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Nonprofit Radio for August 20, 2010: Retirement Planning for Small Nonprofit Employees

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Tony’s Guest:

Mary-Jo Knight, Senior Financial Consultant, AXA Advisors talks about retirement planning for small nonprofit employees.

With or without an employer-sponsored retirement plan, Mary-Jo will take your questions and help you chart your retirement course.

Here is a link to the podcast: 006: Your Retirement Plan

This Friday from 1-2pm this week and every week!


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Durney arika durney hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio on your aptly named host tony martignetti and we’re talking about big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. A pleasure to follow larry broom and bloom and the divorce our if you were listening. There’s big news in new york state about divorce because no fault divorce is now legal, and if you missed larry’s show right before this one, you can always listen to the archive at talking alternative dot com on talking alternative broadcasting. My guest today is going to be mary-jo knight and she’s, a senior financial consultant with access, she’ll be joining me after our first break have a couple of things want teo, proceed with our name, the number contest i had asked you to name the number the calling number, which is eight seven seven for nato forty one twenty and that went bust because there are too many zeros and ones the ones and zeros don’t have letters corresponding to them on the keypad, and that flow mixed everyone and i didn’t realize that when i announced the contest, it was spur of the moment, and i hadn’t looked at the technology or a keypad so we don’t have a winner for the name the number contest. We’ll have another contest, i’ll think of something, and i’ll give away either a free copy of my book to your favorite charity or a complimentary hour of planned e-giving consulting, so we’ll have another contest and that’ll be on the facebook page. Which brings us to the facebook page. I have a facebook page for the show it’s now facebook dot com slash tony martignetti non-profit radio, but you don’t even have to go there to find it. You can find it on the page you’re listening from right now you’re looking at the player where on the at the screen, if you just scroll down a little bit, you’ll see the facebook window you can click on it. Don’t click now because you might cut off the show. We don’t want that, but if you know that your browser will open a new window, then go ahead and click it or click after the show. I would never advocate clicking during commercials that’s not a good idea click there and join like us like us on our facebook page. That’s the way to get to the facebook page. Right below the player that you’re looking at on your screen. You don’t even have to know how to spell my last name. And as i said, my guest today is mary-jo night, and we’re talking about all things retirement were relating to your retirement. You devote so much time to the care and help and lives of others let’s devote this hour to you, your retirement plan, maybe a retirement tuneup. Mary-jo has enormous experience working with people, planning for retirement and in retirement, and after this break, she is going to join us. Stay with me. You couldn’t do anything, including getting dink dink dink. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. Cubine are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. I’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size. But you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays one, too. Talking. Yeah! Back-up. Neo-sage no. Because i’m dahna can i must? I’ve always loved the monkeys. My favorite with peter tour this is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. We’re talking to small and mid sized non-profits sometimes you feel left out, maybe often, because big non-profits get attention. You have a home here at tony martignetti non-profit radio. My guest today for the whole show is mary-jo night mary-jo is a senior financial consultant and retirement planning specialist with aksa advisers. She began her career in financial services in nineteen seventy two she is one of the top women financial advisors at axa of among many, she serves on the axle women’s leadership council, is president of the arts art resource alliance and is on the oratorio society of new york’s board of directors and with oratorio society. She performs regularly in carnegie hall, a great background to be a guest because she has non-profit experience she’s working with non-profits not only in her practice, but serving on boards you may have seen mary-jo on the today show, maybe bloomberg tv, cnbc power lunch you might have heard mary-jo on bloomberg radio or the wall street journal. Report after having done those smaller media outlets she’s joining talking alternative broadcasting on the twenty martignetti non-profit radio today mary-jo welcome to the show and it’s great to be a tony. Thank you very much a pleasure to have you when we’re thinking about retirement, what are some things that people should think about? First may be with respect to their employer, but what are some awesome first thoughts people should have? I think the first thing that people all around the country are concerned about us outliving their money with medical advances being so great we are going to be living a lot longer and we have a lot less resource is unless we save them. The government is making us more responsible for our retirement. Um, our corporations or our organizations are non for profits are making us more responsible for our retirement, and unless we save that money, we’re going to be very short on dollars when we get to retirement age, i actually looked at a number social security average is about twelve hundred dollars for a working couple that’s, not five hundred dollars a month for a working couple. That’s not a lot to live on so that’s today, right? That’s today that today’s couples i have always lived by and took the word of my parents. If you’ve saved ten percent of everything you make, you’ll never be poor. So i’ve always lived that and putting ten percent away even though it’s, a major struggle today will pay off in spades down the road. Okay, there’s a valuable first very simple lesson strive to save right ten percent of your earnings. That would be my first off advice. You know, corporations, organization not-for-profits typically provide employees with a way to save its either through there for o three b, also known as a psa t d a tax sheltered annuity program. Um, people complete away or you fora one k which is also a new plan that you can put into the not for profit world. Now mary-jo before we get too far, i don’t want to put you in jargon jail, so okay, let’s let’s. First let me tell listeners that we are taking your calls. Today we are live today and the number to call is eight double seven four eight zero, forty one, twenty eight, double seven for eight o. O for one two oh, taking your calls for mary-jo night. Ah, let’s. Define a few of the things that you just mentioned. Ah, for o three b what? What is that? Ok, all of these numbers are simply sections of the irs tax code of four. Oh, one k is typically a corporate retirement plan where people can put money away every paycheck. Four o three b is the same thing on lee it’s for hospitals it’s for universities it’s for not provoc not-for-profits so essentially it’s the same exact thing. And i think people who have accounts with i’m going to name the biggest one that i know of. Tia cref that’s a four o three b is that right? Yes. Could be ok. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I read your it’s. Just a numbers that the irs puts on a corporal or employer sponsored pension plan or retirement plan. Okay. And then you mentioned t d a. I think tanya is a tax deferred annuity, eh? So we can get into these unusual a little later, right? I just wanted to flush out the acronyms and there was one more. Three b is a psa it’s also what’s. It say tax, sheltered and unsheltered anew. Thanks. Deferred annuity for all three b well, the same thing. Okay, we’ll get to we’ll get tau breaking those out shortly on dh. I was asking you about what some first thoughts are, so we know strive to save ten percent, right? Don’t you have to be concerned about outliving your assets, so that would be the first thing. Another thing is to really take stock of what you’re entitled to. Many corporations. Um, we’re not-for-profits that have been around for a long time offer their employees pensions, actual pension and a pension is something that when you retire your company, your organization is going to provide you with a monthly income for the rest of your life and that’s something that the organization probably contributes to. They are. And this would be something called a find benefit plan where the company on ly contributes to it. And foreign since i spent twenty, is at merrill lynch way back when and they owe me a pension. I know a lot of the lodge in not-for-profits have guaranteed their employees when they turn, it can be fifty five, sixty, sixty five they when they’re retired. They will get a monthly paycheck for the rest of their life and that’s really the difference between a pension on a retirement plan, a pension is typically the fine benefit guaranteed most companies our cutting them out or do not offer them to new employees now on dh, small and midsize non-profits are not likely to have pension that’s, right? Yeah, so i’m sort of going on the assumption, and we will that that we’re talking to people who don’t have non-profit whose employers don’t have a pension plan, but as you know, other things, one of ah recent client of ours found out that she had a huge pension and she actually changed jobs into a smaller not-for-profits because her pension was so big and she was able to collect that pension, roll it over into an ira, and now she’s working for a small enough for-profit so i think it makes some sense for people at least understand what you have and if you left a large not-for-profits make sure you understand whether or not you have a pension coming to you any other things that we should be looking at, maybe maybe with respect. To the employer, seeing what the employer might offer aside from a pension well, typically it’s mostly gonna be retirement plans again. Most not-for-profits can’t really give pensions, so they set up one of the retirement accounts that you can contribute into, okay, and what type of one of those? And that would be those four o three b in the four oh one k. Often, the not for profit will give an employee some kind of match for if you put in four percent, they may match you’re four percent contribution, and you typically have to put in a certain amount what to get the employer match what’s your recommendation. Do you recommend putting in as much as you can to get that match? Well, i wouldn’t at least put in as much as you need to get the match. Don’t give away free money. We do have a caller already. Excellent. Tracy, tracy, you’re on talking alternative broadcasting that tony martignetti non-profit radio welcome. I think we lost tracy tracy, hopefully you will call back let’s, continue with mary-jo what about some of the issues that revolve around beneficiaries naming naming beneficiaries of whatever your plan is? Aren’t there pitfalls there and things that people need to know about? Generally, if we’re married, we under law, we must name our spouse that’s number one um, there is some pitfalls, though you don’t want to name your minor children. Typically, you might want to find a custodian for your minor children, because if they if you pass away and your five year old inherit your retirement account, they can’t use it, and then you have to go. A court has to appoint a guardian, and that child may not be able to get any of the benefit of that money until they become of majority age. I see. So now now we’re talking about naming beneficiary named beneficiaries receive the balance of your a count count, correct, and that could that’s true of ira’s fora one case for three bees or any type of retirement accounts you should name, name a custodian for your children. The other thing is a lot i see a lot. Of clients, but their mom down, you know, you’re a young woman, a young man, and you’re just starting out, you put your mom down. We had one gentleman in our office who, after twenty years of being divorced when he passed away unexpectedly, his ex wife actually got his retirement account. Twenty years worth of savings, which is not what has tended. So whenever you have a life event, you want to change your beneficiaries, we’re going to take a break. Mary-jo night is with us, we’re talking all things retirement, your retirement focusing on you in this hour. Mary-jo will stay with us after the break, and i hope you do, too. You’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com wolber is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call us ed to one, two, nine, six, four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one, two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Hyre xero. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Dahna tony martignetti the host is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. My guest today is mary-jo night senior financial consultant and retirement planning specialist with access advisers were live, and we would love to be taking your calls on you’ll know that this is a very high tech station because we have technical problems, we can’t seem to keep a call on the phone, so don’t call eight, seven, seven etcetera instead. Email info at talking alternative dot com. So if you have questions for mary-jo, please email info at talking alternative dot com. We’ll get your message and read it on the air, and you and everyone else will benefit from it mary-jo you ah, i mentioned earlier if someone changes jobs, they might roll over and let’s, talk a little about what happens, what you should be thinking about if you are in a job change. Um, it’s really? Never smart to take your money out of your retirement account, as i said, you’re going to really be you need to save a lot of money so that you’re not. I told my clients, i don’t want you flipping hamburgers at eighty years old at mcdonald’s so you really need to put money away today. The life expectancy of a newborn is one hundred twenty years, so even if you retire, say it seventy years old, you still have another fifty years that you have to potentially i have to have your money last four. So when you’re changing a Job the best 1 of the best things thiss tool turn it is that i see one is rolling your money over or transferring directly, transferring your money over to your own ira and that’s, very simply done by getting the paperwork from your employer than having an ira set up at a bank of mutual fund company with your financial advisor. However you do that, so essentially, if you have the money in your retirement account, you fill out the paperwork and the money is sent from that employer sponsored retirement account to your own ira that’s one alternative the other alternative is if if you go to another corporation, another not-for-profits another organization, you can also directly transfer that money from your current employers plan to the next employer’s plan, and there’s benefits to doing both if you combine and this is again what i typically advocate if you combine your retirement accounts as you change jobs into your own ira, then you always have the ability to control how that money is invested, what you’re paying for that investment, but the management of those investments and you don’t lose track. I have one client who has literally moved to india, and she still has a retirement account in new york, one in california and she’s in india and it’s really difficult at this point to combine them until she comes back to the states so you can lose track and it gets really messy. And if you are doing any kind of investment management for yourself, unless you have them in one place, it gets really complicated. Teo try toe manage five or six different iras or five or six different accounts with your employers. So now if you have an i r a, you can also have an employer sponsored, maybe for three, right? Sure, sure, i’m i again at Acts. I have my 40 one k and i have. I also have some self employed in comment. I also have an ira, so i have three. Things, but i am very careful about combining and managing them. They’re all in my control. They’re just not at other companies, one of the benefits of and if you have the thing on the difference on from an ira to a corporate retirement account or your employer sponsored for o three b is that in the four o three b or in the four oh one k, you can typically borrow money while you’re still working at that company. You will have to pay it back before you leave that company, but you can borrow money from your four oh three typical. Yes, and i don’t know about tia specifically, and i won’t go into that because it really worked too much on that. But typically most organizations and the federal government says you can borrow up to fifty percent. Now. If you’re buying a home, you might borrow a piece of the down payment. You may use it for paying taxes. There are, you know, um, emergency comes up, so there are things to use that for. But you must. The trap is if you don’t pay it back by the time you changed jobs, then you have to pay regular income tax on that money plus a ten percent penalty. So you always have to be where the tax ramifications of borrowing you want to get that money back in your account before you change jobs. And the way to find out those implications would be to talk to the plan administrator or yes or your accountant or your own tax advisor, right? Everything that we say here is it should be under the umbrella of talk to your tax advisor. This is not tax advice as muchas general knowledge s o but the other side of it is if you have an ira, even though under most circumstances you cannot borrow from that ira, you can take the money out for sixty days. It must be back in the account by the end of sixty days. So the irs does allow you to use that money for sixty days has to be back in the ira. Well, you’ll pay that income tax again. And the ten percent sort of ah, a bridge loan. It’s a quick. Give yourself it’s. A quick like yourself. A bridge loan. We have a couple of email questions. Excellent. Thank you. For emailing your questions. The first one is from tracy, who were lost on the phone. Sorry about that, tracy on dh, she asks a self employed freelance writer what are my options for retirement? Since i don’t have a company that offers a four oh one k like us, we’re talking about ira’s well do-it-yourself employed, the irs allows you to open something called a sep s p i r a what’s up stand for self employed retirement plan pension there’s also a start but it’s much more complicated there’s a surprise like serpent i don’t wantto dahna let’s start with step so self employed all is that by right now? There’s a catch to this? Some corporations pay you on a ten nineteen r w too, even though you are a freelance that’s, one of the really hard places to save on attacks preferred basis so if you’re freelancing and being paid on a w two, you cannot open a set by array it’s on ly if it’s a ten, ninety nine basis so there’s a distinction there so what you can do or anybody can dio is one of the products that’s out on the market that allows people to save its not tax. You don’t get a tax deduction, but one of the products out there is something called nonqualified or none. I arrest nondeductible variable or fixed rate annuities where you can literally save as much as you want. The money that goes in is an after tax money. The money grows tax deferred when you take that money out what you put in is obviously tax free comes out again tax free. But any profit is taxable as at ordinary income tax rates. Alright, eso profits tax what you put in his tax free. But like a mutual fund, your profit always comes out first. So you’re paying tax on the profit first i’m opening the doors again. Teo jargon jail. I want teo flesh out. You just said qualified plans so let’s before the final unqualified right? We have about a minute or so before the next break. Explain what qualified and nonqualified means qualified plan is something that the irs sanctions and gives you a tax benefit for so a qualified plan would be your employer’s retirement plan would be your a pension plan on ira is qualified on ly in that it gives you a tax deduction. That’s what i mean qualified means hyre e-giving deduction and non qualified is after tax money that is going to be taxed at the back end. And so i’ll stick a roth ira right in the middle of that tax at the back end, meaning when you withdraw, if it is that’s, when that’s, when you attack, correct. Okay, we’re going to take a break after the break. We have an e mail from christine. Email your questions to info at talking alternative dot com, please stay with us. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. I’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size, but you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays. One, too hyre you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll she’s. All mrs back-up he’s called. I can’t officially jumping. My rival will love back-up on talking alternative broadcasting, this is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your host, tony martignetti my guest today is mary-jo night senior financial consultant and retirement specialist with axe advisers were going to start with a question mary-jo that came in by e mail. By the way. Email your questions, please today to info at talking alternative dot com that’s info at talking alternative dot com this question is from christine, who says, i was also taught the ten percent rule about saving when i started working, my parents wisely told me i look at that, she says, wisely told her she loves her parents. This is wonderful. My parents wisely told me that if i started saving from the beginning of my employment, i would never even notice that decrease in spending money that having been said, what advice do you have for adults who are in the middle of their career and take a decrease in pe or for a period, leave employment altogether to care for children or aging parents? It’s hard to remain focused on retirement and discipline when life gets complicated in the present thank you. For your question, christine mary-jo what do you think? It’s? A great question, christine and it’s, not something unusual today there are so many people out of work, there are so many people struggling, so here, just some of the things that we’re experiencing in our financial planning practice is downsizing and and i empathize sympathize because i know how difficult it is, especially a lot of women are taking care of children wearing about college, and they’re also taking care of their parents, and we call it the sandwich generation it’s really, really difficult. So, um, one of the things i would say starting out is the most important thing is really, and i think this is for everyone when you’re doing retirement planning college planning, we’re just trying to save is sit down and know what you’re spending every month, sit down and really figure out a budget, and you can send an email to tony if you want our budget sheet and i will make sure everybody, anybody that emails him gets a copy of it. Well, actually, the way to reach mary-jo is to goto mary-jo site, it’s mary-jo mary-jo dot biz mary-jo that is that’s. An m a r y joo dot biz that’s our website, but so ah, budget, you hear that by so often, but rarely not about guilty about how you’re spending your money as much as it is about self awareness about what we’re doing without money and where we can make changes. Ah lot of us owe housed were working with, um, some clients who were advising to move into less expensive apartments. You know, credit has dried up in a lot with the bank, so it’s hard to get a home equity lines in a lot of places, so i think the thing is, number one, start out with a budget, see where you can cut expenses and, you know, assuming you’re going back into the workforce and, you know, give yourself a little bit of a break and don’t depends so much on the retirement account on the retirement plan and focus on getting through the next year or two, i think we will get out of this recession i think the world will get better on we will have brighter days ahead, but i would say, you know, the other thing is sit down with a good financial advisor um, who may charge you a fee for the service but may save you and give you some ideas on how to get through this how to use some of the benefits you have, um, or maybe even augment what you’re already doing. So anything financial advisor, i think, understand your budget, look at the possibility of downsizing not only expenses, but also housing and don’t worry immediately about retirement. Maybe maybe that retirement planning and saving needs to be put off for a short period a couple of years, but to get back to it exactly before the break mary-jo we were talking about you mentioned the roth i r a, and why don’t we explore that a little bit as a as an alternative account overtime account, i think it’s great, you know, circling back to a lot of the smaller admit size non-profits not having retirement accounts, formal retirement accounts for their employees, those employees can set up individual iras. Um, which is just simply a vehicle that allows you to save i think it’s six thousand dollars excuse me for not knowing that number, um, a year on attacks preferred basis, let’s see is it five thousand dollars on attacks preferred basis and you could do that either in a deductible ira or a roth ira, and we don’t say i’m sorry wait when you say attacks preferred basis, what does that mean going okay, so a deductible i r a traditional ira, if you put five thousand dollars away, then you’re income taxes will be reduced, or the income that year will be reduced by that five thousand dollars. So if you’re earning one hundred thousand dollars and you put five thousand dollars into an ira, you’re only going to be taxed by the irs at ninety five thousand dollars if you do, and so that money will grow tax free for the rest of your life or until you have to take money out seventeen and a half, but we’ll go there later when you have to take money out, then you’ll pay taxes on that money because you didn’t pay any money up front. You’ve got the taxi to the traditional, traditional or deductible ira. The other type of ira is a roth ira. And this again, i think it’s it’s perfect four self employed people. It’s really excellent if you have a corporate or organization sponsored retirement plan? You can also do a roth ira for up to five thousand dollars a roth ira is an after tax contribution to an ira, so you already paid your income taxes on that money. It will also grow tax free until you decide to take it out, but he is the good part when you decide to take it out, it is also tax free, so essentially you’re pre paying your taxes upfront that five thousand dollars gets to grow until you take it out. There are you can leave that to your grandchildren to your children. The tax benefits for roth iras of fabulous but you don’t want to name a minor is the beneficiary, right? You never wanna name a minor, so you would so let’s just fall that’ll bit. So what suppose you did want the money teo in a roth ira to ultimately get two grandchildren? And you’re not sure what age there’ll be, but you don’t want them to get it when they’re under, say twenty or it doesn’t have to be just eighteen. What what do you do? Everybody with children should really hear this loud. And clear. Don’t name your children as beneficiaries. And do you get a well done? Seventy four percent of the population does not have a will. You should have a custodian, someone you trust, a sister, a brother, a relative. Um, someone that you trust that we’ll take care of your children’s money for you. So you have that in your will. You should have that on your life insurance. And you should have that on your retirement accounts. So what you do is your naming a custodian for the benefit of your children as long as they are minors. Once your children are not miners, then fine. Then you can name them directly, and you’re naming the custodian in your will. Is that right? As as the beneficiary as the custodian is the person that will take care of your children’s money. Yes, but also directly on your retirement. You know, when you, when you altum in an ira, correct on a beneficiary form. When you open an ira, you have to name a beneficiary. Here’s the key. If you name your a state as the beneficiary of your ira, that estate must pay out with the bent. The ira four oh, one k for three be any retirement account must pay out in five years. If you do not name an individual person, if you name your estate the ira must pay out in five years in effect for donors. If you name a charity that ira must pay out in five years a non natural person on on a beneficial as a beneficiary of an ira or any kind of retirement account, non natural people, which is non people, okay, must pay out in five years. So you want to name an individual a person. But if it’s minor children name it as a custodian for those children, as long as they minor, i see. So on the beneficiary form itself, you’re naming the custodian as custodian for the minor child. Correct? That’s what exactly? What you put on the change of beneficiary? Correct. Okay. Is anything more than you wanted to say about the roth ira now, this sounds like something. Let me just say that it could be valuable for the woman tracy three mailed. Doesn’t have an employer. Could be a roth ira oran or a traditional correct. Correct. You khun do either, but again, and and for younger people, where it looks very likely that over the next ten, fifteen years, taxes will probably be hi there. When i started working in nineteen, seventy two, capital gains rates were up around seventy percent. Now, that’s a long time ago, most people don’t remember that long ago, but tak capital gains rates and now fifteen percent. So we’re one of the lowest tax time’s in, you know, decades, our memories are short way. Don’t think back that far. We don’t realize that way weren’t born that far back. So for the younger people, um, a roth ira, if you pre paying your taxes now, by the time you’d use this money, if tax rates are a lot higher and you don’t have any taxes to pay because it’s a roth ira, it is such a bonanza. So that’s, really, i think good advice for people who don’t have an employer plan like tracy, who emailed, by the way, email your questions to info at talking alternative dot com were not able to take calls today through a technical problem, so email mary-jo if you have a question at info at talking alternative dot com, this is tony martignetti non-profit radio mary-jo what about thinking about sort of pre retirement? If you’re maybe five years out from retirement when you think you’re going to be retiring, are there things you should be doing in preparation? Well, i guess one of the most important things, you know, i just talked about it a little bit a few minutes ago is i understand what it cost you to live, um, everything that you do, going forward in retirement is going to be based on what does it cost you to live? And if you have a handle on that, if you know it cost you five thousand dollars, if you know it cost you seven thousand dollars, then you can start to prepare for how much do you need to retire? Five years out? You still have time to make adjustments. Um, you may think it’s five years out, when in fact, if you do a financial plan, it turns out it’s seven years or eight years out. So it’s really helpful to number one. Understand what your cost of living is if you one of the rules of thumb that the industry is looking at right now is if you take your balance as of december thirty first say you have a half a million dollars saved and your offices in all savings, everything, everything that you’re going to spend wants to retard. So the ideas how do you turn that into an income? So if you look at your december thirty first balance and this isn’t even a gauge for younger people cause then you can start to monitor. How close are you to having enough? Or are you saving enough? Or are you way way off? So a half a million dollars if you calculate four percent of that, that four percent well, pretty much withdrawal once a year. Well, pretty much allow youto have your money last twenty five years. So if i have a half a mostly around them, as i have a million dollars four percent withdrawals forty thousand dollars if that’s all my money can i live on forty thousand dollars? It’s a pretty simple way to understand whether or not you have enough now add to the forty thousand dollars your social security, which we will get a reminder from social security three months before our birthday. How much our social security payment is estimated to bay. So if i know i have a million dollars, um, so i know i can take forty thousand out of my assets, plus my social security. If i have any pensions, add that on and now you know, you have an idea of how much or how much income you’ll have during retirement if you don’t have enough to go on vacation with that four percent this year, skip the vacation next year if investments are hyre and your account has gone up on december thirty first of the following year, and you have enough to take the vacation. Great. But you need to know let’s talk about maybe had invested all this money also, and that four percent rule is that that will give you a gauge of how that your money will. Last for twenty years, twenty five years, twenty five years. That so, if you’re so if you expect a latto live longer than twenty five, you need to have more money or that’s produced the four percent two and a half or three percent quick. And as you get, you know, when you when you get to be seventy, you can use five percent when you get to be, you know, eighty, you can use six percent in the minute or so we have left before a break. What else should people in those pre retirement years be thinking of anything else? Well, i think you really again. From our perspective, you really should be sitting down and doing a formal financial plan so that you can identify. How do you allocate your money? How much should be in fixed income? How much income should you have? You know what? You want to equate your fixed expenses with fixed income, your variable expenses, your, you know, luxuries, things that you can change around on and have that invested a little bit more let’s. Say aggressively. So let’s talk about how to allocate on and you really want to be ableto lock that in before you sit down and and retire from your job. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio, your host, tony martignetti. My guest today is mary-jo night, senior financial consultant and retirement planning specialist with access advisors. We’re going to take a break. Mary-jo will stay with us, and i hope you do, too. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two eight six five nine two nine. Zero or visit w w w died. Mind over matter. Y si dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call us ed to one, two, nine, six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom at to one to nine six four three five zero two. We make people happy. Durney talking. This is about. Teo, wait! Sit around the house, get watching tio here’s. What happened with no. I swear to you, tony martignetti non-profit radio, my guest today is mary-jo night we’re talking about your retirement. I’d like to take a minute to talk about something that i blogged about this week. No, and that is the name of the block post actually is unheralded e-giving we learned last week that johnny carson donated one hundred fifty six million dollars to his foundation at his death through his estate and what really caught my attention about that is nobody knew it. It got discovered by the investigators at the smoking gun because they were filing coming through nine, ninety forms, the annual filing form that the carson foundation it’s actually called the john w carson foundation and the smoking gun went through the nine, ninety form for the tax year and found a significant gift from johnny carson himself and that’s the only way that this became news, nobody at the foundation was disclosing it. Obviously, johnny carson didn’t say anything before his death, and i just that gets me just thinking about, ah sort of revered status of someone who gives quietly, silently. I can’t technically call his gift anonymous because the john w carson foundation is certainly making gifts to charities and those charities know where the money is coming from so it’s not strictly anonymous but still got me thinking about how we just should respect the people who give to your organization’s quietly, silently, you know, there’s a lot of attention being paid to the to the buffet gates, six hundred billion dollars challenge, and that is a very worthy challenge not to minimize that or disparages at all it’s outstanding for the attention that it brings to philanthropy, but there’s another kind of giver, another kind of donor of the secret, quiet donor a person is someone that maybe we should be thinking about and and paying honor to when when we come across them, their their their occasional, they’re rare. I’ve worked on just a few anonymous gif ts on, hopefully you have had the pleasure of working with such donors. You’ll find my block post at on this subject at m p g a d v dot com, which is the home of my blood. My guest is mary-jo night mary-jo, of course, is still with us mary-jo we, we’ve talked about traditional iras, roth iras, we compared and contrasted. Them, but you’ve mentioned something that’s important i think we want to explore, and that is that these get invested. If you’re doing your own investment management, what do you do? You’re not a professional advisor. Financial advisor? How do you determine how you should have your accounts invested? I think this is ah, really critical information for everyone. There’s an awful lot of information available. And so i’m going to just go through a couple of things that i think go from the very, very simple, too. A little bit more complicated. There’s a rule of thumb that i heard from a very, very wise investment manager years ago, and i think it probably still holds a lot of validity a cz faras investing. So if you take your take one hundred, subtract your age. The difference is the percentage that you should have in stocks, and that would be for a very conservative investor. So let’s, take the example of a forty five year old. Okay, i was going to use a forty year old but that’s great. So forty five year old if you take one hundred, subtract forty five that person should have if it’s a conservative investors should have fifty five percent in stocks, so now you’re going to re balance this annually. So it’s a very simple way to manage how you invest stocks to bonds to cash and and you said it twice. I just want to emphasize that’s for someone who’s conservative. So so if you’re if you’re more of a risk taker, then you’d have more than the fifty five percent clolery in-kind in stocks, so go ahead so let’s go into that a little bit, you know, generally the most effective way to investor money in any retirement plan today is using mutual funds. There are so many different mutual funds, and if you find a family of mutual funds that you’re comfortable with or mutual fund investment company, by all means go on their website and create a strategy. Every single mutual fund company has something called a risk tolerance profile where you can literally go in and say, you know, if you’re not comfortable with what happened in your account two years ago and not many people are very comfortable with the value of their account going down forty percent, um then go on, do one of these risked tolerance, profiles and, well, personal risk tolerance and create a strategy. Um, i studied very high math about six years ago, and i was absolutely blown away by the sophistication that goes into the models that people use probabilities, et cetera to understand what, how much stocks, how much bonds, how much should be international, how much should be small cap, large cap, etcetera? So go on to a website and really answer the questions of very simple questions and answer them honestly, if you didn’t change your portfolio when the market went down forty percent, and yet the question says, how often do you change your portfolio when the market goes down and you didn’t change it? Then answer xero you didn’t change it, so i would spend the time to go on there, and that will give you an idea of what the allocation is. And then you can look for the mutual fund that’s going to fit your comfort zone? Is it sixty percent stocks or and forty percent bonds? You don’t want to ever have one hundred percent bonds or one hundred percent stocks either way, it’s too risky? We found that that bonds don’t always work two years ago, and we know that stocks don’t always work because there’s too much volatility and it’s when the market is down the most that people get scared and get out. One other thing is, when you’re putting money away every month, you have to also realize that when the market is down, i think warren buffett he’s buying in on sale when the world goes to hell in a handbasket, he wants to own stuff. So the worst time to get out one of his one of his adage is that i love is it’s time to be fearful when everyone else is greedy and it’s time to be greedy when everyone else is fearful. He sees a lot of fear in the market and that’s, why he’s doing what you just said exactly so there’s ah technique called dollar cost averaging. So you’re putting money in every paycheck or every month when the market’s down you want to stay in there buying those stocks because they’re cheap when the market goes back up a year, two years from now or whatever that cycle is, and typically the seven year cycles you will have bought a lot of stock, very cheap relative to look ahead five years, how much it buy and how cheap was it? So dollar cost averaging is a great thing when you’re buying when you get to be fifty five, sixty, sixty five and looking at retirement again, you want to make sure you’re readjusting that portfolio to your temperature. At that point, my guest today has been mary-jo night, senior financial consultant and retirement specialist with aksa advisers, you could reach mary-jo at mary-jo dot biz, you can reach tony martignetti non-profit radio on the fan page, which it’s going to be safe to click in just a minute because i’ll be done and on that player window, just scroll down and click to the fan page go over there and like us, my guest next week will be stephanie strong she’s, the non-profit beat reporter for the new york times. She’ll be with us here in the studio, and joining us by phone next week will be can cerini of cerini and associates were going to be talking about compliance and auditing, and we’re certainly gonna include a conversation aboutthe possible revocation of tax exempt status for this small and mid sized organizations that didn’t file their form nine, ninety within the past three years. The irs has a procedure for you to save your tax exempt status, and we’ll be covering that with ken cerini also joining me next week. As i said, stephanie strong, i want to think clear meyerhoff, our creative producer, sand liebowitz, line producer, and regina walton, who takes care of our facebook page. I’m tony martignetti, the host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Thanks for listening. Join us next week, friday at one p, m eastern at talking alt-right dot com. Oppcoll hyre

Nonprofit Radio for August 13, 2010: Exploting Traditional Media: What is your nonprofit story?

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

You can subscribe on iTunes and listen anytime, anyplace on the device of your choice.

Tony’s Guests:

Peter Panepento, web editor, The Chronicle of Philanthropy and Sara Dunaj, account executive, CRT/tanaka PR agency.

Topic: Exploting Traditional Media: What is your nonprofit story? How to get yours told

There will be a link to the podcast posted here after the show.

This Friday from 1-2pm this week and every week!
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Durney durney dahna 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 tony martignetti last week, we looked at traditional sari last week, we looked at social media using social media, building community networks, online community, using online fund-raising the person to person fund-raising this week, we’re looking at traditional media, my guests are going to be peter panepento, whose web editor for the chronicle of philanthropy, so he’s got on interesting mix of traditional media but doing it in the non traditional sense he’s, their web editor, and we’ll talk about the non-profit story. How that’s been changing what he sees it becoming and what’s interesting to the chronicle how the chronicle is a resource for small and medium non-profits our audience and at the bottom of the hour i’ll be joined by sarah din, eh? Sarah is account executive for tanaka agency and does public relations for non-profits and has a non-profit background herself. So this week, it’s traditional media howthe story is evolving and how you can get involved where pre recorded this week so i won’t be able to take your calls will be live. Next week, though, on the twenty third, but there is a contest name the number i want to find a way to name our calling number, which is, um eight seven seven for eight xero for one to zero again, we can’t take calls this week. We will be taking calls next week, but go to our facebook page, the facebook fan page at tony martignetti non-profit radio and joined the contest name the number to find a way to remember that number. Using the letters that correspond to those numbers, please go to the facebook page. Tony martignetti non-profit radio beacon so search on facebook just search for non-profit radio you don’t have to remember how to spell my name. Start searching for non-profit radio and the fan page will come up. I’d be grateful if you’d like us, join us as a fan on the fan page, click like we’re going to take a break now and after the break, my guest peter panepento, will join us. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio co-branding dick dick tooting getting ding, ding, ding ding you’re listening to the talking alternate network you waiting to get you thinking? Cubine are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam lebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. I’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size. But you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays one, too. Talking. With a little. And something heinous way. Boedecker we’re rather a mess. Well, a little. And some money. I’m tony martignetti you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio on talking alternative broadcasting, talking, alternative, dot com small and medium non-profits have a home here if you feel you’re ignored, perhaps by the media, and we’re going to talk about how the chronicle of philanthropy doesn’t want to ignore you and want you wants to reach out to you, but if you feel you’re ignored by maybe consultants or just the non-profit community, because you’re a smaller organization, small and medium size, you have a home here. Tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent sent i’m going, i’m joined now by peter panepento, web editor for the chronicle of philanthropy. Peter welcome, thanks for having me on tony. My pleasure. Welcome to the show, peter, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about your background in journalism and and you’re interesting non-profits sure i’ve been with the chronicle of philanthropy as a full time staff member for about four years now. I came here as a senior reporter who covered fund-raising and later irs issues, and when we, when we really committed off full board to the web about three years. Ago, i took the title of web editor, where my role has been to really rethink the way we present news online and expand what we dio to prevent to present what we d’oh to the non-profit world in some new and really community oriented ways. So i’ve been working over the last few years, both teo kind of re imagine the website, but also to expand our content. We’ve started a number of podcasts and blog’s and video siri’s and and other features that are aimed at really taking what we’ve been doing for print for more than twenty years and really blowing it out and opening it up and making it more accessible to the non-profit world online, your role then is to bring traditional media online, and i know the chronicle has done that in a lot of ways that you touched on let’s start just what do you see as the non-profit story? What interests you as web editor? What interests the chronicle about the non-profit community? Well, what we’re really trying to do is is the non-profit community is so large and so diverse, we’re really trying to serve much bigger piece of it than we’ve ever, ever been able to do in print before. What what’s happening online is it’s giving us the opportunity, thio more people, a voice and create a lot more conversations online, and by doing that, we’re able to not only report and deliver the news, but we’re also able to get a lot more people having input in in in what we’re talking about, able to ask a lot more questions and able to share a lot more information with each other and what stories specifically or what angles are interest you and the chronicle. Well, we’re interested in a number of things, probably the biggest thing is is we are really interested in trends and and looking at information and what’s happening in the world that that somebody who works in the nonprofit world can then turn around and apply to what they do every day unlike, you know, your local newspaper tv station, which is really aimed at delivering news to the to the to the whole community and the whole consumer. We really we focus on what is of interest to people who work in the nonprofit world. So we tell our stories in that way. Instead of instead of reporting something, too uh, you know, to ah, you know, a wide audience we really try to focus in on information and in a language and in a delivery way that, um, if you’re working for a small, medium or large non-profit group, you know, we’re talking to you and we’re delivering information to you. So really what interests you as a reader as somebody who works in the field and who cares about the field is what interests us and how that interest can be used and benefit and the larger community can benefit from it the larger non-profit community competitive, absolutely so you know it, we’re not necessarily interested in the fund-raising event that you dio on its own in the same way that you would be telling that story, too. Ah, local newspaper editor, for instance, you’re probably trying to get publicity for the event itself. What we’d be interested in is what’s unique about that an event and what could somebody else you know, who works in the field? Learn from it? Are you doing something different with it? Or is there a tactic or a technique that you’re using that? Ah colleague halfway across the country might be ableto read about or or or listen to samen formacion about and then turn around, defy it. What they dio you mentioned accessibility, making the chronicle accessible, and what i think is remarkable is people can follow you, for instance, on twitter. Absolutely, absolutely, um, you know, for many years what we were was a pass around publication, we were a newspaper that have delivered it, delivered to your office every two weeks probably do your executive director, your development director, and then got passed around the office, and by the time i got to you, if you were depending on where you were on the totem pole, you might ah, you might be reading it of, you know, three or four weeks after it came out. Uh, now the level of communication with us is so much more personal and rial time. Like you said, we’re on twitter, we were under the handle at philanthropy, and i’m on there throughout the day, answering people’s questions, posting links to our stories and communicating with people through there we have ah, facebook group actually have to facebook groups one called philanthropy dot com and one called the chronicle of philanthropy, and we were talking to people there where i’m linked in now we’re on youtube. Um, and we’re also on the website really were trying to respond to people were opening up, uh, sections of the site for people to submit their stories and their ideas. Oh, and and really start communications and conversations that way. Um, one example of how that’s changing is is a feature we’re doing right now called fund-raising videos that work and what it really is it’s not us doing the reporting it’s you doing the reporting? If if you work for a nonprofit organization and you’ve done a pretty cool fund-raising video that you think others can learn from, you submit the embed cup code and some backstory on our prospecting block, and we we put it out there so people can can watch it and critique it and learn from it. Peter, we’re going toe dive more into some of the the ways that the conical is is reaching out. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. My guest is peter panepento with the chronicle of philanthropy peter is the chronicle’s web editor peter? How is you started talking about video? Let’s talk about some of the ways that methods of getting the chronicles attention of submitting a picture or a story to the chronicle has has changed? Absolutely well, all the all the avenues i’ve talked about in the last few minutes are actually ways that people are pitching us stories. Now i get i get messages from people on twitter almost daily, with ideas and links to things that they’re doing, that they think are of interest to us and and often that leads to stories if somebody is is has something unique and creative, and they reach out to us in any one of these social network it’s getting my attention typically and or, um or, um, passing it on to another reporter editor here tto vetted and see if it’s something that’s of interest. Peter, is this limited to what we’d consider large? Non-profits oh, absolutely not at all on drily what we’re hoping to do is is make a lot of what we do accessible to the smaller and medium group, because those are the groups that really need the information the most. Um and and again, before you know that the newspaper was something that you you had a subscribe to and pay for, and we still hope people do have because that’s what keeps us in business, but ah lot of what we do now is is free online, and hopefully those are things that are that are useful resource is two people and become gateways for us to engage with us in other ways, too, i think there’s a lingering perception about the chronicle and clearly you’re describing ways that you’re trying to defeat that perception. But i think the lingering perception is that the chronicle is just as you said, something that you subscribe to and it’s really only for the largest organisations, right, right? And that and that, i think, is a perception we’ve had for a long time eyes that you know, where the were the pay paper for the large organization or were the paper that your ceo reads. But you know what we’ve always had and what i think we are doing now in more ways than ever before is providing information that really anybody in the field can can benefit from and learn from. And apply to what they do each day. Let’s talk about some of the ways that organizations can sort of get your attention can submit you started to talk about video fund-raising videos that work, why don’t you flush that out for us? Sure, it started out is basically something that sprang out of a feature we did for the paper on some effective fund-raising strategies, and one of them was a college that it self created its own video as junior at a college in pennsylvania had created a video in house that that ended up raising quite a bit of money for the organization. And rather than just putting that example out there, we decided that it would be interesting, too. Um, i put a call for other organizations that have produced videos on, you know, and almost on a shoestring budget, teo, you know, give us an example of the video show us what it looked like and what you were able, tio, what you were able to do to promote it and how much money you raised, and we’ve been getting a number of responses from that. I just i just attach my email address to a basically and said, if you have a great video that you think others can learn from, you know, send me a note, explain what you did and send me the embed code and we’ll you know, we’ll promote some of these on the web site we’ve been doing that on our fund-raising log, which is called prospecting, and we’ve gotten a number of submissions one was from a small charity in new york called youth renewal fund, where their communications person basically used nothing but stock images from, uh, from, uh, from a photo sharing website called i stock photo uh, and she produced this video with music and text for a few thousand dollars, and ultimately, um, the video itself has raised many multiples of that since then, just by showing it to their supporters. And what we’ve been able to do with the blogger is share stories like this talk about how they put the video together, how they marketed the video, who they showed it, teo and what the results were and what they’ve learned from it, and we’ve been able to get some rich conversations going that way we’ve done the same thing with, um with direct mail fund-raising letters. In that case, people are submitting their draft letters to us, and we’re posting them and we’re you know, we’re asking for a critique from the larger non-profit world. So you, khun, uh, submit ah letter that you’re working on or struggling with and get really almost a committee of your peers from around the country, too. Submit ideas for how you can improve it. Peter will talk more about the sort of a peer-to-peer analysis after the break. What strikes me is that the video submission started with juniata college, not columbia university or stanford, and you use as an example on organization called youth renewal, not american cancer or american lung small and medium sized non-profits benefiting from the resource is at the chronicle. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio. Peter panepento, web editor of the chronicle of philanthropy, will stay with us after this break. You’re listening to talking on their network at www dot talking alternative dot com now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s two one two, seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness can help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two eight six five nine two nine. Zero or visit w w w died. Mind over matter. Y si dot com. Cerini duitz is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Dahna arika hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Duitz you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio i’m your host, tony martignetti. My guest is peter panepento, web editor at the chronicle of philanthropy. You know, it’s important that you not think that this is an infomercial for the chronicle of philanthropy. The reason i invited peter is that all the resources were talking about our free and on the web and accessible to small and medium non-profits and that’s, you that’s our audience. You have a home here. I want you to understand that this is all very accessible to you, as peter has said, and it was my idea to bring peter so that you could get a sense of how the chronicle of philanthropy website can help you at small and medium size non-profits peter, you’ve been covering fund-raising and non-profits for some time. How do you see the substance of stories having changed over the time that you’ve been covering this beat? That’s an interesting question i think we are and and others are really because of the number of people that are out there now writing about these things. I think it’s really raised everybody’s game. The internet has really made it possible for people. Who, uh, work in the fund-raising field to really have their own voice and, you know, have their own blog’s or have their own twitter accounts where they can dispense advice and share ideas. And i think what that’s done is really created a more of ah, sharing culture than that existed before, where is in the past? There were a few voices who are writing about these things, and they were, you know, they were really ritually reported and and put out there now there’s there’s a lot more information available, and i think that’s that’s really pushing everybody to make sure they’re creating much more useful information for people and that’s what they’re putting out there is unique and different. Are you seeing a shift in terms of substance related teo compliance issues for non-profits you know what i think that there are, you know, there aren’t a whole lot of venues out there that really pay that a whole lot of attention of that we are one, and we we have ah, couple of channels on the site that really pay specifically ah, specific attention to, uh what what the irs is doing what state regulators air doing, um, and there are there’ve been a few blog’s out there that have really done a good job with that, too. So i think there’s a lot more information out there, but i don’t necessarily think it’s it’s, you know, mainstream what? Uh, you know, being put out there on the mainstream case in point is the fact that the irs has is still having a hard time reaching out to millions of charities that that now have to fill out the postcard form, you know, there’s, a ninety nine year old, they don’t know about it, and, you know, i wonder i wonder if there are are even better ways to get information out to those who really need it. You know, i i asked because i see ah, shift in terms of treating non-profits mohr like for-profit corporations in terms of compliance, and i i’ve i’ve seen that since sarbanes oxley past, which did not apply in ninety nine percent of it did not apply toe non-profits there were a couple of small provision that did, but but i see that trickling down to non-profits slowly, a cz you mentioned through the irs onda also through state. Regulators either secretaries of state or or attorneys general? Absolutely, absolutely. And the irs certainly, i mean, the mere fact that they are looking to collect information from those charities that that don’t raise a whole lot of money in here or, you know, the local, you know, soccer club and those type of things, it really shows that there is much more attention being paid to compliance, even up for the small groups the nine, ninety so heavily revised about eighteen months or two, years ago, so much more detail required to fill it out. It’s signed under penalty of perjury, and the the non-profits that are required to file it is an expanding population each year the threshold at which a non-profit is required to file that nine ninety is coming down over the next couple of years through two thousand, two thousand eleven or two thousand twelve. So there’s going to be a larger population of non-profits required to file the nine, ninety absolutely and there’s going to be as a result of that there’s going to be a lot more information that’s available to the public about how non-profits operate, of course, uh, that deluge of information has to get sorted through, and people have to put it together. I know we’re really excited to be ableto learn more about the audience we cover and find out some more things about it through these forms. So there’s going to be actually a lot more information available on a lot more to compare yourself to down the line too. Let’s, let’s look back to the chronicles, sort of a peer to peer review of fund-raising letters? How does someone submit? What exactly can they expect? Well, and this is something we’ve been doing on and off for a couple of years now, actually, and basically what they’ve done is they’ve sent me an email, i’ve put my email on the on the prospecting blogged, and maybe we can share that on the website later, people do want to connect with well, and since we’re talking about it, why don’t you give us your email right now? Okay, it’s, peter dot panepento p a kenny p nto at philanthropy dot com um and an easier address and things get get sorted around and kind of given to the appropriate editor is if you send a une male editor. At philanthropy dot com that will get seen by an editor here and given to the appropriate person here, too, and so they can use that email to submit their fund-raising letters let’s talk about how that works. Yeah, what they do is typically what happens if somebody has a letter that they’re working on and then you know, they have a draft of it, but they are not necessarily sure ifit’s it has the right messaging if they’ve taken the right approach, if they’ve done all the right things with their letter, so what they do is they send us, you know, a copy of the letter and a little description of what, what they’re hoping to accomplish with that, what type of campaign is that? Four who are they hoping to reach? And they email it to us and what what i do or another editor here will do is is that the letter? Make sure it’s, you know, it’s something that bye, you know, we’re providing the right level of information about and we’ll post it to our prospecting blawg with a little background on you know what its goals are and how it works? And then we invite readers to post comments teo teo offer critiques of the letter, offer suggestions on things they could do better what’s working what doesn’t work with it and almost universally, the folks who have submitted the letters have have gotten great feedback from, you know, anywhere from ah handful of readers to dozens of readers and, uh, what what’s really amazed me is the amount of respect that people have for each other and the the constructive nous of the critiques they’ve all been really above board, and folks have really done a great job of offering, you know, really constructive advice to each other on this, and i think it’s it’s really provided a great service to the to the non-profit world and what i’m hoping to do very soon as is create a page that collect the letters that we’ve gotten and, uh, and the comments that have come in so that folks can can really see, you know, and pull some information out of those things for their own work in the minute or so we have left. Peter, you mentioned earlier live discussions, how do those were? Where can people want what? Every week we invite on on expert or two on a specific topic to come in and take questions from our readers and that you can find information out about those that philanthropy dot com slash live on well, on that we announce the upcoming discussions, and we also have ah, full archive of all the past one. So the the discussion i’m doing today, which will actually happen, you know, before this goes live is is on corporate giving, and we have the head of the foundation and the walmart foundation on to take reader questions on howto get the attention of corporate philanthropist, and you can now after the, you know, after the event, you can go on and read the transcript of that, you could see all the questions that that we published and what folks answered and again, this is a resource for small and medium non-profits as much as anybody else really get some high level advice from folks on a weekly basis on a a really wide range of topics that relate how they operate. My guest has been peter panepento, web editor for the chronicle of philanthropy. You can follow peter on twitter the handle there. Is at philanthropy. Peter, i want to thank you very much for being on tony martignetti non-profit radio. Tony, thanks for letting me come on and talk about what we dio. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Joining me after this break will be sarah din a and we’re going toe. Continue the discussion about traditional media. How to get yourself in front of traditional media in some of the more traditional ways after this break. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. I’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size, but you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays. One, too hyre you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll hyre oppcoll! Duitz! Bilich! Buy-in! Dahna well, in a way, around the world, are you ready? Co-branding this’s tony martignetti i’m the host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent in a moment, i’ll be joined by sarah done a who is with a large pr agency, and we’re going to talk about getting your voice heard in the media. I’m thinking about be quests and planned giving this week because my guide star article for about starting a planned giving program using charitable bequests as the foundation of that program came out this week. I’m writing a one year siri’s every other month, and this was the fourth article in the in the six article siri’s siri’s is called make two thousand ten the year you start planned giving and it’s for the guide star newsletter, and i want to spend a moment explaining that planned giving is not something that is only for large organizations, large fund-raising shops that’s, not the case. You can have a very respectable planned giving program at a small and medium size development shop or non-profit, and that would start with bequests encouraging your donors to remember your organization in their will or in their larger estate plan. Typically, we start with the will, because everyone needs one and it’s something that’s very simple for your donors to understand and simple for them to do when they do their first will, or when they revise their existing will, they can think about including you as part of that. So alongside a bequest to there spouse, children, grandchildren, there is a request for your organization. These are very simple to market and promote we use for our clients direct mail a lot. You can’t have a presence on your website, but probably the most valuable method of marketing is talking to people, either at events where it’s appropriate to mention that they can include your organization in their will or in your one to one face to face meetings with donors. If you’re talking about a larger gift plan, you might include a part of that plan to be a charitable bequests in there will not that it would replace other giving that you’re encouraging them to do but be a supplement to whatever it is you’re asking them to do on sort of a more outright basis. You need those current dollars. I recognize that and you never want planned giving to supplant. Those but to be an adjunct, and when it’s explained in that way, people understand. So i encourage you to think about planned giving in your small and medium sized non-profit not to ignore it and think that it’s only for the big guys, you can have a very respectable planned e-giving program and start and maybe even finish with a bequest marketing program, because for all non-profits, irrespective of size, regardless of their mission, charitable bequests are always the most popular type of planned gift. So it makes sense to make that the beginning of your program. And as i said, you might stop there based on your size and the number of donors that you have look a planned e-giving look att charitable bequests, and you might find my guide star siri’s helpful to you. The siri’s again is called make two thousand ten the year you start planned giving and that’s at guidestar dot org’s as part of the guide star newsletter. I’m joined now by sarah din, a sarah is an account executive at c r t tanaka, which is a public relations agency. Her work includes non-profit public relations, which is important for us, and her background includes work in non-profits tanaka is a national public relations agency. Sarah is calling us from los angeles, and prior to joining the agency, she worked for one of the regional offices of the juvenile diabetes research foundation, doing communications and public relations. Sarah, welcome to the show. Hi, tony, thanks for having me on this morning. It’s my pleasure. Why is public relations important for small and medium sized non-profits public relations is a great tool for small and medium sized non-profits because it’s a great alternative advertising that can be done on the small budgets that we had smaller non-profits air just so used to, and what are some of the sort of first thoughts that someone should have about about their goals on objectives for public relations initiative? Well, first, i think someone needs to sit down and think about what they want to see about their non-profit in the media, i think there are two key goals for most non-profits when it comes to media relations, one is awareness and the other is fund-raising so with awareness it’s always great to get the non-profits name out there and their mission out there, regardless of what that mission is so they might be interested in pitching cem human interest stories about the non-profits work, or perhaps pitching their employees as an expert in key stories and when it comes to fund-raising being cognizant of our low budgets and our high fund-raising goals, it’s always important to find new ways to generate revenue and simple things like getting your events posted on a newspaper’s calendar or getting in the society pages for a gala fund-raising event can be a great tool e-giving revenue awareness and fund-raising as your goals, those air really going to be long term goals, right? That’s, you expect to see some measurable difference in in a longer term? Yes, absolutely. When it comes to media relations, i think the effects are definitely long term on the organization and its the long term impact of lots of different media coverage over the years that’s going to really resonate with the non-profit community is there, ah, length of time that we can share with our listeners as a guideline? Or does it really vary based on what they’re doing and who they are? I think it definitely varies based on what the coverage in the media is and also based on which non-profit is involved for some non-profit simply getting a mention in the society pages for a local fund-raising event could be enough to improve attendance and last boost fund-raising for other non-profit they might be looking for longer term awareness, which would require some repeated mentioned in the press. Is there any non-profit profile that you think makes an organization inappropriate for these types of fund-raising and awareness initiatives through public relations? They certainly think public relations is appropriate for any non-profit i i think the scale might be different from non-profits non-profit but it definitely holds universal value and what would be ah, first step if if an organization wants to now now has its goals, wants increased coverage would like to expand awareness and maybe even fund-raising what? What’s really the first thing that they should be thinking about? Well, the first thing they should do is sit back and think about exactly what story they want to read about their non-profit in the practice, so if they’re thinking they want to see maybe a heartwarming story about affecting a local child in the community than they they can then move on and pitch that exact story. The first step is usually writing out a quick email to whatever media contact you’re interested in reaching out to and being clear and concise is most important. They’re journalists are just as busy as non-profit professionals, so it’s important to be respectful of their time. You don’t need flowery hooks, you don’t necessarily need a formal press release just simply state what your story is. Make sure you give plenty of contact information and shoot over an email and then the next day it’s always essential follow-up with a phone call, the journalists that we reach out to often get hundreds of pitches a day, and when you get that many emails it’s easy for some to slip through the cracks so often it’s the folks who go the extra mile and pick up the phone to have a personal conversation with the journalist about their story, who are able to see their story in print. I just want to emphasize something that you said the first thought after your goal setting is really teo sort of define what your ideal story is. What what what’s the ideal exactly. Well, you need to think about what you want before you can get it, so it really depends from non-profits non-profit what that story is going to be if your goal is awareness thie ideal story is going to be different from fund-raising but it’s always important to have a positive message and connected back to the non-profits mission. My guest is sarah din, a account exec with tanaka. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio sarah let’s talk about maybe some of the outlet’s what what where should people be looking for placement of their story? And and what outlets should they be looking at? Emailing well, when you’re looking for outlets first, think about what you read and what you watch. Chances are what you and others people in your non-profit reader watch are going to be the right places for you to pitch your story because those air simply the places where the people in your community are looking, it doesn’t necessarily have to be reaching out to something as big as the new york times or fox news. You can think more regional and locally in orderto have a better chance of getting coverage, so a smaller regional non-profit can focus on relationships in their market. If you’re in cincinnati, go for this matty’s, a local paper if you’re in connecticut, go for maybe the connecticut tv news there, and this works just as well for non-profits who are national also because a national non-profit can have their regional staff reach out and make local relationships as well. It’s usually the smaller places, the smaller papers, the smaller tv shows where you’ll have the best chance of seeing you’re non-profit covered. Yes, you don’t want to ignore very local coverage, especially if you’re a smaller organization all your fund-raising maybe very local. All your events are very local. You don’t want to ignore the local coverage, absolutely. If you’re based in a smaller city, the best coverage for you that might have the biggest impact on your organization may just be in a city paper or in a city tv show or city radio show. It might even be better than if you’ve gotten your message on yusa today. You’ve been talking about tv and and newspapers are sort of the i think is the the outlets were focusing on so far. What about blog’s? I think blobs are a great way for organizations to dip their feet into media relations starting with some smaller blog’s can be a great way to get some initial coverage and get some initial messaging out for your organization, in part because the smallest blog’s aren’t often pitched by any organizations or companies, so chances are your odds put good there, so the so the smaller blog’s might actually be grateful to get some pitches from you? Absolutely and that’s always great to have somebody who’s very excited to receive information about your organization and show that enthusiasm when they’re writing. They’re block post and couldn’t an organization find the appropriate blog’s just through a simple google search? Absolutely, when it comes to block it’s, easy to do a quick google search on your non-profit missions and key focuses, and you can also think about what blog’s you read if you’re working for, say, a diabetes non-profit and you read diabetes blog’s, those are the first places where you should pitch when reaching out with a story. So your your suggestion really this’s interesting i’m seeing ah trend to mean, you want to think about your ideal story and you think about placing it in media that you read buy-in blog’s that you read so that’s, where you expect your your constituents to be? Absolutely, i think staff at non-profits tend to be so connected to their missions that even in their personal time, their personal reading tends to focus a lot around the mission of their non-profit i know that when i was working at the juvenile diabetes research foundation and still today, i was so passionate about the work that we did that i would often lead those outlets where it would be great to place a story and different news cycles. I mean, you’d be more likely to get a blog’s attention and coverage within maybe days or a week versus perhaps, ah magazine, definitely we consider media like blog’s and newspapers to be shortly media. Those are places where you could email a member of the media and then a few days later see your messaging and print, whereas it comes to something like a magazine it’s long lead because it takes them so long to go through the press cycle so it might take months before you’re able to see that story in print. So if your story is time sensitive it’s often best to go to the newspaper or to go to online resource is where you can see that story come up very quickly, sarah, in the forty five seconds or so we have before the break, why don’t you tell people how they can contact you? Well, people can contact me through the sierra t tanaka website, which is www dot see artie, hyphen, tanaka, t a n a dot com. My guest is sarah din, a account executive at that agency. C r t, tanaka and sarah will stay with us after this break, you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter, i see dot com. Bilich oppcoll are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set two one, two nine six, four, three, five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Dahna zoho talking. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio, i’m your host, tony martignetti my guest, this segment is sarah din, a account executive for the agency. C r t tanaka, sarah let’s, talk a little about methodology you started to get into it. The email is best then you said follow-up phone call the next day, what do we do? Make sure i have that right and then what’s the next step, when your phone call message isn’t answered? Well, i think repetition is key when it comes to phone calls, i know that they’re certainly days when i think that the press simply has turned off their phones because i’m getting so few answers. So what happens even if it happens, even to the professional public relations agency account executive? Oh, absolutely, all the time there so many times where i just hear the phone ring and ring, but never get the journalist on the other end of the line and that’s simply part of the game here. When it comes to media relations journalists, they’re so busy and often on deadline that there are many times in the week when they simply aren’t able to pick up the phone and listen to what you have to say about your story and we really have no way to call and call again try calling for a few days try calling at different times to see what works. Chances are you make it through, but if not, you can always leave a message and be sure to be clear, concise a state exactly what the key point of your story is and always leave contact information. Can i also suggest that we would you want to be upbeat so that if you’ve made a dozen of these calls in a row and you’re on number twelve, you don’t wantto make it sound like you’ve called eleven people before the message you’re leaving now? Absolutely attitude is everything, and if you were enthusiastic about your message, then that’s going to carry across to the reporter and if you never get a callback, should you? I hope i’m sure you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t be discouraged. Try again! Absolutely not again. Given that journal lists received so much information each day, sometimes that’s simply not a feasible so it’s a matter of coming back whenever you have another story and if you get in front. Of a journalist’s enough! They’re going to remember you and they’re going to remember your organization’s mission. So even if they can’t place a story about what you have currently going on, they may have something down the line where you would be a great fit. We’ve been talking about you relying on media if you have something newsworthy, you want to get that ideal story out? What if you have experts in your organization that can serve as experts in that field? For a journalist? Do you need to wrap a story around that to propose your your agency experts as experts when it comes to positioning one of your employees as an expert, you don’t actually need tohave a specific story in mind, although sometimes that can be helpful simply reaching out to a journalist and letting them know that you do have an expert in your organization who can speak to a certain topic can be enough to get your name in front of them and also make sure that that journalists puts your name in the role of decks for whenever they have a story coming up on that topic and sarah in the thirty seconds. Or so that we have left. What about trying to develop a relationship on ongoing relationship with maybe one or two key journalists in local media? How how could someone try to do that when in between their story ideas, but they’d like to have a relationship, obviously a professional relationship with the journalist. Repeat communication is key, so making sure that you always send them any story ideas you might have any news that your organization or story ideas that might not necessarily relate to you but might interest the journalists are great ways to keep in touch with them. Long term sort of trends that you’re seeing that the journalist might be very interested in. Absolutely if you’re an asset to the journalist seldman member and they’ll keep going back to you for information time after time. My guest has been sarah din, a account executive for cr t tanaka, a large public relations agency. Nationwide. Sarah called us from los angeles. Sarah, thank you so much for being on tony martignetti non-profit radio. Thanks, tony. We’ve come to the clothes and i want to thank my guests, peter panepento, web editor for the chronicle of philanthropy, and sarah dahna, account executive at c r t tanaka we have a facebook page, go to facebook and search for you don’t have to remember how to spell my name just search for non-profit radio and the facebook fan page will come up like us there, join the contest, their name, the number. I’m trying to get a way of remembering our call in number sorry, we couldn’t take calls this week, but we will be taking calls next week will be live next week on august twenty third let’s name that number. Find a catchy way to remember the calling number eight seven seven for eight xero for one to zero, you’ll find information about that contest on our facebook fan page and please like us over there, click like and become a fan. I want to thank claire meyerhoff she’s, our creative producer oneof thanks, sam liebowitz he’s, our line producer and the owner of talking alternative broadcasting. You’ve been listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative broadcasting at talking alternative dot com. Look forward to having you as a guest as ah, as a listener on august twenty third. Next friday, when we will be taking your calls live. Please join us then. Until then, have a good week. E-giving you’re listening to the talking alternate network. Duitz to get into thinking. Take it. Cubine are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam lebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set two one two, nine six, four, three, five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom at two one two nine six four three five zero two. We make people happy. I really need to take better care of myself if only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up eyes thisyou, mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two eight six five nine to nine xero or visit www. Died mind over matter. Y si dot com. Cerini i’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size. But you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays one, too. Talking. Hyre

Nonprofit Radio for August 6, 2010: Social Media for Nonprofits and Using Social Networks for Fundraising.

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

You can subscribe on iTunes and listen anytime, anyplace on the device of your choice.

Tony’s Guests:

Regina Walton, Principal of Organic Social Media, on whether you should, where to start and what to do with social media.

John Murcott, Vice President, Karma411, on using social networks for fund-raising.

Here is a link to the podcast: 004: Social Media & Online Fundraising

This Friday from 1-2pm this week and every week!


Also, there is contest for my show!

Name the Number!

The call-in number for my show is 877-480-4120. It’s toll free, but not very memorable. Give my number a name. Create an acronym or acrostic sentence, using the letters on the phone that correspond to those digits. We need something clever and memorable, so listeners can call quickly when you have a burning nonprofit question.

Hint: 0 and 1 don’t have letters. Be clever and imaginative, for you will be rewarded.

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Durney hyre cerini hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio i have terrific guests today. This is your home if you feel that your non-profit is ignored, maybe by the media by consultants, big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, we’re always talking about what’s ideal for small and medium sized non-profits my guests today are going to be regina walton and she’s going to talk to us about social media should you be doing it? If so, how, where, when and at the bottom of the hour we’re going to welcome john melkis hot with karma for one one and john’s going to talk about specifically fund-raising online, this show is pre recorded, so we won’t be able to take your calls today. But there is a contest to name the calling number name the number contest the calling number again. We’re not taking calls today, but the number is eight seven seven for eight xero forty one twenty name that number for us. Please find sentence or something that triggers the that number using the digits on your phone and you’ll win one hour of complimentary planned e-giving consulting by me for the non-profit of your choice. Or a copy of my book, charity registration, state by state guidelines for compliance. Again. For the charity of your choice, you’ll see details aboutthe contest. The name that gnome named the number contest on our facebook page. Go to facebook, dot com and search for tony martignetti non-profit radio when we have lots of fans will have a girl that has that radio show in it. But for now, you have to search for tony martignetti non-profit radio goto. Our facebook fan page, like us, which means you’re joining as a fan, and you’ll see details of the name the number contest. After this break, i’m going to welcome regina walton for all things about social media. Right after this break, e-giving didn’t think dick tooting getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. Duitz cubine are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam lebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Sametz i’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size. But you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays one, too. Talking. Welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, i’m your host, the aptly named host tony martignetti my first guest today is regina walton. Regina is principal of organic social media. Reggina’s joining us by phone. Welcome regina, how are you? Well, how are you? I’m well too, thanks. Welcome to the show. We’re talking about social media for small and medium non-profits what? Let’s let’s first just define the space. What how do you define social media? Well, many different things there lots of moving parts right now, which i guess you know can be overwhelming if you’re not familiar with it. But the things that i think most people have heard about our sites like facebook and twitter, i would include other things like, you know, forms where people communicate with each other on usually forms or targeted based on topic or sometimes demographics are things with that that also email, i think although email at this point is around twenty years old, i think that it’s part of it because it can lead people to those sites. Okay, interesting. You mentioned something i’d like to look into it can be overwhelming. I have experienced with clients that it’s so overwhelming that they leads teo paralysis. They don’t know how to start so they don’t start, right? Do you have before we start talking about the different strategies? Do you have some advice for organizations that just may feel paralyzed? Well, i think probably the smartest thing then is to find an expert right on dh that doesn’t necessarily mean someone like me, because people do hate me to do it, but maybe you have and you probably do. You have someone in your organization who is on facebook who is on twitter? I’m not saying that they’re experts, but i’m saying that they have at least gotten over a certain level of phobia, right? Um and that maybe, you know, you can use them, you know, to kind of get you started are many b hey, who knows? Maybe they will end up being the community manager of your non-profit, you know, because you know, it might be some untapped potential there with someone, but at least, you know, try to find somebody who is already in the treyz ondas already, you know, already comfortable, comfortable because a lot. Of it is googling a lot of it is finding information. This is all very new that we’re all learning. I mean, even the even the experts are still learning, right? I mean, sites pop up every day. There’s, there’s, there’s, constant learning for you. Yeah, that’s the thing i mean and i was going to say it, people are like, oh, you’re you’re an expert or you’re you know, you should call yourself this through that on dh ii has been paid to do that simply just because it’s a constant elearning process there are articles, blobs and guides being written almost daily and it’s just so much information. So i would just say that i’m someone who keeps her finger on the pulse of what’s going on you mentioned. Alright, you mentioned email as ah as a social networking strategy. So since that is what everyone by now is comfortable with you do you have a couple of ideas that someone who’s maybe, starting on email campaign of some type could i should start with? Well, i just i meant an email from the perspective of if you just look at, you know, marketing research in terms of value, you know, email is very valuable because that person is explicitly giving you permission, you know, to market to them are to send them messages on dh so and that from that perspective, there’s just, you know, ah, high high value of return. So i would say that in a social media strategy, you ultimately want to build in a system where you have an op in email system, you might not have won initially. Ah, but those people are going to be valuable to you because, you know, they are, at least at some level vested enough where they said, ok, you can send stuff to my email box and that’s valuable that’s a lot more valuable than say, you know, someone on twitter, not that twitter is not valuable, a different kind of value, but just, you know, in terms of sheer marketing numbers, the value of an email customers, more so what can you dio? Maybe if you build a facebook page for your non-profit then, you know, maybe set up something where you have a newsletter or something on and, you know, you asked people are often for that. Andi, if they do that, you know they’re they’re asking they’re basically consenting to getting more another advantage to email is that, you know, the person has received it, they may not necessarily open it, but well, they you know, they have seen it, right? Yeah, well, i mean, i would just say the value is the fact that this person, you know, has giving you their email information on dh, that, you know, you’re going to get to deliver them something straight to their inbox that they’re going to look at in the morning or in the evening on dh yeah, they may or may not open it, and i have to let that sometimes i will opt into a loose on dh, then i’ll take myself off because then i find that well, maybe i’m not as interested as i thought it was or, you know, i always feeling like they’re kind of abusing the process, you know? So don’t overdo it if you get someone’s email because they will opt out. And what about some some goals for around email? What what might small organization hope to achieve by starting on email awareness or ah friendraising or even fund-raising campaign? Well, i mean one example, and i’m actually just referring to something that’s going on right now on social media there’s a website that is conducting, like a contest of measure who’s, the most influential person. Well, there’s like kind of an activist non-profit booth that raises, you know, fundez just go khun dej for people, and they’ve decided they’re gonna hijack the project and turn it into something good because, you know, they’re the objective of what they do on days ago, they sent out a thing and message, people saying, we’re going to hijack this project read up this is what we do. Andi, i literally got an email yesterday saying, ok, this has started on and, you know, so go onto twitter and update your status and go on to facebook and do this, so i would say that maybe one goal is actually, you know, get people engaged, you know what called action i find that i get from non-profits quite a bit in my email, um, you know, one political one or you know fund-raising one, but i find that a lot of non-profits music back how successful that is, i don’t know i’m not working on that. Side of it, but just as somebody who was kind of in the safe and get those emails that’s when i see a lot of things happening, is that non-profit will use them to get people tio take a stand or, you know, to react to do something. And you mentioned using email in that example to send people elsewhere toe facebook, twitter so why don’t we start to movinto into those areas on you? Also mentioned earlier, the facebook fan page? What is that? What does it take to start one? Oh my god, what is it? What it was just the first are easy, they already zito set up okay there, maybe let me qualify that they’re easy for someone who’s, comfortable with the platform to set up, it doesn’t take much at all. Um, the only thing i’m just going to say as a caveat is that let’s say, you know you’re a non-profit it’s a small organization, you want to make sure that the facebook page for the organization is tied to the person like tied to the president or the person who is in charge? Because example, if i’m your intern and then you let me build that page on my profile. You know, eight minutes. Time for me to go back to school. The profile is permanently tied to my account. That’s. Something that cannot be changed later. Can i cannot be changed right now. Maybe fate, maybe it’s gonna happen that, you know, so many people in this state that facebook is goingto have to build it in. Well, it doesn’t exist. We can transfer it. But as it stands right now, that account will not move. It stays on the account it was started on. So, you know, give your intern temporary access. You know, you can always change your password, you know, or whatever, but and have them set up the page on your account, and then you go in or they go in because they’re already in your account and make themselves an admin and administrator of that account. And then they can do it from their camp. But make sure that it’s anchored, you know, into, you know, with ceo account burrito, whoever is in charge so that’s just caveat. So what that face? That rampages are pretty easy to set up. Um, they’re the level of sophistication, though. Is getting pretty high and people’s expectations they’re getting pretty high, so that means if you have things like logos, um and things that can brand you non-profit used them. Andi that’s, you dragon image files and things like that there’s a special language and things that you confined. But this is the thing. It sounds overwhelming. Trust me, you can go on google and type in something like facebook. You know how to build a facebook sam page and you will get tons and tons and tons of resource is from very good sources on how to do it now, it’s goingto take you more time and you’re gonna have to still learn. But the information is out there and that’s kind of the fun thing about you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio my guest is regina walton principle of organic social media. Regina if people want to contact you ah, why don’t you tell us briefly? Tell us how they should do that. Well, probably the best way. Because this is what i d’oh get up pretty early in the morning. The best way to contact me via e mail. My email feeds everything it sees into. My laptop, my phone, everything so regina r e g in a w o l t o n at g mail dot com. That is be most direct and easiest way to find me on dh. Then from there, you no way we can continue the conversation. That’s. The easiest way to find me, and probably the most guaranteed way to get me. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio. My guest is regina walton, and regina will stay with us after this break. You’re listening to talking on their network at www dot talking all calm now, broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my life style. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert, two one two eight six five nine to nine xero, or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com durney is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Hey, are you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. With a little love and something kayman i’m tony martignetti you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. My guest is regina walton on dh. We’re talking about social media, regina is the principle of organic social media. Regina we were just talking about the facebook fan page. It sounds like that is a fairly simple and on a, uh, easily done place for a non-profit to start great you think so? Yes, i’m sorry. I mean, that was a high pitched kind of i’m yes, maybe i should say that because facebook does have, you know, fifty million people so there’s a really high chance that, you know, your core audience is definitely definitely on facebook. However, um, bigger might not necessarily be better and preparation preparing for this, i put down a list and, like an example is, you know, maybe it would be better to pick a form where there are people who deal directly with what your cause is like example, there was a there was a shelter or woman shelter regina, before you, before you launch into the example, just explain what? What you mean by forms. Well, i mean, basically, what i mean is it’s, an online space where they said earlier people congregate based on interest are based on demographics or, like example, if you like knitting, you can probably go online. I know i could go online right now and find a form that is dedicated and probably in detail you would never have imagined, but they talk about knitting on dh. They talk about all kind of little side issues that come up with knitting. And so that’s what? I mean, these air specialized space is online that deal with people’s interest and they can talk about thank you. And i thought you said form fo r m my mistake. You’re talking about online forums, forums. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, you had an example of the forum. Well, yeah, so like example there. Is there not a shelter that we’re looking? Tio have people help them. Jazz up the shelter’s for abused women are women who just needed a place to be a safe place. And so what they did was they specifically targeted, um, a form a martha stewart form, right? These were women, mostly who are very interested in, you know, jazzing up their home environments and making things pretty. So this is kind of an ideal group of people to target, and they did, and they got a lot of people to contribute help them, you know, beautify these spaces. So, yeah, i’m sure that maybe they could have found, like, you know, the martha stewart fan page, um, on facebook and try to engage people there or build a facebook page, but, you know, maybe sometimes it’s better part to be targeted and what you do, and and that all comes down to research, so i would say before any non-profit does anything you know, take the time to think about what your goals are as a non-profit and what you want to dio onda social media because there’s so much you can do maybe targeting would help. And what about using online communities for for listening about what’s going on in your space? I mean, you’re using you’re giving us a great example of raising awareness and even volunteer recruitment on you even mentioned fund-raising in that in that example of the of the shelter, what about a non-profit using these communities? Just tow, listen to what’s going on in their in their work space in their in their sort of service community. Well, that’s key. Andi, i think that that comes down to doing research. You can build a thing called google alert. Um, and specifically, google will email you any time and every time, something along whatever that term is. So you get a google alert on a term or a phrase? Yeah, andi so you can build google alert on to do that with someone just started. Google, google dot com. You just started google dot com. Usually, google tries to be pretty intuitive. Andi, i actually believe it’s something like alert google dot com or www google that com flash back flasher are ford flash alert. Excellent. Okay, thanks. Something like that. And and in general, google tends to be very intuitive regarding that kind of stuff. So even if you type in alerts and it’s something else, usually something will pop up saying, do you mean this? Um so, you know, you can start by doing research. Yeah. Researching on maybe definitely your own non-profit you should definitely be getting google. You should definitely build the google alert with the name of your non-profit actually know that if people are talking about you, you know it and maybe also maybe also the executive director, key volunteers, i mean, these airways of researching your organization and the research answers air coming right to your e mail. Yeah, trust me, i haven’t even got a google alert about me. I want to know when my name comes up and when people are talking about me on dh that’s pretty standard these days amongst brovey becky, um, you know, but also you want to find out you might have, you might have some fans out there depending on what you’ve done in the community. So there might be people who have, you know, unofficial profiles are who were just enthusiastic supporters of what you do, you know, try to find them on dh when you start building your on online presence, engaged them. Oh, hey, you know, i ran the google search and i found this post or something. Andi, i just wanted to let you know we’re building up this book fans, you know, they built a facebook fan page, so come on over. Um, durney and if that person is already in your corner right then he or she is definitely going to spread the word on dh that actually leaves me tio another side of it, which is you can’t really control, um, the internet, you might get people saying that things about you, then it comes to, you know, make take the time, tio think about, you know, maybe what you do in terms of damage control think about this in advance also. Ugh, i’m example, haiti, um, someone i know was helping a famous individual with his social media, and he got into a little bit of scandal. I’m not a little bit quite a bit on dh i was talking to the guy who was helping him, and it was this one of those things were eventually, you know, it came into, you know, just being transferred parent and damage control and dealing with it, and that seemed to kind of have it all calmed down, but you can’t be scared that people might say bad things about you. They’re carting internet trolls and it’s better to know and, you know, and sometimes people will go too far, but things like, if you know the facebook page, you know you might want to make it very explicit that, you know, we don’t tolerate abusive language here, you know? We reserve the right to delete thomas for things like that, but you be ready, but it’s it’s better it’s better for the organization to know that there is negative stuff out their way. They’re almost always gonna be some naysayers out there and be ready for them so you can use the google alert stuff to find out. Yeah, good alert, it comes up to deal with that on dh, then move on, you know, because usually what happens is, you know, they say you get sucked down really fast that they’re just kind of regina, just in the in the minute or so that we have left. What about using social media these on the online communities for non-profits to network with other non-profits i think that’s something that isn’t often photos there’s actually a non-profit that i found a really good story on basically they deal with paraplegics who happened injured and so sport accident and what this group it was online, they connected with another non-profit so the name of the non-profits life world on and they connect. It with chris and re foundation on dh they have, you know, they have similar objectives, andi so between those two groups it’s just a really easy flow of communication and the people that are vested in their cause, you know, kind of by default are vested in the cause of this other non-profit and it just kind of help to expand the base of boat. And how do you how do you get started? How do you find other non-profits that air working in your space in just the thirty seconds or so that we have left? I would say it comes down to monitoring that’s where the google searching is really going to start pulling up all this activity started getting tweets coming in thanks for my website, all that’s going to come up and that’s all searchable and that’s all those air, all being searched, i guess, by the google alerts that you were talking about, yeah, but also going in and physically googling yourself, you know, go into google and try some different terms because sometimes, you know your first choice but necessarily work, and so then you have to kind of getting a bit more. Precise, sir, changed the terms of that. Go in and play around with google it’s, okay to get some bad results, because then you’ll learn how to do that anymore. Between to give us your email one more time. People want to contact you. All right. Regina r g, a altum, w el tio and all one word. Regina walton at gmail dot com regina, thank you very much for joining us. My guest has been regina walton principle of organic social media following this break. I’ll be joined by john melkis hot, and we’ll be talking specifically about fund-raising in online communities. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. I’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size, but you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays. One, too hyre oppcoll you’re listening to the talking alternative network. I’m tony martignetti and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio in a moment, i’ll be joined by john melkis, and we’ll talk about using online communities for fund-raising in the next moment, i want to spend just reminding you that if you are planning fall events for your organization, september and october, i think tend to be pretty common months for social events of different types fund-raising events because people have largely taking the summer off if you’re planning an event like that, those events are solicitations, and those solicitations trigger the requirement to register with st charity officials in the state where you’re hosting that event so that event might be in your home state might be in your office or maybe in a major donors home or a board member’s home that may very well be in your home state, and hopefully you’re registered in the state where you’re doing the most business with st charity officials. But if you’re hosting an event and in some other state, you need to be registered with the state charity officials before you host that event because, as i said, that event is a solicitation and solicitation is what triggers. The charity registration requirements throughout the states, as i’ve said in previous shows, there are lots of other things that trigger these requirements. Email, paper, mail buying advertising space in a lot of states having a donate now button if you have ah live donate now button on your website and that’s visible obviously throughout the world in twenty ah, more than twenty states that’s a charity solicitation because the donate now button is visible buy-in those twenty states and it doesn’t matter whether someone gives through the donate. Now button, i’m not talking about donations coming through your website. I’m talking about the website, just accepting merely act accepting online gift that also is a solicitation. But if you’re planning these fall events, it took the summer off. If you have events coming up, you should register with st charity officials before you host those events. I am very interested in this topic so much so that i wrote a book about it. The book is charity registration state by state guidelines for compliance, and you’ll find the book at st charity registration dot com. My guest now is john melkis. John is vice president of karma for one. One john is joining us by phone. John welcome buy-in tony let’s talk about fund-raising using online communities, my my last guest was talking about getting started in online communities. How is the online community space valuable for fund-raising sure we actually call this type of fund-raising people two people fund-raising and for non-profit there’s multiple ways, of course, to raise money, some of the traditional ways would be to do a direct mail asked for large checks from big donors, government grants, etcetera, but a new way that people are raising money are through social networks and the people to people phenomena means the non-profits are not directly soliciting donations. They are actually encouraging people who care about the organisation. It could be evolved here, it could be someone who’s close to the organization. It could be someone who cares about the cause for them to ask their friends directly to support the cause they care about the non-profit company is the non-profit the non-profit is not soliciting it’s, someone who is someone who loves the non-profit act quickly so the people to people part, our friends asking there colleagues, their relatives of their friends to support a cause. They care about what about sort of message control if we’re going to let air constituents who admittedly love us but might not describe us ah, charity in the way that we most like to be described, that’s, that’s going to be a concern? Oh, sure, and that comes up a lot. I will say we’ve been doing this for two years now, since since two thousand eight we used to get that question more often, but less and less now, and the trade office and i think i heard a little bit from the last conversation that there is a tradeoff you do some of that control. The simple answer is the people to people aspect the social media aspect of this equation, which is user generated content, meaning people are creating creating two e mails they’re creating the the request are more persuasive than the kind of official marketing request, so i guess the way i would look at it is if you look at the popularity of a site like you to a lot of the videos on youtube or not professionally made marketing, people may cringe to think what, that some of those videos, but they’re very, very popular, and they’re very viral, so and kind of trade off a little less control. It’s not polished it’s definitely more informal, but marika and those messages, you’re often very viral. Yeah, some of the most viral videos are the ones that have what? What critics would say low production values, homegrown i’m thinking of some that come from from the military doing dances or the or the guy who dances throughout the world in different countries, in very low production, but but millions and millions of hits you’re absolutely right and this term that people use all the time called social media and it’s not always defined people just kind of talk about it as this big trend and phenomenon, but it just means user generated and you’re right, it’s not a professional, but it’s very, very popular social media, social networking. Your sight is karma for one one, and people will find that it karma for one one dot com why don’t you tell us what karma for one one is doing in promoting the people the people fund-raising sure on if you just take a quick step and we talk about social media and social. Networking in general there’s two there’s two kind of core of activities going on here. The first one is, as i was saying, social media, so content that’s generated by individuals is very popular, very persuasive and it’s very viral. So that’s just kind of as a trend. Youtube is a certainly a big example of that. But then social networking, which, of course, facebook is the big example is the same idea. Of course, it’s all user generated content you get one of the most popular web sites in the world. Facebook and no content is being written by someone on facebook, it’s, all written by mothers and high school kids and college kids, etcetera. So the reason why it’s so popular? First of all, the social media so it’s people sharing their own stories and messages with their friends? But it’s a great way to communicate. And even now, of course, it’s a good way to communicate, but she couldn’t hear even hell with all of the tools that the social networking sites like facebook and others offer. So it it’s absolutely terrific way to communicate and the way we look at the world that karma fall on. One looks at the world is you use these tools these social networking elements for different tasks in your life, most of it right now is around buy-in facebook is fun. Check out photos of your friends, kids catch up with friends from high school, etcetera, but it’s kind of addressing in need of just that basic end of day at work. Just relax and kind of see what’s going on with your friends so it’s for fun and then linked into him along and said, you know, this is a great way to connect and communicate and interact with people, but what about business needs? So you’re looking for a job you’re trying to communicate your resume, you know that type of thing and our view is x ray two so fundez covered and business and kind of searching for a job is covered. What about causes? So you care about it because you want to support it cause it’s the same idea you need tools to communicate, to share your ideas and provide a platform to support social media. So that’s where car before one one fix and where wei have similar tools to those other sites, but we focus on causes. My guest is john melkis, vice president of karma for one one you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio john, you’re on entrepreneur, a cofounder of karma four one one so i am tempted to ask you what happened to my space? Why did it decline in popularity? Yeah, it’s interesting, innit? And reborn itself a little bit, but i had this really nice picture that i used to use for discussions on social networking, and it had three pictures, one for my space, one for facebook and one for lengthen the one for facebook had kind of a nice, clean cut college student type person just very nicely dressed and, uh, you know, nicely put together something you want to talk to the length in person, of course had a suit on and was a little more professional, but the myspace person was carrying a nice a little dangerous, and that was the problem with facebook was you’re saying before important, teo kind of be more informal and let people create their content, but at the same time it needs tio you need to make sure that it doesn’t go overboard and the problem with people who are not being honest, the people were not representing themselves correctly. So maybe they took some of the potential downside that you were asking me about in the beginning and took it too far. And what one thing just to learn from this is that it’s always an issue and people do worry about it. But big picture when you try to figure out on my own and i fall this message with so many content so much content, so many updates. So much networking going on. Can anyone really control it? And on the one hand know you as a company. You can’t control every element. You could monitor it and do alerts, etcetera. But at the same time i really think that the community people understand when people go overboard and there is within reason a kind of a self policing. And i do believe that’s what happened? What myspace? The community said this is not where we want to go. This is not what social networking is supposed to do. And there was no government agency that came in. There was no police force that came in. There was no external force. It was just a community itself said, this is not what we want, so it doesn’t happen a cz quickly as arresting someone, for example, but big picture i really do think these pro social type proclivities will will win out, and that so we certainly hope for carmen four one one so it gave new meaning to crowd control. It was really the crowd acting as the police and moving away. You mentioned that my space was reborn just in the forty five seconds or so that we have before the break. How did my space have a rebirth? Yeah, uh, it’s a good question, because someone made tracks their head and say, i won’t be one mother of all social network where everyone goes and everyone uses for everything, and that has not happened whether it’s in a good way, really in any space, even if you look a email, which is so commoditized you haven’t. In boxing, send e mails but there’s hot male there’s, g mail, there’s, yahoo! Of course, they’re still outlook from microsoft, so there’s still that kind of individuality. So i don’t believe it will ever be the mother of all social networks and part of it is because people will focus, you go to facebook for fun. As i said before, you would have went inter business. I hope you go to karma for hunt, hunt for causes, and people go to myspace now for music, actually, how they started. My state started as a little area where bands could promote themselves, put up their calendar, upload pictures from their concerts and the fans of those of cages. I would say how much they love their band. Then people said, hey, i don’t have a page, just like my band has a page and that’s how my space started. But like i said, it went a little too far, and now they’re kind of going back to their roots, and they’re focusing on people who are interested in music. John, we have to take a break. My guest is john melkis, vice president of karma four one one and he’ll stay with us after this message. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Durney i really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness can help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert, at two one two eight six five nine two nine zero or visit w w w died. Mind over matter. Y si dot com. Cerini! Duitz duitz are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set two one, two nine six, four, three, five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Talking. I’m tony martignetti this is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, my guest by phone is john melkis with karma for one one. John, how are people using social networks to do this? People two people? Fund-raising yeah, the best way to look at it would be to consider a youtube page when someone upload the video and kind of gives a quick description of it or on facebook. So you have a page with your profile in a little information, the bottom line is you get your own page. So as i was saying before, whoever this person is, who cares about the organization? So could be someone who suffered a disease that the organization support could be a volunteer, another concern, citizen, where it is you, quote unquote, make a page, and on that page you upload your picture to tell your story of why it’s important to you, and then they’re tools to share this message with your friends so they can come and check out your page, just like you might say, hey, check out this video on youtube, but kind of fun and your friends would go to that youtube page it’s the same idea, except on that page two options one you could make a donation, then that’s a key element, and that donation goes to the non-profit oh, our past the word so becomes you tell your friends this is something interesting, you know, this is my friend very connected to this cause. Could you show your support? So so that’s it it’s all as i said, user generated and what you’re seeing on karma for one one. How are the most successful campaigns being run by individuals? You know they’re great because they’re saying before, a lot of times people are familiar mohr with kind of when they’re communicating this way online, maybe they do an email blast, which which can often make sense, but it’s typically a numbers game. Maybe you have an e mail with the ten thousand names, and if you were going to send out an email blast, you would expect a very, very low open raid. Maybe a couple click throughs, you know it could have could have an impact, but it’s quite low number, however, in a campaign like this that i’m describing the people who are sending the invitation. So when i make my page and send it to my friends and colleagues, etcetera, this’s a page on you’re talking about a pain giant, you’re talking about a page on karma for one one right back. Okay, please page on karma for one one, just like you say make a page on youtube. Uh, the response rate is dramatically hyre because you’re getting the email from your friend, you’re it will get through to the inbox if they probably hurting sent e mails to that person before and their request is a lot more persuasive because it’s coming from someone you know, so the response rates are typically very good and donations think back to the obama campaign. They’re not always large gifts. This is not the same is getting a big check from a donor? They range. Sometimes you get a fifty dollar check, it could be a ten dollars take check or credit card divination, but sometimes we do get quite large donations. We’ve gotten donations on the site up to ten thousand dollars to settle a lot of pain, but i cleared more grass roots so larger responses of smaller transactions that typically the experience. We found john. Please tell our listeners how to reach you if they’d like to. Well, that certainly just go to the site and we have a number of ways to contact us. So it’s, just www that karma for one one dot com back k a r m a and then the members for one one dot com and my email address is john jail h n got murcott em isn’t mary-jo you are the old tt at karma four one one dot com john, thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you so much. My guest has been john murcott, vice president of karma for one one. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. We have a facebook fan page. Please go to facebook dot com and at this point, you still have to search for tony martignetti non-profit radio click like so you like us and become a fan. We have a name the number contest neymar call in number eight seven seven four eight zero for one to zero you’ll win a free hour of planned giving consulting for your selected non-profit or a copy of my book, charity registration, state by state guidelines for compliance. Details of the name the number contest are on our fan page. I want to thank my creative producer, claire meyerhoff, producer sandy liebowitz and say affair sad farewell to former line producer matt in elko, who has made his way back to pittsburgh two and mark on continue his career in in media has a lot of experience in radio and tv, and we wish matt very, very well. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Please join us every friday at one p m eastern on talking alternative broadcasting at talking alternative dot com hyre. No, i think a good ending. You’re listening to the talking alternate network. Get in. E-giving cubine. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set two one, two nine six, four, three, five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life in fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert, at two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero, or visit w w w dot mind over matter. N y c dot com i’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size. But you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays one, too. Talking.

Nonprofit Radio for July 30, 2010: Relationship Building and Fundraising & Risk management and Insurance strategies

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

You can subscribe on iTunes and listen anytime, anyplace on the device of your choice.

Tony’s Guests:

John Hicks, President & CEO of J.C. Geever, on foundation relationship building and fundraising.

Brian Flood, Vice President of The Flood Group, on risk management and insurance strategies.

There will be a link to the podcast posted here after the show.

This Friday from 1-2pm this week and every week!


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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.

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Durney welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio i’m your aptly named host. Tony martignetti in this hour, we have to very knowledgeable, terrific guests are first after the break, we’ll be john hicks, john is expert in foundation and corporation foundation fund-raising among other areas, but we’re going to focus a lot on foundation fund-raising the research that goes into it, building the relationships, what to do when a foundation says no, how do you proceed and how do you proceed when you get that sought after yes, on a proposal after john, our guest will be brian flood. Brian is a third generation insurance professional and he’s going to share insights about all different kinds of insurance, the casualties, insurance and the directors and officers insurance that small and medium non-profits need to be aware of how to avoid and minimize can ever really avoid, but how to minimize risk in your non-profit this is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. If you feel that your organization is somehow left out in the cold, by consultants or by the media or by constituents generally, then you’re in the right place. This is big. Non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. We have a break, and then john hicks joins us. They couldn’t do anything, including getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking, alternate network waiting to get in. E-giving cubine. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. I’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size. But you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays one, too. Talking. Oppcoll miree this is tony martignetti non-profit radio, i’m tony martignetti your host, my first guest today is john hicks. John is the president and ceo of the j c geever in-kind fund-raising consultancy in new york city, john does a lot of public speaking for the foundation center, which will be diving into a little bit some details about the foundation center. He delivers their proposal writing proposal, writing, too and cultivating grantmaker relationships seminars throughout the country, the foundation center has coordinating collections throughout the country, and we’ll be talking about those. John is also on the faculty of columbia university’s master’s degree program in fund-raising management, he does a lot of speaking, and he also does a lot of writing he’s, a contributing author to two books, the foundation centers after the grant and wiley’s the non-profit handbook. Fund-raising and i’m very glad that john’s work brings him to the studio today. Welcome, john. Oh, thanks, it’s, great to be here. You’re an expert in in foundation fund-raising and we all know that a lot of almost all fund-raising his relationship building, let’s, let’s start by talking a little about building that relationship with foundations, how does how? Does that process start? Well, let’s do because i think that’s one of the big mistakes or big mean snow mers about foundation philanthropy that it’s all a grant proposal that we write and and that’s the be all and end all involves relationship building involves relationship building with staff professionals who run foundations, manage foundations, and in some cases, it involves building relationships with members of the board of directors of the foundation. So depending on the kind of foundation you’ll approach, the process is going to be a little different. We can talk more about that. Yeah, i do want to dive into that in a few minutes in terms of taking this through a linear process does one doesn’t does a small and medium medium non-profits start with research about foundations and trying to align the mission of the foundation with their own? Is that where we start? We’ll write. The first step in the process that we teach in the foundation center seminars is actually you begin with your own priorities. You figure out what it is that you need to do to meet the real needs of your community or constituency, and then you’re going to research foundation’s who want to accomplish the same things that you do by giving money to support your programs and that’s when you’ll turn toe a resource like the foundation center and their foundation directory online, which is certainly, in my opinion, the best one stop shopping resource in the marketplace. Tto learn about foundations, let’s, talk a little about the foundation center. I know they’re headquartered here in new york city, but there are they called cooperating collections throughout the country that people can access right. The foundation center is headquartered in new york. They have five regional libraries new york city, washington, dc. Atlanta, georgia, cleveland, ohio, and out in san francisco. But there is also a network of over four hundred cooperating collections these air public libraries, university libraries, non-profit service organizations around the country and they’ve even begun to move far. They’ve established their first cooperate collection in korea, and they’re developing networks in europe and throughout age of which is great work on their part, so it means that their intent is that anyone can have access for free use of foundation directory online at a cooperating collection and no cooperating collection is really more than about a half an hour’s drive away from probably anyone anywhere who’s trying to raise money, and those foundation center re sources are, as john said, i wantto reiterate, free in all those places that john mentioned, but john those air it’s really a a seminal program and a research package that the foundation senators put together, isn’t it? Absolutely? The foundation directory online is based on information that’s publicly available bye foundation, certainly taken from their websites and it’s updated constantly weekly. Um, you can go to their website, foundation center dot or ge, and you can locate a cooperating collection where you can access the information for your charge. And what type of information do they have on on all the seventy six thousand or so foundations that they they research? Well, actually, the number is now one hundred thousand, so isn’t i mean its presentation okay few years ago that it was seventy six, seventy seven thousand? Absolutely. So we’re the kind of information’s available is in addition to basic contact information, address phone number, members of the staff, you have information on all the trustees and officers there’s information on giving by these foundations most of the foundations they have sample grants you have access to what’s called a form nine ninety pf, which is the foundation equivalent of a tax return where you can look at their contributions and they have analyses on the larger foundations in particular, where it’ll show you e-giving down to the level of how many grants were made in a given year in a given county in any state or common wealth in the us. And you can certainly look att what types of giving, what types of missions the foundation’s e-giving too, and that isn’t that the way to start aligning the foundations with your own work? Absolutely so you’ll start with your own work, and certainly you can research across different subject areas of interest. Bye, different foundations, there’s tons of categories, tony, that you khun search across and you can combine searches. It’s, a very powerful search tool, and it’s it’s pretty easy to use, and particularly when you go into a cooperative collection there’s a library on staff who is trained in how to use this database so you’ll get hands on help when you go into a cooperating collection. Alright, so easy to use there’s professional staff helped help you if you do need help and research on roughly one hundred thousand foundations, this really is ah place where a smaller medium non-profit wants to start and again, it’s all for and this is free in the end, all the locations. Absolutely, absolutely. After you’ve done this initial research, you found maybe a dozen, maybe more or less numb foundations that you think are appropriate to ask for a grant of some type. What? What should be the next step? Well, in the case where the foundation is professionally staffed, we counsel the organization to at least try to reach out and have a conversation with someone, because even though the information you’re looking at online, even on the foundations on website, might suggest that there’s an interest, what is it that we don’t know? We don’t know if the foundation is accepting applications right now, given the economy, some foundations have delayed some of their review processes, so they’re holding back on the number of applications there accepting, but they’re not telling us this information publicly, so we learn that kind of information on a call, sometimes making a call to a foundation and you’re talking to a staff person, you will learn some of the things that they’re particularly interested in learning about your program, and that helps you write a more targeted, and i’m just a better proposal. I think this is an important point, john, that a lot of people are not aware of the foundation’s air willing. Tio take these kinds of calls, these sort of inquiry calls initial inquiry or doesn’t really depend on the foundation? Well, it depends on the foundation. Tony i i’m always issued the disclaimer that, you know, the textbook says call every foundation, but the reality is there are roughly one thousand very, very large foundations, these air mega foundations you’ve heard of them, the gates foundation, carnegie, kellogg they certainly are more than adequately staff then there’s another maybe fifteen thousand foundations below that top layer, and we can usually get through and have a conversation with those funders that leaves us eighty six thousand foundations and those air family foundations and those are usually i mean, for all intensive purposes, you really have to know the donor you might be able to talkto trust advisor and a bank, but those folks don’t typically take cold calls, and even if they do, they’re not going to be privy to what the family necessarily wants to do. It’s more in the domain of individual fund-raising i see so all right, so then you’ve, you’ve made this inquiry phone call where it’s appropriate, where they’ll accept it. What you’ve given us an idea of what we’re looking for, what what really is ah, is the next step typically? Well, once we’ve established that there’s a willingness to look at the proposal and that there’s a real interest in the program, then you follow through with the actual proposal. At this point, we get into a disclaimer, i always give it my foundation center classes end when he’s listening in who’s ever taken one of my classes, you’ll know what i mean. I always say that sixty five percent of this the success sixty five percent of the success is basically following the directions. I mean, if you can, you can pick up a box of cake mix and follow the directions. You can write a grant proposal, just answer the questions, but the other thirty five percent is you have to understand the nuances, and this is where the phone call is going to help you, but you followed through with a proposal and sometimes it’s not a full proposal, right? But a letter of inquiry in some cases it’s a letter of inquiry? Yes, the foundation wants to save a little paperwork on both ends. I have to say, one thing i am observing across my clients is that i’m seeing a lot of grantmaker is just going to the full proposal because they don’t want to have to handle paper twice, and they’re cutting down on their staff because of the economy, so don’t be surprised if they wanted to send a full application and where does building the relationship fit into this way had been taking it linearly, let’s, let’s talk a little broadly break out of that, that chronology, and how does the relationship building gets started? Well, a lot of times it is with that first step of a phone call, you have to have something of interest, but you have to remember, and i’m going to quote jules auras. He used to be a program officer at the kellog foundation, he’s written on the topic and he’s. Ah, thought leader in the industry and he says, and that shell people working foundations where three hats first had his gatekeeper there, you know, screening proposals next hat once it makes it past the screen is investigator, i’m gonna learn more about your charity learn more about your program, but i haven’t decided if i’m going to put it in front of my board. If it’s the right fit, i’m doing due diligence, but ultimately you’re going to the third hat that of advocates? So thie idea is at some point you’re going to have to have a conversation and a lot of it’s cold calls, some of it could be personal networking. You may meet grantmaker zad events or have colleagues in the field who can introduce you to some of these program officer so i encourage a lot of networking. It’s hart, this is a hard business to get ahead. If you simply sit behind your desk and on lee, right proposals boardmember zx could be important to this process, right? Let’s, help us understand how our organization’s board members are critical to this. Well, for every proposal that you’re sending out, you should that the officer director list for the grantmaker with your own board to find out if there are personal connections, they want your proposals in place and the foundation is looking at it there and then that investigative mode winning allies on the board is pretty important. The one thing you want to avoid and this is a trap i see organisations fall into is thinking they can go around the professional staff and simply lobby the members of the board to get the grant. Sometimes you do nothing more than end up antagonizing the staff of the foundation. So it’s ah it’s a very carefully nuanced process, you know, we’re bored to board pays off in spades is going to be the family foundations and its individual networking. I see, but we cannot ignore in the bigger organization the bigger foundations, the professional staff absolutely not, especially in those larger foundations, because the staff hold, you know, a lot of sway and they’re they’re there for a reason. This staffer there for a reason, this is tony martignetti non-profit radio. My guest is john hicks. John is president and ceo of j c geever fund-raising council in new york city and john’s. Going to stay with us after this break? You’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Durney i really need to take better care of myself if only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up dahna is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness can help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert, two one two eight six five nine into nine xero, or visit w w w died mind over matter and y si dot com. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering the voice? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Schnoll hyre hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio, i’m your host. Tony martignetti with us in the studio is john hicks, president and ceo of j c geever fund-raising council in new york city, and we’re talking about foundation fund-raising for our audience, the small and medium non-profits throughout the country, john, we were we digress. A little talk about relationship building, let’s, let’s jump back into the sort of more linear chronology eww! Put yourself in the sixty five percent category of giving yourself a sixty five percent shot by following the directions you made that point what we’re waiting now, and we get a we get a negative response, or or might we get an inquiry for more information? Help me understand what comes next, right? In some cases, you’re going to get a ah, an inquiry for more information of the grantmaker is interested remember it’s a process of learning process on their part? Particular, if they’ve never funded you before there’s going to be information exchange, this is something i do talk about quite a bit in my seminars, the foundation center that i find that in the beginning there may be an exchange of information over the phone there, maybe even be a meeting. But once the proposal is seriously under consideration, what happens? Usually there’s a site visit particularly more money? You request they actually want to come and see the work that you’re doing, and then a lot of the information exchange becomes paper. They want more financial information on your agency, they want to do a lot more do dilgence and digging into the books, and then that takes us out to the result. And either you have the grant or you get that you get that negative that turned down the request for more information, i would think an organization should take as a good sign. It’s always a good sign turned down they’re interested, you know, it’s always a great sign. One of grantmaker i just upgraded that’s a great sign for grantmaker comes in and ask you for more information because they don’t do that unless they’re seriously kicking the tires and looking at making the grant and let’s say you do get the turn down the negative response. How should you react internally? And what should you do with respect to the foundation? Well, internally, you’re going to be frustrated. And you need to keep that internal that’s that’s the number of thes of advice, one of the challenges of getting a turned down from a foundation. And i always say this that if you if you’ve ever gotten a declination letter from a foundation, you probably share my believe that every foundation has hired the same guy to write the letter because it’s the same bloody letter. Thanks, but no thanks. Ah, this point, you’re going to use the phone again. Something i do say in my seminars to the foundation center is that a lot of grants began with a word. Now, this is like, you hear this and sales urine dating individual giving, we say six knows, and you’re half way to it. Yes, absolutely. So the whole idea is that, um, the grantmaker may have ah, a lot of interest in supporting you. They just aren’t ready to make that commitment. And so what we’re trying to get at is, are we close enough where we should continue the conversation, give them or information? Or are we just simply not something they’re interested in supporting? And we need to move on so that we can use our time well in the foundation could use its time. Well, that’s, where phone calls going to really pay off, okay, so again, hyre foundations are willing to take those kinds of calls from from organizations that they’ve declined. Some foundations are tony there isn’t that marries again. Yeah, it’s ah, there’s only as i say to my foundation sandorkraut oops, i say to my clients, there’s, only one way we’re going to find out. We try and pick up the phone, right? And you’ve gotten the positive what we’re calling a foundation and you made the transition is actually now a grantmaker to your organization, you’ve gotten a approval. How should you react? Well, in the first thing that grantmaker wants to do is to simply be gracious and say thank you and one of the more surprising things we’ve learned over the years from grantmaker zoho is that a lot of charities cash the cheque and they may send back the paperwork, but they don’t take that moment to say thank you, and you have to remember somebody’s going to bat for you, and they’ve done a lot of work and they’ve put themselves out there. Elizabeth olafsson who’s a grantmaker here in new york city with the stolen charles guttman foundation something she said once i think we all need to remember this, that there are three owners grant her board owns it because they voted to, you know, make the award our charity obviously owns it because we have the cash, but she owns it because she’s the one that went to bat for us, so thinking that person is it sounds like a very small thing, but it’s a very big thing when it comes to relationship building, so that’s number one and number two is making sure that you are totally locked into giving foundations the reports that they require when they require them. Because foundations use this, these reports really tto learn about how effective they’re rants are, so they’ve become our partner. I think there could be a potential for fallout in the relationship if the grant is made, whether in full or in part, and the organization, the non-profit is not fulfilling its responsibility back to the foundation. Well, they’re two pitfalls one must be mindful of, one is not reporting, and therefore we’re not keeping up our end of the bargain of course not using the grant for the purpose that it was intended that’s going to be very important, but something else we don’t think about and i think it merits mentioned here is what happens when things don’t work out, you know grantspace are made on under the assumption that sure this project’s going to be successful, we would never ask for the grant. We didn’t believe the project’s going to be successful, but sometimes projects just aren’t successful. Sometimes we don’t give enough kids involved, sometimes we come up short on the other fund-raising grantmaker sze understand this? What they want us to do is to communicate with them early if we have a sense that things are not working out right? Come to them earlier in the process and have that conversation. Don’t wait until the final report, then it’s too late for everyone and let’s let’s, talk a little about aligning cultures or maybe determining culture, whether our foundation would be properly called may be old school orm or cutting edge and how that might impact your relationship with them. Sure, one of the things that i spend time thinking about is a consultant one i’m doing research, andi, i’m guiding someone through the process, coaching someone through the process is i really tried to look, but, you know, beyond the numbers i look beyond what’s on on a web page, and i like to spend some time thinking about what is the corporate culture of the foundation. Sometimes we’re dealing with a very small shop foundation they’re very hands on, they’re going to expect the same kind of treatment from us, they’re going to want to have access to people inside our organization, so i look at the corporate culture of the foundation, but i also think about the foundation’s values sometimes we’re approaching a thunder with a solution to a problem and our solution a lot of times when well, whenever we get a grant, i can pretty much guarantee you that philosophically, we’re on the same page with grantmaker but sometimes there are just some differences of opinion, particularly when it comes to values yeah, there’s, a conservative and a liberal site to the foundation world, just as there is to the non-profit world, some foundations air driven by matters of faith. Some charities are, too, but the two faiths may not. Completely lined up, so we have to think about some of those nuances. First, i’ll just to decide whether we want to spend time trying to build a relationship, and then as we build relationship, how do we use that information and those perceptions to strengthen and cement the relationship? Ultimately, this is very nuanced stuff. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio. My guest is john hicks, president, ceo of j c geever fund-raising council in new york city. John let’s, look a little at corporate foundation fund-raising in just the two minutes or so that we have left, what what ways would you distinguish corporate foundation fund-raising from the foundation? Fund-raising we’re talking, we’ve been talking about, well, corporate foundations and private foundations in in terms of how they’re organized, they look exactly the same and largely they operate the same. Ah, the nuance that creeps in on the corporate side obviously is corporation is associating, if you will it’s brand with your charity. So one of the things you have to think about is how does that brand benefit you benefit your constituency and how it is you know, you’re affiliation with the corporation benefit the corporation, so i tried to think about it it’s easy when you look at something like, if it’s a pharmaceutical corporation and you’re a medical charity, the connection’s air pretty dead on. But then, if you’re not let’s, say you’re a local youth service organization, you’re looking at a pharmaceutical, then you’re thinking about things like, you know, our are there a lot of corporate employees who live in the community where you’re providing benefit? Are you building a higher quality of life for the community? So those are the things i think you need to think about as you’re approaching the corporate foundations, does the non-profit maybe have a little more opportunity for salesmanship in in the corporate work? In other words, persuading the corporation are helping the corporation to see what the value could be to that company and the corporate foundation. No, i’m going to say that most of the corporation are corporate foundations, operate very much on a very objective plane, just like private foundations. Obviously, if you’re working with a corporate contributions person and they’re giving money of their own corporate coffers, that’s where the showmanship comes, i mean, maybe the easiest way of summarizing this is if if you were approaching a corporate foundation, i would be talking to you about how to develop the right proposal. People going in to talk to a corporate contributions officer. We probably talking about how to take your program and develop a really nice power point. Dad, at present. It okay, my guest is has been john hicks, president and ceo of j c geever john, why don’t you give us the company website, please? Sure, you can visit us at www dot j c geever that’s, j, c g as in george e theisen, victor e r dot com gentlemen, thank you very much for coming to the studio, and i would like to have you back, and we’ll continue the conversation on a future show. Maybe delve more into the fountain to the corporation side. Thank you very much, tony. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. I’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size. But you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays one, too. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Geever this is tony martignetti non-profit radio, i’m your host, tony martignetti joining us shortly will be brian flood to talk about insurance and risk management for your non-profit i’d like to spend a couple of minutes elaborating on something that was talked about in our very first show with my guest was stephen perrotto, and steve talked to us about planned e-giving and we talked a little about charitable bequests, that foundation of planned giving for any non-profit irrespective of size, regardless of mission, the charitable bequest is always the most popular planned gift in any planned giving program. You would expect about eighty five or so eighty five to ninety percent of your gif ts to be charitable bequests, and i’d like to talk a little in detail about marketing those charitable bequests. Stephen, i delved into a few areas using a newsletter, your website direct mail, and i’d like to go into a little more detail about some of those areas. Direct mail is a very common way, too market the idea of the charitable bequest for your organization what your mail is essentially saying is it’s important to have your state properly planned? And when you do that consider including us in your plan, you’re typically talking about someone’s will, because everyone has a will. There may be other state plan tools that work around the will, but everyone has a will, and everyone can understand what you’re talking about when you ask them to include your organization in their will. So direct mail is a very common way. I like tio, see direct mail that’s devoted exclusively to the idea of the charitable bequest. Now that can the expensive because direct mail devoted to one subject means postage and printing and maybe male house operations, depending how many your people your mailing to and you’ve just got one idea going out in that mail that’s, the charitable bequests but if you can afford the direct mail devoted to charitable bequests, it’s it’s really ideal. If you’re doing that, i like to see those mail pieces personalized, so not addressed to dear friend, but using the person’s name and address in an inside address on the letter and then addressing the letter oryu greeting them with a formal greeting. Dear mr mrs or miss doctor, not again not dear friend, i like to see these enclosed envelopes. Not windowed envelopes. I think window envelopes look too much like an invoice or a bill, and this is a pretty personal subject. This is someone’s estate plan, and you’re asking to be a part of that. So i think that merits something different than a than a windowed envelope. All the direct mail that we do for clients goes with a reply. Peace people should have the opportunity to tell you, most importantly, that they’ve already included you in their estate plan. You might not very well know that because you’ve never asked, and now you’re giving someone the opportunity to reveal to you that you are indeed already a part of their state plan and another one or two check offs on a reply card should be devoted to letting the person asked for more information about the subject. Maybe you ask, maybe they check off a box that says they’d like to attend a seminar or they would go that they would consider including you in their state plan. You’re giving people a few different ways, too self identify as having an interest in including you in their state plan, so direct mail a very common and very effective way of getting charitable bequests if you can’t afford the direct mail or even if you can but in addition to direct mail, the pieces that you’re already sending the communication devices you already have for your constituents to your donors, to your prospects. If you have a newsletter, a terrific sidebar on on a page on the newsletter so it doesn’t have to be lengthy fifty or a hundred words about the importance of having your state properly planned and the idea of considering including your organization in that plan in your will. I would also suggest you including that sidebar, your legal name and your tax id number so that someone can take that information on their own, bring it to their attorney and include your organization in there. Will they don’t have to ask you for more information. Everything they need is in that just a small article or or sidebar and a note about your organization’s tax i d number that is not private the way all of our individual social security numbers are private. Your organization’s tax i d number it’s also called an employer idea number e i n that is a public number it appears on all the form’s nine ninety thatyou have to file john. My previous guest mentioned the nine, ninety pf for private foundations that’s that that’s the annual tax filing for private foundations your organization asians are filing the nine, ninety annually just as all of us as individuals file a ten, forty annually and you’re organisations federal tax i d number is on that nine, ninety and that nine, ninety is a matter of public record. People can get it from the irs. They can often get it from your state attorney general, the charity’s bureau. They can get it from organizations like guide star or charity charity navigator. So don’t keep that tax i d number private or share it so that your donors can include you in their state plan. So there’s some ideas of marketing the charitable bequests, using direct mail, using the other communications devices that you have that you’re already using and sending that won’t add to the cost the way direct mail will. My next guest is brian flood. Brian is a third generation insurance professional with the flood group llc on long island. He has a number of non-profit clients and works with them, too control risk in their organizations using insurance. And we’re also going to talk about some ideas that that he has that are not not the purchase of insurance, but also helped too control risk in your organization. You do need to be concerned about what could go wrong, what could happen and look at ways too mitigate minimize those risks and, um, vory, please, that brian’s work brings him to the show today. Welcome, brian. Hi, tony it’s. Nice to be with you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Brian let’s, talk some about the sort of the basics of coverage. What are just let’s? Say, just your top two areas of insurance to start that you think non-profits need to be paying attention. Metoo we’ll find if i too work. Tio, pick two areas that i find not-for-profits seemed to have the most difficulty understanding. It would have to be, uh, directors and officers coverage. And also the employment practices. Liability coverage. Okay, let’s. Dive into those. What? What is directors and officers coverage with the directors and officers coverage? What? They were looking to protect our the people who are serving. On the board of directors and also any employees of the company for things such as mismanagement of the operations organization assets hyre things that come up with self dealing and conflicts of interest or acts that go beyond thie authority that could be granted in the bylaws of the organization. Perhaps it is a violation of certain state and federal laws. You are even a breach of producer duties, his role items that come up typical duitz that outsiders would bring against a board of directors, and so the organization can ensure its board against liability for all these different negligence is, and malfeasance is that you’re describing that’s correct at these and more on typically, these litigations can last several years, which becomes a continuous financial drain on the not for profit organization on if the organization winds up in a situation where it cannot indemnify its directors, its officers, or of its employees, either because of the allegations of a lawsuit or is the result of the organizations and solvency, then this financial burden can become the responsibility of the organization’s directors, officers and employees. And you really want to shift that burden to an insurance company. So they do you mean that they could be individually liable from from their own personal assets without this kind of coverage, right, without the proper coverage in place, its potential for the individual to be liable, which is what necessitates the coverage being purchased. I see. And could the organization also be liable again? Absent the right kind of coverage? Could the organization be financially liable for these types of wrongdoings? The organization is right. The organization’s frequently brought into suit where the entity has to defend itself, too. And people may go after the assets of the entity as well as the board of directors itself is providing a defense. Ah, part of the coverage that we would expect to see in the director’s an officer’s liability policy providing an attorney for the parties that are sued that’s correct it. Typically, the insurance company would select counsel for the defense of the suit that has brought against the organization and within the nuances of the directors and officers policies. It’s really not a one size fits all product, and it can be very much individually tailored to an organization on one of the things that is very important. To look at when it comes to defense costs is to make sure that the defence cost are providing a limit outside of the liability limit. In other words, if you have a million dollars of coverage to pay for a claim, you want to have the defence cost paid outside of that limited liability. So in addition to that limit of liability edition, too that’s correct this way. It doesn’t. The defense costs, which typically make up a very large portion of the claim, does not feed into the limit of liability that you would purchase. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m tony martin, your host. My guest is brian flood. Brian is vice president of the flood group llc and insurance professional organization in a company in long island. Brian, the other type of insurance that you mentioned, i asked you to pick two of the top ones that concern you the most for non-profits and the other you mentioned was liability insurance. Can you help us understand what the issues are there, right. The other one they picked was the employment practices, likability practices. Okay, portion of it. And this is an area again. It’s it’s. One that not very well understood bye not-for-profits organizations and it’s not very well understood by the insurance community, the brokers, a lot of the brokers and agents that are out there selling it. Unfortunately, an area that again has many nuances to the wording of the coverage, and i confused it myself with general liability. So i’m guilty of everything you’re describing right on what happens here is that with the employment practices liability here, not for profit organization are finding out the hard way just how complex the employment relationship has become. Employers are subject to ah widening net a federal legislation which could include the american with the americans with disabilities act, the civil rights act of nineteen, ninety one. The asians thie age discrimination in employment act, admitting there’s many more federal, state and local employment laws that they need to comply with the equal opportunity equal opportunity commission is out more aggressively investigating employment practices clean, and they’re filing lawsuits for sexual harassment for discrimination, wrongful termination, retaliatory treatment, unfair hiring practices and other types of workplace towards and it’s frequently. When i worked with for-profit organization, i find that latto this coverage has not. Been suggested to them to purchase, and they do have a need for it because the the variety of not only direct payroll employees that they have but also the volunteers and the committee members uh, people that really genuinely interested in helping that organisation willing to donate their time in their energy, the liability then can go beyond just employees. You’re saying it can go beyond the employees, and it can also go what’s called third parties lot of people who will say you’re a good your organization discriminated against me because of, and it could be a number of items, their race, their religion there wait there’s a variety of claims that have been brought against organizations people say i was not allowed to benefit from the services of your organization, and i feel that i was discriminated against. And now it’s a third party, somebody outside of the organization that’s bringing action under this type of coverage. So it’s it’s very broad, and what it offers on dh again, it’s one that is, seems to be not very well understood and not very well just displayed out there in the not-for-profits community and in terms of the brokers being out there, teaching not-for-profits the value of it. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio. My guest is brian flood, and brian will join us after this break. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness can help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two eight six five nine two nine. Zero or visit w w w died. Mind over matter. Y si dot com. Upleaf duitz are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people well, happy. Police call a set. Two one two nine six, four, three, five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom, too. One, two, nine, six, four, three, five zero two. We make people happy. Xero talking. This’s tony martignetti non-profit radio i’m your host. Tony martignetti. My guest is brian flood, vice president of the flood group on long island in new york. Brian, would you give us the web address, please? For your for the flood group testimony? Our web address is www dot the blood group dot com excellent people confined you there. Thank you, let’s. Spend some time talking about what organizations khun do to minimize risk internally rather than the purchase of insurance which is critical as we as we talked about back-up, do you have some ideas that organizations can implement on their own internally too manage risk? Stony, when it comes to what can be done internally, there are several things that not-for-profits khun d’oh. Andi, a lot of these procedures are very good at helping support the insurance policies that they may have in place. In other words, their internal procedures become their first line of defense. And with choosing the correct agent broker toe work with them on their behalf, they can really help develop some wonderful internal controls. The basics of internal risk control include first off having it well laid out disaster recovery plan. What types? Of what types of disasters are you anticipating in a disaster recovery plan? Well, with the not for profit organization buy-in but you have one that is a food bank and they have a disaster at their warehouse destroys all the inventory in the warehouse, there would need to be a plan. Okay, what are we going to do the next day to get our organization? The warehouse is up and running again and continue providing this valuable service to the community on a lot of times, very scary hyre day one after a disaster on a lot of confusion, where where plan is not laid out and the volunteers or end or the employees of the not-for-profits i really don’t have a clear focus is to exactly what are we going to do to be able to continue this? But a well laid out disaster recovery plan could put everybody at ease where there’s on organized chain of command well, this thing of back-up suppliers alternative location to move the operations, too, a really well designed disaster recovery plan. Kim wey these things out nicely and take a lot of chaos out of a difficult situation we talked earlier. About employment practices coverage, and it sounds like there are such a just a morass, really, of federal laws and probably even state laws as well. That impact on the employer employee relationship. Is there something that an organization khun, do tow, help minimize risk around employment practices? There is a well crafted employee handbook again can be the first line of defense to help minimize employees related practices lawsuit on in that hymn book, various items would be addressed to it is the employment of that person in employment that will can the organization let that person go at any point? What is the what? Our grievance procedures, what disciplinary procedures for employees that are just not performing well? We have all these various matters that typically wind up when they’re not clearly defined and outlined an employee handbook they want to become in discrepancies and ultimately and unhappy employees could leave the organization, and they leave with the full intent of well, i feel i feel like i was very poorly treated by that organization. I’m going to retaliate and bring a lawsuit against them front was a good employee handbook will have all of this all of these procedures laid out nicely that on the last page of the employee handbook, a place for the employee to sign and date it acknowledging that they have read the employee handbook and that they understand how the organization function. This could be daunting for ah, for our audience of small and medium sized non-profits are their templates, or should templates be avoided? And should these be done out of whole cloth? How how shouldn’t organization go about crafting, say, the employee handbook? Tony, this is where i have to say the insurance industry has really stepped up nicely realizes that there are organizations that are out there that are big enough to get themselves into trouble, but small enough yet where they still need the guiding hand of a new insurance company or knowledgeable insurance broker to help put these pieces into place for them. Many of the insurance companies have designed web portals, which are basically human resource web portal that are associated with the purchase of the insurance policy from that insurance company. And your policy number becomes your id to get onto their human resource web portal. And there they have templates for the employee handbook. Where an organization called go on, download this employee handbook and then it would be suggested that they review it with their own counsel teo tailored to their specific needs, but it would take a lot of the legwork off of their plate because it is most of my life i’ve looked at our very nicely designed on. If they’re designed by the insurance company, i can pretty well rest assured they’re trying to put as much of the cautionary language buy-in there is possible help protect brian. You’ve mentioned a few times the importance of having a knowledgeable broker. So i’m going to remind people that you are vice president of the flood group, a third generation, family owned insurance agency. Why don’t you give us your web address one more time? Yes, that is www dot the flood group dot com. My guest has been brian g flood of the flood group, and i want to thank brian very much for being with us, brian, thank you very much. Thank you, tony. Enjoy speaking with you. It’s, time for me to say thank you, too. People who were involved in this show, my creative producer, claire mckeever, line producer matt in elko and the owner of talking alternative broadcasting, sam liebowitz, this’s, the tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent every friday, one two to eastern, right here at talking alternative dot com. Thanks for joining us, co-branding dick, dick tooting. Getting ding, ding, ding, ding. You’re listening to the talking alternate network duitz to get you thinking. E-giving good. Are you stuck in your business or career, trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set two one two nine six, four, three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom, too. One, two, nine, six, four, three, five zero two. We make people happy. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two eight six five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w dot mind over matter. Y si dot com. Cerini i’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. You’re non-profit is ignored because you’re smaller medium size. But you still need expertise and help with technology fund-raising compliance, finance and accounting will look at all of these areas on the tony martignetti show. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on talking alternative dot com fridays one, too. Talking dot com. Hyre

The Premiere of the Tony Martignetti Show: Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

Rideau ! courtesy of Constuview on Flickr
THE TONY MARTIGNETTI SHOW: Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

— Compliance.
— Board relations.
— Fundraising.
—Technology.
— Volunteer management.
— Accounting.
— Finance.
— Marketing.
— Social media.
— Investments.

Every nonprofit faces these issues. Big nonprofits have experts in all areas.

The other 95% have The Tony Martignetti Show. Trusted experts and thought leaders throughout the country join me to take on the tough issues facing small and medium size organizations.

This week:

  • I Welcome You To My Show (so new it’s not branded yet)
  • Starting Your Planned Giving Program; guest Steve Imperato, Future Funds.
  • Cloud Computing is Perfect for Smaller Nonprofits; guest Scott Koegler, editor, Nonprofit Technology News.
  • Boards: Recruiting; Retaining; and Releasing Recalcitrants; guest Michael Davidson, board coach.

Listen: Friday, July 16th, 1-2 Eastern, and every Friday or listen to the podcast; coming to iTunes soon.

Where: Talking Alternative Broadcasting

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I hope you’ll join me. Please don’t listen to just the last 15 seconds.