Tag Archives: volunteer

Nonprofit Radio for July 12, 2021: Your Fun Volunteer Program

My Guests:

Liza Dyer & Corina Sadler: Your Fun Volunteer Program

As our 21NTC coverage continues, Liza Dyer and Corina Sadler share their stories of transforming volunteering from in-person to off-site. Then they share their lessons. Liza is at Multnomah County Library and Corina is with Volunteers in Plano.

 

 

 

 

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[00:02:04.84] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of like the Asus if you dried me out with the idea that you missed this week’s show, your fund volunteer program As our 21 NTC coverage continues, Liza dire and Karina Sadler share their stories of transforming volunteering from in person to offsite. Then they share their lessons, Lizza is at multnomah County Library and Karina is with volunteers in plano Antonis take two, the new york city studio were sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. And by sending Blue the only all in one digital marketing platform empowering non profits to grow. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in blue. What do you say we get started here is your fun volunteer program. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 ntc The 2021 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot C. O. With me now are Lizza dyer, who is volunteer engagement coordinator at Multnomah County Library, Portland Oregon and Karina Sadler. Volunteer resources supervisor. The city of plano texas at volunteers in Plano. Welcome, Lizza. Welcome Karina.

[00:02:10.34] spk_1:
Thanks for having us. tony

[00:02:11.57] spk_2:
Hello,

[00:02:17.44] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure. You each have a CVA after your name and uh, tell us what it I know it’s not cardiovascular accident. So tell us Karina, what what is C. V. A. What is that? What do you both? Uh, credentialed with

[00:02:28.14] spk_2:
the C. V. A. Is a certified volunteer administrator. Is a global credential for leaders of volunteers if you have at least three years experience. And then it is an ongoing professional development networking and educational credential.

[00:02:57.34] spk_0:
Cool. All right. I don’t think I’ve seen that one before. I mean, everybody knows the fundraising ones and the events. I haven’t seen a one for volunteer professionals. So interesting. All right. Yes, there are volunteer. Well, we know there are volunteer professionals. There’s a credential. What’s the organization that you get the credential from

[00:03:07.24] spk_2:
The Council for Certification and Volunteer Administration. And there are 1100 of us around the world and growing.

[00:03:15.44] spk_0:
Okay, Well, you don’t want too many. If if you get right, if you get too many, then it’s then it’s it’s watered down. Its liquefy. Its not as valuable. So you want to manage the number of CVS out there. You know, you don’t write, you want it to be something special.

[00:03:30.24] spk_2:
We’ll make that decision when we get there.

[00:03:32.84] spk_0:
Okay. Are you an authority? Are you an executive in, uh, in the agency?

[00:03:37.43] spk_2:
I’m on the outreach committee.

[00:03:39.74] spk_0:
Oh, so it’s your job. So you disagree with what I just said? You’re you’re trying to you’re trying to reach out. You’re trying to expand the C. V. A. Credential, not not restricted.

[00:03:49.50] spk_2:
Bring in more voices from leaders of volunteers all over the world.

[00:03:56.14] spk_0:
More. Okay. Not fewer. Alright. But soon. But be careful though. If it gets too watered down, it won’t mean as much, it won’t be as valuable to.

[00:04:00.87] spk_2:
That’s a good point.

[00:04:19.44] spk_0:
Now, I’m alive, Noma County Library and the city of Plano because it won’t be as valuable. Alright. Um So you each have stories of how you transformed your volunteer experiences in the pandemic. And then we’ve got some takeaways For future future programs, even when we end up back in person. So listen, let’s go to you to tell the tell the story at the Multnomah County Library 1st.

[00:05:23.74] spk_1:
Absolutely. So at my county library we of course like everybody around the U. S. And around the world had to pretty much shut down very quickly. And we were in the midst of planning for our summer reading Volunteer program. And summer reading is a program every summer where kids and families read all summer long. And the whole point is to encourage people to read all summer long so they don’t lose those reading skills between when school ends in the spring and starts back up in the fall. Right. That’s called the summer slide when your skills slide because you’re not keeping up. And so the volunteer program is all about encouraging families and helping kids get excited about reading for fun. And because of COVID We couldn’t have volunteers in person. And normally we would have almost 900 youth volunteers In all of our 19 library branches. So in the span of about two weeks, we completely shifted that program to be at home and virtual. And if you’ve ever tried to get a youth to do something in person that’s already challenging. But then to get them to do it from a distance is another thing. So we really wanted to make it fun and meaningful and you know, they’re already online so much with school. So we had a lot of offline options as well. And that way we could still engage them as volunteers. They still have something to do over the summer and it would still be promoting our summer reading program and letting people know in their own neighborhoods that summer Reading was still happening. You could still, uh, do things with the library online and that there was still reading to be done over the summer.

[00:06:09.24] spk_0:
Give us a little depth what was what was a one or two examples of what you, what you devised.

[00:07:45.64] spk_1:
Yeah. So it was actually kind of an interesting time because I was redeployed to the Emergency Operations Center for Multnomah County at that time. So I got kind of pulled in at the very last minute, um, to start this up with a number of staff at the library who’d been working on this. And so they had already put together some ideas for activities that the kids could do from home. And it’s, you know, of course you think about social media, Right? But a lot of our volunteers are under 13. They’re not really using social media. It’s their parents, their older siblings who are doing it. So we really wanted to focus on things that they could do that would be just for them. So like things like doing chalk drawings in their neighborhoods, in any language that they speak. Um, we knew that we ended up having about 220 230 volunteers doing this from home, and 48% of them were fluent in another language besides english. And I think we had 14 other languages represented. So they were doing chalk drawings, um, and saying summer reading, sign up online or making signs and distributing them to their neighbors or doing pop up stands where they would have the summer reading game board and different materials with them that they would set up in a park. One person set up at a farmer’s market. And these were things, I was not saying, hey, here’s the contact person at the farmers market. They were doing it. These were the teens leading these activities and of course we were giving them ideas and and things like that. But really the success was because the teens had been given that, that, that authority over what they got to do. So they got to choose what activities they got to do. And that was really way more fun than us Just saying, here do this.

[00:07:52.84] spk_0:
You’re a teenager at heart. I love that

[00:07:55.44] spk_1:
you

[00:07:56.37] spk_0:
trusted them and they didn’t let you down. It’s great. And you can, you give them absolutely some basics and sent them off. Excellent

[00:08:06.21] spk_1:
Karina. How about, uh, let’s say sorry. We also provided them with the materials to do the activities. So we didn’t just say, oh, we assume that you have all these art supplies at home because you may not. So we provided the supplies to do those things as well. Okay,

[00:08:21.34] spk_0:
Guerena, what’s the story at uh, in play now?

[00:09:15.74] spk_2:
Yeah. So when Covid hit, I was in the exact same situation like Lizza, everything got turned off and I felt like our adult program, you know, our adult volunteers were kind of somewhat prepared for what they needed to do, um, for their families and in their workplaces. But I was very worried about the teens, how they were going to react being cut off from our summer of service program. So I really wanted to create something specifically 14 volunteers. We usually have 300 to 3 50 in our program and they’re doing things at the library similar to what Lissa was talking about. But we also have them out at summer camps, especially events, a lot of in person social interaction. So I created a bingo style game, just the classic bingo board. The P and plano is really big. It’s our, it’s our icon at the city. So I called it ping go. Um, each

[00:09:22.32] spk_0:
you messed with, You messed with, You messed with the tradition of bingo.

[00:09:26.57] spk_2:
I did. We

[00:09:36.84] spk_0:
deserve it. That’s pretty gutsy. Well it’s been with us for hundreds of years. I don’t know, maybe thousands of years. People blame bingo. And then in plano you call it bingo. Yeah, that’s all right. When he

[00:09:37.94] spk_2:
really turned a lot of stuff upside down.

[00:09:40.22] spk_0:
Okay. Now what in Portland do you call Portland? In Portland? You call bingo bingo in Portland,

[00:09:45.94] spk_1:
you know, yet to be yet to be determined. I was so inspired by Karina’s program that we’re actually looking at adapting that for our summer reading program this year to say that we’re going to have um you know, one of the activities be a bingo board but we haven’t decided on branding yet. We need to consult with our marketing manager.

[00:10:06.84] spk_0:
All rights gutsy. Alright, bingo. You said the P. in plano is big. You know, I don’t know that. I mean, I didn’t know that.

[00:10:12.78] spk_2:
Yeah, it’s an iconic P.

[00:10:14.70] spk_0:
It’s important. All right. It’s important that words start with P and Plano, is it Okay? All right. All right. So please go ahead Karina.

[00:10:56.04] spk_2:
So I, you know, I used the squares in our bingo board who provides safe at home activities for the teens. They could earn service hours by completing the game board. Um, it also allowed me to leverage many of the partnerships I have built over many years at my program by reaching out to other departments, other organizations and, you know, asking for an activity that I could put on my board. It got people’s interest. They were happy to see something positive going on during that time. And then in our third and final month, I had all the teams submit their own ping go ideas. And our last board was completely uh, selected by the volunteers.

[00:14:54.84] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to Communications, the Chronicle of philanthropy, the new york Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today stanford Social Innovation review, the Washington post, the Hill Cranes, nonprofit quarterly Forbes, Market Watch, goodness gracious. That’s where turn to clients have gotten exposure. You want that kind of exposure. You want that kind of press turn to has the relationships to get it for you. Turn hyphen two dot C o. Your story is their mission. It’s time for Tony Take two. Sometimes I miss the new york city studio days. Remember SAm SAM at the board, Help me out with the uh, with the live listener love. He would uh, check the check the I. P. Addresses of everybody listening live and tell me the cities and states and countries. Um and I’m thinking about this especially because next week is an anniversary show tease. Uh and that was very special on the anniversary shows. You know, every july we would get everyone together, scott stein brings his, would bring his keyboard and Claire Meyerhoff was there and we’d get some other folks sometimes to drop in. It was just great fun. So there are times when I missed the studio days uh and the live stream that went along with that overall, I’m much happier producing the show the way we do now. But there are moments of angst when I I missed those new york city studio days, so just letting you know, I haven’t forgotten SAm and the studio, The studios, we were in three different ones. We started on West 72nd Street, then we move to west 76 I think, much further west. And then the last one where he still is now is on West 33rd I think it is maybe 32 good italian restaurant down the street. Uh if it’s still there cafe nana, cafe nana. If you’re in new york city, can you tell Sam lives on the west side. He only has Sam lives on the west side. So he picks all the studios that are with either within walking distance of his apartment or easy commute by subway. Don’t need to go over to the east side. Sam Liebowitz. All right, That is Tony’s take two send in blue. It’s an all in one digital marketing platform with tools to build end to end digital campaigns that look professional are affordable and keep you organized for goodness sake. They do digital campaign marketing. Most marketing software is designed for big companies and has that enterprise level price tag send in blue is priced for nonprofits. It’s an easy to use marketing platform that walks you through the steps of building a campaign to try out sending blue and get a free month. Hit the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in blue. We’ve got but loads more time for your fun volunteer program. Give us a little flavor of some of the board theme, the ping go board themes.

[00:15:35.94] spk_2:
Yeah. So we partnered with the police Department and had a section of safety minute videos. The teens could watch and learn some safety tips from the police Department, similar with our fire department, checking out some tours of the fire stations and learning about what the fire department does. The census was going on. So encouraging their family to complete their census was a square going out and getting exercise doing uh outdoor social distance scavenger hunt with our museum calling or zooming with the relative to say hi, okay.

[00:16:00.64] spk_0:
You brought in the the institutions of Plano, Cultural Law enforcement fire. Cool. Alright. Alright. So we’ve got you you each have some takeaways that that folks can used in. Mhm. Creating their own volunteers activities. Right? So what what the coroner? Let’s stay with you. What what what what are some lessons learned here that folks non private media listeners can benefit from.

[00:16:50.04] spk_2:
I think it’s great to be specific when creating engagement opportunities to narrow down your audience to create something just for teens or just for seniors or being very um specific in creating activities that would interest them and having at home options. I think going forward will be a bonus will be a plus. Not every child’s home has the same resources as their neighbor and being able to provide them with an engaging activity that connects them back to the community regardless of how many resources they have access to really strengthens that trust.

[00:17:14.94] spk_0:
And I guess you could segment by other categories also besides age. I mean maybe section of the neighborhood that you live in or I don’t know school that you go to, depending on the size of your community, you know? Um, yeah. Whether you’re new to the, I don’t know, you don’t want to start dividing people like whether your native in the town or your or your, you’ve been lived here less than five years. Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe

[00:17:43.54] spk_2:
I’ve seen other organizations. There was a food pantry, a senior living to hospitals from all over the US that took my idea and made their own boards and they made them as inclusive as they wanted or specific to their audiences they wanted. So people can get really creative when you give them an empty bingo board. Okay,

[00:17:45.34] spk_0:
Lizza. You got something you can share for us.

[00:18:53.14] spk_1:
Yeah. So one of the things that I started doing throughout last summer was asking our volunteers to send us pictures of them doing these activities or to send us pictures of just like their chalk drawings or their summer reading pop up stations. And then I took those photos and then put them into our weekly email newsletter that we were sending to the volunteers. So it created a kind of online feedback loop of hey here in a normal time, we would be able to see each other and we would see the things that we’re doing. But because we’re all spread out through throughout Multnomah County were not able to see that. And so being able to share that back helped to elevate the teens and their work and show them, Hey, your artwork that you did has made it into our official newsletter. And you know, for me, I’m just like, oh, that’s just such a simple thing for me to do. But for them, it’s a sense of validation that they created something that was then sent out to hundreds of people and it got included in our end of summer reading report. We used it on social media, you know, and of course we made sure to get permission and everything from, from folks. And that was just a really cool way to spread that. And 11 thing I got from a couple of teams, they were like, oh yeah, I don’t have social media, but I asked my dad to put this on his social media. And so it was just, you know, it created a kind of family experience. whereas before it would be kids coming to the library and their families aren’t really involved at all. And so this created a different kind of opportunity that we’re going to stick with this year.

[00:19:39.24] spk_0:
Yeah, I was just gonna ask about the summer’s coming up. We’re recording in basically mid april. You’re already planning your summer reading program. Are you are you going to try to make it a hybrid or strictly virtual again or? Well I mean the activities weren’t all virtual but distanced I guess I should say distanced or how are you? How are you conceiving of it?

[00:20:44.04] spk_1:
Yeah. So it’s funny you say that you know we must be planning, we started planning summer reading 2021 in September of 2020. So it’s basically a rolling programme for us. It takes so much planning and preparation and working with different organizations that we partner with and um, just planning everything for the next year’s theme. And so each summer reading each year there’s a theme. And so this year our theme is reading colors, your world. And so we have gotten teens to submit their own black and white drawings that are gonna be, I think one or two of them will be printed on the summer reading game boards. So of course, all of these things, you know, you have to backtrack, you can’t just say like, oh, we’ll have this by summer. No, we’re like getting these printed now. Um, and then all of the drawings that were not going to be on the game board, we’re putting them into a coloring book. And so the coloring book will be put together by the library, but then distributed to all of our patrons that are coming into place. So it’s not just, you know, an insular volunteer program of only volunteers get this. No, this is this is everybody can get this. And so yeah, we are going to be opening up recruitment in actually next week for summer reading volunteers and um, really focusing on what volunteers can do in that the two months between when we start recruiting and when summer reading actually starts, um, which is mid june. And so we’re going to have zoom backgrounds that they can use for their classes. Their online classes. We’re going to have, um, we’re going to have them submit ideas for bingo boards. So that was the idea that we are borrowing from Corinna. And so we’re going to ask them, you know, in these two months because we have some really excited volunteers and they just want to get started right away. So, um, so yeah, so we’re almost like doing this pre planning this pre volunteer program for the two months between and one of the things I’m working on

[00:22:15.34] spk_0:
itself is a valuable take away. You know, think about something to engage folks from the time they sign up to the time your program formally starts. If you’ve got like you’re saying two months, you know, people are going to maybe lose interest. You know, you want to keep them engaged to get them and start their engagement before the thing actually formally starts. So, alright, another committee. You got another valuable takeaway. I want listeners to to pick your brain to get the best of your brains.

[00:22:52.94] spk_2:
Yeah, I definitely was not planning in september Yeah. For a summer. Um, but I think just having communication with your volunteers, we surveyed, um, are teens at the end of our summer game. Got their feedback if they wanted this again, even if we were in person or not. So we’re still kind of weighing options and figuring out what we’re going to do. But I expect ping, go to return and hopefully be more interactive now that in texas we are open and having some more opportunities for people to socially distance get together.

[00:23:10.04] spk_0:
Okay. All right. So advice their, keep in touch, keep in touch with folks throughout the year. Even if it’s just lisa, I’m sure you do that. I’m sorry, Liz, I’m sure you do the same. You know, you’re in touch with your summer volunteers throughout the year. You must be right,

[00:23:50.74] spk_1:
definitely. Yeah. We have other volunteer opportunities to that. Some of them volunteer year round. We have virtual team councils. And so those are things that they’re gathering every other week or sometimes monthly, depending on which council that they’re part of. And so they’re continuously engaged or we’re asking them, hey, you know, you participated in summer reading last year were planning and we want to know what you think about this. So we’re regularly checking in with them and then of course they get folded into our regular volunteer pool and get our monthly newsletter to find out what’s happening at the library and, and our status because we’re not currently open to the public except for curbside pickup. So, um, so definitely engaging them not just as volunteers who do things for us, but as community advocates and people who care a lot about what we do.

[00:24:07.84] spk_0:
Any more. Any more takeaways, the lessons that we should learn from your either of your experiences about our own activities. Volunteer activities.

[00:24:38.44] spk_2:
I would just encourage people not to be afraid to try something new to be creative to pilot. an idea. It brings joy to people and people want positive, happy fun things going on. Even if it’s a tough year, it still resonates with a lot of, of families and that connection is just really strong. So don’t be afraid to be creative.

[00:25:11.94] spk_0:
Yeah. How about we leave it there? It sounds good. Right? That’s that’s great. Parting words. All right. They’re both CVS certified volunteer administrators. Did I get that right? Volunteer administrators. All right. And they are Eliza dire at um, multnomah County Library. She’s volunteer engagement coordinator and Karina Sadler. Volunteer resources supervisor for the city of Plano for volunteers in Plano. And Lizza Karina, thank you very much.

[00:25:14.74] spk_1:
Thank you so much. tony

[00:27:24.34] spk_0:
My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you and welcome and thank you not welcome. We’re wrapping up. We’re not welcoming. We’re thanking you. I’m thanking you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 ntc where we are sponsored by Turn to communications turn hyphen two dot C O. That’s it. Short show this week. It’s a quickie a drive by a wink without the nod, a shake of flash. If I keep this up, it won’t be a short show, A new york minute, two shakes of a lamb’s tell blink of an eye, A jiffy a hot minute Next week It’s the 550th show, our 11th anniversary. Who How many podcasts do you know that are 11 years old and produced 550 episodes and abdominal to boot. Claire Meyer off will co host, will have live music from scott Stein, our contributors, our sponsors and guest awards. Would you care to guess what the awards are called if you missed any part of this week’s show? I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Re sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. And by sending Blue, the only all in one digital marketing platform empowering non profits to grow. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in Blue, our creative producer is clear. Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein. Thank you for that information scotty, You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio for the 550th show. Big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great. Mhm Yeah.

Nonprofit Radio for October 19, 2020: Virtual Volunteering & Artists Sunday

My Guests:

Elizabeth Neufeld: Virtual Volunteering

During the resurging pandemic—and after—there are smart ways to keep your volunteers engaged virtually. What’s this got to do with the movie, “Miracle on 34th Street?” Elizabeth Neufeld shares her thinking. She’s CEO and founder of Strat Labs.

 

 

Chris Sherman: Artists Sunday

Chris Sherman crafted this day of artistry that follows Thanksgiving and precedes Giving Tuesday. He explains what it’s about and how you can join the movement.

 

 

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Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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Transcript for 511_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20201019.mp3
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[00:01:56.54] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non proper radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with Leuco play Kia if you rubbed me with the idea that you missed today’s show Virtual volunteering during the Resurging Pandemic and after there are smart ways to keep your volunteers engaged virtually. What’s this got to do with the movie Miracle on 34th Street? Elizabeth Neufeld shares her thinking. She’s CEO and founder of Strat Labs and Artists. Sunday. Chris Sherman crafted this day of artistry that follows Thanksgiving and precedes giving Tuesday. He explains what it’s about and how you can join the movement. Antonis, take two planned giving accelerator were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o and by dot drives, raise more money, changed more lives. Tony-dot- M.A.-slash-Pursuant for a free demo and free month. Let’s get started with virtual volunteering. It’s my pleasure to welcome to the show. Elizabeth New Felt. She is CEO and founder of Strat Labs, supporting change agents in every corner of the globe by telling and marketing their stories. Her background is in operations, program development, community engagement, strategic marketing and communications. The company is at Strat labs dot us and at the Strat Labs. Elizabeth is at Lizzie Neuf. Any us on Instagram? Lizzie, welcome to the show.
[00:02:03.84] spk_0:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to be here.
[00:02:12.84] spk_1:
Absolutely pleasure. It’s good to have you were talking about virtual volunteering. You You have a post on this? Eso
We’re gonna talk through it, though, and we’ll get into more detail. Um, you’re just basically I imagine sprung from not wanting to lose contact with our volunteers who are more accustomed to being live face to face kind of volunteers. Yes,
[00:02:32.60] spk_0:
we had a lot of people reach out right when things were shifting and it was going to become clear across the country
that volunteerism it was going to take a turn in terms of how we were going to be able to volunteer during a global pandemic. When a lot of non profits rely on actual physical bodies and hands to get their work done on DWI started kind of quickly digging into what that was gonna look like we work with a lot of nonprofits, but we also work with a lot of social enterprises and companies that have pretty robust volunteer programs where they’re partnering with nonprofits and they rely on it for both. They reliant for employee engagement as well. A ZX, the nonprofits relying on the actual volunteer. So this was a big thing for us. We wanted. We wanted to dive in.
[00:03:21.34] spk_1:
Yeah, that’s increasingly popular. Ah, very common now that companies want their employees to be engaged with the
non profit with their non private partners as part of sponsorship or, you know, is part of giving. I’m hearing more about that. It seems much more common now.
[00:03:40.14] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s it’s incredible. I mean, we we hear it from almost everyone that we work with, that they want some kind of
employee engagement program that involves volunteering and the nonprofits that we work with. They tell us the same thing on the other side is that they don’t just want sponsorship dollars anymore. They want that, you know, employee

engagement. They really want to buy in. And that becomes increasingly more difficult when we’re living in such a virtual world because you know a lot of that employee engagement in those volunteers. It’s it’s about the community that they build and the community in that engagement, and they do that in person. You know, it’s meant as a team building activity, so it becomes more difficult. But we’ve been working on it with our clients and and really studying and researching and trying to come up with different ways and people can engage. And, you know, I think something to know in something that was It’s been very interesting to me is that the value of the volunteer hour is valued currently at $27.20 and that’s up 7% from 2019. So even in the midst of this global pandemic, the value of the volunteer hours still going up, which means it’s still relevant and it’s still necessary
[00:04:54.34] spk_1: who values that time
[00:05:04.44] spk_0:
that was done by the independent sector and the Do Good Institute. They put out what they put out a wonderful
survey, and they and research around it and what they actually break it down by state, and it shows you how much your state has the volunteer, our value, Dad. It’s pretty impressive e.
[00:05:24.94] spk_1:
All right. So one of the things that you recommend for ah, virtual volunteering is putting together a lobbying campaign.
[00:06:00.11] spk_0:
Yeah, you know, if your organization is involved in a particular issue and things have kind of been on pause, whether
you know, human service is that you’re a habit to had scaled back during this time. You know, one thing that you can do is and I don’t mean lobbying necessarily in the formal sense of being coming a lobbyist because that comes with other, you know, issues and complications as it relates to the 501 C three status. But just more in terms of getting your cause out there on a broader scale, really, really making a case for support for your cause. So it doesn’t necessarily even have to be for your organization, but just for your cost. So if you work with people that are homeless and you want to talk about this issue of homelessness in America, you know, bond together with other organizations that are doing similar work and come up with a campaign or a cause that helps you advocate and lobby for these issues.
[00:06:24.34] spk_1:
And so you would you would be encouraging your folks to do what kind of stuff for you.
[00:06:32.40] spk_0:
Ah, lot of times executive directors they want toe. They want to do this work and they want a partner with other like
minded organizations around the country around the world. They just don’t have the time. So if you can utilize your volunteers to dig in and assign a couple volunteers to become thes advocates, they become more of a global policy advocate, then necessarily for your specific cause and get them excited about it. So if you’re dealing, you work with people with disabilities, you know, encourage them and get them started with a list of organizations that you’ve always wanted to connect with and go after those organizations and come up with a platform that gets the conversation around disability out there in the world in a bigger way.
[00:07:26.34] spk_1:
Or if you work with Children. I mean, there’s all kinds of different Children’s causes, Uh, s So this is related to
something else you recommend, which is encouraging. Volunteering at other organizations. Yeah, cool. I love this is like this reminded me of Miracle on 34th Street. Macy’s recommending gimbals.
[00:07:34.04] spk_0:
Yes, absolutely so We saw this a lot in the beginning of things starting to shut down in March and April where, you
know, employees were at home and they were furloughed and they were on, you know, they were on hold, they didn’t know what they were going to do. And we heard of a couple different groups and some clients saying, We’re going to recommend that are employees go out and volunteer with other organizations because, you know, meals need to be delivered still, and, you know, people need to be checked on in some capacity, and so we’re gonna make up a list of company or organizations that we no need bodies, and we don’t have that need right now. And we’re gonna push that out, tow our volunteers and our staff and ask them to contribute it. It’s really a beautiful, you know, kind of coming together. I’m still hearing about it quite a bit. I’m hearing it more on the corporate side where, you know, if an organization that they were supporting is no longer accepting in person volunteers, they’re getting referred to do other work with other groups.
[00:08:44.84] spk_1:
Yeah, and of course, you’re gonna get the gratitude of those other organizations. Dio. Yeah, so talk about
collaborating and trusting each other, working together. You know, that’s yeah, it’s beautiful, really. That’s very savvy

on. Did you know it happens organically? You said, you know, it was just organizations were thinking of this. We may as well. We have this talent. We have these folks who are motivated. We may as well refer them where the need is if we don’t have it any longer. Yeah,
[00:08:58.55] spk_0:
no, it’s true. Really organic.
[00:09:02.34] spk_1:
What’s another? Another idea for virtual volunteering.
[00:09:05.50] spk_0:
Yeah, so another thing that I We’ve been working with a lot of our clients just gearing up for annual campaign season
on this end of year. Giving is that, you know, with older volunteers so those that may be closer to retirement or in their retirement and are volunteering with organizations but don’t feel comfortable being in person. We’re really encouraging a robust writing letter writing campaign for the for end of your giving. So not just asking them to write letters to group of people, but to come up with their own messaging to come up with their own sort of passion and their plea, and to set some goals around it, you know? Is it 50 a week? Is that 100 letters a week? But you can really cover quite a bit in terms of a mailing list with personal letters, and I think the impact this year on on end of your giving is gonna be tremendous. So if you get that personal letter in the mail, I think it’s going to mean a lot more this year than it ever has before. People are missing that connection and that touch and and the, you know, the campaigns of old will not no longer be, you know, able to kind of just be a letter that they get that’s printed on, you know, and looks good and has the right graphics. There’s gonna have to be that personal touch.
[00:10:48.94] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They help you build relationships with journalists because of a
relationship started by turn to and nurtured the New York Community Trust got to features in The Wall Street Journal. That’s the value of relationships with journalists turn to specializes in working with nonprofits. One of the partners, Peter Pan A. Pento, was an editor at The Chronicle of philanthropy. I like saying his name. Peter Pan, a pento. Lovely. They’re at turn hyphen two dot ceo now back to virtual volunteering
[00:10:58.54] spk_0:
for younger generations were kind of encouraging a similar idea, however, we’re looking at it, utilizing the tools that
they’re used to working with. So, for example, we’re taking younger volunteers, and we’re asking them to engage and do community management on social media. So a big thing that our clients often says, I just don’t have time. Thio interact with people on social media. And that’s how you get a following. And so similar to writing a hand written letter, we’re asking people to reach out to influencers in their space that they think would be interested in their cause on Bright them a direct message on Instagram or Facebook, Um, leave comments on different peoples pages and mention your organization in the comments so that people will potentially refer back. So we’re trying to think of things for every age range of volunteers because we know that you know, handwriting. A letter may not be something that a 20 something you know here wants to dio,
[00:11:54.54] spk_1:
but for somebody who’s 65 or 70 that’s ideal. Eso. What kind of support do we need to give you? Need a resource
Page? Uh, messaging. What? What,
[00:12:04.24] spk_0: you have to
[00:12:04.55] spk_1:
give these folks thio support them?
[00:12:07.04] spk_0:
Yes. So when people are developing their annual campaign and they’re really looking at, how are we going to utilize
volunteers right now, at this time of year, something that we’re recommending that they do is come up with that list of assets that they’re going to need to send every volunteer in a folder. And so for some volunteers, you’re gonna want to send that directly in the mail so that they have a hard copy of it, and some you’re gonna be able to send them a link to a you know, a folder through Google or whatever you may use, whatever your platform is. But you want to include photos. You want to include case statements, um, you know, call the actions and then let them pick what they what is most interesting to them? We’re encouraging people to come up with at least the recall. The actions that they can pick from that will suit them in terms of there’s kind of an overarching called action and there’s these sub called actions on Dhe that’s filters into a bigger campaign. So for letter writing, and that’s really important on Dhe, then in terms of managing it, you know, everybody should get their own list and they should be working off a list, and there should be

no overlap with those lists. I mean, not that it would be bad to get two letters from an organization, but you want to make sure, and you try to line people up with people that they’re connected to, whether that’s geographically or because they were a donor, that they knew at some point are, you know, you try to make that happen. There is quite a bit of process that goes into it, but you’re it’s October, so you have some time to plan that out.
[00:13:28.54] spk_1:
What are some of these calls to action that you see?
[00:13:31.54] spk_0:
Um, well, you know, this year we’re still working on a lot of those. I mean, obviously the big one being to donate, But it
depends on the organization. So ah, lot of our organizations, they’re saying that they really want to use this time to build their mailing lists and to build their following online, and so we’re including that in a potential call the action. So beyond just asking for dollars, we’re actually including that, you know, in the past that may have been Come volunteer with us or set up a volunteer day with your company or your community, and we just don’t know if that’s going to be possible this winter. So we have to kind of get creative and think of ways to engage with people online.
[00:14:08.44] spk_1:
Something else you suggested is ah, listening campaign.
[00:14:11.84] spk_0:
Yeah, I think this is really important right now. You know, we’re I feel like we did a lot of this in the spring and I think it
needs toe happen again. Right now we’re doing this right now with the Girl Scouts of Colorado and it’s been we haven’t we actually are just sending it up today, and I’m really curious to kind of see what comes back. But it’s going thio help inform how the organization moves forward starting in January and with a listening campaign. What you’re trying to determine is, you know what? Where are people right now? How can you show up for them? This relates specifically to volunteers. So, you know, they were used to working with your organization for so many years, or even maybe if they had just started. But they’re sort of, Ah, deflation. That comes, you know, that has come in the last few months with not having in person engagement. And so you want to really here where they’ve been? Have they been impacted by cove? It have they lost their job? Are they gonna When things turn around, will they be able to continue to volunteer with? You were looking at all of those things to help us better understand how we can communicate with volunteers so that when things do open up a bit more, we conserve their needs. Justus Muchas. We want them to serve the community.
[00:16:01.44] spk_1:
I wonder if there are ways to that. You can get the volunteers together now. I’m thinking, Well, you know, I I do plan to
giving fundraising. So volunteers that we work with are usually 70 and over, but I don’t think it’s restricted to that. But volunteers look forward to the community. You know that their community of volunteers, even if I’m a community, could be four or five people and I’m not talking about 100. But, you know, they look forward to that time together Twice a week. They’re doing something together, or once a month, whatever it is, and they’ve lost that. So I wonder if there’s a way to that You could rekindle that community online for folks Thio keep in touch with their fellow volunteers.
[00:16:07.56] spk_0:
Yeah, we we have recommended and we’ve set up a few of these, um, ambassador programs, volunteer ambassador
programs, And they actually they’re great because I think every organization really should be thinking about doing this. We do this. This came from the social enterprise world from the for profit world and that people would bring together ambassadors to help them sell product or to get their name out into the world. But there’s no reason that the nonprofit world shouldn’t do this on day. One of the organizations that I’ve worked with the range of Motion project does an amazing job with this, and I think they have maybe 50 ambassadors right now. It could be wrong on that number. Uh, the range of motion project
[00:16:49.59] spk_1: Colorado Denver area.
[00:16:51.22] spk_0:
They’re actually a global organization. They do have an office in Colorado. But they serve individuals, um, that are in
need of prosthetic devices around the world and the the website for its romp global DOT or GE. But they’re pretty incredible because they started this ambassador program a few years ago, and it has just grown every year. And it’s not just online, like there is a component of it that lives online. But there is this community that has been built around it, and in an age when we can’t get together, they are leaning on the online piece of it. And so that can include setting up a private Facebook group for those individuals or email group that you could just send constant email communication. Thio. I know that some of them not just wrong, but I know other organizations have, ah, text chain with their ambassadors, and you know, it’s it’s These are people that are out there talking about their organization and

doing good for them and also raising money for them on. But it’s also a great way to get Presas Well. A lot of these ambassadors come to the organization or these volunteers with good stories, and some of those stories could be shared in the press. Um, in a way that, you know, while it relates back to the organization, it has a real personal feel which the press love.
[00:18:24.64] spk_1:
Yeah, right. So, again, that’s Romp romp, Global Motion program romp global Dot or GE. I’m Global. Okay. I love that
ramp. Romper Room? Yes, exactly. I’m old enough to have grown up with Romper Room. What was her name, Miss? Uh, you know, I think I went to the studio once too. I
[00:18:26.41] spk_0: think I was
[00:18:26.74] spk_1:
in the Romper Room studio. I’m pretty sure I did her and I did. Bob McAllister to On What the heck was he? Bob
McAllister.
[00:18:34.24] spk_0:
There’s one generation above me, e I know of it.
[00:18:39.42] spk_1:
Wonder what the heck was Bob McAllister? He was the host of something. I was on him. But then Romper Room was
Yeah, I miss I don’t know, Miss Kelly or something. Can’t remember. Oh, uh, if anybody remembers should be any tony at tony-martignetti dot com. What was the name of the lady on Romper Room? I’m sure I could find it, But who’s that host? The woman who hosted Romper Room. She was like a kindergarten teacher. She
[00:19:02.22] spk_2: was It was
[00:19:13.74] spk_1:
wonderful. It was It was a romper room. Um, yeah. So Okay, back Thio. Sorry. So, um 1965 digression. Um on de So
when you have thes when you’re putting these folks together, I mean, what’s your role, like keeping in touch with them too, Or like, if their ambassadors for you, you know, how do you How often do you wanna be in touch with them? Like thanking them, seeing how they’re doing, asking if they need coaching or help or anything like that. What’s your role in keeping it keeping it going once you’ve given them tools in the platform?
[00:19:36.97] spk_0:
That’s a great question. I’d say that the issue that we see the most is that our clients will set up an ambassador
program, and then it will fall apart shortly after nobody is managing the community. So our suggestion is that at least once a week, at the very minimum, there should be some kind of prompt that goes into the Facebook group are on email that asked people to respond, and then in a non going weekly basis, we’re asking and this could be another volunteer role. This could be a volunteer that manages the community. That’s a little bit meta, but it’s meant to, you know, if there’s a real superstar volunteer, get them to be the community manager and have the manages ambassadors because you do wanna be interacting with them at the minimum on a weekly basis. But the idea is that you want to be giving them a prompt. It will further communication and conversation among them and then also a call the action eso You know whether or not that’s, you know, doing a funny video around, um, there cause that is, maybe at home and then they can all post if they all do. A video community edited together. Um, you could do these like, you know, have them set up a virtual fundraiser for the organization, and they do it together. They’re doing it in there, you know, group. They could also go out for press. You know that as a group they could go out for press. They could set a challenge for the community, like a running challenge or climbing challenge or a swimming challenge. Um, you know, they can also be tasked with being, you know, kind of doing what we talked about before with social media, which is going through and tagging celebrities and news outlets and kind of getting their name out there. But there needs to be someone at the helm who condemn erect some of that. And I recommend in this day and age that that person should also be a volunteer. It’s a great time that
[00:21:34.36] spk_1:
seems like the gold standard. Like if you can get a volunteer who’s that engaged, then you know they could take it the
way the fellow volunteers, you know, it’ll be easy. It’ll just just be a little friendlier, like then the organization like looking over your shoulder. You know, even if it’s a friendly relationship, you know, it’s just better if it’s self managed.
[00:21:42.44] spk_0:
Yeah, and we recommend to get them together. I mean, this has to happen virtually this year, but so I think it’s great.

Get them together. You send them some kind of fun box or something, you know, prior to their virtual retreat, and do a retreat where they plan out their activities for the next you know, 12 months. So we’re recommending people do that November, December, and maybe you send, you know, like some cookies or some You know something you know, to kind of get them ready, A stress ball. But you’re gonna be online for two hours. And you guys were gonna plan the month, you know, every month, an ambassador related activity again, these air volunteers. But this is kind of the way we have to think through, You know, the new age of volunteerism, given what we’re living and that you can’t necessarily show but a warehouse and pack boxes or ship meals out for people you know or deliver things. So you have to think of these other things. And I do think it can spanned generations to I know it probably sounds, given that a lot of it’s online, that it would only be for the younger generation. But we’ve seen that. You know, the older generation likes this Justus much. They want that opportunity to connect online their home, probably even more than the younger generation with less opportunity to connect. So Zoom has become, um, you know, a fixture in my mom’s life, and she’s 70 something years old. It’s also become a picture of my grandmother’s life, and she is 90 something years old so they’ve even become accustomed to this new way, and I think it’s important to provide that during the day.
[00:23:10.04] spk_1:
That’s great. You still have your grandmother,
[00:23:13.85] spk_0: Your 100. 0 my God, I’m
[00:23:57.44] spk_1:
so lucky to have them. That’s wonderful. Yeah, I have been hearing that zoom and even just some some older folks
who didn’t even have email or had an email but never used it. You know, in the first few months it wasn’t really catching on. And But as things dragged on and now sort of a resurgence, Um, I think folks have caught on that the only real way to keep in touch on a good frequent basis is going to be online. So they’ve they’ve adopted. They’ve they’ve adopted online work more than they were like March, April, even may some. It’s become more, a lot more. A lot more popular. Yeah, in really just the past, like 33 months or so, Yeah,
[00:24:06.40] spk_0:
we’ve seen some good multi generation programs pop up using utilizing volunteers where in old the older generation
might lead a class like an on going class. Maybe it’s monthly or every other week for a younger generation. We specifically saw this in the arts? Quite a bit. We had to art clients, clients that worked in the arts. And they utilized this format. And it worked really well where they were utilizing this sort of this older generation, um, to help teach some of the classes that would have otherwise been in person and being taught, you know, by someone else, Um, that had availability at three o’clock on a, you know, Thursday. But this was being done, you know? You know, at any time they could schedule at any time, and people from around the country were signing in to be part of it.
[00:24:53.34] spk_1:
What else? What else you wanna talk about around virtual volunteering?
[00:25:06.24] spk_0:
No, I think, um, you know, another idea would be, um, e just looking at something. So another idea I have, in terms of
virtual volunteering is really you know, that thinking through that the staff at these organizations are being test, but there’s been a lot of cutbacks. We’re hearing that, you know, staff have been reduced quite a bit at nonprofits just to stay afloat. And so ah, lot of staff that these organizations are taking on task that they may not feel qualified for, or even just the amount of work that they have is, you know, increasing on a daily basis. And so you can utilize volunteers to come in and help with, you know, administration. And doing that online is pretty easy. You know, whether that’s entering gifts, um, into a database where it’s cleaning up databases in preparation for an annual campaign or, you know, all the things that used Thio. You know, we’re kind of given that people would dio, but not not necessarily. You know, you may think like, well, I can’t do that because they can’t be in person, so I can’t teach them. But I think set up a meeting with them on Zoom. Show them how to do it, share your screen, give them access to the database or the system and let them help you Really, with that process piece, because ultimately, when we head into 21 it’s gonna be really important that people have a very strong volunteer process in place in order to maximize the benefit for that. For those that group of people
[00:26:36.54] spk_1:
so basically looking Thio use volunteers to fill gaps in expertise that maybe you’ve always had. Or maybe now you
newly have because you have the you have to let let folks go which tragic to start with. But the reality is, the work still needs to get done.
[00:26:43.39] spk_0:
Yes, absolutely. With everybody working at home in the in these companies, there’s actually a lot more access to them

and a lot of ways because they are at home and so they need to jump on, you know, a 30 minutes, um called to hear about a project that they could potentially take on for you as a volunteer. They may have more availability than they would if they were in meetings all day or they were off site, and then they had to come meet you somewhere. So in some ways it has provided a lot more connection that otherwise would have been harder to dio.
[00:27:14.24] spk_1:
We got time for one more.
[00:27:19.74] spk_0:
One more idea. Well, the other thing I was going to say, and I think this kind of gets lost in the mix, and this probably
should have been one of the first things I mentioned, but, you know, I think it’s important is we talk about process and how we you know and developing process so that you’re ready to go for next year. I think setting goals for your volunteers is a really, you know, strong way to approach a volunteer program. Eso even if the if the if you choose this Met, I like smart goals. I think that those air really helpful And I think, you know, just provides volunteers with additional motivation for donating time so you could do that in the form of incentives. Um, you can create opportunities for volunteers toe lead kind of what we were just talking about. Either you’re an ambassador program or even helping out in the case of staff that have been, you know, had to let go and they’ve got to take over. But I think if you’re if you set goals, however, you choose to do them, you know, I think it will give you a benchmark, um, for how to measure whether or not these volunteer programs or successful. They know the larger organizations have that because they have a person dedicated to volunteer management. But these smaller organizations don’t always do that, and I think it’s really critical.
[00:29:02.34] spk_1:
Okay, start with goals. Yeah, that’s right. It wasn’t the first thing you said, but we got there. And by the way, Bob
McAllister’s program was wonder Rama e thought of it. I did not Look it up, wasn’t I Wouldn’t do that while we’re talking e I still need to know who who ran Romper Room. Okay, She’s Elizabeth Elizabeth. Lizzie Neufeld. The company is Strat Labs. They’re at Strat labs dot us and at the Strat Labs. And she is at Lizzie nuf on instagram. You’re not on Twitter, Lizzie?
[00:29:07.49] spk_0:
Not really. Okay, hard. I got two little kids and I got I have to prioritize my social media, which I don’t even like to begin
with.
[00:29:16.21] spk_1:
All right? So people, people will find join instagram. Sounds good. You got You got lots of ups. You got lots of kids
pictures on instagram.
[00:29:23.04] spk_0: Yes. Okay.
[00:29:24.84] spk_1:
Thank you very much for sharing all these ideas. Thanks very much, Lizzy. Thank
[00:29:28.15] spk_0:
you so much pleasure to be here.
[00:33:26.84] spk_1:
Good to have you. Thank you. Time for our last break. Dot drives drives engagement dot drives Relationships that
drives is the simplest donor pipeline fundraising tool. It’s customizable. It’s collaborative. It’s intuitive. If you want to move the needle on your prospect and don’t relationships check out the free demo for listeners. There’s also a free month. You go to the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant. It’s time for Tony’s Take two. Start your plan giving in 2021 with planned giving accelerator. I launched planned giving accelerator because I want to see a bunch. I want to see 1000 or 1500 new plan giving programs in the U. S. And when those each scale up to 100 new gif ts and knowing that the average charitable bequest in the U. S. Is $35,000 right? That’s a minimum of 3.5 billion new plan giving dollars for nonprofits. That’s what I want to do in planned giving accelerator. How are we going to do it together? We’re gonna get your program started in 2021. I’m gonna have live trainings. Of course they’ll be recorded. So if you can’t make the live naturally, we’re gonna do ask me anything sessions in small groups, I’m gonna have an exclusive podcast, not tony-martignetti non profit radio. That’s a fabulous podcast. We’ll have Justus fabulous of podcast, but it will be exclusively for members of the accelerator, just like the trainings. And they ask me anything sessions and the Facebook community that we’re gonna have. So there’s gonna be networking and learning from others who are in the community as well. That’s plan giving, accelerator. We’re gonna get your plan giving started in 2021. Like get this off your to do list. Do it together. I’m going to teach you everything I know about how to start and

grow your plan giving program. I’ve been doing this since 1997. Starting plan, giving programs, consulting in it since 2003. But since the very beginning, that’s all I do. At first, I was a frontline fundraiser, director of planned giving throughout my 23 years in planned giving. That’s all I’ve done start programs. So I know how to do it. They’re successful. Programs that I’ve worked with have raised over $100 million. You’re not going to get $100 million at least not in the first year. But I have a long record doing this with startup programs. I know how to get it started for you. I know what to do in the beginning so that in 35 10 years from now you’ve got the plan giving program you want. It’s all that planned giving accelerator dot com First class starts in January. Check it out. Join on def. Not even for the organization. You know, for your non profit forgetting that program started, think about it as to professional development. If you don’t know much about planned giving or anything about planned giving, consider it professional development. You’re gonna learn you’re gonna learn how to start a program. You learn the basics of planned giving so you can expand your career. A ZX well again. Planned giving accelerator dot com Check it out. Any questions? You can contact me through that page. Take a look. Plan giving accelerator that is tony. Stick to We’ve got a single butt cheek of time left. Here is artists Sunday. It’s a pleasure to welcome Chris Sherman to non profit radio. He’s founder of Artists Sunday. The Oranges at Artists Sunday, calm and at artists Sunday. Chris is at C V. Sherman. Chris Sherman. Welcome to non profit radio.
[00:33:29.24] spk_2:
Thank you, Tony. Good to be here.
[00:33:33.24] spk_1:
Pleasure. Good to have you. Let’s start with the obvious question. What is artists Sunday
[00:33:59.94] spk_2:
In a very good question, it is. So it’s essentially think of Black Friday or small business Saturday. But for the arts so
small business Saturday is the Saturday after Thanksgiving, black Friday and Friday after Thanksgiving. Artist Sunday is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and the whole idea is to shop with artists and shop for something hand made on that day. Something handmade, uh, all kinds of art. So your traditional heart argued, Hang on the wall, something you put on your bookshelf to something you wear something that you take with you a wide variety of art. It is available through artist Sunday on artists from across the country.
[00:34:17.64] spk_1:
Okay, eso as the Sunday after Thanksgiving, where you have you have a lot of people traveling that day. So are you.
Are you among the travel advisers saying, Don’t travel on Sunday either go Saturday or Monday
[00:34:55.52] spk_2:
because that is that that is the one drawback to that particular Sunday. Actually, what we’re saying is we’re using
Sunday is the anchor. It’s not necessarily the day you have to shut up. You can’t certainly, and there will be certain promotions that are going on from artists and our agencies across the country. But just like Black Friday is not on Friday any longer. Artist Sunday is really just an anchor, so the idea is for you to shop with artists sometime during that time period for the holidays.
[00:35:05.14] spk_1:
Have you used giving Tuesday as, ah, model,
[00:35:10.04] spk_2:
giving Tuesday and small business Saturday. I’ve looked pretty much in our models for this process, and what we’re
doing is we’re saying it’s free to artists to participate, given the tool kit. Looks like you get if you were, you know, giving Tuesday or small business Saturday. And so it’s free to the artists and it’s free to nonprofits that support artists.
[00:35:31.44] spk_1:
Okay, good. I was just gonna ask about organizations joining as well.
[00:35:36.24] spk_2:
Exactly. So organizations are invited to join across the country. We’ve got organizations that are participating with
more joining every day. Those could be art district’s could be cities. Could be counties could be states. Could the chambers of commerce could be private organizations, non profits that support the arts in some way, shape or form anything from churches. Thio associations are invited to join and promote this to their artists and get their artists involved. And they get this tool kit as well that they can s so it’s really kind of a turnkey solution. You basically give them a tool kit to help them market, help them work with their artists to get them out there in public exposure. And then we do a national. We’re doing a national PR campaign to to tell consumers about this as well.
[00:36:39.37] spk_1:

Now you’re also competing. Besides travel, you’re competing with God. This is This is our day of is a day of rest for a lot of people. That’s true. What do you say to the? Okay. Okay. You have an answer. I know you have an answer. Uh, okay. Competing with God is a big, you know. That’s a big deal.
[00:36:46.73] spk_2:
I don’t know if we’re competing with God. We’re working.
[00:36:49.40] spk_1:
God. Okay. He’s Is he blessed this He’s giving you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, you’ve got God on your side.
Then you’re not competing at all. He’s in a field. God’s an affiliate member.
[00:37:00.97] spk_2: That’s true. He’s a partner.
[00:37:10.53] spk_1:
Okay? He listed should be listed among your partners. Yes, alongside God. I saw a lot of government agencies or
agencies or I don’t know how you would agencies. I get a counties, counties. I saw a couple of states I think to
[00:37:51.73] spk_2:
right. We’ve got, I think, 10 or 11 states now with regards to government agencies. I mean, there are 4000 art district
according to the national damage for the arts on. And, you know, we’re working with as many of those as possible signing. There’s many because as possible to join us. This is obviously the first year. But the whole idea is to have this take on a life of its own and become, you know, a Christmas Sorry Thanksgiving holiday tradition. Are
[00:37:51.87] spk_1:
you an artist? Is that what created?
[00:38:27.62] spk_2:
Yeah, Yeah, came to mind as last year on Artist Sunday, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I saw a boost in sales and
thought, Wait a minute. This is kind of curious. There should be a day for artists for this kind of stuff, you know? So so that’s really kind of how the idea came about. And in addition to being a photographer, I’m also an entrepreneur, so I’m gonna kind of brought the two together, bringing my photography and the entrepreneurial experience Thio create the other Sunday. Is
[00:38:27.78] spk_1:
there a space in here for performing artists?
[00:38:30.72] spk_2:
Sure. Certainly so. Experiential artists performing artists, however you might determine them, uh, this year with that
maybe kind of difficult for them Thio, you know, in the theaters being closed in that type of thing. But certainly for musicians being able to sell their work, whether it’s a downloader CD if people still buy CDs that cut, uh, can certainly participate as well as visual.
[00:38:54.00] spk_1:
Okay, something outdoors is conceivable, Uh, whether if the weather permits in November, if you’re in the Southern
tier, it could be an outdoor performance.
[00:39:04.52] spk_2:
Exactly. And we actually have actually have a group with a traveling piano. I don’t know the name there somewhere out
of the West Coast, but they’ll do outdoor performances and a piano on a flat bed or something like that. And you know, the commune with nature and God and, uh, music.
[00:39:28.82] spk_1:
So folks who are interested they should go to artists sunday dot com
[00:39:52.32] spk_2:
Correct? Yep, we’ve got over 1000 participants. We’ve got 930 some artists. We’ve got 188 nonprofit organizations
across the country that are participating in war, signing up every day and you know we hope to have several 1000 by by artist Sunday by Thanksgiving time frame
[00:40:38.11] spk_1:
All right, well, hope non profit radio audience helps you hope listeners. Check it out. Artist. Sunday Thank You, Chris

artists sunday dot com and at artists Sunday, and Chris is at C. V. Sherman. Chris Sherman. Thanks very much And good luck. I hope you get those thousands thousands next week. Mommy lied to God with Carlos Mestas were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo and by dot drives raise more money, changed more lives tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant for a free demo and a free month. Our creative producer is clear, Meyerhoff shows social Media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our Web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Here with me next week for non profit radio, big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for December 9, 2016: Leveraging Expert Or Tech Volunteers & 7 IT Security Pitfalls

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Steve Heye, Erin Dieterich, & Princessa Bourelly: Leveraging Expert Or Tech Volunteers

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We’ve got what you need to know about managing volunteers with special expertise. Where do you find them? What about screening and scoping? Our panel is Steve Heye and Erin Dieterich from NetSuite and Princessa Bourelly from Juma Ventures. (Recorded at the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference)

 

 

 

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Okay. Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on the aptly named host we have a listener of the week, young non-profit professionals network of milwaukee hello, milwaukee! They tweeted learning about non-profit excellence listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio end quote excellence love that thank you so much for that. Plus they’re very loyal re tweeters. Thanks for that also, i’m glad you found us. Thanks so much for listening for loving non-profit radio. I’m glad we’re helping your important work. Young non-profit professionals network of milwaukee they’re at and why p n m e congratulations on being our listener of the week. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with bracket nathalia if i had to speak the words you missed today’s show leveraging expert or tech volunteers we’ve got what you need to know about managing volunteers with special expertise. Where do you find them? What about screening and scoping their work? Our panel is steve hi and aaron dietrich from net sweet and princessa bourelly from juma ventures that was recorded at the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference. Are you signed up for twenty seventeen? You? Need to and seven security pitfalls not sexy but very important leon wilson from the cleveland foundation and dan revis from idealware walk you through bad habits that you need to change so you don’t put your precious data at risk. That’s also from the twenty sixteen and tc. Sign it for twenty seventeen on today’s. Tony, take two your trump challenge reduction director’s cut. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we be spelling dot com here is leveraging expert or tech volunteers from the twenty sixteen and tc. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen auntie si non-profit technology conference in san jose, california. This is also part of ntcdinosaur stations my guests now are steve, hi, aaron dietrich and princessa bourelly let’s meet them. They’re seminar topic is leveraging expert or technical volunteers. Steve is solution consultant for net suite, and next to him is erin aaron dietrich, director of corporate citizenship, and princessa bourelly director of finance at juma ventures. Steve aaron princessa welcome, thank you. You’re very welcome welcome to non-profit radio. Just indulge me for a moment while i highlight our swag item for this interview, which is from black mesh. Everything is in black there’s. A very high gloss notebook with a calendar at the end. And we have a usb drive. Flash driver should tell you flash drive and, uh, upend your basic basic pen. And this goes into our are you our swag pile for the day, which is right here. Awesome. Third for the for the people, for our listeners. Just have audio. Okay. There’s a difference. Hyre let’s. Steve, you explain it off off. Mike let’s, have you explain now, there’s a difference between using experts who are technical and non-technical help us with an overview of this? Sure. So the way we first started, you know, talking about this was, you know, we all have volunteers. We all understand how to work with them when we all have ideas. Part of matthew’s. Um but there is a very fundamental difference between using somebody that just wants to come in for a single day and do a single task versus somebody that has ah, very skill. A very big skillsets and indoors and expert. So you know, with probono the key is they’re coming in and they do legal work for their living, or they do finance work for their living, and they come or technology for their living, and then they want to do that for you, but do it for free. So that kind of volunteer requires a very different relationship with them because you’re allowing them to do work that will have dramatic impact on your organization and is much more critical that you understand what they’re going to be doing, how you’re going to use them and build a relationship with them. All right, erin, is it essential that these technical volunteers be supervised by other people who are technically inclined or who are technicians? So i would say it’s very important that they’re supervised the level of technology knowledge that the person who supervises has will differ at different organizations. And i think the most important thing is just that whoever’s managing thie non-profit ah project and whoever’s, the lead volunteered that they’re on the same page about what the project’s going to be, so as long as they can speak the same language and that’s probably the right skill level. But if you have a volunteer who’s very, very skilled and is speaking a language that you just don’t understand, as they described a project that projects probably not going to go well until you find somebody on your side who can speak the same language and understand what you’re getting involved in, ok, so at least that level of understanding. Okay, now princessa you’re using technical volunteers at juma ventures, we are currently using the probono through net sweet this’s a multi year and the project is going really well, and it is i have been a great experience and opportunity for juma as well as the net sweet probono to come in and offer their experience in what capacity are using technical volunteers, so they are helping us now set up our dash schwartz within the net sweet system, tio take an excel spreadsheet and be able to pull that same information out of net sweet without having to pull all of these different areas together. So it’s going to be sort of easier for us to manage to maintain. So we use their technology expertise to actually do the set up, and i managed the dashboards as well, okay. And do you have some lessons learned to share? Not necessarily. Right now, way. Have another twenty minutes together. But there’s some lessons learned about using technical volunteers. The biggest lesson that i shared today would be for us to be prepared on the non-profit side. Okay, little better preparation. So all right, well, we’ll get there. We’ll get a chance. Talk about that. Andi okay, you have some advice on finding technical volunteers. Erin, you want to start with there, start start stuff. They’re sure one of the things that we shared today in our session was that it’s important to look at who as a non-profit you’re already connected, teo. So you look at who is already, you know, from the corporate side making donations who perhaps is already a partner and look at what their core competencies are as an organization, and see if there is an alignment between their core competencies and what you need help with. If there is, it might be very easy. Next step to go back to them and say, hey, we love working with you, here’s something that were really struggling with do you think that this is something? Your team would wantto look at probono and start the relationship that way. In addition to looking at your corporate kind of connections, there are a lot of really awesome sites out there that can help you find an individual technical volunteer. So we shared a list of resource is today, but among them is the taproot foundation. Catch afire community core volunteermatch linked in latto from empower there’s a bunch community corps for man, power and power and power. Okay, where you could get you could go on there and essentially say, you know, we’ve scoped out this it’s a challenge that organizations having. Perhaps we need a new website and you can go and find volunteers who are taking their personal time after their job to to do that project for you. Okay, i’ve had the catch a fire ceo on rachel chong. Yeah, it was great a couple years, but yes, very true. Okay, is a screening is going to be important eyes? Okay, wait. So we talked a little about finding now we’ve got a prospect pool of whether it’s from real time relationships and partnerships or somewhere we found online screening. We re interview them. Right? I mean, i would think same way you’re interviewing. Ah hyre yeah, so there’s a couple, it varies a little bit. First, the amount of screening, the amount of effort that you’re going to put into the screening process depends on what the type of project that they’re going to be working on. So based on the level of impact of the project was going tohave and the risk that’s involved in this project, you’re going to want a little varying level of screening. So if it’s if it’s a project where they are like princessa talked about, they’re going to be in your financial system. They’re going to be looking at, you know, helping you, you know, adjust you although or if it’s a legal probono where your they’re reviewing contracts or they’re doing that, you’re gonna want to ah, ah, lot more screening a hell of a lot. A proprietary information, proprietary and potentially damaging. Yeah. So you want to make sure it fits in the wrong hands, right? So what do some of those, you know, nondisclosure agreement might be in place or, you know, on actual application, ask him who they worked with before. Do some background checks if it’s needed, but if it’s a vendor that you already have a long term relationship, you’re a customer with them and, you know, maybe then the barriers drop a little bit because you’ve already had a long letter longer relationship with that company and because you’re paying them and they have, you know, are already a setup established program is a little bit different on the type of screening you would do, or if you’re just having somebody build a little widget on your website, that isn’t like mission critical, then you’re screening might be a little lower because it’s it’s not like mission critical it’s not going to blow up the whole world, your world, your mission world and there isn’t a finance proprietary data right involved, but still there still going into your yeah, you still have to ensure that they have a certain level of technical expertise because they are going into the back end of your system, your coding and yeah, so i mean, asking could mess things up, right? Asking for examples of work they’ve done before who they worked with or even asking for their resume or having a full out a sample application there’s a number of things you could do just to get some simple information about them. Okay? Yeah, right to screen him. Princessa any any advice lessons learned on screening volunteers? So going through net sweet, we didn’t have to do the screening. We just we applied we the hardest part is narrowing down from this, you know, these grand scheme of ideas that we need internally narrowing that down for the next week team to then matches teo prose that could come in and have the availability to sort of target our project. Okay, so you potentially could have used more volunteers? Is that what you mean? T to other work for you? The beauty of net suite is that they offer it multiple times per year. So even though we didn’t get to address all of the projects there is, there is a possibility that we could get to it. Okay, okay, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Dahna the errand and steve are both nodding. So i guess you have a shot at this. All right? So instead of talking around, this remains will say, well, let’s, just have aaron, why did you describe the net sweet volunteer technical volunteer program? How this works? Sure so and nets sweet. We donate our software platform to non-profits and social enterprises, and once they start using that platform, they are eligible to apply for probono support from our global employee workforce every quarter, so at the beginning of each quarter and application goes out to non-profits they say, here are the things i need help with. And then internally at the company, we send out an email to all of our employees and say, hey, hear the things that non-profits need help with on the platform. We need your technical skills if you want to get involved, let us know, and then our team actually does the matchmaking. So were the screeners in that instance, we look at all the employees, backgrounds, we look at where they work, what time zone they’re on, what their expertise is and we put together typically teams of two to four employees who we think have the right skills to get that project done. That’s been requested. Okay. How many? How many people on your team princessa there? Ford for max. You got the mac. Okay, now, doesn’t that sweet? Havea probono requirement part of employment is you’ll spend weeks or ten percent of your time or something. Is there anything like that? So, it’s not a requirement, but all of our employees are allowed to spend twenty hours a quarter on a project probono when they get matched up so they could, you know, work it out with their manager that they apply and take on a project every single quarter of the year. But it’s not a requirement. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. Uh, all right. So after screening let’s, see where should we wish we go on starting to manage? We’ve nothing scope. Hoping is that we are right now on twenty martignetti non-profit radio. I have george in jail now think if this was a discussion on on hiking in the in the adirondacks, scoping, you know, would probably be pretty simple thing, understand? But in this conversation, i don’t know what scoping is. So get yourself out of jail, what is scoping? So i think the key teo a big differentiator between using an expert or technical volunteer is they will need something that tells them exactly the challenge you’re having, what you’re hoping to solve and how you want, ok, scope of the project so it’s a scope of the project, meaning that you’re going to just both sit down with a document and agree on what are the what is the challenge? We’re trying to solve one of the goals of the project and then talk through that together to figure out what the actual outcome will be. So you know it usually it starts way too big, and then you scale down into something that’s actually accomplish because that’s, one of the channels we have with expert could also employees only have up to twenty hours per quarter, right? And that zoho almost all probono helped that you get will have some sort of ah, limitation to how much help you’ll get and how long the project can last. So the real key to using a technical volunteer is having a chunk of work. That’s, containable, it’s, describable attainable and it’s something that you can easily pass to someone and have them understand. Princessa was this hard? Teo, define the scope. It was hard to narrow down internal given. I mean, you said there were other things get done, and maybe this project was even bigger than it. It could reasonably be i think i shot for the moon, ok? And they had to bring me back down. All right, so i basically put out our, you know, our primary concerns. They chose a a project that they could actually accomplish within the twenty hours. And so the difficult part is on my end, making sure that i’m providing them with the proper information to make the project six successful. Okay. Yeah. You clearly have responsibilities. Yes, a swell as they do. Okay. Okay. All right. So scoping. Yes, of course. We what do we want to see if the out at the end of this whether you know again, this supplies beyond that’s that’s sweet program, but, uh, you gotta have a scope document. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. It’s hopeful about both sides. Not just for the non-profit, but also for the, you know, the probono person because the probono in person and it knows what’s expected of them. And then is mohr able to know if their skills is the right skills and if they’re able to actually achieve it, or to start to understand if it’s even impossible within the amount of time that they’re given to do it? Okay, and that they have to do to donate. Okay, all right, what comes at right now? Snack it’s, savoury snacks are being served and the announcement is being made. That is not theirs, not god. Not on. I’m diffident, it’s. Just somebody who knows that the savoury snacks are being served. That’s awesome that’s extension of a sense of his omnipotence. Chocolate snacks, including big urns of chocolate milk. Here. Then i see which i don’t know about the rest, but i kind of like talking, but it was weird to see a milk in an urn and you don’t see that very clear that they were armed with a silver top. It looks like a three gallons, three or four gallon earned. It looks like to me. Yeah, and with a little with, you know spigot on it. Okay. Okay. After scoping working with our technical volunteers. Aaron, what comes? Next what i’m really getting into the meat and potatoes of getting the project done and, you know, something that’s important to think about there is project management because sometimes you’ll get a really excited set of volunteers. And if there’s not somebody who’s responsible for keeping the project on track, as with any project you’d work on probono or not, you know, khun, go kind of off the rails or can get delayed, or people can kind of wander away, and it doesn’t get accomplished on the time that you really had set aside for it. So focusing, having that timeline, having a project manager who’s going to lead everybody through the process is really critical. But now we are working with volunteers. So where do you draw the line between? You know, team, this is you’re too slow and okay, team i understand. We understand who will will extend the timeline. You are volunteers and we don’t want to lose you because we’re twenty five percent of the way into this now, right? How did we manage that? Well, it’s a collaboration. So i think that’s one of the most important things about using technical volunteers is that it’s not like you’re saying i want this project done, go do it and let me know when it’s done it’s that you are saying, i’m going to work with you and we’re going to get this project done together, so if it starts getting delayed because of your timeline or their timeline, you’re kind of in that together and you can re adjust expectations vs if you just kind of set it and forget it, then you have no idea what’s going on on the scenes, but if it’s a true collaboration, then you’re both coming to the table. You’re both taking on work in order to get this delivered and the project’s going to be something that really resonates with your organization and that you can continue using for a long time if you were part of the process versus if non-profit volunteered just came in. Did something said, here you go and then left. You might not know how to use that thing in the future, okay? I don’t know, princess is i don’t want to put you on the spot and say that sweet volunteers volunteermatch please there, there, there, there, over budget there, behind time. E, you want to you want to get more out of this so you don’t know anything you want to add to this part of the project management internally, we had to make sure that we were prepared for our meetings, okay? You know, you have periodic meetings face-to-face orwell, skype or whatever virtual virtual once a week, and prior to that meeting on the non-profit side, we had to be prepared in order to get the best benefit from the professionals on get their insight in their feedback. Ok, what do you want to say about preparation? You got to get the right people collaborating internally. So internally we have a great team, you know, working with the accounting team and then also communicating that information to the leadership team for their feedback, and they’re circling back to net sweet just to make sure that they know that things are working that were, you know, also to make sure that we’re on track and to make sure that we’re on pretty much on track to complete the project. Okay, okay, i should have asked you earlier. What is juma ventures work? So junior ventures works too. They’re they’re fighting. The poverty, the poverty cycle by providing education and financial literacy to youth. And they employ the use at the ballpark. Ballpark venues around the area and what’s your area. Where are you? We are end. We’re here in san jose. We’re in san francisco. Where in nor new orleans. We have new york. Venue way are growing. Yes. Yeah. Your central. You’re west. Your east? Yes. Nothing north. The chicago. Detroit? Not yet. Okay, but probably definitely on the on the horizon. Okay. Okay. What’s, the budget there, annual budget. The annual budget is eight million. Yeah. Okay. Now, some people might think, why a million dollar budget? Why do they need probono? How come they couldn’t pay for the help that they need? So with non-profits we use most of that that money to sort of support the mission. And it is it is difficult to be able to provide income for this level of professional, you know, services? Yeah. You’re getting roughly eighty hours of technical help. Which several hundred dollars an hour. I imagine if you had to go out and purchase it. Yes. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Uh, all right. Project management. That seems like a pretty broad topic is there more we could say about strategies for project manager? Upleaf i think the key there is just that collaboration and just trying to have regular scheduled meetings and you even having a regular format to that regular scheduled meeting like, we’re going to start the meeting and we’re going to look at the goal we meet the goal help along. Are we on the timeline? I know there’s not much else to say about the project management, except that it shouldn’t be a, um, attack or, you know, like we didn’t meet the deadline or, you know, managing it that way as much as trying to ensure the both sides are happy with the progress, but i’d say the other big key with that project management that isn’t talked about enough is making sure that the non-profit is in er the probono person is seeing their impact and seeing the progress that is being made and understanding how it is really helpful to the non-profit so the non-profit has sort of has a responsibility to keep sharing back to the volunteer of how appreciative they are from the help and the outcome that it’s going to do and what it’s going to allow that non-profit to do, they couldn’t do without that help. And just because the energy of a probono khun feed over time especially the project, is like three months or, you know that it’s time, you know, when they’re when they first start, they’re not they’re excited, they’re energetic, but then when they get into the weeds and then the problems start or they hit a hiccup part of that project management is keeping that person engaged and excited and reassured. Yeah, there’s value there’s a number of ways to do that of, you know, either to recognition or doing many celebrations of metoo hitting a milestone or doing, you know, small thank you says you go, i think that’s a big part of that project management. Okay, princessa you wantto share what what you’re doing around, sharing the value and encouraging the the probono volunteers? I don’t think i’ve done anything specific, but i think what goes a long way is the fact that they can see that their work is being utilized ized and actually brings value to the organization. How do they see that they don’t see that? During them during the project management phase, so they don’t see it until abila project is finished, right? But during the process, you know the fact that we’re not coming back with a lot of changes, a lot of iterations, you know, a lot of going over the time schedule in the time frame, i think it’s it’s sort of positive reinforcement tio let them know that things are going smoothly and according to plan and will be seen to her through fruition, your work is appreciated, yes, and i think the other thing that she’s maybe down playing a little bit is that she is able princessa did talk about how she was able to share that back-up with our leadership team, and i know that the probono volunteers are seeing the fact that there’s, an investment from the leadership team there’s an engagement through the team and their energy is staying up and excited about it so that just, you know, it plays into it, it doesn’t have to be in actually like a gift or anything like that. It’s just that continued conversation, okay? And i think as the volunteers get the exposure of understanding more and more of what you’re non-profit does they take away a real pride of what they’ve helped you achieve, even if what they were building is, you know, a small widget for your website, they are now kind of feeling a part of the team, and i love when i, you know, ask employees who have done probono projects hey, what kind of a project did you d’oh? What was the organization? And they automatically become the spokesperson for the organization they tell you about they light up there like, oh, and you’re now i donate to them or oh, i just went into the five k run for them and there’s so much more engaged now than they were before, and they kind of feel like they have a real responsibility for that organization because they took on actual technical work for them. That’s wonderful. All right, all right. Are we at project completion? Now? We have. We have a couple minutes left together. We’re okay. Are you anxious to get out of here? I don’t know. I mean, the project. I got to go somewhere way. Chocolate milk. You’re looking really good there in the middle. You can’t leave. Until steve, steve are princessa does okay, what? We’re project completion. Yeah, so i think the big project completion to me then is where we ended our presentation was talking about connecting it back to the mission, so then, you know, the outcome was a great great we created this financial dashboard, but i think taking a minute there and just saying, yeah, you just created a finding dashboard, but now what you’ve done is you’ve eliminated hours of work that i was doing every week in a manual spreadsheet that now i can really spend time analyzing that data and actually changed the way my organization works based on this data and just taking time to celebrate that, connecting it back to the overall goal and of inviting leadership, maybe to come in and talk to thank the volunteers. That could be a real way to wrap up and close the projects that leadership leadership touch again. Yeah, valuable aaron, anything. You know, i think revisiting the project maybe five, six months out is also really important for the volunteers just to hear from you about hey, you know, for six months now, we’ve been using these new dashboards. And here’s, what we’ve seen that’s happened at the organization, i had a probono project that some colleagues were working on a few years ago, where they helped build a social media strategy for a non-profit and a year later, the non-profit came back to them and said, hey, you know, because of that strategy that you helped us build, we want to grant to get a full time social media person on the other hand, it’s like gravel or the amazing, amazing stories, but had that non-profit not come back to the volunteers a year out and told them that they would have never known that we’ve just been happy about the project, but now they felt real prime glee that’s, magnificent. Princessa is your project finished? It is one week away from ove r being done there. Go deliver balls have been sent to us, the dashboards are set up, the reports are active, and it is now on me to actually play around with them and make sure that they’re functioning properly and any changes or anything like that, we would have to communicate back to the team, but we’re pretty close to signing off on that. Okay. This’s is exciting. Time was cool and, uh, what’s planned for the for the for the mark. The occasion of the completion dahna we hadn’t thought that far. That’s only you only got a week left. I got to get to ceo onboard is gonna be some something dramatic. Okay. Okay. Uh, all right. This is wonderful. Lots of great ideas are durney project management tools. Online tools that you you recommend that you like. If not, you could say no, but i think the project management for me, for this kind of a project, it depends on the severity or the scope of the project. But i think keeping it simple, askey, let’s say scope, not severity also. Very. Yeah. Yeah. E i think keeping the tool is simple. A za project. So you know, if it is something something as simple as a google doc just having a quick outline, they’re keeping your mini me meeting minutes. They’re keeping, you know, the record of what happened and what got done. You could do something more complicated now, but i don’t think it really needs to be anything more. Okay. All right. Should we wrap it up there? Hands alright, excellent, great ideas, lovett and that was leveraging expert or technical volunteers with steve hi solution consultant at net sweet also aaron dietrich, director of corporate citizenship at that sweet and princess bourelly director of finance for juma ventures steve princessa thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference thank you for being with us. Seven security pitfalls coming up first pursuant, they have a new content paper for you, it’s free and easy to get overcoming the major donor dilemma. How to identify and engage new major donors and also optimized your cultivation process. You’ll find this paper at pursuing dot com, and we’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising are you kicking off millennial engagement in twenty seventeen? You can do it with stand up comedy, live music, dancing and raising money. Check out the video at we b e spelling dot com now, tony steak too you’re trump challenge re ducks director’s cut it’s still up it’s the reduction of the reduction check out to lula, the jack russell terrier. I’m telling you she has great insights into donald trump’s. Potential impact on non-profits and i have minor contributions. Check out the video. The director’s cut. The video is at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s take two. We got to live listener love. I would do it quickly. And then, of course, the affiliate affections of podcast pleasantries. If you’re listening live love out to you you know who you are you know where you are. Thank you so much for being with me. Podcast pleasantries i still got to check you know i keep saying way we’ve been spiking twelve thousand on some shows. However many there are is way over ten thousand could be his money is twelve or thirteen thousand pleasantries to you, our podcast listeners and the affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners nationwide, you thought of anything to say throughout the country, but i nationwide affections to you. Let your station know thatyou listen, i’d be grateful for that. Thanks so much for being with us. Here are leon wilson and dan revis from the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference seven security pitfalls welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference. We’re in san jose, california, at the conference convention center in san jose. My guest now are leon wilson and dan revis. Leon is chief technology and information officer at the cleveland foundation. And he’s sitting right next to me. And dan revis is managing writer for idealware. Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you. Welcome to non-profit radio. Pleasure to have you. Yeah, a pleasure being here. Your session is seven. Highly risky habits of small to midsize non-profits security pitfalls. That’s great. Leon let’s. Start with you. Why? Why are non-profits just not paying enough attention, teo. Security? Well, a lot of in the whole emphasis behind presentation was just my travels over the last four years of working with small and midsized non-profits and constantly seeing the same challenges that we’re dealing with. Some of it is just naive nous ignorance, complacency, poor slumming that it really doesn’t impact them until it does impact them. So we felt that this session was critically important to just remind them of some of the simple, basic and black lean tackling things. Okay, we’re trying to avoid crises here. Is that right there? That’s? Right? Dahna i mean, how bad can it be? Security, dan, don’t you have an actual example of or just making hypothetical, but how bad could it be? Well, yeah, i don’t have examples. We worked on a report recently where we talked teo security experts and sort of learned from them what are the things that non-profits they’re dealing with? And we found that, you know, non-profits are in an interesting space, as we all know, low budgets, very little time security often gets overlooked, gets neglected, it’s not particularly sexy, no it’s, sort of the vegetables, you know, the non-profit world. We were surprised by how many people came to our session because the reality is it’s the last thing you really want to do, but i think people have seen enough of the data breaches they’ve seen enough of the issues come out like weekly there’s, there’s, data breaches and that’s on the commercial side where they presumably have so much more money toe to throw with us. Absolutely on dh that’s where we see so much of trouble. Yeah, all right arika okay, i mean, it’s pretty simple stuff, i mean, the way you do, i don’t mean the topic metoo details of it, the way you’ve organized seven highly risky habits. Right. So all right, you know, you shouldn’t be sleeping with a bad partner. What? All right, why don’t you start us off? Well, leon, but you bring up anything point, they were all very common sense things that are happening. What we want to do is share with them if you’re going to do these things, but we wanted to educate you on how you can mitigate the risk. For example, one of the first things we talked about wass bring allowing people to use personal computers in the workplace. We know it’s going to happen because for a lot of non-profits it’s the way that they can save money because you don’t have to worry about purchasing a computer for someone. But keep in mind that you have toe put some provisions around that, like making sure that they have the most up to date somewhere running on that computer, making sure they have anti virus running on that computer, otherwise and who’s had who who else has access to the computer when they’re at their homes, their family members, friends, other type of disaster. Exactly. So we know it’s gonna happen. And that’s why we said that? We’re not telling you something that you don’t already know, but what we do want to do is provide you with some wisdoms and some thoughts as far as how can you mitigate, prevent or least contains some of the challenges that you’re going to be dealing with that so that’s a good example right there. Okay, so way need to have policies, i presume they’re absolutely around the use of the personal technology in the workplace. What are some of these policies? Well, i mean, just having a policy thinking ahead of time, what should we allow and what should we not? You know, that’s probably the first most important thing just to think it through. So you’re not doing that at hawk way or that people aren’t sort of making it up as they go along. But then from there, you know, some of the things we talked about our session things that you already know you need anti virus software, you need to make sure it was on your phone that your aps are not downloading something malicious. That’s pulling data from your phone, you know, there they’re things that you have probably all heard somewhere in. Your life. But, you know, in the work context, we sort of forget that, you know, we assume that there’s someone on the and who’s taking care of everything and we forget once we bring it home, you know, it’s up to us now, and so if you as leader of your organization, aren’t making sure your employees, they’re doing those things, they’re helping them do those things, there’s a lot of risk in that we did it, we did it really a straw man pole where we asked a lot of people had about forty or fifty people in our session, and we ask him how many of you have any virus software on your cell phone? I was expecting to see about release half only about maybe six people raise your hands, and i don’t even think most people know that that exists. There you go. So now wear allowing folks to share to sync up their email, sync up their email that context also get access to certain files off their mobile devices, because, again, it’s how we operated these at these days, and it works for a lot of us, but what happens when that smart? Phone gets stolen, lost or if you’re constantly upgrading, you’re a smart phone and you don’t properly clean out here clean out your smartphone well, if you don’t have password protection and also, if you’re not using anti virus software on their, imagine how others can get out that information. Where are we even gonna find auntie? But where do we start to look for anti virus software for our phone? It’s right out there? I mean, if you go out to the iphone store and just search for any virus software, if you go to the google play store and search for anti virus software, it is out there it’s just again. It’s not sexy, it’s, not something you’re downloading, usually downloading games and absent things that nature, you’re not down lee office productivity, our office, productivity, aps as well as in the especially for android phones because they’re not as police. The acts that are not a police there’s a lot of malicious acts that are out there, so you’re downloading what you might think. It’s a free game, the software but it is designed to then go after your contacts, your emails and other type of other types of information that could end work its way into your organization. Leon let’s, stay with you. How did we enforce these policies that both are saying are important on the in this? This this one on the personal technology side? How do we make sure that people are doing with their equipment what we’re asking them to do if they want to use it in the workplace? Great question. And that question came up a couple of times in our talk. Part of it is human police enemy some of it you can, you can you can afford through technology through right, so certain kind of tools, but sometimes it’s just about writing that policy in place, right creating a b y o d policy and and require all your staff members to comply with that were to sign off and understand a lot of his education, and then try to do sometimes basic auditing and checking with people’s equipment. Verify that they have this, that they have, that they’re compliant with those policies. So if you have the luxury of adapting technologies to enforce those rules and some of them are very commonplace with microsoft exchange and often sixty five you could do some of those things, but you you can’t it cost you nothing to write a policy, to put it in place forces, but enforcement. So there is actual verification. We actually going to look at their device and see that they’ve got on it what we are asking them to put. Well, imagine if you’re working for social services organization and you have health and human services information on there that information get lost, would you would you rather not go after and once a year check and verify that they are in compliance with that as opposed to falling prey to a hip, a compliance issue? Okay, okay, then let’s move on to number two are you know what a second? Why don’t mean necessarily in sequence, but what’s another one out of the seven? You know, another one that i think falls in line with it’s a bad habit that people just aren’t really necessarily very aware of is they’re. They’re not always very discerning about which cloud platforms they’re using so often people wanting his drop box. It’s easy. They probably have a personal account already and so, you know, you jump. On dropbox and you’re putting your data files from your organization on there, the reality is that consumer based called services just aren’t as secure as ones that air oriented, more towards business and enterprise type. I’m called service, so you know, people think they’re doing fine, they think they’re doing good, they trust drop box, but they don’t really understand there is a difference between using that and a more business orian commercial. What were some of the more? What are some of the commercial ones? Leon leon for-profit says that well, i mean what again, what we’re talking about rather than using the dropbox to personal version used to run blocks for business or dog bites for team rather than using dahna g dr usedto get a partial use g driver’s part of blue collapse whether than using microsoft one dr that you get for free if you haven’t outlook dot com account, use it as a part of one dr for business on the part of your opposite sixty five you have greater securities, the i t department or whoever is your tech support provider has greater control over containing who has access to that information. Plus you can retrieve that information more efficiently. Imagine it wanted you using your own personal dropbox account and it’s sink to, like five or six other different devices when you leave that organization. How do we get that information back from your personal rot box account? We don’t basic. There you go. So information’s out door now you’re basically are storing your data and everybody’s home when everybody’s personal device you’re probably not a magic. I don’t know how many people have tried to return. Retrieve a lot of information off a dropbox personal account’s been successful at it. Okay. Okay. So you thank you because you let your name three resource is there on top. Your head. Excellent. Ok. Alright. So safe for use of the cloud of cloud services. Okay, what else we got of our seven? Well, the one thing that we always harp on and people get a chuckle out of it. But we have deal with it is proper password management strong password using stronger passwords and insurance, and requiring that your staff members whether they’re using their personal devices or if they’re using company own devices to use strong passwords and not just using one, two, three, four, five, six or password as your password, but also changing that passed were periodically will do with that that’s still out there, we showed a church, we showed her chart and still one, two, three, four, five, six password no past are still the top passwords being used by most folks. So we again we think that we’re past that, but we’re really not and what we’re what we’re doing in our talk is really just reminding folks and educating them of things that they know, but they just need to be reminded of people. Please have a secure password do not use one, two, three, four, five or password, no path, no pan out used you’ll be, you’ll be, you’ll be better than probably two thirds of users if you just eliminate those three things that i don’t use them. What oppcoll yeah again, you’re right. These things were here, but we’re not doing it exactly when i do it, there should be numbers that should be symbols. It should be a word out of a definition of what a lot of people are talking about. It now is maybe using phrases so you can’t you can’t assume you can’t you can’t expect your staff member to come up with a cryptic pass where like a b capital, jay lorts see one, two, three oh, the ampersand sign and all that sort of stuff, but they could come up with a phrase always use the example of it. He used big mac fries but capitalized, obey in the a m and neck and then using empress stand for the a m a that is going to be far harder to increase, to break to crack, then some some more simple password, but you’ll remember it. Or maybe a phrase that’s just known to you or your family or your yeah, yeah it’s in your from your grandparent’s something, and then you choose the first couple of letters of each exactly, exactly, and using symbols and numbers and still those things, too, make it somewhat creek critics still, because really, what? What happens? You know you’re you’re lengthening the time it takes to crack your password, you know, if they if they know there’s a with just twenty six characters a through z, they can do that a lot more quickly than if there’s twenty six. Characters plus, you know, ten digits plus cerini of upper case and symbols. You just magnify the difficulty. Yeah, absolutely exponentially. Okay, okay, give us another one again. Would you throw something else out from our from our seven? Yeah. You know, one that is another pretty basic thing. People aren’t necessarily always backing up their data. They they don’t have a plan for back-up. Yeah. Disaster recovery, you know, not just a disaster. Where, say, a server breaks down or, you know, something gets erased, but like real disasters, what happens if you have a flood and you know, your servers get destroyed? That way, you know, a fire, those sorts of situation, actually, at last, year’s auntie si i interviewed. I remember you could you could search listeners if you want to find this one. Her name was dar geever ca. It was all about you, you know that. You know, you know that, you know, dark. It was all about your disaster disaster recovery plan. So that was just one year ago. But first of all, you gotta have a plan. You’re not the airtight may not be hurricane proof, but i have a plan, right, let’s. Get started well, that’s the key thing, and we were saying that a lot of non-profits have become more mature, smart backing up their data. But david, backing up your data is just one part of it. When you talk about disaster recovery, you’re talking about protecting the entire environment. So if your server crash it’s going to take a lot longer to bring that server back-up depending on how you been, how you been poor, proactive, into that recovery, then just restoring the working files, how long is it going to take for you to get the operating system back-up apply altum security patches and all that sort of stuff and depending on the type of non-profit you are, is that ok or not for you to be dahna day a week, two weeks, so when we talk about disaster recovery we’re talking about you got to go beyond just backing up the data, you’ve got to be concerned with the environment as a whole and what is your strength? What is your what if analysis for if this were to occur, when are we going to do? Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation, pop trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m lawrence paige nani, author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. Dar even went into the possibility that some organizations may need off site places to go. Well, you gotta have some place rented or or have a share agreement for when you needed an emergency for physical location. It is it is conceivable me, obviously, going to the cloud has helped out tremendously as far as people who still itjust dorner information in a cloud using google laps ofthis office. Three, sixty five things that nature there, they have access to their working files, and they could still use things like microsoft office or google docks and things that nature. But if you’re trying to get to your donor zsystems and hopefully that’s in a cloud of swell, but there might be still some things that are on that physical server and what happens if that server was to crash or the building that you’re operating out of two is inaccessible or loses power? Yeah, okay, all right. They’re excellent. What else you guys got? Well, the one of things that we also talked about that we want to touch on was about software management. And this is about basically ensuring that when you’re doing software updates, patch updates and things that nature, that you do it in an intelligent matter-ness not every not every update is a good update. A lot of the hackers thes days are going through the adobes, the job of e ems and things of that nature. So you want to be mindful of that? And you want to make sure that if you’re allowing people to download software and do updates on their own, um what? What are your provisions around that they’re actually downloading malicious software. So we talked about again, more policies the potential the locking down the workstations and required an it person or tech support person, too. Basically white list that particular software patch up days before comes down. Because once you do that, then it help out with on the productivity. Okay. Okay. Anything else, dan, you want to add about the suffering management side? No, i think that covers it that way. Okay. Okay. Don’t want to go through these two fast. No that’s. Quite all right. Okay. So feel free to elaborate. Well, well, i will share that one thing that in the office, when we’re talking, we’re going to talk. That thing that came up a lot of security and especially we start talking about cyber security, and they say, well, leon and dan, if you’re telling us we have to be have stronger passwords if we have to be responsible about where we’re storing our data in mohr business, great cloud storage solutions as opposed to consumer grace clouds store solutions, what does that say for cybersecurity were what are your thoughts on cybersecurity? And what we were sharing with them is that we feel that a lot of the cloud stores a lot, a lot of the cloud vendors are doing a decent job as far as doing that. What we need to start looking at when we start talking about password management is looking to some of the clouds cloud password management solutions out there, because now we’re requiring our staff members to remember five or six or seven different passwords because they log into their computer one way they logged into google app susan another password because we were now no longer have single sign on any more, so they were asking questions regarding that and make it, and we were given recommendations on tools like last past and so forth, okay. Let’s not gloss over this. Yeah, yeah. Last last past a cz one of those clouds on password management solutions and there’s two or three others that are out there if you go out there and google them. But what they allow you to do is is almost like a software it’s. Almost like a password vault. You can upload a key and all your primary passwords. And then you have one master password with some kind of token key that allows you to then log in one time. And then those solutions was analog into your sixty five. Those solutions argument with in laws because they have they have they hold on to your credentials. So as we’re now moving into maur, this hybrid mode where we still have to log into a local network. But we have a lot of our systems out in a cloud. We have to now deal with howie managing our passwords across both in the cloud and on premise. Okay, about dash lane. Either of you familiar with it. Actually. Password management is that you think is in the same camp it’s in that same camp with last pass and so forth. I mean there’s two or three, they’re out there. Octus another one that’s out there that a lot of people are trying to use for a single sign on between their microsoft active directory network as well as in the cloud. So and some of them tie in with things like salesforce. Dot com embraces these kind of things. So the more major players out in the field, the major software vendors are making sure that their cloud management solutions are our being able to be accessible through these cloud password management system. Okay, dash lane, last pass octa okay, and he wasn’t any another one. You want to shout out as worthy? There was another and there’s another incarnation of non-profit radio. So you won passed hyre special one passes another one as well. Ok, very good. What else? But this is in our list of seven. Well, the other thing that we talked about it kind of going to school in size. We are talked about personal computers to introduce it, but i’m going to talk about that. But then, if you want to talk about, we’re talking about the mobile devices and so forth and the issues that come with that mobile, right? So we we talked about bring your own device when your pc or your laptop, you know similar concerns with mobile devices. You know, you need policies in place. I need to make sure that, you know, there’s a reality that people were using their phones or tablets for work. We’re taking our work everywhere now. And so how do you manage that? That’s a there’s a reality there that everyone’s probably living with on some degree. How do you minimize the risk and manage it so that your comfortable with how people using their mobile devices for work? Okay, how do you how do you know? Well, you know, i think some of the things that we’ve already talked about you making sure you have antivirus software on your phone is a really important thing, okay, you’ll be able to manage on some level the device that if someone say, leaves your organization that you can either you know, it’s complicated, potentially, but you potentially could delete some of the information in particular aps you’re not likely probably to be able to delete their whole phone and that’s probably good for everybody, but just having a little bit more control. On how people are using their mobile devices when it comes to work. And, you know, leon mentioned he’s sort of old school, and i think maybe very prudent in the sense that he has his personal device and he has a work device and he keeps those separate, i think, for for an organization, if you could do that, it really is the most prudent approach, because the reality is you can’t control. So what else is device they’re passing around with their family, you know, someone borrows it to look something up or use the phone, you know, that data contract veliz the reality. And so, you know, you have to think about that risk, and if your organization is sort of willing to take that risk, or if it needs to take some steps to kind of minimize the okay, we have time for one more dan you want introduce the last one? Yeah, the last one is the lack of network security, right? So you’re we often using wifi. You have a router. But did you make sure to set a unique password for that round? Or are you just using the factory setting and itjust admin, which is public. Anyone could look that up and get on your router at any time. You know things like that, making sure firewalls are in place. You’re making sure your network is secure altum throughout and i think leon comprise going more. Did you want to have anymore about network security? Yeah, that’s the one thing is it’s a multi layer it’s, a multi layered approach. So you have to have the external penetration protection with your firewall but that’s also where you need to also maybe have a firewall running at the pc level is well along with the a v and malware software. Additionally, what we were talking about, hiss. If you’re providing wifi access within your organization, you definitely want to have a separate wifi space for a guest, contractors, visitors and thea nature versus you definitely want to do that. And you definitely want because again, if you have people just coming in off the street in public and bringing in their laptops, you don’t know what’s running on their laptop you again. It goes back to a lot of the other issues we were talking about it’s, like, bring another personal workstation in there we’ll have to wifi. And exactly you want to have a separate it one where? Even if you give him a password to log again. That password maybe times out after two hours of three hours with boy, they have to re authenticate, separate from your stamp, where they’re always going to be able to go on and have constant access to what? You want to keep it separated. Okay, we’re gonna leave it there. Ok. Cool. So it’s cool, right? They are. Leon wilson, chief technology and information officer at the cleveland foundation, and dan rivas, managing writer for idealware. Gentlemen. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I have to a highlighter intense wag item. We’re doing that each each interview and i neglected due in the beginning. We have this usb flash from texas, and we had that to the pile of here. You might have thought we just have a message said that’s. Not true. Thean ten swag pile. Very well organized. Cool. See? Very nice. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc sixteen twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Thanks. Next week, zombie loyalists. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Kevin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and his great music is by scott stein of brooklyn. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Hey! Buy-in what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card, it was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. 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Nonprofit Radio for December 2, 2016: Find Fantastic Volunteers & Board Unity Or Dissent

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Liza Dyer, Gina Roberti, & Taryn Kearns: Find Fantastic Volunteers

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(L to R) Liza Dyer, Gina Roberti, & Taryn Kearns at 16NTC

Who is your ideal volunteer and what are your best strategies to find them? Our panel shares online and offline tips, including lots of resources. From the Nonprofit Technology Conference they’re Liza Dyer from Multnomah County Library, with Gina Roberti and Taryn Kearns from Reading Partners.

 

 

 

Gene Takagi: Board Unity Or Dissent

Should “shut up” be part of your board meetings? Gene Takagi, our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO), returns to weigh the pros and cons of dissent on your board vs. speaking with a singe voice. (Originally aired on 12/5/14).

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week. Urban stead. They messaged me. Caught your radio show today we’re a small non-profit in philadelphia. Found your show absolutely relevant and helpful. Absolutely relevant. Unhelpful. Not just relevant. Unhelpful. Absolutely. Thank you very much. They do urban farming with at risk youth in philadelphia, which i love that’s where i went to law school. Temple, temple university law school. Now the beasley school like the old, like that old show with mrs beasley the rag doll on was that a family affair with brian keith and mr french anyway? Ah, urban st they’re at urban stead and urban stead dot or ge? Thank so much, herb instead. So glad that you found non-profit radio and that it helps your work. What work? Congratulations on being our listener of the week. Urban stead. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into pica if you forced down my throat. The idea that you missed today’s show find fantastic volunteers who’s, your ideal volunteer. And what do your best strategy is? To find them, our panel shares online and offline tips, including lots of resource, is from the non-profit technology conference there lies a dyer from multnomah county library with gina roberti and taryn kearns from reading partners very literate group also bored unity or descent should shut up. Be part of your board meetings. Jean takagi are legal goal legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations. Law group returns to weigh the pros and cons of dissent on your board versus speaking with a single voice not originally aired on december fifth. Twenty fourteen on tony’s take to your trump challenge. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we be spelling dot com here is find fantastic volunteers from auntie si. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc the non-profit technology conference in san jose, california. This is also part of ntc conversations. We’re in the convention center in san jose. Naturally, where else? Where else would we be? And my guests? Yeah, session topic is fantastic volunteers and where to find them we’re going to meet the guests very shortly. First, have to do a shout out for the swag item for this interview, which is a very hot item appreciated by all three women on the panel. It’s ah, it’s, a red box it’s, a red box, one night rental only liza holds her movies longer than i’m a night, so this is no value to her. But gina and taryn love it, and it is from unleashed unleashed technologies. Red box promo code. One night, we added to the swag pile. And don’t walk away with it, ladies, alright, let’s, meet our guests. Liza dyer is first of all, she has the professional designation cv a certified in volunteer administration. She’s, a program coordinator for volunteers services at the multnomah county library and multnomah county, encompasses portland, oregon. And it’s, oregon not oregon. There’s no e at the end of oregon, i’ve learned that many times. Gina roberti is community engagement manager at reading partners. And taryn kearns is the americorps volunteer coordinator at reading partners. And i started closest to me. So liza is closest to me. And then it’s gina and then taran they’re topic is yes, the fantastic volunteers and where to find them. Let’s, talk down the end there, taryn. What is it that you ladies field non-profits or not getting maybe quite right with volunteers. Gino was in with the face is coming. What you got stuff i want you look it’s. Tough looking issues. You really like the question? Okay, what is it? Well, i’m sorry i directed for tarrant, but i’ll give you the follow-up if she doesn’t, she doesn’t lackluster job at it. Then you can you khun ad on? What do you mean she will do great. Karin, what are we not getting right about volunteers? I think there’s a couple things that we’re not getting quite right volunteers. Perhaps one is retention a lot of non-profits struggle with retaining volunteers, long term reading partners, we retain roughly thirty percent of our volunteers year to year doesn’t seem like a lot of volunteers. We do retain our amazing, but we’d still need to constantly invent new strategies to keep those volunteers engaged, excited and coming back for more to serve our population. You’re retaining thirty means you’re losing seventy percent of your volunteers each year. True? Yeah. That’s. The same as donorsearch a tous ticks no non-profits lose seventy percent of their donors each year. All right, gina, how did she do anything great? If anything, you’d like to add teo terrans assessment of what? We’re not getting quite right. Well, she did great. Okay, i actually think attention. So retention one problem a problem. I actually think we’re really fortunate reading partners where we have dedicated staff to focus on volunteermatch judgment. And i don’t think all non-profits have the capacity to have paid staff. So i feel like that’s you need people who are focused on volunteers and engaging them, appreciating them and developing the program. So i feel fortunate reading partners, but i know that’s not everywhere, and so i feel like that’s what we’re getting wrong in the nonprofit world do we have strategies to help people who aren’t devoted to volunteer management but have other responsibilities as well? We have some ideas for them. You came to the right place, we will have some okay way have twenty five years together, so okay, we do have some ideas, okay? Liza, anything you’d like to add? Yes, oh, something that really leads into a retention is that a lot of non-profits don’t know what they’re looking for in a volunteer, so they don’t know who they are actually trying to attract before they want to retain them. So they go out and they say, yeah, well, take anybody if you believe in our mission will take you, but you don’t really focus on what they’re skillsets is what their knowledge, their background, their availability. And so once you can do that and figure out who your ideal volunteers are, then you can work to engage them and retain. Them for the long term. But it starts with that first relationship. Excellent lead in let’s. Begin there. How how do we identify who the ideal volunteer is? Yeah, perfect. So something that you can do is create a volunteer persona and figure out who? Just like, when you do marketing personas or daughter personas, you can figure out what are the specific skills that i’m looking for and all of that khun lead into a position description. But you also need to think about. So if i am recruiting somebody who can teach computer classes, who are they? Where are they currently at? What is their availability like? So in portland, we have ah, few tech companies, not as money is down here in silicon valley, but we have a few and so, you know, do they have daytime availability? Maybe if they have a corporate responsibility program, they can come and and volunteer during their work time. But if not, well, then you kind of have to taylor, you’re programming maybe have your computer classes at days and times when volunteers are available. Okay, what should we be thinking about? A cz we build these personas? What attributes? Yeah, so you want to think about not just their knowledge and their skills, but also their beliefs or their values? Because if somebody doesn’t have alignment in terms of your organization, then you might not be a good match. So on the one hand, if i am recruiting a bunch of volunteers to stuff envelopes doesn’t matter that they believe in army mittens, maybe, maybe not. If i’m recruiting somebody to teach classes like, for example, citizenship classes at multnomah county library, i’m gonna want somebody who believes in the things that we do and making sure that they have a welcoming personality that can make sure that people feel welcome and also that they believe in the concept of intellectual freedom so people can come in, use the library. We’re not judging them. We’re not censoring anything. We believe people should have free access to information. You know, if somebody doesn’t believe that we’re not a good fit for that. Gina, are there other attributes we variables we can describe to our volunteermatch personas? I think liza covered a lot of really well, well, the age wouldn’t talk about age. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Well, i think it just varies per per volunteer opportunities like reading partners. We have one type of volunteer that we look for. So and for us, it’s fourteen, to retired is the age range which brought age, so we have a bigger audience that we can recruit for. But we also we have a volunteer opportunities monday through thursday between nine and five. So what liza was saying is, here in silicon valley, it works for us because there’s a lot of companies and they have huge corporate social responsibility departments who helped, you know, connect us to the companies, but, you know, oftentimes we’ll find high schoolers there over programmed and, you know, they’re only available between three and five or people who don’t have the same corporate culture of volunteerism they want to do evenings and weekends, and that doesn’t necessarily fit for reading part doesn’t work for you. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Other strategies for finding the ideal volunteer. Taryn besides the user, the volunteer persona. Did you talk about others in your your in your own? Do you programmed yet? Yes, you did. Okay. Ten. Thirty? Yeah. Were there other ideas? Are we exhausted that that part of it? No. I think that there’s so much to talk about a sfar strategies go if you want to get into that and, you know, separate from identifying the ideal volunteer. Okay, great. So based on each type of volunteer that you’re looking for, you need to really assess the community as faras. What kind of resource is either online or actually in person are around you, it’s helpful to be so aware of what schools are around? Maybe if any clubs meet at local coffee shops during the day. So as you get that information and create either a visual layout or just have it in your mind, you can start to target those locations for either long term volunteer opportunities or short term and fill those needs match those volunteers are available at certain times and have different interests with the needs of your organization. So what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna go into the coffee shop and start talking up reading partners and whatever organization is that they may be a strategy for the coffee shop. What if there’s a no solicitation sign on the door? Well, we’ll probably have to obey by that sign, but most places you feel like you go into a place and it’s a gut feeling that you get if they’re open. Teo connecting community members with local opportunity. Right, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Dahna other strategies? Anybody i don’t necessarily have to pick on you. You want to raise your hands? Anybody guidelines? Yeah. Another thing that you can do is you can survey your staff and find out what our who have been the most successful volunteers in the past. And so, if you say, pick your top ten percent that you would say, i want these people and i want to clone them, and i want to have volunteers at that level on lee, what is it about them? So is that their age? Are they retired? Are they high school students? So they have a lot of technical knowhow. Or is it somebody who has, you know, they are willing to just do what needs to get done? Like if you have a clerical volunteered, you don’t need somebody to go above and beyond necessarily. You just need them to be reliable, dependable and get the work done. So who are the volunteers who have been the most successful? And then you can use that to create your ideal volunteer. And then you, khun specifically target your recruitment for that type of person. And plus you this ideal volunteer that you want to clone? How do we find her? Yeah, you know, who does she know? How could she connect us to people like her? Absolutely right. Okay, okay. Excellent. We got other before we go online or not, i know you have online strategies to we’re not there yet. Other offline in real time. Face-to-face strategies for recruitment. These are excellent. I’d like to build upon that point you just made about how can you talk to someone that’s? Your perhaps ideal volunteer, maybe sametz already volunteering for you and get that person to talk to their friends about opportunities. Peer-to-peer volunteer recruitment is one of the most successful strategies because if you haven’t in, you know sametz already volunteering for going elearning organization and they can vouch for you going to tell you how awesome it is. You know, exactly when i’m teaching kids and their learning and it’s great, you’re much more likely to want to even just try it out and see if it’s a right fit for you, right? Yeah. And i think that using people’s personal networks leveraging those to create further connections is so useful. Excellent works for reading partners is that you get a lot of of your volunteers through testing volunteers with public latto personally. Okay. Anything else we should talk about? Offline. Real world? Yeah. It’s something that i saw it actually in a cafe in nashville, tennessee was a table number sign. You know, you place your order and you get a table number sign has we’re number the restaurant. It was in a restaurant, okay? Restaurant. And so i get my table number and it’s two or whatever and the rest of it is actually a kind of restaurant barbecue, you know, it was like it was like a healthy, you know, like begin. Yeah, s o they have those in tennessee as well. Although it was one of the one you were at the world. I was at the one and only you have it and you were at it. And so i get my numbers are in, and it has the number. But it also has a brochure about a dog rescue non-profit and it was specifically on the back of the tent, the number ten, it was. No, it was it was, you know, sticking up out of ah, like a metal holder and so on. Both sides that had information about volunteering a great partnership. Absolutely. Okay. Have any of you done that successfully with local businesses where they’ll they’ll basically let you have your solicitation materials? No, but like restaurant did mention that to us. And that is on my list of things that we will do next here in silicon valley. You got some places in mind? Yes. Okay. Okay. Next interview. I’ll update you. Okay? You’re presuming you’re gonna be back. Don’t don’t be presumptions will determine that in a couple minutes. Okay, uh, that’s. Excellent. You got ladies. You’re full of ideas. Anything else off line? I don’t mind if we talk more offline before we go online. Nothing else, really world. I think one more thing is another in person. Strategy is inserting yourself the organization into local community events. Say the community center is having a resource fair for non-profits maybe homeowners association or any other business to come and have a free table. Talk about what they do. Connect people that air interested from the community that’s a wonderful way. And often you, khun basically get a free space to just either recruit volunteers or spread organizational visibility. Once you create a presence for yourself and you start going to these types of events and meeting the same people over and over, they’ll say, ok, actually remember seeing this logo. I remember seeing your face, you’re here, and i like it, right, right on dh, there are community organizations, like maybe a chamber of commerce or something, exactly, uh, yeah, okay, karen, i don’t know if you know, gina agrees with very much of what you say, a lot of nodding, i say they work very closely together, we dio, she approves of everything i don’t you don’t not when she speaks, though, so you’re very disapproving of mentally, not idea, so you are okay, we believe you. Okay, okay. Okay, so let’s go online. Who wants to start? Gina, once you start, do you in the middle? Some online strategies you have for recruiting volunteers? Awesome. Fantastic volunteers. Yes. That’s a very good question. So i would say speaking for us at reading partners, we have actually always had our typical social media pieces of facebook, right? And this year our specific region has utilized twitter more. Andi, i think we honestly we have just skim the services to what we can do with our online recruitment on we definitely pay for facebook ads and things of that nature on dh has been extremely helpful. But it’s working it’s working. But you know what the problem is with that is that you need more money in order to make that happen. So it took a while to get some movement on. As soon as we got movement, we realized our budget is depleting. We had to go for the second movement. And now it’s like, what is it going to look like to continue that the ads and things of that nature. Okay, so so you were spending more than fifteen or twenty dollars? Yeah. Yeah, you’re okay. And what does that look like? Way have fourteen regions and we all need ads and our eight regions. And what does that look like for marketing budget? Ok, sorry, so facebook ads, but they’ve been valuable. You most definitely paid off. Yeah, yeah, liza, how about you and multnomah public? Yeah, so we utilise all our social channels as well. So facebook, twitter, instagram also flicker. We post photos there as well, and something that some of our volunteers participating is called a m c l hel p so m c l multnomah county library. Hel p is a selfie that you take while you’re helping or volunteering, right? So, yeah, so we every year we have a summer reading program and to encourage kids to read all year long. And we have eight hundred volunteers close to eight hundred volunteers for that program, ninety percent of which are under the age of eighteen years old, so ninety percent are under eighteen. Yeah, and those are our volunteers. That’s. You know the participants. We have over one hundred ten thousand participants just for the summer reading program. So we were looking for a way to engage our summer reading volunteers. Many of whom have smartphones and want to take selfies, and so we encourage them. Hey, take a selfie while you were at the library hashtag it this or, you know, put it on instagram and show your friends what you’re doing this summer, and so that could be a way to recruit volunteers and get them to you show their their other friends what they’re doing for the summer. What are we doing in the channels in these facebook ads or instagram? Whatever to advertise the the volunteer possibilities, what we what we saying? What are we showing, etcetera? A great regular facebook campaign reading partners, which each week we have a feature called thank you tutor tuesday we feature a picture of the tutoring question and the student they work with if both have photo permission don’t use real names in many instances, but it gives a glimpse into either of them working together or them doing something fun together. Maybe during a spirit week with cem, funny props of what it looks like for them to be volunteers, and also matched that with a quote from them about their volunteer experience that lets them speak from their own perspective and give people that do follow us on social media is chance to say okay, maybe i could do this and work with a student that looks super happy and keep with their tutor. Right? Must be other stuff we could talk about online before we before we go to the next topic. What else? Yes. Oh, at melanoma counting library. We have a monthly volunteers spotlight, which is not a new thing. Many organizations have monthly voluntary spotlights to showcase what their volunteers were doing, and what that is is it doubles as both a recognition tool and a recruitment tool. Because you are recognizing the volunteer by saying, hey, you are so great that we want to talk about you and we want to post you know, this blogger on on our website, and then we share it on our social media channels, but also when other people see that they see oh, that’s, what a volunteer does who you know is teaching a citizenship class or is delivering books toe homebound patrons. I’m interested in that not just learning about somebody else doing that, but maybe i can do that, too. And so it doubles. Is recognition and recruitment excellent, excellent. All right, i like, uh, thank a tutor tuesday. Gotomeeting every partners your own hashtag was that your idea? I think it was a collective decision. Okay, i like i like a little rations. So on this show, i ii send live listener love because show street live, i have podcast pleasantries for the podcast listeners. I’ve affiliate affections for the am and fm station listeners, you know, so i do tony’s take, too. I’m over the moon with, as listeners of the show will know, with a liberation. Okay, uh, well, should we go? There we go offline. Anything else? What? I got online on the networks go online network. So good. I want to say, i don’t know if we even mention this, but we definitely use that reading partners, you know? Volunteermatch and, you know, volunteermatch croup, mint websites get amount of our two shot out. Some of the ones that you use a helpful idea. Why am i drawing a blank? So we definitely is craigslist volunteermatch is an idealist, idealist, idealist. We’ve done volunteer center, which is more local to the francisco bay area, but we’re on many and all, especially more local, more local, you know, centered silicon valley pages. Okay, that’s been a huge help over those who know where to go or choose to go to those kinds of pages for volunteer opportunities right way, use volunteermatch and also hands on greater portland, which is part of the hands on network through points of light and so hands on greater portland is more focused on the portland metro area. Volunteermatch of course, you can search through, you know, different areas, but is more national. And so both are great because with volunteermatch if you get people who moved to portland, we have a lot of people moving to portland, then they already know about volunteermatch from their past community, and so they just switched to portland, and so we find a lot of people who moved to the area are looking through volunteermatch postings and finding us, and even if they’re not interested in the specific position that we’re recruiting for, they will then be drawn to our website, find something else, apply and then become a volunteer. Yeah, you know, i want to mention one more that is it’s probably giving us some success because it’s fairly new it’s next door and for when you’re trying to engage the community when a a current volunteer for us, lives in the community in which we’re serving and they post about it it’s that peer-to-peer but of a larger network of community members that maybe we’d never even touched, which has been a really cool thing to try out. It’s cool, it’s cool. What next? Next door next door? Yeah. Okay. All right. Go. Another one that i haven’t used for recruitment yet, but i have scene people who are seeking volunteer. Opportunities uses read it. So i have a google search alert for anything mentioning volunteermatch portland, oregon and it’s just a way to be aware of what’s going on in the area and sew something will come up and somebody will say post on reddit for the portland read it general think gina likes your ideas about to put it in her notes way steal the best ideas, okay? And and so they you know, they’ll post hey, i’m looking for a volunteer position where can i go? And then people talk about hey, you should try the oregon food bank. You should try free geek, which refurbishes, you know, older computers and gets him into the hands of people who need them. And so those air probably the two that i see most often is is the oregon food bank and freaky, but then other ones will say, oh, well, i’m really wanting to volunteer at an environmental organisations so somebody might recommend friends of trees or something like that, so yeah, and that’s another thing is that with oregon food bank, you can. I’ve personally volunteered there, so i’m a huge fan. I had a birthday party there. I had a fallen bir birthday where i volunteered and then ones on the other side, i think of the first has to be mine, to be funny calling peer-to-peer and so, yeah, so volunteering at the oregon food bank, posting a healthy on twitter and instagram, and then we went to a place called oregon public house, which is a non-profit pub in portland and had beer eso with any of those aiken then go online and say, hey, have you tried oregon food bank? Because they’re great and here’s, why? All right, let’s, just move. Teo some of the partnerships, i think my voice just broke moved too. But thirteen years old. But partnerships you talked about finding and cultivating partnerships. Now we just touched on his very lightly. We’re talking about the possibility of what i mentioned chambers of commerce when you were talking about local organizations. Is there more we can say about finding and cultivating these partnerships? To find volunteers who wants to go wants to volunteer to talk about partnership volunteering opportunities? I can certainly speak briefly more gina’s area of expertise. She’s, right? I shouldn’t say anything quite the experience cultivating partnerships, but it’s important, teo follow-up i don’t know if you need to call it a strict list of partnership planning steps, but haven’t idea of first what you can offer or what your strengths are as an organization, then see what that potential partner can also offer you it’s making sure the relationship is mutually beneficial. If you want to move forward with more of a formal agreement in the future, make sure both parties are really going to get what they want out of it and along the way, sorry, go what types of organizations are we talking about? You have some examples? Yeah, we have one of our strongest partnerships within the silicon valley region of reading partners is with the department at san jose state university here, locally it’s child in the adolescent development and their students who go through several different classes learning about various stages of child development, and they come to us. We have a program tailored to their needs as far as a service learning requirement, and their program it’s little bits is actually tailored to our curriculum and tutoring so local college you could look at college university another example of successful partnership. Organization? Yeah, new partnership we have just going on is with actually a food truck collective that’s all over the basement. Portland. I know, right? Okay. Great terminology around trucks, which you’ve gotten since i was there, but a cluster. What was it? A pod? A pod, right. That’s right apart? Yes, i heard that. It’s a cluster of trucks. You don’t call it a cluster or collection? You call it a pod, but their carts there lorts their carts, not truck that’s, right? That’s why i’m getting that wrong to not trucks the cards, but you would never say i’m going to the part of cards. You would just say i’m goingto just like on the pot. I mean, you might say that, but i wouldn’t wait. Don’t have carts here in silicon valley. Well, their truck’s, but they call them courts, owe their trucks. You put your right thumb and there’s a lot of a lot of times. They’re trailers that really there that you can’t drive them. They just have to hitch onto something. But either way, they’re called the coal carts. I’m going to the cards or the pod, but not the part of cards. Not say that you would be laughed out of portland. Okay, um, we gotta wrap this up in a few. Actually, this one fast. All right. Well, guy’s got about another minute or so let’s focus on the partnerships. What was the one you were just mentioned? The new one you were starting at? It’s called off the grid. Food trucks and group. Yeah, they have a very important emphasis on community in their markets. So we’re able to get an in with one of their markets in san jose. And we’re gonna have a regular appearance at there sunday. Food truck gathering its great. Let me turn the liza. You have any, uh, successful partnership type organisations? Yeah. So, atmel, uma county library. We don’t have too many formal partnerships in terms of volunteer, but we do reach out to our there’s, a local cohort cohort of library students from emporia university. And so they meet here in portland. And so we can send information about different volunteermatch positions that we have for them, and then they can come and get engaged. There’s also? Ah. Library media specialist program. I believe at portland community college. And so we can easily reach out to that college. Okay, so look, a civic organizations is tearing. You were saying like minded organizations where there are potential volunteers. All right, you’re gonna wrap it up. There are ladies cloudgood some excellent unison. Amazing, remarkable panel. Okay, liza dire. I have to turn. I know should with multnomah county library and know that m c l but she’s a cva so divided volunteered ministrations and the program coordinator for volunteers served asses and next to her in the middle is gina roberti, community engagement manager at reading partners and taryn kearns americorps volunteer coordinator also at reading partners. Ladies, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Excellent. Lots of ideas. That’s a good resource is do i love the tools? Durney martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc sixteen the sixteen. Ninety cf courses the hashtag but it all stands for non-profit technology conference in twenty sixteen at the san jose convention center thank you so much for being with us board unity or dissent coming up first pursuant fund-raising like a boss that’s therefore part webinar siri’s starting in january if you like to bake, you could fund-raising like a cake, boss. Your master discovery questions major gift solicitations, prospecting and prioritising and getting your board to fundraise oh, that’s, critical board fund-raising you can’t make all four sessions, no problem, they have you covered. You’ll get the recordings info is at pursuant dot com slash training slash webinar and again it’s called fund-raising like a boss, we’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising are you kicking off millennial engagement in our new year twenty seventeen do it with stand up comedy, live music, dancing and raising money and spelling. Check out the video at we b e spelling dot com now tony steak too. First, i did your trump challenge video. Now this week i have your trump challenge reduction director’s cut and the director’s cut you will find that toluca, the jack russell terrier and i have a challenge for you at your end going forward based on what tallulah and i believe might be in store under a trump presidency to lula has very good insight wait and that’s why i enlarged her part in the reduction director’s cut version both videos, the original and the director’s cut or at toni martignetti dot com and that’s tony’s take two here is jeanne takagi with board unity or descent. Jean takagi. You’re out there, right? I am, honey, i know you are. You’re the managing attorney of neo, the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco, that’s still true, right? Absolutely. And fire yourself, all right, and you also still edit the popular non-profit low block dot com, and on twitter, you’re at g tak gt a k right, all correct, okay, just like the check. Double check the biographical information every every once in a while. And plus, being an attorney, i don’t like to ask questions that i don’t know the answer to, so i knew that was all correct. All right, gene, we’re talking about unity and dissent on your board this arose from, although we’re not going to nit pick the details of this, but this arose from a university of virginia proposal that that board members silence their descent and there was a little bit shocking for some people to read in the paper when they read about ebba talking about so sad, discouraging or actually prohibiting dissenting board members from publicly expressing their view. And that was just a proposed policy that somehow got released to the public, and some people were very, very upset about it thinking of it a censorship um and that caused them once, you know, the public was made aware of it. There was all sorts of articles in the washington post and other newspapers about it, and they rescinded that part of the proposal, but they kind of added a more common governance spot after about well, you can talk about your descent publicly, we won’t. We won’t chill that from happening, but once a decision is reached by the board. The board members each have a responsibility to ensure that the board’s actions and decisions are successfully implemented. So they really downgraded their initial thought. But it was a a source of a lot of controversy at the time. And i think it’s a really interesting subject. Yeah, i love that. Some dissenter released to the public, the non dissenting policy hyre and that there that’s interesting at virginia. I just this is just a small detail, but they call their board the board of visitors. I thought that was interesting. Hey, i i i do it. Well, i don’t know what the historical artifact of that is, but it is their governing body. Yes. This’ll all go back to the days of this is from thomas jefferson, i think is the founder of via university that’s a little bit ironic and some people’s mind about, right? You know, quenching public dissent? Yeah, this statesmen who spoke out of, um and they’re doing just the opposite. But askew said it turns out they’re not doing it, that that part of the proposal was was killed. There is, in fact, value in diversity and dissent. On aboard, right? Yeah, absolutely way need tohave open discussion. And in a lot of governance, experts will say having a culture that encourages open dissent is actually one of the most important indicators of bored effectiveness, the opposite being, you know, usually a culture of group think and rubber stamping one person’s decision and all just sort of reinforcing, you know, the first point of view that comes up rather than actively debating and thinking about, you know, critically thinking about what would be the best decision of the board amongst all of the possibilities. So so every board vote should not be one hundred percent in a unanimous in fact, it’s you’re saying it’s a good sign if there’s there is disagreement. Yeah, but, you know, from from time to time and that’s, you know, a pet peeve of mine and many other lawyers that work with non-profit boards to see by-laws that say board actions will only be taking taken if there is a unanimous vote in favor of aboard actions. That’s really just chills. You know, the board from discussing, you know, individual boardmember from discussing their dissenting opinions. That’s part of some by-laws of some organizations that has to be a one hundred percent vote. Yeah, after my gosh, she is an uncommon to find consensus. A xero required vote, teo get bored. Action. Well, but consensus could be an easy majority or two thirds or something, but but you see it often that it’s one hundred percent unanimous requirement. Yeah. It’s not uncommon. I wouldn’t. I would i would say, you know, it’s, not the majority of by-laws permit that, but certainly i’ve seen several that that require one hundred percent consensus vote in order to take aboard action, and that is to promote their culture. What they feel like is a culture, a beauty. Mmm. All right, there are ways of dealing with the descent in a in a board discussion on dh valuing the honesty and the openness and the diversity if you just if you just manage and facilitate the conversation yeah, you know, you’re absolutely right. And i think it takes a really skilled chair of the board or whoever is the presiding officer at the board meetings to really encourage that. That dissent without letting it, you know, devolved into infighting and ah, and, uh, a culture where nobody wants to be there, and everybody is apprehensive about showing up at the next board meeting because there is that culture of stress and tension and disagreement. So it is a bit of a balancing act, and i think it actually like many, many things take some exercise. The effort, teo, create that culture of open dissent where, you know, people can descent. This takes place in families too, doesn’t it? Tony, especially in italian cultures, open dissent and at the dinner table, but always mine afterwards. Yeah, i went after the thanksgiving dinner at my cousin’s house. When, when i was walking down the sidewalk in getting into the car to drive home, i realized how quiet it was. I felt like i had been in a springsteen concert for, like, four hours. And then i was back at home and my ears were almost ringing. Yes. So there’s a healthy descent at least among my cacophonous family. Yeah, for sure and my part of the family. And i have ah, through marriage, some italian family as well. And yes, it is this healthy dissenting atmosphere, but it’s very vibrant it’s encouraging of discussion. Um and at the end of the day, they can move forward. So, you know, creating that culture is not necessarily the easiest thing, especially for non-profit board, who may not meet so often like the way family gets to meet andi, everything gets remedy, you know, the next time they have dinner, but when you meet, like once every other month or once every quarter on and that’s, the only time you see these people, you may be a little hesitant about, you know, starting a fight by by presenting a dissenting views. So i think it takes practice. And, you know, one way you might practise is and there’s some dangers to this as well. But in short, formal, just say creating a doubles advocate for a particular issues, you know, in a particular issue, maybe where the board all sees the thing, you know, in the same light and would all vote unanimously in favor of it. Maybe at that time assigning one person to just raise issues and take the other part and encouraging discussion to see what happens. And you may end up with still the same opinion, but ah aboard that’s learned to discuss things a little bit more. Vigorously and critically look att issues and weigh conflicting viewpoints. There’s a policy governance model from interestingly, from a married couple, the carvers that has some very good ideas for howto manage this whole process and maintain good governance. Yeah, and they’re they’re aspects of the carver policy governance model that i really like and and it is a model that encourages discussion, even passionate disagreement, i think they say to rip represent the diversity on the board, hopefully the diversity in all kinds of ways, on the board, with different perspectives in different ways of looking at things. But i think part of the model says is once you’ve made a vote, you know whether it’s a unanimous vote or if it’s a five for a slim majority vote and that’s enough to take board action, the ceo and the staff have got to treat it the same way. It’s a board decision in favor of going a certain direction and that’s what needs to be implemented. And so the carver model goes on to say, you know, if a boardmember two cents, you know, with that, well, you should absolutely record that descent. So in a five, four vote, you’ll record those who have presented their dissenting opinions, not necessarily by name. However, if they don’t want their name to be to be entered into there, if they’re minutes or public, they may feel that that might chill future board discussion if they’re not in the majority. So, you know, it could just indicate that there was a five four vote and anybody who wants to be on record as dissenting should have their name recorded otherwise, maybe not, but if if the if you do disagree with it and you want to go out and publicly say it, we don’t chill that process, you let them say that, but they’ve got to balance that with a duty of confidentiality, so they have to make sure that they’re not releasing confidential information out there. They have to be careful of not chilling board participation in future discussions. So if they go, you know, john smith disagreed with me, and he came up with all sorts of terrible arguments in favor of that. Well, that’s not going to be a healthy way to descend, you know, naming out individual board members who disagreed with you and, you know, taking down their argument without the chance for them to present the side. And then i think what’s important about the carver model. The balance is that if a boardmember disagrees, they should go on to say, on the record, whoever they’re speaking out to in the public, that the process used by the board with proper so they disagreed, but they were in the minority. But the process used was proper to get all those things out there and that hopefully we’ll create a good culture of open dissent and ability to expect dissenting views in public without harming the organization. All right, there was a lot in there that this is getting into the details. Very interesting of of good governance, right? I mean, a lot of times we talk about good governance and it stops with well, you should have a conflict of interest policy. You have a whistle blower policy document retention. But this is getting into the process of board meetings that create good governance and proper oversight. Yeah. And you know, onboarding typically take actions that board meeting. So how boardmember things air run? How their chairs, what type of discussions you choose toe have. Board meetings when in the meeting do you take your, you know, place your most important discussions? Maybe it shouldn’t be approving the board minutes right at the front where everybody, you know has the energy to vigorously discuss important issues. Maybe that gets put in the back. So prioritizing what you’re goingto, you know, discussed at the board meetings and creating that culture of open descent and possibly allowing everybody toe argue different points beforehand, circulating that in the board agenda and sort of meeting prep materials would be a very good and healthy way to get bored to be able to discuss the most important things to the organization because boards are ultimately in charge of the organization. You mentioned the agenda, and this ah, this carver policy governance model, which, by the way, you’ll find it. Carver governance dot com has something to say about the agenda who should be creating the board agenda because that could that could be a source of of dissension also is what belongs on our agenda for the month or whatever. For the for the meeting. Yeah, that’s, that’s absolutely true. I don’t actually, i’m not familiar with how, how carver’s model treats who will create the what’s? What typically done is is bored chairs. After conferring with the executive, the executive director’s, ceo of the organization developed the agenda. But i think knowing what i do about policy governance, it is openly encourage other board members to chime in as the chair developed the agenda. Ah, figure out what topics are most important to the organization and figuring out at that point how to proceed with finalizing the agenda and the meeting materials beforehand on dh that’s, very consistent with what carver recommends in there in there model, which is that the board developed its agenda. Not that the ceo create the agenda for the board. Yeah. You know, that’s, uh, i don’t wantto go too far off, but that’s sort of the problem with when the board acts by written consent because whoever drafts that that consent and circulates it is possibly planted just one point of view and argued only one side of it. And that can be very persuasive. And nobody has had a chance to look at the other side. So developing an agenda with only one point of view can make things look very, very. One sided in developing organisation melkis rubber stamped the chairs decision. Okay, we’re going to go out for a break for a few minutes. You mentioned a consent agenda for the break you’re in, george, in jail for that, and we come back. I’ll offer you a quick, a quick parole stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m dana ostomel, ceo of deposit, a gift. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’ve got more live listener to love to send out ottawa on ontario, canada, ottawa, the capital city of canada welcome live listener lived to ottawa in china we’ve got coming. Ni hao my first guest, gail bauer, did some work in china for the great wall foundation. I believe it is. I know she did work with a couple of clients in china. We’ve got hanoi, vietnam, we’ve got turkey, germany and seoul, south korea on yo haserot turkey and germany. I’m sorry, we can’t see your cities your mask, but we know that your country is represented live listener love to you and naturally podcast pleasantries, everybody listening in the time shift wherever the heck you maybe arjun takagi the you didn’t actually say the phrase consent agenda. I put that together for you and locked you up in george in jail. But you said consent and you were referring to agenda, so i’ll give you half a break. So could we explain what consent agenda is sure, andi, you know, i didn’t realize that i did not say that i thought i was accused and i was guilty, okay, but i don’t think we’re buy-in consent agenda. Is basically a group of routine, typically procedural, self explanatory, noncontroversial decisions that the board has to make, like approving the minutes of the last meeting, approving committee actions that were very non controversial and it’s done all in one action. So rather than going through them one by one and having a lot of discussion about each one if they don’t deserve that discussion, it’s just something that should have been read before the meeting it’s all presented on the consent agenda, one person moves to adopt it, it gets seconded, approved and then it’s done and you don’t have to spend, you know, half to your board meeting talking about thes routine on controversial board actions that everybody should have read beforehand and instead of, you know, having them read it at at the meeting and wasting everybody’s time. Thank you very much. Probation granted a parole parole granted program when how do we know when a boardmember has gone too far? You suggested that its fine for board members to speaking descent as long as they’re they’re not speaking on behalf of the board and they and they say that. But when does the boardmember go, too? Far, yeah. I wish i had one easy answer to that. And i think i mentioned before, you know, balancing against being a balancing that openness against the duty of confidentiality. So not giving away any confidential information and also not harming any individual on the board or sabotaging, if you will, the board action that ultimately was taken by majority vote, even though you were dissenting on it. So if you try to unwind and unwrap it, that that’s probably not acting in the best interest of the organization could harm the organization and their four year breaching your fiduciary duties. But exactly when when you cross the line is not always clear, for example. And if you thought the boarded approved an unlawful action, both well, it’s going to be you do need to speak out. And at worst case, you need to bring it to the attention of ah, the authorities in much more common cases. Maybe it’s something if you if you feel very strongly about that, you send a private letter out each boardmember and the ceo. And if somebody asks you about it, you just say you disagreed with it vigorously. But the process used again was proper, and a majority voted the other way. And if you really can’t live with that decision, think about resigning from the board, okay, the private letter to the individual boardmember is that’s an interesting approach, but that’s discreet but still could be very firm, right? And i think it allows you to state your argument in a way that you can get all your points across the way you might not be able to do at a board meeting when you know everybody’s interrupting each other and there’s this vigorous discussion amongst, you know, five, ten, fifteen, twenty people all trying to chime in in a short amount of time. Would you be asking if you felt that strongly about something for the board to reconsider its decision and have the discussion again at another board meeting? If it’s the type of decision that can be reconsidered, maybe it’s something that’s going to be? Ah, a strategic ah plan for the future and not a contract that has already been signed on dh where you can’t back out of it. If it’s something that far off enough that the board decision can be reversed in the organization can change course without any harm, and then yes, i think the board can reconsider it if if they didn’t get a chance to hear your arguments, perhaps because the board meeting cut short and didn’t give a chance give you the opportunity to put out all your points that you thought were very important, sending it in a board letter, at least to the chair of the board. But but possibly toto, all board members and and the executive might might be the right thing to do. Do you see money? Occasions? And we just have about a minute and a half left where an outside facilitator could be valuable for for these these kinds of difficult discussions in board meetings. Yeah, you know, i think when when the board starts to disagree each other and creates this culture, not only have open dissent but of open ah hostility, yeah. So just where they can stand each other anymore, i think you really need to get a facilitator to help. Ah, figure out the process and howto get boardmember to understand their different viewpoints. You also have tio select board members very carefully, not only for for their diversity and skills and backgrounds, but also for their ability. Teo operate in a culture that that encourages dissent on where they they’re not afraid to speak out, even if they may not be in the majority view point. That’s, that’s really important in our democracy on, certainly in aboard as well. My voice just went up like a high school girl like you often voice cracked like a fourteen year old, and i do that all the time. No, but it is very important. That’s, a very, very interesting point two to bring in the recruitment process, the not only the skill that you might be seeking real estate attorney, whatever, but fitting into the culture of the organization and the culture of the board. Yeah, i i think that could even be a valid statement for the organisation when it when it, you know, think about all of the valleys that it wants to to promote is encouraging dissenting views as a core governance or organizational values. Okay, jean, we’re gonna leave it there. I want to thank you very much. You will find jeans, blawg at non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter, you’ll find him at g tack again. Jean, thanks so much. Thank you. You have a happy holiday. Thank you very much. You two we’ll talk next month next week seven security pitfalls. They’re not sexy, but they are very important. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com ah, creative producers claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and this cool music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything people don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff sort of dane toe add an email. Address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies insurance. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for April 15, 2016: 8 Areas of Nonprofit Excellence

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Michael Clark & Melkis Alvarez-Baez: 8 Areas of Nonprofit Excellence

The Nonprofit Coordinating Committee Excellence Awards are based on tough criteria that reveal the right way to run your organization in areas like fundraising; management; board; financial; and diversity. This is from the show on March 6, 2015, when Michael Clark was NPCC’s president, and Melkis Alvarez-Baez was their director of programs. They explain all the standards.


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host it’s tax day. I hope that doesn’t make you cringe just think about next year when you’ll have until april seventeenth, two extra days next year see how generous the irs is to you. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into thrombosis, ida pina, if you dealt me the low blow that you missed today’s show eight areas of non-profit excellence the non-profit coordinating committee excellence awards are based on tough criteria that revealed the right way to run your organization in areas like fund-raising management board, financial and diversity. This is the show from march six twenty fifteen, when michael clark was and pcc’s president and melkis alvarez-baez was their director of programmes. That explains all the standards on tony’s tech too our contributors, we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com also by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay for mobile donations. Crowdster dot com here are michael clarke and melkis alvarez-baez with eight areas of non-profit excellence, i’m very glad teo welcome it’s, a pleasure to welcome michael clarke and melkis alvarez-baez to the show, michael is president of the non-profit coordinating committee of new york. He has thirty five years of training and experience in urban issues, public health and non-profit management, and they are at n pcc. And why on twitter melkis alvarez-baez, director of programmes at non-profit coordinating committee of new york, one of the programs she directs is the new york community trust non-profit excellence awards that we’re talking about today and she’s at melkis alvarez-baez michael melkis welcome to the show. Thank you for having us. Pleasure. Pleasure. Tio be able to spend the hour talking about some, i think extraordinary guidelines. Eight specific areas. That non-profits good. Very much benefit from michael, our president and pcc, new york. Where were these eight areas of excellence come from that? The awards are based on well, it’s. Funny. You should ask tony. We we actually little karin answer for that. I didn’t prepare nasco and not only prepared but it’s the truth. Ten years ago we looked around the country and we realised there are thirty six regional associate state and regional associations of non-profits like ours, representing a total of about twenty five thousand non-profit organizations and nineteen of them have developed their own standards for what are the key areas of management that you have to do really well, so that your organization performs at a high level and as a ceo so you don’t get fired. So the point is we took a look at those we identified even though they don’t quite agree with each other. We said we’re gonna fight eight areas that that they all had in common. Okay? And we decided to use those eight areas to build a slightly different kind of programme. Most of those are certification programs. You take a workshop, you passed the test, they say, okay, you’re certified in financial management. You certified in this, we thought we would create an aspirational program, one that really talks about what did the excellent practices and financial management look like? What did the excellent practices and communication look like? Because i think these days, most people are trying to figure out how to make the organization’s perform better. So these air guides to how to make your organization perform better in those areas and quite well detailed. We’re gonna have time since we have the full hour. Get into some of the detail of it. Um, now, only nineteen of the thirty eight organizations had had standards of sometime. That’s only that’s, only half. Yeah, that’s all within the last five or ten years. It’s a trend that they’re gradually developing these program or more. Yeah. No kisses, nothing. Yeah, i think last time i checked, it was actually twenty one of them that had some sort of standards program. It’s growing. I just came from our national conference, and we talked a lot there about standards of excellence programs and also about the excellence awards program and where they were one of only two organizations that has an excellence award. Strauss cool. All right, the other one is washington d c right now melkis this is a lot more than an awards ceremony, right? Maybe there’s let’s talk about the workshops that aaron get involved all year. You’re raising really the level of lots and lots of non-profits whether there in the awards competition or not. Yeah, we actually like to say that the awards is uneducated schnoll program disguised. As an awards program on and it’s quite lengthy process from march to november, culminating in that final award ceremony where we sort of announced three winners but really the entire process, even the application is meant to be educational for applicants, so that there’s something for all of the organizations that go through the process, even those that don’t win, right? And the idea is that by going through this application process, they’re learning about their management practices and how to improve them. At the end of each awards program, we also put on a siri’s of workshops that are actually going on. Now they’re called the pathways toe excellence workshops in the idea with those is to really disseminate the best management practices in each of these eight key areas that we’re going to talk about from past winners of the awards. And it was that award ceremony last november that motivated me tohave the two of you on the show because i was i just was so taken by how no, how the organizations had risen to the to the challenge of the eight areas that there were three organizations on stage, but i know there’s lots. Of lots of organizations a z i said, i mean, even even beyond the ones that are in the competition, there’s lots of organizations learning a lot about very, very good practices. Andi was just i hadn’t i hadn’t heard of the awards. Sorry to say i hadn’t heard of them before i was invited. Okay? All right, well, i’m too i’m helping you. We’re getting it out to ten thousand more people. Yeah, i was invited to go boyfriend hey. And i went and i really was was taken by the descriptions of the organizations out there with the three that were on the stage, the finalists and just the overall explanation of the eight areas. So welcome. I’m glad i’m glad i was there going. You’re the practices. The good thing about the program when you come to those awards and when you sit through the best practices workshop is you’re listening to people that have actually had to implement these things. Yes. So this is not somebody’s theory about how to do this stuff. This is this is just a lesson straight from the field, right? How they think it has a has a i think non-profit managers recognize that right away it has an authenticity that you wouldn’t necessarily see if you read a lot of books. There are something over seven million entries and google for non-profit excellence. Okay, it’s, a confusing world let’s start to get it let’s start to get into our eight because because there are eight, and i want it just as an overviewing i’m going to take them off, okay, if you’ll allow me great. So people know what’s what’s coming up, the first we’re going to talk about is effective and ethical fund-raising and resource development overall management focus on results, governance structure that moves the organization forward strong, transparent and accountable financial management, diversity and culturally competent organizational practices. Enlightened use of human resource is that’s interesting, enlightened use appropriate and reliable information technology it systems and regular ineffective communications and use of communications technology. That’s where we’re headed let’s start with thea the fund-raising and ethical effective unethical fund-raising and resource development let’s start with you, michael, the one of the things that there’s lots of bullets under all of them. And we obviously do not have time for all that for each bullet. That’s impossible, but let’s ah, let’s talk let’s. Look at a couple like fund-raising revenue streams are as diverse as possible. What are we looking for there? Why is it important? You’re looking for something that looks like a pyramid and a lot of non-profits finances looked like an inverted pyramid are the words you’re looking for some money coming from private donors, some money coming from foundations, some money coming from the government, some money coming from corporations and that there’s a very simple reason for that. If you have only one source revenue, then you’re extremely vulnerable to changes in politics or changes in foundation trends or changes in whatever that one sources so better toe have you that that’s very risky? Yes. So you you know, just to keep it to be a sustainable is posits a big word in the nonprofit sector. Sustainability to be a sustainable is possible. You want tohave as diverse range of sources of money as you can get the the board. So i’ll tell you what we’ll may well go back and forth. So you know michael will cover. Well, michael will cover the talk about the fund-raising and then melkis will do the next area. Okay, we’ll be all right. But then chime in two, you know, i mean, let’s have a conversation. I don’t mean to shut you off milk if you want to add something about effective ethical fund-raising please do. Okay, um, the board overall responsibility for raising funds to meet the organization’s needs the responsibility fund-raising resides with the board, michael, it actually does. You know, there are three basic principles built into non-profit law about what boardmember we’re supposed to do, and one of them is called the duty of care, and that involves making sure the organization is sustainable and has revenue. A lot of board members walk onto boards and never realized that we do a lot of training with board members and coaching on they say, really, i’m supposed to help them raise money? Absolutely it’s part of its part of the job of being a boardmember so, you know, boardmember is frequently represent very different kinds of backgrounds than the managers, but they bring a lot to the table, and we’re looking for one hundred percent annual giving on the board. A good standard is tohave one hundred percent above board giving something personally. Some board set up a number something just say, give something that’s meaningful to you, but somehow you one hundred percent giving you what that is that if your board members aren’t giving, then it’s hard to convince others to give to your organization. Sure, they’re your key, your key volunteers right there. You’re a prime stakeholders if they’re not doing it, why should others? Yeah, cool. Um, let’s say i’ll tell you what, let’s let’s go out on a break and when we come back, we’re going toe we’ll get through our next area, which is going to be overall management focused on results, and we’ve got six other areas after that, so hang there with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent let’s do live listener love let’s do it early because we got a lot manami wisconsin love it, my nominee. I love that st louis missouri would bury new jersey, new bern, north carolina will be there in a couple weeks in north carolina. Anyway, new york, new york live listener love to each of you will go abroad a little later on got to send out the podcast pleasantries, people listening in the time shift on any device, anytime podcast pleasantries to you and our affiliate affections love our affiliates throughout the country, lots of affection going out to them melkis let’s, look at this overall management focus on results and why a well defined mission statement is important. Yeah, i mean, i think mission statements contend to be kind of cloudy sometimes they’re up there, right? And this area really has to do with organizations defining the difference that they want to make people’s lives in the communities that they’re serving, and then setting sort of milestones and benchmarks to assess and track their own progress towards that difference right towards the impact that they ultimately. Want to it? See? And there’s a point made that it’s ah it’s. A well defined mission statement so narrowly focused. Ah, what else? Well defined geographical focus also, you know, in terms of when it comes to what the selection committee is looking for, a strong response in this in this question, they’re looking to get a sense from the mission statement. What an organization does, right. And ultimately, if an organization has to take a paragraph toe, explain what they do, then perhaps it’s worth revisiting the mission statement. Okay. You mentioned the selection committee. Who is the selection committee for the awards? Yeah. The selection committee is a group of about thirty two consultants non-profit leaders. That’s a big committee. Yeah, many of thirty two. Yep. And the idea is that we have about four people strong in each of these eight areas. Okay. Oh, i see. All right. So there’s target over their teams. Some committee’s subcommittee. Oh, excellent. Okay. Um, expert consultants and technical assistance air used when they’re needed. Yeah. What’s what’s a focus their you know, this is an area that can get really expensive, you know, to do long term evaluations for example, and so consultants provide a service that allows organizations toe improve upon this practice, especially if they can’t do it. I’m themselves. Last year, rome, new york, during their site visit, spoke about their use of consultants and row in new york was one of the three finalists. Yes, that i saw on the stage. Three winners for one of three winners, right on dh. They spoke during their site visit, which is the final stage of the selection process about how they had used um ah, consultants teo improve their own performance in this area to assess thie impact of their work. Remember what kinds of consultants they were using? Let’s. See? So in one area they were working to improve their boards performance and making sure that they were setting expectations on dh, that the responsibilities were clear. So, you know, this area about tracking results is not just about program results, but also about organizational results as well. Yeah, okay. The organization uses reflective learning. What is that? It’s an organization. You know, it’s a practice that organizations are being mindful of what they’re seeing, and then reflecting back on that. So saying, well, why did that work a certain way, or why didn’t that work a certain way? As we expected, perhaps, and then coming back and trying to take steps to sort of address whatever you know, they did see what the result wass, you know, so they’re not just resting and great results, for example, but they’re trying to see how can they be even greater? And if something doesn’t work, then how can we improve upon it going forward? All right, how about we go to aa governance structure, michael governance structure that moves the organ move the organization forward, that’s what we do, yeah, we do more that i functional agreement, our experience high performing non-profits and i say this without exception all think of the relationship between their board of directors and their top manager, usually the executive director of the president as a partnership. I say that because when i came into the sector thirty five years ago, there was a tendency to see the board as the governance body, and they made the decisions, and they made the policy. It never really worked like that. But it sounded nice on paper. But the truth is, if they’ve got to work together because both of them play essential roles in making sure that the organization is is working at its optimum. And there are a lot of details to that, as you know, but the point is, you know, it’s it’s just to make sure that everybody’s on the same page and we’re all moving in the same direction, and that we have some markers for determining whether we’re getting there. One of the standards is that the individual board members and the board overall is regularly evaluated key huge print, huge thing people think, well, the board should be evaluating the executive director of the year it’s true that’s true, right? The government governance committee or some other body should be evaluating the performance of the board as a whole and the performance of every boardmember because it really is a job. And you want to make sure that everybody’s playing on the team think of think about rowing about like rome. New york does every day and you get imagine if eleven people are growing really well on one person’s decided that this is lunch time. You’re not gonna have a high performing rowing team? Yeah, teamwork. Is what non-profits take toe work effectively. Um, new board candidates get a recruitment prospectus and site visits. It’s a big deal. What should be in that recruitment prospectus? We look well, a lot of things that expectations. Ideally, you’d have a job description for board members. You have some sort of description of the kinds of functions of the different committees on the board. How will you be evaluated a year from now? So people know what they’re working against. You know what with what will this test cover, as they say in school and, you know, it’s it’s way give people in our organization we give people the last six meeting’s minutes so they can sort of get a flavor for how the board talks about things. We have ah, charge to every one of our committees that says not only what its duties are, but sort of what its goals are. Our contribution should be, i presume. Non-profit coordinating committee of new york is adhering to these eight standards we try, we were working in its very aspirant. They’re very aspirational really mean. They are it’s and it’s. A constant, innovative process. I can’t. Exactly. And the exciting thing. Tow us is about fifty percent of the people that apply now have applied before that’s exactly way we structured. The weight is fifty percent of the organization’s. Oh, oh have r repeat people keeping one of they want they want to do more. They want it. They want to come back to the inn are most positive. Feedback comes from people that don’t win. They say this is the best thing we ever. It was an enormous amount of lorts cream it’s the best thing we ever went through it’s better than strategic planning, you know it’s it’s ah it’s better than anything else. We’ve tried and we and we didn’t win this year, but we want to go through again next year. We have part of a big part of the reason too. That is melkis gives everybody on our toe now on behalf of detailed feedback in a conference call after the committee of the committee of our two hour and a half, you here’s here’s what the committee said about your communications here’s what the committee said about your financial management hears so mary’s where you need to improve that’s what would cost most? Non-profits a lot of money and, you know, and paid consultant and how many organizations do you do that for? Its offered to everyone that applies. So, for example, in twenty fourteen, we had seventy seven applicants. I’ve done feedback calls with fifty three of them so that’s, about seventy percent of them. Okay, that’s, a big commitment on our part, you know, toe invest that time. But as she said, it’s, really from our point perspective, a training and consulting and coaching program mohr than a competition in the competition is it’s like the voice, you know, see the voice on television. You know, the big payoff in the voice is not whether you win that particular cycle, it’s, that you get to be part of some, you know, master, musical persons team, and you’re going to learn a mountain from that. Well, we hope you learned a mountain from our whole application process. All right, excellent. Um okay. Another one just under the governance structure. That expectations are understood by board members, i guess. That’s part of that probably reflects on the prospect. The recruitment prospectus. Yeah, it does. But it’s it’s also something that needs a constant refresh because board members, i think a lot of them have sort of fallen into ah, dreamlike stand trance where they believe, you know, my job is to come and make sure that the staff’s doing a good job and pat him on the back well, that is part of their job. But there are a lot of other parts to their job, and they they need to do it. And sometimes i need coaching and coaxing and and help and all sorts of stuff, all of which is part of the picture. But staff does a lot of the driving of that process. But boardmember sze have very definite responsibilities just ah, quick. When do you think that these this the recruitment prospectus would that be something that signed by the boardmember i acknowledge that i’ve received a copy and i understand it. Is that that important? It some organizations do that. Some organizations have an annual commitment. Statement where every boardmember signs a commitment that this year i will help raise this amount of money this year with individualized goals. Yeah, this year i will attend at least seventy five percent of all the board meetings, committee meetings and so on. It’s not a light thing. You know, i had a governess, board chair, governance committee chair at a previous organization who used to say it’s the reverse of the old army slogan which used to say it’s, not a job. It’s a journey. He said, this is not a journey at the job. Yeah, it really today running a nonprofit corporation has never been more demanding, but it’s also, you know, one of those things where it’s really closely related toe having board assessments and having a report card, you know, of the entire board or individual boardmember because that’s another way to die, checkin on whether they know what is expected of them on and to remind them when they are not performing, and to acknowledge them when they are, you know, performing you know, i love the annual commitment document or something like that. And and of course, the individual boardmember zehr all being reviewed? Yeah, cool melkis let’s stay with you for ah, accountable financial management. What? Why don’t you? Why don’t you point out what you think is important there? Yeah, i think in this area what? And michael said, one of the buzzwords earlier sustainability, right? So the selection committee is really looking for organizations that are financially healthy and that are that are making smart choices in their finances so that they’re around five years from now, ten years from now, long long term write the other thing that they’re looking for here is how their mission is informing their financial practices. And sometimes we tend to think that those two things are separate, but are the finances informed by what is important to the organization? Right? So, for example, with leek and watts, who was our gold prize winner last year, they were really focused on making sure that their programs were being maximized because beds that weren’t full meant dollars were being thrown. What you tell us what we can watch those? Yeah, sure. So lincoln watts has a school up in yonkers. They also provide tons of programs and services for juvenile justice, youth or kids that are involved in the juvenile justice and students with disabilities. They have programming for them as well. So it’s a pretty multi service organization. All right, so you want to see that alignment between financial priorities and mission and that correct mission statement? Yeah, exactly. Okay, um, adequate cash reserves. Yeah, the protect the organization against contingencies about that. Yeah. I mean, it’s sort of ties back to what michael was talking about earlier about having a diverse revenue stream. It’s all about making sure that you’re protecting yourself and having that cash available is critically important. This election committee looks for a minimum of three months of cash reserves, but ideally at least six months. And of course, you keep saying the selection committee, but we know that this is for all non-profits whether you and to the end of the competition or we’re just or not, it has been an area of serious advancement in the nonprofit world of management of governance. In the last twenty five, thirty years, there was a time when people thought, well, they should operate in a break even, you know, they should just barely make it out because we don’t want a pile of money in the closet. And the truth is, you do that and you’re putting your entire mission at risk. It’s a very silly way to do business. In fact, there’s a standard here for ah working, striving toward a budget surplus each year. Yes, you should. You should want one of the simplest ways. And people don’t think about it is one of the simplest ways to build a surplus is to put it in the budget every year. Contribution of the surplus. Fifty thousand dollars on contribution of the surplus one hundred thousand dollars and treated as an annual recurring expense. And next thing you know, you look up in five years. So it’s not just an afterthought, right? Exactly. Well, not just what’s left over what’s left at the end because non-profit people tend to always could think of more needs and more things they can do and more activity. But you got to think about preserving your organization. I don’t like your own personal finances. Budget for savings? Yes, not just save what’s left of the exactly. Exactly. All right, all right. I’ll stay with you, michael. For ah, diversity and culturally competent practices. Well, this is a very rich area. The truth is diversity. I think most people understand what that means, but diversity’s important, we believe, for all kinds of companies, not just non-profit companies, but in the nonprofit sector where were frequently dealing with such a diverse communities it’s especially critical that we have boards that represent that staffs that represent that, and those are some of the questions that we and the practices that we focus on, representing the communities, that they’re serving exactly the populations, but there’s another issue in here, which is cultural competency, which is a little newer, but i think in many ways is more on point, and that is, if you’re working with populations that are that are each have their own cultural and language and other kinds of barriers to perhaps to dealing with you, you know, it’s part of your job to make sure that you can communicate with him in ways that are understood and that you understand enough about the culture and the language to make sure that not only are you getting the word out, but also you’re getting communications back. Yes, there is, and i think we’re going you have it in one of those standards, regular feedback from the communities that you’re serving. Yeah, there’s a great example. There’s, an organism wonderful organization, bronx works that that about five years ago applied and when asked about diversity said, well, you know, they’re in the bronx and they said, well, you know, we have several people on staff to speak spanish, and i think at the time, they thought that was a good answer, but the selection committee actually dinged him on that because the bronx today represents a very diverse number of ethnic communities, and it goes way beyond the sort of historic image of the puerto rican south bronx. So we came back this past year, and i asked them that same question, and they explained that they had the capacity now to trance simultaneously translated thirty four languages, that they had people on staff speaking nine of the most frequently spoken languages in the bronx. And they want outstanding that’s. That what that’s a what a great story. That’s. Terrific. Um, you have about a minute left before we, uh, we take a little break. Um, the organization regularly assesses in response to emerging needs. So that’s. That’s a big part of that feedback you’ve gotto do you know what your community’s needs are? Yeah, because the truth is not a static, especially in new york city, no place like new york city, where neighborhoods turnover constantly in terms of ethnic and demographic, another composition just look at brooklyn or queens in the last ten or fifteen years, so what you want to do is keep making sure that the geographic area is serving on the issues that you’re working on, connect with those realities outstanding. All right, mohr with michael and melkis coming up first, pursuant and crowdster i’ve talked to their ceos, both of these guys, you are focused on small and midsize shops just like this show, and just like i am, trent recur at pursuant, he has thirteen years working in small and midsize non-profits he gets your fund-raising challenges he’s lived them day in and day out and that’s. Why pursuing tools are made to overcome those challenges so you will raise more money pursuing dot com over crowdster the ceo there, joe ferraro, he and his wife, hanna run a small charity, and he used to be a marketing executive at t he knows your challenges also living them now each day and he’s at crowdster applying corporate marketing to overcome these challenges. That’s why, they added apple pay for mobile donations they’re peer-to-peer micro sites, they’re simple to set up elegant crowdster has terrific support. You are not going to be doing this alone just ah, talk to joe yourself. Joe ferraro, joe dot ferraro at crowdster. Dot com talk to the guy now. Time for tony’s. Take two. I am so grateful to our three regular contributors, amy sample ward, maria semple and jean takagi. They are by no means regular, like ordinary. They’re exemplary. The time they put in to prepping were even before prepping. But just thinking about topics, you know they’re always out thinking about topics emailing me here. This could be good. How about this? And nine times out of ten, whatever they come up with is outstanding. And i say, yes, let’s, go with it. And then the time that they spend preparing and then actually doing the show, you know they have to arrange their schedules around that. Obviously so, you know, very very grateful. Ah, i’m thanks. Latto have amy and maria. And jean on the show, month after month, it’s been for years, all of them jean has been the longest, like he was on one of the very first shows. So that’s, almost latto what we’re coming up on five years, six years come upon six years in july, and maria and amy, like four years or something, you know, it’s just enormous gratitude to the three of them. Thank you so, so much that’s. Tony’s take two now here’s michael and melkis continuing with eight areas of non-profit excellence melkis i think i think it’s your turn all right, let’s sound right for the enlightened use of human resource is what’s enlightened use? Um, so enlightened use means that that organizations are sort of maximizing the talent that is available of them, that they are taking care of their staff. And what else? That they’re sort of using their staffs experienced, tio benefit the organization. Okay, uh, another area in that and there is making sure that your risk level for your staff and three organization is as low as possible so that you don’t allow your organization be blown off course because of something didn’t expect and for that matter, you don’t subject your staff too. Such stressful conditions that it’s bad for them. So it’s it’s, really? The karen nature nurturing of your staff, as well as optimizing with one of the standards, is professional development opportunities, internal and external melkis yeah, so that’s something that the selection committee members really look for in strong organizations is that they’re investing in their staff, right? And so that khun b you know that can take the shape of online universities almost that are created for larger napor imitations and their staff, or something as simple as belonging to end pcc and sending your staff to the workshops that we put on that’s that’s you know something else that a lot of organizations tower in their own applications? Um, that there that there is a whistleblower and conflict of interest policies. Now i noticed those those specific policies appearing to two different standards. What? Why are those specifically mentioned whistleblower in conflict of interest? Well, one one big thing is we just wait. Just finished passing the first revision of the new york state, not for-profit corporation long forty five years and i served on the attorney general’s task. Force that created much of the draft for that and the truth is so so i’m only i’m only two levels. I’m only two degrees of separation from new york state attorney general, two degrees of separation. Well for mr snusz wish i had known you als, but the upshot is it requires now used to be recommended and now requires that every non-profit have a conflict of interest policy and a whistleblower policy, and not everyone was civil or you have to be above a certain budget level. But the point is that there’s much more law undergirding those doing policies. What conflicts of interest are we talking about this between morgan over primarily material conflicts of interest between your sister is the treasurer, right or or the money, you know says we’re paying we’re paying an insurance company. This is an actual example. We’re paying insurance company to ensure all of our operations, but it turns out you’re paying the insurance company more than they really charge, and they’re taking the extra and kicking it back to us. Executive director is just a couple of examples of flagrant abuse that’s about somebody just went what prison last year? For okay, for eleven years of that kind of behavior. And the truth is ah, it turns out this is far more important even than the audit. We actually raised the threshold for audits in the state from two hundred fifty thousand up to a million starting over the next few days. Give a break to the smaller organization exactly on it for what it is not because an audit is not it. You know, every one of the organizations that you’ve read headlines about people stealing money in the last fifteen years, they had a clean audit here before. So the point i’m making us it’s. Not that the auditors weren’t doing their job. They were. And on it is a very limited tools to assess the finances. Okay, and the conflict of interest part are we also thinking about conflicts between boards? Boardmember is doing business with the organization? Yeah. That’s part of what’s covered. Okay. Has a whole list of things. If your mother, brother, sister, grandfather, any people like the any relatives, children, you know, life partners or people are also being paid by the organization. Then you have to. You have to do a declaration. You have to fill out a form. Okay? Succession planning is a part of this too. That that’s part of risk is it is you don’t want an organization that has suddenly hit from sideways because executive director dies. Gets run over by a truck is the favorite example. Yeah, or just, you know, gracefully retired, whatever it is you want to know about that, you want to plan for it in advance. You want to have process established for how it’s going to work on big organizations. You might even have somebody in waiting in smaller organization to at least know what the plan is, you know? And it could even be a you mentioned could be retirement. Retirement could be corixa. Resignation could be sudden. And ideally, the person would stay until the replacement is in place. But maybe there next-gen job doesn’t allow that. Thinks that i mean, that could that could shake things up pretty seriously when the ceo walks in and says, you know, i’m only gonna be here another three months yet big deal. Okay, okay. I’m going back to melkis because you took over work-life. Um melkis information technology. This is this is big reliable we have reliable. So if we’re using windows x p still that’s ah, we probably do not have, which is totally unsupportive and has been un supported by window by microsoft. For i think a year now or something that’s, not a reliable system. Ok, yeah. So this area actually focuses more on like it. T infrastructure has a hole, right? But also i’m shallow, shallow examples of so here we’re looking at, you know, making sure that you have the technology that you need to make sure that the organization is efficient. That it’s, you know, sort of making everyone’s job a little bit easier. But also, you know, what roles does technology play in advancing your mission related goals? A cz. Well, so we often hear about how organizations are trying to use technology. Teo sort of helped deliver the programs and services that they offer. So eh? So i guess this this area is twofold. It’s about building that infrastructure to support your staff, but also the infrastructures to support your programs as well. Yeah. Ok. I see that disaster preparedness and disaster recovery planning is a part of that. One of the interviews i did we’re gonna have? Ahh we’re gonna have ahh half a show devoted to that because it’s one of the end and tcs reviews i got was exactly that. Why? Why so important? Well, we saw it with sandy firsthand, right? Organizations that didn’t have that solid infrastructure were unable to return toe work on dh basically were not able to provide services on dh programming organizations that had a more solid infrastructure we’re able to, even though they might not have been able to return to their offices physically were able to continue their work with pretty minimal interruption because they were ableto work remotely from home on. And we saw that, you know, with our own organization where a lot of us were able to work from home even though it was difficult toe commute into the into the office. Okay, andi, even if you can’t maintain fool full operations, at least you khun, you’re functioning, you’re in communication with each other, you can you can communicate outward to the people that you’re serving mean, at a minimum, you know, i think those things are important communications. What was your michael? What was the ceo there? President there? What was the post sandy like for ah non-profit coordinating committee? Well, it was quite hectic because a lot of organizations were, you know, trying to scramble to come up with solutions to problems that varied all over the map from literally being underwater toe having some of their system’s knocked out toe, having clients that were stranded in communities that were heavily impact about the hurricane and one of our winner is actually in the excellence awards program redhook initiative had had had the foresight four years earlier to build a wireless network in the largest public housing project in brooklyn, and it was it was done for the right programmatic reasons, the very reasons melkis just mentioned so they get communicate easily and cheaply out toe people that lived there, that’s the low income population so that those people could talk directly back to bradrick initiative and say, we need a program that does this, and we need some economic work on this and so on it’s very rambunctious programmed as a lot of stuff, and they didn’t plan it. I don’t think that’s a disaster response mechanism, but when the when the flood hit and then i think fourteen thousand people stranded in all these buildings with no elevators and very difficult problems with medications and food and stuff. They were all they were able nonetheless, in most cases to communicate, at least with every floor, and they were able to talk to people going to get people out, bring stuff in. So, you know, you forget sometimes you think of it and wireless services, you know, that stuff that you have to have a certain level of influence for, but, you know, when used public broadband and things like that, you can actually make it quite cheap, so non-profits air finding very innovative ways to use it, i think, okay, augment their mission, all right, and it’s part of the standards melkis thea, there should be a technology plan shouldn’t just all be happening haphazardly. We should actually should be planning our use of tech. Yeah, i mean, this is something that i feel like a lot of organizations don’t do but it’s a worthwhile investment, it helps you sort of monitor the systems that you haven’t place and thinking about where you’re going in the future and what sort of investment’s in you’re right, you’re going to need to make right. And that also sort of gets the different parts of the organization involved in talking about it. T as it relates to them as well. So, you know, it should not just be the Job or responsibility of 1 person, but really, it should be integrated until the entire, you know, organisation and its functioning. Yeah. Including the people who are doing the program work, everybody’s feeding in at least to the to the person who has the responsibility. Um, there was something that oh, yeah, the confidentiality standards, privacy standards. That’s a little about the importance of thinking about this. Yeah. And and this becomes a bigger issue with the following area as well. Communications. But, you know, there are organizations that do health related work that need to really be mindful of the hip standards on dh, the responsibilities that they owe to their clients to make sure that their information is protected and kept confidential. Okay, michael, anything you want to add on the on the side? No, just obviously, with all social media that are exploding. And with all the various ways in which people network these days non-profits have to be at least keeping up with that and making sure that they’ve got the ability to reach people and at least a lot of those ways, and this would this would flow back to the financial management. I think that should be budgeting for it for the support, the play and that we need to have in this area exactly it it is a growing budget item in a lot of non-profits lives, sure, and it cuts across communications and just basic infrastructure of technology. But it’s it’s pretty much an indispensable assumption today that you need that you think we’ll do with live listen, love, we got more new york, new york joined us welcome, welcome additional new york city people and madison, wisconsin joined us live listener love going out there to medicine let’s go abroad! We’ve got we’re in china! We’ve got wenzhao and tajol china ni hao, seoul, korea and young son korea love went south, south korea so loyal, always, always south korean listeners, please, on your haserot and going to japan, konnichiwa to honda and masato kenichi while we got hungary with us, we can’t see your city, hungary, but we know that. You’re with us live. Listen, love going out to hungary and bringing it back to you to the states. Middleton, middletown, middletown, delaware, joined us live, listener love, of course, those podcast pleasantries always and the affiliate affections so, so important. Okay, um, we’re moving on can hear me turning pages, uh, where we now with michael, right, michael, tends tio take over a bit, but really, sam, we got a minute for a break, ok, it’s melkis astern. Okay, melkis, we’re going tow. I’ll tell you what, let’s, go out for a break. Now. I think it makes sense to have our break now, when we come back, effective communications that melkis was just alluding to stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m rob mitchell, ceo of atlas, of giving. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent and since we did the live listen love wigan uk joined us welcome, wigan live listen love out to you, marcus, you’re up communications and and use of communications technology why is this important? Yeah, so with this area were really focused on not just how organizations are broadcasting their own work and the services that they provide, but also, you know, going back to that piece of feedback, how are they asking their different stakeholders? Not just their clients, but they’re funders there? Other donors, they’re boardmember zeev anon volunteers? How are they asking them for feedback? And then what our organization’s doing with that feedback? So our communications out, and then we’re also listening in writing to be listening to our stakeholders, right? So there’s that focus on the two way communications bond with the stakeholders it’s not just about communicating with all of them and the exact same way there should be the communications practices should really be tailored towards the stakeholders and you would know, you know what works with them by sort of tracking the effectiveness of your communication strategies and also just by listening to them, right? So what is what is it that they like to hear about? How do they like to be communicated with all right? Critical? I mean, you know, you’ve got to go to where people are not not the channel that you want them to be on, whether it’s email or social media or your sight or you’re a blogger or live events, you’ve got to do where you gotta go, where they are, right, and with social media it’s not even just about, you know, being on everything that’s available, right? It’s about being really mindful about about how you use each forum. So, for example, the washington heights corner project was a finalist last year, and they talked about how they use social media for the purposes of of connecting with city officials, right? So if they attend events and didn’t get to shake a hand, they will tweet at the city official and say, sorry i missed you hope we can reconnect at some point, all right? So that’s a very smart use on very targeted use of one particular media and your point about not being in all of them just because they’re exist when i was it. Ah, again non-profit technology conference this week few people mentioned, you know, avoiding shiny object syndrome just because there’s something new and shiny, a new network, a new social channel doesn’t mean that you need to be on it. Are your people there? Do they want? Do they want to hear from you? There doesn’t make sense for the age, the geography, the other demographics of the people you’re talking to it might not make sense for for your audience. I noticed that there’s something mentioned about formal and informal communication strategies. This could be just meeting people in the building where they live all right, right? Right? Or even, you know, mapping out sort of ah, touch strategy. Right? For particular people, for donors. Maybe where you’re going to map out, how many times a year going to speak to them and whether you know you want to make sure that, especially with funders this is true. You don’t want to make you want to make sure that each touches not an ask, right? So one of them might be, you know, how’s your daughter doing is she liking college? Write something very simple like that that’s that’s an informal check in but something that could go a long way right and says also a lot about how you communicate with with your you’re different audiences making the form nine ninety available is mentioned in this standard thiss area. And in a couple of others to teo to one or two others. Well, what you looking for? That nine? Ninety? It speaks the transparency of the organization. Is the organisation willing to put its finances out there for the public to review? Andi, think, michael, you can jump in here, but i am seeing that more and more of them are available online because it’s a testament to how the organisation sort of holds its self accountable by putting out there it’s, you know, it’s finances or others to see michael anything when we actually did a national guide to how to read the nine ninety and figure out what it means. Because it’s a complicated form, the iris requires it it’s not just a financial form and asked you to talk about are you still pursuing the mission that you were created for? Are you getting results? What is your board looked? Like it’s, it’s, a pretty exhaustive look at your organization from different angles, and they are all indeed online. But the truth is, you know, not every organization puts it on its own website was that my question would be where, where they’re accessible at the national level from an organization called guides guide star, of course, is that but for the for the committee, like now, i am going to focus on what the committee is looking for. Is that sufficient? If it’s if it’s killing one guy, they want ideally, they want to see your nine ninety on certainly they want to see it referenced on guide it’s our maybe a link or from your site? Yes to it on god, because the guy it’s different than a financial form because it gives the organization a chance to talk about its mission. It’s progress, it’s it’s ways of tracking progress and that sort of stuff. So you know non-profits have a cz jim collins once said, i really have to bottom lines. We have a financial bottom line and we have what they call a return on social investment and that’s the way in which you are are not fulfilling your mission. Are you changing anything in the world? And you should be able to track both of those things every year. Ideally, you’re nine, ninety and a certain sections of it that will help people figure that out. Are they making progress? So they helping more kids? Are they getting the kids not only into high school, but into college or they you know that sort of stuff? I had a guest. Ah, a couple of months ago. Now c p a huge tomb and the the conversation was about using the nine. Ninety as a marketing tool. The narrative sections instead of just copying and pasting from your mission statement, you use the narrative two to beam or if you save about what? About what your what your work is because because it is so widely available, use it as a marketing tool. Right? Um, all right, we just have a couple minutes left, and i want to talk some more about these workshops that are that that you conduct or are they strictly in person events or they on the web that others can take advantage of melkis pathway, sexson’s workshops are in person events. But what we do is we post the materials that are distributed at each of the sessions on our awards website, so folks can still i have access to all of the tools and templates that we share in person. Okay, cool it’s called pathways to excellent pathways. And, of course, the site organs of the sorry the organization site is n pcc. And why dot org’s? And where would people go to find the resource is you’re talking about melkis yeah, so actually, they would be on the awards microsite, which is np excellence dot f d n y dot or ge and there’s a a section for that on pathways to excellent say that. Say that you’re ill one more time, it’ll slower for the for the awards. Microsite yep. It’s n p excellence dot fc. And why dot or ge? Okay, i think there’s a link to it and the pcc. And why dot org’s? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. You’re raising the level of ah, lots and lots of non-profits minutes. It’s important for people to recognize. This is not just ah, a competition. All right. And and those have start the workshops have started. You said march to november. So there started, right? We yeah, so we’ve conducted three of them to date. So the one on fund-raising one on results in one on human resource is going to more coming up. And for those folks who are in new york when what’s the date of the ceremony, i very much hope to be there. We might be talking about that, michael. Yep. So for the twenty fifteen awards, the date is november nineteenth. A location to be determined. Okay, excellent that’s. Michael clarke is president of the non-profit coordinating committee of new york and melkis alvarez-baez director of programmes also at n p c c and they are at n pcc. And why on twitter? Michael melkis thank you so, so much. Thank you, toni. This has been great conversation appreciate. Thank you. My pleasure. Next week, i’ll be back live, probably with mohr from the non-profit technology conference. Got over thirty interviews from there. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go? Hyre? I don’t know. Responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay for mobile donations. Crowdster dot com. Our creative producer is clear. Meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by dina russell, and our music is by scott stein. That’s right, scotty, be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.