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Nonprofit Radio for February 9, 2018: Your Online Giving Plan

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My Guest:

Joe Garecht: Your Online Giving Plan

Change is a constant in the online space. What does that mean for your fundraising plan? Fundraising consultant Joe Garecht shares his wisdom.

 

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’ve endured the pane of glass a tricky if i had to speak with harry words you missed today’s show you’re online giving plan change is a constant in the online space what does that mean for your fund-raising plan? This year fund-raising consultant joe garrick shares his wisdom on tony’s take two lose track of time. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna i’m a slash pursuant radio and by wagner cpas guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream tony dahna may slash tony tell us i’m very glad to welcome joe garrick to the show. He is president of garrick fund-raising associates. He has nearly twenty years of experience helping non-profits build donorsearch sta mes to increase their fund-raising he was founder of the fund-raising authority, providing online fund-raising training before consulting, he was an executive director and the development director. You’ll find him at garrick tw dot com and he’s at joe garrick and he’s on non-profit radio welcome, joe garrett. Thanks, tony. I’m really, really glad to be here with you today. Thanks for having me. I’m glad you’re doubly glad. That’s cool. Thank you. Thank you. Um, okay, let’s, talk about online. We got a good amount of time together. This space, as i said in the intro, is always changing. But how do we, uh, how do we adapt? Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s one that, you know particularly bedevils small and mid sized non-profits because there’s a ton of information coming at fundraisers about online fund-raising it comes from what they see, large organizations doing it comes from what vendors are trying to sell them, and a lot of times it comes internally. I can’t tell you how many non-profits i’ve worked with where the fundraisers say to me, hey, i was talking to a boardmember and they said, we’ve got to be on blank and blank is usually a social media platform or ah, blogging platform or a crowdfunding platform. Okay, and so they’re kind of getting it from all sides. And so one of the one of the biggest things like right up front here that i want to say to non-profits is, um, kind of relax about online fund-raising it’s important, but just like every other kind of fund-raising it’s important to develop a plan and a strategy for your online fund-raising and to implement it and give it time toe work, you know, a lot of non-profits i’ve found feel like they’ve got to keep up, you know, every new thing that comes out, they’ve got to keep up with, you know, they’ve got ad, they gotta take bitcoin donations, they’ve got it beyond another social media platform, and the truth is just like every other kind of fund-raising this is fund-raising it’s a process, you need to develop a plan, and you need to stick with it. And then after you give it some time to run, you contest and iterated, you need teo, but it’s, it’s, knowable and it’s doable for every non-profit stick with it long enough to toe do, in fact test and and see if there’s if there’s traction among your constituents, i mean, you’re not going to know that in just like, four to six months that’s, right? That’s, right? I always say you know, develop a plan and give it, you know, at the very least a year so that you have enough data, enough contacts with your donors, with your prospects, with the network as a whole, to really see where it’s going for your non-profit again, it’s, just like, you know, just because we say it’s online fund-raising doesn’t mean it not still fund-raising, you know, non-profits wouldn’t, you know, launch a they wouldn’t launch a capital campaign and give it a month, and if they don’t have, you know, a certain percentage of gifts dropped the campaign right away, they’d carefully consider whether or not they were ready to run a crowd i mean, a capital campaign, they develop a plan for it, and then they’d implement that plan and on lee after they’ve implemented, would they be able to really just make decisions about changing that plan and it’s the same with online fund-raising need to really think it through before you dive into a new strategy or a new tactic, and then you’ve got to give it time. And and also you really need to make sure that your online fund-raising strategy works with your overall fund-raising strategy so many non-profits have limited bandwidth in terms of time and money. I mean, rare right is the non-profit that has too much band with all it never happens. So you have to make sure that you’re making wise decisions because everything that you’re doing online, it’s time that you take away from offline and everything you’re doing offline is time that you’re taking away from online. So you have to kind of see where those where those tactics strategies fit together in your overall fund-raising plan. Yeah, and we’re going to talk a little about the offline, too, because they do need to align. What do you do with that? Boardmember or ceo that says, we need to be somewhere can can the existence of a plan help you and be sort of a defense and say, look, we’ve got a plan, we’re executing, you know? What can we say to that person who was above us that says, we gotta be on this new this new ah shiny platform? Sure, yeah, i think your biggest the biggest tool you have is a fundraiser foran executive director when those ideas come at you is a plan. Now, if you’re developing the plan because you’re getting those ideas, then you may have a problem because now that’s all for today? Yeah, why isn’t idea and that playing but if you if you take the time to develop a plan ahead of time about how your non-profit is going to pursue engagement online, and if that plan has phases and deadlines and metric and, you know, testing and looking at maternal investment and it really just is a good plan and it makes sense, then you’re able to, you know, take that to your boardmember why usually like to say to boardmember xero first of all, that’s a really interesting idea. Thank you so much for being think, you know, for thinking about this for our non-profits top of mind that you’re generating these ideas, i want to let you know i’m definitely going, we’re definitely going to consider it right now, we’re in the middle of our online and he’s been playing online fund-raising plan for the year and were, you know, at band with capacity, and we’re going to implement this, and at the end of the year, we’re goingto look at how we did and if there’s you know, if there are some things that are underperforming, and we think that this strategy will, you know, outperform those we’d love to take a look at it. So, you know, stay tuned, i promise i’ll report back to you at the end of the year, and then you know it, you know, an animal, so i hope that non-profit that you’re working at, you know, whoever, whoever you are, dear listener, that you are not in this situation, but if you’re in a situation where boardmember they’re saying no, no, no, you definitely need to do this this year, right now, then my suggestion always is saying to them, that’s, fine, we can do that, but what should we cut? You know, that’s the big question, what should we cut? We’re running at capacity in terms of band with so let’s, take a look at the fund-raising plan and you tell me what to cut out of that fund-raising plan to be able to fit this and normally that gets boardmember thinking more about the fact that while fund-raising capacity is not a zero sum game and it’s a world of abundance, you were fund-raising resource is and staff resources are your something certainly xero some game? Yeah, that’s i like that. Like that method of handling certainly give the affirmation that your your idea is meritorious, but where? You know, you said we’re in the middle of executing a current plan. Hopefully you don’t have that kind of micromanagement if we had many guests on, you know, saying that your board members or others senior volunteers, if you like, should not be micromanaging your you know, the day to day tactics that you’re that you’re executing, i’ll tell you what you were going, we’re going to take our first break, so hang with me, please. Great. Pursuing the field guide for data driven fund-raising it’s, the latest resource on their listener landing page now at tony dahna slash pursuing to radio there’s so much data available to all of us. It’s overload. So what you gonna do with it? The field guide is comes in to make your data less daunting. What’s in it. They’ve got five high level steps that you can take quickly to translate your business objectives into actionable data. That’s, that’s manageable real world case studies showing you how some other non-profits are using data, in other words, do some benchmarking and learning worksheet with some conversation and thought starters to help you your team. Maybe even some of those key volunteers board members find the right focus to begin a data driven culture. It’s the field guide for data driven fund-raising tony dahna slash pursuant radio let’s go back to joe and your online giving plan, and my voice just cracked, too. How are you still there? And i know you are, joe, all right? Yeah, well, i was just mentioning the micromanagement. Anything you want, you want to be among the countless guests who have said that you should not be allowing your board members to micromanage tactic like that. Yeah, well, obviously, i concur. And i would i would say again that a planning process and developing a plan is your best defense against that. And i were talking about online giving today, but just, you know, i’ve found that developing an overall development plan fund-raising plan for your organization and if you’re a smaller midsize organization actually, going through the step of having your board approved that plant vote to approve it, hopefully lead by the board chair is sometimes a way that you really can, you know, provided defense against that because then you can go back and say what we were all on board with this plan is we’re going to execute the plan as as we, you know, as we all agreed, as we got the buy-in yeah, we get that board. Buy-in okay, right? So as we’re looking at our our our plan, how do we figure out what’s the best mix for our organisation? Of course, there’s no, no universal formula, how we figure out what, what fits us best. What mix? Sure, and you’re right, there’s no universal formula for online fund-raising but the closest we can get to a universal principle for online fund-raising right now is that email is the most effective method for online fund-raising now, that’s not to discount the impact of social media were crowdfunding or, you know, or your website, they’re all important, but email is the only knowable and really active medium that your organization controls. You know, we’re in a situation where when you’re posting on social media, first of all, you don’t own the social media profile the social media site does and that’s been proven by the fact that, you know, when you, when facebook first started out, if you were a non-profit on facebook or a company on facebook and you were, you know, you had followers, the vast majority, then we’re going to see the posts that you put up right now, you know, that used to be remember that remember that time? Yeah, and that mystery companies and non-profits fuel hoodwink you probably remember facebook was getting people to buy advertising to get likes on their page, as opposed lynx clicks to their links with the idea that if you got people to like your page, they would then see all the other content you put up essentially for free, you know, once you’ve got that buy-in and now now, you know, before the latest algorithm change, they you know, facebook was only showing you were posted less than ten percent of the people who liked your page unless you’re paying for advertising and that’s going down again because of the latest algorithm change. So so clearly you don’t control you can’t control the volume and pacing of your messages to donors on social media. That’s true of every social media site, unless you’re paying for it, your website’s, kind of similar, like i love when donors come to our organization’s website that i’m working with, and click that donate now button, but most donors aren’t going to do that, and if they don’t do that, then unless some using, you know, expensive retargeting advertising tools of paying for a car for advertising on other sites? I’m i don’t know who’s coming to our website, i don’t know who’s stopping by if they don’t taken action. Yeah, andi so that’s kind of passive as well. Email right is the only active mediums that a non-profit controls. If you have someone give you permission to use their email address for your email newsletter or for other communications, they’re going to see your messages. Almost everybody in the united states certainly checks their email address their primary email address almost every day. Oh, it’s, hundreds of the stats are like we checked, like like one hundred twenty five times a day or something, you know, right it’s just beyond me. Yeah, and particularly because a mobile right everyone’s looking on their email on there, you know, and so and and how do they check it, they skim basically, if he doesn’t land in the junk folder, they’re going to see your name and the subject line, which gives you a fighting chance of having your email open and so sabat i always advised, but i’m building a new online fund-raising system for a non-profit my advice to them is funnel everybody as many people as you can do everything you can to collect that email address, because then you are in control, you’re in the driver’s seat. So, you know, your original question was, what is the mix? The right mix for? Non-profits and i would say that for most, almost every non-profit the right mix is ah, hub and spoke system where your website is the hub, but the purpose of that hub is to collect email addresses from all the spokes, which is all of the places that you will have a presence online, whether it’s paid or earned or social. Okay, you said, you know, once you have that email address, you’re in the driver’s seat, but that’s with the with the qualification that you’re you’re adhering to the permission that the person gave you in terms of what? Subjects they want to hear from you about if you’re sophisticated enough to be asking when and how often but you want to keep to those to the parameters that the that the potential donor has given you absolutely, absolutely and so for, you know, for more sophisticated non-profit not only is it, you know, you know, the ethical thing to do to try and segment somewhat and determined the volume and the messaging, but also is really effective. Fund-raising right, if i, if i can determine by asking donors and tying their responses to the email address what they want to hear about how they want to hear from me, how often they want to hear from me that’s going to make our fund-raising program more effective, but for every non-profit you know the goal of collecting the email address, you know, what i kind of said was you want to collect email address, but you really want to collect permission to use it, right? You can go find email addresses, you come by list, you can do all this other stuff that’s, unethical, you know, in some cases, particularly for-profit businesses, it may be illegal or, you know but but what you really want to do is focus on getting permission and easiest way for smaller non-profits to get that permission is by signing people up for an email newsletter by signing people up to get your your non-profits email newsletter and other updates is usually the way we on brother and other communications is usually the way we try and freeze it and that’s broad and if that’s a starting place, if you’re more sophisticated than you contrive segment further, right, right? Based on topic and as i said, maybe even frequency they’ve even time of year. I’ve seen questions. Yeah, on that can come later to when you khun survey later on, once you’ve i mean, if you’ve got there, if you’ve got their permission, and if you have the wherewithal to to execute on the segmentation, you might survey your donors, you’re not even just your donors, but survey your your the people that are accepting your communications and ask what their preferences are. Absolutely, andi, assuming you have the capability to adhere to them, you know you alluded a couple times, teo spending let’s talk a little about that how do we decide whether we should be spending on, uh, what i’m thinking primarily facebook, twitter? Sure, sure. Well, i mean, obviously there’s a there’s, a lot of benefits, two advertising on those platforms facebook in particular has a ton of targeting tools where you can really i mean, it’s a segue mentors dream right? You, khun really dahna drill down and really heavily segment you were you’re you’re advertising audience, you can say you wantto segment people who are thirty five to forty years old who live in indiana and who follow a certain, you know, a certain would have liked a certain page that’s really, really powerful the key, as you know and as any you know for-profit market or nose, the key is figuring out the return on investment and really trying to get your per click advertising spent down as low as possible, first of all, and i’m not, i wouldn’t say there’s a universal agreement with this, but my strong recommendation and on properties there’s really only one crew action you want to be paying for on facebook, and that action is getting people to click over to your website, right? I i don’t i don’t think it makes sense anymore to pay for like, i don’t think it makes sense to pay for other actions. I want to get people to click on links to my website to come over to my website where they can do what, where they can sign up for my email news longfield email drive him to that home. Yeah, but i own that connection. So your goal if you’re if you’re deciding to spend money on social media, is to get the cost per email acquisition is really what you’re trying to do as low as possible, and you know they’re through testing you really can get that down. You can certainly get the cost per click to your website down into the ten fifteen, twenty cents per click range, maybe lower, depending on what you’re targeting and then figuring out how many of those people sign up for your email newsletter. So i think that’s the, you know, the really the only consideration with online from a fund-raising perspective is really, you know, with all nine hundred advertising his return on investment now bigger organizations can afford things like i talked, you know, i mentioned earlier, which was like a retargeting. On bacon, you know, that’s, those ads that follow you across the web, you know, you could you look up, you know, non-profit radio and then you’re on another website and all of a sudden there’s a non-profit radio ads on that website and it’s, because you’re being targeted, you’re being followed buy a cookie that’s, you know that that impact your return on investment, but it’s really something that’s reserved two muchmore advanced organizations who have more money to spend on the testing because with all nine fund-raising really the fortunes in the follow-up it’s your spending money? If you’re paying for online engagement, you’re spending a certain amount now with the goal of making money on the back and and the way you’re going to make money on the back end is not by getting people to constantly, you know, come to your web site and clicked one ofthe donate now buttons it’s by using email to stay in touch with them, to solicit them and to try and build a path for them to become a regular giver to your organization. I admire that you kept yourself out of jargon jail by defining retargeting thank you, i was i was i was chomping at the bit to get you, but it was short lived because you immediately explain what we targeting is those those those ads that yes, you did you’re you’re free of drug in jail. Those ads that i consider annoying, i guess there are people who like them or if even if they don’t like them, they’re obviously successful because their companies making aa lot of money filtering adds segment in ads. Teo individual people i know, i know it’s a lucrative business i find i find that stuff annoying, um, creepy, but can be lucrative. Yeah, it is on dh it’s both i think i think it’s both on and then the other one that i didn’t mention our one hundred facebook. Of course, there is the possibility of google adwords and we’ve we’ve covered this on the show a couple times you could search that phrase tony martignetti dot com and we’ve had detailed conversations about how to take advantage of the ten thousand dollars per month that’s hard to spend that much money but it’s up to that maximum that google provides in an ad free adwords if you want to. And you could do much, much smaller campaigns. You don’t have to spend ten thousand dollars, but we’ve had guests talking about that and that’s another that’s, another possibility in the spending category, but it’s free because it’s tze a grant from google um okay, let’s. Um let’s bring in some some coordination between online and offline, as we’re thinking about what belongs in our plan three offline i’m thinking of is face-to-face meetings and u s mail. How do we how do we coordinate thes this with our with our online? Right? Well, good, great question and it’s two great questions you’re living me with thank you if you don’t have to keep it out, that is not necessary, you know you’re you’re a guest, i’m not going to cut your mic off so it’s not necessary to keep saying i got you the the you know again, i don’t want to make a i don’t want to make a sweeping generalizations because every non-profit is different, but if in general right the the most there is a hierarchy of fund-raising ass strategy’s where and it and it tends towards the more personal right so a in person ask. Is more effective than a phone ask a phone ask is more effective then a ah direct mail snail mail asked a snail mail ask is more effective than an email asking email ask is more effective than like social media ask now that you know, some donors don’t want to get a phone call or don’t want to get in person, you know, meeting and they want to be selected by the mail and that’s great, and we need respect what our donors you know what our donor preferences are, but in general that’s the hierarchy and if that’s the hierarchy, we need to respect that and realize that, as with all things there’s, ah, there’s a curve in terms of our time, and we should be spending more time on the more effective strategies. Now. The good news is that one of the reasons direct mail’s effective because it doesn’t take much time to talk to lots of donors. Your your average gifts size is going to be lower, but it’s relatively easy emails, even easier right it’s emails and even easier method your average gifts eyes is likely going to be lower than your direct male average. Gifts, eyes and so, you know, the things that go into your decision on your strategy for the year are go where the money is, what, you know, what kind of time do we have to invest in those things? And where our donors i mean that’s, really? Another question is, you know where, where our donors, if you’re a small organization that happens to have lots of donors scattered throughout the country for the world, then in person meetings aren’t going to be, as, you know, big a possibility for you, and you may have to rely on you no more on the mail in the morning. I don’t know. Not only where are they physically, but where are they? Virtually what platforms are they on? As we talked about, you know what preferences do they have for communications? And where do you find the bulk of them? You know, you may have more fun on facebook, but you’ve got you’ve got a lot more activity and engagement, riel engagement on twitter so you need to be spending more time there. I and the other just one other thing i wanted to put a little spin a little little point to is, of course, another factor with direct mail is the cost postage printing, the collating however you do when you do it in house, you pay somebody to do it, you know, there’s there’s a much bigger cost to direct mail. I’m not denying that it’s it’s ah it’s up there, you know, it’s it’s right below face-to-face ass, i’m not. I’m not quick challenging that, but just the cost factor of that the u s mail. Oh, yeah, and that’s, why return on investment is the biggest consideration when you want to direct mail testing intestine, right? If you don’t have the capacity to test and then the money to invest in testing, you shouldn’t particularly direct mail. You should not be doing prospecting mailing because you know it doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense. I think you know, in developing your overall, you know, strategy email, you know, for most organizations, the email newsletter is the backbone of the donor cultivation and stewardship sabelo more about that. You alluded to that before, when you were talking about the hub, trying to get people to your site. You want that email address newsletter is the is the center of your communications plan. It sounds like for you, right? Yeah, that that that is true. You know, email emails are super popular for a couple of reasons. One is because they work. I mean, they’re away for for non-profits that would never get a monthly snail mail newsletter out the door or have any other way to connect with their donors monthly or even quarterly in a method that’s just cultivation and stewardship. That’s not on aska truitt for them to stay in touch with their donors on a regular basis, it gets to the donor the donors who are interested, we’d those newsletters, those who don’t can just delete them. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s effective, but but it’s also the backbone of most donorsearch altercation zsystems because of those other things we mentioned it’s cheap it’s, easy, it’s, easy to do. You know, it’s. Not like the old days where it was real hard to create a good looking email newsletter. You got services that constant contact in a weber and male chimp and you know you’re donordigital based all of them send out beautiful, you know, emails at a really, really cheap costs far less. Obviously, than the cost of direct mail, so for most non-profits it makes sense that that the backbone of your entire donorsearch altum ation system not just your online donor cultivation system, but your entire donorsearch conservation zsystems his email communication, it’s, it’s email newsletters again, you’re still gonna want with your certain segments of donors have much more personal contact that they didn’t want to invite them to cultivation event you’re going to want to talk to them in person, you’re going to want to go out and see them. You’re gonna want to send a personalized notes, but but email the email newsletter the email cultivation is something that ties almost all of your donors together. Okay, um, let’s, let’s, take a break there. Okay? George arika okay, sounds good. Regular sepa is this testimonial quote, this is my first year and we’re growing non-profit regular gps was completely attentive and gave the impression as if they were right next door when handling our review engagement. Even though we’re in a different state, they made me feel like we were the only client they had that’s like that. And like the whole thing, they were able to walk. Me, through starting up our accounts to finishing our yearly statements, nothing was too small of a task for them to handle their always available for questions and concerns customer service was exceptional and was greatly appreciated. I received great advice and guidance for better business practices. This is talking about the cps for god’s sake. Listen to this gushing thing, it’s it’s incredible! That was my part that i didn’t write that all from a professional while feeling supported and genuinely cared for in the process. Wagner stupas really stands out as a partner, and i could not be happier with the results and quote that’s from the small cancer research non-profit on the east coast, supported and genuinely cared for are they limo drivers, wedding photographers, makeup artists, caterers, florists alright, you hear the wedding theme? Are they pre op nurses, interventional cardiac surgeons, home health workers, chaplin’s, social workers, none of the above their just wagner, cps but they’re more they’re more than cpas, trusted advisors to their clients. You’re supposed to change our two firms every three years to get that fresh perspective, you want the advice of a firm that goes broad and helps you. Beyond just the numbers. That’s them right beyond the numbers. You hear me say it, talk to them. You know you can talk to at wagner. You coached him? He’s been on the show. He’s been guessed twice. I’ve had lunches and dinners with heat right here in new york city. You can speak to him, he’s a live person. And ah, well, the people i meet for lunches and dinners for the most part. So, you know, get to know them. See if wagner cps can help you beyond the numbers. Okay, i’m gushing, but ah, i like them. I like eat. I like i like wagner, wagner, cpas, dot com now time for tony’s take two. I was on a cruise last month, totally disconnected. Totally offgrid or just, you know, don’t you want to modify it? Just offgrid i was offgrid and it felt luxurious. I lost track of time. There were there were blocks of ours, ours strolling by with my ties on drum punches. And i did not know what time it was the only reason i had to ask people. And i’d asked me because i kept my phone in my room the whole time. Ah, it zoho i wouldn’t show up for late, late for lunch and dinner breakfast. I was on track, but that, you know so my advice can you get a vacation where you’re not only napping? You’ve heard me talk about the beneficial impact of naps, but when you actually when you lose track of time one of those, what time is it? Vacations or a piece of vacation where you just you’re unconnected and you don’t even know what time it is. Okay, that’s, my video is from st thomas and it’s at tony martignetti dot com. Now, let’s, go back to joe garrett and you’re online e-giving plan. Thank you, joe garrett, um, i need to be here before you were really, really glad now, you just now now, it’s, not so much anymore. Just clouds the middle of the show. We’ll get her energy back-up oh, jeez, you’re in a slump. Cutting mike off. I’ll tap dance myself. I got i got playing giving god again gush with plan giving for all right. You’re not in a slump. I know you’re not, um by way you got a nice radio voice like you got a basic kind of voice. Thank you. Yeah. Um, how about should we that’s? Just something that i’ve talked to guess about? And i’ve heard different philosophies. What about converting online donors too? Latto offline donors, first of all, should we mean with all the things that you and you’ve just said should we be? And then if you think we should, i’m not. I’m not suggesting that’s what? One answer or another. But if you do think we should how do we do that? Let’s, start with that threshold question. Should we even be thinking about doing that, right? Yeah, i do think that you should try and convert all flight vote. Well, let me let me go online online to all i would like to offer you. Yeah. You you should be trying to move those online donors who won tohave offline contact with your non-profit to offline status. Now, there’s. A reason for that is because you have muchmore there’s much more ability to cultivate and steward those donors in a more personal fashion. If they’re offline, donors, very rarely will will a one hundred percent online donor moved from small gift to major gift to plan gift all online without ever talking to people face to face her on the phone or at an event with your non-profit and so i find that it’s, beneficial for the move donors over took to be offline donors, but again, ok, only if they want to move over because not everything. There are plenty of donors today who like a little bit of anonymity, who like a little bit who liked who liked to make those donations online, who like to read your email newsletter, look atyou on social media, but not have that personal that more personal touch, so my suggestion would be yes, now the trick really is to moving your online donors offline. Is tio seat as a system? You know you need to build a lot of non-profits crying kind of haphazardly one off, like they’ll do the price. A certain tactic to move those donors offline, maybe it’s doing some well screening and doing some calls or sending out some snail mail letters and and then it will work or it won’t work. And then, though, so it’ll be discontented and they’ll move on to something else. If you want to move your offline, don’t order. Online donors offline you need to put a strategy behind it, and you need to treat it like you do kind of direct mail prospecting or other other real measurable types of fund-raising you need to measure what you’re doing and see if it’s working and if it’s not working, then you know, try something else, but you need to you need to put a system behind what what suggestions have you got for for it, including our system? Sure. Well, there’s really? Two the two primary ways that non-profits trying move online donors offline our events and mail. So, you know there’s there’s non-profits that have success, particularly if most of their donors are local, you know, in a certain region or certain metropolitan area with having donorsearch collectibe ation events were donorsearch dank u events or larger types of types of events, or a regular system of cultivation tours of the facility, things like that, and they invite their online donors. Teo, come and connect through those types of events. Obviously the vast majority of the donors are not going to do that, but the ones who do are weeding themselves out for you there segmenting themselves for you they’re kind of raising their hand and saying, i’m super committed because i’m willing to come teo to a tour of the facility, even if it’s building is a donor thank you. Event that’s an actual investment time and energy on the other the other way that non-profits try and move online donors offline is male. You know, they try and do a do a mailing fund-raising mailing that converts some of those donors to essentially male donors, and then they try and move the donors up with line that way through a traditional capacity screening and, you know, male donor engagement strategy to move, though toe move up, move the donor’s through the funnel who have the capacity to give mohr. I’ve seen non-profit set up six have had success with both strategies. Teo do the event strategy. Obviously, most of your donors have to be local. My suggestion is to test both of them to test both of those strategies, and certainly, if you have wealth screening tools there you can. You can bring those into play and the other, frankly, the other riel indicator of an online donor. Is the number of the amount of engagement they have with your non-profit how many times do they donate online? How many times today, you know, respond open your e mails, how many times today engage with you on social media? Those are the type of metrics that show that there really engaged with your non-profit online and maybe ripe for moving off line or even moving to another level of online giving, like monthly giving entering that recurring credit card doing occurring right, an example of that, it could be an example of a hybrid between online offline depending how you structure your campaign is giving tuesday you are do i have it right? Are you e-giving tuesday denier? I am ok, i want to give. Okay, i want to give one to give voice to that we’ve had folks on from ninety second street y and in fact, this year i’m going to try to have ah to like one in may and one later, closer to the event, but i want to give voice to the to the denier, deny your camp what’s your opinion of giving tuesday. Sure. Well, i’m a big fan of giving days. For non-profits i’ve i’ve seen a lot of success with e-giving days that air run specifically for a non-profit for a particular non-profit i’m a big fan of crowdfunding in peer-to-peer campaigns online, what i’m not a fan of is particularly and and the non-profits i work with are particularly small and on the small size of side of mid sized non-profits i’m not a fan of them using what are very limited resource is for those organizations on giving tuesday because of the sheer volume of communications and fund-raising campaigns that are going on around that day, i would rather them take all the tools that they would normally use to run a successful giving tuesday campaign, which, as we all know as i’m sure, the folks who have had on who have been successful with that, i’ve told you, it’s more than just a day, right? A lot of prep work that goes into a successful giving tuesday for sure, and i’d rather than take that and move it over to e-giving day, just for their non-profit where there, what? They don’t have to compete with all of the many messages that their donors are getting, i don’t know if you’re like me, you probably are because you’re in the industry, i, you know, on giving tuesday and the days before leading up to it, i get i mean, dozens of e mails from non-profits about giving tuesday social media is packed with messages about giving tuesday and, you know, there’s two sides to argument, of course, that that buzz is going to boost it is going to raise all the ships that, well, that’s a mixed metaphor. Yeah, but you get, you know, you know what i mean? Yeah, right. That’s the argument and for me, for the organization’s i’ve worked with who have done giving tuesday, i’ve found that the amount of time number your number of staff hours that go into rising above the noise, or getting to a certain level with your donors, with awareness for your non-profit for a small non-profit that that number of hours would be better put into other fund-raising methods and moving the e-giving the e-giving daito, another day away from giving tuesday so that’s kind of my take on it. Okay, good on jeez, that was that was that was quite a mixed metaphor, but buzz raising ships. But what did you come up with this nonsense? If i had an intern that we we do? I mean, it’s not like anybody writing this it’s just all for mei apologize. Um, okay, you mentioned crowdfunding menu. We were sort of following the same sequence you like you like crowd? Well, wait, before we get to the generic crowdfunding. So what would you like to see people do on? Give me some client examples, perhaps if you like, of their own individual giving day? Sure way. You know, we have organizations that i’ve worked with where, instead of, you know, instead of doing on giving tuesday, we need we pick a day that makes sense with the organizations with their editorial counter with their market encounter with their fund-raising calendar where we name that day for that organization. You know, we call, you know, maybe it’s april third is, you know, killing off your children’s alliance day or that’s very presumption we stop that’s that’s very presumptuous of your client’s, isn’t it? You got it. You got to get out there and shake it up. You don’t have you don’t have a mayoral proclamation or anything like that, you’re just doing it on your own. It’s a great idea. We haven’t done that yet. But that’s a great idea. Yeah. Get the mouth that the mayor of philadelphia behind you. Yeah, yeah. So we we name that as our day, and we build a campaign message behind that day. And we just as with e-giving tuesday or with a with an online crowdfunding campaign, we set a goal for that day with a riel hans will outcome for that goal. You know, we say something like we want to raise twenty five thousand dollars on speak up day because we want to do x y and z we want to provide this number of scholarships or we want toe, you know, provide this number of warm meals, you know, hot meals to the homeless, and then we do all the normal things to build up to that day we put i like to put a committee behind it of people who, just as i will with a crowdfunding campaign. People who are commit to not only give that day right in the morning to show some to show some traction, but also who commit throughout the day send out an e mail to their network to be active on social media to really try and help us push it. Then we do a sequence of emails to our tow, our newsletter listeningto our donor base to prepare them for this day so that by the time the day comes around and we hit, send on the on the email that isa announcing that the day is now open, people are expecting it. People know that it’s coming, they’ve at least heard of it. And then, well, then we’re very active throughout the day. It’s, a one day crowdfunding campaign just like e-giving just like you’re giving tuesday. Sure effort is essentially a one day crowdfunding campaign except here, hopefully and that, you know, it’s not always caves, but hopefully really the only massive fund-raising messages that your donors are getting in the email and their email on social media and things that day are primarily from your non-profit yeah, it’s, your it’s your day. All right, i got it. It’s presumptions, but bold. You’ve gotta be bold, but you gotta you gotta be out there. Okay. Um, what about what about the blog’s we’re talking about online? Ah, let’s. See? You know what? I’m going to let you ruminate on that topic for a minute while i take our last break. Okay, okay. Tell us. Credit card, payment processing. Check out the video it’s at tony dot m a slash tony tell us goes through the process of businesses switching to tell us and remember how you are going to get fifty percent of telesis revenue. That’s passive revenue for you each month. You thought i was just i had lunch friendly. We’re talking about passive revenue, you know, into into retirement way. Get passive revenue some he he rents hubei’s properties and rinse them. I pay rent so i don’t have passed a revenue. But no, i don’t pay rent. Um, but you pass a revenue it’s a it’s. A good thing. You know what it means, right? It means you’re not working for every dollar. It’s just coming that’s it just comes and it comes routinely. That’s what happens a cz long is the businesses with tell us for credit card processing you’re going to get fifty percent of what tell us earns from that business times the number of businesses that you think of in your community ah, there’s a hundred percent satisfaction rate among among their non-profits and the businesses that are referred to them. Remember, if teller’s can’t save them any money, then you are going to get two hundred fifty dollars. But that’s, the that’s, the short term and that’s a short play. You don’t really want that, it’s. Not likely because tell us is probably is going to save the money. Otherwise, you’ll be writing a lot of twenty fifty dollars checks. Right? So you don’t want the short money. You want the passive revenue indefinite that long tail. Tony dot m a slash tony tello’s. Check out the video now, let’s, go back to joe garrick and wrap up with your online giving plan. Okay, so what homework did i give you? What did i just ask you to ruminate about? Do you remember what let’s talk about block? There we go. Yes. Much better than i am. I know, i know. Okay, uh, should we have a block to it? Is it is it essential anymore to have a blogger? Well, so in my mind, having a quote unquote blogged is not essential. It can be. It can be an important part of what you do but it’s not essential to have a separate page our link on your site necessary that says block what is important, whether it’s through your block, which is probably the easiest way to do this or through your sight as a whole. It’s important to have your your sight be updated regularly and to be something that makes donors want to come visit fresh, fresh content, right fresh content. Yet most non-profits have essentially a static brochure up with a donate now button and you know if they’re advanced, maybe they have a video at a newsletter sign up box, but it doesn’t change, and i always come non-profits your website can be in a really, really crucial part of your cultivation and stewardship stress, but it’s only important it’s the hub, right? If the hub is where the heart is weak, then the spokes are going to loose. Exactly exactly people don’t think that your website is that metaphor that was that was a that was a good metaphor. I’m sorry, but that was an example of a good metaphor. If they don’t think it’s informative or entertaining or, you know, compelling, they’re not going to visit it, and then it doesn’t work. So one of the mean, the easiest way to keep fresh content up on your website is a blogger there’s nothing. I hate more hearing more from non-profits then when a fundraiser says something like while we can update our own website, right, we’ve gotta get our web design team where we got that that’s crazy. You mean that there was a time when if you’re one of your website, to look nice, you had to do that, you had a have you had to make it such that you couldn’t update it yourself, but with all the modern back ends like wordpress that are available, there’s no reason that someone at your non-profit can’t go onto that website once a week or every other week or once a month and post something new and there’s a ton of things you can post there’s donorsearch stories and staff stories and clients, stories and things about your mission and things about your outcomes, things about events coming up and, you know, there’s, you know, thought leadership pieces. There is no end to the amount of things you can put up there. And what stops non-profits from doing that is they think that they have to write essentially a white paper or, you know, a master species every time they post something, they’re worried that they have to be fifteen hundred words and footnoted and it three hundred, four hundred, five hundred words up on your website that’s compelling that’s decently written that you mean, frankly, we talked about george, and earlier in the show that three of jargon that’s, you know, not technical that’s written at that sixth or seventh grade level that’s just up there that’s information, you know, informative or entertaining that gives donors a reason to at least check your website occasionally and that’s what you want. You want to give him a reason to keep coming back, so i’m a big proponent of like you said tony, fresh content up on that web site on a regular basis? What if we are hearing joe garrett say, oh, my god, three hundred, four hundred, five hundred words, i don’t i don’t i don’t think i have the time to come up, even with the low end of that three hundred. Well, i’m thinking about hiring, uh, what about what about outsourcing? Some of this what’s your opinion of getting an outsider tio provide that fresh content for you? And maybe maybe that’s not even on ly blogged, but could be facebook, twitter, your corporate page on linkedin, instagram, etcetera? Yeah, and you and you certainly can do that they’re you know, they’re certainly plenty of vendors out there we’re going to do that free it’s still going to require your time because what you don’t want to do is have a vendor who’s putting up kottler who’s, sending your content that that essentially could apply to any non-profit that sometimes what happens, right? We we get content from the outside from an outside vendor, and really, if you change this non-profit name out, it could applied any non-profit or it’s basically just rewording your case for support over and over again, or something like that in orderto and and i don’t want to suggest that that the way all vendors operate, but if you’re going to really get great content from an outside writer there going to be great at writing, they’re going to try and immerse themselves in your non-profits mission and what you do, but no. Matter what you do, they’re still going to need you to tell them about your latest outcomes your new programs you were you were, you know, help you collect your help them collect omer stories, clients, stories, things like that. So i would say, you know, if you’re if you’re thinking about, for instance, starting a block and you’re really, really concerned about the amount of time it’s going to take, i would say start from the real real low and meaning try and make a commitment that once per month just once per month, you’re going to come up with three hundred words right? On three hundred words less, which is less than a, you know, eight and a half by eleven piece of paper of one sheet that you’re going to come up with three hundred words to put up on your on your website and then then see how it goes if that works that maybe you could expand it a little bit if that’s not working. If you find that you don’t have the time in the band with, then investigate, you know, outsourcing it, but i would i would suggest, given it a shot first. And realizing again, it does not have to be we’re not talking about something that has to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be the greatest story in the world. In many cases, it just has to be something that goes up there that at least somewhat compelling to your donors and supporters. Another possibility for content is curating the content of others that’s that’s related to your mission or related to your community, you know? Ah, you know what interests your constituents, you know, you confined content from other people and, you know, call it a round up, i say we found on the found on the web and list the board, you know, bullet with links to, like, two to two or three things and there’s a lot of great content out there from others that you can use to supplement your own right. That’s exactly, i mean, and you’re right, there’s a lot of great content from from other people there’s also a lot of internal resource is that might be willing to provide content. Now, obviously, as a fundraiser, you don’t want to be in a position where you’re loading work onto the program’s staff, but you may have program folks who are excellent at writing about their experiences in the trenches that’s a green, compelling piece of content you may have boardmember who loved to write and who would love nothing more than to write a write an article where to interview a donor or two, you know, given explanation, you know, provide a provide a story about a kn event that you held that they attended. So there are a lot of ways where, you know, you’re looking for essentially, at a minimum twelve pieces of content a year, and if you can farm some of that out, then maybe you as a fundraiser are only writing a piece every other month or every third month because you have other re sources that are helping you create that content and ah, perfect example, tony, is what you said, which is to around up, post or a top ten, you know, top ten tips post, you know, if your if your organization that’s working in, you know, in healthcare non-profit maybe you’ve got a tip post you can post about how people can stay healthy in a certain respect so there’s a lot of different ways to go about it. You have ideas around personalized video for cultivation. Now we just have about two minutes left, joe garrick so you know you, teo constrain yourself, but what advice do you have around personalized video, right? So one of the new ideas one of the more innovative ideas that i’ve that we’ve used and that i love, is using personalized videos to stewart and cultivate, particularly stuart, you were mid level donorsearch if their donors out there who were giving it a level where he would like to offer them more cultivation, but you don’t have the time or and it doesn’t make sense, go out, meet with them. One thing, some non-profits air doing is a development director or a board number will sit in front of the computer and record thirty second videos using the donor’s name, personalizing it to their gift, thanking them for their gift and then emailing it out to them and it’s a way that you could do personalize stewardship. You can do, you know, fifteen or twenty of these videos in an hour and send them all out in the same amount of time it would take to meet. With one donor. Awesome. You did that in just one minute. Okay. Okay. Andi, you have clients doing that successfully? Yes. Yeah, very successfully. And and donors tender. I mean right now, it’s kind of new nobody, not many organizations. They’re doing it. So right now, i would say get double. In fact, in fact, we’ve had clients where significant a not insignificant number of donors actually call. Call the person who sends them the video to say how much they liked. The video, you know, leads to a whole different level of interaction. Not surprised. Awesome. That’s a great tip. Toe end on he’s. Joe garrett, president of garrett fund-raising associates, garrick dot com. And at joe garret joe garrett. Thank you. So, so much. Thanks for sharing. You bet. Thanks, tony. My pleasure. Next week, build your grantmaker relationships. If you missed any part of today’s show, i’d be seat. You find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuing unlike tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio wagner, cps guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com tell us. Credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream. Tony dot, m a slash tony tell us our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit medio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Treyz 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 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 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 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 sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five.

Nonprofit Radio for August 28, 2015: Fundraiser Incentive Pay

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Dave Dalessandro & Liz Cooper: Fundraiser Incentive Pay

The University of Pittsburgh has created a career ladder to stem frontline fundraiser turnover—and it includes incentive pay. Explaining Pitt’s innovation and helping you think through whether this makes sense at your organization are Dave Dalessandro, associate vice chancellor for university development, and Liz Cooper, senior executive director for university development.

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I go into hydro poisonous if i got exposed to the hot idea that you missed today’s show fundraiser incentive pay university of pittsburgh has created a career ladder to stem frontline fundraiser turnover, and it includes incentive pay, explaining pits, innovation and helping you think through whether this makes sense at your organization. Our dave dalessandro and liz cooper fund-raising administrators at the university on tony’s take two the ntc videos responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com i’m very glad to welcome dave dalessandro and liz cooper to the show. Dave is associate vice chancellor for university development at the university of pittsburgh and liz cooper is senior executive director for development at the university. David liz, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having us for having a it’s a pleasure, dave, i don’t i’m not sure we’ve ever had a a chancellor or vice chancellor on the show before. This sounds like a very regal term, but you’ve got a crown born there. What? You’re sitting on a throne. What? Mrs chancellor? Well, uh, associate vice chances are a lot like vice presidents in bank. Okay, a lot of you. Okay, but they prefer chancellor. Essentially, i sit over all of the individual fund-raising for the university plan giving prospect, research all the analytics and lose his second in command. Okay, uh, it’s, just interesting that some places, i guess mostly i see it, and i guess it is in universities. Prefer chancellor over president. I don’t know. I don’t know where that. Okay, i don’t know it just right. It sounds, uh, sounds like royalty. All right, um, liz, you and i are ah, you and i are the now the libyans know, um, what is your responsibility, liz? As senior executive director for development? Sure. So i oversee all of the central fund-raising operation. So i hyre orient and supervise all of our fundraisers that are located here. Centrally. I also oversee fund-raising efforts that go on in some of our smaller schools, for example, school of education or the school of social work. And i also work closely with our regional campuses. All right? And of course, ah, i wanted teo, we’ll let you know that i’m a carnegie mellon altum and no, carnegie mellon is just down the street from pit, so we’ll have no ah, we’ll have no trouble with you, please way won’t hold it against, don’t yeah, that’s. Sure it is two against one. So what am i talking about? Yeah, all right, all right, dave, why don’t you get us started? This incentive pay and the career ladder, and why was this important to do it? Back-up i’m gonna have i’m gonna have to start off on that look at this already is an anarchist anarchist already? I okay, this is what is what happens when you deal with this. What happens when you’re dealing with a chancellor? I see. Ok, ok, go ahead, liz. You start off. Um, you know, i think that it seemed like every moment i was checking my email, i was receiving an article or blogged about some big hyre education fund-raising issues, um two of which were the recruitment of major gift officers and the retention of major gift officers. During our campaign. We were fortunate to have a group of very successful and talented individual major gift officers that are loyal to the university. But as you know wherein one campaign ends, you start thinking about another, and we knew we were going to grow. So we wanted to address these issues recruitment and retention of major gift officers at pitt before they became ah common. Seem to us, if that makes sense. In other words, it was a common theme across hyre education. And we didn’t want it to be an issue here. And what do you see? As the downside of just make sure everybody eyes on the same page with this the downside of a frequent turnover of fundraisers, i think continuity is a big themes that you’ll find in development. Uh, continuity is good for donors. It’s good for the employees. It’s good for the organization. Good for the bottom line. Um, when an individual major gift officer leaves the university, uh, that relationship that they developed with that individual major gift donor repaired and start over again. So all right, so yes, we want this continuity, and donors prefer it. Donors prefer it sure they because they begin a relationship not only with pitt, but with that individual major gift officer. Yeah, for sure, dave, if you think i’m going to bring you in this conversation, you’re out of your head so you can hang up or whatever i don’t. It doesn’t matter to me. No, it sounded like there was something you were going to say, dave, you want to add something? Well, i think that one of the things that we learned was that it’s actually less expensive over the long run to retain your existing fundrasing not only have you spent time training them, and we spend a lot of time training our major gift officers, but the process of recruiting the process of, you know, matching salaries from from folks coming from larger cities or larger institutions actual becomes more expensive over time, so it seemed us that one of the things we wanted to do it was to control, uh, for those those problems when we were going from eleven major gift officers to probably thirty two, so you multiply all those problems when you’ve got three times more fundraisers and you’ve got a real problem of scale if people are coming and going, so that was a big hit was a big issue for us that, you know, once we had made this initial investment, we didn’t want to have to recoup it over and over again with new folks. Liz, you said you’re responsible for the hiring and training, so why don’t we? Why don’t we start with this? The career ladder idea and the incentive pay around around fundraiser orientation? What what’s what’s different now that you have this method of evaluation and compensation? Sure, when there’s so many young, talented folks out there that have maybe two or three years in development. These millennials, when they came to me in an interview, would ask me, where will i be a pit in five years? Or where will i be a pit? In seven years? Prior to the career ladder, i would stare back at them, and i would not be able to answer them except with simple response. We hope that you’ll still be here. So, you know, this was a really when when this was established, this was a really interesting way for us to tell that applicants there is a future for you here, and we have thought it through. How long have you been doing incentive pay and the career ladder, which we’re going to talk about? So we worked on the career rod, or for about eighteen months, and it was implemented in janu miree okay, so we’re talking, oh, wow. All right, so just eight months or so, all right, but a lot of little lead time lot of thought went into it, so go back to the orientation question then was how is training of new fundraisers different now? So a part of what we wanted to ensure was that we were orienting exceptional fundraisers and that’s, really, what the career ladder is based on is really those performers that are going above and beyond a successful and being exceptional. Part of that is us training them for the first three months of their employment to get up and running as quickly as possible. So learn how pit fund-raising tto learn how we do it. So we establish what we lovingly refer to as the academy it’s a week long, intensive training, hands on experience taught by our own staff on all the things that we think they need to know as individual fund-raising individual gift fundraiser, for example. But they get a crash course on plan giving. They get a crash course on our endowment, making the ask proposals agreement’s, etcetera. So that we feel that after that week, they really do have a great face in what it takes to be an individual major gift officer here. And what about god? I was just going to add that part of that so is the explanation is the explanation of the career excuse me? Is the explanation of the career ladder? Yes, there is actually a booklet that they get that that sets out uh all the requirements for them to in a period of three years be eligible for promotion. Okay? We’re we’re. We’re gonna we’re gonna go out a little early for a break. When we come back. We’re going to talk about what these elements are to being exceptional, there’s six of them and we’ll talk about how they fit into the career ladder all that stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Liz, let’s, let’s, turn to you. Would you please take off the six elements to prove that you’re an exceptional fundraiser? Sure, what well we have the first is our fund-raising visit number, dollar raised agreement sent. Agreement’s accepted the total contact that they have in our in our database, and the last is origination guest. Okay. Thank you. Um, let’s, let’s. Define some terms. What’s, an origination gift and origination gift is a gift that the development officer excuse me. Let me go back. The origination gift is a gift where the prospect was never placed in what we call active management. In other words, ah, other universities use the term maybe a legacy or one that was kind of handed down from a previous development officer to another origination gifts or those gifts that were the relationship that was established by the gift officer cultivated, solicited and closed. So their new giver to the university at the major gift level. All right, all right. And to be exceptional, you what? You have to achieve a certain level or exceed or so how do you prove that you’re exceptional across these six categories? Yeah, if it’s okay, i’ll let dave kind of handle that. And what we what? We’ve determined to be exceptional. That’s okay, trust him. Go ahead. Yeah. One of one of the things that that the career ladder does is takes a traditional major gift officer position and breaks into six steps. So at each step, step one step two, step three. Step forward. So on there are a set of performance standards. The initial performance standards are considered. This is your level of competency. This is what you’re supposed to be doing. Uh, and then you have the exceptional being in terms of money raised double that amount. And all of these other factors are not all that different at both exceptional in regular. In other words, what we’re really trying to figure out is are you doing to baseline of activity? And how effective are you taking that baseline and raising mohr gifts than the person sitting next to you? So at each level and exceptional person is always raising double the amount of money that another person in the class is raising, or with one so the ones might be exceptional taken average five hundred thousand if they could propose to it to their only exceptional, they raise a million if they get to three, they’re only exceptional. Raise two million. If they get the for their only exceptional, they raise three million. Alright, so in this system it’s entirely possible to be promoted and be exceptional as a cr m one and never leave the c r m to level because you’re not exceptional at that level. All right, so let me just way have jog in jail on tony martignetti non-profit radio c r e m is probably pretty widely known but let’s, just make explicit. I assume that’s, constituent relationship manager, charitable relationship, charitable. See, i did not have a charitable relationship manager. Okay, okay, go ahead. Sorry. And, uh, yeah. That’s that’s. Kind of where we got away from the major gift officer term. Because we felt that terrible relationship manager actually is a title that expresses the job. Yeah, related. They’re managing sheriff oppcoll relationship. Yeah, kind of like that. A charitable relationship manager. Okay, so do you to be exceptional. Do you have to do double the double the goal in all six of these categories? No. No. Okay. How does it work now? How does it work? What’s the formula. The formula is that let’s say you come in as what we call the c r m one. So you’re cr one and we tell him here’s what you need. All right. Need forty five fund-raising visits two hundred thousand new pledges. Six. Agreement sent four agreements accepted. A thousand total contacts. Into origination gets now. If you are exceptional, you’ll have forty five were mohr fund-raising visits. You’ll raise five hundred thousand maurin new pledges and gifts. You’ll have six agreement scent, or mohr for agreements, mohr, a thousand total contracts and three origination gifts. So if you managed to make all those numbers all right over a period of three years, in other words, set your average of doing at over three years. Yes, stand. At the end of the third year you’re eligible for a promotion, it would be promoted to c r, m two two. Okay, okay, what is probably should just defined this earlier, but what is the total contacts? Total contacts are all the things that you put in the database, which indicate an attempt to maintain communication with the donor. So emails, letters, phone calls, okay? That’s, pretty liberal, and then and then one of the categories i think the first one lives mentioned is is actual visits fund-raising visits, right? That that assumes that that’s a face to face meeting, yes, okay, but here’s the difference and, you know, we’ve had people say, boy, that number that numbers, so we have to make two hundred visits. Well, the only way you get credit for a fund-raising visit is that you have an actual discussion about a major gift, and in fact, all of our folks are supposed to call and say i would like to come and talk to you about your philanthropic relationship with the university of pittsburgh. So these aren’t alumni visits. These aren’t people you casually run into at a football game or a basketball game. We still count those, but you don’t get credit. We’ve got you know, we’ve got a staff that actually vets all the contact reports, determine whether you get credit or not for that visit i used to be a planned e-giving director at two colleges before i before i became a plan giving consultant. Yeah, i do. I do play e-giving telling now, but i used to be plain giving director i i’m trying to decide whether i would have loved this or hated it. I think it’s i think i would have loved it because i kind of like the office competition. Although buy-in both these shops, i had started the plan giving program, so there was no other planned e-giving fundraiser. But i mean, you could. I’m sure we could have worked out a way of comparing my work to that of frontline major gift officers, but sure. Okay, now i think i would have i don’t know if i would have succeeded, but i think i would have liked it. I don’t know. I might have been out after three years. Why did yu let’s turn to lose? But is why? Why a thirty six month average? And and also, how does that work? If someone goes out on maternity leave or or family medical leave or, you know, has an injury or something like that. But first, why the why the thirty six months? We felt like three year rolling average was a great way to measure exceptional performance and that you’re not relying on a successful year and you’re not relying on a particularly poor year, either. So for example, let’s say, ah, major gift officer has ah, year where they raised one point, one point, one million dollars it’s a great fund-raising year well, then, if you take the three year rolling average, you can’t just do nothing for the next two years and and know that you’re going to get promoted. There’s still work to be done? Um, so and on the flip side, if you have a year where you raise only two hundred thousand dollars, you still have plenty of time to make it up, so we thought it was fair in that sense. Um, the thirty six months is what hr helped us to find us as active employment, so if they are, go on maternity leave, for example, essentially their performance cycle thes thirty six months pause and it picks right back-up and thirty six months so that’s, another thing that i want to mention is that we don’t run on the fiscal year, for example, we run on a calendar year from the date of their hyre they’re hired on march first, they’re judged on twelve year cycle for a year, one from march first to march first. So if they were to go on maternity leave on march first and then it would pause for the next three months, it would then pick up on june first, and that would be the end of their very six months, if that makes it okay. So each each person’s anniversary is the date of hyre correct and and there’s a if there’s a chunk missing for medical leave or whatever, then you would just tack on more time at the end. You got it. Okay, okay. Does that does that trouble you at all that or how did you think through this one? Everybody’s got a different anniversary date. I mean, putting aside the record keeping well, we’ll get to that. I mean, that’s a ministerial we could deal with that. But the different people have different anniversaries when they’re thirty six months is up. Does that? Does that concern fundraisers at all? Is that concern you? Well, i think that they believe that that’s actually extremely. Fair um, so let’s say you start in september if you were running on a fiscal year, you’ve only got nine months of performance, so at the end of three fiscal years, you actually haven’t worked for thirty six months. You’ve worked for thirty three months this way, your guarantee that you get the full thirty six months for your promotional review, and, uh, from what i know from the folks who who work here and now live under this, they love the certainty of all this, they know when they’re going to be up for a promotional review, which almost never exists in any organisation i worked at before, one of which was carnegie mellon. You’ve got voodoo, you’ve got booted out all for emotion. No review was something that you might ask your supervisor. Hey, i’ve been doing pretty good for two years, you know, when you’re going to look at, you know, what else can i be? How can i be promoted? And that was always this foggy kind of answer this way. They know at the end of that thirty six months they’re going to sit down and they’re going to be able to review their last three years of work. I’m sorry. You got booted out of carnegie mellon. Pardon? I said, i’m sorry you got booted out of carnegie mellon. Yeah, well, they had crazy ideas. Okay? I’m so uncertain. That didn’t happen. So so is there not a performance evaluation? Interim during the thirty six months there is there’s still an annual praise a ll, um and and that’s kind of the more, um, qualitative way of looking at this. So each annual appraisal has five performance factors, and these performance factors are what we’ve identified to be an exceptional individual, major gift officer. They are perseverance, problem solving, functional technical skills, interpersonal communication and kind of most importantly, donor focus. So that it’s not just about the numbers and i will and i when i would like to say that individual major guest officers tend to be numbers driven people. And they like this career ladder because it’s very transparent and it’s very numbers driven. But to us, it’s not just about the numbers to us, it’s about ensuring that there still meeting the needs of the donor and these annual appraisals help us determine that there still totally donor-centric now i would think that even in these annual appraisal, though, you’re you’re evaluating the a reviewing with the fundraiser, their performance, how they’re doing time versus goal over there for their thirty six month period. Yep, you got it. Okay, so there’s that there’s that too. But but okay, but also call it a more qualitative assessment than than the thirty six months which would be that’s, that’s, pretty quantitative and numerical in the thirty six month review. Okay, well, the thirty six month review so here’s how it fits together, tony. All right, so at the end of the thirty six months so everybody every morning gets there gets their current running total on their screen so they know exactly where they stand. Oh, my, everyone. So at the end of the first year, they will get their current totals and there their average at the end of the second year, they’ll get their current total stand. How that averages so they’re always they always know how hard they have to be working to get where they need to get. Okay? And that becomes that’s important because when they sit down for there promotional review their very well aware of whether or not they’re going to make it or not, the others the numbers there, right? You have seen it and seen it every day during your appraisals, you cannot have needs improvement in any aspect. If you get it needs approval, you will not be promoted because exceptional employees don’t need to improve on one of these five aspects, right? And the biggest one that trips everybody up dysfunctional technical skills. Handup uh, one of the things that’s functional technical skill is putting accurate information and timely in a timely manner on what you’re doing. And so we just have some folks who simply can’t get around to port again trip reports, or they put in inaccurate trip reports, and so they get a needs improvement, and therefore they don’t get promoted because they’re not exception, i see, right? Even if, even if the numbers are there, even if the numbers you can’t need, you can’t need improvement in any of the five qualitative areas that liz mentioned. All right, so what’s the problem with the trip report? I mean, i that that used to be really valuable to me when i came back. Although, you know, if you get behind, then you’re really screwed because you have to forget and hopefully had decent notes. But but okay, we just have about two minutes before a break, but that that’s what? You’d be surprised. How long? Two minutes last. What? What trips people up with the use of inaccurate tripp reports? Like, how does that happen? One of the things that the one of the rules is that one of the only way you could get counted for a credit for a fund-raising visit one of the fifty six is you have to enter a next task. So a lot of folks, not a lot of folks, but there are those people who go to the visit and don’t think about what they’re going to do next. And so, over time, these people who are actually competent fundraisers, all right, they meet their basic numbers. They get a backlog of information that they owe us, and they never catch up. Yeah, i mean, they never catch up. Now, if you keeping up with your visits yeah. It’s it’s hard plus, you know, administrative tasks and things. I definitely if you get yeah. Like i said, if you get behind and you agree, right? Would you have just a minute? Liz, what happens if i come to you and tell you i got an offer at a competing? I got it. I got offered carnegie mellon. And not surprisingly, you know, they’re going to pay me one half times what i’m making at pitt. How does that fit into the career ladder? What kind of nice about the career ladder is that we can say to that employee? Well, this is where we value. This is where we see you. This is where our our standards are. And this is where we see you at pitt. So if you feel that that a move to carnegie mellon or to wherever is the appropriate step for you at this time, we’re sorry to see you go, but this is where we value you. Okay? This being your current salary, we’re not current. We’re not matching. We’re not matching competing offers. No. Right? Ok. All right. Sounds fair. We got more coming up. Of course, we’re going to talk a little about the ethics of of all this and maybe get some dahna reactions as well and talk about the infrastructure you gotta have a lot more coming up. Stay with us. In the meantime, i need to talk about pursuing because they’re a very smart company and, well, they sponsor non-profit radio. So there you go, that is de facto they’re smart company if you need more than that, they rely on data not unlike what we’re talking about with david liz that pit on dh technology metrics analysis, they’re not basing you’re fund-raising on tradition and popular wisdom that gets propagated at a fundraising conferences there’s too much of that around, you need to be smart and analytical and measure and then learn from what you’re measuring and that’s. What pursuing is about, um, for instance, the prospector platform that they have, which uses your data and, of course, supplements it with their algorithms to find your upgrade ready donors who should you be spending time talking to about upgrading from a thousand dollars a year to five thousand dollars a year, or half a million dollars a year, or half a million dollars last major gift to three quarters or a million dollar gift this time, whatever level you’re at, whatever size your shop, they’re going to apply prospector platform and its algorithms to your data and help you. Find the people target the people you should be spending time talking about with around upgrading their giving. It’s all at pursuant dot com i was at the non-profit technology conference back in march, interviewing speakers. I used all those interviews on non-profit radio you’ve been hearing for the past several months, we also shot video of those interviews and now it’s about time. Um, the videos are coming online, we’re going to start putting them on my youtube channel. The first four is up already, and it includes our contributor, amy sample ward, who is the ceo of non-profit technology network, which, by the way, is an excellent organization around using technology smartly in your non-profit and you know, her she’s on every month talking about social media so that’s, one of the four videos that’s up the the others are previewed on my video and of course, their links to all for anti seizure goes and there are more to come because i did twenty five interviews that ntcdinosaur year so there’s, a lot more video to come and that is tony’s take two for friday, twenty eighth of august thirty fourth show of this year. David liz, you’re still with us, right? Yes. Ok. You ok? Thank you. I know you were seven. Sam, let me know, but i just like to say a little affirmation. Um, let’s. See, i don’t know who wants to talk about this there’s? Not really too much. But i just wanted to make it clear when you talk about incentive pay, i think there’s a possibility that people might be thinking of the ethical considerations and constraints that the association of fund-raising professionals f has. And the relevant sort of passages, i guess are that members of a f p shell not accept compensation or enter into a contract that is based on a percentage of contributions. Nor shall members except finder’s for your contingent fees. Well, this clearly that’s that’s really not that’s, not what’s going on here, right? Right. That’s not what’s going on. And there is no relationship between the amount of money anybody raises and there increase in salary. So this is not a okay. You did really good this year. So here’s twenty thousand dollars based on one percent of your increases. This is an actual an actual increase in their salary, their annual salary level and hr work with us to ensure that that compensation levels stayed within the university’s ranges for jobs. That were classified like our jobs were classified and hr actually had no problem with this. We thought that would be a stumbling block, but they really didn’t see a problem with that. Because, you know, the alternative is that people walk in and say, i have an offer from cmu and it’s one and a half times what you’re paying me and what are you going to do and a most instant? Most places that i know and i’ve worked for a bunch of folks sit around a table and say, what do we want to keep that person or not? And, you know, that’s, basically what it’s, what it’s, what it’s, based on right, and they kick it up, and so that drives a long term that drives your cost over because it’s, not controllable, it’s, not predictable and it’s hard to set up long term budgets when you say fifteen percent of the people in our community and asked for more money. So ethic but we’re trying to do is say to somebody, if you, uh, you have a career here and there is a a future that you can envision based on your performance. All right. What has the fundraiser reaction been now since since january? And neither one of you wants to commented did well, i can let me talk about two examples without naming any of the school’s involved. We hired someone from an ivy league school, and she basically said that she had no idea how she would get promoted at the school. She was that she had never seen anything like the career ladder where it says, if you do these things every three years, we’re going to look at the possibility of promoting you within the major gift class, so that made us feel really good, you know that someone from an ivy league school thought this was great? Um and we, you know, recently hired someone for from a private school who also said the same thing now what’s nice about the career ladder is we were able to bring that person in at a four because she had ten years of experience as a major give fund-raising yes, so we’re not limited to just bringing people in in one. And when we sent the numbers over to h r, they said, well, that person fits exactly into who we defined as a four so we don’t have any problem with that compensation, and it actually worked out wonderfully dahna and most people when we come in and handed this booklet during the interview, they’re just amazed that that this thing has been thought out to the details been thought out, has anybody? Ah, i’m going to challenge us to see on the other side has anybody either applicant or employees. When it was implemented, i objected and on departed because of it, no one’s left yet, okay and apprehend list as you’re interviewing applicants, potential fundraisers, anybody said, i don’t think this works for me again. I mean, the young applicants are mother of their millennials or it’s a generational thing, you know, they want to know what their future is going to be like in an organization, and so most of them are very appreciative that we’ve kind of thought it through another existing staff. You know, the reaction has been very positive and i think it’s in large part because it’s so transparent, all right? And yes, it sze clear everyone everyone knows they’ve been knows that i think that he knows the state level of trust. That this engenders it is very powerful for, you know, a group of fundraisers and, uh, one more point on that is we’ve had three promotional reviews two uh, managed to make the jump to another level, and one did so that’s the way it goes, right? All right. And the one who didn’t well, let’s not say his or her name, but nobody listens to this show, so it really doesn’t matter. You don’t worry about that, but the okay, so for people who don’t make the so then they’re still retained a t organization. Yes, there’s capped and now we’re going in thirty six months will look att promoting you the possibility of promoting you again? No, actually that’s not the way it works, the way it works is what we do is we drop off the first year of their three year total and their scent in their third year again, so i don’t understand that what you mean? Ok, so the person who came up had worked here for three years and he didn’t make it. So what happens is we then say, we’re going to take all the Numbers from year 1 and drop him. And now you are in your new third year so you can come up again on your next anniversary. Oh, in one year. Okay, so i’m now right. I’ve now finished my second year and i’m entering my third because we drop the first one off. Yes. Okay. Well, that’s good. Presumably they’re getting better if you had a great, great first here and then you went down that’s not that doesn’t work to your advantage, but presumably fundraisers are improving. Not always, though you might have, you might have a spike one year and and not be able to match it in. You’re too, but that happens a lot. Yeah, on the other thing that’s important about all this is when you move from a one to two, all your previous numbers is zeroed out so you don’t carry those successes forward. In terms of the career ladder, you carry the prospects forward, but those numbers disappear. And so now you’re starting from ground zero again. Yeah, so, you know, it seems like, oh, wow, you know, all these people getting promoted over and over again, but in fact they won’t be because now they’ve gotta prove that they’re exceptional with the other level. And now they have to raise more money because we paid them or so they have to raise more money. And they have to do even better to be exceptional at that level. Yeah. Give us a sense of what the percentage increases from fromthe levels. Can you can you do that? Yeah, we could do that. It’s. I’m going to say it’s between ten and twenty percent. Okay, across all the levels, do you think? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, but that’s. Yeah, but here’s here’s the thing the university of pittsburgh has given out a raise of one point. Five percent for the last three years. Pary here. Right. So that’s, half percent over over three years. And you have the chance to go somewhere between ten and twenty. Yeah. Yeah. Ok. Yeah. That makes sense. It should. Your exceptional. You’re only being promoted your exceptional so exceptional peoples get the exceptional increases. Let’s. Move to the social infrastructure. Little record keeping well, ministerial stuff. What do you what do you need to put in place if you’re if you’re goingto take this on? Well, the first thing you need is some way to validate and verify all the information that goes into counting all these things you’re supposed to count, right? Almost everybody has that. What we have is we have two people who are assigned. Do as i say, validate all the information it goes in. So, you know, that becomes very important. The second thing is evaluation of gifts on some gifts. We have a sliding scale. Um, so certain request, depending on the age of the person, are not going to be valued at one hundred percent. Yes. Okay, uh, you know, so, you know, you want to be fair about these insurance policies that university doesn’t? Oh, are not valued at all our credit. It all right? Because that’s that’s rather krauz remainders knew all those things have have values based on, uh, you know, kind of the standard way of valuing things in the campaign. Right? In other words, all those numbers have to be validated. In other words, they’ve planned giving is getting screwed. That’s what’s happening because i could really i could get lots of bequests. But bequests are revocable and yeah, is there an age? At which a bequest would count at maybe not at not a future value. If the person reveals the amount. That’s just first of all, let’s. See if you think it’s i think it’s, i think it’s. So i have this thing here. Got sixty five. They get one hundred percent information. Okay, let’s, just let’s. Just passed it on age sixty five. Okay, so requests, if they’re over sixty five hundred, chancellor, if they’re under sixty five to get a five percent discount per year to the age fifty five. Okay. That’s, actually. Pretty generous, by the way, liz, that already? I think so. Liz had provided that about thirty seconds ago. But that’s all right, there. Um ah, yeah. That’s. Pretty generous. I was thinking more like seventy or seventy five. Wow. So full face value for aged sixty five. Ok. I think you bring pretty generous there. That’s. That’s. Very nice. Now that that presumes that, of course, the plan giving donors is willing to reveal the amount a lot. A lot would rather not. And it’s also put some pressure on the plan, giving officers to inquire right? And of course, they need what we call. Letter of testamentary intent. Yes, it’s got to be something in writing, okay? And there’s. So you’re not discounting the fact that this remains a revocable gift? No. Okay, but you are discounting that on the life insurance side. You said if it’s a life insurance beneficiary there’s no credit now the university’s nifty insurance is owned by the donor and doesn’t transfer the ownership to the university. Right? Right. That’s that’s the problem, right? The university’s just named as beneficiary, right? Okay. And that that doesn’t count. There’s no credit for that. That beneficiary designation. And i’ll tell you what you know, one of the things that scare one of these things came about is is, you know, meeting with someone who says, well, you know, i’m with this i’m with this corporation and i’m on the board, and so i’m going to put you in this a beneficial for the corporation, all right? On the key map, they’re not key, man. You know what they allow you to do that we’ve had those things just disappear when the corporation disappears. Most recently what? Hines when it was bought. Oh, heinz, of course. Very big in pittsburgh. Yeah, yeah. Okay, i could see that on the corporate policy said, okay, because i’m if i was one of your plan giving officers, i would i would question that life insurance beneficiary designation. If i got it, i got a letter that says, you’re a beneficiary of my life insurance policy and, of course, that share the beneficiary designation form. You don’t see that is equivalent teo to a request for a sixty five year old no, no, okay, go, we’ll take a break, not because of that, not because that the screaming with the break was coming anyway. You’re not cut off, don’t worry, stay with us, okay, okay. 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 levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti m a r 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. Buy-in top trends sound advice. That’s tony martignetti, yeah, that’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m travis frazier from united way of new york city, and i’m michelle walls from the us fund for unicef. Lest you thought that i forgot about live listener love, certainly i did not. We can’t can’t send live listen live by city and state today because they because we are he recorded where we can advance, but of course the love goes out to each live listener. I just don’t know exactly where you are. Podcast pleasantries those listening in the time shift over ten thousand of you, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing as you’re listening pleasantries out toe all the vast podcast listeners and those very important affiliate affections our am and fm stations across the country, there may be ten thousand affiliate listeners who knows? I don’t really know the stations don’t have the ppm data, so maybe there’s no, maybe there’s another ten thousand, who knows? But anyway, however many however few affiliate affections out to our am and fm station listeners. Liz let’s, let’s bring you back to the to the conversation. Is there anything more that you want to tell us about sort of infrastructure that it has to be in place to make this career ladder of success? Yeah, i think what’s important is is looking a little bit at your own. Analytics. Um, so we talked a little bit about, you know, pits Numbers 45 visits fund-raising hundred thousand six agreement sent etcetera those numbers were not thought off the top of our heads are plucked from the sky we used data from our own individual major gift officers going back far fifteen years individual gift officers that were that have a very exceptional record individual gift officers that didn’t and came up with the numbers looking at the data that way so i think it’s important to tell your listeners that if they’re thinking about using a career ladder as a model for individual gift officers that it’s important to kind of examine your organization and and and what kind of data makes sense for you and looking at your own analytic and what those analytics tell you all right dave, anything, anything more you want to contribute to the to the infrastructure question? Well, i think that when you said when you set this up, you have to have some set of folks who are worried about the impending review dates so that all the information is gathered together. All the information is is put together that you do this in sufficient time so that any increase in pay is cleared by hr and buy your vice chancellor. You know, these big organizations, uh, you know, the cat time seems to creep up on you will be sitting there, especially the first two we did after january, you know, the place was basically more or less closed christmas spray, and suddenly you’re coming up on this deadline that you have to meet, and you’ve got it, you’ve got to be ahead of that, so you have to have people care about it and our curating the information, and then you’ve got to get everything in line with all the people have to know you’re going to do this so that when the person comes in, you basically handed the letter says congratulations or we’re sorry that it didn’t work. This time, but yeah, i mean it’s, not the kind of it doesn’t run on its own. Okay? And that’s actually could play into the the hands of small and midsize shops advantageously because they don’t have different levels. They may not even have a person who manages hr. It might be the it might be the executive director taking care of hr so you don’t have to. You have to worry about getting that. I guess that administrative buy-in we’re talking about a leaner organization. So there may be advantages there, making it a little easier to create something like this. Yeah, definitely. I mean, once you decide once, once you decide would exceptional means, uh, then i think that’s the big that’s, the big leap. Okay, what does it mean to be exceptional? And when you determine what it means to be exceptional, what happened? Whether you have three, four, seven, eight however many criteria you have, our metrics you have, you know, it could be managed in any sign shop, but i think where becomes difficulty is where, uh, you don’t really identify what exceptional performances. And, of course, liz, you made the point that it should come from your own data, your own analytics, not from some benchmarking survey of what’s, typical in organizations of your size or something like that. That’s. Exactly right. I mean, you know, when we look at pitt, or if you look at harvard, those that data might look completely different. Um, and so, i think, it’s, beneficial tio to look within your own organisation, because you really can’t control where the numbers fall. When it’s your own data. Yeah, yeah. How about ah approval for this, david? Was this something that that needed to reach the board or no? Well, actually, this needed to work its way up through the chancellor’s office. Okay, jess, um, yeah. So we started hr and, uh uh, it was approved by hr after months and months of work. And then it went up to the chancellor’s chief of staff and then that’s at the level at which it was approved. I was thinking that for a smaller, much smaller organization or non-profit this might go to the board. All right? Yeah, i was wondering presentation aboard because it has somewhat of an effect on the budget. But it’s not it’s, not as overwhelming as you thinking. Here’s actually, advantage. If i have one minute, this is this is very interesting. You have actually, you have just about a minute. All right, i’m on it. So, uh, remember that we have these folks who are scattered all the way through the year, and so from a budget standpoint, the actual amount in that year that they’re going to make might be cut by fifty percent. In other words, the actual outlay. Because hyre of when? They started. So, you know, the way it works is that you actually have. We have the three year anniversary date for twelve people already calculate. So we can estimate based on the numbers that we have thus far, what the cost in the budget would be over the next three to four years, which is really from a budgeting standpoint. Really? Value? Yes, i see the value. That. Okay. All right. We have to leave that there. Liz. I don’t know if you are aware dave volunteered you oftheir to accept questions that people listeners might have. Are you willing? Are you, in fact ah, consenting to that? They’re more than welcome to e mail me at sea lives at pit p i t dot edu see liz at p i t dot edu. Yeah. All right. We have to leave it there, and i want to thank you both david and liz, thanks so much for sharing everything. Thank you, tony. Appreciate a real pleasure. Okay, buy-in, if you missed any part of today’s show, you will find it. Where else? Tony martignetti dot com. In fact, where in the world else would you go pursuant? Full service. Fund-raising you’ll raise airplane loads more money, and i’m not talking about those two seater piper cubs like you see in the local county airport. I’m talking dreamliners seven eighty sevens, like emirates flies with the studio apartments in first class that have showers and double beds filled with money. Pursuant dot com. Our creative producers, claire meyerhoff, janice taylor is no. Sam liebowitz is the line producer today who writes this copy. I wish i had an intern to blame. The show’s social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. 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Amador is the founder of idealised took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. 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Nonprofit Radio for August 21, 2015: Online And At Risk & Your Board’s Role In Executive Hiring

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Diane Oates: Online and at Risk?

Do you accept donations online? Have a “donate now” button? Are you using crowdfunding sites? You may need to register with lots of states, not just your own. Diane Oates is an assistant attorney general in the consumer protection division of the Florida AG’s office and a former National Association of State Charities Officials (NASCO) board member. (Originally aired July 11, 2014.)

 

Gene Takagi: Your Board’s Role in Executive Hiring

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Gene Takagi, our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO), walks us through this important board responsibility: hiring the executive officer.  (Originally aired July 11, 2014.)

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with dextrose gas trea, if i was forced to stomach the mere hint that you missed today’s show online and at risk, do you accept donations online? Do you have a donate now button? Are you using crowd funding sites? You may need to register with lots of states, not just your own. Diane oates is an assistant attorney general in the consumer protection division of the florida attorney general’s office and she’s, a former national association of state charities officials boardmember that’s nasco and that originally aired on july eleventh twenty fourteen also, your board’s role in executive hiring jean takagi, our monthly legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo walks us through this important board responsibility hyre ing the executive officer that’s also from the july eleventh show last year on tony’s take two, i’m not speaking to the new york times we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com here is online and at risk with diane oats with me she’s an assist, associate assistant attorney general in the ohio attorney generals charitable law section. She had been with the office for eight years. Managing a broad range of cases, including charitable gambling and charitable solicitations. She has handled multiple investigations and enforcement actions and is ohio’s point person for multi state enforcement actions. Diana it’s, welcome to the show. Thanks, tony, for having me on. Thank you very much for holding on. Sorry about that. No problem. I hope you enjoyed the music. Oh, i did, um, let’s. See, so these are laws that non-profits have to comply with. And a lot of these laws haven’t really kept up with the new solicitation methods that that charities have that’s correct. A lot of the laws are are older and do not address any sort of internet solicitations. Ah, there are such guy lines is the charleston principles which charities can follow in determining whether they need to register in a variety of states that they are soliciting online right? And we’ll get a chance to talk about the charleston principles. It’s, it’s, but there’s there’s not only online. But then there’s also the mobile giving world, of course, and that is growing by leaps and bounds. We actually just had a multi state they nasco it’s, the national state association charity officials put out some wise giving tips for charities on how to manage ah, and be wise on the internet when doing any sort of mobile giving or any sort of internet solicitation. So you definitely charity should be definitely protecting their brand and making sure they know who is soliciting for them on the internet. Um, and we’re going to get to that document in the wise giving tips the primary question, i think, is what what is a solicitation? And unfortunately that really varies from state to state, you’re correct. In a lot of states, the definitions might be a little bit different in ohio. Uh, it is when a person asked for anything of value, so it can’t be money can be time, and that donation would benefit a charitable organization or a charitable purpose and that’s that’s fairly consistent across the states. But but there are there are nuances when you start to drill down into well, okay, so sending us mail asking for a donation. That’s, that’s. A solicitation everywhere but as you start to go down, too, email oppcoll having a donate. Now, button on your site, driving people to the donate now button that’s, where it starts to get a little murky across the states. Definitely, and that’s, where the charleston principals come into play, and that’s, where the differences arise, because i believe only two states, tennessee and colorado, have adopted the charleston principles into law. Ah, many other states, including ohio, used them as guidelines for when to determine if a charity needs to register with our state if they have such a thing as it donate now, button or any sort of online solicitation. Okay, so we know that they’re adopted in only two states. Right now. Suppose you’re not in aa one of those two states. Can you just pick up the phone and talk to somebody and ask whether they use the charleston principles as guidelines? I would advise calling either the attorney general and your state or the secretary of state’s office, whichever office has the charity regulator located in it and see how they treat the charleston principles you could call up if you’re in ohio, call up our office, we would be able to tell you we used merely as guidelines to guide us as to whether charity needs to register. Obviously, if you are located in a certain state, if you’re located in ohio and you’re soliciting from there, you would have to register anyways, if you’re not let’s, say you’re located in west virginia, then we would go through the factors with you to see if you would need to register in ohio simply by having a donate. Now button on your website. A lot of times, though, i find clients make a call like that, but ultimately the final responsive to get is always we can’t tell you or we can’t advise you whether to register, okay, that and that might be the response in some states and ohio. I mean, we we would try to help you out as much as possible again, we can’t give legal advice, but i mean, i think we could steer you in the right direction isto whether you would need to register or not looking at whether you are, you know, mailing or emailing any solicitations to someone in ohio, if you are soliciting through an interactive website meaning you can collect donations straight through that website and whether you’re these are the two big factors whether you’re specifically targeting a person in our state or whether you’re receiving donations from a purse from people in our state on a repeated an ongoing basis or substantial basis, that so we would go through those factors and try to work with the charity to figure out whether you need to register here or not. We would definitely do that, ok, maybe ohio’s friendlier than a lot of states that that may very well be, but and i’m not saying it’s not worth the call it’s just that because it definitely is worth the call. As you said, either to the attorney, general’s office or the secretary of state, it is worth the call. This is that sometimes, you know, the ultimate answer should i register falls on usually it falls to the to the charity and, you know, and they’re sort of referred to their legal advisors, but it’s still worth the call because, um, you can you can get a fair amount of help. Definitely. Okay, um, we have just about a minute or so before break. Why don’t you explain what thes charleston principles are just so so everyone’s acquainted with them? Sure, they are guidelines which, uh, charity can follow, too. See if they should register in a state merely if they are soliciting on the internet. So what they need to look at if they are domiciled in a state, they will probably need to register there. And what i mean by domiciled is if they have their principal place a business in that state, if they’re not domiciled in the state, they need to look at there. Ah, non internet activities. And if those alone would cause them to register in that state, like if they’re mailing or calling people in that state, they would need to register if they are just asking for donations through their website. And if they’re either specifically targeting people in that state on their website for donations or they’re receiving contributions from that state on a repeated and ongoing basis for a substantial basis, then they would need to register in that state all about looking at the contacts in that state. All right, we’re going to take this break. When we come back, we’ll find out where we can see the charleston principles. They actually happen to be my subway read. I carry them with me all the time, and i read them every, you know, like, every six months or so, i just go back and read them on ben. Diane and i will we’ll keep talking about what’s a solicitation on, including talking about crowd funding sites to stay with us. Could you tell at the beginning of that interview that i was badly out of breath? That’s because i was late to the studio. This was the one hundred ninety ninth show. Andi was the first time i had been late. I had teo either called or texted sam. He had to play the music. I like one and a half times over by the time i got here i had run from the subway, which which is what held me up. So yes, if you if you thought i was out of breath, you were right. And then i i was looking forward to the two hundred show and hoping that i wouldn’t be late for that which which i was not let’s, do some live. Listen, love before we go to this break st louis, missouri clifton, new jersey i used to hang out at clifton a lot because my grandmother used to work at a big pharmaceutical company in clifton son of a gun. Which one was that? I don’t think it was mark. Well, there was a big pharmaceutical company i don’t think is very big and clifton anymore, but she used to work there and i would go meet her after and then my parents were dropped me off. We’d meet her there, and then she would take me to her house. That was in clifton, and we have another us, your masked we see you, we just don’t know where you are. So could be the nsa, fbi, cia, some other acronym. We’re on to you, and we are we are investigating. Also, let’s go to aa japan, konnichi wa, too, in chino, maya and mexico city, mexico, is with us. Also. Hola, que tal that’s really about the best i can recall from from high school, but that’s not so bad. I mean, i think, it’s, how you doing? Right. Holacracy tall tower, mexico city listeners and there’s more to come. Let’s, go to this break, and then we’ll go right back into this interview with diane oats. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent got lots of live listener love, let’s start domestic because we’ve got a lot of foreign listeners, of course, but let’s start domestic bethpage, new york. Many in bethpage don’t know who’s in bethpage do you know each other in bethpage live? Listen, her love to you there. Beverly, massachusetts, new bern, north carolina. I just spent some very nice time in north carolina. Thank you. New bern. Columbus, ohio. New york, new york. Live listener loved each of our live listeners. And, of course, there are more podcast pleasantries, of course, to those listening on the time shift where the iran a treadmill car, subway airplane, wherever you are, pleasantries to you. Nine thousand plus ofyou. Okay. Diana it’s. Um, let’s. See, where can we? What? We find these charleston principles to go and read them ourselves? If we would like to do so, i believe they’re located on the nasco net website. You can go to nasco net dot or ge. Okay. And that’s an a s c o net dot org’s the national association of state charities officials of which you are a boardmember. Yeah. And that’s, the organization that created the wise giving tips documents. So while we’re talking about finding documents, what what’s the full name of that document? Sure, it’s the internet and social media solicitations wise giving tips and the tips are for three separate audiences for charities, donors and fund-raising platforms, and it gives recommendations and tips on how to give and fund-raising wisely online. All right, the internet and social media solicitations wise giving tips and that’s also on the nasco website, right? Correct. Okay, crowd funding the crowd funding sites. Those raised a lot of questions. I get this a lot when i’m doing speaking, what if we are using crowd rise or deposited gift? What do who’s supposed to register them? Right? If you’re a charity again, i would direct the charity to the charleston principles. Usually on those websites, you’re not targeting a specific state unless maybe an event is taking place in a certain state or, you know, your charity is located in that state, so and i think it’s unclear also, whether the fund-raising platforms themselves need to register with states that’s still kind of an open question, okay? And also get questions related. When charity’s air working with community foundations and and the foundation is sort of the past through for the for the donations, the question then is who should be fun? Who should be registering and again looking at the charleston principles if it’s just a passer, entity that’s just doing some administrative work with processing donations, they might not need to register, so i would again and advise those community foundations toe look at the principles right for the community foundations and then the charity’s the same who exactly? Okay, but yeah, as we said, unfortunately, you don’t know for sure, except for two states, whether the state is is adhering to the principles. How come, how come, why is it that more states haven’t adopted them either? Officially, i guess through their legislatures or may be not as an act of the legislature, but just officially through the office that manages the charity registration process in each state, and that is a good question. I am not. I’m not really sure of the answer there, and yeah, i should probably talk to tennessee in colorado and see how they got that pushed through. I’m not sure why more states haven’t actually officially adopted them, okay, dahna because they are really cool, and they’re called charleston principles because i believe it was in meeting of nasco that was held in charleston, south carolina, where they were. These were adopted. I think they were. The discussion started there, yes, in charleston, south carolina, that’s. Why they’re called goodbye, not okay, but maybe not adopted there. Alright, yeah, attorney holding my feet to the fire e used to be an attorney, but so now that now i run roughshod over things. So thank you for being explicit. Okay, what about? We know there’s one state where you don’t have to register. Tell us about that. I believe that. Arizona? Yes. Yes, arizona. I believe they recently did away with their registration statue. I’m not too sure about that, but that is not a growing trend that icy. Definitely. I see that kind of an outlier. Okay, okay. So one point does not one data point does not make a trend. Things that i can’t even make a line from one point. Okay, but yes, arizona has explicitly said charities that are on ly soliciting in our state. I don’t need to register and yeah, they had a statutory system around registration and that was repealed or, you know, largely repealed. Yes. Um, now you made a point earlier that we wanted i want, like, just liketo amplify your home state where your incorporated that we should certainly be registered there. Yes, than any place where you have any principal place of business. Well, okay. So differentiating the inc you’re you’re only incorporated in one state, right? Because you’re not you’re not not-for-profits corporation, and that can only be one state. But you could have places of business. In lots of states, you can have the principal place of this that’s, probably in one state, but then you can have multiple locations everywhere and if you’re, you know, conducting solicitations from those locations and yes, definitely should be registering in the states. Now you’re you’re a, uh an important player in this because you’re a nasco boardmember but it’s so, um, divers, because we’re fifty difference sets of statutes and, um, timetables and fees and things do you do you get frustrated by this process? It it can get frustrating. And we definitely hear from our constituent charities that it is frustrating and that’s why we do have twelve states that are working on a single poor, cracked the website where charities khun go and register and they wouldn’t have to duplicate the process over and over again. Okay, this is the single portal initiative. Exactly. What more can you tell us about what state that is? Or i don’t mean state. You know what? What state it’s in, etcetera. What can you tell us? Uh, well, the single portal project is being headed by twelve pilot states. They include california, illinois, alaska, colorado, connecticut, hawaii, massachusetts, michigan. Mississippi, missouri, new hampshire and tennessee and basically it’s, a project that has three components one obviously is to create a unified elektronik registration system that will allow non-profit organizations and then they’re professional fundraisers to goto one site and fulfill their registration requirements for all states eventually at that site. Um, another component is also to be a public website where anyone can get this information that’s filed, academics could get it tio create analysis of emerging issues and trends. The public can look up this information to make more informed choices about their charitable giving and also non-profits can look up this information to compare thie effectiveness and cost of their professional fundraisers that they hyre and third, this would be a great tool for regulators. They could direct their limited resources away from registration and toward their core purpose of preventing fraud and misuse of charitable funds. Is this ah, envision to be a free site for charities? Um, that is a good question. I not sure about that. I know that this is kind of a three year time period where they’re going to try to get this off the ground rather soon and have it. Build up in phases over the next three years. I am not sure about the fees. I do not know that. Ok, ok. Um, timetable do what stage is it at now? It is at the beginning stages. Thie pilot states created a nonprofit organization in delaware. Teo, help develop and operate the website. And they just decided that the urban institute they chose them to design and build the single portal website. So it’s in the process of being built. And they are also establishing an advisory committee to help with the design and operation of the system. Okay, is it is it funded yet? Or were steven still too early for that it’s in the process of funding and the the non-profit, the multistate registration of filing portal the non-profit that was formed is reaching out to the non-profit community. Now, with grant proposals to help build up funds for this project. Okay, so that’s something to look forward to. Handup so is there not yet a timetable? Like when this should be live? Or maybe not all twelve states, but at least some initial minimum viable version? Um, i think i mean, the goal is to roll. Out the stages in the next three years. So hopefully in the next, maybe two years, the registration sites would be up and running. But please don’t call me that, okay? Okay, we won’t. Nobody listens to this show anyway, diane so you’re fine. Okay, well, we know that arizona standing alone. Not a trend, but are there any other trends that you do see coming up? The big trend icy is internet fund-raising on and that’s. Why nasco did put out this wise internet giving tips the intern fund-raising on the internet is growing. I believe in two thousand three it was about six point four percent of all charitable giving, but still it’s growing lead some bounds year by year. So we were really urge charities. Teo be aware of their presence on the internet and be aware of who’s raising money for them on the internet. A lot of thes fund-raising websites, they download the database of charities from guide star. And then anyone can just go on and start fund-raising for a charity, which is great. But you also want to make sure that no impostors are going out there and claiming that their associate it with your charity and trying to gain access to your donations, so check out the wise giving tips on also the charleston principles those will help you, andi will put, ah, put links to those on the takeaways from the show, which go up on the facebook pages afternoon diane, please leave us with the nasco conference that the charities are welcome to come, too. Yes, definitely. The two thousand fourteen nasco conference is on monday, october six, at the hyatt regency washington on capitol hill in washington, d c the theme this year is the evolving role of charitable regulation in the twenty first century. There are a lot of great panel scheduled i’ll just mention a couple first will be disaster relief and opportunities for collaboration between regulators and the not for profit sector. Um, our luncheon topic is our charities really charitable with our keynote speakers? Thomas kelly, who is a professor at u n c school of law, and john columbo, who’s, professor and interim dean at the university of illinois at chicago school of law and then one panel, i think, is going to be extremely interesting about ratings and evaluating charities. We have three. Panelists are taylor, who is president and ceo of the better business bureau. Wise getting alliance. Daniel bora chop, who is president of charity watch, and ken berger, who is the ceo of charity navigator. And then we also have panels on a messa you bit executive compensation are wise giving tips and then also a single portal update, so it should be a great conference, and you can get more information about the conference at nasco. Net dot org’s, thank you very much. Art taylor and ken berger have been guests on the show when we did the, uh, the altum the myth, the what was it, thea, the overhead myth letter that’s, right? We have the three signers of the overhead myth letter on and those they were two of them. All right, diane, thank you very much. Thank you, my pleasure, diana it’s, associate assistant attorney general in the ohio attorney general’s charitable law section. And i have an update tio what? Diane, i’m just talking about if you’re interested in this year’s nasco conference, that is october fifth of this year and ah, nasco net dot or ge is the place to get more information. I called my mother on the brake and asked her the company that my grandmother used to work for in clifton i was mistaking it was not a pharmaceutical company, but was i t and t international telephone and telegraph? Do they even exist anymore? It and t i don’t i don’t know if they do, but that was where there was a big plant that my grandmother worked at when i was growing up. Tony, take two and your boards role in executive hiring are coming up first. Pursuant, they do full service fund-raising they have web based tools for small and midsize non-profits do you need more prospects? I hear that a lot that that’s a problem. You need more prospects at higher levels and related to that. How do you know who’s capable of upgrade? This is what pursuance prospector platform does. It finds your upgrade ready donors. So you know who to pursue for larger. E-giving trent riker is the ceo at pursuing he has a background in non-profits for about twelve years, he leads this company. They are data driven, technology driven, and prospector platform is one of pursuing smart online tools. You’ll raise more money pursuant. Dot com, check them out new york times i’m not speaking to the new york times, and i implore them to stop stealing my guests. It happened latest incident. Latest incident was just last week. Remember, will mccaskill, the professor from oxford, oppcoll what happened? Okay, i do love scott stein, but not his time. Are we okay? Okay. I don’t mind. Scott stein a little. Well, who? Um it was a phantom sam throwing his arms up. He doesn’t know what happened. All right. Anyway, we’ll mccaskill so he’s on the show last friday. Of course, talking about his show doing good, his book doing good, better. And then on saturday, he’s in the new york times profiling his book doing good, better you believe that? And there was another time it was about two or three years ago and i’m sick of it. It’s happening too often do two points like that make a trend? Absolutely. The video where i explain this in more detail and you’ll see my ire. Is that tony martignetti dot com knock it off new york times do you know about fund-raising fundamentals? That is my monthly ten minute podcast devoted to fund-raising only for small and midsize shops, it’s fund-raising only not on ly for small and midsize shops, large shops could listen to, but i’m not thinking about them when i’m producing the show it’s a burst of fund-raising info i would say it’s only once. A month, i do it for the chronicle of philanthropy. So that’s published on their site and like non-profit radio, i picked the brains of experts and you listen on your own schedule. That one is not live. That is strictly a podcast. Recent ones preparing for your next recession with paul rosenberg from the bridge band group and boosting your plan e-giving with our own creative producer claire meyerhoff there’s info on fund-raising fundamentals at tony martignetti dot com and at the chronicle of philanthropy. Although gotomeeting durney dot com because i need the traffic and chronicle of philanthropy is doing just fine. That is tony’s take two for friday twenty first of august thirty third show of the year. Here is r wonderful. Ah, informative. Smart contributor on the law, jean takagi on your boards role in executive hiring jean takagi he’s with us. You know him? He’s, the managing editor, attorney at neo non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the very popular non-profit law block dot com on twitter he’s at g tak g ta ke jin takagi welcome back. Hi, tony in congratulations on one ninety nine. I’m looking forward to two hundred next week. Cool. Yes. I’m glad you’re gonna be calling in for with us. Thank you very much. Thank you, it’s. Very exciting. Really? One hundred ninety nine shows ago. It’s one hundred ninety nine weeks it’s it’s. Remarkable. Um, we’re talking this week about the board’s role in hiring the executive and i’ve i understand that there are a lot of executives in transition. I think so, tony and it looks like some surveys have confirmed that it’s certainly been syrians with some of my clients and even on boards i’ve sat on over the last couple years. And there’s, a great group called compass point out in san francisco there nationally known as one of the most respected non-profit support centers and together with blue avocado, a non-profit online publication, they have a national survey on leadership succession in transition going on just right now. The last time they published the results with in two thousand eleven, and they found that sixty seven percent of current executive anticipated leaving within five years and ten percent. We’re currently actively looking to leave right then, and in two thousand eleven, the economic times weren’t so were so great. So sixty seven percent anticipating leaving within five years that’s a pretty staggering number. So now we’re already three years into that survey into that five year projection. Yeah, and sixty seven percent of two thirds. So if we had held this show off until two thousand sixteen, then it would have been moved. But there’s a new one coming out, you said, yeah, well, they’re they’re just starting the survey online now so you can participate on that. I don’t know the website, but if you, you know google non-profit transition survey executive transition survey, thank you, you’ll get that okay, and its compass point it’s a compass point and blew up a goddamn kottler who you’ve. You’ve mentioned blue vaccaro before i know. All right, so, yeah, two thirds of of ceos were expecting to be in transition within five years and where we’re only three years into it now. So the presumably these people are still looking. What? But boards don’t really spend enough time preparing for this kind of succession, do they? Well, you know, in many cases they don’t, and sometimes, you know, they might stay, they don’t get the chance because their executive director comes up to them and give us in two weeks notice, and now, you know, the board may be used to meeting every month or every other month or even every third month, and now all of a sudden they’ve gotta ramp up their efforts and find an executive to come in in two weeks. That’s going to be really tough to do on dh, you know, again, if we say at any given time, two thirds of the non-profit executives are looking to leave their job, you know, it’s very likely that within your board term, you know, you may have an executive transition to manage, and sometimes with very little notice. So that’s that’s? Why? I think succession planning is just really a core duty of non-profit board. Well, how do we let them get away with this two week notice? I mean, the ones i typically see are you know, the person will stay on until a successor is found, you that’s, not your experience. Well, you know, you’re really lucky if you if you do get that situation, i think most non-profit executives are hired on at will basis. Meaning that there’s, not a contract to stay there for a given number of years. Either party can conception, rate or terminate the employment relationship at any time. And as the average, you know, employee may give two weeks notice to go on to another job there. Many executives who feel the same way that they, you know, they may feel like they own allegiance to an organization. But another opportunity comes up and it’s not going to be held for them forever. And they may want to move on. Um, and they may feel like what they gave the board really advanced notice that they might be looking for something that they might get terminated. So they may keep that information from the board until the last two weeks. Well, because all right, so that i am way in the dark because i would. I just presumed that executive directors, ceos even if small and midsize shops were not at will. But they were but that they were contract. I mean, when i was a lonely back in my days of wage slavery, director of planned e-giving i was in at will employees, which means you can end it. Like you said, you could end at any time and so can they like, if they don’t like the color of your tie one day they can fire you, you’re at will. But but that that’s typical for for ceos and and executive directors. Yeah, i think for smaller non-profits it’s very, very common. Oh, i just always assumed that these were contract positions with termination clause is and no. Okay, but, i mean, you know, it’s, your practice, i’m not i’m not disagreeing with you, i’m just saying i’m okay, i’m learning something s so that’s that’s incredibly risky. So it is. It just put you in that position of saying, well, i need to replace somebody immediately and i don’t you know, as a board we don’t meet very often can we even convene within the two weeks to find the process going? It’s going to be so much better if he had a plan of what happened in case you know, our executive every doesn’t give two weeks notice, and even if the executive says, you know, in your scenario, maybe a longer notice, maybe, you know, in six months, if they do have a contract at the end of my contract, i don’t plan to renew, you know, i think we should go through the process of looking for for a successor and having a plan or thinking about that plan that is just coming up with something on the fly is going to probably result in a much better choice for selection of a leader in the future and that’s going to be critical and how well the organisation operates and how the beneficiaries of your organization are going to do are they going to get the benefits of a strong organization or are thinking is suffer because the organization can’t do it? You can’t advance mission as well. It should. Yeah, i mean, you’re you’re calling it on the fly. I would say two weeks notice for an executive director. Departing is is a crisis even four weeks notice? Yeah, in many cases you’re you’re absolutely right. Okay, i’m right about something. Thank you. You’ve got something right today. All right. So what do we what do we do, teo, to plan for that? Just well, you know, i think the first thing the board has to do is start toe think about the contingencies. So what do we do and then actually want one thought that comes to mind that, uh, that you raised tony is should we get our executive director on an employment contract? If they are and that will employee do we want to lock it in? And they’re sort of pros and cons with that? If you’ve got, like, not the best executive director in the world, terminating somebody on a contract becomes much, much more difficult than if they were at will employees. So, you know, you kind of have to weigh the pros and cons, but, you know, revisiting your current executives director and the employment relationship is maybe step one. Oh, and suddenly he was thinking about, well, do you have a really strong job description that really reflects with the board wants of the executive director and on the basis on which the board is reviewing the executives performance on dh? Maybe the sort of initial question to ask in that area? Is do you actually review the executive director and that the board you absolutely should? You and i have talked about that the board’s is not part of their fiduciary duty to evaluate the performance of the the ceo? Yeah, i think so. I think it’s a core part of meeting their fiduciary duties that really, you know, as a board, if you meet once a month or once every couple of months or whatever what’s more important, you know, then really selecting the individual who’s going to lead the organization in advancing its mission and its values and implementing your plans and policies and making sure the organization complies with the law. Taking your leader is probably the most important task that the board has, because the board is delegating management to the to that leader. Yeah, absolutely. And i think it’s often forgot naralo overlooked that individual board members inherently have no power and no authority to do anything think so, it’s only as a group. When they meet collectively, can they take aboard action? So for individuals to exercise, you know, powers on behalf of the organization that has to be delegated to them and typically the person responsible for everything is that ceo or the executive director. We’re gonna go out for a break, gene. And when we come back, you now keep talking about the process. The what goes into this process, including the job offer. So everybody stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email. Tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact, i guess, directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Duitz gotta send live listener love, let’s. Start in japan with tokyo kiss are a zoo and nagoya. Konnichiwa, seoul, south korea, seoul. Some someone south korea, always checking in love that on your haserot. Moscow, russia, mexico city, mexico, ireland. We can’t see your city ireland’s being masked for some reason, but we know you’re there. Welcome, welcome, ireland, and also taipei, taiwan. Ni hao, nobody from china, that’s, funny, nobody from china today, coming back to the u s, we got cummings, georgia, in ashburn, virginia. Live listener love to you in georgia and virginia. Okay, gene. So now we’ve let’s say, we’ve learned that our exec is departing and let’s not make it a crisis situation, though let’s say this person is generous enough to give six months notice. So, you know, let’s, not make it a crisis. Where what’s our what’s, our what’s, our first step as the board. Terrific. And i’ll just add, even if you don’t, if you know your executive is not leaving any time soon and i think you should go ahead and start this process anyway. Oh, yeah, clearly we should be. We should have a succession plan in place. Yes, we’ve talked right? Okay, yeah. So i think the first thing to do is get a committee together so it might include boardmember some outside experts outside with the board. If you don’t have that internal expertise and just getting different perspectives out there, some of your other stakeholders might be really important in what, you know what you want to look for in an executive in the future. So get that committee together first, get the buy-in of the current executive director. So unless it’s going to be, you know, a succession plan for a termination? Yeah, we’re really unhappy with executive director, right? Let’s not get into that. Yeah, let’s get their buy-in and have them help in the process. Especially with your scenario where they’re giving a six months notice and everything is amicable. Let’s, you know, see? Shoot, who knows better about the organization than the executive director that’s in place right now. So i’m getting there buy-in and help contribution. I think it is pivotal. Does this committee have to be comprised of hr experts? Why? I think having a least one or two hr experts is going to be really helpful. But i i think it’s more than that. It’s, you need program people who understand what the executive you know roll is no respect to advancing the program. You need the fund-raising people to know well, what is the going to do with respect to fund-raising perhaps the seeds, the lead fundraiser and some small organizations as well. So we need thio gather a bunch of different people with different perspectives and expertise to figure this out. And i think that’s a very good point to include a t least a programme expert. Now, could this committee include employees, or does it have to be sure you can absolutely on dh? You know, you might even have have have different subcommittees in there. So eventually this is going to go up to the board. But as the committee’s doing the legwork for determining what? You need an executive director and putting together a job description, and and, you know, perhaps, but the performance evaluation is going to be based on for the future executive director all those things can get, you know, we’d be aided by the contribution from several areas. Okay, okay, what are your thoughts on hiring a recruiter vs vs? Not well, i you know, i think it depends upon what the organization shins resource is our and the organization should understand the marketplace it’s in a swell hiring two great executive director is the competitive thing. So, you know, if you’ve got a lot of resources and you’re able to you want to allocate an appropriate amount of resource is tio what i think again is making one of your most important decisions of the board? I don’t think you want to do this on the cheap at all. I’m just the same way i didn’t want you to do it on the fly or or or in a rushed matter-ness think you want to invest in this, and if you don’t have great expertise inside about on things about, like, doing job interviews and doing background checks on the sex thing, you know how to differentiate between one candidate and another when they all look good on paper and when they’re maybe professional interviewees, but they’re not there, maybe not great leaders. How do you figure all those things that if you don’t know, that dahna an executive search firm could be a great help, and it can just open up the marketplace of potential candidates as well, especially if they, you know, decide to do a regional or even a national search. It really can ramp up who who you’re going to see in front of you and the quality of the candidates that the selection comedian the board eventually will have to choose from. Okay, does the committee now come up with a couple of candidates to bring to the board, or is it better for the committee to choose one and bring that person to the board? How does this work? You know, i think the committee should be tasked with bringing several candidates up on sometimes it may be a multi tiered process so they might go through two rounds of screening, for example, and and at least let the board see who’s made the first cut. And then and then, you know, present to the board, the final, perhaps two or three candidates. If, if you’ve got, you know, the ones that are very close and in quality in terms of what the board want in an executive director, i think that’s pivotal. I wanted to add one. Nothing, though. I’ve seen this done before, tony and i don’t really like it and that’s when. If a search committee or research consultant comes up and says, you know, to the board, tell me what you want in the good executive director everybody, you know, spend five minutes, write it down and send it to me or take it home and email it to me oh, and tell me what you want and then the search consultant collates the the the answers and then that’s, you know, the decision about that’s what’s going to be the qualities you’re going to look for. I think this needs a lot of discussion and deliberation and the value of that, you know, that that thought process and that really difficult thinking and getting all those generative questions out there is going to produce a much better product in terms of what you’re looking for and who you can get and how you’re going to do it. Yeah, you you send this tio use email and, you know, it’s going to get the typical attention that an e mail gets, like a minute or something. You know, it’s it’s going to get short shrift. And your point is that this is critical. It’s it’s, the leader of your organization, you want do you want the contributions of the committee to be done in, like a minute off the top of their head just so they can get the email out of their inbox? Yeah, definitely. We could talk about board meetings and another show, but put this at the front of the meeting and spend, you know, seventy five percent of your time talking about this. This is really, really important, okay, you have some thoughts about compensation, and we just have a couple minutes left. So let’s let’s say we’ve the board has well, i can’t jump there yet. Who should make the final call among these candidates? Is it the board? Yeah, i think it should be the board that makes the final approval, but they they’re going to put a lot of weight based on what? The executive of the search committee, you know, tell them who they’re you know, the recommendation is okay, and i think that toe add one more thing to it is make sure the organization looks good to clean up your paperwork and your programming and even your facilities. Just make sure you’re going to be attractive to the candidate as well. Because if you want to attract the best, you better be looking your best as well. Okay, okay. And the with respect to compensation now, we’ve talked about this before. What? What’s excessive. And there should be calms and things like that, right? So it’s really important to make sure that the board or unauthorized board committee one that composed just board members, approved the compensation before it’s offered to the candidate. Even if you don’t know that they’re going accepted or not, once he offers out there that compensation package, total compensation should have been approved by the board. And you want to do it with using the rebuttable presumption of reasonable procedures unless you know its far below market value. Okay, if you get payed accessibly or if you pay somebody excessively, that could be penalty taxes for everybody. Including the board. Should be careful of that. We have talked about that rebuttable presumption before. Yeah. All right, then. We have to leave that there. I look forward to talking to you next week on the two hundredth great. Congratulations again. And i look forward to it as well. Thank you, gene. Gene takagi, managing attorney of neo. The non-profit and exempt organizations law group, his blog’s non-profit law block dot com and on twitter he is at g tak. Some updates, of course, too live listener love because you were listening to live listener love from july eleventh, twenty fourteen. So that’s a that’s. A little bit at a date, more people have joined us, including wilmington, north carolina, media, pennsylvania. Pottstown, pennsylvania, and spring lake, new jersey. I spent a lot of time very close to spring lake in belmar because my other grandmother, not the grandmother who worked at i t that was my mom’s mom. But my dad’s mom and dad had a home in belmar and i used to go there weeks on end. My parents were thrilled to get rid of me when i was four, five, six, seven, eight years old. Oh, my gosh. Lots of weekends in belmar. And i know that spring lake is a very, very pretty town. Also, uh, what’s the big hotel there where i’ve been for dinner, the breakers. Is that the breakers? That beautiful hotel? Ah, not literally on the water, but pretty darn close right across that little little just across ocean have love spring lake and interesting springlake media and pottstown you’re listening from itunes cool live listen love to each of you also joining us sao paulo, brazil, beijing, china ni hao and belong j portugal live listeners love to each of you now you might have noticed that on that july eleven twenty fourteen show, there was no podcast pleasantries and no affiliate affections. You see how this show is growing and expanding and innovating constantly on one hundred ninety ninth show. The next week was going to be the two hundredth. We don’t have podcast pleasantries and affiliate affections. Now we do so pleasantries out to all our ten thousand plus podcast listeners wherever, whatever you’re doing, affiliate affections love you too all our affiliate am and fm stations i want to waken affiliate affections. I’m just realizing it’s a f f f f f after two dafs squared affiliate affections! I don’t know, maybe that’s too that’s hokey. Besides, i like thea. I like the the ah what is it when all the words start with the same whatever that that i love it’s an alliteration. Thank you saying so. I liked the alliteration, so we’re sticking with affiliate affections. No. After two next week, i told you it was coming. Incentive pay for your fundraisers to fund-raising administrators from the university of pittsburgh. Very senior people share their innovative pay plan for their frontline fundraisers. If you missed any part of today’s show finding on tony martignetti dot com, where in the world else would you go? I i believe that i had said that i was going to stop singing weeks ago, but i must have been misinformed. It’s my show and do whatever i want. And if you don’t want to singing host, get your own show, i beseech you, go ahead pursuant full service fund-raising you’ll raise train car loads more money, and i’m not talking about those two person little flat beds that the people pump up and down like a seesaw to move along the tracks like, you know, oh brother, where art thou? I’m talking cattle cars, container cars, tank cars filled with money pursuant dot com. We’re going to go out with a live version of cheap red wine today. This is the live version from the two hundredth show, which was the week after the show that we just turned the two segments from scott stein came in the studio, brought his elektronik eighty eight keyboard, and he played cheap red wine, our theme music. And since it’s snuck in earlier today, phantom lee, we’re going to go out with it. Here’s. The live version from the two hundred show our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer show social media’s by susan chavez. Susan chavez. Dot com on our music is by scots. Dine with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great wait can agree on nothing. Wait till our ups from my down wait disappointed in each other. Now tell me, baby, and this love that we found. You know, you used to find me charming, but i can figure out how. And you said, you thought those handsome. But it doesn’t matter now. So came falling for my punch. On just long in time, we’ll allow, because i’m you got her empty promises. A bottle of cheap red wine. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist. 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 fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five.

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