Tag Archives: procurement

Nonprofit Radio for January 30, 2023: Spend Wisely As You Buy

 

Kumar KannanSpend Wisely As You Buy

Let’s talk procurement. Odds are you can save big if you shop smartly. Consolidation. Group Purchasing Organizations. Negotiating. Payment terms. Warranty terms. These will all save you money. Kumar Kannan, from Procural LLC, educates us.

 

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[00:01:50.34] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh I’m glad you’re with me. I’ve come down with Treacle. Oh my itis if you strangled me with the idea that you missed this week’s show, spend wisely as you buy, let’s talk procurement odds are you can save big if you shop smartly consolidation group purchasing organizations negotiating payment terms, warranty terms these will all save you money Kumar cannon from procuring LLC educates us on tony steak too. I’m grateful. It’s a big pleasure to welcome Kumar con into non profit radio he is principal of procuring LLC. He has 30 years of global leadership experience in sourcing and procurement. He spent 16 years at Owens corning where he managed an annual spend of $900 million in categories such as I. T. Marketing HR and finance Kumar also led IT sourcing at American Airlines for eight years. The company is at procure all services dot com and he’s taken in K A N N A N at procuring services dot com Kumar Welcome to nonprofit radio

[00:01:53.21] spk_1:
thank you, Tony, very happy to be here.

[00:02:24.25] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure to have you. So let’s talk procurement. Uh you’ve you’ve you’ve spent a lot of money over 30 years but I see it’s it’s your job to spend other people’s money wisely wisely. Right carefully thoughtfully. All right, so what do you think? Generally because we have plenty of time together high level what do you think nonprofits could be smarter about buying wise

[00:03:54.60] spk_1:
I think I’ll speak generally to that tony Um, companies tend to not place in my view as much focus on sourcing and procuring smartly as they could. Often it’s an afterthought I think in many companies and, and nonprofits included in that their core business is their focus. And so this almost becomes an afterthought. But if you step back, Um, in nonprofits, 25-30% of their revenues is spent on buying things and services in manufacturing type of companies that can go up to 60%. So if you’re looking at a 500 million or a billion or a $5 billion dollar organization, that is a huge amount of money. Um, so it just makes a lot of sense to approach this in a structured fashion with the right talent, the right skill sets and right experience so that you’re making sure that you are not spending more than your shirt and that you’re not leaving money on the table because every dollar saved in procurement goes to the bottom line to either return to your shareholders or to use it in your projects and, and programs. All

[00:04:39.03] spk_0:
Right now, our folks are most likely not at the billion dollar spend level or even billion dollar annual revenue level. Uh, you know, we have lots of folks who have annual revenues, annual budgets. Let’s talk about annual budgets in the low to mid-6 figures. So, but your point of course, well taken, you know, they’re still spending money on buying. You said 25-30%. Um They’re still buying things, they gotta buy things, least things they are terms associated with all these purchases and and we could uh we could be doing a little savvy er and and as you say of course putting money to the adding money to the bottom line. So the first thing I want to talk about is something dear to me because professional fundraising relationships, you know, people don’t think of this in terms of buying, you know, I need, I need a case of paper, I’m gonna run to the staples or I’m just gonna click and you click and buy and I’ll have it in a couple of days.

[00:04:58.13] spk_1:
Uh talk

[00:04:59.90] spk_0:
to me about relationships with, with your your vendors, how, how this is beneficial, how to build them up, why not just buy it as you need it, help us out with relationships.

[00:06:36.45] spk_1:
Sure. And that’s that’s a really great you know, starting point on sourcing and procurement because it’s one of the things that even a lot of mature social organizations don’t necessarily focus on and I think having strong relationships adds a lot of value. Um The now you’ve got to be a little careful obviously about spreading yourself thin, so you want to identify who are the key suppliers with whom you want to invest that time and effort to build a relationship. These are typically suppliers that are providing either services or commodities that are core to what you are producing or delivering to other people to your customers, right? And managing those relationships is is not different than frankly managing good relationships even within your company. So when you run into supply chain constraints, when you run into, you know, inflationary markets, you can depend on your supplier because of your relationship to be able to put you on the top of their list versus a purely transactional sort of relationship. So when you look at your entire supplier landscape, what I generally recommend doing is identify that go with that 80 20 rule and identify maybe your top 10, 15, 20 depending on how many, how many suppliers you have any supply base as your strategic or constraint kind of suppliers

[00:07:04.00] spk_0:
and for a lot for a lot of our listeners that maybe just five, you know that maybe there maybe 10 vendors overall and they can identify three or five where they’re spending, You know, I guess you’re spending 80% of your money on with 20% of your vendors, right?

[00:07:51.22] spk_1:
Exactly, exactly, exactly. And you want to build a relationship with them, recognize that the supplier, sailors guides have a great visibility into your organization right there there to sell you stuff, right? But they’re also bringing their expertise and knowledge in the products and services they’re selling to you. So by having a good relationship, I like to say you’re kind of creating a disproportionate mindshare from the supplier, because you can use the suppliers, you can leverage suppliers expertise to create value for your end customers. And that’s an area that, that many many companies do not take advantage of. And I’m a big proponent of building strong supplier relationships because they bring a lot to the table, right? I may not have to invest in expertise. I could depend on the supplier to bring that to the table.

[00:09:19.34] spk_0:
Let’s, let’s make this concrete with an example. Let’s take a let’s take a soup kitchen in a, in a food bank. So food is their primary expense. Maybe aside from labor, we’re putting, we’re putting labor costs aside. I’m sure they have a lot of volunteers in this hypothetical organization, but you know, labor may still be, but in terms of what they’re procuring from the outside, let’s say it’s, you know, it’s, it’s food, there’s grocery items produce, which they have spoilage issues. Um, and let’s say they have some, uh, they might have some trucks to maybe pick up food. They might have relationships with some, some supermarkets, some restaurants that they pick up food on, you know, probably daily basis. So maybe gas, gas insurance on the trucks, maintenance on the trucks, you know, those may, So let’s say food, gas, maintenance, those are there in this organization. There’s are there three top vendors with food being the predominant one, the number one, what, what can I expect from my my grocery and and produce and dairy suppliers that vendors that they can, they can help me with.

[00:09:53.30] spk_1:
Sure. Sure. So if you think about food, uh think about a situation where your fragment of your food purchase amongst a lot of different suppliers, right? And you’re approaching it transactional e then you are exposed to kind of whatever the pricing is. If the food is, if that particular sort of food is available with that supplier, he or she is gonna decide who they want to sell it to, right versus if you have a relationship and you’ve consolidated this bank one, consolidating the spend leads to lower prices because now you have volumes whatever that volume, maybe maybe $100,000 right? Versus splitting it between 10 suppliers and spending 10,000 with each and then not known.

[00:11:06.48] spk_0:
So even if even if some of the items that we buy frequently are more expensive with with one vendor, it’s still better. I’m not saying they’re expensive on their most expensive on everything, but you know, it’s maybe some key items, you know, maybe bread is more expensive from them than somewhere else, but their dairy is lower and and and we overall they just seem like a better company or like maybe they’re more reliable or something. It’s better to consolidate and pay a little extra for the what I say for the bread but have a relationship versus bread being transactional from the baker down the street and the but the dairy comes from the farm of and and the produce is coming from uh from the U. S. Supply or you know whatever these big companies are. So it’s better, that’s what you’re saying. It’s better to consolidate even on some of the items you’re spending

[00:11:26.71] spk_1:
more exactly in total. You’ll be spending less and to you will be a bigger customer for that supplier when you call they’re going to pay attention to you right? And if you are connected well enough with them, they may be able to tell you, hey look this stuff is going to go up in price two weeks from now. We suggest you place the order right now the timing of the order can have right

[00:11:32.70] spk_0:
not right. They’re not gonna, they’re not gonna inform all their customers.

[00:11:36.78] spk_1:
They

[00:11:37.18] spk_0:
may have 1000 customers. They’re not going to inform all their customers. Their prices may go up in a couple of weeks

[00:11:42.30] spk_1:
or

[00:11:47.16] spk_0:
they’ve got something else coming. You know, they see a shortage coming in something that you buy often they’re not gonna be able to write, they’re gonna do that with the folks, they have relationship with who are their their better customers, they’re bigger customers

[00:11:58.91] spk_1:
right? And they may show up in time when you when you actually need something urgently they may actually go out of their way to deliver that to you quicker faster, cheaper.

[00:12:03.22] spk_0:
Yes you get you get favor right? You’ll get favors. Okay,

[00:12:06.98] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:12:23.72] spk_0:
relationships and so should we, you know, like should we try to have meetings, you know, instead of doing this all online ordering and face? Well, you’re not going to build a relationship through online clicking and shipping, but instead of just phone, uh or you know, probably phone with most vendors. Should we, should we have meetings? I mean get meet face to face. Well, you know, when, when you’re in town, please come by things like that.

[00:13:17.82] spk_1:
Sure. I mean, you can, you can get as sophisticated as you want or you can keep it simple but absolutely having that face to face, meeting that connection with your supplier helps a lot because always putting a name and a face together, meeting with them that forms a bond, you know, and people ultimately want to work with people, right? If I’m just a phone call or I’m a website, who cares? Right. Why would, why would you go out of the way to interact with me if you don’t know me at all? However, if you and I meet for coffee every now and then we could discuss business then that’s the objective, Right? I could be talking to you in those meetings about how my, I’ve spent with you, What are the kinds of things I’m buying and you may come back and say, hey look here are some alternative commodities that are coming down the road that might be better suited for your needs. They may be priced less. So you get an insight into things that otherwise would not be available if you treat it as just a transactional purchase.

[00:14:00.90] spk_0:
And again this is you know this is your top, your top spend vendors now, this is not every vendor, this is your top three maybe or so something like that, where you see your spending the bulk of your money. Alright, the relationships and you know what you just said, we could have been talking about fundraising, we could just as easily been talking about fundraising relationships, what you just said in the last minute or so. Um Alright, relationships. So that leads to and you know we were talking about consolidating, consolidating around the vendors that

[00:14:09.30] spk_1:
are that

[00:14:10.51] spk_0:
are I guess. Well how do you, I suppose we are, let me ask you this suppose we are pretty fractured in our in our buying of food, how do we pick which vendor to consolidate around?

[00:15:48.57] spk_1:
I think first you want to get a view into watch your supplier landscape. So who are you buying things from and how much are you buying and what are you buying? Right. And let’s say you talk about you pick a particular category and typically we categorize these categories for each of the different types of spend that big categories. Right? So food gas, maybe within food, you may have categories like you know there could be meat, there could be a vegetable, there could be something else, Right? Just depends on how large your operation is and how you want to categorize that there isn’t a straight answer for that, but you have to figure out what’s appropriate for you. So you build that category and then look at who are the suppliers in that space. Typically, if you have never done a competitive bid before, we generally recommend go out and put out an RFP, which is like a request for proposal to say, look Mr MS supplier, this is the kind of product we want to buy, right? These are the specification, these are the deliveries that we need and this is what we think we’re going to be spending overall from a quantity perspective annually, we’d like you to bid on this. So you get bids from different suppliers, look at the bed, see what, what kind of suppliers this is. Call them and talk to them and pick one and contract with them on an annual basis,

[00:16:14.60] spk_0:
listeners, I just lost my internet, so tomorrow and I got cut off and so now you hear that my sound is not anywhere near as good as it was with my nice studio mic because now I’m on my phone, maybe our Kitchen and food bank could do an informal RFP like, you know, we we project spending $50,000 on and you know, uh you know over this, you know, like so much per month or you know, maybe we could do this in an email that is not as formal as a, as a full RFP.

[00:17:39.91] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely tony I mean, I, you know, I I don’t want people to be scared off by, you know, these jargon type of things like R, F, P S and R F Q and all, they can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be. Right. I mean just think about it. Just me, if you were to go to buy a car, you probably go to three dealerships and ask for quote, what you’re basically doing is an RFP you have in your mind, what kind of car you want, what specifications and you go and look for it, right, that’s exactly what an RFP is. But the only thing I suggest is just think about what it is you’re buying and to what, what are the characteristics that are important to you, right. How much you’re spending, maybe an idea of how that spend, you know, happens over the year. What are the kind of products you’re buying, What are the minimum requirements for those products? And I wanted to be absolutely, you know, one day old or I can live with a week old product, what does the deliveries need to be? You know, I need it yesterday or I can give you a week’s notice all those things, factor into the pricing that you receive. So if you sit and think about what exactly it is you want to buy and how you want to structure your spend. That’s an RFP, you could do it in one page or you can do it in 100 pages.

[00:18:15.89] spk_0:
Okay. Okay cool and that that car buying analogy is perfect. So you’re you’re right as you’re shopping around the three different dealerships, there’s your RFP. Okay. Very so long as consolidation you have, there’s something, well there’s something called group purchasing organizations or G. P. O. S. How can we, can we find these or do we create them ourselves or what what what what flesh this out for us?

[00:20:40.77] spk_1:
Okay so the G. P. O. S. Have been around for you know several decades. Uh They really started in the medical industry so small hospitals and clinics and all decided they didn’t have enough spend individually. So they like to get together and and combine their spend so then they have more power to negotiate and then go and talk to these big medical providers and put contracts in place with them. So GPS started in that space, they’ve expanded now into other areas like for example restaurant food supplies. There are several G. P. O. S. That cater to individual small restaurants. So if you started a restaurant you would go to one of these G. P. O. S. And sign up and become a member with them. Um early on in the early days they used to charge you a membership free. Now I believe many of them do not, right? And then you have access to their contracts and the prices they have negotiated now what you miss and that is you don’t have a direct one on one relationship necessarily with the supplier. However you have the choice, you have the ability to kind of take advantage of the G. P. O. S. Pricing and contractor. So for a lot of your spend again, if you apply the 80 20 rule as as a nonprofit you may say look 2080% of my spenders with these 10 suppliers and I want to have uh you know, direct relationships with them because they are extremely important to my uh to my services. However, the other 20% of the standard with like 500 suppliers, I would rather go to a GPO and just kind of pick up the best prices that they can offer. Right? So there are some G. P. O. S. Now, I believe the medical G. P. O. S are also expanding into non medical areas. Right? And then there are some G. P. O. S that cater only to, you know, the broader manufacturing and other service type of organizations. So nonprofits can certainly go and sign up for them. You can check them out on the website. I don’t want to necessarily endorse one or the other on the show because a lot of them have good services, they bring good capabilities to the table. They actually will help you consolidate your spend and actually analyze your spend to see how you’re doing, how, how you’re doing your spend and whether opportunities like to maybe make some changes in the way you buy things so you can, you can kind of rely on their expertise as well to take a look at your spend pie and see what’s the best way to structure it.

[00:23:50.55] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. I am grateful, very grateful to the many people and companies and nonprofit agencies that are helping me to promote planned giving accelerator for the next class starting in March, lots of webinars and podcasts uh guest spots and I’m grateful and I have to shout them out, gotta gotta recognize them. They are sherry, Kwame, Taylor Lawrence paige known, I wish he’s pronounced his name pinon but he doesn’t Julia. Campbell non profit solutions, hurdle Callahan, nexus marketing brian saber at asking matters. We are for good podcast NATO National Association of Y M. C. A Development Officers A F P Long island new york chapter J Frost and Responsive non profit podcast. I’m thankful to all these folks for hosting me giving me an opportunity to meet their audiences, give them value of course, talking about planned giving and then have a chance to explain plan giving accelerator. If you are interested in plan giving accelerator, it’s all at planned giving accelerator dot com help you launch your planned giving That is Tony’s take two And I’m sorry about the sound issues this week. The delays and it’s slowed down and dragged out. It sounds like somebody’s stepping on my tongue. But thank you for listening through it. This week. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time. I love the book. Ooh, you gotta for spend wisely as you buy with Kumar cannon and maybe if we cannot find a GPO around what we’re procuring, uh, maybe we can partner with another. It could be anything, it could be a non non profit or could be a company in the, could be a company in your community or that you have a relationship with doesn’t have to be another nonprofit that you know, that they’re buying the same, the same, uh, goods that you’re buying the same food you’re buying. Maybe you can partner with them and, and negotiate, which we’re gonna get to negotiate better terms with a, with a common vendor when there’s, you’re, you’re buying more together than you are separately.

[00:24:06.09] spk_1:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean you hit the nail on the head there. I mean, I would, I would also add to that and say, you know, think about your big donors, your big donors are probably sitting on some boards or some other companies that, you know, you’re going to them for donations. Why not go to them and say, Hey, look, you’re sitting on the board of Del. Why don’t you get me some good computers, you know, at a cheaper price or something like that. Right? I think you can access your your donor base to for that.

[00:24:56.81] spk_0:
Yeah. Very good. I’ll bet I’ll bet for board members people are hopefully they’re savvy and they’re they’re thinking that way but good, good, good to say it explicitly. Um And you know, in our this hypothetical food food banks and soup kitchen that I set up. Uh you know, one of the one of the things they were buying was insurance. So I just want to make the point that this this does not apply only to tangible goods but services to you. You can have you you should have relationships with your insurers.

[00:25:07.05] spk_1:
You

[00:25:07.78] spk_0:
can create your own GPO around insurance buying.

[00:25:11.67] spk_1:
Right?

[00:25:12.31] spk_0:
And this all applies to services as well as goods.

[00:25:25.57] spk_1:
Yes. I mean I think the point you make tuning on kind of uh several maybe, you know, nonprofits kind of coming together uh and maybe hiring even an advisory firm to help consolidate their spin. So you can even create an informal gpu you don’t need to put a formal GPO structural place and you can take advantage of consolidating your spin.

[00:25:42.88] spk_0:
Yes. All

[00:25:43.79] spk_1:
right.

[00:25:47.41] spk_0:
So let’s talk about negotiating and and you know, we’re gonna lump together I think

[00:25:50.08] spk_1:
uh

[00:25:51.46] spk_0:
you know, well

[00:25:52.52] spk_1:
you

[00:25:53.24] spk_0:
pricing and and payment terms and warranty terms these all these all fit together I think under negotiating. Um But let’s talk about just being comfortable

[00:26:05.45] spk_1:
you

[00:26:05.64] spk_0:
know getting comfortable talking about terms with

[00:26:09.87] spk_1:
the

[00:26:10.98] spk_0:
cos you’re spending money with

[00:27:15.89] spk_1:
right? Um And you know a lot of us are just not comfortable asking like you know and we tend to take the price is given right Especially if it’s a commodity type of item. You know who goes to negotiate Kroger or whole foods or wherever you do your grocery shopping right? But if you spend a significant amount of money I would say ask. And that’s one of the biggest things that holds people back. We just don’t ask just going and asking and saying look you know I’m willing to put this much of spend through your organization. What can you do for me? And you’ll be surprised at the benefits you get just by asking that question. At worst they’re gonna say no we can’t do it. But the chances are they will give you something of value. Um So I think it’s getting over that initial hurdle of asking. And uh if you do that you know you can probably get a whole lot of additional value. Whether it’s in in in in in the ability to return things if you don’t like it if you buy access whether it’s getting lower pricing whether it’s them storing stuff for you free of cost and delivering it when you need it. So you can get a lot of value just by asking.

[00:27:41.86] spk_0:
Excellent okay so yes don’t don’t be afraid like you said, you’re gonna be no worse off,

[00:27:48.58] spk_1:
yep. All

[00:27:50.87] spk_0:
right, so you just brought up some excellent terms, you know, people are not going to think of this. I don’t know, maybe maybe listeners are brighter than their lackluster host things like returns, return terms, storage,

[00:28:06.55] spk_1:
you know,

[00:28:37.24] spk_0:
we’re short on, we’re short on freezer space, you know, can you store for for 10 days we will pay for it. But can you hold it? I mean that those are I mean that’s a simple thing for uh A grocery or you know, a meat uh vendor to provide. I mean they probably have 10,000 square feet of storage space. So carve out a little bit for our for our side of beef for you know, for our whatever’s alright, alright, returns storage, okay. Uh let’s talk more, you know, pricing payment uh warranty warranty terms, help us understand what’s what we could be benefiting

[00:30:04.31] spk_1:
from. Sure payment terms, that’s a that’s a great you know, item of value that that you know, a good solid sourcing can open up and and frankly it’s It’s not that difficult to get better payment terms. A lot of people don’t just don’t actually see value when there is real value on there. The sense of think about this if you were paying for what you buy immediately versus paying in 60 days or 90 days. There’s real value in keeping that money for another 60 or 90 days, maybe you’re borrowing something from the bank. Right? Maybe your cash flow is, is not quite, you know, uniform and there are peaks and valleys. This helps you build up your working capital. And again in these cases I find that a lot of people are, don’t even think about going and asking the supplier to give them 60 day payment terms. Right? If you’re flush with cash, different story, you couldn’t care less. Maybe the cost of money to use zero, you just pay up. But even then I would say ask if you’re going to pay immediately, ask for a discount, Right? vs paying in 30 or 60 or 90 days.

[00:30:07.12] spk_0:
Yes, brilliant. Right. Right. Yeah. I think I’m certainly not thinking of when you talk about payment terms, I’m thinking of price, give us a discount but payment over time. Give us 60 days, 90 days and if we’re gonna pay immediately, give us give us a deeper discount. Yes.

[00:30:25.71] spk_1:
Yes. Yes. So you have

[00:30:27.96] spk_0:
like, you know,

[00:30:45.59] spk_1:
2%, for example, the terms like uh, 2% 30 net 60, which basically means, Hey, if I pay you within 30 days, I’ll take a reduction of 2% in the, in the price. Otherwise I’ll pay you in 60 days. You know, you can structure a lot of different kinds of payment terms. Keep it simple again, let’s not complicate it too much. Um, just say you’ll take a discount if you pay upfront. Otherwise you want that 60 payment terms. So you pay them after 60 days.

[00:31:07.56] spk_0:
Okay? You sound like a real insider would say uh 2% 30 net 60. All right, come on. You’re dealing with a savvy buyer here. Let’s, let’s talk about, let’s start.

[00:31:13.65] spk_1:
Let’s,

[00:31:14.46] spk_0:
Let’s talk about 2% 30 net 60. Come

[00:31:16.81] spk_1:
on. This

[00:31:18.77] spk_0:
is where we should be starting. Alright, alright. I’m an inside buyer now. Alright. Anything else about price or payment terms? Anything else in that in those categories?

[00:32:28.52] spk_1:
Yeah, I also recommend think about you may think you’ve negotiated the price and everybody goes back happy and then on the invoice show that you’ve got three additional items that it do it right. It could be um delivering, afraid they could be afraid of charge. Hey, fuel prices gone up. My transporter is now charging me a fuel surcharge. So I’m going to get it from you. So look for some of these hidden things and discuss it up front. That’s why having a good contract in place, health, You know, you want to be very clear what you’re finally gonna pay for that product. They’ll put handling child this child and that child and suddenly looked at your phone bill, you know, like 15 items they’ve added to it and who knows where that money goes and it ends up being 20% of your of your actual what you thought you were gonna pay and adds another 20% of it. Um So so being very clear about what are these additional items or making sure that your price reflects what you’re actually gonna pay. Plus maybe a sales tax. So make sure you know who’s gonna, you know who’s gonna, who’s gonna pay for the freight. Are there any handling charges um for

[00:32:49.23] spk_0:
for nonprofits or even their their sales tax exempt?

[00:32:53.46] spk_1:
Yes.

[00:32:54.85] spk_0:
So I mean that’s really not even something to negotiate. That’s just that’s just state law. You give them your I. R. S. Tax determination letter and they should not be charging you sales tax. So, but you know, you’re mentioning lots of other terms beyond beyond your sales tax. Just making the point that sales tax is just that’s a given.

[00:33:14.90] spk_1:
All

[00:33:21.77] spk_0:
right. These are excellent. Come are great insights, great insights. Um uh warranty, let’s talk about warranty terms,

[00:35:27.37] spk_1:
sure warranties, you know, very from product to product. Sometimes. Often the suppliers will will say, hey this is our standard warranty, right? You know, you buy a piece of software, they’ll say, you know, 90 day warranty, which means the 90 days you can return the product, But there’s a lot more that goes into this, right? So you would want to understand now in the case of things like software products, you know, people may say, you know, 90 days you can return the product, but we will give you a replacement. Like product, we’re not gonna refund your money, right? You need to understand that. That’s what is gonna happen right? If you want your money back, you’ve got to be very clear that the warranty is money back and then you have to be very clear about understanding what qualifies as a warranty, right? Is the product the fact that you open it and then realize it doesn’t work for you. They will typically water into their specifications. If your specifications are different from their specifications then guess what you’re stuck. It doesn’t meet your specifications. So again, it goes back to kind of that whole RFP kind of question. Think about what it is you want to buy and what’s important to you, right? And you can negotiate warranty terms. If you’re able to consolidate and have a large enough spend, if you walk in and say, hey I just want this For you know $100. They’re probably not gonna negotiate warranty with you and you don’t want to spend your time doing that either. But if you’re gonna spend $100,000, you probably want to want to negotiate good warranty terms and understand when warranty kicks in and if warranty kicks in, what’s the remedy, right? Do you want your money back? You want them to replace it with another product and if they replace it with another product, you want to make sure that that product works. So think about warranty as something that gives you protection um that what you are wanting to buy is actually delivered to you.

[00:35:34.76] spk_0:
Awesome, awesome. What else? I don’t want to let you go

[00:35:38.78] spk_1:
yet. What

[00:35:40.09] spk_0:
what else can we talk about buying wise that that I haven’t asked you about,

[00:36:50.94] spk_1:
I think when you talk about, I like to, I like to say strategic sourcing and within that I’d like to talk about again, we talked about supplier relationships and management, supplier relationships with more than just meeting people and getting to know that it’s understanding how they’re actually performing in your environment, which means kind of having the data to understand your spend. You know if they were delayed, if they were late deliveries, if they were spoiled goods, having that data to have a really robust conversation with your supplier and to make sure that that they performed to what you expect them to perform and if they don’t there could be penalties. So managing your suppliers performance can be a, can require a little bit of effort but it tells the supplier that you are serious about how they perform for it. So

[00:36:55.30] spk_0:
just by just by opening the conversation you’re you’re letting them know that you have standards that you expect them to meet.

[00:37:49.90] spk_1:
Yes, yes. And tracking those standards. So having data um the other thing that’s valuable now is using technology. So really the underpinnings of all these other strategic sourcing and you know, supply management, the underpinnings are really three things people process and technology, right? Having the people who have the skills to do this kind of work, having processes that are repeatable and not just ad hoc so that everybody knows how this process works and frankly having good technology and today there’s a lot of technology available that can at least automate and make life easier for the people who are doing this kind of work right. There are simple subscription software that can help you do your sourcing much more efficiently, that can make your organization look a lot more professional when you’re going to suppliers and that can help that can provide the data for you to analyze and look at what your spend looks like. A lot of cases. I find people don’t even know what that actually looks like,

[00:38:14.66] spk_0:
what this the technology. Uh are there any platforms that you can name that? Not necessarily endorse,

[00:38:23.16] spk_1:
but

[00:38:24.03] spk_0:
I’m not sure folks are familiar

[00:38:26.03] spk_1:
with

[00:38:30.11] spk_0:
procurement software applications.

[00:39:11.08] spk_1:
I would, there are, there are lots and lots of, you know, sourcing software available. tony What I recommend is just google for Gartner’s Magic quadrant. Gardner is is as you know, you know, this advisory firm consulting firm that does a lot of work in in in the technology space and they they publish a magic quadrant where they identify the top dozen 15 supplier technology suppliers and a whole plethora of different spaces and out of that you can actually pick and and and drill in and see, you know who those suppliers are, what are their strengths, What are their weaknesses. And then you can decide which three you want to talk to. So I would say start with that Gartner magic quadrant in the space in which you’re interested in uh in the technology that you’re interested in.

[00:39:48.38] spk_0:
Okay. The Magic Gartner’s magic quadrant. Alright. Um Alright leave us leave us with something else. This is incredible. You know, I don’t think people are thinking about this at all. I know sophisticated strategic sourcing which I almost put you in jargon jail for. But you were you flush you flushed it out so I didn’t feel you deserve to be sentenced to jargon jail.

[00:39:59.43] spk_1:
Uh

[00:40:22.93] spk_0:
You’re you’re you’re you’re you’re helping us. So we we we take these things in the cooperation we have a cooperation agreement. You’re kind of we flipped you we picked your brain uh We flipped you to a cooperating witness. So no no sentence. What else? Anything else? Anything else you can leave us with around the relationships or the consolidating or being

[00:40:26.90] spk_1:
strategic.

[00:40:28.54] spk_0:
All this negotiation that we talked about. What else can you leave us with?

[00:40:36.32] spk_1:
Um The thing that the one thing that I leave you with a couple of things that I would leave leave your

[00:40:43.19] spk_0:
is

[00:42:18.74] spk_1:
um focus on sourcing. Uh make sure that you’re actually paying attention to it because a lot of money could throw out the door and you don’t even know it number two. Uh as I mentioned earlier just to recap, look at sourcing as these, as strategic and as supplier management. Two big buckets. Strategic is what you buy, how you buy it from whom you buy. Supplier management is about once you’ve decided your supplier and you’re you, you know what you’re buying that the supplier performs the way you want them to perform. And the underpinnings of these are the kind of talent you have, the kind of processes you have and the kind of technologies you use. Think about this landscape and make sure that you have the talent available to focus on each of these areas. You don’t have to boil the ocean right pick on a couple of them consolidation to drive value negotiations. There are lots of great negotiation training courses available, develop your talent, you know, give them the skills tools and abilities to do the job more effectively for you. And I think at the end of the day you will find that it adds a lot of value. It streamlines your processes and you don’t have to run around with your hair on fire because of emergencies. Now those will happen. But you’ll be better positioned to manage them and having good relationships with your suppliers will again make it much easier for you to manage those ups and downs and emergencies that are bound to show up.

[00:42:49.99] spk_0:
Mark Cannon, He’s Kay Cannon, K K A N N A N at Procuring services dot com. The company is at procuring services dot com camara. Thank you very much for sharing all this expertise.

[00:43:04.82] spk_1:
Thank you for having me tony for the real pleasure.

[00:43:32.16] spk_0:
Thank you. Next week. Eric Sapperstein returns by popular demand. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyer Hawk shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our Web guy and this music is by Scott’s tony Thank you for that information. Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 17, 2014: UX Secrets Revealed & Better Tech RFPs

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Jared Schwartz: UX Secrets Revealed

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User Experience (UX) is all the stuff visitors see on your site and how they navigate through it. What are the secrets to strategy and design so people enjoy engaging with your site and find the content they want? Jared Schwartz is senior consultant at Beaconfire Consulting. (Recorded at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) 2014.)

 

 

 

Peter Campbell: Better Tech RFPs

Peter CampbellPeter Campbell has strategies to make your software and service requests for proposals smarter, so you build better relationships with vendors and get what you need at the right price. Peter is chief information officer of Legal Services Corporation. (Also recorded at NTC.)

 

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of relapsing polly con dryness if i learned that you had missed today’s show you ex secrets revealed you ex user experience is all the stuff that visitors see on your site and how they navigate through it. What are the secrets to strategy and design so people enjoy engaging with your sight and find the content they want. Jared schwartz is senior consultant at beaconfire consulting and better r f p’s. Peter campbell has strategies to make your software and service requests for proposals or, if he’s smarter, so you build better relationships with vendors and get what you need at the right price. Peter’s, chief information officer for legal services corporation both of those interviews are from auntie si non-profit technology conference on tony’s take two something to tuck away for twenty fifteen, responsive by generosity, siri’s hosting multi charity five k runs and walks here’s. The first ntcdinosaur view with jared schwartz on user experience. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc fourteen. The non-profit technology conference we’re outside, we’re in washington, d c at the marriott wardman park hotel. And with me is jared schwartz he’s, senior consultant at beaconfire consulting, and his workshop topic with the other some other panelists is top five u x rated secrets revealed. Jerry swartz welcome to the show. Thanks that’s. A pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Thank you for taking time on a busy conference day. You ex let’s make sure everybody starts at the at the same level. What is you, x or user experience? What? Music’s? So you exes user experience. So that’s all i’m sorry, i already i already revealed you gave the cat. Yeah. That’s, that’s that’s number one of five. You’ve gotta come with four more secrets. Yes. Oh, you exit is the user experience. And a lot of what that is is a lot of the front and pieces of these web applications. It’s the when the user interacts with the computer. Whether it’s with the website, whether they’re the product of an application, it is the experience that they’re having that is guiding them to achieve a certain goal. Um, and so the goals of you, except to make sure that that is optimized for the user so that they can achieve their goals as quickly and efficiently as possible. And then so there is a lot of what falls under the u ex umbrella, such as user testing, focus groups that there’s a lot of like pieces of u ex butler. The heart of it is making sure that when you want someone to do a thing, they get that done as official as they can. So first thing we need to know is, what do we want people to do? And that could change by a week to week, right? Month to month? Yeah, i mean, so a lot of what you ex starts with this sort of one of the goals and the goals for your application for you is the organization of the company. But then also the users goals were they coming here to accomplish, and that also ties into audiences. So a big part of user experience is who are your users? And so we’re talking about demographic data, but also, you know, a lot about what are they trying to accomplish? What other internet habits? So ah lot of our session, one of the other panelists is talking a lot about users and audience and having empathy for who they are and what they want to do. I’m trying to put yourself sort of in their shoes, they are coming here to do a certain thing. It may not be exactly what you want them to accomplish, but you need to think about what they would do and lead them down, that pathway, what they want to do, but it also has to be coordinated with what you want them to do. Absolutely if you’re in the midst of ah campaign for for gathering emails or a campaign for fund-raising or, you know, whatever, yes, i’m so ah lot of what we do it beaconfire and some of our initial work with our clients is to sort of figure out these audiences and then their goals and your goals and how that thai house that matches up to each other, it doesn’t always jive oneto one sometimes it’s close, sometimes related, but you know, if the goal is is email conversion, you don’t just want it’s not just simple, to put an email sign a page. On your on your home page because they may not be there yet, and they’re not coming to your website yet to give you an e mail address. They’re coming for another reason you wantto figure out what they’re trying to accomplish. I think of what is the pathway that would lead them down the road to okay, they’ve gotten what they’ve wanted the next step would be now how do we lead them to where we want them to go? And so it’s zoho trying a lot of what we always start with his understand your audience, and they’re prioritized them and then understand try to match up your goals with their goals and that’s that’s a really key to making sure that you’re gonna have successful application if you just put your goals first there, you’re not going to get there don’t care. Yeah, so start with them and then try to lead them to where you want them to go. And i think the email conversion is a very good example. Putting on a light box on your home page may not be appropriate because your point people haven’t come for that purpose on lex out of the light box, maybe they’ll stay for what they wanted to achieve, or maybe they won’t. But either way, at least one of you is unsatisfied and that’s you because you bombarded them with the email purpose before they were ready. Essentially, absolutely. And i think you have anything you haven’t sold them. Why also you’ve got to make the case for someone to give it their email address. It means you’re going to be invading their personal space potentially several times a day. You need to make the case for why they want that space invaded. And so, you know, a lot of work just by putting a female sign a box and say join our list great isn’t really going to actually convince somebody that i should do that. I should get more email from you, so it’s make the case with content that you have made the case that the organization who you are, that they see themselves and your community, your community is them, and then when they feel that connection there, then say, join our email list to get daily updates during our email list to get job postings that that is a much telling. Them what they’re going to get that is the benefit to them is much better than just opening up with join our list because that’s just that’s just serving your own purposes and not theirs and our audience is small and midsize non-profit so ninety percent of cases we’re going to talk about the organization’s website you had mentioned aps ahs a possibility, but we’re probably talking about their their their website and that’s most of our clients as well, you know, it’s, a u x there’s a it breeds into, you know, the applications you carry around with you, i mean that the cars you drive, i mean there’s there’s user experience toe actual physical products that chairs you sit in this user experience by but really the most most of our clients are also medium to large non-profits and so they’re mostly it’s mostly, you know, web sites as well some web specific applications, so not just like organizational website by the website that does a thing and then occasionally in tow, like abs or things like that. Okay, now you’re part of the panel was the psychology of users correct and what’s going on literally what’s going on physically in their brains as their coursing through your site. Yes. So, i mean that this is sort of, you know, i do a lot of us work, and then my hobby miree of interest is a lot of this pop psychology and okay, you know what is making the web sites are the most successful. So successful. Why are people going there? You know, tens twenties, hundreds of times a day? What are they tapping into the underlying human psychology? You know what? What is firing off the dopamine? And you’re their brain that says, i need to go here. I’m getting a pleasure, but results. I’m gonna go there again and again and again and again. How do you hook them? How do you keep them coming back? What are the triggers that are being fired off on them now? Some of my my pat, my peace talks about there’s. An external internal triggers there’s. Probably a lot at this conference about external triggers. So that’s getting an email, that’s getting a text message, something saying go to my website internal trigger is instinctively on their own. They make a decision to do that. So an example. Would be facebook photo sharing when you take when you see, you know this amazing celebrity walking down the street, you take a picture of it. No one said facebook doesn’t say to you, go share that photo here. They don’t remind you you instinctively know to do that. The goal is to form a habit isto have the minimal amount of neurological activity required to get there and so it’s to try to find, you know organisms are not going to be facebook, but what is what is the thing that when someone wants to do something or find something they instinctively know to go to you and so try to identify what those internal triggers are because that’s mean that that’s what drives massive amounts of traffic? And how did you get get interesting that you said that you said it’s a hobby? I get into the psychology of it. So i mean, i’ve been doing, you know, sort of web application development for the older than i look from the beginning, the beginning of the internet and he looks about for listening. She looks about thirty a lot to be forty and northern. Thirty. Okay, so and i’ve been doing this for about twenty years, and i just, you know, it always sort of fascinated me, you know? Why does someone do what they do? Why are these things so successful? There’s millions and millions of web site, you know, i think i heard that the top thirty websites account falik ninety some ninety five percent of traffic and it’s insane, the food that that dominate the space. And so what are they doing differently? And you could start to see the patterns of the understanding of their words and it’s, not reward wasn’t giving you a t shirt or a sticker it’s the rewards of, like, stroking your ego, making you recognize the community. This, like, the sense of the hunt is when i talk about so, like reddit and countries that you want to keep looking for, what may be that you know, that next great things going to be on the next page, i can’t leave, i got five more things, and so they’re all tapping into this, like, you know, that this hundreds and fifty tens of thousands of years of human psychology and leveraging that, you know, make their website successful interesting. Okay, so you you mentioned dopamine, there are there are physical changes happening in our brain as we’re going through. Ah, website? Yeah, and then this actually was just that south by southwest. And i saw a really fascinating panel on don’t know the name i can’t without my head. Unfortunately, it was fantastic. I love to give him credit, but it was on the neural, the neurological effects that happened on the successful websites on so they were actually, like, scanning people’s brains they were interacting with. And it was really fascinating to see that, like, its firing off the same, like pleasure centers. When you, for example, what would you do? Something good. And you want to share that? And then people like it. And so having someone like that, you did something good. Just fires off the same pleasure center as anna’s. Mother sex? Yeah, i mean, it’s, that sense of you know you. Yes. You want to do good things that you wanna be altruistic? Yes. You want to have an interesting life but it’s even more exciting when somebody you know acknowledges that likes it back to you. And so that’s include that’s. Why, facebook? Tapped into that very early and so that’s why the like button is so ubiquitous tower, what part of what it actually does that that reward is, you know, is this it is a super powerful thing in your brain that you don’t even know is happening, but it’s, you know, it keeps coming back because you want more, but you want more of it. You want more of it? I’ve read research that takes the talk about the first step that about how pleasure centers are activated when you do something positive and what i was reading about was making donation when you, uh, you know, the science was someone who makes it makes it a donation versus someone who doesn’t, and the pleasure centers are activated, but you’re going a step further and research that shows that when someone likes yes and and acknowledges and approves of your having done something beneficial, it is even more activity. And i think that greater pleasure and i think you see, a lot of that was like the peer-to-peer fund-raising stuff it’s spreading now because you can give ten dollars organization, you feel good about it, but once you do that, now you’re invested and it feels even better to get someone else to give arms, it feels even better toe, like have them know you care enough that you’re going to get them roped in. So i think that’s why a lot of peer-to-peer stuff that’s, why they’re trying to know share when you make this donation because they know that, like, you know, that’s, that’s a human ego thing that people want, they want to feel like they’re part of the cause and bigger than just a donor. I feel it, i think, just dahna simpler level when i find an article that i’ve read that i think someone else is going to like that. So i just forwarded to them from the time sight or send them the u r l n e mail and then i get something back says oh, yes, thanks. That was pretty cool, you know? Yeah, i was right. The person did like i liked it and they like to to feel good and is the opposite feeling that that sense when you send it out and nothing happens, you know, like that they think is that sense of like what i thought? For sure, you’d validate my my mind knowledge of who you are, my mother. I least deserve acknowledgment. At least say thank you, even if you didn’t think, well, just something okay? You’re listening to the talking alternative network. This’s. The same way we’re hosting part of my french new york city guests come from all over the world, from mali to new caledonia, from paris to keep back french is that common language? Yes, they all come from different cultures, background or countries, and it comes desires to make new york they’re home. Listen to them. Share this story. Join us, part of my french new york city. Every monday from one to two p, m. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping countries. People be better business people. Dahna talking. Hyre dahna okay, so let’s, let’s, look on the flip side, what happens when we’re in a site and we’re not finding what we want. You made the point that we come with with with our own goals in our own purpose, to go to a site, what what do we feel when when that frustration of cars and we’re not getting what we want, what were therefore, i think the first thing you’ll see is you’ll see luke users leave. I mean, you know, the internet loads so fast, there’s so many other options out there, you know, data analytics is a piece of you x as well, and i’m looking at like, the simplest thing is bounce rates, that is an example of you think they care because you’re in that organization, you deal with this every day, but if what they’re saying they don’t care about they’re going to bounce rate is how fast how many users leave the first pay, but about bounce rate is the percentage of people who, like, come to a page and then lead it, they don’t go anywhere else on so that so that, you know, they think that you’re gonna have the answer for them. They go there. You don’t have what they want. Boom! There were only one page deep there, one hand, even after one, too. Yeah, and that that is a really easy way to identify. Are you giving users pathways? Are they seeing themselves in your sight? Are they connecting with your brand at all? If your bouncers every high ah, what’s jai, is it possible to generalize what i hate putting numbers on things that are because it always depends, like in a one organizations bounce cerini complete different than another it’s i would you know, i would say, look at trends. So if you’re seeing that you know you’re going worse, they’re getting better. A lot of us is testing and so it’s to keep trying to you always want to try and try and try and then look at what the data’s telling you. And so if you’re making adjustments and the bouncer is going down, you’re doing good things. If you’ve if you’ve taken something off of your home page, if you redesigned it in a way that’s what you think it works and you see that change, i would look at trends trying. To always say, like, this is good, this is bad, you know, it is i find that sometimes unfairly for example, like open rate supplies. That’s what a good open percentage it depends on, you know, if you’re talking about a list it’s a small list of highly cultivated people or one hundred thousand like random strangers you just bought, you know, so it’s really hard to say what affair basically, okay, trends trends are valuable, too, and and now bounce treyz something that users confined in google analytics. It’s, one of the top analytics applied to your your your page, your sight, your sight and there there’s that’s when, like the first top things you can see, it’s very easy to find google analytics is very rich, very deep. They just come out with universal analytics, which takes it even richer and deeper. I’m very fortunate that i understand that at an emotional level i can kind of interpret with the number someone’s telling me the numbers say, and i work with people who understand this stuff in a very strong, deep technical levels, you know, i’m fortunate that this that i consent, that we have people who look at the data, you know, process that data because their data analysts and then it’s my job. Treyz okay, now that they’ve process that for me, like what’s the driving reasons of these, okay, but even though, you know, people were sort of amateur, google analytics bounced rates, the ones that know google smart, the ones they put upon that first page view that summary page, they know what they’re doing, but we’ll give you good answers. Okay, well, let’s, let’s see if there’s some advice that we can leave non-profits with we have ten minutes to stop, we got plenty time. Um, based on from your perspective, from the cycle of psychological perspective, what would you like to see? Non-profits maybe doing better? Smarter? I think one of the things that they tend to forget is that their users and themselves are different, that it’s very hard, you know, i worked non-profit space for a long, long time, it’s very hard not to step back from that bubble, right? I mean, you’re causes your there, you work for these organizations because you’re insanely passionate for them, that is your job. Everybody you work with is interested in it when you have this great idea for a campaign, of course, everybody would want to do it because you’re in that. And so i think the hardest thing to do is kind of step back and say, not me, but somebody who is a squishy middle, someone who not the converted, not the staff, somebody who we want to make the case for they’re not there yet, and a cz much as possible when you’re designing your sights. When you’re thinking of your imagery and what your imagery is saying, i think i see all the time. So taking advice, i see a lot of organization websites have large, beautiful imagery now, but they will put in that image whatever the latest news is and don’t realize that image is connecting your brand more than anything else. And so did you really think about what your imagery is saying thing with your confidence saying not to the converted, but to that people who you want to get to your so you have to take that that perspective of the person who’s? Not, as you said, not yet converted. Step outside your day today dafs site excitement of your work how do you get somebody as excited as you are because i have been part of lots of campaigns when i’ve been working non-profit space where we’re like this is going to explode, of course, who wouldn’t want to, like, share this on with all their social media friends i personally do, and then it doesn’t really explode, and i think a lot of that is because we just have you just not well, you’re not coming from their perspective, and so you need to think, okay, they’re not here yet. What do they want? How can i lead them to the point when then they’re fourth, fifth, sixth views visit now? They really care. But those first few visits or the is that making break time and they’re they’re not where you are. You need to really remind remember remember that? Okay. Is it important to know what sights are? Ah, referring to your to your own site? Yeah, i mean, where people are coming from there. I mean, i think that’s that’s always important to look at that. The number one thing to remember is google’s. Probably number one, bob. A lot of organizations spend time trying to put everything. Possible onto their home page because they think that’s how people are getting to their content because maybe that’s how they are, but truthfully, most people are coming to your content as an internal visitor. If you go to look up, you know, blue cheese, you’re going go to google type blue cheese, you’re not going to go to the cheese foundation and see if they have a navigation. It takes you to cheese colored block. Yeah, so i’m looking away. Other organizations where people come from is important. I think the most number one to remember is it’s probably google people on your home page come in because they want to know who you are so that’s probably a brand thing, but that most uses air hitting you first at an internal page and so that that email sign up just shouldn’t be on the home page. If there’s, that pathway should be accessible anywhere. People get to your content because they’re not going home page first, they’re not going to your navigation likely they’re doing a google search and coming into an internal piece of content, and so you still need to make that conversion case even three. Four levels down your cs. Okay. Excellent. Yeah, very good point people. Not they’re not doing it the way top down. They’re coming in the middle somewhere. That doesn’t know there’s a lot of what we have. Several u ex folks. There’s always big debates about navigation, the value of navigation. I’m on the stage. So i get to like you say my opinion versus the person i work with who tend to disagree. I think navigation is least second third tier navigation is this is somewhat overvalued. You know, i think taxonomy, i think having smart tags. I think having your content search engine optimize is really the best way to get content. And not just necessarily, like, do you have to think about things and strict categories of first level, second level, third level? Because people just don’t navigate the web that way anymore. That it’s it’s not that hub and spoke structure. Yes, or did they just jump around from from thing to thing? What more? What more can we say about the psychology? Other advice? Mom it’s. The other advice about the psychology. So, you know, understanding the rewards is a huge one. The other is that there’s a person and bj fog who i’ve read a fair amount of honest what’s called bogey bogey has the fog model and the but you can find online type in five model the core of it is that when the trigger goes off another internal external, the reward has to outweigh the effort to get there very right simple idea, but that’s that’s the core of successful websites, and so that rewarded, whether it’s a internal reward, whether it’s a hyre you know, i want to find things wherever that might be the level of effort they have to take to meet that reward. They’re going to make, like internal mental calibration essentially a cost benefit analysis essentially cost benefit analysis, and so that that level of effort has to be usually fairly frictionless because that reward is probably not as high as you think it is. So too, you know, to to keep that you try to make that as frequent as possible try to get people invested a lot of times. Why, you’ll see, you know, the most people don’t leave facebook for google plus was because they were heavily invested, their data was there their friends were there. So if you get people invested, it makes it easier for them to just to re engage because they’ve been through experience. They have already signed up. They have your data. So i think trying to kind of always balance that reward effort is really that’s. That’s that’s the challenge. What if we have to justify spending time and money on on our user experience? If we feel it’s lackluster and, uh, but we have to go to an executive director, maybe even to a board to justify this. We were sort of talking around the benefits, but let’s, i think that would make them explicit. Yeah, man, that that’s a fantastic question. Because one of the things that that comes up a lot, that is my best, you know, you’re great at it. We’re twenty minutes in and it’s the first good question. Okay. Ah, one of things that gets cut from a lot of our clients budgets is testing and user experience and things like that and it’s. Not because they don’t value it. It’s. Because it’s not as tangible, right? You have to have a design. The site has to be developed. It has. To function and so when they’re you know, non-profits have about budget restraint constraints, and so they do tend to say, okay, we’re not gonna have those audience focus groups, we’re not going to bring in users to test our wireframes to valley that we’ve done is right because we can still build it, it’ll still maybe be pretty little still, but we think it’s going to be and i can get by on less money, and so that is always a challenge. I think you will never regret spending money tohave a actual audience, our users actually interacting with your sight structure, interacting with your of the wireframes you set ups interacting with your prototype, giving you information ahead of time, you will never regret that information. I’ve never been a time when someone said that was useless like you always lie learned something when you actually get out of your own space and put in the hands of users back-up so it’s super super important and it often gets cut and it’s a challenge. I think one of the things is to try to make the case for, you know, when you’re inside under an organization that this way. We want this to be successful, that with with our users we need to hear from them. It also sometimes helps sell with the internal politics one why did you design it this way? Why did you put it here? If you have users informing that it gives you a little bit of protection, you can say we put it there because users are finding told us that’s where it goes were designed in this way because users test said that when we did the blue button, it didn’t perform as well as the red button. So back-up it’s not only hugely successful tow the product being a success. It’s hugely important that provoc buy-in success. It’s also can help with when it comes time to defend the decisions that you’ve made. It’s not because it’s just the three of you in a room who’s on the core team deciding this it’s because this is what our users have told us. So i it’s it’s a it’s. A big challenge because you see it, it does all it’s. One of the first things to go. Well, you know, we could probably get away without this user tests. We probably don’t have to bring in user focus groups. We know the answers ourselves and it’s, always surprising, there’s, a really interesting study where they asked people to sort of guess how many jelly beans are in a jar and, like a hundred people guessed, and no one got any closer than the average of everybody’s guesses. All right, nobody got any closer than the average ok, even though there was wildly low gas isn’t some wildly high guesses. The hearing from the larger community actually gave the smartest answer than even the expert jellybean kapin guests, so nobody did better than the average. So as much as you try to think like that, we could just get this exactly right on our own idea. It’s, you’re always going to do better to hear from a larger perspective, to hear from thoughts outside of your own it’s super valuable, okay, dahna. I want to ah admonish you live it on the show. We have jargon jail okay now, just for people who may not know what a wireframe is. Yeah, it was a few minutes ago, but i didn’t want interrupt you. Although used a lot of times i do it threw up, but you were i didn’t feel like interrupting you, but what’s a wireframe just eso a wireframe is in a nutshell, a website design without a design it’s the functional captures the general layout. It captures the functional specifications of what that piece of the website will do and how people do wireframe is very, quite a bit. But i guess you could think of it as if you were going to design a home page you would have at the top that there is a big maybe hero space, and there’ll be a couple sentences that would annotate, saying it is going to do this, it will rotate this way. It’s not designed it’s not actually drawn. It just sort of implies what it’s going to do. And so then then those wireframes go to designers who then design around that aunt? I don’t know we often. Tell our designers that design is not a coloring book, they’re meant to kind of interpret this, but it’s just sort of say, this is what the thing is supposed to do in generally how it’s supposed to look, and then it also feeds over to the developers. You, seo when i see this email sign up thing here that the wireframe tells them well, it means that when they sign up it’s going to put them into this also database, for example, so it’s the wireframe is these step before you start designing and before you developing is just a way to capture those requirements. Okay, put me in jail. That’s okay? You’re out to make prohibition comes easily. That’s okay, um, or parole should say welcomes you were in jail on parole comes after, um, let’s say, all right, so one, one final thing we can leave people with just throw to you, uh, about about user experience, you know? So i guess i’m one final thing about user experience. I would say, you know, we’re doing an exercise at the end of our session and it’s an audience exercise and the reason i want to do that. Is with a hammer home that think about who you’re trying to do this for. So the exercise that we’re going to do, i think it is a good example where we’re taking a really bad donation page so that, you know, we have one of our folks in our teams like this on the worst possible nation page, and then we’re going to tell the team, break up in small groups and say one of you is the audience the rest of you take five minutes interview that audience member about when they’ve had a good donation experience and who they are and what they’re trying to accomplish and then take notes on that, and then they’re going to be asked to then redesigned this with that audience member in mind takes five, ten minutes to do you know, i think it’s a really good, easy exercise, so when you’re saying, like, wow, this we want to do this thing, do it, and then think of an audience person have somebody played that role for five minutes and then redo it for that person you’ll make, you know, some nice improvement. So it’s a really low hanging way to kind of like just keep tweaking things for for different your audience and a way to see that adopt that outside perspective that we talked about earlier on we do that’s no, we’re consulting firm, we do that. We helped lead clients through that, but you can certainly do-it-yourself think any any organization can say, you know what? We were built this thing. Now we’re going to think of who’s going to visit there. John, you can play the role that person tell us about this from your perspective, and now we’ll tweak it and it’ll get a little bit better. Excellent. Thanks very much. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having my pleasure. Jarod schwartz is a senior consultant with beaconfire consultant. And thank you for being with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of non-profit technology conference generosity. Siri’s you know them? They host five k runs and walks. You probably. I’m guessing can’t generate enough runners to host your own event. And then, if you did, you’d have to deal with the permitting and the medals and the sound system and the starting finish line and the porta potties. That’s what generosity siri’s does they do? Porta potties? And all the other things that are involved in multi charity runs and walks where there are hundreds of people because each charity brings the participants that they can, and together they have hundreds talk to dave lind he’s the ceo, about becoming one of their charity partners. They have events in new jersey, miami, new york city and philadelphia coming up. Tell dave you’re from non-profit radio, please let him know that he’s a seven one, eight, five o six, nine triple seven or generosity siri’s dot com can you start planned e-giving in twenty fifteen? I know you’re in fourth quarter fund-raising right now, it’s not any more detailed then just something to tuck away in the back of your mind for next year. Planned giving is not complicated. You do not need special expertise. I’ll have more to say about it later, but that’s all for now. Just tuck it away for next year and that is tony’s. Take two for friday, seventeenth of october forty first show of this year here’s my interview with peter campbell from non-profit technology conference on better requests for proposals. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology. Conference ntc two thousand fourteen the hashtag is fourteen and tc we’re at the marriott hotel and wardman park washington d c my guest now is peter campbell. He is chief information officer for legal services corporation. Peter welcome, good to be here. It’s a pleasure. Thank you on your ah workshop topic is requests for proposals making our of piecework for non-profits and vendors. Peter campbell, what is the problem with our f p’s that non-profits do no, my take is so rps request proposals um, commonly used by organizations to gouge whether a vendor is going to be able to do their projects for them or whether the software they’re buying is going to meet their needs. But i don’t think it’s something that’s well understood non-profits i don’t think there are a lot of resource is for understanding how to write our appease, how to do that well, and as a result of that, a lot of the vendors in the sector really hate them to the point where i’ve sent our if he’s out to vendors who have refused to even open them, much less response. So part of the problem is non-profits i’m not going. To be getting the the quality and volume of of replies that they could be getting to their art piece because they’re writing them in a bad way. Well, he let me see how i see the issue say you need a new website, your non-profit you need your website um, how much that cost you so it cost fifteen thousand should it cost seventy five thousand? It cost one hundred fifty and if you spend one hundred fifty, are you getting a much better website than you would for fifteen or seventy five? And i think today the answer is you have no idea you could pay one hundred fifty and get a much worse website than me when you could get from somebody who’s very smart and doesn’t charge a lot. Um, so the non-profits goal is to gouge who should i hired to do this job for me, who will give me the most value for my money? And if you’re buying, say, a software system something that’s really well defined before you buy it, you can ask very tactical questions, get them answered that’s fine you khun do a request proposal has a list of i need this feature? I need this functionality i need to integrate with this. Get a good answer, but if you’re doing a website or you’re doing a sales force implementation or you’re doing a project that is much more open ended, um, using the form of our a p that you would use to buy a product doesn’t work very well. And i think what happens often this people use that form and send it to a consultant say beaconfire you were talking to earlier? Yeah, and the chances going into a web project that you know exactly how many hours it’s going to take to do that project and what type of effort’s going to be needed are very, very slim, right? So my argument is that our of peas are unimportant thing because when you go into a relationship with a vendor to do an expensive project, we’re talking one hundred thousand for an organ, it maybe makes three million, you know, bilich revenue. Um, you want to make a good investment in that relationship, you know, you don’t as someone to marry you on the first date, you get to know them first, you got to know. What? You’re compatible. You get to know if your needs are going to be mutually met, that type of thing. So we need to be more creative about how we do our fees in order to ensure that, and i think one of the problems is the non-profit i want the rp to tell them exactly how much they’re going to have to pay that’s what they’re focused on. Yeah, cause we need a new website, we need fifteen thousand pages. We need this color scheme. How much will you charge us to do that? And i think that that’s a question you really can’t ask and shouldn’t be asking. So when i do an r p for something like that, i recently won recently did one for a sales force ghisolf the r p est a few basic things i want to know if the vendors i was sending it to had the expertise i needed for my project, i had some particular aspects of my project that one vendor might do better than another say, integrating with databases in my organization, so i ask questions about that and asked him to give examples case studies when they done before, if they can send me pictures, website links and then i also have section, what are your standard rates for each role of consultant that would work? What i didn’t ask is how much will this project cost? I didn’t it’s a multi year project, i have no idea, and i just didn’t think that was fair question what i i was looking for and what i think i got was a vendor that had the expertise needed do my project that i felt my staff and i had a good report with that we’d be able to work well with, um and a good relationship and through the reference checks, assurances that they were very sensitive to non-profit budget needs that they could stretch the project out longer if the money wasn’t coming in to pay the bills, that type of thing. Do i know what the project’s gonna cost when it’s all done? I don’t do i know that this vendor is going to work with me? I’m not going to get in financial trouble on this project. I’m pretty reassured, you’re confident so my pushes the ar fi sessions say r f peace can be good. But we’re kind of being cruel to the vendors and frustrating the life out of andrews by sending them questions that can’t be answered. Ok, all right, so do we need to spend more time in planning on r f p? I think a lot of non-profits that’s sort of the mind set is, well, we need a vendor, and this is going to be a sizable project for us. Let’s, do an r f p, right and then and okay, it’s going to fall within your department. So you put together the questions we need to do more than we need better planning around the rof pieces that were part of the problem. So the r p is a piece of the process of evaluating purchasing a system. If you’re talking about software that needs to be in consultants and that type of project, the web sales for us, who are the, you know, fund-raising database of things that highly customized. Project that you’re going to need that help on there are few is a piece of it. Any organization going into a project like that should understand their business needs. Our sales were surprising. For example, before we’re doing the sales worse project, we’ve hired business process consultant’s help us fully understand what we’re doing today before we start trying to do it better. So so it is a piece of that process, and again, the rp we think about the rv is being the session a bunch of questions that we weren’t asked avenger, but just as important as part of the therapy that explains to the vendor what we’re trying to accomplish so that we’re helping the vendor understand the depth of the project and the scope of the project. You’re going to get better answers back. Yeah, it’s zoho learning process both ways. It’s a two way into yeah, okay, i think, yeah, i think that perspective is not really seen. Basically we ask questions, you come back and answer, and and the questions are not really that informative about what we’re trying to do. Yeah, this is really very timely, actually, for may i do play. Into giving fund-raising consulting. And just last night, when i got back to my room at the hotel, i had an email from someone who had been referred to me, and she asked me to give her a price quote for creating a plant giving program for our organization and i and i don’t really know about your organization. She said that, you know, a small number should get to give a number of donors, but i have no idea how they break down in terms of age. I don’t know whether they’ve ever attempted plans giving in the past and maybe it’s been unsuccessful or this is the first venture. What are their goals were planned e-giving of how deep do they want to go? Is this gonna have the most sophisticated programs? And or is it just gonna be maybe charitable bequests? Is that all we’re going to start? Stop there. So what i sent back was, can we plan a call before i give you a range and that’s actually what you said i need i need a range of costs. Teo, give to my board. I said, well, it’s kind of premature. I don’t don’t know. Enough about the organization, and so i need to learn more as the vendor and that’s what you’re suggesting? Yes. So i will say as the client and, you know, i work for a quasi government organization, and we have very appropriately bureaucratic process follow-up just explained legal services corporation plays what? Rolling? Oh, yes, i have a legal service corporation. We are the federally created five a onesie three non-profit that allocates federal funding to legal aid programs across the country. Ok, our tagline is america’s partner fecal justice, and i think people know legal aid, you know, legal aid in their community and in their cities. People know exactly what people get confused about is because we have so many cop shows telling us that everybody has the right to an attorney. They forget that that’s only in criminal cases. So if the bank is foreclosing on your home or you’re in a domestic abuse situation or children or being threatened, take it away and you can’t afford an attorney we’re trying to address that. Those are all civil. Yes is criminal and illegal. That’s what legal aid provides? Yes, legal aid gives the attorney to the people. Who are too poor to afford one? Our funding program has requirements on coffeecake income. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Alright. So legal services corporation is the primary funder of legal aid services throughout the country. Yes. Okay. Absolutely. Okay, please. Okay, so on our way to talk about, oh, learning and how i was giving you my example of how i need to learn more about the organization before i could. Yeah, there was a change of prices, but i want to add to that from my if i’m doing an rp process, i want to be very fair process. I don’t want to give one vendor advances another one might not have so i might agree to have a five minute phone call just outlying a little more of our situation, and i’ll have that same conversation with every vendor that i’m including in the process of but i generally don’t want to do the full pledged interview with the vendor until after the r p e r a p is determined which of these people who have responded to the therapy are the ones who really look like they might be a match? Narrow it down and then from there, go to the interviews. Usually, when i’m doing our fee for a large project, all in, you know, include a deadline to ask questions, preferably send those questions by email, and then i’ll send out the questions and answers to every participant in the r p so, again, everybody’s getting the same answer is getting old questions. Asked even nothing worth questions, they particularly asked. Okay, e-giving didn’t think dick tooting getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternative network e-giving. E-giving cubine have you ever decided to reinvent yourself? Are you navigating a new life’s journey? Are you an aspiring artist that’s looking for direction? This is kevin, barbara, ll and my new show, coffee talk three point, always your new best friend. Tune in live to hear successful professional artists and their inspiring real life adventures. Mondays at two p m eastern, right here at talking alternative dot com stand. Wait, no this’s, the same way we’re hosting part of my french dinner city guests come from all over the world, from mali to new caledonia, from paris to keep back french is that common language. Yes, they all come from different cultures, background or countries, and it comes desires to make new york they’re home. Listen to them. Share this story. Join us, a part of my french new york city. Every monday from one to two p, m. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Hey, hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Oppcoll what? What? What specifics can we leave? Give the non-profits around our f p planning. So creation so very important. Assess whether the rv is necessary or not. My take their two things that in general there’s a dollar amount relative to your total revenue that’s going to justify doing the rpg? Determine what? That is really another thing that’s kind of abusive to the vendors is you have a twenty thousand dollar project and the vendor is used to doing fifty one hundred hundred fifty thousand dollar project it’s not worth their time to answer the our feet that’s work they’re doing without getting paid for it. So you want to make sure that there is some value to vendor in taking the risk of the answers are api. They’ll put the hours putting the time means yes. Okay. Okay, so, so being part of this is be respectful to the vendors. And you know, if this is a simply project and not that high dollar, then just go straight to the vendor interviews. Don’t do the rp process. Don’t make him look that hard. Okay, value to it. Okay. Other other advice? What else? What else could we be doing better the when you do have the valid or if he makes sure that you’ve got the right questions and they’re not the ones there, you know, and just the right ones. I think there is if you go look for examples of our apiece on the web, you get one’s written by very large companies that are sixty pages long. I think in a lot of our cases with the work that we’re doing this non-profits we don’t have to write sixty page long are appease, we can keep the questionnaire is shortened just what they need to be. I’ve done our peace for large dollar projects, but they’ve really only been one or two page question because because that told me what i needed to know to move forward well, let’s, explore this a little more what other advice to have around questions that don’t really belong that you think, are there often that you see often? Well, again, i think comes too. You wantto ask what you know, not ask what you don’t know so again in that kind of web, our fee, you know? All right? Or let me even back off again with myself feeling example, i didn’t ask every vendor if their sails for certified i didn’t ask if they, you know, do you know how to do this? That or the other detailed thing in sales for us? I asked broader questions for hyre level skills and ask for examples again because, you know, i didn’t want just putting questions for the sake of having questions if the vendor is on the sale, i found all these vendors through sales force af exchange, they’re certified yeah, okay, yeah, anything that i didn’t need to ask. I didn’t ask so again, focus the questions generally you could assume if you’re picking the vendors were going to send the rp two, is supposed to just posting rp publicly and both are valid ways to go. But, you know, you really could make some assumptions that they’re going to have this that or the other thing and not necessarily make them answer questions on necessary. I do like to ask questions like particularly if i’m going for some kind of there’s a sport contract following its avenger than to rely on past the initial install what? The rate of turnover is the questions like that. So you, khun gouge the stability of the company. There are different types of r f peace. Yes. Okay, let’s, talk about some of different types. What are they, um how do you categorize? Ok, so i work in technology, and i see two general types. One is for product ones for services to a very different and, you know, again with the products i think you want to ask. Actually ask a lot of questions on day one of the reasons you want to do that. You’re looking for a new phone system. It’s very important to you. They’d have certain types of conference calling functionality. Or maybe it does calls center. You know, there are things that your particular looking for for your organization. So you ask every one of those questions. Do it in a way that simple. The answer that they can check a box or, you know, just say yes. No, um, you know, again that’s the way you be nice with a lot of questions, everything they demolish, everything doesn’t have to be a narrow exactly. And then once you decide on the vendor include the r f p response as an amendment to the contract so they’re accountable for what they said their system could do in the ar fi. O interesting. Okay, that sounds like that’s very good advice. Other other something else and different tight around different types is just product versus services bilich anything else that you want to leave people with around labbate i’m kind of okay, okay, um, what if? Well, i guess let’s get to what the ultimate benefit of all of this is if you have smarter or f p’s, we’re going toe is going to be hiring the better the better providers. Well, i mean that, you know, the goal is for the non-profit to get the return on investment on, you know, we’re spending a lot of money on this project that’s why we’re doing the therapy in the first place. We want to make sure that when it’s all said and done, we haven’t wasted that money, the two risks icy or one that you make a big investment in my case in technology, and then that technology is rolled out in such a way that it’s not useful to people it’s not used you’ve made the big investment. You haven’t gotten the functionary that you were seeking that’s one problem the other night where we see is that we haven’t really picked the right vendor. The project has become a money pit that we’re now thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds thousands over what we wanted to pay software evaluation for major systems for your new fund-raising system for, you know, your new website something that is a big investment for the organization in a very important project provoc can’t can’t be decided on by one or two people in a room somewhere e i mean project’s go much better if more people are involved at the start of them in the evaluation in determining the needs and entering what’s important product demos are great opportunities to educate staff about what the software could do for them because most people go into a software project thinking, i know what i like in my current product. Does the new product do the same things? But the question really should be, how could this new product give me more capabilities? Mohr strategic possibilities and my existing software did and going to the demos and seeing you know what the president is going to show, you can spark the imagination. Okay, having this many people in that room as possible. Okay, now your program is an hour and a half, so i know we haven’t exhausted this. What more can we? I mean, your your workshop is going to be so what more can you can you share? I’m leaving it open to you. What more can you tell us that we haven’t talked about my pushed any anti seizure shin is to do about food four, five minutes worth of presentation, so you’re right. I have more than this, okay? And then open up for a good discussion and in this case, because we’ve got vendors versus staff and it’s a controversial topic, i’m hoping for some violence. You are? Yeah, we’ll see. Last year i did one on project planning. I’m agile versus waterfall, too. Computing project management philosophy’s i was hoping that we’d have some, you know, excitement in the room. But no, everybody agreed with me that there’s time for one in time for a male. We’ll see. It wasn’t it wasn’t. It didn’t turn out to be his. Provocative as he would have liked. So maybe, well, maybe start out by moving all the consultants to one side of the room in the staff to the other. Okay. And then looking throw things or something. Okay, well, let’s, leave it there then. Peter campbell is chief information officer for legal services corporation on dh. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc the non-profit technology conference. Thanks so much for being with us, thanks to everybody at the non-profit technology conference and there hosts the non-profit technology network and ten next week, an interview or two from fund-raising day that’s the one day conference in new york city in june, where i got a whole bunch of speaker interviews, i have one or two of those. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com generosity. Siri’s they sponsor non-profit radio generosity siri’s dot com or seven one eight five o six. Nine triple seven our creative producer is clear miree off. Sam liebowitz is our line producer shows social media is by julia campbell of jake campbell, social marketing and the road producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. Our music. This 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. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping countries. People be better business people. Buy-in have you ever decided to reinvent yourself? Are you navigating a new life’s journey? Are you an aspiring artist that’s looking for direction? This is kevin, barbara, ll and my new show, coffee talk three point oh, is your new best friend. Tune in live to hear successful professional artist and their inspiring real life adventures. Mondays at two p m eastern, right here at talking alternative dot com stand wait. You’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. I’m the aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent fund-raising board relations, social media, my guests and i cover everything that small and midsize shops struggle with. If you have big dreams and a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio friday’s one to two eastern at talking alternative dot com. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Napor

Nonprofit Radio for September 19, 2014: Buyer Beware & Managing Your Big Spike

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Don Jean: Buyer Beware

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Don Jean is CEO of FocusedBuyer.com. He’s got tips for buying smarter, from accounting services to zoo animals. How do you start a money-saving buyers club? What belongs in your procurement policy and how do you compare alternative suppliers? Don’s got a good story about horse linament.

 

 

 

Maria Semple: Managing Your Big Spike

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Maria Semple

After a big event, gala, run/walk, open house or ice bucket challenge, you’ve got lots of newly-engaged people. How do you break them down into manageable sets for cultivation? Maria Semple is our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder.

 

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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 pseudo member anus still mastitis if i had to form the words to say you missed today’s show hyre beware don gene is ceo of focusedbuyer dot com he’s got tips for buying smarter from accounting services to zoo animals what belongs in your procurement policies and how do you compare alternative suppliers also managing your big spike after a big event gala run walk open house ice bucket challenge you’ve got lots of newly engaged people how do you break them down into manageable sets for cultivation? Maria simple is our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder on tony’s take two get off! Ellis is back, responsive by generosity siri’s they host multi charity five k runs and walks. I’m very glad that don jean is with me, he’s, a ceo and co founder of focusedbuyer dot com, he has many years of experience with big us and uk businesses routinely buying billions of dollars of goods and services. He’s, a member of the institute of supply management and cornell university’s athletic hall of fame dahna jean welcome to the show. Good morning, tony. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you and your non-profit radio colleagues. Cool. Thank you very much. My pleasure to have you. We’re talking about buying buyer beware, but you like to call it procurement. What? Why is that? Well, procurement takes in all the aspects of purchasing from the time that you’re thinking about purchasing a product or service for your organization to actually contracting for it, to the performance of the suppliers around the contract, to the payment of the invoice that submitted by the suppliers to the warehousing of the data around the actual transactions. So it’s the whole process, then so buying would be very limited. Part of will be one part of the entire procurement process, i guess. Is that right? Yes. The buying the buying process tony’s is just the actual transaction of saying i want to buy this and a supplier saying i’ll supply it and then that happening. Okay, so there’s a rationale, because on non-profit radio we have jargon, jail and right out i didn’t. I hate to put you in. Jargon jail. So i’m trying to explain why we were going to use the word procurement instead of just buying oh, okay. All right. So you’re not in jargon jail. You could have been, but i i i was i was lenient. But what? Your step? All right, why do we need a procurement policy? Well, first of all, any organization or business needs a policy which is a statement of principles or intent or protocols to run the organization and business and these policies, they include the fundamentals of operating in a foreign organization or business such as who’s in charge. Uh, also includes well established best practices and or guidelines such as who raises money. How is money raised? How is money spent? It includes the procedures than that. I’ll allow you to carry out the policies, and it applies to all the state color’s involved. So this was the leadership board members, employees, customers and suppliers, and it’s, a clearly documented policy and communicated to everyone in some cases, uh, people who received the communication are actually asked to sign and acknowledge that they received it. A purchasing policy is really a subset of an overall policy. And it’s around how employees and volunteers spend money for products and services needed to run the operations and administrative functions of organizations or businesses, and the purchasing folly should include managing the money to be spent accounting for the money that has been spent and ensuring the money is being spent as wisely as possible. All right, don, we’re going, we’re gonna have a chance. We’re gonna get into the details get too far ahead of ourselves. So even a small mid size shop, i mean, if they’re not spending tens of thousands of dollars on on purchases, do they still need to have a procurement policy? Yes, they do, tony and the reason for that is if you look at television or radio, listen to radio and read newspapers, you’re fine, and i’m looking at stuff on the internet. You’re finding that even in small businesses small organization, small non-profits there seems to be a trend where someone is being cheated, either with in the organization itself or a supplier is cheating the organization. Oh, and it all comes to buyer beware and it’s important that everyone have guidelines and rules so that the buyer beware process does not come into play regards to the size of the organization. All right, so organizations need to be thinking strategically, carefully about purchasing, even if we’re talking about just like paper, and, um, i don’t know, maybe some consulting services and, you know, small, small purchases that typically now they’re probably just going online and buying from a source that they’ve been using for a long time, or they go to the store and use their credit card, even even in those cases, they need to be thinking more about this whole process, right? So from from a standpoint of small purchases in my investigations, i’ve found across a broad range of organizations, including non-profits that somebody could be paying anywhere from nine dollars, a ream for a ream of paper, five hundred sheets of paper down to three dollars, and oftentimes it’s, you know, people say, well, nine dollars, i can pay nine dollars, but you maybe should be paying three dollars, and that all is tied up into making sure you have a process in place, the other the other issue is how do you generate economy of scale? So just because you’re a small non-profit doesn’t mean that there aren’t other small non-profits that are not in competition with you in terms of what you do, where you could, uh, collaborates and increase the economy of scale of your purchases in a blanket order process a process where each individual non-profit could buy from it, but get a better price for everyone. Alright, so that would be like buying club you’re saying? Well, it would be it would be a buy-in club, and it could be organized among the non-profits or it can be organized by a third party supplier. Okay, cool. All right, well, i’m going toe to spend some time talking about that. Let’s, let’s, get back to the procurement policy, which we were starting to get into. Why don’t you just take off? What? What? Some what belongs in that policy? Sure. So, uh, purchasing procurement policy should include being in line with the financial controls of the organizations. So for instance, the financial controls may say we want a three way matching process to assure that there’s no fraud or illegalities in the procurement to pay process. And we know that the fraud and evil of gowdy’s they happen on a regular basis. But the three way matching process is something that says a person. Who’s authorized the purchase. Creates the purchase order someone else who’s authorized to receive the product or service. Actually documents that receive receipt and someone else who is involved with finance and the accounts payable process actually transact the payment of the of the envoys. Right. Wait. I have a purchase order in place. And when they have a receipt covered dahna done way too much into the weeds. I just want you to please just take off. Just take off major items like like credit cards. I’m sure belong in there. You know, just just what s the major time from competition belongs in there buying from competent. Okay. Okay. With competitions when i mean it was competent. Okay, conducting negotiations belongs in there buying. How do you buy from supportive stakeholders buying from employees and their affiliates, such as family members. Latto how do you define relationships between suppliers and vendors and the persons who are buying? What are some of the conflicts of interests? For instance, two employees have some type of ownership privately in a supplier or is there they have some public ownership where they own some stock in a public company? Also around the security of information in terms of how information is communicated to suppliers back and forth and whether there needs to be a non disclosure agreement, things such as gratuities and quid pro quo. You know our crew tootie’s accepted by by employees and quid pro quo meaning employee says, hey, i’ll give you this contract if you give me four tires for my jeep, okay, meals and entertainment no, if you’re invited to a ball game or a golf outing, or maybe you’re going out weekly for lunches and dinners and there’s no real business reason for that it’s just become habit trips to places of business, the cross and reimbursement of that when you go visit a supplier and compliance with rules and regulations around safety, health, environmental and governmental types of regulations, and then how do you capture the content, the data in the information around all of your procurement transactions, and last but not least settling disputes and disagreements? How does that process work and unfold between buyers and sellers? All right, we’re not gonna have time to cover all that, and i hope you acknowledge thiss can be kind of boring stuff. Do you realize that you realize you do? Realize that okay, i do realize, ok, we’re going. We’re going to hit just a couple of those that are probably the most popular let’s start with credit cards, which, you know, you don’t even call them credit card, you call them procurement cards? Yeah, this is a credit instrument that is used the organizations and businesses want to cut down on the actual, uh, transactions inside the procurement process. So they used credit cards where stuff happens on the phone call between the buyer and seller, and i’ve been involved in credit card purchases that have reached thirty thousand transactions a year in one hundred twenty million dollars worth of procurement. And in those scenarios, the difficult part is determining that the credit card’s been used appropriately by the holder of the credit card. In one particular case, i recall that a particular employee every month was buying oil, and we couldn’t figure out why there was a need for this much oil. So we said we’d look into it a little bit, and it turns out that the person was actually buying horse liniment forces for their horse farm horse liniment the horse. The horse liniment story. Yeah. Okay, that’s a good one. So what? We have just about a minute or so before first break, so keep that in mind and then we’ll have more time after the break. But what? What can we do to make sure that credit cards, procurement cards if if you prefer, are used appropriately? The details around the transaction are most important and what happens with a credit card? You get a summary statement at the end of of each month, and then employees and sometimes financial people are asked to latto to audit those to make sure it’s correct. But the problem is that summary statements don’t give you a lot of detail, so it would be helpful if you could come up with the process a business process that makes it easy for people to create a ghost purchase order and send it to accounts payable with line item detail so that the accounts payable, people can match it one for one with the accounting summary statement let’s go out for a break, and when we come back, don, you’re not going to keep talking about that. You’re talking about different levels of control and i want to you. Want to talk about how that fits within a small organization that it isn’t gonna have made very well, not have accounts payable, so stay with us. We’re going to keep keep talking about buyer beware. Thank you didn’t think getting dinged. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get me to thinking. E-giving cubine this’s. The way we’re hosting part of my french nufer city guests come from all over the world, from mali to new caledonia, from paris to keep back french is that common language. Yes, they all come from different cultures, background or countries, and it comes tires to make new york they’re home. Listen to them, shed their story, join us, pardon my french new york city every monday from one to two p m. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll duitz welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent sorry, i can’t send live listener love were pre recorded today, but i do love our live listeners, and of course, i send pleasantries to those who are listening to the podcast. All right, don let’s, let’s continue with the credit cards. So your concern is that there be oversight of these purchases, but what if we don’t have an accounts payable office? Well, normally the small non-profit will have someone who is responsible for the financial aspects of the business and what it would, what you would do there. In that particular cases, you would put a policy and procedure in place that the person who was using the credit card had to generate the ghost purchase order and do the match and send the documentation to that one person for a final review. All right, so there has to be some review of these procurement card or credit card purchases. Yeah, i mean, like i said before, tony, every day you’re seeing people have stealing thirty thousand dollars or embezzling one hundred thousand dollars or doing something illegal for ten thousand dollars and when you get involved in looking at how that all happened, it happens in the procurement of payment process that’s where the controls breakdown that’s where the opportunity to at least do some cursory auditing is is possible to prevent that. At one particular case, i’m aware of a a small company who i had a system in place, and i suggested that they do something different. And they said, now we’re happy with what we’re doing. And just recently i read in the paper where they were embezzled for about six hundred thousand dollars in their procurement payment process. Oh my did you send an email saying i told you so? I did not know i would have i would have that would have been the subject with capital caps with a exclamation marks. I told you so. Yeah, it’s amazing tony. Just what? What folks are doing these days? I’m not sure whether it’s the economy or or whether it’s the state of you know how we live these days, but everybody’s looking for an angle and everybody’s looking for finding something for free. And unfortunately, in the procurement to pay process, lax controls give you ability to come up with what people say this was found money for myself? Six hundred thousand is about right? I mean, i would i would do it. I would risk my reputation for six hundred thousand it’s the five and ten thousand. You know, the twenty thousand? I just don’t. I don’t think it’s worth it. If you’re gonna do it, do it big. You know, it’s got to be deep deep into six figures before i would risk my reputation. I mean, everyone’s got their price. I’m giving people an idea where mine is. So you know, you know howto get my attention on. Be suspicious of people zoho own horses, right? Right. Right. Let’s move. Teo buyers, this idea of a buyer’s club. What could’ve non-profit do? How would they reach out to affiliated do or what? Not not even affiliate? Just other non-profits too joined their purchases and and have some leverage. Well, it’s an interesting question. So in the world of chambers of commerce, many of them, whether they’re local or state, have sub chapter’s are set up for non-profit. And they meet on a regular basis to discuss various types of opportunities and processes were together they can improve. Their businesses, they go through legal aspects of setting up a non-profit how you, how you go after funding in terms of better ways and to how you can join together for economy, of scale of purchases. So that’s one way another way is from time to time there are expose, which are just for non-profits in fact, i just attended one this weekend here in the lehigh valley of pennsylvania, where there were probably twenty five non-profits who had tables in a large mall right shopping mall, and i visited each one of the tables, and it became clear to me that when i asked the question around the economy of scale, they all had the same answer. We don’t know how to generate economy of scale, and i said, well, we could do it with just twenty five non-profits here in the mall and, you know, we’ll work on that with you, and they said, wow, that’d be great, you know, give me a follow up call so there’s a number of different ways where economy of scale can be grown all right, do you object to me calling this a buyer in a buying club? Is that? Ok for you with you. I find, you know, some people call it cooperative supply. Yeah, that doesn’t sound it’s cold. You guys have a way of making this sound dull. I mean, there’s there’s good information here, but cooperative supply. I don’t think you’re gonna get too much people too many people’s attention, but if you call it a buying club, i think that people that’s something people can grasp a little easier than cooperative supply. So i’m okay with buy-in club. All right, thank you. So, do we have to weigh reach out to non-profits whether they’re in expo with us or that we just know them, they’re in our community, whatever. And we just say, you know, maybe we can collaborate on buying together and save some money, isn’t that easy? It’s that simple, but what it takes is that in a non-profit it takes a decision around, you know, who is going to take that charge? You know, you know, who’s doing the buying currently in some small non-profits you have several people in several different areas making the purchases and doing the procurement for for the non-profit and other non-profits you have one person and all that stuff is filtered through that one person to make the procurement, so a lot depends on the organizational set up. And but once the organization set up is determined, okay, it’s a matter of reaching out to those people cross the non-profits and facilitating a buying club atmosphere, i think that’s great, i mean, there’s there’s considerable money to be saved in day to day purchases if if non-profits collaborate that way. Yeah, there’s there’s no question that there is and i would say hundreds of millions of dollars are left on the table because many non-profits don’t act in that mode. In fact, i know i know non-profits who are organized locally, but they also have st chapters. In some cases they have national chapters and there’s. They’re not currently doing any buying club type of collaboration let’s move to exploring multiple suppliers because that’s something that a buying club could do. But even a non-profit acting on its own should be doing why better tohave multiple suppliers of the same thing? Well, one of the reasons is that many suppliers have different types of products and services that give you the same end result, but in some cases are less costly because they’re more efficient and how they accomplished making the product or providing the service so it’s important to reach out to a number suppliers to make sure you you have a cross section of the suppliers, capabilities, and and the innovations that they have in terms of bringing products and services to you. It’s also a good idea to be planning your purchases so that you don’t end up in a crisis buying situation. Yeah, that’s one of the major miscues of, uh, many folks who are in the world of procuring and who were doing purchasing, whether you’re a small company organization and non-profit social organization, people do not plan their purchases. So what happens is you get to the end of the line when he i really need this tomorrow or needed a few days, and they find out that, you know, in order to get it, they have to pay a premium or they can’t get what they really need, and they have to substitute something that is okay but doesn’t do what they needed to do. It’s it’s the worst aspect of procurement when you do not plan for the purchase and you run out of time. You’re in a negotiation weakness every time with the supplier, vendor or seller who you’re going to and say, i need this. Tomorrow, you’re going to pay more money for it, it’s, just that simple. So you’re either going to spend time planning or you’re going to spend money, but you’re going to spend one or the other exactly that’s, exactly right, tony in. And unfortunately, yeah, waiting to the last minute is easy. Yeah, okay, sitting down and planning something out takes a little bit of time and takes a little bit of moxie in order to say, ok, what do i really want? But don? Yes. Okay, alright, i’m sorry. So so yeah, so you’re like a sari is going to plan ahead of time. And as as you are trying to find alternative suppliers, how would we go about doing that? I mean, we buy all our office products from staples dot com. We’re going to find alternatives. Well, alternatives that alternatives can be found in a number of different places. The’s, air capable and qualified potential suppliers. Of course, whenever you reach out to look for suppliers, not only do you have to find out who they are and where they operate from, but then you have to find out if they’re capable and qualified to be able to supply to but there’s without giving anybody a plug there’s something called thomas register dot net, which has i think that was a plo. Thousands of suppliers, thomas registered dot net. I think that was a plug done and the other the other areas are the chamber of commerce members. When you belong to a chamber of commerce, you can be involved in just buy-in doing work inside the chamber and getting to meet all of the different members who can be the pliers and cellars and it doesn’t mean that you have to buy everything from staples stables that doesn’t necessarily have have the best prices. I can tell you that just from my own research, staples and other large big box stores have good prices, but not necessarily the best prices and not necessarily the best merchandise. Three other place you could go is you can use search engines such as yahoo, google or being which khun khun xero you in on particular suppliers in particular areas, there are a number of small business expose that happened regularly. In fact, i attended one in new york city not too long ago at around peered ninety, which was an excellent place to meet new suppliers uh, with new processes and products on then there’s a number of diversity organizations and expose where people are trying to, uh, improve and increase the amount of spend that’s happening with diversity suppliers such as minority suppliers, women, own suppliers, veteran own suppliers and so forth. So on there’s something called mcrae’s book, which is another listing of suppliers it’s like thomas register and, of course, there’s always the angie’s list for services both local. And statewide. And then there’s something called institute supply management, of which i’m a member of which, which has literally hundreds of thousands of members across many types of products and services. And then there’s the referrals from, you know, friends, and and also from fellow non-profits i have i have a referral for office supplies. I happened like w b mason and so in i like them that their prices are lower. Yeah. W donations a great, uh, great supplier. And there very good competition to the other big box stores. Yeah, for sure. All right. We have just about two minutes left. Done. Once we have all these alternative suppliers in just a couple minutes. How do we decide between them? Well, the first, the first step, tony, is too. You need to create. They clearly defined request for proposal that levels the playing field so that everyone you reach out to knows exactly what you want to buy. That’s, that’s really important and and there’s. Lots of things you need to consider in terms of putting a request for proposal together. You know, for instance, let’s say, you’re putting a roof on your house, you know, you could get single warranties that air. Twenty, twenty five, thirty years. Okay, but in addition to that, you can get warranties that cover mold and mildew. So some singles, you know, we’ll give you a ten year warranty inside the long warranty for moldy mildew damage, and some will give you curling damage against sun damage. So you need to, uh, make sure you have a clearly defined request for proposal. You need to take into account the things that you need, uh, and want okay to get the best value for your money. And then once you do that and you get it out and you get the offer’s back, the next step is to make sure you do a standard kind of an evaluation of those potential suppliers. No, some type of format that allow youto lineup the proposals next to each other and evaluate them. I’ve used something called critical success factors which say, these are the important things that need to happen and does this supply or meet them? And then what are the key performance indicators or how do they meet them? And then i line those up across the different suppliers. It’s a it’s. A formal process. But again, it’s like planning. Okay, if you plan it well, you have the opportunity to save money. And if you evaluate supplier proposals well, you have the opportunity to save money. Don, we have to leave it there. I know you want to leave people with your email address. If they’d like more information. What is that it’s done at focused buyer dot com. Alright. And the site is focusedbuyer dot com. Check that out, don gene. Thank you very, very much. Thanks very much, tony. My pleasure to have you take care, everyone. How thoughtful. Yes do take care. Thank you. Don generosity siri’s they host multi charity five k runs and walks. You know them? They have a charity support team as part of the process when you are one of their charity partners and that support team helps you with your fund-raising the’s are people that you talk to on the phone. You talk to them. You don’t have to email them. You don’t the chat with them. You can talk to them. I like that. They will help you get more runners and help you motivate the runners that you get. So that there’s more donors for your non-profit that’s the whole purpose of this event. Talk to dave lynn he’s the ceo see about becoming one of their charity partners. They have events coming up in new jersey, miami, new york city and philadelphia. You can talk to dave at seven one eight five o six. Nine triple seven or the web generosity siri’s dot com can we get off? Alice’s back second week in a row. I’ve asked that question. I kept the video on top at twenty martignetti dot com for another week. I’m interested in what you think about the way l s has been treated in the media. What do you think? I think we should give them a chance to manage this enormous spike in money and donors let’s see how they do. What do you think i’m interested? Please comment on the video. Tell me what you think. It’s at tony martignetti dot com and that is tony’s. Take two for friday nineteenth of september thirty seventh show of the year. Maria simple. You know her she’s, the prospect finder she’s a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot. Com and her book is panning for gold. Find your best donorsearch prospects now she’s our doi end of dirt, cheap and free. You can follow maria on twitter at maria simple glamarys simple. Welcome back. Hello there. How are you? I’m doing very well. How are you? You’ve been sailing. I have been sailing. It’s been a fantastic summer. How is yours? My summer was very nice. You were you were sailing for a couple of weeks and it occurred to me that when you’re sailing your pretty. Um all right, what i want to say you’re at the mercy of the weather. I definitely hear priorities completely change and focus when you’re on the water. We spent about ten days on our sail boats, of course, over the course of time, anything could happen with wind and weather, etcetera. So we got very lucky. For the most part, it was very good. How do you know you’re going to get back home on time? Well, way build in plenty of extra buffer time to have to stay an extra day or two someplace if the weather doesn’t get bad. But we do have a built in gps, so it kind of tells us what’s how long it’ll take us to get from point a to point b do you also have a built in engine? Oh, definitely built in and you do aren’t. So is that considered cheating for sailors? If you if you resort to your engine or now, not if you need to get out of a storm. That’s for sure. It’s not okay, that’s a good thing to have. All right, you have some thoughts generated from the l s ice bucket challenge what’s on your mind. Well, you know, i was thinking about it and thinking about how you know that that happened on such a magnitude and scale that, you know, most non-profits are not going to experience, but i was thinking about how this could sort of applied in non-profits who we’re getting into a season now in the fall, for example, where you might be hosting a run or a walk or your galas are coming up, certainly in the fall and spring there’s a lot of them. So i was thinking about, you know, how do you sort of manage this hopefully new influx of names that are going to be captured by your organization so first and foremost, i hope everybody’s capturing all of that information when people register your collecting those those critical data points that you want to make sure that you have obviously, you know, name, but address a cz well as where they’re employed. So if you can at least collect that piece of information that’s going to fill in another piece of the puzzle for you, should that person kind of moved through your pipeline to be more of, ah major gift prospect or a plan giving prospect at some point? And of course, you’re also going to collect email address kapin absolutely, and i want to stay engaged with them and, you know, people are usually feeling pretty good right after interacting with your organization through a walk or a run or a gala so it’s an opportunity to really capitalize on their good feelings that they have for the organization, so i would recommend that you actually have a smaller, maybe syriza’s two or three cultivation events, at least one cultivation event. But if you’re you’re a larger organization or, like a less for examples national in scope, right? So you’ve gotta have the a regional affiliates getting involved if you are a national organization, but you want to think about what could we be doing to host smaller cultivation events and get these people further engaged with the organization? So certainly people that are going to show up to a subsequent event, you know, as far as i’m concerned, all right? They’re showing additional interest in the organization on dh they are probably worthy of of doing a little bit more in depth research on before coming to that second follow-up say cultivation event that you would be having all right? So events very good for cultivation. What else? What else? How else can we sort of breakdown this file of hundreds, you know, because we’re going to keep it to scale the audience hundreds, maybe even into the thousands? How else can we sort of figure out who did continue to cultivate among this big, big news spiking in donors? We’ve got or or yeah, donors or runners, walkers, whatever. So if you happen to have a relationship already with a ah company that provides elektronik screening of your database, this would be an excellent opportunity to screen some new names very similar to what a college or university does every fall, right? They take the names of all the incoming parents and the students, the parents of students, and they make sure that they’re there screening that to try and figure out, how are we going to start engaging these people from their point of entry with our organization? So you want to kind of have that mindset? So if you have, you know, ah, relationship or maybe this is the time to start one with an electron ic screening company, that would be the ideal right? Just screen all the names and try and let those best prospects filter to the top for you that way, and those would then be the people that we would invite to the cultivation events you’re suggesting i would definitely invite to those top prospects to your follow-up event something you want to extend an invitation to a many people, as you can obviously, um, uh, depending on space and so forth is to where you’re going to be having these follow-up events. But if it’s going to be okay in a in a boardmember home, or maybe a boardmember has ah. Ah, a membership to a local country club and would be willing to host a small cultivation event there you want to think about, you know, managing your audience sizes, but for sure it’s an opportunity to screen them, try and figure out, and and if you don’t have a budget for doing a screening of paid screening service, you know, think about there’s, you know, a few sites that you could go to that are either going to be free or very low cost that are going to at least point you in the right direction and try and help you figure out, you know, where you want to start prioritizing this new pool of names that have been interacting with your organization? Um, you want me to kind of go through your arse, and i would do if i didn’t have a budget at all and screen some of those names on manually? Yeah, you’re are doi end of dirt, cheap and free. So you gotta you gotta live up to it, and then and then now these may very well be sites that we’ve talked about in the past, so if we have, you know, don’t don’t you have to go into a lot of detail, but definitely that’s ah, share a couple of sight, right? So obviously google, right? So you want to definitely google their name, make sure you’re putting parentheses around their name so that you’re researching their name as as an entirety, as opposed to any place that maria or simple would be mentioned on the web. You want to make sure you’re you’re researching the name as an entirety? You don’t mean you want to try and figure out, you know, somebody’s property where they’re living their primary and secondary properties. Certainly their primary property is probably, in most families that’s going to be the largest asset that is owned by by sea, individual or the couple. So you want to try and figure out a little bit more information about the value of of the home that they’re in. So whether you’re looking at a property assessment database to try and figure that out, or if you look at something like zillow dot com again, if you’ve collected that address information at the point of registration, you’ll have that so, you know, it is possible to manually do a lot of what thes elektronik screening services do it’s just going to take manpower so you might want to think about in advance of that event. Well, who’s going to be available, what hands do we have available to us as volunteers? Maybe you’ve got some board members who would be willing to step forward and take a list of, you know, names say, you know, we’re going to be assigning you a list of ten names to research, and we’re going to give you a set of sites that we need you to go to after the event and then start doing some of this research on our behalf, and so certainly property assessments would be one of them, okay, you want to try and figure out something about their property? Um, lincoln would be another good place try and figure out where the person might be employed, and so that would be giving you some information about whether they have their own business, whether they are tied to a larger corporation that might have matching gift opportunities that might have other opportunities to engage that corporation say through, ah, corporate giving program or a formal foundation, and certainly, if that individual happens to come up as a corporate insider. Now you’ve got a pretty good prospect there, because now this is somebody you can tap into for a gift of stock to the organization and gift of appreciated securities, and that benefits them by donating that. And, you know, we’ve we’ve talked about that before in terms of seeking out those types of corporate insiders to engage with your organization. Yeah, a couple of things, maria, you said, putting names in parentheses when you’re searching, you use google is example, but i think you meant quotes, right? Putting them oh, i did mean quotations. Yes, i didn’t mean to say parentheses sametz quote, yeah, sorry also you you read my mind thinking about boardmember xero there a couple of ways that board members could be involved or other volunteers don’t have to be, but but i was thinking of board members, especially for hosting the cultivation events. But then, as you said, also doing some of the from this follow-up research, these could be very good tasks for key volunteers board members? Absolutely, absolutely, because this is something that they could do on their own time from their home and justice if you’ve got that that pool, that manpower pool waiting, post event and knowing that they’re going to be having ten to fifteen names, whatever it is, however many names you’re going to be, kind of, you know, giving each volunteer to manage just pulling together some research on this is a great way to get them involved, you know, especially those board members who say, you know, i’ll do anything for the organization just don’t make me ask for money. Well, this’s a function that totally supports the fund-raising function, however, they don’t have to get involved in making the ass oppcoll now i’m not trying to get boardmember zao out of doing that, of course, but you do have some people who might just be better on that behind the scenes, providing you with that back-up and now you’ve got some board members who are going to be engaged at a different level and might say, well, gee, got, you know, i didn’t know we could so simply find out this this additional information that’s going really leverage and propel our fundraising efforts to a whole different level, so i would imagine that just getting them involved. In a small pool of names like this for them to research that they will then say, you know, what else can i do to help our development efforts with? With regard to research? I’ve had so many guests on saying how beneficial it is to plan your after event activities before the event, and i think that that benefit is emerging, because if you’re thinking about what you want to do to cultivate people who were engaged at this event, if you’re thinking about that in advance, then you’re going to know what data points you’d like to know in advance, and you can include that in your registration. So for instance, you might then asking the registration, where do you work? And some people may refuse to tell you for some reason, but a bunch of people probably won’t refuse. And so if you’re planning in advance to know what you’re going to do, then you know the data you’re going to need. You can put that into the upfront registration and other activities early on, right? Right? I mean, in this day and age, there’s absolutely no reason why any registration process for an event should be. Done manually at all he’s got so many different event registration systems out there, but you know, you’re able to collect every one of these data points, and like you said, you can make something like collecting their company data anon optional field, not a a mandatory required field because don’t forget, they’re there might be a lot of retired people right attending your event so it wouldn’t be appropriate for them to be filling that field in any way. So definitely always provide that optional field of collecting that data point because you just don’t know where, down the line that data points going become crucial for your your development efforts. The very best of the sites that will help you with your events, of course, is generosity siri’s, and you’ll be able to capture all this at the front end and with the help of their support team, you’ll figure all this out in the beginning so you can have valuable cultivation after then. All right, maria was very important. We got to take a break. When we come back. You and i will, of course. Keep talking about managing this big spike in donors. Stay with us. Dafs you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll hyre have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Lively conversation, top trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m lawrence paige, no knee author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. Dahna i still wish lawrence would pronounce his name panjwani be so much nicer than paige nani like martignetti i would never do that, but martignetti panjwani would be beautiful. Maria semple, we can’t do anything to change your name to make your italian, but no, but i am one hundred percent italian. So mei mei my maiden name is mackay. So i’ve seen that right. Maria mattei. Sam simple. I’ve seen that around. Yeah, so i totally agree with you. Yeah, tony, he should definitely be saying it panjwani i have to petition. Lawrence, do you know lawrence panjwani ideo yeah. Wait. Maybe if we just start using his name that way, so he forced into it. He won’t know. We’re talking about him. He’ll think we’re talking about some other larry. Larry panjwani sells salami down the street. All right, what else have we got for managing this big spike in and donors or attendees to our to our event. Well, you know, i was just thinking as we were going to break about, you know, you were talking about, make sure you have that follow-up event sort of planned and so forth beforehand. And i was thinking, well, you know, one of the things that you’ve heard, i’m sure in the past before either from mayor from other guests is that if you ask for money, they’ll give you advice, but if you’re bringing people in to ask him for advice will ultimately want to give you money, right? So you’ve heard that i’m sure a ton of time, so it would be really fun may be at this event tohave, you know, you’re photos and videos you’ve had a guest on in the past that turned me on to something called an emoto that you can pull together photos into these really cool videos afterward, but you bring them together and then just get them into an environment where maybe you’re asking them about what did you think went really well with our gail? Oh, our walk, you know, you’re kind of, you know, playing off of the good feelings that they’ve had engaged them further, but, you know, in terms of additional research, we were talking about corporate stock, for example, you know, try and determine if there are corporate insider and then before i get thrown into jargon jail just to remind everybody if you’re a corporate insider at a at a public company that means that you are considered to be a you know, on the board of directors or the top executives at a company, or you have been owned ten percent or more of the outstanding stock of that company. That means you’ve got to report all your trading activity. So all of this data is available on the seas, database, securities and exchange commission, so that’s sec dot gov or on the corporate website itself, there’s usually a tab called investor relations, and right there they’re going to be listing all of the corporate insiders and so forth. So again, if you’ve collected that data point to find out that a person works for x y z corporation, visit that corporate website, go to the investor relations tab, click into their their their latest proxy statement that they filed usually comes out once a year, very often in the in the late spring or summer is when people are filing the company’s heir filing these proxy statements and look at that last proxy might be known on the website as by its technical number, which is death d f fourteen, eh? So look at the proxy and try and find that person’s name, do a search to a control f on your keyboard, input the person’s name and see if their name shows up on that corporate proxy. All right? And that is all for the potential of generating gifts of stock from that person that’s, right? That’s, right? So and if the person is listed on the corporate proxy, their age is going to be listed there. Toni and so you know what that could mean for planned e-giving purposes? Well, if they’re sixty or over that they could potentially be a plant giving prospect long, longer term. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So then you would think about ok. Well, if you’ve got a database that’s allowing you now to do that level of segmentation and tagging and flagging, he’d be able to at least say, okay, well, we you know, because seen that he’s listed on this corporate database that as an insider we’ve got an age listed of, you know, say, fifty eight, fifty nine whatever, you might want to flag them as somebody who could be a potential that you would want to start talking to are cultivating in that direction for for plant giving down the road. Okay, that all sounds very good. We still have ah, a couple of minutes left. Any other ideas that we haven’t talked about for managing this big spike? Well, you know, you’ve got your local newspapers write, um and you’re actually or your previous guest was talking about local chambers as being ah place to look for individuals, so find out, usually through your library website, you can have access to the local newspapers in their entirety for free, so run their names through the through the newspaper database to see if they’ve been profiled by another non-profit or maybe they’ve been given some sort of a citizen of the year award. Those types of biographical articles are great because they’re going to point you to information about those familial relationships, whether they’re married, how many children they have, what communities they live in and so forth and give you a lot of great background information. So, um, i would say, make sure you’re also researching as one of your stopping point if they’re mentioned in any of the local press you’re thinking about this was all generated by the ice bucket challenge for ah amigo, traffic, lateral sclerosis, what’s what’s your thoughts on how the media that the media is just reporting, but how people are critiquing a less what what do you what do you think? How do you and how do you feel they’re managing this enormous spike that got foisted on them? Very, very, very luckily very luckily indeed, yeah, it’ll be so interesting to see, i think that, you know, everybody, as you said, has their opinion about what should be happening with all of this, and and i agree with you totally let’s let’s see what they do because i’m quite certain that they’re going to be very capable of handling this in the appropriate manner and, um, it, you know, certainly, if they weren’t already engaged with using an electron ic screening service, they will be now. But, you know, it’s it’s an opportunity for us as as professionals who work in the fund-raising arena to kind of look at this is anabel lutely wonderful case study going forward, however it’s going to be handled one way or another, and i’m sure it will be handled very well. I’m part of the american marketing association they have a non-profit conference every year. Ah, and next june or actually july, i think when they have there their conference, i’m really hoping that there’ll be somebody there from this organization speaking because this will be so long, it will be a year after the, you know, the challenge really happens that i’m sure there’s going to be so many wonderful lessons learned even from a marketing standpoint of what to do for further engagement. So i’m taking very much a wait and see approach i’m eagerly awaiting to see how this will all come out myself. Maria simple is the prospect finder you’ll find her at the prospect finder dot com on twitter she’s at maria simple maria, thanks so, so much. Thank you, pleasure always next week your development committee is critical. Greg cohen is from cause effective also an interview from the non-profit technology conference. Or maybe fund-raising day start to bring those to you from fund-raising day back in june. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com remember generosity siri’s, you can have this big spike that marie and i were just talking. About they are at generosity. Siri’s, dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer shows social media is by julia campbell of jake campbell. Social marketing and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. Our music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. E-giving didn’t think dick tooting getting dink, dink, dink, dink. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, wanting to get me to thinking. I think. Come, join us for the thirteenth annual vigil for international peace and ecology on sunday, september twenty one. From nine a, m to six p, m celebration of live music and dance performances spoke a word human-centered ein art installations in a world peace flag ceremony that celebrates the united nations international day of peace. That’s sunday, september twenty one from nine a, m to six p, m central park numbered band shell by the bethesda fountain. For more information or volunteer, go to www. Dot vigil number four. International peace dot org’s that’s, the number four in the earl, or call to want to chip in to five, four, three two that’s a two one, two, triple two, five, four, three two we’ll see you there. Hyre you’re listening to talking on turn their network at www. Dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Talking.