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Nonprofit Radio for December 7, 2018: Lean Impact

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My Guest:

Ann Mei Chang: Lean Impact
Your organization can adopt the lean innovation practices that help fuel the rapid evolution of digital tech in Silicon Valley. Ann Mei Chang says you need to, if you’re to do your best work in social change. She’s author of the new book, “Lean Impact.”

 

 

 

 

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of depress opus. If you made me face the idea that you missed today’s show lean impact, your organization can adopt the lean innovation practices that helped fuel the rapid evolution of digital tech in silicon valley. And mae chang says you need to if you’re to do your best work in social change. She’s author of the new book lean impact on tony. Steak, too. Train. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant bye weinger cps guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner cps dot com bye. Tell us, tony. Credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tello’s and by text to give mobile donations made easy text n pr to four four, four nine nine nine it’s a pleasure to welcome and may chang to the show. She’s the author of lean impact. How doe in innovate for radically greater social good. She’s worked as chief innovation officer at yusa idea and mercy corps and serve the u. S department of state as senior adviser for women and technology in the office of global women’s issues prior to her pivot to the public sector and may have more than twenty years experience as a technology executive at google apple and into it, as well as a range of startups. She’s at an mei and her book is at and made dot com. I’m very glad her book brings her to non-profit radio. Welcome to the show and may thank you so much for having me, tony. Real pleasure. Oh, you’re coming in loud and clear. Your your tech is you’re not surprising that your tech is awesome. Sound great. Thank you. Um, this lean impact process that you’ve evolved comes from the lean startup movement. Eric. I read his book, but i don’t know how to pronounce his last name. Is it? Reese? Isn’t eric reese? Yeah. Eric mary-jo k. Yeah. So within that, as a lean startup came from toyota manufacturing. Talk a little about just, you know, some little overview of lean startup and how you’ve morph this into the social change, social change, work and lean impact. Yeah, sure. So eric restore the book called lean startup about seven years ago now where he described a methodology for building products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty. And this is certainly, you know, it’s it’s growing out of his work in silicon valley on dh, his own failures and what he learned from this failures about how we build products better on dh. You know, although it came out of silicon valley, it’s since then been highly papa popular and been adopted no, in business, both big and small and government and around the world. It’s been a new york times bestseller. It sold over a million copies and, you know, and this issue of extreme uncertainties really important. So if you’re building a product or service that is well understood and well defined, and you know exactly what you need to do, then what you care about is predictable execution. But if you’re trying to build something in a realm of high uncertainty, what you need is to figure out how to speed up your process of learning. And that is his court. Insight is that if we don’t know where we’re trying to get to what we need, to do is learn as quickly as possible to figure out the best way to get there. And why should i non-profits care about what came from lean startup, which now your book lean impact? Yeah, so, you know, if the lean startup was originally very focused on silicon valley, like i said in this branch out from there. But if you think about tech start ups, they work with high uncertain because they’re trying to build products and services no one has ever done before and not in the same way create new business models, new technologies and so forth in the nonprofit world. I would argue that we have at least a much if not more uncertainty, were generally working on challenges that are a big complex and entrench that have been around for ages and where the solutions we have are simply insufficient. Otherwise, we’d all be out of business. And so we give that we’re dealing with this incredible uncertainty both and not having interventions that are necessarily good enough. A cz well is not having one that can scale dramatically enough. That’s where techniques such a lean startup i become really appropriate. And yet you know the reality is that innovating and the social sector is much, much harder on. We can talk about all the reasons why, but, you know, from coming from silicon valley into the social sector. At first i thought i’d have it easier in some ways. But in fact it’s much, much harder because, you know, we have to deal with things like highly restrictive funding, you know, impact that can be difficult to measure. It may take years to realize that we worked with vulnerable populations for the whole notion of experimentation. Khun seem irresponsible you. In fact, you lay out some of this. I wantto i ripped out page sixty three from your book. I’m not gonna ask you to quote page sixty three. I doubt you haven’t memorized by page, but because i don’t bring, i’ll bring books to the into the studio, but i ripped out page sixty three and i wantto i’m going to read ah, paragraph. And i think this sets it up a cz just as well as you did. And and ask some very important questions that your book and this whole process set out to answer a grassroots community named lien impact sprang up several years ago as an offshoot of the lean startup movement, bringing together hundreds of practitioners. What has been missing is a framework that answers the common questions that arise when theory meets reality. How do i experiment when my funding is based on activities and deliver a bles that air predefined? How can i create a feedback loop? But it takes years for true impact to become evident. Is it responsible for us to experiment on people who are already vulnerable? Where do i find the resource is to test and iterated when i can barely make payroll? And i thought that was a really striking paragraph on dh. Set it up all very nicely on dh serves as some motivation for people in our non-profit community, too. Well, frankly, they’re gonna start with buying the book. I mean, that’s the first step you got. Tio got it by the book on then and then become acquainted with the practice of the impact. Yeah, and i think in that paragraph, really just try to call up some of the unique town does their face in the nonprofit sector who were trying to innovate. It’s not that we don’t want any of it. That’s not profit. Leaders very much care about these issues, care about their mission, want to figure out better solutions but worked within constraints that make it very hard to do so. I know many non-profit leaders that i’ve read the lean startup or similar types of books on the similar types of training and go back to the days you know their day job and just feel stuck because these these different impediments making much, much harder to innovate. And so, with the lean impact book, i’m not trying to come up with some new rocket science way of doing something. You know, most of the techniques i talked about are fairly common sense. But what i do try to do is look at how do we do this? Do these common sense things in the context of social good where we have to work within these kinds of strength, and i do so by bringing forward the stories of organizations that have been incredibly successful that has found ways to navigate these and other challenges. Ok, i agree. You did do that, and, uh, we’re gonna go out just, ah, moment early for our first break. And when we come back, you and i will talk about the way the book is organized around the three hypotheses. So first break pursuant they have to resource is to help you use data for improved fund-raising. The field guide for data driven fund-raising was riel world case studies of organizations using data to hit their fund-raising goals all data driven, just like pursuing typically is and the other is demystifying the donor experience revealing simple ways to develop relation a ll donordigital durney for your donors. You find them both at the listener landing page tony dot m a slash pursuing capital p for, please. And may you have these three hypotheses that the that the book is built around inspire, validate and transform. Can you? Ah, you sort of set these up for us and then we looked at, and then we’ll pedal through and we’ll touch down as much as we can. But, you know, we only have an hour. You just people got it by the book. I mean, that’s all there is to it. So go ahead, please. Yes, you’re i think you’re talking about the three parts of the book on the book is organized into three parts. The first part is inspire, and i think one of the biggest challenges in the social sector is that we tend to plan within constraints. We look at the amount of the money we have, amount of staff, we have the size and scope of grant and we think, what can we do with what’s in front of us with these? Resource is. And so i think the first line set shift is tio. Think big e also codify three principles really starts. A person would just think that that that we need to start thinking instead of what can we do with within the constraints we have, but what is needed in order to move the needle on the problems that we care about. And so the first part of the book is really looking at how do we expand our horizons? B’more ambitious about what we’re trying to do. Um, then the second part of the book, validate, is really the core of the book is what the lean startup is about is once, you know, have that you know, you’re thinking big, you have big aspirations. You have a potential solution that might work. How can you validate that solution to determine quickly, cheaply, a. Cz possible, whether it does deliver the things that you hope it will be. Too often we spend too much time heading down the wrong path on dh, wasting a lot of time and money before realizing some of the mistakes we’ve made. None of us a t least, not myself, can design something perfectly for such complex problems that we work on. And so figure out how we accelerate the pace of learning so that we can validate what you know. The risks that we are taking on by playing a new solution is essential to getting to a solution that works, and the third part of the book is called transform. And and that’s really looking at, you know, beyond sort of any individual organization and what they can do to both identify their problems. Think big, start small and experiment. How do we look at the broader system that we work in to transform the system to help us all be more effective? And that includes both with respect to solving problems the system change that is required. It also pertains to organizations. How do we change the culture of organizations? But it also applies to the sector at large. How do we change the dynamics of funding in the relationship between funders and non-profits so that we can all achieve more of what we’re looking for. Thanks. Excellent. Set up. And i see i understand my mistake. I called. I called these year your hypotheses, but you’re the hypotheses or value growth and impact, so thank you. Yeah, that’s well, we’ll get to those, but those are the three parts of the book. That was or not three hypotheses. I don’t want to confuse people who confuse our listeners. You you say that, you know, i i mean, i see i saw his like your objective, and this is the last last time i’m going to quote the book. Okay. I mean, i don’t i don’t read books backto authors who have written, but i just love this, too. If you want to find the most efficient path to deliver greatest social benefit at largest possible scale, that seems like, you know, that’s what you’re trying to help people do through lean impact. Most efficient, greatest social benefit at the largest possible scale. And my buy-in. Are you still there? You know, you cut out their part way through the quotes, so i didn’t quite hear the whole quote. Well, that’s a problem, okay? It’s if you want to find the most efficient path to deliver greatest social benefit at largest possible scale, that seems to me that’s what you’re trying to get get non-profits to to achieve. Yeah, exactly. I mean, i think that again because of a lot of systemic constraints we work in a lot of times what we’re doing is nibbling away at the edges. Were putting band aids on problems and doing some good on dh, making some difference, which is fantastic. But i think there’s a lot more we could do. And the reason that i wrote the book look at how can we bring some of these tools that have worked in other domains were squarely into the social sector so that we can deliver greater impacted skillsets. That’s ultimately what we’re all after. Andi. It’s just harder to do what one thing i would sort of add to that is, you know, in the business world, companies are expected to maximize shareholder value or maximize profits on dso everything, cos do you know all the decisions that they make day today? The metrics they collect, you know, sort of incentive they set up all around. How do we match my shareholder value? How do we maximize profits? And what i love to see is in the social sector. You know, whether you are a donor or whether you’re non-profit or whether your social enterprise that we hold ourselves that same standard to stay. We’re thinking impact. How do we maximize our impact? Not just how do we have some impact and sort of feel like we’ve done some good how we maximize that impact, and that’s really what the book is about is trying to put lord some tools that can help us magnify the impact that we’re having, because the things that we’re trying to solve are so grandiose, they’re so large, the problems with the problems that non-profit too devoted to our just so enormous. Yeah, absolutely. So starting with, you know, inspiration on dh listeners. I have heard many, many guests say the place to start is with your goals, you encourage you, you clamor for audacious goals. Yeah, absolutely. I think non-profits usually have audacious missions. The thing that i think is often missing, though, is that those missions are aspirational and their vague. There, you know, we’re going to end poverty, and instead what i want to encourage us to do is that much more concrete goals that are measurable, that our time down there geographically bound so that we know where we’re trying to get two more concretely and have those goals be goals that we don’t know how we’re going to get you yet. Because if you can achieve your goals with business as usual, there’s no reason to take risks or one potentially failing to innovate those cycles that really are a stretch but that are measurable so that we can tell whether we’re making enough progress towards wth um, um, and that sets the stage to orient everyone in the organization, as well as the other partners, to know exactly what we’re trying to get you. If you think of president kennedy’s call to send a man to the moon that galvanized the nation to try to figure out, how are we going to do this thing that we don’t yet know? How to do. And i think for non-profits, if we don’t set more concrete goals, it’s you know, if there’s a temple, it’s easy to fall into the trap of just moving in the right direction but not necessarily moving fast enough or deeply enough. Ah, part of what you point out is ah related to. This is a problem that we tend to fall in love with our solutions and you want us to fall in love with the problems. Yeah, i love the phrase fall in love with your problem, not your solution. I think this is a problem. Also in the business world that organizations can, companies can get very excited about their product or service. And and you get stuck to that and forget about what problem they’re trying to solve. I think it’s an even greater challenge in the social sector. I think that they’re there’s a tendency to fall in love. Are with our problems even more for a number of reasons. One is that whatever solution we have, we often it’s usually doing some good where that we don’t have a solution that’s doing some good. And so therefore we’ve seen it make a difference in real people’s lives on dso weaken become emotionally patch we wanted do whatever it is four more people even if it’s not the optimal thing to do even if there’s a potential to do something more it’s it’s easy to get stuck in that because we’ve seen it do some good and we don’t want to get it out because there’s a real need but there’s also i think because of the dynamics of social lt’s actor were constantly promoting our solutions. This is what you see on people’s websites. It’s what we’re pitching the thunder saying this is the best thing that you could possibly fund-raising dent if i with it becomes part of our organization als identity. And so it’s very hard to let go of any particular solution you have and what’s interesting to me. I talk to and work with a lot of different non-profits is that, you know, i can talk to ten different non-profits in the same sector, and they’ll all tell me that their solution is the best possible solution and out there, and i can’t imagine that that’s true. They can’t all possibly be right. Andi. Yet everyone has that we felt belief. So i think it’s important for us to have the data and look at the data, see what really is the best solution and of our solution isn’t the best recognised that and look at how we can improve it or look at how we can adopt. I’ve somebody else’s solution or elements of someone else’s solution or partner with someone else. And you know that kind of rigor behind delivering them. But most impact we ken will get us a lot further. You’re a computer scientist, you know. So you’re. Of course. That’s why you’re something stronger than encouraging your insisting that we be be data driven, your scientist. And so you’re bringing the rigor of the scientific method to this social change work. Um, we’ll get to, you know, it’s just that it’s tempting to talk about it now. You know, you thought of your book is how to make this change in your your in your organization that culturally. But i have to talk about it now, too, because we’re we’re talking about ego. This is this is difficult for people to abandon ego, put aside ego and recognize that their solution isn’t the best that there, that the work that they have been devoted to isn’t the best way the best way teo, to solve the problem that that that they’re attacking ego is because a tough thing to teo fiddle with toe get people to put aside yet. And organizations and an organization to put aside. Yeah, i mean, both individually and this organization’s again because we’re doingood. Our tendency is tio want encourage each other, pat each other on the back, you know, encourage each other. You’re doing good. Keep going. Keep doing this. You know you’re taking it a lower salary. You’re working long hours. Like who wants to discourage people who are doing that on dh. One of the things that i loved about coming into the social sector is, you know, just the culture. You know, people are so encouraging, so embracing, so supportive of each other. And yet i think something is also lost in that that we because we want to encourage each other. We often are reluctant to ask each other. The hard questions of, you know is working as well as it could. Could we do more, you know, kind of point out ways that maybe something is not quite meeting its full potential on when i said you’re a computer scientist, i didn’t mean to minimise the what? Two decades almost of work that you’ve been in non-profits as well. So i don’t know what the balances. But you’ve you’ve done quite a bit of work in the nonprofit community to i didn’t mean to say that. You’re you’re fresh to the non-profits. That’s not that’s not the case at all. All right. So you want us to think big with these audacious goals that are properly bounded? Think big, but start small. We’ll flush out. Out? Yes. So once you have that audacious goal, there’s a temptation to say i have a solution. That’s good enough. Let’s just execute and deliver as much of it as we can. But when we start small, it allows us to run experiments much more quickly and cheaply. If you’re working with five or ten or fifty people, you can be much more nimble. You can try things out. You, khun, learn much more quickly. You can adapt and change much more quickly than if you’re working with thousands of people. And so, by starting small allows us to accelerate that pace of learning again where we don’t have a solution that we know is good enough to fully solve the problems that we’re we’re trying to address. Okay, now this yeah. So this is ah, quite contrary to teo. What’s traditional and typical and quite a bit less efficient than than what you’re you’re promoting. What help people understand you mentioned these experiments. So what these experiments going to look like with ten people or fifty people instead of five thousand people. Yeah, sure. Let me give an example, maybe from from social enterprise in kenya. So there’s a a social enterprise called copia global in kenya that decided that that decided to focus on the issue, that people who are low income, the being in remote rural areas have a very limited choice of consumer goods. They can only really get this staples, and so they have a lot less choice of things that can enrich their lives. And so they set out this address this problem to give people much wider choice by, you know, sort of being the amazon, if you will, of rural kenya. And you know what some organizations might do is to go out, you know, build some warehouses, build transportation infrastructure, build some catalogue ordering system hyre a bunch of staff and so forth and roll out an offering. And i would take a lot of time and effort and money to do so. Instead, they decided to run an experiment minimum viable product, or m. V. P, which are these small experiments that eric talks about in the lead startup that allow us to validate our assumptions. First, until the case of copia global, their assumptions that they wanted to test were first would people order from a catalog was something people would find appealing. Second, what kinds of products would be most interested in? And third would agents cell from the catalogue could because they find agents that would help them sell in these different areas. And so what they did in their mvp was that the ceo at the time crispin went to the sort of walmart equivalent in the city and took photos of a bunch of different products, paste them into a handful of catalogs and gave them out to a potential agents and a few villages and step back to see what would happen. And now, when somebody came in and they want to place an order, the agent, we give him a call he would literally himself go run to the store, pick up that product just at the retail store by it, carry it to the village and deliver it. And certainly this is not something that was scalable at all, but it’s something that they could get up and running in the course of a few days, or a week and start to learn. And what did they learn? One. They learned that people were ordering from the catalog. It was appealing. People did have a demand for these products that were too hard for them to get, and so they validated demand. Second, they learned what products people were most interested in that help them figure out what things to put in their catalog when they actually wrapped up the business, what things to stock in the warehouse and so forth. And third, they had a surprise that people they thought would be the best agents who were the kiosk owners or the people who had these kind of corner stocked store equivalent that sold consumer staples. They thought that those would make the best agents, but they turned out to be terrible agents because there are far more interested in moving their own inventory in the store. But what they found out was that what made better agents were the people who ran complementary businesses, like a hair salon, where their customers were sitting around waiting to get their hair cut. They could flip through the catalogue order, things that they were looking for and it became a additional revenue stream for the business, and so do the m v. P. They were able to answer all sorts of questions very quickly, very cheaply. That helped them steer the next stage of their business in the far more effective erection. And so it’s it’s, you know, it’s experiments like these that that help us learn more quickly rather than focusing just on how do we roll out our program or our solution and the the the m v p. The minimum viable product? That’s that, that that’s at the at the root of all this. It’s it’s it’s smart because it’s you will avoid risk. You’re avoiding spending a lot of money and a lot of time on a solution that isn’t the best. Maybe based on assumptions that are invalid on dh, then is going is going to end up doing a disservice to the people you’re trying to serve to your employees, to your funders that flesh out more this and how non-profits could you apply the the minimum viable product to their work? Think, think through how to do that? Yeah, so that the way that you so the minimum viable product is really an experiment that test my hypothesis. So just step back a little bit when we think small. So when we have a solution and we know there’s some risks behind whether it will work or not, there’s some unknown. The first step is to identify that is unknown, so we contest that, and in the realm of social innovation, i think there’s three pillars of what makes a successful social innovation. And that is that it has to deliver value impacting growth. So value is something people want not only want, but we’ll demand will come back for will tell their friends about it. Fill a deeply felt need both by your beneficiary as well as by other stakeholders who need to buy-in is that people don’t want what you have. The offer. You’re going to be swimming upstream the whole time, the second once you have, you know, ascertain something people want. You have to ask, doesn’t have impact. Does this make a difference? Does it deliver the social benefit you’re looking for? In other words, does it work on guys? Too often we get far along and delivering something that people want, and that sounds good. To us but doesn’t necessarily deliver the social impact. And then the third pillar is growth, even if we’re delivery social impact from a few people, usually a scope of a problem, this huge there, maybe millions or hundreds of millions of people who have a particular need. And so how do we create an engine that will accelerate growth over time so that we can reach people enough people to really move the needle and sew? The m. V p is really the first step in what eric calls the build, measure learned feedback loop, which is essentially applying the scientific method to the risks that we identify. And each of these three categories that you identify a potential risk, for example, that people may not want to order from the catalog. You build an m p p, like copia did to test that assumption. Then you measure the results. You gathered data to see how many people ordered people engage, and then finally you learn. If you’re successful, then maybe it safe to double down. If you’re not successful like, for example, with copia, they’re there. They found out that the agents in the in these corner stores were not selling from the catalogue that they had to tweak their solution to to to look for other agents that might be more effective. And sometimes you find that, you know, you’re completely off base and you need to pivot and take a different direction altogether. And so it’s driving that bill measure learned feedback loop quickly as possible. That dr social innovation and, you know, we all do this in the bull court, of course, of time. Except that often the bill measure learned feedback loop. It can take years. By the time we deploy a program, you know, measure it, evaluate and learn from it. It can take years. And so what lean impact does is really asked. How do we move that learning cycle from an order of years to an order of days or weeks? All right, we gotta take another break when we come back and may and i, uh but also more stories about ah ah. Public school system, for instance, a cz. Great examples of this. This constant testing and learning iterating. And we’re talking about wagner sita is if you need help with your nine ninety, do you? I hope you hope you’re getting it out very soon. Are your books properly managed? Have you got the books? I do. Do you know how you’re doing financially? If you’ve got to see piela, maybe you’re thinking about a change in twenty nineteen. Talk to the wagner, the partner there. Eat huge tomb. You know him? He’s been a guest. You know him. Start out at wagner cps dot com and then pick up the phone. Talk to you. Check out regular cps dot com. Now time for tony’s take two training trains. I encourage you to invest in basic planned giving training for your fund-raising team, and i recognise your fund-raising team might be just you or you and the ceo that but get the basics of plan giving down. You want them to be you and your and your team. You want to be comfortable opening the door to conversations about a state plan. Gifts. That’s all that’s this’s not expertise. This is opening doors to conversations. You’re not talking about death like a lot of fundraisers. Think that complete misconception you’re talking about the long term value of your work and what what a long term gift is going to mean to keeping that work going beyond all of us. So that’s the that’s the essence of basic plan giving training. And in my video, i put a little holiday spin on training. So you check that out at tony martignetti dot com. Let’s go back to and mae chang and lean impact. Oh, and may you have this example of summat public schools. I felt like they were a good example of this iterating and was testing, learning and iterating. Yeah, one of the reasons that i think people struggled to look at how you can apply these tools in the social sector is that impact can take a long time to measure on dh, take a long time to fully realize and so you know. Example. Some of public schools is a great one because they work in education, where educational attainment is one of those things. Take a long time to fully realize that the founder of summat public schools, a woman named diane tavener, started out with this audacious goal that she wanted to start some schools that would serve a diverse student population, where one hundred percent of them would graduate from college. Now they brought in the best practices that they could find in education. Started up a couple charter schools, and eight years later, when they’re first cohort graduated from college, they they were highly successful. They beat out most of their peers and, you know, people were recognizing from this and encouraging her to just gail her solution. But but what diane recognised was that even though that they were doing well, they were doing better than any others. She believed they could do better, and she won’t had wanted to, you know, say she had set out with this goal of getting one hundred percent of students to graduate and they weren’t there yet. And so she she decided to invest instead and trying to figure out how to improve on the model. But she realized she didn’t want to wait another eight years for the next cohort to graduate. You know that that would be way too long in orderto see whether she was improving the models. Enough. So instead she decided to focus on building in a culture of of learning of it, aeration of innovation into their organization. And so what this looks like was they started out by running weeklong experiments for and did so over the course of fifty seven weeks, and each week they would bury the the structure of their classroom, the content of the classroom, the types of activities, whether it be, you know, kind of traditional lectures by teachers or south paste elearning on computers or small group project, or one on one tutoring. And they would look at all these different ways tools that they had and measure it each week by running student assessments, doing focus groups to see what the students are most engaged with interviewing teachers. And so each week they would gather this data marin what worked and didn’t work about what they had tried that week and that that’s what they’re doing and then try something slightly different the next. And so over the course of these this year, they essentially refined their model, a very transformative model for personalized learning and and, you know, have been highly successful. Their most recent cohort, ninety nine percent, got admitted to college. You know, they haven’t yet graduated from college. But now this model that they’ve developed has been adopted by over three hundred public schools around the country. So it shows that when you take a little bit more time up front to invest in improving what you’re doing to really maximizing the quality of what you’re able to deliver, then it’ll pay dividends over time. And and even in the case of education where you know, fully measuring educational attainment may take years and eventually get, they’ll get to looking at their graduation rates from college. There are often earlier indicators that can help you determine whether you’re on track or not and help you improve your solution along the way. And as you’re improving, you’re there’s a very good chance you’ll be. You may need to pivot at based on what you’re learning. I thought the the vision spring case in the book is a is a good example of multiple pivots. Can you talk about that one? Geever. Yeah. So a lot of times when we think about innovation, we think about the big, flashy new ideas and visions. Spring decided to focus on a seven hundred year old invention that has been proven teo. Increase productivity and improve learning potential and that i’d lost. And so, despite being seven hundred years old there’s an estimated two and a half billion people who need eyeglasses and don’t have them. Mental vision spring thought to bridge the gap you know we talked about earlier. They set out with an audacious goal that there’s two one a half billion people in need, and they started out of most non-profits would by looking, piloting in two locations in their case, elsalvador. In india, they recruited people they called vision entrepreneurs to go out to rule areas, division exams and provide eyeglasses and came back with really moving stories of people who weren’t able to work in a work again. Kids who weren’t able tto learn being latto learn more effectively, and many non-profits would be thrilled by that. You know, we’re making a big difference, but it wasn’t enough for vision spring. They recognized they were losing money with each person they reached, and they would never be able to scale to the degree that they needed teo achieve their goal. So they pivoted. Their second incarnation is that they set a vision centres in more urban areas that was serving more affluent population and took the profits from that too. Cross subsidize outreached into more rural areas. Through this mechanism, they were able to become financially self sustainable, also something that most non-profits would think. This is a huge success, not only doing good, we’re doing it in a financially self sustainable way. Prevision spring thought again it wasn’t enough because it would take them decades to be able to scale their infrastructure. To get to all the people around the world who could benefit, they pivoted again. They partnered with of organization in bangladesh called brac, who it which has community health care workers in every corner of the country and used their existing network to provide vision care. And through their partnership with brak, they’ve reached over a million people. Today on dh through other partnerships have not reached over four and a half million people. Well, that’s a pretty impressive number for a non-profits before and a half million people. But it still wasn’t enough provisions. Springbox kuze four and a half million is only a tiny fraction of two and a half billion, and they recognised that the problem here was really a systems problem that anyone organization could never reach. All of these people that we needed to figure out how to make marketsmart and how to make governments work better. And so they decided, instead of a public private partnership called the alliance that brought together eyeglass manufacturers, non-profits and local government to look at how they could work together to change the system. Tio encourage eyeglass manufacturers to manufacturer lower costs eyeglasses and distribute them to more remote areas, and to encourage governments to provide i care to their citizens. And one of their early successes was with the government of liberia. They find a mou where the government liberia agreed to work with, um, to provide vision care, do their national health care network as well as the public school system. Until you can imagine now, as they’re approaching this this problem from a more systems approach and working with making governments and businesses work for for people to provide vision, care to everyone that they can eventually get to this. This really audacious school they set out to, but it required them to be humble enough again, to your point, to put their ego aside to recognize when their solution wasn’t good enough and to be willing to pivot. Okay, i like that examples. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, wait taking a break. Tell us. Start with the video at tony dot m a slash tony tello’s then think about this. What companies can you ask that would consider switching their credit card processing to tell us? Maybe it’s one owned by a boardmember. Maybe it’s one that’s already been supporting. You talk to them, have them watch the video. And if they switch, you get that long stream of passive revenue every single month. It’s it’s basically dahna unearned, but you’ve earned it. It’s that long stream, passive revenue that’s that’s the goal. And that’s what you can get through. Tello’s you’ll find this video and the intro at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us now, back to and mae chang. Um and may the the tech industry has taken off well, not just recently, but has been able to grow so zoho so rapidly what you call the hockey stick growth growth curve. And a lot of that is explained by moore’s law. Ah, that dahna, eh? You know what? I think i know what it is, but you’re the computer scientists. You tell us just briefly what moore’s law is yes, the moore’s law was something that was defined by more. Who is that intel, i think almost fifty years ago now that said the number of transistors essentially, that the speed of computer chips would double every two years. I mean, tell true for almost fifty years now, and because of this, it’s driven this exponential growth in the computing industry, where computer that used to take up the whole building now fits in your pocket, and you can imagine all the things that that’s enabled us to do. And so, you know, it’s the underlying driver, a lot of the progress we see in the tech industry. So my question to you is, what is maize law going to be? There’s got to be. We have that. We need a maze law for the for the social change sector. Well, i think that, you know, moore’s law certainly has given the speed of computers, the advancement in the speed of computers. But what’s behind it in terms of like how how does that actually happen? You don’t just sit back and have more law takes place. Part of how that happened is because silicon valley is so competitive because there are are so many opportunities that people have really refined away to accelerate progress and accelerate innovation. And that’s what i think the lean startup captured so well. And it really is about having those audacious goals. You know, like how do you know? Doubling every two years is is a really fast pace of progress, and that requires organisations to take risks, to try different techniques, to try different approaches and figure out howto learn as quickly as possible. And that’s you know, where some of these innovation techniques i’ve really been home. But i do think that these techniques are just as important and justice needed for the social sector because we’re talking about solving, you know, real challenges, that where people are suffering, where there’s real needs. And so we need it more than ever. And i truly believe that the same techniques are equally ethical in the social sector. I’ve seen organizations, the success, sloan applying them and be able to dramatically magnify their impact. Andi so you know, i think there is a real translation there, but again, it’s not easy. It’s much harder in the social sector, and so you know, the lean impact book is really my attempt at looking at how do we adapt these tools for the realities of social good? Okay, i hope you believe in all this because that’s what the book is about. So you say you said you believe these tools apply. I hope you do. All right, but i’m challenging you. I want to see a maze law and maze low if you want. But i like the, you know, like the liberation of going from morris to maze, so yeah, i mean, are you, um i’m concerned, are you? I’m concerned. I guess i’m not really asking. I’m telling you. What about my concern? I’m i’m concerned about what i call legacy non-profits. Maybe i don’t catch if you use that in the book, but you know, the ones that are so big and bureaucratic that taking on new thinking like this and vast culture change just doesn’t seem likely. I mean, they just seem like dinosaurs that don’t know what their future is. Don’t know how bleak their future is. I don’t know. Are you more optimistic? And i am about those those types of legacy institutions. I am. I mean, maybe it’s in part because in my last job at uc, i’d e i worked at one of those dinosaur institutions, you know, on the underside here. But we also worked with a lot of large established non-profits that have been around for ages. You know, the yusa ideas, the us government’s foreign aid agency were one of the largest donors in the world. And we’re government. So you know, we are, ah, large, entrenched bureaucratic organization, andi. Even that yusa idea, we know with the vision of russia whose administrator, when i joined you, say i’d haye set up something called the global development lab that was recognizing that, you know, the world is changing, and we need to change with it if we want to stay relevant. So the lab was set up with this duel part mission teo identify innovations that could dramatically move the needle on our aim to fight global poverty as well as to look at how we could transform the development, the tools in our approach to development self to accelerate both our own work and those of our partners. And so so i saw through that how we could in a large established bureaucratic organization start planting the seeds of a new culture. It’s not easy. In our case, it was a separate team that kind of started out that was protected by the leaders shippen. But that ultimately, overtime made inroads across the whole agency by finding other people who really know saw the need, you know, felt felt, felt compelled to find better tools on dh were interesting partnering with us. And i thought, i’ve seen this happen at lots of large non-profits as well, that they know that they recognize that, you know, people work at non-profits, who they care about the mission. And even though some parts of organizations maybe entrench, there’s always some people there who, you know are restless and want to find better solutions and are just looking for the tools and opportunity to use. Um, yeah. All right, well, that was exactly we capitalize on that restlessness because, you know, doing well isn’t as good, is doing the best. And that’s what you know that’s that’s your that’s your that’s running through the book. That’s your thesis. You know, we wantto do it. Maximum scale, you know, as you say, greatest social benefit. Largest possible scale. Um, i so let’s let’s move over, too. Making this thiss transformation. You know what you call ah ri? Architecture of organizations? Ah, you say that, you know, we’re relying on nineteenth century institutions using twentieth century tools to address twenty first century problems. And we need to. The third part of your book is about the re architecture of not only the institutions that are doing the work, but also the funding institutions on the funding and their funding models. What did you you lead us into this one, i would you like to start this conversation about making this transformation? Yeah. So one of the biggest challenges that i heared over and over again across the over two hundred organizations i interviewed was funding that funding becomes an incredible impediment on one. The biggest issues of funding is that funding tend to be highly if under most thunders, wants to see you deliver very concrete short term delivery bubbles, that’s and that’s what how they measure you by and in your proposal, they expect you to layout in excruciating detail exactly how you’re going to do that, how you’re going to spend every penny, every person you’re goingto hyre and, you know, put together essentially what i call a grand master plan and then execute on that planet, sometimes over as many as five years. And those plans are quite rigid, and it prevents us from experimenting. Prevents us from taking risks. Potential prevents us from pivoting and taking different paths. When the status types of stories i heard over and over again, we’re from organizations who would get a grant from a foundation, start executing on that grant. Realized that it wasn’t working, but then continue doing it anyway. And of course, no one wants to go on the record about this buy-in tell you there’s lots of organizations that do this, but it’s just too hard to go back to your funder and say, this isn’t working. You’re worried you’re gonna lose the grants all together, then andi. So finding a different way, thiss kind of the existing relationship is one that seems like micro management to me, and we all know that people don’t do their best work when they’re micromanaged. So i think the first thing we need to do is we architect, the relationship between funders and non-profits that we need to have a relationship that’s a little bit more based on trust that allows for more risk that allows for more agility. And there’s a number of tools that we’ve tried to do this. The global development labbate use a. I. D. One of those is to tear funding. We have a mechanism called development innovation ventures that was modeled after venture capital where, rather than giving out the big, monolithic grants that yusa typically does, we would give out much smaller grant that we could take much more risk with and allow people to experiment. If they could show us that they had an idea where they thought they could develop a far more cost effective solution. What was that? So we give out these grants that were, like, typically about one hundred thousand dollars for them to try these things out. And if they were successful, they were able to get data back that showed that this thing had traction than we give them a larger grant of million dollars and then five million dollars. And so, just like in the startup world, where venture capitalist come in and they give you small amounts of money to test out your ideas and more money as you get more traction by funding this way in the non-profit space, we can allow people to take a lot more risks. We can allow funders to try a lot more different potential solutions, but without putting too much at stake. You know, because you know what you want to do. If you’re going to innovate, you need to fail. But what you want to do is fail small, not fail. Yes. All right, well, we got to take a break. And when we come back and may and i were going toe, continue this about making the change and talk some about within your own organisation. Now incentivizing and and hiring text to give. They have a five part email, many course which is debunking five myths. Do you think that all text donations or small the captain like five or ten or fifteen dollars? Not true. Do you think there’s a monthly or annual minimum? No, there doesn’t need to be. There’s a good amount of misinformation around text e-giving, and you can break through that with this five party male. Many course end up raising more money. You get the email men? Of course. You text npr to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine. And now we’ve got several more minutes for lean impact. So in may, um, anything just is there one more thing you wantto share with with us about lessons that you say i d before we turn it to the non-profits doing the work and some of the incentivizing there one more thing. You can you want to share with us a ride? Um, you know, i think we were just talking about tiered funding and other mechanism that can be really effective is paying for outcomes. You know, looking at how do we incentivize outcomes rather than center vise activities? Because outcomes is ultimately what matters. You know, eric and his book talks about something called vanity medicines that are these absolute numbers that we all used to say we’ve reached or touched or helped, you know, a million people on dh, you know, this is plastered all over mt profit and foundation web sites in terms of trying to give people some sense of what they’ve done. But those numbers are meaningless because it just says, like, we’ve done stuff, we’re good at raising money. It doesn’t say whether we made a big difference in those people’s lives. And it doesn’t say whether another organization with the same resource is could have done even more on. So you know what eric encourages us to do. It would mean impact talks about is moving away from these vanity metrics to actionable or innovation metrics that are at the unit level that look at what is our conversion rate. Are unit costs our success rate because when we can optimize for those types of those unit level metric. Those are the things that are going to make a big difference over time. All right, and this. So this creates thoughts, foreign fodder for conversation with you’re funders, potential funders. And also, of course, for foundations themselves to, you know, to try to rethink. I mean, maybe, you know, experiment yourselves for our foundation listeners with with an organization or two in some of these, some of these very different with with some of these different funding methods obviously more detail in the book, you gotta get the book. Let’s turn to the to the five a onesie three’s themselves. You talk a good bit about incentivizing around this around lean impact and the adoration and the testing and learning talk some about incentivizing. Sure, what i see is because innovation is hard in the social factor. I do see a lot of non-profits these days talking about innovation and wanting to innovate. And usually what ends up happening is that innovation is something that gets bolted on rather than built in on by bolted on. I mean, you know, organizations tend to, you know, either run a contest or a hackathon or a pilot, or they could, you know, hyre like an innovation person or a small innovation team, and these things are usually off to the side. They’re not part of the core operations of a non-profit, but something that they can kind of highlight in issue. Nice press releases about, but go on business as usual with ninety nine percent of what they’re doing. And so if if you really want teo, so what? The result is that we see all these kind of pilots and all these contests and flashy ideas, but very few of them making an appreciable difference over tonic. So if what we care about is getting to impact and transforming the culture and building a culture of innovation, we need to do that from the ground up. And i think that starts by establishing, you know, those ungracious goal something, you know, that we is measurable, that we continue to reference back to that we, you know, kind of reinforce, that is that is the north star for everyone in the organization to measure their own work against, you know, like vision spring to be. It asks the question. Is this going to get us to two and a half billion people. And so you need to start out with that goal because again, if you have a goal that is achievable with business as usual, there’s no reason for anyone to do anything different on then. Secondly, way need to create incentives that reinforced kruckel. Both reinforce the importance of taking risks and celebrate failure as well as reinforce progress towards that call, you know, on those innovation metrics. So if you’re able to reduce your costs, increase your success rate and so forth those air the metrics that really matter and get it into the goal on dso. Finding mechanisms that incentivize and incentives could be, you know, financial incentive. So they don’t have to be. They could be just you know what this leadership highlight when you have you know organization, you know, all all hands meeting. What? What do you highlight in your press releases? What are the you know who gets recognized? What are the things that you talk about in your weekly updates? So those incentives are incredibly important because they are what culture forms around. And then finally, once you have those goals and those incentives and you can look at where do you need to fill the gaps? In terms of talent? Do you need to bring in some other people who bring in a different skill set than you make might have the need to train your existing staff? Two. In some of these innovation techniques, that’s that’s sort of the last step into often. People make that the first and only step and don’t get a lot attraction. We gotta leave it there. Another book, another book you need. There’s so much more there you can follow and may she’s at and may its n n m e. I m not talking about ellie may from the beverly hillbillies and may so it’s not a y. It’s m e i on you find her book at and may dot com and may thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me on your show. Pleasure next week. Consultant sarah olivieri with admonition, but also, of course, encouragement for small and midsize non-profits. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled twenty dahna slash pursuant we’re by wagner. Cps guiding you beyond the numbers wagner cps dot com bye. Tell us credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made. Easy text. Npr to four four four nine nine nine right. Our creative producers. Claire meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer, but today it’s by chris shows, social media is by susan chavez. Mark silverman is our web guy and this music is by scots diner, brooklyn, new york do with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. Buy-in. 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Nonprofit Radio for March 3, 2017: Prosperity Paradox

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Alexa Cortes Culwell & Heather McLeod Grant: Prosperity Paradox

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Silicon Valley boasts 76,000 millionaires and billionaires and revolutionary innovation. Yet local nonprofits struggle to meet demand and suffer inadequate reserves. Researchers Alexa Cortes Culwell and Heather McLeod Grant explain the disconnect⎯and the lessons for your organization. Their report is “The Giving Code.”

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host we have a new am and fm outreach director betty mcardle she’s, based in portland, oregon. She has a long background in community radio, and she was recommended by her predecessor, gavin doll. I appreciate that, gavin, but he’s got lots of experience. She loves non-profit radio, so i know that we are in good hands as we bring mohr affiliate stations to the flock, the family, the foundation, the community very glad you’re with me. Betty, welcome. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with simpatico tonia, if you got me nervous with the idea that you missed today’s show prosperity paradox silicon valley boasts seventy six thousand millionaires and billionaires and revolutionary innovation yet local non-profits struggled to meet demand and suffer inadequate reserves. Researchers alexa cortez culwell and heather macleod grant explained the disconnect and the lessons for your organization. Their report is tthe e-giving code on twenty steak two i’ve got a plan giving webinar coming up. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling dot com. I want to welcome alexa and heather to the show, but they haven’t called into our line yet, so we’re waiting. Sam, of course, is struggling. You’re sending them texts to sam. Okay, sam is trying to get them on the line. Wth e-giving code is their report, and this is based on silicon valley. New philanthropy and the paradox in silicon valley, where there is enormous wealth and enormous innovation and research going on, and yet silicon valley non-profits r struggling to meet what are actually growing needs, we’re going to talk about thea, the shrinking middle class in the silicon valley they ladies define the silicon valley with in terms of two, there are two counties, and we’ll talk about those that they define as the silicon valley area specifically for their research and the report e-giving code. So it’s ah it’s frustrating to hear that with the enormous wealth and, you know, we’ve got statistics like, um, well, it’s, a super rich place the number of millionaires and billionaires is has grown incredibly in six years from, like two thousand eight to two thousand thirteen, individual giving rose incredibly from, like two billion dollars to have almost five billion dollars, one hundred fifty percent increase the number of millionaires and billionaires now at seventy six thousand. In these in these two counties santa clara and san mateo counties, so enormous wealth and considerable growth in giving but the non-profits in those two counties, our ah are struggling. I’ll tell you what, we’re going to go out for a break and we’re going, so i’m going to try i’m going to regroup and see what sam has done, and maybe i’ll call the women myself and see what’s up with how come they haven’t called in to our line yet so let’s go out early for the break, we’re gonna come back with e-giving code and hopefully the two co authors of the giving code 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. We’ve got one of our co authors, i think, it’s, alexa, alexa, is that you? Yeah, okay, alexa, thank you, alexa cortez culwell, cofounder of open impact and a longtime philanthropy advisor, speaker and facilitator for the past twenty five years, she’s built and managed foundations and philanthropic initiatives for successful entrepreneurs, including serving as ceo of the charles and helen schwab foundation. She’s at alexa culwell and open impact is at open impact dot hi. Oh, welcome, alexa. Thanks for having me. You’re welcome, pleasure and honor to be with. Thank you. Is there gonna be calling in shortly? I am sure will be joining us soon as you can. Okay. All right. Well, we’ll see her on the panel. We have the dashboard for the the conference line. Okay, so let’s, then let’s, get get started. I gave a little overviewing while in the first block while we were waiting, hoping you were going to call silicon valley is very rich. I went through some some statistics about the number of millionaires and billionaires there. Seventy six thousand. But talk about the growing need. I didn’t. I didn’t cover this part yet. The growing need that non-profits air facing. Yeah, so we uncovered that there’s, this incredible growing wealth in the region and with it is growing philanthropy. And then there’s what we call a prosperity paradox and that’s exactly right. So it’s, this enormous economy and all of these wealthy people, and yet thirty percent of our residents are replying on some form of public or private assistant. Yeah, that’s! Incredible! A third. A third of residents need some kind of public assistance. Nearly a third. Yes, and one and one in three, which is a third of our kids are going hungry, so they’re on free. And reduced lunch programs. They’re accessing food from the food bank and other things. Um, what is the non-profit community like there? In terms of numbers and size? I know it’s ten, small and struggling, but give us more color than just that. Well, like the rest of the united states, the majority of our non-profits their small under a million dollars in revenue. And since in the last ten years, we’ve actually seen a lot of growth in the number of our non-profits almost thirty, one hundred non-profits in the region. And so and so we have a lot of non-profits a lot of small inns, and we also have non-profits that are struggling to get by. So they’re being displaced by this economy. They’re under siege and what’s. Interesting is not only are they kind of being displaced, they can’t afford actually operate in the region. The demand for their services is at an all time high, so people are on wait lists there being ah, dahna, you know? They’re just asking for help that these non-profits can’t keep up with that kind of thie irony of all of this and as a result, our non-profits they’re struggling, so they actually have deficit that are above the national average for organizations there and also being displaced from office base because it’s, the silicon valley on and i mentioned earlier san matteo in santa clara, county’s that’s how you define silicon valley office space is at a premium, so that’s costing them and that’s hurting them. Um, i have some of the stats from your executive summary eighty percent of non-profits reporting increasing demand for services over the past five years, seventy four percent don’t have access to high net worth donordigital works significantly hindering their outreach. We’re going to talk about that. The gap there, fifty one percent say they will not be able to meet demand for services this year and and on and on, you’ve got very nice multicolored summary there on page three of the executive summary, but of lots of lots of pretty colors in those in those stats, i like the electric i appreciate the color, thank you and think you’re actually reading the report and i do what you think of earth people to dig into our data. It’s awesome and there’s a lot of it. You think i don’t prepare for the show or what? What do you think? You’re very well off the cuff. Well, we haven’t. We haven’t spent the hour together yet. We’ll see what happens in one one fifty nine eastern rolls around. See if you still say that, but yeah, now the summary, i have toe critique a little bit because it’s my nature, i think the executive summary is a little on the long side. Sixteen page. I mean, i’m executive summary. I’m looking for like, two paragraphs. Well, then i won’t torture you with the full report, but it’s seventy nine pages of even more data graphics and deeper insight, and i really would urge people teo get into the executive summary and if and if they’re interested to really, really dig deeper into some of the analysis and implications for their work. Well, it doesn’t mean sixteen pages it’s a really tough topic and there’s there’s just i think we’re going to need to really kind of carefully consider these issues that were going to actually want to solve them. Well, i’m well acquainted with take point taken. Okay, now, but i’m well acquainted with the full report. I’ve read large pieces of it. I do not read all sixty nine pages, but okay, you know, executive. I mean, i’m a busy person. I don’t know. I’m sure you’re busy, but i’m busier. I need i need to paragraph executive summary. So, please, maybe you need a summary of the summary. Can you do that? Yeah, well, well, i think that somewhere you were pretty forward if we want to give it to people here and then they don’t even have to read the report. They can hear your interview. Go. Okay. Okay. I got it. Like i say, executive summary is the situation sucks. It’s bad and yeah, and we can do some things to help it. Is that teo teo to kurt? Well, i think i think that’s the set up to this report the set up is we have growing wealth and growing philanthropy in silicon valley. We haven’t even dug into that. So it ends up that all these wealthy people in silicon valley are actually giving a lot of money away where the disconnect is is that money is not making its way to a local causes an issue and the community based organizations, right, that kind of are the champions of those issues and those residents who need help and that’s the case in many communities, right? I think this is a trend we’re seeing across the country, you’re we’re seeing increased income disparity, we’re seeing growing need by the by the residents who are the most left out, and then a non-profit community that’s under siege. And so we’re interested. And yet we see this growing wealth and we think, well, are they giving money away? And if so, why isn’t it making its way to me? Where is this money going? And so in silicon valley, we track all of these statistics. We tracked individual giving the growth in private foundations the phenomenon called donor advised funds and also corporate giving. And there was mortgaging everywhere that was kind of the astonishing fact. But the majority of it does not go to our local organizations and heather’s now on the line, and can be brought into the call to add into this dialogue. Okay, sam, you’re ready way. Have heather. Okay, wonderful. Let me introduce her. Heather macleod grant is the other co founder of open impact she’s, a social entrepreneur, author and consultant with twenty five years of experience and social change. Both these women have twenty five years. Everybody’s got twenty five years today except neil fight host with twenty years she is. She is co author of forces for good six practices of high impact non-profits, which was named a top ten book buy of the year by the economist she’s at hmc grant and again open impact is that ah, open impact, dot io and also at open impact team. Okay, heather, welcome. Welcome to the show. Hi, tony. Thank you. And i apologize for the technical difficulties. That’s. Okay. Well, berate you later, it’s not, but not on the air. It’s ok, um okay. So alexa and i have been ah, diving in and let’s bring you in where? I guess we were really at the point where we’re saying that essentially the need is scaling much faster than the support is growing locally. Locally, that’s the point that election was just making heather let’s bring it in. Let’s bring you in with an explanation of what the giving code is, yeah, so the giving code, we talk about it in the report, and we talk about it being this kind of implicit approach philanthropy that many of these new donors have that is very much it’s, very much informed by their business background and experience, and they’re they’re they’re sort of expertise and technical companies, so for example, they’re very focused on impact, they’re very driven by metrics they’d like to measure outcome, not surprisingly, their innovative and disruptive, so they really like to think about, you know, how they can hack systems and change things like education or health care. They’re very connected and networked with their peers again. Many of these new donors are in their thirties and forties, they’ve grown up in the era of social media, they like to do things with their peers, so we see a rise and e-giving search kinds of group e-giving activities and you know, they’re they’re really again. Their approach to philanthropy is very much informed by their business background and experience, and so sometimes, unfortunately there’s a disconnect between this business like approach to philanthropy and the approach that community based organizations take yeah. And in fact, well, first, i want to make something explicit when we say they and they turned the donors were talking about newly wealthy philanthropist knew ah, high net worth ultra high net worth millionaires, billionaires in the inn, that to county area the way you, the two of you to find silicon valley there’s also ah, skepticism of non-profits heather, yes, absolutely. They look out across the landscape and they see this fragmentation among non-profit organizations, and they really think that non-profits aren’t being businesslike enough in their approach. So again, it doesn’t mean non-profits they’re wrong, they’re just not meeting the expectations of some of these new donors. Um, and and they do tend to be skeptical non-profits don’t inherently have scale. Almost eighty percent of them are operating on less than a million dollars in budget. That’s true for these two counties and it’s true for the rest of america as well. So these are the guys we’re used to running multibillion dollar companies, and they see these small, tiny non-profits and there’s just a massive disconnect you mentioned the growth of unicorns in silicon valley, which is the unicorn is a greater than one billion dollar asset value pre ipo and how the number has grown to twenty something right? I think in the region, yeah, there’s twenty one unicorn in these two counties now, i’m sure there’s i think there’s something like forty six forty seven nationally, but you know more than our almost half of the unicorns that we see now are here in silicon valley, and you’re correct those that’s kind of the local jargon or lingo for start up companies that have a billion dollars evaluation pre-tax haven’t, in two thousand eleven, there were three unicorns and twenty sixteen there were twenty one so again, just enormous growth in wealth and scaling. You refer to a bigger, better, faster, essentially, too, to summarize what the newly wealthy philanthropy philanthropists think and how they think, and then there’s the skepticism of non-profits of it, i mean, you don’t you don’t use this word, but would you say it? It suggests in a certain arrogance among these, these folks? Well, you know, some would say someone some would use that word. We wait, we don’t say it’s arrogance, i think it’s perhaps more ignorance or not understanding how. Social change works, but, you know, i do think some of these donors can’t come across that way in their approach to social change, they think, well, i built this billion dollars, you know, app that scaled in three years, i’m going to go fix public education, and they don’t really have an understanding of how complex social systems are, um, and again there really obsessed with scale and, yes, moving really fast and unfortunately, social change is an entirely different beast than building an internet company, right? It’s complicated and involved multiple stakeholders, you often have to find ways to work with a partner with government latto leverage the significant resources that are already in government, you’ve gotta engage communities, and you’re really trying to solve market dafs where they’re actually isn’t a paying customer sometimes, right? It’s, you know, solving homelessness is not something that you could do with the technical app, so so the complexity of these problems, i think sometimes pla mixes these new donors, and they do come in with this mindset of, you know, i felt this huge company, how hard can it be? And i think what we’ve seen many of them overtime. Bill gates, mark zuckerberg and others have learned that it’s actually really, really hard the’s air really big, intractable problems, and it takes time and it takes patience and it takes resources and it takes working in very different ways than just building an internet company. You and alexa are very nonjudgmental in the report, but it’s well, actually, tony, i’m going to jump it. I’m going to jump in here. It’s really not about judgmental or non judgmental, we find that not really going to help us get to a solution, and we call it the empathy gap because when people start relegating each other teo arrogant one percenters or social do getters, we find the conversation just stops and everyone walks away frustrated why heather and i wanted to write this report is we wanted to really probono deeply like, how could we get these two sides that are so disconnected? Who speaks such different languages who have such different mindsets and frameworks? How could we leveraged their strength to come together to really solve community problems? And if we stop at just going okay there too arrogant and you’re too much of a do better we don’t. Get to the solution, and the reason we wrote the report is we wanted to get past kind of those stereotypes and begin to bridge the empathy gap that is so wide right now. By the way, alexa, our listeners will know that earlier, when i said when i said i may be busy, but you’re busier. I mean, what did i say? I may be busy, you know, i said, you may be busy, but i’m busier. That’s what i said, listeners know that i was joking, but you might have rolled your eyes and said, who is this clown? But, you know, now i’m andi, i’m teo for twenty minutes, and yeah, he’s only takes about thirty seconds for people to recognize my i mean, i’m judgmental about myself, arrogant, certainly big doses of scare of sarcasm, so all right, we’re all busy, but heather, that was in the context of i was saying earlier, when i see executive summer, expect like, two paragraphs, not sixteen pages, and then the sixty nine full page, sixty nine page full report that i had to reed, you know, so i was that i was asking alexis to scale it down. But i understand it’s, a complex problem, and all right, but i expect to pay an executive summary. I was scrolling through the pdf. Is that what this is a summer? You need a. You need a summary of the summary? Okay, wait, we got a little ambitious. My last project was a book, and so i let you keep joking that i was trying to turn this into a book. So all right, well, you’re in the right trends in terms of least my attention deficit. So you know the next thing you could do instead of a report, maybe, just to a paragraph. Great. Well, we could try. I suppose you could sum it up. You could probably get into one hundred forty characters if you tried really hard, but yeah, basically, it sucks. I had said that earlier. All right, let’s, get to the to the challenges that you identify between that are preventing the two communities the newly wealthy philanthropists and the community based on non-profit organizations from coming together. Alexis let’s, go back to you. You basically the first one is they don’t they don’t know each other that’s how i know that that’s how i put i’m using my words you have different, you know, you live in silicon valley, it’s a pretty compact in place. We’re not talking about, uh, this enormous area, these air to counties and people live pretty close together. And some of our poorest neighborhoods are right next door. Some some of our wealthiest neighborhoods. And yet these two groups of people the ones who have all this capital and are giving it away, and the ones who desperately needed in order to help are most needy residents. They just are worlds apart. They have completely different networks and ways of thinking about place. And at the heart of it, it really is about community in place, so the donors are often globally minded. They’re working or running global companies, they’re traveling all over the world for those companies, and they will have homes in different places and relate and identify with different places as their home in community, whereas the nonprofit and community based organizations that we work with r really thinking about places, the place where we live and raise our families and our kids go to school where we go to work every day, and this is our community, and it deserves our attention, and it deserves to be healthy and vibrant for the sake of all of us. And so the social networks just don’t meet as often as you might think they’re like worlds apart, even though they may only be blocks apart. Yeah, you call it the more articulate that you called the knowledge and information gap. I was just saying they don’t know each other. Let’s let zach with you for another one. What you call the social network and experience gap. I just say they don’t have ways to get to know each other that’s, right? They don’t, they don’t, they’re not at the same cocktail parties, they’re not vacationing in the same places. They’re not even going to the same grocery stores, and even though they live sometimes within a mile of each other. That’s, right, it’s just a very stark contrast and kind of an odd conundrum, but it makes sense, right? I mean, there’s, a sense of place in community is different, and their social networks are really different. Let’s jump over to you and and continue this thread on the gaps that what you call the mindset and language gap, i just say it, they look at the world differently. Yeah, that’s, that’s going back a little bit of what i was saying before about this language of business and metrics and scale and that’s a language, you know that these tech entrepreneurs have come up and many of them have had almost no exposure to social problems or public policy or government or social work. And on the other side you have non-profit leaders, many of whom came out of programs for public policy or social work and who really speak a much more moral language, a language of ethics and social justice and taking care of the least well off. And so, again, we find that there is kind of a disconnect in terms of the language and frame works in the mental models, if you will, that the philanthropist use versus the language and framework and mental models that community based organizations in particular use and later on that that many of these community based organizations were serving low income population, sometimes there’s literally a real language kept sometimes these populations are speaking spanish or their low income asian communities, so you’ve got lots of different layers of disconnect, and and that leads to what we ultimately say is an empathy gap and that’s why we don’t like to use words like arrogant, we don’t wanna point fingers because we actually feel like that’s already happening too much it’s too easy to write off these business people is being arrogant and greedy and that’s actually oversimplifying and it’s not also taking their good intentions into consideration. We really think we need to get beyond the empathy gap, have each side try and understand the other in the world that the other is living in and that that’s what’s going. To ultimately help bridge the gap. Okay, perfect, ladies, we’re going to take a break for a little while. Your i have to do a little business for our sponsors, and of course we’re going to continue our conversation for the remainder of the hour. And now that we’ve talked about what creates the what the gaps are, you know we’ll spend the balance of time talking about bridging those gaps on the positive side and, uh, encourage you again to have ah, two paragraph summary of your executive summary, so stay with us. Ladies duvette there’s more of this prosperity paradox coming up first, i got a chat with you about pursuing because they have a new info graphic grow your monthly e-giving your problem, you need to raise more money solution in part monthly giving and that’s what the infographic is about. Ah, it helps you, whether you’re creating a program or trying to convince your board or your c e o of the value of a sustainers program or you need to grow your existing program and your fund-raising mix the infographic has got strategies to launch and grow tells you how long you can expect sustainers to stay with you and gives you tips for attracting new donors and there’s more to it as well. It’s all in mourning for graphic. Amazing, very, very highly concentrated, dense with value. And it is at pursuant dot com quick resource is my voice just crack get resource is fourteen years old quick resource is and then info graphics at pursuing dot com we be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising you need a fun millennial event, check out the video it’s from one night of spelling and stand up comedy music great fun! The video is that we be ee spelling dot com now for tony’s take two. I am doing a free webinar coming up later this month. It’s jump start your planned e-giving how to get started. Who the best prospects are were the types of gif ts that you can start promoting right away right away easily dispel yourself of the myth that plant e-giving is only for larger organizations and only for major donors. Both of those are incorrect. Both fallacies. I’m gonna explain plan giving simply ah, not using my legal background. I can explain it to you so that you will understand it. And understand how to get started. You know my focus is small and midsize shops that’s who the webinars for it’s on thursday, march sixteenth two o’clock eastern affiliate listeners there is time for you to be with me. I know sometimes the timing doesn’t work for you by the time i and i put something in the show and then by the time you’re your station airs, it may be too late. This one the timing is perfect for you it’s march sixteenth there’s still time you register at tony dot m a slash jump start your pg the link is also on my video, which explains a little more about the webinar and that video with the registration link is at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s take two and i feel like doing live listen love podcast pleasantries and affiliate affections a little differently today we have listeners all over the country all over the world, but today i will instead of identifying city and state and sending love and pleasantries and affections, we’re all one big non-profit radio, family flock, not a church. I almost said church, not a church, but we’re one family. Whether you’re listening live right now or among our twelve thousand podcast listeners or among our am and fm affiliate station listeners, today, we’re one big non-profit radio family. So the love and the pleasantries and the affections go out irrespective of what your method of listening is. I’m very glad you’re with us. That is tony steak, too, all right, let’s, bring the ladies back, and, uh, you know, you, uh, you have something interesting. Anybody can comment on this, the you devote a page in the full report to the good wani brothers. They sold their company to netscape in nineteen ninety eight, and in two thousand three, the co founded a nonprofit to india community center. And basically, what i come away from that page is they recognize the brothers, recognized that this is hard work, having a non-profit. Yeah, i love that story in our report. And tony, it does prove that you’re you’re a much more diligent reader than you let on, because that’s all the way on page fifty for the report, but there was a couple of reasons we wanted to feature their story, their immigrant, uh, americans who came from india, they started a really successful company, that’s contributed to the economy in the valley, and then they decided to give back by starting a nonprofit that would serve the indian diaspora in silicon valley. That would be a gathering place for indians to come and to share culture and food and language and ping pong, which they love. And so it’s an enormous community center not unlike the jewish community center model we often see in the u s and they started the very first one and silicon valley, and we talk to them because we wanted to hear about there journey, starting a community based organization and also about how philanthropy work in other cultures and communities. And, you know, philanthropy is a rather novel thing to america, it’s part of our culture and its distinct distinct from other cultures and other parts of the world, and so they just shared how challenging it’s been to raise money from other indian americans around this really compelling non-profit that they’re building because they prioritize helping their families back at home. E-giving toe heart hyre roo i causes in india, where you can literally save someone play for set their whole life on a new trajectory by sending them to school for hundreds of dollars a year on get this incredible return. And so they’ve been on a journey to figure out how to build a sustainable business model for this very vibrant community center that they started some time ago. That was alexa, right? Or is that just alexis being? Yes, i’m a little disadvantaged cause you sound a little a little like, but i figured, yeah, that xero voices don’t don’t apologize, and i want to remind listeners that alexa cortez culwell and heather macleod grant are the co authors of this the of the study i’m called e-giving code and also co founders of open impact ladies, how come open impact your your your your consultancy around social impact and how come you’re dot i owe you? Didn’t you didn’t get in early enough to get dot com or dot or gore dot net, will you not dot org’s? But how come dot i owe on your for your very trendy, trendy and hip trendy in him, it is kind of the forefront of of the new. Yeah, but, you know, a lot of people buy up lots of names with dot org’s dot com, even though they’re not using them that we just went. Dad, i oh, okay. It’s. Another word you came? Yeah. It’s. Cool. Because why? Oh, i iove well, well, because that io is also open impact initial backwards, right? So it’s ah, it’s ah it’s a palindrome that’s, right? Oh, i i don’t. I don’t. I don’t know what kind of some kind. Okay, well, yeah, if you take just the initials but it’s not it’s, not a lie. Dot io it’s open impact, your honor name. We will tell you what, why open impact is such an important name and part of the value of the work we do, which is we think that non-profit leaders today are constantly balancing the tension of staying open and adapting to the complexity that they’re dealing with all around them, the external landscape is so volatile, but they’re also being required to really measure their impact and report that in clear terms. So we are really committed, teo writing and speaking and publishing about that. And we help our clients with that. Yeah. You have a very good video at open impact dot io who’s who’s fireplaces that that you’re in front of that’s. A beautiful fireplace. Is that one of your homes? No. That’s, a dear colleague of our living room. Okay, i kind of want to see the kitchen. I was hoping the second half of the video was gonna move into the kitchen because the fireplace is beautiful. Fabulous. Yeah. Labbate all right, maybe the next video, he’ll let you use the kitchen. Okay, let’s. Go back to the substance, though, so let’s, start bridging the gaps. I don’t know who want to take the first way, but, uh, you do something. You suggest something called connect to build empathy. We want to talk about that. Yeah, this is heather happy too. I’m happy to jump in on that. So so i do think bridging these gaps really starts by finding ways to bring these donors and these non-profits together and there’s a couple of examples in our community of organizations that are doing that we’ve also seen traditional intermediaries. Their role has very much changed in this landscape. I don’t think alexa touched on this before it joins the call, but just in brief our local united way has emerged, so we now have a bay area why united way that serving like twelve different counties and our community foundation is very nationally and globally focused on working with many of these donors on all levels of e-giving but not just community e-giving so what we’re finding is, as these intermediaries have kind of changed their role in the ecosystem, new intermediaries, air having to step in until some of these gaps. One example is to silicon valley social ventures, which was actually founded sixteen, seventeen years ago by laura, ari, aga and reasons and it’s e-giving circle, where donors actually come together, meet local non-profits vet them, they pool their money and their resource is so you don’t have to be a billionaire. You don’t even have to be a millionaire to join you can contribute six or seven thousand dollars pool your money with other donors and then vet local non-profits and find knows that you think are, you know, the most interesting, having significant impacts have leadership that you like and basically make an investment in that organization and what’s really great about this model is many of the partners in this e-giving circle actually take board seats or become mentors to the non-profit so this is, you know, one example, but we think it’s the perfect example of what we need a lot more with these opportunities for these donors to actually connect with these leaders, mentor and coach them start having a conversation where the non-profit leaders can teach the business with yours about social change and why it’s so complex and why it sometimes really hard to measure their impact, and at the same time, the business leaders could bring their technical and their marketing and their strategy skills, cities non-profit organizations, and really helps them be even more effective. So it’s again connection and learning together, we find it a very effective way to start. Bridget yeah, engagement if i put a five letter word to it, genuine up boat way just lose alexa, i don’t know. Heather used to with us, no, i mean, i’m here, i’m good, we’re here. Oh, you are okay. Whoever was whoever was listening on the call, the third party that wasn’t invite the third party that wasn’t invited, just dropped off. All right, they could have just listened online. It’s so much easier than calling the number. Um, yeah, and i think, you know, this is the section bridging the gaps that has the real value, i think, for our listeners, because these are things that non-profits can do in their own community. You know, there are lessons. That’s, why i wanted to have this conversation with ladies, because there are lessons for the entire nation’s non-profit community based on your findings. Just in two counties in california. What do we got? Well, this’s, alexa, you’re exactly right. I mean, the report is received a lot of national attention because issues of income disparity, issues of the wealthy and philanthropy, and the very unhealthy state of many of our local community based non-profits is something that is concerning in many, many cities, in urban areas and even rural areas in the country. So i do think we’ve been surprised at how much has been resonating, because on one hand, silicon valley is so unique. But, on the other hand, is part of the really odd story that we’re also so much like other places. Yeah, well, that’s, your it’s, a well written report, and that it comes out the value for the community nationwide comes out if i can call that a community. Oh, and all that national media attention has brought you to this moment non-profit radio. You see that, right? Yeah, and we’re grateful to you see that? Yeah, okay, what, i don’t know, whatever the national media you’re on, but it brought you two brought you here. So there’s, roger’s stepping stones, all right, let’s, let’s, let’s, continue to bridge the gap. Thank you for agreeing. You have no choice. I understand that let’s, continue bridging the gaps. Who wants to talk about creating educational opportunities in your your step two? Well, this is heather. I can jump in again. I mean, so two thoughts first on the like this resonates across the country mean, one thing we are doing, you know, we start to see up solutions in the report, but we’re actually starting teo focus even more on what would it take to implement execute some of the solutions in silicon valley? Because we actually do think if we can start to solve some of these divides here that’s a model that other communities might want to emulate, but going back to what you said, tony, i think it does come down to engagement, and one thing we’re realizing is that that both sides need to be educated that can happen through connection and experience are learning the both sides really need to build their capacity to engage with the other. So in this case, many community based on profits, they’re so resource strapped, they’re so focused on being head down, trying to serve the communities there, serving that often they’re not actually doing a good enough job of creating real donor engagement opportunities. Finding ways to connect into these networks happened to these networks. I get it that takes time and money, and when you’re serving the poor, the temptation is to spend all your resources on your program. But then you have nothing left to build your organization and build your outreach and build the donor engagement opportunities, or even to market and get your information out of these donors even know that you exist. So we think there’s education opportunities on both sides the opportunity to build the capacity of non-profits to be more sophisticated and how they reach out and engage these donors and how they have theories of change and strategies and how they measure their impact to the extent that they can and how they can tell stories used metrics, not just wonderful anecdotes, i think again playing both the head and the heart, same time donors need education to we were astonished as we talk to many this philantech how long it takes him to get up the warning firm, sometimes five or ten years, and there are some programs out there, the philanthropy workshopping one there are some other programs out there that focus really on donor education, but we need many, many, many more programs like this because there are many more millionaires and billionaires who are coming online with their philanthropy and our country stuck. They don’t even know how to get started, so so education can also be a stepping on dh, creating things. Circles are accessible and communities all over the country, and the data is showing that when a donor joins e-giving circle, they give more and they give more faster, they accelerate, they’re giving their more satisfied there, more confident, so really simple things. Non-profits khun dio is help think about curating e-giving circles or joining with partners, and if a donor is listening to the podcast, you know, joining a e-giving circle is just a a fabulous way to accelerate your impact. Also also just creating or seeking out volunteer opportunities, and i have to stop you. Alexa, hold on, we’ll take our last break. Hold that thought, please, andi will continue, okay, hang on. 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Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Oppcoll welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m with alexa and heather, and they are co authors of the giving code that that is they’re reporting you confined their full report and the lengthy executive summary there’s my judgment, i’m not i’m not no, i am not nonjudgmental judgment confined the full report in all its robustness, both forms at open impact dot i oh, which is actually a very pretty sight, ladies. All right? And i do love the video. That’s a very good video of the two of you. Um okay, alexis, i think you had a thought that i cut off you wantto ex charity? Well, i was just saying that, you know, a creative thing for a non-profit to do would be teo curate e-giving circle on the cause that their organization is all about and to try to get some donors and learn about the issue and to learn how to give and donors likewise confined giving circles there’s lots of those in their communities. It’s an easy way. Easy, inaccessible way to plug in non-profits i think there’s lots of capacity building opportunities for non-profits and they really need to think strategically about building their capacity to pitch their organization proactively. So what a lot of donors told us is there often coaching non-profits on what they need rather than having a non-profit pitch some kind of anticipating what they’re going to need, and i think it’s pretty easy to anticipate what the donor’s need they want, like, a really clear narrative about what the organization does, and they want really clear numbers, they want to know very basic things in a very clear way, like, how many people do you serve? How deeply do you serve them? What’s the evidence you have that something is changing in their lives for the better, and how much does it cost to do that service and why? And non-profits really struggled to just step up and and frame those issues in a non apologetic way, never heather and i are out talking non-profits they they really struggled to just kind of state and the state it clearly, and so the best advice we can give in terms of educating yourself is to go out and really learn how to put together follow-up plan that you can pitch to donors that really anticipate their objections. Like, you know, overhead is a big objection donors donors often will express. And the leader who just, like gets ahead of that. You know, who really explains what the organization does and why how they do it so efficiently is really gonna win with owners versus one that’s kind of caught on their back foot trying to answer that question. Yeah. You refer to the overhead myth, and i thought we were i thought we were past this. I had back when this happened. When? When? Guidestar and charity navigator and better business bureau wise giving alliance. I created this problem. I had the three ceos of those organizations on and we talked about thea overhead myth letter that they all signed for the country. And this was back, like, three years ago. I think it was twenty thirteen. Are we not past the overhead myth among, well, let’s talk about the court you’re dealing with among newly wealthy philanthropists. Are they not overhead that? Are they not past that overhead myth problem? Well, tony, this is heather and it’s. Interesting. Because my book forces for good came out almost ten years ago and we started to take on the overhead myth in our book back then, and i think, unfortunately, even though those of us who are kind of insiders in the nonprofit sector feel like, you know, haven’t we gotten past that? Haven’t we said it’s really about impact and outcomes, not the inputs that it takes you to get to that impact? Unfortunately, i think some of these new donors coming online are not yet with the program, and these kinds of, you know, stereotypes and overly simplistic ways of looking at measurement, unfortunately continue to persist. But as alexis said, we’ve also seen amazing examples of community based organizations taking that argument and just flipping it on its head. So one great example. Peter forton bob, who runs the local boys and girls club in our community, serving literally thousands of low income students and kids and partnering with schools. He’s really been a subtle intra printer, and within the boys and girls club network, he’s really innovated around their core models and, you know, i went to a fundraiser they had two weeks ago, and not only did he have the ceo of youtube, susan would just be was a judge. On the panel, he had the ceo of lincoln in the audience, and he had cheryl sandberg is opener, the ceo of facebook. And when he got up to give the pitch to that audience, peter, by the way, has a harvard mba. It worked in tech. Former mackenzie really smart guys made some money now dedicated his life to service and running this grassroots community organization. So he knows how to talk to these donors. And he stood up and he made a pitch that you would hear kind of on sandhill road and the tony kind of blue chip venture capitalist offices. He stood up and he said, guys, this is not charity. This is an investment. This is an investment in the youth in our community. This is an investment and where we live, this is an investment in our future workforce. And by the way, we hyre top talent. We have a great organization, we have state of the art technology. We don’t work on twenty year old computers and guess what? That costs money. But if you invest in us here’s the return, you’re getting it on that investment and he walked through the numbers. Of the impact that they’re having, and i’ll tell you what, they raised a million dollars in one night in that room, unbelievable and that’s an example of what we don’t see enough non-profit leaders doing is getting out ahead of the argument, anticipating to push back and saying, yeah, you know, you want me to run a small, shabby organization that’s never going to scale or have impact? Fine, then we can talk about overhead, but if you really want me to have impact, you’ve got to pay for the things that it takes. So we would just love to see more non-profits in this country, learn from these examples and figure out how to do this and get on the front foot rather than being on the back foot. Excellent, excellent. Okay, we have we have just about, like three minutes left together, ladies. So and i want to get to the rest of the your specific methods of bridging the gap. Let’s just stay with you, heather, and talk about just in like a minute or so. Increasing coordination and collaboration among non-profits on dh and then also among i know that’s hard to do in a minute, but then also among the let’s, just talk about it for the non-profit just on the collaboration on the non-profit side. Okay? Please. Yeah, so this is all i’ll be quick, and then i’m sure alexis may have something to add as well, but, you know, i’ve done a lot of work over the last five, seven years of my career working on networks and collective impact, and we actually think this approach holds great promise when it’s done the right way because you have hundreds, if not thousands of tiny community based organizations, the answer isn’t necessarily to have them all merge because that’s not practical, but if you can get them more coordinated and aligned around the goals that they’re trained, the problems we’re trying to solve and setting shared goals and setting shared measurement and collaborating rather than competing against each other, you can actually have much more impact cubine also attract more resource is because donors look out and they say, oh, finally, all these small little guys, they’re working together on solving the problem that’s what i care about, i want to put my money into that so there’s a couple examples in our own backyard one called the big lift, which is an early literacy program for early childhood development, and they’re working with several hundred non-profits they’re working with school district, they’re working with the county government, and they have managed to create this kind of collective impact network. So we think again, we need to see more of this in our sector, we need to see more non-profits kind of stepping up and really getting aligned with other non-profits and coordinating rather than everybody kind of putting their head down and doing all right, you have, and then you have a fourth, which is building capacity and addressing costs, and we’ve pretty much covered that not under that rubric. We’ve talked about that so let’s, let’s wrap up with, we just have a minute left celebrating success. Please, alexa well, so whenever we see a philanthropist and a non-profit doing this the right way, we need teo tell their story. And in silicon valley, we actually have some really great stories of where this is working. Well, so it’s not all bad news. We have some extraordinary philanthropist who are commited locally and telling their stories why they’re committed locally how they give their money to smaller community based non-profits how they partner with them is just critical to raising awareness that it can be a great and satisfying thing to do is a donor and and go beyond just e-giving safe bets to your alma mater or to the things that are familiar to you. Stepping out of your comfort zone has huge rewards. Andi, start funding these organizations and we have to leave it there. Alexa cortez culwell she’s at alexa culwell heather macleod grant she is at hmc grant. You’ll find the report and the summary at open impact dot io ladies, thank you very much next week. Thank you so much for being a call. Alright next week doing good, better effective altruism for individuals with takeaways for non-profits of course, if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com our creative producers claire meyerhoff sam liebowitz is on the board is a line producer, betsy mcardle. Is our new am and fm outreach director. Welcome, bette shows. Social media is by susan chavez, and this cool music is by scott stein. Do with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Kayman buy-in what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealised took two or three years for foundation staff latto deigned to 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 and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. 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