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Durney 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 come down with trapani mitosis if you infected me with the idea that you missed today’s show master google adwords google has ten thousand dollars of free advertising for you each month. Are you taking advantage? Learn about the program and how to plan your campaign also find the best search terms to bid on and stay on track as adwords evolves the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference i talked to jason shim at pathways to education canada and mark coleman of evergreen digital marketing. This originally aired august twelfth twenty sixteen and master your decision making you make hundreds of decisions a day, some simple, some complex what’s the science and art behind making good ones. You’ll learn how to pare down choices and ask yourself good questions. Karen headed niimi and jamie nelson are from the inside education society of alberta. Karen is director of business in human resources, and jamie is an educator. This is also from sixteen ntc it’s ntcdinosaur day on non-profit radio canada master day. Lots of mastering going on on tony steak, too solitude, responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com here’s master google adwords welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen auntie si the non-profit technology conference. We’re also part of ntcdinosaur say, shins, we’re in san jose, california, at the convention center on day three of the conference. My guests now are jason shim and mark holman will meet them very shortly first have to shout out today this this interview’s not just one a day, but one interview swag item which is a brand dahna and it’s from ah on good from on good many ways to wear it and also ah ah yo, yo alighted yo yo which we don’t have enough not brought enough frame i can’t demonstrate my yo go pray yo, yo prowess i used to be able to walk the dog doo around the world, you know, rocket out horizontal butt now it was not to take my word for it that i can still do it, so this joins our swag pile. All right, jason shevawn jason is associate director of digital strategy and alumni relations at pathways to education in canada. Thank you. Very welcome back, jason. Thank you. Believe it was two years ago. It ntcdinosaur good memory and more. Coleman is president of evergreen digital marketing. Mark, welcome to the show. Thanks, tony. My pleasure. All right, gents, we’re talking about how to be a google adwords superhero waken rock this now let’s talk first about the ten thousand dollars per month program for non-profits who who knows this program best. Is it free? How do we where we find it? What is this? Who knows the best? Go ahead. Yeah. Basically it’s ten thousand dollars of in-kind advertising given by google every month. It’s rule over grantspace oh, there’s there’s no limit to it as long as you keep me in the grant requirements and basically it’s in-kind so the little adds it show up on the top the google search results and that’s what you get so it’s a great program be part of. Okay, where can we find info for people who’ve never heard of this before? Google’s website is, i believe it’s google dot com slash non-profits or for canada’s, google dot cn non-profits okay, and you get ten thousand dollars a month? Yeah, a month free. Edwards yeah, free. Albert is not a cash it’s non-cash granted in-kind advertising, but every month limited to three hundred twenty nine dollars per day. But every month on going, as long as you meet the program requirements, there is no expiration date. Okay, did you find it very hard to qualify if you’re i mean, if you’re in the u s and your five o one c three or if you’re in canada and you have the wherever the equivalent designation is, um, you’re a bona fide non-profit is that about all it takes are very much if you meet the requirements for being a registered charity, then you’re pretty much good to go. Okay, well, that’s outstanding, alright, i’m not sure how widely known that is, but it is now because everybody listens to the show. If they’re not, then they do. They ignored at their peril because then i don’t know. All right? Well, let’s, talk about some campaigning. Where should we start with our google now? We’ve got three hundred eighty nine dollars, a day forever where should we start our campaign? So i think that one of the first things to start off with is really identifying, you know what your organization’s your mission is, and then how you can align some of those add words to to align with, you know, with that that mission. So for example, for pathways to education canada, you know, our mandate is to help high school students that they’re living in low income communities to graduate from high school. So anyone searching for any topics that are related to, you know, dropout prevention or helping the high school students day in school or people that are living in communities that we serve, you know, whenever they’re searching for nothing’s, really to education and drop you? No, we make sure that we sort of an ad, so, you know, they confined our resources more easily and that we can get access to nothing’s like tutoring and mentoring and, you know, access to scholarships and things like that, so it really helps connect people with the resource is out in the community. Yeah, how do we think broadly about what keywords people might be searching for him and you know, i’m sure every organization could name half a dozen off the top of their head, but how do we go beyond that? Maybe listening on twitter? I don’t know. You tell me, how did it go beyond what it comes to it comes to mind immediately. I think it’s, you can start with a sort of ah thought experiment and just trying to get into that the heads of other people and really, you know, using your, you know, just general empathy. So when when you, for example, mark and i, we used to live in a way, we’re sort of used to work together in kitchen waterloo at a place called cries in family counseling services. And what we did was we were trying tio create ad campaigns to target people who are looking for things that couples counseling. Nothing is the market for key. Which couples counseling. You know, the bid rate is quite high, you know, for it. And then when you think about it, you know, by the times a couple realizes they need couples counseling. You know, you may have to pay more than what you have for those kind of words. You rewind it. You know, a month, six months prior. You know what? What kind of things might that couple be going through? And, you know, trying we want it that way. So the kind of things maybe bidding for it’s, like, you know, i’m having challenges, you know, communication with i suppose, you know, how do you resolve money issues? Fundamental difference of opinion about children. You know, things like that that, you know, you krauz you at the end of the path, you know, but for people who would require couples counseling you how to get to them a little bit earlier to connect them with the organization. So really, it’s just a lot of service sitting there and thinking, oh, i love that idea of thinking ahead because you actually beat the competition that is paying the higher price for couples. You know, for that phrase couples counseling, absolutely relationship counselling you can get. You can beat the competition if you’re thinking a couple of months earlier. What are they talking about? Like money? Children finance center? Yeah. Cool. On another example, i can provide and american and speak to this. Ah, as well. Let’s, when we part of the service that were offered was credit counseling, and the thing is, like payday loan places like they’re they’re willing to bid up to, like fifteen dollars per click and the google lad words krauz is limited to two dollars per click maximum. Okay, so you really have to be extremely creative when you’re thinking about, you know, for some of those services where you also, you know, essentially competing against for-profit right on do you know, how can you think about, you know, okay, so for people that are running into credit issues down the road, you know, what might have looked like six months prior? And, you know, maybe, you know, people are searching for, you know, troubles making their bills or looking for, you know, initial, you know, information about me, you know, loan consolidation or things like that, you know, before they get into that critical, you know, the moment where you know, they’re they’re living on sort of back to back loans and yeah, so it’s just a lot of thinking and but one of the greatest tips that i think we received when we first discovered head where it’s at it’s from the ultimate guide to adwords by perry marshall you know, way highly recommend that book through the ultimate guide to edwards yeah, it’s called okay. And if one of them was read cosmo magazine and, you know, i think cosmo magazine provides a lot of lessons around, you know that the way that it cost one magazine covers designed, you know, it’s it’s designed to entice, you know, people that are going through a shopping check out to pick up a copy immediately, and i mean, it’s been the best selling women’s back-up dean since nineteen seventy to know so you know, they really done that in the print industry on the transits quite well into design in-kind adwords campaigns as well, 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 oppcoll is pathways to education canada using google edwards ten thousand dollar month program? Yeah, yeah, ok, and mark, you have other clients that are as well, successfully, yeah, a number a number and you’re going with jason’s saying as well to part of the big part of adwords is trying to think of you know how how our people need our programs and services are looking for us if you’re doing banner ads or magazine ads to to kind of show what your your services are in google search is very specific, you can’t think of what our people looking for it so how to use the wise all the questions for help versus the opportunity of having made a scene at where you can put a big, you know, big, full page description of what your services are. This is really an opportunity for people who are actively searching for your programs and services and bring them right back to website. So it’s a really important program tohave from non-profits okay, after we’ve set on decided on a set of add words, phrases that we can afford to bid on how do we? I’m thinking next stage is monitoring. Our our results day today is that if i skipped anything well, there’s there’s a process there’s the whole setup piece, which is your campaigns, i groups keywords creating your ads. But one side nuts and bolts piece of it is done gather it is the moderate peace and add words and google analytics are fantastic for that they show you clicked the rates that should you conversion rates if you have that set up impressions and something, and really manage actively and make wise decisions on a short term basis. And that’s what actually drew me, tio adwords and that grants program originally was the fact that i came from a auto background. We have the auto trader, which is it’s, a paper magazine, and anatoli, you’re hoping to see people come in and say, i came here because i read your magazine without words, jason first showing the dashboard the first day i’m like, okay, we can actually see that accent or people clicked this ad in this time frame. It went back to our website and took actions, so get the monitoring in the analytics part of is a really big piece it’s important? Okay, yeah, jason won’t you talk about this more? Yeah, what’s really great is that you can really make data driven kind of decisions, which is, you know, one of the hallmarks of working in digital, an example i would give us, you know, we we had run a campaign to get supporters to donate their air miles to our organization, and we worked off the assumption that, you know, people want to give their, you know, their airline miles, you know, the goodness of their hearts because, you know, you know, but what? We quickly realized that, you know, the think the ad copy was something along the lines of, like, hey, you know, i don’t need your airline miles to ah, charity focused on youth and, you know, the click to rates on that were abysmal, like they weren’t fantastic people kapin verdict, so we, you know, we sat down and went back and thought about it, and the ad copy that did perform better was, hey, i don’t have enough miles teo to go on a trip, you know, donate them to our charity instead, which reflected the kind of reality that some people face when you realize that you need like, maybe ten or fifteen thousand miles you wanna trip in just a thousand? Yeah. Dahna and they just want to, you know, do something good with it and, you know, because they can’t go anyway and that one converted three times better and it’s amazing to people to get, get the metrics around and really support some of those hypotheses around. You know how our people thinking, how are they behaving? And you can really test those out. And conversely, you know, sometimes you know the hypotheses that you come up, you know, fall completely flat as well. But it’s, you can always go back to the data rather than relying on some of these, you know, anecdotal, you know, kind of gut feelings. You can still have toast, got feelings, but you consistently validating them over and over again with the data, which makes us think, edwards, you know, one of most compelling platform’s teo, really experiment and run campaigns. Mark, you mentioned something. I want to die aggress to an add grants. You said adwords and add grants what’s with the ad grantspace program. Yeah, granted, we’re actually talking here for non-profits adwords is a platform. That google has five times in that sort of business is you and you pay for ads today, but i grantspace the non-profit program that’s just ten thousand dollars a month. Okay, exactly. Right. Keeping keeping a straight. All right. Okay. Well, all right. So now we can monitor results like day to day, right? I mean, we and at the end of a week, we can see one phrase, one word is performing quite well. Another is not so weii stop bidding on the on the underperformers that basically what what we do? Yeah, basically straight a be testing and if one odds working other ones not if it’s we’re talking incremental increases. Here is what we’re talking about. One point five click through rate versus the one point seven or two point three it’s not always an eighty twenty of this huge disparity. Okay, but over time, you can make these incremental increases and really improve your presence, and we’ll set up typically set up two ads per at group abila play them out like jason mention. We make assumptions about what’s going to work, and we’ll quickly learned that it does or it doesn’t, and they get to go on, we’ll pause the want ad, create new adam, obviously reset the process and move forward. So kind of a fun game that i have with my summer intern. So we get a summer intern every summer, and what i do is i challenge them to a competition, so every week will come up with an ad and you’ll see what the results are. And then we face off every week, so the lower performing at gets paused. And then we were both trying to create a better one every week. So, you know, by the end of the summer, you sort of have this, like, hunger games, you know, style of creation. You know, only the strongest survives the best click through and the best results and conversions. Okay, all right. Pathways, education canada benefits. All right, they’re the winners. All right, do-it-yourself time together. What? Let’s? See what else? You, uh, campaign what else can we say about a campaign but the ongoing but i think waken speak a bit to the google grantspace oh, program. So if you max oh, it’s, your ten thousand dollar grant does there’s a few of our requirements in there. You max out your the ten thousand dollar grant for two months out of the prior six months, a cz well as maintaining certain kind of quality metrics around new york like two rates and also setting up conversions non-profits are eligible to apply for the grants parole account, which is forty thousand dollars a month, which is nearly half a million dollars a year in in-kind ad revenue and, you know, that’s that’s a great way for, you know, larger non-profits or international facing non-profits to get additional kind of exposure grantspace pro it’s called that’s pro. Okay, ru is pathways, education and a grand pro now, yet we’re run away, but i know that a mark is pricked with several clients against pro against yeah, we we have a few that working with the grants provoc counts again. It’s the more than international reach or the national across the states reach the reality is a lot of our smaller non-profit to have a regional focus, a search based so there’s a limitation, sometimes near population, searching for programs and the relevancy in just the raw reach doesn’t there sometimes, but for the bigger the big organizations absolutely it’s. A fantastic way to actively manager account and and really reach out. Okay, okay. You are. You also spent some time talking about keeping your skills fresh. As as adwords evolves. What is that about? What happens? I think that the platform is constantly changing. And s o back in toronto, i teach a digital marketing classes in the evenings. And one of the things that i am costly, thomas students, is that in one working in adwords and analytics, that the platform can change at any time on do you have to adapt to it? That’s part of you know, being, you know, working in digital so an example would be, you know, if when, when google changes our algorithm for search, you know, you have to respond to that, and you read up on, you know what the new algorithm changes? Maybe an adjuster campaigns accordingly. Another one is sometimes the platform itself changes. So you log into the interface and, you know, the buttons of switch debate or there’s. A new feature or a new tab. It’s? Very disconcerting. Yeah. Especially people. We’re not, you know, native digital. You know, you just used to something for years. And then without an announcement, it’s different yeah, so you have to keep on constantly beating and adapting and everything, but part of it is that, you know, even though, you know, for people who have been doing it for a while, you know, and maybe a little bit disconcerting to, you know, have everything shift, i think it’s also an opportunity for people who are completely new to the platform, i mean, it hits the reset button for everyone, right? So if you’re if you’re brand new getting into edwards, i mean, it’s a great opportunity jumpin you’re at the same level of everyone else. So, you know, it’s it’s also, i think, a positive thing and, you know, for people, you do not feel intimidated about jumping into it cause i know that when you first log into the dashboard like it’s, a lot of buttons and everything, but, you know, it’s, you know, both of us, you know, we start doing adwords about seven years ago when we were working at a smaller non-profit and, you know, it’s been a constant kind of learning and evolution, and we’ve seen so much change on the platform, but you know, the more time you spend in it, you know, it’s, the analogy we used in in our in our session was, you know, we’re not the kind of, like superheroes i got bitten by a radioactive spider and wasn’t out with all these superpowers to do add words, we would be more like, you know, the batman or the ironman in-kind things where, you know, just a regular person who, you know, that man went away for, like, five years, you know, into the mountains to, you know, train and honed his skills and everything. So, you know, similarly, i think it’s a lot of reading, so i really start off with a you know, just that the ultimate guide to edward’s weii read that book cover to cover many several times. Okay, is there a i presume there is? Ah, blogged that block for edwards. So google keeps yeah, google keeps obl argast adwords dot black spot dot com and that’s not asleep. Grants focus but that’s where all the new updates come out. Oftentimes the update will come out a few days before they get around the block post. So part of the fun as your law again and you think things were happy? Like, oh, shoot where’s my reports button, but they are constantly changing things and they are constantly improving. That’s part of the fun of google’s, they’re always innovating and, you know, a few weeks ago they went from having ads on the top, the top the searches also and decide to just the top. So jason’s thing it’s an opportunity to have you say that’s what i noticed that s o for advertisers know we were used to having, you know, three or four spots across the top, plus five or six more down the side, and i were down too two or three or four at the top. It has become really competitive, so if you’re willing to spend the time and research and learn the program, you’re competitive, you could be up there. So it’s, not it’s, not it’s, not something you’re like. Jason said begin with immediately and be up there, but you can learn it quickly and to spend the time. That’s what? We both started a lot of reading a lot of time out the side of our deaths and a lot of time at night, you know? Just just learning the craft. So yeah, it is definitely a worthwhile investment in time because i think that for all the organizations i’ve been involved with after implementing the edwards grant, like, you see a good spike in traffic, you know, in your google analytics, because people are finding the organization and all the the services you offer much easier and better. And, you know, mark has a similar kind of experience with the organization that he works with, like just getting general traffic over to your site for better awareness and, you know, connecting with existing supporters who are looking to make a donation like no one, no one google’s like, you know, i have too much money, you know, how you know who can i give it to you? I don’t, yeah, yeah, me strategic, yeah, all right. Now you had a superhero theme your your session? I see now i am not a dc comics guy or, like, superheroes, guys. So were you challenging? You’re challenging audience members, too. I identify with a superhero name themselves a superhero now? Yeah, not actually named themselves. But the whole approach was that you could be a superhero as well, and you can learn the craft. You can hone your skills, you could be a superhero. And you really do have responsible of the digital marketing record in your organization. Tto learn this and you know it’s there. It’s free it’s free money from google’s free ahjumma, google if you dont having not using it is a bit of a disturbance. So step up. Be a superhero and you know, okay, take it up. What? What is excelsior in you’re in the god zoology is thin. The session description says excelsior that’s how you ended it, excelsior all right, so that was that was just like a superhero. Kind of like exclamation that comment is the marvel comics. Yeah, okay, sure. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Part of superhero theme is also, you know, the spider man quotation. You know, with great power comes great responsibility and that’s good if you have an opportunity to connect with someone and you miss that opportunity, you know, that could be someone who was searching for, you know, help with their rent to what their anxiety or depression or help, you know, with some of their personal challenges. You can’t you can’t be serious. You’re absolutely right. We have a couple more minutes left. What have we not talked about or what you want to see? More detail may be something we covered too quickly. You spent ninety minutes in a session, so i know you got more. I got more knowledge than nineteen and a half minutes. I think that one of the questions that we ask this, you know, how much time does this take, you know, to do adwords. And to be honest, i wish i could say that, you know, it’s, you know, you can always make you know the case and be like, okay, i’m going to spend this amount of hours and you know, you’re your organization is going to support you all the way to do it. But, you know, the reality is, you know, sometimes you get you know, you’re really busy and non-profits and no this’s another thing to do on top of the you know, the ten or twenty, you know, items on your list for the for the week. And i guess what i want when i want a share is that when we both started out doing add words like we really were doing it off the side of right ask you not to try and prove that viability that you know, to bring in new traffic for our site. So you two, i guess whatever advising people are looking into adwords is you don’t know that this way. Do you know if if you to have a passion for it and are willing to do, you know, a bit in your spare time to even, like, get the initial ball rolling like it’s worth it? You know, even just to prove the viability to the organization because i know could be hired to try, negotiate for that time and resources and initially to get started, okay, but you’re encouraging. Yeah, for sure and the other part, guys don’t expect you have to spend two, three, four hours per week and build all your campaigns the first it can be a slow burn, it’s non going grant you khun step a a few basic campaigns to start with you learn the accounts, learn how things work and build from there that’s often often times your clients of just become super overwhelmed because they want to have this full blown fifteen campaign hundred. Ads that i’m going to spend my ten thousand dollars but it’s a race today you don’t need to yeah, that’s actually very good point we always talk it’s not about spending ten thousand dollars of spending the money properly, and you might spend five dollars, a month or a thousand dollars a month. But if you’re reaching your target and the people need to find your finding, you dori with ten thousand dollars, worry about doing it properly and making sure you spend the money properly and i think one of the great things about antennas that there’s ah, a community of people that are using adwords a spell. So, you know, one of the things i was really important for our session is like it’s, not only to show people how to use adwords, the google adwords grant better, but also, you know, reminding people like, you know, don’t forget to reach out to those around you because we’re all facing similar challenges, and we’re all along, you know, a spectrum of you know, your movies to experts and, you know, whenever something changes in all the experts become newbies again and so making sure that, you know people recognize you, there’s always help, you know, just around the corner just, you know, don’t be afraid to ask for help when especially in the community for is there a, uh, maybe xero community of practice around add words, you know, in in ten? Not yet, but we should wait. Yeah, i mean, you know, they’re very liberal about ah, a couple people interested, and now they’ll support it. Ok, there isn’t yet, but yeah, the entire community is very giving. So even without a formal structure around around edwards, there’s still help. They’re absolutely just posted one of the one of the one of the community boards and examine you and ask, ask for help, ok? And the one thing i would mention is that american speak to some of the more advanced you. So just so you know, i think there’s there’s certain things that you khun dio with the free adwords grant, but it also helps pave the way for a charity to explore usage of paid advertising as well and that’s, you know, the edwards grant is a great way to sort of explore those initial kind of foundational steps before moving to the paid advertising model what you have demonstrated, no clear return on investment for you’re on schnoll can about what you can persuade the leadership that there’s value, then maybe they’ll start to invest some of the organization money. Is that where we’re headed? Yeah, exactly. A string itself is an expert, as you understand there’s gaps we might know jason talked about competing with the pity alone’s places are competing with payed counselors and professionals add words is a really competitive market, but if you can show yourself is an expert and say, you know what, here’s what we’ve done but there’s a few gaps over here would like to other, you know that on some paid, you know hyre big key words or potential duitz, um, banner advertising, the google display network, or even potentially do some advertising on youtube that’s all within the adwords platform on a number of my clients and people i work with have their google grants account and also separate google adwords account is paid and google’s fine with that they there’s no wish without as long as you’re not competing on the same let’s, same keywords in your paid account and you’re free account. Dahna wish you okay. Okay. So you can you can do both side by side. Exactly. All right. Um okay. We wrap it up there. You think we’ve anything else? Well, before we do any other good, you have to raise something that made me think any other good questions that came from from the audience in your session. You want toe one highlight. Eleven were around some of the kind of technical details and that there are quite a few kind of, you know, technical, administrative details, you know, related to, you know, properly administering your adwords accounts. The one question that did come up during our session was, you know, what if you’re inheriting account that, you know, it is quite old and, you know, it may not have been well administered in the past, you know, how should you even start to, you know, fix it up, and our suggestion for that was to, you know, to break it down into buckets and just start changing it one campaign at a time to try and use proper structures and applying very method a logical approach to it, rather than sort of the scattershot approach that may have been used, but if you’re inheriting a campaign that has been a total mess, theun, you know, chances are it’s not performing very well, you may as well just wait, you know, most paul’s most of the campaigns and restart everything on the other question that came as well was just, you know, are on general support. And one thing that i like some of the google reps here at ntc mentioned is that there is a support line as well. So, you know, it’s it’s amazing, because there was a lot of companies that don’t offer, like, direct phone support. We’re talking about telephone support. Yeah, from google. Oh, yeah, yeah, it was actually a number that you can call, you know, if you’re adwords grantee that, you know, if if you need help, you know, navigating, you know, the main panel or creating ads or whatever, you know that there is, you know, entire support team that you can pick up the phone and call and they will help navigate through some of those challenges. Excellent. Yeah. So that that number is available. Okay, that is rare. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let’s, leave it there. Thank you. Very much thanks, alright. Jason shim, associate director of digital strategy and alumni relations at pathways to education canada, and mark coleman, president of evergreen digital marketing. Thank you again, gents. Thanks, tony, thanks, thank you very much for being with us. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference. Thanks so much, master. Your decision making coming up first. Pursuant is your last chance to check out the archive of the state of fund-raising midyear checkpoint that’s, their webinar with ceo trent ryker and senior vice president jennifer balat. Midyear fund-raising reports they came out last month. What’s most important to follow. What if you’re not hitting the benchmarks? How do you keep up your good pace if you are doing well in comparison with the rest of the community? Pursuant is data driven. They’re gonna help you succeed in these all important third and fourth quarters by making sense of the data that you are inundated with its at pursuing dot com quick resource is then webinars. Let them help you make sense of data. We be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers it’s a night of live music, dancing, standup comedy, spelling and raising money for your work. It’s a night devoted to your charity not a bunch of charities it’s for you that’s the purpose raise money for your good mission to help you make the world better. Watch the video at we b e spelling dot com and then talk to ceo alex career ninety nine to two four bees now time for tony stick too solitude i’m hitting this again this week. It’s essential if you want to do your best work helping other people, you’re in e-giving profession if you want to give, you got to take take time for yourself. It’s essential time away from phone, email, text, social media and work just me show your boss my video. I’ll get an extra view your boss will agree with you, they’ll see it. My way. And you get the time off. It’s called solitude, full cast and crew. Your boss is going to be impressed. You got to trust me. Just show this thing to your boss it’s at tony martignetti dot com and that is tony’s take two here’s karen headed niimi and jamie nelson with master your decision making welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc that’s, of course that’s, the non-profit technology conference hosted by intend the non-profit technology network. This is also part of ntc conversations. We’re in san jose, california, at the convention center on my guests are karen already said, karen headed niimi and jamie nelson and their session topic is the science and art of decision making. Karen is director of business and human resource is at the inside education society of alberta and she’s sitting closest to me. And jamie nelson is an educator at the inside education society as well. Ladies, welcome. Thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure. Indulge me, please. While i just highlight our swag item for this interview, which is from think shout it’s a t shirt from think shout and according to our outstanding piela hanna this is a minimalist star wars theme. She can point out that there’s ah, minimalist death star and a minimalist. What else is there? Millennium falcon. See it. See the minimalist millennium falcon, that’s, an mmf, minimalist millennium falcon. For those of you who are not on the video, i’m sorry. Go to real tony martignetti dot com r e a l, and you can watch the video there. It’ll be there shortly, so we’re adding this to our second day swag pile. All right, that’s. Where it goes, the science and art of decision making. Karen what? What are our challenges around decisionmaking? Well, i’ll tell you a little bit of the back story of this session, okay. Came to the non-profit technology conference last year for the first, and i am not a techie, but i want to learn more about trends and issues. And after it was over, i was very overwhelmed. And i thought it would be really need if there was a session on another life. Important topic to kind of give my brain a break. So weii well, had to choose this one, but i don’t know. You know what? It just came out of the universe, but i was here to make decisions about technology solutions, and i was having some trouble, and yeah, so i just thought, you know what? I need to learn more about this. And so it’s been a good long years journey. And here we are spent a year curating content a little bit. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Jamie wanted to share. What did you what have you learned in this curation process? So karen invited me in after she’s done. Quite. A bit of the legwork, which was wonderful on dh, so for me, it was really trying to look at the three different kind of areas of decision making, so we talked about the science on dh. Then we talked about what it’s like to take in additional information, and then we kind of talked about some of the the influences, and i think for me, one of the big things that i learned is is too to understand the systems that are happening every time that we face a decision. And that was really, really important because, like karen said, we’re here at the ntcdinosaur decisions a cz non-profits we’re faced with all kinds of, like, really important decisions on dh, so being able to kind of understand that process was really, really valuable as part of this whole, the building of the presentation, okay? So there’s, the science, the influences and the process all around our decision making. What did the count since you did most of the duration will give you the chance. What? What did you learn about the science of decision making? Well, it drew a lot from the work of dr daniel kahneman. Who? Wrote the book thinking fast and slow and he’s very respected in his field. He’s, a psychologist. And he also won the nobel prize in economics eggs for some of his work. So okay, smart guy. He basically proposed that our approaches to judgment and choice take their two mental systems or modes of thinking one of them is sort of fast and instinctual. Then the other is slower and deliberate. So that was sort of based on the different types of decisions we have to make, like whether whether it across the road now versus whether to buy a new home are hard wiring. You know, we could come free built right way. But we have different types of thes to these two methods of decision making. Break down into the types of decisions we have to make for sure, like one is mohr sort of natural. The fast thinking that we do is effortless is just something we do is we navigate our life. We drive the car down the road. Okay? Slow thinking is more deliberate, it’s more logical thinking through procedures. Little more algorithmic. So it takes more mental effort to do logical thinking decision making. It takes longer. Okay. More deliberative process. Yes, exactly. Um, is that all you learned on it for you in the years that all the science you master and that’s it? No. I mean, we boy, you could go on forever. I mean, a decision making is such a huge topic. You can look at it from a leadership aspect. Marketing behavioral economics. It’s huge. We just sort of focused in this session on, you know, information overload in an increasingly digital world. And how that’s we process that kind of information differently. Then then what? What we’re hardwired to do? Just perfect. Because that’s what you suffered after and twenty fifteen mental fatigue you were you were distressed and overloaded. Exactly, there’s. Not that you suffer from ntcdinosaur. The after effect was it was so much value, so much value. You were you were you were shell shocked. All right, um, so how can we start to help people in there decision making and let you know, let’s, take the the normal in our conversation. Let’s, take the normal day to day decisions. Not this. Something is simple minded is crossing the street. But, you know, some fair minded. Work decisions or personal decisions, but it is not his monumental is whether to buy a home, whether they have a child. But, you know, you know what? Like, what am i gonna have for dinner tonight or ah, whether i should have my parents over or, you know, i mean, average sort of day to day decisions, sort of in the middle of the spectrum, very fair, fair enough, very good point because our brain doesn’t doesn’t prioritize all the decisions we have to make in a day so we could be spending a lot of mental energy on things that are a trivial nature. Andi and then we don’t have enough reserves for the important ones, you know, when when we’re expending mental effort in our slow thinking we are we’re the brain is using twenty percent of our body’s energy, so we’re using up more of that energy in our in our logical processes. So if there’s a new way of losing weight, i just obsess about whether across the street now definitely can i can i lose twenty pounds? Not that i have a lot to lose, but but but, you know, yeah, i obsess about whether to put the stamp on the envelope right side up or upside down can i drop some pounds? You may drop some pounds. I know, i know. All kidding aside energy not calories, energy. Okay, assuming energy. Okay, but, i mean, you do. You are depleting some of your resources if you spend too much time on thing on decisions that just ultimately don’t matter that much. Ah, so, you know, some really good advice is to look at how you are. You know, how? First of all your energy when you’re making these decisions, you don’t want to make them when you’re tired and hungry? I mean, this is just obvious when you’re feeling emotional things, you can monitor about yourself. You know, in a busy life. We did go. Go, go, go, go. We don’t have this sort of transition zone to kind of recent reset our mental mode to the next transition zone. Right? We don’t. We don’t have. Okay. Okay, jamie, anything you want to add at this? Ah, scientific stage. Yeah, well, i think a lot of people can can relate to that. And that transferred really well from kind of talking about how as an individual, we make decisions and what influences us, whether it’s past memories, past experiences, you know, the time of the day how much you’ve had to eat, i think it really translates well when you’re talking about the non-profit world is a cz well, so if you are thinking about some major decisions that you need to make, you want to make sure that you’re you’re planning your board meeting an appropriate time of the day, you know, like so people are feeling fed if you feel really happy if you’re in a really good mood than that can actually make you less thoughtful in your decision making. And so we’re not saying that, you know, everybody should be kind of new thriller on happy in a board meeting, but just keeping these kinds of influences in mind. So in your day to day life, if you’re if you’re making decisions on what project to work on or if you’re making some of those bigger organization all decisions just keeping these influences in mind, khun b can actually have quite an impact, and that was really surprising to me to find out all of these external factors, aunt. How you know, just one of the stories that karen tell told in the session today was how if you’re holding a warm liquid like a cup of coffee? Yeah, you actually feel warmer feelings towards the people person that you’re chatting with, which makes sense culturally, like we get together over coffee all the time. And so and usually when someone asks you to go for coffee, it’s not because they want to yell at you, it’s, because they wanna have ah, positive, you know, productive kind of conversation, so that was was really interesting to think about and and that’s, what i loved about this session is it helped us kind of connect with our our own processes, but at the same time, we can think about how it influences our day to day work. Excellent, i liketo like that exploration of holding a warm liquid, what other other influences are there that we haven’t talked about yet? Well, we’re we’re influenced by almost everything in our environment, you know, our natural impulses when you know if i look at you and i see i might be able to detect that you’re angry, just buy one or two. Words that you say in the tone, you know, whether makes us happy if you ask someone if they’re happy and that’s a beautiful brightstep durney day, they’re more inclined to say that they’re happy than they are on a cloudy sort of moody day. You know, we are feeling beans before we are thinking beings and so, you know, this translates in our day to day life. All right, so how do we control some of these things? The one that we can control? We can control the weather, but our feelings, our state. How do we how do we sort of harness that? So that we do make better decisions? Well, you know a very simple thing you khun dio, is before you’re making a decision. Put yourself in a neutral state of mind. You know, you can. You can just say write down everything that you did yesterday, step by step in sequins i got up, i had breakfast, i drove to work had my day of work came home walk the dog you’re just sort of reset it’s like it’s like your computer, your rebooting your computer on then you’ve shifted your mental mode, you know? You’re not bringing in, maybe your emotion and your anxiety and whatever you’re kind of reset and then take the appropriate approach for what type of decision that that it is, you’re making. You want to just take a step back. You need this transition zone, you know, it’s hard, all the switching we do all the time, you know, between with multi task. And, you know, they’re really saying, well, what you’re doing is you’re you’re, you’re just doing attention switching, and that is very depleting in our mind, in our body. So, you know, having a little like, if you go to a therapist and you have an appointment, your appointments probably going to be about forty five minutes. It’s, not an hour, because they use some time to prepare. Have your session sometime to externalize what just happened and and collect some notes and be ready for the next person, you know, that’s logical. I see myself, yeah, i see my therapist for three hours, three hours, three times a day for a week, so i don’t know how she’s managing externalization she’s got just needs she needs to download, just like on the only person we could see each of those three days or practices suffering. I’m bolin pain, well, externalizing information. I mean it’s coming at us, and i mean, we we learn our brain like spatial, you know, and and the context of the environment that we learn in having all of this information coming at us. It’s. I mean, yes, lists are still important in this digital age. It’s still important to externalize some of what’s going on in your mind so that you can look at it as an observer in your environment, rather than you know, yeah, okay, yep, little dispassionate, yes, once removed, but but clearheaded. I see your head, 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 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 guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m christine cronin, president of n y charities dot orc. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Anything else about these influences? Because we’re going now, we’re going to move to the process. Okay, but anything more about the influences? Well, i mean, biologically speaking, good moods. I mean, meant to us and our ancestors that environment was safe. We could we could relax a little. We could let our guard down, but that makes us less vigilant. You know, a bad mood. Singles tow us. Something’s wrong. I might need to protect myself. There might be a threat. I need to pay more attention. So, yeah, emotions. Like i said, we’re we’re thinking or feeling beings before we’re thinking. Okay? We moved to the process of of decision making. I mean, i feel like we’re sort of there, but okay, it sounds like yes. Yeah, well, i want to go there next. Well, one thing about the process, there is a lot of choice in today’s world, you know. Example, in the session we gave was going to pick out aspirin. You know, when you look at the isle of there’s, a spare for migraines and for sore muscles. And for all the different reasons you might have an ailment. But ultimately, maybe it’s the same. Product on homes have thousands and thousands of our possessions um, there’s research that shows that actually having too much choice leads us to make poor decisions, and we’re also dissatisfied with them. So having in the process fewer, fewer good options, but just a few and fewer variables, okay, karen is nodding a lot what you wantto into this? Well, i think that that ah, really translates well, when we’re thinking about that, the options that a lot of non-profits faces thinking, well, we can go in this direction, and we could do this kind of program or or use this kind of tactic, and what karen saying is is really like pairing that down and then making that decision and and the process of paring it down requires a decision as well. But i think a lot of us can agree that after a brainstorming session, it’s pretty obvious what some of the best options are, and then kind of taking a moment and taking a break, especially in, like, a working meeting where everyone has a chance to kind of reset and then that makes that actually makes the decision process easier on dh, that is really profound that sometimes people just want to kind of powerthru and say, it’s, getting towards the end of the day like we just need to make a decision. And that’s exactly right, you just need to make a decision. So in order to do that, you have to kind of think about all of these, all of the influences that air that are wrapped up in that. Okay, okay, we still have some time together. You spent ninety minutes on this and in your session, so has it goes quick, here’s a lot more to say and have enough time. This well, i mean, okay, the other the other part that we touched on in the session of the end was about creativity, because how can you choose the best option if you haven’t even imagined it? So part of it is developing some flexible thinking skills to, you know, be experimenting a little whimsical. And, um, you know, that requires sometime sometime in a calm mental state to do that kind of creative exploration. Eso we didn’t exercise in the session. We just ask everyone, what could you do with a marble? You know, similar to google? Asking what? Can you do with a pencil? Let’s? Try and see what we get. And some of the answers were like super unique. Jamie, can you ask the audience? Okay, what can we do with a marble? So it’s kind of fun? Yeah. Some people went really practical right away. Like i could hold it. I could put it in my mouth. I could put it in my head. I could put it on the table on dh. Then other folks also kind of went more creative right away. So one of our participants said you could write a haiku about it, which i she’s like it’s, not that left field, but but in the activity they had on an opportunity to work just by themselves and then to share and build upon. And i think what was really apparent is that a lot of the folks who participated said that that once they connected and started to build upon existing structure, then it it was really additive and really complimentary. And they started to go in more creative places. Yeah. Um, you know, along this line we were talking about the complexity of problems today and a lot of our problems are crossing borders and what is required. You know, i read something today about borderless leadership on dh you need a different skill set to address some of these problems. And so some of the things we talked about beyond creativity, where was critical thinking skills, you know, to look at all of the information coming at us and to be able to discern what is true and what is not true, what are some reliable sources, you know, and to be able to synthesise some of this information together with that we talked about being able to ask good questions, because that helps you ultimately make a better decision if you can clarify things so it’s kind of a lost art, you know, we reward people at work for having the answer rather than having a really good question and children asked several hundred questions a day on. Well, you probably ask a lot as an interviewer, but i do know i’m also child. I’m asking a thousand questions today in our day today, life like way asked everyone in the room, like, see if you can keep track of how many questions you ask today is probably going to be very few. Ah, very good skill to develop question answering how does that help us make better decisions? Jamie well, for me, i mean, in our work with the inside education, we we ask a lot of questions, so we do environmental programs with our students on we talked about natural resources in the environment and in that is this critical thinking piece. And so i found that if a student asked me a question and i turn it back to the rest of the classroom or or answered them with another question that it helps start to kind of peel back the layers and let’s folks realize they start to consider the question from a different perspective. So if i used the example in the session, you know, the first time a student asked me, well, what’s the difference between coal and charcoal? First of all, i couldn’t believe that i didn’t know the answer and it’s not a life changing thing, you know, like, i’ve gone so far without knowing that, and that was fine, but once i realised that it made me think to myself like, what else don’t i know about the world? Like, why don’t i know the difference between those two things and that’s the power of questions is that i know, like karen said in a professional life, sometimes if you’re if you’re in a meeting and and there’s questions about the reasoning behind the project that you’re working on, folks, khun bristle they can feel really defensive, but the power of asking a really good question is that it expands that horizon, and it helps you start to think about the bigger picture on dh then in that you’re able to think creatively and shift the paradigm and that that can only be helpful, you know? Okay, okay, we still have a couple minutes left. Let’s tease out. Come on. Did ninety minutes in a session. We’ll back on non-profit radio listeners. Yeah, never. I’ll never have your back-up billet. All related. Teo related to good questions and critical thinking is really about how we learn on dh and, you know, if you notice someone’s thinking process, if if if there’s a bias or they they they have a distorted reasoning, you know, we get defensive when people point out our errors. So the best way to help people see that they have maybe a flaw in their thinking is too created a learning experience for them to see the insight for themselves. Tohave a lightbulb moment an ah ha moment your mental mode shifts more easily when you discover it for yourself. How do you create this kind of moment? Teachers are good at creating this moment. What teachers are good you turned away from the mic, she said teachers were go to creating this moment on, i guess one of the ways that that i do that in a classroom with students is i you know, if we if we ask in opening question like what’s, a type of natural resource that we used to create energy, you know, some kids might have the answer right away and then others will be like lightning and it’s like, okay, so why did you say lightning? We don’t get electricity from from lightning, but why that? And then it helps them instead of saying no, you’re wrong because they’re they’re right. Lightning is electricity, but instead then we can kind of have a conversation about it, and then the student can come to the conclusion themselves working can work. Through the process themselves and say, okay, wait a second that doesn’t make sense, there’s nobody running around trying to capture lightning so that we can have power in our homes, but in that it doesn’t it’s that experience, and i think it resonates more with a student. I mean, this is such a trivial example, but like karen said, if, if there’s this this bias that occurs or this kind of error in thinking, i think everyone can relate to have someone if you have ah colleagues saying you’re wrong, the rest of the conversation doesn’t always go really well. So instead, you know yeah, you came, you can and it’s not avoiding the conversation, it’s just helping them kind of see, because that’s, the only way that that folks can kind of overcome is that if they experience that process themselves, it can be really hard to try to convince someone that they’re wrong and you’re right. But by building that experience by kind of understanding how our mind works and how thoughts are created, you can you can help increase that knowledge and expand the conversation instead of shutting it down and making it kind of antagonistic. Okay, okay. That sounds like a pretty good place to wrap up. Yeah, i think bernie’s consolation like you. All right. See, the closest to me is karen headed niimi, director of business and human resource is at the inside education society of alberta. And if the same society is jamie nelson who’s, an educator at inside education, ladies, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you. And this is that i thank you for being with us. Twenty martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference. Thank you. Next week. Definitely not fermentation. If you missed any part of today’s show, i’d be seat. You find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive 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. Our creative producer is climb hyre off. Sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez on our music is by scots time be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and i agree dahna 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 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. It 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 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 dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. 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