Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%
New Sponsor!
Opportunity Collaboration: This working meeting on poverty reduction is unlike any other event you have attended. No plenary speeches, no panels, no PowerPoints. I was there last year and I’m going this year. It will ruin you for every other conference! October 11-16, Ixtapa, Mexico.
Listen Live or Archive:
- On Fridays at 1pm Eastern: Talking Alternative Radio
- Listen to the April 3, 2015 archived podcast.
My Guests:
Dan Pallotta: Charity Defense Council
He’s the guy behind the 2013 viral TED video “The Way We Think About Charity Is Dead Wrong.” Now he runs the Charity Defense Council, because nonprofits have no anti-defamation cause.
John Fulwider: Your CEO/Board Chair Partnership
How do you cultivate this critical relationship? What should they be asking each other? John Fulwider is a consultant and author of “Better Together.”
Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.
You’re on the air and on target as I delve into the big issues facing your nonprofit—and your career.
If you have big dreams but an average budget, tune in to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
I interview the best in the business on every topic from board relations, fundraising, social media and compliance, to technology, accounting, volunteer management, finance, marketing and beyond. Always with you in mind.
Sponsored by:
View Full Transcript
Processed on: 2018-11-11T23:25:05.700Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2015…04…234_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20150403.mp3.552048700.json
Path to text: transcripts/2015/04/234_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20150403.txt
Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer scrub typhus if i got bitten by the notion that you missed today’s show damn piela and charity defense counsel he’s, the guy behind the twenty thirteen viral ted video now he runs the charity defense counsel because non-profits have no anti defamation cause and your ceo board chair partnership. How do you cultivate this critical relationship? What should they be asking each other? John fulwider is a consultant and author of better together on tony’s take to storytelling and a fellowship opening. We’re sponsored by opportunity collaboration, the working meeting on poverty reduction that will ruin you for every other conference. Terrific pleasure to welcome to the show, dan piela he’s, the founder and president of the charity defense counsel at charity defense counsel dot or ge he created the multi day charitable event industry when one hundred eighty two thousand people participated in the aids rides and breast cancer three days that plot a team works created he’s, the author of uncharitable how restraints on non-profits undermined their potential. You probably saw his viral ted video the way we think about charity is dead wrong. He’s at dan, pull out a dot com, and at dan piela on twitter, dan. Welcome to the show. Okay, tony, thanks for having me, it’s. My pleasure. Thank you for being with us. Did i beat the hell out of you when we were kids? No, i you know, be careful, ly i went to high school with a kid named tommy tony martignetti and, uh, the only fist fight of my life and i didn’t fare well in it. And when and when we spoke a week ago or so, i just had to make sure you weren’t the same. Tony martignetti but sounds like, you know, i’m not i i had never beaten anybody up. I’ve lost a bunch of fights when i was young, but i ran away from most of them. I was a pretty quick runner, so that saved me from a lot of beatings. I used to play hockey, i was a goalie, and when i would have a fight with someone with that right handed waffle glove, that was that was nothing for them to overcome that would put them out, right? You’re the big guy big guy in front of the goal, then it’s, right? Save the save the team from from aa a goal and trying to save the world now, are you you still skating it all skating on ice? You know, when the kids go skate and go skating with the kids i got three kids. I got triplets there. Seven there’s, seven years old. And so i dragged escape. Sometimes i tell people triplets really? How many? That’s? Wonderful. Congratulations on triplets. I think that’s great that’s. Terrific. Yeah, wonderful. Why do we need a charity defense counsel? Why do we need a charity defense counsel? Because, amazingly, unbelievably, somehow the nonprofit sector which organizes people on behalf of all kinds of causes is not organized itself. So if you look at any successful movement for change, there are a few basic functions that those movements have that the non-profits sack sector lacks utterly and completely so. Four things essentially first, we don’t have an anti defamation force, you know? So we get the famed in the media all the time, and we have no powerful organized voice to offer the general public and alternative point of view. You know, the gay and lesbian community has the anti has glad the jewish community has the anti defamation league. We have nothing like that. Now, what about independent sector? They would say that they’re they’re that kind of a voice. Independent sector isn’t chartered to be an anti defamation force, you know? So they do their work on the hill, and they try to make sure that, you know, they were originally charted to make sure that that the non profit sector never loses the tax exemption, so that was their original charter. So say they work a lot on the federal level on big public policy issues, but they’re not specifically chartered to be the media organisation any more than, you know, the some of the big, like the the human rights campaign is chartered to be a gn anti defamation mechanism for the gay and lesbian community that’s why the gay and lesbian community specifically has get glad the gay and lesbian alliance against defamation so we don’t have anything with that kind of specific charter and specific expertise. Secondly, we don’t have any kind of a public facing ad strategy, you know, the way the pork producers in the nineteen eighties got together and change the image of pork with pork, the other white milk bottles got together and came up with got milk in the face of big challenges by the bottled water in the sports drink industry wasn’t anything like that were never taken out a full page ad in the new york times to say anything about our sectors of the first two things, the third thing is we don’t have ah legal defense fund. So all kinds of counterproductive public legislation and regulation gets proposed, especially at the state and local level, and we have no apparatus for combating that are educating, for example, state’s, attorney’s, general and last but not least, we don’t have a database, we’re not organized, we don’t have a database of the ten million people employed in the sector, you know, we don’t have anything close to that, so we can’t bring that powerful voice to bear on the issues that we really care about. So the charity defense counsel is to fill those voids. Do you see the statistic that charity’s represent roughly a tenth of the gdp of the country, which would be around a trillion and a half dollars in assets and money through in a year? Do you? Is that something a little more than a trillion dollar annual sector? You know, it’s huge in the end, the idea that it doesn’t have any systematic form of a comprehensive treyz just this morning, as you mentioned, the pork board and milk and you know, i’m learning on the subway that a tablespoon of peanut butter has seven ounces of protein, you know, from the peanut board, so you know, yeah, imagine if you learn that, contrary to popular belief, the amount of money that charity spends on overhead is correlated to its ability to have an impact on them or that it spends on its own growth mohr impact that can have that would be great. We’re actually running digital billboards in very high profile locations on highways in massachusetts right now that tell people don’t ask if a charity has low overhead, ask if it has a big impact and that’s the first time that we’ve ever spoken to anyone other than ourselves about these things let’s talk a little about ah, something that i know you’re a strong advocate of. Ah, investing in fund-raising and what the failure to do that means for for people whose lives we’re trying to save. Yeah, you know the question is always asked, you know, what are you spending on? Fund-raising how much are you spending on? Fund-raising and the question is not what is your fund-raising costing you it? What is your unwillingness to invest more money in fund-raising costing you you know, you look for example, a wounded warrior project they didn’t exist fifteen years ago, and in two thousand six they were spending about a million five on fund-raising on, and they had about five million left over for programs they had about a forty four percent fund-raising an admin ratio, and you look at that and say, well, that’s beyond what any of the watchdogs say, so wounded warrior project should just cut down on that overhead. They went in the other direction, they spent more money on fund-raising so that’s six years later, they went from a million spent on fund-raising twenty million spent on fund-raising their revenue went from ten million to two hundred million. The money available for veterans went from five million to one hundred and fourteen million um all because they were willing to buck the system and invest in their growth and it’s that unwillingness of organizations to invest in growth because of the cultural pressure put on them. It’s literally killing people, it’s keeping these organizations miniature up against the scale of the problem, but they can’t grow, they can’t ever possibly solve the problem what the donor doesn’t realize. The donor thinks i want low overhead because that’s what they’ve been taught, but what the donor really wants is the problem to get solved. What the donor really wants is mohr of the hungry to get fed and, paradoxically, counterintuitively, the path to ending hunger and curing breast cancer isn’t toe lower overhead. It isn’t the lower fund-raising costs it’s increased those things so that we can grow the size of these organizations and they have a shot at combating these problems. I get it, i get enormously frustrated when i see that, um gives to charity are so consistent at two percent of of whatever the aggregate is that it was gross domestic product or something. We’re just way don’t we haven’t found the way to get people to give mohr without taking without becoming a zero sum game, which it doesn’t have to be. Yeah, exactly. Charitable giving has been stuck in two percent of gdp for forty five years now, which means the non-profit sector isn’t taking any market share away from the for-profit sector, it isn’t convincing consumers to give money to charity instead. Of the budweiser into hershey’s, and the reason is it doesn’t spend any money convincing donors to give their money to charity instead of budweiser and her she’s now her, she spent five hundred eighty million dollars a year trying to convince the public to part with their money for chocolate loreal spends one point five billion dollars a year on advertising, trying to convince the public to part with their money for cosmetics. By contrast, susan komen, the breast cancer organization in two thousand twelve spent twenty five million dollars on advertising against lorry as one point five billion, and we would criticize coleman even for spending that twenty five million dollars on advertising. Well, if you don’t let these charities go out into the public media, television, advertising, radio, advertising, newspapers, billboards the way, every other big consumer brando they can’t excite peoples imaginations that can’t compete with the for-profit sector for the consumers dollar let’s go out for a breakdown. Of course you and i’ll keep talking about the work of the charity defense counsel and investment and scalability 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. I’ve got a ton of live listener love we’re going to start in the u s del valle, a texas new bern, north carolina live listener loved to you, lincoln, nebraska and i believe that’s, our upcoming guests. John fulwider who says on twitter he’s hoping for some live listener love i have to admonish you live listen, love is a privilege, not a right, and those who ask for it sometimes don’t get it. So watch that. But i am i am very generous with it but it’s not common to be asking for the live listen love it’s a it’s a privilege daisy missouri st louis, missouri many in new york, new york right here, bold in massachusetts and denver, colorado and live listener love to you and lots of people out west to including san francisco live listener love. And then we got a bunch of broad will get two podcasts, all of massachusetts that you are born. Is that right? Maybe that’s tony martignetti that’s, the tony martignetti who beat beat the heck out of you and he’s listening, tony, i love, you know only because you have the same name, not because you beat up damp latto i wish you could hit you with his hizmet what you call that? That glove is the glove waffle glove. I appreciated you with his rifle glove, because clearly the the anguish and the pain remain. All these years later, you still remember tony martignetti i gotta send podcast pleasantries. Everybody listens in the time shift, whatever device, whatever time, whatever day pleasantries to you and, of course, affiliate affections to our many affiliate stations throughout the country. Love you too, dan. Do you distinguish between impact and outcomes? Do you make that distinction? People do you know, i thought about that before, not really. I i put them in the same category. I don’t, i don’t know. Maybe they’re maybe they’re some p people who ah, are more purist about that. Okay, but now seems a semantic difference only to you. All right, but you want people donors to be focusing on the impact. The lives that are being saved. Changed? Yeah. What impact is the organization having? Actually, you know, the problem with the overhead ratio is it’s overly simplistic. And, you know, we as a culture are addicted to simplicity, so we got to be careful that we don’t trade one simplistic measure for another simplistic measure, and you’re starting to see that addiction to simplicity play out with the measurement of effectiveness now, because okay, so effectiveness has become the new trend. The new buzzword. You got to be careful because if you start rewarding charities for effectiveness, then they’ll start to pursue the problems that are easiest to solve and show effectiveness on because that’s, where the money will be easy to get, especially from grantmaker and and the problems that are more difficult to solve will get orphaned. So you want to ask the charity what? What are your goals? What progress are you making toward those goals? And how do you know? So i don’t necessarily care if you’re making progress, you might be working on a very difficult problem, but i want i want to know whether you care about whether or not you’re making progress. I want to know whether you measuring whether or not you’re actually making progress on the problem, so, you know, i encouraged the average doner look, you’re always going to give to the red cross one when a tsunami happens, you know, when some one ofthe tragedy happens, you’re always gonna give one hundred dollars or something. But in terms of your overall philanthropy, what is the cause you really care about? Figure that out? Which one of you passionate about? Then? Do some research on the organizations that are doing the best work in that area the same way you do research before you buy a car? Same way you do a lot of research before you vote for a presidential candidate, you know you owe it to yourself. It’s your money? You’re a philanthropist too, even though you might be giving a lot less than within warren buffett. Philanthropy means love of humanity you’re a philanthropist respect your money and your investment take the time to get to know the charity called them up go visit them. Go for a site visit. They’ll be happy to take you on a site. Visit that’s the best way to learn about the work that they’re doing. Not by looking at some rating on a website i had the c p a send me ah comment when he saw that you were going to be a guest on hey does audit work, and what he’s seen is the focus on the overhead ratio encouraging non-profits to miss report on their nine nineties putting what are clearly administrative expenses and into program program lines on their nine, ninety or in some kind of financial report? Yeah, well, you know, that’s a that’s a whole kind of a big dark secret in the sector, right? The sector knows that the public wants low overhead, so the sector has figured out all different kinds of waiting to give the public low overhead. One of those ways is by underspending on the things that they really need. Another ways to joint cost allocation. Now i’m a fan of joint cost allocation, but on ly, if your definition of the cause is the same as the consumer’s definition of the cause because you know what percentage goes to the cause depends on hot entirely on how you define it. If you define it very broadly and you include all kinds of expenses that the donor doesn’t think of cause related in your cause related line items, well, then you’re going to show a very high percentage going to the cause. But, you know, you run the risk of duping the consumer if your breast cancer organization and that you know, the donor thinks the money’s going to breast cancer research. But what you mean is it’s going to education and it’s going to events, and some of it’s going to research, then to me, that’s doing it disservice to the donor. We have jargon, jail on non-profit radio, but i think you clearly explained what you mean by the joint cost allocation. Um, but training teo trying to transcend it’s. Ah, probation is hard to come by in drug, in jail. Let’s see, there’s ah, there’s. A joking with you. By the way, you sound like you found dead. You’re not. You’re not taking me seriously. Are you mi dan? Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. Jog in jail. It’s fun. Okay, no really being admonished. Um, this is ah ah, being adopted in a bunch of states, we’re seeing a regulatory trend where states are enacting by statute percentages that ah, either shouldn’t be allocated to overhead to be on a certain amount or must be allocated to program certain way. New york has jumped on the bandwagon. A lot of states air headed this way. Yeah. In new york, you know, they grants state grants to non-profits used to come with a twenty five percent overhead threshold. Then all of a sudden, as of january, andrew cuomo decided it should be. It should be fifteen percent, you know. On what basis? No, there was one organization, one one watchdog agency that once did a study to find out how much money should go to the cause versus overhead. And they serve in consumers and said, you know how much money do you think should goto overhead? Well, that’s like asking the general public. How long do you think jurassic surgery should take and then using? That is standard for thor asic surgeons. I mean, what does the general public know about how much overhead should be it’s? A complicated question. And it all depends on what you want is an outcome. The feeling is that it’s it’s partially public money because of the charitable deduction. So it becomes a political issue and come political issue. And but people say, you know, politicians say i want a lower overhead. I wanna lower overhead because i want more money going to the cause you know, overhead is part of the cause if you especially if you’re using money for growth if you if you can invest a dollar and fund-raising and turn it into ten dollars, wouldn’t you is a state want to put all your money into fund-raising instead of programs because you can multiply it by ten dollars? So you know, by forcing these charities not to spend on overhead, the state is getting a lot less bang for its buck. Out of its money overhead is part of the cause. Thank you. Outstanding. Ah, what? What? How do you know? How many states there are roughly that air there, even that have enacted these kinds of statutes or or considering them? Well, new york is a standout example right now, but but oregon past legislation that would strip the tax deductible status from from donations coming from charities that don’t meet a certain overhead threshold. Florida was about to do the same thing. Last year, the california attorney general was looking at eliminating the ability of charities to do joint cost allocation. Right now, the california attorney general wants to required charities to make a statement on any solicitation that there’s a professional fundraiser involved and to me, you know so well, why does an apple have to put on their iphone that there were professional engineers involved in people being paid, you know, x amount of money to build the iphone? Those aren’t those aren’t the questions you should be asking, what is somebody being paid? What you want to know is what value is somebody being producing for the money they’re being paid now? It could be somebody’s being paid very low, but they’re not doing a goddamn thing, so they’re the ones you know, really ripping the charity off. So you, you know, you really want to ask not what is the dollar amount, but what is the ratio of value to dollar spent? That’s the important question, you know, any business school student would be thrown out in year one if they didn’t do a cost benefit analysis duitz but we never do them with charity salaries. We look a figure four hundred thousand dollars we so that’s way too much get rid of the person or throw them in jail. You know what? How do you know that person isn’t capable of making for a million dollars in the for-profit sector? And then that that they haven’t produced three times as much in the way of a result of the lesser paid person? Would so it’s it’s just a really simplistic way of looking at the world in it, and undermines the donors and undermines state and undermines the clients that the charity’s ultimately serve? Another thing that i believe you encourage and ah ah, nde actually seth godin does to has been on the show, and he has three things he encourages organizations that do create ship and fail and the willingness to fail. And learn. Yeah, you know, well, that’s a big issue in the nonprofit sector is we don’t want non-profits to take risk on new fund-raising ideas with donor dollars? Well, if they can’t take risks that can’t learn and they can’t grow, if they can’t grow, they can’t solve these problems, you know, we don’t we let hollywood take all kinds of risks, you know, we let hollywood place two hundred million dollar bets on movies like sex and the city seventeen or, you know, the lone ranger which flopped or john carter, which flops, and this is how the big consumer brands learned they place these big bet some of them pay off some of them don’t, and on the basis of that, you know, they evolved, we don’t let non-profit organizations do that. I don’t know of a nonprofit organization that has a research and development budget for fund-raising i don’t even know of one that has a line item for it. I mean, can you imagine if apple didn’t have ah, on rnd budget for the new products that it wants introduce? I s o you quoted somewhere saying that restraints undermine potential just sort of service something all this up? Yeah, that’s actually, that it’s actually the subtitle parent restraints on non-profit attention, mind their potential. I really didn’t want that subtitle because i can’t stand the use of the word non-profit you know the words, it apologizes for itself. It tells us what what we’re against talks about our tax status yes, it does the larger issues. And the word profit comes from the latin for progress so that the term non-profit literally means non-profit gress you know it’s it’s the no sector? No, you can’t have money to advertise. No, you can’t pay people a swell as the for-profit sector does. No, you can’t take any risks, but please solve all the world’s problems for us. You know what i can’t stand is a lot of times i’ll do an interview with a reporter and then the headline writer will will label the story damn pull out of the guy who thinks charity should act more like business that’s not at all what i’m saying, i’m saying that you know we as a culture are not for a moment. Ready to give charities the big league freedoms. We really give the business. So please stop telling them to act more like businesses. If they’re too stupid to do it in the first place, they would act more like business if you would give them the permission to the just this week. Way learned that charity navigator’s ceo ken berger who’s been on the show a few times, eyes leaving. Does does charity defense counsel have any advice for charity navigator in their search for a ceo? They say they want to a technologist. Yeah, i think ken has already left. Um, yeah, i think i think there’s a tremendous opportunity here now, you know, charity navigator was funded by donor-centric new york originally, who had a bad experience with a charity. You know, it was hale house where a lot of the money was going to places that he didn’t feel it was going. And, you know, he made a great contribution of his heart and his wealth, and he felt betrayed. And as a reaction to that, he created charity navigator. You know, essentially for all these years to make sure the charity’s weren’t spending too much money. On overhead and salaries, the intentions, i believe we’re good, but the effects have been destructive now, you know, to their credit, they signed on to this letter telling the public a year and a half ago not to ask about overhead anymore, but focus on what ah outcome the charity is having, i think there’s an opportunity here for some kind of ah, of a merger with other organizations, for charity navigator to become much more nuanced and not so numeric and not so rigid. Overall, though, i think the issue is all of these evaluative efforts, whether it’s, you know, the wonderful work that are taylor does with the better business bureau wise giving alliance charity navigator great non-profits there’s, they’re relatively small in scale, you know, they’re they’re one million two million three million dollar organizations and americans give three hundred billion with a b dollars to charity every year we need on itunes for charity nationally, you know, we need a big, robust entity operation that can evaluate every charity in america using rich narrative as well as america data, it could be updated on an annual basis and that’s going to cost hundreds of millions. Of dollars sounds like a lot, but it’s cheap up against the three hundred billion we give to charity every year. We have to make some excuse me, meaningful investment in measuring all that. And, you know, charity navigator is just a way, way, way too small a scale to be able to do that you’ll find charity defense counsel at charity defense counsel dot or ge and you’ll find dan at dan piela dot com and at dan pelota on twitter. Dan, thanks so much for sharing. Thanks, tony. Have a great easter weekend. Thank you very much. Same to you. Thank you. Bye bye. So long, tony’s, take two and your ceo board chair partnership are coming up. First opportunity collaboration. Extremely useful contacts, projects funding. It opens people that was from last. Year’s delegate alberto vasco is president of society edad e dis capacidad in saudi’s, peru. It is the single most productive week i have spent all year. That’s gretchen wallace, founder and president of global grassroots dar for haiti, rwanda, uganda and the u s opportunity collaboration is a week long conference in x top of mexico devoted to poverty reduction throughout the world. It’s coming up in october, i was there last year. I’m going again this year. If your work is it all related to poverty reduction, check it out. Opportunity, collaboration, dot net. I have a new non-profit radio knowledge, base storytelling, the best non-profit radio guests on the subject of storytelling. The video and links are at tony martignetti dot com. Are you a millennial interested in measuring social good, then evaluate for change, has your next career move they’re recruiting for their millennial non-profit data fellowship. The ideal candidate is a millennial, employed or volunteering at a non-profit and dedicated to using data to improve the social sector. The fellowship is part time and includes training, mentoring and a final capstone project. The application deadline is april thirtieth. Apply at evaluate for change, dot com. I am being honored by a non-profit that saves lives in the dominican republic, they bring water to the poorest of the poor in the d r the organization is hermandad and i’d really like non-profit radio fans to be honored with me by giving to herman dahna i’ve been supporting the charity for several years, and i would love for us all to be honored together on april twenty third video is that tony martignetti dot com and i thank you for thinking about that, considering that that is tony’s take two for friday, third of april thirteenth show of the year john fulwider is with me. He helps non-profit chief executives, he combines coaching, teaching and training toe work exclusively with high achieving ceos. I want their leadership teams and boards to row in the same direction. His latest book is better together non-profits ceos and board chairs get happy and fall in love with the mission hope the book is shorter than the title. John he’s at john fulwider dot com and on twitter he’s at john m fulwider welcome john fulwider, thanks so much, tony, its honor and pleasure to be here. Thank you. I’m glad. And you’re you’re calling, ah, from omaha, nebraska. Is that right? Lincoln, nebraska lincoln, nebraska pardon me. I gave you live. Listen, love to lincoln. Pardon me. That’s. Right? Lincoln i hope you didn’t take me too seriously when i was admonishing you about requesting live listener love. Careful, they’re not at all ok, good. Don’t take. Nobody listens to call it it’s all in good fun. Okay, your book is ah siri’s of questions, which i love, that that ceos and board chairs should be asking each other. What? What shortcomings do you see in this relationship? That you want to be a partnership? You know, i wantto start with the possibilities that you can achieve from a really healthy and successful partnership before i get to the shortcomings, if i could. The possibilities are amazing. Too high achieving, growth oriented, talented, passionate people can really support each other and accomplishing together for themselves, for the organization and for the mitch and something they wouldn’t be able to achieve a part. And so it can be a really fulfilling effort asked, spend their wanting two, maybe three years of the board chairs leadership term together, really accomplishing something that they could both feel proud of at the end of those years. Okay, um, but i’m still gonna ask my question. Don’t be an anarchist now taking over the show. What? What? What now? I got two shortcomings or what? You know what? What’s typical of the board chair ceo relationship that that you see, and when you build that strong partnership, you can avoid a number of pitfalls. One of them is just failure to develop trust and transparency in your relationship, which was really the bedrock for leading together at the start. Next up, you can sail to communicate often enough, and as a result, neither the board chair nor the chief executive gets what she or he needs in terms of information to even run an effective board meeting, much less provide some really inspiring strategic direction to the organization. And the last thing that you can do is fail to establish clear expectations of each other. So you’re sort of casting about rudderless, not really knowing who’s. Responsible for what? And that’s not a fun or indeed fulfilling a productive position for either of the leaders to be. How about that trust the how do people? In these positions, let’s, take it’s ah, new relationship either. Well, the board chair is new, or the ceo is new to the organization. How do we start to build build that trust? You know, it really just begins in conversation, tony change begins in conversation conversation with your most important partner that being your board chair, if you’re the chief executive, the chief executive, if you’re the board chair, it’s just a matter of starting off the relationship, right with some open ended kind of deep questions that let you start to develop that trust and transparency from the very start in the book associate in the workbook associated with the book, i have lists of those questions that go from sort of short to medium so long, and you can kind of customize it based on the time you have, and you have them broken down into categories and then within the categories, there are lots of different topic areas marketing and accountability, and that’s right succession planning. So i really like this question and answer that i mean, i they’re they’re all questions to stimulate conversation and conversation hopefully is going to be honest and open and that helps us get to trusting partnership. Indian. Yeah. Ok. It is a virtuous cycle. Okay. All right. Let’s, let’s, talk about some of these questions. I like them so much. Um, you don’t mind if we start with marketing, do you? Would that be okay? No. Let’s, let’s. Go right into it. Ok, so you’re the way it’s laid out is you give some perspectives, cem quotes for thinking for the people. Tto consider on the subject and then ask your partner and there’s. Lots of ask your partner questions. And, uh, you know that you ask some very basic ones around marketing. What should our message be? Who needs to hear it? Where? Where does it need to be? Can two people, though sitting in a room together, answer these? They can begin to answer them, tony. And in a way that generates questions for other people. Let me use one of your previous guests as an example of how this could work. So you have a guest one or two weeks ago, talking about your board as brand ambassadors. And there was that there was that question, as i recall about, you know, what does our organization even do in terms of category where we capacity building organization or were we making social change organization? I believe your guest said, and and that’s a question that you and your board chair i’m just going to talk from the chief executive’s perspective because those of the clients i work with you can ask your board chair well, bored share what d’you, how would you categorize our organization and then ask your board chair? How do you think your colleagues on the board would categorise the organization and that helps the board chair decide? Well, hey, maybe i need to lead a discussion on this at the next board meeting because i’m not sure and i want to find out. So starting a conversation with your board chair starts conversations that she or he has with her or his colleagues. Okay, so these are not going to be questions that we’re going to sit down in a couple of our long meetings, and we’re going to have answers to no, we’re not going to figure it out for ourselves, but we’re going to we’re going to start the conversation. We’re going to use our knowledge at my knowledge as the chief executive of the leadership teams perspective and the board chair her knowledge of her colleagues on the board, their perspectives. We’re going to use it to narrow dance on our information, gathering our question asking for our colleagues. Okay, by the way, that guessed that you were referring. Teo, your board is brand ambassadors. Two weeks ago was roger sametz, um, also with the also in one of your marketing questions looking internally, how good a job are we doing? Getting our message to our own board and staff, you want some introspection here? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the one of the challenges that that i i always here when i’m working with not-for-profits is the staff in general are pretty dissatisfied with what they perceive as the boards level of knowledge about and interest in the organization. And then what i find when that when when we really examine it, the board tends to have more knowledge and information about the organization. Dan was the staff perception and so conversations about marketing and branding and the, you know, sort of internal outside perspective on the organization can be sort of a safe and comfortable way. For people to get rid of negative assumptions they might have about their colleagues. Okay, i’m going to move to one that also i find interesting internal threats to the organiser from like you ask who is a flight risk on the board who air flight risks on our staff? This is right. This is very, very good, like risk-alternatives would call it too. Yeah, absolutely, and it’s it’s something not not every organization really has the time or bandwidth to consider, but it is pretty hard to attract high quality talent. You are not for-profit organizations for various reasons everyone’s familiar with so once we have a really talented, high achieving, competent person on board, we need to take special care to ensure that we retain that person by continuing to challenge her or him offering a clear way up in the organization and so on. That could be the downside of term limits indeed, a can on the on the board side and boy, you know, if we get into the question of term limits will get into the question of government governance structures, and this conversation will get too complicated and i will wind up in jargon. Jail well, but you’re well, i’ll put your there, i’ll put your but they’re easily so you may end up there anyway, but let’s not let’s, not let’s. Not underestimate the capacity of non-profit radio listeners. The very sophisticated audience. Ah lutely. So i think they’re up for ah, governance conversation. We may we may get there, you that’s one of the other topics that you have questions around governance and accountability, but oh, i mean, if i can, if i can address term limits for just seconds under under governance, you know, that’s one of the frustrations of building a partnership with your board chair is that it’s a short term relationship. You could be doing all this work that i recommend, and i recommend doing a lot of work on this relationship only to have that person term out of the board chair seat one year from now, maybe two years, probably at the most three years. So term limits are a big deal in this context. I’m going hyre but as we’re identifying let’s say, you know ah well, who’s, the who’s a flight risk on the board we should be then the next question is going to be, well, what’s our succession plan for for that well, flight risk or, you know, whether it’s, term limits or whatever, for whatever reason president is going to be the position. So how do you how would you feel about having a neg zsystems chair and the planned successor? Whoever that is, the vice chair, whatever the the chair to be named in this conversation, could we do this is a three way? Sure, we definitely could do that. The first thing you need to do is have the two way conversation where you’re building the solid partnership with your board chair and honestly, if that’s all the two of you have the time, space and bandwidth to do. Just stop there, because you’ll be ahead of many other people who are in a leadership partnership. But if you can, by all means bring device chair, they’re elected the president elect that sort of thing into your discussions on dh and talk about how we can keep the strong leadership goodness culture flowing, but then also talk about how we need to customize the relationship to the prospective, the incoming board chair, because the nature of building trust with that person setting expectations, clarifying rolls, and the style and manner and frequency of communication, it’s all going to be different for that new person. Yes, customized, not not cookie cutter. And, yes, not one size fits. All right, right. That’s, that’s, offensive to the incoming person. Then, you know, right, alright, loss of trust there. We just have a minute or so before a break. Um, you would also like us under internal threats, to be looking at which of our programs is below par or failing. Sure and and that’s a great conversation. Tio have with your board chair, because you’re bored. Chair isn’t in the organization twenty six hours a day. Thinking about it, like like you are, doesn’t have probably that attachment to each of the programs, and so can offer and unbiased mohr outside view at what is working and what is not in the organization and honestly, can help you strategize about how to do the influence campaign necessary on your board, and indeed, with your staff, and maybe even your thunders, to eliminate a failing program in order to allocate resources to something that is creating social change. Let’s, take a break. When we come back, john and i are going toe. Keep covering some questions that the ceo on board chair should be asking each other. Hang in there. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth godin, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Got lots more live listener love tons of live listeners today serbia is with us life listen, to live out there. Mccarty in the philippines, mexico city, mexico. I’ll be flying there in october on my way to stop a for opportunity collaboration. Go through mexico city, reservoir, australia, bogota, colombia, seoul, south korea several in seoul not surprised. Always appreciative. Thank you very much on your haserot in japan, kawasaki and tokyo konichiwa also aspired. Germany good dog, it’s. Amazing let’s, bring it back to the u s newport news, virginia, omaha, nebraska. John omaha, eyes on and multiple in lincoln, nebraska so you’ve got some family there. I don’t know some people love you in lincoln, nebraska and pflueger ville, texas i love pflueger ville! Welcome live listener love to each person listening live. John, do you mind if we, since we’ve sort of headed in this direction to look what some succession planning for the for the board chair and for the ceo, we’ll do it, we’ll be okay. Your questions for for those two are pretty similar, so i would just take him in a bunch recognizing that nobody’s going to be in the position forever. What? What skills and qualities do we need in our next chair and our next ceo? Right? The reason i include the succession planning of questions in the book is because it really gives away toe have that conversation about succession planning, which is so sort of inconvenient and awkward and about your own mortality on a regular basis. What i recommend is that people go through this list of twenty four strategic discussion topics with their board chair one at a time really go through the entire list um, twice a year, so they’re having forty eight weeks of conversations taking four weeks off, but this just brings it up automatic so that it’s not awkward. Now that’s a that’s. A lot of time to ask. Ah, volunteer to spend is that you have you have clients that are doing that. This is realistic. Ideo i do have clients who were doing that. Okay? And what do we say to the board chair? Who may be reluctant to spend that kind of time? We’re talking about at least an hour a week, right? Sure. I mean, it can go faster or slower than that. What we say to the person is, i value your counsel and your input. And i know you joined the board because you felt like you have something to say. Um, you, you cared about the mission, and you felt like you had something to say about advancing the mission and getting mohr done for the social change cause that wee boat care about. And so i simply want teo give you the opportunity to be strategic about that as often as possible. And i promise that in our conversations, we’ll try to keep it at the high strategic, interesting and compelling level and away from boring taxable day today as much as possible. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We want to encourage the board to be looking at bigger pictures and not what the office supply budget line should be. How about let’s? Look, a little external. Now we’ve been doing a lot of introspection. You have a section on meeting community needs, right? I mean, this, the basic. What does our community need from us on dh? How are we doing in providing it? Yeah, this is this is really a question i like to use, teo, inform strategic planning processes. And so what i what i see this conversation as tony is ah, logical and easy progression from, uh, tapping the strategic thinking capabilities of the chief executive and the board chair and then moving that discussion to the executive committee or the officers of the board and then moving it from there to further board members in, say, a strategic thinking slot on the board agenda and then moving that all the way to the strategic planning retreat. So strategic conversations are happening constantly at all levels of the organization, but starting at the top it’s kind of like one of those chocolate fountains that you see at wedding receptions and so forth where it’s this yummy, gooey, rich chocolate and it bubbles out of the top, and it flows down to the next layer and the next layer, and then it bubbles back-up from the top strategic thinking happens in organizations the same way, okay, we don’t have to explain it to the person or maybe the people we’re going to have these conversations with as a strategic planning process, dewey. Because that has a lot of it’s our baggage to it that maybe people aren’t ready to take on or, you know, we have, you know, you’re completely you’re completely right, tony, i’m i’m working on a year long strategic planning process with a client right now, and as i’m doing the strategic, the preplanning interviews with the leadership team, they’re being kind enough to tell me, hey, some of us have some trepidation about that. The board says that has as well, you do want it to be clear at the board chair level, though, that you have a shared responsibility to, no matter how you phrase it or how you present it. Teo, get strategic thinking happening throughout the organization consistently. It can’t be something you do just once a year, okay? Or once every three years or something, and then it ends up on the show, which would be even worse. Okay, yes, these are that’s true and seen it this way. But these are very good strategic planning questions, even if you don’t want to call it a strategic planning process there. Very good strategic questions, i guess is what i mean. Um, you have a section on external threats. And we just have about a minute left. But so let’s. Just throw out that we should be looking at who’s, doing a better job than we are at providing program. Right. And that’s a that’s. A question that your your board chair is especially well suited to help answer she or he may have the answer himself just by being virtue of being a philanthropist in the community, caring about the issue, seeing what others have to say or your board chair main not know the answer himself but can go to other, uh, you know, really connected on that particular issue. People on the board who then can offer some information that again comes from somebody who has that outside. Unbiased, not thinking about the organization, you know, more than twenty four hours a day, like twenty six hours a day, like the chief executive is all right, lots of strategic and thought provoking questions. In the book, you’ll find it at john fulwider dot com. And john is on twitter at john m fulwider. Thank you very much for sharing john there’s. An even better link, tony at better together leadership. Dot com it’s, easier to spell. All right. Thank you very much, john. Thanks, tony. Next week. Do you know the agitator at agitator dot net? He’s. Roger craver and he’s with me. Next week, we’re going. To talk about donorsearch retention. If you missed any part of today’s show finding on tony martignetti dot com, where in the world else would you go, i think you have to be, ah, be over twenty to get that, i believe maybe, or maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t that long ago, but i hope you get it. If you’re over twenty opportunity, collaboration with world convenes for poverty reduction, it’ll ruin you for every other conference opportunity. Collaboration. Dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer show social media’s, by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. He was me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Yeah. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist. I took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe. Add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five.
