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Nonprofit Radio for October 3, 2022: Your Dismantling Racism Journey

 

Pratichi ShahYour Dismantling Racism Journey

Starting with your people, your culture and your leadership, how do you identify, talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit? My guest is Pratichi Shah, founder & CEO at Flourish Talent Management Solutions. (Originally aired 7/8/20)

 

 

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[00:01:58.44] 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 and oh, I’m glad you’re with me, I’d be thrown into necro psychosis if you killed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. You’re dismantling racism journey starting with your people, your culture and your leadership. How do you identify? Talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit. My guest is pretty itchy Shah founder and Ceo at flourished Talent management Solutions. This originally aired july 8th 2020 on Tony’s take two, let’s debunk plan to giving myths. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I tion for in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D just like three D but they go one dimension deeper here is your dismantling racism journey. It’s a real pleasure to welcome welcome. I’m not welcoming. I’m welcoming, I’m welcoming, she’s an HR strategist and thought leader with 25 years experience in all aspects of talent management. She’s making her face when I say 25 years human resources equity and inclusion and organizational development in the nonprofit and for profit arenas. She’s founder and Ceo of flourish Talent management Solutions. The company is at flourish tMS dot com. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:10.09] spk_1:
Thank you so much tony I appreciate being here.

[00:02:14.25] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure pleasure to have you um and I’d like to Jump right in if you’re, if you’re ready. Um,

[00:02:20.35] spk_1:
absolutely.

[00:02:48.05] spk_0:
You know, racism and white privilege most often look very benign on their face. Um, I had a guest explain why use of the word professional in a job description is racist. I had a more recently, I had a guest explain how not listing a salary range in a job description was felt racist to them. So how do we begin to uncover what is inequitable and right under our noses yet not visible on its face?

[00:03:34.85] spk_1:
Yeah. You know what it often it starts with listening. I mean to state state a bit of the obvious. It really does start with listening. It’s understanding for organizations. It’s understanding where we are. Um, so it’s listening to the voices that may not have been centered. We’ve become better as organizations and being responsive to staff. I hear that a lot kind of, hey, this is what my staff is telling me. This is what we need to do. But the question is is are you responding to the voices that have possibly been marginalized? Likely been marginalized or oppressed in the past joe. General responsiveness is not the same as centering the voices that really need to be heard. So it’s first off just understanding where you are as an organization and listening to the people who may have experienced organization in a way that is different than you think.

[00:03:50.19] spk_0:
So when you say general responsiveness is not what not adequate, not what we’re looking for. What do you mean by that?

[00:04:45.05] spk_1:
So a lot of time the voices that are saying, hey something’s wrong or we need to do this or we need to do that are not the voices of those that have been marginalized and oppressed. They tend to be maybe the loudest voices. They’re speaking maybe from a place of privilege and that needs to be taken into account. So being responsive, for instance, if the I call it kind of the the almond milk issue being responsive to a staff that says in addition to dairy milk for coffee. This is back when we were in fiscal offices, um, we need almond milk too. But the question is is are we listening to the voices of those that weren’t able to consume the dairy milk? It’s not a perfect metaphor. It’s not a perfect analogy because that one ignores actual pain and it just talks about preference. But are we list listen to the voices of people that have been oppressed who have, who have been, who have heard the word professional or professionalism wielded against them as a, as an obstacle in their path to success in their path to career advancement. Those are the voices that we need to listen to not the ones who have a preference for one thing or another.

[00:05:08.34] spk_0:
Um let’s be explicit about how we identify who, who holds these voices, who are these people?

[00:06:03.47] spk_1:
It’s people that have have come from. It’s particularly right now when we talk about anti black racism, we need to center the voices of those from the black community. And that means those who have either maybe not joined, not just not joined our organization for particular reasons, but maybe they have not joined our board. Maybe they have not participated in our programs, Maybe they haven’t had the chance to. So it’s really from an organizational perspective, think of it as understanding what our current state is. So how does your organization move people up? Move people in move people out if we don’t have the voices in the first place? Because maybe we’re not as welcoming as we should be, then what does the data tell us about? Who’s coming into our organization? Who’s leaving our organization, Who’s able to move up into our organization, what our leadership looks like, what our board looks like. So at times the fact that there is an absence of voice is telling in and of itself and our data needs to be able to explain what is going on. So that data needs to be looked at as well.

[00:06:52.58] spk_0:
Alright, so we need to very well, good chance we need to look outside our organization. You’re talking about people that we’ve turned down for board board positions turned down for employment? Um, I’m not even gonna say turn down for promotion because that would presume that they’re still that that presumes are still in the organization, But I’m talking about very likely going outside the organization. People who don’t work with us, who aren’t volunteering, who aren’t supporting us in any way, but we’ve marginalized them. We’ve cast them out before they even had a chance to get in

[00:07:10.44] spk_1:
potentially. Yeah. And then actually probably probably there is something that they have not found palatable or appealing about working with us or being a sensor or being uh to your point of volunteer. So so we need we need to look at why that’s happening.

[00:07:36.46] spk_0:
Okay. I’ve gotta I gotta drill down even further. How are we gonna identify these people within within our organization as it is? How are we gonna figure out which people these are that we’ve marginalize these voices of color over the let’s just like in the past five years, what have we if we’ve done this? How do we identify the people we’ve done it to?

[00:08:33.53] spk_1:
Yeah. It’s a really it’s a complicated question. It will differ by organization, right? It differs by what your subsector is, how things flow within a subsector. The size of the organization. A really good place to start is understanding who has turned us down, why have people left? So take a look at exit interviews. Even if you’re not doing exit interviews, we know that there is not always uh an HR presence in a lot of our organizations. If there aren’t formal exit interviews, first of all, let’s make time for those because we need to understand why people are leaving. Um but if if there isn’t a formal HR presence, what do we know about the circumstances under which someone left organization or said no to a job offer or said no to a board position or a volunteer. It’s also important to ask, expanding our definition of stakeholder groups, engaging with all of our stakeholder groups as as broadly defined as possible. And within those groups, understanding are we reaching out to a diverse audience to say why would you engage with us? Why would you not engage with us in any of those roles? So, yeah, it’s gonna be a little bit harder to understand the people who are not there because they’re not there.

[00:09:02.40] spk_0:
Yeah. Okay, Alright, so, alright, um we go through this exercise and and we identify we’ve identified a dozen people, um they’re not they’re not currently connected to us and uh it may be that they have had a bad experience with us, that they may have turned us down for employment because they got offered more money somewhere else. That could that in itself could be, let’s

[00:09:18.28] spk_1:
say that

[00:10:08.31] spk_0:
in itself could be uh not something other than benign, um but let’s say they moved out of the state, you know, they were they were thinking about, so, so in some cases they may not have a bad have had a bad experience with us, but in but in lots of cases they may have, they may have turned down that board position because they saw the current composition of the board and they didn’t feel they felt like uh maybe being an offer, you know, a token slot or whatever, whatever it might be. I’m just, I’m just suggesting that some of the, some of the feelings toward the organization might not be negative, but some might very well be negative of these dozen people we’ve identified in all these different stakeholder or potential stakeholder roles that they could have had. Um what do we reach out to them and say, how do we, how do we get them to join a conversation with an organization that they may feel unwelcome him?

[00:11:21.79] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And and I think right now, especially we tread carefully. Um we tried carefully and we honored the fact that they in fact might be getting that same question from many other other organizations, friends, colleagues, family members, in which people want to understand something. What we’re seeking to do is not be educated on the overall picture of white privilege, white supremacy of dominant narrative and dominant culture. That’s on us. That’s on all of us individually to understand that, that is not the member that is not up to. The member is of oppressed societies to have to tell us that, Right? So what they, what we want to understand is kind of, what did you experience with our organization? What was the good? What was bad? And first of all, do you even want to engage with us. Is this not a good time to do that because they’re already exhausted. I said to a colleague recently, you know, we can’t even understand the reality of what it’s like to live there to live that reality and for many to lead the charge, right? Because they’re also showing leadership in the movement. So to we can’t even understand what those layers of existence are like. So I think it’s treading very carefully and should we have the ability to engage with someone because they have the space, the energy, the desire. Then I think it’s understanding and asking kind of what’s going on for us? What where did you find us either not appealing or where did you? Why did you not want to work with us in whatever capacity we were asking? And it’s asking that question.

[00:11:50.37] spk_0:
Okay, well that’s further down. I’m just trying to get to like what’s the initial email invitation look like?

[00:11:55.10] spk_1:
It depends on the organization. It depends on the organization. It depends on the relationship. I wouldn’t presume to give words to that to be honest with you because because I think it also depends on the person that you’re asking. I don’t want to offer kind of a blanket response and inadvertently tokenized people by saying, oh, of course you’re gonna want to engage with us. So I really think it’s dependent on the situation.

[00:13:35.19] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They had a very smart newsletter this week. We often can’t predict news outcomes, but we often do know news is coming, for instance, hurricanes during hurricane season, the Duffy decision on abortion and the november midterm elections. We know in advance that there’s going to be this news. The smart nonprofits turn to communication says prepare talking points for all the possible outcomes in advance and they’re the ones that get the day one quotes and the op EDS and they own the issue on social media. So prepare your messaging in advance, then launch when the news breaks. It’s brilliant turn to communications. Your story is their mission. You can get their newsletter which is on message at turn hyphen two dot c o. Brilliant. Now, back to your dismantling racism journey. What are you inviting them to do with you have a conversation, share your experience with us, is it?

[00:14:42.37] spk_1:
Yeah, essentially. I mean, that’s what it boils down to. But again, it really depends on where the organization is. Right. So this is your data collection moment. This is information collection. Where else are you collecting information? What what else do you know? What other steps have you taken to begin that educational process because there’s there’s kind of a dual purpose here, right? It’s understanding who we are in, where we have contributed to structural racism, to pretend to a culture of that does not support differing viewpoints, differing populations, that is in some ways upholding white supremacy or is completely holding upholding white supremacy and its culture, there’s that general education of understanding all of that and then there’s understanding what our organization’s role is, right? So it’s both. And um so it’s really highly dependent upon where is the organization uh case for us, who you’ve talked to? The head of Equity in the center describes a cycle that is brilliant um around awake too, woke to work. Where are you in that cycle? Are you, where are you on? Um where are you and being pluralistic? Where are you and being inclusive? All of those things depend on what you’ll ask and how you’ll reach out and if you even should reach out there maybe work that has to be done internally before that reach out can happen again, just being considerate and sensitive of those who are willing to talk to.

[00:15:09.48] spk_0:
Yeah. Kay was our guest for the last most recent special episode on this exact same subject. Thank you.

[00:15:16.71] spk_1:
Yeah. The the organization is doing and has been since its inception has been doing incredible work. K is leading that work. Um and and both her words always contain wisdom and the products that they’ve put out are extraordinary.

[00:15:48.30] spk_0:
How about in your work are you facilitating the kinds of conversations in your practice that you and I are talking about right now, Do you you bring these outside folks in sometimes too to to have these conversations

[00:16:16.58] spk_1:
sometimes. Yeah, sometimes again being highly respectful of if they didn’t want to engage with us, do they even want to talk to us right now? My work really is around um, having an organization understand where it is right now. So what is its current state? What is the desired future state? Right. So we know that we want to be a racially inclusive, racially equitable organization likely that’s already been defined. But what does that mean for us as an organization if it means solely in numbers piece right? Like we want to be more divorces aboard. Okay, that’s fine. But beyond that, how will we make ourselves have a board culture that is appealing to those people that we want to bring in to work with us? So it’s kind of defining both current state and understanding current state to finding future state and then developing the strategy to get there.

[00:17:00.63] spk_0:
Okay. And now you and I are talking about, you said you know, we’re still data gathering, so we’re still defining the current culture as it exists. Right. Okay. Okay. And your work, you you centered around people, culture and leadership. Can we focus on leadership? I feel like everything trickles down from

[00:17:05.04] spk_1:
there.

[00:17:27.69] spk_0:
I don’t know. Are we okay. Are you okay, Starting with a leadership conversation or you’d rather start somewhere else? Okay. Um, so what what is it we’re looking for leaders of our listeners of small and midsize nonprofits to, to commit to you.

[00:17:30.41] spk_1:
I think it’s first of all committing to their own

[00:17:32.40] spk_0:
learning

[00:17:33.56] spk_1:
and, and not relying on communities of color to provide that learning. Right? Again, Going back to what we said earlier, it’s not relying on those who have been harmed or oppressed to provide the learning. So first of all, it’s an individual journey that’s a given. Okay. Um,

[00:18:32.11] spk_0:
can I, can I like to like things like people, I like action steps. Okay. So we’re talking about our individual journey, our own learning. I mean, I’ve been doing some of this recently by watching Youtube, watching, um, folks on Youtube of course. Now I now I can’t remember the names of people, but no Eddie Glaude. Um, so Eddie Glaude is a commentator on MSNBC. He’s just written a just released this last week, uh, biography, well, not so much a biography of James baldwin, but, but an explanation of baldwin’s journey around racism. Um, so that’s one example of, you know, who I’ve been listening to. So we were talking about educating like learning from thought leaders around yeah, privilege structures, whether reading books listening to podcasts.

[00:19:00.76] spk_1:
Absolutely. It’s around, it’s around structures, but it’s also understanding things that we do all the time in organizations and how I as a leader might perpetuate those, right? So it’s sometimes the use of language to your point about the use of the word professional. Um, language tends to create our reality. So, and and it either language will build a bridge or not. So how do we use our language? How do we use our descriptors? How do I show up as a leader? Um, as in my own kind of inclusion or not? So, I think it is absolutely that it is looking at thought leaders around things like structural racism, around the use of language around people’s individual experiences to get that insight and depth, because it’s not just an intellectual exercise. This is emotional, too, and therefore has to have emotional resonance.

[00:20:10.42] spk_0:
Okay, thank you for letting me dive deeper into what about personal, you know, your own personal journey, your own personal education, uh, fact finding and introspection. You’re talking about something, you know, and it’s no, no revelation. This is it’s difficult. It’s painful. You know, you you’re very likely uncovering how you offended someone, uh, how you offended a group. Um, if you were, you know, speaking in public and something comes to mind or how you offended someone in meetings or, you know, multiplied. I don’t know how many times. I mean, this introspection is likely painful,

[00:20:12.44] spk_1:
likely likely. Yeah, more often. More often than not, I can’t I can’t really envision it. Not at some level being painful.

[00:20:21.92] spk_0:
Yeah. But you’ve caused pain. You know, that there’s a recognition there. Yeah,

[00:20:27.16] spk_1:
exactly,

[00:20:27.62] spk_0:
painful for you. But let’s consider the pain of the person or the group that you.

[00:20:33.80] spk_1:
Exactly, right. I

[00:20:34.78] spk_0:
don’t know, offended, stereotyped, mean to put off, you know, whatever it is, you’re

[00:20:40.73] spk_1:
that’s right. And that that’s why the work as much as I know, you know, to some degree, people want this to be work that can be kind of project managed if you will or it can be put into a process or a series of best practices or benchmarks

[00:20:53.94] spk_0:
to

[00:21:05.75] spk_1:
some degree, not very much, but to some degree. Yes, absolutely. The some a little bit of that can happen, but that in and of itself is a bit of a dominant narrative, right? That in and of itself is kind that that centering white culture. So I think what we need to understand is this is not just going to be again to sorry to be redundant, but it’s not just gonna be intellectual. The fact that pain has been caused dictates that this be emotionally owned as well. It can’t be arms length. It can’t be just intellectually owned with a project plan that I keep over here on a chalkboard or something like that.

[00:21:41.49] spk_0:
Emotionally owned. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Um All right. So I made you digress and deeper. What else, what else you wanna tell us about leadership’s commitment and and and the importance of leadership commitment.

[00:23:23.38] spk_1:
Yeah. So, so it needs to be explicit. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be baked into the leadership. Whatever leadership structure of the organization has, it needs to be an ongoing piece of that leadership. So it’s not a, hey, let’s touch base on our quote inclusion initiative. If it’s an initiative first of all, that’s not really doing the work anyway. Um but it’s not something that lives separately from ourselves. Let’s have HR kind of check in on this or let’s have the operations person check in on this, that that’s not what this is about. It’s really, it’s authentically being owned by leadership to say, yeah, I know it’s gonna be painful. And in looking at our organization, we’re gonna need to understand why our leadership is remarkably homogeneous. Which in the case of many nonprofits, it is if you take a look at Building movement project and the unbelievably great work that they’ve done twice now, they just put out an update to their leadership work around how people move through the sector or don’t and how people communities of color and people of color are represented in our leadership. We can begin to understand that by and large, they’re they’re not. Um though i that is an oversimplification in some ways. So I would encourage people to go to building movement Project’s website and check out their work. Um but you know what, why are we so homogeneous? Why is our board? So homogeneous? It’s it’s also unpacking and uncovering that. So to your point earlier about, you know, how do we look at people and how they move through the organization. This is where you look at Who is present, right? Not just who’s not with us, but who is with us? How do people get promoted? How does that system work? Does any does everyone have the same information? Is it a case of unwritten rules? Is it a case of some people move up because they’re similar or they have 10 years of experience, which is something that we like to say.

[00:23:45.71] spk_0:
How

[00:24:08.90] spk_1:
Do you get 10 years of experience if you’ve not been given those chances to begin with? So is there life experience that we can that we can begin to integrate in our conversations? Because life experience is equally valuable. Are we putting too much of a premium on higher education, education and its formal kind of traditional form. Are we putting too much of a of an emphasis on pedigree of other kinds of those, those are the things that ultimately keep people out. So taking a look at leadership and and having leadership commitment ultimately means looking at all of those things, there’s an overlap and how we look at leadership or people and or organizational culture.

[00:24:24.52] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah, of course, this is a it’s a continuum or

[00:24:27.44] spk_1:
Absolutely, absolutely. And the areas bleed into each other.

[00:24:38.31] spk_0:
Yeah, of course, yeah. Um, you know, subsumed in all this, I guess. I mean, it’s okay for leaders to say, I don’t know where the where the journey is going. I don’t know what we’re going to uncover, but I’m committed to having this journey and leading it and and right. I mean, supporting it, but I don’t know what we’re going to find.

[00:24:54.28] spk_1:
Uh

[00:24:55.50] spk_0:
Right,

[00:24:56.39] spk_1:
right. And that in and of itself can be uncomfortable for a lot of people. And that’s the that’s the kind of discomfort we need to get okay with.

[00:25:03.34] spk_0:
Yeah. Alright. Yeah. This, you know, I had I had a guest explained that this is not as you were alluding to, uh it’s not the kind of thing that, you know, we’re gonna have a weekly meeting and will be these outcomes at the end of every meeting, then we’ll have this list of activities and, you know, that then, you know, it’s how come it’s not like that. How come we can’t do it like that

[00:25:26.67] spk_1:
because we’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of years of history, and it’s because we haven’t been inclusive in the ways that we do things and we haven’t allowed whole selves to show up that it is um It’s complicated and it’s messy because it’s human.

[00:25:44.56] spk_0:
Alright. So it’s not gonna be as simple as our budget meetings.

[00:25:48.62] spk_1:
Absolutely different. Different kind of hard.

[00:25:52.76] spk_0:
Alright. And we’re gonna have an outcome at every at every juncture at every step or every week or every month or something. That’s

[00:25:58.65] spk_1:
right. That’s right. And if we expect it to go that way. Um We are likely going to give ourselves excuses not to press on

[00:26:56.36] spk_0:
it’s time for a break, fourth dimension technologies. Are you seeing technology as an investment, an investment in your people, the people you’re helping, the people who work for you, the people who support you, an investment in your sustainability and investment in your programs four D. Can help you make better tech investment decisions. Check them out on the listener landing page at Just like three D. But you know, they go one dimension deeper. Let’s return shall we to your dismantling racism journey. Alright, so that’s what it’s not. What, what does it look like?

[00:27:59.80] spk_1:
It absolutely looks different for every organization. It absolutely looks different for every organization and that’s why it’s so critical to understand kind of where are we right now? Um where are we? As far as all of the components of our organization? Right. So volatile. Again, volunteers board staff culture. You said, you know, we were talking about people organization and leadership, which is obviously a lot of my work. Um, it is getting underneath all of those kinds of things to say. So who experiences our culture? How um so we do engagement surveys, Right. A lot of times we do engagement employee surveys, that kind of thing. Are we looking at those disagree in a disaggregated way? Are we asking different populations to identify themselves? And are we looking at what the experiences are by population? Are we asking explicit questions around whether or not you feel like you can be yourself in this organization, Whether you can provide dissenting opinions, whether you feel comfortable approaching your boss with feedback, um

[00:28:01.00] spk_0:
whether

[00:28:01.73] spk_1:
you feel comfortable volunteering for particular work, whether you feel like you understand what a promotion or performance management processes, whether you get the support that you need or to what extent you get support that you need either from colleagues, boss, leadership etcetera. So it’s looking at all of those things and then understanding are they being experienced differently by different communities within our organization?

[00:28:26.10] spk_0:
You mentioned disaggregate ng. That that’s where the data is not helpful, right?

[00:28:31.94] spk_1:
That is where we look at the data in terms of populations.

[00:28:35.58] spk_0:
Oh, of course. Aggregating. I’m sorry.

[00:28:39.09] spk_1:
Oh, that’s okay.

[00:28:40.34] spk_0:
You’re stuck with a lackluster host? No, of course, yes. Aggregating

[00:28:44.36] spk_1:
early in the week.

[00:29:00.70] spk_0:
Thank you. You couldn’t say early in the day, but thank you for being gracious. Okay. Yes. We we we want to disaggregate of course. Um and look by population and I guess cut a different way. I mean depending on the size of the organization, um age, race, uh

[00:29:25.54] spk_1:
race, ethnicity, um of physical ability, orientation. All of those need to be in the mix. Um gender as well. Including gender fluidity. So really looking at all of our populations and then understanding, you know, for these particular questions, is there a difference in how people experience our organization? We we know then what we do know is that if there is a difference that there is a difference, we don’t know that there is causality unless they’re unless you’ve asked questions that might begin to illuminate that. Right? But there’s there’s always that difference between correlation and causality and then what you want to do is get underneath that to understand why the experience might be different and why it might change along lines of gender or race or ethnicity or orientation or physical ability.

[00:29:57.07] spk_0:
We we we wandered, you know, but that’s that’s fine. I

[00:30:03.50] spk_1:
people

[00:30:09.82] spk_0:
culture and um and leadership all coming together. Um where where where do you want to go? Uh I mean, I would like to talk about people, culture and leadership. What’s a good, what’s a good next one?

[00:32:27.52] spk_1:
Yes. Well, so, so this is what you’re doing, right? As you’re you’re collecting information and all of those three areas. Right? And one so a couple of things that I would add to that is when you look at people, you’re looking at their experiences, when you look at the leadership, you’re looking at commitment, makeup, structure, access all of those kinds of things. When you’re looking at culture, you’re looking at how people experience the culture, Right? And so what, what is happening? What’s not happening? What’s stated out loud? What’s not stated out loud? What are the unwritten rules? There is also the piece that that forms all of these things, which is operational systems. Right? So things like performance management, things like um where people may sit back when we were in physical offices having access to technology, all of those kinds of things, particularly important now that we’re not in physical offices, so does everyone have access to the technology and information necessary to do their job, to do their jobs to do their work? So it is looking also at your operator side and saying, how do we live our operational life? How do how do people experience it, who do we engage with to provide services for our operations? How do we provide services if you will, for lack of better term to our employees? So it’s also looking at that because operations ultimately permeates organizational culture, people and leadership, Right? Because it kind of sustains all of that. So taking a look at that too. And finally, I would suggest again as part of this and as a wraparound is what is the internal external alignment? Right? So I often hear people say, hey, you know what, this is the subsector we work in, people would think that we’re really equitable, but internally we are living a different life than what we are putting out to our stakeholders and our constituencies externally. So what is what is our external life? And how does that need to inform our internal world? It’s not unusual for me to hear that the external life, the way we engage with stakeholders or the way we put out program Programmatic work is actually may be further along to the extent that this is considered to be a contain, it’s further along than the way that we’re living our life internally. So

[00:32:31.20] spk_0:
there’s dishonesty there disconnect that

[00:32:34.70] spk_1:
there’s a disconnect

[00:32:36.18] spk_0:
disconnect

[00:32:36.88] spk_1:
for sure and possibly yeah, dishonesty and hip hop maybe even hypocrisy.

[00:32:47.12] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. But again, all right. So that now we’re looking like this is organizational introspection. Exactly. There’s individual learning and introspection. Now we’re at the organizational level right? Being honest with our with our culture and our messaging.

[00:33:05.70] spk_1:
Right. Right. And and so what I try to do is to help organizations kind of look at those things and decide how we might evolve give in the future that we’ve set our sights on and given some of the principles that we’ve laid out. How do we kind of get there? How do we, how do we evolve our systems? How do we evolve our people practices? How do we evolve our culture. So hence the need to look at all of these things that centered around people, culture and leadership.

[00:35:27.37] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take to debunk the top five myths of planned giving. I hate these insidious, pernicious myths like the one that planned giving will hurt your other fundraising and the one that you need a lawyer because plan giving is so complicated. I will debunk the top five myths in a webinar on Tuesday october 18th at 10 a.m. Pacific time, one p.m. Eastern time. but the time doesn’t matter because if you grab your spot for the webinar, you’ll get the video. This is 2022 you don’t need to be there. We’d love to have you live, but you don’t need to be there. I will be debunking these insidious myths in plain simple language and I’m gonna weave in my stand up comedy. The host is NP Solutions. They’re hosting, you are hosting me, they’re hosting us. That’s what hosts do they host their hosting? You go to N. P solutions dot org and click on workshops. What could be simpler. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got the boo koo but loads more time for your dismantling racism journey with Gene Takagi. No, no, it’s with who writes this copy? I need an intern so badly, desperately. So I have somebody to blame. Please. You’re dismantling racism journey with pretty itchy Shah and intern resumes are welcome. What about the use of a professional facilitator? Because well, first of all, there’s a body of expertise that someone like you brings uh but also help with these difficult conversations. Talk about the value of having an expert facilitator. Yeah,

[00:36:50.97] spk_1:
absolutely. So, so, you know, I think I think there’s always a level of objectivity and and and kind of an in inside look by an outsider that you that you benefit from. We go to experts for everything from, you know, our health to the extent that we have access to those experts, which is a whole different conversation on race and oppression. Um, we we want that external voice. What I would say is it’s likely not going to be the same expert or the same facilitator and I say expert in quotes um, for everything. So for instance, I am not the voice to be centered on educating an organization around structural racism. I don’t think I’m the right voice to be centered. I would rather center voices like those at um, At race forward at equity in the center at those who have lived the results of 400 years of oppression. So you might want to call in someone for that discussion for that education. There are people that are better and more steeped in that and whose voices should absolutely be centered for that. Um, you might want to call in a voice for White Ally ship because there is some specifics around that that we need to talk about without kind of centering white voices. I’m

[00:36:51.22] spk_0:
sorry that white Ally ship. Yeah. What is that?

[00:38:01.95] spk_1:
So if we think about the or the organization, right, and are kind of culture and our people um, who who on staff sees themselves as an ally. And how can they be good? How can how can white people be good allies? Right. And how do how do we further and embed that in the culture. Um, and then finally, so keeping that in mind that there are gonna be different experts or different facilitators for different things, you know, who is going to be the person in my case, this actually might be me is to help us evolve our culture and our systems so that we can be more equitable and take a look at that, who’s gonna provide the training because there are skills necessary right to have these com conversations. There are foundational communication skills, there is the ability to give feedback. Um, there is the ability to communicate across cultures, across genders, across across groups. There is ability to be collaborative. So so also strengthening those skills while we continue to look at those things. But to think that all of this help is going to come from? One source is not ideal and unlikely it’s even inappropriate because everyone can’t be everything. I don’t try to be the voices that I can’t be, it’s inappropriate for me to do that.

[00:38:26.14] spk_0:
What what else do you wanna, what do you want to talk about? You know, given the level where that we’re at, we’re trying to help small and midsize nonprofits inaugurate a journey around racism and white privilege.

[00:39:44.81] spk_1:
Yeah, I think, I mean, look, first of all I hear a lot of organizations say like what what is the access point, like what do I get started doing? We put out a statement um in some cases we are experiencing some dissonance between the statement that we put out or the programmatic work that we do and the way that we’re living internally. So it is really understanding kind of why where are we now through all of the ways that that we’ve been talking about over the last several minutes. Where are we now? What is it that we’re not doing that we should be doing, What is it that we need to be doing? How do we define for us if we have an equitable culture, if we are living racial equity, what does that look like for us? Um how does that affect our programmatic work? How does that affect our operations? Everything from our finances to our people processes to when we are back in an office, even our physical setup. How how does that affect us and how would we define that future state? So it’s understanding what is my current state, what is my future state and then understanding how we get there and it’s likely gonna be along all of the areas that we said. Right? So individual journeys, some group and individual skill building, um some evolution of our systems and some understanding of kind of how we can support each other and support ourselves for those that are that affiliate with a particular group. Um and then kind of moving us along to that place of where we want to be. So it is it is understanding where you are that determines what your access point is. But I would say if you if you have done the work of putting out this statement then there then look for look for where you’re not living that statement internally.

[00:40:22.11] spk_0:
That sounds like a very good place to Yeah, to start your search for for an access point because it’s so recent, your organization has probably said something in the past 56 weeks.

[00:40:23.77] spk_1:
Absolutely

[00:40:26.78] spk_0:
to that, to that statement.

[00:40:43.46] spk_1:
Exactly. And and we are incredibly, I would say and pardon the use of the term, but almost fortunate that so many thought leaders have been kind and generous enough to share with us their thoughts on this moment, so not just within the sector, but all the way across our society. So many people have taken the time and the patients and the generosity amidst everything else that they’re living through, they have agreed to share their thoughts, their leadership, their expertise with us. So there is a ton of knowledge out there right at our fingertips and that’s a that’s another really great place to start and to center the voices that most need to be heard

[00:41:15.89] spk_0:
at the same time. You know, we are seeing beginnings of change uh institutions from Princeton University to the state of Mississippi

[00:41:37.59] spk_1:
right? Absolutely. To hopefully, you know, the unnamed Washington football team and to Nascar and places where we, I didn’t know that change necessarily was possible, but we we are same change and and the important thing is is to not be complacent about that change,

[00:42:41.88] spk_0:
right and not and also recognize that it’s just a beginning. You know, removing confederate statues, um taking old glory off the Mississippi flag. These are just beginnings. But I think worth worth noting. I mean worth recognizing and celebrating because The state of Mississippi is a big institution and it’s been wrestling with this for, I don’t know if they’ve been wrestling for centuries, but that flag has been there for that just that long 18. Some things I think is when that flag was developed. So it’s been a long, it’s been a long time coming. So recognizing it for what it is and celebrating it, you know, to the extent that yeah, to the extent that represents the change, the beginning of the beginning of change. All right. Um well, you know, what else, what else, what else do you want to share with folks at this? You know, at this stage?

[00:43:50.39] spk_1:
You know, I think, I think the main thing is um dig in, We need to dig in on this. We need to dig in on this because in the same way that that we have been living this society societally for so long. Our organizations many times are microcosms of society. So if we think as an organization that were exempt or that were already there, we’ve arrived at like a post racial culture, that’s not the case, that’s just not the case. Um, so where do you want to dig in? Where do you want to dig in, chances are good you are doing some version of looking at issues within your organization, whether it’s your annual survey, if you do it annually or whatever in which you can use that information to begin this journey. So dig in from where you are. It’s one of those things that if you’re waiting, if you’re waiting for kind of the exact right time or further analysis to begin the journey again, it’s not it’s not based solely on analysis. There is a p there is certainly information. There’s data that needs to be understood. But if we’re waiting for endless analysis to happen or to kind of point us to the right time, that’s not going to happen. The intellectualism needs to be there. But again, as we said in the path, as we’ve said a few times during the course of our conversation, this is about emotional resonance and an emotional ownership and a moral obligation. So, dig in, dig in wherever you are right now,

[00:44:38.44] spk_0:
what if I’m trying within my organization and I’m not the leader, I’m not even second or third tier management or something, You know, how do I elevate the conversation? I presume it helps to have allies. What if what if I’m meeting a resistance from the people who, who are in leadership?

[00:45:11.35] spk_1:
I think look for the places where there may not be resistance, right? So look within the organization. Um, if there is resistance at a particular level, then you know, who do you have access to in the organization where there isn’t that? And I think, I think starting out not assuming that you have solutions if you have expertise in this area, if you have lived through the oppression as a member of a community that has lived through the impression, particularly in the black community, I think you’re coming from one place if you are, if you are not in that community and saying that you have expertise, I think you have to be a little bit more circumspect about that and introspective about what you can offer in this vein. Um, and I think, I think we want to look for the places where there is some traction, I think in most organizations, it’s not unusual to be getting the question right now,

[00:45:47.45] spk_0:
and what is the, I don’t want to call it outcome. What, what, what what can the future look like for our organization if we do embark on this long journey,

[00:46:18.02] spk_1:
uh, cultures that are equitable in which people can show up as their whole selves, um, in which there is not only one right way to do things which tends to be a very kind of white dominant Western culture, linear sequential way of, of managing work of managing communications, etcetera, but that in fact work can be approached in a number of different ways and that solutions can be approached in a number of different ways. People get to show up and give their all to these missions that we all hold very near and dear. And so they are able they’re empowered. They are able they are celebrated without sticking to a set of preconceived guidelines or preconceived unwritten or written rules that don’t serve us anymore. Anyway,

[00:46:44.78] spk_0:
when you started to answer that, I saw your face lighten up your I don’t know, it was a smile, it just looks like your face untended. Not that you’re nervous,

[00:46:55.65] spk_1:
Your face changed,

[00:47:06.37] spk_0:
started to answer the where we could be. Uh yeah, it was, it was palpable. Alright, alright. Are you comfortable leaving it there?

[00:47:09.88] spk_1:
I think so. I think so what have we not covered that? We need to cover for your listeners,

[00:47:15.60] spk_0:
you know that better than I getting started. That’s

[00:47:34.18] spk_1:
fair. Look, you know what, this is, this is the future that is written with many voices and and while I think I can be helpful, I don’t presume to be the voice that has all the answers. I definitively don’t. I definitively don’t. And so what we have not covered is actually probably not known to me, but I dare say someone, someone out there does know that and and they will likely be putting their voice up, which is exactly what we want.

[00:47:47.19] spk_0:
Yes, we will be bringing other voices as well. Alright,

[00:47:50.25] spk_1:
no doubt. Yeah,

[00:48:02.94] spk_0:
she’s founder and Ceo of flourished Talent management Solutions and the company is at flourish tMS dot com. Thank you so much. Thank you very very much.

[00:48:05.97] spk_1:
Thank you. Thank you for opening up this space and having the conversation

[00:49:10.60] spk_0:
a pleasure. Uh it’s a responsibility and happy to live up to it. Try trying next week Beth Canter and Alison fine on their new book the smart non profit if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies their I. T. Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great

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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[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