketing channels, so you need to have somebody dedicated to that you need to really be able, teo leverage social media. I mean, you could do e-giving day without social media, but i think it’s a lot more difficult, so you need to have we’re already started thinking about how do you build that up for your organization to use that as a lever. So you need to have some type of social media presence and you need tohave ah, fairly decent following, and that could mean different things for different organizations. A larger organization is going have probably many more followers. A smaller organization may not have as many, but the followers they do have maybe just his passionate. So you need those people to amplify your message, and then you need a really easy way for people to activate, right? You’re sending out? Those messages through social media, how do you actually get those people to take action and make it very easy for them to do so in terms of donating online or with your call to action could be signing a petition most giving days are about giving funds and making a donation, but some organ it doesn’t have to be, but it doesn’t have to be at a lot of people use that as an opportunity to raise funds, but also to get people on their email lists he really expand their social network. So some of those different asks that you could give to your supporters are yes, we would love for you to support the mission with a mani very gift, but you can also support the mission by sharing this this message with your followers and help us expand that network, and that could be really powerful, especially as we see millennials take hold that’s one way where they really feel like they can make a big difference is being an advocate for that cause and that in some cases, especially for smaller organizations, can be a big win because they don’t necessarily have that built in. Base to communicate, tio way assumed that most people know what e-giving tuesday is, but give local america when i wanted to explain what that one is about because i don’t, i don’t think a cz widely known but it’s still very, very interesting. Yeah, it’s it’s it is, and i think it taps into this idea where so give local america is actually done through a lot of the local community foundations and it’s really all about giving local to your own local charity. So if you are living in austin and i think the us who actually austin is having an event this week called amplify austin and it’s all about giving back teo to those charities and those organizations in the austin community. So it’s really focused on making sure that your charitable donations are staying within the community and really getting people excited about what good is happening in their own backyard. So that’s really the premise of give local america’s toe leverage the networks and then the non-profits through the local community foundations and created giving dae that way. So it is a national day devoted to giving, but it’s, the action is actually happening. At the local level, can we talk some about technologies that you should be employing in your you’re now that you’ve decided to to embark on a given day? Definitely. So the great thing is that technology is really democratizing fund-raising and it allows that toe happen at many different levels by really anyone, and so what we would would recommend is that you have a really strong online giving presents it should also allow your donors to make a donation online very quickly, but it’s also about mobile because we know that a great majority of people are now reading messages on mobile email messages as well as the primary use of many social networks is actually coming through mobile. And so that experience needs to be very mobile friendly so people could quickly take action, get that done and feel good about giving that gift rather than it being a long drawn out process. So that’s really critical. The other thing that you need to think about with your online giving platform is, is there an option for people to raise funds on your behalf? So is there an option for someone to come in and not just make a donation, but actually amplify your fund-raising by becoming a fundraiser for you, so appear fund-raising functionality is also very important for that and then having cement a grated social sharing tools. So we talked a lot about this idea of social media and leveraging networks has really allowed these giving days to take off so that’s one things that non-profits really need to think about us, how are they going to then enable and empower those donors and those fundraisers to share their message with tools right on that page, right on their their facebook page on their web site, just making sure that they’re making it as easy as possible to find those ways to share that message? And so i think those were really the things that are critically important, there are many other things that you could do. I mean, having a great email marketing tool, of course, is one and all these things are typically what you would find for any successful campaign, but particularly the mobile in the social and the pier fund-raising are extremely critical, forgiving days because you need to be able to activate as many people as possible within a very limited amount of time. 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You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m ken berger of charity navigator. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Oppcoll now i imagine there’s there’s lead time to this and, well, there’s obviously lead time that’s silly, but in terms of getting some early adopters, maybe, you know, you got some key people lined up way in advance so e-giving day about some of the ground working, yeah, so u need t be planning ahead, so we would say if you’re if you’re thinking about giving tuesday a new it’s only march, but you need to be thinking about that now we would say that ideally, you would have about three to six months lead time if you are thinking of of give local america, which is just in may so that’s not too far away, you still have time to plan that, but those far ahead as you can get you is going to be more you’re gonna have a more successful campaign and one of the things that you need to be thinking about when you’re planning that is being able to identify who are your most passionate supporters, whether those air people within your staff or your volunteer group, or maybe donorsearch one outside your organization, you need to be able to get those people on board. Orderly, get their input, make sure they’re aware of what’s happening and then equip them with the right messages in the right tools to be able teo really amplify that message for you. So that’s really important to think about what more are we looking for when we’re in these people that we’re going to recruit early on long before the early the early adopter? Yeah, i think what you need to think about our, you know, our what is their story? Why do they support you? And i think that’s a really compelling question to start asking those people because that story you can use yourself, tio really inspire other donors, but you need to understand what motivates them. Why do they give to the organization? Why do they care about your cause? I really understand that. I think what you’re also looking for frankly, are people that have large networks, you know, and influence. Yeah, i think i think he want at least two to three people on your, you know, group of supporters that can reach out to the media. Maybe they have connections. You know, your board members are actually great people to get involved in this process, because they are typically people that do have influence in your community or have connections, and that could be a great way to use them t get involved, get excited about what you’re doing and really, you know, kind of make give them something to feel proud about when they’re reaching out to their friends, family and colleagues about why your cause is so important. So those are some groups that you could look to you, but i think volunteers, board members, people that are recurring, geever, you know, we’re really talking a lot about recurring giving it networked for good, because we know that those people are the most loyal in the most passionate people. They’re committed to your organization, and often times they will want to do more for your organization. So that’s, another group that you can look teo excellent. You have excellent way of explaining this very concisely. Thank you, really. So it, sze voluble. Let’s think about trying to make the case in our organization if we believe it’s, right? And we’ve got the tools in place and we have staff that can support it wear confident we’ve got some people in our networks who will take it on right? But, uh, maybe the board is reluctant or the orjust my immediate boss is reluctant with ceo, how do we start to make they bring these people? Yeah, i think there’s a couple of things that you can do, i think you can point to the larger success of these giving days there’s a ton of examples out they’re both from the hyre ed space, but also from from non-profits in general, that are raising a lot of money this way, and so i think you can use that as a springboard for having this conversation at your organization. I think you have to be realistic. You have to think about what is the investment that you’re making in this giving day because you do need teo planning to have some marketing dollars to put behind it. What we would typically say is that you should plan to spend about ten percent of what you hope to raise and so i think it’s important to be really clear on what that goal is for your organization. But it could be a way for you to expand your audience and raise more funds. And so i think it’s ah, this investment that’s well spent. I think the other thing to think about is a network for good. We’ve seen that this type of fund-raising so far has been additive for organizations. A lot of people are concerned. Well, zishe is cannibalizing other giving it actually is very additive, and it could be another way to not only grow your day donations, but it could be a way to grow that donor base, which is a critically important for so many non-profits especially those small to midsize folks that are really looking to build their lists. And so i think, that’s another way, it’s a it’s an opportunity, really, for those people to meet several goals at once and i think that’s a great investment of dollars. How do you assuage the people who do say it’s just gonna cannibalize our annual giving? We’re just going to shift shift time of year that they give, yeah. I mean, what we’ve seen in the data is that that’s not actually the case. And so you know, we we do a lot of analysis on your in giving. And what we typically find is that we see about ten percent of our animal volume for the entire year. Come in at the last three days of the year and that’s been pretty constant. And so this year, we really interested to see what? How did this really big giving tuesday, if influence that. And so we saw that on giving tuesday. I think we are. Volume was about one hundred and forty eight percent. An increase over twenty thirteen on giving tuesday. I was like, okay, that’s that’s nice. But what happened later? Right? Because that’s really where more people are giving what we actually saw is that this past year in twenty fourteen, those last three days accounted for twelve percent of our annual bowling, and that volume actually went up those days got larger. So it’s really interesting. Now we can’t necessarily attribute that cause, but it was just interesting for us to see that happen because there was, you know, we were thinking like, well maybe that is shifting. I think what it is is starting to just accelerate the way that people are giving at the end of the year, but what we saw is that people are giving both in both cases, right? They may not big be giving large amounts on giving tuesday as they will on december thirty first, but what we do see is that the largest average donation comes in on december thirty first and the second largest comes in on giving tuesday on dso and and that’s a bigger gift than what happened at any other time of the year outside of december first. All right, uh, can we still have a few minutes left together? What? What more do you want share that i haven’t asked you about? Wow, that’s a great question. Well, i think that the thing that we would really encourage people to think about is just start thinking about it. I think it’s a great way for you to think about how to message organization in a new way if you haven’t tried it yet. It’s a great way to activate younger supporters if you’re kind of looking for a way to get new people in the door get younger donors involved it’s a good way to activate them, right? Because they really take to this because it incorporates a lot of the behaviours and the technology that they’re so comfortable with using. And so i think, that’s another thing to think about if you’re looking to tap into a new demographic, i think that giving days are way to do that, and there are so many great examples out there that you can kind of look, teo, to see how people are doing this and it’s really, you know about being creative and about, you know, thinking about maybe a new way to spend your cause to people that haven’t heard about it before. Are there other national ones besides e-giving tuesday give local america others that we could participated in before we start thinking about creating our own? Yeah, i mean, i think that the big too, you mentioned i think i believe there are there are other giving days, i don’t have it for some reason i’m drawn, drawing a blank on that, but i think, you know, the interesting thing is that we would really recommend that you participate. In one that has maybe a bigger following. First, because a lot of those organizations, especially the folks, that giving tuesday, have a set of resource, is for you to take advantage of. And that could be really powerful for folks that are just getting started. And not quite sure now. Or forget also provides a toolkit for folks that outlines exactly what you need to do and when. And so i think, it’s really important if you’re just starting out to try to go in on e-giving day, that’s already in existence, like one of these national days, or even a regional event before you think about maybe creating your own event, because i think you’ll learn a lot by doing that, you know, sharing tools or critical on dh there already set up. Exactly, you know. Want to reinvent the wheel your first time out. Don’t leave us with one one tip that you haven’t mentioned yet he’s going to think of something that just in the last minute, but yeah, definitely i wouldn’t say that on giving days, you know, just like any other day of the year, any other campaign it’s all about being very compelling and drawing in that emotion from the donor, so don’t leave that behind like we said, it’s not just about the giving day it’s, about what you’re empowering that donor to make possible. And so you really need to be able to think about tapping into emotion when your thing thinking about that fund raiser and thinking about that appeal letter or that social media post that you’re doing really leverage the powerful work that you’re doing and, you know, send that message out and draw all those emotions because that’s, what really is going to get people in the door? Thank you very much. Thank you so much, tony. My pleasure. Karen stein, vice president for communications and content at network for good. And you’re with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen. Thanks so much for being with us. Thanks. To everyone at ntc and and ten, the non-profit technology network, i felt very welcomed at ntc this year. If you like more detail on giving tuesday, i had the founder henry tim’s on this show, and that was the january sixteenth show from of this year just a couple months ago next week damn piela he’s, the guy in the ted viral video, which is the way we think about charity is dead wrong. Have you seen it? If you haven’t, then you certainly should. He’s, also founder and president of the charity defense counsel. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go for info? Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and this music is by scott stein of brooklyn’s yeah, see that that’s, right, scott? Yeah, 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 their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.