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Jim Nowak heads fundraising for the dZi Foundation, which he founded. How did he and the Foundation manage his transition from executive director to chief fundraiser? He talks candidly about the board, job descriptions, ego and more. (We talked at Opportunity Collaboration 2015 & this originally aired 10/30/15.)
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Disaster recovery: Ignore it at your own peril. What belongs in your DR plan? Dar Veverka is vice president of technology for LIFT. (This originally aired 5/1/15 and is from the 2015 Nonprofit Technology Conference.)
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Dahna hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the idler ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of black ophelia if you tried to sugar coat the idea that you missed today’s show, don’t be the founder from hell, jim no ac heads fund-raising for the d c i foundation, which he founded. How did he and the foundation manage his transition from executive director to chief fundraiser? He talks candidly about the board, job descriptions, ego and more. We talked that opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen miss originally aired october thirtieth, twenty fifteen and your d our plan disaster recovery ignore it at your own peril. What belongs in your d our plan dahna geever ca is vice president of technology for lift. This originally aired on may first, twenty fifteen and is from the twenty fifteen non-profit technology conference on tony’s take two the charleston principles we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers we be e spelling dot com here is gym no ac with don’t be the founder from hell. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen were on the beach in x top of mexico. My guest is jim no ac. He is president and co founder of zi foundation. They’re at dc i that’s deltas delta zulu, india from my air force days dot org’s dc i dot org’s and we’re talking about avoiding being the founder from hell. Jim is not that jim. Welcome. Thanks, tony for having me on the show. Appreciate it. It’s a pleasure. I’m glad we got together rubs what? Two days ago, right? I think we’re connected. And, um all right, you’re not the founder from hell, and we are going. We’re gonna take this way only have one side of the story, so i don’t have justin you because one of your board to collaborate to corroborate your your side. But you’re doing a session here. Yeah, i presume you’ve been. You’ve been vetted. Yeah, i’ve done done the session for the six years i’ve been coming. Job pretending collaboration. I keep offering. You know i don’t need to do the session, but it seems as i always say nobody ends up in that session by mistake, you know, people and it’s been interesting people, aaron really tough situations, very emotional, you know, that the social sector is a tough space to be in, and people are very passionate and it can be really charged, but we do our best to try to give people some tools, maybe walk through these these these difficult situations, all right? And in the six years i’ve been doing, you’ve never been challenged by anyone who said, no, that guy is the ceo. That guy he’s the founder from hell, no never had that challenge, but having no, but there, you know, again, i would say i only have one perspective to bring to it there are people that have different perspectives and say that would never work that are absolutely, and i’ve had some of them as guests, but but we’re getting the founders perspective, which i haven’t had before. Yeah, let’s, start with your history with the organization. I’m the cofounder, and now i sit is president we started are working. Paul. Seventeen years ago, it was around an expedition that had been climbing in the fall for a number of years and small expedition to climb. Memoria twenty three thousand four hundred foot what’s. The name of it from maury fremery three miles to the west of everest, on the nepal tibet border. Doing a new route has never been climbed. I was on there and eighty nine now back in ninety eight and in ninety eight found out about small girls home that was financially failing. Raised money in my local community to help bail this girl’s home out. That was the genesis of our work. Where’s. Your community. Where were you living then? I was living the vail, colorado, that and shortly after that moved to where were based now in ridgeway, colorado, southwest corner of colorado. Down by tell you right now. Okay. And how long have you not been the executive director? I was executive director for the first thirteen years. Okay? And then we started into a process of identifying we wanted to shift from there and bring someone in with better financial skills than than myself. But and it was early, early on, it was identified by my board that they want me to say connected to the organization i carried the history carried a lot of the donors carried those relationships on. They want me to become the development director. Okay, i’m going to get to the details of how that all played out. That’s that’s, critical part. But so it was for you, it’s been four years now since you were executive director. Is that right? Correct. Okay. And there is a new executive director. Hired and same person have been in the position for years. Yeah, we feel like we we did a really thorough an extensive search. Get a job and he’s still on the job saying individual okay. Okay, so, he’s uh, he’s executive director. Um correct, mark. Mark. And you won’t get a shot at mark. Yeah. Mark rikers, mark rikers. And you’re the president. Correct. Okay. Let’s, um, let’s start with the board’s role in this what i think is really interesting eyes that it was the board recommendation that you stay it wasn’t you as founder dictating. I want to stay with this organization. The impetus for having you remain came from the board. And also the impetus toe hyre an executive director came from the board, so it was to phase it was like we need to. And as my board affectionately refers to jim, if you get hit by a bus, this organization could potentially go down in flames. So the impetus came from some very skilled and wise board members that had experience in the nonprofit world. Had experiences change management leaders. We’re just very savvy and saying let’s, make our organization more sustainable and increase our bench bench strength. There had to be a lot of trust, a cross, you and the board, i mean, you had to believe that the board actually wanted you two remain and in the capacity that you ultimately became president and which is chief fundraiser for right, you have put a lot of faith in you’re in your board members telling you that believing what they were telling you. Yeah, and this is a really an emotional space for founder’s teo walk into because you could certainly believed that you were in a situation where you were being replaced, you and i that certainly took ah, was it took a while for me? Because that was my first reaction. I don’t think it was an unusual one. Hyre this changing roles and organizations is really tough work, i think it’s exceptionally tough if you’re the founder, if you were the very first person working on your own, you know, from monstrous hours and generating the organization, but pardon parcel of that is that i always had the belief that eventually, you know, in organizations everyone leaves eventually, and i always had in the back of my mind that the most important thing was that this organization lived on beyond me. And this was certainly a major stepping stone to that. What about the, uh, the composition of the board you mentioned? You had some change management people on your board talk about the importance of having the right skill set on your board. Help this transition? Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s, kind of like who’s. Do you have the right people on the bus? You know, and early on in our evolution, you know, i was way had a lot of people that knew a lot about paul, and that was great. But they were all foreigners, you know? And they had great skill, great passion and that but the evolution has been to bring in people with sound non-profit experience people who were changed management leaders that basically had their own consulting firms that actually helped corporal eaters and non-profit lee just walk through these really challenging transitions in the evolution of the nor is a t had that expertise. Oh, yeah, we have that three people that change management expertise. Yeah, that was that was really hughes. And then more than anything, maybe was that i had specifically two individuals that i trust implicitly, that they actually have my back. And that that boardmember board members that this was, you know, they had long non-profit experience, but that this was the way the organization could go and that i was not being, you know, put out to pasture and that that that this would be a very fascinating time for me to be able to find out what i really wanted to do instead of having to do everything you also had to trust that the board has the best interests of z in mind that and that their vision is at least, you know, parallel to yours. I mean, it may not be identical, but they yeah, they’ve got z in their in their hearts and and that that really, you know, one of the two individuals i trusted implicitly had been there at the first board meeting in my kitchen table, you know? And now we’re actually we have our board meetings at his board table on the fourteenth floor in denver office, you know? So i mean, that’s been a long evolution, but that had been fourteen years of that relationship, so yeah, i really knew that they had my had my back, a lot of trust ways, but not without a lot of emotion. And a lot of baggage, i’m sure is a tough, you know, you know, talk about the emotional, you know, you just just feel, is this the where am i actually going? What was actually going to happen to the organization, you know, what’s gonna happen to me because i really impassioned about this work and want to stay in this space, you know? So yeah, a lot, a lot of challenges and a lot of ups and downs, and i would say that that period tow walk through that and feel confident it took a couple months and they really took a couple months, and we laid out a very deliberate plan on the evolution of this after about a month into it. So i was starting to get on board a month of emotion. Yeah, the emotion continued, but then it started become irrational process. Yeah, because it started to develop and expand into what could be and i didn’t see that initially. Oi! All i saw was what what? What i thought was being replaced. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Initially that’s it. Yeah, yeah. All right. But you obviously overcame that. Yeah. Oh, and to add to that in this process and, you know, one thing that was really fascinating is that our entire board bought into the concept that as we moved into a new executive director, that the executive committee and myself would be the five people that would decide, and it would be unanimous on who we decide if we didn’t find them knives like your daddy way did not find that person, we would scrap it for six months and then come back okay, 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 dahna we’re going to get to the search. I spent more time on the board. You mentioned you had a lot of longevity on the board. Not not just the one. The one guy who started your kitchen table and now you’re in his fifteenth floor. Yeah, but you you yeah, you had other board members with long longevity. They understand the organization. They they have the best interests of z in their hearts to jury. I mean in our by-laws boardmember sze sit for three years, they have to be voted back on for another three years. They could walk away from the organization or immediately go to an advisory board that gets all the information doesn’t vote. After a year, they could be voted back on the board, but wave have everything we’ve had people that stayed a long time. We’ve had people that cycled and cycled out. I think that’s a really healthy for the cycle more than anything. New ideas, new energy, new vision. You know, new new things. Yeah. Onda connection disease work. Yeah, and and that that solid underpinning has always been that people have been there to anchorage, not just myself. Let’s, talk about the the search, the search process. You said it was the executive committee of the board for people and you. And did it have to be? You had to be unanimous. Vote on who the successor would be. Okay. He obviously had a lot of you have to be a lot of trust in that process. Yeah, from the rest of the board members. So well. And you too, you know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All five of you had to. Well, actually, the whole board had trust the process. Yeah, they had delegated the vote to the executive committee and you, but the whole board had trust this process. Yeah, they really did. And so there were some mechanisms that engaged staff engaged other board members, whether it was an opportunity for the three final candidates to be in our office and ridgeway and for people to come there and meet them and to sit in on a conference call with all the board members anyone that wanted to patch in, we actually had the three final candidates work with our financial officer for an hour and at ask questions around that they were in a closed room also with our the paul country director who was in country at that time. So they they all spent time with them. So it was really a deal where everyone had input. But there were five the executive committee and myself that were decided. Maybe a little detail. But i’m interested. What was the mechanism for staff to give feedback to the five people who are going to do the vote? It was basically threw the board chair. So they say the staff whether it was the financial officer in the whole country. Director they gave that him. Put directly back to the board chair on the board chair. Disseminated that to this election. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Um, was there a outside search consultant? No. No, we all did. With is completely just posted it publicly. Well, we posted it in all sorts of spaces, you know, on you threw the peace corps on on. Were located in a remote area in western colorado. So speak on the western slope. So we had lots of people in the denver area. Certainly. Um what we ended up through our network’s way ended up with sixty for paper applications. Now on dh. So that was what we started to wed our way through and pretty short. Or there were a third that it was really crystal clear they were, yeah, yeah, way too much of a stretch, and people asking to remove work remotely in new york for this job. So am i, and that was deal that we want people in the office, you know, you know, face-to-face on dh, so that was a real process, and and once we cold that list, then all of the board members were assigned. The executive committee search committee were assigned a certain amount of people to deal with, to make phone calls, too. There was a list of questions to be asked, and then that information was brought back to the search committee, and we started to, just with a little bit, whittle it down. Job the job descriptions, you’ve identified that as being critical, setting boundaries abound. What? What? You’re what you’re gonna be doing as president and not doing with the exec director is going to be doing let’s. Let’s flush that out job description. Yeah, that was that was really critical, you know, so to speak. What? You know, what was mark’s role? What was my role in what was our rule? You know, and how are we gonna work? Basically in the same office. And how is that going to make this kind of lateral move to be in charge of of all development, really focusing and digging into that, which is something i certainly had done, but i was doing a lot of different things, too. So that was just really critical and also having our executive committee really get into the weeds on that. And then, you know, it’s all about really owning that once it won once things transition about assuring mark who became executive director, but during the process, maybe at the point where he was offered the job or at some point he had to be reassured that this was not going to be a founder. Syndrome situation that he was stepping into. Yeah, what was that like? How did you well, we did that with all of our three final buy-in indefinite detail. And that was something that we put forth. This is how this out was, is how it’s changing. Okay? And, um, you know, i mean, this is probably a good time and, uh, it’s about somebody’s ego and, you know, what’s the what’s, the main driver, is it about you is about control, is it about not allowing the organization to grow past you and evolved past you? Or you’re going to keep a stranglehold on it on dh make things miserable for not only marked, but everybody else in the organization, so i want to double it more detail on how those three candidates got god assured that this was not going to be a disaster situation they’d be walking into mean, it had to be more than just the written job descriptions. Yeah. You know, i think one of the things that was really interesting is we weren’t, you know, quite often in this the executive director search or changes organization. What happens is it’s because the, you know, the staff’s upset programs are not being delivered properly, and financially, you’re you’re in dire straits. I mean, it was a kind of that’s, a standard, why you’re changing. We actually came from a really strong position, and we felt it was inappropriate time to make the shift financially. We were in good shape. Um, staff was quite happy with what they were doing, and programs were certainly evolving at that time. So, you know, nothing was perfect, but we certainly were not in the crisis mode. That’s quite often, what happened, so we were on the front end of this, but we were again realizing the vulnerability of of me is found, yeah. And they also had to be assured that you personally wood abide by the job description. Yeah, on everything that’s being said. I mean, you know, this is all in writing, and it all sounds good, but, you know, i was the new executive director could walk in and, you know, this guy jim is just blowing everything out of the water that we talked about, and now i’m in a bad spot. Yeah, yeah, yeah latto latto i had to trust you. Yeah, and that it’s a pretty standard situation. Yeah, you know, it’s pretty standard that it be negative. Yeah, is that demanded? And quite often, i do hear that people cycle through that know that first executive director didn’t work out. Now we’re into our second one, you know, we were fortunate and maybe i don’t know why, but i guess mark and the two other candidates believe me, you know, i mean, i really think it comes down to you know that and reassurance from the executive committee, no more trust, yeah was allowed to rest there’s a lot of stress. Yeah, we’re taking a big step here. Like i said, the paper documents are fine. But in the end, they could be end up being meaningless. It comes down to a human connection and right and trust. Yeah. Yeah, ego. You mentioned it before. So let’s, explore that it’s mostly your ego that you had keep in check for the for the good of z. Yeah, i think so. I mean, i’m no, no expert trust me, but i guess at the core of this is i’ve always held a belief of doing your best to hyre smart people than yourself on that doesn’t intimidate me. It makes us a stronger organization. So that’s a core belief of mine. Mine. Um, i why would i not try to bring the best and the brightest board members to the board, the best and brightest staff to the board? Um, that’s. Just a core belief of mind that that’s what’s going to make a sustainable organization, you know, that’s where the oil starts for me. All right, you know, and, um, hyre, you know, again, that core belief that my biggest responsibilities, this organization, lives on beyond me. Yeah. It’s bigger than you. It is much bigger than me. And then you, you know, from one person operation tow for people in colorado in twenty five in the fall. And, you know, fourteen girls is where we started serving over. Thirty thousand people now it’s way beyond me. I play an inter call roll i have in trickle power because i am the founder, but i’m on ly a piece of the puzzle and that’s that’s a healthy place for nor ization obviously there was a transition period where you had a share, a lot of corporate knowledge, with mark as the new executive director. Absolutely. You know, one of the things that was interesting way we’re in an office situation where we had two basic office rooms, and initially mark and i were going to work in the same room, and i just was, like, that’s not gonna work. We took the office next door. We’re connected by a door, but we can be close and have our own private space that i didn’t want him to feel that i was looking over his shoulder. Yeah, ever, you know, but there was institutional knowledge, you know, of our organization and what we done and our relationships and our funding and our partners and how we did things and where we worked and all that stuff that had to be transferred over and that takes time. That’s just a constant process of answering those questions mark was incredibly quick study, but i mean, i can’t imagine i’m thinking back out for years now, but, you know, he was really getting it after four months, six months a year, you know, it takes time and it’s, you know, and transferring those relationships, introducing him to those relationships is key and again, taking that letter will move away from that, you know, so that’s, what an and in a way, we also identified that it was an opportunity for me to become maur engaged in the board on dh i now sit on the board, i had never sat on the board. First of all, no, there was not in exhibition zoho ous founder, no, no one i was fonder, i said as the executive director, but i did not sit on the board and you don’t have a vote now. I didn’t have a vote that i don’t have a way out or not right now you’re on the board, but you don’t have a vote, correct. So i’m basically straddled the board on the kind of clutch between the staff from the boy. Why that decision to not have a vote i already have enough power is what the board felt, and i think that that’s the accurate, that definitely was another risk situation for me where i was like, wow, i’m losing control. Yeah, but founders have immense historical knowledge, respond relationships, they have immense power with organizations. And although that did feel uncomfortable, it was the right decision, you know, and quite a lot, itjust wass, you know, a lot of this feels like it has to be the right people. I mean, here you’re you’re you’re saying, you know, you struggled with not getting a vote being on the board, but not having a vote, but in order for this to work and for the board to be comfortable, you had teo swallow that you had to accept that and, you know, another person might not have been able to yeah, a lot of this, yeah, trust and and the personalities that people have to be right now, if it’s not the right people, then you’re not gonna have the trust and and we’re gonna end up with what i’ve had guests on the show say that which is when the founder leaves the leadership role here. She has got a several ties. Yeah, that’s really the default, right? But it sounds like if you arrive the right personalities, you don’t have to you don’t. Except the default. Well, i think there’s a couple things that play into that one is most times when people are shifting executive directors, it is a crisis situation, and maybe the management wasn’t very strong for so that’s that’s a pretty standard situation. I mean, for us, we were coming from ah, solid footing and the thing that was the constant phrase that we we used in our search was we need to find somebody with correct emotional intelligence to come in and not gutsy, but to build on pond what we’ve already created. And so that was it was really the baseline kind of tag line that way worked off the position as president created opportunities for you that you didn’t have as dahna in the leadership relies founder yeah, let’s talk a little about that because i think it was important for you to recognize that there was opportunity for you and the board was making that clear in the new president role. Yeah, and there i think the opportunity around it was too deep in my relationship with board members. And as i say, be that clutch between what’s happening in our work on the paul what’s happening with staff and that but a zai moved into the development roll exclusively. Really? What happened is at a time. I mean, i had time to follow some more creative, creative things i mentioned there was a knopper to nitti where we were invited from a little town that’s less than a thousand people in ridgeway, colorado, to create enter an event in italy and in france, where there’s a charity cycling about where it’s it’s basically a fancy camp for cyclists that i mean, they have massages and right insane amounts. That was three days of riding with over twenty five thousand feet of climbing racing. And so basically, we were able to bring in individuals who had financial capacity to commit to raising a significant amount of money for the foundation. Through this, this leverage point through their friends, and you would not have been able to pursue this no way and found a rolling no on and much band with way too much band with and then what happened out there that is we actually then deepened our relationships in london in the uk and we were a register as a charity in the uk. So now there’s the zi foundation uk and we have a board of trustees over there and they basically carried the work of the zi foundation in the uk raise funds for the paul that money flows through the u s and then in the fall so that basically become a whole new revenue stream that we never had nor would they have had anywhere near the bandwidth to take something like that on so it’s all those opportunities you know and looking around the corner what’s next and being very creative about it and that’s been very, very rewarding for me simple question in in the wrap up why the title president instead of director of development or institutional advancement? I think the board really wanted to honor my legacy with the organization, you know? And instead of just director of della development, they just wanted to honor my title is cofounder present your morning thank you for sharing means really some personal stuff talking about trust and ego and you know, being the right personality, so i want to thank you very much for for sharing. Yeah, thanks. I’m happy to share with anybody. It’s it’s, i think one of the things that happens is in these non-profits u u you changed from being student sometimes teacher, and i’ve been able to share this with a lot of people. It’s tough work at that level and i’m happy to share with anyone. So thank you for having me on pleasure you’ll find him at xero foundation dot org’s, it’s dc i foundation dot org’s tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage at the opportunity collaboration twenty fifteen on the beach i know you hear the waves breaking in its top of mexico. Thanks so much for being with us. Your d our plan with dar viv arika coming up first. Pursuant they’re content paper. They want you to know about its breakthrough fund-raising like all their content it’s free and this one is going to train you on break through thinking where you will learn how to solve the challenges facing your office, how to set a breakthrough outcome and what that means and how to create a culture of breakthrough thinking. In your office breakthrough, you can do it. There’s good ideas in here. The paper is breakthrough fund-raising and you get it at pursuing dot com click resource is and then click content papers. We’ll be spelling spelling bees that raise money. It’s a fun night out at a local place and it’s not your seventh grade spelling bee. You need to raise more money. I know you do. You can do it. We be e spelling dot com. We’ll help you. We’ll be spelling now. Time for tony’s take two the charleston principles this is something that relates to charity registration, which talked about love three weeks ago or so roughly three, four weeks ago was the video on that charity registration morass. Now i’ve got one on the charleston principles. They were created in charleston, south carolina, and they have very good suggestions for states it za recommended body of laws for states to adopt around charity registration to try to standardize things. Trouble is ah, lots of states haven’t adopted them. It’s not too clear where they’re adopted. Eso it’s not really all that standardized, but they’re good ideas and they are in some states the charleston principles. Check out the video at tony martignetti dot com it will help you with charity registration. And as always, i can if can you help with that, too? That is tony’s take two here’s darby barca with your disaster recovery plan welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc twenty fifteen the non-profit technology conference were in day two. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center and my guest is dar vivir ca she’s vice president of technology for lift a lefty, and her workshop topic is avoiding disaster. A practical guide for backup systems and disaster recovery planning you’re welcome. Thank you very much. Good to be here. It’s! A pleasure to have you ah, this day two we’re highlighting one swag item at and ntc her for interview. And, uh, i have a double chip biscotti from a sputnik moment. The hashtag is hashtag is sputnik smiles and i’m told that the glasses go with the biscotti so this is essential. This is this interview’s swag moment. Thank you very much. Sputnik smiles and it goes into the goes into the swag collection. There it is. Okay, door. Um we need to know some. Ah little basic turn. Well, you know what, before we even get into why is disaster recovery and the related and included back-up so i don’t know if it’s just for gotten ignored, not done. Well, what inspired the session is a organization i used to work for. We were required by auditors to do a disaster recovery plans. So when it came time for the annual audit, i got out the current disaster recovery plan. It went all right, i’m going to go ahead and update this, and when i discovered, when i read the plan was there were servers that were eight years gone for last eight years server and reading the planet was very clear that what the previous person had done was simply change the date and update the plan for auditors. And as i thought about it and talk to other people, i found that that actually happens a lot people. It’s, d r is sort of that thing they don’t have time for because no one ever thinks it’ll happen to them, so you push it off, you push it off, and you either just download the template, you know, a template off the internet. And you slap a date on it and basically fill it out just for the auditors. But a lot of organizations never actually think through their disaster recovery, they don’t get into the details, they don’t worry about it, and then when a disaster actually happens to them, they’re sort of stuck. You don’t have a plan that i don’t have a functioning christian, and they’ve never tried it out. So that was what inspired the session, and as we dug into it, we we tried to give the thirty thousand foot view because disaster it cover, you know, there’s an entire industry, the deals with technology, disaster recovery. You can spend days on this topic, and obviously we didn’t have days we had a ninety minute session, so we tried to give the thirty thousand foot view of the practical items you need to pay attention to if you’re not confident in your organisation’s d our plan, if you i don’t have a d our plan or if you do and you really don’t, you know, you think it really needs an overhaul that sort of the top ten of items of what you should really be looking at. When you’re dealing with disaster recovering backups and we tried to give some several practical examples myself and the other speaker and andrew, who could not make it this morning of disasters we’ve had to deal with as well as other well known ones. Yeah, okay, do we need some basic language? Wait, get into the d r disaster recovery topic short jr is one of them disaster recovers, often referred to his d r it’s often spoken about in terms of business continuity or bc, which is sort of the larger plan for the entire organisation. Should’ve disaster strike there’s you know, there’s very d are specific things such as our poet recovery point objective that we could talk about your rto, which is recovery time objective there’s very specific language like that for disasters. It’s usually just referred to d ours. So whenever we say d arts disaster recovery okay, we’ll see if we get into those eyes and i could explain this week. Okay, um, all right, so clearly we should have a disaster recovery written just recovery plan. Even if we’re an organization that small enough that doesn’t have an annual audit, we still should have. Something in place? Yes. Okay. What belongs in our day? Our plan top ten things. You need a contact list for your team. So if you have a top ten of the d r i do of what should your plan d our plan? You know, it could be anything from a five page outline that just covers the basics. And in in our sessions slides, which i’ve posted in the ntc library gives it some good resource is for doing a d our plan or it could be a, you know, a huge hundred page document. It covers absolutely every aspect of business continuity or something in between. It’s going very by organization. And the reality is, if you’re a small organisation with a small team, you might only be able to do the five page outline. But that’s better than nothing. That’s better than no d our plan or a d r plan that realistically hasn’t been updated in the last ten years. But i would say, you know, the top ten you really should have in your day. Our plan is number one. A contact list for your team members. You know what is the contact for? Your team, folks, your business continuity folks, if you normally would get that out of your email and you’re in a disastrous situation, you know you can’t get to your email or, you know, like we’re ever going through. And i want listeners to know that she’s doing this without notes, i it seems very confident that she’s got the and hopefully i remember altum in-kind get seven out of seven or eight of ten will be ecstatic, but so continue. Oh, but i want to say, yeah, as we’re going through, consider two organizations that may not have someone devoted to it correctly. This is our listeners are small and midsize non-profits right? They very, very well just all be outsourced, or it falls on the executive director’s desk. Excellent point. Would you cover that in the session? So t finish at the top ten contactless three team members contact list for your vendors, a call tree and some sort of communications. How do you tell your organization in your members that you’ve had a disaster? Either your servers have gone down your parts of burst and your communications air underwater. How do you do that? What is your? Network look like so. Network diagram process. Outline how you’re actually going to do your disaster recovery. A timeline? How long do you expect these activities to take before you, khun b live again? A list of systems and applications that you’re going to recover. If you’re a large enough or gore, you can afford a hot site was called a hot or warm site where you can immediately switch over two other equipment. You know, information about that. You’d need that to start your recovery. And then also information about your backups. You know, who’s got your back ups? What system are you using? How do you, you know? Get those back. So those air sort of like the top ten things or d our plan should have alright, let’s dive into the the process. Okay? A bit is that intrigues me, bond. Hopefully listeners? I think so. I think i have a fare beat on what’s. Interesting. I hope i do. Um, yeah. What? How do we start to think about what our dear process should be? But first, i have to think about what all could be a disaster for your organization. A lot of people think. About things you know, earthquakes, hurricane, sandy, hurricane katrina, but it could also be water pipes bursting in your building. That is one of the most common thing if your server is not properly protected. Which a lot of a lot of stuck in closets ah, dripping pipe water. We call those water events and that seems to be the most common thing departments encounter is leaking pipes in the building or some sort of a flooding situation, but it could also be an elektronik disaster. Such, i’ve worked at an organization that underwent what’s called a ddos attack, which is a distributed denial of service. It took out our entire web presence because malicious hacker hacker went after that’s where there’s millions of right network and they just flood your network seconds you’re overloaded and yeah, and that’s a disaster situation. So one why would they attack like that? Why wasn’t non-profit attack malicious? The cp dot organ are attacked out with avon marchenese travon martin decision. Folks attacked our our petition site way. We were able to get it back online, but for a couple of hours yeah, we were off line and that could be considered a disaster situation for sure. Yeah? How do you help us think through what potential disasters are not even identify them all i think about what could affect your or what you wear, you vulnerable? Some of the things we talked about in the session where? Think about how would you get back online if the’s, various things happened to you are your are your services sort of in the cloud? Do you have servers on site and start there when thinking about your process is what would you have to recover if these various scenarios affected you or with these various scenarios? Scenarios affect you. If your website is completely outsourced to a vendor that has de dos protection. Okay, that’s not a scenario you have to worry about so kind of analyze it and every organs going to be different. You know, if you live on the west coast, you’re probably concerned more about earthquakes than other regions. So it’s it’s going to vary for each organization, what sort of disaster you’re going to be worried about? And then you start getting down into the practical nuts and bolts in terms of who are your disaster recovery people, who’s. Your team, if you’re really small lorry, that might just be you or as you mentioned before, if you’re using outsourced, manage service provider and your vendors responsible for that, make sure your vendor has a d our plan for you? Ah lot of folks just assume your vendors taking care of that, but when it comes right down to it, do they actually have d our experience? Can they recover your items? Actually sit down and have that conversation? Because so many of the small org’s, as you pointed out, do use outsourced thes days? There’s yeah, there’s a lot of manage service providers that specialize in non-profit, but you need to have that conversation. Don’t wait till you’re under a disaster scenario to discover that groups they don’t actually have that experience have that conversation ahead of time. What else belongs in our process? Outlined in your process that outline? If you’ve got a another site, either a cold, a warmer, hot site or if your stuff is based in the cloud, where would you recover to? The hot side is some place you go to drink cold water or hot? Sure, a cold site would be where? You’ve got another location let’s say you have a dozen servers at your location and in the case of your building, being inaccessible or underwater, a cold site would be where you’ve got another location you could go to, but you don’t really have any equipment stage there, but it is another location you can begin operations out if that’s a cold sight there’s nothing ready to go, but you’ve got a sight a warm site would be where you sort of have a skeletal equipment there it’s far less capacity than you’re currently at, but you’ve got something there it’s not live, but you’ve got stuff ready to go that you can restore to and get going. And a hot site is where you can flip over immediately. Your live replicating to somewhere else, it’s ready to go? It might not be full capacity, so it might not have, you know, full blown data line size that you’re used to might not have your full range of service, but it is live and you could switch over near instantaneously. That’s a hot site, ok, eso you’d want that in your process and you’re going to want to think about what are you restoring and that’s, where we get into the backups? What comes first and that’s, where you start getting into terms such as recovery point objective and recovery time objective those air to very common d our terms recovery time is how far back are you recovering too? And what does that mean for each system? So if it’s your donorsearch system that’s probably fairly critical, you want a recent restore of that? If it’s a system that doesn’t change very much, maybe a week ago restores okay for that sorry that’s recovery point objective recovery time objective is how long does it take you to get back online after a disaster? You know, ifyou’ve got to download your data from an external source. Has anyone thought about how long that’s going to take you to get the data back? Is it going to take you fifteen hours or three days? So it’s in a lot of folks don’t think about that ahead of time, they just go oh, you know, we’ll we’ll pull it back down if we have a disaster, but they don’t think about instead of their nice normal data communications, they’re going to be on a tiny d s l line trying to pull down one hundred fifty gigs of information and it’s going to take a week to get it back down. I have to say you’re very good about explaining terms and thank you, proper radio. We have jargon jail? Yes, we try not to neo-sage transcend you haven’t transgressed cause your immediate about explaining exactly what recovery point river and recovery time objectives are. It could be very confusing. You know, if you don’t understand the terms in tech, you can be confusing what folks are talking about, and that was one of the the focus is of our station session is making it less confusing and being very practical, practical about what you can or cannot do, and if folks go and look at our slides, they’ll see on several of the items we did a good better best, and we tried to talk about that all throughout the session because we realized again for a small ork or, you know, even a large order that just doesn’t have the resources to devote to it. You might not be able to do best practice, but you could at least try. A good practice that would be better than nothing. And then so we do a good, better best for each. Each type of thing, like what does a good d our plan look like versus the best day our plan, and at least try and get to that. Good, because at least you’ll have something. And it could be a continuum where you try and improve it along the way. But you’ve got to start somewhere it’s. Better than just ignoring it, which is what happens at a lot of places. 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 neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Duitz i’m chuck longfield of blackbaud. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Do we need thio prioritize what’s mission critical and yes, we can work with out for a time. Yes, how do we determine that? Definitely we talk about that in terms of its not just a knight each decision either because we may think that the emails the most critical thing out there, but development may see the donor system as the most critical out there program might think that the case management system is the most critical out there, so you finance wants their account, they want their accounting system up. Obviously you’ve got to have an order in which you bring these things up. You’re probably not gonna have enough staff for bandwith or, you know, equipment to bring everything back online, so there needs to be and hopefully your executive team would be involved in deciding for the organization what is most critical in what order are you going to bring those things up? And that needs to be part of your d r plan? Because otherwise, if you’re in a disaster scenario, you’re not going to know where to start and there’s going to be a lot of disagreement of who starts where so you guys need to decide on the order, okay, we solve a few minutes left, but what more can we say about d r and related? Back-up that’s not going to wait till i’m back up because i think we could do a little bit in terms of d r i n st key points on backups are check them because a lot of time, yes, monthly or quarterly, at least is anyone looking at your back-up back-up work-life one of the scenarios that we talked about that actually happened to my co speaker, andrew, was that their server room flooded and it hit their razor’s edge server, which is their entire c, m, s, c r, e, m and donorsearch system, and they thought it was backing up, but no one had actually check the backups in the last two months, and it was on, and it was not s o in terms of back-up just typical, you know, pay attention to the maintenance. What do you backing up? Has anyone checked it? And again, if you’re using a manage service provider, make sure if they’re responsible for for looking at your backups of managing them, make sure they’re doing that. You know, double check and make sure that they understand that your backups are critical and they can’t just ignore the alerts about your backups. You know, you don’t want to be in the unpleasant situation of three of our servers just got flooded. We need the data and discover nobody was backing it up. It ain’t exactly okay, all right, anything else, you wanna leave people about back-up before we go to the broader diar? No, i think that’s good for those were the highlights for it. All right, so back to the disaster recovery. What more can we say about that? There are going to be a lot of watches if you’re in a large d our situation. And so one of things we stress is one getting down into the details of your d. Our plan. Before disaster hits. You see, if you’ve never thought about how you’re actually going to do the restores air, actually, how you’re going to be rebuild those servers. You need two ahead of time. A lot of folks never practiced have a fire drill. I hate fire drill, but and you don’t have a live fire drills in this case, it might be a live fire drill. You don’t want to have that, so you should make some effort to practice, even if it’s just something small, you know, trying to restore one server. I mentioned in this session that i was put in a situation years ago at johns hopkins university, where we were required to have verification of live tr practice, so i was put in a room that had a table, a telephone, a server, and we were carrying two laptops and we couldn’t come out of the room, and so we had completely restored our domain. We had a set of backups on the thumb drive and added the second laptop to that domain improve that we had restored the domain, and an independent person that was not connected to our department was monitoring to make sure we had done it, and we had to prove it, and that was an eye opening experience is as experienced as i was doing that i’d never done it live, and it took me three tries to do it so that’s, right? Encourage folks to really try and practice this stuff ahead of time and get down into the you know, the weeds on their on their d our plan and, uh and also to think about it, you weren’t fired because wayne johnson no, no, no, i actually like too much, john soft. No, we we did complete it within the time frame, but we were a little startled when we discovered that we thought we knew how to do it first time out, and we kept making little mistakes. There were two of us and they’re doing it, and we were surprised ourselves that we thought, oh, of course we know this. This is not a problem, but no, we were making little mistakes because we didn’t have the documentation down. A specific is it needed to be. And so that was a very eye opening experience. There’s a couple of their d r gotchas we talked about, which is crossed. People don’t think about the cost ahead of time. How much is going to cost to get you that data back in the instance of my co presenter who had the damaged drives, they weren’t expecting a near ten thousand dollars cost to recover those drives, but that’s what happened when they didn’t have the backups? They had to take those hard drives to a data recovery place, and the price tag was nearly ten thousand dollars. Dealing with insurance is another big one that people don’t think about having to account for all of the equipment that was lost, and dealing with that insurance morass often gets dumped on the auntie department in a small organization. There’s not, you know, a legal department that’s going to deal with that it’s going to be you so to, you know, kind of talk to your insurance provider ahead of time and see what all you have to deal with in a disaster situation. So you don’t get an unpleasant surprise if you’re ever in one a cz well on the insurance topic, just are you covered? Exactly what you think is your equipment covered? And what do you have to do with that? In terms of accounting for it? If you suffer a disaster, you know the gooch is we get so a couple of minutes, if if oh for days. About consciously trying to think about somebody we don’t hold back on non-profit video uh, i think some of the other ones that we covered in their thick wit mint again to the cost, how much is it going to cost you? Two gets new equipment and did you account for that when you were doing your d our plan and a time to recover? A lot of folks don’t understand how long it may take them to do a recovery and also deciding what is important and what is not important, not just in terms of what should be restored in what order, but in terms of practical things, do you really need to restore your domain? Er, or could you just start over from scratch if your domain only contains maybe fifty accounts and doesn’t have any associated servers faster for you to just start over and just recreate the domain immediately? Especially if a lot of your emails in office three, sixty five or google maps, you could reconnect it very quickly. So, you know, thinking about more practical gotsch is like that with that, you should think about have time, you know, obviously it’s that’s the best practice to think of all these details, and we realised folks may not be able to, so we provided someone sheets and some samples of them of just quick, yes or no questions and thinking this through and things to think about and where will we that is not notice provoc radio has a professional sound i don’t know about ntcdinosaur ten, but that was a way over there. They’re on their own. They can come to us for expertise if they if they need to, but, um, see, now i messed myself up because i ask you about something, but we were just talking about how much, how long will actually take you to recover things and whether or not you should practically skipped recovering something because it might be faster to rebuild it. Okay, i have a follow up to that my smart ass humor, maybe lose it. All right, so why did you leave us with one take away d, r or back-up the session was a little bit misnamed because technically, you’re not going to avoid a disaster. You really can’t. In many cases, you’re not gonna avoid the flood you’re not going to avoid. The earthquake if you’re in that region, so you need to plan on how to deal with it. So it’s more like avoiding avoiding your d are becoming the disaster because you’re not going to avoid the disaster itself, so you might as well plan for it. Outstanding. Thank you very much. Door. Thank you much. Darby america, vice president of technology for lift. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference two thousand fifteen. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Next week it will not be fermentation. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. And by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com a creative producers. Claire miree off. Sam liebowitz is the line producer, but he mcardle is our am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by susan chavez. And this music is by scott stein be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the odd learned 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 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 posts here’s aria finger, ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were. And, uh 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’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 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.
