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Nonprofit Radio for February 27, 2023: Resilience & Lean Risk Management

 

Ted BilichResilience & Lean Risk Management

Ted Bilich wants you to develop a risk management cycle and incorporate lean principles, so you confront negative risks and exploit positive risks. He’s the author of the book, “Managing Your Nonprofit for Resilience.”

 

 

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[00:00:03.62] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure to welcome back Ted village. Wait, do I am I saying your name? Wait, wait, we gotta stop here, I forgot to ask, am I saying your name correctly? That’s

[00:00:08.62] spk_1:
right. It’s it’s village village. Thank you very much

[00:02:27.29] 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. We have a listener of the week Gina Grove at ANne Arundel County Public Library Foundation that’s in Maryland. She loved last week’s show talent development. It was very timely for her and Gina took the time to write and tell me, thank you very much Gina, I’m glad that the show struck a chord with you. I appreciate your message very much. Congratulations on being our listener of the week. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of necrotizing ulcerative ginger vos dermatitis. I think that one deserves two weeks. If you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show resilience and lean risk management. Ted billets wants you to develop a risk management cycle and incorporate lean principles so you confront negative risks and exploit positive risks. He’s the author of the book managing your nonprofit for resilience On Tony’s take two planned giving accelerator here is resilience and lean risk management. It’s a pleasure to welcome back to non profit radio Ted Village. He is the author of the 2023 book managing your nonprofit for resilience Use lean risk management to improve performance and increase employee engagement. He’s also ceo of risk alternatives providing non profit training, highlighting challenges in evaluating risk and providing unique nonprofit resources. Ted is at T village his book and his company are at risk Alz R I S K A L T S dot com. Ted welcome back and congratulations on the book,

[00:02:41.34] spk_1:
tony Thanks so much for having me back. I’m excited to talk about this. Always excited to talk to you.

[00:03:13.05] spk_0:
Ah that’s very thoughtful. Thank you very much. All right. It’s a pleasure to have you. Let’s start. I’m gonna get to parse through the title Managing your nonprofit for resilience. Okay. Managing your nonprofit for I can I can handle that listeners got that. I’m sure resilience help us. What’s your definition of this resilience which you pointed out of the book is a process. What talk to us about resilience

[00:03:34.06] spk_1:
exactly uh resilience in my view, tony is the idea of being able to not just bounce back in the face of conflict and unusual circumstances, but to actually welcome the idea of uncertainty and take advantage of the positive aspects of uncertainty over time. You know, it’s not a matter of just sort of cowering behind the wall and hoping to absorb a blow. It’s being willing to look out over the wall and see the uncertainty and then make the next reasonable choices, in light of your evaluation of that uncertainty

[00:03:58.93] spk_0:
and when you were on the show roughly five years ago we talked about positive and negative risks. were you, were you formulating this book as long as five years ago because we’ll get to positive risk. But did you have the genesis of the book in mind all those years ago?

[00:04:28.37] spk_1:
That’s exactly right. I think from the get go, I’ve been slowly building uh, this theory of the way you create an organization that isn’t just uh risk, uh, risk able, but in fact is risk agile. And uh yes, from the get go, I’ve been thinking that risk is not just about bad things. Okay.

[00:04:40.59] spk_0:
And we’re gonna talk about the positive risks. Um, let’s a little more on motivation. Perhaps why should non profits be paying more attention to risk management?

[00:05:26.98] spk_1:
Well, you know, every nonprofit has a strategic plan. No, not everyone, but 89%. I think according to the data I’ve seen. Um, but if you if you have a strategic plan without an awareness of what your current capacities are, then really you just have an aspiration. What you want to have is an early warning system. Something that allows you to orient ear along the way toward those mountains that you’re trying to conquer. And that’s true any time. But especially it’s true now, you know, when you think about all of the challenges, not just of the business model but all of the political unrest and social unrest and you just go down the line, nonprofits need to have a way to avoid being reactive and instead be proactive.

[00:06:11.18] spk_0:
All right, so let’s get into negative risk and positive risk. I think most people are acquainted. I mean on a, on a general level you certainly drill down about potential negative risks. But um, you know, so, so what’s the word that I’m looking for differentiate? That’ll work. It’s not exactly the word I was thinking of, trying to get to, but differentiate will work differentiate between negative risk and positive risk.

[00:06:36.74] spk_1:
You know, the the idea would be, um, a negative risk is, um, we call them threats, you know, we it’s it’s something where there is something looming out there that if it happens, is going to either impact your performance negatively or it’s going to reduce your funding or it’s sometimes somehow going to undermine your business model. Um, by contrast contrast, that

[00:06:43.77] spk_0:
was, that’s what I was

[00:06:44.62] spk_1:
trying there. It is okay.

[00:06:49.86] spk_0:
And I was looking for, would you please contrast negative and positive

[00:08:20.57] spk_1:
and you know, by contrast, think about the number of things that a nonprofit faces that could actually be good. It could either be a a new initiative, tony you know, something where where someone says, boy, you could partner with us and we could do great things for your mission by doing this new thing. So it could be that kind of positive risk or it could be simply right now we do our device development process this way. If we tweaked it a little bit, we would unlock so much more value for us and therefore be able to achieve our mission more effectively. So it could either be something entirely new or something that is simply a different way of doing what you were already doing and and tony The weird thing is, yeah, I’ve asked leader after leader after leader about this, what device do you have in your organization to identify opportunities and make sure that you follow through on them. Even those organizations that have a risk management process and they think of it as a threat management process very rarely do they have what private industry has, which is a, you know an R. And D. Development and R and D program and an op X program to do operational excellence and identify ways to change for the better And so nonprofits don’t have that tool to build that muscle. That’s why I like to think of risk management, lean risk management as thinking, you know, how do we serve the customer better by reducing threats and increasing opportunities.

[00:09:46.63] spk_0:
Okay. The increasing opportunity part is not widely recognized as you’re saying, you know, we’re focused on the threat side and as you know, the book is important because we’re not focused enough on the, on the threat on the threat side, we really don’t, I think people think of insurance and um putting their head in the sand. Those are the two ways of avoiding risk, which is not what ted billets would recommend. Risk insurance. Okay, that’s bona fide. But it’s not the only thing to do. It’s it’s not the first thing to do. Putting your head in the sand. That’s that’s a that’s a big mistake. Alright. Um I got one more thing before we get into what what does lean contribute to risk management? You you pledge that we can do more or we can have less worry not more. If we start we start paying attention to risk. If we create our risk register which we’ll get to and and you get into a cycle we can have less worry not more because we’re surfacing a whole bunch of risks here and only a few of them are positive. I think you’d agree that imbalance there’s more negative risk than positive risk. I I don’t

[00:09:47.38] spk_1:
know about that one. But let me let me let me let me address the basic question that you asked, which is you know, we’ll hold off

[00:09:56.62] spk_0:
the proportion the proportionality. But but you’re you’re assuring us that we can have less worry not

[00:11:09.90] spk_1:
more without question. And and the reason for that is and there’s sound research saying that uh people carry a certain amount of cognitive load and that cognitive load is not only about what they are consciously focusing on, but also what they are subconsciously ka agitating about that never gets up to the conscious level. And that car agitation creates this low level anxiety that’s gonna be there. And I tell you every one of your listeners who honestly looks at themselves in the mirror is gonna say, oh yeah, I know what he’s talking about, I don’t want to lift up those rocks because they might have bad things, so I’m still thinking about bad things, but I don’t know what they are by getting it out in the open. There’s always this incredible cathartic effect. I was working with a client yesterday and and, you know, 25 people on a conference call and they were just saying, oh my gosh, it’s so great to get it down on paper. First of all, we see that most of us are in agreement about what the important things are. But secondly, now, as a, as the leader of this organization, I’ve had so many people who have been able to bring things to my attention and I don’t feel like I’m worried about what balls are out there that I don’t know about. So it’s a really enormous uh, clarity that comes from using a risk management process.

[00:12:03.15] spk_0:
Narcisse is what I was thinking of when you you said it, I was thinking this sounds cathartic for the organization. Alright. That word I could think of contrast eluded me until you said you’re you’re you’re saying all the words that I’m thinking of, so you’re, I don’t know if you knew that you were, you’re a mind reader as well. Um Savant, Alright, um Acquaint us with one more thing before we get into lead. What liber this process of risk management. Like give us, give us a high level overview of what you’re encouraging folks to, to jump into.

[00:13:32.16] spk_1:
I’ll again use the analogy of of, you know what mountains you want to conquer and imagine that you drop, you drop your, you are parachuted or you crash land in a jungle and you want to get to a mountain. The first thing you do is you want to figure out what your capabilities are. You want to take inventory of what you got. And so the first step of a risk management processes to perform a risk inventory where you look at the various functional areas of your nonprofit plus your external environment to say. What do I currently have in my toolbox? And what are my current worries about those tools that I’ve got? So that’s the first thing. After you do an inventory, you’d probably get 150 items. If you’re really looking at the average nonprofit, you can’t focus on all of them. So what are the most important critical items? So you prioritize and you put together a list that’s sort of like, you know, creating the map and creating a a rubric of what you’ve got wear in your backpack. The things that you most need to worry about in order to get from point a to point B. And then the third thing is this is not an event, it’s a process you want to make sure that you don’t just set off towards the mountain and never pay attention to orienteering again periodically stop. You assess how am I doing in terms of hunger and breathing and everything else? In other words, what are my current threats? Are there any new ones? Are there any new opportunities? And of course correct as necessary along the path. That’s why I think of, you know, risk management. Strategic planning is hand in glove. Strategic planning tells you what mountains to conquer and how you’re gonna judge when you’ve done it. Risk management helps you orient your along the way,

[00:13:58.67] spk_0:
Ted Bill. It is going to take us to the mountaintop. Alright, So now what does lean contribute to risk management?

[00:16:38.55] spk_1:
Sure. Lien is, you know, it’s it’s it’s not new, but it’s really important. Lean is a methodology that says that you start with what does your customer want and then you try to give the customer what he or she wants with a minimum of waste things that the customer doesn’t want to deal with. The reason why we adopt a lean methodology in in our risk management process is that um you want to make sure you are always focused on customer needs when you’re thinking about your current capabilities and your potential future capabilities. So lean emphasizes. First of all get the voice of the customer. If you’re a nonprofit, you should be finding out how you’re doing. Programmatically not by sort of sitting back and watching the program, but instead by talking to the actual participants. And if you’re talking to, if you’re looking at your other set of customers, the your donors who are after all their customers, they’re giving you money in order to achieve some sort of social change. You want to find out why those donors are doing it and and what they value in what of what your mission is. And so you want to focus on customers. The second reason why lean is so important is that lean emphasizes that you want to make incremental positive change over time. You want to look at problems, challenges as opportunities to become better. You know, a lean one of the lean uh aphorisms would be, you can never be perfect, You can always be better. And so by emphasizing that that you can begin a lean management lean risk management journey and take steps over time to make yourself more and more agile. It allows an organization to say we can test the process of risk management and course correct. Rather than saying we’re going to spend 100 grand and hire a risk manager and create a risk management process. So that’s the second reason why a lean methodology isn’t so important. And then the third one that I think is so consistent with the nonprofit sector is that lean management says your number one asset is your people, you want to empower your people to be able to perform better every day? And if you go back to what I was talking about, when you think about that risk inventory and the risk prioritization and the risk cycle. That’s what it is. It’s a way of an executive director or ceo being able to get his or her team to identify and prioritize and act incrementally to be better every day. So those are the basic concepts behind a lean risk management process.

[00:17:07.55] spk_0:
I thought lean originated with software development, But it goes back to Toyota Motor Company in, I think it was the early 1970s, I think you said.

[00:17:14.14] spk_1:
Absolutely, no, it it came out of the fact that that Toyota after World War Two was trying to compete with bigger organizations that have greater efficiencies

[00:17:27.34] spk_0:
after post World War Two. Okay. Yeah.

[00:17:29.65] spk_1:
And and but you’re right, Tony that it wasn’t until the early 80s that that that it became popularized as a methodology, in the in the United States,

[00:18:19.11] spk_0:
in the United States. Um, yeah, it’s got a it’s got a rich history and I know there are a lot of books about lean for folks are interested in a lot of books about lean management principles. Um Okay, sorry. So now as I understand how it’s how it applies to risk management, let’s let’s dive into what we’ve been, we’ve been sort of talking about the edges of the risk inventory? The prioritization. Um, what is this and then the cycle, what is the, what is the risk inventory? You know, How often do we need to be inventorying? Acquaint us with this?

[00:21:08.57] spk_1:
Sure. Usually what will happen? tony is an organization beginning the risk management process or exploring whether to begin one. They’ll, they’ll do an inventory with a small group of people because you don’t want to over promise that that your day definitely going to adopt risk management. You want to first test how your culture responds to identifying threats and opportunities. So you bring together a small group. They look at the various functional areas of the nonprofit. Each of them identifies threats and opportunities in all of the functional areas. In other words, you ask someone who’s in the development function. No, don’t just focus on development also identify other things that that has been on your mind in other functional areas because the development person might have seen something in the finance function that that is really cockamamie, but they’ve never been asked. So you you have everyone identify threats and opportunities. You put them together in a central document and then you look at them and you talk about what that tells you as an organization. You know, for instance, again, with the organization I was talking about yesterday. You know, they were able to look at their initial risk inventory and they were able to see that a lot of people were identifying the same issues under various functional areas of of their organization. But there was some diversity of opinion as to, you know, as to the threats and opportunities as well. Both of those were really insightful, you know, kind of wow moments for for that organization. Um that’s the first thing the next thing you would do is if you’re going to do an inventory, if you’re gonna stick with this process is after you initially test the idea of a risk cycle with the small group, then what you might do is take it down a level to the people who are boots on the ground and have them do the same sort of exercise because they may see things that senior leadership doesn’t see. You might even at sometime down the road go up A level and engage your board in a risk inventory exercise. Now that would probably be more focused on external things than internal things. But your board might be able to identify big external issues that the staff because they are narrowly focused don’t see. So that’s the way that you could do an inventory and then once you get into adoption of risk management process organization wide, maybe you do a full inventory with a select group of people, you know, twice a year, once a year, depends on the nature of the organization, you know, Sophistication, it’s regular environment, things like that. But but initially what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to slowly widen the number of people who have been asked to identify threats and opportunities in your organization.

[00:21:30.25] spk_0:
Ok. And it starts with senior leadership. It sounds like he usually does. When you were saying the development person, that would be the chief development, the

[00:21:52.14] spk_1:
chief development officer. You know, you want your, your head of programs, your CEO or E. D. Um, you might, in that initial group have one more junior person who might be, you know, an up and comer. Just so that you, even at the beginning, you, you get a little bit more insight than just the C suite would be able to provide. Um, one thing I would urge anyone who’s trying this process is unless you are a one or two person nonprofit so that you don’t have anyone else to bring in, don’t involve your board in an initial risk inventory because that’s just an invitation for them to get into the weeds

[00:24:19.55] spk_0:
enough. Said leave it there with leave it there with the board at that at that stage. Or if your, if your organization is that small. It’s time for Tony’s take two time is running short for planned giving accelerator. The next course is going to start in the first week of March, that will be our fifth class. I’ve had four classes before I already have a Y, we got the first Y this one is a Y M. C. A. In small. It’s a small Y M. C. A. Because all the members of playing giving accelerator are in small and midsize shops. Uh, this is a small Y in north Carolina. We don’t have yet any humane societies. The last few classes have had humane societies again, small but and the very first class had a humane society. But no humane societies. Yet, if you are interested in plan giving accelerator, of course you can get 50% off using the coupon. Non profit Radio 50. The class is all about teaching you to launch planned giving at your small or midsize nonprofit. I went into more detail last week, lots of peer support, all the templates and resources that you’re gonna need to get started holding your hand, guiding you step by step, we’ll spend three months together, March april and May an hour each week. All the other info is at planned giving accelerator dot com. You can always send me an email, tony at tony-martignetti dot com. If you would like to talk about whether planned giving accelerator works for your non profit That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got just about a butt load more time for resilience and lean risk management with ted village, you have a methodology for prioritizing because now we’ve got this bunch of risks and uh, you know, how do we know obviously which comes first and which one can can wait. You have a methodology for prioritizing.

[00:25:53.31] spk_1:
Yeah. And and I think that some risk managers at major financial firms would just slap me if they had the chance to, to look at me because they would probably say I oversimplify the process. My response is no, no, no, no, no. You know what, what most risk management professionals do is they try to make precision and it is false precision, you know, they’re why broadly, when you look at a risk, you think about what’s the likelihood of it happening? What’s the impact if it happens and how much of a lead time am I going to get between when I first see it’s definitely coming on and when I feel the full impact, but tony I guarantee If you and I were looking at the same risk and we were using those criteria, we would have different backgrounds that would lead us to have different views of those three factors. So we take it down to an absolute simple level, we say give each participant 50 points And they use those points like chips that they would put on the table and and they can put 50 on one, they can put one on 50 different risks. And what they’re saying is my assessment of likelihood impact and speed of onset means that I want to say this one’s more important and when you bring that all together, you get a very good first estimate of the emotional content of risk in terms of likelihood and impact and so on. You know, that’s a great way to begin to get the process rolling without applying a false level of precision to it.

[00:26:32.79] spk_0:
Well, well, well dismiss the naysayers in the, in the professional risk management pool. The simplification can be very, very valuable. So now, so now prioritize so we create our risk register. Yes, we can get to the risk register. This is a this is a moment of peak excitement around risk management.

[00:26:39.00] spk_1:
Oh, it’s something that gives you tingles.

[00:26:41.61] spk_0:
My synesthesia is kicking in. I’ve got chills. Yeah, chills and I’m almost moved to tears. I’m not quite there. But

[00:27:26.55] spk_1:
but but but think about it this way, tony Imagine you’re a nonprofit chief executive and you have a single document that allows you to know what are the most important issues facing our organization right now. Who is watching over that issue for me because because it can’t be me watching over every issue. What is our current best description of what the issue is? What’s our current expectation of what we’re gonna do next about that issue. And when am I gonna hear back about? Imagine if you had that document, it’s better than a strategic plan. It’s better than an annual operating plan. It’s a Boots on the ground. This is a situation, you know, a a situation report about where we are on the most important things. That’s why it is, it’s kind of a really great tool. It

[00:27:44.43] spk_0:
sounds, it sounds reassuring and comforting.

[00:27:47.92] spk_1:
No going back to

[00:27:50.92] spk_0:
less worry, not more, you know, it’s, it sounds like something that, you know, you gotta, you gotta slog through to get to, but it’s very gratifying and reassuring to have it.

[00:28:37.91] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely. tony And, and those who do have it report that, you know, they have, uh, greater engagement from their team because team, team members know who is the champion of a particular risk. Uh, they have greater engagement in terms of people feeling like they belong because they realize that that the, the organization has, is really looking out for them and wants to be around for the long haul. They’re just this host of things that come out of having a risk register and using it, that, that really impact performance in extremely positive ways to

[00:28:43.76] spk_0:
tell another story. Uh, the different different organization, not the one you just talked to yesterday, uh, that just had good, had good outcomes or just felt reassurance at reaching a milestone in risk management tell tell a good story.

[00:32:01.77] spk_1:
Yeah. Well, okay, a couple of years ago, um, we did work down in Jacksonville and we did work through the non profit center for Northeast florida that brought together a number of organizations to do this deep dive to go through doing an inventory and doing a prioritization and creating a register, uh, in parallel so that they were all doing it together and first of all, that’s a great way to do it because you create a common language among the number of different nonprofits and so, you know, you get this informal coordination and discussion and being willing to show a little bit of vulnerability and so and so on. But one of those organizations was the area agency on aging for Northeast florida wonderful organization. They looked at their uh, situation and they realized, well, a lot of the risk that we have really resides in the fact that we aren’t put boots on the ground. We distribute money to meals on wheels and legal counsel for the elderly and pick your number, you know, that all of the Jacksonville area organizations that interact with with the elderly, but they realized we don’t control those organizations and we don’t know what risks they face. So this organization went and was able to persuade a funder in florida to allow them to do the same sort of thing with their provider network. So we had the provider network also do a risk inventory and discuss it and also do prioritization and discuss it. And so you had things tony like, you know, you had organizations, all of whom were saying, boy, it’s really hard to have capable talent. We can’t hire people and keep them. What they realized though was that most of the people who they hired, who left, we’re going to another organization within that general group. And so discussions started to come about of saying, you know, should we be recruiting in some ways for the ecosystem? Should we be thinking that we’re hiring people who will be with us for 2.5 years and then we’ll become ambassadors either good or bad to some other organization who is working with us. And then the, the area agency on aging accomplished the result of getting these people who were boots on the ground to be talking to each other more and also to be willing to be more vulnerable in their conversations with the area agency on aging. And because they knew that the triple A. Had done the same sort of inquiry. It’s phenomenal what you can do with with that. And so in various communities we’ve had situations where organ where cohorts have gone through because the funder wants to have uh, people who might be interested in collaboration do this work so that they start identifying areas of collaboration. We have some that have done it because they realize that there are certain backbone organizations that they want to make sure have a common vocabulary in case something goes awry. It’s a really powerful tool, not just from a single nonprofit perspective, but from a nonprofit ecosystem perspective.

[00:32:29.53] spk_0:
The risk management cycle. Yes, let’s let’s flush that out.

[00:33:52.02] spk_1:
Yeah, well, it it captures that idea that risk management is not a one and done thing. Risk management involves, you know, identifying and prioritizing and responding as we, as we’ve talked about already. And then it includes assessing how you’ve done so far with those risks you’ve addressed and what else needs to be done on those risks. But then it emphasizes as well that the next time you look out into the community or even the next time you bring an all staff or a senior staff meeting together, there may be new issues that have percolated up. So it emphasizes that it’s cyclical. You don’t stop after assessing and improving based on your first go round, you identify more, you fold those into your list of existing risks and put them in the risk register where they depend where they need to go. And then you respond to your various risks and assess and improve and identify and so on and so forth. That’s the, that’s the reason why, you know, and it’s the hardest thing tony is to get an organization to adopt a risk cycle. They get tremendous value out of a risk inventory. They say, oh my God, this is great. They do their prioritization, they get the register and they say, oh my God, this is great. And they, they hit their top 10 risks and hit them hard and then they decide, well we’re doing really good. So let’s look at that shiny object over there and they set it aside and so getting that emphasis on making sure that you continue to bring up that register periodically and update it and hold yourselves accountable is the most critical aspect of this. It’s the it’s the one that allows you to really feel like you are facing uncertainty with agility

[00:34:17.16] spk_0:
and reach like risk management. Well, you may not achieve it, but asa methodically approach risk management maximization.

[00:34:28.53] spk_1:
Nirvana yes, may

[00:34:31.12] spk_0:
never reach it. But the the journey, the journey is the end.

[00:34:35.36] spk_1:
That’s exactly right. Going back to that lean principle that you can never be perfect. You can always be better. Alright.

[00:35:30.70] spk_0:
Uh there’s a lot more detail in the book. You know, you just you wanna you wanna achieve the risk management Nirvana. You want to reach that mountaintop with Ted Bill it. You’re just gonna have to get the book because there’s only so much that we can, we can uh we can talk about and the book is managing your nonprofit for resilience. Use lean risk management to improve performance and increase employee engagement. And I believe we’ve we’ve hit on each of the main topics in the title. So the book is at risk Alz dot com. R I S K A L T S dot com. You’ll find ted at t Bilic uh and you’ll find ted’s company also at risk Alz dot com. Ted thank you so much, enjoyed

[00:35:32.62] spk_1:
it. This has always been a blast to talk to you. This has been a great discussion. I can’t wait to talk to you again soon.

[00:36:24.37] spk_0:
Thank you so much Ted next week. The co ceo of free will jenny xia Spradling and Patrick Schmidt. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. I really do. Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. I’m not light about the beseeching. I mean it’s it’s a serious beseech Mint. This is no, this is no off the cuff. Beseech Mint, our korean 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 21, 2022: Improve Your Relationship With Failure

Ashley Good: Improve Your Relationship With Failure

We all know we ought to learn from failure. But most of us don’t have that healthy relationship with failure. Ashley Good reveals the breakdowns to help us improve the relationship. Her consultancy is Fail Forward.

 

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[00:00:15.84] spk_0:
mm hmm. Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the

[00:00:18.54] spk_1:
the other

[00:00:45.04] spk_0:
95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast and oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of a tick a phobia. If you shared with me the fear that you’d miss this week’s show improve your relationship with failure. We all know we ought to learn from failure, but most of us don’t have that healthy relationship with failure. Ashley Good reveals the breakdowns

[00:00:47.43] spk_1:
to

[00:01:13.24] spk_0:
help us improve the relationship. Her consultancy is fail forward And Tony’s take two easy, comfortable donor relationships, responses 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 Ashley Good. She is founder of fail

[00:01:16.33] spk_1:
forward,

[00:01:20.64] spk_0:
the world’s first failure consultancy supporting people and organizations to acknowledge,

[00:01:24.14] spk_1:
create

[00:01:24.77] spk_0:
and evolve from

[00:01:26.64] spk_1:
failure.

[00:01:28.24] spk_0:
A winner of the Harvard business review Mckinsey Innovating innovation

[00:01:33.23] spk_1:
challenge,

[00:01:34.54] spk_0:
fail forward helps businesses, governments and nonprofits harness their failures

[00:01:41.34] spk_1:
to

[00:01:44.94] spk_0:
learn innovate and build resilience. The company is at fail forward dot org and at fail forward. Ashley Good. Welcome to nonprofit radio

[00:01:53.74] spk_1:
Thanks so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[00:01:57.74] spk_0:
My pleasure to have you. Thank you joining us from toronto I

[00:02:00.83] spk_1:
AM Yes. And you may be able to hear a little baby crying in the background. That’s my 10 month old who just woke up from his nap.

[00:02:18.44] spk_0:
There he is. Absolutely we are. We are. We’re not only family family friendly. The and anybody could be family friendly. We’re family embracing If you’re if you’re a 10 month old has to come in with

[00:02:20.50] spk_1:
you. I

[00:02:21.78] spk_0:
understand. We’ll,

[00:02:23.31] spk_1:
we’ll

[00:02:23.86] spk_0:
we’ll still be able to hear you over. No, no problem at

[00:02:25.99] spk_1:
all.

[00:02:27.54] spk_0:
Uh, so welcome. Welcome from one of our northern neighbors. Glad to have you.

[00:02:33.34] spk_1:
Thanks for that.

[00:02:34.74] spk_0:
You’re

[00:02:36.14] spk_1:
company

[00:02:39.24] spk_0:
bio starts with in many ways, our relationship with failure either unlocks our full potential

[00:02:45.34] spk_1:
or

[00:02:46.31] spk_0:
keeps us from ever realizing it.

[00:02:48.84] spk_1:
Please.

[00:02:50.27] spk_0:
I think that’s a great place for us to begin. Please explain that.

[00:03:50.84] spk_1:
Yeah, So I guess where that line came from is how our relationship with failure often is one that is rooted in fear. Um, at least that’s what I hear the most from my clients is they’re calling me because they feel like their fear of getting it wrong is the reason that they’re not taking the risks. They might otherwise desire to um, the fear of what might happen. Their fear of letting other people down. The fear of being seen as a failure by the folks around them, hold us back from maybe from doing a lot of the things that um, that might help us learn and grow and on the flip side of that, you know, our healthy relationship with failure is one where we feel we feel safe stepping out of our comfort zone, recognizing that that, that, that often deep discomfort we experience amidst our failure is um, really the thing that transforms us into the people that we, that we might become, you know, reaching that full potential as it were, is only possible for willing to push ourselves to the edge of what we’re capable of

[00:04:04.04] spk_0:
outside our comfort zone.

[00:04:08.04] spk_1:
Exactly. I

[00:04:09.94] spk_0:
do do organizations come to you when they’re in crisis

[00:04:13.66] spk_1:
sometimes?

[00:04:15.58] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:05:02.54] spk_1:
yeah, I get a little bit of both. I see too equally important sides of my work. There’s the learning component. So you’re, you’ve had a failure and often folks are not treating each other very well or they’re not communicating very well and they needed a little bit of support, um maximizing what they can learn from that event. So there’s the learning aspect of the work that I do, trying to maximize what we, what we take away and how do we move forward from our failures more wisely? Um, and then there’s what I might call like a risk taking or the innovation side, How do we create the conditions under which we can, we feel safe taking those risks where we’re confident enough to do the things that we might not know how to do yet. Um in order to push ourselves to keep up with the pace of change or are competitive pressures or whatever they might be.

[00:05:16.94] spk_0:
Mhm. I feel like the, the combination of your work and, and you’re thinking, uh, you should be, your name should be Ashley Exemplary. Okay,

[00:05:17.64] spk_1:
I don’t know about that

[00:05:19.70] spk_0:
because you, you want people, you want us to to to reach our full potential,

[00:05:24.94] spk_1:
absolutely

[00:05:25.95] spk_0:
not just be good, you want it to be, you want us to be exemplary, That’s the way I’m that’s what I’m hearing in the first few minutes. Anyway, I’m sorry for changing your name. I don’t mean to be so brash about, you know,

[00:06:11.34] spk_1:
well, and why I why I hesitate with it is because I mean, when I first started this company, I really thought I had something like I figured something out that I’m going to help people with, right? Like I’m gonna help people have a healthier relationship with failure and the more that I do this work, it’s been gosh, 11, 12 years now, the more I realized that I actually started it, because my own relationship with failure is so troubled and I probably need this more than anyone else. So um in asking people to, I kind of reached their full potential. It came from a place of actually wanting to build a healthier relationship with failure for myself as well. And um you know, tell myself it’s okay to be wrong, sometimes it’s okay to not be perfect all the time.

[00:06:17.84] spk_0:
Well, alright, I’m still gonna stick with Ashley Exemplary, but I’m sure we don’t have to go down that path.

[00:06:28.04] spk_1:
Tell a little

[00:06:50.44] spk_0:
about your your personal experience with failure. You you are public about that, you’re one of the things that you sent me to read in advance says, you know, you uh many of us including myself, you know, don’t have the right the right healthy relationship with failure, which we’ll be getting that we’ll talk about. But what’s a little bit of your own, your own background that I guess that led you to the you’re saying lead you to the work.

[00:10:35.74] spk_1:
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I could I could share that story in so many ways. Um I was inspired to work on this topic when I was working for Engineers without Borders, um working in international Development, working on an agricultural food chain project many years ago and saw lots of failures. I was working with incredible colleagues um who you know, were hand selected by the funding agency because they were exceptional. Um and yet when the when the donor came in to kind of ask about what was going right and wrong, um my exceptional colleagues, you know, didn’t didn’t necessarily share the whole truth. It didn’t lie, but but didn’t talk about the real fundamental challenges that that they were, that they were sharing. And I remember asking them afterwards, you know, why why didn’t you tell that guy what we’ve been talking about? Like he can actually change it for future projects and and it’s an oversimplification, but it was essentially like, you know, oh actually you’re so naive, like there’s no way we could do that. You know, we like, we like our jobs were great at our jobs because we can work around these things. Um, and telling that we all know, telling the donor isn’t necessarily the most advisable lot telling the donut the project was designed, it was designed incorrectly is not the most advisable thing for job longevity, shall we say. And, and I was really struck by that because it, of course they were right. Um, but it was my idealistic nature kind of held held tight and it frustrated me to no end that we can’t have those more honest conversations. Um, A a a longtime mentor, tim Brodhead described it as the dance of deceptions where um, nonprofits pretend to have the answer and the owners pretend to believe them and we just keep dancing in this dance of deception. Um, so that was really what sparked my passion for changing it. But I’d say on a, on a personal note as well, I, um, I had, I was at a very low point coming back from that experience. Um, and, and I, you know, I don’t need to describe for your listeners where we’ve all had ups and downs, especially over the last couple of years, but just in a, in a real, real pit. Um, and was, was walking, I pulled myself together was walking down the street and and realized that on the outside, you know, that the strangers that were passing me by, they’d never know how, how broken I felt inside. Um, and then, and I just had this aha moment where I realized that just like me, they, They could be suffering and I’d never know or they could be going through what I was going through or worse, 10 times worse. And I never know. And I had this moment of I’m just, I don’t, I don’t even know how to describe it, uh, clarity and I, and I, and love for these strangers. I was, I was passing on the street thinking that they could and probably would feel the suffering that, that I was in as well at some point. Um, and I, and I think that moment that made me like us a little wiser, a little more human, a little more empathetic. And, and I really held on to that belief in that moment because I think it helps me remember that those moments of suffering are what transform us and allow us to be more human. And that, that’s that those, that the hardest moments that were in, um, make us more

[00:10:51.24] spk_0:
human. That’s very at this poignant. Thank you for sharing. And you know, the, the empathy it makes me think of empathy for, for the,

[00:10:52.15] spk_1:
uh, the folks

[00:12:25.04] spk_0:
that your engineer colleagues were hiding the truth from. Uh, empathy for donors that we may conceal the truth from. Or I’ll just come right out and call it lie to about our, about our outcomes. But so empathy for those folks and, and how, how much of a disservice it is and how wrong it is to treat them that way, whether it’s a, I don’t know, it was a foundation or a government entity, whoever your engineering colleagues were talking to, you know, with billions of dollars of resources potentially. Or, you know, even if that wasn’t the case, but that could, that, that type of funder could be on one end of the spectrum, or is it a $50 donor who contributed to a larger program that I didn’t yield the outcomes that, that, that we had, we had hoped for maybe in, in, in, in any, in any kind of senate. Oh, it’s healthcare or feeding or whatever. Um, you know, the disservice we do, um, when we’re, when we’re not upfront and you know that I think it’s informed by all the talk about transparency and authenticity and honesty over the past. You know, that I guess that’s probably been 5, 7 years or so we’re supposed to be donor centric. Well, it started with donor centrism and then honesty and transparency and um, you know, we want to, we want to live the things that that were aspiring to.

[00:13:30.34] spk_1:
Absolutely. And I think we get into these patterns of interacting with each other where we feel we have to show up in a certain way. Um, and I I see, you know, we think that sharing our failures will show weakness. It will show, you know, it’ll show our incompetence, it will show that we don’t, we don’t really, you know, have it all together, we’re figuring it out as we go along. Um, and I fundamentally believe that when we share our failure as well as in we take ownership of them. We talk about what we learn, we talk about, you know, how we’re incorporating that going forward. It shows incredible strength and courage. Um, and I, the example I love to use because it’s so universal is um, is Babe Ruth, I’m famous baseball player who is famous for hitting somewhere in so many home runs, but he also held the record for the number of strikeouts for like over a decade, you know, and when he was asked about that, he said, um, well, every strike leads me closer to the next home

[00:13:34.28] spk_0:
run.

[00:14:10.24] spk_1:
And I think, I mean, we could all, we could all be a little bit more like Babe, as in, you know, he’s not denying that he got those strikes, like, yeah, I struck out, you know, I made the wrong call, maybe I lost us the game, I swung at the wrong pitch. Um, but I’m going to make sure that that gets me, that experience gets me or us the team closer to the next home run and here’s how and that can show incredible strength and courage if we can share our failures in that way. Um, and yeah, and like you said, demonstrate that authenticity and perhaps that it feels incredibly vulnerable, you know, even when we have that story of what the next home run is, it still feels terrifying to share those stories, but um but it can in that sense that you’re still doing it. It shows incredible strength to those listening

[00:14:32.74] spk_0:
I’ve said many times and many guests have said to uh vulnerability is a sign of strength,

[00:14:35.34] spk_1:
not

[00:14:35.93] spk_0:
not weakness, it’s a sign of confidence, not not weakness, vulnerability, humility.

[00:14:43.04] spk_1:
Yeah, one of those things that’s so easy to say, and then when you’re in the moment, almost impossible to

[00:14:59.84] spk_0:
do, alright, uh let’s talk about the ideal relationship with with failure, we’re getting into some of your more than nuts and bolts. Uh you have, you have a pretty straightforward cycle and then and then we’ll talk about why why we go astray?

[00:15:06.40] spk_1:
We

[00:15:07.10] spk_0:
go astray from the ideal. That’s that’s your practice, the filling the void between the ideal and the and the reality.

[00:16:21.14] spk_1:
Absolutely. So the the ideal is what I refer to as intelligent failure or a healthy relationship with failure. How do we feel? Well, basically um starts with acknowledging that failure is inevitable, just uh you know, expecting it from that perspective so that we can detect it early ideally. Um and then we want, when we detect it, we want to analyze it effectively to maximize our learning after that we want to apply that learning, we want to let that lessons learned, report collect dust on a shelf, how do we apply that to actually change our behaviors. Um, do something new or try again whatever it is. Um, and then how do we let that whole experience uh, inspire us to take, continue to take risks and bold action knowing that even the things that we try that don’t work out, we are able to recognize them, learn from them and apply that learning and move forward more wisely. Um, so that opens up more room to take risks and innovate, which of course leads to more failure, but hopefully different failures the next time around the loop and you can check out. Um, so if you google intelligent failure, you’ll probably see the loop come up on google, You can see the visual there.

[00:17:53.04] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications the problem because of their local missions, US community foundations are largely ignored by national media. So when the media covers philanthropy and public policy, community foundations are often left out the turn to approach media relations, building relationships. You’ve heard me talk about that before with national journalists and getting local community foundations op EDS and interviews. Also owned media, creating a website and social media presence to showcase the work of community foundations and capacity building ongoing resources and training for communications teams at local community foundations. So the community foundations were not getting attention. Turn to turn that around. You don’t have to be a community foundation to have turned to turn around your absence in the media, turn to communications turn hyphen two dot c o This applies in all kinds of realms. I mean, I’ve seen it applied to software development. I mean, it certainly applies to, uh, nonprofit community.

[00:17:59.33] spk_1:
It’s

[00:18:00.16] spk_0:
just, it’s sort of universally applied, isn’t it?

[00:20:07.04] spk_1:
I mean, I think so. I think failure is a universal experience and um, and we want to react to it in that way. The, and I should stay just to give your listeners the utmost respect. Like I know they already know what I just said. Everyone already knows how we should respond to failure. We know we should, you know, detect it, acknowledge it, analyze it, change their behavior and continue to take those risks. Everyone knows that. Um, and in many ways we think we do it because we know what it is. But the reality is that almost none of us myself included are able to actually practice, um, that intelligent failure consistently when we’re in the midst of it. The great analogy that my co author Diana Kander shared with me was it’s analogous to what we do when we fall like when we, when we fall down, our instincts are to, you know, to put our arms out to brace our fall, we tight, tense up and we tend to break wrists and hips and all sorts of other things. Falling is the number one reason why people end up in the hospital. Um, and yet there’s a right way to fall. Uh and there’s there’s examples of physiotherapists and and even this 80 year old man that I read about that like practices falling well every day. And it goes around like assisted living centers teaching other generally older people how to fall well. And it’s totally different. You you let your body relax to kind of absorb more of the shock, you protect, you know, your head or your side with your arms depending on where you’re falling and kind of tuck and roll out of it. Um but that’s not what our instincts are and most people have never thought about that, right? We we don’t and the same is true with failure. We don’t think that our instincts might lead us astray. And no one, probably no one’s ever told us that our instincts might lead us astray. Um but in almost all cases, um our instincts and and often organizational norms, learned behaviors will cause us not to fill intelligently. Um and so we need to practice our tuck and roll out of our failures. Uh and and learn what that is.

[00:20:26.74] spk_0:
I just have one correction to make. Uh they they are our listeners, our listeners.

[00:20:31.14] spk_1:
Thank you. So

[00:20:52.94] spk_0:
where do we go astray? Um there there you call them exit ramps that we can uh we avail ourselves of very well as you’re saying, you know, very conveniently, but not not more than convenient instinctively. We avail ourselves of uh Mhm exiting the the ideal that ideal loop of failing intelligently.

[00:21:00.54] spk_1:
Oh, you know, it’s um how long is your podcast? Because I feel like this is the whole like I’ve been doing this work for 10 years, this is the whole reason I have a job. So I could go on for days about this. Well

[00:21:12.23] spk_0:
we have an hour,

[00:21:13.17] spk_1:
okay,

[00:21:14.09] spk_0:
Give us about another 40

[00:21:15.30] spk_1:
minutes. I will, I will try to but

[00:21:30.84] spk_0:
we don’t but I also would like we we need to spend some time on how to re conceive failure, you know, in your organization so that you’re avoiding some of the avoiding some of these exit ramps. So maybe maybe not every

[00:21:35.14] spk_1:
not

[00:21:36.22] spk_0:
every one of the the exits, but you know, there’s there’s some, there’s like like there’s some introspection involved.

[00:22:33.24] spk_1:
Yeah, I think there’s some common ones for sure. So I mean a big one folks, we tend to assume that it’s easy to detect failure. We just know when it happens. But a big challenge that I see is the is the kind of denial or escalating commitment um biases that we have that prevent us from even detecting that what we’re doing is a failure and have us keep doing the things that we probably should stop. You know, that denial comes from a place of either, we’re not getting the information that we need are asking the right folks for feedback about what’s working and what’s not um or simply confirmation bias. You know, we want to believe that things are working on are going well. So we look for information that reinforces that. Um, what about

[00:22:36.14] spk_0:
Tito, can we talk a little about personal and institutional, both on both levels? Ego.

[00:22:51.84] spk_1:
That’s interesting. I, so I’ll give you a personal example of this. Um, just before I started my company fell forward, I started a website called admitting failure And it was a place for anyone to share their stories of failure and learning, you know, never again, what a mistake he repeated because this website existed built into the database. There’s gonna be thousands, thousands of failure stories shared on this. Got a lot of attention to a lot of media interviews and you know, I, I don’t know, it’s been whatever 13 years since then. And there are 32 stories shared on that site. 32

[00:23:14.91] spk_0:
is a much more exemplary place than we realized certainly than you realize you’re just a negative, negative

[00:23:21.95] spk_1:
asking people

[00:23:23.26] spk_0:
Of humanity why why are you so harsh on humanity? There’s only, there only been 32 failures in 13 years.

[00:24:57.94] spk_1:
Exactly. Um, and, and on the other side of that, I’m totally amazed that 32 per strangers wanted to put the failures on my, but uh, and, and I had, I had some, some donor funding for that. And I remember the day very clearly when they were telling me like, no, this, this isn’t working actually. You have zero stories on this, this experiment failed, ironically the site about failure failed. You need to do something else. And I’m supposed to be great at this. You know, I’m supposed to be the one that has that healthy relationship with failure. That’s what I’m trying to help people create by building this site after all. And I’m sitting there talking to donors being like, you’re wrong, let me show you all of the reasons why this is working. And there were like a couple of indicators that it was going well, but they were right obviously, and I just, I don’t know if it, I wouldn’t call it ego so much as I loved the idea so much and I wanted it to succeed so much and and perhaps a little bit of sunk costs fallacy to like I’d sunk a lot of my time and energy into, to making it and I really wanted it to work that it was really hard for me to see that it hadn’t worked. And I had that optimism bias as well. Like I just, I thought that if we just kept at it and if I just did a few different things, we might figure it out and ultimately it wasn’t, it wasn’t gonna work if you build it, they will not share your favorite stories and just and and it was only through the process of accepting that that I was able to start fail forward and and realized what was actually needed and what I actually want to spend my time on, but but it didn’t happen immediately.

[00:25:21.84] spk_0:
Is there is there such a thing as a a final failure that that we we just it’s unreal. It’s unrecoverable. We’re going beyond, we’re getting little metaphysical, but that’s such a beautiful

[00:25:23.94] spk_1:
question. I

[00:25:32.44] spk_0:
mean, on the beyond the organization, maybe it’s an individual, you know, is there such a thing on either level as the final unrecoverable failure?

[00:27:20.54] spk_1:
And you know, I think it’s always possible that any failure will destroy us. I think it’s also always possible that any failure could transform us into something wiser if we let it, I think it has less to do about the actual facts of the event and more to do with where we’re at as as human beings, you know, do we have, Do we um do we have the resources we need uh and the support we need to actually recover and try again? Um Do people believe in us? Do we believe in ourselves? Do we have enough time to do that healing process and get enough distance from it that we can look objectively and learn the lessons that we need to do? We have the self awareness um to kind of ask ourselves the questions that we need to and bring in the people we need to to be able to maximize what we can learn from it. There’s a lot of different pieces that have to be at work there. Um but even the worst failures, I always um I always believe it is possible to use those moments uh to become more human. Vm The metaphor I love to use is the japanese art of repairing pottery with gold, I believe it’s called. Um So you take these broken pieces of pottery and you you glue them together with gold enamel and the pieces are just stunning and the art form recognizes that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. You’re not hiding it. You know, you’re not trying to put it back to just the way it was. Um you know, you’re saying like I I can be better because of this.

[00:27:29.14] spk_0:
So you don’t think there is

[00:27:30.59] spk_1:
a

[00:27:32.04] spk_0:
final final failure. If if you have the right support confidence resources, you know, the things that the things that you describe Alright, alright, I

[00:27:41.86] spk_1:
don’t, I don’t think any failure has to be final.

[00:27:44.08] spk_0:
I think you can mess

[00:27:45.12] spk_1:
up really, really bad and you can hurt a lot of people and and and and then it becomes even more important that you do the near impossible work of repairing with gold.

[00:28:10.04] spk_0:
Mhm. Those, you know, those resources that support even the confidence um

[00:28:11.44] spk_1:
that’s going to vary

[00:28:46.24] spk_0:
depending on your background, I’m I’m thinking of women minorities who don’t uh don’t in, in, in a lot of, a lot of situations have, you know have that even the internal the self confidence, let alone the external support and confidence resources that more privileged folks do have, that’s gonna, that’s gonna affect your your outcome from the same failure across all across all folks.

[00:30:23.44] spk_1:
I know and it is a who uh just in the injustice piled on the injustice, I guess that’s how I might describe that one that that the privileged and the ones that that have all those opportunities. Um you know, it’s it’s easy to feel it’s easy for for us to stand up and say like, yeah, feel fast, feel often go out, feel fast and break things, you know, and you put that poster up on your wall uh, when that speaks to a very small sliver of the population that can actually do that with that kind of gung ho rara Silicon Valley, um pizzas. Um it’s because, you know, they have endless resources and and uh and a and a culture that supports folks to try try again. Um, and I think, I think what’s really needed across um across those boundaries, like, you know, for for for all of us um to offer each other grace in times of failure that, you know, we all need that time and we’re all capable and and it’s always possible to um, to move forward more wisely. So how do we give each other that grace of the second chance um would be would be my invitation and not just to the to the uh, the privileged few, but to

[00:30:30.24] spk_0:
everyone interesting. Our, our conversation has taken a different turn for

[00:30:34.74] spk_1:
half

[00:30:35.04] spk_0:
an hour or so. But that’s fine.

[00:30:36.11] spk_1:
I

[00:30:37.96] spk_0:
only got to the

[00:30:38.55] spk_1:
first step around the loop and the exits. My goodness

[00:30:46.34] spk_0:
you did. I know well you’re, you’re, you’re suffering a lackluster host. You know, I, I think I digress and no etcetera. But uh,

[00:30:49.66] spk_1:
no,

[00:30:50.03] spk_0:
I think very, very informative introspective. You know, I appreciate your sharing your not your own, not only your own stories but

[00:31:00.04] spk_1:
your thoughts.

[00:33:04.74] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. I wish for you. Easy, comfortable donor relationships. What am I talking about? The kinds of relationships where you can pick up the phone, the person is going to take your call or if you leave a message, you’re very, very confident. There’s, there’s no question they’re gonna call you back. The kinds of relationships where you can write a quick handwritten note. It doesn’t have to be a formal letter 8.5 by 11 word document. The kinds of relationships where there’s trust. There’s and these relationships are fun. Right? Those are the kinds of relationships I hope you have with your donors planned giving donors or otherwise it doesn’t make a difference. Um, I posted about this on linkedin and Kirsten Hill suggested the word authentic to describe these relationships. Absolutely, Joanna brody also commented and reminded me that these kinds of relationships ease tension, Joanna. Absolutely right. So that if there is ever conflict, hopefully there isn’t. But you know, things happen on both sides. If there is ever a conflict it’s so much easier to resolve when you’ve got these comfortable authentic donor relationships. These are the kinds of relationships I hope you’re striving for and I hope you’re enjoying with your donors. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for improve your relationship with failure with Ashley. Good. See relationships again, the relationships are ubiquitous. Let’s talk more on, on an organizational level. What, what, what kind of culture? Um, what kind of ceo do, what can a

[00:33:08.35] spk_1:
supervisor

[00:33:18.14] spk_0:
of others who is not necessarily the ceo due to, to foster this. Um, intelligence failing.

[00:33:21.34] spk_1:
Mm hmm. What

[00:33:25.04] spk_0:
do we need to encourage others to think about? What do we need to do for ourselves?

[00:33:26.95] spk_1:
I

[00:33:31.14] spk_0:
guess acknowledging our own failures when they, when they occur setting the

[00:34:58.54] spk_1:
example. Mm hmm. Um again, there’s many ways I can answer that question. I think there’s an there’s an individual because organizations are made up of individuals. There’s something that everyone of us as individuals can do and leaders most importantly must do if they want to see a healthy relationship with failure thrive? Uh, so there’s the individual actions. There’s also kind of the organizational structures. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna touch on the individual side first. Um, and that’s simply, I, I love to talk about four mindsets or like our ground rules that I often set when I’m facilitating groups. Um So the ground rules are blameless nous humility, empathy and curiosity. So the blameless nous is recognizing that everyone makes, no one shows up to work hoping to mess up. You know, we’re all trying to do the best job possible. So blame really doesn’t make sense. You know what you really want to be doing is figuring out how exceptional talented, hard working, intelligent people. I made the wrong call and and we ended up with the result that was that was undesirable. Um You know, how did we arrive at that conclusion? What what information was missing? How you know it’s a process vlog what how so how did that happen? Never who who doesn’t matter. Um because everyone’s trying their best. We want to know how are great people. Um You know I got to the wrong answer right?

[00:35:11.64] spk_0:
So before we move to the empathy we we can we can avoid the finger pointing. I mean maybe we do that. Maybe that we do that behind closed doors but you know to try to improve. But but there’s not there’s not a lot of value in you know who caused who caused it. Like it could be

[00:35:21.69] spk_1:
that there’s no value in it. It’s completely counterproductive

[00:35:25.94] spk_0:
that

[00:35:26.73] spk_1:
that blaming someone has the exact opposite impact that you want it to. So it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Maybe they deserved to be finger pointed, who cares? Because by pointing fingers at them, you are guaranteeing that they show up even more

[00:35:41.31] spk_0:
defensive because they know

[00:35:42.75] spk_1:
that you’re blaming them and therefore the more defensive they are, the less likely they’re ever going to be to learn from that experience because you never learn if you’re stuck in that defensive position because you’re just there protecting yourself,

[00:35:55.17] spk_0:
protecting your job

[00:35:56.02] spk_1:
or you know, whatever,

[00:35:57.64] spk_0:
it’s not only them, everyone around them will see, see the, see the blame, see the injury that it causes to the blamed person or people and and react the way you’re describing. So

[00:36:21.53] spk_1:
it’s legitimate to be angry and upset that somebody did the wrong thing, I get that. So but deal with that within yourself before having the conversation with them. If you want to maximize what you can learn and move forward more wisely, I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s almost impossible,

[00:36:25.92] spk_0:
like so much of

[00:36:26.80] spk_1:
this, but but that’s the goal.

[00:36:30.18] spk_0:
Maybe it’s easier than almost impossible. Okay,

[00:36:33.90] spk_1:
depends on, it depends on the situation,

[00:36:41.33] spk_0:
reasonably likely that you can do this with some with some some of your own introspection.

[00:36:43.23] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:36:44.35] spk_0:
it takes a lot

[00:37:48.03] spk_1:
of self awareness. Yeah. But yeah, that’s blameless nous right, recognizing that no matter how bad the decision the chances are that person did it with good intentions. Um the so the second and humility Um you know, so often we want to blame as opposed to looking at ourselves as I often say in groups, you know, even if the failure was 99% not your fault. What’s the 1% of things you could have done differently? What’s the 1% you did contribute or did what didn’t you do that? You might have, you know, really looking for your your own role in trying to see and own whatever piece you can the the empathy piece. I use the word empathy almost to get folks out of that tendency to judge. Obviously those judgmental thoughts are always there, especially in terms of failure when emotions are high. Um, and often the consequences are high. But really trying to get ourselves out of that tendency to judge and move into a stance of empathy, recognizing that um, you know, really putting yourselves in their shoes that you can see how they could have arrived at that conclusion or that decision, right? I understand they might have had this lens, you know, really trying to understand where they might be coming from. So even if you don’t agree, you can at least empathize with with their position. And then finally, probably the most important one.

[00:38:05.61] spk_0:
This is the second time we’ve talked about empathy.

[00:38:08.72] spk_1:
Mm hmm. It’s important that

[00:38:16.22] spk_0:
there’s a lot of a lot of that in this work because we’re talking because what we’re talking about its failure. You if you if you’re not going to have empathy for, you know earlier we were talking about the people who are mistreated,

[00:38:22.62] spk_1:
you lied

[00:38:28.72] spk_0:
to deceived, you know, whatever by errors of omission or um, You know, but now we’re talking about empathy for the folks who contributed even 1% to the failure.

[00:41:05.91] spk_1:
Yeah, often I hear when I’m facilitating in teams, you know, staff want to blame their boss, you didn’t set me up for success or the executive didn’t do this or the donor didn’t do this or whatever it is. Um, and it’s, and it’s stepping back from that that your judgments may be true, but it doesn’t matter. Can you understand where they’re coming from so that you can have a conversation with them about how you do better going forward. That’s the whole goal, right? The goal is learning moving forward more wisely. Um, anyway, the last of the four values or mindsets um, is curiosity and this is the one that I probably spend the most time on only because I think it’s, we’re so we’re such great problem solvers, especially in times of failure, we just want to identify the problem, I want to fix it and often what folks need much, much more than problem solving cause if it was easy to solve they would’ve already done it is the curiosity, you know, trying to, trying to help others deepen their learning around what around the experience and ask the curious questions to help understand their perspective. So you can get at that rich or learning to allow yourself to move forward more wisely. Um so those are those are the four mindsets that ideally, like I said, leaders exemplify, they share their own failures, they, you know, with that humility and that blameless nous. They get curious when other failures happen um and they empathize, you know, when they’re, when they’re folks maybe don’t, you know, implement their ideas as well as they could, but there uh they empathize with them and and ask how they can do better and then so that’s the, that’s the individual side and basically that’s for you, do this for your, your golden right? You might not even need the organizational side, but the reality is each individual, you know, it’s it’s a lot to put on an individual to ask them to show up with those four mindsets all the time. Um that and that our organizational structures often make that very difficult. So how do we shape our organizations? So that that’s the norm is basically the questions that I often ask, um executive teams because they’re in the position to start to shape recruitment systems and training systems and performance appraisal systems and um you know, the way stories are told and what stories get told and how people do after action reviews and do we create enough time and resources for those and basically my whole job on the organizational structure side is to make sure we’re not expecting X, but rewarding for why, as in like we’re expecting a healthy relationship with failure and people to own their failures and work together to have these conversations, but we reward people who defend themselves and throw other people under the bus and um, and prove that it wasn’t their fault. You know, we’re trying to avoid that, uh, that folly

[00:41:44.71] spk_0:
Many years ago when I was in the first year of the podcast, which is 10, this is our, this is our 10th year. So this is our 12th year. This part, this is our 12th year, 2010. Um, I had someone on from the new york times, Stephanie strom back when there was such a thing called the nonprofit beat in, in a, in a, you know, a world leader newspaper that doesn’t exist anymore. But she covered something that the World Bank ran called failure Fair

[00:41:46.41] spk_1:
Fair

[00:42:00.20] spk_0:
Fair had an E at the end F A I R E. Um, and they were, um, for listeners, this was the August 27th 2010 show. Um, the World Bank was highlighting

[00:42:01.79] spk_1:
failures

[00:42:08.70] spk_0:
was failure Fair be out be open. Um, and you know, 12 years ago that that wasn’t such

[00:42:11.10] spk_1:
a, there

[00:42:53.50] spk_0:
was, we were in the dark ages, I’d say of, of, of intelligent failure may be failing intelligently. Probably didn’t, maybe not even even existed as a phrase, but um, it was, it was the dark ages in any case. Um, so I, I don’t, I don’t know if the World Bank continues that or did it again, but They did it in 2010 and for such a high profile organization, International Organization to do that. I thought it was exemplary. You know, it merited coverage. The new york times felt felt that. So uh of course the new york times follows non profit radio that’s how they get their ideas for for chauffeur articles is by listening to the property naturally. Um anyway, just a shout out to the World Bank and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of failure fair.

[00:43:18.60] spk_1:
Yeah, I spoke at one of my hosted the, if you excuse my language, the puck up nights in Toronto for a while. Um Knights, Knights. Yeah, they are, it’s not necessarily in the non profit world, but it’s largely entrepreneurs that get together and it’s kind of a a very authentic networking experience. Pre covid obviously, but a

[00:43:23.19] spk_0:
very good chance

[00:43:24.25] spk_1:
to come together and share share failures. Where

[00:43:26.89] spk_0:
where was that? Was that in Canada?

[00:44:00.39] spk_1:
They are in hundreds of cities all over the world now started by Leticia Gasca out of Mexico City and spread across the world. I I’m a real, I mean obviously I hosted, I’m a real fan of these events for many reasons. I think the best thing that they do is de stigmatize failure, they bring, you know, all these, all these earnest folks together and they have a couple of great speakers lined up to share their failures honestly and openly, and you just had this experience in the audience of watching these people share and you’re like, oh my gosh, like that’s a really bad failure and they’re still standing

[00:44:05.13] spk_0:
really,

[00:44:05.37] spk_1:
really,

[00:44:05.64] spk_0:
I

[00:44:07.52] spk_1:
Remember 1 1 guy,

[00:44:09.98] spk_0:
the session

[00:44:10.50] spk_1:
I was hosting, it was like millions and millions and millions of dollars, and I was like, I’m getting nervous as your host.

[00:44:17.70] spk_0:
But

[00:45:44.09] spk_1:
anyway, and you and you see, and you see that they that they lived through it and that they are stronger because of it, like you and you watch them and and you know, no one’s throwing tomatoes at them, you know, they really are the strong wise leaders at the front of the room still. And so there’s this real de stigmatization that happens, it allows everyone in the audience to kind of put down their usual masks that you wear when you’re at networking events and actually show up a little bit more more human as I’ve said a number of times in this interview. Um so I love them from that perspective, I think the danger in them is that we assume that if we share those failures, no one else is going to make that mistake, like that’s how we’re going to learn, and I would say they’re not a very good learning tool because it’s so rare that someone in the audience isn’t exactly the same position and needs to learn that exact same lesson. So I think it’s great from a cultural perspective. Um, and I’d say the other risk in them that I I feel really uncomfortable with them and not for profit world is the celebrating failure because those failures have real consequences on people’s livelihoods. So when you have an event and you’re making light of them, i it just it doesn’t sit well with me. I’m all for de stigmatizing failure in a healthy relationship with failure. But I can’t get behind celebrating it because you know, you’re talking about people’s livelihoods. Um, and

[00:46:01.38] spk_0:
maybe people who are impacted in other ways by by the failure. You know, if the if the project or program didn’t go well because we didn’t understand the culture in in Eritrea than than those people of you know, there may be relationships damaged there

[00:46:05.98] spk_1:
that

[00:46:09.68] spk_0:
where we, where we came with good intentions but uh, you know, but messed up people’s lives on the ground somewhere to

[00:46:41.88] spk_1:
Yeah, and to me that I mean that is not to be celebrated right? That is like I have a moral obligation to maximize what I learned from this experience. Like I’m allowed to get it wrong, I’m I’m not, I don’t have to be perfect, but if I do get it wrong, it is my responsibility to learn what I can from that and share that. And I think that’s more if we can come at it from that tone. It speaks a little bit more to me than I think some of these events got a little too um celebratory,

[00:46:43.07] spk_0:
celebratory. Yeah. Not

[00:46:45.22] spk_1:
to say that the lights aren’t fun. They are fun, but acronym is fun, but you know, it’s it’s from a place of recognizing how important it is that we learn from those.

[00:46:57.68] spk_0:
Wasn’t that uh the premise for your database was

[00:47:02.92] spk_1:
that

[00:47:04.08] spk_0:
nobody would make these mistakes again

[00:47:07.48] spk_1:
was wrong?

[00:47:24.78] spk_0:
I know I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not blaming wright. I’m not blaming, I’m trying to I’m trying to be empathetic, but that was one of your objectives was to to prevent this from happening again. But right now, I mean the likelihood of someone being in the same circumstance, you know, a similar program, similar set of facts. Very reading

[00:47:34.54] spk_1:
that particular story on that web, particular website that they may or may not know about is that it’s pretty unlikely

[00:47:46.98] spk_0:
right? That too, Yes, they’ve got got to go to the website and read it. Yes. Um

[00:47:47.42] spk_1:
made a few mistakes in my assumptions around that project.

[00:48:00.67] spk_0:
What about a story um case um anonymized or not. I don’t, you know what, where uh an organization turned around. It’s it’s it’s thinking and maybe maybe maybe didn’t necessarily fail a second time more more intelligently,

[00:48:10.37] spk_1:
but you

[00:48:10.50] spk_0:
know, where you you saw, you saw a change

[00:48:12.86] spk_1:
in an in an organ at

[00:48:17.67] spk_0:
an organizational level that was that was going to make it more likely that in the future they would fail intelligently,

[00:49:00.97] spk_1:
You know, it’s funny, I often get asked for organizational examples like who do we look to to really um you know, be a role model for this and I shy away from it mostly because it’s not an arrival, like it’s not, you know, I have figured this out, I now have the perfect organizational structure and our leadership is exemplifying these things and we have like gold, gold star certification, we are an intelligence failure organization. It just, You know, I’ve been doing this for 10 years, I’ve worked with some incredible organizations, incredible leaders um and it’s, there is no end point in this,

[00:49:04.35] spk_0:
it’s a journey then

[00:49:23.37] spk_1:
maybe we’ll talk about it individually, it’s probably a little bit easier. I’ve been trying to promote a healthy relationship with failure for over a decade and I still struggle with my own failures and I still respond badly sometimes, you know, I’m aware of it often or probably hopefully I can recognize

[00:49:30.39] spk_0:
it in myself a little

[00:50:58.26] spk_1:
faster than most people do, but I still suck at it. So for me it is not about like this organization is totally figured it out, it’s how do we see this as a practice? Um kinda like staying in shape I guess, you know that we’re going to the gym and we’re lifting those heavy weights because we know that we have to keep doing that if we want to keep our muscle mass, like I think the same thing is true with um with a healthy relationship with failure, we want to keep pushing ourselves, keep taking those risks and seeing ourselves fall down and right, I know what I’m supposed to do when I do this, I’m supposed to own it and I’m bringing together the people that were involved to analyze it and that’s really uncomfortable and I don’t want to have that conversation, but I’m going to and I’m going to try to change my behavior and I’m going to ask for people to tell me when I make that mistake again. Um and I’m going to continue to push myself and that’s that’s kind of the the forever cycle. There isn’t necessarily an arriving um and I think there’s a lot of, a lot of groups that I’ve worked with that have taken, you know, three steps forward, two steps back, you know, another step or two for, you know, it gets a it’s hard to keep up. Um It’s hard, there, there is no example is basically my long winded way of saying that that, but there are a lot of incredible organizations who are doing incredible things with incredible leadership um really striving to make what is not instinctive work. Um

[00:51:14.36] spk_0:
Yes, counterintuitive, not right, but it’s a it’s a journey, it’s a practice. Alright, alright, you told an interesting story on another conversation with someone about um

[00:51:15.66] spk_1:
one

[00:51:24.96] spk_0:
Step Forward, two steps back um a an explorer in the in the North Pole. I thought that was a poignant story. Can you

[00:51:30.46] spk_1:
absolutely share

[00:51:31.94] spk_0:
That 1? You know what I’m talking about?

[00:51:39.66] spk_1:
I do. I do and you know what his name is totally escaping me. So please go back in your show notes and like reference the name. I’ll look it up after the

[00:51:41.57] spk_0:
interview.

[00:53:39.95] spk_1:
Um But it was a an explorer who an arctic explorer. So on the arctic ice sheets um And the North Pole has no no landmass, right? It’s just ice sheets that are constantly constantly moving around. He’s trying to make it to the North Pole. And you know, he’d walk and walk for hours and hours and at the end of um you know 10 12, 14 hours of walking. You have to set up camp and rest because you know, he’s still human and he said his gps and he’d wake up in the morning and would often find out that he had floated back and undid all of the work that he’d done the days before trying to make that progress. And he would still have to pack up his camp and keep marching towards that North Pole. And how um oh gosh! You can only imagine how that would feel like the futility of it, the the powerlessness in that moment of changing the directions of the ocean currents underneath you that are moving you further away from your definition? I think such a beautiful metaphor for what we often experience in our work. You know, we work so hard and toil and just the, the forces of the ocean can pull us away from that goal. And um, and he had some great wisdom to share and again, I apologize for not remembering his name, but it was basically he’d wake up and and even with that information that he had just been moved far further away from his gold while he slept, um, he’d set his sight on one ice mount, You know, whatever it was 50 ft away and say, you know what if I make it there today, that’s success and that’s that’s what he needed to pack up his gear, put back on his skis and and keep going and he gets that iceman and say, okay if I make it to that iceman today is a success and and little by little those little, those little those days, those little goals, you know, eventually, um I reached that North Pole goal

[00:53:55.35] spk_0:
mm actually, good founder of fail forward. The company is at fail forward dot org and at fell forward Ashley, thank you very much. Very stimulating, interesting conversation. Thanks thanks so much for sharing

[00:54:03.95] spk_1:
my pleasure

[00:54:07.34] spk_0:
next week. Talk about humility. I’m working on

[00:54:09.24] spk_1:
it.

[00:54:10.14] spk_0:
If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:54:16.44] spk_1:
We’re

[00:54:53.34] spk_0:
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 be with me next week for nonprofit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the The other 95%. Go out and be great, mm hmm.

Nonprofit Radio for November 1, 2021: Risk Management II

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Buy-in 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 break out with cering go sista noma, if you made me sweat with the idea that you missed today’s show risk management, not all risk is bad, says ted village. We’ll walk you through why you should care about the good and bad and how to get going with your risk inventory he’s ceo of risk-alternatives and your disaster recovery plan one bad risk is you’re going to put ignore it at your own peril. What belongs in your d our plan darva arika is from lift that originally aired on may fifth twenty fifteen i’ll take two charity registration and plan giving podcasts responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio and by weinger cps guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dot, m a slash tony tell us it’s my pleasure to welcome ted village. He is ceo of risk-alternatives llc, providing risk management and process improvement. Solutions for non-profits and start ups he used to practice law and has served on the boards of numerous organizations. Ted has written about risk management and process improvement in stanford social innovation review, where you can also hear this show. Corporate responsibility magazine. This show is not on corporate sponsors. What magazine and risk management magazine were also not there. He’s at t bilich and the company is at risk. Hyphen alternatives dot com welcome to non-profit radio. Ted. Tony it’s. Great to be here. I hope you’re doing well. Thank you. I am. And how are you? I have to ask. I’m doing great. Thanks. I’m glad. Everybody’s. Good today. All right. Um all right. You’ve been in some magazines that non-profits are most likely not reading responsability magazine. Corpse. Sorry. Corporate responsibility magazine risk management magazine. I’m sure you’re not unfamiliar with this risk management sounds boring. Why either boring or scary? Alright. And if this was not on some affiliate stations, i might use stronger language. I might put it. Put an adjective on before the word for before the word boring. Oh, my god. Why should we be paying attention to this? You know you. Hit on one of the most important issues that i face, which is when people think about risk management, they think about either the fact that it’s one more obligation for them or that they don’t wanna lift up rocks because they’re afraid of what what’s under them and and, you know, what i say to people time and time again is that risk management is a critical part of your business because especially if you’re a non-profit you are dealing with more risks than almost any other organization you could possibly think of, you know, think of the non-profit business model, toni it’s, your taking money from strangers in order to deal with intractable problems. And if you do your job really well, your business should go out of business that’s a risky model, so it really pays to pay attention to risk management, and we could get into sort of what that means if you’d like, yeah, we’re going to, um you do say that not all risk is bad. That’s exactly right? Flush it out. Yeah. Yeah, sure. You know, one of the one of the issues in risk management is what do you mean by rich? And risk matt necessarily mean bad things risk. So i always tell people, when you’re talking about risk talking about uncertainty management, you could have bad risk that could go go, go wrong, and we call those threats. He could also have good rick, you know, opportunities either opportunities for improvement of your current processes or opportunities in the sense of new initiatives, and all of that is within the framework of a good risk management process. Okay, so i like the idea of we don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s. Just it’s something we don’t know, right? So it does not. Of course, it does not have to be bad. It could be fantastic, right? Okay, absolutely. You know, it could be that that that there is a new donor who is waiting to not give you money if you expand your programs in a new direction, but simply wants to give you money to do mohr of what you’re doing now. And you believe that this is important for non-profit sustainability? Oh, gosh, yes, if you don’t, if you don’t have a risk management process, tony, then let’s say, you’re thinking about having a strategic plan or you have a strategic plan, how can you possibly have confidence that that strategic plan is going to accomplish its its objective if you don’t have a really strong awareness of what your current capabilities are, including what the threats and opportunities are that face your organization? So there’s this thing out there called a swot tte or swat analysis? Um s w o t the o’s opportunities in the tear threats i forget with the what do you what’s the s and the w its strength and weak she’s. So weak threat. Thank you. All right. Yeah. And and people use that sometime during strategic planning process. Okay, so this is s so we’re calling altum positive risks or good risks. That that’s the opportunity. That’s, right? Those are opportunities there. Potential opportunities? Ok. Yes, exactly. And one of the things that i talk to people about when when they talk about a swat analysis, is that swat analysis tends to be a static once every couple of years, activity done during strategic planning. One way to think about risk took that slot and alan and you operationalized it so that you were as a matter of routine, looking at your strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats. That’s one way to think about a risk management structure is it’s taking the swat process and making it something that is ongoing over time. I think it should be swope i think it’s a long hour, i know not to quibble, but i think it’s, of course, equivalent, but i think it’s a long oh, i think so long, so might be, but i don’t think that negates anything that you just said, i don’t know listeners thinking that all right, so so an ongoing process. Now you you have this cool article. Stanford social innovation review called a call for non-profit risk management, you make very clear in that, and we have about a minute before first break make very clear that that this is not really appropriate for start ups. If you start up basically, your your argument is you can cover this most of your problems or potential risks with insurance. But so when when should we start doing formalized risk analysis? You know, a good signal for that, tony and briefly before break good signal is when you start doing, when you start having regular audit, um, that usually happens when a non-profit is going into growth phase, and at that point, it’s useful to start having a risk management process because after all, you’re becoming a grown up organization. Okay, so when you start when you start having going through an audit process with your right when you and then that usually in love that you know, depending on the state seven hundred fifty thousand dollars to a million dollars of annual revenue, okay, let’s, take our first break pursuant, their newest paper demystifying the donor journey. You need to be intentional, deliberate about stuart in your donors, we’re talking about being delivered today, assessing risk. You also need to be deliberate about stewarding your donors so you don’t lose them. Pursue it will help you create and fine tune your donorsearch stewardship plan. Keep your donors with you so you don’t have to replace them each year. Demystifying the donor journey it’s at tony dot m a slash pursuant, radio let’s, go back to ted village and let’s continue our talk about risk management thiss ongoing assessment process so all right, so we know when we should begin. Um, what shall we begin with? Is it? Is it the risk inventory? That’s exactly right, tony the first step still, this good risk management process is too take stock of where you are now because you can’t start prioritizing if you don’t have awareness of what your current threats and opportunities are so there’s a process risk-alternatives hq inventory it’s simply a structured exercise that you take your staff through to help them identify threats and opportunities not just within operations, but operations and finance that i t and a talent management and development and all those different functions within the non-profit and it usually takes about, you know, two or three hours of work total for your staff to do something like this spread out over a couple of weeks, and at the end of it, you have a really good idea of the threats and opportunities you currently face, really only two to three hours for each put threespot actually not that hard of a process in fact, your listeners could go to our website, risk-alternatives risk-alternatives dot com and download a little report that shows you how to do it on your own when we do it as a facilitated manner. It takes about an hour to train people about risk management, and then they go off on their own and each person takes about forty minutes to use an online tool toe identify these threats and opportunity. So it’s really not a long involved process. I love the online resource. Thank you for that. So again, risk hyphen alternatives dot com let’s say i want to flush this risk inventory a little bit. So who should be involved in this process? First of all? Well, when when we advise customers to do it, we always say you should have your c sweet team. I’m assuming that that you have a small, that this is a fairly small organization were small. There were small to midsize non-profits here, however you think one point five, two million dollars to five million dollars in revenues, you probably have a ceo cfo, a head of development in in some form or another, and probably someone in charge of programs. You would want to have those people, but we also also always advised get one person who’s simply a staff member right on the front line and have them do it along with the senior team because they’re no thing that that the senior staff don’t have any id dea is going on. Yeah, i know that there. That could be very eye opening on ly one person, though, from from down in the trenches. Well, on in your initial risk inventory, tony wanna balance thoroughness with efficiency. And so with this initial inventory, i think it’s good to have one person from the trenches. But this is mostly going to be a bottom down identification process. His first run through the idea behind it, though, is that risk management is not a one and done thing. You do an inventory, you prioritize, you respond to those you assess and improve, and then you do another inventory and so on and so forth. And as as you grow this within your organization, you would want to make sure that mohr and more people are involved in that risk identification process. All right, so i see we’ve got an interpretive process. Let’s, go back to our initial one now. All right, so we’ve got this were basically creating a committee, that’s going to meet a couple of times, you said over, like two or three weeks. We’re creating a committee. A risk risk assessment committee is not going to scare people like we think committee, right? Okay, that sounds like when, when, when people below the c suite start hearing there’s, a risk assessment committee being formed. That sounds like they’re going to firings, coming, eyes firing or they know about. They know about the seven deadly plagues that are ten deadly plagues, depending on which version bible you read. There’s, locusts and blood and darkness coming on dh, what else we got flies really was that part of the buy-in frogs, frogs that was the effort, the other fellow. So this sounds a little scary to me if i’m not on the committee, no that’s exactly right, which is why one of the things that we advise the senior staff to do when they decide to go through this sort of exercise is to send in all staff e mail out saying, you know, we’re doing this process so that we can dip our toe in the in the waters of risk management. It’s not a matter of something to worry about. In fact, the idea over time is to get everyone in the organization involved in this process, okay? So yeah, and we’re actually trying to do is reduce worry by identifying what’s out there that we don’t know. So we’re identifying are known unknowns. What about our unknown unknowns? Can we get to them? They’re always going to be things that are unknowable, you know, there’s, a wonderful book by, uh, well, it’s called the black swan. Have you read it, tony? You know, i think i saw a movie called black swan, but i don’t i don’t think it’s very different now a very different from what i’m talking about, okay, this book is about how, no matter how well you might try to predict the future, there are always going to be significant jolt of one sort or another that you can’t possibly predict beforehand. And so you know, i again, i always tell people, risk management is not a crystal ball. The better analogy is risk management is a flashlight in the dark, it allows you to see things you might not otherwise see. It makes the path a little safer because you can see some of the things that that might be bad along the way and some of the things that might be good, that can help you, but it also gives you a healthy sense of maybe we shouldn’t be running too fast, because if we run too fast, we’re not going to see the things that could trip let’s. Let’s, go back to our to our initial committee now. So so how do we ah wei, is that there’s a risk assessment committee? Yeah. Can we call that? Okay, managing committee, risk inventory shoretz are risking our r i c were first our first rick. So way get the group together. What do we do? How do we get the process started? If we don’t, we don’t have the luxury of the of a professional facilitator, right? Well, if i were doing it and i didn’t want to bring my company or some other company and it’s, what i would do is i would cheat in the following way, i would go get that that report that that we have on our website and i would download that and it says, ah, this is how you do it. These air, the various different functions that you want to look at, and it lists eleven different functions of the organization, and it says what you ought to do is you hot auto, have each team member within each function, identify three things that could go wrong, and one thing that could go right in the near future either because it’s a new process that we could adopt, or a new initiative or a process that we could tweak in some way. So each one of the people goes off and does and and they identify three threats and one opportunity in each function of the organization. Okay, then they do it, but they do it, tony, even if it’s not their function oh, you’re going all right. Well, let’s, take one step at a time. First of all, just just name a couple of the functions. You know, talent management. Okay. Hiring, developing and if necessary, firing people that’s one funky reputation management, you know, how do you influence what? What people think about your organization. Um, fernand is another function. How do you account for the money that flows through the the organization? Just give us one. Give us one more. We don’t want to eleven. Because because there are available on the title is the big ones. You know, how do you use elektronik technology in order to enhance the services you provide? Why’re we waited three, three potential bad and one potential. Good. Why can’t we be? Do equalize it out two and two. You could do it that way. I’ve found just over time that people are going to be very, very, um, free with identifying things that could go wrong. People have lots of worries, especially during an initial risk inventory. They like to dump a lot of stuff out on on the table it the reason why we emphasize identifying at least one opportunity is that we want them to be balanced in their presentation to some extent. Nevertheless, it always is that people are going to identify more threats than opportunities, and so we’ve set it up as a rubric of three to one to at least get the one in each because really not balance it’s tze, twenty five percent good and seventy five percent bad, but but you see, people are thinking mohr negatively, people thinking more about the bad risks that’s, right? And and also when when you know, when we reconvene after after having people look at those things out on their own. One thing that that happens is that the team the committee that you’ve developed is going to find that they identified it ah lot of the same risk, so you might get a list of one hundred risks, but really it’s going to end up with about sixty sixty to seventy risks and and a lot of those things that they identify as bad things aren’t going to stand up to the light of day one person might be worried, but another person has a full explanation, and so it will simply go away. You’ll end up with about forty or fifty for challenge either positive challenges or negative challenges, and and at the end of that process, i can almost guarantee that someone who does this will be aware of two or three things that are low hanging fruit, that they can pick very rapidly in order to help their organization thrives. Now, are we allowed to come back to the committee then with mohr than the four that you challenged us with? And then the committee and the committee flushes them out to get down to this forty or fifty? Is that the way it works? Yes, if someone wants to identify more than three threats and one opportunity, i would never say, no, you can’t, but but on the other hand, you don’t want someone, for instance, to focus so much on this that they become, you know, all engrossed in in their potential worries rather than doing their job. So you wanted to be somewhat manageable, all right? We’re in the details of this, which is where i want to be. So so our first meeting is introductory. And then we give some homework second meeting you’re coming back in a week or maybe give him ten days. All right, maybe it’s a it was a long weekend in there, so e-giving e-giving ten days you’re coming back with your your analysis of threats and opportunities with the understanding that we’re going to narrow, we as a committee are going to narrow it down to three, three and one for each functional area, okay? No, no, no, that that i think i misled you on that one. Well, you’re going to narrow it down to a certain number of risks. It may be that there are that that the committee ends up saying, yeah, there really are seventeen risks in the development function. And they all are really rich. Each person would have identified only three. But, you know, maybe maybe it ended up that that you had ah, fifteen at least, um, legitimate risks threats that were identified, that is, you don’t limit it artificially as far as the total number of risk that could be identified within a function. Okay, i think you did mislead me, but that’s all right? You know, character. So listeners going go back, listen to what ted originally set the record will now pass that’s, right? I think it’ll show that i’m correct, but, um, so all right, so and you had also said that people can identify threats and opportunities outside their their own functional area, so a cfo can comment on it, and i can’t comment on hr and talent development, et cetera. Okay, um, that’s our second meeting, what happens after that? Now, we’ve now we’ve got our core of forty to fifty yeah, you’ve got your core of forty to fifty. The next step in that in the process would be to prioritize along those risks, because if you have forty two, fifty two, sixty risks and you think they’re all equally important, well, you’re just going to be frozen in inaction. So the next step is to use whatever tool you wish to use to prioritize those risks down to the most important ones that your organization face. And when i’m advising r our clients, i say the simpler the better, as far as prioritization, use a simple, you know, ah, point system, where each person on the team gets a certain number of points and they can allocate those points, however they wish among the fifty or sixty rhys so that if you want to push him all of your chips on toe one risk because you think that’s really important and should be really high priority for the organization, you could do that. Um, and and by doing that, you end up with your top ten or fifteen risk that got the most points and those become your first prioritized punch list of high value items that your organization should focus on during the coming period of time. You could do this like a poker game. You could all be you could buy everybody a stack of chips and okay, number one, we’re going to go through all forty or fifty. Number one who wants to throw is number one throwing your chips. But when you have a chip on that one that you exactly right, good bet judiciously, because when you’re out of chips, then you’re silent. There’s no taking chips back. Alright, right? Yeah. And? And what is happening is that people will take different different approaches to deciding what you know what their priority risks are and and the reason why. I say it needs to be a simple process is that deciding priority really is a judgment call? It has something to do with how dangerous or how good is this opportunity of its opportunity? How, how, how big is the risk if it comes about, how likely is it to come about? And if it comes about, how much lead time are we going to get before it manifest? Seldman now, you know, if you’re a multi billion dollar corporation, you khun create huge financial models to make those sorts of decision, but for the average non-profit you have to rely on people’s considered judgment, and so having a simple prioritization process where people are told, you know, consider those three factors and then put your chips the way they should. It ends up being a pretty powerful system for identifying the core risk organization and say those three three factors again, yes, it is it’s, the magnitude of the risk if it comes about the likelihood of the risk coming about and how much lead time you’re going tohave once the risk manifests itself before the full impact hit, okay, that third one could be it could be a day or so? I mean, that could be short term and they could on the end. And that might mean that you would get several rank that risk hyre because you don’t get that much lead. On the other hand, if you’re talking about a legislative change, you might have not in front. Okay? Yes, exactly. Yeah. So you’re aware, of course, weighing the factors, it might be low, like a low, low, low probability, but xero lead time and great magnitude you’re going to rank that thing. Hyre okay. All right, all right. So now we’ve got our ten. We’ve got our top ten. Yeah. Now, do we continue in just the committee and dealing with these? Or do we start to open it up in, like, meeting three or four guard to open it up? Ok, start opening up when you, when you boil that tend the risks down to your poor wrist, then you start opening it up to the rest of your staff by bringing those the list of those risks to your staff meetings and talking about those with your staff asking, ah, you know, for for their reactions tow those risks. Signing those. Risks, too. Particular people tto be dealt with a signing check in dates for when when you’re going to check back, you know that that list of core risks, which is second big tool that risk managers use, they call it a risk register. But that prioritized list becomes the operational judge document that you share with your staff in all staff meetings and and other staff meetings. You also share that up to your board of directors because those are the core risk that the organisation face and the board may want to weigh in on some of those risks. Excellent. Ted. We’re gonna leave it there. That’s a perfect place to ah overviewing on dh, of course, there’s get you could get thie get the format at risk. Hyphen alternatives dot com. You could follow ted at t bilich b i l i c h ted village. Thank you so much for sharing. Uh, tony was great to be here. Thank you so much for having me on my pleasure. We need to take a break. Wittner, cps, anek cerp from the latest testimonial quote, they’re accessible. They care about their clients. End quote, can you say that about your accounting and audit firm? This is another way that wagner goes beyond the numbers remember all the guides and the templates you heard me rattle on about, but they’re valuable. So it’s rattling and it’s valuable rattle. Yes, it was very it was a high tone rattle, good tone, so there’s that but then there’s also they’re accessible. They care let’s make it personal. Talk to eat. Which tomb he’s. The guy you want to talk to? Check out wagner, cpas, dot com he’s a very good guy. Now time for tony’s take two two people have me on their podcasts, it’s their lives joe correct, and i talked about charity registration. Now, first of all, i have to apologize to joe correct, who i’ve always called joe garrick, including what he was on the show. Why he didn’t correct me, i guess. It’s too polite. I don’t know. I think i take notes. Well, as long as they’re not from my wife, i think i’m open so i would. Appreciate it, but joe correct did not. So i have to correct, correct and eso yes, joe, correct, and i did charity registration and i did, launching a planned e-giving program with heather yan tao. Those are my two tricks to trick pony that’s what i know, plan giving and charity registration heimans lots of people say they feel passionate, passionate about their their work you need i love you. The twitter bios air are actually pretty interesting there’s a lot of passion out there, they’re passionate about whatever they do. I don’t know, i like it. I like playing giving i like charity registration let’s just leave it at that let’s not get carried away about passion. Um, so those are the two things i talked about. So the plan the plan giving with heather watching apollo program? Not surprisingly, i talked about charitable bequests that is the place to begin your plan giving program, as you know, and it could be the place to stop. If you’re a smaller, maybe even midsize shop, you don’t want to invest in more and more like infrastructure and further expertise or something it’s not necessary, you can have a very respectable program with charitable bequests start and stop there so you’ll hear that message. And then, of course, we’re going to more detail about starting a plan giving program against marketing tips that i shared with heather et cetera and for charity registration that was the one with job. Correct? Um, you know, the biggest hook with that is your donate. Now button, if you have a donate now button on your website, you’re accepting gifts on your site. That thing is a solicitation in lots of states the day that it goes live, and it doesn’t matter whether anybody in montana ever clicks on it. I don’t know if montana is one states you gotta register is like ten or twelve states where you don’t but let’s just don’t don’t fight the hypothetical, um, it’s it’s a solicitation in a lot of states, the moment it goes live because people in those states can see it so that’s a big hook you donate now button and just generally, of course, charity registration. You need to be registered in each state where you solicit donations, and joe and i went into some of the generalities about registration because it’s a morass. But there are some generalizations you could draw about what the states require in terms of timing and forms and fees, things like that when you get into the weeds of charity registration, then that’s where it’s it’s a morass because every state has its own let’s be polite and say video sync christie’s that they’re their own personalities that must emerge through the charity registration channel so you can’t make a lot of you can’t go into a lot of detail and, you know, like a forty minute podcast, but there are generalizations you can draw, and so we talk about exemptions also exemptions or key, you know, once you find a state that you need to register in because, you know you’re soliciting in that state, the first thing you want to do is look at the exemptions in that state. What do those look like? Because you might very well be exempt. Then, of course, drill down to the details of exemptions and that’s where the morass comes in is in a state where you apply for the exemption or the state, and you have to be approved for the exemption. Or is it a state where? You could just walk away, throw up your hands and go to the next state because you just deem yourself exempt, right? So joe, correct, and i talked about the exemption, of course, too, because, you know, you could save a lot of time if you find that you are exempt. All right. So carrie restoration job, correct planned e-giving beginning of launching a plant e-giving program that’s with heather, you, lando and i’ve got links to those two podcasts, of course, there’s. My video. I have to have my own personality and nuances. So my video, with the links to the those two podcasts where i was a guest, is that tony martignetti dot com live. 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Thanks to your station for carrying us affiliate affections that’s the liveliest or love the podcast pleasantries and the affiliate affections. Now let’s, go to darby, barca and your disaster recovery plan. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc twenty fifteen the non-profit technology conference were in day two. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center and my guest is dar vivir ca she’s vice president of technology for lift a lefty and her workshop topic is avoiding disaster a practical guide for backup systems and disaster recovery planning. Dar welcome, thank you very much. Good to be here. It’s a pleasure to have you this day two we’re highlighting one swag item at ntc per for interview and, uh, i have a double chip biscotti from ah sputnik moment the hashtag is hashtag is sputnik smiles and i’m told that the glasses go with the biscotti, so this is essential. This is this interview’s swag moment. Thank you very much. Sputnik smiles and it goes into the goes into the swag collection. There it is. Okay, door. Um, we need to know some ah, little basic turn. Well, you know what? Before we even get into why is disaster recovery and the related and included back-up so i don’t know if it’s just for gotten ignored, not done well, what inspired the session is a organization i used to work for. We were required by auditors to do a disaster recovery plans. So when it came time for the annual audit, i got out the current disaster recovery plan and went all right, i’m going to go ahead and update this and when i discovered when i read the plan was there were servers, there were eight years old gone for the last eight years server and reading the planet was very clear that what the previous person had done was simply change the date and update the plan for auditors. And as i thought about it and talk to other people, i found that that actually happens a lot people it’s d r is sort of that thing they don’t have time for because no one ever thinks it’ll happen to them, so you push it off and you push it off, and you either just download the template, you know, a template off the internet, and you slap a date on it and basically fill it out just for the auditors. But a lot of organizations never actually think through their disaster recovery, they don’t get into the details, they don’t worry about it, and then when a disaster actually happens to them, they’re sort of stuck. You don’t have a plan that i don’t have a functioning crush on, they’ve never tried it out, so that was what inspired the session and as we dug into it. We we tried to give the thirty thousand foot view because disaster it cover, you know, there’s an entire industry, the deals with technology, disaster recovery. You can spend days on this topic, and obviously we didn’t have days. We had a ninety minute session, so we tried to give the thirty thousand foot view of the practical items you need to pay attention to if you’re not confident in your organisation’s d our plan, if you don’t have a d our plan or if you do and you really don’t, you know, you think it really needs an overhaul that sort of the top ten of items of what you should really be looking at when you’re dealing with disaster recovering backups. And we tried to give some several practical examples myself and the other speaker and andrew, who could not make it this morning of disasters we’ve had to deal with as well as other well known ones. Yeah, okay, do we need some basic language? Miree before we get into the d r disaster recovery topic short jr is one of them. Disaster recovers, often referred to his d r it’s often spoken about in terms of business continuity or bc, which is sort of the larger plan for the entire organisation should’ve disaster strike there’s the others very d are specific things such as our poet recovery point objective that we could talk about your rto, which is recovery time objective there’s very specific language like that for disasters. It’s usually just revert to de ours. So whenever we say d arts disaster recovery okay, we’ll see if we get into those eyes and i could explain to ms wick. Okay, um, all right? So clearly we should have a disaster recovery written, just recovery plan. Even if we’re an organization that small enough that doesn’t have an annual audit, we still should have something in place. Yes. Okay. What belongs in our day? Our plan top ten things. You need a contact list for your team. So if you have a top ten of the d r i do of what should your plan d our plan? You know, it could be anything from a five page outline that just covers the basics. And in in our sessions slides, which i’ve posted in the ntc library gives it some good resource is for doing andy. Our plan, or it could be a, you know, a huge hundred page document, it covers absolutely every aspect of business continuity or something in between it’s going very by organization, and the reality is, if you’re a small organisation with a small team, you might only be able to do the five page outline but that’s better than nothing that’s better than no d our plan or a d r plan that realistically hasn’t been updated in the last ten years, but i would say, you know, the top ten you really should have in your day. Our plan is number one, a contact list for your team members. What is the contact for your team, folks, your business continuity folks, if you normally would get that out of your email and you’re in a disastrous situation, you know you can’t get to your email or, you know, like we’re ever going through, and i want listeners to know that she’s doing this without notes, i it seems very confident that she’s got the hopefully i’ve ever altum in-kind get seven out of seven or eight ten will be ecstatic, but so continue. Oh, but i want to say yeah, as we’re going through, consider two organizations that may not have someone devoted to it. Correct, that is, our listeners are small and midsize non-profits right? They very, very well just all be outsourced or it falls on the executive director’s desk. Excellent point. Would you cover that in the session? So t finish at the top ten contactless three team members contact list for your vendors, a call tree and some sort of communications. How do you tell your organization in your members that you’ve had a disaster? Either your servers have gone down your parts of burst and your communications air underwater? How do you do that? What is your network look like? So? Network diagram process outline how you’re actually going to do your disaster recovery a timeline? How long do you expect these activities to take before you? Khun b live again, a list of systems and applications that you’re going to recover if you’re a large enough or gore, you can afford a hot site what’s called a hot or warm site where you can immediately switch over two other equipment. You know information about that, you’d need that to start your recovery and then also information about your backups. You know, who’s got your back ups? What system are you using? How do you, you know? Get those back. So those air sort of like the top ten things or d our plan should have. Alright, let’s dive intothe process. Ok a bit, because that intrigues me. And hopefully listeners. I think so. I think i have a fare beat on what’s. Interesting. I hope i do. Um, yeah. What? How do we start to think about what our dear process should be? First, you have to think about what all could be a disaster for your organization. A lot of people think about things, you know, earthquakes, hurricane, sandy, hurricane katrina. But it could also be water pipes bursting in your building. That is one of the most common thing. If your server is not properly protected, which a lot aren’t a lot of stuck in closets. Ah, dripping pipe water. We call those water events and that seems to be the most common thing departments encounter is leaking pipes in the building or some sort of a flooding situation. But it could also be an elektronik. Disasters such i’ve worked at an organization that underwent what’s called a ddos attack, which is a distributed denial of service. It took out our entire web presence because malicious hacker hacker went after that’s where there’s millions of right the network and they just flood your network seconds you’re overloaded and yeah, and that’s a disaster situations. So one, why would they attack like that? Why wasn’t non-profit attack malicious? The cp dot organ are attacked out with avon marchenese travon martin decision. Folks attacked our our petition site way. We were able to get it back online, but for a couple of hours. Yeah, we were off line. And that could be considered a disaster situation. For sure. Yeah. How do you help us think through what potential disasters are not even identify them all i think about what could affect your or what you wear. You vulnerable? Some of the things we talked about in the session and we’ll think about it. How would you get back online if the’s various things happen to you are your are your services sort of in the cloud? Do you have servers on site and start there when thinking about your process is what would you have to recover if these various scenarios affected you or with these various scenarios. Scenarios affect you if your website is completely outsourced to a vendor that has de dos protection. Okay, that’s, not a scenario you have to worry about so kind of analyze it and every organs going to be different. You know, if you live on the west coast, you’re probably concerned more about earthquakes than other regions. So it’s it’s going to vary for each organization, what sort of disaster you’re going to be worried about? And then you start getting down into the practical nuts and bolts in terms of who are your disaster recovery people, who’s your team, if you’re really small lorry, that might just be you or as you mentioned before, if you’re using outsourced, manage service provider and your vendors responsible for that, make sure your vendor has a d our plan for you. Ah lot of folks just assume your vendors taking care of that, but when it comes right down to it, do they actually have d our experience? Can they recover your items? Actually sit down and have that conversation? Because so many of the small org’s as you pointed out, do youse outsourced thes days and there’s there’s a lot of manage service providers that specialize in non-profit, but you need to have that conversation. Don’t wait till you’re under a disaster scenario to discover that groups they don’t actually have that experience have that conversation ahead of time. What else belongs in our process? Outline in your process latto outline if you’ve got a another site either a cold, a warmer, hot site or if your stuff is based in the cloud, where would you recover to the hot side is some place you go to drink cold water or hot? Sure, a cold site would be where you’ve got another location let’s say you have a dozen servers at your location, and in the case of, you know, your building being inaccessible or underwater. A cold site would be where you’ve got another location you could go to, but you don’t really have any equipment stage there, but it is another location you can begin operations out if that’s a cold sight there’s nothing ready to go, but you’ve got a sight a warm site would be where you sort of have a skeletal equipment there it’s far less capacity than you’re currently at, but you’ve got something there it’s not live, but you got stuff ready to go that you can restore to and get going. And a hot site is where you can flip over immediately. Your live replicating to somewhere else, it’s ready to go? It might not be full capacity, so it might not have, you know, full blown data line size that you’re used to might not have your full range of service, but it is live and you could switch over near instantaneously. That’s a hot site, ok, eso you’d want that in your process, and you’re going to want to think about what are you restoring and that’s where we get into the backups? What comes first and that’s, where you start getting into terms such as recovery point, objective and recovery time objective those air to very common d our terms recovery time is how far back are you recovering, too? And what does that mean for each system? So if it’s your donorsearch system that’s probably fairly critical, you want a recent restore of that? If it’s a system that doesn’t change very much, maybe a week ago restores okay for that and sorry that’s recovery point objective recovery time objective is how long does it take you to get back online after a disaster? You know, ifyou’ve got to download your data from an external source. Has anyone thought about how long that’s going to take you to get the data back? Is it going to take you fifteen hours or three days? So it’s in a lot of folks don’t think about that ahead of time, they just go oh, you know, we’ll we’ll pull it back down if we have a disaster, but they don’t think about instead of their nice normal data communications, they’re going to be on a tiny d s l line trying to pull down one hundred fifty gigs of information and it’s going to take a week to get it back down. I have to say you’re very good about explaining terms and thank you, proper radio. We have jargon jail? Yes, we try not teo transcend. You haven’t transgressed cause your immediate about explaining exactly what recovery point river and recovery time objectives are. It could be very confusing, you know, if you don’t understand the terms in tech, you can be confusing what folks are talking about, and that was one of the the focus is of our station session is making it less confusing and being very practical, practical about what you can or cannot do. And if folks go and look at our slides, they’ll see on several of the items we did a good, better best, and we tried to talk about that all throughout the session because we realized again for a small ork or, you know, even a large order that just doesn’t have the resources to devote to it. You might not be able to do best practice, but you could at least try a good practice that would be better than nothing. And then so we do a good, better best for each each type of thing like what does a good d our plan look like? Versace best day our plan and at least try and get to that good, because at least you’ll have something and it could be a continuum where you try and improve it along the way. But you’ve got to start somewhere it’s better than just ignoring it, which is what happens. At a lot of places. Got to take a break. Tell us credit card and payment processing. You know these people check out the video at tony dot m a slash tony tello’s that will start to explain to you the long tail of revenue that you can earn from. Tell us when you get companies to look att tello’s. Let tell us look at their processing fees. Then they switch to tell us you get fifty percent of the revenue forever. Tony dahna slash tony. Tell us now back to your disaster recovery plan with dar do we need to prioritize what what’s mission critical. And, yes, we can work with out for a time. Yes. How do we determine that? Definitely. We talk about that in terms of its not just a knight each decision either because we may think that the emails the most critical thing out there, but development may see the donor system as the most critical out there program might think that the case management system is the most critical out there. So you finance wants their account. They want their accounting system up. Obviously you’ve got to have an order in which you bring these things up. You’re probably not gonna have enough staff for bandwith or, you know, equipment to bring everything back online, so there needs to be and hopefully your executive team would be involved in deciding for the organization what is most critical in what order are you going to bring those things up? And that needs to be part of your d r plan? Because otherwise, if you’re in a disaster scenario, you’re not going to know where to start and there’s going to be a lot of disagreement of who starts where so you guys need to decide on the order, okay, we still have a few minutes left, but what more can we say about d r and related back-up that’s not going to wait till i’m back up because i think we could do a little bit in terms of d r i would say the key points on backups are check them because a lot of time, yes, monthly or quarterly, at least is anyone looking at your back-up back-up work-life one of the scenarios that we talked about that actually happened to my co speaker, andrew, was that their server room flooded and it hit their razor’s edge server, which is their entire c, m, s, c r, e, m and donorsearch system, and they thought it was backing up, but no one had actually check the backups in the last two months, and it was on, and it was not s o in terms of back-up just typical, you know, pay attention to the maintenance. What do you backing up? Has anyone checked it? And again, if you’re using a manage service provider, make sure if they’re responsible for for looking at your backups of managing them, make sure they’re doing that, you know, double check and make sure that they understand that your backups are critical and they can’t just ignore the alerts about your backups. You know, you don’t want to be in the unpleasant situation of three of our servers just got flooded. We need the data and discover nobody was backing it up. It ain’t exactly okay. All right. Anything else? You wanna leave people about back-up before we go to the broader diar? No, i think that’s. Good for those were the highlights for it. All right. So back to the disaster recovery. What more can we say about that. There are going to be a lot of watches if you’re in a large d our situation and so one of things we stress is one getting down into the details of your d our plan before disaster hits, you see, if you’ve never thought about how you’re actually going to do the restores air, actually, how you’re going to be rebuild those servers, you need two ahead of time. A lot of folks never practice have a fire drill. I hate fire drill, but and you don’t have a live fire drills in this case, it might be a live fire drill. You don’t want to have that, so you should make some effort to practice, even if it’s just something small, you know, trying to restore one server. I mentioned in this session that i was put in a situation years ago at johns hopkins university, where we were required to have verification of live tr practice. So i was put in a room that had a table, a telephone, a server, and we were carrying two laptops, and we couldn’t come out of the room, and so we had completely restored our domain. We had a set. Of backups on the thumb drive and added the second laptop to that domain improve that we had restored the domain, and an independent person that was not connected to our department was monitoring to make sure we had done it and we had to prove it, and that was an eye opening experience is as experienced as i was doing that i’d never done it live, and it took me three tries to do it so that’s, right? Encourage folks to really try and practice this stuff ahead of time and get down into the you know, the weeds on there on their d our planet on also to think about it. You weren’t fired because way, john no, no, no. I actually like too much john soft. No, we did complete it within the time frame, but we were a little startled when we discovered that we thought we knew how to do it first time out. And we kept making little mistakes. There were two of us and they’re doing it. And we were surprised ourselves that we thought, oh, of course we know this. This is not a problem, but no, we were making little mistakes. Because we didn’t have the documentation down, a specific is it needed to be, and so that was a very eye opening experience. There’s a couple of their d r gotchas we talked about, which is crossed, people don’t think about the cost ahead of time. How much is going to cost to get you that data? Back in the instance of my co presenter who had the damaged drives, they weren’t expecting a near ten thousand dollars cost to recover those drives, but that’s what happened when they didn’t have the backups? They had to take those hard drives to a data recovery place, and the price tag was nearly ten thousand dollars. Dealing with insurance is another big one that people don’t think about having to account for all of the equipment that was lost, and dealing with that insurance morass often gets dumped on the auntie department in a small organization. There’s not, you know, a legal department that’s going to deal with that it’s going to be you so to, you know, kind of talk to your insurance provider ahead of time and see what all you have to deal with in a disaster situation, so you don’t get an unpleasant surprise if you’re ever, in one a cz well, on the insurance topic, just are you covered? Exactly what what, exactly, is your equipment covered, and what do you have to do with that? In terms of accounting for it, if you suffer a disaster and you know the gooch is, we get so a couple of minutes, if if oh, about conscious. Trying to think about somebody we don’t hold back on provoc video, i think some of the other ones that we covered in their thick wit mint again to the cost, how much is it going to cost you? Two gets new equipment and did you account for that when you were doing your d our plan and a time to recover? A lot of folks don’t understand how long it may take them to do a recovery and also deciding what is important and what is not important, not just in terms of what should be restored in what order, but in terms of practical things, do you really need to restore your domain? Er, or could you just start over from scratch if your domain only contains maybe fifty accounts and doesn’t have any associated servers faster for you to just start over and just recreate the domain immediately? Especially if a lot of your emails in office three, sixty five or google maps, you could reconnect it very quickly. So, you know, thinking about more practical gotsch is like that that you should think about have time, you know, obviously it’s that’s the best practice to think? Of all these details, and he realized folks may not be able to, so we provided someone sheets and some samples of them of just quick, yes or no questions and thinking this through and things to think about and where will we that is not notice provoc radio has a professional sound i don’t know about ntcdinosaur ten, but that was a way over there. They’re on their own. They can come to us for expertise if they if they need to. But, uh uh, now i messed myself up because i ask you about something. What were you just talking about? How much? How long will actually take you to recover things? And whether or not you should practically skipped recovering something because it might be faster to rebuild it. Okay, i have a follow up to that my smart ass humor, maybe lose it. All right, so why did you leave us with one take away? Dror back-up the session was a little bit misnamed because technically, you’re not going to avoid a disaster you really can’t in many cases, you’re not gonna avoid the flood. You’re not going to avoid the earthquake if you’re in that. Region so you need to plan on how to deal with it. So it’s more like avoiding avoiding your d are becoming the disaster because you’re not going to avoid the disaster itself, so you might as well plan for it. Outstanding. Thank you very much. Door. Thank you much. Darby america vice president of technology for lift. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference two thousand fifteen. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Next week date your donor’s returns with jonah helper. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuant radio wagner c p a’s guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com and tell us credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream tony dot m a slash tony tell us our creative producers claire meyerhoff family boots is the line producer show social media is by sirs and chavez and this great music is by scott stein with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the odd. They’re ninety five percent go out and be great. Kayman you’re listening to the talking, alternate network, waiting to get you thinking. Nothing. Cubine are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, i’m nor ing. Sometimes the potentiality tune in every tuesday line to ten eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Beyond potential live life your way on talk radio dot n y c. Me, are you feeling unhappy with your body, shape or size? Ever feel out of control with food? I’m elizabeth from nourish the soul, and on this show you will uncover the route to these imbalances and discover a permanent solution toe having a healthy relationship to food and your body. Join us every thursday morning at eleven a, m eastern time on talk radio dot buy-in. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Yeah. Are you into comics, movies and pop culture at large? What about music and tv? Then you’re in for a treat. This is michael dulled, your host on talking alternative dot com. I’ve been professionally writing comic books, screenplays and music articles from fifteen years. Catch my show secrets of the sire at its new prime time slot. Wednesdays, eight p m eastern time, and get the inside scoop on the pop culture universe you love to talk about. For more info, go to secrets of the sire dot com dahna. 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Nonprofit Radio for August 25, 2017: Raising Risk & Avoid Social Weariness (ASW)

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Maya Winkelstein & John Hicks: Raising Risk

Risk pervades every grant you get. Lots of things can go wrong. Is it appropriate to discuss potential problems with your funders? Does that advantage your grant competitors? We’ll flesh it all out with Maya Winkelstein of the Open Road Alliance and John Hicks from DLBHicks.

 

 

Amy Sample Ward: Avoid Social Weariness (ASW)

Amy Sample Ward

With our own ASW, Amy Sample Ward. The social networks are 24/7 and can overwhelm you. But there are ways to make them work for you. Amy knows how to make your social manageable and strategic. She’s our social media contributor and CEO of Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN).

 

 

 


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Duitz 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 suffer with media asta no, pericarditis, if you broke my heart with the idea that you missed today’s show raising risk risk pervades every grant you get, lots of things can go wrong. Is it appropriate to discuss potential problems with your funders? Does that advantage your grant competitors? We’ll flush it all out with maya winkelstein of the open road alliance and john hooke hicks, john hicks from de lb hicks and avoid social weariness et s w with our own s wmd sample ward the social networks twenty four seven and can overwhelm you, but there are ways to make them work for you. Amy knows how to make your social manageable and strategic she’s, our social media contributor and ceo of the non-profit technology network, and ten on tony’s take two show our sponsors love responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com, and by we’d be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. We be e spelling dot com. We just corrected that problem. Hey, maya winkelstein is on the line. She is executive director of open road alliance, finding new ways to deploy capital to achieve maximum social returns. She had been there consultant. And they loved her so much. They put her in charge. So i guess there must not have been any non solicitation clause in that contract. We’ll flush that out. They’re open road, alliance, dot or ge and at open road tweet. Welcome, maya. Heidtke durney. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. My pleasure. We have john hicks on the line yet. Okay, we don’t have john hicks yet, so sam’s going to give him a call, but that’s. Okay? Because i want to start with you anyway, maya, um, we want to talk about risk to talk about risk and are funding relationships, but, uh, yeah, i know why. Well, uh, you see the opening of the show riskiest everywhere it has stopped anyone on the street and said, hey, the world is unpredictable vehicle, you’re disagree. Everybody agrees. Andi makes sense that in the nonprofit sector, where by definition we’re working with the most vulnerable populations and look vulnerable and challenging. Geography and problems that unpredictability is just a fact of life, but this reality often doesn’t translate into the way that grantmaking works the way that project planning and particularly the going on grantee relationship functions. Andi, we think that change, okay, if i know you have some stats about how ah unlikely it is that a grantee will be asked to assess the challenges that are facing them in the in the program or project that they’re that they’re seeking money for on dh like, okay, you’re welcome, you’re welcome to work those in and but but then, but if if if we’re not being asked to raise this, this issue of risk, don’t we end up disadvantaging ourselves because our competitors in the grantspace may not do the same thing? Absolutely right now we’d like to say that the word risk is a foreign letter word, and you’re on, and i think about the situation as an emperor has no clothes. The truth is, we did do a survey in twenty fifteen, where we interviewed two hundred foundations two hundred non-profits and asked him about it what’s really interesting in that survey is that the foundations acknowledged that risk percent as much hutchisson non-profits it princessa agreed on the number, and the number is one inside the one in five projects or wanted five grand’s legend to encounter some type of roadblock or obstacle that’s going to need additional funding in order to achieve impact on time and in cold. Okay, that zoho both sides acknowledges so to, as you said before, seventy six percent of thunders don’t ask any point in the application what goes wrong and went under so now guarantees don’t tell. So we do have this this dilemma and the question about competitive advantage, i think there’s a really important one because there is a lot of fear among non-profits you know, why would i reveal my weaknesses if you know somebody else competing for the grand isn’t but the truth is, uh, when you don’t talk about brightstep friends, we’re not brave and say, hey, you know, there’s, other things that could go wrong, you really just shooting yourself in the foot because things are so go going to go to go wrong one way or the other, and the difference here is simply for patient setting. Well, we don’t expect a set. Expectations appropriately, they’re thunders then it’s not surprising that they’re blind sided or react negatively when you come up. All right, all right. Um, i saw the so we believe i’m not surprised to hear one in five twenty percent of funded projects will have trouble. I’m in trouble is inherent in anything we do, whether it’s commercial or non-profit i’m just still i’m trying todo playing devil’s advocate i’m trying to think of think like a ceo or a grant writer who is wants to be transparent and set expectations, okay, but my board or my ceo from the grant writer says, look, i mean, the competitors are just not going to do this. We’re making ourselves look like we’re inferior because we’re going to raise challenges that the other people competing for this exact money are not going to raise, and they’re going to look superior and we’re going to look poor, right? And where one where i encourage non-profits to play teo freedom, your donor’s instincts as an investor that’s open lately what all donors are, you know, when we send money out into the world, it’s not baking powder self-funding back and sleep at night, we’re in an era of philanthropy where we want to see change, um, we really do treat our philanthropic dollars as investments for looking for maximum return on investment on if you think about it in the private sector, you know, who am i going to pick the company that tells me that everything’s perfect and they’re never gonna have any problems or the management team that said, hey, look, you know, we’ve looked at all of the issues, these air, some things that could go around, but this is how we’re managing it. Uh, you’ve been really treat with management as a sign of confidence in your management team position it as, uh, a competitive advantage to your advantage that you’re thinking about these things and your competitors are if somebody tries to tell me that something one hundred percent guarantee that for me is a much for red flag and the honesty and transparency of saying, hey, what could go wrong? But i’ve got a plan in place, okay? Okay. That’s ah, that’s. Excellent. That would be persuasive to me. Position as as an advantage. Somebody who tells you that there’s no risk is not doing a complete analysis. You know, they’re they’re superficial and were detailed, etcetera, depending how far you want to go in trash trash in your competition. Okay, that is a great intro, right? We’re goingto going go out early for our first break. When we come back, we’ll bring in john hicks, we got him on the line now, and, uh, we’ll get into where does this start? I mean, is this a chicken and egg thing? I mean, to me, it seems like funders have the greater responsibility. They’re the ones with the applications, but we’ll talk about that on dh, more about, you know this, don’t ask, don’t tell about risk that that were in stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent they were on facebook live, so i want to give shouts shout outs to carry my croghan good to see you, carrie it’s been awhile, it’s been quite so quite awhile. Thanks for being with me, man and jeff rose and also and there are others there are multiple others, but i can’t quite see them all right now, but we’ll get to them more facebook live shoutouts, let’s bring in john hicks john hicks is principal of de lb hicks consulting deal b is for dylan’s light bulb and if you don’t know that story, it’s at deal be hicks dot com he’s on the faculty of columbia university’s master’s program in non-profit management and a contributing author to the books after the grant and the non-profit handbook fund-raising he’s at de lb hicks john hicks welcome back. Glad to be back. Thank you. You’re you’re on vacation in north carolina, are you? Is that right? Yeah. Absolutely beautiful day down here in the outer banks. Well, thank you for joining us on vacation, john. Thank you so much. Thanks for doing that. Uh, jon, do you heard the intro, i hope. Where yuan for that? I was okay. What do you think of this idea of raising risk? Other people might not be well, i think it’s incredibly important it’s something we talk about a lot in our grants glass at columbia university about mitigating risk for the donor and mitigating risk for the non-profits and i was one of very quickly right off the bat compliment maya and her team on raising this topic for grantmaker but i think it’s also everything that i’ve seen has been developed by by the team. I would love to share my plan to share this with my client because i think non-profits have to be looking at risk management in terms of developing long term, sustaining positive relationships with donors, but also, you know, you have to do a reading, undertake a really solid reality check when you’re starting a new program, you know how how much can you realistically do? How much can you realistically deliver? Um, so it’s an important topic and, you know, it’s, just so great to see this being, you know, brought out in the way that it’s it’s been taken on my uh, where do you feel the responsibility lies for starting what you want to see happen a lot more often than it does in, like thirteen percent of grand applications or something dependents look like depending whether you asked the funders or the or the grantees, you’ll get different numbers as to how often it’s it’s raised, but in both cases it’s in the vast minority of applications, do you feel like it’s the funders? Responsibility? Because they’re the ones asking the questions they’re the ones with the with the applications so open it, lee risk itself is a shared responsibility. I mean, these often heard the conversation, and rightly so that non-profit can’t do their work for that thunders and thunder achieve their objective non-profits so we really are equal partners in in sharing and the successive failures and rick, every project that we partner on, but the reality is that there’s also a power dynamic within that partnership, and that power dynamics is very clear and it’s such a the thunders so as much as i do think there is a place and is a safe for non-profits to stand up to breathe ray’s, tow, have the conversation. To raise the issue uh, really, if we’re going to see widespread change, it’s going to have to come from the underside and it’s gonna have to really be be demanded as thunders. And i like to sort of think about it as risk monitoring an evaluation was pan of fifty years ago, right? It wasn’t until even though non-profits knew that they could do better at measurements were trying to do better measurement to billy and sam impact of their products. You know, it’s not told donors have a really big lever when they asked for it. And when they funded that’s, when things really start to move and change, all right, let’s, let’s drill down into some of the how tio, how to do this my way if i’m of i’m a potential grantee and there’s no mention of challenges, risks, obstacles in an application for for granted i’m applying for how do you like? How do you encourage organizations toe raise the issue? Do they wait till there filling out the application? Do they started in the preliminary phone calls that we hope that they’re having before they submit an application? How do you like to see? This one of the things we found on the underside in particular is not that thunder don’t want to know about bricks or don’t want to ask about it’s just that it’s not part of the grantmaking mainstream grantmaking culture, and so it doesn’t even occur to them, and one of the things that is also absent on the underside is very serious for thinking about their own risk tolerance and being able to define that. So one way to ease into the conversation without going straight to hey, you want to me to give you a risk assessment is to ask the thunder about their risk tolerance. Askin, you know hey, what is your profile? What are the types of risks that you like to see potential grantspace taking? And what are some of the risks that you tend to lead to a void in your grantmaking portfolio? Not only is that dahna night entree to the conversation, but it will also give you as the applicant, some really interesting on dh hopefully helpful information around here. What will be a better fit for that particular thunder? All right, john, how do you feel about when when it’s appropriate? To to start asking these questions may be asking the funders risk tolerance, what’s your ideas on how to raise this. I know what my just said about you is that it’s very early on in the conversation? I mean, this is why, you know, a best practices, particularly taking on a ah large initiative, a new initiative you’re looking at standing something significantly, i i’m a big believer in coveting the client or the organization through having on initial conversation with grantmaker i think that’s where you you asked that question about risk colorants, and then but at the same time, i think the charity has i have a responsibility to have considered that question and be able to speak to handle day are assessing risk and how they have factored of risk-alternatives grain up. So i felt that, you know, a grantmaker handup that obligation to the grantmaker and john, can we quantify these things? I mean, ultimately we’re asking the funder for money. Can we quantify the likelihood of risk percentage of likelihood vs versus potential cost? Can we quantify this? I think it really depends on the program. Tony means sometimes if you’re if you’re looking at replicating something that’s already been found there might be information helps you to do that in a lot of cases that i come across, it may be that thie organization is trying something that’s very new and it’s very i mean, it could be a something new within a community, something new with them, a community of practice, and it may be hard to put numbers around that, and i think this is where, again, engaging the grantmaker and a conversation toe tried to bring out the questions that they’re going to have because, you know, ultimately you’re talking to a grantmaker you’re talking to probably a representative, who is? Mom has a responsibility to a foundation board and, you know, you want to get a sense of where is the board? We’re that foundation board, in terms of, you know, going back to what my dad says, what is their wrist and that mike guy, the metrics and the numbers and that helps you to create and construct a grant proposal that would speak to you know, that you could or you might be able to quantify risk. Let me give you a couple of my hold on. One sec, i just gotta do a lot more facebook live shot out sorry if you want to join us on facebook live, go to the tony martignetti non-profit radio page and joining us most recently craig’s swenson onda cara gammel, cara charles hello hello karen, what a pleasure. Thank you. Sorry, maya. What do you want to get my? What do you want to say about quantifying this for funders? Yeah, i’m really glad you brought that up, it’s something that we’ve actually been looking at open road for the past couple of years and unfortunately compared to certainly the for-profit sector, we just don’t have numbers yet, and this is in part due to some of the other clans patients, particularly when it comes to pricing in cause so that our sector is facing. So we’ve actually been having conversations and working with partners that would stand and non-profit finance son, people who are looking at things like overhead on dh, the survey shin cycle and accurately pricing the true cost of a process. We haven’t even figured that out yet, so this figuring out the next step beyond what is the true cost of a perfect projects. To say ok, and now, based on some sort of actuarial tables or other data that we could drop from here is the risk premium, if you will. I do think our sector is going to get there, but it’s going to be many more years and are you you you’re helping this conversation along the way? This research along, i should say, not just conversation, wei are yeah, we are helping to search along. In fact, one of the things that were excited about is within our portfolio. Now that he’s been around for five years, we’ve got over a hundred krauz funded, which also means we now over have a whole one hundred and miracle data points of what actually does go wrong in our sector. Andi, we’re going to be publishing reports later this year or early next year that begins to offer actually the first data that empirical david, what goes wrong? For what type of project, how often and under what circumstances? But failure has always been and can gentle and related challenge to this question of risk. You know, i say failure is a risk realized so and we all know how difficult it is to talk about failure in our sector so it’s very hard to get some of this data because people don’t want to admit failure. There’s certainly not recording failure. Can you open up an annual report? You see all of the good numbers, right? All of the return numbers, nobody, uh, really truck goes around. Failure is risk allies. Dh jonah, you hear snickering whereas my talks about the annual report, you want to answer them? I mean, no, i’m not laughing at you with everything that, you know, i think that it’s like when i’m sitting here with someone who probably, you know, works with charities on reports, and i’m constantly, you know, playing to my clients, that i think when we come back, we’re behold them to come back to a grantmaker and to honestly say when something doesn’t work, what do we understand about the failure? Why did it fail? How are we going to take that failure and learn something? Promise? I agree. I think that you know that sometimes there’s uh uh, there’s. A lapse in communication where the great you know that grant he feels like, okay, i just have to go back. And talk about all the really good things that happened and you’re right on the point of annual reports, there’s a lot of annual reports that just simply, you know, put a fairly burnished picture out there of the work that seemed done when reality not everything works and the more you can understand from it’s better you’re going to bay so i totally agree with, you know, with the point she’s making yes, producing this show, john, i’ve heard rumors to that effect. Not everything works. You have something you will. And when i said you were snickering, i didn’t mean you were snickering derisively maybe i should said you were chuckling or you were bemused. As as my was talking, i didn’t mean to suggest that you were you were being negative. About what? About what? She was saying that at all? No, not at all. You have a lot of you have a lot of good tools that open road, alliance, dot or ge on dh. One of them is you talk about a risk profile statement. What is that? Yes. Let’s. Go back to the convent and made earlier around. What is your tolerance? Andi? This is a tool that we developed with thunders and nine, but i think it is equally applicable and adaptable for non-profits out as well. One of the things that we found in our work and research is that it’s very hard to take steps to manage risk, to try to minimize it or avoid it. If you haven’t gone through the preliminary step of figuring out what you’re willing to deal with or not right, what is your current service profile statement is basically the idea that you go through a a very deliberate and intentional discussion with your your staff for your board, your trustees, depending on what type of organization you are and you really deliberately come up with what you’re risking, tolerance is and think about it along different not so your risk tolerance when it comes to taking reputational risk might be very low, but you’re colorants for innovation might be very high risk is not a single single variable, either. On the idea of this profile statements and it’s sort of the division would be wow, imagine if every thunder you could go to their website and you could look at their risk profile statement. And you could see in writing where they’re willing to take risks where they’re not willing to take risks, you know that? And it’s non-profit we’re able to look at their programs and strategies in the same light you the matchmaking, if you will, between non-profits grantees, not only is there potential for that becomes easier, but if you don’t know what risks you’re willing thank you, it’s very hard, then to identify and managed. So if you are looking to improve your management in general, you would’ve also have to do that. First step is figuring out what risks you even talking about and which ones are going to be worth it to try and save it for duitz and we need to, i guess, then set aside money teo plan for these could negative contingencies, absolutely, and that gets into the risk management side of it is sort of the objects inside of fifty will he other think cubine mind is that when we’re talking about a profiler with cholera in ultimately that’s a subjective measures, you know, whether or not i prefer to curtis, test with stock or treasury bonds is a very subjective choice on dh. That’s a choice that thunder have every single day do they want to invest in the tried and true after school program? Where do they want to invest in the innovative new inner cities i have model and whether or not which one they pick is as much about the impact that piece of the cross product can provide as much of the currents of the thunder, but that’s ultimately a subjective measure, but once you have that subjective measure now, you can do this management, and you can look at the object in sight of the fact that no matter how little tolerance for averse service you are subjectively it’s filled and exits, and you’re going to need to manage it and you can manage it through budgetary actions. You can manage it with internal policies of procedure e-giving manage it with communications on a whole bunch of other tools have been become much more easy to implement and ready it at your weinger john hicks, anything you want to head there? No, i think an ideal world and if we do live in an ideal world where there’s a lot of grantmaker who are listening to this program. Or are taking the time to go and get their hands on the tool kit, and they’re going, they’re going to use that five again, you know, just applauding the work that maya and her team have done on the topic and i hope, it’s useful to the grantmaking communities well, our our listeners are the non-profits over twelve thousand small mid size non-profit so what? We’re we’re i know meyer’s working on both sides because this is a shared responsibility, but so what we’re doing is encouraging non-profits to raise it with their they’re funders on dh that’s, why i want to drill down earlier and about how do you the asked both of you? How do you raise the question? Because where, you know, we’re hitting the non-profits and now the newly competitive because of maya’s my strategy and thinking on this, the newly competitive non-profits because they’re there now at a competitive advantage that they weren’t roughly twenty eight minutes ago. So i feel bad i feel bad for your competitors, not listening. You should, but you shouldn’t. But i do because i wish they were listening, which we have more but wait, we don’t have an audience to brag about of course we do, but i feel bad for the feel bad for the ones they’re not listening. My, i’m going to give you the last word. We just got about thirty seconds ago. Once you wrap up for us. Sure. Well, i guess that’s the last thing i would say, you know, keeping that non-profit audience and nine is duitz sebi breaks, you know, and stand up. There are a lot of a lot of things that you think you internally and externally with their fenders, put a risk front and center center onda also in terms of your own internal processes, you sustenance on your own. Anyway, even if you don’t know, never hear about it. Yes, what? You’ve just made your program stronger. You’re gonna have more impact and be more successful, which in turn is gonna attract more donors regardless. So i do think there’s a lot that non-profits could bring to the table here on but the end of the day without non-profit hundreds of just sitting on piles of money doing nothing. So i think it really, really is a great role that complaint my is executive director of open road alliance, open road, alliance dot or ge and at open road tweet john is principal of de lb hicks at de lb hicks dot com and also at deal be hicks. Maya. John, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for your pleasure. Got a void? Social weariness et s w with our own s w amy sample ward coming up first pursuant acquisition campaigns, they’ve got a free webinar, so much of the content is free it’s almost it’s redundant to safely webinar when you’re talking about pursuing but just in case you’re a first time listener free weapon are coming up to help you acquire new donors. It’s on august thirty first what inspires that first gift for a donor? They’ll talk about it. We’ll have lots of examples and and as we do here, actionable strategies just like non-profit radio, if you can’t make it live on august thirty first at noon eastern, then watch the archive listen live or archive, just like non-profit radio and the place to sign up. Is that the new landing page that pursuing has for non-profit radio listeners, that is tony dot m a slash pursuing with a capital p go there, sign up for the, uh, acquisition campaigns webinar and if you can’t make it live, you’ll get emails about you get an email telling you when the archive is available, so it doesn’t matter where you could make it alive or not. Just go, tony dahna i’m a slash pursuant we’ll be spelling, you know that super cool spelling bee fundraisers, millennial fund-raising and fund raising because they do spelling bees that include live music and dancing and stand up comedy, not your seventh grade spelling bee. At least not my seventh grade spelling bee from like, what would that have been? Nineteen, seventy one or something? Or nineteen, seventy five? Whatever. I was not like that. Throw that out. Check him out. The video that will show you all this happening at one of their many events is that we be e spelling dot com. Then just talk to the ceo. His name alex alex career. You’ve heard me talk about him. Get him, alex at we b e spelling dot com or you could pick up the phone. The numbers on the website. Check out the video. We b e spelling dot com have a millennial spelling bee fundraiser for your organization, low risk that’s probably don’t have to raise the risk issue for a spelling bee. I would think, what could it possibly be besides embarrassment now, time for tony steak, too. Listen, i really need you to be supporting our sponsors pursuant, we dispelling two new ones coming, the two new ones coming next week. Yes. Apple owes software is starting next week and also wagner, cps so we’re going for sponsors and peace organizations come to me. I’m very grateful for that because they know we’ve got a very consistent show every single week for seven years and over twelve thousand listeners, and i need you to step it up and show your love to our sponsors. So if you’re looking for millennial fund-raising talk to, we’d be spelling, and if you are interested in lots of free content bond fund-raising management then talk to pursue it, check them out, go to that landing page and likewise will be hearing me talk about wagner, cpas and apple owes software we need to show the love to the sponsors. Please keep respond to keep your sponsors. Our sponsors keep our sponsors in mind, thanks so much, and that is tony stick, too. And now time for a s w r own amy sample ward she’s, a social media contributor, and she’s, the ceo of inten, the non-profit technology network. Her most recent co authored book is social change anytime everywhere about multi-channel online engagement she’s that amy sample, ward dot or ge and at amy r s board. Welcome back in the sample. Ward. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Did you see? I put i’m sure you noticed that she had put your initials in the segment title. Now, i actually thought maybe this meant there was a lot more pressure now that any topic in the future has to be able to fall into a nasco w acronym. No, i don’t. I don’t feel like that now. Besides, i’m the one who put there. I would be putting the pressure on myself because i there. Yes. You don’t hear me. Hello? Hear me? I cannot hear you. I’m not sure if you can hear me. Okay? Okay. Why don’t you call back and call back so i can hear you now? Okay. Okay. Now i was saying that there is no pressure because first of all, i did not ask you to come up with a title that met your initials. I did that myself, so you can blame me for that. And no, not not a precedent setting measure. No, you don’t have to worry. And we just lose amy. We did just back now. Now you are back. Okay. Did you hear? Everything i just said, i’ve been in the system the whole time listening to the whole show. And then when it’s my turn to talk wait cut you off? Yes. Did you just hear my whole diatribe? No, i didn’t hear you. Well, alright, basically. Well, i thought maybe i sum you buy my comment. Oh, come on. You know better than that eyes no silence on non-profit radio that never that would never happen. Okay, well, you’ll have to go listen back. But the short answer is no it’s, not a precedent. Don’t worry, grayce so what? We are talking about setting boundaries around your social. Is this getting to be now? Is this going to be an issue for you and your community? Definitely been a really kind of top of mind. Intentional topic here at and ten, i think i think last fall leading up to the election, regardless of any candidate that any single person was voting for. It was just such an intense election and the, you know, everyone turning to social media all throughout the campaign turned to social media that i think by the time the election happened, everyone was just really at this kind of emotional breaking point around how much content there wass how often updates were coming through and that’s both content from, you know, out less media outlets, newspapers, etcetera, but also just content from each of us write everybody sharing things and adding commentary and just reflecting on things that i think people have you no for almost a year now felt like i have to find a way to take a break, or i may be going to lose it, you know, i’m just reading too much, and i feel like if i’m not, you know, i’ve left my left my desk, but now i better open up twitter on my phone because i want to make sure i’m staying on top of this, that people are getting to a place that i think is really overwhelming. I understand, yeah, there’s so many more people paying so much more attention to the networks and the news. I mean, this is the social networks on dh exactly on i would never advocate against that way. I mean, i’m excited that we have a country that feels like people are paying attention, i think, for non-profits that this is a huge moment for us because it means that when we send out on a call to action or an appeal, we can make less of a point about what it is that’s going on because people are are now informed and waiting for that action and indifferent way, right? So on one hand, as organizations it’s a really great time because people are informed and are paying attention, but as individuals and individual staff, i think if we don’t set some boundaries around how much content we’re trying to absorb every day, we will just burn out. Look how good she is bringing it right back to the listeners wait brilliant were brilliant contributors on this show, the host is lackluster, but the contributors are outstanding example exemplary, alright, so yes, so as individuals and maybe even as organizations to i mean, if we’re a small organization, we don’t we don’t have a devoted social media director manager, this applies on the organization level to so what ideas you got? Well, i think at the very basic, when we’re talking about just boundaries in general, something that i have been practicing and that a number of other staff here it and ten have also been practicing is to kind of use different devices as a way to create boundaries. So for example, i don’t have facebook as an app on my phone, and that means that i’m only going to go expose myself to the world of facebook if i’m sitting at a computer and i can open up a browser right? That i’m not just like on my phone, letting myself be kind of mindlessly sucked into that news feed, so separating which which channels which applications you’re going to look at on different devices means oh, well, you know, maybe in the evenings you liketo have a tablet because that’s, where you read, you read a magazine or you have a kindle or something, making sure that you minimize how many other apsara on that device will help you create some boundaries so that’s excellent. And then in addition to that, i think it kind of goes hand in hand, but it’s picking times of day where you want to engage, so saying, you know what? During the morning when i’m getting up and i’m having my coffee and i may be with my family, i don’t wanna have to start the day already worried about what’s happening in the news, right? So, like i during these times, even though the temptation is there, i don’t check twitter until i get to work or something. So picking sometimes a day where your mind knows, okay, it’s okay to go down the rabbit hole. This is my life twenty minute twitter break when you get into the office or something, but then the rest of the time, you don’t feel like, oh gosh, i should check i should check i should check you say, no, i have that time when i know i’m going to go check it. That’s a tough one. You know, people have been saying that about email for a year for years as manager. Way of managing your inbox on ly check email, whatever two, three times a day instead of i think the is in the aft national adult average, like a hundred times a day, we look at our phone to check email something instead of doing it a hundred times. Cut it down to three that’s a that’s, a tough one. You know, last time i had beth can’t iran and i know you know, beth very well and she’s very smart. She talked about how difficult it was for her to break the habit of waking up and picking up her phone and looking at email it’s, hard it’s shorts and part of it, if you know you have that habit, let the device help you with that, right, you can set your different channels, whether that’s, social media are email or whatever toe on ly shou notifications at certain times or never shown on vacations. I think it is very healthy to make sure your phone is not constantly showing you the number of unready males, because that is just like a stressful little picker, right? So, you know, howto open email on your phone, you can go look at it, but you don’t need this scream at all times to be shouting at you fifty on read emails, right? So you some of the control that you have just by the settings and was identification setting their display settings to help create some space there? Yeah, that’s a great one. You know, i’m going to do that that’s a great, like that little red badge next to my helmet that red number you need that. I don’t need that in your life, right? I’m going to look at that. I’m going to check email anyway. I don’t need to know that. There’s there’s one i didn’t. I didn’t get to. I just checked back. They just check twelve. I closed the damn thing. And now there’s one how did that guy? How did that bugger sneak in there exactly. Just feel good about closing it. Yeah, you don’t need that picture and you know it’s a great one. It’s not a phone app, necessarily. But if you use gmail, i know a lot of folks do. If you use gmail there’s a free ad on called bloomerang and if you in add that into your gmail in your browser, it can mute that incoming email like you were just talking about for you. So it’s not a matter of temptation of saying, gosh, i can’t even open my email because i’m always forced to look at it two or three times a day. You can have it open. You could be sending emails. You can read emails that air there, but it will not show you the incoming. E mails wow, during these times where you say i want a mute email for the next hour so that you’re not tempted to dive into all those new emails while you’re trying to focus on something else. That’s outstanding what’s that called it’s called bloomerang bloomerang and it only works with what did you say? Gmail workflows gmail? Okay, well, i don’t know if it works on other things, okay? I know that it does work with female. I’ve heard i’ve heard of female, so okay bloomerang cool, you’ve great ideas, it’s amazing. What? Well, i mean, i think it’s what’s important, even if those air to specific things that you already do or you don’t care to try, they’re just example to illustrate that there are some ways that we can use technology to help us stay away from technology. There are some good tools are quick little add ons that can help you create some boundaries and some filters so that you’re not feeling overwhelmed all the time that you don’t have to do all that work, right? You don’t have to say i just need to be a better digital citizen and not care to check. Facebook, facebook wants you to check it it’s going to send you notifications every way it can and it’s trying to get you back in there so you don’t need to feel guilty for checking the notification instead. Think about where where should i go turn off those notifications? Facebook isn’t trying to tempt me back in and the emails the emails of facebook sends did you know that seventy nine people like the recent posting you’re non-profit happy hour? Oh my god! Yeah, i got to turn that off, too. All right, that’s, too? Yeah, i got one the other day that i thought i felt so desperate, it’s said. You have not updated your public, i don’t know if it was my profile or just i hadn’t posted to my own kind of, you know, posted into the news feed in fifteen week don’t you want to see it? And i was like, if i haven’t done it in fifteen, we space book makes me maybe you could just let me go, you neo-sage they’re trying to trying to get you back in. You’re not cooking on enough ads for them to suit them exactly. All right, we gotta go out far for a break. When we come back, we’ll talk about the ultimate low tech non-technical way of turning yourself off. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t g n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, he hosts a podcast for for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m jonah helper, author of date your donors. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back and i got to say hello. More shout outs to facebook live, we’re on the tony martignetti non-profit radio page and scott williams with us. Mike hargrove, barbara freeze owner and terra kelly who’s now tower hickey, but i know you’re a star. Kelly welcome. Good to see you, facebook live! Thanks for being with us and there’s people on other pages, too, if you made beyond the talking alternative page. Thank you so much for being with us, facebook live and that leads me, of course, to live listener love the podcast audience the what am i saying? The live streaming audience. Our live love goes out to tampa, florida. Woodhaven, newjersey, ridgewood, new york. Which one you want? That’s, queens. We also have brooklyn. We have new york, new york. We’re missing staten island in the bronx. We got left to get that follow five boroughs, but live love to the three bottles that are with us. Queens, brooklyn in manhattan, andi woodbridge, new jersey. Also besides woodhaven, let’s, go abroad, seoul, south korea cells so of course, always checking in. So so, so loyal in seoul and your haserot cancer, ham, nida, germany. We can’t see your city? I’m sorry, but germany’s with us. Guten tag and rio de janeiro, brazil welcome live listener love to you also on the podcast pleasantries go out of course, to the over twelve thousand listeners on the podcast medium were multi-channel here where multi-channel multi? I know we’re multi personality maybe, but we’re multi multi. So, uh, every time i’ve been on, at least one listener has been on from seoul, i think that’s so awesome. Yeah, yeah, they are soul is very, very boyle. Yeah, i love it. So the podcast were the podcast audience. You’re pulling me back in howto live love. I’ve advanced. I’m past that now. I went to the podcast wasn’t i’m sorry you’re into other channels? Yes, or the other that’s, right, it’s, the podcast audience. The pleasantries go out to the over twelve thousand listeners, the ceos, the fundraisers, the the board members, the consultants pleasantries to you. And then, of course, the affiliate affections to our am and fm listeners throughout the country. Thank you. So glad that your station has included non-profit radio in its weekly schedule. Affections to our affiliate listeners and turkey in mexico joined us as well, back to the live love turkey, mexico sorry, we cannot see your cities, but but we know that we know you’re there. We know you’re there. All right, amy sample ward. Thank you for that indulgence, even though you interrupted, but okay, so let’s go to a very i know it is that i love having you on, you know that let’s goto a completely non tech way of setting boundaries, and that is just turn yourself off and take a take time away right from the social net from the networks. Yes, take a little social media vacation. Ah, sabbatical, if you will, you don’t have to close everything permanently. You don’t have to cancel all of your accounts, but, you know, and i think it doesn’t have to be like i’m going to take the month of september off of twitter or something. It doesn’t have to be so rigid and intense, but just saying, you know what? I wantto give a gift to myself of saying that every sunday afternoon is for me and not for the internet, it could be that simple, right doesn’t even have to say, oh, gosh, it’s twelve oh one, i’m already entered into my afternoon of no social media just saying, i i want i know that it will make me feel better. I’m going to give this to myself and then as you start to make that a regular routine, i think it’s easier to say ok like this feels good. I didn’t have to check anything all, you know, all sunday afternoon or whatever today it is, just give yourself that regular vacation very good idea and so simple to do and, you know, be good to yourself, you know? You need you need time away from the i don’t know the pace, the fast pace of the networks and the networks are only expanding and they’re only encouraging you back. Mohr and maura’s, we were just saying before the break, you’ve got to take control, you have to you have to it’s on you. They’re not gonna let you alone. You have to tell them you have to tell them to let you alone. I mean, just in that same way of, like, take control, i think it’s so easy to feel like, especially with channels like twitter where there’s it’s just happening so fast, right is just kind of streaming by that it can feel like you’re kind of this passive participants audience member right there, watching all of this content go by that again, just like you’re saying remember that you can be in control, that i think some of the smartest things to do for using it, not just setting boundaries about when you use it, but when you are using it are to use the list, make sure whatever channel you’re talking about, that you’re kind of filtering that content. It’s okay to follow a million people on twitter but start making a list of specific voices or people or certain hashtags that you you really do care about that you trust that you want to listen to first, and then instead of feeling like, okay, this is my to use that example from before. This is my kind of twenty minutes twitter break when i get to work instead of feeling like great. Now i need to read like all of twitter somehow open first that lift and just listen to those voices that you already know you care more about her that you wanted to listen to first, and then if you have extra time, open up the whole world of twitter, go back to your full kind of followers stream but don’t feel obligated to just always have to consume it all. Use some list on dh kind of filter down what you’re reading. Okay, excellent. Listen hashtags yes, and go there first, cause that’s your most important stuff to you, right? And then, of course, we could weaken turn off certain people if we need to. Yeah. Oh, my god! Unfollowed people just a kn follow-up make that stop if that if that is something that is not productive, you don’t mean maybe they’re your aunt and you feel like you can’t facebook unfriend them just mute them. Tell facebook you never, ever want to hear from that person, but they will still see that your facebook friends you know, maybe you need to maintain that in your family but again let some of those system preference options help you hide content that is on ly goingto make things worse for you. Okay, so and in that similar way i think you know something that’s been really helpful for me and my friends. Outside of work is just being intentional, you know, having conversations with folks and saying, when you realize that every person has started kind of their story or the article that they wanted to talk about by saying, oh, i read this article on facebook or i found this thing on twitter realizing that everyone’s starting place with social media, you know, we kind of had this conversation of i want i want to intentionally go find content that’s interesting to me that i made, you know, maybe i don’t tell anyone about it, i just read it while i was eating lunch. Or maybe i want to talk to my husband about it, but i don’t want to have to start every conversation with i read this article on facebook. I want to feel like i am, you know, i am not beholden to just those social channels i want to go find some other content and knowing that kind of having that realization has helped me and my friends and i have been all have a couple points during the day where we say i want to go like, look at the new york times home page. Oh, how crazy versus waiting for news. Articles to show up in twitter stream so just kind of thinking about how you want to be interacting with with content and media instead of just passively feeling beholden to the channels that you’re already a part of, i think also helps just with that kind of awareness, like we used to pick up the newspaper every day from from from a doorstep. Yeah, yeah, from the news stand okay, okay, which never like two minutes or so left. What else? What else? You have some ideas around filtering fill your other ideas around filtering content. Yeah, something that i found really helpful is that, you know, inside of channels like facebook is having private or semi private group that i engage in a lot more than just that generic kind of big news feed type engagement. So i’m not logging into facebook just to see what happens to be there. I’m logging in to go talk with this community. Andre could be really small or, you know, they could be professional, that i’m not saying there’s only one type, but i think creating some kind of safe private spaces with your friends, with family, with people that you like in any other way is really helpful because even what i have found t use facebook, arlington is two examples of people will still reference content in that group that maybe, you know, is everybody’s sharing that, saying on facebook or there’s a big news item on lincoln that lots of people are interacting with, but it’s a it’s a different way to talk about it in that group than it is often, you know what i’m talking about, where, like lots of different voices jumpin on a thread, and it just turns into a dumpster fire so instead, you know, having a kind of smaller, safer space to talk about things again just makes it feel a little bit more positive to engage their, especially around news items. Then it would be i just feel like you’re commenting on somebody’s post again create small groups that you want teo intentionally interact with versus just waiting to see who’s online and there could even be offline in your really real time real life community. Oh, my god! Okay, we get yes, yes. Oh, yes! Oh, heretical. How heretical is that? All right, we got to leave it there in the sample ward. Thank you so much. Thank you. You’ll find her at amy sample, war dot or ge and at amy r s board next week. I don’t know next week. Oh, no, i do know. Next week i was going to threaten you with fermentation that we actually i thought it might be from fisher, but no, we’re not doing that. It’s going to be with jean takagi. Jean takagi is returning and we’re going to talk about fiscal sponsorship. Big topic. I think we’re going to the whole show. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com our creative producers claire miree sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez. And this very cool music is by scott stein be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. Hey! What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do you put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.