Tag Archives: recruiting

Nonprofit Radio for December 5, 2022: 6 Steps Before You Hire

 

Andrea Hoffer6 Steps Before You Hire

Hiring is rampant because turnover is rampant. You have work to do internally, before you go public with your job posting. Andrea Hoffer, from AHA! Recruiting Experts, talks you through her 6 steps. You can download the first chapter of Andrea’s book, “Hire Higher.” We recorded on a bus in the Israeli desert.

 

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[00:01:10.11] spk_0:
And welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit 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’d suffer the effects of para fia if you touched me with the idea that you missed this week’s show six steps before you hire, hiring is rampant because turnover is rampant, you have work to do internally before you go public with your job posting. Andrea Hoffer from ah ha recruiting experts talks you through her six steps On Tony’s take two lots of opportunities for growth. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o Here is six steps before you hire.

[00:01:57.34] spk_1:
It’s a pleasure to welcome to non profit radio Andrea Hoffer, Andrea is a businesswoman over three decades of experience. She’s managed hundreds of employees and knows firsthand the everyday challenges, motivating a team, exceeding customer expectations and meeting business and revenue goals now Andrea is using her experience to help companies recruit hire and onboard new team members successfully without wasting time or money on those poor hires that don’t work out. Her company is a hot recruiting a AJ they are at aha underscore recruiting and at aha recruiting experts dot com Andrea welcome to nonprofit radio

[00:02:09.12] spk_2:
hi, Tony, I’m really happy to be here. This is, this is pretty cool,

[00:03:41.33] spk_1:
You’re happy in your surprise surprise Andrea and I are on a bus in Israel, we are headed to the dead sea, we met at this course called Israel innovation that she and I are both taking along, with I don’t know seems to be maybe 60 or 70 other people most are not from the US most are from latin America brazil chile Argentina. Uh, but there are also folks from central America Panama, Colombia costa rica. Uh, there’s a woman from Ireland should make sure that we know Ireland is in the house every time we have a meeting. So we’re spending a week together traveling through Israel. Uh, we’ve been in tel Aviv together. Um, today we left tell Aviv came to the negative desert, the desert we visited kibbutz and now we’re on a bus from the kibbutz to the Dead sea where we’re gonna stay overnight in hotels and we are stealing some time on the bus so that Andrea and I can record and I can record because we’re not sure if we’re gonna have time any other time. There might be occasional interruptions, bus noises. And we’re on the bus. Welcome! Welcome. We are talking about the process of discovery, which is the earliest phase, right? This is the earliest phase of

[00:03:50.55] spk_2:
Yes, but what you do before you even put a job ad out there, things you need to think about. So that when you do start recruiting, you’re looking for the for the right person.

[00:04:04.69] spk_1:
Okay, so we’re in introspective exercise in house were strictly in house Discovery and you call this phase Discovery?

[00:04:10.96] spk_2:
Yes.

[00:04:11.69] spk_1:
Why is that?

[00:04:27.93] spk_2:
Because a lot of it you actually know, but you haven’t thought about it, You haven’t asked yourself those questions that you’re discovering this about yourself, about your organization, about the people that work for you and what you want your work culture to look like, what you want your team to look like.

[00:04:34.23] spk_1:
Okay, okay, now one thing I didn’t say in your bio, you are founder and what you what do you call yourself at, recruiting founder and Ceo

[00:04:44.99] spk_2:
founder and Ceo

[00:04:46.08] spk_1:
founder and Ceo

[00:04:47.36] spk_2:
recruiting experts,

[00:04:53.26] spk_1:
recruiting experts. Okay, excellent. Alright, so you have a discovery process, You have a process for this discovery?

[00:04:57.61] spk_2:
Yes. So we have six questions. Um six overall questions that we typically take our clients through and um and then there are lots of questions underneath it to go to go deeper, but I can

[00:05:11.15] spk_1:
to talk to

[00:05:11.99] spk_2:
You about the six,

[00:05:13.17] spk_1:
the six most important and maybe some of my questions will evoke some of your sub questions etcetera. So, okay, so

[00:06:34.06] spk_2:
the first question is really, you know, why does this position exist? What is the main purpose of it? Every position has some reason it exists and it typically in some way will contribute to the bottom line and will contribute to the mission of the company. So it either in some way is gonna save your company money or in some way is going to make the company more money, but it’s usually even bigger than that. And I and I have an example I can share to you. Um, so one example I like to share is an account manager and the job we like to break it into job title, job purpose and then organizational mission. And so the job title of account manager could be the job purpose to ensure client’s expectations are exceeded. Very, you know, it’s very simple. There’s no very high level, no getting this wrong. You know, we tell people don’t worry about getting it right. You’re gonna start, you’re going to tweak it over over time, but just put some thought into it. So you have direction. Um, so the whole purpose of this account manager’s job is to make sure the client’s expectations are exceeded. And then as we go through some of these other questions of these six questions will go a little bit deeper of what that looks like.

[00:06:51.07] spk_1:
Let’s let’s reassure folks that this certainly applies to non profits because your work is, your work is mostly you’ve done some work with nonprofits and you have a background in nonprofits.

[00:07:07.38] spk_2:
Yes. I started working in higher ed. And so in an arts organization that was all non profit. And then when I started the company, I did a lot of consulting with nonprofits in addition to small business,

[00:07:21.93] spk_1:
everything we’re talking about transfers

[00:07:23.44] spk_2:
of course,

[00:07:25.56] spk_1:
Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. And I’m sure you all know

[00:07:32.11] spk_2:
that in many ways, a lot of these questions of why a position exists or what the mission is of an organization. In some ways, it’s even easier for the nonprofits to answer because they talk about their mission so much more than business students often. So it there’s a good connection there

[00:08:07.52] spk_1:
and before we go further with, because we’re still at the very high level, why does the position exist? Who should be well, yeah, who should be answering these questions? What’s the structure do we send around a survey to all the employees? Is it only the employees who are going to work with the person whose whose position were filling is leadership involved? Who’s answering this? What are the logistics of getting?

[00:08:36.48] spk_2:
A lot of it depends on how large the organization is. We have done this process with just the Ceo or just the leader of if it’s a non profit organization, but typically would recommend getting at least the leadership involved. But if you’re thinking, if you can get more people involved in answering these questions and discussing these questions and get as many people as possible, the better outcomes better you’re going to answer these questions,

[00:08:49.58] spk_1:
you like the idea of maybe circulating the questions in advance and then meeting everybody writing their answers that

[00:09:55.98] spk_2:
we actually have. Sometimes what we do if the organization agrees and they can get more people involved is we do a sort of sort of what you just said, like a questionnaire like a survey of different than have each person fill it out separately without talking to each other. Even if it’s a small organization, we’re just sitting at the four or five people and then we get them all together and we talk about, well, okay, here are the patterns we saw here, here’s what everybody’s saying and usually about 70 to 80% is going to be similar but then hear the differences and why do you, why do you think this person answered this and this and that person into that? And we talk about the gaps and then a lot of times we’re able to bring it together and and really come to a, I don’t want to say a compromise, but something that is behind a consensus.

[00:10:00.90] spk_1:
Um, Alright, so we’re at the level, why does this position even exist?

[00:10:22.73] spk_2:
So the next one is, it’s about the outcomes you’re looking for and this drills it down. Um, often two metrics, you know, how do you qualify this and the, and you know, I know you’re doing a planned giving and if you talk about a fundraising, which is kind of an offshoot bringing money in there could be the amount of money, the level of money that this position is responsible for bringing in. It could be how much money you want to bring in for different events or for different milestones or deadlines.

[00:10:45.58] spk_1:
What if it’s a program

[00:10:47.02] spk_2:
position

[00:10:48.14] spk_1:
and they’re gonna be doing service

[00:10:50.00] spk_2:
to

[00:10:51.61] spk_1:
beneficiary humans in some in some capacity and then would it be like your monthly throughput or a number of client hours you spend? It

[00:11:02.97] spk_2:
could be, it could be retention, It could be

[00:11:07.06] spk_1:
keeping people in

[00:11:13.36] spk_2:
keeping volunteers or keeping how many people attend and and come back each time. You know, anything that shows growth that shows that it’s a contribution to the, to the mission overall.

[00:11:22.54] spk_1:
Okay, Alright. Again, that’s why mission can be so

[00:11:25.01] spk_2:
valuable. Exactly.

[00:11:34.97] spk_1:
Because your, as you said, you know, we’re talking about mission often it’s the core, it’s the reason we exist. It’s protecting the homeless, It’s protecting animals. It’s feeding the hungry education

[00:12:01.45] spk_2:
and this is what’s going to attract people. All of this is what is going to attract people to join your team to join your organization and money of course is important to most people they have to be able to live. But and to many people this mission knowing how they contribute to the mission of the organization, whether it’s a business or a non profit is just as important, sometimes more important than than the money factor. And so if you can get this part right and and show that connection, you’re gonna attract more skilled people and more pass.

[00:12:24.15] spk_1:
And I see why you say we’re jumping ahead because now we’re kind of bleeding into promoting the promoting position and organization to the, to the and the mission to the right people, but we’re still in the discovery phase, but, but it all into relates of course. Um And so these are, these are valuable introspection questions. Okay. Anything else that you want to say about that? That second one before we?

[00:12:47.77] spk_2:
No, I think I think

[00:12:49.03] spk_1:
you’ve

[00:15:53.09] spk_2:
pretty much got the gist of it there. Um and then the next one is I like to refer to it as success traits. But what are the characteristics? And this is yeah, this is specific to the position because we’re going to talk about the organizational culture in a moment. But you know, what are the specific characteristics, specific traits that you have seen of successful people in this position or similar position in the past? And this takes some thought and and we usually, the way we pull it out of people is by stories. I’m a big fan of thinking back and writing down stories stories of um when you had team members that were successful and lots of different successes. Big successes. But I’m always encouraging people to to track those things to write them down. And then also stories of when people weren’t successful and you start to see patterns of the different traits of of what would make somebody successful in this particular position. Um and I’ll give you an example. We um, you know, we often will recruit for executive assistants and we had a couple of years ago we had a ceo and just can apply non profit for profit. But this this happened to be a for profit company. Um, and she needed an executive assistant and she had already gone through several, nobody was successful with. Um, and one of the things, one of the reasons why she was having trouble finding the right person was her company, um, was very fast pace. It, everybody in the company traveled a lot and the Ceo was absolutely brilliant. She needed somebody who could organize her and be like a million steps ahead of her. And, and used to that chaos and be able to thrive in that chaos. So we knew we were recruiting that those were some of the traits we were looking for. So we had lots of amazing executive assistant candidates who had great skills. But as soon as we talked to them and learned, you know, that they’ve been an executive system, say in a large organization for yes, a very busy, you know, senior executive, but it was still structured, they were still useful. A lot of structure. We knew they weren’t going to be a good fit. So we knew what types of success traits to, to look for and, and then, you know, we take that and we drill it down to a couple of sentences so that it really jumps out at the right person when we’re going to look for someone. And so that it’s very clear to us for more interview, was

[00:15:53.54] spk_1:
there any chance that you should have been recruiting for a new Ceo, in that, in that company?

[00:16:18.50] spk_2:
Actually there are lots of businesses and even non profit organizations that do function in that way. There’s still some structure, there’s still productivity. But because of the nature of what they do there is this daily chaos. You just have to find the right way to say. And and it was also where they were in their history as a, as a company to with the growth.

[00:18:29.44] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications their e newsletter this week. What a year in review can do for you. And they talk about the value of a year in review article or blog post that you write. They say that it usually only requires a light lift because you just need to spend time summarizing stuff that you’ve been writing all year long and of course you’re gonna file focus on milestones, you know, main achievements, accomplishments. But they also suggest including challenges, especially if you overcame them successfully. Because that adds some authenticity. Right? And they suggest that a year in review can help you, of course, you know, showcase your results. You just talked about, you know, accomplishments, achievements, you can acknowledge your key audiences, supporters, loyal customers, donors, your, your beneficiaries, any any parts of your year in review that you can work these folks in all the better boost morale. Uh, it’s often easy to forget all the things that you did achieve over the year at the end of the, at the end of the year because it’s so busy. So this can help refresh recollections about the good things that that happened through the year. Um, so those are some ideas that they have around your year in review piece. You can get their e newsletter, which is on message at turn hyphen two dot c o turn to communications. Your story is their mission Now back to six steps before you hire. We

[00:18:29.70] spk_1:
Have Questions 4, 5 and six.

[00:18:31.19] spk_2:
Yes. I’m trying to make sure. I don’t forget any

[00:18:33.98] spk_1:
here. You

[00:20:15.83] spk_2:
know, I think this is good and let me just go back to my thing here. So the, so we talked about success trades which are specific to the position, but then you have your core values that are specific to the overall organ. So everyone in the organization, no matter what position they have lived by. These core values and I call them, um, kind of your default zone, your guiding principles. And if you’re done right, if they’re really alive in your organization, then you know that no matter what decisions being made by anybody in the organization that there they’ll be making a decision the way you around those values, the way they act. And so for example, one of our core values at aha is think like a detective. So we’re often kind of putting our detective hat on and often the core values do start to come from what’s important to the ceo to the person who’s running the company or restart the company but you want to make sure that they’re also important to everybody in the organization that they like. It they they’re successful by it there it’s natural for them. So when when we’re recruiting for our company we’re looking for people who are curious Think outside the box who put their detective hat on and don’t just accept, you know you have to do things 123 but there’s gotta be another way to do it better. Um And so it comes up in our meetings a lot. You know when somebody says they have a challenge, did you put your detective hat on? How you know how else can we? So that’s one of our core values

[00:20:28.18] spk_1:
since we’re in the middle here were three out of six I want to mention. Andrew you don’t have in your Andrea you don’t have in your bio that you’re the author of. Higher.

[00:20:38.84] spk_2:
Higher.

[00:21:01.30] spk_1:
Unless I I don’t I don’t I didn’t deliberately cut it out of your cut it out of your bio. No look there’s I’m showing her the bio bio on her phone which does not mention that she is the author of the book. It says about the author it’s a piece of a larger pr alright still. Okay well she’s she’s the author of the book. Higher. Higher. H. I. R. E. H. I. G. H. T. R. Which you can get on amazon. Higher.

[00:21:10.17] spk_2:
Higher and and in the book it’s a very practical guide and it does walk through these six questions and a lot more but it goes into more detail about it and

[00:21:29.55] spk_1:
we can’t do everything the surface, we can’t dive deep. Just you know, if this intrigues you, you got to get the book, that’s the only way to get the full depth. Alright. Number four question four discovery process.

[00:22:21.29] spk_2:
So this is what everybody already thinks they know right when when you’re thinking about, I got to fill a job. I always say employers say okay they have to have this many years of experience in this particular industry and they’ve had to have You know, no this specific software and have this education and all of these skills and when I go online and I look at job as it’s usually pages and pages of the experience and skills that they want as can be a really big mistake. So what I recommend in this area is just narrow it down to the 4-6 skills or experience that you absolutely need for the job and think about

[00:22:27.56] spk_1:
Like 13 Bullets one

[00:22:33.38] spk_2:
job. I just

[00:22:36.65] spk_1:
I get bored.

[00:22:40.48] spk_2:
Most candidates look at it. I

[00:22:44.63] spk_1:
can’t possibly sometimes I wonder if there’s anybody who could really creating such an ideal that I think there may be scaring candidates away. They’re intimidated by the prospect of the requirements of the

[00:23:10.31] spk_2:
job. And the interesting thing is there have been studies done between men and women and men typically, Even if they can only do three out of the 15 bullets on the list will apply, but women, if they can do 14 out of 15 on average will not apply. So you end up

[00:23:22.81] spk_1:
cutting out, you

[00:24:05.01] spk_2:
know, a big part of the population. Um, so you know, we typically recommend between four and six of the most important, think about what you’re set up to train for. So you know, if you can bring someone on who has the right attitude, you know, they’re trainable, make sure you can train them or you have something, some resources to train them. Um, and then that opens the field for you and, and people love training and professional development. That’s one of the big things. Again, it’s are always asking about what, how am I gonna get growth from this? How is this going to take me to the next level? So that’s an amazing thing to offer somebody

[00:24:08.81] spk_1:
training. Professional development is important even more. So maybe now in the post pandemic economy, they want candidates want to know that the company, the organization is going to invest in their growth,

[00:24:24.07] spk_2:
that they’re going to invest in the growth, that there’s opportunity to move up. But even if there is an opportunity to move up because sometimes certain organizations just, it just doesn’t have, that is their opportunity to learn something new. There are lots of ways to keep people happen about what they’re doing and wanting to stick, stick around even if it’s not a huge bump in pay and a huge title. That’s not always what’s most important to

[00:24:54.78] spk_1:
people? What do we have next?

[00:26:14.38] spk_2:
Okay, let’s see. Did we go? We went through five already, Right. But we went through four. Okay. We talked about results. So what, why do people stay at your organization and why do they leave that often? We don’t even ask ourselves that. And that was probably a question for, for your current team. You know, what, what is it that they really enjoy about working there? Is it the mission, is it that you’re, you do a lot of things together as a team. Is it the pay, is it the professional development? There could be lots of different things sometimes, which is very big. Now it’s the flexibility, you know, if they’re they can come in at different hours, um, or you know, is there a work from home? Is there a hybrid? That’s of course very big right now. What is it that keeps them and what is it that drives them away? And that often could be like, you know, you you made a comment when I I talked about that example of this Ceo and the kind of the chaos, some people thrive in that by your comment. It sounds like that would probably drive you away. Um, so be very clear about what your environments like and put it all out there sometimes. Um People will ask me, well shouldn’t I make it sound really great? Only if it’s true, Be authentic and find out what is true.

[00:26:23.97] spk_1:
Otherwise you’re misleading the candidates.

[00:26:25.53] spk_2:
Exactly. It’s

[00:26:26.39] spk_1:
a chaotic environment and a lot of flexibility is needed and it’s hard to work through a weekly plan that you might

[00:26:34.83] spk_2:
put put

[00:27:13.69] spk_1:
together on monday or the friday before. Uh then then reveal that because the person is gonna leave in a couple of months when they realize that it’s not, it’s not the predictable week after week pattern that you made it sound like that. You just told me out explicitly that it is all right. So if we’re at why do people, why do people stay and why do people leave? Uh look people could be leaving because of leadership, difficult leadership, but now we’re having leadership. Answer the answer the survey uh here’s where the leaders answers the C suite answers. They diverge from the and who in the C suite is gonna be willing to admit that they are the reason or contributing to the reason that people leave.

[00:28:39.25] spk_2:
You would be surprised that I have met a lot of leaders over the years, both in non profit and for profit. And I have met leaders who who recognize where their challenges are. And sometimes they’ll say I need to hire somebody to fill that gap for me. Actually met with a later a couple weeks ago who said that, he said you know what I know I’m not good at managing people like keeping the team motivated that it um checking in with them and making sure they’re supported so I need to hire somebody to help me with that or that order kind of fill that gap. So a lot of them will especially now because more important because we as a society after the pandemic are demanding more of that you know to be recognized to be respected too leaders who are going to contribute to our growth. So I think that more and more leaders are even if they have to be banged on the head a little bit with it um I think they’re recognizing the importance of that and that they need to do that they want to retain,

[00:28:42.12] spk_1:
okay you’re finding that people are realistic

[00:28:46.70] spk_2:
about it couldn’t be

[00:29:06.07] spk_1:
careful, you should watch your hair on your left side too. So that was Andrea Andrea I’ve been calling you for half a week now and recording and I keep saying Andrea Andrea touching her mike but we’re on the fly here that’s what that’s what that noise in the middle of anything else went through everything. That’s a very good one why why people stay and why people

[00:30:42.21] spk_2:
leave, you could spend a lot of time on that. It was so funny I actually I met with often I will run masterminds or be in masterminds with other organizational leaders and there was one woman who um her business is growing very quickly and she said I’m so overwhelmed and like what are you overwhelmed with? She said I’m overwhelmed with the employee and gauge. I feel like there’s so much I need to do to show my employees I care and to keep them happy and successful and I’ve been told like you know there’s so much out there and it’s just there’s so much more because that we’re hearing now. So I was like you don’t have to do everything right away. Just check in with your team regularly. That’s probably the most important thing is checking in, see how you can help them and make sure they know you’re being authentic. You’re being sincere. You truly want to hear if there’s a challenge which this leader is naturally empathetic. So I said really you just need to be you. She had a counseling background but I told her to just start with three things that

[00:30:47.38] spk_3:
we are

[00:30:48.36] spk_1:
now we’re gonna pause while we have an introduction explanation.

[00:31:27.55] spk_3:
Maybe we should include this. People have problems with breathing. They come to because the air here is very very dry and it’s very good for people who have problems breathing and lungs problems. Now the dead sea is also part of I would say medical tourism and now that we are starting to go down to the dead sea A lot is like 4, 500 m above sea level. The dead sea is 425 m below sea level. So we’re going out 800 m down.

[00:31:39.92] spk_1:
Alright. So there’s a little bit about the dead sea and how far below sea level it is courtesy of our guide for the week. Is Michael from Denmark.

[00:33:07.18] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. We are at the beginning of december which of course is most likely a very important month for you regardless of how you perform, how your organization comes out tomorrow is another opportunity to grow. So I’m urging you to shed Let go how it goes today. This week you have another day tomorrow, you have another week and you have the one after. So regardless of how you and your nonprofit do even this year 2023 is another opportunity Full of 365 days. If you do great this year. 2022, fantastic. If you don’t, 2023 is another new full year. Your past doesn’t define your future and you have many opportunities to grow each day, week, month year. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for six steps before you hire with Andrea hoffer.

[00:33:26.29] spk_1:
We were talking about the reasons why people leave the reasons why people stay and I was saying that I think that’s valuable introspection. Even apart from a hiring process, this is valuable, valuable to think about these things. Is there anything more that you want to add on?

[00:35:51.46] spk_2:
No, not onto that. And you know I agree it is it is very important and you know sometimes we do all this work with clients and to find them the best candidate or what we think is the best candidate. And what we have learned over the years is that we also need to do work with the employers on how to set the new higher up for success and and keep them happy and help them with success on ongoing because we’re seeing, we started doing a survey of our people. We placed last year in 2021 we placed 100 and 65 people and we have been reaching out to them At different points like 30 days in 60 days and 90 a year to find out. Did they feel like the recruitment process was professional? Was it a good representation of where they were going? And then what was, you know, what is it like at the company And what we’re hearing? A lot of is I wasn’t really, I’m generalizing here but I wasn’t really set up for success. I wasn’t given the resources I needed to be successful or sometimes it wasn’t as described, which means we we didn’t get the correct information from from the employer because what what also seems to happen sometimes is the employer things change quickly in organizations and sometimes they change the position so they might not change position title, but then they changed the expectations around the position and that’s not what was quote sold to the candidates. So if and sometimes it happens and it’s nobody’s fault, it’s just how the organization, the direction is moving. And I always recommend just just be up with with your new hire and talk to them and figure out is this the right fit for you? And how can we work with you? So that it can be the right fit and maybe there’s somebody else in the organization where it’s a better fit and you can put this person in a position that will work for them,

[00:35:53.34] spk_1:
but at least be upfront and talking about these things. So we kind of melded a couple of these together. So why don’t you just read through one through six? So it’s clear that we’ve covered everything.

[00:36:20.94] spk_2:
Okay, So the first one is why does the position exist next? Or what are the results or outcomes needed from this position? And I think we just grazed over that one. And one of the things I do want to mention that I didn’t mention earlier related to that question is I’m a big fan of,

[00:36:31.86] spk_1:
I even asked you if there were more

[00:37:51.80] spk_2:
my brain. Okay, so I’m a big fan of result oriented job descriptions and and that means, you know, writing the job description for the results that you’re looking for. So I think this question is really important and sometimes you can get a really great candidate from a different industry who has accomplished something very close to what you’re looking to accomplish from this position. So, so the more clear on what you’re looking for, what, you know what we always ask, what will give this person a great performance evaluation in 90 days, What would they have accomplished for you to say A plus for them in the 1st 90 days and, and and then different segments of, you know, the next time line, so that I just wanted to make sure I cover that. So the next question is, um what skills and experience are needed to do this job successfully? What is specific traits, we call them success traits or attributes that make a person successful in this position. What are the specific you’re set fit in your organizational culture? We’re talking about core values. And then lastly, um why did team members stay with you? And why did they leave

[00:38:34.50] spk_1:
question. What about um salary? Now we’re now we’re jumping outside of discovery. But you and I talked earlier when we were getting to know each other about salary range disclosures, job descriptions, which is becoming so much more important. New york state just passed a law that requires it. Um I thought I had seen that in Oregon too. I might be mistaken about that. You hadn’t heard of that one, but at least we know new york state has, has passed that law and other states are considering it. And just it’s just, it’s a movement apart from whether it’s legal or not legally required

[00:38:39.84] spk_2:
or not right

[00:38:41.58] spk_1:
share your opinion on disclosing salary or arrange a description.

[00:39:28.85] spk_2:
It’s always been a best practice. And now in many states, like you mentioned tony it’s a law. Um, and I think at some point it will probably be a law and in just about all states. The reason for it, there’s, there’s several reasons, but one of the main reasons that’s become a law in a lot of states is because in the past, um, there’s been a lot of bias and discrimination when it comes to pay. When you think about how women have been paid or different cultural groups or background? Exactly. And so if you are not transparent about your salary and you then, because I hear this a lot from employers, well, I don’t, I don’t know what I’m going to pay. We’ll see what the person made before. Well, all that’s doing is contributing to the bad uneven inequitable from the perpetuating. Thank

[00:39:49.71] spk_1:
you.

[00:40:38.04] spk_2:
Right. So what you need to do is think about What can you pay, what do you think the return is for this position that your organization can afford. Um, and what is it worth to the value that’s going to be contributed and and create a range there and don’t make the range 100,000. I usually recommend. I see sometimes do. Exactly. I usually recommend, you know maybe a $10,000 range, maybe a $20,000 range. Um not much more than that. And and you can decide based on what what that person you’re hiring is going to bring, how much training you need to give them. I’m up to speed. Um The other thing is it just waste your time if you’re not transparent

[00:40:43.08] spk_1:
upfront,

[00:40:43.84] spk_2:
it wastes the jobseeker’s time and it wastes your time because everybody

[00:40:49.11] spk_1:
well

[00:40:57.37] spk_2:
look at the job and have different thoughts on what it’s going to pay. So I may apply for the job Thinking that it’s going to pay 100,000 and you’re only planning to pay 40,000. And if we don’t get to that until the third interview, well we’ve wasted so much time and it just frustrates both of us so that no

[00:41:13.74] spk_1:
candidate is going to ask about salary in the first interview. Maybe not even in a second if they know there’s another coming

[00:41:24.16] spk_2:
and less candidates are going to apply for your job if they don’t know what because they’re afraid they’re gonna waste their time. And they often feel like

[00:41:31.35] spk_1:
because

[00:41:31.87] spk_2:
you’re not being transparent with that you might not be transparent with other things as well, so you might not be the right employer for

[00:41:51.70] spk_1:
them. Um And just let’s let’s kind of wrap up with what you are seeing in our sort of trend one or two things that you, you want folks to know about, you know, in this post pandemic hiring environment that we find ourselves,

[00:42:19.05] spk_2:
People are looking for their passion, their looking for, not just the passion connected to the mission that the company that that is a big part of it, but they’re looking for a place they can call home, they’re looking for flexibility. They’re looking for an environment that they’re happy to go to work and it doesn’t matter the

[00:42:26.12] spk_1:
level of

[00:44:01.07] spk_2:
the position. Um Pay is also important. They want to be paid what they feel their worth. And because pay, we’re seeing a big trend and increase of pay. Um uh you know, jobs that have paid one amount for decades are now have, have, we’ve seen large jumps in them. Um but then I’ve seen where candidates have been willing to take a pay cut if it means they could work from home or they could have more flexibility or it’s something that they truly believe in. And I have seen a great trend of candidates of job seekers who have left or actually even gotten laid off during the pandemic from high paying, high pressure jobs that are now saying they want a job in a nonprofit in something that they truly believe in. And they usually have a specific type of nonprofit or type of mission that they have in mind because it’s something important to them specifically. And I’m not saying that there isn’t anyone, but for them individually. And I think the pandemic has really, it’s created this thing in all of us where life short, right? Like it. I want to just do something I want to be contributing in a way that that works for me on both my time and what, what’s important to me. And I think that’s important as you go out and recruit people and as you work with people as well to keep that in mind,

[00:44:10.04] spk_1:
a lot of us have heard from

[00:44:11.95] spk_2:
people who want

[00:44:50.27] spk_1:
to want to now give back. That was even pre pandemic. But I think the pandemic accelerated it being more reflective about their career because of the pandemic people question their own mortality. And in the early days of the pandemic, we didn’t know if, if you were 30 if they could kill you or if you were 75 if it could kill you or or if one was a greater risk than the other. We didn’t know, People were really questioning a lot of things in life and obviously career is enormous. So, um, you know, we, we see so much about nomads, digital nomads traveling the US traveling the world and moving and working from a completely different time zones and completely different atmospheres because they want to have a richer life, but they still need to make some money. So they’re happy to work from wherever, if you’ll allow

[00:45:37.45] spk_2:
it. And if the type of position you have available, if you’re able to think maybe a little outside the box and make it either a hybrid or remove or add some of that flexibility in that is so important to people now and and they because of the pandemic where they saw companies and organizations, they will take,

[00:45:39.73] spk_1:
oh

[00:45:40.02] spk_2:
no, we don’t do that here as an answer. Then there’s then there’s, you know, then that’s not for me. Plus

[00:45:45.80] spk_1:
as

[00:45:59.01] spk_2:
things started to let up just a little bit during the pandemic was still pretty early on. The question I got over and over again from candidates was what will happen um with this position if if we end up having to shut down again, if we have another pandemic and I haven’t been hearing as much of the past year, but that first year or heard a lot because they do not want to be laid off again, you know, they wanted. So you might want to think about that as well. It’s not just because they want the flexibility. They also want that security that they know if a pandemic hits again, they’ll still be able to make a living.

[00:46:28.27] spk_1:
Okay? We’re in the we’re in the Israeli desert Negev were descending as you

[00:47:00.14] spk_3:
heard going 425 m down underneath the most the worst place on earth, that’s a dead sea. Now the lights that you see on the other side, this is already another country, this is George. The border between Israel and Jordan is exactly in the middle of the day,

[00:47:32.52] spk_1:
I should have said that Michael is originally from Denmark but lives in Israel and as a tour guide here, so with Andrea Hoffer, founder and ceo of Aha recruiting experts, ha underscore recruiting and Aha recruiting experts dot com. Andrea, thank you so much. Real pleasure. Thank you for doing this on a bus in the Israel desert.

[00:47:41.47] spk_2:
It was fun. Thank you in different.

[00:48:02.57] spk_0:
Thank you for hanging in with the weird sound this week. I know it’s up and down and it’s crackly. I really wanted to capture the conversation with Andrea, we’re sitting side by side. And how many shows do I get to record in the Israeli desert and and plus you got to learn about the desert from Michael. So thank you. I know it’s

[00:48:14.13] spk_1:
weird, it’s weird

[00:49:07.45] spk_0:
this week. Thanks very much. Next week. Traven Heckman with his book. Take Heart, Take action. I know last week I said he’d be this week I need an intern if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o Our creative producer is claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, thank you for that. Affirmation, scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for March 7, 2022: Get Off The Recruitment Merry-Go-Round

Teri Beckman: Get Off The Recruitment Merry-Go-Round

When someone leaves your nonprofit, it’s an opportunity to carefully assess, not a time to jump into a hasty job description and post it on LinkedIn. Teri Beckman shares her strategies for thoughtfully recruiting, developing and retaining talent. She’s founder and CEO of HIGOL.

 

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:01:53.84] 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’d be hit with para magnesia if you gave me the false idea that you missed this week’s show, get off the recruitment merry go round when someone leaves your nonprofit, it’s an opportunity to carefully assess, not a time to jump into a hasty job description and posted on linkedin. Terry Beckman shares her strategies for thoughtfully recruiting, developing and retaining talent. She is founder and Ceo of High Goal on tony steak too 22 NTC. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. It’s a pleasure to welcome Terry Beckman to nonprofit radio she has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 30 years, including five years as an executive director. She understands leadership challenges and has been a strategic advisor and consultant, two executive directors and ceos as they grow their organizations, teams and boards. She and her team at high goal help nonprofit leaders, increased revenue and community impact. The company is at high goal dot c o. That is h I G O L for high impact growth oriented leaders and she’s at terry Beckman. Welcome terry.

[00:01:56.54] spk_1:
Hey Tony, it’s great to be here.

[00:02:22.04] spk_0:
Pleasure to have you on nonprofit radio thank you. Thank you. Let’s uh let’s let’s go right in because I think this is a an area where nonprofits could benefit from some, some advice about taking a breath. So let’s say someone has just given two weeks notice. What do we do,

[00:02:22.84] spk_1:
what do you do? Yeah, it’s nice when you get two weeks notice right? Sometimes

[00:02:28.17] spk_0:
That doesn’t happen or you can make it three days or 24 hours. But I was trying to, I thought I was trying to give like an average

[00:02:42.14] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah or I quit now. I had a client who, she had a team of 10 people and five of them left in one week. Either they were fired or they left on their own and oh

[00:02:46.79] spk_0:
Gosh, okay, well I did, I quit a job with 24 hours notice once

[00:02:50.24] spk_1:
if you get

[00:03:13.24] spk_0:
Mad enough, you know. Yeah. The last job I had, I quit it with 24 hours notice. That was 19. No, it was 2003. I am I certain that I would be a lousy employee. You wouldn’t want to onboard me, you don’t want to retain me off boarding me in the interview. We compress, yeah. With me, you compress the whole compress the whole cycle, you could on board, you could, you

[00:03:18.27] spk_1:
could, you

[00:03:25.14] spk_0:
could interview on board and off board being in like an hour and a half, you know, would put your, put your practice out of work but it would accelerate the cycle at least there’d be a lot of,

[00:03:37.64] spk_1:
yeah, it’s, you know, some of us are meant to be entrepreneurs but you know, most of us are

[00:03:46.14] spk_0:
not. So that’s what I’d be a lousy employee. Yeah, vacation request forms and you know, please could I have christmas day off? All right. All right. So let’s go to this. Uh, let’s go to the reasonable hypothetical. You got two weeks.

[00:03:52.11] spk_1:
Yeah. You have two weeks notice.

[00:03:54.60] spk_0:
What do you want folks

[00:04:53.64] spk_1:
to do? Yeah. Well, the first thing actually, you know, for Executive directors, typically this ends up on their plate in some shape or form, right? For the other 95%. And um, you know, the first thing I advise folks is just to take a deep breath. Like you really don’t have to panic. You don’t have to panic. Um, even though I’m sure whoever has, you know, resigned has a to do list 10 miles long. And of course your biggest fear is that’s going to become your to do list. Right? But that’s a, you know, it’s really, that’s a short term problem. And um, so the first thing really is to take a deep breath. And I think that in a way the very first question is, you know, do you, do you really still need this position? It’s the first question and you know, if that’s not clear, maybe the, you know, maybe the, the job as it was, you know, originally constituted doesn’t make sense anymore for the organization.

[00:05:06.92] spk_0:
So, you know, like, All right. So I’m gonna encapsulate that as don’t stress assess.

[00:05:12.34] spk_1:
There you go. I like that. Yeah, good for

[00:05:32.94] spk_0:
you. If I could think of something wrong with you gotta think of something to write with panic. I’d say don’t panic and do something else, but I couldn’t think of anything wrong with panic, but don’t stress assess maybe the job isn’t needed, but you had someone in the job. So isn’t that doesn’t that de facto mean by the Yeah, well forget by default, doesn’t that the fact don’t mean the job is needed? We had somebody in it.

[00:05:37.64] spk_1:
No, that doesn’t mean that

[00:05:39.24] spk_0:
needed. Yeah.

[00:07:04.94] spk_1:
Yeah. So, you know, I think, I think to answer that question also, it’s nice to just take a breath again and ask yourself, you know, is my vision clear for the organization for the next 12 months? Like where where do I really want to bring the organization in the next 12 months? Where’s the potential where opportunities and then yeah, if that’s clear, then you can really, Really look at how does this position contribute to bringing the organization to that point over the next 12 months, then you’re you’re, you know, you then you’re sort of stepping out of the kind of the panic cycle, right of someone leaving and getting much more strategic about, you know, time and money and skills, right? Which is this great resource in a sense that you have to be able to rehire. Um and and really looking at Yeah. What given these resources, how would, how could, how would I like to best deploy that to really help me leverage where I want to go over the next 12 months. I think that’s ultimately the question and that might be the same job, right? The person that’s leaving and maybe, maybe it’s not, maybe it’s slightly different, Maybe it’s a completely different job. You know, the other thing that can come up is also looking at the orc chart, right? And this is especially true. Wait,

[00:07:27.04] spk_0:
I’m going to stop before we go to the chart. Yeah, we’ll get to the orC chart. Okay, I promise. But so, so you’re suggesting, like, maybe there are things that this this job could encompass that the previous person wasn’t doing, or maybe some of these things are better done elsewhere, and maybe this has been in the back of your mind or

[00:08:56.14] spk_1:
all of those things, or maybe, you know, maybe it hasn’t been in the back of your mind, but, you know, sometimes when, you know, we we stay stuck in patterns with people, right? Like, okay, this is my job, leave me alone and let me do it. And they kind of do it reasonably well. But, you know, that’s what happens. You know, organizations are living are living organisms, really, and so their, you know, their environment is changing, they’re changing the dynamics within the organization, is changing the board is changing all of these things that there’s fluidity to them, especially coming out of the pandemic, right? There’s a tremendous amount of change that’s happened over the last couple of years. Um and so it could very well be that this position was not is not Really best focused and aligned with what your current needs are. You know, and like you said, two could be that this person, you know, maybe they’re doing things that could be even outsourced for less money so that, you know, low value kinds of repeating activities so that, you know, in the next incarnation, they could be focused on activities that are really bringing a lot more value to the organization. Those are, yeah, those are questions you can ask around that as well, you know, I just feel like every time there is someone leaves, it’s a great opportunity just to do a little refresh to see how does this position align with where we’re really headed as an organization.

[00:09:33.84] spk_0:
Alright, so don’t stress, assess, take a breath That that 10 mile long to do list, right? I mean, it can be uh maybe some of it can be delegated. I mean, if it’s, if it’s, if it’s a database person, you know, you’re not going to be, you’re not gonna be querying the database for the next mailing, you’re gonna, right, okay, so take a look at, you know, so you have to have a conversation with the person, understand what is coming, right?

[00:10:30.24] spk_1:
Yes, yes. That’s, you know, that’s certainly another piece of it, right? It’s kind of preparing that person to leave. So there’s the forward looking piece of like, okay, what do we want to do with this position moving forward and then there’s the backward looking piece which is equally important. So knowing what is coming up, what’s the price, you know, what does this person see as a priority? What, you know, what does their to do list look like? You know? And then also, I think naturally leads to the exit interview as well, um where the person has a chance to really honestly share, you know, their insights about the organization and you know what they see the strengths being, where they see the weaknesses. Um if there’s if there are other, you know, people leave organizations for all kinds of reasons, it’s helpful if they could really be honest with you or if you have an HR person about, you know, why, why are they leaving? It’s always it’s always very helpful to know that more clearly

[00:11:08.54] spk_0:
that I still have the orchestra in mind, we’re going back to the heart. But the the exit interview, I mean, that’s isn’t that hard for the ceo to to conduct because he or she may be the reason that the person is leaving or if they’re not the direct reason, you know, if the person is unhappy and they’re unhappy with the organization generally or with their job? I mean, it ultimately feeds up into the ceo you know, what level of honesty are you likely to get when it’s Yeah,

[00:11:28.44] spk_1:
yeah. I think it depends on the circumstance. Um, certainly that can be the case that, you know, especially if there’s tension with the ceo of the executive director, it could be that it might be better suited for someone else in the organization to do the exit interview. So that creates a little bit more safety, um, for the person leaving. That could be the case as

[00:11:40.84] spk_0:
well. Um, Alright, so the organ chart, you want us to look at the Yeah. As we’re not stressing, we’re assessing, Right. Right. What’s, what’s the role of the orchid chart here?

[00:13:18.24] spk_1:
Well, so that, yes, that goes back towards sort of the forward facing again, right, assessing? Um, mm hmm. It’s a similar question. Right. So is the ORC chart, you know, isn’t where we need it to be given, where we want to go in the future, Right. Or does is this an opportunity to tweak the ORC chart a little bit and to, to really think about, you know, if we were ideally organized, what might that look like? And again, I think if you if you’re facing more than one, the person leaving, then obviously there’s more flexibility and kind of really looking at the org chart, but I, I think that’s always worth a look, you know, that’s always worth a look in the assessment, You know, does it make sense if you’re going to be changing the job description, does it make sense that this person reporting up through the right, you know, the right supervisor, for example, through the right thing. Um Yeah, so I think that’s that’s always good to look at. And in the earlier example I gave of the client who lost half her team. Yeah. One thing we talked about it, all 10 of them were reporting to her, which just was too, too many people. So part of what we we did was create a middle layer, right? Where, you know, so she had no more than four people reporting to her and just gave her a little bit of a buffer because that was very

[00:13:19.66] spk_0:
10 direct reports. I’m not sure anybody. I’m not sure anybody should have that.

[00:13:23.86] spk_1:
No, it was too many. So, you know, that was that was a chance to look at her or charts. So it just, it depends, you know, on the circumstance, but it’s a it’s a good thing to have a look at. I think when someone leaves

[00:13:41.24] spk_0:
With, with with 50% of that person’s staff leaving, uh was your client the problem.

[00:15:07.44] spk_1:
Um you know? Yes and no. So one thing that um she took the time to do at that point was to really create their core operating principles. So she, you know, took some time to create five core operating principles and this was super helpful. It was really um gave the made it very clear upfront that this is who we are, and this is how we operate. And it really was very tied into value statements, right? Like this, this is the way we will treat our clients, these are, you know, these are our principles in a sense, in terms of how we work. Um, and because she had team members that were not aligned with those core operating principles, it was definitely part of the problem. And so there was huge tension there. Um, so working on that, you know, and we’re gonna kind of start leaking into the job description, we wanted to put up front in the job description really, and we have done work on this as well as a clear vision and mission for the organization. And then those core operating principles, so that whoever’s, you know, whoever applies that is the very, very first thing you read. Um, and there’s discussion about that in the interview, so that, you know, there’s real alignment when people are coming on board, they really understand that this organization stands for certain things and if you’re not comfortable with that, this isn’t going to be the right place for you,

[00:16:37.94] spk_0:
it’s time for a break. Turn to communications, they have a free webinar coming up crisis communications, you ought to have a plan or at least the outline of a plan and that’s what they’re gonna cover in this free webinar, they will take you step by step through a crisis communications plan or protocol if you like the like the more State department sounding crisis communications you want to be prepared. I don’t even want to go through the possibilities of you know that that a crisis could uh could look like I think we know enough about yeah we know enough about that. You want to be prepared. They’re free webinar is on March 24 naturally if you can’t attend live you get the recording so you sign up they’ll send you the link to the recording and where do you sign up at turn hyphen two dot c o slash webinars. Now back to get off the recruitment merry go round. You you started to talk about, you started to mention you just mentioned that the attributes of the job. How does that I mean they need to be aligned with where you see the organization going to definitely be aligned with your organization. Chart. What what else, what

[00:16:53.94] spk_1:
else? Yeah. Yeah. So you know most job descriptions that I read are elongated to do list. That’s what they would say. Well there’s

[00:17:13.14] spk_0:
the responsibilities and the and the qualifications basically introduction about the about what what the organization does that is the key responsibilities and of course the last one is always and other duties as assigned

[00:17:16.59] spk_1:
by.

[00:17:35.34] spk_0:
You could have just you could just put that you could just have the job, the key, the key responsibilities one bullet everything we tell you to do. You know, you do, you need to do it again, condensing condensing down. But um, and, and then there’s the, and then there’s the skills, skills required, skills optional skills, preferred skills required,

[00:17:41.04] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah. And experience. Right. Right. Right.

[00:17:45.27] spk_0:
All right. You don’t care for that.

[00:20:31.24] spk_1:
Well, I wouldn’t say that those things are not important, but they are, we give those things way more important. I think in the hiring process than is actually the case in terms of what will produce, you know, a highly productive, highly engaged person that has the skills you need and we’ll be there for a long time. Like putting all the emphasis on the to do list man and especially post covid that is not the way to go. In my experience. Um, you know, people are really tired of being treated like widgets. I think that’s a big part of what we’re seeing in the great resignation and the great, great resignation is certainly affecting the nonprofit sector as well. Um, and so what I would, I would I suggest is folks, I think you’re gonna have plenty of time to develop to do list. Right? That’s really not a problem. The, the, the, the, the thing that I encourage people to think about job descriptions is it’s a marketing tool. This is a way to attract the right people to your organization that are going to be committed to it that see it as more than a job, right? That see it as something that they they have a role in creating something that is bigger than the sum of its parts essentially bigger than themselves. Um, and this is, you know, I I think people, this is we’re really craving for this now as a culture and a society for deeper meaning in our work again, you know, this is what is really getting reflected in in in folks who are part of this great resignation. And so um, you know, like as I said, we we I like to see people start with mission. Mission vision corp takes some time to develop core principles and then you get into the meat of the particular job description. But I want to I like to see folks right? The job description from the perspective of helping the applicant understand how will this role play a part in helping the organization meet its vision. Like what’s how are they contributing to that? Right. How are they contributing to the bigger picture? A lot of stuff that’s never discussed even. You know, again, we just kind of like hire people like we buy toilet paper. I mean at least that’s what we’ve done in the past. Um, and you know, you just put yourself in a real competitive disadvantage doing that. Um,

[00:20:32.20] spk_0:
I’m not sure which is more scarce sometimes toilet paper or the people or labor. Yeah,

[00:20:38.34] spk_1:
it’s true. Yeah, that’s really true. They’re both really scarce, aren’t they?

[00:20:57.54] spk_0:
Yeah. I’m sure you would say that it’s right. You’re smart to hold out for the right candidate. Not just take somebody who you know is pretty close. You know they came early. I’ve got this job. I got to fill it. You want us to hold out for the right Absolutely. Mission and values. Core principles.

[00:22:26.34] spk_1:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean in an ideal world the Ceo or executive director is not talking to anybody except the final applicants that rise to that level. You know, honestly, even if you don’t have an HR function, I strongly encourage that you get a hiring buddy. You know hiring partner, someone in the organization that’s going to help you with the hiring process. And um, that can really help weed out all the folks who are not going to be a good fit, right? And and and attract the folks who are going to be a good fit. So um, one thing that’s really nice to do I like doing is having an application that folks fill out in addition to providing you with a resume where you’re asking them questions up front in the application. Um, Again, you want to put all that good juicy stuff up front around your vision mission. The core values. You can put that there in the application and then ask the questions. Um, you know, I would, I would like to see people ask questions around culture and mission honestly. And uh and and this helps to first to know that gives it really telegraphs quickly to the applicants that you’re serious about that. Um

[00:22:38.44] spk_0:
The other like what like what how would you how do you ask questions around culture? Are you committed? Are you committed to or we’re committed to something or you like Yes, check yes or no or or I’m I’m oversimplifying.

[00:24:35.94] spk_1:
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know like again it depends a little bit on the organization and its values. But let me give you some examples of questions that I’ve seen in applications. So one is, you know, what is your commitment to um professional growth as an individual? What’s your commitment to that? Um How do you see, you know how do you see your um yeah. You know your individual growth contributing to the wider organization? Um what is what attracted you to our organization? Why do you want to work for us? Um um what’s you know, how how important is collaboration to you? You know, you can ask questions if you want to have a strong collaborative team, you can ask questions around collaboration. Um how closely have you collaborated with others? Can you give me an example where you were working on a team project? And there was miscommunication around the direction that the project was going. What did you do? How did you handle it? Those kinds of things? So it it causes people to stop and actually have to think right about how they would handle something like that and what’s most important to them this process. I mean first of all, a good number of people will never fill out the application, right? Because they’re not really serious about the job or they’ll fill it out in a very cursory way right there, kind of half fill it out and they’ll give one or two quite, you know, kind of three sentence answers kinds of things or three word answers I should say. Um and so those, it’s just easy that way. It’s like, no, no, no, don’t know. And then folks who are sincerely engaging with the application, they’re serious, right? They’re serious about the job,

[00:25:05.24] spk_0:
right? So, so it serves a screening purpose, but also you’re even just starting to onboard the person you are, you’re showing them what’s important and you’re making sure that they’re aligned with with with, with that culture with. Yeah. All right. So it has a practical purpose as well as uh practical immediate purpose as well as a midterm purpose for for helping screen and on board and on board I should say that’s the that’s the midterm.

[00:25:10.20] spk_1:
It is, it’s the beginning of the on boarding

[00:25:12.07] spk_0:
socialize them to the organization. Yeah, I love that tony

[00:26:36.64] spk_1:
I thought of it that way, but that’s very true. Yeah, yeah. And then I like to see your hiring buddy is handling the applications right? Um if if at all possible. So you want to make sure that you’re on the same page with that person about the culture that you’re trying to create in the organization. And that’s really kind of a culture test. Um you know, based some, you know, basic skills are important, but you want to remember that skills and experience are actually the thing that we can get the fastest, like a person’s motivation and um kind of their, you know, Yeah, their motivations and their preferences. Those things don’t change very quickly, but skills and experience, we really, in a year’s time, you can gain a lot of skills and experience if you’re very focused right? In in in something. So, I mean, you can’t obviously become a brain surgeon in a year if you’re hiring a brain surgeon, but there’s a lot, I mean, given our information age, there’s an awful lot of experience and knowledge that people can gain really pretty quickly. Um of course it’s it’s great if you can get someone who has solid experience that you can benefit from. But I just, I feel like we really give that a little bit too much weight. Um okay,

[00:27:08.24] spk_0:
let’s talk a little about some diversity and equity in the, in the job description. Uh, you know, there’s there’s there’s a focus now on, you know, less traditional education, but, but life experience being enormously valuable and equivalent to formal education? How do we how do we convey that? And also, you know, how do we encourage communities of color, underrepresented folks, you know, to apply for what may look like an all white organization?

[00:30:54.24] spk_1:
Yeah, that’s a really, really good question. Really good question. Um I always like to see um an affirmative statement in that regard. Um you know, in in the job advertisement for sure. You can also put it on the application something to the extent that you you know, you your organization really values inclusion and that people from all backgrounds are very welcome to apply. And so this gives essentially um you know, this is a signal to folks from different backgrounds that they’re welcome there, you know, that they’re welcome to apply. So that’s I think one thing that can be very helpful. Um and I think, yeah, you know this this idea that life experience has real value as well is certainly true. Um It depends on the obviously to the position that you’re hiring for. But if you think carefully about the qualities, this is another piece actually. That’s really important. If you think about the qualities that are required when you’re doing the job? Like the the patterning that’s involved when you’re doing the job. For example, does the job require a lot of research? Um Does your job require a lot of follow through or does the job require you to sort of sort through bureaucracy quickly and find a solution to things, right? Which is a little different than follow through. It’s like kind of the other end, does it require that you be fast on your feet and be able to kind of speak to people that may be comfortable speaking to people that you don’t know. Um and and be asked questions that you’re not going to know ahead of time, those kinds of things or is it more of a position where you know, you’re um ensuring um that the organization doesn’t take too many risks that it you know, that it doesn’t fix what’s not broken, you know, like accounting for example, you know, might be more in that realm, you know, these are these are ways of behaving in jobs that are actually um we are wired to to act in different ways just by virtue of who we are and everybody is wired a little bit differently in terms of how they do their job when they’re striving. And I’m sort of giving you some examples of of different kinds of patterning. So um it can be very helpful to also put that in the job description and there are some assessments that also will help that can really help you be able to measure things like that, but just to think carefully through that right? Like and that also will attract, you know, for example, if the job requires a lot of follow through if it’s really a process or repeating process that you’re asking someone to manage. You know, you want to put that kind of language into your advertising and into the, you know, into the job description so that you attract people that have that quality. Um And of course that has nothing to do with education or experience necessarily. It’s more how people are wired to work. If that makes sense. As we become more aware of that. We also tend to get a wider diversity of folks applying because it has nothing to do with, you know, um with any kind of physically born attributes like gender or race or ethnicity. Does that make sense?

[00:31:27.54] spk_0:
Yeah. Um Well, you know, it also raises the question of um salary ranges for for equity. There’s there’s there’s a lot of concerned that not putting a salary in uh salary range um discourages folks or disadvantage is folks who might end up being offered a lower salary because because of their background, you know, because of their their skin color or their background. Yeah, putting a salary range in you like that as well.

[00:33:14.74] spk_1:
I do like to see that. Yeah, I definitely like to see that. I think that that does create um that does create more equity. It’s not, you know, it’s not to say that you’re going to pay everybody the same because you’re not um And pay, Yeah. And pay, you know, pay needs to be very much accorded to value, right? The value that’s being created in the position. Um So I think it’s totally fair game. You know, to pay fundraisers potentially more than you might pay somebody else. Um, you know, that’s, I think totally reasonable, but where the, where the equity thing comes into play. And I have seen this where organizations have not posted salary ranges and they will, they will get an applicant in this honestly, particularly well. I think it happens with race and gender certainly happens with gender. You know, they’ll get somebody. And I remember an executive director saying to me, man, I think she’s, you know, she’s given us writing examples and she’s going to be the communications manager and I can get her for $15,000 less than the guy who left. And he jumped on that. And there was no salary range posted, you know, and now that, you know, especially the nonprofit sector, it takes a long time Right to make up $15,000 cap like that. She’ll have to jump organizations to do it. Um, and if they’re, if they’re bringing the value right, then it’s worth the investment in that person. And it’s worth, it’s worth it really, is it is worth it to be equitable because that means she won’t have to jump right to actually meet the value that she’s creating.

[00:33:29.64] spk_0:
She probably knows that people know if they’re being lowballed too. I think, I think people have a sense of that. And you know, it’s just sometimes,

[00:33:55.14] spk_1:
and sometimes not, you know, especially young people, you know, and I don’t know sometimes, and sometimes I think especially if you’ve been trapped in in low salary bands which you know, I think my people of color and women have been for a long time. You don’t necessarily, you know, it’s just tricky. It’s just really tricky.

[00:33:57.24] spk_0:
You think people don’t generally know then that there

[00:34:14.94] spk_1:
I don’t think that they yeah, that they’re being undervalued. No. And it’s sort of the sense of like I’ve been undervalued for so long that you don’t and on some level you don’t you don’t necessarily, you know, it feels normal I guess.

[00:34:21.84] spk_0:
You know that we have what you started right? The normalizing of of of pay disparity.

[00:34:24.18] spk_1:
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I mean I think it has been normalized

[00:34:34.04] spk_0:
maybe you know, maybe I was projecting my own. I mean I I have a good sense of what I’d be worth, not that I want employment. You know, we’ve talked about that you made that clear. I’m not

[00:34:41.74] spk_1:
right. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But I imagine you do have a good sense of what you’re worth, but I’ve done in the past

[00:34:46.73] spk_0:
But I’m also a white guy who’s 60 years old. So you know, I know what my value is to clients as well as to potential employee employers, but only the former is

[00:34:59.31] spk_1:
feasible.

[00:35:24.64] spk_0:
Alright let’s let’s go to some on boarding besides you know we uh we said that the job description is sort of an entree to on boarding as you’re as you’re exposing, socializing, inculcating people too important in the organization and where it’s headed. But what, what’s more more formal on boarding do you like to see in? Yeah six months is on boarding? six months. Is it six

[00:36:01.93] spk_1:
weeks? Oh man, it’s so nice if it could be six months, you know, if that’s unusual I would say. Um there was a, there was a company in the Research Triangle Park. It was a startup pharma company that has now been brought up by some huge thing. But they were so intentional in their on boarding that they literally, they didn’t hire anybody and give them a job. They completely hired based on cultural aspects that we’ve been talking about and then they spent six months in kind of the university of the, of the company just, you know, just like immersing them in the culture and the values of the organization. And then at the end of six months they evaluated where they should go in terms of a job

[00:36:23.93] spk_0:
that’s, that sounds extraordinary, valuable. Extraordinarily valuable but very not practical

[00:36:26.18] spk_1:
for non small non profit. No, but they created huge value,

[00:36:31.23] spk_0:
huge value.

[00:38:47.92] spk_1:
Absolutely. Yeah. And it was reflected in their market value as well and what they mean just the quality of what the, the work that they were doing. So that’s obviously like way gold standards, we’re not gonna be able to do that and most probably any nonprofit. But um, so it gives you a sense though of really how important it is and that it certainly should be more than just throwing the employee manual down on the desk if you have one, that’s not enough. Right. That is, that is really not enough. First is, do you have an employee manual? Many nonprofits don’t. So that’s kind of a whole nother topic, but it’s, it’s very nice to have your processes, your procedures, you know, your policies written down in some shape or form so that, you know, you’re starting to some assurances around equity and treating people fairly right. That is, that is important. And that is something. So let’s say that you do have that, that’s something to spend some time with the person with. Not just ask them to read it and sign it, but to actually walk through it and talk to them about what does that mean on a day to day basis? What do these things mean for us? The other thing I really love, um, for there to be and you can plan this over several weeks. It doesn’t have to be like all in the first day, but taking the time to really make the introductions for a new employee. Like it’s great if you know what? There are one or two board members who are willing to serve on kind of the on boarding committee, so to speak. You know, maybe this is part of your governance committee, something that they do where they get to meet members of the board and understand that there is a board, there is a governance board and you know, have some personal, a little bit of personal interaction with a couple of board members can be very inspirational right from, you know, then they can talk about what drew them to the organization, why they volunteer their um, meeting volunteers is another one. If your organization has volunteers certainly needing the staff right? Taking the time for that person to spend a few minutes with with um, each staff member is at all feasible. Is it is another really great way for people to start to get comfortable, right? Because then you, you have a name with the email and that kind of thing.

[00:40:44.51] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two, it’s time to register for 22 N. T. C. You heard AMY sample ward talk about the conference last week on the show. I’m not sure, I’m not sure that the biggest feature is 180 Workshops that you’ll get the video links to, you know, that you can, that you can, if you can consume that much. I think she said the record was 50 some last year that that somebody watched. I’m not sure that’s, I’m not sure that’s the biggest feature that’s big, you know, 180 different topics to choose from. All smart speakers. You know, that’s why this is the only conference that I affiliate with On nonprofit radio I’ll be capturing 25 or 30 different interviews from the conference speakers. But you know, it’s more the it’s the vibe. It’s the the inclusivity, the planning that they do that make, it’s not just their planning because you could do planning and it could still suck but it’s a planning that makes it fun. It’s a it’s a lively place. I’m looking forward to next year’s which will be back in person. But even virtual they put a lot of thought they’re very intentional about the feel the vibe of non profit technology conference. So I recommend it March 23 – 25. You register at 10:10.org if you want to see what people are talking about. Of course there’s the hashtag 22 N. T. C. I recommend it. I hope you’ll be there. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time

[00:40:48.45] spk_1:
for get

[00:41:11.11] spk_0:
off the recruitment merry, go round with terry Beckman and probably better done one on one or maybe two on one and this is the staff. Okay, everybody introduce yourself to the new employee. Okay, new employee, tell us about yourself. Okay everybody sign off now you know, go back it’s all done in an hour. You know, you don’t get to know, you don’t get to know folks that way, especially in a in a virtual workspace.

[00:41:16.41] spk_1:
Especially in a virtual workspace. Right?

[00:41:18.72] spk_0:
But even so you know, you want one on one. You want one on one or maybe two on one.

[00:41:23.35] spk_1:
Yeah, we’re starting to build relationships, right? Yeah.

[00:41:27.78] spk_0:
You live what, what, what do you have family? What? You know what movies? You know, what do you love music? You know, what do you do when you’re not with us? Yeah.

[00:41:38.61] spk_1:
All of that. Yeah. But what about the idea of real exchange?

[00:41:42.07] spk_0:
I’m sorry, what

[00:41:42.97] spk_1:
I said there can be a real exchange.

[00:41:54.11] spk_0:
Yeah, for sure. Right? Spend an hour getting to know somebody. Yeah. Um what about the idea of like an onboarding buddy? Maybe not so much a mentor, but somebody that, so I have one person I can ask. How do we do that? Well how do I get access to the shared documents? You know, I feel stupid. But you know, I can’t get the wifi to work on my company laptop or you know, whatever.

[00:42:06.50] spk_1:
Right? Yeah. Somebody that can point you point the new person in the right direction.

[00:42:10.62] spk_0:
Yes,

[00:42:37.80] spk_1:
I was, that was the next thing I was gonna say is to have like an an on boarding buddy who’s who’s willing to do that. And that can be a really nice function that can rotate right around the organization and anybody at any level can do that. Right? So it’s a, it’s a really nice way also of just kind of leveling the field in a way that everybody can have a role in in bringing on new people, which is really, you know, very nice and, and helps, I think in, in just continuing to create that, the stronger bonds across your team,

[00:42:46.20] spk_0:
anything else we should be talking about onboarding before we move to keeping people.

[00:44:31.69] spk_1:
Um, I would say that that may be the most important thing is to have, you know, think through the on boarding process, I think we’ve given folks some really good ideas, um, but to think through it and write it down so that it becomes an actual process in your process, you know, um and then it’ll then it’s much more likely to actually get done, so right down the steps, the timing on it, how long the onboarding process will last, Maybe it’s a couple of weeks, you know, and then the cadence of the different things like every couple of days or whatever. There are different meetings that this person is exposed to. Um the last piece probably tony that I would say and, and this bleeds into the next topic is um, with their supervisor to set some really clear goals for their 1st 90 days, so that, you know, there’s no misunderstanding the employee knows where to focus and um there’s no miscommunication that the supervisor, well you may be disappointed, but there’s a much higher chance of success if you’re both on the same page around what you, you know, what, what do you expect from this person in their 1st 90 days and then at 90 days, talk about it, right? So, You know, and it’s, it’s really nice actually to even have little check ins right? You say even 30 days around those goals, every you know, so that if the person is having trouble or they’re not quite focused, right? Or they have questions around those goals, they have a chance to ask you and that can just provide, you know, a really smooth um kind of, you’re really kind of greasing the skids for that person’s success coming

[00:44:44.19] spk_0:
in. It’s also scheduled devoted time with the, with the new supervisor, which should be at least monthly, I would say. Maybe maybe every other week.

[00:45:16.79] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah, you know, absolutely, it depends. I think a little on your structure and hopefully if you’re a manager, you have a schedule of one on ones not, you know, I shouldn’t assume that because I’m always surprised that people are not meeting one on one with people that report to them, but I am, this is, I’m assuming a little bit that you have a schedule for doing that right? Maybe it’s every other week. Um yeah, I like that cadence myself. Um, but this, this would be um kind of extra meetings or maybe a little bit longer of a meeting monthly to really focus in on those goals.

[00:45:41.09] spk_0:
Um Yeah, very good, excellent advice. Um seeing the onboarding and retaining on boarding. Okay. We started to bleed into uh keeping, yeah, keeping your good folks.

[00:47:02.18] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great topic. I think, you know, keeping good people is all about your relationship with them, you know, um, and their alignment with your vision of where you want to take the organization. So, you know, if you, if you’re clear about the vision and you know, even if you’re not the executive director and you’re the supervisor, you know, you still need to have a vision for your team, right? Even if somebody else is setting the bigger vision, you want to have a vision for your team. Um, and you know, depending on what it is, maybe it’s, you know, we’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna have, you know, we’re, we have, we have great customer client satisfaction, Right? And we respond to clients, we want to consistently respond to clients within 24 hours or you know, whatever it is. You know, if you, you have kind of a vision and standards for your team, that’s really important to develop in your own mind and then to be able to share that clearly right with your team. Um, and then it’s, it’s all about developing and supporting the people that are working for you to meet those bigger goals. Um, and I think that those are, that is why one on one meetings are important so that you really understand what it is. They need to be successful in meeting the goals. Um, and and being able to get them the resources they need to do that work

[00:47:19.18] spk_0:
resources including professional development budget, right?

[00:47:22.71] spk_1:
You

[00:47:23.41] spk_0:
want to sponsor? You want to be supporting your folks for classes conferences. I don’t know, certifications.

[00:48:10.47] spk_1:
So they keep learning. Yeah. And, and understanding to what are their goals? What are their professional development goals? You know, maybe would they do they aspire to become a manager one day or an executive director one day, um, and, and encouraging that? Right? So that we’re not, you know, then we’re then we’re actually getting off the merry go round, right, when we were starting to develop actually, a pipeline of folks within the organization that want to grow up in the organization. That, you know, want to have bigger roles and um, creating a pathway for them to be able to do that, you know, is that’s really the ultimate,

[00:48:45.27] spk_0:
it’s a, it’s investment in the, in the person. It shows that there’s promise, uh, there’s a future for the person in the organization, make, you know, these things all make it less likely that they’ll leave. I mean, they may still leave, but if they, if they, if they feel supported, they see a future in the organization for them for their own growth, both in responsibility and salary. You know, they’re, they’re less likely to leave will be explicit, you know, you want to, you want to lay that out. Not when they, when they say, you know, then they give the two weeks notice you you know right at the secret plan but

[00:48:53.62] spk_1:
you don’t know the secret.

[00:49:05.97] spk_0:
Yeah there’s a growth development plan. You’re gonna miss out on all this. Yeah right. That’s not the time. Um At what point maybe maybe I’m you know you’re stuck with a lackluster host. I’m sorry maybe this is going back to on boarding. But

[00:49:09.97] spk_1:
that’s the point

[00:49:10.94] spk_0:
at what point should you or should should there be should there be a formal point at which we say yes, this relationship is working? No, this relationship is not working. Yeah. That should that should there be a formal like I think it’s a probationary period or something like that.

[00:51:12.36] spk_1:
Yeah, that’s a good question. That is a really good question. And I have seen Organisations have formal like a 90 day, You know that’s it is a little bit implied in that, right? So you’re setting the expectations for this is what we expect in 90 days. Yeah. Yeah. And you can be even more explicit and you can say, you know this is this is a trial in a sense. We’re gonna, for both of us we’re gonna we’re gonna see how this goes in 90 days and then we’ll evaluate, I mean you’re kind of doing that right? Anyway um you know, so there’s a couple of questions that kind of come to my mind is from that like so what if they’re not meeting, You know what if they’re not meeting their goals in 90 days and I think, you know, if if you’ve been meeting with them monthly and you’ve been talking about it and you’re giving them the support they need, but you’re sort of sensing like, mm mm mm mm they’re not able to do this like they’re not fully engaged or they’re distracted for some reason. You know, it’s whatever is going on. Um, you know, you’re, what’s really good is you’re having the opportunity to regularly have open honest conversations about it. And then when you get to the 90 days, if there’s really some clear gaps you know, I think that’s an opportunity for, um, you know, a more honest conversation that maybe, you know, maybe this isn’t the right fit. Um, and, and they may, They probably will also sense that, right. They may sense that also at 90 days, maybe this isn’t really the right fit for me. Um,

[00:51:16.76] spk_0:
plead where they plead though, I can do better. Give me another 90 days. I I swear I can do better

[00:51:22.14] spk_1:
without

[00:51:37.66] spk_0:
Any, without any concrete reason why they didn’t, like, you know, if there was illness, you know, there was something in the family, it was a crisis, you know, putting that aside, there was no real reason why they didn’t they didn’t measure up in the 90 days, they’re pleading for another 90, right? Well, I need the job. I can do it

[00:53:41.55] spk_1:
Right? I think another 90 is probably too long. You know, if you were really in that situation because that then puts you at six months with somebody who may not work out. Um of course it depends on the situation and you’ll want at that point, you know, you’ll want to be talking to other professionals about that situation, right? So if you have an HR person in your team, you want to be talking to them. Um if you don’t have an HR person, you want to be talking to the executive director um the best um executive directors honestly, or the best organizations have very solid relationships with employment attorneys so that, you know what the laws are in your state doesn’t mean that you have to do anything in particular necessarily. But if you do move towards potentially terminating somebody, you wanna, you know, you want to know what, what the rules of the road around that are right before you enter into those waters. That is very important. Um for especially for um this is also, you know, a lesson that is a very painful one for people to learn. You know, if you’re if you’re hiring at a senior level, right? So if you’re aboard hiring an executive director or if you have like a, you know, a chief operating officer or Chief HR marketing marketing person, yeah, Director of Development, anybody at that level. You know, when they come on, you’re gonna want to have um, agreements around um, you know, non um, that they’re not going to speak badly about the organization when they leave and that the, and that they’re not going to take sensitive information out of the organization, essentially. So that should be part of the agreement that they signed when they’re hired. Um,

[00:53:47.22] spk_0:
because

[00:53:48.75] spk_1:
when they leave and they’re unhappy, that inevitably happen. Well, not inevitably, but that can often happen that they’re kind of trashing the organization. They’re going to donors saying bad things like you want all of that to be an agreement up front that they are not allowed to do that. And it’s a binding legal agreement that you can have a lawyer read a letter if they start doing stuff

[00:54:10.74] spk_0:
like that. Especially I haven’t thought about that. But especially talking to donors, right? Maybe talking to board

[00:54:19.54] spk_1:
members. Yes. Yes.

[00:54:24.64] spk_0:
I guess volunteers could, you know, volunteers could be just as serious. Yeah, Bad mouthing.

[00:55:47.54] spk_1:
Bad mouth generally no bad mouthing. Like, and it’s mutual. So the organization doesn’t bad mouth the employee that’s leaving and the employee doesn’t bad mouth the organization, it goes both ways. Um, so that’s, yeah, that’s important to standardize, especially when you’re hiring at a higher level, you know, for, for other levels. It may be not less necessary. I mean, you can just, you have to sort of evaluate that right across the organizational structure. Um, but you still obviously, you want to, you know, be aware of what the laws are in your state and um guidance from an attorney around how to handle terminations if it comes to that. But I think, you know, if, and again it really so depends on the situation, but if you get to 90 days and you feel like this isn’t really a good fit, you know? Um I would, you know, and somebody is wanting more time and you know, so you have to use your judgment around that too, right? Do I want to give them another month? I wouldn’t go more than 30 days, though right before you seriously evaluate again and you would want to be very clear about what you’d want to see change right in that period of time. And if it doesn’t, if it doesn’t change, then, you know, then it’s probably time to um to let them go. Um But you know,

[00:55:49.84] spk_0:
well then we’re back where we started with uh

[00:55:52.94] spk_1:
yeah, we

[00:55:53.67] spk_0:
are back where we started. Don’t don’t don’t stress assess.

[00:56:30.43] spk_1:
Yes. Yeah. And hopefully, hopefully you’ve gone through a process where, you know, you developed a pretty strong pool of applicants, so maybe some of them are around um still, but if not, then you go through the process again. Um I, you know, I like the the adage hire slow fire fast. Um I just I think that that’s wise, you know, to take your time to get the right people and if it gets to a point where it’s not the right person, then you make that decision quickly.

[00:56:58.63] spk_0:
You also have to put ego aside that you know, maybe you that that it appears you made a bad hire if the person goes after three months or four months, you know, that that reflects that poorly on on the ceo, on the hiring buddy, if there was, you know, whoever was involved in the process of board members involved, that we all made a bad choice, well, okay, maybe we did, but but maybe we didn’t, you know, remember and in the interviews and the application of the person looked like the right person. So we have to put ego aside I guess. Yeah,

[00:57:59.63] spk_1:
very much so, you know, and I think any time that someone either voluntarily or involuntarily leaves the organization, you know, it’s never like one person’s fault, so to speak, you know, because there’s just too many interactions and too many. It’s just complicated, right? There’s way too much that goes into that mix. But I think it’s also really helpful when something, you know, like that happens, especially if it’s somewhat unexpected is to evaluate, you know, and especially if it was like a 90 day point evaluate. Well, let’s look at our process, you know, what’s missing, what went well, what did we miss, what would we do different, you know, what would we want to do differently and and do that as a team. Um, and I can feel, you know, I think as a leader it can feel scary to do that because you sort of, you know it feels like you’re being somewhat vulnerable to talk

[00:58:02.35] spk_0:
about what

[00:58:03.47] spk_1:
didn’t work.

[00:58:16.32] spk_0:
It’s introspective thought, you know, what what did we do wrong? What could we do better? What maybe some of my you know, maybe my contributions weren’t, maybe the goals were not Uh maybe the 90 day goals were not fair or although clear, I would hope that you’re clear that you would hope that you would figure that out in the 90 days and assess, you know? Yeah. Yeah, introspection is is a big challenge. It’s hard.

[00:58:31.44] spk_1:
Yeah. But it’s so good.

[00:58:33.67] spk_0:
It is vulnerable, it makes you

[00:59:07.02] spk_1:
Vulners, you’re right. It does make you vulnerable. It doesn’t take long. That’s the other thing. I mean you can really do a good evaluation in 30 or 45 minutes if that’s what you’re focused on with your team. And the insights from it are just invaluable. You know, just invaluable and this, you know, you want to create an environment where this is not about blaming people. It’s totally not about that, it’s really about looking at the process and what could we have done better. Not tell you, I mean that’s what you get out of that is worth. You know, tens of thousands of dollars of some consultant telling you it really is.

[00:59:33.32] spk_0:
Okay, okay, so leave us with some closing thoughts uh terry. What about the process, overall importance of, of assessment, etcetera. You know, leave us, we just fired somebody, you know, so leave us leave us in an uplift. We just fired somebody. So leave us in an uplifting spot.

[01:00:59.81] spk_1:
Okay. Yeah, So you just fired somebody that’s, oh man, it’s always you and I you and I know it’s a tough, tough place to be in. Um but I think um you know, if you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve had to to take that kind of action, then one door closes and another always opens, always always opens and what you’re looking for. Like with actually every single thing that we talked about today, you’re really looking at how can you unleash the potential of your organization, right? How can you unleash the potential of your vision, That’s what you’re doing, that’s what all of this is about, right? It’s it’s taking methodical intentional steps to unleash that potential and sometimes letting somebody go, it actually unleashes their potential to because they may honestly be in the wrong position, right? Like if it’s not working for you for the organization, it probably isn’t working for them either if they’re honest about it. Um So it’s all good. You know, I think the key is to be is to not panic to not react to really be intentional and to be thinking about some of these questions that you know, we’ve come up with Tony and you know, how how can you make the organization the best that it can be and really just get a, you know, a team that is working together like a fine oiled machine.

[01:01:19.51] spk_0:
Terry Beckman outstanding. Thank you. The company high goal H I G O L. Remember high impact growth oriented leaders, high gold dot C. O. And terry is at Terry Beckman. That’s Terri with an I and one are, thank you very much. Terry.

[01:01:20.80] spk_1:
Terrific. Thank you tony It’s such a pleasure to be with you today.

[01:02:19.81] spk_0:
Thank you. Thanks for sharing your good ideas. Thank you very much. Next week. I’m working diligently on that. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Responsive by turning to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C o. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, thank you for that affirmation scotty be with me next week for nonprofit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the The other 95 go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for September 26, 2014: Critical Development Committee & Creative Commons 101

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Greg Cohen: Critical Development Committee

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Greg Cohen is senior associate at Cause Effective. He wants you to understand how important your development committee is to your board and your organization. What does a high performing committee do and how can you support them? Plus tips on recruiting and mentoring.

 

 

 

Carly Leinheiser: Creative Commons 101

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Carly Leinheiser explains what Creative Commons is and how valuable it can be if you need video, images or pubs or want to release your own to raise awareness. She’s an attorney at Perlman+Perlman. (Recorded at NTC 2014, the Nonprofit Technology Conference.)

 

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with red know cora did itis if i saw that you missed today’s show critical development committee greg cohen is senior associate at cause effective. He wants you to understand how important your development committee is to your board and your organisation. What is the high performing committee do? And how do you support them? Plus tips on recruiting and mentoring and creative commons one oh one carly leinheiser explains what creative commons is and how valuable it khun b if you need video images or publications or want to release your own to raise awareness. She’s, an attorney at perlman and pearlman we talked at ntcdinosaur fourteen the non-profit technology conference on tony’s take two, get off a less is back and a very special, a less show next week. Responsive by generosity siri’s you know them. They host multi charity five k runs and walks. I’m very glad that greg cohen is in the studio with me. He is a senior associate at cause effective since two. Thousand six he has provided training and coaching on fund-raising and governance to the boards and staffs of hundreds of non-profits for over thirty years, he’s worked to the wide range of non-profits greg cohen, welcome to studio very glad to be here. We had your colleague susan gabriel on about three weeks ago or so, and i am so in love with what cause defectives work does and how smart you all are on when she introduced me to you, i said, yes, this is definitely an important topic development committee. Please just remind us what cause effective does it’s a non-profits were non-profit ourselves, we’ve been around for over thirty years and where a capacity building group with a focus on helping other non-profits build communities of supporters with a particular emphasis on individual donors. We help them strengthen their boards both for governance and stewardship functions, as well as to make boardmember sze confident and effective fundraisers, aki function and the third area is to advise groups on the strategic use of special events. So not event management, but more the big picture of if we’re going to do something special this year, how do we make? Sure, it aligns with our capacity in our long term organisational objectives, and we don’t steer off the cliff running an event that doesn’t really fit who we are and who our audiences are and that’s related, the third part is related to what susan and i talked about using anniversaries exact effectively, basically when i would say that in a nutshell, it helps you get to the next level for small organizations that are struggling, particularly with fund-raising but also governance? Well, they may not really know that they have governance issues. Um, i think cause effective is a very good place for these organizations again, so it’s, particularly about diversifying funding when we’re talking about fund-raising for groups that have been very dependent on government or foundation, a few sources to diversify into individual donors and don’t know quite what the first steps are in aa strengthening, i think everything every organization feels its board could get to the next level so very much helping boards figure out how to be better planners and stewards of their organization. How does cause effective charge for its work? So about half our clients have a third party like united way. Or a foundation like new york women’s foundation who have funded us to work with them to strengthen them in a particular area. And about half come in having found a source of funding, either unrest, districted or a boardmember someone who feels the topic is important and helps fund our work with them. We also do a lot of work for free through partners like the foundation center and the non-profit coordinating committee, where we offer workshops, i do a lot speaking at the foundation center, i’ve never done non-profit coordinating committee, maybe you can get me in there. I don’t i’m on the board, so you are i’m talking e expected to get me, but i have done a lot of the foundation’s enter through the years on either planned e-giving or charity registration. They have an open house in november foundation center i’m speaking on plant giving a great that open house our development committee? Yes. Why is well, let’s start with why it’s important that we get to whether everybody needs one? Why is your function so important on the board as a committee? So i’m going to get a little high concept for a minute. And talk about the sociology of philanthropy and one of the key principles is that people are motivated to give and respond to their peers people who are like them in a socioeconomic way, perhaps, but i’m sure staff people listening are familiar with the fact that after a while, because they are always speaking to their boards about every possible topic, they’re urging them to fundraise becomes part of the wallpaper just become something that becomes routine. So how do we break through that to encourage and support boardmember sze to fundraise in ways that they can really here and the development committee, which is made up of their peer board members, is a key way for board members to talk to board members as a team about how we’re going to approach fund-raising for this organization, it sounds like even a small board six people should have ah, development committee absolutely so even if it’s a committee of two, although i would work to grow the board and grow that committee that’s important because the other thing is every critical function of a non-profit needs somebody who owns it. So if ah, a lot of organizations think, well the whole board should be fund-raising that’s absolutely true, the function of the development committee is to be the little wheel that turns the big wheel board fund-raising not to be the people who the rest of the board has delegated to go out and raise the money that the port thinks it should be raising, but rather it’s, the people who leave the meeting thinking about how do we move the board forward towards some fund-raising goals in between those meetings, just the way the staff does. A lot of times, i think boards delegate the fund-raising to the staff person, and they see maybe hiring their first director of development as the panacea, the cure all that’s right now, we can relax now we don’t have worry about fund-raising cause we have a director, we hired a director development so it’s his or her job. So this is why that peer-to-peer concept is so important because if we can visualize around every boardmember their facebook and lengthen networks, they’re connected to dozens, if not hundreds of people, but the staff would never have access to those folks were it not for board members willingness to be in front. Of those folk shin’s share their passion for the mission of the organization. So and typically, staff members don’t come in with the multiple of networks that aboard represents. So we say aboard is the vanguard of individual fund-raising and they have to be willing to reach out themselves to connect with other people and that can’t be delegated to staff, even if that the director of development does have networks, they’re not the networks that you, khun that person can bring to the organization their networks of other professional fundraisers, friends and family. But but it’s it’s not appropriate for this staff person to be asking their friends and family just be supporting argast that they work for well, we like staff people teo fund-raising actually, but it’s limited to their network. And if you have six, eight, ten boardmember sze sitting around the table who might offer access to hundreds more people, you’re leaving that resource untapped if you only rely on the staff to do that individual relationship building within their circles. Okay, then what is the relationship between the board development committee and either the director of development or even let’s? Consider a smaller shop that don’t even have a director development where it’s, the executive director. Sure. Well, let me start, actually, with the functions of the development committee, then it’s easier to understand. Taking taking over. All right now, i just think it’s a little. All right, well, okay. You know, i’ll say that it’s in a way the staff leads from behind. So they’re the ones who are the professionals who are thinking of, in a sophisticated way about where the organization could go for fund-raising collecting the information on what’s effective and but what they’re doing is they’re guiding the board leadership into howto have the conversation about fund-raising and supporting their fellow board members, kind of from behind, right? Okay, so so they they may in fact be either masterminding or thinking in conjunction with the head of the development committee or the board chair how we’re going to move this group, but they’re they’re letting the board voices lead the conversation around the table instead of it being their voices thie other thing is there plenty of tools that board members need? They need elevator speeches. They need talking points. They need help thinking out cultivation events to bring their friends in aa lot of different activities and events that are going to need the support of staff, the most valuable thing the boardmember brings is the ability to get someone to respond to their phone call or their appeal. Excellent. Ok, i just wanted to lay out, yeah, i didn’t want to get into detail, okay, don’t upset you, okay, we’re gonna go because right after this break was going to take right now, we’re definitely going to get into what does this committee do? Great. And then we can talk more in detail about the the staff functions to support that in detail. Sure, i just want to lay out the general landscape relationship. Thank you very much for indulging me. All right, we’ll go out for a couple minutes. When you come back, greg and i are going to keep talking about your critical development committee. E-giving didn’t think dick tooting good ending. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. I think. Cubine this’s, the cook said about wear 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 a common language. Yes, they all come from different cultures, background or countries, and it common desires to make new york they’re home. Listen to them, shed their 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 conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Greg let’s, let’s, move right into this. Now, what does this important development committee do? Right? So i said, it’s, the little wheel that turns the big wheel aboard fund-raising so what are the functions of that cock? First thing is, it helps the board have a conversation about what are its goals for fund-raising as a subset of the goals of the overall organization, sometimes an organization says, okay, we want to raise fifty thousand dollars from individual donations this year through a combination of our event staff driven fund-raising inboard fund-raising and that goal sits there. However, the the board itself doesn’t have its own thermometer for its own activities, and commonly there’ll be a board meeting and every will say, you know, we have the big anniversary gala coming up. I know everybody’s going to go out and sell tickets and sponsorships, right? And everybody agrees at that moment, there’s a good feeling in the room, and then they go back to their regular lives and expect, as in the past executive director and the board chair going to pull the rabbit out of the hat so what we want to do is set goals for the board specifics, both for events and overall so of that fifty thousand what’s our board promised to the organization that we’re going to do let’s say we’re going to twenty thousand of it minimum, and we’re going to have a stretch goal a thirty five toward the fifty that way, the exact director knows one they can write that number into the budget and actually spend on it rather than live in suspense until the end of the year to see are the boardmember is actually able to come through and two, it gives a rallying point throughout the year for that board development committee toe work with the other boardmember sze to say, hey, we’re up to fifteen, you know, with this spring reception, we could get toward twenty five of our goal who you thinking of bringing and how much do you think they’d be able to do? So, you know, they say what gets measured gets done and setting goals for board specific fund-raising and having knows that gold monitored, but and supported by members of the board itself is a strong way to actually tow actualize those girls. What happens if the development committee brings these goals to the larger board and there isn’t support for them, so it has to be consensus, right? You can’t the ah, one of the most important characteristics of non-profit is it’s, not a command and control culture, it’s by consensus and, of course, what’s. Most important is that you bring in the board members who have the most ability in terms of your financial goals. But if you have a board with varied economic impact in a diverse board, then you also want goals that have to do with capacity. How many new people worry bringing into the organization? How many new donors without regard to the size of their gifts, how many people are we asking and those air goals that every boardmember can embrace without regard to? Hey, i don’t know anyone of high net worth and your point earlier was that these this is peer-to-peer so its board members in the development committee bringing these goals eggs, activities exactly to their fellow board members versus the staff, and it voids the awkwardness of saying, hey, reach a bigger goal that goes for my salary. Right, you can see where that might not be a most comfortable conversation foran executive director not to set a goal, but to exhort boardmember is that’s kind of hard when it when it’s partly your livelihood that’s at stake, so that’s goal setting the second thing is i mentioned is monitoring toward the goals. The third thing is supporting board members, so checking in and saying, how’s it going? What are you hearing when you’re out talking with your friends about the work or your colleagues at work? Are there additional tools that you need? What kind of events would help you bring in the folks that you think might be most interested in your circle in our work? So they’re they’re getting the chance to ask the board members how’s this process going rather than again? Exhorting people have him leave the room and be on their own teo to meet their individual fund-raising goals there’s the idea that they’re backing them up, and in fact, we advocate a buddy system where each member the development committee takes a few people on the board if you have a board that’s large enough who are not on the development. Committee and works with them over the course of the year in partnership to help them reach their goals. All right, we’re gonna have some more time talking about the buddy system of that. Because it’s ah, it brings back to my boy scout data on ah, we had troops whims. You have a swim in the water front now on the waterfront of been inspected. That’s a part of the truth from you had a buddy system and everybody had to be near their buddy swimming. And these are body checks. So we’re going aboard united now checks and hopefully they’re not drowning in the water. The board members, they’re i’ve taken that foreign so away. Other things that the committee does but let’s sze check in which this support role is this, i guess it’s not on ly at board meetings, but but we can be particularly between the time right took in board meetings is when we’re together. We have ah good feeling of working as a group and being aligned. The hard part is when we go back to the rest of our lives, family and work and our board responsibilities tend to fade in the face of the immediacy of those other things having development committee people checking in with board members in those periods between board meetings is a way to keep that present in their lives. All right, so that’s the monitoring and support role that’s that’s, right of the committee that’s right and listening, you know, there’s such a key thing in all fund-raising but hearing how’s it going for this difficulty thing of asking for money and and and finding out what’s, easy, what’s, hard, and and also because each development committee person is talking to a few people, they start to see what the commonalities are, you know, something’s missing from our pitch, i’m hearing that from several people. What about dealing with the recalcitrant board members so kind of in a version of everybody bring in stories, but sure, if you want to tell me so in a version of the buddy system, one one great system is to take boardmember sze who are experienced and confident and match them up, whether they’re on the development committee or not matched them up with newer boardmember czar or board members who are more reluctant to ask and have them go. Out together, for instance, on and ask so that the lesser experienced person had has a chance to see how it’s done and participate first. So great great example a peer-to-peer support there thie other area that often happens is chaillou i think i’d liketo have host a house party to get some of my friends, but i’m not sure enough people will turn up, and i wouldn’t want the embarrassment of having an empty room. Well, is there another boardmember thatyou could pair up and co host together, for instance? Excellent. Okay, and we’re going to talk about the recruiting, but but just it’s coming to my now the ah fund-raising expectations e-giving of board members at the recruitment stage can we just can we talk about that confession? How explicit should we be? Should it be in writing? Not in writing? How do we have this conversation about fund-raising expectations at recruitment? Great questions so that that’s really the next evolution of board fund-raising goal setting, which is ok overall, is aboard. We’re going to set some goals and then the next step is to say, what does each person think over the course of the year, they khun do toward those various goals. Can they host an event? Will they show up at other events? How many new people do they think they can bring into the fold? How many people do they think they can ask for money and at what levels? And, of course, for their own giving what? What between events and an annual gift? Do they think they’ll give and that’s important? Because that’s really where the rubber meets the road and being able to match the aspirations of a goal with what’s actually likely toe happen over the course of the year, and it let’s board members reflect on what they can, what there actually able to do? Dahna what’s easy and then what becomes a stretch? And if you add up, if you get people to write down on ah pledged pledge form pledge is probably the wrong word, but a projection form of what they can do, and you add that up, you see two people’s own projections of what they do get anywhere close to what we’re projecting as a goal overall, and if it’s too far apart than either you have to lower your goal or ask people. To redouble their efforts. All right, but still sticking with the recruitment stage. Yes, we putting all this, these expectations in writing for the boardmember the the potential boardmember boardmember including yeah, ideally, yes, because particularly if you’re trying to recruit people who are experienced and fund-raising the more organized and clear you are about what’s expected the more comfort that they’re going to feel in joining your board. You know, they say you want something done, ask a busy person. Yes, the worst thing you could do is say you’re so great and experienced wolf will find lots of roles for you. I think busy people run from vagueness. If you say we are looking to recruit five sponsors from fortune five hundred companies, you work for such a company and you have a network. It is our hope that you will help us, particularly the sponsorship area. Then the person can evaluate. Can i step into that role? And can i meet those expectations or not? Versus so often we recruits on because we have unspoken sense of what their connections will bring spoken and and then it turns out either the person’s already committed those connections to another cause or they’re not a confident fundraiser and the last thing they’re going to do is turn around, use their business relationships for the charity. Okay, okay. Let’s, let’s. Go back, tio the functions of the of the development committee beyond the goal setting and monitoring. And so there’s ah, one really critical one, which is to celebrate success. And that doesn’t mean just when the check arrives. But when that person who was a recalcitrant, ask her, ask their first person whether they get a yes or a no, we want to say, i want to acknowledge tony for stepping forward and actually sending out that appeal that we might then want to be the step pick somebody else. Okay, okay. I don’t want the recalcitrant. Okay. Ah, so we’re doing this in public at the board meeting at the board neo-sage celebration is the best way tio provide positive feedback for somebody’s step so that’s another aspect of that pure culture, which is we all have an equivalency of effort. And when we when we step forward to do that and show her on the bus ah, the rest of us acknowledge it and celebrated and in all forms you notice? I wasn’t talking about the amount of money i’m really talking about nufer fund-raising activities, right? And what other one of their activities should we be should be celebrating the first ask the first ask turning out ah, above and beyond kind of number of people to an event taking a leadership role by hosting an event or at the event itself, doing a great job with follow-up and saying thank you to donors on behalf of the organization and the board there’s so many activities that don’t involve asking that any boardmember can undertake, and then we want to say, great job, you know, both to reward that person and also to give the message to the other people around the table, you have the chance to step in the limelight as well. That’s cool the celebration. I haven’t heard that you mentioned the board members thanking i love that. I have heard that suggestion that at a board meeting or a special event, i’m a special evening, a bunch of board members around a table, and they’re just thanking donors for having made recent gift so i love a one to one thank so encouraging board members to make a phone call, maybe to someone that they haven’t met, you don’t know me. My name is greg on the border cause effective and, ah, i’m calling to thank you for your support and ah, and then you wantto what’s that person thinking there’s an ask buried here and then you have the boardmember say, i just have one question for you, and they think here’s, where the shoe drops, why did you choose to support our cause? And then they’re going to hear a bunch of extraordinary reasons that come from the heart of that donor it’s reinforcing to the boardmember oh, you know, we’re not out there with our tin cup. People are giving because of a connection to our mission and when’s the last time you got a thank you call from a board member of a charity you donate to never happens. So even the smallest organization that’s their comparative advantage against channel thirteen. Yes, they can thank every single one of their donors personally, right? Logistically, do you like to do those where? It’s a bunch of board members in a room together, and they’re they’re encouraging each other? They’re making individual falls or you rather have people do it from their home or their office depends on the size of the charity, you know, university’s love those call a thon. Alumni call it on things. Thank you. Call. Thank you. Write well for whatever i think it’s hard enough to get a board together for its general deliberations so i wouldn’t complicate matters. Ah, and let people also let people make those calls on their own schedule. So you’re giving them a list of dahna people little information about them? Ah, script that’s one of the forms of support staff can provide so that until someone gets their sea legs in these calls, they know what to say after a few it’s going to go easy and yeah, and you’re gonna hear terrific, heartwarming stories about why this is it right? So that, yes, your point that reinforces for the boardmember there are people all of us and it says now now now there is a step toward their getting confidence to be askanase themselves. Excellent that’s a great one. Okay, this celebration and the thank you’s. What else is there more this committee can be doing to turn the bigger wheel. Well, do you want to touch on recruitment? Not yet. It felt more that the committee khun do other functions. Those air, those air, the main function. Okay, can we talk about staff support? I have time to go short. The agenda with you. You’re you’re the board meeting with an agenda. I’d rather talk about a staff support for all these activities for yes. And then we’ll come to recruitment and mentoring. Right? Our buddy staff support. So ah, this could be the executive director without who doesn’t have a director of development supporting this a ll this committee work that’s correct. It’s always the exact director who has some involvement. Even with the development director. Just the way you observed the board can’t relax when they hyre their first development director. To manage all this. The staff can’t relax just because the board’s formed the development committee and there’s a good, vital conversation about board fund-raising taking place. They’ve got to be providing those tools. And that support because boardmember don’t have the time toe manage the infrastructure of fundrasing that’s still falls to the staff, including very importantly, if this is working, having a system for tracking all the contacts, all the people and the contacts that are made with those folks over time. So there’s a good record of the relationship that’s important staff function yes entering into r r fund-raising database are exactly our cr m database that’s, right? The contacts that are made calls that i made the right back we get, and then something very basic when so in response to a board appeal, so let the boardmember know that it happened so that they can say thank you and avoid the embarrassment of running into the person who is waiting to be thanked and the boardmember doesn’t realize the person made a gift, right? So keeping the board members up to date on what’s happening in terms of their contacts and overall for that monitoring function is really critical. All right, so the running of these reports, right for right? For the for the board, right? And it’s it’s, partly the staff celebrating with the board to say, hey, your donor came back this year with an even bigger gift when you give me a call and say thanks that’s. Great, yes called. All right, um, i have to talk. Ah, i’d like to talk about ah, an organization sponsors non-profit radio generosity siri’s and i don’t know do doo ahh and your strategic use of events, teo do runs and walks ever ever figure in so some of our groups do do walks, we don’t get involved in any of the you’re not planning on you know, but but we’ll ask the question, you know, do you have a broad enough constituency base to have confidence that you’ll recruit enough people to make a walk or run successful? You know, you need zack, i need a word pretty well established network, and you need people who are willing to be the cheerleaders to bring people together in that, for instance, for organizations that can’t generate hundreds of unity’s hundreds. If you’re gonna have your own stand alone event for organization that can’t do that generosity, siri’s generosity, siri’s dot com their sponsor and they host multi charity five k runs and walks i am seed one of theirs last november, little chilly day. But it’s still great fun. There were about a dozen charities they had about no two hundred or so to fifty runners. Among these dozen charities, one hundred thirty, one hundred forty thousand dollars was raised, and it was great fun. And none of the charities could generate enough support. Enough participants on their own. But collectively through generosity siri’s they had this great event and generosity. Siri’s does all the all the back end work of licensing. We were in what’s the huge park in brooklyn that take part. We’re provoc piece of problem back park. They got the licence to get the port a johns to get the amplification and the big start the starting gate way in the finished gateway. And, um, it’s all done. Very smart, great. And its collective that’s. Quite if you would like tio. See if it makes sense for you to be a charity partner of generosity. Siri’s do what i do. You know, i like to talk to people. Pick up the phone. Devlin is the ceo and he’s at seven. One eight five o six. Nine, triple seven if you prefer generosity siri’s dot com a l s i’m keeping this video on the top of my sight tony martignetti dot com for a third week because i want people to get off a less is back let’s give them a chance to see how they’re going to manage this enormous growth. And next week we’re going to hear directly from the ceo and president of l s she’s going to be my guest. Barbara newhouse, we’ll hear first hand how they plan to manage this enormous spike in donors and dollars. The show next week is going to be a google plus hang out on air. We’re doing it from the chronicle of philanthropy offices in washington that’s where l s is that’s where the chronicle it obviously and that’s where i’ll be, because i’d like to be face to face with with barbara new house so you will join the google plus hang out on air at tony martignetti dot com that’s the place to view. We are definitely taking questions for barbara throughout the hour if you know how hang out on air works, you just type in your questions if you don’t, we’ll explain at the beginning, so very exciting show. Next week and very different format you come here to, well, not don’t come here, come to tony martignetti dot com and that’s, where you’ll watch the hang out on air with a less is president and ceo barbara newhouse, and that is tony take two for friday, twenty sixth of september thirty eighth show of this year thank you, greg, for indulging me little pleasure. Um, let’s, let’s, talk about let’s continue the staff support training. I’m glad you brought it up. Of course that’s one of krauz defectives great loves as something we provide, which is so few people come to a board with either fund-raising experience or a positive fund-raising experience, right? We’re lucky if we can recruit someone who’s been a great fundraiser for their alumni association or another non-profit but most often we’re recruiting people who are willing and interested, but i haven’t had the chance to fund-raising a systematic way before and of course, like everything else that we need to master in our lives, we need some training and information so staff arranging for training to make boardmember more confident is a great idea and cause effective could be the real happy that makes you happy to be a provider of such training latto onboarding persuasive years of experience, i could see you moving and motivating boardmember toe task that they’re not comfortable with at the beginning of your of your so i’d say it’s a little bit like arthur murray’s dance studio, we paint the steps on the floor, we get people toe awkwardly, try those steps and it gets more and more fluid until they discover you know what? I really like this so let’s, move them. Tio recruiting yes, talk some about recruiting to the development committee, so we have our board who were responding specifically for this committee, so i always take the extreme position not often embraced by every board. Every new member of the board should be placed on the development committee, plus one other committee. So i like to give the message right, it’s just a place to start. Absolutely because one people are at their highest point of enthusiasm, usually when they’re joining aboard two they don’t know better, right? If the culture of the board is a few people carry all the weight for fund-raising we don’t want them to sink to the lowest. Common denominator after going to a few meetings, so let’s grab them while they’re hot and put him on that development committee and then if you’re organized enough maybe to serve on one other committee as well, so that would be my preferred position. But i would say, of course, anyone who’s got prior experience ought to be recruited because they can help with the planning function and be creative about how the board can be fund-raising but really, what it really is a question of there’s someone have to desire to give it a try, and if you’re providing the tools and the training than anyone who’s willing ought to be added to that committee and bring in that new energy, can they also be mentors? Now they’re new board members? Can they be mentor? They’ve got what has the Numbers and actually 1 of the great ways to turn around the culture of a board that has gotten a little stagnant on fund-raising or has never stepped up is to bring in some fresh blood who are able to say when i did it over here, this is what worked and really help revitalize that culture i’ve even seen that work with some organizations that have young professional boards or junior boards where the enthusiasm of those young folks actually ah, crosses over and helps the established board embrace some goals with greater energy infecting them. They’re like their youthful energy that’s, right and vigor that’s right? Who do we look forward to lead our development committee? That’s a great question, so good question forty minutes, that’s a pretty good now they’re evolving right chair the development committee. You want someone who’s, a good cheerleader who relates well to other board members can communicate well, they don’t have to be the most generous giver on the board or necessarily the greatest getter. In fact, you probably don’t necessarily want the wealthiest person on your board to behead development committee because other people will look and say, well, they have the resource is of course they do. It seems effortless. You don’t identify with the right, right? So you want someone who’s really out there showing their commitment to the organization, but both by e-giving stretch gift themselves and out there asking widely in their circles durney ideally, that person would have prior experience, but it’s really the effort? They’re willing to put in that counts the most in their willingness to be a role model, because and this is true for all bored fund-raising if you’re not a giver yourself, it’s very hard to ask others to do something you’re not doing beyond that. I think it’s great to get experienced people for that mentoring and butting up, they can help with the training. They can help build the confidence. So you do want a cadre of people who are comfortable around the fund-raising conversation and who are well regarded by other board members so that they can induce them to join that conversation. Let’s, have a body check? Yes, the buddy system could we say more about how the development committee is mentoring and buddying with shirts? Are what’s the idea that you’re providing focus on fund-raising gear around and you have somebody on the development committee who really comes to understand what’s going on in the mind of their fellow boardmember who their networks are can be a thought partner and how to reach them. I can understand where their fears or inhibitions are and helped develop ways of overcoming them also hears what do you need to be successful? Would you like practice in making the elevator speech? Would you like to be paired with someone who’s going out, making an athlete, see how it works? Do you want a staff person to join you? And you’re asking because you’re not confident that you could answer detailed question about the organization’s program so that someone who can check in and ah, that the boardmember can reveal themselves to without exposing the fact that they might feel like to write about a topic and facing the professional staff, that might be an important aspect. We have just a minute left, okay, i really would like to hear what it is that you love about the work that you’re doing with boards. Well, you know, we say that boards are the most important volunteers of any organization, so we work with so many fantastic organizations and missions and boards are the place where you see people who, despite busy lives, step forward to make these organizations successful, make incredible sacrifices are incredibly generous with their time and expertise. So it’s fantastic to be in a room with people who are thes chief cheerleaders as volunteers around the widest range of causes it’s very noble calling great going senior associate at cause effective on twitter, they are at cause effective, and greg on twitter is greg causevox greg cause you want to follow him. Greg, thank you so much. My pleasure. Thanks so much. Now the interview that i did at ntcdinosaur profit technology conference on ah, creative commons one o one with carly leinheiser welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference and t c twenty fourteen we’re at the marriott wardman park hotel in washington, d c with me is carly leinheiser she’s, an associate at perlman and pearlman that’s, a law firm in new york city. And her workshop topic is share use remix an introduction to creative commons. Carly welcome. Thank you. It’s. A pleasure to have you. Thanks, it’s. Great to be here. Thanks. And thank you for taking time on a pretty busy conference day. What is creative commons that i think a lot of people have heard of and not so familiar with? Sure. So creative commons is itself a non-profit they were founded in two thousand won with a mission of making the basically making content. On the internet accessible, so they developed a suite of licenses, which are basic copyright licenses that allow creators, artists, authors to distribute work under one of these licenses, and that signals to anyone who might find their work that it’s freely available for use subject to certain different restrictions. So this is quite a service, really it’s a certain unorganised ation serving non-profits and making content available, right? I mean, they’re serving not only non-profits but sort of ah, the larger idea of basically the commons there, they’re making a easier to put more works into not exactly the public domain because they’re still under copyright but making more works freely available for anyone to use. So the idea is that right now, the way copyright works is any time that somebody creates a work it’s automatically subject to copyright, you don’t have to register it. You don’t have to put a notice on it if you’ve created a work it’s copyrighted on dso that’s what is known as the all rights reserved model and that’s what happens automatically so if you are an artist and you get benefit from distributing your photos online and having other people take them and incorporate them into their works. It’s hard to do that because somebody would have to seek you out and get individual written permission from you in order to do that. Otherwise they’d be infringing your copyrights. But most people’s experiences it’s incredibly easy to find content online that you can just, you know, screen. Grab our download and creative commons brings the law in line with that experience that it’s fine it’s easy to find content online, it’s easy to incorporate it into new works. And so by with using these licenses, it makes it easy for people to know they have permission from the artist to do that. Do we need to know a little bit the basics of intellectual property law before we go to into too much detail? Well, i think that that sort of covers it so i could say copyright well, i could talk a little bit about it. Copyright is ah, is basically a bundle of rights that anybody who creates a creative work gets in their in their work. So you have a set of exclusive rights that you’re the only one that you khun the only one who can exercise those rights with respect to your work and um and then you can also assigned those rights or licenses rights out to other people. So you have the right to use the work to distribute it, to make copies, to make derivative works or a new work based on the original work, so that something like a translation or collage would be a derivative work and to license that out to other people. So what you’re doing with the creative commons licenses, you have your bundle of rights and you’re saying anybody can use my work. Anyone has access to my work. Andi anyone can exercise those same rights as long as with all creative commons licenses, you have to give attribution or credit s o you link back to the original work and then there’s certain other restrictions that are in some of the different licenses. Okay, on dh. Some of those different restrictions is get a little too technical. Know that’s that’s, sort of the heart of creative commons there’s. Six basic licenses. So all of them, including attribution requirements. So say i post a photo online and i license it under a creative commons attribution. License that means anybody who came across my photograph could take it, download it, use it, put it into a new work. All they have to do is give me attribution. So that means maybe linking back to my web page just putting my name on it. And i i would normally specify how i want to be attributed. So some of the other restrictions are share alike. Which means that i would license my photo under a creative commons attribution share alike license meaning anyone could take my photo, download it, use it, make a new work with it. But if they did that and distributed that new york new work, they’d have to release it under the same license. On this is a concept called the copy left and the ideas that i’ve created a work that someone else is used. And then now their work is also in the commons for anyone to use s o, for example, wikipedia’s content is licensed under c c it’s, cc by essays are creative commons attribution share alike license so anyone can use the content on wikipedia and incorporated into a new work. But then they have to also license it in the same way, so grows the body of work. Exactly. They’re two other restrictions. One is no derivatives, meaning you can download my work. You can share it or distribute it, but you can’t change it in any way, so i’m not allowed to make a new work based on it. So you’ll see this sometimes with some sort of reports that in the case of non-profits, maybe report that you’ve published on a particular policy issue, and you want that shared as widely as possible. But you don’t want people sort of taking accepts. Reinardy. Or, you know, photos, or maybe personal histories, things that, like you want shared sort of intact on dh. The last restriction is a noncommercial restriction, so that means anybody could use the work as long as what they do with it is for a non commercial purposes. Ok, thank you, little detail. But details, i think, are interesting. I think they are. You think they are. I think they are all right. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll 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, too? He’ll call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s two one two, 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 alternative radio twenty four hours a day. I’m christine cronin, president of n y charities dot orc. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. How do we how doesn’t know provoc about using creative commons? What do we need to do right xero assumes we create something. I understand we have a bundle of automatic rights, but we’re talking about now making it available under creative commons license. Sure. So if you want teo well, i guess i’ll start with how do you find works that you could better license? Okay? Because they think that’s a lot more people have experienced with searching on flicker, for example. So if you’re looking for save photographs to put on your website or incorporate into a brochure and you want to find a photo that’s, all you have to do is give attribution to the person who made it. You can go on. Flicker flicker has a search feature and also the creative commons website itself has a search feature where you can go in and specify what you want to do with the work, whether it’s going to be for commercial or non commercial purposes. O r all you want, you want the least restrictive license and you put in your search terms and it pops up. So when i was putting together my talk, i wanted to find pictures of cute cats because that’s, what people like to look at on a saturday morning esso i search for cute cats license under creative commons license and found a whole bunch as far as really seeing your work under creative commons license if you’re distributing it online, creative comments has a licensed chooser on their website, so you don’t even have to really know the technical restrictions you go in and you say, i want people to give me attribution. I want to allow derivative works or not if i allowed derivative works, i want them to be released center share, like license or not, and i’m ok or not with the commercial uses, and then creative commons tells you which license you’ve picked on degenerates thiss html code that you can embed on your site, which then makes your work searchable by license. Okay, you become part of the search results and and it generates a little button you can put on the work, so you’ll see in a lot of like footers of websites thiss you know this pages published under creative commons license in which one? Okay, now the search function sounds pretty. Easy finding finding going back to finding content. Pretty simple. Yeah, it’s really simple the the only risk is you want to make sure that that thing’s air correctly tagged so but it is really pretty intuitive and you khun search you can search flicker you khun search through google images i think that there are more and more search engines that are supporting a search by license, so it is really easy to use and in terms of releasing your own content, any restrictions on what that content is? Well, i mean, it’s basically anything that’s subject to copyright so you wouldn’t you use a creative commons license with se your trademark or something that was protected by patent law, not copyright law. It also doesn’t deal with model writes in photographs, so if you have a photograph that includes an image of a person, creative commons doesn’t really deal with that person’s right of publicity or protections that they get for being in the photograph. So there was actually a litigation over this issue where a company used a photograph that included an image of a person, and the photographer had released the image under creative commons license. But never secured the model rights s o the person in the image sued the company and ask them to stop using it. Okay, are there other other cases that air don’t necessarily mean litigation case? Maybe client examples? You know that air that interesting, that and somewhat, you know, instructive. Yeah, so, no, i don’t have any specific client examples. They do have some examples i found in researching for my talk. One of my favorites actually is the brooklyn museum, which is i live in brooklyn, so i have a lot of pride for the brooklyn museum. They do really interesting things with their they’ve done two very interesting things. One is that a lot of their collection, they made their collection searchable by license. So much of their collection is very old and in the public domain, so you can now search their collection online and see what’s in the public domain and use those images if you want, and i actually incorporated a few of their images into my presentation and where stuffs not out of copyright but they on the right, innit? They’ve released it under creative commons license so you can use some of the works in their collection, another interesting thing that they did was in connection with the show they did a few years ago, go called who shot rock n roll, which was a series of portrait it’s and photographs relating to rock n roll. They did a remix contest, so they had chris stein and believes his name from blondie put together a bunch of tracks that he released under a creative commons license. And then anybody could download those tracks, remix them, upload them and those tracks would again be really center creative commons license. And they picked a winner, and they’re all available on their website. Um, it’s really interesting. So it was this great way to engage with their community and sort of further their mission of, like, getting culture out to the public on really engaged people while completely avoiding the issue of having to get signed releases and have people wave their their rights or sign rights toe in their tracks that they made to the brooklyn museum. They were just available to use, which i think is a really interesting example of what you could do. So photo contest anything like that video as well, video yeah, absolutely. I think on a new tube, isn’t there? Ah, little pull down window, whether you want to use a have a standard creative commons license to your video yeah, i wouldn’t be surprised i’m not positive, but i think that sounds right. Ok, i think they have a three or maybe four licensing options, and one of them, i think, is standard creative commons license. Yeah, and actually, when i was uploading my slides, teo the ntc, they asked whether i wanted to release my slides under creative commons license or not, so they’re they’re on top of it. Excellent. Well, you know, i don’t know what teo asked specifically, but what more do you want to share that we haven’t talked about? Let’s see, i think i mean, one of the things that i think is most interesting for me is they think a lot of non-profits have have sort of limited experience using creative commons in looking for photos and things like that on flicker, but i think that there are a lot of great examples of non-profits really saying they’re content under creative commons license, so not only so the brooklyn museum is a good one, but and wikipedia is another one. There’s, another organization called teach aids that creative commons features it’s a case study on their site. They big, they make sort of educational health materials that are really sandorkraut of commons license so anybody can download materials from their sight, redistribute them on, and i think for non-profits that have any kind of educational mission thie idea that you could create these materials and then just release them out into the world and they would be freely shared and no one had to worry about, like, violating your copyright if they wanted to download a report or, you know, i know your rights pamphlet or health materials, those kind of things i think are really great uses for creative commons, particularly for non-profits that have a mission based on education, where you’re not worried about so much selling individual copies of your materials, but that the more you get the word out about your organization by distributing materials, you’ll get your name out donordigital here about you, and you don’t have to worry about the transaction costs of negotiating, you know? Oh, okay, that person could buy a copy to do this or that. So i think it’s one of the more interesting things, all right, i hope listeners will pay attention to a creative commons both in terms of their own you’re your own work and and searching for others as well. Sounds like it, sze i’ve learned a lot more about the community then thin. I knew. Thank you very much, carly. Yeah. Thank you for the pleasure. Carly leinheiser is associate perlman and roman. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference twenty fourteen. Thanks so much for being with us. My thanks to everybody at the non-profit technology network and ten next week. Barbara newhouse ellis is president and ceo for the hour joined the hangout on air at tony martignetti dot com regular time one p m eastern. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com it’s, the store it’s, the center of universe you’re seeing this so all things emanate from there generosity siri’s and their charity support team that helps you in your fund-raising think about them for multi charity five k runs and walks generosity siri’s dot com seven one eight, five or six. Nine, triple seven our creative producers, 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. I didn’t even think that shooting the ending. You’re listening to the talking alternate network. E-giving dahna cubine 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 line 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 borg that’s, the number four in the earl, or call to want to chip in to five, four, three two to want to triple. Two, five, four, three two we’ll see you there. Heimans 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. 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. Hyre